Unbroken Bonds: Middle and High School Activity 3

Activity 3: Lowell’s Response to Slavery: Students learn about the actions of Lowell’s abolitionists, antislavery activists, and anti-abolitionists and make note of some of the tactics they used to advance their views.

Homework: 

Students read the essay “Economical and Political Connections between Lowell and the Southern States” and answer the Text-Dependent and Discussion Questions.

One class period

Guiding question:

What tactics did abolitionists, antislavery activists and anti-abolitionists in Lowell use to try to advance their causes?

Class discussion:

As a class, brainstorm and list methods that abolitionists, antislavery activists, and anti-abolitionists could have used to promote their views.

Primary source exploration:

1.    Divide the class into seven groups and give each group a different colored marker.

2.    Create seven stations around the room.

3.    Print copies of the attached information and questions, along with the corresponding document(s) for each station.

4.    Give each station poster paper.

5.    Each group starts at a different station, examining the document(s) and answering the question(s) on the poster paper.

6.    Groups then move around the room, moving from station to station, examining the documents. Students are encouraged to read the answers of other groups, comment on them, ask questions, and add information.

Station 1: Black Abolitionists’ Activism in Lowell

Document 20a: Letter from Horatio W. Foster to Maria Weston Chapman on Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society Constitution, April 18, 1843.

H.W. Foster wrote this letter to abolitionist Maria Weston Chapman, requesting a copy of the constitution of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society to help interested ladies of Lowell form their own anti-slavery society. Chapman's reply to Foster’s letter is unknown.

Questions:

1.    What might Foster’s motives have been in trying to help the women of Lowell form an Anti-Slavery Society?

2.    What does he hope to gain?

Station 2: Black Abolitionists’ Activism in Lowell

Document 22a: “Manstealers in Lowell!”, Lowell Tri-Weekly American, October 2, 1850.

This article appeared in an 1850 Lowell newspaper. The writer warns Lowellians – Black and white – that “slave catchers” are patrolling the town looking to kidnap Nathaniel Booth, a formerly enslaved man who ran from his enslaver’s home in Virginia to freedom in Lowell.

And

Document 22b: “Manstealers,” Lowell Daily Journal and Courier, October 4, 1850.

This article appeared in another Lowell newspaper two days after the “Manstealers” article. It takes a different perspective than Document #22a on Nathaniel Booth’s situation.

Questions:

1. How do the articles in Document 22a and 22b describe the same events differently?

2. Why do you think the authors of Document 22a wanted to stir up the emotions of the people of Lowell? What did they hope to gain?

3. Why do you think the authors of Document 22b felt it was important to refute the Lowell Tri-Weekly American article?

Station 3: Antislavery Activism in Lowell

Document 28: “Another [Antislavery] Meeting,” Letter from H.W. Foster to William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator, May 4, 1843.

This letter from H.W. Foster to William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, discusses a recent antislavery meeting in Lowell.

Questions:

1. What examples does Foster give of successful responses to this meeting?

2. What benefits of in-person activism do you notice in this report?

Station 4: Antislavery Activism in Lowell

Document 33: “Letter from a Factory-Girl [Clementine Averill] to Senator Clemens,” The New York Weekly Tribune, March 23, 1850.

Clementine Averill worked in Lowell’s Boott Cotton Mills. She wrote this letter, published in The Weekly Tribune, in response to a statement by Senator Jeremiah Clemens of Alabama, printed in many New England newspapers. Clemens reportedly declared that “the Southern slaves are better off than the Northern operatives.”

Questions:

1. Clementine Averill was a mill worker (operative) in Lowell. How does that make her a convincing respondent to Mr. Clemens?

2.      In refuting Mr. Clemens’ claims that operatives were worse off than enslaved people, how does Clementine Averill bring to light the evils of slavery?

Station 5: Antislavery Activism in Lowell

Document 36: Anti- Fugitive Slave Act Petition, Lowell, 1851.

This is one of many anti- Fugitive Slave Act petitions circulated in Massachusetts in 1851. Notice that the top part of the petition is typewritten and that someone has cut the original document apart to add more space for signatures. This petition was signed primarily by men, but at least two signatures can be identified as those of women.

Questions:

1. What are the petitioners asking for?

2. Why do you think those who signed the petition chose this as their means of protest? What else could they have done to attain their desired results?

Station 6: Anti-Abolitionists in Lowell

Document 40: “Citizens of Lowell” [Anti-Thompson Handbill], Lowell, December 2, 1834.

George Thompson was a British abolitionist who traveled to the United States in 1834 to deliver lectures on abolition. In Lowell, an anti-abolitionist mob attempted to silence him and “suppress the liberty of speech on the subject of slavery.”

Question:

1.    How and why does the author use the US Constitution to try to gain followers and defend their anti-abolition actions?

Station 7: Anti-Abolitionists in Lowell

Document 41: “Public [Anti-Abolition] Meeting” Broadside, Lowell, August 21, 1835.

Growing concern over Southern reactions to the abolitionist activities of William Lloyd Garrison and the threat abolitionism posed to the Union, prompted a group of prominent Lowellians, including Kirk Boott,  the agent of the Merrimack (cotton textile) Mills, to call for a meeting at Lowell’s Town Hall to proclaim their anti-abolitionist sentiments. 

Questions:

1     What arguments against abolition is the author of this broadside using?

2     What does the author hope the meeting will accomplish?

3     How might they personally benefit from the continuation of slavery?

Class discussion:

Once students have visited all seven stations (or as many as possible), discuss the following as a class:

1.    What tactics did the people of Lowell use to try to convince others to join the abolitionist, antislavery or abolitionists movements?

2.    How were their motives reflected in the tactics each group used?

3.    What other factors lend themselves to success besides tactics?