from A Sermon to the Medical Students
Born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, the lifelong Quaker activist Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793–1880) emerged as one of the most fearless and dynamic campaigners for abolition and women’s rights in the nineteenth century. Active in boycotting products of slave labor as early as the 1820s, and a close friend of Garrison, she helped found the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, attended the first Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women in 1837, and with her husband James Mott, represented Pennsylvania at the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. She lectured and preached constantly. In her long life of activism, Mott never slowed down, joining at age eighty-five in the anniversary celebration of the Seneca Falls convention for women’s rights, which she had organized with Susan B. Anthony thirty years earlier. Here, in this 1849 sermon addressed to medical students in Philadelphia, Mott stressed that doctors had moral as well as clinical responsibilities and suggested that to be a serious physician meant that one must oppose slavery.
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Your growing knowledge of the system of man impresses the importance of observing every law of his physical being, in order to be preserved a perfect whole. The light of truth has revealed to you your noble powers, and the responsibility of exercising them in the purity with which they have been bestowed. If then by your studies you are made intelligently acquainted with these things, and if superadded, you have a quick sense of the divinity in the soul, responding to and according with this knowledge, how increasingly incumbent is it upon you to carry out your principles among your associates, so that you be not found in the back ground in the great reformation that is taking place in human society.
This is a part of my religion—a part of true Christianity, and you must bear with me, my friends, if I press upon you duties, having reference to your different relations in society, to your intercourse with men, wherever you are placed. It has been my privilege and pleasure to meet with some of you in our Anti-Slavery Rooms. When these have been disposed to come there, though perhaps from mere curiosity, to see what the despised abolitionist was doing, I have been glad to meet them, and to offer such considerations as would induce a reflection upon the relation which they bear to our fellow beings in their own country and neighborhood. This, in the view of many, is a subject of delicacy—lightly to be touched. Still it is an essential part of Christianity; and one object in asking your audience this evening, was to offer for your consideration some views connected with it, in the hope that you would at least patiently hear, and “suffer the word of exhortation.”
There are many now looking at the subject of slavery in all its bearings, who are sympathizing with the condition of the poor and oppressed in our land. Although many of you may be more immediately connected with this system, yet it is coming to be regarded as not a mere sectional question, but a national and an individual one. It is interwoven throughout our country, into so much with which we have to do, that we may well acknowledge we are all, all “verily guilty concerning our brother.” There is, therefore, the greater responsibility that we first examine ourselves and ascertain what there is for us to do in order that we may speedily rid ourselves of the great evil that is clinging to us. Evil?—this mighty sin which so easily besets us. There are those here who have had their hearts touched, who have been led to feel and have entered into sympathy with the bondman, and have known where the evil lies. I believe there is a work for you to do, when you return home, if you will be faithful to yourselves. You will be brought more deeply to enter into feeling with the poor and oppressed slave; you will find that the mission of the gospel is “to bind up the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captive.” It would be a reflection upon the intelligence and the conscience of those who are here, to suppose that they would always resist the wisdom and power with which truth is speaking to their hearts upon this subject. There are many disposed to examine, to cultivate their minds and hearts in relation to their duties in this respect. May you be faithful, and enter into a consideration as to how far you are partakers in this evil, even in other men’s sins. How far, by permission, by apology, or otherwise, you are found lending your sanction to a system which degrades and brutalizes three millions of our fellow beings; which denies to them the rights of intelligent education, rights essential to them, and which we acknowledge to be dear to us.
Is this an evil that cannot be remedied? A remedy is nigh at hand, even at the door. The voice has been heard saying, “Proclaim liberty to the captive, the opening of the prison to them that are bound.” “Proclaim ye liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” To this land peculiarly is this language applicable. In this land especially are we called to be faithful in this subject. Be true to your convictions of duty then, oh my brethren, and you will have the blessing of beholding your own country purged of this iniquity, and be brought to acknowledge that the divine hand of mercy and love has been stretched over our land.
[Here a few persons, irritated by this reference to the question of slavery, left the meeting.]
It is not strange that the allusion to this subject should create some little agitation among you; and while I can but regret it, I stand here on behalf of the suffering and the dumb, and must express the desire, that there may be a disposition to hear and reflect, and then judge. I speak unto those who have ears to hear, who have hearts to feel. May their understandings not be closed! May they be willing to receive that which conflicts with their education, their prejudices and preconceived opinions. The subject of slavery you must know, is now agitating the country from one end to the other. The Church and the Legislative Hall are occupied with its discussion. It will be presented to you in all its various bearings, and let me urge such faithfulness to the light which you have, as shall prepare you to become able advocates for the oppressed. So shall the blessing descend upon you as well as upon those for whom the appeal is made. I should not be true to myself did I not thus urge this subject upon your consideration. When you have opportunities for meditation and reflection, when your feelings are soothed by the circumstances around you, may you be led to reflect upon your duties, and the responsibility of your position in society.
(1849)