The Kansas herald of freedom., 1858-08-28
For tss Rsrald Of Freedom.
Wonan's Rights.
LAWRENCE, Aug. 25. 1853.

For Ese Herald Of Freedom.
Wonan's Rights.
LAWRENCE, Aug. %, 1853.
Ed. HERALD OF FREEDoM:-In recent
number of the Republican, find an out
line OF lecture lately delivered in the
Unitarian church by the learned J. II.
Coe, for the special instruction of the citi-
zens of our favored town, in which we are
gravely, and seriously told that tho pro-
gress of Bloomerism and of woman's
rights has tendency to infidelity. This
is an alarming and most serious eonsiders-
ton.
Isit really so, thatthat most comfortable,
healthful, modest, and graceful form of
apparel, known as the Bloomer costume,
can have tendency to infdelity. If this
be so, dear ladies, then we will of course
reverse that decision which many of US
had arrived at namely, that it was our
duty, now that this most trying season is
Just upon US, when our labor and house
hold duties (already as great as our
limited strength can sustain,) are being
greatly increased by the circumstance that
sickness has visited many of our families,
to adopt a dress which would so much
facilitate our labors, which would add so
much to our strength and power in the
performance of those duties which de-
volved upon us, and which none but we
are fully enlightened as to the dangerous
tendencies of Bloomerism, it is to be hoped
that none Of US will be so daring or SO
presumptous as to put it on.
But we are further assured that woman's
rights has the same disastrous tendency.
Oh, indeed! We women are very, very
sorry that the question of woman's rights,
sgitated, as it has been, by woman, and
which has been productive of such great
and most beneficial results, which has
raised woman in the scale of society, and
placed her to some extent on an equality
with man, which has opened to her col
leges and institutions of learning to which,
but few years ago, she was denied access;
which has been the means of opening
many avenues to respectable and lucrative
employments, which were previously
closed to her. To the agitation of this
question of woman's rights, by woman, do
we owe the circumstance that the Legisla-
lures of the several States have rescinded
those more than brutal laws, which ami
hilated woman the moment she was mar
ried, which gave her person, her property,
even her children, (dearer to the mother
than her very life, )-gave the unquestioned,
undisputed control of all-all she had or
ever could have; all she was or ever
could be, into the keeping of him who
was her legally constituted husband; laws
which were disgrace to any civilized
people. This agitation, by means of
which public opinion has undergone a
radical change, inasmuch as the world
does now actually believe in the individ-
uality and identity of woman, not in wo-
man merely as the echo or instrument of
man; this, which is diffusing new
light into the church, so that it has come
to be the expressed opinion of wise and
pious ministers of the gospel, that the
church can never rise te its destined posi-
ton, that the gospel of Christ will only be
fully appreciated as the life and light of
the world, through the instrunaesatality and
cooperation of woman; which has i'm
pressed many of our most able and en-
lightened statesmen, with the belief that
nothing but the purifying effects of wo-
mans influence in the government and
politics of the country can save it from
utter ruin; which is now influencing the
world TO call for the aid of woman in every
great moral and social reform, to feel that
she is the great auxiliary, without whose
help no work or labor of love can pros
per. But, alas! Ali those great and ben
efcial results, with many more which have
not been mentioned, all the glorious pros
poets that are yet in anticipation, all must
be given up; all that has been done, and
done so well, must be undone, for it has
lust been discovered that woman's rights
tend to inidelity. This is most timely
discovery. Perhaps Kansas may yet be
saved. though in this respect she shows q
disposition to follow the example set hel
by the other States of the Union. If we
may judge by the constitution framed
through her delegates in Leavenworth,
her woman's rights sentiment has been
strong and active. But then, the people
were not enlightened. Now that they
are aware of its dangerous tendency, they
will, of course, feel quite different.
But, seriously, must confess that am
rather sceptical myself as to the fact that
Bloomerism, woman's rights, abolitionism,
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