A. W. Weston

“ The dominant sects of the country can hardly understand that certain great, and, in their eyes, all-important doctrines, are no more to be asserted as truths on our platform, except incidentally, than are the converse propositions. Their members can enforce and illustrate Anti-Slavery truth in whatever way they please; but if smaller and more heretical bodies, represented in our councils, choose to use the same liberty, by speaking in their own theological tongue, the Society holds itself responsible for neither. ”

“ While money-making is our primary object, we yet manage to secure collateral results of a very agreeable, as well as useful character. The Bazaar furnishes an occasion, on which Anti-Slavery people of all shades of opinion, the pro-slavery world and the Poco curante, all meet together, and from the conflict of sentiment and exchange of ideas that ensue, it cannot be but that good is evolved. Much social enjoyment and much serious business are compressed into the ten days through which the Bazaar continues, and many friends from a distance make their annual visit to Boston at this season. ”

“ By incessant pains and promulgation, we have at length made men understand, partially, at least, the catholicity and breadth of our platform; that on it, men and women of all nations, and conditions, and creeds, and politics, can meet in harmonious action, ignoring, for the time, all other differences of opinion, and united, so far as their Anti-Slavery life is concerned, by the recognition of the sin of Slavery, under all circumstances, and the duty, consequently, of its immediate abolition. ”

“ It takes all sorts of sects, and creeds, and parties, to make up a pro-slavery world; and hence, when we rally for the slave’s liberation, common sense calls on us to unite all sects, and creeds, and parties in an Anti-Slavery fellowship. To make their arguments and appeals effective, people must necessarily use such as are real and influential to their own convictions ”

“ Of the thousand petty toils, and wearying annoyances, and uncongenial duties that attend the Bazaar, we will not speak. They would be burdensome under any circumstances; for buying and selling, even when viewed as a prelude to getting gain, is not in itself an interesting occupation. Neither do we dwell on the misunderstandings and misrepresentations, and absence of popular sympathy, to which our position exposes us. ”

“ The enemies of the American Anti-Slavery Society have changed their ground. “It is not an Infidel Society, but a Society that has a great many Infidels in it.” To look at this matter fairly, requires a wider view than many of our British friends are able to take. Their own agitation for the abolition of West India Slavery offers nothing analogous to the state of things that has obtained for the last twenty years in this country. No institutions, either civil or ecclesiastical, were the least affected in Great Britain by the abolition of West India Slavery. ”

“ The minister of religion, the philosopher, the artist, and the poet, have given us of their best, have freely contributed that spiritual and ideal wealth, whose price is above rubies. But all these gifts, however diverse their source, come to us with words of the most earnest encouragement, with assurances of exhaustless sympathy, and promises of continued support. Much of the help thus given, by deed and word, is sent from other lands. To the moral beauty of the contribution, it adds not a little, in our eyes, that such is the case. ”

“ It is in no rash or thoughtless spirit that they have initiated opinions that have convulsed, and are destined still more mightily to shake this whole nation. True, they began in ignorance whither their path might lead, ignorant of almost every thing but that it is safe to do right,—​safe for the State, safe for the Church, safe for one’s own soul. ”

“ There is a practice in the Catholic Church, which, Protestant as we are, attracts our sympathy. Any suffering, no matter how earthly its character, any labor, however mundane and common-place, becomes ennobled and sanctified, if removed from the category of common duties, and performed as a religious offering. Let it be so with this annual Bazaar. ”

“ With the heart of the nation, colder and harder than marble, and a mere handful of men awake to the Slave’s terrible wrongs, and striving to create some sympathy for them, this miserable talk of patience, and of judicial calmness in summing up the arguments on all sides of the question, and of scientific surveys of the whole field of conflict, appears to us extremely out of place. ”

“ We must confess that, to speak of the Maker and Governor of all things, the self-existent and Omniscient, “whose kingdom is where time and space are not,” whose methods and sovereignty are in so many instances inscrutable, as waiting patiently for the evolution of His own all-perfect purposes, and thence inferring that it is the duty of His creatures to look with patience on scenes of wrong and outrage which they could not contemplate patiently as borne for one day by themselves, is a species of cant, the impiety of which is equalled only by its inhumanity. ”

“ Having no national ecclesiastical establishment, we cannot affirm the same of the American Church, in the same absolute and positive sense, that we do of the State; and yet it is virtually and actually so. The voters and the church members are the same persons. ”

“ When tidings could arrive, and nearly every hour brought fresh intelligence of peril, disaster or shipwreck, and the very aspect of nature herself seemed redolent of melancholy suggestion, it certainly would not be unnatural if, in some minds, the whole coloring of thought assumed a graver and more sober hue. ”

“ Our distant friends cannot know the difficulties and discouragements that, at every step, beset such an undertaking as ours. It is the twentieth Bazaar that has just closed. The interest afforded by novelty and a spirit of adventure has long since died away. The number of Abolitionists in the city which sent back Thomas Sims is necessarily small; and, of that small number, only a few are so situated as to give to the Bazaar much earnest and effective labor. Many of the Committee do not reside in Boston, and several of its most efficient members are absent from the country. ”

“ Hence the increased temptation to support Slavery under which members of those sects labor. The liberal sects (to use popular phraseology) are small, and comparatively insignificant bodies. There are not more than half a dozen Unitarian congregations, to our knowledge, south of Mason and Dixon’s line. When we take into account the difference of belief in respect to church fellowship that exists between Orthodox and liberal churches, it is very easy to see why the latter should find it much easier than the former to coöperate with the Anti-Slavery Society. ”

“ The intellect of the civilized world is convinced as to the enormity of the system we are attacking. A new and unique mode of defence is beginning to obtain in some quarters. The sins and sufferings of Slavery are conceded, but Abolitionists are urged to patience—​by what consideration, think you? ”

“ Earnest rebuke and moral indignation belong to wrong-doing, and not to erroneous opinion. It is a confusion of mind on these points that has led to all the persecution and religious hatred that the world has ever witnessed. ”

“ George Harris, though occupied with the erection of a new church, and unusual claims on their charity, in consequence of the prevalence of cholera in their town, have yet remembered those who are forbidden, by law, to worship God according to their own consciences, and whose worldly estate is such, that pestilence in their midst is esteemed a boon instead of a curse. ”

“ Their labor has been lost to the promotion of the Bazaar, lost to the treasury of the slave, but the fresh motive to hope and encouragement it has supplied to our hearts, can never be lost; and as to their own souls, it shall in no wise lose its reward.
The contributions of the American abolitionists are in amount about the same as in previous years. Horticultural Hall is so entirely inadequate in size, that we can hardly allow our country friends any room for separate tables, and this circumstance is naturally somewhat discouraging in its tendency. ”

“ If, with a few insignificant exceptions, the churches of America are the strongholds of oppression, slaveholding and slave-hunting forming no bar to communion with any sect, the revelation of such facts, and the recognition of the real character that they imply, must almost of necessity involve a parallel theological warfare. ”

“ It was a noble struggle with a mighty moneyed interest, and too great credit cannot be awarded to British Abolitionists. But, we repeat, their situation differed very widely from ours. The Constitution of our country, as expounded by its authorized interpreters, has provided, by the most careful and astute arrangements, for the continuance and perpetuity of Slavery. All our civil institutions are, therefore, in some sense, based upon it. ”

“ One is bound to defend the personal Christianity of its communicants, the other not at all. Hence the difficulty that an Orthodox man finds in acting with us, unless he be prepared to take the great step of coming out, and being separate from churches which we denounce as apostate. The Unitarians and Universalists, holding very different views in regard to church fellowship, have very little temptation, religiously, to be untrue to the slave. ”

“ The best stand-point from which to consider this question is that which the Slave occupies. We can but imperfectly approach to that, but perplexities become easy of solution in proportion as we do so. If we will but remember how much education, and temperament, and the providential arrangements of life, have had to do with the formation of our own most cherished opinions, we shall be better able to exercise the virtue of a perfect toleration. ”

“ From the homes of actual poverty, from young girls painfully earning their own bread, and yet saving something to purchase the material that shall be fashioned into the gay clothing, never to be worn for their own decoration, from the chambers of sickness and languor, and hopeless disease, from Asylums for the Blind, from schools that charity has established for the help of the wholly indigent,—​it is from sources like these, that very great and valuable assistance is obtained. True, the gifts of the happy and the prosperous are here also ”

“ That a heavy pecuniary loss should have been sustained by a Cause so poor as ours, of course we deeply regret, but that is nothing to our sorrow that the most unwearied labor and generous devotion of time and money should be met with entire failure and disappointment. ”

“ Child’s residence in New York has occasioned, we hailed her presence as a helper with the liveliest satisfaction. We participated in the great pleasure she must have experienced in comparing our present Bazaar with the first Anti-Slavery Fair, held in the December of 1834, owing its origin entirely to the personal labors and contributions of herself and Mrs. Ellis Gray Loring. In every point of view, the reminiscence is full of encouragement.
With very earnest and peculiar emotions of interest, the Committee welcomed the presence and sympathy of Mrs. Stowe. ”

“ Within the last two years, two of those who have been co-workers with us almost from the beginning of the conflict, have passed onward to a higher service. The example of a long life, devoted to deeds of self-sacrificing beneficence, the memory of beauty and genius, and gifts still more excellent than either beauty or genius,—​these are all that remain to us. ”

“ The theory of the one sect is, that the church is a society of good men, (of the regenerate,) —​of the other, that it is a society of men seeking to become such. With the one party, the sacrament is a seal of their acceptance ”

“ Notwithstanding our utmost exertions, we were unable to obtain the box from the Custom House till the evening of the 29th, and the Bazaar closed on the 31st. The very pretty box from Cork was displayed at the same time, and the effect of their arrival was at once evinced in the greatly increased receipts; but still, as our first two days are always the best in respect to sales, we could not but regret that so many valuable and beautiful articles should have been absent at the opening. It is almost impossible to do full justice to the boxes arriving under such circumstances. ”

“ It implies that an individual has a perfect right, not only to believe, but to teach and promulgate as earnestly as he pleases, whatever he thinks true. It does not bind us to read or to hear, to give him one sixpence of our money nor one hour of our time, or to do otherwise than regret that he holds opinions we consider untrue. ”

“ Several of our most active Ladies’ Societies have chosen to assist us by contributions of money, rather than articles,—​a mode equally useful and acceptable. Other towns propose shortly the holding of Fairs at home, the proceeds of which are to be devoted to the American Society. The greater part of our goods that remain unsold are forwarded to these sales. ”

“ When we take into account the storm, disappointments and hindrances, in respect to the arrival of boxes, and the absence of the Liberty Bell, which circumstances rendered it inconvenient to issue, and then remember that our receipts have exceeded those of last year by $200, we have occasion to feel that we have great reason for hope and encouragement. ”

“ Both as an Anti-Slavery and a literary paper, it sustains a deservedly high character, and cannot, we believe, be justly censured for any important departure from the great principles of mutual respect and toleration on which the members of the Society have bound themselves, in their associated capacity, to proceed. ”