Lessons About Reform from •Œa Very Dangerous Womanâ•Š
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New England Journal of Public Policy Volume 20 | Issue 2 Article 8 3-21-2005 Lessons about Reform from “A Very Dangerous Woman” Sherry H. Penney University of Massachusetts Boston, [email protected] James Livingston Massachusetts nI stitute of Technology Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.umb.edu/nejpp Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Penney, Sherry H. and Livingston, James (2005) "Lessons about Reform from “A Very Dangerous Woman”," New England Journal of Public Policy: Vol. 20: Iss. 2, Article 8. Available at: http://scholarworks.umb.edu/nejpp/vol20/iss2/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. It has been accepted for inclusion in New England Journal of Public Policy by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Lessons about Reform from “A Very Dangerous Woman” Sherry H. Penney and James D. Livingston We discuss reform in antebellum America through the life of Martha Coffin Wright, an activist in the abolition and early women’s rights movements. Consideration of her motivations for reform; the obstacles faced by these movements; their methods, successes, and failures, may offer guidelines for reformers of today. ublic policy evolves in response to the balance between two competeing P forces: reformers agitating for change and defenders of the status quo. This competition becomes particularly fierce when the proposed changes threaten not only the financial and political powers of entrenched interests but also the inertia of “tradition,” often understood and expressed in terms of basic religious beliefs. The problems and progress of two major reform movements of nineteenth-century America, abolition and women’s rights, may offer some insights relevant to modern reform movements. We examine abolition and women’s rights through the life of an active participant in both, Martha Coffin Wright (1806–75), whose story has only recently been told.1 Because the reform movements Martha supported represented a direct assault on the status quo of society, her conservative neighbors in Auburn, New York, labeled her “a very dangerous woman.” Martha Wright and Abolition Perhaps the first basic question is what makes a reformer. Agitating for social change is not easy, and strong motivation is required to enable a reformer to continue her efforts over the many years usually required to effect major change. Martha Coffin’s hatred of the institution of slavery was instilled in her both by her Quaker family and by her Quaker schools. Sherry Penney is the Sherry H. Penney Professor of Leadership, College of Management, University of Massachusetts Boston. James Livingston is Senior Lecturer, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 105 New England Journal of Public Policy Although Martha was born in Boston, her siblings, parents, and generations of her ancestors were all born on Nantucket, where the dominant religion was that of the Society of Friends. The Quaker religion places a strong emphasis on the individual and holds that each person, white or black, male or female, has an Inner Light that shows the way of God. For most Quakers, this led to an early recognition that one human should not be the possession of another, and to an early embrace of antislavery. One of the teachers at the Pennsylvania Quaker boarding school Martha attended as a teen, Enoch Lewis, published one of the first abolitionist newsletters in the United States, the African Observer. Like most women of her time, Martha’s energies in her early adult years were focused primarily on marriage and the raising of children. Her first husband died after the birth of her first child and after only a year and a half of marriage. In 1829, she married again, and had six more children with her second husband, David Wright. The early years of her marriage were difficult, caring for her husband and growing family in a small house in the tiny village of Aurora, New York, on the very limited income of an aspiring lawyer. Martha had little time or energy for reform. Although she had no direct exposure to the evils of slavery in the South, her adult experi- ences began to build on her antislavery beliefs formed in her childhood. In Aurora, she saw the scars a neighbor’s cook retained on her back from the many whippings she had endured when she was a slave. (Slavery in New York was not formally abolished until 1827.) Her older sister Lucretia Mott, a Quaker preacher in Philadelphia, began to preach against slavery, and in 1833, Martha visited Lucretia and met a group of Lucretia’s abolitionist friends, many of whom were freed blacks. It was on this 1833 visit to Lucretia’s home in Philadelphia that Martha also met William Lloyd Garrison, who became one of the best-known leaders of the abolitionist movement. Prior to the 1830s, much of the anti- slavery activity in the United States was centered in the American Coloniza- tion Society, which was formed in 1816 with the goal of financing the purchase of slaves from their owners and the emigration of freed blacks to a colony in West Africa that later became the colony of Liberia. But Garrison and others became convinced that the only solution to the problem of slavery was abolition — the immediate emancipation of all slaves. He initiated publication of the Liberator, an uncompromising weekly journal devoted to promoting abolition. In Boston in 1832, Garrison formed the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and in 1833 chose Quaker Philadelphia as the site for the formation of a national society. The founding meeting of his American Anti-Slavery Society coincided with Martha’s visit to Lucretia, and the two sisters were among the very few women who attended this first meeting. Here Martha was exposed to debates over the relative merits of colonization and abolition, and she was particularly impressed with the fact that most of the freed blacks she met in Philadelphia were firmly against 106 Lessons about Reform from “A Very Dangerous Woman” colonization. They had no interest in being transported to Africa. It was then and there that Martha became firmly committed to the abolitionist cause. Her basic antislavery beliefs, developed in childhood, were strongly reinforced by her adult experiences, in particular her exposure to the argu- ments of leaders in the early abolition movement, including William Lloyd Garrison and her own sister, Lucretia Mott. Martha Wright, ca. 1840. Courtesy of the Garrison Family Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College. Once committed, what could Martha, at first largely confined to her home by family responsibilities, contribute to the cause? Martha and David began subscribing to the Liberator, and Martha wrote articles in support of abolition for the Liberator and local newspapers. She also knitted and sewed clothing to be sold at fundraising antislavery fairs, the money from which supported publication of antislavery pamphlets. While some aboli- tionists attempted to work through political parties, Garrison and the antislavery societies focused on widespread distribution of their arguments about the evils of slavery, hoping to move public opinion through moral suasion. As David’s law business grew, the Wright family moved from Aurora to a larger home in Auburn, the nearby county seat. Although 107 New England Journal of Public Policy Martha’s responsibilities to David and her many children limited her oppor- tunities for travel, there was another significant contribution she could make to the abolitionist cause without leaving home. She allowed her Auburn home to become a station on the Underground Railroad. One of her 1843 letters to Lucretia described the overnight stay of a fugitive slave from Maryland, who was provided dinner and breakfast, a kitchen settee to sleep on, and warm clothes and money for his further travel. Unlike Martha’s other activities for the cause, assisting fugitive slaves carried risk because it was illegal. Few of Martha’s Auburn neighbors were aware of her Underground Railroad activities, but she made no attempt to hide other black household guests. She had become acquainted with Frederick Douglass, a freed slave who was well educated and became a well-known lecturer on abolition and related issues. When Douglass lectured in Auburn in the 1840s and 1850s, he, sometimes accompanied by other blacks, often dined and stayed over- night at the Wright’s home. Since his race made Douglass unwelcome at the hotels and most homes in conservative Auburn, such visits attracted consid- erable attention. One neighbor asked with considerable curiosity whether the visiting blacks had eaten at the table with them. Another approached Martha at a neighborhood party and wished to be informed whether the blacks had been given the best bedroom. Martha told him “certainly,” and added, “in conversing with a man of superior intellect one forgot whether he was black or white.” Martha’s personal behavior in opening her home to Douglass and other blacks was consistent with the views she promoted in the antislavery pamphlets she handed to visitors to her home, and was a means of swaying local opinion through example. Her open challenge to current social standards with regard to blacks was one of the reasons that one of Martha’s neighbors, at a local gathering, labeled Martha “a very dangerous woman.” Martha’s neighbors also considered her an “infidel” because she seldom attended church and was openly critical of organized religion. Most leaders of orthodox Christian churches at the time were relatively silent on the controversial subject of slavery, and some that defended slavery, especially in the South, often used quotations from the Bible to justify their position.