concerted attack upon them, she did a daring thing for a woman in those days to do: She decided on taking the platform to defend those truths, and, in so far as she might, to counteract the threatened attack on Freethought. "It was in 1828,” she says in her autobiography, “that the standard of the Christian party in politics was openly unfurled. Of this party, which had been long secretly at work, Frances Wright had previously detected the maneuvers, in all sections of the country. This was an evident attempt, through the influence of the clergy over the female mind, to effect a union of Church and State, and with it a lasting union of Bank and State, and thus effectually to prostrate the independence of the people and the institutions of the country. Clearly distinguishing the nature of the move, she determined to arouse the whole American people to meet it at whatever cost to herself.”
She delivered her first lecture in Cincinnati, then made a tour as far west as
