Middle class women in antebellum America were basically confined to the home. Women were expected to assert themselves and exert influence within the home. They were suppose to have influence on their husbands, their brothers and their fathers. And in this way impact politics, culture, religion. But they were not to speak openly in public. They basically were suppose to follow the dictates of St. Paul, let women keep silent. And this was not only in the churches, but this extended into the community and women accepted that role.

The abolitionists movement changed all that because the male abolitionists encouraged women to participate, not as equals, but to participate by creating resources, having sewing circles, bazaars, raising money so that the men could go out and lecture and create newspapers. And women accepted this for a while and then gradually they began to speak out. Women formed their own antislavery societies and within these societies they voiced their opinion about abolition.

Two women, two white women, Angelina and Sara Grimké, really opened up the convergence of women's rights and abolition. And one black woman, Maria Stewart did the same thing, actually a little bit earlier. But it was really the Grimkés who spread the idea of women's equality and that it was morally right for women to speak out against slavery just as it was morally right for men to speak out against slavery. So it really is to the Grimkée sisters, in terms of publicizing the connection between women's rights and abolition, that we owe that connection. However, it was the Antislavery Convention in 1839 that really mushroomed the connection between abolition and women's rights for most activist women because at that convention women were allowed to vote and they voted in one delegate to go to the World Antislavery Convention in London. When the women got there and the delegate who was Lucretia Mott appeared with her credentials from the American Antislavery Society she was not seated. And she was not seated because she was a woman. And that crystallized for women their own position, that they were fighting for the rights of African Americans when in many situations they, themselves were oppressed. So one could say that had not been for the abolition movement that women would not have found their voice at the time in which they did.