legal fraternity, that as a
profession they were dead-weights on our demands, and the reason why.
When pressed to logical conclusions, which they were always quick to
see, and in fair proportion to admit, were in our favor, they almost
invariably retreated under the plea that the reforms we asked "being
fundamental, would destroy the harmony of the statutes!" And I had
come to the conclusion that it would cost more time and effort to
disrupt the woman's "disabilities" attachment from the legal and
political harmonicons of the old States, than it would to secure
vantage ground for legal and political equality in the new. I believed
then and believe now that Woman Suffrage would have received a
majority vote in Kansas if it could have been submitted unembarrassed
by the possibility of its being made a pretext for keeping Kansas out
of the Union. And but for Judge Kingman, I believe it would have
received the vote of a majority in convention. He played upon the old
harmonicon, "organic law," and "the harmony of the statutes."

My pleas before the Constitutional Convention and the people, were for
equal legal and political rights for women. In detail I asked:

1st. Equal educational rights and privileges in all the schools and
institutions of learning fostered or controlled by the State.

2d. An equal right in all matters pertaining to the organization and
conduct of the Common Schools.

3d. Recognition of the mother's equal right with the father to the
control and custody of their mutual offspring.

4th. Protection in person, property, and earnings for married women
and widows the same as for men.

The first three were fully granted. In the final reading. Kingman
changed the wording of the fourth, so as to leave the Legislature a
chance to preserve the infamous common law right to personal services.
There were too many old lawyers in the Convention. The Democracy had
four or five who pulled with Kingman, or he with them against us. Not
a Democrat put his name to the Constitution when adopted.

The debate published in the Wyandotte _Gazette_ of July 13, 1859, on
granting Mrs. Nichols a hearing in the Constitutional Convention, and
the Committee's report on the Woman's Petition, furnishes a page of
history of which some of the actors, at least, will have no reason to
read with special pride.

REPORT OF JUDICIARY FRANCHISE COMMITTEE ON WOMAN SUFFRAGE PETITIONS.

The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom in co