Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/404

CHAPTER XXXV.

NEW HAMPSHIRE.

Nathaniel P. Rogers—First Organized Action, 1868 —Concord Convention —William Lloyd Garrison's Letter—Rev. S. L. Blake Opposed—Rev. Mr. Sanborn in Favor —Concord Monitor—Armenia S. White—A Bill to Protect the Rights of Married Men —Minority and Majority Reports—Women too Ignorant to Vote—Republican State Convention—Women on School Committees—Voting at School-District Meetings—Mrs. White's Address—Mrs. Ricker on Prison Reform—Judicial Decision in Regard to Married Women,—1882 Letter from Senator Blair.

A State that could boast four such remarkable families as the Rogers, the Hutchinsons, the Fosters, and the Pillsburys, all radical, outspoken reformers, furnishes abundant reason for its prolonged battles with the natural conservatism of ordinary communities. Every inch of its soil except its mountain tops, where no man could raise a school-house for a meeting, has been overrun by the apostles of peace, temperance, anti-slavery, and woman's rights in succession.

To the early influence of Nathaniel P. Rogers and his revolutionary journal, The Herald of Freedom, we may trace the general awakening of the true men and women of that State to new ideas of individual liberty. But while some gladly accepted his words as harbingers of a new and better civilization, others resisted all innovations of their time-honored customs and opinions. And when the clarion voices of Foster and Pillsbury arraigned that State for its compromises with slavery, howling mobs answered their arguments with brickbats and curses; mobs that nothing could quell but the sweet voices of the Hutchinson family. Their peans of liberty, so readily accepted when set to music, were obstinately resisted when uttered by others, though in most eloquent speech. Thus with music, meetings and mobs, New Hampshire was at least awake and watching, and when the distant echoes of woman's uprising reverberated through her mountains she gave a ready response.

In 1868, simultaneously with other New England States, she felt the time had come to organize for action on the question of