Salerno, Beth. Sister Societies: Women’s Antislavery Organizations in Antebellum America (DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005).

Primary/Secondary

Secondary

Reading suggestions

See especially Chapter Four: Internal Divisions, 1837-1840, pp. 79-118

Source note

Beth Salerno is a professor and the department chair of American History at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. Her research focuses on the antebellum era, and she is currently writing a biography of New England anti-slavery activist Mary Clark.

Reading questions

1. What reasons did some women have to join the American Anti-Slavery Society? What reasons did some women have to join the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society? Why did many women choose to stay in their female anti-slavery societies?

2. Why were there more African American delegates and attendees at the 1838 Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women than at the 1837 convention?

3. Why did some women object to having a mixed meeting with both female and male speakers (page 82)?

4. What reason did dissenters give for not approving Sarah Grimke’s resolution stating the duty of female anti-slavery activists to refute prejudice by interacting socially with African Americans and treating them as social equals?

5. Why was 1840 a crucial year in the Women’s Anti-Slavery Movement (page 118)?

6. How does the Women’s Anti-Slavery Movement start to overlap with a nascent Women’s Rights Movement (page 118)?

Source Set

Women and the Anti-slavery Movement (1830s)

Source type

Scholarly book

History Topics

19th Century Social Reform

Abolition and Anti-slavery

Women's Rights

Time Period

Slavery, Sectionalism, and Social Reform (1815-1861)

Source

Salerno Secondary Source

Publication Year: 2005