meetings was equal to a convention. The leading events of the day were
discussed in no uncertain tones. All were Garrisonians and believed in
"immediate and unconditional emancipation." In 1850 the Fugitive Slave
Law was passed and all the resources of the federal government were
employed for its enforcement. Its provisions exasperated the
Abolitionists to the highest degree. The house of Isaac and Amy Post
was the rendezvous for runaway slaves, and each of these families that
gathered on Sunday at the Anthony farm could have told where might be
found at least one station on the "underground railroad."
Miss Anthony read with deep interest the reports of the woman's rights
convention held at Worcester, Mass., October, 1850, which were
published in the New York Tribune.[11] She sympathized fully with the
demand for equal rights for women, but was not yet quite convinced that
these included the suffrage. This, no doubt, was largely because Quaker
men did not vote, thinking it wrong to support a government which
believed in war. Even so progressive and public-spirited a man as
Daniel Anthony, much as he was interested in all national affairs,
never voted until 1860, when he became convinced it was only by force
of arms that the question of slavery could be settled.
In 1851, the License Law having been arbitrarily repealed a few years
before, there was practically no regulation of the liquor business, nor
was there any such public sentiment against intemperance as exists at
the present day. Drunkenness was not looked upon as an especial
disgrace and there had been little agitation of the question. The wife
of a drunkard was completely at his mercy. He had the entire custody of
the children, full control of anything she might earn, and the law did
not recognize drunkenness as a cause for divorce. Although woman was
the greatest sufferer, she had not yet learned that she had even the
poor right of protest. Oppressed by the weight of the injustice and
tyranny of ages, she knew nothing except to suffer in silence; and so
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