eat events, often
fail to understand some of the best pages of history made under their
own eyes. Hence the woman suffrage movement has not yet been accepted
as the legitimate outgrowth of American ideas--a component part of the
history of our republic--but is falsely considered the willful
outburst of a few unbalanced minds, whose ideas can never be realized
under any form of government.

Among the immediate causes that led to the demand for the equal
political rights of women, in this country, we may note three:

1. The discussion in several of the State Legislatures on the property
rights of married women, which, heralded by the press with comments
grave and gay, became the topic of general interest around many
fashionable dinner-tables, and at many humble firesides. In this way
all phases of the question were touched upon, involving the
relations of the sexes, and gradually widening to all human
interests--political, religious, civil, and social. The press and
pulpit became suddenly vigilant in marking out woman's sphere, while
woman herself seemed equally vigilant in her efforts to step outside
the prescribed limits.

2. A great educational work was accomplished by the able lectures of
Frances Wright, on political, religious, and social questions.
Ernestine L. Rose, following in her wake, equally liberal in her
religious opinions, and equally well informed on the science of
government, helped to deepen and perpetuate the impression Frances
Wright had made on the minds of unprejudiced hearers.

3. And above all other causes of the "Woman Suffrage Movement," was
the Anti-Slavery struggle in this country. The ranks of the
Abolitionists were composed of the most eloquent orators, the ablest
logicians, men and women of the purest moral character and best minds
in the nation. They were usually spoken of in the early days as "an
illiterate, ill-mannered, poverty-stricken, crazy set of long-haired
Abolitionists." While the fact is, some of the most splendid specimens
of manhood and womanhood, in physical appearance, in culture,
refinement, and knowledge of polite life, were found among the early
Abolitionists. James G. Birney, John Pierpont, Gerrit Smith, Wendell
Phillips, Charles Sumner, Maria Weston Chapman, Helen Garrison, Ann
Green Phillips, Abby Kelly, Paulina Wright Davis, Lucretia Mott, were
all remarkably fine-looking.

In the early Anti-Slavery conventions, the broad principles of human
rights were so exhau