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

evening by anti-abolitionist mobs. When the Requited Labor Convention met the next
morning “at the ruins of the Pennsylvania Hall,” the group adjourned to meet instead at
the home of James and Lucretia Mott. After appointing a Committee of Correspondence
authorized to call a convention together at an appropriate time, the Requited Labor
Convention adjourned. 71
In September 1838, the Convention met again with a much smaller group in
attendance. Lewis C. Gunn reported on a draft of the association’s constitution, which
was accepted. The members agreed to call the new association the American Free
Produce Association. Gunn was appointed to prepare and publish an address on the duty
of abstinence. The members of the association also appointed a committee to consider
the propriety of establishing free-labor stores as well as a committee to prepare a
memorial to Congress requesting a repeal of duties on free-labor goods allowing such
goods to compete equally with slave-labor goods. Though absent, the group elected
Gerrit Smith as president. Smith, a friend of Abraham L. Pennock, had been invited by
71 Minutes of the Proceedings of the Requited Labor Convention, 3-8. Italics in the original. Ira
V. Brown argues that the integrated meeting of the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women
provoked public hostility and led to the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall. “Not even Pennsylvania was
ready racial integration and women’s liberation in 1838,” Brown notes. Ira V. Brown, “Racism and
Sexism: The Case of Pennsylvania Hall,” Phylon 37 (1976), 126-36. Brown incorrectly identifies the
Requited Labor Convention as the Recruited Labor Convention. He also overlooks the integrated
membership of the Requited Labor Convention. See also History of Pennsylvania Hall, Which Was
Destroyed by a Mob, on the 17 th of May 1838 (Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn, 1838); Pennsylvania
Freeman, May 24, 1838, May 31, 1838. See also Pennsylvania Freeman, May 17, 1838: “The beautiful
temple consecrated to Liberty, has been offered a smoking sacrifice to the Demon of Slavery.” On antiabolitionist
mobs, see Leonard L. Richards, Gentlemen of Property and Standing: Anti-Abolition Mobs in
Jacksonian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); David Grimsted, American Mobbing,
1828-1861: Toward Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), ch. 1-2. Mary Pennock Sellers
was among the women assembled for the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women on May 17. As
the women listened to the discussions, “with the angry murmur of the mob outside ever increasing, a light
remark was made by someone in the assembly. Lucretia Mott arose and said that no light remark should be
made, for no one knew when she stepped outside the building whether or not she would step from to
eternity.” Sellers, David Sellers, Mary Pennock Sellers, 55.
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