nized themselves into female anti-slavery societies, did their
work apart from the men, who plainly regarded themselves as the
principals in the contest, and women as their moral seconds. The first
shock, which this arrangement, so accordant with the oak-and-ivy notion
of the masculine half of mankind, received, came when representatives of
the gentler sex dropped the secondary role assigned women in the
conflict, and began to enact that of a star. The advent of the sisters
Grimke upon the anti-slavery stage as public speakers, marked the advent
of the idea of women's rights, of their equality with men in the
struggle with slavery.

At the start these ladies delivered their message to women only, but
by-and-bye as the fame of their eloquence spread men began to appear
among their auditories. Soon they were thrilling packed halls and
meeting-houses in different parts of the country, comprised of men and
women. The lesson which their triumph enforced of women's fitness to
enact the role of principals in the conflict with slavery was not lost
upon the sex. Women went, saw, and conquered their prejudices against
the idea of equality; likewise, many men. The good seed of universal
liberty and equality fell into fruitful soil and germinated in due time
within the heart of the moral movement against slavery.

The more that Sarah and Angelina Grimke reflected upon the sorry
position to which men had assigned women in Church and State the more
keenly did they feel its injustice and degradation. They beat with their
revolutionary idea of equality against the iron bars of the cage-like
sphere in which they were born, and within which they were doomed to
live and die by the law of masculine might. At heart they were rebels
against the foundation principle of masculine supremacy on which society
and government rested. While pleading for the freedom of the slaves, the
sense of their own bondage and that of their sisters rose up before them
and revealed itself in bitter questionings. "Are we aliens," asked
Angelina, "because we are women? Are we bereft of citizenship because we
are the _mothers, wives, and daughters_ of a mighty people? Have _women_
no country--no interests staked on the public weal--no partnership in a
nation's guilt or shame?" This discontent with the existing social
establishment in its relation to women received sympathetic responses
from many friends to whom the sisters communicated the contagion of
their unrest