ne of
her noble sisters in reform has truly said, "Birth made Victoria a
queen, but her own pure, sweet life made Lucretia Mott a queen; queen
of a realm on which the sun never sets, the realm of humanity. If ever
any one inherited the earth it was this blessed Quaker woman."
Space fails me to tell of all the pleasant memories of our forty
years friendship, of the inspiration she has been to those on our
platform, of the bond of union to hold us together, of the innumerable
conventions over which she has presided, of the many long journeys
both North and South to carry the glad tidings of justice, liberty,
and equality to all. A missionary who always traveled at her own
expense, giving her best thoughts freely, asking nothing in return,
neither money, praise, nor honor; for misrepresentation and cruel
persecution were the only return she had for years. Both in religion
and reform hers was a free gospel to the multitude.
As division has been the law in politics, religion, and reform, woman
suffrage proved no exception. But Lucretia Mott and her noble sister,
Martha O. Wright, remained steadfast with those who had taken the
initiative steps in calling the first Convention, and with the larger
and more radical division their sympathies remained, both being
prominent officers of the National Woman Suffrage Association at the
time of their death. They fully endorsed the great lesson of the war,
National protection for United States citizens, applied to woman as
well as to the African race, the doctrine the association to which
they belonged has so successfully advocated at Washington for twelve
years.
Reading the numerous complimentary obituary notices of our long loved
friend, so fair, so tender, so full of praise, we have exclaimed, what
changes the passing years have wrought in the popular estimate of a
woman once considered so dangerous an innovator in the social and
religious world; and yet the Lucretia Mott of to-day is only the
perfected, well-rounded character of half a century ago. But the
slowly moving masses that feared her then as an infidel, a fanatic, an
unsexed woman, have followed her footsteps until a broader outlook has
expanded their moral vision. The "vagaries" of the anti-slavery
struggle, in which she took a leading part, have been coined into law;
and the "wild fantasies" of the Abolitionists are now the XIII., XIV.,
and XV. Amendments to the National Constitution. The prolonged and
bitter schis
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