Theodore Parker, in tribute to badly treated Abby Kelley

TRIBUTE TO A NOBLE WOMAN.  ”  ‘ The Light Shineth in Darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.’   Rev. Theodore Parker preached a very instructive and interesting discourse from this text … In the course of his remarks, he had frequent reference to the treatment which the great teachers and reformers of the world received at the hands of those they only wished to serve and bless ….. Among other just and pointed remarks, he said: — Here is a woman in Massachusetts who has traveled all over the North, laboring for woman’s cause. She bore the burden and heat of the day. She was an outcast from society. Other women hated her; men insulted her, when defended only by her own nobleness and virtue….. The noble woman bore it with no complaint; only now and then, in private, the great heart of Abby Kelley would fill her eyes with tear at the thought of this injustice … But when the cause had won something of respect, a great Convention of women and the friends of women was summoned to meet in the heart of this Commonwealth; and those who had the control of the matter thought it would not do to have woman’s ablest champion sit upon the platform.   She must sit below it, lest it hurt the cause and peril the rights of woman to have woman’s noblest champion sit in woman’s honored place! ”

(Liberator, January 4, 1856, pg 3)