Salem Lyceum Society and Women’s Political Organizations
43 Church Street

Organized in January of 1830 as part of an American movement of the mid-nineteenth century, the Salem Lyceum Society was modeled after the concept of the “Mechanics Institutes” in England. The expressed purpose of the society was to provide “mutual education and rational entertainment” for both its membership and the general public through a biannual course of lectures, debates, and dramatic readings.³¹ While no debates were actually ever held, there were, over the next sixty years, more than a thousand lectures on such themes as biography, science, politics, government, and even phrenology. These early lectures were held in other locations until the Salem Lyceum Society bought land and erected its own building in 1830 and 1831. Admission was one dollar for men, and seventy-five cents for women, who had to be “introduced” by a man to gain entrance. Over the life of the society, only a half dozen women were invited to appear on the Church Street stage. The best known was British actress Frances Anne “Fanny” Kemble (1809-93) whose dramatic reading of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer's Night Dream was a highlight of the 1849/1850 course of lectures.³²

Aside from regular lyceum program offerings, the hall itself has been used over the years by a number of prominent women’s groups such as the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society whose members included Sarah Parker Remond (see S36) and Charlotte Forten (see S38). Organized in 1834, the society attracted one hundred and thirty members during its first year. The constitution drawn up by its members stated, “It is our belief that the principle upon which all slavery is founded, that man may in some cases innocently hold property in man is FALSE! Any lady professing to believe the sentiments of this preamble and signing the constitution may become a member of this society.”³³

Among the more well-known speakers brought to Salem by the society was Lucy Stone (1818-93), whose lecture in October of 1851 brought in the third highest receipts ever recorded by the society. Although best known for her work on women’s suffrage and the movement’s newspaper, the Woman’s Journal, Lucy Stone was also a dedicated antislavery activist. She broke with several leaders of the women’s suffrage movement when she insisted on including African American suffrage rights as part of the overall efforts of liberation and inclusion.

Sarah Moore Grimké (1792-1873) and her younger sister, Angelina Emily Grimké Weld (1805-79), also spoke here against slavery. Born as privileged daughters of a Charleston, South Carolina, family who owned slaves, the Grimkés received an upper-class education they wanted to share with enslaved people — an illegal act at that time. They both became Quakers and powerful speakers against slavery. Sarah never married, fearing she would become more of a “slave” than a wife; Angelina married Theodore Weld in 1838 but refused to recite the vow to obey. He agreed with her sentiments, and during their ceremony he “alluded to the unrighteous power vested in a husband by the laws of the United States over the person and property of his wife, and he abjured all authority, all government, save the influence [of] love.”³⁴

Men and women were both actively engaged in the struggle for women’s suffrage in Salem. The Woman Suffrage Club of Salem met regularly at Lyceum Hall and in private homes, and in 1856 the club hosted the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association’s annual convention. Among the more well-known women speakers were Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) and Lucy Stone. Several outstanding essays on women’s suffrage published in the Woman’s Journal came from Salem’s William I. Bowditch, who was also a leading anti-slavery activist. In Woman Suffrage a Right, Not a Privilege, Bowditch argued:

“If suffrage for a man cannot be infringed upon even once without doing him an injury, can we deny it to women altogether and yet do them no wrong? If women had ever consented to be governed by us, our rule over them would of course be just. But women have never given any such consent. On the contrary, it has only been after long years of effort and struggle on their part against all sorts of ridicule and opposition on the part of men, that the women of the State have finally wrung from our unwilling hands the measure of property right which they now possess. The existing subjection of women is merely what remains of the former universal slavery of women, and the slavery of women at the time of its existence was deemed by the very best and noblest of men to be as natural a state for women as their present state of subjection is now deemed by any of us men to be their natural condition.”³⁵

And in 1874, George B. Loring, president of the Woman Suffrage Club of Salem stated:

“In this work of reform let man give up and let woman hold not back. The history of our country, from its colonial organization to the present hour of republican success, teaches us that not by restraint, but by the largest freedom consistent with personal and public safety, have the human faculties been developed with symmetry and health. Grateful for the rights and opportunities I myself possess under institutions thus animated and inspired, I would extend an open hand to all who would enter in and enjoy the healthful air of freedom.”³⁶

Along with suffrage and abolition, Salem women were also deeply concerned about the treatment of Native Americans in the western part of the country. Even though Salem was far removed from efforts of the United States government to displace, force into reservations, or otherwise obliterate whole tribes of people, a group of women nonetheless formed the Salem Women’s Indian Association in 1885 “to strengthen a Christian public sentiment which shall aid our Government in the abolition of all oppression of Indians within our national limits and in the granting them the same protection of law that other races enjoy among us.”³⁷ They further determined to “aid in educational and mission work for and among the Indians.”³⁸ Among their efforts to sway public and political opinion, the association published and distributed pamphlets, lobbied Congress, and placed articles in the press to “promote the growth of right sentiment concerning our national duty to Indians.”³⁹ Officers included representatives from each of Salem’s Christian churches. Annual membership cost one dollar, or ten dollars for life membership. Men were allowed to become members, but not to hold office. The association’s first president was listed as Mrs. Amos H. Johnson who lived at 26 Winter Street.

Women were centrally involved in the temperance movement of the late 1800s, an effort to curb the devastating outcomes of men’s excessive drinking that could include domestic abuse, abandonment of families, and loss of employment. Indeed, women’s temperance unions throughout the country are now recognized as having been some of the best organized and most effective reform groups. In 1899, the Salem Woman’s Christian Temperance Union published a cookbook to raise funds to support their efforts. In the book, they explained that they worked to educate people about the “scientific and religious” reasons for having a stronger observance of the Sabbath; to “train spiritually” those who were imprisoned; to teach principles of abstinence and prohibition in their Sunday school; and to teach foreign-born residents the value of “Gospel Temperance.” They involved themselves with “working men” — “railroad men, telegraph operators, street-car men, policemen, express and hackmen" are mentioned specifically — and with soldiers and sailors “to create a sentiment against the canteen.” The union published and distributed books, papers, leaflets, and a regular newsletter, The Union Signal, that provided information on issues of concern to women and related to temperance. As their work progressed, union leaders trained younger women to carry on what they had started. Their motto was “For God, and Home, and Native Land.”⁴⁰

Notes
31. By-laws of the Salem Lyceum, 1830.

32. Jim McAllister files.

33. Constitution of the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society, 1834.

34. Catherine H. Birney, The Grimké Sisters: Sarah and Angelina Grimké, The First American Women Advocates of Abolition and Woman’s Rights (Boston, 1885), 232-33.

35. William I. Bowditch, Woman Suffrage a Right, Not a Privilege (Cambridge, Mass., 1879), 31.

36. George B. Loring, “The Right of Woman Suffrage,” Boston Daily Advertiser, December 18, 1874.

37. By-laws of the Salem Women’s Indian Association, 1885.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid.

40. Cookbook of the Salem Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 1899.