Abby Kelley Foster PDF

# 3 Abby Kelley Foster JANUARY 15, 1811–JANUARY 14, 1887 **BLOODY FEET, SISTERS, HAVE WORN SMOOTH THE PATH BY WHICH YOU COME UP HITHER.** ABBY KELLEY once walked into a church service in Connecticut and, at the sight of her, the preacher shouted out a warning to his congregation. "This Jezebel...

# 3 Abby Kelley Foster JANUARY 15, 1811–JANUARY 14, 1887 **BLOODY FEET, SISTERS, HAVE WORN SMOOTH THE PATH BY WHICH YOU COME UP HITHER.** ABBY KELLEY once walked into a church service in Connecticut and, at the sight of her, the preacher shouted out a warning to his congregation. "This Jezebel is come among us also!" he cried, likening her to a biblical villain of low reputation. What had this young woman done to deserve such public scorn? Born into a middle-class Quaker farm family in Pelham, Massachusetts, Abby was educated to become a teacher. In 1826, she left home to attend a Quaker boarding school in Providence, Rhode Island. She paid her way by teaching younger students and borrowing money from an older, married sister. In 1829, at the age of nineteen, she embarked on her adult life. After spending a few years at home, Abby took a teaching job in Lynn, Massachusetts, where she heard the antislavery lectures of William Lloyd Garrison. She eagerly adopted his cause, which included not only the freeing of slaves, but the end of the slave trade and the granting of full civil rights for African Americans. These views, considered extreme at the time, made her an outcast. When she spoke against slavery, she was often refused entrance to churches and town halls, so she held meetings outdoors, in meadows and apple orchards, where she was pelted with rotten fruit and stones. Abby was a moving and persuasive speaker. Her lively and independent spirit seeped into her speeches. Her oratory was so powerful that someone once told her that if she didn't keep speaking, "God will smite you." But people still weren't used to women speaking in public, especially to audiences that included white men and African American people. On May 17, 1838, a mob of angry men gathered outside a newly built lecture hall in Philadelphia. Abby was among the antislavery speakers who addressed a crowd of three thousand people that afternoon. Despite the rising threat of violence, she and the other speakers, including Lucretia Mott, did not back down. "It is the still small voice within, which may not be withstood, that bids me open my mouth for the dumb!" she shouted above the heckling men. The women delivered their speeches and left the building, white women arm-in-arm with black women, pushing boldly through the swelling crowd. After they left, the mob rushed into the building, hacked it to pieces, and burned it to the ground. The building had stood for just four days! In an odd twist of history, Abby led a series of antislavery meetings in Seneca Falls in 1843, five years before the women's rights convention was held there. She held nothing back—she accused northerners of being as bad as southern slaveholders, because they had the power to end slavery but they would not. The audience became enraged—they threw rotten eggs, rum bottles, and worse at her. But that didn't stop her. In the cause of suffrage, Abby went even further. "Harmony? I don't want harmony!" she said. "I want truth!" In 1873, she and her husband, Stephen Foster, refused to pay real estate taxes on their home in Worcester, Massachusetts. The government, they said, was made up entirely of men, and women had no role in electing them. That being the case, Abby reasoned, she didn't have to obey the law. The county seized the Fosters' property and set a public auction. Abby and her husband held a meeting to protest "taxation without representation"—a phrase they took from the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when American colonists protested taxes imposed by the British king. At the meeting, suffragist Lucy Stone spoke up for her friend. "Now feeble by advancing age and by hard service for her country," she said, "tomorrow will have her house sold over her head because, like Jefferson and Adams and Hancock, she believes taxation without representation is tyranny." Only one person bid, but he didn't bail out the Fosters. Instead of paying the bid price, he returned their home to the county, forcing another auction. At the second auction, the Fosters bought it back. Their protest went on for seven years and cost them their life savings. Abby was a mentor for suffragists who came after her—she taught Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony how to speak forcefully, organize meetings, and raise funds. Many of the suffragist workers who joined the cause credited their inspiration to Abby. She never wanted women to forget the bravery of those who had paved the way for them. She was quick to remind them of their debt: "Bloody feet, Sisters, have worn smooth the path by which you come up hither." ## Suffragists Spread Their message widely through speaking tours. Back then, lectures were a popular form of entertainment, as of course radios, movies, TVs, and phones hadn't been invented yet. Lecturers were often backed by a speaker's bureau, called a lyceum, or by supporting organizations. The pay wasn't always good, but those who believed in a cause, like Abby, didn't mind the sacrifice—at first she even refused payment. Some lecturers, such as Lucretia Mott, came from well-to-do families, so money wasn't a concern. Others, like Sojourner Truth, sold books or cards printed with inspiring messages to add to their pay. In the 1830s, Angelina and Sarah Grimké, two sisters from a southern slaveholding family, became the first women to speak publicly for the American Anti-Slavery Society. They suffered so much abuse for speaking in public that they began to speak out for women's rights. Following their example, the early suffragists gained the confidence to speak boldly in public for the ballot. The Fosters' home was a stop on the Underground Railroad. After their deaths, its new owner renamed the home Liberty Farm. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.