y
subject. In courts of justice and legislative assemblies, if the
right of any person to be there is questioned, all business waits
until that point is settled. Now, it is not settled in the minds of
the masses that woman has any right to stand on an even pedestal
with man, look him in the face as an equal and rebuke the sins of
her day and generation. Let it be clearly understood then that we
are a Woman's Rights Society; that we believe it is woman's duty to
speak whenever she feels the impression to do so; that it is her
right to be present in all the councils of Church and State.

Continuing, she took firm ground in favor of the right of a woman to be
divorced from an habitual drunkard, a position which brought upon her a
storm of censure from press, pulpit and society. She was strongly
supported, however, by the most prominent women of the day and received
many letters of approval, among them one from Lucy Stone, saying: "On
the divorce question, I am on your side, for the reason that
drunkenness so depraves a man's system that he is not fit to be a
father." Gerrit Smith wrote to the convention:

I know not why it is not as much the duty of your sex as of mine to
establish newspapers, write books and hold public meetings for the
promotion of the cause of temperance. The current idea that modesty
should hold women back from such services is nonsense and
wickedness. Female modesty! female delicacy! I would that I might
never again hear such phrases. There is but one standard of modesty
and delicacy for both men and women; and so long as different
standards are tolerated, both sexes will be perverse and
corrupt.... The Quakers are the best people I have ever known, the
most serious and chaste and yet the most brave and resisting; but
there are no other people who are so little concerned lest women
get out of their sphere. None make so little difference between man
and woman. Others appear to think that the happiness and safety of
the world consist in magnifying the difference. But when reason and
religion shall rule, there will be no difference between man and
woman, in respect to the intellect, the heart or the manners.

[Autograph:

Very respectfully
your friend
Gerrit Smith]

A stirring letter was sent by Neal Dow, expressing his great pleasure
that women were taking active and decided measures for the