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

the ACCL. By the time the corn laws were repealed in 1846, Indian reform and the
British India Society were nearly forgotten. 38
The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society also suffered from declining
membership in the 1840s. In the early years of the Society, the association pursued an
active recruitment campaign, sponsoring public lectures as a way to bring in new
members. The women of the PFASS also gave a great deal of time to circulating
petitions. After 1837, the PFASS handed off responsibility for organizing public lectures
to the recently established Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. In this period, the PFASS
also reduced their petitioning efforts. By the 1840s, the annual anti-slavery fair absorbed
much of the reformers’ interest and time. In addition to a shift in tactics, the PFASS also
initiated new standards for membership, requiring adherence to non-resistance. As the
women of the PFASS narrowed the focus of the society, membership in the group
changed. In the late 1830s and 1840s, African American membership increased while
Hicksite and Orthodox Quaker membership declined slightly. As Jean Soderlund argues,
in the 1840s the PFASS occupied an increasingly “restrictive ideological position.” 39
Core constituents of the AFPA, the women of the PFASS found that association
and its male-segregated successor, the Free Produce Association of Friends, inadequate
for promoting free produce in the 1840s. In 1842, Mary Grew offered a free-produce
38 Elizabeth Pease to J.A. Collins, undated in BAA, 140; Elizabeth Pease to Anne Warren Weston,
June 24, 1841 in BAA, 154; Elizabeth Pease to unknown, February 28, 1842 in BAA, 169-170; William
Bassett to Elizabeth Pease, April 25, 1842, MS.A. 1.2.12.2.46, BPL; Mehrota, “The British India Society
and Its Bengal Branch,” 139-142; Malcolm Chase, Chartism: A New History (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2007), 158-160.
39 Soderlund, “Priorities and Power,” 67-88.
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