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

information on the condition of slaves and to join in a collective effort to abolish slavery.
Free produce also figured prominently in women’s activities. The PFASS maintained an
active correspondence with other anti-slavery societies about free-labor goods, and
served as an important source of information about the free-produce movement. 49
Affirming the centrality of free produce to their activism, the women of the PFASS added
a strong article to its constitution pledging to “at all times and on all occasions” give
preference to free-labor goods. 50 The PFASS and other female anti-slavery societies
provided women with an important moral community, one which extended beyond the
local association and the local community through a network of correspondence and
activities. 51
The women of the PFASS also pledged to do all they could to eliminate prejudice
and promote racial uplift, a position that reflected the integrated membership and the
importance the women placed on the relationship between slavery and racism. PFASS
members worked together on a number of projects to aid the black community, including
the improvement of education for blacks in Philadelphia. In 1836 under Lucretia Mott’s
leadership, the PFASS assumed responsibility for Grace Douglass’s school. Two years
later, the PFASS assumed financial responsibility when it learned the school failed to
49 See for example, August 11, 1834, March 9, 1837, and August 10, 1837, Minutes of the
Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, Reel 30, PFASS, HSP.
50 December 14, 1833 and January 15, 1834, Minutes of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery
Society, Reel 30, Pennsylvania Abolition Society, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
(hereafter PFASS, HSP); Faulkner, “The Root of the Evil,” 390-391; Ira V. Brown, “Cradle of Feminism:
The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, 1833-1840,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and
Biography 102 (1978), 143-166; Jean R. Soderlund, “Priorities and Power: The Philadelphia Female Anti-
Slavery Society,” in The Abolitionist Sisterhood, 67-88.
51 Salerno, Sister Societies, 35.
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