In February of 1840 Lucretia Mott’s travels took her to Delaware where she stayed with relatives. As she travelled about the countryside with Daniel Neall, the president of Pennsylvania Hall, their carriage was stoned. They disregarded the incident and proceeded on to the home of local Quakers for tea.  However they were followed there by “a group of raw-looking men , who demanded that Daniel Neall come with them. When Daniel refused, more men arrived and forced their way into the house.”

Lucretia would have none of it and later wrote that she “pled hard with (the men) to take me as I was the offender if offence had been committed …but they declining said ‘you are a woman and we have nothing to say to you’ – to which I answered, ‘I ask no courtesy at your hands on account of my sex’…When the men refused her offer and took Daniel Neall  away, she followed them, continuing to argue, so intent on what she was doing that she forgot to be afraid for herself.  With Lucretia watching, the men rather shamefacedly smeared a little tar on Daniel’s coat, attached a few feathers, and gave him a token ride on a rail. They then turned him over, virtually unharmed, to the little Quaker woman. “

Source of quotes: Valiant Friend by Margaret Hope Bacon