"underground railway" to run through their barn, their
conversion was gradual, and only arrived at after various
controversies and discussions, and much bitter feeling between them
and the advocates of the unpopular cause. Opposed to slavery in the
abstract, that is, believing it to be a sin to hold a fellow creature
in bondage for the "_mere purposes of gain_," they utterly condemned
all agitation of the question. The Church and the Gospel were, with
them, as with so many evangelical Christians, the true means through
which evils should be reached and reforms effected. All efforts
outside were unwise and useless, not to say sinful. And further, as
Catherine Beecher expressed it, they considered the matter of Southern
slavery as one with which the North was no more called to interfere
than in the abolition of the press-gang system in England, or the
tithe system in Ireland. Some chapters back, the short but pleasant
friendship of Catherine Beecher and Angelina Grimke was mentioned.
Very soon after that little episode, the Beechers removed to
Cincinnati, where the doctor was called to the Presidency of the Lane
Theological Seminary. We can well understand that the withdrawal of
nearly all its students after the great discussion was a sore trial to
the Beechers, and intensified their already adverse feelings towards
abolitionists. The only result of this with which we have to do is the
volume published by Catherine Beecher during the summer of 1837,
entitled "Miss Beecher on the Slave Question," and addressed to
Angelina Grimke.

Catherine was the true counterpart of her father, and the most
intellectual of his children, but she lacked the gentle, feminine
graces, and was so wanting in tenderness and sympathy that Angelina
charitably implies that her heart was sunk forever with her lover,
Professor Fisher of Yale, who perished in a storm at sea. With
independence, striking individuality, and entire freedom from timidity
of any sort, it would appear perfectly natural that Catherine should
espouse the Woman's Rights reform, even though opposing that of
abolitionism. But she presented the singular anomaly of a
strong-minded woman, already successful in taking care of herself,
advocating woman's subordination to man, and prescribing for her
efforts at self-help limits so narrow that only the few favored as she
was could venture within them.

Her book was received with much favor by slave-holders and their
apologists, thoug