Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/621

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Miss Brown's Resolutions
593


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:

1. Resolved, That the men who claim to be Christian Republicans, and yet class their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters among aliens, criminals, idiots, and minors, unfit to be their coequal citizens, are guilty of absurd inconsistency and presumption; that for males to govern females, without consent asked or granted, is to perpetuate an aristocracy, utterly hostile to the principles and spirit of free institutions; and that it is time for the people of the United States and every State in the Union to put away forever that remnant of despotism and feudal oligarchy, the caste of sex.

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

———

    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.