there, they found
friends on every hand--women of the highest culture and purest
religion, eager to hear them, not only concerning what their eyes had
witnessed in that land of worse than Egyptian bondage, but ready to be
enlightened upon their own duties and rights in the matter of moral
reform, and as willing as resolute to perform them. Without experience,
as the sisters were, we can hardly be surprised that they should have
been carried beyond their original moorings, and have made what many of
their best friends felt was a serious mistake, in uniting the two
causes, thus laying upon abolitionists a double burden, and a
responsibility to which the great majority of them were as much opposed
as were their bitterest enemies. But no movement in this direction was
made for some time. Indeed, it seems to have grown quite naturally out
of, or been forced forward by, the alarm among men, and the means they
took to frighten and warn women away from the dangerous topic.

The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Convention met early in June, 1837. In
writing about it to Jane Smith, Angelina first touches upon the dawning
feeling on this woman question. She says:--

"We had Stanton and Burleigh, Colver and Birney, Garrison and Goodell,
etc. Their eloquence was no less delightful to the ear than the
soundness of their doctrine was comforting to the heart.... A peace
resolution was brought up, but this occasioned some difficulty on
account of non-resistance here meaning a repudiation of civil
government, and of course we cannot expect many to be willing to do
this.... 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. 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.... And now, my dear friend, in view of these things, I feel
that it is not the cause of the slave only that we plead, but the cause
of woman as a moral, responsible being, and I am ready to exclaim, 'Who
is sufficient for these things?' These holy causes must be injured if
they are not helped by us. I see not to what point all these things are
leading us. But one thing comforts me: I do feel as though the Lord had
sent us, and as if I was leaning on his arm."

And in this reliance, in a meek and lowly spirit, impelled not by
inclin