Introduction

Introduction January 3, 1993, was the 200th birthday of Lucretia Mott. As its contribution to the bicentennial celebrations for one of its more famous founders, Swarthmore College hosted a two-day conference, March 1920 , on "Nineteenth-Century Feminist Strategies for Nonviolence." Wendy E. Chmielewski, Curator of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, chaired the organizing committee, with support from the Friends Historical Library and the Women's Studies Program. This issue oí Quaker History presents four papers from that conference of particular interest to Quaker historians. While the authors were not necessarily addressing the Quaker issues in their presentations, all have a direct Quaker connection. The conference planners chose the theme to stimulate scholarship on a major concern of Mott's that has received far less attention than either abolitionism or women's rights. It also reflected the direct connection in the nineteenth century between the women's rights and peace movements, both in ideology and in personnel. Three of the four papers in this issue deal with specific nineteenthcentury Quaker women leaders in themix ofradical reformmovements that included abolitionism, women's rights, peace, labor rights, and temperance . The work and experience of Elizabeth Pease (Nichol), abolitionist and feminist, invites many parallels to Lucretia Mott, although the two led very different personal lives. More than the other papers, Karen Halbersleben's account addresses the importance ofPease's Quaker background in shaping her reform impulses and her activism. Elizabeth Buffum Chace, an American contemporary ofMott and Pease, considered her childrearing practices a major expression of her radical political commitment. From the writings ofboth Chace and her daughter, Lillie Chace Wyman, Elizabeth C. Stevens extracts a portrait of a parent consciously socializing children into the culture of a radical cause. The only aspects of this portrait that clearly differentiate it from radical parenting ofthe 1960s and 1970s are the specific cause (abolitionism) and the presumption that childrearing is the exclusive realm of the mother. Modern radicalparents may find it comforting that Lillie Chace Wyman not only grew up to share her mother's ideals but recalled with great fondness a childhood spent in the heart of a radical movement, though she never achieved the leadership status ofher mother. Agemate of daughter Lillie, Hannah Johnston Bailey faced the same dilemma ofreaching adulthoodjust as the Civil warbrought the abolitionist cause to a climax and gave pacifism its greatest nineteenth-century challenge . This generation of women activists had not only to resolve the conflict between ends and means but also to find a new outlet for their reformist enthusiasm. Wyman spent much ofher adult life memorializing 2 Quaker History the activities of her mother and other antebellum women abolitionists. In hermajor life work, Hannah Bailey represented an aspectofthe nineteenthcentury reform alliance least familiar to modern radicals (temperance), heading the department ofpeace and arbitration ofthe Women's Christian Temperance Union from its establishment in 1 883 to 1916. In thatposition, Bailey became perhaps the most prolific publicist for pacifist causes in the period before World War I. Like Chace, she was especially eager to mold the minds ofchildren, not only through literature but also through seeking to eliminate militaristic toys and activities. Lori S. Ginzberg's paper on radical feminists in the antebellum nonresistance movement has the least overt Quaker content, although Lucretia Mott is the name that arises most frequently. Ginzberg does not give a narrative of the movement's story but rather an analysis of the issues confronting "ultraist" women, issues that shaped the lives described in the other papers. Almost all of the women reformers accepted the nineteenthcentury ideology of woman's moral superiority and natural proclivity towards peace, with Mott as a notable exception. Is there any basis inreality for this assumption, and if so, can we hold men accountable to the same standards of moral behavior? Do traditional female nurturing roles give women a special interest in peace? Would the "feminization of power" automatically lead to peace or simply substitute one tyranny for another? Is moral authority an effective substitute for power? At what point do reform movements operating through oppressive, violent institutional structures imply support for those structures? Can a relatively powerless group exert more influence through separatist or integrationist tactics...