Lucretia Mott Speaks: The Essential Speeches and Sermons ed. by Christopher Densmore, et al. (review)

Lucretia Coffın Mott (1793–1880), noted orator, is well known for her work with Elizabeth Cady Stanton in organizing the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention declaring women's equality with men. However, she was also a tireless Quaker preacher and an activist for abolition, peace, and universal education. She is important to the history of rhetoric for both her prominent career and the diverse topics and range of audiences she addressed.

In Mott's case, the role of audience was crucial because records of her speeches survive only through transcriptions; following Quaker practice, she spoke spontaneously (xi). From 190 lectures in manuscript archives, newspapers, and other sources, the editors of Lucretia Mott Speaks: The Essential Speeches and Sermons selected 60 speeches concerning characteristic themes and important historical events. Mott's two major rhetorical genres were letters and oratory (xii). This volume adds an authoritative edition of the speeches to the Selected Letters of Lucretia Coffın Mott, edited by Beverly Wilson Palmer (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2002); therefore, it allows us to study the full array of Mott's rhetoric, contributing to our understanding of the histories of nineteenth-century American women and of United States rhetoric.

The introduction of this edition is clear, organized, and elegantly written, providing an overview of events of Mott's career and appropriate background regarding her place within reform movements. It does not, however, offer many personal details, citing coverage in the Wilson Palmer edition of Selected Letters. But such details would be useful, as Vicki Tolar Burton points out in "The Speaker Respoken: Material Rhetoric as Feminist Methodology" (College English 61.5 [May 1999]: 545–73), because women especially succeed or fail because of the support systems that historically benefıtted them. Wilson Palmer indicates, for example, that Mott had six children, employed a nurse, and was often accompanied by her husband (xiv–xviii). Such information is important to our understanding of some themes of the Essential Speeches—Mott's inveighing against corporal punishment for children (5) and her citing the innocence of children as argument against the doctrine of natural depravity (131), for instance.

The texts themselves are presented in chronological order and encompass speeches given at conventions throughout the eastern United States and in England, sermons at Quaker Meetings, eulogies, and funeral speeches. The sermons reveal Mott was involved in contemporary theological debates. She urged the traditional Friends' view of the Inner Light, arguing that the "revelation within us" was to be followed even above the words of the Bible (58–61). But she also preached more radical beliefs, promoting the divinity of humanity (121) and wading into the controversy over whether good works violated the Sabbath (31–38). Mott critiqued the lack of sincerity in contemporary Christians as professors, not doers—observing the forms of worship, not the spirit, especially in dress, baptism, or marriage ceremonies (19–20, 184–85, 215). But she extended this concept to denounce those who used the Bible to defend slavery, exclude women (16), or support capital punishment (11). In many of her sermons, Mott preached religious tolerance, as in an 1873 speech: "Let it be called the Great Spirit of the Indian, the Quaker 'inward light' of George Fox, the 'Blessed Mary, mother of Jesus,' of the Catholics, or Brahma, the Hindoo's God—they will all be one" (204). Mott did not preach humanity's sinfulness or God's vengefulness; rather, she spoke of the joy derived from faith and doing good to help bring society closer to humanity's potential.

Mott's politics were based on Quaker beliefs radicalized, as her famous "Discourse on Women" (88–91) suggests by its interweaving of a defense of women's preaching with a call for women's political rights. She found certitude in the Bible that God created men and women as equal (46–47, 69...