ce, should be abolished; that
Christians should not take part in politics, either by voting or
holding office; that they should not employ force, even to resist
encroachment or in the defence of their wives and children; and that
although slavery, being a form of force, was wrong, no one should vote
against it. The slave-holder was to be converted by love. The free
States should show their grief and disapprobation by seceding from the
slave States, and by nullifying within their limits any unjust laws
passed by the nation. All governments, civil, ecclesiastical, and
family, were to disappear, so that the divine law, interpreted by each
one for himself, might have free course. To this fanciful,
transcendental, and anarchical theory, Mr. Wright made sundry
converts, more or less thorough, including Parker Pillsbury, Wm. L.
Garrison, and Stephen S. Foster. That he took a good deal of pains to
capture the subjects of our biography is evident. He attended their
lectures, cultivated their acquaintance, extended to them his
sympathy, and made them his guests. There are certain affinities of
the non-resistance doctrines with Quakerism, which made them
attractive to these two women who had little worldly knowledge, and
who had been trained for years in the peace doctrines of the
Philadelphia Friends.

It was fortunate for the anti-slavery cause that Sarah and Angelina
were warned in time by their New York friends of the fatally dangerous
character of the heresies they were inclined to accept. They went no
further in that direction. In all their subsequent letters, journals,
and papers there is not a word to show that either of them ever
entertained no-government notions, or identified herself with persons
who did. During the remaining months of their stay in Massachusetts,
they devoted themselves to their true mission of anti-slavery work,
accepting the co-operation and friendship of all friends of the slave,
but avoiding compromising relations with those known as "no human
government" non-resistants. This course was continued in after years,
and drew upon them the disapprobation and strictures of the
non-voting, non-fighting faction. In a letter from Sarah to Augustus
Wattles, dated May 11, 1854, about the time of the Kansas war, she
says:--

"We were fully aware of the severe criticisms passed upon us by many
of those who showed their unfitness to be in the judgment seat, by the
unmerciful censure they have pronounced again