The Voice of the Clergy ... Protest ... As an effort to sustain, on Bible principles the States in rebellion against the government, in the wicked attempt to establish by force of arms a tyranny under the name of a republic, whose 'corner stone' shall be the perpetual bondage of the African, it challenges their indignant reprobation .

Philadelphia, 1863. Broadside. Signed in print by Bishop Alonzo Potter and 105 clergymen. 18-3/4x12-1/2 inches. Linen-backed and mounted within a folio cloth binding. Provenance: General Theological Seminary (perforated stamp on the broadside, other markings in the vol.). Broadside. Signed in print by Bishop Alonzo Potter and 105 clergymen. 18-3/4x12-1/2 inches. In 1863, Bishop John Henry Hopkins of Vermont re-issued an 1861 pamphlet he authored justifying slavery on scriptural grounds. Extensive dissemination by Democratic State Central Committee of Pennsylvania prompted Pennsylvania Bishop Alonzo Potter and a group of clergy to protest Hopkins's statements by issuing a handbill and the present broadside, writing: "This attempt not only to apologize for slavery in the abstract, but to advocate it as it exists in the Cotton States, and in States which sell men and women in the open market as their staple product, is, in their judgment, unworthy of any servant of Jesus Christ." Among the 106 signers of the protest was African American William J. Alston, Rector of the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas. OCLC records but eight other examples.