[8] This was the argument which Angelina heard Mr. Weld make before the A.S.  Convention in New York two years before, and which was afterwards published by the A.A.S.  Society.  He was now revising it for a new edition.  It made many converts to emancipation.  Among them was the Rev. Dr. Brisbane of South Carolina, a slave-owner, who, after reading it, sat down to answer and refute it; but, before proceeding half way, he became convinced that he was wrong, and Weld right.  Acting upon this conviction, he freed his slaves, went to Cincinnati, joined the abolition ranks, and became one of their most eloquent advocates.

Theodore adds a postscript, addresses Sarah as “My dearly loved sister,” and says, “As dear Angy remarks, your room does look so chill and desolate, and your place at table, and your chair in our little morning and evening circle, that we talk about it a dozen times a day.  But we rejoice that the Master put it into your heart to go and give your testimony for our poor, suffering brothers and sisters, wailing under bonds, and we pray without ceasing that He who sent will teach, strengthen, and help you greatly to do for Him and the bleeding slave.”

Debarred from lecturing by the condition of his throat, Mr. Weld was a most untiring worker in the Anti-Slavery office in New York, from which he received a small salary.  His time out of office hours was employed in writing for the different anti-slavery papers, and in various editorial duties.  Soon after his marriage he began the preparation of a book, which, when issued, produced perhaps a greater sensation throughout the country than anything that had yet been written or spoken.  This was, “American Slavery as it is:  Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses,” a book of two hundred and ten pages, and consisting of a collection of facts relating to the actual condition and treatment of slaves; facts drawn from slaveholders themselves, and from Southern publications.  The design was to make the South condemn herself, and never was success more complete.  Of all the lists of crimes, all the records of abominations, of moral depravity, of marvellous inhumanity, of utter insensibility to the commonest instincts of nature, the civilized world has never read anything equal to it.  Placed by the side of Fox’s “Book of Martyrs,” it outrivals it in all its revolting characters, and calls up the burning blush of shame for our country and its boasted Christian civilization.  Notwithstanding all that had been written on the subject, the public was still comparatively ignorant of the sufferings of the slaves, and the barbarities inflicted upon them.  Mr. Weld thought the state of the abolition cause demanded a work which would not only prove by argument that slavery and cruelty were inseparable, but which would contain a mass of incontrovertible facts, that would exhibit the horrid brutality of the system.  Nearly all the papers, most of them of recent date, from which the extracts were taken, were deposited at the office of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York, and all who thought the atrocities described in Weld’s book were incredible, were invited to call and examine for themselves.