ere ready
speakers upon both topics. When the Grimke sisters came into the church
with a fresh baptism of the Spirit, they overcame all obstacles and,
with a passion for righteousness, moral and spiritual and political,
they carried the war against slavery into politics.

In 1833, at the organization of the American Anti-Slavery Society
in Philadelphia, a number of women were present. Lucretia Mott, a
distinguished "minister" in the Society of Friends, took part in the
proceedings. She was careful to state that she spoke as a mere visitor,
having no place in the organization, but she ventured to suggest various
modifications in the report of Garrison's committee on a declaration of
principles which rendered it more acceptable to the meeting. It had not
then been seriously considered whether women could become members of
the Anti-Slavery Society, which was at that time composed exclusively
of men, with the women maintaining their separate organizations as
auxiliaries.

The women of the West were already better organized than the men and
were doing a work which men could not do. They were, for the most part,
unconscious of any conflict between the peculiar duties of men and
those of women in their relations to common objects. The "library
associations" of Indiana, which were in fact effective anti-slavery
societies, were to a large extent composed of women. To the library
were added numerous other disguises, such as "reading circles," "sewing
societies," "women's clubs." In many communities the appearance of men
in any of these enterprises would create suspicion or even raise a mob.
But the women worked on quietly, effectively, and unnoticed.

The matron of a family would be provided with the best riding-horse
which the neighborhood could furnish. Mounted upon her steed, she would
sally forth in the morning, meet her carefully selected friends in
a town twenty miles away, gain information as to what had been
accomplished, give information as to the work in other parts of the
district, distribute new literature, confer as to the best means of
extending their labors, and return in the afternoon. The father of
such a family was quite content with the humbler task of cooperation by
supplying the sinews of war. There was complete equality between husband
and wife because their aims were identical and each rendered the service
most convenient and most needed. Women did what men could not do. In
the territory of the enemy the