Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/431

390 in the following year, when the corner-stone was laid by General Lafayette. It sent forth nearly all its sons to the great rebellion. Indeed, at one time its condition served to remind one of the lines of Holmes—

 "Lord, how the Senior knocked about That Freshman class of one."

It has graduated such men as the late Senator Collamer, John G. Smith, president of the Northern Pacific Railroad; William G. T. Shedd, the learned theologian; the late Henry J. Raymond of the New York Times; John A. Kasson of Iowa, Frederick Billings, and a host of others, eminent in all the walks of life. Its late president, who was an "Angell from Providence," and has just been elected president of Michigan University, is heartily in favor of the movement, and the president-elect, Matthew H. Buckham, is no less so. With its new president and its "new departure" the future bids fair even to outshine the past. It may be well to inquire the reason why a college located in a State regarded by outsiders "as the most conservative of the Union on the woman suffrage question," should take a step so far in advance of what has been deemed the prevailing sentiment. Editors who have been battling the new reform with a zeal equaled only by that manifested against abolitionism a few years since, can see no necessary connection between the new movement and the general cause of woman's emancipation. Whether necessary or not, there is a practical connection between them which is being felt more and more every day. I assert, with no fear of contradiction by any observing man, that Vermont is no more committed against woman suffrage than any other State in the East, and the fact that but one man in our late convention voted to extend the right of suffrage to all, can well be explained when we consider the manner of choosing delegates by towns; one town, for instance, with twelve voters, having the same voice in the representation that this city has with 1,500. With a popular vote upon that question the State would give such a majority as would fairly astonish all those who regarded the late convention as a complete demolition of the "reformers."

2em

The following criticism of the Rev. Mr. Holmes, from the pen of a woman, shows the growing self-assertion of a class hitherto held in a condition of subordination by clerical authority. Such tergiversation in the pulpit as his has done much to emancipate woman from the reverence she once felt for the teaching of those supposed to be divinely ordained of heaven:

, Vt., June 20, 1871.

I have heard it stated from the pulpit within a year that the woman suffrage question in Vermont is dead. Well, we believe in the resurrection. Week by week this question of the hour and of the age confronts those who claim to have given it decent burial. The same clergyman who pronounced it dead has since spoken of it as one of the "growing evils of the times," and in this beautiful summer weather he has felt called upon to preach another sermon, ostensibly on "marriage," really upon this "dead