Massachusetts,[1] who for many years afterward preached the same glad tidings of justice, equality, and liberty for all.
TEMPERANCE.
In this reform, also, the women of Pennsylvania took an equally active part. We are indebted to Hannah Darlington, of Kennett Square, Chester Co., for the following record of the temperance work in this State:
Dear Mrs. Stanton: — I did not think our early temperance work of sufficient account to preserve the reports, hence with considerable research am able to send you but very little. Many mixed meetings were held through the county before 1847. Woods-meetings, with decorated stands, were fashionable in Chester in warm weather, for several years before we branched off with a call for a public meeting. That brought quite a number together in Friends' Meeting-house at Kennett Square, where we discussed plans for work and appointed committees to carry them out.
Sidney Peirce, Ann Preston, and myself, each prepared addresses to read at meetings called in such places as the Committee arranged; and with Chandler Darlington to drive us from place to place, we addressed many large audiences, some in the day-time and some in the evening; scattered appeals and tracts, and collected names to petitions asking for a law against licensing liquor-stands.
In 1848, we went to Harrisburg, taking an address to the Legislature written by Ann Preston, and sanctioned by the meeting that appointed us. The address, with our credentials and petitions, was presented to the two Houses, read in our presence, and referred to the Committee on "Vice and Immorality," which called a meeting and invited us to give our address. Sidney Peirce, who was a good reader, gave it with effect to a large roomful of the Committee and legislators. It was listened to with profound attention, complimented highly, and I think aroused a disposition among the best members to give the cause of temperance more careful consideration. The Local Option Law was passed by that Legislature. We also aided the mixed meetings by our presence and addresses, and by circulating petitions, and publishing appeals in the county papers; helping in every way to arouse discussion and prepare the people to sustain the new law. But the Supreme Court of the State, through the liquor influence, declared the law unconstitutional, after a few months' successful trial. Drinking, however, has not been as respectable since that time. We continued active work in our association until the inauguration of the Good Templars movement, in which men and women worked together on terms of equality.
- ↑ Abby Kelly.
