Writing Style
The writing style of the author has been judged to be dense and difficult by some who have equated it with some of the more purplish prose of some of the more creative sermon-writers of the time. Oddly, this is not the case with much of the text. And then, on the other hand, there are examples like this, so laden with metaphor that the point almost collapses under the burden:
“I have felt for you at this time, when unwelcome light is pouring in upon the world on the subject of slavery; light which even Christians would exclude, if they could, from our country, or at any rate from the southern portion of it, saying, as its rays strike the rock bound coasts of New England and scatter their warmth and radiance over her hills and valleys, and from thence travel onward over the Palisades of the Hudson, and down the soft flowing waters of the Delaware and gild the waves of the Potomac”
The Sisterhood of the Southernhood
Early on, the author addresses the uniqueness of her document: a call for abolition issued to the women of Dixie, an often overlooked and undervalued element of the slavery question on both sides of the issue. It is significant to understand that this is intended as a persuasive argument, not merely information. More to the point: the target of persuasion is quite specific even as she uses metaphor to describe them:
“But there are other Christian women scattered over the Southern States, of whom a very large number have never seen me, and never heard my name, and feel no personal interest whatever in me. But I feel an interest in you, as branches of the same vine from whose root I daily draw the principle of spiritual vitality”
Debunking Biblical Argument
Hard as it may be to believe, scripture and Biblical stories were forwarded as evidence by both sides to support slavery as well as to argue against. In fact, there are still some today making this argument. Not so fast, says the author, as she proceeds to unwind the technicalities, details and nuance of ancient law which forms the basis for supporting slavery. After systematically debunking some of these arguments, she engages an effective metaphor to sum up:
“Here, then, we see that by this first law, the door of Freedom was opened wide to every servant who had any cause whatever for complaint; if he was unhappy with his master, all he had to do was to leave him, and no man had a right to deliver him back to him again.”
What Some Call Northern Aggression
Some may not be aware that the Civil War was long afterward referred to as the War of Northern Aggression by the descendants of the losers of that war. Even before the war started, the author reverses the perspective and puts a much more appropriate label upon the situation:
“the guilt of the North is increasing in a tremendous ratio as light is pouring in upon her on the subject and the sin of slavery.”
Congress: Then, Now and Forever
Every generation hopes that they are living in a time when members of Congress will rise to the occasion when they spot the immediate threat facing democracy and move to change it. And, it seems, every generation is disappointed and must therefore wait until some members—usually, but not always of just one Party—catch up in the present to where everybody else was in the past. The text proves that this is not a new phenomenon:
“Like the unjust judge, Congress must redress the wrongs of the widow, lest by the continual coming up of petitions, it be wearied. This will be striking the dagger into the very heart of the monster, and once 'tis done, he must soon expire.”
