Letter from Sophia De Morgan concerning anti-slavery campaigning [c.1850s]
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Dear Mr Chadwick
I thank you for your
letter and newspaper slip
I should have replied
by your messenger, but
that I wished for time
to read & consider Lord
Shaftesbury letter
At the time when
a few friends met to consider
the expediency of an address
to the United States (suggested
in the first instance by
the author of “Uncle Tom
in England”) the feeling
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was strongly expressed that
the remonstrance should not
be signed by women only.
We believed that to confine
an expression of such general
feeling to women, would
be to deprive it of that
dignity and weight which
it would have as coming
from “Englishmen and
Englishwomen”. We wished
it to be National.
This is so strongly my own
feeling that I should be
disinclined to take part
in an exclusive movement
but in this I only speak
for myself & this in consequence
of Lord [Ashley] Shaftesbury’s
[….] proposal for a
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meeting of ladies.
We had carefully
avoided publication in the
newspapers, because
the immediate publication
of the design in America
would follow [as a matter
of course. The publication
in a measure binds] the
English to something, as failure
now might be considered by
the slave holders a proof
of apathy, [however as the
plan is put forward by
the public man like Lord
Shaftesbury, there is little
danger of entire failure, & we
can only leave the whole
in his Lordships hands]
I will inform Mr Nicolay
of the contents of your
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kind letter – and he
will I do not doubt
communicate with you
or directly with Lord Carlile
on the subject.
With kind remembrance
to Mrs Chadwick, and
many thanks, I am
dear Sir
yours very truly
Sophia De Morgan
7 Camden Street
Tuesday