In Morris, M. Memoir of Miss Margaret Mercer (Philadelphia, 1848), frontispiece., Mercer, who was born into an affluent family, became an educator and director of several schools. She was an abolitionist and a colonization advocate; after emancipating her own slaves, she provided for their passage to Liberia., "Educated in the midst of slavery, and familiar with it under circumstances in which it displayed its least exceptionable features, Miss Mercer was fully convinced of the evil necessarily inherent in the system, and of the malign influence it exerts as well upon the master as the slave. She had, however, also, at the same time, full opportunity to observe the great difficulties with which the effort to get rid of the evil is environed, and was able to appreciate the obstacles which oppose the full development of the negro character in a country in which he has so long been kept in a state of degradation, and where he is compelled to contend with habits and prejudices, not only inveterate from long continuance, but continually excited into renewed vigour by the struggle ever maintained between distinct races of men dwelling on the same soil. She was convinced that circumstances over which the friends of the negro have no control, would keep him here in a state of thraldom and servitude, even though liberated from the galling chain of hopeless bondage. Yet none ever felt more deeply the evil of slavery; none ever more anxiously desired the coming of the time when the stain of it should be wiped from the scutcheon of our country; none ever made more disinterested, self-sacrificing efforts than she to be delivered from its guilt. It was with such views and feelings she had hailed with delight the establishment of the American Colonization Society, an institution which she regarded as peculiarly adapted to the relief of both master and slave."--P.113-114., Figurehead and text below portrait: Non nobis solum ("Not for ourselves alone")., Another portrait appears in: Hale, S. J. Woman's record (Philadelphia, 1855), p. 424., Three-quarter-length, seated portrait of the educator, wearing a bonnet and rings, with a table at right.
