Virtuous Lives: Four Quaker Sisters Remember Family Life, Abolitionism, and Women's Suffrage (review)

64Quaker History tions" (pp. 175-82), he insists that the Naylerites' messianic goals for their leader demonstrated a Christ-like and fundamental challenge to the Cromwellian order and its nascent capitalism. With Nayler's disgrace, Quakers gradually retreated to a safer, more conventional stance, one that ultimately led them to make accommodations with the very capitalistic enemy they waged their "Lamb's War" against. This interpretation converts Nayler into a representative of the entire movement—something only hypercritics were willing to do at the time— and even implies that George Fox and other Friends put Nayler forward as their agent in this quixotic escapade. Gwyn's theory may demand this kind ofsleight-of-hand, but it simply does not comport with the facts as we know them. Although much needs saying ofthe earliest Friends' radicalism, Gwyn says too much. Hence he gives scant attention to the more nuanced view that Quakerradicalism was compounded oftwo ingredients, one that gave elements ofthe bourgeoisie a chance to free themselves ofthe heavy hand of tradition, thus feeding the rise of capitalism, and a radicalism that, dialectically, harked back to the traditional and found the new world wanting. The radicalism that Gwyn finds seems abit too self-conscious, too sophisticated, too modern, and thus is an anachronistic reading of the Quaker tradition. The Covenant Crucified deserves a long life. If Douglas Gwyn has not "re-enacted"—and certainly not "re-simplified"—the Quaker drama, he has "re-ordered" it so that students must continue to "re-engage" with it. University of Tennessee-ChattanoogaH. Larry Ingle Virtuous Lives: Four Quaker Sisters Remember Family Life, Abolitionism , and Women 's Suffrage. Ed. by Lucille Salitan and Eve Lewis Perera. New York: Continuum, 1994. 180pp. Appendix. Paper, $15.95. The strength and courage of nineteenth century women activists are vividly portrayed in this work and the one consideredbelow. Nancy Hewitt, in an historiographical essay, dates the resurgence of interest in women abolitionists from 1976, which is true for the contemporary, scholarly examination of abolitionists in the context of race, class and gender. However, the stories themselves have always been powerful and the first person account ofthe Buffum sisters given in Virtuous Lives: Four Quaker Sisters Remember Family Life, Abolitionism and Women 's Suffrage is an expanded version of Two Quaker Sisters that was a New York Times best seller when published in 1937. This edition of Virtuous Lives adds the narratives of two more of the Book Reviews65 Buffum sisters and a generally informative introduction and genealogy of the family from 1741 to 1992. The sisters were "birthright" abolitionists. Their father, Arnold Buffum, a farmer and hat manufacturer, is best remembered as a founderwith WilliamLloyd Garrison oftheNewEngland Antislavery Society. He became the society's president and such an outspoken opponent of slavery that his meeting eventually disowned him for his active abolitionist lecturing. Nevertheless, he continued to attend meetings and raised his seven surviving children (of ten) as Quakers. The reminiscences, selected from "voluminous diaries, letters, essays, speeches, journals and news clippings" (p. 16) begin with a thoughtful reflection by Elizabeth Buffum Chace, at age ninety-one, of her family heritage and childhood. Elizabeth, whose voice predominates in this collection, wrote prolifically throughout her life. In one section she recounts her memories ofanti-slavery work, including the organization of the Fall River Female Antislavery Society in 1835. Elizabeth also relates separately the story ofJames Curry, a slave who escaped from Alabama to Fall River, Massachusetts. Written in 1839, this as-told-to story spoke powerfully ofslaves' love for family and desire for freedom. Recognizing the interconnectedness of all social injustice, Elizabeth also turned her eloquent pen to women's suffrage and factory working conditions for women and girls. The contributions ofElizabeth's sister Lucy are more domestic, reminding readers of the ever-present hand of childhood death. Lucy Buffum Lovell, married to a Baptist minister, details with poignant tenderness the loss of three children, and her struggle to maintain faith in a benevolent, caring God. Rebecca Buffum Spring offers one ofthe liveliest accounts, as she tells of her daring visit to the prison that held the condemned John Brown. Through pluck and determination, she gained admittance to the prison...