Enclosed is a copy of our woman’s rights memorial.  Will you give me a full report of the action taken upon it?...  I hope you and your daughters arrived home safe.  Say to the elder I shall be most happy to hear from her when she shall have fairly inaugurated some noble life work.  I trust each will take to her soul a strong purpose and that on her tombstone shall be engraved her own name and her own noble deeds instead of merely the daughter of Judge Ormond, or the relict of some Honorable or D. D. When true womanhood shall be attained it will be spoken of and remembered for itself alone.  My kindest regards to them, accompanied with the most earnest desire that they shall make truth and freedom the polar star of their lives.

To this Judge Ormond made cordial reply, October 17, 1859: 

DEAR MADAM:  I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 2d inst., with the papers enclosed.  The petition to the Legislature will be presented by the senator from this county and I will apprise you of the action had upon it.  My daughters are obliged to you for the interest you take in them.  To a certain extent I agree with you as to the duties of woman.  I am greatly in favor of her elevation to her proper sphere as the equal of man as to her civil rights, the security of her person, the right to her property and, where there is a separation after marriage, her equal right with the father to the custody and education of the children.  All this as a legislator I have endeavored to accomplish, making large innovations upon the ancient common law.  If I differ from you as to her political rights, it is because I think that, from political as well as moral considerations, she is unfit for, indeed incapacitated from, the performance of most of the duties which are now performed by men as members of the body politic; but there are many avocations and professions now exclusively occupied by men which women are as well, perhaps better fitted to fill.  I hope these will soon be thrown open to an active competition of both sexes.

Then came the raid on Harper’s Ferry and all its terrible consequences, and in December Judge Ormond wrote again: 

MADAM:  In redemption of my promise to tell you the fate of the woman’s rights petition to our Legislature, I have the honor to inform you that it was virtually rejected, being laid on the table.  I interested a distinguished member of our Senate in its presentation and, in addition, wrote a letter which under ordinary circumstances would have insured its respectful consideration.  But after your petition was forwarded came the treasonable and murderous invasion of John Brown.  The atrocity of this act, countenanced as it manifestly was by a great party at the North, has extinguished our last spark of fraternal feeling.  Whilst we are all living under a Constitution which secures to us our right to our slaves, the results of