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Summary
Summary
An LA Times Best Book of the Year
"Engrossing... examines the major events of the mid 19th century through the lives of three key figures in the abolitionist and women's rights movements." -- Smithsonian
From the executive editor of The New Yorker , a riveting, provocative, and revelatory history of abolition and women's rights, told through the story of three women--Harriet Tubman, Frances Seward, and Martha Wright--in the years before, during and after the Civil War.
" The Agitators tells the story of America before the Civil War through the lives of three women who advocated for the abolition of slavery and for women's rights as the country split apart. Harriet Tubman, Martha Coffin Wright, and Frances A. Seward are the examples we need right now--another time of divisiveness and dissension over our nation's purpose 'to form a more perfect union.'" --Hillary Rodham Clinton
In the 1850s, Harriet Tubman, strategically brilliant and uncannily prescient, rescued some seventy enslaved people from Maryland's Eastern Shore and shepherded them north along the underground railroad. One of her regular stops was Auburn, New York, where she entrusted passengers to Martha Coffin Wright, a Quaker mother of seven, and Frances A. Seward, the wife of William H. Seward, who served over the years as governor, senator, and secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln. During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the Union Army in South Carolina as a nurse and spy, and took part in a spectacular river raid in which she helped to liberate 750 slaves from several rice plantations.
Wright, a "dangerous woman" in the eyes of her neighbors, worked side by side with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to organize women's rights and anti-slavery conventions across New York State, braving hecklers and mobs when she spoke. Frances Seward, the most conventional of the three friends, hid her radicalism in public, while privately acting as a political adviser to her husband, pressing him to persuade President Lincoln to move immediately on emancipation.
The Agitators opens in the 1820s, when Tubman is enslaved and Wright and Seward are young homemakers bound by law and tradition, and ends after the war. Many of the most prominent figures of the era--Lincoln, William H. Seward, Frederick Douglass, Daniel Webster, Charles Sumner, John Brown, William Lloyd Garrison--are seen through the discerning eyes of the protagonists. So are the most explosive political debates: about the civil rights of African Americans and women, about the enlistment of Black troops, and about opposing interpretations of the Constitution.
Through richly detailed letters from the time and exhaustive research, Wickenden traces the second American revolution these women fought to bring about, the toll it took on their families, and its lasting effects on the country. Riveting and profoundly relevant to our own time, The Agitators brings a vibrant, original voice to this transformative period in our history.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
New Yorker executive editor Wickenden (Nothing Daunted) expertly weaves together the biographies of "co-conspirators and intimate friends" Harriet Tubman, Martha Wright, and Frances Seward in this novelistic history. When Wright, the younger sister of abolitionist Lucretia Mott, and Seward, the wife of U.S. senator and secretary of state William Henry Seward, got to know Tubman in the early 1850s, they were already "in the process of transforming themselves from conventional homemakers into insurgents." Wright and Seward hosted fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad and helped Tubman to build and sustain a free Black community in Auburn, N.Y., where all three women lived from 1857 on. Wickenden details the links between the suffragist and abolitionist movements in the U.S., noting that women like Seward and Wright, by virtue of being in the private sphere, had a moral clarity about the evil of slavery that male politicians lacked, and describes how post-Civil War tensions over whether Black men or white women should get the vote first divided the suffragist movement. Through extensive research and fluid writing, Wickenden rescues Wright and Seward from obscurity and provides a new perspective on Tubman's life and work. This is an essential addition to the history of American progressivism. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM Partners. (Mar.)
Kirkus Review
The executive editor of the New Yorker tells the stories of three female friends who defied the social conventions of their day to fight for women's rights and abolition. Harriet Tubman, Martha Coffin Wright, and Frances A. Seward made history as females who fought against the subjection of women and slaves in the 19th century. Wickenden braids together the intersecting threads of their lives and accomplishments into a highly readable, instructive historical narrative. The daughter of Nantucket Quakers who opposed slavery and sister of early feminist Lucretia Mott, Wright came to know Seward in 1839 while residing in Auburn, New York. Although Seward lived a life of privilege, the two women bonded over many shared interests, including social reform and an "antipathy to pretentiousness." Wright soon became involved in the abolitionist movement and made her home "a station on the underground railroad." In 1849, Tubman escaped from her master in Maryland and made her way to Philadelphia. There, she met Mott, who actively "preached against slavery and lambasted slavers and clergymen for citing the Bible to justify their sins." Wickenden convincingly speculates that Mott introduced Tubman to both Wright and Seward in the late 1840s. The three quickly formed friendships that united them across race and class in a common fight against White patriarchal oppression. The author sets their stories against a tumultuous backdrop of events--e.g., the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 and the "bleeding" Kansas massacres of the 1850s--that not only defined the revolutionary spirit of the era, but also caused divisions that still haunt the American soul today. Yet in the strength of the bonds forged among Wright, Seward, and Tubman, Wickenden offers hope for a healing of old wounds and a future where "the dignity and equality of all Americans" is an authentic reality. A well-researched, sharp portrait of the "protagonists in an inside-out story about the second American revolution." Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Women's stories from nineteenth-century America are sparsely told compared to those of male politicians, statesmen, and soldiers. New Yorker executive editor Wickenden brings three fascinating women to life in rich, humanizing detail, and shares how their "insubordination" against slavery and the oppression of women brought them together. These women--Harriet Tubman, Frances Seward, and Martha Coffin Wright (niece of Lucretia Coffin Mott)--were put in each other's paths through geography and a common goal. Wright, reared in a Quaker community on principles of equality; Seward, married to Lincoln's eventual Secretary of State and a staunch abolitionist; and Tubman, creator of a free Black community in the women's shared town of Auburn, NY; all three were involved in the work of the Underground Railroad and all blew apart the stereotypical view of nineteenth-century women. Wickenden pulls this history out of the dry dustiness of fact and adds color and warmth to its retelling. The women of our shared past deserve more treatments like this.
Choice Review
This popular history is a page-turner with considerable depth and breadth. In the 1840s and 1850s, Auburn, NY, percolated with suffrage and abolition activism largely because of the efforts of close friends Frances Seward, Harriet Tubman, and Martha Coffin Wright, which Wickenden (executive editor, The New Yorker) here recounts. Married to New York politician William Henry Seward, Frances befriended many of the notables of the era, including Frederick Douglass, Charles Sumner, and Tubman. After decades of service to her husband and his political career, Seward refused to continue hosting pro-slavery politicians in the late 1850s. Returning to her family home in Auburn, she ran a stop on the Underground Railroad and sold some of her Auburn property at a bargain rate to help Tubman return to the US from Canada. Wright, sister of suffragist Lucretia Mott and mother of six children, lobbied for the Married Women's Property Act and organized the 1848 Seneca Falls convention. She often worked with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to organize anti-slavery meetings. Tubman left no letters and spent much of this era ferrying slaves to freedom. Overall, this delightful book will engage a broad audience. Summing Up: Essential. All levels. --Caryn E. Neumann, Miami University
Library Journal Review
With this latest work, journalist and author Wickenden (Nothing Daunted) follows the lives of three friends and heroes of the women's rights and abolitionist movements, and describes the ways they impacted both causes. Wickenden effectively argues that these two movements, which were gathering steam during the mid-1800s, did not exist independently of one another; rather, they were intertwined. The author's accessible, engaging writing highlights the life of Frances Seward (1805--65), whose husband William H. Seward, secretary of state to Abraham Lincoln, is also given careful consideration. Along with the Sewards, the book also chronicles the lives of close friends Martha Coffin Wright, a feminist and abolitionist, and Harriet Tubman, who was born enslaved in Maryland and left a lasting legacy after escaping slavery and establishing the Underground Railroad. The author effectively places Seward, Wright, and Tubman in historical context. Accounts of Tubman's life in the Underground Railroad and as a scout in the Union army shine particularly brightly, narrated like the daring exploits they were. VERDICT Filling a gap in the telling of women's and abolitionist history, this highly readable book gives these three women their due. Wickenden's deft touch will allow this book to appeal to a wide audience.--Stacy Shaw, Denver
Table of Contents
| Prologue | p. xiii |
| Part 1 Provocations (1821-1852) | |
| 1 A Nantucket Inheritance (1833-1843) | p. 3 |
| 2 A Young Lady of Means (1824-1837) | p. 19 |
| 3 Escape from Maryland (1822-1849) | p. 37 |
| 4 The Freeman Trial (1846) | p. 47 |
| 5 Dangerous Women (1848-1849) | p. 55 |
| 6 Frances Goes to Washington (1848-1850) | p. 65 |
| 7 Martha Speaks (1850-1852) | p. 79 |
| Part 2 Uprisings (1851-1860) | |
| 8 Frances Joins the Railroad (1851-1852) | p. 89 |
| 9 Reading Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852-1853) | p. 99 |
| 10 Harriet Tubman's Maryland Crusade (1851-1857) | p. 109 |
| 11 The Race to the Territory (1854) | p. 115 |
| 12 Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Sumner (1854-1856) | p. 121 |
| 13 Frances Sells Harriet a House (1857-1859) | p. 129 |
| 14 Martha Leads (1854-1860) | p. 141 |
| 15 General Tubman Goes to Boston (1858-1860) | p. 149 |
| 16 The Agitators (1860) | p. 159 |
| Part 3 War (1861-1864) | |
| 17 "No Compromise" (1861) | p. 169 |
| 18 A Nation on Fire (1861-1862) | p. 183 |
| 19 "Gods Ahead of Master Lincoln" (1862) | p. 193 |
| 20 Battle Hymns (1862) | p. 201 |
| 21 Harriet's War (1863) | p. 215 |
| 22 Willy Wright at Gettysburg (March-July 1863) | p. 231 |
| 23 A Mighty Army of Women (1863-1864) | p. 239 |
| 24 Daughters and Sons (1864) | p. 247 |
| Part 4 Rights (1864-1875) | |
| 25 E Pluribus Unum (1864-1865) | p. 263 |
| 26 Retribution (1865) | p. 269 |
| 27 Civil Disobedience (1865) | p. 283 |
| 28 Wrongs and Rights (1865-1875) | p. 289 |
| Epilogue | p. 303 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 309 |
| Notes | p. 313 |
| Selected Bibliography | p. 353 |
| Image Credits | p. 359 |
| Index | p. 361 |
