t Smith to Elizabeth C. Stanton, in reference to
the Woman's Rights Movement, showing cause, through labored columns,
why it has proved a failure.

This article, though addressed to Mrs. Stanton, is an attack upon
every one engaged in the cause. For he boldly asserts that the
movement "is not in proper hands, and that the proper hands are not
yet to be found." I will not deny the assertion, but must still claim
the privilege of working in a movement that involves not only my own
interest, but the interests of my sex, and through us the interests of
a whole humanity. And though I may be but a John the Baptist, unworthy
to unloose the latchet of the shoes of those who are to come in _short
skirts_ to redeem the world, I still prefer that humble position to
being Peter to deny my Master, or a Gerrit Smith to assert that truth
_can_ fail.

I do not propose to enter into a full criticism of Mr. Smith's long
letter. He has made the whole battle-ground of the Woman's Rights
Movement her dress. Nothing brighter, nothing nobler than a few inches
of calico or brocade added to or taken from her skirts, is to decide
this great and glorious question--to give her freedom or to continue
her a slave. This argument, had it come from one of less influence
than Gerrit Smith, would have been simply ridiculous. But coming from
_him_, the almost oracle of a large portion of our reformers, it
becomes worthy of an answer from every earnest woman in our cause. I
will not say one word in defense of our present mode of dress. Not I;
but bad as it is, and cumbersome and annoying, I still feel that we
can wear it, and yet be lovers of liberty, speaking out our deep
feeling, portraying our accumulated wrongs, saving ourselves for a
time yet from that antagonism which we must inevitably meet when we
don the semi-male attire. We _must own ourselves under the law first_,
own our bodies, our earnings, our genius, and our consciences; then we
will turn to the lesser matter of what shall be the garniture of the
body. Was the old Roman less a man in his cumbrous toga, than
Washington in his tights? Was Christ less a Christ in His vesture,
woven without a seam, than He would have been in the suit of a
Broadway dandy?

"Moreover, to concede to her rights of property, would be to benefit
her comparatively little, unless she shall resolve to break out of her
clothes-prison, and to undertake right earnestly, as earnestly as a
man, to get property." So says