Letter from Lydia Mott, Albany, [N.Y.], to William Lloyd Garrison, May 8 1861

Lydia Mott asserts to William Lloyd Garrison that there "never was a time" in which the "friends of peace" were "called upon to bear a more faithful testimony" than the present, and express her disappointment that some within the non-resistance movement have abandoned these principles to "help arm the troops", and act she views as hypocritical in regards to the prevailing Constitutionality of slavery. Mott declares that circumstances cannot "change Eternal principles", and that those who view the Civil War as the act of God and not "from our own Evil doing in compromising with wrong" are mistaken. Mott states her grief at having heard May compare the "sacrifices made for this war" to the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, labeling this assertion to be "almost blasphemous". Mott asserts her belief that even should the war result in the abolition of slavery that it would still not "make it right for us to participate in the Evil".
Courtesy of Boston Public Library