The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women's Rights (Bestselling Women's History)

by Dorothy Wickenden

Women were men’s moral guardians; men were women’s overseers.

As Garrison had once said about abolitionists, “Are we enough to make a revolution? No, sir. But we are enough to begin one, and, once begun, it never can be turned back.” Although the women’s rights cohort was small and reviled, Martha saw it as an explosive force, capable of blasting open narrow hearts, minds, and laws.

The nation’s laws and prejudices had once seemed solid and immutable, but over time she had realized how hidebound the framers were—perpetuating the enslavement of Black Americans and denying women any true autonomy.

The country had reached an impasse: “The South must either give up slavery, or the North must give up liberty. The two interests are hostile, and are irreconcilable.”

“Our masters, they have lived under the flag, they got their wealth under it, and everything beautiful for their children. Under it they have grind us up, and put us in their pocket for money. But the first minute they think that old flag mean freedom for we colored people, they pull it right down, and run up the flag of their own.”