d Abolitionists in
Great Britain and the United States. Many a man who advocated equality
most eloquently for a Southern plantation, could not tolerate it at
his own fireside.

The question of woman's right to speak, vote, and serve on committees,
not only precipitated the division in the ranks of the American
Anti-Slavery Society, in 1840, but it disturbed the peace of the
World's Anti-Slavery Convention, held that same year in London. The
call for that Convention invited delegates from all Anti-Slavery
organizations. Accordingly several American societies saw fit to send
women, as delegates, to represent them in that august assembly. But
after going three thousand miles to attend a World's Convention, it
was discovered that women formed no part of the constituent elements
of the moral world. In summoning the friends of the slave from all
parts of the two hemispheres to meet in London, John Bull never
dreamed that woman, too, would answer to his call. Imagine then the
commotion in the conservative anti-slavery circles in England, when it
was known that half a dozen of those terrible women who had spoken to
promiscuous assemblies, voted on men and measures, prayed and
petitioned against slavery, women who had been mobbed, ridiculed by
the press, and denounced by the pulpit, who had been the cause of
setting all American Abolitionists by the ears, and split their ranks
asunder, were on their way to England. Their fears of these formidable
and belligerent women must have been somewhat appeased when Lucretia
Mott, Sarah Pugh, Abby Kimber, Elizabeth Neal, Mary Grew, of
Philadelphia, in modest Quaker costume, Ann Green Phillips, Emily
Winslow, and Abby Southwick, of Boston, all women of refinement and
education, and several, still in their twenties, landed at last on the
soil of Great Britain. Many who had awaited their coming with much
trepidation, gave a sigh of relief, on being introduced to Lucretia
Mott, learning that she represented the most dangerous elements in the
delegation. The American clergymen who had landed a few days before,
had been busily engaged in fanning the English prejudices into active
hostility against the admission of these women to the Convention. In
every circle of Abolitionists this was the theme, and the discussion
grew more bitter, personal, and exasperating every hour.

The 12th of June dawned bright and beautiful on these discordant
elements, and at an early hour anti-slavery delegates from