The claims we make at these conventions are self-evident truths.  The second resolution affirms the right of human beings to their persons and earnings.  Is not that self-evident?  Yet the common law, which regulates the relation of husband and wife, and is modified only in a few instances by the statutes, gives the “custody” of the wife’s person to the husband, so that he has a right to her even against herself.  It gives him her earnings, no matter with what weariness they have been acquired, or how greatly she may need them for herself or her children.  It gives him a right to her personal property, which he may will entirely away from her, also the use of her real estate, and in some of the States married women, insane persons and idiots are ranked together as not fit to make a will; so that she is left with only one right, which she enjoys in common with the pauper, the right of maintenance.  Indeed, when she has taken the sacred marriage vows, her legal existence ceases.  And what is our position politically?  The foreigner, the negro, the drunkard, all are entrusted with the ballot, all placed by men politically higher than their own mothers, wives, sisters and daughters!  The woman who, seeing this, dares not maintain her rights is the one to hang her head and blush.  We ask only for justice and equal rights—­the right to vote, the right to our own earnings, equality before the law; these are the Gibraltar of our cause.

Rev. Antoinette Brown, the first woman ever ordained to preach, declared: 

Man can not represent woman.  They differ in their nature and relations.  The law is wholly masculine; it is created and executed by man.  The framers of all legal compacts are restricted to the masculine standpoint of observation, to the thoughts, feelings and biases of man.  The law then can give us no representation as women, and therefore no impartial justice, even if the law-makers were honestly intent upon this, for we can be represented only by our peers....  When woman is tried for crime, her jury, her judges, her advocates, all are men; and yet there may have been temptations and various palliating circumstances connected with her peculiar nature as woman, such as man can not appreciate.  Common justice demands that a part of the law-makers and law-executors should be of her own sex.  In questions of marriage and divorce, affecting interests dearer than life, both parties in the compact are entitled to an equal voice.

Mrs. Nichols said in discussing the laws: 

If a wife is compelled to get a divorce on account of the infidelity of the husband, she forfeits all right to the property which they have earned together, while the husband, who is the offender, still retains the sole possession and control of the estate.  She, the innocent party, goes out childless and portionless by decree of law, and he, the criminal, retains the home and children by favor of the game law.  A drunkard