Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
"'I am very glad to hear of the step in advance made by the Rhode
Island Legislature in constituting a Board of Women for some
important administrative purposes. Your intended proposal, that
women be impaneled on every jury where women are to be tried,
seems to me very good, and calculated to place the injustice to
which women are at present subjected, by the entire legal system,
in a very striking light.
"'I am, dear madam, yours sincerely,
"'MRS. PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS. J. S. MILL.'
"Immediately after the reports were published, they were sent to
various persons in Europe, and before the second Convention was held,
letters of cheer were received from Harriet Martineau, Marion Reid,
and others.
"Thus encouraged, we felt new zeal to go on with a work which had
challenged the understanding and constrained the hearts of the best
and soundest thinkers in the nation; had given an impulse to the women
of England and of Sweden--for Frederika Bremer had quoted from our
writings and reported our proceedings; our words had been like an
angel's visit to the prisoners of State in France and to the wronged
and outraged at home!
"Many letters were received from literary women in this country as
well as abroad. If not always ready to be identified with the work,
they were appreciative of its good effects, and, like Nicodemus, they
came by night to inquire 'how these things could be.' Self-interest
showed them the advantages accruing from the recognition of
equality--self-ism held them silent before the world till the reproach
should be worn away; but we credit them with a sense of justice and
right, which prompts them now to action. The rear guard is as
essential in the army as the advance; each should select the place
best adapted to their own powers."
As Mrs. Davis has fallen asleep since writing the above, we have
thought best to give what seemed to her the salient points of that
period in her own words.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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