[8] Among those who took part in the discussions were Dr. Clemence Lozier, Susan B. Anthony, Helen M. Slocum, Sarah Goodyear, Helen M. Cook, Abby and Julia Smith, Sara Andrews Spencer, Miss Charlotte Ray, Lillie Devereux Blake and Matilda Joslyn Gage.
[9] Letters were written to these conventions from different States. Mrs. Elizabeth L. Saxon, New Orleans, La.; Elizabeth A. Meriwether, Memphis, Tenn.; Mrs. Margaret V. Longley, Cincinnati, O., all making eloquent appeals for some consideration of the political rights of women.
[10] Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Gage, and Mrs. Spencer.
[11] On the receipt of these letters a prolonged council was held by the officers of the association at their headquarters, as to what action they should take on the Fourth of July. Mrs. Mott and Mrs. Stanton decided for themselves that after these rebuffs they would not even sit on the platform, but at the appointed time go to the church they had engaged for a meeting, and open their convention. Others more brave and determined insisted that women had an equal right to the glory of the day and the freedom of the platform, and decided to take the risk of a public insult in order to present the woman's declaration and thus make it an historic document.—[E.C.S.
[12] During the reading of the declaration to an immense concourse of people, Mrs. Gage stood beside Miss Anthony, and held an umbrella over her head, to shelter her friend from the intense heat of the noonday sun; and thus in the same hour, on opposite sides of old Independence Hall, did the men and women express their opinions on the great principles proclaimed on the natal day of the republic. The declaration was handsomely framed and now hangs in the vice-president's room in the capitol at Washington.
[13] This document was signed by Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Paulina Wright Davis, Ernestine L. Rose, Clarina I. H. Nichols, Mary Ann McClintock, Mathilde Franceska Anneke, Sarah Pugh, Amy Post, Catharine A. F. Stebbins, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Clemence S. Lozier, Olympia Brown, Mathilde F. Wendt, Adleline Thomson, Ellen Clark Sargent, Virginia L. Minor, Catherine V. Waite, Elizabeth B. Schenck, Phoebe W. Couzins, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Laura De Force Gordon, Sara Andrews Spencer, Lillie Devereux Blake, Jane Graham Jones, Abigail Scott Duniway, Belva A. Lockwood, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Sarah L. Williams, Abby P. Ela.
One hundred years hence, what a change will be made,
In politics, morals, religion and trade,
In statesmen who wrangle or ride on the fence,
These things will be altered a hundred years hence.
Our laws then will be uncompulsory rules,
Our prisons converted to national schools.
The pleasure of sinning 'tis all a pretense,
And the people will find it so, a hundred years hence.
Lying, cheating and fraud will be laid on the shelf,
Men will neither get drunk, nor be bound up in self,
But all live together, good neighbors and friends,
Just as Christian folks ought to, a hundred years hence.