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

prioritized unity rather than challenging slavery or racial inequality. In some instances,
Quaker abolitionists who did not so prize unity were disowned for their continued
agitation of the slavery question. However, a number of men and women remained
members of the Society of Friends, balancing their spiritual and social reform impulses.
In this way, free produce served as a compromise tactic for those inclined toward
radicalism — a blending of Quaker values and abolitionist sentiment — that could be
adopted for radical purposes, or remain simply a statement of individual conscience.
The first half of the nineteenth century was an important period in the
development of women’s political culture. Race, gender, religion, and class shaped the
patterns of women’s reform in the United States in this period. This was certainly the
case with the transatlantic abstention movement. Distinctions between British and
American women’s political culture were influenced in large part by these factors, which
impacted the development of free produce. The lessons learned from antebellum reform
aided the transformation of women’s reform from its initial roots in moral suasion and
local control in the first half of the century to expanded federal power in the second
half. 12 This transformation is evident in the story of Sarah Pugh and her niece Florence
Kelley. A founder of the Progressive-era National Consumers League, Kelley was
initiated into consumer activism by her aunt, a woman she described as “conscience
incarnate.” The day Kelley realized her aunt did not use sugar was a watershed moment.
When questioned by Kelley, Pugh replied, “Cotton was grown by slaves, and sugar also
12 See Alison M. Parker, Articulating Rights: Nineteenth-Century American Women on Race,
Reform, and the State (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010).
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