our
cause on our platform, so long as no religious organization has
yet recognized our demand as a principle of justice. Discussion
is rarely held in their councils but it is generally treated as a
speculative, sentimental question unworthy of serious
consideration. Neither would it be sufficient if they gave their
adhesion to the demand for political equality, so long as by
scriptural teachings they perpetuate our racial and religious
subordination." Mrs. Stanton would demand that an expurgated
Bible be read in churches. "Such parables as refer to woman as
'the author of sin,' 'an inferior,' 'a subject,' 'a weaker
vessel,'" she says, "should be relegated to the ancient
mythologies as mere allegories, having no application whatever to
the womanhood of this generation. It is not civil nor political
power that holds the Mormon woman in polygamy, the Turkish woman
in the harem, the American woman as a subordinate everywhere. The
central falsehood from which all these different forms of slavery
spring is the doctrine of original sin and woman as a medium for
the machinations of Satan, its author. The greatest block today
in the way of woman's emancipation is the church, the canon law,
the Bible and the priesthood. Canon Charles Kingsley said not
long ago: 'This will never be a good world for woman till the
last remnant of canon law is stricken from the face of the
earth.'"[5]

After finishing Mrs. Stanton's letter Miss Anthony presented her own
greeting, in the course of which she said:

"If the divine law visits the sins of the parents upon the children,
equally so does it transmit to them the virtues of the parents.
Therefore if it is through woman's ignorant subjection to man's
appetites and passions that the life current of the race is corrupted,
then must it be through her intelligent emancipation that it shall be
purified and her children rise up and call her blessed.... I am a full
and firm believer in the revelation that it is through woman the race
is to be redeemed. For this reason I ask for her immediate and
unconditional emancipation from all political, industrial, social and
religious subjection. It is said, 'Men are what their mothers made
them,' but I say that to hold mothers responsible for the characters
of their sons while denying to them any control over the surroundings
of the sons' live