An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism

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Beecher Catharine Esther. An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism

PREFACE

ESSAY ON SLAVERY AND ABOLITIONISM

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My dear Friend,

Your public address to Christian females at the South has reached me, and I have been urged to aid in circulating it at the North. I have also been informed, that you contemplate a tour, during the ensuing year, for the purpose of exerting your influence to form Abolition Societies among ladies of the non-slave-holding States.

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In attempting to characterize these leaders, I would first present another leader of a similar enterprise, the beloved and venerated Wilberforce. It is thus that his prominent traits are delineated by an intimate friend.

"His extreme benevolence contributed largely to his success. I have heard him say, that it was one of his constant rules, and on the question of slavery especially, never to provoke an adversary – to allow him credit fully for sincerity and purity of motive – to abstain from all irritating expressions – to avoid even such political attacks as would indispose his opponents for his great cause. In fact, the benignity, the gentleness, the kind-heartedness of the man, disarmed the bitterest foes. Not only on this question did he restrain himself, but generally. Once he had been called during a whole debate 'the religious member,' in a kind of scorn. He remarked afterwards, that he was much inclined to have retorted, by calling his opponent the irreligious member, but that he refrained, as it would have been a returning of evil for evil. Next to his general consistency, and love of the Scriptures, the humility of his character always appeared remarkable. The modest, shrinking, simple Christian statesman and friend always appeared in him. And the nearer you approached him, the more his habit of mind obviously appeared to be modest and lowly. His charity in judging of others, is a farther trait of his Christian character. Of his benevolence I need not speak, but his kind construction of doubtful actions, his charitable language toward those with whom he most widely differed, his thorough forgetfulness of little affronts, were fruits of that general benevolence which continually appeared."

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