Representative women of New England/Abby K. Foster
ABBY KELLEY FOSTER was the descendant of a long line of Quaker ancestry, English on the mother's side, Irish on the father's. From the former came her unflinching determination, her almost dogged persistence, her unyielding will where a principle was at stake, her severe judgment of all who failed to reach her lofty standards of morality. With the Celtic blood came her cheerfulness, her ingenuousness, her childlike simplicity, and utter lack of self-consciousness. Her inability to keep a secret, even when of an important character, was the source of much amusement and occasional annoyance to her friends. Of Irish wit she had not a trace, though she could thoroughly enjoy a joke when it was explained to her.
Mrs. Foster had a clear, though perhaps, an unusual, conception of the distinction between the possible and the impossible. Whatever was right and just she firmly believed to be possible. To right a wrong or to accomplish an important object, she would move heaven and earth; but she wasted no energy in useless repining over the inevitable. It was this philosophic resignation to the necessary ills of life, combined with a remarkable elasticity of temperament, which enabled her to endure the intense nervous strain to which she was for many years unavoidably subjected, and helped to prolong beyond threescore years and ten a life, in childhood frail, in youth and middle age constantly overburdened with severe mental and physical toil.
Soon after her birth in the little town of Pelham, Mass., January 15, 1811, her parents, Wing and Diama (Daniels) Kelley, removed to Worcester, where the little Abigail, because of her delicate health, was allowed to grow up in comparative freedom from the restraint imposed upon the girls of her day. But, in spite of this, she used to tell me that she constantly rebelled against the limits set to the physical activity of girls. She felt it a humiliation to be permitted to go on the ice only in tow of some condescending boy who might offer to drag her behind him by a stick. But she would climb trees and fences, and coast down hills on barrel staves, undeterred by the epithets "hoyden" and "tomboy," heaped upon her by the girls who only played with dolls in the house. Thus early did she exhibit that love of freedom which was her leading trait through life.
Her mother, the strictest of orthodox Friends, taught her children to follow with unquestioning obedience the leadings of "the Spirit," that inner voice which the world calls conscience. It was to this early training of the conscience and the will that Mrs. Foster attributed her moral strength in later life. The severe discipline of the household was mitigated, however, by the genial influence of the warm-hearted, impulsive father, whose kindly nature found expression in tender affection toward his children and abounding hospitality to a large circle of friends.
Pecuniary misfortunes reduced the family income by and by, and put to the test the character of the young girl who was just now beginning to realize the serious meaning of life. She had learned all that the best private school for girls in Worcester could teach her. Her parents could not afford to send her away to school, so at the age of fourteen she borrowed money of an elder sister to pay her expenses for a year at the Friends' School in Providence, R.I. Though not (as she declared) a brilliant scholar, she was a most faithful student, often working so hard over her lessons that the perspiration would stand out on her face as if from hard physical exertion. She took a high rank in her class, and was there- fore able to obtain from her teachers a recommendation which secured her a school the next year, though she was only fifteen years old. Having paid her debt and earned a little beside, she returned to school; and for three years she alternately taught and studied, until she had finished the most advanced course of instruction which New England then offered to women. From the age of fourteen she paid all her own expenses.
She was fond of dress, and indulged to the full in the few frivolities -allowed by her sect, which did not altogether frown upon rich silks anil satins, if plainly fashioned and of subdued tints. Abby (I think she had already dropped the "gail") had an eminently social nature, and did not disdain the pomps and vanities of parties and balls, with their attendant beaux, among whom her slender, graceful figure and beautiful dancing made her a favorite.
Miss Kelley must have been about nineteen when she went to Lynn, where for several years she had charge of the private school of the Friends' Society. It was while here that she first heard the subject of slavery discussed. She listened to the burning words of William Lloyd Garrison and to the strong Quaker utterance of Arnold Buffum. The "inner voice" began to call to her, and she replied by accepting the secretaryship of the Lynn Female Anti-slavery Society, just formed. Her own words, taken from the letter to which I have referred, give a vivid picture of the strong impression which the reform had already made upon her.
"From this time I did what I could to carry forward the work, by circulating petitions to for legislative bodies, scattering our publications, soliciting subscriptions to our journals, and raising funds for our societies, in the meantime by private conversations enforcing our principles and our measures in season and out of season, taking more and more of the time left from my school duties. At length my whole soul was so filled with the subject that it would not leave me in school hours, and I saw I was giving to this duty less than its due. This decided me to resign. I had been wanting to pass a season with my mother, who was in failing health. My resignation was not accepted, but I persisted, and after two more terms I was released. My mother was in sympathy with me on the slavery question, and I told her fully the state of my mind, saying that, but for the fact that I had so little com- mand of language and no training in public speaking, I should think I had a divine call (as understood by Friends) to go forth and lecture.
"About this time there was a pressing call for funds from the anti-slavery societies, and I sold some of the most expensive articles of my wardrobe, and forwarded the proceeds to the treasury, feeling that I could not withhold even a feather's weight of help that might hasten the downfall of the terrible system which, by crushing and cursing the slave, had deprived the whole country of the liberty of speech and the press, and the right of peaceable assemblage and petition."
(It should be said at this point that Miss Kelley had already given to the society all her accumulated earnings and the small inheritance recently received from her father's estate.) "Not long after this, in one of our Scripture readings at breakfast, I read from a chapter containing these words: 'Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: but God hath chosen the polish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, . . . and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are: that no flesh should glory in his presence.' I closed the book and said to my mother: 'My way is clear now: a new light has broken on me. How true it is, as history records, that all great reforms have been carried forward by weak and despised means! The talent, the learning, the wealth, the Church, and the State, are pledged to the support of slavery. I will go out among the honest-hearted common people, into the highways and byways, and cry, "Pity the poor slave!" if I can do nothing more.' My mother still hoped that I might be spared from taking up so heavy a cross;. but I told her I had counted the cost, and though, as an abolitionist, I must take my life in my hand, and, as a public-speaking woman, must suffer more than the loss of life, yet all I could give, and all I was, was but as dust in the balance, if my efforts could gain over to our cause a few honest souls.
"I had a sister living in Connecticut, who was quite in accord with me, and at her house I now made my home, going out as opportunities were offered me by the few abolitionists of that vicinity. I was entirely unknown and uidicard of, except as some New York paper, in its denunciation and ridicule of the anti-slavery meetings, might refer to me as 'that monstrosity, a public-speaking woman.' I had no endorsement from any society, none but a few of my most intimate friends knowing of my purpose. The reason for my going out thus was my doubt of being able to serve the great cause in this way; and I did not wish to involve any other person in the trials, perils, and tribulations to which I should be liable."
Miss Kelley finally received an invitation to hold meetings in Washington, Conn. She says of them: "The first meeting was well attended, and another was called for, then still another and another, each with deepening interest and larger attendance. When a fifth was proposed, as I had engagements elsewhere, I promised to return in two weeks and speak again. It may seem remarkable that no opposition was manifested; but those who invited me were all members of the church, and Mr. Gunn was the superintendent of the Sabbath-school, and Mr. Piatt a sheriff of the county. . . . I was treated with much consitleration, receiving hospitality from those who stood first and best. But, when I returned, lo, what a change! Mr. and Mrs. Gunn met me with sorrowful faces and told me that in my absence Mr. H., the minister, had preached a sermon from the text. Rev. ii. 20: 'I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel to teach and to seduce my servants.' . . . He set forth the powers and artifices of Jezebel, her learning, her marvellous blandishments, with the neglect of the minister to forbid her preaching until she had acquired such an influence that he dared not interfere. Then Mr. H. charged that another Jezebel had arisen, and, with fascinations exceeding even these of her Scripture prototype, was aiming to entice and destroy this church. ... He added: *Do any of you ask for evidence of her vile character? It needs no other evidence than the fact that in the face of the clearest commands of God, "Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak," she comes here with brazen face, a servant of Satan in the garb of an angel of light, and tramples this command under her feet.' This is the purport of his discourse as reported to me.
"My friends invited me to go with them to the weekly prayer-meeting that afternoon. We hoped, though with little faith, to have an opportunity for my friend to say a few words in reply to the Sunday's sermon. But no one was allowed to speak except by the minister's invitation, and the meeting was soon closed. We stood near the door as the people passed out. With one exception, not one of those whom I had met on my first visit, not even those who had hospitably entertained me, gave me a hand or a look, but all passed me as if I had been a block. I doubt not that many of the members of that church thanked Mr. H. for his timely warning, by which they were saved from being led to death and hell. At my lecture that evening few were present, and those mainly from surrounding towns. I went to my chamber that night, but not to sleep. In agony of prayer and tears, my cry was, -Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fomitahi of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! 'My anguish was not because of anything personal to myself, but because I was thus cut off from the people who might rise up for the defence of the slave. The friends at whose house I was stood by me nobly, but we all saw that nothing more could be done at that time.
"Soon after this I was invited to speak in Torrington, where a Methodist church was opened to me, the minister being absent. I remained there about a week, holding several meetings, which created great interest, so that people came in from surrounding towns. There were many questions asked and answered, but very little opposition was apparent. At one of the last meetings, though nothing had been said about money, the people in passing out left contributions on the desk before me. No one said a word except an aged man, who, dropping a gold coin, remarked, ^The laborer is worthy of his hire.' The amount was several dollars.
"When I started on my mission, my funds were low. I could not ask for help, but de- cided that, when my supply should fail, it would be sufficient reason for my going home. At one time I had but ten cents left in my purse, and was about to write home for a loan, when a letter from an intimate friend was brought me, containing a five-dollar bill."
Among the places which Miss Kelley visited was Norfolk, Conn. Arriving in the absence of her host, several of the principal men of the town called on her, and informed her with threats that if she persisted in her attempt it would be at her own peril. With no friend at hand she had to yield; but it was Saturday night, and she could not get away before Monday. Her hostess was evidently in sympathy with the mob element, and Miss Kelley therefore tried to get lodgings at the hotel. She was told that the innkeeper would as willingly entertain the vilest woman from New York as herself. "Language," she writes, "cannot describe that long day and night of spiritual anguish and utter desolation." Monday morn- ing saw her depart. She went to the house of a friendly Quaker farmer in Canaan. "Once more I breathed freely. A terrible burden fell off me. W^hen left alone I went into the or- chard back of the house" (remember she was still young, only about twenty-five) "and ran about like a colt let loose. I hopped, skipped, and danced. I climbed the trees and sang with the birds. Such ecstasies of delight come rarely."
In this town she held good meetings, but in Salisbury her meeting was broken up by a mob which rang the church hell, tooted tin horns, and beat on tin pans.
At Cornwall Bridge Miss Kelley barely escaped personal injury. The politics of the town were controlled by a charcoal manufacturer, a drunken, profane fellow, who had a similar following. "When we entered the house, we found it well filled and lighted, with a candle on the desk, and several candles and oil lamps on the box stove in the centre. The audience appeared respectable; but from with- out smutty faces looked in through the open windows, and ominous mutterings were heard. Directly there strode in a burly, led-faced fellow, with glaring eyes, who brandished a huge club, shouting with an oath, 'Where's the nigger wench?' A shudder ran through me. A feeble, trembling voice in a far corner of the room replied, 'Perhaps she has not come.' Down fell his club, right and left, Kitting out and smashing lamps and candles. That on the desk followed in an instant, while I was seized by my friends, and in the darkness was hurried to the door, amid the sounds of the falling club, the screams of the wounded, and the horrible oaths of the drunken wretch." Another attempt to hold a meeting was foiled by the appearance of this man with a loaded gun.
If anything more than the terrible campaign in Connecticut were needed to convince Miss Kelley that she had a divine call for public speaking, it was found in the effect produced by the short but eloquent appeal which she made in Pennsylvania Hall, Philadelphia, on the memorable evening of its destruction at the hands of a pro-slavery mob, May IG, 1838. At the close of that meeting, her friend, Theodore D. Weld, strongly urged her to join the lecture corps, adding, "Abby, if you don't, God will smite you." But, before a woman could go forth as the accredited agent of the Anti-slavery Society, a battle had to be fought within its own ranks. Witness a letter dictated by Mrs. Foster two or three years before her death:—
"Long before there was any organized movement in behalf of the equal rights of women, the battle for the recognition of their equality was fought and won, as an incidental issue, on the anti-slavery platform. In 1837 Sarah and Angelina Grimke, of South Carolina, were invited to New England to lecture to women on slavery. Meetings were appointed for them in Boston, at which a few men looked in from the vestibule, and finally entered and took seats. No objections being made to this invasion, their subsequent meetings were, largely attended by men as well as women. Meetings were held in many towns in New England, frequently in influential churches, the pastors opening with prayer and otherwise giving countenance to the movement. Among the most important hearings given the Grimkes were those before the Legislature of Massachusetts, on petitions. They created an interest that had never been felt before, as witness the action of the Congregational Association, which in 1838, by a pastoral letter, written by a committee of which the Rev. Nehemiah Adams was chairman, warned its various churches against giving countenance to women's speaking in public assemblies, a movement which was anti-scriptural, unnatural, indecent, and ruinous to the best interests of the comnuuiity.
"These lectures and the action of the Congregational Association resulted in a great agitation, extending throughout New England, especially in the anti-slavery ranks. No woman hail hitherto taken part in a mixed convention of any of the anti-slavery societies by speaking or serving on committees; but in May, 1838, at the New England Convention, Abby Kelley said a few words from her seat in the hall, and was afterward nominated and elected a member of a conmiittee to memorialize the religious associations of Massachusetts in regard to slavery.
"This action, hastily taken in the closing moments of the first .evening, was next day violently opposed by ministers and others, among them several who had been prominent in aiding the Grimke sisters in their mixed meetings, but who now, under the influence of the pastoral letter and hostile public sentiment, had joined the opposition. These members, having in vain requested Miss Kelley to withdraw from the committee, introduced a resolution excusing her from serving. An intensely exciting discussion followed. The resolution was defeated, a large majority taking the ground that women, being members of the society, were entitled to all the rights, privileges, and duties pertaining to membership. In May, 1839, the question again came up, this time at the annual meeting of the American Anti-slavery Society, in New York. An exciting discussion followed the appointment of Miss Kelley to a committee, the question being decided as before. The next year it was settled, once for all, that in the American Anti-slavery Society and its auxiliaries throughout the country the women should take part as freely as the men in all the work of the public meetings, even to the point of presiding on important occasions."
It was in 1839 that Miss Kelley's recognized career as a lecturer began. She had already been baptized with the terrible flame of persecution in the solitary Connecticut campaign, and whatever of abuse and vilification now assailed her she could bear with comparative equanimity, supported by the strong band of brave and loyal souls who had pledged to the cause of the slave their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. From this time till her marriage, in 1845, Miss Kelley devoted herself untiringly to anti-slavery work. She spoke in conventions not only, but guide long trips through remote country districts, speaking in churches, whenever they could be obtained; when not, in school-houses. Sometimes arrangements were made by the society's agent; but she often had to be her own agent, learning from her last host who in the surrounding towns would help her to get up meetings, and who would receive her at their houses, for she had no money to pay hotel bills. For many years she received no salary, her travelling expenses only being paid by the society, and her most pressing needs for clothing being supplied by her friends. Many annising anecdotes might be related of these lecture tours. She, like Dickens, was given her choice of "corn bread and common doin's" or "white bread and chicken fixin's." In the new settlements of the West, where the kitchen sink or the well was the common bath-room for the family, and a single dish (sometimes the iron skillet) served each in turn as a wash-basin, her hostesses discovered that an occult connection existed between a woman lecturer and a pan of water—a luxury which Miss Kelley always insisted upon having in her room. In those days of pork and bacon it was extremely difficult to get suitable food, but eggs and potatoes could usually be obtained. Travelling was a terrible undertaking. At first no railroads, then only a few between the larger cities, stage-coaches or wagons, and roads of every degree of muddiness or roughness, with the corduroy road of logs as the extreme of torture—these were the only means of conveyance for the pioneers of the anti-slavery cause.
About the time that Abby Kelley became known to the public, another lecturer appeared on the anti-slavery platform, one who excited more animosity, if less ridicule, than she. This was Stephen S. Foster, who out-Garrisoned even the famous leader. In his ability to portray in vivid and terrible language the sin of the stat-holder and the wickedness of the church and clergy in lending countenance to the system, he was without a rival. No meeting was dull where he spoke. Indeed, a mob was the not improbable outcome, before which Mr. Foster never quailed. A non-resistant, he carried always with him two invaluable weapons — a piercing eye, with which he transfixed his assailants, and a wonderful magnetic power, which enabled him to hold an audience, though they writhed under his terrible denunciations. But he was sometimes roughly handled, and several times received serious injuries.
This brave martyr spirit was the mate for whom destiny had preserved Abby Kelley from her many youthful admirers. Marriage had never attracted her; for marriage, at that time, meant the absolute submission of the wife, her entire loss of identity. To such a union such a woman could never consent. But when this wooer came there was a difference. The great principle of human freedom which he applied to the black slave he applied also to the white woman, who was a subject, if not a chattel. He had the same great cause at heart as Miss Kelley. Like her, he had labored without money and without price, had given up his profession and his creed for the slave. Marriage to such a man seemed to her the realizazation of an ideal, and so it proved. But there was one condition: three entire years must be devoted to the sacred cause. So the travelling and lecturing went on. T^p and down, from Maine to Ohio, always with some woman for a travelling companion. Miss Kelley toiled almost without rest. One summer she spoke every day for six weeks and sometimes twice a day. The meetings (some of them large conventions) were often held in groves, and it was this severe strain which broke the voice, before so strong and clear.
In December, 1845, Abby Kelley and Stephen S. Foster were married. For a year or two previously they had consented to receive the small salary then usually paid to lecturer's. They felt that they owed something to the new relation and duties they were soon to assume. Mr. Foster had also realized something from an anti-slavery work which he wrote about that time. With this small sum the husband and wife purchased a farm in the suburbs of Worcester, Mass., which continued to be their home till Mr. Foster's death in 1881. But their public work was not given up. Mr. Foster was usually absent during the winter on lecturing tours, while Mrs. Foster made several long campaigns in the West, besides often attending conventions or giving lectures nearer home. When asked how she could bear to leave her little daughter, she would reply, "I leave my child in wise and loving hands and but for a little, while the slave mothers daily have their daughters torn from their arms and sold into torture and infamy."
Never was mother more devoted, more self-sacrificing than she. Had she been less noble, less brave, less tender of her child, she would have remained at home to enjoy her motherhood at the expense of other mothers. She once exclaimed, "The most precious legacy I can leave my child is a free country!"
It was about this time that the woman's rights cause came up as an independent reform. Mrs. Foster had fought the battle for the right of women to speak in public, and had gained it for herself and for all women. Now came the broader question of the right to vote, which involves all other rights. She was earnest in its advocacy, and came to see that it was a much more comprehensive reform than even the anti-slavery movement. But she felt that her life was consecrated to the slave, and that her failing voice and broken health must be husbanded for that service. Yet she was thoroughly identified with the suffrage movement, and was recognized, with the Grimkes, as the pioneer who, with bleeding feet, smoothed the path through which the women of the suffrage movement might lead their sex to the light.
Mrs. Foster's last public work was devoted to raising money for rousing public sentiment to the necessity of carrying the Fifteenth Amendment. With the other loyal friends of the freedmen, she felt that freedom without the ballot was an empty name. She could no longer speak from the platform, but her earnest pleading in private rarely failed to convince her listener that justice was the only safe course for the nation to pursue. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dollars were contributed through her to be spent in holding meetings throughout the North and in publishing and distributing documents for the enlightenment of the public. This amendment at last carried, she felt that she had at last earned a discharge from the army of workers.
Those who listened to Abby Kelley in the days of her young womanhood have told me of her wonderful power. This consisted, I imagine, in her intense earnestness, in her utter self-forgetfulness and consecration. Her language was of Quaker simplicity, unadorned with figures or imagery. She never wrote her speeches, and rarely spent any time in their preparation; but the eloquence of a heart on fire, words lighted at the altar of Cod's truth, were hers. Her audience felt that she "remembered those in bonds as bound with them." Such a passion for freedom, such unselfish devotion, could not fail to inspire admiration and win converts.
Though Miss Kelley's features were not beautiful, she had an attractive personality. Her lithe, graceful figure was crowned with a head of fine outlines, well poised on a beautiful neck, and covered with abundant dark brown hair, hardly gray, even at her death. The Quaker kerchief, laid in folds around her neck, was the one article of personal adornment to which she clung. Its simplicity was perhaps its special charm, so completely did it harmonize with the purity and sincerity of the wearer.
Mrs. Foster was noted far and near for her good housekeeping. She had had almost no experience in this department before her marriage, but (as she confided to me a short time before her death) she was determined to disprove the assertion that a "strong-minded woman" would, of course, neglect her house and family. As a poor farmer's wife she had a hard task, but she accomplished it success- fully, though her health was often far from robust. From kitchen to platform was perhaps not an easy transition, yet it was one which she often made with little apparent difficulty.
The five years of Mrs. Foster's life from 1876 to 1881 were saddened by the illness of her husband, which was attended with intense suffering and which terminated fatally. But throughout this time of trial and for the succeeding five years preceding her own death. January 14, 1887, her brave and cheerful spirit triumphed over her frail body, and she lived on the serene heights, happy in the consciousness of a life well spent and ready for that immortal existence which she was convinced would bring her renewed strength and further opportunity to work toward the ultimate good which to her meant God.
A sketch of Mrs. Foster would be incomplete without a word upon the character of her husband, which cannot be better said than by his lifelong friend, Parker Pillsbury, in his "Acts of the Anti-slavery Apostles":—
" Distinguished abolitionists were often called men with one idea. Anti-slavery, in its immeasurable importance to all the interests of the country, material, mental, moral, and social, as well as religious and political, was one idea far too great for ordinary minds, even without any other. But the sturdy symmetry and consistency of Mr. Foster's character were as wonderful as were his vigor and power in any one direction. Earliest and bravest among the temperance reformers, when even that cause was almost as odious as anti-slavery became afterward; a radical advocate of peace from the standpoint of the Sermon on the Mount, 'Resist not evil,' seconded by the apostolic injunction, 'Avenge not yourselves'; a champion in the woman suffrage enterprise from its inception; an intelligent, earnest advocate of the rights of labor and deeply interested in all the moral, social, and philanthropic associations of the city and neighborhood where he lived — he left behind him a record and a memory to grow brighter as the years sweep on. … The beauty and harmony of his home were unsurpassed. It was sacred to peace and love. Its unostentatious but elegant and generous hospitality was the admiration of all who ever enjoyed it."
James Russell Lowell, in a rh}'med letter descriptive of the principal figures in the anti-slavery bazaar held in Boston in 1846, pays a charming tribute to Mrs. Foster:—
"A Judith there, turned Quakeress,
Sits Abby in her modest dress,
Serving a table quietly,
As if that mild and downcast eye
Flashed never with its scorn intense,
More than Medea's eloquence.
******
Xo nobler gift than heart or brain,
No life more white from spot or stain,
Was e'er on Freedonrs altar laid
Than hers — the simple Quaker maid."