The essays trace the important role females played in the antislavery movement from its start. Articles in this volume show the important contribution of white women such as Elizabeth Chandler and Lydia Maria Child in defining and disseminating abolitionist ideology from the 1830s down to the Civil War. Other articles examine the contributions of black women such as Maria Stewart, Charlotte Forten, and Sojourner Truth to the antislavery agitation. Women played such a prominent public role in early abolitionist activity that they became speical targets of antiabolitionist wrath. Participation in abolitionism often led women to question the traditional definition of their sex's proper sphere. As a number of essays show, many early feminists got their start in the antislavery campaign where the ideology of inalienable rights for all gave them powerful arguments to challenge the strictures placed upon their sex by institutions such as the church and state.