the purpose of advocating the cause of the slave, with whose condition
they were well acquainted, being natives of South Carolina, and having
been themselves at one time implicated in the system. Their original
intention was to confine their public labors to audiences of their own
sex, but they finally addressed promiscuous assemblies. Their intimate
knowledge of the true character of slavery; their zeal, devotion, and
gifts as speakers, produced a deep impression, wherever they went. They
met with considerable opposition from colonizationists, and also from a
portion of the New England clergy, on the ground of the impropriety of
their publicly addressing mixed audiences. This called forth in the
Liberator, which at that time, I understand, was under the patronage,
though I believe not under the control of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
Society, a discussion of the abstract question of the entire equality of
the rights and duties of the two sexes. Here was a new element of
discord. In 1838, at the annual New England convention of abolitionists,
a woman was for the first time placed on committees with men, an
innovation upon the general custom of the community, which excited much
dissatisfaction in the minds of many.

About this time the rightfulness of civil and church government began to
be called in question, through the columns of the Liberator, by its
editor and correspondents. These opinions were concurrently advocated
with the doctrine of non-resistance. Those who hold these opinions,
while they deny that civil and ecclesiastical government are of divine
authority, are yet passively submissive to the authority of the former,
though they abstain from exercising the political rights of citizenship.
There were not wanting those, among the opponents of abolition, to
charge the anti-slavery body at large with maintaining these views, and
in consequence serious embarrassments were thrown in the way of a
successful prosecution of the cause. The executive committee of the