Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
Yet that very day in that very city was a large assemblage of
women convened to protest against the gross wrongs of their
sex--the representatives of twenty millions of citizens of the
United States, composing one-half of the population being
governed without their consent by the other half, who, by virtue
of their superior strength, held the reins of power and
tyrannically denied them all representation. At that very meeting
at which that polished falsehood was uttered had the women, but
shortly before, been denied the privilege of silently presenting
their declaration of rights. More forcibly is this mortifying
disregard of the claims of women thrust in their faces from the
fact that, amid all this magnificent triumph with which the
growth of the century was commemorated, amid the protestations of
platforms all over the country of the grand success of the
principle of equal rights for all, the possibility of the future
according equal rights to women as well as to men was, with the
exception of one or two praiseworthy instances, as far as reports
have reached us, utterly ignored. The women have no
country--their rights are disregarded, their appeals ignored,
their protests scorned, they are treated as children who do not
comprehend their own wants, and as slaves whose crowning duty is
obedience.
Whether, on this great day of national triumph and national
aspiration, the possibilities of a better future for women were
forgotten; whether, from carelessness, willfulness, or
wickedness, their grand services and weary struggles in the past
and hopes and aspirations for the future were left entirely out
of the account, certain it is that our orators were too much
absorbed in the good done by men and for men, to once recur to
the valuable aid, self-denying patriotism and lofty virtues of
the nation's unrepresented women. There were a few exceptions:
Col. Wm. M. Ferry, of Ottawa county, Michigan, in his historical
address delivered in that county, July Fourth, took pains to make
favorable mention of the daughter of one of the pioneers, as
follows:
Louisa Constant, or "Lisette," as she was called, became her
father's clerk when twelve years old, and was as well known
for wonderful faculties for business as she was for her
personal attractions. In 1828, when Lisette was seventeen
years old, her father died. She closed up his business with
the British Company, engaged with the American Fur Company,
at Mackinaw, receiving from them a large supply of
merchandise, and for six years conducted the most successful
trading establishment in the northwest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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