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 Thermopylæ fight for coëducation 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
