ation, the woman's question played a principal part. Upon this as
upon the Sabbath question, Garrison's early position was one of extreme
conservatism. As late as 1830, he shared the common opinions in regard
to woman's sphere, and was strongly opposed to her stepping outside of
it into that occupied by man. A petition of seven hundred women of
Pittsburgh, Pa., to Congress in behalf of the Indians gave his masculine
prejudices a great shock. "This is, in our opinion," he declared, "an
uncalled for interference, though made with holiest intentions. We
should be sorry to have this practice become general. There would then
be no question agitated in Congress without eliciting the informal and
contrariant opinions of the softer sex." This top-lofty sentiment
accorded well with the customary assumption and swagger of one of the
lords of creation. For the young reformer was evidently a firm believer
in the divine right of his sex to rule in the world of politics. But as
he grew taller and broader the horizon of woman widened, and her sphere
embraced every duty, responsibility, and right for which her gifts and
education fitted her. The hard and fast lines of sex disappeared from
his geography of the soul. He perceived for a truth that in humanity
there was neither male nor female, but that man and woman were one in
work and destiny--equals in bearing the world's burden, equals in
building the world's glory. He heard in his heart the injunction of the
eternal wisdom saying: "Whom God hath joined together let no man put
asunder;" and straightway disposed his opinions and prejudices, his
thoughts and purposes in cordial obedience therewith. He saw at once the
immense value of woman's influence in the temperance movement, he saw no
less quickly her importance in the anti-slavery reform, and he had
appealed to her for help in the work of both, and she had justified his
appeal and proven herself the most devoted of coadjutors.

In the beginning of the movement against slavery the line of demarcation
between the sexes was strictly observed in the formation of societies.
The men had theirs, the women theirs. Each, sexually considered, were
very exclusive affairs. It did not seem to have occurred to the founders
of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, or of the national organization
to admit women to membership in them, nor did it seem to enter the mind
of any woman to prefer a request to be admitted into them. Anti-slavery
women orga