Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/534

Rev. William Henry Channing, in giving his report of the World's Temperance Convention to the Toronto Division of Sons of Temperance of the City of Rochester, said:

And now it becomes my disagreeable duty, as one of your delegates, to report to the Toronto Division how my highly honored fellow-delegate was treated. Her credentials were received without dissent; she was, of course, then entitled, egually with every other delegate, to take part in all the proceedings of the Conventions. At a suitable time and in a perfectly orderly manner she rose to speak; the floor was adjudged to her by Hon. Neal Dow, the President, but her right to the platform was questioned. Again and again the President declared your delegate to be in order; again and again appeal was made to the Convention and the decision of the President sustained; but a factious minority succeeded in silencing her voice, and so ended the first session in storm.

On the second morning your delegate wisely waited until the resolutions offered to the convention by the Business Committee were opened for discussion, When the first resolution, declaring the religious character of the Temperance Movement, was submitted to the meeting, Miss Brown rose to speak. She rose calmly in the body of the house; she was a minister of religion, an advocate of temperance; she had it in her heart to press this reformation onward in a religious spirit; she had avoided all disputes on petty points of order, and now wished to address herself earnestly to the momentous theme. Had she not a perfect right to do so? And what fitter occasion could occur? The very topic was of a kind to banish personalities and hush low passions. Your delegate was invited by the President to take the platform; she did so with quiet dignity, but scarcely had she reached the stand when all around her on the platform itself, and among the officers of the Convention, began that disgraceful row, which led an onlooker in the gallery to cry out, "Are those men drunk?" I have no wish to dwell upon that cowardly transaction, but this remark I am bound in honor to make: If any man says that Antoinette Brown forced the subject of "Woman's Rights" on that Temperance Convention. in plain Saxon speech, He Lies. She never dreamed of asking any privilege as a woman, she stood there in her right as a delegate; her aim was to urge forward the Temperance Reform. No! the whole uproar on "Woman's Rights" came from the professed friends of Temperance, and began with the insulting cry — from a man on the platform — of, "Shame on the woman!" That man I need hardly tell you was the notorious John Chambers, of Philadelphia — the so-called Rev. John Chambers! — he it was who, with brazen face and clanging tongue, stood stamping until he raised a cloud of dust around him, pointing with coarse finger and rudely shouting "shame on the woman," until he even stood abashed before the indignant cry from the Convention of "shame on John Chambers."

The Reverend John Chambers! Reverend for what? For his piety; manifested in the fact that he, a professed minister of the:gospel, could by rowdy tumult drown the voice of another minister of the gospel while she was asserting the religious character of the Temperance Reform! Reverend for what? For his charity; manifested by low cries and insulting gestures to a gentlewoman who stood there firm. yet meek, before him! Strange that he, of all, should thus