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The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society Starts Its Third Annual Petition Drive for the Abolition of the Interstate Slave Trade and Slavery in Washington, DC, and the Territories (1836)

Melissa Range

September 17, 2019

Letters and pamphlets are good. Petitions, better: Ye who have pens, prepare to use them now. We’re going to need all of you to go house to house to collect signatures. We’ve been called impertinent intermeddlers, incarnate devils—and that is how we know our petitions are at work. No names are too few. A name is a truth: sometimes like a hammer, sometimes like a fire. A name is a voice. We must do with our might what our hands find for our sisters’ deliverance. We are bound with them; remember their bonds. It’s not a choice. Now, who is ready to knock on her first door? Who is ready to be Christ’s agitator, Christ’s martyr?

Melissa RangeMelissa Range


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