violent in its
opposition. The clergymen seemed to have God and his angels especially
in their care and keeping, and were in agony lest the women should do or
say something to shock the heavenly hosts. Their all-sustaining conceit
gave them abundant assurance that their movements must necessarily be
all-pleasing to the celestials whose ears were open to the proceedings
of the World's Convention. Deborah, Huldah, Vashti, and Esther might
have questioned the propriety of calling it a World's Convention, when
only half of humanity was represented there; but what were their
opinions worth compared with those of the Rev. A. Harvey, the Rev. C.
Stout, or the Rev. J. Burnet, who, Bible in hand, argued woman's
subjection, divinely decreed when Eve was created.

One of our champions in the convention, George Bradburn, a tall
thick-set man with a voice like thunder, standing head and shoulders
above the clerical representatives, swept all their arguments aside by
declaring with tremendous emphasis that, if they could prove to him that
the Bible taught the entire subjection of one-half of the race to the
other, he should consider that the best thing he could do for humanity
would be to bring together every Bible in the universe and make a grand
bonfire of them.

It was really pitiful to hear narrow-minded bigots, pretending to be
teachers and leaders of men, so cruelly remanding their own mothers,
with the rest of womankind, to absolute subjection to the ordinary
masculine type of humanity. I always regretted that the women themselves
had not taken part in the debate before the convention was fully
organized and the question of delegates settled. It seemed to me then,
and does now, that all delegates with credentials from recognized
societies should have had a voice in the organization of the convention,
though subject to exclusion afterward. However, the women sat in a low
curtained seat like a church choir, and modestly listened to the French,
British, and American Solons for twelve of the longest days in June, as
did, also, our grand Garrison and Rogers in the gallery. They scorned a
convention that ignored the rights of the very women who had fought,
side by side, with them in the anti-slavery conflict. "After battling so
many long years," said Garrison, "for the liberties of African slaves, I
can take no part in a convention that strikes down the most sacred
rights of all women." After coming three thousand miles to speak on