deceived and silenced the majority. How well they have kept their promises is fully shown in the fact that although twenty years have passed, the political status of woman remains unchanged. The Abolitionists have drifted into other reforms, and the Republicans devote themselves to more conservative measures. The Milwaukee convention was adjourned to Madison, where Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony addressed the legislature, Gov. Fairchild presiding.
In 1870, March 16, 17, a large and enthusiastic convention was held at Janesville, in Lappin's Hall. Rev. Dr. Maxon, Lilia Peckham and Mrs. Stanton were among the speakers. After this, the latter being on a lyceum trip, spoke in many of the chief cities of the State and drew general attention to the question.
The following clear statement of the petty ways in which girls can be defrauded of their rights to a thorough education by narrow, bigoted men entrusted with a little brief authority, is from the pen of Lilia Peckham, a young girl of great promise, who devoted her rare talents to the suffrage movement. Her early death was an irreparable loss to the women of Wisconsin:[1]
Ed. News:—We find proofs at every step that one class cannot legislate for another, the rich for the poor, nor men for women.
The State University, supported by the taxes of the people and for the benefit of the people, should offer equal advantages to men and women. By amendment of the Constitution in 1867, it was declared that the University shall be open to female as well as male students, under such regulations and restrictions as the board of regents may deem proper. At first the students recited together, but Mr. Chadbourne made it a condition of accepting the presidency that they should be separated. I do not speak of the separation of the sexes to find fault. I conceive that if equal advantages be given women by the State, whether in connection with or apart from men, they have no ground for complaint. My object is to compare the advantages given to the sexes and see the practical effect of legislation by men alone in this department. From all the facts that are now pressed upon us, confused, contradictory and obscure, we begin to obtain a glimpse of the general law that informs them. The University has a college of arts (including the department of agriculture, of engraving and military tactics), a college of letters, preparatory department, law department, post-graduate course, last and certainly least, a female college. The faculty and board of instructors number twenty-one. The college of arts has nine professors, one of natural philosophy, one each of mental philosophy, modern languages, rhetoric, chemistry, mathematics, agriculture,
- ↑ Miss Lilia Peckham died in Milwaukee, the city of her residence. She had been ill but a few weeks, her physicians considering her recovery certain up to within an hour of her death; but a sudden and unlooked-for change took place. One of the truest, purest and best spirits we have ever met has thus passed from earth to heaven. All who met her soon came to appreciate her gifted nature, her rare talent and spiritual insight. But only those who knew her well can bear witness to her wonderful unselfishness, her remorseless honesty of speech and deed, the loftiness of her ideal and the beauty of her womanly soul. The Milwaukee Sentinel closes a brief obituary notice of our friend and co-worker as follows: "This talented young woman is well known throughout the country as an earnest advocate of the woman's rights movement. Only a few weeks since she made a successful tour through the West, speaking in various city pulpits. Fearlessly she spoke all that she had come to feel was truth, though it shook the very foundations of old creeds and ideas. Many efforts from her scholarly pen attest to her devotion to every onward movement of the hour. She was to have entered the Cambridge Divinity School early in the present autumn, having chosen the ministry for her life-work. That a life so full of promise of usefulness should be so suddenly stopped is irreconcilable with our finite judgment. It is hard to say, 'it is well,' though God's fact may be that this young life, with its beauty of character, its sisterly affection, its still larger sisterly sympathy with a suffering humanity, its longings and aspirations, its zealous strivings after the true and good, is full and complete now; still we shall mourn her loss, her brief though beautiful career."
