Modern Boston History Exam

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Week 1.3 Radicalism in Boston History 385

Julie de Chantal

The Desire to build a cohesive city If we come back to the very beginning of the city in 1629, we have to remember that the first residents of the city founded Boston with a religious mission in mind. Boston was the City Upon a Hill, an example of what the city could be to the world. This religious mission to be better often allowed Bostonians to be more radical than other colonists.

It is no surprise that Bostonians were at the origin of the Tea Party, that they wrote petitions to the King to fight against the Crown’s encroachments of their rights as citizens. Boston is known as Freedom’s birthplace from there on out. Widespread education was specially important to this aspect of Bostonians’ political position in the country.

Education As you might remember, the first public school Boston Latin School, opened in 1635. It emphasized learning religion, Latin, classic literature. Since the tax system was in its infancy in the colony, the school was funded by private donations in kind and in land. In 1636, the General Court appropriated a sum of £400 pounds to establish a college similar to Cambridge University in England. That college became Harvard College, then Harvard University. With the increase in population, especially as the population spreads around Boston, other schools were built to meet the demand.

In 1645, for example Reverent John Eliot created the Roxbury Latin School, which aimed to educate young boys. The school was a private school and was not supported by public funds at its origins.

Public vs free school We often mention the Boston school system being the first Public school system in the United States. I would like to add some nuance to this. In the minds of the colonists, there is a distinction between public and free schools. • Free school = free to all who paid their tuition and which was supported in part by

endowments and voluntary contributions. • public schools = a school free of charge supported by city taxes.

But even Public schools charge something to their students: wood for the fire, portion of the teacher’s board, books. In the subsequent years, expenses of the schools will be paid by the city but books are still at the students expense. In 1885 the state legislature passes the Free Text book law which funds all textbooks used in class. The fact that public schools did not charge tuition is a first in the United States

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The first elementary school The assumption was that primary education would be taught at home. Children were expected to be able to read and write to some extent when they entered school around age 7. Since not all colonist had the same level of education or access to the books necessary to teach their children, the town of Dorchester opened the first elementary school in the colonies, the Mather School.

The school was named after Richard Mather, (He was father to Increase Mather and grandfather to Cotton Mather). It was a one room school at first. The school teacher was to teach English, Latin, and other tongues, as well as writing to the pupils. The creation of the school came with an annual salary for the school teacher £20 per year and a budget for the maintenance of the premises. Other school teachers at the same period were paid both in money and in kind (wheat, peas, barley, etc). The school master was chosen by the freemen and the elders. These elders were also asked to decide if girls should be allowed to be taught with the boys or not. As you can imagine that question was tabled rather quickly and not considered for several decades after that. Students who lived too far away to walk to school would either ride a horse or take a horse drawn “bus,” called a kid-hack!

In 1641 the land was given to the town of Dorchester so that the city could use the land toward free education. Not long after the creation of the school, the town of Dorchester levied a property tax. The money was to be put in a public treasury and used for the school. It was the first instance of public taxation used for public education. Furthermore, in 1645 the town reaffirmed its commitment to public education by declaring that the schoolmaster “shall equally and impartially receive, and instruct such as shall be sent and Committed to him for that end whither their parents be poor or rich not refusing any who have Right and Interest in the School.”

If you think about it, it is quite a revolutionary concept to take the children out of the home at a young age. Children were supposed to stay in the private sphere until they were of age enough to be able to learn a trade and to apprentice under someone else. Their mother was supposed to give them a rudimentary education (reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic) before they could make their way into the world. So what was the motivation for Bostonians to send their children to school? The answer is simple. In 1642, the colony created a law which recognized the public school system, and at the same time, forced people to educate their children. In 1647, the state established a law which contained the substance of the American common school and industrial education:

• Education is seen as being not only for the good of the person but also for the good of the Commonwealth

• If parents did not educate their children -> Seen as negligence or barbarism • So the state decides to force parents and masters to educate their children or hire someone if

they cannot do so under penalty of £20 pounds per child. • Children had to read English at the very least. • Selectmen (city officials) were in charge of the education system and of the assessment of the

performance of the children, in school or not.

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• the state forced families to teach religion to their children at least once a week. The children’s knowledge could be tested by any selectmen through a trial.

• The state argued that people should have a knowledge of the scripture and that only Satan would keep men from the scriptures

• The state finds that it is the responsibility of parents and masters to give their children the training necessary for a profession

• the state legislates that for every 100 families, 1 grammar school should be set up so that the children could access further learning (university perhaps)

• if a town neglects to build a new school as its population increases, the state could fine the town £5 per year until they constructed the school is completed.

Gender Discrimination? If you notice, the law does not discriminate under the basis of gender. So young girls are under the same obligation to receive an education as their male counterparts. However, until 1784, young girls were only allowed in common schools, not grammar school. After 1784, girls could attend grammar school from June to October. This was usually the time when young men were in the fields, helping their families.

The reason why women were not allowed to continue further was because of biases of the time. People assumed that, since women stayed in the private sphere, they rarely met people who lived outside of their town. As a result, they did not need to learn to write since they would not send letters to their out-of-town friends. Instead, they only needed a basic education which allowed them to count eggs, stitches when knitting, or run the household. At the same time thought, they were still required to read the Catechism and Testament.

If we jump to the post Revolutionary period… In 1790 the state legislature passed a law which required that young pupils be taught in other schools before being admitted to the grammar school. Until 1818, there is no public school in Boston to prepare children for grammar school. Parents had to send their children to private school first, then to grammar school. This created a discrepancy between people educated in Boston and those educated elsewhere in the state. In 1817, there were 164 private schools, 135 of them were taught by women. Of the 4132 children enrolled in schools -> 1914 were boys and 2218 were girls.

In 1818, despite the opposition of the selectmen, people voted almost unanimously to provide free instruction for children age 4 to 7. When the state passed the law, it also required that women provided this instruction to little children. This was a revolutionary demand.

Remember that women are supposed to be in the private sphere. However, here, they saw a school for 4 to 7 year-old children as an extension of the home, hence still part of the domestic sphere. Furthermore, if women taught these children, they did not need a lot of education. They only needed to be able to show the rudiments of spelling to young children. Why waste the skills of a man over this? (In addition, women could be paid less than men for the same job, hence the bargain for the state).

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In 1836, Massachusetts was the first state to compel children to stay in school beyond basic literacy. The law was not necessarily a concern for the children’s education but a reaction to the rise of the industry and the hiring of children as workers. The 1836 law, required that children under the age of 15 remain in school for at least 3 months a year.

Black Bostonians Free Black Bostonians had access to education in the city. However, they felt that their children were discriminated against in the public school at the time. The city had no school specifically for Black children so some Black parents petitioned the state legislature to complain that their taxes were used to fund white schools but not Black schools. Some Black children attended white schools.

In 1798, 60 Black parents founded the African School. They attempted to get the support of the city to make their school a public school (i.e. one where they would not have to pay for tuition). In 1812, the city began to contribute to the school. The school building was not in good condition and was not able to do any maintenance. Some Black parents of the upper class (remember that the Black elite emerge at this point) felt that their children did not receive the best education possible at the school.

In 1815, Abiel Smith, who was a philanthropist, died and left $4,000 to be used to build a school for Black children. In 1835, they used part of the money to construct the Abiel Smith School. While the school was meant to give Black children the best education that they could, some parents became fearful of the system. The school intended to give Black children a tailored education including topics that were not discussed in white schools (Black history for example). However, this led to the Boston public school system becoming segregated. Soon, the Abiel Smith School was used against the Black community (for segregation instead of for better education).

A few years later, some parents organized to fight against this double system. (We will talk about this a bit later in this lecture)

Literacy rates Because of all of these laws, and the access to education, people who grew up in Boston were by far among the most literate in the United States at the time (98% of Bostonians being literate around 1860, only Connecticut had a higher rate with 98.9%). Bostonians were also some of the most literate people in the world at the time. As you can imagine with these numbers, literacy was common among all classes. Some professions, for example weavers, shoe-makers, or hat makers even included reading as part of their job description. Bostonians loved to read, became collectors of all things intellectual, and begin to promote erudition as a way to distinguish themselves from other colonists. They opened the first public library somewhere between 1711 and 1725. They also open a private library in 1807, the Boston Athenæum, where the Brahmins could pay a membership fee to use the services of the institution. The Athenæum served as a publishing arm for the elite with the publication of the Monthly Anthology, Or Magazine of

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Polite Literature. With these literacy rates and the exchange of information, the city was bound to see the emergence of some radical thought not seen elsewhere.

Radical Thought comes with education For example, between 1820 and 1830, Transcendentalism became really popular in the city. If you remember, in our first lecture, I mentioned briefly the role of the philosophers in the Revolutionary Era. The philosophers advocated for the use of reason and skepticism to question their world.

Transcendentalism rejects reason and skepticism, and advocates against intellectualism and spirituality. The movement was greatly influenced by English and German romanticism and by Eastern religions (for example Buddhism or Hinduism). A number of Bostonians began to translate ancient Buddhist and Hindu texts from their original language to English. Transcendentalism, however, only began to develop after Harvard became a Unitarianism stronghold.

So what is Transcendentalism? It is a movement which believes/promotes in the following: • the inherent goodness of people and nature. • society and its institutions have corrupted the purity of the individual • they have faith that people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. • The movement also emphasizes subjective intuition instead of objective empiricism.

Transcendentalism became a coherent movement with the founding of the Transcendental Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 8, 1836. Its founders George Putnam, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Ripley, and Frederic Henry Hedge met to discuss the formation of the club and held their first meeting at Ripley’s house in Boston. The movement itself was a movement of young people, men and women, who had grown up in the city and had been educated in the Boston schools.

Watch The Bloodless Revolution http://silk.library.umass.edu/login?url=http://fod.infobase.com/ PortalPlaylists.aspx?wID=102927&xtid=43062&loid=99596 (4:31 minutes, you will need your NetID to access this video. If the video does not start, click on the title the Bloodless Revolution on the right hand side menu).

Declaration of intellectual independence The most important aspect of the Transcendentalism is that it is a declaration of intellectual independence from Europe. At the time, Transcendentalists felt that American intellectuals were far too reliant on English literature and culture. Similar to the ways in which the Declaration of Independence declares the separation of the United States from Britain, the movement promotes an intellectual separation from England. This is particularly true in The American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

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Transcendentalists opposed following tradition just because it is tradition. They will set the ground for other movements such as the abolitionists.

Rebellion with conservative roots In the text The Genesis of Boston, the author argues that “Historically, Boston proved itself to be revolutionary, though in a curiously conservative way.” This will be a theme to remember in the upcoming weeks. For example, we have seen that

• Bostonians favor education of women but oppose women’s rights at the same time. • They want to reform religion, but do so within the confine of religion itself • They reproduce what they love from England but with an American twist • They give a spin to school while keeping the structures that they had seen before • However this allows their movements to be more powerful and legitimate to some extent.

They are pushing boundaries, while justifying them by their continuity with the past.

Abolitionism One of the movements that come out of the radicalism in Boston is abolitionism.

Before we start though, I would like to make some distinctions in vocabulary. Do you know what the difference is between slavery and indentured servitude? • Slavery is based on race, it is an hereditary condition since the 1660s through the mother’s

line. If your mother is a slave, you are a slave, no matter who your father is. • Indentured servants could be of any race. They are bound by a limited-term contract, and

once the contract is over or once the person paid back their transportation and living expenses in full, they regain their freedom

• I would like to caution you about the myth of Irish slavery. There is a long held myth that the Irish came as slaves to the United States. Although the Irish suffered greatly through their migration to the United States, they were indentured servants, and not slaves. In this sense, one cannot compare the lot of the Irish who were indentured servants to the fate of Africans who were enslaved.

I would also like to make a distinction between abolitionist and antislavery. The two philosophies appear at the same time and coexisted in the minds of some people. • Anti-slavery is the opposition to the expansion of slavery and its influence over the

government and civil life. Someone like Abraham Lincoln for example was anti-slavery but not abolitionist. He wanted to stop the expansion of slavery but was perfectly fine with it existing in the South of the United States.

• Abolitionism, however, promotes the complete abolition of slavery as a system and the immediate emancipation of all slaves. That means that once the abolition is done, slaves become free people and acquire rights that their white peers have.

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Abolitionism around the world Abolitionism was not created in the United States. Already in the Middle Ages, King Louis X of France had published a decree which proclaimed that France signified Freedom. In the decree, the king stated that anyone who set foot in France was to be freed, notwithstanding their origin or condition. Despite the decree in the metropole, France’s colonies, especially in the Caribbean and Louisiana, after the colonization were slave colonies.

England had a similar policy. In 1569, a court case involved a person who had brought a slave from Russia. The court ruled that since slavery had never been established officially in England, the court could not recognize slavery. In the same way, Lord Chief Justice John Holt ruled that a slave became free if they set foot in England, like in France.

In Massachusetts, slaves sued their masters for their freedom early on. However, the idea of a cohesive abolition movement only appeared during the Enlightenment (1715-1789). This period coincided with the creation of the United States as a nation.

Abolitionism in the United States The first group to oppose Slavery in the United States were the Mennonites of Germantown Pennsylvania. The Mennonites are a ethno-religious group who were of German and Dutch descent. A number of them came to America to avoid persecution in Europe, and established themselves in Pennsylvania.

The Mennonites opposed slavery from a religious stand point. They used the Bible's Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” in order to justify their opposition to slavery.

The Quakers who also came to Pennsylvania, shared similar beliefs. A number of them petitioned the Dublin Quaker Meeting in 1688, stating the Golden Rule as a way to justify their position. The petition is very unconventional and avoids most of the standard expected pieces in a Quaker document of the time (no reference to Jesus or God, no salutation to fellow Quakers, etc).

The document argues that every human, regardless of belief, color, or ethnicity, has rights that should not be violated. It is the first time in US history that a group proposes the idea that universal rights should be applied to all humans, not only to those whom they consider civilized.

Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage In 1775, the Quakers founded the first abolition society in Philadelphia. After 1785, Benjamin Franklin was elected president of the organization. The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage was an integrated organization which included both Black and white members.

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After the Revolution, more people feel that slavery is incompatible with the ideas put forth during the conflict (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness). Vermont abolished slavery in 1777. Pennsylvania in 1780. Massachusetts followed in 1783 after the case of Quock Walker.

The Revolution triggered a debate around the legality of slavery nationwide. As a result, the Founding Fathers agreed to permit the trade for 20 years at the minimum. All states had to pass laws that abolished or limited international slave trade. Northwest Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery in the territories northwest of the Ohio river. New York State abolished slavery progressively starting in 1799.

Jefferson, who was a slave holder, denounced slavery during his presidency. The slave trade was officially banned in 1808 but nothing was done to ban local or interstate slave trade. From that point on, the Mason Dixon line served as a division in the nation, but the debate was far from settled. It became even more heated as the country expanded West.

Compromise of 1820 Since most people who explored the West do so in a horizontal fashion (for example, someone from North Carolina might explore toward Tennessee or Arkansas and someone from Massachusetts toward Michigan or Ohio), states which were created in the Northwest (Ohio 1803, Indiana 1816, and Illinois 1818) are created prohibiting slavery. The states created in the Southwest (Kentucky 1792, Mississippi, 1817, Alabama 1819) allowed slavery. Since the federal government sought to keep a balance between slave and non-slave states, the administrations in place admitted states in pairs (1 slave, 1 non-slave).

The number of states had remained fairly equal, where one state was admitted as a slave state, one was admitted as a free state. Remember that the U.S. Constitution had two provisions to balance the amount of power that the slave and free states held in the government. Every state had/has two senators. If states are admitted as pairs, the balance of power is respected. The second provision, the ⅗ clause corrected the number of representatives per state and the amount of taxes to be levied, by counting slaves as ⅗ of a person.

At the time of Missouri’s admission as a slave state, debates were raging in Congress. The House was mainly anti-slavery. The senate was blocking a restricted-slavery statehood. However, they found a quick solution to their problem. At the time, the district of Maine petitioned for statehood. Until then, Maine had been part of Massachusetts. Congress thought that admitting Maine as a state would kill 2 birds with one stone. 1) Maine would see its petition fulfilled and become a state. 2) Admitting Maine as a free state could be the condition to the admission of Missouri as a slave state.

Senator Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois, however, added a clause as a compromise. The Compromise would guarantee that slavery would be permitted south of the 36° 30’ parallel, and would be illegal north of the parallel. Although they felt that the compromise would calm the passions, it instead inflamed them.

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With the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Witney, slavery increased. However, since the trade is prohibited after 1808 and that slavery is now an hereditary condition, slave holders used reproduction to increase the number of slaves that they held.

With the decline in conditions, a number of slaves fled to the North to protect themselves and their families. Once established in Northern cities, they influenced white liberals, mostly of the middle class, who were sympathetic to the plight of the slaves.

David Walker was one of them He was born a free person in the Cape Fear area of North Carolina. His mother was free, but his father had been enslaved. Despite the fact that he was free, he was aware of slavery around him. As a young adult he moved to South Carolina, where a large number of free Blacks had established themselves. He moved to Philadelphia then to Boston in 1825. He became a used clothing store owner in the City Market. He then owned a clothing store on Brattle Street near the wharfs.

Walker became quickly involved with the Black Brahmins. He was involved with the Prince Hall Freemasonry which formed 1780 to fight against discrimination against Blacks. He was one of the founders of the Massachusetts General Colored Association who was opposed to the colonization efforts in Africa (I will develop this in a few minutes). At the time when Walker moved to Boston, Black Bostonians had become more and more radicalized about slavery and more active in their community. Between 1827 and 1829, David Walker became the subscription agent and a writer for the first Black newspaper in the US, the New York City Freedom’s Journal. By the end of 1828, he was speaking publicly against slavery.

In September 1829, he published his appeal entitled Walker's Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America, Written in Boston, State of Massachusetts, September 28, 1829. (Yes, that is the whole title of his Appeal!)

Appeal The purpose of Walker’s Appeal is to engage Black readers into fighting their oppression, regardless of the risk to themselves or to their families. In addition, the appeal speaks to white readers in hope that they will realize that slavery is a moral and religious failure.

The appeal addresses 3 core issues. • It addresses racism. Specifically, it targets groups like the Americanization Society which

hoped to deport all African Americans to Liberia. The Society founded in 1816 in order to support the migration of free Black Americans to colony of Liberia (1821-1822). The idea was that Free Blacks were “causing issues” in the United States (as we know, this stemmed from prejudice against African Americans). People at the time saw Free folks as morally lax 
 -> one of the way to protect the institution of slavery was to dehumanize African American and make them appear as savages who needed the white planters to become more civilized.

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They also depicted them as having a tendency toward criminality, as being mentally inferior, incapable of citizenship and of real improvement, and as being a threat to working-class jobs. For that reason, sending them elsewhere would solve the issue. They also felt that the location was logical since all African Americans ultimately came from Africa hence they saw them as “going back home.” In his appeal Walker challenges these assumptions and the racism that was the basis of it.

• Second, Walker fights for equal rights. This is fairly self-explanatory. Walker wants Black people to have the same rights as white people. Don’t forget that naturalization is still only possible for white people at the time. Black men can only vote in a limited capacity if they can vote at all. (They can vote in Massachusetts if they fulfill the requirements set forth by the state, i.e. property, poll tax, residence, etc).

• Walker finally is one of the first people who talked about the detrimental effect of slavery on Black people. He challenged the idea that Black people are morally deficient and unable to resist their savage urges by blaming slavery as the root of Black people’s behaviors. He argues, that the unequal treatment, let alone physical violence, led to the behavior which ultimately led to the prejudice.

Call to action Overall the Appeal is a call to action. It was a call to resistance against slavery, a call to uplift the race, to show that free Blacks are moral, religious individuals who, if educated, will do great things. In this sense, the appeal also pushes for the education and the practice of religion in Black community.

Walker distributed his pamphlet through Black community networks along the Atlantic coast, which included free and enslaved Black Civil Rights activists, laborers, Black church and revivalist networks, contacts with free black benevolent societies, and “maroon communities”.

The response to the pamphlet was, as you can imagine, vitriolic. Southerners attempted to prevent the pamphlet from reaching their homes. They tempered with the mail. They prevented Black sailors from disembarking in ports (in Savannah for example). They labeled it as seditious and fined people who distributed it. They took out contracts for his capture, offering $10,000 for him alive, $1,000 for him dead. His message was considered to be too radical, even among abolitionists

However, it had a great influence on Boston’s Abolitionists and the pamphlet radicalized a number of them. The Boston Evening Trasncript reported that the pamphlet was really well received in the Boston Black community. After reading the pamphlet, William Lloyd Garrison became even more active as an abolitionist.

William Lloyd Garrison He was born in Newburyport Massachusetts and was the son of immigrants who had come from New Brunswick (Canada). His father had become destitute during the Embargo of 1807 and left the family in 1808. His mother raised him but died in 1823 in Springfield, MA. At age 13,

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Garrison started working as an apprentice compositor for the Newburyport Herald. He started writing his own articles soon after he became an apprentice. In 1826, he bought his own newspaper with friend Isaac Knapp. In 1828, he was appointed editor of the National Philanthropist in Boston, which was a temperance journal. At age 25, he joined the anti-slavery movement. He had read the book called Letters on Slavery by Reverend John Rankin which attracted him to the cause. He became associated with the American Colonization Society but left quickly once he realized what the mission of the organization truly was.

Garrison began writing in the Genius of Universal Emancipation which was a Quaker newspaper published in Baltimore. In the Genius, he introduced the “Black list” where he reported what he considered to be the “barbarities of slavery — kidnappings, whippings, murders.” He was sued, found guilty of libel, and fined several times. Since he refused to pay the fines, he was sent to jail for 6 months, but was released after 7 weeks, when a philanthropist who supported the anti- slavery cause paid the fine for him. In 1831, he returned to Boston to found The Liberator.

The Liberator In the first issue he wrote:

“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen;—but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch— and I will be heard. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.”

By 1832, he founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833, he was instrumental in founding the American Anti-Slavery Society. His presence, however, was challenging to many pro-slavery people. He received threats against his organization, mobs tried to break the meetings, they assaulted lecturers, broke into their offices to ransack them, and even burned postal bags which contained their pamphlets. They also put a contract on his head. In 1835, a mob of thousands of people gathered around his office in Boston. He had agreed to meet with the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society at the time. When the mayor tried to help him escape (through a back window), the mob caught him, tied him around the waist, and brought him to the Common. They called for tar and feathers. The mayor arrested him to put him in protective custody for his own protection.

Women and the abolitionist movement One of the important aspects of Garrison’s activism is that he gave a space to women to speak against slavery. As I mentioned a few times already, women were not supposed to take an active role in the political life. But Garrison saw something that most did not want to see. Since women

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were supposed to be the custodians of morality, why would they not speak up on a question of morality such as slavery? This participation, ultimately gave women a platform from which to speak about rights (their rights and the rights of others). It also gave them a political voice despite their lack of political rights.

Wendell Phillips Following Garrison’s lead, some Bostonians became even more radical than Garrison was. Wendell Phillips, for example, was one of them. He was born in Boston to a Brahmin family. His father, John Phillips was a wealthy lawyer, and the first mayor of Boston. In 1822, the city revised the city charter and changed from the board of selectmen to a mayoral system. Wendell had attended Boston Latin School, then Harvard (graduated in 1831), and then Harvard Law School (1833). He was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1834 and opened his own law practice in the city. Phillips had seen the events which almost led to the lynching of Garrison. He was converted to abolitionism in 1836. He decided to stop practicing law, instead dedicating himself to the movement.

He joined the American Anti-Slavery Society, and spoke at the different meetings. He adopted a life-style compatible with his beliefs. He did not eat anything that had cane sugar in it, did not wear cotton, and participated in the Free produce Movement. The Free Produce Movement boycotted the use of goods produced by slave labor (cotton, sugar, etc).

Wendell also argued for secession. He felt that if slavery was not going to be abolished, the North should secede from the United States, in order to protect its own morality. He said:

“The experience of the fifty years ... shows us the slaves trebling in numbers – slaveholders monopolizing the offices and dictating the policy of the Government – prostituting the strength and influence of the Nation to the support of slavery here and elsewhere – trampling on the rights of the free States, and making the courts of the country their tools. To continue this disastrous alliance longer is madness. The trial of fifty years only proves that it is impossible for free and slave States to unite on any terms, without all becoming partners in the guilt and responsible for the sin of slavery. Why prolong the experiment? Let every honest man join in the outcry of the American Anti-Slavery Society.”

Underground Railroad One of the major achievements of the abolitionist movement is of course the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was a network of safe houses by which slaves could escape to go to Canada which was a British colony (hence did not have slavery at the time). Under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, slave holders were guaranteed a right to recover an escaped slave. The federal act forced officials to assist slaveholders or their agents in recapturing slaves notwithstanding if slavery was legal or not in their state. Some states ignored the law but depending on who controlled the judicial system, they could be required to help. The Underground Railroad went against that idea by creating a series of mechanisms to help runaway

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slaves. Because of its port, Boston was one of the points on the railroad. People came by ship from ports in Virginia, then went from Boston to Fitchburg MA, then through New Hampshire, Vermont, all the way to Canada. A number also sailed from Boston to the Maritimes (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and PEI). The Underground railroad proved to become even more important after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 Passed by United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. Abolitionists nicknamed it the "Bloodhound Law" for the dogs that were used to track down runaway slaves. As with the previous act, law enforcement and others in non-slave states had the obligation to support the slave owner efforts in capturing runaway slaves. Under the law, officials who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave, could be fined $1000 (about $29,000 in present-day value). Law- enforcement officials had to arrest people suspected of being a runaway slave on as little as an owner’s sworn testimony of ownership. The suspected slave could not ask for a jury trial or testify on his or her own behalf. In addition, people aiding and abetting a runaway slave by providing food or shelter were subject to six months' imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. Officers who captured a fugitive slave were entitled to a bonus or promotion for their work.

Women’s Rights To finish, I would like to come back to the question of women’s rights. The abolitionist movement had one advantage for women. It had given them a platform to demand their rights and privileges. After the Anti-Slavery conference in London, women, who had been refused the right to speak in public, were galvanized and ready to ask for their own rights. You probably have already heard of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony. They are associated with the suffrage movement and the Senecal Falls Convention.

Lucretia Mott Mott in particular had a Massachusetts start. She was born in Nantucket, MA to a Brahmin family (Coffin). At age 13 she was sent to the Nine Partners School which was run by the Quakers. She joined the different abolitionist societies and women’s rights movement and attended the conference in London. She met William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips there. When she returned to the United States from London, she went on a speaking tour which included lectures in Boston. She became a member of the New England Non-Resistance Society, a peace convention that William Lloyd Garrison formed in September 1838. Another important figure of both the abolitionist movement in Boston is Lucy Stone.

Lucy Stone Stone was born in 1818 (she is of a younger generation than Mott). At age 16 she began to teach like many women did and realized that she was paid less than her male counterparts. Lower pay for women was one of the arguments cited by those promoting the hiring of women as teachers: “To make education universal, it must be at moderate expense, and women can afford to teach

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for one-half, or even less, the salary which men would ask.” She became an abolitionist after reading materials from William Lloyd Garrison in the antislavery papers. In 1847, she became the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree. She enrolled at Mount Holyoke at age 21 (1839) but was disappointed in Mary Lyons’ stance on Slavey and women’s rights. She left, enrolled at Wesleyan Academy (now called Wilbraham & Monson Academy). She was almost thrown out of the academy for her anti-slavery views. She left in 1841 and enrolled at Oberlin College.

After college, she became a lecturing agent hired by different organization. She was in particular hired by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery society in June 1848. From that point on, she became more involved in the Women’s movement and the anti-slavery/abolitionist movement. What is most interesting about her is that she was a total radical. For example, she was the first woman to keep her own name instead of taking her husband’s name as was the custom. She also attempted to reform the dress of the time (she wore bloomers instead of a dress for its comfort).

The Reform Movement Abolitionism and the women’s movement created the foundations for what would become the reform movement that we will see in the upcoming weeks.

Discussion Questions For this week, I would like you to think about the how these questions played in Boston’s intellectual life. I give you a choice to read either Boston, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, or On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau. I want you to think about how those texts come out of the radical tradition that we see emerging in Boston at the time. You will see the questions that I propose in the discussion forum.