Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/703

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Memorializing the Legislatures.
673

noon of that day, in Mozart Hall. The meeting was called to order by Susan B. Anthony, of Rochester, New York, who made a few introductory remarks, after which, the question of the expediency of memorializing the Legislatures of the different States, on the sunject of granting equal rights to Woman, was discussed at some length. At the close of the debate, a resolution was adopted, that it was expedient so to memorialize the several Legislatures, and a committee[1] was appointed for that purpose, and a series of resolutions[2] offered by Caroline H. Dall.

These resolutions were discussed by Mrs. Dall, Mrs. Hallock, Mrs. Elizabeth Neal Gay, Lucretia Mott, A. M. Powell, Charles C. Burleigh, and others.

EVENING SESSION.

At an early hour, Mozart Hall was crowded to overflowing, every seat being occupied, and crowds standing in the aisle, and the rear of the hall.

Lucretia Mott had been chosen to preside, but was not able, on account of the crowd, to reach the platform at the hour appointed. The Convention was therefore called to order by Susan B. Anthony.

Mrs. Caroline H. Dall, of Boston, was the first speaker. She desired to commemorate the century which had just closed since the death of Mary Woolstonecraft, and to show that what she did in the old world, Margaret Fuller had done in the new; but the noise and restlessness among the audience were so great (much of which, we

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  1. Wendell Phillips, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Caroline H. Dall, Caroline M. Severance, Ernestine L. Rose, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Thomas W. Higginson, Susan B. Anthony.
  2. Resolved, That while every newspaper in the land carries on its face the record of woman's dishonor, the women who seek to elevate their sex are bound to inquire into its causes and save from its paralysis. Resolved, That while we have no daughters too tender and pure, no sons too innocent, to escape from the influence of such tragedies as those at North Adams and Washington, the true modesty of every mother, the true dignity of every wife, should forbid her to put aside the questions they involve. Resolved, That the dishonor of single women proceeds in great measure from destitution, and the dishonor of married women as much from their own want of education and utter absence of purpose in life as from the inability of their husbands to inspire them with true respect and help them to true living: therefore, Resolved, That it is our bounden duty to open, in every possible way, new vocations to women, to raise their wages by every advisable means, and to secure to them an education which shall be less a decoration to their persons than a tool to their hands. Resolved, That while courts adjourn in honor of a man like Philip Barton Key, while the whole Bar of the District of Columbia pass resolutions in his honor, and vote to attend his funeral, as a mark of respect, while the public opinion of a whole community sustains a man who could not defend his murderous indignation by the witness of an unspotted life, it is our duty to rate public opinion as a corrupting power, and to bring up our children in the knowledge and sanction of a higher law.