Lucretia Coffin Mott (January 3, 1793 –
November 11, 1880) was an American Quaker minister, abolitionist, social reformer and proponent of women's rights. She is credited as the first American "feminist" in the
early 1800s but was, more accurately, the initiator of women's political advocacy.
Biography
Early life
Lucretia Coffin was born into a Quaker family in Nantucket, Massachusetts.
She was the second child of seven by Thomas Coffin and Anna Folger. At the age of thirteen she was sent to a boarding school run
by the Society of Friends, where she eventually became a teacher. Her
interest in women's rights began when she discovered that male teachers at the school were paid twice as much as the female
staff. On 10 April, 1811, Lucretia married James Mott, another
teacher at the school. Their first child died at age 5. Ten years later, she became a Quaker minister.
Early anti-slavery efforts
Lucretia and her husband were both opposed to the slave trade and were active in the American Anti-Slavery Society. She moved
to Philadelphia in 1821. She quickly became known for her persuasive
speeches against slavery. Prior to her own involvement, many Quaker men had been involved in the
abolitionist movement in the very early 1800s. Lucretia Mott was one of the first Quaker
women to do advocacy work for abolition. She and her husband followed Elias Hicks in the "Great Separation" of American Quakerism in 1827 into the more liberal and
mystical Hicksite branch, which drew away from the more evangelical and conservative Orthodox
branch.
Mott's letters reflect her regular travels in the mid-nineteenth century throughout the East and Midwest as she addressed
various reform organizations such as the Non-Resistance Society, the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women as well as the quarterly and yearly Quaker meetings. Her letters
not only express the thoughts of a public figure but they also show the anxieties and joys of a nineteenth-century woman.
Forceful and intelligent, her letters also reflect Mott's character and Quaker background.
Like many Quakers including Hicks, Mott considered slavery an evil to be opposed. They refused to use cotton cloth, cane
sugar, and other slavery-produced goods. With her skills in the ministry, she began to speak publicly for abolition, often
traveling from her home in Philadelphia. Her sermons combined antislavery themes with broad calls for moral reform. Her husband
supported her activism and they often sheltered runaway slaves in their home.
It should be noted that Quakers, when compared to other religious and social groups in America since its founding, were
unusual in their equal treatment of women. They had a rich history and singular respect from the majority of American people of
those times, mostly due to their advocacy and martyrdom for being conscientious
objectors to war, and later their anti-slavery efforts.
Mott was successful in her abolitionist lobbying and punctuated her career with teaching the ropes of representative
government's political advocacy to women coming up as women's and abolitionist advocates. In the 1830s she helped establish two
anti-slavery groups.
The International Anti-Slavery Convention
Mott spoke at the International Anti-Slavery Convention in London, England in June
1840. In spite of her status as one of six women delegates, Mott was not formally seated at the meeting because she was a woman.
This led to the protest of other Americans advocates attending the convention, including William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her activist husband Henry B. Stanton attended the convention while on their honeymoon. Stanton became angry when she couldn't
see Mott as she spoke, as women in the audience were required to sit in a roped-off section hidden from the view of the men in
attendance. Mott and Stanton became well acquainted at the convention, and Stanton later recalled: "We resolved to hold a
convention as soon as we returned home, and form a society to advocate the rights of women." However, it was not until 1848
that Mott and Stanton organized the Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls,
New York
Seneca Falls
The Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 was the first American women's rights
meeting. Stanton's resolution that it was "the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves the sacred right to the
elective franchise" was passed, and this became the focus of the group's campaign over the next few years. Mott was a signatory
of the Declaration of Sentiments. While Elizabeth Cady Stanton is usually credited as the leader of that effort, it was Mott's mentoring
of Stanton and their work together that organized the event. Lucretia's sister, Martha
Coffin Wright also helped organize the convention and signed the declaration.
Opinions
Mott parted with the mainstream women's movement in one area, that of divorce. At that time it was very difficult to obtain
divorce, and fathers were given custody of children. Stanton sought to make divorce easier to obtain and to safeguard women's
access to and control of their children. The more conservative Mott opposed any significant legal change in divorce laws.
Mott's theology was influenced by Unitarians including Theodore Parker and William Ellery Channing as well as early Quakers
including William Penn. She taught that "the kingdom of God is within man" (1849) and was part of the group of religious liberals
who formed the Free Religious Association in 1867, with Rabbi Wise, Ralph Waldo
Emerson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Her theological position was particularly influential among Quakers, as in the
future many harked back to her positions, sometimes without even knowing it.
American Equal Rights Association
Elected as the first president of the American Equal Rights
Association after the end of the Civil War, Mott strove a few years later to reconcile the two factions that split over
the priorities between woman suffrage and black male suffrage. Ever the peacemaker, Mott tried to heal the breach between
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B.
Anthony and Lucy Stone over the immediate goal of the women's movement: suffrage for
freedmen and all women, or suffrage for freedmen first?
Writing
In 1850 Mott wrote Discourse on Woman, a book about restrictions on women in the United States. She became more widely
known after this. When slavery was outlawed in 1865, she began to advocate giving black Americans the right to vote. She remained
a central figure in the women's movement as a peacemaker, a critical function for that period of the movement, until her death at
age 87 in 1880.
Swarthmore
In 1864 Mott and several other Hicksite Quakers incorporated Swarthmore College,
which today remains one of the premier liberal-arts colleges in the United States [1].
Organizations
In 1866 Mott joined with Stanton, Anthony, and Stone to establish the American Equal Rights Association. She was a leading
voice in the Universal Peace Union, also founded in 1866. The following year, the organization became active in Kansas where
Negro suffrage and woman suffrage were to be decided by popular vote.
She was posthumously inducted into the U.S. National Women's Hall of
Fame.
Biographical Excerpts
1) Carl Schurz first met Lucretia Mott in 1854. He described her in his autobiography
published in 1906.
- Lucretia Mott, a woman, as I was told, renowned for her high character, her culture, and the zeal and ability with which
she advocated various progressive movements. To her I had the good fortune to be introduced by a German friend. I thought her the
most beautiful old lady I had ever seen. Her features were of exquisite fineness. Not one of the wrinkles with which age had
marked her face, would one have wished away. Her dark eyes beamed with intelligence and benignity. She received me with gentle
grace, and in the course of our conversation, she expressed the hope that, as a citizen, I would never be indifferent to the
slavery question as, to her great grief, many people at the time seemed to be.
2) Editorial, Time and Tide (1926-07-09)
- Feminism, like any other great movement, proceeds at varying paces and in varying forms in different countries. Few things
are more enlightening than a study of the inter-reactions of the feminist movement in the two great English speaking peoples
during the past seventy or eighty years. It is curious how closely related have been the movements on the two sides of the
Atlantic. Each has continually learnt from the other. Beginning with Mary Wollstonecraft in the late 18th century, the feminist
movement owed its next big impetus (in the eighteen forties and fifties) to Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony, of New England.
It was Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth C. Stanton who organised the first Equal Rights Convention which was held in New York in 1848;
and it was Lucretia Mott who laid down the definite proposition which American women are still struggling to implement today:
'Men and Women shall have Equal Rights throughout the United States.' A few years later Susan B. Anthony, the pioneer Suffragist,
came into the American movement.
- It was not till the eighteen sixties that the political feminist movement came alive in Great Britain. Dame Millicent
Fawcett was even in those early days one of the leading names connected with it. The British suffragists pushed forward
enthusiastically for some twenty years, but the failure to achieve success in 1885, when the third Reform Bill was passed giving
the agricultural labourer the vote, seemed to take the heart out of our early suffragists, and the movement died down again.
Meanwhile, in the nineties the American women were full of life and enthusiasm, winning victory after victory in State after
State.
- In 1902 Susan B. Anthony came to England and stayed with Mrs. Pankhurst in Manchester. The result of that visit was
far-reaching. All unwittingly the old pioneer handed back the torch to the British suffragists. 'It is unendurable,' declared
Christabel Pankhurst after her departure, 'to think of another generation of women wasting their lives begging for the vote. We
must not lose any more time. We must act.' Those words heralded the birth of the British militant movement. From that moment
onwards British feminists went forward without pause till the outbreak of war in 1914 and when that time came (although the
actual Bill was not passed until 1918) the first instalment of victory was virtually won.
- Meanwhile in America by 1912 things had died down to very much the same state as the English movement has been in since
1918. Votes had been achieved in a considerable number of States, the feeling was widespread that a partial victory was good
enough for the moment and that complete victory would come all in good time without much further trouble. And then in 1912 Alice
Paul, lit by the fire of the English militant movement, returned to America - and America woke up. It took the Americans just
eight years from that date to achieve complete political equality; but they were under wise leadership (Alice Paul will surely go
down to history as one of the great leaders of the world), and when they did achieve political equality they did not make the
mistake of supposing that that was the end. They turned back to the 'declaration of sentiments' laid down by Lucretia Mott in
1848 and they realised that political equality was only the first step on the path which they had chosen and that there could be
neither halting nor relaxing their pace until they had come to the end of that path.
Quotes
"It is not Christianity, but priestcraft that has subjected woman as we find her. " -Lucretia Mott
"We too often bind ourselves by authorities rather than by the truth." -Lucretia Mott
"The cause of Peace has had my share of efforts, taking the ultra non-resistance ground - that a Christian cannot consistently
uphold, and actively support, a government based on the sword, or whose ultimate resort is to the destroying weapons. " -Lucretia
Mott
See also
References
- Bacon, Margaret Hope. Valiant Friend: the Life of Lucretia Mott. Walker and Company, 1980.
- Bacon, Margaret Hope. Mothers of Feminism: the Story of Quaker Women in America. Harper & Row, 1986.
- Greene, Dana (editor). Lucretia Mott: Her Complete Speeches and Sermons. The Edwin Mellen Press, 1980.
- Palmer, Beverly Wilson (editor), Selected Letters of Lucretia Coffin Mott. University of Illinois Press, 2002.
External links
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