Born: 25 July 1806, United States
Died: 12 July 1885
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Maria Weston
The following is republished from the National Park Service. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Marrying into a wealthy Boston merchant family, Maria Weston Chapman used her status to play an influential role in the city’s early abolitionist movement. She became a leader in the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society and helped contribute to the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator.
Born in 1806 to Warren and Nancy Weston, Maria Weston spent much of her youth on her family’s farm in Weymouth, Massachusetts, with her seven siblings. Though not wealthy, the Westons had powerful connections, allowing her many opportunities not afforded to other women of her time and background. As a young woman, Maria’s uncle offered her the chance to finish her formal education in England. She seized this opportunity to complete her schooling and lived with her uncle’s family in London for many years. When she returned to Boston in 1828, Weston became the principal of the Young Ladies’ High School.1
In 1830, Maria Weston married Henry Grafton Chapman, ushering her into the upper echelons of Boston’s society through her new husband’s merchant business. Unlike most of Boston’s merchant class, however, the Chapman family staunchly advocated for the abolition of slavery. The Chapmans refused to deal in Southern cotton, a lucrative trade that built the wealth of many of Boston’s merchant families. Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison considered the Chapmans “almost the only, if not the only, mercantile houses in the country which sacrificed a profitable Southern business to their deep conviction of the sin of slavery.”2
Maria Weston Chapman herself became wholly devoted to the abolitionist cause, and in 1833 she and 12 others—including her sisters—founded the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. The group, composed of Black and White women from various social classes and backgrounds, found common ground in the fight for the immediate abolition of slavery. They played an active role in recruiting women to the cause, as well as using their funds to promote lectures and create institutions for learning.3
The society procured many of these funds through abolitionist bazaars and fairs, where the women themselves handmade the items for sale. Chapman organized her first anti-slavery fair in 1834 and continued to run them annually for over 20 years. Chapman contributed many of her own works to the fairs, including The Liberty Bell—an annual gift-book she edited that featured some of the most prominent writers of the day.4 In total, the efforts of Chapman and the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society helped raise $65,000 over the years.5
On October 21, 1835, a violent mob descended upon the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society’s annual meeting. The mob dragged William Lloyd Garrison, who had offered to speak at the event, from his office and assaulted him. The mayor of Boston asked the women to end their meeting for their own safety. In response, Chapman declared, “If this is the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here, as any where.”6
In open defiance of the angry crowd, the women left the anti-slavery office arm in arm, enduring the insults and threats of the men around them. They proceeded to Chapman’s home to finish their meeting.7 Well aware of the threat of mob violence that abolitionists faced, Chapman predicted that this meeting might become a target: “We shall be in session at Boston, and we are prepared to say that in the strength of God our duty shall be done, let the events of the day be what they may.”8 Just three years later, Chapman attended an anti-slavery convention in Philadelphia at the newly constructed Pennsylvania Hall. Once again, mob violence threatened the meeting. The day after she spoke, an anti-abolitionist mob burned the hall to the ground.9
Throughout the late 1830s, Chapman’s influence grew. Her home served as the center of the “Boston Clique,” a term used by friends and foes alike to describe the group of White abolitionists who exerted power and influence over the various antislavery societies.10 Chapman worked most closely with William Lloyd Garrison, assisting him in writing and editing The Liberator newspaper. She also served on various committees for the New England Anti-Slavery Society, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and the American Anti-Slavery Society. Throughout this time, she published numerous abolitionist and feminist essays, most famously Right and Wrong in Massachusetts—a paper that argued for the equal rights and participation of women in the abolitionist movement.
When President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Chapman retired from her activist work. Ultimately, her primary cause had been for the abolition of slavery. Like many other White abolitionists, she had little interest in the fight for civil rights and equality for African Americans once slavery ended. Though she worked with African American abolitionists and reformers in various organizations, her innermost circle primarily consisted of wealthy White abolitionists.
Despite these glaring shortcomings, Chapman opened the door for other women to have a more assertive role in Boston’s abolitionist movement, encouraging their participation in lectures, speeches, fundraising, and petitioning. Her Boston Clique, comprised of men and women, became a space for women to proudly engage in debate, bringing into question what the traditional “female sphere” included.11 She successfully carved out an active role for herself in Boston’s abolitionist community, changing the perspective of what a female reformer could and should do.
The following is republished with permission from the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail.
Among the more well-known Boston women who attended William Ellery Channing’s Federal Street Church were abolitionists Maria Weston Chapman (1806-85) and Eliza Lee Cabot Follen. Chapman, a founder of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, was a supporter of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of the famed abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. An inspired organizer and fundraiser, Chapman ran twenty-two yearly anti-slavery fairs in Boston beginning in 1834. One of her colleagues in this venture was Lydia Maria Child (1802-80) whose 1833 publication, An Appeal in Behalf of that Class of Americans called Africans, was the first book to advocate an immediate end to slavery. Chapman’s fairs became a model for women in other parts of the country to raise money for the abolitionist cause. Chapman also published several important anti-slavery tracts including How Can I Help Abolish Slavery? and Right and Wrong in Massachusetts. With Garrison, Maria Chapman supported women’s full participation in abolitionist work—including public speaking, which had been condemned in a pastoral letter from the Congregational ministers of Massachusetts as being outside women’s God-ordained sphere. In 1840, Chapman was elected to the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society.