, to
elevate her condition or to command the respect of the other
sex....

How did woman first become subject to man, as she now is all over
the world? By her nature, her sex, just as the negro is and always
will be to the end of time, inferior to the white race and,
therefore, doomed to subjection; but she is happier than she would
be in any other condition, just because it is the law of her
nature....

What do the leaders of the woman's rights convention want? They
want to vote and to hustle with the rowdies at the polls. They want
to be members of Congress, and in the heat of debate subject
themselves to coarse jests and indecent language like that of Rev.
Mr. Hatch. They want to fill all other posts which men are
ambitious to occupy, to be lawyers, doctors, captains of vessels
and generals in the field. How funny it would sound in the
newspapers that Lucy Stone, pleading a cause, took suddenly ill in
the pains of parturition and perhaps gave birth to a fine bouncing
boy in court! Or that Rev. Antoinette Brown was arrested in the
pulpit in the middle of her sermon from the same cause, and
presented a "pledge" to her husband and the congregation; or that
Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, while attending a gentleman patient for a fit
of the gout or fistula in ano found it necessary to send for a
doctor, there and then, and to be delivered of a man or woman
child--perhaps twins.[16] A similar event might happen on the floor
of Congress, in a storm at sea or in the raging tempest of battle,
and then what is to become of the woman legislator?

For months after this convention the discussions and controversies were
kept up through press and pulpit. The clergymen in Syracuse and
surrounding towns rang the changes on the cry of "infidel" as the
surest way of neutralizing its influence. Rev. Byron Sunderland, a
Congregational minister of Syracuse and afterwards chaplain of the
United States Senate, preached a sermon on the "Bloomer Convention."
Rev. Ashley, of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Syracuse, also preached a
sermon against equality for woman, which was put into pamphlet form and
scattered throughout the State. It called forth many protests, some
from the women of his own church. The clergymen selected the Star, the
most disreputable paper in the city, for the publication of their
articles. Rev. Sunderland was ably answered by