At heart they were rebels against the foundation principle of masculine supremacy on which society and government rested.

While pleading for the freedom of the slaves, the sense of their own bondage and that of their sisters rose up before them and revealed itself in bitter questionings.

"Are we aliens," asked Angelina, "because we are women?
Are we bereft of citizenship because we are the _mothers, wives, and daughters_ of a mighty people?
Have _women_ no country--no interests staked on the public weal--no partnership in a nation's guilt or shame ?" This discontent with the existing social establishment in its relation to women received sympathetic responses from many friends to whom the sisters communicated the contagion of their unrest and dissatisfaction.

Angelina records that, "At friend Chapman's, where we spent a social evening, I had a long talk with the brethren on the rights of women, and found a very general sentiment prevailing that it is time our fetters were broken.

L.M.Child and Maria Chapman strongly supported this view; indeed very many seem to think a new order of things is very desirable in this respect." This prevalence of a sentiment favorable to women's rights, which Angelina observed in Mrs.Chapman's parlors possessed no general significence.