Hannah Maria Conant Tracy Cutler (December 25, 1815[1] – February 11, 1896[2]) was an American abolitionist as well as a leader of the temperance and women's suffrage movements in the United States.
Cutler presented petitions to state and federal legislatures, and helped to form temperance, abolition, suffrage and women's aid societies in Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Vermont.
The couple had two daughters, Melanie in 1836 and Mary in 1841, and a son was on the way when in August 1844, John Tracy died of pneumonia taken as a result of exposure and abuse suffered when he was pursued by a mob while helping escaped slaves.
[5] To support her family, Tracy wrote for Ohio newspapers[4] including for Cassius Marcellus Clay's True American (writing under a pseudonym) and for Josiah A. Harris at the Cleveland Herald.
Tracy cautioned that to make woman "both physically and intellectually man's equal" would require a societal revolution that would take at least a generation to accomplish.
[4] In Columbus, Tracy met Frances Dana Barker Gage, another abolitionist and feminist; both were interested in advancing the Free Soil Party with its anti-slavery platform.
Because the Deaf and Dumb Asylum allowed only one of her children to remain in residence with her, in 1849 Tracy accepted a position as principal of the "female department" at Columbus' new public high school.
Gage was elected president and Cutler secretary of the women's convention, where they met Sojourner Truth and witnessed her famous speech: Ain't I a Woman?.
[10] Tracy also carried credentials as the United States delegate to the Peace Congress, but arrived one day late, and was able to hear only the closing speeches.
She met Joseph Sturge and William Ewart Gladstone, but was more interested in hearing details about the Emancipation of the British West Indies from anti-slavery activist Anna Knight.
[2] Upon her return to the United States, Tracy paused in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, so she could attend the Free Soil Convention; there she was urged to take the platform and speak about human rights.
The new Mrs. Hannah Tracy Cutler carried out much of the work herself, including "spinning, weaving, knitting, tailoring, baking, dairying, basket-weaving, shoe-making, and hat-braiding," according to a later account by her daughter Mary.
[2] Cutler wrote an article for The Una defending the essential difference between men and women: The objector meets us with the oft repeated cry, "would you unsex woman and render her the same selfish being that you find in man, when immersed in the strife and chicanery attendant upon political relations?
Rather than focusing on isolated passages that had no modern-day application, Cutler recommended her audience "proclaim the beautiful spirit breathed through all its commands and precepts.
"[14] After the 1855 convention that met in Cincinnati adopted a plan of circulating woman suffrage petitions in as many states as possible, Tracy agreed to take up the work in Illinois.
[15] In late May 1856, Cutler was on her way to preside over a Woman's Temperance Convention in Chicago when she heard about arson and crimes committed in Lawrence, Kansas against abolitionists.
Spurred by the women's effort, Gerrit Smith, Thurlow Weed and other politically active men organized a National Kansas Aid Convention in Buffalo, New York, beginning July 10.
[17] Cutler consulted repeatedly with Abraham Lincoln before he left for Washington, D.C.,[5] and she drafted a law affecting married women's property which saw passage in February, 1861.
The grave and reverend seigniors, on this, indulged in a hearty guffaw, hugely enjoyed by his honor Lieutenant-Governor Hoffman, and, to this day, no further action has been taken to give the wife and mother this small modicum of justice...[18]During the Civil War, Cutler served as president of the Western Union Aid Commission in Chicago.
[5] A conversation with Reverend Doctor Thomas M. Eddy about Lincoln's stated wish to be pressured strongly by abolitionists to free the slaves as an emergency war measure caused Cutler to begin gathering such signatures in the West.
Hannah Tracy Cutler's final service in the war was to help the Union Aid Society gather and send six thousand bushels of seed corn to farmers in the war-torn southwest.
[19] The Ohio Equal Rights Society held a convention in Cincinnati in mid-September, and Stone and her husband Henry Browne Blackwell gave speeches.
[27] Later that summer, Bloomer and Cutler lectured in Oskaloosa, Iowa and sparked the formation of a woman suffrage society there,[28] building on a much earlier visit by Frances Dana Barker Gage in 1854.
"Her womanliness and logic won and convinced her hearers",[29] but didn't result in the formation of a local woman suffrage organization until Susan B. Anthony came through later that winter.
During the Ohio push, she was described by a fellow suffragist as "Strong in body as well as mind, she endures with comparative ease the fatigues and discomforts of the lecture field, and sends the truth to the hearts of her hearers with a force and directness that is seldom surpassed.
[2] Cutler returned to the United States to practice medicine in Cobden, Illinois, and later in Brentwood, California, where her daughter Mary Tracy Mott lived and wrote.
[35] Lucy Stone, Henry Browne Blackwell and Cutler were among the featured speakers at the AWSA convention in mid-September, and all three remained afterward to canvass the state.
On December 21, 1887, Cutler was appointed by Anthony and Stone to a committee tasked with joining the AWSA with the NWSA to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).
For the next two years, Cutler worked with Alice Stone Blackwell and Rachel Foster Avery to help establish a common structure and mission for the combined organization.
[2] Mary Tracy Mott finished then submitted her mother's autobiography to Alice Stone Blackwell to be published in a series of Woman's Journal issues from September through October 1896.