Abstract

ABSTRACT:

This article examines abolitionist Lucretia Mott’s views on the Underground Railroad. In 1856 Mott publicly dismissed fugitive slave assistance, comparing it to Liberian colonization, both of which she considered unable to compete with natural increase of slaves and thus ineffective in toppling U.S. slavery. Such a position was incongruous with the general attitude among U.S. abolitionists who categorically denounced Liberian colonization as a racist, pro-slavery movement while amplifying their Underground Railroad activism in the 1850s. The article attributes the timing of Mott’s 1856 remark to a partisan abolitionist strife spanning the Atlantic and explains her disregard of fugitive assistance to her puristic commitment to women’s rights.

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