History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I

by Unknown

MOB CONVENTION IN NEW YORK.

Broadway Tabernacle, Sept. 6 and 7, 1853.

This week as already stated was one of unusual excitement in the city of New York, as representatives of all the unpopular reforms were holding their several conventions. The fact that the Anti-Slavery Society held a meeting on Sunday morning, and Antoinette Brown preached to five thousand people the same evening, called out the denunciations of the religious press, which intensified the mob spirit, culminating at last in the Woman's Rights Convention. That portion of the secular press which had shown the most bitter opposition to the anti-slavery cause, now manifested the same spirit toward the enfranchisement of woman.

The leading papers in the United States were The Tribune, The Herald, The Times, The Evening Post, and The Express, which gave tone to the entire press of the country. All these journals were edited by men of marked ability, each representing a different class of thought in the community. The Tribune was independent, and fearless in the expression of opinions on unpopular reforms; its editor, Horace Greeley, ever ready for the consideration of new ideas, was on many points the leader of liberal thought.

The Herald was recognized by reformers as at the head of the opposition, and its diatribes were considered "Satanic." Its editor, James Gordon Bennett, pandered to the lowest tastes in the community, not merely deriding reforms, but holding their advocates up to the ridicule of a class too degraded to understand the meaning of reform.

The Times held a middle position; established at a much later date, its influence was not so great nor extended as either The Tribune or The Herald. It represented that large conservative class that fears all change, and accepts the conditions of its own day and generation, knowing that in all upheavals the wealthy class is the first and greatest loser. From this source the mob spirit draws its inspiration. Violence being the outgrowth of superstition and despotism; the false morality and philosophy taught by the press and the pulpit are illustrated by the lower orders in hisses, groans, and brick-bats. Although far below Horace Greeley in sagacity, intelligence, and conscience, Henry J. Raymond claimed for his paper a position superior in respectability. Having originated the present system of reporting, and thereby acquired his first reputation, Mr. Raymond prided himself upon reportorial sharpness, even at the expense of veracity and common self-respect. That woman so long degraded should dare to speak of injustice, so long defrauded of her social, civil, and political rights, should dare to demand some restitution, was to Mr. Raymond so fit a subject for ridicule that he could not refrain from making even such women as Lucretia Mott and Ernestine L. Rose targets for his irony.

The Empress, an organ of the Democratic party, was in its debasement on a par with The Herald and Times, though each had different styles, more or less refined, of doing the same thing. Encouraged by these three papers, the mob element held high carnival through that eventful week. Starting in the anti-slavery and temperance meetings, they assembled at every session in the Woman's Rights Convention. Gentlemen and ladies alike who attempted to speak were interrupted by shouts, hisses, stamping, and cheers, rude remarks, and all manner of noisy demonstrations. The clergy, the press, and the rowdies combined to make those September days a disgrace to the metropolis, days never to be forgotten by those who endured the ridicule and persecution.

Although the Mayor with a large police force at his command made no show even of protecting the right of free speech, the editor of The Tribune sent forth his grand fulminations against bigotry, hypocrisy, and vulgarity in every issue of his journal. William Cullen Bryant, editor of The Post, one of the purest men that ever stood at the head of a daily paper, also spoke out grandly against mob law, and for the rights of woman. We have made this brief episode on the press, that our readers may see how characteristic are the comments of each paper that we give here and there in this chapter.

This Convention, interrupted throughout by the mob, has an unique and historic value of its own. It was the first overt exhibition of that public sentiment woman was then combating. The mob represented more than itself; it evidenced that general masculine opinion of woman, which condensed into law, forges the chains which enslave her. Owing to the turmoil we have no fair report of the proceedings; it was impossible for the representatives of the press to catch what was said, hence their reports, as well as the one issued by our Central Committee, are alike fragmentary. And yet with such a brilliant array of speakers of both men and women, it should have been one of our most interesting and successful Conventions. The Tabernacle, holding three thousand persons, was packed long before the hour announced. At ten o'clock Lucy Stone called the Convention to order, and presented a list of officers[117] nominated at a preliminary meeting, which was adopted. In this list we find England, Germany, and eleven States represented. The Rev. William Henry Channing opened the meeting with prayer. After which Mrs. Mott made a few appropriate remarks. Lucy Stone read a series of resolutions[118] which were accepted and laid on the table for discussion.

Charles Burleigh and Lydia A. Jenkins spoke briefly on the many grounds of opposition to this movement, which in all respects commends itself as one of the greatest reforms of the age.

Mr. Garrison said: The first pertinent question is, what has brought us together? Why have we come from the East and from the West, and from the North? I was about to add, and from the South; but the South, alas! is so cursed by the spirit of slavery, that there seems to be no vitality left there in regard to any enterprise, however good; hence the South is not represented on an occasion like this. It is because justice is outraged. We have met to protest against proud, rapacious, inexorable usurpation. What is this usurpation? What is this oppression of which we complain? Is it local? Does it pertain to the city of New York, or to the Empire State? No! It is universal—broader than the Empire State—broader than our national domains—wide as the whole world, weighing on the entire human race. How old is the oppression which we have met to look in the face? Is it of to-day? Is it young in years, or is it as old as the world itself? In all ages men have regarded women as inferior to themselves, and have robbed them of their co-equal rights. We are, therefore, contesting hoary tyranny—universal tyranny. And what follows, as a natural result?

That the land is beginning to be convulsed. The opposition to the movement is assuming a malignant, desperate, and satanic character; every missile of wickedness that can be hurled against it is used. The pulpit is excited, the press is aroused; Church and State are in arms to put down a movement on behalf of justice to one-half of the whole human race. (Laughter and cheers). The Bible, revered in our land as the inspired Word of God, is, by pulpit interpreters, made directly hostile to what we are endeavoring to obtain as a measure of right and justice; and the cry of infidelity is heard on the right hand and on the left, in order to combine public opinion so as to extinguish the movement.

Now, beloved, let us not imagine that any strange thing has happened to us. We are but passing through one of the world's great crises; we, too, in our day, are permitted to contend with spiritual wickedness in high places—with principalities and powers. What reform was ever yet begun and carried on with any reputation in the day thereof? What reform, however glorious and divine, was ever advocated at the outset with rejoicing? And if they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his household? (Cheers and stamping).

I have been derisively called a "Woman's Rights Man." I know no such distinction. I claim to be a Human Rights Man, and wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being whatever may be the sex or complexion.

To the excellence of the movement God has given witnesses in abundance, on the right hand and on the left. Show me a cause anathematized by the chief priests, the scribes, and the pharisees; which politicians and demagogues endeavor to crush, which reptiles and serpents in human flesh try to spread their slime over, and hiss down, and I will show you a cause which God loves, and angels contemplate with admiration. Such is our movement. Do you want the compliments of the satanic press, The New York Times, Express, and Herald? (Roars of laughter). If you want the compliments of such journals, you will be bad enough to take a place among the very vilest and lowest of the human race. They are animated by a brutal, cowardly, and devilish spirit. Let us rejoice at the manifestation! Not for the wickedness, but at the evidence thus afforded by God, that our cause is of Heaven, and therefore has on its side all the power and might of God, and in due season is destined to have a glorious triumph!

Charles C. Burleigh said: There is a feeling to-day that woman has some rights, that she has some reason to complain of the present relation in which she is placed. In this country we congratulate ourselves that woman occupies a higher position than elsewhere, although some think it would be a calamity to improve her condition still further, and mere fanaticism to raise her still higher.

The cry is—"unnatural!" The aspiration of woman for a better lot, say her oppressors, is not natural, it is abnormal! So they say; but why not hear her on the matter? Is she, the most interested party, to have no voice in the solution of a question which is to her of such overwhelming interest? I ask, did God give woman aspirations which it is a sin for her to gratify? Abnormal! No, it is to be found everywhere. The man whose soul is so callous that he can hold his fellow-man as a slave, cries out (as in excuse) that the slave is contented. The autocrat exclaims that it is only a turbulent Kossuth or a factious Mazzini who feels that uneasy discontent which preys not on the hearts of his millions of legal slaves. Will that be, to us, an argument that the tyrant is in the right? No! the aspirations to liberty and justice are universal, and ever though the volcanic blaze breaks into the air only through the loftiest mountain peaks, the volcano is in itself an index to the ocean of molten fire that boils inaudibly beneath it. And so the deep discontent of humble millions breaks through the mountain-minds of their great leaders. Woman is a part of the human commonwealth; why deprive her of a voice in its government? Woman herself, a component part of the community, must be called into the councils which direct it, else a wrong is done her, the responsibility of which lies heavily on those who do it. We ask rights for woman, because she has a human nature, and it is not only ungenerous and unmanly, but in the highest degree unjust to banish her from the discussion of questions which so nearly and dearly concern her, and in which nature, reason, and God have announced that she should have a voice.

Either there is a distinction between the sphere of man and that of woman, or there is not. If there is, it is unfair to have one determine both; if there is not, why does tyrannous custom separate her? The dilemma is clear, and can not be escaped. Both should be called into counsel, every note in the scale of harmony should be sounded; and to say that hers, because an octave higher, should not be heard, is downright nonsense. (Rousing cheers and laughter). We claim for woman simply the right to decide her own sphere, or, in conjunction with man, to determine what should be the relative position of both.

W. H. Channing said: When I was returning from the first Woman's Rights Meeting at Worcester, a friend said to me, "I intend getting up a Man's Rights Society; you misunderstand the matter; all the efforts of society are for the elevation of woman, and man has to perform the drudgery. The consequence is, the women are far better educated than the men." The answer was obvious. "If women are, according to your admission, fitted for the higher plane, why keep them on the lower?" My friend then went on to say, that the whole of this scheme was considered to be of the most morally visionary character, and the proof of this feeling was the slight opposition it met, "for," said he "if it were looked on by society as serious, it would be at once, and forcibly, opposed in the church, by the press, in all public assemblies and private circles." Now, the object of this, and all such conventions, is to prove that we have made up our minds as regards operation and method; that we have looked clearly into the future; and that we have at heart this movement, as we have no other of the day, believing that out of this central agitation of society will come healthful issues of life. The inhabitants of Eastern India speak of a process for gaining immortality, namely, churning together the sea and the earth. They say the gods had the serpent by the head, and the devils had it by the tail, and out of the churning of the foam came the waters of immortality. The movement we are engaged in, may be typified by the Indian allegory; and out of the commotion we make shall be drawn a new principle which shall be one of immortal growth to all society. (Stamping, cheers, and laughter).

As regards the differences between men and women, we say that out of them grows union, not separation. Every organ of the body is double; in the pulsations of the heart a double machinery is used, there is a double auricle and a double ventricle. It is so in the inspirations which flow from God to society; they must pass twice, once through the heart of man, once through the heart of woman; they must stream through the reforming and through the conservative organ; and thus, out of the very difference which exists between man and woman, arises the necessity for their co-operation. It has never been asserted that man and woman are alike; if they were, where would be the necessity for urging the claims of the one? No; they differ, and for that very reason it is, that only through the action of both, can the fullness of their being find development and expression. We know that woman exerts an influence on man, as man does on woman, to call forth his latent resources. In the difference, we find a call for union. And to this union we perceive no limit; on the contrary, whatever necessity there is for the combination in the private, there is the same necessity for it in the public sphere. (Long continued stamping and cheers).

And now I will meet the two great objections made. It is not objectionable, it is said, that woman, in some spheres of life, should give an expression of her intellect; but, on the platform, she loses her character of woman, and becomes incidentally masculine. Just observe the practical absurdities of which society is guilty. The largest assemblies greet with clamors Jenny Lind, when she enchains the ear and exalts the soul with the sublime strain, "I know that my Redeemer liveth"; but when Mrs. Mott or Miss Brown stands with a simple voice, and in the spirit of truth, to make manifest the honor due to our Redeemer, rowdies hiss, and respectable Christians veil their faces! So, woman can sing, but not speak, that "our Redeemer liveth." Again, the great men of our land do not consider it unworthy of their character to take from Fanny Ellsler what she makes by the movement of her limbs, by a mere mechanical action,[119] to aid in erecting a column to commemorate our struggles for liberty. The dollars are received and built into the column; but when Mrs. Rose or Mrs. Foster, who feels the spirit of justice within her, and who has felt the injustice of the laws, stands up to show truth and justice, and build a spiritual column, she is out of her sphere! and the honorable men turn aside, and leave her to be the victim of rowdyism, disorder, and lawlessness! It is not out of character that Fanny Kemble should read Shakespeare on the stage, to large circles. The exercise of the voice on the stage is womanly, while she gives out the thoughts of another; but suppose (and it is not unsupposable) a living female Shakespeare to appear on a platform, and utter her inspirations, delicacy is shocked, decency is outraged, and society turns away in disgust! Such are the consistencies of the nineteenth century! (Great uproar).

This is simply and merely prejudice, and it reminds me of the proverb, "If you would behold the stars aright, blow out your own taper." I say there is a special reason why woman should come forward as a speaker; because she has a power of eloquence which man has not, arising from the fineness of her organization and the intuitive power of her soul; and I charge any man with arrogance, if he pretend to match himself in this respect with many women here, and thousands throughout our country. (Hissing). I take it, the hissing comes from men who never had a mother to love and honor, a sister to protect, and who never knew the worth of a wife. Woman's power to cut to the quick and touch the conscience, is beautifully accompanied by her unmatched adaptation to pour balm into the wound; and though the flame she applies may burn into the soul, it also affords a light to the conscience which never can be dimmed.

There is an exquisite picture by Retsch, which represents angels showering roses on devils; to the angels they are roses, but the devils writhe under them as under fire. On sinful souls the words of women fall as coals from the altar of God. And here let me offer my humble gratitude to the women who have borne the brunt of the test with the calm courage which women alone can exhibit; to the women who have taught us that, as daughters of God, they are the equals of His children everywhere on earth. (Cheers and stamping).

Let me add another word upon this interference, or, rather, entrance of woman into the sphere of politics. As a spiritual being, her duties are like those of man; but, inasmuch as she is different from man, man can not discharge them; and if there be any truth in holding (as our institutions do), that the voice of the whole is the nearest approach we can make to eternal truth, we, of course, can not arrive at it till woman, as well as man, is heard in the search for it. God, not man, nor herself, made her woman; there is nothing arbitrary in the distinction; and let the true woman go where she may, she will retain her womanhood. We wish to see her enter into politics, not to degrade herself, but to bring them up to her own level of simple-heartedness and purity of soul. Can man ever raise them to that lofty height? Never! woman alone can do it; it is a work reserved for her, and by her and her alone will it be done. (Roars of laughter).

Whose exploits leave the brightest lines of moral courage on the historic page? Those of woman! When the French had broken through the barriers, the maid of Saragossa rushed to the breach. The demand of the invader came to Palafox, and he trembled; but what the heart of man was unequal to, the courage of woman could perform, and the answer of the heroic maiden was, "War to the knife!" And so, always when man has faltered, woman, earnest and simple-hearted, has answered, War to the knife with evil! (A frightful yell from the gallery.) I perceive my friend is anxious to hear a woman speak to him as only a woman can. I will soon give way and let him be gratified; but, first, I will tell him an anecdote. A woman once told me she never saw a horse so wild that she could not tame him. I asked her how, and she answered, "Simply by whispering in his ear." Our wild friend in the gallery will probably receive some benefit listening to the voice of a woman, if his ears be only long enough to hear her. (Prolonged cheers).

Antoinette Brown said: Our cause is progressing triumphantly; and yet it is not without some to oppose it. Who are they? Persons utterly ignorant of the claims which its advocates advance, ignorant alike of the wrongs existing and of the remedy proposed. They suppose that a few mad-cap reformers are endeavoring to overthrow dame Nature, to invert society, to play the part of merciless innovators to imperil religion, to place all civil and religious freedom in jeopardy; that if our ends were accomplished all the public and private virtues would be melted as in a crucible and thrown upon the ground, thence to cry aloud to heaven like the blood of righteous Abel. Were it not that curiosity is largely developed in this class, they would go down to their graves wholly uninformed of our true principles, motives, and aims. They look upon us as black beetles or death's-heads, to be turned away from with horror; but their curiosity overcomes their repugnance, and they would investigate some of our properties, as a naturalist does those of a noxious animal. (Cheers and laughter).

There is another class, that of genuine bigots, with hearts so ossified that no room can be found for one noble and expansive principle within those little stony cells. Many of this class may be persons of excellent intentions; they would do us good if they could, but they approach us with somewhat of the feeling with which Miss Ophelia regarded Topsy, the abhorrence that is experienced on drawing near a large black spider. They try to show us our errors, but if we attempt to justify by argument the ground we have taken, they cry aloud that we are obstinate and unreasonable, especially when we quote text for text, as Christ did when talking with a certain person of old.

But the most hopeless and spiteful of our opponents is that large class of women whose merits are not their own; who have acquired some influence in society, not by any noble thoughts they have framed and uttered, not by any great deed they have done, but by the accident of having fathers, brothers, or husbands whose wealth elevates them to the highest wave of fashion, and there enables them to roll in luxurious and indolent pomp, like Venus newly risen from the ocean. They feel how much easier it is to receive the incense of honor and respect (however insincerely paid to them) without any effort of their own, than to undergo the patient toil after excellence which wrings from the heart of all that homage of true honor which can not be denied to it. They, unused to any noble labor (as all labor is), either physical or mental, will be careful, to a degree of splenetic antagonism, how they will allow the introduction, into the acknowledged rights and duties of their sex, of a new element which may establish the necessity of their being themselves energetic and efficient. We need never hope to find any of this class change, until compelled to do so by public sentiment. The opposition here is really rabid. Intellectual women! oh, they are monsters! As soon allow wild beasts to roam at large as these to be let loose on society. Like lions and tigers, keep them in their menagerie; perhaps they needn't be actually chained, but see that they are well secured in their cages! (Stamping, groans, and laughter).

These are far more bitterly hostile than the men of small proportions, who are willing to have a great woman tower above them from time to time—as a Madame de Stael. Such a case, however, they would rank as an exception, not admit as a rule. To allow women to stand every day in the foremost lines of intellect and ability, is a thought altogether too expansive to be entertained by them.

Such are the oppositions we meet; but they are all melting down like frost-work before the morning sun. The day is dawning when the intellect of woman shall be recognized as well as that of man, and when her rights shall meet an equal and cordial acknowledgment. The greatest wrong and injustice ever done to woman is that done to her intellectual nature. This, like Goliath among the Philistines, overtops all the rest. Drones are but the robbers of the hive; ladies educated to no purpose are but surfeited to a dronish condition on the sweets of literature. Such minds are not developed, but molded in a fashionable pattern.

Lucy Stone said: It has been stated that we women were not fit for anything but to stay in the house! I look over the events of the last five years, and almost smile at the confutation of this statement which they supply. Let it not be supposed that I wish to depreciate the value of house-duties, or the worth of the woman who fitly discharges them. No! I think that any woman who stands on the throne of her own house, dispensing there the virtues of love, charity, and peace, and sends out of it into the world good men, who may help to make the world better, occupies a higher position than any crowned head. However, we said women could do more; they could enter the professions, and there serve society and do themselves honor. We said that women could be doctors of medicine. Well, we can now prove the statement by fact. Harriot K. Hunt is among us to-day, who, by recognized attainment and successful practice, has shown that women can be physicians, and good ones. You have in your city two women who are good physicians; there are female medical colleges, with their classes, as well ordered, and showing as good a proficiency as any classes of men. Thus that point is gained. It was said women could not be merchants. We thought they could; we saw nothing to prevent women from using the power of calculation, the knowledge of goods, and the industry necessary to make a successful trader. Here, again, we have abundant examples. Many women could be pointed to whose energy and ability for business have repaired the losses of their less competent husbands, I will mention a particular case. Mrs. Tyndal, of Lowell, Mass., has for years carried on business in a quiet way; she has made herself rich by conducting a ladies' shoe store in Lowell. She said to herself: "What is to hinder me from going into this business? I should know ladies' shoes, whether they were good or bad, and what price they can bring. The ladies should support me." And so they did, and that woman has given a proof that her sex does not incapacitate for successful mercantile operations.

It is said women could not be ministers of religion. Last Sunday, at Metropolitan Hall, Antoinette L. Brown conducted divine service, and was joined in it by the largest congregation assembled within the walls of any building in this city. (Hisses). Some men hiss who had no mothers to teach them better. But I tell you that some men in New York, knowing that they can hear the word of God from a woman, as well as from a man, have called her to be their pastor, and she is to be ordained in this month. Some of you reporters said she was a Unitarian, but it is not so; she is among the most orthodox, and so is her church.

We have caused woman's right to address an audience to be more fully recognized than before. I once addressed an assemblage of men, and did so without giving previous notice, because I feared the opposition of prejudice. A lady who was among the audience said to me afterward, "How could you do it? My blood ran cold when I saw you up there among those men!" "Why," I asked, "are they bad men?" "Oh, no! my own husband is one of them; but to see a woman mixing among men in promiscuous meetings, it was horrible!" That was six or seven years ago last fall; and that self-same woman, in Columbus, Ohio, was chosen to preside over a temperance meeting of men and women; yes, and she took the chair without the least objection! In Chicago, a woman is cashier of a bank; and the men gave her a majority of three hundred votes over her man-competitor. In another State, a woman is register of deeds. Women can be editors; two sit behind me, Paulina W. Davis and Mrs. Nichols. Thus we have an accumulation of facts to support our claims and our arguments.

Daily Tribune, Sept. 7, 1853.

The Woman's Rights Convention was somewhat disturbed last evening by persons whose ideas of the rights of free speech are these: two thousand people assemble to hear a given public question discussed under distinct announcement that certain persons whose general views are well known, are to speak throughout the evening. At least nineteen-twentieths come to hear those announced speakers, and will be bitterly disappointed if the opportunity be not afforded them. But one-twentieth have bought tickets and taken seats on purpose to prevent the hearing of those speakers, by hissing, yelling, and stamping, and all manner of unseemly interruptions. Under such circumstances, which should prevail; the right of the speakers to be heard and the great body of the audience to hear them according to the announcement, or the will of the disturbers who choose to say that nineteen out of twenty shall not have what they have paid for, and what the promised speakers are most willing to give them?

To state the case exactly as it is, precludes the necessity of arguing it. We rejoice to say that the will of the great majority prevailed, and that the discussion which was marked in its earlier days by occasional tumult was closed in good order, and amid hushed and gratified attention. We ought, perhaps, to return thanks to the disturbers for so stirring the souls of the speakers that their words came gushing forth from their lips with exceeding fluency and power. We certainly never before heard Antoinette Brown, Mrs. Rose, and Lucy Stone speak with such power and unction as last night. It was never before so transparent that a hiss or a blackguard yell was the only answer that the case admitted of, and when Lucy Stone closed the discussion with some pungent, yet pathetic remarks on the sort of opposition that had been manifest, it was evident that if any of the rowdies had an ant-hole in the bottom of his boot, he would inevitably have sunk through it and disappeared forever.

Herald, Sept. 7, 1853.

THE LAST VAGARY OF THE GREELEY CLIQUE—THE WOMEN, THEIR RIGHTS, AND THEIR CHAMPIONS.

The assemblage of rampant women which convened at the Tabernacle yesterday was an interesting phase in the comic history of the nineteenth century.

We saw, in broad daylight, in a public hall in the city of New York, a gathering of unsexed women—unsexed in mind all of them, and many in habiliments—publicly propounding the doctrine that they should be allowed to step out of their appropriate sphere, and mingle in the busy walks of every-day life, to the neglect of those duties which both human and divine law have assigned to them. We do not stop to argue against so ridiculous a set of ideas. We will only inquire who are to perform those duties which we and our fathers before us have imagined belonged solely to women. Is the world to be depopulated? Are there to be no more children? Or are we to adopt the French mode, which is too well known to need explanation?

Another reason why we will not answer the logic which is poured out from the lips of such persons as Lucy Stone, Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Amelia Bloomer, and their male coadjutors, Greeley, Garrison, Oliver, Johnson, Burleigh, and others, is because they themselves do not believe in the truth or feasibility of the doctrines they utter. In some cases eccentricity is a harmless disease; but the idiosyncrasies of these people spring from another source. They admit the principle that fame and infamy are synonymous terms. Disappointed in their struggle for the first, they grasp the last, and at the same time pocket all the money they can wring from the "barren fools" who can be found in any community eager to grasp at any doctrine which is novel, no matter how outrageous it may be. They are continually advertising from their platforms some "Thrilling Narrative," or "Account of the Adventures of a Fugitive," which may be had at the low price of one shilling each, or eight dollars per hundred. Recently they have discovered that the great body of their audiences came only to be amused, and they have therefore imposed an admission fee. Lucy Stone, who is a shrewd Yankee, has gone a step further, and in her management of the business of the "Woman's Rights Convention," has provided for season tickets, to be had at "the extremely low price of two shillings."

It is almost needless for us to say that these women are entirely devoid of personal attractions. They are generally thin maiden ladies, or women who perhaps have been disappointed in their endeavors to appropriate the breeches and the rights of their unlucky lords; the first class having found it utterly impossible to induce any young or old man into the matrimonial noose, have turned out upon the world, and are now endeavoring to revenge themselves upon the sex who have slighted them. The second, having been dethroned from their empire over the hearts of their husbands, for reasons which may easily be imagined, go vagabondizing over the country, boring unfortunate audiences with long essays lacking point or meaning, and amusing only from the impudence displayed by the speakers in putting them forth in a civilized country. They violate the rules of decency and taste by attiring themselves in eccentric habiliments, which hang loosely and inelegantly upon their forms, making that which we have been educated to respect, to love, and to admire, only an object of aversion and disgust. A few of these unfortunate women have awoke from their momentary trance, and quickly returned to the dress of decent society; but we saw yesterday many disciples of the Bloomer school at the Tabernacle. There was yesterday, and there will be to-day, a wide field for all such at the Tabernacle.

The "compliments" showered upon The Herald by the wretched Garrison yesterday afternoon, at the Woman's Wrong Convention, fully show that he and his coadjutors, Greeley and the rest, are beginning to feel the truth of our remarks during the time they have been amusing our citizens. His insane attack shows that our course has been the true one.

To the credit of Mr. Greeley, he made an effort to suppress the disturbance. Raymond, of The Times, gave the following report:

Times, September 8, 1853.

(Evening of the first day, Mrs. Rose speaking).

Mr. Greeley was among the audience, and in passing through the gallery, it was supposed he remonstrated with the sibillating gentlemen, and a great rumpus was raised. Some cheered the peace-maker, others hissed, the rush collected about the scene of the disturbance, and all proceedings were interrupted. Mrs. Rose suspended her remarks for a few moments, but presently said: "Friends, be seated, and I will continue." The audience would not listen, however. The uproar still continued. Cries of "Order," "Mrs. President," "Put him out," "Hurrah!" hisses, groans, and cheers. Mr. Greeley and a policeman presently succeeded in stilling the tumult, the officer collaring several men and compelling them to keep quiet. Mrs. Rose resumed and continued her remarks.

Second Day, Morning Session, Opened at 10 a.m.

Mrs. Mott: The uproar and confusion which attended the close of our proceedings of last night, although much to be regretted, as indicating an unreasonable and unreasoning disposition on the part of some, to close their ears against the truth, or rather, to drown its voice by vulgar clamor, yet, when viewed aright, and in some phases, present to us matter of congratulation. I do suppose that never, at any meeting, was public propriety more outraged, than at ours of last evening. I suppose no transactions of a body assembled to deliberate, were ever more outrageously invaded by an attempt to turn them into a mere tumult; yet, though voices were loud and angry, and the evil passions exhibited themselves with much of that quality to affright, which usually, if not always, attends their exhibition, not a scream was heard from any woman, nor did any of the "weaker sex" exhibit the slightest terror, or even alarm at the violent manifestations which invaded the peace of our assemblage.

I felicitate the women on this exhibition of fortitude; of calm moral courage. Should not our opponents, if they have any reason among them, reflect that these exhibitions are, in reality, some of the strongest arguments that can be offered to support the claims which we stand here to advocate? Do they not show, on the one hand, that men, by whom such an overpowering superiority is arrogated, can betimes demean themselves in such a way as to show that they are wholly unfit for the lofty functions which they demand as their exclusive right? And, on the other hand, do they not conclusively show, that women are possessed of, at least, some of those qualities which assist in calmness of deliberation during times of excitement and even danger? I think it was really a beautiful sight to see how calm the women remained during last evening's excitement; their self-possession I consider something truly admirable. I know that in the tumult and noise it would have been vain for any woman to raise her voice in an attempt to check it. Indeed, I am satisfied the outrage was predetermined, and I regret that the aid of the police had to be called in to quell it. Had there been here a company of women who were taught to rely upon others, they would, doubtless, have felt bound to scream for "their protectors"; but the self-reliance displayed, which must have its basis in a consciousness of the truth and justice of our cause, and which kept the members of the Convention unmoved, amid all the prevailing confusion, gives us matter of real congratulation. Let us rejoice in this, my friends; and let us remember, that when we have a true cause—while our cause rests on the basis of right—we have nothing to fear, but may go on unmoved by all these petty circumstances, by which we may be surrounded.

Mr. Burleigh said: A request was made last night by some person, I don't know who, or rather a challenge was offered, that three good reasons should be given why women should vote. Perhaps, had the person making this demand had this question put to him, namely: "What reasons are there why men should vote?" he would have considered them so self-evident as to make any answer superfluous. Yet it would be found difficult, I apprehend, to assign any reason why men should vote, which would not be found to be an equally good one for extending the elective franchise to women. He asked, however, why women should be allowed to take a part in the civil government of the country. This question will, I doubt not, be answered to-day by some one more able than myself; and if the person who asked it be present, and open to conviction, he will hear reasons sufficient to convince him.

Why should women vote? She should vote, first, because she has to bear her portion of the burdens imposed by the government which the voting makes. Is not this one reason amply sufficient for any honest-minded man? Taxation and representation go hand in hand, says a principle of our body politic. Is woman represented? No. Is woman taxed? Yes. How is that? Is it consistent with the profession; and, if there were no profession, is it right, is it just? The burden falls equally on woman and her brother; but he has all the power of applying it; she must bear it to the end of the journey, and then know nothing, say nothing, as to how it is to be disposed of. What kind of justice is that? Were woman exempted from those burdens, why, then, the exemption would so far be an argument on the other side; although even that would fail on investigation, because other equally immutable principles show that neither exemption nor representation is the condition in which any portion of the political body should be allowed to remain. But where there is no exemption, but a full apportionment of the burden, and, at the same time, no representation, the absurdity of injustice has reached its climax. (Laughter and cheers).

In the second place, woman should vote, because she ought to be a sharer in those benefits which government is formed to confer upon the governed. She has property which the government must protect, a person which it must defend, and rights which it is bound to secure. Were the millennium arrived, were there no such thing as selfishness on earth; were simple truth and justice the prominent elements in all men's minds, and the guiding spirit of all men's actions, then indeed might woman confide herself to man; then might she rely on him to secure those governmental benefits which are her due, as a portion of the general community. But is this the state of things? Alas! not yet; and, until it is, the horrible injustice of the laws which exclude woman from a share in making them, while they are her only security for the advantages she ought to enjoy, will never cease crying aloud to all men for purification. One of the great aims of all government, one of the strong considerations which alone makes its restrictions endurable, is the assurance which it gives the governed, that the sum of their happiness, and even of their liberty, shall, by individual restraints, become greater on the whole. It holds out a bonus to society, or rather, to its individual members, "Give me this little, and I will give you in exchange this much." Thus each individual puts a stake into the common fund, has an interest in the common weal, which demands careful watching. Can woman watch the large, the all-absorbing interest she has at stake? She, above all, the most tender, the most sensitive of beings, the most keenly alive to wrong, to insult, to oppression, to aught that bruises her womanly nature, can she give a careful eye to the disposal of those important questions which touch the very core of her heart? Why, when reduced to these, its naked dimensions, the injustice seems so horrible, as not to be credible, and did we not know the facts, we would find it hard to believe that man, made in the image of his Maker, could violate justice so barbarously. Surely woman lies under no moral obligation to any laws which, wanting her assent, yet assume to control her every action, word, and even thought. Her property, her person, all her rights, her most sacred affections, come within the province of those enactments; yet she can have no voice, no weight in determining what those enactments shall be. (Stamping and groans).

In the third place, woman is entitled to vote, because she is liable to all the penalties imposed by government. Not only is it that she confides, or rather, that government compels her to confide to it, the custody of person, property, rights, and all dearest interests, but it goes a step further, and thus adds another link (though quite a superfluous one) to the adamantine chain of argument which it supplies to bind down its own injustice. It stands not merely in a passive or receiving relation to woman, it becomes the active arbiter of her doom; it declares itself competent to lay hands on her, to shut her up in prison, to take away her life, the life of one who has made with it no compact—giving such awful power—the life of one who never consented to the laws which assert over her so terrible a supremacy! All the principles already applied come in here with perhaps renewed force, as being the arbiters of a question which may be regarded by some as of a still more absorbing interest, although to woman it may not be so, for when did she value life more highly than tenderness, domestic confidence, and affection? (Prolonged laughter).

Dr. H. K. Root, of New York, rose in his place among the audience and declared his intention of arguing against the principles and demands of the Convention. Being requested to take the rostrum, he did so, and spoke thus:

Mrs. President and Ladies: I do not come here with the slightest intention of offering to the ladies any opposition for mere opposition's sake. If they are proved to have more knowledge and intelligence than men, let them govern! My purpose, ladies, is to try and attain truth, which, I think, will not be found favorable to the views you express. I come, rather, as a matter of intelligence than opposition. I do not come here for the purpose of opposing the ladies too much; but as the question was not only open yesterday, but still is for discussion, I maintain that if the ladies have more intelligence, and more energy, and science than the male sex, they should rule. I think I can give three reasons why men should vote, and one why woman should not vote. (Cheers).

My first reason is, because there was an original command from God that man should rule. It may be supposed that we are in the garden of Eden now, as in the days of Adam and Eve. Now, it will be remembered, when Adam and Eve fell, Adam, because Eve tempted him, was placed in the garden as its keeper, and it was necessary in those days, as it is now, that woman should be a helpmeet for him; but you recollect that by the eating of the forbidden fruit, original sin came into the world. What was the expression of God to Adam? He says in the third chapter of Genesis, 17th verse: "Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life." Now, permit us to be in the relation that Adam and Eve were originally. It behooves the male sex to answer the objections of the female sex—not that we wish to combat them in public; but it behooves us, as a matter of justice, to put the question on a right foundation. It may be necessary, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, that the ladies should be here, but in the hundredth it may be necessary that man should say, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." You see the original cause of sin was because man, being placed in the garden, gave way to woman, and the curse fell upon him; the original cause of sin was because man gave up his judgment to woman; and it may be, if we now give up our rights to woman, some great calamity may fall upon us. Had woman only sinned, perhaps we might still have been in Eden. (Great applause).

My second reason why man should vote is the law of physical force over the woman—because man's strength is greater than woman's.

The third reason is, because if women enter the field of competition with men, it may lead not only to domestic unhappiness, but a great many other ill feelings. And I will give another reason why men should be dictators. If woman says she shall vote, and man says she sha'n't, he is in duty bound to maintain what he says. If he says she sha'n't, that is reason enough why she should not." (Cheers and laughter).

Alexander Parker, of Philadelphia, rose in his place, and on being invited to the platform, spoke thus:

Adam was the first gardener in the world; he belonged to my business, for I am a gardener—a business I took up myself, so I should have something to say about the garden of Eden. Well, I have often thought about the fall, and I have often pictured it in this manner: the very moment the charge was given not to do such a thing, that was just the time they wanted to do it. (Prolonged cheers).

It is often said that woman has a great deal of curiosity, and no doubt it was whispered into her ear, that the moment she ate of the forbidden fruit she should become a god. Now, I have seen more reason this morning why women should vote than I have ever seen before. In Pennsylvania a man has got but one vote, while a woman has three—her husband's and her two sons'. Eve tried to get over the temptation, but she could not; and so, after many efforts, she clutched the apple she looked at so, and so, and she reached out to it; afraid at first, but at last she laid hold of it, and, seeing that her fear was over, she kissed its lovely cheek. Then she ran to Adam, and said it was good, and he ate of it. Then his eyes were opened and he saw he was naked, and ran and hid himself. He tried to hide himself among the bushes, but he could not deny the eating of it, because the core was sticking in his throat, and it is sticking there still; but woman has not got the core sticking in her throat. Well, Adam pretended to be innocent, like all the rest of mankind, and said it was not he, but the woman that did it. No, no; it was not his fault, it was the woman who gave it to him. Oh, yes! he was not to blame, no more than any lord of creation. Well, then, there was a curse upon him; but there was a promise to woman that her seed should bruise the head of the serpent with her heel. (Shouts of laughter).

Mrs. Nichols: As to the text which says that woman must obey her husband, surely that is no reason why she should obey all the bachelors and other women's husbands in the community. My husband would have me advocate the claims I do, therefore by the logic of our cause my husband wishes me to vote, and, according to the Scripture, the gentleman must, even in his own reasoning, allow me the right to vote. In one place the gentleman said that woman had already turned the world over; and that man must be cautious not to allow her to do so again. Perhaps, if he reconsidered these statements he might be willing to retract the latter; because, if she turned the world over once and put the wrong side up, he ought now to allow her to turn it back, that she may bring the right side up again.

Mrs. Rose said: As to the personal property, after all debts and liabilities are discharged, the widow receives one-half of it; and, in addition, the law kindly allows her her own wearing apparel, her own ornaments, proper to her station, one bed, with appurtenances for the same; a stove, the Bible, family pictures, and all the school-books; also, all spinning-wheels and weaving-looms, one table, six chairs, tea cups and saucers, one tea-pot, one sugar dish, and six spoons. (Much laughter). But the law does not inform us whether they are to be tea or table spoons; nor does the law make any provision for kettles, sauce-pans, and all such necessary things. But the presumption seems to be that the spoons meant are teaspoons; for, as ladies are generally considered very delicate, the law presumed that a widow might live on tea only; but spinning-wheels and weaving-looms are very necessary articles for ladies nowadays. (Hissing and great confusion). Why, you need not hiss, for I am expounding the law. These wise law-makers, who seem to have lived somewhere about the time of the flood, did not dream of spinning and weaving by steam-power. When our great-great-grandmothers had to weave every article of apparel worn by the family, it was, no doubt, considered a very good law to allow the widow the possession of the spinning-wheels and the weaving-looms. But, unfortunately for some laws, man is a progressive being; his belief, opinions, habits, manners, and customs change, and so do spinning-wheels and weaving-looms; and, with men and things, law must change too, for what is the value of a law when man has outgrown it? As well might you bring him to the use of his baby clothes, because they once fitted him, as to keep him to such a law. No. Laws, when man has outgrown them, are fit only to be cast aside among the things that were.

But I must not forget, the law allows the widow something more. She is allowed one cow, all sheep to the number of ten, with the fleeces and the cloth from the same, two swine, and the pork therefrom. (Great laughter). My friends, do not say that I stand here to make these laws ridiculous. No; if you laugh, it is at their own inherent ludicrousness; for I state them simply and truly as they are; for they are so ridiculous in themselves, that it is impossible to make them more so.

Mrs. Nichols said: As widow, too, the law bears heavily on woman. If her children have property, she is adjudged unworthy of their guardianship; and although the decree of God has made her the true and natural guardian of her children, she is obliged to pay from her scanty means to be constituted so by law.

I have conversed with judges and legislators, and tried to learn a reason for these things, but failed to find it. A noble man once gave me what he probably thought was a good one. "Women," he said to me, "can not earn as much as men!" We say they should be allowed to earn as much. They have the ability, and the means should not be shut out from them. I have heard of another man who held woman's industrial ability at a low rate. "His wife," he said, "had never been able to do anything but attend to her children." "How many have you?" he was asked; and the answer was, "Nine." Nine children to attend to! nine children cared for! and she could do nothing more, the wife of this most reasonable man. Now, which is of more importance to the community, the property which that reasonable husband made, or the nine children whom that mother brought, with affectionate and tender toil, through the perils of infancy and youth, until they were men and women? Which was of more importance to this land, the property which the father of George Washington amassed, or the George Washington whom a noble mother gave to his country? The name of Washington, his glorious deeds, and the enduring benefits he secured for us, still remain, and will long after the estates of Washington have passed from his name forever!

In the State of Vermont, a wife sought a divorce from her husband on the ground of his intemperance. They were persons moving among our highest circles—wealthy people; and the wife knew that she could, through the aid of her friends and relations, with the influence and sympathy of the community, obtain a divorce and a support for her children. That father carried away into Canada one child, a little girl, and paid three hundred dollars to a low, vile Frenchman, that he might keep her from her mother and friends. Three times her almost heart-broken mother went in search of her; twice in vain, but the third time she was found. So badly had the poor child been treated in the vile hands in which her father had placed her, that, when recovered, she was almost insensible; and when, by her mother's nursing care, her intelligence was at length restored, her joy at seeing her mother was so violent, that it was feared its excess might prove fatal. The case came into court, and the judge decided that the two daughters should be given to their mother, but that the custody of the son should be given to the father. She was acquitted of the least impropriety or indiscretion; yet, though the obscenity and profanity of her husband in his own family was shocking, and it was in the last degree painful to that high-minded woman to see her son brought up under the charge of such a man, the law decided that the unworthy father was the more proper guardian for the boy!

In the Green Mountain State a great many sermons have lately been preached on the text, "Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands." The remaining words, "in the Lord," are generally omitted; so that the text is made to appear like an injunction that the wives should submit to their husbands, whether they were in the Lord or in the devil. And the best of all is, that we are told that if we would be submissive, we could change our husbands from devils into angels.

Mrs. Mott: I now introduce to the Convention Frances Dana Gage, of St. Louis, Mo., better known as "Aunt Fanny," the poet.

Mrs. Gage said: This morning, when I was leaving my boarding-house, some one said to me, "So you are ready armed and equipped to go and fight the men." I was sorry, truly sorry, to hear the words—they fell heavily on my heart. I have no fight with men. I am a daughter, a sister, a wife, and a mother, and in all these relations I live in harmony with man. Neither I, nor any of the sisters with whom I am united in this movement, have any quarrel with men. What is it that we oppose? What do we seek to overturn? The bad laws and customs of society. These are our only enemies, and against these alone is our hostility directed; although they be "hallowed by time," we seek to eradicate them, because the day for which they were suited, if such ever existed, is long since gone by. The men, we may suppose, are above and beyond the laws, and we assail the laws only.

There is one law which I do not remember having heard any of my sisters touch upon, that is the Law of Wills, as far as it relates to married women, and as far as it allows a husband (which it fully does), along with his power to determine the lot of his wife while he is alive, also to control her when he is dead. Would any gentleman like to have that law reversed? Let me read to you a will after that odd fashion. It will fall on your ears, gentlemen, with as loud a tone of injustice as it does on mine:

Will Of Bridget Smith.—In the name of God, amen. I, Bridget Smith, being weak in body, though sound in mind, blessed be God for the same, do make and declare this my last will and testament. Item first: I give my soul to God, and my body to the earth, from which it came. Item second: I give to my beloved husband, John Smith, Sen., my Bible, and forty acres of wild land which I own in Bear Marsh, Ill, for the term of his natural life, when it shall descend to our son, John Smith, Jr. Item third: I give and bequeath to my daughter, Tabitha, my farm, house, outhouse, barns, and all the stock on said farm, situated in Pleasant Valley, and which said farm consists of 160 acres. I also give to my said daughter Tabitha, the wagons, carriages, harnesses, carts, plows, and all other property that shall be on said farm at the time of my death. Item fourth: I give to my son, John Smith, Jr., my family horse, my buggy, harness, and saddle, and also eighty acres of wild land which I own in the State of Iowa, for which I have a patent. Item fifth: I give to my beloved husband, John Smith, Sen., the use of the house in which we live, together with my bed, so long as he shall live, or remain my widower; but in case he shall die, or get married, then it is my will that my house and bed shall descend to my said daughter, Tabitha. Recommending my said husband to her care, whom I make the sole executrix of this my last will and testament, hereby revoking all others.

Signed, sealed, and proclaimed this —— day of ——, 1853, in the presence of John Doe and Richard Roe.

Bridget Smith.

Would any of you like such power as that to be placed in our hands? Yet, is it not as fair that married women should dispose of their property, as that married men should dispose of theirs? It is true, the power thus given to husbands is not always used to the detriment of women, and this is frequently urged in support of the law. But I reply, that law is made for extreme cases; and while any such statutes remain on the books, no good man will cease to exert himself for their removal. I ask the right to vote, not because it would create antagonism, but because it would create harmony. I want to do away with antagonism by removing oppression, for where oppression exists, there antagonism must exist also.

Ernestine L. Rose: In allusion to the law respecting wills, I wish to say that, according to the Revised Statutes of our State, a married woman has not a right to make a will. The law says that wills may be made by all persons, except idiots, persons of unsound mind, married women, and infants. Mark well, all but idiots, lunatics, married women, and infants. Male infants ought to consider it quite an insult to be placed in the same category with married women. No, a married woman has no right to bequeath a dollar of the property, no matter how much she may have brought into the marriage, or accumulated in it. Not a dollar to a friend, a relative, or even to her own child, to keep him from starving. And this is the law in the nineteenth century, in the enlightened United States, under a Republic that declares all men to be free and equal.

Lucy Stone: Just one word. I think Mrs. Rose is a little mistaken; I wish to correct her by saying that of some States in—

Mrs. Rose: I did not say this was the universal law; I said it was the law in the State of New York.

Lucy Stone: I was not paying close attention, and must have been mistaken. In Massachusetts the law makes a married woman's will valid in two cases: the first is, where the consent of her husband is written on the will; the second, where she wills all she has to her husband, in which case his written consent is not deemed requisite.

Dr. Harriot K. Hunt spoke on the fruitful theme of taxation without representation! and read her annual protest[120] to the authorities of Boston against being compelled to submit to that injustice. She said: I wish to vote, that women may have, by law, an equal right with men in property. In October, 1851, I went to pay my taxes in Boston. Going into the Assessor's office, I saw a tall, thin, weak, stupid-looking Irish boy. It was near election time, and I looked at him scrutinizingly. He held in his hand a document, which, I found on inquiry, was one of naturalization; and this hopeful son of Erin was made a citizen of the United States, and he could have a voice in determining the destinies of this mighty nation, while thousands of intellectual women, daughters of the soil, no matter how intelligent, how respectable, or what amount of taxes they paid, were forced to be dumb!

Now, I am glad to pay my taxes, am glad that my profession enables me to pay them; but I would like very much to have a voice in directing what is to be done with the money I pay. I meditated on what I had seen, and, in 1852, when paying my taxes, I took to the Treasurer's office my protest.

The case of the Hon. Mrs. Norton before the English courts, then attracting much attention, was a fair exemplification of the injustice of the law to married women.

Lucy Stone said: I have before me, in a newspaper, a case which shows strongly the necessity for woman's legislating for herself. I mean the case of the Hon. Mrs. Norton, which lately transpired in a court in London, and which fully proves that it is never right for one class to legislate for another. There are, probably, few here who have not been made better and wiser by the beautiful things which have fallen from the pen of that lady. In 1836 her husband obtained a separation from her on the charge of infidelity. Eighteen years of a blameless life since, and the conviction every pure mind must feel, that nothing impure could ever dwell in a mind such as her productions show hers to be, will fully relieve her of any suspicion that she ever was guilty of acts justifying that charge. She was a woman of transcendent abilities; and her works brought her in £1,000 a year—sometimes more, sometimes less. This her husband procured to be paid over to himself, by securing the profits of her copyrights; and this husband allowed her only £400 a year! and, at last, refused to pay her even this sum; so that, for her necessary expenses, she was obliged to go into debt, and her debtors brought a suit against her husband, which was taken into court. In the court she stood before her husband's lawyer, and said to him: "If you are afraid of what I may say, beware how you ask me questions!" Wealth and power were against her, and the lawyer did ask questions which wrung from her what she had concealed for seventeen long years, and the world at last knew how her husband had kept the money she earned by her pen. She stood in court, and said: "I do not ask for rights; I have no rights, I have only wrongs. I will go abroad, and live with my son." Her husband had proposed to take her children from her, but she said: "I would rather starve than give them up." And for a time she did starve. I will read for you her poem of "Twilight," and you will all see what kind of woman has been so wronged, and has so suffered.

That woman, gifted, noble, and wealthy, with such great yearnings in her soul, whose heart was so bound up in her children, was thus robbed not only of her own rights, but also of theirs. Men! we can not trust you! You have deceived us too long! Since this movement began, some laws have been passed, securing to woman her personal property, but they are as nothing in the great reform that is needed. I can tell you a case. A woman married a man, whom she did not love, because he had a fortune. He died, and she married the man whom she loved before her first marriage. He died, too, and the fortune which was hers through her first husband was seized on by the relatives of the second, and she was left penniless in the wide world. Here, as in England, women earn large sums by their literary fame and talents; and I know a man who watches the post-office, and, because the Law gives him the power, secures the letters which contain the wages of his wife's intellectual toil, and pockets them for his own use.

I will conclude by reading a letter from an esteemed friend, Mr. Higginson. It proposes certain questions which I should wish to hear our enemies answer.

Worcester, Sept. 4, 1853.

Dear Friend:—You are aware that domestic duties alone prevent my prolonging my stay in New York during the session of the Woman's Rights Convention. But you know, also, that all my sympathies are there. I hope you will have a large representation of the friends of the great movement—the most important of the century; and that you will also assemble a good many of the opposition during the discussion. Perhaps from such opponents I might obtain answers to certain questions which have harassed my mind, and are the following:

If there be a woman's sphere, as a man's sphere, why has not woman an equal voice in fixing the limits? If it be unwomanly for a girl to have a whole education, why is it not unwomanly for her to have even a half one? Should she not be left where the Turkish women are left? If women have sufficient political influence through their husbands and brothers, how is it that the worst laws are confessedly those relating to female property? If politics are necessarily corrupting, ought not good men, as well as good women, to be exhorted to quit voting?

If, however, man's theory be correct—that none should be appointed jurors but those whose occupations fit them to understand the matters in dispute—where is the propriety of empanneling a jury of men to decide on the right of a divorced mother to her child? If it be proper for a woman to open her lips in jubilee to sing nonsense, how can it be improper for her to open them and speak sense? These afford a sample of the questions to which I have been trying in vain to find an answer. If the reasonings of men on this subject are a fair specimen of the masculine intellect of the nineteenth century, I think it is certainly quite time to call in women to do the thinking.

T. W. Higginson.

Yours, respectfully and cordially,

Miss Lucy Stone.

Matilda Joslyn Gage cited the Convention to a case recently tried before the Court of Common Pleas of New York, as illustrating the husband's ownership of the wife, the Court deciding that the friends of a woman who had "harbored" and detained her from her husband, though with her own consent and desire, should pay him $10,000. He recovered this sum on the principle of ownership; the wife's services were due him, and he recovered their value.

Mrs. Gage also commented on the divorce laws, which she declared were less just in Christian than in Mohammedan countries. In those countries if the husband sues for a divorce he is obliged to restore the dower, but in Christian America the husband not only retains all the property in case he sues for a divorce, but where the wife, being the innocent party, sues, she even then receives neither property nor children, unless by an express decree of the court. She is alike punished, whether innocent or guilty. Mrs. Gage also discussed the question so often put, "What has woman to do with politics?" She said the country must look to women for its salvation.

Sojourner Truth, a tall colored woman, well known in anti-slavery circles, and called the Lybian Sybil, made her appearance on the platform. This was the signal for a fresh outburst from the mob; for at every session every man of them was promptly in his place, at twenty-five cents a head. And this was the one redeeming feature of this mob—it paid all expenses, and left a surplus in the treasury. Sojourner combined in herself, as an individual, the two most hated elements of humanity. She was black, and she was a woman, and all the insults that could be cast upon color and sex were together hurled at her; but there she stood, calm and dignified, a grand, wise woman, who could neither read nor write, and yet with deep insight could penetrate the very soul of the universe about her. As soon as the terrible turmoil was in a measure quelled

She said: Is it not good for me to come and draw forth a spirit, to see what kind of spirit people are of? I see that some of you have got the spirit of a goose, and some have got the spirit of a snake. I feel at home here. I come to you, citizens of New York, as I suppose you ought to be. I am a citizen of the State of New York; I was born in it, and I was a slave in the State of New York; and now I am a good citizen of this State. I was born here, and I can tell you I feel at home here. I've been lookin' round and watchin' things, and I know a little mite 'bout Woman's Rights, too. I come forth to speak 'bout Woman's Rights, and want to throw in my little mite, to keep the scales a-movin'. I know that it feels a kind o' hissin' and ticklin' like to see a colored woman get up and tell you about things, and Woman's Rights. We have all been thrown down so low that nobody thought we'd ever get up again; but we have been long enough trodden now; we will come up again, and now I am here.

I was a-thinkin', when I see women contendin' for their rights, I was a-thinkin' what a difference there is now, and what there was in old times. I have only a few minutes to speak; but in the old times the kings of the earth would hear a woman. There was a king in the Scriptures; and then it was the kings of the earth would kill a woman if she come into their presence; but Queen Esther come forth, for she was oppressed, and felt there was a great wrong, and she said I will die or I will bring my complaint before the king. Should the king of the United States be greater, or more crueler, or more harder? But the king, he raised up his sceptre and said: "Thy request shall be granted unto thee—to the half of my kingdom will I grant it to thee!" Then he said he would hang Haman on the gallows he had made up high. But that is not what women come forward to contend. The women want their rights as Esther. She only wanted to explain her rights. And he was so liberal that he said, "the half of my kingdom shall be granted to thee," and he did not wait for her to ask, he was so liberal with her.

Now, women do not ask half of a kingdom, but their rights, and they don't get 'em. When she comes to demand 'em, don't you hear how sons hiss their mothers like snakes, because they ask for their rights; and can they ask for anything less? The king ordered Haman to be hung on the gallows which he prepared to hang others; but I do not want any man to be killed, but I am sorry to see them so short-minded. But we'll have our rights; see if we don't; and you can't stop us from them; see if you can. You may hiss as much as you like, but it is comin'. Women don't get half as much rights as they ought to; we want more, and we will have it. Jesus says: "What I say to one, I say to all—watch!" I'm a-watehin'. God says: "Honor your father and your mother." Sons and daughters ought to behave themselves before their mothers, but they do not. I can see them a-laughin', and pointin' at their mothers up here on the stage. They hiss when an aged woman comes forth. If they'd been brought up proper they'd have known better than hissing like snakes and geese. I'm 'round watchin' these things, and I wanted to come up and say these few things to you, and I'm glad of the hearin' you give me. I wanted to tell you a mite about Woman's Rights, and so I came out and said so. I am sittin' among you to watch; and every once and awhile I will come out and tell you what time of night it is.

The Times next day commented as follows:

The New York Times, Sept. 9, 1853.

The Row of Yesterday.—Row No. 3 was a very jolly affair, a regular break-down, at the Woman's Convention. The women had their rights, and more beside. The cause was simply that the rowdyish diathesis is just now prevalent. True, a colored woman made a speech, but there was nothing in that to excite a multitude; she did not speak too low to be heard; she did not insult them with improper language; nor did the audience respond at all insultingly. They did not curse, they only called for "half a dozen on the shell." They did not swear, they only "hurried up that stew." They did wrong, however.

If we had our own way every rascally rowdy among them should have Bloomers of all colors preaching at them by the year—a year for every naughty word they uttered, a score of them for every hiss. Out upon the villains who go to any meeting to disturb it. Let anybody who can hire a house and pay for it have his way, and let none be disturbed; the opposers can stay away. But for us, let us be thankful that in such hot weather there is something to amuse us, something to season our insipid dishes, something to spice our dull days with. Mem. It was cooler in the evening.

---

Caroline M. Severance, of Ohio, presented an argument and appeal based upon the following propositions: That as the manifest dissimilarities which cause the nations of the earth to differ, physically, and in degree of mental and moral development and cultivation, are not found justly to invalidate their claim to a place in the vast brotherhood of man—to fullness of family communion and rights; so there are no radical differences of the sexes in these respects, which can at all impair the integrity of an equal humanity—no sufficient basis for a distinction in so comprehensive a classification.

The fundamental facts and faculties—the higher and more essential attributes which make up the accepted definition of humanity in our day, are identical in both—are no more confined or unduly allotted to one sex than to one nation.

On the broad basis of this philosophy, on the ground of woman's undeniable and equal humanity, proven by the possession of identical human faculties, and equal human needs, we claim for her the recognition of that humanity and its rights—for the freedom, protection, development, and use of those faculties, and the supply of those needs. And we maintain that no accident of sex, no prejudged or proven dissimilarity in degree of physical, mental, or moral endowment, or development, can at all stand in the way of the admission of such just claim; and no denial of such claim but must necessarily be fraught with evil, as subversive of the Creator's economy and design. [Shouts and laughter.]

Rev. John Pierpont, who, for the first time, took part in a Woman's Rights Convention, said: Ladies and gentlemen, a woman, at this hour, occupies the throne of the mightiest kingdom of the globe. Under her sway there are some hundred and fifty millions of the human race. Has she a right to sit there? [Several voices, "No!">[ The vote here is—no; but a hundred and fifty millions vote the contrary. If a woman can thus have the highest right conceded to her, why should not woman have a lower? Therefore, some women have some rights. Is not the question a fair one,—how many women have any rights? And, also, how many rights has any woman? Are not these fair subjects for discussion? I do not come here to advocate any specific right for women; I come merely for the consideration of the question, what right she has. What are the rights which can not rightfully be denied her? Surely, some belong to the sex at large, as part of the great family of man. We lay it, down as the foundation of our civil theory, that man, as man, has, and by nature is endowed with certain natural, inviolable, indefeasible rights; not that men who have attained the age of majority alone possess those rights; not that the older, the young, the fair, or the dark, are alone endowed with them; but that they belong to all. The rights are not of man's giving; God gave them; and if you deny or withhold them, you place yourself in antagonism with your Creator. The more humble and despised is the human being claiming those rights, the more prompt should be the feeling of every manly bosom to stand by that humble creature of God, and see that its right is not withheld from it! Is it a new thing in this country to allow civil rights to a woman?

Susan B. Anthony, who had been a teacher for fifteen years, gave an amusing description of her recent experience in attempting to speak at a teachers' convention. Paulina Wright Davis offered the following resolution:

Resolved, That inasmuch as this great movement is intended to meet the wants, not of America only, but of the whole world, a committee be appointed to prepare an address from this Convention to the women of Great Britain and the continent of Europe, setting forth our objects, and inviting their co-operation in the same.[121]

Wm. Lloyd Garrison: I second the resolution, because it shows the universality of our enterprise. I second it heartily, for it manifests the grandeur of the object we are pursuing. There never yet was a struggle for liberty which was not universal, though, for the time, it might have appeared to be no more than local. If the women of this country have to obtain rights which have been denied them, the women of England, of France, of the world, have to obtain the same; and I regard this as a struggle for the race, sublime as the world itself. It is right that this Convention should address the women of the whole world, in order that they should announce precisely how they regard their own position in the universe of God. What rights they claim are God-given; what rights they possess, and what rights they have still to achieve. It is time that the women of America should ask the women beyond the Atlantic to consider their own condition, and to co-operate with them in the same glorious struggle. There is not an argument that God ever permitted a human being to frame, that can be brought against this cause. This is a free Convention, and we are willing that any man or woman who has aught against its principles, should come here and freely urge it. And yet, with a free platform, where is the human being who cares to argue the question? Where is the man who presents himself decently, and proffers a word of reasonable argument against our cause? I have yet to see that man. Instead, we have blackguardism, defamation, rowdyism, profanity; we have all the indications that hell from beneath is stirred up against this divine Convention, for it is divine—it takes hold of heaven and the throne of God! (Hisses). Hiss, ye serpents! ye have nothing else to offer. There is not one of you to whom God has given a brain to fashion an argument. But it goes on record, and all the journals of this city will themselves bear testimony, that no one takes the platform, like an honest and honorable man, to argue this cause down. Therefore, the whole ground is won, and we stand, as we have stood from the beginning, on the rock of victory.

It was rather singular that in this Convention, so entirely under the control of a mob, that there should be found one man who dared to stand upon the platform and announce that he had been an opponent for ten years, and was connected with a journal which had initiated this mob; and now he desired to give in his adhesion, and to confess his conversion. This was one of the remarkable incidents of the occasion.

Isaac C. Pray said: Until within two years I have been an incessant opponent of the persons on this platform, in a leading journal in this city, which gives the cue to the hisses in that gallery. I have myself given—(applause). Pray spare your plaudits; I do not wish for them. In November, 1851, I retired from that journal, and I have since applied myself to study. This movement, among others, has come under my notice, and I have given it much attention. The result is, that I have entirely changed my opinion with regard to it. I know, not only that my former opinion was wrong, but that this movement is one which you can not stop; it emanates from the Deity himself, whose influence urges man forward on the path of progress. I say to the clergy, if they ignore this movement, they ignore that accountability to the Almighty which they preach. I do not mean to enter into any argument on this subject, but merely wish to say, as each one is accountable for his energies to God, you must go on in this good and holy cause; also, I wish to show that there is such a thing as a man's changing his opinion. This cause has been the butt of all the ridicule I could command. I scoffed at it, in season and out of season. There is not a lady on this platform whom my pen has not assailed; and now I come to make all the reparation in my power, by thus raising my voice on behalf of them and the cause committed to their hands. (Cheers and stamping).

As it was inconsistent with Mrs. Mott's Quaker principles to call upon the police for the forcible suppression of the mob, she vacated the chair, inviting Ernestine L. Rose to take her place. The last evening session opened with a song by G. W. Clark; but the music did not soothe the mob soul; he was greeted with screeches, which his voice only at brief intervals could drown.

The President then introduced a German lady, Madame Mathilde Francesca Anneké, editor of a liberal woman's rights newspaper which had been suppressed in Germany. She had but recently landed in our country, and hastened to the Convention to enjoy the blessings of free speech in a republic. She had heard so much of freedom in America, that she could hardly express her astonishment at what she witnessed. After many attempts, and with great difficulty, owing to the tumult and interruption by impertinent noises, she spoke as follows, in German, Mrs. Rose translating her remarks into English:

I wish to say only a few words. On the other side of the Atlantic there is no freedom of any kind, and we have not even the right to claim freedom of speech. But can it be that here, too, there are tyrants who violate the individual right to express opinions on any subject? And do you call yourselves republicans? No; there is no republic without freedom of speech. (The tumult showing no signs of abatement),

Wendell Phillips came forward, and said: Allow me to say one word, purely as a matter of the self-respect which you owe to yourselves. We are citizens of a great country, which, from Maine to Georgia, has ex tended a welcome to Kossuth, and this New York audience is now looking upon a noble woman who stood by his side in the battle-fields of Hungary; one who has faced the cannon of Francis Joseph of Austria, for the rights of the people. Is this the welcome you give her to the shores of republican America? A woman who has proved her gallantry and attachment to principles, wishes to say five words to you of the feelings with which she is impressed toward this cause. I know, fellow-citizens, that you will hear her.

The audience showing a better disposition to hear Madame Anneké, she proceeded thus:

I saw this morning, in a paper, that the women of America have met in convention to claim their rights. I rejoiced when I saw that they recognized their equality; and I rejoiced when I saw that they have not forgotten their sisters in Germany. I wished to be here with my American sisters, to tell them that I sympathize in their efforts; but I was too sick to come, and would probably not have been here but that another German woman, a friend of this movement, came to Newark and took me out of my sick bed. But it was the want of a knowledge of the English language which kept me away, more than sickness.

Before I came here, I knew the tyranny and oppression of kings; I felt it in my own person, and friends, and country; and when I came here I expected to find that freedom which is denied us at home. Our sisters in Germany have long desired freedom, but there the desire is repressed as well in man as in woman. There is no freedom there, even to claim human rights. Here they expect to find freedom of speech; here, for if we can not claim it here, where should we go for it? Here, at least, we ought to be able to express our opinions on all subjects; and yet, it would appear, there is no freedom even here to claim human rights, although the only hope in our country for freedom of speech and action, is directed to this country for illustration and example. That freedom I claim. The women of my country look to this for encouragement and sympathy; and they, also, sympathize with this cause. We hope it will go on and prosper; and many hearts across the ocean in Germany are beating in unison with those here.

Madame Anneké retired amid a great uproar, which increased when Mr. Phillips presented himself again. He persisted against frequent clamorous interruptions in his purpose to speak, and addressed the meeting as follows:

Mr. Phillips: I am not surprised at the reception I meet. (Interruption).

Mrs. Rose: As presiding officer for this evening, I call upon the police. The mayor, too, promised to see that our meetings should not be disturbed, and I now call upon him to preserve order. As citizens of New York, we have a right to this protection, for we pay our money for it. My friends, keep order, and then we shall know who the disturbers are.

Mr. Phillips: You are making a better speech than I can, by your conduct. This is proof positive of the necessity of this Convention. The time has been when other Conventions have been met like this—with hisses. (Renewed hisses). Go on with your hisses; geese have hissed before now. If it be your pleasure to argue the question for us, by proving that the men here, at least, are not fit for exercising political rights. (Great uproar).

Mrs. Rose: I regret that I have again to call upon the police to keep order; and if they are not able to do it, I call upon the meeting to help them.

Mr. Phillips: You prove one thing to-night, that the men of New York do not understand the meaning of civil liberty and free discussion.

Antoinette Brown made an attempt to speak, but soon ceased amidst the most indescribable uproar. Mr. Elliott then jumped upon the platform, and harangued the audience as a representative of the rowdies, though he claimed for himself great fairness and respectability. He said:

If taxation without representation be robbery, then robbery is right, and I am willing to be robbed. For twelve years I have paid taxes; and here and in other countries I have, in return, got protection. Robbery is, to take away property forcibly without giving an equivalent for it; but a good equivalent is given for taxation. In this and other countries, the property of individuals is taken from them, as when an owner of land is deprived of it by the State to make a railroad through it; that is no robbery; an equivalent is given, and the owner is fairly dealt by. We have heard many instances of the tyranny inflicted on women; but is that a reason that they should vote? If it be, minors, who are under a double tyranny, that of father and mother—

Here the audience seemed to have lost all patience, and Mr. Elliott's voice was completely drowned in the uproar. He retired, repeating that he had proved the rowdies were not all on one side. The confusion now reached its climax. A terrific uproar, shouting, yelling, screaming, bellowing, laughing, stamping, cries of "Burleigh," "Root," "Truth," "Shut up," "Take a drink," "Greedey," etc., prevented anything orderly being heard, and the Convention, on the motion of Mrs. Rose, was adjourned sine die; the following resolution having first been read by Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, and passed without dissent:

Resolved, That the members of this Convention, and the audience assembled, tender their thanks to Lucretia Mott for the grace, firmness, ability, and courtesy with which she has discharged her important and often arduous duties.

Daily Tribune, Sept. 8, 1853.

WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION:—Meeting At The Tabernacle.

Evening Session.—Tremendous uproar—close of the Convention. Yesterday evening being the last sitting of this Convention, the approach to the Tabernacle was thronged long before the hour for opening the doors, and considerable excitement seemed to prevail. At about seven o'clock the Tabernacle doors were thrown open, and the rush for tickets and admission to the anxious throng could only be equalled by that of a Jenny Lind night. The building, capable of holding some 2,000 persons, was immediately filled to excess, and the principal promoters of the movement took their places on the platform.... Mr. George W. Clark, who had been requested to sing a song on "Freedom of Thought," did so in a style apparently not much approved by the audience, who at a very early stage began to give vent to all kinds of groans and ironical cheers.

Mrs. Martin, of this State, was then introduced, and with considerable difficulty began her address.

(Cries—"No! no!" and tremendous yells and laughter). "Time's up," "That'll do." (Loud hisses, groans, laughter, tigers, and demoniac sounds from the galleries). Cries of "Phillips! Phillips." (Hisses and yells).

Tribune, Sept. 9, 1853.

We do not know whether any of the gentlemen who have succeeded in breaking up the Woman's Rights Convention, or of the other gentlemen who have succeeded in three sessions at Metropolitan Hall in silencing a regularly appointed and admitted delegate, will ever be ashamed of their passion and hostility, but we have little doubt that some of them will live to understand their own folly. At any rate, they have accomplished a very different thing from what they now suppose. For if it had been their earnest desire to strengthen the cause of Woman's Rights, they could not have done the work half so effectively. Nothing is so good for a weak and unpopular movement as this sort of opposition. Had Antoinette Brown been allowed to speak at Metropolitan Hall, her observations would certainly have occupied but a fraction of the time now wasted, and would have had just the weight proper to their sense and appropriateness, and no more. But instead of this the World's Convention was disturbed and its orators silenced. The consequences will be the mass of people throughout the country who might otherwise not know of its existence, will have their attention called and their sympathies enlisted in its behalf. So, too, when Antoinette Brown is put down by Rev. John Chambers and his colleagues, and denied what is her clear right as a member of the Temperance Convention by a vociferous mob, composed, we are sorry to say, very largely of clergymen, every impartial person sees that she is surrounded with a prestige and importance which, whatever her talents as a speaker, she could hardly hope to have attained. Many who question the propriety of woman's appearing in public, will revolt at the gagging of one who had a right to speak and claimed simply to use it on a proper occasion. There is in the public mind of this country an intuitive love of fair play and free speech, and those who outrage it for any purpose of their own merely reinforce their opponents, and bestow a mighty power on the ideas they hate and fain would suppress.

Tribune, Sept. 12, 1853.

Arguments pro and con. The meetings at the Tabernacle Tuesday and Wednesday last, exhibited some features not often paralleled in the progress of any public agitation for the redress of grievances, or the vindication of rights. The advocates of an enlargement of the allotted sphere of woman, had hired the house, paid the advertising and other expenses, gathered at their own expense from their distant homes, and taken all the responsibilities of the outlay, yet they offered and desired throughout to surrender their own platform for one-half of the time, to any respectable and capable antagonists who should see fit to appear and attempt to show why their demands were not just and their grievances real. Consequently, though they are engaged in a struggle, not only against numbers and power, and fashion and immemorial custom, but with the Pulpit and the Press actively and bitterly leading and spurring on their antagonists, and with no access to the public ear but from the public platform, we consider this proposition more than liberal—it was chivalric and generous. We listened with interest to some of the arguments pro and con, and propose here to recapitulate their substance, that our readers may see at a glance the present position and bearing of the controversy. We will begin with the first speech we heard, that of

Rev. Wm. H. Channing: They say the public platform is not in woman's sphere; but let us understand why. Jenny Lind stands on that platform before thousands of men and women, and sings, "I know that my Redeemer liveth," with all hearts approving, all voices applauding, and nobody lisps a word that she is out of her sphere. Well, Antoinette Brown believes the sentiment so sang to be the hope of a lost world, and feels herself called to bear witness in behalf of that religion, and to commend His salvation to the understanding and hearts of all who will hear her. Why may she not obey this impulse, and bear the tidings of a world's salvation to those perishing in darkness and sin? What is there unfeminine or revolting in her preaching the truth which Jenny Lind may sing without objection and amid universal applause?

Answer by things "in male costumes." Hiss-s-s.

Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose: The law declares husband and wife one; and such we all feel that they should be, and must be when the marriage is a true one. Now, why should that same law base their union or oneness on inequality or subjugation? The wife dies and the husband inherits all her property, as is right; but let the husband die, and the greater part of the property is taken from the wife and given to others, even though all that property was earned or inherited by the wife. She may be turned out of the house she was born in and which was hers until marriage, and see it given to her husband's brothers or other kindred who are strangers to her. I insist that the wife should own and inherit the property of the husband just to the same extent that the husband inherits that of the wife—why not?

Answer to the aforesaid—Hiss-s-s-s! Bow-ow-ow!

Harriot K. Hunt: I plant myself on the basis of the Declaration of Independence and insist, with our Revolutionary sires, that taxation without representation is tyranny. Well; here am I, an independent American woman, educated for and living by the practice of medicine. I own property, and pay taxes on that property. I demand of the Government that taxes me that it should allow me an equal voice with the other tax-payers in the disposal of the public money. I am certainly not less intelligent than thousands who, though scarcely able to read their ballots, are entitled to vote. I am allowed to vote in any bank or insurance company when I choose to be a stockholder; why ought I not to vote in the disposition of public money raised by tax, as well as those men who do not pay taxes, or those who do either?

Answer of the aforesaid—Yah! wow! Hiss-s-s-s!

Lucy Stone: I plead for the right of woman to the control of her own person as a moral, intelligent, accountable being. I know a wife who has not set foot outside of her husband's house for three years, because her husband forbids her doing so when he is present, and locks her up when he is absent. That wife is gray with sorrow and despair though now in middle life, but there is no redress for her wrongs because the law makes her husband her master, and there is no proof that he beats or bruises her; there is nothing in his treatment of her that the law does not allow. I protest against such a law and demand its overthrow; and I protest against any law which limits the sphere of woman, as a bar to her intellectual development. You say she can not do this and that, but if so, what need of a law to prevent her? You say her intellectual achievements have not equaled those of man; but I answer, that she has had no motive, no opportunity for such achievement. Close all the avenues, take away all the incitement for man's ambition, and he would do no more than woman does. Grant her freedom, education, and opportunity, and she will do what God intended she should do, no less, no more. Men! you dwarf, you wrong yourselves in restraining and fettering the intellectual development of woman! I ask for her liberty to do whatever moral and useful deed she proves able to do—why should I ask in vain?

Answer by time-serving Press: Men, Women, and Bloomers! Faugh! Bah!

Antoinette Brown: I plead that the mother may not be legally robbed of her children. I know a mother who was left a widow with three young children. She was able, and most willing to support them in humble independence; but her husband before he died, had secretly given two of them to his relatives, and the law tore them from the mother's bosom, and left her but the youngest, who was soon taken from her by death. That, mother lived to see her two surviving children, grow up, the one to be a drunkard and the other a felon, all through neglect and the want of that care and guardianship which none so well as a parent can be relied on to afford. I plead for woman as a mother, that her right to her children be recognized as at least equal to that of the father, and that he, being dead, no other can have a right to their guardianship paramount or even equal to hers.

Pantalooned mob as aforesaid: Oh, dry up! Bow-ow! Waugh! Hiss-s-s! Get out!

The case is still on.

WOMAN'S RIGHTS STATE CONVENTION,
ROCHESTER, N. Y., NOVEMBER 30 AND DECEMBER 1, 1853.

As William Henry Channing resided at Rochester, and felt that the time had come for some more active measures, he was invited to prepare the call and resolutions for the Convention. The following was issued and extensively circulated, and signed by many of the leading men and women of the State:

THE JUST AND EQUAL RIGHTS OF WOMEN.

To the Men and Women of New York:

The "Woman's Rights" Movement is a practical one, demanding prompt and efficient action for the relief of oppressive wrongs; and, as the Conventions held for several years past in different States, have answered their end of arousing earnest public attention, the time has come for calling upon the people to reform the evils from which women suffer, by their Representatives in Legislative Assemblies.

The wise and humane of all classes in society, however much they may differ upon speculative points as to woman's nature and function, agree that there are actual abuses of women, tolerated by custom and authorized by law, which are condemned alike by the genius of republican institutions and the spirit of the Christian religion. Conscience and common sense, then, unite to sanction their immediate redress. Thousands of the best men and women, in all our communities, are asking such questions as these:

1. Why should not woman's work be paid for according to the quality of the work done, and not the sex of the worker?

2. How shall we open for woman's energies new spheres of well remunerated industry?

3. Why should not wives, equally with husbands, be entitled to their own earnings?

4. Why should not widows, equally with widowers, become by law the legal guardians, as they certainly are by nature the natural guardians, of their own children?

5. On what just ground do the laws make a distinction between men and women, in regard to the ownership of property, inheritance, and the administration of estates?

6. Why should women, any more than men, be taxed without representation?

7. Why may not women claim to be tried by a jury of their peers, with exactly the same right as men claim to be and actually are?

8. If women need the protection of the laws, and are subject to the penalties of the laws equally with men, why should they not have an equal influence in making the laws, and appointing Legislatures, the Judiciary, and Executive?

And, finally, if governments—according to our National Declaration of Independence—"derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," why should women, any more than men, be governed without their own consent; and why, therefore, is not woman's right to suffrage precisely equal to man's?

For the end of finding out practical answers to these and similar questions, and making suitable arrangements to bring the existing wrongs of women, in the State of New York, before the Legislature at its next session, we, the undersigned, do urgently request the men and women of the Commonwealth to assemble in Convention, in the city of Rochester, on Wednesday, November 30th, and Thursday, December 1, 1853.[122]

The Convention assembled at Corinthian Hall at 10 o'clock. Rev. Samuel J. May, of Syracuse, in the chair.[123] After thanking the Convention for the honor conferred, he ran the parallel between the laws for married women and the slaves on the Southern plantation, and then introduced Ernestine L. Rose, to paint in more vivid colors the picture he had outlined.

Mrs. Rose said: The remarks of the president have impressed us to do our duty with all the earnestness in our power. This is termed a woman's rights movement. Alas! that the painful necessity should exist, for woman's calling a Convention to claim her rights from those who have been created to go hand in hand, and heart in heart with her; whose interests can not be divided from hers. Why does she claim them? Because every human being has a right to all the advantages society has to bestow, if his having them does not injure the rights of others. Life is valueless without liberty, and shall we not claim that which is dearer than life? In savage life, liberty is synonymous with aggression. In civilized countries it is founded on equality of rights. Oppression always produces suffering through the whole of the society where it exists; this movement ought, therefore, to be called a human rights movement. The wrongs of woman are so many (indeed there is scarcely anything else but wrongs) that there is not time to mention them all in one convention. She would speak at present of legal wrongs, and leave it to her hearers, if all are not—men, perhaps, more than women—sufferers by these wrongs. How can woman have a right to her children when the right to herself is taken away? At the marriage altar the husband says in effect, "All this is mine, all mine is my own." She ceases to exist legally, except when she violates the laws; then she assumes her identity just long enough to receive the penalty. When the husband dies poor, leaving the widow with small children (here the speaker pictured thrillingly the suffering of a poor, weak-minded, helpless woman, with small children dependent on her), she is then acknowledged the guardian of her children. But any property left them takes away her right of control. If there is property the law steps in as guardian of it and therefore of the children. The widowed mother is their guardian, only on condition that the husband has made her so by will. Can any human being be benefited by such gross violations of humanity?

Matilda Joslyn Gage said: The legal disabilities of woman are many, as not only known to those who bear them, but they are acknowledged by Kent, Story, and many other legal authorities. A wife has no management in the joint earnings of herself and her husband; they are entirely under control of the husband, who is obliged to furnish the wife merely the common necessaries of life; all that she receives beyond these is looked upon by the law as a favor, and not held as her right. A mother is denied the custody of her own child; a most barbarous and unjust law, which robs her of the child placed in her care by the great Creator himself. A widow is allowed the use merely of one-third of the real estate left at the husband's death; and when her minor children have grown up she must surrender the personal property, even to the family Bible, and the pictures of her dear children. In view of such laws the women engaged in this movement ask that the wife shall be made heir to the husband to the same extent that he is now her heir.

Taxation without representation is another of the wrongs that woman endures. In this she is held below the negro in the political scale; for the black man, when not possessing property to the extent of two hundred and fifty dollars, is not allowed to vote, but neither is he taxed. The present law of divorce is very unjust; the husband, whether the innocent or the guilty party, retaining all the wife's property, as also the control of the children unless by special decree of the court they are assigned to the mother.

Rev. Antoinette Brown said: The wife owes service and labor to her husband as much and as absolutely as the slave does to his master. This grates harshly upon the ears of Christendom; but it is made palpably and practically true all through our statute books, despite the poetic fancy which views woman as elevated in the social estate; but a little lower than the angels.

Letters were read from Paulina Wright Davis, Dr. Trail, Mary C. Vaughan, and Hon. William Hay. A series of fourteen resolutions were presented by Mr. Channing, and discussed, which suggested the appointment of various committees. One to prepare an address to the Legislature, and to ask a special hearing before a joint committee to consider the whole subject of the just and equal rights of woman; another to prepare an address to the capitalists and industrialists of New York on the best modes of employing and remunerating women.

Resolved, That the movement, now in progress throughout the United States, for securing the just and equal rights of women, in education, industry, law, politics, religion, and social life, is timely, wise, and practical; that it is authorized by all the essential principles of Republican institutions, and sanctioned by the spirit of the Christian religion; and finally that it is but a carrying on to completeness of a reform, already begun, by legal provisions, in the most advanced States of the Union.

Resolved, That the design of all true legislation should be the elevation of every member of the community—and that the violation of this legitimate design, in depriving woman of her just and equal rights, is not only highly injurious to her, but by reason of the equilibrium which pervades all existence, that man, too, is impeded in his progress by the very chains which bind woman to the lifeless skeleton of feudal civilization.

Resolved, That we do not ask for woman's political, civil, industrial, and social equality with man, in the spirit of antagonism, or with a wish to produce separate and conflicting interests between the sexes, but because the onward progress of society and the highest aspirations of the human race, demand that woman should everywhere be recognized as the co-equal and co-sovereign of man.

Resolved, That women justly claim an equally free access with men, to the highest means of mental, moral, and physical culture, provided in seminaries, colleges, professional and industrial schools; and that we call upon all friends of progress and upon the Legislature of New York, in establishing and endowing institutions, to favor pre-eminently those which seek to place males and females on a level of equal advantages in their system of education.

Resolved, That, inasmuch as universal experience proves the inseparable connection between dependence and degradation—while it is plain to every candid observer of society that women are kept poor, by being crowded together, to compete with and undersell one another in a few branches of labor, and that from this very poverty of women, spring many of the most terrible wrongs and evils, which corrupt and endanger society: therefore do we invite the earnest attention of capitalists, merchants, traders, manufacturers, and mechanics, to the urgent need, which everywhere exists, of opening to women new avenues of honest and honorable employment, and we do hereby call upon all manly men to make room for their sisters to earn an independent livelihood.

Resolved, That, whereas, the custom of making small remuneration for woman's work, in all departments of industry, has sprung from her dependence, which dependence is prolonged and increased by this most irrational and unjust habit of half pay; therefore do we demand, in the name of common sense and common conscience, that women equally with men, should be paid for their services according to the quality and quantity of the work done, and not the sex of the worker.

Resolved, That, whereas, the State of New York, in the acts of 1848 and 1849, has honorably and justly placed married women on the footing of equality with unmarried women, in regard to the receiving, holding, conveying, and devising of all property, real and personal, we call upon the Legislature of the State to take the next step—so plainly justified by its own precedents—of providing that husbands and wives shall be joint owners of their joint earnings—the community estate passing to the survivor at the death of either party.

Resolved, That, whereas, the evident intent of the Legislature of the State of New York has for many years been progressively to do away with the legal disabilities of women, which existed under the savage usages of the old common law, therefore we do urgently call upon the Legislature of this State, at its next session, to appoint a joint committee to examine and revise the statutes, and to propose remedies for the redress of all legal grievances from which women now suffer, and suitable measures for the full establishment of women's legal equality with men.

Resolved, That, whereas, under the common law, the father is regarded as the guardian, by nature, of his children, having the entire control of their persons and education, while only upon the death of the father, does the mother become the guardian by nature; and, whereas, by the revised statutes of New York, it is provided, that where an estate in lands shall become vested in an infant, the guardianship of such infant, with the rights, powers, and duties of a guardian in soccage, shall belong to the father, and only in case of the father's death, to the mother; and, whereas, finally and chiefly, by the revised statutes of New York, it is provided, that every father may, by his deed or last will, duly executed, dispose of the custody and tuition of his children, during their minority, "to any person or persons in possession or remainder"; therefore, do we solemnly protest against the utter violation of every mother's rights, authorized by existing laws, in regard to the guardianship of infants, and demand, in the name of common humanity, that the Legislature of New York so amend the statutes, as to place fathers and mothers on equal footing in regard to the guardianship of their children. Especially do we invite the Legislature instantly to pass laws, entitling mothers to become their children's guardians, in all cases where, by habitual drunkenness, immorality, or improvidence, fathers are incompetent to the sacred trust.

Resolved, That, whereas, according to the amendments of the Constitution of the United States, it is provided that "in all criminal cases, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury," and that "in suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved"; and, whereas, according to the revised statutes of New York, it is provided, that "no member of this State can be disfranchised or deprived of any of the rights or privileges, secured to any citizen thereof, unless by the law of the land, or the judgment of his peers"; therefore, do we demand, that women, as "members" and "citizens" of this State, equally with men, should be entitled to claim a trial by "an impartial jury of their peers." And especially do we remonstrate against the partial, mean, and utterly inequitable custom, everywhere prevalent, that in questions of divorce, men, and men alone, should be regarded as "an impartial jury."

Resolved, That, whereas, in the Declaration of Independence of the United States, one of the "injuries and usurpation" complained of is Taxation without the consent of the persons taxed; and, whereas, it is provided in the revised statutes of New York, that "no tax, duty, aid or imposition whatever—except such as may be laid by a law of the United States—can be taken or levied within this State, without the grant and assent of the people of this State; by their representatives in Senate and Assembly"; and that "no citizen of this State can be compelled to contribute to any gift, loan, tax, or other like charge, not laid or imposed by a law of the United States, or by the Legislature of the State"; therefore do we proclaim, that it is a gross act of tyranny and usurpation, to tax women without their consent, and we demand, either that women be represented by their own appointed representatives, or that they be freed from the imposition of taxes.

Resolved, That inasmuch as it is the fundamental principle of the Nation and of every State in this Union, that all "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed"—it is a manifest violation of the Supreme Law of the land for males to govern females without their consent; and therefore do we demand, of the people of New York, such a change in the Constitution of the State, as will secure to women the right of suffrage which is now so unjustly monopolized by men.

Resolved, That Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Samuel J. May, Ernestine L. Rose, William Hay, Susan B. Anthony, Burroughs Phillips, Antoinette L. Brown, W. H. Channing, and Lydia A. Jenkins, be a committee to prepare and to present an address to the Legislature of New York, at its next session, stating, as specifically as they shall see fit, the legal disabilities of women, and to ask a hearing before a joint committee, specially appointed to consider the whole subject of the just and equal rights of women.

Resolved, That Horace Greeley, Mary C. Vaughan, Abram Pryne, Sarah Pellet, and Matilda Joslyn Gage be a committee to prepare an address to capitalists and industrialists of New York, on the best modes of employing and remunerating the industry of women.

The President invited any one who saw errors or fallacies in the arguments brought forward, to make them apparent.

Mr. Pryne, of Cazenovia, editor of the Progressive Christian, said: If women desire to enter the ordinary avocations of men, they must be brave enough to become shopkeepers and mechanics. There is no law to prevent it, neither is there to woman's voting. The men have made an arrangement by which their votes are not counted, but still they might provide ballot-boxes, and decide upon whom they would prefer as magistrates and legislators. A man who was thus voted to stay at home, by an overwhelming majority of women, even if elected by the men, would find himself in an uncomfortable position.

Mr. Channing said he understood that in a town in Ohio the women did so, and cast sixty votes.

Mr. Pryne was glad to hear that there were practical women in Ohio. Man is where he is because he is what he is, and when woman gets the same elements of moral and physical power she will have no more wrongs to complain of.

Mrs. Rose said it was a true maxim that he who would be free, himself must strike the blow. But woman could not, as things were, help herself. As well might the slaveholder say that the slave was fit for no other condition while he consents to occupy that position. To a certain extent this is true, and the same principles apply to both classes. But all human beings are not martyrs; the majority accept the conditions in which they find themselves, rather than make their lives one long struggle for freedom. Woman must be educated to take the stand which Mr. Pryne invites her to assume. The only object for which woman is now reared is to be married; and is she fitted even for that; to become a companion, an assistant, an aid, a comforter to man; and above all, a mother? That alone; to fit a woman for that sphere; she must possess all the extended education which would fit her to take any position in life to which man aspires.

Mary F. Love said there might be hindrances in the way of woman too great for her to surmount. Men in their straggles for liberty have sometimes met insuperable obstacles; there have been unsuccessful revolutions at all stages of human development.

Frederick Douglass, in discussing the injustice to woman in the world of work, said: Some one whispers in my ear that as teachers women get one-fourth the pay men do, while a girl's tuition is the same as a boy's.

The President observed, that the girl gets twice as much education, being uniformly more studious and attentive.

E. A. Hopkins, a lawyer of Rochester, spoke to the eighth resolution, which asks fora committee to examine the whole subject; he said: I believe if this question was properly presented to the Legislature, we might have well grounded hope for the relief of women from their legal disabilities, and indicated the amendments which ought to be made in the present laws regulating the relations of the married state. He argued against making the man and wife joint owners of property, execpt in certain specific cases.

Rev. Mr. Channing said that in Louisiana and California this joint ownership was recognized by the laws.

Mr. Hopkins was not aware of that; and he did not see why labor, worth in the market no more than one or two dollars per week, should be paid for at the rate of, it may be, $200 per week. He thought the law should be altered so that the widow may have control of property while her children are minors. The right to vote, which was claimed under the idea that representation should go before taxation, he discussed with ability, taking ground against women voting. The arguments used by the other side were shown to be fallacious, or at least partaking of the aristocratic element. Women are already tried by "their peers," though not by those of their own sex. As to women holding office, this movement had proved the position of Dr. Channing, in his discussion with Miss Martineau, that "influence was good, and office bad." Women should be content to exercise influence, without seeking for the spoils and risking the temptations of office. He argued upon the maxim that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," contending that it was not true; those powers are derived from the majority who are brave enough to set up and sustain the government.[124]

Frederick Douglass, in the course of his remarks, said he had seen two young women assistants in the County Clerk's office, also young women going into printing-offices to set type; and he might have added the following, which we clip from the The Una of the same date:

Female compositors have been employed in the offices of the three Cincinnati daily papers which stood out against the demands of the Printer's Union. The Pittsburg Daily Dispatch is also set up entirely by females. The experiment was commenced on that paper two months ago, and the proprietors now announce its entire success. The Louisville Courier announces its intentions to try the experiment in the spring.

Wherever the change has been made it seems to be completely successful.—Courier and Enquirer.

Mr. May said: If a woman should not leave her family to go to the Legislature, neither should a man. The obligation is mutual: and while children require the care of both parents, both should share the duty, and not leave them from ambitious motives. It is only those who have well discharged their duties to their families who are fit to become legislators. We are now giving the nation into the hands of boys and half-grown men. Had we such women as Lucretia Mott and Angelina Grimké in the Legislature, there would be more wisdom there than we have to-day. When I look through the nation and see the shameful mismanagement, I am convinced that it is the result, in part, of the absence of the feminine element in high stations; it is because the maternal influence is wanting that we run riot as we do. The State is in a condition of half orphanage, and needs the care and guidance of a mother.

E. A. Hopkins, Esq.: Thought the movement was not entirely timely, wise, and practicable, though parts of it might be. He took Up and answered each of the questions appended to the call for the Convention. His speech was characteristic of the lawyer, and the frequent recurrence of the idea, it is right because it is customary, will illustrate its moral character. He stated three several points where he thought woman was aggrieved and should have legislative redress. Office was a temptation, and he thought woman was better off without it.

Miss Brown proposed that the men, for a while, be relieved from this great evil, and excused from the burdens of office. If this necessary duty was so burdensome, woman should be a helper and share its burdens with him. We are taught to be grateful for small favors. Our friend has been giving you milk, but to me it seems, even at that, diluted with water. There is one law, "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." When our brothers are ready to be paid a dollar a week for keeping house and nursing the children, let them dictate this also to us. We women now offer to take the burden and responsibility of government upon ourselves. We would be willing to save our friends for a time from temptation and care, as they have so generously done by us; if we are to be satisfied with things as they are, so should the slave be. He should be grateful for the care of his master, for according to the established price paid for labor, he does not earn enough to take care of himself. We should be satisfied with our present license laws; they are right, just, and good, judged by our friend's reasoning. If our offer to rule alone is not liked, we are ready, then, to co-operate with man in this according to the original design and arrangement of the Creator.

Mr. Hopkins opposed with several objections, one of which was, that private stations demand as high qualifications, and more surely command a just recompense, than public offices; woman has yet taken few lucrative private employments; why, then, till these are taken, should she seek for public office?

Frederick Douglass again raised the inquiry, in the investment of money or the use of property, where there is joint ownership, and in regard to which there may be disagreement between husband and wife, how shall the matter be settled between them? Law is not a necessity of human nature; if love ruled, statutes would be obsolete; genuine marriages and harmonious co-operations would prevent any such necessity.

Miss Brown proposed to reply in a word: Law must regulate differences where there is not true union, and as a business copartnership, if the matter could not be adjusted between themselves to mutual satisfaction, let it be referred to a third person; where it is a property transaction, let the usual business custom be observed; but if there be a difficulty of a different nature, so serious that the parties, bound to each other for life, can not enjoy existence together if they can not make each other happy, but are to each other a mutual source of discomfort, why, let them separate; let them not be divorced, but let them each be content to live alone for the good of society.

Mrs. Love, of Randolph, read an address, flowery in style, but full of truth, upon the discord that pervades social life. Homes should be reformed; from domestic uncongeniality spring the chief evils of society. She advised men and women to beware of inharmonious alliances, and made a touching appeal in behalf of the fallen of her sex.

Mr. Channing said: Whenever he heard a woman, in face of existing prejudices, speak the simple truth in regard to the social wrongs of her sisters, as Mrs. Love had done, asking no leave of the Convention, and making no apology for her sincere words, however they might startle false delicacy, he felt bound as a man, and in the name of man, to offer her the tribute of his hearty respect.

Mr. Channing presented two forms of petitions—one for property rights, the other for suffrage—which were adopted. Rev. Lydia A. Jenkins read a carefully prepared address. Emma R. Coe made a full review of the laws, which, at that early day, was the burden of almost every speech. At the close of the sixth session, the audiences having grown larger and larger, until the spacious and beautiful Corinthian Hall was packed to its utmost, the Convention adjourned, to begin its real work in canvassing the State with lectures and petitions, preparing an address to the Legislature, securing a hearing, and holding a Convention at Albany during the coming session of that body.

An appeal[125] to the women of the State was at once issued, and all editors requested to publish it with the forms of petitions. The responses came back in the form of 13,000 signatures in two months, gathered in thirty out of the sixty counties of the Empire State. The lecturers were: Susan B. Anthony, Mary F. Love, Sarah Pellet, Lydia A. Jenkins, and Matilda Joslyn Gage. Over sixty women were engaged in the work of circulating the petitions.

Horace Greeley, chairman of the Committee on Industry, published in The New York Tribune the following report:

WOMAN AND WORK.

Whether women should or should not be permitted to vote, to hold office, to serve on juries, and to officiate as lawyers, doctors, or divines, are questions about which a diversity of opinions is likely long to exist. But that the current rates of remuneration for woman's work are entirely, unjustly inadequate, is a proposition which needs only to be considered to insure its hearty acceptance by every intelligent, justice-loving human being. Consider a few facts:

Every able-bodied man inured to labor, though of the rudest sort, who steps on shore in America from Europe, is worth a dollar per day, and can readily command it. Though he only knows how to wield such rude, clumsy implements as the pick and spade, there are dozens of places where his services are in request at a dollar per day the year through, and he can even be transported hence to the place where his services are wanted, on the strength of his contract to work and the credit of his future earnings. We do not say this is the case every day in the year, for it may not be at this most inclement and forbidding season; but it is the general fact, as every one knows. And any careful, intelligent, resolute male laborer is morally certain to rise out of the condition of a mere shoveler, into a position where the work is lighter and the pay better after a year or two of faithful service.

But the sister of this same faithful worker, equally careful, intelligent, and willing to do anything honest and reputable for a living, finds no such chances proffered her. No agent meets her on the dock to persuade her to accept a passage to Illinois or Upper Canada, there to be employed on fair work at a dollar per day and expectations. On the contrary, she may think herself fortunate if a week's search opens to her a place where by the devotion of all her waking hours she can earn five to six dollars per month, with a chance of its increase, after several years' faithful service, to seven or eight dollars at most.

The brother is in many respects the equal of his employer; may sit down beside him at the hotel where they both stop for dinner; their votes may balance each other at any election; the laborer lives with those whose company suits him, and needs no character from his last place to secure him employment or a new job when he gets tired of the old one. But the sister never passes out of the atmosphere of caste—of conscious and galling inferiority to those with whom her days must be spent. There is no election day in her year, and but the ghost of a Fourth of July. She must live not with those she likes, but with those who want her; she is not always safe from libertine insult in what serves her for a home; she knows no ten-hour rule, and would not dare to claim its protection if one were enacted. Though not a slave by law, she is too often as near it in practice as one legally free can be.

Now this disparity between the rewards of man's and woman's labor at the base of the social edifice, is carried up to its very pinnacle. Of a brother and sister equally qualified and effective as teachers, the brother will receive twice as much compensation as the sister. The mistress who conducts the rural district school in summer, usually receives less than half the monthly stipend that her brother does for teaching that same school in winter, when time and work are far less valuable; and here there can be no pretence of a disparity in capacity justifying that in wages. Between male and female workers in the factories and mills, the same difference is enforced.

Who does not feel that this is intrinsically wrong? that the sister ought to have equal (not necessarily identical) opportunities with the brother—should be as well taught, industrially as well as intellectually, and her compensation made to correspond with her capacity, upon a clear understanding of the fact that, though her muscular power is less than his, yet her dexterity and celerity of manipulation are greater?

Where does the wrong originate? Suppose that, by some inexorable law in the spirit of Hindoo caste, it were settled that negroes, regardless of personal capacity, could do nothing for a living but black boots, and that red-haired men were allowed to engage in no avocation except horse-currying; who does not perceive that, though boot-blacking and horse-currying might be well and cheaply done, black-skinned and also red-haired men would have but a sorry chance for making a living? Who does not see that their wages, social standing, and means of securing independence, would be far inferior to those they now enjoy?

The one great cause, therefore, of the inadequate compensation and inferior position of woman, is the unjust apportionment of avocation. Man has taken the lion's share to himself, and allotted the residue to woman, telling her to take that and be content with it, if she don't want to be regarded as a forward, indelicate, presuming, unwomanly creature, who is evidently no better than she should be. And woman has come for the most part to accept the lot thus assigned her, with thankfulness, or, rather, without thought, just as the Mussulman's wife rejoices in her sense of propriety which will not permit her to show her face in the street, and the Brahmin widow immolates herself on the funeral pyre of her husband.

What is the appropriate remedy?

Primarily and mainly, a more rational and healthful public sentiment with regard to woman's work; a sentiment which shall welcome her to every employment wherein she may be useful and efficient without necessarily compromising her purity or overtasking her strength. Let her be encouraged to open a store, to work a garden, plant and tend an orchard, to learn any of the lighter mechanical trades, to study for a profession, whenever her circumstances and her tastes shall render any of these desirable. Let woman, and the advocates of justice to women, encourage and patronize her in whatever laudable pursuits she may thus undertake; let them give a preference to dry-goods stores wherein the clerks are mainly women; and so as to hotels where they wait at table, mechanics' shops in which they are extensively employed and fairly paid. Let the ablest of the sex be called to the lecture-room, to the temperance rostrum, etc.; and whenever a post-office falls vacant and a deserving woman is competent to fill and willing to take it, let her be appointed, as a very few have already been. There will always be some widow of a poor clergyman, doctor, lawyer, or other citizens prematurely cut off, who will be found qualified for and glad to accept such a post if others will suggest her name and procure her appointment. Thus abstracting more and more of the competent and energetic from the restricted sphere wherein they now struggle with their sister for a meager and precarious subsistence, the greater mass of self-subsisting women will find the demand for their labor gradually increasing and its recompense proportionally enhancing. With a larger field and more decided usefulness will come a truer and deeper respect; and woman, no longer constrained to marry for a position, may always wait to marry worthily and in obedience to the dictates of sincere affection. Hence constancy, purity, mutual respect, a just independence and a little of happiness, may be reasonably anticipated.

Horace Greeley, Mary Vaughan, Abraham Pryne,
Sarah Pellet, Matilda Joslyn Gage.

ALBANY CONVENTION.
FEBRUARY 14 AND 15, 1854.

Although the weather was inclement, a large audience assembled in Association Hall on the morning of the 14th, representing the different portions of the State. Susan B. Anthony called the Convention to order and read the call, which had been written by Rev. Wm. Henry Channing, and published in all the leading papers of the State.

JUSTICE TO WOMEN—CONVENTION AT ALBANY, FEB. 14 AND 15, 1854.

The petition asking for such amendments in the Statutes and Constitution of New York as will secure to the women of the State legal equality with the men, and to females equally with the males a right to suffrage, will be presented to the Legislature about the middle of February. We, the Committee appointed at the Convention held at Rochester in December—by whose authority these petitions were issued—do hereby invite all fellow-citizens, of either sex, who are in favor of these measures, to assemble in Convention, at Albany, on Tuesday and Wednesday, February 14th and 15th.

The so-called "Woman's Rights Movement" has been so much misrepresented, that it is desirable to make the appeal for justice earnest, imposing, and effective, by showing how eminently equitable are its principles, how wise and practical are its measures. Let the serious-minded, generous, hopeful men and women of New York then gather in council, to determine whether there is anything irrational or revolutionary in the proposal that fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, should treat their daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers as their peers. This reform is designed, by its originators, to make woman womanly in the highest sense of that term—to exalt, not to degrade—to perfect, not to impair her refining influence in every sphere. The demand is made only to take off burdens, to remove hindrances, to leave women free as men are free, to follow conscience and judgment in all scenes of duty. On what ground—except the right of might—do men, claiming to be Republicans and Christians, deny to woman privileges which they would die to gain and keep for themselves? What evil—what but good can come from enlarging woman's power of usefulness? How can society be otherwise than a gainer by the increased moral and mental influence of one-half of its members? Let these and similar questions be fairly, candidly, thoroughly discussed in the hearing of the Legislature of New York.

Come then, fellow-citizens, to this Convention prepared to speak, to hear, to act. Lucy Stone, Wendell Phillips, Mrs. C. I. H. Nichols, and other earnest friends of the cause from New England and the West, as well as from our own State, are to be with us. And may the spirit of Truth preside over all.

Elizabeth C. Stanton, Samuel J. May, Ernestine L. Rose,
Antoinette L. Brown, William Henry Channing, Wm. Hay,
Burroughs Phillips, Lydia Ann Jenkins, Susan B. Anthony.

Those having petitions in their hands will please send them to Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, until the first of February, after which they should be forwarded to Lydia Mott, Albany.

N. B.—Editors please copy.

January 23, 1854.

The officers[126] of the Convention being reported, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (President) took the chair, and after returning her acknowledgments for the honor conferred, introduced Rev. Antoinette L. Brown, who read a series of resolutions:

1. Resolved, That the men who claim to be Christian Republicans, and yet class their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters among aliens, criminals, idiots, and minors, unfit to be their coequal citizens, are guilty of absurd inconsistency and presumption; that for males to govern females, without consent asked or granted, is to perpetuate an aristocracy, utterly hostile to the principles and spirit of free institutions; and that it is time for the people of the United States and every State in the Union to put away forever that remnant of despotism and feudal oligarchy, the caste of sex.

2. Resolved, That women are human beings whose rights correspond with their duties; that they are endowed with conscience, reason, affection, and energy, for the use of which they are individually responsible; that like men they are bound to advance the cause of truth, justice, and universal good in the society and nation of which they are members; that in these United States women constitute one-half the people; men constitute the other half; that women are no more free in honor than men are to withhold their influence and example from patriotic and philanthropic movements, and that men who deny women to be their peers, and who shut them out from exercising a fair share of power in the body politic, are arrogant usurpers, whose only apology is to be found in prejudices transmitted from half-civilized and half-christianized ages.

Whereas, The family is the nursery of the State and the Church—the God-appointed seminary of the human race. Therefore

3. Resolved, That the family, by men as well as women, should be held more sacred than all other institutions; that it may not, without sin, be abandoned or neglected by fathers any more than by mothers, for the sake of any of the institutions devised by men—for the government of the State or the Nation any more than for the voluntary association of social reformers.

4. Resolved, That women's duties and rights as daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers, are not bounded within the circle of home; that in view of the sacredness of their relations, they are not free to desert their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons amidst scenes of business, politics, and pleasure, and to leave them alone in their struggles and temptations, but that as members of the human family, for the sake of human advancement, women are bound as widely as possible to give to men the influence of their aid and presence; and finally, that universal experience attests that those nations and societies are most orderly, high-toned, and rich in varied prosperity, where women most freely intermingle with men in all spheres of active life.

5. Resolved, That the fundamental error of the whole structure of legislation and custom, whereby women are practically sustained, even in this republic, is the preposterous fiction of law, that in the eye of the law the husband and wife are one person, that person being the husband; that this falsehood itself, the deposit of barbarism, tends perpetually to brutalize the marriage relation by subjecting wives as irresponsible tools to the capricious authority of husbands; that this degradation of married women re-acts inevitably to depress the condition of single women, by impairing their own self-respect and man's respect for them; and that the final result is that system of tutelage miscalled protection, by which the industry of women is kept on half-pay, their affections trifled with, their energies crippled, and even their noblest aspirations wasted away in vain efforts, ennui, and regret.

6. Resolved, That in consistency with the spirit and intent of the Statutes of New York, enacted in 1848 and 1849, the design of which was to secure to married women the entire control of their property, it is the duty of the Legislature to make such amendments in the laws of the State as will enable married women to conduct business, to form contracts, to sue and be sued in their own names—to receive and hold the gains of their industry, and be liable for their own debts so far as their interests are separate from those of their husbands—to become joint owners in the joint earnings of the partnership, so far as these interests are identified—to bear witness for or against their husbands, and generally to be held responsible for their own deeds.

7. Resolved, That as acquiring property by all just and laudable means, and the holding and devising of the same is a human right, women married and single are entitled to this right, and all the usages or laws which withhold it from them are manifestly unjust.

8. Resolved, That every argument in favor of universal suffrage for males is equally in favor of universal suffrage for females, and therefore if men may claim the right of suffrage as necessary to the protection of all their rights in any Government, so may women for the same reason.

9. Resolved, That if man as man, has any peculiar claim to a representation in the government, for himself, woman as woman, has a paramount claim to an equal representation for herself.

10. Resolved, Therefore, that whether you regard woman as like or unlike man, she is in either case entitled to an equal joint participation with him in all civil rights and duties.

11. Resolved, That although men should grant us every specific claim, we should hold them all by favor rather than right, unless they also concede, and we exercise, the right of protecting ourselves by the elective franchise.

12. Resolved, That if the essence of a trial by an "impartial jury" be a trial by one's own equals, then has never a woman enjoyed that privilege in the hour of her need as a culprit. We, therefore, respectfully demand of our Legislature that, at least, the right of such trial by jury be accorded to women equally with men—that women be eligible to the jury-box, whenever one of their own sex is arraigned at the bar.

13. Resolved, That could the women of the State be heard on this question, we should find the mass with us; as the mother's reluctance to give up the guardianship of her children; the wife's unwillingness to submit to the abuse of a drunken husband, the general sentiment in favor of equal property rights, and the thousands of names in favor of our petition, raised with so little effort, conclusively prove.

Whereas, The right of petition is guaranteed to every member of this republic; therefore

14. Resolved, That it is the highest duty of legislators impartially to investigate all claims for the redress of wrong, and alter and amend such laws as prevent the administration of justice and equal rights to all.

Resolved, That all true-hearted men and women pledge themselves never to relinquish their unceasing efforts in behalf of the full and equal rights of women, until we have effaced the stigma resting on this republic, that while it theoretically proclaims that all men are created equal, deprives one-half of its members of the enjoyment of the rights and privileges possessed by the other.

The salient points of the question as embodied in the resolutions and the address were ably presented by William Henry Channing, Samuel J. May, Mrs. Nichols, Mrs. Rose, Mrs. Love, Miss Brown, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Jenkins, Hon. William Hay, and Giles B. Stebbins. At the evening session Mrs. Stanton read her address prepared for the Legislature, which Miss Anthony had stereotyped and published. A copy was laid on the desk of every legislator, and twenty thousand scattered like snow-flakes over the State.

MRS. STANTON'S ADDRESS.

To the Legislature of the State of New York:

"The thinking minds of all nations call for change. There is a deep-lying struggle in the whole fabric of society; a boundless, grinding collision of the New with the Old."

The tyrant, Custom, has been summoned before the bar of Common-Sense. His majesty no longer awes the multitude—his sceptre is broken—his crown is trampled in the dust—the sentence of death is pronounced upon him. All nations, ranks, and classes have, in turn, questioned and repudiated his authority; and now, that the monster is chained and caged, timid woman, on tiptoe, comes to look him in the face, and to demand of her brave sires and sons, who have struck stout blows for liberty, if, in this change of dynasty, she, too, shall find relief. Yes, gentlemen, in republican America, in the nineteenth century, we, the daughters of the revolutionary heroes of '76, demand at your hands the redress of our grievances—a revision of your State Constitution—a new code of laws. Permit us then, as briefly as possible, to call your attention to the legal disabilities under which we labor.

1st. Look at the position of woman as woman. It is not enough for us that, by your laws we are permitted to live and breathe, to claim the necessaries of life from our legal protectors—to pay the penalty of our crimes; we demand the full recognition of all our rights as citizens of the Empire State. We are persons; native, free-born citizens; property-holders, tax-payers; yet are we denied the exercise of our right to the elective franchise. We support ourselves, and, in part, your schools, colleges, churches, your poor-houses, jails, prisons, the army, the navy, the whole machinery of government, and yet we have no voice in your councils. We have every qualification required by the Constitution, necessary to the legal voter, but the one of sex. We are moral, virtuous, and intelligent, and in all respects quite equal to the proud white man himself, and yet by your laws we are classed with idiots, lunatics, and negroes; and though we do not feel honored by the place assigned us, yet, in fact, our legal position is lower than that of either; for the negro can be raised to the dignity of a voter if he possess himself of $250; the lunatic can vote in his moments of sanity, and the idiot, too, if he be a male one, and not more than nine-tenths a fool; but we, who have guided great movements of charity, established missions, edited journals, published works on history, economy, and statistics; who have governed nations, led armies, filled the professor's chair, taught philosophy and mathematics to the savants of our age, discovered planets, piloted ships across the sea, are denied the most sacred rights of citizens, because, forsooth, we came not into this republic crowned with the dignity of manhood! Woman is theoretically absolved from all allegiance to the laws of the State. Sec. 1, Bill of Rights, 2 R. S., 301, says that no authority can, on any pretence whatever, be exercised over the citizens of this State but such as is or shall be derived from, and granted by the people of this State.

Now, gentlemen, we would fain know by what authority you have disfranchised one-half the people of this State? You who have so boldly taken possession of the bulwarks of this republic, show us your credentials, and thus prove your exclusive right to govern, not only yourselves, but us. Judge Hurlburt, who has long occupied a high place at the bar in this State, and who recently retired with honor from the bench of the Supreme Court, in his profound work on Human Rights, has pronounced your present position rank usurpation. Can it be that here, where we acknowledge no royal blood, no apostolic descent, that you, who have declared that all men were created equal—that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, would willingly build up an aristocracy that places the ignorant and vulgar above the educated and refined—the alien and the ditch-digger above the authors and poets of the day—an aristocracy that would raise the sons above the mothers that bore them? Would that the men who can sanction a Constitution so opposed to the genius of this government, who can enact and execute laws so degrading to womankind, had sprung, Minerva-like, from the brains of their fathers, that the matrons of this republic need not blush to own their sons!

Woman's position, under our free institutions, is much lower than under the monarchy of England. "In England the idea of woman holding official station is not so strange as in the United States. The Countess of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery held the office of hereditary sheriff of Westmoreland, and exercised it in person. At the assizes at Appleby, she sat with the judges on the bench. In a reported case, it is stated by counsel, and substantially assented to by the court, that a woman is capable of serving in almost all the offices of the kingdom, such as those of queen, marshal, great chamberlain and constable of England, the champion of England, commissioner of sewers, governor of work-house, sexton, keeper of the prison, of the gate-house of the dean and chapter of Westminster, returning officer for members of Parliament, and constable, the latter of which is in some respects judicial. The office of jailor is frequently exercised by a woman.

"In the United States a woman may administer on the effects of her deceased husband, and she has occasionally held a subordinate place in the post-office department. She has therefore a sort of post mortem, post-mistress notoriety; but with the exception of handling letters of administration and letters mailed, she is the submissive creature of the old common law." True, the unmarried woman has a right to the property she inherits and the money she earns, but she is taxed without representation. And here again you place the negro, so unjustly degraded by you, in a superior position to your own wives and mothers; for colored males, if possessed of a certain amount of property and certain other qualifications, can vote, but if they do not have these qualifications they are not subject to direct taxation; wherein they have the advantage of woman, she being subject to taxation for whatever amount she may possess. (Constitution of New York, Article 2, Sec. 2). But, say you, are not all women sufficiently represented by their fathers, husbands, and brothers? Let your statute books answer the question.

Again we demand in criminal cases that most sacred of all rights, trial by a jury of our own peers. The establishment of trial by jury is of so early a date that its beginning is lost in antiquity; but the right of trial by a jury of one's own peers is a great progressive step of advanced civilization. No rank of men have ever been satisfied with being tried by jurors higher or lower in the civil or political scale than themselves; for jealousy on the one hand, and contempt on the other, has ever effectually blinded the eyes of justice. Hence, all along the pages of history, we find the king, the noble, the peasant, the cardinal, the priest, the layman, each in turn protesting against the authority of the tribunal before which they were summoned to appear. Charles the First refused to recognize the competency of the tribunal which condemned him: For how, said he, can subjects judge a king? The stern descendants of our Pilgrim Fathers refused to answer for their crimes before an English Parliament. For how, said they, can a king judge rebels? And shall woman here consent to be tried by her liege lord, who has dubbed himself law-maker, judge, juror, and sheriff too?—whose power, though sanctioned by Church and State, has no foundation in justice and equity, and is a bold assumption of our inalienable rights. In England a Parliament-lord could challenge a jury where a knight was not empanneled; an alien could demand a jury composed half of his own countrymen; or, in some special cases, juries were even constituted entirely of women. Having seen that man fails to do justice to woman in her best estate, to the virtuous, the noble, the true of our sex, should we trust to his tender mercies the weak, the ignorant, the morally insane? It is not to be denied that the interests of man and woman in the present undeveloped state of the race, and under the existing social arrangements, are and must be antagonistic. The nobleman can not make just laws for the peasant; the slaveholder for the slave; neither can man make and execute just laws for woman, because in each case, the one in power fails to apply the immutable principles of right to any grade but his own.

Shall an erring woman be dragged before a bar of grim-visaged judges, lawyers, and jurors, there to be grossly questioned in public on subjects which women scarce breathe in secret to one another? Shall the most sacred relations of life be called up and rudely scanned by men who, by their own admission, are so coarse that women could not meet them even at the polls without contamination? and yet shall she find there no woman's face or voice to pity and defend? Shall the frenzied mother, who, to save herself and child from exposure and disgrace, ended the life that had but just begun, be dragged before such a tribunal to answer for her crime? How can man enter into the feelings of that mother? How can he judge of the agonies of soul that impelled her to such an outrage of maternal instincts? How can he weigh the mountain of sorrow that crushed that mother's heart when she wildly tossed her helpless babe into the cold waters of the midnight sea? Where is he who by false vows thus blasted this trusting woman? Had that helpless child no claims on his protection? Ah, he is freely abroad in the dignity of manhood, in the pulpit, on the bench, in the professor's chair. The imprisonment of his victim and the death of his child, detract not a tithe from his standing and complacency. His peers made the law, and shall law-makers lay nets for those of their own rank? Shall laws which come from the logical brain of man take cognizance of violence done to the moral and affectional nature which predominates, as is said, in woman?

Statesmen of New York, whose daughters, guarded by your affection, and lapped amidst luxuries which your indulgence spreads, care more for their nodding plumes and velvet trains than for the statute laws by which their persons and properties are held—who, blinded by custom and prejudice to the degraded position which they and their sisters occupy in the civil scale, haughtily claim that they already have all the rights they want, how, think ye, you would feel to see a daughter summoned for such a crime—and remember these daughters are but human—before such a tribunal? Would it not, in that hour, be some consolation to see that she was surrounded by the wise and virtuous of her own sex; by those who had known the depth of a mother's love and the misery of a lover's falsehood; to know that to these she could make her confession, and from them receive her sentence? If so, then listen to our just demands and make such a change in your laws as will secure to every woman tried in your courts, an impartial jury. At this moment among the hundreds of women who are shut up in prisons in this State, not one has enjoyed that most sacred of all rights—that right which you would die to defend for yourselves—trial by a jury of one's peers.

2d. Look at the position of woman as wife. Your laws relating to marriage—founded as they are on the old common law of England, a compound of barbarous usages, but partially modified by progressive civilization—are in open violation of our enlightened ideas of justice, and of the holiest feelings of our nature. If you take the highest view of marriage, as a Divine relation, which love alone can constitute and sanctify, then of course human legislation can only recognize it. Men can neither bind nor loose its ties, for that prerogative belongs to God alone, who makes man and woman, and the laws of attraction by which they are united. But if you regard marriage as a civil contract, then let it be subject to the same laws which control all other contracts. Do not make it a kind of half-human, half-divine institution, which you may build up, but can not regulate. Do not, by your special legislation for this one kind of contract, involve yourselves in the grossest absurdities and contradictions.

So long as by your laws no man can make a contract for a horse or piece of land until he is twenty-one years of age, and by which contract he is not bound if any deception has been practiced, or if the party contracting has not fulfilled his part of the agreement—so long as the parties in all mere civil contracts retain their identity and all the power and independence they had before contracting, with the full right to dissolve all partnerships and contracts for any reason, at the will and option of the parties themselves, upon what principle of civil jurisprudence do you permit the boy of fourteen and the girl of twelve, in violation of every natural law, to make a contract more momentous in importance than any other, and then hold them to it, come what may, the whole of their natural lives, in spite of disappointment, deception, and misery? Then, too, the signing of this contract is instant civil death to one of the parties. The woman who but yesterday was sued on bended knee, who stood so high in the scale of being as to make an agreement on equal terms with a proud Saxon man, to-day has no civil existence, no social freedom. The wife who inherits no property holds about the same legal position that does the slave on the Southern plantation. She can own nothing, sell nothing. She has no right even to the wages she earns; her person, her time, her services are the property of another. She can not testify, in many cases, against her husband. She can get no redress for wrongs in her own name in any court of justice. She can neither sue nor be sued. She is not held morally responsible for any crime committed in the presence of her husband, so completely is her very existence supposed by the law to be merged in that of another. Think of it; your wives may be thieves, libelers, burglars, incendiaries, and for crimes like these they are not held amenable to the laws of the land, if they but commit them in your dread presence. For them, alas! there is no higher law than the will of man. Herein behold the bloated conceit of these Petruchios of the law, who seem to say:

"Nay, look not big, nor stamp, nor stare, nor fret,
I will be master of what is mine own;
She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything;
And here she stands, touch her whoever dare;
I'll bring my action on the proudest he,
That stops my way, in Padua."

How could man ever look thus on woman? She, at whose feet Socrates learned wisdom—she, who gave to the world a Saviour, and witnessed alike the adoration of the Magi and the agonies of the cross. How could such a being, so blessed and honored, ever become the ignoble, servile, cringing slave, with whom the fear of man could be paramount to the sacred dictates of conscience and the holy love of Heaven? By the common law of England, the spirit of which has been but too faithfully incorporated into our statute law, a husband has a right to whip his wife with a rod not larger than his thumb, to shut her up in a room, and administer whatever moderate chastisement he may deem necessary to insure obedience to his wishes, and for her healthful moral development! He can forbid all persons harboring or trusting her on his account. He can deprive her of all social intercourse with her nearest and dearest friends. If by great economy she accumulates a small sum, which for future need she deposit, little by little, in a savings bank, the husband has a right to draw it out, at his option, to use it as he may see fit.

"Husband is entitled to wife's credit or business talents (whenever their inter-marriage may have occurred); and goods purchased by her on her own credit, with his consent, while cohabiting with him, can be seized and sold in execution against him for his own debts, and this, though she carry on business in her own name."—7 Howard's Practice Reports, 105, Lovett agt. Robinson and Whitbeck, sheriff, etc.

"No letters of administration shall be granted to a person convicted of infamous crime; nor to any one incapable by law of making a contract; nor to a person not a citizen of the United States, unless such person reside within this State; nor to any one who is under twenty-one years of age; nor to any person who shall be adjudged incompetent by the surrogate to execute duties of such trust, by reason of drunkenness, improvidence, or want of understanding, nor to any married woman; but where a married woman is entitled to administration, the same may be granted to her husband in her right and behalf."

There is nothing that an unruly wife might do against which the husband has not sufficient protection in the law. But not so with the wife. If she have a worthless husband, a confirmed drunkard, a villain, or a vagrant, he has still all the rights of a man, a husband, and a father. Though the whole support of the family be thrown upon the wife, if the wages she earns be paid to her by her employer, the husband can receive them again. If, by unwearied industry and perseverance, she can earn for herself and children a patch of ground and a shed to cover them, the husband can strip her of all her hard earnings, turn her and her little ones out in the cold northern blast, take the clothes from their backs, the bread from their mouths; all this by your laws may he do, and has he done, oft and again, to satisfy the rapacity of that monster in human form, the rum-seller.

But the wife who is so fortunate as to have inherited property, has, by the new law in this State, been redeemed from her lost condition. She is no longer a legal nonentity. This property law, if fairly construed, will overturn the whole code relating to woman and property. The right to property implies the right to buy and sell, to will and bequeath, and herein is the dawning of a civil existence for woman, for now the "femme covert" must have the right to make contracts. So, get ready, gentlemen; the "little justice" will be coming to you one day, deed in hand, for your acknowledgment. When he asks you "if you sign without fear or compulsion," say yes, boldly, as we do. Then, too, the right to will is ours. Now what becomes of the "tenant for life"? Shall he, the happy husband of a millionaire, who has lived in yonder princely mansion in the midst of plenty and elegance, be cut down in a day to the use of one-third of this estate and a few hundred a year, as long he remains her widower? And should he, in spite of this bounty on celibacy, impelled by his affections, marry again, choosing for a wife a woman as poor as himself, shall he be thrown penniless on the cold world—this child of fortune, enervated by ease and luxury, henceforth to be dependent wholly on his own resources? Poor man! He would be rich, though, in the sympathies of many women who have passed through just such an ordeal. But what is property without the right to protect that property by law? It is mockery to say a certain estate is mine, if, without my consent, you have the right to tax me when and how you please, while I have no voice in making the tax-gatherer, the legislator, or the law. The right to property will, of necessity, compel us in due time to the exercise of our right to the elective franchise, and then naturally follows the right to hold office.

3d. Look at the position of woman as widow. Whenever we attempt to point out the wrongs of the wife, those who would have us believe that the laws can not be improved, point us to the privileges, powers, and claims of the widow. Let us look into these a little. Behold in yonder humble house a married pair, who, for long years, have lived together, childless and alone. Those few acres of well-tilled land, with the small, white house that looks so cheerful through its vines and flowers, attest the honest thrift and simple taste of its owners. This man and woman, by their hard days' labor, have made this home their own. Here they live in peace and plenty, happy in the hope that they may dwell together securely under their own vine and fig-tree for the few years that remain to them, and that under the shadow of these trees, planted by their own hands, and in the midst of their household gods, so loved and familiar, they may take their last farewell of earth. But, alas for human hopes! the husband dies, and without a will, and the stricken widow, at one fell blow, loses the companion of her youth, her house and home, and half the little sum she had in bank. For the law, which takes no cognizance of widows left with twelve children and not one cent, instantly spies out this widow, takes account of her effects, and announces to her the startling intelligence that but one-third of the house and lot, and one-half the personal property, are hers. The law has other favorites with whom she must share the hard-earned savings of years. In this dark hour of grief, the coarse minions of the law gather round the widow's hearth-stone, and, in the name of justice, outrage all natural sense of right; mock at the sacredness of human love, and with cold familiarity proceed to place a moneyed value on the old arm-chair, in which, but a few brief hours since, she closed the eyes that had ever beamed on her with kindness and affection; on the solemn clock in the corner, that told the hour he passed away; on every garment with which his form and presence were associated, and on every article of comfort and convenience that the house contained, even down to the knives and forks and spoons—and the widow saw it all—and when the work was done, she gathered up what the law allowed her and went forth to seek another home! This is the much-talked-of widow's dower. Behold the magnanimity of the law in allowing the widow to retain a life interest in one-third the landed estate, and one-half the personal property of her husband, and taking the lion's share to itself! Had she died first, the house and land would all have been the husband's still. No one would have dared to intrude upon the privacy of his home, or to molest him in his sacred retreat of sorrow. How, I ask you, can that be called justice, which makes such a distinction as this between man and woman?

By management, economy, and industry, our widow is able, in a few years, to redeem her house and home. But the law never loses sight of the purse, no matter how low in the scale of being its owner may be. It sends its officers round every year to gather in the harvest for the public crib, and no widow who owns a piece of land two feet square ever escapes this reckoning. Our widow, too, who has now twice earned her home, has her annual tax to pay also—a tribute of gratitude that she is permitted to breathe the free air of this republic, where "taxation without representation," by such worthies as John Hancock and Samuel Adams, has been declared "intolerable tyranny." Having glanced at the magnanimity of the law in its dealings with the widow, let us see how the individual man, under the influence of such laws, doles out justice to his helpmate. The husband has the absolute right to will away his property as he may see fit. If he has children, he can divide his property among them, leaving his wife her third only of the landed estate, thus making her a dependent on the bounty of her own children. A man with thirty thousand dollars in personal property, may leave his wife but a few hundred a year, as long as she remains his widow.

The cases are without number where women, who have lived in ease and elegance, at the death of their husbands have, by will, been reduced to the bare necessaries of life. The man who leaves his wife the sole guardian of his property and children is an exception to the general rule. Man has ever manifested a wish that the world should indeed be a blank to the companion whom he leaves behind him. The Hindoo makes that wish a law, and burns the widow on the funeral pyre of her husband; but the civilized man, impressed with a different view of the sacredness of life, takes a less summary mode of drawing his beloved partner after him; he does it by the deprivation and starvation of the flesh, and the humiliation and mortification of the spirit. In bequeathing to the wife just enough to keep soul and body together, man seems to lose sight of the fact that woman, like himself, takes great pleasure in acts of benevolence and charity. It is but just, therefore, that she should have it in her power to give during her life, and to will away at her death, as her benevolence or obligations might prompt her to do.

4th. Look at the position of woman as mother. There is no human love so strong and steadfast as that of the mother for her child; yet behold how ruthless are your laws touching this most sacred relation. Nature has clearly made the mother the guardian of the child; but man, in his inordinate love of power, does continually set nature and nature's laws at open defiance. The father may apprentice his child, bind him out to a trade, without the mother's consent—yea, in direct opposition to her most earnest entreaties, prayers and tears.

He may apprentice his son to a gamester or rum-seller, and thus cancel his debts of honor. By the abuse of this absolute power, he may bind his daughter to the owner of a brothel, and, by the degradation of his child, supply his daily wants: and such things, gentlemen, have been done in our very midst. Moreover, the father, about to die, may bind out all his children wherever and to whomsoever he may see fit, and thus, in fact, will away the guardianship of all his children from the mother. The Revised Statutes of New York provide that "every father, whether of full age or a minor, of a child to be born, or of any living child under the age of twenty-one years, and unmarried, may by his deed or last will, duly executed, dispose of the custody and tuition of such child during its minority, or for any less time, to any person or persons, in possession or remainder." 2 R. S., page 150, sec. 1. Thus, by your laws, the child is the absolute property of the father, wholly at his disposal in life or at death.

In case of separation, the law gives the children to the father; no matter what his character or condition. At this very time we can point you to noble, virtuous, well-educated mothers in this State, who have abandoned their husbands for their profligacy and confirmed drunkenness. All these have been robbed of their children, who are in the custody of the husband, under the care of his relatives, whilst the mothers are permitted to see them but at stated intervals. But, said one of these mothers, with a grandeur of attitude and manner worthy the noble Roman matron in the palmiest days of that republic, I would rather never see my child again, than be the medium to hand down the low animal nature of its father, to stamp degradation on the brow of another innocent being. It is enough that one child of his shall call me mother.

If you are far-sighted statesmen, and do wisely judge of the interests of this commonwealth, you will so shape your future laws as to encourage woman to take the high moral ground that the father of her children must be great and good. Instead of your present laws, which make the mother and her children the victims of vice and license, you might rather pass laws prohibiting to all drunkards, libertines, and fools, the rights of husbands and fathers. Do not the hundreds of laughing idiots that are crowding into our asylums, appeal to the wisdom of our statesmen for some new laws on marriage—to the mothers of this day for a higher, purer morality?

Again, as the condition of the child always follows that of the mother, and as by the sanction of your laws the father may beat the mother, so may he the child. What mother can not bear me witness to untold sufferings which cruel, vindictive fathers have visited upon their helpless children? Who ever saw a human being that would not abuse unlimited power? Base and ignoble must that man be who, let the provocation be what it may, would strike a woman; but he who would lacerate a trembling child is unworthy the name of man. A mother's love can be no protection to a child; she can not appeal to you to save it from a father's cruelty, for the laws take no cognizance of the mother's most grievous wrongs. Neither at home nor abroad can a mother protect her son. Look at the temptations that surround the paths of our youth at every step; look at the gambling and drinking saloons, the club rooms, the dens of infamy and abomination that infest all our villages and cities—slowly but surely sapping the very foundations of all virtue and strength.

By your laws, all these abominable resorts are permitted. It is folly to talk of a mother moulding the character of her son, when all mankind, backed up by law and public sentiment, conspire to destroy her influence. But when woman's moral power shall speak through the ballot-box, then shall her influence be seen and felt; then, in our legislative debates, such questions as the canal tolls on salt, the improvement of rivers and harbors, and the claims of Mr. Smith for damages against the State, would be secondary to the consideration of the legal existence of all these public resorts, which lure our youth on to excessive indulgence and destruction.

Many times and oft it has been asked us, with, unaffected seriousness, "What do you women want? What are you aiming at?" Many have manifested a laudable curiosity to know what the wives and daughters could complain of in republican America, where their sires and sons have so bravely fought for freedom and gloriously secured their independence, trampling all tyranny, bigotry, and caste in the dust, and declaring to a waiting world the divine truth that all men are created equal. What can woman want under such a government? Admit a radical difference in sex, and you demand different spheres—water for fish, and air for birds.

It is impossible to make the Southern planter believe that his slave feels and reasons just as he does—that injustice and subjection are as galling as to him—that the degradation of living by the will of another, the mere dependent on his caprice, at the mercy of his passions, is as keenly felt by him as his master. If you can force on his unwilling vision a vivid picture of the negro's wrongs, and for a moment touch his soul, his logic brings him instant consolation. He says, the slave does not feel this as I would. Here, gentlemen, is our difficulty: When we plead our cause before the law-makers and savants of the republic, they can not take in the idea that men and women are alike; and so long as the mass rest in this delusion, the public mind will not be so much startled by the revelations made of the injustice and degradation of woman's position as by the fact that she should at length wake up to a sense of it.

If you, too, are thus deluded, what avails it that we show by your statute books that your laws are unjust—that woman is the victim of avarice and power? What avails it that we point out the wrongs of woman in social life; the victim of passion and lust? You scorn the thought that she has any natural love of freedom burning in her breast, any clear perception of justice urging her on to demand her rights.

Would to God you could know the burning indignation that fills woman's soul when she turns over the pages of your statute books, and sees there how like feudal barons you freemen hold your women. Would that you could know the humiliation she feels for sex, when she thinks of all the beardless boys in your law offices, learning these ideas of one-sided justice—taking their first lessons in contempt for all womankind—being indoctrinated into the incapacities of their mothers, and the lordly, absolute rights of man over all women, children, and property, and to know that these are to be our future presidents, judges, husbands, and fathers; in sorrow we exclaim, alas! for that nation whose sons bow not in loyalty to woman. The mother is the first object of the child's veneration and love, and they who root out this holy sentiment, dream not of the blighting effect it has on the boy and the man. The impression left on law students, fresh from your statute books, is most unfavorable to woman's influence; hence you see but few lawyers chivalrous and high-toned in their sentiments toward woman. They can not escape the legal view which, by constant reading, has become familiarized to their minds: "Femme covert," "dower," "widow's claims," "protection," "incapacities," "incumbrance," is written on the brow of every woman they meet.

But if, gentlemen, you take the ground that the sexes are alike, and, therefore, you are our faithful representatives—then why all these special laws for woman? Would not one code answer for all of like needs and wants? Christ's golden rule is better than all the special legislation that the ingenuity of man can devise: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." This, men and brethren, is all we ask at your hands. We ask no better laws than those you have made for yourselves. We need no other protection than that which your present laws secure to you.

In conclusion, then, let us say, in behalf of the women of this State, we ask for all that you have asked for yourselves in the progress of your development, since the Mayflower cast anchor beside Plymouth rock; and simply on the ground that the rights of every human being are the same and identical. You may say that the mass of the women of this State do not make the demand; it comes from a few sour, disappointed old maids and childless women.

You are mistaken; the mass speak through us. A very large majority of the women of this State support themselves and their children, and many their husbands too. Go into any village you please, of three or four thousand inhabitants, and you will find as many as fifty men or more, whose only business is to discuss religion and politics, as they watch the trains come and go at the depot, or the passage of a canal boat through a lock; to laugh at the vagaries of some drunken brother, or the capers of a monkey dancing to the music of his master's organ. All these are supported by their mothers, wives, or sisters.

Now, do you candidly think these wives do not wish to control the wages they earn—to own the land they buy—the houses they build? to have at their disposal their own children, without being subject to the constant interference and tyranny of an idle, worthless profligate? Do you suppose that any woman is such a pattern of devotion and submission that she willingly stitches all day for the small sum of fifty cents, that she may enjoy the unspeakable privilege, in obedience to your laws, of paying for her husband's tobacco and rum? Think you the wife of the confirmed, beastly drunkard would consent to share with him her home and bed, if law and public sentiment would release her from such gross companionship? Verily, no! Think you the wife with whom endurance has ceased to be a virtue, who, through much suffering, has lost all faith in the justice of both heaven and earth, takes the law in her own hand, severs the unholy bond, and turns her back forever upon him whom she once called husband, consents to the law that in such an hour tears her child from her—all that she has left on earth to love and cherish? The drunkards' wives speak through us, and they number 50,000. Think you that the woman who has worked hard all her days in helping her husband to accumulate a large property, consents to the law that places this wholly at his disposal? Would not the mother whose only child is bound out for a term of years against her expressed wish, deprive the father of this absolute power if she could?

For all these, then, we speak. If to this long list you add the laboring women who are loudly demanding remuneration for their unending toil; those women who teach in our seminaries, academies, and public schools for a miserable pittance; the widows who are taxed without mercy; the unfortunate ones in our work-houses, poor-houses, and prisons; who are they that we do not now represent? But a small class of the fashionable butterflies, who, through the short summer days, seek the sunshine and the flowers; but the cool breezes of autumn and the hoary frosts of winter will soon chase all these away; then they, too, will need and seek protection, and through other lips demand in their turn justice and equity at your hands.

"Nay, look not big, nor stamp, nor stare, nor fret,
I will be master of what is mine own;
She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything;
And here she stands, touch her whoever dare;
I'll bring my action on the proudest he,
That stops my way, in Padua."

The friends of woman suffrage may be said to have fairly held a protracted meeting during the two following weeks in Albany, with hearings before both branches of the Legislature, and lectures evening after evening in Association Hall, by Mrs. Rose, Mr. Channing, Mr. Phillips, and Miss Brown, culminating in a discussion by the entire press of the city and State; for all the journals had something to say on one side or the other, Mrs. Rose, Mr. Channing, Miss Brown, and several anonymous writers taking part in the newspaper debate. As this was the first Convention held at the Capitol, it roused considerable agitation on every phase of the question, not only among the legislators on the bills before them, but among the people throughout the State.

The Albany Transcript thus sums up the Woman's Rights Convention.—The meeting last evening was attended by the largest and most brilliant audience of the series. A large number of members of the Legislature were there, and a full representation of our most influential citizens. Indeed they could not have asked for a more numerous or talented body of hearers. Mrs. Rose was the sole speaker, owing to the necessity which had called the others away.... She was listened to with the most profound attention, and encouraged by frequent and prolonged applause.

Thus has ended the first Convention of women designed to influence political action. On Monday the 6,000 petitions will be presented in the Legislature, and the address be placed on the members' tables. Whatever may be the final disposition of the matter, it is well to make a note of this first effort to influence the Legislature. It was originated by Miss Susan B. Anthony, and has been managed financially by her. Though a stranger amongst us, she has made the contracts for the room, advertised in the papers, employed the speakers, published the address, and performed much other arduous labor.

Mrs. Nichols, one of the speakers, has long been connected with the press, and is a woman of no mean ability. Her mild, beaming countenance and the affectionate tones of her voice, disprove that she is any less a woman than those who do not "speak in public on the stage." Mrs. Love is a new caterer to public favor, and promises well. Some have remarked that she is well named, being a "Love of a woman." Mrs. Jenkins is a fluent and agreeable speaker, and has a good degree of power in swaying an audience. But Mrs. Rose is the queen of the company. On the educational question in particular, she rises to a high standard of oratorical power. When speaking of Hungary and her own crushed Poland, she is full of eloquence and pathos, and she has as great a power to chain an audience as any of our best male speakers.

The Evening Journal (Thurlow Weed, editor): Woman's Rights.—Mr. Channing and Mrs. Rose pleaded the cause of woman's rights before the Senate Committee of bachelors yesterday. The only effect produced was a determination more fixed than ever in the minds of the committee, to remain bachelors in the event of the success of the movement. And who would blame them?

The same champions, with others probably, will speak to the House Committee in the Assembly Chamber this afternoon; and Mr. Channing and Mrs. Rose make addresses in Association Hall this evening. Price twenty-five cents.

The Albany Register: Women in the Senate Chamber.—The Senate was alarmed yesterday afternoon. It surrendered to progress. The Select Committee to whom the women's rights petitions had been referred, took their seats on the president's platform, looking as grave as possible. Never had Senators Robertson, Yost, and Field been in such responsible circumstances. They were calm, but evidently felt themselves in great peril.

In the circle of the Senate, ranged in invincible row, sat seven ladies, from quite pretty to quite plain.

Ernestine L. Rose and Rev. William Henry Channing presented the arguments and appeals to the Committee, and Mrs. Rose invited them to ask questions. The Register concludes:

The Honorable Senators quailed beneath the trial. There was a terrible silence, and the audience eager to hear what the other ladies had to say, were wretched when they found that the Committee had silently dissolved—surrendered. Oh, what a fall was there, my countrymen!

The Albany Argus of March 4th, says: The Rights of Women Defined by Themselves.—Miss Anthony and Mrs. Rose before the House Committee, March 3d. The Committee took their seats in the clerk's desk, and the ladies took possession of the members' seats, filling the chamber, many members of the Legislature being present. Miss Anthony presented a paper prepared by Judge William Hay, of Saratoga, asking that husband and wife should be tenants in common of property without survivorship, but with a partition on the death of one; that a wife shall be competent to discharge trusts and powers the same as a single woman; that the statute in respect to a married woman's property descend as though she had been unmarried; that married women shall be entitled to execute letters testamentary, and of administration; that married women shall have power to make contracts and transact business as though unmarried; that they shall be entitled to their own earnings, subject to their proportionable liability for support of children; that post-nuptial acquisitions shall belong equally to husband and wife; that married women shall stand on the same footing with single women, as parties or witnesses in legal proceedings; that they shall be sole guardians of their minor children; that the homestead shall be inviolable and inalienable for widows and children; that the laws in relation to divorce shall be revised, and drunkenness made cause for absolute divorce; that better care shall be taken of single women's property, that their rights may not be lost through ignorance, that the preference of males in descent of real estate shall be abolished; that women shall exercise "the right of suffrage," and be eligible to all offices, occupations, and professions; entitled to act as jurors; eligible to all public offices; that courts of conciliation shall be organized as peace-makers; that a law shall be enacted extending the masculine designation in all statutes of the State to females.

Mrs. Rose then addressed the Committee, saying: The right of petition is of no avail unless the reform demanded be candidly considered by the legislators. We judge of the intellectual inferiority of our fellow-men by the amount of resistance they oppose to oppression, and to some extent we judge correctly by this test. The same rule holds good for women; while they tamely submit to the many inequalities under which they labor, they scarcely deserve to be freed from them.... These are not the demands of the moment or the few; they are the demands of the age; of the second half of the nineteenth century. The world will endure after us, and future generations may look back to this meeting to acknowledge that a great onward step was here taken in the cause of human progress.

Mrs. Rose took her seat amidst great applause from the galleries and lobbies. The Committee adjourned.

---

Albany Register, March 7: Woman's Rights in the Legislature.—While the feminine propagandists of women's rights confined themselves to the exhibition of short petticoats and long-legged boots, and to the holding of Conventions, and speech-making in concert-rooms, the people were disposed to be amused by them, as they are by the wit of the clown in the circus, or the performances of Punch and Judy on fair days, or the minstrelsy of gentlemen with blackened faces, on banjos, the tambourine, and bones. But the joke is becoming stale. People are getting cloyed with these performances, and are looking for some healthier and more intellectual amusement. The ludicrous is wearing away, and disgust is taking the place of pleasurable sensations, arising from the novelty of this new phase of hypocrisy and infidel fanaticism. People are beginning to inquire how far public sentiment should sanction or tolerate these unsexed women, who make a scoff of religion, who repudiate the Bible and blaspheme God; who would step out from the true sphere of the mother, the wife, and the daughter, and taking upon themselves the duties and the business of men, stalk into the public gaze, and by engaging in the politics, the rough controversies, and trafficking of the world, upheave existing institutions, and overturn all the social relations of life.

It is a melancholy reflection, that among our American women who have been educated to better things, there should be found any who are willing to follow the lead of such foreign propagandists as the ringleted, glove-handed exotic, Ernestine L. Rose. We can understand how such men as the Rev. Mr. May, or the sleek-headed Dr. Channing may be deluded by her to becoming her disciples. They are not the first instances of infatuation that may overtake weak-minded men, if they are honest in their devotion to her and her doctrines. Nor would they be the first examples of a low ambition that seeks notoriety as a substitute for true fame, if they are dishonest. Such men there are always, and honest or dishonest, their true position is that of being tied to the apron-strings of some "strong-minded woman," and to be exhibited as rare specimens of human wickedness, or human weakness and folly. But, that one educated American woman should become her disciple and follow her infidel and insane teachings, is a marvel.

Ernestine L. Rose came to this country, as she says, from Poland, whence she was compelled to fly in pursuit of freedom. Seeing her course here, we can well imagine this to be true. In no other country in the world, save possibly one, would her infidel propagandism and preachings in regard to the social relations of life be tolerated. She would be prohibited by the powers of government from her efforts to obliterate from the world the religion of the Cross—to banish the Bible as a text-book of faith, and to overturn social institutions that have existed through all political and governmental revolutions from the remotest time. The strong hand of the law would be laid upon her, and she would be compelled back to her woman's sphere. But in this country, such is the freedom of our institutions, and we rejoice that it should be so, that she, and such as she, can give their genius for intrigue full sway. They can exhibit their flowing ringlets and beautiful hands, their winning smiles and charming stage attitudes to admiring audiences, who, while they are willing to be amused, are in the main safe from their corrupting theories and demoralizing propagandism.

The laws and the theory of our government suppose that the people are capable of taking care of themselves, and hence need no protection against the wiles of domestic or foreign mountebanks, whether in petticoats or in breeches and boots. But it never was contemplated that these exotic agitators would come up to our legislators and ask for the passage of laws upholding and sanctioning their wild and foolish doctrines. That was a stretch of folly, a flight of impudence which was hardly regarded as possible. It was to be imagined, of course, that they would enlist as their followers, here and there one among the restless old maids and visionary wives who chanced to be unevenly tempered, as well as unevenly yoked. It was also to be assumed, as within the range of possibility, that they might bring within the sphere of their attractions, weak-minded, restless men, who think in their vanity that they have been marked out for great things, and failed to be appreciated by the world, men who comb their hair smoothly back, and with fingers locked across their stomachs, speak in a soft voice, and with upturned eyes. But no man supposed they would abandon their "private theatricals" and walk up to the Capitol, and insist that the performances shall be held in legislative halls. And yet so it is.

This Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, with a train of followers, like a great kite with a very long tail, has, for a week, been amusing Senatorial and Assembly Committees, with her woman's rights performances, free of charge, unless the waste of time that might be better employed in the necessary and legitimate business of legislation, may be regarded as a charge. Those committees have sat for hours, grave and solemn as owls, listening to the outpourings of fanaticism and folly of this Polish propagandist, Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, and her followers in pantalets and short gowns. The people outside, and especially those interested in the progress of legislation, are beginning to ask one another how long this farce is to continue. How long this most egregious and ridiculous humbug is to be permitted to obstruct the progress of business before the Committees and the Houses, and whether Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose and her followers ought not to be satisfied with the notoriety they have already attained. The great body of the people regard Mrs. Rose and her followers as making themselves simply ridiculous, and there is some danger that these legislative committees will make themselves so too.

Lecture of the Rev. Antoinette L. Brown.—It will be seen the Rev. Antoinette L. Brown delivers a lecture at Association Hall to-morrow evening. It has been said that we have done the women's rights people injustice in charging upon them the infidelity of Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose. If we have done them injustice in this matter it is but right that we should make amends by calling attention to the lecture of Miss Brown, which, as we understand, will embrace the Bible argument in favor of the measures which they advocate. Miss Brown is a talented woman, and we have no doubt an exemplary Christian.

For the Albany Daily State Register.

WOMAN'S RIGHTS.

Mr. Editor:—In your paper of Monday the 6th inst., I perceive you pass judgment upon the woman's rights cause, upon those engaged in it, and particularly upon myself—how justly, I leave to your conscience to decide.

Every one who ever advanced a new idea, no matter how great and noble, has been subjected to criticism, and therefore we too must expect it. And, in accordance with the spirit of the critic, will be the criticism. Whether dictated by the spirit of justice, kindness, gentleness, and charity, or by injustice, malice, rudeness, and intolerance, it is still an index of the man. But it is quite certain that no true soul will ever be deterred from the performance of a duty by any criticism.

But there is one thing which I think even editors have no right to do, namely: to state a positive falsehood, or even to imply one, for the purpose of injuring another. And, as the spirit of charity induces me to believe that in your case it was done more from a misunderstanding than positive malice, therefore I claim at your hands the justice to give this letter a place in your paper.

In the article alluded to, you say: "Ernestine L. Rose came to this country, as she says, from Poland, whence she was compelled to fly in pursuit of freedom." It is true that I came from Poland; but it is false that I was compelled to fly from my country, except by the compulsion, or dictates of the same spirit of "propagandism," that induced so many of my noble countrymen to shed their blood in the defence of the rights of this country, and the rights of man, wherever he struggles for freedom. But I have no desire to claim martyrdom which does not belong to me. I left my country, not flying, but deliberately. I chose to make this country my home, in preference to any other, because if you carried out the theories you profess, it would indeed be the noblest country on earth. And as my countrymen so nobly aided in the physical struggle for Freedom and Independence, I felt, and still feel it equally my duty to use my humble abilities to the uttermost in my power, to aid in the great moral struggle for human rights and human freedom.

Hoping that you will acede to my (I think) just claim to give this a place in your paper,

I am, very respectfully,

Ernestine L. Rose.

New York, Mar. 7, 1854.

William Henry Channing asks the following questions in the Albany Evening Journal:

WOMAN'S RIGHTS.

A lady actively and prominently connected with, the movement which is expected to secure "justice to woman," personally requested us to publish the following communication. It is proper to state that it is written in reply to an article of one of our morning contemporaries, published a day or two ago:

"Let us take it for granted that your pop-gun of pleasantry has killed off the six thousand 'strong-minded' women and 'weak-minded' men who signed the petitions to the Legislature for Justice to Woman. And thus having disposed of personalities, will you be pleased to pass on to a discussion of the following questions:

"1. Are women, in New York, persons, people, citizens, members of the State? If they are not, then why are they numbered in the census, taxed by assessors, and subjected to legal penalties? If they are, then why is authority exercised over them without their consent asked or granted?

"2. If among the male half of the people, only criminals, aliens, and minors are excluded from the right of suffrage are all women excluded from exercising this right, on the ground of criminality, idiocy, foreign associations, or infantile imbecility?

"3. If the mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters of New York are the peers and equals of their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons, why should they not enjoy all civil and political rights equally with them? If they are, on the contrary, an inferior caste, how can a jury of men thus avowedly superior, be regarded as peers and equals of any woman whom they are summoned to try?

"4. Would the editor of The Register consider himself justly treated if he would some day find himself governed by women, without his consent, taxed by women without power of voting for his representative, tried by a jury of women under laws made and administered by women?

"5. If prosecuted under the law of libel before a court of women for his late remarks, does he think he would get his deserts?

"Fair Play."

Knickerbocker, Albany, March 8, 1854: Going it Blind.—The editor of The State Register is going it blind on woman's rights matters. He was out on Monday with a half column leader that touched everything except the matter in dispute. We quote a paragraph:

"People are beginning to inquire how far public sentiment should sanction or tolerate these unsexed women, who make a scoff at religion, who repudiate the Bible, and blaspheme God; who would step out from the true sphere of the mother, the wife, and the daughter, and take upon themselves the duties and the business of men; stalk into the public gaze, and by engaging in the politics, the rough controversies, and trafficking of the world, upheave existing institutions, and overturn all the social relations of life."

The Register either misunderstands matters, or else willfully misrepresents them. The leading women connected with this new movement do not scoff at religion, repudiate the Bible, nor blaspheme God. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Brown are no more opposed to God and religion than the editor of The Register is. They are educated, Christian women, and would no sooner "overturn society" than they would bear false witness against their neighbors. Before The Register again attacks the reforms proposed by the Woman's Rights Conventions, it should become acquainted with them. "Going it blind," not only exposes one's prejudices, but ignorance. Many of the innovations proposed by Mrs. Stanton are such as every common-sense man would or should vote for. We mean those improvements which she would have made in the rights of property and the care of children. There are other propositions in her platform which we should dissent from. The State Register may do the same. All the "Woman's Rights" women claim is fair play and truthful criticism. They object, however, to any misstatements. They are willing to fall before truth, but not before detraction. The State Register will please notice and act accordingly.

Mrs. Stanton's address to the Legislature was laid upon the members' desks Monday morning, Feb. 20, 1854. When the order of petitions was reached, Mr. D. P. Wood, of Onondaga, presented in the Assembly a petition signed by 5,931 men and women, praying for the just and equal rights of women, which, after a spicy debate, was referred to the following Select Committee: James L. Angle, of Monroe Co.; George W. Thorn, of Washington Co.; Derrick L. Boardman, of Oneida Co.; George H. Richards, of New York; James M. Munro, of Onondaga; Wesley Gleason, of Fulton; Alexander P. Sharpe, of New York.

In the Senate, on the same day, Mr. Richards, or Warren County, presented a petition signed by 4,164 men and women, praying for the extension of the right of suffrage to women, and on his motion it was referred to the following Select Committee: George Yost, of Montgomery Co.; Ben. Field, of Orleans Co.; W. H. Robertson, of Westchester Co.

We give the report of the presentation and discussion of the petitions from The Albany Evening Journal of Feb. 20, 1854:

WOMAN'S RIGHTS.

Assembly, Monday, February 20, 1854.

Mr. D. P. Wood: I am requested by a Committee of the Woman's Rights Convention recently assembled in this city, to present to this body their address, together with a petition signed by 5,931 men and women, asking that certain withheld rights shall be granted to the women of the State. I ask the reference of these two documents to a Select Committee of seven; and in making this motion, I wish the Speaker to waive the courtesy which would require him, under ordinary circumstances, to place me at the head of this Committee. I am already on several Committees which are pressed with business, and I would not, in my present state of health, be able to give the subject that careful consideration which the importance requires. I am satisfied, sir, that these ladies are entitled to some relief. They think so, and they say so, in language equally eloquent and impressive.

Mr. Burnett: I hope the House will not act at all on this subject without due consideration. I hope before even this motion is put, gentlemen will be allowed to reflect upon the important question whether these individuals deserve any consideration at the hands of the Legislature. Whatever may be their pretensions or their sincerity, they do not appear to be satisfied with having unsexed themselves, but they desire to unsex every female in the land, and to set the whole community ablaze with unhallowed fire. I trust, sir, the House may deliberate before we suffer them to cast this firebrand into our midst. (Here was heard a "hiss" from some part of the chamber). True, as yet, there is nothing officially before us, but it is well known that the object of these unsexed women is to overthrow the most sacred of our institutions, to set at defiance the Divine law which declares man and wife to be one, and establish on its ruins what will be in fact and in principle but a species of legalized adultery. That this is their real object, however they may attempt to disguise it, is well known to every one who has looked, not perhaps at the intentions of all who take part in it, but at the practical and inevitable result of the movement.

It is, therefore, a matter of duty, a duty to ourselves, to our consciences, to our constituents, and to God, who is the source of all law and of all obligations, to reflect long and deliberatively before we shall even seem to countenance a movement so unholy as this. The Spartan mothers asked no such immunities as are asked for by these women. The Roman mothers were content to occupy their legitimate spheres; and our own mothers, who possessed more than Spartan or Roman virtue, asked for no repudiation of the duties, obligations, or sacred relations of the marital rite.

Are we, sir, to give the least countenance to claims so preposterous, disgraceful, and criminal as are embodied in this address? Are we to put the stamp of truth upon the libel here set forth, that men and women, in the matrimonial relation, are to be equal? We know that God created man as the representative of the race; that after his creation, his Creator took from his side the material for woman's creation; and that, by the institution of matrimony, woman was restored to the side of man, and became one flesh and one being, he being the head. But this law of God and creation is spurned by these women who present themselves here as the exponents of the wishes of our mothers, wives, and daughters. They ask no such exponents, and they repel their sacrilegious doctrines.

But again, sir, our old views of matrimony were, that it was a holy rite, having holy relations based on mutual love and confidence; and that while woman gave herself up to man, to his care, protection, and love, man also surrendered something in exchange for this confidence and love. He placed his happiness and his honor, all that belongs to him of human hopes and of human happiness, in the keeping of the being he received in the sacred relationship of wife. I say, sir, that this ordinance, sought to be practically overthrown by these persons, was established by God Himself; and was based on the mutual love and confidence of husband and wife. But we are now asked to have this ordinance based on jealousy and distrust; and, as in Italy, so in this country, should this mischievous scheme be carried out to its legitimate results, we, instead of reposing safe confidence against assaults upon our honor in the love and affection of our wives, shall find ourselves obliged to close the approaches to those assaults by the padlock. (The "hiss" was here repeated).

Mr. Lozier: Mr. Speaker, twice I have heard a hiss from the lobby. I protest against the toleration of such an insult to any member of this House, and call for proper action in view of it.

The Speaker: The chair observed the interruption, and was endeavoring to discover its source, but has been unable to do so. If, however, its author can be recognized, the chair will immediately order the person to the bar of the House.

Mr. Burnett: I have nothing further. The leading features of this address are well known; and I do not wish at present to further enter upon the argument of its character. I merely wish that members be afforded time for consideration. I therefore move to lay the pending motion on the table.

D. P. Wood: I am surprised that the gentleman from Essex, who professes to desire light, and to afford members time for examination, should make a motion which, if carried, will preclude light and prevent examination. The gentleman sees fit to regard the memorial of these 6,000 men and women as a firebrand. I do not believe the ladies who presented it intended it as such; and they will be surprised to learn that a gentleman of his age and experience should have taken fire from it. Their requests are simple. They ask for "justice and equal rights," and this simple request is made the excuse for an attack upon them as unheard of as it is unjust. They ask only for "justice and equal rights." If the House does not see fit to grant them what they ask, let my motion be voted down, and send the memorial to the Judiciary Committee, of which the gentleman from Essex is chairman. Let such a disposition be made of it, and there will then be no danger that any one will be fired up by it, for it will then be sure to sleep the sleep of death.

Sir, when a petition like this comes before the Legislature, it should not only be respectfully received, but courteously considered; particularly when it asks, as this petition does, a review of the entire code of our statute laws. It should not be sent to a Committee adverse to its request. That would be unparliamentary and the end of it. If sent to such a Committee it would be smothered. The House, I am sure, is not prepared for any such disposition of the matter, but is willing to look candidly at the alleged grievances, and, if consistent with public policy, redress them, although in doing so we may infringe upon time-honored notions and usages.

Mr. Peters: I am not surprised at the direction which the gentleman from Essex seeks to give this memorial. Any gentleman who would assail these ladies as he has done, would be prepared to make any disrespectful disposition of their rights. I may regret that he has sought to deny a hearing to these petitioners, but I am not surprised that he has done so. I trust that no other member on this floor will refuse, practically, to receive this petition—refuse to our mothers, wives, and sisters, what we every day grant to our fathers, brothers, and sons. These women come here with a respectful petition, and we should give them a candid and respectful hearing. If it be true, and true it is, that there are real grievances complained of, I hope they may be redressed after careful and candid consideration.

The time has gone by, sir, when we may say progress must stop. It is well known that in many particulars the laws are glaringly unjust in regard to the female sex. The education of the sex is defective; and this fact unfolds the secret germ of this movement. We should review the structure of our institutions of learning, and see whether there be not there room for reform. I do not believe it to be a part of the duty of women to sit in the jury-box, to vote, or to participate in all the tumultuous strifes of life; but I do believe that those who differ from me in opinion should have respectful hearing. Nor, because women are not allowed to vote, do I admit that they are precluded from all agency in the direction of national affairs. They, more than their husbands, have power over the future history of the country, by imparting a correct fireside education to their sons. But there are legal disabilities imposed upon women which I would be willing to see removed, in regard to property, etc. Whether those disabilities are of a character to justify affirmative action on the part of this House or not, is not now the question. The question simply is, shall this petition be received? I trust that it may be, and that it may afterward be sent to a select committee.

Mr. Benedict: The gentleman from Onondaga asks that this petition shall be sent to a select committee of seven, although he admits that the Judiciary Committee would be more appropriate, if it would not be sure, if sent to that Committee, to sleep the sleep of death. Sir, I am one of that Committee, and protest against any such imputation upon it. I will not only not vote to reject any petition offered the House, but I will give every petition sent to any committee of which I am a member a respectful hearing. This is a petition signed by some 6,000 men and women. They ask "justice" and relief. What kind of relief they may desire is no matter. It is enough for me to know that they ask to be heard. I shall vote to give them a hearing; and I can assure the gentleman from Onondaga that if sent to the Judiciary Committee it will sleep no sleep of death, but will be respectfully considered. A contrary intimation is an unjust reflection on that Committee.

Mr. Wood: My remark was not intended to reflect upon that Committee. I referred merely to the great amount of business before it.

Mr. Benedict: There the gentleman is equally at fault. That Committee is a working Committee, and disposed of all the business before it on Friday last. I am, however, in favor of the motion for a select committee, and desire that the petition should receive legitimate and careful consideration, not only because the petition is largely signed, but because every petition from any portion of the people on any subject, should receive a respectful hearing from the people's representatives. I I hope, therefore, that not a single member may vote against the reception of this petition, whatever his views may be in regard to granting its prayer. I am in favor of the right of petition.

Mr. Burnett: It was not my wish in the motion I made to have this petition rejected. Had I intended any such thing I should have said so; for I always go directly at what I want to accomplish, and never fail to call things by their right names. I merely wished, before any disposition was made of the petition, that the members should have time to examine the address, which is the key of the whole subject. This is all I desire; and it was simply an expression of this desire that has awakened all this windy gust of passion. After members shall examine the address which accompanies this petition, they can make such disposition of the petition itself as they shall deem wise and proper. This is the length and breadth of my object and desire.

Mr. Wood: I think the House understands the subject sufficiently to justify action upon my motion of reference.

The motion for the Select Committee prevailed, ayes, 84; the Committee appointed, and Mr. Wood excused from serving.

REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE.

In Assembly, Monday, March 27, 1854.

The Select Committee, to whom was referred the various petitions requesting "the Senate and Assembly of the State of New York to appoint a joint committee to revise the Statutes of New York, and to propose such amendments as will fully establish the legal equality of women with men," report: That they have examined the said petition, and have heard and considered the suggestions of persons who have appeared before them on behalf of the petitioners.

Your Committee are well aware that the matters submitted to them have been, and still are, the subject of ridicule and jest; but they are also aware that ridicule and jest never yet effectually put down either truth or error; and that the development of our times and the progression of our age is such, that many thoughts laughed at to-day as wild vagaries, are to-morrow recorded as developed principles or embodied as experimental facts.

A higher power than that from which emanates legislative enactments has given forth the mandate that man and woman shall not be equal; that there shall be inequalities by which each in their own appropriate sphere shall have precedence to the other; and each alike shall be superior or inferior as they well or ill act the part assigned them. Both alike are the subjects of Government, equally entitled to its protection; and civil power must, in its enactments, recognize this inequality. We can not obliterate it if we would, and legal inequalities must follow.

The education of woman has not been the result of statutes, but of civilization and Christianity; and her elevation, great as it has been, has only corresponded with that of man under the same influences. She owes no more to these causes than he does. The true elevation of the sexes will always correspond. But elevation, instead of destroying, show? more palpably those inherent inequalities, and makes more apparent the harmony and happiness which the Creator designed to accomplish by them.

Your Committee will not attempt to prescribe, or, rather, they will not attempt to define the province and peculiar sphere which a power that we can not overrule has prescribed for the different sexes. Every well-regulated home and household in the land affords an example illustrative of what is woman's proper sphere, as also that of man. Government has its miniature as well as its foundation in the homes of our country; and as in governments there must be some recognized head to control and direct, so must there also be a controlling and directing power in every smaller association; there must be some one to act and to be acted with as the embodiment of the persons associated. In the formation of governments, the manner in which the common interest shall be embodied and represented is a matter of conventional arrangement; but in the family an influence more potent than that of contracts and conventionalities, and which everywhere underlies humanity, has indicated that the husband shall fill the necessity which exists for a head. Dissension and distraction quickly arise when this necessity is not answered. The harmony of life, the real interest of both husband and wife, and of all dependent upon them, require it. In obedience to that requirement and necessity, the husband is the head—the representative of the family.

It was strongly urged upon your Committee that women, inasmuch as their property was liable to taxation, should be entitled to representation. The member of this House who considers himself the representative only of those whose ballots were cast for him, or even of all the voters in his district, has, in the opinion of your Committee, quite too limited an idea of his position on this floor. In their opinion he is the representative of the inhabitants of his district, whether they be voters or not, whether they be men or women, old or young; and he who does not alike watch over the interests of all, fails in his duty and is false to his trust.

Your Committee can not regard marriage as a mere contract, but as something above and beyond; something more binding than records, more solemn than specialties; and the person who reasons as to the relations of husband and wife as upon an ordinary contract, in their opinion commits a fatal error at the outset; and your Committee can not recommend any action based on such a theory.

As society progresses new wants are felt, new facts and combinations are presented which constantly call for more or less of addition to the body of our laws, and often for innovations upon customs so old that "the memory of man runneth not to the contrary thereof." The marriage relation, in common with everything else, has felt the effects of this progress, and from time to time been the subject of legislative action. And while your Committee report adversely to the prayer of the petitions referred to them, they believe that the time has come when certain alterations and amendments are, by common consent, admitted as proper and necessary.

Your Committee recommend that the assent of the mother, if she be living, be made necessary to the validity of any disposition which the father may make of her child by the way of the appointment of guardian or of apprenticeship. The consent of the wife is now necessary to a deed of real estate in order to bar her contingent interest therein; and there are certainly far more powerful reasons why her consent should be necessary to the conveyance or transfer of her own offspring to the care, teaching, and control of another.

When the husband from any cause neglects to provide for the support and education of his family, the wife should have the right to collect and receive her own earnings and the earnings of her minor children, and apply them to the support and education of the family free from the control of the husband, or any person claiming the same through him.

There are many other rules of law applicable to the relation of husband and wife which, in occasional cases, bear hard upon the one or the other, but your Committee do not deem it wise that a new arrangement of our laws of domestic relations should be attempted to obviate such cases; they always have and always will arise out of every subject of legal regulation.

There is much of wisdom (which may well be applied to this and many other subjects) in the quaint remark of an English lawyer, philosopher, and statesman, that "it were well that men in their innovations would follow the example of time, which innovateth greatly but quietly, and by degrees scarcely to be perceived. It is good also in states not to try experiments, except the necessity be urgent and the utility evident; and well to beware that it be the reformation that draweth on the change, and not the desire of change that pretendeth the reformation."

In conclusion, your Committee recommend that the prayer of the petitioners be denied; and they ask leave to introduce a bill[127] corresponding with the suggestions hereinbefore contained.

The report was signed by James L. Angle and all the members of the Committee except Mr. Richards.

Of the report on the petitions, Mr. Weed says:

Mr. Angle, from the Select Committee of the Assembly, to which the woman's rights petitions were referred, made a report last evening, which we publish elsewhere to-day. It is a compact, lucid, and ably drawn document, highly creditable to its author, and becomingly respectful to the petitioners. The Committee report adversely to the petitions, but recommend one or two changes in our existing law, which will, we think, commend themselves as well to the opponents, as to the advocates of woman's rights.

The work in the State of New York was now thoroughly systematized. Susan B. Anthony was appointed General Agent, and it was decided to hold a series of Conventions in all the counties and chief cities of the State, in order to roll up mammoth petitions with which to bombard the Legislature at every annual session. Two appeals[128] were issued to the women of the State, one in June, prepared by Mr. Channing, and one in December, by Mrs. Stanton. A number of able speakers[129] joined in the work, and the State was thoroughly canvassed every year until the war, and petitions presented by the thousands until the bill securing the civil rights of married women was passed in March, 1860.

Lest our readers should think that there was no variety to our lives in these early days, that we did nothing but resolve, complain, petition, protest, hold conventions, and besiege Legislatures, we record now and then some cheerful item from the Metropolitan papers concerning some of our leading women.

New York, March 14, 1854.

ANNIVERSARY OF THE 83D BIRTHDAY OF ROBERT OWEN AT 600 BROADWAY.

When the reporter entered the room he found the ladies and gentlemen assembled there tripping the light fantastic toe to the music of a harp, piano, and violin. Ernestine L. Rose was president of the occasion, and gave a very interesting sketch of the life and labors of this noble man. After which they had a grand supper, and Lucy Stone replied to the toast, "Woman, coequal with man." The ladies not only danced and made speeches, but they partook of the supper. They did not sit in the galleries, as the custom then was, to look at the gentlemen eat, and listen to their after-dinner speeches, but enjoyed an equal share in the whole entertainment. Mrs. Rose and Miss Stone seemed to feel as much at home on this festive occasion, as amid the more important proceedings of a convention.

As the agitation was kept up from year to year with frequent conventions, ever and anon some prominent person who had hitherto been silent, would concede a modicum of what we claimed, so timidly, however, and with so many popular provisos, that the concessions were almost buried in the objections. It was after this manner that Henry Ward Beecher, then in the zenith of his popularity, vouchsafed an opinion. He believed in woman's right to vote and speak in public. There was no logical argument against either, but he would not like to see his wife or mother go to the polls or mount the platform. This utterance called out the following letter from Gerrit Smith in The Boston Liberator:

Peterboro, N. Y., Nov. 19, 1854.

Dear Garrison:—I am very glad to see in your paper that Henry Ward Beecher avows himself a convert to the doctrine of woman's voting. But I regret that this strong man is nevertheless not strong enough to emancipate himself entirely from the dominion of superstition. Mr. Beecher would not have his wife and sister speak in public. Of course he means that he would not, however competent they might be for such an exercise. I will suppose that they all remove to Peterboro, and that a very important, nay, an entirely vital question springs up in our community, and profoundly agitates it; and I will further suppose that the wife and sister of Mr. Beecher are more capable than any other persons of taking the platform and shedding light upon the subject. Are we not entitled to their superior light? Certainly. And certainly therefore are they bound to afford it to us. Nevertheless Mr. Beecher would have them withhold it from us. Pray what is it but superstition that could prompt him to such violation of benevolence and common-sense? Will Mr. Beecher go to the Bible for his justification? That blessed book is to be read in the life of Jesus Christ; and in that life is the fullness of benevolence and common-sense, and no superstition at all. Will Mr. Beecher limit his wife and sisters in the given case to their pens?[130] Such limitation would he then be bound in consistency to impose upon himself. Would he impose it? Again, it takes lips as well as pens to carry instruction to the utmost.

Gerrit Smith.

Your friend,

SARATOGA CONVENTIONS,
August, 1854-'55.

Seeing calls for two national conventions, by the friends of Temperance, and the Anti-Nebraska movement, to be held in Saratoga the third week of August, the State Woman Suffrage Committee decided to embrace that opportunity to hold a convention there at the same time.[131] As it was at the height of the fashionable season it was thought much good might be accomplished by getting the ear of a new class of hearers.

But after the arrangements were all made, and Miss Anthony on the ground, she received messages from one after another of the speakers on whom she depended, that none of them could be present. Accordingly, encouraged by the Hon. William Hay, she decided to go through alone. Happily, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Sarah Pellet being in Saratoga, came forward and volunteered their services, and thus was the Convention carried successfully through.[132] The meeting was held in St. Nicholas Hall, which was well filled throughout, three-hundred dollars being taken at the door. The following resumé of this occasion is from the pen of Judge William Hay, in a letter to The North Star of Rochester (Frederick Douglass, editor):

THE SARATOGA CONVENTION.

Miss Sarah Pellet addressed an audience of six hundred persons in the afternoon, most of whom returned with others to St. Nicholas Hall in the evening, thus manifesting their satisfaction with what they had heard and their interest in the cause, which was farther discussed by Mrs. Gage, whose address was an elaborate argument for the removal of woman's legal and social disabilities. Among other authorities she quoted with judgment, was the following from Wm. W. Story: "In respect to the powers and rights of married women, the law is by no means abreast the spirit of the age. Here are seen the old fossil prints of feudalism. The law relating to woman tends to make every family a barony, a monarchy, or a despotism, of which the husband is the baron, king, or despot, and the wife the dependent, the serf, or slave. That this is not always the fact, is not due to the law, but to the enlarged humanity which spurns the narrow limits of its rules; for if the husband choose, he has his wife as firmly in his grasp and dominion, as the hawk has the dove upon whom he has pounced. This age is ahead of the law. Public opinion is a check to legal rules on this subject, but the rules are feudal and stern. It can not, however, be concealed that the position of woman is always the criterion of the freedom of a people or an age, and when man shall despise that right which is founded only on might, woman will be free to stand on an equal level with him—a friend and not a dependent."

Mrs. Gage also, and with like effect, cited from the same learned jurist, laws, which, had her lecture been a sermon, might have been prefixed as a text. Such opinions, although but seldom known to any but lawyers, and not appreciated by many of them, have frequently been printed in books, which, however, being professional, are perused by few persons only. Mrs. Gage[133] concluded her excellent discourse with Bryant's celebrated stanza, relative to truth and error.

Miss Anthony's situation had become embarrassing, if not critical. At a late hour of a summer night, she was to follow Mrs. Gage on the same subject, and before a fastidious audience, almost surfeited during three days with public addresses in several different conventions, and many of whom desired to contrast her expected effort with the splendid platform eloquence of Henry J. Raymond, Wm. H. Burleigh, and "their like," fearlessly advocating the redress of wrongs and the promotion of human rights. Miss Anthony, who had conciliated her audience by lady-like conduct and courtesy, in providing seats for the accommodation of those standing, commenced with an appropriate apology for unavoidable repetition, when it was her lot to follow Mrs. Gage. Sufficient here to say that she acquitted herself admirably. The simplicity and repose of her manner, the dignity of her deportment, the distinctiveness of her enunciation, her emphatic earnestness, the pathos of her appeals, and completeness of her arguments, convinced the understanding and persuaded all hearts.

The gossip of mustached dandies, and the half-suppressed giggle of bedizened beauty, soon settled down into respectful attention, if not appreciation. Indeed many of the most intelligent hearers before retiring, audibly confessed that they came to find fault, but had seen nothing to censure. So some who came to scoff remained to applaud. With such advocates there can be no retrogression of Woman's Rights. Equality is their motto, and onward their destiny.

Wm. Hay.

This Convention was so successful in point of numbers and receipts, and the sale of woman suffrage literature, that it was decided to repeat the experiment the next year; accordingly the following call was issued early in the season:

SARATOGA CONVENTION, 1855.

A Convention will be held at Saratoga Springs on the 15th and 16th of August next, to discuss woman's right to suffrage.

In the progress of human events, woman now demands the recognition of her civil existence, her legal rights, her social equality with man.

How her claims can be the most easily and speedily established on a firm, enduring basis, will be the subject of deliberation at the coming Convention.

The friends of the movement, and the public generally, are most respectfully invited to attend.

Many of the advocates of the cause are expected to be in attendance.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton,	Lydia Mott,
Ernestine L. Rose,	Antoinette L. Brown,
Samuel J. May,	Susan B. Anthony.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton,	Lydia Mott,
Ernestine L. Rose,	Antoinette L. Brown,
Samuel J. May,	Susan B. Anthony.

This Convention also was held in St. Nicholas Hall, and a large audience greeted the speakers of the occasion as they appeared upon the platform.

A brief report of the secretaries in The Una of September, 1855, says: A large audience assembled on the morning of August 15th at St. Nicholas Hall. Susan B. Anthony called the meeting to order, and presented a list of officers[134] nominated at a preliminary gathering, which was accepted. Martha C. Wright, on taking the chair, made a brief statement of the object of the Convention, and invited all those who were opposed to our demands to come to the platform and state their objections.

During the absence of the Business Committee, Ernestine L. Rose briefly reviewed the rise and progress of the woman's rights movement. Antoinette Brown reported a series of resolutions, on which she commented at some length, when the Rev. Samuel J. May was introduced. Although he spoke to the entire edification of the platform, yet he was constantly interrupted by the audience. It was a novelty to hear women speak, and the audience having assembled for that purpose, preferred to listen to woman's pathetic statements of her wrongs, than to the most gifted orators that men could boast. It was not until after repeated requests for order from the president, and assurances from several of the ladies that they would not speak until Mr. May had finished his remarks, that quiet was restored.

It was at this Convention that Mary L. Booth[135] made her first appearance on our platform, as one of the secretaries. One feature of these meetings was the freedom and warm sympathy between the audience and the platform. At the close of almost every speech, some one on the floor asked questions, or stated some objections which were quickly answered and refuted by the speakers in the most pleasant conversational manner.

Mrs. Rose presented the wrongs of woman in her most happy manner, demanding the ballot as the underlying power to protect all other rights. Thomas Wentworth Higginson made an address especially adapted to the fashionable audience. Many of the thoughtless ones whom idle curiosity had led to the hall, must have felt like the woman of Samaria (John iv. 29) at the well, when she reported that she had seen a man who told her all the things that ever she had done, so nearly did Mr. Higginson picture to them their thoughts and feelings, the ennui of their daily lives. Lucy Stone, whom the papers now call Mrs. Blackwell, arriving in the midst of the convention, was greeted with long and repeated cheers, and spoke with her wonted simplicity and earnestness. The resolutions covering all the different phases of the movement were duly discussed through two entire days.

Antoinette Brown was called on as usual to meet the Bible argument. A clergyman accused her of misapplying texts. He said Genesis iv. 7 did not allude to Cain and Abel, and that the language in Genesis iii. 16, as applied to Eve, did not mean the same thing. Miss Brown maintained her position that the texts were the same in letter and spirit; and that authority to all men over all women could be no more logically inferred from the one, than authority to all elder brothers over the younger could be from the other; and that there was no divine authority granted in either case.

Miss Anthony announced that woman's rights tracts and papers were for sale at the door, and urged all who had become interested in the subject to procure them not only for their own benefit, but to circulate among their neighbors. If they would be intelligent as to the real claims of the movement, they must take The Una, a paper owned and edited by one of its leaders. No one would expect to get temperance truths from Bennett's Herald, nor anti-slavery facts from The New York Observer, or Christian Advocate; no more can we look to any of the popular newspapers, political or religious, for reliable information on the woman's rights movement.

She also presented the claims of The Woman's Advocate, a paper just started in Philadelphia by Anna E. McDowell, devoted chiefly to woman's right to work—equal pay for equal service (she was sorry that it did not see that the right of suffrage underlies the work problem); nevertheless the existence of a paper owned, edited, published, and printed all by women, was a living woman's rights fact, and she hoped every one would give it encouragement and support. She then gave a brief report of the work done in the State during the past year,[136] and closed by presenting the form of petition that had just been adopted.[137]

Mr. May moved the appointment of a committee of five[138] to engage lecturing agents and raise funds for their compensation. The president thanked the people for the respect and attention manifested during the several sessions, and adjourned the Convention.[139]

The Saratoga papers were specially complimentary in their notices of Ernestine L. Rose and Lucy Stone, pronouncing them logical and eloquent, and Miss Anthony was highly praised for her skill in getting contributions and distributing documents. She sold over twenty thousand pamphlets that year. As there were many Southern people always at Saratoga, this was considered a grand opportunity through tracts to sow the seeds of rebellion all through the Southern States. This Convention afforded a new theme for conversation at the hotels, and was discussed for many days after with levity or seriousness, to be laughed over and thought over by the women at their leisure.[140]

LETTERS TO THE CONVENTION.

Boston, June 23, 1855.

Susan B. Anthony.

Dear Madam:—Your note of the 20th has just come to hand. I am sorry to say that my engagements are such that it will not be possible for me to be present at the Woman's Rights Convention at Saratoga, which I should very much rejoice to attend.

Theodore Parker.

Heartily and hastily yours,

Syracuse, June 13, 1855.

Dear Friend:—I like your call to the Convention at Saratoga, and I shall endeavor to be there on my return from Massachusetts, where I deliver an oration on education on the 8th of August. By all means put Judge Hay's name on the Central Committee. Invite Theodore Parker without delay.

Samuel J. May

In great haste, but very truly yours,

Philadelphia, Sixth Mo., 11, 1855.

My Dear Susan B. Anthony:—Returning home, I hasten to answer thy letter forwarded to me a week ago by sister M. C. Wright. It is always with regret that I have to answer any letter of the kind in the negative. But the time fixed for the Saratoga Convention renders it impracticable for me to be present. My husband and I hope to attend the National Convention at Cincinnati in October. Thy active interest and exertions in this cause are greatly cheering. We are doing little hereaway. Pennsylvania is always slow in every reformatory movement. We have circulated many of the pamphlets.

Wishing you all success at the convention, and sure of thy "great recompense and reward,"

Lucretia Mott.

I am thine affectionately,

Boston, June 6, 1855.

Dear Friend:—I have kept your letter by me, and omitted to reply, hoping, and indeed expecting, that though I give up all but two or three routine and neighboring engagements in the summer. I might plan so as to accept yours. But I find I can not come as you ask. My summer months must be devoted otherwise. I hope you will not nickname me No, for my so constantly using that monosyllable to you. Indeed, I will try to oblige you next winter.

Wendell Phillips.

With much regard, yours truly,

High Rock, Lynn, Mass., August 4, 1855.

Earnest Friend:—We have just received your hearty invitation to the Convention at Saratoga. Nothing would give us more pleasure than to be with you on that occasion. We are all interested in Woman's Rights, and in liberty for all humanity.

Long submission has smothered the hope and extinguished the desire in many for any change of condition. But the light of the nineteenth century should awake all to earnest battle for their God-given rights. We will consult together, and if we can make up a quartette we will try and be with you to sing once more our songs[141] of freedom for another struggling class. With much esteem

John W. Hutchinson,
(for the family).

I remain yours truly,

Following the Convention the usual attacks were made by the press, accusing the members of "infidelity and free love," which Miss Brown refuted through The New York Tribune. In this way, with conventions being continually held at the fashionable watering places[142] in the summer, and at the center of legislative assemblies in the winter, New York was compelled to give some attention to the question. A Woman's Eights meeting and a hearing were of annual occurrence as regular as the convening of the Legislature.