During the first decade of its history the movement toward securing a larger liberty for women was known by the comprehensive term “woman’s rights.”  At its inception, under the English common law which everywhere prevailed, woman was legally a part of man’s belongings, one of his chattels.  Restrained by custom from speaking in public or expressing herself through the newspapers, she had been silent under the oppression of ages.  When at length she found her voice there were so many wrongs to be righted that she scarcely knew which first should receive attention.  Those early meetings could not be called woman suffrage conventions, for many who advocated all the other reforms which they considered either disbelieved in or were indifferent to the franchise.  It was only the Anthonys, Stantons, Stones, Roses, Garrisons, Phillips of this great movement for woman’s liberty who were philosophical enough to see that the right of suffrage was the underlying principle of the whole question; so it was not for many years, not until practically all other demands had been granted, that they were finally resolved into a suffrage organization, pure and simple.  At the beginning of 1860 the laws relating to women, as briefly stated by the great jurist, David Dudley Field, were as follows: 

The elective franchise is confined entirely to men.  A married woman can not sue for her services, as all she earns legally belongs to the husband, whereas his earnings belong to himself, and the wife legally has no interest in them.  Where children have property and both parents are living, the father is the guardian.  In case of the wife’s death without a will, the husband is entitled to all her personal property and to a life interest in the whole of her real estate to the entire exclusion of the children, even though this property may have come to her through a former husband and the children of that marriage still be living.  If the husband die without a will, the widow is entitled to one-third of the personal property and to a life interest in one-third only of the real estate.  In case a wife be personally injured, either in reputation by slander, or in body by accident, compensation must be recovered in the joint name of herself and her husband, and when recovered it belongs to him.  On the other hand, the wife has no legal claim in a similar case in regard to the husband.  The father may by deed or will appoint a guardian for the minor children, who may thus be taken entirely away from the jurisdiction of the mother at his death.  Where both parents are dead, the children shall be given to the nearest of kin and, as between relatives of the same degree of consanguinity, males shall be preferred.  No married woman can act as administrator in any case.

One can not but ask why, under such laws, women ever would marry, but in those days virtually all occupations were closed to them and the vast majority were compelled to marry for support.  In the few cases where women had their own means, they married because of the public sentiment which considered it a serious reproach to remain a spinster and rigorously forbade to her all the pleasures and independence that are freely accorded to the unmarried woman of today.  And they married because it is natural for women to marry, and all laws and all customs, all restrictions and all freedom, never will circumvent nature.