For two hundred years women had been accustomed to talk to both men and women in Friends' meetings and, when the moral war against slavery brought religion and politics into close relation, they were ready speakers upon both topics.When the Grimke sisters came into the church with a fresh baptism of the Spirit, they overcame all obstacles and, with a passion for righteousness, moral and spiritual and political, they carried the war against slavery into politics.
In 1833, at the organization of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia, a number of women were present.Lucretia Mott, a distinguished "minister" in the Society of Friends, took part in the proceedings.She was careful to state that she spoke as a mere visitor, having no place in the organization, but she ventured to suggest various modifications in the report of Garrison's committee on a declaration of principles which rendered it more acceptable to the meeting.It had not then been seriously considered whether women could become members of the Anti-Slavery Society, which was at that time composed exclusively of men, with the women maintaining their separate organizations as auxiliaries.
The women of the West were already better organized than the men and were doing a work which men could not do.They were, for the most part, unconscious of any conflict between the peculiar duties of men and those of women in their relations to common objects.The "library associations" of Indiana, which were in fact effective anti-slavery societies, were to a large extent composed of women.To the library were added numerous other disguises, such as "reading circles," "sewing societies,""women's clubs." In many communities the appearance of men in any of these enterprises would create suspicion or even raise a mob.
But the women worked on quietly, effectively, and unnoticed.
The matron of a family would be provided with the best riding-horse which the neighborhood could furnish.Mounted upon her steed, she would sally forth in the morning, meet her carefully selected friends in a town twenty miles away, gain information as to what had been accomplished, give information as to the work in other parts of the district, distribute new literature, confer as to the best means of extending their labors, and return in the afternoon.The father of such a family was quite content with the humbler task of cooperation by supplying the sinews of war.There was complete equality between husband and wife because their aims were identical and each rendered the service most convenient and most needed.Women did what men could not do.In the territory of the enemy the men were reached through the gradual and tentative efforts of women whom the uninitiated supposed to be spending idle hours at a sewing circle.Interest was maintained by the use of information of the same general character as that which later took the country by storm in Uncle Tom's Cabin.In course of time all disguise was thrown aside.A public speaker of national reputation would appear, a meeting would be announced, and a rousing abolition speech would be delivered; the mere men of the neighborhood would have little conception how the surprising change had been accomplished.
On rare occasions the public presentation of the anti-slavery view would be undertaken prematurely, as in 1840 at Pendleton, Indiana, when Frederick Douglass attempted to address a public meeting and was almost slain by missiles from the mob.Pendleton, however, was not given over to the enemy.The victim of the assault was restored to health in the family of a leading citizen.The outrage was judiciously utilized to convince the fair-minded that one of the evils of slavery was the development of minds void of candor and justice.On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Pendleton disturbance there was another great meeting in the town.Frederick Douglass was the hero of the occasion.The woman who was the head of the family that restored him to health was on the platform.Some of the men who threw the brickbats were there to make public confession and to apologize for the brutal deed.
In the minds of a few persons of rare intellectual and logical endowment, democracy has always implied the equality of the sexes.From the time of the French Revolution there have been advocates of this doctrine.As early as 1820, Frances Wright, a young woman in Scotland having knowledge of the Western republic founded upon the professed principles of liberty and equality, came to America for the express purpose of pleading the cause of equal rights for women.To the general public her doctrine seemed revolutionary, threatening the very foundations of religion and morality.In the midst of opposition and persecution she proclaimed views respecting the rights and duties of women which today are generally accepted as axiomatic.
