James Parton, Horace Greeley, T. W. Higginson, J. S. C. Abbott, E. M. Hoppin, William Winter, Theodore Tilton, Fanny Fern, Grace Greenwood, Mrs. E. C. Stanton, Women of the age; being natives of the lives and deeds of the most prominent women of the present gentlemen

[347] Seneca Falls was called, as the advertisement phrased it, “to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition of woman.” Nothing was here said of woman's political condition, except so far as that might be ambiguously included in her civil. Probably very few of the delegates, on going to the meeting, carried to it any such idea as woman's suffrage. When Mrs. Stanton privately proposed to introduce the resolution which I have quoted, even Lucretia Mott — who (as the report characterizes her) was “the ruling spirit of the occasion” --attempted to dissuade the bold innovator. But the innovator would not be dissuaded. She offered her resolution, and, in support of it, made, for the first time in her life, a public speech. Not a natural orator, she at first shrank from taking the floor. But a sense of duty impelling her to utter her thought, she conquered her bewilderment, stated her views, answered the convention's objections, fought a courageous battle, and carried her proposition. No American woman ever rendered a more signal service to her country than was, on that day, bashfully, yet gracefully and triumphantly, performed by Mrs. Stanton.

That convention, and, above all, its demand for woman's suffrage, excited the universal laughter of the nation. Wonder-stricken people asked each other the question, “What sort of creatures could those women at Seneca Falls have been?” It was never suspected by the general public that they were among the finest ladies in the land. Even their own relatives and friends, who knew their personal virtues, lamented their public eccentricities and joined the general crowd of critics and satirists. Judge Cady, on hearing of what his daughter had done, fancied her crazy, and immediately journeyed from Johnstown to Seneca Falls to learn for himself whether or not that brilliant brain had been turned.

“After my father's arrival,” says she, “he talked with me a whole evening till one o'clock in the morning, trying to ”