ovement in
Kentucky almost from its beginning. Among the later generation were
the Rev. Caroline Bartlett Crane (Mich.), Miss Julie R. Jenney (N.
Y.), Mrs. Ella S. Stewart (Ill.), Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (N.
Y.) and Mrs. Judith Hyams Douglas (La.).

Of most of these addresses there is no printed record. Mrs. Gilman
commented on the resolution that "the laws which place woman in a
position inferior to that of man are contrary to the great precept of
nature," saying in part: "Woman has the same right to happiness and
justice as an individual that man has and as the mother of the race
she has more.... Women have a right to citizenship and to all that
citizenship implies, not only for their own sake but especially
because the world needs them. We have the masculine and the feminine
but above them both is the human, which has nothing to do with sex.
The argument for equal freedom and equal opportunities for women rests
not on the law of the worthy Mr. Blackstone but on the law of nature,
which is the law of God...."

Mrs. Blackwell said in response to the resolution that "as man accords
to woman moral superiority it is his pre-eminent duty to encourage her
to speak and teach in religious assemblies": "You cannot realize how
serious a thing it was to be a minister in early days when St. Paul
was taken literally. I know from personal experience that nearly all
the religious world in those days believed it to be a sin for a woman
to try to preach. My own mother urged me to become a foreign
missionary instead; she was willing to send her daughter away to other
lands rather than have her become a minister at home. At 18 I was
considered as well-fitted for college as the half dozen young men
among my schoolmates who were going to take a college course. At that
time Oberlin, O., was the only college that admitted women. When I
arrived there Lucy Stone had pretty well stirred up the whole
institution. I was warned against her in advance but we soon became
warm friends. One beautiful evening we walked out together and as we
stood in that glorious sunset I told her that I meant to be a
minister. She said: 'You can't do it; they will never let a woman be a
public teacher in the church.' ... One other woman and I graduated
from the theological school. For three years the authorities of the
school put our names into the catalogue with a star and then they
dropped us out and it took forty years to get us reinstated."

Mrs. Spenc