y. The negro's skin and
the woman's sex are both _prima facie_ evidence that they were
intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man. The few
social privileges which the man gives the woman, he makes up to
the negro in civil rights. The woman may sit at the same table
and eat with the white man; the free negro may hold property and
vote. The woman may sit in the same pew with the white man in
church; the free negro may enter the pulpit and preach. Now, with
the black man's right to suffrage, the right unquestioned, even
by Paul, to minister at the altar, it is evident that the
prejudice against sex is more deeply rooted and more unreasonably
maintained than that against color. As citizens of a republic,
which should we most highly prize, social privileges or civil
rights? The latter, most certainly.

To those who do not feel the injustice and degradation of the
condition, there is something inexpressibly comical in man's
"citizen woman." It reminds me of those monsters I used to see in
the old world, head and shoulders woman, and the rest of the body
sometimes fish and sometimes beast. I used to think, What a
strange conceit! but now I see how perfectly it represents man's
idea! Look over all his laws concerning us, and you will see just
enough of woman to tell of her existence; all the rest is
submerged, or made to crawl upon the earth. Just imagine an
inhabitant of another planet entertaining himself some pleasant
evening in searching over our great national compact, our
Declaration of Independence, our Constitutions, or some of our
statute-books; what would he think of those "women and negroes"
that must be so fenced in, so guarded against? Why, he would
certainly suppose we were monsters, like those fabulous giants or
Brobdignagians of olden times, so dangerous to civilized man,
from our size, ferocity, and power. Then let him take up our
poets, from Pope down to Dana; let him listen to our Fourth of
July toasts, and some of the sentimental adulations of social
life, and no logic could convince him that this creature of the
law, and this angel of the family altar, could be one and the
same being. Man is in such a labyrinth of contradictions with his
marital and property rights; he is so befogged on the whole
question of maidens