III. SOME KEY CONCORD ABOLITIONISTS
III.D. The Alcotts:
Both Amos Bronson Alcott—educator, philosopher, lecturer, poet, essayist, diarist, and reformer—and his wife Abigail May Alcott (residents of Concord during the 1840s and from 1857) were staunch abolitionists long before they lived in this town. In 1835, they visited William Lloyd Garrison in jail following the Boston antislavery riot prompted by British abolitionist George Thompson's visit to that city. (Garrison was held for his own protection after an angry mob dragged him through the streets at the end of a rope.)
In the 1850s, Bronson Alcott was a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee, an organization formed to aid runaway slaves. In 1854, he participated in the unsuccessful attempt to rescue fugitive slave Anthony Burns from being returned to his owner.
In her antislavery ardor, Mrs. Alcott—whose brother Samuel Joseph May was also an abolitionist, and whose cousins were agents of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society—kept pace with her husband. She was a member of antislavery societies in Philadelphia, Boston, and Concord. The Concord Ladies' Antislavery Society met in her home from time to time. At one meeting in November of 1860, her brother spoke to a group that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frank Sanborn, and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody.
In late 1846 and early 1847, while living in the Hillside (the name used by the Alcotts for the house that became the Wayside during Hawthorne's residence there), they provided safe haven for at least one runaway slave. John Brown's daughters boarded with them during the summer of 1861.
In 1858, the Alcotts' daughter Louisa May organized an evening of dramatic performances in the Town Hall (the meeting room in the Town House) to benefit the Concord Ladies' Antislavery Society, demonstrating the willingness of young Concordians to take up a cause that their parents had earlier embraced.
43. Randall (Detroit, Mich.). Carte de visite portrait photograph of Abigail May Alcott. CFPL Photofile.
44. Warren's (Boston, Mass.). Carte de visite photograph of Amos Bronson Alcott. CFPL Photofile.
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