referring to the Bible as a false idol, a “gilded household God.”28
Quaker minister Priscilla Hunt of Indiana served as Hicks’s female counterpart. She preached on similar topics and drew large crowds in Philadelphia in 1822 and 1823. In one sermon she declared, “I have seen the Gospel trumpet laid down in this city. False alarms have been sounded here and believed. True alarms have been sounded and not believed.”29 Like Hicks, she emphasized the inward light, which she called “the monitor in the breast.” But her preaching (and her popularity) drew the ire of the elders. In response to one sermon at Pine Street Meeting, William Evans, son of Jonathan Evans, rose and stated, “These are not the doctrines of our religious Society.” After this rebuke, Priscilla Hunt kneeled to pray, and the rest of the meeting rose in unity, with the exception of William and Jonathan Evans. The meeting then ended in an “agitated fashion.”30 When Hunt returned to speak at Arch Street and Pine Street Meetings, she faced similar opposition. But she was welcomed at Green Street Meeting, a stronghold for Hicks, and at Mott’s Twelfth Street Meeting. Lucretia later referred to her as a “great minister.” Evans justified his behavior by suggesting that Hunt had been reprimanded for unsound doctrine by her home meeting. But one Hicksite later testified, “it was not the business of elders in Philadelphia to condemn an individual unheard, and thus publicly proscribe her; which that opposition manifested was calculated to do.”31
With women as crucial players, the character and authority of female ministers became an issue in the Hicksite controversy. Evangelical Quakers saw Hannah Barnard, whose disownment figured so prominently in Lucretia’s childhood, as a Quaker Eve, precipitating the fall. Thomas Eddy, a leading Quaker and founder of the American Bible Society, claimed that before Barnard’s trip to England the Society of Friends was united in “love and amity,” but her “deist” sermons on the Scriptures, the Atonement, and the divinity of Christ divided Quakers. Eddy cited Barnard as a direct predecessor to Elias Hicks.32 Female ministers presented a problem for evangelical Quakers because their equal presence further distinguished the Society of Friends from mainstream denominations. For example, Presbyterian minister Eliphalet Gilbert, writing as Paul, viewed female preachers as another Quaker heresy. “Paul” described the pen of “Amicus” as like a “scolding woman’s tongue” and female Quaker ministers as “frothy” and “ignorant.”33
All Quakers agreed on the right of women to be ministers, but they disagreed about which women had received genuine inspiration. Evangelical Quakers defended Anna Braithwaite as “innocent” and a victim of “calumny and persecution.” Hicksites saw her as “shameful and unprincipled,” “violent,” and deluded.34 Evangelical Quakers described Ann Shipley, a witness to Anna Braithwaite’s conversation with Elias Hicks, as a “worthy minister,” while Hicksites doubted her authorship of a letter supporting Braithwaite’s account.35
As a consequence, the mistreatment of female ministers became one of many points of contention between evangelical and Hicksite Quakers. In 1826, the Hicksite-dominated Green Street Meeting succeeded in having several evangelical holdouts, including Ann Scattergood and Mary Taylor, removed as ministers. The Orthodox or evangelical Quakers later referred to this action as “oppressive and arbitrary” as well as ungentlemanly.36 Similarly, the Hicksites complained of the Evanses’ treatment of Priscilla Hunt, deploring their hostile “reception of a virtuous female stranger.”37
Most historians consign female Quakers to a minor role in the split, yet women’s participation was evident during every stage of the conflict. In 1826, Anna Braithwaite and another British Friend, Elizabeth Robson, appeared at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and, according to Lucretia, “had full opportunities to relieve their minds, and we had much preaching.”38 Robson returned to Philadelphia in 1827 and, after requesting an audience with the men’s meeting, preached for close to an hour against the unsound doctrines of Hicks and his allies.39
After the acrimonious 1827 Yearly Meeting adjourned, a struggle ensued for the loyalty of women. Hicksite men were particularly concerned about the influence of British evangelicals on the women’s meeting. When Ann Jones, another English Friend, proposed appointing a committee to determine the state of the ministry, Hicksite men saw it as an attempt to derail the separation. Their anger at Jones turned on the women’s meeting, and they suggested that the women had exceeded their authority. At Green Street Monthly Meeting, which had already broken its connection to Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting, Orthodox minister Ann Scattergood tried to lead a “rump” women’s meeting, only to have several men interrupt to bring out their wives.40 Despite Hicksite men’s concerns, women were among Hicks’s most important partisans. In addition to Priscilla Hunt and Lucretia Mott, Esther Moore, wife of Hicksite Dr. Robert Moore of Easton, Maryland, remained true to Hicks throughout the controversy.41
The Hicksite and Orthodox Quakers offered two competing models of womanhood. The Hicksites’ egalitarianism, closely linked to democratic ferment and free thought, produced Hannah Barnard and Priscilla Hunt, dynamic preachers liberated from the constraints of religious orthodoxy and middle-class domesticity. The Orthodox Quakers celebrated a more reserved female piety as exemplified by the private Ann Shipley or the haughty Anna Braithwaite. Within the bounds of propriety, Orthodox Quakers and their evangelical allies encouraged women to expand their benevolent presence in the public sphere, as missionaries, exhorters, fundraisers, and volunteers. In 1829, this mainstream ministerial embrace of female moral power inspired Catharine Beecher, daughter of Lyman Beecher, to embark on the first mass petition campaign among women. Beecher argued that women’s religious “influence” should be exerted to raise sympathy and awareness of the plight of the Cherokee, the target of removal efforts led by Democratic President Andrew Jackson.42
Any chance of unity among Philadelphia Quakers ended with the 1827 Yearly Meeting. After the split, the Orthodox Philadelphia Yearly Meeting retained most of the property and assets, but counted only 9,009 members to the 17,000 strong Hicksites. Both sides filed lawsuits to gain control over meetinghouses and schoolhouses. They also issued pamphlets to win the hearts and minds of fellow Quakers. The Orthodox, staking their place firmly in the Protestant evangelical mainstream, referred to the Hicksites as a new and distinct sect, made up of “libertines” advocating “wild ranterism.” They condemned the Hicksites’ disregard for doctrine, and viewed the separation as a result of Hicksite unwillingness to follow “strict morality” or “religious obligations.”43 The Hicksites, on the other hand, adopted the democratic language of the time. They invoked their “inalienable right” to religious liberty, calling the measures of the Philadelphia elders “oppressive.” Instead, they promoted “the blessings of a Gospel Ministry unshackled by human authority.” 44 With intentional symbolism, Hicksites held a meeting in June 1827 in Carpenters’ Hall, where the Continental Congress first met. This convention gave birth to Cherry Street Meeting, where the Motts worshipped after the separation.
The bitter rupture of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting spread quickly through American Quakerism. News of the split traveled to Aurora, New York, where Anna Coffin and the newly widowed Martha Pelham were teaching school. Lucretia’s youngest sister had already been disowned for marrying out of meeting, but Scipio Meeting promptly disowned Anna Coffin, who sided with the Hicksites. Yearly Meetings in Baltimore, Indiana, New York, and Ohio soon suffered their own fractures.45
Though Mott followed these theological debates intently, her family required her physical presence and emotional attention. Lucretia had children at regular intervals throughout the decade. After the birth of her daughter Maria in 1818, there was a gap of a few years as she explored her calling as a minister. This deliberate spacing of children suggests Lucretia participated in a larger demographic transition among American women, who limited their family size from an average of seven children to an average of 3.5 children over the course of the nineteenth century. In 1823, Lucretia had a son, also named Thomas. Two more daughters followed: Elizabeth in 1825, and Martha (known as Pattie) in 1828. In the nineteenth century, pregnancy was a dangerous proposition. While Lucretia survived her pregnancies, her younger sister Mary