Many women’s Ies in the religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening moved them to engage in social activism. Abolitionism attracted female activists who believed they were called to rid America of a grave sin. Like many women across the country, women in Andover, Massachusetts, organized a Female Antislavery Society. Elizabeth Emery and Mary Abbott, two leaders in the society, wrote a letter to the antislavery newspaper the Liberator, expressing their belief that women had a moral responsibility to work to end slavery.
Mr. Editor:
In these days of women’s doings, it may not be amiss to report the proceedings of some ladies in Andover. The story is now and then told of a new thing done here, as the opening of a railroad, or the building of a factory, but we have news better than all—it is the formation of a “Female Antislavery Society.”
The call of our female friends across the waters—the energetic appeal of those untiring sisters in the work of emancipation in Boston—above all, the sighs, the groans, the deathlike struggles of scourged sisters in the South—these have moved our hearts, our hands. We feel that woman has a place in this Godlike work, for woman’s woes, and woman’s wrongs, are borne to us on every breeze that flows from the South; woman has a place, for she forms a part in God’s created intelligent instrumentality to reform the world. God never made her to be inactive nor in all cases to follow in the wake of man. When man proves recreant to his duty and faithless to his Maker, woman, with her feeling heart, should rouse him—should start his sympathies—should cry in his ear, and raise such a storm of generous sentiment, as shall never let him sleep again. We believe God gave woman a heart to feel—an eye to weep—a hand to work—a tongue to speak. Now let her use that tongue to speak on slavery. Is it not a curse—a heaven-daring abomination? Let her employ that hand, to labor for the slave. Does not her sister in bonds, labor night and day without reward? Let her heart grieve, and her eye fill with tears, in view of a female’s body dishonored—a female’s mind debased—a female’s soul forever ruined! Woman nothing to do with slavery! Abhorred the thought!! We will pray to abhor it more and more. Is not woman abused—woman trampled upon—woman spoiled of her virtue, her probity, her influence, her joy! And this, not in India—not in China—not in Turkey—not in Africa but in America—in the United States of America, in the birthplace of Washington, the father of freedom, the protector of woman, the friend of equality and human rights!
Woman out of her place, in feeling, praying, and acting for the slave! Impious idea! Her oppressed sister cries aloud for help. She tries to lift her manacled hand—to turn her bruised face—to raise her tearful eye, and by all these, to plead a remembrance in our prayers—an interest in our labors. . . . As Christian women, we will do a Christian woman’s duty. . . .
Our preamble gives our creed:
“We believe American Slavery is a sin against God—at war with the dictates of humanity, and subversive of the principles of freedom, because it regards rational beings as goods and chattel; robs them of compensation for their toil—denies to them the protection of law—disregards the relation of husband and wife, brother and sister, parent and child; shuts out from the intellect the light of knowledge; overwhelms hope in despair and ruins the soul—thus sinking to the level of brutes, more than one million of American females, who are created in God’s image, a little lower than the angels’, and consigns them over to degradation, physical, social, intellectual, and moral: consequently, every slaveholder is bound instantly to cease from all participation in such a system. We believe that we should have no fellowship with these works of darkness, but rather reprove them—and that the truth spoken in love, is mighty to the removal of slavery, as of all other sins.” . . .
May fearful foreboding lead the slave holder to timely repentance.
Source: Elizabeth Emery and Mary P. Abbott, “Letter to The Liberator,” The Liberator, August 27, 1836, 138.