The Rev. Joel Hawes, D. D., of Connecticut, was one of these. Judging of them from their ominous silence, when sectarianism had been most violent in its attacks on the integrity of the cause, he felt a drawing towards the Executive Committee at New York, and fancied them _altogether_ such ones as himself. His adhesion had been hailed with joy by abolitionists. They soon found reason to know that such adherents are more ruinous than open enemies, to the cause they espouse. He travelled in Massachusetts, shortly after the New England Convention of 1838, memorable as the scene of the first attempt to exclude women from membership in anti-slavery meetings. A number of clergymen of his own denomination, headed by Mr. Torrey and Mr. Phelps, had most inconsistently labored to vote away the freedom and the rights of the female members of that Convention. So indefinite were their ideas on the whole great subject of rights, that they overlooked the obvious thought, that no general anti-slavery convocation could take such ground without denying the fundamental principle that brought them together. In the horror of their great darkness on the subject of “_woman’s_ rights,” they trampled on _human_ rights, and the rights of _membership_, in the persons of those women whom they labored to exclude. They also deeply wounded the feelings of the great body of the men there present; few of whom but had occasion to acknowledge, with grateful affection and respect, how much a mother, wife or sister had done, in the difficult years that were past, to help and strengthen them in the labors and sacrifices of the cause. Women are so accustomed to suffering under the many indignities which men unconsciously inflict, that in this instance they felt less keenly for themselves than did their brethren for them, the tyrannical attempt to assume their responsibilities. The refusal of the Convention to eject them from their seats, with the excellent memorial of its Committee, Mr. Johnson, Miss Kelley and Mr. St. Clair, to the ecclesiastical associations of New-England, excited much indignation among the ministry, with which Dr. Hawes was in a state of mind to sympathize. After his return to Connecticut, he stated, in a letter to a friend, that he had recently visited Massachusetts, and conversed with several _leading abolitionists there_: that in reference to the doings of the New England Convention, they declared that “they could no longer work in such a team,” and that, unless the Massachusetts Society would take ground in opposition to this action of the Convention, _there must and should be a new organization_. Dr. Hawes added, that if he resided in Massachusetts he should be with them in favor of such a movement.