ne,

ELLOW.

GENERAL HISTORY-EARLY INFLUENCES.

1774-1850.

We want powder, but by the blessing of Heaven v fear them not. ABIGAIL ADAMS, in 1774.

IN

N this brief history of the Woman Suffrag Movement in Massachusetts, will be found record of the distant and surrounding cause which brought the reform into successful exis ence, with some mention of the names of thos men and women who, long before the date of th first Woman's Rights Convention, listened an responded to this new cry for life.

The earliest voice heard was that of Abiga

Adams, wife of our first President Adams, who, in a letter written to her husband, in 1774, at the time the First Continental Congress met in Philaadelphia, said: "In the new code of laws

I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your Do not put such unlimited power in Remember, all men

ancestors.

the hands of the husbands.

would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation." Was not this a prophetic word? and though spoken half playfully by one who, perhaps, would not have confessed how serious the matter was with her, to-day, after an interval of more than a century, it contains the gist of the whole Woman's Rights Movement.

After the Constitution was framed, the women who had done and sacrificed so much for the country, in the War of Independence, having been left out, Mrs. Adams wrote again to her husband in gentle warning words: "I cannot say

that I think you are very generous to the ladies, for, while you are proclaiming peace and good will to all men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining absolute power over wives. But you must remember, that absolute power, like most other things which are very bad, is most likely to be broken." Our first President Adams, in his attitude towards this subject, is an example of the sort of statesman, or legislator, described by his wife in one of her later letters: "He who is most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of government."

Mercy Otis Warren, sister of the fiery patriot, James Otis, was a staunch advocate of the "inherent rights" of all the citizens of the new republic. She was the first woman to make use of this celebrated phrase, and to assert that "inherent rights belonged to all mankind, and had been conferred on all by the God of nations." In 1818, Hannah Mather Crocker, grand-daughter of Cotton Mather, published a book, called "Observations on the Rights of Women."* After *See Appendix A.

this date, and until 1828, there is no record to be found, of any public expression here upon this subject.

In 1828 Frances Wright, an educated Scotchwoman, came to this country to lecture upon the "Moral and Political Questions of the Day, including Woman's Rights." This gifted lady was an able exponent of the doctrines of her eminent country-woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, as set forth in her celebrated book, the "Vindication of the Rights of Woman." Ernestine L. Rose, a beautiful Polish lady, lectured in 1836, in New York and other States, upon the Equal Rights of Women, In 1837, Mary S. Gove spoke upon the same subject, especially upon woman's right to a thorough medical education. About this time Sarah and Angelina Grimké, daughters of a wealthy planter in South Carolina, emancipated their slaves, and came North to live, and they lectured on the evils of slavery.

In 1838, Abby Kelley, a young Quakeress, made her first appearance upon the anti-slavery platform. She was the first Massachusetts woman who spoke to mixed audiences of men and

women in the State. As agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Abby Kelley followed in the footsteps of Angelina Grimké; speaking to the people, in school houses and churches, upon the horrors of slavery. The churches were alarmed at such an innovation, and both men and women were expelled from their body for going to hear them, especially on Sunday !* Had not St. Paul Isaid that women were to keep silent in the churches? It unsexed them, the church dignitaries had said in a Pastoral Letter, written by the General Association of Congregational Ministers in Massachusetts (in 1837), and it was unnatural that woman should assume the place and tone of man as a public reformer.

This "Clerical Bull," as it was called, was ably answered by Sarah Grimké, in a series of letters to Mary S. Parker (President of the

*Poor old Abby Folsom deserves some mention, as a martyr to woman's right to speak in public. She was notorious as a "woman's righter," and the boys followed and hooted her along the street. She was one of the first women to speak in anti-slavery meetings. Emerson called her the "Flea of Conventions." But for this impaling on the pen of his genius, her name would have been long ago lost in her forgotten grave.