Massachusetts in the woman suffrage movement. A general, political, legal and legislative history from 1774, to 1881. By Harriet H. Robinson ...
(Massachusetts in the woman suffrage movement. A general, ...)
Massachusetts in the woman suffrage movement. A general, political, legal and legislative history from 1774, to 1881. By Harriet H. Robinson ... is a high quality paperback publication of a historical work on women's suffrage and is a popular title among
Abigail Kelley Foster, born Abigail Kelley, was an American feminist, abolitionist, and lecturer who is remembered as an impassioned speaker for radical reform.
Background
Abigail Kelley Foster was born on January 15, 1811, in Pelham, Massachusetts, the seventh daughter of Wing Kelley and Diana Daniels. She was of Irish-Quaker descent, and James Russell Lowell in the well-known "Letter from Boston", in which he describes the Abolitionist leaders, refers to her as "A Judith, there, turned Quakeress. "
Education
Foster was raised in Worcester and educated at the Friends' School in Providence, Rhode Island.
Career
Then Foster became a teacher at Worcester, Millbury, and Lynn. While teaching in the Friends School ill the last-named town she was impressed by Garrison’s attack on slavery and in 1837 abandoned teaching for the lecture platform, giving her services gratuitously to the anti-slavery cause.
She conducted a campaign in Massachusetts in company with Angelina Grimke and is reported to be the first Massachusetts woman to have regularly addressed mixed audiences. The latter innovation was the source of many scandals to her contemporaries. She was denounced by the clergy as a menace to public morals, and her meetings were occasionally broken up by mobs. For some years she endured an incredible amount of insult and abuse.
In 1839 the American Anti-Slavery Society endorsed the right of women to speak on its platform, but a year later her appointment to its executive committee caused a serious split in the organization. Her presence as a delegate at the world anti-slavery convention at London in 1840, and its refusal to recognize women delegates, caused an equally serious disturbance.
As a pioneer, Abigail Foster performed important services for her cause. She was a leader in the radical Abolitionist group, and became a well-known figure throughout the North. She was in a favorable position while attacking the evils of slavery to point out the serious legal, economic, and political disabilities of women.
After 1850 Foster was more prominent as an advocate of woman’s rights than as an anti-slavery leader; and she took a prominent part in most of the woman’s rights conventions for the next twenty years.
Her appearance at the anniversary convention of 1880, together with Lucy Stone, as the only surviving leaders of the famous gathering of thirty years before, attracted great attention. The woman’s rights movement had become fairly respectable by 1880, and had attracted many who would have shrunk from the hardships of pioneering. Her remark in the convention of 1851, in reply to some disparagement of the Abolitionists, that "bloody feet have worn smooth the paths by which you came up hither, " is both poignant and significant.
On the platform, she was an effective speaker for many years but her voice finally gave out from overuse. She was an invalid in her last years. Abigail Kelley Foster died on January 14, 1887, in Worcester, Massachusetts, one day before her 76th birthday.
(Massachusetts in the woman suffrage movement. A general, ...)
Views
Abigail Kelley Foster worked for equal rights for women and for slaves.
Foster also was fearless in denouncing the conservatism of the church and clergy, and repeatedly declared that they must shoulder much of the responsibility for the wrongs of women. In addition to her work in the woman’s rights cause Foster was active in support of prohibition and minor humanitarian interests.
Quotations:
"Bloody feet, sisters, have worn smooth the path by which you come hither. "
Membership
Abigail Foster became a committee organizer for the influential American Anti-Slavery Society, where she worked closely with William Lloyd Garrison and other radicals.
Personality
Abigail Kelley Foster is described by those who knew her as an attractive, kindly person with unassuming manners, and a good housekeeper.
Connections
On December 31, 1845, Abigail Kelley married Stephen Symonds Foster. They had one daughter.