Crusade for Freedom: Women of the Antislavery Movement (review)

BOOK REVIEWS119 Wittner emphasizes the most radical wing of the peace movement, although he does devote some space to the more moderate elements. He points out that pacifists tend to be on the radical edge of society generally, and are involved in other issues of social change such as the race question. This is a sympathetic study of the peace movement, yet is not sentimental. It is useful for us to study these two decades, for it helps us to understand the present. Now we need to have someone study the World War I years and the decades between the two wars, to bridge the gap between this study and the Brock volume. Haverford CollegeEdwin B. Bbonner Crusade for Freedom: Women of tL· Antislavery Movement. By Alma Lutz. Boston: Beacon Press. 1968. 338 pages. Illustrations. $7.50. This is an excellent narrative account of the contributions women made to the antislavery movement. It provides more information about such notable women reformers as Elizabeth Chandler, the Grimké sisters, Prudence Crandall, Maria Weston Chapman, Abby Kelly Foster, Lucy Stone, and Lydia Maria Child than is collected in any other single volume. Since William Lloyd Garrison assumed a strong stance on the question of women's rights, it is not surprising that most of the women discussed were Garrisonians at one time or another. The Society of Friends produced a high percentage of the women abolitionists, but their public work for abolition caused some of them to be read out of meeting while others left voluntarily. Women were very active in the antislavery movement. A number became powerful speakers for the abolition cause, others organized antislavery bazaars and female auxiliaries, some wrote articles and stories, and several of them became first-rate editors of antislavery newspapers. As antislavery activists, women met with considerable discrimination from the male reformers as well as from the movement's opponents, and reaction to this discrimination led directly to the struggle for women's rights. Exclusion from meetings and relegation to a lesser role even in the antislavery cause made some of the women aware of their own lack of freedom. When Lucy Stone was advised to avoid the question of women's rights at an antislavery meeting she answered, "I was a woman before I was an abolitionist. I must speak for the women." And speak she and others did. In 1848 a group of women held the first Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York, and two years later Worcester, Massachusetts, was the scene of the first National Woman's Rights Convention. Yet despite their efforts and their major contributions to the antislavery reform, women failed to gain the recognition they deserved . Even after the Civil War, when the Fifteenth Amendment granted Negro suffrage, women were unable to convince the men in Congress that they too should have the right to vote. That reform took another half-century of agitation and social and economic change. 120QUAKER HISTORY Crusadefor Freedom is readable and well researched, with many of its findings based on manuscript source material. It is stronger on facts than interpretation. Footnotes are placed at the back of the book with a bibliography added. It is a book more useful to the general reader than the specialized scholar and as such it fills a timely need. Wilmington CollegeLakby Gaea Quakers on tL· American Frontier. A History of tL· Westward Migrations, Settlements , and Developments of Friends on tL· American Continent. By Errol T. Elliott. Richmond, Indiana: Friends United Press. [cl969] 434 pages. $6.50. Edwin Bronner, in his preface to this work, has shown its place in the literature and the way the author's involvement in Western Quakerism gives him the advantage of the insider's perspective. Bronner, embarked with others upon the first history of American Friends since 1894, is grateful for this contribution to understanding among different kinds of Friends and non-Friends. The foreword by Lorton Heusel, general secretary of Friends United Meeting, shows that it is an officially commissioned history with none of the censorship once exercised by committees of publication. The author is a lifelong pastor, preacher, and editor who accepts the obligation to "distinguish fact from truth" (p...