Читать книгу The Life of Lucy Stone - Alice Stone Blackwell - Страница 5

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The family circle in the evenings was a large one. Father Stone built magnificent fires in the great open fireplace, which stretched a long way across one side of the room; in front of it, at a safe distance, stood a large, high-backed settle that kept off the draughts. Near one end of the circle stood a small square table with a light on it, and those who were studying or sewing sat near it. The row of the others extended clear around the fire. There were Father and Mother Stone, the seven children who lived to grow up, — Francis, William Bowman, Eliza, Rhoda, Luther, Lucy and Sarah; and in the corner nearest the brick oven, old Aunt Sally, knitting. Often the neighborhood blacksmith sat there, telling stories of bears, wolves and Indians; and there was generally one or more of three old drunkards, who had been Father Stone's schoolmates, and whom he would never turn away. They often came and quartered themselves upon him for long visits. They were an affliction to Mother Stone, who had to cook for them and wash their clothes. She thought them a bad influence for the children; but the children regarded them with disgust. Once Luther and Lucy conspired secretly to break the jug of rum that one of them had hidden by a stone wall, when he came to spend a week-end.

On winter nights the children often roasted apples on the hearth, and popped corn. Two or three times in the course of the evening, one of them would be sent down cellar to bring up a quart mug of cider. It was passed from hand to hand, and they all drank from it. Tea and coffee were not used in this household.

On Sunday two wagonloads of the family were driven to church, and the rest walked. Those who rode one Sunday walked the next. The children too small to attend were gathered around the mother at home, while she read them Bible stories.

Once, as she went through the fields in summer, Lucy saw a large snake asleep upon a rock in the sun. Most little barefooted girls would have run away. Lucy picked up a heavy stone, approached softly, poised the stone exactly above the reptile's head and dropped it, crushing the head to pieces. The act was symbolic. Her whole life was, metaphorically, a bruising of the serpent's head.

Most brave men and women are courageous because they overcome their fears. Lucy was one of the very few persons who seem to have been born incapable of fear. She could feel terror for those whom she loved; but, for herself, she did not know what fear was. In her later life, in alarms arising from fire or thieves, we never saw her fluttered. She said in her old age that, during all the mobs and tumults of the antislavery time, she was never conscious of a quickened heartbeat. She laid it to the fact that she had been brought up on a farm and so had "good calm nerves." But it was not due to her bodily health. In her last illness, when her physical strength was all gone, her serene courage remained.

The overmastering purpose of her life took possession of her in childhood. She very early became indignant at the way in which she saw her mother and other women treated by their husbands and by the laws, and she silently made up her mind that those laws must be changed. Only wait until she was older! Then, one day, as she was reading the Bible, with the big book resting upon her little short legs, she came upon the words, "Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." She was filled with horror. She knew that the laws and the customs were against the women, but it had never occurred to her that God could be against them. She went to her mother and asked, "Is there anything that will put an end to me?" Annihilation was what she craved. Seeing the child's agitation, the mother questioned her, learned the trouble, and then, stroking Lucy's hair away from her hot forehead, told her gently that it was the curse of Eve, and that it was women's duty to submit. "My mother always tried to submit. I never could," Lucy said. For a short time she was in despair. Then she made up her mind to go to college, study Greek and Hebrew, read the Bible in the original, and satisfy herself as to whether such texts were correctly translated.

When her father heard of her wish to go to college, he said to his wife, in all seriousness, "Is the child crazy?" It had not surprised him when his two elder sons wanted to go to college, but such a thing was unheard of in the case of a girl. Lucy herself had her misgivings, and asked her brother privately whether it was possible for a girl to learn Greek.

She had a keen appetite for reading matter. The stagecoach passed the schoolhouse door, and sometimes travelers would throw out a handful of tracts or other pamphlets for the children to pick up. Lucy was so eager to get them that once, nimble as a young chamois, she darted through the open window. When she came back with her prize, the teacher stood in the door and said, "You must come in as you went out," and made her climb in through the window, to her great mortification.

The only papers taken by the family were the Massachusetts Spy and the Advocate of Moral Reform; but they borrowed the Youth's Companion and read it eagerly. When the children grew older, they subscribed for the Liberator and the Anti-Slavery Standard. Later, they took the Oberlin Evangelist for years.

They had few books. Among these, Lucy's especial delight was Guthrie's "Geographical, Historical and Commercial Grammar of the World", printed in London in 1788. They had also Fox's "Book of Martyrs", Edwards on the Affections, and a big volume gotten out by the Baptists, who were at that time intensely unpopular. It showed a certain liberality of mind on Father Stone's part that he should have bought a book setting forth the views of a denomination which was the object of so much public odium.

The only storybook in the house was "Charlotte Temple." This Was said to be both true and instructive, so the children were allowed to read it. But, in general, novels were classed with cards, dancing and the theater, as utterly sinful.

The first novel Lucy ever saw was "The Children of the Abbey." Her elder sister Rhoda, teaching school in a neighboring village, read it and told Lucy about it, and, at her eager request, borrowed it for her. Lucy used to lock herself into her room to read it. While she was absorbed in the third volume, her younger sister Sarah came to the door and was refused admittance. She peeped through the keyhole and told her mother that Lucy was reading something with the door locked. The mother came up to investigate. She was shocked and distressed. Lucy begged hard for leave to finish the story. Rhoda added her assurances that it really was not a bad book, and the gentle mother, with many misgivings, consented. But it was years before Lucy read another novel.

As a child she had a high temper. Once when Sarah had angered her, and Lucy was chasing her through the house, she caught sight in a looking-glass of her own face, white with wrath. She said to herself, "That is the face of a murderer! " She went out and sat down on a stone behind the woodshed, and rocked herself to and fro, holding one bare foot in her hand and thinking how she could ever get the better of such a temper. She had an overwhelming sense that it was something which she must do alone; nobody could help her. She decided that when she was angry she must not speak; if she could refrain from breaking forth into such a flow of wrathful words, that would be the first step. She sat on the rock till it grew so dark that her mother called her in.

From that time on, she set herself seriously to conquer her temper. Luther did not make it easier. He was a tease. When he had taunted her till she grew angry, he would say, "See Luce's nose turn up! See it! See it!" Lucy's nose turned up by nature; but at this it would turn up more and more, and her face grow as red as a beet. He had no idea of the struggle going on within her. Then she would go away across the pastures to the Hemlock Hill and sit down where the sweet voice of the little brook and the soft sough of the wind in the trees helped to calm her. Those who saw her great gentleness in later life found it hard to realize that her temper had ever been so fiery.

When she was about twelve years old, she saw her mother's health giving way under the hard work, and quietly made up her mind that, if some one must be killed by overwork, she could be spared better than her mother. A strong and resolute child, she took upon herself as many as she could of her mother's burdens. The school was so far away that the children took their lunches with them and stayed till the afternoon. Now, rising very early on Monday mornings, Lucy would do the washing for the family of ten or twelve persons, hang out the clothes to dry, walk a mile to school, walk back at noon and bring the clothes in, and return for the afternoon session. She toiled early and late. Even her robust health suffered under the strain and she grew weak and pale. In those days paleness was admired. To be pale was to look "delicate." She hid her fatigue from her mother. When so tired that she could hardly stand, she would slip upstairs and lie down for a few minutes; but if she heard her mother's foot on the stair, she would at once spring up and pretend to be busy. At night, after the work was done, she sat up to study.

Things kept happening that strengthened her zeal for equal rights. Mary Lyon, the pioneer of education for women in New England, was raising money for Mount Holyoke Seminary. She spoke before the sewing circle of the West Brookfield church and told of the great lack of educational opportunities for girls. Lucy listened, her heart growing hotter and hotter within her. The sewing circle was working to educate a theological student, and Lucy was making a shirt. She thought how absurd it was for her to be working to help educate a student who could earn more money toward his own education in a week, by teaching, than she could earn toward hers in a month; and she left the shirt unfinished and hoped that no one ever would complete it.

Her father did not like to buy schoolbooks for her. He told her she could use her brother's. Once he refused to get her a necessary textbook, which he thought quite superfluous for a girl. "I went to the woods, with my little bare toes, and gathered chestnuts, and sold them for money enough to buy the book. I felt a prouder sense of triumph than I have ever known since," she said, when telling the story. After that, when she wanted books, she picked berries and nuts and sold them. She joined with other ambitious pupils to secure a college student as teacher for the school, so that they might learn more than the ordinary branches.

The teacher boarded with the Stone family. Once, when he saw Lucy go out into the pasture, catch the horses, bring them in and harness them, he told her that she ought to be a missionary's wife and live at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. This young man awakened in Lucy the first stirrings of the tender passion; but she kept her feelings strictly in her own breast. Her mind was made up never to marry.

She was not beautiful. Her father said, "Luce's face is like a blacksmith's apron; it keeps off the sparks." She told him with indignation that she did not mean to marry, and that she wished her face was even plainer. Yet, in spite of her irregular features, she was very attractive. She had a pretty figure, a beautiful rosy complexion, which remained with her through life, bright gray eyes, good teeth, a profusion of dark brown hair, unusually fine and silky, which was very little gray at her death, much personal magnetism, and a singularly sweet voice. She had also a mind as bright and swift as quicksilver, and that indescribable something which radiates from a character strong, simple and sincere. Many hearts were drawn to her. Until her marriage, which took place late in life, she never lacked wooers.

She joined the Orthodox Congregational Church of West Brookfield while still in her teens. The subject of slavery was agitating the churches more and more. William Lloyd Garrison had started his paper, the Liberator, in Boston, and the Governors of Virginia and Georgia had written to the Mayor of Boston, recommending that it be suppressed. They were surprised to learn that there was no law under which this could be done. The Mayor, who had never heard of the Liberator, sought for Garrison, and told the Governors that he and his paper were not worth notice; that his office was an obscure hole and his only visible auxiliary a Negro boy.

But the subject would not down. Soon after Lucy joined the West Brookfield church, Deacon Henshaw was expelled from it for his antislavery activities. A series of church meetings was held in regard to his case. Lucy did not know that women who were church members could not vote in church meetings, and when the first vote was taken, she held up her hand with the rest. The minister, a tall, dark man, stood watching the vote. He pointed over to her, and said to the person who was counting the votes, "Don't you count her." The man asked, "Is n't she a member?" The minister answered, "Yes, but she is not a voting member." The accent of scorn in his voice touched her to the quick. Six votes were taken in the course of that meeting, and she held up her hand every time. She held it up again, with a flash in her eyes, when she recalled the incident upon her deathbed, and thought how great the change had been since the time when "that one uncounted hand" was the only visible protest against the subjection of women in church and State.

Father Stone did not approve of Lucy's wish to go on with her studies. He thought she had had quite schooling enough for a girl. She told him that if he would lend her a small sum of money, to enable her to keep on a little longer, she would then be qualified to teach; and he agreed to do so, taking her note for the amount. As she was a minor, the note was not legally valid; but she did not know that, and, if she had, she would of course have paid the debt just the same.

At sixteen she began to teach district schools at a dollar a week, "boarding around ", as was the custom. She soon became known as a successful teacher. She got larger and larger schools, until her salary reached sixteen dollars per month, which was considered very good pay for a woman.

Once she was engaged to teach the "winter term" of the school at Paxton, Massachusetts, which had been broken up by the big boys throwing the master out of the window head first into a deep snowdrift. Generally women were not thought competent to teach in the winter, because then the big boys were released from farm work and were able to attend. She soon had this difficult school in perfect order, and the big boys who had made the trouble became her most devoted lieutenants; yet she received only a fraction of the salary paid to her unsuccessful predecessor.

When Abby Kelley lectured in West Brookfield, she invited Lucy to sit in the pulpit with her. Lucy refused, partly because her hair had got all blown about on the three-mile ride from the farm to the village, and partly from a lingering traditional feeling, which she knew to be quite irrational, that the pulpit was too sacred a place for her to enter. Abby Kelley's comment was, "Oh, Lucy Stone, you are not half emancipated! "

She was teaching school in North Brookfield in 1837, when the General Association of the Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts held their Quadrennial Conference there, and issued a "Pastoral Letter" to the churches under their care, warning them against discussing slavery, and especially against letting women speak in public. This remarkable document called attention to "the dangers which at present seem to threaten the female character with wide-spread and permanent injury." It especially deplored "the mistaken conduct of those who encourage females to bear an obtrusive and ostentatious part in measures of reform, and countenance any of that sex who so far forget themselves as to itinerate in the character of public lecturers and teachers." Such proceedings, it predicted, would open the way to "degeneracy and ruin."

In those days, the Orthodox Congregational Church was supreme in Massachusetts, and the word of its clergy carried immense weight. The Pastoral Letter was read in all the churches. At the Conference in North Brookfield the floor of the church was black with ministers, and the gallery was filled with women and laymen. While the Letter was read, the Reverend Doctor Blagden walked up and down the aisle, turning his head from side to side and looking up at the women in the gallery with an air that seemed to say, "Now! Now we have silenced you! " Lucy sat in the gallery with her cousin. She said, in after years, "I was young enough then so that my indignation blazed. My cousin said that her side was black and blue with the indignant nudges of my elbow at each aggravating sentence; and I told her afterwards that, if I ever had anything to say in public, I should say it, and all the more because of that Pastoral Letter."

This Pastoral Letter, which was satirized by Whittier in a stirring poem, was called out by the lectures of Sarah and Angelina Grimke against slavery, and the deep impression they made.

The Grimke sisters were the first American women to lecture against slavery or for woman's rights — almost the first American women to open their mouths in public at all, outside a Quaker meeting. They and Abby Kelley Foster were the three women who did the most to break down the barrier debarring women from public speech. They opened the way for Lucy, and for all who came after her. Their names should always be held in grateful remembrance.

Daughters of one of the first families of South Carolina, brought up to wealth and luxury and the service of slaves, Sarah and Angelina had become convinced that slavery was wrong, and Angelina had entered into correspondence with Garrison. In 1836 she was invited by the American Anti-Slavery Society to come and give talks against slavery, to women only. She declined the offered salary, but came and brought her sister. They spoke in New York and New Jersey, and then came to New England. It had been the intention that they should speak to women in church sewing circles and at parlor meetings, but no parlor would hold all the women who wanted to hear. Anti-slavery ministers offered the use of their session rooms. It was thought a great scandal that women should speak in so sacred a place. The interest grew. One or two men began to slip into the rear seats. At first they were turned out. Later they refused to go. Although brought up as High Church Episcopalians, the sisters had become Quakers, and did not think it wrong for a woman to speak when men were present. Before long they were lecturing to mixed audiences, largely made up of men. Then the storm broke, — a storm of tremendous violence.

The texts that were always quoted against the women were the words of St. Paul, "Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak", and "I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence."

The opposition to the women who spoke against slavery was due in part to the belief that their action was contrary to Scripture, in part to the usual dislike for any innovation, in part to the anger of men against any encroachment upon their exclusive privileges, and in part to the belief that the textile industries of New England could not be carried on without the slave-grown cotton of the South. The economic objection was not the least powerful.

Even while the sisters spoke only to women, their meetings had been ridiculed in the proslavery press, which included almost all the Northern newspapers. With the issuing of the Pastoral Letter, the opposition became fiercer; but they continued to lecture to audiences that overflowed the largest halls. Angelina was beautiful, and had a calm, simple and magnetic eloquence. Wendell Phillips said, "She swept all the chords of the human heart with a power that has never been surpassed, and rarely equalled." Sarah, though an able writer, was not so good a speaker; but both sisters had the great advantage that they could tell of the facts of slavery from actual experience.

If the wrath that they aroused was great at the North, it was still greater in the South. Angelina wrote "An Appeal to Southern Women against Slavery." Many copies were mailed to South Carolina. Most of them were publicly burned by postmasters. When she wished to make a visit to her mother and sisters, the Mayor of Charleston sent her word that the police had orders to prevent her from landing or from communicating with any person while the steamer was in port; and that, if she succeeded in coming ashore, she would be put in prison. Friends warned her that she would almost certainly become the object of mob violence.

Shortly before the issuing of the Pastoral Letter, Sarah had begun to publish in the New England Spectator a series of articles on "The Province of Woman." She had long had the woman question very much at heart. She grieved for the sufferings not only of the slaves, but of white women and children under the unjust laws; and she had felt strongly on the subject of equal educational opportunities for women ever since, in her girlhood, her father, Judge Grimke, had refused to let her study Latin with her brother, although he declared that, if she were a boy, she would make the ablest jurist in the country.

Sarah's letters in the Spectator made a commotion and greatly intensified the opposition. Garrison and Phillips backed the women to the utmost; but most of the abolitionists did not yet believe in the general doctrine of equal rights for women, and, of those who did, many thought it a mistake to mix up the antislavery cause, which was intensely unpopular, with the question of woman's rights, which was more unpopular still. Angelina wrote:

"We have given great offence on account of our womanhood, which seems to be as objectionable as our abolitionism. The whole land seems aroused to discussion on the province of woman, and I am glad of it. We are willing to bear the brunt of the storm, if we can only be the means of making a breach in the wall of public opinion, which lies right in the way of woman's true dignity, honor and usefulness. Sister Sarah does preach up woman's rights most nobly and fearlessly; and we find that many of our New England sisters are prepared to receive these strange doctrines, feeling, as they do, that our whole sex needs emancipation from the thralldom of public opinion."

In reply to further remonstrances, she wrote:

"I am still glad of sister's letters, and believe they are doing great good. Some noble-minded women cheer her on, the brethren notwithstanding. I tell them that this is a part of the great doctrine of Human Rights, and can no more be separated from emancipation than the light from the heat of the sun; the rights of the slave and of woman blend like the colors of the rainbow. However, I rarely introduce this topic into my addresses, except to urge my sisters up to duty I am very glad to hear that Lucretia Mott addressed the Moral Reform Society, and am earnest in the hope that we are only pioneers, going before a host of worthy women who will come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty."

The protests were so many and so earnest, even from men who themselves believed thoroughly in equal rights, that Sarah finally discontinued her articles in the Spectator. They were published in pamphlet form, however, and widely circulated.

A committee of the Massachusetts Legislature was appointed in 1838 to consider the petitions that were pouring in on the subject of slavery. Hearings were held, and Angelina was among the speakers. It was the first time that a woman's voice had been heard in the Boston State House.

In the same year, she married Theodore D. Weld, a noble and valiant abolitionist. The wedding took place in Philadelphia. Three days later Angelina made what was destined to be her last public speech.

Having had great difficulty in securing halls, the Pennsylvania abolitionists and other friends of free speech had formed an association and built a beautiful hall at a cost of forty thousand dollars, to be open for free discussion on all subjects not immoral. Most of the stockholders were mechanics or working men, and many were women. Pennsylvania Hall was opened on the week of Angelina's marriage. The first three days of the dedicatory exercises included addresses on slavery, temperance, the Indians, the right of free discussion and kindred topics. On the fourth day, speeches were to be made against slavery by prominent women. The mob rose — egged on secretly, it was said, by gentlemen of property and standing — and surrounded the hall with howls and uproar. Angelina spoke for an hour, standing calm and beautiful, while the yells and execrations increased without, and missile after missile crashed through the broken windows; and the crowded audience hung upon her words. The next night the hall was burned down, without any serious effort by the city authorities to save it.

An injury received soon after her marriage incapacitated Angelina permanently for public speaking, and her sister had already been obliged to give it up, owing to the failure of her voice.

Abby Kelley made her first public speech at the meeting where Angelina Grimke Weld made her last. Of all the pioneer women, she suffered the most persecution. She was a Quaker school-teacher, fair, comely, and of the noblest character. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1811, she studied and taught, by turns, like Lucy Stone, till she had gained the highest education then obtainable by a woman in New England. She became so deeply interested in the antislavery cause that she gave to the Anti-Slavery Society all her accumulated earnings, and her small inheritance from her father's estate, and even sold her most expensive garments in order to contribute their price. She finally resigned her position as teacher of the Quaker school in Lynn, Massachusetts, and devoted herself wholly to anti-slavery work. Again and again, some friend gave her a gold watch; but the gold watches always went straight into the antislavery treasury. Lucy Stone said, "She could no more have helped it than if her children had needed bread." Her path was made very hard.

She held several well-attended meetings at Washington, Connecticut, and was asked to stay and address another. Then the minister preached against her from the text, "I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach, and to seduce my servants to commit fornication." He drew a black picture of the original Jezebel and declared that another Jezebel had arisen, making high pretensions to philanthropy and Christianity, and with fascinations exceeding even those of her Scriptural prototype. He added: "Do any of you ask for evidence of her vile character? It needs no other evidence than the fact that, in the face of the clearest commands of God, 'Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak', she comes with her brazen face, a servant of Satan in the garb of an angel of light, and tramples this commandment under her feet." She went to the next prayer meeting, and stood near the door as the people passed out. With one exception, none of those who had attended her meetings, or had entertained her hospitably, gave her a word or a look. They passed her by as if she did not exist. Such things happened again and again. In 1845 she married Stephen S. Foster, a leonine abolitionist who out-Garrisoned even Garrison in his vivid and terrible denunciations of the sin of slavery and the wickedness of the clergy and the churches that countenanced it. After that, husband and wife lectured and faced the mobs together.

At the memorial exercises for Abby Kelley Foster, in 1887, Lucy Stone said:

"The open door for higher education (Oberlin) was the gray dawn of our morning. Its sure day came when the sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimk6 and Abby Kelley Foster began to speak publicly in behalf of the slaves. Public speaking by women was regarded as something monstrous. All the cyclones and blizzards which prejudice, bigotry and custom could raise, were let loose on these three peerless women. But they held fast to the Eternal Justice. Above the howling of the mobs, the din of the press and the thunders from the pulpit, they heard the wail of the slave and the cry of the mothers sold from their children. Literally taking their lives in their hands, they went out to speak, remembering those in bonds as bound with them.'

"In 1838, Angelina Grimke spoke in the House of Representatives in Massachusetts. It was packed as it probably never was before or since. The great crowd had gathered, some from their interest in the slave, more from curiosity to hear a woman, and some intent on making an uproar. But this quiet woman arose, utterly forgetful of self; with anointed lips, and with eloquence rare and wonderful she pleaded for the slave. The curious forgot their curiosity; the mobocrat dropped his brickbat before the solemn earnestness of this woman who, for the slave's sake, had braved the mob and the fagot; who could neither heed the uplifted finger that cried shame nor cease for the texts and the sermons, or the odium of the newspapers. To herself, she was not 'flying in the face of Providence.' It was no hunger for personal notoriety that had brought her there, but a great, earnest purpose that must find expression.

"How great a debt the woman's rights movement owes to her! But one such speech, or many, could not kill the hoary prejudice of ages; and circumstances soon compelled the sisters Grimke to leave the lecture field. Abby Kelley remained to bear alone the opprobrium still heaped upon the woman who so far departed from her sphere as to speak in public. Whatever of tribulation any of us have known in the advocacy of this reform, it has been play compared with the long, unrelieved moral torture endured by Abby Kelley, in the battle which finally secured the right of free speech for every woman. A sharp onset with shot and shell is no trifle; but to stand year after year, as Abby Kelley stood, in the thick of the fight, while pulpit and press, editors and clergy, poured upon her vials of bitterness and wrath, to which falsehood always resorts, required the courage of a martyr and the faith of a saint. If she had been a weak woman, she would have yielded and fled. Think what it would be to live perpetually in the midst of scorn and reproach; to go to church and find the sermon directed against you, from the text denouncing Jezebel; and, with no chance to reply, to sit and hear all manner of lies told about you; at another time, to meet with intolerable insult under the very roof of the house where you were authorized to seek shelter, so that you fled from it, fasting for thirty-six hours. These things were actual incidents in her experience, and only a small part of what she endured. If she had been less noble, or more self-seeking, she would have abandoned the terrible pioneer's post and taken an easier way.

"The great service Abby Kelley rendered the slave is less than that by which, at such a price, she earned for us all the right of free speech. Long after this right was conceded, the effect of the old odium lingered, and she was regarded by those who did not know her as a pestilent person, no better than she should be. Even as late as the Worcester Woman's Rights Convention in 185o, the managers of the meeting conferred beforehand as to whether it was best to invite her to speak, 'She is so odious.' She was allowed to be present; and I shall never forget the thrilling voice in which she said, 'Sisters, bloody feet have worn smooth the path by which you come up here!' It was her own bleeding feet that had worn the way."

In those early days, it was considered improper not only for a woman to speak in public, but even for her to hold office in an association formed for a benevolent purpose. When Abby Kelley, in 1838, was appointed on a committee of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, it split the association in twain. Eight Congregational ministers withdrew immediately, and a new organization was formed by the seceders.

Lucy followed the controversy with the keenest interest. In 1838 she wrote to her brother Bowman:

"I would like to have you read John Q. Adams's remarks on the Misses Grimke. He says in the controversy that is begun he wishes them well; but Mr. Bartlett has 'S. M. Grimke on The Rights of Women' in pamphlet form, and if you could read that (and she says nothing but what she proves), I guess you would not think that I was too 'obstreperous.' I tell you, they are first-rate, and only help to confirm the resolution I had made before, to call no man master."

Lucy studied and taught by turns. She would teach until she had saved up a little money and then use it to study further. She was able to go for one term to the Quaboag Seminary at Warren, Massachusetts, and later, for a short time, to Wilbraham Academy. She wrote from Wilbraham to her brother on June 18, 1840:

"You ask if I am a friend of such a 'New Organization' as I find an account of in your last paper. (This was the organization formed by the members of the Anti-Slavery Society who objected to any public work by women.) No, brother, I am not. If that is the spirit of the N. O., I am far enough from being its friend. There seems to be no feeling of Liberty about it. Its great object seems to be to crush Garrison and the women. While it pretends to endeavor to remove the yoke of bondage on account of color, it is actually summoning all its energies to rivet more firmly the chains that have always been fastened upon the neck of women. Look at the ridiculous conduct of H. G. Ludlow, at the anniversary of the Anti-Slavery Society of New Haven. If a woman would 'open her mouth for the dumb', she sha'n't. If she would let her voice speak, the cry is raised again, 'It shall not be allowed.' Thus the inalienable right that God had given is wrested from her, and the talent, or, if you please, half talent entrusted to her keeping for improvement, is violently taken away; and H. G. L., becoming the keeper of her conscience, must also answer for her at the Day of Judgment. Hear him answering to ' Where is the half talent I gave her?" Lord, thinking I knew better than Thou didst, and believing that might gave right, I violently took it from her, though she strove hard to maintain it. Lo, here Thou hast ', etc. Must he not have an answer similar to one of whom we read, who hid his Lord's money? Yet he says, ' I have the spirit of God. I am a Christian.'

"I admire the calm and noble bearing of Abby Kelley on that occasion, and cannot but wish there were more kindred spirits.

"Only let females be educated in the same manner and with the same advantages that males have, and, as everything in nature seeks its own level, I would risk that we would find out our 'appropriate sphere.'

"I am well, and am doing well in my studies.

"Miss Adams and I walked out to Springfield last Saturday, and back again, the whole distance being nearly twenty-five miles. We do not feel any inconvenience from it.

"I have been examining the doctrine of Christian Perfection, and I cannot avoid the conclusion that it is attainable in this life.

"Will you, when you can, consistently with your other duties, write me what you think about the immortality of the spirit of beasts, and, if you think they are not, tell me how the justice of God can be reconciled with the abuse they often suffer?

"I am glad your prayer-meetings are good. Warren needs a revival. I hope you may have one. My own heart is cold as clay. I often think that I have never been a Christian, for how can one who has ever known the love of God go so far away? Will brother sometimes pray for me?

"It was decided in our Literary Society the other day that ladies ought to mingle in politics, go to Congress, etc., etc. What do you think of that?"

Lucy often said that, if women could secure education and the right to speak, they could win everything else for themselves.

She finally accumulated money enough to enter Mount Holyoke Seminary. That institution was much interested in foreign missions, and many of the teachers and students kept mite boxes in which they collected money for that work. Lucy kept, instead, one of the mite boxes of the Anti-Slavery Society, which bore a picture of a kneeling slave holding up manacled hands, with the motto, "Am I not a man and a brother?" Bowman sent her the Liberator, and, after reading it, she used to place it in the reading room of the Seminary. No one knew who put it there, but Lucy was suspected, because of her strong antislavery views, and, when questioned, she frankly admitted it. Mary Lyon summoned her to a private interview and talked to her very seriously. She said, "You must remember that the slavery question is a very grave question, and one upon which the best people are divided."

Lucy spent only three months at Mount Holyoke. Then her sister Rhoda died. Her mother was so heart-broken that her health failed, and Lucy went home to comfort and help her.

Meanwhile the struggle for the right of women to speak and to take part with men in antislavery work kept on. It is easy to imagine the feelings with which Lucy must have read the report of the World's Anti-Slavery Convention held in London in 1840. The Call had invited delegates from all antislavery organizations. A number of the societies in America elected women among their delegates. Despite the efforts of Wendell Phillips and many others, the convention refused to accept their credentials. Garrison had been delayed at sea. When he arrived and found that the women delegates had been rejected, he refused to take his own seat in the convention, and during the ten days of its discussions and votes upon a subject so dear to his heart, he sat in silence in the gallery, with the excluded women.

One of the delegates was the distinguished Quakeress, Lucretia Mott. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was also present, not as a delegate, but as the young wife of a delegate, Henry B. Stanton. Mrs. Mott and Mrs. Stanton took long walks together, mingling their indignation; and they determined that some day, after their return to America, they would hold a convention for woman's rights. Eight years later they carried out their plan.