Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 2

The New Organizationists did not need these signals² to prepare themselves for renewing in England their sectarian warfare. The result of their private correspondence was manifested in a second, modified call,³ dated February 15, 1840, in which the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society desired ‘early to receive, from the different anti-slavery bodies who may appoint deputies, the names of the gentlemen who are to represent them’; and in a letter from Joseph⁴ Sturge to a member of the Executive Committee, dated March 3, 1840, in which he deprecated the sending of female delegates to the World's Convention, and desired it might be discouraged. It would encounter a strong adverse feeling in England, from which country there would be no female representation.

In the meantime, however, the Massachusetts Board had already chosen its delegates, including not only Mr.⁵ Garrison, Wendell Phillips, George Bradburn, William Adam (Professor of Oriental Languages at Harvard College), Isaac Winslow, and many other leading abolitionists, white and black, but a large proportion of women— Harriet Martineau, a life-member of the Massachusetts Society; Mrs. Phillips and Mrs. Chapman and Mrs. Child, as well as their respective husbands; Miss Abby Kelley, Miss Emily Winslow, and still others. The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, unabashed by Sturge's rebuke, named a full contingent of their sex, with Lucretia⁶ Mott at their head.⁷ Mrs. Mott, with Garrison and Rogers (already a delegate from New Hampshire), being⁸ now selected to represent the American Society, went in a double capacity, and so offered the completest test of the Convention's disposition to ‘fully and practically recognize, in its organization and movements, the equal brotherhood of the entire Human Family, without distinction ’