7. Women in the Abolition Movement

Women of all races identified with the abolition movement, some as Christians, some as humanitarians, some from personal experience, and many were notorious household names for their quest to end slavery in the United States. 

It’s easy to compartmentalize the various human rights struggles of history. Most human rights issues are and always have been linked. The struggle for the emancipation of enslaved people was intertwined with the struggle for women’s rights, both in the people advocating for it and in the systemic and political issues they raised. As members of an oppressed class themselves, women brought empathy, compassion, intelligence, and plenty of organizational skills to the abolition movement.

Recognizing the connection between racial and gender oppression, iconic suffrage pioneer Susan B. Anthony famously urged her followers to “make the slave’s case our own.” But she is just one of many examples.
Advocacy for abolition goes way back. Phyllis Wheatly brought abolitionist ideas to American culture with her poetry. Wheatley was born in West Africa and taken to Boston as a child. In 1773 she was emancipated and became the first published African-American woman poet. Her poems included the reflection on slavery, “On Being brought From Africa,” which opened people’s eyes to the humanity of enslaved people. Her work was even praised by George Washington.

One of America’s earliest advocates for ending slavery was Abigail Adams, who once counseled her husband to “remember the ladies” when he and the Continental Congress were debating independence. In September of 1774, Abigail wrote to John: “I wish most sincerely there was not a Slave in the province. It always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me--fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.” For Abigail Adams, the cause of liberty meant liberty for all. 
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Leading up to the Civil War, many women called for abolition in private letters and poems, but it was highly unusual for a woman, especially an African-American woman, to speak in public on the matter. On September 21, 1832, Maria W. Miller Stewart spoke before the African-American Female Intelligence Society in Boston’s Franklin Hall. Stewart’s jeremiad, a form of speaking derived from the sermons of New England ministers, accused white Americans of breaking their covenant with God by supporting slavery. Stewart believed that God would judge Americans for the sin of slavery. She traveled throughout New England sharing her message with Christian Americans.

Women who had experienced the horrors of slavery were incredibly powerful representatives of the abolition movement. Amy Hester (Hetty) Reckless was born into slavery in southern New Jersey. She escaped violence at the hands of her mistress and settled in Philadelphia in 1826, operating a safe house on the underground railroad and supporting education for black children. In 1833, Hetty became a founding member of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Reckless also worked with the Female Vigilant Association starting in 1838, assisting enslaved people on their Underground Railroad journey, often at considerable personal risk.

Black women also wrote powerful pieces to teach people about the horrors of slavery. In 1861, Harriet Jacobs published her autobiography, "Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl." The book chronicles Jacobs’s life on a North Carolina plantation. She wrote about her abuse and her escape from her owner who sought to sexually abuse her. She got out by hiding in a crawlspace in her grandmother’s attic for seven years. When Jacobs finally escaped to New York, she worked as a nanny while supporting both the abolitionist and feminist causes. Her employer eventually purchased her freedom, and Jacobs helped found two schools for formerly enslaved people.

Harriet Tubman has a historical resume that is quite impressive. After her escape from bondage, Tubman made thirteen trips back to the south to free more than seventy enslaved people. In addition, Tubman gave many powerful speeches on behalf of abolition and women’s rights. Even though she could neither read nor write.

Sojourner Truth, who escaped from slavery in 1826, also rose to prominence speaking about intersectional equal rights. Her speech, “Ain’t I a Woman?” reminded folks that Black women were women too, and yet were not treated as such. It profoundly integrated the issues of racial and gender equality, and reminds us that women’s history isn’t experienced the same way for all women.

In spite of their own struggles to gain equal legal and social rights in America society, American women were in the forefront of the struggle to end slavery. They wrote pamphlets, gave speeches on behalf of enslaved people, and they dedicated their lives and their talents to the task of improving the lives of freed people. 

More and more white women began to connect the struggle for emancipation from slavery to the journey for equal legal and social rights for women. Margaret Fuller, a philosopher and Transcendentalist colleague of Thoreau and Emerson, noted that restrictions on the economic and political freedom of women were comparable to the restrictions imposed on enslaved people. To be clear, legally not being allowed to own property is not on the same level as being property--but Fuller’s point allowed others to consider a more equality-oriented perspective.
Lucretia Mott was active in William Lloyd Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society and helped to found the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. She was a Quaker preached, accustomed to speaking her mind in religious spaces, and found it impossible to reconcile that she could not outside her congregation. Her sister, Martha Coffin Wright was a friend and supporter of Harriet Tubman. Both were organizers of the first women’s rights in 1848 at Seneca Falls, NY. 

Lydia Maria Child insisted abolition should be included in a broader social reform context. Born into a religious family, Child trained to be a teacher and founded a school in Watertown, Massachusetts in 1826. She published the Juvenile Miscellany, a magazine for children, but she lost her southern subscribers when she published her anti-slavery views. However that didn't stop her. In 1833 Child argued for immediate emancipation of enslaved people in An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.

While most people relate abolition to the northern states, there were certainly Southern women who worked to end slavery too. Sarah and Angelina Grimke were born to unimaginable wealth and raised on a South Carolina plantation that included hundreds of enslaved people. They were so wealthy each family member had a personal slave. Using Christian arguments of charity and compassion, both sisters came to abhor slavery. In the 1820s, Angelina wrote to William Llyod Garrison and he published her letter in his liberal journal The Liberator. She was widely criticized and her writings were burned in Charleston. Faced with the ridicule, the Grimke sisters doubled down and became among the most vocal and famous critics of slavery. As feminists, they broke the taboo regarding women’s presence on the lecture circuit, which contributed to their profound and positive influence on both movement, but they faced considerable backlash. Their male abolitionist peers tried to withdraw them from the speaking circuit. When Angelina married Theodore Dwight Weld a pro-slavery mob burned down Pensylvania Hall where they were married. When they traveled through New England speaking to “mixed audiences” a mob of protesters surrounded them, because who were they to speak to men? Two sisters, two movements, too bad for racists and sexists.

The Grimke sisters were originally inspired to oppose slavery in part because their brother had consentual children with an enslaved woman. One of these children was Francis James Grimke, who later served as a minister in Washington, D. C.. He married Charlotte Louise Bridges Forten, who came from a prominent free Black abolitionist family in Philadelphia. Forten’s family had a long history of helping enslaved people escape bondage. She trained as a teacher, becoming the first Black graduate of the Salem Normal School in 1856. She was one of the first African-American teachers in Salem and was a member of  the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society, a precursor of the black women’s club movement that flourished in the early twentieth century.

Another South Carolina native, Mary Boykin Chesnut, was the matriarch of a family that owned nearly 1,000 slaves. However, in February of 1861, as Confederate war sentiment was increasing in intensity, Mary Chesnut began to compose a diary that revealed the inner life of the plantation. While not specifically an abolitionist document, Chesnut’s diary, which was published long after her death, provided important material for historians hoping to understand the life of the plantation.
Some women contributed to the abolitionist cause by articulating a religious and moral position against slavery. Harriet Beecher Stowe was a member of a famous family of ministers. In 1832, Harriet moved with her father to Cincinnati, Ohio, a river town that was a northern destination for many escaping enslaved people. She’d listen to debates about slavery at the her dad’s Seminary group and after hearing about, you know, the absolutely legal terror happening to human beings, she used her talent to take a stand against the oppression. In 1852, while sitting upstairs in the attic and having her sister watch her many children, Stowe wrote and  published Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which detailed the horrific conditions and dangers of plantation life. The book and play based on the story were both wildly popular. Legend has it that President Abraham Lincoln told Stowe in 1862, “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” Kind of a backhanded compliment, Abe, but it can’t be denied Stowe’s work really affected her readers’ opinions of the political issue. Her home was a stop along the underground railroad.

By the late 1850’s the divisions between the north and south were raw. Talk of secession was eminent. John Brown, a radical abolitionist from New York had not only murdered some pro-slavery folks, but led a raid on Harper’s Ferry Virginia. Harriet Tubman was supposed to be with him, but she was on another mission… seems someone knew she was destined for more. The South felt attacked and when Lincoln was elected it was the last straw. 

One of the earliest battles in the Civil War occurred at Port Royal on the Atlantic coast between Charleston and Savannah, Georgia. The Union victory effectively freed the 10,000 enslaved people of the region...but being free and having means for a future are two different things. So! The “Port Royal Experiment” was born! Abolitionists did what they do best. They served. They established schools, medical facilities, and paved the way for land ownership for these recently freed African-Americans. The Penn School, which is still around today, was run by abolitionists Charlotte Forten, Ellen Murray, and Laura Towne. The school provided literacy and history instruction as well as practical skills like basketmaking, shoemaking, and carpentry to African-American children.

We’ve talked about a lot of influential written work by women, but a song can also capture a historical moment. When Julia Ward Howe met President Lincoln in 1861, she penned new words to the familiar tune, “John Brown’s Body,” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was created. The song was a popular and invigorating anthem among Union soldiers not only toward victory, but the moral imperative to end slavery. She said:

​“Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel, Since God is marching on. As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free; While God is marching on.
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave, He is wisdom to the mighty, He is honor to the brave; So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of wrong His slave,
Our God is marching on.”

Efforts to improve the lives of free African people in the south continued after the War, and surprise, surprise, women were key in establishing schools. In 1868, Martha Schofield, a Quaker from Pennsylvania, brought her life savings of $468 to Aiken, South Carolina to establish a school for newly freed African-American folks. Students could learn basic academics and life skills--like cooking and sewing. The Schofield Normal and Industrial school is now a public middle school, and, oh, you bet the students there learn about Martha Schofield to this day.

Social norms in the 19th Century demanded middle-class and wealthy women devote their energies to home and family, but jokes on society because those expectations were so frustrating to many women, not only did they want to upset gender norms, but fight for racial equality too. Thus, American women found their voice and their place in both the struggle for women’s rights and the abolition movement. As we’ve learned, some women wrote books, others wrote songs. Some started schools, others risked their lives on the Underground Railroad. Some had power and wielded it to help others, and some women were born enslaved but became powerful through their actions. Regardless of how these and many more women attempted to create a more equal country, their attempts were not in vain. We can celebrate them and follow in their herstorical footsteps now--all these years later.

[Setting up the Inquiry] By the end of this era, so much remained in question. Would the federal government get involved? Would this come to war? Would women’s advocacy be well received? How would women’s politicization impact their role in society? Was suffrage an obvious next step?

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Bibliography

​Collins, Gail, America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines. New York, William Morrow, 2003.

DuBois, Ellen Carol, 1947-. Through Women's Eyes : an American History with Documents. Boston :Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005.Indians Editors. “NATIVE AMERICAN WOMEN.” Indians. N.D. http://indians.org/articles/Native-american-women.html.

Ware, Susan. American Women’s History: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Primary AUTHOR:

Dr. Barbara Tischler

Primary Reviewer:

Dr. Alicia Guitierrez-Romine

Consulting Team

Editors

Kelsie Brook Eckert, Project Director
Coordinator of Social Studies Education at Plymouth State University

Dr. Barbara Tischler, Consultant
​Professor of History Hunter College and Columbia University

Dr. Alicia Guitierrez-Romine, Consultant
Assistant Professor of History at La Sierra University

Jacqui Nelson, Consultant
Teaching Lecturer of Military History at Plymouth State University

Dr. Deanna Beachley
Professor of History and Women's Studies at College of Southern Nevada

Alice Stanley

Reviewers

18th Century
Dr. Margaret Huettl
​Hannah Dutton
​Dr. John Krueckeberg

19th Century
Dr. Rebecca Noel
Michelle Stonis, MA
Annabelle L. Blevins Pifer, MA
Cony Marquez, PhD Candidate
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​20th Century
Dr. Tanya Roth
​Dr. Jessica Frazier
Mary Bezbatchenko, MA