In 1833, after several years of study and thought about slavery, Child published a book quite different from her novels and her children's stories. She titled the book awkwardly: An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans. In this work, she described the history of slavery in America and the present condition of those enslaved. She proposed the end of slavery, not through colonization of Africa and the return of the slaves to that continent, but by integration of ex-slaves into American society. She advocated education and racial intermarriage as means to that multiracial republic.
The Appeal had two main effects. One, it was instrumental in convincing many Americans of the need for abolition of slavery. Those who credited Child's Appeal with their own change of mind and increased commitment included Wendell Phillips and William Ellery Channing. Two, Child's popularity plummeted, leading to the folding of Juvenile Miscellany (in 1834) and reduced sales of The Frugal Housewife. She published more anti-slavery works, including an anonymously-published Authentic Anecdotes of American Slavery (1835) and the Anti-Slavery Catechism (1836). Her new attempt at an advice book, The Family Nurse (1837), failed, a victim of the controversy.
The rest of Child's life followed the pattern begun with Juvenile Miscellany, The Frugal Housewife and the Appeal. She published another novel, Philothea, in 1836, Letters from New York in 1843-45 and Flowers for Children in 1844-47. She followed these with a book depicting "fallen women," Fact and Fiction, in 1846 and The Progress of Religious Ideas (1855), influenced by Theodore Parker's transcendentalist Unitarianism.
Both Maria and David became more active in the abolitionist movement. She served on the executive committee of Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society -- David had helped Garrison found the New England Anti-Slavery Society. First Maria, then David, edited the National Anti-Slavery Standard from 1841 to 1844 before editorial differences with Garrison and the Anti-Slavery Society led to their resignations.
David embarked on an effort to raise sugar cane, an attempt to replace slave-produced sugar cane. Lydia Maria boarded with the Quaker family of Isaac T. Hopper, an abolitionist whose biography she published in 1853.
In 1857, now 55 years old, Lydia Maria Child published the inspirational collection Autumnal Leaves, apparently feeling her career coming to its close. But in 1859, after John Brown's failed raid on Harper's Ferry, she plunged back into the anti-slavery arena with a series of letters that the Anti-Slavery Society published as a pamphlet. Three hundred thousand copies were distributed. In this compilation is one of Child's most memorable lines. Responding to a letter from the wife of Virginia Senator James M. Mason which defended slavery by pointing to the kindness of Southern ladies in helping slave women give birth, Child replied,
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"... here in the North, after we have helped the mothers, we do not sell the babies."
Back in the fray, Child published more anti-slavery tracts. In 1861, she edited the autobiography of an ex-slave woman, Harriet Jacobs, published as Incidents in the Life of a Slave-Girl.
After the war -- and slavery -- ended, Lydia Maria Child followed through on her earlier proposal of education for ex-slaves by publishing at her own expense The Freedmen's Book. The text was notable for including writings of noted African Americans. She also wrote another novel, Romance of the Republic about racial justice and interracial love.
In 1868, she returned to hear early interest in Native Americans and published An Appeal for the Indians, proposing solutions for justice. In 1878 she published Aspirations of the World.
Lydia Maria Child died in 1880 at Wayland, Massachusetts, at the farm she had shared with her husband David since 1852.
Today, if Lydia Maria Child is remembered at all, it is usually for her Appeal. But ironically, her short doggerel poem, "A Boy's Thanksgiving," is better-known than any of her other work. Few who sing or hear "Over the river and through the woods..." know much about this woman who was a novelist, journalist, domestic advice writer and social reformer, one of the first American women to earn a living income from her writing.
