Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
After arriving at Metropolitan Hall, accompanied by these
friends, I did quietly what we had predetermined was the best to
do. The Secretary was sitting upon the platform. I handed him my
credentials from both societies. He said: "I can not now tell
whether you will be received or not. There is a resolution before
the house, stating, in substance, that they would receive all
delegates without distinction of color or sex. If this
resolution is adopted, you can be received." I then left my
credentials in his hands, and went down from the platform. It was
rather trying, in the sight of all that audience, to go upon the
platform and come down again; and I shall not soon forget the
sensations with which I stepped off the platform. After a little
time they decided that the call admitted all delegates. I thought
this decision settled my admission, and I went again upon the
platform. In the meantime a permanent organization was effected.
I went there, for the purpose of thanking them for their course,
and merely to express my sympathy with the cause and their
present movement, and then intended to leave the Hall. I arose,
and inquired of the President, Neal Dow, if I was rightly a
member of the Convention. He said, "Yes, if you have credentials
from any abstinence societies." I told him I had, and then
attempted to thank him. There was no appeal from the President's
decision, but yet they would not receive my expression of thanks;
therefore I took my seat and waited for a better opportunity.
And now let me read a paragraph again from this paper, the
temperance organ of your State. The writer is still Gen. Carey.
(The extract intimated that Miss Brown, supported and urged on by
several others, made an unwomanly entrance into the Convention,
and upon the platform itself, which was reserved for officers,
and as it would imply, already filled). There were only the two
other persons I mentioned who went with me to that Convention,
but they took their seats back among the audience, and did not
approach the platform. There were friends I found in that
audience to sustain me, but none others came with me for that
purpose. The platform was far from being full; it is a large
platform, and there might a hundred persons sit there, and not
incommode each other at all.
(Here Miss Brown read another extract from the same article, in
which Gen. Carey implies, that concerted measures had been set on
foot at the Woman's Rights meeting at the Tabernacle, the evening
after Miss Brown's first attempt at a hearing before the
Temperance Convention, for coming in upon them again _en masse_,
and revengefully).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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