FOOTNOTES:
[6] The ladies of the Convention were fenced off behind a bar and curtain, similar to those used in churches to screen the choir from the public gaze.
[7] Some of the English clergy, dancing around with Bible in hand, shaking it in the faces of the opposition, grew so vehement, that one would really have thought that they held a commission from high heaven as the possessors of all truth, and that all progress in human affairs was to be squared by their interpretation of Scripture. At last George Bradburn, exasperated with their narrowness and bigotry, sprang to the floor, and stretching himself to his full height, said: "Prove to me, gentlemen, that your Bible sanctions the slavery of woman—the complete subjugation of one-half the race to the other—and I should feel that the best work I could do for humanity would be to make a grand bonfire of every Bible in the Universe."
CHAPTER IV.
NEW YORK.
The First Woman's Rights Convention, Seneca Falls, July 19-20, 1848—Property Rights of Women secured—Judge Fine, George Geddes, and Mr. Hadley pushed the Bill through—Danger of meddling with well-settled conditions of domestic happiness—Mrs. Barbara Hertell's will—Richard Hunt's tea-table—The eventful day—James Mott President—Declaration of sentiments—Convention in Rochester—Clergy again in opposition with Bible arguments.
New York with its metropolis, fine harbors, great lakes and rivers; its canals and railroads uniting the extremest limits, and controlling the commerce of the world; with its wise statesmen and wily politicians, long holding the same relation to the nation at large that Paris is said to hold to France, has been proudly called by her sons and daughters the Empire State.
But the most interesting fact in her history, to woman, is that she was the first State to emancipate wives from the slavery of the old common law of England, and to secure to them equal property rights. This occurred in 1848. Various bills and petitions, with reference to the civil rights of woman, had been under discussion twelve years, and the final passage of the property bill was due in no small measure to two facts. 1st. The constitutional convention in 1847, which compelled the thinking people of the State, and especially the members of the convention, to the serious consideration of the fundamental principles of government. As in the revision of a Constitution the State is for the time being resolved into its original elements in recognizing the equality of all the people, one would naturally think that a chance ray of justice might have fallen aslant the wrongs of woman and brought to the surface some champion in that convention, especially as some aggravated cases of cruelty in families of wealth and position had just at that time aroused the attention of influential men to the whole question. 2d. Among the Dutch aristocracy of the State there was a vast amount of dissipation; and as married women could hold neither property nor children under the common law, solid, thrifty Dutch fathers were daily confronted with the fact that the inheritance of their daughters, carefully accumulated, would at marriage pass into the hands of dissipated, impecunious husbands, reducing them and their children to poverty and dependence. Hence this influential class of citizens heartily seconded the efforts of reformers, then demanding equal property rights in the marriage relation. Thus a wise selfishness on one side, and principle on the other, pushed the conservatives and radicals into the same channel, and both alike found anchor in the statute law of 1848. This was the death-blow to the old Blackstone code for married women in this country, and ever since legislation has been slowly, but steadily, advancing toward their complete equality.