Mrs. Frances Watkins Harper was the last speaker. She said that she had often known women who wished they had been born men, but had known only one man who wished he had been born a woman, and that was during the war when he was in danger of being drafted into the army. He then not only expressed the wish that he had been born a girl, but even went further, and longed to be a girl-baby at that. Mrs. Harper gave a touching description of the disabilities to which women, and especially colored women, are subjected, and looked forward to their enfranchisement as the dawn of a better era alike for men and for women. At the conclusion of Mrs. Harper's address the Convention adjourned sine die.
The anniversary of the recognition of the equal political rights of women by the Constitutional Convention of New Jersey, July 2, 1776, celebrated in 1876 by the American Woman Suffrage Association, was as bright and beautiful as the fact it commemorated. Notwithstanding the heat of the weather and the varied attractions of the Exhibition and the great procession, an intelligent audience assembled at Philadelphia in Horticultural Hall. It contained many representatives of Pennsylvania, but was mainly composed of several hundred friends of woman suffrage from all parts of the country. The meeting was called to order by Henry B. Blackwell, Secretary of the Society, who read the call and introduced Mrs. Lucy Stone as Chairman of the meeting. Mrs. Stone prefaced her address by a historical statement of the interesting facts of woman's enfranchisement and disfranchisement in New Jersey.[1]
The Hutchinson family sang with thrilling power and sweetness "The Prophecy of Woman's Future."
Mr. Blackwell said: The Philadelphia newspapers are discussing the question whether the second or the fourth day of July is the real anniversary of American Independence. I give my vote for the second of July for a reason which has not been generally named. On this day the men of New Jersey, for the first time in the world's history, organized a State upon the principles of absolute justice. For the first time, they established equal political rights for men and women. This was a greater event than the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration only announced the principle that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," but the men of New Jersey applied the principle alike to women and negroes. By as much as practice is worth more than theory and life more than raiment, by so much is the event we celebrate more glorious than any other in the annals of the Revolution. It was the prophecy and the guarantee of our national future.
Some people say that we celebrate a failure, because thirty-one years later the franchise was taken away from the women of New Jersey. But the generation which enacted woman suffrage did not repeal it. New Jersey was first settled by the Puritans and Quakers—educated and intelligent, full of the spirit of liberty. Soon after the State was organized, this population was overwhelmed by an ignorant immigration from Continental Europe. Slavery became a power. Free schools did not exist. Another body of
- ↑ These facts are given in the chapter on New Jersey, Vol. I.
