Lucretia Mott

American social reformer

• Born: January 3, 1793
• Birthplace: Nantucket, Massachusetts
• Died: November 11, 1880
• Place of death: Near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

An eloquent advocate of the abolition of slavery and of equality for women, Mott devoted her life to working toward those goals and made a fundamental contribution to the eventual winning of woman suffrage.

Early Life

Lucretia Coffin was the daughter of the master of a whaling vessel. Her parents, Thomas and Anna Folger Coffin, were hardworking Quakers. Although public education was not available, Lucretia learned to read and write as a young child, probably attending Quaker schools. In 1804, Thomas Coffin, who had lost his ship, moved the family to Boston, where he became a successful merchant. Here the children could be educated, and when Lucretia showed particular talent, she was sent to Nine Partners Boarding School, a Quaker academy in southeastern New York. She became an academic success, met James Mott—her future husband—and got a lesson in discrimination when she discovered that James was paid five times as much as a woman with the same title at the school.

In 1809, the Coffin family moved to Philadelphia, and James Mott followed, taking a job in the family business. In 1811, James and Lucretia were married. They experienced several years of hard times because of the depression that followed the War of 1812, but eventually they settled in Philadelphia, where James established a successful business. Lucretia, despite having two small children, took a job teaching. Four more children followed, but Mott’s son Thomas died in 1817. As the children began to spend time at school and her husband prospered, Mott had time to read many books, including Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), which had a strong influence on her. Mott began to speak in Quaker meetings and during the early 1820’s was approved as a Quaker minister.

Life’s Work

For Lucretia Mott, faith was always important, and it led her to desire justice for all, including slaves and women. Although she always wanted to avoid controversy, when issues she cared about arose, she was often outspoken. During the early 1830’s, she befriended William Lloyd Garrison, a leading abolitionist who founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society. When women’s groups were called for, Mott helped found the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society and held some office for virtually every year of its existence. Mott was soon a leader in the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, and when its 1838 meeting was met by riots and arson in its meeting hall, it was the Mott home at which convention leaders reconvened.

Mott soon found equality an issue within the abolitionist movement. In 1838, the Massachusetts branch of the Anti-Slavery Society gave women the right to vote. A decision on the issue was blocked at a regional meeting, and a debate began at the 1839 national convention. After the five sessions adjourned without a decision, Garrison managed to get agreement that the organization’s roll would include all persons, but a number of leading abolitionists were opposed, maintaining that the organization was being diverted from the issue of slavery.

In 1840, the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society issued invitations for a world convention, and Mott was elected as one of the American delegates. The British group had indicated that women were not wanted, and Mott arrived to find that the credentials of female delegates were not being honored. Despite an angry debate, the decision stood, and Mott had to sit in the visitors’ gallery, where she was joined by Garrison and the other American delegates. Mott did not speak at the convention, preferring to defer to proper authority even when it was mistaken.

After the convention Mott traveled in Britain—it was her one trip abroad—and visited such luminaries as Harriet Martineau. In Scotland, it was suggested that she address the Glasgow Emancipation Society, but the directors demurred. The city’s Unitarian Church, however, welcomed her, and she gave her address there. During this trip, she also began a friendship with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, with whom she would fight discrimination against women. The two were close until Mott’s death in 1880.

Mott’s attitude about slavery was quite clear: It was unmitigated evil and should be ended forthwith. She rejected any idea of compensation for slave owners as adding to the immorality, and she urged abolitionist groups to stop debating the ethical and philosophical implications of the institution—for her, these were settled anyway—and stick to the practical question of ending it. She argued for “free produce”—that is, refusing to conduct any trade in goods produced by slaves—but northern economic interests in southern goods and commerce were too large for such a boycott to win many friends even among abolitionists. In theory, she rejected colonization and even flight as solutions to slavery because the numbers who escaped did not even equal the natural increase of the enslaved population. In practice, however, she supported the Underground Railroad, freely opening her home to fugitives. She was an active supporter of many escapees, including Henry “Box” Brown, who had himself nailed into a packing box and shipped to her friend Miller McKim.

During the early years of the 1840’s, Mott was often ill. Her husband, however, had become prosperous enough to give up his business so that the family could pursue other interests. The Mott home was known for its hospitality to its many guests, including Garrison, Theodore Parker, Frederick Douglass, and Sojourner Truth. As her health allowed, Mott continued her preaching, mostly at Quaker and Unitarian meetings. Having rejected orthodox Quaker theology in 1827, she faced charges of heresy as well as denunciations for daring, as a woman, to speak in church. Never ruffled, she spoke to hostile audiences—including slave owners—forthrightly and firmly.

Although she never gave up her work toward abolition, during the late 1840’s Mott became more and more involved in the crusade for women’s rights. In 1845, she made her first public call for woman suffrage in a speech to the Yearly Meeting of Ohio Quakers. Three years later, in an address to the American Anti-Slavery Society titled “The Law of Progress,” she lamented the lack of improvement in the condition of women. It was after this speech that Mott fell in with a suggestion by Elizabeth Cady Stanton that there should be a women’s rights convention.

The future stars of the women’s movement, Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, were virtually unknown, so the much better known Mott emerged as the person in the public eye at the first Woman’s Rights Convention, which met at Seneca Falls, New York, July 19 and 20, 1848. Mott and others drew up a Declaration of Sentiments modeled on the Declaration of Independence, but the women were so unsure of themselves that they asked James Mott to preside at their meeting. The convention then debated the declaration paragraph by paragraph, ultimately passing them all unanimously.

Mott had been somewhat reluctant to press the issue of suffrage, but, urged on by Stanton and Frederick Douglass, she agreed to it. In the end, she was the most frequent speaker at Seneca Falls. At a follow-up meeting two weeks later in Rochester, New York, she responded to critics who asserted that the women were ignoring St. Paul’s injunction that they be subservient to their husbands by noting that most of the complainers had ignored the saint’s advice not to marry. The 1853 convention met in Philadelphia only to be so disrupted by hostile demonstrations that Mott, the presiding officer, was forced to adjourn it. An invitation to move to Cleveland was accepted, and despite some tension, the meeting was completed without interruption.

Although she was beginning to experience some physical decline during the 1850’s, Mott made many efforts on behalf of the abolitionist and women’s rights crusades. In 1849, she agreed to make a speech to counter the traditional misogynist position taken by Richard Henry Dana during a lecture series in Philadelphia. Her “Discourse on Women,” tracing the history of women’s achievements and reiterating her position that female inferiority was a function of systematic repression and denial of opportunity, was printed.

A second edition appeared in 1869 in response to requests from feminists in England. During the early 1850’s, Mott confronted Horace Mann and the new National Education Association on the issue of equal pay for women teachers, though without much immediate success. She also continued to speak for the abolitionist cause, traveling as far south as Maysville, Kentucky, where, despite some significant hostility, she presented her case for freedom. Although she took no public position on John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry—Quaker principles of pacifism overrode even the urgency of freeing slaves—she did shelter Mrs. Brown while she was trying to visit her husband in the weeks before his execution.

In 1857, the Mott family moved to Roadside, a comfortable estate between New York and Philadelphia. The move was intended in part to get Lucretia away from the stress of her numerous commitments. Although her health was somewhat restored by rest, she was sixty-four years old and beginning increasingly to feel her age. A pacifist, she was torn by the Civil War, but after the conflict she tried to preserve the antislavery society to support the freedmen. She was also active in the Free Religious Association, which had been formed in 1867 to encourage an end to sectarian strife. She also continued her activities with the Equal Rights Convention.

When that organization began to split during the 1870’s, Mott tried vainly to heal the breach. The feminists divided into the National Woman Suffrage Association, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and the American Woman Suffrage Association, headed by Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe . Mott remained with her longtime friends Stanton and Anthony but deeply regretted the split. Mott’s activities decreased steadily throughout the late 1860’s and 1870’s. She died on November 11, 1880, at Roadside.

Significance

Lucretia Mott was an unusual woman. In an age when most people objected to women ministers, she was an eloquent advocate for her faith. Not only did she speak effectively within Quaker meetings, but she also had the confidence to challenge the leadership on points of theology. Her preaching and erudition won the respect of many, although no woman in the first half of the nineteenth century could have achieved full acceptance in the pulpit. Believing that she was in the right, she was unruffled by criticism and continued to speak as she deemed appropriate.

Mott was less unusual in the ranks of the abolitionists, which included many women, white and black. Nevertheless, her dignified mien and public speaking ability gave her a leadership role. The strength of her conviction led her to take risks, speaking out during the 1830’s when the antislavery position was far from popular and going into hostile areas—even the South. She fought diligently for her view that the antislavery forces should insist on total abolition immediately and should use the economic weapon of refusing to trade in products produced by slave labor. Although she was unsuccessful in winning support for the latter position, she provided the abolitionist movement with one of its best examples of idealism and principle.

Faced with serious sexual discrimination within the ranks of the abolitionists, Mott emerged as a champion of women’s rights. At a time when most of the eventual champions of the feminist movement were young and unknown, Mott was a respected and respectable leader. If Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, in 1848, could be dismissed as part of a radical fringe, Lucretia Mott could not. As a minister whose knowledge and conviction were well established and as a mainstay of the abolitionist movement, she gave the fledgling women’s movement a credibility that would have taken much time and effort to gain without her leadership. She did not live to see the triumph of equal rights for women, but she did much to give the movement the impetus necessary to obtain them.

Bibliography

Burnett, Constance. Five for Freedom: Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt. Reprint. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968. Originally published in 1953, this is an effective and well-written biography that gives a thorough account of Mott’s life and career.

Cromwell, Otelia. Lucretia Mott. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958. A scholarly, well-researched biography that sets Mott’s life and activities in the context of nineteenth century America, this work is somewhat lacking in critical analysis of the subject.

Hallowell, Anna. James and Lucretia Mott: Life and Letters. 5th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1896. An early biography made particularly valuable by the inclusion of correspondence. Overly supportive of the Motts.

Mott, Lucretia. Lucretia Mott: Her Complete Speeches and Sermons. Edited by Dana Greene. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1980. A convenient source of much of Mott’s writing that provides an excellent means of gaining an understanding of her philosophy and ideas.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Selected Letters of Lucretia Coffin Mott. Edited by Beverly Wilson Palmer, Holly Byers Ochoa, and Carol Faulkner. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Contains a selection of Mott’s letters written between 1813 and 1879, providing an understanding of her public and private lives. The letters are annotated, and a guide to the correspondence is published as an appendix.

Stewart, James B. Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery. New York: Hill & Wang, 1976. A useful survey of abolitionism that is extremely valuable in setting Mott’s work and views in the context of the movement as a whole.