Editing Lucy Stone (section)

== Antislavery apprenticeship ==
[[File:Stone facing left.jpg|thumb|Lucy Stone as a young woman]]
Stone gave her first public speeches on women's rights in the fall of 1847, first at her brother Bowman's church in [[Gardner, Massachusetts]], and a little later in [[Warren, Massachusetts|Warren]].<ref>Kerr, 1992, p.28; Million, 2003, pp. 86-87.</ref> Stone became a lecturing agent for the [[Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society]] in June 1848, persuaded by Abby Kelley Foster that the experience would give her the speaking practice she still felt she needed, before beginning her women's rights campaign.<ref>Million, 2003, p. 91.</ref> Stone immediately proved to be an effective speaker, reported to wield extraordinary persuasive power over her audiences. She was described as "a little meek-looking Quakerish body, with the sweetest, modest manners, and yet, as unshrinking and self-possessed as a loaded cannon." One of her assets, in addition to a storytelling ability that could move audiences to tears or laughter, as she willed, was said to be an unusual voice that contemporaries compared to a "silver bell,” and of which it was said, "no more perfect instrument had ever been bestowed upon a speaker."<ref>Million, 2003, p. 96.</ref>

In addition to helping Stone develop as an orator, the antislavery agency introduced her to a network of progressive reformers within the Garrisonian wing of the abolition movement who assisted her women's rights work. In the fall of 1848, she received an invitation from Phoebe Hathaway of Farmington, New York, to lecture for the women who had organized the [[Seneca Falls Convention|Seneca Falls women's rights convention]] and the [[Rochester Women's Rights Convention of 1848|Rochester women's rights convention]], earlier that summer. These rights conventions provided continuity for the woman's rights movement, even though no official organization was actually formed, prior to the Civil War. Most of the well-known leaders, at the time, attended these conventions, except for those who were ill or sick. The best-known of them, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone, met and worked together, harmoniously, as they wrote, discussed, and circulated petitions for the woman's rights movement.<ref>Riegel, Robert E. "The Split of Feminist Movement in 1869." The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 49, no. 3, 1962, pp. 485-496.</ref> Although Stone accepted and expected to begin working for them in the fall of 1849, the agency never materialized.<ref>Million, 2003, pp. 99, 102.</ref> In April 1849, Stone was invited to lecture for the [[Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society]], and [[Lucretia Mott]] took advantage of her presence to hold Pennsylvania's first women's rights meeting on May 4, 1849.<ref>Million, 2003, p. 100.</ref> With the help of abolitionists, Stone conducted Massachusetts' first petition campaigns for the right of women to vote and hold public office. [[Wendell Phillips]] drafted the first petitions and accompanying appeals for circulation, and William Lloyd Garrison published them in [[The Liberator (newspaper)|''The Liberator'']] for readers to copy and circulate. When Stone sent petitions to the legislature in February 1850, over half were from towns where she had lectured.<ref>Million, 2003, pp. 99-100, 293n. 6; 102-03, 293n. 6, ''Liberator'', December 14, 1849, February 1, 1850; Million, pp. 111-12, ''Liberator'', January 24, 1851.</ref>