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

At the third annual meeting of the AFPA in October 1841, members and officers
lamented the apathy many abolitionists demonstrated toward free produce. “The great
mass of abolitionists,” Sarah Pugh asserted in the annual report, “need an abstinence
baptism.” Many abolitionists had “sacrificed political party and religious sect for the
cause of freedom, yet the taint of slavery still clings to them, and they need to be pointed
to the stain that dims their otherwise consistent testimony,” Pugh claimed. Pugh
described the AFPA as an association under siege. Editors of anti-slavery papers did not
reprint an address published by the association in the Pennsylvania Freeman. Thus, the
report reached only “a comparatively small portion of abolitionists” rather than “the great
mass of . . . anti-slavery brethren.” Likewise, England continued to purchase American
slave-grown cotton rather than improving labor conditions and increasing production of
cotton in India. Support was even lacking from the most likely sources: abolitionists and
Friends. Both groups had failed to give adequate attention to the issue. The AFPA’s
efforts were further hampered by high duties on free-labor cotton. At the annual meeting,
members reviewed and approved a memorial to Congress requesting that duties on
foreign and raw cotton be removed, claiming that current duties paid by the association
constituted “a tax upon conscientious scruples.” The report also included an extensive
quote from Elizabeth Heyrick, reminding readers of the connection between free produce
and immediatism. 24
Nonetheless support for free produce and the American Free Produce Association
continued to decline in the 1840s. At the fourth annual meeting in 1842, Sarah Pugh
24 Minutes, October 18, 1841, AFPA, HSP; New York Evangelist, April 28, 1842.
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