The Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society (founded 1837) was a female abolitionist organisation in Concord, Massachusetts, in the mid 19th century. This society was a significant influence on Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Louisa May Alcott.
Concord, Massachusetts The town of Concord, Massachusetts, was founded in 1635 by a group of English settlers, with the help of their slaves to build the foundation of the town.Elise Virginia Lemire, Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts, (Philadelphia: University Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 24. During the early 1830s Concord, like most other cities in North America, was largely pro-slavery with only a small amount of the 2000-person population in support of abolitionism.Sandra Herbert Petrulionis, “Swelling That Great Tide of Humanity’: The Concord, Massachusetts, Female Anti-Slavery Society,” The New England Quarterly 74, no. 3 (2001): 391. By 1839 Massachusetts hosted over 240 local anti-slavery societies, despite Concord having no official abolitionist efforts before 1833.Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, To Set This World Right: The Antislavery Movement in Thoreau's Concord, (Cornell University Press, 2018), 9-10. The black population of Concord never rose above 3% (Lemire, 9) and was estimated to be only 1% in the early 1830s.Petrulionis, To Set This World Right, 11.
In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law was introduced, requiring that escaped slaves be returned to their masters.Petrulionis, "Swelling That Great Tide of Humanity," 395-6 The law still applied to slaves who were in a ‘free state'. This Law saw an increase in support for abolitionism. Many Concord residents housed and provided support to fugitive slaves. A Concord local, Ann Bigelow stated that fugitive slaves were being hidden nearly every week during the 1850s. Abby and Amos Alcott (parents of Louisa May Alcott) as well as the Thoreau and Brooks' households assisted in housing fugitive slaves.
Emergence of abolitionism The Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society (CFASS) was founded officially in 1837, however there is a longer history to abolitionism in Massachusetts.“LADIES' ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY OF CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS, RECORDS, 1853-1864.” Concord Free Public Library, accessed October 20, 2022: 1 A man who went by the name "Felix", possibly an enslaved person working for Mary and Abia Holbrook, was the first black individual to successfully lobby the local government in Boston to question slavery in Massachusetts and in the country.Chernoh M. Sesay Jr. “The Revolutionary Black Roots of Slavery's Abolition in Massachusetts.” The New England Quarterly, no. 1 (2014): 99-100 In 1773, Felix's petition was printed in "The Appendix; Or, Some Observations on the Expediency of the Petitions of the Africans, living in Boston". The Petition of 6 January 1773 was called by Felix a "humble petition" which confronted executive and legislative bodies in Boston, and he put forward the petition on behalf of enslaved people living in Boston and "other towns".Sesay Jr. "The Revolutionary Black Roots," 100 This petition brought attention to abolitionism which eventually manifested in more abolitionist movements in Massachusetts and slavery's abolition in December 1865.Sesay Jr. “The Revolutionary Black Roots," 130. The conditions for activism and social change became stronger with the colonist's escalating conflict with England during the 1770s, combined with the cumulative frustration of enslaved people as slavery had expanded in Massachusetts between the 1720s and 1760s.Sesay Jr. “The Revolutionary Black Roots," 102. Throughout the 1770s activism took more footholds in society as enslaved and free black Americans along with white abolitionists started petitions, asserted their rights and defined their conditions, wrote letters and enacted change and traction regarding abolition. By 1775 The African Lodge, a branch of Freemasonry established by Prince Hall and 14 other free black men became the oldest black institution in America. In 1829 The African Lodge aided the black activist David Walker in while he was living in Boston, Massachusetts. This is where he published his "An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World", which called for black unity, equality and the fight against slavery.Peter P. Hinks. “John Marrant and the Meaning of Early Black Freemasonry.” The William and Mary Quarterly 64, no. 1 (2007): 106 This document was critical to the anti-slavery, abolitionist and black empowerment movement in Massachusetts and in America. The CFASS was founded seven years after Walker's Appeal.
Women in abolitionism For women, abolitionism was a religious issue, and their involvement was based within the traditional view of women as more pious and responsible as moral arbiters.Julie Roy Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Anti-Slavery Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 54, 68-69. Female abolitionists saw slavery as "a sin that, as women, they had a moral and religious duty to eradicate.Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, “Swelling That Great Tide of Humanity’: The Concord, Massachusetts, Female Anti-Slavery Society,” The New England Quarterly 74, no. 3 (2001): 389-390. The Evangelical Revivalism of the 2nd Great Awakening saw people as capable of working for their own salvation, and the "moral perfection" of society.Elizabeth J. Clapp, “Introduction,” In Women, Dissent, and Anti-Slavery in Britain and America, 1790-1865, ed. Elizabeth J. Clapp and Julie Roy Jeffrey. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 13-14. Abolitionism was one of many social reform movements that emerged out of this, in which women had prominent roles.Clapp, “Introduction,” 14. Women's public abolitionism was controversial, and the General Association of Massachusetts Congregational Churches criticised their involvement as "obtrusive and ostentatious."Clapp, “Introduction,” 1-2. Mary Brooks saw abolitionism as a religious issue, stating in 1843 that the founding of the society would help turn "our world of sin and misery into a world of purity, holiness, and happiness."
The Concord Freeman encouraged women's involvement in abolitionism as men had "faltered... in their duty."Petrulionis, “Swelling That Great Tide of Humanity," 389. Mary Brooks echoed this, stating that God "had placed this cause... in the hands of women."Robert A. Gross, “Helen Thoreau's Antislavery Scrapbook,” The Yale Review 100, no. 1 (2012): 113. Women's involvement, due to their perceived virtue, helped legitimise abolitionism.Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army, 54. Women's involvement also turned abolitionism into a mass movement.Margaret M.R. Kellow, “Women and Abolitionism in the United States: Recent Historiography: Women and Abolitionism in the United States,” History Compass 11, no. 11 (2013): 1012. In 1837 and 1838, 340 women signed memorials to congress against slavery compared with 130 men.
The abolitionist movement served as a way for women to overcome the social obstacles that saw women's roles as domestic.Stacey Robertson, "7- 'On the Side of Righteousness': Women, the Church, and Abolition," in Women, Dissent, and Anti-Slavery in Britain and America, 1790-1865, edited by Elizabeth J. Clapp & Julie Roy Jeffrey,(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 155-174. Abolitionism justified a political identity through the language of female religious duty.
Activities Robert Gross states that women were "the foot soldiers of reform," in abolitionism.Robert A. Gross, Transcendentalists and Their World, (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2021), 513. Women sponsored speakers, disseminated anti-slavery publications, and engaged in petitioning. They hosted fairs that turned their domestic work into abolitionist work, and raised funds for abolitionism.Petrulionis, “Swelling That Great Tide of Humanity," 392-393.Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army, 85-86. Women were also engaged with other anti-slavery organisations, and attended national anti-slavery conventions.Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army, 59-61, 76, 93-94. Some women, wrote for anti-slavery newspapers, often anonymously, the CFASS annual reports were also published in The Liberator.Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army, 76, 83.Petrulionis, “Swelling That Great Tide of Humanity," 391, 395.F.B. Sanborn, "A Concord Note-Book: The Women of Concord – IV. Mrs. Mary Merrick Brooks and the Anti-Slavery Movement," The Critic 48, iss. 5 (1906): 409. People in Concord also participated in the underground railroad.Petrulionis, “Swelling That Great Tide of Humanity," 401-403. During the Civil War they supported the war effort, and after the war they went "door to door" to get relief for the newly freed African American population.Petrulionis, “Swelling That Great Tide of Humanity," 417.
History
In 1837 abolitionists Angelina and Sarah Grimké visited Concord and lectured at the Trinitarian Parish of Reverend Wilder, creating interest for abolitionism at Concord.Petrulionis, "Swelling That Great Tide of Humanity," 388-389. On October 18, 1837, 61 women gathered together to found the CFASS.Petrulionis, "Swelling That Great Tide of Humanity," 387-388. Mary Wilder, the wife of Reverend Wilder, was elected president, Helen Thoreau, the sister of Henry Thoreau, was elected vice president, and Mary Merrick Brooks was elected secretary and treasurer.Petrulionis, "Swelling That Great Tide of Humanity," 387.Gross, "Helen Thoreau's," 105. Mary Brooks remembered the founding as "an event noticed but little by the inhabitants of the town, or noticed but to be ridiculed; nevertheless an event which is destined to have an immense bearing on the temporal and eternal interests of its founders, and do not a little towards swelling that great tide of humanity, which is finally to turn our world of sin and misery into a world of purity, holiness, and happiness."
Between 1837 and 1839 the CFASS participated in the country-wide anti-slavery petitioning drive.Gross, Transcendentalists, 520-521. A petition opposing the annexation of Texas was signed by over half the women in Concord and a fifth of the men.Gross, Transcendentalists, 520. In 1838, 340 women and 130 men put their names on memorials to congress against slavery.
In 1837 Mary Brooks, the Wards, the Thoreau's and the Emerson's organised a public meeting in response to the Indian Removal Acts, in support of the Indians of Georgia.Gross, Transcendentalists, 523-525. Mary Brooks wrote to Angeline Grimké to urge her to speak out against it.Gross, Transcendentalists, 523. At the urging of Mary Brooks, Lidian Emerson and Prudence Ward, Waldo Emerson spoke at this event.Gross, Transcendentalists, 523-524.
In May 1838 Mary Brooks and her stepdaughter Caroline represented Concord at the second meeting of the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women.Gross, Transcendentalists, 517. In the same year Abolitionism in New England split as many abolitionists disagreed with Garrison's radicalism and the public involvement of women.Gross, Transcendentalists, 529-530. This split ended many female anti-slavery societies, the CFASS survived but in 1942 Maria Thoreau and others left the CFASS and started the Ladies' Emancipation Society.Gross, "Helen Thoreau's," 110-111.