B. STOWE.
During the Kansas and Nebraska agitation (1853-54), Mrs. Stowe, in
common with the abolitionists of the North, was deeply impressed with
a solemn sense that it was a desperate crisis in the nation's history.
She was in constant correspondence with Charles Sumner and other
distinguished statesmen of the time, and kept herself informed as to
the minutest details of the struggle. At this time she wrote and
caused to be circulated broadcast the following appeal to the women of
America:--
"The Providence of God has brought our nation to a crisis of most
solemn interest.
"A question is now pending in our national legislature which is most
vitally to affect the temporal and eternal interests, not only of
ourselves, but of our children and our children's children for ages
yet unborn. Through our nation it is to affect the interests of
liberty and Christianity throughout the world.
"Of the woes, the injustice, and the misery of slavery it is not
needful to speak. There is but one feeling and one opinion upon this
subject among us all. I do not think there is a mother who clasps her
child to her breast who would ever be made to feel it right that that
child should be a slave, not a mother among us who would not rather
lay that child in its grave.
"Nor can I believe that there is a woman so unchristian as to think it
right to inflict upon her neighbor's child what she would consider
worse than death were it inflicted upon her own.
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