were commanded to honor and obey." These
remarks were so ridiculous as to excite laughter, and the manner in
which Stanton demolished the speaker by his own arguments called forth
such repeated rounds of applause that the great orator was obliged to
_insist_ upon silence.

At this meeting, said to have been the largest ever held in Boston,
several hundred women were present, a most encouraging sign to Sarah
Grimke of the progress of _her_ ideas.

After some parleying, the hall of the House of Representatives was
granted the Society for their remaining meetings, and here Quincy,
Colver, Phelps, and Wendell Phillips spoke and made a deep impression,
so deep that a committee was appointed to take into consideration the
petitions on the subject of slavery.

Stanton, half in jest, asked Angelina if she would not like to speak
before that committee, as the names of some thousands of women were
before it as signers of petitions. She had never thought of such a
thing, but, after reflecting upon it a day, sent Stanton word that if
the friends of the cause thought well of it, she _would_ speak as he
had proposed. He was surprised and troubled, for, though he was all
right in the abstract on the woman question, he feared the
consequences of such a manifest assertion of equality.

"It seems," Angelina writes, "even the stout-hearted tremble when the
woman question is to be acted out in full. Jackson, Fuller, Phelps,
and Quincy were consulted. The first is sound to the core, and went
right up to the State House to inquire of the chairman of the
committee whether I could be heard. Wonderful to tell, he said Yes,
without the least hesitation, and actually helped to remove the
scruples of some of the timid-hearted abolitionists. Perhaps it is
best I should bear the responsibility _wholly_ myself. I feel willing
to do it, and think I shall say nothing more about it, but just let
Birney and Stanton make the speeches they expect to before the
committee this week, and when they have done, make an independent
application to the chairman as a woman, as a Southerner, as a moral
being.... I feel that this is the most important step I have ever been
called to take: important to woman, to the slave, to my country, and
to the world."

This plan was carried out, thanks to James C. Alvord, the chairman of
the committee; and the halls of the Massachusetts Legislature were
opened for the first time to a woman. Wendell Phillips says of that
me