can sign a will. We will have that question decided before the
meeting of the next Legislature. Some ladies donated property to
an asylum. They wrote the will and signed it themselves, and
it was null and void, because the signers were women. They not
knowing the law, believed that they were human beings, and signed
it. That clause, perhaps, will be wiped out. Many gentlemen signed
the petition on that account. I took the paper around myself.
Governor Wiltz, then lieutenant-governor, told me he would present
the petition. He was elected president of the convention. I
presented my first petition, signed by the best names in the city
of New Orleans and in the State.

I had the names of seven of the most prominent physicians there,
leading with the name of Dr. Logan, and many men, seeing the name
of Dr. Samuel Logan, also signed it. I went to all the different
physicians and ministers. Three prominent ministers signed it for
moral purposes alone. When Mrs. Horsey was on her dying bed the
last time she ever signed her name was to a letter to go before
that convention. No one believed she would die. Mrs. Merrick
and myself went before the convention. I was invited before the
committee on the judiciary. I made an impression favorable enough
there to be invited before the convention with these ladies. I
addressed the convention. We made the petition then that we make
here; that we, the mothers of the land, are barred on every side
in the cause of reform. I have strived hard in the work of reform
for women. I pledged my father on his dying bed that I would never
cease that work until woman stood with man equal before the law,
so far as my efforts could accomplish it. Finding myself baffled
in that work, I could only take the course which we have adopted,
and urge the proposition of the sixteenth amendment.