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| Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women | |
|---|---|
| Name | Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women |
| Formation | 1837 |
| Founders | Lucretia Mott, Sarah Pugh, Margaretta Forten, Mary Grew |
| Dissolution | 1870s |
| Headquarters | Philadelphia |
| Purpose | Abolition of Slavery in the United States, women's rights advocacy |
Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women was an organization founded in 1837 to mobilize women in the northern United States for abolitionist action. Drawing from networks connected to Quakerism, Unitarianism, Methodism, and urban reform societies, it united activists from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York (state), Massachusetts, Ohio, and other northern states. The Convention served as a platform for coordination among women's auxiliaries to the American Anti-Slavery Society, local anti-slavery societies, and free Black organizations during the antebellum era.
The Convention emerged amid debates following the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 and schisms involving leaders such as William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Arthur Tappan, and Henry Highland Garnet. Influences included earlier female activism in the Female Anti-Slavery Society movement, the Philadelphia-based Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, and influential figures like Lucretia Mott, Hannah Clothier Hull, Sarah Grimké, and Angelina Grimké. The 1830s reform environment—populated by Temperance Movement organizers, Abolitionist newspapers like The Liberator (newspaper), and philanthropic institutions such as Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society—provided the social infrastructure that enabled the Convention's founding.
The Convention combined delegates from city societies, county auxiliaries, and state-level associations drawn from urban centers such as Philadelphia, Boston, New York City, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Providence, Rhode Island. Leadership included prominent activists who were also associated with institutions such as Swarthmore College-connected Quaker families, Branch Hall-affiliated meetinghouses, and abolitionist lecture circuits featuring speakers like William Lloyd Garrison, Lucretia Mott, Maria W. Stewart, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Membership encompassed women of varied backgrounds: free Black activists linked to the African Methodist Episcopal Church and families like the Forten family; white women from Quaker communities; and Radical Republicans’ allies during the later period. The Convention used committees—on "Ladies' Committees", "Education", "Petitions", and "Fundraising"—mirroring organizational models used by the American Anti-Slavery Society and the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.
Annual sessions and regional conferences convened delegates to coordinate petition drives, lecture tours, boycotts of goods produced by enslaved labor, and fundraising for legal defense and emancipation efforts. Notable meetings drew speakers such as Lucretia Mott, Margaretta Forten, Mary Grew, Sarah Pugh, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and visitors like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Activities included organizing petition campaigns to state legislatures and the United States Congress, distributing abolitionist pamphlets through networks that included The Liberator (newspaper), Garrisonian presses, and abolitionist bookstores in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City. The Convention also coordinated support for escape networks and legal challenges involving cases like those addressed by Salmon P. Chase and Lyman Trumbull-era antislavery legal advocates.
The Convention forged tactical alliances with the American Anti-Slavery Society, the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, African American organizations such as the Colored Conventions Movement, and sympathetic politicians in the prewar period including members of the Free Soil Party and later the Republican Party. It endorsed petitions for abolition, emancipation laws, and federal measures such as the positions debated around the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850. The Convention also engaged with contemporaneous reformers like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone on intersecting campaigns, while maintaining distinct organizational autonomy in its advocacy for women-led antislavery action.
Debates within the Convention reflected wider tensions in the abolitionist movement: conflicts over the role of women in public political speech pitted more radical advocates like Lucretia Mott and Sarah Grimké against cautious moderates connected to conservative Quaker circles. Racial tensions emerged between white and Black members over leadership roles and strategy, involving figures such as Margaretta Forten and Frederick Douglass in contested dialogues about suffrage, moral suasion, and direct political engagement. The Convention faced criticism from proslavery politicians in Southern United States legislatures and confrontations with anti-abolitionist mobs in northern cities tied to events like riots in Philadelphia and New York City. Schisms mirrored national splits within the American Anti-Slavery Society between Garrisonian radicals and institutional abolitionists like the Tappan brothers.
The Convention’s legacy persisted through its contributions to petition campaigns that pressured legislative debates leading into the Civil War and Reconstruction, influencing measures championed by figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Thaddeus Stevens, and Charles Sumner. Alumni and affiliates went on to shape suffrage movements, working with leaders like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth in postwar reform. The Convention’s model informed subsequent women’s organizing, paralleling structures in the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Equal Rights Association. Its archival traces survive in collections associated with institutions like the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and university repositories holding papers of activists including Lucretia Mott and Margaretta Forten Grimké. Scholars of antebellum reform link the Convention to broader currents represented by Second Great Awakening-era activism, the Underground Railroad, and the long-term struggle for civil rights culminating in twentieth-century movements such as the Civil Rights Movement and the push for equal voting rights.
Category:Abolitionism in the United States Category:Women's organizations based in the United States