LETTER: ALS to Hale.
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody to Rev. Edward Everett Hale Concerning a
Petition to Facilitate the Granting of Freedom to All Slaves
Peabody, Elizabeth P. Autograph letter signed, to Rev. E. E. Hale; postmarked June 7, 1858; one leaf of plain paper, folded to make four pages; creased; small whole at center margin, not affecting text.
A feisty and remarkable letter signed by Elizabeth P. Peabody, to Rev. Edward Everett Hale of Boston, regarding Peabody's anti-slavery efforts, which mentions a petition she wrote, calling for a limited form of compensation to achieve the great goal of ultimate and complete emancipation.
Peabody entreats and challenges the Rev. Hale (1822-1909), author and Unitarian clergyman, a liberal reformer with a deep interest in abolition and education, then at the South Congregational Church, to encourage women to become involved since “women unless encouraged are not courageous enough to sign a petition to Congress… they should have the advice of their ministers" (p.2). She begins,
I believe the two copies of the women’s petition have been sent to you. I don’t know whether you have taken any interest in it – But I wish you would consider all the arguments suggested by the preamble & take an opportunity to bring it before the ladies of your society & that you would suggest to Mr. Hepworth [Rev. George Hughes Hepworth of the Church of the Unity] to do the same. The plan of compensation has some advantages over that suggested in the Merchant’s petition as it more adequately remunerates the real sufferers from impoverishment & does not give money to landowners who will be richer for emancipation. My plan gives the Negroes every incitement to be good. In the West Indies they were found to put themselves under the restraints as well as protection of the law & here I would have them have the State Laws in their favour. (p.1)
“The merchant’s petition” she may have been referring to was a petition from September of 1856 from over 300 merchants of Boston in regard to the then pending question of Kansas – whether it be slave or free.
Peabody then proposes that Rev. Hale call a special meeting and says she is sending 500 petitions for each to get twenty names. "there will be ten thousand- enough to shame the calumny that the north is breathing out blood & – only on the South – the government can wait torch in one hand & this olive branch in the other” (p. 4).
We know of only one existing copy of this women’s petition – unless Peabody’s letter refers to another unknown petition – held at The Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins University, Manuscripts Division (Francis Lieber Papers - folder 66). The Johns Hopkins petition was written by several prominent women of Massachusetts, identifying slavery as the cause of the Civil War, and in an effort to end the war and stop the bloodshed, requesting that the slave-holding states emancipate their bondsmen in return for financial compensation from the U.S. government...from "some of the ladies of the Quincy family, Mrs. R.W. Emerson [Mary Moody Emerson], Mrs. Horace Mann [Mary Tyler Peabody Mann], and others ...," and soliciting women from elsewhere to add their names to the petition and mail it to an address in Concord, Mass. The petition presented by Sumner is recorded in the Senate Journal as follows:
Mr. Sumner presented a petition of women of the North, praying Congress to propose to the States which shall proclaim the emancipation of slavery remuneration to all persons who, having no property but slaves, would be impoverished thereby. Ordered, That it lie on the table. [Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, 1789-1873, Tuesday, July 16, 1861.] That this petition was tabled was not surprising since the Civil War had already begun by April of 1861.
Other slavery related petitions were circulating in the same time frame. The Liberator of December 23, 1859 shows the signatures of thirty-three Boston area women o
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