Religion: The Beechers

In a Brooklyn Church one Sunday in 1848, a fiery young preacher stood at his pulpit, gesturing at a handsome mulatto girl who sat near him on the platform. Cried he: ''This is a marketable commodity! Such as she are put into one balance and silver into the other. I reverence woman. For the sake of the love I bore my mother I hold her sacred even in the lowest position and will use every means in my power for her uplifting. What will you do now? May she read her liberty in your eyes?...

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