THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

and non-Quakers to establish an international free-produce movement are essential to
understanding transatlantic abolitionism.
This dissertation recovers and critically interprets the transatlantic free-produce
movement from the late-eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth century, revealing the key
role women played in the protracted battle for the abolition of slavery. Recognizing the
importance of abstention to the abolitionist movement broadens the period of women’s
activism to the eighteenth century, more than forty years prior to the organizational
activity of the 1830s that serves as the traditional starting point for histories of women’s
abolitionism. Abstention reveals the ways in which British and American women
crossed generational, gender, geographic, religious as well as class and racial boundaries
on behalf of the slave. This study places abstention and abolitionism within the context
of the market revolution, examining abstainers’ debates about the morality of the
marketplace. Rather than political economy, abstainers urged Britons and Americans
alike to create a moral economy, which privileged humanity and justice over financial
profit. Asserting the importance of moral suasion and consistency in abolitionist activity,
abstainers challenged the greed and racism that supported the transatlantic economy in
this period. In doing so, abstainers called for the radical reform of society.
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