Rochester Nov 24, 1850—

Dear MadamGage, Matilda Electa Joslyn

Matilda Electa Joslyn Gage (1826-98), women's rights advocate, was born in Cicero, New York, to Dr. Hezekiah and Helen (Leslie) Joslyn. After early instruction by her father, she completed her formal education at the Clinton Liberal Institute of New York. She married Henry H. Gage in 1845, and they moved from Cicero to nearby Fayetteville, New York. Despite recurring health problems, Gage became active in the fledgling women's rights movement, speaking, writing, and organizing for the cause as early as 1852. She was a member of the National Woman Suffrage Association from its inception and served as its president from 1875 to 1876. Gage was a principal contributor to the first newspaper devoted to woman suffrage, the Revolution, and coauthored with Elizabeth Cady Stanton the historic "Declaration of Rights" for women, which was presented at the Independence Day ceremonies at the 1876 meeting of the National Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia. She edited the National Citizen and Ballot Box, wrote many pamphlets, and joined Stanton and Anthony to produce the multivolume History of Woman Suffrage (1881-86). Because of her family commitments and ill health, she neither achieved the fame of Susan B. Anthony nor received the credit of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, but both acknowledged her leadership in the women's rights movement. Leila R. Brammer, Excluded from History: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Nineteenth-Century American Feminist (Westport, Conn., 2000), xiii-xvii, 1-3, 4-7, 13; Sally Roesch Wagner, Matilda Joslyn Gage: She Who Holds the Sky (Aberdeen, S.D., 2002), 1-34, 66-70; NAW, 2:4-6.

It is not my custom to publish stories in my paper—The space of my paper is too narrow to permit that disposition of it. But for this, it is quite probable that I could publish your Story on Kansas to advantage.

Respectfully yours &c.

Frederick Douglass