The women who attended the meetings for the organization of the American Anti-Slavery Society were not suffragists, nor had they espoused any special theories respecting the position of women.
They did not wish to be members of the men's organizations but were quite content with their own separate one, which served its purpose very well under prevailing local conditions.James G.
Birney, the candidate of the Liberty party for the Presidency in 1840, had good reasons for opposition to the inclusion of men and women in the same organization.He knew that by acting separately they were winning their way.The introduction of a novel theory involving a different issue seemed to him likely to be a source of weakness.The cause of women was, however, gaining ground and winning converts.Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were delegates to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention at London.They listened to the debate which ended in the refusal to recognize them as members of the Convention because they were women.The tone of the discussion convinced them that women were looked upon by men with disdain and contempt.Because the laws of the land and the customs of society consigned women to an inferior position, and because there would be no place for effective public work on the part of women until these laws were changed, both these women became advocates of women's rights and conspicuous leaders in the initiation of the propaganda.The Reverend Samuel J.May, of Syracuse, New York, preached a sermon in 1845 in which he stated his belief that women need not expect to have their wrongs fully redressed until they themselves had a hand in the making and in the administration of the laws.This is an early suggestion that equal suffrage would become the ultimate goal of the efforts for righting women's wrongs.
At the same time there were accessions to the cause from a different source.In 1833 Oberlin College was founded in northern Ohio.Into some of the first classes there women were admitted on equal terms with men.In 1835 the trustees offered the presidency to Professor Asa Mahan, of Lane Seminary.He was himself an abolitionist from a slave State, and he refused to be President of Oberlin College unless negroes were admitted on equal terms with other students.Oberlin thus became the first institution in the country which extended the privileges of the higher education to both sexes of all races.It was a distinctly religious institution devoted to radical reforms of many kinds.Not only was the use of all intoxicating beverages discarded by faculty and students but the use of tobacco as well was discouraged.
Within fifteen years after the founding of Oberlin, there were women graduates who had something to say on numerous questions of public interest.Especially was this true of the subject of temperance.Intemperance was a vice peculiar to men.Women and children were the chief sufferers, while men were the chief sinners.It was important, therefore, that men should be reached.
In 1847 Lucy Stone, an Oberlin graduate, began to address public audiences on the subject.At the same time Susan B.Anthony appeared as a temperance lecturer.The manner of their reception and the nature of their subject induced them to unite heartily in the pending crusade for the equal rights of women.The three causes thus became united in one.
Along with the crusade against slavery, intemperance, and women's wrongs, arose a fourth, which was fundamentally connected with the slavery question: Quakers and Southern and Western abolitionists were ardently devoted to the interests of peace.
They would abolish slavery by peaceable means because they believed the alternative was a terrible war.To escape an impending war they were nerved to do and dare and to incur great risks.New England abolitionists who labored in harmony with those of the West and South were actuated by similar motives.
Sumner first gained public notice by a distinguished oration against war.Garrison went farther: he was a professional non-resistant, a root and branch opponent of both war and slavery.John Brown was a fanatical antagonist of war until he reached the conclusion that according to the Divine Will there should be a short war of liberation in place of the continuance of slavery, which was itself in his opinion the most cruel form of war.
Slavery as a legally recognized institution disappeared with the Civil War.The war against intemperance has made continuous progress and this problem is apparently approaching a solution.
The war against war as a recognized institution has become the one all-absorbing problem of civilization.The war against the wrongs of women is being supplanted by efforts to harmonize the mutual privileges and duties of men and women on the basis of complete equality.As Samuel May predicted more than seventy years ago, in the future women are certain to take a hand both in the making and in the administration of law.
