berlin, there were women
graduates who had something to say on numerous questions of public
interest. Especially was this true of the subject of temperance.
Intemperance was a vice peculiar to men. Women and children were the
chief sufferers, while men were the chief sinners. It was important,
therefore, that men should be reached. In 1847 Lucy Stone, an Oberlin
graduate, began to address public audiences on the subject. At the same
time Susan B. Anthony appeared as a temperance lecturer. The manner of
their reception and the nature of their subject induced them to unite
heartily in the pending crusade for the equal rights of women. The three
causes thus became united in one.

Along with the crusade against slavery, intemperance, and women's
wrongs, arose a fourth, which was fundamentally connected with the
slavery question: Quakers and Southern and Western abolitionists were
ardently devoted to the interests of peace. They would abolish slavery
by peaceable means because they believed the alternative was a terrible
war. To escape an impending war they were nerved to do and dare and to
incur great risks. New England abolitionists who labored in harmony with
those of the West and South were actuated by similar motives. Sumner
first gained public notice by a distinguished oration against war.
Garrison went farther: he was a professional non-resistant, a root and
branch opponent of both war and slavery. John Brown was a fanatical
antagonist of war until he reached the conclusion that according to the
Divine Will there should be a short war of liberation in place of the
continuance of slavery, which was itself in his opinion the most cruel
form of war.

Slavery as a legally recognized institution disappeared with the Civil
War. The war against intemperance has made continuous progress and this
problem is apparently approaching a solution. The war against war as
a recognized institution has become the one all-absorbing problem of
civilization. The war against the wrongs of women is being supplanted by
efforts to harmonize the mutual privileges and duties of men and women
on the basis of complete equality. As Samuel May predicted more than
seventy years ago, in the future women are certain to take a hand both
in the making and in the administration of law.

CHAPTER IV. THE TURNING-POINT

The year 1831 is notable for three events in the history of the
anti-slavery controversy: on the first day of January in that year