of our politicians are dough-faced serviles, without
independence or manhood; no wonder our priests are time-serving
and sycophantic: no wonder that so many men are moral cowards and
cringing poltroons. What more could be expected of a progeny of
slaves? Slaves are we, politically and legally. How can we, who,
it is said, are the educators of our children, present to this
nation anything else but a generation of serviles, while we,
ourselves, are in a servile condition, and padlocks are on our
lips? No! if men would be men worthy of the name, they must cease
to disfranchise and rob their wives and mothers; they must
forbear to consign to political and legal slavery their sisters
and their daughters. And, would we be women worthy the
companionship of true and noble men, we must cease longer to
submit to tyranny. Let us rise in the might of self-respect, and
assert our rights, and by the aid of truth, the instincts of
humanity, and a just application of the principles of equality,
we shall be able to maintain them.

You ask, would you have woman, by engaging in political party
bickerings and noisy strife, sacrifice her integrity and purity?
No, neither would we have men do it.... We hold that whatever is
essentially wrong for woman to do, can not be right for man. If
deception and intrigue, the elements of political craft, be
degrading to woman, can they be ennobling to man? If patience and
forbearance adorn a woman, are they not equally essential to a
manly character? If anger and turbulence disgrace woman, what can
they add to the dignity of man? Nothing; because nothing can be
morally right for man, that is morally wrong for woman. Woman, by
becoming the executioner of man's vengeance on his fellow-man,
could inflict no greater wrong on society than the same done by
man; but it would create an intenser feeling of shuddering
horror, and would, we conceive, rouse to more healthful activity
man's torpid feelings of justice, mercy, and clemency. And so,
also, if woman had free scope for the full exercise of the
heavenly graces that men so gallantly award her, truth, love, and
mercy would be invested with a more sacred charm. But while they
continue to enforce obedience to arbitrary commands, to encourage
love of admiration and a desire for frivo