“After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognises her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

“He has monopolised nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow she receives but a scanty remuneration.  He closes against her all the avenues of wealth and distinction which he considers most honourable to himself.  As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.

“He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.

“He allows her in church, as well as state, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the church.

“He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in man.

“He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God.

“He has endeavoured, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

“Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation; in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.

“In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object.  We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and National legislatures, and endeavour to enlist the pulpit and press in our behalf.  We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions embracing every part of the country.”

Such was the defiance of the Women’s Rights Convention in 1848; other conventions were held, as at Rochester, in 1853, and at Albany in 1854; the movement extended quickly to other States and touched the quick of public opinion.  It bore its first good fruits in New York in 1848, when the Property Bill was passed.  This law, amended in 1860, and entitled “An Act Concerning the Rights and Liabilities of Husband and Wife” (March 20, 1860), emancipated completely the wife, gave her full control of her own property, allowed her to engage in all civil contracts or business on her own responsibility, rendered her joint guardian of her children with her husband, and granted both husband and wife a one-third share of one another’s property in case of the decease of either partner.