Lucretia Mott's Heresy. Carol Faulkner

As James reported to his parents, “Many failures have taken place, and no doubt many more will. All confidence is destroyed, and those who have money keep it in their own hands.”⁴¹

      These economic troubles also affected the whaling industry, prompting a visit from Lucretia’s uncle, Mayhew Folger, and his family. In addition to sharing his complete adventures on the Topaz, Folger introduced the Coffins and Motts to “Ohio fever.” With business in Philadelphia stagnant and war with England begun, many looked to Ohio as a place of opportunity. In 1812, Thomas and Anna Coffin traveled to Massillon, Ohio, to consider moving there permanently. Though the Coffins returned to Philadelphia, Folger decided to relocate, living there until his death in 1828. James considered migrating with the Folgers as he searched for a way to provide a “comfortable living” for his family. Instead of heading for Ohio, however, James, pregnant Lucretia, and their daughter Anna, born in August 1812, moved to Mamaroneck in early 1814, where James worked at his Uncle Richard Mott’s mill. After six months, the young family, including their new son Thomas Coffin Mott, born in July 1814, returned to Philadelphia, where James found work in a wholesale plow store. James and Lucretia’s anxiety over their finances was partially relieved by their joy over their growing family.⁴²

      Even when distracted by domestic concerns, Lucretia and James always paid close attention to race relations in Philadelphia. Despite the city’s reputation for anti-slavery, the situation of free blacks was far from equal. In a brief moment of racial cooperation during the War of 1812, white Philadelphians asked African American men for help in fortifying the city against potential British invasion. But whites also feared that the free black population would increase as the city became a destination for fugitive slaves. In January 1815, James wrote to his parents that southern Quakers and slaveholders had begun to bequeath slaves to Philadelphia Quakers and the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in an effort to free them. James was “undecided”—torn between the possibility of determining the “future situation of blacks in the Southern States” and violating Quaker testimony against slaveholding. A careful man, James believed that Quakers needed to consider this moral dilemma before deciding whether it was acceptable to own slaves, even if ownership was only a means to free them. James and Lucretia were also aware of the Northern Liberties mob that burned down a black church later that year, presaging the racial violence that characterized antebellum Philadelphia.⁴³

      Meanwhile, the financial problems of Thomas Coffin and James Mott grew worse. Coffin lent some money to a friend, John James, who defaulted on the loan. As Coffin spiraled into debt, his reputation suffered. Lucretia later recalled that her father’s accounts “were disputed by the Odiornes, because of their inability to pay.” When Thomas died suddenly from typhus in February 1815, he left his family thousands of dollars in debt and in the midst of a lawsuit. As James Mott wrote, “my business is suddenly changed.” In addition to the four members of their nuclear family, Lucretia’s mother Anna Coffin, her older sister Sarah, and younger siblings Thomas and Mary continued to reside with them (her sister Eliza had married Philadelphia merchant Benjamin Yarnall in 1814). In order to support the family, Anna opened a small store as she had on Nantucket, while James continued to search for a meaningful career, working as a bookkeeper for Philadelphian John Large at a salary of $750 per year; he would eventually earn $1,000 a year in the same position. Despite having two young children in the house, Lucretia also contributed to the family’s income, teaching in a Quaker school affiliated with Pine Street Meeting, where students paid $7 per quarter to attend. In April 1817, the school had ten students.⁴⁴

      Though the family rebounded quickly after Thomas Coffin’s death, they soon faced another tragedy. In the spring of 1817, Lucretia and her son Thomas came down with high fevers. Lucretia survived, but their “active, fat, and rosy-cheeked” darling Thomas died at the age of two years and nine months. His last words were “I love thee, mother.” Lucretia, weak from the same illness, was bereft. James wrote platitudes to his parents about the “inscrutable wisdom” of the Almighty and endeavoring “patiently to bear the stroke,” but Lucretia never resigned herself to little Thomas’s death. Her grief prompted a religious awakening that would eventually lead her into the ministry. Rejecting the pessimistic Christianity that saw humans as sinners with little ability to comprehend the divine, Lucretia believed that all individuals had the ability to know and understand God’s plans. Though medicine had not yet progressed to the point that it could have cured her son, she believed that reason and science, rather than superstition, were the answer to the world’s ills. This powerful belief allowed her to return to teaching soon after little Thomas’s death. She only stopped teaching when another daughter, Maria, was born in 1818.⁴⁵

      At twenty-five, Lucretia was a loving wife and mother and a devout member of the Society of Friends. But her “guarded” Quaker education at Nine Partners had also prepared her to be an independent actor in conflicts that would soon divide the nation: the province of religion in a society rapidly disestablishing its churches, the place of slavery in a free country, and the status of women as citizens in a republic that did not grant them full rights. Nine Partners also introduced Lucretia to a broader Quaker community, stretching from Nantucket to New York to Philadelphia. But this close-knit religious group was about to come apart. Following Tommy’s death, Mott sought spiritual and intellectual solace. Her personal search brought her into the heart of the social and religious conflict that severed the Society of Friends in America.

       CHAPTER 3

      Schism

      LUCRETIA MOTT BEGAN HER LONG CAREER as a Quaker minister at Twelfth Street Monthly Meeting in Philadelphia. In 1818, a year after her son Thomas’s death, she rose and prayed publicly for the first time. In her sweet and melodious voice, Lucretia appealed for strength to enable Friends to stand firm against the enticements of the larger world: “As all our efforts to resist temptation and overcome the world prove fruitless, unless aided by Thy Holy Spirit, enable us to approach Thy Throne, and ask of Three the blessing of Thy preservation from all evil, that we may be wholly devoted to Thee and Thy glorious cause.”¹ After her death, Mott’s meeting remembered her adherence to “the simple faith of the society.” They recalled her ability to quote from Scripture and her emphasis on “practical righteousness” and “the sufficiency of divine law.” These circumspect women avoided mention of their own passionate opposition to Mott’s sermons over the course of her ministry.²

      In 1819, during one of her first trips as a visiting Friend, Lucretia traveled with Sarah Zane to Virginia, to attend Quarterly Meeting at Hopewell, twenty-four miles southeast of Richmond. There she met Edward Stabler of Alexandria, a regular clerk of Baltimore Yearly Meeting and friend of the increasingly divisive minister Elias Hicks. At Baltimore Yearly Meeting, Stabler had a reputation for convening a close circle of six allies to stay up all night discussing strategy, an effective way to influence the direction of debate in the larger body. Mott had a similar experience, noting that “He is one of the very interesting men. We lodged at the same house, and sat up very late to hear him talk.” Mott also observed the surrounding countryside, writing “the sight of the poor slaves was indeed affecting.” The Virginians she met reassured her of the contentment of the slaves, citing kind treatment from their masters, but Lucretia’s Quaker education taught her to question such pleasantries.³

      In 1821, at age twenty-eight, Mott became an approved minister in the Society of Friends. Though any Quaker could speak in meeting if moved by the spirit, monthly meetings recorded the names of especially gifted preachers in their minutes. By issuing a minute, they also authorized these ministers to preach at distant meetings. The Society of Friends recognized female ministers regardless of age, marital status, or number of children, valuing their spiritual talents over their familial obligations. And most female Quakers typically found their calling in their twenties. For example, Elizabeth Coggeshall, the traveling minister who visited the Coffins on Nantucket, had been married three years when she was recognized as a minister at age twenty-six.⁴

      A typical female preacher in many ways, Lucretia soon distinguished herself from her peers. By 1825, Quakers in Philadelphia knew her for her “peculiar testimony” on “female elevation” and “woman’s responsibility as a rational and immortal being.” One man remembered that