Antislavery and Free Produce

The organization of the New England Anti-Slavery Society and especially the establishment of the American Anti-Slavery Society the following year signaled an important shift in the American abolitionist movement, one that had a profound effect on the free-produce movement in the 1830s. The AASS organized in December 1833 when an interracial group of abolitionists from nine states gathered in Philadelphia for the purpose of establishing a national organization. Among the delegates to the founding convention were several prominent black abolitionists, including Robert Purvis (founder of the Colored Free Produce Society) and James McCrummell. The official delegates and signatories were men, but there were at least eight women present, including Hicksite Quakers Lucretia Mott, Lydia White, and Esther Moore, and Orthodox Quaker Sidney Ann Lewis, sister-in-law of Enoch Lewis. Garrison and a committee of other delegates wrote the AASS’s Declaration of Sentiments. Mott, however, suggested important revisions to the final document, which emphasized the importance of moral suasion, rejected compensated emancipation, and urged support for free produce.⁷ The Declaration of Sentiments also reflected, in its support of free labor, the significant presence of Quaker delegates and an attempt to integrate free produce with abolitionism. Adoption of the Declaration of Sentiments affirmed supporters’ break with earlier forms of antislavery and their commitment to the immediate abolition of slavery. This new form of immediatism originated in the anticolonization movement and was further refined by the arguments of Heyrick. While Heyrick defined immediatism as direct economic action, Garrison defined immediatism in terms of moral suasion. In the pages of the Liberator, which he started publishing in 1831, Garrison denounced slavery as a sin and all slaveholders as sinners, condemned the ACS, and demanded the immediate abolition of slavery. Reborn as an immediatist, Garrison attacked racial prejudice and fought for racial equality. By the time delegates met in 1832 to form the NEASS, Garrison had earned a reputation for his unequivocal attacks on colonization, his advocacy of immediatism, and his willingness to work with black abolitionists.⁸

Four days after delegates organized the AASS, the women who were present at that meeting gathered to organize the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Lucretia Mott asked James McCrummell to assist. McCrummell, who had signed the Declaration of Sentiments, was a member of Philadelphia’s black elite and the husband of Sarah McCrummell, who was appointed to the committee charged with drafting the constitution for the PFASS. The committee submitted a draft of the constitution on December 14. In January, the group revised the constitution, adding an additional article pledging to give preference to free-labor goods “at all times and on all occasions.” The membership of the PFASS eventually exceeded two hundred; however, a core group ran the society and determined its direction.⁹ Like British female antislavery societies, the PFASS gave structure to women’s activism, sponsoring public addresses by abolitionists, purchasing and distributing antislavery literature, raising funds, and gathering signatures for petitions to Congress.¹⁰ The women of the PFASS pledged to do all they could to eliminate prejudice and to promote racial uplift, a position that reflected the integrated membership of the organization. PFASS members worked together on a number of projects to aid the black community, including the improvement of education for blacks in Philadelphia.¹¹ Free produce also figured prominently in women’s activities. The PFASS maintained an active correspondence with other antislavery societies about free-labor goods and served as an important source of information about the free produce movement.¹²

The PFASS, the Logan Female Anti-Slavery Society, and the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society were among the more than 140 female antislavery societies established in the 1830s. Some of these societies, such as the Providence (Rhode Island) Female Anti-Slavery Society outlined their commitment to free produce in their organizing documents whereas others, such as the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society (1832) and the Ladies’ New-York City Anti-Slavery Society (1835), did not.¹³ Female antislavery societies, particularly those that gave explicit support to free produce, encouraged women who boycotted slave-labor goods. While free produce was an extension of women’s domestic role, boycotting slave-labor goods could lead to awkward social encounters, as Massachusetts abolitionist Deborah Weston discovered in 1836. Weston complained that free-produce principles had prevented her from eating “almost everything good” while visiting in New Bedford. Still, she consoled herself with the hope that she had embarrassed her hostess into switching to free-labor goods. In another incident, the confrontation was much more painful. Mary Ann, a young woman who visited Weston’s sister Ann in Groton, was humiliated when she refused slave-labor goods while visiting at “Dr. Cutter’s.” As Anne Weston explained, “on declining slave labour, some how or other the mine exploded.” Too upset to describe the incident in detail, Mary Ann pleaded with Anne not to press for details: “ ‘for if I talk I shall get to crying.’ ” Anne comforted the young woman and offered her free-labor cake and assured her “the storm would blow over.”¹⁴ Meeting regularly with those who shared their free-produce principles comforted and strengthened women like Deborah, Anne, and Mary Ann.

In mid-1836, this idea of shared values and community led antislavery women in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York to consider a national association of women’s antislavery societies, similar to the American Anti-Slavery Society. The Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society proposed establishing an executive committee of female abolitionists to better coordinate the work of female antislavery activists throughout the United States.¹⁵ New York women also supported the idea of an executive committee, preferring an organization that united women, rather than an integrated association to unite women and men. Such a female association, they believed, would better coordinate the arduous work of gathering signatures on petitions without violating accepted gender norms. The women of the PFASS, however, preferred to seek recognition of female delegates to the national and state meetings of the male associations. In a compromise measure, in January 1837, the Boston women called for a general meeting of all female abolitionists, rather than form an executive committee, believing “the united wisdoms of all the societies” might better serve the development of a plan of cooperation among women’s antislavery societies.¹⁶ American abolitionist women held three annual national meetings in New York (1837) and Philadelphia (1838 and 1839). Although many of the women involved in these associations had corresponded for years, these national meetings provided them an opportunity to meet face to face.

At each of the three conventions, the female delegates endorsed free produce. In 1837, delegates approved Lucretia Mott’s free-produce resolution. Purchasing slave-labor products continued southern slavery, Mott noted; therefore, it was the duty of abolitionists to avoid “this unrighteous participation” in the consumption of slave produce.¹⁷ Again, in 1838 and 1839, delegates passed free-produce resolutions. In 1838, Thankful Southwick, a member of the BFASS, claimed it was the duty of female abolitionists “to make the most vigorous efforts to procure for the use of their families the products of free labor.” Southwick’s resolution emphasized women’s leadership in advancing the cause of free produce. Abby Kelley of the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Lynn, Massachusetts, introduced a resolution that noted the support northern “social and commercial intercourse” gave to “slaveholding communities.”¹⁸ In 1839, delegates endorsed a resolution introduced by BFASS founder Martha Ball who urged women to refuse “participation in the sin” and to maintain “a pure example.” During the subsequent discussion, radical members of the convention, including Lucretia Mott, encouraged women to “regard slave labor produce as the fruits of the labor of our own children, brothers, and sisters, and from such a view decide on the propriety of using it.” In doing so, Mott and others promoted free produce as an act of radical identification with the slave, embracing identification with African Americans even as many abolitionists retreated from racial equality in the face of violent protests by antiabolitionist mobs.¹⁹

Of the resolutions passed by the women at these conventions, the most controversial revolved around issues of gender and race. At the first convention, in May 1837, Angelina Grimké of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society challenged women to move beyond traditional religious and cultural ideas about gender. Grimké urged women to recognize that “certain rights and duties are common to all moral beings.” She described women’s reform work as a “duty” that was within the “province” of woman’s sphere. Woman, Grimké argued, must “do all that she can by her voice, and her pen, and her purse, and the influence of her example” to abolish slavery. After much discussion, the resolution was adopted; however, twelve women, most of them from New York, dissented and requested their names be listed in the proceedings as doing so. Abolitionist and author Lydia Maria Child proposed a resolution rebuking evangelical associations that accepted contributions from slaveholders. Three of the twelve women who had refused to approve Grimké’s resolution also dissented from Child’s resolution.²⁰

Angelina and Sarah Grimké were early advocates of free produce as well women’s equality. Natives of South Carolina, the sisters had migrated north to escape the influence of slavery. The Grimkés joined the Society of Friends and the PFASS. Both women were outspoken supporters of free produce, maintaining their personal boycott until the Civil War.²¹ When Angelina wed abolitionist Theodore Weld in 1838, the couple transformed the event into a testimonial to their antislavery views. In addition to an interracial guest list, the couple hired a black confectioner to make a wedding cake of free-labor sugar.²² In 1837, the Grimkés, at the invitation of the American Anti-Slavery Society, traveled the abolitionist lecture circuit. Their popularity soon drew mixed-gender audiences. In June 1837, the General Association of Massachusetts Congregational Churches met to discuss the sisters’ flagrant violation of gender norms. Three years earlier, in 1834, Congregationalist ministers in Boston had voted by a large majority to refuse to read abolitionist meeting notices from the pulpit. In 1836, the ministers passed a resolution against “itinerant agents” speaking in churches without the consent of the pastors and the ecclesiastical bodies. The sisters’ antislavery lectures to mixed-gender audiences provided another opportunity for the Congregationalists to issue a harsh rebuke against antislavery lecturers, particularly women. Though the pastoral letter does not specifically identify the Grimkés, they were clearly the focus of the ministers’ concerns that women had assumed “the place and tone of man as a public reformer.”²³

In contrast to the lively debates about gender at the 1837 convention and in the wake of the Congregational rebuke of the Grimkés, discussions of women’s role at the 1838 and 1839 conventions were much more restrained. The resolutions introduced in 1838 tapped into gender-specific ideas about women’s appropriate role and, as a result, generated little discussion. The delegates resolved that “one of the most appropriate fields of exertion of the influence of woman” was abolitionism. Additional resolutions by abolitionists Abigail Ordway (Massachusetts) and Mary Grew (Pennsylvania) affirmed that woman’s responsibility to act against slavery was rooted in her role as a mother and a Christian.²⁴ In 1839, the delegates consciously avoided the issue of women’s rights, a strategy made easier by the Grimkés absence from the convention that year.²⁵

Race also figured prominently at the women’s conventions. In 1837, Angelina Grimké presented a resolution against racial prejudice, calling on women to “mingle with our oppressed brethren” and “to act out the principles of Christian equality by associating with them as though the color of the skin was of no … consequence.” At the 1838 convention, Angelina’s sister Sarah Grimké’s resolution against race prejudice sparked strong opinions on either side of the debate. Grimké claimed that abolitionists had a duty to “identify themselves with these oppressed Americans by sitting with them in places of worship, by appearing with them in our streets, by giving them our countenance in steam-boats and stages, by visiting them at their homes and encouraging them to visit us, receiving them as we do our white fellow citizens.” Several delegates voted against the resolution claiming it would hinder rather than help the abolitionist cause. After the convention, several delegates attempted to remove the resolution from the convention transcription. Although the convention proceedings do not provide an explanation for these actions, the women may have acted out of racial prejudice, or fear of antiabolitionist mobs like those that burned Pennsylvania Hall, in 1838, during the second convention.²⁶

Thankful Southwick and Martha Ball each introduced free-produce resolutions at the women’s antislavery conventions; yet the two women held different views about women’s abolitionist activity. Southwick was proud of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society’s success in petitioning Congress and running an annual antislavery fair. Southwick, as well as other women, including Lucretia Mott and the Grimké sisters, believed women and men shared the same rights and duties when it came to political questions such as slavery. In contrast, Ball and like-minded women affirmed the tenets of domesticity. For Ball, a well-ordered society, like a well-ordered household, was arranged around the natural distinction between the sexes. While conservative women, such as Ball, used these ideas to argue for women’s participation in reform movements, that activism did not translate into arguments for women’s equality. Increasingly, in the late 1830s, women who supported free produce and abolitionism linked the movements to more radical ideas about gender and race. As a result, Martha Ball and other conservative women retreated into reform work that affirmed the maternal and domestic roles of women, consciously avoiding political issues such as women’s rights.²⁷ Although Ball agreed with Angelina Grimké that it was “the province of woman, to plead the cause of the oppressed,” she disagreed with the implications of Grimké’s argument that woman should “no longer remain satisfied in the circumscribed limits with which corrupt custom and a perverted application of Scripture have encircled her.”²⁸ When the Congregational ministers reprimanded the Grimké sisters in 1837, several female antislavery societies, including the Buckingham Female Anti-Slavery Society of Pennsylvania, expressed their support of the sisters. In a letter that echoed the moral resolve of Elizabeth Heyrick, the Buckingham women reminded the Grimkés that moral right mattered more than masculine custom: “Whatever is right must be expedient.… Let then, the right be done tho’ all the associations of men be dissolved, and their glory laid low in the dust.”²⁹ Regardless of the consequences, the Buckingham women noted, women must act on their beliefs.

The women of the Buckingham group linked radical ideas about gender and political action to the boycott of slave labor. In a letter to the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in August 1837, the women of the Buckingham Female Anti-Slavery Society asserted the duty of abolitionists to abstain from slave-labor products and lamented the lack of free-labor goods. Anti-slavery societies, they argued, had to become in practice free-produce societies: “There are now about 1100 Anti-Slavery Societies in the United States, embracing at least 100,000 members; now if these societies would individually, as well as collectively, use their influence to encourage the labor of free men, to the exclusion of that of slaves, can any one doubt that such influence would have a most salutary effect in promoting a market for free products.” The Buckingham women urged opponents of free produce to imagine those “dear to them … writhing beneath the gory lash of a cruel task-master or loaded and bowed down with the galling chains of slavery.” In addition to applying “moral bearing” to “political action,” women should merge the moral and the political in daily activities: “Take [your principles] also to the grocers, and dry-goods store, to the tables of our friends, and into every social circle and thus make them have a moral bearing on the social and commercial interests of the whole community.” Abstention “should not breathe … forth in words only, but interweave [in] every action of our lives.”³⁰ In their vision of free produce, the Buckingham women suggested a radical reordering of American society, one that affected not only the domestic world of women but the public realm of politics and economics as well. For the Buckingham women, free produce formed the core of equal rights for all.

Black abolitionists’ support of free produce made similar connections between the boycott of slave labor and equal rights. In 1827, in his famous anticolonization letter, Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, criticized the American Colonization Society and claimed African colonization denied black claims to American citizenship. In language reminiscent of the first slave-sugar boycott, Allen reasserted blacks’ right to citizenship: “This land which we have watered with our tears and our blood is now our mother country.” Rather than contamination of domestic goods, African blood, sweat, and tears became the means by which blacks would claim civil and political rights.³¹ David Walker, in his 1829 Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, reprinted Allen’s letter verbatim before elaborating on Allen’s metaphor of blood-stained soil. “America is more our country, than it is the whites,” Walker wrote. “We have enriched it with our blood and tears. The greatest riches in all America have arisen from our blood and tears:—and will they drive us from our property and homes, which we have earned with our blood?”³² In a July 4, 1830, speech, black minister Peter Williams connected black service during the Revolutionary War to black toil on the land as markers of citizenship: “We are natives of this country … not a few of our fathers suffered and bled to purchase its independence … we have toiled to cultivate it, and to raise it to its present prosperous condition; we ask only to share equal privileges with those who come from distant lands to enjoy the fruits of our labour.”³³ Boycotting slave-labor goods would end the theft of African labor and restore to the enslaved the fruits of their labor.

For black abolitionists, free produce and racial uplift were inextricably joined; as a result, black abolitionists often integrated support for the boycott of slave labor with other reform activities. In the early 1830s, in a series of conventions, black abolitionists passed resolutions in support of free produce and encouraged moral reform and economic independence. In 1833, delegates approved a resolution supporting the establishment of free-labor stores by black entrepreneurs. The following year, black businessman William Whipper established a free-labor and temperance grocery store next door to Bethel Church in Philadelphia. In this same period, in an attempt to improve the supply of free-labor goods, the Colored Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania offered premiums above the market price for rice produced by free labor. At the fifth convention in 1835, delegates described free produce as “the duty of every lover of freedom.” Delegates also considered a report from France that sugar had been successfully manufactured from the beet root. Members were asked to explore the potential for producing beet sugar in the United States and “to report to the next convention, the result of their efforts.”³⁴ In 1836, black abolitionists in Philadelphia organized the American Moral Reform Society, adopting the principles of education, temperance, economy, and universal liberty. In an “Address to the Colored Churches in the Free States,” the society criticized free blacks who condemned slavery yet continued to purchase slave-labor goods.³⁵ Connecting the economic activities of free blacks to slave labor, black abolitionists asserted the importance of racial solidarity and ideological consistency. In 1838, black abolitionists in New York celebrated the end of slavery in the British Empire in an event supplied with free-labor goods.³⁶ For black abolitionists, abolishing the market for slave-labor goods was critical to the fight for emancipation and racial equality.

In the 1830s, the male-only or integrated (by gender or race) antislavery societies established by men at the local and regional level also debated the relationship between free produce and abolitionism. The Clarkson Anti-Slavery Society, organized in 1832 by residents of Lancaster and Chester Counties, Pennsylvania, asked its members, “Is it consistent with the principles of Abolitionists, to use the products of slave labor?”³⁷ In 1837, at the second annual meeting of the East Fallowfield Anti-Slavery Society, supporters passed a free-produce resolution. The Schuylkill Township Anti-Slavery Society adopted a similar measure the following year.³⁸ Also, in 1838, members of the East Fallowfield, Clarkson, and Schuylkill Anti-Slavery Societies, as well as other groups such as the Kennett and West Chester Anti-Slavery Societies, met in Philadelphia to discuss free produce at the Requited Labor Convention.³⁹ Despite this apparent agreement on the issue of free produce, many of these same societies struggled with the relationship between free produce and abolitionism. For example, in 1837, the Clarkson Anti-Slavery Society failed to pass a resolution calling for “total abstinence” from slave-labor products.⁴⁰ Such discussions were not limited to the local level.

Although free produce had been included in the American Anti-Slavery Society’s Declaration of Sentiments, supporters and opponents continued to debate the role of free produce in the abolitionist movement, particularly at the national level. In 1836, William Jay, son of the famous jurist John Jay, protested the passage of New York abolitionist Gerrit Smith’s free-produce resolution at the society’s annual meeting. Jay believed free produce was an individual principle, which should be promoted through free-produce societies and not through the national antislavery society: “Abolitionists who embrace this doctrine have an unquestionable right to maintain and defend it on their own responsibility, and to form Societies avowing it in their constitutions; but they have no right to use the meetings, the periodicals, or the funds of the American Society for the purpose of propagating it.” In a letter to the Liberator, Smith defended his action, claiming he had substituted a “far milder Resolution” than the one introduced by abolitionist Charles Stuart, who was described by Smith as “a man, who never consents to sacrifice a hair’s breadth of principle.” Smith justified his support of free produce: “I have long thought, that there is no single thing, which abolitionists could do, that would contribute so far to the abolition of slavery, as their abstinence from the products of slave labor.” Smith believed the self-denying example of 100,000 boycotters “would carry more conviction to the minds of slaveholders of the truth and power of antislavery doctrines and of the sincerity with which they are held, than all the testimony of types and pens.” The following year, at the fourth annual meeting of the AASS in May 1837, Stuart tried once again to introduce the issue of free produce, but the resolution “was laid upon the table, and subsequently, indefinitely postponed.” Likewise, in 1838, a free-produce resolution was considered but not acted on.⁴¹ Likely, Garrison’s intervention prevented action in support of free produce at the annual AASS meetings.⁴²

Garrison’s dismissal of free produce frustrated abolitionist consumers like Smith. It is unclear exactly when Garrison rejected free produce as an antislavery tactic; however, articles in the Liberator suggest his disaffection developed in the mid to late 1830s. In 1835, for example, Garrison published a letter he received from Rowland T. Robinson, a Vermont Quaker and supporter of free produce, encouraging Garrison to give “more than a mere recommendation” to abstain from slave-labor products.⁴³ Gerrit Smith, in his defense of free produce, called on Garrison “to increase the power and efficacy of your writings and of your uncompromising integrity and fearless vindication of the truth, by your thorough espousal of the doctrine of abstinence from the products of slave labor.”⁴⁴ In a letter to British abolitionist Elizabeth Pease in August 1839, Angelina Grimké lamented Garrison’s rejection of free produce “because the weight of his example & his influence are very extensive.”⁴⁵ Still, the presence of free-produce supporters, such as Lucretia Mott, at the annual AASS meetings meant free produce would come up for discussion even if Garrison did not support the boycott. For example, at the twentieth anniversary of the AASS in 1853, Mott “urged attention” to the Declaration of Sentiments, “which relates to our giving preference to the products of free labor over those of slave labor.”⁴⁶

In the 1830s, as abolitionists formed antislavery societies to promote the immediate abolition of slavery, men and women such as Jay, Smith, Garrison, and Mott worked to reconcile free produce with radical abolitionism. Traditionally, free produce was associated with the Quakers. In the 1820s, free produce became closely associated with colonization schemes through the activism of Benjamin Lundy who sought opportunities for free blacks in Texas and in Haiti. As a result, for many abolitionists in the 1830s, free produce was associated with the strategies and tactics of an outmoded form of antislavery activism. Still, among the more radical, often women and black abolitionists, free produce represented an absolute moral position, one that supported individual identification with enslaved blacks. Even after Garrison distanced himself from free produce, many Garrisonian abolitionists continued to assert the importance of the boycott of slave-labor goods. This ongoing connection to radical abolitionism worried many Quakers who struggled to define the relationship between free produce and the Society of Friends.

Quakers

Although free produce figured prominently in Elias Hicks’s conflict with Quaker elders, Quakers on either side of the schism continued to abstain from slave-labor goods. In the 1830s, Friends’ participation in free produce was influenced by internal conflicts among Hicksite and Orthodox Quakers and by external events, particularly the rise of radical abolitionism. Friends’ views of free produce and abolitionism were shaped by the schism of 1827–28, which opened to reinterpretation every fundamental belief and practice of Friends. Friends’ participation in abolitionism was influenced by the development of immediatism. Immediatist abolitionists sought support from Quakers. Yet most Quakers were wary of the radical abolitionist movement. Garrison denounced slaveholders and advocated disunion, activities which violated Friends’ testimonies about the inward light and peace. Indeed, for most Quakers, Garrison sounded more like Benjamin Lay than John Woolman. Moreover, the outspoken and often violent antiabolitionist response to Garrisonian radicalism, as well as opposition from Quaker meetings, discouraged most Friends from participating in abolitionism. In many ways, Friends’ participation in free produce followed a similar trajectory. Free produce retained its Quaker core while responding to the developments in the abolitionist movement. Increasingly, supporters of the boycott asserted the economic argument of free produce, namely that support for free produce would force slaveholders to emancipate their slaves and to use free labor. Such arguments reflected criticism from abolitionists who questioned the efficacy of boycotting slave-labor goods. Similarly, supporters used Quakers’ moral argument for free produce to demand consumers identify with the enslaved and to seek racial equality, core tenets of the abolitionist movement. For Quakers in the 1830s, the free-produce movement was marked by conflicting demands to retain traditional free-produce activism and to align free produce with radical abolitionism.⁴⁷

Quakers who participated in the abolitionist movement risked being denounced as a radical abolitionist. Consider, for example, the petition of Caln Quarterly Meeting (Hicksite). In November 1835, members of Caln Quarterly Meeting (Hicksite) in Chester County, Pennsylvania, drew up a petition to the U.S. Senate praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. The Caln petition arrived in January 1836 as the Senate was debating two antislavery petitions from Ohio. Senator James Buchanan of Pennsylvania presented the Caln petition, asking the Senate accept the petition but reject the attached prayer. South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun reacted strongly against the Ohio and Pennsylvania petitions. Though the Quaker petition was more respectfully worded, Calhoun claimed “the same principles were embodied in [both petitions], and the innuendoes conveyed [in the Quaker petition] were as far from being acceptable as the barefaced insolence” of the Ohio petitions.⁴⁸ Defenders of the Quaker petition made a clear distinction between Quakers and abolitionists. New Jersey Senator Garrett Wall demanded the Caln petition be heard. The Caln petition, Wall claimed, did not “come from the great laboratory of abolition incendiarism. It [did] not spring from the heated atmosphere produced by the contention of men struggling for political power; nor [did] it come from men, who under pretence of conscience, cloak worldly, selfish, or unholy designs.” Friends were not seeking “to destroy the constitution or endanger the peace and permanency of the Union.” Using “the calm, mild, and dispassionate voice of reason,” Wall said the Caln petitioners had exercised their political rights in a manner consistent with the principles of the Constitution and the discipline of their society.⁴⁹ Opponents of the Quaker petition, however, condemned the Society of Friends for agitating the slavery question. On March 9, the Senate voted to receive the Quaker petition and to reject the petitioners’ prayer. Afterward the Senate adopted the rule to lay all antislavery petitions on the table, a practice that had the same practical effect as the gag rule passed in the House of Representatives.⁵⁰

Reaction to the Caln petition convinced some Quakers that while they might use their voices as members of the Society of Friends to speak out against slavery, they risked receiving the same treatment as radical abolitionists. In a comparison of the abolitionist and the colonizationist, the Friend noted that Quakers must remain in a state of “forbearance”; otherwise, they were likely to “[sow] the seeds of disagreement and discord.” After the Caln controversy, the Friend warned against petitions to Congress and suggested that Friends’ actions “in behalf of oppressed humanity, ought ever to be characterized by mildness, by prudence, by a proper regard to fitness as to the time and the occasion.”⁵¹ In the 1830s, Orthodox and Hicksite meetings warned Friends against joining antislavery societies. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Hicksite) refused to take any action as a corporate body other than to encourage its members “to embrace every right opening, to maintain & exalt our righteous testimony against slavery.”⁵² Farmington Quarterly Meeting (Orthodox) proposed New York Yearly Meeting (Orthodox) prepare a petition to Congress for members of subordinate meetings to sign, but this suggestion was not adopted by the Yearly Meeting.⁵³ In September 1839, members of the Meeting for Sufferings, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Orthodox), noted their desire to “stand open, individually and collectively, to the tendering influences of that Spirit which breathes peace on earth and good will to men … [and] be prepared to take such measures as Divine Wisdom may point out to clear our own hands and to espouse [the slaves’] cause whenever the way may clearly present.”⁵⁴ Similarly, Quaker meetings were cautious in their admonitions about free produce, urging support for free produce but not making it a point of discipline. For example, the Hicksite meetings in New York (1837) and Philadelphia (1839) advised against the use of slave produce. Also, in 1839, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Hicksite), in response to the sixth query asking Friends to remain clear of prize goods among other things, noted that some members “consider the use of slave goods … a departure.” Other Quakers were less circumspect in their support of free produce. In the early 1840s, several Quaker meetings, including Farmington Quarterly Meeting (Orthodox) and New York Yearly Meeting (Orthodox), issued statements on free produce while other meetings, such as Genesee Yearly Meeting and Indiana Yearly Meeting of Anti-Slavery Friends, made abstention from slave-labor goods a point of discipline.⁵⁵

As a traditional Quaker practice, free produce provided a seemingly apolitical solution for Quakers who wished to pursue what one Friend editorialist described as a “noiseless path” while promoting the “general good.” Friends could provide an effective example by remaining aloof from the passions of American social and political life. As the writer explained, Friends’ “examples of uprightness and religious stability give a useful tone wherever they exist, and when commotions arise, they are peculiarly valuable, in drawing those who are in danger of being swept away by the various currents, which rush hither and thither, to enquire what it is, which makes such unmoved, in the midst of storm and distress.”⁵⁶ Some Quakers urged Friends against associating with non-Friends in reform associations. Friends, as one writer noted, “are more likely to advance the cause by acting very much alone.” Citing Anthony Benezet and John Woolman (but not Elias Hicks) as useful examples, the author suggested Friends could maintain their traditional antislavery principles in the midst of the chaos created by Garrisonian abolitionism only by remaining apart from the secular movement.⁵⁷

Quakers’ reluctance to take collective measures against slavery led Philadelphia Hicksites to organize the Association of Friends for Advocating the Cause of the Slave, and Improving the Condition of the Free People of Colour in May 1837. The group had more than one hundred charter members. Organized as a Quaker antislavery society, the association was an attempt by Friends to provide their co-religionists an opportunity to work within the abolitionist movement without joining secular societies. However, the presence of Quaker abolitionists James and Lucretia Mott, Caleb Clothier, Daniell Neal, Daniel Miller Jr., and Emmor Kimber gave the organization a decidedly abolitionist slant. Though not strictly a free-produce association, the group made abstention a central tenet of their activism. The association created the Committee on Requited Labor, which met for the first time on September 12, 1837. Caleb Clothier, Lydia White, Priscilla Hensey, and William C. Betts formed the core of the committee. The Committee on Requited Labor compiled a list of free-labor grocers, supported the American Free Produce Association after its establishment in 1838, and wrote addresses for the association.⁵⁸ Most likely the committee was responsible for the pamphlet, An Address to the Members of the Religious Society of Friends, on the Propriety of Abstaining from the Use of the Produce of Slave Labour, issued by the association in its first year. In the Address, the association urged Friends to consider the issue of abstinence and adopt it as part of their abolitionist testimony. According to the Address, Quaker discipline prohibited the use of or trade in prize goods, including the products of slave labor. The Address also referred to the antislavery testimony of John Woolman and Elias Hicks, reminding Friends of their collective tradition of antislavery testimony. Abstention from the products of slave labor purified the individual and the community from the stain of slavery and delivered slaves from oppression by choking off demand for the products of forced labor.⁵⁹ The association published two other pamphlets in 1838: one appealing to women and the other a general statement on the evils of slavery.⁶⁰ In 1840, the association changed its name to the Association for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. The association provided an outlet for Quakers’ abolitionist energy. Still, the organization was controversial. Many in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Hicksite) objected to it while others argued the association did not go far enough in its abolitionist work.⁶¹

In 1839, Charles Marriott of New York Yearly Meeting (Hicksite) helped organize the New York Association of Friends for the Relief of those Held in Slavery and the Improvement of Free People of Color, an association most likely modeled after the Philadelphia association. In the 1830s and early 1840s, Marriott stood at the epicenter of debates about Friends’ relationship with the antislavery movement. Born in England in 1782, Marriott came to America in 1801 with his parents and sisters. A member of Hudson Monthly Meeting, Marriott served on the Meeting for Sufferings, New York Yearly Meeting. After the schism, Marriott joined with the Hicksites. In the 1830s, Marriott published articles in the Genius of Universal Emancipation and the Liberator.⁶² In 1835, he published an address on the duty of abstinence from slave-labor goods. Marriott challenged the traditional Quaker argument that antislavery activism was an attempt “to do good in our own wills” and, therefore, contrary to the Quaker view that Friends should wait on the prompting of the inward light. Instead, Marriott asked, “Would it not be as charitable, and more useful to inquire what our reward will be, for persisting to do evil in our own wills. And, whether, when our understandings are convinced, if it be not presumptuous to ask a further extension of Divine revelation, ere we consent to cease to oppress our fellow-creatures.” Marriott claimed nothing but Quaker unfaithfulness had prevented incorporation into the discipline an article requiring abstention from the products of slave labor. Friends, he warned, must actively pursue their antislavery testimony or forgo any further witness against slavery. “What is morally wrong can never be religiously right,” Marriott concluded. He submitted the tract to the Meeting for Sufferings, New York Yearly Meeting, for publication, but the group rejected it, leaving Marriott to proceed on his own responsibility.⁶³ Despite this setback, Marriott continued to work within the structure of the Society of Friends, refusing to join any organized antislavery societies, for example, because of Friends’ admonitions against such participation. Finally, in 1840, Marriott joined the American Anti-Slavery Society.⁶⁴ That same year, Marriott signed the Address, published by the New York Association of Friends, which challenged conservative Friends’ objections to participation in the wider antislavery movement. Consistent with his earlier statements, Marriott insisted Friends had a moral responsibility to oppose slavery by every available means.⁶⁵ Conservative Quakers disagreed. In 1842, Marriott was disowned.⁶⁶

By the late 1830s, slavery was for many Friends the defining issue. Increasingly, Friends judged one another not by their adherence to Quaker tenets, such as plainness but instead by how consistently they advocated the cause of the slave. Collectively, Quaker meetings sought what one historian calls “a moderate tone of moral suasion.”⁶⁷ Many meetings such as New York Yearly Meeting (Orthodox) made public statements against slavery, but cautioned members against getting caught up in the excitement of the radical abolitionist movement.⁶⁸ Abstention from slave-labor products urged Friends to high levels of personal morality and responsibility rather than active involvement in non-Quaker reform societies. Moreover, abstention might succeed in rendering slavery uneconomical, ultimately leading to its abolition. And if free produce did not succeed in abolishing slavery, Friends had at least purified themselves and their community from the taint of slavery.⁶⁹ As long as free produce remained an individual, moderate antislavery statement, it was unobtrusive enough for most Quakers to adopt the practice. When Quakers began to organize with non-Quakers in free-produce and antislavery associations, however, abstention increasingly took on the radical tone of Garrisonian abolitionism.

Juvenile Antislavery Societies

In addition to the various free-produce and antislavery societies formed by men and women, Quaker and non-Quaker, the 1830s also witnessed the development of juvenile antislavery. Although the editor of the Slave’s Friend credited the publication with inspiring the creation of juvenile abolitionist groups, juvenile antislavery societies actually predated publication of the newspaper, as evidenced by a report in the Liberator, in December 1835, from the newly formed Providence Juvenile Anti-Slavery Society. The young women reported reading antislavery literature and raising funds for the cause through the solicitation of donations and the sale of handmade items. The Providence group soon opened their membership to include young black women eventually calling themselves a “sugar-plum society,” which most likely referenced their pledge to abstain from slave-grown sugar.⁷⁰ In 1836, young abolitionists in New York organized the Chatham Street Chapel Juvenile Anti-Slavery Society, which served as an auxiliary society to the New York City Anti-Slavery Society. The juvenile abolitionists invited New York abolitionist Lewis Tappan to address their first meeting.⁷¹ That same year, young men in Philadelphia formed the Junior Anti-Slavery Society of Pennsylvania.⁷² By the late 1830s, there were groups in Richmond, Ohio; Pawtucket, Rhode Island; Portland, Maine; and Newark, Patterson, and Whippany, New Jersey, as well as least three juvenile societies in New York City.⁷³ In 1838, African American juvenile societies were established in Troy, Carlisle, Pittsburgh, and Providence. The Pittsburgh society, for example, was established in July 1838 as a “cent a week” society. By 1839, the group had grown to forty members and had raised money to support the Colored American, the weekly published by black minister and abolitionist Samuel Cornish.⁷⁴

Like adult antislavery societies, juvenile associations promoted the free-produce movement. In January 1837, for example, the Junior Anti-Slavery Society invited abolitionist printer Lewis C. Gunn to address the group on the preselected discussion question: “Is it consistent with the principles of abolition to partake of the produce of slave labor?” After Gunn’s address, the group resolved to give preference to free-labor produce and abstain “as far as practicable” from slave-labor produce. The following January, the group renewed their commitment to free produce. Despite repeated resolutions against slave-labor produce, however, the group lamented that more members had not made the commitment.⁷⁵ In Boston, a female juvenile antislavery society boycotted the products of slavery and raised funds for the cause. In August 1837, the young women “had quite a discussion on self-denial and on the use of sugar and butter and at last came to the conclusion that we would deny ourselves of something so as to contribute one cent weekly to the society.”⁷⁶ In New York, R. G. Williams addressed the initial gathering of the Juvenile Anti-Slavery Society. He encouraged the children to sacrifice on behalf of the slave. “When you feel a desire to spend your money for confectionery, or any unnecessary thing to eat or drink,” Williams said, “think of the thousands of poor slave children who are naked, hungry, ignorant, whipped and destitute of the good things you enjoy.” The society adopted a free-produce resolution: “We do not like to eat sugar, or rice, or any thing else, made by the poor slaves, seeing they are forced to work every day with out pay, under the lash, and are fed no better than brutes.”⁷⁷

Juvenile antislavery societies, perhaps more so than any other group, struggled with identifying appropriate activities. Organizers encouraged activities similar to those of adult abolitionist societies, including learning about the slave’s experience, boycotting slave-labor goods, and encouraging others to join the organization. Free produce, in particular, was an important, pragmatic tactic for juvenile abolitionists. Publications for young abolitionists urged children to adopt free produce as one of several means for aiding the abolitionist cause. The Slave’s Friend, published as a monthly periodical from 1836 to 1838, included articles, stories, and poems written for an eight- to twelve-year old audience. Garrison included a juvenile column in the Liberator and published a collection of poems for children. Juvenile Poems for the Use of Free American Children, of Every Complexion, published in 1835, included several of Elizabeth Margaret Chandler’s free-produce poems. Children were also urged to refrain from calling slaves vulgar names, to imitate the moral courage of their parents, and even to sign Petitions for Minors. Young girls were also encouraged to sew and to knit for antislavery fairs.⁷⁸

In the 1830s, whether the association was organized by men or women, adults or children, Quakers or non-Quakers, white or black abolitionists, free-produce as an antislavery tactic was discussed and often included particularly as a resolution. Seemingly, free produce was widely discussed and, by implication, widely adopted. And, initially, free produce seemed a promising strategy for abolitionist Quakers and non-Quakers. However, as resistance to radical abolitionism and women’s activism deepened and spread in the 1830s, some prominent abolitionists including William Lloyd Garrison and Theodore Weld began to question the efficacy of free produce. By the late 1830s, Garrison had given up on free produce while Weld dismissed abstinence as a “collateral principle” although he had abstained from slave-labor goods “for years” as a duty.⁷⁹ Still, supporters of the boycott of slave-labor remained optimistic that abstention could indeed apply economic and moral pressure on slaveholders. In an effort to spread the word about slave-labor goods and to increase the supply of free-labor goods, abolitionist consumers in the 1830s began to consider the benefits of a national free-produce association. In 1837, abolitionists decided to organize a national convention to consider the question.

Requited Labor Convention

Planning for the Requited Labor Convention began with a call sent out by the Clarkson Anti-Slavery Society in 1837 to other abolitionists—individuals and societies—to join in a general convention of men and women committed to abstinence from the products of slave labor. In September, the society named a committee of three men and three women to correspond with other individuals and groups to discuss the organization of a free-labor convention “to devise the best means for the procurement and manufacturing of articles obtained by free labor.” The committee contacted the PFASS for help in organizing the convention. By the following spring, the society had generated enough support to publish a circular inviting groups and individuals to attend a free-produce convention scheduled for mid-May.⁸⁰

The Requited Labor Convention met May 17, 1838, at Pennsylvania Hall, along with the second annual Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women. Although the Requited Labor Convention drew representatives primarily from Pennsylvania-based antislavery societies, representatives William Bassett and James P. Boyce of the Lynn Anti-Slavery Society, Massachusetts, were also present. James and Lucretia Mott as well as Lydia White served as delegates from the Quaker Association of Friends for Advocating the Cause of the Slave, and Sarah Pugh, Grace Douglass, and Sarah Grimké were among the representatives from the PFASS. Individual attendees included Mary Grew, Abraham Pennock, Mary L. Cox, and Susan H. Luther.⁸¹ The conservative Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery (PAS), however, declined the invitation to attend. Established in 1775, the PAS preferred political lobbying and opposed all forms of grassroots activism, including the “holding of ‘promiscuous meetings’ of men and women, blacks and whites,” believing such meetings “threatened the Union’s well-being by arousing the people’s passions.”⁸² Although organizers hoped to draw a broad cross-section of the abolitionist community, most of the attendees were Quakers, Hicksite and Orthodox.

The convention resolved to form the National Requited Labor Association and appointed a committee to draft a constitution for the new association. Committees were also formed to prepare and publish an address on the duty of abstinence and to identify sources of free-labor goods. At the end of the first afternoon, Alanson St. Clair, a Unitarian minister from Massachusetts, offered a strong free-produce resolution that members should “in all cases give a preference to the products of free labor over those of slaves; and never, if we can have a choice between the two give countenance to slaveholding, by purchasing, trafficking in, or using the latter.” The resolution was tabled after “an animated discussion,” and the convention adjourned to meet the next morning. Pennsylvania Hall, however, was destroyed that evening by antiabolitionist mobs. When the Requited Labor Convention met the next morning “at the ruins of the Pennsylvania Hall,” the group adjourned to meet instead at the home of James and Lucretia Mott. After appointing a Committee of Correspondence authorized to call a convention together at an appropriate time, the Requited Labor Convention adjourned.⁸³

In September 1838, convention delegates met again, this time with a much smaller group in attendance. Lewis C. Gunn reported on a draft of the association’s constitution, which was accepted. The members agreed to call the new association the American Free Produce Association. Gunn was appointed to prepare and publish an address on the duty of abstinence. The members of the association also appointed a committee to consider the propriety of establishing free-labor stores as well as a committee to prepare a memorial to Congress requesting a repeal of duties on free-labor goods to allow such goods to compete equally with slave-labor goods. Though absent, the group elected Gerrit Smith as president. Abraham L. Pennock, William Bassett, William H. Johnson, and Lewis Tappan were elected as vice presidents. Other officers included Lewis C. Gunn, Lucretia Mott, Lydia White, Henry Grew, Abby Kelly, and Sarah Pugh.⁸⁴ The organizers of the convention and the AFPA attempted to appeal to a broad cross-section of abolitionists as evidenced by the election of the non-Quakers Smith as president and Lewis Tappan as one of the vice presidents. Smith, an outspoken supporter of free produce and a friend of Quaker Abraham L. Pennock, had been invited by Gunn to participate in the convention, but other commitments prevented Smith’s attendance. A letter from Smith was read to the convention and included in the published minutes.⁸⁵

Radical reformer William Goodell had also been invited to attend the convention. Goodell, like Elizabeth Heyrick, believed the abolition of slavery and the reform of labor conditions were inextricably linked. In the 1820s, Goodell edited the Investigator and General Intelligencer, the Genius of Temperance, the Emancipator, and the Friend of Man, all reform journals. His articles addressed both colonization and immediatism. However, after Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831, and the harassment of Prudence Crandall after she admitted black students to her school in 1833, Goodell was influenced by Garrison to focus his editorial and journalistic skills on abolitionism. Goodell was among the first to link abolitionism to the broader issue of black civil rights and racial equality. He was one of the few abolitionists to connect these issues to women’s rights and working-class reform. Goodell advocated for suffrage reform in Rhode Island and challenged the exploitation of women and children who were paid starvation wages. He believed just and equitable laws as important as personal reform. In his publications, Goodell reprinted material from the workingman’s press and provided space for the discussion of women’s issues. Goodell also used his publications to challenge the decline in morals and the rise in aristocracy that were, he believed, the result of the market revolution.⁸⁶

The problem with free produce, according to Goodell, was that it did not go far enough in targeting oppressive labor conditions. In declining the invitation sent by Gunn, Goodell observed that at the founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society delegates had adopted a free-produce resolution despite concerns that “its incorporation into our enterprise would cripple our efforts, and shut us out of the manufacturing districts of the North.” Yet little had been done “to make any decisive advances in relation to it.” For many, introducing the discussion of the boycott of slave-labor “appears to be a wandering from the specific object of association, if not an impertinent attempt to press the organization into a service for which it was never intended,” a reference to William Jay’s criticism of Gerrit Smith in 1836. Moreover, the oppression of “kitchen domestics and cotton factory operatives,” Goodell observed, “has been known to give serious offence to some who are sufficiently zealous for Southern emancipation.” Goodell asked whether the AFPA, through “its periodicals and official publications,” would consider publishing “kindred discussion[s] of the propriety of abstinence from the products of other forms of oppression besides that of our American slaveholding.” Citing his experiences on the island of Java, Goodell noted that his awareness of other forms of oppressive labor had strengthened his “repugnance to the use of slave labor products.” If the AFPA were successful in “procuring supplies of free labor goods, for all parts of the country,” Goodell concluded, the association would accomplish much in removing objections to the free-produce movement. The increased supply of free-labor goods would lead many consumers to “examine the subject, and not only examine, but act, by giving the preference, to say the least, for free goods.”⁸⁷ For Goodell, it was critical that the AFPA retain both its moral and its market focus.

The Requited Labor Convention marked a significant shift in the American free-produce movement. The convention represented American activists’ first attempt to organize a national movement against slave-labor goods. The delegates hoped the association would impress on abolitionists the importance of moral consistency. Integrated by race and gender, the AFPA reflected “the fusion of moral passion and political demands” identified as unique to women’s antislavery associations in the 1830s. Influenced in large part by Quaker women such as Lucretia Mott, Sarah Pugh, and Lydia White, the Requited Labor Convention and the American Free Produce Association likewise brought together the moral and the political.⁸⁸ Despite the conflagration at Pennsylvania Hall that forced convention delegates to reconvene in September, supporters of the AFPA were optimistic about the future.

In addition to ideological support, the organization of the American Free Produce Association promised a solution for the problems of supply that continued to plague the movement. The various free-produce societies that organized in the 1820s and 1830s sought alternatives for slave-labor goods. Often these limited efforts yielded few goods that were not more costly than the slave-labor alternative. For example, in 1828, Charles Collins of New York purchased a few bales of cotton from Francis Williamson in North Carolina. The manufactured cotton sold for nineteen to twenty-one cents per yard, well above the price for similar goods made from slave-labor cotton.⁸⁹ In 1831, a committee of the Pennsylvania Free Produce Society published an extensive summary of available sources for free-labor goods, outlining the challenges of acquiring such goods. Maple sugar was the only source of free-labor sugar in the United States; additionally, cotton supplies were inadequate and rice was so scarce premiums were offered.⁹⁰ Supply, as well as quality, challenged supporters of the movement. And the two problems worked in dynamic relationship. Limited supplies meant limited choices for consumers. Limited consumer demand, in turn, became a disincentive for producers of free-labor goods. Still, abolitionist merchants opened free-labor stores: at least six in the 1820s and more than twenty in the 1830s. Free-labor stores were concentrated in major cities such as New York and Philadelphia.⁹¹ For example, in 1837, E. Robinson of New York City claimed to regularly supply nearly two hundred abolitionists with free-labor goods. Robinson even offered to deliver those goods free of charge. Samuel Cornish, editor of the Colored American, drew his readers’ attention to the store of Perkins and Town, also located in New York, who supplied free-labor molasses, sugar, rice, and coffee, “which can be relied upon as really free, of an excellent quality and very cheap.” Cornish urged “the friends of the slave” to make it a matter of conscience not “to partake of the slaveholders’ deeds by eating of the fruits of slave labor.”⁹² In addition to clothing and dry goods, free-labor stores offered goods such as shoes, paper, ice cream, and candy “free from the taint of slavery.”⁹³ Abolitionist consumers also bought and sold free-labor goods at the annual antislavery fairs organized by women’s antislavery associations. The Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society’s early antislavery fairs included treats made with free-labor sugar and sugar bowls inscribed “Sugar not made by slaves” while the Western Anti-Slavery Fair featured “free labor cotton shirts, collars, and bosoms.”⁹⁴ Services, using free-labor goods, were also available to consumers. Boarders at the Graham House in Boston, for example, were fed only “the products of free labor.”⁹⁵ In Philadelphia, Quaker Nathan Thorne offered tailoring services that used only free-labor goods.⁹⁶ For supporters of the boycott, a national organization held the potential to better coordinate these myriad efforts to supply free-labor goods to the market.

In the 1830s, men and women, Quaker and non-Quaker alike, worked to integrate Quaker views about slave labor and free produce into the antislavery societies they organized. For American supporters of the boycott, free produce offered a pragmatic way to fight slavery, citing the British example as evidence. In the 1790s, the boycott of slave-grown sugar preceded the abolition of the slave trade in 1807; in the 1820s, a second major boycott of slave-labor goods had culminated in parliamentary passage of the Emancipation Act in 1833 and in full emancipation in 1838. Events in Britain encouraged American abolitionist consumers to persist in spite of the internecine disputes that divided American abolitionists in the late 1830s. Moreover, the protean meanings of free-produce activism encouraged participation by conservative and radical abolitionists. Even as free produce united disparate groups of abolitionist consumers, free produce divided abolitionists over the use of the boycott in the fight against slavery. For many reformers, free produce remained an individual question. Still, the establishment of the American Free Produce Association, as well as the founding of a similar organization in Britain, the British India Society, encouraged many supporters of the boycott, who looked forward to more abolitionists joining the cause of free produce.