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 meeting:—­“It gave Miss Grimke the opportunity to speak to the best culture and character of Massachusetts; and the profound impression then made on a class not often found in our meetings was never wholly lost.  It was not only the testimony of one most competent to speak, but it was the profound religious experience of one who had broken out of the charmed circle, and whose intense earnestness melted all opposition.  The converts she made needed no after-training.  It was when you saw she was opening some secret record of her own experience that the painful silence and breathless interest told the deep effect and lasting impression her words were making.”

We have not Angelina’s account of this meeting, but referring to it in a letter to Sarah Douglass, she says:  “My heart never quailed before, but it almost died within me at that tremendous hour.”

But one hearing did not satisfy her, and the committee needed no urging to grant her another.  At the second meeting, the hall was literally packed, and hundreds went away unable to obtain seats.  When she arose to speak, there was some hissing from the doorways, but the most profound silence reigned through the crowd within.  Angelina first stood in front of the Speaker’s desk, then she was requested to occupy the Secretary’s desk on one side, and soon after, that she might be seen as well as heard, she was invited to stand in the Speaker’s place.  And from that conspicuous position she spoke over two hours without the least interruption.  She says to Sarah Douglass:—­