Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/377

340 so little has been accomplished there in the way of legislative enactments and supreme-court decisions. Nevertheless that State has shared in the general agitation and can boast many noble men and women who have taken part in the discussion of this subject.

The first woman suffrage association was formed in Rhode Island in December, 1868. In describing the initiative steps, Elizabeth B. Chace in a letter to a friend, says:

In October 1868, while in Boston attending the convention that formed the New England society, Paulina Wright Davis conceived the idea that the time had come to organize the friends of suffrage in Rhode Island. After consultation with a few of the most prominent friends of the cause, a call was issued for a convention, to be held in Roger Williams Hall, Providence, December 11th, signed by many leading names. No sooner did the call appear than, as usual, some clergyman publicly declared himself in opposition. The Rev. Mark Trafton, a Methodist minister, gave a lecture in his vestry on "The Coming Woman," who was to be a good housekeeper, dress simply, and not to vote. This was published in the Providence Journal, and called out a gracefull vindication of woman's modern demands from the pen of Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, the poet, and Miss Norah Perry, a popular writer of both prose and verse. The convention was all that its most ardent friends could have desired, and resulted in forming an association. The audience numbered over a thousand, at the different sessions, and among the speakers were some of the ablest men in the State. Though the friends were comparatively few in the early days, yet there was no lack of enthusiasm and self-sacrifice. Weekly meetings were held, tracts and petitions circulated; conventions and legislative hearings were as regular as the changing seasons, now in Providence, and now in Newport, following the migratory government.

Mrs. Davis was president of the association for several successive years in which her labors were indefatigable. Finally failing