for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed to her.”  It mattered not at the time that male suffrage was by no means universal, or that amelioration of the condition of woman had already begun; the movement stated its case clearly and strongly in order that it might fully be brought to the attention of the American people.  In 1850 the first formal National Woman’s Rights Convention assembled in Worcester, Mass.  To this meeting came a young Quaker woman who was already listed in the cause of temperance.  In fact, wherever she went Susan B. Anthony entered into “causes.”  She possessed great virtues and abilities, and at the same time was capable of very great devotion.  “She not only sympathized with the Negro; when an opportunity offered she drank tea with him, to her own ‘unspeakable satisfaction.’"[1] Lucy Stone, an Oberlin graduate, was representative of those who came into the agitation by the anti-slavery path.  Beginning in 1848 to speak as an agent of the Anti-Slavery Society, almost from the first she began to introduce the matter of woman’s rights in her speeches.

[Footnote 1:  Ida M. Tarbell:  “The American Woman:  Her First Declaration of Independence,” American Magazine, February, 1910.]

To the second National Woman’s Suffrage Convention, held in Akron, Ohio, in 1852, and presided over by Mrs. Frances D. Gage, came Sojourner Truth.

The “Libyan Sibyl” was then in the fullness of her powers.  She had been born of slave parents about 1798 in Ulster County, New York.  In her later years she remembered vividly the cold, damp cellar-room in which slept the slaves of the family to which she belonged, and where she was taught by her mother to repeat the Lord’s Prayer and to trust in God.  When in the course of gradual emancipation she became legally free in 1827, her master refused to comply with the law and kept her in bondage.  She left, but was pursued and found.  Rather than have her go back, a friend paid for her services for the rest of the year.  Then came an evening when, searching for one of her children who had been stolen and sold, she found herself a homeless wanderer.  A Quaker family gave her lodging for the night.  Subsequently she went to New York City, joined a Methodist church, and worked hard to improve her condition.  Later, having decided to leave New York for a lecture tour through the East, she made a small bundle of her belongings and informed a friend that her name was no longer Isabella but Sojourner.  She went on her way, speaking to people wherever she found them assembled and being entertained in many aristocratic homes.  She was entirely untaught in the schools, but was witty, original, and always suggestive.  By her tact and her gift of song she kept down ridicule, and by her fervor and faith she won many friends for the anti-slavery cause.  As to her name she said:  “And the Lord gave me Sojourner because I was to travel up an’ down the land showin’ the people their sins an’ bein’ a sign unto them.  Afterwards I told the Lord I wanted another name, ’cause everybody else had two names, an’ the Lord gave me Truth, because I was to declare the truth to the people.”