The account I have given above of the valuable services rendered in
the Philadelphia Convention by Lucretia Mott, Esther Moore, and Lydia
White, doubtless reminded my readers of many other excellent women,
whose names stand high among the early antislavery reformers. The
memories of them are most precious to me. If I live to write out half
of my Recollections, and you do not weary of them, I shall make most
grateful mention of our female fellow-laborers in general, of several
of them in particular, though I cannot do ample justice to any.
There is one of whom I must speak now, because I have already passed
the time, at which her inestimable services commenced. In July, 1833,
when the number, the variety, and the malignity of our opponents had
become manifest, we were not much more delighted than surprised by the
publication of a thoroughgoing antislavery volume, from the pen of
Mrs. Lydia Maria Child. She was at that time, perhaps, the most popular
as well as useful of our female writers. None certainly, excepting
Miss Sedgwick, rivalled her. The _North American Review_, then, if
not now, the highest authority on matters of literary criticism,
said at the time: “We are not sure that any woman in our country
would outrank Mrs. Child. This lady has long been before the public
as an author with much success. And she well deserves it, for in all
her works we think that nothing can be found which does not commend
itself by its tone of healthy morality and good sense. Few female
writers, if any, have done more or better things for our literature,
in its lighter or graver departments.” That such an author--ay, such
an _authority_--should espouse our cause just at that crisis, I do
assure you, was a matter of no small joy, yes, exultation. She was
extensively known in the Southern as well as the Northern States, and
her books commanded a ready sale there not less than here. We had seen
her often at our meetings. We knew that she sympathized with her brave
husband in his abhorrence of our American system of slavery; but we
did not know that she had so carefully studied and thoroughly mastered
the subject. Nor did we suspect that she possessed the power, if she
had the courage, to strike so heavy a blow. Why, the very title-page
was pregnant with the gist of the whole matters under dispute between
us,--“Immediate Abolitionists,” and the slaveholders on the one hand,
and the Colonizationists on the other,--“_An Appeal in Favor of that
Class of Americans_ CALLED _Africans_.” The volume, still prominent
in the literature of our conflict, is replete with facts showing, not
only the horrible cruelties that had been perpetrated by individual
slaveholders or their overseers, but the essential barbarity of the
_system of slavery_, its dehumanizing influences upon those who
enforced it scarcely less than upon those who were crushed under it.
Her book did us an especially valuable service in showing, to those who
had paid little attention to the subject, that the Africans are not by
_nature_ inferior to other--even the _white_--races of men; but that
“Ethiopia held a conspicuous place among the nations of ancient times.
Her princes were wealthy and powerful, and her people distinguished
for integrity and wisdom. Even the proud Grecians evinced respect
for Ethiopia, almost amounting to reverence, and derived thence the
sublimest portions of their mythology. And the popular belief, that all
the gods made an annual visit to feast with the excellent Ethiopians,
shows the high estimation in which they were then held, for we are not
told that such an honor was bestowed on any other nation.” Mrs. Child’s
exposure of the fallacy of the Colonization scheme, as well as the
falsity of the pretensions put forth by its advocates, amply sustained
all Mr. Garrison’s accusations. And her _exposé_ of the principles of
the “Immediate Abolitionists” was clear, and her defence of them was
impregnable.
This “Appeal” reached thousands who had given no heed to us before, and
made many converts to the doctrines of Mr. Garrison.
Of course, what pleased and helped us so much gave proportionate
offence to slaveholders, Colonizationists, and their Northern abettors.
Mrs. Child was denounced. Her effeminate admirers, both male and
female, said there were “some very indelicate things in her book,”
though there was nothing narrated in it that had not been allowed, if
not perpetrated, by “the refined, hospitable, chivalric gentlemen and
ladies” on their Southern plantations. The politicians and statesmen
scouted the woman who “presumed to criticise so freely the constitution
and government of her country. Women had better let politics alone.”
And certain ministers gravely foreboded “evil and ruin to our country,
if the women generally should follow Mrs. Child’s bad example, and
neglect their domestic duties to attend to the affairs of state.”
Mrs. Child’s popularity was reversed. Her writings on other subjects
were no longer sought after with the avidity that was shown for them
before the publication of her “Appeal.” Most of them were sent back to
their publishers from the Southern bookstores, with the notice that
the demand for her books had ceased. The sale of them at the North was
also greatly diminished. It was said at the time that her income from
the productions of her pen was lessened six or eight hundred dollars
a year. But this did not daunt her. On the contrary, it roused her to
greater exertion, as it revealed to her more fully the moral corruption
which slavery had diffused throughout our country, and summoned her
patriotism as well as her benevolence to more determined conflict with
our nation’s deadliest enemy. Indeed, she consecrated herself to the
cause of the enslaved. Many of her publications since then have related
to the great subject, viz.: The Oasis, Antislavery Catechism, Authentic
Anecdotes, Evils and Cure of Slavery, Other Tracts, Life of Isaac T.
Hopper, and, more than all, her letters to Governor Wise, of Virginia,
and to Mrs. Mason, respecting John Brown. Those letters had an immense
circulation throughout the free States, and were blazoned by all
manner of anathemas in the Southern papers. Her letter to Mrs. Mason
especially was copied by hundreds of thousands, and was doubtless one
of the efficient agencies that prepared the mind of the North for the
final great crisis.
For several years, assisted by her husband, Mrs. Child edited the
_Antislavery Standard_, elevated its literary character, extended its
circulation, and increased its efficiency.
But, in a more private way, this admirable woman rendered the early
Abolitionists most important services. She, together with Mrs. Maria
W. Chapman and Eliza Lee Follen, and others, of whom I shall write
hereafter, were presiding geniuses in all our councils and more public
meetings, often proposing the wisest measures, and suggesting to
those who were “allowed to speak in the assembly” the most weighty
thoughts, pertinent facts, apt illustrations, which they could not
be persuaded to utter aloud. Repeatedly in those early days, before
Angelina and Sarah Grimké had taught others besides Quaker women
“to _speak_ in meeting,” if they had anything to say that was worth
hearing,--repeatedly did I spring to the platform, crying, “Hear me as
the mouthpiece of Mrs. Child, or Mrs. Chapman, or Mrs. Follen,” and
convulsed the audience with a stroke of wit, or electrified them with
a flash of eloquence, caught from the lips of one or the other of our
antislavery prophetesses.
N. B.--That Mrs. Child, when she became an Abolitionist, did not become
a woman “of one idea” is evinced, not only by her two volumes of
enchanting “Letters from New York,” “Memoirs of Madame de Staël” and
“Madame Roland,” “Biographies of Good Wives,” and several exquisite
books for children, but still more by her three octavo volumes,
entitled “Progress of Religious Ideas,” which must have been the result
of a vast amount of reading and profound thought on all the subjects
of theology and religion. Her later work, “Looking towards Sunset,” is
full of beautiful ideas about that future life, for which her untiring
devotion to all the humanities in this life must have so fully prepared
her.