"Let Us Own Ourselves, Our Earning, Our Genius"

"Let Us Own Ourselves, Our Earning, Our Genius". . , Frances D. Gage (1808-1884) visited Springfield in February 1854 from her home in St. Louis to advocate for women's rights. , While Gage sought full equality under the law for women - including the right to vote - her Springfield lectures focused on the need for laws which would allow married women to own and control property. In Illinois, and in most other states at the time, legal control of a woman's property transferred to her husband upon marriage., Gage's speeches, at what is today the Old State Capitol State Historic Site, called for equal rights for women as a matter of simple justice and self-defense against the potential for poor decision-making by husbands. , In December 1855, Gage made what became her most widely known comments on full civil and legal rights for women. , "Labor is the foundation of wealth." The reason that our women are 'paupers,' is not that they do not labor "right earnestly," but that the law gives their earnings into the hands of manhood. What reduces both the woman and the slave to poverty? The law which gives the husband and the master entire control of the person and earnings of each; the law that robs each of the rights and liberties that every 'free white male citizen' takes to himself as God-given." , Section 1. Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly, That all the property, both real and personal, belonging to any married woman, as her sole and separate property, or which any woman hereafter married owns at the time of her marriage or which any married woman, during coverture, acquires, in good faith, from any person, other than her husband, by descent, devise er otherwise, together with all the rents, issues, increase and profits thereof, shall, notwithstanding her marriage, be and remain, during coverture, her sole and separate property, under her sole control, and be held, owned, possessed and enjoyed by her the same as though she was sole and unmarried; and shall not be subject to the disposal, control or interference of her husband, and shall be except from execution or attachment for the debts of her husband. Approved February 21, 1861 , The Illinois General Assembly passed "An Act to Protect Married Women in their Separate Property" in 1861. Giving full equal rights to women would take much longer. , Caption , This Harper's Weekly lustration from 1859 shows an artist's conception of meeting of women rights.