Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/37

26 mob which rang the church hell, tooted tin horns, and beat on tin pans.

At Cornwall Bridge Miss Kelley barely escaped personal injury. The politics of the town were controlled by a charcoal manufacturer, a drunken, profane fellow, who had a similar following. "When we entered the house, we found it well filled and lighted, with a candle on the desk, and several candles and oil lamps on the box stove in the centre. The audience appeared respectable; but from with- out smutty faces looked in through the open windows, and ominous mutterings were heard. Directly there strode in a burly, led-faced fellow, with glaring eyes, who brandished a huge club, shouting with an oath, 'Where's the nigger wench?' A shudder ran through me. A feeble, trembling voice in a far corner of the room replied, 'Perhaps she has not come.' Down fell his club, right and left, Kitting out and smashing lamps and candles. That on the desk followed in an instant, while I was seized by my friends, and in the darkness was hurried to the door, amid the sounds of the falling club, the screams of the wounded, and the horrible oaths of the drunken wretch." Another attempt to hold a meeting was foiled by the appearance of this man with a loaded gun.

If anything more than the terrible campaign in Connecticut were needed to convince Miss Kelley that she had a divine call for public speaking, it was found in the effect produced by the short but eloquent appeal which she made in Pennsylvania Hall, Philadelphia, on the memorable evening of its destruction at the hands of a pro-slavery mob, May IG, 1838. At the close of that meeting, her friend, Theodore D. Weld, strongly urged her to join the lecture corps, adding, "Abby, if you don't, God will smite you." But, before a woman could go forth as the accredited agent of the Anti-slavery Society, a battle had to be fought within its own ranks. Witness a letter dictated by Mrs. Foster two or three years before her death:—

"Long before there was any organized movement in behalf of the equal rights of women, the battle for the recognition of their equality was fought and won, as an incidental issue, on the anti-slavery platform. In 1837 Sarah and Angelina Grimke, of South Carolina, were invited to New England to lecture to women on slavery. Meetings were appointed for them in Boston, at which a few men looked in from the vestibule, and finally entered and took seats. No objections being made to this invasion, their subsequent meetings were, largely attended by men as well as women. Meetings were held in many towns in New England, frequently in influential churches, the pastors opening with prayer and otherwise giving countenance to the movement. Among the most important hearings given the Grimkes were those before the Legislature of Massachusetts, on petitions. They created an interest that had never been felt before, as witness the action of the Congregational Association, which in 1838, by a pastoral letter, written by a committee of which the Rev. Nehemiah Adams was chairman, warned its various churches against giving countenance to women's speaking in public assemblies, a movement which was anti-scriptural, unnatural, indecent, and ruinous to the best interests of the comnuuiity.

"These lectures and the action of the Congregational Association resulted in a great agitation, extending throughout New England, especially in the anti-slavery ranks. No woman hail hitherto taken part in a mixed convention of any of the anti-slavery societies by speaking or serving on committees; but in May, 1838, at the New England Convention, Abby Kelley said a few words from her seat in the hall, and was afterward nominated and elected a member of a conmiittee to memorialize the religious associations of Massachusetts in regard to slavery.

"This action, hastily taken in the closing moments of the first .evening, was next day violently opposed by ministers and others, among them several who had been prominent in aiding the Grimke sisters in their mixed meetings, but who now, under the influence of the pastoral letter and hostile public sentiment, had joined the opposition. These members, having in vain requested Miss Kelley to withdraw from the committee, introduced a resolution excusing her from serving. An intensely exciting discussion followed. The