Abolitionist patriarchy, part I
Sexism in the abolitionist movement planted one of the seeds for Seneca Falls. In 1840 the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London refused to seat Lucretia Mott, an official US delegate. Notably, the Americans stood up for her. (1/3) #SenecaFalls #Suffrage100 #KnowYour19th https:<br /><br />Lisa Tetrault describes: “the convention’s first day...devolved into a lengthy, acrimonious dispute about the rights of women to participate. Arguments ended in a ridiculous compromise: women could listen, seated behind a bar, but they could take no active part.” <br /><br />Elizabeth Cady was there on her European honeymoon. Her new husband, “scruffy” abolitionist Henry Stanton wanted to watch the proceedings. She fumed w/Lucretia, 22 yrs older. The mentoring bore fruit 8 yrs later when they were back in NY where Eliz was a bored, frustrated mom.
Daily Suffragist
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09/23/2019
Charity Castle and Laura Tucker
I can’t stop thinking about this girl. Her gorgeous smile, her presence in front of the camera. The photo was taken sometime in the 1860s. @amhistorymuseum shared it on Instagram a few days ago, and I keep coming back to it. Long thread.<br /><br />We don’t know her name, because she was invisible to the people who paid for the sitting on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, and distributed copies of the portrait to friends and family. We know the baby’s name, and her age - to the day. Looking at her, wondering how her life turned out, made me think of a different young woman who found herself in Philadelphia about 50 years before. Maybe she too walked down Chestnut Street with a child in her care. <br /><br />It was 1814, and Charity Castle was doing everything she could to stay in Pennsylvania. She was enslaved in Maryland in the home of Charles Caroll Jr. and his wife, Harriet. Charles was a violent alcoholic, and Harriet finally had enough. She took the kids and left him, back to her family estates in Philadelphia. She brought along Charity & 7 other enslaved people. <br /><br />Pennsylvania had abolished slavery gradually, beginning during the Revolutionary War. Freedom was not automatic upon arrival in the state. After six months, though, an enslaved person was free under state law. Charity knew this - maybe every enslaved person in Maryland did. Every enslaver certainly knew it. <br /><br />Five months after arriving in Philadelphia, Harriet Chew Carroll makes plans to send Charity back to Maryland before the deadline. But Charity refuses - vehemently. She says she would rather be sold than go back to the Carroll estate in Maryland. <br /><br />Pressed to explain, Charity tells Harriet - seemingly in pretty blunt terms - that Charles Carroll Jr. raped her. Harriet’s brother Benjamin Chew sees how distraught Harriet is...on her own behalf. So he jumps in to try and get Charity out of Philadelphia and back to Maryland. <br /><br />The night before she is to be sent back, Charity is seriously injured. She falls (or jumps) from a wood pile. She’s found bleeding profusely, and probably has a punctured lung. Much correspondence ensues about whether she can be returned to Maryland before six months have passed. <br /><br />Marvelously, she recovers. By that time, she’s spent more than six months in Pennsylvania - and connected with attorney William Lewis. He’s a leader of the Pa. Abolitionist Society - and a drafter of the state’s abolition law. He provides a written opinion that she is now free. <br /><br />Harriet’s brother & father-in-law argue that because Charity remained in the state only because of the accident, it shouldn’t count. Attorney Lewis responds curtly: “accident made her a slave, accident has made her free, and it seems right that she should avail herself of it.â€Â <br /><br />BTW, Harriet’s father-in-law Charles Carroll was a former Senator, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. <br /><br />For months, the men in the family keep insisting that Charity is their property. Charles Jr, the rapist, sends his father a ranty letter in which he says that while he could sue, “A Law Suit would probably be attended with many circumstances afflicting to my Wife and Children.â€Â <br /><br />There’s no satisfying conclusion. We don’t know for sure whether Charity is ever free. We know that she had a husband who was in contact with attorney William Lewis. For now, the trail ends there. Like the unnamed girl in the photograph, we can only wonder and hope for her. <br /><br />We do know one ending, though: we know the choice Harriet Chew Carroll makes. When Harriet is asked what SHE thinks, she literally refuses to answer. She begs her brother to respond for her. He does, in her voice, to say that the whole matter is entirely up to her husband. <br /><br />Harriet, who was strong enough to leave her abuser, refuses to help another woman he has attacked. Refuses, to the very end, to utter one word on her behalf. (There are portraits of everyone in this story except Charity, so I'm not including any of them.) <br /><br />I first heard Charity’s story on the podcast Amended, where @marthasjones_ tells it to illustrate the deep roots of white women’s disloyalty and failed sisterhood. <a href="https://humanitiesny.org/amended-episode-2-any-woman/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">It’s a must-hear.</a> <br /><br />***<br /><br />Laura. Her name is Laura Tucker. Thanks to @JasonPetrulis for finding her, and building <a href="https://twitter.com/JasonPetrulis/status/1317036846220668928" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">this fascinating thread</a>👉
Daily Suffragist
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Oct 15, 2020
Charles Lenox Remond
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Charles Lenox Remond was the most prominent Black abolitionist in the US until he was overshadowed by Frederick Douglass. Remond’s commitment to women’s rights was as deep as FD’s, maybe deeper. He should be remembered for his feminism. Long thread.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Charles Remond was the oldest son of eight children of Nancy Lenox and John Remond of Salem, Mass. He had six sisters. Their grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War. The photograph above was taken in the 1850s by Samuel S. Broadbent. Via @BPL</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Until Charles Remond, the most visible spokespeople for abolition were white. Remond was a founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and the first Black man to lecture widely against slavery. In 1840, he was invited to join a delegation to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">In the US & UK, abolitionists had been arguing for months over whether women could participate equally. Misogyny had caused a schism in the US movement. Multiple US delegations went to London. One, from Philadelphia, sent four women; other groups were all men.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Charles Remond was part of another delegation that included William Lloyd Garrison and Lucretia Mott. About Mott, perhaps the greatest woman of her era, Garrison asked: “In what assembly is that almost peerless woman NOT qualified to take an equal part?”</span><span style="font-weight:400;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">This one, apparently. The London organizers refused to seat the female delegates. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Charles Remond was *the only Black delegate to the entire convention.* Everyone was watching to see what he would do. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Remond refused to take his seat if women could not. He and Garrison sat in the gallery with the women. Remond said later that it was a matter of respect - to be seated as a delegate would disrespect the women whose dogged fundraising underwrote the trip.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">When the delegation returned to the US, the men were hailed for “refusing to lower a noble principle to accommodate a barbarous custom.” A special resolution added: “We, the colored citizens of Boston, feel ourselves ably represented at antislavery meetings in England in the person of Charles Lenox Remond.”</span><span style="font-weight:400;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Throughout his life, he leveraged his privilege as a man. In 1848 he opened an African American Anti-Slavery Society meeting in Philadelphia by specifying that “any gentleman _or lady_ who may desire to address the meeting” could do so.</span><span style="font-weight:400;"> @marthasjones_</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Remember, this was 1848! Women’s public participation was still novel. Harriet Purvis was on the business committee, with other Black women. Lucretia Mott was there too, and she was impressed at the breadth and inclusivity of the agenda: “the cause of the slave, as well as of women.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">At the Colored National Convention in 1855, Charles Remond proposed Mary Ann Shadd for membership. She was one of two women there, having journeyed back from Windsor, Ontario, where she edited <em>The Provincial Freeman</em>, a newspaper for the Black emigrant community. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Remond moved to admit her as a “corresponding member” representing the Canadian emigrant population - which was fraught for two reasons. Whether to leave or stay and fight in the US was a heated dispute, and she was the only </span><span style="font-weight:400;">émigré</span><span style="font-weight:400;"> at the meeting. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">She was also one of only two women there, and not all men thought women should participate. “This question gave rise to a spirited discussion,” per Jane Rhodes’ biography of Mary Ann Shadd Cary and @CCP_org. Her membership was approved by a vote of 38-23, after Remond and Frederick Douglass fought for her.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">In 1859, Charles declined to be nominated to the business committee of the New England Convention of Colored Citizens, “and said that it was time to elect women to leadership positions in the organization.” (Terborg-Penn)</span><span style="font-weight:400;"> A man *stepped back* and refused power explicitly to make room for women.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">By this time, Charles Remond frequently shared a podium with his sister Sarah. She was 16 years younger than he, and becoming an accomplished activist and orator in her own right. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">In 1866-67, Sarah and Charles toured New York state campaigning for universal suffrage. A state constitutional convention was planned for 1867, and it was an opportunity to correct two major wrongs.</span><span style="font-weight:400;"> No woman could vote in New York, and Black men had to meet an impossibly high property tax.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The state refused to make progress on either front. New York restricted voting by Black men until 1874; by Black women until 1917. Soon after their speaking tour, Sarah Remond moved to Italy, where she became a doctor and lived the rest of her life.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Charles Remond died in Boston in 1873. He stood up for his sisters, all of them. Early in his life when he had plenty to lose, and later when he was more established, he used his power to benefit women.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">#Suffrage100 #BlackSuffragists #SuffrageMen</span></p>
Daily Suffragist
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January 16, 2021
Death and taxes
Was suffrage a legitimate charitable cause? "501c3" refers to a section of the tax code. Tax exempt status for voluntary, religious & educational orgs took its current form between 1894-1913. But before that, trusts & estates law was where the question was argued. Thread. <br /><br />In 1861, a Boston abolitionist named Francis Jackson bequeathed $5,000 to Susan B Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Wendell Phillips, “in trust...to secure the passage of laws granting women, whether married or unmarried, the right to vote, to hold office...to hold, manage and devise property, and all other civil rights enjoyed by men. My desire is that they may become a permanent organization, until the rights of women shall be established equal with those of men.” <br /><br />A Massachusetts court invalidated the gift. <br /><br />The court noted that it had no comment on whether the stated goals were wise or desirable. But accomplishing them would require changing the law - the Constitution, even! It held that overthrowing or changing laws is not a charitable use. <br /><br />The movement got the money anyway. Francis Jackson anticipated this would happen, and had given the $5,000 to Wendell Phillips while alive. Plenty of abolitionists didn’t care much about women’s rights. So why did Jackson? <br /><br />Sally Roesch Wagner @<a href="https://twitter.com/Swagner711" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Swagner711</a> explains that watching his daughter suffer awakened him to the injustice women faced. His daughter Eliza lost custody of her young children when her husband absconded with them. In 1850s Boston, she was powerless. <br /><br />When Eliza herself died more than 20 years later, she left $50,000 to the movement. Just as her father had, she divided the funds between Lucy Stone and Susan B Anthony - now the leaders of two separate suffrage associations. <br /><br />Susan B Anthony, an unmarried woman, could inherit outright. For a married woman the will had to be more specific: “to Lucy Stone, wife of Henry B. Blackwell, as her own absolute separate property, free from any control by him.” <br /><br />Disappointed relatives challenged the will, arguing that Eliza was trying to do just what her father’s will couldn’t: create an unlawful charity. But Wendell Phillips - to whom Francis Jackson entrusted the original $5,000 gift - had written the will himself. <br /><br />The highest court in Massachusetts - 7 men, including Oliver Wendell Holmes - held in 1885 that Eliza's will was airtight. Lucy Stone and Susan B each got almost $25,000. Even after legal fees, it was the largest gift a woman had yet given to the cause. #Suffrage100
Daily Suffragist
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19/03/2020
<a href="https://dailysuffragist.omeka.net/admin/items/show/327" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Eliza Jackson Eddy's $50,000 Bequest</a>
Hester Lane
The story of Black abolitionist Hester Lane features blatant racism and sexism. But it’s also about a subtler version of both: when you’re expected to choose a side because of your identity, and pigeonholed into what someone like you is “supposed to” believe. Long thread. <br /><br />Hester’s story is one of the most exciting discoveries in @marthasjones_' wonderful Vanguard - which is saying something! <br /><br />Hester was a free woman of color in 1820s New York City. She was an entrepreneur, a leader, and a liberator. <br /><br />Hester Lane bought the freedom of enslaved people - dangerous work that meant negotiating with southern slaveholders herself. She brought out as many as 11 people - she required them to repay her, which enabled her to keep the cycle going. <br /><br />Slavery was still legal in New York then, and the state wanted to prevent African Americans from amassing political power as they gradually became free. In 1821 the legislature imposed a rule that Black men had to own $250 worth of property in order to vote - white men, zero. That’s almost $6000 today, and in 1825 there were 16 Black men who met the qualification. So Hester Lane’s success - she owned her own decorating business and her own home - was truly extraordinary. <br /><br />She was a powerful community leader. She led fundraising for the NYC Vigilance Committee, which worked to protect African Americans who were in constant danger of being seized and enslaved. She led the local Dorcas Society, which clothed the children of the community so they could attend the African Free School.<br /><br />In the 1830s slavery mushroomed in the South and organized opposition grew in the North. The American Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1833, and Hester Lane was an early donor. Then & now, being a donor & fundraiser was a route to becoming a leader in a volunteer organization. <br /><br />In 1840, Hester ran for a seat on the Society’s Executive Committee. Two other women ran that year also. Good, right? Well.... the bumper crop of women reflected a schism in the abolitionist movement. A large faction had just quit the Society -- over the issue of electing women. And that was Hester’s faction. She was aligned with the side of the Society that wanted to use lobbying and litigation and other political means to end slavery. <br /><br />The handful of other women who were active in the Society - all of them white - were aligned with the other faction. That faction, led by Wm Lloyd Garrison, was more anarchic. They didn’t think slavery could be ended through capital-P Politics. They wanted to focus on changing hearts and minds, winning over Americans with the moral rightness of their cause. (Portrait: Garrison in 1833.) <br /><br />The political wing was more conservative, and women’s leadership was a radical proposition. At the Society’s 1839 convention, inclusion of women became a flashpoint. 123 men formally protested women holding leadership roles. Why? They felt it would make their cause ridiculous. The Female Anti-Slavery Societies that had developed in the 1830s were fine, they said, but nothing more. Women leading the national organization risked causing “unnecessary reproach and embarrassment to the cause of the enslaved.” <br /><br />.@MarthaSJones_ asks us to imagine how Hester felt - these were her ideological allies. Hester’s alliance with the political wing makes sense to me. Those men were pragmatists who wanted to end slavery by using the system. In contrast... Garrison’s opposing faction was anarchist; to me, his confidence that a new system would be better reeks of white privilege. Hester was a businesswoman, not a dreamer. <br /><br />A year later, everyone returned to New York for the annual meeting. Abby Kelley - a white woman from Lynn, Mass. - was appointed to a leadership committee at the Society’s annual meeting. Like Hester Lane, Kelley was a seasoned abolitionist and a fundraiser for the Society. Her appointment brought the issue of women’s leadership to a boiling point. A vote was called on whether to approve her. 557 in favor; 451 against. The losers walked out, never to return. They founded their own abolitionist group. Good riddance, right? <br /><br />The meeting continued, and the women present - about 120 delegates - were elected and appointed to leadership roles. But let it sink in. In 1840, the racially integrated American Anti-Slavery Society split over the question of women in power. And it left Hester Lane, the most prominent African American woman there, in a lousy position. She had too much self-respect to go where she was not wanted. She stayed, and her friend Charles Ray nominated her to the Society’s executive committee. Ray and his late wife Henrietta were Hester’s partners in leading New York City's Black community. He published the newspaper the Colored American; Henrietta was a founder of the African Dorcas Society & the NY Female Literary Society. <br /><br />When the Society election was over, well-known Lucretia Mott and Lydia Maria Child had won. Hester Lane lost. Maria Chapman was also on the executive committee by the end of the 1840 convention - so three white women were in leadership and the strongest Black candidate was not. Charles Ray pointed to racism as the culprit. <br /><br />Garrison blamed Hester for her association with the dissident anti-feminists: “It is to be supposed that the Society would be guilty of this obvious impropriety of appointing to office a woman who denies her own right of membership?” That was snotty of Garrison, and a low blow. Hester Lane certainly hadn’t signed on to the anti-woman petition in 1839, nor walked out in 1840. <br /><br />Another of Hester's distinguishing characteristics was independence. The white women elected were all sponsored by their husbands, prominent abolitionists in their own right. (Abby Kelley, elected before the schism, was single then.) Hester was not just Black, she was an unmarried, independent businesswoman. <br /><br />Hester left abolitionist politics after that. She died in New York City’s 1849 cholera epidemic. I hope Professor Jones’ work leads to much more awareness of this fascinating woman. <br /><br />#BlackSuffragists #Vanguard
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1314693511669862405" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original source</a>
Oct 9, 2020
Maria Stewart spoke first
Did you know that the first American woman to speak for equal rights in public, in front of men, was a Black woman? And that she made sure her speeches were published and circulated? When? More than 15 years before Seneca Falls. Who? 👇🧵<br /><br />Maria W. Stewart gave her first public lecture in Boston in 1832. She explained her unexpected female presence, but didn’t apologize for it. She quoted Hebrew Bible and New Testament fluently, especially prophetic texts like Jeremiah and Ezekiel. <br /><br />She addressed the shared fate of enslaved people and free People of Color like her, and advocated a multi-pronged strategy for resisting white supremacy: sue for your rights, boycott white businesses, and do not discount the threat of violence. <br /><br />In the 1830s, many abolitionists thought “colonization†-exile to Africa- would follow slavery. Maria rejected that: “Now that we have enriched their soil and filled their coffers...they would drive us to a strange land. But before I go, the bayonet shall pierce me through.†<br /><br />Her speeches were published because she marched into the small office of The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison & Isaac Knapp’s fledgling newspaper, and told them they should publish her writing. So many later women’s words were lost, but Maria Stewart made sure hers were not. <br /><br />We don’t have an image of young Maria Stewart, but she was described as very beautiful. She was orphaned at 5 and indentured until 15 in the home of a minister. She found brief happiness in her marriage to James Stewart, but he died three years after their wedding. <br /><br />Her husband left her what should have been a comfortable inheritance but it was denied her. The injustices, though typical for the widow of a Black man with property, affronted even the Massachusetts court. “For several years,†Stewart wrote, “my heart was in continual sorrow.†<br /><br />What made her so bold, so unusual? No woman had sought to speak in public, on politics. Religious conviction was the source of her confidence. She underwent a religious conversion after her husband’s died - and God compelled her to deliver a divinely inspired message of justice. <br /><br />"Who shall go forward, and take off the reproach that is cast upon the people of color?" asked a voice from within, "Shall it be a woman?" And my heart made this reply--"If it is thy will, be it even so, Lord Jesus!" <br /><br />She persevered for two years before relentless criticism pushed her to give up public speaking. She remained an activist, a teacher, and a devout Christian. She also worked constantly, ultimately as the matron - head of housekeeping - at the Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington. <br /><br />In 1879 she came into a bit of money - her late husband’s pension from the War of 1812. She used it to underwrite publication of a second edition of her speeches, Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart. <br /><br />#suffrage100 #vanguard #BlackSuffragists <br /><br />Adding her contemporary editor, Marilyn Richardson, @MarilynElaine - read Maria's writing and Richardson's wonderful essays for context, interpretation, and biographical detail.
Daily Suffragist
Original thread
Sept 21, 2020
Mary Grew & Margaret Burleigh
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Mary Grew, abolitionist leader & newspaper editor. Her work was respected by all the men in the movement—except her own father. Mary >> back row with fellow members of the Penn. AntiSlavery Society. Margaret Burleigh, her partner of 40 years, is in front. They were known as the “Burleigh-Grews.” Thread.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Mary Grew & her father Henry sailed for England to attend the World AntiSlavery Convention. They were both delegates—but when Mary & the other women were denied their seats, her father didn’t protest. The opposite: he said seating women wd violate “the ordinance of Almighty God!”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">We don’t know what Mary thought of her father, whose wealth gave her the freedom not to marry.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Mary was an officer of both the Female AntiSlavery Society and the co-ed Pennsylvania AntiSlavery Society. She edited the <em>Pennsylvania Freeman</em>, the abolitionist newspaper. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">When the <em>Freeman</em> merged with the <em>National Anti-Slavery Standard</em>, Mary wrote for the <em>National</em> as a Philadelphia correspondent. She also wrote the Female AntiSlavery Society’s annual report every year, concluding in 1870 with a retrospective on 35 years of work.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">From her earliest years as an abolitionist, Mary demanded radical and immediate change. In 1838 she spoke at the American Women’s AntiSlavery Convention the day before their meeting hall was torched. Mary made a controversial resolution to cut off churches that condoned slavery.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">“RESOLVED That it is our duty to keep ourselves separate from those churches which receive to their pulpits and their communion tables those who buy, sell, or hold as property, the image of the living God.” <br /><br />It passed narrowly. Yrs later the larger movement took the same position.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Abolitionists were trying to convince white Northerners that slavery was evil. In this work, Mary had much to offer. She was a good writer, a clear and compelling speaker, and willing to go door to door to collect signatures, even when Congress refused to accept them. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">SIDEBAR: Did you know there was a Gag Rule in the 19th century? Abolitionists submitted so many petitions that the House of Representatives voted to table them automatically. Like the contemporary Gag Rule, this affected women most, as petitioning was their only political voice.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Mary Grew believed in racial equality in the north, not just freedom from enslavement in the south. When Frances Watkins Harper critiqued the women’s rights movement for ignoring streetcar segregation in Philadelphia, Mary listened. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Mary lambasted local white clergy:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">“Eager, zealous, prompt to do battle against the running of our city cars on Sunday, they have scarcely been disturbed by this wicked and cruel practice of excluding their fellow citizens and fellow Christians from those cars on account of their complexion.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Mary was always a feminist, though she wasn’t at Seneca Falls in 1848. That convention, sparked by the discrimination Mary Grew and Lucretia Mott experienced in London, was called on short notice when Mott was visiting western NY from Philadelphia. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">But the same year, Mary lobbied the Pennsylvania legislature to pass the married women’s property act. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">After the war, with ratification of the 15th Amdt imminent, Mary turned more attention to women’s suffrage. She was the founding president of the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association, and its head for 23 years.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">She was exasperated with those who demanded justification for women voting. “What is woman going to do with the ballot? I don’t know; I don’t care; and it is of no consequence. Their right to the ballot does not rest on the way in which they vote.” (1871, quoted in HWS)</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">When she died in 1896, her obituary observed: “Her biography would be a history of all reforms in Pennsylvania for fifty years.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">What about Margaret??</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">From the time they were in their 30s, Mary Grew and Margaret Jones did everything together. Abolition was the center of their lives, but they also took trips to the seashore. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Their circle included Mary’s co-editor on the newspaper, Cyrus M. Burleigh. In 1855, when he was dying of tuberculosis, Margaret married him.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Cyrus died a month later. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Margaret settled his affairs and she and Mary set off on a tour of New England. Six months later they were signing their letters “Mary & Margaret.” They lived together the rest of their lives.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Did they have sex? They may have; it’s not a new invention. We know they were a devoted couple for 40 years. When Margaret died, Mary received condolences like a widow. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">When Mary died five years later, a eulogy described their connection as akin to husband and wife: “They had grown like two noble trees, side by side from youth to age, with roots so interlaced that when the one was uptorn the other could never take quite the same hold on life again.” </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Mary Grew’s only fault, said the eulogist, was her intolerance of people not committed to justice.</span></p>
Daily Suffragist
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January 30, 2021
More abolitionist patriarchies
ElizCadyStanton’s feminism was ignited watching her mentor Lucretia Mott be denied credentials at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. <br /><br />I knew that, but I didn’t know the backstory: fissures in the US abolitionist movement over women’s participation. Long thread.<br /><br />Wm Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist fervor led him to reject American govt & the Constitution entirely. <br /><br />(FWIW Frederick Douglass disagreed, insisting the Constitution was fixable. IMO, rejecting it requires high confidence _you_ will have a say in the rewrite.💕 @<a href="https://twitter.com/heidibschreck" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">heidibschreck</a>) <br /><br />By 1839, a split developed between the Garrisonian anarchists and a more pragmatic faction: political abolitionists, led by Elizabeth Cady’s cousin Gerrit Smith & a politician named Henry Stanton who wd become her husband. They thought those who could vote against slavery should. <br /><br />Henry Stanton and the political abolitionists quit the American Anti-Slavery Society. Ironically given his fiance’s nascent feminism, their exit created opportunity for women. If the Garrisonians weren’t voting or running for office, women’s political disability was irrelevant. <br /><br />Women like Abby Kelley (later Foster) seized the opportunity. She toured and lectured against slavery nationwide & helped launch Female AntiSlavery Conventions, a new idea, in 1837 & 1838. <br /><br />In 1840 she was nominated to a seat on the board of the American Anti-Slavery Society. At the Society’s annual meeting on May 12, 1840, objection to Kelley’s participation was lodged. <br /><br />A vote was called: 557 in her favor; 451 against. 3 men quit the committee rather than serve with her; they created a breakaway abolitionist group that barred women from leadership. Just one month after insulting Abby Kelley, a who’s who of American abolitionists went to London, all looking for validation. <br /><br />Kathryn Kish Sklar explains that the issue of women’s participation was hotly anticipated, and not at all peripheral. She writes: “More than an abstract principle was contested here. The "woman question" became the means by which each side of the divided American movement was struggling to gain the extremely influential moral support and access to the extensive financial resources of the British movement.†<br /><br />Lucretia Mott and the other women in the delegation - all accomplished abolitionist leaders in Philadelphia and Boston - were refused credentials. Garrison and 3 other men, inc. African-American Charles Remond (brother of Sarah), sat with the women in protest. <br /><br />ElizCadyStanton wasn’t a delegate; she was accompanying her new husband. Lucretia Mott was the most memorable part of their honeymoon: “...the greatest wonder of the world--a woman who thought and had opinions of her own." #Suffrage100Â
Daily Suffragist
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02/04/2020
More Lucy Stone
At Lucy Stone's graduation from Oberlin in 1847, she declined the "honor" of writing the oration for a man to read. Wm Lloyd Garrison met her that day. He was impressed with her intellectualism & willingness to make powerful people uneasy, and hired her to lecture on abolition. <br /><br />Lucy Stone annoyed the Anti-Slave Society by insisting on discussing women's rights as well as abolition. She's the person who recruited Susan B Anthony to the cause - in Worcester in 1850. Eventually they loathed each other, exacerbating the schism in the movement. <br /><br />She edited the weekly Woman's Journal, known for both quality journalism & loyalty to the Republican Party. Stone disdained the self-mythologizing of Stanton & Anthony, and as a result she's far less famous. I like knowing she was a Leo, and suffered from migraines all her life.
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1192456756871471104" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
07/11/2019
Sarah Pugh
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">This is the Pennsylvania AntiSlavery Society in 1851. You might recognize Lucretia Mott, front row in the bonnet between her husband James and Robert Purvis. But who are the other women? And why is this building on fire? Long thread.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The four other women in this picture had politics as radical as Lucretia Mott’s — and their personal lives were even more unusual. Today, meet Sarah Pugh. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Sarah Pugh was 35 years old when she heard British abolitionist George Thompson speak and was converted to the cause. Until then she had spent her life teaching; by 1829 she ran a Quaker school with two close friends, Rachel Peirce and Sarah Lewis. Lewis joined her in the cause and they soon devoted themselves to running the newly-formed Philadelphia Female AntiSlavery Society. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">In 1837 Pugh traveled to New York City for the first American Women’s AntiSlavery Convention. The next year she wouldn’t sail for New York - that’s right, sail - as Philadelphia would host the convention. It was to be held at the brand new Pennsylvania Hall, built by the community. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">They needed to build a building. You see, no one in town would rent abolitionists space to meet. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">So white abolitionists and free people of color bought $20 shares - 2,000 shares in all - and they built their own building. In addition to a lecture hall, it had meeting rooms, galleries, and a bookstore.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The building lasted four days.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Its first big event was the second annual American Women’s AntiSlavery Convention. </span><span style="font-weight:400;">As the women spoke, a mob surrounded the building and threw rocks at the windows. </span><span style="font-weight:400;">Later that night, the crowd overran the building and set it on fire. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">What upset them so much?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Black and white women and men mingling, women speaking in front of an integrated, co-ed crowd, demanding the immediate abolition of slavery...all of it. Especially the mixed seating, and that Black and white attendees had exited the hall arm-in-arm. (Otherwise the Black attendees would have been lynched.) </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The fire department didn’t try to save the building, which was damaged beyond repair. In the investigation that followed, the city blamed the abolitionists. They inflamed the mob by “advocating doctrines repulsive to the moral sense of a large majority of our community.” </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The Convention continued the next day. </span><span style="font-weight:400;">They reconvened in Sarah Pugh’s schoolhouse. </span><span style="font-weight:400;">And the following year they made a point to hold the convention in Philadelphia again.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The Philadelphia Female AntiSlavery Soc. was integrated from the beginning - Black women like Sarah Mapps Douglass and the Forten and Purvis women were among its founders, and at least 10% of its members. But no Black woman was invited to join the deliberately co-ed delegation to the World AntiSlavery Convention in London.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Sarah Pugh was, though, along with Lucretia Mott and several others.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">When they arrived in London the women were warmly welcomed with teas and other social events, but they weren’t welcome to be delegates at the convention. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Sarah Pugh wrote the letter of protest. “While as individuals [the women] return thanks for these favors...as delegates from the bodies appointing them they deeply regret to learn” they will be excluded from acting as “coequals in the advocacy of Universal Liberty.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Elizabeth Cady Stanton wasn’t a delegate, but her husband was. Witnessing the insult to Mott and the other women made a lasting impression on Cady Stanton. Eight years later she and Mott would convene a small women’s rights meeting in Seneca Falls, New York.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Sarah Pugh supported the developing women’s rights movement, but devoted herself to ending slavery. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">In abolition Pugh was a doer, not a strategist. She chaired meetings, gathered signatures, and organized the annual craft fairs that funded the movement for 25 years.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">She was a witness to history. When Pugh first met Frederick Douglass, he was 24 years old. She met Harriet Jacobs shortly after Lydia Maria Child published Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">In 1855, Pugh and Lucretia Mott acted as bodyguards for <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/courageous-tale-jane-johnson-who-risked-her-freedom-testify-those-who-helped-her-escape-180976302/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jane Johnson</a>. They surrounded Johnson as she risked her freedom to appear in court after her sensational escape from her enslaver.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">After the war Pugh embraced women’s suffrage, though the post-War conflict among suffragists pained her. She tried to stay on good terms with everyone, but privately preferred the daring of the National Woman Suffrage Assoc. to the caution of the American. She signed the National’s 1876 centennial protest Articles of Impeachment.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">She doted on Lucretia Mott in the last years of Mott’s life, helping her attend her final women’s rights conference to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Seneca Falls. But Pugh didn’t envy Mott’s husband and many children.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Instead, Pugh created an intentional household of women. She and Sarah Lewis lived together for decades. From 1856-64, Abby Kimber and two other women joined them to form “a pleasant home” on Green Street. The Pennsylvania AntiSlavery Society executive committee met in their parlor.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Pugh was particularly close to Abby Kimber, another member of the 1840 delegation to London. Here, in the photo. >>> They toured freedmen’s schools together after the war. They are buried in the same plot at Fair Hill Burial Ground. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Sarah Pugh’s diaries, excerpted after her death in an admiring book published by her cousins, are a portrait of a wholly independent person. Each year on her birthday she would reflect on the status of her faith, her intellectual life, and what she had accomplished in the world. At a time when almost all women married, Pugh made an unapologetically autonomous life. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">/End</span></p>
Daily Suffragist
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January 25, 2021