What Can a Woman Do?: A Young Abolitionist in the Michigan Territory

As a young woman in the nineteenth-century, Elizabeth Margaret Chandler could not help end slavery by becoming a lawyer or legislator. But she could write—and publish—her passionate opinions. And, beginning when she was just sixteen, that’s what she did. Hers was a voice out of the “backwoods” wilderness of the Michigan Territory, laying the groundwork for Emancipation. Elizabeth practiced Quaker modesty—her poems and essays were published under a variety of pseudonyms. But in less than five years, no “anonymous” woman was better known in the cause of abolition. This is her story. It is also the story of life in the 1830’s Michigan Territory: the excitement of raising a cabin, the terrifying awesomeness of a prairie fire, and the joys of learning new skills like sausage-making and maple-sugaring. Elizabeth wrote enthusiastically of the “surprising beauty” of her new home, contradicting the saying, “Don’t go to Michigan, that land of ills; the word means ague, fever, and chills!”