So entirely one are we that, in all our associations, ever side by side on the same platform, not one feeling of envy or jealousy has ever shadowed our lives.  We have indulged freely in criticism of each other when alone, and hotly contended whenever we have differed, but in our friendship of years there has never been the break of one hour.  To the world we always seem to agree and uniformly reflect each other.  Like husband and wife, each has the feeling that we must have no differences in public.  Thus united, at an early day we began to survey the state and nation, the future field of our labors.  We read, with critical eyes, the proceedings of Congress and legislatures, of general assemblies and synods, of conferences and conventions, and discovered that, in all alike, the existence of woman was entirely ignored.

Night after night, by an old-fashioned fireplace, we plotted and planned the coming agitation; how, when, and where each entering wedge could be driven, by which women might be recognized and their rights secured.  Speedily the State was aflame with disturbances in temperance and teachers’ conventions, and the press heralded the news far and near that women delegates had suddenly appeared, demanding admission in men’s conventions; that their rights had been hotly contested session after session, by liberal men on the one side, the clergy and learned professors on the other; an overwhelming majority rejecting the women with terrible anathemas and denunciations.  Such battles were fought over and over in the chief cities of many of the Northern States, until the bigotry of men in all the reforms and professions was thoroughly exposed.  Every right achieved, to enter a college, to study a profession, to labor in some new industry, or to advocate a reform measure was contended for inch by inch.

Many of those enjoying all these blessings now complacently say, “If these pioneers in reform had only pressed their measures more judiciously, in a more ladylike manner, in more choice language, with a more deferential attitude, the gentlemen could not have behaved so rudely.”  I give, in these pages, enough of the characteristics of these women, of the sentiments they expressed, of their education, ancestry, and position to show that no power could have met the prejudice and bigotry of that period more successfully than they did who so bravely and persistently fought and conquered them.

Miss Anthony first carried her flag of rebellion into the State conventions of teachers, and there fought, almost single-handed, the battle for equality.  At the close of the first decade she had compelled conservatism to yield its ground so far as to permit women to participate in all debates, deliver essays, vote, and hold honored positions as officers.  She labored as sincerely in the temperance movement, until convinced that woman’s moral power amounted to little as a civil agent, until backed by ballot and coined into State law.  She still never loses an occasion to defend co-education and prohibition, and solves every difficulty with the refrain, “woman suffrage,” as persistent as the “never more” of Poe’s raven.