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197 Letterto the editor: “Mrs.roseandthe bangor Mercury” December 1855 New York, New York Rose had been invited to address an antislavery society meeting in Bangor, Maine, but soon found herself caught up in controversy when a local minister hostile to the freethought movement attacked her in the local newspaper. Because the New York Tribune had referred to the Bangor Mercury article, Rose responded in a letter to the editor of the Tribune. In her letter, she included excerpts from the Bangor Mercury piece—in which she was attacked as a woman, a foreigner, and a Jew, as well as an “infidel”—and defended herself point by point. The Mercury articles did not dissuade local abolitionists, who refused to withdraw their invitation to Rose. The letter was printed in the Boston Investigator on December 26, 1855; there is no record of the date of its writing, or of its publication in the New York Tribune. n To the Editor of the New York Tribune: Sir:—On my return from a lecturing tour in the West, I saw a short paragraph in the Tribune of the 6th, with my name in it, occasioned by some remarks in the Bangor Mercury. Wishing to know what it all meant, I procured the Mercury of the 3d, 10th, and 17th of Nov., in which, in some articles in reference to a course of lectures to be given in Bangor, to which I have been invited as one of the speakers, I found a most brutal attack upon me. From the tenor of those articles it is evident that the writer meant others who were invited to lecture in the course as well as me; but being too cowardly to attack any of them personally, he concentrated his whole malice upon me, feeling himself quite safe as I am only a woman, a foreigner , and (as the sectarian world calls me) an “Infidel” at that. Well, he is safe, for, as far as my own feelings and dignity are concerned , I treat it with the silent contempt it deserves. I stand before the world as I am, unprotected and unsupported by sect or party. I have not the advantage of a profession of religion, which, like an impenetrable cloak, covers a multitude of sins. My opinions are publicly given, and I fear no investigation of them. In principle I know no compromise, I expect no reward, I fear no 198 ernestIne l.rose opposition, and can therefore afford to pass by in silence the outpourings of a bitter spirit, and only pity him who possesses it. But I think it my duty to point out at least some of the false statements to show the merits and reliability of the author by the truthfulness of his assertions, and not wishing to send it to the editor of the Mercury —for a man who evidently takes pleasure to calumniate and slander a person of whom he is utterly ignorant, cannot possess manliness, justice and honor enough for me to reply to him personally—I therefore ask it of you as a favor, as some remarks including my name in reply to some of his articles have appeared in the Tribune, to give this a place in your paper, and greatly oblige Yours, very truly, Ernestine L. Rose Extracts from the Bangor Mercury: In an article in reference to some of the speakers invited to lecture in Bangor the editor says: “We referred particularly to the engagement of Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, the President of an Infidel club in New York, whose speeches at the annual Tom Paine festivals have, for half-a-dozen years, surpassed anything with which we are acquainted in ribald blasphemies against the Christian religion.” “On the anniversary of Tom Paine’s birth-day every year this Association get up a supper, at which Jesus Christ is uniformly treated with the choicest blasphemies of which its members are capable. The presiding officer at these celebrations for at least half-a-dozen years past has been a female born of Jewish parents in Poland. Her Tom Paine festival speeches are as famous as infamous. Everybody accustomed to read a certain class of New York newspapers must have been time after time disgusted with the reports of her loathsome ribaldries against Christ and Christianity.” “For ourselves we do not hesitate to confess that we know of no object more deserving of contempt, loathing, and abhorrence than a female Atheist. We hold the vilest strumpet from...

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