NAWSA GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE WARREN, L.D. Paia 5 Miss Lucy Stone Oberlin Lorain Co, Ohio Wellington March 5th L. D. Warren 1847 Feb. 20 Wellington Feb. 20 1847 Dear Madam I have had the pleasure of reading the A.S. Bugle which you sent into the neighborhood and was particularly interested in your communication relative to the action of the Oberlin church with regard to fellowsh- iping those churches that fellowship slave holders. I admire your firmness and independence in exposeing the errors of your teachers and othes in high places especially as it must be a very unpopular act in Oberlin where you reside I think I see something In that fearless devotion to the right that augurs much of future usefulness. I agree with you that the American churches is the Bulwarks of American slavery and that the Oberlin church may be regarded as one of the [strong] "strong pillars of that Bulwark in and behind [whie?] slavery lies and moves and has its being" As you express your opinions freely in regard to the position of others you will excuse me for frankly expressing my view of yours If I rightly apprehend your sentiments they are calculated to throw around the foundation of both pillar and Bulwar aniron casement utterly impregnable to all the weapons which truth and mercy ever wield you aim your blows at the branches while you leave the root to strike deep and spread wide its ramifycations over all the length and breadth of society Instead of drying the fountain you go below and spend your enegies upon the stream. You do this in censureing the church for not "withholding fellowship from local churches on the ground of their sustaining eccleseastical relations Our folks all send their best respects. Your former scholars here are makeing verry good improvement (Some of them write verry pretty poetry I would like to send specimens of all if had room The following is from (Samantha Braaley How sweet how gay are faneys bowers Where hope devsive loves to stray To while away lifes transient hours With dreams of bliss which soon (decay The soul with [high] bright imaginings [is] Is ever on the rapid wing To find in its high wandering The fount where true enjoyments spring to bodies that do not bear open and faithful testimony against slavery--the local churches giving at the same time every suitable evidence of their own hostility to slavery" while you emblazon thus saith the Lord upon language like the following. Lev. 25:49 Both thy bondsman and thy bondmaids which thou shalt have shall be of the heathen that are roundabout you of them shall ye buy bondmen and bond maids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you of them shall ye buy and of their families that are with you which they begat in your land and they shall be your possession and ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you to inherit them for a possession they shall be your bondsmen forever But over your brethren of the children of israel ye shall not rule with rigor I am aware that some perverters endeavor to explain away the force of this and kindred passages they also lay their sacreligious hands upon the Constitution of the United States But what is an unfortunate circumstance in the case they have not the least convincing power except on mind who were previously opposed to slavery and were casting about in every direction for a missile to cast at the object of their hate While those who seek to justify slavery from the constitution as well as the Bible are satisfied to know that they contain all the helish enginery necessary to work the infernal system which they advocate You believe the American church is the bulwark of slavery and censure the most distant connection with that branch of it which holds slaves and apologizes for slavery altho those connecting themselves with it denounce in the strongest language the evil and wickedness of the system while you invest with divine authority a book that does not merely neglect to wield its utmost authority to discountenance slavery, but which is the great "Alma Mater" of this hydra headed monster and so considered by every advocate of the cruel system a book that sanctions as great extremes of cruelty as any slave code now extant for example Exodus 21 20-21 "And if a man smite his servant or his maid with a rod and she die under his hand he shall be surely punished not withstanding if he continue a day or two he shall not be punished for he is his money" Thus you sanction a book that sanctions the infliction of any punishment short of instantaneous death and so while you battle for the opprest with one hand you carry in the other a sanction for the utmost cruelty which the brutal master can inflict. Church action tho fraught with immense evil to the slave sinks into insignificance when compared to the evils growing out of bible sanction to slavery The following are the reasons church action apart from the bible lays claim to no super human authority and mankind are at liberty to believe or discard their doctrine at pleasure Again the action of a church is necessarily local in its nature and confined to comparatively narrow limits while the bible is clothed with authority which no man may question and from its universal difusion is omnipresent to sanction and strengthen each accused chain link throughout slavedom For want of room I close here Let your gifted pen throw lights upon our darkness in relation to this matter From your most obedient S. D. Warren [*Mrs George Clifford is quite sick otherwise your friends here are well we all remember you and sorrow "most of all for the word which" you "spake that" we "should see" your" face no more" in Washington. We are getting to be great literary characters here in Washington. There have been five papers published here regularly this winter We have all come to be editors or corespondents Every family in this district has participated more or less in the exercises of our society save Daniel Cliffords who is of course decidedly oposed to our society. S. D. W.*] [*Miss L. Stone*] Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.