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1845
and 1848: Abby
Kelley Foster Lectures in Harrisburg
1845,
April 2-3 A delegation of American Antislavery
Society speakers, including Abby Kelley (later Abby Kelly Foster)
and Jane Elizabeth Hitchcock, speak at the Courthouse in Harrisburg. A
Philadelphia correspondent reports that they lectured to large
audiences, "many of whom were ladies." Unfortunately
the lectures were marred by pro-slavery activists who "raised
false alarms of fire," heckled the speakers, and showered
the group with eggs. The women were also threatened with
tar and feathers, and duckings. ("Mobocracy in Harrisburg,"
Carlisle Herald & Expositor, 9 April 1845; "Mobocratic
Interruptions," The
Liberator, 25 April 1845)
1848,
March Female abolitionist Abby Kelley Foster lectures
in Harrisburg. This is her second appearance in Harrisburg
(see 1845, April). Foster,
a forceful and dynamic speaker, convinced many women that they
could have an active, vocal role in social change. The
Philadelphia U.S. Gazette belittled Foster's Harrisburg
appearance by noting "We wonder if she knows how to broil
a steak or knit stockings."
By
the late 1840's, Harrisburg was attracting regular speakers in support
of abolitionist doctrine. For more than ten years the town
had supported a small but active Anti-Slavery Society, and the Pennsylvania
Anti-Slavery Society, with high profile members Robert Purvis, Lucretia
Mott and Miller McKim had been organized here. While the leaders
of Harrisburg's African American community and a few white abolitionists,
such as the Rutherford and Graydon families and Church of God minister
John Winebrenner supported these speakers, most of the local citizenry
was apathetic or even outright hostile to these events.
An
1845 visit from four abolitionist speakers, including the dynamic Abby
Kelly, received an unkind welcome from a large crowd of Harrisburg
rowdies. As reported in the Carlisle Herald:
Mobocracy
in Harrisburg
Miss Abby Kelly, the well known Abolition lecturer, accompanied by
a party of her friends, has been holding a series of meetings in
Harrisburg. On Wednesday and Thursday evenings last, while she was
lecturing in the Court House, a disgraceful assault was made upon
the party by some disorderly persons, who commenced throwing eggs,
and in various ways disturbed the meeting. Proceedings of this kind
are disgraceful to the capital of the State, and most dishonorable
to the character of those engaged in them.
In
1847 Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison spoke at the courthouse,
but a rowdy crowd
outside of the building disrupted the event by throwing firecrackers,
rotten eggs, and bricks. Abolitionist Abby Kelley Foster faced
an even larger challenge, not only because of the strong societal
taboo against female speakers, but also because she advocated equal
rights
for African Americans and women, a view many abolitionists were not
yet ready to embrace.
The North Star,
Frederick Douglass' newspaper, supported Foster and her equal rights
views, and
defended her right as a woman to speak out and to become politically
and socially involved. When the Philadelphia newspaper U.S.
Gazette made the following scathing mention of Foster's activity, The
North Star reprinted it:
"Abby
Kelley has been lecturing in Harrisburgh on abolition. We wonder
if she knows how to broil a steak or knit stockings." In
reply, The North Star said
We
have ever noticed that when a female gives evidence of a superior mental
cultivation--that
she had lived to some purpose, above and beyond the everyday animal
routine of menial duties--that she aspired to drink of the fountain
of knowledge--to take the place in the scale of intellectual being,
which it was designed by her Creator that she should till, she is
met with sneers like the above from the "lords of creation." ...When
we hear of the eloquence, the learning, the statesmanship, of
a distinguished man, who
ever thinks of asking, Can he hold a plough? Can he saw
wood? Can he drive a team? Can he plant potatoes,
or hoe corn? Oh no! it is assumed to be the natural
position of man to triumph in the conflict of mind; to him is
assigned an exclusive monopoly of the deep treasures of learning;
eloquence is his birthright, and fame his just reward. But
whenever one of the other sex ventures beyond the sphere assigned
for the mass--whenever she displays natural talents highly cultivated,
and the gifts which God has bestowed upon her improved, enlarged,
elevated--it is received as something what ought to be frowned
upon--as an assumption of prerogatives belonging not to her. But
this feeling is wearing away with the progress of society--with
a juster appreciation of woman's duties, and their influence
upon all the relations of life."
While
many abolitionists looked only to the end of slavery, Foster, Douglass,
and others were looking beyond
that issue. They saw how the rights
of African Americans and the rights of women were not inseparable, and
that the question was not really about the legitimacy of slavery, but
about whether basic human rights were applicable to all.
Sources
Carlisle
Herald and Expositor, 9 April 1845
North
Star (Rochester,
NY), 17 March 1848.
Learn More
For
more on Abby Kelley Foster, see http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/pwwmh/ma42.htm |
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