Ahead of Her Time: Abby Kelley and the Politics of Antislavery

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W. W. Norton & Company, Jun 17, 1994 - Biography & Autobiography - 480 pages

“[The author] tells this remarkable story with honesty and compassion. Readers will find a wealth of new information not only about Kelley’s outstanding contribution to abolitionism but about the movements to bring about the end of slavery and to advance the cause of women.” —Mari Jo Buhle, Brown University

In the tumultuous years before the Civil War, a young white woman from a Quaker background came to embody commitment to the cause of antislavery and equal rights for black people. Abby Kelley became the abolitionist movement’s chief money-raiser and organizer and its most radial member. She traveled hundreds of miles to awaken the country to the evils of slavery, braving hardship and prejudice as well as opening the way for other women, black and white, to take leadership roles. Now the full story of this principled woman has been told in Dorothy Sterling’s compelling biography.

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Contents

Introduction
Note to Readers
The Education of Abby Kelley 2 A Wider World
Women Find Their Voices
The Call
A PublicSpeaking Woman 6 War to the Knifes Point
The Notorious Abby Kelley
A New Hampshire Fanatic
Lord What a Tongue Shes
Conflicting Claims
Bloody Feet Sisters
General Agent
The Irrepressible Conflict
Nothing Is Done While Anything Remains to Be Done
A Lonely Rocket in a Dark
Notes Selected Bibliography

Along the Psychic Highway
Antislavery Politics
The Path of True Love and Other Matters
Acknowledgments
Index
Copyright

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About the author (1994)

Dorothy Sterling (1913—2008) was a native New Yorker who lived for many years on Cape Cod in Wellfleet. She made many trips to Nantucket, Block Island, Martha's Vineyard, and Long Island. She was a painstaking and thorough researcher with a long list of natural history, biography, and fiction books to her credit.

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