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

Of the resolutions passed by the women of the 1837 convention, the most
controversial revolved around issues of gender, religion, and race. Angelina Grimké
offered a resolution challenging women to move beyond traditional religious and cultural
ideas about gender. Grimké urged women to recognize that “certain rights and duties are
common to all moral beings.” She described women’s reform work as a “duty” that was
within the “province” of woman’s sphere. Woman, Grimké argued, must “do all that she
can by her voice, and her pen, and her purse, and the influence of her example” to abolish
slavery. After much discussion, the resolution was adopted; however, twelve women,
most of them from New York, dissented and requested their names be listed in the
proceedings as doing so. Lydia Maria Child proposed a resolution rebuking evangelical
associations that accepted contributions from slaveholders. Three of the twelve women
who had refused to approve Grimké’s resolution dissented from Child’s resolution.
Grimké also presented a resolution against racial prejudice, calling on women to “mingle
with our oppressed brethren” and “to act out the principles of Christian equality by
associating with them as though the color of the skin was of no . . . consequence.” The
convention also passed a free-produce resolution presented by Mott. Purchasing slave-
labor products continued southern slavery, she noted, therefore it was the duty of
abolitionists to avoid “this unrighteous participation” in the consumption of slave
produce. 57
57 Anti-Slavery Convention of Women, Proceedings . . . 1837, 9, 10, 13. In the fall of 1837, the
Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society passed similar resolutions. See Pennsylvania Freeman,
September 21, 1837.
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