Letter from Noah Worcester, Brighton, [Massachusetts], to Amos Augustus Phelps, 1833 Oct[ober] 5

Noah Worcester writes to Amos A. Phelps in regards to his sentiments on slavery. He regrets that "any of your propositions are expressed in a form to which I cannot give my signature" but he does state that "I regard the slavery of our country, since the Revolution, as griply inconsistent with our free institutions." He explains his reasons for refusing to sign the circular drawn up by Phelps concerning slavery. He writes, "I may now proceed to say, that some of your propositions for signatures appear to me incorrect or incautious--too indiscriminate in the censures implied--and that they said to make or to admit some candid distinctions which are authorized by the scriptures." He goes into depth with the different scriptures he doesn't agree with and writes at the end, "in some of your propositions, in right and left, I think you have 'adopted an opinion' which tends to 'perpetuate,' or at least to prolong slavery; but I do not impute this to you as a sin, because I charitably believe that you have not been aware that such is the tendency."
Courtesy of Boston Public Library