The Abolitionist Sisterhood

A small group of black and white American women who banded together in the 1830s and 1840s to remedy the evils of slavery and racism, the "antislavery females" included many who ultimately struggled for equal rights for women as well. Organizing fundraising fairs, writing pamphlets and giftbooks, circulating petitions, even speaking before "promiscuous" audiences including men and women—the antislavery women energetically created a diverse and dynamic political culture. A lively exploration of this nineteenth-century reform movement, The Abolitionist Sisterhood includes chapters on the principal female antislavery societies, discussions of black women's political culture in the antebellum North, articles on the strategies and tactics the antislavery women devised, a pictorial essay presenting rare graphics from both sides of abolitionist debates, and a final chapter comparing the experiences of the American and British women who attended the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London.

Jean Fagan Yellin is Distinguished Professor of English at Pace University. Her previous books include Women and Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in American Culture. John C. Van Horne is Librarian of The Library Company of Philadelphia. He is the editor of The Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe.

This fine collection of essays explores the initial development of American women's political culture through the antislavery movement led by women reformers from the Northeast in the late 1830s.

The overall aim of showing the impact, complexity and dynamic quality of female anti-slavery work is amply realized.