Holograph, signed.

This manuscript appears to be a rough draft of a letter.

Maria Weston Chapman alerts the Bishop of Oxford, [Samuel Wilberforce], as the historian of the American Episcopal Church, to the Book of Common Prayer that is now being circulated in the South, which contains an "expurgated" version of the picture by Ary Scheffer, with the supplicating slave removed from the presence of Christ. Chapman will send a copy of the prayer book to the Bishop "in the hope of a word of rebuke from you for Christ's sake as the Redeemer of man from the sin of slavery among the rest." Chapman is also sending him a copy of the Liberty Bell, in which she has referred to the expurgated picture, and a copy of the National Anti-Slavery Standard. She recalls how much abolitionists owe to the Bishop's father [William Wilberforce].

Bishop Samuel Wilberforce was the author of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, 1844.