Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/496

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CHAPTER XIV.

NEW YORK.

First Steps in New York Woman's Temperance Convention, Albany, January, 1852—New York Woman's State Temperance Society, Rochester, April, 1852—Women before the Legislature pleading for a Maine Law—Women rejected as Delegates to Men's State Conventions at Albany and Syracuse, 1852; at the Brick Church Meeting and World's Temperance Convention in New York, 1853—Horace Greeley defends the Rights of Women in The York Tribune—The Teachers' State Conventions—The Syracuse National Woman's Rights Convention, 1852—Mob in the Broadway Tabernacle Woman's Right? Convention through two days, 1853—State Woman's Rights Convention at Rochester, December, 1853—Albany Convention, February, 1854, and Hearing before the Legislature demanding the Right of Suffrage—A State Committee Appointed—Susan B. Anthony General Agent—Conventions at Saratoga Springs, 1854, '55, '59—Annual State Conventions with Legislative Hearings and Reports of Committees, until the War—Married Women's Property Law, 1860—Bill before the Legislature Granting Divorce for Drunkenness—Horace Greeley and Thurlow Weed oppose it—Ernestine L. Rose, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton Address the Legislature in favor of the Bill—Robert Dale Owen defends the Measure in The New York Tribune—National Woman's Rights Conventions in New York City, 1856, '58, '59, '60—Status of the Woman's Rights Movement at the Opening of the War, 1861.

A full report of the woman's rights agitation in the State of New York, would in a measure be the history of the movement. In this State, the preliminary battles in the anti-slavery, temperance, educational, and religious societies were fought; the first Governmental aid given to the higher education of woman, and her voice first heard in teachers' associations. Here the first Woman's Rights Convention was held, the first demand made for suffrage, the first society formed for this purpose, and the first legislative efforts made to secure the civil and political rights of women; commanding the attention of leading members of the bar; of Savage, Spencer, Hertell, and Hurlbut. Here too the pulpit made the first demand for the political rights of woman. Here was the first temperance society formed by women, the first medical college opened to them, and woman first ordained for the ministry.

In 1850, in the city of Buffalo, 1,500 women petitioned the Com-