e this peculiar advantage the moment they took up another subject.

2d. That almost any other women of their capacity and station could
produce a greater effect on the public mind on that subject than they,
because they were Quakers, and woman's right to speak and minister was
a Quaker doctrine. Therefore, for these and other reasons, he urged
them to leave the lesser work to others who could do it better than
they, and devote, consecrate their whole souls, bodies, and spirits to
the greater work which they could do far better than anybody else. He
continues: "Let us all first wake up the nation to lift millions of
slaves from the dust and turn them into men, and then, when we all
have our hand in, it will be an easy matter to take millions of women
from their knees and set them on their feet; or, in other words,
transform them from _babies_ into _women_."

A spirited, almost dogmatic, controversy was the result of these
letters. In a letter to Jane Smith, Angelina says: "I cannot
understand why they (the abolitionists) so exceedingly regret sister's
having begun those letters. Brother Weld was not satisfied with
writing us _one_ letter about them, but we have received two more
setting forth various reasons why we should not moot the subject of
woman's rights _at all_, but our judgment is not convinced, and we
hardly know what to do about it, for we have just as high an opinion
of Brother Garrison's views, and _he_ says, '_go on_.' ... The great
effort of abolitionists now seems to be to keep every topic but
slavery out of view, and hence their opposition to Henry O. Wright and
his preaching anti-government doctrines, and our even writing on
woman's rights. Oh, if I _only_ saw they were _right_ and _we_ were
_wrong_, I would yield immediately."

One of the two other letters from T.D. Weld, referred to by Angelina,
is a very long one, covering over ten pages of the old-fashioned
foolscap paper, and is in reply to letters received from the sisters,
and which were afterwards returned to them and probably destroyed. I
have concluded to make some extracts from this long letter from Mr.
Weld, not only on account of the arguments used, but to show the
frank, fearless spirit with which he met the reasoning of his two
"sisters." When we consider that he was even then courting Angelina,
his hardihood is a little surprising.

After observing that he had carefully read their letters, and made an
abstract on half a sheet of pape