XL. OHIO…

XL. OHIO

The First Soldiers' Aid Society--Mrs. Mendenhall--Cincinnati Equal Rights Association, 1868--Homeopathic Medical College and Hospital--Hon. J. M. Ashley--State Society, 1869--Murat Halstead's Letter--Dayton Convention, 1870--Women Protest against Enfranchisement--Sarah Knowles Bolton--Statistics on Coeducation--Thomas Wentworth Higginson--Woman's Crusade, 1874--Miriam M. Cole--Ladies' Health Association--Professor Curtis--Hospital for Women and Children, 1879--Letter from J. D. Buck, M. D.--March, 1881, Degrees Conferred on Women--Toledo Association, 1869--Sarah Langdon Williams--The Sunday Journal--The Ballot-Box--Constitutional Convention--Judge Waite--Amendment Making Women Eligible to Office--Mr. Voris, Chairman Special Committee on Woman Suffrage--State Convention, 1873--Rev. Robert McCune--Centennial Celebration--Women Decline to Take Part--Correspondence--Newbury Association--Women Voting, 1871--Sophia Ober Allen--Annual Meeting, Painesville, 1885--State Society, Mrs. Frances M. Casement, President--Adelbert College.

Early in the year 1862, Cincinnati became a hospital for the army operations under General Grant and was soon filled with wounded heroes from Fort Donelson and Pittsburg Landing, and the women here, as in all other cities, were absorbed in hospital and sanitary work. To the women of Cleveland is justly due the honor of organizing the first soldiers' aid society, a meeting being called for this purpose five days after the fall of Fort Sumter. Through the influence of Mrs. Mendenhall were inaugurated the great sanitary fairs[285] there, and by her untiring energy and that of the ladies who labored with her, many of our brave soldiers were restored to health. Mrs. Annie L. Quinby writes:

In the autumn of 1867 Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony made a lecturing tour through Ohio and roused popular thought on the question of suffrage. March 28, 1868, the Cincinnati Equal Rights Association[286] was formed, auxiliary to the National Society, of which Lucretia Mott was president. April 7, 1869, Mrs. Ryder called the attention of the meeting to a resolution offered by Mr. Gordon in the State legislature, to amend the constitution so as to strike out the word male, proposing that at the October election, "in all precincts in the State, there shall be a separate poll, at which all white women over 21 years of age shall be permitted to vote, and if the votes cast be a majority of all the white women, the constitution shall be amended." Mrs. Ryder seemed to think the proposition a very fair one, or intended by the mover to give the women, if they wanted to vote, the opportunity of saying so on this amendment to the constitution. Mrs. Blangy also concurred in this view of the subject. Mrs. Quinby expressed her indignation at the proposition, saying she believed its passage by the legislature would be detrimental to the cause, both on account of its provisions and the mode of accomplishing the object of the resolution. As it stood, it could but fail, as women were not prepared for it at the present time, and the proposition was not that the majority of votes cast should settle the question, but that the number cast in favor of it should be a majority of all the women in the State 21 years of age. She therefore thought we should express our decided disapproval of this amendment. Mrs. Leavitt also declared her opposition to this resolution, believing it to have been offered for the sole purpose of stalling the woman suffrage movement for years to come. She thought this association should express its decided opposition to this resolution. Mrs. Butterwood and others followed in the same strain, and it was finally agreed unanimously that the corresponding secretary be instructed to write to the mover of the resolution, expressing disapprobation of some of the terms of the amendment, with the hope that it will not pass in the form offered, and politely requesting Mr. Gordon to define his position as the resolution is susceptible of being construed both for and against equal rights.

At a meeting held April 21, 1869, delegates[287] were elected to attend the May anniversary of the American Equal Rights Association in New York. Mrs. Margaret V. Longley was placed on the executive committee of the National Association to represent Ohio. On her return from New York she joined with the Cincinnati Equal Rights Society in a call for a convention in Pike's Hall, September 15, 16, 1869, for the organization of an Ohio State Society.[288] Mrs. Longley presided; the audiences were large and enthusiastic;[289] the press of the city gave extended reports. Murat Halstead, editor of the Cincinnati Commercial, sent the following reply to his invitation:

CINCINNATI, July 28, 1869.

Mrs. M. V. LONGLEY: Dear Madam--I cannot sign your call for a woman suffrage convention, for I do not feel a serious interest in the subject. That there are woman's wrongs that the law-makers should right, I believe. For instance, I think married women should hold property independently; that they should be able to save and enjoy the fruits of their own industry; and that they should not be absolutely in the power of lazy, dissipated or worthless husbands. But I cannot see clearly how the possession of the ballot would help women in the reform indicated. If, however, a majority of the women of Ohio should signify by means proving their active interest in the subject that they wanted to acquire the right of suffrage, I don't think I would offer opposition.

M. HALSTEAD.

Mrs. Livermore and Miss Anthony made some amusing strictures on Mr. Halstead's letter, which called out laughter and cheers from the audience. April 27 and 28, 1870, a mass-meeting was held in Dayton. Describing the occasion, Miss Sallie Joy, in a letter to a Boston paper, says:

The west is evidently wide awake on the suffrage question. The people are working with zeal almost unknown in the East, except to the more immediately interested, who are making a life-labor of the cause. The two days' convention at Dayton was freighted with interest. Earnest women were there from all parts of the State. They of the west do not think much of distances, and consequently nearly every town of note was represented. Cleveland sent her women from the borders of the lake; Cincinnati sent hers from the banks of the Ohio; Columbus, Springfield, Toledo and Sydney were represented. Not merely the leaders were there, but those who were comparatively new to the cause; all in earnest,--young girls in the first flush of youth, a new light dawning on their lives and shining through their eyes, waiting, reaching longing hands for this new gift to womanhood,--mothers on the down-hill side of life, quietly but gladly expectant of the good that was coming so surely to crown all these human lives. Most of the speakers were western women--Mrs. Cutler, Mrs. Cole, Mrs. Stewart, of Ohio, and Miss Boynton, of Indiana. The East sent our own Susan B. Anthony, and Mrs. Livermore of Boston. Like every other convention, it grew more interesting the longer it continued, and just when the speakers were so tired that they were glad the work for the time was done, the listeners, like a whole army of Oliver Twists, were crying for more. They are likely to have more--a great deal more--before the work is done completely, for it is evident the leaders don't intend to let the thing rest where it is, but to push it forward to final success. From the list of resolutions considered and adopted, I send the following:

Resolved, That as the Democratic party has long since abolished the political aristocracy of wealth; and the Republican party has now abolished the aristocracy of race; so the true spirit of Republican Democracy of the present, demands the abolition of the political aristocracy of sex.

Resolved, That as the government of the United States has, by the adoption of the fifteenth amendment, admitted the theory that one man cannot define the rights and duties of another man, so we demand the adoption of a sixteenth amendment on the same principle, that one sex cannot define the rights and duties of another sex.

Resolved, That we rejoice in the noble action of the men of Wyoming, by which the right of suffrage has been granted to the women of that territory.

Resolved, That we feel justly proud of the action of those representatives of the General Assembly of Ohio, who have endeavored to secure an amendment to the State constitution, striking out the word "male" from that instrument.

It is rather remarkable that in a State which so early established two colleges admitting women--Oberlin in 1834, and Antioch in 1853--any intelligent women should have been found at so late a date as April 15, 1870, to protest against the right of self-government for themselves, yet such is the case, as the following protest shows:

We acknowledge no inferiority to men. We claim to have no less ability to perform the duties which God has imposed upon us than they have to perform those imposed upon them. We believe that God has wisely and well adapted each sex to the proper performance of the duties of each. We believe our trusts to be as important and as sacred as any that exist on earth. We feel that our present duties fill up the whole measure of our time and abilities; and that they are such as none but ourselves can perform. Their importance requires us to protest against all efforts to compel us to assume those obligations which cannot be separated from suffrage; but which cannot be performed by us without the sacrifice of the highest interests of our families and of society. It is our fathers, brothers, husbands and sons, who represent us at the ballot-box. Our fathers and brothers love us. Our husbands are our choice, and one with us. Our sons are what we make them. We are content that they represent us in the corn-field, the battle-field, at the ballot-box and the jury-box, and we them, in the church, the school-room, at the fireside and at the cradle; believing our representation, even at the ballot-box, to be thus more full and impartial than it could possibly be, were all women allowed to vote. We do, therefore respectively protest against legislation to establish woman suffrage in Ohio.

The above paper, signed by more than one hundred ladies of Lorain county, was presented, March 14, 1870, to the legislature assembled at Columbus. Mrs. Sarah Knowles Bolton, criticising the Oberlin protestants, said:

That so many signed is not strange, because the non-suffrage side is the popular one at present. Years hence, when it shall be customary for women to vote, it is questionable whether the lady who drew up that document would have many supporters.

If "we are not inferior to men," we must have as clear opinions and as good judgment as they. To say, then, that we are not capable of judging of political questions, is untrue. To say that we are not interested in such things is absurd, for who can be more anxious for good laws and good law-makers than women, who, for the most part, have sons and daughters in this whirlpool of temptation, called social and business life. If we are too ignorant to have an opinion, the fault lies at our own door.

These ladies reason upon the premises that the duties imposed upon us as we find them in this nineteenth century, are the duties, conditions, and relations established of God. Two things we do certainly find in the Bible with regard to this matter; that women are to bear children, and men to earn bread. The first duty we believe has been confined entirely to the female sex, but the male sex have not kept the other in all cases. If anybody has belonged for any considerable time to a benevolent institution, he has ascertained that women sometimes are obliged to earn bread and bear children also. A century or two ago, when women seldom thought of writing books, or being physicians or lawyers, professors or teachers, or doing anything but housework, probably they thought, as the ladies of Lorain county do to-day, they were in the blessed noonday of woman's enlightenment and happiness. Their husbands, very likely, needed something of the same companionship as the men of the present, but it was unpopular for girls to attend school. If these ladies, after careful study and thought, believe that woman suffrage will work evil in the land, they ought to say that, rather than base it upon lack of time. The enfranchisement of 15,000,000 women will be a balance of power for good or evil that will need looking after. As for our representing men at the fireside, I think it a great deal pleasanter that they be there in person. Nothing is more blessed than the home circle, and here I think if husbands were not so often represented by their wives, while they are absent evening after evening on "important business," the condition of things would be improved. If the ladies aforesaid cannot vote without the highest interests of their families being sacrificed, they ought to be allowed to remain in peace. I am glad they made this protest, not only because this is a country where honest views ought to be expressed, but because agitation pushes forward reform. I am glad that nearly half of our representatives were in favor of submitting this question to the women of the State, and that our interests were so ably defended by a talented representative from our own district. I do not think, however, by submitting it to the women, they would get a correct expression upon the subject. A good many would vote for suffrage, a few against it, and thousands would be afraid to vote. If it is granted, I do not suppose all women will vote immediately. Many prejudices will first have to give way. If women vote what they wish to vote, and there is no disorderly conduct at the polls in consequence, and no general disorder in the body politic, I do not see any objection to the voting being continued from year to year.

When women like Miss Jones of our city, now in California, take a few more professorships in a university over half-a-hundred competitors, write a few more libraries, show themselves capable of solving great questions, become ornaments to their professions, it will seem more absurd for them not to be enfranchised than it does now for them to be so.

Hon. J. M. Ashley, of Toledo, in a speech on the floor of congress, June 1, 1868, said:

I want citizenship and suffrage to be synonymous. To put the question beyond the power of States to withhold it, I propose the amendment to article fourteen, now submitted. A large number of Republicans who concede that the qualifications of an elector ought to be the same in every State, and that it is more properly a national than a State question, do not believe congress has the power under our present constitution to enact a law conferring suffrage in the States, nevertheless they are ready and willing to vote for such an amendment to the constitution as shall make citizenship and suffrage uniform throughout the nation. For this purpose I have added to the proposed amendment for the election of president a section on suffrage, to which I invite special attention.

This is the third or fourth time I have brought forward a proposition on suffrage substantially like the one just presented to the House. I do so again because I believe the question of citizenship suffrage one which ought to be met and settled now. Important and all-absorbing as many questions are which now press themselves upon our consideration, to me no one is so vitally important as this. Tariffs, taxation, and finance ought not to be permitted to supersede a question affecting the peace and personal security of every citizen, and, I may add, the peace and security of the nation. No party can be justified in withholding the ballot from any citizen of mature years, native or foreign born, except such as are non compos or are guilty of infamous crimes; nor can they justly confer this great privilege upon one class of citizens to the exclusion of another class.

The Revolution of March 19, 1868, said:

Notwithstanding the most determined hostility to the demands of the age for female physicians, institutions for their educational preparation for professional responsibilities are rapidly increasing. The ball first began to move in the United States,[290] and now a female medical college is in successful operation in London, where the favored monopolizers of physic and surgery were resolved to keep out all new ideas in their line by acts of parliament. But the ice-walls of opposition have melted away, and even in Russia a woman has graduated with high medical honors.

The following statistics from Thomas Wentworth Higginson settle many popular objections to a collegiate education for women:

GRADUATES OF ANTIOCH COLLEGE.--In a paper read before the Social Science Association in the spring of 1874 I pointed out the presumption to be, that if a desire for knowledge was implanted in the minds of women, they had also as a class the physical capacity to gratify it; and that therefore the burden of proof lay on those who opposed such education, on physiological grounds, to collect facts in support of their position. In criticising Dr. Clarke's book, "Sex in Education," I called attention to the fact that he has made no attempt to do this, but has merely given a few detached cases, whose scientific value is impaired by the absence of all proof whether they stand for few or many. We need many facts and a cautious induction; not merely a few facts and a sweeping induction. I am now glad to put on record a tabular view[291] of the graduates of Antioch, with special reference to their physical health and condition; the facts being collected and mainly arranged by Professor J. B. Weston of Antioch--who has been connected with that institution from its foundation--with the aid of Mrs. Weston and Rev. Olympia Brown, both graduates of the college. For the present form of the table, however, I alone am responsible.

It appears that of the 41 graduates, ranging from the year 1857 to 1873, no fewer than 36 are now living. Of these the health of 11 is reported as "very good"; 19 "good"; making 30 in all; 1 is reported as "fair"; 1 "uncertain"; 1 "not good," and 3 "unknown." Of the 41 graduates, 30 are reported as married and 11 are single, five of these last having graduated within three years. Of the 30 married, 24 have children, numbering 48 or 49 in all. Of the 6 childless, 3 are reported as very recently married; one died a few months after marriage, and the facts in the other cases are not given. Thirty-four of the forty-one have taught since graduated, and I agree with Professor Weston that teaching is as severe a draft on the constitution as study. Taking these facts as a whole, I do not see how the most earnest advocate of higher education could ask for a more encouraging exhibit; and I submit the case without argument, so far as this pioneer experiment at coeducation is concerned. If any man seriously believes that his non-collegiate relatives are in better physical condition than this table shows, I advise him to question forty-one of them and tabulate the statistics obtained.

In the following editorial in the Woman's Journal Mr. Higginson pursues the opposition still more closely, and answers their frivolous objections:

I am surprised to find that Professor W.S. Tyler of Amherst College, in his paper on "The Higher Education of Woman," in Scribner's Monthly for February, repeats the unfair statements of President Eliot of Harvard, in regard to Oberlin College. The fallacy and incorrectness of those statements were pointed out on the spot by several, and were afterwards thoroughly shown by President Fairchild of Oberlin; yet Professor Tyler repeats them all. He asserts that there has been a great falling off in the number of students in that college; he entirely ignores the important fact of the great multiplication of colleges which admit women; and he implies, if he does not assert, that the separate ladies' course at Oberlin has risen as a substitute for the regular college course. His words are these, the italics being my own:

In Oberlin, where the experiment has been tried under the most favorable circumstances, it has proved a failure so far as the regular college course is concerned. The number of young women in that course, instead of increasing with the prosperity of the institution, has diminished, so that it now averages only two or three to a class. The rest pursue a different curriculum, live in a separate dormitory, and study by themselves in a course of their own, reciting, indeed, with the young men, and by way of reciprocity and in true womanly compassion, allowing some of them to sit at their table in the dining-hall, but yet constituting substantially a female seminary, or, if you please, a woman's college in the university.--Scribner, February, page 457.

Now, it was distinctly stated by President Fairchild last summer, that this "different curriculum" was the course originally marked out for women, and that the regular college course was an after-thought. This disposes of the latter part of Professor Tyler's statement. I revert, therefore, to his main statement, that "the number of young women in the collegiate course has diminished, so that it now averages only two or three to a class." Any reader would suppose his meaning to be that taking one year with another, and comparing later years with the early years of Oberlin, there has been a diminution of women. What is the fact? The Oberlin College triennial catalogue of 1872 lies before me, and I have taken the pains to count and tabulate the women graduated in different years, during the thirty-two years after 1841, when they began to be graduated there. Dividing them into decennial periods, I find the numbers to be as follows: 1841-1850, thirty-two women were graduated; 1851-1860, seventeen women were graduated; 1861-1870, forty women were graduated. From this it appears that during the third decennial period there was not only no diminution, but actually a higher average than before. During the first period the classes averaged 3.2 women; during the second period 1.7 women, and during the third period 4 women. Or if, to complete the exhibit, we take in the two odd classes at the end, and make the third period consist of twelve classes, the average will still be 3.8, and will be larger than either of the previous periods. Or if, disregarding the even distribution of periods, we take simply the last ten years, the average will be 3.1. Moreover, during the first period there was one class (1842) which contained no women at all; and during the second period there were three such classes (1852-3, 7); while during the third period every class has had at least one woman.

It certainly would not have been at all strange if there had been a great falling off in the number of graduates of Oberlin. At the outset it had the field to itself. Now the census gives fifty-five "colleges" for women, besides seventy-seven which admit both sexes. Many of these are inferior to Oberlin, no doubt, but some rose rapidly to a prestige far beyond this pioneer institution. With Cornell University on the one side, and the University of Michigan on the other--to say nothing of minor institutions--the wonder is that Oberlin could have held its own at all. Yet the largest class of women it ever graduated (thirteen) was so late as 1865, and if the classes since then "average but two or three," so did the classes for several years before that date. Professor Tyler knows very well that classes fluctuate in every college, and that a decennial period is the least by which the working of any system can be tested. Tried by this test, the alleged diminution assumes a very different aspect. If, however, there were a great decline at Oberlin, it would simply show a transfer of students to other colleges, since neither Professor Tyler nor President Eliot will deny that the total statistics of colleges show a rapid increase in the number of women.

Moreover, I confess that my confidence in Professor Tyler's sense of accuracy is greatly impaired by these assertions about Oberlin, and also by his statement, which I must call reckless, at least, in regard to the inferiority in truth, purity and virtue of those women who seek the suffrage. He asserts (page 456) that "women--women generally--the truest, purest and best of the sex--do not wish for the right of suffrage." Now, if the women who oppose suffrage are truest, purest and best, the women who advocate it must plainly be inferior at all these points; and that is an assertion which not only these women themselves, but their brothers, husbands and sons are certainly entitled to resent. Mr. Tyler has a perfect right to argue for his own views, for or against suffrage, but he has no right to copy the Oriental imprecation, and say to his opponents, "May the grave of your mother be defiled!." He claims that he holds official relations to one "woman's college," one "female seminary" and one "young ladies' institute." Will it conduce to the moral training of those who enter those institutions that their officers set them the example of impugning the purity and virtue of those who differ in opinion from themselves?

But supposing Professor Tyler not to be bound by the usual bonds of courtesy or of justice, he is at least bound by the consistency of his own position. Thus, he goes out of his way to compliment Mrs. Somerville and Miss Mitchell. Both these ladies are identified with the claim for suffrage. He lauds "Uncle Tom's Cabin," but Mrs. Stowe has written almost as ably for the enfranchisement of woman as for the freedom of the blacks. He praises the "sacramental host of authoresses," who, he says, "will move on with ever-growing power, overthrowing oppression, restraining vice and crime, reforming morals and manners, purifying public sentiment, revolutionizing business, society and government, till every yoke is broken and all nations are won to the truth." But it has been again and again shown that the authoresses of America are, with but two or three exceptions, in favor of woman suffrage, and, therefore, instead of being "sacramental," do not even belong to Professor Tyler's class of "wisest, truest and best." He thus selects for compliment on one page the very women whom he has traduced on another. His own witnesses testify against him. It is a pity that such phrases of discourtesy and unfairness should disfigure an essay which in many respects says good words for women, recommends that they should study Greek, and says, in closing, that their elevation "is at once the measure and the means of the elevation of mankind."

In the autumn of 1884 an effort was made to exclude women from Adelbert College. We give an account thereof from the pen of Mrs. Sarah Knowles Bolton, published in the English Woman's Review of January, 1885:

DEAR EDITOR: The city of Cleveland has been stirred for weeks on this question of woman's higher education. Western Reserve College, founded in 1826, at Hudson, was moved to Cleveland in 1874, because of a gift of $100,000 from Mr. Amasa Stone, with the change of name to Adelbert College, in memory of an only son. A few young women had been students since 1873. In Cleveland, about twenty young ladies availed themselves of such admirable home privileges. Their scholarship was excellent--higher than that of the young men. They were absent from exercises only half as much as the men. Their conduct was above reproach. A short time since the faculty, except the president, Dr. Carroll Cutler, petitioned the board of trustees to discontinue coeducation at the college, for the assumed reasons that girls require different training from boys, never "identical" education; that it is trying to their health to recite before young men; "the strain upon the nervous system from mortifying mistakes and serious corrections is to many young ladies a cruel additional burden laid upon them in the course of study"; "that the provision we offer to girls is not the best, and is even dangerous"; that "where women are admitted, the college becomes second or third-rate, and that, worst of all, young men will be deterred from coming to this college by the presence of ladies." An "annex" was recommended, not with college degrees, but a subordinate arrangement with "diploma examinations, so far and so fast as the resources of the college shall allow."

As soon as the subject became known, the newspapers of the city took up the question. As the public furnishes the means and the students for every college, the public were vitally interested. Ministers preached about it, and they, with doctors and lawyers, wrote strong articles, showing that no "annex" was desired; that parents wished thorough, high, self-reliant education for their daughters as for their sons; that health was not injured by the embarrassment (?) of reciting before young men; that young men had not been deterred from going to Ann Arbor, Oberlin, Cornell, and other institutions where there are young women; that it was unjust to make girls go hundreds of miles away to Vassar or Smith or Wellesley, when boys were provided with the best education at their very doors; that, with over half the colleges of this country admitting women, with the colleges of Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Holland and France throwing open their doors to women, for Adelbert College to shut them out, would be a step backward in civilization.

The women of the city took up the matter, and several thousands of our best names were obtained to a petition, asking that girls be retained members of the college; judges and leading persons gladly signed. The trustees met November 7, 1884. The whole city eagerly waited the result. The chairman of the committee, Hon. I. W. Chamberlain of Columbus, who had been opposed to coeducation at first, from the favorable reports received by him from colleges all over the country, had become a thorough convert, and the report was able and convincing.

President Angell of Michigan University, where there are 1,500 students, wrote: "Women were admitted here under the pressure of public sentiment against the wishes of most of the professors. But I think no professor now regrets it, or would favor the exclusion of women. We made no solitary modification of our rules or requirements. The women did not become hoydenish; they did not fail in their studies; they did not break down in health; they have been graduated in all departments; they have not been inferior in scholarship to the men. We count the experiment here successful."

Galusha Anderson, president of Chicago University, wrote: "Our only law here is that the students shall act as gentlemen and ladies. They mingle freely together, just as they do in society, as I think God intended that they should, and the effect in all respects is good. I have never had the slightest trouble from the association of the sexes."

Chancellor Manatt of Nebraska University, for four years engaged in university work at Yale, in answer to the questions as to whether boys would be driven away from the institution, replied: "This question sounds like a joke in this longitude. As well say a girl's being born into a family turns the boys out of doors. It rather strengthens the home attraction. So in the university. I believe there is not a professor or student here who would not, for good and solid reasons, fight for the system."

President Warren of Boston University, lately the recipient of, L200,000, wrote: "The only opponents of coeducation I have ever known are persons who know nothing about it practically, and whose difficulties are all speculative and imaginary. Men are more manly and women more womanly when concerted in a wholly human society than when educated in a half-human one."

President White of Cornell wrote: "I regard the 'annex' for women in our colleges as a mere make-shift and step in the progress toward the full admission of women to all college classes, and I think that this is a very general view among men who have given unprejudiced thought to the subject. Having now gone through one more year, making twelve in all since women were admitted, I do not hesitate to say that I believe their presence here is good for us in every respect."

Professor Moses Coit Tyler of Cornell said: "My observation has been that under the joint system the tone of college life has grown more earnest, more courteous and refined, less flippant and cynical. The women are usually among the very best scholars, and lead instead of drag, and their lapses from good health are rather, yes, decidedly, less numerous than those alleged by the men. There is a sort of young man who thinks it not quite the thing, you know, to be in a college where women are; and he goes away, if he can, and I am glad to have him do so. The vacuum he causes is not a large one, and his departure is more than made up by the arrival in his stead of a more robust and manlier sort."

The only objectors to coeducation were from those colleges which had never tried it; President Porter of Yale thought it a suitable method for post-graduate classes, and President Seeley for a course of "lower grade" than Amherst.

President Cutler of Adelbert College made an able report, showing that the progress of the age is towards coeducation. Only fifty-three Protestant colleges, founded since 1830, exclude women; while 156 coeducational institutions have been established since that date.

Some of the trustees thought it desirable to imitate Yale,[292] and others felt that they knew what studies are desirable for woman better than she knew herself! When the vote was taken, to their honor be it said, it was twelve to six, or two to one, in favor of coeducation. The girls celebrated this just and manly decision by a banquet.

The inauguration of the women's crusade at this time (1874) in Ohio created immense excitement, not only throughout that State, but it was the topic for the pulpit and the press all over the nation. Those identified with the woman suffrage movement, while deeply interested in the question of temperance, had no sympathy with what they felt to be a desecration of womanhood and of the religious element in woman. They felt that the fitting place for petitions and appeals was in the halls of legislation, to senators and congressmen, rather than rumsellers and drunkards in the dens of vice and the public thoroughfares. It was pitiful to see the faith of women in God's power to effect impossibilities. Like produces like in the universe of matter and mind, and so long as women consent to make licentious, drunken men the fathers of their children, no power in earth or heaven can save the race from these twin vices. The following letter from Miriam M. Cole makes some good points on this question:

If the "woman's war against whisky" had been inaugurated by the woman suffrage party, its aspect, in the eyes of newspapers, would be different from what it now is. If Lucy Stone had set the movement on foot, it would have been so characteristic of her! What more could one expect from such a disturber of public peace? She, who has no instinctive scruples against miscellaneous crowds at the polls, might be expected to visit saloons and piously serenade their owners, until patience ceases to be a virtue. But for women who are so pressed with domestic cares that they have no time to vote; for women who shun notoriety so much that they are unwilling to ask permission to vote; for women who believe that men are quite capable of managing State and municipal affairs without their interference; for them to have set on foot the present crusade, how queer! Their singing, though charged with a moral purpose, and their prayers, though directed to a specific end, do not make their warfare a whit more feminine, nor their situation more attractive. A woman knocking out the head of a whisky barrel with an ax, to the tune of Old Hundred, is not the ideal woman sitting on a sofa, dining on strawberries and cream, and sweetly warbling, "The Rose that All are Praising." She is as far from it as Susan B. Anthony was when pushing her ballot into the box. And all the difference between the musical saint spilling the precious liquid and the unmusical saint offering her vote is, that the latter tried to kill several birds with one stone, and the former aims at only one.

Intemperance, great a curse as it is, is not the only evil whose effects bear most heavily on women. Wrong is hydra-headed, and to work so hard to cut off one head, when there is a way by which all may be dissevered, is not a far-sighted movement; and when you add to this the fact that the head is not really cut off, but only dazed by unexpected melodies and supplications, there is little satisfaction in the effort. We learn that, outside of town corporations that have been lately "rectified," the liquor traffic still goes on, and the war is to be carried into the suburbs. What then? Where next? Which party can play this game the longer? Tears, prayers and songs will soon lose their novelty--this spasmodic effort will be likely soon to spend itself; is there any permanent good being wrought? Liquor traffic opposes woman suffrage, and with good reasons. It knows that votes change laws, and it also knows that the votes of women would change the present temperance laws and make them worth the paper on which they are printed. While this uprising of women is a hopeful sign, yet it cannot make one law black or white. It may, for a time, mold public opinion, but depraved passions and appetites need wholesome laws to restrain them. If women would only see this and demand the exercise of their right of suffrage with half the zeal and unanimity with which they storm a man's castle, it would be granted. This is the only ax to lay at the root of the tree.

Springfield, Ohio, has just had a case in a Justice Court which attracted much attention and awakened much interest. A woman whose husband had reduced his family to utter want by drunkenness, entered a suit against the rumseller. An appeal from the drunkard's wife to the ladies of Springfield had been circulated in the daily papers, which so aroused them that a large delegation of the most respectable and pious women of the city came into the court. But the case was adjourned for a week. During this time the excitement had become so great that when the trial came on the court-room was full of spectators, and the number of ladies within the rail was increased three-fold. Mrs. E. D. Stewart made the plea to the jury. A verdict was rendered against the rumseller. An appeal will be taken; but the citizens of Springfield will never forget the influence which the presence of women, in sympathy with another wronged woman, had upon the court. And what added power those women would have had as judges, jurors and advocates; citizens crowned with all the rights, privileges and immunities justly theirs by law and constitution.

Of the work in Geauga county, Mrs. Sophia Ober Allen, of South Newbury writes:

In the winter of 1851-2, Anson Read circulated a petition praying the legislature to protect married women in their property rights; and from that time the subject of women's rights was frequently discussed in social and literary gatherings. In 1871, Mrs. Lima Ober proposed to be one of six women to go to the township election and offer her vote. Nine[293] joined her, but all their votes were rejected, the judges saying they feared trouble would be the result if they received them. From that year to 1876 these heroic women of South Newbury persisted in offering their votes at the town, state and presidential elections; and though always refused, they would repair to another room with the few noble men who sustained them, and there duly cast their ballots for justice and equality. On one occasion they polled fifty votes--thirty-one women and nineteen men. In 1876 they adopted a series of stirring resolutions with a patriotic declaration of principles.

In 1873, large meetings were held, and a memorial sent to the constitutional convention, asking for an amendment, that "the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged to any adult citizen except for crime, idiocy or lunacy." On January 12, 1874, a political club was organized,[294] which has been active in holding meetings and picnics, circulating petitions and tracts. On July 4, 1874, a basket picnic was held in Ober and Allen's grove, at which Gen. A. C. Voris was among the speakers.[295] Hon. A. G. Riddle, whose early life was spent mostly in Newbury, encouraged and assisted the work, both by voice and pen. During the winter of 1878, Susan B. Anthony, in company with my husband and myself, lectured in several towns under the auspices of the club. Miss Eva L. Pinney, a native of Newbury, was employed by the club to canvass the county. Her success was marked. In 1879 the treasury received a bequest of $50, from Reuben H. Ober, who, though spending much of his time in the East, ever sustained a live interest in the home society.[296]

Mrs. Sarah Langdon Williams sends us the following report from the Toledo society:

In the winter of 1869, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony returning from an extended trip through the West, spent a few days in Toledo. In addition to public meetings, their coming was the occasion for many pleasant and hospitable gatherings. A large circle of intelligent and earnest women were longing and waiting to do something to speed the movement for woman suffrage, when the coming of these pioneers of reform roused them to action. It was like the match to the fire all ready for kindling, and an organization was speedily effected.[297] From that time forward, the air seemed magnetized with reform ideas, and to the loyal band who stood true to their flag, new members were added from time to time, and from this little band went forth an influence, a steady force which has operated silently though continuously through both visible and invisible channels, moulding the thought and action of the community. The meetings of this association were regularly reported by the daily press, with more or less justice, according as the reporter present, or the newspaper which reported the proceedings, was more or less friendly.

A letter published in The Revolution of June 10, 1869, indicates the practical work of our association:

The first skirmish along the line of the suffrage army in Ohio has been fought, and the friends of reformation may well rejoice at the result. In this city there has existed for a long time a library association to which women were admitted as members, but in the control or management of which they had no voice. Under the pressure of influences set in motion by your visit, it was resolved that this relic of the past should be swept away, that women should be represented in the management as well as in the membership of the association. At the late election six directors were to be chosen among other officers, and Miss Anna C. Mott,[298] Mrs. M. W. Bond and Mrs. M. J. Barker were candidates upon a ticket called the Equal Rights Ticket, headed by Mr. A. W. Gleason, for president. The dangerous proposition, not only of allowing women to vote, but of giving them offices, was a bombshell in the camp of conservatism, and every influence that could be, was brought to bear against this ticket. After an exciting contest, the result showed that notwithstanding a powerful and influential opposition, the ticket was elected by a vote of from 186 to 220 out of 327 votes. This result has been all the more grateful, because in the opposition were to be found many of the most wealthy and respected citizens of Toledo.

As an index of the interest the women manifested in that election, three-fourths of them voted. It was interesting to notice the firmness with which the women walked up to the ballot-box. No trembling was perceptible. They carried the ballot with ease, deposited it with coolness, watched to see that no fraud was perpetrated, and then departed as noiselessly as they came. The deed was done. Woman's honor, woman's purity, woman's domestic felicity, woman's conjugal love, woman's fidelity to her home duties, all these and a thousand other of the finer qualities were destroyed. No more peace in families; no more quiet home evenings; no more refined domestic women; but wrangling and discords instead. Soldiers and sailors, policemen and gravel-shovelers had taken the place of wives and mothers. Sick at heart I went to my home and wept for American womanhood. But the sun rose as usual, and the world still revolved. I went to the police-court--all was quiet. I passed to the county-court, and looked over the docket--no new divorce cases met my gaze. With unsteady hand I have opened the morning papers for the past few days, but nothing there betrayed the terrible results of that false step. Oh, women! women! In the days of Indian warfare, the skilled hunter would tell you that after an attack, when all was quiet, and you thought the enemy had departed, the greatest danger awaited, and the most careful vigilance was required. So I still keep watching, for I know the vengeance of the gods must fall upon this worse than Sodom, for since women have voted, surely there be not five righteous within the city. Real estate is not falling, however, but then!--

The evening after the election, the friends of the association and of the successful tickets, gathered to witness the incoming of the new administration. Hearty words of cheer for the future were spoken. The president, Mr. Gleason, delivered a beautiful inaugural address, of which I send you a few sentences, and the meeting adjourned.

The president said: While thanking you most heartily, ladies and gentlemen, for the distinguished honor conferred upon me in the election, I do not forget that it is due to the great principles of equal rights and universal suffrage--not to any merits of my own. We live in an age of progress. In my humble opinion we have taken a great step forward in admitting ladies to the management of this association--not only from the fact that in this particular institution they hold an equal footing with ourselves, and of right are entitled to all its privileges, but from the more important fact that it is a recognition here of those principles which are now claiming recognition in the political institutions of our country. It is in the natural order of events that this "equal rights" movement should meet with opposition. All movements of a novel and radical character at their commencement meet with opposition. This is the ordeal through which they must pass, but their success or failure depends upon their intrinsic merit. Nothing is to be feared from opposition to any movement that possesses these elements. Whatsoever idea has its origin in the recesses of human nature, will, sooner or later, become embodied in living action, and so we have this assurance--that as here, so also in the political institutions of our country--this principle of equal rights, both to man and woman, will at last prevail.

In 1871 the Sunday Journal offered the association half a column, which was gratefully accepted, and Mrs. Sarah Langdon Williams appointed editor. The department increased to a full page, and the circulation of the paper became as large as that of either of the city dailies. When there was danger of its being sold to opponents of the cause, Mrs. Williams purchased one-half interest, and by so doing kept the other half in the hands of the friendly proprietor. In the Sunday Journal the association had a medium through which it could promptly answer all unjust attacks, and thus kept up a constant agitation. In November, 1875, the sale of the paper closed for a while direct communication between the association and the public. But soon becoming restive without any medium through which to express itself, the society started The Ballot-Box in April, 1876, raising money among the citizens in aid of the enterprise. With this first assistance the paper became at once self-supporting, and continued thus until April, 1878,[299] when it was transferred to Matilda Joslyn Gage, and published at Syracuse, N. Y.

The convention for the remodeling of the constitution of the State, in 1873-74, afforded an opportunity for unflagging efforts of the members of the association in the circulation of petitions; and so successful were they that when their delegates presented themselves with 1,500 signatures, asking for an amendment securing the right of suffrage to women, a member of the convention, on scanning the roll, exclaimed: "Why, you have here all the solid men of Lucas county." Mr. M. R. Waite, since chief-justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, was president of the convention, and in presenting the petition said the names on that paper represented fifteen millions of dollars. Mr. Waite's courtesy indicated stronger convictions regarding the rights of women than he really possessed. In an interview with our committee, appointed to secure a hearing from the members-elect--Mr. Waite and Mr. Scribner--Mr. Waite declared himself in favor of according equal wages to women, and believed them entitled to all other rights, except the right to vote. He thought women were entitled to a hearing in the convention, and would aid them all he could to secure the privilege. Mr. Waite, with great kindness of nature, possesses an inborn conservatism which curbs his more generous impulses. He adhered to this position in his decision in the case of Minor vs. Happersett, declaring that "the constitution of the United States has no voters." Many of the most sanguine friends were greatly disappointed. They had fully believed his love of justice would lead him to the broad interpretation of the constitution, so clearly the true one, set forth in the first article of the fourteenth amendment. It did prevail, however, when, after saying the constitution does not confer the right of suffrage with citizenship, he said: "If the law is wrong, it ought to be changed; but the power is not with the Supreme Court."

When, in February, 1873, an irascible judge of the Court of Common Pleas refused to ratify the appointment of a woman--Miss Mary Sibley--to the office of deputy clerk, which she had filled for eight years with unusual acceptance, on the ground that not being an elector she was legally disqualified, the association determined to dispute the decision in her behalf, and on applying through their president to Mr. Waite to act as counsel, he gave his unhesitating acceptance, and declared that if the appointment was illegal, the law ought to be changed at once. True to his promise, he defended her most ably, and engaged other counsel to act with him. His services were given gratuitously.

Subsequently, in the constitutional convention, an amendment was adopted making women eligible to appointive offices, and also to any office under the school control, with the exception of State commissioner. But when voted upon, the new constitution was lost, and with it these amendments. The cause had able advocates in the convention, leading whom was General A. C. Voris of Akron, who was made chairman of the Special Committee on Woman Suffrage. The Standing Committee on Elective Franchise was extremely unfriendly, conspicuously so the chairman, Mr. Sample. A Special Committee on Woman Suffrage was appointed, which performed its duty faithfully, and reported unanimously in favor. Mr. Voris worked for the measure with an enthusiasm equaled only by his ability. When the report came up for discussion he made a masterly speech of two hours, during which the attention was so close that a pin could be heard to drop. Other able speeches were also made in favor of the measure by some of the most talented members of the convention. It came within two votes of being carried. The defeat was largely due to the liquor influence in the convention. The cause, however, received a new impetus through the exertions of General Voris, to whom, second to no other person in Ohio, should the thanks of the women be rendered. During the contest the Toledo society was constantly on the alert. On three occasions it sent its delegates to the convention; but it has not limited its work to Ohio alone; it has given freely of its means whenever it could to aid the struggle in other States, and has rolled up large petitions to congress asking for a sixteenth amendment.

When the State convention met in Toledo, February, 1873, the members of the city society exerted themselves to the utmost to have all arrangements for their reception and entertainment of the most satisfactory character, and the delegates unanimously agreed they had never before had so delightful and successful a meeting. Many lasting friendships were formed. The opera-house was well filled at every session of the three days' convention. At the opening session a cordial address of welcome was given by Rev. Robert McCune, one of Toledo's most eloquent Republicans. The mayor of the city, Dr. W. W. Jones, a staunch Democrat, also made a courteous speech.

The Toledo Society has always held itself an independent organization, though its members, individually, have identified themselves as they chose with other associations. Its attitude has been of the most uncompromising character. It has never been cajoled into accepting a crumb in any way in the place of the whole loaf. Sometimes this has brought upon it the condemnation of friends, but in the long run it has won respect, even from bitter opponents. An illustration of this was given in its action with regard to the centennial celebration. The Fourth of July, 1876, was to be observed in Toledo as a great gala day. Long before its arrival preparations were in progress through which patriotic citizens were to express their gratitude over the nation's prosperity on the one-hundredth anniversary of freedom. All trades, professions and organizations were to join in one vast triumphal procession. A call was issued for a meeting, to which all organizations were requested to send representatives. The Woman Suffrage Association was not neglected, and a circular of invitation was mailed to its president. This raised a delicate question, for how could women take part in celebrating the triumphs of their country whose laws disfranchised them? But, having received a courteous recognition, they must respond with equal courtesy. The letter was laid before the society, and the president instructed to politely decline the honor. The Ballot-Box of May, 1876, contains the correspondence:

TOLEDO, Ohio, April 8, 1876.

At a meeting of citizens, held at White's Hall, on the evening of the 6th inst., the undersigned were instructed to invite your organization, with others, to send a representative to a meeting to be held at White's Hall, on the evening of Monday, April 17, which will elect an executive committee, and make other arrangements for a celebration by Toledo of the one-hundredth anniversary of American independence in a manner befitting the occasion and the character of our city. It is earnestly desired that every organization, of whatever nature, in Toledo, be represented at this meeting. We would, therefore, ask of you that you lay the matter before your organization at its next regular meeting, or in case it shall hold no meeting before the 17th, that you appear as a representative yourself.

GUIDO MARX, Chairman.

D. R. LOCKE, JAMES H. EMORY, Secretaries.

This was laid before the association at a meeting which occurred the same afternoon, and by the order of the society the invitation therein conveyed was replied to in season to be read at the meeting at White's Hall, April 17:

TOLEDO, Ohio, April 15, 1876.

Hon. Guido Marx, Messrs. D. R. Locke and James H. Emory:

GENTLEMEN: The printed circular, with your names attached, inclosed to my address as president of the Toledo Woman Suffrage Association, inviting that body to send a representative to a meeting to be held at White's Hall, Monday evening, April 17, to elect an executive committee and make other arrangements for a celebration by Toledo of the one-hundredth anniversary of American independence, was received just in time to lay before the meeting held April 10. It was there decided that while the members of the association fully appreciate the generosity of the men of Toledo, and feel grateful for the implied recognition of their citizenship, yet they manifestly have no centennial to celebrate, as the government still holds them in a condition of political serfdom, denying them the greatest right of citizenship--representation.

Conscious, however, of the great results which the nation's hundred years have achieved in building up a great people, we are aware that you, as American men, have cause for rejoicing, and we bid you God-speed in all efforts which you may make in the approaching celebration. In an equal degree we feel it inconsistent, as a disfranchised class, to unite with you in the celebration of that liberty which is the heritage of but one-half the people. It is the will, therefore, of the association that I respond to the above effect, thanking you for your courteous invitation, and recognizing with pleasure among your names those who have heretofore extended to us their sympathy and aid. I remain, with sincere respect, yours,

SARAH R. L. WILLIAMS, President T. W. S. A.

The letter was intended to be in all respects courteous, as the writer and the society which she represented had naught but the kindest of feelings toward those who, in so friendly a manner, recognized their citizenship by inviting them to take part in the meeting, and also toward the Toledo public, who, as a general thing, had treated their organization with friendly consideration. It appears, however, that their attitude was misconstrued, according to articles subsequently published in the Blade and Commercial, which we reproduce below:

The women say they "manifestly have no centennial to celebrate." If we are not mistaken, the women of this country have enjoyed greater progress than the men under our free government, and it illy becomes them now to steadily and persistently pout because they have not yet attained the full measure of their earthly desires--the ballot-box. Better by far give a hearty show of appreciation of benefits received, and thereby materially aid in further progress. Nothing can be gained by their refusing to celebrate the one-hundredth anniversary of civil and religious liberty. The rights of all are necessarily restricted wherever there is a government, and time and experience can alone demonstrate just what extension or contraction of rights and liberties may be essential to the general good. In our judgment the women, by refusing to participate in the coming Fourth of July celebration, have committed an error, the influence of which cannot but prove prejudicial to the interests of their association. The opposite course would undoubtedly have won friends.--Blade.

A singularly uncourteous letter was the one sent by the Woman Suffrage Association to the meeting at White's Hall. Ninety-nine-hundredths of the women of the country will be surprised to learn that they "have no centennial to celebrate," and will be still more surprised when they discover that it is "inconsistent" for them to unite with their brothers, fathers, sons and husbands "in the celebration of the liberty which is the heritage" of all the people. We cannot but feel that the claims set forth by the association would command more respectful consideration with the display of a different spirit. The maids and matrons of 1776 were of a different mold.--Commercial.

The Blade has been a good friend to woman suffrage for many years, but we feel that the present article was written in a spirit of needless irritability, such as we should think might ensue from a fit of indigestion. The Commercial, since its change of management, has certainly not been unfriendly, and we have thought fair. Its present comments are unjust. The following editorial appeared in The Ballot-Box of the same date:

WHY WE CANNOT CELEBRATE THE CENTENNIAL.--The city dailies criticise the suffrage association somewhat severely for declining to unite in the centennial celebration. Perhaps from the outlook of masculine satisfaction it may seem astonishing that patriotism should not inspire us with gratitude for the crumbs from the national table; that we should not rejoice at the great banquet being prepared. But it is as impossible for us to look from their standpoint, as for them to see from ours. While appreciating the kindnesses measured out to us in this city by our friends and the press, yet laboring without visible results for the recognition of our rights as citizens of the United States, we cannot, even through the potent incentive of sympathizing with our "husbands, fathers, brothers and sons," lay aside our grievances and rejoice in a triumph which more clearly marks our own humiliation.

Can our friends inform us what is our crime, that we are denied the right of representation? Can they point to any mental or moral deficiency, to render justifiable our being denied political rights? If not--if there is no just cause for our disfranchisement, it surely should not excite surprise that we cannot rejoice with those who systematically persist in perpetrating this great wrong. With no discredit to any of the sovereign voters of this nation, we cannot forget that the most ignorant negro, the most degraded foreigner, even refugees from justice, are accorded the rights which we have been demanding in vain; and we are conscious every day and hour these privileges are denied us, that we are not only wronged by the American government, but insulted. Every year that our appeals for political rights to congress and the legislature are denied, insult is heaped upon injury. Women are told by those who are in the full enjoyment of all the privileges which this government can confer, to rejoice in what little they have, and wait patiently until more is bestowed. Wait we must, because they have the reins of power, but to wait patiently, with the light we have to perceive our relative condition, would be doing that for which we should despise ourselves.

We are not laboring for to-day alone, but for the fruition which must come from the establishment of justice. If we fail in this memorial year, a brighter day must surely come. Our failure now will be the failure of the country to improve its opportunities. All the successes which may be rejoiced over, all the triumphs of trade, commerce and invention are secondary to the rights of citizens, to those principles which lie at the foundation of national liberty. When women are recognized as citizens of this republic, there will be some occasion for their thankfulness and rejoicing; then they can join in the jubilee which celebrates the birthday of a mighty nation.

At the June meeting of the association, a declaration of rights, and a series of radical resolutions were adopted. The president urged the society to stand firm in the determination to take no part in the centennial celebration, and the members of the suffrage association passed the Fourth of July quietly at their own homes, but they caused a banner, bearing the inscription, "Woman Suffrage and Equal Rights," to be hung across one of the principal streets, under which the whole procession passed. Of the original members of the society,[300] some who during its earlier years took an active part have removed elsewhere, and a few have passed to the beyond. But the majority still remain, and are earnest in their labors with the hope for a better day, undampened by the delays and disappointments which attend every step in progress.

There is a flourishing association at Cleveland called the Western Reserve Club;[301] Mrs. Sarah M. Perkins and her highly educated daughters, graduates of Vassar College, are among the leading members. They hold regular meetings, have a course of lectures every winter and are exerting a wide influence. The club consists of thirty members, paying five dollars annually into the treasury.

The Painesville Equal Rights Society,[302] formed November 20, 1883, is one of the most flourishing county associations in the State. It numbers 150 members, and it has organized many local societies in the vicinity. The annual meeting of the State society,[303] held at Painesville, May 11, 12, 13, 1885, with a large representation of the most active friends present, by a unanimous vote declared itself no longer auxiliary to the American, and thereby secured the cooeperation of the Toledo, South Newbury, and other independent local organizations of the State.

We are indebted to Annie Laurie Quinby for the following account of the founding of a hospital for women and children, and of some of the difficulties women encountered in gaining admittance into the medical colleges:

Mrs. Quinby says: In 1867, some Cincinnati ladies met at the residence of Mrs. J. L. Roberts and organized a health association, the object of which was to obtain and disseminate knowledge in regard to the science of life and health. Mrs. Leavett addressed the ladies on the importance of instituting a medical school for women, stating a recent conversation she had with Prof. Curtis, and suggesting that he be invited to lay his views before them. A vote to that effect was passed, and in his address Professor Curtis touched the following points:

Women have greater need than men of the knowledge of the science of life, and can make more profitable use of it. First: They need this knowledge. In a practice of thirty-six years, full seven-tenths of my services have been devoted to women who, had they been properly instructed in the science of life, and careful to obey those instructions, would not have needed one-seventh of those services, while they would have prevented six-sevenths of their sickness, suffering and loss of time, and a like proportion of the expenses of doctoring, nursing, medicines, etc., etc. Second: They can make a far better and more profitable use of this knowledge than men can, because they can better appreciate the liabilities, sufferings and wants of their sex, which are far more numerous and imperative than ours; and they are always with us, from infancy to boyhood and womanhood, to watch us and protect us from injury, and to relieve us promptly from the sufferings that may afflict us, as well as to teach us how to avoid them. Third: Their intellectual power to learn principles is as great as ours, their perceptions are quicker than ours, their sympathies are more tender and persistent, and their watchfulness and patient perseverance with the sick are untiring. I regard the teaching and practice of the science of life as woman's peculiarly appropriate sphere. Its value to the family of the wife and the mother, is beyond estimation in dollars and cents, by the husband and father. No money that he can properly spend to secure it to his daughters, should be otherwise appropriated; for, should they never enter the family relation, it will be a means of escape from sickness mortification and expense to themselves, and of useful and honorable subsistence, not only priceless in its possession, but totally inalienable by any reverses of fortune. The possession of this knowledge from their infancy up, would do more to prevent their becoming poor and "friendless," than do all the alms houses for the former, and "homes" for the latter that society can build, while it would cost less to each individual than does an elegant modern piano. Forty years ago your speaker obtained from the legislature of Ohio a liberal university charter under the title of "The Literary and Botanical Medical College of Ohio," which was afterwards changed to "The Cincinnati Literary and Scientific Institute and Physio-Medical College." By the aid of able assistants he conducted this institution for the benefit of men only, till, in 1851, the students of the class were between eighty and ninety. From that time to the present, he has received women into the classes and demonstrated that they are not only as competent as men to learn all parts of the science of life, but, in very many particulars, far better qualified for the practice of the art of curing disease. The last session of the college was suspended that he might travel in the country and learn the disposition of the friends of progress to establish the institution on a permanent foundation, and is happy to say that all that seems necessary to that glorious consummation is the prompt and concentrated effort of a few judicious and influential ladies and their friends to secure pecuniary aid.

June 11, 1879, a dispensary for women and children was opened in Cincinnati, by Drs. Ellen M. Kirk, and M. May Howells, graduates of the New York College and Hospital for Women. Their undertaking proving successful, with other ladies of wealth and ability they soon after established a hospital. November 1, 1881, the certificate of incorporation[304] was filed in the office of the secretary of state. The ladies labored unweariedly for the support of these institutions. At two public entertainments they realized nearly a thousand dollars. For the establishment of a homeopathic college they manifested equal earnestness and enthusiasm. Many of them interested in this mode of practice, seeing the trials of Dr. Pulte in introducing this new theory of medicine, determined to help him in building up a college and hospital for that practice. By one fair they raised $13,500, net profits, and the Pulte Medical College was established. But the remarkable fact about these institutions is that after being started through the labors of women, women appealed in vain for admission for scholarships for a long time. For a clear understanding of the matter, and a knowledge of the defense made in behalf of the right of women to enter the college, I send you the following from Dr. J. D. Buck:

Pulte Medical College, of Cincinnati, was organized under the common law, and opened in 1872, for the admission of students, with no provision, either for or against the admission of women. From time to time, during the first seven years, the subject of the admission of women was broached, but generally bullied out of court amid sneers and ridicule. The faculty stood five against and four for. The opposition was the most pronounced and bitter imaginable, the staple argument being that the mingling of the sexes in medical colleges led always and necessarily to licentiousness.

Finally, in the fall of 1877, seven of the nine members of the faculty voted to admit women. One professor voted no, and the leader of the opposition, Prof. S. R. Beckwith--a life-long opponent of the broader culture of women--left the meeting with the purpose of arresting all action. In this, however, he failed; the vote was confirmed.

On the following day another meeting was held, when the vote was re-considered and again confirmed, each of the seven members agreeing to stand by it. Still again, another meeting was called, at the instance of the leader of the opposition, and in the absence of two of the staunch friends, a bare majority of the whole faculty voted to exclude women, as heretofore, and notified the applicants for admission, who had been officially informed of the previous resolution to admit them, that they would not be admitted.

Forbearance on the part of the friends of justice was no more to be thought of, and notice was given that the wrong should be righted, at all hazards. For the next two years war raged persistent and unflinching on the part of the friends of the rights of women, bitter and slanderous on the part of the opposition. All the tricks of the politician were resorted to to defeat the cause of right, and more than once by misrepresentation they obtained the announcement in the public press that the case was decided, and women forever excluded. Still the cause moved on to complete triumph, and to the disgrace and final exclusion from the college of two of the most bitter leaders of the opposition.

In the fall of 1879 it was announced in the annual catalogue, "that students will be admitted to the lectures of Pulte college without distinction of sex," a very simple result indeed, as the outcome of two years' warfare. At the opening of lectures the first of October, four female students presented themselves, and were admitted to matriculation. Every prophecy of disaster had failed. The class was an increase in numbers over that of any preceding year, and showed a marked improvement in deportment and moral tone from the presence of ladies, who from their high character and bearing exerted a restraining influence, as they always do, on those disposed to be gentlemen. At the commencement exercises in March, 1881, three women, viz: Miss S. C. O'Keefe, Mrs. Mary N. Street, and Mrs. M. J. Taylor, received the degree of the college, after having attended the same lectures and been submitted to the same examination as the male graduates. The prize for the best examination (in writing) in physiology, was awarded to Miss Stella Hunt, of Cincinnati. The right of women to admittance to this college cannot again be raised except by a two-thirds vote of both faculty and trustees--a majority which will be difficult to obtain after the record which the women have already made as students in the institution.

Yours truly, J. D. BUCK.

After all this educational work and this seeming triumph for the recognition of an equal status in the colleges for women, we find this item going the rounds of the daily journals, under date of Cleveland, March 29, 1885:

Considerable excitement prevails among the homeopathists of Cleveland. Commencement exercises of the college are to be held next Tuesday evening, and Miss Madge Dickson, of Chambers, Pa., was to have delivered the salutatory address. Dr. H. H. Baxter, a prominent professor of the college, objected, saying a woman salutatorian would disgrace the college. Miss Dickson resigned the honor, and no address will be delivered.

In April, 1873, Miss Nettie Cronise of Tiffin, was admitted to the bar. In the following September, her sister Florence was admitted, and they practiced as N. & F. Cronise, until Miss Nettie's marriage with N. B. Lutes, with whom she has since been associated under the firm name of Lutes & Lutes. Miss Florence Cronise has her office in Tiffin. Soon after commencing practice Mrs. Lutes was appointed to examine applicants for admission to the bar, the first instance of a woman serving in this capacity in the United States, although Florence Cronise and one or two other women have since done like duty. These ladies and Miss Hulett were the first women to open law offices and begin an active, energetic practice of the profession.

In 1885, Miss Mary P. Spargo of Cleveland, was admitted to the bar.

FOOTNOTES:

[285] Among those associated with Mrs. Mendenhall were Mrs. Calvin W. Starbuck, Mrs. W. Woods, Miss Elizabeth Morris, Miss Ellen Thomas, Mrs. Kendrick, sister to General Anderson, Mrs. Caldwell, Mrs. Annie Ryder, Mrs. Mary Graham, Mrs. Louisa Hill, Mrs. Hoadly.

[286] The officers of Cincinnati Equal Rights Society were: President, Mrs. H. A. Leavitt; Vice-President, Mr. J. B. Quinby; Corresponding-Secretary, Mrs. A. L. Ryder; Recording-Secretary, Mrs. L. H. Blangy; Treasurer, Mrs. Mary Moulton; Executive Committee, Mrs. J. B. Quinby, Mr. ---- Hill, Mrs. A. L. Ryder. Mrs. Dr. Mortell, Mrs. Mary Moulton, Mrs. Mary Graham, Mrs. Annie Laurie Quinby, Mrs. L. H. Blangy and Mrs. Dr. Gibson.

[287] The delegates appointed were, Mr. and Mrs. J. B. Quinby, Mrs. Mary Graham, Mrs. Charles Graham, Mrs. Mary Moulton, Mrs. Dr. Morrel, Mrs. Blangy, Mrs. M. V. Longley, Mr. and Mrs. A. G. W. Carter, and Mrs. Soula and daughter.

[288] The officers of the State Society were: President, Mrs. H. Tracy Cutler, M. D., Cleveland; Vice-President, Mrs. M. V. Longley; Recording Secretary, Mrs. H. M. Downey, Xenia; Corresponding Secretary, Mrs. Miriam M. Cole, Sidney; Treasurer, Mrs. L. H. Crall, Cincinnati; Warden, Mr. J. B. Quinby, Cincinnati; Business Committee, A. J. Boyer, esq., Dayton; Elias Longley, esq., Cincinnati; Mrs. R. L. Segur, Toledo; Mrs. Morgan K. Warwick, Cleveland; Dr. M. T. Organ, Urbana; Mrs. E. D. Stewart, Springfield; Miss Rebecca S. Rice, Yellow Springs.

[289] The speakers at Pike's Hall were Susan B. Anthony, Mary A. Livermore, Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell, Mrs. Dr. Chase, Miriam M. Cole, Mr. A. J. Boyer, Dr. Mary Walker, J. J. Bellville, Mary B. Hall, Mrs. Dr. Keckeler, Mrs. Longley, Mrs. Graham, Mrs. Griffin, and Elizabeth Boynton.

[290] At a meeting of the corporators of the Cleveland Homeopathic Medical College and Hospital for Women, the following board of trustees was appointed: Stillman Witt, T. S. Beckwith, Bolivar Butts, N. Schneider, M. D., T. S. Lindsey, Mrs. D.R. Tilden, Mrs. S. F. Lester, Mrs. Peter Thatcher, Mrs. C. A. Seaman, M. D., Mrs. M. K. Merrick, M. D., Mrs. S. D. McMillan, Mrs. M. B. Ambler, Mrs. Lemuel Crawford, Mrs. Henry Chisholm, Mrs. G. B. Bowers. At a subsequent meeting of the board of trustees, the following officers were chosen: President, Mrs. C. A. Seaman, M. D.; Vice-president, Mrs. S. F. Lester; Secretary, Mrs. M. B. Ambler; Treasurer, Mrs. S. D. McMillan.

[291]

A = Individual. B = Year of Graduation. C = Married or Single. D = Number of Children. E = Health.

+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ | A| B | C | D | E |Remarks | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ | 1|1857|Married| 3 |Not living|Died, 1874. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ | 2| " | " | 1 | Good |Taught eleven years; now in Indiana.| +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ | 3| " | " | 2 | " |Has taught ever since graduating; | | | | | | |now in Ohio. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ | 4|1858| " | 2 |Very good |Taught five years; now in Ohio. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ | 5| " | " | 6 | Good |Has taught school; slight bronchial | | | | | | |trouble. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ | 6|1859| " | 3 | " | | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ | 7| " | " | 3 |Uncertain |Has taught school. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ | 8| " | " | | Good |Taught thirteen years, till married,| | | | | | |in 1872. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ | 9| " | " |2 or 3 | |No recent intelligence; health good | | | | | | |so far as known. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |10|1860|Single | | " |Taught some years; now in England. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |11| " |Married| 2 | |Taught three years. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |12| " |Single | | " |Has taught school. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |13| " | " | |Very good |Physician in Missouri. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |14| " |Married| 1 | " " |Has taught school. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |15| " |Single | | " " |Constantly a teacher, except two | | | | | | |years in Europe. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |16| " |Married| | " " |Minister in Connecticut; lately | | | | | | |married. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |17|1861| " | | Good |Taught three years; journalist in | | | | | | |Ohio. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |18| " | " | 1 | |Has taught school. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |19|1862| " | 1 |Not living|Died of hereditary consumption. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |20| " | " | 1 | " " | | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |21| " | " | 1 | Good | | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |22| " | " | 2 |Very good |Resides in Ohio. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |23| " | " | 2 | " " |Resides in Vermont. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |24| " | " | 2 | " " |Resides in New York. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |25| " | " | | Good |Lately married. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |26| " | " | 3 | " |Has taught school. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |27|1863| " | 2 |Very good |Taught four years, till married. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |28|1864| " | 3 | " " |Taught one year. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |29|1866| " | | Not good |Troubled with scrofula, dating back | | | | | | |earlier than her school days; | | | | | | |practices medicine in Missouri. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |30|1868|Single | | Good |Very good & Has just returned from | | | | | | |three years in Europe, where she | | | | | | |took long pedestrian journeys. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |31| " |Married| 1 | " |Has taught school and is teaching | | | | | | |now. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |32| " | " | 2 | " |Taught three years. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |33|1869|Single | | |Taught constantly and is teaching | | | | | | |now. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |34|1870|Married| |Not living|Died, 1871. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |35| " | " | 1 | Good |Has taught school in Missouri. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |36| " | " | 1 | " |Taught one year. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |37|1871|Single | | Unknown |Came to college in delicate health, | | | | | | |which improved while there; the | | | | | | |youngest woman ever graduated at | | | | | | |Antioch. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |38|1872| " | |Not living|Died, 1873, of hereditary | | | | | | |consumption. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |39| " | " | | Fair |Teaching in Massachusetts. | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |40|1873| " | | Good | | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+ |41| " | " | | " | | +--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+

[292] But even old Yale has to succumb to the on-sweeping tide of equal chances to women, as will be seen by the following Associated Press item in the New York Sun of October 2, 1885: "NEW HAVEN, Conn., Oct. 1.--Miss Alice B. Jordin, of Coldwater, Mich., a graduate of the academic and law departments of the University of Michigan, entered the Yale law school to-day. She is the first woman ever entered in any department of Yale outside of the art school.

[293] Mesdames Lima H. Ober, Lovina Greene, Hophni Smith, Ruth F. Munn, Perleyette M. Burnett, Sophia L. O. Allen, Mary Hodges, Lydia Smith, Sarah A. Knox. The men who sustained and voted with these women were Deacon Amplias Greene, Darius M. Allen, Ransom Knox, Apollos D. Greene, Wesley Brown. Their tickets were different each year; their first read, "Our Motto--Equal Rights for all--Taxation without Representation is Tyranny. Our Foes--Tradition and Superstition." Among the speakers invited to address the people at the polls were Mrs. Organ, of Yellow Springs, and Mrs. Hope Whipple, of Clyde.

[294] President, Ruth F. Munn; Vice-Presidents, Joel Walker, D. M. Allen; Recording Secretary, Ellen Munn; Corresponding Secretary, Julia P. Greene; Treasurer, Mary Hodges; Executive Committee, William Munn, Sophia L. O. Allen, Amanda M. Greene, Apollos D. Greene, Ransom Knox.

[295] At other picnics the speakers were, Mrs. S. B. Chase, M. D., Colonel S. D. Harris, J. W. Tyler Jane O. DeForrest, T. W. Porter.

[296] The Society of South Newbury, like that of Toledo, refrained from auxiliaryship with the State Association from the time of its organization to June, 1885, when such relationship was made possible by the State Society voting itself an independent organization, free to cooeperate with all national or local associations that have for their object the enfranchisement of women; and to Mrs. Allen may be ascribed a large share of the credit for the good work and broad platform of the South Newbury club.

[297] The presidents of the Toledo Society have been, Emma J. Ashley, Elizabeth R. Collins, Sarah R. L. Williams, Rosa L. Segur, Julia P. Cole, Sarah S. Bissell, Ellen S. Fray, Mary J. Cravens. The vice-presidents, Martha Stebbins, Julia Harris, S. R. L. Williams, Sarah S. Bissell, Ellen Sully Fray, Mary J. Barker. Miss Charlotte Langdon Williams rendered valuable service in the business department of The Ballot-Box, and served for three years as secretary and treasurer of the association.

[298] Miss Anna C. Mott, and her father, Richard Mott, were two strong pillars of the woman suffrage movement in Ohio; their beautiful home has for many years been a harbor of rest alike to the advocates of anti-slavery, temperance and woman's rights.

[299] Mrs. Williams further adds that The Ballot-Box became also a foster child of the National Association, Miss Anthony canvassing for it after each of her lectures during the winters of 1877 and 1878, thus largely increasing the circulation. It, on the other hand, gave full and faithful account of the work of the National Association, so that in reality it was the organ of the National as well as of the Toledo society.

[300] The officers of the Toledo Society are, 1885, President, Mrs. Mary J. Cravens; Vice-president, Sarah R. L. Williams; Recording Secretary Mrs. E. R. Collins; _Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs. Sarah S. Bissell; Treasurer, Mrs. Mary J. Barker; Executive Committee, Mrs. Rosa L. Segur, Mrs. Julia P. Cole, Mrs. Caroline T. Morgan, Miss Anna C. Mott, Mrs. E. M. Hawley.

[301] President, Mrs. Judge Caldwell; Secretary, Mrs. Bushnell; Treasurer, Mrs. Ammon.

[302] The officers of the Painesville Society, 1885, are, President, Mrs. Frances Jennings Casement; Vice-Presidents, Mrs. Eliza P. Chesney, Mrs. Lydia Wilcox, Mrs. Cornelia Swezey; Recording Secretary, Mrs. Martha Paine; _Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs. Lou J. Bates; Treasurer, Mrs. Adelia J. Bates; Trustees, Mrs. J. B. Burrows, Mrs. A. G. Smith, Mrs. C. C. Beardslee.

[303] The officers of the Ohio State Association for 1885 are, President, Mrs. Frances M. Casement, Painesville; Vice-Presidents, Mrs. N. Coe Stewart, Cleveland; Mrs. C. C. Swezey, Painesville; Hon. Richard Mott, Toledo; Mrs. U. R. Walker, Cincinnati; Mrs. Dr. Warren, Elyria; Recording Secretary, Miss Mary P. Spargo, Cleveland; Corresponding Secretary, Mrs. Rosa L. Segur, Toledo; Treasurer, Mrs. Elizabeth Coit, Columbus; Executive Committee, Dr. N. S. Townshend, Columbus; Mrs. M. B. Haven, Cleveland; Mrs. M. Cole, Painesville; Mrs. W. J. Sheppard, Cleveland; Mrs. Elizabeth Coit, Columbus; Mrs. Ports Wilson, Warren; Mrs. Sarah M. Perkins, Cleveland.

[304] The incorporators were, Mrs. Davies Wilson, Mrs. John Goddard, Mrs. Jane Wendte, Mrs. William N. Hobart, Dr. Ellen M. Kirk, Dr. M. May Howells, Miss Jennie S. Smith, and Miss Harriet M. Hinsdale; Resident Physician, Dr. Sarah J. Bebout; _Visiting Physicians_, Drs. Ellen M. Kirk, M. May Howells.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XLI. MICHIGAN

Women's Literary Clubs and Libraries--Mrs. Lucinda H. Stone--Classes of Girls in Europe--Ernestine L. Rose--Legislative Action, 1849-1885--State Woman Suffrage Society, 1870--Annual Conventions--Northwestern Association--Wendell Phillips' Letter--Nannette Gardner Votes--Catharine A. F. Stebbins Refused--Legislative Action--Amendments Submitted--An Active Canvass of the State by Women--Election Day--The Amendment Lost, 40,000 Men Voted in Favor--University at Ann Arbor Opened to Girls, 1869--Kalamazoo Institute--J. A. B. Stone, Miss Madeline Stockwell and Miss Sarah Burger Applied for Admission to the University in 1857--Episcopal Church Bill--Local Societies--Quincy--Lansing--St. Johns--Manistee--Grand Rapids--Sojourner Truth--Laura C. Haviland--Sybil Lawrence.

Traveling through the State of Michigan, sufficiently at leisure to make acquaintances, one would readily remark the unusual intelligence and cultivation of the women. Every large town can boast a woman's literary club, a reading-room, nicely furnished, with a library containing, in many cases, one and two thousand volumes, a choice collection of scientific, historical and classical works. This may be attributed in part to the fact that the population is largely from New York and New England, partly to the many institutions of learning early opened to girls, and partly to the extensive social influence of Mrs. Lucinda H. Stone,[305] whose rare culture, foreign travels and liberal views have fitted her, both as a woman and as a teacher, to inspire the girls of Michigan with a desire for thorough education. Mrs. Stone has traveled through many countries in the old world with large classes of young ladies under her charge, superintending their reading and studies, and giving them lectures on history and art on classic ground, where some of the greatest tragedies of the past were enacted; in ancient palaces, temples and grand cathedrals; upon the very spots still rich with the memories of kings and popes, great generals, statesmen, poets and philosophers. We cannot estimate the advantages to these young travelers of having one always at hand, able to point out the beauties in painting and statuary, to interpret the symbols and mysteries of architecture, the language of music, the facts of history, and the philosophy of the rise and fall of mighty nations. Mrs. Stone has also given courses of parlor lectures to large classes of ladies in every city of the State, thus, with her rare experiences and extensive observations, enriching every circle of society in which she moved.

To Catharine A. F. Stebbins we are indebted for compiling many of the facts contained in this chapter. Reviewing the last forty years, she says:

The agitation on the question of woman suffrage began in this State in 1846, with the advent of Ernestine L. Rose,[306] who spoke twice in the legislative hall in Detroit--once on the "Science of Government," and once on the "Antagonisms in Society." A resolution was passed by the House of Representatives, expressing a high sense of her ability, eloquence and grace of delivery. Her work in Detroit, Ann Arbor and other places was three or four years prior to the first report by the Special Committee of the Senate in the general revision of the constitution, nine years before the House Committee's report on elections in response to women's petitions, and a dozen years before the favorable "report of the Senate upon the memorial of ladies praying for the privilege of the elective franchise," signed by Thomas W. Ferry.

The Revolution of April 30, 1868, gives an account of the manner the women of Sturgis voted on the question of prohibition:

"A few weeks ago, at a large meeting of the citizens of Sturgis, Michigan, the ladies were asked to help in the coming election the cause of prohibition. They replied that they would if they were allowed to vote. At a subsequent meeting the gentlemen could do no less than to invite them. A committee of twelve was appointed. They canvassed the village and invited all the ladies to come out and join in the demonstration. At 2 o'clock on election day they assembled at Union School Hall and marched to the room where the election was held, and one hundred and fourteen deposited their votes in favor of prohibition, and six against it. Whilst they were marching through the room the utmost order prevailed, and when they were retiring three hearty cheers were given for the ladies of Sturgis. Great credit is due to Mrs. William Kyte, chairman of the committee, as well as to all the other members, for their management of the whole affair. The utmost good feeling prevailed, and not a sneer or a jeer was heard from the lords of creation, but a large majority seemed to hail this as a precursor of what they expect in the future, when the people shall be educated to respect the rights of all."

We find the above in the Sturgis Journal, by the way, one of the best in tone and talent of all our western exchanges. Its editor, Mr. Wait, is a prominent leader in the State, a member of the legislature, and a believer in the equal civil and political rights of women. We have more than once suggested in The Revolution that the women should appear at the polls on election days and demand their rights as citizens. The effect could not but be beneficial wherever tried. Any considerable number of intelligent women in almost any locality would in this way soon inaugurate a movement to result in a speedy triumph. Let these noble Sturgis women persevere. Methodist Bishop Simpson was right when he declared the vote of woman at the polls would soon extinguish the perdition fires of intemperance. The Sturgis women have begun the good work, a hundred and fourteen to six! Surely, blessed are the husbands and children of such wives and mothers.

P. P.

In The Revolution of September 3, 1868, we find the following from the Sturgis Star:

Last spring the ladies of Sturgis went to the polls one hundred and twenty in number, and demonstrated the propriety of the movement. Their votes did not count, for they could only be cast in a separate box, and the movement was only good in its moral effect. But at the school meeting the ladies have an equal right to vote with the men. Whatever qualifications a man must possess to exercise privileges in that meeting, any woman possessing like qualifications can exercise like privileges there. To substantiate this, it is only necessary to read the school law. Section 145 of the Primary School law: "The words 'qualified voter' shall be taken and construed to mean and include all taxable persons residing in the district of the age of twenty-one years, and who have resided therein three months next preceding the time of voting."

Ex-State Superintendent John M. Gregory's opinion of that is, that "under this section (145) all persons liable to be taxed in the district, and twenty-one years of age, and having resided three months in the district, without distinction of sex, color, or nationality, may vote in the district meetings." In districts where they elect only a director, assessor and moderator, the women can vote on all questions except the election of officers. In graded districts they can vote on all questions, election of trustees included. Men having no taxable property, but who vote at town meetings and general elections, can only vote for trustees at a school meeting. Any woman, then, having a watch, cow, buggy, or personal property of any kind, subject to tax, or who has real estate in her own name, or jointly with her husband, can vote. Here, then, is a lawful right for women to vote at school meetings, and as there can be no impropriety in it, we advocate it. We believe that it will work good. Our Union school is something that all should feel an active interest in. We hope, then, that those ladies entitled to vote will exercise the rights that the law grants them. To give these suggestions a practical effect, we cheerfully publish the following notice:

The undersigned respectfully request those ladies residing in District No. 3, of the township of Sturgis, who are entitled to vote at the annual meeting, to assemble in Mrs. Pendleton's parlor, at the Exchange Hotel, on Friday evening next, August 28, at 7:30 o'clock, to consider the matter of exercising the privilege which the law gives them.

This call is signed by about twenty of the best women of the borough. Last week we called attention in The Revolution to the earnestness of the English women in urging their claim to the right of suffrage, and appealed to American women from their example. We hear from different sources that American women will attempt, to some extent, to be registered this year as voters, and we hope so brave an example will become a contagion. A boastful warrior once demanded of his foe, "Deliver up your arms." The answer was, "Come, if you dare, and take them!" Let women become brave enough to take their rights, and there will not be much resistance. According to their faith and their courage, so shall it be.

P. P.

The Michigan State Suffrage Society--always an independent association--was organized at the close of the first convention held in Hamblin's Opera-house, Battle Creek,[307] January 20, 1870, and has done the usual work of aiding in the formation of local societies, circulating tracts and petitions, securing hearings before the legislature, and holding its annual meetings from year to year in the different cities of the State.

The Northwestern Association held its first annual convention in the Young Men's Hall, Detroit, November 28, 29, 1870, with large and appreciative audiences.[308] Legislative action on the question of woman suffrage began in Michigan in 1849, when:

The special report favorable to Senate document No. 10, for universal suffrage, was signed by Dwight Webb, Edward H. Thompson and Rix Robinson.--House document No. 31, legislature of 1855: "The Committee on Elections, to whom was referred the petition of Betsy P. Parker, Lucinda Knapp, Nancy Fleming, Electa Myers, and several other 'strong-minded' ladies of Lenawee county, asking such amendments to the constitution of the State as will secure to women an equal right to the elective franchise with men," reported adversely, ridiculed the petitioners, and was signed by A. P. Moorman.--Senate document No. 27, in the session of 1857: On a memorial of ladies praying the legislature to grant them the elective franchise, the report was signed by Thomas W. Ferry, and was favorable and respectful.--House document No. 25, legislature of 1859: On constitutional amendments in favor of universal suffrage, the report was favorable for extending suffrage to colored men, but doubtful as to the wisdom of extending it to women. This was signed by Fabius Miles, chairman.--Senate document No. 12: Upon the same constitutional amendments, in the legislature of 1859, the report signed by R. E. Trowbridge, chairman of the committee, was adverse to extending suffrage to women.

On February 13, 1873, Mr. Lamb introduced "a joint resolution granting the privilege of the elective franchise to the women of the State." Mr. Bartholomew introduced "a joint resolution proposing an amendment to section 1, article 1., of the constitution, in relation to the qualifications of electors." Both were referred to the Committee on Elections, which made the following report:

The Committee on Elections, to whom was referred the joint resolution granting the privilege of the elective franchise to women of this State, respectfully report that they have had the same under consideration, and have directed me to report the same back to the House without recommendation. We think the time has not arrived for us to decide on so important a matter. We await further developments, and are under the impression that there is no popular demand for the change--at least not sufficient to warrant us in recommending so important a change in our form of government at the present session of the legislature--and ask to be discharged from the further consideration of the subject.

[Signed:] A. HEWITT, Acting Chairman.

Motion carried to lay the joint resolution on the table. March 4, it was taken from the table and referred to the Committee of the Whole, who recommended its passage, and April 10 it was lost by a vote of 50 to 24:

The committee have considered the matters embraced in the several resolutions referred to them relative to providing for woman's suffrage, and have instructed me to report against adding any such provision to the constitution at present. The committee ask to be discharged from the further consideration of the subject.

[Signed:] E. W. MEDDAUGH, Chairman.

October 14.--A bill for separate submission to a vote of the people of an amendment to the constitution relating to woman's suffrage, was lost by a tie vote--7 for and 7 against.

At the extra session of the legislature, 1874, in the House, March 10, Mr. Hoyt introduced a joint resolution for separate submission to a vote of the people of an amendment to the constitution relating to woman suffrage. Referred to the Committee on Elections and State Affairs, jointly. On March 12 the following memorial from the State Woman Suffrage Association[309] was presented in the House:

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Michigan, in Special Session Convened: _

The Executive Committee of the Michigan State Woman Suffrage Association, at their meeting held in Kalamazoo, February 10, 1874, voted to memorialize your honorable body, at your special session now being held.

We beg leave to represent to you that the object of this association is to secure, in a legal way, the enfranchisement of the women of the State. They are, as you well know, already recognized as citizens of the State according to the laws of the United States. They are now taxed for all purposes of public interest as well as the men. But they are not represented in the legislature, nor in any branch of the State government, thus affording a great example, and an unjust one for women, of taxation without representation, which our fathers declared to be tyranny; and which is contrary to the genius of our republican institutions, and to the general polity of this commonwealth. Women are also governed, while they have no direct voice in the government, and made subject to laws affecting their property, their personal rights and liberty, in whose enactment they have no voice.

We therefore petition your honorable body, that in preparing a new constitution, to be submitted for adoption or rejection by the people of this State, you will strike out the word "male" from the article defining the qualifications of electors; or if deemed best by you, will provide for the separate submission of an article for the enfranchisement of the women of Michigan, giving them equal rights and privileges with the men. By thus taking the lead of the States of the Union, to more fully secure the personal rights of all the citizens, you will show yourselves in harmony with the spirit of the age and worthy to be called pioneers in this cause, as you are already most honorably accounted pioneers in your educational system, which affords equal and impartial advantages to the population of our State, irrespective of sex or condition in life--thus aiming to elevate the entire people to the highest practicable plane of intelligence and true civilization.

By order, and in the name of the Michigan Woman Suffrage Association.

LUCINDA H. STONE, Corresponding Secretary.

Mrs. A. H. WALKER, President.

On March 14, the joint committee made the following report:

The committees on State affairs and elections, to whom was referred the joint resolution proposing an amendment to section I, article VII., of the constitution, in relation to the qualifications of electors, respectfully report that they have had the same under consideration, and have directed us to report the same back to the House without amendment, and recommend that it do pass and ask to be discharged from the further consideration of the subject.

The reasons which have influenced the committee in recommending an amendment so radical and sweeping in the changes which it will create if finally adopted by the people, are briefly these: The question of granting the right of suffrage to women equally with men, is one that has been seriously and widely agitated for years, and while, like other political reforms which change in any considerable degree the old and established order of things, it has met with strong opposition, on the other hand it has been ably advocated by men and women distinguished alike for their intellectual ability and their excellent judgment. Although we believe that there should be certain necessary and proper restrictions to the exercise of the elective franchise, we are of the opinion that there are reasonable grounds to doubt whether the distinction of sex in the matter of voting, is not, in a large measure, a fictitious one. The interests of women in all matters pertaining to good government are certainly identical with those of men. In the matter of property their rights conceded by law are equal, and in some respects superior to those of men; and if the principle of no taxation without representation is a just one as applied among men, it would seem that it might in justice be extended to women. As the reasons given above are strongly urged by the advocates of woman suffrage, and as several petitions, numerously signed by citizens of the State, asking for some action on the part of the House in this matter, are in the hands of the committee, we have deemed it advisable, although not equally agreed as to the main question involved, to recommend the passage of the resolution by the House, in order that the people of the State may have an opportunity of expressing their will at the ballot-box as to the expediency of extending the right of suffrage to women.

SAMUEL H. BLACKMAN, Chairman of Committee on State Affairs. JAMES BURNES, Chairman of Committee on Elections.

Report accepted, and joint resolution placed on the general order.

On March 18 the following joint resolution passed the House by a vote of 67 to 27, and passed the Senate by a vote of 26 to 4,[310] proposing an amendment to section I of article VII. of the constitution, in relation to the qualification of electors:

Resolved, By the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Michigan, That at the election when the amended constitution shall be submitted to the electors of this State for adoption or rejection, there shall be submitted to such electors the following propositions, to be substituted in case of adoption, for so much of section I, of article VII., as precedes the proviso therein, in the present constitution of this State as it now stands, and substituted for section I, article VII., in said amended constitution, if the latter is adopted, to wit:

SECTION 1. In all elections, every person of the age of twenty-one years who shall have resided in this State three months, and in the township or ward in which he or she offers to vote ten days next preceding an election, belonging to either of the following classes, shall be an elector and entitled to vote:

First--Every citizen of the United States; Second--Every inhabitant of this State, who shall have resided in the United States two years and six months, and declared his or her intention to become a citizen of the United States pursuant to the laws thereof, six months preceding an election; Third--Every inhabitant residing in this State on the twenty-fourth day of June, one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five.

Said proposition shall be separately submitted to the electors of this State for their adoption or rejection, in form following, to wit: A separate ballot may be given by every person having the right to vote, to be deposited in a separate box. Upon the ballot given for said proposition shall be written, or printed, or partly written and partly printed, the words, "Woman Suffrage,--Yes"; and upon ballots given against the adoption thereof, in like manner, the words, "Woman Suffrage,--No." If at said election a majority of the votes given upon said proposition shall contain the words, "Woman Suffrage,--Yes," then said proposition shall be substituted for so much of section I, of article VII., as includes the proviso therein in the present constitution of the State as it now stands, or substituted for section I, of article VII., in said amended constitution, if the latter is adopted.

This bill was promptly signed by Governor Bagley, and from that hour the attention of the advocates of suffrage for women was centered on Michigan.

The submission of this amendment to a vote of the people, gave an unusual interest and importance to the annual meeting held at Lansing, May 6, 1874,[311] at which plans were to be made, and money raised for a vigorous campaign throughout the State. The large number of women ready to do the speaking, and the equally large number of men ready to make generous contributions, were most encouraging in starting. Women who could not aid the cause in any other way cast their gold watches into the treasury. From the large number of letters received at this convention we may judge how thoroughly aroused the friends were all over the country. Lydia Maria Child wrote:

It is urged, that if women participated in public affairs, puddings would be spoiled, and stockings neglected. Doubtless some such cases might occur; for we have the same human nature as men, and men are sometimes so taken up with elections as to neglect their business for a while. But I apprehend that puddings and stockings, to say nothing of nurseries, suffer much greater detriment from the present expenditure of time and thought upon the heartless ostentation of parties, and the flounces and fripperies of fashion, than can possibly accrue from the intellectual cultivation of women, or their participation in public affairs. Voting is a mere incident in the lives of men. It does not prevent the blacksmith from shoeing horses, or the farmer from planting fields, or the lawyer from attending courts; so I see no reason why it need to prevent women from attending to their domestic duties. On certain subjects, such as intemperance, licentiousness and war, women would be almost universally sure to exert their influence in the right directions, for the simple reason that they peculiarly suffer from the continuance of these evils. In the discharge of this new function, they would doubtless make some mistakes, and yield to some temptations, just as men do. But the consciousness of being an acknowledged portion of the government of the country would excite a deeper interest in its welfare, and produce a serious sense of responsibility, which would gradually invigorate and ennoble their characters.

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON wrote: I believe that we fail to establish a truly republican government, or to test the principle of universal suffrage, so long as we enfranchise one sex only.

A. BRONSON ALCOTT wrote: * * * Where women lead--the best women--is it unsafe for men to follow? Woman's influence cannot be confined to her household; woman is, and will be, womanly wherever placed. No condition can unsex the sexes. The ten commandments will not suffer in her keeping. Her vote will tell for the virtues, against the vices all. Plato said: "Either sex alone is but half itself." Socially, we admit his assertion, and are just beginning to suspect that our republican institutions need to be complemented and rounded with woman's counsels, and administrations also. Good republicans are asking if our legislation is not unsettled, demoralized by the debauchery of hasty politics, by private vices, and the want of manly integrity, woman's honor. Let our courtesy to women be sincere--paid to her modesty as to her person; her intelligence as to her housekeeping; her refining influence in political as in social circles. Where a husband would blush to take his wife and daughters, let him blush to be seen by his sons. "Revere no god," says Euripides, "whom men adore by night." And Sophocles: "Seek not thy fellow-citizens to guide till thou canst order well thine own fireside." Mrs. Alcott and Louisa join in hearty hopes for your success.

EDNA D. CHENEY wrote: * * * How I long for the time when this question being settled, we can all go forward, working together, to discuss and settle the really great questions of political and social economy, of labor, of education, and the full development of human life in State and society.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER wrote: * * * I hope and trust the electors will be wise and generous enough to decide it in your favor. Were I a citizen of the State I should esteem it alike a duty and a privilege to vote in the affirmative.

ASA MAHAN, president of Oberlin College, wrote: The cause which has called you together is a very plain one. It is simply this, whether "taxation without representation" is tyranny to all but one-half of the human race, and the principle that rulers derive their authority to make and administer law from the consent of the governed, holds true of the white man and the black man, of man native or foreign born, and even of the "heathen Chinee," if he belong to the male sex, and is a lie in its application to woman.[312]

Dr. Stone, of Kalamazoo, read an able report of what had been done, and all it was necessary to do if the friends desired to carry the pending amendment. The following extract will give some idea of the momentous undertaking in canvassing a State:

When the governor decided to call an extra session of the legislature, so as to submit the new constitution to a popular vote next November, the committee had but little time for the circulation of petitions; but enough was done to secure the vote in favor of submission. This was the more easily accomplished because we have in the present legislature so many warm and active friends, who gave that body no rest until their point was carried. And here we find ourselves suddenly brought into a campaign almost as novel as momentous, with scarce a precedent to guide us. We ask the electors of Michigan to share their civil and political power with those who have always been denied all electoral rights--to vest the popular sovereignty not merely in themselves, in a quarter of a million of men, as hitherto, but in half a million of men and women, and so make our State what it is not now, a truly republican commonwealth. We have a great work before us, and no time should be lost in organizing a general canvass of the entire State. Competent lecturers should be employed wherever hearers can be found, and money raised to defray the expenses. Printed documents too, must be circulated; arguments and conclusions framed by those who have thought on these subjects for men, and sometimes for women, who are too indolent to think for themselves. And there are many other things which we must do before the November election; ballots must be furnished for every township and polling place, especially affirmative ballots, and placed in the hands of all the voters. The Executive Committee cannot be ubiquitous enough to discharge all these multifarious duties. We therefore suggest that there be appointed during this meeting, First, a Committee on Finance. Second, a Committee on Printed Documents. Third, a Committee on Lecturers. Fourth, a County Committee of perhaps three persons in each county, who shall have power also to appoint a sub-committee in each township. Whether so many distinct committees will be needed, or more than one class of duties can be entrusted to the same committee, the association can determine. We do not want too much, nor too complicated machinery, but just enough to accomplish the work. We must fall into line; woman expects every man to do his duty; surely she will not fail to be true to herself.

Representatives from the different counties gave their names[313] as ready to begin the work arranged by the several committees. With this large and enthusiastic convention the campaign may be said fairly to have opened at Lansing early in May, a political organization being formed of Republicans and Democrats alike, representing nearly every district in the State. Governor Bagley having promptly signed the bill, and his wife being an earnest advocate of the measure, the social influence of the family was all in the right direction. The influence of the church, too, was in a measure favorable. The Methodist denomination, in its general conference, passed a resolution indorsing woman suffrage. Mrs. Stanton, in a letter to the Golden Age, said:

During the time I spent in Michigan, speaking every night and twice on Sunday to crowded houses, I had abundant opportunities of feeling the pulse of the people, both in public and private, and it seemed to me that the tide of popular thought and feeling was running in the right direction. The people are beginning to regard the idea of woman's equality with man as not only a political, but a religious truth, Methodist, Congregational, Presbyterian, Baptist and Unitarian churches being all alike thrown open to its consideration. Sitting Sunday after Sunday in the different pulpits with reverend gentlemen, my discourses given in the place of the sermon, in the regular services, I could not help thinking of the distance we had come since that period in civilization when Paul's word was law, "Let your women keep silence in the churches." Able men and women are speaking in every part of the State, and if our triumph should not be complete at the next election, at all events a great educational work will have been accomplished in the distribution of tracts, in the public debates, and in reviewing the fundamental principles of our government and religion. Being frequently told that women did not wish to vote, I adopted the plan of calling for a rising vote at the close of my lectures, and on all occasions a majority of the women would promptly rise. Knowing that the men had the responsibility of voting before their eyes, and might be diffident about rising, I reversed the manner of expression in their case, requesting all those in favor of woman suffrage to keep their seats, and those opposed to rise up, thus throwing the onerous duty of changing their attitudes on the opposition. So few arose under such circumstances that it was somewhat embarrassing for those who did.

Those who were engaged in the canvass[314] had enthusiastic meetings everywhere. They not only filled all their regular appointments, but spoke in the prisons, asylums; even the deaf and dumb were refreshed with the gospel of woman suffrage. The press, too, was generally favorable, though the opposition magnified the occasional adverse criticisms out of all proportion to their severity and number. Towards the last of September Miss Anthony, by invitation of Mrs. Briggs and Mrs. Bliss of Grand Rapids, came into the State and remained until election day. She often brought down the house with her witty comments on the criticisms of the press.[315]

Everything that could be done was done by the friends of the amendment throughout the State; meetings held and tracts on every phase of the question scattered in all the most obscure settlements; inspiring songs sung, earnest prayers offered, the press vigilant in its appeals, and on election day women everywhere at the polls, persuading voters to cast their ballots for temperance, moral purity and good order, to be secured only by giving the right of suffrage to their mothers, wives and daughters. But the sun went down, the polls were closed, and in the early dawn of the next morning the women of Michigan learned that their status as citizens of the United States had not been advanced one iota by the liberal action of their governor, their legislature, the appeals of the women nor the votes of 40,000 of the best men of the State.

When the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the national constitution were passed, many advocates of suffrage believed that the right was conferred on women. In a letter to a State convention held at that time, Wendell Phillips said:

The new phase of the woman movement--that claiming the right to vote under the fourteenth amendment--is attracting great attention in Washington. Whether it ever obtains judicial sanction or not, it certainly gives a new and most effective means of agitation. The argument of the minority report, understood to be written by General Butler, is most able. * * * The statement of the argument, and the array of cases and authorities, are very striking. Nothing more cogent can be imagined or desired. When two years ago a Western advocate of woman's rights started this theory, we never expected to see it assume such importance.

In accordance with this opinion, certain women resolved to apply for registration, and offer their votes. On March 25, 1871, Catherine A. F. Stebbins and Mrs. Nannette B. Gardner of Detroit made the attempt to have their names regularly enrolled as legally qualified voters. Mrs. Stebbins, accompanied by her husband, made application in the fifth ward to have her name registered, but was refused. She then proposed to her friend, Mrs. Gardner, to make the trial in her ward, to which she assented. Accordingly, they went to the first district of the ninth ward, where Peter Hill was the enrolling officer. Mrs. Gardner gave her name, saying she was a "person" within the meaning of the fourteenth amendment, and that she was a widow, and a tax-payer without representation. Mr. Hill, seeing the justice of her demand, entered her name upon the register.

This action took some of the board of registration by surprise, and a motion was made to erase her name, but was decided in the negative.[316] The board was now asked for a decision in regard to Mrs. Stebbins' name, as the question very naturally suggested itself to the inspectors, if one woman can vote why not another. Mrs. Stebbins was notified that her case would have a hearing. When asked to submit her reasons for demanding the right to vote, Mrs. S. stated that she asked it simply as the right of a human being under the constitution of the United States. She had paid taxes on personal and real estate, and had conformed to the laws of the land in every respect. Since the fourteenth amendment had enfranchised woman as well as the black man, she had the necessary qualifications of an elector.

A long debate followed. Inspectors Bagg, Hill and Folsom argued in favor of the petitioner; Allison, Brooks, Henderson and Hughes against. The opposition confessed that the negro had voted before the word "white" had been expunged from the State constitution; but that was done from a "political necessity." The question of acceptance being put to vote, was negatived--13 to 10. This was counted a victory, and stimulated the opposition to make another effort to strike Mrs. Gardner's name from the register; but failing in that, the board adjourned. There was now much curiosity to know if Alderman Hill would have the nerve to stand by his initiative; but with him the Rubicon was passed, and on April 3, Messrs. Hill and Durfee accepted Mrs. Gardner's vote, Mr. Bond protesting. The Detroit Post gave the following account:

Mrs. Gardner arrived at the polls of the first precinct of the ninth ward at about half-past ten o'clock in a carriage, accompanied by her son, a lad of ten years, Mrs. Starring and Mrs. Giles B. Stebbins. Barely a dozen by-standers were present, and the larger part of these were laboring men. No demonstration followed the appearance of the ladies, the men remaining quiet, and contenting themselves with comments sotto voce on this last political development, and with speculations as to how the newly enfranchised would vote. Mrs. Gardner presented herself at the polls with a vase of flowers and also a prepared ballot, which she had decorated with various appropriate devices. The inspectors asked the questions usually put to all applicants, and her name being found duly registered, her ballot was received and deposited in the box. There was no argument, no challenge, no variation from the routine traversed by each masculine exerciser of the elective franchise. Mrs. Gardner voted, as we understand; for the Republican candidates generally, with one Democrat and one lady.

At Battle Creek, Mrs. Mary Wilson voted at the election of 1871. When she registered, she was accompanied by her lawyer.

In the fall of 1872, Peter Hill again registered Mrs. Gardner, and received her vote. Mr. Hill had been exposed to many animadversions for his persistence, and as an acknowledgment of her appreciation of his course, Mrs. Gardner presented him a silk banner suitably inscribed. A city paper gives this account of it:

Mrs. Gardner, who has for years been a recognized voter in the ninth ward of Detroit, again voted on Tuesday. She came on foot, with Mrs. Stebbins, in a drenching rain, as no carriage could be obtained. After voting, she presented a beautiful banner of white satin, trimmed with gold fringe, on which was inscribed, "A Woman's Voting Hymn." The reverse side, of blue silk, contained the dedication: "To Peter Hill, Alderman of the Ninth Ward, Detroit. First to Register a Woman's Vote. By recognizing civil liberty and equality for woman, he has placed the last and brightest jewel on the brow of Michigan."

The city board now felt called upon to pass a vote of censure upon Mr. Hill's action. The record runs thus:

Canvasser BAXTER: Resolved, That the act of the inspectors of election of the first district of the ninth ward, in receiving the vote of Mrs. Nannette B. Gardner at the election just passed, is emphatically disapproved by this board, on the ground that said act is a plain violation of the election laws and constitution of the State of Michigan, and is liable to lead to the grossest abuses and complications.

Canvasser FULDA moved to lay the resolution on the table--lost. Adopted as follows: Yeas--Langley, Flower, House, Lichtenberg, Phelps, Parsons, Christian, Allison, Buehle, Dullea, Daly, Barbier, Baxter--13. Nays--Wooley and Fulda--2.

CHAS A. BORGMAN, Secretary. PHILO PARSONS, Chairman.

Mrs. Stebbins attempted to register at this election with the same result as before. Upon the fourth of November she provided herself with a sworn statement that she had been "wrongfully prevented" the record of her name, and offered her vote at the polls, calling attention to the "enforcing act," provided for such cases. It had no terror, however, for the valiant inspectors of the fifth ward. In the fall of 1873, there was the following correspondence between the board and the city counselor:

Hon. D. C. Holbrook, City Counselor: DEAR SIR:--Mrs. Giles B. Stebbins has applied to this board and demands the right to register. This board has declined to grant the request on the ground that it does not believe her to be a legal elector. Mrs. Stebbins would have all the required qualifications of an elector, but for the fact of her being a woman, and we therefore respectfully request that you instruct us as to our duty in the premises. Very respectfully,

S. B. WOOLLEY, ALBERT BOTSFORD, Inspectors of First Ward.

Woman cannot be enrolled or registered. Let her try it on.[317]

Oct. 24, 1873. D. C. HOLBROOK, City Counselor.

In company with Mrs. H. J. Boutelle, Mrs. Stebbins offered her vote in the fifth ward. Mr. Farwell was in favor of receiving it, and wished to leave the question to a dozen responsible citizens whom he called in as referees, but Col. Phelps would not be influenced by the judgment of outsiders, and would not agree to the proposal.[318]

Mrs. Gardner's name was retained on the ward voting list, and she voted every year until she left the city for the education of her children.

Before the University at Ann Arbor was opened to girls in 1869, there had been several attempts to establish seminaries for girls alone.[319] But they were not successful for several reasons. As the State would not endow these private institutions, it made the education of daughters very expensive, and fathers with daughters, seeing their neighbors' sons in the State University educated at the public expense, from financial considerations were readily converted to the theory of coeducation. Again the general drift of thought was in favor of coeducation throughout the young western States. Then institutions of learning were too expensive to build separate establishments for girls and boys, and the number of boys able to attend through a collegiate course could not fill the colleges ready for their reception. Hence from all considerations it was a double advantage both to the State and the girls, to admit them to the universities.

James A. B. Stone and Mrs. Lucinda H. Stone went to Kalamazoo in 1843, immediately after his election to take charge of the Literary Institute. The name was afterwards changed to Kalamazoo College. It is the oldest collegiate institute in the State, having been chartered in 1833, and was designed from the outset for both sexes. In the beginning it did not confer degrees, but was the first, after Oberlin, to give diplomas to women. Kalamazoo was an object of derision with some of the professors of the University, because it was, they averred, of doubtful gender. But a liberal-minded public grew more and more in favor of epicene colleges. Literary seminaries had been established for coeducation at Albion, Olivet, Adrian and Hillsdale, but some of their charters were not exactly of a collegiate grade, and it was doubtful whether under the new constitution, new college charters would be granted, so that Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor had the field. In January, 1845, a bill was introduced in the legislature to organize literary institutions under a general law, no collegiate degrees being allowed, unless on the completion of a curriculum equal to that of the State University. The championship of this bill fell to Dr. Stone, for while it would have no special effect on Kalamazoo, it concerned the cause of coeducation in the State, and the friends of the University made it a kind of test of what the State policy should be in reference to the higher learning for women. Dr. Tappan, then the able president of the University, appeared at Lansing, supported by Rev. Dr. Duffield and a force of able lawyers, to oppose it, and the far-seeing friends of education in the legislature and in the lobby, rallied with Dr. Stone for its support. For several weeks the contest was carried on with earnestness, almost with bitterness, before the legislative committees, before public meetings called in the capitol for discussion, and on the floor of both houses. Dr. Tappan made frantic appeals to Michigan statesmen not to disgrace the State by such a law, which he prophesied would result in "preparatory schools for matrimony," and, shocking to contemplate, young men would marry their classmates. Among the friends of the measure present, were President Fairfield, Professor Hosford, and Hon. Mr. Edsell, of Otsego, all graduates of Oberlin, who had married their classmates, and "been glad ever since." They replied, "What of it? Are not those who have met daily in the recitation-room for four years, as well prepared to judge of each other's fitness for life-companionship, as if they had only met a few times at a ball, a dress party, or in private interview?" The legislature was an intelligent one, and the bill passed amid great excitement, crowds of interested spectators listening to the final discussions in the lower House. Governor Bingham was friendly to the bill from the first. After its passage, he sent a handsome copy signed by himself and other officers, to Dr. and Mrs. Stone, at Kalamazoo, to be preserved as a record of the Thermopylae fight for coeducation in Michigan.

Rev. E. O. Havens succeeded Dr. Tappan in the presidency, and was supposed to be less strong in his prejudices, but when efforts were made to open the doors to both sexes, he reported it difficult and inexpedient, if not impossible. But he counted without the broad-minded people of Michigan. A growing conviction that the legislature would stop the appropriations to the University unless justice was done to the daughters of the State, finally brought about, at Ann Arbor, a change of policy. Under the light that broke in upon their minds, the professors found there was really no law against the admission of women to that very liberal seat of learning. "To be sure, they never had admitted women, but none had formally applied." This, though somewhat disingenuous, was received in good faith, and soon tested by Miss Madeline Stockwell, who had completed half her course at Kalamazoo, and was persuaded by Mrs. Stone to make application at Ann Arbor. Mrs. Stone knew her to be a thorough scholar, as far as she had gone, especially in Greek, which some had supposed that women could not master. When she presented herself for examination some members of the faculty were far from cordial, but they were just, and she entered in the grade for which she applied. She sustained herself ably in all her studies, and when examined for her degree--the first woman graduate from the literary department--she was commended as the peer of any of her class-mates, and took an honorable part in the commencement exercises. Moreover, she fulfilled the doleful prophecy of Dr. Tappan, as women in other schools had done before her, and married her class-mate, Mr. Turner, an able lawyer.

The statement by the faculty, or regents, that "no woman had formally applied," was untrue, as we shall see. The University was opened to them in 1869; eleven years before, Miss Sarah Burger, now Mrs. Stearns, made the resolve, the preparation, and the application to enter the University of Michigan; and young as she was, her clear-sightedness and courage called forth our admiration. As a child, in Ann Arbor, from 1845, to 1852, she had often attended the commencement exercises of the University, and on those occasions had felt very unhappy, because all the culture given to mind and heart and soul by this institution was given to young men alone. It seemed a cruel injustice to young women that they could not be there with their brothers, enjoying the same. In connection with her efforts and those of her friends to enter those enchanted portals, she bears grateful testimony to the discussions on the question of woman's rights, as follows:

When it was my blessed privilege to attend a women's rights convention at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1853,--and it was a grand meeting--where dear Lucretia Mott, Ernestine L. Rose, Frances D. Gage, Antoinette Brown, Lucy Stone, and others, dwelt upon the manifold wrongs suffered by women, and called upon them to awake and use their powers to secure justice to all, I felt their words to mean that the Michigan University as well as all others, should be opened to girls, and that women themselves should first move in the matter.

Thus aroused, though but sixteen years old, she resolved at once to make application for admission to the State University. Early in the autumn of 1856, she entered the high school at Ann Arbor, and studied Greek and Latin two years, preparatory to taking the classical course. Four young ladies besides herself, recited with the boys who were preparing for college, and they were all declared by a university professor who had attended frequent examinations, to stand head and shoulders in scholarship above many of the young men. Miss Burger wishing as large a class as possible to appeal for admission, wrote to a number of classical schools for young women, asking cooeperation, and secured the names of eleven[320] who would gladly apply with her. In the spring of 1858, she sent a note to the regents, saying a class of twelve young ladies would apply in June, for admission to the University in September. A reporter said "a certain Miss B. had sent the regents warning of the momentous event." At the board meeting in June, the young ladies presented their promised letter of application, and received as reply, that the board should have more time to consider. In September their reply was, that it seemed inexpedient for the University to admit ladies at present. In the meantime, a great deal had been said and done on the subject; some members of the faculty had spoken in favor, some against. University students, and citizens of Ann Arbor also joined in the general discussion. The subject was widely discussed in the press and on the platform; members of the faculty and board of regents applied to the presidents of universities east and west, for their opinions. The people of Michigan, thus brought to consider the injustice of the exclusion of their daughters from this State institution, there was offered for signature during the winter of 1859, the following petition:

To the Regents of the University of Michigan:

The undersigned, inhabitants of ----, in the county of ----, and State of Michigan, respectfully request that young women may be admitted as students in the University, for the following among other reasons: First--It is incumbent on the State to give equal educational advantages to both sexes. Second--All can be educated in the State University with but little more expense than is necessary to educate young men alone. Third--It will save the State from the expenditure of half a million of dollars, necessary to furnish young ladies in a separate institution with the advantages now enjoyed by young men. Fourth--It will admit young ladies at once to the benefits of the highest educational privileges of the State.

Among the most active in lectures, debates, circulation of petitions and general advocacy were James B. Gott, Judge Edwin Lawrence, Giles B. Stebbins and O. P. Stearns, the last at that time a student, since a lawyer, and the husband of Mrs. Sarah Burger Stearns of Minnesota.

In the spring of 1859 formal application was again made to the regents by a class of young ladies, only to receive the same answer. But the discussion was not dropped; indeed, that was impossible. Some of the most intelligent on this question believe that the final admission of women to the University was due to a resolve on the part of the people of the State to place upon the board of regents, as the terms of old members expired, men well known to be favorable. On the election of Professor Estabrook of the State Normal School there was one more noble man "for us," who, with other new members, made a majority in favor of justice. In the autumn of that year (1869) young women were admitted to full privileges in Michigan University, and, like political freedom in Wyoming, it has for years been confessed to have yielded only beneficent results. As long ago, however, as the first application was made (1858) women were permitted to attend certain lectures. They could not join a class or read a book, but it was the custom for them to go and listen to the beautiful and highly instructive lectures by Professor Andrew D. White on history, sculpture, and mediaeval architecture, and they highly appreciated the privilege.

In March, 1869, President Havens said in the House of Representatives at Lansing, "he believed the University should be opened to those who desired to obtain the benefit of the branches of education which they could not obtain elsewhere." The Rev. Gilbert Haven wrote to the American Society's meeting held in Detroit, in 1874: "I have been identified with your cause through its evil report, and, I was going to add, good report, but that part has not yet very largely set in. I also had the honor to preside over the first ecclesiastical body that has, just now, pronounced in your favor." This church assembly was the Methodist State Association, which adopted the following in October, 1874, without a negative vote, though several of the delegates refused to vote:

WHEREAS, The legislature of Michigan, at its recent session, has submitted to the electors of the State a proposition to change the State constitution so as to admit the women of Michigan to the elective franchise; therefore,

Resolved, That this convention recognizes the action of the legislature as a step toward a higher and purer administration of the government of our country, and we hope the provision will be adopted.

But the above was not the strongest utterance of Bishop Gilbert Haven. Once at an equal rights society convention in the Academy of Music, Brooklyn, where from floor to ceiling was gathered an admirable and immense audience, with profound respect I heard these memorable words:

"I shall never be satisfied until a black woman is seated in the presidential chair of the United States," than which no more advanced claim for the complete legal recognition of woman has been made in our country.

In February, 1879, a spirited debate took place in the legislature upon an amendment to the Episcopal Church bill, which struck out the word "male" from the qualification of voters. The Detroit Post and Tribune says a vigorous effort was made to defeat the measure, but without success. The justice of allowing women to take part in church government was recognized, and the amendment carried.

We have written persistently to leading women all over the State for facts in regard to their local societies, and such responses as have been received are embodied in this chapter. We give interesting reports of a few of the county societies in which much has been accomplished.

Of the work in Quincy Mrs. Sarah Turner says:

We never organized a woman suffrage society, although our literary club has done much for the cause in a general way. We had crowded houses on the occasions of a very able speech from Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a most spirited one from Miss Phoebe Couzins. For the past eight years a dozen tax-paying women of this town have availed themselves of the privilege granted them years ago, and voted at the school meetings; and two years ago a woman was elected member of the school-board.

Lansing reports for January, 1871, Mrs. Livermore's lecture on "The Reasons Why" [women should be enfranchised]; the organization of a city society with sixty members at the close of the annual meeting of the State Association held in that city in March; a lecture from Mrs. Stanton before the Young Men's Association; the adoption of a declaration of rights by the Ingham County Society, March, 1872, signed by 169 of the best people of the county. In 1874, of the many meetings held those of Mrs. Stanton and Miss Couzins are specially mentioned.

The St. Johns society, formed in 1872 with six members, reported sixty at the State annual meeting of 1874, and also $171.71, raised by fees and sociables, mainly expended in the circulation of tracts and documents throughout the county.

From Manistee Mrs. Fannie Holden Fowler writes:

In the campaign of 1874 Hon. S. W. Fowler, one of the committee for Northern Michigan appointed by the State Society, canvassed Manistee county and advocated the cause through his paper, the Times and Standard. The election showed the good of educational work, as a large vote was polled in the towns canvassed by Mr. Fowler, two of them giving a majority for the amendment. In an editorial, after the election, Mr. Fowler said: "The combined forces of ignorance, vice and prejudice have blocked the wheels of advancing civilization, and Michigan, once the proudest of the sisterhood of States, has lost the opportunity of inaugurating a reform; now let the women organize for a final onset." However, no active suffrage work was done until December 3, 1879, when Susan B. Anthony was induced to stop over on her way from Frankfort to Ludington and give her lecture, "Woman Wants Bread; Not the Ballot." She was our guest, and urged the formation of a society, and through her influence a "Woman's Department" was added to the Times and Standard, which is still a feature of the paper. In the following spring (April, 1880), Elizabeth Cady Stanton gave her lecture, "Our Girls," with two "conversations," before the temperance women and others, which revived the courage of the few who had been considering the question of organization. A call was issued, to which twenty-three responded, and the society was formed June 8, 1880,[321] adopting the constitution of the National and electing delegates to attend a convention to be held under the auspices of that association the following week at Grand Rapids. The society at once made a thorough canvass of the city, which resulted in the attendance of seventy tax-paying women at the school election in September, when the first woman's vote was cast in Manistee county. Each succeeding year has witnessed more women at the school election, until, in 1883, they outnumbered the men, and would have elected their ticket but for a fraud perpetrated by the old school-board, which made the election void.

In August 1881, Mrs. May Wright Sewall delivered two lectures in Manistee. In February 1882, a social, celebrating Miss Anthony's birthday, was given by the association at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Fowler, and was voted a success. Through the untiring efforts of Mrs. Lucy T. Stansell, who was also a member of the Ladies' Lever League, Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert gave a Manistee audience a rich treat in her "Homes of Representative Women," and her conversation on suffrage elicited much interest.

During the autumn of 1882, petitions asking for municipal suffrage were circulated. The venerable Josiah R. Holden of Grand Rapids, father of Mrs. Fowler, then in his 88th year, obtained the largest number of signatures to his petition of any one in the State. A bill granting municipal suffrage to women was drawn by Mrs. Fowler, introduced in the legislature by Hon. George J. Robinson, and afterwards tabled. At the session of 1885 a similar bill came within a few votes of being carried.

In Grand Rapids there was no revival of systematic work until 1880, when the National Association held a very successful two days' convention in the city. In response to a petition from the society, the legislature in the winter of 1885 passed a law, giving to the tax-paying women of the city the right to vote on school questions at the charter elections. At the first meeting a hundred women were present, and hundreds availed themselves of their new power and voted at the first election.

The State Society held its annual meeting at Grand Rapids, October 7, 8, 9, 1885, at which the address of welcome was given by Mrs. Loraine Immen, president of the City Society,[322] and responded to by Mrs. Stebbins of Detroit.[323]

The only religious sect in the world, unless we except the Quakers, that has recognized the equality of woman, is the Spiritualists. They have always assumed that woman may be a medium of communication from heaven to earth, that the spirits of the universe may breathe through her lips messages of loving kindness and mercy to the children of earth. The Spiritualists in our country are not an organized body, but they are more or less numerous in every State and Territory from ocean to ocean. Their opinions on woman suffrage and equal rights in all respects must be learned from the utterances of their leading speakers and writers of books, from their weekly journals, from resolutions passed at large meetings, and from their usage and methods. A reliable person widely familiar with Spiritualism since its beginning in 1848, says that he has known but very few Spiritualists who were not in favor of woman suffrage; that all their representative men and women, and all their journals advocate it, and have always done so; that expressions in its favor in public meetings meet with hearty approval, and that men and women have spoken on their platforms, and held official places as co-workers in their societies through all of these thirty-seven years. All this has taken place with very little argument or discussion, but from an intuitive sense of the justice and consequent benefits of such a course. A single testimony, of many that might be given from their writings, must suffice. In the Religio-Philosophical Journal, Chicago, Ill., November 22, 1884, its editor, J. C. Bundy, says: "Although not especially published in the interest of woman, this journal is a stalwart advocate of woman's rights, and has for years given weekly space to 'Woman and the Household,' a department under the care of Mrs. Hester M. Poole, who has done much to encourage women to renewed and persistent effort for their own advancement."

It has been the custom of some of our journals to ask for letters of greeting from distinguished people for New Year's day. We find the following in the Inter-Ocean: "Sojourner Truth, the Miriam of the later Exodus, sends us this remarkable letter. She is the most wonderful woman the colored race has ever produced, and thus conveys her New Year's greeting to our readers:

"DEAR FRIENDS: More than a hundred New Years have I seen before this one, and I send a New Year's greeting to one and all. We talk of a beginning, but there is no beginning but the beginning of a wrong. All else is from God, and is from everlasting to everlasting. All that has a beginning will have an ending. God is without end, and all that is good is without end. We shall never see God, only as we see him in one another. He is a great ocean of love, and we live and move in Him as the fishes in the sea, filled with His love and spirit, and His throne is in the hearts of His people. Jesus, the Son of God, will be as we are, if we are pure, and we will be like him. There will be no distinction. He will be like the sun and shine upon us, and we will be like the sun and shine upon him; all filled with glory. We are the children of one Father, and he is God; and Jesus will be one among us. God is no respecter of persons, and we will be as one. If it were not so, there would be jealousy. These ideas have come to me since I was a hundred years old, and if you, my friends, live to be a hundred years old, too, you may have greater ideas than these. This has become a new world. These thoughts I speak of because they come to me, and for you to consider and look at. We should grow in wisdom as we grow older, and new ideas will come to us about God and ourselves, and we will get more and more the wisdom of God. I am glad to be remembered by you, and to be able to send my thoughts; hoping they may multiply and bear fruit. If I should live to see another New Year's Day I hope to be able to send more new thoughts.

SOJOURNER TRUTH.

"Grand Rapids, Mich., Dec. 26, 1880."

This was accompanied by a note from her most faithful friend, Mrs. Frances W. Titus, relating matters of interest as to her present circumstances. She also said: "We have recently another proof that she is over one hundred years old. Mention of the 'dark day' May 19, 1780, was made in her presence, when she said, 'I remember the dark day'; and gave a description of that wonderful phenomenon. As the narrative of Sojourner's life has long been before the public, we prefer to anything this latest thought of hers, standing then on the verge of the life of the spirit."

Sojourner was long a resident and laborer in reform in Michigan, from which State she went out to the District of Columbia to befriend her people, as well as to other distant fields. She went to help feed and clothe the refugees in Kansas in 1879-80, and in reaching one locality she rode nearly a hundred miles in a lumber wagon. She closed her eventful life in Battle Creek, where she passed her last days, having reached the great age of one hundred and ten years.

Mrs. Laura C. Haviland is another noble woman worthy of mention. She has given a busy life to mitigating the miseries of the unfortunate. She helped many a fugitive to elude the kidnappers; she nursed the suffering soldiers, fed the starving freedmen, following them into Kansas,[324] and traveled thousands of miles with orphan children to find them places in western homes. She and her husband at an early day opened a manual-labor school, beginning by taking nine children from the county-house, to educate them with their own on a farm near Adrian. Out of her repeated experiments, and petitions to the legislature for State aid, grew at last the State school for homeless children at Coldwater, where for years she gave her services to train girls in various industries.

Mrs. Sybil Lawrence, a woman of strong character, and charming social qualities, exerted a powerful influence for many years in Ann Arbor. Being in sympathy with the suffrage movement, and in favor of coeducation, she did all in her power to make the experiment a success, by her aid and counsels to the girls who first entered the University. Her mother, sister, and nieces made a charming household of earnest women ready for every good work. Their services in the war were indispensable, and their sympathies during the trying period of reconstruction were all on the side of liberty and justice.

There are many other noble women in Michigan worthy of mention did space permit, such as Miss Emily Ward, a woman of remarkable force of character and great benevolence; Mrs. Lucy L. Stout, who has written many beautiful sentiments in prose and verse: Eliza Legget and Florence Mayhew, identified with all reform movements; Mrs. Tenney, the State librarian; and Mrs. Euphemia Cochrane, a Scotch woman by birth, who loved justice and liberty, a staunch friend alike of the slave and the unfortunate of her own sex. Under her roof the advocates of abolition and woman suffrage always found a haven of rest. Henry C. Wright, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Sojourner Truth, Theodore Tilton, Frederick Douglass, Abbey Kelley and Stephen Foster could all bear testimony to her generous and graceful hospitality. She was president of the Detroit Woman Suffrage Association at the time she passed from earth to a higher life.

FOOTNOTES:

[305] Having made many lyceum trips through Michigan, I have had several opportunities of meeting Mrs. Stone in her own quiet home, and I can readily understand the wide influence she exerted on the women of that State, and what a benediction her presence must have been in all the reform associations in which she took an active part. I always felt that Michigan would be a grand State in which to make the experiment of woman suffrage, especially as in Mrs. Stone we had an enthusiastic coaedjutor. In paying this well-deserved tribute to Mrs. Stone, I must not forget to mention that Mrs. Janney of Flint, a woman of great executive ability, started the first woman's reading-room and library many years ago.--[E. C. S.

[306] A sketch of this brilliant Polish woman, who has taken such an active part in the woman suffrage movement, both in this country and England, will be found in Volume I., page 95.

[307] The speakers at the Battle Creek convention were Miriam M. Cole, editor of The Woman's Advocate, Dayton, Ohio; Mary A. Livermore, editor Woman's Journal, Boston; Hannah Tracy Cutler, Illinois; Rev. J. M. McCarthy, Saginaw; Mrs. J. C. Dexter, Ionia; Mrs. D. C. Blakeman, Lucinda H. Stone, Kalamazoo; Adelle Hazlett, Hillsdale; Rev. J. S. Loveland, D. M. Fox, Battle Creek; Mary T. Lathrop, Jackson. Letters of sympathy were received from B. F. Cocker and Moses Coit Tyler, professors of the Michigan State University. The officers of the State association were: President, Professor Moses Coit Tyler, Ann Arbor; Vice-President, Lucinda H. Stone; Recording Secretary, Mary T. Lathrop; Corresponding Secretary, Euphemia Cochran, Detroit; Treasurer, Colin Campbell, Detroit; Executive Committee, Dr. S. B. Thayer, Frances W. Titus, Battle Creek; Eliza Burt Gamble, East Saginaw; Catharine A. F. Stebbins, Detroit; Hon. J. G. Wait, Sturgis; Mrs. D. C. Blakeman, Kalamazoo; Mrs. L. H. T. Dexter, Ionia.

[308] The speakers at the Northwestern convention were Mrs. Hazlett, the president; Hon. C. B. Waite, Professor D. C. Brooks, Chicago; Susan B. Anthony, Celia Burleigh, New York; Lillie Peckham, Wisconsin; Mrs. Lathrop, Jackson; Giles B. Stebbins, Adam Elder, J. B. Bloss, Detroit. Letters were reported from Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillips, Rev. E. O. Haven, Professor B. F. Cocker, Moses Coit Tyler, Mrs. Livermore, Lucy Stone, H. B. Blackwell, Mrs. Josephine Griffing, T. W. Higginson, Theodore Tilton, Phoebe Couzins, Anna E. Dickinson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Miriam M. Cole and Rev. Robert Collyer. The officers elected were: President, Mrs. A. M. Hazlett, Michigan; Recording Secretary, Mrs. Rebecca W. Mott, Chicago; Corresponding Secretary, Mrs. Harriet S. Brooks, Chicago; Treasurer, Hon. Fernandol Jones, Chicago; Vice-Presidents, J. B. Bloss, Michigan; Mrs. Myra Bradwell, Illinois; Mrs. E. R. Collins, Ohio; Mrs. Dr. Ferguson, Indiana; Miss Phoebe Couzins, Missouri; Executive Committee, C. B. Waite, Chicago; Colin Campbell, Detroit; Mrs. Francis Minor, Missouri; Madame Anneke, Wisconsin; Mrs. Charles Leonard and Mrs. E. J. Loomis, Chicago.

[309] President, Mrs. A. H. Walker; Corresponding Secretary, Lucinda H. Stone; Recording Secretary, Mrs. S. E. Emory; Treasurer, Mrs. E. Metcalf; Executive Committee, Dr. J. A.B. Stone, Mrs. Frances Titus, Mrs. O. A. Jennison, Mrs. C. A. F. Stebbins, Mrs. D. C. Blakeman, Mrs. L. B. Curtiss, Dr. J. H. Bartholomew.

[310] The following named representatives voted yea: Messrs, Armstrong, Bailey, Bartholomew, Blackman, Briggs, Brown, Brunson, Buell, Burns, Cady, Carter, Chamberlain, Collins, Dintruff, Drake, Drew, Edwards, Fancher, Ferguson, Garfield, Gravelink, Gilmore, Goodrich, Gordon, Green, Haire, Harden, Hewitt, Hosner, Howard, Hoyt, Kellogg, Knapp, Lamb, Luce, E. R. Miller, R. C. Miller, Mitchell, Morse, O'Dell, Parker, Parsons, Pierce, Priest, Remer, Rich, Robinson, Sanderson, Scott, Sessions, Shaw, Smith, Taylor, Thomas, Thompson, VanAken, VanScoy, A. Walker, F. Walker, Walton, Warren, Welch, Welker, Wheeler, Withington, Wixon, Speaker--67. The following named Senators voted yea: Messrs. Anderson, Beattie, Brewer, Butterfield, Childs, Clubb, Cook, Crosby, Curry, DeLand, Ely, Goodell, Gray, Hewitt, Isham, Lewis, Mickley, Mitchell, McGowan, Neasmith, Prutzman, Richardson, Sparks, Sumner, Sutton, Wells--26.

[311] Officers of the Michigan State Woman Suffrage Association: President, Hon. Jonas H. McGowan, Coldwater; Vice-Presidents, Rev. Richmond Fiske Jr., Grand Haven, Mrs. John J. Bagley, Detroit; Recording Secretary, Mrs. N. Geddes, Lenawee; _Secretary and Treasurer_, George H. Stickney, Grand Haven; Executive Committee, Chairman, Hon. William M. Ferry, Grand Haven; First District--Giles B. Stebbins, Z. R. Brockway, Wayne; Second District--Hon. Charles E. Mickley, Lenawee, Mrs. M. A. Hazlett, Hillsdale; Third District--Hon. W. H. Withington, Jackson, Morgan Bates, Calhoun; Fourth District--James H. Stone, Kalamazoo, Miss Sarah Clute, St. Joseph; Fifth District--Hon. B. A. Harlan, Mrs. M. C. Bliss, Kent; Sixth District--Hon. I. H, Bartholomew, Ingham, Mrs. A. Jenney, Genesee; Seventh District--Hon. J. C. Lamb, Lapeer, J. P. Hoyt, Tuscola; Eighth District--Hon. C. V. DeLand, Saginaw, Hon. J. D. Lewis, Bay; Ninth District--Hon. E. L. Gray, Newaygo, Mrs. J. G. Ramsdell, Grand Traverse; _Vice-Presidents by Congressional Districts_, First District--Mrs. Eliza Leggett, Hon. W. N. Hudson, Wayne; Second District--Hon. W. S. Wilcox, Lenawee, Hon. Talcott E. Wing, Monroe; Third District--Mrs. Ann E. Graves, Calhoun, Mrs. Mary Lathrop, Jackson; Fourth District--Hon. Levi Sparks, Berrien, Rev. H. C. Peck, Kalamazoo; Fifth District--Hon. S. L. Withey, Hon. James Miller, Kent; Sixth District--Hon. Randolph Strickland, Clinton, C. F. Kimball, Oakland; Seventh District--Hon. Ira Butterfield, Lapeer, John M. Potter, Macomb; Eighth District--Hon. Ralph Ely, Gratiot, Mrs. S. M. Green, Bay; Ninth District--Elvin L. Sprague, Grand Traverse, S. W. Fowler, Manistee.

[312] Among many others were letters from Amos Dresser, Parker Pillsbury, Henry B. Blackwell, Rev. S. Reed, of Ann Arbor, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucy Stone, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Dr. Henry B. Baker, Miriam M. Cole, Margaret V. Longley, Abby and Julia Smith, of Glastonbury, Conn., A. C. Voris, from the Ohio constitutional convention, Hon. J. Logan Chipman.

[313] The following persons were announced and requested to communicate at once with the Executive Committee, George H. Stickney, Secretary, Grand Haven, Mich.: Allegan, Mrs. E. S. Nichols; Barry, Mrs. Goodyear; Bay, Mrs. S. M. Green, Mrs. Judge Holmes; Berrien, Hon. Levi Sparks, O. E. Mead; Branch, Mrs. Celia Woolley, Mrs. H. J. Boutelle; Calhoun, W. F. Neil, Mrs. Judge Graves, Morgan Bates, Dr. G. P. Jocelyn; Cass, Mr. Rice, William L. Jaques; Chippewa, Mrs. Charles G. Shepherd; Clinton, Mrs. Lee, Mrs. Gole; Eaton, J. Chance, Hon. A. K. Warren, Mrs. J. Musgrave, Mr. and Mrs. E. A. Foote; Genesee, Mrs. D. Stewart; Grand Traverse, Hon. W. H. C. Mitchell, Hon. J. G. Ramsdell; Gratiot, Hon. Ralph Ely; Hillsdale, Mrs. M. A. Pendill, Mrs. Dr. Swift, Mrs. E. Samm; Ingham, Dr. I. H. Bartholomew, Mrs. O. A. Jenison, A. R. Burr; Ionia, Mrs. A. Williams, Mrs. Chaddock, Mr. J. B. Smith; Isabella, Mrs. Douglas Nelson; Jackson, Mrs. Mary Lathrop, Fidus Livermore; Kalamazoo, J. H. Stone, Col. F. W. Curtenius, Merritt Moore. Dr. N. Thomas; Kent, Mrs. E. L. Briggs, E. G. D. Holden, E. P. Churchill; Lapeer, Hon. J. C. Lamb, Mrs. J. B. Wilson; Lenawee, Mrs. Dr. Fox, Mrs. F. A. Rowley, Hon. Charles E. Mickley; Livingston, E. P. Gregory; Macomb, Mrs. Ambrose Campbell, Daniel B. Briggs; Manistee, S. W. Fowler, Hon. B. M. Cutcheon, T. J. Ramsdell; Marquette, Sidney Adams, Hiram A. Burt; Mason, Mr. Foster; Midland, Dr. E. Jennings, Mrs. Sumner; Missaukee, S. W. Davis; Monroe, Hon. J. J. Sumner; Montcalm, Mr. J. M. Fuller; Muskegon, Lieutenant-Governor H. H. Holt, Mrs. O. B. Ingersoll, Mrs. Barney; Newaygo, Hon. E. L. Gray, Mrs. Lucy Utley; Oakland, Mrs. D. B. Fox, J. Holman, jr., Mrs. Alexander; Oceana, John Halsted; Osceola, B. F. Gooch; Ottawa, Dwight Cutler, Mrs. W. C. Sheldon; Roscommon, Messrs. Davis & Hall; Saginaw, Mrs. Whiting, Mrs. Gamble, J. F. Driggs, W. P. Burdick; Shiawassee, Mrs. Dr. Parkill, J. H. Hartwell, Hon. J. M. Goodell, Dr. King; St. Clair, Hon. B. W. Jenks; St. Joseph, W. S. Moore, Mrs. Mary Peck; Tuscola, Mrs. J. P. Hoyt; Van Buren, Mr. and Mrs. C. D. Van Vechten, A. S. Dyckman, Hon. S. H. Blackman; Washtenaw, Mrs. Israel Hall, Mrs. Seth Reed, D. Cramer, Mary E. Foster; Wayne, Mrs. C. A. F. Stebbins, Colin Campbell, G. W. Bates, Lucy L. Stout.

[314] Miss Eastman, Miss Hindman, Phoebe Couzins, Margaret W. Campbell, Elizabeth K. Churchill, Lelia Partridge, Mrs. Hazlett, Mrs. Samms, Miss Matilda Victor; George W. Julian of Indiana, Giles B. Stebbins and Clinton R. Fisk, representing the Michigan Association, and the following among volunteer workers: B. A. Harlan of Grand Rapids, Mrs. Hathaway of Cass county, Mrs. Judge Fuller, the Hon. J. H. McGowan and Mrs. Boutelle of Branch county; Mrs. L. A. Pearsall of Macomb, Mrs. F. W. Gillette of Oakland, Miss Strickland of Clinton, J. B. Stone of Kalamazoo, Mrs. Lucy L. Stout of Wayne, and the Rev. T. H. Stewart of Indiana.

[315] It was in this campaign that an editor in a Kalamazoo journal said: "That ancient daughter of Methuselah, Susan B. Anthony, passed through our city yesterday, on her way to the Plainwell meeting, with a bonnet on her head looking as if she had recently descended from Noah's ark." Miss Anthony often referred to this description of herself, and said, "Had I represented 20,000 votes in Michigan, that political editor would not have known nor cared whether I was the oldest or the youngest daughter of Methuselah, or whether my bonnet came from the ark or from Worth's.--[E. C. S.

[316] The inspectors voting were: Yeas--Adams, Baxter, Brooks, Dullea, Henderson, Smith. Nays--Bragg, Balch, Barclay, Barry, Bond, Christian, Hill, Hughes, Langley, Mahoney, O'Keefe, Sutherland.

[317] We can easily see how little the opponents who talk so much of chivalry, respect women or themselves, by the language they use when they are opposed on this very question.

[318] Mrs. Boutelle and Mrs. Stebbins were in the polling place two or three hours, while Mr. Farwell made efforts to gain favorable opinions enough to convert Colonel Phelps; many excellent men were in favor of her vote. The ladies lunched from a daintily filled basket, prepared by the wife of inspector Farwell.

[319] Miss Abby Rogers, Miss Delia Rogers, Miss Emily Ward, and Miss Clapp, were all deeply interested in establishing a seminary where girls could have equal advantages with students in the university. This seminary was in existence ten years, but without State aid the struggle was too great, and Miss Abby Rogers, the founder, abandoned the undertaking.

[320] The names of the eleven young women Mrs. Stearns is unable to recall.

[321] The officers of the Manistee Society are (1885): President, Mrs. Lucy T. Stansell; Corresponding Secretary, Fannie Holden Fowler; Recording Secretary, Miss Nellie Walker; Treasurer, Mrs. Susan Seymour.

[322] The officers of the Grand Rapids Society are: President, Mrs. Cordelia F. Briggs; Vice-Presidents, Loraine Immen, Emma Wheeler; Treasurer, Mrs. Henry Spring; Secretary, Mrs. J. W. Adams.

[323] Following is a complete list of all officers elected in 1885: President, Mrs. Mary L. Doe of Carrollton; Vice-President, Mrs. Loraine Immen of Grand Rapids; Recording Secretary, Mrs. H. S. Spring of Grand Rapids; Corresponding Secretary, Mrs. Fannie H. Fowler of Manistee; Treasurer, Mrs. C. A. F. Stebbins of Detroit; Advisory Committee, Mrs. E. L. Briggs of Grand Rapids, and Mrs. S. E. V. Emery of Lansing; Executive Committee--First District, Mrs. Harriet J. Boutell of Detroit; Second District, Mrs. Annette B. Gardner Smith of Ann Arbor; Fifth District, Mrs. Emily H. Ketchum of Grand Rapids; Sixth District, Francis M. Stuart of Flint; Eighth District, Mrs. Frances C. Stafford of Milwaukee; Ninth District, Col. S. W. Fowler of Manistee; Eleventh and Twelfth Districts, Mrs. R. A. Campbell, Traverse City.

[324] Spending the summer of 1865 at Leavenworth, I frequently visited Mrs. Haviland, then busily occupied in ministering to the necessities of the 10,000 refugees just then from the Southern States. On May 29, I aided her in collecting provisions for the steamer, which was to transport over a hundred men, women and children, for whom she was to provide places in Michigan. I shall never forget that day nor the admiration and reverence I felt for the magnanimity and self-sacrifice of that wonderful woman.--[S. B. A.

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