[Letter to] My dear Mrs. Chapman
Contributors: Chapman, Maria Weston, 1806-1885, recipient
Series: Maria Weston Chapman Correspondence (1835-1885)
Published: 1848
Place of publication: Bristol, [England]
Language: eng
Format: [manuscript]
Number of pages: 11
Subjects: Correspondence; Women abolitionists; Antislavery movements; History
Notes: Holograph, signed.

In this letter, Mary Carpenter refers to "the mischance of our Bristol boxes." She is pleased that William Lloyd Garrison would like to have one of her drawings. She asks Maria Weston Chapman to choose the most beautiful and placid drawing for him. Carpenter comments about William Lloyd Garrison: "I greatly value his friendship, & esteem it a privilege to be personally acquainted with a devoted & earnest a servant of his Lord." She hopes Maria W. Chapman will see Bristol before she goes to London and the continent. She expresses admiration for Elihu Burritt. Carpenter says about Elihu Burritt: "I have seen nothing in his writings of compromising character..." She says that "'his still, small voice' has united in a League of Brotherhood 20,000 English with as many Americans." She refers to "the unhappy proceedings about the printing press, etc. & the separation of the Liberty party from the old Abolitionists," but which Carpenter can form no opinion. Carpenter cannot condemn Elihu Burritt "solely because he lectured for Liberty Party." The English regard abolitionists as all those who exert themselves for the abolition of slavery. She mentions especially Dr. [John Gorham] Palfrey. Carpenter draws an analogy between Unitarians who hold other Christians as unprincipled and abolitionists who suppose people to be unprincipled because they have not separated from the constitution. Carpenter is "glad to live at" a period which will be "a world era." She comments on the recent French revolution and the signs of "free spiritual life" in Italy, Austria, and Russia.