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

esolution that was tabled by members of the PFASS; however, in 1848, Lucretia Mott
offered a similar resolution that was readily adopted, evidence that among members of
the PFASS, radical free-produce statements were no longer controversial. Increasingly in
the 1840s, members of the PFASS found themselves forced to choose between moral
purity and pragmatic tactics, prompting Lucretia Mott to ask in an article in The Liberty
Bell, “What is Anti-Slavery Work?” Writing in response to a request for funds to
purchase the freedom of a female slave held in prison in Baltimore, Mott denied such
financial assistance was appropriate anti-slavery work. Mott’s statement is troubling but
significant. As historian Carol Faulkner argues, “[I]t shows Mott believed the primary
goals of abolitionists should be ending slavery and racial prejudice; everything else was a
distraction.” A consistent moral example as exemplified by free produce was the best
means to accomplish these goals. 40
In the 1840s, the free-produce movement was deeply divided. The movement’s
core constituencies — abolitionists and Quakers — were so divided they could not form
an effective base of support for an organized abstention movement. Still, the movement
was an important part of the transatlantic abolitionist movement in this period. As
conservative and radical Quakers negotiated their individual and collective relationship
with Garrisonian radicalism and political abolitionism, debates between abstainers and
abolitionists and abstainers and non-abstaining co-religionists revealed core questions
about tactics and strategy. Had moral suasion lost its relevance in the politically charged
40 October 13, 1842, December 8, 1842, and April 11, 1848, Minutes, PFASS HSP; Lucretia Mott,
“What is Anti-Slavery Work?” The Liberty Bell, January 1, 1846; Soderlund, “Priorities and Power”;
Faulkner, “The Root of the Evil,” 397-399; Faulkner, “Lucretia Mott and the Problem of Moral Suasion.”
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