The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement

Abstract

In her study of American antebellvun and wartime abolitionism, Julie Roy Jeffrey argues that "ordinary" women formed the essential foundation of the movement to eradicate slavery.Chiding historians for ignoring the muted masses of female abolitionists, Jeffrey challenges scholars to consider how abolitionism rnight have become marginalized if ordinary women had not pursued reformist roles.If it were not for these women, Jeffrey hypothesizes, abolitionism probably would have engendered less societal change.Jeffrey's sources include newspaper articles, diaries, and organizational records (from an array of antislavery societies), aU drawn largely from archives in the Northeast.Due to the paucity of sources on African American women, Jeffrey relies heavuy on the monumental collection of primary material found in C. Peter Ripley's edited collection.The Black Abolitionist Papers (1991).It is Jeffrey's clever interpretation of letters authored by "ordinary," white, middle-class women, however, that immediately draws readers' attention to the changing nature of antebellum and wartime womanhood.In six chapters orgaruzed chronologically and thematically, Jeffrey examines the family life, domestic structures, econonüc status, religious affiliation, and labor patterns of female abolitionists.In doing so, she highlights the commonalities, rather than the incongruities, shared by her subjects, the majority of whom believed that the annihilation of chattel slavery was a moral and religious obligation and an eventual certainty.In her chapter on methods used to recruit women into the abolitionist movement, Jeffrey posits that women gained new skills that would take them "far from the kitchen and the parlor" (52), traversing the seemingly unbridgeable gap between public and private in the antebellum North.AbóUtionist leaders enticed women to join by devising a campaign that focused on both class and gender; illustrations and broadsides encouraged white, middle-class women to consider their fellow bondwomen as fellow Americans who were being derüed the "rights, privileges, and protections" (41) accorded to all