The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2): Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty YearsHarper, Ida Husted
History
The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2): Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years
Harper, Ida Husted
Anthony, Susan B. (Susan Brownell), 1820-1906
Miss Anthony said that she appeared on behalf of the signers of the
petitions and tendered to the Legislature thanks for the courteous
manner in which they had been received. They asked that husband and
wife should be tenants in common of property, but with a partition
upon the death of one; that a wife should be competent to discharge
trusts and powers, the same as a single woman; that the statute in
respect to married women's property should be made effectual, and
the wife's property descend as though she had been unmarried; that
married women should be entitled to execute letters testamentary
and of administration; that they should have power to make
contracts and transact business; that they should be entitled to
their own earnings, subject to their proportionate liability for
support of children; that post nuptial acquisitions should belong
equally to husband and wife; that married women should stand on the
same footing with single as parties or witnesses in legal
proceedings; that they should be equal guardians of their minor
children; that the homestead should be inviolable and inalienable
for widows and their children; that laws in relation to divorce
should be revised, and habitual drunkenness be made cause of
absolute divorce; that the preference of males in descent of real
estate should be abolished; that women should exercise the right of
suffrage, be eligible to all offices, occupations and professions,
entitled to act as jurors, eligible to employment in public
offices; that a law should be passed extending the masculine
designation in all statutes to females.
The committee, James L. Angle, of Monroe county, chairman, presented a
dignified and respectful report, denying the petition for suffrage but
recommending that the laws be so changed as to allow the wife to
collect and control her own earnings if the family were neglected by
the husband, and to require the written consent of the mother to the
apprenticeship of her children. The Legislature, however, refused to
pass such a bill, as did all succeeding Legislatures until 1860.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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