All We Were Promised by Ashton Lattimore

Author:Ashton Lattimore [Lattimore, Ashton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2024-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

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For the next Antislavery Society meeting, in early May, the women gathered at Sarah’s schoolhouse in the evening to discuss plans for yet another petition drive. These had occupied much of the society’s time over the last few years, along with fundraising and fair planning. The group regularly drafted ringing antislavery statements, circulated them around town for signatures, and shipped them off to Congress. As women, they had no other way to make their voices heard on matters of federal policy. Still, Nell’s faith in their effectiveness was flagging; the congressmen had gotten so tired of being buried under reams of paper that they’d passed a gag rule that automatically tabled all antislavery petitions without discussion, in the hope that would stop the avalanche. But the group’s leadership, particularly the white officers, clung to the practice as a method of shifting public opinion, and so it continued.

Of course, where Evie was concerned, Nell had something far more provocative in mind than a strongly worded statement. As the meeting went on, she kept finding her eye drawn to Hetty, remembering how eager she’d been to join the proposed committee on direct action to aid fugitives, and the advice she’d given about the Vigilant Association. Maybe Hetty was the person Nell needed to talk to now. She had to know something about arranging an escape, after all, since she’d engineered one for herself.

Once petitioning plans were squared away, talk turned to settling the meeting schedule for the national Women’s Antislavery Convention, which would coincide with the opening of Pennsylvania Hall on May 14. With less than two weeks to go, the excitement was growing. The hall opening promised a grand meeting of the minds, a space to refine and debate the very ideas that bound together abolitionists around the country and to work out how to put them into practice. Increasingly, that practice—the doing of abolition—was where Nell wanted to put her efforts. And that kept bringing her around to Hetty. Silently, Nell wondered why Hetty didn’t offer herself up as a speaker, or why someone in the society’s leadership didn’t bother trying to recruit her for the job. With her life experience, Hetty could enlighten the crowd not only on the harsh realities of slavery but on what freedom really felt and sounded and tasted like, and where it fell short. Why not put her forward, rather than Angelina Grimke? Even as a staunch ally to the cause, Miss Grimke had lived through slavery as a beneficiary, not a victim—someone like Hetty could offer all the same insights, and more.

And that was to say nothing of Hetty’s sheer audacity. Not just for running away from her masters—it was easy enough to understand the impulse to do that. But also for being brave enough to insert herself into this circle. High-minded as Philadelphia’s upper class might be on abolition, they weren’t so different from any other upper class when it came to mixing and mingling with those below their station.

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