of weakness. The cause of women was, however, gaining ground and
winning converts. Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were
delegates to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention at London. They
listened to the debate which ended in the refusal to recognize
them as members of the Convention because they were women. The
tone of the discussion convinced them that women were looked upon
by men with disdain and contempt. Because the laws of the land
and the customs of society consigned women to an inferior
position, and because there would be no place for effective
public work on the part of women until these laws were changed,
both these women became advocates of women's rights and
conspicuous leaders in the initiation of the propaganda. The
Reverend Samuel J. May, of Syracuse, New York, preached a sermon
in 1845 in which he stated his belief that women need not expect
to have their wrongs fully redressed until they themselves had a
hand in the making and in the administration of the laws. This is
an early suggestion that equal suffrage would become the ultimate
goal of the efforts for righting women's wrongs.

At the same time there were accessions to the cause from a
different source. In 1833 Oberlin College was founded in northern
Ohio. Into some of the first classes there women were admitted on
equal terms with men. In 1835 the trustees offered the presidency
to Professor Asa Mahan, of Lane Seminary. He was himself an
abolitionist from a slave State, and he refused to be President
of Oberlin College unless negroes were admitted on equal terms
with other students. Oberlin thus became the first institution in
the country which extended the privileges of the higher education
to both sexes of all races. It was a distinctly religious
institution devoted to radical reforms of many kinds. Not only