man, they were given an opportunity to appear
before the committee on resolutions. Mrs. Sewall presented a
resolution, and in a brief speech urged its adoption and
incorporation into the platform of the Republican party. Mrs.
Merritt and Mrs. Sewall were offered an opportunity to speak
before the convention, which they declined in the belief that it
was a greater gain to the cause to appear before the resolution
and platform committee than before the convention itself.

To what an appalling degree women were discriminated against by
the law prior to 1860, may be inferred from subsequent
legislative enactments. At almost every sitting of the biennial
legislature, since 1860, some important change will be observed.
In 1861 was passed the following:

AN ACT _to enlarge the Legal Capacity of Married Women whose
Husbands are Insane, and to enable them to Contract as if
they were Unmarried._

SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the
State of Indiana: That all married women, or those who may
hereafter be married, whose husbands are or may be insane,
are, during the continuance of such insanity, hereby enabled
and authorized to make and to execute all such contracts,
and to be contracted with in relation to their separate
property, as they could if they were unmarried, and they may
sue and be sued as if they were _sole_.

The legislature of 1863 was undisturbed by any question
concerning women. In 1865 the legislature discriminated against
women by the passage of a very long act, prescribing the manner
in which enumerations of _white male citizens_ shall be made;
thus implying that a _white male citizen_ is an honorable and
important person, whose existence is to be noted with due care;
with a care that distinguishes him equally above the _white
female_ and the _black male_ citizen, and in effect places these
two unenumerated divisions of human beings into one class.

Another act of 1865 reaeffirmed an act of 1852 which prescribed
the classes of persons capable of making a will, from which
married women were excluded.

[Illustration: May Wright Sewall]

The legislature of 1867 passed an act in regard to conveyance of
lands by wives of persons of unsound mind, which