CHAPTER XII.
RIFT IN COMMON LAW--DIVORCE QUESTION.
1860.
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.