ion, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall
use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We
shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and National
legislatures, and endeavour to enlist the pulpit and press in our
behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of
Conventions embracing every part of the country."

Such was the defiance of the Women's Rights Convention in 1848; other
conventions were held, as at Rochester, in 1853, and at Albany in 1854;
the movement extended quickly to other States and touched the quick of
public opinion. It bore its first good fruits in New York in 1848, when
the Property Bill was passed. This law, amended in 1860, and entitled
"An Act Concerning the Rights and Liabilities of Husband and Wife"
(March 20, 1860), emancipated completely the wife, gave her full control
of her own property, allowed her to engage in all civil contracts or
business on her own responsibility, rendered her joint guardian of her
children with her husband, and granted both husband and wife a one-third
share of one another's property in case of the decease of either
partner.

Thus New York became the pioneer. The movement spread, as I have
mentioned, with amazing rapidity; but it was not so uniformly
successful. Conventions were held, for example, in Ohio, at Salem,
April 19-20, 1850; at Akron, May 28-29, 1851; at Massillon on May 27,
1852. Nevertheless, in 1857, the Legislature of Ohio passed a bill
enacting that no married man should dispose of any personal property
without having first obtained the consent of his wife; the wife was
empowered, in case of a violation of this law, to commence a civil suit
in her own name for the recovery of the property; and any married woman
whose husband deserted her or neglected to provide for his family was to
be entitled to his wages and to those of her minor children. A bill to
extend suffrage to women was defeated, by a vote of 44 to 44; the
petition praying for its enactment had received 10,000 signatures.

The course of events as it has been described in New York and Ohio, is
practically the same in the case of the other States. The Civil War
relegated these issues to a secondary place; but during that momentous
conflict the heroism of Clara Barton on the battlefield and of thousands
of women like her paved the way for a reassertion of the rights of woman
in the light of her unquestioned exertions and unselfish labo