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

officially adopt immediatism was based in Calne. In a letter to Heyrick, association
member Martha Gundry distinguished between the gradualism proposed by men’s
associations and the immediatism of women’s associations. “I trust no Ladies’
association will ever be found with such words attached to it,” Gundry declared. 61
Women had a moral obligation to oppose the gradualism of men’s associations,
according to the Sheffield Female Anti-Slavery Society. Women, they claimed “ought to
obey God rather than man.” The Sheffield women encouraged women to remain strong
against the national anti-slavery society because their stance was based on Christian
principles. 62 Like Heyrick, the Sheffield women argued that universality, numbers, and
authority were insufficient reasons for perpetuating the sinfulness of slavery, thus
defining slavery as a pre-eminently moral question.
Bolstered by Heyrick’s unequivocal call for immediate abolition, women’s
associations exerted their influence on the national anti-slavery movement in the most
significant way possible, through the use of financial pressure. Of the women’s
associations formed in the 1820s, the Female Society for Birmingham was the largest and
most influential. Birmingham women were one of the largest donors to the national anti-
slavery society. Moreover, because the Birmingham group had played such an important
role in the establishment of other ladies’ associations, the women held great influence
over the funds raised by those societies as well as their own. The network of women’s
associations accounted for more than one-fifth of the national society’s income from
61
As reprinted in Heyrick, Letters on the Necessity of a Prompt Extinction of British Colonial
Slavery, 164. Emphasis in the original.
62 Report of the Sheffield Female Anti-Slavery Society (Sheffield: J. Blackwell, 1827), 10-11.
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