never.”12
Her participation in the convention violated the period’s gender and racial norms. Outside of Quaker meetings, the sight of a woman speaking publicly to a “promiscuous” audience of men and women was a rare event. Delegates to the convention remembered Lucretia’s comments long after. Robert Purvis recalled that Lucretia’s “beautiful face was all aglow.” After Lucretia used the word “transpose,” James Miller McKim, a young delegate from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, twisted around in his seat to catch a glimpse of the woman who knew the meaning of the term. While Lucretia’s participation surprised the delegates, the very existence of an interracial anti-slavery convention scandalized Philadelphians. The young anti-slavery movement had already inspired violent opposition, such as the attacks on Prudence Crandall’s school for African Americans in Canterbury, Connecticut. As a result, the convention took the precaution of posting a guard outside the building on Fifth Street. Still, some local philanthropists, fearing retribution, refused to participate. Their refusal prompted another short speech by Mott, who argued “right principles are stronger than great names. If our principles are right, why should we be cowards?”13
Under Mott’s influence, the American Anti-Slavery Society’s declaration set out the basic assumptions of the emerging abolitionist movement. The declaration compared abolitionists to the patriots of the American Revolution, but noted their rejection of “all carnal weapons for deliverance from bondage; relying solely upon those which are spiritual.” As a result, their method of resisting slavery was to contrast “moral purity to moral corruption” and to “overthrow prejudice by the power of love.” In addition, members of the American Anti-Slavery Society agreed that “no compensation should be given to the planters emancipating their slaves—because it would be a surrender of the great fundamental principle, that man cannot hold property in man.” Finally, the declaration included a statement of support for free produce: “We shall encourage the labor of freemen rather than that of slaves, by giving a preference to their productions.” The declaration reflected the same “purity of motive” that had captured Lucretia’s attention in Heyrick’s pamphlet.14
Four days later, Mott and the other female spectators helped to found the interracial Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS), which would outlive every other women’s anti-slavery group in the United States. Mott remembered that “at that time I had no idea of the meaning of preambles, and resolutions, and votings.” But her ignorance, exaggerated to emphasize the newness of their venture, had as much to do with religion as it did sex. Mott was clerk of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Women, with over a decade of experience in the internal politics of the Society of Friends. But Quakers determined doctrine by consensus rather than votes. Outside of the Society of Friends, her experience was limited to one “colored” convention (probably one of the Annual Conventions of Colored Americans, held in Philadelphia from 1830–1832) and the founding meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The women asked James McCrummell, a member of Philadelphia’s black elite and a signer of the American Anti-Slavery Society’s Declaration, to chair the meeting, the only time in the organization’s history that such a measure was taken. Their choice of McCrummell also explicitly linked the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society to the American Anti-Slavery Society, further attesting to their commitment to racial equality.15
The meeting appointed a committee composed of white and black women, including Mott, Margaretta Forten (daughter of James Forten), Sarah McCrummell (James McCrummell’s wife), Esther Moore, and Lydia White, to write the organization’s constitution. Submitted on December 14, the constitution stated that “slavery, and prejudice against colour, are contrary to the laws of God, and to the principles of our far-famed Declaration of Independence.” Article 1 noted the society’s intentions to distribute accurate information about slavery, “dispel prejudice against color,” and improve the condition of free African Americans. Article 10, added to the constitution in January 1834, demonstrated the women’s years of commitment to free produce, recommending “that the Members of this society should, at all times and on all occasions, give the preference to free produce over that of slaves believing that the refusal to purchase and use the products of slave labour is one of the most efficient means of abolishing slavery.”16 Their language echoed Heyrick’s, showing the continuing influence of her emphasis on the potential of individual moral power to end slavery.
Like other voluntary societies, the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society had a president, corresponding secretary, treasurer and other officers to run the organization. Hicksite Esther Moore was named the organization’s first president. Lucretia was the first corresponding secretary, and, after she was succeeded by the gifted Mary Grew, she served a short stint as president before becoming a regular member of the Board of Managers. Abba Alcott, mother of the young Louisa May Alcott, whose husband Bronson was teaching at the nondenominational Germantown Academy, was on the original Board of Managers. While white women dominated the official positions, African American women usually held at least one office. Margaretta Forten was the society’s first recording secretary.17
One historian astutely describes the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society as “cliquish.” Though its membership eventually exceeded two hundred women, a core group ran the society and determined its direction. Kinship, as well as friendship, bound these members together. Charlotte Forten, wife of James, along with her daughters, Margaretta Forten, Sarah Forten, and Harriet Purvis, were all members. Grace Bustill Douglass, an Orthodox Quaker and wife of the successful black barber Robert Douglass, joined with her daughter Sarah, a schoolteacher. By 1836, Mott’s two oldest daughters, Anna and Maria, were active in the organization. Women in the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society also shared similar economic status. Both white and black members came from the middle and even elite classes of Philadelphia society. Some of the white and black women worked as school teachers, but other members did not need to rely on paid employment. African American members were especially unusual in this regard, as most free black women in Philadelphia were among the poorest residents of the city, working primarily as domestic servants, laundresses, or street vendors.18
The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society represented a breakthrough for women’s activism. Though female anti-slavery societies proliferated in the coming years, the society was one of only a handful in existence in 1833. The mingling of black and white women stoked the fear of social equality and even “amalgamation,” that is, miscegenation. And women’s entrance into the often violent debate over slavery soon provoked a crisis over women’s proper place in the public arena.
While the city of Philadelphia was home to a large and vibrant community of free blacks, some of whom were prosperous by any standards (James Forten and Robert Purvis both had fortunes of $100,000), the era of Jacksonian democracy saw an assault on their status. Black Philadelphians endured routine violence, including race riots in 1834, 1835, and 1837. Following the August 1834 riot, which killed one, injured numerous others, and destroyed forty-four black-owned churches and buildings, Lucretia and James visited a damaged neighborhood and estimated the property losses at $5,000–6,000. The destruction prompted their friends Robert and Harriet Purvis to buy a country home in Bristol Township. Then, when Pennsylvania revised its constitution to expand voting rights for white men in 1838, the state simultaneously disenfranchised African American men. Robert Purvis and other free blacks argued that the new constitution “laid our rights a sacrifice on the altar of slavery,” in order to win favor from southern states. This loss of their citizenship further endangered the uneasy freedom of the state’s African American population, now lacking the political power to resist further attacks on their civil rights. Reminding readers of the fugitive slave clause in the U.S. Constitution, Purvis asked, “Need we inform you that every colored man in Pennsylvania, is exposed to be arrested as a fugitive from slavery?”19
In this intense period, Lucretia and the members of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society met monthly, undertaking three main tasks. First, in order to disseminate information about slavery, they donated money to support the American Anti-Slavery Society and subscribed to newspapers like the Liberator and the Herald
