d as the result of war it was not of their making and their
part in it was not on the battlefield. This was the most unequal
contest that ever was waged, for one side had to fight without
weapons. It was held against women that they were not educated, but
the doors of all institutions of learning were closed against them;
that they were not taxpayers, although money-earning occupations were
barred to them and if married they were not allowed to own property.
They were kept in subjection by authority of the Scriptures and were
not permitted to expound them from the woman's point of view, and they
were prevented from pleading their cause on the public platform. When
they had largely overcome these handicaps they found themselves facing
a political fight without political power.

The long story of the early period of this contest will be found in
the preceding volumes of this History and it is one without parallel.
No class of men ever strove seventy or even fifty years for the
suffrage. In every other reform which had to be won through
legislative bodies those who were working for it had the power of the
vote over these bodies. In the Introduction to Volume IV is an
extended review of the helpless position of woman when in 1848 the
first demand for equality of rights was made and her gradual emergence
from its bondage. No sudden revolution could have gained it but only
the slow processes of evolution. The founding of the public school
system with its high schools, from which girls could not be excluded,
solved the question of their education and inevitably led to the
opening of the colleges. In the causes of temperance and anti-slavery
women made their way to the platform and remained to speak for their
own. During the Civil War they entered by thousands the places vacated
by men and retained them partly from necessity and partly from choice.

One step led to another; business opportunities increased; women
accumulated property; Legislatures were compelled to revise the laws
and the church was obliged to liberalize its interpretation of the
Scriptures. Women began to organize; their missionary and charity
societies prepared the way to clubs for self-improvement; these in
turn broadened into civic organizations whose public work carried them
to city councils and State Legislatures, where they found themselves
in the midst of politics and wholly without influence. Thus they were
led into the movement for the suffrage. It w