owing periods was claimed for the black
man, they now claimed for themselves, and compelled the law-makers of
this State to give some consideration to the wrongs of woman.

Again, in 1850, Ohio held a Constitutional Convention, and these
women, thoroughly awake to their rights, naturally thought, that if
the fundamental laws of the State were to be revised and amended, it
was a fitting time for them to ask to be recognized.

In 1851, Harriet Beecher Stowe commenced the publication of "Uncle
Tom's Cabin" in the _National Era_, in Washington, D. C., which made
Ohio, with its great river, classic soil, and quickened the pulsations
of every woman's heart in the nation.

Reports of the New York Conventions, widely copied and ridiculed in
leading journals, from Maine to Texas, struck the key-note for similar
gatherings in several of the Northern States. Without the least
knowledge of one another, without the least concert of action, women
in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, sprang up as if by
magic, and issued calls for similar conventions. The striking
uniformity in their appeals, petitions, resolutions, and speeches;
making the same complaints and asking the same redress for grievances,
shows that all were moved by like influences. Those who made the
demand for political freedom in 1848, in Europe as well as America,
were about the same age. Significant facts to show that new liberty
for woman was one of the marked ideas of the century, and that as the
chief factor in civilization, the time had come for her to take her
appropriate place.

The actors in this new movement were not, as the London and New York
journals said, "sour old maids," but happy wives and faithful mothers,
who, in a higher development, demanded the rights and privileges
befitting the new position. And if they may be judged by the vigor and
eloquence of their addresses, and the knowledge of parliamentary
tactics they manifested in their conventions, the world must accord
them rare common-sense, good judgment, great dignity of character, and
a clear comprehension of the principles of government. In order to
show how well those who inaugurated this movement, understood the
nature of our republican institutions, and how justly they estimated
their true position in a republic, we shall give rather more of these
early speeches and letters than in any succeeding chapters.

In 1849, Mrs. Elizabeth Wilson, of Cadiz, Ohio, aroused some attentio