woman in the church? Only in the Quaker congregation and possibly among
the Methodists in the South did colonial womanhood successfully assert
itself, and take part in the official activities of the institution. In
the Episcopal church of Virginia and the Carolinas, the Catholic Church
of Maryland and Louisiana, and the Dutch church of New York, women were
quiet onlookers, pious, reverent, and meek, freely acknowledging God in
their lives, content to be seen and not heard. In the Puritan assembly,
likewise, they were, on the surface at least, meek, silent, docile; but
their silence was deceiving, and, as shown in the witchcraft
catastrophe, was but the silence of a smouldering volcano. In the
eighteenth century, the womanhood of the land became more assertive, in
religion as in other affairs, and there is no doubt that Mercy Warren,
Eliza Pinckney, Abigail Adams, and others mentioned in these pages were
thinkers whose opinions were respected by both clergy and laymen. The
Puritan preacher did indeed declare against speech by women in the
church, and demanded that if they had any questions, they should ask
their husbands; but there came a time, and that quickly, when the voice
of woman was heard in the blood of Salem's dead.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Reprinted in _English Garner_, Vol. II, p. 429.

[2] Vol. I, p. 101.

[3] Sewall's _Diary_, Vol. I, p. 40.

[4] _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 111.