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Modern Persecution, or Married Woman's Liabilities
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2857 | No -- nothing but a life-long entombment can satisfy the selfhood of my only legal protector! | |
2858 | Brothers, should the credulous public suffer me thus to die a martyr for woman's cause, don't let this precious cause be entombed with me. Oh! leave not this dear cause to the fickle decision of public sentiment, if you can afford me no other protection. | |
2859 | Public sentiment! What protection does that ensure to me? | |
2860 | Do you not see in our very midst, how very unstable is the verdict it renders me? Does it not one day cry, Hosannah! and the next, Crucify! | |
2861 | Oh! I do want laws to defend me; and as an American citizen, I not only ask, but I demand as my right, that my personal liberty shall depend upon the decision of a jury -- not upon the verdict of public sentiment, or forged certificates either. | |
2862 | And here, I beg leave to enter my most solemn protest against the injustice of that legislation which suspends the personal liberty of any American citizen upon the certificate of any person, class, or oligarchy. | |
2863 | Again I say, my gallant brothers, he true to my cause, if false to me. Be true to woman! defend her, as your weak confiding sister, and heaven shall reward you. | |
2864 | This untimely bursting in upon our almost triumphant cause, of the spirit of this cruel conspiracy is designed by the woman-hating spirit which prompted it, to defeat the first progressive step of this new rallying army, in defense of woman's emancipation. | |
2865 | But, my brothers -- my dauntless brothers! be not afraid of this wicked host which is encamped against us. Be valiant for woman! God is on her side, and "he always wins who sides with God." | |
2866 | Gentlemen of Connecticut Legislature, go forward! Emancipate woman! and put to flight this wicked host who have encamped against us. Fear not! Fear nothing so much as the sin of simply not doing your duty. Maintain your death grapple in defense of the heaven-born principles of liberty and justice to all human kind -- especially to woman. | |
2867 | For above this cross hangs suspended a crown, of which, even our martyred Lincoln's crown of negro emancipation is but a mere type and shadow, in brilliancy. And God grant! that this immortal crown of unfading honor may be the rightful heritage, the well earned reward, of Connecticut's manly sons, as embodied in their Legislature of 1866, by the passage of the following bill, viz.: | |
2868 | "Any woman entering the marriage relation, shall retain the same legal existence which she possessed before marriage, and shall receive the same legal protection of her rights as a woman, which her husband does as a man. Should the husband's power over the wife become an oppressive power, by any unjust usurpation of her natural rights, she shall have the same right to appeal to the Government for redress and protection that the husband has." | |
2869 | End of Vol. II. |