earth and heaven, equal in the sight of man and God, we shall have a glorious revival of liberty and justice everywhere.
How fully these pages of history illustrate the equal share woman has had in the trials and triumphs of all the political and moral revolutions through which we have passed, from feeble colonies to an independent nation; suffering with man the miseries of poverty and war, all the evils of bad government, and enjoying with him the blessings of luxury and peace, and a wise administration of law. The experience of the heroines of anti-slavery show that no finespun sentimentalism in regard to woman's position in the clouds ever exempt her from the duties or penalties of a citizen. Neither State officers, nor mobs in the whirlwind of passion, tempered their violence for her safety or benefit.
When women proposed to hold a fair in Concert Hall, their flag was torn down from the street, while they and their property were ejected by the high constable. When women were speaking in Pennsylvania Hall, brickbats were hurled at, them through the windows. When women searched Philadelphia through for a place where they might meet to speak and pray for the slave-mother and her child (the most miserable of human beings), halls and churches were closed against them. And who were these women? Eloquent speakers, able writers, dignified wives and mothers, the most moral, religious, refined, cultured, intelligent citizens that Massachusetts, New York, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania could boast. There never was a queen on any European throne possessed of more personal beauty, grace, and dignity than Maria Weston Chapman.65 The calmness and impassioned earnestness of Angelina Grimké, speaking nearly an hour 'mid that howling mob, was not surpassed in courage and consecration even by Paul among the wild beasts at Ephesus. Here she made her last public speech, and as the glowing words died upon her lips, a new voice was heard, rich, deep, and clear upon the troubled air; and the mantle of self-sacrifice, so faithfully worn by South Carolina's brave daughter, henceforth rested on the shoulders of an equally brave and eloquent Quaker girl from Massachusetts,66 who for many years afterward preached the same glad tidings of justice, equality, and liberty for all.
TEMPERANCE.
In this reform, also, the women of Pennsylvania took an equally active part. We are indebted to Hannah Darlington, of Kennett Square, Chester Co., for the following record of the temperance work in this State:
Kennett Square, 2 mo., 6, 1881.
Dear Mrs. Stanton:—I did not think our early temperance work of sufficient account to preserve the reports, hence with considerable research am able to send you but very little. Many mixed meetings were held through the county before 1847. Woods-meetings, with decorated stands, were fashionable in Chester in warm weather, for several years before we branched off with a call for a public meeting. That brought quite a number together in Friends' Meeting-house at Kennett Square, where we discussed plans for work and appointed committees to carry them out.
Sidney Peirce, Ann Preston, and myself, each prepared addresses to read at meetings called in such places as the Committee arranged; and with Chandler Darlington to drive us from place to place, we addressed many large audiences, some in the day-time and some in the evening; scattered appeals and tracts, and collected names to petitions asking for a law against licensing liquor-stands.
In 1848, we went to Harrisburg, taking an address to the Legislature written by Ann Preston, and sanctioned by the meeting that appointed us. The address, with our credentials and petitions, was presented to the two Houses, read in our presence, and referred to the Committee on "Vice and Immorality," which called a meeting and invited us to give our address. Sidney Peirce, who was a good reader, gave it with effect to a large roomful of the Committee and legislators. It was listened to with profound attention, complimented highly, and I think aroused a disposition among the best members to give the cause of temperance more careful consideration. The Local Option Law was passed by that Legislature.
We also aided the mixed meetings by our presence and addresses, and by circulating petitions, and publishing appeals in the county papers; helping in every way to arouse discussion and prepare the people to sustain the new law. But the Supreme Court of the State, through the liquor influence, declared the law unconstitutional, after a few months' successful trial. Drinking, however, has not been as respectable since that time. We continued active work in our association until the inauguration of the Good Templars movement, in which men and women worked together on terms of equality.
Hannah M. Darlington.
Respectfully yours,
TEMPERANCE CONVENTION.
A Temperance Convention of Women of Chester County, met at Marlborough Friends' Meeting-house, on Saturday, the 30th of December, 1848, and was organized by the appointment of Martha Hayhurst, President; Sidney Peirce and Hannah Pennock, Secretaries.
Letters received by a Committee of Correspondence, appointed at a Convention last winter, were read; one, from Pope Bushnell, Chairman of the Committee on Vice and Immorality, to which temperance petitions were referred; and also from our Representatives in the Legislature, pledging themselves to use all their influence to obtain the passage of a law to prohibit the sale of intoxicating liquors as a beverage amongst us. The Business Committee reported addresses to the men and women of Chester County, which were considered, amended, and adopted, as follows:
To the Women of Chester County:
Dear Sisters:—Again we would urge upon you the duty and necessity of action in the temperance cause. Notwithstanding the exertions that have been made, intoxicating liquors continue to be sold and drank in our midst. Still, night after night, the miserable drunkard reels to that home he has made desolate. Still, wives and sisters weep in anguish as they look on those dearer to them than life, and see, trace by trace, their delicacy and purity of soul vanishing beneath the destroying libations that tempt them when they pass the domestic threshold.
We need not depict to you the poverty and crime and unutterable woe that result from intemperance, nor need you go far to be reminded of the revolting fact, that under the sanction of laws, men still make it a deliberate business to deal out that terrible agent, the only effect of which is to darken the God-like in the human soul, and to foster in its place the appetites of demons. The law passed the 7th of April, 1846, under which the sale of intoxicating drinks was prohibited by vote of the people in most of the townships in Chester County, has been decided by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional; and this decision, by inspiring confidence in the dealers and consumers of the fatal poison, seems to have given a new impetus to this diabolical traffic. Wider and deeper its ravages threaten to extend themselves; and to every benevolent mind comes the earnest question, What must now be done? It is too late for women to excuse themselves from exertion in this cause, on the ground that it would be indelicate to leave the sheltered retirement of home. Alas! where is the home-shelter that guards the delicacy of the drunkard's wife and daughter? We all recognize the divine obligation to relieve suffering and to cherish virtue as binding alike on man and woman. Our hearts thrill at the mention of those women who were "last at the cross and earliest at the grave" of the crucified Nazarine. We commend her whose prayers and entreaties once saved her native Rome from pillage. We admire the heroism of a Joan of Arc, as it is embalmed in history and song. We boast of virgin martyrs to the faith of their convictions, and we dare not now put forth the despicable plea of feminine propriety to excuse our supineness, when fathers, sons, and brothers are falling around us, degraded, bestialized, thrice murdered by this foe at our doors. No! we have solemn obligations resting upon us, and we should be unfaithful to the holiest call of duty, false to the instincts of womanhood and the pleading voice of love, if we should sit quietly down in careless ease while vice is thus spreading around us, and human souls are falling into the fell snare of the destroyer.
By meeting together
