>> Welcome, everyone, to one of
our Thursdays at three talks.
It's so nice to see
all of you here.
It is our pleasure to
introduce Eileen Botting
to the rare books division.
So, as many of you know,
we hold a lot of events
in the rare books division.
But it's somewhat unique,
I think, to host a talk
that not only speaks
to our holdings
in the rare books division,
but also directly points
to material that, right now,
is so readily accessible
to the public.
So Hannah Mather Crocker's
"Observation on the Real Rights
of Women," published in
Boston in 1818, the first book
on women's rights published by
an American, can be accessed
in its entirety on
the library's website.
That's very exciting, right?
And in many ways, this
liberates the text, right?
Both, sort of, figuratively
and literally,
from its archival
boundaries, right?
And making it freely available
to that next generation
of feminist philosophers.
And that's very exciting.
So, appropriately, today
we're going to be talking
about those questions of
reception and influence
of the long, and complex, and
sometimes controversial history
that comes along with the
history of women's rights.
Professor Botting is here to
talk about all of this today.
And I can honestly think
of no one who's better
suited for this talk.
Dr. Botting is a professor
of political science
at the University Of Notre Dame.
Her many publications reflect
her profound commitment
to using the history
of political science
to engage questions, important
questions, of human rights,
of women's rights,
of children's rights.
And so her books include,
"Mary Shelley and the Rights
of the Child: Political
Philosophy
in Frankenstein," from 2017.
"Wollstonecraft, Mill, and
Women's Human Rights," 2016.
"Family Feuds: Wollstonecraft,
Burke, and Rousseau
on the Transformation of
the Family," from 2007.
Dr. Botting also has written
an intimidating amount
of articles and book chapters.
And if I may, my favorite
is from the Journal
of International
Political Theory, from 2016,
"Women's Human Rights
May be Unicorns,
but They Can Fight
Wicked Witches."
So several of these articles
have won prestigious awards
from institutions such as,
the Society for the Study
of American Women Writers
and the Okin-Young Award
in Feminist Political Theory.
So again, we are delighted to
have her here with us today.
So please help me to officially
welcome Dr. Eileen Botting
to speak on why Hannah
Mather Crocker's "Observation
on the Real Rights of
Women" matters at 200.
[ Applause ]
>> Eileen Hunt Botting: I
wanted to see how good you are.
So, the topic of my talk is
why Crocker's "Observation
on the Real Rights of
Women" matters at 200.
And to answer this
question, I think I need
to tell you a little
bit about why I came
to study Hannah Mather Crocker,
and why she's come to matter
so much to me as a scholar
of feminism in America.
I became interested in
the American tradition
of women's rights advocacy
in graduate school,
at Yale University, where
I was studying for my PhD
in political science
with my good friend
and colleague Colleen Shogan
of the Library of Congress.
Professor Roger Smith
of the Yale Department
of Political Science
taught a course
on American political thought
in which we read
women's rights advocates
like Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
and Susan B. Anthony,
the Grimke sisters,
Katherine Beecher, and so on.
And I was struck by how these
women made arguments strikingly
similar to Mary Wollstonecraft,
who is the topic
of my dissertation.
Mary Wollstonecraft,
as you know,
was an Anglo-Irish women's
rights advocate from London,
who had published the first
internationally renowned
treatise on women's rights
in 1792, "A Vindication
of the Rights of Women."
So after I had completed my
dissertation on Wollstonecraft,
Burke, and Rousseau's
theories of the family,
I moved on to study the question
of Wollstonecraft's
philosophical impact
in the United States.
And among those women that
I discovered were pupils
of Wollstonecraft, to
use a phrase coined
by Abigail Adams, no less.
Were women like Judith
Sargent Murray,
who wrote a very early essay
on women's equality to men,
that was published in
her Gleaner of 1798.
And also Hannah Mather Crocker,
who published the first book
length philosophical treatise
on women's rights
in 1818, in Boston.
I was shocked to learn that the
author of America's first book,
or treatise on women's
rights was almost unknown,
even in feminist scholarship.
In fact, one of the
only scholars
to have highlighted Crocker's
achievement was Roger Smith
in his 1997 book,
"Civic Ideals."
So who was Hannah
Mather Crocker?
She was born in 1752
near North Square,
in Boston's North
End neighborhood.
Her family home on Moon
Court was around the corner
from Paul Revere's house and
the Second Church of Boston.
So if you've been to
the Paul Revere house,
you're in her neck of the woods.
And the Second Church of
Boston no longer exists,
but there's a placard in the
square there that you can see.
And this was the
Congregationalist Church
of her forefathers,
Increase and Cotton Mather,
who are pictured here.
She identified as
the fifth generation
of Congregationalist clerics.
And political leaders born
of the American branch
of the Mather family, she gave
to the American Antiquarian
Society, in 1815,
an infant's high
chair, pictured here.
She claimed that
seven generations
of the Mather family
had sat in it,
beginning with Richard Mather,
the father of Increase Mather.
But later scholarship has shown
that the chair was likely made
in America, not England,
in the 17th century.
So it is more likely that
five generations, only five,
of Mathers and Crockers,
beginning with Increase's son
Cotton, pictured in center here,
sat in the chair from
the late 17th century
through the early 19th century.
Crocker bore 10 children
to Joseph Crocker,
a Revolutionary War veteran.
And seven lived to adulthood.
Some of her grandchildren,
she wrote in her unpublished
Reminiscences, in the 1820s,
sat in the Mather high
chair before she gave it
to the American Antiquarian
Society.
So it's quite a touching
art object for her
to symbolically bestow
to the AAS.
Which at the time, as you
know, with an all-male society.
So it takes on even deeper
symbolic feminist resonance.
We think about her as
a woman, as a mother,
giving over this art
object that represents
at least five generations
of her family.
Now Crocker's mother
was a Hutchinson.
She was the sister of the
Royal Governor of Massachusetts
in the run-up to the
American Revolution.
He's pictured here.
And so Crocker had Loyalist
ties through that wing
of the family, the
Hutchinson wing.
But her father was a Mather,
the son of Cotton Mather,
the famed Puritan minister.
And Samuel Mather, her
father, was a strong supporter
of the Revolutionary cause.
Crocker's own political
sympathies were squarely
on the side of the
Revolutionary patriots.
In her Reminiscences and
Traditions of Boston,
which I co-edited and published
with my former graduate student,
Sarah L. Houser, 2011,
she describes herself
as a Revolutionary
patriot, smuggling papers
across the Charles
River from her father
to General Joseph
Warren, pictured here.
Joseph Warren was a
Revolutionary War hero,
who would die in the Battle of
Bunker Hill the next morning
after Crocker supposedly
delivered these papers
on behalf of her father.
Now this story may have
been inflated for effect
by the elderly Crocker,
who wrote her Reminiscences
in the 1820s, when
she was in her 60s.
But the symbolic point
of this story is clear.
Crocker wishes to
represent women
of the Revolutionary
generation as more than capable
of the taking up the task
of republican citizenship,
including putting their safety
on the line for the sake
of preserving the flame
of liberty that had swept
over the American colonies.
After enduring the increasingly
oppressive and unfair trade
and taxation policies
of the British
since the mid-18th century.
Crocker consistently represented
herself and other women
as capable and deserving
of citizenship.
She also suggested, in
sometimes subtle prose,
that to deny women's
full citizenship was
to render illegitimate the
American republic and its roots
in the revolutionary
struggle for equal rights
and liberty for each and all.
Raised a Congregationalist,
Crocker viewed all souls
as equal, and made in the
image of their rational God,
whose universal and
rational moral law,
they were obliged to follow.
On the title page
of the Observations,
she used a quote
from Genesis 2:23.
As a biblical para-text
to frame her argument
for the rights of women.
And I quote, "And God saw
that it was not good
for man to be alone.
And he made him a
helpmeet for him.
And Adam said, she is bone of
my bones and flesh of my flesh.
Therefore she shall
be called women."
This view of woman as made
by God to be the helpmeet
of man might look, at first
glance, as patriarchal.
But over the course
of the Observations,
as well as her other writings,
Crocker emphasizes that man
and women are meant
to be friends
and companions to one another.
For they are both made in the
image of God and share most
of the same characteristics,
including the basic
building blocks
of the body, bones and flesh.
As well as the God-given
reason to read the scriptures
and understand the
divine moral commandments
that apply to both of them.
Her father, Samuel Mather, was
dismissed from the Second Church
of Boston and founded a new
Congregationalist Church,
the Mather meeting house.
That eventually became the home
of the Universalist
Church of Boston.
His theological views were
more in the rationalist vein
than the evangelical vein
that was sweeping Boston
in the run-up to the Revolution.
I think that Crocker's
own unique theology,
which he preserved in
manuscripts now housed
in the American Antiquarian
Society was deeply influenced
by her father's rationalism
as well as her affiliation
with the Masonic
movement of Boston.
Crocker was involved in founding
the first female lodge for women
in Boston, if not, in the
United States, St. Anne's Lodge.
Now much is known about
this female masonic lodge,
beyond her publication
of several poems concerning
its activities and ideals
in Boston newspapers
in the 1780s and 1790s.
I was able to confirm her
publication of these poems
through examination
of the contents
of the appendix of
her Reminiscences.
And comparing these
poems preserved there
in manuscript form with those
published in Boston newspapers,
and now preserved on microfilm.
The spirit of St. Anne's Lodge
was one of educating women
to understand and believe in
one another's fundamental moral
and intellectual equality
as creatures made
in the image of God.
The lodge met to read works
in science and literature.
Blending biblical and
masonic language and ideas,
the lodge produced a feminist
creed, the North Square Creed
for the husbands of
the women of the group.
Preserved in the Reminiscences,
as well as in the American
Antiquarian Society,
the Creed provides the
helpful feminist commentary
on the biblical concept
of the helpmeet.
That makes sense of the
para-text from Genesis
on the title page
of the Observations.
So I'll read the Creed now.
"I believe woman is
the ostensible source
of man's happiness.
I believe it was not
good for man to be alone,
and God in infinite mercy
provided him a helpmeet.
I believe a prudent wife is the
greatest blessing man can attain
in this life.
I also believe every man
that has a prudent wife ought
to harken to the voice
of his prudent wife.
As I firmly no good and
prudent woman will ever lead her
husband astray.
And I do verily believe
that every man
that has a prudent wife has
a blessing from the Lord.
Therefore, I do believe in
all things, as my best friend
and my wife, and
the other ladies
of this happy circle
wishes to believe.
In token of approbation,
we unite in here to
affix our names."
Among the initials is JC,
which I and Sarah Houser take
to be Joseph Crocker,
Crocker's husband.
The Creed is drawn by Prudentia.
Prudentia's one of
Crocker's staple nicknames.
And she often wrote
under that pseudonym,
even in her manuscripts.
So she clearly thought
of the name, Prudentia,
as symbolic of her
character as a model
of women's prudential
reason and good judgment.
So now the Creed suggests
that the husbands of the women
in the lodge pledge to honor and
obey their wives in every aspect
of their lives, showing
the lodge's commitment
to the empowerment of women
from within marriage and family,
and extending outward to
women's roles in society
and education more broadly.
So I take this to be a
creed written by women.
And probably written,
in particular,
by Hannah Mather Crocker
for the men whose wives were
in the lodge to signify their
support of their education
within the masonic culture.
But also, just to more
broadly affirm their support
of their wives in every aspect
of life, beginning in the family
and extending out
to society at large.
So together with Sarah Houser,
I argued in a 2006 article,
in the American Political
Science Review, that Crocker,
like many women of the early
19th century used rhetorical
strategies to subtly
and cleverly engage the
controversial question
of women's rights in the
post-Revolutionary era.
In the Napoleonic era, both in
the United States and in Europe,
the question of women's rights
was often run underground.
And it lacked the highly visible
public profile it had enjoyed
in the heady days of the
American and French Revolutions.
For this reason,
women had to engage
in covert rhetorical strategies
to engage the question
of women's rights during
the first two decades
of the 19th century.
One example of a
rhetorical strategy
that Crocker used was
her apparent claim
in the Observations that women
should not ascend the rostrum
to make public speeches.
So let me read this quote from
chapter two of the Observations,
and then we can parse it to look
at its complicated language.
She says, "There can be no
doubt that, in most cases,
their [women's judgement] may
be equal with the other sex,
perhaps, even on the subject
of law, politics, or religion.
They may form good judgment.
But it would be morally improper
and physically very incorrect
for the female character to
claim the statesmen's birth,
or ascend the rostrum to gain
the loud applause of men,
although their powers of mind
may be equal to the task."
So although it looks
at face value
that she's prohibiting women's
ascent to the rostrum, you know,
ascent to a position
such as this, a podium,
to make a public speech.
When you read closer,
her language reveals
itself to be very ambiguous.
It seems that she's
not so much claiming
that women should not
make public speeches,
but that women are constrained
to some degree by norms
of feminine propriety
with regard
to their public political
actions, including speech.
In addition, when we read
this passage in light
of Crocker's own preservation
of manuscripts of sermons
and other speeches that
she gave in the 1810's
to support the founding
of a school for poor girls
in the north end of Boston,
and to protest the
injustice of the War of 1812.
Then we see that
Crocker did not object
to women's public
speaking per se.
But rather modeled,
through her writing
and other political
actions, including her gifts
of manuscripts to public
repositories, a women could
and should strategically
deploy speech
and other political
actions in relation
to sometimes oppressive
norms of femininity.
Paradoxically, capitalizing
on those norms
by subtly subverting them
through brave and smart acts
of public resistance to
gender-based oppression.
Crocker advocated for equal
educational opportunities
for men and women,
beginning in childhood.
She liked Wollstonecraft's
view on education,
but was not as committed to
co-education or public education
as the primary means for
realizing the full range
of educational opportunities
for women.
Crocker emphasized the
need for the content,
but not necessarily the form
of education to be the same
for girls and boys, for the sake
of advancing gender equality.
To get a sense of the range of
educational forms she supported,
we can look at her life.
She was homeschooled amidst the
famed Mather family library,
now housed in the American
Antiquarian Society.
She praised her friend,
the freed slave
and African American
poetess, Phillis Wheatley,
as a largely self-taught
prodigy and poetic genius.
She helped found a vocational
school for poor girls in 1813,
which closed in 1819,
in part due to the rise
of public schools in Boston that
could fulfill the same purpose,
but in a more comprehensive
manner.
There was no record of her
or the other women involved
in the founding of the school
for poor girls opposing
its closure, or the growth
of public schooling in Boston.
It seemed Crocker was fine
with religious and secular,
public and private,
co-educational
and single sex forms of
education for children.
As long as the genders, classes,
and races had equal access
to high-quality educational
content, with a focus
on science and literature.
So why do the Observations
matter at 200?
I have five reasons.
First, I'd like to make a
case that it is, in fact,
the first book-length
philosophical treatise
on women's rights
published by an American.
We had a symposium at the
Massachusetts Historical Society
as part of the American
Political Science Association
meeting in September,
in which we had a number
of scholars of Crocker.
And some scholars, more
generally, of American history
and literature taking part.
And some of my colleagues
expressed some skepticism
about this claim.
I mean, is the Observations
truly a treatise?
That was one question
that someone asked.
I believe so.
It is organized in the
form of a treatise.
And this tends that
it is separated
into discrete chapters focused
on particular philosophical,
theological, and
historical topics.
It builds to a conclusion.
And although it branches the
fields of history, philosophy,
and literature, as well
as theology, it, to me,
represents a coherent
philosophical argument made
over the space of
roughly 100 pages.
If that doesn't qualify
for a treatise,
I don't know what does.
Now, I think that in
contemporary literary terms,
we might understand
it as a hybrid text.
So in contemporary
literary theory,
we call a hybrid text
something that, perhaps,
bridges autobiography
and philosophy,
or creative writing and history.
This is a very popular
form of writing today.
Crocker most definitely
bridged the feminine genres
of the late 18th and
early 19th century
of the literary miscellany,
women's history,
and family genealogy for sure.
But she blended those
traditional feminine genres
and modes of writing
with traditional masculine
genres and modes of writing.
And those would be the
philosophical treatise,
or argument, the theological
treatise and argument,
and the political treatise.
Which is probably the
most masculine form
of writing at that time.
So keep in mind how bold it
was for Mary Wollstonecraft
to publish her first political
treatise in 1790, "A Vindication
of the Rights of Man."
Wollstonecraft published that
first reply to Burke in his
"Reflection on the Revolution
in France" anonymously.
And no one guessed
it was a woman.
No one believed it
could be a woman.
That's how bold it
was to write--
use the form of a political
treaties to reply to Burke,
you know, the elder
statesman of the time.
So for Crocker to
take this form, right,
of the political treatise
in 1818, just three years
after the end of the Napoleonic
Wars, in a time of repression
on the issue of woman's rights,
on both sides of the Atlantic,
and to make an extended
argument for woman's rights
in that forum, is radical.
Even if much of her language
appears conservative and appears
to be a step backward from
Enlightenment Era ideals
of woman's rights
that Wollstonecraft
advocated for, for example.
I think when we read the
treatise more closely,
we find that Crocker,
largely, is in agreement
with Wollstonecraft,
who she actually praises
at one point in the
Observations.
So I would like to make a
scholarly case at some point
that we should understand the
publication of the Observations
as significant politically as
Wollstonecraft's publication
of "The Vindication of the
Rights of Man" in 1790.
So the second reason
I'd like to argue
that the Observations matter at
200 is Crocker's use of the text
to defend, not solely
republicanism,
but a feminist form
of republicanism.
So in chapter seven
of the Observations,
Crocker follows Mary
Wollstonecraft
by explicitly venturing
into the political theory
of republicanism.
Those of you who are familiar
with Wollstonecraft's work know
that her history of the
French revolution, Crocker--
I mean, I'm sorry,
Wollstonecraft explicitly
identified herself
as a political scientist.
In chapter 6 of the
Observations,
Crocker explicitly identifies
herself as a philosopher.
And she takes up
the philosophical
and political question of
what makes a legitimate state.
And like Wollstonecraft,
she agrees that a legitimate
state must be republican.
Crocker argues, in
chapter seven,
that legitimate government
requires women the right
of mutual judgment
alongside men.
Joining with the other sex
in every prudent measure
for their mutual
defense and safety.
Republicanism also requires
free discussion of sentiments
across all classes
of the citizens.
But she doesn't stop there.
The Observations do not merely
advocate for republicanism,
as male revolutionary leaders,
you know, such as Jefferson
and Lafayette had
done for decades.
But the Observations go further.
They argue for a need of a
feminist form of republicanism.
Her model for a legitimate
American republic is the happy
and equal marriage.
The state must be constituted
in terms of the equality
of its partners in
the citizenry.
Animated by mutual respect,
and put in deliberation
about matters of common concern.
Just like in an ideal marriage,
the partners would have
equal say and input.
And the husbands would
respect the wives
as the North Square Creed
implored them to do.
So she writes in
the Observations,
"Love is the sacred bond
of mutual friendship,
and promotes a reciprocal
intercourse of kind affection."
This is a really
striking passage.
And a number of us
at the Massachusetts Historical
Society panel noted the way
in which the Observations
continually returns
to the importance of the values
of love, peace, and friendship.
And that this actually provides
a nice antidote to the, kind of,
hostile political climate
we find ourselves in,
especially with regard
to feminist ideas today
in the United States.
In the age of me
too, it does seem
as though Crocker's
understanding
of love is the sacred bond
of mutual friendship
is instructive.
Friendship between men
and women is the basis
of a just and peaceful society.
You know, while naming violence
is critical, as she did herself
in the Reminiscences, when
she exposed Phillis Wheatley's
husband was abusive,
and a likely reason
for her untimely death,
Crocker also envisioned
and practiced how friendship
across differences
is the way forward.
So while we must name
and identify violence
and injustice, we
can't stop there.
We actually have to build
bridges and create peace
and relationships of
friendship in order
to achieve justice
in the future.
Domestic tranquility
and peace are part
of a legitimate republic
as much as a loving
and egalitarian marriage
based on friendship.
Crocker though, an
ardent supporter
of the American Revolution,
represented herself
as a non-violent
messenger for the patriots.
When she smuggled papers from
her father to Joseph Warren,
her point, even in this story,
was the value of peace and love
over war and conflict.
In one version of the story that
circulated in anecdote form,
in early 19th century Boston,
Warren gave her a chaste
and friendly kiss before he
said, "I'll see you tomorrow."
Of course the tragedy
was, he died the next day
in the Battle of Bunker Hill.
And I think this story has great
symbolic resonance for Crocker.
Because I think she wants
to hold up Joseph Warren
and herself as a model of
a kind of civic friendship
between male and female equals.
It wasn't a romantic
relationship.
She was already engaged
to Joseph.
But they had a kind of deep
respect for one another,
as fellow civic actors.
And so the chaste kiss
represents that equality
and friendship between them.
In the 1810's, she
protested the War of 1812
through numerous poetry.
And she used the penname,
the Widow Pigsley.
And argued with satirical
political verse
that she should not have to
pay taxes to support an unjust,
imperial war against
the poor Canadians.
And her Observations, likewise,
preach peace and love to cancel
out past conflict
between the sexes.
And argue that, only once
peace reigns in the family,
will it reign across
the whole republic.
The next reason why I think the
Observations matter at 200 is
that Crocker gives us a model
for theorizing rights
alongside duties.
So the title of the Observations
is quite long, "Observations
on the Real Rights of Women
with Their Appropriate Duties
Agreeable to Scripture,
Reason, and Common Sense."
And I think it's
really important
that she pairs real rights
alongside appropriate duties.
And by pairing rights
and duties,
she actually followed both
Burke and Wollstonecraft.
Her language of real rights
probably was drawn from Burke's
"Reflections on the
Revolution in France,"
where he contrasted the real
rights grounded in human needs,
with the abstract
rights of the principles
of the French revolutionaries.
Now although she takes the
term real rights from Burke,
she puts a Wollstonecraftian
twist on them.
Like Wollstonecraft,
she understands rights
as moral correlates of
fundamental duties described
by the universal,
rational law of God.
For Crocker and Wollstonecraft,
the real rights
of women are grounded on the
absolutely firm foundation
of God's rational and moral law.
It must be practiced in tandem
with their appropriate
moral duties.
Crocker, however,
relies much more heavily
on Christian scripture to
justify this moral framework
than does Wollstonecraft.
Now in a time of skepticism
about liberals and liberalism,
the emptiness of rights talk,
the futility of liberalism,
and speculation about the
end of the republic itself,
we need recourse to a deeper
and richer vocabulary of rights
and duties that Crocker
provides in the Observations.
30 years ago, the Kantian
feminist philosopher Onora
O'Neill called for a declaration
of duties to fend off the threat
of the emptiness of rights talk.
In other words, O'Neill,
like Crocker,
thought every time
we mention a right,
we ought to be conceptualizing
that right in relationship
to a fundamental duty.
Paying respect to Crocker's
argumentative approach
to women's rights
may pay dividends
to contemporary feminists,
especially in the US,
where Christian religion
is a huge part
of the political landscape.
We may need more reference to
real rights, grounded in a sense
of duty to serve
and help one another
in times of crisis and need.
Crocker wrote in the
Observations, "Love is the life
and soul of every relative duty.
Furthermore, the
surest foundation
to secure the female's right,
must be in family government.
As without that, woman can
have no established right."
Throughout the book, she
speaks of the importance
of maintaining sexual equality
in both religious practice
and education in the home in the
old tradition of the Puritans.
Gender equality begins
not only with the family,
but with its religious
practices and beliefs.
Then extends outward to permeate
the whole free federal republic.
The fourth reason why I
think the Observation matters
at 200 is somewhat paradoxical.
And that's because, I
think, Crocker is something
of a specter in the
history of feminism.
She's haunted the history
of feminism in the US
without ever gaining a
real place in the canon.
Harriet Robinson and Elizabeth
Cady Stanton dismissed her
in their 1880's histories
of the women's rights
and suffrages movements.
Because she was too
conservative or subtle
in her presentation
of her views.
They viewed her as a step
backwards not forwards.
They may have also felt
some anxiety of influence.
Ironically, the now
famous Cady Stanton
and other white feminists
of the women's suffrage
movement during reconstruction
in the progressive era are
rightfully taken to task
for racist attacks
against Frederick Douglas
and other black feminists of
the period after the passage
of the 15th Amendment,
without women's suffrage.
By contrast, Crocker modeled
inclusion, not exclusion
on matters of race,
gender, class, and religion.
She helped to found the school
of industry for poor girls
in the North End, with a group
of women from various churches.
She included women of all
backgrounds in her history
of Boston, including her friend
the poet, Phillis Wheately.
She condemned slaver in her
1813 sermon, "A Humble Address,"
which she preserved
in the American Antiquarian
Society in manuscript form.
She included the founding of
the first black church of Boston
in her history of the evolution
of Christianity in the city.
She was not free of
prejudice, however.
She never took her grandfather
and great-grandfather Cotton
and Increase to task
for justifying the theology
behind the Salem witch trials.
Even though she made fun
of lingering superstitions
of witches in 18th
century Boston.
She occasionally resorted to
ethnic stereotypes such as,
original inhabitant to
describe herself as one
of the few true Bostonians left
in the north end in the 1820's
as migrants and other
minorities began
to populate her home
neighborhood.
The interface of sexual, racial,
and religious inequalities
haunt Crocker's thought
in subsequent iterations
of American feminism.
Returning to her Observations
is a chance to reflect
on how feminism has haunted
the ideas and politics
of the American republic
from the start.
And to think about why
extraordinary women
like Crocker still
haunt the very margins
of the feminist tradition that
aims to make that republic live
up to its principles of equality
and liberty for each and all.
A visible sign of her
ghostly presence is our lack
of any image of her, despite
her gift of priceless portraits
of her forefathers
Cotton and Increase
to the American Antiquarian
Society
and the Massachusetts
Historical Society.
So finally, the fifth
reason why the book matters
at 200 is digitization by the
Library of Congress in 2017.
So the text is preserved
on microfilm
by the American Antiquarian
Society
in the late 20th century,
and made available digitally
in the early part
of this century,
via the Early American
Imprint Series,
which is a wonderful resource.
But if you're not part of a
University with a great library,
you probably don't
have access to this.
And so to have it
digitized by the Library
of Congress is really a
tremendous step forward
in Crocker scholarship.
I truly believe that
there will be a generation
of young feminist scholars who
study this work in its context,
in its rich political context.
And make many discoveries,
simply because it is, literally,
publically accessible now.
So thank you very much for that.
Now my good colleague,
Constant Post of the University
of Iowa published the first
modern scholarly edition
of the Observations in 2011,
published with the
University of Nebraska press.
And it's a wonderful resource.
And it not only has
the Observations,
but also Crocker's other
two major prose works,
long essays that she published
in Boston in the 1810's.
It also has several
of her sermons
from the American
Antiquarian Society.
And it has selections from her
Reminiscences and Traditions
of Boston, which is the
manuscript that I co-edited
and published with the New
England Historic Genealogical
Society, with Sarah
Houser in 2011.
So this is a comprehensive
scholarly edition
of the manuscript that's
held at the NEHGS in Boston.
And this is her history
of Boston.
It's also very much a
history of her family.
But it's a comprehensive history
of the city from the late 1620's
through the late 1820's,
when she died in 1829.
We don't know what she intended
to do with this manuscript.
But there is some evidence
within it that she intended
to either publish or give it
to the Massachusetts
Historical Society.
And so, either way, I think she
would have been quite pleased
that it finally made
it to print.
So with these resources,
these scholarly resources
and the digitization of the
Observations on the Library
of Congress website, I think
we have the opportunity
to push people to
take Crocker seriously
in American history
going forward.
I have on the screen
the homepage
of the Hannah Mather
Crocker Society,
which is a scholarly group
I helped to found in 2013.
And you can see that we
have a link to your copy
of the Observations
on the homepage.
And we also have some other
links to snippets of manuscripts
that I became aware
of, initially, in 2009,
a anonymous owner of Crocker
family manuscripts contacted me
by email.
I still don't know the
identity of the family.
But I believe they're
descendants of Crocker,
probably through Joseph's
line of the family.
And they shared with me some
images of manuscripts that,
I believe, are authentic
due to the handwriting.
And they've not shared with me
the whole of their collection,
although they promised me that
when they were ready to share it
with the public, I would be
the first to be able to use it
for scholarly purposes.
I hope that is true.
You know, I'm sitting
on the edge
of my seat waiting
for this moment.
And if anyone has any advice
how deal with anonymous donors,
and get them to give you
access to their papers,
their priceless collection
of historical data,
I would love to hear any advice.
Because if I was
granted permission
to study this treasure
trove of documents
from the Crocker family's
private collection,
I believe I could make
a serious contribution
to knowledge regarding the
religious, intellectual,
cultural, and political origins
of women's rights
advocacy in the US.
But I believe that's
the missing piece.
What we need are further
manuscripts evidence of her life
and times to pull
the pieces together.
Because there's still
a few mysteries left.
The major mysteries I would like
to solve are, first the school
of industry for poor girls
in the north end of Boston.
I think this is a really
remarkable organization.
It's one of the first
organizations
of any sort founded by
women, as far as I know,
in at least Boston,
if not the northeast.
And so it was a school founded
for the assistance of poor girls
by women from multiple religious
backgrounds and churches.
So I'd really like
to get more insight
in to what actually was going
in the school of industry.
Because it strikes me as,
actually, quite radical
from both-- at least
from a gender perspective
and a class-based perspective.
And I would love to know how
racially diverse the group they
were serving was.
I also want to learn more
about St. Anne's lodge,
supposedly the first
female masonic lodge
in the United States.
And we know almost nothing
beyond the few poems
that are preserved
in the Reminiscences,
which she also published
in Boston newspapers
in the late 18th century.
But if I could crack the
puzzle of St. Anne's lodge,
that would be amazing.
As many of you may know, masonry
is a difficult subject to study,
because they're still
quite secret.
And so I've gotten to know some
scholars of masonry who tend
to be freemasons themselves.
But I think it if could find
manuscripts that shed light
into the history of
St. Anne's lodge,
that would probably make the
masonic scholarly community more
open to collaborating
with a non-mason.
So that's what I think we
have left here is, hopefully,
a raising of public
awareness of Crocker.
So that more manuscripts
will come to light.
And we'll be able
to learn even more
about this really
important, but, unfortunately,
largely forgotten
founding mother
of the United States of America.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> So we certainly have
time for questions, so.
>> What are the poems like?
>> Eileen Hunt Botting: Oh,
yeah, sure, maybe I can--
she had a lot of humor.
So maybe I can pull out
a poem that was humorous.
One thing that she did is
she preserved the poetry
of other women.
So in her history of
Boston, she has a poem,
a famous poem by
Phillis Wheatley.
And she says that Phillis
Wheately gave her a copy of it.
She's copying down a
poem from manuscript
that Phillis Wheately
herself gave her.
And of course, in
my fantasy world,
this manuscript actually
exists in this-- [Laughter].
But she had a lot of respect
for her fellow women poets.
And she chronicled the
many great women poets
in the Boston area, going
back to the 17th century.
So, yeah, well, here's
a funny one.
It's called, "On the
Advantage of a Good Chimney."
OK. "Would you your
house from smoking free?
You must erect a good chimney.
While you're planned
by [inaudible] ware,
so as to rarify the air.
By gentle crannies
made complete,
so as to send a pleasant heat
into your parlor pure and clear,
and keep the smoke
out through the year.
Then you, my friend,
will clearly see the
blessing of a good chimney."
She did lots of funny,
satirical verse.
And some of the best
stuff is stuff
that protests the War of 1812.
There's some really
great satirical verse,
which I think is very much in
spirit of John [inaudible].
So and implicitly quite sharp.
Because what's she's saying
is that she's a taxpayer.
She owns land.
And she shouldn't have to
pay taxes for an unjust war.
Which is an incredible--
I mean think about it.
I mean, how could you possibly
read her as just some sort
of retrograde defender
of the status quo?
She's writing poetry
like that, right?
And then, literally, giving
it to the AAS or preserving
so that it can be given
to the MHS, right?
Clearly she wanted
this stuff to be read.
And she also circulated
a lot of her poems.
She gave a lot of her poems,
or mailed a lot of her poems
to some of the leading
male intellectuals
of the time period.
So William Jenks was a professor
of theology at Bowdoin.
And he also was a professor
of Oriental languages.
And they had a long
correspondence
about the school of industry.
He was very interested in her
work as part of that school.
But she also would just send
him her political poetry
in the mail.
And so, actually,
that's why we have a lot
of those poems, or
copies of them.
Is he preserved them
in his papers,
and they ended up in the MHS.
Here's one on a more
serious topic.
And this is really
early, this is 1773.
So she's 21.
So this is really one
of her earliest poems.
"To a Friend on the
Death of a Child," 1773.
"Say Delia [phonetic spelling],
whence these cares arise,
those anxious cares
that wrack your breast,
if heaven is infinitely wise,
what heaven appoints
is just and best.
'Tis mercy, justice, truth
divine that mingles blessings
with our cares and shower
our thankful hearts repine,
if we obtain not
all our prayers."
And she signs it,
"Resignation by [inaudible]."
So this is a more humorous
one, I suppose, about death.
But written in a
more humorous vein.
"Lines in the Death
of her Favorite Cat,"
by Hannah Mather Crocker.
"Awake my psalm, awake my muse,
the noble theme I now
must choose shall be poor
tabby's praise.
Assist my muse, restring
my lyre,
and touch my pen
with ardent fire.
To sing her worth and
humble [inaudible].
Had I pen well-tipped with gold,
her virtues I might just unfold.
She was quite meek
and harmless too,
but faithful in her duties sang.
For the rats and mice did slay
and did her duty faithful show."
[Inaudible] range, I
mean I think that--
on the face of might say,
oh, she was just kind
of amateur writer
of [inaudible].
But if you look back
at the 18th century
and by how many intellectuals
of the time period wrote verse
and then published it,
often under pseudonyms,
you have to remember that poetry
performed a political function.
But it doesn't for
us now, necessarily.
And so for her to be writing
poems, circulating them
by manuscript, publishing them
in newspapers, [inaudible].
Compare it with the Federalist
Papers, also published
under pseudonym, I think we need
to see the value of these poems
in their political context.
And understand that,
especially for a women writer,
much of what she was doing has
many levels of [inaudible],
personal, social,
political, and so on.
>> It seems like
she talked a lot
about women, wife, and helpmeet.
>> Eileen Hunt Botting:
Yeah, yeah.
>> And I'm wondering if, like,
single women or, you know--
>> Eileen Hunt Botting: Yeah,
well, that's a great question.
That's great.
In the Rights of Women, by Mary
Wollstonecraft, which she read
and cites several times
in the Observations,
Wollstonecraft does
single out single women.
And she does argue for
a single woman's right
to live a life of dignity.
And I think that's, really, one
of the most powerful moments
in "The Vindication of
the Rights of Women."
Because a lot of times
Wollstonecraft even gets
typecast a kind of
conservative defender
of marriage and,
you know, so on.
And I think that
really misses the mark.
Because Wollstonecraft
certainly defends marriage
when it's practiced as an
egalitarian friendship.
But she also defends
women's right to be single.
And to live that
life with dignity.
Crocker is similar
in this sense.
Now, she's certainly
upholds marriage
as her model social
relationship.
So does Wollstonecraft.
Wollstonecraft says marriage
is the most holy band
of friendship in society.
And Crocker says just about
the same in the Observations.
So it's her ideal model
relationship, right?
So everything, including
politics,
including the republic
itself, you know,
everything should
function, ideally,
the way a good marriage
functions.
If a marriage is
functioning as a friendship.
That said, [inaudible] was a
widow for most of her life.
OK, and she raised most
of those kids herself.
So seven of them
lived into adulthood.
And Joseph Crocker is dead by--
I think he dies in 1797, right?
So when she's giving
papers and books
from the Mather family
library, and the artworks
from the Mather family
collection the MHS in 1798,
she's doing that as a widow.
So many of her boldest
political acts,
the boldest public acts
come when she's a widow.
And then all of her published
writings come when she-- no, no.
All of her major published
writing come when she's a widow.
She published some poems
when she was married.
And she was obviously active in
founding the St. Anne's lodge,
which she supported through
signing the North Square Creed.
But she lived most of her life
as a widow, as a single mother,
you could say, supporting that
family and her grandchildren.
And so I think that
she used the--
many of her pseudonyms
accentuated her identity
as a widow.
The Widow Pigsley was
one I mentioned earlier.
So I think it's implicit
across her body of work
that being a single woman
or being a widow is a legitimate
way of life for a woman,
and ought to be respected
and supported
in a free, federal republic.
I'd have to go back and look at
the text of the Observations,
though, to see when she flags
single women who are not widows.
That [inaudible] when she
talks about the right of women
to be single prior to marriage,
or to not enter marriage at all.
But I think the fact that
she understands marriage
as a friendship and as a
union you enter into freely.
And that love means that she has
to vindicate women's
right to be single.
Because marriage, if
it is a friendship,
could never be forced.
>> Many times people
that have manuscripts,
don't want them published
because it affects the value.
So you may want to
find a benefactor.
>> Eileen Hunt Botting:
Right, a benefactor.
>> Who could help you to talk
with this anonymous source.
>> Eileen Hunt Botting:
Yes, right.
>> That maybe there is some way
of shaping those [inaudible].
>> Eileen Hunt Botting:
Oh that's interesting.
>> Find the money first.
>> Eileen Hunt Botting:
Find the money first.
OK, OK, it should be possible.
That's good advice.
That's good advice.
And one time when they wrote
to me, I did say, you know,
I think [inaudible]
would be very interested
in preserving these.
And their special
collections library.
But they, basically, just
weren't ready to part with them.
You know, they were preserving.
And so I value your
intuition here that it's
about family attachments to the
documents themselves, right?
And they have to
get to the point
where they are ready
to part with them.
>> But if you can convince them
that financially
you're prepared,
or the institution is prepared
to have them evaluated
and so forth.
Over time it may help them
make a decision, [inaudible].
>> I don't know the naming
traditions of that period.
How common was it for a
woman to use her birth name?
And did she do that
all her life,
or only when she became a widow?
>> Eileen Hunt Botting: Well,
you can see that's
one of her signatures.
And she often went
by HM Crocker.
Let me go back to the--
here, when she published
it, it was H Mather.
She also used HMC a lot
in her Reminiscences.
She loved that.
But she almost always included
the M. She was very proud
to be a Mather.
It mattered a lot to her, and
she understood herself as part
of the five-fold line of Mather.
And I think she understood
herself as the female heir
of that grand Puritan
theological tradition.
That went back to
Richard Mather.
And she was the heir of
the Mather family library.
And then donated most of that
to the American Antiquarian
Society in 1814, 15.
And so she, I think, always
accentuated the Mather,
or the M, because she wanted
to remind people she
was the female heir
of this grand patriarchal
tradition.
In some ways, what she's doing,
she's taking it making
it into a feminist one.
She's showing that their
Christian principles are
compatible with modern
ideas of women's rights
that were arriving from
the Revolutionary period.
There was no conflict
in principle
between being a Christian,
right,
and that, what her father would
have called an old light sense,
an old rationalist,
Puritan sense
of Christianity of
the 17th century.
And espousing the
revolutionary ideals,
including women's rights.
>> Yet she's light
years away from Cotton.
>> Eileen Hunt Botting:
Oh, yes, On the other hand,
what she has more in common
with Cotton and her father,
Samuel, is their rationalism.
I mean that, you know, that
the Great Awakening brought
evangelicalism to Boston.
And that never sat
well with the Mathers.
They weren't evangelicals.
And that's why there was the
break between the Second Church
of Boston and the
Mather family house.
So her father, literally,
goes to found a new church.
Because he's an old
light rationalist.
And he, in many ways, is
much more in tune, you know,
with Increase and Cotton than
he is with his [inaudible].
[Inaudible] and Crocker became
very interested in the rise
of universalism, Unitarianism,
from within the Unitarian
Church of Boston.
Because she was,
herself, not a Unitarian.
But what she had in
common with the Unitarians
and the Universalists
was rationalism.
And I think that's why you see
all those old Boston, you know,
Congregationalist
churches, basically,
turn Unitarian functionally
by the early 19th century.
>> I have a question about,
so you made a really good case
about why she would be
considered feminist republican.
You know, and cited civic duty
and virtue being, you know,
equal between men and women.
But the question
I-- and going back
to the [inaudible] Roger Smith.
Roger, you know, said
that it's not just--
it's not just republicanism,
but it's also liberalism.
And then he has this other
term, descriptive hierarchies.
So I want to ask you
about liberalism.
There wasn't a lot of
liberalism in your talk.
But this is the real rights of
women and appropriate duties.
The duties, yes, OK
that's the republicanism.
But what about the rights?
And what rights is
she advocating for?
And did they include voting?
Did they include things
that we would consider
to be liberal functions?
>> Eileen Hunt Botting: Sure,
like other women's rights
advocates of the late 18th,
early 19th century, she didn't
go straight to suffrage.
Even Mary Wollstonecraft
doesn't go straight to suffrage.
I mean there's the famous
moment in the "Vindication
of the Rights of all Men,"
in chapter 9, where she says,
you might laugh at me if I say
that women should have the
same right to be represented.
And to have representatives
as men.
And she flags the debate
about whether working class
men [inaudible] or not.
But she kind of frames it
as a kind of joke of sorts.
Or she anticipates the
laughter [inaudible].
And so there's even a debate in
the Wollstonecraft scholarship,
believe it or not, where some
scholars will actually resist
the notion that Wollstonecraft
really advocated women's right
to vote.
I think that's going
way too far.
It's clear from the "Vindication
of the Rights of Women,"
even just the preface
and the introduction.
Wollstonecraft wants men and
women to have equal civil
and political rights, period.
That includes voting.
And so it even includes being
representatives themselves,
[inaudible].
That said, Wollstonecraft
was a little cagey
in the way she represented
that issue of suffrage.
And Crocker is no different.
We don't get any explicit
defense of women's right
to suffrage in the Observations.
But as far as I can tell, nobody
in the American tradition,
not a single writer,
prior to 1846, I believe--
Samuel May was actually an owner
of a copy of the Observations,
which is now held in
the Boston Athenaeum.
And he wrote an essay on
the rights and condition
of women published in New York,
upstate New York, in 1846.
The library has a copy of that.
And that book has some
theological arguments
about the rights of women,
which I think are roughly
comparable to the Observations.
Now I could never say, was
there a direct influence
of Crocker's Observations
on Samuel May's, you know,
book on the right of
women to suffrage.
But I think the fact that he
owned a copy of the Observations
and he made similar
theological arguments suggest
that he was probably
influenced by her.
So while she herself did not
argue for women's suffrage,
which I guess we'd understand
as the classic liberal
right, right?
She certainly had
influence on those who went
on to make those arguments.
Now let's think about other
famous American feminists
from the early 19th century,
Angelina and Sara Grimke.
Their letters on the equality of
the sexes, from the late 1830's,
also published in Boston.
They don't explicitly argue
for women's right to
vote at that time.
They go on to.
They go on to become advocates.
But 1840's is a real
turning point
in American women's
rights advocacy.
That's when you start
to see explicit defenses
of a right to vote.
Now there are other
liberal rights,
or rights that we associate
with the liberal tradition.
You know, free speech,
association, tolerance,
freedom of religious expression,
all of those things she defended
in Crocker's Observations
and across her body
of work, for sure.
For sure all of those are there.
Now the reason I frame her as a
feminist republican is that it's
because of this ontological
conception of rights and duties.
That duties are the basis
for rights, you know.
So every right emerges
from a corresponding duty.
And that is a more
republican way of framing it.
And so starting from
rights, we start from duties.
My own view, perhaps,
a slightly in tension
with our wonderful professor,
Robert Smith, is more in line
with [inaudible], who in her
work always emphasized the
way back.
Modern liberalism emerged from
18th century republicanism.
So both in Europe and the US.
So we can't really separate
out liberals and republicans.
Historically, they
emerged from one another.
So liberalism, in many ways,
grows out of 18th
century conceptions
and practices of republicanism.
And she really liked
the American case
as being hugely influential
on the liberal tradition
going forward.
So I really read both Crocker
and Wollstonecraft
as 18th century,
and in Crocker's case,
early 19th century,
republican feminists,
or feminist republicans.
Whose ideas resonate with
liberalism going forward,
because republicanism
in general was
such an important
source for liberalism.
>> Does she discuss as
to why she writes this?
My question is.
And second question, did
she also have interaction
with single propertied
women of other states?
So for example, New Jersey--
it's been a while since
I've looked at that.
But there was a period of time
wherein single propertied women
did have the right to vote.
>> Eileen Hunt Botting:
Yes, absolutely, yes.
So yeah, women could
vote in New Jersey
until about, I think,
about 1800.
It might be a little bit later.
It might be 1803.
It's about 1800.
And it was because
their constitution,
their state constitution
didn't specify the gender.
So it was legal-- a
classic legal loophole.
So women could vote.
And then it was shut
down during the beginning
of the Napoleonic era,
as things became more
of a process [inaudible] during
the [inaudible] administration.
Ironically, given
that [inaudible],
you know, was when she left.
Her husband voted to support.
And so, yeah, I mean, how
much contact did she have
with women from other states?
There's not a lot of evidence,
although she did have some
correspondence with people
from Philadelphia that's
preserved in her Reminiscences.
And she spent her
whole life in Boston.
And she, just a few
times, records going out,
even into what we'd
now call suburbs.
You know, she'd been
out to Plymouth once.
She went out to Worcester once.
You know, she was
a true Boston girl.
And she nearly devoted her
whole life to the city,
and then chronicling
its history.
But certainly, in her history
of Boston shows her awareness
of women's agency in
every sector of society,
including economic agency, and
religious agency, and so on.
So but I'll have to look.
And she did talk
about women traveling
in the colonial period.
And some of the women that
she chronicles were those
that were very bold in their
travels during the colonial era,
often at great personal risk.
And so she certainly was
interested in this question
of chronicling and
representing women's agency,
especially in roles that kind
of trespassed feminine norms.
I can't remember if I
followed on [inaudible].
>> And the first question
was, what compelled her,
what was the rationale for her--
>> Eileen Hunt Botting: Oh yeah,
so, you know, so it seems to me
that in the 1810's, the War
of 1812 really affected her.
I think it kind of brought
her into the public.
She really despised that war.
And so much of her
literary work was devoted
to protesting that war.
And so I think that kind of got
her more into the public light.
She, at the same time, she got
involved in founding the school.
And then she published her
three major prose works,
the series of letters
on freemasonry in 1850,
the school of reform in 1816,
and the Observations in 1818.
And during this period, she's
beginning to collect the poetry
that would then be put
in the Reminiscences.
And in the 1820's, she
writes the Reminiscences,
between 1822 and 1829.
Now, traditionally,
scholarship has emphasized
that Crocker waits until her
husband is dead before she
publishes her major writing.
While this is true, it
ignores two critical facts.
One is that she did publish
in the Boston newspaper
while she was married.
And then in that
very Reminiscences,
she's preserving poems she
wrote prior to her marriage.
And then, it also ignores
the fact that Crocker had--
Joseph Crocker had been dead
quite some time before she went
out and published her first
major prose works in 1810.
He dies in the 1790's.
So it can't simply be his death
that precipitates her to go out.
It's not right, oh yeah,
because she was in some sort
of repressive marriage
in which, you know,
she didn't feel comfortable
publishing or writing.
That wasn't the case at all.
And so I think it really was the
political atmosphere of the War
of 1812 that really catalyzed
her as a public actor.
And that I find very
inspirational, honestly.
And when I was writing the
piece on her political oratory
for the Journal of Politics,
you know, it was in the wake
of the Iraq and Afghanistan War.
And I have to say reading
her protest of the War
of 1812 resonated
very strongly with me.
And also in thinking
about contemporary feminist
protest of war [inaudible].
>> So she was financially
stable [inaudible].
>> Eileen Hunt Botting: Well,
OK, so that's a great question.
She did inherit most of her
wealth from her mother's side
of the family, the Hutchinsons.
The Mathers had a lot of
books and a lot of art.
The Hutchinsons had real estate.
And I think that's how
she maintained herself.
She rented rooms.
There are ads in
the Boston newspaper
that showed she rented
rooms, a room for a doctor.
There's some time she
had multiple homes.
She gave a home to one of her--
actually, one of her
brothers [inaudible],
because he was a Loyalist.
And then she gives him a house
so he could come back to Boston.
I think shows the ways in which
she never really forsook ties
to the Loyalist side
of the family.
She always maintained
a strong affection,
even as politically,
was always a patriot.
So yeah, it was her
mother [inaudible].
And then she sold a lot
of the Mather books.
And she made some money on that.
And Isaiah Thomas
was the founder
of the American Antiquarian
Society.
He was a pretty shrewd operator.
I think he knew she
had a treasure trove.
And he did kind of move in.
But I also think that she
was probably shrewd too.
She sold that off in portions
over quite a bit of time.
So she knew she had something
of value, and she dragged it
out as long as she could to
use it as a kind of resource
for her family over time.
But there is a moment
in the late 1810's,
after she published
the Observations,
where she actually
applied for some charity
from a veteran's
association as a widow
of a Revolutionary War veteran.
And so she always
was complaining
in her poetry how her
house was falling apart.
It always needs repair.
It was colonial era so, yeah.
>> And we, probably
for the sake of time
and getting everybody back
to their office before five,
should go ahead and
shut this down.
But thank you so much.
[ Applause ]
