Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/263

198 From these four lectures in St. Louis she cleared seven hundred dollars.

She headed the call for the first National Woman's Rights Convention, held in Worcester, Mass., October 23 and 24, 1850, and took a leading part in getting up the meeting. The report of this convention in the New York Tribune converted Susan B. Anthony to woman suffrage, and led John Stuart Mill's wife to write for the Westminster Rcrieir an article which was the starting-point of the equai rights movement in England. This convention was also the first that called wide public attention to the question in this coimtry, although the attention was mostly in the way of ridicule. Year after year Lucy took the laboring oar in getting up conventions and in printing and selling the woman's lights tracts at the meet- ings. She was "such a good little auctioneer," said one who remembei'ed her well.

On May 1, 1855, Lucy married Henry B. Blackwell, a yovmg hardware merchant of Cin- cinnati. His father, a sugar refiner of Bristol, England, highly respected for his integrity, had come to this country in 1S32, and in 1837 had gone out to Ohio, with the hope of event- ually introtlucing the manufacture of beet sugar and thus dealing a severe blow at slaveiy by making the slave-grown cane sugar un- profitable. Before he could carry out this plan, he died suddenly in Cincinnati, leaving his wife and large family of young chiUlren dependent on their own exertions. The mother and elder daughters opened a school. One of them studied medicine and became the first woman physician. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. The boys went into business. Henry had marked talent and energy, great eloiiuence, a kind heart, and an unparalleled gift of wit and fun. He was a woman's rights man and a strong abolitionist. In consequence of the active part he had taken in rescuing a little colored girl from slavery, a reward of ten thou- sand <1611ars had been offered for his head at a l)ublic meeting at Memphis, Tenn. In 1853 he hiid attended the Massachusetts Constitu- tional Convention at the State Hou.se in Bos- ton, when Wendell Philliixs, Theodore Parker, T. W. Higginson, and lAicy Stone s])oke in behalf of a woman suffrage petition headed b} Loui.sa Alcott's mother: and he had made up his mind at that tune to marry JiUcy if he could. Armed with a letter of introduction from Mr. (larrison, he sought her out at her home in West Brookfield, where he fomid her staiuUng on the kitchen table, whitewashing the ceiling. He had a long and arduous court- ship. Lucy had meant never to marry, but to devote herself wholly to her work. But he ])roniised to devote himself to the same work, and persuaded her that together they could do more for it than she could alone. The wedding took place at the home of the bride's parents at West Brookfield, Mass. The ceremony was performed by the Rev. Thomas Went worth Higginson, who afterward left the ministry for refoim work and the army, and is now better known as Colonel Higginson.-.

On the occasion of the marriage they issued a protest against the inequalities then existing in the marriage laws. It was widely pub- lished, and helped to get the laws amended. Mr. Higginson sent it to the Worcester S])}/, with the following letter- —

" It was my privilege to celebrate May-day liy officiating at a wedding in a farm-house among the hills of West Brookfield. The bridegroom was a man of tried worth, a leader in the Western anti-slavery movement; and the bride is (^ne whose fair name is known throughout the nation, one whose rare intel- lectial qualities are excelled l)y the private beauty of her heart and lif(

"I never perform the marriage ceremony without a renewed sense of the iniquity of our present system of laws in respect to marriage — a system by which 'man and wife are one, and that one is the husband.' It was with my hearty concurrence, therefore, that the follow- ing protest was read and signed, as a part of the nuptial ceremony: and I send it to you, that others may be induced to do likewi.'^e." The protest was as follows : —

"While acknowledging our nuitual affection by ]nil>licly assvuning the relation.ship of husband and wife, yet, in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem it our duty to declare that this act on our ])art im]:)lies no sanction of nor promise of voluntary obedience to such of the present laws of marriage as refuse