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

Juvenile Anti-slavery
In addition to encouraging women’s activism, Chandler used the gendered space
of the “Ladies Repository” and the “Ladies’ Department” to promote juvenile
abolitionism. Her anti-slavery texts written especially for children highlighted the
importance of children to the abolitionist community. Abolitionists recognized that
children were an important and receptive audience for anti-slavery literature. 52 Noting
that “[e]very body writes now for children,” an editorial in the Liberator linked the
growth in children’s literature in general to the specific need to provide children with
“correct information” about slavery. 53 Consuming abolitionist literature socialized young
boys and girls into the abolitionist community and initiated them into the broader
antebellum consumer culture. Henry C. Wright compared abolitionist instruction to
religious instruction, calling for children to be “thoroughly imbued with the spirit and
principles of Christian abolition.” 54 Writing abolitionist literature for children provided
women writers such as Chandler another literary venue to enter into the public debate
52 See for example, “Juvenile Anti-Slavery Agent,” The Slave’s Friend, vol. II, no. VIII (1837), 2.
Note this article is published on the second page of the cover. The editor of The Slave’s Friend lauded the
appointment of Henry C. Wright as the American Anti-Slavery Society’s agent appointed to work with
children: “Woe to slavery . . . when the present race of juveniles are grown up.” See also Henry C. Wright,
“Juvenile Anti-Slavery Societies,” Liberator, January 14, 1837. Wright noted that at that time there were
four juvenile anti-slavery societies in New York averaging about 100 members each and that two or three
societies were in the process of organizing.
53 Liberator, January 22, 1831. See also Mary Lystad, From Dr. Mather to Dr. Seuss: 200 Years
of American Books for Children (Boston: G.K. Halle, 1980), 50. Lystad notes that in this period sixty
percent of books written for children “focused on moral instruction” and thirty-eight percent provided
“instruction in social behavior.”
54 Pennsylvania Freeman, August 24, 1837. Children, according to Wright, were essential to the
future of abolitionism: “I hope you, and all engaged in this holy struggle in behalf of our afflicted fellow
citizens in chains, will never forget that our duty is but half done by struggling ourselves; we must also
raise up and discipline a generation to carry this work to complete triumph after we are laid aside from our
labors.
114