Abolitionist Women Research Articles

Beyond the Boundaries

'Shall I Fetter Her Will?': Literary Americans Confront Feminine Submission begins with an interpretation of antebellum gender relations that divides world into public and private, masculine and feminine, assertive and passive. Men, according this system of social markers and meanings, had all world's power. They were the movers, doers, actors. In performing a quintessential femininity, women were men's opposite. Denied authority and autonomy, they were submissive responders. If this interpretation sounds familiar, it should. Laura McCall has culled illustrative quotations from Barbara Welter's landmark of True Womanhood: 1820-1860. Although Julie Roy Jeffrey does not cite Welter directly, Permeable Boundaries: Abolitionist Women and Separate Spheres takes her conclusions as a point of departure (and, as with McCall, as a point of opposition). Published in American Quarterly in Summer of 1966, Welter's article on nineteenth-century America's ideology of womanhood has had an enormous impact. In closely affiliated fields of American women's history and American women's literature, many scholars, at least until recently, have agreed that antebellum women were held hostage four behavioral tenets that Welter posited-piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity.1 In decades following its publication, of True seemed be everywhere. subject of a special session at American Studies Association meeting in 1977, article was also reprinted in a host of collections. The Cult of True appeared in Ronald Hogeland's widely read Women and Womanhood in America, published in 1973. Welter herself reprinted it in Dimity Convictions: American Woman in Nineteenth Century, collection of her essays issued a decade after article appeared in American Quarterly. Mary Beth Norton included it in Major Problems in American Women's History, a collection of essays and documents that has been used in classrooms across nation since its publication in 1989. More recently, John R. M. Wilson made The Cult of True central Forging American Character, interdisciplinary collection he edited for Prentice-Hall in 1991. Barbara Welter's of True Womanhood, 1820-1860 has also been widely cited in historical and literary scholarship on nineteenth-century women, white and black. During 1970s, Welter's paradigm served as a point of departure for Kathryn Kish Sklar and Nancy Cott, both of whom influenced much of subsequent scholarship in American women's history. Published in 1974, Sklar's pathbreaking Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity highlighted compromise that Beecher told white women strike with their male counterparts: if they agreed restrict their participation in larger society, they could have control of domestic sphere. Welter's womanhood demonstrated widespread popularity of this bargain by 1840s, Sklar told readers. Nancy Cott's Bonds of Womanhood: Woman's Sphere in New England, 17801835 opened with an acknowledgment Welter. When she began pursue her research on New England women, Cott told readers that she had wanted understand how Welter's womanhood related women's actual circumstances, experiences, and consciousness. She had turned women's letters, diaries, and journals and looked decades before 1830 to find out what had happened that might clarify reception of or need for a `cult.' Fifteen years after publication of Bonds of Womanhood in 1977, Jo Anne Preston embarked on a similar project in an article that she published in New England Quarterly. Preston had wanted understand impact of Welter's womanhood on New England women's entry into profession of teaching.2 Literary critics, most notably those who focused on antebellum narratives of black women, have begun with Welter's of True Womanhood. …

The Woman's National Loyal League: Feminist Abolitionists and the Civil War

In the summer of 1862, Ellen Wright penned a letter to her close friend Lucy McKim. Both of these young women were the daughters of well- known abolitionists and both would later marry sons of William Lloyd Garrison. Writing from her home in upstate New York, Ellen Wright ex- pressed her disappointment at being unable to play an active role in what she regarded as the war to liberate the slaves. Think how our boys are all going! she wrote. Is it not stifling, irksome work, to remain quietly at home.1 Her letter demonstrated the exuberance and impatience ofyouth, but she also touched upon something far-reaching. Manywomen felt a sense offrustration during the war. Fully aware ofthe importance ofthe conflict about antislavery and the future ofdemocratic government, many longed to take a active role in the war than the traditional female tasks of nursing, sewing, and bandage rolling. When the Emancipation Proclamation became law January 1, 1863, some abolitionist women rejoiced, but most were skeptical ofthe measure. Amy Post, a Rochester activist, summarized the views of many when she wrote that the proclamation was more than I feared but much less than I hoped.Abolitionists also complained about the president's motives. The ugly fact cannot be concealed from history, wrote the novelist and pam-

I Speak for my Slave Sister: The Life of Abby Kelley Foster (review)

50QUAKER HISTORY them objects of silver. Joseph made thousands of such. To the modem eye one of the most engaging is a gorget, or small breastplate, of c. 1760, showing William Penn extending to an Indian a pipe of peace. The pipe has wings—presumably borrowed from the bird of peace. At their father's death in 1784 Joseph, Jr. and his brother Nathaniel continued the business, and it is they who created the neoclassical pieces which we associate with the Richardson name. A few years later Nathaniel left the trade, and Joseph, Jr. carried on alone. He was highly regarded by Washington, who appointed him assayer of the United States Mint in Philadelphia, where he spent most of his time for the last diirty years of his life. When he died in 1831 the Richardson dynasty, in respect to silver craft, came to an end. In addition to its other attractions Joseph Richardson is a scholarly work, well documented, and enriched with a variety of appendixes. It is the perfect gift for the connoisseur, and it will also be welcomed joyfully by many who are not specialists in the field, but who delight in the beauty of 18th century craftsmanship. Pendle HillEleanore Price Mather J Speak for my Slave Sister: The Life of Abby Kelley Foster. By Margaret Hope Bacon. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1974. 221 pages. $9.50. Of all the women who were galvanized into social action, and later into a concern for their own rights, by the issue of slavery Abby Kelley was perhaps the most prototypical radical. Outwardly unconcerned about public opinion, she persisted in doing "unwomanly" things and in challenging church, state and other abolitionists on behalf of her own uncompromising view of what abolitionism ought to be. Young, beautiful and charismatic at the outset, she inspired numbers of other women to join bodi causes, and attracted die bitterest of anti-abolition and anti-feminist attacks. Despite her stern exterior she was sensitive—in private—to criticism. Yet she went doggedly ahead, and by some stroke of luck met a man who shared her views and was capable of the ultimate radicalism: shared child care and domestic responsibilities as the other side of die coin of shared public life. Though neither the author nor the publisher is explicit about die audience for which this book is intended, it is part of a series, "Women of America," which aims to present the careers and achievements of a considerable variety of American women and is written in die style which publishers are wont to insist is necessary for high school students. The book is based on careful research and intimate acquaintance with the Foster-Kelley collection at the American Antiquarian Society. The care with which the work is done and flashes of insight throughout the book make one wish that die author had not held herself to the presumption that young people can take biography only in simple declarative sentences . This most interesting of abolitionist women deserves a full scale critical biography and diere is some evidence here that Mrs. Bacon could write it. Duke UniversityAnne Firor Scott ...