y of Cleveland, Ohio,
October, 1853. The Rev. Asa Mahan, president of Oberlin College,
and Hon. Joshua R. Giddings were there. Horace Greeley and
William Henry Channing addressed letters to the convention. The
letter of Mr. Channing stated the proposition to be that--

The right of suffrage be granted to the people, universally,
without distinction of sex; and that the age for attaining
legal and political majority be made the same for women as
for men.

In 1857, Hon. Salmon P. Chase, chief-justice of the Supreme Court
of the United States, then governor of Ohio, recommended to the
legislature a constitutional amendment on the subject, and a
select committee of the Senate made an elaborate report,
concluding with a resolution in the following words:

_Resolved_, That the Judiciary Committee be instructed to
report to the Senate a bill to submit to the qualified
electors, at the next general election for senators and
representatives, an amendment to the constitution, whereby
the elective franchise shall be extended to the citizens of
Ohio _without distinction of sex_.

During the same year a similar report was made in the legislature
of Wisconsin. From the report on the subject we quote the
following:

We believe that political equality, by leading the thoughts
and purposes of men and women into the same channel, will
more completely carry out the designs of nature. Woman will
be possessed of a positive power, and hollow compliments
will be exchanged for well-grounded respect when we see her
nobly discharging her part in the great intellectual and
moral struggles of the age that wait their solution by a
direct appeal to the ballot-box. Woman's power is at present
poetical and unsubstantial; let it be practical and real.
There is no reality in any power that cannot be coined in
votes.

The effect of these discussions and efforts has been the gradual
advancement of public sentiment towards conceding the right of
suffrage without distinction of sex. In the territories of
Wyoming and Utah, full suffrage has already been given. In regard
to the exercise of the right in the territory of Wyoming, the
present governor of that