cess we claimed for our
first convention. While so many of those early friends fell off
through indifference, fear of ridicule and growing conservatism,
she remained through these long years of trial steadfast to the
close of a brave, true life. She has been present at nearly every
convention, with her encouraging words and generous
contributions, and being well versed in Cushing's Manual, has
been one of our chief presiding officers. And my heart is filled
with gratitude, even at this late day, as I recall the
earnestness and eloquence with which Frederick Douglass advocated
our cause, though at that time he had no rights himself that any
white man was bound to respect. I marvel now, that in our
inexperience the interest was so well sustained through two
entire days, and that when the meeting adjourned everybody signed
the declaration and went home feeling that a new era had dawned
for woman. What had been done and said seemed so preeminently
wise and proper that none of us thought of being ridiculed,
ostracised, or suspected of evil. But what was our surprise and
chagrin to find ourselves, in a few days, the target for the
press of the nation; the New York _Tribune_ being our only strong
arm of defense.

Looking over these twenty-eight years, I feel that what we have
achieved, as yet, bears no proportion to what we have suffered in
the daily humiliation of spirit from the cruel distinctions based
on sex. Though our State laws have been essentially changed, and
positions in the schools, professions, and world of work secured
to woman, unthought of thirty years ago, yet the undercurrent of
popular thought, as seen in our social habits, theological
dogmas, and political theories, still reflects the same customs,
creeds, and codes that degrade women in the effete civilizations
of the old world. Educated in the best schools to logical
reasoning, trained to liberal thought in politics, religion and
social ethics under republican institutions, American women
cannot brook the discriminations in regard to sex that were
patiently accepted by the ignorant in barbarous ages as divine
law. And yet subjects of emperors in the old world, with their
narrow ideas of individual rights, their contempt of all
womankind, come here to teach the mothers of t