passed amid great excitement, crowds of interested spectators
listening to the final discussions in the lower House. Governor
Bingham was friendly to the bill from the first. After its
passage, he sent a handsome copy signed by himself and other
officers, to Dr. and Mrs. Stone, at Kalamazoo, to be preserved as
a record of the Thermopylae fight for coeducation in Michigan.

Rev. E. O. Havens succeeded Dr. Tappan in the presidency, and was
supposed to be less strong in his prejudices, but when efforts
were made to open the doors to both sexes, he reported it
difficult and inexpedient, if not impossible. But he counted
without the broad-minded people of Michigan. A growing conviction
that the legislature would stop the appropriations to the
University unless justice was done to the daughters of the State,
finally brought about, at Ann Arbor, a change of policy. Under
the light that broke in upon their minds, the professors found
there was really no law against the admission of women to that
very liberal seat of learning. "To be sure, they never had
admitted women, but none had formally applied." This, though
somewhat disingenuous, was received in good faith, and soon
tested by Miss Madeline Stockwell, who had completed half her
course at Kalamazoo, and was persuaded by Mrs. Stone to make
application at Ann Arbor. Mrs. Stone knew her to be a thorough
scholar, as far as she had gone, especially in Greek, which some
had supposed that women could not master. When she presented
herself for examination some members of the faculty were far from
cordial, but they were just, and she entered in the grade for
which she applied. She sustained herself ably in all her studies,
and when examined for her degree--the first woman graduate from
the literary department--she was commended as the peer of any of
her class-mates, and took an honorable part in the commencement
exercises. Moreover, she fulfilled the doleful prophecy of Dr.
Tappan, as women in other schools had done before her, and
married her class-mate, Mr. Turner, an able lawyer.

The statement by the faculty, or regents, that "no woman had
formally applied," was untrue, as we shall see. The University
was opened to them in 1869; eleven years before, Miss Sarah
Burger, now Mrs. Stearns, made the re