The agitators Three friends who fought for abolition and women's rights

Dorothy Wickenden

Book - 2021

Chronicles the revolutionary activities of Harriet Tubman, Frances Seward, and Martha Wright--friends and neighbors in Auburn, New York--discussing their vital roles in the Underground Railroad, abolition, and the early women's rights movement.

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Subjects
Genres
Biographies
Published
New York : Scribner 2021.
Language
English
Main Author
Dorothy Wickenden (author)
Physical Description
xiv, 384 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9781476760735
  • Prologue
  • Part 1. Provocations (1821-1852)
  • 1. A Nantucket Inheritance (1833-1843)
  • 2. A Young Lady of Means (1824-1837)
  • 3. Escape from Maryland (1822-1849)
  • 4. The Freeman Trial (1846)
  • 5. Dangerous Women (1848-1849)
  • 6. Frances Goes to Washington (1848-1850)
  • 7. Martha Speaks (1850-1852)
  • Part 2. Uprisings (1851-1860)
  • 8. Frances Joins the Railroad (1851-1852)
  • 9. Reading Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852-1853)
  • 10. Harriet Tubman's Maryland Crusade (1851-1857)
  • 11. The Race to the Territory (1854)
  • 12. Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Sumner (1854-1856)
  • 13. Frances Sells Harriet a House (1857-1859)
  • 14. Martha Leads (1854-1860)
  • 15. General Tubman Goes to Boston (1858-1860)
  • 16. The Agitators (1860)
  • Part 3. War (1861-1864)
  • 17. "No Compromise" (1861)
  • 18. A Nation on Fire (1861-1862)
  • 19. "Gods Ahead of Master Lincoln" (1862)
  • 20. Battle Hymns (1862)
  • 21. Harriet's War (1863)
  • 22. Willy Wright at Gettysburg (March-July 1863)
  • 23. A Mighty Army of Women (1863-1864)
  • 24. Daughters and Sons (1864)
  • Part 4. Rights (1864-1875)
  • 25. E Pluribus Unum (1864-1865)
  • 26. Retribution (1865)
  • 27. Civil Disobedience (1865)
  • 28. Wrongs and Rights (1865-1875)
  • Epilogue
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Selected Bibliography
  • Image Credits
  • Index
Review by Choice Review

This popular history is a page-turner with considerable depth and breadth. In the 1840s and 1850s, Auburn, NY, percolated with suffrage and abolition activism largely because of the efforts of close friends Frances Seward, Harriet Tubman, and Martha Coffin Wright, which Wickenden (executive editor, The New Yorker) here recounts. Married to New York politician William Henry Seward, Frances befriended many of the notables of the era, including Frederick Douglass, Charles Sumner, and Tubman. After decades of service to her husband and his political career, Seward refused to continue hosting pro-slavery politicians in the late 1850s. Returning to her family home in Auburn, she ran a stop on the Underground Railroad and sold some of her Auburn property at a bargain rate to help Tubman return to the US from Canada. Wright, sister of suffragist Lucretia Mott and mother of six children, lobbied for the Married Women's Property Act and organized the 1848 Seneca Falls convention. She often worked with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to organize anti-slavery meetings. Tubman left no letters and spent much of this era ferrying slaves to freedom. Overall, this delightful book will engage a broad audience. Summing Up: Essential. All levels. --Caryn E. Neumann, Miami University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review

Women's stories from nineteenth-century America are sparsely told compared to those of male politicians, statesmen, and soldiers. New Yorker executive editor Wickenden brings three fascinating women to life in rich, humanizing detail, and shares how their "insubordination" against slavery and the oppression of women brought them together. These women--Harriet Tubman, Frances Seward, and Martha Coffin Wright (niece of Lucretia Coffin Mott)--were put in each other's paths through geography and a common goal. Wright, reared in a Quaker community on principles of equality; Seward, married to Lincoln's eventual Secretary of State and a staunch abolitionist; and Tubman, creator of a free Black community in the women's shared town of Auburn, NY; all three were involved in the work of the Underground Railroad and all blew apart the stereotypical view of nineteenth-century women. Wickenden pulls this history out of the dry dustiness of fact and adds color and warmth to its retelling. The women of our shared past deserve more treatments like this.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

New Yorker executive editor Wickenden (Nothing Daunted) expertly weaves together the biographies of "co-conspirators and intimate friends" Harriet Tubman, Martha Wright, and Frances Seward in this novelistic history. When Wright, the younger sister of abolitionist Lucretia Mott, and Seward, the wife of U.S. senator and secretary of state William Henry Seward, got to know Tubman in the early 1850s, they were already "in the process of transforming themselves from conventional homemakers into insurgents." Wright and Seward hosted fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad and helped Tubman to build and sustain a free Black community in Auburn, N.Y., where all three women lived from 1857 on. Wickenden details the links between the suffragist and abolitionist movements in the U.S., noting that women like Seward and Wright, by virtue of being in the private sphere, had a moral clarity about the evil of slavery that male politicians lacked, and describes how post-Civil War tensions over whether Black men or white women should get the vote first divided the suffragist movement. Through extensive research and fluid writing, Wickenden rescues Wright and Seward from obscurity and provides a new perspective on Tubman's life and work. This is an essential addition to the history of American progressivism. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM Partners. (Mar.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

With this latest work, journalist and author Wickenden (Nothing Daunted) follows the lives of three friends and heroes of the women's rights and abolitionist movements, and describes the ways they impacted both causes. Wickenden effectively argues that these two movements, which were gathering steam during the mid-1800s, did not exist independently of one another; rather, they were intertwined. The author's accessible, engaging writing highlights the life of Frances Seward (1805--65), whose husband William H. Seward, secretary of state to Abraham Lincoln, is also given careful consideration. Along with the Sewards, the book also chronicles the lives of close friends Martha Coffin Wright, a feminist and abolitionist, and Harriet Tubman, who was born enslaved in Maryland and left a lasting legacy after escaping slavery and establishing the Underground Railroad. The author effectively places Seward, Wright, and Tubman in historical context. Accounts of Tubman's life in the Underground Railroad and as a scout in the Union army shine particularly brightly, narrated like the daring exploits they were. VERDICT Filling a gap in the telling of women's and abolitionist history, this highly readable book gives these three women their due. Wickenden's deft touch will allow this book to appeal to a wide audience.--Stacy Shaw, Denver

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

The executive editor of the New Yorker tells the stories of three female friends who defied the social conventions of their day to fight for women's rights and abolition. Harriet Tubman, Martha Coffin Wright, and Frances A. Seward made history as females who fought against the subjection of women and slaves in the 19th century. Wickenden braids together the intersecting threads of their lives and accomplishments into a highly readable, instructive historical narrative. The daughter of Nantucket Quakers who opposed slavery and sister of early feminist Lucretia Mott, Wright came to know Seward in 1839 while residing in Auburn, New York. Although Seward lived a life of privilege, the two women bonded over many shared interests, including social reform and an "antipathy to pretentiousness." Wright soon became involved in the abolitionist movement and made her home "a station on the underground railroad." In 1849, Tubman escaped from her master in Maryland and made her way to Philadelphia. There, she met Mott, who actively "preached against slavery and lambasted slavers and clergymen for citing the Bible to justify their sins." Wickenden convincingly speculates that Mott introduced Tubman to both Wright and Seward in the late 1840s. The three quickly formed friendships that united them across race and class in a common fight against White patriarchal oppression. The author sets their stories against a tumultuous backdrop of events--e.g., the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 and the "bleeding" Kansas massacres of the 1850s--that not only defined the revolutionary spirit of the era, but also caused divisions that still haunt the American soul today. Yet in the strength of the bonds forged among Wright, Seward, and Tubman, Wickenden offers hope for a healing of old wounds and a future where "the dignity and equality of all Americans" is an authentic reality. A well-researched, sharp portrait of the "protagonists in an inside-out story about the second American revolution." Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.