Angelina Grimké speaks before the Massachusetts legislature.

The first woman to testify before a legislative body in the U.S., Grimké delivers an anti-slavery petition signed by 20,000 women. She declares, “I stand before you as a moral being, and as a moral being I feel that I owe it to the suffering slave and to the deluded master, to my country and to the world, to do all that I can to overturn a system of complicated crimes built upon the broken hearts and prostrate bodies of my countrymen in chains and cemented by the blood, sweat and tears of my sisters in bonds.” Angelina speaks only because her sister, Sarah, who was to have delivered the address, was ill.