Mr. Editor:

In these days of women’s doings, it may not be amiss to report the proceedings of some ladies in Andover. . . .

The call of our female friends across the waters—the energetic appeal of those untiring sisters in the work of emancipation in Boston—above all, the sighs, the groans, the deathlike struggles of scourged sisters in the South—these have moved our hearts, our hands. We feel that woman has a place in this Godlike work, for woman’s woes, and woman’s wrongs, are borne to us on every breeze that flows from the South; woman has a place, for she forms a part in God’s created intelligent instrumentality to reform the world. . . . When man proves recreant [remiss] to his duty and faithless to his Maker, woman, with her feeling heart, should rouse him—should start his sympathies—should cry in his ear, and raise such a storm of generous sentiment, as shall never let him sleep again. We believe God gave woman a heart to feel—an eye to weep—a hand to work—a tongue to speak. Now let her use that tongue to speak on slavery. Is it not a curse—a heaven-daring abomination? Let her employ that hand, to labor for the slave. Does not her sister in bonds, labor night and day without reward? Let her heart grieve, and her eye fill with tears, in view of a female’s body dishonored—a female’s mind debased—a female’s soul forever ruined! Woman nothing to do with slavery! Abhorred the thought!! We will pray to abhor it more and more. Is not woman abused—woman trampled upon—woman spoiled of her virtue, her probity, her influence, her joy! And this, not in India—not in China—not in Turkey—not in Africa but in America—in the United States of America. . . .

As Christian women, we will do a Christian woman’s duty. . . .

Our preamble gives our creed:

“We believe American Slavery is a sin against God—at war with the dictates of humanity, and subversive of the principles of freedom, because it regards rational beings as goods and chattel; robs them of compensation for their toil—denies to them the protection of law—disregards the relation of husband and wife, brother and sister, parent and child; shuts out from the intellect the light of knowledge; overwhelms hope in despair and ruins the soul—thus sinking to the level of brutes, more than one million of American females, who are created in God’s image, a little lower than the angels’, and consigns them over to degradation, physical, social, intellectual, and moral.

Source: Elizabeth Emery and Mary P. Abbott, “Letter to The Liberator,” Liberator, August 27, 1836, 138.