The clergy often spoke—always when present—and in the negative, if it was their first hearing; and without a single exception they faced the audience at the close with a cordial endorsement of the cause. Said one such: "I told you, ladies and gentlemen, that I had given little attention to the subject, and you see that I told the truth. Mrs. Nichols has made out her case, and let her and the women laboring like her, persevere, and woman will gain her rights." "Let your wife go all she can," said one of these converts to Mr. Nichols, "she is breaking down prejudices and making friends for your paper. Your political opponents have represented her as a masculine brawler for rights, and those who have never met her know no better. I went to hear her, full of misgivings that it might be so."

In the winter of 1852 I went as often as twice a week—late P.M. and returned early A.M.—from six to twenty miles. I was sent for where there was no railroad. I often heard of "ready-made pants," and once of a "rail," but the greater the opposition, the greater the victory.

On a clear, cold morning of January, 1852, I found myself some six miles from home at a station on the Vermont side of the Massachusetts State line, on my way to Templeton, Mass., whither I had been invited by a Lyceum Committee to lecture upon the subject of "Woman's Rights." I had scarcely settled myself in the rear of the saloon for a restful, careless two hours' ride, when two men entered the car. In the younger man I recognized the sheriff of our county. Having given a searching glance around the ear, the older man, with a significant nod to his companion, laid his hand upon the saloon door an instant, and every person in the car had risen to his feet, electrified by the wail of a "Rachel mourning for her children." "O, father! she's my child! she's my child!" I reached the door, which was guarded by the sheriff, in a condition of mental exaltation (or concentration), which to this day reflects itself at the recollection of that agonizing cry of the beautiful young mother, set upon by the myrmidons of the law whose base inhumanity shames the brute! "Who is it?" "What is it?" "What does it all mean?" were the anxious queries put up on all sides. I answered: "It means, my friends, that a woman has no legal right to her own babies; that the law-makers of this Christian country (!) have given the custody of the babies to the father, drunken or sober, and he may send the sheriff—as in this case—to arrest and rob her of her little ones! You have heard sneers at 'Woman's Rights.' This is one of the rights—a mother's right to the care and custody of her helpless little ones!"

From that excited crowd—all young men and grown boys, I being the only woman among them—rose thick and fast—"They've no business with the woman's babies!" "Pitch 'em overboard!" "I'll help." "Good for you; so'll I!" "All aboard." (The conductor had come upon the scene). "All aboard." "Wait a minute till he gets the other child," cries the old man, rushing out of the saloon with a little three-year-old girl in his arms, while the sheriff rushed in. Standing behind the old man, I beckoned to the conductor, who knew me, to "go on," and in five minutes we were across the Massachusetts line, and I was in the saloon. With his hand on her child, the sheriff was urging the mother to let go her hold. "Hold on to your baby," I cried, "he has no right to take it from you, and is liable to fine and imprisonment for attempting it. Tell me, Mr. C——, are you helping the other party as a favor, or in your official capacity? In the latter case you might have taken her child in Vermont, but we are in Massachusetts now, quite out of your sheriff's beat." "The grandfather made legal custodian by the father, was he? That would do in Vermont, sir, but under the recent decision of a Massachusetts Court, given in a case like this, only the father can take the child from its mother, and in attempting it you have made yourselves liable to fine and imprisonment." Thus the "sheriffalty" was extinguished, and mother and child took their seat beside me in the car.

Meantime the conductor had made the old gentleman understand that they could get off at the next station, where they might take the "up train," and get back to their "team" on the Vermont side of the "line." As they could get no carriage at the bare little station, and with the encumbrance of the child, could not foot it six miles in the cold and snow, they must wait some three or four hours for the train, which suggested the possibility of a rescue. I could not stop over a train, but I could take the baby along with me, if some one could be found—The conductor calls. The car stops. As the child robbers step out (the little girl, clutched in the old grandfather's arms) 'mid the frantic cries of the mother and the execrations of the passengers, two middle-aged gentlemen of fine matter-of-fact presence, entered. I at once met their questioning faces with a hurried statement of facts, and the need of some intelligent, humane gentleman to aid the young mother in the recovery of her little girl. Having spoken together aside, the younger man introduced "Dr. B——, who lives in the next town, where papers can be made out, and a sheriff be sent back to bring the men and child; the lady can go with the doctor, and the baby with Mrs. Nichols. I would stop, but I must be in my seat in the Legislature." "I have no money, only my ticket to take me to my friends," exclaimed the anxious mother. "I will take care of that," said the good doctor; "you won't need any." "They will have to pay," I whispered....

I gave my lecture at Templeton to a fine audience; accepted an invitation to return and give a second on the same subject, and having left the dear little toddler happy and amply protected, at noon next day found myself back at Orange, where I had left the mother. Here the conductor, who by previous arrangement, left a note from me telling her where to go for her baby, reported that the party had been brought to Orange for trial, spent the night in care of the sheriff, and were released on giving up the little girl and paying a handsome sum of the needful to the mother. He had scarcely ended his report when the pair entered the car, like myself, homeward bound. The old gentleman, care-worn and anxious, probably thinking of his team left standing at the Vermont station, looked straight ahead, but the kind-hearted sheriff caught my eye and smiled. In my happiness I could not do otherwise than give smile for smile.

Arrived at home, I found the affair, reported by the conductor of the evening train, had created quite an excitement, sympathy being decidedly with the mother. I was credited with being privy to the escapade and the pursuit, and as having gone purposely to the rescue. Had this been true, I could not have managed it better, for a good Providence went with me. I received several memorial "hanks" of yarn, with messages from the donors that "they would keep me in knitting-work while preaching woman's rights on the railroad"—a reference to my practice of knitting on the cars, and the report that I gave a lecture on the occasion to my audience there.

And thus was the seed of woman's educational, industrial, and political rights sown in Vermont, through infinite labor, but in the faith and perseverance which bring their courage to all workers for the right.

WISCONSIN.

In September and October, 1853, I traveled 900 miles in Wisconsin, as agent of the Woman's State Temperance Society, speaking in forty-three towns to audiences estimated at 30,000 in the aggregate, people coming in their own conveyances from five to twenty miles. I went to Wisconsin under an engagement to labor as agent of the State Temperance League, an organization composed of both sexes and officered by leading temperance men—at the earnest and repeated solicitations of its delegates whom I met at the "Whole World's Temperance Convention," held in New York City in September, and who were commissioned by the League to employ speakers to canvass the State; the object being to procure the enactment of a "Maine Law" by the next Legislature. These delegates had counseled, among others, with Horace Greeley, who advised my employment, curiosity to hear a woman promising to call out larger audiences and more votes for temperance candidates in the pending election.

I, at first, declined to make the engagement, on the ground that I could not be spared from my newspaper duties; but to escape further importunity, finally consented to "ask my husband at home," and report at New York, where one of the gentlemen would await my answer, and myself, if I decided to accept their proposition. My husband's cheerful, "Go, wife, you will be doing just the work you love, and enjoying a journey which you have not means otherwise to undertake," and a notice from Mrs. Lydia F. Fowler, that she would join us in the trip with a view to arranging for physiological lectures at eligible points in the State, decided me to go. Mrs. F.'s company was not only a social acquisition, but a happy insurance against pot-house witlings on the alert to impale upon the world's dread laugh, any woman who, to accomplish some public good, should venture for a space to cut loose from the marital "buttons" and go out into the world alone!

In making the engagement, I had taken it for granted, that the right and propriety of woman's public advocacy of temperance was a settled question in the field to which I was invited. But arrived at Milwaukee, I found that the popular prejudice against women as public speakers, and especially the advocacy of Woman's Rights, with which I had for years been identified, had been stirred to its most disgusting depths by a reverend gentleman who had preceded us, and who had for years been a salaried "agent at large," of the New York State Temperance Society. A highly respectable minority of the Executive Committee of the League endorsed the action of their delegation, but were overruled by a numerical majority, and I found myself in the position of agent "at large," while the reverend traducer secured his engagement in my place.

This turn of affairs, embarrassing at first, proved in the end providential—a timely clearance for a more congenial craft—since the women of the State had organized a Woman's State Temperance Society, and advertised a Convention to meet the following week at Delavan, the populous shire town of Walworth County, fifty miles distant in the interior. Thither the friendly Leaguers proposed to take us. Meantime it was arranged that Mrs. F. and I should address the citizens of Milwaukee. A capacious church was engaged for Sabbath evening, from which hundreds went away unable to get in. But neither clergyman nor layman could be found willing to commit himself by opening the services; and with "head uncovered," in a church in which it was "a shame for a woman to speak," I rested my burden with the dear Father, as only burdens are rested with Him, in conscious unity of purpose.

Mrs. F. addressed the audience on the physiological effects of alcoholic drinks. I followed, quoting from the prophecy of King Lemuel, that "his mother taught him," Proverbs xxxi., verses 4, 5, 8, 9, "Open thy mouth for the dumb; in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction. Open thy mouth, judge righteously and plead the cause of the poor and needy." The spirit moved audience and speaker. We forgot ourselves; forgot everything but "the poor and needy," the drunkard's wife and children "appointed to destruction" through license laws and alienated civil rights.

At Delavan we met a body of earnest men and women, indignant at the action of the Executive Committee of the League, to which many of them had contributed funds for the campaign, and ready to assume the responsibility of my engagement, and the expenses of Mrs. F., who in following out her original plan, generously consented to precede my lectures with a brief physiological dissertation apropos to the object of the canvass. The burden of the speaking, as planned, rested with me, provided my hitherto untested physical ability proved equal, as it did, to the daily effort.

In counsel with Mrs. R. Ostrander, President of the Society, and her sister officials, women of character and intelligence, I could explain, as I could not have done to any body of equally worthy men, that in justice to ourselves, to them, and to the cause we had at heart, we must make the canvass in a spirit and in conditions above reproach. "I can not come down from my work," said Miss Lyon, founder of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, when importuned to rebut some baseless scandal. To fight our way would be to mar the spirit and effect of our work. We must place the opposition at a disadvantage from the first; then we could afford to ignore it altogether and rise to a level with the humane issues of the campaign. It was accordingly arranged that the friends should make appointments and secure us suitable escort to neighboring towns; and to distant and less accessible points a gentleman was engaged to take us in a private carriage,—his wife, a woman of rare talent and fine culture, to accompany us. A programme which was advertised in the local papers and happily carried out.

From Delavan we returned to Milwaukee to perfect our arrangements. From thence our next move was to Waukesha, the shire town of Waukesha County, twenty miles by rail, to a Temperance meeting advertised for "speaking and the transaction of business." The meeting was held in the Congregational church, the pastor acting as chairman. The real business of the meeting was soon disposed of, and then was enacted the most amusing farce it was ever my lot to witness. The chairman and his deacon led off in a long-drawn debate on sundry matters of no importance, and of less interest to the audience, members of which attempted in vain, by motions and votes, to cut it short. When it had become sufficiently apparent that the gentlemen were "talking against time" to prevent speaking, there were calls for speakers. The chairman replied that it was a "business meeting, but Rev. Mr. ——, from Illinois, would lecture in the evening." Several gentlemen rose to protest. One said he "had walked seven miles that his wife and daughters might ride, to hear the ladies speak." Another had "ridden horseback twelve miles to hear them." A storm was impending; the chairman was prepared; he declared the meeting adjourned and with his deacon left the house.

There was a hurried consultation in the ante-room, which resulted in an urgent request for "Mrs. Nichols to remain and speak in the evening." The speaker noticed for the evening, joined heartily in the request; "half an hour was all the time he wanted." But when the evening came, he insisted that I should speak first, and when I should have given way for him, assured me that he "had made arrangements to speak the next evening," and joined in the "go on, go on!" of the audience. So it was decided that I should remain over the Sabbath, and Mrs. F. return with the friends to Milwaukee.

Meantime it had transpired that in the audience were several Vermonters from a settlement of fourteen families from the vicinity of my home; among them a lady from my native town; we had been girls together. "We know all about Mrs. N.," said one. "We take the Tribune, and friends at home send us her paper." So the good Father had sent vouchers for His agent at large. But this was not all. I had a pleasant reserve for the evening. I had recognized in the deacon, a friend from whom I had parted twenty-one years before in Western New York. In the generous confidence of youthful enthusiasm we had enlisted in the cold-water army; together pledged ourselves to fight the liquor interest to the death. And here my old friend, whose debut on the Temperance platform I had aided and cheered, had talked a full hour to prevent me from being heard! Was I indignant? Was I grieved? Nay! It was not a personal matter. Time's graver had made us strange to each other. His name and voice had revealed him to me; but the name I bore was not that by which he had known me. Besides, I remembered that twenty-one years before, I could not have been persuaded to hear a woman speak on any public occasion, and I had nothing to forgive,—my friend had only stood still where I had left him. Such, suppressing his name, was the story I told my audience on that evening. And with his puzzled and kindly face intently regarding me, I assured my hearers that I had not a doubt of his whole-souled and manly support in my present work. Nor was I disappointed.

Next morning, (Sabbath) I listened to a scholarly sermon on infidel issues and innovations from the chairman of the "business meeting" of the previous afternoon, he having stayed away from my lecture to prepare it. In the evening, after the temperance lecture of my Illinois friend, I improved the opportunity of a call from the audience, the Rev. Chairman being present, to meet certain points of the sermon, personal to myself and the advocates of rights for women, closing with a brief confession of my faith in Christ's rule of love and duty as impressing every human being into the service of a common humanity—the right to serve being commensurate with the obligation, as of God and not of man.

One week later, another business meeting was held in the same house, and in its published proceedings was a resolution introduced by the Rev. Chairman, endorsing Mrs. Nichols, and inviting her "to be present and speak" at a County Convention appointed for a subsequent day. Not long after he sent me, through a brother clergyman, an apology that would have disarmed resentment, had I felt any, toward a man who, having opposed me without discourtesy and retracted by a published resolution, was yet not satisfied without tendering a private apology.

I had achieved a grateful success; license to "plead the cause of the poor and needy," where, how to do so, without offending old-time ideas of woman's sphere, had seemed to the women under whose direction I had taken the field, the real question at issue. In consideration of existing prejudices, they had suggested the prudence of silence on the subject of Woman's Rights. And here, on the very threshold of the campaign, I had been compelled to vindicate my right to speak for woman; as a woman, to speak for her from any stand-point of life to which nature, custom, or law had assigned her. I had no choice, no hope of success, but in presenting her case as it stood before God and my own soul. To neither could I turn traitor, and do the work, or satisfy the aspirations of a true and loving woman.

For more than a quarter of a century earnest men had spoken, and failed to secure justice to the poor and needy, "appointed to destruction" by the liquor traffic. They had failed because they had denied woman's right to help them, and taken from her the means to help herself. In speaking for woman, I must be heard from a domestic level of legal pauperism disenchanted of all political prestige. In appealing to the powers that be, I must appeal from sovereigns drunk to sovereigns sober,—with eight chances in ten that the decision would be controlled by sovereigns drunk.

To impress the paramount claim of women to a no-license law, without laying bare the legal and political disabilities that make them "the greatest sufferers," the helpless victims of the liquor traffic, was impossible. It would have been stupidly unwise to withhold what with a majority of voters is the weightier consideration, that in alienating from women their earnings, governments impose upon community taxes for the support of the paupered children of drunken fathers, whose mothers would joyfully support and train them for usefulness; and who, as a rule, have done so when by the death or divorce of the husband they have regained the control of their earnings and the custody of their children. Thus proving, that man, by his disabling laws, has made woman helpless and dependent, and not God, who has endowed her with capabilities equal to the responsibilities He has imposed.

Worse than unwise would it have been to allow an unjust prejudice against Woman's Rights, to turn the edge of my appeals for a law in the interest of temperance, when by showing the connection, as of cause and effect, between men's rights and women's wrongs, between women's no-rights and their helplessness and dependence, I could disarm that prejudice and win an intelligent support for both temperance and equal rights. On such a showing I based my appeals to the noble men and women of Wisconsin. I assured my audiences, that I had not come to talk to them of "Woman's Rights," that indeed I did not find that women had any rights in the matter, but to "suffer and be still; to die and give no sign." But I had come to them to speak of man's rights and woman's needs.

From the Lake Shore cities, from the inland villages, the shire towns, and the mining communities of the Mississippi, whose churches, court-houses, and halls, with two or three exceptions, could not hold the audiences, much less seat them; the responses were hearty, and when outspoken, curiously alike in language as well as sentiment on the subject of rights. "I like Mrs. Nichols' idea of talking man's rights; the result will be woman's rights," said a gentleman rising in his place in the audience at the close of one of my lectures. On another occasion, "Let Mrs. Nichols go on talking men's rights and we'll have women's rights." "Mrs. Nichols has made me ashamed of myself—ashamed of my sex! I didn't know we had been so mean to the women," was the outspoken conclusion of a man who had lived honored and respected, his threescore years and ten. This reaction from the curiosity and doubt which everywhere met us in the expressive faces of the people, often reminded me of an incident in my Vermont labors for a Maine law.

In accepting an invitation to address an audience of ladies in the aristocratic old town of C——, in an adjoining county, I had suggested, that as it was votes we needed, I would prefer to address an audience of both sexes. Arrived at C——, I found that the ladies of the committee, having acted upon my suggestion, were intensely anxious as to the result. "An audience," they said, "could not be collected to listen to woman's rights; the people were sensitive even to the innovation of a mixed audience for a woman, and they felt that I ought to be informed of the facts." And I felt in every nerve, that they were suffering from fear lest I should fail to vindicate the womanliness of our joint venture. But the people came, a church, full; intelligent, expectant, and curious to hear a woman. The resident clergyman, of my own faith, declined to be present and open with prayer. A resident Universalist clergyman present, declined to pray. A young Methodist licentiate in the audience, not feeling at liberty to decline, tried. His ideas stumbled; his words hitched, and when he prayed: "Bless thy serv—a'hem—thy handmaid, and a'hem—and let all things be done decently and in order;" we in the committee pew felt as relieved as did the young Timothy when he had achieved his amen!

Utterly unnerved by the anxious faces of my committee, I turned to my audience with only the inspiration of homes devastated and families paupered, to sustain me in a desperate exhibit of the need and the "determination of women, impelled by the mother-love that shrinks neither from fire or flood, to rescue their loved ones from the fires and floods of the liquor traffic, though to do so they must make their way through every platform and pulpit in the land!" "Thank God!" exclaimed the licentiate on my right. "Amen!" emphasized the chairman oh my left. My committee were radiant. My audience had accepted woman's rights in her wrongs; and I —— only woman's recording angel can tell the sensations of a disfranchised woman when her "declaration of intentions" is endorsed by an Anti-Woman's Rights audience with fervent thanks to God!

Latter-day laborers can have little idea of the trials of the early worker, driven by the stress of right and duty against popular prejudices, to which her own training and early habits of thought have made her painfully sensitive. St. Paul, our patron saint, I think had just come through such a trial of his nerves when he wrote: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." The memory of the beautiful scenery, the charming Indian summer skies, the restful companionship of our family party in the daily drive, and the generous hospitality of the people of Wisconsin, is one of the pleasantest of a life, as full of sweet memories as of trials, amid and through which they have clung to me with a saving grace.

The Temperance majority in the ensuing election, so far as influenced by canvassing agents, was due to the combined efforts of all who labored for it, and of these it was my good fortune to meet a younger brother of William H. and O. C. Burleigh, who from his man's stand-point of precedents and statistics did excellent service.

The law enacted by the Legislature securing to the wives of drunkards their earnings and the custody and earnings of their minor children, I think I may claim as a result of appeals from the home stand-point of woman's sphere. As a financial measure diverting the supplies and lessening the profits of the liquor traffic, this law is a civil service reform of no mean promise for the abatement of pauper and criminal taxes. In a plea of counsel for defendant in a case of wife-beating to which I once listened, said the gentlemanly attorney: "If Patrick will let the bottle alone"—"Please, your honor," broke in the weeping wife, "if you will stop Misthur Kelly from filling it."

KANSAS.

In October, 1854, with my two eldest sons, I joined a company of two hundred and twenty-five men, women, and children, emigrants from the East to Kansas. In our passage up the Missouri River I gave two lectures by invitation of a committee of emigrants and Captain Choteau and brother, owners of the boat. A pious M.D. was terribly shocked at the prospect, and hurried his young wife to bed, but returned to the cabin himself in good time to hear. As the position was quite central, and I wished to be heard distinctly by the crowd which occupied all the standing room around the cabin, I took my stand opposite the Doctor's berth. Next morning, poor man! his wife was an outspoken advocate of woman's rights. The next evening she punched his ribs vigorously, at every point made for suffrage, which was the subject of my second lecture.

The 1st of November, 1854—a day never to be forgotten—heaven and earth clasped hands in silent benedictions on that band of immigrants, some on foot, some on horseback, women and children, seventy-five in number, with the company's baggage, in ox-carts and wagons drawn by the fat, the broken-down, and the indifferent "hacks" of wondering, scowling Missouri, scattered all along the prairie road from Kansas City to Lawrence, the Mecca of their pilgrimage.

In advance of all these, at 11 o'clock A.M., Mrs. H—— and myself were sitting in front of the Lawrence office of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, in the covered wagon of Hon. S. C. Pomeroy, who had brought us from Kansas City, and entered the office to announce the arrival of our company; when a hilarious explosion of several voices assured us that good lungs as well as brave hearts were within. Directly Col. P. and Dr. (Governor) Robinson came out. "Did you hear the cheering?" asked the Doctor. "I did, and was thinking when you came out, what a popular man the Colonel must be to call forth such a greeting!" "But the cheers were for Mrs. Nichols," was the reply; and the Doctor proceeded to tell us that, "the boys" had been hotly discussing women's rights, when one of their advocates who had heard her lecture, expressed a wish that his opponents could hear Antoinette Brown on the subject; a second wished they could hear Susan B. Anthony; and a third wished they could hear Mrs. Nichols. On the heels of these wishes, the announcement of Colonel Pomeroy, that "Mrs. Nichols was at the door," was the signal for triumphant cheering. "The boys" wanted a lecture in the evening. The Doctor said: "No; Mrs. Nichols is tired. To-morrow the thatching of the church will be completed, and she can dedicate the building."

Thus truths sown broadcast among the stereotyped beliefs and prejudices of the old and populous communities of the East, had wrought a genial welcome for myself and the advocacy of woman's cause on the disputed soil of Kansas. But, alas! for the "stony ground." One of "the boys" didn't stay to the "dedication." He had "come to Kansas to get away from the women," and left at once for Leavenworth. I wonder if the Judge—he is that now, and a benedict—remembers? I still regret that lost opportunity for making his acquaintance.

At Lawrence, the objective point of all the Free State immigration, where I spent six weeks in assisting my sons to make a home for the winter, I mingled freely with the incoming population, and gave several lectures to audiences of from two to three hundred, the entire population coming together at the ringing of the city dinnerbell. I returned to Vermont early in January, 1855, and in April following, with two hundred and fifty emigrants (my husband and younger son accompanying me), rejoined my other sons in the vicinity of Baldwin City, where we took claims and commenced homes. I presented the whole subject of Woman's Rights on the boats in going and returning, as at first, by invitation. In the summer of 1855, delegates were elected to a Constitutional Convention, which later convened at Topeka. Governor Robinson, who with six other delegates voted for the exclusion of the word "male" from qualification for elector, sent me an invitation to attend its sessions, speak before it for woman's equality, and they would vote me a secretary's or clerk's position in the Convention. My husband's fatal illness prevented me from going.

In January, 1856, I returned from Kansas to Vermont, widowed and broken in health, to attend to matters connected with my husband's estate. Prevented by the ruffian blockade of the Missouri from returning as intended, I spent some time in the summer and all of the autumn of 1856 and January, 1857, lecturing upon Kansas, the character and significance of its political involvements, its promise and importance as a free or slave State, and its claims to an efficient support in the interest of freedom. In September, being appealed to by the "Kansas National Aid Committee," at the instance of Horace Greeley, I engaged for two months in a canvass of Western New York, lecturing and procuring the appointment of committees of women to collect supplies for the suffering people of Kansas; my two oldest sons, C. H. and A. O. Carpenter being among its armed defenders, the latter having been wounded in the fight between the invaders under Captain Pate and the forces under John Brown and Captain S. Shores, at Black Jack.

Between May, 1856, and February, 1857 (not counting my engagement with the Aid Committee), I gave some fifty Kansas lectures in the States of Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New York, followed occasionally by one or two lectures on the legal and political disabilities of women; receiving more invitations on both subjects than I could possibly fill.

My experiences in these semi-political labors were often racy, never unsatisfactory. In a public conveyance one day, an honest old Pennsylvania farmer asked if I was "the lady who made an appointment to speak in his place on Kansas, and did not come?" I replied that I had filled all the appointments made for me with my knowledge; that I made a point of keeping my promises. "I believe you, ma'am," said he. "I suspicioned then it was jest a republican trick. You see, ma'am, our folks all are dimocrats and wouldn't turn out to hear the republican speakers; so they appointed a meeting for you and everybody turned out, for we'd hearn of your lectures. But instid of you, General D—— and Lawyer C—— came, and we were mad enough. I was madder, 'cause I'd opened my house, seein' as it was the largest and most convenient in the neighborhood."

Occasionally I stumbled on a loose segment of woman's sphere, even among the friends of "free Kansas." In a populous Vermont village, at a meeting called for the purpose, a committee was appointed to invite me to speak, composed of the two clergymen of the village and Judge S——. Reverend W—— excused himself from the service on the ground of "conscientious scruples as to the propriety of women speaking in public." Judge S——, a man who for a quarter of a century had, by a racy combination of wit and logic, maintained his ground against the foes of temperance and freedom, with inimitable gravity thanked the audience for the honor conferred on him; adding, "I have no conscientious scruples about getting desirable information wherever I can find it."

In Sinclairville, Chautauque County, New York, where I arrived late, in consequence of a railroad accident, I found a crowded church. A gentleman introduced to me as "Mr. Bull" was sitting at a table in the extreme front corner of the spacious platform, recording the names and advance payments of a class in music, which, as I had been told outside, was being organized by a gentleman who had arrived with the news of my probable detention.

During the next half hour gentlemen rose at three several times and requested Mr. B—— to "postpone the class business till the close of the lecture: that people had come from a distance to hear the lecture, and were anxious to return home, the night being dark and rainy." "I will be through soon. I like to finish a thing when I begin." "There'll be time enough," were the several replies, given in a tone and with an emphasis that suggested to my mind a doubt of the speaker's sympathy with my subject. When the clock pointed to eight, I quietly took my seat in the desk and was smoothing my page of notes when there fell on my astonished ear—"I was about to introduce the lady speaker, but she has suddenly disappeared." Stepping forward, I said, "Excuse me, sir; as the hour is very late I took my place to be in readiness when you should be through with your class." "Madam, you will speak on this platform." "I noticed, sir, that I could not see my audience from the platform, also that the desk was lighted for me." "Madam, you can't speak in that pulpit!" "This is very strange. Will you give me your reasons?" "It's none of your business!" "Indeed, sir, I do not understand it. Will you give me your authority?" "It's my pulpit, and if you speak in this house to-night you speak from this platform!" "Excuse me, sir; I mistook you for the music-teacher, who, as I was told, was organizing a class in music." And stepping quickly to the platform to restore the equanimity of the house, I remarked, as indicating my position, that my self-respect admonished me to be the lady always, no matter how ungentlemanly the treatment I might receive; that the cause of humanity, the cause of suffering Kansas was above all personal considerations, and proceeded with my lecture.

At the close, Mr. B—— arose and said: "I owe this audience an apology for my ungentlemanly language to Mrs. Nichols. I am aware that I shall get into the public prints, and I wish to set myself right." A gentleman in the audience rose and moved, "that we excuse the Rev. R. B—— for his ungentlemanly language to Mrs. Nichols to-night, on the score of his ignorance." The motion was seconded with emphasis by a man of venerable presence. "Friends," I appealed, "this is a personal matter; it gives me no concern. It will affect neither me nor my work. Please name suitable women for the committee of relief which I am here to ask." Business being concluded, I turned to Mr. B——, who was shut in with me by a press of sympathizing friends, and expressed my regret, that he should have said anything to place him under the necessity of apologizing, adding, "but I hope in future you will remember the words of Solomon: 'Greater is he that controlleth his own spirit, than he that taketh a city.' Good-night, sir." I learned that a few months before he had prevented his people from inviting Antoinette Brown to speak to them on Temperance, by declaring that "he would never set his foot in a pulpit that had been occupied by a woman." When three weeks later I heard of his dismissal from his charge in S——, I could appreciate the remark of his brother clergyman in a neighboring town, to whom I related the incident, that "Brother B—— is rather given to hooking with those horns of his, but he's in hot water now."

In the winter and spring of 1856, I had, by invitation of its editor, written a series of articles on the subject of woman's legal disabilities, preparatory to a plea for political equality, for the columns of the Kansas Herald of Freedom, the last number of which went down with the "form" and press of the office to the bottom of the Kansas river, when the Border ruffians sacked Lawrence in 1856.

In March, 1857, I again returned to Kansas, and with my daughter and youngest son, made a permanent home in Wyandotte County.

The Constitution was adopted in November, 1859, by popular vote. In January, 1860, Kansas having been admitted to the Union, the first State Legislature met at Topeka, the capital of the new State. I attended its sessions, as I had those of the Convention, and addressed both in behalf of justice for the women of the State, as delegate of the Kansas Woman's Rights Association. This Association was formed in the spring of 1859 with special reference to the Convention which had already been called to meet in the July following, in the city of Wyandotte.

The Association—if I recollect aright—numbered some twenty-five earnest men and women of the John Brown type, living in Moneka, Linn County; John O. Wattles, President; Susan Wattles, Secretary. Wendell Phillips, treasurer of the Francis Jackson Woman's Rights Fund, guaranteed payment of expenses, and the Association sent me, with limited hopes and unstinted blessings, to canvass the principal settlements in the Territory, obtain names to petitions and represent them—if allowed by courtesy of the Convention—in behalf of equal civil and political rights for the women of the State to be organized. I was appealed to as the only woman in the Territory who had experience and could take the field, which was I believe true.

We had no material for Conventions, and the population was so sparse, distances so great, and means of conveyance and communication so slow and uncertain, that I felt sure an attempt at Conventions would be disastrous, only betraying the weakness of our reserves, for I must have done most, if not all the speaking.

It was the policy of the Republicans to "keep shady," as a party. John Wattles came to Wyandotte before I addressed the Convention, counseled with members, and reported to me that "I didn't need him, that it was better that no man appear in it."

After spending some four weeks in the field, I went to the Convention, and with a very dear friend, Mrs. Lucy B. Armstrong, of Wyandotte, was given a permanent seat beside the chaplain, Rev. Mr. Davis, Presiding Elder of the Methodist Episcopal Church of the District, which I occupied till the adjournment of the Convention, laboring to develop an active and corresponding interest in outsiders as well as members, until my petitions had been acted upon and the provisions finally passed; purposely late in the session.

Having at the commencement, only two known friends of our cause among the delegates to rely upon for its advocacy, against the compact opposition of the sixteen Democratic members, and the bitter prejudices of several of the strongest Republicans, including the first Chief Justice of the new State and its present unreconstructed Senator Ingalls, an early report upon our petitions would have been utter defeat. Persistent "button-holing" of the delegates, any "unwomanly obtrusiveness" of manners, a vague apprehension of which, at that period of our movement, was associated in the minds of even good men and women, with the advocacy of the cause, was the "big-'fraid" followed by more than one "little 'fraid," that made my course one of anxiety, less only than my faith in the ultimate adoption of the provisions named.

Of political suffrage I had, as I confidentially told my friends of the Association, no hope, and for the very reason given me later by members of the Convention who consented to school suffrage; viz: "even if endorsed by popular vote, such a provision would probably defeat admission to the Union." None the less, however, was the necessity for disarming the prejudices and impressing upon delegates and citizens the justice of the demand for political enfranchisement.

Fortunately, the hospitable tea-table of Mrs. Armstrong, with whom I was domiciled for the session, offered abundant womanly opportunity for conference and discussion with delegates; and in the homes of leading citizens I met a hearty sympathy which I can never forget.

During a recess of the Convention, a friendly member introduced me to Governor Medary, as "the lady who, by vote of the Convention, will speak here this evening in behalf of equal Constitutional rights for the women of Kansas." "But, Mrs. Nichols, you would not have women go down into the muddy pool of politics?" asked the Governor. "Even so, Governor, I admit that you know best how muddy that pool is, but you remember the Bethesda of old; how the angel had to go in and trouble the waters before the sick could be healed. So I would have the angels trouble this muddy pool that it may be well with the people; for you know, Governor Medary, that this people is very sick. But here is a petition to which I am adding names as I find opportunity; will you place your name on the roll of honor?" "Not now, Madam, not now. I will sign the bill." And the Governor, quite unconscious of his mistake, with a smile and a bow, hurried away amid the good-natured raillery of the little circle that had gathered around us. But it was Governor Robinson, the life-long friend of woman and a free humanity, that had the pleasure of "signing the bills."

In compliance with the earnest request of delegates, supported by the action of the Association, I labored from the adjournment of the Convention till the vote on the adoption of the Constitution, to "remove the prejudices"—as the delegates expressed it—"of their constituents, against the Woman's Rights provisions" of that document. The death of Mr. Wattles on the eve of the campaign sent me alone into the lecture field. For with the exception of Hon. Charles Robinson, our first State Governor, and always an outspoken friend of our cause, the politicians in the field either ignored or ridiculed the idea of women being entitled under the school provision to vote.

At Bloomington, when I had presented its merits in contrast with existing legal provisions, a venerable man in the audience rose and remarked that the Hon. James H. Lane, in addressing them a few days before, denied that the provision regarding Common Schools meant anything more than equal educational privileges, and that the Courts would so decide. That it would never do to allow women to vote, for only vile women would go to the polls. And now, added the old gentleman, "I would like to hear what Mrs. Nichols has to say on this point?" Taking counsel only of my indignation, I replied: "Mrs. Nichols has to say, that vile men who seek out vile women elsewhere, may better meet them at the polls under the eyes of good men and good women:" and dropped into my seat 'mid a perfect storm of applause, in which women joined as heartily as men.

Policy restrained the few Republican members who had voted against the provisions[24] from open opposition, and the more that everywhere Democrats, whom I appealed to as "friends in political disguise," treated me with marked courtesy; often contributing to my expenses. One such remarked, "There, Mrs. Nichols, is a Democratic half-dollar; I like your Woman's Rights."

At Troy, Don. Co., sitting behind the closed shutters of an open window, I heard outside a debate between Republicans and Democrats. One of the latter, an ex-Secretary of the Territory, at one time acting Governor, and a member of the Constitutional Convention, who had dwelt much on the superior prerogatives of the Anglo-Saxon race, was saying, "You go for political equality with the negro; we Democrats won't stand that, it would demoralize the white man." On my way to lecture in the evening, a friend forewarned me that the ex-Secretary, with two or three of his political stripe, had engaged a shrewd Democratic lawyer, by getting him half drunk, to reply to me. So when in my concluding appeal I turned as usual to the Democrats, I narrated the above incident and bowed smilingly to the ex-Secretary, with whom I was acquainted, and said, "Gentlemen who turn up their 'Anglo-Saxon' noses at the idea of 'political equality with the negro,' as demoralizing to the white man, forget that in all these years the white woman has been 'on a political equality with the negro'; they forget, that in keeping their own mothers, wives and daughters in the negro pew, to save them from demoralization by political equality with the white man, they are paying themselves a sorry compliment." The drunken lawyer was quietly hustled out by his friends, the Democrats themselves joining the audience in expressions of respect at the close of my lecture. But these from hundreds of telling incidents must suffice to initiate you in the spirit of that ever memorable campaign.



In 1854, when I was about leaving Vermont for Kansas, an earnest friend of our cause protested that I was "going to bury myself in Kansas, just as I had won an influence and awakened a public sentiment that assured the success of our demand for equal rights." I replied that it was a thousand times more difficult to procure the repeal of unjust laws in an old State, than the adoption of just laws in the organization of a new State. That I could accomplish more for woman, even the women of the old States, and with less effort, in the new State of Kansas, than I could in conservative old Vermont, whose prejudices were so much stronger than its convictions, that justice to women must stand a criminal trial in every Court of the State to win, and then pay the costs.

My husband went to Kansas for a milder climate; my sons to make homes under conditions better suited than the old States to their tastes and means. I went to work for a Government of "equality, liberty, fraternity," in the State to be.

I had learned from my experience with the legal fraternity, that as a profession they were dead-weights on our demands, and the reason why. When pressed to logical conclusions, which they were always quick to see, and in fair proportion to admit, were in our favor, they almost invariably retreated under the plea that the reforms we asked "being fundamental, would destroy the harmony of the statutes!" And I had come to the conclusion that it would cost more time and effort to disrupt the woman's "disabilities" attachment from the legal and political harmonicons of the old States, than it would to secure vantage ground for legal and political equality in the new. I believed then and believe now that Woman Suffrage would have received a majority vote in Kansas if it could have been submitted unembarrassed by the possibility of its being made a pretext for keeping Kansas out of the Union. And but for Judge Kingman, I believe it would have received the vote of a majority in convention. He played upon the old harmonicon, "organic law," and "the harmony of the statutes."

My pleas before the Constitutional Convention and the people, were for equal legal and political rights for women. In detail I asked:

1st. Equal educational rights and privileges in all the schools and institutions of learning fostered or controlled by the State.

2d. An equal right in all matters pertaining to the organization and conduct of the Common Schools.

3d. Recognition of the mother's equal right with the father to the control and custody of their mutual offspring.

4th. Protection in person, property, and earnings for married women and widows the same as for men.

The first three were fully granted. In the final reading. Kingman changed the wording of the fourth, so as to leave the Legislature a chance to preserve the infamous common law right to personal services. There were too many old lawyers in the Convention. The Democracy had four or five who pulled with Kingman, or he with them against us. Not a Democrat put his name to the Constitution when adopted.

The debate published in the Wyandotte Gazette of July 13, 1859, on granting Mrs. Nichols a hearing in the Constitutional Convention, and the Committee's report on the Woman's Petition, furnishes a page of history of which some of the actors, at least, will have no reason to read with special pride.

REPORT OF JUDICIARY FRANCHISE COMMITTEE ON WOMAN SUFFRAGE PETITIONS.

The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom in connection with the Committee on Franchise was referred the petition of sundry citizens of Kansas, "protesting against any constitutional distinctions based on difference of sex," have had the same under consideration, and beg leave to make the following report:

Your Committee concede the point in the petition upon which the right is claimed, that "the women of the State have individually an evident common interest with its men in the protection of life, liberty, property, and intellectual culture, and are not disposed to deny, that sex involves greater and more complex responsibilities, but the Committee are compelled to dissent from conclusion of petition; they think the rights of women are safe in present hands. The proof that they are so is found in the growing disposition on the part of different Legislatures to extend and protect their rights of property, and in the enlightened and progressive spirit of the age which acts gently, but efficiently upon the legislation of the day. Such rights as are natural are now enjoyed as fully by women as men. Such rights and duties as are merely political they should be relieved from, that they may have more time to attend to those greater and more complicated responsibilities which petitioners claim, and which your Committee admit devolves upon woman.

All of which is respectfully submitted.

SAM. A. KINGMAN, GEO. H. LILLIE, P. S. PARKS, JOHN P. SLOUGH, SAM. A. STINSON, JOHN F. BURNS, J. D. GREER, G. BLUNT, BEN. WRIGLEY.

MISSOURI.

In the spring of 1858, having arranged my home affairs, I set about the prosecution of a plan for widening the area of woman's work and influence on the Missouri border. Separated only by the steam-plowed river from my Kansas home, Missouri towns and hamlets lay invitingly before me. For more than three years I had held my opportunity in reserve. The time to improve it seemed to have come.

When our company landed at Kansas City, October, 1854, members of a Missouri delegation opposed to the Free State emigration to that Territory met us. More than half the company that preceded ours had been turned back by their representations without a look at the territory. As our boat touched the landing, Col. Scott, of St. Joseph, stepped on board, and commenced questioning Hon. E. M. Thurston, of Maine, who, as Committee of Arrangements for the transfer of the company's baggage, excused himself, and turning to me, added: "Here, sir, is a lady who can give you the information you desire—Mrs. Nichols, editor of the Windham County Democrat." In accepting the introduction, I caught the surprised and quizzical survey of a pair of keen, black eyes, culminating in an unmistakable expression of humorous anticipation; and, certain that my interviewer was intelligent and a gentleman, I resolved to follow his lead in kind. "Madam," he inquired, "can you tell me where all these people are from, and where they are going?" They are from the New England States, and are going to Kansas. "And what are they going to do in Kansas?" Make homes and surround themselves with the institutions, social and political, to which they are accustomed. "But, madam, they can't make homes on the Kansas prairies with free labor; it is impossible!"

Why, sir, our ancestors felled the primitive forests and cleared the ground to grow their bread, but Kansas prairies are ready for the plow; their rank grasses invite the flocks and herds. Do you know what a country we come from? did you never hear how in New Hampshire and Vermont the sheeps' noses have to be sharpened, so that they can pluck the spires of grass from between the rocks?

With a humorous, give-it-up sort of laugh, he remarked, abruptly: "You are an editor; do you ever lecture?" Sometimes I do. "On what subjects?" Education, Temperance, Woman's Rights—"Oh, woman's rights! Will you go to St. Joseph and lecture on woman's rights? Our people are all anxious to hear on that subject." Why, sir, I am an Abolitionist, and they would tar and feather me! "You don't say anything about slavery in your woman's rights' lectures, do you?" No, sir; I never mix things.

After a sharp, but good natured tilt on the slavery question, the Colonel returned to the lecture, about which he was so evidently in earnest—guaranteeing "a fine audience, courteous treatment, and ample compensation"; that I gave a promise to visit St. Joseph on my return if there should be time before the closing of navigation, a promise I was prevented from fulfilling. And now after three years, in which the emigrants had made homes and secured them against the aggressions of the slave power, I wrote him that if the people of St. Joseph still wished to hear, and it pleased him to renew his guarantees of aid and protection, I was at leisure to lecture on woman's rights. His reply was prompt; his assurances hearty. I had "only to name the time," and I would find everything in readiness. That the truce-like courtesy of the compact between us may be appreciated, I copy a postscript appended to his letter and a postscript in reply added to my note of appointment; with the explanation, that in our Kansas City interview, the Colonel had declared the negro incapable of education, and that emancipation would result in amalgamation.

Postscript No. 1.—Have you tried your experiment of education on any little nigger yet? J. S.

Postscript No. 2.—No, I have not tried my educational experiment, for the reason that the horrid amalgamationists preceded us, and so bleached the "niggers" that I have not been able to find a pure-blood specimen. C. I. H. N.

The subject of slavery was not again mentioned between us. And when we shook hands in the cabin of the steamer at parting, he remarked, with a manly frankness in grateful contrast with the covert contempt felt, rather than expressed, in his previous courtesies, that he thought it proper I should know, that my audiences, composed of the most intelligent and respectable people of St. Joseph, were pleased with my lectures. One of its most eminent citizens had said to him, that he "had not thought of the subject in the light presented, but he really could see no objection to women voting."

Only one lecture had been proposed. By a vote of my audience I gave a second, and had reason to feel that I had effectually broken ground in Missouri; that I had not only won a respectful consideration for woman's cause and its advocacy, but improved my opportunity to vindicate New England training, in face of Southern prejudices. One little episode, as rich in its significance, as in the inspiration it communicated, will serve to round out my St. Joseph experience.

In introducing me to my audience, the Colonel—remembering, perhaps, that I did not "mix things," or feeling that he might trust my consciousness of being cornered on the slavery question—remarked in a vein of courteously concealed irony: "It looks very strange to us for a lady to speak in public, but we must remember that in the section of country from which this lady comes, the necessity of self-support bears equally upon women, and crowds them out of domestic life into vocations more congenial to the sterner sex. Happily our domestic institutions, by relieving women of the necessity to labor, protect them in the sacred privacy of home."

In his ignorance of the subject, my friend had unwittingly resined the bow. In bringing his "domestic institution" to the front, he had so "mixed things," that in my showing of the legal disabilities of women, of the no-right of the white wife and mother to herself, her children, and her earnings, my audience could not fail to appreciate the anomalous character of a "protection" so pathetically suggestive of the legal level of the slave woman, to which man, in his greed of wealth and power, had "crowded" both.

Some months later, at the breakfast-table of a Missouri River steamer, a gentleman of St. Joseph recognized me, and reported my lectures to ex-Governor Rollins, who was also on board, and asked an introduction. After a long and pleasant discussion with the Governor, who entered at once upon the subject, in its legal, political, and educational aspects, it was agreed that I should lecture at my earliest convenience in several of the principal towns of the State, the capital included; the Governor himself proposing to communicate with influential citizens to make the necessary arrangements.

An early compliance with my promise was prevented by the Kansas movement for a constitutional convention; my connection with which left me no leisure till late in the autumn, when I commenced my proposed lecture course in Missouri by an appointment at Westport, by arrangement of a gentleman of that place, whose acquaintance I had made in my Kansas campaign. Arrived at the Westport hotel, where my entertainment had been bespoken, I was taken by the landlady to her own cosy sitting-room, and made pleasantly at home. Later in the day I became aware of considerable excitement in the bar-room and street of the town. The landlord held several hurried consultations with his wife in the ante-room. My dinner was served in the private room, it "being more pleasant," my hostess said, "than eating at the public table with a lot of strange men." An hour after time, the gentleman who was to call for myself and the landlady, announced an assembly of a "dozen rude boys," and that in consequence of the news of John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry (of which I had not before heard), the excitement was such that he could not persuade the ladies to come out. With some hesitation he added, that it "had even been suggested that I might be an emissary or accomplice, in what was suspected to be a general and preconcerted abolition movement." This explained the questionings of my hostess, and the provision against any possible rudeness which I might have received from the "strange men" at the public table. Thus ended my projected campaign in Missouri. For every city and hamlet in the State was so haunted by the marching spirit of the Kansas hero, that to have suggested a lecture on any subject from a known Abolitionist, would have ruined the political prospects of even an ex-Governor.

Three years later, assisted by a former resident of Kansas, I lectured to a very small, but respectful audience in Kansas City; and in the spring of 1867 was invited by a committee of ladies to lecture at a Fair of the Congregational Society of that city, with accompanying assurances from the pastor and his wife, of their confidence in the salutary influence of such a lecture, on a community which had been recently treated to an unfriendly presentation of the woman's rights movement and its advocates. I was too ill at the time to leave home, but the difference between my anxious efforts three years before to be heard, and this more than cordial assurance of a waiting audience, was a happy tonic. It was from persons who knew me only through my advocacy of woman's equality, and evidenced the progress of our cause.

In December, 1854, on my return from Kansas to Vermont, I spent several days in St. Louis, in the pleasant family of my friend, Mrs. Frances D. Gage, who, very much to my regret, was away in Illinois. The Judge having recently removed to the city, the family were comparatively strangers; Abolitionists in a pro-slavery community. Mrs. Gage, I think, had broken ground for temperance, but they could tell me of no friends to woman's rights. Rev. Mr. Elliot was not then one of us, as I learned through a son of Mrs. Gage, who called on him in my behalf for the use of his lecture-room. I felt instinctively that, unfettered by home and business interests, I was less constrained than my friend, and resolved, if possible, to win a hearing for woman. Having secured a hall, I called at the business office of a gentleman of wealth and high social position—a slave-holder and opposed to free Kansas, with whom I had formed a speaking acquaintance in Brattleboro'—and procured from him a voucher for my respectability. Armed with this I called on the editors of the Republican (pro-slavery), and secured a paid notice of my lecture. The editor of the Democrat, who had an interest in free Kansas, and was glad of news items from its immigrants, received me cordially, and gave the "lady lecturer" a handsome "personal," though he had no more interest in my subject than either of the other gentlemen, and gave me little encouragement of an audience. Nevertheless, when the evening came, I met an audience intelligent and respectful, and larger than I had ventured to expect, but not numerous enough to warrant the venture of a second lecture in the expensive hall, which from the refusal of church lecture-rooms, I had been obliged to occupy. But here, as often before and after, a good Providence interposed. Rev. Mr. Weaver, Universalist, claimed recognition as "a reader in his boyhood of Mrs. Nichols' paper"—his father was a patron of the Windham County Democrat—and tendered the use of his church for further lectures. I had found a friend of the cause. The result was a full house, and hearty appeals for "more."

As isolated, historical facts, how very trivial all these "reminiscences" appear! How egotistical the pen that presumes upon anything like a popular interest in their perusal! But to the social and political reformer, as to the Kanes and Livingstons, trifles teach the relations of things, and indicate the methods and courses of action that result in world-wide good or evil. Seeds carried by the winds and waves plant forests and beautify the waste places of the earth. Truths that flowed from the silent nib of my pen in Vermont, had been garnered in a boy's sympathies to yield me a man's welcome and aid in St. Louis. How clear the lesson, that for seed-sowing, all seasons belong to God's truth!

The autumn and winter of 1860-61 I spent in Wisconsin and Ohio; in Wisconsin, visiting friends and lecturing. In Ohio, Mrs. Frances D. Gage, Mrs. Hannah Tracy Cutler, and myself were employed under direction of Mrs. Elizabeth Jones, of Salem, to canvass the State, lecturing and procuring names to petitions to the Legislature for equal legal and political rights for the women of the State. The time chosen for this work was inopportune for immediate success—the opening scenes of the rebellion alike absorbing the attention of the people and their Legislature. Women in goodly numbers came out to hear, but men of all classes waited in the streets, or congregated in public places to hear the news and discuss the political situation.

From December, 1863, to March, 1866, I was in Washington, D. C., writing in the Military or Revenue Departments, or occupying the position of Matron in the Home for Colored Orphans, which had been opened in the second year of the rebellion, by the help of the Government and the untiring energy of a few noble women intent on saving the helpless waifs of slavery cast by thousands upon the bare sands of military freedom.

In the autumn of 1867, the Legislature of Kansas having submitted to the voters of the State a woman suffrage amendment to its Constitution, I gave some four weeks to the canvass, which was engaged in by some of the ablest friends of the cause from other States, among them Lucy Stone, Rev. Olympia Brown, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. In our own State, among others, Governor Robinson, John Ritchie, and S. N. Wood of the old Free State Guard, rallied to the work. With the canvass of Atchison and Jefferson Counties, and a few lectures in Douglass, Shawnee, and Osage Counties, I retired from a field overlaid with happy reminders of past trials merged in present blessings. The work was in competent hands, but the time was ill-chosen on account of the political complications with negro suffrage, and failure was the result.

Since December, 1871, my home has been in California, where family cares and the infirmities of age limit my efforts for a freer and a nobler humanity to the pen. Trusting that love of God and man will ever point it with truth and justice, I close this expose of my public life.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] Mrs. Nichols had written up a case occurring among the subscribers to the Democrat, in which $500, the whole estate, was divided, the half of that amount being all the law allowed for the support of a woman, then in the decline of life, and sent fifty marked copies of the paper to members of the Legislature elect. One of them introduced the bill, which passed the first day of the session.

[23] The violent throbbing of Mrs. Nichols' heart, caused by her unusual position and her intense anxiety that her plea might be successful, had stopped her speaking at the close of a brief preface to her plea. She, however, soon rallied, though her voice was tremulous throughout, from the conviction that only an eminently successful presentation of her subject, could spike the enemy's batteries and win a verdict of "just and womanly." Mrs. Nichols hoped no further than that. She did not expect conservative Vermont to yield at once for what she asked, as she stood alone with her paper among the press; and there was no other advocate in the State to take the field.

[24] The head and front of the opposition was Judge Kingman, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to which, with the Committee on Elections, my petition was referred. He wrote the Report against granting our demand, and of those who signed it all but (Gen.) Blunt and himself were Democrats. The report was adopted by a solid vote of the Democrats (16), and enough Republicans to make a majority. Thirty-six Republicans and 16 Democrats comprised the whole delegation. If my memory is not at fault, 27 Republicans voted in caucus for the provisions which were ultimately carried in our behalf, which was a majority of the whole Convention. In caucus a majority were in favor of political rights; but only a minority, from conviction that Woman Suffrage would prevent admission to the Union, would vote it in Convention.



CHAPTER VIII.

MASSACHUSETTS.

Women in the Revolution—Anti-Tea Leagues—Phillis Wheatley—Mistress Anne Hutchinson—Heroines in the Slavery Conflict—Women Voting under the Colonial Charter—Mary Upton Ferrin Petitions the Legislature in 1848—Woman's Rights Conventions in 1850, '51—Letter of Harriet Martineau from England—Letter of Jeannie Deroine from a Prison Cell in Paris—Editorial from The Christian Inquirer—The Una, edited by Paulina Wright Davis—Constitutional Convention in 1853—Before the Legislature in 1857—Harriet K. Hunt's Protest against Taxation—Lucy Stone's Protest against the Marriage Laws—Boston Conventions—Theodore Parker on Woman's Position.

During the Revolutionary period, the country was largely indebted to the women of Massachusetts. Their patriotism was not only shown in the political plans of Mercy Otis Warren,[25] and the sagacious counsels of Abigail Smith Adams, but by the action of many other women whose names history has not preserved. It was a woman who sent Paul Revere on his famous ride from Boston to Concord, on the night of April 18, 1775, to warn the inhabitants of the expected invasion of the British on the morrow. The church bells pealing far and near on the midnight air, roused tired sleepers hurriedly to arm themselves against the invaders of their homes.

During the war two women of Concord dressed in men's clothing, captured a spy bearing papers which proved of the utmost importance to the patriot forces.

During these early days, the women of various Colonies—Virginia, New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts—formed Anti-Tea Leagues. In Providence, R. I., young ladies took the initiative; twenty-nine daughters of prominent families, meeting under the shade of the sycamore trees at Roger Williams' spring, there resolving to drink no more tea until the duty upon it was repealed. The name of one of these young ladies, Miss Coddington, has been preserved, to whose house they all adjourned to partake of a frugal repast; hyperion[26] taking the place of the hated bohea. In Newport, at a gathering of ladies, where both hyperion and bohea were offered, every lady present refused the hated bohea, emblem of political slavery. In Boston, early in 1769, the matrons of three hundred families bound themselves to use no more tea until the tax upon it was taken off. The young ladies also entered into a similar covenant, declaring they took this step, not from personal motives, but from a sense of patriotism and a regard for posterity.[27] Liberty, as alone making life of value, looked as sweet to them as to their fathers. The Women's Anti-Tea Leagues of Boston were formed nearly five years previous to the historic "Boston Tea Party," when men disguised as Indians, threw the East India Company's tea overboard, and six years before the declaration of war.

American historians ignoring woman after man's usual custom, have neglected to mention the fact that every paper in Boston was suspended during its invasion by the British, except the chief rebel newspapers of New England, The Massachusetts Gazette and North Boston News-Letter, owned and edited by a woman, Margaret Draper.

They make small note of Women's Anti-Tea Leagues, and the many instances of their heroism during the Revolutionary period, equaling, as they did, any deeds of self-sacrifice and bravery that man himself can boast.

The men of Boston, in 1773, could with little loss to themselves, throw overboard a cargo of foreign tea, well knowing that for the last five years this drink had not been allowed in their houses by the women of their own families. Their reputation for patriotism was thus cheaply earned in destroying what did not belong to them and what was of no use to them. Their wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters drank raspberry, sage, and birch, lest by the use of foreign tea they should help rivet the chains of oppression upon their country. Why should not the American Revolution have been successful, when women so nobly sustained republican principles, taking the initiative in self-sacrifice and pointing the path to man by patriotic example.

In Massachusetts, as in other States, were also formed associations known as "Daughters of Liberty."[28] These organizations did much to fan the nascent flames of freedom.

The first naval battle of the Revolution was fought at Machias, Maine, then a part of Massachusetts. An insult having been offered its inhabitants, by a vessel in the harbor, the men of the surrounding country joined with them to avenge this indignity to their "Liberty Tree," arming themselves, from scarcity of powder, with scythes, pitchforks, and other implements of peace. At a settlement some twenty miles distant, a quantity of powder was discovered, after the men had left for Machias. What was to be done, was the immediate question. Every able-bodied man had already left, only small boys and men too aged or too infirm for battle having remained at home. Upon that powder reaching them the defeat of the British, might depend. In this emergency the heroism of woman was shown. Two young girls, Hannah and Rebecca Weston, volunteered their services. It was no holiday excursion for them, but a trip filled with unseen dangers. The way led through a trackless forest, the route merely indicated by blazed trees. Bears, wolves, and wild-cats were numerous. The distance was impossible to be traversed in a single day; these young girls must spend the night in that dreary wilderness. Worse than danger from wild animals, was that to be apprehended from Indians, who might kill them, or capture and bear them away to some distant tribe. But undauntedly they set out on their perilous journey, carrying twenty pounds of powder. They reached Machias in safety, before the attack on the British ship, finding their powder a most welcome and effective aid in the victory which soon crowned the arms of the Colonists. The heroism of these young girls was far greater than if they had fought in the ranks, surrounded by companions,'mid the accompaniments of beating drums, waving flags, and all the paraphernalia of war.

In the war of 1812 two young girls of Scituate, Rebecca and Abigail W. Bates, by their wit and sagacity, prevented the landing of the enemy at this point.[29] Congress, during its session of 1880, nearly seventy years afterward, granted them pensions, just as from extreme age they were about to drop into the grave.

Though it is not considered important to celebrate the virtues of the Pilgrim Mothers in gala days, grand dinners, toasts, and speeches, yet a little retrospection would enable us to exhume from the past, many of their achievements worth recording. More facts than we have space to reproduce, testify to the heroism, religious zeal, and literary industry of the women who helped to build up the early civilization of New England. Their writings, for some presumed on authorship, are quaint and cumbrous; but in those days, when few men published books, it required marked courage for women to appear in print at all. They imitated the style popular among men, and received much attention for their literary ability. Charles T. Congdon, as the result of his explorations through old book-stores, has brought to light some of these early writers.

In 1630, Mrs. Anne Bradstreet, known as quite a pretentious writer, came to Boston with her husband, Simon Bradstreet, Governor of Massachusetts. Her first work was entitled "The Tenth Muse lately sprung up in America." The first edition was published in London in 1650, and the first Boston edition was published in 1678. If Mrs. Bradstreet loved praise, she was fortunate in her time and position. It would have been in bad taste, as it would have been bad policy, not to eulogize the poems of the Governor's wife. She was frequently complimented in verse as bad as her own. Her next great epic was entitled "A Complete Discourse and Description of the Four Elements, Constitutions, Ages of Man, Seasons of the Year, together with an exact epitome of the Four Monarchies, viz: the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman." "Glad as we were," says the owner, "to obtain this book at a considerable price, we are still gladder of the privilege of closing it." Although this lady had eight children, about whom she wrote some amusing rhymes, she found time in the wilds of America to perpetuate also these ponderous-titled poems.

Phillis Wheatly, a colored girl, also wrote poetry in Colonial Boston, years before our Declaration of Independence startled the world. She was brought from Africa, and sold in the slave market of Boston, when only six years old. Mr. Sparks, the biographer of Washington, thinks "that the poems contained in her published volume, exhibit the most favorable evidence on record, of the capacity of the African intellect for improvement." When the Rev. George Whitefield died, at Newburyport, Mass., in 1770, the same writer from whom we quote these facts, says: "It was quite natural, his demise being much talked of in religious families, that our sable Phillis should burst into monody. That expression of grief I have before me. Of the most rhetorical preacher of his age, it is not inspiring to read:

"He prayed that grace in every heart might dwell. He louged to see America excel."

Phillis married badly, and died at the age of thirty-one, in 1784, utterly impoverished, leaving three little children. Her own copy of her poems is in the library of Harvard College. When she died it was sold for her husband's debts.

In a letter thanking her for an acrostic on himself, General Washington said: "If you should ever come to Cambridge, or near headquarters, I shall be happy to see a person so gifted by the muses, and to whom Nature has been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensations."

Was there ever any story, which had such a hold upon the readers of a generation, as "Charlotte Temple"? It is said 25,000 copies were sold soon after publication—an enormous sale for that day. Mrs. Rowson, who wrote the book, was a daughter of a lieutenant in the Royal Navy; she was an actress in Philadelphia, and afterward kept a school in Boston for young ladies, where she died, in 1824. Her seminary was highly recommended.

Women in the last age naturally drifted into the didactic. They should have the credit of trying always to be useful. They go through so many pages, seeking to give the little people some notion of botany, of natural history, of other branches of human intelligence. There is no book cleverer in its way than Miss Hannah Adams' "History of New England," of which the second edition was published in Boston in 1807. The object of this lady was, as she tells us in the preface, "to impress the minds of young persons with veneration for those eminent men to whom their posterity are so highly indebted." All the tradition is that Miss Adams was a wonderfully learned lady. She is best known by her "History of the Jews." She wrote pretty good English, of which this may be considered a specimen: "Exalted from a feeble state to opulence and independence, the Federal Americans are now recognized as a nation throughout the globe." To a sentence so admirably formed, possibly there is nothing to add.

MISTRESS ANNE HUTCHINSON.

Mistress Anne Hutchinson, founder of the Antinomian party of New England, was a woman who exerted great influence upon the religious and political free thought of those colonies. She was the daughter of an English clergyman, and with her husband, followed Pastor Cotton, to whom she was much attached, to this country in 1634, and was admitted a member of the Boston church, becoming a resident of Massachusetts one hundred and forty years before the Revolutionary war. She was of commanding intellect, and exerted a powerful influence upon the infant colony.

It was a long established custom for the brethren of the Boston church to hold, through the week, frequent public meetings for religious exercises. Women were prohibited from taking part in these meetings, which chafed the free spirit of Mistress Hutchinson, and soon she called meetings of the sisters, where she repeated the sermons of the Lord's day, making comments upon them. Her illustrations of Scripture were so new and striking that the meetings were rendered more interesting to the women than any they had attended. At first the clergy approved, but as the men attracted by the fame of her discourses, crowded into her meetings, they began to perceive danger to their authority; the church was passing out of their control. Her doctrines, too, were alarming. She taught the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in each believer, its inward revelations, and that the conscious judgment of the mind should be the paramount authority. She was the first woman in America to demand the right of individual judgment upon religious questions. Her influence was very great, yet she was not destined to escape the charge of heresy.

The first Synod in America was called upon her account. It convened August 30, 1637, sat three weeks, and proclaimed eighty-two errors extant; among them the tenets taught by Mistress Hutchinson. She was called before the church and ordered to retract upon twenty-nine points. The infant colony was shaken by this discussion, which took on a political aspect.[30] Mistress Hutchinson remained steadfast, and was sustained by many important people, among whom was the young Governor Vane.

Church and State became united in their opposition to Mistress Anne Hutchinson. The fact that she presumed to teach men, was prominently brought up, and in November, 1637, she was arbitrarily tried before the Massachusetts General Court upon a joint charge of sedition and heresy. She was examined for two days by the Governor and prominent members of the clergy. The Boston Church, which knew her worth, sustained her, with the exception of five members, one of them the associate pastor, Wilson. But the country churches and clergy were against her, and she was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment and banishment.

As the winter was very severe, she was allowed to remain in Roxbury until spring, when she joined Roger Williams in Rhode Island, where she helped form a body-politic, democratic in principle, in which no one was "accounted delinquent for doctrine." Mistress Hutchinson thus helped to dissever Church and State, and to found religious freedom in the United States.

After her residence in Rhode Island, four men were sent to reclaim her, but she would not return. Upon the death of her husband she moved, for greater security, to "The Dutch Colony," and died somewhere in the State of New York.

Thus, through the protracted struggle of the American Colonies for religious and political freedom, woman bravely shared the dangers and persecutions of those eventful years. As spy in the enemy's camp; messenger on the battle-field; soldier in disguise; defender of herself and children in the solitude of those primeval forests; imprisoned for heresy; burned, hung, drowned as a witch: what suffering and anxiety has she not endured! what lofty heroism has she not exemplified!

And when the crusade against slavery in our republic was inaugurated in 1830, another Spartan band of women stood ready for the battle, and the storm of that fierce conflict, surpassing in courage, moral heroism, and conscientious devotion to great principles, all that woman in any age had done or dared. With reverent lips we mention the names of Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Lydia Maria Child, Maria Weston Chapman, Mary S. Parker, Abby Kelly, whose burning words of rebuke aroused a sleeping nation to a new-born love of liberty. To their brave deeds, pure lives, and glowing eloquence, we pay our tributes of esteem and admiration.

To such as these let South Carolina and Massachusetts build future monuments, not in Quincy granite, or Parian marble, but in more enduring blessing to the people; inviolable homesteads for the laborer; free schools and colleges for boys and girls, both black and white; justice and mercy in the alms-house, jail, prison, and the marts of trade, thus securing equal rights to all.

WOMAN'S EARLY POLITICAL RIGHTS.

In Massachusetts, women voted at an early day. First, under the Old Province Charter, from 1691 to 1780, for all elective officers; second, they voted under the Constitution for all elective officers except the Governor, Council, and Legislature, from 1780 to 1785. The Bill of Rights, adopted with the Constitution of 1780, declared that all men were born free and equal. Upon this, some slaves demanded their freedom, and their masters yielded.[31] Restrictions upon the right of suffrage were very great in this State; church membership alone excluded for thirty years three-fourths of the male inhabitants from the ballot-box.[32]

That women exercised the right of suffrage amid so many restrictions, is very significant of the belief in her right to the ballot, by those early Fathers.[33]

THE FIRST STEP IN MASSACHUSETTS.

Woman's rights petitions were circulated in Massachusetts as early as 1848. Mary Upton Ferrin, of Salem, in the spring of that year, consulting Samuel Merritt, known as "the honest lawyer of Salem," in regard to the property rights of married women, and the divorce laws, learned that the whole of the wife's personal property belonged to the husband, as also the improvements upon her real estate; and that she could only retain her silver and other small valuables by secreting them, or proving them to have been loaned to her. To such deception did the laws of Massachusetts, like those of most States, based on the Old Common Law idea of the wife's subjection to the husband, compel the married woman in case she desired to retain any portion of her own property.

Mrs. Ferrin reported the substance of the above conversation to Mrs. Phebe King,[34] of Danvers, who at once became deeply interested, saying, "If such are the laws by which women are governed, every woman in the State should sign a petition to have them altered."

"Will you sign one if drawn up?" queried Mrs. Ferrin.

"Yes," replied Mrs. King, "and I should think every woman would sign such a petition."

As the proper form of petitions was something with which women were then quite unfamiliar, the aid of several gentlemen was asked, among them Hon. D. P. King and Judge John Heartley, but all refused.

Miss Betsy King then suggested that Judge Pitkin[35] possessed sufficient influence to have the laws amended without the trouble of petitioning the Legislature. Strong in their faith that the enactment of just laws was the business of legislative bodies, these ladies believed they but had to bring injustice to the notice of a law-maker in order to have it done away. Therefore, full of courage and hope, Judge Pitkin was respectfully approached. But, to their infinite astonishment, he replied:

"The law is very well as it is regarding the property of married women. Women are not capable of taking care of their own property; they never ought to have control of it. There is already a law by which a woman can have her property secured to her."

"But not one woman in fifty knows of the existence of such a law," was the reply.

"They ought to know it; it is no fault of the law if they don't. I do not think the Legislature will alter the law regarding divorce. If they do, they will make it more stringent than it now is."

Repulsed, but not disheartened, Mrs. Ferrin herself drew up several petitions, circulated them, obtaining many hundred signatures of old and young; though finding the young more ready to ask for change than those inured to ill-usage and injustice. Many persons laughed at her; but knowing it to be a righteous work, and deeming laughter healthful to those indulging in it, Mrs. Ferrin continued to circulate her petitions.

They were presented to the Legislature by Rev. John M. Usher, a Universalist minister of Lynn, and member of the lower House. Although too late in the session for action, these petitions form the initiative step for Woman Suffrage in Massachusetts.

Early the next fall, similar petitions were circulated. It was determined to attack the Legislature in such good season, that lateness of time would not again be brought up as an excuse for non-attention to the prayers of women. Mrs. King's interest continued unabated, and through her advice, Mrs. Ferrin prepared an address to accompany the petitions. Hon. Charles W. Upham, minister of the First Unitarian church of Salem, afterward Representative in Congress, was State Senator that year. From him they received much encouragement. "I concur with you in every sentiment," said he, "but please re-write your address, making two of it; one in the form of a memorial to the Legislature, and the other, an address to the Judiciary Committee, to whom your petitions will be referred." These two documents will be found to suggest most of the important demands, afterward made in every State, for a change of laws relating to woman. The fallacy of "sacredness" for these restrictive laws was shown; the rights of humanity as superior to any outside authority, asserted; and justice made the basis of the proposed reformation. The right of woman to trial by a jury of her peers was claimed, followed by the suggestion that woman is capable of making the laws by which she is governed. The memorial excited much attention, and was printed by order of the Legislature, though the possibility of a woman having written it was denied.[36]

But in 1850, as in 1849, no action was taken, the petitioners having "leave to withdraw." Petitions of a similar character were again circulated throughout Salem and Danvers, in 1850, '51, '52, '53, making six successive years, in each of which the petitioners had "leave to withdraw," as the only reply to their prayers for relief. The Hon. Mr. Upham, however, remained woman's steadfast friend through all this period, and Mrs. Phebe Upton King was as constantly found among the petitioners.

In 1852 the petitions were signed only by ladies over sixty years of age, women of large experience and matured judgment, whose prayers should have received at least respectful consideration from the legislators of the State. We give the appeal accompanying their petition:

GENTLEMEN:—Your petitioners, who are tax-payers and originators of these petitions, are upwards of three-score years; ten of them are past three-score years and ten; three of them three-score and twenty. If length of days, a knowledge of the world and the rights of man and woman entitle them to a respectful hearing, few, if any, have prior or more potent claims, for reason has taught them what individual rights are, experience, what woman and her children suffer for the want of just protection in those, and humanity impels them once more to appear before you, it may be for the last time. Let not their gray hairs go down in sorrow to the grave for the want of this justice in your power to extend, as have several of their number whose names are no longer to be found with theirs, whose voices can plead never more in behalf of your own children and those of your constituents.

In 1853 a petition[37] bearing only Mrs. King's name was presented. In 1854 the political organization called the "Know Nothings" came into power, and although no petition was presented, a bill securing the control of their own property to all women married subsequent to the passage of the law, was passed. The power to make a will without the husband's consent, was also secured to wives, though not permitted to thus will more than one-half of their personal property. This law also gave to married women having no children, whose husbands should die without a will, five thousand dollars, and one-half of the remainder of the husband's property. The following year the Divorce Law[38] was amended, and shortly thereafter two old ladies, nearly seventy years of age, having no future marriage in view, but solely influenced by a desire to secure their own property to their own children, which without such divorce they would be unable to do, although one of their husbands had not provided for his wife in twenty years, nor the other in thirty years, availed themselves of its new privileges.

The first change in the tyrannous laws of Massachusetts was really due to the work of this one woman, Mary Upton Ferrin, who for six years, after her own quaint method, poured the hot shot of her earnest conviction of woman's wrongs into the Legislature. In circulating petitions, she traveled six hundred miles, two-thirds of this distance on foot. Much money was expended besides her time and travel, and her name should be remembered as that of one of the brave pioneers in this work.

Although two thousand petitions were sent into the Constitutional Convention of 1853, from other friends of woman's enfranchisement in the State, Mrs. Ferrin totally unacquainted with that step, herself petitioned this body for an amendment to the Constitution securing justice to women, referring to the large number of petitions sent to the Legislature during the last few years for this object. Working as she did, almost unaided and alone, Mrs. Ferrin is an exemplification of the dissatisfaction of women at this period with unjust laws.[39]

MRS. FERRIN'S ADDRESS TO THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE OF THE MASSACHUSETTS LEGISLATURE IN 1850.

Long have our liberties and our lives been lauded to the skies, to our amusement and edification, and until our sex has been as much regaled as has the Southern slave, with "liberty and law." But, says one, "Women are free." So likewise are slaves free to submit to the laws and to their masters. "A married woman is as much the property of her husband, likewise her goods and chattels, as is his horse," says an eminent judge, and he might have added, many of them are treated much worse. No more apt illustration could have been given. Though man can not beat his wife like his horse, he can kill her by abuse—the most pernicious of slow poisons; and, alas, too often does he do it. It is for such unfortunate ones that protection is needed. Existing laws neither do nor can protect them, nor can society, on account of the laws. If they were men, society would protect and defend them. Long, silently, and patiently have they waited until forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

Should a woman make her will without her husband's consent in writing, it is of no use. It is as just and proper that a woman should dispose of her own property to her own satisfaction as that a man should dispose of his. In many cases she is as competent, and sadly to be pitied if not in many cases more so. And even with her husband's consent she can not bequeath to him her real estate. She can sell it with his consent, but the deeds must pass and be recorded, and then, if the husband pleases, he can take the money and buy the property back again. Does justice require that a man and his wife should use so much deception, and be at so much unnecessary expense and trouble, to settle their own private affairs to their own satisfaction—affairs which do not in the least affect any other individual? Reason, humanity, and common sense answer—No!

"All men are created free and equal," and all women are born subject to laws which they have neither the power to make or to repeal, but which they are taxed, directly or indirectly, to support, and many of which are a disgrace to humanity and ought to be forthwith abolished. A woman is compelled by circumstances to work for less than half an ordinary man can earn, and yet she is as essential to the existence, happiness, and refinement of society as is man.

We are told "a great deal has already been done for woman;" in return we would tender our grateful acknowledgments, with the assurance that when ours is the right, we will reciprocate the favor. Much that has been done, does not in the least affect those who are already married; and not one in ten of those who are not married, will ever be apprised of the existence of the laws by which they might be benefited. Few, if any, would marry a man so incompetent as in their opinion to render it necessary to avail themselves of such laws; neither would any spirited man knowingly marry a woman who considered him so incompetent; hence, instead of being a blessing, much labor and expense accrue to those who desire to avail themselves of their benefit; and such a step often induces the most bitter contention.

We are told "the Bible does not provide for divorce except for one offence." Neither does the Bible prohibit divorce for any other justifiable cause. Inasmuch as men take the liberty to legislate upon other subjects of which the Bible does, and does not, take particular notice, so likewise are they equally at liberty to legislate and improve upon this, when the state of society demands it.... A woman who has a good husband glides easily along under his protection, while those who have bad husbands, of which, alas! there are too many, are not aware of the depths of their degradation until they suddenly and unexpectedly find themselves, through the influence of the law, totally destitute, condemned to hopeless poverty and servitude, with an ungrateful tyrant for a master. No respectable man with a decent woman for a wife, will ever demean himself so much as to insult or abuse his wife. Wherever such a state of things exists, it is a disgrace to the age and to society, by whomsoever practiced, encouraged, or protected, whether public or private—whether social, political, or religious.