Lucretia Mott’s Heresy This page intentionally left blank Lucretia Mott’s Heresy Abolition and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America Carol Faulkner university of pennsylvania press philadelphia Copyright © 2011 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 A Cataloging-in-Publication Record in available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-0-8122-4321-5 With much love For my husband Andrew Wender Cohen This page intentionally left blank contents Introduction: Heretic and Saint 1 1 Nantucket 8 2 Nine Partners 25 3 Schism 41 4 Immediate Abolition 60 5 Pennsylvania Hall 75 6 Abroad 87 7 Crisis 109 8 The Year 1848 127 9 Conventions 148 10 Fugitives 161 11 Civil War 176 12 Peace 197 Epilogue 213 Notes 219 Index 265 Acknowledgments 289 Gallery appears after page 108 This page intentionally left blank introduction Heretic and Saint On February 11, 1849, Lucretia Mott gave an unusual sermon in her usual place of worship, Cherry Street Meetinghouse in Philadelphia. The pe- tite fifty-six-year-old Quaker minister was one of the most famous women in America. During the previous year alone, she had addressed the first women’s rights conventions at Seneca Falls and Rochester, Seneca Indians on the Cattaraugus reservation, former slaves living in Canada, and the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York City. Yet her au- dience on that winter day was filled, not with Quakers, African Americans, reformers, or politicians, but with white medical students from Thomas Jef- ferson Medical College and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. Many of these students were born in the south. And, although a female medical school would open in Philadelphia the next year, all these students were men.1 Her sermon was unique to its time and place. In 1849, Philadelphia was the fourth largest city in the United States, with a population of 121,376. The diverse city was home to the largest population of free blacks in any northern state. It also contained the oldest and most prestigious anti-slavery society in the country, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, founded by Quakers. With borders touching the slave states of Delaware and Maryland, Pennsylvania was regularly infiltrated by fugitive slaves. Philadelphia’s black abolitionists established a Vigilance Committee to aid these fugitives. Mott was a mem- ber of two anti-slavery organizations, the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society and the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Both of these interracial organizations denounced slavery as a sin and called for its immediate end.