Abolitionist, Feminist, Suffragette: Women in the John Greenleaf Whittier Letters

Grace Greenwood (1823-1904).
Author, poet, journalist, abolitionist,
women's rights activist.

This small selection of letters from the John Greenleaf Whittier Correspondence Collection highlights documents from women, both well known and nearly forgotten, who were involved with abolition and the emerging women's suffrage and feminism movements. Also included is one odd marriage proposal from a little-known Sacramento City woman.

This collection of eight letters features some of the most significant pieces of correspondence from women in the Whittier collection, although some appear more for the significance of their author than the content of the letter.

It is important to note that the anti-slavery movement is one of the first American social justice movements in which women were heavily involved. For many, participation in the abolitionist movement led to (or coincided with) involvement with causes like women's suffrage. The higher-than-usual concentration of women in the cause made A.S. meetings an early theater for American feminist thought.

Furthermore, misogyny in abolitionism played a role in establishing the women's rights movement. Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton held the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention (the first women's rights convention in the U.S.) in part due to the cold shoulder they received at the first World Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840, where they met. The convention organizers refused to allow female delegates to take part in the convention, instead relegating them to watching and listening from the spectators' gallery.

It is worth noting the American Anti-Slavery Society (of which William Lloyd Garrison was a co-founder) sent women as delegates, as did the societies from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Garrisonians supported the female delegates' participation, with Garrison and others going so far as to protest by sitting with the women rather than taking their seats.

The letter writers featured in this collection are:

• Louisa Maria Sewall, abolitionist, most well-known as the first wife of prominent abolitionist Samuel Edmund Sewall, whom she met at a New York anti-slavery meeting in 1835.
• Harriet Minot, abolitionist and friend of prominent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.
• Grace Greenwood, author, abolitionist, and women's rights activist who became, at age 30, the first woman on the New York Times' payroll.
• Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, author best known for her radical feminist fiction.
• John Greenleaf Whittier, who was writing to the Women’s Suffrage Association congratulating them on their work thus far and encouraging their future endeavors.
• P.L. Paige, a purportedly wealthy Sacramento City widow who sent Whittier an unsolicited marriage proposal.