niversal, or that
amelioration of the condition of woman had already begun; the movement
stated its case clearly and strongly in order that it might fully be
brought to the attention of the American people. In 1850 the first
formal National Woman's Rights Convention assembled in Worcester, Mass.
To this meeting came a young Quaker woman who was already listed in the
cause of temperance. In fact, wherever she went Susan B. Anthony entered
into "causes." She possessed great virtues and abilities, and at the
same time was capable of very great devotion. "She not only sympathized
with the Negro; when an opportunity offered she drank tea with him, to
her own 'unspeakable satisfaction.'"[1] Lucy Stone, an Oberlin graduate,
was representative of those who came into the agitation by the
anti-slavery path. Beginning in 1848 to speak as an agent of the
Anti-Slavery Society, almost from the first she began to introduce the
matter of woman's rights in her speeches.

[Footnote 1: Ida M. Tarbell: "The American Woman: Her First Declaration
of Independence," _American Magazine_, February, 1910.]

To the second National Woman's Suffrage Convention, held in Akron, Ohio,
in 1852, and presided over by Mrs. Frances D. Gage, came Sojourner
Truth.

The "Libyan Sibyl" was then in the fullness of her powers. She had been
born of slave parents about 1798 in Ulster County, New York. In her
later years she remembered vividly the cold, damp cellar-room in which
slept the slaves of the family to which she belonged, and where she was
taught by her mother to repeat the Lord's Prayer and to trust in God.
When in the course of gradual emancipation she became legally free in
1827, her master refused to comply with the law and kept her in bondage.
She left, but was pursued and found. Rather than have her go back, a
friend paid for her services for the rest of the year. Then came an
evening when, searching for one of her children who had been stolen and
sold, she found herself a homeless wanderer. A Quaker family gave her
lodging for the night. Subsequently she went to New York City, joined
a Methodist church, and worked hard to improve her condition. Later,
having decided to leave New York for a lecture tour through the East,
she made a small bundle of her belongings and informed a friend that
her name was no longer _Isabella_ but _Sojourner_. She went on her
way, speaking to people wherever she found them assembled and being
entertained in many aristo