History of Woman Suffrage/Volume 1/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV.
NEW YORK.
A full report of the woman's rights agitation in the State of New York, would in a measure be the history of the movement. In this State, the preliminary battles in the anti-slavery, temperance, educational, and religious societies were fought; the first Governmental aid given to the higher education of woman, and her voice first heard in teachers' associations. Here the first Woman's Rights Convention was held, the first demand made for suffrage, the first society formed for this purpose, and the first legislative efforts made to secure the civil and political rights of women; commanding the attention of leading members of the bar; of Savage, Spencer, Hertell, and Hurlbut. Here too the pulpit made the first demand for the political rights of woman. Here was the first temperance society formed by women, the first medical college opened to them, and woman first ordained for the ministry.
In 1850, in the city of Buffalo, 1,500 women petitioned the Common Council not to license the sale of intoxicating drinks; and the following year, they sent a petition to the Legislature, signed by 2,200, asking for an act authorizing some official body to take into custody, and provide for the swarms of vagrant children, growing up in ignorance and vice. This may be considered the initiative step to a Board of Charities. In the same year, a number of spirited women in Fulton, Oswego Co., disgusted with the inefficient action of the temperance men, entered complaint against the liquor dealers, for the violation of the license laws, and some of them attended the trials in person. In 1851, the ladies of Cardiff, Onondaga Co., appeared before the Grand Jury, and made complaint against the liquor dealers and overseers of the poor, the one for violating the law, the other for neglecting to prosecute the violators on their complaint, and they succeeded in getting both indicted. In 1851, a petition was sent from Ontario County, praying the Legislature to exempt women from taxation.
September 15, 1853, Antoinette L. Brown was ordained as pastor of a church in South Butler, and November 15, performed the ceremony at the marriage of a daughter of Rhoda de Garmo, of Rochester. In this year, at a large Convention of liberal people, to promote Christian Union, held in Syracuse, she made an address. All denominations took part on the occasion and listened to her with respectful attention. In New York, woman's voice was first heard on the Nation's great festal day. In 1853, Mary Vaughan gave the fourth of July oration at Speedsville, Emily Clarke at Watkins, Amelia Bloomer at Hartford, and Antoinette Brown at South Butler. Everything on these occasions was conducted as usual: the grand procession to the grove, or town hall, the military escort, reading the Declaration, martial music, cannon, fire-crackers, torpedoes, roast pig, and green peas; none of the usual accompaniments were omitted. In the same year, Antoinette Brown and Lucy Stone canvassed the twenty-second district, to secure the election of the Hon. Gerrit Smith for Congress, and were successful in their efforts.
In April, 1854, the Daughters of Temperance at Johnson's Creek, sent thirty pieces of silver to Gov. Seymour, for vetoing a bill for a prohibitory law, and thus betraying the friends of temperance. In New York, the first anti-tax association, the first woman's club and Loyal League were formed. Here, too, a woman, Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, was appointed State Commissioner of Charities, by Gov. Samuel J. Tilden. Whether the Governor of any other State had preceded him in a more profitable or honorable appointment, has not yet been discovered. Lest women should feel too deep a sense of gratitude, they should understand that this office involves arduous labors, but no pecuniary recompense. This may be a reason that such positions are being gradually assigned to women.
At the time of this general uprising, New York was thoroughly stirred with temperance and anti-slavery excitement. George Thompson, the great English reformer and orator, who had been
mobbed in all the chief cities of the North, accompanied by William Lloyd Garrison, was holding a series of conventions through the State. And as these conventions were held in the midst of the "Jerry rescue trials,"[1] the apostles of freedom spoke with terrible vehemence and denunciation. Popular orators, too, were rushing here and there in the furor of a Presidential campaign, and as all these reforms were thrown into the governmental cauldron for discussion, the whole people seemed to be on the watch towers of politics and philanthropy. Women shared in the general unrest, and began to take many steps before unknown. Since 1840, they had generally attended political meetings, as with the introduction of moral questions into legislation, they had manifested an increasing interest in government.
The repeal of the License Law of 1846, filled the temperance hosts throughout the State with alarm, and roused many women to the assertion of their rights. Impoverished, broken-hearted wives and mothers, were for the first time looking to the State for some protection against the cruelties and humiliations they endured at the hands of liquor dealers, when suddenly the beneficent law was repealed, and their reviving hopes crushed. The burning indignation of women, who had witnessed the protracted outrages on helpless wives and children in the drunkard's home, roused many to public speech, and gave rise to the secret organizations called "Daughters of Temperance." Others finding there was no law nor gospel in the land for their protection, took the power in their own hands, visiting saloons, breaking windows, glasses, bottles, and emptying demijohns and barrels into the streets. Coming like whirlwinds of vengeance, drunkards and rum-sellers stood paralyzed before them. Though women were sometimes arrested for these high-handed proceedings, a strong public sentiment justified their acts, and forced the liquor dealers to withdraw their complaints.[2]There is nothing more terrible than the reckless courage of despairing women, who, though knowing they have eternal truth and justice on their side, know also their helplessness against the tide of misery engulphing the drunkard's home. Women were applauded for these acts of heroism by the press and temperance leagues; they were welcomed too as speakers sometimes on their platforms, just as slaves were in the olden days, to move an audience with their tales of woe. But when they organized themselves into associations, adopted constitutions, passed resolutions, and sent their delegates to men's conventions, asking to be recognized as equals, then began the battle in the temperance ranks, vindictive and protracted for years. The clergy were the most bitter opponents of the public action of women; but throughout the conflict they were sustained by the purest men in the nation, such as Horace Greeley, Joshua R. Giddings, Rev. E. H. Chapin, Rev. Samuel J. May, Thomas W. Higginson, William H. Channing, Gerrit Smith, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, and others. All this persecution on the ground of sex, intensified the love of liberty in woman's soul, and deepened the oft repeated lesson of individual rights.
On January 28, 1852, "The Daughters of Temperance "assembled in Albany to take part in a mass meeting of all the "Divisions" in the State. Among the delegates present were Susan B. Anthony, Mary C. Vaughan, and Lydia Fowler, who were received as members of the Convention. But at the first attempt by Miss Anthony to speak, they were informed that the ladies were invited to listen, and not to take part in the proceedings. Those women present who were not satisfied with such a position withdrew, announcing that they would hold a meeting that evening in which men and women would stand on equal ground.
At the appointed time they assembled in the vestry-room of the Presbyterian church on Hudson Street. Samuel J. May, who was in Albany attending one of the "Jerrey Rescue Trials" was present, and opened the meeting with prayer. Mrs. Vaughan was chosen President,[3] and on taking the chair, said:
. . . . There are plenty of women, as well as men, who can labor for reforms without neglecting business or duty. It is an error that clings most tenaciously to the public mind, that because a part of the sex are wives and mothers and have absorbing duties, that all the sex should be denied any other sphere of effort. To deprive every unmarried woman, spinster, or widow, or every childless wife, of the power of exercising her warm sympathies for the good of others, is to deprive her of the greatest happiness of which she is capable; to rob her highest faculties of their legitimate operation and reward; to belittle and narrow her mind; to dwarf her affections; to turn the harmonies of her nature to discord; and, as the human mind must be active, to compel her to employ hers with low and grovelling thoughts, which lead to contemptible actions.
There is no reform in which woman can act better or more appropriately than temperance. I know not how she can resist or turn aside from the duty of acting in this; its effects fall so crushingly upon her and those whose interests are identical with her own; she has so often seen its slow, insidious, but not the less surely fatal advances, gaining upon its victim; she has seen the intellect which was her dearest pride, debased; the affections which were her life-giving springs of action, estranged; the children once loved, abused, disgraced and impoverished; the home once an earthly paradise, rendered a fit abode for lost spirits; has felt in her own person all the misery, degradation, and woe of the drunkard's wife; has shrunk from revilings and cowered beneath blows; has labored and toiled to have her poor earnings transferred to the rum-seller's ill-gotten hoard; while her children, ragged, fireless, poor, starving, gathered shivering about her. and with hollow eyes, from which all smiles had fled, begged vainly for the bread she had not to bestow. Oh! the misery, the utter, hopeless misery of the drunkard's wife!
. . . . We account it no reason why we should desist, when conscience, an awakened sense of duty, and aroused heart-sympathies, would lead us to show ourselves something different than an impersonation of the vague ideal which has been named, Woman, and with which woman has long striven to identify herself. A creature all softness and sensibility, who must necessarily enjoy and suffer in the extreme, while sharing with man the pleasures and the ills of life; bearing happiness meekly, and sorrow with fortitude; gentle, mild, submissive, forbearing under all circumstances; a softened reflex of the opinions and ideas of the masculines who, by relationship, hold mastery over her; without individualism, a mere adjunct of man, the chief object of whose creation was to adorn and beautify his existence, or to minister to some form of his selfishness. This is nearly the masculine idea of womanhood, and poor womanhood strives to personify it. But not all women. This is an age of iconoclasms; and daring hands are raised to sweep from its pedestal, and dash to fragments, this false image of woman. We care not how soon, if the true woman but take its place. This is also, and most emphatically, an age of progress. One old idea, one mouldering form of prejudice after another, is rapidly swept away. Thought, written and spoken, acts upon the mass of mind in this day of railroads and telegraphs, with a thousandfold more celerity than in the days of pillions and slow coaches. Scarce have the lips that uttered great thoughts ceased to move, or the pen which wrote them dropped from the weary hand, ere they vibrate through the inmost recesses of a thousand hearts, and awaken deep and true responses in a thousand living, truthful souls. Thence they grow, expand, fructify, and the result ig Progress.Mrs. Lydia F. Fowler then gave several very touching recitals of the evils of intemperance in family circles within her own observation. Her lectures on Hygiene and Physiology through the State, illustrating as she did the effect of alcohol on the system, and pointing out to mothers what they could do to promote the health of their children, and thus ensure temperance and morality, were most effective in their bearings on this question. Letters were read from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Clarina Howard Nichols, and Amelia Bloomer.
But I am particularly encouraged that the women of the State have made an especial and somewhat novel movement in this behalf. It has in all ages of the world been ominous when the women of a country have come out of the retirement they generally choose, to take a public part in the affairs of the State. What if this Convention be not a large one, it is significant nevertheless. I could cite you to a reform in our own country which commenced with less than twelve individuals twenty years ago, and now that reform has drawn into its vortex all the living spirits in the land, and has created an agitation of the public mind that will never be quelled until Slavery is buried out of sight forever. If the women of New York will act up to the noble sentiments that have been expressed in the addresses and letters written by women to this Convention, great and glorious results must follow. And there are especial reasons why women should be earnest in this cause. Their sex, though not so much addicted as ours to the use of intoxicating drinks, suffers more from the effects of the evil. To them it is the destruction of all domestic peace, the wreck of all conjugal and maternal hopes; it is ignorance, poverty, misery, for themselves and children. My own attention was first called to this reform by the sufferings of women. (Mr. May here related several touching anecdotes of most estimable women he had known, devoted wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, who had been utterly despoiled of all earthly comfort by the intemperance of those they loved).
At one time I thought this evil might be repressed by man alone; but I have learned that humanity is dual. God made man male and female. The sexes are equally concerned in the welfare of the race. What God has joined together must not be put asunder. Women are constituent parts of the State and the Church, as well as of the home; and their influence is as indispensable to the well-being of the former as the latter. A State or Church that excludes woman from its councils, is like a family without a mother, in a condition of half orphanage.
In the days of our Revolution women made as many sacrifices and endured as great sufferings for independence, as did the men. It is most ungrateful when we are speaking of that event, and the actors in it, not to make mention of our Revolutionary Mothers. In the French Revolution women were conspicuous actors. If Madame Roland and her coadjutors had been allowed to sway the public councils, the results would have been far happier for France.
In moral revolutions women have ever signalized themselves. It was a woman, Elizabeth Fry, who in England commenced the reform in the discipline of prisons, and prosecuted it in person for years, until she had proven her plans feasible, and inspired others with a faith like her own. It was Dorothea Dix (a very delicately organized woman), who first in this country recognized the claims and acknowledged the rights of the insane. She found these poor victims of man's ignorance everywhere suffering terrible hardships. They were dreaded by all, and abhorred by many who had charge of them, and believed to be incapable of suffering as sane people suffer, and to be beyond the reach of those kindly influences which more than all others control those who are in their right minds. Miss Dix penetrated their cheerless, dark, damp abodes. She brought to light the wrongs that were inflicted upon them. She exposed the folly of the fears which were entertained of them. She showed by her own courageous experiments that even furious maniacs could be controlled by the spirit of Christian love. The asylums in many of our States to-day are noble monuments to the inestimable value of her services.
When Miss Dix first visited the insane department of the jail in Cambridge, to look after one miserable human being she had chanced to hear was immured there, she little thought of the career of benevolent effort and of high distinction as a philanthropist that was opening before her. She went only to give relief to a solitary sufferer. But the dejected, helpless and wretched condition in which she found the insane there, raised the inquiry in her mind whether it could be that the same class of unfortunates were treated in this wise elsewhere. Such an inquiry could not be suppressed in a heart like hers; it urged her on to further investigation. It led to new developments of the methods that philanthropists and scientists were advocating in France. She came at last to feel that she had a mission to that class of "the lost ones," and she has fulfilled it gloriously. She has been the angel of the Lord to the insane in almost all the States of the Union.
The Anti-Slavery cause in both England and America, owes as much to woman as to man. If in Great Britain the suppression of the African slave trade was commenced by men, the abolition of West India slavery was begun by women; and it is acknowledged that they did more than the men to accomplish the overthrow of that system of all imaginable wickedness, which, while it endured, stimulated the cupidity of the slave-trader, so that he prosecuted his accursed traffic as much as ever, notwithstanding the acts of the American Congress and the British Parliament. In our country the most efficient, untiring laborers in the antislavery cause, have from the beginning been women. Lydia Maria Child, a lady highly distinguished among the authors of America, was the first to publish a sizable book upon slavery. Its very title was a pregnant one, viz, "An Appeal in behalf of that Class of Americans called Africans." Its contents were of great and permanent value. The publication of that volume was to her a costly sacrifice of popularity as an author. At a very early period of the enterprise, Elizabeth M. Chandler published many essays and poems that will live forever. The bravery and persistence of Prudence Crandall in maintaining a school for colored girls in Connecticut, in the face of terrible persecution, is beyond praise. Maria Weston Chapman, since 1834, has been among the leaders of the anti-slavery host, directing their movements and stimulating them to effort. Lucretia Mott, Sarah Pugh, Eliza Lee Follen, Abby Kelly, Mary Grew, are all worthy of mention — there is no end to the names of excellent, wise, courageous women who have contended nobly for the antislavery faith and practice. They have been traduced, reviled, persecuted, but nothing has deterred them from advocating the rights of humanity.NEW YORK STATE TEMPERANCE CONVENTION,
Rochester, N. Y., April 20 And 21, 1852.
At ten o'clock a large audience assembled in Corinthian Hall. The morning session was composed entirely of women; more than five hundred being present. The meeting was called to order by Susan B. Anthony, who read the following call that had been extensively circulated throughout the State:
Arrangements have been made to render the occasion one of interest to all friends of the cause. Addresses and communications from both ladies and gentlemen of known ability will be presented, and a general and comprehensive plan of operation proposed, whereby woman may aid in the promotion of a cause which appeals to her sympathy through the avenue of every relation which binds her to the race.
It is earnestly hoped that this meeting will be numerously attended.[4]
Susan B. Anthony, H. Attilia Albro, And Mary C. Vaughan,
The officers of the Convention were then chosen. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, President,[5] who on rising said:
I fully appreciate, ladies, the compliment intended, in choosing me to fill this place on an occasion of such interest and importance. If a sincere love for the principles of temperance, a fervent zeal in the welfare of woman, and an unwavering faith in the final triumph of truth, fits one for this post of honor, then am I not unworthy, though I must confess myself, from the novelty of the position, ignorant alike of the rights and duties of the office of President. I shall deeply regret if in any omissions or commissions of duty I fail to reflect back on this Convention a full share of the honor now conferred upon me.
How my heart throbs to see women assembling in convention to inquire what part they have in the great moral struggles of humanity! Verily a new era is dawning upon the world, when woman, hitherto the mere dependent of man, the passive recipient alike of truth and error, at length shakes off her lethargy, the shackles of a false education, customs and habits, and stands upright in the dignity of a moral being, and not only proclaims her own freedom, but demands what she shall do to save man from the slavery of his own low appetites. We have come together at this time to consult each other as to what woman may do in banishing the vice of intemperance from the land. We can do much by years of preparation and education of ourselves, for a great moral revolution will burst forth with the regeneration of woman. We shall do much when the pulpit, the forum, the professor's chair, and the ballot-box are ours; but the question is, what can we do to-day, under existing circumstances, under all the adverse influences that surround us? I will briefly mention several points for your consideration that have suggested themselves to my mind.
1. Let no woman remain in the relation of wife with the confirmed drunkard. Let no drunkard be the father of her children. Let no woman form an alliance with any man who has been suspected even of the vice of intemperance; for the taste once acquired can never, never be eradicated. Be not misled by any pledges, resolves, promises, prayers, or tears. You can not rely on the word of a man who is, or has been, the victim of such an overpowering appetite.
2. Let us petition our State governments so to modify the laws affecting marriage, and the custody of children, that the drunkard shall have no claims on either wife or child.:
3. Let us touch not, taste not, handle not, the unclean thing in any combination. Let us eschew it in all culinary purposes, and refuse it in all its most tempting and refined forms.
4. With an efficient organization, lectures, tracts, newspapers, and discussion, we shall accomplish much. I would give more for the agitation of any question on sound principles, thus enlightening and convincing the public mind, than for all the laws that could be written or passed in a century. By the foolishness of preaching, must all moral revolutions be achieved; but remember the truth, the whole truth must be faithfully preached.
5. We must raise the standard of temperance in all things. The man who over-eats takes a little wine to aid digestion, and he who exhausts himself by licentious indulgence takes a little as a stimulus; thus one vice induces another, and all go hand in hand together.
6. Let us endeavor to make labor honorable in all. Work is worship, says Emerson. Let us honor the hard hand and sun-burnt brow. Remember idleness is the parent of vice; and there is no surer way to banish vice from our land, than to see that the young just coming on the stage of life are wisely and fully employed.
And lastly, inasmuch as charity begins at home, let us withdraw our mite from all associations for sending the Gospel to the heathen across the ocean, for the education of young men for the ministry, for the building up of a theological aristocracy and gorgeous temples to the unknown God, and devote ourselves to the poor and suffering about us. Let us feed and clothe the hungry and naked, gather children into schools, and provide reading-rooms and decent homes for young men and women thrown alone upon the world. Good schools and homes where the young could ever be surrounded by an atmosphere of purity and virtue, would do much more to prevent immorality and crime in our cities than all the churches in the land could ever possibly do toward the regeneration of the multitude sunk in poverty, ignorance, and vice.Susan B. Anthony, Chairman of the Central Committee, addressed the meeting in a clear, forcible manner, alluding to the indifference manifested by many women on the subject of temperance, and stated the object of calling the women of the State together at this time. She read letters[6] from Frances Dana Gage, Clarina Howard Nichols, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Abby Kelly Foster, and Horace Greeley. In the discussion of the resolutions* during the different sessions, Giles B. Stebbins, Benjamin Fish, William Barnes, Amy Post, Mrs. Albro, Mrs. Vaughan, William C. Bloss, George W. Clark, and the Rev. Mr. Goodwin, all took part. One resolution denouncing Mr. Gaie, a State Senator, for his insulting epithets in regard to the women who had petitioned for a Maine law, called down on that gentleman some well-deserved reprimands. The Rev. Mr. Goodwin expressed his indignation and shame, that any man of education and position should use such language in speaking of women who were so faithfully laboring in all the great reforms of thee day. Mrs. Bloomer in the course of her remarks also criticised Mr. Gale for saying in a sneering way "that representatives were not accustomed to listen to the voice of woman in legislating upon great public questions; that the constitution of the female mind was such as to render woman incapable of correctly deciding upon the points involved in the passage of the proposed bill." After rousing the attention of the people of the State by large and enthusiastic meetings in all the chief cities, and sending into the Legislature a mammoth petition for a Maine law, this was woman's answer. On the Divorce resolution,
We are told that such sentiments are "exceptional," "abhorrent," that the moral sense of society is shocked and outraged by their promulgation. Can it be possible that the moral sense of a people is more shocked at the idea of a pure-minded, gentle woman sundering the ties which bind her to a loathsome mass of corruption, than it is to see her dragging out her days in misery, tied to his besotted and filthy carcass? Are the morals of society less endangered by the drunkard's wife continuing to live in companionship with him, giving birth to a large family of children who inherit naught but poverty and disgrace, and who will grow up criminal and vicious, filling our prisons and penitentiaries and corrupting and endangering the purity and peace of community, than they would be, should she separate from him and strive to win for herself and the children she may have, comfort and respectability? The statistics of our prisons, poor-houses, and lunatic asylums, teach us a fearful lesson on this subject of morals.
The idea of living with a drunkard is so abhorrent, so revolting to all the finer feelings of our nature, that a woman must fall very low before she can endure such companionship. Every pure-minded woman must look with loathing and disgust upon such a union of virtue and vice; and he who would compel her to it, or dissuade the drunkard's wife from separating herself from such wretchedness and degradation, is doing much to perpetuate drunkenness and crime, and is wanting in the noblest feelings of human nature. Thanks to our Legislature, if they have not given us the Maine law, they are deliberating upon the propriety of giving to the wives of drunkards and tyrants a loop-hole of escape from the brutal cruelty of their self-styled lords and masters. A bill of this kind has passed the House, but may be lost in the Senate. Should it not pass now, it will be brought up again, and passed at no distant day. Then if women have any spirit, they will free themselves from much of the oppression and wrong which they have hitherto of necessity borne.A brief address was read by Mrs. Robinson, of Darien. This woman had been tor many years the wife of a drunkard; she had overcome many obstacles to attend this Convention for the purpose of relating her experience, and offering words of encouragement. Her narration of the trials and sufferings she had endured was very affecting. She fully endorsed the tenth resolution, "That the woman who consents to live in the relation of wife with a confirmed drunkard, is, in so doing, recreant to the cause of humanity, and to the dignity of a true womanhood."
An organization was effected called "The Woman's New York State Temperance Society"; large numbers of the members of the Convention signed the Constitution, and elected Elizabeth Cady Stanton President.[7] A vote of thanks was passed to Horace Greeley for the kind manner in which he had uniformly sustained the women in their temperance efforts in The New York Tribune, and after six long sessions, the Convention adjourned.
As President of "The Woman's State Temperance Society," Mrs. Stanton issued a plain, strong appeal to the women of the State in which it was said woman's rights predominated over temperance. The strong point she uniformly pressed on the temperance question was the right and duty of divorce for drunkenness. A letter of hers to the Convention in Albany on this point, was so radical, that the friends feared to read it; however, after much discussion, Susan B. Anthony took the responsibility. It was read to the Convention, and published in The Lily and other papers, and called out many condemnatory notices by the press. The Troy Journal was much excited at the idea of "a virtuous woman severing the tie that bound her to a confirmed drunkard," and spoke of such a union of virtue and vice as a "divine institution," sacred in the eye of the "divine author," and declared Mrs. Stanton's teachings "reviling Christianity."
However, these bold utterances roused the consciences of many women to the sinfulness of such relations, and encouraged them in sundering such unholy ties.
At the Rochester Convention, Gerrit Smith, Susan B. Anthony, and Amelia Bloomer were appointed delegates to "The Men's State Temperance Society," to be held in June, at Syracuse. The call for the meeting contained these words, "Temperance associations of every name are invited to send delegates." Hence the Woman's State Society being earnestly enlisted in the good work, responded to this invitation. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Bloomer accepted the appointment, and on arriving at Syracuse, found many of the delegates already there, and everything indicating a large Convention. The next morning, while preparing to go to the hall, a gentleman was announced, who wished to see them in the parlor. On descending thither, they were happy to meet Samuel J. May. He came to inform them that their arrival had created great excitement among some of the clergy, who were
shocked at the idea of women delegates to the Convention, and threatened if they were admitted, to withdraw. This had alarmed others who were not quite so conservative, but who feared to have anything occur to create disturbance. They had persuaded Mr. May to wait upon the ladies and urge them quietly to withdraw. Mr. May performed his part well, merely stating the facts of the case, and leaving them to act upon their own judgment. But when they decided to present their credentials and demand their rights as members of the Convention, his face beamed with joy, as he said to them, "You are right." At the appointed time they were seated with other ladies in attendance at the side of the platform. Presently Rev. Dr. Mandeville, of Albany, arose, turned his chair facing them, his back to the audience, and stared at them with all the impudence of a boor, as if to wither them with his piercing glance.
Dr. Mandeville objected in a speech of some length, characterized by more venom and vulgarity than it had ever before been our fortune to hear; and such as the most foul-mouthed politician or bar-room orator would have hesitated to utter before respectable audiences. He denounced the Woman's State Temperance Society, and all women who took an active public part in promoting the cause. Spoke contemptuously of woman going from home to attend a temperance convention, and characterized such as a sort of "hybrid species, half man and half woman, belonging to neither sex." The short dress and woman's rights questions were "handled without gloves." These movements must be put down; cut up root and branch, etc., etc., and finally his Reverence wound up with a threat that if the report was adopted without striking out the offensive sentence he would dissolve his connection with the Society. Having thus discharged his venom, and issued his commands, he took his hat and with a pompous air left the house and did not again show himself at the meetings.
A warm discussion followed the motion for striking out, which it would be impossible to describe. Mr. Havens, of New York, offered an amendment — substituting a sort of unmeaning compliment to the ladies, and asking their influence in their proper sphere — the domestic circle. The discussion was kept up, but amid the confusion of "Mr. President!" "Mr. President!" "Order!" "Order!" "I have the floor!" "I will speak, right or wrong!" from at least half a dozen voices, until all lost sight of both motion and amendment.
Miss Anthony arose and addressed the Chair, but was at once called to order by Rev. Fowler, of Utica. He denied woman's right to speak in that meeting. Here the confusion again began. "Mr. President!" "Mr. President!" "Order!" "Order!" "Hear the lady!" "Hear the lady!" "Let her speak!" "Let her speak!" "Go on, go on!" 'Order! order!" in the midst of which the president left the chair, and said if there was any gentleman present who could keep order he would thank him to take the chair; he could hear nothing when so many were talking at once, and if order was not preserved he would not attempt to preside. A moment's quiet followed, and then all was confusion again. The conservatives were determined to have their way, and nearly every attempt on the part of the liberals to make themselves heard was frustrated.
A. N. Cole, of Belfast, succeeded in Keeping the floor a few moments, and spoke ably in defence of woman and of her right to be heard. He declared that man had no more right to prescribe woman's sphere and mark out a course of action for her, than she had to prescribe man's sphere and dictate his course of action. Woman had ever been untiring and earnest in her labors in this cause, and he was ready at all times and everywhere to acknowledge her aid, and hail her as a co-worker. He insisted that woman had a right to be heard on that Moor; that she was there on the invitation of the Society, and they could not refuse her a voice in the proceedings.
But points of order were raised, and a determination manifested not to permit a fair discussion of the subject. The Chair was at length appealed to for a decision. He decided that the letter of the Constitution of the State Society, and also the call for this meeting would admit woman to an equal participation in the proceedings, and allow her a vote; but as there were no female societies in existence five years ago when this Society was organized, such a thing was not contemplated at that time; he therefore considered her inadmissible. "The letter of the Constitution and call would admit her, but the spirit would not."
Mr. Camp must have been very ignorant not to know that ten years before there were efficient woman's temperance societies all over the State. He was doubtless right in saying that such a thing as a woman presuming to speak or vote in the meetings of that Society was not contemplated by its founders, but he greatly erred in giving a reason for their short-sightedness.
The decision of the Chair was appealed from, and the excitement continued. All tried to talk at the same time, but those possessing more firmness than others succeeded in having their say: while the opponents of woman were allowed to express their sentiments freely, those in favor were called to order and forced to yield the floor. The decision of the Chair was finally sustained by two votes. As the delegates had not been required to make themselves known, it was not ascertained how many were present, or who they were; nor how many persons in the crowd voted who had no right to do so. All men were permitted to vote, without its even being known whether they were temperance men or not.
And so, after spending the whole afternoon in hot discussion of the woman's rights question, the disgraceful affair terminated by refusing woman the right of uttering her sentiments on a subject in which she was deeply interested, and of pleading in behalf of the poor crushed victims of man's injustice and cruelty.Rev. Luther Lee offered his church just before the adjournment, and Mr. May announced that Miss Anthony and Mrs. Bloomer would speak there in the evening. They had a crowded house, while the conservatives had scarce fifty people. The general feeling was hostile to the action of the Convention. This same battle on the temperance platform was fought over and over in various parts of the State, and the most deadly opposition uniformly came from the clergy, though a few noble men in that profession ever remained true to principle through all the conflicts of those days, in the antislavery, temperance, and woman's rights movements.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY'S LETTER, FROM THE "CARSON LEAGUE."
Dear League: — Permit me to say a few words to your readers, relative to the plan of action, recommended by the "Women's New York State Temperance Society." We have now three agents lecturing, who are endeavoring, by a novel application of woman's "marvelous gift of tongue" to rouse their sisters of Western New York, to render active service in aid of the Temperance cause. Woman has so long been accustomed to "non-intervention" with the business of law-making — so long considered it men's business to regulate the Liquor Traffic, that it is with much cautiousness that she receives the new doctrine which we preach; the doctrine that it is her right and her duty to speak out against the liquor traffic and all men and institutions that in any way sanction, sustain, or countenance it; and since she can not vote, to duly instruct her husband, father, or brother how she would have him vote, and if he longer continue to misrepresent her, take the right to march to the ballot-box, with firm, unwavering tread, and deposit a vote indicative of her highest ideas of practical temperance. For women longer to submit to be ruled by men and legislators who sanction license laws, is to act the part of slaves and cowards. Men are just beginning to see that they must carry this temperance question into polities, but can see no farther than to vote for a rum-drinking President, Vice-President, and Congressmen. If they can place temperance men in those offices which directly control the license system of our own State, they seem to think they need look to, nor care for, the habits and principles of the men who fill the National offices. And it is for woman now, in the present Presidential campaign, to say to her husband, father, or brother, if you vote for any candidate for any office whatever, who is not pledged to total abstinence and the Maine law, we shall hold you alike guilty with the rum-seller. He who loves not humanity better than his whig or loco partyism, is not worthy the name of man nor the love and respect of woman. But to our Society. We recommend that women form temperance societies in their respective cities, towns, and villages, which shall be auxiliary to the State Association. The work which we propose to do is a missionary one. We therefore suggest the name "Temperance Home Missionary Society," whose object shall be to raise funds, by means of an admission fee and donations, to be expended in subscribing for temperance newspapers, for gratuitous distribution among all families, both rich and poor, who do not furnish themselves with such reading. During the last two weeks I have visited several villages in Genesee and Erie Counties, have found the women ready for work, and now and then a temperance man who had taken in the whole idea of political action. Home Missionary Societies are formed in all of the places visited except two, and will doubtless soon be in those. I recommend them to take The Lily and Carson League. The Lily, because it is particularly devoted to woman's interest in temperance and kindred reforms, and because it is their duty to sustain the only paper in the State owned and edited by a woman. The Carson League, because it presents and advocates a definite plan for temperance political action. It is to be hoped that the State Alliance, at its session at Rochester, the 18th of August, will make converts not only of all the professed temperance men of Western New York, but of all the temperance newspapers. Alliances must be formed in every county and town of the State. An additional clause must be appended to the pledge, "that no member of the Society shall vote for any officer who is not an open and avowed total abstinence man, and pledged to use his influence to secure the enactment of the Maine law." There must be concert of action; every man must know exactly how and for whom all other men of the State are going to vote. Let there be combined political action and the Maine law is ours.
During this year the Society was active, its agents visiting nearly every county, forming auxiliary societies, circulating tracts and petitions, and rolling up subscribers to The Lily. In January, 1853, a great mass-meeting of all the temperance organizations of the State was held in Albany. Nearly every hall and church in the city was occupied, with different associations of men and women. "The Woman's Society "met in the Baptist church in State Street, which was crowded at every session. Susan B. Anthony presided. Emily Clark, Mrs. Bloomer, Mrs. Vaughan and Mrs. Albro were appointed a committee to present to the Legislature a petition signed by 28,000 women for a prohibitory law. On motion of S. M. Burroughs, of Orleans, the rules of the House were suspended and the ladies invited to the Speaker's desk. In a brief and dignified speech, Miss Clark presented the petition, after which they returned to the Convention, and reported the success of their mission, in full confidence that their prayers would be answered. But alas! they forgot that women were a disfranchised class, and that legislators give no heed to the claims of such for protection.
In the evening, the ladies had two immense meetings, one in the church, and one in the Assembly Chamber of the Capitol. At the latter, Susan B. Anthony read Mrs. Stanton's "Appeal to the Legislature," and addresses were made by Mary C. Vaughan and Antoinette Brown; the galleries as well as the floor of the house being literally packed; while at the former, Mrs. Bloomer, Mrs. Fowler, Mrs. Albro, and Miss Clark addressed an equally crowded audience.
Following this Convention, Mrs. Bloomer, Miss Brown, and Miss Anthony went to New York, on the invitation of S. P. Townsend, and addressed 3,000 people in Metropolitan Hall; Lydia F. Fowler presided; Mr. and Mrs. Horace Greeley, Abby Hopper Gibbons, and other prominent gentlemen and ladies sat on the platform. . They also addressed large audiences in the Broadway Tabernacle and Knickerbocker Hall, and in Brooklyn. And during March and April made a most successful tour through the State, speaking at Sing Sing, Poughkeepsie, Hudson, Troy, Cohoes, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Lockport, Buffalo, and many of the smaller cities, and were greeted everywhere with large audiences and the most respectful attention from both press and people.
The New York Evening Post said: The first meeting of the Women's Temperance Society was held last evening in Metropolitan Hall. There were about three thousand persons present, a large proportion of whom were ladies. It was the first time that an audience in this hall was to be addressed by women, and the novelty of the occasion doubtless attracted a large number who would otherwise have been absent. The proceedings, however, were conducted in the most orderly manner, and the speakers apparently felt themselves as much at home with their hearers, as if they were merely a private company. They were listened to with much attention and frequently applauded. Altogether, the meeting was very successful and would compare most favorably with any that has ever been held in the same building.
The proceedings were commenced by Mrs. Lydia F. Fowler being appointed President, and Miss Mary S. Rich Secretary. Prayer was offered by Rev. Antoinette L. Brown, after which Mrs, Amelia Bloomer was introduced amid warm applause. She was dressed in the peculiar costume to which her name is given. Her speech, which occupied more than an hour in its delivery, was an able exposition of the reasons why women should be amongst the foremost of the advocates of the temperance reformation. Her remarks on the position of woman under the law, and the subordinate part she was compelled to play in all the relations of life, were listened to with much attention, and though sometimes very caustic and severe upon the other sex, they were received not only with forbearance, but were frequently applauded. Rev. Antoinette L. Brown made a very effective and eloquent address, urging the necessity for legislative action against the evils of intemperance, and recommended the passage of the Maine Law in our Legislature. Addresses were also made by Susan B. Anthony, and Horace Greeley.
The Tribune, under the heading of "Grand Temperance Rally," said: Last evening an exceedingly numerous and enthusiastic meeting was convened in the Tabernacle, under the auspices of the "Fifth Ward Temperance Alliance," it then gave a full report of the addresses of the four ladies, and closed with:
Horace Greeley then came forward in response to numerous and repeated calls, and said that within his immediate recolletion the Temperance cause had been utterly ruined (as it was said) three distinct times; first when the pledge of total abstinence was introduced; again when the Washingtonian movement was set on feet, and then when the Maine Liquor Law came out, every rum-drinker in the country mourned the cause as irrevocably ruined. But now, however, it was gone entirely, because some women came forward to speak for temperance. He had spoken so often on the subject that he had nothing new to say; but he rejoiced to see that there was another army coming up who could speak, as they had heard them that evening and on other occasions. There was something of freshness in them; and if they did not advance new truth, we, at least, heard truth from a new point of view. He had often heard of the fascinating influence of woman, and he was glad if she had such that it should be put forth for temperance. He was happy to hear her explain the wants of the poor mother, or sister, or wife of the unfortunate drunkard; he would not object to her saying if her home had become intolerable that she should be allowed a separation, and permitted to earn a living for herself, seeing that her brute of a husband was unwilling or unable to give her a support. The great cause would be advanced, he thought, by the advocacy of it by women. He considered that the people would be called upon to vote for the Maine Liquor Law one way or the other within a year, for the politicians were becoming tired of this mischievous element. It was one on which they could not calculate, and would be glad to get it out of the way by submitting it to the people for their disposition. The friends of the cause should be rejoiced if women who could speak on this subject did come forward and speak until the law was passed. He would feel their advocacy an additional assurance of success.The women of New York brought to this work a religious earnestness and intense enthusiasm, that seemed determined to override every obstacle that blocked the way to family purity and peace. Every phase of the question, without a thought of policy or conciliation, was freely discussed. Seeing the evils in social life, in the destruction of all domestic harmony, they demanded divorce for drunkenness. Seeing wine on the tables of clergymen and bishops, liquor-dealers and wine-bibbers dignified and honored as elders and deacons in churches, they called on the women to leave all such unholy organizations. Thus besieging legislators for a "Maine Law," demanding purity at the family altar, denouncing the Church for its apathy, and the clergy for their hostility to the public action of woman, this State Temperance Society roused the enmity of many classes, and was the target for varied criticism.
Politicians said such radical measures as the women proposed would destroy the Whig party, if carried into legislation. Churchmen said such infidel measures would undermine the influence of the clergy and the foundations of the Church. Conservatives said the divorce measures proposed would upheave the whole social fabric. Thus a general disintegration of society was threatened, if freedom was granted to woman. Not being allowed to vote themselves, they used their influence both in the anti-slavery and temperance reforms to strengthen many men in their determination not to vote for any man who was in favor of slavery and license; hence there had been a steadily increasing defection in the Whig ranks, that cost Clay his election in 1844, and Scott in 1852.
Mr. Pierce's administration, beginning in 1853, was a period of great political overturning. Innumerable small office-holders being thrown out of employment, and feeling hostile to all "isms," as the opposition designated the reforms of the day, they became a troublesome element in our Conventions.
To avoid this class in organizing "The Woman's Temperance Society," it was decided to enroll men as members, but not to allow them to vote and hold office. They were permitted to attend the meetings, talk, and contribute money, but they were to have no direct power. On this basis the Society was formed, and maintained its integrity one year. However, as the justice of such discrimination on the ground of sex was questionable, and some women and many men refused to unite with a Society thus proscriptive, the Constitution was amended, and men admitted to full membership.
FIRST ANNUAL MEETING OF THE WOMAN’S STATE TEMPERANCE SOCIETY.
Rochester, June 1 and 2, 1853.
The Rochester Advertiser gives the following report: In Corinthian Hall yesterday, at ten o’clock, a large audience assembled. The Society was called to order by Mrs. E. C. Stanton, who said if any one present desired to offer vocal prayer, there was now an opportunity. Prayer was then offered by a young man in one of the side seats. The platform was occupied by Mrs. Stanton, Emily Clark, Lucy Stone, Mrs. Vaughan, Dr. Harriot Hunt, Mrs. Nichols, Mrs. Fish, Mrs. Albro, Mrs. Alling, Elizabeth C. Wright, and Mrs. Lydia F. Fowler.
The attendance at this opening session is much larger this year than last, and a more hopeful spirit prevails. There are several of the notabilities of the Woman’s Rights cause present, and a fair sprinkling of Bloomers is scattered through the audience. There were many out, attracted by curiosity, though probably the most are earnest friends of the Society. The proceedings were of a deeply interesting character, both from their novelty and their importance. After the prayer was concluded, Mrs. Stanton gave her opening address, as follows:
MRS. STANTON’S ADDRESS.
A little more than one year ago, in this same hall, we formed the first Woman’s State Temperance Society. We believed that the time had come for woman to speak on this question, and to insist on her right to be heard in the councils of Church and State. It was proposed at that time that we, instead of forming a society, should go en masse into the Men’s State Temperance Society. We were assured that in becoming members by paying the sum of $1, we should thereby secure the right to speak and vote in their meetings.
We who had watched the jealousy with which man had ever eyed the slow aggressions of woman, warned you against the insidious proposition made by agents from that Society. We told you they would no doubt gladly receive the dollar, but that you would never be allowed to speak or vote in their meetings. Many of you thought us suspicious and unjust toward the temperance men of the Empire State. The fact that Abby Kelly had been permitted to speak in one of their public meetings, was brought up as an argument by some agent of that Society to prove our fears unfounded. We suggested that she spoke by favor and not right, and our right there as equals to speak and vote, we well knew would never be acknowledged. A long debate saved you from that false step, and our predictions have been fully realized in the treatment our delegates received at the annual meeting held at Syracuse last July, and at the recent Brick Church meeting in New York.
In forming our Society, the mass of us being radical and liberal, we left our platform free; we are no respecters of persons, all are alike welcome here without regard to sect, sex, color, or caste. There have been, however, many objections made to one feature in our Constitution, and that is, that although we admit men as members with equal right to speak in our meetings, we claim the offices for women alone. We felt, in starting, the necessity of throwing all the responsibility on woman, which we knew she never would take, if there were any men at hand to think, act, and plan for her. The result has shown the wisdom of what seemed so objectionable to many. It was, however, a temporary expedient, and as that seeming violation of man's rights prevents some true friends of the cause from becoming members of our Society, and as the officers are now well skilled in the practical business of getting up meetings, raising funds, etc., and have fairly learned how to stand and walk alone, it may perhaps be safe to raise man to an entire equality with ourselves, hoping, however, that he will modestly permit the women to continue the work they have so successfully begun. I would suggest, therefore, that after the business of the past year be disposed of, this objectionable feature of our Constitution be brought under consideration.
Our experience thus far as a Society has been most encouraging. We number over two thousand members. We have four agents who have traveled in various parts of the State, and I need not say what is well known to all present, that their labors thus far have given entire satisfaction to the Society and the public. I was surprised and rejoiced to find that women, without the least preparation or experience, who had never raised their voices in public one year ago, should with so much self-reliance, dignity, and force, enter at once such a field of labor, and so ably perform the work. In the metropolis of our country, in the capital of our State, before our Legislature, and in the country schoolhouse, they have been alike earnest and faithful to the truth. In behalf of our Society, I thank you for your unwearied labors during the past year. In the name of humanity, I bid you go on and devote yourselves humbly to the cause you have espoused. The noble of your sex everywhere rejoice in your success, and feel in themselves a new impulse to struggle upward and onward; and the deep, though silent gratitude that ascends to Heaven from the wretched outcast, the wives, the mothers, and the daughters of brutal drunkards, is well known to all who have listened to their tales of woe, their bitter experience, the dark, sad passages of their tragic lives.
I hope this, our first year, is prophetic of a happy future of strong, united, and energetic action among the women of our State. If we are sincere and earnest in our love of this cause, in our devotion to truth, in our desire for the happiness of the race, we shall ever lose sight of self; each soul will, in a measure, forget its own individual interests in proclaiming great principles of justice and right. It is only a true, a deep, and abiding love of truth, that can swallow up all petty jealousies, envies, discords, and dissensions, and make us truly magnanimous and self-sacrificing. We have every reason to think, from reports we hear on all sides, that our Society has given this cause a new impulse, and if the condition of our treasury is a test, we have abundant reason to believe that in the hearts of the people we are approved, and that by their purses we shall be sustained.
It has been objected to our Society that we do not confine ourselves to the subject of temperance, but talk too much about woman's rights, divorce, and the Church. It could be easily shown how the consideration of this great question carries us legitimately into the discussion of these various subjects. One class of minds would deal with effects alone; another would inquire into causes; the work of the former is easily perceived and quickly done; that of the latter requires deep thought, great patience, much time, and a wise self-denial. Our physicians of the present day are a good type of the mass of our reformers. They take out cancers, cut off tonsils, drive the poison which nature has wisely thrown to the surface, back again, quiet unsteady nerves with valerian, and by means of ether infuse an artificial courage into a patient that he may bravely endure some painful operation. It requires but little thought to feel that the wise physician who shall trace out the true causes of suffering; who shall teach us the great, immutable laws of life and health; who shall show us how and where in our every-day life, we are violating these laws, and the true point to begin the reform, is doing a much higher, broader, and deeper work than he who shall bend all his energies to the temporary relief of suffering. Those temperance men or women whose whole work consists in denouncing rum-sellers, appealing to legislatures, eulogizing Neal Dow, and shouting Maine Law, are superficial reformers, mere surface-workers. True, this outside work is well, and must be done; let those who see no other do this, but let them lay no hindrances in the way of that class of mind, who, seeing in our present false social relations the causes of the moral deformities of the race, would fain declare the immutable laws that govern mind as well as matter, and point out the true causes of the evils we see about us, whether lurking under the shadow of the altar, the sacredness of the marriage institution, or the assumed superiority of man.
1. We have been obliged to preach woman's rights, because many, instead of listening to what we had to say on temperance, have questioned the right of a woman to speak on any subject. In courts of justice and legislative assemblies, if the right of the speaker to be there is questioned, all business waits until that point is settled. Now, it is not settled in the mass of minds that woman has any rights on this footstool, and much less a right to stand on an even pedestal with man, look him in the face as an equal, and rebuke the sins of her day and generation. Let it be clearly understood, then, that we are a woman's rights Society; that we believe it is woman's duty to speak whenever she feels the impression to do so; that it is her right to be present in all the councils of Church and State. The fact that our agents are women, settles the question of our character on this point.
Again, in discussing the question of temperance, all lecturers, from the beginning, have made mention of the drunkards' wives and children, of widows' groans and orphans' tears; shall these classes of sufferers be introduced but as themes for rhetorical nourish, as pathetic touches of the speaker's eloquence; shall we passively shed tears over their condition, or by giving them their rights, bravely open to them the doors of escape from a wretched and degraded life? Is it not legitimate in this to discuss the social degradation, the legal disabilities of the drunkard's wife? If in showing her wrongs, we prove the right of all womankind to the elective franchise; to a fair representation in the government; to the right in criminal cases to be tried by peers of her own choosing, shall it be said that we transcend the bounds of our subject? If in pointing out her social degradation, we show you how the present laws outrage the sacredness of the marriage institution; if in proving to you that justice and mercy demand a legal separation from drunkards, we grasp the higher idea that a unity of soul alone constitutes and sanctifies true marriage, and that any law or public sentiment that forces two immortal, high-born souls to live together as husband and wife, unless held there by love, is false to God and humanity; who shall say that the discussion of this question does not lead us legitimately into the consideration of the important subject of divorce?
But why attack the Church? We do not attack the Church; we defend ourselves merely against its attacks. It is true that the Church and reformers have always been in an antagonistic position from the time of Luther down to our own day, and will continue to be until the devotional and practical types of Christianity shall be united in one harmonious whole. To those who see the philosophy of this position, there seems to be no cause for fearful forebodings or helpless regret. By the light of reason and truth, in good time, all these seeming differences will pass away. I have no special fault to find with that part of humanity that gathers into our churches; to me, human nature seems to manifest itself in very much the same way in the Church and out of it. Go through any community you please into the nursery, kitchen, the parlor, the places of merchandise, the market-place, and exchange, and who can tell the church member from the outsider? I see no reason why we should expect more of them than other men. Why, say you, they lay claim to greater holiness; to more rigid creeds; to a belief in a sterner God; to a closer observance of forms. The Bible, with them, is the rule of life, the foundation of faith, and why should we not look to them for patterns of purity, goodness, and truth above all other men? I deny the assumption. Reformers on all sides claim for themselves a higher position than the Church. Our God is a God of justice, mercy, and truth. Their God sanctions violence, oppression, and wine-bibbing, and winks at gross moral delinquencies. Our Bible commands us to love our enemies; to resist not evil; to break every yoke and let the oppressed go free; and makes a noble life of more importance than a stern faith. Their Bible permits war, slavery, capital punishment, and makes salvation depend
We must not expect the Church to leap en masse to a higher position. She sends forth her missionaries of truth one by one. All of our reformers have, in a measure, been developed in the Church, and all our reforms have started there. The advocates and opposers of the reforms of our day, have grown up side by side, partaking of the same ordinances and officiating at the same altars; but one, by applying more fully his Christian principles to life, and pursuing an admitted truth to its legitimate results, has unwittingly found himself in antagonism with his brother.
Belief is not voluntary, and change is the natural result of growth and development. We would fain have all church members sons and daughters of temperance; but if the Church, in her wisdom, has made her platform so broad that wine-bibbers and rum-sellers may repose in ease thereon, we who are always preaching liberality ought to be the last to complain. Having thus briefly noticed some of the objections to our movement, I will not detain the audience longer at this time.An able report of the Executive Committee was then read by Mrs. Vaughan. The President, on motion, appointed the various Committees,[9] and read a letter from Gerrit Smith to Susan B. Anthony:
Dear Madam: — I thank you for your letter. So constantly am I employed in my extensive private concerns, that I can attend none of the anniversaries this spring. I should be especially happy to attend yours; and to testify by my presence, if not by my words, that woman is in her place when she is laboring to redeem the world from the curse of drunkenness.
I know not why it is not as much the duty of your sex, as it is of mine, to establish newspapers, write books, and hold public meetings for the promotion of the cause of temperance. The current idea, that modesty should hold women back from such services, is all resolvable into non sense and wickedness. Female modesty! female delicacy! I would that I might never again hear such phrases. There is but one standard of modesty and delicacy for both men and women; and so long as different standards are tolerated, both sexes will be perverse and corrupt. It is my duty to be as modest and delicate as you are; and if your modesty and delicacy may excuse you from making a public speech, then may mine excuse me from making one.
The Quakers are the best people I have ever known — the most serious and chaste, and yet the most brave and resisting. But there is no other people who are so little concerned, lest man get out of his sphere, or lest woman get out of hers. No people make so little difference as they do, between man and woman. Others appear to think that the happiness and safety of the world consist in magnifying the difference. But when reason and religion shall rule the world, there will be felt to be no other difference between man and woman, than that of their physical constitutions. None will then be acknowledged in respect to the intellect, the heart, or the manners.
The attendance at this Convention was larger than the year previous, and the debates more interesting, as Mrs. Nichols, William Henry Channing, Lucy Stone, Antoinette Brown, and Frederick Douglass all took an active part in the proceedings. During one of the sessions quite a heated discussion took place on the subject of Divorce, Mrs. Stanton and Lucy Stone taking the ground that it was not only woman's right, but her duty, to withdraw from all such unholy relations, Mrs. Nichols and Miss Brown taking the opposite position.
As it was decided at this second convention to admit gentlemen, a schism was the immediate result. By their party tactics, in which they were well versed, they took the initiative steps to scatter the forces so successfully gathered. The Society, with its guns silenced on the popular foes, lingered a year or two, and was heard of no more. It was the policy of these worldly wise men to restrict the debate on temperance within such narrow limits as to disturb none of the existing conditions of society. They said, treat it as a purely moral and religious question; "pray over it," it being too knotty a problem to be solved on earth, they proposed to have the whole case adjusted in the courts of Heaven: very much as the wise men to-day think best to dispose of the temperance reform.
Thus these politic gentlemen manipulated the association, eliminated the woman's rights element per se, which, having been educated in the anti-slavery school of morals, could not be blinded with any male sophistries or considerations of policy. It was the universal plea then as now, in advocating reforms, "Sacrifice principle to numbers, if you would secure victory," forgetting that one company of brave men could clear their path to the enemy quicker than a battalion of cowards. A multitude of timid, undeveloped men and women, afraid of priests and politicians, are a hindrance rather than help in any reform. When Garrison's forces had been thoroughly sifted, and only the picked men and women remained, he soon made political parties and church organizations feel the power of his burning words. The temperance cause has had no organized body of fearless leaders. Psalm singing and prayer it was supposed would accomplish what only could be done by just laws, enlightened public sentiment, and pure religion, applied to the practical interests of mankind. When abolitionists left parties and churches, because of their pro-slavery codes and creeds, they began alike to purify their organizations in order to win back that noble army of patriots. Women were urged to enroll themselves as members of men's associations, pay their initiation fee of one dollar, gather petitions, do all in their power to rouse enthusiasm; but they must not presume to sit on the platform, nor speak, nor vote in the meetings. Those women who had no proper self-respect accepted the conditions; those who had, tested their status on the platform, and not being received as equals, abandoned all temperance organizations, as the same proper pride that forbade them to accept the conditions of a proscribed class in men's conventions, also prevented their affiliation with women who would tolerate such insults to the sex. The long, persistent struggle at last culminated in the World's Temperance Convention, which may be called our Waterloo in that reform.
BRICK CHURCH MEETING.
May 12th, 1853, the friends of temperance assembled in New York to make arrangements for a World's Temperance Convention. The meeting was held in Dr. Spring's old Brick Church, on Franklin Square, where the New York Times building now stands. It was organized by nominating the Hon. A.C. Barstow, of Rhode Island, chairman; the Rev. R. C. Crampton, of New York, and the Rev. George Duffield, of Pennsylvania, secretaries. The meeting opened with prayer, "asking God's blessing on the proceedings."[10] A motion was made that all gentlemen present be admitted as delegates. Dr. Trall, of New York, moved an amendment that the word "ladies" be inserted, as there were delegates present from the Woman's State Temperance Society. The motion was carried, and credentials received, and every man and woman became members of the convention. A business committee of one from each State was appointed. A motion was made that Susan B. Anthony, Secretary of the Woman's State Temperance Society, be added to the business committee. Then the war commenced in earnest. D.D.'s, M.D.'s, and Honorables were horrified. Speech followed speech in rapid succession, with angry vehemence. As the committee was already full, the motion was ruled out of order. Thomas Wentworth Higginson asked that he be excused from serving on the committee, and moved that Lucy Stone be added in his place. Then the confusion was increased. Abby Kelly Foster arose and tried to explain, but shouts of "order" drowned her voice, and after persisting in her attempt to speak for ten minutes the uproar was frightful, and she was compelled to sit down. Emily Clark made a similar attempt, with the same result.
Hon. Bradford R. Wood, of Albany, then moved, that as there was a party present determined to introduce the question of woman's rights, and to run it into the ground, that this convention adjourn sine die; but on request he withdrew it, and moved that a committee on credentials be appointed to decide who were members of the convention. This committee, consisting of Rev. John Chambers, of Philadelphia, Hon. B. R. Wood, of Albany, and Dr. Condit, of New Jersey, were absent fifteen minutes, and then reported that, as in their opinion, the call for this meeting was not intended to include female delegates, and custom had not sanctioned the public action of women in similar situations, the credentials of the ladies should be rejected. The report was received, and after a disgraceful contest on the part of those from whom we look for honor, truth, and nobleness, and every Christian virtue, on account of their sacred calling and high position, it was adopted by a vote of 34 to 32, ten of those voting in the negative being women. During the progress of the discussion — if discussion it could be called, where all the women who attempted to speak were silenced, and the men who attempted to speak for them were almost as rudely treated — Mayor Barstow twice requested the appointment of another chairman in his stead, stating that he would not preside over a meeting where woman's rights were introduced, or women allowed to speak. Having finally silenced them, he was henceforward content to wear the honors of his temporary office.
Mr. Higginson protested against the action of the meeting as disgraceful to the leaders, and tendered his resignation as one of the business committee. He then stated that all persons favorable to calling a whole world's temperance convention were invited to meet at Dr. Trall's office at 2 o'clock. The ladies present, and the gentlemen who had contended for their admission as delegates, then withdrew. Another disgraceful scene occurred on a protest from Dr. Townsend against the action of the convention, and a motion to pay the expenses of the ladies who had come some distance as delegates and been excluded. The motion was seconded. Again shouts of "order," "order,' arose, and the contusion was worse than ever. Dr. T. finally withdrew his motion, on being told that the ladies would accept no such favor at the hands of a convention of rowdies.
Several speeches then followed, mostly from clergymen; all condemning the public action of women in any reforms, and defending the position of the convention, quoting Scripture and the Divine Will to sanction their injustice. One Rev. gentleman stated that he would have nothing to do with the women. Rev. John Chambers said, for one, he rejoiced that the women were gone; they were now rid of the scum of the convention!! Other clergymen spoke in the same strain. A motion was made by Dr. Snodgrass that the committee assign some part of the work of the World's Convention to women, which called out from Mr. Barstow some remarks too indecent for repetition. The motion was withdrawn. The gall and bitterness, the ridicule and vulgarity of the Rev. D.D.'s being expended on some of the grandest women our nation could boast, they adjourned, after deciding to hold a four days' convention, beginning the 6th of September. The other wing of the temperance army decided to do the same, and held a meeting of protest a few days after in the Tabernacle.
President — Susan B. Anthony.[11]
Lucy Stone, in a letter to The Una, says: Last week, at New York, we had a foretaste of what woman is to expect when she attempts to exercise her equal rights as a human being. In conformity with a resolution adopted by the Mass Convention recently held in Boston, a call was issued, inviting "the friends of temperance" to meet in New York, May 11th, and prepare for a "World's Convention." Under that call, the Woman's State Society of New York, an active and efficient body, sent delegates; but though regularly elected, their credentials were rejected with scorn. The chairman of the committee reported that those who called the meeting never intended to include women. Think of it, a World's Convention, in which woman is voted not of the world!!
Rev. Dr. Hewitt affirmed it a burning shame for women to be there; and though it was entirely out of order, he discussed the question of "Woman's Rights," taking the ground that women should be nowhere but at home. Rev. E. M. Jackson, gave it as his opinion, that "the women came there expressly to disturb." The Rev. Mr. Fowler, of Utica, showed the same contempt for woman that he did last year, at the N. Y State Temperance Society, at Syracuse. Rev. Mr. Chambers was particularly bitter.
It would have been well for those women who accept the foolish flattery of men, to have been present to see the real estimate in which woman is held by these men who surely represent a large class. The President of the meeting, Mayor Barstow, of your city, indignantly refused to put the motion made — that Susan B. Anthony should be on a committee, declaring "that he would resign rather than do it." He said it 'was not fit that a woman should be in such places." After we left, if the papers reported him correctly, he used language which proved that he was not fit to be where decent people are. It was next to impossible for us or our friends to get a hearing. The "previous question" was called, or we were voted out of order, or half a dozen of the opposing party talked at once to keep us silent. Rev. T. W. Higginson declined serving on a committee from which women were excluded, and when it became apparent that only half of the world could be represented, he entered his protest, and invited those who were in favor of a Whole World's Temperance Convention to meet that afternoon at Dr. Trall's. A large minority withdrew, including several ministers, and arranged for a Convention that shall know "neither male nor female," to be held in New York sometime during The World's Fair.
A large and enthusiastic meeting was held at the Broadway Tabernacle, to protest against the above proceedings, and although twelve and a half cents were charged at the door, every seat was occupied, and much of the "standing room "also.
The same gentlemen! who excluded us, held a meeting subsequently in Metropolitan Hall. There your Major Barstow said: "God has placed woman in the moral world where he has the sun in the physical, to regulate, enlighten, and cheer." C. C. Burleigh, alluding to this remark, in our meeting at the Tabernacle, said: "Thus he calls his Convention, in which Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, and Neptune are appointed a committee of arrangements, and says the Sun shall be excluded."
at this meeting, ladies were especially invited to vote, as though they had a heart in it, and were urged also to give their money to aid these very men by whom every soul of us had been insulted. I am sorry to say some gave. But taught such lessons, by such masters, woman will one day be wiser. Yours, for humanity, without distinction of sex,
After the Brick Church meeting was over, some of the actors being ashamed of themselves, the Rev. John Marsh tried to defend himself and his coadjutors, but Mr. Greeley very summarily brushed his sophistry aside, and placed all the actors in that disgraceful farce in their true colors.
The New York Daily Tribune, Wednesday, May 18, 1858.
THE WORLD'S TEMPERANCE CONVENTION.
Sir: — Your "Inquirer,"it appears to me, is bent on throwing firebrands into the temperance ranks, and the worst kind of firebrands, those of vile sectarianism. Will you permit me to answer and remark upon a few of his inquiries?
1. "Are there to be two World's Conventions?"
Answer. That will be, I suppose, as people please. There may be a dozen; and I know not that any harm will be done.
2. Did Mayor Barstow occasion the schism in the temperance ranks, by refusing to recognize the feminine element in the movement?"
Ans. No. The schism, such as there was, was caused by a proposal of Rev. Mr. Higginson, and a persistence in it, that a representative of the Women's State Society should be added to the Business Committee of one from each State; and this after the Committee was full. With as good reason, it was said, might one be pressed from the Men's State Society or State Alliance. Mr. Higginson pertinaciously pressed the matter; and because he could not have his own way and rule the Convention, he refused to serve on the Committee; and hence arose all the disturbance and the schism.
3. "Did Dr. Hewitt rule out from office Mr. Barnum on the ground that he (Mr. Barnum) was an infidel?"
Ans. No. I am confident he used no such phraseology; and "Inquirer"? has no more right to ask such a question, than he has to ask if Dr. Hewitt did not rule him out on the ground that Mr. Barnum was a horse thief. The very question amounts to an assertion (as is announced in the next inquiry; that he did say it; which, if he did not, is calumny. Dr. H. did object to Mr. Barnum, as he had a perfect right to do, as one of the Appointing Committee. It was desirable to find the best men to get up to the World's Convention. I proposed Mr. Barnum as one, knowing his amazing efficiency. Dr. H. objected, on the ground that he (Barnum) was a very exceptionable man in his part of Connecticut, and would do injury to the Convention; and, as harmony was desirable, and unexceptionable men should be put upon the Committee, his name was withdrawn. It was agreed that what was said in Committee should not go abroad.
4. "Does Mr. Barnum's infidelity consist in his attending another church in Bridgeport from Dr. Hewitt's?"
Here appears the cloven foot of sectarianism. One sect is to be held up as persecuted. Here the writer assumes that Dr. Hewitt did say that Mr. B. was an infidel; and, assuming it and knowing it, why does he hypocritically ask whether Dr. H. did say it?
5. "Is it true that Dr. H. refused his pulpit for a temperance lecture by Rev. E. H. Chapin, on the ground that he was a Universalist?"
Sectarianism again! What has all this to do with the meeting at the Brick Chapel? Why is it brought here but to kindle up sectarian fires? A pastor of a church has where conceded to him the control of his pulpit, and no one may contend with him in this matter. Whether that was so or not, I know not, nor is it any concern of mine, nor of the public. Such a rule the world knows does not govern us in selecting temperance speakers. We will not invite speakers to speak at temperance meetings who have something else more at heart than temperance, which they will most offensively thrust in their speech upon the meeting. But we, without hesitation, invite men of all sorts to speak at temperance meetings, who will speak to the point, and do us good and not hurt. Rey. Mr. Chapin, we all know, is of this character, and, without hesitation, I invited him to speak at the late Anniversary of the American Temperance Union (as I did Rev. Mr. Higginson, who differs from me perhaps as much ir religious belief), and he (Mr. C.) would have spoken, but was to be out of the city.
6. "How can the proposed Convention be a World's Convention, if women and all who do not belong to a particular Church are to be excluded?"
Sectarianism again! Who has said a word about Church but this writer, and about excluding women from the Convention and all its entertainments? No one. The basis of the Convention has not been settled. It probably will be as broad as the world. The last query I think unworthy an answer. And I must be permitted to say the whole inquiry manifests a very bad spirit, and is calculated to promote evils which the public press should suppress rather than foster.
As I sent you an anonymous communication explaining some of these matters last Saturday, which you declined publishing, because, I suppose, it was anonymous, I feel constrained, though reluctantly, to give this my name.
HORACE GREELEY'S REPLY.
Rev. John! we have allowed you to be heard at full length; now you and your set will be silent and hear us.
Very palpably your palaver about Mr. Higginson's motion is a dodge, a quirk, a most contemptible quibble, reluctant as we are to speak thus irreverently of the solemn utterances of a Doctor of Divinity. Right well do you know, reverend sir, that the particular form, or time, or fashion in which the question came up is utterly immaterial, and you interpose it only to throw dust in the eyes of the public. Suppose a woman had been nominated at the right time, and in the right way, according to your understanding of punctilios, wouldn't the same resistance have been made and the same row got up? You know right well that there would. Then what is all your pettifogging about technicalities worth? The only question that anybody cares a button about is this, Shall woman be allowed to participate in your World's Temperance Convention on a footing of perfect equality with man? If yea, the whole dispute turns on nothing, and isn't worth six lines in The Tribune. But if it was and is the purpose of those for whom you pettifog to keep woman off the platform of that Convention, and deny her any part in its proceedings except as a spectator, what does all your talk about Higginson's untimeliness and the Committees being full amount to? Why not treat the subject with some show of honesty?
Now as to Barnum and Hewitt: it is eminently proper that the public should know exactly on what ground H. ruled B. off the Business Committee, and it is self-criminating to plead that a mantle of secrecy was spread over the doings in Committee. If Hewitt protested against Barnum on the assumption that the latter is a sinner, while this is to be a Convention of saints, let that fact be known, so that sinners may keep away from the Convention. If on the assumption that Mr. Barnum is an infidel or a heretic, let that fact come squarely out, so that we may know that infidels or heretics, either or both, are to be proscribed at the Hewitt-Marsh Convention. For if there is to be really and truly a World's Temperance Convention, according to any fair meaning of the phrase, then we say women, as well as men, youth, as well as adults, colored, as well as white, heretic, as well as orthodox, sinners, as well as saints — so that they be earnest and undoubted upholders of total abstinence — should be invited to send delegates, who should be equally welcome to its platform and eligible to its offices. An Orthodox White Male Adult Saints' Convention may be very proper and very useful, but it should be called distinctly as such, and not unqualifiedly as a World's Convention.
Dr. Marsh thinks it nobody's business whether Dr. Hewitt did or did not refuse the use of his church for a temperance-meeting at which Mr. Chapin was to speak, because he (Mr. C.) was a Universalist. Yes, reverend sir, it is a good many people's business if the public are purposely left in doubt as to the character of the World's Convention that is to issue from the Brick Church meeting. For if Dr. Hewitt shut his pulpit against so unexceptionable, assiduous, effective an advocate of temperance as Mr. Chapin confessedly is (see Marsh, above), then we have a cue to his objection to Barnum and to the general bearings of the "World's Convention" to be incubated under his auspices. That single incident of the pulpit-shutting will have a great deal of significance to many other people; wherefore the fact that it has none to Marsh is overruled.
Whenever a real "World's Temperance Convention "shall assemble, an inquiry may be found necessary as to what Dr. Hewitt has done and sacrificed for temperance these five years that should authorize him to rule P. T. Barnum off a temperance committee; also, whether men who live by Temperance, like Dr. Marsh, are in the right position to judge those, like Barnum, who labor and spend money for it. For the present, however, we will leave these inquiries on the General Orders.
One word as to Sectarianism. If "Inquirer," or Mr. Barnum, or Mr. Chapin has proposed or intrigued to Keep any one out of office, or otherwise overslaughed in the Brick Church Meeting, or any of its meetings, because of said body's religious opinions or associations, then said intriguer has been guilty of a very faulty and culpable sectarian dodge, which can not be too severely reproached. But if it be in fact t'other fellow's bull that has gored this one's ox, then the facts should come out, and the culprit can not escape censure by raising the stop-thief cry of "Sectarianism." "Thou art the man!"Let the women of this nation ponder Horace Greeley's arraignment of the reverend gentlemen who were the chief actors in this farce, and remember that in all ages of the world the priesthood have found their pliant tools and most degraded victims in the women of their respective sects. In all of these meetings there were intelligent, sincere women, so blinded by the sophistry and hypocrisy of Marsh, Chambers, Hewitt, et al., that they gave them their countenance and support throughout this disgraceful mob, so shocking and revolting to the best men of that day and generation.
In consequence of the action in the Brick Church two temperance conventions were called, to meet in New York the first week in September. One designated "The Whole World's Convention," including men and women, black and white, orthodox and heretic; the other the "Half World's Convention," restricted to the "simon pure, white (male) orthodox saints"; which for ribaldry of speech and rudeness of action surpassed in its proceedings the outside mob, that raged and raved through an entire week, making pandemonium of our metropolis.
A GRAND GATHERING ANTI-SLAVERY WOMAN'S RIGHTS TEMPERANCE THE WORLD'S FAIR, SEPTEMBER, 1853.
The opening days of the autumn of this year were days of intense excitement in the city of New York. Added to the numbers attracted by the World's Fair was the announcement of the Anti-Slavery, Woman's Rights, and two Temperance Conventions. The reformers from every part of the country assembled in force, each to hold their separate meetings, though the leaders were to take a conspicuous part in all. The anti-slavery meetings began on Sunday, and every day two or three of these conventions were in session, all drawing crowds to listen or to disturb. William Henry Channing, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Thomas Wentworth Higginson eloquently pleading for the black man's freedom on the anti-slavery platform, and for the equality of their mothers, wives, and daughters on the woman's rights platform, and for both the woman and the black man on the temperance platform; now face to face with Rynders and his mob, and then with the Rev. John Chambers, Marsh and Hewitt and their mob, the viler of the two.
THE HALF WORLD'S TEMPERANCE CONVENTION,
led by Chambers, Hewitt, and Marsh, was in session in Metropolitan Hall several days. As it was simply an organized mob, we find in the journals of the day no speeches or resolutions on the great question on which they nominally assembled.
In trying to get rid of Antoinette L. Brown, who had been sent as a delegate from two respectable and influential societies, and of James McCune Smith, a colored delegate, they quarrelled through most of the allotted time for the convention over what class of persons could be admitted. In summing up the proceedings of these meetings
"First Day — Crowding a woman off the platform.
"Second Day — Gagging her.
"Third Day — Voting that she shall stay gagged. Having thus disposed of the main question, we presume the incidentals will be finished this morning."Antoinette Brown was asked why she went to that Convention, knowing, as she must, that she would be rejected.
"Is it asked, Why did you make that issue at that time? I answer, I have made it at all times and in all places, whenever and wherever Providence has given me the opportunity, and in whatever way it could be made to appear most prominent. Last spring, when woman claimed the supremacy — the right to hold all the offices in the Woman's State Temperance Society — I contended,
"from this platform, for the equality of man; the equal rights of all the members of this society. I have claimed everywhere the equality of humanity in Church and in State; God helping me, I here pledge myself anew to Him, and to you all, to be true everywhere to the central principle — the soul of the Divine commandment, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' The temperance cause was not injured by our course at that Convention. We went there with thoughtful hearts. Said Wendell Phillips: 'Take courage, and remember that whether you are received or rejected, you are going to: make the most effectual speech for temperance, for woman, and humanity that you have ever made in your life.' 'God bless you,' were the fervent words of Mr. Channing, in a moment when there was most need of Divine assistance; and when I stood on the platform for an hour and a half, waiting to be heard, I could read in the faces of men such as these, and in the faces, too, of our opposers, the calm assurance, 'You are making the most effectual speech for temperance, for woman, and humanity, that you have ever made in your life.' I believed it then; I believe it now." [12]Rev. William Henry Channing, in giving his report of the World's Temperance Convention to the Toronto Division of Sons of Temperance of the City of Rochester, said:
On the second morning your delegate wisely waited until the resolutions offered to the convention by the Business Committee were opened for discussion, When the first resolution, declaring the religious character of the Temperance Movement, was submitted to the meeting, Miss Brown rose to speak. She rose calmly in the body of the house; she was a minister of religion, an advocate of temperance; she had it in her heart to press this reformation onward in a religious spirit; she had avoided all disputes on petty points of order, and now wished to address herself earnestly to the momentous theme. Had she not a perfect right to do so? And what fitter occasion could occur? The very topic was of a kind to banish personalities and hush low passions. Your delegate was invited by the President to take the platform; she did so with quiet dignity, but scarcely had she reached the stand when all around her on the platform itself, and among the officers of the Convention, began that disgraceful row, which led an onlooker in the gallery to cry out, "Are those men drunk?" I have no wish to dwell upon that cowardly transaction, but this remark I am bound in honor to make: If any man says that Antoinette Brown forced the subject of "Woman's Rights" on that Temperance Convention. in plain Saxon speech, He Lies. She never dreamed of asking any privilege as a woman, she stood there in her right as a delegate; her aim was to urge forward the Temperance Reform. No! the whole uproar on "Woman's Rights" came from the professed friends of Temperance, and began with the insulting cry — from a man on the platform — of, "Shame on the woman!" That man I need hardly tell you was the notorious John Chambers, of Philadelphia — the so-called Rev. John Chambers! — he it was who, with brazen face and clanging tongue, stood stamping until he raised a cloud of dust around him, pointing with coarse finger and rudely shouting "shame on the woman," until he even stood abashed before the indignant cry from the Convention of "shame on John Chambers."
The Reverend John Chambers! Reverend for what? For his piety; manifested in the fact that he, a professed minister of the:gospel, could by rowdy tumult drown the voice of another minister of the gospel while she was asserting the religious character of the Temperance Reform! Reverend for what? For his charity; manifested by low cries and insulting gestures to a gentlewoman who stood there firm. yet meek, before him! Strange that he, of all, should thus seek a bad eminence in outraging the decencies of social life; for unless report is false, John Chambers owes whatever position he may have to woman. It is said — I beleive on good authority — that he was educated for the ministry by the contributions of women; that he preaches in a church built and endowed by a woman: that his salary is chiefly paid by hard-working needle-women; finally, that he married a rich wife! Now what a sight was there! A man, whose brain had been fed with books by woman, whose body had been fattened with bread by woman, every fragment and stitch of whose ministerial garb, from his collar to his boot-heels, had been paid for by woman, whose very traveling ticket to that convention had been bought by woman, could find no better way to discharge his mission as minister of the gospel than to point his finger and shout, "Shame on the woman!"Mr. Channing then bore his testimony to the admirable combination of energy and mildness, by which Miss Brown's whole air and manner were distinguished amid these hours of tumult. He said: "Such serene strength comes only from religious principle and life. I know not how it may have been with nerves and pulses — there was no apparent tremor. But of this I am assured, whatever disturbance there was in the outer court of the Temple, in the Holy of Holies was the heart of peace, and the dove of the Spirit brooded in light on the tabernacle of conscience."
In an editorial of The Una, headed "Rev. John Chambers Recommended to Mercy," Mrs. Davis says: "We publish the letter of Rev. Wm. Henry Channing because it is a noble defence of woman and a part of the history of the movement. We do not give Mr. Chambers' reply, 1st, Because we find in it no evidence of penitence nor any testimony as to who was the guilty party — if he was not; and 2d, Because the tone and language of the letter is of a character we trust will never sully the pages of The Una. Mr. Channing's rebuke is severe, but we believe it to have been richly deserved and given in true Christian love."
Editors Sunday Mercury: — You ask for proof that Rev. John Chambers took part in the brutal insult offered to a Christian gentlewoman at the late "World's Temperance Convention." I was witness of the conduct of that man and his abettors during that cowardly transaction, and I hereby charge him with being a ringleader in that platform row.
When my honored friend and fellow-delegate, the Rev. Antoinette L. Brown, was standing calm, yet firm, amidst those rude scoffers, the words of the Psalmist kept sounding in my ear: "Strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round about, gaping upon me with their mouths." I marked the biggest of the herd with the purpose. at the first suitable season, of laying on one blow of the lash with such a will that it should cut through any hide, however callous, That season came when, as a delegate, I was called upon to report to the "Toronto Division of the Sons of
Temperance" how my fellow-delegate had been treatedAnother letter of Mr. Channing's of same date to the editor of The Daily Register:
And first, Mr. Birney, a word to yourself. You knew me in "former days as mild," etc., and were not prepared for such a speech; you charitably suggest that its "vindictiveness" may be owing to a substitution of the reporter's language for my own, and "are not without hope of seeing a disclaimer." Now, far from wishing to disclaim the one real accusation made in my remarks, I am ready, anywhere and everywhere, to reiterate that charge. Yet there is no "vindictiveness" in my heart toward the criminal whom I thus arraign, and no emotion which I should not honor any man for feeling toward myself, if I was consciously guilty of having played so base a part. You were not wrong in thinking me "mild in former days"; I trust lam milder now than then. But my mildness never was, and never will be, of that mean quality, which can tamely see a sister insulted, whether by a pugilist from the ring, or by a rowdy from the pulpit. My principle is peace, but I remember the saying, "You can not become an angel till you are first a man." . . . . Womanhood, as such, claims honorable courtesy of every manly heart; and he is unmanly who does not rejoice to testify this respect. The man who can be rude to even a poor prostitute in the street, will be rude to wife or daughter at his own fireside; while he who is a gentleman to any woman, will be a gentleman to all women. His spirit is brutal, who could ever dream of applying the slang phrase "creature" to any woman under any conceivable conditions. What shall be thought then of the moral grade of him who chose as the mark for his missiles of "contempt," a young lady of rare refinement in her whole presence and manner, of spotless delicacy and gentlest dignity, of commanding talent and philanthropic earnestness, and who stood there before him, serene amid the tumult, clad, even then, in the bright robe of heavenly peace?
And now one word in closing. Let Mr. Chambers, and all of like spirit, be assured, that I am but a representative of a large, rapidly growing, and influential body in every community throughout our land, who are resolved, that women shall no longer be insulted in public assemblies with impunity. Wm. Henry Channing.Through this fierce conflict Horace Greeley, with his personal presence on the platform, and his brave editorials in the New York Tribune. fought a great battle for free speech and human equality, Speaking of the Whole World's Convention, he said:
New York Tribune, September 3, 1853.
This has been the most spirited and able Convention on behalf of temperance that was ever held. It has already done good, and can not fail to do more. The scarcity of white neck-ties on the platform so fully atoned for by the presence of such champions of reform and humanity as Antoinette L. Brown, Lucy Stone, and Mrs. Jackson, of England, Mrs. C. I. H. Nichols, Mrs. Frances D. Gage, etc., that like the absence of wine from our festive board when it is graced by women, it was the theme of no general or very pointed regret. It was a great occasion, and we know truth was there uttered which will bear fruit through coming years.
Tribune, September 7, 1853.
When the call of the World's Temperance Convention was issued, we were appealed to by valued friends, whom we know as devoted to the temperance cause, to discountenance all efforts to get up a rival Convention. "The call is unexceptionably broad," we were reminded, "it invites all and excludes nobody, then why not accept it and hold but one Convention? "The question was fair and forcible, and had there been no antecedents we should have acceded to its object. But we could not forget the preliminary meeting at the Brick Church Chapel, and we could not take the hazard of having many whom we knew as among the most efficient and faithful laborers in the Temperance cause shut out of a World's Convention of its advocates; so we cast our lot with them about whose catholicity of sentiment and action there could be no dispute, and yesterday's doings at the Metropolitan Convention maintained the conviction created by the whole World's Convention that our decision was right.
We ask especial attention to the proceedings of the World's Convention yesterday morning, particularly with reference to Antoinette Brown, who had been chosen by two separate temperance organizations of men to represent them at this Convention. How she was received, how treated, and how virtually crowded off the platform, our report most faithfully exhibits. They who are sure that the Age of Chivalry is not gone, are urged to ponder this treatment of a pure and high-souled woman, a teacher of Christian truth, an ornament of her sex, and an example to all, by a Convention of Reformers and Gentlemen, many of them from that section of the Union where the defence of woman from insult has been deemed a manly grace, if not a manly duty. We presume the matter will be further considered to-day.
Of the Whole World's Temperance Convention a correspondent of The Una says: "Throughout, the meeting has been one of intense interest; not a moment's nagging, not a poor or unworthy speech made by either man or woman. Again and again, as we passed into the large hall, filled with eager listeners, we felt it to be one of the most sublime scenes we had ever looked upon. There the audience remained, hour after hour, patient, earnest, full of enthusiasm, and yet hundreds could scarcely hear a single connected sentence. The majority were women, but the larger number of the speakers were men. The right and equality being recognized, there was no longer a necessity for controversy to maintain principle, hence no woman attempted to speak except she had something to say. Mrs. Jackson, of England, Mrs. Nichols, Mrs. Vaughan, Miss Stone, Rev. A. L. Brown, Lucretia Mott, and Mrs. F. D. Gage addressed the Convention during the different sessions."
The same correspondent says of the World's Temperance Convention: "There was one feature more anomalous than the rejection and gagging of Miss Brown, darker and far more cruel, for it has not the excuse of custom, nor can the Bible be tortured into any justification of it. This was the exclusion of Dr. James McCune Smith, a gentleman, a graduate of the Edinburgh University, a member of a long-established temperance society, and a regularly appointed delegate. And wherefore? simply for the reason that nature had bestowed on his complexion a darker, richer tint than upon some of the sycophants who gathered there; it appears to have been simply to pander to a bigoted priesthood and a corrupt populace."In deciding the action of the Convention to be worse in its treatment toward Mr. Smith than toward Miss Brown, we think The Una correspondent makes a grave mistake.
In point of courtesy the treatment of a lady of culture and refinement, the peer of any man in that assembly, with the unpardonable rudeness they did, was infinitely worse than to have done the same thing to any man, white or black, because by every code of honor or chivalry all men are bound to defend woman. Again, as a question of morals, custom, and prejudice, they occupied the same position in the State:and the Church. The "white male" in the Constitutions placed women and black men on the same platform as citizens. The popular interpretation of Scripture sanctioned the same injustice in both cases. In the mouths of the false prophets, "Servants, obey your masters," was used for the same purpose, and with equal effect, as "Wives, be in subjection to your own husbands." "Servant of servants shall he be" has been used with the same prophetic force as the more cruel curse pronounced on woman. The white man's Bible has been uniformly used to show that the degradation of the woman and the black man was in harmony with God's will. On what principle is proscription on account of color more cruel than on account of sex?
Most of the liberal men and women now withdrew from all temperance organizations, leaving the movement in the hands of timeserving priests and politicians, who, being in the majority, effectually blocked the progress of the reform for the time — destroying, as they did, the enthusiasm of the women in trying to press it as a moral principle, and the hope of the men, who intended to carry it as a political measure. Henceforward women took no active part in temperance until the Ohio crusade revived them again all over the nation, and gathered the scattered forces into "The Woman's National Christian Temperance Union," of which Miss Frances E. Willard is president. As now, so in 1853, intelligent women saw that the most direct way to effect any reform was to have a voice in the laws and lawmakers. Hence they turned their attention to rolling up petitions for the civil and political rights of women, to hearings before legislatures and constitutional conventions, giving their most persistent efforts to the return technically called "Woman's Rights."
Susan B. Anthony had a similar battle to fight in the educational conventions. Having been a successful teacher in the State of New York fifteen years of her life, she had seen the need of many improvements in the mode of teaching and in the sanitary arrangements of school buildings; and more than all, the injustice to women in their half-pay as teachers. Her interest in educational conventions was first roused by listening to a tedious discussion at Elmira on the "Divine ordinance" of flogging children, in which Charles Anthony, principal of the Albany Academy, quoted Solomon's injunction, "Spare the rod, and spoil the child.",
In 1853, the annual convention being held in Rochester, her place of residence, Miss Anthony conscientiously attended all the sessions through three entire days. After having listened for hours to a discussion as to the reason why the profession of teacher was not as much respected as that of the lawyer, minister, or doctor, without once, as she thought, touching the kernel of the question, she arose to untie for them the Gordian knot, and said, "Mr. President." If all the witches that had been drowned, burned, and hung in the Old World and the New had suddenly appeared on the platform, threatening vengeance for their wrongs, the officers of that convention could not have been thrown into greater consternation.
There stood that Quaker girl, calm and self-possessed, while with hasty consultations, running to and fro, those frightened men could not decide what to do; how to receive this audacious invader of their sphere of action. At length President Davies, of West Point, in full dress, buff vest, blue coat, gilt buttons, stepped to the front, and said, in a tremulous, mocking tone, "What will the lady have?" "I wish, sir, to speak to the question under discussion," Miss Anthony replied. The Professor, more perplexed than before, said: "What is the pleasure of the Convention?" A gentleman moved that she should be heard; another seconded the motion; whereupon a discussion pro and con followed, lasting full half an hour, when a vote of the men only was taken, and permission granted by a small majority; and lucky for her, too, was it, that the thousand women crowding that hall could not vote on the question, for they would have given a solid "no." The president then announced the vote, and said: "The lady can speak."
We can easily imagine the embarrassment under which Miss Anthony arose after that half hour of suspense, and the bitter hostility she noted on every side. However, with a clear, distinct voice, which filled the hall, she said: "It seems to me, gentlemen, that none of you quite comprehend the cause of the disrespect of which you complain. Do you not see that so long as society says a woman is incompetent to be a lawyer, minister, or doctor, but has ample ability to be a teacher, that every man of you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledges that he has no more brains than a woman? And this, too, is the reason that teaching is a less lucrative profession, as here men must compete with the cheap labor of woman. Would you exalt your profession, exalt those who labor with you. Would you make it more lucrative, increase the salaries of the women engaged in the noble work of educating our future Presidents, Senators, and Congressmen."
This said, Miss Anthony took her seat, amid the profoundest silence, broken at last by three gentlemen, Messrs. Cruttenden, Coburn, and Fanning, walking down the broad aisle to congratulate the speaker on her pluck and perseverance, and the pertinency of her remarks. The editor of The Rochester Democrat said the next morning, that "whatever the schoolmasters might think of Miss Anthony, it was evident that she hit the nail on the head."
To give the women of to-day some idea of what it cost those who first thrust themselves into these conventions, at the close of the session Miss A. heard women remarking: "Did you ever see anything like this performance?" "I was actually ashamed of my sex." "I felt so mortified I really wished the floor would open and swallow me up." "Who can that creature be?" "She must be a dreadful woman to get up that way and speak in public." "TI was so mad at those three men making such a parade to shake hands with her; that will just encourage her to speak again." These ladies had probably all been to theatres, concerts, operas, and gone into ecstasies over Fanny Kemble, Rachel, and Jenny Lind; and Fanny Elsler, balanced on one toe, the other foot in the air, without having their delicacy shocked in the least. But a simple Quaker girl rising in a teachers' convention to make a common-sense remark modestly, dressed, making no display of her neck, or arms, or legs, so tried their delicate sensibilities that they were almost afraid to attend the next session.
At the opening of the next morning's session, after Miss Anthony's début, Professor Davies, in all his majesty and pomposity, with his thumbs in the arm-holes of his regulation buff vest, called the Convention to order, and said: "I have been asked by several persons, why no provisions have been made for women to speak, and vote, and act on committees, in these assemblies?" My answer is, '" Be. hold yonder beautiful pilaster of this. superb hall! contemplate its pedestal, its shaft, its rich entablature, the crowning glory of the whole. Each and all the parts in their appropriate place contribute to the strength, symmetry, and beauty of the whole. Could I aid in taking down that magnificent entablature from its proud elevation, and placing it in the dust and dirt that surround the pedestal ¢ Neither could I drag down the mother, wife, and daughter, whom we worship as beings of a higher order, on the common plane of life with ourselves."
If all men were pedestals and shafts capable of holding the women of their households above the dirt and dust of common life, in a serene atmosphere of peace and plenty, the good professor's remarks would have had some significance; but as the burdens of existence rest equally on the shoulders of men and women, and we must ever struggle together on a common plane for bread, his metaphor has no foundation. Miss Anthony attended these teachers' conventions from year to year, at Oswego, Utica, Poughkeepsie, Lockport, Syracuse, making the same demands for equal place and pay, until she had the satisfaction to see every right conceded. Women speaking and voting on all questions; appointed on committees, and to prepare reports and addresses, elected officers of the Association, and seated on the platforms. In 1856, she was chairman of a committee herself, to report on the question of co-education; and at Troy, before a magnificent audience of the most intelligent men and women of the State, she read her report, which the press pronounced able and conclusive. The President, Mr. Hazeltine, of New York, congratulating Miss Anthony on her address, said: '" As much as I am compelled to admire your rhetoric and logic, the matter and manner of your address and its delivery, I would rather follow a daughter of mine to her grave, than to have her deliver such an address before such an assembly." Superintendent Randall, overhearing the President, added: "I should be proud, Madam, if I had a daughter capable of making such an eloquent and finished argument, before this or any assembly of men and women. I congratulate you on your triumphant success."
In 1857, at Binghamton, Professor Fowler, of Rochester, took up the gauntlet thrown down by Miss Anthony, and presented the other side of the question, taking the ground that boys and girls should not be educated together, and that women should not be paid equal wages even for equally good work. The gentlemen who sustained the side demanding equal rights for women in these conventions, were Randall, Rice, Cruttenden, Cavert, Fanning, Johonett, Coburn, Wilder, and Farnham. The opposition was led by Davies, Valentine, Buckley, Anthony (not S. B. A.), Ross, an old bachelor, the butt of ridicule, the clown of the Convention; and McElligott, the latter hardly ranking with the rest, for though opposed, he was always a gentleman, the others being ofttimes so coarse in their sneers and innuendoes, that they disgraced the positions they occupied, as the educators of the youth of the State. In the discussion at Binghamton, where Miss Anthony introduced a resolution in favor of co-education, Mr. McElligott said "he was in favor of allowing her full and equal opportunity with any other member to present resolutions, or to call them up for discussion. Standing up as she does before large audiences, to advocate what she conscientiously considers the rights and privileges of her sex, gives a touch of moral sublimity to our proceedings worthy the admiration of all."
Professor Davies denounced the resolutions in the strongest terms. "We had for four years been trying to escape this discussion; but if the question must come, let it be boldly met and disposed of. These resolutions involve a great social rather than an educational question, calculated to introduce a vast social evil; they are the first step in that school which seeks to abolish marriage, and behind the picture presented by them, I see a monster of deformity."[13]
In view of the grand experiment of co-education, so successful in every part of our country, the fears of those timid men thirty years ago provoke nothing now but a passing smile. How few of them with a sober face could at this time defend their old positions. It is creditable to the stronger sex that so many men in all those encounters, took no counsel with their fears nor prejudices, but seeing the principle steadfastly maintained it.
But the temperance and educational conventions, the clergy and the pedagogues, were alike abandoned now for the legislators. All this escapading of Miss Anthony's was mere child's play, compared with the steady bombardment kept up until the war on the legislators of the Empire State. Calls, appeals, petitions to rouse the women, fell like snow-flakes in every county, asking for the civil and political rights of woman; they were carried into the Legislature, frequent hearings secured, the members debating the question as hotly there as it had already been discussed in popular conventions. As New York could boast a larger number of strongminded women than any other State, whose continuity of purpose knew no variableness nor shadow of turning, the agitation was persistently continued in all directions.
THE SYRACUSE NATIONAL CONVENTION.
September 8, 9, and 10, 1852.
This Convention, lasting three days, was in many respects remarkable, even for that "City of Conventions." It called out immense audiences, attracted many eminent persons from different points of the State, and was most favorably noticed by the press; the debates were unusually earnest and brilliant, and the proceedings orderly and harmonious throughout. Notwithstanding an admission fee of one shilling, the City Hall was densely packed at every session, and at the hour of adjournment it was with difficulty that the audience could gain the street. The preliminary[14] editorials of the city papers reflected their own conservative or progressive tendencies.
In no one respect were the participants in these early Conventions more unsparingly ridiculed, and more maliciously falsified, than in their personal appearance; it may therefore be wise to say that in dignity and grace of manner and style of dress, the majority of these ladies were superior to the mass of women; while the neat and unadorned Quaker costume was worn by some, many others were elegantly and fashionably attired; two of them in such extreme style as to call forth much criticism from the majority, to whom a happy medium seemed desirable.
The Convention was called to order by Paulina Wright Davis, chairman of the Central Committee, and prayer offered by the Rev Samuel J. May, pastor of the Unitarian Church in Syracuse.
Although this was the first Woman's Rights Convention at which Mr. May was ever present, he had been represented in nearly all by letter, and as early as 1845 had preached an able sermon advocating the social, civil, and political rights of woman. He had been an early convert to this doctrine, and enjoyed telling the manner of his conversion. Speaking once in Providence on the question of slavery, he was attracted by the earnest attention he received from an intelligent-looking woman. At the close of the meeting, she said to him: "T have listened to you with an interest that only a woman can feel. I doubt whether you see how much of your description of the helpless dependence of slaves applies equally to all women." She ran the parallel rapidly, quoting law and custom, maintaining her assertion so perfectly that Mr. May's eyes were opened at once, and he promised the lady to give the subject his immediate consideration.
Lucy Stone read the call[15] and expressed the wish that every one present, even if averse to the new demands by women, would take part in the debates, as it was the truth on this question its advocates were seeking. Among the most noticeable features of these early Conventions was the welcome given to opposing arguments.
The Nominating Committee reported the list of officers,[16] with Lucretia Mott as permanent President. She asked that the vote be taken separately, as there might be objections to her appointment. The entire audience (except her husband, who gave an emphatic "No!") voted in her favor. The very fact that Mrs. Mott consented, under any circumstances, to preside over a promiscuous assemblage, was proof of the progress of liberal ideas, as four years previously she had strenuously opposed placing a woman in that position, and as a member of the Society of Friends, by presiding over a meeting t which there was an admission fee, she rendered herself liable to expulsion. The vote being taken, Mrs. Mott, who sat far back in the audience, walked forward to the platform, her sweet face and placid manners at once winning the confidence of the audience. This impression was further deepened by her opening remarks. She said she was unpracticed in parliamentary proceedings, and felt herself incompetent to fulfill the duties of the position now pressed upon her, and was quite unprepared to make a suitable speech. She asked the serious and respectful attention of the Convention to the business before them, referred to the success that had thus far attended the movement, the respect shown by the press, and the favor with which the public generally had received these new demands, and closed by inviting the cordial co-operation of all present.
In commenting upon Mrs. Mott's opening address, the press of the city declared it to have been "better expressed and far more appropriate than those heard on similar occasions in political and legislative assemblages." The choice of Mrs. Mott as President was preeminently wise; of mature years, a member of the Society of Friends, in which woman was held as an equal, with undoubted right to speak in public, and the still broader experience of the Anti-Slavery platform, she was well fitted to guide the proceedings and encourage the expression of opinions from those to whom public speaking was an untried experiment. "It was a singular spectacle," said the Syracuse Standard, "to see this gray-haired matron presiding over a Convention with an ease, dignity, and grace that might be envied by the most experienced legislator in the country."
Delegates were present from Canada and eight different States. Letters were received from Mrs. Marion Reid, of England, author of an able work upon woman; from John Neal, of Maine, the veteran temperance reformer; from William Lloyd Garrison, Rev. William Henry Channing, Rev. A. D. Mayo, Margaret H. Andrews, Sarah D. Fish, Angelina Grimké Weld, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, from G. W. Johnson, chairman of the State Committee of the Liberty party, and Horace Greeley, the world-renowned editor of the Tribune. Mr. Johnson's letter enclosed ten dollars and the following sentiments:
1. Woman has, equally with man, the inalienable right to education, suffrage, office, property, professions, titles, and honors — to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 2. False to our sex, as well as her own, and false to herself and to God, is the woman who approves, or who submits without resistance or protest, to the social and political wrongs imposed upon her in common with the rest of her sex throughout the world.
Mrs. Stanton's letter[17] presented three suggestions for the consideration of the Convention, viz.: That all women owning property should refuse to pay taxes as long as unrepresented; that man and woman should be educated together, and the abuse of the religious element in woman. This letter created much discussion, accompanied as it was by a series of resolutions of the most radical character, which were finally, with one exception, adopted. Thus at that early day was the action of those women, who have since refused to pay taxes, prefigured and suggested. One of the remarkable aspects of this reform, is the fact that from the first its full significance was seen by many of the women who inaugurated it.
HORACE GREELEY'S LETTER.
My Friend: — I have once or twice been urged to attend a Convention of the advocates of woman's rights; and though compliance has never been within my power, I have a right to infer that some friends of the cause desire suggestions from me with regard to the best means of advancing it. I therefore venture to submit some thoughts on that subject. To my mind the Bread problem lies at the base of all the desirable and practical reforms which our age meditates. Not that bread is intrinsically more important to man than Temperance, Intelligence, Morality, and Religion, but that it is essential to the just appreciation of all these. Vainly do we preach the blessings of temperance to human beings cradled in hunger, and suffering at intervals the agonies of famine; idly do we commend intellectual culture to those whose minds are daily racked with the dark problem, ‘‘ How shall we procure food for the morrow?” Morality, religion, are but words to him who fishes in the gutters for the means of sustaining life, and crouches behind barrels in the street for shelter from the cutting blasts of a winter’s night.
Before all questions of intellectual training or political franchises for women, not to speak of such a trifle as costume,do I place the question of enlarged opportunities for work; of a more extended and diversified field of employment. The silk culture and manufacture firmly established and thriftily prosecuted to the extent of our home demand for silk, would be worth everything to American women. Our now feeble and infantile schools of design should be encouraged with the same view. A wider and more prosperous development of our Manufacturing Industry will increase the demand for female labor, thus enhancing its average reward and elevating the social position of woman. I trust the future has, therefore, much good in store for the less muscular half of the human race.
But the reform here anticipated should be inaugurated in our own households. I know how idle is the expectation of any general and permanent enhancement of the wages of any class or condition above the level of equation of Supply and Demand; yet it seems to me that the friends of woman’s rights may wisely and worthily set the example of paying juster prices for female assistance in their households than those now current. If they would but resolve never to pay a capable, efficient woman less than two-thirds the wages paid to a vigorous, effective man employed in some corresponding vocation, they would very essentially aid the movement now in progress for the general recognition and conception of Equal Rights to Woman.
Society is clearly unjust to woman in according her but four to eight dollars per month for labor equally repugnant with, and more protracted than that of men of equal intelligence and relative efficiency, whose services command from ten to twenty dollars per month. If, then, the friends of Woman’s Rights could set the world an example of paying for female service, not the lowest pittance which stern Necessity may compel the defenceless to accept, but as approximately fair and liberal compensation for the work actually done, as determined by a careful comparison with the recompense of other labor, I believe they would give their cause an impulse which could not be permanently resisted.
Mr. Greeley’s letter bore two remarkable aspects. First, he recognized the poverty of woman as closely connected with her degredation. One of the brightest anti-slavery orators was at that time in the habit of saying, "It is not the press, nor the pulpit, which rules the country, but the counting-room"; proving his assertion by showing the greater power of commerce and money, than of intellect and morality. So Mr. Greeley saw the purse to be woman's first need; that she must control money in order to help herself to freedom.
Second, ignoring woman's pauperized condition just admitted, he suggested that women engaged in this reform should pay those employed in the household larger wages than was customary, although these very women were dependent upon others for their shelter, food, and clothes; so impossible is it for a governing class to understand the helplessness of dependents, and to fully comprehend the disabilities of a subject class.
The declaration of sentiments[18] adopted at the Westchester Convention was read by Martha C. Wright, and commented upon as follows by
It is in behalf of our sons, the future men of the Republic, as well as of our daughters, its future mothers, that we claim the full development of our energies by education, and legal protection in the control of all the issues and profits of our lives called property. Woman must seek influence, independence, representation, that she may have power to aid in the elevation of the human race. When men kindly set aside woman from the National Councils, they say the moral field belongs to her; and the strongest reason why woman should seek a more elevated position, is because her moral susceptibilities are greater than those of man.
Mrs. Mott thought differently from Mrs. Nichols; she did not believe that woman's moral feelings were more elevated than man's; but that with the same opportunities for development, with the same restrictions and penalties, there would probably be about an equal manifestation of virtue.
Elizabeth Oakes Smith: My friends, do we realize for what purpose we are convened? Do we fully understand that we aim at nothing less than an entire subversion of the present order of society, a dissolution of the whole existing social compact? Do we see that it is not an error of to-day, nor of yesterday, against which we are lifting up the voice of dissent, but that it is against the hoary-headed error of all times — error borne onward from the foot-prints of the first pair ejected from Paradise, down to our own time? In view of all this, it does seem to me that we should each and all feel as if anointed, sanctified, set apart as to a great mission. It seems to me that we who struggle to restore the divine order to the world, should feel as if under the very eye of the Eternal Searcher of all hearts, who will reject any sacrifice other than a pure offering.
We are said to be a "few disaffected, embittered women, met for the purpose of giving vent to petty personal spleen and domestic discontent." I repel the charge; and I call upon every woman here to repel the charge. If we have personal wrongs, here is not the place for redress. If we have private griefs (and what human heart, in a large sense, is without them?), we do not come here to recount them. The grave will lay its cold honors over the hearts of all here present, before the good we ask for our kind will be realized to the world. We shall pass onward to other spheres of existence, but I trust the seed we shall here plant will ripen to a glorious harvest. We "see the end from the beginning," and rejoice in spirit. We care not that we shall not reach the fruits of our toil, for we know in times to come it will be seen to be a glorious work.
Bitterness is the child of wrong; if any one of our number has become embittered (which, God forbid!), it is because social wrong has so penetrated to the inner life that we are crucified thereby, and taste the gall and vinegar with the Divine Master. All who take their stand against false institutions, are in some sense embittered. The conviction of wrong has wrought mightily in them. Their large hearts took in the whole sense of human woe, and bled for those who had become brutalized by its weight, and they spoke as never man spoke in his own individualism, but as the embodied race will speak, when the full time shall come. Thus Huss and Wickliffe and Luther spoke, and the men of '76.
No woman has come here to talk over private griefs, and detail the small coin of personal anecdote; and yet did woman speak of the wrongs which unjust legislation; the wrongs which corrupt public opinion; the wrongs which false social aspects have fastened upon us; wrongs which she hides beneath smiles, and conceals with womanly endurance; did she give voice to all this, her smiles would seem hollow and her endurance pitiable.
I hope this Convention will be an acting Convention. Let us pledge ourselves to the support of a paper in which our views shall be fairly presented to the world. At our last Convention in Worcester, I presented a prospectus for such a paper, which I will request hereafter to be read here. We can do little or nothing without such an organ. We have no opportunity now to repel slander, and are restricted in disseminating truth, from the want of such an organ. The Tribune, and some other papers in the country, have treated us generously; but a paper to represent us must be sustained by ourselves. We must look to our own resources. We must work out our own salvation, and God grant it be not in fear and trembling! Woman must henceforth be the redeemer, the regenerator of the world. We plead not for ourselves alone, but for Humanity. We must place woman on a higher platform, and she will raise the race to her side. We should have a literature of our own, a printing-press and a publishing-house, and tract writers and distributors, as well as lectures and conventions; and yet I say this to a race of beggars, for women have no pecuniary resources.
Well, then, we must work, we must hold property, and claim the consequent right to representation, or refuse to be taxed. Our aim is nothing less than an overthrow of our present partial legislation, that every American citizen, whether man or woman, may have a voice in the laws by which we are governed. We do not aim at idle distinction, but while we would pull down our present worn-out and imperfect human institutions, we would help to reconstruct them upon a new and broader foundation.
Lucy Stone: It seems to me that the claims we make at these Conventions are self-evident truths. The second resolution affirms the right of human beings to their persons and earnings. Is not that self-evident? Yet the common law which regulates the relation of husband and wife, and which is modified only in a very few instances where there are statutes to the contrary, gives the "custody" of the wife's person to her husband, so that he has a right to her even against herself. It gives him her earnings, no matter with what weariness they have been acquired, or how greatly she may need them for herself or her children. It gives him a right to her personal property, which he may will entirely from her, also the use of her real estate; and in some of the States, married women, insane persons, and idiots are ranked together as not fit to make a will. So that she is left with only one right, which she enjoys in common with the pauper, viz.: the right of maintenance. Indeed when she has taken the sacred marriage vow, her legal existence ceases.
And what is our position politically? Why, the foreigner who can't speak his mother tongue correctly; the negro, who to our own shame, we regard as fit only for a boot-black (whose dead even we bury by themselves), and the drunkard, all are entrusted with the ballot, all placed by men politically higher than their own mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters. The woman who, seeing and feeling this, dare not maintain her rights, is the woman to hang her head and blush. We ask only for justice and equal rights — the right to vote, the right to our own earnings, equality before the law — these are the Gibraltar of our cause.
Rev. Antoinette L. Brown: Man can not represent woman. They differ in their nature and relations. The law is wholly masculine; it is created and executed by man. The framers of all legal compacts are restricted to the masculine stand-point of observation, to the thought, feelings, and biases of man. The law then could give us no representation as woman, and therefore no impartial justice even if the present lawmakers were honestly intent upon this; for we can be represented only by our peers. It is expected then under the present administration, that woman should be the legal subject of man, legally reduced to pecuniary dependence upon him; that the mother should have lower legal claims upon the children than the father, and that, in short, woman should be in all respects the legal inferior of man, though entitled to full equality.
Here is the fact and its cause. When woman is tried for crime, her jury, her judges, her advocates, are all men; and yet there may have been temptations and various palliating circumstances connected with her peculiar nature as woman, such as man can not appreciate. Common justice demands that a part of the law-makers and law executors should be of her own sex. In questions of marriage and divorce, affecting interests dearer than life, both parties in the compact are entitled to an equal voice. Then the influences which arise from the relations of the sexes, when left to be exerted in our halls of justice, would at least cause decency and propriety of conduct to be maintained there; but now. low-minded men are encouraged to jest openly in court over the most sacred and most delicate subjects. From the nature of things, the guilty woman can not now have justice done her before the professed tribunals of justice; and the innocent but wronged woman is constrained to suffer on in silence rather than ask for redress.
Clarina Howard Nichols said: There is one peculiarity in the laws affecting woman's property rights, which as it has not to my knowledge been presented for the consideration of the public, except by myself to a limited extent in private conversation and otherwise, I wish to speak of here. It is the unconstitutionality of laws cutting off the wife's right of dower. It is a provision of our National and State Constitutions, that property rights shall not be confiscated for political or other offences against the laws. Yet in all the States, if I am rightly informed, the wife forfeits her right of dower in case of divorce for infidelity to the marriage vow. In Massachusetts and several other States, if the wife desert her husband for any cause, and he procure a divorce on the ground of her desertion, she forfeits her right of dower. But it is worthy of remark that in no case is the right of the husband to possess and control the estate which is their joint accumulation, set aside; no, not even when the wife procures a divorce for the most aggravated abuse and infidelity combined. She, the innocent party, goes out childless and portionless, by decree of law; and he, the criminal, retains the home and the children, by the favor of the same law. I claim, friends, that the laws which cut off the wife's right of dower, in any case do confiscate property rights, and hence are unconstitutional. The property laws compel the wife to seek divorce in order to protect her earnings for the support of her children. A rum-drinker took his wife's clothing to pay his rum bill, and the justice decided that the clothing could be held, because the wife belonged to him.
Only under the Common Law of England has woman been deprived of her natural rights. Instances are frequent where the husband's aged parents are supported by the wife's earnings, and the wife's parents left paupers.
Mrs. Nichols here offered the following resolution:
Resolved, That equally involved as they are in all the Natural Relations which lie at the base of society, the sexes are equally entitled to all the rights necessary to the discharge of the duties of those relations.
Elizabeth Oakes Smith presented the following resolution offered by Lucretia Mott:
Resolved, That as the imbruted slave, who is content with his own lot, and would not be free if he could, if any such there be, only gives evidence of the depth of his degradation; so the woman who is satisfied with her inferior condition, avering that she has all the rights she wants, does but exhibit the enervating effects of the wrongs to which she is subjected.Susan B. Anthony read the resolutions.[19] The audience called upon Hon. Gerrit Smith for a speech. His rising was received with cheers. This was Mr. Smith's first appearance upon our platform, although in letters to different Conventions he had already expressed his sympathy. His commanding presence, his benevolent countenance, and deep rich voice, made a profound impression, and intensified the power of his glowing words. Being well known in Syracuse for his philanthropy, his presence added dignity and influence to the assembly.[20]
These women complain that they have been robbed of great and essential rights. They do not ask favors; they demand rights, the right to do whatever they have the capacity to accomplish, the right to dictate their own sphere of action, and to have a voice in the laws and rulers under which they live. Suppose I should go to vote, and some man should push me back and say, "You want to be Governor, don't you?" "No," I reply, "I want to exercise my God-given right to vote." Such a taunt as this would be no more insulting than those now cast at women, when they demand rights so unjustly denied.
I make no claim that woman is fit to be a member of Congress or President; all I ask for her is what I ask for the negro, a fair field. All will admit that woman has a right to herself, to her own powers of locomotion, to her own earnings, but how few are prepared to admit her right to the ballot. But all rights are held by a precarious tenure, if this one be denied. When women are the constituents of men who make and administer the laws, they will pay due consideration to their interests and not before. The right of suffrage is the great right that guarantees all others.Mr. Smith set forth the education, the dignity, the power of self-government, and took his seat amid great applause.
J. B. Brigham, a school teacher, said: That the natures of men and women showed that their spheres were not the same, and woman was only truly lovely and happy when in her own element. He wished woman to recognize the feminine element in her being, for if she understood this, it would guide her in everything. In the domestic animals even this difference was manifest. Women should be keepers at home, and mind domestic concerns. The true object of this Convention is, I fear, not so much to acquire any real or supposed rights, as to make the speakers and actors conspicuous. I urge those engaged in this movement to claim nothing masculine for woman.
Mrs. Nichols said: Mr. Brigham's allusion to the animal world is not a happy one, as no animal has been discovered which legislated aay the rights of the female.
Gerrit Smith said: He would hand his esteemed friend over to Lucretia Mott, that he might be slain like Abimelech of old, by the hand of a woman; as evidently from his estimate of the sex, that would be the most humiliating death he could suffer. I trust no gentleman on this platform will consent to play the part of the armor-bearer in his behalf, and rescue him from his impending fate.
Lucretia Mott said: It was impossible for one man to have arbitrary power over another without becoming despotic. She did not expect man to see how woman is robbed. Slaveholders did not see that they were oppressors, but slaves did. Gerrit smith alluded to one woman that he intends me to personify, whom our friend would consider far out of her sphere. Yet if he believes his Bible, he must acknowledge that Deborah, a mother in Israel, arose by divine command, and led the armies of Israel, — the wife of Heber the Kenite, who drove the nail into the head of the Canaanite General, and her praises were chanted in the songs of Israel. The preaching of women, too, is approved in the Bible. Paul gives special directions to women how to preach, and he exhorts them to qualify themselves for this function and not to pin their faith on the sleeves of the clergy. I would advise Mr. Fingham not to set up his wisdom against the plain decrees of the Almighty. As to woman's voice being too weak to be heard as a public speaker, did Mr. Brigham send a protest to England against Victoria's proroguing Parliament?
Mr. May moved that Mrs. Stephen Smith be placed on a Committee in his stead.
The President quickly replied: Woman's Rights' women do not like to be called by their husbands' names, but by their own.
Mr. May corrected himself and said — Rosa Smith.Matilda Joslyn Gage made her first public appearance in an address to this Convention. She pressed the adoption of some settled plan for the future — brought up many notable examples of woman's intellectual ability, and urged that girls be trained to self-reliance. Although Mrs. Gage, whose residence was Onondaga County, had not before taken part in a Convention, yet from the moment she read of an organized effort for the rights of woman, she had united in it heart and soul, merely waiting a convenient opportunity to publicly identify herself with this reform; an opportunity given by the Syracuse Convention. Personally acquainted with none of the leaders except Mr. May, it was quite a test of moral courage for Mrs. Gage, then quite a young woman, in fact the youngest person who took part in that Convention, to speak upon this occasion. She consulted no one as to time or opportunity, but when her courage had reached a sufficiently high point, with palpitating heart she ascended the platform, where she was cordially given place by Mrs. Mott, whose kindness to her at this supreme moment of her life was never forgotten.
It was but a short time since the most common rudiments of education were deemed sufficient for any woman; could she but read tolerably and write her own name it was enough. Trammeled as women have been by might and custom, there are still many shining examples, which serve as beacon lights to show what may be attained by genius, labor, energy, and perseverance combined. "The longer I live in the world," says Göethe, "the more I am certain that the difference between the great and the insignificant, is energy, invincible determination, an honest purpose once fixed, and then victory."
Although so much has been said of woman's unfitness for public life, it can be seen, from Semiramis to Victoria, that she has a peculiar fitness for governing. In poetry, Sappho was honored with the title of the Tenth Muse. Helena Lucretia Corano, in the seventeenth century, was of such rare scientific attainments, that the most illustrious persons in passing through Venice, were more anxious to see her than all the curiosities of the city; she was made a doctor, receiving the title of Unalterable. Mary Cunity, of Silesia, in the sixteenth century, was one of the most able astronomers of her time, forming astronomical tables that acquired for her a great reputation, Anna Maria Schureman was a sculptor, engraver, musician, and painter; she especially excelled in miniature painting. Constantina Grierson, an Irish girl, of humble parentage, was celebrated for her literary acquirements, though dying at the early age of twenty-seven.
With the learning, energy, and perseverance of Lady Jane Grey, Mary and Elizabeth, all are familiar. Mrs. Cowper was spoken of by Montague as standing at the head of all that is called learned, and that every critic veiled his bonnet at her superior judgment. Joanna Baillie has been termed the woman Shakespeare. Caroline Herschell shares the fame of her brother as an astronomer. The greatest triumphs of the present age in the drama, music, and literature have been achieved by women, among whom may be mentioned, Charlotte Cushman, Jenny Lind, the Misses Carey, Mrs. Stowe, and Margaret Fuller. Mrs. Somerville's renown has long been spread over both continents as one of the first mathematicians of the present age.
Self-reliance is one of the first lessons to be taught our daughters; they should be educated with our sons, and equally with them, taught to look forward to some independent means of support, either to one of the professions or the business best fitted to exercise their talents. Being placed in a position compelling them to act, has caused many persons to discover talents in themselves they were before unaware of possessing. Great emergencies produce great leaders, by arousing hitherto dormant energies.
Let us look at the rights it is boasted women now possess. After marriage the husband and wife are considered as one person in law, which I hold to be false from the very laws applicable to married parties. Were it so, the act of one would be as binding as the act of the other, and wise legislators would not need to enact statutes defining the peculiar rights of each; were it so, a woman could not legally be a man's inferior." Such a thing would be a veritable impossibility. One-half of a person can not be made the protection or direction of the other half. Blackstone says "a woman may indeed be attorney for her husband, for that implies no separation from, but rather a representation of, her lord. And a husband may also bequeath anything to his wife by will; for it can not take effect till the coverture is determined by his death." After stating at considerable length, the reasons showing their unity, the learned commentator proceeds to cut the knot, and show they are not one, but are considered as two persons, one Superior, the one inferior, and not only so, but the inferior in the eye of the law as acting from compulsion.
J. Elizabeth Jones, of Ohio: This is a time of progress; and man may sooner arrest the progress of the lightning, or the clouds, or stay the waves of the sea, than the onward march of Truth with her hand on her sword and her banner unfurled. I am not in the habit of talking much about rights; I am one of those who take them. I have occupied pulpits all over the country five days out of seven, in lecturing on science, and have found no objection.
I do not know what all the women want, but I do know what I want myself, and that is, what men are most unwilling to grant; the right to vote. That includes all other rights. I want to go into the Legislative Hall, sit on the Judicial Bench, and fill the Executive Chair. Now do you understand me? This I claim on the ground of humanity; and on the ground that taxation and representation go together. The whole question resolves itself into this; there has been no attempt to dispute this. No man will venture to deny the right of woman to vote. He may urge many objections against the expediency of her exercising it, but the right is hers.
But though women are deprived of political rights, there are other rights which no law prevents. We can take our rights as merchants and in other avocations, by investing our capital in them; but we stand back and wait till it is popular for us to become merchants, doctors, lecturers, or practitioners of the mechanic arts. I know girls who have mechanical genius sufficient to become Arkwrights and Fultons, but their mothers would not apprentice them. Which of the women of this Convention have sent their daughters as apprentices to a watchmaker? There is no law against this!!
Mrs. Mott: The Church and public opinion are stronger than law.
Lydia Jenkins: Is there any law to prevent women voting in this State? The Constitution says "white male citizens" may vote, but does not say that white female citizens may not.
Mrs. Jones said: I do not understand that point sufficiently well to explain, but whether the statute book is in favor or opposed, every citizen in a republic (and a woman is a citizen) has a natural right to vote which no human laws can abrogate; the right to vote is the right of self-government.
Antoinette Brown said: I know instances of colored persons voting under the same circumstances, and their votes being allowed by the legal authorities; but John A. Dix declared the proceedings of a school meeting void because two women voted at it.
Benjamin S. Jones said, in Ohio where there is much splitting of hairs between white and black blood, the judges decided in favor of a certain colored man's right to vote, because there was 50 per cent. of white blood in the person in question.:
Mrs. Davis: The first draft of the Rhode Island Constitution said "all citizens," but as soon as some one suggested that the door was thus left open for women to vote, the word "male" was promptly inserted.
Mrs. Davis read an interesting letter from the Rev. A. D. Mayo.[21] Samuel J. May read letters from William Lloyd Garrison, of Boston, and Margaret H. Andrews, of Newburyport, Massachusetts.
Rev. Samuel J. May.
Dear Friend — I wish to express my deep sympathy with those brave women who are struggling against ancient prejudices and modern folly, and who will eventually elevate our sex to a position which will command the respect of those who now regard them with derision and contempt, and my gratitude to the noble-minded men who are extending a helping hand to those who have hitherto been considered the weak and dependent portion of society, and are endeavoring to raise them to their level, instead of trying to establish their superiority over them. Such conduct shows true greatness and dignity of character. I wish to bear my share of the reproach and contumely which will be liberally bestowed upon this movement by many who ought to know and to do better; this is indeed the actuating motive which impels me to write.
With regard to the counsel which has been requested, I have little to say. if there be any one subject which has not been sufficiently insisted on, it is the aimless life which young women generally lead after they have left school. A large portion are occupied in forming matrimonial plans when they are wholly unfit to enter into that sacred state. Dr. Johnson makes his Nekayah say of young ladies with whom she associated, "Some imagined they were in love, when they were only idle." If young ladies directed their attention to some definite employment, this evil would be remedied.
I am, dear sir,
Very truly yours,
Lucy Stone said: Mrs. Jones' idea of taking our rights is inspiring, but it can not be done. In Massachusetts some women apprenticed themselves as printers, but were expelled because men would not set type beside them. Dr. Harriot K. Hunt asked permission to attend medical lectures at Harvard, but the students declared that if she were admitted they would leave, and so she was sacrificed.
Harriot K. Hunt: No; I am here.
Lucy Stone: Mrs. Mott says she was only suspended. So, too, when the Grimké sisters and Abby Kelley began publicly to plead the cause of the slave, they were assailed both by pulpit and press, and every species of abuse was heaped upon them; but they persevered and proved their capacity to do it, and now we meet in quietness, and our right to speak in public is not questioned. The woman who first departs from the routine in which society allows her to move must suffer. Let us bravely bear ridicule and persecution for the sake of the good that will result, and when the world sees that we can accomplish what we undertake, it will acknowledge our right. We trust be true to each other We must stand by the woman whose work of hand or brain removes her from the customary sphere. Employ the woman physician, dentist, and artist rather than a man of the same calling, and in time all professions and trades will be as free to us as to our brothers.
Abby Price, of Hopedale, said: I shall briefly consider woman's religious position, her relation to the Church, and show that by its restrictions she has suffered great injustice; that alike under all forms of religion she has been degraded and oppressed, the Church has proscribed her, and denied the exercise of her inalienable rights, and in this the Church is false to the plainest principles of Christianity. There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither bond nor free; there is neither male nor female; for ye all are one in Christ Jesus." Gal., chap. iii., v.28. "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them, and said unto them: have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air; over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." Genesis i., v. 27, 28. Notwithstanding these explicit declarations of equality, even in the Godhead, the Church claiming to be "Christian" denies woman's right of free speech. The priesthood, from Paul down, say gravely: 'It is not permitted for woman to speak in the churches." Some denominations have gravely debated whether she should be allowed in the service, or chants, to respond Amen!
The whole arrangement of Nature in her beautiful and wise manifestations to us evinces that the Divine order is for the sexes to mingle their different and peculiar characteristics in every relation of life. In Jesus the masculine and feminine elements of humanity were blended harmoniously. These different characteristics in His own person were distinctly and plainly seen. The masculine, when He fixed His eye in stern rebuke, and made the hypocrite and the Pharisee tremble; and the feminine gleamed often through His tears of affection and pity, and shone ever a glorious halo of patience and love around Him in the midst of suffering the most wasting and intense. The Church, as His Representative, should also exhibit these peculiarities in as full and glorious harmony.
Yet very few of the sects allow woman to assume the responsibility as religious teacher. However great she may feel the duty to be upon her, and however well qualified she may be, all ecclesiastical authorities, with one accord, begin to make excuses whenever a woman presents herself to be properly authorized, according to the popular usage of that Church, to preach the Gospel to a people, one-half of whom are her own sex.
Again, woman is denied a representation in all Ecclesiastical Assemblies.
The male portion of the Church assemble in delegation from the different bodies with which they are connected to legislate in behalf of the churches, but woman has no representation in these councils. Her opinion of what is best to promote the interests of religion is not respected; her right to representation being denied, her claim to just recognition is solemnly mocked. The Church places its hands on woman's lips, and says to her, "You shall not speak; you shall not be represented; you are not eligible to office because you are a woman!" Is not this crucifying with a strange presumption the soul of Christ? — treating wit contempt the purity of the Christian character { — trampling upon Human Rights? And yet woman patiently bears this contumely and scorn. The poor young men that she often educates by toil early and late, labor, arduous and half paid, teach her, when properly prepared, that this absurd tyranny is supported by the word of God!
Woman may speak when the thoughtless crowd the halls of fashion, with no aim but amusement. in the theatre, opera, or concert hall; she may meet with ministers in revivals, camp meetings, and sociables, and reply with smile and bow to the hollow compliments addressed to her vanity, but she must keep silence in the churches and all religious meetings; if there are only six persons present woman may not ask God's blessing to rest there, nor presume, should one man be present, to give utterance to her religious aspiration.
Every class of society, and especially each sex, need religious teachers of their own class and sex with themselves, having the same experience, the same hopes, aims, and relations. Human minds are so constituted as to need not merely intellectual instruction, but the strength imparted by an earnest sympathy born of a like experience. In order rightly to appreciate the wants of others, we must know and realize the trials of their situation, the struggles they may encounter, the burthens, the toils, the temptations that beset their different relations. These should be apprehended to some extent, and the more the better by the person qualified to speak to the spiritual wants of all. Each relation, therefore, needs its teacher — its peculiar ministry. No one can demonstrate by college lore the weight of a mother's responsibility.
No man — not even the kindest father — can fully apprehend the wearisome cares and anxious solicitude for children of her who bore them. The tremblings of a mother's soul none save a mother can feel. Man may prepare sound and logical discourses; he may clearly define a mother's duty; he may talk eloquently about her responsibility; he may urge upon her strong motives to faithfulness in the discharge of her maternal duties; he may tell her what her children should be in all life's varied aspects. She hears the good instruction and advice with more or less of the feeling, "You cannot know of what you are talking." . . . .
The Church needs a varied ministry. Not alone is the power of mind needed, but the zeal and the inspiration of the inner life; the unction of love and faith and courage produced by a struggle amid life's realities. Not the dreamer, but the toiler can best affect the lives of others through their hearts. In this ministry the sexes must blend harmoniously their ministrations to others from their own lives and experiences. This must be the Divine order. Reason teaches it to the calm observer. Our souls respond to this truth from their deepest chambers.
. . . . Doom woman no longer to banishment from the hallowed ground of Church and State. She has too long been but as the Pariah of the desert. Welcome her ministrations reverently to her human nature, kindly to her present weakness, encouragingly to her hopes; receive her counsels with respect and confidence, so far as they are worthy, and be assured that a better day will begin to dawn. The birth of a new spiritual life will be given in this new marriage, and melody us from the harps of angels will be breathed from the circles of earth.
Paulina Wright Davis: . . . . We commence life where our fathers left it. We have their mistakes and their achievements. We attempt to walk in the paths they trod, and wear the garments left by them; but they are all too short and narrow for us; they deform and cramp our energies; for they demand the Procrustean process to conform the enlarged natures of the present to the past. While the human soul, like the infinite in wisdom and love, is ever governed by the eternal law of progress, creeds and codes are always changing. All things founded in immutable truth grow only the stronger by every trial.
. . . . The sacred traditions of both Jew and Gentile agree in ascribing to woman a primary agency in the introduction of human evils. In the Greek. Mythology, she is indeed not the first offender; but she is the bearer of the box that contained all the crimes and diseases which have punished our world for the abuse of liberty. It is worthy of remark that Pandora, who is the Eve: of the Grecian system, being like her Hebrew correspondent, created for special purposes, was the joint work of all the gods. Venus gave her beauty, Minerva. wisdom, Apollo the art of music, Mercury eloquence, and the rest the perfection and completeness of all her divine accomplishments. Her name signifies gifts. from all.
"A combination and a form indeed
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a paragon."
Prometheus made the first man of clay and animated him with fire stolen from Heaven. Jupiter is represented as attaching the terrible consequences of a rational and responsible vitality, thus conferred upon a creation of earth, by sending this wonderfully gifted Pandora into the world loaded with all the evils which it was fated to endure. It was her destiny to be the occasion of the fall, the instrument of doom; but her fortunes are linked to the resurrection and life, as well as the suffering and death of the race. Among the gifts of Pandora which had otherwise been fatal, she brought hope which lay concealed after all the others had flown abroad on their missions of mischief. In our Sacred Story this point in the parable has a clear explanation: "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." If she brought death into the world, she brought forth a Son who "taketh away the sins of the world." . . . . These myths, whether received as simple facts, or poetic fiction, whose oracles always: reveal the deepest signification of facts, alike indicate the eminent agency of woman in the fall and rising again of the human image of the divine upon earth.
. . . . From the marriage hour woman is presented only in a series of dissolving views. First. She stands beside her husband radian' in girlish beauty. She worships. One side of the lesson is well learned, that of entire dependence. Not once has she dreamed that there must be mutual dependence and separate fountains of reciprocal life. . . . . In the next scene the child wife appears withering away from life as from the heart she is not large or noble enough to fill — pining in the darkness of her home-life, made only the deeper by her inactivity, ignorance, and despair. . . . . In another view she has passed the season of despair, and appears as the heartless votary of fashion, a flirt, or that most to be dreaded, most to be despised being, a married coquette; at once seductive, heartless, and basely unprincipled; or as beauty of person has faded away, she may be found turning from these lighter styles of toys to a quiet kind of handmaiden piety and philanthropy.
.... Marriage as it now exists is only a name, a form without a soul, a bondage, legal and therefore honorable. Only equals can make this relation. True marriage is a union of soul with soul, a blending of two in one, without mastership or helpless dependence. The true family is the central and supreme institution among human societies. All other organizations, whether of Church or State, depend upon it for their character and action. Its evils are the source of all evils; its good the fountain of all good. The correction of its abuses is the starting-point of all the reforms which the world needs.Dr. Harriot K. Hunt attracted much attention from the fact of her yearly protest against taxation. In the course of her remarks she said, "Unseen spirits have been with us in this Convention; the spirits of our Shaker sisters whom untold sorrows have driven into those communal societies, the convents of our civilization."
After quite a brilliant discussion, in which Mr. Brigham made himself a target for Lucy Stone, Martha C. Wright, Eliza Aldrich, Clarina Howard Nichols, Harriot K. Hunt, and Mrs. Palmer to shoot at, Antoinette L. Brown offered the following resolution, and made a few good points on the Bible argument:
God created the first human pair equal in rights, possessions, and authority. He bequeathed the earth to them as a joint inheritance; gave them joint dominion over the irrational creation; but none over each other. (Gen. i. 28). They sinned. God announced to them the results of sin. One of these results was the rule which man would exercise over woman. (Gen. iii. 16). This rule Was no more approved, endorsed, or sanctioned by God, than was the twin-born prophecy, "thou (Satan) shalt bruise his (Christ's) heel." God could not, from His nature, command Satan to injure Christ, or any other of the seed of woman. What particle of evidence is there then fur supposing that in the parallel announcement He commanded man to rule over woman? Both passages should have been translated will, instead of shall. Either auxiliary is used indifferently according to the sense, in rendering that form of the Hebrew verb into English.
Because thou hast done this, is God's preface to the announcement. The results are the effects of sin. Can woman then receive evil from this rule, and man receive good? Man should be blessed in exercising this power, if he is divinely appointed to do so; but the two who are one flesh have an identity of interests, therefore if it is a curse or evil to woman, it must be so to man also. We mock God, when we make Him approve of man's thus cursing himself and woman.
The submission enjoined upon the wife in the New Testament, is not the unrighteous rule predicted in the Old. It is a Christian submission due from man towards man, and from man towards woman: "Yea, all of you be subject one to another" (1 Pet. v.5; Eph. v. 21; Rom. xii. 10, etc.) In I Cor. xvi. 16, the disciples are besought to submit themselves "to every one that helpeth with us and laboreth." The same apostle says, "help those women which labored with me in the Gospel, with Clement also, and with other of my fellow-laborers."
Man is the head of the woman. True, but only in the sense in which Christ is represented as head of His body, the Church. In a different sense He is head of all things — of wicked men and devils. If man is woman's head in this sense, he may exercise over her all the prerogatives of God Himself. This would be blasphemous. The mystical Head and Body, or Christ and His Church, symbolize oneness, union. Christ so loved the Church He gave Himself for it, made it His own body, part and parcel of Himself. So ought men to love their wives. Then the rule which grew out of sin, will cease with the sin.
It is said woman is commanded not to teach in the Church. There is no such command in the Bible. It is said (1 Cor. xiv. 34), "Let your women keep silence in the churches; for it is not permitted unto them to speak." This injunction, taken out of its connection, forbids singing also; interpreted by its context, woman is merely told not to talk unless she does teach. On the same principle, one who has the gift of tongues is told not to use it in the Church, unless there is an interpreter. The rule enforced from the beginning to the end of the chapter is, "Let all things be done unto edifying." Their women, who had not been previously instructed like the men, were very naturally guilty of asking questions which did not edify the assembly. It was better that they should wait till they got home for the desired information, rather than put an individual good before the good of the Church. Nothing else is forbidden. There is not a word here against woman's teaching. The apostle says to the whole Church, woman included, "Ye may all prophesy, one by one."
In 1 Tim. ii. 12, the writer forbids woman's teaching over man, or usurping authority over him; that is, he prohibits dogmatizing, tutoring, teaching in a dictatorial spirit. This is prohibited both in public and private; but a proper kind of teaching is not prohibited. Verse 14 — a reference to Eve, who, taough created last. sinned first, is merely such a suggestion as we would make to a daughter whose mother had been in fault. The daughters are not blamed for the mother's sin, merely warned by it; and cautioned against self-confidence, which could make them presume to teach over man. The Bible tells us of many prophetesses approved of God. The Bible is truly democratic. Do as you would be done by, is its golden commandment, recognizing neither male nor female in Christ Jesus.
Ernestine L. Rose: If the able theologian who has just spoken had been in Indiana when the Constitution was revised, she might have had a chance to give her definitions on the Bible argument to some effect. At that Convention Robert Dale Owen introduced a clause to give a married woman the right to her property. The clause had passed, but by the influence of a minister was recalled; and by his appealing to the superstition of the members, and bringing the whole force of Bible argument to bear against the right of woman to her property, it was lost. Had Miss Brown been there, she might have beaten him with his own weapons. For my part, I see no need to appeal to any written authority, particularly when it is so obscure and indefinite as to admit of different interpretations. When the inhabitants of Boston converted their harbor into a teapot rather than submit to unjust taxes, they did not go to the Bible for their authority; for if they had, they would have been told from the same authority to "give unto Cesar what belonged to Cesar." Had the people, when they rose in the might of their right to throw off the British yoke, appealed to the Bible for authority, it would have answered them, "Submit to the powers that be, for they are from God." No! on Human Rights and Freedom, on a subject that is as self-evident as that two and two make four, there is no need of any written authority. But this is not what I intended to speak upon. I wish to introduce a resolution, and leave it to the action of the Convention:
Resolved, That we ask not for our rights as a gift of charity, but as an act of justice. For it is in accordance with the principles of republicanism that, as woman has to pay taxes to maintain government, she has a right to participate in the formation and administration of it. That as she is amenable to the laws of her country, she is entitled to a voice in their enactment, and to all the protective advantages they can bestow; and as she is as liable as man to all the vicissitudes of life, she ought to enjoy the same social rights and _ privileges. And any difference, therefore, in political, civil, and social rights, on account of sex, is in direct violation of the principles of justice and humanity, and as such ought to be held up to the contempt and derision of every lover of human freedom.
. . . . But we call upon the law-makers and law-breakers of the nation, to defend themselves for violating the fundamental principles of the Republic, or disprove their validity. Yes! they stand arrayed before the bar, not only of injured womanhood, but before the bar of moral consistency; for this question is awakening an interest abroad, as well as at home. Whatever human rights are claimed for man, moral consistency points to the equal rights of woman; but statesmen dare not openly face the subject, knowing well they can not confute it, and they have not moral courage enough to admit it; and hence, all they can do is to shelter themselves under a subterfuge which, though solidified by age, ignorance, and prejudice, is transparent enough for the most benighted vision to penetrate. A strong evidence of this, is given in a reply of Mr. Roebuck, member of Parliament, at a meeting of electors in Sheffield, England. Mr. R., who advocated the extension of the franchise to the occupants of five-pound tenements, was asked whether he would favor the extension of the same to women who pay an equal amount of rent? That was a simple, straight-forward question of justice; one worthy to be asked even in our republican legislative halls. But what was the honorable gentleman's reply? Did he meet it openly and fairly? Oh, no! but hear him, and I hope the ladies will pay particular attention, for the greater part of the reply contains the draught poor, deluded woman has been accustomed to swallow — Flattery: "There is no man who owes more than I do to woman. My education was formed by one whose very recollections at this moment make me tremble. There is nothing which, for the honor of the sex, [ would not do; the happiness of my life is bound up with it; mother, wife, daughter, woman, to me have been the oasis of the desert of life, and, I have to ask myself, would it conduce to the happiness of society to bring woman more distinctly than she now is brought, into the arena of politics? Honestly I confess to you I believe not. I will tell you why. All their influences, if I may so term it, are gentle influences. In the rude battle and business of life, we come hone to find a nook and shelter of quiet comfort after the hard and severe, and, I may say, the sharp ire and the disputes of the House of Commons. I hie me home, knowing that I shall there find personal solicitude and anxiety. My head rests upon a bosom throbbing with emotion for me and our child; and I feel a more hearty man in the cause of my country, the next day, because of the perfect, soothing, gentle peace which a mind sullied by politics is unable to feel. Oh I can not rob myself of that inexpressible benefit, and therefore I say, No."
Well, this is certainly a nice little romantic bit of parliamentary declamation. What a pity that he should give up all these enjoyments to give woman a vote! Poor man! his happiness must be balanced on the very verge of a precipice, when the simple act of depositing a vote by the hand of woman, would overthrow and destroy it forever. I don't doubt the honorable gentleman meant what he said, particularly the last part of it, for such are the views of the unthinking, unreflecting mass of the public, here as well as there. But like a true politician, he commenced very patriotically, for the happiness of society, and finished by describing his own individual interests. His reply is a curious mixture of truth, political sophistry, false assumption, and blind selfishness. But he was placed in a dilemma, and got himself out as he could. In advocating the franchise to five-pound tenement-holders, it did not occur to him that woman may possess the same qualification that man has, and in justice, therefore, ought to have the same rights; and when the simple question was put to him (simple questions are very troublesome to statesmen), having too much sense not to see the justness of it, and too little moral courage to admit it, he entered into quite an interesting account of what a delightful little creature woman is, provided only she is kept quietly at home, waiting for the arrival of her lord and master, ready to administer a dose of purification, "which his politically sullied mind is unable to feel." Well! I have no desire to dispute the necessity of it, nor that he owes to woman all that makes life desirable — comforts, happiness, aye, and common sense too, for it's a well-known fact that smart mothers always have smart sons, unless they take after their father. But what of that? Are the benefits woman is capable of bestowing on man, reasons why she must pay the same amount of rent and taxes, without enjoying the same rights that man does?
But the justice of the case was not considered. The honorable gentleman was only concerned about the "happiness of society." Society! what does the term mean? As a foreigner, I understand by it a collection or union of human beings — men, women, and children, under one general government, and for mutual interest. But Mr. Roebuck, being a native Briton and a member of Parliament, gave us a parliamentary definition, namely; society means the male sex only; for in his solicitude to consult "the happiness of society," he enumerated the benefits man enjoys from keeping woman from her rights, without even dreaming that woman was at all considered init; and this is the true parliamentary definition, for statesmen never include woman in their solicitude for the happiness of society. Oh, no! she is not yet recognized as belonging to the honorable body, unless taxes are required for its benefit, or the penalties of the law have to be enforced for its security.
Thus, being either unwilling or afraid to do woman justice, he first flattered her, then, in his ignorance of her true nature, he assumed that if she has her rights equal with man, she would cease to be woman — forsake the partner of her existence, the child of her bosom, dry up her sympathies, stifle her affections, turn recreant to her own nature. Then his blind selfishness took the alarm, lest, if woman were more independent, she might not be willing to be the obedient, servile tool, implicitly to obey and minister to the passions and follies of man; "and as he could not rob himself of these inexpressible benefits, therefore he said, No."The speech of Antoinette Brown, and the resolution she presented opened the question of authority as against individual judgment, and roused a prolonged and somewhat bitter discussion, to which Mrs. Stanton's letter,[22] read in a most emphatic manner by Susan B. Anthony, added intensity. It continued at intervals for two days, calling out great diversity of sentiment. Rev. Junius Hatch, a Congregational minister from Massachusetts, questioned the officers of the Convention as to their belief in the paramount authority of the Bible, saying the impression had gone abroad that the Convention was infidel in character. The President ruled that question not before the Convention.
Thomas McClintock[23] said, to go back to a particular era for a standard of religion and morality, is to adopt an imperfect standard and impede the progress of truth. The best minds of to-day surely understand the vital issues of this hour better than those possibly could who have slumbered in their graves for centuries. Mrs. Nichols, whom the city press spoke of as wielding a trenchant blade, announced herself as having been a member of a Baptist church since the age of eight years, thus sufficiently proving her orthodoxy. Mrs. Rose, expressing the conviction that belief does not depend upon voluntary inclination, deemed it right to interpret the Bible as he or she thought best, but objected to any such interpretation going forth as the doctrine of the Convention, as, at best, it was but mere opinion and not. authority.
The debate upon Miss Brown's resolution was renewed in the afternoon, during which the Rev. Junius Hatch made so coarse a speech that the President was obliged to call him to order.[24] Paying no heed to this reprimand he continued in a strain so derogatory to his own dignity and so insulting to the Convention, that the audience called out, "Sit down! Sit down! Shut up!" forcing the Reverend gentleman to his seat. The discussion still continued between the members of the Convention; Miss Brown sustaining her resolution, Mrs. Rose opposing it.
A Gentleman said: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and profitable, etc." Does not this apply to the latest period?
Lucretia Mott: If the speaker will turn to the passage he will find that the word "is," being in italics, was inserted by the translators. She accepted it as in the original, "All Scriptures given by inspiration of God, is profitable, etc." She was somewhat familar with the Scriptures, and at a suitable time would have no objection to discuss the question. She concluded by moving that the resolution be laid on the table, which was unanimously carried.On the morning of the last day the President stated that the subject of organizing a National Society was to be discussed, and at her suggestion Mr. May read along and interesting letter from Angelina Grimké Weld, from which we give the salient points:
It is not to organization that I object, but to an artificial society that must prove a burden, a clog, an incumbrance, rather than a help. Such an organization as now actually exists among the women of America I hail with heartfelt joy. We are bound together by the natural ties of spiritual affinity; we are drawn to each other because we are attracted toward one common center — the good of humanity. We need no external bonds to bind us together, no cumbrous machinery to keep our minds and hearts in unity of purpose and effort: we are not the lifeless staves of a barrel which can be held together only by the iron hoops of an artificial organization.
The present aspect of organizations, whether in Church, or State, or society at large, foretokens dissolution. The wrinkles and totterings of age are on them. The power of organization has been deemed necessary only because the power of Truth has not been appreciated, and just in proportion as we reverence the individual, and trust the unaided potency of Truth, we shall find it useless. What organization in the world's history has not encumbered the unfettered action of those who created it? Indeed, has not been used as an engine of oppression.
The importance of this question can hardly be duly magnified. How few organizations have ever had the power which this is destined to wield! The prayers and sympathies of the ripest and richest minds will be ours. Vast is the influence which true-hearted women will exert in the coming age. It is a beautiful coincidence, that just as the old epochs of despotism and slavery, Priest-craft and Political intrigue are dying out, just as the spiritual part of man is rising into the ascendency, Woman's Rights are being canvassed and conceded, so that when she becomes his partner in office, higher and holier principles of action will form the basis of Governmental administration.
The reading of Mrs. Weld's letter was followed by a spirited discussion, resulting in the continuance of the Central Committee, composed of representative men and women of the several States, which was the only form of National Organization until after the war.
Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Davis did not like to be bound by a Constitution longer than during the sessions of the Convention. Both recommended the formation of State Societies.
Dr. Harrior K. Hunt spoke as a physician in deeming spontaneity as a law of nature.
Ernestine L. Rose declared organizations to be like Chinese bandages. In political, moral, and religious bodies they hindered the growth of men; they were incubi; she herself had cut loose from an organization into which she had been born;[25] she knew what it had cost her, and having bought that little freedom for what was dearer to her than life itself, she prized it too highly to ever put herself in the same shackles again.
Lucy Stone said, that like a burnt child that dreads the fire, they had all been in permanent organizations, and therefore dread them. She herself had had enough of thumb-screws and soul screws ever to wish to be placed under them again. The present duty is agitation.
Rev. Samuel J. May deemed a system of action and co-operation all that was needed. There is probably n"t one woman in a thousand, not one in ten thousand who has well considered the disabilities, literary, pecuniary, social, political, under which she labors. Ample provision must be made for woman's education, as liberal and thorough as that provided for the other sex.
Mrs. C. I. H. Nichols favored organization as a means to collect and render operative the fragmentary elements now favoring the cause.
Rev. Abram Pryne, in an able speech, favored National and State organization.The discussion was closed by the adoption of the following resolution, introduced by Paulina Wright Davis:
It is impossible to more than give the spirit of the Convention, though glimpses of it and its participants may be caught in the brief sketch of its proceedings. In accordance with the call, woman's social, civil, and religious rights were all discussed. Lucy Stone made a brilliant closing address, the doxology was sung to "Old Hundred," and the Convention adjourned.
The character and influence of this Convention can best be shown by the reports of the city press.[26]
The Standard, September 13, 1852.
The Woman's Rights Convention was in session during three days of last week in this city, and was attended by a large number of persons, not less, probably, than 2,000. Such a Convention, even in this city of conventions, was something new under the sun. .... The discussions were characterized by a degree of ability that would do credit to any deliberative body in the country. .... Some able letters were read to the Convention. Among the most noteworthy was that of Mrs. Stanton. .... Mrs. Mott presided over the Convention with much dignity and ability. .... If any of the natural rights belonging to women are withheld from them by the laws and customs of society, it is due to them that a remedy should be applied; .... those among them who are aggrieved should have an opportunity to give free expression to their opinions. This will hurt nobody, and those who profess to be alarmed at the result, should dismiss their fears.
The Daily Journal (Whig), September 13, 1852.
The National Woman's Rights Convention. — After a duration of three mortal days this august Convention came to a "happy and peaceful end" Friday evening. .... All who attended any portion of the Convention, or the whole, will unite with us in pronouncing it the most dignified, orderly, and interesting deliberative body ever convened in this city. The officers, and most especially the distinguished woman who occupied the president's chair, evinced a thorough acquaintance with the duties of their station, and performed them in an admirable manner. .... No person acquainted with the doings of the assembly and capable of passing judgment in the matter, will deny there was a greater amount of talent in the Woman's Rights Convention than has characterized any public gathering in this State during ten years past, and probably a longer period, if ever. .... For compact logic, eloquent and correct expression, and the making of plain and frequent points, we have never met the equal of two or three of the number. The appearance of all before the audience was modest and unassuming, though prompt, energetic, and confident.
Business was brought forward, calmly deliberated upon, and discussed with unanimity, and in a spirit becoming true woman, and which would add an unknown dignity and consequent influence to the transactions of public associations of the "lords." .... The appearance of the platform was pleasing and really imposing in the extreme. The galaxy of bold women — for they were really bold, indeed they are daring women — presented a spectacle the like of which we never before witnessed. A glance at the "good old lady" who presided with so much dignity and propriety, and through the list to the youngest engaged in the cause, was enough to impress the unprejudiced beholder with the idea that there must be something in the movement. .... The audience was large and more impressive than has marked any convention ever held here. .... We feel in a mood to dip lightly into a discussion of the Woman's Rights question. .... Our sober second thought dictates that a three days' enlightenment at the intellectual feast spread by Beauty and Genius, may have turned our brains, and consequently we desist.The discussions of this Convention did not end with its adjournment; its "sine die" had effect only upon the assembled body; for months afterward controversies and discussions, both public and private, took place. Clergymen of Syracuse and adjoining cities kept the interest glowing by their efforts to destroy the influence of the Convention by the cry of "infidel." A clergyman of Auburn not only preached against the Convention as "infidel," but as one holding authority over the consciences of his flock, boldly asserted that "no member of his congregation was tainted with the unholy doctrine of woman's rights."
Rey. Byron Sunderland, pastor of the Plymouth Congregational Church of Syracuse (since Chaplain of the United States Senate), characterized it in his sermon[27] as a "Bloomer Convention," taking for his text Deut. xxii. 5:
Mrs. Gage's reply, in the absence of the editor, appeared in The Star, in whose columns Rev. Mr. Sunderland's sermon had been given the public, calling forth the following letter:
The readers of The Star are aware that the editor docs not sanction the ridiculous stuff which appeared in the issues of the 17th and 18th insts. over the signature of "M" upon the subject of "Woman's Rights," nor does he approve of its admission in the columns of the paper, and hereby disclaims having authorized the publication of any such emanations from the pit during his absence from home. When at his post he sometimes gives publicity to such communications for the purpose of showing up the fallacy of the positions taken, but never does he intend, so long as he has control of its columns, to allow The Star to become the medium of disseminating corrupt and unwholesome doctrines. Such doctrines have found and will continue to find means enough with which to do their duty in Syracuse without the aid of a reputable newspaper in their behalf; and the editor indeed is greatly surprised that those who temporarily fill his place, should lend The Star to so base purposes. We trust that these words (if discretion does not) will prevent further encroachment upon our good nature.
It is the first paragraph of the above letter that is noticeable. The Star is the organ of a certain class of ministers. Messrs. Sunderland and Ashley and The Star nestle in a common sympathy. It is significant of the character of their published sermons, that The Star stands alone in their defence. More significant still that The Star negates all replies to them, even by a lady. "Put out the light," says the thief. "Put out the light," says the assassin. "Put out the light," says The Star; and verily if these gentlemen had their way, the light would go out in Egyptian darkness. It is wholesome doctrine, in the opinion of The Star, to deny woman's rights and negro's rights and the right of free discussion, to maintain them is to countenance "corrupt and unwholesome doctrines."
The subject of woman's rights somehow is attracting general attention. Rev. Mr. Sunderland, of this city, in a published sermon, sought to bring the whole matter into contempt, under cover of the ridicule of the Bloomer dress. His position is, that if God made man a little lower than the angels, He made woman a little lower still. His sermon we gave last week. This week we give a woman's reply to it. Nobly has she shown him up. We like her review. She treats his argument gravely, and answers it logically. She has touched the tender in him. He will begin to think women are somebody after all. We think he should have measured his calibre before making such atilt. . . . . Regarding his condition as rather awkward, and finding it difficult to be quiet, he appears in the Friday Star with the following equivocal communication:
The Woman's Rights Question. — Mr. Editor: The last two numbers of The Star contain an article purporting to review my Sermon from Deut. xxii. 5, but the author does not appear. The article in question contains inaccuracies which should be noticed for the author's future benefit. If the author should turn out to be a man, I should have no objection to point out those inaccuracies through your columns. But if the writer is a lady, why, I really don't know yet what I shall do. If I thought she would consent to a personal interview, I should like to see her.Very truly,
Some other person, under the head of "A Reader," addressed the following to The Star, which, in the editor's absence, was published:
Upon the expression of Mr. Sunderland's desire to meet the reviewer of his sermon, if a lady, and his willingness to continue the controversy, The Star finally opened its columns to Mrs. Gage, although delaying the publication of her articles, sometimes for weeks, to suit the dominie's convenience, and allowing his reply to appear in the same issue of the paper with her answer to his preceding article. Mr. Sunderland's reply to "A Reader "was characteristic of the spirit of the clergy, not only of their intolerance, but of their patronizing and insulting manner toward all persons who presumed to question either their authority or learning.
Rey. Mr. Ashley, rector of St. Paul's, the first Episcopal Church of Syracuse, also preached a sermon against woman, which was published in pamphlet form, and scattered over the State. This sermon was reviewed by a committee of ladies appointed by the Ladies' Lyceum. It was an able and lengthy document from the pen of the chairman of the committee, a member of the Episcopal Church, and was a significant sign of woman's growing independence of clerical authority. This sermon and its reply was also published by the city press; the Church, the press, and the fireside all aiding in the continued dissemination of the woman's rights discussion.
The publication of the proceedings of the Convention in pamphlet form gave The Star occasion for a new fulmination which not only farther showed the base character of this sheet, but which shocked all devout minds by its patronizing tone toward the Deity. Both in the Convention and its following debate, Syracuse well maintained its character for radicalism.
MOB CONVENTION IN NEW YORK.
Broadway Tabernacle, Sept. 6 and 7, 1853.
This week as already stated was one of unusual excitement in the city of New York, as representatives of all the unpopular reforms were holding their several conventions. The fact that the Anti-Slavery Society held a meeting on Sunday morning, and Antoinette Brown preached to five thousand people the same evening, called out the denunciations of the religious press, which intensified the mob spirit, culminating at last in the Woman's Rights Convention. 'That portion of the secular press which had shown the most bitter Opposition to the anti-slavery cause, now manifested the same spirit toward the enfranchisement of woman.
The leading papers in the United States were The Tribune, The Herald, The Times, The Evening Post, and The Express, which gave tone to the entire press of the country. All these journals were edited by men of marked ability, each representing a different class of thought in the community. The Tribune was independent, and fearless in the expression of opinions on unpopular reforms; its editor, Horace Greeley, ever ready for the consideration of new ideas, was on many points the leader of liberal thought.
The Herald was recognized by reformers as at the head of the opposition, and its diatribes were considered "Satanic." Its editor, James Gordon Bennett, pandered to the lowest tastes in the community, not merely deriding reforms, but holding their advocates up to the ridicule of a class too degraded to understand the meaning of reform.
The Times held a middle position; established at a much later date, its influence was not so great nor extended as either The Tribune or The Herald. It represented that large conservative class that fears all change, and accepts the conditions of its own day and generation, knowing that in all upheavals the wealthy class is the first and greatest loser. From this source the mob spirit draws its inspiration. Violence being the outgrowth of superstition and despotism; the false morality and philosophy taught by the press and the pulpit are illustrated by the lower orders in hisses, groans, and brickbats. Although far below Horace Greeley in sagacity, intelligence, and conscience, Henry J. Raymond claimed for his paper a position superior in respectability. Having originated the present system of reporting, and thereby acquired his first reputation, Mr. Raymond prided himself upon reportorial sharpness, even at the expense of veracity and common self-respect. That woman so long degraded should dare to speak of injustice, so long defrauded of her social, civil, and political rights, should dare to demand some restitution, was to Mr. Raymond so fit a subject for ridicule that he could not refrain from making even such women as Lucretia Mott and Ernestine L. Rose targets for his irony.
The Express, an organ of the Democratic party, was in its debasement on a par with The Herald and Times, though each had different styles, more or less refined, of doing the same thing. Encouraged by these three papers, the mob element held high carnival! through that eventful week. Starting in the anti-slavery and temperance meetings, they assembled at every session in the Woman's Rights Convention. Gentlemen and ladies alike who attempted to speak were interrupted by shouts, hisses, stamping, and cheers, rude remarks, and all manner of noisy demonstrations. The clergy, the press, and the rowdies combined to make those September days 4 disgrace to the metropolis, days never to be forgotten by those who endured the ridicule and persecution.
Although the Mayor with a large police force at his command made no show even of protecting the right of free speech, the editor of The Tribune sent forth his grand fulminations against bigotry, hypocrisy, and vulgarity in every issue of his journal. William Cullen Bryant, editor of The Post, one of the purest men that ever stood at the head of a daily paper, also spoke out grandly against mob law, and for the rights of woman. We have made this brief episode on the press, that our readers may see how characteristic are the comments of each paper that we give here and there in this chapter.
This Convention, interrupted throughout by the mob, has an unique and historic value of its own. It was the first overt exhibition of that public sentiment woman was then combating. The mob represented more than itself; it evidenced that general masculine opinion of woman, which condensed into law, forges the chains which enslave her. Owing to the turmoil we have no fair report of the proceedings; it was impossible for the representatives of the press to catch what was said, hence their reports, as well as the one issued by our Central Committee, are alike fragmentary. And yet with such a brilliant array of speakers of both men and women, it should have been one of our most interesting and successful Conventions. The Tabernacle, holding three thousand persons, was packed long before the hour announced. At ten o'clock Lucy Stone called the Convention to order, and presented a list of officers [28] nominated at a preliminary meeting, which was adopted. In this list we find England, Germany, and eleven States represented. The Rev. William Henry Channing opened the meeting with prayer. After which Mrs. Mott made a few appropriate remarks. Lucy Stone read a series of resolutions[29] which were accepted and laid on the table for discussion. .
Charles Burleigh and Lydia A. Jenkins spoke briefly on the many grounds of opposition to this movement, which in all respects commends itself as one of the greatest reforms of the age.
That the land is beginning to be convulsed. The opposition to the movement is assuming a malignant, desperate, and satanic character; every missile of wickedness that can be hurled against it is used. The pulpit is excited, the press is aroused; Church and State are in arms to put down a movement on behalf of justice to one-half of the whole human race. (Laughter and cheers). The Bible, revered in our land as the inspired Word of God, is, by pulpit interpreters, made directly hostile to what we are endeavoring to obtain as a measure of right and justice; and the cry of infidelity is heard on the right hand and on the left, in order to combine public opinion so as to extinguish the movement.
Now, beloved, let us not imagine that any strange thing has happened to us. We are but passing through one of the world's great crises; we, too, in our day, are permitted to contend with spiritual wickedness in high places — with principalities and powers. What reform was ever yet begun and carried on with any reputation in the day thereof? What reform, however glorious and divine, was ever advocated at the outset with rejoicing? And if they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his household? (Cheers and stamping).
I have been derisively called a Woman's Rights Man. I know no such distinction. I claim to be a Human Rights Man, and wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being whatever may be the sex or complexion.
To the excellence of the movement God has given witnesses in abundance, on the right hand and on the left. Showing a cause anathematized by the chief priests, the scribes, and the pharisees; which politicians and demagogues endeavor to crush, which reptiles and serpents in human flesh try to spread their slime over, and hiss down, and I will show you a cause which God loves, and angels contemplate with admiration. Such is our movement. Do you want the compliments of the satanic press, The New York Times, Express, and Herald? (Roars of laughter). If you want the compliments of such journals, you will be bad enough to take a place among the very vilest and lowest of the human race. They are animated by a brutal, cowardly, and devilish spirit. Let us rejoice at the manifestation! Not for the wickedness, but at the evidence thus afforded by God, that our cause is of Heaven, and therefore has on its side all the power and might of God, and in due season is destined to have a glorious triumph!
Charles C. Burleigh said: There is a feeling to-day that woman has some rights, that she has some reason to complain of the present relation in which she is placed. In this country we congratulate ourselves that woman occupies a higher position than elsewhere, although some think it would be a calamity to improve her condition still further, and mere fanaticism to raise her still higher.
The cry is — "unnatural!" The aspiration of woman for a better lot, say her oppressors, is not natural, it is abnormal! So they say; but why not hear her on the matter? Is she, the most interested party, to have no voice in the solution of a question which is to her of such overwhelming interest? I ask, did God give woman aspirations which it is a sin for her to gratify? Abnormal! No, it is to be found everywhere. The man whose soul is so callous that he can hold his fellow-man as a slave, cries out (as in excuse) that the slave is contented. The autocrat exclaims that it is only a turbulent Kossuth or a factious Mazzini who feels that uneasy discontent which preys not on the hearts of his millions of legal slaves. Will that be, to us, an argument that the tyrant is in the right? No! the aspirations to liberty and justice are universal, and ever though the volcanic blaze breaks into the air only through the loftiest mountain peaks, the volcano is in itself an index to the ocean of molten fire that boils inaudibly beneath it. And so the deep discontent of humble millions breaks through the mountain-minds of their great leaders. Woman is a part of the human commonwealth; why deprive her of a voice in its government? Woman herself, a component part of the community, must be called into the councils which direct it, else a wrong is done her, the responsibility of which lies heavily on those who do it. We ask rights for woman, because she has a human nature, and it is not only ungenerous and unmanly, but in the highest degree unjust to banish her from the discussion of questions which so nearly and dearly concern her, and in which nature, reason, and God have announced that she should have & voice.
Either there is a distinction between the sphere of man and that of woman, or there is not. If there is, it is unfair to have one determine both; if there is not, why does tyrannous custom separate her? The dilemma is clear, and can not be escaped. Both should be called into counsel, every note in the scale of harmony should be sounded; and to say that hers, because an octave higher, should not be heard, is downright nonsense. (Rousing cheers and laughter). We claim for woman simply the right to decide her own sphere, or, in conjunction with man, to determine what should be the relative position of both.
W. H. Channing said: When I was returning from the first Woman's Rights Meeting. at Worcester, a friend said to me, "I intend getting up a Man's Rights Society; you misunderstand the matter; all the efforts of society are for the elevation of woman, and man has to perform the drudgery. The consequence is, the women are far better educated than the men." The answer was obvious. "If women are, according to your admission, fitted for the higher plane, why keep them on the lower?" My friend then went on to say, that the whole of this scheme was considered to be of the most morally visionary character, and the proof of this feeling was the slight opposition it met, "for," said he "if it were looked on by society as serious, it would be at once, and forcibly, opposed in the church, by the press, in all public assemblies and private circles." Now, the object of this, and all such conventions, is to prove that we have made up our minds as regards operation and method; that we have looked clearly into the future; and that we have at heart this movement, as we have no other of the day, believing that out of this central agitation of society will come healthful issues of life. The inhabitants of Eastern India speak of a process for gaining immortality, namely, churning together the sea and the earth. They say the gods had the serpent by the head, and the devils had it by the tail, and out of the churning of the foam came the waters of immortality. The movement we are engaged in, may be typified by the Indian allegory; and out of the commotion we make shall be drawn a new principle which shall be one of immortal growth to all society. (Stamping, cheers, and laughter).
As regards the differences between men and women, we say that out of them grows union, not separation. Every organ of the body is double; in the pulsations of the heart a double machinery is used, there is a double auricle and a double ventricle. It is so in the inspirations which flow from God to society; they must pass twice, once through the heart. of man, once through the heart of woman; they must stream through the reforming and through the conservative organ; and thus, out of the very difference which exists between man and woman, arises the necessity for their co-operation. It has never been asserted that man and woman are alike; if they were, where would be the necessity for urging the claims of the one? No; they differ, and for that very reason it is, that only through the action of both, can the fullness of their being find development and expression. We know that woman exerts an influence on man, as man does on woman, to call forth his latent resources. In the difference, we find a call for union. And to this union we perceive no limit; on the contrary, whatever necessity there is for the combination in the private, there is the same necessity for it in the public sphere. (Long continued stamping and cheers).
And now I will meet the two great objections made. It is not objectionable, it is said, that woman, in some spheres of life, should give an expression of her intellect; but, on the platform, she loses her character of woman, and becomes incidentally masculine. Just observe the practical absurdities of which society is guilty. The largest assemblies greet with clamors Jenny Lind, when she enchains the ear and exalts the soul with the sublime strain, "I know that my Redeemer liveth"; but when Mrs. Mott or Miss Brown stands with a simple voice, and in the spirit of truth, to make manifest the honor due to our Redeemer, rowdies hiss, and respectable Christians veil their faces! So, woman can sing, but not speak, that "our Redeemer liveth." Again, the great men of our land do not consider it unworthy of their character to take from Fanny Ellsler what she makes by the movement of her limbs, by a mere mechanical action,[30] to aid in erecting a column to commemorate our struggles for liberty. The dollars are received and built into the column; but when Mrs. Rose or Mrs. Foster, who feels the spirit of justice within her, and who has felt the injustice of the laws, stands up to show truth and justice, and build a spiritual column, she is out of her sphere! and the honorable men turn aside, and leave her to be the victim of rowdyism, disorder, and lawlessness! It is not out of character that Fanny Kemble should read Shakespeare on the stage, to large circles. The exercise of the voice on the stage is womanly, while she gives out the thoughts of another; but suppose (and it is not unsupposable) a living female Shakespeare to appear on a platform, and utter her inspirations, delicacy is shocked, decency is outraged, and society turns away in disgust! Such are the consistencies of the nineteenth century! (Great uproar).
This is simply and merely prejudice, and it reminds me of the proverb, "If you would behold the stars aright, blow out your own taper." I say there is a special reason why woman should come forward as a speaker; because she has a power of eloquence which man has not, arising from the fineness of her organization and the intuitive power of her soul; and I charge any man with arrogance, if he pretend to match himself in this respect with many women here, and thousands throughout our country. (Hissing). I take it, the hissing comes from men who never had a mother to love and honor, a sister to protect, and who never knew the worth of a wife. Woman's power to cut to the quick and touch the conscience, is beautifully accompanied by her unmatched adaptation to pour balm into the wound; and though the flame she applies may burn into the soul, it also affords a light to the conscience which never can be dimmed.
There is an exquisite picture by Retsch, which represents angels showering roses on devils; to the angels they are roses, but the devils writhe under them as under fire. On sinful souls the words of women fall as coals from the altar of God. And here let me offer my humble gratitude to the women who have borne the brunt of the test with the calm courage which women alone can exhibit; to the women who have taught us that, as daughters of God, they are the equals of His children everywhere on earth. (Cheers and stamping).
Let me add another word upon this interference, or, rather, entrance of woman into the sphere of politics. As a spiritual being, her duties are like those of man; but, inasmuch as she is different from man, man can not discharge them; and if there be any truth in holding (as our institutions do), that the voice of the whole is the nearest approach we can make to eternal truth, we, of course, can not arrive at it till woman, as well as man, is heard in the search for it. God, not man, nor herself, made her woman; there is nothing arbitrary in the distinction; and let the true woman go where she may, she will retain her womanhood. We wish to see her enter into politics, not to degrade herself, but to bring them up to her own level of simple-heartedness and purity of soul. Can man ever raise them to that lofty height? Never! woman alone can do it; it is a work reserved for her, and by her and her alone will it be done. (Roars of laughter).
Whose exploits leave the brightest lines of moral courage on the historic page? Those of woman! When the French had broken through the barriers, the maid of Saragossa rushed to the breach. The demand of the invader came to Palafox, and he trembled; but what the heart of man was unequal to, the courage of woman could perform, and the answer of the heroic maiden was, "War to the knife!" And so, always when man has faltered, woman, earnest and simple-hearted, has answered, War to the knife with evil! (A frightful yell from the gallery.) I perceive my friend is anxious to hear a woman speak to him as only a woman can. I will soon give way and let him be gratified; but, first, I will tell him an anecdote. A woman once told me she never saw a horse so wild that she could not tame him. I asked her how, and she answered, "Simply by whispering in his ear." Our wild friend in the gallery will probably receive some benefit listening to the voice of a woman, if his ears be only long enough to hear her. (Prolonged cheers).
Antoinette Brown said: Our cause is progressing triumphantly; and yet it is not without some to oppose it. Who are they? Persons utterly ignorant of the claims which its advocates advance, ignorant alike of the wrongs existing and of the remedy proposed. They suppose that a few mad-cap reformers are endeavoring to overthrow dame Nature, to invert society, to play the part of merciless innovators to imperil religion, to place all civil and religious freedom in jeopardy; that if our ends were accomplished all the public and private virtues would be melted as in a crucible and thrown upon the ground, thence to cry aloud to heaven like the blood of righteous Abel. Were it not that curiosity is largely developed in this class, they would go down to their graves wholly uninformed of our true principles, motives, and aims. They look upon us as black beetles or death's-heads, to be turned away from with horror; but their curiosity overcomes their repugnance, and they would investigate some of our properties, as a naturalist does those of a noxious animal. (Cheers and laughter).
There is another class, that of genuine bigots, with hearts so ossified that no room can be found for one noble and expansive principle within those little stony cells. Many of this class may be persons of excellent intentions; they would do us good if they could, but they approach us with somewhat of the feeling with which Miss Ophelia regarded Topsy, the abhorrence that is experienced on drawing near a large black spider. They try to show us our errors, but if we attempt to justify by argument the ground we have taken, they cry aloud that we are obstinate and unreasonable, especially when we quote text for text, as Christ did when talking with a certain person of old.
But the most hopeless and spiteful of our opponents is that large class of women whose merits are not their own; who have acquired some influence in society, not by any noble thoughts they have framed and uttered, not by any great deed they have done, but by the accident of having fathers, brothers, or husbands whose wealth elevates them to the highest wave of fashion, and there enables them to roll in luxurious and indolent pomp, like Venus newly risen from the ocean. They feel how much easier it is to receive the incense of honor and respect (however insincerely paid to them) without any effort of their own, than to undergo the patient toil after excellence which wrings from the heart of all that homage of true honor which can not be denied to it. They, unused to any noble labor (as all labor is), either physical or mental, will be careful, to a degree of splenetic antagonism, how they will allow the introduction, into the acknowledged rights and duties of their sex, of a new element which may establish the necessity of their being themselves energetic and efficient. We need never hope to find any of this class change, until compelled to do so by public sentiment. The opposition here is really rabid. Intellectual women! oh, they are monsters! As soon allow wild beasts to roam at large as these to be let loose on society. Like lions and tigers, keep them in their menagerie; perhaps they needn't be actually chained, but see that they are well secured in their cages! (Stamping, groans, and laughter).
These are far more bitterly hostile than the men of small proportions, who are willing to have a great woman tower above them from time to time—as a Madame de Stael. Such a case, however, they would rank as an exception, not admit as a rule. To allow women to stand every day in the foremost lines of intellect and ability, is a thought altogether too expansive to be entertained by them.
Such are the oppositions we meet; but they are all melting down like frost-work before the morning sun. The day is dawning when the intellect of woman shall be recognized as well as that of man, and when her rights shall meet an equal and cordial acknowledgment. The greatest wrong and injustice ever done to woman is that done to her intellectual nature. This, like Goliath among the Philistines, overtops all the rest. Drones are but the robbers of the hive; ladies educated to no purpose are but surfeited to a dronish condition on the sweets of literature. Such minds are not developed, but molded in a fashionable pattern.
Lucy Stone said: It has been stated that we women were not fit for anything but to stay in the house! I look over the events of the last five years, and almost smile at the confutation of this statement which they supply. Let it not be supposed that I wish to depreciate the value of house-duties, or the worth of the woman who fitly discharges them. No! I think that any woman who stands on the throne of her own house, dispensing there the virtues of love, charity, and peace, and sends out of it into the world good men, who may help to make the world better, occupies a higher position than any crowned head. However, we said women could do more; they could enter the professions, and there serve society and do themselves honor. We said that women could be doctors of medicine. Well, we can now prove the statement by fact. Harriot K. Hunt is among us to-day, who, by recognized attainment and successful practice, has shown that women can be physicians, and good ones. You have in your city two women who are good physicians; there are female medical colleges, with their classes, as well ordered, and showing as good a proficiency as any classes of men. Thus that point is gained. It was said women could not be merchants. We thought they could; we saw nothing to prevent women from using the power of calculation, the knowledge of goods, and the industry necessary to make a successful trader. Here, again, we have abundant examples. Many women could be pointed to whose energy and ability for business have repaired the losses of their less competent husbands, I will mention a particular case. Mrs. Tyndal, of Lowell, Mass., has for years carried on business in a quiet way; she has made herself rich by conducting a ladies' shoe store in Lowell. She said to herself: "What is to hinder me from going into this business? I should know ladies' shoes, whether they were good or bad, and what price they can bring. The ladies should support me." And so they did, and that woman has given a proof that her sex does not incapacitate for successful mercantile operations.
It is said women could not be ministers of religion. Last Sunday, at Metropolitan Hall, Antoinette L. Brown conducted divine service, and was joined in it by the largest congregation assembled within the walls of any building in this city. (Hisses). Some men hiss who had no mothers to teach them better. But I tell you that some men in New York, knowing that they can hear the word of God from a woman, as well as from a man, have called her to be their pastor, and she is to be ordained in this month. Some of you reporters said she was a Unitarian, but it is not so; she is among the most orthodox, and so is her church.
We have caused woman's right to address an audience to be more fully recognized than before. I once addressed an assemblage of men, and did so without giving previous notice, because I feared the opposition of prejudice. A lady who was among the audience said to me afterward, "How could you do it? My blood ran cold when I saw you up there among those men!" "Why," I asked, "are they bad men?" "Oh, no! my own husband is one of them; but to see a woman mixing among men in promiscuous meetings, it was horrible!" That was six or seven years ago last fall; and that self-same woman, in Columbus, Ohio, was chosen to preside over a temperance meeting of men and women; yes, and she took the chair without the least objection! In Chicago, a woman is cashier of a bank; and the men gave her a majority of three hundred votes over her man-competitor. In another State, a woman is register of deeds. Women can be editors; two sit behind me, Paulina W. Davis and Mrs. Nichols. Thus we have an accumulation of facts to support our claims and our arguments.
Daily Tribune, Sept. 7, 1853.
The Woman's Rights Convention was somewhat disturbed last evening by persons whose ideas of the rights of free speech are these: two thousand people assemble to hear a given public question discussed under distinct announcement that certain persons whose general views are well known, are to speak throughout the evening. At least nineteen-twentieths come to hear those announced speakers, and will be bitterly disappointed if the opportunity be not afforded them. But one-twentieth have bought tickets and taken seats on purpose to prevent the hearing of those speakers, by hissing, yelling, and stamping, and all manner of unseemly interruptions. Under such circumstances, which should prevail; the right of the speakers to be heard and the great body of the audience to hear them according to the announcement, or the will of the disturbers who choose to say that nineteen out of twenty shall not have what they have paid for, and what the promised speakers are most willing to give them?
To state the case exactly as it is, precludes the necessity of arguing it. We rejoice to say that the will of the great majority prevailed, and that the discussion which was marked in its earlier days by occasional tumult was closed in good order, and amid hushed and gratified attention. We ought, perhaps, to return thanks to the disturbers for so stirring the souls of the speakers that their words came gushing forth from their lips with exceeding fluency and power. We certainly never before heard Antoinette Brown, Mrs. Rose, and Lucy Stone speak with such power and unction as last night. It was never before so transparent that a hiss or a blackguard yell was the only answer that the case admitted of, and when Lucy Stone closed the discussion with some pungent, yet pathetic remarks on the sort of opposition that had been manifest, it was evident that if any of the rowdies had an ant-hole in the bottom of his boot, he would inevitably have sunk through it and disappeared forever.
Herald, Sept. 7, 1853.
THE LAST VAGARY OF THE GREELEY CLIQUE — THE WOMEN, THEIR RIGHTS, AND THEIR CHAMPIONS.
The assemblage of rampant women which convened at the Tabernacle yesterday was an interesting phase in the comic history of the nineteenth century.
We saw, in broad daylight, in a public hall in the city of New York, a gathering of unsexed women — unsexed in mind all of them, and many in habiliments — publicly propounding the doctrine that they should be allowed to step out of their appropriate sphere, and mingle in the busy walks of every-day life, to the neglect of those duties which both human and divine law have assigned to them. We do not stop to argue against so ridiculous a set of ideas. We will only inquire who are to perform those duties which we and our fathers before us have imagined belonged solely to women. Is the world to be depopulated? Are there to be no more children? Or are we to adopt the French mode, which is too well known to need explanation?
Another reason why we will not answer the logic which is poured out from the lips of such persons as Lucy Stone, Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Amelia Bloomer, and their male coadjutors, Greeley, Garrison, Oliver, Johnsen, Burleigh, and others, is because they themselves do not believe in the truth or feasibility of the doctrines they utter. In some cases eccentricity is a harmless disease; but the idiosyncrasies of these people spring from another source. They admit the principle that fame and infamy are synonymous terms. Disappointed in their struggle for the first, they grasp the last, and at the same time pocket all the money they can wring from the "barren fools" who can be found in any community eager to grasp at any doctrine which is novel, no matter how outrageous it may be. They are continually advertising from their platforms some "Thrilling Narrative," or "Account of the Adventures of a Fugitive," which may be had at the low price of one shilling each, or eight dollars per hundred. Recently they have discovered that the great body of their audiences came only to be amused, and they have therefore imposed an admission fee. Lucy Stone, who is a shrewd Yankee, has gone a step further, and in her management of the business of the "Woman's Rights Convention," has provided for season tickets, to be had at "the extremely low price of two shillings."
It is almost needless for us to say that these women are entirely devoid of personal attractions. They are generally thin maiden ladies, or women who perhaps have been disappointed in their endeavors to appropriate the breeches and the rights of their unlucky lords; the first class having found it utterly impossible to induce any young or old man into the matrimonial noose, have turned out upon the world, and are now endeavoring to revenge themselves upon the sex who have slighted them. The second, having been dethroned from their empire over the hearts of their husbands, for reasons which may easily be imagined, go vagabondizing over the country, boring unfortunate audiences with long essays lacking point or meaning, and amusing only from the impudence displayed by the speakers in putting them forth in a civilized country. They violate the rules of decency and taste by attiring themselves in eccentric habiliments, which hang loosely and inelegantly upon their forms, making that which we have been educated to respect, to love, and to admire, only an object of aversion and disgust. A few of these unfortunate women have awoke from their momentary trance, and quickly returned to the dress of decent society; but we saw yesterday many disciples of the Bloomer school at the Tabernacle. There was yesterday, and there will be to-day, a wide field for all such at the Tabernacle.
The "compliments" showered upon The Herald by the wretched Garrison yesterday afternoon, at the Woman's Wrong Convention, fully show that he and his coadjutors, Greeley and the rest, are beginning to feel the truth of our remarks during the time they have been amusing our citizens. His insane attack shows that our course has been the true one.To the credit of Mr. Greeley, he made an effort to suppress the disturbance. Raymond, of The Times, gave the following report:
Times, September 8, 1853.
(Evening of the first day, Mrs. Rose speaking).
Mr. Greeley was among the audience, and in passing through the gallery, it was supposed he remonstrated with the sibillating gentlemen, and a great rumpus was raised. Some cheered the peace-maker, others hissed, the rush collected about the scene of the disturbance, and all proceedings were interrupted. Mrs. Rose suspended her remarks for a few moments, but presently said: "Friends, be seated, and I will continue." The audience would not listen, however. The uproar still continued. Cries of "Order," "Mrs. President," "Put him out," "Hurrah!" hisses, groans, and cheers. Mr. Greeley and a policeman presently succeeded in stilling the tumult, the officer collaring several men and compelling them to keep quiet. Mrs. Rose resumed and continued her remarks.
Second Day, Morning Session, Opened At 10 A.M.
MRS. Mott: The uproar and confusion which attended the close of our proceedings of last night, although much to be regretted, as indicating an unreasonable and unreasoning disposition on the part of some, to close their ears against the truth, or rather, to drown its voice by vulgar clamor, yet, when viewed aright, and in some phases, present to us matter of congratulation. I do suppose that never, at any meeting, was public propriety more outraged, than at ours of last evening. I suppose no transactions of a body assembled to deliberate, were ever more outrageously invaded by an attempt to turn them into a mere tumult; yet, though voices were loud and angry, and the evil passions exhibited themselves with much of that quality to affright, which usually, if not always, attends their exhibition, not a scream was heard from any woman, nor did any of the "weaker sex" exhibit the slightest terror, or even alarm at the violent manifestations which invaded the peace of our assemblage.
I felicitate the women on this exhibition of fortitude; of calm moral courage. Should not our opponents, if they have any reason among them, reflect that these exhibitions are, in reality, some of the strongest arguments that can be offered to support the claims which we stand here to advocate? Do they not show, on the one hand, that men, by whom such an overpowering superiority is arrogated, can betimes demean themselves in such a way as to show that they are wholly unfit for the lofty functions which they demand as their exclusive right? And, on the other hand, do they not conclusively show, that women are possessed of, at least, some of those qualities which assist in calmness of deliberation during times of excitement and even danger? I think it was really a beautiful sight to see how calm the women remained during last evening's excitement; their self-possession I consider something truly admirable. I know that in the tumult and noise it would have been vain for any woman to raise her voice in an attempt to check it. Indeed, I am satisfied the outrage was predetermined, and I regret that the aid of the police had to be called in to quell it. Had there been here a company of women who were taught to rely upon others, they would, doubtless, have felt bound to scream for "their protectors"; but the self-reliance displayed, which must have its basis in a consciousness of the truth and justice of our cause, and which kept the members of the Convention unmoved, amid all the prevailing confusion, gives us matter of real congratulation. Let us rejoice in this, my friends; and let us remember, that when we have a true cause—while our cause rests on the basis of right—we have nothing to fear, but may go on unmoved by all these petty circumstances, by which we may be surrounded.
Mr. Burleigh said: A request was made last night by some person, I don't know who, or rather a challenge was offered, that three good reasons should be given why women should vote. Perhaps, had the person making this demand had this question put to him, namely: "What reasons are there why men should vote?" he would have considered them so self-evident as to make any answer superfluous. Yet it would be found difficult, I apprehend, to assign any reason why men should vote, which would not be found to be an equally good one for extending the elective franchise to women. He asked, however, why women should be allowed to take a part in the civil government of the country. This question will, I doubt not, be answered to-day by some one more able than myself; and if the person who asked it be present, and open to conviction, he will hear reasons sufficient to convince him.
Why should women vote? She should vote, first, because she has to bear her portion of the burdens imposed by the government which the voting makes. Is not this one reason amply sufficient for any honest-minded man? Taxation and representation go hand in hand, says a principle of our body politic. Is woman represented? No. Is woman taxed? Yes. How is that? Is it consistent with the profession; and, if there were no profession, is it right, is it just? The burden falls equally on woman and her brother; but he has all the power of applying it; she must bear it to the end of the journey, and then know nothing, say nothing, as to how it is to be disposed of. What kind of justice is that? Were woman exempted from those burdens, why, then, the exemption would so far be an argument on the other side; although even that would fail on investigation, because other equally immutable principles show that neither exemption nor representation is the condition in which any portion of the political body should be allowed to remain. But where there is no exemption, but a full apportionment of the burden, and, at the same time, no representation, the absurdity of injustice has reached its climax. (Laughter and cheers).
In the second place, woman should vote, because she ought to be a sharer in those benefits which government is formed to confer upon the governed. She has property which the government must protect, a person which it must defend, and rights which it is bound to secure. Were the millennium arrived, were there no such thing as selfishness on earth; were simple truth and justice the prominent elements in all men's minds, and the guiding spirit of all men's actions, then indeed might woman confide herself to man; then might she rely on him to secure those governmental benefits which are her due, as a portion of the general community. But is this the state of things? Alas! not yet; and, until it is, the horrible injustice of the laws which exclude woman from a share in making them, while they are her only security for the advantages she ought to enjoy, will never cease crying aloud to all men for purification. One of the great aims of all government, one of the strong considerations which alone makes its restrictions endurable, is the assurance which it gives the governed, that the sum of their happiness, and even of their liberty, shall, by individual restraints, become greater on the whole. It holds out a bonus to society, or rather, to its individual members, "Give me this little, and I will give you in exchange this much." Thus each individual puts a stake into the common fund, has an interest in the common weal, which demands careful watching. Can woman watch the large, the all-absorbing interest she has at stake? She, above all, the most tender, the most sensitive of beings, the most keenly alive to wrong, to insult, to oppression, to aught that bruises her womanly nature, can she give a careful eye to the disposal of those important questions which touch the very core of her heart? Why, when reduced to these, its naked dimensions, the injustice seems so horrible, as not to be credible, and did we not know the facts, we would find it hard to believe that man, made in the image of his Maker, could violate justice so barbarously. Surely woman lies under no moral obligation to any laws which, wanting her assent, yet assume to control her every action, word, and even thought. Her property, her person, all her rights, her most sacred affections, come within the province of those enactments; yet she can have no voice, no weight in determining what those enactments shall be. (Stamping and groans).
In the third place, woman is entitled to vote, because she is liable to all the penalties imposed by government. Not only is it that she confides, or rather, that government compels her to confide to it, the custody of person, property, rights, and all dearest interests, but it goes a step further, and thus adds another link (though quite a superfluous one) to the adamantine chain of argument which it supplies to bind down its own injustice. It stands not merely in a passive or receiving relation to woman, it becomes the active arbiter of her doom; it declares itself competent to lay hands on her, to shut her up in prison, to take away her life, the life of one who has made with it no compact—giving such awful power—the life of one who never consented to the laws which assert over her so terrible a supremacy! All the principles already applied come in here with perhaps renewed force, as being the arbiters of a question which may be regarded by some as of a still more absorbing interest, although to woman it may not be so, for when did she value life more highly than tenderness, domestic confidence, and affection? (Prolonged laughter).
Dr. H. K. Root, of New York, rose in his place among the audience and declared his intention of arguing against the principles and demands of the Convention. Being requested to take the rostrum, he did so, and spoke thus: Mrs. President and Ladies: I do not come here with the slightest intention of offering to the ladies any opposition for mere opposition's sake. If they are proved to have more knowledge and intelligence than men, let them govern! My purpose, ladies, is to try and attain truth, which, I think, will not be found favorable to the views you express. I come, rather, as a matter of intelligence than opposition. I do not come here for the purpose of opposing the ladies too much; but as the question was not only open yesterday, but still is for discussion, I maintain that if the ladies have more intelligence, and more energy, and science than the male sex, they should rule. I think I can give three reasons why men should vote, and one why woman should not vote. (Cheers).
My first reason is, because there was an original command from God that man should rule. It may be supposed that we are in the garden of Eden now, as in the days of Adam and Eve. Now, it will be remembered, when Adam and Eve fell, Adam, because Eve tempted him, was placed in the garden as its keeper, and it was necessary in those days, as it is now, that woman should be a helpmeet for him; but you recollect that by the eating of the forbidden fruit, original sin came into the world. What was the expression of God to Adam? He says in the third chapter of Genesis, 17th verse: "Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life." Now, permit us to be in the relation that Adam and Eve were originally. It behooves the male sex to answer the objections of the female sex—not that we wish to combat them in public; but it behooves us, as a matter of justice, to put the question on a right foundation. It may be necessary, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, that the ladies should be here, but in the hundredth it may be necessary that man should say, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." You see the original cause of sin was because man, being placed in the garden, gave way to woman, and the curse fell upon him; the original cause of sin was because man gave up his judgment to woman; and it may be, if we now give up our rights to woman, some great calamity may fall upon us. Had woman only sinned, perhaps we might still have been in Eden. (Great applause).
My second reason why man should vote is the law of physical force over the woman—because man's strength is greater than woman's.
The third reason is, because if women enter the field of competition with men, it may lead not only to domestic unhappiness, but a great many other ill feelings. And I will give another reason why men should be dictators. If woman says she shall vote, and man says she sha'n't, he is in duty bound to maintain what he says. If he says she sha'n't, that is reason enough why she should not." (Cheers and laughter).
Alexander Parker, of Philadelphia, rose in his place, and on being invited to the platform, spoke thus:
Adam was the first gardener in the world; he belonged to my business, for I am a gardener—a business I took up myself, so I should have something to say about the garden of Eden. Well, I have often thought about the fall, and I have often pictured it in this manner: the very moment the charge was given not to do such a thing, that was just the time they wanted to do it. (Prolonged cheers).
It is often said that woman has a great deal of curiosity, and no doubt it was whispered into her ear, that the moment she ate of the forbidden fruit she should become a god. Now, I have seen more reason this morning why women should vote than I have ever seen before. In Pennsylvania a man has got but one vote, while a woman has three—her husband's and her two sons'. Eve tried to get over the temptation, but she could not; and so, after many efforts, she clutched the apple she looked at so, and so, and she reached out to it; afraid at first, but at last she laid hold of it, and, seeing that her fear was over, she kissed its lovely cheek. Then she ran to Adam, and said it was good, and he ate of it. Then his eyes were opened and he saw he was naked, and ran and hid himself. He tried to hide himself among the bushes, but he could not deny the eating of it, because the core was sticking in his throat, and it is sticking there still; but woman has not got the core sticking in her throat. Well, Adam pretended to be innocent, like all the rest of mankind, and said it was not he, but the woman that did it. No, no; it was not his fault, it was the woman who gave it to him. Oh, yes! he was not to blame, no more than any lord of creation. Well, then, there was a curse upon him; but there was a promise to woman that her seed should bruise the head of the serpent with her heel. (Shouts of laughter).
Mrs. Nichols: : As to the text which says that woman must obey her husband, surely that is no reason why she should obey all the bachelors and other women's husbands in the community. My husband would have me advocate the claims I do, therefore by the logic of our cause my husband wishes me to vote, and, according to the Scripture, the gentleman must, even in his own reasoning, allow me the right to vote. In one place the gentleman said that woman had already turned the world over; and that man must be cautious not to allow her to do so again. Perhaps, if he reconsidered these statements he might be willing to retract the latter; because, if she turned the world over once and put the wrong side up, he ought now to allow her to turn it back, that she may bring the right side up again.
Mrs Rose.said: As to the personal property, after all debts and liabilities are discharged, the widow receives one-half of it; and, in addition, the law kindly allows her her own wearing apparel, her own ornaments, proper to her station, one bed, with appurtenances for the same; a stove, the Bible, family pictures, and all the school-books; also, all spinning-wheels and weaving-looms, one table, six chairs, tea cups and saucers, one tea-pot, one sugar dish, and six spoons. (Much laughter). But the law does not inform us whether they are to be tea or table spoons; nor does the law make any provision for kettles, sauce-pans, and all such necessary things. But the presumption seems to be that the spoons meant are teaspoons; for, as ladies are generally considered very delicate, the law presumed that a widow might live on tea only; but spinning-wheels and weaving-looms are very necessary articles for ladies nowadays. (Hissing and great confusion). Why, you need not hiss, for I am expounding the law. These wise law-makers, who seem to have lived somewhere about the time of the flood, did not dream of spinning and weaving by steam-power. When our great-great-grandmothers had to weave every article of apparel worn by the family, it was, no doubt, considered a very good law to allow the widow the possession of the spinning-wheels and the weaving-looms. But, unfortunately for some laws, man is a progressive being; his belief, opinions, habits, manners, and customs change, and so do spinning-wheels and weaving-looms; and, with men and things, law must change too, for what is the value of a law when man has outgrown it? As well might you bring him to the use of his baby clothes, because they once fitted him, as to keep him to such a law. No. Laws, when man has outgrown them, are fit only to be cast aside among the things that were.
But I must not forget, the law allows the widow something more. She is allowed one cow, all sheep to the number of ten, with the fleeces and the cloth from the same, two swine, and the pork therefrom. (Great laughter). My friends, do not say that I stand here to make these laws ridiculous. No; if you laugh, it is at their own inherent ludicrousness; for I state them simply and truly as they are; for they are so ridiculous in themselves, that it is impossible to make them more so.
Mrs. Nichols said: As widow, too, the law bears heavily on woman. If her children have property, she is adjudged unworthy of their guardianship; and although the decree of God has made her the true and natural guardian of her children, she is obliged to pay from her scanty means to be constituted so by law.
I have conversed with judges and legislators, and tried to learn a reason for these things, but failed to find it. A noble man once gave me what he probably thought was a good one. "Women," he said to me, "can not earn as much as men!" We say they should be allowed to earn as much. They have the ability, and the means should not be shut out from them. I have heard of another man who held woman's industrial ability at a low rate. "His wife," he said, "had never been able to do anything but attend to her children." "How many have you?" he was asked; and the answer was, "Nine." Nine children to attend to! nine children cared for! and she could do nothing more, the wife of this most reasonable man. Now, which is of more importance to the community, the property which that reasonable husband made, or the nine children whom that mother brought, with affectionate and tender toil, through the perils of infancy and youth, until they were men and women? Which was of more importance to this land, the property which the father of George Washington amassed, or the George Washington whom a noble mother gave to his country? The name of Washington, his glorious deeds, and the enduring benefits he secured for us, still remain, and will long after the estates of Washington have passed from his name forever!
In the State of Vermont, a wife sought a divorce from her husband on the ground of his intemperance. They were persons moving among our highest circles—wealthy people; and the wife knew that she could, through the aid of her friends and relations, with the influence and sympathy of the community, obtain a divorce and a support for her children. That father carried away into Canada one child, a little girl, and paid three hundred dollars to a low, vile Frenchman, that he might keep her from her mother and friends. Three times her almost heart-broken mother went in search of her; twice in vain, but the third time she was found. So badly had the poor child been treated in the vile hands in which her father had placed her, that, when recovered, she was almost insensible; and when, by her mother's nursing care, her intelligence was at length restored, her joy at seeing her mother was so violent, that it was feared its excess might prove fatal. The case came into court, and the judge decided that the two daughters should be given to their mother, but that the custody of the son should be given to the father. She was acquitted of the least impropriety or indiscretion; yet, though the obscenity and profanity of her husband in his own family was shocking, and it was in the last degree painful to that high-minded woman to see her son brought up under the charge of such a man, the law decided that the unworthy father was the more proper guardian for the boy!
In the Green Mountain State a great many sermons have lately been preached on the text, "Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands." The remaining words, "in the Lord," are generally omitted; so that the text is made to appear like an injunction that the wives should submit to their husbands, whether they were in the Lord or in the devil. And the best of all is, that we are told that if we would be submissive, we could change our husbands from devils into angels.
Mrs. Mott: I now introduce to the Convention Frances Dana Gage, of St. Louis, Mo., better known as "Aunt Fanny," the poet.
Mrs. Gage said: This morning, when I was leaving my boarding-house, some one said to me, "So you are ready armed and equipped to go and fight the men." I was sorry, truly sorry, to hear the words—they fell heavily on my heart. I have no fight with men. I am a daughter, a sister, a wife, and a mother, and in all these relations I live in harmony with man. Neither I, nor any of the sisters with whom I am united in this movement, have any quarrel with men. What is it that we oppose? What do we seek to overturn? The bad laws and customs of society. These are our only enemies, and against these alone is our hostility directed; although they be "hallowed by time," we seek to eradicate them, because the day for which they were suited, if such ever existed, is long since gone by. The men, we may suppose, are above and beyond the laws, and we assail the laws only.
There is one law which I do not remember having heard any of my sisters touch upon, that is the Law of Wills, as far as it relates to married women, and as far as it allows a husband (which it fully does), along with his power to determine the lot of his wife while he is alive, also to control her when he is dead. Would any gentleman like to have that law reversed? Let me read to you a will after that odd fashion. It will fall on your ears, gentlemen, with as loud a tone of injustice as it does on mine:
Will of Bridget Smith.—In the name of God, amen. I, Bridget Smith, being weak in body, though sound in mind, blessed be God for the same, do make and declare this my last will and testament. Item first: I give my soul to God, and my body to the earth, from which it came. Item second: I give to my beloved husband, John Smith, Sen., my Bible, and forty acres of wild land which I own in Bear Marsh, Ill, for the term of his natural life, when it shall descend to our son, John Smith, Jr. Item third: I give and bequeath to my daughter, Tabitha, my farm, house, outhouse, barns, and all the stock on said farm, situated in Pleasant Valley, and which said farm consists of 160 acres. I also give to my said daughter Tabitha, the wagons, carriages, harnesses, carts, plows, and all other property that shall be on said farm at the time of my death. Item fourth: I give to my son, John Smith, Jr., my family horse, my buggy, harness, and saddle, and also eighty acres of wild land which J own in the State of Iowa, for which I have a patent. Item fifth: I give to my beloved husband, John Smith, Sen., the use of the house in which we live, together with my bed, so long as he shall live, or remain my widower; but in case he shall die, or get married, then it is my will that my house and bed shall descend to my said daughter, Tabitha. Recommending my said husband to her care, whom I make the sole executrix of this my last will and testament, hereby revoking all others.
Signed, sealed, and proclaimed this day of, 1853, in the presence of John Doe and Richard Roe.
Would any of you like such power as that to be placed in our hands? Yet, is it not as fair that married women should dispose of their property, as that married men should dispose of theirs? It is true, the power thus given to husbands is not always used to the detriment of women, and this is frequently urged in support of the law. But I reply, that law is made for extreme cases; and while any such statutes remain on the books, no good man will cease to exert himself for their removal. I ask the right to vote, not because it would create antagonism, but because it would create harmony. I want to do away with antagonism by removing oppression, for where oppression exists, there antagonism must exist also.
Ernestine L. Rose: In allusion to the law respecting wills, I wish to say that, according to the Revised Statutes of our State, a married woman hag not aright to make a will. The law says that wills may be made by all persons, except idiots, persons of unsound mind, married women, and infants. Mark well, all but idiots, lunatics, married women, and infants. Male infants ought to consider it quite an insult to be placed in the same category with married women. No, a married woman has no right to bequeath a dollar of the property, no matter how much she may have brought into the marriage, or accumulated in it. Nota dollar to a friend, a relative, or even to her own child, to keep him from starving. And this is the law in the nineteenth century, in the enlightened United States, under a Republic that declares all men to be free and equal.
Lucy Stone: Just one word. I think Mrs. Rose is a little mistaken; I wish to correct her by saying that of some States in —
Mrs. Rose: I did not say this was the universal law; I said it was the law in the State of New York.
Lucy Stone: I was not paying close attention, and must have been mistaken. In Massachusetts the law makes a married woman's will valid in two cases: the first is, where the consent of her husband is written on the will; the second, where she wills all she has to her husband, in which case his written consent is not deemed requisite.
Dr. Harriot K. Hunt spoke on the fruitful theme of taxation without representation! and read her annual protest[31] to the authorities of Boston against being compelled to submit to that injustice. She said: I wish to vote, that women may have, by law, an equal right with men in property. In October, 1851, I went to pay my taxes in Boston. Going into the Assessor's office, I saw a tall, thin, weak, stupid-looking Irish boy. It was near election time, and I looked at him scrutinizingly. He held in his hand a document, which, I found on inquiry, was one of naturalization; and this hopeful son of Erin was made a citizen of the United States, and he could have a voice in determining the destinies of this mighty nation, while thousands of intellectual women, daughters of the soil, no matter how intelligent, how respectable, or what amount of taxes they paid, were forced to be dumb!
Now, I am glad to pay my taxes, am glad that my profession enables me to pay them; but I would like very much to have a voice in directing what is to be done with the money I pay. I meditated on what I had seen, and, in 1852, when paying my taxes, I took to the Treasurer's office my protest.
The case of the Hon. Mrs. Norton before the English courts, then attracting much attention, was a fair exemplification of the injustice of the law to married women.
That woman, gifted, noble, and wealthy, with such great yearnings in her soul, whose heart was so bound up in her children, was thus robbed not only of her own rights, but also of theirs. Men! we can not trust you! You have deceived us too long! Since this movement began, some laws have been passed, securing to woman her personal property, but they are as nothing in the great reform that is needed. I can tell you a case. A woman married a man, whom she did not love, because he had a fortune. He died, and she married the man whom she loved before her first marriage. He died, too, and the fortune which was hers through her first husband was seized on by the relatives of the second, and she was left penniless in the wide world. Here, as in England, women earn large sums by their literary fame and talents; and I know a man who watches the post-office, and, because the Law gives him the power, secures the letters which contain the wages of his wife's intellectual toil, and pockets them for his own use.
I will conclude by reading a letter from an esteemed friend, Mr. Higginson. It proposes certain questions which I should wish to hear our enemies answer.
Dear Friend: — You are aware that domestic duties alone prevent my prolonging my stay in New York during the session of the Woman's Rights Convention. But you know, also, that all my sympathies are there. I hope you will have a large representation of the friends of the great movement — the most important of the century; and that you will also assemble a good many of the opposition during the discussion. Perhaps from such opponents I might obtain answers to certain questions which have harassed my mind, and are the following:
If there be a woman's sphere, as a man's sphere, why has not woman an equal voice in fixing the limits? If it be unwomanly for a girl to have a whole education, why is it not unwomanly for her to have even a half one? Should she not be left where the Turkish women are left? If women have sufficient political influence through their husbands and brothers, how is it that the worst laws are confessedly those relating to female property? If politics are necessarily corrupting, ought not good men, as well as good women, to be exhorted to quit voting? _
If, however, man's theory be correct — that none should be appointed jurors but those whose occupations fit them to understand the matters in dispute — where is the propriety of empanneling a jury of men to decide on the right of a divorced mother to her child? If it be proper for a woman to open her lips in jubilee to sing nonsense, how can it be improper for her to open them and speak sense? These afford a sample of the questions to which I have been trying in vain to find an answer. If the reasonings of men on this subject are a fair specimen of the masculine intellect of the nineteenth century, I think it is certainly quite time to call in women to do the thinking.
Yours, respectfully and cordially, T. W. Higginson.
Miss Lucy Stone.
Matilda Joslyn Gage cited the Convention to a case recently tried before the Court of Common Pleas of New York, as illustrating the husband's ownership of the wife, the Court deciding that the friends of a woman who had "harbored" and detained her from her husband, though with her own consent and desire, should pay him $10,000. He recovered this sum on the principle of ownership; the wife's services were due him, and he recovered their value.
Mrs. Gage also commented on the divorce laws, which she declared were less just in Christian than in Mohammedan countries. In those countries if the husband sues for a divorce he is obliged to restore the dower, but in Christian America the husband not only retains all the property in case he sues for a divorce, but where the wife, being the innocent party, sues, she even then receives neither property nor children, unless by an express decree of the court. She is alike punished, whether innocent or guilty. Mrs. Gage also discussed the question so often put, "What has woman to do with politics?" She said the country must look to women for its salvation.Sojourner Truth, a tall colored woman, well known in antislavery circles, and called the Lybian Sybil, made her appearance on the platform. This was the signal for a fresh outburst from the mob; for at every session every man of them was promptly in his place, at twenty-five cents ahead. And this was the one redeeming feature of this mob — it paid all expenses, and left a surplus in the treasury. Sojourner combined in herself, as an individual, the two most hated elements of humanity. She was black, and she was a woman, and all the insults that could be cast upon color and sex were together hurled at her; but there she stood, calm and dignified, a grand, wise woman, who could neither read nor write, and yet with deep insight could penetrate the very soul of the universe about her. As soon as the terrible turmoil was in a measure quelled
I was a-thinkin', when I see women contendin' for their rights, I was athinkin' what a difference there is now, and what there was in old times. I have only a few minutes to speak; but in the old times the kings of the earth would hear a woman. There was a king in the Scriptures; and then it was the kings of the earth would kill a woman if she come into their presence; but Queen Esther come forth, for she was oppressed, and felt there was a great wrong, and she said I will die or I will bring my complaint before the king. Should the king of the United States be greater, or more crueler, or more harder? But the king, he raised up his sceptre and said: "Thy request shall be granted unto thee—to the half of my kingdom will I grant it to thee!" Then he said he would hang Haman on the gallows he had made up high. But that is not what women come forward to contend. The women want their rights as Esther. She only wanted to explain her rights. And he was so liberal that he said, "the half of my kingdom shall be granted to thee," and he did not wait for her to ask, he was so liberal with her.
Now, women do not ask half of a kingdom, but their rights, and they don't get 'em. When she comes to demand 'em, don't you hear how sons hiss their mothers like snakes, because they ask for their rights; and can they ask for anything less? The king ordered Haman to be hung on the gallows which he prepared to hang others; but I do not want any man to be killed, but I am sorry to see them so short-minded. But we'll have our rights; see if we don't; and you can't stop us from them; see if you can. You may hiss as much as you like, but it is comin'. Women don't get half as much rights as they ought to; we want more, and we will have it. Jesus says: "What I say to one, I say to all—watch!" I'm a-watehin'. God says: "Honor your father and your mother." Sons and daughters ought to behave themselves before their mothers, but they do not. I can see them a-laughin', and pointin' at their mothers up here on the stage. They hiss when an aged woman comes forth. If they'd been brought up proper they'd have known better than hissing like snakes and geese. I'm 'round watchin' these things, and I wanted to come up and say these few things to you, and I'm glad of the hearin' you give me. I wanted to tell you a mite about Woman's Rights, and so I came out and said so. I am sittin' among you to watch; and every once and awhile I will come out and tell you what time of night it is.
The New York Times, Sept. 9, 1853.
The Row of Yesterday.—Row No. 3 was a very jolly affair, a regular break-down, at the Woman's Convention. The women had their rights, and more beside. The cause was simply that the rowdyish diathesis is just now prevalent. True, a colored woman made a speech, but there was nothing in that to excite a multitude; she did not speak too low to be heard; she did not insult them with improper language; nor did the audience respond at all insultingly. They did not curse, they only called for "half a dozen on the shell." They did not swear, they only "hurried up that stew." They did wrong, however.
If we had our own way every rascally rowdy among them should have Bloomers of all colors preaching at them by the year—a year for every naughty word they uttered, a score of them for every hiss. Out upon the villains who go to any meeting to disturb it. Let anybody who can hire a house and pay for it have his way, and let none be disturbed; the opposers can stay away. But for us, let us be thankful that in such hot weather there is something to amuse us, something to season our insipid dishes, something to spice our dull days with. Mem. It was cooler in the evening.
Caroline M. Severance, of Ohio, presented an argument and appeal based upon the following propositions: That as the manifest dissimilarities which cause the nations of the earth to differ, physically, and in degree of mental and moral development and cultivation, are not found justly to invalidate their claim to a place in the vast brotherhood of man—to fullness of family communion and rights; so there are no radical differences of the sexes in these respects, which can at all impair the integrity of an equal humanity—no sufficient basis for a distinction in so comprehensive a classification.
The fundamental facts and faculties—the higher and more essential attributes which make up the accepted definition of humanity in our day, are identical in both—are no more confined or unduly allotted to one sex than to one nation.
On the broad basis of this philosophy, on the ground of woman's undeniable and equal humanity, proven by the possession of identical human faculties, and equal human needs, we claim for her the recognition of that humanity and its rights—for the freedom, protection, development, and use of those faculties, and the supply of those needs. And we maintain that no accident of sex, no prejudged or proven dissimilarity in degree of physical, mental, or moral endowment, or development, can at all stand in the way of the admission of such just claim; and no denial of such claim but must necessarily be fraught with evil, as subversive of the Creator's economy and design. [Shouts and laughter.]
Rev. John Pierpont, who, for the first time, took part in a Woman's Rights Convention, said: Ladies and gentlemen, a woman, at this hour, occupies the throne of the mightiest kingdom of the globe. Under her sway there are some hundred and fifty millions of the human race. Has she a right to sit there? [Several voices, "No!"] The vote here is—no; but a hundred and fifty millions vote the contrary. If a woman can thus have the highest right conceded to her, why should not woman have a lower? Therefore, some women have some rights. Is not the question a fair one,—how many women have any rights? And, also, how many rights has any woman? Are not these fair subjects for discussion? I do not come here to advocate any specific right for women; I come merely for the consideration of the question, what right she has. What are the rights which can not rightfully be denied her? Surely, some belong to the sex at large, as part of the great family of man. We lay it, down as the foundation of our civil theory, that man, as man, has, and by nature is endowed with certain natural, inviolable, indefeasible rights; not that men who have attained the age of majority alone possess those rights; not that the older, the young, the fair, or the dark, are alone endowed with them; but that they belong to all. The rights are not of man's giving; God gave them; and if you deny or withhold them, you place yourself in antagonism with your Creator. The more humble and despised is the human being claiming those rights, the more prompt should be the feeling of every manly bosom to stand by that humble creature of God, and see that its right is not withheld from it! Is it a new thing in this country to allow civil rights to a woman?Susan B. Anthony, who had been a teacher for fifteen years, gave an amusing description of her recent experience in attempting to speak at a teachers' convention. Paulina Wright Davis offered the following resolution:
It was rather singular that in this Convention, so entirely under the control of a mob, that there should be found one man who dared to stand upon the platform and announce that he had been an opponent for ten years, and was connected with a journal which had initiated this mob; and now he desired to give in his adhesion, and to confess his conversion. This was one of the remarkable incidents of the occasion.
As it was inconsistent with Mrs. Mott's Quaker principles to call upon the police for the forcible suppression of the mob, she vacated the chair, inviting Ernestine L. Rose to take her place. The last evening session opened with a song by G. W. Clark; but the music did not soothe the mob soul; he was greeted with screeches, which his voice only at brief intervals could drown.
The President then introduced a German lady, Madame Mathilde Francesca Anneké, editor of a liberal woman's rights newspaper which had been suppressed in Germany. She had but recently landed in our country, and hastened to the Convention to enjoy the blessings of free speech in a republic. She had heard so much of freedom in America, that she could hardly express her astonishment at what she witnessed. After many attempts, and with great difficulty, owing to the tumult and interruption by impertinent noises, she spoke as follows, in German, Mrs. Rose translating her remarks into English:
The audience showing a better disposition to hear Madame Anneké, she proceeded thus:
Before I came here, I knew the tyranny and oppression of kings; I felt it in my own person, and friends, and country; and when I came here I expected to find that freedom which is denied us at home. Our sisters in Germany have long desired freedom, but there the desire is repressed as well in man as in woman. There is no freedom there, even to claim human rights. Here they expect to find freedom of speech; here, for if we can not claim it here, where should we go for it? Here, at least, we ought to be able to express our opinions on all subjects; and yet, it would appear, there is no freedom even here to claim human rights, although the only hope in our country for freedom of speech and action, is directed to this country for illustration and example. That freedom I claim. The women of my country look to this for encouragement and sympathy; and they, also, sympathize with this cause. We hope it will go on and prosper; and many hearts across the ocean in Germany are beating in unison with those here.
Madame Anneké retired amid a great uproar, which increased when Mr. Phillips presented himself again. He persisted against frequent clamorous interruptions in his purpose to speak, and addressed the meeting as follows:
Mrs. Rose: As presiding officer for this evening, I call upon the police. The mayor, too, promised to see that our meetings should not be disturbed, and I now call upon him to preserve order. As citizens of New York, we have a right to this protection, for we pay our money for it. My friends, keep order, and then we shall know who the disturbers are.
Mr. Philips: You are making a better speech than I can, by your conduct. This is proof positive of the necessity of this Convention. The time has been when other Conventions have been met like this—with hisses. (Renewed hisses). Go on with your hisses; geese have hissed before now. If it be your pleasure to argue the question for us, by proving that the men here, at least, are not fit for exercising political rights. (Great uproar).
Mrs Rose: I regret that I have again to call upon the police to keep order; and if they are not able to do it, I call upon the meeting to help them.
Mr. Phillips: You prove one thing to-night, that the men of New York do not understand the meaning of civil liberty and free discussion.Antoinette Brown made an attempt to speak, but soon ceased amidst the most indescribable uproar. Mr. Elliott then jumped upon the platform, and harangued the audience as a representative of the rowdies, though he claimed for himself great fairness and respectability. He said:
Here the audience seemed to have lost all patience, and Mr. Elliott's voice was completely drowned in the uproar. He retired, repeating that he had proved the rowdies were not all on one side. The confusion now reached its climax. A terrific uproar, shouting, yelling, screaming, bellowing, laughing, stamping, cries of "Burleigh," "Root," "Truth," "Shut up," "Take a drink," "Greedey," etc., prevented anything orderly being heard, and the Convention, on the motion of Mrs. Rose, was adjourned sine die; the following resolution having first been read by Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, and passed without dissent:
Daily Tribune, Sept. 8, 1853.
WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION:—Meeting At The Tabernacle.
Evening Session.—Tremendous uproar—close of the Convention. Yesterday evening being the last sitting of this Convention, the approach to the Tabernacle was thronged long before the hour for opening the doors, and considerable excitement seemed to prevail. At about seven o'clock the Tabernacle doors were thrown open, and the rush for tickets and admission to the anxious throng could only be equalled by that of a Jenny Lind night. The building, capable of holding some 2,000 persons, was immediately filled to excess, and the principal promoters of the movement took their places on the platform.... Mr. George W. Clark, who had been requested to sing a song on "Freedom of Thought," did so in a style apparently not much approved by the audience, who at a very early stage began to give vent to all kinds of groans and ironical cheers.
Mrs. Martin, of this State, was then introduced, and with considerable difficulty began her address.
(Cries—"No! no!" and tremendous yells and laughter). "Time's up," "That'll do." (Loud hisses, groans, laughter, tigers, and demoniac sounds from the galleries). Cries of "Phillips! Phillips." (Hisses and yells).
Tribune, Sept. 9, 1853.
We do not know whether any of the gentlemen who have succeeded in breaking up the Woman's Rights Convention, or of the other gentlemen who have succeeded in three sessions at Metropolitan Hall in silencing a regularly appointed and admitted delegate, will ever be ashamed of their passion and hostility, but we have little doubt that some of them will live to understand their own folly. At any rate, they have accomplished a very different thing from what they now suppose. For if it had been their earnest desire to strengthen the cause of Woman's Rights, they could not have done the work half so effectively. Nothing is so good for a weak and unpopular movement as this sort of opposition. Had Antoinette Brown been allowed to speak at Metropolitan Hall, her observations would certainly have occupied but a fraction of the time now wasted, and would have had just the weight proper to their sense and appropriateness, and no more. But instead of this the World's Convention was disturbed and its orators silenced. The consequences will be the mass of people throughout the country who might otherwise not know of its existence, will have their attention called and their sympathies enlisted in its behalf. So, too, when Antoinette Brown is put down by Rev. John Chambers and his colleagues, and denied what is her clear right as a member of the Temperance Convention by a vociferous mob, composed, we are sorry to say, very largely of clergymen, every impartial person sees that she is surrounded with a prestige and importance which, whatever her talents as a speaker, she could hardly hope to have attained. Many who question the propriety of woman’s appearing in public, will revolt at the gagging of one who had a right to speak and claimed simply to use it on a proper occasion. There is in the public mind of this country an intuitive love of fair play and free speech, and those who outrage it for any purpose of their own merely reinforce their opponents, and bestow a mighty power on the ideas they hate and fain would suppress.
Tribune, Sept. 12, 1858.
Arguments pro and con. The meetings at the Tabernacle Tuesday and Wednesday last, exhibited some features not often paralleled in the progress of any public agitation for the redress of grievances, or the vindication of rights. The advocates of an enlargement of the allotted sphere of woman, had hired the house, paid the advertising and other expenses, gathered at their own expense from their distant homes, and taken all the responsibilities of the outlay, yet they offered and desired throughout to surrender their own platform for one-half of the time, to any respectable and capable antagonists who should see fit to appear and attempt to show why their demands were not just and their grievances real. Consequently, though they are engaged in a struggle, not only against numbers and power, and fashion and immemorial custom, but with the Pulpit and the Press actively and bitterly leading and spurring on their antagonists, and with no access to the public ear but from the public platform, we consider this proposition more than liberal—it was chivalric and generous. We listened with interest to some of the arguments pro and con, and propose here to recapitulate their substance, that our readers may see at a glance the present position and bearing of the controversy. We will begin with the first speech we heard, that of
Rev. Wm. H. Channing: They say the public platform is not in woman’s sphere; but let us understand why. Jenny Lind stands on that platform before thousands of men and women, and sings, ‘‘ I know that my Redeemer. liveth,” with all hearts approving, all voices applauding, and nobody lisps a word that she is out of her sphere. Well, Antoinette Brown believes the sentiment so sang to be the hope of a lost world, and feels herself called to bear witness in behalf of that religion, and to commend His salvation to the understanding and hearts of all who will hear her. Why may she not obey this impulse, and bear the tidings of a world’s salvation to those perishing in darkness and sin? What is there unfeminine or revolting in her preaching the truth which Jenny Lind may sing without objection and amid universal applause ?
Answer by things ‘‘in male costumes.” Hiss-s-s.
Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose: The law declares husband and wife one; and such we all feel that they should be, and must be when the marriage is a true one. Now, why should that same law base their union or oneness on inequality or subjugation? The wife dies and the husband inherits all her property, as is right; but let the husband die, and the greater part of the property is taken from the wife and given to others, even though all that property was earned or inherited by the wife. She may be turned out of the house she was born in and which was hers until marriage, and see it given to her husband's brothers or other kindred who are strangers to her. I insist that the wife should own and inherit the property of the husband just to the same extent that the husband inherits that of the wife—why not?
Answer to the aforesaid—Hiss-s-s-s! Bow-ow-ow!
Harriot K. Hunt: I plant myself on the basis of the Declaration of Independence and insist, with our Revolutionary sires, that taxation without representation is tyranny. Well; here am I, an independent American woman, educated for and living by the practice of medicine. I own property, and pay taxes on that property. I demand of the Government that taxes me that it should allow me an equal voice with the other tax-payers in the disposal of the public money. I am certainly not less intelligent than thousands who, though scarcely able to read their ballots, are entitled to vote. I am allowed to vote in any bank or insurance company when I choose to be a stockholder; why ought I not to vote in the disposition of public money raised by tax, as well as those men who do not pay taxes, or those who do either?
Answer of the aforesaid—Yah! wow! Hiss-s-s-s!
Lucy Stone: I plead for the right of woman to the control of her own person as a moral, intelligent, accountable being. I know a wife who has not set foot outside of her husband's house for three years, because her husband forbids her doing so when he is present, and locks her up when he is absent. That wife is gray with sorrow and despair though now in middle life, but there is no redress for her wrongs because the law makes her husband her master, and there is no proof that he beats or bruises her; there is nothing in his treatment of her that the law does not allow. I protest against such a law and demand its overthrow; and I protest against any law which limits the sphere of woman, as a bar to her intellectual development. You say she can not do this and that, but if so, what need of a law to prevent her? You say her intellectual achievements have not equaled those of man; but I answer, that she has had no motive, no opportunity for such achievement. Close all the avenues, take away all the incitement for man's ambition, and he would do no more than woman does. Grant her freedom, education, and opportunity, and she will do what God intended she should do, no less, no more. Men! you dwarf, you wrong yourselves in restraining and fettering the intellectual development of woman! I ask for her liberty to do whatever moral and useful deed she proves able to do—why should I ask in vain?
Answer by time-serving Press: Men, Women, and Bloomers! Faugh! Bah!
Antoinette Brown: I plead that the mother may not be legally robbed of her children. I know a mother who was left a widow with
Pantalooned mob as aforesaid: Oh, dry up! Bow-ow! Waugh! Hiss-s-s! Get out!
The case is still on.
WOMAN'S RIGHTS STATE CONVENTION,
ROCHESTER, N. Y., NOVEMBER 30 AND DECEMBER 1, 1853.
As William Henry Channing resided at Rochester, and felt that the time had come for some more active measures, he was invited to prepare the call and resolutions for the Convention. The following was issued and extensively circulated, and signed by many of the leading men and women of the State:
THE JUST AND EQUAL RIGHTS OF WOMEN.
To the Men and Women of New York:
The "Woman's Rights" Movement is a practical one, demanding prompt and efficient action for the relief of oppressive wrongs; and, as the Conventions held for several years past in different States, have answered their end of arousing earnest public attention, the time has come for calling upon the people to reform the evils from which women suffer, by their Representatives in Legislative Assemblies.
The wise and humane of all classes in society, however much they may differ upon speculative points as to woman's nature and function, agree that there are actual abuses of women, tolerated by custom and authorized by law, which are condemned alike by the genius of republican institutions and the spirit of the Christian religion. Conscience and common sense, then, unite to sanction their immediate redress. Thousands of the best men and women, in all our communities, are asking such questions as these:
1. Why should not woman's work be paid for according to the quality of the work done, and not the sex of the worker?
2. How shall we open for woman's energies new spheres of well remunerated industry?
3. Why should not wives, equally with husbands, be entitled to their own earnings?
4. Why should not widows, equally with widowers, become by law the legal guardians, as they certainly are by nature the natural guardians, of their own children?
5. On what just ground do the laws make a distinction between men and women, in regard to the ownership of property, inheritance, and the administration of estates?
6. Why should women, any more than men, be taxed without representation?
7. Why may not women claim to be tried by a jury of their peers, with exactly the same right as men claim to be and actually are?
8. If women need the protection of the laws, and are subject to the penalties of the laws equally with men, why should they not have an equal influence in making the laws, and appointing Legislatures, the Judiciary, and Executive?
And, finally, if governments — according to our National Declaration of Independence — "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," why should women, any more than men, be governed without their own consent; and why, therefore, is not woman's right to suffrage precisely equal to man's?
For the end of finding out practical answers to these and similar questions, and making suitable arrangements to bring the existing wrongs of women, in the State of New York, before the Legislature at its next session, we, the undersigned, do urgently request the men and women of the Commonwealth to assemble in Convention, in the city of Rochester, on Wednesday, November 30th, and Thursday, December 1, 1853.The Convention assembled at Corinthian Hall at 10 o'clock. Rev. Samuel J. May, of Syracuse, in the chair. [34] After thanking the Convention for the honor conferred, he ran the parallel between the laws for married women and the slaves on the Southern plantation, and then introduced Ernestine L. Rose, to paint in more vivid colors the picture he had outlined.
Matilda Joslyn Gage said: The legal disabilities of woman are many, as not only known to those who bear them, but they are acknowledged by Kent, Story, and many other legal authorities. A wife has no management in the joint earnings of herself and her husband; they are entirely under control of the husband, who is obliged to furnish the wife merely the common necessaries of life; all that she receives beyond these is looked upon by the law as a favor, and not held as her right. A mother is denied the custody of her own child; a most barbarous and unjust law, which robs her of the child placed in her care by the great Creator himself. A widow is allowed the use merely of one-third of the real estate left at the husband's death; and when her minor children have grown up she must surrender the personal property, even to the family Bible, and the pictures of her dear children. In view of such laws the women engaged in this movement ask that the wife shall be made heir to the husband to the same extent that he is now her heir.
Taxation without representation is another of the wrongs that woman endures. In this she is held below the negro in the political scale; for the black man, when not possessing property to the extent of two hundred and fifty dollars, is not allowed to vote, but neither is he taxed. The present law of divorce is very unjust; the husband, whether the innocent or the guilty party, retaining all the wife's property, as also the control of the children unless by special decree of the court they are assigned to the mother.
Rev. Antoinette Brown said: The wife owes service and labor to her husband as much and as absolutely as the slave does to his master. This grates harshly upon the ears of Christendom; but it is made palpably and practically true all through our statute books, despite the poetic fancy which views woman as elevated in the social estate; but a little lower than the angels.Letters were read from Paulina Wright Davis, Dr. Trail, Mary C. Vaughan, and Hon. William Hay. A series of fourteen resolutions were presented by Mr. Channing, and discussed, which suggested the appointment of various committees. One to prepare an address to the Legislature, and to ask a special hearing before a joint committee to consider the whole subject of the just and equal rights of woman; another to prepare an address to the capitalists and industrialists of New York on the best modes of employing and remunerating women.
Resolved, That the design of all true legislation should be the elevation of every member of the community—and that the violation of this legitimate design, in depriving woman of her just and equal rights, is not only highly injurious to her, but by reason of the equilibrium which pervades all existence, that man, too, is impeded in his progress by the very chains which bind woman to the lifeless skeleton of feudal civilization.
Resolved, That we do not ask for woman's political, civil, industrial, and social equality with man, in the spirit of antagonism, or with a wish to produce separate and conflicting interests between the sexes, but because the onward progress of society and the highest aspirations of the human race, demand that woman should everywhere be recognized as the co-equal and co-sovereign of man.
Resolved, That women justly claim an equally free access with men, to the highest means of mental, moral, and physical culture, provided in seminaries, colleges, professional and industrial schools; and that we call upon all friends of progress and upon the Legislature of New York, in establishing and endowing institutions, to favor pre-eminently those which seek to place males and females on a level of equal advantages in their system of education.
Resolved, That, inasmuch as universal experience proves the inseparable connection between dependence and degradation—while it is plain to every candid observer of society that women are kept poor, by being crowded together, to compete with and undersell one another in a few branches of labor, and that from this very poverty of women, spring many of the most terrible wrongs and evils, which corrupt and endanger society: therefore do we invite the earnest attention of capitalists, merchants, traders, manufacturers, and mechanics, to the urgent need, which everywhere exists, of opening to women new avenues of honest and honorable employment, and we do hereby call upon all manly men to make room for their sisters to earn an independent livelihood.
Resolved, That, whereas, the custom of making small remuneration for woman's work, in all departments of industry, has sprung from her dependence, which dependence is prolonged and increased by this most irrational and unjust habit of half pay; therefore do we demand, in the name of common sense and common conscience, that women equally with men, should be paid for their services according to the quality and quantity of the work done, and not the sex of the worker.
Resolved, That, whereas, the State of New York, in the acts of 1848 and 1849, has honorably and justly placed married women on the footing of equality with unmarried women, in regard to the receiving, holding, conveying, and devising of all property, real and personal, we call upon the Legislature of the State to take the next step—so plainly justified by its own precedents—of providing that husbands and wives shall be joint owners of their joint earnings—the community estate passing to the survivor at the death of either party.
Resolved, That, whereas, the evident intent of the Legislature of the State of New York has for many years been progressively to do away with the legal disabilities of women, which existed under the savage usages of the old common law, therefore we do urgently call upon the Legislature of this State, at its next session, to appoint a joint committee to examine and revise the statutes, and to propose remedies for the redress of all legal grievances from which women now suffer, and suitable measures for the full establishment of women's legal equality with men.
Resolved, That, whereas, under the common law, the father is regarded as the guardian, by nature, of his children, having the entire control of their persons and education, while only upon the death of the father, does the mother become the guardian by nature; and, whereas, by the revised statutes of New York, it is provided, that where an estate in lands shall become vested in an infant, the guardianship of such infant, with the rights, powers, and duties of a guardian in soccage, shall belong to the father, and only in case of the father's death, to the mother; and, whereas, finally and chiefly, by the revised statutes of New York, it is provided, that every father may, by his deed or last will, duly executed, dispose of the custody and tuition of his children, during their minority, "to any person or persons in possession or remainder"; therefore, do we solemnly protest against the utter violation of every mother's rights, authorized by existing laws, in regard to the guardianship of infants, and demand, in the name of common humanity, that the Legislature of New York so amend the statutes, as to place fathers and mothers on equal footing in regard to the guardianship of their children. Especially do we invite the Legislature instantly to pass laws, entitling mothers to become their children's guardians, in all cases where, by habitual drunkenness, immorality, or improvidence, fathers are incompetent to the sacred trust.
Resolved, That, whereas, according to the amendments of the Constitution of the United States, it is provided that "in all criminal cases, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury," and that "in suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved"; and, whereas, according to the revised statutes of New York, it is provided, that "no member of this State can be disfranchised or deprived of any of the rights or privileges, secured to any citizen thereof, unless by the law of the land, or the judgment of his peers"; therefore, do we demand, that women, as "members" and "citizens" of this State, equally with men, should be entitled to claim a trial by "an impartial jury of their peers." And especially do we remonstrate against the partial, mean, and utterly inequitable custom, everywhere prevalent, that in questions of divorce, men, and men alone, should be regarded as "an impartial jury."
Resolved, That, whereas, in the Declaration of Independence of the United States, one of the "injuries and usurpation" complained of is Taxation without the consent of the persons taxed; and, whereas, it is provided in the revised statutes of New York, that "no tax, duty, aid or imposition whatever — except such as may be laid by a law of the United States — can be taken or levied within this State, without the grant and assent of the people of this State; by their representatives in Senate and Assembly"; and that "no citizen of this State can be compelled to contribute to any gift, loan, tax, or other like charge, not laid or imposed by a law of the United States, or by the Legislature of the State"; therefore do we proclaim, that it is a gross act of tyranny and usurpation, to tax women without their consent, and we demand, either that women be represented by their own appointed representatives, or that they be freed from the imposition of taxes.
Resolved, That inasmuch as it is the fundamental principle of the Nation and of every State in this Union, that all "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed" — it is a manifest violation of the Supreme Law of the land for males to govern females without their consent; and therefore do we demand, of the people of New York, such a change in the Constitution of the State, as will secure to women the right of suffrage which is now so unjustly monopolized by men.
Resolved, That Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Samuel J. May, Ernestine L. Rose, William Hay, Susan B. Anthony, Burroughs Phillips, Antoinette L. Brown, W. H. Channing, and Lydia A. Jenkins, be a committee to prepare and to present an address to the Legislature of New York, at its next session, stating, as specifically as they shall see fit, the legal disabilities of women, and to ask a hearing before a joint committee, specially appointed to consider the whole subject of the just and equal rights of women.
Resolved, That Horace Greeley, Mary C. Vaughan, Abram Pryne, Sarah Pellet, and Matilda Joslyn Gage be a committee to prepare an address to capitalists and industrialists of New York, on the best modes of employing and remunerating the industry of women.
The President invited any one who saw errors or fallacies in the arguments brought forward, to make them apparent.
Mr. Pryne, of Cazenovia, editor of the Progressive Christian, said: If women desire to enter the ordinary avocations of men, they must be brave enough to become shopkeepers and mechanics. There is no law to prevent it, neither is there to woman's voting. The men have made an arrangement by which their votes are not counted, but still they might provide ballot-boxes, and decide upon whom they would prefer as magistrates and legislators. A man who was thus voted to stay at home, by an overwhelming majority of women, even if elected by the men, would find himself in an uncomfortable position.
Mr. Channing said he understood that in a town in Ohio the women did so, and cast sixty votes.
Mr. Pryne was glad to hear that there were practical women in Ohio. Man is where he is because he is what he is, and when woman gets the same elements of moral and physical power she will have no more wrongs to complain of.
Mrs. Rose said it was a true maxim that he who would be free, himself must strike the blow. But woman could not, as things were, help herself. As well might the slaveholder say that the slave was fit for no other condition while he consents to occupy that position. To a certain extent this is true, and the same principles apply to both classes. But all human beings are not martyrs; the majority accept the conditions in which they find themselves, rather than make their lives one long struggle for freedom. Woman must be educated to take the stand which Mr. Pryne invites her to assume. The only object for which woman is now reared is to be married; and is she fitted even for that; to become a companion, an assistant, an aid, a comforter to man; and above all, a mother? That alone; to fit a woman for that sphere; she must possess all the extended education which would fit her to take any position in life to which man aspires.
Mary F. Love said there might be hindrances in the way of woman too great for her to surmount. Men in their straggles for liberty have sometimes met insuperable obstacles; there have been unsuccessful revolutions at all stages of human development.
Frederick Douglass, in discussing the injustice to woman in the world of work, said: Some one whispers in my ear that as teachers women get one-fourth the pay men do, while a girl's tuition is the same as a boy's.
The President observed, that the girl gets twice as much education, being uniformly more studious and attentive.
E. A. Hopkins, a lawer of Rochester, spoke to the eighth resolution, which asks for a committee to examine the whole subject; he said: I believe if this question was properly presented to the Legislature, we might have well grounded hope for the relief of women from their legal disabilities, and indicated the amendments which ought to be made in the present laws regulating the relations of the married state. He argued against making the man and wife joint owners of property, except in certain specific cases.
Rev. Mr. Channing said that in Louisiana and California this joint ownership was recognized by the laws.
Mr. Hopkkins was not aware of that; and he did not see why labor, worth in the market no more than one or two dollars per week, should be paid for at the rate of, it may be, $200 per week. He thought the law should be altered so that the widow may have control of property while her children are minors. The right to vote, which was claimed under the idea that representation should go before taxation, he discussed with ability, taking ground against women voting. The arguments used by the other side were shown to be fallacious, or at least partaking of the aristocratic element. Women are already tried by "their peers," though not by those of their own sex. As to women holding office, this movement had proved the position of Dr. Channing, in his discussion with Miss Martineau, that "influence was good, and office bad." Women should be content to exercise influence, without seeking for the spoils and risking the temptations of office. He argued upon the maxim that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," contending that it was not true; those powers are derived from the majority who are brave enough to set up and sustain the government[35]
Frederick Douglass, in the course of his remarks, said he had seen two young women assistants in the County Clerk's office, also young women going into printing-offices to set type; and he might have added the following, which we clip from the The Una of the same date:
Mr. May said: If a woman should not leave her family to go to the Legislature, neither should a man. The obligation is mutual: and while children require the care of both parents, both should share the duty, and not leave them from ambitious motives. It is only those who have well discharged their duties to their families who are fit to become legislators. We are now giving the nation into the hands of boys and half-grown men. Had we such women as Lucretia Mott and Angelina Grimké in the Legislature, there would be more wisdom there than we have to day. When I look through the nation and see the shameful mismanagement, I am convinced that it is the result, in part, of the absence of the feminine element in high stations; it is because the maternal influence is wanting that we run riot as we do. The State is in a condition of half orphanage, and needs the care and guidance of a mother.
E. A. Hopkins, Esq.: Thought the movement was not entirely timely, wise, and practicable, though parts of it might be. He took up and answered each of the questions appended to the call for the Convention. His speech was characteristic of the lawyer, and the frequent recurrence of the idea, it is right because it is customary, will illustrate its moral character. He stated three several points where he thought woman was aggrieved and should have legislative redress. Office was a temptation, and he thought woman was better off without it.
Miss Brown proposed that the men, for a while, be relieved from this great evil, and excused from the burdens of office. If this necessary duty was so burdensome, woman should be a helper and share its burdens with him. We are taught to be grateful for small favors. Our friend has been giving you milk, but to me it seems, even at that, diluted with water. There is one law, "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." When our brothers are ready to be paid a dollar a week for keeping house and nursing the children, let them dictate this also to us. We women now offer to take the burden and responsibility of government upon ourselves. We would be willing to save our friends for a time from temptation and care, as they have so generously done by us; if we are to be satisfied with things as they are, so should the slave be. He should be grateful for the care of his master, for according to the established price paid for labor, he does not earn enough to take care of himself. We should be satisfied with our present license laws; they are right, just, and good, judged by our friend's reasoning. If our offer to rule alone is not liked, we are ready, then, to co-operate with man in this according to the original design and arrangement of the Creator.
Mr. Hopkins opposed with several objections, one of which was, that private stations demand as high qualifications, and more surely command a just recompense, than public offices; woman has yet taken few lucrative private employments; why, then, till these are taken, should she seek for public office?
Frederick Douglass again raised the inquiry, in the investment of money or the use of property, where there is joint ownership, and in regard to which there may be disagreement between husband and wife, how shall the matter be settled between them? Law is not a necessity of human nature; if love ruled, statutes would be obsolete; genuine marriages and harmonious co-operations would prevent any such necessity.
Miss Brown proposed to reply in a word: Law must regulate differences where there is not true union, and as a business copartnership, if the matter could not be adjusted between themselves to mutual satisfaction, let it be referred to a third person; where it is a property transaction, let the usual business custom be observed; but if there be a difficulty of a different nature, so serious that the parties, bound to each other for life, can not enjoy existence together if they can not make each other happy, but are to each other a mutual source of discomfort, why, let them separate; let them not be divorced, but let them each be content to live alone for the good of society.
Mrs. Love, of Randolph, read an address, flowery in style, but full of truth, upon the discord that pervades social life. Homes should be reformed; from domestic uncongeniality spring the chief evils of society. She advised men and women to beware of inharmonious alliances, and made a touching appeal in behalf of the fallen of her sex.
Mr. Channing said: Whenever he heard a woman, in face of existing prejudices, speak the simple truth in regard to the social wrongs of her sisters, as Mrs. Love had done, asking no leave of the Convention, and making no apology for her sincere words, however they might startle false delicacy, he felt bound as a man, and in the name of man, to offer her the tribute of his hearty respect.
Mr. Channing presented two forms of petitions—one for property rights, the other for suffrage—which were adopted. Rev. Lydia A. Jenkins read a carefully prepared address. Emma R. Coe made a full review of the laws, which, at that early day, was the burden of almost every speech. At the close of the sixth session, the audiences having grown larger and larger, until the spacious and beautiful Corinthian Hall was packed to its utmost, the Convention adjourned, to begin its real work in canvassing the State with lectures and petitions, preparing an address to the Legislature, securing a hearing, and holding a Convention at Albany during the coming session of that body.
An appeal[36] to the women of the State was at once issued, and all editors requested to publish it with the forms of petitions. The responses came back in the form of 13,000 signatures in two months, gathered in thirty out of the sixty counties of the Empire State. The lecturers were: Susan B. Anthony, Mary F. Love, Sarah Pellet, Lydia A. Jenkins, and Matilda Joslyn Gage. Over sixty women were engaged in the work of circulating the petitions.
Horace Greeley, chairman of the Committee on Industry, published in The New York Tribune the following report:
WOMAN AND WORK.
Every able-bodied man inured to labor, though of the rudest sort, who steps on shore in America from Europe, is worth a dollar per day, and can readily command it. Though he only knows how to wield such rude, clumsy implements as the pick and spade, there are dozens of places where his services are in request at,a dollar per day the year through, and he can even be transported hence to the place where his services are wanted, on the strength of his contract to work and the credit of his future earnings. We do not say this is the case every day in the year, for it may not be at this most inclement and forbidding season; but it is the general fact, as every one knows. And any careful, intelligent, resolute male laborer is morally certain to rise out of the condition of a mere shoveler, into a position where the work is lighter and the pay better after a year or two of faithful service.
But the sister of this same faithful worker, equally careful, intelligent, and willing to do anything honest and reputable for a living, finds no
[37] such chances proffered her. No agent meets her on the dock to persuade her to accept a passage to Illinois or Upper Canada, there to be employed on fair work at a dollar per day and expectations. On the contrary, she may think herself fortunate if a week's search opens to her a place where by the devotion of all her waking hours she can earn five to six dollars per month, with a chance of its increase, after several years' faithful service, to seven or eight dollars at most.
The brother is in many respects the equal of his employer; may sit down beside him at the hotel where they both stop for dinner; their votes may balance each other at any election; the laborer lives with those whose company suits him, and needs no character from his last place to secure him employment or a new job when he gets tired of the old one. But the sister never passes out of the atmosphere of caste — of conscious and galling inferiority to those with whom her days must be spent. There is no election day in her year, and but the ghost of a Fourth of July. She must live not with those she likes, but with those who want her; she is not always safe from libertine insult in what serves her for a home; she knows no ten-hour rule, and would not dare to claim its protection if one were enacted. Though not a slave by law, she is too often as near it in practice as one legally free can be.
Now this disparity between the rewards of man's and woman's labor at the base of the social edifice, is carried up to its very pinnacle. Of a brother and sister equally qualified and effective as teachers, the brother will receive twice as much compensation as the sister. The mistress who conducts the rural district school in summer, usually receives less than half the monthly stipend that her brother does for teaching that same school in winter, when time and work are far less valuable; and here there can be no pretence of a disparity in capacity justifying that in wages. Between male and female workers in the factories and mills, the same difference is enforced.
Who does not feel that this is intrinsically wrong? that the sister ought to have equal (not necessarily identical) opportunities with the brother — should be as well taught, industrially as well as intellectually, and her compensation made to correspond with her capacity, upon a clear understanding of the fact that, though her muscular power is less than his, yet her dexterity and celerity of manipulation are greater?
Where does the wrong originate? Suppose that, by some inexorable law in the spirit of Hindoo caste, it were settled that negroes, regardless of personal capacity, could do nothing for a living but black boots, and that red-haired men were allowed to engage in no avocation except horse-currying; who does not perceive that, though boot-blacking and horse-currying might be well and cheaply done, black-skinned and also red-haired men would have but a sorry chance for making a living? Who does not see that their wages, social standing, and means of securing independence, would be far inferior to those they now enjoy?
The one great cause, therefore, of the inadequate compensation and inferior position of woman, is the unjust apportionment of avocation. Man has taken the lion's share to himself, and allotted the residue to woman, telling her to take that and be content with it, if she don't want to be regarded as a forward, indelicate, presuming, unwomanly creature, who is evidently no better than she should be. And woman has come for the most part to accept the lot thus assigned her, with thankfulness, or, rather, without thought, just as the Mussulman's wife rejoices in her sense of propriety which will not permit her to show her face in the street, and the Brahmin widow immolates herself on the funeral pyre of her husband.
What is the appropriate remedy?
Primarily and mainly, a more rational and healthful public sentiment with regard to woman's work; a sentiment which shall welcome her to every employment wherein she may be useful and efficient without necessarily compromising her purity or overtasking her strength. Let her be encouraged to open a store, to work a garden, plant and tend an orchard, to learn any of the lighter mechanical trades, to study for a profession, whenever her circumstances and her tastes shall render any of these desirable. Let woman, and the advocates of justice to women, encourage and patronize her in whatever laudable pursuits she may thus undertake; let them give a preference to dry-goods stores wherein the clerks are mainly women; and so as to hotels where they wait at table, mechanics' shops in which they are extensively employed and fairly paid. Let the ablest of the sex be called to the lecture-room, to the temperance rostrum, etc.; and whenever a post-office falls vacant and a deserving woman is competent to fill and willing to take it, let her be appointed, as a very few have already been. There will always be some widow of a poor clergyman, doctor, lawyer, or other citizens prematurely cut off, who will be found qualified for and glad to accept such a post if others will suggest her name and procure her appointment. Thus abstracting more and more of the competent and energetic from the restricted sphere wherein they now struggle with their sister for a meager and precarious subsistence, the greater mass of self-subsisting women will find the demand for their labor gradually increasing and its recompense proportionally enhancing. With a larger field and more decided usefulness will come a truer and deeper respect; and woman, no longer constrained to marry for a position, may always wait to marry worthily and in obedience to the dictates of sincere affection. Hence constancy, purity, mutual respect, a just independence and a little of happiness, may be reasonably anticipated.
| Horace Greeley, Mary Vaughan, Abraham Pryne, |
| Sarah Pellet, Matilda Joslyn Gage. |
ALBANY CONVENTION.
February 14 and 15, 1854.
Although the weather was inclement, a large audience assembled in Association Hall on the morning of the 14th, representing the different portions of the State. Susan B. Anthony called the Convention to order and read the call, which had been written by Rev. Wm. Henry Channing, and published in all the leading papers of the State.
JUSTICE TO WOMEN—CONVENTION AT ALBANY, FEB. 14 AND 15, 1854.
The petition asking for such amendments in the Statutes and Constitution of New York as will secure to the women of the State legal equality with the men, and to females equally with the males a right to suffrage, will be presented to the Legislature about the middle of February. We, the Committee appointed at the Convention held at Rochester in December — by whose authority these petitions were issued — do hereby invite all fellow-citizens, of either sex, who are in favor of these measures, to assemble in Convention, at Albany, on Tuesday and Wednesday, February 14th and 15th.
The so-called "Woman's Rights Movement" has been so much misrepresented, that it is desirable to make the appeal for justice earnest, imposing, and effective, by showing how eminently equitable are its principles, how wise and practical are its measures. Let the serious-minded, generous, hopeful men and women of New York then gather in council, to determine whether there is anything irrational or revolutionary in the proposal that fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, should treat their daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers as their peers. This reform is designed, by its originators, to make woman womanly in the highest sense of that term — to exalt, not to degrade — to perfect, not to impair her refining influence in every sphere. The demand is made only to take off burdens, to remove hindrances, to leave women free as men are free, to follow conscience and judgment in all scenes of duty. On what ground — except the right of might — do men, claiming to be Republicans and Christians, deny to woman privileges which they would die to gain and keep for themselves? What evil — what but good can come from enlarging woman's power of usefulness? How can society be otherwise than a gainer by the increased moral and mental influence of one-half of its members? Let these and similar questions be fairly, candidly, thoroughly discussed in the hearing of the Legislature of New York.
Come then, fellow-citizens, to this Convention prepared to speak, to hear, to act. Lucy Stone, Wendell Phillips, Mrs. C. I. H. Nichols, and other earnest friends of the cause from New England and the West, as well as from our own State, are to be with us. And may the spirit of Truth preside over all.
Those having petitions in their hands will please send them to Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, until the first of February, after which they should be forwarded to Lydia Mott, Albany.
N. B. — Editors please copy.
January 23, 1854.The officers[38] of the Convention being reported, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (President) took the chair, and after returning her acknowledgments for the honor conferred, introduced Rev. Antoinette L. Brown, who read a series of resolutions:
2. Resolved, That women are human beings whose rights correspond with their duties; that they are endowed with conscience, reason, affection, and energy, for the use of which they are individually responsible; that like men they are bound to advance the cause of truth, justice, and universal good in the society and nation of which they are members; that in these United States women constitute one-half the people; men constitute the other half; that women are no more free in honor than men are to withhold their influence and example from patriotic and philanthropic movements, and that men who deny women to be their peers, and who shut them out from exercising a fair share of power in the body politic, are arrogant usurpers, whose only apology is to be found in prejudices transmitted from half-civilized and half-christianized ages.
Whereas The family is the nursery of the State and the Church—the God-appointed seminary of the human race. Therefore
3. Resolved, That the family, by men as well as women, should be held more sacred than all other institutions; that it may not, without sin, be abandoned or neglected by fathers any more than by mothers, for the sake of any of the institutions devised by men—for the government of the State or the Nation any more than for the voluntary association of social reformers.
4. Resolved, That women's duties and rights as daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers, are not bounded within the circle of home; that in view of the sacredness of their relations, they are not free to desert their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons amidst scenes of business, politics, and pleasure, and to leave them alone in their struggles and temptations, but that as members of the human family, for the sake of human advancement, women are bound as widely as possible to give to men the influence of their aid and presence; and finally, that universal experience attests that those nations and societies are most orderly, high-toned, and rich in varied prosperity, where women most freely intermingle with men in all spheres of active life.
5. Resolved, That the fundamental error of the whole structure of legislation and custom, whereby women are practically sustained, even in this republic, is the preposterous fiction of law, that in the eye of the law the husband and wife are one person, that person being the husband; that this falsehood itself, the deposit of barbarism, tends perpetually to brutalize the marriage relation by subjecting wives as irresponsible tools to the capricious authority of husbands; that this degradation of married women re-acts inevitably to depress the condition of single women, by impairing their own self-respect and man's respect for them; and that the final result is that system of tutelage miscalled protection, by which the industry of women is kept on half-pay, their affections trifled with, their energies crippled, and even their noblest aspirations wasted away in vain efforts, ennui, and regret.
6. Resolved, That in consistency with the spirit and intent of the Statutes of New York, enacted in 1848 and 1849, the design of which was to secure to married women the entire control of their property, it is the duty of the Legislature to make such amendments in the laws of the State as will enable married women to conduct business, to form contracts, to sue and be sued in their own names — to receive and hold the gains of their industry, and be liable for their own debts so far as their interests are separate from those of their husbands — to become joint owners in the joint earnings of the partnership, so far as these interests are identified — to bear witness for or against their husbands, and generally to be held responsible for their own deeds.
7. Resolved, That as acquiring property by all just and laudable means, and the holding and devising of the same is a human right, women married and single are entitled to this right, and all the usages or laws which withhold it from them are manifestly unjust.
8. Resolved, That every argument in favor of universal suffrage for males is equally in favor of universal suffrage for females, and therefore if men may claim the right of suffrage as necessary to the protection of all their rights in any Government, so may women for the same reason.
9. Resolved, That if man as man, has any peculiar claim to a representation in the government, for himself, woman as woman, has a paramount claim to an equal representation for herself.
10. Resolved, Therefore, that whether you regard woman as like or unlike man, she is in either case entitled to an equal joint participation with him in all civil rights and duties.
11. Resolved, That although men should grant us every specific claim, we should hold them all by favor rather than right, unless they also concede, and we exercise, the right of protecting ourselves by the elective franchise.
12. Resolved, That if the essence of a trial by an "impartial jury" be a trial by one's own equals, then has never a woman enjoyed that privilege in the hour of her need as a culprit. We, therefore, respectfully demand of our Legislature that, at least, the right of such trial by jury be accorded to women equally with men — that women be eligible to the jury-box, whenever one of their own sex is arraigned at the bar.
13. Resolved, That could the women of the State be heard on this question, we should find the mass with us; as the mother's reluctance to give up the guardianship of her children; the wife's unwillingness to submit to the abuse of a drunken husband, the general sentiment in favor of equal property rights, and the thousands of names in favor of our petition, raised with so little effort, conclusively prove.
Whereas, The right of petition is guaranteed to every member of this republic; therefore
14. Resolved, That it is the highest duty of legislators impartially to investigate all claims for the redress of wrong, and alter and amend such laws as prevent the administration of justice and equal rights to all.
Resolved, That all true-hearted men and women pledge themselves never to relinquish their unceasing efforts in behalf of the full and equal rights of women, until we have effaced the stigma resting on this republic, that while it theoretically proclaims that all men are created equal, deprives one-half of its members of the enjoyment of the rights and privileges possessed by the other.The salient points of the question as embodied in the resolutions and the address were ably presented by William Henry Channing, Samuel J. May, Mrs. Nichols, Mrs. Rose, Mrs. Love, Miss Brown, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Jenkins, Hon. William Hay, and Giles B. Stebbins. At the evening session Mrs. Stanton read her address prepared for the Legislature, which Miss Anthony had stereotyped and published. A copy was laid on the desk of every legislator, and twenty thousand scattered like snow-flakes over the State.
MRS. STANTON'S ADDRESS.
To the Legislature of the State of New York:
"The thinking minds of all nations call for change. There is a deep-lying struggle in the whole fabric of society; a boundless, grinding collision of the New with the Old."
The tyrant, Custom, has been summoned before the bar of Common-Sense. His majesty no longer awes the multitude — his sceptre is broken — his crown is trampled in the dust — the sentence of death is pronounced upon him. All nations, ranks, and classes have, in turn, questioned and repudiated his authority; and now, that the monster is chained and caged, timid woman, on tiptoe, comes to look him in the face, and to demand of her brave sires and sons, who have struck stout blows for liberty, if, in this change of dynasty, she, too, shall find relief. Yes, gentlemen, in republican America, in the nineteenth century, we, the daughters of the revolutionary heroes of '76, demand at your hands the redress of our grievances — a revision of your State Constitution — a new code of laws. Permit us then, as briefly as possible, to call your attention to the legal disabilities under which we labor.
1st. Look at the position of woman as woman. It is not enough for us that, by your laws we are permitted to live and breathe, to claim the necessaries of life from our legal protectors — to pay the penalty of our crimes; we demand the full recognition of all our rights as citizens of the Empire State. We are persons; native, free-born citizens; property-holders, tax-payers; yet are we denied the exercise of our right to the elective franchise. We support ourselves, and, in part, your schools, colleges, churches, your poor-houses, jails, prisons, the army, the navy, the whole machinery of government, and yet we have no voice in your councils. We have every qualification required by the Constitution, necessary to the legal voter, but the one of sex. We are moral, virtuous, and intelligent, and in all respects quite equal to the proud white man himself, and yet by your laws we are classed with idiots, lunatics, and negroes; and though we do not feel honored by the place assigned us, yet, in fact, our legal position is lower than that of either; for the negro can be raised to the dignity of a voter if he possess himself of $250; the lunatic can vote in his moments of sanity, and the idiot, too, if he be a male one, and not more than nine-tenths a fool; but we, who have guided great movements of charity, established missions, edited journals, published works on history, economy, and statistics; who have governed nations, led armies, filled the professor's chair, taught philosophy and mathematics to the savants of our age, discovered planets, piloted ships across the sea, are denied the most sacred rights of citizens, because, forsooth, we came not into this republic crowned with the dignity of manhood! Woman is theoretically absolved from all allegiance to the laws of the State. Sec. 1, Bill of Rights, 2 R. S., 301, says that no authority can, on any pretence whatever, be exercised over the citizens of this State but such as is or shall be derived from, and granted by the people of this State.
Now, gentlemen, we would fain know by what authority you have disfranchised one-half the people of this State? You who have so boldly taken possession of the bulwarks of this republic, show us your credentials, and thus prove your exclusive right to govern, not only yourselves, but us. Judge Hurlburt, who has long occupied a high place at the bar in this State, and who recently retired with honor from the bench of the Supreme Court, in his profound work on Human Rights, has pronounced your present position rank usurpation. Can it be that here, where we acknowledge no royal blood, no apostolic descent, that you, who have declared that all men were created equal — that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, would willingly build up an aristocracy that places the ignorant and vulgar above the educated and refined — the alien and the ditch-digger above the authors and poets of the day — an aristocracy that would raise the sons above the mothers that bore them? Would that the men who can sanction a Constitution so opposed to the genius of this government, who can enact and execute laws so degrading to womankind, had sprung, Minerva-like, from the brains of their fathers, that the matrons of this republic need not blush to own their sons!
Woman's position, under our free institutions, is much lower than under the monarchy of England. "In England the idea of woman holding official station is not so strange as in the United States. The Countess of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery held the office of hereditary sheriff of Westmoreland, and exercised it in person. At the assizes at Appleby, she sat with the judges on the bench. In a reported case, it is stated by counsel, and substantially assented to by the court, that a woman is capable of serving in almost all the offices of the kingdom, such as those of queen, marshal, great chamberlain and constable of England, the champion of England, commissioner of sewers, governor of work-house, sexton, keeper of the prison, of the gate-house of the dean and chapter of Westminster, returning officer for members of Parliament, and constable, the latter of which is in some respects judicial. The office of jailor is frequently exercised by a woman.
"In the United States a woman may administer on the effects of her deceased husband, and she has occasionally held a subordinate place in the post-office department. She has therefore a sort of post mortem, post-mistress notoriety; but with the exception of handling letters of administration and letters mailed, she is the submissive creature of the old common law." True, the unmarried woman has a right to the property she inherits and the money she earns, but she is taxed without representation. And here again you place the negro, so unjustly degraded by you, in a superior position to your own wives and mothers; for colored males, if possessed of a certain amount of property and certain other qualifications, can vote, but if they do not have these qualifications they are not subject to direct taxation; wherein they have the advantage of woman, she being subject to taxation for whatever amount she may possess. (Constitution of New York, Article 2, Sec. 2). But, say you, are not all women sufficiently represented by their fathers, husbands, and brothers? Let your statute books answer the question.
Again we demand in criminal cases that most sacred of all rights, trial by a jury of our own peers. The establishment of trial by jury is of so early a date that its beginning is lost in antiquity; but the right of trial by a jury of one's own peers is a great progressive step of advanced civilization. No rank of men have ever been satisfied with being tried by jurors higher or lower in the civil or political scale than themselves; for jealousy on the one hand, and contempt on the other, has ever effectually blinded the eyes of justice. Hence, all along the pages of history, we find the king, the noble, the peasant, the cardinal, the priest, the layman, each in turn protesting against the authority of the tribunal before which they were summoned to appear. Charles the First refused to recognize the competency of the tribunal which condemned him: For how, said he, can subjects judge a king? The stern descendants of our Pilgrim Fathers refused to answer for their crimes before an English Parliament. For how, said they, can a king judge rebels? And shall woman here consent to be tried by her liege lord, who has dubbed himself law-maker, judge, juror, and sheriff too? — whose power, though sanctioned by Church and State, has no foundation in justice and equity, and is a bold assumption of our inalienable rights. In England a Parliament-lord could challenge a jury where a knight was not empanneled; an alien could demand a jury composed half of his own countrymen; or, in some special cases, juries were even constituted entirely of women. Having seen that man fails to do justice to woman in her best estate, to the virtuous, the noble, the true of our sex, should we trust to his tender mercies the weak, the ignorant, the morally insane? It is not to be denied that the interests of man and woman in the present undeveloped state of the race, and under the existing social arrangements, are and must be antagonistic. The nobleman can not make just laws for the peasant; the slaveholder for the slave; neither can man make and execute just laws for woman, because in each case, the one in power fails to apply the immutable principles of right to any grade but his own.
Shall an erring woman be dragged before a bar of grim-visaged judges, lawyers, and jurors, there to be grossly questioned in public on subjects which women scarce breathe in secret to one another? Shall the most sacred relations of life be called up and rudely scanned by men who, by their own admission, are so coarse that women could not meet them even at the polls without contamination? and yet shall she find there no woman's face or voice to pity and defend? Shall the frenzied mother, who, to save herself and child from exposure and disgrace, ended the life that had but just begun, be dragged before such a tribunal to answer for her crime? How can man enter into the feelings of that mother? How can he judge of the agonies of soul that impelled her to such an outrage of maternal instincts? How can he weigh the mountain of sorrow that crushed that mother's heart when she wildly tossed her helpless babe into the cold waters of the midnight sea? Where is he who by false vows thus blasted this trusting woman? Had that helpless child no claims on his protection? Ah, he is freely abroad in the dignity of manhood, in the pulpit, on the bench, in the professor's chair. The imprisonment of his victim and the death of his child, detract not a tithe from his standing and complacency. His peers made the law, and shall law-makers lay nets for those of their own rank? Shall laws which come from the logical brain of man take cognizance of violence done to the moral and affectional nature which predominates, as is said, in woman?
Statesmen of New York, whose daughters, guarded by your affection, and lapped amidst luxuries which your indulgence spreads, care more for their nodding plumes and velvet trains than for the statute laws by which their persons and properties are held — who, blinded by custom and prejudice to the degraded position which they and their sisters occupy in the civil scale, haughtily claim that they already have all the rights they want, how, think ye, you would feel to see a daughter summoned for such a crime — and remember these daughters are but human — before such a tribunal? Would it not, in that hour, be some consolation to see that she was surrounded by the wise and virtuous of her own sex; by those who had known the depth of a mother's love and the misery of a lover's falsehood; to know that to these she could make her confession, and from them receive her sentence? If so, then listen to our just demands and make such a change in your laws as will secure to every woman tried in your courts, an impartial jury. At this moment among the hundreds of women who are shut up in prisons in this State, not one has enjoyed that most sacred of all rights — that right which you would die to defend for yourselves — trial by a jury of one's peers.
2d. Look at the position of woman as wife. Your laws relating to marriage — founded as they are on the old common law of England, a compound of barbarous usages, but partially modified by progressive civilization — are in open violation of our enlightened ideas of justice, and of the holiest feelings of our nature. If you take the highest view of marriage, as a Divine relation, which love alone can constitute and sanctify, then of course human legislation can only recognize it. Men can neither bind nor loose its ties, for that prerogative belongs to God alone, who makes man and woman, and the laws of attraction by which they are united. But if you regard marriage as a civil contract, then let it be subject to the same laws which control all other contracts. Do not make it a kind of half-human, half-divine institution, which you may build up, but can not regulate. Do not, by your special legislation for this one kind of contract, involve yourselves in the grossest absurdities and contradictions.
So long as by your laws no man can make a contract for a horse or piece of land until he is twenty-one years of age, and by which contract he is not bound if any deception has been practiced, or if the party contracting has not fulfilled his part of the agreement—so long as the parties in all mere civil contracts retain their identity and all the power and independence they had before contracting, with the full right to dissolve all partnerships and contracts for any reason, at the will and option of the parties themselves, upon what principle of civil jurisprudence do you permit the boy of fourteen and the girl of twelve, in violation of every natural law, to make a contract more momentous in importance than any other, and then hold them to it, come what may, the whole of their natural lives, in spite of disappointment, deception, and misery? Then, too, the signing of this contract is instant civil death to one of the parties. The woman who but yesterday was sued on bended knee, who stood so high in the scale of being as to make an agreement on equal terms with a proud Saxon man, to-day has no civil existence, no social freedom. The wife who inherits no property holds about the same legal position that does the slave on the Southern plantation. She can own nothing, sell nothing. She has no right even to the wages she earns; her person, her time, her services are the property of another. She can not testify, in many cases, against her husband. She can get no redress for wrongs in her own name in any court of justice. She can neither sue nor be sued. She is not held morally responsible for any crime committed in the presence of her husband, so completely is her very existence supposed by the law to be merged in that of another. Think of it; your wives may be thieves, libelers, burglars, incendiaries, and for crimes like these they are not held amenable to the laws of the land, if they but commit them in your dread presence. For them, alas! there is no higher law than the will of man. Herein behold the bloated conceit of these Petruchios of the law, who seem to say:
"Nay, look not big, nor stamp, nor stare, nor fret,
I will be master of what is mine own;
She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything;
And here she stands, touch her whoever dare;
I'll bring my action on the proudest he,
That stops my way, in Padua."
How could man ever look thus on woman? She, at whose feet Socrates learned wisdom—she, who gave to the world a Saviour, and witnessed alike the adoration of the Magi and the agonies of the cross. How could such a being, so blessed and honored, ever become the ignoble, servile, cringing slave, with whom the fear of man could be paramount to the sacred dictates of conscience and the holy love of Heaven? By the common law of England, the spirit of which has been but too faithfully incorporated into our statute law, a husband has a right to whip his wife with a rod not larger than his thumb, to shut her up in a room, and administer whatever moderate chastisement he may deem necessary to insure obedience to his wishes, and for her healthful moral development! He can forbid all persons harboring or trusting her on his account. He can deprive her of all social intercourse with her nearest and dearest friends. If by great economy she accumulates a small sum, which for future need she deposit, little by little, in a savings bank, the husband has a right to draw it out, at his option, to use it as he may see fit.
"Husband is entitled to wife's credit or business talents (whenever their inter-marriage may have occurred); and goods purchased by her on her own credit, with his consent, while cohabiting with him, can be seized and sold in execution against him for his own debts, and this, though she carry on business in her own name." — 7 Howard's Practice Reports, 105, Lovett agt. Robinson and Whitbeck, sheriff, etc.
"No letters of administration shall be granted to a person convicted of infamous crime; nor to any one incapable by law of making a contract; nor to a person not a citizen of the United States, unless such person reside within this State; nor to any one who is under twenty-one years of age; nor to any person who shall be adjudged incompetent by the surrogate to execute duties of such trust, by reason of drunkenness, improvidence, or want of understanding, nor to any married woman; but where a married woman is entitled to administration, the same may be granted to her husband in her right and behalf."
There is nothing that an unruly wife might do against which the husband has not sufficient protection in the law. But not so with the wife. If she have a worthless husband, a confirmed drunkard, a villain, or a vagrant, he has still all the rights of a man, a husband, and a father. Though the whole support of the family be thrown upon the wife, if the wages she earns be paid to her by her employer, the husband can receive them again. If, by unwearied industry and perseverance, she can earn for herself and children a patch of ground and a shed to cover them, the husband can strip her of all her hard earnings, turn her and her little ones out in the cold northern blast, take the clothes from their backs, the bread from their mouths; all this by your laws may he do, and has he done, oft and again, to satisfy the rapacity of that monster in human form, the rum-seller.
But the wife who is so fortunate as to have inherited property, has, by the new law in this State, been redeemed from her lost condition. She is no longer a legal nonentity. This property law, if fairly construed, will overturn the whole code relating to woman and property. The right to property implies the right to buy and sell, to will and bequeath, and herein is the dawning of a civil existence for woman, for now the "femme covert" must have the right to make contracts. So, get ready, gentlemen; the "little justice" will be coming to you one day, deed in hand, for your acknowledgment. When he asks you "if you sign without fear or compulsion," say yes, boldly, as we do. Then, too, the right to will is ours. Now what becomes of the "tenant for life"? Shall he, the happy husband of a millionaire, who has lived in yonder princely mansion in the midst of plenty and elegance, be cut down in a day to the use of one-third of this estate and a few hundred a year, as long he remains her widower? And should he, in spite of this bounty on celibacy, impelled by his affections, marry again, choosing for a wife a woman as poor as himself, shall he be thrown penniless on the cold world — this child of fortune, enervated by ease and luxury, henceforth to be dependent wholly on his own resources? Poor man! He would be rich, though, in the sympathies of many women who have passed through just such an ordeal. But what is property without the right to protect that property by law? It is mockery to say a certain estate is mine, if, without my consent, you have the right to tax me when and how you please, while I have no voice in making the tax-gatherer, the legislator, or the law. The right to property will, of necessity, compel us in due time to the exercise of our right to the elective franchise, and then naturally follows the right to hold office.
3d. Look at the position of woman as widow. Whenever we attempt to point out the wrongs of the wife, those who would have us believe that the laws can not be improved, point us to the privileges, powers, and claims of the widow. Let us look into these a little. Behold in yonder humble house a married pair, who, for long years, have lived together, childless and alone. Those few acres of well-tilled land, with the small, white house that looks so cheerful through its vines and flowers, attest the honest thrift and simple taste of its owners. This man and woman, by their hard days' labor, have made this home their own. Here they live in peace and plenty, happy in the hope that they may dwell together securely under their own vine and fig-tree for the few years that remain to them, and that under the shadow of these trees, planted by their own hands, and in the midst of their household gods, so loved and familiar, they may take their last farewell of earth. But, alas for human hopes! the husband dies, and without a will, and the stricken widow, at one fell blow, loses the companion of her youth, her house and home, and half the little sum she had in bank. For the law, which takes no cognizance of widows left with twelve children and not one cent, instantly spies out this widow, takes account of her effects, and announces to her the startling intelligence that but one-third of the house and lot, and one-half the personal property, are hers. The law has other favorites with whom she must share the hard-earned savings of years. In this dark hour of grief, the coarse minions of the law gather round the widow's hearth-stone, and, in the name of justice, outrage all natural sense of right; mock at the sacredness of human love, and with cold familiarity proceed to place a moneyed value on the old arm-chair, in which, but a few brief hours since, she closed the eyes that had ever beamed on her with kindness and affection; on the solemn clock in the corner, that told the hour he passed away; on every garment with which his form and presence were associated, and on every article of comfort and convenience that the house contained, even down to the knives and forks and spoons—and the widow saw it all—and when the work was done, she gathered up what the law allowed her and went forth to seek another home! This is the much-talked-of widow's dower. Behold the magnanimity of the law in allowing the widow to retain a life interest in one-third the landed estate, and one-half the personal property of her husband, and taking the lion's share to itself! Had she died first, the house and land would all have been the husband's still. No one would have dared to intrude upon the privacy of his home, or to molest him in his sacred retreat of sorrow. How, I ask you, can that be called justice, which makes such a distinction as this between man and woman?
By management, economy, and industry, our widow is able, in a few years, to redeem her house and home. But the law never loses sight of the purse, no matter how low in the scale of being its owner may be. It sends its officers round every year to gather in the harvest for the public crib, and no widow who owns a piece of land two feet square ever escapes this reckoning. Our widow, too, who has now twice earned her home, has her annual tax to pay also—a tribute of gratitude that she is permitted to breathe the free air of this republic, where "taxation without representation," by such worthies as John Hancock and Samuel Adams, has been declared "intolerable tyranny." Having glanced at the magnanimity of the law in its dealings with the widow, let us see how the individual man, under the influence of such laws, doles out justice to his helpmate. The husband has the absolute right to will away his property as he may see fit. If he has children, he can divide his property among them, leaving his wife her third only of the landed estate, thus making her a dependent on the bounty of her own children. A man with thirty thousand dollars in personal property, may leave his wife but a few hundred a year, as long as she remains his widow.
The cases are without number where women, who have lived in ease and elegance, at the death of their husbands have, by will, been reduced to the bare necessaries of life. The man who leaves his wife the sole guardian of his property and children is an exception to the general rule. Man has ever manifested a wish that the world should indeed be a blank to the companion whom he leaves behind him. The Hindoo makes that wish a law, and burns the widow on the funeral pyre of her husband; but the civilized man, impressed with a different view of the sacredness of life, takes a less summary mode of drawing his beloved partner after him; he does it by the deprivation and starvation of the flesh, and the humiliation and mortification of the spirit. In bequeathing to the wife just enough to keep soul and body together, man seems to lose sight of the fact that woman, like himself, takes great pleasure in acts of benevolence and charity. It is but just, therefore, that she should have it in her power to give during her life, and to will away at her death, as her benevolence or obligations might prompt her to do.
4th. Look at the position of woman as mother. There is no human love so strong and steadfast as that of the mother for her child; yet behold how ruthless are your laws touching this most sacred relation. Nature has clearly made the mother the guardian of the child; but man, in his inordinate love of power, does continually set nature and nature's laws at open defiance. The father may apprentice his child, bind him out to a trade, without the mother's consent—yea, in direct opposition to her most earnest entreaties, prayers and tears.
He may apprentice his son to a gamester or rum-seller, and thus cancel his debts of honor. By the abuse of this absolute power, he may bind his daughter to the owner of a brothel, and, by the degradation of his child, supply his daily wants: and such things, gentlemen, have been done in our very midst. Moreover, the father, about to die, may bind out all his children wherever and to whomsoever he may see fit, and thus, in fact, will away the guardianship of all his children from the mother. The Revised Statutes of New York provide that "every father, whether of full age or a minor, of a child to be born, or of any living child under the age of twenty-one years, and unmarried, may by his deed or last will, duly executed, dispose of the custody and tuition of such child during its minority, or for any less time, to any person or persons, in possession or remainder." 2 R. S., page 150, sec. 1. Thus, by your laws, the child is the absolute property of the father, wholly at his disposal in life or at death.
In case of separation, the law gives the children to the father; no matter what his character or condition. At this very time we can point you to noble, virtuous, well-educated mothers in this State, who have abandoned their husbands for their profligacy and confirmed drunkenness. All these have been robbed of their children, who are in the custody of the husband, under the care of his relatives, whilst the mothers are permitted to see them but at stated intervals. But, said one of these mothers, with a grandeur of attitude and manner worthy the noble Roman matron in the palmiest days of that republic, I would rather never see my child again, than be the medium to hand down the low animal nature of its father, to stamp degradation on the brow of another innocent being. It is enough that one child of his shall call me mother.
If you are far-sighted statesmen, and do wisely judge of the interests of this commonwealth, you will so shape your future laws as to encourage woman to take the high moral ground that the father of her children must be great and good. Instead of your present laws, which make the mother and her children the victims of vice and license, you might rather pass laws prohibiting to all drunkards, libertines, and fools, the rights of husbands and fathers. Do not the hundreds of laughing idiots that are crowding into our asylums, appeal to the wisdom of our statesmen for some new laws on marriage—to the mothers of this day for a higher, purer morality?
Again, as the condition of the child always follows that of the mother, and as by the sanction of your laws the father may beat the mother, so may he the child. What mother can not bear me witness to untold sufferings which cruel, vindictive fathers have visited upon their helpless children? Who ever saw a human being that would not abuse unlimited power? Base and ignoble must that man be who, let the provocation be what it may, would strike a woman; but he who would lacerate a trembling child is unworthy the name of man. A mother's love can be no protection to a child; she can not appeal to you to save it from a father's cruelty, for the laws take no cognizance of the mother's most grievous wrongs. Neither at home nor abroad can a mother protect her son. Look at the temptations that surround the paths of our youth at every step; look at the gambling and drinking saloons, the club rooms, the dens of infamy and abomination that infest all our villages and cities—slowly but surely sapping the very foundations of all virtue and strength.
By your laws, all these abominable resorts are permitted. It is folly to talk of a mother moulding the character of her son, when all mankind, backed up by law and public sentiment, conspire to destroy her influence. But when woman's moral power shall speak through the ballot-box, then shall her influence be seen and felt; then, in our legislative debates, such questions as the canal tolls on salt, the improvement of rivers and harbors, and the claims of Mr. Smith for damages against the State, would be secondary to the consideration of the legal existence of all these public resorts, which lure our youth on to excessive indulgence and destruction.
Many times and oft it has been asked us, with, unaffected seriousness, "What do you women want? What are you aiming at?" Many have manifested a laudable curiosity to know what the wives and daughters could complain of in republican America, where their sires and sons have so bravely fought for freedom and gloriously secured their independence, trampling all tyranny, bigotry, and caste in the dust, and declaring to a waiting world the divine truth that all men are created equal. What can woman want under such a government? Admit a radical difference in sex, and you demand different spheres—water for fish, and air for birds.
It is impossible to make the Southern planter believe that his slave feels and reasons just as he does—that injustice and subjection are as galling as to him—that the degradation of living by the will of another, the mere dependent on his caprice, at the mercy of his passions, is as keenly felt by him as his master. If you can force on his unwilling vision a vivid picture of the negro's wrongs, and for a moment touch his soul, his logic brings him instant consolation. He says, the slave does not feel this as I would. Here, gentlemen, is our difficulty: When we plead our cause before the law-makers and savants of the republic, they can not take in the idea that men and women are alike; and so long as the mass rest in this delusion, the public mind will not be so much startled by the revelations made of the injustice and degradation of woman's position as by the fact that she should at length wake up to a sense of it.
If you, too, are thus deluded, what avails it that we show by your statute books that your laws are unjust — that woman is the victim of avarice and power? What avails it that we point out the wrongs of woman in social life; the victim of passion and lust? You scorn the thought that she has any natural love of freedom burning in her breast, any clear perception of justice urging her on to demand her rights.
Would to God you could know the burning indignation that fills woman's soul when she turns over the pages of your statute books, and sees there how like feudal barons you freemen hold your women. Would that you could know the humiliation she feels for sex, when she thinks of all the beardless boys in your law offices, learning these ideas of one-sided justice — taking their first lessons in contempt for all womankind — being indoctrinated into the incapacities of their mothers, and the lordly, absolute rights of man over all women, children, and property, and to know that these are to be our future presidents, judges, husbands, and fathers; in sorrow we exclaim, alas! for that nation whose sons bow not in loyalty to woman. The mother is the first object of the child's veneration and love, and they who root out this holy sentiment, dream not of the blighting effect it has on the boy and the man. The impression left on law students, fresh from your statute books, is most unfavorable to woman's influence; hence you see but few lawyers chivalrous and high-toned in their sentiments toward woman. They can not escape the legal view which, by constant reading, has become familiarized to their minds: "Femme covert", "dower", "widow's claims," "protection," "incapacities," "incumbrance," is written on the brow of every woman they meet.
But if, gentlemen, you take the ground that the sexes are alike, and, therefore, you are our faithful representatives — then why all these special laws for woman? Would not one code answer for all of like needs and wants? Christ's golden rule is better than all the special legislation that the ingenuity of man can devise: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." This, men and brethren, is all we ask at your hands. We ask no better laws than those you have made for yourselves. We need no other protection than that which your present laws secure to you.
In conclusion, then, let us say, in behalf of the women of this State, we ask for all that you have asked for yourselves in the progress of your development, since the Mayflower cast anchor beside Plymouth rock; and simply on the ground that the rights of every human being are the same and identical. You may say that the mass of the women of this State do not make the demand; it comes from a few sour, disappointed old maids and childless women.
You are mistaken; the mass speak through us. A very large majority of the women of this State support themselves and their children, and many their husbands too. Go into any village you please, of three or four thousand inhabitants, and you will find as many as fifty men or more, whose only business is to discuss religion and politics, as they watch the trains come and go at the depot, or the passage of a canal boat through a lock; to laugh at the vagaries of some drunken brother, or the capers of a monkey dancing to the music of his master's organ. All these are supported by their mothers, wives, or sisters.
Now, do you candidly think these wives do not wish to control the wages they earn — to own the land they buy — the houses they build? to have at their disposal their own children, without being subject to the constant interference and tyranny of an idle, worthless profligate? Do you suppose that any woman is such a pattern of devotion and submission that she willingly stitches all day for the small sum of fifty cents, that she may enjoy the unspeakable privilege, in obedience to your laws, of paying for her husband's tobacco and rum? Think you the wife of the confirmed, beastly drunkard would consent to share with him her home and bed, if law and public sentiment would release her from such gross companionship? Verily, no! Think you the wife with whom endurance has ceased to be a virtue, who, through much suffering, has lost all faith in the justice of both heaven and earth, takes the law in her own hand, severs the unholy bond, and turns her back forever upon him whom she once called husband, consents to the law that in such an hour tears her child from her — all that she has left on earth to love and cherish? The drunkards' wives speak through us, and they number 50,000. Think you that the woman who has worked hard all her days in helping her husband to accumulate a large property, consents to the law that places this wholly at his disposal? Would not the mother whose only child is bound out for a term of years against her expressed wish, deprive the father of this absolute power if she could?
For all these, then, we speak. If to this long list you add the laboring women who are loudly demanding remuneration for their unending toil; those women who teach in our seminaries, academies, and public schools for a miserable pittance; the widows who are taxed without mercy; the unfortunate ones in our work-houses, poor-houses, and prisons; who are they that we do not now represent? But a small class of the fashionable butterflies, who, through the short summer days, seek the sunshine and the flowers; but the cool breezes of autumn and the hoary frosts of winter will soon chase all these away; then they, too, will need and seek protection, and through other lips demand in their turn justice and equity at your hands.The friends of woman suffrage may be said to have fairly held a protracted meeting during the two following weeks in Albany, with hearings before both branches of the Legislature, and lectures evening after evening in Association Hall, by Mrs. Rose, Mr. Channing, Mr. Phillips, and Miss Brown, culminating in a discussion by the entire press of the city and State; for all the journals had something to say on one side or the other, Mrs. Rose, Mr. Channing, Miss Brown, and several anonymous writers taking part in the newspaper debate. As this was the first Convention held at the Capitol, it roused considerable agitation on every phase of the question, not only among the legislators on the bills before them, but among the people throughout the State.
The Albany Transcript thus sums up the Woman's Rights Convention. — The meeting last evening was attended by the largest and most brilliant audience of the series. A large number of members of the Legislature were there, and a full representation of our most influential citizens. Indeed they could not have asked for a more numerous or talented body of hearers. Mrs. Rose was the sole speaker, owing to the necessity which had called the others away.... She was listened to with the most profound attention, and encouraged by frequent and prolonged applause.
Thus has ended the first Convention of women designed to influence political action. On Monday the 6,000 petitions will be presented in the Legislature, and the address be placed on the members' tables. Whatever may be the final disposition of the matter, it is well to make a note of this first effort to influence the Legislature. It was originated by Miss Susan B. Anthony, and has been managed financially by her. Though a stranger amongst us, she has made the contracts for the room, advertised in the papers, employed the speakers, published the address, and performed much other arduous labor.
Mrs. Nichols, one of the speakers, has long been connected with the press, and is a woman of no mean ability. Her mild, beaming countenance and the affectionate tones of her voice, disprove that she is any less a woman than those who do not "speak in public on the stage." Mrs. Love is a new caterer to public favor, and promises well. Some have remarked that she is well named, being a "Love of a woman." Mrs. Jenkins is a fluent and agreeable speaker, and has a good degree of power in swaying an audience. But Mrs. Rose is the queen of the company. On the educational question in particular, she rises to a high standard of oratorical power. When speaking of Hungary and her own crushed Poland, she is full of eloquence and pathos, and she has as great a power to chain an audience as any of our best male speakers.
The Evening Journal (Thurlow Weed, editor): Woman's Rights. — Mr. Channing and Mrs. Rose pleaded the cause of woman's rights before the Senate Committee of bachelors yesterday. The only effect produced was a determination more fixed than ever in the minds of the committee, to remain bachelors in the event of the success of the movement. And who would blame them?
The same champions, with others probably, will speak to the House Committee in the Assembly Chamber this afternoon; and Mr. Channing and Mrs. Rose make addresses in Association Hall this evening. Price twenty-five cents.
The Albany Register: Women In The Senate Chamber. — The Senate was alarmed yesterday afternoon. It surrendered to progress. The Select Committee to whom the women's rights petitions had been referred, took their seats on the president's platform, looking as grave as possible. Never had Senators Robertson, Yost, and Field been in such responsible circumstances. They were calm, but evidently felt themselves in great peril.
Ernestine L. Rose and Rev. William Henry Channing presented the arguments and appeals to the Committee, and Mrs. Rose invited them to ask questions. The Register concludes:
The Albany Argus of March 4th, says: The Rights of Women Defined By Themselves. — Miss Anthony and Mrs. Rose before the House Committee, March 3d. The Committee took their seats in the clerk's desk, and the ladies took possession of the members' seats, filling the chamber, many members of the Legislature being present. Miss Anthony presented a paper prepared by Judge William Hay, of Saratoga, asking that husband and wife should be tenants in common of property without survivorship, but with a partition on the death of one; that a wife shall be competent to discharge trusts and powers the same as a single woman; that the statute in respect to a married woman's property descend as though she had been unmarried; that married women shall be entitled to execute letters testamentary, and of administration; that married women shall have power to make contracts and transact business as though unmarried; that they shall be entitled to their own earnings, subject to their proportionable liability for support of children; that post-nuptial acquisitions shall belong equally to husband and wife; that married women shall stand on the same footing with single women, as parties or witnesses in legal proceedings; that they shall be sole guardians of their minor children; that the homestead shall be inviolable and inalienable for widows and children; that the laws in relation to divorce shall be revised, and drunkenness made cause for absolute divorce; that better care shall be taken of single women's property, that their rights may not be lost through ignorance, that the preference of males in descent of real estate shall be abolished; that women shall exercise "the right of suffrage," and be eligible to all offices, occupations, and professions; entitled to act as jurors; eligible to all public offices; that courts of conciliation shall be organized as peace-makers; that a law shall be enacted extending the masculine designation in all statutes of the State to females.
Mrs. Rose then addressed the Committee, saying: The right of petition is of no avail unless the reform demanded be candidly considered by the legislators. We judge of the intellectual inferiority of our fellow-men by the amount of resistance they oppose to oppression, and to some extent we judge correctly by this test. The same rule holds good for women; while they tamely submit to the many inequalities under which they labor, they scarcely deserve to be freed from them.... These are not the demands of the moment or the few; they are the demands of the age; of the second half of the nineteenth century. The world will endure after us, and future generations may look back to this meeting to acknowledge that a great onward step was here taken in the cause of human progress.
Mrs. Rose took her seat amidst great applause from the galleries and lobbies. The Committee adjourned.
Albany Register, March 7: Woman's rights In the Legislature. — While the feminine propagandists of women's rights confined themselves to the exhibition of short petticoats and long-legged boots, and to the holding of Conventions, and speech-making in concert-rooms, the people were disposed to be amused by them, as they are by the wit of the clown in the circus, or the performances of Punch and Judy on fair days, or the minstrelsy of gentlemen with blackened faces, on banjos, the tambourine, and bones. But the joke is becoming stale. People are getting cloyed with these performances, and are looking for some healthier and more intellectual amusement. The ludicrous is wearing away, and disgust is taking the place of pleasurable sensations, arising from the novelty of this new phase of hypocrisy and infidel fanaticism. People are beginning to inquire how far public sentiment should sanction or tolerate these unsexed women, who make a scoff of religion, who repudiate the Bible and blaspheme God; who would step out from the true sphere of the mother, the wife, and the daughter, and taking upon themselves the duties and the business of men, stalk into the public gaze, and by engaging in the politics, the rough controversies, and trafficking of the world, upheave existing institutions, and overturn all the social relations of life.
It is a melancholy reflection, that among our American women who have been educated to better things, there should be found any who are willing to follow the lead of such foreign propagandists as the ringleted, glove-handed exotic, Ernestine L. Rose. We can understand how such men as the Rev. Mr. May, or the sleek-headed Dr. Channing may be deluded by her to becoming her disciples. They are not the first instances of infatuation that may overtake weak-minded men, if they are honest in their devotion to her and her doctrines. Nor would they be the first examples of a low ambition that seeks notoriety as a substitute for true fame, if they are dishonest. Such men there are always, and honest or dishonest, their true position is that of being tied to the apron-strings of some "strong-minded woman," and to be exhibited as rare specimens of human wickedness, or human weakness and folly. But, that one educated American woman should become her disciple and follow her infidel and insane teachings, is a marvel.
Ernestine L. Rose came to this country, as she says, from Poland, whence she was compelled to fly in pursuit of freedom. Seeing her course here, we can well imagine this to be true. In no other country in the world, save possibly one, would her infidel propagandism and preachings in regard to the social relations of life be tolerated. She would be prohibited by the powers of government from her efforts to obliterate from the world the religion of the Cross — to banish the Bible as a text-book of faith, and to overturn social institutions that have existed through all political and governmental revolutions from the remotest time. The strong hand of the law would be laid upon her, and she would be compelled back to her woman's sphere. But in this country, such is the freedom of our institutions, and we rejoice that it should be so, that she, and such as she, can give their genius for intrigue full sway. They can exhibit their flowing ringlets and beautiful hands, their winning smiles and charming stage attitudes to admiring audiences, who, while they are willing to be amused, are in the main safe from their corrupting theories and demoralizing propagandism.
The laws and the theory of our government suppose that the people are capable of taking care of themselves, and hence need no protection against the wiles of domestic or foreign mountebanks, whether in petticoats or in breeches and boots. But it never was contemplated that these exotic agitators would come up to our legislators and ask for the passage of laws upholding and sanctioning their wild and foolish doctrines. That was a stretch of folly, a flight of impudence which was hardly regarded as possible. It was to be imagined, of course, that they would enlist as their followers, here and there one among the restless old maids and visionary wives who chanced to be unevenly tempered, as well as unevenly yoked. It was also to be assumed, as within the range of possibility, that they might bring within the sphere of their attractions, weak-minded, restless men, who think in their vanity that they have been marked out for great things, and failed to be appreciated by the world, men who comb their hair smoothly back, and with fingers locked across their stomachs, speak in a soft voice, and with upturned eyes. But no man supposed they would abandon their "private theatricals" and walk up to the Capitol, and insist that the performances shall be held in legislative halls. And yet so it is.
This Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, with a train of followers, like a great kite with a very long tail, has, for a week, been amusing Senatorial and Assembly Committees, with her woman's rights performances, free of charge, unless the waste of time that might be better employed in the necessary and legitimate business of legislation, may be regarded as a charge. Those committees have sat for hours, grave and solemn as owls, listening to the outpourings of fanaticism and folly of this Polish propagandist, Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, and her followers in pantalets and short gowns. The people outside, and especially those interested in the progress of legislation, are beginning to ask one another how long this farce is to continue. How long this most egregious and ridiculous humbug is to be permitted to obstruct the progress of business before the Committees and the Houses, and whether Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose and her followers ought not to be satisfied with the notoriety they have already attained. The great body of the people regard Mrs. Rose and her followers as making themselves simply ridiculous, and there is some danger that these legislative committees will make themselves so too.
Lecture of the Rev. Antoinette L. Brown. — It will be seen the Rev. Antoinette L. Brown delivers a lecture at Association Hall to-morrow evening. It has been said that we have done the women's rights people injustice in charging upon them the infidelity of Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose. If we have done them injustice in this matter it is but right that we should make amends by calling attention to the lecture of Miss Brown, which, as we understand, will embrace the Bible argument in favor of the measures which they advocate. Miss Brown is a talented woman, and we have no doubt an exemplary Christian.
For the Albany Daily State Register.
WOMAN'S RIGHTS.
Mr. Editor: — In your paper of Monday the 6th inst., I perceive you pass judgment upon the woman's rights cause, upon those engaged in it, and particularly upon myself — how justly, I leave to your conscience to decide.
Every one who ever advanced a new idea, no matter how great and noble, has been subjected to criticism, and therefore we too must expect it. And, in accordance with the spirit of the critic, will be the criticism. Whether dictated by the spirit of justice, kindness, gentleness, and charity, or by injustice, malice, rudeness, and intolerance, it is still an index of the man. But it is quite certain that no true soul will ever be deterred from the performance of a duty by any criticism.
But there is one thing which I think even editors have no right to do, namely: to state a positive falsehood, or even to imply one, for the purpose of injuring another. And, as the spirit of charity induces me to believe that in your case it was done more from a misunderstanding than positive malice, therefore I claim at your hands the justice to give this letter a place in your paper.
In the article alluded to, you say: "Ernestine L. Rose came to this country, as she says, from Poland, whence she was compelled to fly in pursuit of freedom." It is true that I came from Poland; but it is false that I was compelled to fly from my country, except by the compulsion, or dictates of the same spirit of "propagandism," that induced so many of my noble countrymen to shed their blood in the defence of the rights of this country, and the rights of man, wherever he struggles for freedom. But I have no desire to claim martyrdom which does not belong to me. I left my country, not flying, but deliberately. I chose to make this country my home, in preference to any other, because if you carried out the theories you profess, it would indeed be the noblest country on earth. And as my countrymen so nobly aided in the physical struggle for Freedom and Independence, I felt, and still feel it equally my duty to use my humble abilities to the uttermost in my power, to aid in the great moral struggle for human rights and human freedom.
Hoping that you will acede to my (I think) just claim to give this a place in your paper,
William Henry Channing asks the following questions in the Albany Evening Journal:
WOMAN'S RIGHTS.
A lady actively and prominently connected with the movement which is expected to secure "justice to woman," personally requested us to publish the following communication. It is proper to state that it is written in reply to an article of one of our morning contemporaries, published a day or two ago:
"Let us take it for granted that your pop-gun of pleasantry has killed off the six thousand 'strong-minded' women and 'weak-minded' men who signed the petitions to the Legislature for Justice to Woman. And thus having disposed of personalities, will you be pleased to pass on to a discussion of the following questions:
"1, Are women, in New York, persons, people, citizens, members of the State? If they are not, then why are they numbered in the census, taxed by assessors, and subjected to legal penalties? If they are, then why is authority exercised over them without their consent asked or granted?
"2. If among the male half of the people, only criminals, aliens, and minors are excluded from the right of suffrage are all women excluded from exercising this right, on the ground of criminality, idiocy, foreign associations, or infantile imbecility?
"3. If the mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters of New York are the peers and equals of their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons, why should they not enjoy all civil and political rights equally with them? If they are, on the contrary, an inferior caste, how can a jury of men thus avowedly superior, be regarded as peers and equals of any woman whom they are summoned to try?
"4. Would the editor of The Register consider himself justly treated if he would some day find himself governed by women, without his consent, taxed by women without power of voting for his representative, tried by a jury of women under laws made and administered by women?
"5. If prosecuted under the law of libel before a court of women for, his late remarks, does he think he would get his deserts?
Knickerbocker, Albany, March 8, 1854: Going it Blind. — The editor of The State Register is going it blind on woman's rights matters. He was out on Monday with a half column leader that touched everything except the matter in dispute. We quote a paragraph:
"People are beginning to inquire how far public sentiment should sanction or tolerate these unsexed women, who make a scoff at religion, who repudiate the Bible, and blaspheme God; who would step out from the true sphere of the mother, the wife, and the daughter, and take upon themselves the duties and the business of men; stalk into the public gaze, and by engaging in the politics, the rough controversies, and trafficking of the world, upheave existing institutions, and overturn all the social relations of life."
The Register either misunderstands matters, or else willfully misrepresents them. The leading women connected with this new movement do not scoff at religion, repudiate the Bible, nor blaspheme God. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Brown are no more opposed to God and religion than the editor of The Register is, They are educated, Christian women, and would no sooner "overturn society "than they would bear false witness against their neighbors. Before The Register again attacks the reforms proposed by the Woman's Rights Conventions, it should become acquainted with them. "Going it blind," not only exposes one's prejudices, but ignorance. Many of the innovations proposed by Mrs. Stanton are such as every common-sense man would or should vote for. We mean those improvements which she would have made in the rights of property and the care of children. There are other propositions in her platform which we should dissent from. The State Register may do the same. All the "Woman's Rights" women claim is fair play and truthful criticism. They object, however, to any misstatements. They are willing to fall before truth, but not before detraction. The State Register will please notice and act accordingly.Mrs. Stanton's address to the Legislature was laid upon the members' desks Monday morning, Feb. 20, 1854. When the order of petitions was reached, Mr. D. P. Wood, of Onondaga, presented in the Assembly a petition signed by 5,931 men and women, praying for the just and equal rights of women, which, after a spicy debate, was referred to the following Select Committee: James L. Angle, of Monroe Co.; George W. Thorn, of Washington Co.; Derrick L. Boardman, of Oneida Co.; George H. Richards, of New York; James M. Munro, of Onondaga; Wesley Gleason, of Fulton; Alexander P. Sharpe, of New York.
In the Senate, on the same day, Mr. Richards, of Warren County, presented a petition signed by 4,164 men and women, praying for the extension of the right of suffrage to women, and on his motion it was referred to the following Select Committee: George Yost, of Montgomery Co.; Ben. Field, of Orleans Co.; W. H. Robertson, of Westchester Co.
We give the report of the presentation and discussion of the petitions from The Albany Evening Journal of Feb. 20, 1854:
WOMAN'S RIGHTS.
Mr. D. P. Wood: I am requested by a Committee of the Woman's Rights Convention recently assembled in this city, to present to this body their address, together with a petition signed by 5,931 men and women, asking that certain withheld rights shall be granted to the women of the State. I ask the reference of these two documents toa Select Committee of seven; and in making this motion, I wish the Speaker to waive the courtesy which would require him, under ordinary circumstances, to place me at the head of this Committee. I am already on several Committees which are pressed with business, and I would not, in my present state of health, be able to give the subject that careful consideration which the importance requires. I am satisfied, sir, that these ladies are entitled to some relief. They think so, and they say so, in language equally eloquent and impressive.
Mr. Burnett: I hope the House will not act at all on this subject without due consideration. I hope before even this motion is put, gentlemen will be allowed to reflect upon the important question whether these individuals deserve any consideration at the hands of the Legislature. Whatever may be their pretensions or their sincerity, they do not appear to be satisfied with having unsexed themselves, but they desire to unsex every female in the land, and to set the whole community ablaze with unhallowed fire. I trust, sir, the House may deliberate before we suffer them to cast this firebrand into our midst. (Here was heard a "hiss" from some part of the chamber). True, as yet, there is nothing officially before us, but it is well known that the object of these unsexed women is to overthrow the most sacred of our institutions, to set at defiance the Divine law which declares man and wife to be one, and establish on its ruins what will be in fact and in principle but a species of legalized adultery. That this is their real object, however they may attempt to disguise it, is well known to every one who has looked, not perhaps at the intentions of all who take part in it, but at the practical and inevitable result of the movement.
It is, therefore, a matter of duty, a duty to ourselves, to our consciences, to our constituents, and to God, who is the source of all law and of all obligations, to reflect long and deliberatively before we shall even seem to countenance a movement so unholy as this. The Spartan mothers asked no such immunities as are asked for by these women. The Roman mothers were content to occupy their legitimate spheres; and our own mothers, who possessed more than Spartan or Roman virtue, asked for no repudiation of the duties, obligations, or sacred relations of the marital rite.
Are we, sir, to give the least countenance to claims so preposterous, disgraceful, and criminal as are embodied in this address? Are we to put the stamp of truth upon the libel here set forth, that men and women, in the matrimonial relation, are to be equal? We know that God created man as the representative of the race; that after his creation, his Creator took from his side the material for woman's creation; and that, by the institution of matrimony, woman was restored to the side of man, and became one flesh and one being, he being the head. But this law of God and creation is spurned by these women who present themselves here as the exponents of the wishes of our mothers, wives, and daughters. They ask no such exponents, and they repel their sacrilegious doctrines.
But again, sir, our old views of matrimony were, that it was a holy rite, having holy relations based on mutual love and confidence; and that while woman gave herself up to man, to his care, protection, and love, man also surrendered something in exchange for this confidence and love. He placed his happiness and his honor, all that belongs to him of human hopes and of human happiness, in the keeping of the being he received in the sacred relationship of wife. I say, sir, that this ordinance, sought to be practically overthrown by these persons, was established by God Himself; and was based on the mutual love and confidence of husband and wife. But we are now asked to have this ordinance based on jealousy and distrust; and, as in Italy, so in this country, should this mischievous scheme be carried out to its legitimate results, we, instead of reposing safe confidence against assaults upon our honor in the love and affection of our wives, shall find ourselves obliged to close the approaches to those assaults by the padlock. (The "hiss" was here repeated).
Mr. Lozier: Mr. Speaker, twice I have heard a hiss from the lobby. I protest against the toleration of such an insult to any member of this House, and call for proper action in view of it.
The Speaker: The chair observed the interruption, and was endeavoring to discover its source, but has been unable to do so. If, however, its author can be recognized, the chair will immediately order the person to the bar of the House.
Mr. Burnett: I have nothing further. The leading features of this address are well known; and I do not wish at present to further enter upon the argument of its character. I merely wish that members be afforded time for consideration. I therefore move to lay the pending motion on the table.
D. P. Wood: I am surprised that the gentleman from Essex, who professes to desire light, and to afford members time for examination, should make a motion which, if carried, will preclude light and prevent examination. The gentleman sees fit to regard the memorial of these 6,000 men and women as a firebrand. I do not believe the ladies who presented it intended it as such; and they will be surprised to learn that a gentleman of his age and experience should have taken fire from it. Their requests are simple. They ask for "justice and equal rights," and this simple request is made the excuse for an attack upon them as unheard of as it is unjust. They ask only for "justice and equal rights." If the House does not see fit to grant them what they ask, let my motion be voted down, and send the memorial to the Judiciary Committee, of which the gentleman from Essex is chairman. Let such a disposition be made of it, and there will then be no danger that any one will be fired up by it, for it will then be sure to sleep the sleep of death.
Sir, when a petition like this comes before the Legislature, it should not only be respectfully received, but courteously considered; particularly when it asks, as this petition does, a review of the entire code of our statute laws. It should not be sent to a Committee adverse to its request. That would be unparliamentary and the end of it. If sent to such a Committee it would be smothered. The House, I am sure, is not prepared for any such disposition of the matter, but is willing to look candidly at the alleged grievances, and, if consistent with public policy, redress them, although in doing so we may infringe upon time-honored notions and usages.
Mr. Peters: I am not surprised at the direction which the gentleman from Essex seeks to give this memorial. Any gentleman who would assail these ladies as he has done, would be prepared to make any disrespectful disposition of their rights. I may regret that he has sought to deny a hearing to these petitioners, but I am not surprised that he has done so. I trust that no other member on this floor will refuse, practically, to receive this petition — refuse to our mothers, wives, and sisters, what we every day grant to our fathers, brothers, and sons. These women come here with a respectful petition, and we should give them a candid and respectful hearing. If it be true, and true it is, that there are real grievances complained of, I hope they may be redressed after careful and candid consideration.
The time has gone by, sir, when we may say progress must stop. It is well known that in many particulars the laws are glaringly unjust in regard to the female sex. The education of the sex is defective; and this fact unfolds the secret germ of this movement. We should review the structure of our institutions of learning, and see whether there be not there room for reform. I do not believe it to be a part of the duty of women to sit in the jury-box, to vote, or to participate in all the tumultuous strifes of life; but I do believe that those who differ from me in opinion should have respectful hearing. Nor, because women are not allowed to vote, do I admit that they are precluded from all agency in the direction of national affairs. They, more than their husbands, have power over the future history of the country, by imparting a correct fireside education to their sons. But there are legal disabilities imposed upon women which I would be willing to see removed, in regard to property, etc. Whether those disabilities are of a character to justify affirmative action on the part of this House or not, is not now the question. The question simply is, shall this petition be received? I trust that it may be, and that it may afterward be sent to a select committee.
Mr. Benedict: The gentleman from Onondaga asks that this petition shall be sent to a select committee of seven, although he admits that the Judiciary Committee would be more appropriate, if it would not be sure, if sent to that Committee, to sleep the sleep of death. Sir, I am one of that Committee, and protest against any such imputation upon it. I will not only not vote to reject any petition offered the House, but I will give every petition sent to any committee of which I am a member a respectful hearing. This is a petition signed by some 6,000 men and women. They ask "justice" and relief. What kind of relief they may desire is no matter. It is enough for me to know that they ask to be heard. I shall vote to give them a hearing; and I can assure the gentleman from Onondaga that if sent to the Judiciary Committee it will sleep no sleep of death, but will be respectfully considered. A contrary intimation is an unjust reflection on that Committee.
Mr. Wood: My remark was not intended to reflect upon that Committee. I referred merely to the great amount of business before it.
Mr. Benedict: There the gentleman is equally at fault. That Committee is a working Committee, and disposed of all the business before it on Friday last. I am, however, in favor of the motion for a select committee, and desire that the petition should receive legitimate and careful consideration, not only because the petition is largely signed, but because every petition from any portion of the people on any subject, should receive a respectful hearing from the people's representatives. I I hope, therefore, that not a single member may vote against the reception of this petition, whatever his views may be in regard to granting its prayer. I am in favor of the right of petition.
Mr. Burnett: It was not my wish in the motion I made to have this petition rejected. Had I intended any such thing I should have said so; for I always go directly at what I want to accomplish, and never fail to call things by their right names. I merely wished, before any disposition was made of the petition, that the members should have time to examine the address, which is the key of the whole subject. This is all I desire; and it was simply an expression of this desire that has awakened all this windy gust of passion. After members shall examine the address which accompanies this petition, they can make such disposition of the petition itself as they shall deem wise and proper. This is the length and breadth of my object and desire.
Mr. Wood: I think the House understands the subject sufficiently to justify action upon my motion of reference.The motion for the Select Committee prevailed, ayes, 84; the Committee appointed, and Mr. Wood excused from serving.
REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE.
The Select Committee, to whom was referred the various petitions requesting "the Senate and Assembly of the State of New York to appoint a joint committee to revise the Statutes of New York, and to propose such amendments as will fully establish the legal equality of women with men," report: That they have examined the said petition, and have heard and considered the suggestions of persons who have appeared before them on behalf of the petitioners.
Your Committee are well aware that the matters submitted to them have been, and still are, the subject of ridicule and jest; but they are also aware that ridicule and jest never yet effectually put down either truth or error; and that the development of our times and the progression of our age is such, that many thoughts laughed at to-day as wild vagaries, are to-morrow recorded as developed principles or embodied as experimental facts.
A higher power than that from which emanates legislative enactments has given forth the mandate that man and woman shall not be equal; that there shall be inequalities by which each in their own appropriate sphere shall have precedence to the other; and each alike shall be superior or inferior as they well or ill act the part assigned them. Both alike are the subjects of Government, equally entitled to its protection; and civil power must, in its enactments, recognize this inequality. We can not obliterate it if we would, and legal inequalities must follow.
The education of woman has not been the result of statutes, but of civilization and Christianity; and her elevation, great as it has been, has only corresponded with that of man under the same influences. She owes no more to these causes than he does. The true elevation of the sexes will always correspond. But elevation, instead of destroying, shows more palpably those inherent inequalities, and makes more apparent the harmony and happiness which the Creator designed to accomplish by them.
Your Committee will not attempt to prescribe, or, rather, they will not attempt to define the province and peculiar sphere which a power that we can not overrule has prescribed for the different sexes. Every well-regulated home and household in the land affords an example illustrative of what is woman's proper sphere, as also that of man. Government has its miniature as well as its foundation in the homes of our country; and as in governments there must be some recognized head to control and direct, so must there also be a controlling and directing power in every smaller association; there must be some one to act and to be acted with as the embodiment of the persons associated. In the formation of governments, the manner in which the common interest shall be embodied and represented is a matter of conventional arrangement; but in the family an influence more potent than that of contracts and conventionalities, and which everywhere underlies humanity, has indicated that the husband shall fill the necessity which exists for a head. Dissension and distraction quickly arise when this necessity is not answered. The harmony of life, the real interest of both husband and wife, and of all dependent upon them, require it. In obedience to that requirement and necessity, the husband is the head—the representative of the family.
It was strongly urged upon your Committee that women, inasmuch as their property was liable to taxation, should be entitled to representation. The member of this House who considers himself the representative only of those whose ballots were cast for him, or even of all the voters in his district, has, in the opinion of your Committee, quite too limited an idea of his position on this floor. In their opinion he is the representative of the inhabitants of his district, whether they be voters or not, whether they be men or women, old or young; and he who does not alike watch over the interests of all, fails in his duty and is false to his trust.
Your Committee can not regard marriage as a mere contract, but as something above and beyond; something more binding than records, more solemn than specialties; and the person who reasons as to the relations of husband and wife as upon an ordinary contract, in their opinion commits a fatal error at the outset; and your Committee can not recommend any action based on such a theory.
As society progresses new wants are felt, new facts and combinations are presented which constantly call for more or less of addition to the body of our laws, and often for innovations upon customs so old that "the memory of man runneth not to the contrary thereof." The marriage relation, in common with everything else, has felt the effects of this progress, and from time to time been the subject of legislative action. And while your Committee report adversely to the prayer of the petitions referred to them, they believe that the time has come when certain alterations and amendments are, by common consent, admitted as proper and necessary.
Your Committee recommend that the assent of the mother, if she be living, be made necessary to the validity of any disposition which the father may make of her child by the way of the appointment of guardian or of apprenticeship. The consent of the wife is now necessary to a deed of real estate in order to bar her contingent interest therein; and there are certainly far more powerful reasons why her consent should be necessary to the conveyance or transfer of her own offspring to the care, teaching, and control of another.
When the husband from any cause neglects to provide for the support and education of his family, the wife should have the right to collect and receive her own earnings and the earnings of her minor children, and apply them to the support and education of the family free from the control of the husband, or any person claiming the same through him.
There are many other rules of law applicable to the relation of husband and wife which, in occasional cases, bear hard upon the one or the other, but your Committee do not deem it wise that a new arrangement of our laws of domestic relations should be attempted to obviate such cases; they always have and always will arise out of every subject of legal regulation.
There is much of wisdom (which may well be applied to this and many other subjects) in the quaint remark of an English lawyer, philosopher, and statesman, that "it were well that men in their innovations would follow the example of time, which innovate th greatly but quietly, and by degrees scarcely to be perceived. It is good also in states not to try experiments, except the necessity be urgent and the utility evident; and well to beware that it be the reformation that draweth on the change, and not the desire of change that pretendeth the reformation."
In conclusion, your Committee recommend that the prayer of the petitioners be denied; and they ask leave to introduce a bill[39] corresponding with the suggestions hereinbefore contained.The report was signed by James L. Angle and all the members of the Committee except Mr. Richards.
Of the report on the petitions, Mr. Weed says:
The work in the State of New York was now thoroughly systematized. Susan B. Anthony was appointed General Agent, and it was decided to hold a series of Conventions in all the counties and chief cities of the State, in order to roll up mammoth petitions with which to bombard the Legislature at every annual session. Two appeals[40] were issued to the women of the State, one in June, prepared by Mr. Channing, and one in December, by Mrs. Stanton. A number of able speakers[41]joined in the work, and the State was thoroughly canvassed every year until the war, and petitions presented by the thousands until the bill securing the civil rights of married women was passed in March, 1860.
Lest our readers should think that there was no variety to our lives in these early days, that we did nothing but resolve, complain, petition, protest, hold conventions, and besiege Legislatures, we record now and then some cheerful item from the Metropolitan papers concerning some of our leading women.
ANNIVERSARY OF THE 83d BIRTHDAY OF ROBERT OWEN AT 600 BROADWAY.
As the agitation was kept up from year to year with frequent conventions, ever and anon some prominent person who had hitherto been silent, would concede a modicum of what we claimed, so timidly, however, and with so many popular provisos, that the concessions were almost buried in the objections. It was after this manner that Henry Ward Beecher, then in the zenith of his popularity, vouch-safed an opinion. He believed in woman's right to vote and speak in public. There was no logical argument against either, but he would not like to see his wife or mother go to the polls or mount the platform. This utterance called out the following letter from Gerrit Smith in The Boston Liberator:
Dear Garrison:—I am very glad to see in your paper that Henry Ward Beecher avows himself a convert to the doctrine of woman's voting. But I regret that this strong man is nevertheless not strong enough to emancipate himself entirely from the dominion of superstition. Mr. Beecher would not have his wife and sister speak in public. Of course he means that he would not, however competent they might be for such an exercise. I will suppose that they all remove to Peterboro, and that a very important, nay, an entirely vital question springs up in our community, and profoundly agitates it; and I will further suppose that the wife and sister of Mr. Beecher are more capable than any other persons of taking the platform and shedding light upon the subject. Are we not entitled to their superior light? Certainly. And certainly therefore are they bound to afford it to us. Nevertheless Mr. Beecher would have them withhold it from us. Pray what is it but superstition that could prompt him to such violation of benevolence and common-sense? Will Mr. Beecher go to the Bible for his justification? That blessed book is to be read in the life of Jesus Christ; and in that life is the fullness of benevolence and common-sense, and no superstition at all. Will Mr. Beecher limit his wife and sisters in the given case to their pens?[42] Such limitation would he then be bound in consistency to impose upon himself. Would he impose it? Again, it takes lips as well as pens to carry instruction to the utmost.
SARATOGA CONVENTIONS,
August, 1854 - '55.
Seeing calls for two national conventions, by the friends of Temperance, and the Anti-Nebraska movement, to be held in Saratoga the third week of August, the State Woman Suffrage Committee decided to embrace that opportunity to hold a convention there at the same time.[43] As it was at the height of the fashionable season it was thought much good might be accomplished by getting the ear of a new class of hearers.
But after the arrangements were all made, and Miss Anthony on the ground, she received messages from one after another of the speakers on whom she depended, that none of them could be present. Accordingly, encouraged by the Hon. William Hay, she decided to go through alone. Happily, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Sarah Pellet being in Saratoga, came forward and volunteered their services, and thus was the Convention carried successfully through.[44] The meeting was held in St. Nicholas Hall, which was well filled throughout, three hundred dollars being taken at the door. The following resumé of this occasion is from the pen of Judge William Hay, in a letter to The North Star of Rochester (Frederick Douglass, editor):
THE SARATOGA CONVENTION.
Miss Sarah Pellet addressed an audience of six hundred persons in the afternoon, most of whom returned with others to St. Nicholas Hall in the evening, thus manifesting their satisfaction with what they had heard and their interest in the cause, which was farther discussed by Mrs. Gage, whose address was an elaborate argument for the removal of woman's legal and social disabilities. Among other authorities she quoted with judgment, was the following from Wm. W. Story: "In respect to the powers and rights of married women, the law is by no means abreast the spirit of the age. Here are seen the old fossil prints of feudalism. The law relating to woman tends to make every family a barony, a monarchy, or a despotism, of which the husband is the baron, king, or despot, and the wife the dependent, the serf, or slave. That this is not always the fact, is not due to the law, but to the enlarged humanity which spurns the narrow limits of its rules; for if the husband choose, he has his wife as firmly in his grasp and dominion, as the haw/c has the dove upon whom he has pounced. This age is ahead of the law. Public opinion is a check to legal rules on this subject, but the rules are feudal and stern. It can not, however, be concealed that the position of woman is always the criterion of the freedom of a people or an age, and when man shall despise that right which is founded only on might, woman will be free to stand on an equal level with him a friend and not a dependent."
Mrs. Gage also, and with like effect, cited from the same learned jurist, laws, which, had her lecture been a sermon, might have been prefixed as a text. Such opinions, although but seldom known to any but lawyers, and not appreciated by many of them, have frequently been printed in books, which, however, being professional, are perused by few persons only. Mrs. Gage[45] concluded her excellent discourse with Bryant's celebrated stanza, relative to truth and error.
Miss Anthony's situation had become embarrassing, if not critical. At a late hour of a summer night, she was to follow Mrs. Gage on the same subject, and before a fastidious audience, almost surfeited during three days with public addresses in several different conventions, and many of whom desired to contrast her expected effort with the splendid platform eloquence of Henry J. Raymond, Wm. H. Burleigh, and "their like," fearlessly advocating the redress of wrongs and the promotion of human rights. Miss Anthony, who had conciliated her audience by lady-like conduct and courtesy, in providing seats for the accommodation of those standing, commenced with an appropriate apology for unavoidable repetition, when it was her lot to follow Mrs. Gage. Sufficient here to say that she acquitted herself admirably. The simplicity and repose of her manner, the dignity of her deportment, the distinctiveness of her enunciation, her emphatic earnestness, the pathos of her appeals, and completeness of her arguments, convinced the understanding and persuaded all hearts.
The gossip of mustached dandies, and the half-suppressed giggle of bedizened beauty, soon settled down into respectful attention, if not appreciation. Indeed many of the most intelligent hearers before retiring, audibly confessed that they came to find fault, but had seen nothing to censure. So some who came to scoff remained to applaud. With such advocates there can be no retrogression of Woman's Rights. Equality is their motto, and onward their destiny.
This Convention was so successful in point of numbers and receipts, and the sale of woman suffrage literature, that it was decided to repeat the experiment the next year ; accordingly the following call was issued early in the season :
SARATOGA CONVENTION, 1855.
A Convention will be held at Saratoga Springs on the 15th and 16th of August next, to discuss woman's right to suffrage.
In the progress of human events, woman now demands the recognition of her civil existence, her legal rights, her social equality with man.
How her claims can be the most easily and speedily established on a firm, enduring basis, will be the subject of deliberation at the coming Convention.
The friends of the movement, and the public generally, are most respectfully invited to attend.
Many of the advocates of the cause are expected to be in attendance.
| Elizabeth Cady Stanton, | Lydia Mott, |
| Ernestine L. Rose, | Antoinette L. Brown, |
| Samiel J. May | Susan B. Anthony. |
This Convention also was held in St. Nicholas Hall, and a large audience greeted the speakers of the occasion as they appeared upon the platform.
A brief report of the secretaries in The Una of September, 1855, says: A large audience assembled on the morning of August 15th at St. Nicholas Hall. Susan B. Anthony called the meeting to order, and presented a list of officers[46] nominated at a preliminary gathering, which was accepted. Martha C. Wright, on taking the chair, made a brief statement of the object of the Convention, and invited all those who were opposed to our demands to come to the platform and state their objections.
During the absence of the Business Committee, Ernestine L. Rose briefly reviewed the rise and progress of the woman's rights movement. Antoinette Brown reported a series of resolutions, on which she commented at some length, when the Rev. Samuel J. May was introduced. Although he spoke to the entire edification of the platform, yet he was constantly interrupted by the audience. It was a novelty to hear women speak, and the audience having assembled for that purpose, preferred to listen to woman's pathetic statements of her wrongs, than to the most gifted orators that men could boast. It was not until after repeated requests for order from the president, and assurances from several of the ladies that they would not speak until Mr. May had finished his remarks, that quiet was restored.
It was at this Convention that Mary L. Booth[47]made her first appearance on our platform, as one of the secretaries. One feature of these meetings was the freedom and warm sympathy between the audience and the platform. At the close of almost every speech, some one on the floor asked questions, or stated some objections which were quickly answered and refuted by the speakers in the most pleasant conversational manner.
Mrs. Rose presented the wrongs of woman in her most happy manner, demanding the ballot as the underlying power to protect all other rights. Thomas Wentworth Higginson made an address especially adapted to the fashionable audience. Many of the thoughtless ones whom idle curiosity had led to the hall, must have felt like the woman of Samaria (John iv. 29) at the well, when she reported that she had seen a man who told her all the things that ever she had done, so nearly did Mr. Higginson picture to them their thoughts and feelings, the ennui of their daily lives. Lucy Stone, whom the papers now call Mrs. Blackwell, arriving in the midst of the convention, was greeted with long and repeated cheers, and spoke with her wonted simplicity and earnestness. The resolutions covering all the different phases of the movement were duly discussed through two entire days.
Antoinette Brown was called on as usual to meet the Bible argument. A clergyman accused her of misapplying texts. He said Genesis iv. 7 did not allude to Cain and Abel, and that the language in Genesis iii. 16, as applied to Eve, did not mean the same thing. Miss Brown maintained her position that the texts were the same in letter and spirit; and that authority to all men over all women could be no more logically inferred from the one, than authority to all elder brothers over the younger could be from the other; and that there was no divine authority granted in either case. Miss Anthony announced that woman's rights tracts and papers were for sale at the door, and urged all who had become interested in the subject to procure them not only for their own benefit, but to circulate among their neighbors. If they would be intelligent as to the real claims of the movement, they must take The Una, a paper owned and edited by one of its leaders. No one would expect to get temperance truths from Bennett's Herald, nor anti-slavery facts from The New York Observer, or Christian Advocate; no more can we look to any of the popular newspapers, political or religious, for reliable information on the woman's rights movement.
She also presented the claims of The Woman's Advocate, a paper just started in Philadelphia by Anna E. McDowell, devoted chiefly to woman's right to work equal pay for equal service (she was sorry that it did not see that the right of suffrage underlies the work problem); nevertheless the existence of a paper owned, edited, published, and printed all by women, was a living woman's rights fact, and she hoped every one would give it encouragement and support. She then gave a brief report of the work done in the State during the past year,[48] and closed by presenting the form of petition that had just been adopted.[49]
Mr. May moved the appointment of a committee of five[50]: to engage lecturing agents and raise funds for their compensation. The president thanked the people for the respect and attention manifested during the several sessions, and adjourned the Convention.[51]
The Saratoga papers were specially complimentary in their notices of Ernestine L. Rose and Lucy Stone, pronouncing them logical and eloquent, and Miss Anthony was highly praised for her skill in getting contributions and distributing documents. She sold over twenty thousand pamphlets that year. As there were many Southern people always at Saratoga, this was considered a grand opportunity through tracts to sow the seeds of rebellion all through the Southern States. This Convention afforded a new theme for conversation at the hotels, and was discussed for many days after with levity or seriousness, to be laughed over and thought over by the women at their leisure.[52]
LETTERS TO THE CONVENTION.
Dear Madam:—Your note of the 20th has just come to hand. I am sorry to say that my engagements are such that it will not be possible for me to be present at the Woman's Rights Convention at Saratoga, which I should very much rejoice to attend.
Dear Friend:—I like your call to the Convention at Saratoga, and I shall endeavor to be there on my return from Massachusetts, where I deliver an oration on education on the 8th of August. By all means put Judge Hay's name on the Central Committee. Invite Theodore Parker without delay.
My Dear Susan B. Anthony:—Returning home, I hasten to answer thy letter forwarded to me a week ago by sister M. C. Wright. It is always with regret that I have to answer any letter of the kind in the negative. But the time fixed for the Saratoga Convention renders it impracticable for me to be present. My husband and I hope to attend the National Convention at Cincinnati in October. Thy active interest and exertions in this cause are greatly cheering. We are doing little hereaway. Pennsylvania is always slow in every reformatory movement. We have circulated many of the pamphlets.
Wishing you all success at the convention, and sure of thy "great recompense and reward,"
Dear Friend:—I have kept your letter by me, and omitted to reply, hoping, and indeed expecting, that though I give up all but two or three routine and neighboring engagements in the summer. I might plan so as to accept yours. But I find I can not come as you ask. My summer months must be devoted otherwise. I hope you will not nickname me No, for my so constantly using that monosyllable to you. Indeed, I will try to oblige you next winter.
Earnest Friend:—We have just received your hearty invitation to the Contention at Saratoga. Nothing would give us more pleasure than to be with you on that occasion. We are all interested in Woman's Rights, and in liberty for all humanity.
Long submission has smothered the hope and extinguished the desire in many for any change of condition. But the light of the nineteenth century should awake all to earnest battle for their God-given rights. We will consult together, and if we can make up a quartette we will try and be with you to sing once more our songs[53] of freedom for another struggling class. With much esteem
(for the family).
Following the Convention the usual attacks were made by the press, accusing the members of "infidelity and free love," which Miss Brown refuted through The New York Tribune. In this way, with conventions being continually held at the fashionable watering places[54] in the summer, and at the center of legislative assemblies in the winter, New York was compelled to give some attention to the question. A Woman's Rights meeting and a hearing were of annual occurrence as regular as the convening of the Legislature.
ALBANY CONVENTION, 1855.
The second Convention at Albany was held in the Green Street Universalist Church, February 13 and 14, 1855. Martha C. Wright presided; the usual speakers[55] were present, and letters of sympathy were received from Wendell Phillips, T. W. Higginson, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, expressing regret at not being able to attend.
LETTER FROM HORACE GREELEY.
Susan B. Anthony. Dear Friend:—I can not be in Albany next week, because I some time since promised to speak on Wednesday in Maine, and must keep my engagement. Nor, indeed, can I deem it of any consequence that I should attend your Convention. You know, already, that I am thoroughly committed to the principle that woman shall decide for herself whether she shall have a voice and a vote in legislation, or shall continue to be represented and legislated for exclusively by man.
My own judgment is that woman's presence in the arena of politics would be useful and beneficent; but I do not assume to judge for her. She must consider, determine, and act for herself. Whenever she shall in earnest have resolved that her own welfare and that of the race will be promoted by her claiming a voice in the direction of civil government, as I think she ultimately will do, then the day of her emancipation will be near. That day I will hope yet to see.
Of the hearings before the Legislature which followed this Convention, we give the report from
The Albany Register, February 17, 1855.
JUST AND EQUAL RIGHTS—HEARING BEFORE THE ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE.
The select Committee of the Assembly, to which was referred the petition for Woman's Rights, granted a hearing to the petitioners in the Assembly Chamber on Saturday evening. Ernestine L. Rose, Antoinette Brown, and Susan B. Anthony represented the petitioners. The arguments were able, and well received. Members of the Committee and others sent up a number of questions which the ladies promptly answered, with a due sprinkling of wit, logic, and sarcasm, greatly to the entertainment of the audience, which did not disperse until after eleven o'clock.
Mr. Rickerson, from the Select Committee, to whom was referred "The Petition for the Right of Suffrage," stated that "after mature consideration the Committee unanimously report adversely to the prayer of the petitioners." Mr. Rickerson, from the same Committee to whom was referred the petition for the just and equal civil rights of woman, said: "The Committee have given the petition that examination which time and circumstances would allow, and report favorably thereon, as embraced in the bill," which they introduced.[56]The petitions of 1856 were referred to the Judiciary Committee, Samuel A. Foote, Chairman. Mr. Foote was at one time a member of the bar of New York, associating with some of the first families in the State — a son, a husband, a father — and yet in his maturer years he had so little respect for himself, his mother, wife, and daughters as to present in a dignified legislative assembly the following report on a grave question of human rights — a piece of buffoonery worthy only a mountebank in a circus:
LEGISLATIVE REPORT ON WOMEN'S RIGHTS.
The Register, Albany, March, 1856.
Mr. Foote, from the Judiciary Committee, made a report on Women's Rights that set the whole House in roars of laughter:
"The Committee is composed of married and single gentlemen. The bachelors on the Committee, with becoming diffidence, have left the subject pretty much to the married gentlemen. ._They have considered it with the aid of the light they have before them and the experience married life has given them. Thus aided, they are enabled to state that the ladies always have the best place and choicest titbit at the table. They have the best seat in the cars, carriages, and sleighs; the warmest place in the winter, and the coolest place in the summer. They have their choice on which side of the bed they will lie, front or back. A lady's dress costs three times as much as that of a gentleman; and, at the present time, with the prevailing fashion, one lady occupies three times as much space in the world as a gentleman.
"It has thus appeared to the married gentlemen of your Committee, being a majority (the bachelors being silent for the reason mentioned, and also probably for the further reason that they are still suitors for the favors of the gentler sex), that, if there is any inequality or oppression in the case, the gentlemen are the sufferers. They, however, have presented no petitions for redress; having, doubtless, made up their minds to yield to an inevitable destiny.
"On the whole, the Committee have concluded to recommend no measure, except that as they have observed several instances in which husband and wife have both signed the same petition. In such case, they would recommend the parties to apply for a law authorizing them to change dresses, so that the husband may wear petticoats, and the wife the breeches, and thus indicate to their neighbors and the public the true relation in which they stand to each other."
ASSEMBLY — WOMEN'S RIGHTS.
Mr. Prendergast presented several petitions asking for an extension of Women's Rights. Mr. P. stated that undoubtedly the Judiciary was the proper Committee to receive these petitions; but the petitioners had signified to him that, from a recent manifestation on the part of the Chairman of that Committee (Judge Foote), they would prefer that the petition should be referred to some other Committee. He therefore moved their reference to the Committee on Claims.
Mr. Northup seconded the motion.
Mr. Foote remarked, that if there was any other Committee of this House that would or could unsex the female sex, he had no objection to the reference moved.
The motion prevailed.
Lydia Mott, in a letter to Susan B. Anthony, under date of Albany, March 15, 1856, says:
The Hon. Wm. Hay, who always aided us and watched the Legislature very closely in its action upon our question, in a letter to Miss Anthony, dated March 20, 1856, said:
March 21st, he says: The petition from Milton, Ulster County, was presented yesterday, and referred to the Committee on Claims, instead of the Judiciary or a Select Committee. It is thus manifest that the cause is not to be put down or even passed by with contemptuous silence, vulgar abuse, or conservative scorn. Foote squealed out his angry opposition, in the old stupid slang (or Shakespeare perverted from "Macbeth"), about unsexing woman with the right of suffrage, and endeavored to contrast it with property-claims; as if the revolutionary maxim concerning taxation and representation going together is not a property rule. I suspect, too, that personal rights, secured by the right preservative of all rights, are more important than mere property rights. But they need not be distinguished in that respect. The proceeding is (even if without any present beneficial result) a triumph; because it proves to Judge Foote and others that the Woman's Rights petitions (or rather demands) must receive suitable consideration and, at least, a respectful report.
Next winter we may hope to be more successful — if not then, success is merely postponed. It has become a question of time only, and perhaps of place — probably Nebraska!
THE SEVENTH NATIONAL WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION.
Pursuant to a call issued by the Central Committee, the Seventh National Woman's Rights Convention was held in New York, at the Broadway Tabernacle, November 25 and 26, 1856.
'The Convention was called to order by Martha C. Wright, President of the last Convention. The officers were duly appointed.[57]
Now almost every Northern State has more or less modified its laws. The Legislature of Maine, after having granted nearly all other property rights to wives, found a bill before it asking that a wife should be entitled to what she earns, but a certain member grew fearful that wives would bring in bills for their daily service, and, by an eloquent appeal to pockets, the measure was lost for the time, but that which has secured other rights will secure this. In Massachusetts, by the old laws, a wife owned nothing but the fee simple in her real estate. And even for that, she could not make a will without the written endorsement of her husband, permitting her to do so. Two years ago the law was so changed that she now holds the absolute right to her entire property, earnings included. Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island have also very much amended their statutes. New York, the proud Empire State, has, by the direct effort of this movement, secured to wives every property right except earnings. During two years a bill has been before the Legislature, which provides that if a husband be a drunkard, a profligate, or has abandoned his wife, she may have a right to her own earnings. It has not passed. Two hundred years hence that bill will be quoted as a proof of the barbarism of the times; now it is a proof of progress.
Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana have also very materially modified their laws. And Wisconsin—God bless these young States—has granted almost all that has been asked except the right of suffrage. And even this, Senator Sholes,[58] in an able minority report on the subject, said, "is only a question of time, and as sure to triumph as God is just." It proposed that the Convention which meets in two years to amend the Constitution of the State should consider the subject. In Michigan, too, it has been moved that women should have a right to their own babies, which none of you, ladies, have here in New York. The motion caused much discussion in the Legislature, and it would probably have been carried had not a disciple of Brigham Young's, a Mormon member, defeated the bill. In Nebraska everything is bright for our cause. Mrs. Bloomer is there, and she has circulated petitions, claiming for women the right to vote. A bill to that effect passed the House of Representatives, and was lost in the Senate, only because of the too early closing of the session. That act of justice to woman would be gained in Nebraska first, and scores of women would go there that they might be made citizens, and be no longer subjects.
In addition to these great legal changes, achieved so directly by this reform, we find also that women have entered upon many new and more remunerative industrial pursuits; thus being enabled to save themselves from the bitterness of dependent positions, or from lives of infamy. Our demand that Harvard and Yale Colleges should admit women, though not yielded, only waits for a little more time. And while they wait, numerous petty "female colleges" have sprung into being, indicative of the justice of our claim that a college education should be granted to women. Not one of these female colleges (which are all second or third rate, and their whole course of study only about equal to what completes the sophomore year in our best colleges) meets the demand of the age, and so will eventually perish. Oberlin and Antioch Colleges in Ohio, and Lima College in New York, admit women on terms nearly equal with men.
In England, too, the claims of women are making progress. The most influential papers in London have urged the propriety of women physicians. Also a petition was sent to Parliament last year, signed by the Browniugs, the Howitts, Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Gaskell, and Mrs. Jameson, asking for just such rights as we claim here. It was presented by Lord Brougham, and was respectfully received by Parliament. The ballot has not yet been yielded; but it can not be far off when, as in the last Presidential contest,[59] women were urged to attend political meetings, and a woman's name was made one of the rallying cries of the party of progress. The enthusiasm which everywhere greeted the name of Jessie[60] was so far a recognition of woman's right to participate in politics. Encouraged by the success of these seven years of effort, let us continue with unfailing fidelity to labor for the practical recognition of the great truth, that all human rights inhere in each human being. We welcome to this platform men and women irrespective of creed, country, or color; those who dissent from us as freely as those who agree with us.
Ernestine L. Rose, from the Business Committee, reported a series of resolutions.[61]The President stated that several letters had been received, one from Francis Jackson, of Boston, one of the noblest of the noble men of the age, inclosing $50, which, he says, he gives “to help this righteous cause along.” Also a letter from the Rev. Samuel Johnson, of Salem, Massachusetts, which would be read by Mr. Higginson.
Men talk a great deal of nonsense about the woman’s rights movement. He never knew a husband who was demolished in an argument by his wife, or a young gentleman who found his resources of reason entirely used up by a young lady, who did not fall back at last when there was no retreat, and say: ‘‘It’s no use; you can’t reason with a woman.” Well, so it would seem in their case. Others shelter themselves behind the general statement, that they don’t wish to marry a woman’s rights woman. I have no doubt the woman’s rights women reciprocate the wish. These appear to have some anxiety about dinner—that seems to be the trouble. Jean Paul, the German, wanted to have a wife who could cook him something good; and Mrs. Frederica Bremer, the novelist, remarked, that a wife can always conciliate her husband by having something to stop his mouth. In a conversation in Philadelphia the other day, a young lawyer, when told that Mrs. Emma R. Coe was studying
law with the intention of practicing, remarked, that he should never see her in Court, but she would remind him of mince pies; to which the gentleman he was in conversation with, observed that he had better not get her as his antagonist in trying a suit. or she would remind him of minced meat. Having given two or three examples of the nonsense of men upon this subject, he would now read them some sense. The letter was from one of the most eloquent and learned of the younger clergy of New England; a man possessed of powers of genius and practical wisdom which would yet make him heard in a larger sphere than that which he now occupied. It was not the old English Sam. Johnson who said that "there never was a lawsuit or a quarrel where a woman was not at the bottom of it." This was Sam. Johnson Americanized, and of course he was a woman's rights man.
LETTER FROM REV. SAMUEL JOHNSON.
Dear Friend: — In complying with your desire that I should send a few words to the Woman's Rights Convention, I am quite aware that in this matter infinitely more depends upon what women do than upon what men say; nevertheless, if my confession of faith will be of the least service, it shall not be wanting.
I regard this movement as no less than the sum and crown of all our moral enterprises; as a proclamation of entire social freedom, never practicable until now. I welcome it, not merely because it aims at delivering half the human race from constraints that degrade and demoralize the whole, but also because it is opening a new spiritual hemisphere, destined to put a new heart into our semi-barbarian theology, politics, manners, literature, and law. And especially do I rejoice, that having defrauded the feminine element of its due share in practical affairs for so many ages, and found ourselves, as a natural consequence, drifting toward barbarism with all our wealth and wisdom, we are compelled at last to learn that justice to woman is simply mercy to ourselves.
Doubtless the main obstacles to this work come from her own sex. Strange if it were not so; if the meagre hope doled out to women hitherto should have unfitted them to believe that such a function awaits them. Strange if they did not fear a thousand perils in the untried way of freedom. But the unwise distrust will have to be abandoned; and so will the conventional flippancy and contempt. I think the grand duty of every honorable man toward this effort at emancipation is simply not to stand in its way. For how much is really covered by that duty? It means that he must wash his hands of every law or prejudice that dooms woman to an inferior position, and makes her the victim of miserable wages and fatal competitions with herself. It means that he must clear himself of this senseless twaddle about "woman's sphere," a matter surely no more for his legislation, than his "sphere" is for hers; and one upon which, at this stage of their experience, it is unbecoming in either to dogmatize; and it means that, as a simple act of justice, he must resign to her the control of her own earnings, secure her fair and full culture, and welcome her to the pulpit, the bar, the medical profession, and to whatever other posts of public usefulness she may prepare herself to fill. As long as he fails of doing this, he is unjustly interfering with her sacred rights; and after he has done this, he may safely leave the rest to her.,
It is humiliating indeed that numbers of well-disposed persons should not recognize so plain a duty. I have no patience to argue it. The moral logic of this movement is as patent as the simplest rule in arithmetic. Every argument brought against it resolves itself into a sneer at woman's capacity, or an anxiety lest the distinction God has established between the sexes will not bear testing; or, what is more common still, though covered up in a thousand ways, the brutish assertion that "might makes right." There is but one answer to these impertinences, and that is the success of individual women in the work they set about. The current ridicule at "doing justice to women "will pass for the sheer vulgarity it is, when so many women shall do justice to themselves, that they can not be taken as exceptions to prove the rule. And this success depends on their own wills. The noble use of God's gifts shall make its mark in this world. As sure as God lives, it shall compel a becoming respect. For more and more of these lessons in true honor do we pray; for the very name of manhood must make us blush, so long as it is identified with these airs of patronage and control, these insulting obeisances, these flatterers of what is childish in women, these sarcasms upon what is noblest; worse than all, this willingness to derive gain from the degradation and suffering of the sex it professes to adore. And words are poor to express the gratitude that shall be forever due to those women whose moral energy shall rebuke this littleness, and stir true manliness in man. With sincere respect, I am truly your friend,
In spite of a violent storm a large number assembled in the evening. The speakers announced were Mrs. Elizabeth Jones and "Wendell Phillips. Mrs. Jones' address was a clear and logical statement of the whole claim of woman. By her own request, it was not published.
In fact this question is a question of civilization, nothing less. The position of woman anywhere is the test of civilization. You need not ask for the statistics of education, of national wealth, or of crime; tell me the position of woman, and you answer the question of the nation's progress. Utah is barbarism; we need no evidence; we read it in the single custom that lowers the female sex. Wherever you go in history this is true. Step by step as woman ascends, civilization ripens. I warn the anxious and terrified that their first efforts should be to conquer their fears, for the triumph of this crusade is written as certain on the next leaf that turns in the great history of the race, as that the twentieth century will open.
The time was when a Greek dared not let his wife go out of doors, and in the old comic play of Athens, one of the characters says, "Where is your wife?" "She has gone out." "Death and furies! what does she do out?" Doubtless, if any "fanatic" had claimed the right of woman to walk out of doors, he would have been deemed crazy in Athens; had he claimed the right of a modest married woman to be seen out of doors it would have been considered fanaticism, and I do not know but that the Herald of that day would have branded him as an infidel. But spite of the anchored conservatism of others, women got out of doors and the country grew, and the world turned round, and so modern Europe has progressed. Now the pendulum swung one way, and now another, but woman has gained right after right until with us, to the astonishment of the Greek, could he see it—of the Turk, when he hears it—she stands almost side by side with man in her civil rights. The Saxon race has led the van. I trample underfoot contemptuously the Jewish—yes, the Jewish—ridicule which laughs at such a Convention as this; for we are the Saxon blood, and the first line of record that is left to the Saxon race is that line of Tacitus, "On all grave questions they consult their women." When the cycle of Saxondom is complete, when the Saxon element culminates in modern civilization, another Tacitus will record in the valley of the Mississippi, as he did in the valley of the Rhine, "On all grave questions they consult their women." The fact is, there is no use of blinking the issue. It is Paul against the Saxon blood; it is a religious prejudice against the blood of the race. The blood of the race accords to woman equality; it is a religious superstition which stands in the way and balks the effort.
Europe has known three phases. The first was the dominion of force; the second the dominion of money; the third is beginning—the dominion of brains. When it comes, woman will step out on the platform side by side with her brother. The old Hindoo dreamed that he saw the human race led out to its varied fortune, and first he saw a man bitted and curbed, and the reins went back to an iron hand. Then he saw a man led on and on, under various changes, until, at last, he saw the man led by threads that came from the brain and went back to an invisible hand. The first was the type of despotism—the reign of force, the upper classes keeping down the under. The last is ours—the dominion of brains. We live in a government where The New York Herald and New York Tribune, thank God, are more really the government than Franklin Pierce and Caleb Cushing. Ideas reign. I know some men do not appreciate this fact; they are overawed by the iron arm, by the marble capitol, by the walls of granite—palpable power, felt, seen. I have seen the palace of the Cæsars, built of masses that seemed as if giants alone could have laid them together, to last for eternity, as if nothing that did not part the solid globe could move them. But the tiny roots of the weeds of Italian summers had inserted themselves between them, and the palace of the Cæsars lies a shapeless ruin. So it is with your government. It may be iron, it may be marble, but the pulses of right and wrong push it aside; only give them time. I hail the government of ideas.
There is another thing I claim. You laugh at Woman's Rights Conventions; you ridicule socialism (I do not accept that); you dislike the anti-slavery movement. The only discussion of the grave social questions of the age, the questions of right and wrong that lie at the basis of society—the only voices that have stirred them and kept those questions alive have been those of these three reforms. Smothered with gold—smothered with material prosperity, the vast masses of our countrymen were living the lives of mere getters of money; but the ideas of this half of the nineteenth century have been bruited by despised reformers, kept alive by three radical movements, and whoever in the next generation shall seek for the sources of mental and intellectual change will find it here; and in a progressive people like ours that claim is a most vital and significant one.... I contend that woman, broadly considered, makes half the money that is made. Go the world over, take either Europe or America, the first source of money is intelligence and thrift; it is not speculation.... Out of the twenty millions of American people that make money, woman does more than half of the work that insures the reward. I claim for that half of the race whose qualities garner up wealth, the right to dispose of it, and to control it by law.
Again, take thought. I know our sister has modestly told us how utterly they are deprived of what are called the institutions of education; but we know very well that book learning is a miserably poor thing, and that the best education in the world is what we clutch in the streets; and of that education, by hook or by crook, woman has so far gained enough, that, Europe and America through, where is the man presumptuous enough to doubt that the hand of woman is not felt as much on the helm of public opinion as that of man? To be sure, she does not have an outside ambitious distinction; but at home, in the molding hours, in youth, in the soft moments when the very balance-wheel of character is touched, we all know that woman, though she may not consciously enunciate ideas, does as much to form public opinion as man. The time has been—and every man who has ever analyzed history knows it—when in France, the mother to Europe of all social ideas; France that has lifted up Germany from mysticism, and told England what she means and what she wants: France that has construed England to herself, and interpreted to her what she was blindly reaching out for; when in that very France, at the fountain-head of that eighteenth century of civil progress, it was in the saloons of woman that man did his thinking, and it was under the brilliant inspiration of her society that that mighty revolution in the knowledge and science of civil affairs was wrought. In this country, too, at this hour, woman does as much to give the impulse to public opinion as man does.
Wherever I find silent power I want recognition of the responsibility. I am not in favor of a power behind the throne. I do not want half the race concealed behind the curtain and controlling without being responsible. Drag them to the light, hold them up as you do men to the utmost study of public questions, and to a personal responsibility for their public settlement. Corruption—it often takes the very form of the passions of woman. In Paris, to-day, we are told, when the government approaches a man, the way is, not to give him wealth for his own enjoyment, but to dower his daughter. It is the pride of woman through which they reach him. Drag that woman forward on the platform of public life; give to her manifest ability a fair field, let her win wealth by her own exertions, not by the surrender of principle in the person of her husband; and although my friend doubts it, I believe, when you put the two sexes harmoniously in civil life, you will secure a higher state of civilization—not because woman is better, not because she is more merciful, or more just, or more pure than man, as man naturally, but because God meant that a perfect human being should be made up of man and woman allied, and it is only when the two march side by side on the pathway of civilization that the harmonious development of the race begins.
Then, again, you can not educate woman, in the sense that we use education. She has no motive. As my friend said, when she marries, education ceases. At that age the education of man commences: he has wealth, ambition, social position, as his stimulus: he knows that by keeping his mind on the alert he earns them all. You furnish a woman with books—you give her no motive to open them. You open to her the door of science: why should she enter? She can gain nothing except in individual and exceptional cases; public opinion drives her back, places a stigma upon her of blue-stocking, and the consequence is, the very motive for education is taken away. Now, I believe, a privileged class, an aristocracy, a set of slaveholders, does just as much harm to itself as it does to the victimized class. When man undertakes to place woman behind him, to assume the reins of government and to govern for her, he is an aristocrat; and all aristocracies are not only unjust, but they are harmful to the progress of society.
I welcome this movement, because it shows that we have got a great amount of civilization. Every other movement to redress a wrong in the past generations of the world has been yielded to only from fear. Bentham says truly, the governing race never yielded a right unless they were bullied out of it. That is true historically; but we have come to a time—and this movement shows it—when civilization has rendered man capable of yielding to something different from fear. This movement has only been eight years on foot, and during that time, we who have watched the statute-book are aware to admiration of the rapid changes that have taken place in public opinion, and in legislation, all over the States. Within the last four years, in different localities, woman has been allowed the right to protect her earnings, and to make a will—two of the great points of property. Aye, and one little star of light begins to twinkle in the darkness of the political atmosphere: Kentucky allows her to vote. Yes, from the land where on one question they are so obstinate, the white race have remembered justice to their white co-equals. In her nobly-planned school system, Kentucky divides her State into districts; the trustees are annually chosen for the State funds; and it is expressly provided, that besides the usual voters in the election of trustees for the school fund, which is coveted by millions, there shall be allowed to vote, every widow who has a child betwixt six and eighteen years old, and she shall go to the ballot-box in person or by proxy. Kentucky repudiates the doctrine that to go to the ballot-box forfeits the delicacy of the sex; for she provides, in express terms, that she shall go to the ballot-box in person, or by proxy, as she pleases. It is the first drop of the coming storm—it is the first ray of light in the rising sun.
Civilization can not defend itself, on American principles, against this claim. My friend of Brooklyn claims the right to make political speeches, as well as sermons, because he is a citizen. Well, woman is a citizen too: and if a minister can preach politics because he is a citizen, woman can meddle in politics and vote, because she is a citizen too. When Mr. Beecher based his right, not on the intellect which flashes from Maine to Georgia, not on the strength of that nervous right arm, but solely on his citizenship, he dragged to the platform twelve millions of American women to stand at his side. But the difficulty is, no man can defend his own right to vote, without granting it to woman. The only reason why the demand sounds strange, is because man never analyzed his own right. The moment he begins to analyze it, he can not defend it without admitting her. Our fathers proclaimed, sixty years ago, that government was co-equal with the right to take money and to punish for crime. Now, all that I wish to say to the American people on this question is, let woman go free from the penal statute—let her property be exempt from taxation, until you admit her to the ballot-box—or seal up the history of the Revolution, make Bancroft and Hildreth prohibited books, banish the argument of '76, and let Mr. Simms have his own way with the history of all the States, as well as South Carolina. Yes, the fact is, women make opinion for us; and the only thing we shut them out from is the ballot-box.
I would have it constantly kept before the public, that we do not seek to prop up woman; we only ask for her space to let her grow. Governments are not made; they grow. They are not buildings like this, with dome and pillars; they are oaks, with roots and branches, and they grow, by God's blessing, in the soil He gives to them. Now man has been allowed
The first three resolutions on the Presidential election were brought up for discussion and adopted. Those persons in the audience who desired to speak were urged to do so.
Philip D. Moore rose in the body of the building and said: During this last Presidential canvass I heard more than once the oldest member of Congress declare that Freedom was based upon the law of God, which was declared in our Bill of Rights—our Declaration of Independence—that it was the inalienable right of all mankind to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness. He placed this last Presidential struggle upon that right higher than all human law; and upon that it seems this contest test in behalf of human rights is based. I think that we should adopt these resolutions, and also appeal to the legislative bodies, where, I believe, there are men who will hear and heed the voice of justice.
Rev. T. W. Higginson took the floor, and expressed his hope that they would have more speaking from the floor and less from the platform. As a Republican voter, he would take his stand in support of these resolutions; and he would declare that it was true that the close of the Presidential election was the time for a woman's Convention to be held. It was true that the Republican party was pledged, if it had any manliness in it, to support the cause of women, to whom it had applied to support its cause every day; and it was positively true that, if there were such a thing in the land as a Democratic party, that party was the party of the women also. As a further illustration of the idea expressed by the gentleman who had preceded him, he would state the fact that, when he was invited to Vermont to address the Legislature in favor of the appropriation of $20,000 for Kansas,[62] the meeting was postponed, on the ground that the shortness of the notice would not allow time for procuring the attendance of the women of the village to fill the galleries, and by their sympathy to influence the determination of the members of the Legislature who might be present. Accordingly they waited a little longer, gave sufficient notice, got the gallery full of ladies, and ultimately got the $20,000 appropriation, too. But always when the women had given their sympathy and began to demand some in return, it was found out that they were very "dependent" creatures, and that, if they persisted in it, they would forfeit the "protection" of the men; and this in the face of the fact, that when politicians wanted votes and clergymen wanted money, their invariable practice was to appeal to the women!
The last time he had considered woman's rights he was in a place where man's rights needed to be defended it was in Kansas. No man could go to Kansas and see what woman had done there, and come back and see the little men who squeak and shout on platforms in behalf of Kansas, and then turn to deride and despise women, without a feeling of disgust. He would like to place some of these parlor orators and dainty platform speakers where the women of Kansas had stood, and suffered, and acted. He saw, while in Kansas, a New York woman[63] — whose story they might remember hi the newspapers how she hospitably prepared, in one day, three dinners for the marauders who were hovering around her house, and in their starvation became respectful at last, and asked her for the hospitality they did not then quite dare to enforce; and how they ate her dinner and abused her husband, until the good woman could stand it no longer, and at last opened her lips and gave them a piece of her mind. He saw that woman. She had lived for weeks together in the second story of a log hut, with the windows of the lower story boarded up, so that the inmates had to climb in by a ladder. She was surrounded by pro-slavery camps; and while her husband was in the army, she was left alone. The house had been visited again and again, and plundered. The wretches would come at night, discharge their rifles, and howl like demons. Her little girl, a nervous child, had sickened and died from sheer fright. But still, after the death of that child, the mother lived on, and still gave hospitality to free-soil men, and still defended the property of her husband by her presence. At last the marauders burned her house over her head, and she retreated for a time. The speaker saw her when she was on her way back to that homestead, to rebuild the house which she had seen once reduced to ashes by the enemy; and she said that if her husband was killed there in Kansas, she should preempt that claim, and defend the property for her children.
He saw another woman, a girl of twenty. He visited a mill which had been burnt by Missourians, where piles of sawdust were still in flames before his eyes, and there he met her; and when he asked to whom that house belonged, she said to her father. And when he inquired about her adventures in connection with that burning house, this was the story. Twenty-eight hundred Missourians were encamped around that house the morning after they had burned it. The girl had fled with her mother a mile off, but had come back to see if she could save any of the property. She walked into the midst of the crowd, and found a man she had previously known seated upon her favorite horse. Said she, "That is my horse; get off." He laughed at her. She repeated her demand. He loaded her with curses and insults. She turned to the bystanders—the herd of ruffians who had burned her father's house—and said: "This is my horse; make that man get off." Those fellows obeyed her; they shrank before that heroic girl, and made their companion dismount. She mounted the horse and rode off. When she had gone about half a mile, she heard a trampling of horses' hoofs behind her. The thief, mounted on a fleeter horse, was riding after her. He overtook her, and reining his horse in front of her, he seized hers by the bridle, and commanded her to let go. She held on. Said he, "Let go, or it will be the worse for you." She still held on. He took out his bowie-knife, and drew it across her hand, so that she could feel the sharpness of the edge. Said he, "If you don't let go, I will cut your hand off." Said she, "Cut if you dare." He cut the rope close to her hand, and took the bridle from her. It was useless to resist any longer, so she slipped off and walked away. But it was not ten minutes before she again heard trampling behind, and as she looked around, she saw two companions of this miscreant—two men less utterly villainous than he—bringing back her horse. Moved by her heroism, they had compelled him again to give up the horse, had brought it back to her, and she owns it now.
That was what great emergencies made out of woman. That girl had splendid physical proportions, and though some accident had deprived her of her left arm, she had a right arm, however, which was worth a good many. She had one arm, and the editor of The New York Times, he supposed, had two. He was not much accustomed to seeking defence of anybody, but he must say that, if he ever did get into difficulty as a Woman's Rights man, and had to choose between the protection of the one arm of that girl in Kansas, and the two of the New York editor, he thought his first choice would not be the Lieutenant-Governor. Seeing the heroism of the women of Kansas, he told the men of Lawrence, that when the time came for them to assert their rights, he hoped they would not imitate the border ruffians of the Eastern States, who asserted rights for man, and denied them to woman.Mr. Higginson then reported the following resolution from the Business Committee:
This resolution referred, as some of them knew, to the recent action of some of the noblest women in England, in behalf of juster rights of property and a larger construction of human rights than had hitherto prevailed there. The list included a few of the very noblest of the women who had helped to make England's name glorious by their deeds in literature and in art. It included Mrs. Norton, to whom Wendell Phillips had referred, as a living proof of the intellectual greatness of woman; she had a husband who, after blasting her life by an infamous charge against her, which he confessed to his counsel he did not believe, now lived on the earnings of the brains of his wife. It included, also, Mrs. Somerville, a woman who had forever vindicated the scientific genius of her sex, by labors that caused the wonder and admiration of scientific men; a woman of whom it is said, that she is in all respects true to her sex, because while studying the motions of the heavenly bodies, she does not forget the motion of the tea-cups around her own table, and is as exquisite a housekeeper, as she is wise and accomplished as a student. It included also Harriet Martineau, that woman who, perhaps more than any other person in this age, had contributed to place the last half century in Europe in a clear light, by her admirable History, and shown in her treatise on Political Economy, a grasp and clearness which few men attain. It included also the name of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, that woman of rarest genius, of whom her husband, himself the greatest of England's living poets, had said that his wife's heart, which few knew, was greater than her intellect, which everybody knew; a woman whose inspiration had drawn from that husband, in the closing poem of his latest volume, the very highest strain which modern English poetry had struck, and the noblest utterance of emotion that ever man produced toward woman, in the speaker's judgment, since the world began. It also included Mary Howitt, whose beautiful union with her husband is a proof of what true marriage will be, when man and woman are equals, and whose genius had brought forth the wonderful powers of another woman whom we may fearlessly claim as a co-laborer, Frederica Bremer. These were the women of England to whom the resolution referred; women who had taken the first step in that movement, of which the full enfranchisement of woman will be the last.
He could not quite accept the opinion by Mrs. Jones in her admirable essay in regard to the superior education of the women of England. The women of England, as he took it, did not equal the women of America in their average education, although they did surpass them in that physical vigor of constitution which, in the end, gave greater power of action and thought. Whilst the English woman was, by the necessity of the case, taught more of the modern languages, she was not so commonly taught either the ancient languages or the mathematics, and had not, therefore, the same amount of mental training. In England, too, this Woman's Rights movement was met by more serious obstacles. It had to encounter all the thunders of The Thunderer—all the terrors of The Times—whilst here it had to undergo the very diluted thunders of The Times the Little. A recent traveler has remarked that he could distinguish the Massachusetts women from the women of any other State—not because they spoke through their nose, or sung psalms, but because they had "views." Every woman had her "views" upon every subject. It was true that the English women had superb frames, grand muscles, fine energies, that they spoke two or three languages, but then they usually didn't have any "views"; and he thanked God that he lived in a State where women had them.
He had spoken for woman and to woman, because he was a man. He did not dare, as a Republican voter, to throw his vote with one hand, without doing something for Woman's Rights with the other. Men and women were one before God, and this union can not be perfect until their equality be recognized. So long as woman is cut off from education, man is deprived of his just education. So long as woman is crushed into a slave, so long will man be narrowed into a despot. Without this movement, the political conventions of the present day would only prove to posterity that the nation was half civilized; but now future historians will record that in 1856, New York had not only her caucuses and her ballot-boxes, but her Woman's Rights Convention also.
Mrs. Rose wished to remark, in reference to the resolution offered by Mr. Higginson, that English women, to her knowledge, were very active in forwarding the Woman's Rights movement throughout Great Britain. And not only English women, but young and noble English girls—girls, who were too timid to take part publicly in the movement, but who were untiring and indefatigable in making converts and enlisting aid. There was Miss Smith, Miss Fox, the daughter of the celebrated W. J. Fox, the eloquent lecturer and member of Parliament for Oldham, Miss Parkes, and others. They had devoted themselves to the great work, which was more difficult in that country than this. They had no declaration of independence to appeal to, declaring that all men were created equal, and endowed with the incalculable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They had no such standard to appeal to there, because men there were not recognized as free. Banking interests, manufacturing interests, land monopolies, and monopolies of every other kind were represented in England, but not men. The principle of universal suffrage had not yet obtained in England, and hence the greater difficulties that woman had to encounter there.
Another obstacle was the division of the people into classes and castes. No movement could make headway in England unless it was commenced among what are termed the higher classes. Every petition to Parliament must first have some names that have a title attached to them before it can obtain other signatures. The thinking portion of the middle classes were kept silent to a great extent, because of their utter inability to do anything unless it was taken up and supported by the higher classes. But this state of things would not continue long; there was "a good time coming" there as well as here. Signatures by thousands had been obtained to the Woman's Petition, and she presumed by the time it was presented to Parliament it would contain tens of thousands of names.
Mrs. Rose then offered the following resolution from the Committee:
In commenting on this resolution, Mrs. Rose remarked that if the difficulties surrounding English women who advocated an amelioration of woman's condition were great, how much greater were those which surrounded the French women, owing to the blight of despotism in that country. They could write their thoughts, but their writings could not be published in France. They had to send them to the one State in Italy which was not crushed by dark and bitter despotism. That bright spot is Sardinia. The works of the noble French women had to be sent to Turin, printed there, and sent back to Paris for private, secret distribution. And when these women met in consultation, they had to watch the doors and windows, to see that all was secure. She knew many of them, but dared not mention their names, for fear they might be borne across the Atlantic, and lead to their oppression and proscription. The noblest thoughts that had ever been uttered in France were by women, not only before the Revolution, but down to the present day. Madame Roland was imprisoned for uttering the truth, in consequence of which imprisonment she lost her arm. Jeanne Deroine was exiled, and now resides in London, where she supports herself, two daughters and son. She was teaching them herself, because she had no means to pay for their education. She filled their minds with noble thoughts and feelings, even to the very sacrifice of themselves for the benefit of the race, and more especially for the elevation of woman, without which she feels convinced that the elevation of man can never be accomplished.
But while the names of a few such noble women were made public, hundreds, nay, thousands, who had done as much, and even more than these, were in obscurity. They were constantly watching to find what was done in America. And there was one thing which characterized these French women, and that was, the entire absence of jealousy and envy of the talents and virtues of others. Wherever they see a man or woman of intellect or virtue, they recognize them as a brother or sister; and they never ask from whom a great thought or a virtuous action comes, but, is it good, is it noble? It seemed to her that the character of the French women was the very essence of human nobility. They are ready to welcome, with heart and hand, every reformer, without stopping to inquire whether he is English, American, German, or Turk. But poor France was oppressed as she never was before. The usurper that now disgraces the throne, as well as the name he bears, does not allow the free utterance of a single free thought. Men and women are taken up privately and imprisoned, and no newspaper dares to publish any account of it.
When Mrs. Rose had concluded, a young gentleman in the rear of the hall rose from his seat, and desired to make a few remarks. We subsequently understood he was from Virginia, and that his name was Leftwich, a theological student. He asked whether the claims of woman, which had been stated and advocated in the Convention, were founded on Nature or Revelation? He wished Mr. Higginson would enlighten him and several of his friends on that subject.
The Gentleman From Virginia rose, in his place, in the rear of the building, and replied that he was not answered. Although earnestly invited to come upon the platform and address the audience, he declined to do so. His remarks, in consequence, were inaudible to about one-half the audience. He said it seemed to him that there was an inconsistency and an antagonism between theology and Mr. Higginson's views, as expressed by himself. The gentleman had contradicted himself. He refused to treat the question on the ground of revelation, and then declared that the claim of Woman's Rights was founded on the fundamental laws of God and nature. Here he took issue with Mr. H. The test of the naturalness of a claim was its universality. The principles upon which it was based must be found wherever man was found, and must have existed through all time and under every condition of life. What was found everywhere under all circumstances was natural. This Woman's Rights claim was not found everywhere even in this country, let alone others. He knew many enlightened and refined districts which had never heard the principles of this society, much less felt them. They were not popular anywhere in the age in which they were inaugurated. Therefore they were not founded in nature, and the claim of naturalism must fall to the ground. The taste for the beautiful, and the love of right, were innate faculties of the mind, because they existed everywhere; not so with the recognition of the claim of Woman's Rights. Again, the claim was not based on revelation, which he would prove in this way: Revelation is never inconsistent with itself. The claim for woman of the right to vote, inasmuch as she would of necessity vote as she pleased, and therefore sometimes contrary to her husband, involved a disobedience of her husband, which was directly antagonistic to the injunction of the Scriptures requiring wives to obey their husbands.
An Elderly Quaker Lady in the body of the audience rose, and told the gentleman from the Old Dominion that if he wished to do any good he must come on the platform where he could be heard. The gentleman declined.
Lucy Stone said that men had rights as well as women, and she would not insist on the gentleman coming to the platform if he chose to remain where he was, but it would be more convenient if he would come.
The Gentleman From Virginia still declined, and proceeded to quote Scripture against the Woman's Rights movement.
The Quaker Lady again started up, and told him he had got hold of the letter of the Bible, but not the spirit.
Lucy Stone desired that each speaker would take his or her turn, "in due order, so that all might be edified."
The Gentleman From Virginia proceeded. Referring to a remark of Mr. Phillips on the preceding evening, in connection with a quotation from Tacitus, "that this movement was Paul against the Anglo-Saxon blood," he stood by the apostle to the Gentiles, and Mr. Phillips might stand by the corrupted Saxon blood.
A Gentleman rose and requested him to go upon the platform, as half the audience were breaking their necks by trying to listen to him. Still the gentleman declined.
The Virginian argued that woman was not fitted for the pulpit, the rostrum, or the law court, because her voice was not powerful enough. God gave her a mild, sweet voice, fitted for the parlor and the chamber, for the places for which He had designed her. God has not given her a constitution to sustain fatigue, to endure as man endures, to brave the dangers which man can brave. She was too frail, too slender—too delicate a flower for rough blasts and tempests. In her whole physical organization there was proof that she was not capable of what man was capable. Hers was a more beautiful mission than man's—a pure atmosphere was hers to breathe. Surrounded by all gentle influences, let her be content with the holy and beautiful position assigned to her by her Maker. He did not rise to make a speech. He was urged into it by the desultory, erratic, shallow, superficial reasonings of the gentleman who in one breath invited them to free discussion, and in the next defamed and scandalized the editor of The Times, because he took the liberty to discuss this question freely in his paper.
Mr. Higginson came forward promptly to reply. He thanked the gentleman for his speech. Such speeches were just what the Convention wanted. He was glad to hear from the applause which followed the gentleman's remarks, that there was a large number of persons present who were opposed to the views of the Convention. It was of little use talking to friends who already agreed with you, but it was always of advantage to talk to opponents, whom you might hope to convert. He was glad that those who differed with them were there, because it showed that the question was one of interest, and was beginning to excite those who probably had bestowed but little thought on it before. He did not think the gentleman could have meant what he said when he accused him of slander. He did not mean to slander anybody. And he did not think he quite meant what he said about his erratic and shallow reasonings. He would appeal to all if he had not treated the gentleman with courtesy. He thought he had answered the gentleman's inquiry, when in reply to the question whether he founded this claim on nature or on revelation, he said that he personally founded it on nature. If there was in the compass of the English language any simpler way of answering the question than that he did not know it. The gentleman, from the scope of his remarks, evinced a considerable love for metaphysical theology. His reasoning appeared to be a little dim; perhaps it was for want of comprehension on his part. He liked to plant himself on the fundamental principles of human nature, and work out his opinions from them.
In reply to the gentleman's reasoning about the universality of a thing being a test of its naturalness, he could say that there were a good many races who did not know that two and two make four. According to the gentleman's idea of natural laws, therefore, it was not natural that two and two should make four. But it had always been a question among metaphysicians, which was really the most natural condition for man—the savage or the civilized state? His own opinion was that the state of highest cultivation was the most natural state of man. He tried to develop his own nature in that way, and one of the consequences of that development was the conviction that two and two made four; while another was the conviction that his wife had as much right to determine her sphere in life for herself as he had for himself. And having come to that conviction, he should endeavor to carry it out, and he hoped by the time the young gentleman came to have a wife, he would be converted to that principle.
In reference to his attack on the editor of The Daily Times for the article on the Woman's Convention, which had appeared in the edition of the previous day, he remarked that he had read that article without any particular reverence for its author. He knew the quarter from which it came. There was not a man in New York who better understood on which side his bread is buttered than the editor of The Daily Times. That gentleman always wished people to understand that his journal was The Times, and was not The Tribune, and never failed to avail himself of the Woman's Rights movement as giving him such an opportunity. Have you ever seen a little boy running along the street, and carefully dodging between two big boys? If you have, that was the editor of The Times between Greeley and Bennett. The Times seeks to be a journal and nothing else. I will always say of it, continued the speaker, that the reports in The Times are very perfect and very excellent. I do not mean any disrespect to the other reporters present when I say that the report of yesterday's proceedings of this Convention, published in this morning's Times, was fuller and far more perfect than the report of any other paper. And so it always is with the reports of The Times . They are as full, as its criticisms on moral subjects are empty.
Lucy Stone vacated the chair to address the meeting. She was more than glad, for the sake of the cause, that this discussion had arisen. She was glad that the question had been asked, whether this claim was based on nature or on revelation. Many were asking the same question, and it was proper that it should be answered. If we were living in New Zealand where there is no revelation and nobody has ever heard of one, there would yet be an everlasting truth or falsehood on this question of woman's rights, and the inhabitants of that island would settle it in some way, without revelation. The true test of every question is its own merits. What is true will remain. What is false will perish like the leaves of autumn when they have served their turn.
But in regard to this question of Nature and Revelation, we found our claim on both. By Revelation I suppose the gentleman means Scripture. I find it there, "He who spake as never man spake" held up before us all radiant with God's own sunlight the great truth, "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them"; and that revelation I take as the foundation of our claim, and tell the gentleman who takes issue with us, that if he would not take the position of woman, denied right of access to our colleges, deprived of the right of property, compelled to pay taxes, to obey laws that he never had a voice in making, and be defrauded of the children of his love, then, according to the revelation which he believes in, he must not be thus unjust to me.
The gentleman says he believes in Paul. So do I. When Paul declares that there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, male nor female in Christ, I believe he meant what he said. The gentleman says he believes in Paul more than in the Anglo-Saxon blood. I believe in both. But when Paul tells us to "submit ourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake," and to "fear God and honor the king," the heavy tread of the Anglo-Saxon blood walks over the head of Paul and sweeps away from this republic the possibility of a king. And the gentleman himself, I presume, would not assent to the sway of a crowned monarch, Paul to the contrary, notwithstanding. Just as the people have outgrown the injunction of Paul in regard to a king, so have the wives his direction to submit themselves to their husbands. The gentleman intimates that wives have no right to vote against their husbands, because the Scriptures command submission, and he fears that it would cause trouble at home if they were to do so. Let me give him the reply of an old lady, gray with the years which bring experience and wisdom. She said that when men wanted to get their fellow-men to vote in the way they desire, they take especial pains to please them, they smile upon them, ask if their wives and children are well, and are exceedingly kind. They do not expect to win their vote by quarreling with them—that would be absurd. In the same way, if a man wanted his wife to vote for his candidate he will be sure to employ conciliatory means.
The golden rule settles this whole question. We claim it as ours, and whatever is found in the Bible contradictory to it, never came from God. If men quote other texts in conflict with this, it is their business, not mine, to make them harmonize. I did not quite understand the gentleman's definition of what is natural. But this I do know, that when God made the human soul and gave it certain capacities, He meant these capacities should be exercised. The wing of the bird indicates its right to fly; and the fin of the fish the right to swim. So in human beings, the existence of a power, presupposes the right to its use, subject to the law of benevolence. The gentleman says the voice of woman can not be heard. I am not aware that the audience finds any difficulty in hearing us from this platform. All Europe and America have listened to the voice of Madam Rachel and Jenny Lind. The capacity to speak indicates the right to do so, and the noblest, highest, and best thing that any one can accomplish, is what that person ought to do, and what God holds him or her accountable for doing, nor should we be deterred by the senseless cry, "It is not our proper sphere."
As regards woman's voting, I read a letter from a lady traveling in the British provinces, who says that by a provincial law of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, women were actually voters for members of Parliament; and still the seasons come and go, children are born, and fish flock to that shore. The voting there is viva voce. In Canada it is well known that women vote on the question of schools. A friend told me when the law was first passed giving women who owned a certain amount of property, or who paid a given rental, a right to vote, he went trembling to the polls to see the result. The first woman who came was a large property holder in Toronto; with marked respect the crowd gave way as she advanced. She spoke her vote and walked quietly away, sheltered by her womanhood. It was all the protection she needed. In face of all the arguments in favor of the incapacity of woman to be associated in government, stood the fact that women had sat on thrones and governed as successfully as men. England owes more to Queen Elizabeth than to any other sovereign except Alfred the Great. We must not always be looking for precedents. New ideas are born and old ones die. Ideas that have prevailed a thousand years have been at last exploded. Every new truth has its birth-place in a manger, lives thirty years, is crucified, and then deified. Columbus argued through long years that there must be a western world. All Europe laughed at him. Five crowned heads rejected him, and it was a woman at last who sold her jewels and fitted out his ships. So, too, the first idea of applying steam to machinery was met with the world's derision. But its triumphs are recognized now. What we need is to open our minds wide and give hospitality to every new thought, and prove its truth.
I want to say a word upon the resolutions. The present time, just after a presidential election, is most appropriate to consider woman's demand for suffrage. The Republican party claims especially to represent the principles of freedom, and during the last campaign has been calling upon women for help. One of the leaders of that party went to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and said he wanted her help in this campaign; and before she told me what answer she made, she asked me how I would have felt if the same had been asked of me. I told her I should have felt as Samson did when the Philistines put out his eyes, and then asked that he should make merriment for them. The Republican party are a part of those who compel us to obey laws we never had a voice in making — to pay taxes without our consent; and when we ask for our political and legal rights, it laughs in our face, and only says: "Help us to places of power and emolument, and we will rule over you." I know there are men in the Republican party who, like our friend Mr. Higginson, take a higher stand, and are ready to recognize woman as a co-sovereign; but they are the exceptions. There is but one party — that of Gerrit Smith — that makes the same claim for woman that it does for man. But while the Republican and Democratic parties deny our political existence, they must not expect that we shall respond to their calls for aid.
Madame de Staël said to Bonaparte, when asked why she meddled with politics: "Sire, when women have their heads cut off, it is but just they should know the reason." Whatever political influence springs into being, woman is affected by it. We have the same rights to guard that men have; we shall therefore insist upon our claims. We shall go to your meetings, and by and by we shall meet with the same success that the Roman women did, who claimed the repeal of the Appian law. War had emptied the treasury, and it was still necessary to carry it on; women were required to give up their jewels, their carriages, etc. But by and by. when the war was over, they wished to resume their old privileges. They got up a petition for the repeal of the law; and when the senators went to their places, they found every avenue to the forum thronged by women, who said to them as they passed, "Do us justice." And notwithstanding Cato, the Censor, was against them, affirming that men must have failed in their duty or women would not be clamorous for their rights, yet the obnoxious law was repealed.
In that story of Mr. Higginson's, of the heroic woman in Kansas whose left arm was cut off, there is a lesson for us to learn. I tell you, ladies, though we have our left hand cut off by unjust Jaws and customs, we have yet the right hand left; and when we once demand the ballot with as much firmness as that Kansas daughter did her horse, believe me, it will not be in the power of men to withhold it — even the border ruffians among them will hasten to restore it. After all, the fault is our own. We have sat to
"Suckle fools, and chronicle small beer;"
and, in inglorious ease, have forgotten that we are integral parts in the fabric of human society — that all that interests the race, interests us. We have never once, as a body, claimed the practical application of the principles of our government. It is our own fault. Let it be so no longer. Let us say to men: "Government is just only when it obtains the consent of the governed ": we are governed, surrender to us our ballot. If they deride, still answer: Surrender our ballot! and they will give tt up. It is not in our stars that we are underlings, but in ourselves." Woman has sat, like Mordecai at the king's gate, hoping that her silent presence would bring justice; but justice has not come. The world has talked of universal suffrage; but it has made it universal only to man. It is time we spoke and acted. It is time we gave man faith in woman — and, still more, woman faith in herself. It is time both men and women knew that whatever has been achieved by woman in the realm of mind or matter, has been achieved by right womanly women. Let us then work, and continue to work, until the world shall assent to our right to do whatever the capacities God has given us enable us to do.
Susan B. Anthony rose and said that several gentlemen had handed her contributions, one $40, another $25. She trusted that all New York men and women would find they had something more to do than listen to speeches.
LETTER FROM HORACE GREELEY.
My Friend: — You are promised to be present and speak at the approaching "Woman's Rights Convention." I, too, mean to attend its deliberations, or some portion thereof, but not to take part in them. For I find this evil apparently inseparable from all Radical gatherings: a very large and influential portion of the press, including, I grieve to say, religious as well as secular journals, are prone and eager to expose to odium those whom they would undermine and destroy, by attributing to them, not the sentiments they have personally expressed, but those of others with whom they are or have been associated in some reformatory movement. He, then, who appears as a speaker at a Woman's Rights Convention is made responsible for whatever may be uttered at such Convention — no matter by whom — which is most likely to excite popular prejudice and arouse popular hostility. I have borne a good share of this unfairly excited and unjust odium, with regard to the dietetic, anti-slavery, and social reforms suggested in our day, and shall bear on as patiently as I may; but I grow older, and do not confront the world on a fresh issue with so light a heart, so careless a defiance, as I might have done twenty years ago. Allow me, then, through you, to say what I think of the woman's rights movement, its objects, incitements, and limitations. If I may thus attain perspicuity, I can bear the imputation of egotism.
1. I deem the intellectual, like the physical capacities of women unequal in the average to those of men; but I perceive no reason in this natural diversity for a factitious and superinduced legal inequality. On the contrary, it seems to me that the fact of a natural and marked discrepancy in the average mental as well as muscular powers of men and women ought to allay any apprehensions that the latter, in the absence of legal interdicts and circumscriptions, would usurp the functions and privileges of the former.
2. I believe the range of employment for woman, in our age and country, far too restricted, and the average recompense of her labor, consequently far less than it should be. In saying this, I do not intimate a doubt that the best possible employment for most women is to be found in the care and management of their own households respectively, with the rearing and training of their children. But many women, including some of the most noble and estimable, are never called to preside over households; while some of the called are impelled to decline the invitation. In point of fact, then, there is and always will be a large proportion of the gentler sex who are, at least temporarily, required to earn their own subsistence, and vindicate their own usefulness in some other capacity than that of the loved and honored wife and mother. The maiden or widow, blessed with opulence, ought to be insured against the worse calamities of a reverse of fortune, by the mastery of some handicraft or industrial avocation; she ought to lead a life of persistent and efficient industry, as the fulfillment of a universal duty; while her unportioned sister must do this or grovel in degrading idleness and dependence on a father's or brother's overtaxed energies, looking to marriage as her only chance of escape therefrom. For man's sake, no less than woman's, it is eminently desirable that that large portion of our women, who are not absorbed in domestic cares, should be attracted and stimulated to industry by a wider range of pursuits, and a consequent increase of recompense. I deem it at once unjust and like all injustice impolitic, that a brother and sister, hired by the same farmer, the one to aid him in his own round of labor, the other to assist his wife in hers, should be paid, the one twelve to twenty, the other but four to six dollars per month. The difference in their wages should be no greater than in their physical and mental ability. Still more glaring is this discrepancy, when the two are employed as teachers, and, though of equal efficiency, the one is paid five hundred dollars per annum, the other but two, or in that proportion, merely because the former is a man and the latter a woman. While such disparities exist, right here in this metropolis of American civilization and Christianity, it is in vain that Conservatism stops its ears and raises its eyebrows at the announcement of a Woman's Rights Convention.
3. Regarding marriage as the most important, most sacred, and tender of human relations, and deeming it irrevocable, save by death, it seems to me essential that woman should be proffered such a range of employments, with such adequate recompense, as to enable her at all times to support herself in honored and virtuous independence, so that marriage shall be accepted by her at the dictates of love, and not of hunger. Much might be urged on this point, but I choose simply to commend it to the consideration of others.
4. As to woman's voting or holding office, I defer implicitly to herself. If the women of this or any other country believe their rights would be better secured and their happiness promoted by the assumption on their part of the political franchises and responsibilities of men, I, a Republican in principle from conviction, shall certainly interpose no objection. I perceive what seem to be serious practical difficulties in the way of realizing such assumption; but these are difficulties, not for me, but for them. I deem it unjust that men should be so constantly and unqualifiedly impeached as denying rights to woman which the great majority of women seem quite as reluctant to claim as men are to concede. I apprehend that whenever women shall generally and earnestly desire an equality of political franchises with men, they will meet with little impediment from the latter.
5. I can not share at all in the apprehensions of those who are alarmed at the Woman's Rights agitation, lest it should result in the unsexing of woman, or her general deflection from her proper sphere. On the contrary, I feel sure that the freest inquiry and discussion will only result in a clearer and truer appreciation of woman's proper position, and a more general and rigid adherence thereto. "Let there be light!" for this is an indispensable condition of all true and healthy growth. Let all convictions find free utterance — all grievances be stated and considered. In the range of my observation, I have found those women who were conscious of defects in the present legal and social position of their sex among the most zealous, faithful, and efficient in the discharge of their household and parental duties. I feel confident that a general discussion of the subject of Woman's Rights will result in a more general recognition and cheerful performance of woman's appropriate duties.
LETTER FROM HON. WILLIAM HAY, OF SARATOGA SPRINGS.
I acknowledge, with much pleasure, the receipt of a printed circular, calling for the Seventh Woman's Rights Annual Convention. I also acknowledge, with increased pleasure, and perhaps with more pride than becomes me, the accompanying invitation to attend that Convention, and take part in its proceedings. I like this word, because it implies progress.
Pre-engagement will prevent my personal attendance at the Broadway Tabernacle, but, be assured, my heart shall be there, with all its desires and hopes for the future of humanity; because I am convinced that until the individual and social rights of our whole race, without distinction of caste or sex, shall have been universally recognized, the tyrannies of earth will not cease from oppressing it.
I wish that every woman in the United States could be at New York, throughout the continuance of your Convention, where each might see for herself, in Mrs. Lucretia Mott, what woman may be, and should be, and must be, before her sex can attain, individually and socially, "that equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle" her. For physical and mental improvement of man's condition, according to his birthright and educational capacity, there must be, in America, more Marys, the mothers of Washingtons.
The great political and legal reform announced in your circular, contemplating complete development of the entire human race, is already operating, sympathetically and auspiciously, in Europe, upon preeminent minds, like that of Lord Brougham, and may favorably react, in practical adoption here, of Jefferson's elementary truth (almost a self-evident proposition, and yet treated as theory), that government derives its just powers from suffrage-consent of all (not half) of the governed. Partial consent (especially by and to a moiety of mankind, arrogantly claiming, like Louis XIV., to be the State) can confer only unjust power, which Heaven's higher law of liberty, equality, and justice never sanctioned.
Your Convention is most opportune, for this Continent is threatened with permanent and peculiar danger, produced by the feudal condition of women. I allude to the increasing curse of Mormonism, a consequence of woman's legalized inferiority or nonentity. With power from your local situation and undoubted sphere, to influence, for all time, the destiny of every civilized country, the members of your Convention, conscious of their duty, will never flinch from the responsibility of their position. It requires an unequivocal and uncompromising claim for perfect equality of rights in every department of manual and machine labor, of thought, of speech, of government, of society, and of life itself. Indeed, testamentary provision for assertion of that claim, by those few fortunate women who have, like Mrs. Blandina Dudley,[64] wealth to bestow, should become a ruling principle, instead of that passion, so strong in death, for posthumous pulpit and newspaper applause, which Protestantism has sagaciously substituted in lieu of the saving ordinances of the Roman Catholic Church.
LETTER FROM FRANCES D. GAGE.
Dear Lucy Stone: — Most earnestly did I desire to attend this Seventh National Convention, more especially as I felt that I should be the only representative from the west side of the great Father of Waters. But it is impossible for me to remove the barriers just now opposed to so long a@ journey and absence from home. There is much thought in the free States of the great West — much less of conservatism and rigid adherence to the old-time customs of law and theology among the masses, than in the East. Thousands are becoming ready to be baptized into a new faith, a broader and holier recognition of the rights of humanity. The harvest-fields are ripening for the reapers.
The gloomy night is breaking —
E'en now the sunbeams rest
With a bright and cheering radiance
On the hill-tops of the West;
The mists are slowly rising
From the valley and the plain,
And a spirit is awaking
That shall never sleep again.
But since I can not meet you in your councils, I will endeavor to allay the disappointment by striving to reach with my pen some of the sunset homes in the far West, and endeavor to arouse woman there to her duties and responsibilities, that she may sympathize more fully with her Eastern sisters, who caught the first glow of the sunrise hour of our great reform movement. With sincere and earnest wishes for your advancement in right and truth,
Mr. Higginson was then introduced. Mrs. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen: I think, as perhaps some of you do, that a disproportionately large portion of the time of the meeting to-day has been taken up by the speeches of men; therefore I do not intend that this man's speech shall be a very long one. I remember a certain sermon, of which it was said it had nothing good in it except its subject and its shortness. My speech is going to be like that sermon. But there is one great advantage which men enjoy in speaking on a Woman's Rights platform: they can not help doing good to the movement, no matter how they speak; for if a man speaks well, of course he helps it by his speech; and if he speaks ill on the subject, he still helps it, because there are women about him who won't speak ill, and the comparison is useful.
I wish to take up a point which, as a man, I am entitled to claim should have more prominence given it than has yet been the case; a point touched upon by me previously, in something I said yesterday, which some of you thought was not correct; and a point touched upon by Wendell Phillips this afternoon. 1 mean the claim of the Woman's Rights movement on woman; the wrong done by woman to that movement; and the injustice of the charge against man, that he especially resists it. And yet I can not fully accept the position taken by Rev. Mr. Johnson and Horace Greeley, that man's duty is only to stand aside and let woman take her rights. Not so. It is not so easy as that, let me tell you, gentlemen, to get rid of the responsibility of years of wrong. We men have been standing for years with our hands crushing down the shoulders of woman, so that she should not attain her true altitude; and it is not so easy, after we have cramped, dwarfed, and crippled her, to get rid of our responsibility by standing back at last, and saying, "There, we will let you go; stand up for yourself." If it is true, as these women say, that we have wronged them for centuries, we have got to do something more than mere negative duty. By as much as we have helped to wrong them, we have got to help to right them; by as much as we have discouraged them heretofore, we have got to encourage them hereafter; and that is why I wish to speak to women to-night of their duties, as these women have spoken to us of ours. I want to remind them that the time has come when men must appeal to them; for be assured that when women are ready to claim their rights, men will be ready to grant them.
There are three special obstacles, Mrs. President, to the willingness of woman to do her simple duty to the Woman's Rights movement. The first is the obstacle of folly — sheer, unadulterated folly — the folly in which women are trained, and in which we men help to train them, and for which we then denounce them. The reason why many women don't like the Woman's Rights movement, is because they have too little real thought in them to appreciate it at all. They have been brought up as fashionable society brings up woman on one side, or as mere household drudgery brings them up on the other in each case, without power to appreciate a great principle — without power tc appreciate a sublime purpose — without power to appreciate anything but a "good match," and the way to obtain it. On their entrance into life, their choice lies, for social position, for enjoyment, for occupation, for usefulness, in this narrow alternative — between a husband and nothing; and that, as Theodore Parker once said, is very often a choice between two nothings. These women may have literary culture and social polish; but, for want of an idea to light up their eyes and strengthen their souls, these things are only glitter and worthlessness.
A certain celebrated French woman in the last century (Mlle. de Launay), who made mathematical science her study, at last had a lover; whereupon she partially forgot her mathematics, and only remembered enough of it for practical purposes. And, in her Memoirs, she mentions the fact that her lover at length began to be less attentive to her; so much so, that she observed that whereas in walking home with her in the evening, he used to take pains to go round the two sides of the public square, in order to make the walk as long as possible, he now cut it short by always striking across the center; "so that his love for me," she observes, "must have decreased in the inverse ratio between the diagonal of a rectangular parallelogram and the sum of two adjacent sides." Who shall say that mathematics are wasted on a woman after that? Now, that is the sum of the science that is taught in half our institutions of education, in more than half our fashionable boarding-schools, in nearly all the most cultivated social circles in the land. How can you expect, from such women, any nobleness or appreciation of nobleness? How can you expect any from such a woman's husband, when all his thoughts of woman have been crushed down, by sad experience, to the level of his wife's capacities? When I find a man who is obstinate against Woman's Rights, I try to find out either what sort of a mother or what sort of a wife that man has, and there I find the key to his position; fur how can you expect any man to have a noble and equal idea of woman, when his mother knows nothing in the universe beyond a cooking-stove, and his wife has not much experimental acquaintance even with that?
No; the first obstacle to this Woman's Rights movement is the feminine, that builds all its hopes upon the wretched adulation and flattery of men — that thinks "the gentlemen admire weakness in a woman." Well, so they do admire to flatter it and to laugh at it! Those are the women who have called out from gifted men, age after age, those terrible denunciations of which literature is full. Women who are here, who think men admire weakness in a woman, let me tell you that if you want to know what men really think of women, you must go beyond the flatteries of the ball-room; you must go beyond the compliments of the public speaker. You must follow your young admirer from the ball-room into the bar-room, where he ridicules you among his companions, and laughs at the folly he has been flattering. You must pass from the public meeting into the office or study, to learn how the man who flatters woman most may despise her in his heart.
Think what great men of the world have said of woman. Voltaire said: "Ideas are like beards — women and young men have none." Lessing, the German, says: "The woman who thinks is like a man who puts on rouge — ridiculous." Dr. Maginn, that accomplished literary man, says: "We like to hear a few words of wit from a woman, just as we like to hear a few words of sense from a parrot — because they are so unexpected." These things were never said to women, but they were said of them. In the presence of female intellect, men are very often like that Englishman who was reproached by the judge in the police-court, because he, being a very large, athletic man, allowed his wife, who was a very delicate, puny woman, occasionally to beat him. Said the judge: "How can you allow it? you have ten times her strength." "Oh," said the giant, drawing himself up to his full stature, "it is no great matter; it pleases her, and it don't hurt me." That is the way men deal with female intellect — they like to amuse themselves with it, to flatter it as an entertaining trifle. But when it comes in earnest, and shows itself, then it is that these men stand apart from the new spectacle of a woman transformed into a thinker and worker; while true men rejoice to see nobleness in a woman. There is not a man here who does not, in his own highest moments, reverence in woman the same qualities he admires in himself, if he thinks he claims them. Power of clear thought and of heroic action — every man admires these in woman in the best moments of bis life. It is when he lowers himself to the level of the public meeting, or of the fashionable drawing-room, that he is changed into a flatterer, and he who flatters always despises the object of his flattery.
Another source of opposition to this movement among women is founded in Fear. It does not require much courage for a man to stand on a Woman's Rights platform. I do not say that it does not require more than a good many men have, for it would be difficult to find a thing so easy as not to do that. He, of course, has to run the gauntlet of the old nonsense of "strong-minded women and weak-minded men." Well, I am willing to be accounted weak-minded in the presence of strength of mind and heart, with which it has been my privilege to be associated in this movement. That is a small thing, and it is the experience of every man who has entered into this reform, that if he had a fiber of manhood in him heretofore, that fiber had been doubled, trebled, and quadrupled before he had been in it a year. Instead of requiring courage for a man to enter into this movement, it rather requires courage to keep out of it, if he is a logical, clear-headed man. But with a woman it is different. She needs much courage. A woman who, for instance, has been engaged in some literary avocation, and obtained some position, does not wish to risk her reputation by connecting herself with those who advocate the right of woman, not merely to write and to speak, but to vote also; hence, while admitting, secretly admitting, the justice of the claim, she will shrink back from avowing it for fear of "losing her position." How can any brave man honor such a recreant woman as that, who, having gained all she wants to herself, under cover of the bolder efforts of these nobler spirits, then settles back upon the ease and comfort of that position, and turns her small artillery on her own sisters? I feel a sense of shame for American literature, when I think how our literary women shrink, and cringe, and apologize, and dodge to avoid being taken for "strong-minded women." Oh, there's no danger. I don't wonder that their literary efforts are stricken with the palsy of weakness from the beginning. I don't wonder that our magazines are filled with diluted stories, in which sentimental heroines sigh, cry, and die through whole pages of weary flatness, and not a single noble thought relieves that Sahara of emptiness and barrenness. It is a retribution on them. A man or woman can not put in a book more than they have in themselves, and if woman is not noble enough to appreciate a great thought, she is not noble enough to write one. I don't wonder that their fame does not keep the promise of its dawn, when that dawn is so dastardly.
The time will come, let me tell you, ladies, when the first question asked about any woman in this age who is worth remembering will be, "Did that woman comprehend her whole sphere? Did she stand beside her sisters who were laboring for the right? If she did not this, it is no matter what she did." It is thus we already begin to judge the American women of the past. The time will come, when of all Mrs. Adams' letters, the passage best remembered will be that, where she points out to her great husband, that while emancipating the world, he still believes in giving men the absolute control over women. So the time will come when Harriet Beecher Stowe will be less honored, even as the authoress of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," than as the woman who in The New York Independent, that repository of religious thought, dared to place it among her religious thoughts, that Antoinette Brown had a right to stand in the pulpit. I wish Mrs. Stowe were yet more consistent; I wish she were not satisfied with merely wishing that others would attend Woman's Rights Conventions, and support Woman's Rights Lectures, but would join and take part in these things herself, as I believe she will when her brave spirit has gone a little further. Her heroic brother, Henry Ward Beecher, is with us already in the public advocacy of the right of suffrage for women.
The third obstacle that sets woman against this movement is prejudice. It is the honest feeling of multitudes of women that their "natural sphere," their domestic duties, will be interfered with by any other career. Let me tell you that so judging, you have only learned half the story we have to tell. We encourage these domestic duties most fully and amply. There is not a woman here who is not proud to claim them. Of all the women who have stood or spoken on this platform since this Convention began, there is only one who is not a married woman; there are very few who are not mothers; and among them all there is not one who does not give, by the nobleness of her domestic life, a proof of the consistency of that with the rest of the claims she makes for her sex. Some there are who doubt this; some there are who do not see how the elective franchise is any way connected with home duties and cares. I tell you there is the closest connection. If any one thing caps the sum of the argument for the rights of woman, it is the fact of those domestic duties which some idly array against it. What has a man at stake in society? What has he to risk by his ballot? Ask him at the ballot-box, and you will hear his statement. You will hear it in a thousand ways, and in a thousand voices. His own personal interest. A man invests himself in society; woman invests infinitely more, for she throws in her child. The man can run away to California with his interests, and from his duties; the woman is anchored to her home. It is important to him, you say, whether the community provides, by its statutes, schools or dram-shops. Then how vast, how unspeakable the importance to her! Deprive every man in the nation of the ballot, if you will, but demand, oh, demand its protection for the wife and the mother!
See the unjust workings of the present system. I knew in a town in Massachusetts a widow woman, who paid the highest tax bill in the town; nay, for every dollar that any man paid in the town, she paid two, and yet that woman had not the right to the ballot, which belonged to the most ignorant Irishman in her employ. She hadn't the right to protect her child from the misappropriation of his property; and if she had owned the whole town, and there had not been any other person to pay a property tax except that solitary woman, the case would have been the same, and not the slightest power of protection would have been in her hands, against the most outrageous misappropriation.
In another town of Massachusetts there is a story told of a man, a member of the Society of Friends. He was once sending his wife on a long journey. As she was about to set forth in the stage, "My dear," said she, "thee has forgotten to give me any money for my journey." "Why," said the Quaker, "thee knows very well that I paid thy fare in the stage." "But thee knows," said she, "that I am going to be away for some weeks, and perhaps it may be well for me to have some little money, in case I should have any expenses." "Rachel," said the astonished husband, "where is that ninepence I gave thee day before yesterday?" That man had gained all the money he had in the world through that wife. He obtained her property by marriage; he invested that property in real estate, and had grown richer and richer, until he grew rich enough to spare a ninepence for Rachel the day before yesterday. It is such marriages as that, that we wish to avert, by placing woman in an honorable position, by substituting an equal union in marriage; such a union as is shown in the lives of those who stand behind me now.
The movement which these women urge is sweeping on with resistless power. Within the last seven years, every legislature, every school, every industrial avocation has been reached by it. This is preliminary work. The final Malakoff, the right of suffrage, is yet to be gained. Already it has been partially conceded, in communities differing in all else, in Canada and in Kentucky. We have only to press on. Strange to say, the reform is reversing the ordinary weapons of the sexes, for the women have all the logic, and the men only gossip and slander. But it finds its answering echo in the very hostility it creates. It has a million hearts. Silence every woman on this platform, and the movement still goes on. Elevate woman at any point, and you lead directly to this. The thousand schools of New York are educating a Woman's Rights advocate in every house.
During the latter part of Mr. Higginson's remarks, a frequent disturbance was made by some of the occupants of the galleries, who were evidently curious to hear the female speakers.
The President then introduced Ernestine L. Rose, who said she wished to say to all self-respecting men, that this is the last place in which they should create a disturbance, especially in a matter which concerns their sisters, their wives, and their mothers.
Mrs. Rose: This morning a young man made some remarks in opposition to our claims. We were glad to hear him, because he gave evidence of an earnest, sincere spirit of inquiry, which is always welcome in every true reform movement. And as we believe our cause to be based on truth, we know it can bear the test of reason, and, like gold doubly refined, will come out purer and brighter from the fiery ordeal. The young man, who, I hope, is present, based his principal argument against us, "Because," said he, "you can bring no authority from revelation or from nature." I will not enter into an inquiry as to what he meant by these terms, but I will show him the revelation from which we derive our authority, and the nature in which it is written in living characters. It is true we do not go to revelations written in books; but ours is older than all books, and whatever of good there is in any written revelations, must necessarily agree with ours, or it is not true, for ours only is the true revelation, based in nature and in life. That revelation is no less than the living, breathing, thinking, feeling, acting revelation manifested in the nature of woman. In her manifold powers, capacities, needs, hopes, and aspirations, lies her title-deed, and whether that revelation was written by nature or nature's God, matters not, for here it is. No one can disprove it. No one can bring an older, broader, higher, and more sacred basis for human rights. Do you tell me that the Bible is against our rights? Then I say that our claims do not rest upon a book written no one knows when, or by whom. Do you tell me what Paul or Peter says on the subject? Then again I reply that our claims do not rest on the opinions of any one, not even on those of Paul and Peter, for they are older than they. Books and opinions, no matter from whom they came, if they are in opposition to human rights, are nothing but dead letters. I have shown you that we derive our claims from humanity, from revelation, from nature, and from your Declaration of Independence; all proclaim our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and having life, which fact I presume you do not question, then we demand all the rights and privileges society is capable of bestowing, to make life useful, virtuous, honorable, and happy.
But I am told that woman needs not as extensive an education as man, as her place is only the domestic sphere; only the domestic sphere! Oh, how utterly ignorant is society of the true import of that term! Go to your legislative halls, and your Congress; behold those you have sent there to govern you, and as you find them high or low, great or small, noble or base, you can trace it directly or indirectly to the domestic sphere.
The wisest in all ages have acknowledged that the most important period in human education is in childhood—that period when the plastic mind may be moulded into such exquisite beauty, that no unfavorable influences shall be able entirely to destroy it—or into such hideous deformity, that it shall cling to it like a thick rust eaten into a highly polished surface, which no after-scouring shall ever be able entirely to efface. This most important part of education is left entirely in the hands of the mother. She prepares the soil for future culture; she lays the foundation upon which a superstructure shall be erected that shall stand as firm as a rock, or shall pass away like the baseless fabric of a vision, and leave not a wreck behind. But the mother can not give what she does not possess; weakness can not impart strength.
Sisters, you have a duty to perform—and duty, like charity, begins at home. In the name of your poor, vicious, outcast, down-trodden sister! in the name of her who once was as innocent and as pure as you are! in the name of her who has been made the victim of wrong, injustice, and oppression! in the name of man! in the name of all, I ask you, I entreat you, if you have an hour to spare, a dollar to give, or a word to utter—spare it, give it, and utter it, for the elevation of woman! And when your minister asks you for money for missionary purposes, tell him there are higher, and holier, and nobler missions to be performed at home. When he asks for colleges to educate ministers, tell him you must educate woman, that she may do away with the necessity of ministers, so that they may be able to go to some useful employment. If he asks you to give to the churches (which means to himself) then ask him what he has done for the salvation of woman. When he speaks to you of leading a virtuous life, ask him whether he understands the causes that have prevented so many of your sisters from being virtuous, and have driven them to degradation, sin, and wretchedness. When he speaks to you of a hereafter, tell him to help to educate woman, to enable her to live a life of intelligence, independence, virtue, and happiness here, as the best preparatory step for any other life. And if he has not told you from the pulpit of all these things; if he does not know them; it is high time you inform him, and teach him his duty here in this life.
This subject is deep and vast enough for the wisest heads and purest hearts of the race; it underlies our whole social system. Look to your criminal records—look to your records of mortality, to your cemeteries, peopled by mothers before the age of thirty or forty, and children under the age of five; earnestly and impartially investigate the cause, and you can trace it directly or indirectly to woman's inefficient education; her helpless, dependent position; her inexperience; her want of confidence in her own noble nature, in her own principles and powers, and her blind reliance in man. We ask, then, for woman, an education that shall cultivate her powers, develop, elevate, and ennoble her being, physically, mentally, and morally; to enable her to take care of herself, and she will be taken care of; to protect herself, and she will be protected. But to give woman as full and extensive an education as man, we must give her the same motives. No one gathers keys without a prospect of having doors to unlock. Man does not acquire knowledge without the hope to make it useful and productive; the highest motives only can call out the greatest exertion. There is a vast field of action open to man, and therefore, he is prepared to enter it; widen the sphere of action for woman, throw open to her all the avenues of industry, emolument, usefulness, moral ambition, and true greatness, and you will give her the same noble motives, the same incentives for exertion, application, and perseverance that man possesses—and this can be done only by giving her her legal and political rights—pronounce her the equal of man in all the rights and advantages society can bestow, and she will be prepared to receive and use them, and not before. It would be folly to cultivate her intellect like that of man without giving her the same chances to use it—to give her an industrial avocation without giving her the right to the proceeds of her industry, or to give her the right to the proceeds of her industry without giving her the power to protect the property she may acquire; she must therefore have the legal and political rights, or she has nothing. The ballot-box is the focus of all other rights, it is the pivot upon which all others hang; the legal rights are embraced in it, for if once possessed of the right to the ballot-box, to self-representation, she will see to it that the laws shall be just, and protect her person and her property, as well as that of man. Until she has political rights she is not secure in any she may possess. One legislature may alter some oppressive law, and give her some right, and the next legislature may take it away, for as yet it is only given as an act of generosity, as a charity on the part of man, and not as her right, and therefore it can not be lasting, nor productive of good.
Mothers, women of America! when you hear the subject of Woman's Rights broached, laugh at it and us, ridicule it as much as you please; but never forget, that by the laws of your country, you have no right to your children—the law gives the father as uncontrolled power over the child as it gives the husband over the wife; only the child, when it comes to maturity, the father's control ceases, while the wife never comes to maturity. The father may bequeath, bestow, or sell the child without the consent of the mother. But methinks I hear you say that no man deserving the name of man, or the title of husband and father, could commit such an outrage against the dearest principles of humanity; well, if there are no such men, then the law ought to be annulled, a law against which nature, justice, and humanity revolt, ought to be wiped off from the statute book as a disgrace; and if there are such—which unhappily we all know there are—then there is still greater reason why the laws ought to be changed, for bad laws encourage bad men and make them worse; good men can not be benefited by the existence of bad laws; bad men ought not to be; laws are not made for him who is a law unto himself, but for the lawless. The legitimate object of law is to protect the innocent and inexperienced against the designing and the guilty; we therefore ask every one present to demand of the Legislatures of every State to alter these unjust laws; give the wife an equal right with the husband in the property acquired after marriage; give the mother an equal right with the father in the control of the children; let the wife at the death of the husband remain his heir to the same extent that he would be hers, at her death; let the laws be alike for both, and they are sure to be right; but to have them so, woman must help to make them.
We hear a great deal about the heroism of the battle-field. What is it? Compare it with the heroism of the woman who stands up for the right, and it sinks into utter insignificance. To stand before the cannon's mouth, with death before him and disgrace behind, excited to frenzy by physical fear, encouraged by his leader, stimulated by the sound of the trumpet, and sustained by the still emptier sound of glory, requires no great heroism; the merest coward could be a hero in such a position; but to face the fire of an unjust and prejudiced public opinion, to attack the adamantine walls of long-usurped power, to brave not only the enemy abroad, but often that severest of all enemies, your own friends at home, requires a heroism that the world has never yet recognized, that the battle-field can not supply, but which woman possesses.
When the Allied Powers endeavored to take Sebastopol they found that every incision and inroad they made in the fortress during the day was filled up by the enemy during the night; and even now, after the terrible sacrifice of life to break it down, they are not safe, but the enemy may build it up again. But in a moral warfare, no matter how thick and impenetrable the fortress of prejudice may be, if you once make an inroad in it, that space can never be filled up again; every stone you remove is removed for aye and for good; and the very effort to replace it tends only to loosen every other stone, until the whole foundation is undermined, and the superstructure crumbles at our feet.
The President: Before this Convention closes, I want to say a word to the women who hear me. This work lies chiefly in our hands. We have undertaken no child's play. It is nothing less than a change in customs hoary with age—in laws which have existed through long years—in mistaken religious interpretations and views of duty, which have received the sanction and veneration of antiquity. It is to place woman where she may make herself fit for life's duties, in whatever department she may find herself, whether as woman, daughter, wife, or mother. Every influence around us to-day tends to the reverse. The young girl stands beside her brother in the world's wide arena, and looks out to see what it shall assign her. To him, everything that power can win is open, while the world cheers him, by so much as he grasps and conquers. To her is presented, what kind of a life? There is not a man in the world, who, if such a life were offered him, would not sooner lie down peacefully in his grave, than in a paltry cage fret away a life that ought to have been broad and grand, as God who gave it intended it should be.
Horace Greeley says he thinks the intellect of woman is not equal to that of man. Horace Greeley was a poor boy, and had to make his way up in the world. He has reached a position that is attained by few. When he speaks the nation listens. Suppose that he had been told by his mother, as she placed her hand upon his little head, with all the tenderness that gushes from a mother's heart, "My son, here is your brother; he shall grow up in the world of society, and no school or college shall be closed against him; the great school of life shall be free to him; he shall have a voice in making the laws he is to obey; he shall pay taxes, and he shall direct the use of the tax; but for you, alas! none of these places will be open; you must therefore rest satisfied with helping your brother. He will win power and wealth, but none of it shall be your own; if you seek to enter into the same position that he is in, the world will scorn and deride you." And if when he came into life he had found all that his mother told him was true, what think you would have been the success of Horace Greeley, with all this mountain-weight upon him? Would he have taken the place he has now? I am glad he was not hindered; I am only sorry that woman is. It is too early for him or us to say what the intellect of woman is, till she has had the freedom to try its powers. I am reminded of what Frederick Douglass said of the negroes: "You shut us out of the schools and colleges, you put your foot on us, and then say, Why don't you know something?" That is just what is said to us.
Let us teach men who talk of the wrongs perpetrated in Kansas, that they are doing the very same thing to us here. One need not go to Kansas to find border ruffians, or bogus legislation, for they can all be found here; and when the future historian shall record that in Kansas, Missourians deprived free State men of the franchise, and that New York men deprived the women of the same, it will be said that the border ruffians of Missouri and the border ruffians of New York were very much alike — one came with the gloved hand, and smiled and bowed, saying, I can't let you vote; while the other said, If you do I will blow out your brains. The result is the same.
I look in the faces of men and marvel that they can meet us in the way they do, when they have made such laws against us. Clear-headed and far-sighted, they do not appear to realize that the outrages they condemn in Kansas, they are themselves all the while inflicting upon us. John Randolph, when the women of Virginia were making garments for the Greeks, pointed to long gangs of slaves, and said, "Ladies, the Greeks are at your doors."In addition to the annual canvass of the State, lectures from the most popular orators were secured in the large cities. In the winter of 1856, by invitation of Miss Anthony, Theodore Parker, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Ralph Waldo Emerson, lectured in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, to good audiences. Jn the spring of 1858, Miss Emily Howland managed a course of lectures in Mozart Hall, New York, in aid of 'The Shirt-sewers' and Seamstresses' Union," viz: George Wm. Curtis, "Fair Play for Women"; Lucy Stone, "Woman and the Elective Franchise"; Hon. Eli Thayer, "Benefit to Women of Organized Emigration "; and Rev. E. H. Chapin, "Woman and her Work." In the autumn of the same year, through the enterprise of Elizabeth M. Powell, Henry Ward Beecher, James T. Brady, Solon Robinson, and others addressed a large audience in Dr. Chapin's church, Mayor Tieman presiding, to aid in the establishment of a "Free Library for Working-Women."
In January, 1859, Antoinette L. Brown gave a series of Sunday sermons in Rochester, and in 1860 she preached in Hope Chapel, New York, for six months. In Rochester during the winter of 1859, Miss Anthony had a series of lectures by George William Curtis, Wendell Phillips, Antoinette Brown, Ernestine L. Rose, and others. The following letter will show that Thomas Starr King was in full sympathy with our movement:
Dear Madam: — It would afford me great satisfaction to be able to serve you as you request. I am compelled to say, however, that it is entirely out of my power. I have already engaged for so much work beyond my regular duties, that I shall have no leisure even to prepare a new Lyceum address. Not having any lecture upon the position of woman that is full enough, and adequate in any way to the present state of the discussion, I must reluctantly decline the opportunity you offer.
In the autumn of 1858, Francis Jackson, of Boston, placed $5,000 in the hands of Wendell Phillips for woman's enfranchisement, as will be seen by the following letter:
Dear Friends: — I have had given me five thousand dollars, to be used for the Woman's Rights cause; to procure tracts on that subject, publish and circulate them, pay for lectures, and secure such other agitation of the question as we deem fit and best to obtain equal civil and social position for woman.
The name of the giver of this generous fund I am not allowed to tell you; the only condition of the gift is, that the fund is to remain invested in my keeping. In other respects, we three are a Committee of Trustees to spend it wisely and efficiently.
Let me ask you to write me what plan strikes you as best to begin with. I think some agitation specially directed to the Legislature very important. It is wished that we should begin our efforts at once.
Mrs. Lucy Stone.
MOZART HALL,
new york, may 13, 14, 1858.
The year 1857 seems to have passed without a National Convention, although the work was still vigorously prosecuted in the State of New York, but in the spring of 1858, the ninth National Convention was called in New York during the week of the anniversaries when crowds were always attracted to attend the various religious and reformatory meetings. Henceforward, for many years, a Woman's Rights Convention was a marked feature of this period in the month of May. There were several persons at this Convention who had not before honored our platform.[66] These, with the usual familiar speakers,[67] filled the platform with quite a striking group of
ladies and gentlemen. The morning session was occupied with the usual preliminary business matters, choosing officers, presenting resolutions, and planning new aggressive steps for the coming year. Susan B. Anthony was President on this occasion, and fulfilled her duties to the general satisfaction. During the evening session the hall was crowded, all the available space for either sitting or standing was occupied, the platform and steps were densely packed, and this at twenty-five cents admission.
Mr. Phillips, Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Rose, Mr. Garrison, Mr. Higginson, Miss Brown, and Lucy Stone all spoke with their usual effect. Mrs. Eliza Woodson Farnham, the author of "Woman and her Era," spoke at length on the "Superiority of Woman."
Mrs. Farnham[68] enforced her theory of woman's superiority in a -long speech, which was received with apparent satisfaction by the audience, though several on the platform dissented from the claim of superiority, thinking it would be a sufficient triumph over the tyrannies of the past, if popular thought could be educated to the idea of the equality of the sexes.
Mrs. Sarah Hallock read an extract from the Statutes of New York, giving the items set aside by law for use of the wife and minor children, in case the husband died without a will.
(Extract from the Statutes of New York).
ARTICLES INVENTORIED, BUT NOT APPROVED, BELONGING TO THE WIDOW AND MINOR CHILDREN.
1st. All spinning-wheels, weaving-looms, or stoves put up for use.
2d. The family Bible, family pictures, school-books, and books not exceeding in value fifty dollars.
[Mrs. Hallock here interjected, husbands had better give their wives cheap books].
3d. Ten sheep and their fleeces, and the yarn and cloth manufactured from the same; one cow, two swine, and the pork of such swine. [Laughter],
4th. All necessary wearing apparel, beds, bedsteads, and bedding; the clothing of the widow and her ornaments proper to her station (as to ornaments, tastes differ as to those proper to her station), one table, six chairs (suppose there were seven or ten children, what then? queried Mrs. Hallock [Laughter],) six knives and forks, six tea-cups and saucers, one sugar-dish, one milk-pot, one tea-pot, and six spoons. "So great a favorite is the female sex of the laws of England and America," says Blackstone.
Mrs. Rose protested against one tea-pot; the law didn't mention tea-pot at all. [Great laughter].
Mrs. Hallock: Oh, yes! but not a coffee-pot. [Renewed laughter].
Mrs. Gage: In Ohio they give twelve spoons. [Convulsive laughter].
Mrs. Hallock: We'll get up a delegation to Ohio, then.
Mrs. Farnham: I would say that I will give up all these things if the State will only give us in return one of our children. [Applause and laughter].
Mrs. Hallock: Isn't it a pity that our laws—are they ours?
Mrs. Rose: No.
And such was the boasted "protection" secured to the wives and mothers by the laws of the most civilized nations on the globe, and such the law-makers in whose hands woman's interests were supposed to be secure, when we began our battle for equality. Class laws, class legislation, legalized robbery from the unborn child, down to the commonest necessaries of life, has been the "protection" woman has complained of from fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons. Those just awaking to an interest in this reform, see but the smoke of the former battles; they can not appreciate all the tyranny from which this agitation has freed them. Step by step, custom by custom, law by law, a partial victory has been wrested, and a public opinion slowly created that promises other victories in the near future.
Those who have not been through the conflict will never realize how dark the prospect was in starting. Denied education, and a place in the world of work, denied the rights of property, whether of her own earnings, or her inheritance, with the press and the pulpit, custom and public opinion sustaining the law, was there ever a struggle entered upon, which at its beginning seemed more hopeless than this for woman? But these constant presentations of the laws, with the comments and arguments in our Conventions, gradually appealed to the understanding of sensible men and women, and opened the eyes of the community to the wrongs of woman, perpetrated under the specious name of justice.
All the sessions of this Convention were interrupted by the rowdyism of a number of men occupying the rear part of the hall.
He knew an orthodox church, consisting of twelve members. One was a man and a deacon, the remainder were women. A vote had to be taken for changing the day for the prayer-meeting, but some difficulty arose between the minister and the deacon, and the only way it could be settled was by the votes of the women. So the deacon went round on tip-toe, and put his head under each bonnet, and held a little private caucus meeting with one after another, and then returned to the altar and reported to the minister that the vote was unanimous. If women had any proper self-respect, they would scorn to remain one hour in any church in which they were not considered and recognized as equals.
Oliver Johnson said there was a new church formed called "Progressive Friends," in which men and women stood on perfect equality. He said there was another church (Henry Ward Beecher's) in Brooklyn, where women were expected to vote on all questions connected with the business affairs of the congregation. Another church in this city (Rev. Dr. Cheever's) had a difficulty in which the capitalists tried to dismiss the pastor, because he maintained the right of the slave to freedom, and of the woman to the elective franchise. He agreed with Mr. Pillsbury that it was woman's duty to test her equality in the Church as well as the State.
Aaron M. Powell took the same ground. As women made the large majority in the churches, they could easily secure equal rights there if united in an effort to do so. Why, said he, are there no young women sitting at the reporters' desks, taking note of the proceedings of this Convention? He advocated the elective franchise, saying that no class could be protected in all its rights without a voice in the laws.
A Mr. Warren said he had no objection to woman's claiming equality, but when they declared their superiority, they injured themselves and the rising generation in teaching the young to disrespect the men of the household. (Great laughter and hisses). Woman might be the savior of man, but was not God, and had no place in the Godhead. (Laughter and cheers). He spoke from experience when he said men had already suffered much from the tyrannical usurpations of women. Let woman be the true helpmate of man, religiously, politically, morally, socially; but, oh! said he, in a sorrowful tone, it will be a sad day for the race when woman takes command, and man is pushed aside. (Convulsive laughter, and cries of "Give us your experience.")
Mrs. Farnham was glad the subject of woman's superiority had been broached, and only regretted that as a scientific fact it could not be more seriously discussed.
A gentleman deprecated the fact that Mr. Warren had not been more fully heard.
The President said it was the audience and not the platform that laughed. Loud calls were made for
Douglass, to which he responded, claiming woman's right to freedom and equality on the same grounds he based his own.
William Lloyd Garrison maintained woman's right to sit in Congress and the legislatures — that there should be the same number of women as men in all the national councils. He said respect for his sainted mother, love for his noble wife, and for the only daughter of his house and heart (my own Fanny), compel me to defend the rights of all women. Those who have inaugurated this movement are worthy to be ranked with the army of martyrs and confessors in the days of old. Blessings on them! They should triumph, and every opposition be removed, that peace and love, justice and liberty, might prevail throughout the world.
A Mr. Tyler remarked that a fear had been expressed that in coming to the polls, woman would be compelled to meet men who drink and smoke. Do women encounter no such evils in their homes? Whisky and tobacco are much greater obstacles at the marriage altar than at the polls — in the relation of wife than in that of citizen.George William Curtis, then in the height of his reputation (as Howadji), spoke at length in favor of suffrage for woman, but amid constant interruptions. With a short speech from Mrs. Rose, the Convention adjourned amid great confusion.
NINTH NATIONAL CONVENTION.
In accordance with a call issued by the Central Committee, the Ninth National Woman's Rights Convention was held in the City of New York on Thursday, May 12, 1859.
The sessions commenced with a business meeting, on the noon of that day, in Mozart Hall. The meeting was called to order by Susan B. Anthony, of Rochester, New York, who made a few introductory remarks, after which, the question of the expediency of memorializing the Legislatures of the different States, on the sunject of granting equal rights to Woman, was discussed at some length. At the close of the debate, a resolution was adopted, that it was expedient so to memorialize the several Legislatures, and a committee[69] was appointed for that purpose, and a series of resolutions[70] offered by Caroline H. Dall.
These resolutions were discussed by Mrs. Dall, Mrs. Hallock, Mrs. Elizabeth Neal Gay, Lucretia Mott, A. M. Powell, Charles C. Burleigh, and others.
EVENING SESSION.
At an early hour, Mozart Hall was crowded to overflowing, every seat being occupied, and crowds standing in the aisle, and the rear of the hall.
Lucretia Mott had been chosen to preside, but was not able, on account of the crowd, to reach the platform at the hour appointed. The Convention was therefore called to order by Susan B. Anthony.
Mrs. Caroline H. Dall, of Boston, was the first speaker. She desired to commemorate the century which had just closed since the death of Mary Woolstonecraft, and to show that what she did in the old world, Margaret Fuller had done in the new; but the noise and restlessness among the audience were so great (much of which, we charitably hope, was attributable rather to the discomfort of their position than to any want of respect for the speaker, or for the cause which the Convention represented), that she yielded to the wish of the presiding officer, and sat down without speaking of Margaret Fuller.
Short speeches were made by Lucretia Mott, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, and Ernestine L. Rose; but as it proved to be another turbulent meeting, Wendell Phillips, who understood from long experience how to play with and lash a mob, and thrust what he wished to say into their long ears, all with one consent yielded the platform to him, and for nearly two hours he held that mocking crowd in the hollow of his hand. In closing he said:
Neither of these great names has linked its fame with one great moral question of the day. They deal with money questions, with tariffs, with parties, with State law, and if by chance they touch the slave question, it is only like Jewish hucksters trading in the relics of Saints. The reformers—the fanatics, as we are called—are the only ones who have launched social and moral questions. I risk nothing when I say, that the anti-slavery discussion of the last twenty years has been the salt of this nation; it has actually kept it alive and wholesome. Without it, our politics would have sunk beyond even contempt. So with this question. It stirs the deepest sympathy; it appeals to the highest moral sense; it enwraps within itself the greatest moral issues. Judge it, then, candidly, carefully, as Americans, and let us show ourselves worthy of the high place to which God has called us in human affairs. (Applause).
MEMORIAL.
To the Honorable the Legislature of the State of ————
The National Woman's Rights Convention, held in New York City, May 12, 1859, appointed your memorialists a Committee to call your attention to the anomalous position of one-half the people of this Republic.
All republican constitutions set forth the great truth that every human being is endowed with certain inalienable rights — such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — and as a consequence, a right to the use of all those means necessary to secure these grand results.
1st. — A citizen can not be said to have a right to life, who may be deprived of it for the violation of laws to which she has never consented — who is denied the right of trial by a jury of her peers — who has no voice in the election of judges who are to decide her fate.
2d. — A citizen can not be said to have a right to liberty, when the custody of her person belongs to another; when she has no civil or political rights — no right even to the wages she earns; when she can make no contracts — neither buy nor sell, sue or be sued — and yet can be taxed without representation.
3d. — A citizen can not be said to have a right to happiness, when denied the wight to person, property, children, and home; when the code of laws under which she is compelled to live is far more unjust and tyrannical than that which our fathers repudiated at the mouth of the cannon nearly one century ago.
Now, we would ask on what principle of republicanism, justice, or common humanity, a minority of the people of this Republic have monopolized to themselves all the rights of the whole? Where, under our Declaration of Independence, does the white Saxon man get his power to deprive all women and negroes of their inalienable rights?
The mothers of the Revolution bravely shared all dangers, persecutions, and death; and their daughters now claim an equal share in all the glories and triumphs of your success, Shall they stand before a body of American legislators and ask in vain for their right of suffrage — their right of property — their right to the wages they earn — their right to their children and their homes — their sacred right to personal liberty — to a trial by a jury of their peers?
In view of these high considerations, we demand, then, that you shall, by your future legislation, secure to women all those rights and privileges and immunities which in equity belong to every citizen of a republic.
And we demand that whenever you shall remodel the Constitution of the State in which you live, the word "male" shall be expurgated, and that henceforth you shall legislate for all citizens. There can be no privileged classes in a truly democratic government.
| Elizabeth Cady Stanton, | Martha C. Wright, |
| Wendell Phillips, | Caroline M. Severance, |
| Caroline H. Dall, | Thomas W. Higginson, |
| Ernestine L. Rose, | Susan B. Anthony, |
| Antoinette Brown Blackwell,Committee. | |
The above memorial was extensively circulated and sent to the Legislature of every State in the nation, but, owing to the John Brown raid and the general unrest and forebodings of the people on the eve of our civil war, it commanded but little attention.
FORM OF APPEAL AND PETITION CIRCULATED IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK DURING THE SUMMER AND AUTUMN OF 1859.
To the Women of the Empire State:
It is the desire and purpose of those interested in the Woman's Rights movement, to send up to our next Legislature an overwhelming petition, for the civil and political rights of woman. These rights must be secured just as soon as the majority of the women of the State make the demand. To this end, we have decided thoroughly to canvass our State before the close of the present year. We shall hold conventions in every county, distribute tracts and circulate petitions, in order, if possible, to arouse a proper self-respect in woman.
The want of funds has heretofore crippled all our efforts, but as large bequests have been made to our cause during the past year, we are now able to send out agents and to commence anew our work, which shall never end, until, in Church and State, and at the fireside, the equality of woman shall be fully recognized.
We hope much from our Republican legislators. Their well-known professions encourage us to believe that our task is by no means a hard one. We shall look for their hearty co-operation in every effort for the elevation of humanity. We have had bills before the Legislature for several years, on some of which, from time to time, have had most favorable reports. The property bill of '48 was passed by a large majority. The various bills of rights, to wages, children, suffrage, etc., have been respectfully considered. The bill presented at the last session, giving to married women their rights to make contracts, and to their wages, passed the House with only three dissenting votes, but owing to the pressure of business at the close of the session, it was never brought before the Senate.
Whilst man, by his legislation and generous donations, declares our cause righteous and just—whilst the very best men of the nation, those who stand first in Church and State, in literature, commerce, and the arts, are speaking for us such noble words and performing such God-like deeds—shall woman, herself, be indifferent to her own wrongs, insensible to all the responsibilities of her high and holy calling? No! No!! I Let the women of the Empire State now speak out in deep and earnest tones that can not be misunderstood, demanding all those rights which are at the very foundation of Republicanism—a full and equal representation with man in the administration of our State and National Government.
Do you know, women of New York! that under our present laws married women have no right to the wages they earn? Think of the 40,000 drunkards' wives in this State—of the wives of men who are licentious—of gamblers—of the long line of those who do nothing; and is it no light matter that all these women who support themselves, their husbands and families, too, shall have no right to the disposition of their own earnings? Roll up, then, your petitions[71] on this point, if no other, and secure to laboring women their wages at the coming session!
Now is the golden time to work! Before another Constitutional Convention be called, see to it that the public sentiment of this State shall demand suffrage for woman! Remember, "they who would be free, themselves must strike the blow!"
Chairman Central Committee.
Of the canvass of 1859 and '60, we find the following letter in The New York Tribune, February, 1860.
Sir: — The readers of The Tribune who have perused its columns closely for the last six months will have noticed repeated announcements of County Conventions in different parts of the State to be addressed by certain ladies engaged in advocating equal rights for woman. It may not be uninteresting to them to know that every one of those appointments was filled by said ladies. Over fifty counties of the State have been thus visited, and petitions presented to the people for their signatures, praying for equal property rights, and for steps to be taken to so amend the Constitution as to secure to woman the right of suffrage, which have been numerously signed and duly presented to the Legislature. In the rural districts the success has been wonderful, considering the unpopularity of the subject; our most violent opposers being demagogical Democrats who frankly acknowledge that if our doctrines prevail, anti-slavery, temperance, moral reform, and Republicanism will conquer.
Large bequests have been made in the East for the furtherance of this movement, and under the direction of a committee appointed for that purpose, these ladies have gone forth to proclaim the doctrine of civil and political equality for woman. No laggards are they in their work. In the language of Mr. Greeley, they have found a work to be done, and have gone at it with ready and resolute will; they have not been able to answer all the calls made upon their time and talent. One of them (I can speak but for one) between the 11th of November and the 31st of January, has given sixty-eight lectures, not missing one appointment, resting only through the holidays and on Sundays. The others have doubtless done as well. In most instances all have been able to pay their own expenses, and in some cases their own salaries.
These ladies are not disappointed old maids, desolate widows, or unhappy wives, though there is one widow and one who has passed what is called the sunny side of twenty-five. Miss Susan B. Anthony, the general agent, resides at Rochester, and is unmarried. Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, of New York City, is too widely known to need comment. The same may be said of Antoinette Brown Blackwell, the eloquent minister,
accomplished scholar, and amiable wife and mother. Mrs. J. Elizabeth Jones, of Ohio, is a lady in the ripeness of womanhood, to whom, equally with the above, all these adjectives apply. Mrs. Hannah Tracy Cutler, of Illinois, has been twice married, and has superintended two families of children satisfactorily; she has been teacher in a high-school in Columbus, Ohio, and matron of a deaf and dumb asylum, has taken premiums on sorghum sugar made by her own hands, and is also a physician among the poor of her neighborhood. Mrs. Lucy N. Colman, of New York, is a widow, and has fought life's battle bravely and well for herself and children. Mrs. Frances D. Gage, of Missouri, formerly of Ohio, might claim the nomination for President under the authority of Henry Ward Beecher, "having brought up six unruly boys," whose aggregate height would form a column of thirty-six feet in honor of their mother, who will all vote the Republican ticket in 1860 but one, and he is not old enough; and no one of them smokes or chews, or stimulates the inner man with intoxicating beverages. She is also the mother of two daughters.
Two years ago Mr. Greeley said to one of the ladies, "Why don't you ladies go to work?" They have gone to work; and with the help of such men as Garrison, Phillips, Parker, Giddings, Curtis, Beecher, Chapin, Brady, and a host of others whom the world delights to honor, their cause will surely triumph. It is a question of time only; not of fact. God speed the day.The State Convention of 1860 was held in Association Hall, Albany, February 3d and 4th, with fine audiences throughout, and the usual force of speakers. As the outpourings of Miss Anthony's love element all flowed into the suffrage movement, she was sorely tried with the imperative cares that the domestic experiments of most of her coadjutors se constantly involved. Her urgent missives coming ever and anon to arouse us to higher duties, are quite inspiring even at this date. In a letter to Martha C. Wright, she says:
Mrs. Stanton, in answering Miss Anthony's appeal, says:
On the 18th of February Mrs. Stanton addressed the Legislature on woman's right of suffrage and the bill then pending in the Senate.. A magnificent audience greeted her in the Capitol. She oceupied the Speaker's desk, and was introduced by Senator Hammond, and spoke as follows:
Though the atmosphere is forty miles deep all round the globe, no man can do more than fill his own lungs. No man can see, hear, or smell but just so far; and though hundreds are deprived of these senses, his are not the more acute. Though rights have been abundantly supplied by the good Father, no man can appropriate to himself those that belong to another. A citizen can have but one vote, fill but one office, though thousands are not permitted to do either. These axioms prove that woman's poverty does not add to man's wealth, and if, in the plenitude of his power, he should secure to her the exercise of all her God-given rights, her wealth could not bring poverty to him. There is a kind of nervous unrest always manifested by those in power, whenever new claims are started by those out of their own immediate class. The philosophy of this is very plain. They imagine that if the rights of this new class be granted, they must, of necessity, sacrifice something of what they already possess. They can not divest themselves of the idea that rights are very much like lands, stocks, bonds, and mortgages, and that if every new claimant be satisfied, the supply of human rights must in time run low. You might as well carp at the birth of every child, lest there should not be enough air left to inflate your lungs; at the success of every scholar, for fear that your draughts at the fountain of knowledge could not be so long and deep; at the glory of every hero, lest there be no glory left for you....
If the object of government is to protect the weak against the strong, how unwise to place the power wholly in the hands of the strong. Yet that is the history of all governments, even the model republic of these United States. You who have read the history of nations, from Moses down to our last election, where have you ever seen one class looking after the interests of another? Any of you can readily see the defects in other governments, and pronounce sentence against those who have sacrificed the masses to themselves; but when we come to our own case, we are blinded by custom and self-interest. Some of you who have no capital can see the injustice which the laborer suffers; some of you who have no slaves, can see the cruelty of his oppression; but who of you appreciate the galling humiliation, the refinements of degradation, to which women (the mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of freemen) are subject, in this the last half of the nineteenth century? How many of you have ever read even the laws concerning them that now disgrace your statute-books? In cruelty and tyranny, they are not surpassed by any slaveholding code in the Southern States; in fact they are worse, by just so far as woman, from her social position, refinement, and education, is on a more equal ground with the oppressor.
Allow me just here to call the attention of that party now so much interested in the slave of the Carolinas, to the similarity in his condition and that of the mothers, wives, and daughters of the Empire State. The negro has no name. He is Cuffy Douglas or Cuffy Brooks, just whose Cuffy he may chance to be. The woman has no name. She is Mrs. Richard Roe or Mrs. John Doe, just whose Mrs. she may chance to be. Cuffy has no right to his earnings; he can not buy or sell, or lay up anything that he can call his own. Mrs. Roe has no right to her earnings she can neither buy nor sell, make contracts, nor lay up anything that she can call her own. Cuffy has no right to his children; they can be sold from him at any time. Mrs. Roe has no right to her children; they may be bound out to cancel a father's debts of honor. The unborn child, even by the last will of the father, may be placed under the guardianship of a stranger and a foreigner. Cuffy has no legal existence; he is subject to restraint and moderate chastisement. Mrs. Roe has no legal existence; she has not the best right to her own person. The husband has the power to restrain, and administer moderate chastisement.
Blackstone declares that the husband and wife are one, and learned commentators have decided that that one is the husband. In all civil codes, you will find them classified as one. Certain rights and immunities, such and such privileges are to be secured to white male citizens. What have women and negroes to do with rights? What know they of government, war, or glory?
The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way. The negro's skin and the woman's sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man. The few social privileges which the man gives the woman, he makes up to the negro in civil rights. The woman may sit at the same table and eat with the white man; the free negro may hold property and vote. The woman may sit in the same pew with the white man in church; the free negro may enter the pulpit and preach. Now, with the black man's right to suffrage, the right unquestioned, even by Paul, to minister at the altar, it is evident that the prejudice against sex is more deeply rooted and more unreasonably maintained than that against color. As citizens of a republic, which should we most highly prize, social privileges or civil rights? The latter, most certainly.
To those who do not feel the injustice and degradation of the condition, there is something inexpressibly comical in man's "citizen woman." It reminds me of those monsters I used to see in the old world, head and shoulders woman, and the rest of the body sometimes fish and sometimes beast. I used to think, What a strange conceit! but now I see how perfectly it represents man's idea! Look over all his laws concerning us, and you will see just enough of woman to tell of her existence; all the rest is submerged, or made to crawl upon the earth. Just imagine an inhabitant of another planet entertaining himself some pleasant evening in searching over our great national compact, our Declaration of Independence, our Constitutions, or some of our statute-books; what would he think of those "women and negroes" that must be so fenced in, so guarded against? Why, he would certainly suppose we were monsters, like those fabulous giants or Brobdignagians of olden times, so dangerous to civilized man, from our size, ferocity, and power. Then let him take up our poets, from Pope down to Dana; let him listen to our Fourth of July toasts, and some of the sentimental adulations of social life, and no logic could convince him that this creature of the law, and this angel of the family altar, could be one and the same being. Man is in such a labyrinth of contradictions with his marital and property rights; he is so befogged on the whole question of maidens, wives, and mothers, that from pure benevolence we should relieve him from this troublesome branch of legislation. We should vote, and make laws for ourselves. Do not be alarmed, dear ladies! You need spend no time reading Grotius, Coke, Puffendorf, Blackstone, Bentham, Kent, and Story to find out what you need. We may safely trust the shrewd selfishness of the white man, and consent to live under the same broad code where he has so comfortably ensconced himself. Any legislation that will do for man, we may abide by most cheerfully. . . .
But, say you, we would not have woman exposed to the grossness and vulgarity of public life, or encounter what she must at the polls. When you talk, gentlemen, of sheltering woman from the rough winds and revolting scenes of real life, you must be either talking for effect, or wholly ignorant of what the facts of life are. The man, whatever he is, is known to the woman. She is the companion, not only of the accomplished statesman, the orator, and the scholar; but the vile, vulgar, brutal man has his mother, his wife, his sister, his daughter. Yes, delicate, refined, educated women are in daily life with the drunkard, the gambler, the licentious man, the rogue, and the villain; and if man shows out what he is anywhere, it is at his own hearthstone. There are over forty thousand drunkards in this State. All these are bound by the ties of family to some woman. Allow but a mother and a wife to each, and you have over eighty thousand women. All these have seen their fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, in the lowest and most debased stages of obscenity and degradation. In your own circle of friends, do you not know refined women, whose whole lives are darkened and saddened by gross and brutal associations? Now, gentlemen, do you talk to woman of a rude jest or jostle at the polls, where noble, virtuous men stand ready to protect her person and her rights, when, alone in the darkness and solitude and gloom of night, she has trembled on her own threshold, awaiting the return of a husband from his midnight revels?—when, stepping from her chamber, she has beheld her royal monarch, her lord and master—her legal representative—the protector of her property, her home, her children, and her person, down on his hands and knees slowly crawling up the stairs? Behold him in her chamber—in her bed! The fairy tale of "Beauty and the Beast" is far too often realized in life. Gentlemen, such scenes as woman has witnessed at her own fireside, where no eye save Omnipotence could pity, no strong arm could help, can never be realized at the polls, never equaled elsewhere, this side the bottomless pit. No, woman has not hitherto lived in the clouds, surrounded by an atmosphere of purity and peace—but she has been the companion of man in health, in sickness, and in death, in his highest and in his lowest moments. She has worshiped him as a saint and an orator, and pitied him as madman or a fool. In Paradise, man and woman were placed together, and so they must ever be. They must sink or rise together. If man is low and wretched and vile, woman can not escape the contagion, and any atmosphere that is unfit for woman to breathe is not fit for man. Verily, the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation. You, by your unwise legislation, have crippled and dwarfed womanhood, by closing to her all honorable and lucrative means of employment, have driven her into the garrets and dens of our cities, where she now revenges herself on your innocent sons, sapping the very foundations of national virtue and strength. Alas! for the young men just coming on the stage of action, who soon shall fill your vacant places—our future Senators, our Presidents, the expounders of our constitutional law! Terrible are the penalties we are now suffering for the ages of injustice done to woman.
Again, it is said that the majority of women do not ask for any change in the laws; that it is time enough to give them the elective franchise when they, as a class, demand it.
Wise statesmen legislate for the best interests of the nation; the State, for the highest good of its citizens; the Christian, for the conversion of the world. Where would have been our railroads, our telegraphs, our ocean steamers, our canals and harbors, our arts and sciences, if government had withheld the means from the far-seeing minority? This State established our present system of common schools, fully believing that educated men and women would make better citizens than ignorant ones. In making this provision for the education of its children, had they waited for a majority of the urchins of this State to petition for schools, how many, think you, would have asked to be transplanted from the street to the school-house? Does the State wait for the criminal to ask for his prison-house? the insane, the idiot, the deaf and dumb for his asylum? Does the Christian, in his love to all mankind, wait for the majority of the benighted heathen to ask him for the gospel? No; unasked and unwelcomed, he crosses the trackless ocean, rolls off the mountain of superstition that oppresses the human mind, proclaims the immortality of the soul, the dignity of manhood, the right of all to be free and happy.
No, gentlemen, if there is but one woman in this State who feels the injustice of her position, she should not be denied her inalienable rights, because the common household drudge and the silly butterfly of fashion are ignorant of all laws, both human and Divine. Because they know nothing of governments, or rights, and therefore ask nothing, shall my petitions be unheard? I stand before you the rightful representative of woman, claiming a share in the halo of glory that has gathered round her in the ages, and by the wisdom of her past words and works, her peerless heroism and self-sacrifice, I challenge your admiration; and, moreover, claiming, as I do, a share in all her outrages and sufferings, in the cruel injustice, contempt, and ridicule now heaped upon her, in her deep degradation, hopeless wretchedness, by all that is helpless in her present condition, that is false in law and public sentiment, I urge your generous consideration; for as my heart swells with pride to behold woman in the highest walks of literature and art, it grows big enough to take in those who are bleeding in the dust.
Now do not think, gentlemen, we wish you to do a great many troublesome things for us. We do not ask our legislators to spend a whole session in fixing up a code of laws to satisfy a class of most unreasonable women. We ask no more than the poor devils in the Scripture asked, "Let us alone." In mercy, let us take care of ourselves, our property, our children, and our homes. True, we are not so strong, so wise, so crafty as you are, but if any kind friend leaves us a little money, or we can by great industry earn fifty cents a day, we would rather buy bread and clothes for our children than cigars and champagne for our legal protectors. There has been a great deal written and said about protection. We, as a class, are tired of one kind of protection, that which leaves us everything to do, to dare, and to suffer, and strips us of all means for its accomplishment. We would not tax man to take care of us. No, the Great Father has endowed all his creatures with the necessary powers for self-support, self-defense, and protection. We do not ask man to represent us; it is hard enough in times like these for man to carry backbone enough to represent himself. So long as the mass of men spend most of their time on the fence, not knowing which way to jump, they are surely in no condition to tell us where we had better stand. In pity for man, we would no longer hang like a millstone round his neck. Undo what man did for us in the dark ages, and strike out all special legislation for us; strike the words "white male" from all your constitutions, and then, with fair sailing, let us sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish together.
At Athens, an ancient apologue tells us, on the completion of the temple of Minerva, a statue of the goddess was wanted to occupy the crowning point of the edifice. Two of the greatest artists produced what each deemed his masterpiece. One of these figures was the size of life, admirably designed, exquisitely finished, softly rounded, and beautifully refined. The other was of Amazonian stature, and so boldly chiselled that it looked more like masonry than sculpture. The eyes of all were attracted by the first, and turned away in contempt from the second. That, therefore, was adopted, and the other rejected, almost with resentment, as though an insult had been offered to a discerning public. The favored statue was accordingly borne in triumph to the place for which it was designed, in the presence of applauding thousands, but as it receded from their upturned eyes, all, all at once agaze upon it, the thunders of applause unaccountably died away—a general misgiving ran through every bosom—the mob themselves stood like statues, as silent and as petrified, for as it slowly went up, and up the soft expression of those chiselled features, the delicate curves and outlines of the limbs and figure, became gradually fainter and fainter, and when at last it readied the place for which it was intended, it was a shapeless ball, enveloped in mist. Of course, the idol of the hour was now clamored down as rationally as it had been cried up, and its dishonored rival, with no good will and no good looks on the part of the chagrined populace, was reared in its stead. As it ascended, the sharp angles faded away, the rough points became smooth, the features full of expression, the whole figure radiant with majesty and beauty. The rude hewn mass, that before had scarcely appeared to bear even the human form, assumed at once the divinity which it represented, being so perfectly proportioned to the dimensions of the building, and to the elevation on which it stood, that it seemed as though Pallas herself had alighted upon the pinnacle of the temple in person, to receive the homage of her worshippers. The woman of the nineteenth century is the shapeless ball in the lofty position which she was designed fully and nobly to fill. The place is not too high, too large, too sacred for woman, but the type that you have chosen is far too small for it. The woman we declare unto you is the rude, misshapen, unpolished object of the successful artist. From your stand-point, you are absorbed with the defects alone. The true artist sees the harmony between the object and its destination. Man, the sculptor, has carved out his ideal, and applauding thousands welcome his success. He has made a woman that from his low stand-point looks fair and beautiful, a being without rights, or hopes, or fears but in him—neither noble, virtuous, nor independent. Where do we see, in Church or State, in school-house or at the fireside, the much talked-of moral power of woman? Like those Athenians, we have bowed down and worshiped in woman, beauty, grace, the exquisite proportions, the soft and beautifully rounded outline, her delicacy, refinement, and silent helplessness—all well when she is viewed simply as an object of sight, never to rise one foot above the dust from which she sprung. But if she is to be raised up to adorn a temple, or represent a divinity—if she is to fill the niche of wife and counsellor to true and noble men, if she is to be the mother, the educator of a race of heroes or martyrs, of a Napoleon, or a Jesus—then must the type of womanhood be on a larger scale than that yet carved by man.
In vain would the rejected artist have reasoned with the Athenians as to the superiority of his production; nothing short of the experiment they made could have satisfied them. And what of your experiment, what of your wives, your homes? Alas! for the folly and vacancy that meet you there! But for your club-houses and newspapers, what would social life be to you? Where are your beautiful women? your frail ones, taught to lean lovingly and confidingly on man? Where are the crowds of educated dependents—where the long line of pensioners on man's bounty? Where all the young girls, taught to believe that marriage is the only legitimate object of a woman's pursuit—they who stand listlessly on life's shores, waiting, year after year, like the sick man at the pool of Bethesda, for some one to come and put them in? These are they who by their ignorance and folly curse almost every fireside with some human specimen of deformity or imbecility. These are they who fill the gloomy abodes of poverty and vice in our vast metropolis. These are they who patrol the streets of our cities, to give our sons their first lessons in infamy. These are they who fill our asylums, and make night hideous with their cries and groans.
The women who are called masculine, who are brave, courageous, self-reliant and independent, are they who in the face of adverse winds have kept one steady course upward and onward in the paths of virtue and peace—they who have taken their gauge of womanhood from their own native strength and dignity—they who have learned for themselves the will of God concerning them. This is our type of womanhood. Will you help us raise it up, that you too may see its beautiful proportions—that you may behold the outline of the goddess who is yet to adorn your temple of Freedom? We are building a model republic; our edifice will one day need a crowning glory. Let the artists be wisely chosen. Let them begin their work. Here is a temple to Liberty, to human rights, on whose portals behold the glorious declaration, "All men are created equal." The sun has never yet shone upon any of man's creations that can compare with this. The artist who can mold a statue worthy to crown magnificence like this, must be godlike in his conceptions, grand in his comprehensions, sublimely beautiful in his power of execution. The woman—the crowning glory of the model republic among the nations of the earth—what must she not be? (Loud applause).[72]
AN ACT CONCERNING THE RIGHTS AND LIABILITIES OF HUSBAND AND WIFE.
The Act of 1860[73] was offered by Andrew J. Colvin in the Senate as a substitute for a bill from the Assembly, which was simply an amendment of the law of 1848. Senators Hammond, Ramsey, and Colvin constituted the Judiciary Committee, to whom the bill was referred. Mr. Colvin objected to it for want of breadth in giving to married women the rights to which he thought them entitled, and urged that a much more liberal measure was demanded by the
spirit of the times. In one of Miss Anthony's interviews with Mr. Colvin, she handed him a very radical bill just introduced in the Massachusetts Legislature, which after due examination and the addition of two or three more liberal clauses, was accepted by the Committee, reported to the Senate by Mr. Colvin, and adopted by that body February 28, 1860.[74] The bill was concurred in by the Assembly, and signed by the Governor, Edwin D. Morgan. It is quite remarkable that the bill in its transit did not receive a single alteration, modification, or amendment from the time it left Mr. Colvin's hands until it took its place on the statute-book. The women of the State who labored so persistently for this measure, felt that the victory at last was due in no small degree to the deep interest and patient skill of Andrew J. Colvin. Hon. Anson Bingham, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who did good service in the Assembly at this time, should be gratefully
remembered by the women of New York. Mr. Bingham acted in concert with Mr. Colvin, both earnestly putting their shoulders to the wheel, one in the Assembly and one in the Senate, and with the women pulling all the wires they could outside, together they pushed the grand measure through.
Judge Bingham served our cause also by articles on all phases of the question over the signature of "Senex," published in many journals throughout the State. And this, too, at an early day, when every word in favor of woman's rights was of immense value in breaking down the prejudice of the ages.
In addition to this, another act of great benefit to a large number of housekeepers, called the "Boarding House Law," was secured by the same members. Miss Emily Howland, Mrs. Margaret Murray, Mrs. Manning, and Mrs. Griffith Satterlee spent some weeks in Albany using their influence in favor of this measure.
In February, 1860, Emily Howland arranged a course of lectures on Woman's Rights, to be given in Cooper Institute, New York. Henry Ward Beecher delivered his first lecture on the question in this course, receiving his fee of $100 in advance, as it was said he considered no engagement of that sort imperative without previous payment. Mr. Beecher's speech was published in full in The New York Independent, of which he was then editor-in-chief. The State Committee purchased a large number, which Lydia Mott, of Albany, laid on the desk of every member of both Houses. At the time we felt the speech worth to our cause all it cost.
TENTH NATIONAL WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION.
cooper institute, new york, may 10-11, 1860.
A large audience assembled in Cooper Institute at 10 o'clock, Thursday morning. Susan B. Anthony called the Convention to order, and submitted a list of officers,[75] nominated at a preliminary meeting, which was adopted without dissent.
The President, Martha C. Wright, of Auburn, on taking the Chair, addressed the Convention as follows:
There are those in our movement who ask, "What is the use of these Conventions? What is the use of this constant iteration of the same things?" When we see what has been already achieved, we learn the use of this "foolishness of preaching:" and after all that we demand has been granted, as it will be soon, The New York Observer will piously fold its hands and roll up its eyes, and say, "This beneficent movement we have always advocated," and the pulpits will say "Amen!" (Laughter and applause). Then will come forward women who have gained courage from the efforts and sacrifices of others, and the great world will say, "Here come the women who are going to do something, and not talk."
There are those, too, who find fault with the freedom of our platform, who stand aloof and criticise, fearful of being involved in something that they can not fully endorse. Forgetting that, as Macaulay says, "Liberty alone can cure the evils of liberty," they fear to trust on the platform all who have a word to say. But we have invited all to come forward and speak, and not to stand aside and afterward criticise what has been said. We trust that those present who have an opinion, who have a word to say, whether they have ever spoken before or not, will speak now. If they disapprove of our resolutions, if they disapprove of anything that is said on this platform, let them oppose if they can not unite with us. (Applause.)Susan B. Anthony was then introduced, and read the following report:
We had in New York a legislative act passed at the last session, securing to married women their rights to their earnings and their children. Other States have taken onward steps. And, from what is being done on all sides, we have reason to believe that, as the Northern States shall one by one remodel their Constitutions, the right of suffrage will be granted to women. Six years hence New York proposes to revise her Constitution. These should be years of effort with all those who believe that it is the right and the duty of every citizen of a State to have a voice in the laws that govern them.
Woman is being so educated that she will feel herself capable of assuming grave responsibilities as lawgiver and administrator. She is crowding into higher avocations and new branches of industry. She already occupies the highest places in literature and art. The more liberal lyceums are open to her, and she is herself the subject of the most popular lectures now before the public. The young women of our academies and high schools are asserting their right to the discipline of declamation and discussion, and the departments of science and mathematics. Pewholders, of the most orthodox sects, are taking their right to a voice in the government of the church, and in the face of priests, crying "let your women keep silence in the churches," yes, at the very horns of the altar, calmly, deliberately, and persistently casting their votes in the choice of church officers and pastors.[76] Mass-meetings to sympathize with the "strikers" of Massachusetts are being called in this metropolis by women. Women are ordained ministers, and licensed physicians. Elizabeth Blackwell has founded a hospital in this city, where she proposes a thorough medical education, both theoretical and practical, for young women. And this Institute in which we are now assembled, with its school of design, its library and reading-room, where the arts and sciences are freely taught to women, and this hall, so cheerfully granted to our Convention, shows the magnanimity of its founder, Peter Cooper. All these are the results of our twenty years of agitation. And it matters not to us, though the men and the women who echo back our thought do fail to recognize the source of power, and while they rejoice in each onward step achieved in the face of ridicule and persecution, ostracise those who have done the work. Who of our literary women has yet ventured one word of praise or recognition of the heroic enunciators of the great idea of woman's equality of Mary Woolstonecraft, Frances Wright, Ernestine L. Rose, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton? It matters not to those who live for the race, and not for self alone, who has the praise, so that justice be done to woman in Church, in State, and at the fireside—an equal everywhere with man—they will not complain, though even The New York Observer itself does claim to have done for them the work.
During the past six years this State has been thoroughly canvassed, and every county that has been visited by our lecturers and tracts has rolled up petitions by the hundreds and thousands, asking for woman's right to vote and hold office—her right to her person, her wages, her children, and her home. Again and again have we held Conventions at the capital, and addressed our Legislature, demanding the exercise of all our rights as citizens of the Empire State. During the past year, we have had six women[77] lecturing in New York for several months each. Conventions have been held in forty counties, one or -more lectures delivered in one hundred and fifty towns and villages, our petitions circulated, and our tracts and documents sold and gratuitously distributed throughout the entire length and breadth of the State.
A State Convention was held at Albany early in February. Large numbers of the members of the Legislature listened respectfully and attentively to the discussions of its several sessions, and expressed themselves converts to the claims for woman. The bills for woman's right to her property, her earnings, and the guardianship of her children passed both branches of the Legislature with scarce a dissenting voice, and received the prompt signature of the Governor.
Our Legislature passed yet another bill that brings great relief to a large class of women. It was called the Boarding-House Bill. It provides that the keepers of private boarding-houses shall have the right of lien on the property of boarders, precisely the same as do hotel-keepers. We closed our work by a joint hearing before the Committees of the Judiciary at the Capitol on the 19th of March. Elizabeth Cady Stanton addressed them. The Assembly Chamber was densely packed, and she was listened to with marked attention and respect. The Judiciary Committees of neither House reported on our petition for the right of suffrage, though the Chairman, with a large minority of the House Committee and a majority of the Senate Committee, favored the claim. The Hon. A. J. Colvin, of the Senate Committee, in a letter to me, says:
"The subject was presented at so late a day as to preclude action. "While a majority of the Senate Committee I think were favorable, a majority of the House Committee, so far as I could learn, were opposed. So many progressive measures had passed both Houses that I felt apprehensive we might perhaps be running too great a risk by urging this question of justice and reform at this session. I did not therefore press It. Should I remain in the Senate, I may take occasion at an early day in the next session to bring up the subject and present my views at length. The more reflection I give, the more my mind becomes convinced that hi a Republican Government, we have no right to deny to woman the privileges she claims. Besides, the moral element which those privileges would bring into existence would, in my judgment, have ,a powerful influence in perpetuating our form of government. It maybe deemed best, at the next session, to urge an early Constitutional Convention. In case one should be called, your friends should be prepared to meet the emergency. Is the public mind sufficiently enlightened to accept a constitution recognizing the right of women to vote and hold office? You should consider this."
The entire expense of the New York State work during the past year is nearly four thousand dollars. The present year we propose to expend our funds and efforts mostly in Ohio, to obtain, if possible, for the women of that State, the liberal laws we have secured for ourselves. Ohio, too, is soon to revise her Constitution, and we trust she will not be far behind New York in recognizing the full equality of woman. We who have grasped the idea of woman's destiny, her power and influence, the trinity of her existence as woman, wife, and mother, can most earnestly work for her elevation to that high position that it is the will of God she should ever fill. Though we have not yet realized the fullness of our hopes, let us rest in the belief that in all these years of struggle, no earnest thought, or word, or prayer has been breathed in vain. The influence has gone forth, the great ocean has been moved, and those who watch, e'en now may see the mighty waves of truth slowly swelling on the shores of time.
"One accent of the Holy Ghost,
A heedless word hath never lost."
Ernestine L. Rose being introduced, said: Frances Wright was the first woman in this country who spoke on the equality of the sexes. She had indeed a hard task before her. The elements were entirely unprepared. She had to break up the time-hardened soil of conservatism, and her reward was sure—the same reward that is always bestowed upon those who are in the vanguard of any great movement. She was subjected to public odium, slander, and persecution. But these were not the only things that she received. Oh, she had her reward!—that reward of which no enemies could deprive her, which no slanders could make less precious—the eternal reward of knowing that she had done her duty; the reward springing from the consciousness of right, of endeavoring to benefit unborn generations. How delightful to see the molding of the minds around you, the infusing of your thoughts and aspirations into others, until one by one they stand by your side, without knowing how they came there! That reward she had. It has been her glory, it is the glory of her memory; and the time will come when society will have outgrown its old prejudices, and stepped with one foot, at least, upon the elevated platform on which she took her position. But owing to the fact that the elements were unprepared, she naturally could not succeed to any great extent.
After her, in 1837, the subject of woman's rights was again taken hold of—aye, taken hold of by woman; and the soil having been already somewhat prepared, she began to sow the seeds for the future growth, the fruits of which we now begin to enjoy. Petitions were circulated and sent to our Legislature, and who can tell the hardships that then met those who undertook that great work! I went from house to house with a petition for signatures simply asking our Legislature to allow married women to hold real estate in their own name. What did I meet with? Why, the very name exposed one to ridicule, if not to worse treatment. The women said: "We have rights enough; we want no more"; and the men, as a matter of course, echoed it, and said: "You have rights' enough; nay, you have too many already." (Laughter). But by perseverance in sending petitions to the Legislature, and, at the same time, enlightening the public mind on the subject, we at last accomplished our purpose. We had to adopt the method which physicians sometimes use, when they are called to a patient who is so hopelessly sick that he is unconscious of his pain and suffering. We had to describe to women their own position, to explain to them the burdens that rested so heavily upon them, and through these means, as a wholesome irritant, we roused public opinion on the subject, and through public opinion, we acted upon the Legislature, and in 1848-49, they gave us the great boon for which we asked, by enacting that a woman who possessed property previous to marriage, or obtained it after marriage, should be allowed to hold it in her own name. Thus far, thus good; but it was only a beginning, and we went on. In 1848 we had the first Woman's Rights Convention, and then some of our papers thought it only a very small affair, called together by a few "strong-minded women," and would pass away like a nine-days' wonder. They little knew woman! They little knew that if woman takes anything earnestly in her hands, she will not lay it aside unaccomplished. (Applause). We have continued our Conventions ever since. A few years ago, when we sent a petition to our Legislature, we obtained, with but very little effort, upward of thirteen thousand signatures. What a contrast between this number and the five signatures attached to the first petition, in 1837! Since then, we might have had hundreds of thousands of signatures, but it is no longer necessary. Public opinion is too well known to require a long array of names.
We have been often asked. "What is the use of Conventions? Why talk? Why not go to work?" Just as if the thought did not precede the act! Those who act without previously thinking, are not good for much. Thought is first required, then the expression of it, and that leads to action; and action based upon thought never needs to be reversed; it is lasting and profitable, and produces the desired effect. I know that there are many who take advantage of this movement, and then say: "You are doing nothing; only talking." Yes, doing nothing! We have only broken up the ground and sowed the seed; they are reaping the benefit, and yet they tell us we have done nothing! Mrs. Swisshelm, who has proclaimed herself to be "no woman's rights, woman," has accepted a position as inspector of logs and lumber. (Laughter). Well, I have no objection to her having that avocation, if she have a taste and capacity for it—far from it. But she has accepted still more, and I doubt not with a great deal more zest and satisfaction—the five hundred dollars salary; and I hope she will enjoy it. Then, having accepted both the office and the salary, she folds her arms, and says: "I am none of your strong-minded women; I don't go for woman's rights." Well, she is still welcome to it. I have not the slightest objection that those who proclaim themselves not strong-minded, should still reap the benefit of a strong mind (applause and laughter); it is for them we work. So there are some ladies who think a great deal can be done in the Legislature without petitions, without conventions, without lectures, without public claim, in fact, without anything, but a little lobbying. Well, if they have a, taste for it, they are welcome to engage in it; I have not the slightest objection. Yes, I have. I, as a woman, being conscious of the evil that is done by these lobby loafers in our Legislature and in the halls of Congress, object to it. (Loud cheers). I will wait five years longer to have a right given to me legitimately, from a sense of justice, rather than buy it in an underhand way by lobbying. Whatever my sentiments may be, good, bad, or indifferent, I express them, and they are known. Nevertheless, if any desire it, let them do that work. But what has induced them, what has enabled them, to do that work? The Woman's Rights movement, although they are afraid or ashamed even of the name "woman's rights."
You have been told, and much more might be said on the subject, that already the Woman's Rights platform has upon it lawyers, ministers, and statesmen—men who are among the highest in the nation. I need not mention Wm. Lloyd Garrison, or Wendell Phillips; but there are others, those even who are afraid of the name of reformer, who have stood upon our platform. Brady! Who would ever have expected it? Chapin! Beecher! Think of it for a moment! A minister advocating the rights of woman, even her right at the ballot-box! What has done it? Our agitation has purified the atmosphere, and enabled them to see the injustice that is done to woman.
Mrs. Elizabeth Jones, of Ohio, was the next speaker. She said: I wish to preface my remarks with this resolution:
Resolved, That woman's sphere can not be bounded. Its prescribed orbit is the largest place that in her highest development she can fill. The laws of mind are as immutable as are those of the planetary world, and the true woman most ever revolve around the great moral sun of light and truth.
As a general proposition, we say that capacity determines the true sphere of action, and indicates the kind of labor to be performed. I often hear women discussing this subject, much more in earnest than in jest, though they profess to be simply amusing themselves. One says: "If I were a man, I should be a mechanic"; another says: "I should be a merchant." One says: "I am sure I should be rich"; another, in the excess of her humor, thinks she should be distinguished. Why do women talk thus? Because one feels that she has mechanical genius; the power to construct, to perfect. Another understands the secrets of trade, and would like to incur the heavy responsibilities it involves. A third is conscious that she was born a financier; while a fourth has an intuitive perception of the elements of success.
Many women are beginning to judge for themselves the proper sphere of action, and are not only jesting about what they should do under other circumstances, but are already entering upon such paths as their taste and capacity indicate. Some will doubtless make mistakes, which experience will rectify, and others will perhaps persist in striving to do that which it will be very evident they have no ability to perform. This is the case with men who have had freedom in every sphere. Look at the American pulpit, for instance. Go through the country, and listen to those who claim to be the messengers of God, and if you do not say that many are destitute of capacity to fill the sphere they have chosen, we shall regard it as an act of obedience on your part to the command which says: "Judge not, lest ye be judged." (Laughter). Let adaptation be the rule for pulpit occupancy, and while it would eject some who are now no honor to the station, and no benefit to the people, it would open the place to many an Anna and Miriam and Deborah to fulfill the mission which God has clearly indicated by the talents He has bestowed.
The world says now, man is God's minister, and woman is not fit to call sinners to repentance; but let it say: "Those who have faith in the principles of eternal right, and have power to give it utterance; those who have the clearest perceptions of moral truth; those who understand the wants of the people, are the proper persons, whether they be men or women, to dispense to the needy multitude the bread of life." This would elevate the standard of pulpit qualifications, and bring into the field a far greater amount of talent to choose from, and thus would the intellectual and spiritual needs of the people be more fully answered. What is true of this profession will apply with equal force to others. Should I be told that the American bar needs no more talent, I would reply that it needs decency, and a well-founded self-respect. When you enter a court-room, and listen to a cross-examination of a delicate nature, one where woman is concerned, and she would rather die a hundred deaths, if she could, than to have the case dragged before the public, you will see it treated in the coarsest way, as if her holiest affections and her most sacred functions were fitting themes for brutish men to jeer at. And even in the most ordinary cases, gentlemen who would spurn the imputation of incivility in social life, will so browbeat and badger a witness, that the most disgusting bear-baiting would become by comparison a refined amusement. If the young aspirants for legal honors should meet among the advocates and judges sensible, dignified, and highly cultivated women, they would, if I am not much mistaken, get the benefit of certain lessons, upon manners and morals, that it is essential for all young men to learn. (Applause). It appears to me that by association of men and women in this profession, the bar might be purged of this indecorum, and possess the humanity, the wisdom, and the dignity that should ever characterize a Court of Justice.
You need not tell me that the profession would be overstocked, if women should enter it, for, like men, they must stand on their merits. Let there be no proscription on account of sex. Let talent be brought fairly into competition, and although many a young man, as well as young woman, would sit down forever briefless, having neither the capacity nor the acquirements to bring or retain clients, yet their loss would be for the public good, and for the honor and respectability of the profession. Let the talents of women be fully developed, and no man will lose any place that he is qualified to fill in consequence, and no woman will obtain that place who has not peculiar fitness. All these matters will find their own level, ultimately. I can point you to localities now where the people prefer women for teachers. A Union School in Northern Ohio, which is made up of ten departments, employs women for teachers, and a woman as superintendent of the whole. The people reason this way: We prefer women, because they bring us the best talent. Not that they have better talents than men, but with the latter, teaching is generally a stepping-stone to a profession. Woman accepts it as her highest post, and brings her best energies. With man, it is often a subordinate interest, and his best talents will be exercised upon what he regards as something higher and better. As in this, so in other things. The time will come when talent or capacity will govern the choice and not sex. It is so now in Art, to a great extent. I think there is not much known of sex there. The world does not care who wrote "Aurora Leigh." It does not recognize it as the production of a woman, but as the work of genius. Let the artists say what they please, the world does not care who chisels Zenobia, so that Zenobia be well chiseled. It does not care whether Landseer or Rosa Bonheur paints animals, so that animals are well painted. No one says this or that is well done for a woman, but he says, this is the work of an artist, that has no merit; not because a woman did it, not because a man did it, but because the author was destitute of capacity to embody the idea.
Again, read the little village newspapers, got out by little editors, and you will find, in many cases, an utter want of ability to fill the place that has been chosen. I hope young women will not make such mistakes as these young men have done, who might have been supposed to know something, if they had only kept still. (Laughter). If these papers, to which I have referred, were all in the hands of women, and so destitute of editorial pith and point as they now are, I should counsel against any further efforts for the elevation of the sex, believing the case to be hopeless. (Applause). If I mistake not, women have a peculiar fitness for trade. Mrs. Dall says, in her second lecture, that on the Island of Nantucket, women have engaged in commerce very successfully. They did it in the war, and afterward, when destitution drove the men to the whale fisheries, and again when they went to California. They have had much experience; and Eliza Barney tells of seventy women who engaged in trade, and retired with a competence, and besides brought up and educated large families of children. She says, also, that failures were very uncommon when women managed the business, and some of the largest and safest fortunes in Boston were founded by women. Whenever, therefore, one shows any ability for trade, that is her license for engaging in it—a license granted under the higher law, and therefore valid. I went into a bonnet store the other day, and saw a man-milliner holding up a bonnet on his soft white hand to a lady customer, and expatiating upon the beauties of the article with an earnestness, if not the eloquence, of an orator. She tried it on, and he went into ecstacies. (Laughter). It was so becoming! It was so charming! He complimented her, and he complimented the bonnet, and had she not been a strong-minded woman, I do not know how much of the flattery she would have taken for truth. I thought that man was out of his sphere: and not only that, but he had crowded some woman out of her appropriate place, out of the realm of taste and fashion. (Applause). When I passed out on the street, the harsh, discordant tone of a fish-woman fell upon my ear. I saw that she bore a heavy tub upon her head, evidently seeking by this branch of merchandise to procure a living for herself and family. So few were the avenues open to her, as she thought, and so much had men monopolized the places she could fill, that she was compelled to carry fish on her head, until she could raise money enough to procure a better conveyance.
Again, I see young men selling artificial flowers, and laces and embroidery, crinolines and balmorals, and I think to myself they had better be out digging coal or making brick. When I go back home to the West, I could take a car-load with me, and set them to work, and I would greatly benefit their condition, while the places they vacate here might be filled by the girls who are now starving in your garrets. (Applause). At a shoe-store, instead of finding a sprightly miss, to select and fit the ladies gaiters, you often see a strong, healthy man, kneeling before the customer with a gallantry that would be admirable in a drawing-room, and worth infinitely more than the price of the article he is selling; and he fusses over the gaiters and over the lady's foot, until you wonder if she is not tempted to propel him into a more appropriate sphere. (Laughter). Whatever possessed men to imagine that God designed them to fit ladies' gaiters, is more than I can imagine. (Applause). I am unable to realize how they obtained the revelation that for a woman to thus officiate would take her out of her appropriate sphere. Shall I be held to my principles here, and told that these men succeed in business, and success being the test of sphere, therefore they are in their place? It remains to be proved that they have succeeded. A man may jump Jim Crow from morning till night, or make a fool of himself in any other way, and succeed admirably in pleasing auditors and gathering pennies; but when you take into consideration his high and heavenly origin, and the noble purposes for which he was made, you can hardly call it a success. Neither should I think a woman was in suitable business, even if it were ever so lucrative and well done, unless that business developed her talents; made her stronger, more self-reliant, and better fitted her for life and its duties. These stores would be a good discipline for young girls, but not for men.
This whole question lies in a small compass. Our reform would leave woman just where God placed her—a moral, accountable being, endowed with talents whose scope and character indicate the work she is to do; and who is responsible primarily to her Creator for the use she makes of those talents. He says to every man and to every woman, Go work in my vineyard! That vineyard I understand to be the world, embracing all the varied responsibilities of life. Whether man shall pursue science, literature, or art, whether he shall engage in agriculture, manufactures, or mechanics, is for him to determine, and whether woman shall engage in any of these things is for her to determine. Nothing but an internal consciousness of power to perform certain work, and that it will be for her own good, can aid her in her choice. If a woman can write vigorous verse, then let her write verse. If she can build ships, then let her be a ship-builder. I know no reason why. If she can keep house, and that takes as much brains as any other occupation, let her be a housekeeper. They tell us that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty"; eternal vigilance is the price of a well-ordered home, and every woman before me knows it. (Applause). I know that the conservative, in his fear, says, Surely you would not have woman till the soil, sail the seas, run up the rigging of a ship like a monkey (I use the language of one of your most distinguished men), go to war, engage in political brawls? No! I would not have her do anything. She must be her own judge. In relation to tilling the soil, the last census of the United Kingdom reports 128,418 women employed in agriculture. Examples are by no means rare where a woman carries on a farm which her deceased husband has left, and I have, seen much skill evinced in the management. "In Media, Pa., two girls named Miller carry on a farm of 300 acres, raising hay and grain, hiring labor, but working mostly themselves." I have been on a farm in your own State where I saw, not Tennyson's six mighty daughters of the plow, but I saw three[78]
who plowed, and not only that, but they plowed well. Doubtless, some of our fastidious young ladies would be greatly shocked at such an exhibition, and I must acknowledge that it was to me a novel sight; but the more I considered it, the more I thought that I would rather see a young woman holding the plow, than to see her leading such an aimless, silly life as many a young lady leads. I would rather see a young woman holding the plow, than to see her decked out in her finery, and sitting idle in the parlor, waiting for an offer of marriage. (Applause). I hope women will not copy the vices of men. I hope they will not go to war; I wish men would not. I hope they will not be contentious politicians; I am sorry that men are. I hope they will not regard their freedom as a license to do wrong; I am ashamed to acknowledge that men do. But we need not fear. We may safely trust the judgment of those who tell us that politics and morals, and every department into which woman may enter, will be elevated and refined by her influence.
So far as navigation is concerned, I think many women would not be attracted to that life. There might be now and then a Betsy Miller, who could walk the quarter-deck in a gale, and that certainly would indicate constitutional ability to become a sailor. I do not suppose so much violence would be done to her nature by navigating the seas, as by helping a drunken husband to navigate the streets habitually. (Applause). In relation to running up the rigging like a monkey, or in regard to any other monkey performance, I do not believe that women will ever enter into competition with men in these things, because the latter have shown such remarkable aptitude for that business. (Laughter and applause). But after all that may be said on this subject, we fail to reach one class in the community who have spare time, spare energies, abundance of power for work. I mean young ladies of wealth and rank. The world shows a degree of toleration now toward any young woman who from necessity has engaged in any industrial avocation to which women have not heretofore applied themselves. But there is no such toleration for the rich. Many of these are now striving to kill time with fancy-work and fiction, with flirtation and flaunting. Some are destitute of aspiration for anything better. These could be moved only by some convulsion in the social system, like the earthquake, or like the volcano that opens the ground at our feet and shows us our danger. But there are others whose convictions lead them to desire something better; who feel that they are living to no purpose; who know that their own powers, good as any God ever created, are lying in inglorious repose. Some of the advocates of our cause have said that for these there is no profession but marriage. If they are not literary, artistic, or philanthropic, what can they do ? They arc held by a cable, made up of home influence, of fashion, and of perverted Scripture, which binds them down to an insipid existence. Hence, they suppress all desire for a fuller, larger life ; they smile graciously upon their fetters; they profess to be the happiest of all happy women, and thus they glide along through the thoroughfares of society with a lying tongue and an aching heart.
I wish these had enough vitality of soul and enough energy of character to rise superior to the circumstances around them, and make some approach to their own ideal. I know this is asking them to martyrize themselves. But could they see the beauty and the glory that will invest the future woman, when she shall have her proper place among the children of the Father; when she shall infuse her love, her moral perceptions, her sense of justice, into the ethics and governments of the earth; when she shall be united to man in a Divine harmony, and her children shall go forth to bless all coming generations, they would regard martyrdom but dust in the balance compared with such blessing. And when the world shall see the moral grandeur, the sublime position of a race redeemed by the sanctifying influences of this Divine harmony, it will weave for them a brighter chaplet than it has ever woven for any of its martyrs who have suffered at the stake. (Loud applause).
Rev. Beriah Green, of Whitesboro', N. Y., was next introduced, and said:
It is not, I suppose, at all the design of this platform in any way to abolish what the grammarians call "the distinction of sex"; and when we speak of "woman's rights," we admit, in the very language which is thus employed, that she is a "woman"—that that is appropriately her character that under this name she is fitly described. Now, a comprehensive description of all the rights which any member of the human family, whoever and whatever and wherever he may be, is entitled to challenge and maintain, we have in the brief and simple expression, the right to be himself; the right to be true to the nature which he has inherited; the right to the free and full development of the powers with which he is endowed; the right to lay out those resources of which he is constructed happily, effectively, properly ; the right to rise to the highest position in excellence and in blessedness to which his capacities and powers may elevate him. This is a comprehensive description of man's rights, a comprehensive description of woman's rights, and a comprehensive description of human rights, under every form and phase of application of which human rights may be supposed capable.
Now, I regard it as a repulsive feature of the age, that one sex should feel itself constrained to come forward and defend itself from the other sex; to demand a redress of the wrongs to which it may be exposed, and a vindication of the rights to which it may be entitled; for, look you! most obviously and clearly, the relation between the sexes is naturally most intimate. The one lives in and through the other. They do not make two distinct classes, most obviously and certainly. They do not in nature; they do not according to the Divine arrangement; and it always seems to me to be most absurd, and in the highest degree ungrateful, to present the subject with which we are now occupied, under any such aspect. Mankind are divided, doubtless—divided now by accident, and now by arrangement—into different classes; but to make the women one class, and the men another class, seems to me to be essentially and flagrantly absurd. (Applause). Manifestly, the grand right of man (employing the term man here not generally, but specifically), in his relations to woman, as well as in all his other relations, is to be grandly, vigorously beautiful; in every way a man; in all the relations of life to be true to whatever may be characteristic of his nature, and to whatever may be distinctive in his sex. And what may be affirmed of him in this respect may be affirmed of his mother, of his wife, of his sister.
It is a general law of our humanity, an all-comprehensive and all controlling principle, that we belong, as human beings, to each other. Every man belongs to the whole human family, and the whole human family belongs to every one of its members. We are mutually, as a matter of course, under the controlling influence of this great law; we are mutually to contribute, as effectively and wisely as we may, to each other's improvement and welfare. This is the great general law which lies at the very basis of our being; this is the law which asserts its majesty in the depths of our consciousness. This law has manifestly a specific and beneficent application to the relation which binds man to woman, and unites woman to man. In a natural state of things, where the ordinances of our true Father were regarded, where the principles of our existence were reverently heeded, as a matter of course, individually and generally, man would devote himself, as man, generously, magnanimously, his entire self, whatever belongs to his manhood, in every department of his being—he would devote himself, as man, to woman; and woman, on the other hand, would just as characteristically, just as nobly, just as cheerfully, just as gratefully, just as effectively, devote herself to the improvement and welfare of man; and according to the nature of the relation which unites them, the one would supply whatever might seem to be demanded in the construction of the other. A man is never completely himself until he is united to woman, and a woman is never completely herself until she is united to man; and thus they become a beautiful unit, playing continually into each other's hands, their hearts beating in delightful harmony with each other. This is the great fundamental law of our social existence. The very germ of the social is to be found in the sexual relations which bind men and women together, and society, in all its forms and phases, is nothing under heaven but the development, the fit, symmetrical, and full development of the germ to which I have thus referred.
As has already been intimated in the beautiful thoughts which have been expressed by those who have preceded me, the great law, which was, perhaps, as intelligibly and impressively presented by Napoleon as by any other man, giving liberty to every man to use the tools who is qualified to use them—"The tools to him who can use them!"—or, in better language still, as it fell from the lips of the Great Teacher, "Every man according to his ability"—this great law applies with equal force to woman as to man. There have been women greatly distinguished for physical power. You remember the old story of Kate Guardinier. A distinguished wrestler, who came to lay hold of her brother, her muscular and gigantic brother, and measure strength with him, found that he was absent. "Well," says Kate, "I will wrestle with you, and if I throw you, you need not wait the return of my brother." And so she did, and he went away, fully satisfied that there was no occasion for him, to wait for any more vigorous arm than Kate Guardinier wielded. Now, wherever there is a strong arm, adapt its task to its powers—that is the will of High Heaven. Wherever there are well-trained powers, let these be recognized powers, and of course the general results can not be otherwise than happy.
In regard to the great question who shall take the lead in the family or the community, let me say, that I do not care through what medium wisdom may reach me, through what medium I may secure the benefit of healthful guidance. What I want is wisdom. Wisdom, goodness, and power are the soul of all government. Wherever these are combined, there you have the results of wisdom, goodness, and power. Now, then, if the mother in a household, or even if a daughter in a household, is more distinguished for these high qualities, for these grand attainments, than any other member of that family, why, it is nothing but rebellion against God, it is nothing but gibbering madness, that would make any member of that family hesitate to avail himself of the guidance thus offered, of the light of the wisdom which may thus be poured around him. In God's name, give me wisdom, give me genuine power, give me magnanimity!—as to the incidents of the matter, I do not insist upon them. Whether it be through my father or my mother that true guidance is afforded, whether it be by my wife or my daughter that good counsel is offered, very clearly, to reject these is to spurn the kindness of benignant Heaven.
Wendell Phillips said:—We are here to enforce, on the consideration of the civil state, those elements of power which have already made the social state. You do not find it necessary to-day to say to a husband, "Your wife has a right to read"; or necessary to say to Dickens, "You have as many women over your pages as men." You do not find it necessary to say to the male members of a church that the women members have a right to change their creed. All that is settled; nobody contests it. If a man stood up here and said, "I am a Calvinist, and therefore my wife is bound to be one," you would send him to a lunatic asylum. You would say, "Poor man! don't judge him by what he says; he don't mean it." But law is halting back just where that old civilization was; we want to change it.
We are not doing anything new. There is no fanaticism about it. We are merely extending the area of liberty—nothing else. We have made great progress. The law passed at the last session of the New York Legislature grants, in fact, the whole question. The moment you grant us anything, we have gained the whole. You can not stop with an inconsistent statute-book. A man is uneasy who is inconsistent. As Thomas Fuller says, "You can not make one side of the face laugh, and the other cry!" You can not have one-half your statute-book Jewish, and the other Christian; one-half of the statute-book Oriental, the other Saxon. You have granted that woman may be hung, therefore you must grant that woman may vote. You have granted that she may be taxed, therefore, on republican principles, you must grant that she ought to have a voice in fixing the laws of taxation—and this is, in fact, all that we claim—the whole of it.
Now, I want to consider some of the objections that are made to this claim. Men say, "Woman is not fit to vote; she does not know enough; she has not sense enough to vote." I take this idea of the ballot as the Gibraltar of our claim, for this reason, because I am speaking in a democracy; I am speaking under republican institutions. The rule of despotism is that one class is made to protect the other; that the rich, the noble, the educated are a sort of probate court, to take care of the poor, the ignorant, and the common classes. Our fathers got rid of all that. They knocked it on the head by the simple principle, that no class is safe, unless government is so arranged that each class has in its own hands the means of protecting itself. That is the idea of republics. The Briton says to the poor man, "Be content; I am worth five millions, and I will protect you." And America says, "Thank you, sir; I had rather take care of myself!"—and that is the essence of democracy. (Applause). It is the corner-stone of progress, also; because, the moment you have admitted that poor ignorant heart as an element of the government, able to mold your institutions, those five millions of dollars, feeling that their cradle is not safe and their life is in peril, unless that heart is bulwarked with education and informed with morality, selfishness dictates that wealth and education should do its utmost to educate poverty and hold up weakness—and that is the philosophy of democratic institutions. (Applause). I am speaking in a republic which admits the principle that the poor are not to be protected by the rich, but to have the means of protecting themselves. So, too, the ignorant; so, too, races. The Irish are not to trust to the sense of justice in the Saxon; the German is not to trust to the native-born citizen; the Catholic is not to trust to the Protestant; but all sects, all classes, are to hold in their own hands the scepter—the American scepter—of the ballot, which protects each class. We claim it, therefore, for woman. The reply is, that woman has not got sense enough. If she has not, so much the more shame for your public-schools—educate her! For you will not say that woman naturally has not mind enough. If God did not give her mind enough, then you are brutes, for you say to her: "Madam, you have sense enough to earn your own living—don't come to us!" You make her earn her own bread, and, if she has sense enough to do that, she has enough to say whether Fernando Wood or Governor Morgan shall take one cent out of every hundred to pay for fireworks. When you hold her up in both hands, and say, "Let me work for you! Don't move one of your dainty fingers! We will pour wealth into your lap, and be ye clothed in satin and velvet, every daughter of Eve!"—then you will be consistent in saying that woman has not sense enough to vote. But if she has sense enough to work, to depend for her bread on her work, she has sense enough to vote....
But men say it would be very indelicate for woman to go to the ballot-box or sit in the Legislature. Well, what would she see there? Why, she would see men. (Laughter). She sees men now. In "Cranford Village," that sweet little sketch by Mrs. Gaskill, one of the characters says, "I know these men—my father was a man." (Laughter). I think every woman can say the same. She meets men now; she could meet nothing but men at the ballot-box, or, if she meets brutes, they ought not to be there. (Applause). Indelicate for her to go to the ballot-box!—but you may walk up and down Broadway any time from nine o'clock in the morning until nine at night, and you will find about equal numbers of men and women crowding that thoroughfare, which is never still. You may get into an omnibus—women are there, crowding us out, sometimes. (Laughter). You can not go into a theater without being crowded to death by two women to one man. If you go to the lyceum, woman is there. I have stood on this very platform, and seen as many women as men before me, and one time, at least, when they could not have met any worse men at the ballot-box than they met in this hall. (Laughter and applause). You may go to church, and you will find her facing men of all classes—ignorant and wise, saints and sinners. I do not know anywhere that woman is not. It is too late now to say that she can not go to the ballot-box. Go back to Turkey, and shut her up in a harem; go back to Greece, and shut her up in the private apartments of women; go back to the old Oriental phases of civilization, that never allowed woman's eyes to light a man's pathway, unless he owned her, and you are consistent; but you see, we have broken down the bulwark, centuries ago. You know they used to let a man be hung in public, and said that it was for the sake of the example. They got ashamed of it, and banished the gallows to the jail-yard, and allowed only twelve men to witness an execution. It is too late to say that you hang men for the example, because the example you are ashamed to have public can not be a wholesome example. So it is with this question of woman. You have granted so much, that you have left yourselves no ground to stand on. My dear, delicate friend, you are out of your sphere; you ought to be in Turkey. My dear, religiously, scrupulously fashionable, exquisitely anxious hearer, fearful lest your wife, or daughter, or sister shall be sullied by looking into your neighbors' faces at the ballot-box, you do not belong to the century that has ballot-boxes. You belong to the century of Tamerlane and Timour the Tartar; you belong to China, where the women have no feet, because it is not meant that they shall walk. You belong anywhere but in America; and if you want an answer, walk down Broadway, and meet a hundred thousand petticoats, and they are a hundred thousand answers; for if woman can walk the streets, she can go to the ballot-box, and any reason of indelicacy that forbids the one covers the other.
Men say, "Why do you come here? What good are you going to do? You do nothing but talk." Oh, yes, we have done a great deal besides talk! But suppose we had done nothing but talk? I saw a poor man the other day, and said he (speaking of a certain period in his life), "I felt very friendless and alone—I had only God with me"; and he seemed to think that was not much. And so thirty millions of thinking, reading people are constantly throwing it in the teeth of reformers that they rely upon talk! What is talk? Why, it is the representative of brains. And what is the characteristic glory of the nineteenth century? That it is ruled by brains, and not by muscle; that rifles are gone by, and ideas have come in; and, of course, in such an era, talk is the fountain-head of all things. But we have done a great deal. In the first place, you will meet dozens of men who say, "Oh, woman's right to property, the right of the wife to her own earnings, we grant that; we always thought that; we have had that idea for a dozen years." I met a man the other day in the cars, and we read the statute of your New York Legislature. "Why," said he, "that is nothing; I have assented to that for these fifteen years." All I could say to that was this: "This agitation has either given you the idea, or it has given you the courage to utter it, for nobody ever heard it from you until to-day.". . . .
What do we toil for? Why, my friends, I do not care much whether a woman actually goes to the ballot-box and votes—that is a slight matter; and I shall not wait, either, to know whether every woman in this audience wants to vote. Some of you were saying to-day, in these very seats, coming here out of mere curiosity, to see what certain fanatics could find to say, "Why, I don't want any more rights; I have got rights enough." Many a lady, whose husband is what he ought to be, whose father is what fathers ought to be, feeling no want unsupplied, is ready to say, "I have all the rights I want." So the daughter of Louis Sixteenth, in the troublous time of 1791, when somebody told her that the people were starving in the streets of Paris, exclaimed, "What fools! I would eat bread first!" Thus wealth, comfort, and ease say, "I have rights enough." Nobody doubted it, madam! But the question is not of you; the question is of some houseless wife of a drunkard; the question is of some ground-down daughter of toil, whose earnings are filched from her by the rum debts of a selfishness which the law makes to have a right over her, in the person of a husband. The question is not of you, it is of some friendless woman of twenty, standing at the door of the world, educated, capable, desirous of serving her time and her race, and saying, "Where shall I use these talents? How shall I earn bread?" And orthodox society, cabined and cribbed in St. Paul, cries out, "Go sew, jade! We have no other channel for you. Go to the needle, or wear yourself to death as a school-mistress." We come here to endeavor to convince you, and so to shape our institutions that public opinion, following in the wake, shall be willing to open channels for the agreeable and profitable occupation of women as much as for men. People blame the shirt-makers and tailors because they pay two cents where they ought to pay fifty. It is not their fault. They are nothing but the weathercocks, and society is the wind. Trade does not grow out of the Sermon on the Mount; merchants never have any hearts, they have only ledgers; two per cent. a month is their Sermon on the Mount, and a balance on the wrong side of the ledger is their demonstration. (Laughter). Nobody finds fault with them for it. Everything according to the law of its life. A man pays as much for making shirts or coats as it is necessary to pay, and he would be a fool and a bankrupt if he paid any more. He needs only a hundred workwomen; there are a thousand women standing at his door saying, "Give us work; and if it is worth ten cents to do it, we will do it for two"; and a hundred get the work, and nine hundred are turned into the street, to drag down this city into the pit that it deserves. (Loud applause).
Now, what is the remedy? To take that tailor by the throat, and gibbet him in The New York Tribune? Not at all; it does the women no good, and he does not deserve it. I will tell you what is to be done. Behind the door at which those women stand asking for work, on one side stands an orthodox disciple of St. Paul, and on the other a dainty exquisite; and the one says, it is not religious, and the other says, it is not fashionable, for woman to be anything but a drudge. Now, strangle the one in his own creed, and smother the other in his own perfumes, and give to those thousand women freedom to toil. Let public opinion only grant that, like their thousand brothers, those thousand women may go out, and wherever they find work to do, do it, without a stigma being set upon them. Let the educated girl of twenty have the same liberty to use the pen, to practice law, to write books, to attend the telegraph, to go into the artist's studio, to serve in a library, to tend in a gallery of art, to do anything that her brother can do. St. Paul is dead and rotten, and ought to be forgotten—(Applause, laughter, and a few hisses)—so far as this doctrine goes, mark you! for his is the noblest figure in all history, except that of Christ, the broadest and most masterly intellect of any age; but he was a Jew and not a Christian; he lived under Jewish civilization and not ours, and was speaking by his own light, and not by inspiration of God.
This is all we claim; and we claim the ballot for this reason; the moment you give woman power, that moment men will see to it that she has the way cleared for her. There are two sources of power: one is civil, the ballot; the other is physical, the rifle. I do not believe that the upper classes—education, wealth, aristocracy, conservatism—the men that are in—ever yielded, except to fear. I think the history of the race shows that the upper classes never granted a privilege to the lower out of love. As Jeremy Bentham says, "The upper classes never yielded a privilege without being bullied out of it." When man rises in revolution, with the sword in his right hand, trembling wealth and conservatism say, "What do you want? Take it; but grant me my life." The Duke of Tuscany, Elizabeth Barrett Browning has told us, swore to a dozen constitutions when the Tuscans stood armed in the streets of Florence, and he forgot them when the Austrians came in and took the rifles out of the Tuscans' hands. You must force the upper classes to do justice by physical or some other power. The age of physical power is gone, and we want to put ballots into the hands of women....
Political economy puts in every man's hand, by the labor of half a day, money enough to be drunk a week. There is one temptation, dragging down the possibility of self-government into the pit of imbruted humanity; and on the other side, is that hideous problem of modern civilized life—prostitution—born of orthodox scruples and aristocratic fastidiousness—born of that fastidious denial of the right of woman to choose her own work, and, like her brother, to satiate her ambition, her love of luxury, her love of material gratifications, by fair wages for fair work. As long as you deny it, as long as the pulpit covers with its fastidious orthodoxy this question from the consideration of the public, it is but a concealed brothel, although it calls itself an orthodox pulpit. (Applause and hisses). I know what I say; your hisses can not change it. Go, clean out the Gehenna of New York! (Applause). Go, sweep the Augean stable that makes New York the lazar-house of corruption! You know that on one side or the other of these temptations lies very much of the evil of modern civilized life. You know that before them, statesmanship folds its hands in despair. Here is a method by which to take care of at least one. Give men fair wages, and ninety-nine out of a hundred will disdain to steal. The way to prevent dishonesty is to let every man have a field for his work, and honest wages; the way to prevent licentiousness is to give to woman's capacity free play. Give to the higher powers activity, and they will choke down the animal. The man who loves thinking, disdains to be the victim of appetite. It is a law of our nature. Give a hundred women honest wages for capacity and toil, and ninety-nine out of the hundred will disdain to win it by vice. That is a cure for licentiousness. (Applause).
I wish to put into our civil life the element of woman's right to shape the laws, for all our social life copies largely from the statute-book. Let woman dictate at the capital, let her say to Wall Street, "My votes on finance are to make stocks rise and fall," and Wall Street will say to Columbia College, "Open your classes to woman; it needs be that she should learn." The moment you give her the ballot, you take bonds of wealth and fashion and conservatism, that they will educate this power, which is holding their interest in its right hand. I want to spike the gun of selfishness; or rather, I want to double-shot the cannon of selfishness. Let Wall Street say, "Look you! whether the New York Central stock shall have a toll placed upon it, whether my million shares shall be worth sixty cents in the market or eighty, depends upon whether certain women up there at Albany know the laws of trade and the secrets of political economy"—and Wall Street will say, "Get out of the way, Dr. Adams!—absent yourself, Dr. Spring!—we don't care for Jewish prejudices; these women must have education!" (Loud applause). Show me the necessity in civil life, and I will find you forty thousand pulpits that will say St. Paul meant just that. (Renewed applause). Now, I am orthodox; I believe in the Bible; I reverence St. Paul; I believe his was the most masterly intellect that God ever gave to the race; I believe he was the connecting link, the bridge, by which the Asiatic and European mind were joined; I believe that Plato ministers at his feet; but, after all, he was a man, and not God. (Applause). He was limited, and made mistakes. You can not anchor this western continent to the Jewish footstool of St. Paul; and, after all, that is the difficulty—religious prejudice. It is not fashion—we shall beat it; it is not the fastidiousness of the exquisite—we shall smother it; it is the religious prejudice, borrowed from a mistaken interpretation of the New Testament. That is the real Gibraltar with which we are to grapple, and my argument with that is simply this: You left it when you founded a republic; you left it when you inaugurated Western civilization; we must grow out of one root.
Let me, in closing, show you, by one single anecdote, how mean a thing a man can be. You have heard of Mrs. Norton, "the woman Byron," as critics call her—the granddaughter of Sheridan, and the one on whose shoulders his mantle has rested—a genius by right of inheritance and by God's own gift. Perhaps you may remember that when the Tories wanted to break down the reform administration of Lord Melbourne, they brought her husband to feign to believe his wife unfaithful, and to sue her before a jury. He did so, brought an action, and an English jury said she was innocent; and his own counsel has since admitted, in writing, under his own signature, that during the time he prosecuted that trial, the Honorable Mr. Norton (for so he is in the Herald's Book) confessed all the time that he did not believe a word against his wife, and knew she was innocent. She is a writer. The profits of her books, by the law of England, belong to her husband. She has not lived with him—of course not, for she is a woman!—since that trial; but the brute goes every six months to John Murray, and eats the profits of the brain of the wife whom he tried to disgrace. (Loud cries of "shame," "shame"). And the law of England says it is right; the orthodox pulpit says, "If you change it, it will be the pulling down of the stars and St. Paul." I do not believe that the Honorable Mr. Norton is half as near to the mind of St. Paul as the Honorable Mrs. Norton. I go, therefore, for woman having her right to her brain, to her hands, to her toil, to her ballot. "The tools to him that can use them"—and let God settle the rest. If He made it just that we should have democratic institutions, then He made it just that everybody who is to suffer under the law should have a voice in making it; and if it is indelicate for woman to vote, then let Him stop making women (applause and laughter), because republicanism and such women are not consistent. I say it reverently; and I only say it to show you the absurdity. Why, my dear man and woman, we are not to help God govern the world by telling lies! He can take care of it Himself. If He made it just, you may be certain that He saw to it that it should be delicate; and you need not insert your little tiny roots of fastidious delicacy into the great giant rifts of God's world—they are only in the way. (Applause).The first evening session was called to order at 7½ o'clock. The President in the chair. The audience was very large, the hall being uncomfortably full, and the attention unremitting and profound. The most excellent order was preserved; the meeting, in this respect, furnishing a marked and gratifying contrast with the evening sessions of the last two years at Mozart Hall.
Mrs. Rose, from the Business Committee, presented a series of resolutions[79], which were read by Miss Anthony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the first speaker of the evening. By particular request she gave the same address recently delivered before the Legislature at Albany, and was followed by Ernestine L. Rose with one of her logical and convincing arguments.
Susan B. Anthony then read the following letters:
LETTER FROM HON. GERRIT SMITH.
My very dear Cousin:—It is proper that one of the first letters which I write in my new life, should be to the cousin whose views are most in harmony with my own. I call it my new life, because I have come up into it from the gates of death. May it prove a new life also, in being a far better and nobler one than that which I had hitherto lived!
I wake up with joy to see my old fellow-laborers still in their work of honoring God, in benefiting and blessing man. Your own zeal for truth is unabated. I see that you are still laboring to free the slave from his chains, and woman from her social, civil, and political disabilities; and to preserve both man and woman from defiling and debasing themselves with intoxicating liquors and tobacco. Precious reforms are these which have enlisted your powers! It is true that they do not cover the whole ground of religious duty. But it is also true that the religion, which, like the current one, opposes or ignores them all, is spurious; and so, too, that the religion which opposes or ignores any one of them is always sadly defective, if not always spurious.
Please add the inclosed draft for $25 to the fund for serving the cause of woman's rights. To no better cause can money, time, or talents be appropriated. I am in high health, compared with any I have enjoyed since the succession of my frightful diseases, begun two and a half years ago. My nerves, however, are still weak, and most of the year 1859 is still full of confusion and darkness to me.
LETTER FROM FRANCIS JACKSON, ESQ.
Hon. Erastus D. Culver, of Brooklyn, New York, being present among that portion of the audience seated upon the platform, was recognized and loudly called for, and came forward in response to the call, and spoke as follows:
That was one case. Another was that of a woman who made a bitter complaint against her husband, saying that he had become a drunkard, and was squandering her estate, and threatened to take their two children away. I signed the writ, and the husband and two children were brought in. He addressed the Court in his own defence, and I have not heard such eloquence in court for many a year. He told how he loved his wife, how devoted he was, and that it would ruin him for ever to be separated from her. He said to his lawyer, "Do you keep still; I can talk better than you can." "Now," said he to the Court, "I adjure you, by the feelings of a father and a man, restore to me my wife and children! Do not disgrace me in this way!" All present were deeply affected, and it seemed as if he had carried the people with him, whether he had the Court or not. His speech sounded admirably; but I am sorry to say, that when his wife's turn came, she had not spoken five minutes before she had taken the wind entirely out of his sails. "I was married," she said, "eleven years ago, and not a fortnight after, he beat me, and left his bruises upon me. He has pawned all my clothes, everything I have in the house has been pledged, and I am left destitute; and here, your honor, are the wounds upon my head, here are the bruises that he has left. I can not live with him any longer; I can not be reconciled, until he abjures rum and comes home resolved to live a sober life." "Well," said the husband's lawyer, "we claim our paramount rights—that the father shall have the custody of the children." Then came up this very law again, and this lawyer was as much surprised as the one to whom I first referred. There is a clause in that law which declares that, from this time forward, there shall be no such thing as "paramount rights." It is declared in that statute that from this day "every married woman is constituted and declared to be the joint guardian of her children, with equal powers, rights, and duties in regard to them, with her husband." In view of that law, I said, "I can not take the children away from the mother; she has just as much right to them as her husband, and if she says she must have them, I will let her have them." (Loud applause).
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I have never been identified with this Woman's Rights movement, but I tell you what it is, we have got to admit some things. We have got to admit that these indefatigable laborers, amid obloquy and reproach, in Church and State, by buffoons and by men, have at last set the under-current in motion. The statute-book is their vindication to-night. The last measure passed has relieved woman, to a great extent, from the disabilities under which she was placed. I am one who believes that she may go forward. There will come a time, friends, when we shall see the ballot-box open, and one particular department (as we have at the post-office) where the ladies will all march up and vote. (Applause, and a few hisses). Now, you men that hiss, you would like to have them help you elect your candidate this year, wouldn't you? I wish most sincerely that they could help elect our Republican candidate. (Applause). There is to be a still further advance in this matter. I do not think it at all degrading to say, that there will come a time when ladies will sit in the jury-box, to pass upon certain cases that come particularly within their sphere; and I will say (now that I am off the bench) that they would make better judges than some who are on the benches now. (Laughter and applause).
Mrs. Rose added: I have been most happy to hear the remarks of Judge Culver. Who can doubt of our success, when judges, and noble ones, too—for it is only noble ones who are ready to identify themselves with this cause before it becomes fully successful—come forward to endorse our movement! All we now have to do is, to continue in the good cause, and, depend upon it, the time will come when we shall look back to this last spring's enactment of the Legislature, as the commencement of the real "good time coming." But we have yet some duties to perform. What we have gained, has not been gained without labor. Freedom, my friends, does not come from the clouds, like a meteor; it does not bloom in one night; it does not come without great efforts and great sacrifices; all who love liberty, have to labor for it. We expect that from this hour, you will all help us to work out that glorious problem, whether or not woman can govern herself quite as well as man can govern her. Give us the elective franchise, and we ask for no more. When we have obtained that, it shall be our fault if we do not take all the rights we now claim. (Applause).
Elizabeth Jones said: The adoption of the plans now proposed would place woman above the necessity of any mercenary marriages. She could leave her father's home if she didn't like it, and engage in business and support herself. Who cared for the husband of Jenny Lind, or of Mrs. Norton? It was not necessary for Florence Nightingale, Harriet Hosmer, or Elizabeth Blackwell to marry to secure the world's consideration. The wife should have equal and joint proprietorship with her husband. Two brothers, John and Henry, go to California and form a partnership; John cooks while Henry digs. Henry finds one day a lump of gold worth a hundred dollars. Will he pay John fifty cents for cooking, and take the rest himself? Of course not; he will divide with him. So the husband should regard the property that he accumulates as owned by his wife jointly and equally with himself. Woman would have her rights, let man do what he might. She asked no rights from man, for man had none to give her—none to spare from himself. Satan promised Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, if He would fall down and worship him; but it was well known that the poor devil had not a foot to give. And so man could give no rights to woman. She was born with rights, and only wanted man to recognize them. Her purpose was to demand them persistently, or, if need be, like the Prince of Orange, die in the last ditch before she surrendered them. (Applause).Rev. Samuel Longfellow, of Brooklyn, N. Y., brother of the poet, was next introduced, and spoke as follows:
I have often thought that the obstacle in the way of a full allowance and recognition of woman's right to stand side by side with man in all the departments of life, and to add her feminine influence and fiber twined in with man's influence and fiber, in all things that are thought and done, that the obstacle lay more in woman than in man. I have often thought that men were more willing to accept these ideas and grant these claims than women were even to make the claims for themselves; and I have no doubt that those women who have labored, through so much difficulty, through so much scorn and obloquy, in behalf of these simple rights, will tell you that they have often found the greatest opposition among their own sex.
The simple proposition which, it seems to me, includes the whole of this matter, is, what I should call a self-evident truth—that, in all departments of life, men and women, made from the first to be co-mates and partners, should stand side by side, and work hand to hand. Not because men and women are identical, not because they are not different, but because they are different; because each has a special quality running through the whole organization of the man and the woman, which quality is needed to make a complete manhood and womanhood. And then there is another proposition, which is this: that whatever any human being can do well, that being has a right to do, and the ability of any person marks the sphere of that person. ("Hear"—"hear"). This, I say, I count to be strictly a self-evident proposition. (Applause). If you want to know what the level of water is at any particular spot upon the face of the earth, you do not force the water up with a force-pump, you do not build a great reservoir with high stone walls, to hold it, you simply leave it alone, and it finds its level. So, if you want to know what is the true sphere of man or woman, just leave the man or the woman alone, and the natural law, and the divine law, which can not be broken, and which are as sure in the moral and human world as they are in the external world, will settle the matter. If you want to know, really and sincerely, what woman's sphere is, leave her unhampered and untrammeled, and her own powers will find that sphere. She may make mistakes, and try, as man often does, to do things which she can not, but the experiment will settle the matter; and nothing can be more absurd than for man, especially, a priori, to establish the limits which shall bound woman's sphere, or for woman, as a mere matter of speculation, to debate what her sphere shall be, since the natural laws are revealed, not to speculation, but to action.
The obstacle to the progress of the simple ideas which underlie this movement and to their being carried out into practice, I take to be nothing else than this—the vis inertiæ of prejudice, the dead-weight of the customary and familiar—that which has been; and that is simply the dead-weight which hangs upon the wheels of every movement of reform. A thing has not not been, it is not customary, it is strange, it disturbs our ordinary modes of thought, and we will have nothing to do with it. When you are driving with your carriage along the track of the horse-railroad, your wheels run very smoothly; but if you are obliged to turn out, it wrenches the wheels and jars your carriage; and the deeper the ruts, the more disturbance and trouble will you have if you are obliged to move out of them. We all move in the ruts of habit and custom; and it disturbs and troubles us to be asked to move out of them—to do or think anything unusual. This vis inertiæ is what stands in the way, first and most of all, of the success of this movement, of the reception of these ideas, as of every other movement of reform. And this dead-weight of prejudice, this vis inertiæ of old and traditional thought, is concentrated in this phrase, uttered with tones of indifference or with tones of self-satisfaction and pride, "I think, for my part, that woman's sphere is home." This phrase you hear everywhere—in the parlors, in the streets, in conventions, and in pulpits, and read in books—"Woman's sphere is home!" (Applause). "Well, is it not?" some one asks among you, perhaps. Now, I have no desire to deny that the home is for woman, as for man, the most noble sphere of life. I am sure that there is not one who will stand upon this platform, or speak or write in this cause, who will deny that; not one but will declare that they count home a sacred and noble sphere for woman, as for man—a sphere for grand and high influence, for noble consecration and devoted work; whether it be the simple duties of housekeeping, which a high and cultivated soul can make beautiful by the spirit in which they are done—or whether it be the care of children and the training up of the youthful mind into noble thought and preparation for noble action, which is a sphere so high, that none of us, perhaps, know how high it is—or whether it be as the friend and comforter, encourager and inspirer, to all things noble in thought and grand in action, of man. But if home be the sphere of woman—as none of us deny or doubt for a moment—if it be a sphere for woman high and noble, and to some altogether sufficient to bound their capacities and bound their desires, it is also a sphere for man—a sphere which he altogether too much neglects, not knowing how high and noble it is, and that his duty lies at home, however much he ignores it, with his wife and with his children. But when it is said that home is woman's only sphere—and that is what is meant—it is simply a mistake; it is simply a narrow statement. Take the very woman who says this. As she passes along the street, she sees a placard for a Woman's Rights meeting, and with scornful lip she says, "I think woman's sphere is home"—and goes promenading up and down the street to meet acquaintances, and spends all the morning in shopping—because woman's sphere is home! (Applause and laughter). And after dinner, she says to her husband, "Where shall we go this evening?" "I think we will go to the opera," he says; and so she leaves the children with the servant, and spends half the night at the opera, because woman's sphere is home! (Laughter). On Sunday she goes to church morning and evening, because woman's sphere is home! and during the week goes to concerts and lectures and balls, perhaps, because woman's sphere is home! This is the answer to be given to all those who claim that woman can do nothing but attend to household affairs, or to those duties which are called especially the duties of home. No woman attends to these utterly. No woman need neglect the duties of home in order to fulfill duties in a wider sphere. It takes as much time to sit and hear a lecture as to stand and deliver it; to sit and hear a concert as to stand before the audience and sing. There is time enough, and if one has a talent for either, that is the sphere for him or her.
But when this claim is made that woman's sphere is at home, it is quite forgotten how many women there are who have not imposed upon them the cares of a home; what numbers there are who are not at the head of families; what numbers there are who have not these domestic ties to call upon them for effort; and it is also forgotten how many there are who can not possibly always remain at home, because upon their going forth depends the getting of the money that shall provide for the wants of the home—that shall bring the clothing and the bread that are to supply the home's outward wants. To do this, these women must go from their homes; and oh! hundreds and thousands of working-women in this city are women whose sphere can not be home alone. It is upon this ground that there is pressed home upon us the consideration of the demands for a wider sphere of work for woman, that she shall not be cut off from this and that means of getting a living, which are freely opened to man, but from which woman is excluded, through prejudices and fears. Let the wide sphere of work be opened to woman, that she may select from it, just as man does, whatever her strength and skill are sufficient for her to accomplish. She is not to be shut up, it is claimed, and justly, to a few poor, small, and wretchedly-paid employments, by which she can, with her own hands and skill, gain a living, but is to be allowed and encouraged to open to herself every variety of employment wherein she shall be paid an equal sum with that which man is paid for doing the same work; a claim which has been too long ignored and set aside, but which will press itself until its manifest justice shall compel its admission. The woman who has not the care of a family is to be encouraged to expand her powers, her talents, and genius, and to apply them to the purpose of securing a livelihood, without any obstacle whatever being put in the way; for when we talk of man's sphere and woman's sphere, it is all a farce. There is no one sphere fitted for all men, any more than for all women. Some men can not make good business men, and must fail if they try; and some men can not possibly write books, or preach, or speak in public, and must fail if they try. They do not try, because they have wisdom enough to know that they could not succeed. So it will be with women. People commonly think, that if you grant this claim of woman's right to make her own sphere, that all women will immediately rush into public speaking, and be crowding to the platform, or into the pulpit, or writing books, or carving statues, or painting pictures. There is not the slightest danger of that. Of course, if either of these is the true sphere of any woman, she ought to go there; but those who have not a talent for these things will not try them.
If the right to vote was granted to woman—from which I do not see how we can escape—I do not suppose that all women would go to the polls, for I know that many men do not, although they have much to say about the great privilege which every man enjoys, of having a voice in the government, and the responsibility of a voter. Things would remain much as now if to-morrow every obstacle were removed from woman's path. Only gradually would the change occur, as individual after individual found larger room for action than that in which she is now pent. As this discussion has been going on, woman after woman has been enlarging the sphere allowed her. Women write admirable books, paint admirable pictures, chisel admirable statues, make most excellent and well-instructed physicians. Women are doing everything which it is now claimed they have the right to do, except voting, which they are not yet permitted to do; and I am not sure, in regard to that, that the best plan would not be, as our Platonic friend in New England once said, for the women to go quietly and vote, without waiting to be asked or told that they would be permitted to do so. To be sure, he said, their votes could not be counted, but there they would be, and they would have their force. He thought that the moral influence of those votes would go a great ways, and it is quite possible that they would have that effect. But I hope, whether in that way or some other—perhaps before that step is taken—men will be led to see, that in the sphere of politics, as well as in the sphere of literature and art, woman's influence is needed; and all the objections that are made to woman's voting are of the most trivial character, that would not stand a day before any serious desire that she should have her simple right in this matter, so far as she chooses to claim it. And her right lies simply in these old propositions, so dear to our fathers—upon which they stood and fought an eight years' war—"Taxation without representation is tyranny," and that "all just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed." And there is nothing in these two propositions which confines their application to man; there is nothing in them which does not demand that woman should be included as well as man. Wherever woman is taxed, she has a right to vote, by this fundamental principle of our government; and wherever she is legislated for and governed, she is entitled to a voice in that legislation and government.
This is a very simple matter. To-day, it is only a question of time, when, from a matter of speculation, it will become a matter of fact, the details of which can be managed as well as anything in the world. Women will not be obliged to enter into a scramble with dirty and fighting men at the polls—though it is possible, if she went where such men are, they would be put on their good manners, and be as well-behaved as anybody; but she could have a separate place to vote, and go to the polls as quietly, and with as little loss of time, as she now goes to the post-office, or walks the streets, where rough, rude men congregate, but where she has enough room to go and purchase her silks and satins and laces in Broadway. (Applause). I congratulate those who, taking an interest in this cause, espoused it when it was a great cross to bear—who took it up with the simple courage of woman, the patient perseverance of woman, and have carried it through as far as it has gone now—upon the advances which it has made, upon the opening and enlightenment of the public mind, and upon its favorable reception, spite of all the obstacles that still remain. I bid them be of good cheer, and remember that the great law of progress is a law of steps; so that we must needs all be patient, while we must also all needs be persevering. It is but a question of time and of steps. The great psalm of human progress is (to borrow a phrase from the Hebrew Bible) a psalm of degrees. By patient steps man rises out of falsehood into truth, out of wrongs into rights. So it is with woman, as a part of humanity. Let every woman be true to this as her mission; let no woman dare to place any obstacle or coldness in the way of this movement; but let all calmly consider it, hear the arguments that are made, and allow them to have their full weight; look at the simple facts, and decide. Then we may, perhaps, all of us live to see the day when, throughout all the spheres of his life, and all the departments of his action, side by side with man and the manly quality, there shall be woman and the womanly quality, and a new Eden begin on earth. (Applause).The President said:—Before introducing the next speaker, I want to express the gratitude which we women feel to Mr. Longfellow and the other gentlemen who have identified themselves with an unpopular and ridiculed cause. Permit me to say one word in relation to this matter of woman's sphere. There is a lady in my neighborhood, who was speaking to me not long since, in the most enthusiastic terms, of this recent law that has passed through our Legislature, and of gratitude toward Susan B. Anthony, through whose untiring exertions and executive ability, aided by two or three other women, this law has been secured. After she had expatiated for a while on this subject, her husband said, "Miss Anthony had a great deal better have been at home, taking care of her husband and children." Thank Heaven! there is one woman who has leisure to care for others as well as herself. (Applause).
Elizabeth Cady Stanton then presented a series of resolutions,[80]in support of which she addressed the Convention as follows:
The science of theology, of civil, political, moral, and social life, all teach the common idea, that man ever has been, and ever must be, sacrificed to the highest good of society; the one to the many—the poor to the rich—the weak to the powerful—and all to the institutions of his own creation. Look, what thunderbolts of power man has forged in the ages for his own destruction!—at the organizations to enslave himself! And through those times of darkness, those generations of superstition, behold all along the relics of his power and skill, that stand like mile-stones, here and there, to show how far back man was great and glorious! Who can stand in those vast cathedrals of the old world, as the deep-toned organ reverberates from arch to arch, and not feel the grandeur of humanity? These are the workmanship of him, beneath whose stately dome the architect himself now bows in fear and doubt, knows not himself, and knows not God—a mere slave to symbols—and with holy water signs the Cross, whilst He who died thereon declared man God.
I repudiate the popular idea of man's degradation and total depravity. I place man above all governments, all institutions—ecclesiastical and civil—all constitutions and laws. (Applause). It is a mistaken idea, that the same law that oppresses the individual can promote the highest good of society. The best interests of a community never can require the sacrifice of one innocent being—of one sacred right. In the settlement, then, of any question, we must simply consider the highest good of the individual. It is the inalienable right of all to be happy. It is the highest duty of all to seek those conditions in life, those surroundings, which may develop what is noblest and best, remembering that the lessons of these passing hours are not for time alone, but for the ages of eternity. They tell us, in that future home—the heavenly paradise—that the human family shall be sifted out, and the good and pure shall dwell together[Pg 718] in peace. If that be the heavenly order, is it not our duty to render earth as near like heaven as we may? in peace. If that be the heavenly order, is it not our duty to render earth as near like heaven as we may?
For years, there has been before the Legislature of this State a variety of bills, asking for divorce in cases of drunkenness, insanity, desertion, cruel and brutal treatment, endangering life. My attention was called to this question very early in life, by the sufferings of a friend of my girlhood, a victim of one of those unfortunate unions, called marriage. What my great love for that young girl, and my holy intuitions, then decided to be right, has not been changed by years of experience, observation, and reason. I have pondered well these things in my heart, and ever felt the deepest interest in all that has been written and said upon the subject, and the most profound respect and loving sympathy for those heroic women, who, in the face of law and public sentiment, have dared to sunder the unholy ties of a joyless, loveless union.
If marriage is a human institution, about which man may legislate, it seems but just that he should treat this branch of his legislation with the same common-sense that he applies to all others. If it is a mere legal contract, then should it be subject to the restraints and privileges of all other contracts. A contract, to be valid in law, must be formed between parties of mature age, with an honest intention in said parties to do what they agree. The least concealment, fraud, or deception, if proved, annuls the contract. A boy can not contract for an acre of land, or a horse, until he is twenty-one, but he may contract for a wife at fourteen. If a man sell a horse, and the purchaser find in him great incompatibility of temper—a disposition to stand still when the owner is in haste to go—the sale is null and void, and the man and his horse part company. But in marriage, no matter how much fraud and deception are practiced, nor how cruelly one or both parties have been misled; no matter how young, inexperienced, or thoughtless the parties, nor how unequal their condition and position in life, the contract can not be annulled. Think of a husband telling a young and trusting girl, but one short month his wife, that he married her for her money; that those letters so precious to her, that she had read and re-read, and kissed and cherished, were written by another; that their splendid home, of which, on their wedding-day, her father gave him the deed, is already in the hands of his creditors; that she must give up the elegance and luxury that now surround her, unless she can draw fresh supplies of money to meet their wants! When she told the story of her wrongs to me—the abuse to which she was subject, and the dread in which she lived—I impulsively urged her to fly from such a monster and villain, as she would before the hot breath of a ferocious beast of the wilderness. (Applause). And she did fly; and it was well with her. Many times since, as I have felt her throbbing heart against my own, she has said, "Oh, but for your love and sympathy, your encouragement, I should never have escaped from that bondage. Before I could, of myself, have found courage to break those chains my heart would have broken in the effort."
Marriage, as it now exists, must seem to all of you a mere human institution. Look through the universe of matter and mind—all God's arrangements are perfect, harmonious, and complete! There is no discord, friction, or failure in His eternal plans. Immutability, perfection, beauty, are stamped on all His laws. Love is the vital essence that pervades and permeates, from the center to the circumference, the graduating circles of all thought and action. Love is the talisman of human weal and woe—the open sesame to every human soul. Where two beings are drawn together, by the natural laws of likeness and affinity, union and happiness are the result. Such marriages might be Divine. But how is it now? You all know our marriage is, in many cases, a mere outward tie, impelled by custom, policy, interest, necessity; founded not even in friendship, to say nothing of love; with every possible inequality of condition and development. In these heterogeneous unions, we find youth and old age, beauty and deformity, refinement and vulgarity, virtue and vice, the educated and the ignorant, angels of grace and goodness, with devils of malice and malignity: and the sum of all this is human wretchedness and despair; cold fathers, sad mothers, and hapless children, who shiver at the hearthstone, where the fires of love have all gone out. The wide world, and the stranger's unsympathizing gaze, are not more to be dreaded for young hearts than homes like these. Now, who shall say that it is right to take two beings, so unlike, and anchor them right side by side, fast bound—to stay all time, until God shall summon one away?
Do wise, Christian legislators need any arguments to convince them that the sacredness of the family relation should be protected at all hazards? The family, that great conservator of national virtue and strength, how can you hope to build it up in the midst of violence, debauchery, and excess? Can there be anything sacred at that family altar, where the chief-priest who ministers makes sacrifice of human beings, of the weak and the innocent? where the incense offered up is not to the God of justice and mercy, but to those heathen divinities, who best may represent the lost man in all his grossness and deformity? Call that sacred, where woman, the mother of the race—of a Jesus of Nazareth—unconscious of the true dignity of her nature, of her high and holy destiny, consents to live in legalized prostitution!—her whole soul revolting at such gross association!—her flesh shivering at the cold contamination of that embrace, held there by no tie but the iron chain of the law, and a false and most unnatural public sentiment? Call that sacred, where innocent children, trembling with fear, fly to the corners and dark places of the house, to hide themselves from the wrath of drunken, brutal fathers, but, forgetting their past sufferings, rush out again at their mother's frantic screams, "Help, oh help"? Behold the agonies of those young hearts, as they see the only being on earth they love, dragged about the room by the hair of the head, kicked and pounded, and left half dead and bleeding on the floor! Call that sacred, where fathers like these have the power and legal right to hand down their natures to other beings, to curse other generations with such moral deformity and death?
Men and brethren, look into your asylums for the blind, the deaf and dumb, the idiot, the imbecile, the deformed, the insane; go out into the by-lanes and dens of this vast metropolis, and contemplate that reeking mass of depravity; pause before the terrible revelations made by statistics, of the rapid increase of all this moral and physical impotency, and learn how fearful a thing it is to violate the immutable laws of the beneficent Ruler of the universe; and there behold the terrible retributions of your violence on woman! Learn how false and cruel are those institutions, which, with a coarse materialism, set aside those holy instincts of the woman to bear no children but those of love! In the best condition of marriage, as we now have it, to woman comes all the penalties and sacrifices. A man, in the full tide of business or pleasure, can marry and not change his life one iota; he can be husband, father, and everything beside; but in marriage, woman gives up all. Home is her sphere, her realm. Well, be it so. If here you will make us all-supreme, take to yourselves the universe beside; explore the North Pole; and, in your airy car, all space; in your Northern homes and cloud-capt towers, go feast on walrus flesh and air, and lay you down to sleep your six months' night away, and leave us to make these laws that govern the inner sanctuary of our own homes, and faithful satellites we will ever be to the dinner-pot, the cradle, and the old arm-chair. (Applause).
Fathers, do you say, let your daughters pay a life-long penalty for one unfortunate step? How could they, on the threshold of life, full of joy and hope, believing all things to be as they seemed on the surface, judge of the dark windings of the human soul? How could they foresee that the young man, to-day so noble, so generous, would in a few short years be transformed into a cowardly, mean tyrant, or a foul-mouthed, bloated drunkard? What father could rest at his home by night, knowing that his lovely daughter was at the mercy of a strong man drunk with wine and passion, and that, do what he might, he was backed up by law and public sentiment? The best interests of the individual, the family, the State, the nation, cry out against these legalized marriages of force and endurance. There can be no heaven without love, and nothing is sacred in the family and home, but just so far as it is built up and anchored in love. Our newspapers teem with startling accounts of husbands and wives having shot or poisoned each other, or committed suicide, choosing death rather than the indissoluble tie; and, still worse, the living death of faithless wives and daughters, from the first families in this State, dragged from the privacy of home into the public prints and courts, with all the painful details of sad, false lives. What say you to facts like these? Now, do you believe, men and women, that all these wretched matches are made in heaven? that all these sad, miserable people are bound together by God? I know Horace Greeley has been most eloquent, for weeks past, on the holy sacrament of ill-assorted marriages; but let us hope that all wisdom does not live, and will not die with Horace Greeley. I think, if he had been married to The New York Herald, instead of the Republican party, he would have found out some Scriptural arguments against life-long unions, where great incompatibility of temper existed between the parties. (Laughter and applause).
Our law-makers have dug a pit, and the innocent have fallen into it; and now will you coolly cover them over with statute laws, Tribunes, and Weeds,[81] and tell them to stay there and pay the life-long penalty of having fallen in? Nero was thought the chief of tyrants, because he made laws and hung them up so high that his subjects could not read them, and then punished them for every act of disobedience. What better are
But, say you, does not separation cover all these difficulties? No one objects to separation when the parties are so disposed. But, to separation there are two very serious objections. First, so long as you insist on marriage as a divine institution, as an indissoluble tie, so long as you maintain your present laws against divorce, you make separation, even, so odious, that the most noble, virtuous, and sensitive men and women choose a life of concealed misery, rather than a partial, disgraceful release. Secondly, those who, in their impetuosity and despair, do, in spite of public sentiment, separate, find themselves in their new position beset with many temptations to lead a false, unreal life. This isolation bears especially hard on woman. Marriage is not all of life to man. His resources for amusement and occupation are boundless. He has the whole world for his home. His business, his politics, his club, his friendships with either sex, can help to fill up the void made by an unfortunate union or separation. But to woman, marriage is all and everything; her sole object in life that for which she is educated the subject of all her sleeping and her waking dreams. Now, if a noble, generous girl of eighteen marries, and is unfortunate, because the cruelty of her husband compels separation, in her dreary isolation, would you drive her to a nunnery; and shall she be a nun indeed? Her solitude is nothing less, as, in the present undeveloped condition of woman, it is only through our fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, that we feel the pulsations of the great outer world.
One unhappy, discordant man or woman in a neighborhood, may mar the happiness of all the rest. You can not shut up discord, any more than you can small-pox. There can be no morality where there is a settled discontent. A very wise father once remarked, that in the government of his children, he forbade as few things as possible; a wise legislation would do the same. It is folly to make laws on subjects beyond human prerogative, knowing that in the very nature of things they must be set aside. To make laws that man can not and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt. It is very important in a republic, that the people should respect the laws, for if we throw them to the winds, what becomes of civil government? What do our present divorce laws amount to? Those who wish to evade them have only to go into another State to accomplish what they desire. If any of our citizens can not secure their inalienable rights in New York State, they may in Connecticut and Indiana. Why is it that all agreements, covenants, partnerships, are left wholly at the discretion of the parties, except the contract, which of all others is considered most holy and important, both for the individual and the race? This question of divorce, they tell us, is hedged about with difficulties; that it can not be approached with the ordinary rules of logic and common-sense. It is too holy, too sacred to be discussed, and few seem disposed to touch it. From man's standpoint, this may be all true, as to him they say belong reason, and the power of ratiocination. Fortunately, I belong to that class endowed with mere intuitions, a kind of moral instinct, by which we feel out right and wrong. In presenting to you, therefore, my views of divorce, you will of course give them the weight only of the woman's intuitions. But inasmuch as that is all God saw fit to give us, it is evident we need nothing more. Hence, what we do perceive of truth must be as reliable as what man grinds out by the longer process of reason, authority, and speculation.
Horace Greeley, in his recent discussion with Robert Dale Owen, said, this whole question has been tried, in all its varieties and conditions, from indissoluble monogamic marriage down to free love; that the ground has been all gone over and explored. Let me assure him that but just one-half of the ground has been surveyed, and that half but by one of the parties, and that party certainly not the most interested in the matter. Moreover, there is one kind of marriage that has not been tried, and that is, a contract made by equal parties to live an equal life, with equal restraints and privileges on either side. Thus far, we have had the man marriage, and nothing more. From the beginning, man has had the sole and whole regulation of the matter. He has spoken in Scripture, he has spoken in law. As an individual, he has decided the time and cause for putting away a wife, and as a judge and legislator, he still holds the entire control. In all history, sacred and profane, the woman is regarded and spoken of simply as the toy of man—made for his special use—to meet his most gross and sensuous desires. She is taken or put away, given or received, bought or sold, just as the interest of the parties might dictate. But the woman has been no more recognized in all these transactions, through all the different periods and conditions of the race, than if she had had no part nor lot in the whole matter. The right of woman to put away a husband, be he ever so impure, is never hinted at in sacred history. Even Jesus himself failed to recognize the sacred rights of the holy mother of the race. We can not take our gauge of womanhood from the past, but from the solemn convictions of our own souls, in the higher development of the race. No parchments, however venerable with the mould of ages, no human institutions, can bound the immortal wants of the royal sons and daughters of the great I Am,—rightful heirs of the joys of time, and joint heirs of the glories of eternity.
If in marriage either party claims the right to stand supreme, to woman, the mother of the race, belongs the scepter and the crown. Her life is one long sacrifice for man. You tell us that among all womankind there is no Moses, Christ, or Paul,—no Michael Angelo, Beethoven, or Shakspeare,—no Columbus, or Galileo,—no Locke or Bacon. Behold those mighty minds attuned to music and the arts, so great, so grand, so comprehensive,—these are our great works of which we boast! Into you, O sons of earth, go all of us that is immortal. In you center our very life-thoughts, our hopes, our intensest love. For you we gladly pour out our heart's blood and die, knowing that from our suffering comes forth a new and more glorious resurrection of thought and life. (Loud applause).Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell followed, and prefaced her remarks by saying: "Ours has always been a free platform. We have believed in the fullest freedom of thought and in the free expression of individual opinion. I propose to speak upon the subject discussed by our friend, Mrs. Stanton. It is often said that there are two sides to every question; but there are three sides, many sides, to every question. Let Mrs. Stanton take hers; let Horace Greeley take his; I only ask the privilege of stating mine. (Applause). I have embodied my thought, hastily, in a series of resolutions,[82] and my remarks following them will be very brief."
Mrs. Blackwell continued:
But I assert that every woman, in the present state of society, is bound to maintain her own independence and her own integrity of character; to assert herself, earnestly and firmly, as the equal of man, who is only her peer. This is her first right, her first duty; and if she lives in a country where the law supposes that she is to be subjected to her husband, and she consents to this subjection, I do insist that she consents to degradation; that this is sin, and it is impossible to make it other than sin. True, in this State, and in nearly all the States, the idea of marriage is that of subjection, in all respects, of the wife to the husband—personal subjection, subjection in the rights over their children and over their property; but this is a false relation. Marriage is a union of equals—equal interests being involved, equal duties at stake; and if any woman has been married to a man who chooses to take advantage of the laws as they now stand, who chooses to subject her, ignobly, to his will, against her own, to take from her the earnings which belong to the family, and to take from her the children which belong to the family, I hold that that woman, if she can not, by her influence, change this state of things, is solemnly obligated to go to some State where she can be legally divorced; and then she would be as solemnly bound to return again, and, standing for herself and her children, regard herself, in the sight of God, as being bound still to the father of those children, to work for his best interests, while she still maintains her own
sovereignty Of course, she must be governed by the circumstances of the case. She may be obliged, for the protection of the family, to live on one continent while her husband is on the other: but she is never to forget that in the sight of God and her own soul, she is his wife, and that she owes to him the wife's loyalty; that to work for his redemption is her highest social obligation, and that to teach her children to do the same is her first motherly duty. Legal divorce may be necessary for personal and family protection; if so, let every woman obtain it. This, God helping me, is what I would certainly do, for under no circumstances will I ever give my consent to be subjected to the will of another, in any relation, for God has bidden me not to do it. But the idea of most women is, that they must be timid, weak, helpless, and full of ignoble submission. Only last week, a lady who has just been divorced from her husband said to me—"I used to be required to go into the field and do the hardest laborer's work, when I was not able to do it; and my husband would declare, that if I would not thus labor, I should not be allowed to eat, and I was obliged to submit." I say the fault was as much with the woman as with the man; she should never have submitted.
Our trouble is not with marriage as a relation between two; it is all individual. We have few men or women fit to be married. They neither fully respect themselves and their own rights and duties, nor yet those of another. They have no idea how noble, how godlike is the relation which ought to exist between the husband and wife.
Tell me, is marriage to be merely a contract—something entered into for a time, and then broken again—or is the true marriage permanent? One resolution read by Mrs. Stanton said that, as men are incompetent to select partners in business, teachers for their children, ministers of their religion, or makers, adjudicators, or administrators of their laws, and as the same weakness and blindness must attend in the selection of matrimonial partners, the latter and most important contract should no more be perpetual than either or all of the former. I do not believe that, rightly understood, she quite holds to that position herself. Marriage must be either permanent, or capable of being any time dissolved. Which ground shall we take? I insist that, from the nature of things, marriage must be as permanent and indissoluble as the relation of parent and child. If so, let us legislate toward the right. Though evils must sometimes result, we are still to seek the highest law of the relation.
Self-devotion is always sublimely beautiful, but the law has no right to require either a woman to be sacrificed to any man, or a man to be sacrificed to any woman, or either to the good of society; but if either chooses to devote himself to the good of the other, no matter how low that other may have fallen, no matter how degraded he may be, let the willing partner strive to lift him up, not by going down and sitting side by side with him—that is wrong—but by steadily trying to win him back to the right: keeping his own sovereignty, but trying to redeem the fallen one as long as life shall endure. I do not wish to go to the other state of being, and state what shall be our duty there, but I do say, that where there is sin and suffering in this universe of ours, we may none of us sit still until we have overcome that sin and suffering. Then if my husband was wretched and degraded in this life, I believe God would give me strength to work for him while life lasted. I would do that for the lowest drunkard in the street, and certainly I would do as much for my husband. I believe that the greatest boon of existence is the privilege of working for those who are oppressed and fallen; and those who have oppressed their own natures are those who need the most help. My great hope is, that I may be able to lift them upwards. The great responsibility that has been laid upon me is the responsibility never to sit down and sing to myself psalms of happiness and content while anybody suffers. (Applause). Then, if I find a wretched man in the gutter, and feel that, as a human sister, I must go and lift him up, and that I can never enjoy peace or rest until I have thus redeemed him and brought him out of his sins, shall I, if the man whom I solemnly swore to love, to associate with in all the interests of home and its holiest relations—shall I, if he falls into sin, turn him off, and go on enjoying life, while he is sunk in wretchedness and sin? I will not do it. To me there is a higher idea of life. If, as an intelligent human being, I promised to co-work with him in all the higher interests of life, and if he proves false, I will not turn from him, but I must seek first to regenerate him, the nearest and dearest to me, as I would work, secondly, to save my children, who are next, and then my brothers, my sisters, and the whole human family. (Applause).
Mrs. Stanton asks, "Would you send a young girl into a nunnery, when she has made a mistake?" Does Mrs. Stanton not know that nunneries belong to a past age, that people who had nothing to do might go there and try to expiate their own sins? I would teach the young girl a higher way. I do not say to her, "If you have foolishly united yourself to another" (not "if you have been tied by the law"; for, remember, it was not the law that tied her; she said, "I will do it," and the law said, "So let it be!")—"sunder the bond"; but I say to her, that her duty is to reflect, "Now that I see my mistake, I will commence being true to myself; I will become a true unit, strong and noble in myself; and if I can never make our union a true one, I will work toward that good result, I will live for this great work—for truth and all its interests." Let me tell you, if she is not great enough to do this, she is not great enough to enter into any union!
Look at those who believe in thus easily dissolving the marriage obligation! In very many cases they can not be truly married, or truly happy in this relation, because there is something incompatible with it in their own natures. It is not always so; but when one feels that it is a relation easily to be dissolved, of course, incompatibility at once seems to arise in the other, and every difficulty that occurs, instead of being overlooked, as it ought to be, in a spirit of forgiveness, is magnified, and the evil naturally increased. We purchase a house, the deed is put into our hands, and we take possession. We feel at once that it is really very convenient. It suits us, and we are surprised that we like it so much better than we supposed. The secret is, that it is our house, and until we are ready to part with it, we make ourselves content with it as it is. We go to live in some country town. At first we do not like it; it is not like the home we came from; but soon we begin to be reconciled, and feel that, as Dr. Holmes said of Boston, our town is the hub of the universe. So, when we are content to allow our relations to remain as they are, we adapt ourselves to them, and they adapt themselves to us, and we constantly, unconsciously (because God made us so) work toward the perfecting of all the interests arising from those relations. But the moment we wish to sell a house, or remove from a town, how many defects we discover! The place has not the same appearance to us at all; we wish we could get out of it; we feel all the time more and more dissatisfied. So, let any married person take the idea that he may dissolve this relation, and enter into a new one, and how many faults he may discover that otherwise never would have been noticed! The marriage will become intolerable. The theory will work that result; it is in the nature of things, and that to me is everything.
Of course, I would not have man or woman sacrificed—by no means. First of all, let every human being maintain his own position as a self-protecting human being. At all hazards, let him never sin, or consent to be sacrificed to the hurt of himself or of another; and when he has taken this stand, let him act in harmony with it. Would I say to any woman, "You are bound, because you are legally married to one who is debased to the level of the brute, to be the mother of his children?" I say to her, "No! while the law of God continues, you are bound never to make one whom you do not honor and respect, as well as love, the father of any child of yours. It is your first and highest duty to be true to yourself, true to posterity, and true to society." (Applause). Thus, let each decide for himself and for herself what is right. But, I repeat, either marriage is in its very nature a relation which, once formed, never can be dissolved, and either the essential obligations growing out of it exist forever, or the relation may at any time be dissolved, and at any time those obligations be annulled. And what are those obligations? Two persons, if I understand marriage, covenant to work together, to uphold each other in all excellence, and to mutually blend their lives and interests into a common harmony. I believe that God has so made man and woman, that it is not good for them to be alone, that they each need a co-worker. There is no work on God's footstool which man can do alone and do well, and there is no work which woman can do alone and do well. (Applause). We need that the two should stand side by side everywhere. All over the world, we need this co-operation of the two classes—not because they are alike, but because they are unlike—in trying to make the whole world better. Then we need something more than these class workers. Two persons need to stand side by side, to stay up each other's hands, to take an interest in each other's welfare, to build up a family, to cluster about it all the beauties and excellencies of home life; in short, to be to each other what only one man and one woman can be to each other in all God's earth.
No grown-up human being ought to rush blindly into this most intimate, most important, most enduring of human relations; and will you let a young man, at the age of fourteen, contract marriage, or a young maiden either? If the law undertakes to regulate the matter at all, let it regulate it upon principles of common-sense. But this is a matter which must be very much regulated by public opinion, by our teachers. What do you, the guides of our youth, say? You say to the young girl, "You ought to expect to be married before you are twenty, or about that time; you should intend to be; and from the time you are fifteen, it should be made your one life purpose; and in all human probability, you may expect to spend the next ten or twenty years in the nursery, and at forty or fifty, you will be an old woman, your life will be well-nigh worn out." I stand here to say that this is all false. Let the young girl be instructed that, above her personal interests, her home, and social life, she is to have a great life purpose, as broad as the rights and interests of humanity. I say, let every young girl feel this, as much as every young man does. We have no right, we, who expect to live forever, to play about here as if we were mere flies, enjoying ourselves in the sunshine. We ought to have an earnest purpose outside of home, outside of our family relations. Then let the young girl fit herself for this. Let her be taught that she ought not to be married in her teens. Let her wait, as a young man does, if he is sensible, until she is twenty-five or thirty. (Applause). She will then know how to choose properly, and probably she will not be deceived in her estimate of character; she will have had a certain life-discipline, which will enable her to control her household matters with wise judgment, so that, while she is looking after her family, she may still keep her great life purpose, for which she was educated, and to which she has given her best energies, steadily in view. She need not absorb herself in her home, and God never intended that she should; and then, if she has lived according to the laws of physiology, and according to the laws of common-sense, she ought to be, at the age of fifty years, just where man is, just where our great men are, in the very prime of life! When her young children have gone out of her home, then let her enter in earnest upon the great work of life outside of home and its relations. (Applause).
It is a shame for our women to have no steady purpose or pursuit, and to make the mere fact of womanhood a valid plea for indolence; it is a greater shame that they should be instructed thus to throw all the responsibility of working for the general good upon the other sex. God has not intended it. But as long as you make women helpless, inefficient beings, who never expect to earn a farthing in their lives, who never expect to do anything outside of the family, but to be cared for and protected by others throughout life, you can not have true marriages; and if you try to break up the old ones, you will do it against the woman and in favor of the man. Last week I went back to a town where I used to live, and was told that a woman, whose husband was notoriously the most miserable man in the town, had in despair taken her own life. I asked what had become of the husband, and the answer was, "Married again." And yet everybody there knows that he is the vilest and most contemptible man in the whole neighborhood. Any man, no matter how wretched he maybe, will find plenty of women to accept him, while they are rendered so helpless and weak by their whole education that they must be supported or starve. The advantage, if this theory of marriage is adopted, will not be on the side of woman, but altogether on the side of man. The cure for the evils that now exist is not in dissolving marriage, but it is in giving to the married woman her own natural independence and self-sovereignty, by which she can maintain herself.
Yes, our women and our men are both degenerate; they are weak and ignoble. "Dear me!" said a pretty, indolent young lady, "I had a great deal rather my husband would take care of me, than to be obliged to do it for myself." "Of course you would," said a blunt old lady who was present; "and your brother would a great deal rather marry an heiress, and lie upon a sofa eating lollypops, bought with her money, than to do anything manly or noble. The only difference is, that as heiresses are not very plenty, he may probably have to marry a poor girl, and then society will insist that he shall exert himself to earn a living for the family; but you, poor thing, will only have to open your mouth, all your life long, like a clam, and eat." (Applause and laughter). So long as society is constituted in such a way that woman is expected to do nothing if she have a father, brother, or husband able to support her, there is no salvation for her, in or out of marriage. When you tie up your arm, it will become weak and feeble; and when you tie up woman, she will become weak and helpless. Give her, then, some earnest purpose in life, hold up to her the true ideal of marriage, and it is enough—I am content! (Loud applause).
Ernestine L. Rose said:—Mrs. President—The question of a Divorce law seems to me one of the greatest importance to all parties, but I presume that the very advocacy of divorce will be called "Free Love." For my part (and I wish distinctly to define my position), I do not know what others understand by that term; to me, in its truest significance, love must be free, or it ceases to be love. In its low and degrading sense, it is not love at all, and I have as little to do with its name as its reality.
The Rev. Mrs. Blackwell gave us quite a sermon on what woman ought to be, what she ought to do, and what marriage ought to be; an excellent sermon in its proper place, but not when the important question of a Divorce law is under consideration. She treats woman as some ethereal being. It is very well to be ethereal to some extent, but I tell you, my friends, it is quite requisite to be a little material, also. At all events, we are so, and, being so, it proves a law of our nature. (Applause).
It were indeed well if woman could be what she ought to be, man what he ought to be, and marriage what it ought to be; and it is to be hoped that through the Woman's Rights movement—the equalizing of the laws, making them more just, and making woman more independent—we will hasten the coming of the millennium, when marriage shall indeed be a bond of union and affection. But, alas! it is not yet; and I fear that sermons, however well meant, will not produce that desirable end; and as long as the evil is here, we must look it in the face without shrinking, grapple with it manfully, and the more complicated it is, the more courageously must it be analyzed, combated, and destroyed. (Applause).
Mrs. Blackwell told us that, marriage being based on the perfect equality of husband and wife, it can not be destroyed. But is it so? Where? Where and when have the sexes yet been equal in physical or mental education, in position, or in law? When and where have they yet been recognized by society, or by themselves, as equals? "Equal in rights," says Mrs. B. But are they equal in rights? If they were, we would need no conventions to claim our rights. "She can assert her equality." Yes, she can assert it, but does that assertion constitute a true marriage? And when the husband holds the iron heel of legal oppression on the subjugated neck of the wife until every spark of womanhood is crushed out, will it heal the wounded heart, the lacerated spirit, the destroyed hope, to assert her equality? And shall she still continue the wife? Is that a marriage which must not be dissolved? (Applause). According to Mr. Greeley's definition, viz., that there is no marriage unless the ceremony is performed by a minister and in a church, the tens of thousands married according to the laws of this and most of the other States, by a lawyer or justice of the peace, a mayor or an alderman, are not married at all. According to the definition of our reverend sister, no one has ever yet been married, as woman has never yet been perfectly equal with man. I say to both, take your position, and abide by the consequences. If the few only, or no one, is really married, why do you object to a law that shall acknowledge the fact? You certainly ought not to force people to live together who are not married. (Applause).
Mr. Greeley tells us, that, marriage being a Divine institution, nothing but death should ever separate the parties; but when he was asked, "Would you have a being who, innocent and inexperienced, in the youth and ardor of affection, in the fond hope that the sentiment was reciprocated, united herself to one she loved and cherished, and then found (no matter from what cause) that his profession was false, his heart hollow, his acts cruel, that she was degraded by his vice, despised for his crimes, cursed by his very presence, and treated with every conceivable ignominy—would you have her drag out a miserable existence as his wife?" "No, no," says he; "in that case, they ought to separate." Separate? But what becomes of the union divinely instituted, which death only should part? (Applause).
The papers have of late been filled with the heart-sickening accounts of wife-poisoning. Whence come these terrible crimes? From the want of a Divorce law. Could the Hardings be legally separated, they would not be driven to the commission of murder to be free from each other; and which is preferable, a Divorce law, to dissolve an unholy union, which all parties agree is no true marriage, or a murder of one, and an execution (legal murder) of the other party? But had the unfortunate woman, just before the poisoned cup was presented to her lips, pleaded for a divorce, Mrs. Blackwell would have read her a sermon equal to St. Paul's "Wives, be obedient to your husbands," only she would have added, "You must assert your equality," but "you must keep with your husband and work for his redemption, as I would do for my husband"; and Mr. Greeley would say, "As you chose to marry him, it is your own fault; you must abide the consequences, for it is a 'divine institution, a union for life, which nothing but death can end.'" (Applause). The Tribune had recently a long sermon, almost equal to the one we had this morning from our reverend sister, on "Fast Women." The evils it spoke of were terrible indeed, but, like all other sermons, it was one-sided. Not one single word was said about fast men, except that the "poor victim had to spend so much money." The writer forgot that it is the demand which calls the supply into existence. But what was the primary cause of that tragic end? Echo answers, "what?" Ask the lifeless form of the murdered woman, and she may disclose the terrible secret, and show you that, could she have been legally divorced, she might not have been driven to the watery grave of a "fast woman." (Applause).
But what is marriage? A human institution, called out by the needs of social, affectional human nature, for human purposes, its objects are, first, the happiness of the parties immediately concerned, and, secondly, the welfare of society. Define it as you please, these are only its objects; and therefore if, from well-ascertained facts, it is demonstrated that the real objects are frustrated, that instead of union and happiness, there are only discord and misery to themselves, and vice and crime to society, I ask, in the name of individual happiness and social morality and well-being, why such a marriage should be binding for life?—why one human being should be chained for life to the dead body of another? "But they may separate and still remain married." What a perversion of the very term! Is that the union which "death only should part"? It may be according to the definition of the Rev. Mrs. Blackwell's theology and Mr. Greeley's dictionary, but it certainly is not according to common-sense or the dictates of morality. No, no! "It is not well for man to be alone," before nor after marriage. (Applause).
I therefore ask for a Divorce law. Divorce is now granted for some crimes; I ask it for others also. It is granted for a State's prison offense. I ask that personal cruelty to a wife, whom he swore to "love, cherish, and protect," may be made a heinous crime—a perjury and a State's prison offense, for which divorce shall be granted. Willful desertion for one year should be a sufficient cause for divorce, for the willful deserter forfeits the sacred title of husband or wife. Habitual intemperance, or any other vice which makes the husband or wife intolerable and abhorrent to the other, ought to be sufficient cause for divorce. I ask for a law of Divorce, so as to secure the real objects and blessings of married life, to prevent the crimes and immoralities now practiced, to prevent "Free Love," in its most hideous form, such as is now carried on but too often under the very name of marriage, where hypocrisy is added to the crime of legalized prostitution. "Free Love," in its degraded sense, asks for no Divorce law. It acknowledges no marriage, and therefore requires no divorce. I believe in true marriages, and therefore I ask for a law to free men and women from false ones. (Applause).
But it is said that if divorce were easily granted, "men and women would marry to-day and unmarry to-morrow." Those who say that, only prove that they have no confidence in themselves, and therefore can have no confidence in others. But the assertion is false; it is a libel on human nature. It is the indissoluble chain that corrodes the flesh. Remove the indissolubility, and there would be less separation than now, for it would place the parties on their good behavior, the same as during courtship. Human nature is not quite so changeable; give it more freedom, and it will be less so. We are a good deal the creatures of habit, but we will not be forced. We live (I speak from experience) in uncomfortable houses for years, rather than move, though we have the privilege to do so every year; but force any one to live for life in one house, and he would run away from it, though it were a palace.
But Mr. Greeley asks, "How could the mother look the child in the face, if she married a second time?" With infinitely better grace and better conscience than to live as some do now, and show their children the degrading example, how utterly father and mother despise and hate each other, and still live together as husband and wife. She could say to her child, "As, unfortunately, your father proved himself unworthy, your mother could not be so unworthy as to continue to live with him. As he failed to be a true father to you, I have endeavored to supply his place with one, who, though not entitled to the name, will, I hope, prove himself one in the performance of a father's duties." (Applause).
Finally, educate woman, to enable her to promote her independence, and she will not be obliged to marry for a home and a subsistence. Give the wife an equal right with the husband in the property acquired after marriage, and it will be a bond of union between them. Diamond cement, applied on both sides of a fractured vase, re-unites the parts, and prevents them from falling asunder. A gold band is more efficacious than an iron law. Until now, the gold has all been on one side, and the iron law on the other. Remove it; place the golden band of justice and mutual interest around both husband and wife, and it will hide the little fractures which may have occurred, even from their own perception, and allow them effectually to re-unite. A union of interest helps to preserve a union of hearts. (Loud applause).
Wendell Phillips then said: I object to entering these resolutions upon the journal of this Convention. (Applause). I would move to lay them on the table; but my conviction that they are out of order is so emphatic, that I wish to go further than that, and move that they do not appear on the journals of this Convention. If the resolutions were merely the expressions of individual sentiments, then they ought not to appear in the form of resolutions, but as speeches, because a resolution has a certain emphasis and authority. It is assumed to give the voice of an assembly, and is not taken as an individual expression, which a speech is.
Of course, every person must be interested in the question of marriage, and the branch that grows out of it, the question of divorce; and no one could deny, who has listened for an hour, that we have been favored with an exceedingly able discussion of those questions. But here we have nothing to do with them, any more than with the question of intemperance, or Kansas, in my opinion. This Convention is no Marriage Convention—if it were, the subject would be in order; but this Convention, if I understand it, assembles to discuss the laws that rest unequally upon women, not those that rest equally upon men and women. It is the laws that make distinctions between the sexes. Now, whether a man and a woman are married for a year or a life is a question which affects the man just as much as the woman. At the end of a month, the man is without a wife exactly as much as the woman is without a husband. The question whether, having entered into a contract, you shall be bound to an unworthy partner, affects the man as much as the woman. Certainly, there are cases where men are bound to women carcasses as well as where women are bound to men carcasses. (Laughter and applause). We have nothing to do with a question which affects both sexes equally. Therefore, it seems to me we have nothing to do with the theory of marriage, which is the basis, as Mrs. Rose has very clearly shown, of divorce. One question grows out of the other; and therefore the question of the permanence of marriage, and the laws relating to marriage, in the essential meaning of that word, are not for our consideration. Of course I know, as everybody else does, that the results of marriage, in the present condition of society, are often more disastrous to woman than to men. intemperance, for instance, burdens a wife worse than a husband, owing to the present state of society. It is not the fault of the statute-book, and no change in the duration of marriage would alter that inequality.
The reason why I object so emphatically to the introduction of the question here is because it is a question which admits of so many theories, physiological and religious, and what is technically called "free-love," that it is large enough for a movement of its own. Our question is only unnecessarily burdened with it. It can not be kept within the convenient limits of this enterprise; for this Woman's Rights Convention is not Man's Convention, and I hold that I, as a man, have an exactly equal interest in the essential question of marriage as woman has. I move, then, that these series of resolutions do not appear at all upon the journal of the Convention. If the speeches are reported, of course the resolutions will go with them. Most journals will report them as adopted. But I say to those who use this platform to make speeches on this question, that they do far worse than take more than their fair share of the time; they open a gulf into which our distinctive movement will be plunged, and its success postponed two years for every one that it need necessarily be.
Of course, in these remarks, I intend no reflection upon those whose views differ from mine in regard to introducing this subject before the Convention; but we had an experience two years ago on this point, and it seems to me that we might have learned by that lesson. No question -Anti-Slavery, Temperance, Woman's Rights--can move forward efficiently, unless it keeps its platform separate and unmixed with extraneous issues, unmixed with discussions which carry us into endless realms of debate. We have now, under our present civilization, to deal with the simple question which we propose-how to make that statute-book look upon woman exactly as it does upon man. Under the law of Divorce, one stands exactly like the other. All we have asked in regard to the law of property has been, that the statute-book of New York shall make the wife exactly like the husband; we do not go another step, and state what that right shall be. We do not ask law-makers whether there shall be rights of dower and courtesy-rights to equal shares-rights to this or that interest in property. That is not our business. All we say is, "Gentlemen law-makers, we represent woman; make what laws you please about marriage and property, but let woman stand under them exactly as man does; let sex deprive her of no right, let sex confer no special right; and that is all we claim." (Applause). Society has done that as to marriage and divorce, and we have nothing more to ask of it on this question, as a Woman's Rights body.
Abby Hopper Gibbons, of New York City, seconded the motion of Mr. Phillips, and said that she wished the whole subject of marriage and divorce might be swept from that platform, as it was manifestly not the place for it.
Mr. Garrison said he fully concurred in opinion with his friend, Mr. Phillips, that they had not come together to settle definitely the question of marriage, as such, on that platform; still, he should be sorry to have the motion adopted, as against the resolutions of Mrs. Stanton, because they were a part of her speech, and her speech was an elucidation of her resolutions, which were offered on her own responsibility, not on behalf of the Business Committee, and which did not, therefore, make the Convention responsible for them. It seemed to him that, in the liberty usually taken on that platform, both by way of argument and illustration, to show the various methods by which woman was unjustly, yet legally, subjected to the absolute control of man, she ought to be permitted to present her own sentiments. It was not the specific object of an Anti-Slavery Convention for example to discuss the conduct of Rev. Nehemiah Adams, or the position of Stephen A. Douglas, or the course of The York Herald; yet they did, incidentally, discuss all these, and many other matters closely related to the great struggle for the freedom of the slave. So this question of marriage came in as at least incidental to the main question of the equal rights of woman.
Mrs. Blackwell: I should like to say a few words in explanation. I do not understand whether our friend Wendell Phillips objects to both series of resolutions on the subject of divorce, or merely to mine.
Mr. Phillips: To both.
Mrs. Blackwell: I wish simply to say, that I did not come to the Convention proposing to speak on this subject, but on another; but finding that these resolutions were to be introduced, and believing the subject legitimate, I said, "I will take my own position." So I prepared the resolutions, as they enabled me at the moment better to express my thought than I could do by merely extemporizing.
Now does this question grow legitimately out of the great question of woman's equality? The world says, marriage is not an alliance between equals in human rights. My whole argument was based on the position that it is. If this question is not legitimate, what is? Then do we not ask for laws which are not equal between man and woman? What have we been doing here in New York State? I spent three months asking the State to allow the drunkard's wife her own earnings. Do I believe that the wife ought to take her own earnings, as her own earnings? No; I do not believe it. I believe that in a true marriage, the husband and wife earn for the family, and that the property is the family's belongs jointly to the husband and wife. But if the law says that the property is the husband's, if it says that he may take the wages of his wife, just as the master does those of the slave, and she has no right to them, we must seek a temporary redress. We must take the first step, by compelling legislators, who will not look at great principles, to protect the wife of the drunkard, by giving her her own earnings to expend upon herself and her children, and not allow them to be wasted by the husband. I say that it is legitimate for us to ask for a law which we believe is merely a temporary expedient, not based upon the great principle of human and marriage equality. Just so with this question of marriage. It must come upon this platform, for at present it is a relation which legally and socially bears unequally upon woman. We must have temporary redress for the wife. The whole subject must be incidentally opened for discussion. The only question is one of present fitness. Was it best, under all the circumstances, to introduce it now? I have not taken the responsibility of answering in the affirmative. But it must come here and be settled, sooner or later, because its interests are everywhere, and all human relations center in this one marriage relation. (Applause).
Susan B. Anthony: I hope Mr. Phillips will withdraw his motion that these resolutions shall not appear on the records of the Convention. I am very sure that it would be contrary to all parliamentary usage to say, that when the speeches which enforced and advocated the resolutions are reported and published in the proceedings, the resolutions shall not be placed there. And as to the point that this question does not belong to this platform,—from that I totally dissent. Marriage has ever been a one-sided matter, resting most unequally upon the sexes. By it, man gains all—woman loses all; tyrant law and lust reign supreme with him—meek submission and ready obedience alone befit her. Woman has never been consulted; her wish has never been taken into consideration as regards the terms of the marriage compact. By law, public sentiment and religion, from the time of Moses down to the present day, woman has never been thought of other than as a piece of property, to be disposed of at the will and pleasure of man. And this very hour, by our statute-books, by our (so called) enlightened Christian civilization, she has no voice whatever in saying what shall be the basis of the relation. She must accept marriage as man proffers it, or not at all.
And then again, on Mr. Phillips' own ground, the discussion is perfectly in order, since nearly all the wrongs of which we complain grow out of the inequality, the injustice of the marriage laws, that rob the wife of the right to herself and her children—that make her the slave of the man she marries. I hope, therefore, the resolutions will be allowed to go out to the public, that there may be a fair report of the ideas which have actually been presented here, that they may not be left to the mercy of the secular press. I trust the Convention will not vote to forbid the publication of those resolutions with the proceedings.
Rev. Wm Hoisington, the blind preacher: Publish all that you have said and done here, and let the public know it.
The question was then put on the motion of Mr. Phillips, and it was lost. After which, the resolutions reported by the Business Committee were adopted without dissent.
Miss Mary Grew, of Philadelphia, said: Friends, we are about to separate. This convention was called for the consideration of one of the most important questions before the American people. The press may ridicule your movement, the pulpit denounce it, but, as time rolls on, it will be seen—the press and pulpit will see—that it is one of the most important questions that has ever agitated the community. It is well that those who are engaged in this movement should go forth deeply impressed with the importance of the work that is before them. It is well that you who have assembled from curiosity, to listen to what these "fanatics" have to say, should take home with you to your souls one thought which is sufficient to settle this whole question. All the arguments that have been adduced against us, and against granting to woman all her rights, come to us in one form or another of prejudice or expediency. Talk with whom you will about it,—the priest, politician, merchant, farmer, mechanic, and one after another says, (you have heard them, I have heard them, we all hear them,) to every right which woman claims, "I grant you that, in the abstract, you are right; but it is not expedient, nor wise, nor safe for woman nor man, nor good for the world." Let me tell you, that the man who grants that the position we assume is, in the abstract, right, has granted all we want; and if he is not ready to take that step of abstract right, he only assumes to be wiser than He who made the world.
Mrs. President, I hear every day of my life, almost, the assertion that it is fanaticism to say that it is always safe and right to follow abstract right. This principle does not belong to any one belief; it is the living soul of God's universe, that the absolute right is safe. If woman has the same right as man to read, to vote, to rule, to learn, to teach, there is nothing further to be said about it; and I never care to argue with the man who says it is right, but for some reason or other, it ought not to be granted, for he has granted everything, and has no ground left to stand upon.
Is it fanaticism to believe that God is wiser than man; that He, "who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth," who "commanded the morning, and caused the day-spring to know its place," is wise enough to give laws to the universe which it shall be safe for you and me to obey? (Applause). Into this fanaticism this world is to be educated, if it is to be saved from going down to moral ruin and death. Remember, then, O man! father, husband, brother, clergyman, and politician—remember, when these words slip so easily from your tongues, as they often do, "I grant you have the same abstract right to do this that man has," you grant all that woman claims; and remember, as you stand reverently in the presence of God, that if you assert that that is not safe which He has pronounced to be right, you claim to be wiser, not than these women or these men who stand on the platform of the "Woman's Rights Convention," but you claim to be wiser than the Creator of man and woman. (Applause).
Allusion was made here this morning—well and wisely made—to the charge that when woman walks out into the avenues of public life, there to gain a living for herself and her children, or to help guide the nation, she ceases to be domestic, and faithful to the cares and shrine of home. We heard something well said this morning on the sphere of woman being the home, and we are told that this objection to our movement was altogether dishonest, contemptible, and ridiculous. It is not always such. Good men and true, and sometimes wise men, also, really in their souls believe that if a woman touches a ballot, her hand will be unfit for domestic duties; that if she teaches in the public congregation, she can not act well her part in the family circle. As I listened to what was said here, the words called to my mind the image of a woman of America, known as a religious and moral teacher, who bears a name of which this nation will one day be proud, but now slandered by a venal press, scorned by an arrogant pulpit, little appreciated by the mass of men and women, for whom the bearer of it is laboring night and day. The image of that woman rose before me. The world regards her as a public woman, as out of her sphere, and infers that she is neglectful of the cares and insensible to the loveliness of domestic life; and as I remembered her, I felt as I ever feel, that there is not a woman who, as a representative of my own sex, I would sooner show to the world as the embodiment of all domestic beauty and wifely care and motherly fidelity. I only wish that they and you might know her as I know her. I only wish that you might see in her, as I see in her, the very best possible illustration of the power of guiding and guarding all the sanctity of home, of blessing husband and children and grandchildren, and exerting in the guidance of her household an intellectual power which would be the glory of this or any other platform. Not only do husband and children "rise up and call her blessed," but in the time to come, the children and children's children of those who now scorn her name—of priests who have despised it, editors who have ridiculed and slandered it, and heaped upon it all of the ignominy of their souls—will thank God, as they reap the benefit of her exertions and her beautiful life, for the name of Lucretia Mott. (Applause).
The word I would impress upon you all, as you go hence, is this—it is always safe to do right. Carry away with you from this Convention, my friends, this one thought—God is wiser than man. What He has made right, He has also made safe. His paths are paths of pleasantness, and all His ways are peace. And to those who go forward, bearing this great cause in their hands, to work for themselves, for their sisters, for their mothers—to them I would say, "Be not discouraged at any obstacles that may lie in your way! Forget, for a little while, the sneers of the press and the pulpit, the laugh of the fashionable lady, who calls you unladylike, and the scorn of arrogant men, who appreciate not your labors! You need not pay back the laughter and the scorn with scorn. Your work is too great, too high, too holy. Forgive them, and pass on! Rejoice to think that, in a few years, they, too, will rise up and thank you for it. Those who work for mankind must be content not to receive their reward in the appreciation of their services as they pass through life. It is of little consequence. The only thing is to be sure we are doing right, and living for some great purpose; for, of all the afflictions that can befall a man or woman, there is none so great as to pass through life without effecting anything—to die and leave the world no better than we found it, never being missed in consequence of any useful work we have done. (Applause). No good cause can go backward. No good cause declines. Nothing can put us down if we are right. All that we need to sustain and strengthen us in any great work is to be quite satisfied with the smile of God, and to have faith and hope that man shall at last be wholly and utterly redeemed and saved." (Applause).
The Convention then adjourned sine die.
From The New York Tribune of May 30.
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE.
To the Editor of The New York Tribune:
Sir:—At our recent National Woman's Rights Convention many were surprised to hear Wendell Phillips object to the question of Marriage and Divorce, as irrelevant to our platform. He said: "We had no right to discuss there any laws or customs but those where inequality existed in the sexes; that the laws on Marriage and Divorce rested equally on man and woman; that he suffered, as much as she possibly could, the wrongs and abuses of an ill-assorted marriage."
Now, it must strike every careful thinker, that an immense difference rests in the fact, that man has made the laws, cunningly and selfishly, for his own purpose. From Coke down to Kent, who can cite one clause of the marriage contract where woman has the advantage? When man suffers from false legislation, he has his remedy in his own hands. Shall woman be denied the right of protest against laws in which she has had no voice—laws which outrage the holiest affections of her nature—laws which transcend the limits of human legislation—in a Convention called for the express purpose of considering her wrongs? He might as well object to a protest against the injustice of hanging a woman, because capital punishment bears equally on man and woman.
The contract of marriage is by no means equal. The law permits the girl to marry at twelve years of age, while it requires several years more of experience on the part of the boy. In entering this compact, the man gives up nothing that he before possessed—he is a man still; while the legal existence of the woman is suspended during marriage, and henceforth she is known but in and through the husband. She is nameless, purseless, childless—though a woman, an heiress, and a mother.
Blackstone says: "The husband and wife are one, and that one is the husband." Kent says: "The legal effects of marriage are generally deducible from the principle of the common law, by which the husband and wife are regarded as one person, and her legal existence and authority lost or suspended during the continuance of the matrimonial union."—Vol. 2, p. 109. Kent refers to Coke on Littleton, 112, a. 187, B. Litt. sec. 168, 291.
The wife is regarded by all legal authorities as a "feme-covert," placed wholly sub potestate viri. Her moral responsibility, even, is merged in the husband. The law takes it for granted that the wife lives in fear of her husband; that his command is her highest law: hence a wife is not punishable for theft committed in presence of her husband.—Kent, vol. 2, p. 127. An unmarried woman can make contracts, sue and be sued, enjoy the rights of property, to her inheritance—to her wages—to her person—to her children; but, in marriage, she is robbed by law of all and every natural and civil right. "The disability of the wife to contract, so as to bind herself, arises not from want of discretion, but because she has entered into an indissoluble connection, by which she is placed under the power and protection of her husband."—Kent, vol. 2, p. 127. She is possessed of certain rights until she is married; then all are suspended, to revive again the moment the breath goes out of the husband's body.—See "Cowen's Treatise," vol. 2, p. 709.
If the contract be equal, whence come the terms "marital power"—"marital rights"—"obedience and restraint"—"dominion and control"—"power and protection," etc., etc.? Many cases are stated, showing the exercise of a most questionable power over the wife, sustained by the courts.—See Bishop on Divorce, p. 489.
The laws on Divorce are quite as unequal as those on Marriage; yes, far more so. The advantages seem to be all on one side, and the penalties on the other. In case of divorce, if the husband be the guilty party, he still retains the greater part of the property. If the wife be the guilty party, she goes out of the partnership penniless.—Kent, vol. 2, p. 33; Bishop on Divorce, p. 492.
In New York and some other States, the wife of the guilty husband can now sue for a divorce in her own name, and the costs come out of the husband's estate; but, in the majority of the States, she is still compelled to sue in the name of another, as she has no means of paying costs, even though she may have brought her thousands into the partnership. "The allowance to the innocent wife of ad interim alimony and money to sustain the suit, is not regarded as strict right in her, but of sound discretion in the court."—Bishop on Divorce, p. 581.
"Many jurists," says Kent, vol. 2, p. 88, "are of opinion that the adultery of the husband ought not to be noticed or made subject to the same animadversions as that of the wife, because it is not evidence of such entire depravity, nor equally injurious in its effects upon the morals, good order, and happiness of domestic life. Montesquieu, Pothier, and Dr. Taylor all insist that the cases of husband and wife ought to be distinguished, and that the violation of the marriage vow, on the part of the wife, is the most mischievous, and the prosecution ought to be confined to the offense on her part.—"Esprit des Loix," tom. 3, 186; "Traité du Contrat de Mariage," No. 516; "Elements of Civil Law," p. 254.
Say you, "These are but the opinions of men"? On what else, I ask, are the hundreds of women depending, who this hour demand in our courts a release from burdensome contracts? Are not these delicate matters left wholly to the discretion of courts? Are not young women from the first families dragged into the public courts—into assemblies of men exclusively—the judges all men, the jurors all men?—no true woman there to shield them by her presence from gross and impertinent questionings, to pity their misfortunes, or to protest against their wrongs?
The administration of justice depends far more on the opinions of eminent jurists, than on law alone, for law is powerless when at variance with public sentiment.
Do not the above citations clearly prove inequality? Are not the very letter and spirit of the marriage contract based on the idea of the supremacy of man as the keeper of woman's virtue—her sole protector and support? Out of marriage, woman asks nothing at this hour but the elective franchise. It is only in marriage that she must demand her rights to person, children, property, wages, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. How can we discuss all the laws and conditions of marriage, without perceiving its essential essence, end, and aim? Now, whether the institution of marriage be human or divine, whether regarded as indissoluble by ecclesiastical courts, or dissoluble by civil courts, woman, finding herself equally degraded in each and every phase[Pg 740] of it, always the victim of the institution, it is her right and her duty to sift the relation and the compact through and through, until she finds out the true cause of her false position. How can we go before the Legislatures of our respective States, and demand new laws, or no laws, on divorce, until we have some idea of what the true relation is? of it, always the victim of the institution, it is her right and her duty to sift the relation and the compact through and through, until she finds out the true cause of her false position. How can we go before the Legislatures of our respective States, and demand new laws, or no laws, on divorce, until we have some idea of what the true relation is?
We decide the whole question of slavery by settling the sacred rights of the individual. We assert that man can not hold property in man, and reject the whole code of laws that conflicts with the self-evident truth of that assertion.
Again I ask, is it possible to discuss all the laws of a relation, and not touch the relation itself?
Yours respectfully,
Horace Greeley in The New York Tribune, May 14, 1860.
One Thousand Persons Present, seven-eighths of them Women, and a fair Proportion Young and Good-looking.—Whether the Woman's Rights Convention will finally succeed or not in enlarging the sphere of woman, they have certainly been very successful in enlarging that of their platform. Having introduced easy Divorce as one of the reforms which the new order of things demands, we can see no good reason why the platform should not be altogether replanked. We respectfully suggest that with this change of purpose there shall also be a change in name, and that hereafter these meetings shall be called not by name of Woman, but in the name of Wives Discontented. Hitherto we have supposed that the aim of this movement related to wrongs which woman suffered as woman, political and social inequalities, and disabilities with which she was mightily burdened. A settlement of the marriage relation, we conceive, does not come within this category. As there can be no wives without husbands, the subject concerns the latter quite as much as it does the former. One of the wrongs which it is charged woman suffers from man, is that he legislates for her when she is not represented. We acknowledge the justice of that plea, and, for that very reason, complain that she, under the name of Woman's Rights, should attempt to settle a question of such vital importance to him where he is supposed to be admitted only on suffrance. We believe in woman's rights; we have some conclusions(?) on the rights of husbands and wives; we are not yet, we confess, up to that advanced state which enables us to consider the rights of wives as something apart from that of husbands.
On the subject of marriage and divorce we have some very positive opinions, and what they are is pretty generally known. But even were they less positive and fixed, we should none the less protest against the sweeping character of the resolutions introduced at the Woman's Rights Convention on Friday by Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. We can not look upon the marriage relation as of no more binding force than that which a man may make with a purchaser for the sale of dry-goods, or an engagement he may contract with a schoolmaster or governess. Such doctrine seems to us simply shocking.
The intimate relation existing between one man and one woman, sanctified by, at least, the memory of an early and sincere affection, rendered more sacred by the present bond of dependent children, the fruit of that love, hallowed by many joys and many sorrows, though they be only remembered joys and sorrows, with other interests that can be broken in upon only to be destroyed—such a relation, we are very sure, has elements of quite another nature than those which belong to the shop or the counting-house. In our judgment, the balance of duty can not be struck like the balance of a mercantile statement of profit and loss, or measured with the calculations we bestow on an account current. Such a doctrine we regard as pernicious and debasing. We can conceive of nothing that would more utterly sap the foundations of sound morality, or give a looser rein to the most licentious and depraved appetites of the vilest men and women. Upon the physiological and psychological laws which govern generation, we do not care here to enter, even if Mrs. Stanton leads the way; but we believe that the progress of the world, springing out of connections formed under such a dispensation of humanity as is here indicated, with so little of duty or conscience, with so little hope or expectation of abiding affection, with so little intention of permanency as must necessarily belong to them, would be more monstrous than the world has ever dreamed of. For such a rule of married life contemplates no married life at all, and no parental relation. It destroys the family; it renders the dearest word in the Saxon tongue (home) a vague and unmeaning term; it multiplies a thousand-fold and renders universal all the evils which in the imperfections of human nature are now occasional under the binding force of a moral sense, the duty of continency, and the remnant of nothing else is left of love.
There are some other things besides in these resolutions to which we might object on the score of truth, some things which we rather marvel, modest women should say, and that modest women, in a mixed assembly, should listen to with patience. But these are secondary matters. The thought—more than them all—that the marriage tie is of the same nature as a mere business relation, is so objectionable, so dangerous, that we do not care to draw attention from that one point.In asserting that marriage is an equal relation for husbands and wives, Mr. Greeley, like Mr. Phillips, begs the whole question. If it is legitimate to discuss all laws that bear unequally on man and woman in woman's rights conventions, surely those that grow out of marriage, which are the most oppressive and degrading on the statute-book, should command our first consideration. There could be no slaveholders without slaves; the one relation involves the other, and yet it would be absurd to say that slaves might not hold a convention to discuss the inequality of the laws sustaining that relation, and incidentally the whole institution itself, because the slaveholder shared in the evils resulting from it. There never has been a woman's convention held in which the injustice suffered by wives and mothers has not been a topic for discussion, and legitimately so. And if the only way of escape from the infamous laws by which all power is placed in the hands of man, is through divorce, then that is the hospitable door to open for those who wish to escape. No proposition contained in Mrs. Stanton's speech on divorce, viewed in any light, can be a tenth part so shocking as the laws on the statute-books, or the opinions expressed by many of the authorities in the English and American systems of jurisprudence. It is difficult to comprehend that the release of the miserable from false relations, would necessarily seduce the contented from happy ones, or that the dearest word in the Saxon tongue (home) should have no significance, after drunkards and villains were denied the right to enter it. It is a pleasant reflection, in view of the dolorous results Mr. Greeley foresees from the passage of a divorce law, that the love of men and women for each other and their children in no way depends on the Statutes of New York. In the State of Indiana, where the laws have been very liberal for many years, family life is as beautiful and permanent as in South Carolina and New York, where the tie can be dissolved for one cause only. When we consider how little protection the State throws round the young and thoughtless in entering this relation, stringent laws against all escape are cruel and despotic, especially to woman, for if home life, which is everything to her, is discordant, where can she look for happiness?
APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF NEW YORK
Women of New York:—Once more we appeal to you to make renewed efforts for the elevation of our sex. In our marital laws we are now in advance of every State in the Union. Twelve years ago New York took the initiative step, and secured to married women their property, received by gift or inheritance. Our last Legislature passed a most liberal act, giving to married women their rights, to sue for damages of person or property, to their separate earnings and their children; and to the widow, the possession and control of the entire estate during the minority of the youngest child. Women of New York! You can no longer be insulted in the first days of your widowed grief by the coarse minions of the law at your fireside, coolly taking an inventory of your household goods, or robbing your children of their natural guardian.
While we rejoice in this progress made in our laws, we see also a change in the employment of women. They are coming down from the garrets and up from the cellars to occupy more profitable posts in every department of industry, literature, science, and art. In the church, too, behold the spirit of freedom at work. Within the past year, the very altar has been the scene of well-fought battles; women claiming and exercising their right to vote in church matters, in defiance of precedent, priest, or Paul. Another evidence of the importance of our cause is seen in the deep interest men of wealth are manifesting in it. Three great bequests have been given to us in the past year. Five thousand dollars from an unknown hand,[83]a share in the munificent fund left by that noble man of Boston, Charles F. Hovey, and four hundred thousand dollars by Mr. Vassar, of Poughkeepsie, to found a college for girls, equal in all respects to Yale and Harvard. Is it not strange that women of wealth are constantly giving large sums of money to endow professorships and colleges for boys exclusively—to churches and to the education of the ministry, and yet give no thought to their own sex—crushed in ignorance, poverty, and prostitution—the hopeless victims of custom, law, and Gospel, with few to offer a helping hand, while the whole world combine to aid the boy and glorify the man?
Our movement is already felt in the Old World. The nobility of England, with Lord Brougham at their head, have recently formed a "Society for Promoting the Employments of Women."
All this is the result of the agitation, technically called "Woman's Rights," through conventions, lectures, circulation of tracts and petitions, and by the faithful word uttered in the privacy of home. The few who stand forth to meet the world's cold gaze, its ridicule, its contumely, and its scorn, are urged onward by the prayers and tears, crushed hopes and withered hearts of the sad daughters of the race. The wretched will not let them falter; and they who seem to do the work, ever and anon draw fresh courage and inspiration from the noblest women of the age, who, from behind the scene, send forth good words of cheer and heartfelt thanks.
Six years hence, the men of New York purpose to revise our State Constitution. Among other changes demanded, is the right of suffrage for women—which right will surely be granted, if through all the intervening years every woman does her duty. Again do we appeal to each and all—to every class and condition—to inform themselves on this question, that woman may no longer publish her degradation by declaring herself satisfied in her present position, nor her ignorance by asserting that she has "all the rights she wants." Any person who ponders the startling fact that there are four millions of African slaves in this republic, will instantly put the question to himself, "Why do these people submit to the cruel tyranny that our government exercises over them?" The answer is apparent—"simply because they are ignorant of their power." Should they rise en masse, assert and demand their rights, their freedom would be secure. It is the same with woman. Why is it that one-half the people of this nation are held in abject dependence—civilly, politically, socially, the slaves of man? Simply because woman knows not her power. To find out her natural rights, she must travel through such labyrinths of falsehood, that most minds stand appalled before the dark mysteries of life — the seeming contradictions in all laws, both human and divine. But, because woman can not solve the whole problem to her satisfaction, because she can not prove to a demonstration the rottenness and falsehood of our present customs, shall she, without protest, supinely endure evils she can not at once redress? The silkworm, in its many wrappings, knows not it yet shall fly. The woman, in her ignorance, her drapery, and her chains, knows not that in advancing civilization, she too must soon be free, to counsel with her conscience and her God.
The religion of our day teaches that in the most sacred relations of the race, the woman must ever be subject to the man; that in the husband centers all power and learning; that the difference in position between husband and wife is as vast as that between Christ and the church; and woman struggles to hold the noble impulses of her nature in abeyance to opinions uttered by a Jewish teacher, which, alas! the mass believe to be the will of God. Woman turns from what she is taught to believe are God's laws to-the laws of man; and in his written codes she finds herself still a slave. No girl of fifteen could read the laws concerning woman, made, executed, and defended by those who are bound to her by every tie of affection, without a burst of righteous indignation. Few have ever read or heard of the barbarous laws that govern the mothers of this Christian republic, and fewer still care, until misfortune brings them into the iron grip of the law. It is the imperative duty of educated women to study the Constitution and statutes under which they live, that when they shall have a voice in the government, they may bring wisdom and not folly into its councils.
We now demand the ballot, trial by jury of our peers, and an equal right to the joint earnings of the marriage copartnership. And, until the Constitution be so changed as to give us a voice in the government, we demand that man shall make all his laws on property, marriage, and divorce, to bear equally on man and woman.
| New York State Woman’s Rights Committee. |
E. Cady Stanton, President. | |
| Lydia Mott,[84] Sec. and Treas. | ||
| Ernestine L. Rose. | ||
| Martha C. Wright. | ||
| November, 1860. | Susan B. Anthony. |
N. B. — Let every friend commence to get signatures to the petition without delay, and send up to Albany early in January, either to your representative or to Lydia Mott.
How can any wife or mother, who to-day rejoices in her legal right to the earnings of her hands, and the children of her love, withhold the small pittance of a few hours or days in getting signatures to the petition, or a few shillings or dollars to carry the work onward and upward, to a final glorious consummation.CONVENTION IN ALBANY AND HEARING BEFORE THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE IN THE ASSEMBLY CHAMBER.
February 7th and 8th, 1861.
The last Convention before the War was held in Albany. Ernestine L. Rose, Lucretia Mott, William Lloyd Garrison, Rev. Beriah Green, Aaron M. Powell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony were the speakers. They had a hearing also before the Judiciary Committee on the bill then pending asking divorce for various causes.* The interest in the question was intense at this time,
owing to several very aggravated cases among leading families, both in this country and England. The very liberal bill pending in the Legislature had drawn special attention to it in the Empire State, which not only made the whole question of marriage and divorce a topic of conversation at every fireside, but of many editorial debates in our leading journals. Among others, Horace Greeley, in The New York Tribune, had a prolonged discussion with the Hon. Robert Dale Owen,[85] in which it was generally thought that the weight of argument rested with Mr. Owen; but it was evident that Mr. Greeley did not think so, as he afterward republished the whole controversy at his own expense. The Albany Evening Journal also took strong grounds against the bill. But the opponents invariably discussed the question on the basis that marriage was an equal relation, in which man suffered as much as woman, ignoring the fact that man had made the laws governing it, and all to his own advantage.
From the following letter of Lucretia Mott, we see how clear she was as to the merits of the position we had taken in the discussion of this vital question:
My Dear Lydia Mott:—I have wished ever since parting with thee and our other dear friends in Albany to send thee a line, and have only waited in the hope of contributing a little "substantial aid" toward your neat and valuable "depository." The twenty dollars enclosed is from our Female Anti-Slavery Society.
I see the annual meeting in New York is not to be held this spring. Sister Martha is here, and was expecting to attend both anniversaries. But we now think the Woman's Rights meeting had better not be attempted, and she has written Elizabeth C. Stanton to this effect.
I was well satisfied with being at the Albany meeting. I have since met with the following from a speech of Lord Brougham's, which pleased me, as being as radical as mine in your stately Hall of Representatives:
"Before woman can have any justice by the laws of England, there must be a total reconstruction of the whole system; for any attempt to amend it would prove useless. The great charter, in establishing the supremacy of law over prerogative, provides only for justice between man and man; for woman nothing is left but common-law, accumulations and modifications of original Gothic and Roman heathenism, which no amount of filtration through ecclesiastical courts could change into Christian laws. They are declared unworthy a Christian people by great jurists; still they remain unchanged."
So Elizabeth Stanton will see that I have authority for going to the root of the evil.
We had a delightful golden-wedding on the 10th inst. All our children and children's children were present, and a number of our friends hereaway. Our sister Mary "W. Hicks and her grand daughter May were all of James's relatives from New York. Brother Richard and daughter Cannie could not feel like coming. Brother Silas and Sarah Cornell could not come.
In 1861 came "the war of the rebellion," the great conflict between the North and the South, the final struggle between freedom and slavery. The women 'who had so perseveringly labored for their own enfranchisement now gave all their time and thought to the nation's life; their patriotism was alike spontaneous and enduring. Tn the sanitary movement, in the hospitals, on the battlefield, gathering in the harvests on the far-off prairies all that heroic women dared and suffered through those long dark years of anxiety and death, should have made "justice to woman" the spontaneous cry on the lips of our rulers, as we welcomed the return of the first glad days of peace. All specific work for her own rights she willingly thrust aside. No Conventions were held for five years; no petitions circulated for her civil and political rights; the action of State Legislatures was wholly forgotten. In their stead, Loyal Leagues were formed, and petitions by the hundred thousand for the emancipation of the slaves rolled up and sent to Congress a measure which with speech and pen they pressed on the nation's heart, seeing clearly as they did that this was the pivotal point of the great conflict.
Thus left unwatched, the Legislature of New York amended the law of 1860, taking from the mother the lately guaranteed right to the equal guardianship of her children, replacing it by a species of veto power, which did not allow the father to bind out or will away a child without the mother's consent in writing. The law guaranteeing the widow the control of the property, which the husband should leave at death, for the care and protection of minor children, was also repealed. This cowardly act of the Legislature of 1862[86] is the strongest possible proof of woman's need of the ballot in her own hand for protection. Had she possessed the power to make and unmake legislators, no State Assembly would have dared thus to rob the mother of her natural rights. But without the suffrage she was helpless. While, in her loyalty to the Government and her love to humanity, she was encouraging the "boys in blue" to fight for the freedom of the black mothers of the South, these dastardly law-makers, filled with the spirit of slaveholders, were stealing the children and the property of the white mothers in the Empire State!
When Susan B. Anthony heard of the repeal of 1862, she was filled with astonishment, and wrote thus to Miss Lydia Mott:
And, worse still, in 1871,[87] after the black man was not only emancipated, but enfranchised, by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which, overriding State Constitution and statute law, abolished the property qualification for colored voters in the State of New York, another step of retrogressive legislation was taken against woman, in the repeal of section nine[88] of the Act of 1860, re-enacting the spirit and letter of the old common law, which holds that the children born in legal wedlock belong to the father alone. Had woman held the ballot—that weapon of protection—in her hand to punish legislators, by withholding her vote from those thus derelict to duty, no repeal of the law of 1860 could have possibly taken place.
Dear Miss Anthony:—Your esteemed favor of the 6th duly received.
The Statute of 1862, Laws of 1862, chapter 90, page 157, repealed the grandest and crowning section of the Statute of 1860, viz: Sections 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, and 11, copies of which sections I herewith inclose you. Had these sections remained, wives in this State would have possessed equal rights with their husbands, save simply the right of voting. It was a great mistake and wrong to repeal them. Had I been a member of the Senate at that time, as I was not, I don't think it would have been done.
I do not know who was the author of the repeal bill, nor did I know of its existence until I saw it in the statute-book. I think Judge Charles J. Folger, now Chief-Justice of the Court of Appeals, was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the bill of 1862 must therefore have passed through the hands of that Committee, in which it originated, or through which it was reported, and by the influence of which it must have been adopted.
Strange that you women, so watchful and so regardful of your rights, should have allowed the repeal of those important sections, without strenuous opposition.
Very sincerely yours,
We were busily engaged rolling up petitions for the Thirteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, our hearts and hands full of work for the Government in the midst of the war, supposing all was safe at Albany. But how comes it that the author of the bill of 1860, residing at the capital, never heard of its repeal? If the bill was so slyly passed that Mr. Colvin himself did not know of it until he saw it in the statute-book, it is not remarkable that it escaped our notice in time to prevent it.
Miss Anthony, Dear Madam:—I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the New York Senate in 1862-'3-'4-'5-'6-'7-'8-'9. Judge John Willard, of Saratoga County, was a member of the State Senate in that year, and a member of that Committee. He was the author of the Act of 1862. His object, as I have always understood it, was to simplify, make clear, consistent, and practical some of the legislation in regard to married women. I think, with deference I say it, that you are not strictly accurate in calling the legislation of 1862 a repealing one. The first section of the Act of 1862 (chap. 172, p. 343) amends the third section of the Act of 1860 (chap. 90, p. 157), by striking out the provision requiring the assent of the husband, and giving the wife the right (or privilege) to contract and convey as a feme sole, and to covenant for title, etc., etc. That amendment rendered unnecessary the fourth, fifth, and sixth sections of the Act of 1860. They would have fallen of themselves, that is, have been repealed by implication, as inconsistent with the greater power and freedom attained by married women by the amendment of 1862 to the Act of 1860. But ex abundanti cautela, as Judge Willard would have said, there was an express repeal of them. The tenth and eleventh sections of the Act of 1860 were also repealed expressly; but not to the sole detriment of married women. The tenth section gave to married men and married women a life estate in certain cases in one-third of all the real estate of which the wife or husband died seized. The wife had before the Act of 1860, and has now, that estate. The tenth section gave her nothing. The repeal of it took nothing from her. The eleventh section, so far as it gave a life estate, is the same as the tenth. So far as it gave the use of all the real estate of the intestate for the minority of the youngest child, it was an addition to the property rights of the wife, but it was also an addition to the property rights of the husband. I am not able from memory to say why it was repealed; and it is remembrance and not reasoning that you ask for. The third section of the Act of 1862 amends the seventh of the Act of 1860 by striking out the phrase, "except her husband," thus enabling a married woman to protect the property given to her by the husband, in which the Act of 1860 was lame, and in other ways gave more freedom and power to married women. The fourth section of the Act of 1862 amends the eighth section of the Act of 1860, but only in its verbiage. The fifth section of the Act of 1862 does not impair the Act of 1860; it simply puts the woman before the courts, and the law as an entity able to go alone. The sixth section of the Act of 1862 increases the powers of a married woman, by giving her a veto on some acts of her husband. The seventh section is like the fifth. In no other respect than those I have named did the Act of 1862 affect the Act of 1860. In but one thing did it repeal, in the sense of taking away any right or power or privilege or freedom that the Act of 1860 gave. On the contrary, in some respects, it gave more or greater.
I am glad that you wrote to me. I am glad that I have the opportunity to defend the memory of a good man, Judge John Willard. I make bold to ask you to turn to the thirty-seventh volume of Barbour's Supreme Court Reports, Appendix, pp. 670 et seq., and read the words spoken of him by his peers. I am glad also to have the opportunity to speak a word for my Judiciary Committee.
And I will not close this lengthened answer, without suggesting a suspicion, that those who have taken the notion that the Act of 1862 was a retrograde step, have done so without comparing for themselves the two acts.
For myself, I have the distinction of being one of less than half-a-dozen Senators who voted that women have the right to vote for delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1866; and one of about a dozen and a half members of that Convention who voted to erase from the suffrage article the word "male." I have never been convinced of the expediency of giving to females the privilege of suffrage; but I have never been able to see the argument by which they were not as much entitled to the right as males.
Trusting that you will forgive the length of this epistle,
I am with respect, yours, etc., etc.,
As will be seen by the above letters, both Mr. Colvin and Mr. Folger make mistakes in regard to the effect of these bills. In speaking of the complete equality of husbands and wives under the law of 1860, Mr. Colvin said, "All the wife then had to ask was the right of suffrage," quite forgetting that the wife has never had an equal right to the joint earnings of the copartnership, as no valuation has ever been placed on her labor in the household, to which she gives all her time, thought, and strength, the absolute sacrifice of herself, mind and body, all possibility of self-development and self-improvement being in most cases out of the question. Mr. Folger in saying the repeal of section eleven affected man as much as woman, falls into the same mistake, assuming that the joint earnings belong to man. We say that the wife who surrenders herself wholly to domestic life, foregoing all opportunities for pecuniary independence and personal distinction in the world of work, or the higher walks of literature and art, in order to make it possible for the husband to have home and family ties, and at the same time, his worldly successes and ambitions, richly earns the place of an equal partner. In their joint accumulations, her labor and economy should be taken into account.
This is the vital point of interest to the vast majority of married women, since it is only the few who ever possess anything through separate earnings or inheritance. A law securing to the wife the absolute right to one-half the joint earnings, and at the death of the husband, the same control of property and children that he has when she dies, might make some show of justice; but it is a provision not yet on the statute-books of any civilized nation on the globe.
The seeming sophistry of Judge Folger may be traced to the universal fact that man does not appreciate the arduous and unremitting labors of the wife in the household, or her settled dissatisfaction in having no pecuniary recompense for her labors. No man with cultured brain and skilled hands would consider himself recompensed for a life of toil in being provided with shelter, food, and clothes while his employer was living, to be cut down in his old age to a mere pittance; yet such is the fate of the majority of wives and widows under the most beneficent provisions of our statutes in this favored republic. True, the law says "the husband shall maintain the wife in accordance with his circumstances"; he being judge, jury, executive. Though she may toil incessantly, and her duties be far more exhaustive than his, yet he is supposed to maintain her, and the joint property is always disposed of on that basis. Legislation for woman proceeds on the assumption, that all she needs is a bare support; and that she is destitute of the natural human desire to accumulate, possess, and control the results of her own labor.
- ↑ Jerry McHenry was an athletic mulatto, a cooper by trade, who had been living in Syracuse for many years, since his escape from slavery. On the 12th of October, 1850, there was an attempt to kidnap him, but the Abolitionists, with such men as Samuel J. May and Gerrit Smith at their head, succeeded in rescuing him by a coup d'état, from the officers of the law, which involved several trials in Auburn, Canandaigua, Buffalo, and Albany. As this occurred soon after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, the leading Abolitionists were determined to test its constitutionality in the courts. It was so systematically and universally violated, that it soon became a dead letter.
- ↑ A Heroic Woman. — Mrs. Margaret Freeland, of Syracuse, was recently arrested upon a warrant issued on complaint of Emanuel Rosendale, a rum-seller, charging her with forcing an entrance to his house, and with stones and clubs smashing his doors and windows, breaking his tumblers and bottles, and turning over his whisky barrels and spilling their contents. Great excitement was produced by this novel case. It seems that the husband of Mrs. Freeland was a drunkard — that he was in the habit of abusing his wife, turning her out of doors, etc., and this was carried so far that the police frequently found it necessary to interfere to put a stop to his ill-treatment of his family. Rosendale, the complainant, furnished Freeland with the liquor which turned him into a demon. Mrs. Freeland had frequently told him of her sufferings and besought him to refrain from giving her husband the poison. But alas! she appealed to a heart of stone. He disregarded her entreaties and spurned her from his door. Driven to desperation she armed herself, broke into the house, drove out the base-hearted landlord and proceeded upon the work of destruction.
She was brought before the court and demanded a trial. The citizens employed Charles B. Sedgwick, Esq., as her counsel, and prepared to justify her assault upon legal grounds. Rosendale, being at once arrested on complaint of Thomas L. Carson for selling liquor unlawfully, and feeling the force of the storm that was gathering over his head, appeared before the Justice, withdrew his complaint against Mrs. Freeland, paid the costs, and gave bail on the complaint of Mr. Carson, to appear at the General Sessions, and answer to an indictment should there be one found.
Mrs. Freeland is said to be "the pious mother of a fine family of children, and a highly respectable member of the Episcopal Church."
The Carson League commenting on this affair says:
"The rum-seller cowered in the face of public feeling. This case shows that public feeling will justify a woman whose person or family is outraged by a rum-seller, for entering his grocery or tavern and destroying his liquor. If the law lets loose a tiger upon her, she may destroy it. She has no other resort but force to save herself and her children. Were the women of this city to proceed in a body and destroy all the liquor of all the taverns and groceries, they would be justified by law and public opinion. Women should take this war into their hands, when men take side with the murderers of their peace.
"A tavern or grocery which makes the neighbors drunken and insane is a public nuisance, and may be pulled down and destroyed by the neighbors who are injured by it. It is worse than the plague. And if men will not put hands on it, then should the women do it. Tell us not it is property. It ceases to be property when it is employed to destroy the people. If a man lights his torch and sets about putting fire to the houses about him, any person may seize the torch and destroy it. So if a man takes a pistol and passes through the streets shooting the people, the pistol ceases to be property and may be taken from him by force and destroyed by any person who can do it. We sincerely hope that the women of the State will profit by this example, and go to destroying the liquor vessels and their contents." To all of which we respond Amen.
The Lily, June, 1853.
- ↑ Mrs. Thompson, of Albany; Mrs. Cushman, of New York, Vice-Presidents. Mrs. Fowler and Miss Anthony, Secretaries. Lydia Mott, of Albany; Phebe Hoag Jones, of Troy; Eliza Hoxie Shove, of Easton; and Elizabeth Van Alstine, of Canajoharie, Business Committee.
- ↑ The following citizens of Rochester concur in the above call: Samuel Richardson, Rev. Wm. H. Goodwin, Samuel Chipman, Geo. A. Avery, James P. Fogg, J. O. Bloss, Wm. R. Hallowell, James Vick, Jr., E. C. Williams, Daniel Anthony.
- ↑ Vice-Presidents. Mary C. Vaughan, Olivia Fraser, Frances Stanton Avery, Rhoda De Garmo, Sarah D. Fish, and Mrs, D. C. Alling.
Secretaries. — Amelia Bloomer and Susan B. Anthony.
Resolutions. — Amy Post, Elizabeth Monroe, Rachel Van Lew.
Finance. — Susan B. Anthony, Mary H. Hallowell, H. Attilia Albro.
- ↑ See Appendix.
- ↑ Vice-Presidents — Mrs. Gerrit Smith, Peterboro; Mrs. E.C. Delevan, Ballston Spa; New York; Julia Clark Lewis, Oswego; Olivia Fraser, Elmira; Emily Clark, Le Roy; Mrs. A. N. Cole, Belfast; Betsy Hawks, Bethany Centre; Antoinette L. Brown, Henrietta. Recording Secretaries — Susan B. Anthony, Rochester; Mary C. Vaughan, Oswego. Corresponding Secretary — Amelia Bloomer, Seneca Falls. Treasurer — Elvira Marsh, Rochester. Executive Committee — Sarah T. Gould, Mary H. Halldwell, and Mrs. Samuel Richardson, Rochester.
- ↑ The Lily was a temperance paper started in Seneca Falls, N. Y., in 1849. It was owned and edited by Mrs. Amelia Bloomer. Though starting as the organ of a society, it soon became her individual] property. She carried it successfully six years, her subscription list reaching 4,000. It was as pronounced on woman's rights as temperance, and did good service in both reforms. We are indebted to The Lily for most of our facts on the temperance movement in New York.
- ↑ Nomination — Lemira Kedzie, Lydia F. Fowler, Amy Post, Mary H. Hallowell, Frederick Douglass, Lydia Jenkins. Business Committee — Emily Clark, W. H. Channing, Mary H. Hallowell, Rev. S. J. May, Mrs. Robie, Mrs. C. I. H. Nichols. Finance — Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Bloomer, H. Attilia Albro. Also, on motion, the President was added to the Business Committee.
- ↑ Throughout this protracted, disgraceful assault on American womanhood, the clergy baptized each new insult and act of injustice in the name of the Christian religion, and uniformly asked God's blessing on proceedings that would have put to shame
- ↑ Vice-Presidents — Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, Mass.; Charles C. Burliegh, Ct.; Edward M. Davis, Pa.; Frances Dana Gage, Mo.; Ashby Pierce, Oregon; Rowland T. Robinson, Vt.; Melissa J. Driggs, Ind.; Thomas Garrett, Del.; Angelina Grimké Weld, N. J.; Hannah Tracy Cutler, Ill.
- ↑ See page 152 — Cleveland Convention — for the full description of this mob by Miss Brown herself.
- ↑ The Binghamton Daily Republican said: Miss Anthony vindicated her resolutions with great eloquence, spirit, and dignity, and showed herself a match, at least, in debate, for any member of the Convention. She was equal if not identical. Whatever may be thought of her notions, or sense of propriety in her bold and conspicuous positions, personally, intellectually, and socially speaking, there can be but one opinion as to her superior ability, energy, and moral courage; and she may well be regarded as an evangel and heroine by her sex; especially by the "Strong Minded "portion of them.
- ↑ The Daily Standard, Sept. 8th, 1852, said: The Woman's Rights Convention will assemble at the City Hall this morning. Some of the most able women of the country will be present, and the discussion can not fail to be particularly interesting. The Daily Star, a pro-slavery paper of the most pronounced and reckless character, said: The women are coming! They flock in upon us from every quarter, all to hear and talk about Woman's Rights. The blue stockings are as thick as grasshoppers in hay-time, and mighty will be the force of "jaw-logic" and "room-stick ethics" preached by the females of both sexes.
- ↑
THE NATIONAL WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION.
The friends of equality, justice, and truth are earnestly invited to meet in Syracuse, N. Y., Sept. 8th, 9th, and 10th, 1852, to discuss the important question of "Woman's Rights." We propose to review not only the past and consider the present, but to mark out new and broader paths for the future. The time has come for the discussion of woman's social, civil, and religious rights, and also for a thorough and efficient organization; a well-digested plan of operation whereby these social rights, for which our fathers fought, bled, and died, may be secured by us. Let woman no longer supinely endure the evils she may escape, but with her own right hand carve out for herself a higher, nobler destiny than has heretofore been hers. Inasmuch as through the folly and imbecility of woman, the race is what it is, dwarfed in mind and body; and as through her alone it can yet be redeemed, all are equally interested in the objects of this Convention. We therefore solemnly urge those men and women who desire the elevation of humanity, to be present at the coming Convention, and aid us by their wisdom. Our platform will be free to all who are capable of discussing the subject with candor and truth. On behalf of the Central Committee,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Paulina Wright Davis,
William Henry Channing,
Lucy Stone,
Samuel J. May. - ↑ President. — Lucretia Mott, Philadelphia. Vice-Presidents. — Paulina, Wright Davis, Rhode Island; Caroline M. Severance, Ohio; Elizabeth Oakes Smith, New York; Clarina I. H. Nichols, Vermont; Gerrit Smith, Peterboro; Sarah L. Miller, Pennsylvania. Secretaries. — Susan B. Anthony, Martha C. Wright, Samuel J. May, Lydia F. Fowler. Business Committee. — Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Lucy Stone, Caroline M. Severance, Harriot K. Hunt, Jane Elizabeth Jones, James Mott, Ernestine L. Rose, Elizabeth W. Phillips, Pliny Sexton, Benjamin 8. Jones. Committee on Finance. — Rosa Smith, Joseph Savage, Caroline M. Severance. Many earnest friends beside the officers were present and took part in the discussions; among them Amy Post, Mary and Sarah Hallowell, Catharine A. F. Stebbins, Thomas and Mary Ann McClintock, Elizabeth Smith Miller, Rev. Lydia Ann Jenkins, Rev. Antoinette L. Brown, Lydia Mott, Phebe H. Jones, Mary A. Springstead, Abby H. Price, Rev. Abraham Pryne, Eliza A. Aldrich, editor Genius of Liberty; Dr. Cutcheon, of McGrawville College; Matilda Joslyn Gage, Lydia P. Savage, Sarah Hallock, Griffith M. Cooper.
- ↑ See Appendix.
- ↑ See Pennsylvania Chapter, page 360.
- ↑ The Syracuse Journal said: "Miss Anthony has a capital voice and deserves to be made clerk of the Assembly."
- ↑ When Gerrit Smith was in Congress, elected on account of his anti-slavery principles, his power to make friends even among foes was fully illustrated. At his elegant dinners distinguished Southerners were frequent guests. Hence it was said of him that he dined with slaveholders, and would have wined with them but for his temperance principles.
- ↑ See Appendix.
- ↑ See Appendix.
- ↑ This noble man was among the first to append his name to the declaration of rights issued at Seneca Falls, and he did not withdraw it when the press began to ridicule the proceedings of the Convention.
- ↑ Rev. Mr. Hatch gave his idea of female loveliness. It consisted in that shrinking delicacy which, like the modest violet, hid itself until sought; that modesty which led women to blush, to cast down their eyes when meeting men, or walking up the aisle of a church to drop the veil; to wear long skirts, instead of imitating the sun-flower, which lifted up its head, seeming to say: "Come and admire me." He repeated the remarks made near the door on some of the speakers. The President hoped he would keep in order, and not relate the vulgar conversation of his associates. He went on in a similar strain until the indignation of the audience became universal, when he was summarily stopped. In the midst of his remarks Miss Anthony suggested that the Reverend gentleman doubtless belonged to the pin-cushion ministry, educated by women's sewing societies? which, on inquiry, proved true. It was almost always the case that the "poor but pious" young man, who had studied his profession at the expense of women, proved most narrow and bigoted in his teachings.
- ↑ The Jewish.
- ↑ See Appendix for comments of Syracuse Star and New York Herald.
- ↑ This sermon was reviewed by Matilda Joslyn Gage, and a newspaper controversy be tween Mr. Sunderland, Mrs. Gage, and others inaugurated. For several months the press of the city was enlivened by these supplementary debates.
- ↑ President. — Lucretia Mott. Vice-Presidents. — Ernestine L. Rose, New York; Paulina W. Davis, Rhode Island; Clarina I. H. Nichols, Vermont; Mary Jackson, England; Caroline M. Severance, Ohio; S. M. Booth, Wisconsin; Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Massachusetts; Mrs. J. B. Chapman, Indiana; Charlotte Hubbard, Illinois; Ruth Dugdale, Pennsylvania; C. C. Burleigh, Connecticut; Angelina G. Weld, New Jersey; Mathilde Franceska Anneké, Germany. Secretaries. Lydia F. Fowler, Sidney Peirce, Oliver Johnson. Business Committee. — Lucy Stone, Antoinette L. Brown, James Mott, Harriot K. Hunt, Mariana Johnson, Lydia Mott, Wendell Phillips, Sarah Hallock, Wm. H. Channing, Ruth Dugdale, Martha J. Tilden, Ernestine L. Rose, Elizabeth Oakes Smith. Finance Committee. — Susan B. Anthony, Lydia A. Jenkins, Edward A. Stansbury.
- ↑ See Appendix.
- ↑ Fanny Ellsler danced for the Bunker Hill monument.
- ↑ See p. 259.
- ↑ The Committee were: Lucretia Mott, Ernestine L. Rose, Marion C. Houghton, Lucy Stone, Caroline H. Dall, Paulina Wright Davis, Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, Mathilde Franceska Anneké, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.
- ↑
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Seneca Falls; James M'Cune Smith, New York; Mary Cheney Greeley, New York; S. G. Love, Randolph; Ernestine L. Rose, New York; Mary F. Love, Randolph; Samuel J. May, Syracuse; C. M. Crowley, Randolph; George W. Jonson, Buffalo; R. T. Trall, New York; Antoinette L. Brown, South Butler; Emily 8. Trall, New York; Frederick Douglass, Rochester; Oliver Johnson, New York; Hiram Corliss, Greenwich; Mariana W. Johnson, New York 3; Lydia A. Jenkins, Geneva; Sydney Howard Gay, New York; William H. Channing, Rochester; Catharine E. Welling, Elmira; William Hay, Saratoga Springs; Mrs. Holbrook, Elmira; Amy Post, Rochester; H. A. Zoller, Little Falls; Mary H. Hallowell, Rochester; Stephen Haight, Dutchess County; Susan B. Anthony, Rochester; Sarah A. Burtis, Rochester; William R. Hallowell, Rochester; Lydia P. Savage, Syracuse; Isaac Post, Rochester; Lydia Mott, Albany; Mary B. F. Curtis, Rochester; J. B. Sands, Canandaigua; Lemira Kedzie, Rochester; Catharine H. Sands, Canandaigua; - ↑ Vice-Presidents. — Ernestine L. Rose, New York; 8. C. Cuyler, Wayne; Amy Post, Rochester; Mary F. Love, Randolph; Amelia Bloomer, Seneca Falls; Caroline Keese, Cayuga; Griffith M. Cooper, Wayne; Rev. Antoinette L. Brown, South Butler; Matilda Joslyn Gage, Manlius; Rev. J. W. Loguin, Syracuse; Sarah A. Burtis, Rochester; Emma R. Coe, Buffalo. Secretaries. — Susan B. Anthony, Sarah Pellet, Wm. J. Watkins, and Sarah Willis. Finance Committee. — Mary 8. Anthony, Mary H. Hallowell, E. J. Jenkins, Lucy Colman, and Mary Cooper. Business Committee. — Emestine L. Rose, William Henry Channing, Antoinette L Brown, Frederick Douglass, Amy Post, and Samuel J. Love.
- ↑ Mr. Hopkins further stated that, tenancy by the courtesy operates in favor of the husband, not of the wife. It is the husband's right during his life to the use of the wife's real estate from her death, in case of a child or children born of the marriage. It is defeasible now by the wife's will. — Cow. Rep. 74, 2 R. 8., 4th Ed. 331. Tenancy by right of dower is the wife's right during her life to the use of one-third of the husband's real estate from his death. It operates in favor of the wife and not in favor of the husband, and is indefeasible by the husband's will or the husband's acts while living, and does not depend upon the birth of a child by the marriage.
The order of distribution of the husband's personal property on his death is as follows, viz.: 1st, the widow of a family takes articles exempt from execution as hers, also $150 worth of property besides. 2d, she has one-third of the personal property, absolutely — if there be no children, one-half, and if there be no parent or descendant, she is entitled, of the residue, to $2,000, and if also no brother, sister, nephew, or niece, all the residue. This order may he varied or defeated by his will.
The order of distribution of the wife's personal property on her death without will is as follows: It goes, after paying her debts, to her husband, if living; if not, then 1st, to her children, 2d to her father, 3d to her mother, 4th to her collateral relatives. This order may be varied or defeated by her will . She may devise it as she may please.
His property before marriage continues his after marriage, subject to her inchoate rights of dower.
Her property before marriage continues hers absolutely. Upon marriage he is liable to support her, and may be compelled to do it if he prove refractory. She is not liable to support him, however wealthy she may be, or poor he may be. He is liable to support the children. She is not so liable, though possessed of millions. The husband is the guardian of the wife, as against third persons. (Page 488). But he has no power to preserve, retain, or regain the custody of her against her will. (Page 47). He may maintain his action against third persons for enticing her away or harboring her. But this harboring, to be actionable, must be more than a mere permission to her to stay with such third person. (4 Barb. 225). If the husband seek to take away his wife by force, it 18 an assault and battery upon her. If a third person resists such force at her request he is not liable to any action. (Barb. 156). The wife is not the husband's guardian, but if he will desert her he may be put under bonds for her support and the support of her children by him. (2 Rev. Stat., 4th Ed., pp. 53, 54). The husband is liable for the debts of the wife contracted before marriage, but only now to the extent of her property received by him. (7 W. R. 237, 1st Chitty PI., 66 to 68, laws of 1853). And he is liable for her debts contracted during marriage, if permitted by him, or if for necessaries which he neglected to provide.
The wife is not liable for her husband's debts contracted at any time. The law casts the custody of the minor children upon the father and not upon the mother. But if this custody is abused, it is by the Court to the mother. The father may appoint a guardian for his infant children. (2 Rev. Stat. 33. But the Court will not allow such guardian to take the children out of the State against the mother's will, much less to separate them unjustly from the mother even though the father's will command it. (5, page 596). During the separation of husband and wife, it is for the court now to decide, under the circumstances of each case, whether father or mother has such custody. (2 R. S 330, 332). When both seek such custody, and both are equally qualified for it, that of daughters and young children is usually given to the mother, and that of the sons to the father, but this is in the discretion of the Court. The earnings of the husband are his. The earnings of the wife are his, if she live with him and he support her. But he can not compel her to work for him. And if she separate from him for cause, he may be restrained for intermeddling with her earnings. The husband's abandonment and his refusal or neglect to provide for her, are good causes of separation. (2 K. S. 329, sec. 53, sub. 3). For the husband's torts the wife is not liable. For the wife's torts, committed by her before marriage or during marriage the husband is liable jointly with the wife. If committed by the wife and husband, or committed by the wife in his presence and without objecting, the husband is liable alone. (1 Chitty Pl., 105, 7th American edition). Nay, even felonies (excepting murder, manslaughter, treason, and robbery), are excusable in the wife if committed in the husband's presence and by his coercion and such coercion is presumed from his presence. For this he must suffer and she must be spared. (Barb. Crim. Law, 247 and 348, and' cases there cited). In actions or lawsuits between men and women, the law in theory claims to be impartial, but in practice it has not been impartial. Before a Court of male judges or a jury of men the bias is in favor of the woman; and if she is pleasing, in person and manners, such bias is sometimes pretty strong. If the man and woman between whom litigation arises are husband and wife, the Court may accord an allowance to be advanced by her husband, to enable her to defray the expenses of the litigation. - ↑ Woman's Rights. — Circulate the Petitions. — The design of the Convention held last week in Rochester, was to bring the subject of Woman's legal and civil disabilities, in a dignified form, before the Legislature of New York. Convinced, as the friends of the movement are, that in consistency with the principles of Republicanism, females, equally with males, are entitled to Freedom, Representation, and Suffrage, and confident as they are that woman's influence will be found to be as refining and elevating in public as all experience proves it to be in private, they claim that one-half of the people and citizens of New York should no longer be governed by the other half, without consent asked and given. Encouraged by reforms already made, in the barbarous usages of common law, by the statutes of New York, the advocates of, woman's just and equal rights demand that this work of reform be carried on, until every vestige of partiality is removed. It is proposed, in a carefully prepared address to specify the remaining legal disabilities from which the women of this State suffer; and a hearing is asked before a joint committee of both Houses, specially empowered to revise and amend the statutes. Now is this movement right in principle? Is it wise in policy? Should the females of New York be placed on a level of equality with males before the law? If so, let us petition for impartial justice to Women. In order to ensure this equal justice should the females of New York, like the males, have a voice in appointing the law-makers and law-administrators? If 80, jet us petition for Woman's right to Suffrage. Finally, what candid man will be opposed to a reference of the whole subject to the Representatives of New York, whom the men of New York themselves elected. Let us then petition for a hearing before the Legislature. A word more, as to the petitions, given below. They are two in number; one for the Just and Equal Rights of Woman; one for Woman's Right to Suffrage. It is designed that they should be signed by men and women, of lawful age — that is, of twenty-one years and upwards. The following directions are suggested: 1. Let persons, ready and willing, sign each of the petitions; but let not those, who desire to secure Woman's Just and Equal Rights, hesitate to sign that petition because they have doubts as to the right or expediency of women's voting. The petitions will be kept separate, and offered separately. All fair-minded persons, of either sex, ought to sign the first petition. We trust that many thousands are prepared to sign the second also. 2. In obtaining signatures, let men sign in one column, and women in another parallel column. 38. Let the name of the town and county, together with the number of signatures, be distinctly entered on the petitions before they are returned. 4. Let every person, man or woman, interested in this movement, instantly and energetically circulate the petitions in their respective neighborhoods. We must.send in the name of every person in the State, who desires full justice to woman, so far as it is possible. Up then, friends, and be doing, to-day. 5. Let no person sign either petition but once. As many persons will circulate petitions in the same town and county, it is important to guard against this possible abuse. 6. Finally, jet every petition be returned to Rochester, directed to the Secretary of the Convention, Susan B. Anthony, on the first of February, without fail. In behalf of the Business Committee.
William Henry Channing.Rochester, Dec. 8, 1853.
Petition For The Just And Equal Rights Of Women. — The Legislature of the State © of New York have, by the Acts of 1848 and 1849, testified the purpose of the people of this
- ↑ State to place married women on an equality with married men, in regard to the holding, conveying, and devising of real and personal property. We, therefore, the undersigned petitioners, inhabitants of the State of New York, male and female, having attained to the legal majority, believing that women, alike married and single, do still suffer under many and grievous legal disabilities, do earnestly request the Senate and Assembly of the State of New York to appoint a Joint Committee of both Houses, to revise the Statutes of New York, and to propose such amendments as will fully establish the legal equality of women with men; and we hereby ask a hearing before such Committee by our accredited Representatives. Petition For Woman's Right To Suffrage. — Whereas, according to the Declaration of our National Independence, governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, we earnestly request the Legislature of New York to propose to the people of the State such amendments of the Constitution of the State as will secure to females an equal right to the Elective Franchise with males; and we hereby ask a hearing before the Legislature by our accredited Representatives. N. B. — Editors throughout the State in favor of this movement are respectfully requested to publish this address and the petitions.
- ↑ President — Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Vice-Presidents. — Rev. S. J. May, Ernestine L. Rose, New York; Hon. William Hay Saratoga; William H. Topp, Albany; Lydia A. Jenkins, Geneva; Lydia Mott, Albany; Mary F. Love, Randolph. Business Committee.—Rev. Antoinette L. Brown, South Butler; W. H. Channing, Rochester; Mrs. Catherine A. F. Stebbins, Mrs. Phebe H. Jones, Troy. Secretaries.—Susan B. Anthony, Sarah Pellet. Finance Committee.—Mary S. Anthony, Rochester; Anna W. Anthony, Cayuga.
- ↑ An Act Relative to the Rights of Married Women:—The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows: 1. Any married woman whose husband, from drunkenness, profligacy, or any other cause, shall neglect and refuse to provide for her support and education, or the support and education of her children, and any married woman who may be deserted by her husband, shall have the right, by her own name, to receive and collect her own earnings, and apply the same for her own support, and the support and education of her children, free from the control and interference of her husband, or from any person claiming to be released from the same by and through her husband. 2. Hereafter it shall be necessary to the validity of any indenture of apprenticeship executed by the father, that the mother of such child, if she be living, shall, in writing, consent to such indentures; nor shall any appointment of a general guardian of the person of a child by the father be valid, unless the mother of such child, if she be living, shall, in writing, consent to such appointment.
- ↑ See Appendix.
- ↑ Ernestine L. Rose, Francis D. Gage, Hannah Tracy Cutler, Lucy N. Coleman, Antoinette L. Brown, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Marietta Richmond, Sarah Pellet, Carrie D. Filkins, Lydia A. Jenkins, Susan B. Anthony, dividing their time and forces, held conventions in nearly every county of the State, traversing some new section each year. In 1859, Miss Anthony and Miss Brown made a successful tour of the fashionable resorts and the northern counties. All this work the State Committee assigned to its General Agent, giving her all honor and power, without providing one dollar. But Miss Anthony with rare executive ability, accomplished the work and paid all expenses.—E. C. S.
- ↑ It is pleasant to record that a few years later Mr. Beecher's vision was clear on the whole question, and he was often found on the woman's rights platform, not only speaking himself, but his sister, Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, also. On one occasion he conducted Miss Kate Field to the platform in Plymouth Church as gracefully as he ever handed a lady out to dinner, introduced her to the audience, and presided during her address. Sitting there he seemed to feel as much at his ease as if Col. Robert G. Ingersoll had been the speaker.
- ↑ As this meeting was hastily decided upon, there was no call issued; it was merely noticed in the county papers. The Saratoga Whig, August 18, 1854, says: Women's Rights.—The series of conventions that have been holding sessions in the village during the week, will close this day with a meeting for the discussion of the social, legal, and political rights of women, at which Miss Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Miss Sarah Pellet will appear. The meetings will be held at St. Nicholas Hall this afternoon at 3½ o'clock, and in the evening at 8 o'clock.
- ↑ Any one but the indomitable Susan B. Anthony would have abandoned all idea of a meeting, but, as it was advertised, she felt bound to make it a fact. This decision may seem the more remarkable in view of other facts, that Miss Anthony had but little experience as a speaker, and was fully aware of her deficiencies in that line; her forte lay in planning conventions, raising money, marshalling the forces, and smoothing the paths for others to go forward, make the speeches, and get the glory. Having listened in St. Nicholas Hall for several days to some of the finest orators in the country, it was with great trepidation that she resolved to attempt to hold such audiences as had crowded all the meetings during the week, and would no doubt continue to do so. However, she had one written speech, which she decided to divide, giving the industrial disabilities of women in the afternoon, and their political rights in the evening, supplementing each with whatever extemporaneous observations might strike her mind as she proceeded. With Mrs. Gage to speak at one session and Miss Pellet at the other, Miss Anthony rounded out both meetings to the general satisfaction. It was thus she always stood ready for every emergency; when nobody else would or could speak she did; when everybody wished to speak she was silent.—E. C. S.
- ↑ The Daily Saratogian. August 19th, said: Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage, a medium-sized, lady-like looking woman, dressed in a tasty plum-colored silk with two flounces, made the first address upon some of the defects in the marriage laws, quoting Story, Kent, and Blackstone. She closed by speaking of Mrs. Marcet, an able writer on political economy, her book much used in schools. She referred to Miss Pinckney, of South Carolina, who in nullification times, wrote powerfully on that subject. It was said that party was consolidated by the nib of a lady's pen. She was the first woman in the United States who was honored with a public funeral.
- ↑ President.—Martha C. Wright, of Auburn.
Vice-Presidents.—Rev. Samuel J. May, Syracuse; Lydia Mott, Albany; Ernestine L. Rose, New York; Antoinette L. Brown, New York; Susan B. Anthony, Rochester; Augusta A. Wiggins, Saratoga Springs.
Secretaries.—Emily Jaques, Nassau; Aaron M. Powell, Ghent; Mary L. Booth, Williamsburgh.
Finance Committee.—Susan B. Anthony, Marietta Richmond, Mary S. Anthony, Phebe H. Jones.
Business Committee.—Antoinette L. Brown, Ernestine L. Rose, T. W. Higginson, Charles F. Hovey, of Boston; Phebe Merritt, of Michigan; Hon. William Hay, of Saratoga Springs. - ↑ Now the successful editor of Harper's Bazar.
- ↑ This year Miss Anthony canvassed the State, holding conventions in fifty-four counties, organizing societies, getting signatures to petitions, and subscribers to The Una. At some of these meetings Mrs. Rose, Miss Brown, and Miss Filkins assisted by turn, but the chief part she carried through alone. She had posters for the entire State printed in Rochester, her father, brother Merritt, and Mary Luther folding and superscribing to all the postmasters and the sheriff of every county. The sheriffs, with but few exceptions, opened the Court Houses for the meetings, posted the bills, and attended to the advertising. Miss Anthony entered on this work without the pledge of a dollar. But with free meetings and collections in the afternoon, and a shilling admission in the evening, she managed to cover the entire expenses of the campaign.
- ↑
WOMEN'S RIGHTS PETITION.
To the Honorable, the Senate and Assembly of the State of New York: Whereas, the women of the State of New York are recognized as citizens by the Constitution, and yet are disfranchised on account of sex; we do respectfully demand the right of suffrage; a right which involves all other rights of citizenship, and which can not be justly withheld, when we consider the admitted principles of popular government, among which are the following: 1st. That all men are born free and equal. 2d. That government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. 3d. That taxation and representation should go together. 4th. That those held amenable to laws should have a share in framing them. We do, therefore, petition that you will take the necessary steps so to revise the Constitution of our State, as that all her citizens may enjoy equal political privileges.
- ↑ The committee were Susan B. Anthony, Ernestine L. Rose, Antoinette L. Brown, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Martha C. Wright, Lydia Mott.
- ↑ At the close of this Convention, Charles F. Hovey, as was his usual custom, planned an excursion for those who had taken part in the meetings. He invited them to take a drive to the lake, a few miles out of Saratoga, gave them a bountiful repast, and together they spent a day rich in pleasant memories. Listening day after day to the wrongs perpetrated on woman by law and Gospel of man's creation, Mr. Hovey always seemed to feel that he was in duty bound to throw what sunshine and happiness he could into the lives of women, and thus in a measure atone for the injustice of his sex, and most royally he did this whenever an opportunity offered, not only while he lived, but by bequests at his death.
- ↑ Twenty years after this Mrs. Stanton met a lady in Texas, who told her about this Saratoga Convention. She said her attention was first called to the subject of woman's rights by some tracts a friend of hers, then living in Georgia, brought home at that time, and that we could form but little idea of the intense interest with which they were read and discussed by quite a circle of ladies, who plied her aunt with innumerable questions about the Convention and the appearance and manners of the ladies who led the movement.
- ↑ It is now over forty years that the various branches of the Hutchinson family have been singing the liberal ideas of their day on the anti-slavery, temperance, and Woman's Rights platforms, and they are singing still (1881) with the infusion of some new blood in the second and third generation. Only one year ago traveling in Kansas, on a dreary night train, with no sleeping car attached, I had worried through the weary hours until three o'clock in the morning, when the cars stopped at Fort Scott. I was slowly pacing up and down the aisle, when in came Asa Hutchinson, violin in hand, and a troop of boys and girls behind him. There we stood face to face, both well on the shady side of sixty-five, our locks as white as snow, each thinking the other was too old for such hard journeys, he still singing, I still preaching "equal rights to all." "Well," said I, "Asa, this is a very unchristian hour for you to be skylarking over the prairies of Kansas." "Ah!" said he, dolorously, "this is no skylarking; we sung last night until near eleven o'clock, shook hands, and talked until twelve; arose about two, waited an hour at a cold depot, and we all feel as cross as bears." "I can sympathize with you," I replied; "I spent the hours until twelve as you did, entertaining my countrymen and women, and have been trying to rest ever since." In talking over old times until the day dawned we forgot our fatigue, and as I left the cars they gave me a parting salute with the "good time coming." How well I remember the power of the young Hutchinsons in the old mob days; four brothers and one sister standing side by side on the platform in Faneuil Hall, Boston. So hated were the Abolitionists and their doctrines, that not even Wendell Phillips or Abby Kelly could get a hearing, but when the sweet singers from the old Granite State came forward silence reigned, to be broken, however, the moment the last notes of harmony died upon their lips. E. C. S.
- ↑ Saratoga, Niagara, and Trenton Falls; Clifton, Avon, Sharon, and Ballston Springs, Lake George, etc. In making the tour in 1859, Miss Brown and Miss Anthony had some recherché out-door meetings in the groves of Clifton and Trenton that were highly praised by the press and the people, and in the long summer days most charming to themselves.
- ↑ The speakers were Samuel J. May, Ernestine L. Rose, Antoinette L. Brown, Carrie D. Filkins, Lydia A. Jenkins, Aaron M. Powell, Hon. Wm. Hay, Susan B. Anthony.
- ↑ If the intestate be a married man living, and having lived with his wife during marriage, or if the intestate be a married woman living or having lived with her husband during marriage, and shall die without lawful descendants, born or to be born of such marriage, or a prior marriage, the inheritance shall descend to the surviving husband or wife, as the case may be, during his or her natural life, whether the inheritance came to the intestate on the part of the mother or father or otherwise.
- ↑ President. — Lucy Stone. Vice-Presidents. — Lucretia Mott, of Pennsylvania; Elizabeth Jones, of Ohio; Rev. T. W. Higginson, of Massachusetts; Cornelia Moore, of New Jersey; A. Bronson Alcott, of New Hampshire; Sarah H. Hallock, of New York. Secretaries. — Martha C. Wright, of New York; Oliver Johnson, of New York; Henrietta Johnson, of New Jersey. Business Committee. — Ernestine L. Rose, Susan B. Anthony, Wendell Phillips, James Mott, Mariana Johnson, T. W. Higginson, William Green, Jr. Treasurer. — Wendell Phillips. Finance. — Susan B. Anthony.
- ↑ At the close of chapter on Indiana, p. 315.
- ↑ John C. Fremont's campaign.
- ↑ Mrs. Jessie Benton Fremont.
- ↑ 1. Resolved, That the close of a Presidential election affords a peculiarly appropriate occasion to renew the demands of woman for a consistent application of Democratic principles. 2. Resolved, That the Republican Party, appealing constantly, through its orators, to female sympathy, and using for its most popular rallying cry a female name, is peculiarly pledged by consistency, to do justice hereafter in those States where it holds control. 3. Resolved, That the Democratic Party must be utterly false to its name and professed principles, or else must extend their application to both halves of the human race. 4. Resolved, That the present uncertain and inconsistent position of woman in our community, not fully recognized either as a slave or as an equal, taxed but not represented, authorized to earn property but not free to control it, permitted to prepare papers for scientific bodies but not to read them, urged to form political opinions but not allowed to vote upon them, all marks a transitional period in human history which can not long endure. 5. Resolved, That the main power of the woman’s rights movement lies in this: that while always demanding for woman better education, better employment, and better laws, it has kept steadily in view the one cardinal demand for the right of suffrage ; in a democracy the symbol and guarantee of all other rights. 6. Resolved, That the monopoly of the elective franchise, and thereby all the powers of legislative government by man, solely on the ground of sex, is a usurpation, condemned alike by reason and common-sense, subversive of all the principles of justice, oppressive and demoralizing in its operation, and insulting to the dignity of human nature. 7. Resolved, That while the constant progress of law, education, and industry prove that our efforts for women in these respects are not wasted, we yet proclaim ourselves unsatisfied, and are only encouraged to renewed efforts, until the whole be gained.
- ↑ During the struggle to extend slavery into that free State.
- ↑ Jeannette Brown Heath, daughter of Nathan Brown, of Montgomery County, New York. She traveled with Abby Kelly at one time as a companion. Jeannette was a famous horsewoman; the young ladies of the county thought themselves well off when they could purchase a steed that she had trained for the saddle. I remember many an escapade in my youth on a full-blooded black horse from Jeannette's equery, as I lived in her neighborhood; she is now residing with two sons and one daughter in Rochester, N. Y., enjoying the needed rest after such an eventful life. — E. C. S.
- ↑ She gave $100,000 to the Observatory in Albany.
- ↑
Extracts From the Will of the Late Charles F. Hovey, Esq.
Article 16. After setting aside sufficient funds to pay all legacies and bequests herein made, I direct my said Trustees to hold all the rest and residue of my estate, real, personal and mixed, in special trust for the following purposes, namely; to pay over, out of the interest and principal of said special trust, a sum of not less than eight thousand dollars annually, until the same be all exhausted, to said Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Stephen 8S. Foster, Abby K. Foster, Parker Pillsbury, Henry C. Wright, Francis Jackson and Charles K. Whipple, and their survivors and survivor, for them to use and expend, at their discretion, without any responsibility to any one, for promotion of the Anti-Slavery cause and other reforms, such as Woman's Rights, Non-Resistance, Free Trade and Temperance, at their discretion; and I request said Wendell Phillips and his said associates to expend not Jess than eight thousand dollars annually, by the preparation and circulation of books, newspapers, employing agents, and the delivery of lectures that will, in their judgment, change public opinion, and secure the abolition of Slavery in the United States, and promote said other reforms. Believing that the chain upon four millions of slaves, with tyrants at one end and hypocrites at the other, has become the strongest bond of the Union of the States, I desire said Phillips and his associates to expend said bequest by employing such agents as believe and practice the doctrine of "No union with slaveholders, religiously or politically"; and by circulating such publications as tend to destroy every pro-slavery institution. Article 17. In case chattel slavery should be abolished in the United States before the expenditure of the said residue of my estate, as stated in said sixteenth article of this Will; then, in that case, I desire that the unexpended part of said residue be applied by said Phillips and his associates, in equal proportions, for the promotion of Non-Resistance, Woman's Rights and Free Trade; requesting that no agents be employed by them for the promotion of said causes, except such as believe it wrong to have any voluntary connection with any government of violence, and such as believe that the natural rights of men and women are equal. Whether slavery be abolished or not, I desire that a part of the said residue of my estate may be applied to the promotion of the kindred causes of Temperance, Woman's Rights, Non-Resistance and Free Trade, at the discretion of the said Phillips and his associates.
• • • • • • • • • • • • Article 22. I particularly request that no prayers be solicited from any person, and that no priest be invited to perform any ceremony whatever, over or after my body. The Priesthood are an order of men, as I believe, falsely assuming to be reverend and divine, pretending to be called of God; the great body of them in all countries have been on the side of power and oppression; the world has been too long cheated by them; the soonerthey are unmasked, the better for humanity. As I have heretofore borne my testimony against slavery, intemperance, war, tariffs and all indirect taxation, banks and all monopolies, I desire to leave on record my abhorrence of them all. The fear of being buried before I am dead is slight, nevertheless it is greater than the fear of death itself. I therefore request my executors not to bury my body until at least three days after my decease. In witness whereof, I have hereto set my hand and seal, this twenty-eighth day of March, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-nine.
charles f. hovey.Signed, sealed, published and declared by the said Testator to be his last Will and Testament, in presence of us, who, at his request, and in his presence, and in the presence of each other, have hereto subscribed our names as witnesses.
George L. Lovett.
Thomas Mack.
Wiliam W. Howe.I do prove, approve and allow the same, and order it to be recorded. Given under my hand and seal of office, the day and year above written.
Isaac Ames,Judge of Probate and Insolvency.May 30, 1859. - ↑ George William Curtis, Mrs. Eliza W. Fernham, Parker Pillsbury, Sarah Hallock, Mrs. Sidney Howard Gay, Sarah M. Grimké, Charles Lenox Remond, Lucy A. Coleman, Surah P. Remond, and the Hutchinson family, consisting of Jessie, his wife, and two children, and Abby, who sung among many other sweet ballads, "The Good Time Coming."
- ↑ Frederick Douglas, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Ernestine L. Rose, Lucretia Mott, Frances Dana Gage, Wendell Phillips, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Oliver Johnson, Susan B. Anthony, Caroline H. Dall, Lucy Stone, Antoinette Brown, Aaron M. Powell.
- ↑ Eliza Farnham was in many respects a remarkable woman. As matron of the Sing Sing prison at one time, she introduced many humane improvements in the occupation and discipline of the women under her charge. She had a piano in the corridor, and with sweet music touched the tender chords in their souls. Instead of tracts on hell-fire and an angry God, she read aloud to them from Dickens' most touching stories. In every way, assisted by Mariana Johnson and Georgiana Bruce, she treated them as women, and not as criminals.
- ↑ Wendell Phillips, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Caroline H. Dall, Caroline M. Severance, Ernestine L. Rose, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Thomas W. Higginson, Susan B. Anthony.
- ↑ Resolved, That while every newspaper in the land carries on its face the record of woman's dishonor, the women who seek to elevate their sex are bound to inquire into its causes and save from its paralysis. Resolved, That while we have no daughters too tender and pure, no sons too innocent, to escape from the influence of such tragedies as those at North Adams and Washington, the true modesty of every mother, the true dignity of every wife, should forbid her to put aside the questions they involve. Resolved, That the dishonor of single women proceeds in great measure from destitution, and the dishonor of married women as much from their own want of education and utter absence of purpose in life as from the inability of their husbands to inspire them with true respect and help them to true living: therefore, Resolved, That it is our bounden duty to open, in every possible way, new vocations to women, to raise their wages by every advisable means, and to secure to them an education which shall be less a decoration to their persons than a tool to their hands. Resolved, That while courts adjourn in honor of a man like Philip Barton Key, while the whole Bar of the District of Columbia pass resolutions in his honor, and vote to attend his funeral, as a mark of respect, while the public opinion of a whole community sustains a man who could not defend his murderous indignation by the witness of an unspotted life, it is our duty to rate public opinion as a corrupting power, and to bring up our children in the knowledge and sanction of a higher law.
- ↑
Form of Petetion
To the Senate and Assembly of the Slate of New York: The undersigned, citizens of , New York, respectfully ask that you will take measures to submit to the people an amendment of the Constitution, allowing women to vote and hold office. And that you will enact laws securing to married women the full and entire control of all property originally belonging to them, and of their earnings during marriage; and making the rights of the wife over the children the same as a husband enjoys, and the rights of a widow, as to her children, and as to the property left by her husband, the same that a husband has in the property and over the children of his deceased
- ↑ Lydia Mott, in writing to a friend, says: "I have heard but one opinion about the merits of the address and the manner of its delivery, and the press is very complimentary. It was better that one like Mrs. Stanton should speak on the occasion than two, unless the other might have been Wendell Phillips. Mr. Mayo expressed himself thoroughly satisfied; the whole effect was grand. Even old Father Woolworth stood the whole time, and very often he would nod assent at certain points. The House was packed, but so still that not one word was lost. It was worth as much to our cause as our whole Convention, though we could not have spared either."
- ↑
AN ACT
CONCERNING THE RIGHTS AND LIABILITIES OF HUSBAND AND WIFE.
Passed March 20, 1860.
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows: Section 1. The property, both real and personal, which any married woman now owns, as her sSectionole and separate property; that which comes to her by descent, devise, bequest, gift, or grant; that which she acquires by her trade, business, labor, or services, carried on or performed on her sole or separate account; that which a woman married in this State owns at the time of her marriage, and the rents, issues, and proceeds of all such property, shall notwithstanding her marriage, be and remain her sole and separate property, and may be used, collected, and invested by her in her own name, and shall not be subject to the interference or control of her husband, or liable for his debts, except such debts as may have been contracted fer the support of herself or her children, by her as his agent. §2. A married woman may bargain, sell, assign, and transfer her separate personal property, and carry on any trade or business, and perform any labor or services on her sole and separate account, and the earnings of any married woman from her trade, business, labor, or services shall be her sole and separate property, and may be used or invested by her in her own name.; § 3. Any married woman possessed of real estate as her separate property may bargain, sell, and convey such property, and enter into any contract in reference to the same; but no such conveyance or contract shall be valid without the assent, in writing, of her husband, except as hereinafter provided.: § 4. In case any married woman possessed of separate real property, as aforesaid, may desire to sell or convey the same, or to make any contract in relation thereto, and shall be unable to procure the assent of her husband as in the preceding section provided, in consequence of his refusal, absence, insanity, or other disability, such married woman may apply to the County Court in the county where she shall at the time reside, for leave to make such sale, conveyance, or contract, without the assent of her husband. § 5. Such application may be made by petition, verified by her, and setting forth the grounds of such application. If the husband be a resident of the county ind not under disability from insanity or other cause, a copy of said petition shall be served upon him, with a notice of the time when the same will be presented to the said court, at least ten days before such application. In all other cases, the County Court to which such application shall be made, shall, in its discretion, determine whether any notice shall be given, and if any, the mode and manner of giving it. § 6. If it shall satisfactorily appear to such court, upon application, that the husband of such applicant has willfully abandoned his said wife, and lives separate and apart from her, or that he is insane, or imprisoned as a convict in any state prison, or that he is an habitual drunkard, or that he is in any way disabled from making a contract, or that he refuses to give his consent without good cause therefor, then such court shall cause an order to be entered upon its records, authorizing such married woman to sell and convey her real estate, or contract in regard thereto without the assent of her husband, with the same effect as though such conveyance or contract had been made with his assent. § 7. Any married woman may, while married, sue and be sued in all matters having relation to her property, which may be her sole and separate property, or which may hereafter come to her by descent, devise, bequest, or the gift of any person except her husband, in the same manner as if she were sole. And any married woman may bring and maintain an action in her own name, for damages against any person or body corporate, for any injury to her person or character, the same as if she were sole; and the money received upon the settlement of any such action, or recovered upon a judgment, shall be her sole and separate property. § 8. No bargain or contract made by any married woman, in respect to her sole and separate property, or any property which may hereafter come to her by descent, devise, bequest, or gift of any person except her husband, and no bargain or contract entered into by any married woman in or about the carrying on of any trade or business under the statutes of this State, shall be binding upon her husband, or render him or his property in any way liable therefor. § 9. Every married woman is hereby constituted and declared to be the joint guardian of her children, with her husband, with equal powers, rights, and duties in regard to them, with the husband. § 10. At the decease of husband or wife, leaving no minor child or children, the survivor shall hold, possess, and enjoy a life estate in one-third of all the real estate of which the husband or wife died seized. § 11. At the decease of the husband or wife intestate, leaving minor child or children, the survivor shall hold, possess, and enjoy all the real estate of which the husband or wife died seized, and all the rents, issues, and profits thereof during the minority of the youngest child, and one-third thereof during his or her natural life.
- ↑ On the final passage of the bill the following Senators, as The Journal shows, voted in favor of the measure, viz: Senators Abell, Bell, Colvin, Conally, Fiero, Goss, Hillhouse, Kelly, Lapham, Sessions, Manierre, Montgomery, Munroe, P. P. Murphy, Truman, Prosser, Ramsey, Robertson, Rotch, Warner, Williams — 21.
- ↑ * President. — Martha Wright, of Auburn, New York. Vice-Presidents. — Abby Hopper Gibbons, of New York; Asa Fairbanks, of Rhode Island; Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, of New Jersey; Thomas Garrett, of Delaware; Wendell Phillips, of Massachusetts; Robert Purvis, of Pennsylvania; J. Elizabeth Jones, of Ohio; Giles B. Stebbins, of Michigan. Secretaries. — Ellen Wright and Mary L. Booth. Finance Committee. — Susan B. Anthoriy, Lucy N. Colman, and Marietta Richmond. Business Committee. — Ernestine L. Rose, A. L. B. Blackwell, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, E. Cady Stanton, Mary Grew, and Wendell Phillips.
- ↑ In the Scotch Presbyterian Church at Johnstown, N. Y., there was great excitement at one time on the question of temperance, the pastor being a very active friend to that movement. The opposition were determined to get rid of him, and called a church meeting for that purpose. To the surprise of the leading men of the congregation, the women came in force, armed with ballots, to defeat their proposed measures. When the time came to vote, according to arrangement, my mother headed the line marching up to the altar, where stood the deacon, hat in hand, to receive the ballots. As soon as he saw the women coming, he retreated behind the railing in the altar, closing the little door after him, which the women deliberately opened, and soon filled the space, completely surrounding the inspector of election, and, whichever way he turned, the ballots were thrown into the hat; and, when all had voted, my mother put her hand into the hat and stirred them up with the men's votes, so that it would be impossible to separate them. The pastor, representing the interests of temperance, had a large majority for his retention. But the men declared the election void because of the illegal voting, and, barricading the women out, with closed doors, voted their own measures the next day. Rev. Jeremiah Wood presided on the occasion, and whilst the women were contending for their rights under the very shadow of the altar, he recited various Scriptural texts on woman's sphere, to which these rebellious ones paid not the slightest attention. One dignified Scotch matron, looking him steadily in the face, indignant, at the behavior of the men, said with sternness and emphasis: "I protest against such high-handed proceedings." The result of this outbreak, was a decree by the Judicature of the Church," that the women of the congregation should have the right to vote in all business matters," which they have most judiciously done ever since. E. C. S.
- ↑ Frances D. Gage, Hannah Tracy Cutler, J. Elizabeth Jones, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Lucy N. Colman, and Susan B. Anthony.
- ↑ Mrs. Roberts and her daughters in Niagara County.
- ↑
Resolved, That inasmuch as man, in the progress of his development, found that at each advancing step new wants demanded new rights, and naturally walked out of those places, customs, creeds, and laws that in any way crippled and trammeled his freedom of thought, word, or action, it is his duty to stand aside and leave to woman the same rights—to grow up into whatever the laws of her being demand.
Resolved, That inasmuch as on woman are imposed by her Creator the duties of self-support and self-defense, and by government the responsibilities of taxation and penalties of violated law, she should be protected in her natural, inalienable rights, and secured in all the privileges of citizenship.
Resolved, That we demand a full recognition of our equal rights, civil and political—no special legislation can satisfy us—the enjoyment of a right to-day is no security that it will be continued to-morrow, so long as it is granted to us by a privileged class, and not secured to us as a sacred right.
Whereas, the essence of republican liberty is the principle that no class shall depend for its rights on the mercy or justice of any other class, therefore,
Resolved, That woman demands her right to the jury-box and the ballot, that she may have, as man has, the means of her own protection in her own hands.
Resolved, That woman, in consenting to remain in any organization or church where she has no voice in the choice of officers, trustees, or pastor—no right of protest against false doctrines or action—is wanting in a proper self-respect, in that dignity which, as a philanthropist and a Christian, she should ever manifest.
Resolved, That we from this platform instruct our legal representatives to make no more appropriations to colleges for boys exclusively. Now that we are large property holders and tax-payers, we protest against the injustice of being compelled to build and endow colleges into which we are forbidden to enter.
Resolved, That we advise women to apply to the trustees and heads of public libraries, galleries of art, and similar institutions, for employment as clerks and attendants, thus securing to themselves, when admitted, a more liberal means of support, and furnishing a stepping-stone to other occupations.
Resolved, That we return thanks to the Legislature of New York for its acts of justice to woman during the last session. But the work is not yet done. We still claim the ballot, the right of trial by a jury of our own peers, the control and custody of our persons in marriage, and an equal right to the joint earnings of the co-partnership. The geographical position and political power of New York make her example supreme; hence we feel assured that when she is right on this question, our work is done.
- ↑ 1. Resolved, That, in the language (slightly varied) of John Milton, "Those who marry intend as little to conspire their own ruin, as those who swear allegiance, and as a whole people is to an ill government, so is one man or woman to an ill marriage. If a whole people, against any authority, covenant, or statute, may, by the sovereign edict of charity, save not only their lives, but honest liberties, from unworthy bondage, as well may a married party, against any private covenant, which he or she never entered, to his or her mischief, be redeemed from unsupportable disturbances, to honest peace and just contentment." 2. Resolved, That all men are created equal, and all women, in their natural rights, are the equals of men, and endowed by their Creator with the same inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. 3. Resolved, That any constitution, compact, or covenant between human beings, that failed to produce or promote human happiness, could not, in the nature of things, be of any force or authority; and it would be not only a right, but a duty, to abolish it. 4. Resolved, That though marriage be in itself divinely founded, and is fortified as an institution by innumerable analogies in the whole kingdom of universal nature, still, a true marriage is only known by its results; and, like the fountain, if pure, will reveal only pure manifestations. Nor need it ever be said, "What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder," for man could not put it asunder; nor can he any more unite what God and nature have not joined together. 5. Resolved, That of all insulting mockeries of heavenly truth and holy law, none can be greater than that physical impotency is cause sufficient for divorce, while no amount of mental or moral or spiritual imbecility is ever to be pleaded in support of such a demand. 6. Resolved, That such a law was worthy those dark periods when marriage was held by the greatest doctors and priests of the Church to be a work of the flesh only, and 7. Resolved, That an unfortunate or ill-assorted marriage is ever a calamity, but not ever, perhaps never, a crime—and when society or government, by its laws or customs, compels its continuance, always to the grief of one of the parties, and the actual loss and damage of both, it usurps an authority never delegated to man, nor exercised by God himself. 8. Resolved, That observation and experience daily show how incompetent are men, as individuals, or as governments, to select partners in business, teachers for their children, ministers of their religion, or makers, adjudicators, or administrators of their laws; and as the same weakness and blindness must attend in the selection of matrimonial partners, the dictates of humanity and common sense alike show that the latter and most important contract should no more be perpetual than either or all of the former. 9. Resolved, That children born in these unhappy and unhallowed connections are, in the most solemn sense, of unlawful birth—the fruit of lust, but not of love—and so not of God, divinely descended, but from beneath, whence proceed all manner of evil and uncleanliness. 10. Resolved, That next to the calamity of such a birth to the child, is the misfortune of being trained in the atmosphere of a household where love is not the law, but where discord and bitterness abound; stamping their demoniac features on the moral nature, with all their odious peculiarities—thus continuing the race in a weakness and depravity that must be a sure precursor of its ruin, as a just penalty of long-violated law.
- ↑ Thurlow Weed, editor of The Albany Evening Journal, opposed the passage of the Divorce Bill before the New York Legislature in 1860.
- ↑ Resolved, That marriage is the voluntary alliance of two persons of opposite sexes into one family, and that such an alliance, with its possible incidents of children, its common interests, etc., must be, from the nature of things, as permanent as the life of the parties. Resolved, That if human law attempts to regulate marriage at all, it should aim to regulate it according to the fundamental principles of marriage; and that as the institution is inherently as continuous as the life of the parties, so all laws should look to its control and preservation as such. Resolved, That as a parent can never annul his obligations towards even a profligate child, because of the inseparable relationship of the parties, so the married partner can not annul his obligations towards the other, while both live, no matter how profligate that other's conduct may be, because of their still closer and alike permanent relationship; and, therefore, that all divorce is naturally and morally impossible, even though we should succeed in annulling all legalities. Resolved, That gross fraud and want of good faith in one of the parties contracting this alliance, such as would invalidate any other voluntary relation, are the only causes which can invalidate this, and this, too, solely upon the ground that the relation never virtually existed, and that there are, therefore, no resulting moral obligations. Resolved, however, That both men and women have a first and inviolable right to themselves, physically, mentally, and morally, and that it can never be the duty of either to surrender his personal freedom in any direction to his own hurt. Resolved, That the great duty of every human being is to secure his own highest moral development, and that he can not owe to society, or to an individual, any obligation which shall be degrading to himself. Resolved, That self-devotion to the good of another, and especially to the good of the sinful and guilty, like all disinterestedness, must redound to the highest good of its author, and that the husband or wife who thus seeks the best interests of the other, is obedient to the highest law of benevolence. Resolved, That this is a very different thing from the culpable weakness which allows itself to be immolated by the selfishness of another, to the hurt of both; and that the miserable practice, now so common among wives, of allowing themselves, their children and family interests, to be sacrificed to a degraded husband and father, is most reprehensible. Resolved, That human law is imperatively obligated to give either party ample protection to himself, to their offspring, and to all other family interests, against wrong, injustice, and usurpation on the part of the other, and that, if it be necessary to this, it should grant a legal separation; and yet, that even such separation can not invalidate any real marriage obligation. Resolved, That every married person is imperatively obligated to do his utmost thus to protect himself and all family interests against injustice and wrong, let it arise from what source it may. Resolved, That every woman is morally obligated to maintain her equality in human rights in all her relations in life, and that if she consents to her own subjugation, either in the family, Church or State, she is as guilty as the slave is in consenting to be a slave. Resolved, That a perfect union can not be expected to exist until we first have perfect units, and that every marriage of finite beings must be gradually perfected through the growth and assimilation of the parties Resolved, That the permanence and indissolubility of marriage tend more directly than anything else toward this result.
- ↑ Francis Jackson. This fund was drawn upon by several of the States. $1,993.66 was expended in the campaigns in New York, the publication of 60,000 tracts, and the appropriation of several hundred to a series of sermons by the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, delivered in Hope Chapel, New York; $1,000 was expended in the Ohio canvass of 1860, and tracts in large numbers were also sent there. Both money and tracts were contributed to the Kansas campaign of 1859. Lucy Stone had $1,500 to expend in Kansas in 1867, and thus in various ways the fund was finally expended, Lucy Stone drawing out the last $1,000 in 1871. So careful had been the management of this fund, that the accumulation of the interest had greatly increased the original sum.
- ↑ Lydia Mott was one of the quiet workers who kept all things pertaining to the woman’s rights reform in motion at the capital. Living in Albany, she planned conventions and hearings before the Legislature. She knew a large number of the members and men of influence, who all felt a profound respect for that dignified, judicious Quaker woman. Her home was not only one of the depots of the underground railroad, where slaves escaping to Canada were warmed and fed, but it was the hospitable resort for all reformers. Everything about the house was clean and orderly, and the table always bountiful, and the food appetizing. As such men as Seward and Marcy, leaders from opposite political parties, Gerrit Smith, Garrison, Phillips, Pillsbury, Remond, Foster, Douglass, representing all the reforms, met in turn at Miss Mott's dinner-table, she had the advantage of hearing popular questions discussed from every standpoint. And Miss Mott was not merely hostess at her table, but on all occasions took a leading part in the conversation. All of us who enjoyed her friendship and hospitality deeply feel her loss in that conservative city.
[* Introduced, on notice, by Mr. Ramsey; read twice, and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary; reported from said Committee for the consideration of the Senate, and committed to the Committee of the Whole].
AN ACT IN REGARD TO DIVORCES DISSOLVING THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT.
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:
Section 1. In addition to the cases in which a divorce, dissolving the marriage contract, may now be decreed by the Supreme Court, such a divorce may be decreed by said court in either of the cases following:
1. Where either party to the marriage shall, for the period of three years next preceding the application for such divorce, have willfully deserted the other party to the marriage, and neglected to perform to such party the duties imposed by their relation.
2. Where there is and shall have been for the period of one year next preceding the application for such divorce, continuous and repeated instances of cruel and inhuman treatment by either party, so as greatly to impair the health or endanger the life of the other party, thereby rendering it unsafe to live with the party guilty of such cruelty or inhumanity.
§ 2. The foregoing sections shall not apply to any person who shall not have been an actual resident of this State for the period of five years next preceding such application for such divorce.
§ 3. Specifications one, two, and three of original section thirty-eight, of article three, of title one, of chapter eight, of part two of the Revised Statutes, shall apply to these causes for divorce as they now apply to the cause of adultery.
§ 4. The other provisions of the Revised Statutes relating to the granting of divorces for adultery, and regulating the form and manner of proceedings and decrees, and the effects thereof, and the restrictions and defences to the application thereof, shall be applicable to the granting of divorces for causes hereinabove specified, and all proceedings therefor and therein, so far and in such manner as the same may be capable of such application.
§ 5. This act shall take effect immediately.
- ↑ Published at the close of Mr. Greeley's "Recollections of a Busy Life."
- ↑
Passed April 10, 1862.
Sect. 3. Any married woman, possessed of real estate as her separate property, may bargain, sell; and convey such property, and enter into any contract in reference to the same, with the like effect in all respects as if she were unmarried ; and she may in like manner enter into such covenant or covenants for title as are usual in conveyances of real estate, which covenants shall be obligatory to bind her separate property, in case the same or any of them be broken. § 2. The fourth, fifth, sixth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh sections of the said Act are hereby repealed. 7th. Any married woman may, while married, sue and be sued, in all mutters having relation to her sole and separate property, or which may hereafter come to her by descent, devise, bequest, purchase, or the gift or grant of any person, in the same manner as if she were sole; and any married woman may bring and maintain an action in her own name, for damages, against any person or body corporate, for any injury to her person or character, the same as if she were sole; and the money received upon the settlement of any such action, or recovered upon a judgment, shall be her sole and separate property. In case it shall be necessary in the prosecution or defense of any action brought by or against a married woman, to enter into any bond or undertaking, such bond or undertaking may be executed by such married woman, with the same effect in all respects as if she were sole; and in case the said bond or undertaking shall become broken or forfeited, the same may be enforced against her separate estate. 8th. No bargain or contract made by any married woman, in respect to her sole and separate property, or any property which may hereafter come to her by descent, devise, bequest, purchase, or the gift or grant of any person (except her husband), and no bargain or contract entered into by any married woman, in or about the carrying on of any trade or business, under any statute of this State, shall be binding upon her husband, or render him or his property in any way liable therefor. 5th. In an action brought or defended by any married woman in her name, her husband shall not, neither shall his property, be liable for the costs thereof, or the recovery therein. In an action brought by her for an injury to her person, character, or property, if judgment shall pass against her for costs, the court in which the action is pending shall have jurisdiction to enforce payment of such judgment out of her separate estate, though the sum recovered be less than one hundred dollars. 6th. No man shall bind his child to apprenticeship or service, or part with the control of such child or create any testamentary guardian therefor, unless the mother, if living, shall in writing signify her assent thereto. 7th. A married woman may be sued in any of the courts of this State, and whenever a judgment shall be recovered against a married woman, the same may be enforced by execution against her sole and separate estate in the same manner as if she were sole.
- ↑
The Guardianship Law, passed April 25, 1871.
6th. The Surrogate, to whom application may be made under either of the preceding sections, shall have the same power to allow and appoint guardians as is possessed by the Supreme Court, and may appoint a guardian for a minor whose father is living, upon personal service of notice of the application for such appointment upon such father, at least ten days prior thereto; and in all cases the Surrogate shall inquire into the circumstances of the minor and ascertain the amount of his personal property, and the value of the rents and profits of his real estate, and for that purpose may compel any person to appear before him and testify in relation thereto.
- ↑ See law of 1860.