Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society

"During its brief history ... it orchestrated three national women's conventions, organized a multistate petition campaign, sued southerners who brought slaves into Boston, and sponsored elaborate, profitable fundraisers.

"[1][2] The founders believed "slavery to be a direct violation of the laws of God, and productive of a vast amount of misery and crime, and convinced that its abolition can only be effected by an acknowledgement of the justice and necessity of immediate emancipation."

[4] "In their early correspondence with other female antislavery societies, BFASS members admitted that an "astonishing apathy" about slavery and race matters had "prevailed" among them.

After concluding that such complacency "cannot be desired," they committed themselves to "sleep no more" now that the "long, dark night is rapidly receding, the light of truth has unsealed our eyes, and fallen upon our hearts, [and] awakened our slumbering energies."

Several strong men, including the mayor Theodore Lyman II, intervened and took him to the most secure place in Boston, the Leverett Street Jail.

The decision caused an uproar in the South and added to tensions over slaveholders' travel to free states, as well as the hardening of positions in the years leading up to the Civil War.

[8][9] Other affiliates of the society included Mary Grew,[10] Joshua V. Himes, Francis Jackson,[11] Maria White Lowell, Harriet Martineau, Abby Southwick,[12] Baron Stow, Mrs. George Thompson.