[Letter to] Esteemed Friend, M. W. Chapman
Contributors: Chapman, Maria Weston, 1806-1885, recipient
Series: Maria Weston Chapman Correspondence (1835-1885)
Published: 1842
Place of publication: New Kent Road, [London, England]
Language: eng
Format: [manuscript]
Subjects: Correspondence; Women abolitionists; Antislavery movements; Boston Female Anti-slavery Society; History
Notes: Holograph, signed.

Esther Sturge begins this letter by acknowledging the receipt of a copy of the Liberty Bell. She has enjoyed the charming picture of Haiti, but wishes that the country's happily emancipated people "were blessed with the more full and glorious liberty of the Gospel" (i.e. Protestantism). Mrs. Elizabeth Fry has been out of town and out of health. Sturge summarizes a letter she received from the daughter-in-law of Mrs. Fry expressing Mrs. Fry's views. Mrs. Fry finds it difficult to write to Mrs. Chapman because she "does not feel clear in her mind about the Boston Anti-Slavery Society." Sturge explains that the misrepresentation "that it is not an Anti Slavery Society only, across the Atlantic, but one mixed up with other & debatable points, questions on which there is an interest felt but rather an aversion to entering into in our land---has taken so firm a hold on the minds of many, that it seems like fighting the winds to combat these ideas." Sturge favors adhering to cause of anti-slavery, and believes women's rights and all other questions would divert from this mission.