undertaking to do what never has been done in the world before, to obtain one million of names to a petition."
The leading journals vied with each other in praising the patience and prudence, the executive ability, the loyalty, the patriotism of the women of the League, and yet these were the same women, who when demanding civil and political rights, privileges, and immunities for themselves, had been uniformly denounced as "unwise," "imprudent," "fanatical," "impracticable." During the six years they held their own claims in abeyance to the slaves of the South, and labored to inspire the people with enthusiasm for the great measures of the Republican party, they were highly honored as "wise, loyal, and clear-sighted." But again when the slaves were emancipated and they asked that women should be recognized in the reconstruction as citizens of the Republic, equal before the law, all these transcendent virtues vanished like dew before the morning sun. And thus it ever is so long as woman labors to second man's endeavors and exalt his sex above her own, her virtues pass unquestioned; but when she dares to demand rights and. privileges for herself, her motives, manners, dress, personal appearance, character, are subjects for ridicule and detraction.
In March, 1863, an appeal[1] to the women of the Republic, was
- ↑ When our leading journals, orators, and brave men from the battle-field, complain that Northern women feel no enthusiasm in the war, the time has come for us to pledge ourselves loyal to freedom and our country. Thus far, there has been no united expression from the women of the North as to the policy of the war. Here and there one has spoken and written nobly. Many have vied with each other in acts of generosity and self-sacrifice for the sick and wounded in camp and hospital. But we have, as yet, no means of judging where the majority of Northern women stand.
If it be true that at this hour the women of the South arc more devoted to their cause than we are to ours, the fact lies here. They see and feel the horrors of the war; the foe is at their firesides; while we, in peace and plenty, live as heretofore. There is an inspiration, too, in a definite purpose, be it good or bad. The women of the South know what their sons are fighting for. The women of the North do not. They appreciate the blessings of slavery; we not the blessings of liberty. We have never yet realized the glory of those institutions in whose defence it is the privilege of our sons to bleed and die. They are aristocrats, with a lower class, servile and obsequious, intrenched in feudal homes. We are aristocrats under protest, who must go abroad to indulge our tastes, and enjoy in foreign despotisms the customs which the genius of a Republic condemns.
But, from the beginning of the Government, there have been women among us who, with the mother of the immortal John Quincy Adams, have lamented the inconsistencies of our theory and practice, and demanded for ALL the people the exercise of those rights that belong to every citizen of a republic. The women of a nation mold its morals, religion, and politics. The Northern treason, now threatening to betray us to our foes, is hatched at our own firesides, where traitor snobs, returned from Europe and the South, out of time and tune with independence and equality, infuse into their sous the love of caste and class, of fame and family, of wealth and ease, and baptize it all in the name of Republicanism and Christianity. Let every woman understand that this war involves the
