American Experience; The Abolitionists; Interview with Julie Roy Jeffrey, part 5 of 5

So, you know, there's this glorious aspect to her rebelliousness, and how does it, what happens to that? Oh, I want to say something else, okay. I want to say something about a little bit more about women in the cause. Sure. Okay, because I didn't have an opportunity. Although, when Angelina Grimke came north and started her lecturing, throughout New England, women were just beginning their participation. I think it's very important to realize how significant women were in supporting abolitionism over the long haul. I believe that women were the great silent army of abolitionism. That's actually a quote from Frederick Douglass. Women became the major fundraisers for what was a very radical and unpopular movement. Two blacks were the original subscribers to Garrison's newspaper, but Garrison depended more and more as time went on on the fundraising efforts of the Boston Female Andy Slavery Society

that hosted a very, very major fair or sale every year. Women in Rochester raised money to support Frederick Douglass's newspaper. Women's fundraising efforts supported lectures, publication of books and tracks, trips for abolitionists to go abroad where they did more fundraising. They were absolutely essential to the financial health of the movement that had no rich men for the most part, supporting it. So this grassroots financial support was very, very important. The area in which women were very significant in terms of their contribution was in the great petition movements. There were many, many petitions sent to Congress and to state legislatures that protested a variety of things. Let's go back to the postal campaign, because then we'll get the petition campaign reaction.

So what role did women play in the postal campaign specifically first? Were they actually kind of putting these things together, and were they physically involved in that campaign? Well, I'm not sure actually, but then that triggers the gag rule. Yes, the postal campaign triggered the gag rule, which was one of the causes for which women gathered signatures, that is the gathered signatures to overturn the gag rule. Women gathered petition signatures to overthrow discriminatory laws on the state level. They collected signatures to encourage Congress and the slave trade in Washington, DC. Women probably passed out, more petitions collected, more signatures than men did, partly because women had the leisure. But we should also remember that every time a woman took a petition around, they had

to be ready to explain why it was necessary to sign that petition. And this was one means of political education for women, that they learned about slavery at the national and state level, and they learned about the legal apparatus of slavery, and they learned about current events, and they learned how to make the anti-slavery cases, a case to other people as well. And so this was an enormous area in which women made a great contribution to activism, where they educated themselves on important issues, and where they entered a public space talking about a public question. And many people in the 1830s and 1840s and 1850s believed that women should not enter public spaces and they should not talk about these questions. And the, you know, I get the impression that the women's rights movement, sometimes people

trace it back to the abolition movement because some of the high profile leaders had started their careers in there. But it seems that there's also this kind of ground swell effect that people that we don't necessarily hear about, it wasn't just the high profile leaders, but an awful lot of women got a political education or at least a feel for what. To be an abolitionist woman was to be a radical woman because it meant that you were throwing off many of the prescriptions about appropriate gender behavior, and it meant that you were involving yourself in a public question that some believed belonged only to men. And although some abolitionist women did go on to become supporters of the women's rights movement, I think it's important to recognize that those who did not were very radical in their own way.

They might not be pressing for the vote, but they were pressing for the right of women to have a view and a voice on important political questions. And I'll get you to kind of touch on that again, because you did a nice thing in your book about moderate, the idea of a moderate abolitionist is kind of an oxymoron. Yes. There's no such thing as a moderate abolitionist. Anyone who proposes doing away with one of the central institutions of American society is by definition a radical. And beyond that, women were particularly radical because they were not just proposing the elimination of a central institution of American society with all the economic, social, and political implications that that had. But they were also proposing a different role for themselves as women. They were proposing a role for themselves that suggested they had every right to talk about this issue in private and in public, and more than talk about it, they had every

right to do something about it. Great. Can I ask you just one more question about the aftermath of Pennsylvania Hall that she has this, she seems, if anything, to be becoming more and more confident and rebellious with her advocacy of more and more causes and the way she put on her wedding, I guess I hadn't heard that there may have been an element of emotional frailty in there or whatever word you want to use, that where do you see that, where does that come from? Well, Angelina seems to have had the kind of obsessive nature, that is, she was obsessed with certain kinds of issues and questions.

She was obsessed by the need to reject worldliness. She was obsessed by the idea of having a marital relationship that was on a kind of elevated level and that did not allow a kind of worldly love or sexual love to take away from interest in the greater spiritual things of life. She was a woman that I don't think was entirely at ease with herself. It's interesting when she was on her lecturing tour, initially she was very apprehensive every time she spoke in public and some of that wore away as she was more and more successful, but you have the feeling that she was never a person who was what you call a relaxed and

confident person deep inside. That's interesting. She ever reappeared? I think she does much later. But not again in any very significant way. I forget exactly in the 50s or during the Civil War she emerges, but I am not sure what way. Okay, great. And what was her place in our history? Her place in our history is that she not only spoke out fearlessly and from first-hand knowledge against slavery, but that she legitimized what women were already doing. That is accepting that it was their moral duty to fight against slavery, accepting the idea

that they were citizens and had a right to speak on political issues and that they had some political responsibilities, that is petitioning, that she legitimized these and insisted upon them in the most public way. Great. Could you just say Angelina Grimpley's place in history? Actually, if you wouldn't mind in the answer again because it was nice. Oh, let's see. Angelina Grimpley's place in history is that she was a woman who became an outspoken leader in the anti-slavery movement. She was the first woman to gain notoriety or fame for speaking out against slavery. She was also important because she legitimized what was already going on at the local level. That is women beginning to organize, to be active in anti-slavery, to arguing that it was

their moral duty to embrace the abolitionist's cause. And she justified and extended her discussion of women's roles in abolitionism at a very high and public level. Thank you. So the last thing we need to do is just have it sit still for 15 seconds or so to record some room tone. Is there anything that we left out that you wanted to add?