Lucretia Mott's Heresy. Carol Faulkner

of slavery. In other words, the violence of slavery resulted only in more brutality.⁸

      Nat Turner’s revolt further mobilized radical abolitionists in the North. In Philadelphia, women donated money to support the embattled Liberator. They also organized a campaign to petition Congress regarding the wrongs of slavery. Ultimately, Mott and over two thousand other “female citizens of Philadelphia and its vicinity” petitioned Congress to “act to the extent of their power in removing this evil.” In signing this petition, Mott and other women drew on the recent precedent of female petitioning against Cherokee removal, an effort led by evangelical Catharine Beecher. But while Beecher’s petitions proposed to channel women’s moral and religious influence on behalf of Native Americans, Mott’s petition invoked women’s status as citizens, who had a constitutional right to petition their legislators. Philadelphia women acknowledged that politicians may find their petition “intrusive,” but they softened their entrance into the political arena by noting “we approach you unarmed; our only banner is Peace.” Like subsequent anti-slavery petitions, the women who signed focused on the abolition of slavery in the nation’s capital and other areas where Congress had legal jurisdiction.⁹

      Meanwhile, Garrison directed his energies toward forming a national organization dedicated to the immediate abolition of slavery. The founding convention of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) was held at the Adelphi Building in Philadelphia in December 1833. The convention signaled the delegates’ final break from colonization and other gradual schemes of abolition. The interracial body also reflected the new organization’s commitment to racial equality as well as immediatism.¹⁰ Approximately seventy men and women attended from all over the northeast; delegates from Philadelphia included James Mott, Robert Purvis, Hicks’s ally Edwin Atlee, and African American barber and dentist James McCrummell (sometimes spelled McCrummill), among others.

      While the official delegates and signatories to the convention’s Declaration of Sentiments were exclusively men, Mott and at least seven other women attended the convention. Several of these women were Lucretia’s immediate family members: her mother, Anna Folger Coffin; her youngest sister Martha, now married to David Wright, who was visiting from Aurora, New York; and her oldest daughter Anna, who had recently married Edward Hopper, a twenty-one year old lawyer and son of Isaac T. Hopper, a Hicksite Quaker, who, like Lucretia, had referred to Orthodox Quaker leader Jonathan Evans as a “pope.” At the convention, they were joined by three other Quaker women: Hicksite Lydia White, owner of the first free produce store; Hicksite Esther Moore, who had moved with her physician husband from Easton, Maryland, to Philadelphia; and Orthodox Quaker Sidney Ann Lewis, an advocate of free produce, who later opened her own shop.¹¹ All of these women were white, but it is possible some African American women attended. Out-of town abolitionists boarded with local families, including the Motts. One of these delegates invited the Coffin and Mott women. Since other abolitionists boarded with black Philadelphians, they too may have invited their hostesses.

      Lucretia boldly interceded in the debates at the convention. As Edwin Atlee read the Declaration of Sentiments, composed by Garrison and a committee that included Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier and Unitarian minister Samuel J. May, Lucretia offered two suggestions. First she proposed that references to “Divine Revelation” and the Declaration of Independence be transposed, to read “With entire confidence in the over-ruling justice of God, we plant ourselves upon the Declaration of our Independence and the truths of Divine Revelation as upon the EVERLASTING ROCK.” With this statement, abolitionists identified themselves as Americans committed to the egalitarian principles of the Declaration of Independence, but they also claimed the higher authority of Divine law. Lucretia also helped craft a phrase expressing abolitionists’ firm commitment to the ultimate truth of abolition: “We may be personally defeated, but our principles 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,