Biography

Social reformer, abolitionist, poet, author, suffragist.

Born the daughter of a slaveholder, she inherited six slaves when her parents died. She abhorred slavery, however, and sought a way to finance her slaves' emancipation and resettlement in the North. Already a published poet as Mattie Griffith, she penned the "Autobiography of a Female Slave" in 1856 hoping it would advance the abolitionist cause and raise enough money to emancipate and resettle her slaves in free territory. Soon after its publication as an authentic slave biography, however, she revealed that she was the true author. Many alleged slave journals had been published purporting to be actually written by slaves, but what made this work difficult to discredit was the fact that it was written by a southern woman and a slaveholder, who claimed to have witnessed the horrors recounted in her fictitious biography. She was vilified in the South and her book condemned. And while it did not earn enough money to help her slaves, the American Anti-Slavery Society financed their freedom and resettlement and brought her into its ranks as a lecturer in the North. She married a prominent abolitionist, and after the war she threw herself into the campaign for women's suffrage and was elected vice president of the National Suffrage Association.