The Liberty Bell, by Friends of Freedom, was an annual abolitionist gift book, edited and published by Maria Weston Chapman, to be sold or gifted to participants in the National Anti-Slavery Bazaar organized by the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. Named after the symbol of the American Revolution, it was published nearly every year from 1839 to 1858.
In 1834 Maria Chapman of Boston, Massachusetts, her sisters Caroline, Anne, Deborah, and eight other women formed the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society as part of their abolitionist activities. The Anti-Slavery Fair, first held in Boston in 1834, was a way to raise money for the society's work. Maria and her sister Anne were chief organizers of the fairs, which were popular Boston social events. [1]
The fairs organizers raised thousands of dollars a year by selling things such as "ladies' aprons, cloaks, cuffs, bags, purses," "knitted quilts," "inkstands," "Ohio cheese," and "dolls in hundreds of every size, price, material, and costume." [2] In 1839 these items were joined by The Liberty Bell, modeled after the fashionable and popular gift books of the time. The book was sold to fair attendees and given without cost to the fair workers, as an acknowledgement of contribution to the abolitionist cause and token of the occasion. [3] Publication continued every year until 1846, and intermittently until 1859's edition, produced in 1858. (1840, 1850, 1855, and 1857 were missed) [3] As with many gift books, publication actually occurred late in the year prior to the date of the book, except for the very first (1839) edition. The next edition was thus dated 1841.
As editor, Maria Chapman wrote much of the content (prose, essays, poetry) herself and pressed her sisters for material. She also solicited contributions from authors such as Lydia Maria Child, Eliza Cabot Follen, Wendell Phillips, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Lucretia Mott William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Martineau, [1] [4] among them many of the leading abolitionist, or abolitionist sympathizing writers of New England.
Chapman, in 1848, commented:
The purpose of this little annual volume, commenced in 1839, and now published for the ninth time, is, the promotion of the cause through the promulgation of its principles in an attractive form....Hence it is that no mere indifferent literati, however intellectually gifted, nor any known enemies of the cause or of its advocates, have ever been permitted to occupy these pages? [5]
Her efforts at soliciting wider afield were successful as well, the Liberty Bell twice published works by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point was published in December 1847 for the 1848 edition, [6] and A Curse for a Nation in December 1855 for the 1856 edition. [7] Both of these works were later published in England as slightly different versions. [8]
Unlike the more customary practice of writing for pay with more commercial gift books, authors typically did not receive any compensation for their submissions to the publication aside from a copy of The Liberty Bell itself. [9]
Accounts differ as to the success and quality of the annual. Some derided the quality of the works, one scholar (Ralph Thompson) saying "throughout the fifteen volumes of the series there is hardly to be found one creation of aesthetic value" [10] while others felt the work was adequate, another scholar (Clare Taylor) saying "a good magazine .... Its standards were high, and items were convincing, for the anti-slavery movement relied on propaganda to win support" [11] Views of the effectiveness of the material as propaganda also vary, Thompson saying "like all unadulterated reform literature, the Liberty Bell circulated among those people who already knew and accepted the tenets it upheld... it could hardly have made many converts", [10] while Taylor feels that "From the outset the Liberty Bell was the most significant anti-slavery annual in America" and that it "made a real contribution to the anti-slavery movement". [11] But even Taylor disparages "sentimental tales of terror which filled every issue"(96), and the "silly sensationalism" of many of the pieces, concluding that "their methods were crude and simplistic, even if their intentions were good" Taylor rates the two contributions by Elizabeth Barrett Browning as the best. [11]
William Lloyd Garrison was an American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known for his widely read anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator, which Garrison founded in 1831 and published in Boston until slavery in the United States was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.
The American Anti-Slavery Society was an abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, had become a prominent abolitionist and was a key leader of this society, who often spoke at its meetings. William Wells Brown, also a freedman, also often spoke at meetings. By 1838, the society had 1,350 local chapters with around 250,000 members.
Lydia Maria Child was an American abolitionist, women's rights activist, Native American rights activist, novelist, journalist, and opponent of American expansionism. Her journals, both fiction and domestic manuals, reached wide audiences from the 1820s through the 1850s. At times she shocked her audience as she tried to take on issues of both male dominance and white supremacy in some of her stories.
Maria Weston Chapman was an American abolitionist. She was elected to the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1839 and from 1839 until 1842, she served as editor of the anti-slavery journal The Non-Resistant.
The Liberator (1831–1865) was a weekly abolitionist newspaper, printed and published in Boston by William Lloyd Garrison and, through 1839, by Isaac Knapp. Religious rather than political, it appealed to the moral conscience of its readers, urging them to demand immediate freeing of the slaves ("immediatism"). It also promoted women's rights, an issue that split the American abolitionist movement. Despite its modest circulation of 3,000, it had prominent and influential readers, including all the abolitionist leaders, among them Frederick Douglass, Beriah Green, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, and Alfred Niger. It frequently printed or reprinted letters, reports, sermons, and news stories relating to American slavery, becoming a sort of community bulletin board for the new abolitionist movement that Garrison helped foster.
The first Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women was held in New York City on May 9–12, 1837 to discuss the American abolition movement. This gathering represented the first time that women from such a broad geographic area met with the common purpose of promoting the anti-slavery cause among women, and it also was likely the first major convention where women discussed women's rights. Some prominent women went on to be vocal members of the Women's Suffrage Movement, including Lucretia Mott, the Grimké sisters, and Lydia Maria Child. After the first convention in 1837, there were also conventions in 1838 and 1839
Pennsylvania Hall, "one of the most commodious and splendid buildings in the city," was an abolitionist venue in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, built in 1837–38. It was a "Temple of Free Discussion", where antislavery, women's rights, and other reform lecturers could be heard. Four days after it opened it was destroyed by arson, the work of an anti-abolitionist mob.
George Bradburn was an American politician and Unitarian minister in Massachusetts known for his support for abolitionism and women's rights. He attended the 1840 conference on Anti-Slavery in London where he made a stand against the exclusion of female delegates. In 1843 he was with Frederick Douglass on a lecture tour in Indiana when they were attacked. Lydia Maria Child wrote with regard to his work on anti-slavery that he had " a high place among the tried and true."
Mary Grew was an American abolitionist and suffragist whose career spanned nearly the entire 19th century. She was a leader of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society and the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. She was one of eight women delegates, all from the United States, who were denied their seats at the London World Anti-Slavery Convention, in 1840. An editor and journalist, she wrote for abolitionist newspapers and chronicled the work of Philadelphia's abolitionists over more than three decades. She was a gifted public orator at a time when it was still noteworthy for women to speak in public. Her obituary summarized her impact: "Her biography would be a history of all reforms in Pennsylvania for fifty years."
Edmond Quincy V (1808–1877) was an American author and reformer.
The Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (1833–1840) was an abolitionist, interracial organization in Boston, Massachusetts, in the mid-19th century. "During its brief history ... it orchestrated three national women's conventions, organized a multistate petition campaign, sued southerners who brought slaves into Boston, and sponsored elaborate, profitable fundraisers."
Cyrus Pitt Grosvenor was an American Baptist minister known for his anti-slavery views. He founded the abolitionist American Baptist Free Mission Society, which did not allow slaveowners to be missionaries, and refused their contributions, prefiguring the split in the Baptist Church in America into Southern and Northern associations. He helped found and served as the first president of New York Central College, the first college in the United States to admit both women and Blacks on an equal basis from its first day, and the first college to employ Black professors. He was described as "a reforming steam engine". In his retirement he worked on a famous mathematics problem and took out a patent to prevent lamp explosions.
Charles Turner Torrey was a leading American abolitionist. Although largely lost to historians until recently, Torrey pushed the abolitionist movement to more political and aggressive strategies, including setting up one of the first highly organized lines for the Underground Railroad and personally freeing approximately 400 slaves. Torrey also worked closely with free blacks, thus becoming one of the first to consider them partners. John Brown cited Torrey as one of the three abolitionists he looked to as models for his own efforts.
In the United States, abolitionism, the movement that sought to end slavery in the country, was active from the late colonial era until the American Civil War, the end of which brought about the abolition of American slavery for non-criminals through the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Samuel Edmund Sewall (1799–1888) was an American lawyer, abolitionist, and suffragist. He co-founded the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, lent his legal expertise to the Underground Railroad, and served a term in the Massachusetts Senate as a Free-Soiler.
The Fall River Female Anti-Slavery Society was an abolitionist group in Fall River, Massachusetts, formed in 1835. It was the second female anti-slavery society in the city. One of its founding members was Elizabeth Buffum Chace (1806-1899).
"The Quadroons" is a short story written by American writer Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) and published in The Liberty Bell in 1842. The influential short story depicts the life and death of a mixed-race woman and her daughter in early nineteenth century America, a slave-owning society.
Anti-slavery fairs were meetings in the 1830s through 1860s where American abolitionists, particularly women, sold goods and distributed and discussed anti-slavery ideas.
Thankful Southwick was an affluent Quaker abolitionist and women's rights activist in Boston, Massachusetts. Thankful was lifelong abolitionist who joined the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1835 with her three daughters. She was present at both the 1835 Boston Mob and the Abolition Riot of 1836. During the 1840 schism in the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, Thankful sided with the Westons, Chapmans, Childs, Sergeants, and other radical Garrisonians to reestablish the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. She also later joined the New England Non Resistance Society.
