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

Garrison’s offer. In December 1834, Chandler’s aunt Ruth Evans wrote from Michigan
to her sister Jane Howell in Philadelphia that she was gathering materials to send to
Garrison. A month later, Howell reported to her sister that she had been unable to secure
a publisher because of the connection to Garrison. Howell proposed rescinding their
choice of Garrison so as not “in the smallest degree tarnish the luster of [Chandler’s]
unspotted character.” Instead, Howell turned to Benjamin Lundy to achieve an
appropriate memorial to Chandler. Lundy, who in 1834 was touring Texas and Mexico,
learned of Chandler’s death on his return to Philadelphia in mid-1835. One year later,
Lundy with the assistance of Lucretia Mott, Hannah Townsend, and William and Thomas
Chandler had produced a volume of Chandler’s poetry (with a memoir) and a volume of
her essays. 92
Chandler fused the Quaker testimony of Elias Hicks and the rhetoric of the British
free-produce movement to create an American movement against the products of slave
labor. Though important to American abolitionism, Chandler is often accorded only a
minor role within the broader history of the movement. Yet, Chandler’s poetics and
prose provided an important intellectual foundation for the women’s anti-slavery
movement. Chandler’s work, though often unattributed, was widely distributed long after
her death. Perhaps that is the ultimate recognition of her importance to the women’s anti-
slavery movement. Her rhetoric was so embedded into the American anti-slavery
movement that abolitionists often quoted her without realizing the source.
92 Liberator November 29, 1834; Ruth Evans to Jane Howell, December 21, 1834, Jane Howell to
Ruth Evans, January 21, 1835, and Jane Howell to Ruth Evans, July 29, 1835, RTD, 258-259, 264-265,
275-276; Dillon, Benjamin Lundy, 213.
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