"Even our own village did not escape unscathed. A pastor of the First Congregational church who had strong antislavery principles, dared to preach an abolition sermon one Sunday from his pulpit, and the next morning the village was flooded with a 'Broadside' demanding the people to rise, and teach this disturber a lesson, and not allow such sins to be perpetrated in their midst. A copy of this sheet was even nailed upon his own doorway, and is now deposited in our historical society, and is worthy of your perusal. "Even the historic cannon now reposing in our historical rooms was used to break up 'pestilent abolition meetings' in our own midst. Thus I have endeavored to give you some idea of an interesting phase in the history of our Commonwealth, that may not be familiar to all, and which I would term as a Connecticut mistake."--_The Springfield Republican_, June 18, 1916. DOCUMENTS LETTERS OF ANTHONY BENEZET Benezet published his letters at his own expense and distributed them with the accompanying circular letter below. "Copy of the substance of a letter written to several persons of note, both in Europe and America, on sending them some of the negroe pamphlets, viz. account of Africa, &c. particularly to the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, dated about the year 1758, and since. * * * * * "With the best respects I am capable of, and from, I trust, no other motive but that of love to mankind; and from a persuasion of thy sincere desires for the suppression of evil and the promotion of that righteousness which alone exalteth a nation, I make bold affectionately to salute thee, and to request a little of thy attention to a subject which has long been a matter of deep concern to many, vast many, well disposed people of all denominations in these parts, viz. that of the negroe trade, the purchase and bringing the poor negroes from their native land, and subjecting them to a state of perpetual bondage, the most cruel and oppressive, in which the English nation is so deeply engaged, and which with additional sorrow we observe to be greatly increasing in their northern colonies, and likely still more to increase by the acquisition the English have lately made of the factories on the river Senegal. I herewith send thee some small treatises lately published here on that subject, wherein are truely set forth the great inhumanity and wickedness which this trade gives life to, whereby hundreds of thousands of our fellow creatures, equally with us the objects of Christ's redeeming grace, and as free as we are by nature, are kept under the worst oppression, and many of them yearly brought to a miserable and untimely end.