ll postures
of self-defence against the dangerous innovation, which the sisters
Grimke were letting into the social establishment, by itinerating "in
the character of public lecturers and teachers." Amos A. Phelps was
quite as strongly opposed to women preachers, to women assuming the
"place and tone of man as a public reformer," as Nehemiah Adams himself.
He remonstrated, with them against their continued assumption of the
character of public lecturers and teachers, but to no purpose. Sarah and
Angelina were uncompromising, refused to yield one iota of their rights
as "moral and responsible beings." They firmly declined to make their
Quakerism and not their womenhood their warrant for "exercising the
rights and performing the duties" of rational and responsible beings,
for the sake of quieting tender consciences, like that of Phelps, among
the anti-slavery brethren. They were in earnest and demanded to know
"whether there is such a thing as male and female virtues, male and
female duties." Angelina writes: "My opinion is that there is no
difference, and that this false idea has run the ploughshare of ruin
over the whole field of morality. My idea is that whatever is morally
right for a man to do is morally right for a woman to do. I recognize no
rights but human rights.... I am persuaded that woman is not to be, as
she has been, a mere second-hand agent in the regeneration of a fallen
world, but the acknowledged equal and co-worker with man in this
glorious work."

The debate on the subject threatened for a short season to push the
woman's question to the level of the slavery question. The contention
became acrimonious, and the alienation of friendships was widespread.
John G. Whittier and Theodore D. Weld, who were both avowed believers in
the idea of women's rights, nevertheless, felt that the agitation of the
subject, under the circumstances, was a grave blunder. "No moral
enterprise, when prosecuted with ability and any sort of energy, _ever_
failed under heaven," wrote Weld to Sarah and Angelina, "so long as its
conductors pushed the _main_ principle, and did not strike off until
they reached the summit level. On the other hand, every reform that ever
foundered in mid-sea, was capsized by one of these gusty side-winds."
Both Weld and Whittier endeavored to dissuade the sisters from mooting
the question of women's rights at all, and to urge them to devote their
voice and pen to the "_main_ principle" exclusively. B