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It verily does!

It was to secure the interests of my immortal soul, that I have suffered all I have in testing these despotic laws. I would have succumbed long ago, and said I believe what I did not believe, had it not been that I cared more for the safety of my own soul, than I did the temporal welfare of my own dear offspring.

I could not be true to God, and also true to the mandates of a will in opposition to God. And whose will was to be my guide, my husband's will, or God's will? I deliberately chose to obey God rather than man, and in that choice I made shipwreck of all my earthly good things.

And one good thing I sorely disliked to lose, was my fair, untarnished reputation and influence. This has been submerged under the insane elements of this cruel persecution.

But my character is not lost, thank God! nor is it tarnished by this persecution. For my character stands above the reach of slander to harm.

Nothing can harm this treasure but my own actions, and these I intend in future shall all be guided and controlled by Him, for whose cause I have suffered so much.

Yes, to God's grace alone, I can say it, that from the first, to the last of all my persecutions, I have had the comforting consciousness of duty performed, and an humble confidence in the i approval of Heaven. Strong only in the justice of my cause, and in faith in God, I have stood alone, and defied the powers of darkness to cast me down to any destruction which extended beyond this life.

And this desperate treason against manliness which has sought to overwhelm me, may yet be the occasion of the speedier triumph of my spiritual freedom, and that also of my sisters in like bondage with myself.

The laws of our Government most significantly require us "to work out our own salvation with much fear and trembling," lest the iron will which would hold us in subjection, should take from us all our earthly enjoyments, if we dare to be true to the God-principle within us. So bitter has been my cup of spiritual suffering, while passing through this crucible of married servitude, that it seems like a miracle almost, that I have not been driven by it into insanity, or at least into misanthropy. But a happy elasticity of temperament, combined with an inward consciousness of rectitude, and disinterestedness, has enabled me to withstand these fiery darts of the adversary, as few women could.

And I cherish such a reverence for my nature, as God has made it, that I cannot be transformed, into a "man-hater." I thank God, I was made, and still continue to be a "man-lover."

Indeed, my native respect for the manhood almost approaches to the feeling of reverence, when I consider that man is God's representative to me -- that he is endowed with the very same attributes and feelings towards woman that God has -- a protector of the weak, not a subjector of them.

It is the exceptions, not the masses of the men, who have perverted or depraved their God-like natures into the subjectors of the dependent. The characteristic mark of this depraved class is a "woman-hater," instead of a "woman-lover," as God by nature made him. This depraved class of men find their counterpart in those women, who have perverted their natures from "men-lovers," into "men-haters."

And man, with a man-hating wife, may need laws to protect his rights, as much as a woman, with a woman-hater for her husband. Laws should take cognizance of improper actions, regardless of sex or position.

All we ask of our Government is, to let us stand just where our actions would place us, without giving us either the right or power to harm any one, not even our own husbands. At least, give us the power to defend ourselves, legally, against our husband's abuses, since you have licensed him with almost almighty power to abuse us.

And it will be taking from these women-haters no right to take from them the right to abuse us. It may, on the contrary, do them good, to be compelled to treat us with justice, just. as you claim that it will do the slave-holder good to compel him to treat his slave with justice.

It is oppression and abuse alone we ask you to protect us against, and this we are confident you will do, as soon. as you are convinced that there is a need or necessity for so doing.

In summing up this argument, based on this dark chapter of a married woman's bitter experience of the evils growing out of the law of married servitude, I would close with a petition to the legislatures of all the States of this Union, that they would so revolutionize their statute laws, as to expunge them entirely from that most cruel and degrading kind of despotism, which identifies high, noble woman as its victim. Let the magnanimity of your holy, God-like natures, be reflected from your statute books, in the women protective laws which emanate from them.

And may God grant that in each and all of these codes may soon be found such laws as guarantee to married woman a right to her own home, and a right to be mistress of her own household, and a right to the guardianship of her own minor children. Let the interests of the maternity be as much respected, at least, as those of the paternity; and thus surround the hallowed place of the wife's and mother's sphere of action, with a fortress so strong and invincible that the single will of a perverted man cannot overthrow it.