Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
Lucretia Mott has been a preacher for years; her right to do so
is not questioned among Friends. But when Antoinette Brown felt
that she was commanded to preach, and to arrest the progress of
thousands that were on the road to hell; why, when she applied
for ordination they acted as though they had rather the whole
world should go to hell, than that Antoinette Brown should be
allowed to tell them how to keep out of it. She is now ordained
over a parish in the State of New York, but when she meets on the
Temperance platform the Rev. John Chambers, or your own Gen.
Carey (applause) they greet her with hisses. Theodore Parker
said: "The acorn that the school-boy carries in his pocket and
the squirrel stows in his cheek, has in it the possibility of an
oak, able to withstand, for ages, the cold winter and the driving
blast." I have seen the acorn men and women, but never the
perfect oak; all are but abortions. The young mother, when first
the new-born babe nestles in her bosom, and a heretofore unknown
love springs up in her heart, finds herself unprepared for this
new relation in life, and she sends forth the child scarred and
dwarfed by her own weakness and imbecility, as no stream can rise
higher than its fountain.
We find no report of the speeches of Frances D. Gage, Lydia Ann
Jenkins, Ernestine L. Rose, Euphemia Cochrane, of Michigan, nor J.
Mitchell, of Missouri, editor of the _St. Louis Intelligencer_, nor of
the presence of James Mott, whose services were always invaluable on
the committees for business and resolutions.
In 1857, the Legislature of Ohio passed a bill enacting that no
married man shall dispose of any personal property without having
first obtained the consent of his wife; the wife being empowered in
case of the violation of such act, to commence a civil suit in her own
name for the recovery of said property; and also that any married
woman whose husband shall desert her or neglect to provide for his
family, shall be entitled to his wages and to those of her minor
children. These amendments were warmly recommended by Gov. Salmon P.
Chase in his annual message. The Select Committee[20] of the Senate on
the petition asking the right of suffrage for woman, reported in favor
of the proposed amendment, recommending the adoption of the following
resolution:
_Resolved_, That the Judiciary Committee be instructed to report
to the Senate a bill to submit to the qualified electors at the
next election for Senators and Representatives an amendment to
the Constitution, whereby the elective franchise shall be
extended to the citizens of Ohio without distinction of sex.
But the bill was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 44 to 44. The
petition had received 10,000 signatures. We give this able report in
full.[21]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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