anity is one in all those intellectual, moral and
spiritual attributes, out of which grow human responsibilities. The
Scripture declaration is, "so God created man in his own image: male
and female created he them." And all divine legislation throughout the
realm of nature recognizes the perfect equality of the two conditions.
For male and female are but different conditions. Neither color nor
sex is ever discharged from obedience to law, natural or moral;
written or unwritten. The commands, thou shalt not steal, nor kill,
nor commit adultery, know nothing of sex in their demands; nothing in
their penalty. And hence we believe that all _human_ legislation which
is at variance with the divine code, is essentially unrighteous and
unjust. Woman and the colored man are taxed to support many literary
and humane institutions, into which they never come, except in the
poorly paid capacity of menial servants. Woman has been fined,
whipped, branded with red-hot irons, imprisoned and hung; but when was
woman ever tried by a jury of her peers?

Though the nation declared from the beginning that "all just
governments derive their power from the consent of the governed," the
consent of woman was never asked to a single statute, however nearly
it affected her dearest womanly interests or happiness. In the
despotisms of the old world, of ancient and modern times, woman,
profligate, prostitute, weak, cruel, tyrannical, or otherwise, from
Semiramis and Messalina, to Catherine of Russia and Margaret of Anjou,
have swayed, unchallenged, imperial scepters; while in this republican
and Christian land in the nineteenth century, woman, intelligent,
refined in every ennobling gift and grace, may not even vote on the
appropriation of her own property, or the disposal and destiny of her
own children. Literally she has no _rights_ which man is bound to
respect; and her civil privileges she holds only by sufferance. For
the power that gave, can take away, and of that power she is no part.
In most of the States, these unjust distinctions apply to woman, and
to the colored man alike. Your Memorialists fully believe that the
time has come when such injustice should cease.

Woman and the colored man are loyal, patriotic, property-holding,
tax-paying, liberty-loving citizens; and we can not believe that sex
or complexion should be any ground for civil or political degradation.
In our government, one-half the citizens are disfranchised by their
sex, a