Maria Weston Chapman

Maria Weston Chapman (July 25, 1806 – 1885) was an American abolitionist. She was elected to the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1839 and from 1839 until 1842, she served as editor of the anti-slavery journal, Non-Resistant.

Maria Weston was born in 1806 in Weymouth, Massachusetts, the eldest of eight children, including five sisters, to Warren Weston and Anne Bates. Though the Westons were not wealthy, they were well connected and through her uncle’s patronage. Weston was educated in England and lived there for a time. She returned to Boston in 1828 to serve as principal of a newly founded and socially progressive girls’ high school.

Two years later she left the field of education to marry Henry Grafton Chapman, a second generation abolitionist and wealthy Boston merchant. Over the course of their twelve-year marriage, which ended in Henry’s death from tuberculosis in 1842, Chapman had four children, one of whom died in early childhood. Henry's parents were also enthusiastic abolitionists. By all accounts the Chapman marriage was a good one, free from ideological and financial strain.

Maria and Henry were both “Garrisonian” abolitionists, meaning that they believed in an “immediate” and uncompromising end to slavery, brought about by “moral suasion” or non-resistance. They rejected all political and institutional coercion—including churches, political parties and the federal government—as agencies for ending slavery. They did, however, support moral coercion that encompassed “come-outerism” and disunion, both of which opposed association with slaveholders. Gerald Sorin writes, “In [Maria’s] nonresistance principles and in her "come-outerism," she was rigidly dogmatic and self-righteous, believing that ‘when one is perfectly right, one neither asks nor needs sympathy.’”

Though Chapman came to the anti-slavery cause through her husband’s family, she quickly and stalwartly took up the cause, enduring pro-slavery mobs, social ridicule and public attacks on her character. Her sisters, notably Caroline and Anne, were also active abolitionists, though Maria is generally considered to be the most outspoken and active among her family. According to Lee V. Chambers, through their "kin-work", the sisters supported each other through family responsibilities in order to take their active public roles. The Chapmans became central figures in the “Boston Clique,” which primarily consisted of wealthy and socially prominent supporters of William Lloyd Garrison.

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