Abstract This chapter examines how supporters of the abstinence movement in the United States worked to reconcile free-produce principles with radical abolitionism. It begins by looking at three antislavery societies that reflect the variety of responses to free produce by the activists who joined the movement for the immediate abolition of slavery in the 1830s: the New England Anti-Slavery Society, the Logan Female Anti-Slavery Society, and the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. The chapter then considers the participation of Quakers in the abolitionist movement and how their organizing with non-Quakers in free-produce and antislavery associations transformed abstention. It also discusses the rise of juvenile antislavery societies in the 1830s that promoted the free-produce movement. Finally, it describes the Requited Labor Convention of 1838 organized by abolitionists that led to the formation of the American Free Produce Association.
Abstract This chapter examines the abstention movement after the abolition of the international slave trade by Britain in 1807 and the United States in 1808, with particular emphasis on the impact of Quaker abstention on the developing crisis among American Quakers. It first compares the popularity of the British boycott with the limited scope of the American abstention movement before discussing Quaker arguments against slave labor that asserted the morality of free labor. It then considers the impact of free-labor ideas on Quaker abstention from slave-labor goods, along with the transformation of the abstention movement of the eighteenth century into the free-produce movement of the 1820s. It also explores the role of the so-called Black Founders in transforming Quaker abstention rhetoric and concludes with an analysis of the 1827–1828 schism among American Quakers that has been attributed to conflicts over the boycott of slave labor.
Abstract How can the simple choice of a men's suit be a moral statement and a political act? When the suit is made of free-labor wool rather than slave-grown cotton. This book traces the genealogy of the boycott of slave labor from its seventeenth-century Quaker origins through its late nineteenth-century decline. In their failures and in their successes, in their resilience and their persistence, antislavery consumers help us understand the possibilities and the limitations of moral commerce. The Quakers' antislavery rhetoric began with protests against the slave trade before expanding to include boycotts of the use and products of slave labor. For more than 100 years, British and American abolitionists highlighted consumers' complicity in sustaining slavery. The boycott of slave labor was the first consumer movement to transcend the boundaries of nation, gender, and race in an effort by reformers to change the conditions of production. The movement attracted a broad cross-section of abolitionists. The men and women who boycotted slave labor created diverse, biracial networks that worked to reorganize the transatlantic economy on an ethical basis. Even when they acted locally, supporters embraced a global vision, mobilizing the boycott as a powerful force that could transform the marketplace. For supporters of the boycott, the abolition of slavery was a step toward a broader goal of a just and humane economy. The boycott failed to overcome the power structures that kept slave labor in place; nonetheless, the movement's historic successes and failures have important implications for modern consumers.
Abstract This conclusion provides a summary of the book's main points by drawing on There Is Death in the Pot!, a pamphlet produced by Henry and Anna Richardson. There Is Death in the Pot! captures both the past and the present of the boycott of slave labor. It explores the contamination of consumer goods by slave labor and the role of consumers in transforming the marketplace. In mapping the availability of free-labor goods, the authors emphasize consumers' ability to act as moral agents in the market. It also highlights the limits of the boycott as evidenced by the continued presence of slave-labor goods. The Quakers, women, and others who supported abstention and free produce never came close to displacing slave-labor goods from the Atlantic marketplace. These supporters and their opponents could not remain fully neutral as they debated the meaning and the role of moral commerce in the fight for the abolition of slavery.
