undersigned, earnestly call on the women of Ohio to meet in Convention, on Friday, the 19th of April, 1850, at 10 o'clock a.m., in the town of Salem, to concert measures to secure to all persons the recognition of equal rights, and the extension of the privileges of government without distinction of sex, or color; to inquire into the origin and design of the rights of humanity, whether they are coeval with the human race, of universal inheritage and inalienable, or merely conventional, held by sufferance, dependent for a basis on location, position, color, and sex, and like government scrip, or deeds of parchment, transferable, to be granted or withheld, made immutable or changeable, as caprice, popular favor, or the pride of power and place may dictate, changing ever, as the weak and the strong, the oppressed and the oppressor, come in conflict or change places. Feeling that the subjects proposed for discussion are vitally important to the interests of humanity, we unite in most earnestly inviting every one who sincerely desires the progress of true reform to be present at the Convention.
The meeting of a convention of men to amend the Constitution of our (?) State, presents a most favorable opportunity for the agitation of this subject. Women of Ohio! we call upon you to come up to this work in womanly strength and with womanly energy. Don't be discouraged at the prospect of difficulties. Remember that contest with difficulty gives strength. Come and inquire if the position you now occupy is one appointed by wisdom, and designed to secure the best interests of the human race. Come, and let us ascertain what bearing the circumscribed sphere of woman has on the great political and social evils that curse and desolate the land. Come, for this cause claims your most invincible perseverance; come in single-heartedness, and with a personal self-devotion that will yield everything to Right, Truth, and Reason, but not an iota to dogmas or theoretical opinions, no matter how time-honored, or by what precedent established.
Randolph—Elizabeth Steadman, Cynthia M. Price, Sophronia Smalley, Cordelia L. Smalley, Ann Eliza Lee, Rebecca Everit. New Garden—Esther Ann Lukens. Ravenna—Lucinda King, Mary Skinner, Frances Luccock.
The officers of the Convention were: Betsey M. Cowles, President; Lydia B. Irish, Harriet P. Weaver, and Rana Dota, Vice-Presidents. Caroline Stanton, Ann Eliza Lee, and Sallie B. Gove, Secretaries. Emily Robinson, J. Elizabeth Jones, Josephine S. Griffing, Mariana Johnson, Esther Lukens, Mary H. Stanton, Business Committee.
Mrs. Jones read a very able speech, which was printed in full in their published report, also a discourse of Lucretia Mott's, "On Woman," delivered Dec. 17, 1849, in the Assembly Building in Philadelphia. Interesting letters were read from Mrs. Mott, Lucy Stone, Sarah Pugh, Lydia Jane Pierson, editor of the Lancaster Literary Gazette, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Harriet N. Torrey.15 Twenty-two resolutions, covering the whole range of woman's political, religious, civil, and social rights, were discussed and adopted. The following memorial to the Constitutional Convention, was presented by Mariana Johnson:
MEMORIAL.
We believe the whole theory of the Common Law in relation to woman is unjust and degrading, tending to reduce her to a level with the slave, depriving her of political existence, and forming a positive exception to the great doctrine of equality as set forth in the Declaration of Independence. In the language of Prof. Walker, in his "Introduction to American Law": "Women have no part or lot in the foundation or administration of the government. They can not vote or hold office. They are required to contribute their share, by way of taxes, to the support of the Government, but are allowed no voice in its direction. They are amenable to the laws, but are allowed no share in making them. This language, when applied to males, would be the exact definition of political slavery." Is it just or wise that woman, in the largest and professedly the freest and most enlightened republic on the globe, in the middle of the nineteenth century, should be thus degraded?
We would especially direct the attention of the Convention to the legal condition of married women. Not being represented in those bodies from which emanate the laws, to which they are obliged to submit, they are protected neither in person nor property. "The merging of woman's name in that of her husband is emblematical of the fate of all her legal rights." At the marriage-altar, the law divests her of all distinct individuality. Blackstone says: "The very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during marriage, or at least incorporated or consolidated into that of her husband." Legally, she ceases to exist, and becomes emphatically a new creature, and is ever after denied the dignity of a rational and accountable being. The husband is allowed to take possession of her estates, as the law has proclaimed her legally dead. All that she has, becomes legally his, and he can collect and dispose of the profits of her labor without her consent, as he thinks fit, and she can own nothing, have nothing, which is not regarded by the law as belonging to her husband. Over her person he has a more limited power. Still, if he render life intolerable, so that she is forced to leave him, he has the power to retain her children, and "seize her and bring her back, for he has a right to her society which he may enforce, either against herself or any other person who detains her" (Walker, page 226). Woman by being thus subject to the control, and dependent on the will of man, loses her self-dependence; and no human being can be deprived of this without a sense of degradation. The law should sustain and protect all who come under its sway, and not create a state of dependence and depression in any human being. The laws should not make woman a mere pensioner on the bounty of her husband, thus enslaving her will and degrading her to a condition of absolute dependence.
Believing that woman does not suffer alone when subject to oppressive and unequal laws, but that whatever affects injuriously her interests, is subversive of the highest good of the race, we earnestly request that in the New Constitution you are about to form for the State of Ohio, women shall be secured, not only the right of suffrage, but all the political and legal rights that are guaranteed to men.
After some discussion the memorial was adopted. With the hope of creating a feeling of moral responsibility on this vital question, an earnest address16 to the women of the State was also presented, discussed, and adopted.
ADDRESS TO THE WOMEN OF OHIO.
How shall the people be made wiser, better, and happier, is one of the grand inquiries of the present age. The various benevolent associations hold up to our view special forms of evil, and appeal to all the better feelings of our nature for sympathy, and claim our active efforts and co-operation to eradicate them. Governments, at times, manifest an interest in human suffering; but their cold sympathy and tardy efforts seldom avail the sufferer until it is too late. Philanthropists, philosophers, and statesmen study and devise ways and means to ameliorate the condition of the people. Why have they so little practical effect? It is because the means employed are not adequate to the end sought for. To ameliorate the effects of evil seems to have been the climax of philanthropic effort. We respectfully suggest that lopping the branches of the tree but causes the roots to strike deeper and cling more closely to the soil that sustains it. Let the amelioration process go on, until evil is exterminated root and branch; and for this end the people must be instructed in the Rights of Humanity;—not in the rights of men and the rights of women; the rights of the master and those of the slave;—but in the perfect equality of the Rights of Man. The rights of man! Whence came they? What are they? What is their design? How do we know them? They are of God! Those that most intimately affect us as human beings are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Their design is happiness. The human organization is the charter deed by which we hold them. Hence we learn that rights are coeval with the human race, of universal heritage, and inalienable; that every human being, no matter of what color, sex, condition, or clime, possesses those rights upon perfect equality with all others. The monarch on the throne, and the beggar at his feet, have the same. Man has no more, woman no less.
Rights may not be usurped on one hand, nor surrendered on the other, because they involve a responsibility that can be discharged only by those to whom they belong, those for whom they were created; and because, without those certain inalienable rights, human beings can not attain the end for which God the Father gave them existence. Where and how can the wisdom and ingenuity of the world find a truer, stronger, broader basis of human rights. To secure these rights, says the Declaration of Independence, "Governments were instituted among men, deriving