August 15, 2018 • 33 mins
This is the studio version of our live show from this years Seneca Falls Convention Days at Women's Rights National Historical Park. Lucretia Mott was small of stature, but made a huge impact as an abolition and women's rights activist, guided by her deeply held Quaker beliefs.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody. We are so excited that we are about
to set out on our very first tour. In augusten
we will be in Atlanta, Georgia, Raleigh, North Carolina, Summerville, Massachusetts, Brooklyn,
New York, and Washington, d C. Then in October we
will be in Seattle, Washington, Portland, Oregon, and Los Angeles
(00:21):
and San Francisco, California. We're hoping that this will go
really well and we can come to other cities and
places that don't end in the word coast sometime maybe
next year. You can find out more information and get
the links to buy tickets at missed in History dot
com slash tour That's missed in History dot com slash tour.
(00:45):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy you Wilson, and today
we're actually recording in studio an episode that we actually
prepared for a live show at the Women's Rights National
(01:08):
Historical Park as part of their Convention Days programming. As
sometimes happens, live show recordings do not go according to plan,
so we can't bring you the original version of that
as it happened live. But that means that those people
in attendance sort of get, you know, their memories of
that special thing that unfortunately nobody else gets to share in.
So let that be lesson to you come to live show. Also,
(01:32):
if you listen to our Road to the Declaration of
Sentiments episode that we did at the end of a
little bit of this is going to sound familiar, there's
not a whole lot of overlap. And that episode was
actually catalyzed by then Chief Technology Officer of the United
States Megan Smith, reaching out to the podcast to raise
awareness of the missing women's rights document, the Declaration of Sentiments,
(01:54):
and we gave a brief version of Lucretia Mott's life
and a quick rundown of how she and Elizabeth Katie
Damn met at the World Anti Slavery Convention. Today's show
is going to focus on Lucretia Mott in much more detail.
But even so, her life is so well documented and
she was such an important public figure in her time
(02:14):
that we're really just hitting some of the highlights. So,
for example, in eighteen sixty four, she helped found Swarthmore
College in Pennsylvania as a co educational institution. But we're
not even going to get into that because we're focusing
instead a lot more on her activism. And she was
a whole lot of activists packed into a diminutive frame.
(02:35):
And while she advocated for peace, she was, in her
own words, no advocate of passivity. Lucretia Mott was born
Lucretia Coffin on January three, seventeen ninety three, on the
island of Nance Huckett in Massachusetts. Her father, Thomas Coffin,
was a sea captain. Her mother, Anna Folger, was related
to Benjamin Franklin. Because Thomas was often at sea, Anna
(02:58):
was managing things at home and she ran us Malch
store with Lucretia's help as Lucretia got older. Lucretia was
their second child, and they eventually had five children. The
Coffin family were Quakers, and the Quaker religion believed slavery
was evil and had a particularly progressive view of women's
equality for the time, so it is not surprising that
(03:19):
Lucresia went on to campaign for women's rights, abolition, and
social reform. When she was ten, her parents decided on
a change for the whole family. Thomas left his job
as a mariner, and the family moved to Boston, where
he became a merchant, all with the intent of creating
a much more stable family life. In addition to how
he was away all the time as a sea captain,
(03:40):
that was also an incredibly dangerous job. Yeah, there was
always the chance that he would not come back, uh,
and they didn't want to live with that risk anymore.
When she was thirteen, Lucretia began attending a Quaker boarding
school in Poughkeepsie, New York called Nine Partners School, along
with one of her sisters, Eliza, and Lucretia did really
well there, so much so that she became an assistant teacher.
(04:02):
When she aged out of the available curriculum, Lucretia was
then shortly thereafter promoted into a teaching position, and this
meant that sort of in an in kind trade on
her work, that another one of her sisters could then
attend the school. And it was during this time that,
even though she was at a Quaker school where equality
was being taught, Lucretia got a really harsh dose of reality. Later,
(04:26):
she wrote of women in education, quote, I learned at
school that their education cost the same as that of men,
while they received as teachers but half the salary. While
she was at nine partners, Lucretia made the acquaintance of
a young teacher named James Mott, who was the son
of the school superintendent. The two of them grew close,
and then they fell deeply in love, and the Coffins
(04:48):
moved once again in eighteen o nine, this time to Philadelphia.
Lucretia and James Mott joined them there, and James was
invited by Lucretia's father, Thomas, to become a partner in
his merchant business. Lucretia married James Mott on April tenth,
eighteen eleven. She was eighteen at the time and he
was five years older. It seems to have been a
(05:08):
very good match. They had similar ideologies when it came
to equality for women. They were both abolitionists. They had
a passionate and devoted relationship, which Lucretia referred to as
a perfect love. Four years after Lucretia and James were married,
Thomas Coffin died. This was not only an emotional blow,
it created a very real financial problem for Lucretia's mother, Anna,
(05:32):
who was suddenly burdened with Thomas's extensive debt, and also
for James Mott, due to his involvement in Thomas's business
and Coffin, had made some pretty bad business decisions and
he was thousands of dollars in debt when he died.
Among other things, he had loaned money to people he
should not have, and he also had a lawsuit pending
against him. Lucretia, James, and Anna all worked together to
(05:55):
address this problem. They chipped away at the financial obligations
that Thomas had behind. Anna went back to work, returning
to her former vocation of running a store. Lucretia worked
as a teacher, and James worked as a bookkeeper, and
the trio really managed to make some very real progress
on this problem. But just as they were getting their
feet back under them, there was another tragedy. Both Lucretia
(06:19):
and her third child, two year old Thomas, became very
ill with fever, and Lucretia recovered, but Thomas did not.
He died and Lucretia was naturally heartbroken. Despite her grief,
though she returned to her teaching job not long after
the loss, and that loss of her son made her
even more devoted to her Quaker faith. In the late
(06:39):
eighteen twenties, the Society of Friends split into two factions,
the Orthodox Group and the Hickside Group, which was named
for Quaker abolitionist Elias Hicks. Hicks had actually been one
of the founding members of the Nine Partner School, where
Lucretia had been a student and a teacher. By this time,
Lucretia was a Quaker minister, although this was not a
vocation as a Quaker, she was not being paid for
(07:01):
this work. Yeah. One of the things I had read
one of the biographies suggested that when she realized that
ministers and other religions got paid to share their sermons,
she was a little bit mortified. I thought that was
not something that should be part of a financial transaction. Uh.
There were a number of issues that led to that
split within the Society of Friends, which is another UH
(07:23):
word for the Quakers. Those reasons were both spiritual and
some were a little bit more mundane. They had to
do with power struggles that were going on. But the
primary reason that was cited for the fracture was the
Hicksite focus on the inward light as the guiding of faith,
whereas the Orthodox group favored biblical authority above all other influences,
(07:43):
and this split began at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, and
the Mots, along with approximately two thirds of their fellow Quakers,
went with the Hicksites. That is a very paired down
an extremely basic version of the schism, which of course
had a lot more nuanced than at but in relation
to the Moths that had a very real impact. The
(08:04):
Hicksites wanted to sever any possible connections to the slave trade,
and as a consequence, James shifted his textile business away
from selling cotton cloth, which was made with raw materials
that had come from slave labor, the transition to selling
wool instead. The Mots and many Hicksites emphasized the importance
of so called free goods and produced, meaning that they
had been produced or grown without the use of slave labor.
(08:27):
In the eighteen thirties, Mott was a member of the
American Anti Slavery Society founded by William Lloyd Garrison, and
that inspired her in eighteen thirty three to found a
women's group within the movement, the Philadelphia Female Anti Slavery Society,
and there was to be clear plenty of controversy around
Mott's outspoken nature in the abolitionist cause. While she had
(08:49):
been raised in a household and a culture that treated
women as more or less equal, her passionate oration was
not always well regarded in non Quaker circles, and sometimes
even within the Society of Friends. There were some members
who were not entirely comfortable with her direct and impassioned
rhetoric on abolition and kind of hoped she might leave
(09:10):
the group rather than continue to stir up controversy. And
there was also a very real danger in being a
public vocal abolitionist. But Lucretia drew a great deal of
strength from her faith, and when she spoke to groups
about slavery, that strength really helped her to make her
position clear, and it helped her to sway people to
(09:31):
her cause. People who heard her speak described her as
being eloquent, calm, and very persuasive, and her use of
logic to condemn the practice of slavery. Coming up who
we're going to talk about a particularly frightening week for
the abolitionist movement in Philadelphia. But before that, we are
going to pause and have a little sponsor break. In
(09:56):
May eight, Lucretia Mott participated in a series of events
at Pennsylvania Hall in her hometown of Philadelphia. That hall
was brand new. It had been designed by Thomas Somerville Stewart,
a Scott's Irish architect living in Philadelphia, as a meeting
place where abolitionists could engage in free discussion, and its
opening was a really high profile event. The hall could
(10:17):
hold three thousand attendees, and in the first few days
the hall's use, both black and white abolitionists sat in
the audience. Journalists and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison made a note, however,
that there were no black speakers on the stage, which
he claimed was the result of either prejudice or fear.
I would point out that it could also have been
(10:38):
related to prejudice, that the white organizers just not even
considering that that would be a thing. Yeah, there could
easily have been thoughtlessness in the mix as well, um,
but there was definitely cause for fear. The opening of
the hall had set off anti abolitionist agitators. Pennsylvania was
a free state, but the issues of slavery in equality
(11:00):
were still topics of strife. Signs began appearing in Philadelphia
urging people to rise up against these abolitionists. And one
red quote, whereas a convention for the avowed purpose of
affecting the immediate abolition of slavery in the Union is
now in session in this city, it behooves all citizens
(11:20):
who entertain a proper respect for the rights of property
and the preservation of the Constitution of the United States,
to interfere forcibly if they must, and prevent the violation
of these pledges heretofore held sacred. There was also the
ongoing issue of women's equality in the mix. With all
of this, some abolitionists felt that open meetings with men
(11:42):
and women, both black and white, all gathered together in
the hall would seem inappropriate. At one point during the
Wednesday evening of the week's events, Mott addressed the assembled
mixed crowd and said she was not speaking on behalf
of the women's Convention, but that she hoped that the
quote false notions of delic see and propriety would soon
be a thing of the past. Yes, she really just
(12:04):
wanted everybody to be able to come together and discuss
these issues and not get watted up on what they
thought was proper or not. And during some of the
speeches in those first few days, Um there were bricks
thrown through the windows of the hall by anti abolitionist protesters.
There are different versions of that story. John Greenleaf Whittier
wrote a biographical sketch of Lucretia Mott right after she died,
(12:27):
and in his version, he suggests that that was happening
while she was speaking. I did not find indications that
that was the case anywhere else. Other versions of the
story of this hall suggests that it happened during other lectures.
Others indicated happened after the fact. We do not know
exactly the timing, but there was some scary stuff going on.
(12:49):
An angry mob had steadily grown in numbers over the
course of several days, and even as the crowd surged
and threatened to enter the building. Mott, who was a
very tiny woman. We said he was diminutive, but to
be clear, she was about five feet tall. She weighed
between ninety and a hundred pounds, and while she was
speaking to her fellow abolitionists in the Anti Slavery Convention
(13:10):
of American Women who were meeting at the time, she
urged them to remain true to the cause and to
continue their work. Meanwhile, all of this scary stuff was
going on literally feet from them, right outside the building.
So when people describe Lucretia Mott as a fierce abolitionist,
which is a phrase you will often see in relation
to her, they are really not kidding. As the women
(13:31):
were leaving, the danger to the black women that had
attended as they walked through this crowd was just obvious.
Mott and the other white women in the group linked
arms with them as a way to help them move
through the angry protesters while trying to also maintain their
physical safety. They did still have to endure the racist
epithets that were being yelled at them as they adjourned,
(13:53):
but they were kept physically safe. Yeah, she was pretty
clear that she believed that these protesters, we're not going
to have the gall to come after, for example, in
her case, a tiny white woman. So she was willing
to put her body physically in the way to prevent
black citizens from being hurt. And the next day, the
threat of violence was so great that all of the
(14:15):
scheduled events were canceled. The mob had grown to a
reported fifteen thousand people in Pennsylvania. Hall, described as one
of the most commodious and splendid buildings in the city
was burned to the ground after the protesters broke in
and lit a fire on the stage. The thing was
like less than a week old at this point, right, Yeah,
(14:35):
that's like the fourth day was when it was burned down.
So there was ongoing violence over the next two days.
The Mots home was in danger as a target because
of Lucresha's high profile and the abolitionist movement. Their home
was spared at the end, but the mob turned its
ire towards black schools and churches. The following month, the
(14:55):
Philadelphia Female Anti Slavery Society, led by Lucretia Mott, hosted
another anti slavery convention, and Mott once again reiterated the
importance of their mission. The World Anti Slavery Convention in
eighteen forty was a significant event in Lucretia Mott's life.
That event took place in London, and when Mott arrived
as a delegate, it became clear that she was not
(15:18):
going to be allowed to participate because she was a woman.
No women were being admitted to the proceedings. Mott was
certainly not the only woman who had traveled to London
with the intent of attending the World Anti Slavery Convention,
all of the women there were told that they could
not participate. Heated debate among the delegates arose over this issue,
(15:39):
and the women were eventually granted admission, but this was
not exactly a win. They had to sit in a
special women's section at the back of the hall, and
they were not allowed to participate in any way. They
were allowed to observe, and to observe only. William Lloyd
Garrison was so angry about this situation, as were other men,
that he withdrew as a delegate and he opted to
(16:02):
share observer only status with the women abolitionists, so he
and several other men actually went back and sat in
their section. But it was in that women's section that
Lucretia Mott met the woman who would become one of
her greatest allies, Elizabeth Katie Stanton, who had made the
trip to London as her honeymoon with her new husband,
Henry Brewster Stanton. I love that they did this on
(16:23):
their honeymoon. It is quite charming. Uh Stanton made a
description of Lucretia Mott at this convention, and I wanted
to include this because there is a photograph of Lucretia Mott.
That is probably the most commonly seen in the modern era.
And it is a photograph taken when she was older,
and she looks a little dour, And I think that
people have in their heads that she must have been
(16:44):
a very sour woman. But in fact she was by
all accounts, really lovely. She was described as a very
vivacious youth. But I wanted to read Stanton's description of
her during the convention quote she was then in her prime,
small in stature, slightly built, with a large head, high
square forehead, remarkably fine face, regular features, dark hair and eyes.
(17:07):
She was gentle and refined in her manners, and she
conversed with earnestness and ease, commiserating over their anger how
women abolitionists for being treated at the convention. Mott and
Stanton decided that when they were both back in the
United States, they should arrange a women's rights convention. Was
five years in the making, but they were true to
their words. On July fourteenth, eight forty eight, the following
(17:30):
announcement ran in the Seneca County Courier under the headline
Women's Rights Convention, a convention to discuss the social civil
and Religious Condition and Rights of Women will be held
in the Wesleyan Chapel at Seneca Falls, New York, on
Wednesday and Thursday, the nineteenth and twentie of July current,
commencing at ten o'clock a m. During the first day,
(17:52):
the meeting will be exclusively for women, which all are
earnestly invited to attend. The public generally are invited to
be present on this second day, when Lucretia Mott of
Philadelphia and others, both ladies and gentlemen, will address the convention.
Of course, famously, the Declaration of Sentiments was signed at
this convention. That's a document that was modeled after the
(18:12):
Declaration of Independence that outlined eighteen injuries to women and
was accompanied by eleven resolutions. Mott was one of the
writers of this document. The most controversial of the eleven
resolutions was getting women the right to vote. This is
sometimes cited as the moment when the US suffrage movement
was born. As a quick note slash reminder, the topic
(18:35):
of the show we did in Seneca Falls last year
was Frederick Douglas, and he also attended the Seneca Falls
Convention and was also one of the signers of the
Declaration of Sentiments. But perhaps surprisingly, Lucretia Mott was one
of the people who was not a supporter of the
Resolution for the right to vote for women. She felt
that politics was inherently really flawed in immoral system, in
(18:59):
part due to its connection with slavery. So she thought
women really did not need to dirty themselves with that grossness.
But she did sign the Declaration of Sentiments, and she
did also managed to reconcile her concerns in a speech
that was later published by Mott as Discourse on Woman.
She said the following, It is with reluctance that I
make the demand for the political rights of women, because
(19:22):
this claim is so distasteful to the age woman shrinks,
in the present state of society from taking any interest
in politics. Who knows but that if woman acted her
part in governmental affairs there might be an entire change
in the turmoil of political life. It becomes man to
speak modestly of his ability to act without her. If
(19:42):
woman's judgment were exercised, why might she not aid in
making the laws by which she has governed? Far be
it from me to encourage woman to vote or to
take an active part in politics. In the present state
of our government. Her right to the elective franchise, however,
is the same and should be yielded to her, whether
she exercises that right or not. And we're going to
(20:03):
talk next about the Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty,
but first we are going to pause for a little
sponsor break. When the Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty
was passed, Lucretia and James Mott protested vehemently against it.
That act has come up with some regularity on the show,
(20:25):
but just for a reminder, it required that enslaved people
who ran away to non slave states had to be
captured and returned to their enslavers, and that aiding a
person who had escaped enslavement was a crime. The Fugitive
Slave Act caused a lot of strife even within the
abolitionist movement. For one thing, there was the debates between
(20:46):
following the law and following the principles of equality. Additionally,
even non abolitionist Pennsylvanians were angry that this act took
precedence over the state's personal liberty laws and instances where
people who had been enslaved were retaken by force Pacifist
abolitionists grappled with their own principles of non violence as
(21:07):
they came into conflict with their desire to protect formerly
enslaved people, and one of the things that Mott continued
to do during this time was to continue to use
her physical presence for the abolitionist cause. She knew, as
I said, that as a white woman, she would likely
be treated more respectfully or at least more gently than
a white man or a person of color, making the
(21:27):
kinds of statements that she made. In one instance, she
rode in a carriage with a woman named Jane Johnson, who,
in the course of fleeing enslavement, actually appeared to testify
in court that the abolitionists who had helped her had
not kidnapped her, but she had gone of her own volition.
She did that knowing that the marshals were going to
pursue her afterwards, so once she finished her testimony, she
(21:49):
and Mott made a hasty exit from the court, and
Mott helped Jane Johnson slip away from the authorities. With
a bit of misdirection. They wrote in a carriage around
the streets. They ended up at the front of the
Mott home they both got out, went through the house.
Jane left out the back door and picked up another
carriage there with a little meal that Lucretia had handed her,
(22:09):
and then she took off in that other carriage and
fortunately was not apprehended, while Lucretia could be like, I
don't know what you're talking about when the marshals got
to the house. Um In another instance, when a black
man named Daniel Webster was captured in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and
accused of being a runaway from a Virginia slave plantation,
that was a case of mistaken identity. Lucretia Mott sat
(22:32):
as near as she could to the defendants throughout his
court case. She would sit there, knitting or sewing, but
always simply being a presence, making it keenly apparent that
an abolitionist was watching. And Webster was eventually declared a freeman.
When the Civil War began, it was already a difficult
time for the Mots. They weren't young by this point.
(22:53):
Both of them were in failing health. James was losing
his vision and Lucretia would read to him, but she
was having dizzy spells and frequent digestive issues. And on
top of that, even though this battle over slavery was
obviously important and abolition had been a driving force in
Mott's license, she was a young girl. Her pacifism made
(23:13):
this entire war extremely upsetting. She really had hoped that
they could win over the hearts and minds of people
through talking about the issue. In fact, she once wrote, quote,
the cause of peace has had a share of my efforts,
leading to the ultra non resistance ground that no Christian
can consistently uphold and actually engage in and support a
(23:36):
government based on the sword after the Emancipation Proclamation. The
Philadelphia Female Antislavery Society works to help formerly enslaved people
transition into freedom. We did an episode on the Civil
War contraband camps two years ago. We talked about the
Union's gap in their plans when it came to actually
helping newly freed men and women make new lives. Lucretia's
(23:59):
group attempt did to help fill that gap by raising
funds and helping to provide basic needs like clothing, and
also offering educational assistance. But as the war came to
a close, Lucretia's forty year old daughter, Elizabeth moved back home.
This was not a joyous occasion. Elizabeth was terminally ill.
She was somewhat estranged from her husband, and the Mots
(24:20):
at that point had already lost two grandchildren, including Elizabeth's
son Henry, just before Elizabeth became ill, and so while
Lucretia continued to stay informed about current events and keep
an eye on what was going on at the war,
her attentions were really split between her struggling family and
the struggling nation. After the war, the issues of black
(24:41):
suffrage and women's suffrage became the subject of debate for
many abolitionists and women's rights advocates. While some women's rights advocates,
including Elizabeth Katie Stanton, thought that the two causes should
be promoted together, my was concerned early on that things
were still really precarious. She thought that they might need
to see one cause through to the end and then
(25:02):
focus on the other. In eighteen sixty six, the American
Equal Rights Association formed with a goal of quote universal suffrage,
and Lucretia Mott was its first president, and she took
that position somewhat tentatively, based largely on her loyalty to
Elizabeth Katie Stanton, who had asked her to take that role,
and she ultimately found this job really trying and unfulfilling
(25:25):
because she spent most of the time trying to mediate
the ongoing arguments among the members about where their focus
should lie. They really were not getting into any actual activism.
And when Stanton and Susan B. Anthony sought backing from
Democrat entrepreneur George Francis Train, that became the last straw
for Mott because Train supported women's suffrage, but he was
(25:46):
a racist. Matt the news of this alliance, A horrified
William Lloyd Garrison wrote to Susan B. Anthony begging her
not to tie up her cause with Train. He wrote, quote,
the colored people and their advocates have not more abusive
assailant than this same train. He is as destitute of
principle as he is of sense. He may be of
(26:08):
use and drawing an audience, but so would a kangaroo,
a gorilla, or a hippopotamus. William Lloyd Garrison ended this
letter by telling Anthony he thought she was just infatuated
with Train. That could be a whole other podcast, and
I kind of want to do one on Train, because
he is sort of gross and horrifying, but also very fascinating.
(26:29):
So Mott's colleagues at this point wanted to prioritize women's
suffrage over black suffrage and engage the help of this
white supremacist to do so, and Mott, as a consequence,
officially withdrew from her office in their organization in May
of eighteen sixty eight. She also recommended that the entire
group be disbanded. Leading up to her resignation, there were
(26:50):
more immediate concerns in Lucrease's life. In January, James, who
was seventy nine, got pneumonia and died suddenly. While he
was mourned by the public as a figure a great regard,
Lucretia felt alone in the world without him. She refused
to sleep in the bedroom that they had shared and
instead moved into a smaller room in the house that
they had moved to outside of the city. She wrote
(27:12):
letters to relatives about her very deep sense of loss,
and she stopped going to meetings of the various organizations
that she continued to be a part of, not returning
to them for several months. Eventually, though, she did return,
and she became president of the Philadelphia Female Anti Slavery Society,
which continued even though slavery was legally abolished. They had
shifted towards focusing on securing the vote for freedmen, and
(27:35):
while the fourteenth Amendment was passed by Congress, the group
disparaged the lack of specificity in its language. While it
defined citizenship in a broad sense, it didn't specifically grant
political rights to black citizens, which they called out as
being a clearly racist move, as it indicated that quote,
the country and the government belonged to the white man.
(27:57):
We spoke last year about the opposition that Elizabeth's Katie
Stanton had to the fifteenth Amendment, which stated, quote the
right of citizens of the United States to vote shall
not be denied or abridged by the United States or
by any State, on account of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude. It did not grant women the right
to vote, and in reaction, Stanton made some really unfortunate
(28:19):
and frankly racist remarks about it. Mott did not share
these views, and she had expressed regret that these two
issues of women's suffrage and black suffrage had ever been
joined together in activist groups, but Lucretia Mott still really
loved both Elizabeth Katie Stanton and Susan B. Anthony despite
their missteps. Uh, they had all been through a lot together,
(28:41):
and so she was really saddened as she watched the
group she had left, the American Equal Rights Association, suffer
from ongoing in fighting, which eventually led to fractures and
rival women's suffrage groups forming. We've talked about that whole
process in other episodes of the show. And the fall
of eighteen eighty, ten years after the fifteenth Amendment was pasted,
(29:01):
Lucretia Mott, aged eighty seven, developed pneumonia. She's always a
very small woman, and she lost weight that she just
didn't have to lose. She grew very frail, and she
died on November eleventh of that year. But as a
nice coda in three when the Equal Rights Amendment was
first introduced by Alice Paul in Seneca Falls during the
(29:21):
seventy fifth anniversary of the Women's Rights Convention, Paul called
it the Lucretia Mott Amendment. Once again, we want to
thank the National Park Service and the Women's Rights National
Historical Parks specifically for inviting us. It is always in
the truest sense of the word awesome. It is an
awesome treat to sit in Wesleyan Chapel and do a
show where we talk about historical events that happened in
(29:43):
that very space. Yes, so thank you so much. We
genuinely have had a great time both times we have
gone out to convention days. It's an awesome weekend of programming.
So thank you again for including us. And we apologize
that some of our recording of live shows there are
elements of it that are not entirely within our control.
So we always go into it hoping to get a
(30:04):
usable recording for everyone, but knowing that there is a
possibility that it will not work out. Yeah. Uh. And
now I have a little bit of listener mail from
our listener Matthew, about our Levin Hook podcast. He says,
my name is Matthew. I'm a professional oil painter from Milwaukee.
As you can imagine, I spend a lot of time
(30:24):
by myself working in my studio, and your podcast has
become a welcome companion. I'm new to your podcast, however,
and I'm working my way backwards through the archive, and
I just listened to the miniscule Science of anton Eva
and Levin Hook. I was expecting you to mention his
connections to my favorite painter, Yon Dremir, but perhaps it
did not come up in your research. Uh. For my
answer on that, I grazed a thing briefly that suggested it,
(30:47):
but at that point putting it in would have created
a whole other portion of the show that I was
not really ready to focus on, because I wanted to
talk about his science a little bit more. But Matthew
hooks us up with the information. He said, there are
many art historians and scholars who believe that leaven Hook
was the sitter for two of Vermeer's paintings, The Geographer
and the Astronomer. So little is known about Vermeer in
(31:10):
his life that we can never say for certain if
the man in the paintings is leaven Hook. But disitter
does bear a striking resemblance to the known portraits of
leaven Hook, and we can probably surmise that the two
men had at least met at some point, as they
lived in the same town and would have both been
considered learned men. The two paintings are pendants, two paintings
that are the same size and subject that go together.
(31:32):
They would have traditionally been hung on either side of
a doorway or fireplace. At some point in history they
were split up and one ended in the Louver and
the other in the Stottle, Germany's oldest art museum in Frankfurt.
I want a lifelong mission to see every Vermeer. They're
only thirty four and I'm close to completing my quest,
and I've gotten to look at both of these pictures
and they are exceptional. One more interesting tidbit about these paintings.
(31:55):
Hitler love Vermeer, and during the Second World War he
had the astronomers Allan for his personal collection. I know
there's a photograph of him holding the astronomer somewhere, but
I can't seem to find it at the moment. After
the war, it was found hidden in an Austrian salt
mine and returned to France by the Allies. So yeah,
I I always love a little art history I have seen.
(32:16):
I think that picture of Hitler holding that Vermeer. Vermeer
is another fascinating character, but as Matthew points out, there
are some big gaps in information about what we have
of him. So thank you for sharing that with us
and connecting Vermeer and Levin hook Uh. If you would
like to write to us, you can do so at
History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. You can
(32:36):
also find us at missed in History dot com and
across the spectrum of social media as missed in History.
That our website. You will find every episode of the
podcast that has ever existed in our archives, as well
as show notes for any of the ones in the
last five years or so that Tracy and I have
been working on the show. So come and visit us
at missed in History dot com and subscribe to Stuff
(32:57):
you Missed in History class on Apple Podcasts, Google a
or wherever you get your podcasts. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
H
Hey, everybody. We are so excited that we are about
to set out on our very first tour. In augusten
we will be in Atlanta, Georgia, Raleigh, North Carolina, Summerville, Massachusetts, Brooklyn,
New York, and Washington, d C. Then in October we
will be in Seattle, Washington, Portland, Oregon, and Los Angeles
(00:21):
and San Francisco, California. We're hoping that this will go
really well and we can come to other cities and
places that don't end in the word coast sometime maybe
next year. You can find out more information and get
the links to buy tickets at missed in History dot
com slash tour That's missed in History dot com slash tour.
(00:45):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy you Wilson, and today
we're actually recording in studio an episode that we actually
prepared for a live show at the Women's Rights National
(01:08):
Historical Park as part of their Convention Days programming. As
sometimes happens, live show recordings do not go according to plan,
so we can't bring you the original version of that
as it happened live. But that means that those people
in attendance sort of get, you know, their memories of
that special thing that unfortunately nobody else gets to share in.
So let that be lesson to you come to live show. Also,
(01:32):
if you listen to our Road to the Declaration of
Sentiments episode that we did at the end of a
little bit of this is going to sound familiar, there's
not a whole lot of overlap. And that episode was
actually catalyzed by then Chief Technology Officer of the United
States Megan Smith, reaching out to the podcast to raise
awareness of the missing women's rights document, the Declaration of Sentiments,
(01:54):
and we gave a brief version of Lucretia Mott's life
and a quick rundown of how she and Elizabeth Katie
Damn met at the World Anti Slavery Convention. Today's show
is going to focus on Lucretia Mott in much more detail.
But even so, her life is so well documented and
she was such an important public figure in her time
(02:14):
that we're really just hitting some of the highlights. So,
for example, in eighteen sixty four, she helped found Swarthmore
College in Pennsylvania as a co educational institution. But we're
not even going to get into that because we're focusing
instead a lot more on her activism. And she was
a whole lot of activists packed into a diminutive frame.
(02:35):
And while she advocated for peace, she was, in her
own words, no advocate of passivity. Lucretia Mott was born
Lucretia Coffin on January three, seventeen ninety three, on the
island of Nance Huckett in Massachusetts. Her father, Thomas Coffin,
was a sea captain. Her mother, Anna Folger, was related
to Benjamin Franklin. Because Thomas was often at sea, Anna
(02:58):
was managing things at home and she ran us Malch
store with Lucretia's help as Lucretia got older. Lucretia was
their second child, and they eventually had five children. The
Coffin family were Quakers, and the Quaker religion believed slavery
was evil and had a particularly progressive view of women's
equality for the time, so it is not surprising that
(03:19):
Lucresia went on to campaign for women's rights, abolition, and
social reform. When she was ten, her parents decided on
a change for the whole family. Thomas left his job
as a mariner, and the family moved to Boston, where
he became a merchant, all with the intent of creating
a much more stable family life. In addition to how
he was away all the time as a sea captain,
(03:40):
that was also an incredibly dangerous job. Yeah, there was
always the chance that he would not come back, uh,
and they didn't want to live with that risk anymore.
When she was thirteen, Lucretia began attending a Quaker boarding
school in Poughkeepsie, New York called Nine Partners School, along
with one of her sisters, Eliza, and Lucretia did really
well there, so much so that she became an assistant teacher.
(04:02):
When she aged out of the available curriculum, Lucretia was
then shortly thereafter promoted into a teaching position, and this
meant that sort of in an in kind trade on
her work, that another one of her sisters could then
attend the school. And it was during this time that,
even though she was at a Quaker school where equality
was being taught, Lucretia got a really harsh dose of reality. Later,
(04:26):
she wrote of women in education, quote, I learned at
school that their education cost the same as that of men,
while they received as teachers but half the salary. While
she was at nine partners, Lucretia made the acquaintance of
a young teacher named James Mott, who was the son
of the school superintendent. The two of them grew close,
and then they fell deeply in love, and the Coffins
(04:48):
moved once again in eighteen o nine, this time to Philadelphia.
Lucretia and James Mott joined them there, and James was
invited by Lucretia's father, Thomas, to become a partner in
his merchant business. Lucretia married James Mott on April tenth,
eighteen eleven. She was eighteen at the time and he
was five years older. It seems to have been a
(05:08):
very good match. They had similar ideologies when it came
to equality for women. They were both abolitionists. They had
a passionate and devoted relationship, which Lucretia referred to as
a perfect love. Four years after Lucretia and James were married,
Thomas Coffin died. This was not only an emotional blow,
it created a very real financial problem for Lucretia's mother, Anna,
(05:32):
who was suddenly burdened with Thomas's extensive debt, and also
for James Mott, due to his involvement in Thomas's business
and Coffin, had made some pretty bad business decisions and
he was thousands of dollars in debt when he died.
Among other things, he had loaned money to people he
should not have, and he also had a lawsuit pending
against him. Lucretia, James, and Anna all worked together to
(05:55):
address this problem. They chipped away at the financial obligations
that Thomas had behind. Anna went back to work, returning
to her former vocation of running a store. Lucretia worked
as a teacher, and James worked as a bookkeeper, and
the trio really managed to make some very real progress
on this problem. But just as they were getting their
feet back under them, there was another tragedy. Both Lucretia
(06:19):
and her third child, two year old Thomas, became very
ill with fever, and Lucretia recovered, but Thomas did not.
He died and Lucretia was naturally heartbroken. Despite her grief,
though she returned to her teaching job not long after
the loss, and that loss of her son made her
even more devoted to her Quaker faith. In the late
(06:39):
eighteen twenties, the Society of Friends split into two factions,
the Orthodox Group and the Hickside Group, which was named
for Quaker abolitionist Elias Hicks. Hicks had actually been one
of the founding members of the Nine Partner School, where
Lucretia had been a student and a teacher. By this time,
Lucretia was a Quaker minister, although this was not a
vocation as a Quaker, she was not being paid for
(07:01):
this work. Yeah. One of the things I had read
one of the biographies suggested that when she realized that
ministers and other religions got paid to share their sermons,
she was a little bit mortified. I thought that was
not something that should be part of a financial transaction. Uh.
There were a number of issues that led to that
split within the Society of Friends, which is another UH
(07:23):
word for the Quakers. Those reasons were both spiritual and
some were a little bit more mundane. They had to
do with power struggles that were going on. But the
primary reason that was cited for the fracture was the
Hicksite focus on the inward light as the guiding of faith,
whereas the Orthodox group favored biblical authority above all other influences,
(07:43):
and this split began at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, and
the Mots, along with approximately two thirds of their fellow Quakers,
went with the Hicksites. That is a very paired down
an extremely basic version of the schism, which of course
had a lot more nuanced than at but in relation
to the Moths that had a very real impact. The
(08:04):
Hicksites wanted to sever any possible connections to the slave trade,
and as a consequence, James shifted his textile business away
from selling cotton cloth, which was made with raw materials
that had come from slave labor, the transition to selling
wool instead. The Mots and many Hicksites emphasized the importance
of so called free goods and produced, meaning that they
had been produced or grown without the use of slave labor.
(08:27):
In the eighteen thirties, Mott was a member of the
American Anti Slavery Society founded by William Lloyd Garrison, and
that inspired her in eighteen thirty three to found a
women's group within the movement, the Philadelphia Female Anti Slavery Society,
and there was to be clear plenty of controversy around
Mott's outspoken nature in the abolitionist cause. While she had
(08:49):
been raised in a household and a culture that treated
women as more or less equal, her passionate oration was
not always well regarded in non Quaker circles, and sometimes
even within the Society of Friends. There were some members
who were not entirely comfortable with her direct and impassioned
rhetoric on abolition and kind of hoped she might leave
(09:10):
the group rather than continue to stir up controversy. And
there was also a very real danger in being a
public vocal abolitionist. But Lucretia drew a great deal of
strength from her faith, and when she spoke to groups
about slavery, that strength really helped her to make her
position clear, and it helped her to sway people to
(09:31):
her cause. People who heard her speak described her as
being eloquent, calm, and very persuasive, and her use of
logic to condemn the practice of slavery. Coming up who
we're going to talk about a particularly frightening week for
the abolitionist movement in Philadelphia. But before that, we are
going to pause and have a little sponsor break. In
(09:56):
May eight, Lucretia Mott participated in a series of events
at Pennsylvania Hall in her hometown of Philadelphia. That hall
was brand new. It had been designed by Thomas Somerville Stewart,
a Scott's Irish architect living in Philadelphia, as a meeting
place where abolitionists could engage in free discussion, and its
opening was a really high profile event. The hall could
(10:17):
hold three thousand attendees, and in the first few days
the hall's use, both black and white abolitionists sat in
the audience. Journalists and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison made a note, however,
that there were no black speakers on the stage, which
he claimed was the result of either prejudice or fear.
I would point out that it could also have been
(10:38):
related to prejudice, that the white organizers just not even
considering that that would be a thing. Yeah, there could
easily have been thoughtlessness in the mix as well, um,
but there was definitely cause for fear. The opening of
the hall had set off anti abolitionist agitators. Pennsylvania was
a free state, but the issues of slavery in equality
(11:00):
were still topics of strife. Signs began appearing in Philadelphia
urging people to rise up against these abolitionists. And one
red quote, whereas a convention for the avowed purpose of
affecting the immediate abolition of slavery in the Union is
now in session in this city, it behooves all citizens
(11:20):
who entertain a proper respect for the rights of property
and the preservation of the Constitution of the United States,
to interfere forcibly if they must, and prevent the violation
of these pledges heretofore held sacred. There was also the
ongoing issue of women's equality in the mix. With all
of this, some abolitionists felt that open meetings with men
(11:42):
and women, both black and white, all gathered together in
the hall would seem inappropriate. At one point during the
Wednesday evening of the week's events, Mott addressed the assembled
mixed crowd and said she was not speaking on behalf
of the women's Convention, but that she hoped that the
quote false notions of delic see and propriety would soon
be a thing of the past. Yes, she really just
(12:04):
wanted everybody to be able to come together and discuss
these issues and not get watted up on what they
thought was proper or not. And during some of the
speeches in those first few days, Um there were bricks
thrown through the windows of the hall by anti abolitionist protesters.
There are different versions of that story. John Greenleaf Whittier
wrote a biographical sketch of Lucretia Mott right after she died,
(12:27):
and in his version, he suggests that that was happening
while she was speaking. I did not find indications that
that was the case anywhere else. Other versions of the
story of this hall suggests that it happened during other lectures.
Others indicated happened after the fact. We do not know
exactly the timing, but there was some scary stuff going on.
(12:49):
An angry mob had steadily grown in numbers over the
course of several days, and even as the crowd surged
and threatened to enter the building. Mott, who was a
very tiny woman. We said he was diminutive, but to
be clear, she was about five feet tall. She weighed
between ninety and a hundred pounds, and while she was
speaking to her fellow abolitionists in the Anti Slavery Convention
(13:10):
of American Women who were meeting at the time, she
urged them to remain true to the cause and to
continue their work. Meanwhile, all of this scary stuff was
going on literally feet from them, right outside the building.
So when people describe Lucretia Mott as a fierce abolitionist,
which is a phrase you will often see in relation
to her, they are really not kidding. As the women
(13:31):
were leaving, the danger to the black women that had
attended as they walked through this crowd was just obvious.
Mott and the other white women in the group linked
arms with them as a way to help them move
through the angry protesters while trying to also maintain their
physical safety. They did still have to endure the racist
epithets that were being yelled at them as they adjourned,
(13:53):
but they were kept physically safe. Yeah, she was pretty
clear that she believed that these protesters, we're not going
to have the gall to come after, for example, in
her case, a tiny white woman. So she was willing
to put her body physically in the way to prevent
black citizens from being hurt. And the next day, the
threat of violence was so great that all of the
(14:15):
scheduled events were canceled. The mob had grown to a
reported fifteen thousand people in Pennsylvania. Hall, described as one
of the most commodious and splendid buildings in the city
was burned to the ground after the protesters broke in
and lit a fire on the stage. The thing was
like less than a week old at this point, right, Yeah,
(14:35):
that's like the fourth day was when it was burned down.
So there was ongoing violence over the next two days.
The Mots home was in danger as a target because
of Lucresha's high profile and the abolitionist movement. Their home
was spared at the end, but the mob turned its
ire towards black schools and churches. The following month, the
(14:55):
Philadelphia Female Anti Slavery Society, led by Lucretia Mott, hosted
another anti slavery convention, and Mott once again reiterated the
importance of their mission. The World Anti Slavery Convention in
eighteen forty was a significant event in Lucretia Mott's life.
That event took place in London, and when Mott arrived
as a delegate, it became clear that she was not
(15:18):
going to be allowed to participate because she was a woman.
No women were being admitted to the proceedings. Mott was
certainly not the only woman who had traveled to London
with the intent of attending the World Anti Slavery Convention,
all of the women there were told that they could
not participate. Heated debate among the delegates arose over this issue,
(15:39):
and the women were eventually granted admission, but this was
not exactly a win. They had to sit in a
special women's section at the back of the hall, and
they were not allowed to participate in any way. They
were allowed to observe, and to observe only. William Lloyd
Garrison was so angry about this situation, as were other men,
that he withdrew as a delegate and he opted to
(16:02):
share observer only status with the women abolitionists, so he
and several other men actually went back and sat in
their section. But it was in that women's section that
Lucretia Mott met the woman who would become one of
her greatest allies, Elizabeth Katie Stanton, who had made the
trip to London as her honeymoon with her new husband,
Henry Brewster Stanton. I love that they did this on
(16:23):
their honeymoon. It is quite charming. Uh Stanton made a
description of Lucretia Mott at this convention, and I wanted
to include this because there is a photograph of Lucretia Mott.
That is probably the most commonly seen in the modern era.
And it is a photograph taken when she was older,
and she looks a little dour, And I think that
people have in their heads that she must have been
(16:44):
a very sour woman. But in fact she was by
all accounts, really lovely. She was described as a very
vivacious youth. But I wanted to read Stanton's description of
her during the convention quote she was then in her prime,
small in stature, slightly built, with a large head, high
square forehead, remarkably fine face, regular features, dark hair and eyes.
(17:07):
She was gentle and refined in her manners, and she
conversed with earnestness and ease, commiserating over their anger how
women abolitionists for being treated at the convention. Mott and
Stanton decided that when they were both back in the
United States, they should arrange a women's rights convention. Was
five years in the making, but they were true to
their words. On July fourteenth, eight forty eight, the following
(17:30):
announcement ran in the Seneca County Courier under the headline
Women's Rights Convention, a convention to discuss the social civil
and Religious Condition and Rights of Women will be held
in the Wesleyan Chapel at Seneca Falls, New York, on
Wednesday and Thursday, the nineteenth and twentie of July current,
commencing at ten o'clock a m. During the first day,
(17:52):
the meeting will be exclusively for women, which all are
earnestly invited to attend. The public generally are invited to
be present on this second day, when Lucretia Mott of
Philadelphia and others, both ladies and gentlemen, will address the convention.
Of course, famously, the Declaration of Sentiments was signed at
this convention. That's a document that was modeled after the
(18:12):
Declaration of Independence that outlined eighteen injuries to women and
was accompanied by eleven resolutions. Mott was one of the
writers of this document. The most controversial of the eleven
resolutions was getting women the right to vote. This is
sometimes cited as the moment when the US suffrage movement
was born. As a quick note slash reminder, the topic
(18:35):
of the show we did in Seneca Falls last year
was Frederick Douglas, and he also attended the Seneca Falls
Convention and was also one of the signers of the
Declaration of Sentiments. But perhaps surprisingly, Lucretia Mott was one
of the people who was not a supporter of the
Resolution for the right to vote for women. She felt
that politics was inherently really flawed in immoral system, in
(18:59):
part due to its connection with slavery. So she thought
women really did not need to dirty themselves with that grossness.
But she did sign the Declaration of Sentiments, and she
did also managed to reconcile her concerns in a speech
that was later published by Mott as Discourse on Woman.
She said the following, It is with reluctance that I
make the demand for the political rights of women, because
(19:22):
this claim is so distasteful to the age woman shrinks,
in the present state of society from taking any interest
in politics. Who knows but that if woman acted her
part in governmental affairs there might be an entire change
in the turmoil of political life. It becomes man to
speak modestly of his ability to act without her. If
(19:42):
woman's judgment were exercised, why might she not aid in
making the laws by which she has governed? Far be
it from me to encourage woman to vote or to
take an active part in politics. In the present state
of our government. Her right to the elective franchise, however,
is the same and should be yielded to her, whether
she exercises that right or not. And we're going to
(20:03):
talk next about the Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty,
but first we are going to pause for a little
sponsor break. When the Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty
was passed, Lucretia and James Mott protested vehemently against it.
That act has come up with some regularity on the show,
(20:25):
but just for a reminder, it required that enslaved people
who ran away to non slave states had to be
captured and returned to their enslavers, and that aiding a
person who had escaped enslavement was a crime. The Fugitive
Slave Act caused a lot of strife even within the
abolitionist movement. For one thing, there was the debates between
(20:46):
following the law and following the principles of equality. Additionally,
even non abolitionist Pennsylvanians were angry that this act took
precedence over the state's personal liberty laws and instances where
people who had been enslaved were retaken by force Pacifist
abolitionists grappled with their own principles of non violence as
(21:07):
they came into conflict with their desire to protect formerly
enslaved people, and one of the things that Mott continued
to do during this time was to continue to use
her physical presence for the abolitionist cause. She knew, as
I said, that as a white woman, she would likely
be treated more respectfully or at least more gently than
a white man or a person of color, making the
(21:27):
kinds of statements that she made. In one instance, she
rode in a carriage with a woman named Jane Johnson, who,
in the course of fleeing enslavement, actually appeared to testify
in court that the abolitionists who had helped her had
not kidnapped her, but she had gone of her own volition.
She did that knowing that the marshals were going to
pursue her afterwards, so once she finished her testimony, she
(21:49):
and Mott made a hasty exit from the court, and
Mott helped Jane Johnson slip away from the authorities. With
a bit of misdirection. They wrote in a carriage around
the streets. They ended up at the front of the
Mott home they both got out, went through the house.
Jane left out the back door and picked up another
carriage there with a little meal that Lucretia had handed her,
(22:09):
and then she took off in that other carriage and
fortunately was not apprehended, while Lucretia could be like, I
don't know what you're talking about when the marshals got
to the house. Um In another instance, when a black
man named Daniel Webster was captured in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and
accused of being a runaway from a Virginia slave plantation,
that was a case of mistaken identity. Lucretia Mott sat
(22:32):
as near as she could to the defendants throughout his
court case. She would sit there, knitting or sewing, but
always simply being a presence, making it keenly apparent that
an abolitionist was watching. And Webster was eventually declared a freeman.
When the Civil War began, it was already a difficult
time for the Mots. They weren't young by this point.
(22:53):
Both of them were in failing health. James was losing
his vision and Lucretia would read to him, but she
was having dizzy spells and frequent digestive issues. And on
top of that, even though this battle over slavery was
obviously important and abolition had been a driving force in
Mott's license, she was a young girl. Her pacifism made
(23:13):
this entire war extremely upsetting. She really had hoped that
they could win over the hearts and minds of people
through talking about the issue. In fact, she once wrote, quote,
the cause of peace has had a share of my efforts,
leading to the ultra non resistance ground that no Christian
can consistently uphold and actually engage in and support a
(23:36):
government based on the sword after the Emancipation Proclamation. The
Philadelphia Female Antislavery Society works to help formerly enslaved people
transition into freedom. We did an episode on the Civil
War contraband camps two years ago. We talked about the
Union's gap in their plans when it came to actually
helping newly freed men and women make new lives. Lucretia's
(23:59):
group attempt did to help fill that gap by raising
funds and helping to provide basic needs like clothing, and
also offering educational assistance. But as the war came to
a close, Lucretia's forty year old daughter, Elizabeth moved back home.
This was not a joyous occasion. Elizabeth was terminally ill.
She was somewhat estranged from her husband, and the Mots
(24:20):
at that point had already lost two grandchildren, including Elizabeth's
son Henry, just before Elizabeth became ill, and so while
Lucretia continued to stay informed about current events and keep
an eye on what was going on at the war,
her attentions were really split between her struggling family and
the struggling nation. After the war, the issues of black
(24:41):
suffrage and women's suffrage became the subject of debate for
many abolitionists and women's rights advocates. While some women's rights advocates,
including Elizabeth Katie Stanton, thought that the two causes should
be promoted together, my was concerned early on that things
were still really precarious. She thought that they might need
to see one cause through to the end and then
(25:02):
focus on the other. In eighteen sixty six, the American
Equal Rights Association formed with a goal of quote universal suffrage,
and Lucretia Mott was its first president, and she took
that position somewhat tentatively, based largely on her loyalty to
Elizabeth Katie Stanton, who had asked her to take that role,
and she ultimately found this job really trying and unfulfilling
(25:25):
because she spent most of the time trying to mediate
the ongoing arguments among the members about where their focus
should lie. They really were not getting into any actual activism.
And when Stanton and Susan B. Anthony sought backing from
Democrat entrepreneur George Francis Train, that became the last straw
for Mott because Train supported women's suffrage, but he was
(25:46):
a racist. Matt the news of this alliance, A horrified
William Lloyd Garrison wrote to Susan B. Anthony begging her
not to tie up her cause with Train. He wrote, quote,
the colored people and their advocates have not more abusive
assailant than this same train. He is as destitute of
principle as he is of sense. He may be of
(26:08):
use and drawing an audience, but so would a kangaroo,
a gorilla, or a hippopotamus. William Lloyd Garrison ended this
letter by telling Anthony he thought she was just infatuated
with Train. That could be a whole other podcast, and
I kind of want to do one on Train, because
he is sort of gross and horrifying, but also very fascinating.
(26:29):
So Mott's colleagues at this point wanted to prioritize women's
suffrage over black suffrage and engage the help of this
white supremacist to do so, and Mott, as a consequence,
officially withdrew from her office in their organization in May
of eighteen sixty eight. She also recommended that the entire
group be disbanded. Leading up to her resignation, there were
(26:50):
more immediate concerns in Lucrease's life. In January, James, who
was seventy nine, got pneumonia and died suddenly. While he
was mourned by the public as a figure a great regard,
Lucretia felt alone in the world without him. She refused
to sleep in the bedroom that they had shared and
instead moved into a smaller room in the house that
they had moved to outside of the city. She wrote
(27:12):
letters to relatives about her very deep sense of loss,
and she stopped going to meetings of the various organizations
that she continued to be a part of, not returning
to them for several months. Eventually, though, she did return,
and she became president of the Philadelphia Female Anti Slavery Society,
which continued even though slavery was legally abolished. They had
shifted towards focusing on securing the vote for freedmen, and
(27:35):
while the fourteenth Amendment was passed by Congress, the group
disparaged the lack of specificity in its language. While it
defined citizenship in a broad sense, it didn't specifically grant
political rights to black citizens, which they called out as
being a clearly racist move, as it indicated that quote,
the country and the government belonged to the white man.
(27:57):
We spoke last year about the opposition that Elizabeth's Katie
Stanton had to the fifteenth Amendment, which stated, quote the
right of citizens of the United States to vote shall
not be denied or abridged by the United States or
by any State, on account of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude. It did not grant women the right
to vote, and in reaction, Stanton made some really unfortunate
(28:19):
and frankly racist remarks about it. Mott did not share
these views, and she had expressed regret that these two
issues of women's suffrage and black suffrage had ever been
joined together in activist groups, but Lucretia Mott still really
loved both Elizabeth Katie Stanton and Susan B. Anthony despite
their missteps. Uh, they had all been through a lot together,
(28:41):
and so she was really saddened as she watched the
group she had left, the American Equal Rights Association, suffer
from ongoing in fighting, which eventually led to fractures and
rival women's suffrage groups forming. We've talked about that whole
process in other episodes of the show. And the fall
of eighteen eighty, ten years after the fifteenth Amendment was pasted,
(29:01):
Lucretia Mott, aged eighty seven, developed pneumonia. She's always a
very small woman, and she lost weight that she just
didn't have to lose. She grew very frail, and she
died on November eleventh of that year. But as a
nice coda in three when the Equal Rights Amendment was
first introduced by Alice Paul in Seneca Falls during the
(29:21):
seventy fifth anniversary of the Women's Rights Convention, Paul called
it the Lucretia Mott Amendment. Once again, we want to
thank the National Park Service and the Women's Rights National
Historical Parks specifically for inviting us. It is always in
the truest sense of the word awesome. It is an
awesome treat to sit in Wesleyan Chapel and do a
show where we talk about historical events that happened in
(29:43):
that very space. Yes, so thank you so much. We
genuinely have had a great time both times we have
gone out to convention days. It's an awesome weekend of programming.
So thank you again for including us. And we apologize
that some of our recording of live shows there are
elements of it that are not entirely within our control.
So we always go into it hoping to get a
(30:04):
usable recording for everyone, but knowing that there is a
possibility that it will not work out. Yeah. Uh. And
now I have a little bit of listener mail from
our listener Matthew, about our Levin Hook podcast. He says,
my name is Matthew. I'm a professional oil painter from Milwaukee.
As you can imagine, I spend a lot of time
(30:24):
by myself working in my studio, and your podcast has
become a welcome companion. I'm new to your podcast, however,
and I'm working my way backwards through the archive, and
I just listened to the miniscule Science of anton Eva
and Levin Hook. I was expecting you to mention his
connections to my favorite painter, Yon Dremir, but perhaps it
did not come up in your research. Uh. For my
answer on that, I grazed a thing briefly that suggested it,
(30:47):
but at that point putting it in would have created
a whole other portion of the show that I was
not really ready to focus on, because I wanted to
talk about his science a little bit more. But Matthew
hooks us up with the information. He said, there are
many art historians and scholars who believe that leaven Hook
was the sitter for two of Vermeer's paintings, The Geographer
and the Astronomer. So little is known about Vermeer in
(31:10):
his life that we can never say for certain if
the man in the paintings is leaven Hook. But disitter
does bear a striking resemblance to the known portraits of
leaven Hook, and we can probably surmise that the two
men had at least met at some point, as they
lived in the same town and would have both been
considered learned men. The two paintings are pendants, two paintings
that are the same size and subject that go together.
(31:32):
They would have traditionally been hung on either side of
a doorway or fireplace. At some point in history they
were split up and one ended in the Louver and
the other in the Stottle, Germany's oldest art museum in Frankfurt.
I want a lifelong mission to see every Vermeer. They're
only thirty four and I'm close to completing my quest,
and I've gotten to look at both of these pictures
and they are exceptional. One more interesting tidbit about these paintings.
(31:55):
Hitler love Vermeer, and during the Second World War he
had the astronomers Allan for his personal collection. I know
there's a photograph of him holding the astronomer somewhere, but
I can't seem to find it at the moment. After
the war, it was found hidden in an Austrian salt
mine and returned to France by the Allies. So yeah,
I I always love a little art history I have seen.
(32:16):
I think that picture of Hitler holding that Vermeer. Vermeer
is another fascinating character, but as Matthew points out, there
are some big gaps in information about what we have
of him. So thank you for sharing that with us
and connecting Vermeer and Levin hook Uh. If you would
like to write to us, you can do so at
History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. You can
(32:36):
also find us at missed in History dot com and
across the spectrum of social media as missed in History.
That our website. You will find every episode of the
podcast that has ever existed in our archives, as well
as show notes for any of the ones in the
last five years or so that Tracy and I have
been working on the show. So come and visit us
at missed in History dot com and subscribe to Stuff
(32:57):
you Missed in History class on Apple Podcasts, Google a
or wherever you get your podcasts. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
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