Whittier's muse, too, found the Pastoral Letter a fitting theme for its vigorous, sympathetic utterances. The poem thus inspired is perhaps one of the very best among his many songs of freedom. It will be remembered as beginning thus:—

Up to this time nothing had been said by either of the sisters in their lectures concerning their views about women. They had carefully confined themselves to the subject of slavery, and the attendant topics of immediate emancipation, abstinence from the use of slave products, the errors of the Colonization Society, and the sin of prejudice on account of color. But now that they found their own rights invaded, they began to feel it was time to look out for the rights of their whole sex.

The Rev. Amos Phelps, a staunch abolitionist, wrote a private letter to the sisters, remonstrating earnestly but kindly against their lecturing to men and women, and requesting permission to publish the fact of his having done so, with a declaration on their part that they preferred having female audiences only. Angelina says to Jane Smith:—

"I wish you could see sister's admirable reply to this. We told him we were entirely willing he should publish anything he felt it right to, but that we could not consent to his saying in our name that we preferred female audiences only, because in so saying we should surrender a fundamental principle, believing, as we did, that as moral beings it was our duty to appeal to all moral beings on this subject, without any distinction of sex. He thinks we are throwing a responsibility on the Anti-Slavery Society which will greatly injure it. To this we replied that we would write to Elizur Wright, and give the Executive Committee an opportunity to throw off all such responsibility by publishing the facts that we had no commission from them, and were not either responsible to or dependent on them. I wrote this letter. H.B. Stanton happened to be here at the time; after reading all the letters, he wrote to Elizur Wright, warning him by no means to publish anything which would in the least appear to disapprove of what we were doing. I do not know what the result will be. My only fear is that some of our anti-slavery brethren will commit themselves, in this excitement, against women's rights and duties before they examine the subject, and will, in a few years, regret the steps they may now take. This will soon be an absorbing topic. It must be discussed whether women are moral and responsible beings, and whether there is such a thing as male and female virtues, male and female duties, etc. 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 know nothing of men's rights and women's rights; for in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female.... 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.... Hubbard Winslow of Boston has just preached a sermon to set forth the proper sphere of our sex. I am truly glad that men are not ashamed to come out boldly and tell us just what is in their hearts."

In another letter she mentions that a clergyman gave out a notice of one of their meetings, at the request, he said, of his deacons, but under protest; and he earnestly advised his members, particularly the women, not to go and hear them. At a meeting, also, at Pepperell, where they had to speak in a barn, on account of the feeling against them, she mentions that an Orthodox clergyman opened the meeting with prayer, but went out immediately after finishing, declaring that he would as soon rob a hen-roost as remain there and hear a woman speak in public.

This, however, did not prevent the crowding of the barn "almost to suffocation," and deep attention on the part of those assembled.

In the face of all this censure and ridicule, the two sisters continued in the discharge of a duty to which they increasingly felt they were called from on high. The difficulties, inconveniences, and discomforts to which they were constantly subjected, and of which the women reformers of the present day know so little, were borne cheerfully, and accepted as means of greater refinement and purification for the Lord's work. They were often obliged to ride six or eight or ten miles through the sun or rain, in stages or wagons over rough roads to a meeting, speak two hours, and return the same distance to their temporary abiding-place. For many weeks they held five and six meetings a week, in a different place every time, were often poorly lodged and poorly fed, especially the latter, as they ate nothing which they did not know to be the product of free labor; taking cold frequently, and speaking when ill enough to be in bed, but sustained through all by faith in the justice of their cause, and by their simple reliance upon the love and guidance of an Almighty Father. The record of their journeyings, as copied by Angelina from her day-book for the benefit of Jane Smith, is very interesting, as showing how, in spite of continued opposition to them, anti-slavery sentiment grew under their eloquent preaching. Wendell Phillips says: "I can never forget the impulse our cause received when those two sisters doubled our hold on New England in 1837 and 1838, and made a name, already illustrious in South Carolina by great services, equally historical in Massachusetts, in the two grandest movements of our day."

Angelina's eloquence must have been something marvellous. The sweet, persuasive voice, the fluent speech, and occasionally a flash of the old energy, were all we who knew her in later years were granted, to show us what had been; but it was enough to confirm the accounts given by those who had felt the power of her oratory in those early times. Says Wendell Phillips: "I well remember evening after evening listening to eloquence such as never then had been heard from a woman. She swept the chords of the human heart with a power that has never been surpassed and rarely equalled."

Mr. Lincoln, in whose pulpit she lectured in Gardiner, says: "Never before or since have I seen an audience so held and so moved by any public speaker, man or woman; and never before or since have I seen a Christian pulpit so well filled, nor in the pews seen such absorbed hearers."