Lucy Stone (13 Aug. 1818-18 Oct. 1893), abolitionist and woman's rights activist, was born in West Brookfield,
Massachusetts, the daughter of Francis Stone and Hannah Matthews, farmers. Her hard-working parents transmitted to
their daughter--one of nine children--both their abolitionist commitment and their Congregationalist faith. Young Lucy
retained their radical antislavery stance but found herself increasingly distant from the Congregationalist church after its
leaders criticized abolitionists Sarah Moore Grimké and Angelina Emily Grimké for unfeminine behavior in speaking to
mixed audiences in churches during their 1837 tour of Massachusetts. Stone also broke with her parents in pursuit of
higher education. At the age of sixteen, after completing local schools, she taught and saved money for advanced study.
She attended nearby Mount Holyoke Seminary for one term in 1839, returning home to attend to the illness of a sister.
Stone waited until 1843 to enroll at the Oberlin Collegiate Institute (later Oberlin College); with her graduation in 1847,
she became the first Massachusetts woman to earn a bachelor's degree.
Confirmed in both her abolitionist and feminist beliefs during her years at Oberlin, Stone gave her first public talk on
woman's rights from her brother's pulpit in Gardner, Massachusetts, in December 1847. She was then hired as an agent for
the Garrisonian Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society the following year. Admonished by her employers to cease her
practice of mixing the two controversial topics in the lectures they sponsored, Stone responded, "I was a woman before I
was an abolitionist" (Woman's Journal, 15 Apr. 1893). She then proceeded to arrange to speak for the society on
weekends, while reserving her weekdays for lectures on woman's rights. A popular orator, Stone garnered praise from
William Lloyd Garrison's paper, the Liberator, for her "conversational tone. . . . She is always earnest, but never
boisterous, and her manner no less than her speech is marked by a gentleness and refinement which puts prejudice to
flight" (25 Aug. 1848). In addition, she played a leading role in the burgeoning woman's rights movement, serving as an
organizer for its first national convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1850.
Until 1855 Stone was in perpetual motion, lecturing across the country for feminism and abolitionism and related reforms,
including temperance, dress reform, and married women's access to property rights and to divorce. Her own marriage in
1855 to Cincinnati hardware merchant Henry B. Blackwell, however, slowed her pace. A fellow abolitionist and the
brother of pioneer women doctors Elizabeth Blackwell and Emily Blackwell, Henry Blackwell joined with Stone in
celebrating their union with a protest against the legal inequalities of husband and wife. He also supported Stone in her
decision later that year to reclaim her birth name as her legal signature. In 1856 Stone's family network was further
augmented when her dear friend and Oberlin classmate, Antoinette Brown (Antoinette L. B. Blackwell), the first woman
ordained in a regular Protestant denomination, married Henry Blackwell's brother Samuel Charles Blackwell. While Stone
maintained visibility within the abolitionist and woman's rights conventions, she also devoted considerable energy to her
husband's struggle to establish himself, first in Chicago as a publisher's representative, then in northern New Jersey, and to
her only child, Alice Stone Blackwell, who was born in 1857. Despite her family responsibilities, Stone nonetheless
protested her disfranchisement in 1858 by allowing the seizure of her household goods at her Orange, New Jersey, home
rather than pay taxes levied by a government in which she could not participate.
During the Civil War, Stone joined other feminist-abolitionists to found the Woman's National Loyal League, an
organization committed to the full emancipation and enfranchisement of African Americans. When Reconstruction began,
Stone became a founder of the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), a union of woman's rights and abolition
supporters determined to support the extension of voting rights irrespective of both race and sex. Under its auspices, Stone
made an extended tour of Kansas in 1867, campaigning for state constitutional recognition of equal rights for both women
and African Americans. But federal congressional action, first on the Fourteenth Amendment, which provided civil rights
for freed slaves while ensuring voter protection only for men, and then on the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed
equal rights without regard to color while pointedly neglecting the issue of sex, angered many woman's rights supporters.
Stone ultimately resigned herself to the provision of voting rights for African-American men without concomitant
enfranchisement of white or black women. Declaring "I will be thankful in my soul if any body can get out of the terrible
pit" quoted in Elizabeth Cady Stanton et al., eds., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 2 [1881], p. 384), she continued to
support the Republican party. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton felt differently, and in May 1869 they led an
exodus from the AERA to form the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). The new organization refused to
support constitutional changes that did not at the same time enfranchise women. Later that year, Stone, her husband, Mary
Livermore, Julia Ward Howe, and others held a convention in Cleveland, at which they founded the rival American
Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) dedicated to achieving woman suffrage, especially through state-level legislation,
while refusing to undermine achievements in African-American civil rights.
Also in 1867, Stone and Blackwell relocated their household to Dorchester, Massachusetts, and raised capital for a
newspaper to be called the Woman's Journal by selling shares in a joint stock company to Boston supporters. Livermore
agreed to merge her Chicago-based reform paper, The Agitator, into the new publication, now issued from the Boston
headquarters of the American Woman Suffrage Association, and remained editor in chief from the debut of the paper on 1
January 1870 until 1872, when Stone assumed primary responsibility for the weekly appearance of this official organ of
the AWSA with assistance from her husband and, after 1882, their daughter, Alice.
Stone remained in demand as a suffrage speaker, addressing state legislatures, women's clubs, collegiate alumnae, and
political conventions from Colorado to Vermont, but increasingly she focused her attention on the paper, which she
likened to "a big baby which never grew up, and always had to be fed." "Devoted to the interests of woman, to her
educational, industrial, legal and political equality, and especially to her right of suffrage," the Woman's Journal, and
particularly Stone's writing, covered a vast array of events, history, and personalities. Ironically, Stone's principles
blocked her one attempt to exercise her own right to suffrage; in 1879 she registered under the new Massachusetts law
permitting women to vote in school elections, but her name was erased by officials who refused to accept her enrollment
under her own, not her husband's, surname.
For many years, Stone maintained a virulent (and reciprocated) animosity toward Stanton, Anthony, and the NWSA, yet
she ultimately became convinced that reunification of the suffrage movement was in the best interest of all. In 1890 she
assisted the merger of the NWSA and the AWSA into the National American Woman Suffrage Association, becoming the
chair of its executive committee, but her failing health kept her close to home except for occasions that honored her
pioneering suffrage activism. Her last public appearance took her to the Congress of Representative Women at the
Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in May 1893. After she died at her home in Dorchester, Stone's was the first body
cremated in New England.
Lucy Stone was a key figure in the American woman's rights movement for nearly a half century, bringing it from tutelage
within the abolitionist movement to full organizational autonomy. Firmly committed to natural rights irrespective of sex,
Stone maintained a distance from more controversial gender issues, such as divorce and free love. Instead, she worked
tirelessly as lecturer, organizer, publisher, and tactician in pursuit of full legal equality, particularly the enfranchisement of
women.
Abby Kimber
The question of woman's right to speak, vote, and serve on committees. . .disturbed the peace of the World's Anti-Slavery
Convention, held [in 1840] in London. The call for that Convention invited delegates from all Anti-Slavery organizations.
Accordingly several American societies saw fit to send women, as delegates, to represent them in that august assembly.
But after going three thousand miles to attend a World's Convention, it was discovered that women formed no part of the
constituent elements of the moral world. In summoning the friends of the slave from all parts of the two hemispheres to
meet in London, John Bull never dreamed that woman, too, would answer to his call. Imagine then the commotion in the
conservative anti-slavery circles in England, when it was known that half a dozen of those terrible women who had
spoken to promiscuous assemblies, voted on men and measures, prayed and petitioned against slavery, women who had
been mobbed, ridiculed by the press, and denounced by the pulpit who had been the cause of setting all American
Abolitionists by the ears, and split their ranks asunder, were on their way to England. The fears of these formidable and
belligerent women must have been somewhat appeased when Lucretia Mott, Sarah Pugh, Abby Kimber, Elizabeth Neal,
Mary Grew, of Philadelphia, in modest Quaker costume, Ann Green Phillips, Emily Winslow, and Abby Southwick, of
Boston, all women of refinement and education, and several, still in their twenties, landed at last on the soil of Great
Britain. Many who had awaited their coming with much trepidation, gave a sigh of relief, on being introduced to Lucretia
Mott, learning that she represented the most dangerous elements in the delegation. The American clergymen who had
landed a few days before, had been busily engaged in fanning the English prejudices into active hostility against the
admission of these women to the Convention. In every circle of Abolitionists this was the theme, and the discussion grew
more bitter, personal, and exasperating every hour.
The 12th of June dawned bright and beautiful on these discordant elements, and at an early hour anti-slavery delegates
from different countries wended their way through the crooked streets of London to Freemason's Hall. Entering the
vestibule, little groups might be seen gathered here and there, earnestly discussing the best disposition to make of these
women delegates from America. The excitement and vehemence of protest and denunciation could not have been greater,
if the news had come that the French were about to invade England. In vain these obdurate women had been conjured to
withhold their credentials, and not thrust a question that must produce such discord on the Convention. Lucretia Mott, in
her calm, firm manner, insisted that the delegates had no discretionary power in the proposed action, and the responsibility
of accepting or rejecting them must rest on the Convention.
At eleven o'clock, the spacious Hall being filled, the Convention was called to order. [The American abolitionist Wendell
Phillips immediately made a motion to admit the female delegates to the Convention, setting off hours of vociferous
debate. Ultimately, a large majority of the Convention's male delegates voted to exclude the women formal participation
in the meeting, insisting instead that if they wanted to attend, they could listen to the proceedings from behind a curtained
wall]. . . .
However, the debates in the Convention had the effect of rousing English minds to thought on the tyranny of sex, and
American minds to the importance of some definite action toward women's emancipation.
As Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton wended their way arm in arm down Great Queen Street that night,
reviewing the exciting scenes of the day, they agreed to hold a woman's rights convention on their return to America, as
the men to whom they had just listened had manifested their great need of some education on that question. Thus a
missionary work for the emancipation of woman in "the land of the free and the home of the brave" was then and there
inaugurated. As the ladies were not allowed to speak in the Convention, they kept up a brisk fire morning, noon, and night
at their hotel on the unfortunate gentlemen who were domiciled at the same house. Mr. Birney, with his luggage, promptly
withdrew after the first encounter, to some more congenial haven of rest, while the Rev. Nathaniel Colver, from Boston,
who always fortified himself with six eggs well beaten in a large bowl at breakfast, to the horror of his host and a circle of
aesthetic friends, stood his ground to the last — his physical proportions being his shield and buckler, and his Bible
[which he likely shook in the faces of the supporters of female participation in the Convention]. . .his weapon of defence.
The movement for woman's suffrage, both in England and America, may be dated from the World's Anti-Slavery
Convention.
Source:
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joselyn Gage, eds., History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. 1
(New York: Fowler and Wells, 1881), 53-54, 61-62.
Frederick Douglass
Abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Talbot County, Maryland. He became one of the most
famous intellectuals of his time, advising presidents and lecturing to thousands on a range of causes, including women’s
rights and Irish home rule. Among Douglass’ writings are several autobiographies eloquently describing his experiences
in slavery and his life after the Civil War.
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. . . . Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never
will."– Frederick Douglass
Life in Slavery
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery in Talbot County, Maryland, around 1818. The exact year
and date of Douglass' birth are unknown, though later in life he chose to celebrate it on February 14. Douglass lived with
his maternal grandmother, Betty Bailey. At a young age, Douglass was selected in live in the home of the plantation
owners, one of whom may have been his father. His mother, an intermittent presence in his life, died when he was around
10. Frederick Douglass was given to Lucretia Auld, the wife of Thomas Auld, following the death of his master.
Lucretia sent Frederick to serve her brother-in-law, Hugh Auld, at his Baltimore home. It was at the Auld home that
Frederick Douglass first acquired the skills that would vault him to national celebrity. Defying a ban on teaching slaves to
read and write, Hugh Auld’s wife Sophia taught Douglass the alphabet when he was around 12. When Hugh Auld forbade
his wife’s lessons, Douglass continued to learn from white children and others in the neighborhood. It was through
reading that Douglass’ ideological opposition to slavery began to take shape. He read newspapers avidly, and sought out
political writing and literature as much as possible. In later years, Douglass credited The Columbian Orator with
clarifying and defining his views on human rights. Douglass shared his newfound knowledge with other enslaved people.
Hired out to William Freeland, he taught other slaves on the plantation to read the New Testament at a weekly church
service. Interest was so great that in any week, more than 40 slaves would attend lessons. Although Freeland did not
interfere with the lessons, other local slave owners were less understanding. Armed with clubs and stones, they dispersed
the congregation permanently.
In 1833, Thomas Auld took Douglass back from his son Hugh following a dispute.
Thomas Auld sent Douglass to work for Edward Covey, who had a reputation as a "slave-breaker.” Covey’s constant
abuse did nearly break the 16-year-old Douglass psychologically. Eventually, however, Douglass fought back, in a scene
rendered powerfully in his first autobiography. After losing a physical confrontation with Douglass, Covey never beat him
again.
Freedom and Abolitionism
Frederick Douglass tried to escape from slavery twice before he succeeded. He was assisted in his final attempt by Anna
Murray, a free black woman in Baltimore with whom Douglass had fallen in love. On September 3, 1838, Douglass
boarded a train to Havre de Grace, Maryland.
At the urging of William Lloyd Garrison, Douglass wrote and published his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of
Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, in 1845. The book was a bestseller in the United States and was translated into
several European languages. Although the book garnered Douglass many fans, some critics expressed doubt that a former
slave with no formal education could have produced such elegant prose. Douglass published three versions of his
autobiography during his lifetime, revising and expanding on his work each time. My Bondage and My Freedom appeared
in 1855. In 1881, Douglass published Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, which he revised in 1892. Fame had its
drawbacks for a runaway slave. Following the publication of his autobiography, Douglass departed for Ireland to evade
recapture. Douglass set sail for Liverpool on August 16, 1845, arriving in Ireland as the Irish Potato Famine was
beginning. He remained in Ireland and Britain for two years, speaking to large crowds on the evils of slavery. During this
time, Douglass’ British supporters gathered funds to purchase his legal freedom. In 1847, Douglass returned to the United
States a free man. Upon his return, Douglass produced some abolitionist newspapers: The North Star, Frederick
Douglass Weekly, Frederick Douglass' Paper, Douglass' Monthly and New National Era. The motto of The North Star
was "Right is of no Sex – Truth is of no Color – God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren." In addition to
abolition, Douglass became an outspoken supporter of women’s rights. In 1848, he was the only African American to
attend the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York.
Angelina and Sarah Grimke
Angelina and Sarah Grimke were born in the upper-class South, but rejected their lifestyles and began to fight slavery as
young women.
Sarah Moore Grimke and Angelina Emily Grimké were the only white people of either gender who were born in the
upper-class South, but rejected that luxurious lifestyle to fight against slavery. They also were among the very first to see
the close connection between abolitionism and women’s rights.
Sarah was born on November 26, 1792, and Angelina was born on February 20, 1805. The sisters grew up in a wealthy
slave-holding South Carolina family. They had all the privileges of Charleston society – the heart of ante-bellum Dixie -but grew to strongly disapprove of slavery. Their large family so strongly disagreed with them that the Sarah, the older,
did not tell anyone when she secretly taught slave children to read, something that violated state law.
In 1821, Sarah moved to Philadelphia and became a Quaker, and Angelina followed the same path a few years later,
moving to Philadelphia in 1829. Angelina joined the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society and wrote letters to
newspapers protesting slavery from a woman’s point of view. This attracted the attention of abolitionists, who enlisted the
Grimkes in the cause because they knew the cruelties of slavery firsthand.
The sisters were attacked most strongly when they began to make public speeches to audiences consisting of both genders,
a practice that was considered shocking. In 1836, after Sarah was reprimanded for speaking at a Quaker meeting about
abolition, the sisters moved to New York to work for its Anti-Slavery Society.
New York was even less fertile ground
for abolitionists than Quaker-based Philadelphia, however, and the sisters continued to be criticized for their “unnatural”
behavior in public speaking. They also began to write. Angelina’s Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1836)
was truly a courageous work. She not only discussed how slavery hurt blacks, but also how it damaged white women and
the institution of the family. Southern society condoned male sexuality outside of marriage, with the result that “the faces
of many black children bore silent testimony to their white fathers.” Postmasters seized and destroyed many of the copies,
and hostility towards the Grimke sisters was so great that they never again would be able to visit their South Carolina
home.
Despite this uproar, they continued. Sarah addressed another audience with Epistle to the Clergymen of the South (1836),
and Angelina followed with Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States (1837). They toured Massachusetts in the
summer of 1837, attracting hundreds of listeners every day; in the town of Lowell, 1,500 people – both men and women –
came to hear them speak against slavery. Again, though, many people denounced them for having the audacity to speak
to “promiscuous meetings of men and women together.” Clergymen in Massachusetts formally condemned their
behavior, pointing out that St. Paul said women should be silent.
Undeterred, Angelina Grimke set another precedent in February of 1838, when she became the first woman to speak
before a legislative committee; she presented an antislavery petition to Massachusetts lawmakers. In the same year, Sarah
published Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1838). That work predated other feminist
theorists by decades.
In May of 1838, Angelina married fellow abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld of Boston, and Sarah
moved in with the couple. The next year, Sarah Grimke and Theodore Weld published a remarkable collection of
newspaper stories that came directly from Southern papers. American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand
Witnesses (1839) used the actual words of white Southerners in describing escaped slaves, slave auctions, and other
incidents that demonstrated how routinely gross inhumanity was accepted as a natural part of the plantation economy.
Again, the effect was shocking.
Like the Grimkes, Weld was a member of a prominent family, but wealthy conservatives in both the North and South
rejected such idealistic rebels, and the three suffered financially in the next decades. Angelina was 33 at marriage, and her
health also deteriorated with the birth of three children, Charles Stuart, Theodore, and Sarah. The three farmed and
operated schools in the 1840s and 1850s, moving several times within New Jersey and Massachusetts. During this period,
the sisters also experimented with the practical pantsuit-style clothing promoted by Amelia Bloomer, but – like other
women’s rights leaders – they gave it up when their appearance distracted from their ideas.
They finally retired to the Hyde Park section of Boston in 1864. By then, the Civil War was in its last full year, and the
sisters’ activism would switch to women’s rights. When the U.S. Constitution was amended to give civil rights to former
slaves after the war, the Grimke sisters were among those who tested the gender-neutral language of the Fifteenth
Amendment that granted the vote. They attempted to cast ballots in the 1870 election, but male Hyde Park officials
rejected them and other women.
They also continued their efforts on behalf of racial equality. In 1868, Angelina and Sarah discovered that they had two
nephews, Archibald Henry and Francis James, who were the sons of their brother Henry and a slave woman. In
accordance with their beliefs, the sisters welcomed the boys into their family. One of them would marry Charlotte Forten,
an outstanding Philadelphia black woman, and the sisters’ feminist legacy would continue through Charlotte Forten
Grimke.
Sarah was nearly 80 when she attempted to vote for the first time, and she died three years later, two days prior to
Christmas of 1873. Angelina Grimke Weld suffered a debilitating stroke and died on October 26, 1879. Weld lived on
until 1895, but he never was as radical as the women.
In the process of fighting against slavery, the Grimké sisters discovered the prejudices that women face, and their cause
joined abolitionism and the early women’s rights movement together. They showed more courage than any white person
in the South of their times, sacrificing both luxury and their family relationships to work for African-American freedom.
A century later, the Grimke story had been largely forgotten: biographical dictionaries, for example, published entries on
Weld without mentioning that Sarah Grimke was his co-author. Feminist historian Gerda Lerner revived interest in the
sisters’ vital contribution to American history with a 1967 book, and it set the standard for modern women’s history.
Charlotte Forten was born on August 17, 1837, in Philadelphia, PA. She kept a diary of her involvement with the
abolition movement and became the first African-American hired to teach white students in Salem, MA. In 1862, Forten
participated in the Port Royal Experiment, educating ex-slaves on St. Helena Island, South Carolina and recording her
experiences in a series of essays. She died in 1914.
Educator, writer, and activist. Born on August 17, 1837, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Born into a wealthy and influential
African-American family, Charlotte Forten is best known for her personal writings, which offered insights into late 19th
century America. Her diaries chronicle the social and political issues of the times—the fight to end slavery, the Civil War,
and the state of race relations.
Forten had a very comfortable upbringing. Her grandfather, James Forten, helped make his fortune with an invention that
assisted sailors with heavy sails. He was an outspoken member of the abolitionist movement and supporter of William
Lloyd Garrison's antislavery publication The Liberator. Forten's parents were also active in the movement. Her mother,
Mary, helped establish the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, and her father Robert often lectured in support of
the abolitionist cause.
When Forten was 3 years old, her mother died. An only child, Forten spent much of her early years in solitude, educated
by tutors. When she was of school age, her father decided to send her to an integrated school in Salem, Massachusetts,
where she lived with the Remond family.
While living on the East Coast, Forten began keeping a diary. In it, she wrote about her involvement in the antislavery
movement in the Boston area. She deepened her connections to family friends in the movement, such as Garrison and
John Greenleaf Whittier, during her time there.
After completing her studies, she became a teacher in Salem. She was the first African-American teacher hired to teach
white students in the town. Unfortunately, she had to resign after two years because of ill health. Some reports indicate
that she may have had tuberculosis. Returning to Philadelphia, she started writing poetry while she tried to regain her
health.
In 1862, Forten traveled to St. Helena Island, South Carolina, to work as a teacher. There, she participated in what became
known as the Port Royal Experiment. During the Civil War, the Union Army took over Port Royal, a Confederate military
base in South Carolina. The area was home to thousands of slaves who had been abandoned by their owners. Many of
them lived in isolation on the Sea Islands off the coast. The former slaves were largely illiterate, and some did not know
English. The Union Army wanted to help these people learn to live independently on local lands.
For 18 months, Forten worked with children, adults and soldiers stationed there as part of this program. The only AfricanAmerican teacher to participate in the experiment, Forten's efforts to help the project became a personal mission. Her
efforts often reached outside the classroom, and she found herself visiting the homes of the various families in order to
instill "self-pride, self-respect, and self-sufficiency," she once wrote.
Forten wrote about her experiences in her diary, and a series of her entries were later published in the form of the essay
series "Life on the Sea Islands" for the Atlantic Monthly in 1864.
Once again, Forten had to abandon her work for health reasons. She began to experience terrible headaches and went
home to Philadelphia in 1864. For several years, Forten worked for the Teachers Committee of the New England
Freemen's Union Commission. She later returned to teaching, spending time in Charleston, South Carolina, and
Washington, D.C.
In 1878, Forten married Francis J. Grimke, a Presbyterian minister. He was the nephew of two famous social activists,
Sarah and Angelina Grimke. The couple had one child together, a daughter named Theodora Cornelia, who died during
her infancy.
Throughout the rest of her life, Forten wrote and spoke out on social issues, including women's rights and racial prejudice.
She also supported her husband's work at the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C.
Forten died on July 23, 1914, in Washington, D.C. Her diaries, which have been published numerous times over the years,
have proved to be her most lasting legacy. With her writings, she has provided an eyewitness account of such a pivotal
and turbulent time in American history. Forten also offers her readers a glimpse at such famous figures as Frederick
Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and many other leading activists of her day.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Born on November 12, 1815, in Johnstown, New York, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an abolitionist and leading figure of
the early woman's movement. An eloquent writer, her Declaration of Sentiments was a revolutionary call for women's
rights across a variety of spectrums. Stanton was the president of the National Woman Suffrage Association for 20 years
and worked closely with Susan B. Anthony.
Early Life
Women's rights activist, feminist, editor, and writer. Born on November 12, 1815, in Johnstown, New York. The daughter
of a lawyer who made no secret of his preference for another son, she early showed her desire to excel in intellectual and
other "male" spheres. She graduated from the Emma Willard's Troy Female Seminary in 1832 and then was drawn to the
abolitionist, temperance, and women's rights movements through visits to the home of her cousin, the reformer Gerrit
Smith.
In 1840 Elizabeth Cady Stanton married a reformer Henry Stanton (omitting “obey” from the marriage oath), and
they went at once to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London, where she joined other women in objecting to their
exclusion from the assembly. On returning to the United States, Elizabeth and Henry had seven children while he studied
and practiced law, and eventually they settled in Seneca Falls, New York.
Women's Rights Movement
With Lucretia Mott and several other women, Elizabeth Cady Stanton held the famous Seneca Falls Convention in July
1848. At this meeting, the attendees drew up its “Declaration of Sentiments” and took the lead in proposing that women
be granted the right to vote. She continued to write and lecture on women's rights and other reforms of the day. After
meeting Susan B Anthony in the early 1850s, she was one of the leaders in promoting women's rights in general (such as
divorce) and the right to vote in particular.
During the Civil War Elizabeth Cady Stanton concentrated her efforts on
abolishing slavery, but afterwards she became even more outspoken in promoting women suffrage. In 1868, she worked
with Susan B. Anthony on the Revolution, a militant weekly paper. The two then formed the National Woman Suffrage
Association (NWSA) in 1869. Stanton was the NWSA’s first president - a position she held until 1890. At that time the
organization merged with another suffrage group to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Stanton
served as the president of the new organization for two years.
Later Work
As a part of her work on behalf of women’s rights, Elizabeth Cady Stanton often traveled to give lectures and speeches.
She called for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution giving women the right to vote. Stanton also worked with Anthony
on the first three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage (1881–6). Matilda Joslyn Gage also worked with the pair on
parts of the project.
Besides chronicling the history of the suffrage movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton took on the role
religion played in the struggle for equal rights for women. She had long argued that the Bible and organized religion
played in denying women their full rights. With her daughter, Harriet Stanton Blatch, she published a critique, The
Woman's Bible, which was published in two volumes. The first volume appeared in 1895 and the second in 1898. This
brought considerable protest not only from expected religious quarters but from many in the woman suffrage
movement.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton died on October 26, 1902. More so than many other women in that movement, she
was able and willing to speak out on a wide spectrum of issues - from the primacy of legislatures over the courts and
constitution, to women's right to ride bicycles - and she deserves to be recognized as one of the more remarkable
individuals in American history.
Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793-1880)
Mott was strongly opposed to slavery and a supporter of William Lloyd Garrison and his American Anti-Slavery Society.
She was dedicated to women's rights, publishing her influential Discourse on Woman and founding Swarthmore College.
Early Life
Women's rights activist, abolitionist and religious reformer Lucretia Mott was born Lucretia Coffin on January 3, 1793, in
Nantucket, Massachusetts. A child of Quaker parents, Mott grew up to become a leading social reformer. At the age of 13,
she attended a Quaker boarding school in New York State. She stayed on and worked there as a teaching assistant. While
at the school, Mott met her future husband James Mott. The couple married in 1811 and lived in Philadelphia.
Civil Rights Activist
By 1821, Lucretia Mott became a Quaker minister, noted for her speaking abilities. She and her husband went over with
the more progressive wing of their faith in 1827. Mott was strongly opposed to slavery, and advocated not buying the
products of slave labor, which prompted her husband, always her supporter, to get out of the cotton trade around 1830. In
1833 Mott, along with Mary Ann M’Clintock and nearly 30 other female abolitionists, organized the Philadelphia Female
Anti-Slavery Society. An early supporter of William Lloyd Garrison and his American Anti-Slavery Society, she often
found herself threatened with physical violence due to her radical views.
Lucretia Mott and her husband attended the
famous World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. It was there that she first met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who
was attending the convention with her husband Henry, a delegate from New York. Mott and Stanton were indignant at the
fact that women were excluded from participating in the convention simply because of their gender, and that indignation
would result in a discussion about holding a woman’s rights convention. Stanton later recalled this conversation in the
History of Woman Suffrage:
As Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton wended their way arm in arm down Great Queen Street that night,
reviewing the exciting scenes of the day, they agreed to hold a woman’s rights convention on their return to America, as
the men to whom they had just listened had manifested their great need of some education on that question. Thus a
missionary work for the emancipation of woman…was then and there inaugurated.
Eight years later, on July 19 and 20, 1848, Mott, Stanton, Mary Ann M’Clintock, Martha Coffin Wright, and Jane Hunt
acted on this idea when they organized the First Woman’s Rights Convention.
Throughout her life Mott remained active in both the abolition and women’s rights movements. She continued to speak
out against slavery, and in 1866 she became the first president of the American Equal Rights Association, an organization
formed to achieve equality for African Americans and women.
While remaining within the Hicksite branch of the Society of Friends, in practice and beliefs Mott actually identified
increasingly with more liberal and progressive trends in American religious life, even helping to form the Free Religious
Association in Boston in 1867.
Final Years
While keeping up her commitment to women's rights, Mott also maintained the full routine of a mother and housewife,
and continued after the Civil War to work for advocating the rights of African Americans. She helped to found
Swarthmore College in 1864, continued to attend women's rights conventions, and when the movement split into two
factions in 1869, she tried to bring the two together.
Mott died on November 11, 1880, in Chelton Hills (now part of Philadelphia), Pennsyvlania.
Maria Weston Chapman and the Weston Sisters
Maria Weston Chapman (July 25, 1806-July 12, 1885) was described by Lydia Maria Child as "One of the most
remarkable women of the age." Chapman and three of her five younger sisters played vital roles in the antislavery
movement. Even the smaller Weston girls were pressed into service for the cause that dominated the lives of this family.
Chapman, best-known of the group, was a "mainspring" and "lieutenant" of the movement, but her sisters worked closely
with her in support of William Lloyd Garrison. They founded an organization, circulated petitions, raised money, wrote
and edited numerous publications, and left behind a remarkable correspondence.
Maria Weston was the eldest of six daughters and two sons born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, to Warren and Nancy
Bates Weston, descendants of the Pilgrims. Maria's birth was followed by those of Caroline in 1808, Anne in 1812,
Deborah in 1814, Hervey Eliphaz in 1817, Richard Warren in 1819, Lucia in 1822, and Emma in 1825. The children grew
up on the family farm and went to local schools.
Joshua Bates, an uncle and prosperous London banker, invited Maria to England to complete her education. Upon her
return to Boston in 1828, she became principal of Ebenezer Bailey's Young Ladies' High School. In 1830 she married
Henry Grafton Chapman, son of Henry Chapman, a wealthy Boston merchant. The Chapmans were members of Federal
Street Church, where William Ellery Channing was minister. Unlike most businessmen and most fellow Unitarians,
Maria's father-in-law refused to participate in the lucrative cotton trade and supported Garrison's radical call for
immediate abolition of slavery.
Maria was the only Weston sister to marry. Caroline and Anne were teachers in Boston. Deborah, though she preferred to
stay in Weymouth, taught for a time in New Bedford. All four sisters were drawn into the antislavery movement. They
were talented, articulate, witty, energetic, and good-looking, outstanding individually and formidable as a group.
In 1834 Maria, Caroline, Anne, Deborah and eight other women formed the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society,
"believing slavery to be the direct violation of the laws of God, and productive of a vast amount of misery and crime, and
convinced that its abolition can only be effected by an acknowledgment of the justice and necessity of immediate
emancipation."
When the impeccably gowned and coiffed Mrs. Chapman first appeared at anti-slavery meetings, other women workers
suspected her of being a spy. It seemed impossible that this socialite could be sympathetic with the slaves. They soon
learned that nothing stood in the way of her dedication and organizational ability. She swept all before her, with her sisters
behind her in close formation.
A famous incident related to the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society was described by Deborah Weston as "the day when
5,000 men mobbed 45 women." In 1835 English abolitionist George Thompson was touring New England, arousing the
anger of those whose livelihood depended upon the cotton industry. Thompson was thought to be attending a meeting of
BFASS at the Liberator office. An angry mob converged on the building. Despite the uproar, the women calmly began
their meeting with scripture reading and prayer. Fearing for the women's safety, the mayor asked them to leave the
building. "If this is the last bulwark of freedom," said Maria, "we may as well die here as anywhere." After being escorted
to safety through the crowd of hissing men, the women continued their meeting at the Chapman house nearby. A few days
after the mob scene, Maria and Deborah were hissed by three men as they stood on the Chapman doorstep. It became
impossible for Maria to walk down the street alone without hearing "odious epithets" shouted after her by shop clerks.
Years later Maria wrote that "the members of Dr. Channing's congregation were the mob." No doubt the mob included
others besides Unitarians, but influential members of Federal Street Church were unsympathetic with the Chapmans and
Westons. Channing himself was only moderately supportive of the anti-slavery movement. Though he denied the right of
property in slaves and had, Maria wrote, "benevolent intentions," he showed "neither insight, courage, nor firmness." He
opposed immediate emancipation and deplored the formation of anti-slavery associations. "Above all," she added,
Channing "deprecated the admission of the coloured race to our ranks." Concerning her minister's opposition to
associations, Maria simply responded, "You know I never consider Dr. Channing an authority."
The sisters regularly attended various Boston churches and exchanged information as to whether the ministers preached
against slavery. Here is Deborah on a Sunday in July, 1835: "I was completely exhausted, listening to his [Rev. Mr.
Francis Parkman's] villainy. Went in the afternoon to the free church, heard Mr. [Theodore] Parker. He preached very
well, speaking extempore." A year later she reported on Maria's success in getting Henry Ware, Jr., guest minister at
Federal Street, to announce a forthcoming BFASS meeting. The incident caused "great excitement." "One man said."
Deborah wrote, "no one but Mrs. Chapman would have the impudence to do this. Another said, if Mrs. Chapman will
insult the congregation, she must expect to be insulted herself."
Such comments from fellow church members led to Maria's disaffection with churches in general. She was nevertheless
Unitarian, heart and soul, as seems clear from a Sunday morning conversation with her daughter Elizabeth, who was
considering Episcopalianism. "A being who was everywhere and knew all our thoughts," Maria maintained, "must be
better pleased with us for doing good to others, than going over 'hair splitting' like heathens and Episcopalians." Sewing
the hooks and eyes onto Elizabeth's gown she thought "more acceptable as a work of maternal piety to a benevolent and
wise being, than if I had passed time at any church in town: more especially as they had all lost sight of what they were
formed for."
By 1840 Chapmans and Westons had stopped attending Federal Street Church. Maria turned to abolitionist minister
Theodore Parker, and her sisters to John Pierpont, who preached anti-slavery at Hollis Street. Maria's spiritual life did not
depend upon church attendance. "Eternity and infinity come in like a flood whenever I open the gates," she wrote,
"although God and immortality never were much to me."
No Unitarian ministers were among the conservative clergymen who published a pastoral letter in 1837 scolding women
abolitionists who departed from their traditional "spheres." In response to this letter Maria published a satirical poem,
"The Times that Try Men's Souls," attributing authorship to the "The Lords of Creation." "Confusion has seized us, and all
things go wrong,/ The women have leaped from 'their spheres,'/ And instead of fixed stars, shoot as comets along,/And are
setting the world by the ears!/ . . . So freely they move in their chosen elipse,/ The 'Lords of Creation'/ do fear an eclipse."
The pastoral letter increased a developing split between Garrison with his anti-government motto, "no union with
slaveholders," and other abolitionists who insisted upon political engagement. A new anti-slavery organization and a new
newspaper, the Abolitionist, were established in competition with Garrisonian institutions. Conflict arose in BFASS as
well. Some opposed Anne Weston's proposal that the organization continue to subscribe to Garrison's Liberator. An 1840
vote favored the "new organization" members against the Garrisonians, but in compliance with their pastors, the
conservative women gradually dispersed. Maria Chapman, her sisters and friends carried on as the only women's group
actively supporting Garrison.
Their support was vital. Beginning in 1834 and continuing for many years, the Anti-Slavery Fair and the annual
publication, Liberty Bell, raised thousands of dollars. Maria and Anne were chief organizers of the fairs, popular Boston
social events. Fom 1839-1846 and intermittently thereafter, the Liberty Bell appeared, modelled on the fashionable gift
books of the time. As editor, Maria wrote many pieces herself and pressed her sisters into the work as well as soliciting
contributions from such notables as Lydia Maria Child, Eliza Cabot Follen, Wendell Phillips, Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Harriet Martineau.
The Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Convention of 1838 was the only occasion on which Maria Weston Chapman spoke in
public. She introduced Angelina Grimke over the howling of a mob which later burned to the ground the building where
the inter-racial meeting was held. From 1839-1842, Maria edited the Non-Resistant, another Garrison publication. In 1840
she was elected, along with Lydia Maria Child and Lucretia Mott, to the executive committee of the American AntiSlavery Society and was appointed a Massachusetts delegate to the world convention in London, although she did not
attend. In 1844 she served as co-editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard published in New York. She also edited the
Liberator in Garrison's absences. Her lively BFASS reports, Right and Wrong in Boston, appeared from 1836-1844
expressing a view of events not always shared by other members. When "an apparently irreconcilable difference of
opinion" arose, Maria stated her intention not to suppress her own views. "I shall never submit to any creation of any
society that interferes with my righteous freedom."
Throughout their public life, the Weston sisters continued their teaching careers, and Maria managed a family and
household which became a center of activity in the anti-slavery movement. The Chapmans frequently entertained the
abolitionist circle, including "coloured" guests, and housed out-of-town delegates to meetings. Three daughters and a son
were born to the Chapmans between 1831 and 1840. The youngest daughter died of tuberculosis, which also afflicted her
father. A trip to the West Indies failed to restore his health. He died in 1842. Nothing assuaged Maria's grief but renewed
immersion in anti-slavery work.
After Henry Chapman's death, Wendell Phillips was guardian of the Chapman children. In 1848 Maria took them out of
the emotional and political hotbed of Boston to complete their education in Europe. She planned to continue her
antislavery work abroad, and Caroline Weston joined her. They stopped briefly in England to visit Garrison's supporters
there. In the fall son Henry was settled at school in Heidelberg and his sisters in Paris, where Maria and Caroline made
their home an outpost of the American anti-slavery movement. Despite the turmoil of the revolution overthrowing Louis
Napoleon, Maria quickly found sympathizers for her cause and recruited many French contributors to the Liberty Bell.
She and Caroline shopped for items to ship to Anne in Boston for the anti-slavery fairs. During visits to England Maria
renewed her friendship with British writer Harriet Martineau, whom she had met in Boston in 1835. Struck by Maria's
"rare intellectual accomplishment," her courage, beauty, and clear, sparkling voice, Martineau made this American friend
editor of her memoirs, published in 1877 as The Autobiography of Harriet Martineau with Memorials by Maria Weston
Chapman.
By the time Henry had completed his education, his sister Elizabeth had married a French abolitionist, and the other
Weston sisters had joined the Paris group. In 1855 Maria returned to Weymouth, where she lived for the rest of her life.
She made extended visits to her son in New York City and worked in his brokerage office. Her grandson, John Jay
Chapman, long remembered the creative games she invented for her grandchildren. When the Civil War began, her sisters
joined her in Weymouth. With emancipation in 1863, Maria agreed with Garrison that it was time to close down the antislavery organizations. She devoted herself to education for the former slaves. Maria Weston Chapman died of heart
disease at 78. By 1890 all the sisters were buried in the Weymouth family plot.
The Weston Sisters Papers are in the
Anti-Slavery Collection at the Boston Public Library. More correspondence of Maria Weston Chapman can be found at
the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith
College in Northampton, Massachusetts. A number of these letters are printed in Clare Taylor, British and American
Abolitionists (1974). In addition to the works mentioned in the article, Chapman wrote Ten Years of Experience (1832); a
pamphlet, How Can I Help to Abolish Slavery (1855); antislavery stories; and a novel, Pindar, A True Tale (1840). Many
of her poems and hymns were published in the Liberator and in Songs of the Free and Hymns of Christian Freedom
(1836).
Among the biographical treatments of Maria Weston Chapman and her sisters are Clare Taylor, Women of the AntiSlavery Movement: The Weston Sisters (1995) and two articles by Margaret Munsterberg, "The Weston Sisters and the
'Boston Mob,'" The Boston Public Library Quarterly 9 (October 1957) and "The Weston Sisters and 'The Boston
Controversy,'" The Boston Public Library Quarterly 10 (January 1958). Short biographical articles on Chapman include
David Johnson, "Biographical Sketch of Maria Weston Chapman," in Standing Before Us: Unitarian Universalist Women
and Social Reform, 1776-1936, ed. by Dorothy May Emerson (2000); Alma Lutz, "Maria Weston Chapman." in Notable
American Women, ed. by Edward T. James et al. (1971); and Gerald Sorin, "Maria Weston Chapman," in American
National Biography (1999). See also Debra Gold Hansen, Strained Sisterhood: Gender and Class in the Boston Female
Anti-Slavery Society (1993) and Phyllis Cole, "Woman Questions: Emerson, Fuller, and New England Reform" presented
at the Massachusetts Historical Society conference, "Transient and Permanent: The Transcendentalist Movement and its
Contexts," 1997.
Article by Joan Goodwin
Susan B. Anthony
Born in Massachusetts in 1820, Susan B. Anthony was a prominent civil rights leader during the women's suffrage
movement of the 1800s. She had become involved in the anti-slavery movement, and it was in doing that work that she
encountered gender inequality. With Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anthony began working to establish women's right to vote.
She also created a weekly paper called Revolution, co-founded the National Woman Suffrage Association, and gave many
lectures in the United States and in Europe.
"Oh, if I could but live another century and see the fruition of all the work for women! There is so much yet to be done."
– Susan B. Anthony
Early Life
Born Susan Brownell Anthony on February 15, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts, Susan B. Anthony grew up in a Quaker
family. She developed a strong moral compass early on, and spent much of her life working on social causes. Anthony
was the second oldest of eight children to a local cotton mill owner and his wife. The family moved to Battenville, New
York, in 1826. Around this time, Anthony was sent to study at a Quaker school near Philadelphia.
After her father's business failed in the late 1830s, Anthony returned home to help her family make ends meet, and found
work as a teacher. The Anthonys moved to a farm in the Rochester, New York area, in the mid-1840s. There, they became
involved in the fight to end slavery, also known as the abolitionist movement. The Anthonys' farm served as a meeting
place for such famed abolitionists as Frederick Douglass. Around this time, Anthony became the head of the girls'
department at Canajoharie Academy—a post she held for two years.
Leading Activist
Leaving the Canajoharie Academy in 1849, Anthony soon devoted more of her time to social issues. In 1851, she attended
an anti-slavery conference, where she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She was also involved in the temperance movement,
aimed at limiting or completely stopping the production and sale of alcohol. She was inspired to fight for women's rights
while campaigning against alcohol. Anthony was denied a chance to speak at a temperance convention because she was a
woman, and later realized that no one would take women in politics seriously unless they had the right to vote.
Anthony and Stanton established the Women's New York State Temperance Society in 1852. Before long, the pair were
also fighting for women's rights. They formed the New York State Woman's Rights Committee. Anthony also started up
petitions for women to have the right to own property and to vote. She traveled extensively, campaigning on the behalf of
women.
In 1856, Anthony began working as an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society. She spent years promoting the
society's cause up until the Civil War.
Women's Right to Vote
After the Civil War, Anthony began focus more on women's rights. She helped establish the American Equal Rights
Association in 1866 with Stanton, calling for the same rights to be granted to all regardless of race or sex. Anthony and
Stanton created and produced The Revolution, a weekly publication that lobbied for women's rights in 1868. The
newspaper's motto was "Men their rights, and nothing more; women their rights, and nothing less." In 1869, Anthony and
Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. Anthony was tireless in her efforts, giving speeches around
the country to convince others to support a woman's right to vote. She even took matters into her own hands in 1872,
when she voted illegally in the presidential election. Anthony was arrested for the crime, and she unsuccessfully fought
the charges; she was fined $100, which she never paid.
In the early 1880s, Anthony published the first volume of History of Woman Suffrage—a project that she co-edited with
Stanton, Ida Husted Harper and Matilda Joslin Gage. Several more volumes would follow. Anthony also helped Harper to
record her own story, which resulted in the 1898 work The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony: A Story of the Evolution
of the Status of Women.
Death and Legacy
Even in her later years, Anthony never gave up on her fight for women's suffrage. In 1905, she met with President
Theodore Roosevelt in Washington, D.C., to lobby for an amendment to give women the right to vote. Anthony died the
following year, on March 13, 1906, at the age of 86, at her home in Rochester, New York. According to her obituary in
The New York Times, shortly before her death, Anthony told friend Anna Shaw, "To think I have had more than 60 years
of hard struggle for a little liberty, and then to die without it seems so cruel."
It wouldn't be until 14 years after Anthony's death—in 1920—that the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving
all adult women the right to vote, was passed. In recognition of her dedication and hard work, the U.S. Treasury
Department put Anthony's portrait on dollar coins in 1979, making her the first woman to be so honored.
Sarah McKim
Sarah McKim was the wife of James Miller McKim, a prominent abolitionist and Presbyterian minister, who also served
as editor for the Pennsylvania Freeman. Sarah was born in Carlisle, PA. Her maiden name was Sarah Allibone Speakman
and she married James McKim on October 1, 1840. A brilliant young lawyer, James McKim was frequently called to
represent free men and freed men kidnapped across the border into Maryland. He was most famous as the secretary of the
Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society and was prominently featured along with William Stills in the renowned illustration of
the arrival of Henry ”Box” Brown.
Like her husband, Sarah McKim was a strong supporter of the anti-slavery movement and some of her friends and
associates included Lucretia Mott, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman and Frances Harper.
Sarah and her husband became influential supporters of the underground railroad organizations centered in Philadelphia
also assisting in the many court cases that emerged after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. They would make trips to
various cities in Pennsylvania from Pittsburg to Philadelphia and Gettysburg to Erie representing the Pennsylvania
Abolitionist Society to assist in legal cases and speak on behalf of those who were being persecuted and needed support.
Additionally, through her role as an officer in the women’s anti-slavery movement, Sarah met abolitionist Mary Peck
Bond with whom she forged a lifetime friendship as her husband did with William Peck.
In 1859, with the impending execution of abolitionist John Brown, the McKims lent their support to his wife, Mary
Brown and traveled with her to Virginia. Sarah and James prayed and held hands with Mary until the hour of John’s
execution had passed. Afterward, the McKims and Frances Harper assisted Mary in claiming her husband's body and
escorted her northward, for the funeral service and interment.
Sarah also lent her support during the trial of William Stills and 5 Black dock workers, accused of helping in the liberation
of Jane Johnson, an enslaved Southern woman who asked for help in obtaining her freedom while passing through
Philadelphia with those she served. Jane made an appearance in the courtroom as surprise witness escorted by Sarah
McKim and a cadre of female abolitionists such as Lucretia Mott, Sarah Pugh, and Rebecca Plumly. Jane testified that she
had not been forcibly abducted by Stills and the other men, but that she had sought freedom out of her own volition. Still
and the other 5 men were acquitted.
During the Civil War, Sarah McKim’s husband founded the Philadelphia Port Royal Relief Committee to help provide for
the liberated freedom seekers of Port Royal. The organization became statewide in 1863 as the Pennsylvania Freedman’s
Relief Association. He also became actively involved in the authorizing and the recruiting of African-American units to
the Union Army. Two years later, The McKims moved to New York City when James became the first secretary of the
new American Freedman’s Union Commission, which operated until 1869. He also helped to found The Nation, a New
York newspaper produced to support the interests of the newly freed men and provided Wendell Garrison the position of
editor.
James and Sarah had two natural children, Charles Follen and Lucy; the couple also adopted James’ niece. Lucy McKim
later married Wendell Phillips Garrison, son of William Lloyd Garrison, while the adopted niece became William
Garrison’s second wife. Eventually, the McKims relocated to Orange, New Jersey, where James died in 1874. Sarah also
stayed in New Jersey until her death in 1891.
Sarah Pugh
Born: 1800
Birthplace: Virginia
Died: 1884
Location of death: Philadelphia, PA
Cause of death: unspecified
Remains: Buried, Fair Hill Burial Ground, Philadelphia, PA
Gender: Female
Religion: Quaker
, but eventually withdrew from the Orthodox Quakers and never rejoined any religious organization,
explaining that she disliked their doctrinal disputes that distracted from enacting beliefs in pursuit of social justice.
Race or Ethnicity: White
Occupation: Teacher, Activist/organizer/agent of PFASS
Nationality: United States
High School: Westtown Boarding School, Philadelphia, PA
Teacher: Friends School, Philadelphia, PA (1821-1860s)
Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society President (1833-1870), Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society
Sarah Pugh was a 19th century schoolteacher and abolitionist. She founded her own school and in 1835, she became
devoted to the immediate abolition of slavery. She was co-founder and leader of the influential Philadelphia Female AntiSlavery Society, a women's group open to all races. In 1838 the Second Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women
met in Philadelphia. Abolitionist Abby Kelley Foster was one of the daring women who spoke to a mixed gender
audience. The experience encouraged her to more vocally express her beliefs that women and men should be equal
participants in the abolition movement, particularly at conventions like the New England Anti-Slavery Convention. Two
years later in 1840, William Lloyd Garrison nominated Kelley to the American Anti-Slavery Society's business
committee, despite opposition by some of the male participants. The Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Convention of 1838,
which also occurred during the three days the Hall was open, was the only occasion on which Maria Weston Chapman
(1806-1885), one of the leading female abolitionists and founder of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, spoke
publicly.
The meeting hall was torched by an angry pro-slavery mob, and the women escaped the building in pairs -- black women
arm-in-arm with white women, which left would-be attackers bewildered long enough for all the women to escape. The
next day the convention reconvened in Pugh's schoolhouse where they pledged to expand the relationship between blacks
and whites. After the Civil War, Pugh helped establish schools for freed slaves. She also worked for the Pennsylvania
Woman Suffrage Association.
With Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Pugh attended the World Anti-Slavery Conference in London in 1840 -or more accurately, they crashed the meeting. Female delegates had been officially denied registration, but Pugh had
written to protest this and advise the organizers that at least three women would be attending. Later, she served as an agent
of the PFASS in Europe, working closely with colleagues there, especially with Richard Webb in Ireland.
After the US Civil War she established several schools for freed slaves and their children, and became a prominent
suffragette. In her mid-70s she signed the Declaration of Rights for Women in 1876. Her closest friends included Lott and
Susan B. Anthony, and she was aunt and inspiration to women's and children's rights activist Florence Kelley.
Theodore Dwight Weld (1803-1895) was an American reformer, preacher, and editor. He was one of the most-influential
leaders in the early phases of the antislavery movement.
Theodore Weld was born in Hampton, Conn., on Nov. 23, 1803, the son of a Congregational minister. Sent to PhillipsAndover to prepare for the ministry, he was forced to leave because of failing eyesight; he tried lecturing and later entered
Hamilton College in New York. Here he was especially influenced by evangelist Charles Grandison Finney, who
conducted revivalist meetings in the area. Weld toured with Finney's "holy band," leaving for Oneida Institute in 1827 to
complete his ministerial studies.
Weld soon converted to the antislavery cause. "I am deliberately, earnestly, solemnly, with my whole heart and soul and
mind and strength," he wrote in 1830, "for the immediate, universal, and total abolition of slavery." The New York
philanthropists Lewis and Arthur Tappan hired Weld as an agent for the Society for the Promotion of Manual Labor to
lecture and also to choose a site for a theological seminary for Finney. Weld chose Lane Seminary, and when the Tappans
installed the Reverend Lyman Beecher as president, Weld remained as a student. However, Weld and other "Lane rebels"
left in 1834 to train agents for the new national American Antislavery Society. Weld himself was a powerful speaker, and
his famous agents, the "Seventy," preached abolition across the West.
In 1837, his voice failing, Weld went to New York to edit the society's books and pamphlets. His The Bible against
Slavery (1837) summarized religious arguments against slavery, while American Slavery as It Is (1839, published
anonymously), a compilation of stories and statistics, served as an arsenal for abolitionist speakers and writers. In 1838
Weld married Angelina Grimké, one of two sisters he had helped train as antislavery speakers.
By the late 1830s antislavery forces formed a significant bloc in Congress, led by John Quincy Adams. Weld helped to
develop the "petition strategy," which forced the slavery issue into open debate. In 1843, feeling that abolition was
established as a political issue, he retired to New York in poor health. In 1854, he founded an interracial school in New
Jersey. He died Feb. 3, 1895, in Massachusetts.
Weld's passion for anonymity and fear of pride tended to obscure his role in the antislavery movement, on which he
exerted an enormous influence. He trained more than a hundred agents for the cause, directed its strategy for a decade, and
influenced many of its leaders.
Columbia Encyclopedia entry:
Weld, Theodore Dwight, 1803-95, American abolitionist, b. Hampton, Conn. In 1825 his family moved to upstate New
York, and he entered Hamilton College. While in college he became a disciple of the evangelist Charles G. Finney and
was influenced by Charles Stuart, a retired British army officer who urged Weld to enlist in the cause of black
emancipation. While studying for the ministry at Oneida Institute he traveled about lecturing on the virtues of manual
labor, temperance, and moral reform. After 1830 he became one of the leaders of the antislavery movement working with
Arthur Tappan and Lewis Tappan, New York philanthropists, James G. Birney, Gamaliel Bailey, Angelina Grimké, and
Sarah Grimké. He married Angelina Grimké in 1838. Weld chose Lane Seminary at Cincinnati, Ohio, for the ministerial
training of other Finney converts and studied there until the famous antislavery debates he organized (1834) among the
students led to his dismissal. Almost the entire student body then requested dismissal, and it was from these theological
students that Weld and Henry B. Stanton selected agents for the American Anti-Slavery Society. The "Seventy," as the
agents were called, gave character and direction to the antislavery movement and successfully spread the abolitionist
gospel throughout the North. From 1836 to 1840, Weld worked at the New York office of the antislavery society, serving
as an editor of the society's paper, the Emancipator, and contributing antislavery articles to newspapers and periodicals.
He also directed the national campaign for sending antislavery petitions to Congress and assisted John Quincy Adams
when Congress tried Adams for reading petitions in violation of the gag rule. While in Washington he advised the
Northern antislavery Whigs, many of whom (e.g., Ben Wade, Thaddeus Stevens) were converted to the cause by Weld or
one of his agents. After 1844 he retired from public participation in the movement to found a school, Eaglewood, near
Raritan, N.J. During the Civil War, at the urging of William Lloyd Garrison, he came out of retirement to speak for the
Union cause and campaign for Republican candidates. Most famous of his writings (none was published under his own
name) was American Slavery As It Is (1839), on which Harriet Beecher Stowe partly based Uncle Tom's Cabin and which
is regarded as second only to that work in its influence on the antislavery movement. Many historians regard Weld as the
most important figure in the abolitionist movement, surpassing even Garrison, but his passion for anonymity long made
him an unknown figure in American history.
Bibliography
See Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld and Sarah Grimké 1822-1844, ed. by G. H. Barnes and D.
L. Dumond (2 vol., 1934); biography by B. P. Thomas (1950); G. H. Barnes, The Antislavery Impulse, 1830-1844 (1933).
William Lloyd Garrison and The Liberator (1805-1879)
Every movement needs a voice.
For the entire generation of people that grew up in the years that led to the Civil War, William Lloyd Garrison was the
voice of Abolitionism. Originally a supporter of colonization, Garrison changed his position and became the leader of the
emerging anti-slavery movement. His publication, The Liberator, reached thousands of individuals worldwide. His
ceaseless, uncompromising position on the moral outrage that was slavery made him loved and hated by many Americans.
Although The Liberator was Garrison's most prominent abolitionist activity, he had been involved in the fight to end
slavery for years prior to its publication. In 1831, Garrison published the first edition of The Liberator. His words, "I am
in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD,"
clarified the position of the New Abolitionists. Garrison was not interested in compromise. He founded the New England
Anti-Slavery Society the following year. In 1833, he met with delegates from around the nation to form the American
Anti-Slavery Society. Garrison saw his cause as worldwide. With the aid of his supporters, he traveled overseas to garner
support from Europeans. He was, indeed, a global crusader. But Garrison needed a lot of help. The Liberator would not
have been successful had it not been for the free blacks who subscribed. Approximately seventy-five percent of the
readers were free African-Americans.
Garrison saw moral persuasion as the only means to end slavery. To him the task was simple: show people how immoral
slavery was and they would join in the campaign to end it. He disdained politics, for he saw the political world as an arena
of compromise. A group split from Garrison in the 1840s to run candidates for president on the Liberty Party ticket.
Garrison was not dismayed. Once in Boston, he was dragged through the streets and nearly killed. A bounty of $4000 was
placed on his head. In 1854, he publicly burned a copy of the Constitution because it permitted slavery. He called for the
north to secede from the Union to sever the ties with the slaveholding south.
William Lloyd Garrison lived long enough to see the Union come apart under the weight of slavery. He survived to see
Abraham Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War. Thirty-four years after first publishing The
Liberator, Garrison saw the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution go into effect, banning slavery forever. It took a
lifetime of work. But in the end, the morality of his position held sway.