nd custom doomed to
degradation. And if the seal of their bondage is never to be
broken, they themselves as well as the lords and masters
they serve, are equally unconscious of the servitude. No
religion, no civil government, has ever taught or recognized
any other condition for woman than that of subjection.
Against the accumulated precedents of all the ages, you and
your noble coaedjutors have rebelled in the face of derision
for fifty long, weary years. Was ever such sublime womanly
heroism and self-sacrifice before known? Was ever such worth
of culture, such wealth of womanhood, laid on the altar of
country and humanity? And all this comparatively
unrecognized and unrewarded. Where is the boasted chivalry
of the English-speaking nations? It is a virtue we boast of,
but do not possess. It never, in fact, had any real
existence based on genuine respect for woman. It is a bitter
sarcasm in the mouth of an American male citizen. A few men
like Theodore Parker, Joshua R. Giddings, William Lloyd
Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Gerrit Smith, Samuel J. May and
Parker Pillsbury have measurably redeemed this nation,
recognizing your claim for woman as self-evidently just and
righteous, and cooeperating with you in maintaining it. There
are only a score or two of such men in a generation with
sufficient chivalry or perception of justice to publicly
claim for women the rights they themselves possess.

Science has demonstrated that men to be manly must be well
born, must have noble mothers. How can a mother give birth
to a noble soul while herself a slave? How can she impart a
free spirit when her own is servile? A stream cannot rise
higher than its fountain.

We have thought to bring about a high order of civilization
by freeing our sons, while chaining our daughters, by
sending sons to college and daughters to menial service for
a mere pittance as wages, or selling them in marriage to the
highest bidder--by robbing them on the very threshold of
life of all noble ambition. By the degradation of our women
we take from the inherited qualities of the race as much as
is