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

American abolitionists’ antipathy toward free produce. After the World’s Anti-Slavery
Convention, American abstainers realized they must become torchbearers for the
movement. 20
Subsequent reports of the free-produce debate focused on the silencing of Mott.
According to Sarah Pugh, Mott’s report to the AFPA in October 1840 revealed “how her
heart burned within her to speak for the wronged & the outraged.” However, Mott had
not been granted the opportunity to counter the “false reasoning” of the delegates. Had
she been able to do so, Pugh noted, “they would have mourned for the wrong they had
done to the slave in this gagging one of his best and most able advocates.” The National
Anti-Slavery Standard noted that “the rules of the Convention had placed a padlock upon
[her] lips, and [she was] obliged to listen to flimsy sophistry in defence of wrong, in
silence.” 21 Ten years earlier, Elizabeth Margaret Chandler had asked whether “woman’s
voice be hushed” when confronted with oppression. She underscored the moral
imperative of women’s public culture in the phrase “life’s holiest feelings.” British
custom had, for the moment, managed to silence Mott and the other female delegates.
Failure to assert the moral foundation of free produce by convention delegates further
highlighted the exclusion of women from the meeting. The men who had voted against
20 See McDaniel, “Our Country is the World,” 83. As McDaniel argues, “If Garrisonians were
more convinced of the freedoms they enjoyed in New England after their trips to London, they also began
to argue that American abolitionists had displaced British abolitionists as the torchbearers for the
antislavery movement. The British had contended against a distant evil in the colonies, while American
abolitionists fought against an entrenched evil that was close at hand. Their persecutors, too, could found
in more dangerous proximity: when had British abolitionists faced mobs like the one that harassed
Thompson and Garrison in 1835? Even the Garrisonians’ British admirers praised their exceptional
heroism.”
21
Sarah Pugh to Richard D. Webb, November 18, 1840, MS.A.1.2.10.49, BPL; National Anti-
Slavery Standard, November 12, 1840.
197