in their turn justice and equity at your hands.
The friends of woman suffrage may be said to have fairly held a protracted meeting during the two following weeks in Albany, with hearings before both branches of the Legislature, and lectures evening after evening in Association Hall, by Mrs. Rose, Mr. Channing, Mr. Phillips, and Miss Brown, culminating in a discussion by the entire press of the city and State; for all the journals had something to say on one side or the other, Mrs. Rose, Mr. Channing, Miss Brown, and several anonymous writers taking part in the newspaper debate. As this was the first Convention held at the Capitol, it roused considerable agitation on every phase of the question, not only among the legislators on the bills before them, but among the people throughout the State.
The Albany Transcript thus sums up the Woman's Rights Convention.—The meeting last evening was attended by the largest and most brilliant audience of the series. A large number of members of the Legislature were there, and a full representation of our most influential citizens. Indeed they could not have asked for a more numerous or talented body of hearers. Mrs. Rose was the sole speaker, owing to the necessity which had called the others away.... She was listened to with the most profound attention, and encouraged by frequent and prolonged applause.
Thus has ended the first Convention of women designed to influence political action. On Monday the 6,000 petitions will be presented in the Legislature, and the address be placed on the members' tables. Whatever may be the final disposition of the matter, it is well to make a note of this first effort to influence the Legislature. It was originated by Miss Susan B. Anthony, and has been managed financially by her. Though a stranger amongst us, she has made the contracts for the room, advertised in the papers, employed the speakers, published the address, and performed much other arduous labor.
Mrs. Nichols, one of the speakers, has long been connected with the press, and is a woman of no mean ability. Her mild, beaming countenance and the affectionate tones of her voice, disprove that she is any less a woman than those who do not "speak in public on the stage." Mrs. Love is a new caterer to public favor, and promises well. Some have remarked that she is well named, being a "Love of a woman." Mrs. Jenkins is a fluent and agreeable speaker, and has a good degree of power in swaying an audience. But Mrs. Rose is the queen of the company. On the educational question in particular, she rises to a high standard of oratorical power. When speaking of Hungary and her own crushed Poland, she is full of eloquence and pathos, and she has as great a power to chain an audience as any of our best male speakers.
The Evening Journal (Thurlow Weed, editor): Woman's Rights.—Mr. Channing and Mrs. Rose pleaded the cause of woman's rights before the Senate Committee of bachelors yesterday. The only effect produced was a determination more fixed than ever in the minds of the committee, to remain bachelors in the event of the success of the movement. And who would blame them?
The same champions, with others probably, will speak to the House Committee in the Assembly Chamber this afternoon; and Mr. Channing and Mrs. Rose make addresses in Association Hall this evening. Price twenty-five cents.
The Albany Register: Women in the Senate Chamber.—The Senate was alarmed yesterday afternoon. It surrendered to progress. The Select Committee to whom the women's rights petitions had been referred, took their seats on the president's platform, looking as grave as possible. Never had Senators Robertson, Yost, and Field been in such responsible circumstances. They were calm, but evidently felt themselves in great peril.
In the circle of the Senate, ranged in invincible row, sat seven ladies, from quite pretty to quite plain.
Ernestine L. Rose and Rev. William Henry Channing presented the arguments and appeals to the Committee, and Mrs. Rose invited them to ask questions. The Register concludes:
The Honorable Senators quailed beneath the trial. There was a terrible silence, and the audience eager to hear what the other ladies had to say, were wretched when they found that the Committee had silently dissolved—surrendered. Oh, what a fall was there, my countrymen!
The Albany Argus of March 4th, says: The Rights of Women Defined by Themselves.—Miss Anthony and Mrs. Rose before the House Committee, March 3d. The Committee took their seats in the clerk's desk, and the ladies took possession of the members' seats, filling the chamber, many members of the Legislature being present. Miss Anthony presented a paper prepared by Judge William Hay, of Saratoga, asking that husband and wife should be tenants in common of property without survivorship, but with a partition on the death of one; that a wife shall be competent to discharge trusts and powers the same as a single woman; that the statute in respect to a married woman's property descend as though she had been unmarried; that married women shall be entitled to execute letters testamentary, and of administration; that married women shall have power to make contracts and transact business as though unmarried; that they shall be entitled to their own earnings, subject to their proportionable liability for support of children; that post-nuptial acquisitions shall belong equally to husband and wife; that married women shall stand on the same footing with single women, as parties or witnesses in legal proceedings; that they shall be sole guardians of their minor children; that the homestead shall be inviolable and inalienable for widows and children; that the laws in relation to divorce shall be revised, and drunkenness made cause for absolute divorce; that better care shall be taken of single women's property, that their rights may not be lost through ignorance, that the preference of males in descent of real estate shall be abolished; that women shall exercise "the right of suffrage," and be eligible to all offices, occupations, and professions; entitled to act as jurors; eligible to all public offices; that courts of conciliation shall be organized as peace-makers; that a law shall be enacted extending the masculine designation in all statutes of the State to females.
Mrs. Rose then addressed the Committee, saying: The right of petition is of no avail unless the reform demanded be candidly considered by the legislators. We judge of the intellectual inferiority of our fellow-men by the amount of resistance they oppose to oppression, and to some extent we judge correctly by this test. The same rule holds good for women; while they tamely submit to the many inequalities under which they labor, they scarcely deserve to be freed from them.... These are not the demands of the moment or the few; they are the demands of the age; of the second half of the nineteenth century. The world will endure after us, and future generations may look back to this meeting to acknowledge that a great onward step was here taken in the cause of human progress.
Mrs. Rose took her seat amidst great applause from the galleries and lobbies. The Committee adjourned.
Albany Register, March 7: Woman's Rights in the Legislature.—While the feminine propagandists of women's rights confined themselves to the exhibition of short petticoats and long-legged boots, and to the holding of Conventions, and speech-making in concert-rooms, the people were disposed to be amused by them, as they are by the wit of the clown in the circus, or the performances of Punch and Judy on fair days, or the minstrelsy of gentlemen with blackened faces, on banjos, the tambourine, and bones. But the joke is becoming stale. People are getting cloyed with these performances, and are looking for some healthier and more intellectual amusement. The ludicrous is wearing away, and disgust is taking the place of pleasurable sensations, arising from the novelty of this new phase of hypocrisy and infidel fanaticism. People are beginning to inquire how far public sentiment should sanction or tolerate these unsexed women, who make a scoff of religion, who repudiate the Bible and blaspheme God; who would step out from the true sphere of the mother, the wife, and the daughter, and taking upon themselves the duties and the business of men, stalk into the public gaze, and by engaging in the politics, the rough controversies, and trafficking of the world, upheave existing institutions, and overturn all the social relations of life.
It is a melancholy reflection, that among our American women who have been educated to better things, there should be found any who are willing to follow the lead of such foreign propagandists as the ringleted, glove-handed exotic, Ernestine L. Rose. We can understand how such men as the Rev.
