avert, Fanning, Johonett, Coburn, Wilder, and Farnham.
The opposition was led by Davies, Valentine, Buckley, Anthony (not S.
B. A.), Ross, an old bachelor, the butt of ridicule, the clown of the
Convention; and McElligott, the latter hardly ranking with the rest,
for though opposed, he was always a gentleman, the others being
ofttimes so coarse in their sneers and innuendoes, that they disgraced
the positions they occupied, as the educators of the youth of the
State. In the discussion at Binghamton, where Miss Anthony introduced
a resolution in favor of co-education, Mr. McElligott said "he was in
favor of allowing her full and equal opportunity with any other member
to present resolutions, or to call them up for discussion. Standing up
as she does before large audiences, to advocate what she
conscientiously considers the rights and privileges of her sex, gives
a touch of moral sublimity to our proceedings worthy the admiration of
all."

Professor Davies denounced the resolutions in the strongest terms. "He
had for four years been trying to escape this discussion; but if the
question must come, let it be boldly met and disposed of. These
resolutions involve a great social rather than an educational
question, calculated to introduce a vast social evil; they are the
first step in that school which seeks to abolish marriage, and behind
the picture presented by them, I see a monster of deformity."[102]

In view of the grand experiment of co-education, so successful in
every part of our country, the fears of those timid men thirty years
ago provoke nothing now but a passing smile. How few of them with a
sober face could at this time defend their old positions. It is
creditable to the stronger sex that so many men in all those
encounters, took no counsel with their fears nor prejudices, but
seeing the principle steadfastly maintained it.

But the temperance and educational conventions, the clergy and the
pedagogues, were alike abandoned now for the legislators. All this
escapading of Miss Anthony's was mere child's play, compared with the
steady bombardment kept up until the war on the legislators of the
Empire State. Calls, appeals, petitions to rouse the women, fell like
snow-flakes in every county, asking for the civil and political rights
of woman; they were carried into the Legislature, frequent hearings
secured, the members debating the question as hotly there as it had
already been discussed in popular conventions.