achusetts a mob threatened to take her life. "The
mob howled, the press hissed, and the pulpit thundered," thus the
proceedings were described by Lucy Stone, the woman's rights advocate.

Even the educated classes shared the prejudice against woman. To them she
was a "human being of the second order." The following is an illustration
of this:

In 1840 Abby Kelly was elected to a committee. She was urged, however, to
decline the election. "If you regard me as incompetent, then I shall
leave." "Oh, no, not exactly that," was the answer. "Well, what is it
then?" "But you are a woman...." "That is no reason; therefore I remain."

In the same year an anti-slavery congress was held in England. A number of
American champions of the cause went to London,--among them three women,
Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Elizabeth Pease. They were
accompanied by their husbands and came as delegates of the "National
Anti-slavery Society." Since the Congress was dominated by the English
clergy, who persisted in their belief in the "inferiority" of woman, the
three American women, being creatures without political rights, were not
permitted to perform their duties as delegates, but were directed to leave
the convention hall and to occupy places in the spectators' gallery. But
the noble William Lloyd Garrison silently registered a protest by sitting
with the women in the gallery.

This procedure clearly indicated to the American women what their next
duty should be, and once when Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
came from the gallery to the hotel Mrs. Stanton said, "The first thing
which we must do upon our return is to call a convention to discuss the
slavery of woman."

This plan, however, was not executed till eight years later. At that time
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, on the occasion of a visit from Lucretia Mott,
summoned a number of acquaintances to her home in Seneca Falls, New York.
In giving an account of the meeting at Washington, in 1888, at the
Conference of Pioneers of the International Council of Women (see Report,
pp. 323, 324), she states that she and Lucretia Mott had drawn up the
grievances of woman under eighteen headings with the American Declaration
of Independence as a model, and that it was her wish to submit a suffrage
resolution to the meeting, but that Lucretia Mott herself refused to have
it presented.

Nevertheless, in the meeting Elizabeth Cady Stanton herself, burning with
enthusiasm, introdu