The Grimké sisters

by Catherine H. Birney

Sarah, too, speaks of looking back upon the labors of the summer with feelings of unmixed satisfaction.

That the leaven prepared in Sarah Grimké's letters on the "Province of Woman" was beginning to work was evidenced by a public discussion on woman's rights which took place at the Boston Lyceum on the evening of Dec. 4, 1837. The amount of interest this first public debate on the subject excited was shown by the fact that an audience of fifteen hundred of the most intelligent and respectable people of Boston crowded the hall and listened attentively to the end. Sarah and Angelina, the latter now almost entirely recovered, were present, accompanied by Mr. Philbrick.

"A very noble view throughout," says Angelina, and adds: "The discussion has raised my hopes of the woman question. It was conducted with respect, delicacy, and dignity, and many minds no doubt were roused to reflection, though I must not forget to say it was decided against us by acclamation, our enemies themselves being judges. It was like a meeting of slave-holders deciding that the slaves are happier in their present condition than they would be freed."

Soon after this, Angelina writes that some Boston women, including Maria Chapman and Lydia M. Child, were about to start a woman's rights paper, and she adds: "We greatly hope dear Maria Chapman will soon commence lecturing, and that the spark we have been permitted to kindle on the woman question will never die out."

The annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society was held the latter part of January, 1838, and was notable in several respects. On the second day, the "great Texas meeting," as it was called, was held in Faneuil Hall, and the fact that this Cradle of Liberty was loaned to the abolitionists was bitterly commented upon by their opponents, while abolitionists themselves regarded it as strong evidence of the progress their cause had made. Angelina writes Jane Smith a graphic account of the speakers and speeches at this meeting, but especially mentions Henry B. Stanton, who made the most powerful speech of the whole session, and was so severe on Congress, that a representative who was present arose to object to the "hot thunderbolts and burning lava" that had been let loose on the heads of "the powers that be, of those whom we were commanded to honor and obey." These remarks were so ridiculous as to excite laughter, and the manner in which Stanton demolished the speaker by his own arguments called forth such repeated rounds of applause that the great orator was obliged to insist upon silence.

At this meeting, said to have been the largest ever held in Boston, several hundred women were present, a most encouraging sign to Sarah Grimké of the progress of her ideas.

After some parleying, the hall of the House of Representatives was granted the Society for their remaining meetings, and here Quincy, Colver, Phelps, and Wendell Phillips spoke and made a deep impression, so deep that a committee was appointed to take into consideration the petitions on the subject of slavery.

Stanton, half in jest, asked Angelina if she would not like to speak before that committee, as the names of some thousands of women were before it as signers of petitions. She had never thought of such a thing, but, after reflecting upon it a day, sent Stanton word that if the friends of the cause thought well of it, she would speak as he had proposed. He was surprised and troubled, for, though he was all right in the abstract on the woman question, he feared the consequences of such a manifest assertion of equality.

"It seems," Angelina writes, "even the stout-hearted tremble when the woman question is to be acted out in full. Jackson, Fuller, Phelps, and Quincy were consulted. The first is sound to the core, and went right up to the State House to inquire of the chairman of the committee whether I could be heard. Wonderful to tell, he said Yes, without the least hesitation, and actually helped to remove the scruples of some of the timid-hearted abolitionists. Perhaps it is best I should bear the responsibility wholly myself. I feel willing to do it, and think I shall say nothing more about it, but just let Birney and Stanton make the speeches they expect to before the committee this week, and when they have done, make an independent application to the chairman as a woman, as a Southerner, as a moral being.... I feel that this is the most important step I have ever been called to take: important to woman, to the slave, to my country, and to the world."

This plan was carried out, thanks to James C. Alvord, the chairman of the committee; and the halls of the Massachusetts Legislature were opened for the first time to a woman. Wendell Phillips says of that meeting:—"It gave Miss Grimké the opportunity to speak to the best culture and character of Massachusetts; and the profound impression then made on a class not often found in our meetings was never wholly lost. It was not only the testimony of one most competent to speak, but it was the profound religious experience of one who had broken out of the charmed circle, and whose intense earnestness melted all opposition. The converts she made needed no after-training. It was when you saw she was opening some secret record of her own experience that the painful silence and breathless interest told the deep effect and lasting impression her words were making."