It is true, women repined at their hard lot; but it was thought
to be fixed by a divine decree, for "The man shall rule over thee,"
and "Wives, be subject to your husbands," and "Wives, submit
yourselves unto your husbands as unto the Lord," caused them to
consider their fate inevitable, and to feel that it would be
contravening God's law to resist it. It is ever thus; where Theology
enchains the soul, the Tyrant enslaves the body. But can any one, who
has any knowledge of the laws that govern our being--of heredity and
pre-natal influences--be astonished that our jails and prisons are
filled with criminals, and our hospitals with sickly specimens of
humanity? As long as the mothers of the race are subject to such
unhappy conditions, it can never be materially improved. Men exhibit
some common sense in breeding all animals except those of their own
species.

All through the Anti-Slavery struggle, every word of denunciation of
the wrongs of the Southern slave, was, I felt, equally applicable to
the wrongs of my own sex. Every argument for the emancipation of the
colored man, was equally one for that of woman; and I was surprised
that all Abolitionists did not see the similarity in the condition of
the two classes. I read, with intense interest, everything that
indicated an awakening of public or private thought to the idea that
woman did not occupy her rightful position in the organization of
society; and, when I read the lectures of Ernestine L. Rose and the
writings of Margaret Fuller, and found that other women entertained
the same thoughts that had been seething in my own brain, and realized
that I stood not alone, how my heart bounded with joy! The arguments
of that distinguished jurist, Judge Hurlburt, encouraged me to hope
that men would ultimately see the justice of our cause, and concede to
women their natural rights.

I hailed with gladness any aspiration of women toward an enlargement
of their sphere of action; and when, in the early part of 1848, I
learned that Miss Elizabeth Blackwell had been admitted as a student
to the medical college at Geneva, N. Y., being the first lady in the
United States that had attained that privilege, and knowing the tide
of public sentiment she had to stem, I could not refrain from writing
her a letter of approval and encouragement. In return I received the
following:

PHILADELPHIA, _August 12, 1848_.

DEAR MADAM:--Your letter, I can