APPENDIX H. P. 119.

LETTER OF A.L.  PENNOCK.

The following letter was addressed by Abraham L. Pennock, conveying his resignation of the office of Vice President of the American Anti-Slavery Society, (old organization,) after the occurrence of the painful divisions in the anti-slavery body, which have been already noticed.  This letter is written in an excellent spirit, and clearly developes the cause of the separation.

    “TO THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY
    SOCIETY.

“Other reasons than those which will be presented in this letter, made it desirable to me to be released from any official connection with the Anti-Slavery Society.  I thought those reasons so well known to some of the delegates from the Pennsylvania Society, and withal they were deemed by me of so much value, that I felt both surprise and regret at understanding that my name was continued as one of the vice presidents of the Parent Society.  Thus saying, I am, nevertheless, bound to express my indebtedness for the kind feeling toward me, and confidence in my love for the slave, which, doubtless, induced the appointment.

“By an accident to my anti-slavery newspapers, I have just received the proceedings of the society at the above meeting.  I am sorry to find in them superadded reasons for regret at my appointment, as that appointment seems to place me in the false position of appearing to be in favor of its leading measures; some of which, denunciatory of co-laborers in the abolition cause, have not my unity.

“In the heavy responsibilities of the former Executive Committee, I find a sufficient reason for their transfer of the ‘Emancipator’ and other property for which they stood personally engaged; and I therefore cannot join in affirming such transfer to be ‘a flagrant breach of trust;’ and their answer in justification of their course, ’an attempt to defend which betrays an utter disregard of the rights of abolitionists.’

“Believing in the intellectual equality of the sexes, I go fully for women’s rights and duties.  They possess a moral force of immense power, which they are bound to exert for the good of mankind; including emphatically so, those who are in the hopeless and most wretched condition of slaves.  The belief of the value of female co-operation is common to the anti-slavery community; and the only question regarding it which has arisen, is, whether it shall be exerted in societies and conventions of women, or in societies and conventions of men and women, irrespective of sex.  The question is of recent date, not even coeval with the modern anti-slavery enterprise; and the practice, at the origination of this enterprise, that of separate action.  We can all bear testimony to the powerful impression upon the public mind, made by women, acting singly or in