Notes on Lucretia Mott

Notes On Lucretia Mott, "The Law of Progress"

News Reports of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting
The New York Herald characterized this meeting with language that offends today but was then customary for mainstream audiences expressing shock at the spectacle of radical abolitionism:
ssss	"This knot of philanthropists, whose dislike to the Constitution of the United States, and the Church, as now in force, is only equalled by their love for their coloured "brethren", held an adjourned meeting yesterday morning at the Minerva Rooms. The audience was more of a mixed character than was that of the day preceding. All kinds of negroes, male and female, were in attendance, from the ebony black to the quadroon--from the polished colour of Lee & Martin's "patent" to the yellowish hue of a mint drop. The ladies (white) seemed to feel perfectly at home; some of them knitting while listening to the arguments in favour of overturning the Constitution, trampling on the laws of the country, and taking a pleasure excursion in a carriage drawn by mules, over the ruins of the Church." (New York Herald, reprinted in the National Anti-Slavery Standard, 5/18/48.)
Notes on Mott's Prophetic Voice. Biblical quotes are in the King James Version familiar to Lucretia Mott. This site recommends the New Revised Standard Version as the most up-to-date critical translation in the English tradition.
Evidence that this speech, despite its strong organizational structure, was like all of Mott's speeches extemporaneous is given in noting the problem Garrison had trying to get her approval to place her name on the list of advertised speakers in advance of the May 1848 meeting:
ssss	"Lucretia Mott, when here, also intimated that she would be willing to speak on that occasion; and it would give additional interest to the meeting, to many, if her name were announced in the placards and advertisements. Can this be done in a way not to interfere with the Quaker doctrine of being 'moved by the Spirit'? Try." (Letter to Sydney Howard Gay, April 27, 1848; Garrison 552)
This is also a clear indication that Mott viewed all her public speeches in the same light as her prophetic ministry amongs the Society of Friends. Revelation is not closed but still continues in the same mode, thus individual revelation is the same in kind if not in degree of veneration as that of Scripture itself. See Robert Barclay's Second Proposition on immediate revelation, emphasis mine:
ssss	"so by the revelation of the same Spirit he hath manifested himself all along unto the sons of men, both patriarchs, prophets, and apostles; which revelations of God by the Spirit, whether by outward voices and appearances, dreams or inward objective manifestations in the hearts, were of old the formal object of their faith, and remain yet so to be; since the object of the saints' faith is the same in all ages, though set forth under diverse administrations."
Genesis 12:1-3. This is from one of several passages recounting God's blessing to Abraham:
ssss	"Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed."
Deuteronomy 2: 1-7. This is from a long speech in the mouth of Moses recounting the wilderness journey. It concerns the from Kadesh to Trans-jordan. Seir is an ancient name for the mountainous area between Sinai and the Negev:
ssss	Then we turned, and took our journey into the wilderness by the way of the Red sea, as the LORD spake unto me: and we compassed mount Seir many days. And the LORD spake unto me, saying, Ye have compassed this mountain long enough: turn you northward. And command thou the people, saying, Ye are to pass through the coast of your brethren the children of Esau, which dwell in Seir; and they shall be afraid of you: take ye good heed unto yourselves therefore: Meddle not with them; for I will not give you of their land, no, not so much as a foot breadth; because I have given mount Seir unto Esau for a possession. Ye shall buy meat of them for money, that ye may eat; and ye shall also buy water of them for money, that ye may drink. For the LORD thy God hath blessed thee in all the works of thy hand: he knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness: these forty years the LORD thy God hath been with thee; thou hast lacked nothing.

References
Garrison, William Lloyd.	No Union with the South, 1841-1849. Vol. 3 of The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison. Ed. Walter M. Merrill. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1973.