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

1830 and in the Liberator in 1831. 2 Angelina Grimké, Frederick Douglass, and William
Lloyd Garrison were among the more prominent abolitionists who used Chandler’s
poetics to defend women’s anti-slavery activism. 3 Chandler’s vision of sisterhood
resonated with rank-and-file abolitionists as well. In 1844, a Miss Smith of Andover,
Massachusetts, presented a banner to the West Parish Anti-Slavery Society as part of the
community’s Fourth of July festivities. Rather than use patriotic imagery, Miss Smith
juxtaposed the phrase: “Shall a woman’s voice be hushed, while a woman’s heart is
bleeding?” with an image of slaveholders forcefully separating a slave mother and her
children. 4
In “Think of Our Country’s Glory,” Chandler linked female sympathy to political
activism. The opening lines of the poem depicted the American flag “stain’d and gory”
with the blood of Africa’s children. In the second stanza, Chandler shifted focus to the
personal describing the “frantic mother” who cries out for her child all the while “falling
lashes smother” her “anguish wild!” In the fourth stanza, Chandler asked whether
“woman’s voice be hush’d” responding in the following, final stanza with an emphatic
“Oh, no!” 5 Rather than a sentimental, poetic plea for women’s anti-slavery activism,
2 [Elizabeth Margaret Chandler], “Think of Our Country’s Glory,” Genius of Universal
Emancipation, May 1830; Liberator, January 8, 1831.
3 Angelina Grimké, Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (New York: s.n., 1836),
http://digital.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=mayanti-slavery;idno=02817604 (accessed April 29,
2009); Frederick Douglass, “American Prejudice Against Color: An Address Delivered in Cork, Ireland,
October 23, 1845,” Cork Examiner, October 27, 1845 in The Frederick Douglass Papers: Series One,
Speeches, Debates, and Interviews (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 1:59; William Lloyd
Garrison, “To the Abolitionists of Massachusetts,” Liberator, July 19, 1839 in LWLG, II: 497-517.
4 True Wesleyan, August 10, 1844.
5 [Chandler], “Think of Our Country’s Glory.”
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