men, was prominently
brought up, and in November, 1637, she was arbitrarily tried before
the Massachusetts General Court upon a joint charge of sedition and
heresy. She was examined for two days by the Governor and prominent
members of the clergy. The Boston Church, which knew her worth,
sustained her, with the exception of five members, one of them the
associate pastor, Wilson. But the country churches and clergy were
against her, and she was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment and
banishment.

As the winter was very severe, she was allowed to remain in Roxbury
until spring, when she joined Roger Williams in Rhode Island, where
she helped form a body-politic, democratic in principle, in which no
one was "accounted delinquent for doctrine." Mistress Hutchinson thus
helped to dissever Church and State, and to found religious freedom in
the United States.

After her residence in Rhode Island, four men were sent to reclaim
her, but she would not return. Upon the death of her husband she
moved, for greater security, to "The Dutch Colony," and died somewhere
in the State of New York.

Thus, through the protracted struggle of the American Colonies for
religious and political freedom, woman bravely shared the dangers and
persecutions of those eventful years. As spy in the enemy's camp;
messenger on the battle-field; soldier in disguise; defender of
herself and children in the solitude of those primeval forests;
imprisoned for heresy; burned, hung, drowned as a witch: what
suffering and anxiety has she not endured! what lofty heroism has she
not exemplified!

And when the crusade against slavery in our republic was inaugurated
in 1830, another Spartan band of women stood ready for the battle, and
the storm of that fierce conflict, surpassing in courage, moral
heroism, and conscientious devotion to great principles, all that
woman in any age had done or dared. With reverent lips we mention the
names of Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Lydia Maria Child, Maria Weston
Chapman, Mary S. Parker, Abby Kelly, whose burning words of rebuke
aroused a sleeping nation to a new-born love of liberty. To their
brave deeds, pure lives, and glowing eloquence, we pay our tributes of
esteem and admiration.

To such as these let South Carolina and Massachusetts build future
monuments, not in Quincy granite, or Parian marble, but in more
enduring blessing to the people; inviolable homesteads for the
laborer; free schools and colleges for boy