STEWART, Maria W. (Miller)

Born 1803, Hartford, Connecticut; died 17 December 1879, Washington, D.C.

Married James W. Stewart, 1826 (died 1829)

Maria W. Stewart was the daughter of black parents whose name was Miller. According to biographical information in the introduction to Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart (1879), Stewart was orphaned at "five years of age; was bound out in a clergyman's family." She left this family when she was fifteen and attended "Sabbath schools" until she was twenty. This appears to be the only formal education she acquired though her "soul thirsted for knowledge." Her marriage in Boston to a navy veteran of the War of 1812 lasted until 1829 when she was widowed. Experiencing a religious conversion in 1830 and making a "public profession of…faith in Jesus Christ" in 1831 evidently led to her writing an essay, "Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality: The Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build," which was printed in tract form in Boston by the young abolitionist editor of the Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison. Another essay, "Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart," was printed by him in 1832. In 1832 and 1833, Stewart gave three public addresses which were subsequently printed in the Liberator (28 April 1832, 17 Nov. 1832, 27 April 1833). Discouraged by the lack of support and disheartened by the criticism of her friends, she gave a farewell speech in September 1833, and moved to New York City where she became involved with a Female Literary Society for black women. She taught school in Manhattan and in Brooklyn until 1852 when she moved to Baltimore, again teaching school there. In 1861 she moved to Washington, D.C., where she organized a school during the Civil War period. Later while working as a matron at the Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, she claimed a pension under a law passed granting funds to widows of veterans of the War of 1812. Not long before her death, using these funds and again with Garrison's help, Stewart published Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart, a collection of all her speeches and writings.

It appears that Stewart was the first American-born woman to speak in public halls in America. Hers are the only extant speeches, although British-born women had spoken in public and American-born women had spoken in churches, particularly Quaker meetings, before her. All of Stewart's speeches and essays exhibit certain general characteristics. Most obvious and pervasive is her strongly emotional appeal to Christian virtue. A second characteristic is her appeal to blacks to help themselves; she speaks of the "great necessity of turning your attention to knowledge and improvement." Her special concern with black women's importance is evidenced frequently as she cries, "O ye daughters of Africa, awake, awake."

Stung by criticism of her public speaking, in her farewell speech in 1833 Stewart justifies her personal virtue and morals and her public speaking with many historical and Biblical references. These allusions attest to the scope of what must have been largely her "self-education." In all her speeches, Stewart laments the injustices inflicted on black people, both free and slave, and takes to task white women, addressing them as "ye fairer sisters." She chides white Americans further, lamenting, "But how few are there among them that bestow one thought upon the benighted sons and daughters of Africa who have enriched the soil of America with their blood and tears."

A dedicated feminist, Stewart was an equally dedicated pacifist. In early speeches she advocates moderation saying, "Far be it from me to recommend to you, either to kill, burn, or destroy." Later she admonishes her listeners to "sheath your swords and calm your angry passions." Her strongest appeal for action is that black men "sign a petition to Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia."

Stewart's early essay, "Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart," is the most literary in form of her writings. A series of fourteen meditations written in a variety of rhyme schemes, most commonly couplets and quatrains, it is somewhat reminiscent of the style of Edward Taylor's meditations written more than a century earlier. Interspersed among the meditations are seven prayers written from the intimately personal and unique viewpoint of a black woman.

To characterize Stewart as an abolitionist is to put the case too strongly; to name her as an early feminist is to describe her accurately. Her writings and speeches indicate her total awareness of her femininity first, her blackness second.

Other Works:

Productions of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart (1835).

Bibliography:

Bormann, E.G., "Female Antislavery Speakers," in Forerunners of Black Power: The Rhetoric of Abolition (1971). Flexner, E., Century of Struggle (1959). Golden, J. L., and R. D. Rieke, "Separation," in The Rhetoric of Black Americans (1971). Lerner, G., Black Women in White America: A Documentary History (1972). Loewenberg, B. J., and R. Bogin, eds., in Black Women in Nineteenth-Century American Life (1976). O'Connor, L., Pioneer Women Orators (1954). Porter, D., Early Negro Writing 1760-1837 (1971).