Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu/307

 of age. When Wendell Phillips, the eloquent apostle of universal freedom, moved the admission as delegates, of all persons having proper credentials, an English clergyman objected to the admission of the American women “as it would shock the sense of propriety of the people of England.” He was supported by the Rev. Henry Grew of Philadelphia, who gravely proclaimed that “the reception of women as a part of this Convention would be a violation of the customs of England, and the ordinance of Almighty God.” Wendell Phillips, George Thompson, a member of the British Parliament, Daniel O’Connell and other friends of human rights made earnest and eloquent pleas for their admission, but English and American prejudice prevailed and the women delegates were refused seats in the Convention. William Lloyd Garrison, the great Antislavery leader, thereupon refused to take a seat in the Convention which had by an arbitrary power of numerical strength excluded all women delegates. This act of tyranny was led by clergymen from both England and America, fortified with frequent quotations from the Bible showing the inferiority of women. George Bradburn sprang to his feet in the midst of this “thus saith the scripture” argument, and towering like a knight, he indignantly exclaimed: “Prove to me gentlemen that your Bible sanctions the slavery of women—the complete subjugation of one-half of the race to the other—and I should feel that the best work I could do for humanity would be to make a grand bonfire of every Bible in the universe.” Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the other women delegates who had come 3,000 miles to represent their constituents in the World’s Antislavery Convention, now realized that the American negroes were not the only people deprived of rights, and then and there was inaugurated the plan of beginning a crusade, upon their return to America, in behalf of the enfranchisement of women. Susan B. Anthony says in her “History of Woman Suffrage”: “The movement for woman’s