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Portland Anti-Slavery Society

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Maureen Elgersman Lee

Maureen Elgersman Lee

Item 18527 info
Maine Historical Society

Maureen Elgersman Lee, a former associate professor of history at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, was Faculty Scholar for USM African American Collection of Maine.

She is now the Executive Director of the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia.

She is a graduate of Redeemer College, Ontario, Canada, and hold master's and doctorate degrees from Clark Atlanta University.

She is the author of Black Bangor: African Americans in a Maine Community, 1880-1950 (December 2005) and Unyielding Spirits: Black Women and Slavery in Early Canada and Jamaica (1999).

Click on the audio link below to hear Dr. Elgersman Lee's introduction to the Maine and Portland anti-slavery society documents.

Transcription of Dr. Elgersman Lee's comments:

The American Anti-Slavery Society was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1833, and was philosophically distinct from the American Colonization Society, which was founded in Washington, D.C., in 1817 and had black expatriation as its primary goal. With representatives from 10 states, the American Anti-Slavery Society had as its aim the immediate abolition of slavery.

Members acknowledged states' rights in slavery legislation, but remained committed to convincing slaveholders that slavery was a crime against humanity and a sin against God. Members deplored insurrection, whether by Blacks or Whites, enslaved or free.

The Maine Anti-Slavery Society was an auxiliary of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Members of the Maine body, therefore, were ex-officio members of the national body.

The documents in the Maine Memory Network online album on the Maine Anti-Slavery Society and the Portland Anti-Slavery Society form a diverse collection of materials. The Society's constitutions, letters, and other materials all speak to the breadth of the organizations' sphere of contact, the depth of their convictions, and the challenges to their missions. Anti-slavery work was serious business. With very real economic, political, and social repercussions, it was not for the faint of heart.


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Maine Anti-Slavery Society constitution, ca. 1833

Maine Anti-Slavery Society constitution, ca. 1833

Item 7485 info
Maine Historical Society

Click on the audio link below to hear Dr. Elgersman Lee's comments on the Maine Anti-Slavery Society constitution of the 1830s.

Transcription of Dr. Elgersman Lee's comments:

Constitution of the Maine Anti-Slavery Society

Like that of the American Anti-Slavery Society, the Maine Anti-Slavery Society's constitution invokes the language of the Declaration of Independence and a Christianity-informed moral responsibility.

The document called for emancipation to be immediate, comprehensive, uncompensated, non-violent, and non-repatriative.

The Maine Anti-Slavery Society's position on abolition would alienate proslavery and antislavery supporters alike -- not only those who wanted to maintain or even expand the institution, but also those whose antislavery platform included staggering the emancipation process or compensating the slaveocracy.

Abraham Lincoln's own plan for emancipation called for slaveholder compensation and slave expatriation. By disavowing compensation, the Maine Anti-Slavery Society underscored an unwillingness to offer restitution for this sin against God.

At the same time, the Society's position on nonviolence limited its power to words and persuasion. This also illuminates why speakers of regional and national renown were actively pursued to deliver lectures in the state.


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Minutes, Portland Anti-Slavery Society, 1844-1846, 1850-1851

Minutes, Portland Anti-Slavery Society, 1844-1846, 1850-1851

Item 10222 info
Maine Historical Society

The Portland Anti-Slavery Society formed and reconstituted itself several times in the mid 19th century. A number of prominent Portlanders were involved in the effort.

Click on the audio link below to hear Dr. Maureen Elgersman Lee's comments on the Society's minutes book, which included the group's constitution.

Transcription of Elgersman Lee's comments:

Minutes Book of the Portland Anti-Slavery Society, (1844-1851, passim)

In the preamble to its constitution, the Portland Anti-Slavery Society invoked the same language of fraternity, equality, and inalienable rights as the Declaration of Independence and as other anti-slavery societies in the United States. In both its 1844 and its 1850 forms, the Portland Anti-Slavery Society kept as its primary goals 1) the dissemination of accurate, persuasive information regarding slavery in the ultimate goal of immediate abolition, and 2) the elimination of racism toward and the elevation of the status of free people of color.

Under the leadership of Oliver Dennett in 1844 and Peter Morrill in 1850, the Portland Anti-Slavery Society saw its mission inextricably tied to the Christian cause of human redemption and freedom. This is seen in language found through the Society's minutes and also in the organization's early decision to attend to their business on Sunday, considered by members to be the most appropriate day for work of this kind. Eventually, meetings began taking place on various weekdays.

Members do not appear to have been disheartened by their small numbers relative to the slave regime of the South or to the anti-slavery societies of larger cities. Members reached out to the influential figures of their day, including Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Charles Remond, and Charles Sumner to bring their anti-slavery messages to the city. Portland Anti-Slavery Society members remained cognizant of regional and national developments, as they continued to build communication networks across the state of Maine.

It is important to note the active role of Portland women in the governance of the Anti-Slavery Society. Noteworthy as well is the sizeable donation of $50 made in 1850 by the Portland Anti-Slavery Society sewing circle.


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Letter to Elizabeth Mounfort from a friend in Trinidad, Cuba, July 4, 1847

Letter to Elizabeth Mounfort from a friend in Trinidad, Cuba, July 4, 1847

Item 10081 info
Maine Historical Society

Click on the audio link below to hear Dr. Elgersman Lee's comments on a letter to Portland Anti-Slavery Society activist Elizabeth Mountfort from a friend in Cuba.

Transcription of Dr. Elgersman Lee's comments:

Maria to Elizabeth Mountfort, 4 July 1847

Unlike the more public documents related to the Portland Anti-Slavery Society, this letter allows the reader to peer into a private conversation between prominent Society member Elizabeth Mountfort and her friend, Maria.

It was written on what was probably a very introspective day - the Fourth of July and a Sunday. Maria provides Mountfort with a multi-sensory report on her Cuban experience. The hallmarks of this experience are the sights and sounds of slavery, an institution that continued to be legal in Cuba until the late nineteenth century.

Informed by mid-nineteenth century conventions of propriety and by her own antislavery sentiment, Maria's letter serves as a personal treatise on the need for abolition. Maria also commends Mountfort's dedication to the cause.


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Fugitive Slave Act cartoon, 1851

Fugitive Slave Act cartoon, 1851

Item 19278 info
Maine Historical Society

The cartoon entitled "Practical illustration of the Fugitive Slave Law" show abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (left) holding a slave woman in one arm and pointing a pistol toward a burly slave catcher mounted on the back of Daniel Webster.

The print might have been produced in Boston, a center of bitter opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 and 1851.


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Letter from Abby K. Foster to Elizabeth Mountfort, ca. 1851

Letter from Abby K. Foster to Elizabeth Mountfort, ca. 1851

Item 10242 info
Maine Historical Society

Click on the audio link below to hear Dr. Maureen Elgersman Lee's comments about a letter from antislavery activist Abby Foster of Massachusetts to Portland activist Elizabeth Mountfort.

Transcription of Elgersman Lee's comments:

Abby Foster to Elizabeth Mountfort, 25 October

Writing to Elizabeth "Lizzie" Mountfort in what may have been the fall of 1851, Foster signals the urgency of antislavery work after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 and the optimism surrounding potential antislavery accomplishments.

Foster and Mountfort are sorors, not in blood, but certainly in antislavery activism. The familiarity with which Foster writes of "our dear home" and "our family" is evidence thereof.

They also shared nineteenth-century feminist sensibilities in which women - particularly activists and reformers - sought to model social responsibility for their daughters.

Foster's letter further conveys a shared consensus of purpose between the writer and the reader. The need to strengthen abolitionist support allowed Foster to be very direct and brief. "Duties press."


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Letter from Frederick Douglass to Elizabeth Mountfort, Aug. 8, 1851

Letter from Frederick Douglass to Elizabeth Mountfort, Aug. 8, 1851

Item 10237 info
Maine Historical Society

Click on the audio link below to hear Dr. Maureen Elgersman Lee's comments on Frederick Douglass's letter to the Portland Anti-Slavery Society in 1850.

Transcription of Elgersman Lee's comments:

Frederick Douglass to Elizabeth Mountfort, 8 August 1850

Because the Portland Anti-Slavery Society had a platform of non-violence, it relied heavily on the power of the word, both written and spoken, to spread abolitionism and undermine slavery.

Although Douglass' letter to Mountfort signaled his inability to accept her request to speak in Portland, it illustrates that Maine abolitionists did not operate in a vacuum. They moved in the philosophical and physical company of nationally recognized figures.


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Frederick Douglass, Old Orchard Beach, 1877

Frederick Douglass, Old Orchard Beach, 1877

Item 6434 info
Maine State Archives

Even though Douglass, a former slave and anti-slavery advocate, did not come to Portland in 1850, he did visit the state in 1877, to join veterans of the First Maine Cavalry, a Civil War unit, at their annual reunion in 1877 at Old Orchard Beach.

Douglass is standing fourth from right in the first row. He noted that it was a sign of great progress in race relations that he had enjoyed "a game of croquet with ladies and gentlemen of a different race right out in front of the hotel."


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Hiram Wilson letter to Elizabeth Mountfort, Nov. 29, 1848

Hiram Wilson letter to Elizabeth Mountfort, Nov. 29, 1848

Item 10088 info
Maine Historical Society

Click on the audio link below to hear Dr. Maureen Elgersman Lee's comments on a letter from Hiram Wilson, who ran an outpost for fugitive slaves in Canada.

Transcription of Elgersman Lee's comments:

Hiram Wilson to Elizabeth Mountfort, 29 November 1848

Hiram Wilson's letter to Elizabeth Mountfort does several things. First, it illustrates the ties between New England and Canada West - which is in present-day Ontario -in the abolitionist struggle.

In addition, Wilson's words encourage two levels of interpretation. The "Box" for the "Canada Mission" may have been an actual box of supplies. The language, however, also encourages one to wonder if Mountfort and the Portland Anti-Slavery Society members assisted a runaway in escaping to the Black settlement managed by Wilson in Canada West.

The terminology and the couched language bring to mind Henry Brown's escape from slavery in a wooden box transported from the South to the North.

Wilson's disappointment with the lack of support and empathy for the plight of the enslaved is almost palpable. However, his encouraging report about the social and educational gains of Blacks at the Dawn Settlement must have cheered Mountfort's heart and convinced her that her labors in the Portland Anti-Slavery Society had not been in vain.


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