Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
5th. That women be exempted from taxation until their right of
suffrage is practically acknowledged.
6th. That women equally with men be entitled to claim trial
before a jury of their peers.
These petitions should be firm and uncompromising in tone; and a
hearing should be demanded before Committees specially empowered
to consider and report them. In my judgment, the time is not
distant, when such petitions will be granted, and when justice,
the simple justice they ask, will be cordially, joyfully
rendered.
I call then for the publication of a Declaration of Woman's
Rights, accompanied by Forms of Petitions, by the National
Woman's Rights Convention at their present session. In good hope,
Your friend and brother,
WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING.
Miss Brown remarked:
There is one of these demands, the fourth, which for myself, I
should prefer to have amended thus--instead of the word
"divorce," I would insert "legally separated." The letter
otherwise meets my cordial and hearty approbation.
MR. HIGGINSON'S LETTER.
WORCESTER, _Sept. 15, 1853_.
DEAR FRIEND:--In writing to the New York Woman's Rights
Convention, I mentioned some few points of argument which no
opponents of this movement have ever attempted to meet. Suffer
me, in addressing the Cleveland Convention, to pursue a different
course, and mention some things which the friends of the cause
have not yet attempted to do.
I am of a practical habit of mind, and have noticed with some
regret that most of the friends of the cause have rested their
hopes, thus far, chiefly upon abstract reasoning. This is
doubtless of great importance, and these reasonings have already
made many converts; because the argument is so entirely on one
side that every one who really listens to it begins instantly to
be convinced. The difficulty is, that the majority have not yet
begun to listen to it, and this, in great measure, because their
attention has not been called to the facts upon which it is
founded.
Suppose, now, that an effort were made to develop the facts of
woman's wrongs. For instance:
1st. We say that the laws of every State of this Union do great
wrong to woman, married and single, as to her person and
property, in her private and public relations. Why not procure a
digest of the laws on these subjects, then; prepared carefully,
arranged systematically, corrected up to the latest improvements,
and accompanied by brief and judicious commentaries? No such work
exists, except that by Mansfield, which is now obsolete, and in
many respects defective.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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