Lucretia Mott

"This volume makes widely available for the first time the correspondence of the Quaker activist Lucretia Coffin Mott. Scrupulously reproduced and annotated, these letters illustrate the length and breadth of her public life as a leading reformer while providing an intimate glimpse of her family life.". "Dedicated to reform of almost every kind - temperance, peace, equal rights, woman suffrage, nonresistance, and the abolition of slavery - Mott viewed women's rights as only one element of a broad-based reform agenda for American society. A founder and leader of many anti-slavery organizations, including the racially integrated American Antislavery Society and the Philadelphia Female Antislavery Society, she housed fugitive slaves, maintained lifelong friendships with such African-American colleagues as Robert Purvis, and agitated to bring her fellow Quakers into consensus on taking a stand against slavery.". "An invaluable resource on an extraordinary woman, these selected letters reveal the incisive mind, clear sense of mission, and level-headed personality that made Lucretia Coffin Mott a natural leader and a major force in nineteenth-century American life."--BOOK JACKET.

This lecture by Mott, delivered 17 December 1849, was in response to one by an unidentified lecturer criticizing the demand for equal rights for women. She makes a very gentle appeal, here, for women's enfranchisement, placing emphasis, instead on the injustices done to women in marriage.