SOURCE: “Sojourner Truth: Ashtabula County, Ohio, 1855,” in New England Magazine, March, 1901, p. 63. Reprinted in Sojourner Truth as Orator: Wit, Story, and Song, by Suzanne Pullon Fitch and Roseann M. Mandziuk, Greenwood Press, 1997, 238 p.

In the following essay originally published in 1901, Wyman discusses a letter describing a public appearance by Truth.

The veteran Abolitionist, Parker Pillsbury, in a letter to the writer, describes a scene in an antislavery convention held about the year 1855, in Ashtabula County, Ohio. The audience was mostly in sympathy with the Abolitionists, Joshua R. Giddings and his family being present at the meetings. On Sunday afternoon Mr. Pillsbury made a speech denouncing “the church and clergy of the country as accomplices in the guilt of slave breeding and slave holding.” A young law student arose to defend both church and clergy. He said that the negroes were fit only to be slaves, and if any...