Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
declaration of King Solomon to the contrary notwithstanding. And
here and to-day we lay new foundations. For the first time, law
and liberty are to be founded in nature and the government of the
moral universe. For the first time is it demanded that JUSTICE be
made our chief corner-stone. The ancient republics, not thus
underpinned, fell. Our old foundations, too, are fallen. In God's
wisdom, not in man's foolishness, let us henceforth build. And
the work of our hands, feeble as we seem to-day, shall survive
all the present kingdoms and dominions of the world.
Miss ANTHONY remarked that Theodore Tilton was in the house, and
had not yet spoken. She would like to hear his opinion.
Mr. TILTON replied that of course Miss Anthony was speaking in
pleasantry when she thus ingeniously pretended not to know his
opinion. This pretense was only a piece of strategy to compel him
to make a speech. Both she and he had lately been co-workers in a
local association for just such a purpose as to-day's enterprise
meditated--"The New York Equal Rights Association," of which he
had had the honor to be president, and Miss Anthony to be
secretary--an association which both its secretary and its
president were only too glad to see superseded by a larger and
more general movement. The apple tree bears more blossoms which
fall off than come to fruit. Our local association was the
necessary first blossom which had to be blown away by the wind.
No--he would rather say it was a blossom which had ripened to-day
into golden fruit. And now, said he, in this consecrated house,
at this sunset hour, amid these falling shadows, with a president
in the chair whose well-spent life has been crowned with every
virtue, let us make a covenant with each other such as was made
by the original members of the American Anti-Slavery Society--a
mutual pledge of diligent and earnest labor, not for the
abolition of chattel slavery, but for the political rights of all
classes, without regard to color or sex. Are we only a handful?
We are more than formed the Anti-Slavery Society--which grew into
a force that shook the nation. Who knows but that to-night we are
laying the corner-stone of an equally grand movement? Let us,
therefore, catch at this moment the cheering pretoken of the
prophecy that declares, "At evening time there shall be light!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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