Her mother, Sarah Tatum Hopper, became a recommended minister for the Society of Friends [4] and oversaw schools for black children, along with a committee.

Called upon to protect the rights of African Americans, Isaac Hopper and his wife garnered a reputation as friends and advisers of the "oppressed race" in all emergencies.

The Hoppers also sheltered many poor Quakers in their house, despite their own family's large size and the father's unstable financial status.

She worked with well-known abolitionists of her time, including Lydia Maria Child, Sarah Moore Grimké, William Lloyd Garrison, and Theodore Dwight Weld.

[9] Some Quaker yearly meetings divided due to influences from deism, as well as differences between urban and rural members.

In 1841, the New York Monthly Meeting, which was dominated by Hicksites, disowned Abigail's father Isaac Hopper and her husband James Sloan Gibbons for their writing and other activities against slavery.

She led an aggressive program of legislative lobbying at the city and state level to improve prison conditions for women.

The United States Sanitary Commission was established in 1861, shortly after the Civil War began, to recruit nurses and to provide adequate medical care to the Union wounded.

Additionally, she used her wages to help pay for medical expenses encountered by patients who resided in a contraband camp.

At Point Lookout, Maryland, the federal government took over a hotel and 100 guest cottages, converting them into a hospital complex with accommodations for 1500 soldiers.

With the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, they feared more job competition by blacks and the loss of work or being driven to lower wages.

During the New York Draft Riots, ethnic Irish led mob attacks against individual blacks, their residences, and businesses, as well as against the Colored Orphan Asylum, in the largest civil insurrection in United States history.

On Tuesday, July 14, 1863, the Gibbons' Manhattan home at 19 Lamartine Place (now 339 West 29th Street) was burned and destroyed by rioters.

[1] As a result of her working on notable social reform movements, Gibbons corresponded with other nationally prominent leaders, including Lydia Maria Child, Joseph H. Choate, and Theodore Roosevelt, .

[1] Her concern for women and children led Gibbons to found the New York Diet Kitchen (to serve infants, the elderly and the poor).

She had also served as the co-founder and president of the New York Committee for the Prevention and Regulation of Vice, directed to control prostitution, drinking and gambling.