Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/320

284 Benjamin F. Butler of Lowell, the whole report, excepting the last clause, was stricken out. There was then left of the whole document (including more than two closely-printed pages of reasoning) only this: "It is inexpedient for this convention to take any action."

Legislative action on the woman's rights question began in 1849, when William Lloyd Garrison presented the first petition on the subject to the State legislature. Following him was one from Jonathan Drake and others, "for a peaceable secession of Massachusetts from the Union." Both these petitions were probably considered by the legislature to which they were addressed as of equally incendiary character, since they both had "leave to withdraw." In 1851 an order was introduced asking "whether any legislation was necessary concerning the wills of married women?" In 1853 a bill was enacted "to exempt certain property of widows and unmarried women from taxation." In the legislature of 1856 the first great and important act relating to the property rights of women was passed. It was to the effect that women could hold all property earned or acquired independently of their husbands. This act was amended and improved the next session.

In 1857 a hearing was held before the Committee on the Judiciary to listen to arguments in favor of the petition of Lucy Stone and others for equal property rights for women and for the "right of suffrage." Another hearing was held in the same place in February, 1858, before the Joint Special Committee on the Qualifications of Voters. A second hearing on the right of suffrage for women was held the following week before the same committee. Thomas W. Higginson made an address and Caroline Kealey Dall read an essay. In 1858, Stephen A. Chase of Salem, from the same Committee on the Qualifications of Voters, made a long report on the petitions. This report closed with an order that the State Board of Education make inquiry and report to the next legislature "whether it is not practicable and expedient to provide by law some method by which the women of this State may have a more active part in the control and management of the schools." There is nothing in legislative records to show that the State Board of Education reported favorably; but from the above statement it appears that ten years before Samuel E. Sewall's petition