As historians have gradually come to recognize, the involvement of women was central to the anti-slavery cause in both Britain and the United States. Like their male counterparts, women abolitionists did not all speak with one voice. Among the major differences between women were their religious affiliations, an aspect of their commitment that has not been studied in detail. Yet it is clear that the desire to live out and practice their religious beliefs inspired many of the women who participated in anti-slavery activities in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
This book examines the part that the traditions, practices, and beliefs of English Protestant dissent and the American Puritan and evangelical traditions played in women's anti-slavery activism. Focusing particularly on Baptist, Congregational, Presbyterian and Unitarian women, the essays in this volume move from accounts of individual women's participation in the movement as printers and writers, to assessments of the negotiations and the occasional conflicts between different denominational groups and their anti-slavery impulses. Together the essays in this volume explore how the tradition of English Protestant Dissent shaped the American abolitionist movement, and the various ways in which women belonging to the different denominations on both sides of the Atlantic drew on their religious beliefs to influence the direction of their anti-slavery movements. The collection provides a nuanced understanding of why these women felt compelled to fight for the end of slavery in their respective countries.

Johanne Durocher fights to free her daughter and four grandchildren from a nightmarish life of abuse and poverty in Saudi Arabia. In 2001, Nathalie Morin was just seventeen when she met Saeed, a Saudi man who claimed to be studying in Montreal. She fell in love with him and then became pregnant, but soon afterward Saeed was deported back to his country of origin. Nathalie decided to join him in Saudi Arabia with her baby, Samir, confident that she would be able to return to Canada whenever she wanted. But a trap was closing around her: her partner turned out to be violent and authoritarian. According to Saudi law, Nathalie was considered married and thus under Saeed’s legal authority. All too often she was shut away in her own house, a place of hellish poverty. In 2005, Johanne Durocher, Nathalie’s mother, began her struggle to get Nathalie back home to Canada with her four children: Samir, Abdullah, Sarah, and Fowaz. While Nathalie is allowed to return on her own, her children cannot leave Saudi Arabia without their father’s consent. And Nathalie will not leave without them. Johanne has left no stone unturned in her efforts to fight her daughter’s case: she has approached governments, embassies, NGOs, media, politicians, and more. Although her hopes have been raised several times, nothing has led to bringing her family home. This book tells the story of her fight.

As historians have gradually come to recognize, the involvement of women was central to the anti-slavery cause in both Britain and the United States. Like their male counterparts, women abolitionists did not all speak with one voice. Among the major differences between women were their religious affiliations, an aspect of their commitment that has not been studied in detail. Yet it is clear that the desire to live out and practice their religious beliefs inspired many of the women who participated in anti-slavery activities in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
This book examines the part that the traditions, practices, and beliefs of English Protestant dissent and the American Puritan and evangelical traditions played in women's anti-slavery activism. Focusing particularly on Baptist, Congregational, Presbyterian and Unitarian women, the essays in this volume move from accounts of individual women's participation in the movement as printers and writers, to assessments of the negotiations and the occasional conflicts between different denominational groups and their anti-slavery impulses. Together the essays in this volume explore how the tradition of English Protestant Dissent shaped the American abolitionist movement, and the various ways in which women belonging to the different denominations on both sides of the Atlantic drew on their religious beliefs to influence the direction of their anti-slavery movements. The collection provides a nuanced understanding of why these women felt compelled to fight for the end of slavery in their respective countries.

Nelly is a simple, ordinary girl-that is, until late one strange night, when she just happens to be lying awake in bed. On this night, while looking out her window, Nelly sees a shadow. She decides to go to her window to see what's casting the shadow and meets Ockleberry. He is a Wigglemot, a small troll who lives under a scraggly bush on the far edge of Nelly's garden. Though surprised to meet such a creature, Nelly accepts Ockleberry as her new friend, and they soon set off on their first adventure. On their adventure, Nelly and Ockleberry meet another garden creature. Pigglewit is a Nongbat who lives in the big tree just outside Nelly's yard. The three become friends and agree to meet again soon. But Nelly, Ockleberry, and Pigglewit are meeting in secret. When Pigglewit and Ockleberry realize that they can't keep sneaking off without their parent's permission, they decide to organize a meeting over tea. Garden creatures generally try to hide from big people. Will the new friends be allowed to continue playing with her, or will Ockleberry's and Pigglewit's parents think it's just not safe?

In this new edition of a classic work, Julie Roy Jeffrey maintains the essential core of her account of the extraordinarily diverse contributions women made to the development of the American frontier. Jeffrey has expanded her original analysis to include the often overlooked perspectives of Native American, Hispanic, Chinese, and African American women.

Narcissa Whitman and her husband, Marcus, were pioneer missionaries to the Cayuse Indians in Oregon Territory. Narcissa grew up in western New York State, her values and attitudes carefully shaped by her mother. Very much a child of the Second Great Awakening, she eagerly embraced the burgeoning evangelical missionary movement. Following her marriage to Marcus Whitman, she spent most of 1836 traveling overland with him to Oregon. Narcissa enthusiastically began service as a missionary there, hoping to see many "benighted" Indians adopt her message of salvation through Christ.

But not one Indian ever did. Cultural barriers that Narcissa never grasped effectively kept her at arm's length from the Cayuse. Gradually abandoning her efforts with the Indians, Narcissa developed a more satisfying ministry. She taught and counseled whites on the mission compound, much as she had done in her own church circles in New York. Meanwhile, the growing number of eastern emigrants streaming into the territory posed an increasing threat to the Indians. The Cayuse ultimately took murderous action against the Whitmans, the most visible whites, thus ending dramatically Narcissa's eleven-year effort to be a faithful Christian missionary as well as a devoted wife and loving mother.

In this moving biography, Julie Roy Jeffrey brings the controversial Narcissa Whitman to life, revealing not only white assumptions and imperatives but the perspective of the Cayuse tribe as well. Jeffrey draws on a rich assortment of primary and secondary materials, blending narration and interpretation in her account. She clearly traces the motivations and relationships, the opportunities and constraints that structured Narcissa Whitman's life as a nineteenth-century American evangelical woman.

This is the first book to explore abolitionist autobiographies in the post - Civil War era.In ""Abolitionists Remember"", Julie Roy Jeffrey illuminates a second, little-noted antislavery struggle as abolitionists in the postwar period attempted to counter the nation's growing inclination to forget why the war was fought, what slavery was really like, and why the abolitionist cause was so important.In the rush to mend fences after the Civil War, the memory of the past faded and turned romantic - slaves became quaint, owners kindly, and the war itself a noble struggle for the Union. Jeffrey examines the autobiographical writings of former abolitionists such as Laura Haviland, Frederick Douglass, Parker Pillsbury, and Samuel J. May, revealing that they wrote not only to counter the popular image of themselves as fanatics, but also to remind readers of the harsh reality of slavery and to advocate equal rights for African Americans in an era of growing racism, Jim Crow, and the Ku Klux Klan. These abolitionists, who went to great lengths to get their accounts published, challenged every important point of the reconciliation narrative, trying to salvage the nobility of their work for emancipation and African Americans and defending their own participation in the great events of their day.

Narcissa Whitman and her husband, Marcus, went to Oregon as missionaries in 1836, accompanied by the Reverend Henry Spalding and his wife, Eliza. It was, as Narcissa wrote, "an unheard of journey for females." Narcissa Whitman kept a diary during the long trip from New York and continued to write about her rigorous and amazing life at the Protestant mission near present-day Walla Walla, Washington. Her words convey her complex humanity and devotion to the Christian conversion and welfare of the Indians. Clifford Drury sketches in the circumstances that, for the Whitmans, resulted in tragedy. Eliza Spalding, equally devout and also artistic, relates her experiences in a pioneering venture. Drury also includes the diary of Mary Augusta Dix Gray and a biographical sketch of Sarah Gilbert White Smith, later arrivals at the Whitman mission.

By focusing on male leaders of the abolitionist movement, historians have often overlooked the great grassroots army of women who also fought to eliminate slavery. Here, Julie Roy Jeffrey explores the involvement of ordinary women--black and white--in the most significant reform movement prior to the Civil War. She offers a complex and compelling portrait of antebellum women's activism, tracing its changing contours over time. For more than three decades, women raised money, carried petitions, created propaganda, sponsored lecture series, circulated newspapers, supported third-party movements, became public lecturers, and assisted fugitive slaves. Indeed, Jeffrey says, theirs was the day-to-day work that helped to keep abolitionism alive. Drawing from letters, diaries, and institutional records, she uses the words of ordinary women to illuminate the meaning of abolitionism in their lives, the rewards and challenges that their commitment provided, and the anguished personal and public steps that abolitionism sometimes demanded they take. Whatever their position on women's rights, argues Jeffrey, their abolitionist activism was a radical step--one that challenged the political and social status quo as well as conventional gender norms. |Explores the essential yet overlooked role of ordinary women in the abolitionist movement.