truggle for freedom. So it has been said of every
reformer that has ever started out the car of progress on a new
and untried track.

We fear, not man as an enemy. He is our friend, our brother. Let
woman speak for herself, and she will be heard. Let her claim
with a calm and determined, yet loving spirit, her place, and it
will be given her. I pour out no harsh invectives against the
present order of things--against our fathers, husbands, and
brothers; they do as they have been taught; they feel as society
bids them; they act as the law requires. Woman must act for
herself.

Oh, if all women could be impressed with the importance of their
own action, and with one united voice, speak out in their own
behalf, in behalf of humanity, they could create a revolution
without armies, without bloodshed, that would do more to
ameliorate the condition of mankind, to purify, elevate, ennoble
humanity, than all that has been done by reformers in the last
century.

When we consider that Mrs. Gage had led the usual arduous domestic
life, of wife, mother, and housekeeper, in a new country, overburdened
with the care and anxiety incident to a large family reading and
gathering general information at short intervals, taken from the hours
of rest and excessive toil, it is remarkable, that she should have
presided over the Convention, in the easy manner she is said to have
done, and should have given so graceful and appropriate an
extemporaneous speech, on taking the chair. Maria L. Giddings,
daughter of Joshua R. Giddings, who represented Ohio many years in
Congress, presented a very able digest on the common law. Betsey M.
Cowles gave a report equally good on "Labor," and Emily Robinson on
"Education."

In all the early Conventions the resolutions were interminable. It was
not thought that full justice was done to the subject, if every point
of interest or dissatisfaction in this prolific theme was not
condensed into a resolution. Accordingly the Akron Convention
presented, discussed, and adopted fifteen resolutions. At Salem, the
previous year, the number reached twenty-two.

Letters were read from Amelia Bloomer, Elizabeth Wilson, Lydia F.
Fowler, Susan Ormsby, Elsie M. Young, Gerrit Smith, Henry C. Wright,
Paulina Wright Davis, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Clarina Howard Nichols,
and others. The Hutchinson family enlivened this Convention with such