Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/51

Rh ton, living in Albany, made the acquaintance of Judge Hurlbut and a large circle of lawyers and legislators, and, while exerting herself to strengthen their convictions in favor of the pending bill, she resolved at no distant day to call a convention for a full and free discussion of woman's rights and wrongs.

In 1828, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, daughters of a wealthy planter of Charleston, South Carolina, emancipated their slaves and came North to lecture on the evils of slavery, leaving their home and native place forever because of their hatred of this wrong. Angelina was a natural orator. Fresh from the land of bondage, there was a fervor in her speech that electrified her hearers and drew crowds wherever she went. Sarah published a book reviewing the Bible arguments the clergy were then making in their pulpits to prove that the degradation of the slave and woman were alike in harmony with the expressed will of God. Thus women from the beginning took an active part in the Anti-Slavery struggle. They circulated petitions, raised large sums of money by fairs, held prayer-meetings and conventions. In 1835, Angelina wrote an able letter to William Lloyd Garrison, immediately after the Boston mob. These letters and appeals were considered very effective abolition documents.

In May, 1837, a National Woman's Anti-Slavery Convention was held in New York, in which eight States were represented by seventy-one delegates. The meetings were ably sustained through two days. The different sessions were opened by prayer and reading of the Scriptures by the women themselves. A devout, earnest spirit prevailed. The debates, resolutions, speeches, and appeals were fully equal to those in any Convention held by men of that period. Angelina Grimke was appointed by this Convention to prepare an appeal for the slaves to the people of the free States, and a letter to John Quincy Adams thanking him for his services in defending the right of petition for women and slaves, qualified with the regret that by expressing himself "adverse to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia," he did not sustain the cause of freedom and of God. She wrote a stirring appeal to the Christian women of the South, urging them to use their influence against slavery. Sarah also wrote an appeal to the clergy of the South, conjuring them to use their power for freedom.

Among those who took part in these conventions we find the names of Lydia Maria Child, Mary Grove, Henrietta Sargent, Sarah Pugh, Abby Kelley, Mary S. Parker, of Boston, who was president of the Convention; Anne Webster, Deborah Shaw, Martha Storrs,