| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Deborah Bingham Van Broekhoven. The Devotion of These Women: Rhode Island in the Antislavery Network. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. 2002. Pp. xiii, 283. $39.95.
The study of the abolitionist movement in the United States has had a long and rich history. Over the last twenty-five years, attention to women abolitionists has resulted in the growth of scholarship on their contributions to the movement and on the dynamics of race and gender politics within antislavery organizations. Although historians have acknowledged women's work in such activities as petition drives as well as various activities to raise funds for the cause, little attention has been given to how important these activities were for sustaining the movement in particular geographic locations and within specific economic and political contexts.	1
In the case of Rhode Island, a focus on the male-led state organization and its eventual collapse might easily lead historians to conclude that abolitionist activity had died. Deborah Bingham Van Broekhoven argues that despite the disintegration of the state's antislavery society and the divisions in the national organization, women abolitionists in Rhode Island kept the movement alive in the state for both men and women through grassroots organizing. By shifting away from women's participation in formal organizations, the author is able to focus on the more elusive facet of social reform: the use of friendship and kinship ties to organize various antislavery activities. Van Broekhaven maintains a focus on local leaders, who may have been well known in their own communities but would likely be invisible in general histories of the movement.	. . .

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