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

. . . so I decided many years ago never to use either, and to bring these facts to the
attention of my friends.” Kelley probed further, “Aunt Sarah, does Thee really think any
slaves were freed because Thee did not use sugar or cotton?” “Dear child,” Pugh replied,
“I can never know that any slave was personally helped, but I had to live with my own
conscience.” 13 For the British and American women who abstained from the products of
slave-labor, fidelity to conscience formed the foundation of their identity.
American free-produce associations blurred the boundaries of race, gender,
religion, and class. Abstainers placed individual moral power above all else. “[A]ll I
ask,” Abby Kelley wrote in 1838, “Let woman be left free to obey the voice of God in her
own heart.” Kelley denied she wanted to transform women into men. Rather, she called
on men and women to claim “the true spirit of Christianity.” When men and women
looked to “our dear Saviour for an example in all things,” Kelley noted, “we shall see
there are not two characters, one for man and one for woman to assume, but His one
character must be put on by both.” 14 Through abstention from slave-labor products, men
and women elided the boundaries of gender, race, and religion. At its most basic,
abstention relied upon individual choice — that moment when the consumer is faced with
a decision. In its simplest terms, boycotting slave-labor goods required no intermediary,
no association, not even a public political statement against slavery. Though expensive
13 Florence Kelley, “My Philadelphia,” The Survey LVII (October 1, 1926), 54. See also Kathryn
Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 15-23.
14
Abby Kelly to Mary Pennock Sellers, July 15, 1838, as quoted in Sellers, David Sellers, Mary
Pennock Sellers, 58.
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