and dissatisfaction. Angelina records that, "At friend
Chapman's, where we spent a social evening, I had a long talk with the
brethren on the rights of women, and found a very general sentiment
prevailing that it is time our fetters were broken. L.M. Child and Maria
Chapman strongly supported this view; indeed very many seem to think a
new order of things is very desirable in this respect."

This prevalence of a sentiment favorable to women's rights, which
Angelina observed in Mrs. Chapman's parlors possessed no general
significence. For true to the character of new ideas, this particular
new idea did not bring peace but a sword. It set Abolition brethren
against Abolition brethren, and blew into a flame the differences of
leaders among themselves. But the first irruption of strife which it
caused proceeded from without, came from the church or rather from the
clergy of the Orthodox Congregational churches of Massachusetts. This
clerical opposition to the idea of women's rights found expression in
the celebrated "Pastoral Letter," issued by the General Association of
Ministers of that denomination to the churches of the same in the summer
of 1837. This ecclesiastical bull had two distinct purposes to
accomplish; first, to discourage the agitation of the slavery question
by excluding anti-slavery agents from lecturing upon that subject in the
churches; and, second, to suppress the agitation of the woman's question
by setting the seal of the disapproval of the clergy to the appearance
of women in their new and revolutionary role of public speakers and
teachers on the burning subjects of the times. The reverend authors
threw up their hands and eyes in holy horror at the "widespread and
permanent injury" which seemed to them to threaten "the female
character." They scorned the new-fangled notion of woman's independence,
and asked for nothing better than the Pauline definition of her
"appropriate duties and influence." "The power of women," quoth they,
"is in her dependence.... When she assumes the place and tone of man as
a public reformer, our care and protection of her seem unnecessary; we
put ourselves in self-defence against her, she yields the power which
God has given her for protection, and her character becomes unnatural!"

These Congregational ministers were not the only representatives of the
lordly sex to whom the idea of women's equality was repellent.
Anti-slavery brethren, too, were flinging themselves into a