The Anti-Slavery Examiner, OmnibusAmerican Anti-Slavery Society
Religion
The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus
American Anti-Slavery Society
Antislavery movements -- United States -- Periodicals; Slavery -- United States -- Periodicals
But time would fail me, to tell of all those hundreds and thousands of
_women_, who perished in the Low countries of Holland, when Alva's sword
of vengeance was unsheathed against the Protestants, when the Catholic
Inquisitions of Europe became the merciless executioners of vindictive
wrath, upon those who dared to worship God, instead of bowing down in
unholy adoration before "my Lord God the _Pope_," and when England, too,
burnt her Ann Ascoes at the stake of martyrdom. Suffice it to say, that
the Church, after having been driven from Judea to Rome, and from Rome
to Piedmont, and from Piedmont to England, and from England to Holland,
at last stretched her fainting wings over the dark bosom of the
Atlantic, and found on the shores of a great wilderness, a refuge from
tyranny and oppression--as she thought, but _even here_, (the warm blush
of shame mantles my cheek as I write it,) _even here, woman_ was beaten
and banished, imprisoned, and hung upon the gallows, a trophy to the
Cross. And what, I would ask in conclusion, have _women_ done for the
great and glorious cause of Emancipation? Who wrote that pamphlet which
moved the heart of Wilberforce to pray over the wrongs, and his tongue
to plead the cause of the oppressed African? It was a _woman_, Elizabeth
Heyrick. Who labored assiduously to keep the sufferings of the slave
continually before the British public? They were _women_. And how did
they do it? By their needles, paint brushes and pens, by speaking the
truth, and petitioning Parliament for the abolition of slavery. And what
was the effect of their labors? Read it in the Emancipation bill of
Great Britain. Read it, in the present state of her West India Colonies.
Read it, in the impulse which has been given to the cause of freedom, in
the United States of America. Have English women then done so much for
the negro, and shall American women do nothing? Oh no! Already are there
sixty female Anti-Slavery Societies in operation. These are doing just
what the English women did, telling the story of the colored man's
wrongs, praying for his deliverance, and presenting his kneeling image
constantly before the public eye on bags and needle-books, card-racks,
pen-wipers, pin-cushions, &c. Even the children of the north are
inscribing on their handy work, "May the points of our needles prick the
slaveholder's conscience." Some of the reports of these Societies
exhibit not only considerable talent, but a deep sense of religious
duty, and a determination to persevere through evil as well as good
report, until every scourge, and every shackle, is buried under the feet
of the manumitted slave.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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