Note 807 — Chapter XVIII · PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY (continued 2)

In Germany Dorothea Christine Erxleben, in her Gründliche Untersuchung der Ursachen, die das weibliche Geschlecht vom Studium abhalten (Berlin, 1742); Vernünftige Gedanken vom Studiren des schönen Geschlechts (Frankfort and Leipzig, 1749); and Hippel, Bürgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber (Berlin, 1792); followed by his Nachlass über weibliche Bildung (Berlin, 1801), were already beginning the agitation for woman's liberation. A remarkably clear and incisive essay in defense of woman, entitled De l'égalité des deux sexes, appeared in Paris in 1673. Condorcet, Lettres d'un bourgeois de New Haven à un citoyen de Virginie (1787) compressed into a few sentences the basic arguments for the movement. In the same year appeared Mary Wollstonecraft's Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, a forerunner of her Vindication five years later. During the next fifty years a few earnest champions of woman's freedom came forward. First was Mary Anne Radcliffe, Female Advocate, or an attempt to recover the Rights of Women from Male Usurpation (London, 1799); followed by Hannah Mather Crocker, Observations on the Real Rights of Women (Boston, 1818); William Thompson and Mrs. Wheeler, Appeal ... of Women (London, 1825), a book written in reply to a statement in James Mill's article on Government, and possibly influencing John Stuart Mill's later thoughts on the subject; Sarah M. Grimke, Letters on Equality of the Sexes (Boston, 1838); Lady Sydney Morgan, Woman and her Master (London, 1840); Mrs. Ellis, Woman's Rights and Duties (London, 1840). The movement took organic form in 1848, when the first convention was held at Seneca Falls, New York. This was followed in 1850 by conventions in Ohio and Massachusetts. In 1851 Mrs. John Stuart Mill's powerful article in the July number of the Westminster Review on the "Enfranchisement of Women" supplied the agitation with a definite program. See Fawcett, The Woman Question in Europe, 273, note; Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, Hist. of Woman Suffrage, I, 70 ff.; Ostrogorski, Rights of Women, 54 ff.; Johnson, Woman and the Republic, 39 ff.; Wade, Women, Past and Present, 247.