rom realizing their civil and
political degradation, until, by some sudden turn in the
wheel of fortune, the individual woman has felt the iron
teeth of the law in her own flesh, and warned her slumbering
sisterhood. We are now awaking to the fact that an
aristocracy of sex in a republic is as inconsistent and
odious as an aristocracy of color, and indeed far more so.

V.--TENNESSEE.

We are indebted to Mrs. Elizabeth Lisle Saxon for the following:

Elizabeth Avery Meriwether is the chief representative of liberal
thought in Tennessee. Her pen is ever ready to champion the
wronged. I first came to know her when engaged in a newspaper
discussion to reestablish in the public schools of Memphis three
young women who had been dismissed because of "holding too many
of Mrs. Meriwether's views"--the reason actually given by the
superintendent and endorsed by the board of directors. A seven
month's war was carried on, ending in a triumphant reinstallment
of the teachers, a new superintendent, and a new board of
directors. Public opinion was educated into more liberal ideas,
and the _Memphis Appeal_, through its chivalrous editor, Mr.
Keating, declared squarely for woman suffrage.

When Col. Kerr introduced into the Tennessee legislature a bill
making divorce impossible for any cause save adultery, Mrs.
Meriwether wrote the ablest article I ever read, in opposition,
which Mr. Keating published in his paper, and distributed among
the members of the legislature. The result was a clear vote
against the bill.

With Mrs. Lide Meriwether and Mrs. M. J. Holmes, she publicly
assailed the cross examination of women in criminal trials,
either as culprits or witnesses, until the practice was broken
up, and private hearings accorded. In 1876 she sent a memorial to
the National Democratic convention at St. Louis, asking that
party to declare for woman suffrage in its platform. Though her
appeal was not read, hundreds of copies were circulated among the
members in the hope of stirring thought on the subject in the
South. It provoked much sarcasm because it was signed only by
Mrs. Meriwether and Mrs. Saxon. In 1880-81 Mrs. Meriwether was
one of the speakers in the series of conventions held by the
National association in the West