The Feminization of Moral Reform

For their annual meeting in 1838, the leadership of the New York Female Moral Reform Society decided to do something different. Following the precedent of the women’s antislavery convention the previous year, the moral reformers decided to hold a large women’s convention in the city. ¹ As nominally auxiliary to men’s moral reform organizations, NYFMRS annual meetings had heretofore been presided over by men, the women having no chance to speak publicly about their own work. But now, with the current male parent organization, the American Moral Reform Society, edging toward nonexistence, the time seemed ripe to hold a meeting of women led by women. Accordingly, the call went out, notice cards were printed and distributed, and as the May anniversary gathering at the Third Free Church approached, it appeared that some nine hundred women from all over the country would be present. But there was a last-minute hitch. To the consternation of the meeting organizers, “it was found at a late period, that many gentlemen planned to attend.” What to do? In 1837 the antislavery conventioneers had simply barred male intruders from the meeting place. ² But presumably these “gentlemen” would be supporters. If the meeting was now to be a “promiscuous assembly,” gender conventions of the day dictated that men preside over the proceedings, and the furor aroused by the Grimké sisters’ recent defiance of the rule had hardly subsided. ³ Should the moral reform women then abandon their plans and let the meeting proceed as in years before? The Advocate of Moral Reform’s account of the hastily planned accommodation makes for interesting reading:

… [I]t was thought best to make the remaining arrangements, as far as possible, with a view to a union meeting of ladies and gentlemen. Still, as it was a ladies’ society, and the reports must necessarily be read by the Secretary and Treasurer, since it was too late to procure 14a [male] reader, it was decided that the First Directress should preside, and the gentlemen should be invited to open the meeting with prayer, and address the audience. ⁴

In the event, over three hundred men showed up. After the formal proceedings, they left, and the women were at last free to conduct business on their own. Yet it was not the women’s convention the planners had envisioned. The shared leadership of the “union meeting”—the female officers delivering their reports, the clerics blessing them with sermons and prayers—was an accommodation to the presence of men. Still, it was a defiance of gender rules. It would not be repeated at future FMRS annual meetings. By the same token, neither would men again attempt to impose upon such a meeting. That fall, the Boston Female Moral Reform Society was able to hold a women-only annual meeting without a hitch. ⁵