Resolved, That every woman is morally obligated to maintain her equality in human rights in all her relations in life, and that if she consents to her own subjugation, either in the family, Church or State, she is as guilty as the slave is in consenting to be a slave.
Resolved, That a perfect union can not be expected to exist until we first have perfect units, and that every marriage of finite beings must be gradually perfected through the growth and assimilation of the parties.
Resolved, That the permanence and indissolubility of marriage tend more directly than anything else toward this result.
[171] Francis Jackson. This fund was drawn upon by several of the States. $1,993.66 was expended in the campaigns in New York, the publication of 60,000 tracts, and the appropriation of several hundred to a series of sermons by the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, delivered in Hope Chapel, New York; $1,000 was expended in the Ohio canvass of 1860, and tracts in large numbers were also sent there. Both money and tracts were contributed to the Kansas campaign of 1859. Lucy Stone had $1,500 to expend in Kansas in 1867, and thus in various ways the fund was finally expended, Lucy Stone drawing out the last $1,000 in 1871. So careful had been the management of this fund, that the accumulation of the interest had greatly increased the original sum.
[172] Lydia Mott was one of the quiet workers who kept all things pertaining to the woman's rights reform in motion at the capital. Living in Albany, she planned conventions and hearings before the Legislature. She knew a large number of the members and men of influence, who all felt a profound respect for that dignified, judicious Quaker woman. Her home was not only one of the depots of the underground railroad, where slaves escaping to Canada were warmed and fed, but it was the hospitable resort for all reformers. Everything about the house was clean and orderly, and the table always bountiful, and the food appetizing. As such men as Seward and Marcy, leaders from opposite political parties, Gerrit Smith, Garrison, Phillips, Pillsbury, Remond, Foster, Douglass, representing all the reforms, met in turn at Miss Mott's dinner-table, she had the advantage of hearing popular questions discussed from every standpoint. And Miss Mott was not merely hostess at her table, but on all occasions took a leading part in the conversation. All of us who enjoyed her friendship and hospitality deeply feel her loss in that conservative city.
[173] [Introduced, on notice, by Mr. Ramsey; read twice, and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary; reported from said Committee for the consideration of the Senate, and committed to the Committee of the Whole].
AN ACT IN REGARD TO DIVORCES DISSOLVING THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT.
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:
Section 1. In addition to the cases in which a divorce, dissolving the marriage contract, may now be decreed by the Supreme Court, such a divorce may be decreed by said court in either of the cases following:
1. Where either party to the marriage shall, for the period of three years next preceding the application for such divorce, have willfully deserted the other party to the marriage, and neglected to perform to such party the duties imposed by their relation.