Mrs. Gage, ever prompt in her place, called the Convention to order at the usual hour. The Melodean at this time contained 1,500 people. We think the women may congratulate themselves on having most emphatically "made a hit" in the forest city.
Of the personnel of the Convention, it says:
Mrs. Mott is matronly-looking, wearing the Quaker dress, and apparently a good-natured woman. Her face does not indicate her character as a fiery and enthusiastic advocate of reform. Mrs. Gage is not a handsome woman, but her appearance altogether is prepossessing. You can see genius in her eye. She presided with grace at all the sessions of the Convention. The house was thronged with intelligent audiences. The President frequently contrasted the order, decorum, and kindness of the Cleveland audiences, with the noisy and tumultuous demonstrations which recently disgraced the city of New York, at the Convention held there.
Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, on being called to the stand, remarked:
That he was present to express, and happy of the opportunity to express, his sincere interest in the cause, and regard for the actors in this movement; but that on almost any other occasion he could speak with less embarrassment than here, with such advocates before him; and as he had not come prepared to address the Convention, declined occupying its time longer.
In reading over the debates of these early Conventions, we find the speakers dwelling much more on the wrongs in the Church and the Home, than in the State. But few of the women saw clearly, and felt deeply that the one cause of their social and religious degradation was their disfranchisement, hence the discussions often turned on the surface-wrongs of society.
Many of the friends present thought the Convention should issue an original Declaration of Rights, as nothing had been adopted as yet, except the parody on the Fathers' of' 76. Although that, and the one William Henry Channing prepared, were both before the Convention, it adjourned without taking action on either.
As so many of these noble leaders in the anti-slavery ranks have passed away, we give in this chapter large space to their brave words. Also to the treatment of Miss Brown, in the World's Temperance Convention, for its exceptional injustice and rudeness.
Miss Brown read a letter from William H. Channing, in which he embodied his ideas of a Declaration. Lucy Stone also read a very able letter from Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Both of these letters contain valuable suggestions for the adoption of practical measures for bringing the wrongs of woman to the notice of the world.