She sheltered fugitive slaves, everywhere befriended the colored people, and traveled from place to place preaching the doctrine of liberty.
Young people of the present time can hardly understand the bitter and fierce opposition encountered by those people who were working to free the slaves. For many years, public feeling on the subject was so intense that many anti-slavery meetings were broken up by acts of violence. Sometimes mobs of men and women stoned the windows of the houses where these meetings were being held, breaking into the assemblage, leaping upon the platform, and shouting so loudly that the speaker's voice was lost in the noise.
In 1838, during a riot in Philadelphia, a mob burned Pennsylvania Hall, and then marched through the streets threatening an attack upon the house of James and Lucretia Mott. Mrs. Mott sent her children out of the house to a place of safety, and she, with her husband and a few friends, sat quietly waiting for the mob. Before it reached the house, however, the leaders urged the rioters to attack a home for colored orphans in another part of the city, and so the raid upon the Mott house was given up for that night.
At another time, when the mob was expected, and when Mr. and Mrs. Mott, surrounded by their friends, sat listening to the angry cries of threatening men outside, it happened that in the crowd was a young man friendly to the Mott family. He cried, "On to the Motts'!" and purposely ran up the wrong street. The rioters followed him blindly, and the Motts were a second time saved from violence.
Women who had formerly been Mrs. Mott's friends passed her on the street without speaking, and scornful people laughed at her. Sometimes rough men, carried away by the excitement of the times, surged round her like maniacs, threatening violence, but Mrs. Mott never lost her temper or her composed manner. In her own story of her life she says, "The misrepresentation, ridicule and abuse heaped upon these reforms do not in the least deter me from my duty."
When the National Anti-Slavery Society was formed, Mrs. Mott took a prominent part, offering suggestions with "such charm and precision that they were readily assented to." In this work she was associated with Garrison, Whittier, and other noted Abolitionists.
In 1840, Mrs. Mott was sent to London to represent the Abolitionists of the United States at the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, where she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, also a delegate. They were not permitted to take their places in the Convention, for by a vote taken at their first sitting, that body decided that only men were to be admitted. Aside from this, however, the women were treated with the greatest courtesy. But, though their feelings were supposed to be salved by being given seats of honor in the hall, they felt keenly the humiliation of their position. It was certainly an indignity.
Mrs. Mott had for years been accustomed to speaking in public, people of all denominations coming many miles to hear the great Quaker preacher. Her home had been a refuge for hunted slaves, and all her eloquence was devoted to the cause of their freedom. Without doubt, she was one of the most prominent persons present at this meeting. She, if anyone, should have been allowed to speak in behalf of humanity.
Out of the indignation aroused on this occasion in the minds of Mrs. Mott and Mrs. Stanton, grew the Woman Suffrage Movement. The first Woman's Rights Convention was called in Seneca Falls, New York, July, 1848, the rights of women to the ballot and their equality with man under the law being the subjects discussed.