Editing Lucy Stone (section)

== Petitioning and hearings ==
[[File:Petition of E. Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and others (1865).jpg|thumb|right|Petition signed by E. Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and others]]

In addition to being the women's rights movement's most prominent spokesperson, Lucy Stone led the movement's petitioning efforts. She initiated petition efforts in New England and several other states and assisted the petitioning efforts of state and local organizations in New York, Ohio, and Indiana.

=== Massachusetts ===
After petitioning the Massachusetts legislature from 1849 through 1852 for the right of women to vote and serve in public office,<ref>Million, 2003, pp. 99-100, 102-03, 111-12, 292n. 23, 293n. 6; 102-03, 293n. 6; ''Liberator'', December 14, 1849; February 1, 1850; January 24, 1851; Jan 9 and 30, 1852.</ref>
Stone aimed her 1853 petitions at the convention that would meet on May 4, 1853, to revise the state constitution. Wendell Phillips drafted both the petition, asking that the word "male" be stricken, wherever it appeared in the constitution, and an appeal urging Massachusetts citizens to sign it. After canvassing the state for nine months, Stone sent the convention petitions bearing over five thousand signatures. On May 27, 1853, Stone and Phillips addressed the convention's Committee on Qualifications of Voters. In reporting Stone's hearing, the ''Liberator'' noted: "Never before, since the world was made, in any country, has woman publicly made her demand in the hall of legislation to be represented in her own person, and to have an equal part in framing the laws and determining the action of government."<ref>Million, 2003, pp. 131, 133-34, 135-38, 297 note 24.</ref>

=== Multi-state campaigns ===
Stone called a New England Woman's Rights Convention in Boston on June 2, 1854, to expand her petitioning efforts. The convention adopted her resolution for petitioning all six New England legislatures, as well as her proposed form of petition, and it appointed a committee, in each state, to organize the work.<ref>''Liberator'', May 26, 1854; ''Una'', July 1854; Million, 2003, p. 170, 171-72.</ref> In a speech before the second New England Woman's Rights Convention, held in June 1855, Stone urged that one reason women needed suffrage was to protect any gains achieved, reminding them that "the next Legislature may undo all that the last have done for women." The convention adopted a resolution calling the ballot "woman's sword and shield; the means of achieving and protecting all other civil rights" and another urging the national convention to make suffrage petitioning its priority.<ref>''Reports on the Laws of New England, presented to the New England Meeting, Convened at the Melodeon, Sep 19 & 20, 1855,'' Woman's Rights Tracts, Boston Public Library; ''Una,'' June 1855, ''Lily'', August 1, 1855; ''Boston Herald'', September 19, 1855; ''Una'', October 15, 1855; ''Lily,'' November 15, 1855.</ref>

The next National Woman's Rights Convention met in Cincinnati on October 17 and 18, 1855. It was here that Stone delivered impromptu remarks that became famous as her "disappointment" speech. When a heckler interrupted the proceedings, calling female speakers "a few disappointed women,” Stone retorted that yes, she was, indeed, a "disappointed woman." "In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything, disappointment is the lot of woman. It shall be the business of my life to deepen this disappointment in every woman's heart, until she bows down to it no longer."<ref name=McMillen111>McMillen, 2008, p. 111.</ref> The convention adopted Stone's resolution calling for the circulation of petitions and saying it was "the duty of women in their respective States to ask the legislators for the elective franchise."<ref>"The National Convention," ''Lily'', November 15, 1855.</ref> Following the convention, suffrage petitioning took place in the New England states, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska, with resultant legislative hearings or action in Nebraska and Wisconsin. Amelia Bloomer, recently moved to Iowa near the Nebraska border, took up the work in that area,<ref>"Letter from Mrs. Bloomer," ''Woman's Advocate'', April 5, 1856, p. 2.</ref> while the Indiana Woman's Rights Society, at least one of whose officers was at the Cincinnati convention, directed the work in Indiana. Stone had helped launch the New York campaign at a state woman's rights convention in Saratoga Springs in August,<ref>''Lily,'' September 15, 1855, p. 134; ''Una,'' September 15, 1855, p. 143.</ref> and at the Cleveland convention recruited workers for it, as well as for the work in Illinois, Michigan and Ohio.<ref>Lucy Stone to Susan B. Anthony, November 15, 1855, Blackwell Family Papers, Library of Congress.</ref> Stone took charge of the work in Ohio, her new home state, drafting its petition, placing it in Ohio newspapers and circulating it during lectures across southern Ohio while her recruit worked in the northern part of the state. Stone also lectured in Illinois and Indiana, in support of the petition drives, there, and she personally introduced the work in Wisconsin, where she found volunteers to circulate the petition and legislators to introduce them, in both houses of the legislature.<ref>Million, 2003, p. 217.</ref>

At the national convention of 1856, Stone presented a new strategy suggested by [[Antoinette Brown Blackwell]] to send a memorial to the various state legislatures signed by the officers of the National Woman's Rights Convention. Antoinette Brown had married [[Samuel Charles Blackwell]] on January 24, 1856, becoming Stone's sister-in-law in the process.<ref name="Lasser, 1987, p. 147">Lasser, 1987, p. 147.</ref> Stone, Brown Blackwell, and Ernestine Rose were appointed a committee to carry out the plan. Stone drafted and printed the appeal, and Brown Blackwell mailed it to twenty-five state legislatures. Indiana and Pennsylvania referred the memorial to select committees, while both Massachusetts and Maine granted hearings. On March 6, 1857, Stone, Wendell Phillips and [[James Freeman Clarke]] addressed the Judiciary Committee of the Massachusetts senate, and on March 10, Stone and Phillips addressed a select committee of the Maine legislature.<ref>Stone report to the 1858 National Woman's Rights Convention, ''New York Times,'' May 15, 1858; Million, 2003, pp. 228, 230-31.</ref>

On July 4, 1856, in [[Viroqua, Wisconsin]], Stone gave the first women's rights and anti-slavery speech delivered by a woman in the area.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.wisconsinhistoricalmarkers.com/2017/04/lucy-stone.html|title=Lucy Stone|website=www.wisconsinhistoricalmarkers.com|access-date=January 5, 2018|archive-date=December 15, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181215133037/http://www.wisconsinhistoricalmarkers.com/2017/04/lucy-stone.html|url-status=dead}}</ref>

=== Tax protest ===
In January 1858, Stone staged a highly publicized protest that took the issue of taxation without representation across the nation. The previous summer she and Blackwell had purchased a house in Orange, New Jersey, and when the first tax bill came, Stone returned it unpaid with the explanation that taxing women while denying them the right to vote was a violation of America's founding principles. On January 22, 1858, the city auctioned some of her household goods to pay the tax and attendant court costs.<ref>Stone to Abraham Mandeville, December 18, 1857, in ''Orange Journal,'' January 16, 1858; ''Liberator,'' January 29, 1858.</ref> The following month, Stone and Blackwell spoke on taxation without representation before two large meetings in Orange, and circulated petitions asking the New Jersey legislature for woman's suffrage.<ref>''Newark Daily Advertiser,'' February 9, 1858; ''Liberator,'' February 19, 1858.</ref> Stone's protest inspired other tax-paying women to action: some followed her example and refused to pay taxes, with one case reaching the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 1863, while others went to the polls to demand their right as taxpayers to vote.<ref>''Sibyl,'' February 1, 1858; Million, 2003, 246, 258-59.</ref>