duty to extend their influence beyond the circumference of the home
circle, and to say what circumstances shall surround children when
they go forth from under the watchful guardianship of the mother's
love; for certain it is that, if the customs and laws of society
remain corrupt as they now are, the best and wisest of the mother's
teachings will soon be counteracted....
Woman has so long been accustomed to non-intervention with
law-making, so long considered it man's business to regulate the
liquor traffic, that it is with much cautiousness she receives the
new doctrine which we preach; the doctrine that it is her right and
duty to speak out against the traffic and all men and institutions
that in any way sanction, sustain or countenance it; and, since she
can not vote, to duly instruct her husband, son, father or brother
how she would have him vote, and, if he longer continue to
mis-represent her, take the right to march to the ballot-box and
deposit a vote indicative of her highest ideas of practical
temperance.
It will be seen by this that already she had taken her stand on the
right of woman to the franchise.
While at Elmira she happened into a teachers' convention and heard
Charles Anthony, of the Albany academy, a distant relative, make an
address on "The Divine Ordinance of Corporal Punishment." It was a
severe and cruel justification of the unlimited use of the rod, but,
although more than three-fourths of the teachers present were women,
not a word was uttered in protest. Throughout the proceedings not a
woman's voice was heard, none was appointed on committees or voted on
any question, and they were as completely ignored as so many outsiders.
Miss Anthony made up her mind that here also was a work to be done, and
that henceforth she would attend the State teachers' conventions every
year and demand for women all the privileges now monopolized by men.
On September 8, 1852, she went to her first Woman's Rights Convention,
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