History of Woman Suffrage/Volume 1/Appendix
APPENDIX.
CHAPTER I.
PRECEDING CAUSES.
William H. Channing, in her "Memoirs," says: "I have no hope of conveying to my readers my sense of the beauty of our relation, as it lies in the past, with brightness falling on it from Margaret's risen spirit. It would be like printing a chapter of autobiography, to describe what is so grateful in memory — its influence upon oneself."
Rev. James Freeman Clarke says: "Socrates without his scholars, would be more complete than Margaret without her friends. The insight which Margaret displayed in finding her friends; the magnetism by which she drew them toward herself; the catholic range of her intimacies; the influence which she exerted to develop the latent germ of every character; the constancy with which she clung to each when she had once given and received confidence; the delicate justice which kept every intimacy separate, and the process of transfiguration which took place when she met any one on this mountain of friendship, giving a dazzling lustre to the details of common life all these should be at least touched upon and illustrated, to give any adequate view of these relations."
Horace Greeley, in his "Recollections of a Busy Life," said: "When I first made her acquaintance she was mentally the best instructed woman in America."
When Transcendentalism rose in New England, drawing the brightest minds of the country into its faith, Margaret was accepted as its high-priestess; and when The Dial was established for the expression of those views, she was chosen its editor, aided by Ralph Waldo Emerson and George Ripley. Nothing could be more significant of the place Margaret Fuller held in the realm of thought than the fact, that in this editorship she was given precedence over the eminent philosopher and eminent scholar, her associates.
She sought to unveil the mysteries of life and enfranchise her own sex from the bondage of the past, and while still under thirty planned a series of conversations (in Boston) for women only, wherein she took a leading part. The general object of these conferences, as declared in her programme, was to supply answers to these questions:
"What are we born to do?" and "How shall we do it?" or, as has been stated, "Her three special aims in those conversations were, To pass in review the departments of thought and knowledge, and endeavor to place them in one relation to one another in our minds. To systematize thought and give a precision and clearness in which our sex are so deficient, chiefly, I think, because they have so few inducements to test and classify what they receive. To ascertain what pursuits are best suited to us, in our time and state of society, and how we may make the best use of our means of building up the life of thought upon the life of action."
These conversations continued for several successive winters, and were in reality a vindication of woman's right to think. In calling forth the opinions of her sex upon Life, Literature, Mythology, Art, Culture, and Religion, Miss Fuller was the precursor of the Woman's Rights agitation of the last thirty-three years. Her work, "The Great Lawsuit; or, Man vs. Woman, Woman vs. Man," was declared by Horace Greeley to be the loftiest and most commanding assertion made of the right of woman to be regarded and treated as an independent, intelligent, rational being, entitled to an equal voice in framing and modifying the laws she is required to obey, and in controlling and disposing of the property she has inherited or aided to acquire. In this work Margaret said: "It is the fault of Marriage and of the present relation between the sexes, that the woman belongs to the man, instead of forming a whole with him.... Woman, self-centered, would never be absorbed by any relation; it would only be an experience to her, as to Man. It is a vulgar error that love—a love—is to Woman her whole existence; she is also born for Truth and Love in their universal energy. Would she but assume her inheritance, Mary would not be the only virgin mother."
Margaret Fuller was the first woman upon the staff of The New York Tribune, a position she took in 1844, when she was but thirty-four. Mrs. Greeley having made Margaret's acquaintance, attended her conversations and accepted her leading ideas, planned to have her become a member of the Greeley family, and a writer for The Tribune; a position was therefore offered her by Mr. Greeley upon his wife's judgment. It required but a short time, however, for the great editor to feel her power, although he failed to fully comprehend her greatness. It has been declared not the least of Horace Greeley's services to the nation, that he was willing to entrust the literary criticisms of The Tribune to one whose standard of culture was so far above that of his readers or his own.
Margaret Fuller opened the way for many women, who upon the editorial staff of the great New York dailies, as literary critics and as reporters, have helped impress woman's thought upon the American mind.
Theodore Parker, who knew her well, characterized her as a critic, rather than a creator or seer. But whether we look upon her as critic, creator, or seer, she was thoroughly a woman. One of her friends wrote of her, "She was the largest woman, and not a woman who wanted to be a man." Woman everywhere, to-day, is a critic. Enthralled as she has been for ages, by both religious and political despotism, no sooner does she rouse to thought than she necessarily begins criticism. The hoary wrongs of the past still fall with heavy weight upon woman—their curse still exists. Before building society anew, she seeks to destroy the errors and injustice of the past, hence we find women critics in every department of thought.CHAPTER IV.
NEW YORK.
Seneca Falls and Rochester Conventions.
Women Out of their Latitude.
We are sorry to see that the women in several parts of this State are holding what they call "Woman's Rights Conventions," and setting forth a formidable list of those Rights in a parody upon the Declaration of American Independence.
The papers of the day contain extended notices of these Conventions. Some of them fall in with their objects and praise the meetings highly; but the majority either deprecate or ridicule both.
The women who attend these meetings, no doubt at the expense of their more appropriate duties, act as committees, write resolutions and addresses, hold much correspondence, make speeches, etc., etc. They affirm, as among their rights, that of unrestricted franchise, and assert that it is wrong to deprive them of the privilege to become legislators, lawyers, doctors, divines, etc., etc.; and they are holding Conventions and making an agitatory movement, with the object in view of revolutionizing public opinion and the laws of the land, and changing their relative position in society in such a way as to divide with the male sex the labors and responsibilities of active life in every branch of art, science, trades, and professions.
Now, it requires no argument to prove that this is all wrong. Every true hearted female will instantly feel that this is unwomanly, and that to be practically carried out, the males must change their position in society to the same extent in an opposite direction, in order to enable them to discharge an equal share of the domestic duties which now appertain to females, and which must be neglected, to a great extent, if women are allowed to exercise all the "rights" that are claimed by these Convention-holders. Society would have to be radically remodelled in order to accommodate itself to so great a change in the most vital part of the compact of the social relations of life; and the order of things established at the creation of mankind, and continued six thousand years, would be completely broken up. The organic laws of our country, and of each State, would have to be licked into new shapes, in order to admit of the introduction of the vast change that it contemplated. In a thousand other ways that might be mentioned, if we had room to make, and our readers had patience to hear them, would this sweeping reform be attended by fundamental changes in the public and private, civil and religious, moral and social relations of the sexes, of life, and of the Government.
But this change is impracticable, uncalled for, and unnecessary. If effected, it would set the world by the ears, make "confusion worse confounded," demoralize and degrade from their high sphere and noble destiny, women of all respectable and useful classes, and prove a monstrous injury to all mankind. It would be productive of no positive good, that would not be outweighed tenfold by positive evil. It would alter the relations of females without bettering their condition. Besides all, and above all, it presents no remedy for the real evils that the millions of the industrious, hard-working, and much suffering women of our country groan under and seek to redress.—Mechanic's (Albany, N. Y.) Advocate.
Insurrection among the Women.
A female Convention has just been held at Seneca Falls, N. Y., at which was adopted a "declaration of rights," setting forth, among other things, that "all men and women are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." The list of grievances which the Amazons exhibit, concludes by expressing a determination to insist that woman shall have "immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States." It is stated that they design, in spite of all misrepresentations and ridicule, to employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and National Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in their behalf. This is bolting with a vengeance.—Worcester (Mass.) Telegraph.
The Reign of Petticoats.
The women in various parts of the State have taken the field in favor of a petticoat empire, with a zeal and energy which show that their hearts are in the cause, and that they are resolved no longer to submit to the tyrannical rule of the heartless "lords of creation," but have solemnly determined to demand their "natural and inalienable right" to attend the polls, and assist in electing our Presidents, and Governors, and Members of Congress, and State Representatives, and Sheriffs, and County Clerks, and Supervisors, and Constables, etc., etc., and to unite in the general scramble for office. This is right and proper. It is but just that they should participate in the beautiful and feminine business of politics, and enjoy their proportion of the "spoils of victory." Nature never designed that they should be confined exclusively to the drudgery of raising children, and superintending the kitchens, and to the performance of the various other household duties which the cruelty of men and the customs of society have so long assigned to them. This is emphatically the age of "democratic progression," of equality and fraternization—the age when all colors and sexes, the bond and free, black and white, male and female, are, as they by right ought to be, all tending downward and upward toward the common level of equality.
The harmony of this great movement in the cause of freedom would not be perfect if women were still to be confined to petticoats, and men to breeches. There must be an "interchange" of these "commodities" to complete the system. Why should it not be so? Can not women fill an office, or cast a vote, or conduct a campaign, as judiciously and vigorously as men? And, on the other hand, can not men "nurse" the babies, or preside at the wash-tub, or boil a pot as safely and as well as women? If they can not, the evil is in that arbitrary organization of society which has excluded them from the practice of these pursuits. It is time these false notions and practices were changed, or, rather, removed, and for the political millennium foreshadowed by this petticoat movement to be ushered in. Let the women keep the ball moving, so bravely started by those who have become tired of the restraints imposed upon them by the antediluvian notions of a Paul or the tyranny of man.—Rochester (N. Y.) Daily Advertiser, Henry Montgomery, Editor.
"Progress," is the grand bubble which is now blown up to balloon bulk by the windy philosophers of the age. The women folks have just held a Convention up in New York State, and passed a sort of "bill of rights," affirming it their right to vote, to become teachers, legislators, lawyers, divines, and do all and sundries the "lords" may, and of right now do. They should have resolved at the same time, that it was obligatory also upon the "lords" aforesaid, to wash dishes, scour up, be put to the tub, handle the broom, darn stockings, patch breeches, scold the servants, dress in the latest fashion, wear trinkets, look beautiful, and be as fascinating as those blessed morsels of humanity whom God gave to preserve that rough animal man, in something like a reasonable civilization. "Progress!" Progress, forever!—Lowell (Mass.) Courier.
To us they appear extremely dull and uninteresting, and, aside from their novelty, hardly worth notice.—Rochester Advertiser.
This has been a remarkable Convention. It was composed of those holding to some one of the various isms of the day, and some, we should think, who embraced them all. The only practical good proposed—the adoption of measures for the relief and amelioration of the condition of indigent, industrious, laboring females—was almost scouted by the leading ones composing the meeting. The great effort seemed to be to bring out some new, impracticable, absurd, and ridiculous proposition, and the greater its absurdity the better. In short, it was a regular emeute of a congregation of females gathered from various quarters, who seem to be really in earnest in their aim at revolution, and who evince entire confidence that "the day of their deliverance is at hand." Verily, this is a progressive era!—Rochester Democrat.
The Women of Philadelphia.
Our Philadelphia ladies not only possess beauty, but they are celebrated for discretion, modesty, and unfeigned diffidence, as well as wit, vivacity, and good nature. Whoever heard of a Philadelphia lady setting up for a reformer, or standing out for woman's rights, or assisting to man the election grounds, raise a regiment, command a legion, or address a jury? Our ladies glow with a higher ambition. They soar to rule the hearts of their worshipers, and secure obedience by the sceptre of affection. The tenure of their power is a law of nature, not a law of man, and hence they fear no insurrection, and never experience the shock of a revolution in their dominions. But all women are not as reasonable as ours of Philadelphia. The Boston ladies contend for the rights of women. The New York girls aspire to mount the rostrum, to do all the voting, and, we suppose, all the fighting too.... Our Philadelphia girls object to fighting and holding office. They prefer the baby-jumper to the study of Coke and Lyttleton, and the ball-room to the Palo Alto battle. They object to having a George Sand for President of the United States; a Corinna for Governor; a Fanny Wright for Mayor; or a Mrs. Partington for Postmaster.... Women have enough influence over human affairs without being politicians. Is not everything managed by female influence? Mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and sweethearts manage everything. Men have nothing to do but to listen and obey to the "of course, my dear, you will, and of course, my dear, you won't." Their rule is absolute; their power unbounded. Under such a system men have no claim to rights, especially "equal rights."
A woman is nobody. A wife is everything. A pretty girl is equal to ten thousand men, and a mother is, next to God, all powerful.... The ladies of Philadelphia, therefore, under the influence of the most serious "sober second thoughts," are resolved to maintain their rights as Wives, Belles, Virgins, and Mothers, and not as Women."—Public Ledger and Daily Transcript.
Woman's Rights Convention.
This is the age of revolutions. To whatever part of the world the attention is directed, the political and social fabric is crumbling to pieces; and changes which far exceed the wildest dreams of the enthusiastic Utopians of the last generation, are now pursued with ardor and perseverance. The principal agent, however, that has hitherto taken part in these movements has been the rougher sex. It was by man the flame of liberty, now burning with such fury on the continent of Europe, was first kindled; and though it is asserted that no inconsiderable assistance was contributed by the gentler sex to the late sanguinary carnage at Paris, we are disposed to believe that such a revolting imputation proceeds from base calumniators, and is a libel upon woman.
By the intelligence, however, which we have lately received, the work of revolution is no longer confined to the Old World, nor to the masculine gender. The flag of independence has been hoisted, for the second time, on this side of the Atlantic; and a solemn league and covenant has just been entered into by a Convention of women at Seneca Falls, to "throw off the despotism under which they are groaning, and provide new guards for their future security." Little did we expect this new element to be thrown into the cauldron of agitation which is now bubbling around us with such fury. We have had one Baltimore Convention, one Philadelphia Convention, one Utica Convention, and we shall also have, in a few days, the Buffalo Convention. But we never dreamed that Lucretia Mott had convened a fifth Convention, which, if it be ratified by those whom it purposes to represent, will exercise an influence that will not only control our own Presidential elections, but the whole governmental system throughout the world.... The declaration is a most interesting document. We published it in extenso the other day. The amusing part is the preamble, where they assert their equality, and that they have certain inalienable rights, to secure which governments, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, are instituted; and that after the long train of abuses and usurpations to which they have been subjected, evincing a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government.
The declaration is, in some respects, defective. It complains of the want of the elective franchise, and that ladies are not recognized as teachers of theology, medicine, and law.... These departments, however, do not comprise the whole of the many avenues to wealth, distinction, and honor. We do not see by what principle of right the angelic creatures should claim to compete with the preacher, and refuse to enter the lists with the merchant. A lawyer's brief would not, we admit, sully the hands so much as the tarry ropes of a man-of-war; and a box of Brandreth's pills are more safely and easily prepared than the sheets of a boiler, or the flukes of an anchor; but if they must have competition in one branch, why not in another? There must be no monopoly or exclusiveness. If they will put on the inexpressibles, it will not do to select those employments only which require the least exertion and are exempt from danger. The laborious employments, however, are not the only ones which the ladies, in right of their admission to all rights and privileges, would have to undertake. It might happen that the citizen would have to doff the apron and buckle on the sword. Now, though we have the most perfect confidence in the courage and daring of Miss Lucretia Mott and several others of our lady acquaintances, we confess it would go to our hearts to see them putting on the panoply of war, and mixing in scenes like those at which, it is said, the fair sex in Paris lately took prominent part.
It is not the business, however, of the despot to decide upon the rights of his victims; nor do we undertake to define the duties of women. Their standard is now unfurled by their own hands. The Convention of Seneca Falls has appealed to the country. Miss Lucretia Mott has propounded the principles of the party. Ratification meetings will no doubt shortly be held, and if it be the general impression that this lady is a more eligible candidate for the Presidential chair than McLean or Cass, Van Buren or old "Rough and Ready," then let the Salic laws be abolished forthwith from this great Republic. We are much mistaken if Lucretia would not make a better President than some of those who have lately tenanted the White House.—New York Herald, James Gordon Bennett, Proprietor.
Mrs. Stanton's Reply.
In answer to all the newspaper objections, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in an article published in the National Reformer, Rochester, N. T., Geo. G. Cooper, Editor, Sept. 14, 1848, said as follows:
There is no danger of this question dying for want of notice. Every paper you take up has something to say about it, and just in proportion to the refinement and intelligence of the editor, has this movement been favorably noticed. But one might suppose from the articles that you find in some papers, that there were editors so ignorant as to believe that the chief object of these recent Conventions was to seat every lord at the head of a cradle, and to clothe every woman in her lord's attire. Now, neither of these points, however important they be considered by humble minds, were touched upon in the Conventions For those who do not yet understand the real objects of our recent Conventions at Rochester and Seneca Falls, I would state that we did not meet to discuss fashions, customs, or dress, the rights or duties of man, nor the propriety of the sexes changing positions, but simply our own inalienable rights, our duties, our true sphere. If God has assigned a sphere to man and one to woman, we claim the right to judge ourselves of His design in reference to "us", and we accord to man the same privilege. We think a man has quite enough in this life to find out his own individual calling, without being taxed to decide where every woman belongs; and the fact that so many men fail in the business they undertake, calls loudly for their concentrating more thought on their own faculties, capabilities, and sphere of action. We have all seen a man making a jackass of himself in the pulpit, at the bar, or in our legislative halls, when he might have shone as a general in our Mexican war, captain of a canal boat, or as a tailor on his bench. Now, is it to be wondered at that woman has some doubts about the present position assigned her being the true one, when her every-day experience shows her that man makes such fatal mistakes in regard to himself?
There is no such thing as a sphere for a sex. Every man has a different sphere, and one in which he may shine, and it is the same with every woman; and the same woman may have a different sphere at different times. The distinguished Angelina Grimké was acknowledged by all the anti-slavery host to be in her sphere, when, years ago, she went through the length and breadth of New England, telling the people of her personal experience of the horrors and abominations of the slave system, and by her eloquence and power as a public speaker, producing an effect unsurpassed by any of the highly gifted men of her day. Who dares to say that in thus using her splendid talents in speaking for the dumb, pleading the cause of the poor friendless slave, that she was out of her sphere? Angelina Grimke is now a wife and the mother of several children. We hear of her no more in public. Her sphere and her duties have changed. She deems it her first and her most sacred duty to devote all her time and talents to her household and to the education of her children. We do not say that she is not now in her sphere. The highly gifted Quakeress, Lucretia Mott, married early In life, and brought up a large family of children. All who have seen her at home agree that she was a pattern as a wife, mother, and housekeeper. No one ever fulfilled all the duties of that sphere more perfectly than did she. Her children are now settled in their own homes. Her husband and herself, having a comfortable fortune, pass much of their time in going about and doing good. Lucretia Mott has now no domestic cares. She has a talent for public speaking; her mind is of a high order; her moral perceptions remarkably clear; her religious fervor deep and intense; and who shall tell us that this divinely inspired woman is out of her sphere in her public endeavors to rouse this wicked nation to a sense of its awful guilt, to its great sins of war, slavery, injustice to woman and the laboring poor. As many inquiries are made about Lucretia Mott's husband, allow me, through your columns, to say to those who think he must be a nonentity because his wife is so distinguished, that James Mott is head and shoulders above the greater part of his sex, intellectually, morally, and physically. As a man of business, his talents are of the highest order. As an author, I refer you to his interesting book of travels, "Three Months in Great Britain." In manners he is a gentleman; in appearance, six feet high, and well-proportioned, dignified, and sensible, and in every respect worthy to be the companion of Lucretia Mott.
Mrs. C. I. H. Nichols.
Miss Barber, of "The Madison (Ga.) "Visitor, promises to "sit in the corner and be a good girl," if we will admit her to our next "editorial soirée." Indeed we will, and brother Lamb, of "The Greenfield Democrat, shall sit in the other corner and "cast sheep's (Lamb's) at her; for he copies her naughty declaration of inferiority, and adds that she "is just the editress for him"; that he "don't like Mrs. Swisshelm, Mrs. Pierson, and "that class." We will let him off with a whispered reminder that there is a Mr. Swisshelm, Mr. Pierson, and more of the same sort for "that class." He has nobody on his side but the musty, fusty old bachelors of the—, and—, and—, who, never having wanted for anything but puddings and shirts, imagine, as Mrs. Pierson says, that "a shirt and a pudding are the two poles of woman's sphere."
But we can not let Miss Barber off so lightly. She says "it is written in the volume of inspiration, as plainly as if traced in sunbeams, that man, the creature of God's own image, is superior to woman, who was afterward created to be his companion. He has a more stately form, stronger nerves and muscles, and, in nine cases out of ten, a more vigorous intellect."
In the first place, it is paying no great compliment to man to suppose that God created an inferior to be his companion. But a man, "the creature of God's own image!" And was the material for God's image all worked up in creating Adam? And if so, whose images are the men of to-day, who can't possibly lay claim to more of the original stock than mother Eve, who set up existence with an "entire rib! And what has it to do with the question of her intellectual equality, that she was created "afterward? If precedence in creation gave any advantage intellectually, the inferior animals may claim superiority of intellect over both man and woman. It would be quite as sound logic to maintain, as some do, that, as last in the series which commenced in nothing (?) and rose by gradations to image God, woman's superiority to all that preceded her in the creation, is probable …. Again, if women have less nerves and muscles, the ox and the ass have a great deal more while God and angels and disembodied spirits have none at all; so that nerves and muscles are of no more significance in this question of the intellectual equality or inequality of the sexes, than is the beard that grows on a man's face and not on a woman's. And arguments drawn from such premises always remind us of the profound logic of a gentleman we once met in a stage coach, and who is now holding a high office under Government at Washington. He professed to set great store by whiskers and mustaches he had none himself and gave as a reason why the beard should be tenderly cherished, that "it was given to man as a badge of his superiority over woman." We were young and mischievous then, and so we told him, most complacently, that the ladies would readily concede the point, and give him the full benefit of his argument and of his beard, since men shared their "badge of superiority" with goats, monkeys, and many other inferior animals. Some fifteen years have passed, but we never think of the honorable gentleman or see his name attached to official reports, without a laugh.
Miss Barber assumes woman's entire intellectual equality, in claiming that she "may mould the mind of the future statesman into whatsoever she will that "through him she can and will make the laws." And we only regret that she should speak so lightly of "depositing a little strip of paper in the ballot-box." To us it is a serious thing, that the depositing of that strip of paper gives and takes the rights, whose possession is the means of the highest intellectual and moral culture and enjoyment.—Windom County Democrat, Brattleboro, Vermont.
Mrs. Jane G. Swisshelm.
A Mistake.—Dear Brother Wright:—In printing my former letter, there was a mistake made which I intended to let pass; but as some of your cotemporaries have taken an agony over the letter, it may be as well to set it right. The last sentence reads, "Now, I move Grace be let alone, and her moral power be no longer invoked by those who have set her and all the rest of her sex, down on a stool mid-way between free negroes and laborers." I wrote it "between free negroes and baboons," and meant just what I said. Man, in his code of laws, has assigned woman a place somewhere between the rational and irrational creation. Our Constitutions provide that all "free white male citizens" of a certain age shall have a right to vote. Here Indians, negroes, and women stand side by side. Our gallant legislators excluded the "inferior races" from the elective franchise because of their inferiority; and just threw their wives and mothers into the same heap, because of their great superiority! One was excluded because they hated them, the other because they loved them so very well. Yet one sentence covers both cases. Women and negroes stand side by side in this case, and also in that of exclusion from our colleges. A negro can not be admitted into one of our colleges or seminaries of the highest class. Neither can a woman. Witness the refusal of some half dozen of your medical colleges to admit Miss Blackwell.
But free negroes can acquire property, can sell it, keep it, give it away, or divide it. A baboon has no such rights; neither has a woman in her highest state of existence here. The right to acquire and hold property is a distinguishing trait between mankind and the brute creation. Woman is deprived of that distinction; for all that she has and all she can acquire, belongs to her master. Custom says she should be fed and clothed, dandled and fondled, her freaks borne with and her graces admired; it awards the same attentions, in a little different degree, to a pet monkey. So woman has been "set down mid-way between free negroes and baboons."
Borders of Monkeydom, Sept. 28, 1848.
P. S.—There is a man who edits The Sunday Age of New York—H. P. Grattan—who appears to be in a peck of trouble about "Blue-Stocking Effusions" in general, and my letter to you in particular. He says, "We love woman. We bow down to them in adoration. But they have their proper place; but the moment they step from the pedestal upon which heaven stood them, they fail to elicit our admiration," etc. Then, to show what the pedestal is on which he adores them, he adds, "If they gave evidence of a knowledge of puddings and pies, how much happier they might be," in the sunlight of his admiration, of course. Well, freedom of conscience in this free land! The Faithful may bow to his prophet; the Persian adore his sun; the Egyptian may kneel to his crocodile; and why should not Mr. Grattan go into rhapsodies before his cook, as the dispenser of the good things of this life? The good book speaks of "natural brute beasts who make a god of their bellies," and it might be natural to transfer the homage to her who ministers to the stomach. I can see his chosen divinity now, mounted on her "pedestal," a kitchen stool, her implements before her, crowned with a pudding-pan, her sceptre a batter spoon, and Mr. Grattan down, in rapt adoration, with eyes upturned, and looks of piteous pleading! Poor fellow! Do give him his dinner! J. G. S.—Saturday Visitor, Pittsburg, Penn.
Here are some of the titles of editorials and communications in respectable papers all over the country: "Bolting among the Ladies," "Women Out of their Latitude," "Insurrection among the Women," "The Reign of Petticoats," "Office-Seeking Women," "Petticoats vs. Boots." The reader can judge, with such texts for inspiration, what the sermons must have been.
Resolutions at Rochester.
The following resolutions, which had been separately discussed, were again read. Amy Post moved their adoption by the meeting, which was carried with but two or three dissenting voices:
1. Resolved, That we petition our State Legislature for our right to the elective franchise, every year, until our prayer be granted.
2. Resolved, That it is an admitted principle of the American Republic, that the only just power of the Government is derived from the consent of the governed; and that taxation and representation are inseparable; and, therefore, woman being taxed equally with man, ought not to be deprived of an equal representation in the Government.
3. Resolved, That we deplore the apathy and indifference of woman in regard to her rights, thus restricting her to an inferior position in social, religious, and political life, and we urge her to claim an equal right to act on all subjects that interest the human family.
4. Resolved, That the assumption of law to settle estates of men who die without wills, having widows, is an insult to woman, and ought to be regarded as such by every lover of right and equality.
5. Whereas, The husband has the legal right to hire out his wife to service, collect her wages, and appropriate it to his own exclusive and independent benefit; and,
Whereas, This has contributed to establish that hideous custom, the promise of obedience in the marriage contract, effectually, though insidiously, reducing her almost to the condition of a slave, whatever freedom she may have in these respects being granted as a privilege, not as a right; therefore,
Resolved, That we will seek the overthrow of this barbarous and unrighteous law; and conjure women no longer to promise obedience in the marriage covenant.
Resolved, That the universal doctrine of the inferiority of woman has ever caused her to distrust her own powers, and paralyzed her energies, and placed her in that degraded position from which the most strenuous and unremitting effort can alone redeem her. Only by faithful perseverance in the practical exercise of those talents, so long "wrapped in a napkin and buried under the earth," she will regain her long-lost equality with man.
Resolved, That in the persevering and independent course of Miss Blackwell, who recently attended a series of medical lectures in Geneva, and has now gone to Europe to graduate as a physician, we see a harbinger of the day when woman shall stand forth "redeemed and disenthralled," and perform those important duties which are so truly within her sphere.
Resolved, That those who believe the laboring classes of women are oppressed, ought to do all in their power to raise their wages, beginning with their own household servants.
Resolved, That it is the duty of woman, whatever her complexion, to assume, as soon as possible, her true position of equality in the social circle, the Church, and the State.
Resolved, That we tender our grateful acknowledgment to the Trustees of the Unitarian Church, who have kindly opened their doors for the use of this Convention.
Resolved, That we, the friends who are interested in this cause, gratefully accept the kind offer from the Trustees of the use of Protection Hall, to hold our meetings whenever we wish.
Signatures to the Declaration adopted at Seneca Falls.
Firmly relying upon the final triumph of the Right and the True, we do this day affix our signatures to this Declaration:
| Lucretia Mott, | Hannah Plant, | |
| Harriet Cady Eaton, | Lucy Jones, | |
| Margaret Pryor, | Sarah Whitney, | |
| Elizabeth Cady Stanton, | Mary H. Hallowell, | |
| Eunice Newton Foote, | Elizabeth Conklin, | |
| Mary Ann McClintock, | Sally Pitcher, | |
| Margaret Schooley, | Mary Conklin, | |
| Martha C. Wright, | Susan Quinn, | |
| Jane C. Hunt, | Mary S. Mirror, | |
| Amy Post, | Phebe King, | |
| Catharine F. Stebbins, | Julia Ann Drake, | |
| Mary Ann Frink, | Charlotte Woodward, | |
| Lydia Mount, | Martha Underhill, | |
| Delia Matthews, | Dorothy Matthews, | |
| Catharine C. Paine, | Eunice Barker, | |
| Elizabeth W. McClintock, | Sarah R. Woods, | |
| Malvina Seymour, | Lydia Gild, | |
| Phebe Mosher, | Sarah Hoffman, | |
| Catherine Shaw, | Elizabeth Leslie, | |
| Deborah Scott, | Martha Ridley, | |
| Sarah Hallowell, | Rachel D. Bonnel, | |
| Mary McClintock, | Betsy Tewksbury, | |
| Mary Gilbert, | Rhoda Palmer, | |
| Sophronie Taylor, | Margaret Jenkins | |
| Cynthia Davis, | Cynthia Fuller, | |
| Mary Martin, | Eliza Martin, | |
| P. A. Culvert, | Maria E. Wilbur, | |
| Susan R. Doty, | Elizabeth D. Smith, | |
| Rebecca Race, | Caroline Barker, | |
| Sarah A. Mosher, | Ann Porter, | |
| Mary E. Vail, | Experience Gibbs, | |
| Lucy Spalding, | Antoinette F. Segur, | |
| Lavinia Latham, | Hannah J. Latham, | |
| Sarah Smith, | Sarah Sisson. |
The following are the names of the gentlemen present in favor of the movement:
| Richard P. Hunt, | Charles L. Hoskins, |
| Samuel D. Tilman, | Thomas McClintock, |
| Justin Williams, | Saron Phillips, |
| Elisha Foote, | Jacob Chamberlain, |
| Frederick Douglass, | Jonathan Metcalf, |
| Henry W. Seymour, | Nathan J. Milliken, |
| Henry Seymour, | S. E. Woodworth, |
| David Spalding, | Edward F. Underhill, |
| William G. Barker, | George W. Pryor, |
| Elias J. Doty, | Joel Bunker, |
| John Jones, | Isaac Van Tassel, |
| William S. Dell, | Thomas Dell, |
| James Mott, | E. W. Capron, |
| William Burroughs, | Stephen Shear, |
| Robert Smalldridge | Henry Hatley, |
| Jacob Matthews, | Azaliah Schooley. |
CHAPTER VI.
OHIO.
Salem Convention, April 19, 20, 1850.
Letter From Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Dear Mariana: How rejoiced I am to hear that the women of Ohio have called a Convention preparatory to the remodeling of their State Constitution. The remodeling of a Constitution, in the nineteenth century, speaks of progress, of greater freedom, and of more enlarged views of human rights and duties. It is fitting that, at such a time, woman, who has so long been the victim of ignorance and injustice, should at length throw off the trammels of a false education, stand upright, and with dignity and earnestness manifest a deep and serious interest in the Jaws which are to govern her and her country. It needs no argument to teach woman that she is interested in the laws which govern her. Suffering has taught her this already. It is important now that a change is proposed, that she speak, and loudly too. Having decided to petition for a redress of grievances, the question is, for what shall you first petition? For the exercise of your right to the elective franchise nothing short of this. The grant to you of this right will secure all others; and the granting of every other right, whilst this is denied, is a mockery. For instance: What is the right to property without the right to protect it? The enjoyment of that right to-day is no security that it will be continued to-morrow, so long as it is granted to us as a favor, and not claimed by us as a right. Woman must exercise her right to the elective franchise, and have her own representatives in our National councils, for two good reasons:
1st. Men can not represent us. They are so thoroughly educated into the belief that woman's nature is altogether different from their own, that they have no idea that she can be governed by the same laws of mind as themselves. So far from viewing us like themselves, they seem, from their legislation, to consider us their moral and intellectual antipodes; for whatever law they find good for themselves, they forthwith pass its opposite for us, and express the most profound astonishment if we manifest the least dissatisfaction. For example: our forefathers, full of righteous indignation, pitched King George, his authority, and his tea-chests, all into the sea, and because, forsooth, they were forced to pay taxes without being represented in the British Government. "Taxation without representation," was the text for many a hot debate in the forests of the New World, and for many an eloquent oration in the Parliament of the Old. Yet, in forming our new Government, they have taken from us the very rights which they fought and bled and, died to secure to themselves. They not only tax us, but in many cases they strip us of all we inherit, the wages we earn, the children of our love; and for such grievances we have no redress in any court of justice this side of Heaven. They tax our property to build colleges, then pass a special law prohibiting any woman to enter there. A married woman has no legal existence; she has no more absolute rights than a slave on a Southern plantation. She takes the name of her master, holds nothing, owns nothing, can bring no action in her own name; and the principle on which she and the slave is educated is the game. The slave is taught what is considered best for him to know—which is nothing; the woman is taught what is best for her to know—which is little more than nothing, man being the umpire in both cases. A woman can not follow out the impulses of her own mind in her sphere, any more than the slave can in his sphere. Civilly, socially, and religiously, she is what man chooses her to be, nothing more or less, and such is the slave. It is impossible for us to convince man that we think and feel exactly as he does; that we have the same sense of right and justice, the same love of freedom and independence. Some men regard us as devils, and some as angels; hence, one class would shut us up in a certain sphere for fear of the evil we might do, and the other for fear of the evil that might be done to us; thus, except for the sentiment of the thing, for all the good that it does us, we might as well be thought the one as the other. But we ourselves have to do with what we are and what we shall be.
2d. Men can not legislate for us. Our statute books and all past experience teach us this fact. His laws, where we are concerned, have been, without one exception, unjust, cruel, and aggressive. Having denied our identity with himself, he has no data to go upon in judging of our wants and interests. If we are alike in our mental structure, then there is no reason why we should not have a voice in making the laws which govern us; but if we are not alike, most certainly we must make laws for ourselves, for who else can understand what we need and desire? If it be admitted in this Government that all men and women are free and equal, then must we claim a place in our Senate Chamber and House of Representatives. But if, after all, it be found that even here we have classes and caste, not "Lords and Commons," but lords and women, then must we claim a lower House, where our Representatives can watch the passage of all bills affecting our own welfare, or the good of our country. Had the women of this country had a voice in the Government, think you our national escutcheon would have been stained with the guilt of aggressive warfare upon such weak, defenceless nations as the Seminoles and Mexicans? Think you we should cherish and defend, in the heart of our nation, such a wholesale system of piracy, cruelty, licentiousness, and ignorance as is our slavery? Think you that relic of barbarism, the gallows, by which the wretched murderer is sent with blood upon his soul, uncalled for, into the presence of his God, would be sustained by law? Verily, no, or I mistake woman's heart, her instinctive love of justice, and mercy, and truth!
Who questions woman's right to vote? We can show our credentials to the right of self-government; we get ours just where man got his; they are all Heaven-descended, God-given. It is our duty to assert and reassert this right, to agitate, discuss, and petition, until our political equality be fully recognized. Depend upon it, this is the point to attack, the stronghold of the fortress — the one woman will find the most difficult to take, the one man will most reluctantly give up; therefore let us encamp right under its shadow; there spend all our time, strength, and moral ammunition, year after year, with perseverance, courage, and decision. Let no sallies of wit or ridicule at our expense; no soft nonsense of woman's beauty, delicacy, and refinement; no promise of gold and silver, bank stock, road stock, or landed estate, seduce us from our position until that one stronghold totters to the ground. This done, the rest they will surrender at discretion. Then comes equality in Church and State, in the family circle, and in all our social relations.
The cause of woman is onward. For our encouragement, let us take a review of what has occurred during the last few years. Not two years since the women of New York held several Conventions. Their meetings were well attended by both men and women, and the question of woman's true position was fully and freely discussed. The proceedings of those meetings and the Declaration of Sentiments were all published and scattered far and near. Before that time, the newspapers said but little on that subject. Immediately after, there was scarcely a newspaper in the Union that did not notice these Conventions, and generally in a tone of ridicule. Now you seldom take up a paper that has not something about woman; but the tone is changing — ridicule is giving way to reason. Our papers begin to see that this is no subject for mirth, but one for serious consideration. Our literature is also assuming a different tone. The heroine of our fashionable novel is now a Being of spirit, of energy, of will, with a conscience, with high moral principle, great decision, and self-reliance.
Contrast Jane Eyre with any of Bulwer's, Scott's, or Shakespeare's heroines, and how they all sink into the shade compared with that noble creation of a woman's genius! The January number of The Westminster Review contains an article on "Woman," so liberal and radical, that I sometimes think it must have crept in there by mistake. Our fashionable lecturers, too, are now, instead of the time-worn subjects of "Catholicism," "The Crusades." "St. Bernard," and "Thomas A Becket, choosing Woman for their theme. True, they do not treat this new subject with much skill or philosophy; but enough for us that the great minds of our day are taking this direction. Mr. Dana, of Boston, lectured on this subject in Philadelphia. Lucretia Mott followed him, and ably pointed out his sophistry and errors. She spoke to a large and fashionable audience, and gave general satisfaction. Dana was too sickly and sentimental for that meridian. The women of Massachusetts, ever first in all moral movements, have sent, but a few weeks since, to their Legislature, a petition demanding their right to vote and hold office in their State. Woman seems to be preparing herself for a higher and holier destiny. That same love of liberty which burned in the hearts of our sires, is now being kindled anew in the daughters of this proud Republic. From the present state of public sentiment, we have every reason to look hopefully into the future. I see a brighter, happier day yet to come; but woman must say how soon the dawn shall be, and whether the light shall first shine in the East or the West. By her own efforts the change must come. She must carve out her future destiny with her own right hand. If she have not the energy to secure for herself her true position, neither would she have the force or stability to maintain it, if placed there by another, Farewell!
Letter From Lucretia Mott.
DEAR FRIENDS: — The call for this Convention, so numerously signed, is indeed gratifying, and gives hope of a large attendance. The letter of invitation was duly received, and I need scarcely say how gladly I would be present if in my power. Engagements in another direction, as well as the difficulty to travel at this season of the year, will prevent my availing myself of so great a privilege. You will not, however, be at a loss for speakers in your midst, for among the signers to the call are the names of many whose hearts "believe unto righteousness"; out of their abundance, therefore, the mouth will make "confession unto salvation."
The wrongs of woman have too long slumbered. They now begin to cry for redress. Let them be clearly pointed out in your Convention; and then, not ask as favor, but demand as right, that every civil and ecclesiastical obstacle be removed out of the way.
Rights are not dependent upon equality of mind; nor do we admit inferiority, leaving that question to be settled by future developments, when a fair opportunity shall be given for the equal cultivation of the intellect, and the stronger powers of the mind shall be called into action.
If, in accordance with your call, you ascertain "the bearing which the circumscribed sphere of woman has on the great political and social evils that curse and desolate the land," you will not have come together in vain.
May you, indeed, "gain strength" by your contest with "difficulty!" May the whole armor of "Right, Truth, and Reason" be yours! Then will the influence of the Convention be felt in the assembled wisdom of men which is to follow; and the good results, as well as your example, will ultimately rouse other States to action in this most important cause.
I herewith forward to you a "Discourse on Woman," which, though brought out by local circumstances, may yet contain principles of universal application.
Letter From Lucy Stone.
For the Woman's Rights Convention:
Dear Friends: — The friends of human freedom in Massachusetts rejoice that a Woman's Rights Convention is to be held in Ohio. We hail it as a sign of progress, and deem it especially fitting that such a Convention should be held now, when a State Constitution is to be formed.
It is easier, when the old is destroyed, to build the new right, than to right it after it is built.
The statute books of every State in the Union are disgraced by an article which limits the right to the elective franchise to "male citizens of twenty-one years of age and upwards," thus excluding one-half the population of the country from all political influence, subjecting woman to laws in the making of which she has neither vote nor voice. The lowest drunkard may come up from wallowing in the gutter, and, covered with filth, reel up to the ballot-box and deposit his vote, and his right to do so is not questioned. The meanest foreigner who comes to our shores, who can not speak his mother-tongue correctly, has secured for him the right of suffrage. The negro, crushed and degraded, as if he were not a brother man, made the lowest of the low, even he, in some of the States, can vote; but woman, in every State, is politically plunged in a degradation lower than his lowest depths.
Woman is taxed under laws made by those who profess to believe that taxation and representation are inseparable, while, in the use and imposition of the taxes, as in representation, she is absolutely without influence. Should she hint that the profession and practice do not agree, she is gravely told that "Women should not talk politics.? In most of the States the married woman loses, by her marriage, the control of her person and the right of property, and, if she is a mother, the right to her children also; while she secures what the town paupers have — the right to be maintained. The legal disabilities under which women labor have no end: I will not attempt to enumerate them. Let the earnest women who speak in your Convention enter into the detail of this thing, nor stop to "patch fig-leaves for the naked truth," but "before all Israel and the sun," expose the atrocities of the laws relative to women, until the ears of those who hear shall tingle. So that the men who meet in Convention to form the new Constitution for Ohio, shall, for very shame's sake, make haste to put away the last remnant of the barbarism which your statute book (in common with other States) retains in its inequality and injustice to woman. We know too well the stern reform spirit of those who have called this Woman's Rights Convention, to doubt for a moment that what can be done by you to secure equal rights for all, will be done.
Massachusetts ought to have taken the lead in the work you are now doing, but if she chooses to linger, let her young sisters of the West set her a worthy example; and if the "Pilgrim spirit is not dead," we'll pledge Massachusetts to follow her.
Southampton, April 10, 1850.
Letter from Sarah Pugh.
"Lawrencian Villa is extremely beautiful; the grounds full of shrubbery and flowers; the splendid dairy, the green-houses and conservatories—four or five of them appropriated to fruit, flowers, and rare plants in large numbers—the whole presenting great taste and skill. Mrs. Lawrence's improvements are not completed; she is extending her shrubbery and walks. She is undoubtedly one of the most skillful cultivators and florists in the country (a country abounding with them), and carries off more prizes at the horticultural exhibitions than almost any one else. I am told Mr. Lawrence is an eminent surgeon in London, and that the whole of the country place is under Mrs. Lawrence's management."—Colman's Letters from Europe.
Dear Friends:—As I finished reading this paragraph, your letter, inviting me to your Convention, to be held on the 19th inst., was received. I can not, as I gladly would, be with you. That my mite may not be wanting in aid of the cause, taking the above extract for my text, I would add as a commentary, that, according to the laws and usages of a large portion of Christendom, in the event of the death of Mr. Lawrence, Mrs. Lawrence, the one whose skill and taste has formed this elegant establishment, would be left by the will of Mr. Lawrence an income from a part of the estate, and the "privilege" of occupying "during her natural life," two or three rooms in the large mansion, but powerless as a stranger in the beautiful demesne made valuable by her industry and skill! This is not "supposing" a case, only in the application of it to Mrs. L. In this country, where, as a general rule, women take their full share of the labor and responsibility of a household, and thus by their constant assiduity contribute their full proportion to the means by which a comfortable competence is secured, do we not see the disposal of it assumed as a matter of right by the male partner of the firm?
That women contribute their full share in the building-up of an estate by labor—the only rightful mode—no one that is capable of taking an enlightened view of the prevailing condition of things will deny. True, she may not wield the axe or guide the plough, braced by the invigorating air, for hers is the wearisome task, and the one which requires the most skill to attend to the complicated machinery within doors; she may not handle the awl or the plane for "ten hours a day," with but a small tax on the intellectual, but by her perpetual oversight and unvarying labor she may make one dollar, two, or more.
This is one form of the many grievances to which women are subjected, all arising from the false assumption of their inferiority by nature and by the "ordination of Providence." May your Convention aid in dispelling this delusion from the minds of men, but chiefly from the minds of women; for to themselves, in a great degree, is their degraded position owing. Rouse them to a belief in their natural equality, and to a desire to sustain it by cultivation of their noblest powers.
There is much that crowds on me for utterance, but there will be those among you that will be able to give a fuller and fitter expression to the thoughts that cluster around this all-important question, the "Rights and Duties of Women"—her rights equal to those of men—she alone the judge of her duties.
May your Convention hasten the day when these rights shall be acknowledged as equal to those of man and independent of him, and when men and women shall equally co-operate for the good of all mankind.
To the Ohio Convention of Women, Phila., April 15, 1850.
Resolutions of the Salem (Ohio) Convention, 1850.
6th. Resolved, That in those laws which confer on man the power to control the property and person of woman, and to remove from her at will the children of her affection, we recognize only the modified code of the slave plantation; and that thus we are brought more nearly in sympathy with the suffering slave, who is despoiled of all his rights.
16th. Resolved, That we regard those women who content themselves with an idle, aimless life, as involved in the guilt as well as the suffering of their own oppression; and that we hold those who go forth into the world, in the face of the frowns and the sneers of the public, to fill larger spheres of labor, as the truest preachers of the cause of Woman's Rights.
19th. Resolved, That, as woman is not permitted to hold office, nor have any voice in the Government, she should not be compelled to pay taxes out of her scanty wages to support men who get eight dollars a day for taking the right to themselves to enact laws for her.
20th. Resolved, That we, the women of Ohio, will hereafter meet annually in Convention, to consult upon and adopt measures for the removal of the various disabilities — political, social, religious, legal, and pecuniary — to which women, as a class, are subjected, and from which results so much misery, degradation, and crime.
After the Akron Convention in 1851, The New York Sunday Mercury published a woodcut covering a whole page, representing the Convention. Every woman in coat and breeches and high-heeled boots, sitting cross-legged smoking cigars (truly manly arguments for equal political rights). There was not a Bloomer present.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
To the Woman's Convention, held at Akron, Ohio, May 25, 1851:
Dear Friends: — It would give me great pleasure to accept your invitation to attend the Convention, but as circumstances forbid my being present with you, allow me, in addressing you by letter, to touch on those points of this great question which have, of late, much occupied my thoughts. It is often said to us tauntingly, "Well, you have held Conventions, you have speechified and resolved, protested and appealed, declared and petitioned, and now, what next? Why do you not do something?" I have as often heard the reply, "We know not what to do."
Having for some years rehearsed to the unjust judge our grievances, our legal and political disabilities and social wrongs, let us glance at what we may do, at the various rights of which we may, even now, quietly take possession. True, our right to vote we can not exercise until our State Constitutions are remodelled; but we can petition our legislators every session, and plead our cause before them. We can make a manifestation by going to the polls, at each returning election, bearing banners, with inscriptions thereon of great sentiments handed down to us by our revolutionary fathers — such as, "No Taxation without Representation," "No just Government can be formed without the consent of the Governed," etc. We can refuse to pay all taxes, and, like the English dissenters, suffer our goods to be seized and sold, if need be. Such manifestations would appeal to a class of minds that now take no note of our Conventions or their proceedings; who never dream, even, that woman thinks herself defrauded of a single right. The trades and professions are all open to us; let us quietly cuter and make ourselves, if not rich and famous, at least independent and respectable. Many of them are quite proper to woman, and some peculiarly so. As merchants, postmasters, and silversmiths, teachers, preachers, and physicians, woman has already proved herself fully competent. Who so well fitted to fill the pulpits of our day as woman? All admit her superior to man in the affections,{high moral sentiments, and religious enthusiasm; and so long as our popular theology and reason are at loggerheads, we have no need of acute metaphysicians or skillful logicians in our pulpits. We want those who can make the most effective appeals to our imaginations, our hopes and fears.
Again, as physicians. How desirable are educated women in this profession! Give her knowledge commensurate with her natural qualifications, and there is no position woman could assume that would be so pre-eminently useful to her race at large, and her own sex in particular, as that of ministering angel to the sick and afflicted; an angel, not capable of sympathy merely, but armed with the power to relieve suffering and prevent disease. The science of Obstetrics is a branch of the profession which should be monopolized by woman. The fact that it is now almost wholly in the hands of the male practitioner, is an outrage on common decency that nothing but the tyrant custom can excuse. "From the earliest history down to 1568, it was practiced by women. The distinguished individual first to make the innovation on this ancient, time-sanctified custom, was no less a personage than a court prostitute, the Duchess of Villiers, a favorite mistress of Louis XIV. of France." This is a formidable evil, and productive of much immorality, misery, and crime. But now that some colleges are open to woman, and the "Female Medical College of Pennsylvania" has been established for our sex exclusively, I hope this custom may be abolished as speedily as possible, for no excuse can be found for its continuance, in the want of knowledge and skill in our own sex. It seems to me, the existence of this custom argues a much greater want of delicacy and refinement in woman, than would the practice of the profession by her in all its various branches.
But the great work before us is the education of those just coming on the stage of action. Begin with the girls of to-day, and in twenty years we can revolutionize this nation. The childhood of woman must be free and untrammeled. The girl must be allowed to romp and play, climb, skate, and swim; her clothing must be more like that of the boy—strong, loose-fitting garments, thick boots, etc., that she may be out at all times, and enter freely into all kinds of sports. Teach her to go alone, by night and day, if need be, on the lonely highway, or through the busy streets of the crowded metropolis. The manner in which all courage and self-reliance is educated out of the girl, her path portrayed with dangers and difficulties that never exist, is melancholy indeed. Better, far, suffer occasional insults or die outright, than live the life of a coward, or never move without a protector. The best protector any woman can have, one that will serve her at all times and in all places, is courage; this she must get by her own experience, and experience comes by exposure. Let the girl be thoroughly developed in body and soul, not modeled, like a piece of clay, after some artificial specimen of humanity, with a body like some plate in Godey's book of fashion, and a mind after the type of Father Gregory's pattern daughters, loaded down with the traditions, proprieties, and sentimentalities of generations of silly mothers and grandmothers, but left free to be, to grow, to feel, to think, to act. Development is one thing, that system of cramping, restraining, torturing, perverting, and mystifying, called education, is quite another. We have had women enough be fooled under the one system, pray let us try the other. The girl must early be impressed with the idea that she is to be "a hand, not a mouth"; a worker, and not a drone, in the great hive of human activity. Like the boy, she must be taught to look forward to a life of self-dependence, and early prepare herself for some trade or profession. Woman has relied heretofore too entirely for her support on the needle—that one-eyed demon of destruction that slays its thousands annually; that evil genius of our sex, which, in spite of all our devotion, will never make us healthy, wealthy, or wise.
Teach the girl it is no part of her life to cater to the prejudices of those around her. Make her independent of public sentiment, by showing her how worthless and rotten a thing it is. It is a settled axiom with me, after much examination and reflection, that public sentiment is false on every subject. Yet what a tyrant it is over us all, woman especially, whose very life is to please, whose highest ambition is to be approved. But once outrage this tyrant, place yourself beyond his jurisdiction, taste the joy of free thought and action, and how powerless is his rule over you! his sceptre lies broken at your feet; his very babblings of condemnation are sweet music in your ears; his darkening frown is sunshine to your heart, for they tell of your triumph and his discomfort. Think you, women thus educated would long remain the weak, dependent beings we now find them? By no means. Depend upon it, they would soon settle for themselves this whole question of Woman's Rights. As educated capitalists and skillful laborers, they would not be long in finding their true level in political and social life.
Resolutions of the Massilon (Ohio) Convention, 1852.
1st. Resolved, That in the proposition affirmed by the nation to be self-evidently true, that "all men are created equal," the word "men" is a general term, including the whole race, without distinction of sex.
2d. Resolved, That this equality of the sexes must extend, and does extend, to rights personal, social, legal, political, industrial, and religious, including, of course, representation in the Government, the elective franchise, free choice in occupations, and an impartial distribution of the reward of effort; and in reference to all these particulars, woman has the same right to choose her sphere of action, as man to choose his.
3d. Resolved, That since every human being has an individual sphere, and that is the largest he or she can fill, no one has the right to determine the proper sphere of another.
4th. Resolved, That the assertion of these rights for woman, equally with man, involves the doctrine that she, equally with him, should be protected in their exercise.
5th. Resolved, That we do not believe any legal or political restriction necessary to preserve the distinctive character of woman, and that in demanding for women equality of rights with their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons, we neither deny that distinctive character, nor wish them to avoid any duty, or to lay aside that feminine delicacy which legitimately belongs to them as mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters.
6th. Resolved, That to perfect the marriage union and provide for the inevitable vicissitudes of life, the individuality of both parties should be equally and distinctively recognized by the parties themselves, and by the laws of the land; and, therefore, justice and the highest regard for the interests of society require that our laws be so amended, that married women may be permitted to conduct business on their own account; to acquire, hold, invest, and dispose of property in their own separate and individual right, subject to all corresponding and appropriate obligations.
7th. Resolved, That the clause of the Constitution of the State of Ohio, which declares that "all men have the right of acquiring and possessing property," is violated by the judicial doctrine that the labor of the wife is the property of the husband.
8th. Resolved, That in the general scantiness of compensation of woman's labor, the restrictions imposed by custom and public opinion upon her choice of employments, and her opportunities of earning money, and the laws and social usages which regulate the distribution of property as between men and women, have produced a pecuniary dependence of woman upon man, widely and deeply injurious in many ways; and not the least of all in too often perverting marriage, which should be a holy relation growing out of spiritual affinities, into a mere bargain and sale — a means to woman of securing a subsistence and a home, and to man of obtaining a kitchen drudge or a parlor ornament.
9th. Resolved, That sacred and inestimable in value as are the rights which we assert for woman, their possession and exercise are not the ultimate end we aim at; for rights are not ends, but only means to ends, implying duties, and are to be demanded in order that duties may be performed.
10th. Resolved, That God, in constituting woman the mother of mankind, made her a living Providence, to produce, nourish, guard, and govern His best and noblest work from helpless infancy to adult years. Having endowed her with faculties ample, but no more than sufficient, for the performance of her great work, He requires of her, as essentially necessary to its performance, the full development of those faculties.
11th. Resolved, That we do not charge woman's deprivation of her rights upon man alone, for woman also has contributed to this result; and as both have sinned together, we call on both to repent together, that the wrong done by both may, by the united exertions of both, be undone.
Fifth National Woman's Rights Convention, Cleveland, Ohio, 1853.
1st. Resolved, That by Human Rights, we mean natural Rights, in contradistinction to conventional usages, and that because Woman is a Human being, she, therefore, has Human Rights.
2nd. Resolved, That because woman is a human being, and man is no more, she has, by virtue of her constitutional nature, equal rights with man; and that state of society must necessarily be wrong which does not, in its usages and institutions, afford equal opportunities for the enjoyment and protection of these Rights.
4th. Resolved, That the common law, by giving the husband the custody of the wife's person, does virtually place her on a level with criminals, lunatics, and fools, since these are the only classes of adult persons over which the law-makers have thought it necessary to place keepers.
5th. Resolved, That if it be true, in the language of John C. Calhoun, that "he who digs the money out of the soil, has a right to it against the universe," then the law which gives to the husband the power to use and control the earnings of the wife, makes robbery legal, and is as mean as it is unjust.
6th. Resolved, That woman will soonest free herself from the legal disabilities she now suffers, by securing the right to the elective franchise, thus becoming herself a lawmaker; and that to this end we will petition our respective State Legislatures to call conventions to amend their Constitutions, so that the right to the elective franchise shall not be limited by the word "male."
7th. Resolved, That there is neither justice nor sound policy in the present arrangements of society, restricting women to so comparatively a narrow range of employments; excluding them from those which are most lucrative; and even in those to which they are admitted, awarding them a compensation less, generally by one-half or two-thirds, than is paid to men for an equal amount of service rendered.
8th. Resolved, That, although the question of the intellectual strength and attainments of woman has nothing to do with the settlement of their rights, yet in reply to the oft-repeated inquiry, "Have women, by nature, the same force of intellect with men?" we will reply, that this inquiry can never be answered till women shall have such training as shall give their physical and intellectual powers as full opportunities for development, by being as heavily taxed and all their resources as fully called forth, as are now those of man.
Mr. Garrison, on being called for, replied that the resolutions would do for his speech to-night, and read as follows:
1st. Resolved, That the natural rights of one human being, are those of every other, in all cases equally sacred and inalienable; hence the boasted "Rights of Man," about which we hear so much, are simply the "Rights of Woman," of which we hear so little; or, in other words, they are the Rights of Humanity, neither affected by, nor dependent upon, sex or condition.
2d. Resolved, That those who deride the claims of woman to a full recognition of her civil rights and political equality, exhibit the spirit which tyrants and usurpers have displayed in all ages toward the mass of mankind; strike at the foundation of all truly free and equitable government; contend for a sexual aristocracy, which is as irrational and unjust in principle, as that of wealth and hereditary descent, and show their appreciation of liberty to be wholly one-sided and supremely selfish.
3d. Resolved, That for the men of this land to claim for themselves the elective franchise, and the right to choose their own rulers and enact their own laws, as essential to their freedom, safety, and welfare, and then to deprive all the women of all these safeguards, solely on the ground of a difference of sex, is to evince the pride of self-esteem, the meanness of usurpation, and the folly of a self-assumed superiority.
4th. Resolved, That woman, as well as man, has a right to the highest mental and physical development; to the most ample educational advantages; to the occupancy of whatever position she can reach, in Church and State, in science and art, in poetry and music, in painting and sculpture, in civil jurisprudence and political economy, and in all the varied departments of human industry, enterprise, and skill; to the elective franchise, and to a voice in the administration of justice, and the passage of laws for the general welfare.
5th. Resolved, That to pretend that the granting of these claims would tend to make woman less amiable and attractive, less regardful of her peculiar duties and obligations as wife and mother, a wanderer from her proper sphere, bringing confusion into domestic life, and strife into the public assembly, is the cant of Papal Rome as to the discordant and infidel tendencies of the right of private judgment in matters of faith; is the outcry of legitimacy as to the incapacity of the people to govern themselves; is the false allegations which selfish and timid conservatism is ever making against every new measure of reform, and has no foundation in reason, experience, fact, or philosophy.
6th. Resolved, That the consequences arising from the exclusion of woman from the possession and exercise of her natural rights and the cultivation of her mental faculties, have been calamitous to the whole human race; making her servile, dependent, unwomanly; the victim of a false gallantry on the one hand, and of tyrannous subjection on the other; obstructing her mental growth, crippling her physical development, and incapacitating her for general usefulness; and thus inflicting an injury upon all born of woman, and cultivating in man a lordly and arrogant spirit, a love of dominion, a disposition to lightly regard her comfort and happiness, all which have been indulged to a fearful extent, to the curse of his own soul and the desecration of her nature.
7th. Resolved, That so long as the most ignorant, degraded, and worthless men are freely admitted to the ballot-box, and practically acknowledged to be competent to determine who shall be in office and how the Government shall be administered, it is preposterous to pretend that women are not qualified to use the elective franchise, and that they are fit only to be recognized, politically speaking, as non compos mentis.
Rebecca M. Sanford To The Cleveland Convention.
Friends Of Reform:—Not being present at the Convention, I can but express my interest by a few lines.
The mere question of woman's civil rights is not a deep one, for it is a natural one, and closely follows her mission in this world. She was not created anything else than a helpmeet to man, and where to limit that assistance there is no rule in nature, except her physical functions; there is a limit in law, but whether the law has the right to place her where she is, is the question. It must be conceded that the law has drawn too great an inference from her ancient social attitude, and from present custom and prejudice. But has the law the right to be prejudiced—ought it not to stand pure, and noble, and magnanimous, founded on the natural rights of the human soul? The law grants woman protection; it also grants negroes, animals, and property protection in their certain spheres. It gives no more to woman.
Woman's sphere is her capability of performing her duty to herself, her family, and to society, taking self-preservation as the first law of her nature. At present she does not fully act in her sphere. The lid of the ballot-box shuts out more than one-half of her duty to herself, family, and society. The eye of the law is diseased, and woman must be made assistant occulist, to render that eye pure and single-sighted. Let not this Convention close until some way and means are decided upon to secure woman's vote at the polls. The propriety or impropriety of the same place and box and other objections, can be disposed of in a short time, as occasion requires.
This done, the monster evils of society, Intemperance, etc., can be handled with ungloved hands.
At this time, as far as custom, made potent by law, permits woman to lead her sons on in the journey of life, she keeps them pure and unspotted from the world; but where she leaves off, hell's avenues are opened, and man too often leads them through.
Allow me, as one who has been obliged to look upon our Conventions from many points of observation, and to note their effects upon the community by actual communication with that community; as one who feels identified in principle and purpose, to suggest perfect unity and but few resolutions, and those well-digested and fully acted upon. Beware of ultraisms. Give a high tone and elevation to your deliberations; bring out the true, the beautiful, the divine of your own souls, to meet the true, the grand, the divine inspirations of this agitation.
One thing else I would strongly recommend. Let no gentleman be appointed to office in the Convention, or by the Convention. You will then secure yourselves from outside coarseness, and secure to yourselves greater respect from the public at large. If you do not come to this now, you will be obliged to come to it before you receive the credit for a wisdom you justly deserve.
Sixth National Woman's Rights Convention, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1856. officers:
President—Martha C. Wright, New York.
Vice-Presidents—Ernestine L. Rose, New York; James Mott, Pennsylvania; Frances D. Gage, Missouri; Hannah Tracy Cutler, Emily Robinson, Ohio; Euphemia Cochrain, Michigan; Paulina Wright Davis, Rhode Island.
Business Committee — Lucy Stone Blackwell, Ohio; Lucretia Mott, Pennsylvania; Josephine S. Griffing, Adelaide Swift, Henry B. Blackwell, Ohio.
Secretaries — Rebecca Plumly, Pennsylvania; Wm. Henry Smith, editor of The Type of the Times.
RESOLUTIONS.
Whereas, All men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and,
Whereas, To secure these rights governments are instituted among them, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; therefore
Resolved, That the legislators of these United States are self-convicted of the grossest injustice and of inconsistency with their own admitted principles, while they refuse these rights to women.
Resolved, That taxation without representation is tyranny.
Resolved, That in accordance with an universally admitted and self-evident truth, woman should possess the elective franchise, as a basis of all legal and political rights, as the only effective protection of their interests, as a remedy against present oppression, and as a school for character.
Resolved, That the right to acquire knowledge should be limited only by the capacity of the individual; and, therefore, we deprecate, especially, that social usage, inexorable as a written statute, which excludes woman from all our best colleges, universities, schools of law, medicine, and divinity, and that we demand equal scholastic advantages for our daughters and our sons; that while only three out of the one hundred and fifty American colleges are open to women, and while every avenue to scientific and professional culture is closed against her, it is unfair to judge woman by the same intellectual standard as man, and impossible to define a limit to her capacities and talents.
Resolved, That the inadequate compensation which the labor of women now commands, is the source of inexpressible individual misery and social demoralization; that inasmuch as the law of supply and demand will always regulate the remuneration of labor, the diversity of female employments and her free access to every branch of business, are indispensable to the virtue, happiness, and well-being of society.
CHAPTER VIII.
MASSACHUSETTS.
First Worcester Convention, 1850.
Names of Persons who Signed the Call of 1850.
| MASSACHUSETTS. | ||
| Lucy Stone, | B. S. Treanor, | Dr. Seth Rogers, |
| Wm. H. Channing, | Mary M. Brooks, | Eliza F. Taft, |
| Harriot K. Hunt, | T. W. Higginson, | Dr, A. C. Taft, |
| A. Bronson Alcott, | Mary E. Higginson, | Charles K. Whipple, |
| Nathaniel Barney, | Emily Winslow, | Mary Bullard, |
| Eliza Barney, | R. Waldo Emerson, | Emma C. Goodwin, |
| Wendell Phillips, | William L. Garrison, | Abby Price, |
| Ann Greene Phillips, | Helen E. Garrison, | Thankful Southwick, |
| Adin Ballou, | Charles F. Hovey, | Eliza J. Kenney, |
| Anna Q. T. Parsons, | Sarah Earle, | Louisa M. Sewall, |
| Mary H. L. Cabot, | Abby K. Foster | Sarah Southwick. |
| RHODE ISLAND | ||
| Sarah H. Whitman, | Sarah Brown, | George Clarke, |
| Thomas Davis, | Elizabeth B. Chace, | Mary Adams, |
| Paulina W. Davis, | Mary Clarke, | George Adams. |
| Joseph A. Barker, | John L. Clarke, | |
| NEW YORK. | ||
| Gerrit Smith, | Charlotte G. Coffin, | Joseph Savage, |
| Nancy Smith, | Mary G. Taber, | L. N. Fowler, |
| Elizabeth C. Stanton, | Elizabeth 8. Miller, | Lydia Fowler, |
| Catharine Wilkinson, | Elizabeth Russell, | Sarah Smith, |
| Samuel J. May, | Stephen Smith, | Charles D. Miller. |
| Charlotte C. May, | Rosa Smith, | |
| PENNSYLVANIA. | ||
| William Elder, | Jane G. Swisshelm, | Myra Townsend, |
| Sarah Elder, | Charlotte Darlington, | Mary Grew, |
| Sarah Tyndale, | Simon Barnard, | Sarah Lewis, |
| Warner Justice, | Lucretia Mott, | Sarah Pugh, |
| Huldah Justice, | James Mott, | Hannah Darlington, |
| William Swisshelm, | W. S. Pierce, | Sarah D. Barnard. |
| MARYLAND. | ||
| Mrs. Eliza Stewart. | ||
| OHIO. | ||
| Elizabeth Wilson, | Mary Cowles, | Benjamin S. Jones, |
| Mary A. Johnson, | Maria L. Giddings, | Lucius A. Hine, |
| Oliver Johnson, | Jane Elizabeth Jones, | Sylvia Cornell. |
RESOLUTIONS.
Wendell Phillips presented, from the Business Committee, the following resolutions:
Resolved, That every human being of full age, and resident for a proper length of time on the soil of the nation, who is required to obey law, is entitled to a voice in its enactments; that every such person, whose property or labor is taxed for the support of the government, is entitled to a direct share in such government; therefore,
Resolved, That women are clearly entitled to the right of suffrage, and to be considered eligible to office; the omission to demand which on her part, is a palpable recreancy to duty, and the denial of which is a gross usurpation, on the part of man, no longer to be endured; and that every party which claims to represent the humanity, civilization, and progress of the age, is bound to inscribe on its banners, "Equality before the law, with out distinction of sex or color."
Resolved, That political rights acknowledge no sex, and, therefore, the word "male" should be stricken from every State Constitution.
Resolved, That the laws of property, as affecting married parties, demand a thorough revisal, so that all rights may be equal between them; that the wife may have, during life, an equal control over the property gained by their mutual toil and sacrifices, be heir to her husband precisely to the same extent that he is heir to her, and entitled at her death to dispose by will of the same share of the joint property as he is.
Resolved, That since the prospect of honorable and useful employment, in after life, for the faculties we are laboring to discipline, is the keenest stimulus to fidelity in the use of educational advantages, and since the best education is what we give ourselves in the struggles, employments, and discipline of life; therefore, it is impossible that woman should make full use of the instruction already accorded to her, or that her career should do justice to her faculties, until the avenues to the various civil and professional employments are thrown open to arouse her ambition and call forth all her nature.
Resolved, That every effort to educate woman, until you accord to her her rights, and arouse her conscience by the weight of her responsibilities, is futile, and a waste of labor,
Resolved, That the cause we have met to advocate — the claim for woman of all her natural and civil rights — bids us remember the two millions of slave women at the South, the most grossly wronged and foully outraged of all women; and in every effort for au improvement in our civilization, we will bear in our heart of hearts the memory of the trampled womanhood of the plantation, and omit no effort to raise it to a share in the rights we claim for ourselves. From Mildred A. Spoford.
Paulina Wright Davis.—Dear Madam:—I take the liberty of enclosing you an extract from a long epistle I have just received from Helene Marie Weber. It speaks of matter interesting to us all, and I ask of you the favor to submit it to the Convention. Miss Weber, as a literary character, stands in the front rank of essayists in France. She has labored zealously in behalf of her sex, as her numerous tracts on subjects of reform bear testimony. No writer of the present age, perhaps, has done more to exalt woman than she has by her powerful essays. My personal knowledge of Miss Weber enables me to speak confidently of her private character. It is utterly false that she is a masculine woman. Her deportment is strictly lady-like, modest, and unassuming, and her name is beyond reproach. She is a Protestant of the Lutheran order; exemplary in all her religious duties, and unaffectedly pious and benevolent.
She is, as you are doubtless aware, a practical agriculturist. The entire business of her farm is conducted by herself, and she has been eminently successful. She has proved the capacity of woman for business pursuits. Her success in this vocation is a practical argument worth a thousand theories. I find no difficulty with her because she dresses like a man. Her dress has not changed her nature. Those who censure her for abandoning the female dress, make up their judgment without proper reflection. She has violated no custom of her own country, and has merely acted according to the honest dictates of her mind—"Honi soit qui mal y pense."
Miss Weber is now about twenty-five years of age. She is a ripe scholar, and has a perfect command of the English language. I am decidedly of the opinion that her visit among us will do a vast deal of good to our cause, and we ought to give her a hearty welcome when she comes. I can assure our most rigid friends that they will all be reconciled to her attire on five minutes' acquaintance....
Extract from a Letter of H. M. Weber.
.... Circumstances place it out of my power to visit America during the present season.... The newspapers, both of England and America, have done me great injustice. While they have described my apparel with the minute accuracy of professional tailors, they have seen fit to charge me with a disposition to undervalue the female sex, and to identify myself with the other. Such calumnies are annoying to me. I have never wished to be an Iphis—never for a moment affected to be anything but a woman. I do not think any one ever mistook me for a man, unless it may have been some stranger who slightly glanced at me while passing along the street or the highway. I adopted male attire as a measure of convenience in my business, and not through any wish to appear eccentric or to pass for one of the male sex; and it has ever been my rule to dress with the least possible ostentation consistent with due neatness. I have never had cause to regret my adoption of male attire, and never expect to return to a female toilette. I am fully aware, however, that my dress will probably prejudice the great body of our friends in America against me, while present impressions on that subject exist; and it was with the view of allaying this feeling that I wished to address the assembly at Worcester.
By this means I think I could satisfy any liberal-minded person, of either sex, that there is no moral or political principle involved in this question, and that a woman may, if she like, dress in male habiliments without injury to herself or others.... Those who suppose that woman can be "the political, social, pecuniary, religious equal of man" without conforming to his dress, deceive themselves, and mislead others who have no minds of their own. While the superiority of the male dress for all purposes of business and recreation is conceded, it is absurd to argue that we should not avail ourselves of its advantages.
There are no well-founded objections to women dressing, as we term it, en cavalier. The only two I ever heard are these: "To do so is contrary to law, both human and divine," and, "The male dress is outre and less graceful than our own." These objections may be answered in a few words. The human statutes on this subject should be repealed, as they surely will be in due time, or be regarded as they now are in European States — as dead letters, The practice is not contrary to divine law. The alleged prohibition, as contained in the fifth book of Moses, had reference to a religious custom of the Amorites, and was limited in its application to the children of Israel, who had by Divine command dispossessed that pagan nation of their territory, and destroyed their temples of idolatrous worship.
The context will show two other prohibitions on this subject. In the 11th and 12th verses of the same chapter (Deut. xxii.) it is forbidden to "wear garments of divers sorts, as of woolen and linen together," and to wear fringes on the vesture. These prohibitions are all of the same character, and had an obvious reference to the ceremonies used by the pagans in their worship of idols. If one of these prohibitions be binding upon nations of the present age, the others are not less so. To the second objection, it may be said that beauty and grace in matters of dress are determined by no rules, and if the fashion of men's clothes be awkward it can easily be improved.
Women who prefer the gown should, of course, consult their own pleasure by continuing to wear it; while those whose preference is a male dress, ought not to be blamed for adopting it. I close this homily by recording my prediction, that in ten years male attire will be generally worn by the women of most civilized countries, and that it will precede the consummation of many great measures which are deemed to be of paramount importance. I hope to visit America next year. Thanks to the invention of steam, a voyage across the ocean is now a mere bagatelle. I have not much of the spirit of travel remaining. My agricultural pursuits confine me at home nearly the whole year, but my captivity is a delightful one.
William Henry Channing, from the Business Committee, suggested a plan for organization, and the principles which should govern the movement for establishing woman's co-sovereignty with man, and reported the following:
Resolved, That as women alone can learn by experience and prove by works, what is their rightful sphere of duty, we recommend, as next steps, that they should demand and secure:
1st. Education in primary and high-schools, universities, medical, legal, and theological institutions, as comprehensive and exact as their abilities prompt them to seek and their capabilities fit them to receive.
2d. Partnership in the labors, gains, risks, and remunerations of productive industry, with such limits only as are assigned by taste, intuitive judgment, or their measure of spiritual and physical vigor, as tested by experiment.
3d. A co-equal share in the formation and administration of law, Municipal, State, and National, through legislative assemblies, courts, and executive offices.
4th. Such unions as may become the guardians of pure morals and honorable manners — a high court of appeal in cases of outrage which can not be, and are not touched by civil or ecclesiastical organizations, as at present existing, and a medium for expressing the highest views of justice dictated by human conscience and sanctioned by holy inspiration.
Resolved, That a Central Committee be appointed by this Convention, empowered to enlarge its numbers, on (1st) Education; (2d) Industrial Avocations; (3d) Civil and Political Rights and Regulations; (4th) Social Relations; who shall correspond with each other and with the Central Committee, hold meetings in their respective neighborhoods, gather statistics, facts, and incidents to illustrate, raise funds for the movement; and through the press, tracts, books, and the living agent, guide public opinion upward and onward in the grand social reform of establishing woman's co-sovereignty with man.
Resolved, That the Central Committee be authorized to call Conventions at such times and places as they see fit, and that. they hold office until the next Annual Convention.
To carry out the plan suggested by Mr. Channing, the following Committees were appointed:
MEMBERS OF COMMITTEES.
Central Committee. — Paulina W. Davis, Chairman; Sarah H. Earle, Secretary; Wendell Phillips, Treasurer; Mary A. W. Johnson, Wm. H. Channing, Gerrit Smith, John G. Forman, Martha H. Mowry, Lucy Stone, Abby K. Foster, Pliny Sexton, J. Elizabeth Jones, William Elder, William Stedman, Emily Robinson, Abby H. Price, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucretia Mott, Ernestine L. Rose, Elizabeth C. Stanton, Angelina Grimké Weld, Antoinette L. Brown, Harriot K. Hunt, Emma R. Coe, Clarina I. H. Nichols, Charles C. Burleigh, Adin Ballou, Sarah H. Hallock, Joseph A. Dugdale.
Educational Committee. — Eliza Barney, Chairman; Marian Blackwell, Secretary; Elizabeth C. Stanton, Eliza Taft, Clarina I. H. Nichols, Calvin Fairbanks, Hannah Darlington, Ann Eliza Brown, Elizabeth Oakes Smith.
Industrial Committee. — Elizabeth Blackwell, Harriot K. Hunt, Benjamin S. Treanor, Ebenezer D. Draper, Phebe Goodwin, Alice Jackson, Maria Waring, Sarah L. Miller.
Committee on Civil and Political Functions.— Ernestine L. Rose, Lucy Stone, Wendell Phillips, Hannah Stickney, Sarah Hallock, Abby K. Foster, Charles C. Burleigh, Elizabeth C. Stanton, William L. Garrison.
Committee on Social Relations. — Lucretia Mott, William H. Channing, Anna Q. T. Parsons, William H. Fish, Rebecca Plumley, Elizabeth B. Chace, John G. Forman, Henry Fish, Mary Grew.
Committee on Publication. — Wm. Henry Channing, Chairman; Ernestine L. Rose, Charlotte Fowler Wells.
MEMBERS WORCESTER CONVENTION, 1850.
Massachusetts. — James N. Buffam, W. A. Alcott, A. H. Johnson, W. H. Harrington, E. B. Briggs, A. C. Lackey, Ora Ober, Olive W. Hastings, Thomas Provan, Rebecca Provan, A. W. Thayer, M. M. Munyan, W. S. Johnson, G. W. Benson, Mrs. C. M. Carter, H. S. Brigham, E. A. Welsh, Mrs. J. H. Moore, Margaret S. Merritt, Martha Willard, A. N. Lamb, Mrs, Chaplin, N. B. Hill, K. H. Parsons, C. Jillson, L. Wait, Chas. Bigham, J. T. Partridge, Eliza C. Clapp, Daniel Steward, Sophia Foord, E. A. Clarke, E. H. Taft, Mrs. E. J. Henshaw, Edward Southwick, E. A. Merrick, Mrs. C. Merrick, Lewis Ford, J. T. Everett, Loring Moody, Sojouyner Truth, E. Jane Alden, Elizabeth Dayton, Lima H. Ober, Thomas Hill, Elizabeth Frail, Eli Belknap, M. M. Frail, Valentine Belknap, Mary R. Metcalf, R. H. Ober, D. A. Mundy, Dr. S. Rogers, Elizabeth Earle, G. D. Williams, Dorothy Whiting, Emily Whiting Abigail Morgan, Susan Fuller, Thomas Earle, Allen C. Earle, Martha B. Earle, Anne H. Southwick, Joseph A. Howland, Adeline H. Howland, O. T. Harris, Julia T. Harris, John M. Spear, E. D. Draper, D. R. P. Hewitt, L. G. Wilkins, J. H. Binney, Mary Adams, Anna Goulding, E. A. Parrington, Mrs. Parrington, Harriot K. Hunt, Chas. F. Hovey, Mrs. J. G. Hodgden, C. M. Shaw, Ophelia D. Hill, Mrs. P. Allen, Anna Q. T. Parsons, C. D. McLane, W. H. Channing, Wendell Phillips, Abby K. Foster, S. S. Foster, Effingham L. Capron, Frances H. Drake, E. M. Dodge, Eliza Barney, Lydia Barney, Wm. D. Cady, C. S. Dow, E. Goddard, Mary F. Gilbert, Josiah Henshaw, Andrew Wellington, Louisa Gleason, Paulina Gerry, Lucy Stone, Mary Abbot, Anna E, Fish, C. G. Munyan, Maria L. Southwick, F. H. Underwood, J. B. Willard, Perry Joslin, Elizabeth Johnson, Seneth Smith, Marian Hill, Wm. Coe, E. T. Smith, S. Aldrich, M. A. Maynard, S. P. R., J. M. Cummings, Nancy Fay, M. Jane Davis, D. R. Crandell, E. M. Burleigh, Sarah Chafee, Adeline Perry, Lydia E. Chase, J. A. Fuller, Sarah Prentice, Emily Prentice, H. N. Fairbanks, Mrs. A. Crowl, Dwight Tracy, J. S. Perry, Isaac Norcross, Julia A. McIntyre, Emily Sanford, H. M. Sanford, C. D. M. Lane, Elizabeth Firth, S. C. Sargeant, C. A. K. Ball, M. A. Thompson, Lucinda Safford, S. E. Hall, S. D. Holmes, Z. W. Harlow, N. B. Spooner, Ignatius Sargent, A. B. Humphrey, M. R. Hadwen, J. H. Shaw, Olive Darling, M.A. Walden, Mrs. Chickery, Mrs. F. A. Pierce, C. M. Trenor, R. C. Capron, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Emily Loveland, Mrs. S. Worcester, Phebe Worcester, Adeline Worcester, Joanna R. Ballou, Abby H. Price, B. Willard, T. Pool, M. B. Kent, E. H. Knowlton, G. Valentine, A. Prince, Lydia Wilmarth, J. G. Warren, Mrs. E. A. Stowell, Martin Stowell, Mrs. E. Stamp, C. M. Barbour, Annie E. Ruggles, T. B. Elliot, A. H. Metcalf, Eliza J. Kenney, Rev. J. G. Forman, Andrew Stone, M.D., Samuel May, Jr., Sarah R. May, M. S. Firth, A. P. B. Rawson, Nathaniel Barney, Sarah H. Earle, F. C. Johnson.
Maine. — Anna R. Blake, Elen M. Prescott, Oliver Dennett, Lydia Dennett.
New York. — Frederick Douglass, Lydia Mott, S. H. Hallock, Ernestine L. Rose, Joseph Carpenter, Pliny Sexton, J. C. Hathaway, Lucy N. Colman, Antoinette L. Brown, Edgar Hicks.
New Hampshire. — P. B. Cogswell, Julia Worcester, Parker Pillsbury, Sarah Pillsbury, Asa Foster.
Vermont. — Clarina I. Howard Nichols. Mrs. A. E. Brown.
Pennsylvania. — Hannah M. Darlington, Sarah Tyndale, Emma Parker, Lucretia Mott, S. L. Miller, Isaac L. Miller, Alice Jackson, Janette Jackson, Anna R. Cox, Jacob Pierce, Lewis E. Capen, Olive W. Hastings, Rebecca Plumley, S. L. Hastings, Phebe Goodwin.
Connecticut. — C. C. Burleigh, Martha Smith, Lucius Holmes, Benj. Segur, Buel Picket, Asa Cutler, Lucy T. Dike, C. M. Collins, Anna Cornell, S. Monroe, Anna E. Price, M. C. Monroe, Gertrude R. Burleigh.
Rhode Island. — Betsy F. Lawton, Paulina W. Davis, Cynthia P. Bliss, Rebecca C. Capron, Martha Mowry, Mary Eddy, Daniel Mitchell, G. Davis, Susan Sisson, Dr. S. Mowry, Elizabeth B. Chase, Rebecca B. Spring, Susan R. Harris, A. Barnes.
Iowa. — Silas Smith.
Ohio. — Mariana Johnson, Oliver Johnson, Ellen Blackwell, Marian Blackwell, Diana W. Ballou.
California. — Mrs. Mary G. Wright.
Asenath Fuller, Denney M. F. Walker, Eunice D. F. Pierce, Elijah Houghton, L. H. Ober, A. Wyman, Silence Bigelow, Adeline S. Greene, Josephine Reglar, Anna T. Draper, E. J. Alden, Sophia Taft, Alice H. Easton, Calvin Fairbanks, D. H. Knowlton, E. W. K. Thompson, Caroline Farnum, Mary R. Hubbard.
Second Worcester Convention, 1851.
resolutions.
1. Resolved, That while we would not undervalue other methods, the Right of Suffrage for Women is, in our opinion, the corner-stone of this enterprise, since we do not seek to protect woman, but rather to place her in a position to protect herself.
2. Resolved, That it will be woman's fault if, the ballot once in her hand, all the barbarous, demoralizing, and unequal laws relating to marriage and property, do not speedily vanish from the statute-book; and while we acknowledge that the hope of a share in the higher professions and profitable employments of society is one of the strongest motives to intellectual culture, we know, also, that an interest in political questions is an equally powerful stimulus; and we see, beside, that we do our best to insure education to an individual when we put the ballot into his hands; it being so clearly the interest of the community that one upon whose decisions depend its welfare and safety, should both have free access to the best means of education, and be urged to make use of them.
3. Resolved, That we do not feel called upon to assert or establish the equality of the sexes, in an intellectual or any other point of view. It is enough for our argument that natural and political justice, and the axioms of English and American liberty, alike determine that rights and burdens — taxation and representation — should be co-extensive; hence women, as individual citizens, liable to punishment for acts which the laws call criminal, or to be taxed in their labor and property for the support of government, have a self-evident and indisputable right, identically the same right that men have, to a direct voice in the enactment of those laws and the formation of that government.
4. Resolved, That the democrat, or reformer, who denies suffrage to women, is a democrat only because he was not born a noble, and one of those levelers who are willing to level only down to themselves.
5. Resolved, That while political and natural justice accords civil equality to woman; while great thinkers of every age, from Plato to Condorcet and Mill, have supported their claim; while voluntary associations, religious and secular, have been organized on this basis, still, it is a favorite argument against it, that no political community or nation ever existed in which women have not been in a state of political inferiority. But, in reply, we remind our opponents that the same fact has been alleged, with equal truth, in favor of slavery; has been urged against freedom of industry, freedom of conscience, and the freedom of the press; none of these liberties having been thought compatible with a well-ordered state, until they had proved their possibility by springing into existence as facts. Besides, there is no difficulty in understanding why the subjection of woman has been a uniform custom, when we recollect that we are just emerging from the ages in which might has been always right.
6. Resolved, That, so far from denying the overwhelming social and civil influence of women, we are fully aware of its vast extent; aware, with Demosthenes, that "measures which the statesman has meditated a whole year may be overturned in a day by a woman"; and for this very reason we proclaim it the very highest expediency to endow her with full civil rights, since only then will she exercise this mighty influence under a just sense of her duty and responsibility; the history of all ages bearing witness, that the only safe course for nations is to add open responsibility wherever there already exists unobserved power.
7. Resolved, That we deny the right of any portion of the species to decide for another portion, or of any individual to decide for another individual what is and what is not their "proper sphere"; that the proper sphere for all human beings is the largest and highest to which they are able to attain; what this is, can not be ascertained without complete liberty of choice; woman, therefore, ought to choose for herself what sphere she will fill, what education she will seek, and what employment she will follow, and not be held bound to accept, in submission, the rights, the education, and the sphere which man thinks proper to allow her.
8. Resolved, That we hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and we charge that man with gross dishonesty or ignorance, who shall contend that "men," in the memorable document from which we quote, does not stand for the human race; that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," are the "inalienable rights" of half only of the human species; and that, by "the governed," whose consent is affirmed to be the only source of just power, is meant that half of mankind only who, in relation to the other, have hitherto assumed the character of governors.
9. Resolved, That we see no weight in the argument that it is necessary to exclude women from civil life because domestic cares and political engagements are incompatible; since we do not see the fact to be so in the case of men; and because, if the incompatibility be real, it will take care of itself, neither men nor women needing any law to exclude them from an occupation when they have undertaken another incompatible with it. Second, we see nothing in the assertion that women, themselves, do not desire a change, since we assert that superstitious fears and dread of losing men's regard, smother all frank expression on this point; and further, if it be their real wish to avoid civil life, laws to keep them out of it are absurd, no legislator having ever yet thought it necessary to compel people by law to follow their own inclination.
10. Resolved, That it is as absurd to deny all women their civil rights because the cares of household and family take up all the time of some, as it would be to exclude the whole male sex from Congress, because some men are sailors, or soldiers in active service or merchants, whose business requires all their attention and energies.
Paulina Wright Davis. — My Dear Friend: — Bless you for The Una, and for sending me a copy. I am pleased with its appearance and with the heartiness of your correspondents. Would you find room for some of my lucubrations? If so, I will drive my quill a little for you some of these evenings. Perhaps I might utter something readable.
I do not ask you to send me The Una, for the dollar must go with the request, and the dollar has yet to be earned by quill-work, a task quite as hard as was work when a child at the quill-wheel, winding yarn from the reel.
Drop me a line if you would like my assistance as a correspondent, and what I can do, I will cheerfully.
Petition Of Harriot K. Hunt To The Massachusetts Constitutional Convention.
To the Constitutional Convention now sitting in Boston:
Your petitioner respectfully prays your honorable body to insert into the Constitution a clause securing to females paying town, county, and States taxes upon property held in their own right, and who have no husbands or other guardians to represent and act for them, the same right of voting possessed by male tax-paying citizens; or, should your honorable body not deem such females capable of exercising the right of suffrage with due discretion, at least excuse them from the paying of taxes, in the appropriation of which they have no voice, thus carrying out the great principle on which the American Revolution was based — that taxation and representation ought to go together. All of which your petitioner will ever pray.
Paulina Wright Davis
Died August 24, 1876, after two years of great suffering. A large circle of friends gathered at her elegant residence near Providence, Rhode Island, to pay their last tributes of friendship and respect. The chief speaker on the occasion was, at her request, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She left her noble husband, Hon. Thomas Davis, and two adopted daughters, to mourn her loss. It was a soft, balmy day, just such as our friend would have chosen, when she was laid in her last resting-place. Dr. and Mrs. Channing, Theodore Tilton, and Joaquin Miller, were among those who followed in the funeral cortége,
CHAPTER IX.
INDIANA.
Dublin Convention, October, 1851.
resolutions.
Resolved, That all laws and customs having for their perpetuation the only plea that they are time-honored, which in any way infringe on woman's equal rights, cramp her energies, cripple her efforts, or place her before the eyes of her family or the world as an inferior, are wrong, and should be immediately abolished.
Resolved, That the avenues to gain, in all their varieties, should be as freely opened to woman as they now are to man.
Resolved, That the rising generation of boys and girls should be educated together in the same schools and colleges, and receive the same kind and degree of education.
Resolved, That woman should receive for equal labor, equal pay with man.
Resolved, That 1s the qualification for citizenship in this country is based on capacity and morality, and as the sexes in their mental condition are equal, therefore woman should enjoy the same rights of citizenship with man.
An association was organized and a constitution was adopted, to which the following names were appended: Amanda M. Way, Minerva Maulsby, Jane Morrow, Agnes Cook, Rebecca Shreves, Rebecca Williams, Wilson D. Schooley, Samuel Mitchell, Elda Ann Smith, Dr. O. P. Baer, Mrs. O. P. Baer, Hannah Birdsall, Melissa J. Diggs, Hannah Hiatt, Jas. P. Way, B. F. Diggs, Mary B. Birdsall, Fanny Hiatt, Henry Hiatt, Thomas Birdsall, Elizabeth Hoover, Elijah C. Wright, Elizabeth Wright, A. W. Pruyne, Dr. Mary F. Thomas, Dr. Owen Thomas, Emi B. Swank, Joel P. Davis, Lydia P. Davis, Thursey A. Way, Rebecca A. C. Murray.
CHAPTER X.
pennsylvania.
Saxe, Dana, and Grace Greenwood.
Mr. Saxe not long since, in a poem, satirized literary women very keenly, upon which Grace Greenwood wrote a severe criticism on his volume, which was published in The Evening Post. Mr. Saxe, after seeing the criticism, wrote a note to the editor of the Post, in which he makes an exception in favor of Grace. This calls forth another letter from her, from which we make the following extract:
Gentlemen: — ... . At the time of my writing, I was feeling peculiarly sensitive in regard to my womanly, as well as literary position. The grandpapaish lectures of Mr. Dana had troubled and discouraged me. I said, "If so speak and write our poets, surely the age is on the backward line of march." I had become impatient and indignant for my sex, thus lectured to, preached at, and satirized eternally. I had grown weary of hearing woman told that her sole business here, the highest, worthiest aims of her existence were to be loving, lovable, feminine, to win thus a lover and a lord whom she might glorify abroad and make comfortable at home.
We have had enough of this. Man is not best qualified to mark out woman's life-path. He knows, indeed, what he desires her to be, but he does not yet understand all that God and nature require of her. Woman should not be made up of love alone, the other attributes of her being should not be dwarfed that this may have a large, unnatural growth. Hers should be a distinct individuality, an independent moral existence — or, at least, the dependence should be mutual. Woman can best judge of woman, her wants, capacities, aspirations, and powers. She can best speak to her on the life of the affections, on the loves of her heart, on the peculiar joys and sorrows of her lot. She can best teach her to be true to herself, to her high nature, to her brave spirit; and then, indeed, shall she be constant in her love and faithful to her duties, all, even to the most humble. Woman can strengthen woman for the life of self-sacrifice, of devotion, of ministration, of much endurance which lies before her.
A woman of intellect and right feeling would never dream of pointing out the weak and unfilial Desdemona as an example to her sex in this age; would never dare to hold up as "our destined end and aim," a one love, however romantic and poetical, which might be so selfishly sought and so unscrupulously secured.
Thank Heaven, woman herself is awaking to a perception of the causes which have hitherto impeded her free and perfect development, which have shut her out from the large experiences, the wealth and fullness of the life to which she was called. She is beginning to feel, and to cast off the bonds which oppress her — many of them, indeed, self-imposed, and many gilded and rarely wrought, covered with flowers and delicate tissues, but none the less bonds — bonds upon the speech, upon the spirit, upon the life.
There surely is a great truth involved in this question of "Woman's Rights," and agitated as it may be, with wisdom and mildness, or with rashness and the bold, high spirit which shocks and startles at the first, good will come out of it eventually, great good, and the women of the next age will be the stronger and the freer, aye, and the happier, for the few brave spirits who stood up fearlessly for unpopular truth against the world.
I know that I expose myself to the charge of being unfeminine in feeling, of ultraism. Well, better that than conservatism, though conservatism were safer and more respectable. Senselessness is always safety, and a mummy is a thoroughly respectable personage,
But to return to Mr. Saxe. Our poet satirized rather keenly literary women, as a class, in the poem on which I remarked, but afterwards, in his communication to the Post, most politely intimates that he excepts me as one of the "women of real talent." But I will not be excepted. I stand in the ranks, liable to all the penalties of the calling—exposed to the hot shot of satire and the stinging arrows of ridicule. I will not be received as an exception, where full justice is not done to the class to which I belong.
Suppose, now, that I should write a poem to deliver before some "Woman's Rights Convention" or "Ladies' Literary Association," on "The Times," which should come down sharp and heavy on the literary men of the day, for usurping the delicate employ by right and nature the peculiar province of woman, "the weaker vessel"; for neglecting their shops, their fields, their counting-houses, and their interesting families, and wasting their precious time in writing love-tales, "doleful ditties," and "distressful strains," for the magazines; for flirting with the muse, while their wives are wanting shoes, or perpetrating puns, while their children cry for "buns"! Suppose that, pointing every line with wit, I should hold them up to contempt as careless, improvident lovers of pleasure, given to self-indulgence; taking their Helicon more than dashed with gin; seekers after notoriety, eccentric in their habits and unmanly in all their tastes! After this, should I very handsomely make an exception in favor of Mr. Saxe, would he feel complimented?
As far as I have known literary women, and as far as they have been made known to us in literary biography, the unwomanly and unamiable, the poor wives, and daughters, and sisters, have been the rare exceptions. I mean not alone "women of genius," but would include those of mere talent, of mediocre talent even, devoted to letters as a profession, and who, by their estimable characters and blameless lives, are an honor to their calling.
I believe that for one woman whom the pursuits of literature, the ambition of authorship, and the love of fame have rendered unfit for home-life, a thousand have been made thoroughly undomestic by poor social strivings, the follies of fashion, and the intoxicating distinction which mere personal beauty confers.
Westchester Convention, June 2 and 3, 1852.
Letter From Mary Mott.
Sisters:—You have called another Convention, and all who are the friends of equal rights are invited to attend and participate in the deliberations. The invitation will probably meet the eye of thousands who would gladly encourage you by their presence, did circumstances permit them to do so. Your aim is the moral, physical, and intellectual elevation of woman, and through her to benefit the whole human race. Can a Convention be called for a nobler purpose? Have men ever aimed so high? They have had Conventions without stint; old men and young men, Whigs, Democrats, Abolitionists, and Slaveholders, all have had Conventions; but how few have aimed at anything higher than political power for themselves and party. We have looked upon their contests without personal interest in their result. Some benefits might come to our husbands and brothers, but none to us. We are permitted to talk about liberty, but we may not enjoy it. We may water the tree with our tears, while our husbands pluck and enjoy the fruit. Of what advantage is it to us to live in a Republic? Our social position is no better than it was in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Men have made great progress since that day; from being subjects they have become sovereigns, ruling, as she professed to rule, by divine right. True, many of these sovereigns have not a foot of ground, and but one subject, a wife; but then he has absolute control over that one. Yes, they have made progress; but for that progress they are much indebted to men who, being in possession of power, were only anxious to retain and extend it. The Great Charter was extorted from King John by the barons in order to consolidate their power; they attended to the interests of the common people (who then were in a state of villanage) just so far as they could clearly see would be for their own interest, and no further. The world is much indebted to those sturdy barons; they did more good than they ever thought of doing. There were germs in that charter that have borne excellent fruit since that day.
Error delights in obscurity; surrounded with clouds and darkness, it is comparatively secure; but let these clouds be scattered, let the light of reason fall upon it, and it is dangerous no longer. Any act that causes men to think, is so far an advantage to society. The ideas will not be lost. When King James I talked and wrote upon the doctrine of the divine right of kings, he little thought it would result in the beheading of his son Charles, and the expulsion of his son James from the throne. Shrouded in mystery, it was approached with reverence, and seldom critically examined, until he lifted the veil and invited others to behold its beauty. What had been a mystery was a mystery no longer. He forgot what others remembered—that it might have different aspects for the sovereign and subject. It was judged unworthy of national homage, but very desirable as a household god. And men who thought Paul was in the dark when he wrote, "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever resisteth the powers resisteth the ordinance of God; and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation;" the men, I say, who could not and would not receive such doctrine from Paul, found him worthy of all praise when he said, "wives, obey your husbands." After a while England proposed taxing the Colonies. One party held that protection gave them the right of taxation. The other said the British Constitution gave the Government no power to tax, unless the persons were represented in Parliament. They declared their resolution to pay no taxes without representation. Much was said about the rights of man. And when at last a three-penny tax was laid upon tea, the men, being brimful of patriotism, cared nothing for the tax; it was the principle they cared for, and they would fight for their principles. How very sincere they were, let the millions of wives answer, whose very existence is ignored in law. There was one thing women gained by that contest; they gained a clearer knowledge of their rights, a better understanding of their wrongs, which, according to Blackstone, are a deprivation of rights. A knowledge of these has produced a strong desire to seek a remedy. Hence the call for a Woman's Convention. We must expect some difference of opinion as to the extent of the reforms proposed; but none who have carefully examined the subject will see reason to doubt that our rights run parallel with the rights of man. That being granted, we may then inquire into their expediency. Many things we have a right to do which are inexpedient; but it is for us to say what rights we will waive and what we will enjoy.
We claim that the professions should be open to woman, believing she can preach as acceptably, study the law as thoroughly, and practice medicine as successfully, as man. The business of a clerk seems to us to be peculiarly feminine, and we claim the right to choose any trade or business for which we have strength and capacity. If it is true that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, we would respectfully ask by what authority men legislate for us, and who gave them that authority? If the power is a just one, from what source did they derive it? Certainly not from the consent of the governed. We presume neither men nor women care for the privilege of voting, except as a means of securing the enjoyment of the rights with which they have been endowed by their Creator, and for the protection of which "Governments were first instituted among men." The rights of women have been long in abeyance, but no lapse of time can deprive her of them; they are not transferable. She does not ask the law to confer upon her new rights. She only asks to have her just rights recognized and protected. A glance at the present position of women will show that the law does not effect this. It places minors, idiots, insane persons, and married women in the same category. Man takes all that the wife has to his own use, and such robberies are so common that they excite no indignation in the breasts of his fellow-men. He can spend all she has at the gaming-table, and who can hinder him? He can spend it in dissipation, while his deceived wife is suffering at home for the necessaries of life. The law gives him the property, and with that he can usually find tools to work out his designs. The law interposes no barriers between him and his victim. If a married woman had equal protection with her husband, she would be ambitious to acquire property by her own industry, and the habit of industry and forethought thus acquired, would be found valuable in the marriage relation, and she would not be compelled to enter matrimony as a house of refuge. But we are told that marriage is a contract, voluntarily entered into by competent parties, and by this contract the rights of the woman are transferred to the man. But marriage is not a contract, it is an union instituted by God Himself, anterior to any contract whatever. Man was not pronounced good until woman was created, and God said, Let us make man in our image after our own likeness, and let them have dominion. But some one may meet us here with the question, did He not say to the woman, after the fall, "Thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee?" Yes, the Bible says so; and in the next chapter we are told that Adam and Eve had two sons, the eldest called Cain, the youngest Abel; and God said to Cain when speaking of Abel, "Unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." You see they are the very words used to Eve; therefore, if dominion was taken from the woman and given to the man, it was taken from all younger brothers and given to the first-born. If marriage be a contract, why is it not governed by the same rules that govern other contracts? A consideration is necessary to the existence of a contract. In marriage, the man offers love for love and hand for hand, but what is the consideration for those personal rights of which he dispossesses her? If a contract, why is there no remedy for its violation either in law or equity, as is the case with other contracts? The bridegroom says in the marriage service, "With all my worldly goods I thee endow." Those who framed that impressive service no doubt considered it but just that he who received all by the courtesy of England, should endow her as liberally, and they thus reminded every bridegroom of his duty, even before the altar; and what honest man will say he should not keep his word?
Letter from Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.
Mrs. Darlington.—Dear Madam:—I thank you cordially for your very kind invitation, and would willingly attend your Convention did not my duties in New York prevent my leaving the city.
The Convention could not choose a more important subject than education for discussion, and great good will be done if public attention is roused to the imperfection of our present system, in which the physical nature and the duties of life are equally neglected. I believe that the chief source of the false position of women is, the inefficiency of women themselves—the deplorable fact that they are so often careless mothers, weak wives, poor housekeepers, ignorant nurses, and frivolous human beings. If they would perform with strength and wisdom the duties which lie immediately around them, every sphere of life would soon be open to them. They might be priests, physicians, rulers, welcome everywhere, for all restrictive laws and foolish customs would speedily disappear before the spiritual power of strong, good women.
In order to develop such women, our present method of educating girls, which is an injurious waste of time, must be entirely remodeled, and I shall look forward with great interest to any plan of action that may be suggested by your Convention.
With hearty sympathy in every aspiration, and the right hand of fellowship to every conscientious worker, believe me,
Letter from Paulina Wright Davis.
It is also often asked if women want more rights, why do they not take them? Let us see how that may be. Does a woman desire a thorough medical education, where is the institution fully and property endowed to receive her? Two women, it is true, have made their way through two separate colleges, and when they had honorably won their diplomas, and even the voice of scandal could not cast a shadow upon them, they were publicly insulted by having the doors of those institutions closed upon all others of their sex. If she desires a course of thorough disciplinary study for any purpose whatsoever, where is she to find means or the institution to receive her? The academic shades are forbidden ground to her, while their massive doors turn with no harsh grating sound at the magic word of man for man. If we did not feel too deeply the injustice of this, we might comfort ourselves with the idea that our brains are so superior that we do not need the same amount of study and discipline as the other sex....
When Socrates was advocating the equal education of women for governmental offices, he was met by ridicule. His words in consideration of it are full of wisdom. Says the sage, "The man who laughs at women going through their exercises, reaps the unripe fruit of a ridiculous wisdom, and seems not rightly to know at what he laughs, or why he does it, for that ever was and will be deemed a noble saying, that the profitable is beautiful and the hurtful base."....
The harmony, unity, and oneness of the race, can not be secured while there is class legislation; while one half of humanity is cramped within a narrow sphere and governed by arbitrary power. This unrecognized half desires these factitious restraints removed, and to be placed side by side with the other, simply that there may be full, free, and equal development in the future. The moral life which urges this claim is the God within us. The force which opposes it, it matters not whence it comes, "is of the earth, earthy."....
Letter from Wm. H. and Mary Johnson.
The influence of woman as a wife and a mother has been so often portrayed, that it would be difficult to find a moral writer who has not indulged in the fruitful theme, but we can not omit the occasion of quoting the sentiments of the eloquent Wm. Wirt on this subject: "Is not our conduct toward this sex ill-advised and foolish in relation to our own happiness? Is it not to reject a boon which Providence kindly offers to us, and which, were we to embrace and cultivate it with skill, would refine and enlarge the sources of our own enjoyment, and purify, raise, and ennoble our own character beyond the power of human calculation?
"As the companion of a man of sense and virtue, as an instrument and partner of his earthly happiness, what is the most beautiful woman in the world without a mind—without a cultivated mind, capable of an animated correspondence with his own, and of reciprocating all his thoughts and feelings?
Is not our conduct on this head ungenerous and ignoble to the other sex? Do we not deprive them of the brightest and most angelic portion of their character, degrade them from the rank of intelligence which they are formed to hold; and instead of making them the partners of our souls, attempt to debase them into mere objects of sense?
"Is not our conduct mean and dastardly? Does it not look as if we were afraid that, with equal opportunities, they would rival us in intelligence, and examine and refute our pretended superiority?"
We congratulate the Convention on the selection of the place for holding their deliberations. In no part of the State could a community be found better qualified to appreciate the objects of such a meeting, or the means for their accomplishment. Chester has undoubtedly taken the lead of all her sister counties in educational movements, as may be witnessed in her numerous flourishing schools for both sexes, which are attracting, as to a common focus, pupils from all parts of the country. And it affords us unmingled pleasure to observe the numerous female schools that have been established in this quarter, and the patronage that has been extended toward them. These are sure indications of an improved public sentiment in relation to the development of the female mind.
But there are other indications of advancement in this particular still more encouraging, because they exhibit fruits of the most ennobling powers of the human understanding. We allude to those benevolent associations particularly for promoting temperance, in which the females of Chester County have borne such a conspicuous and effective part. The reflection is, indeed, animating, that at a period when almost all kindred associations in the State, among the other sex, had languished, and intemperance seemed likely once more to overwhelm the land with more desolating evils than had ever yet been known, there was yet to be found in Chester County an association of females who were nobly bearing the standard of total abstinence, and by their well-timed labors giving evidence that there was yet vitality in the cause! Thus we have seen not only in this, but in other fields of moral reform, that the progress has uniformly been commensurate have seen not only in this, but in other fields of moral reform, that the progress has uniformly been commensurate[Pg 833] with the intellectual and moral culture of the female mind. Let the sex, then, give their influence in promoting a system of education that will, if carried out, secure to every woman in the land the blessings of thorough practical instruction. May the deliberations of the Convention tend to the promotion of this most desirable object. With such developments as must result from the more general diffusion of knowledge, not only rights, but duties that have been hidden by the suggestions of ignorance and bigotry will be brought to light, and the sex will realize the noble sentiment of one of New England's gifted sons, that
"New occasions teach new duties—Time makes ancient good uncouth,
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth!"
Desiring that your discussions may be guided by that spirit which has heretofore characterized them, we remain your friends,
Resolutions Of The Westchester Convention, 1852.
Resolved, That every party which claims to represent the humanity, the civilization, or the progress of the age, is bound to inscribe on its banner, "Equality before the laws, without distinction of sex."
Resolved, That the science of government is not necessarily connected with the violence and intrigue which are now frequently practised by party politicians, neither does the exercise of the elective franchise, or the proper discharge of governmental duties necessarily involve the sacrifice of the refinement or sensibilities of true womanhood.
Resolved, That in demanding for women that equal station among their brethren to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, we do not urge the claim in the spirit of an adverse policy, or with any idea of separate advantages, or in any apprehension of conflicting interests between the sexes.
Resolved, That while we regret the antagonism into which we are necessarily brought to some of the laws, customs, and monopolies of society, we have cause to rejoice that the exposure of the great wrongs of woman has been so promptly met by a kind spirit, and a disposition to redress these wrongs, to open avenues for her elevation, and to co-operate for her entire enfranchisement.
Resolved, That the greatest and most varied development of the human mind, and the widest sphere of usefulness, can be obtained only by the highest intellectual culture of the whole people, and that all obstructions should be removed which tend to prevent women from entering, as freely as men, upon the study of the physical, mental, and moral sciences.
Resolved, That we can not appreciate the justice or generosity of the laws which require women to pay taxes, and thus enable legislators richly to endow colleges and universities for their own sex, from which the female sex is entirely excluded.
Resolved, That the growing liberality of legislation and judicial construction, in regard to the property rights of married women, affords gratifying evidence of the equity of our demands and of their progress in public sentiment.
Resolved, That the disposition of property by law as affecting married parties, ought to be the same for the husband and the wife, "that she should have, during life, an equal control over the property gained by their mutual toil and sacrifices; and be heir to her husband, precisely to the extent that he is heir to her."
Resolved, That the mother being as much the natural guardian of the child as the father, ought so to be recognized in law, and if it is justly the province of the court to appoint guardians for minors, want of qualification in the surviving parent should be the required condition of the appointment.
Resolved, That the inequality of the remuneration paid for woman's labor compared with that of man, is unjust and degrading, for so long as custom awards to her smaller compensation for services of equal value, she will be held in a state of dependence, not by any order of nature, but by an arbitrary rule of man.
Resolved, That the distinctive traits of female character, like its distinct physical organism, having its foundation in nature, the widest range of thought and action, and the highest cultivation and development of all its varied powers, will only make more apparent those sensibilities and graces which are considered its peculiar charm.
Resolved, That in claiming for woman all the rights of human beings we are but asserting her humanity, leaving the differences actually existing in the male and female constitutions to take care of themselves, these differences furnishing no reason for subjecting one sex to the other.
Resolved, That a Committee be appointed to prepare and circulate petitions, asking of our Legislature such a change in the Constitution and laws of this State, as shall extend to woman the privilege of the elective franchise, and equality in the division and inheritance of property.
Resolved, That said Committee be instructed to collect information upon the rights acknowledged and privileges guaranteed to women by other States and Governments, publishing it in such way as by them shall be deemed best for promoting political and legal equality between the sexes.
Resolved, That H. M. Darlington, P. E. Gibbons, Hannah Wright, Mary Ann Fulton, Sarah E. Miller, Lea Pusey, and Ruth Dugdale be the Committee.
Oliver Johnson offered a resolution expressing the satisfaction afforded to the members of the Convention by the presence and labors of those friends who had come from their distant homes in other States to be with us on this occasion. It was unanimously adopted.
The Convention adjourned sine die.
Fourth National W. R. Convention, Philadelphia, October 18, 19, 20, 1854.
resolutions.
Resolved, That we congratulate the true friends of woman upon the rapid progress which her cause has made during the year past, in spite of the hostility of the bad and the prejudices of the good.
Resolved, That woman's aspiration is to be the only limit of woman's destiny.
Resolved, That so long as woman is debarred from an equal education, restricted in her employments, denied the right of independent property if married, and denied in all cases the right of controlling the legislation which she is nevertheless bound to obey, so long must the woman's rights agitation be continued.
Resolved, That in perfect confidence that what we desire will one day be accomplished, we commit the cause of woman to God and to humanity.
Resolved, That in demanding the educational rights of woman, we do not deny the natural distinctions of sex, but only wish to develop them fully and harmoniously.
Resolved, That in demanding the industrial rights of woman, we only claim that she should have "a fair day's wages for a fair day's work," which is, however, impossible while she is restricted to few ill-paid avocations, and unable (if married) to control her own earnings.
Resolved, That in demanding the political rights of woman, we simply assert the fundamental principle of democracy—that taxation and representation should go together, and that, if this principle is denied, all our institutions must fall with it.
Resolved, That our present democracy is an absurdity, since it deprives woman even of the political power which is allowed to her in Europe, and abolishes all other aristocracy only to establish a new aristocracy of sex, which includes all men and excludes all women.
Resolved, That it is because we recognize the beauty and sacredness of the family, that we demand for woman an equal position there, instead of her losing, as now, the control of her own property, the custody of her own children, and, finally, her own legal existence, under laws which have all been pronounced by jurists "a disgrace to a heathen nation."
Resolved, That we urge it upon the women of every American State: First, to petition the legislatures for universal suffrage and a reform in the rights of property; second, to use their utmost efforts to improve female education; third, to open as rapidly as possible new channels for female industry.
Mrs. Tracy Cutler made an address upon the objects of the movement.
CHAPTER XI.
Lucretia Mott's Funeral.
Lucretia Mott died at her quiet home, "Roadside," near Philadelphia, Nov. 11, 1880. Notwithstanding the Associated Press dispatch said, "Funeral strictly private by special request," the attendance on that occasion was large. The Philadelphia Times thus describes it: The funeral of Lucretia Mott, attended by an immense concourse of people, at her residence as well as in the cemetery, was an impressive scene not soon to be forgotten. A handsome stone house, standing in tastefully laid out and carefully kept grounds studded with forest trees, just west of the old fork road in Cheltenham township, Montgomery County, was the home of Lucretia Mott. On this occasion the road and grounds were densely packed with carriages, people on horseback and on foot, coming from many miles about to pay their last tributes of respect to this noble woman.
The funeral was conducted according to the custom of the Society of Friends, and was in all its appointments simple and unostentatious, in keeping with the character of the noble woman who had passed away. No set forms were observed.
The body, in her usual Quaker costume, lay in a room adjoining the library, in a plain, unpolished walnut coffin, padded and lined with some white material, but without any ornamentation whatever. There were no flowers and no uttered demonstrations of grief, but a profound sadness seemed to pervade the house, and for half an hour no sound was heard in the densely thronged rooms save the muffled tread over the thick carpets of fresh arrivals and the whispered directions of a servant, pointing the way to the room where a last look at the dead might be had.
At half-past 12 o'clock Deborah Wharton arose from her seat in the parlor, and made a brief but touching address on the life and character of the deceased. She began by a quotation from the Bible: "This day a mighty prince has fallen in Israel." She then contrasted the condition in life of Lucretia Mott and that of a prince, and showed how she had accomplished more for humanity than the most powerful princes, but without noise and tumult and the shedding of blood.
Dr. Furness paid a beautiful tribute to the dead. He quoted the beatitudes from the the fifth chapter of Matthew, and applied them to her. "We are accustomed," he said, "to speak of the dead as having gone to their reward, but Lucretia Mott had her reward here, and she shall have it hereafter a hundred fold." Dr. Furness closed with an eloquent prayer that the example of the beautiful life ended upon earth might not be lost upon the living.
Phœbe Couzins paid a tender and loving tribute that touched every heart. Then loving hands took up the little coffin—it looked hardly larger than a child's—and bore it to the gravelled drive in front of the house. The route was down York road to Fairhill, the Friends' cemetery, at Germantown Avenue and Cambria Street, in this city, which was reached about three o'clock. Here several hundred people were already gathered to witness the interment. Fairhill is a little cemetery, about the size of a city square. It is mound-shaped, sloping up from all sides to the center. It is filled with trees and shrubbery, but does not contain a single monument, the graves being simply marked with little marble blocks, which do not rise more than six inches above the ground. In the highest part of the grounds was the open grave, by the side of the husband, James Mott, who was buried about twelve years ago. Above the grave spread the branches of an aspen tree, and near it is a weeping willow. While thousands stood about, the coffin was reverently, solemnly, and silently lowered. The grave was then filled up, the friends turned away, and slowly the cemetery was deserted.
Memorial services were held the same day and hour by Liberal Germans in Milwaukie, Wisconsin, and by the City Suffrage Association in New York. Dr. Clement Lozier, president of the society, presided. Charles G. Ames, of Philadelphia; Frederick Hinckley, of Providence; Robert Collyer, of New York, gave memorial sermons in their respective churches.
CHAPTER XIII.
mrs. stanton's reminiscences.
Elizabeth C. Stanton.—My Dear Friend:—The "Woman's Rights Movement" has deeply interested your generous heart, and you have ever been ready to serve it with your vigorous understanding. It is, therefore, at the risk of appearing somewhat unkind and uncivil, that I give my honest answer to your question. You would know why I have so little faith in this movement. I reply, that it is not in the proper hands; and that the proper hands are not yet to be found. The present age, although in advance, of any former age, is, nevertheless, very far from being sufficiently under the sway of reason to take up the cause of woman, and carry it forward to success. A much stronger and much more widely diffused common sense than has characterized any of the generations, must play its mightiest artillery upon the stupendous piles of nonsense, which tradition and chivalry and a misinterpreted and superstitious Christianity have reared in the way of this cause, ere woman can have the prospect of the recognition of her rights and of her confessed equality with man.
The object of the "Woman's Rights Movement" is nothing less than to recover the rights of woman—nothing less than to achieve her independence. She is now the dependent of man; and, instead of rights, she has but privileges—the mere concessions (always revocable and always uncertain) of the other sex to her sex. I say nothing against this object. It is as proper as it is great; and until it is realized, woman can not be half herself, nor can man be half himself. I rejoice in this object; and my sorrow is, that they, who are intent upon it, are not capable of adjusting themselves to it—not high-souled enough to consent to those changes and sacrifices in themselves, in their positions and relations, essential to the attainment of this vital object.
What if a nation in the heart of Europe were to adopt, and uniformly adhere to, the practice of cutting off one of the hands of all their new-born children? It would from this cause be reduced to poverty, to helpless dependence upon the charity of surrounding nations, and to just such a measure of privileges as they might see fit to allow it, in exchange for its forfeited rights. Very great, indeed, would be the folly of this strange nation. But a still greater folly would it be guilty of, should it, notwithstanding this voluntary mutilation, claim all the wealth, and all the rights, and all the respect, and all the independence which it enjoyed before it entered upon this systematic mutilation.
Now, this twofold folly of this one-hand nation illustrates the similar twofold folly of some women. Voluntarily wearing, in common with their sex, a dress which imprisons and cripples them, they, nevertheless, follow up this absurdity with the greater one of coveting and demanding a social position no less full of admitted rights, and a relation to the other sex no less full of independence, than such position and relation would naturally and necessarily have been, had they scorned a dress which leaves them less than half their personal power of self-subsistence and usefulness. I admit that the mass of women are not chargeable with this latter absurdity of cherishing aspirations and urging claims so wholly and so glaringly at war with this voluntary imprisonment and this self-degradation. They are content in their helplessness and poverty and destitution of rights. Nay, they are so deeply deluded as to believe that all this belongs to their natural and unavoidable lot. But the handful of women of whom I am here complaining—the woman's rights women—persevere just as blindly and stubbornly as do other women, in wearing a dress that both marks and makes their impotence, and yet, O amazing inconsistency! they are ashamed of their dependence, and remonstrate against its injustice. They claim that the fullest measure of rights and independence and dignity shall be accorded to them, and yet they refuse to place themselves in circumstances corresponding with their claim. They demand as much for themselves as is acknowledged to be due to men, and yet they refuse to pay the necessary, the never-to-be-avoided price of what they demand—the price which men have to pay for it.
I admit that the dress of woman is not the primal cause of her helplessness and degradation. That cause is to be found in the false doctrines and sentiments of which the dress is the outgrowth and symbol. On the other hand, however, these doctrines and sentiments would never have become the huge bundle they now are, and they would probably have all languished, and perhaps all expired, but for the dress. For, as in many other instances, so in this, and emphatically so in this, the cause is made more efficient by the reflex influence of the effect. Let woman give up the irrational modes of clothing her person, and these doctrines and sentiments would be deprived of their most vital aliment by being deprived of their most natural expression. In no other practical forms of folly to which they might betake themselves, could they operate so vigorously and be so invigorated by their operation.
Were woman to throw off the dress, which, in the eye of chivalry and gallantry, is so well adapted to womanly gracefulness and womanly helplessness, and to put on a dress that would leave her free to work her own way through the world, I see not but that chivalry and gallantry would nearly or quite die out. No longer would she present herself to man, now in the bewitching character of a plaything, a doll, an idol, and now in the degraded character of his servant. But he would confess her transmutation into his equal; and, therefore, all occasion for the display of chivalry and gallantry toward her on the one hand, and tyranny on the other, would have passed away. Only let woman attire her person fitly for the whole battle of life—that great and often rough battle, which she is as much bound to fight as man is, and the common sense expressed in the change will put to flight all the nonsensical fancies about her superiority to man, and all the nonsensical fancies about her inferiority to him. No more will then be heard of her being made of a finer material than man is made of; and, on the contrary, no more will then be heard of her being but the complement of man, and of its taking both a man and a woman (the woman, of course, but a small part of it) to make up a unit. No more will it then be said that there is sex in mind—an original sexual difference in intellect. What a pity that so many of our noblest women make this foolish admission! It is made by the great majority of the women who plead the cause of woman.
I am amazed that, the intelligent women engaged in the "Woman's Rights Movement," see not the relation between their dress and the oppressive evils which they are striving to throw off. I am amazed that they do not see that their dress is indispensable to keep in countenance the policy and purposes out of which those evils grow. I hazard nothing in saying, that the relation between the dress and degradation of an American woman, is as vital as between the cramped foot and degradation of a Chinese woman; as vital as between the uses of the inmate of the harem and the apparel and training provided for her. Moreover, I hazard nothing in saying, that an American woman will never have made her most effectual, nor, indeed, any serviceable protest against the treatment of her sex in China, or by the lords of the harem, so long as she consents to have her own person clothed in ways so repugnant to reason and religion, and grateful only to a vitiated taste, be it in her own or in the other sex.
Women are holding their meetings; and with great ability do they urge their claim to the rights of property and suffrage. But, as in the case of the colored man, the great needed change is in himself, so, also, in the case of woman, the great needed change is in herself. Of what comparative avail would be her exercise of the right of suffrage, if she is still to remain the victim of her present false notions of herself and of her relations to the other sex?—false notions so emphatically represented and perpetuated by her dress? Moreover, to concede to her the rights of property would be to benefit her comparatively little, unless she shall resolve to break out from her clothes-prison, and to undertake right earnestly, as right earnestly as a man, to get property. Solomon says: "The destruction of the poor is their poverty." The adage that knowledge is power, is often repeated; and there are, indeed, many instances to verify it. Nevertheless, as a general proposition, it is a thousandfold more emphatically true that property is power. Knowledge helps to get property, but property is the power. That the slaves are a helpless prey, is chiefly because they are so poor and their masters so rich. The masses almost everywhere are well-nigh powerless, because almost everywhere they are poor. How long will they consent to be poor? Just so long as they shall consent to be robbed of their God-given right to the soil. That women are helpless is no wonder, so long as women are paupers.
As long as woman shall be silly enough to learn her lessons in the schools of gallantry and chivalry, so long will it be the height of her ambition to be a graceful and amiable burden upon the other sex. But as soon as she shall consent to place herself under the instructions of reason and common sense, and to discard, as wholly imaginary, those differences between the nature of man and the nature of woman, out of which have grown innumerable nonsensical doctrines and notions, and all sorts of namby pamby sentiments, so soon will she find that, to no greater extent than men are dependent on each other, are women to foster the idea of their dependence on men. Then, and not till then, will women learn that, to be useful and happy, and to accomplish the high purposes of their being, they must, no less emphatically than men, stand upon their own feet, and work with own hands, and bear the burdens of life with their own strength, and brave its storms with their own resoluteness.
The next "Woman's Rights Convention" will, I take it for granted, differ but little from its predecessors. It will abound in righteous demands and noble sentiments, but not in the evidence that they who enunciate these demands and sentiments are prepared to put themselves in harmony with what they conceive and demand. In a word, for the lack of such preparation and of the deep earnestness, which alone can prompt to such preparation, it will be, as has been every other Woman's Rights Convention, a failure. Could I see it made up of women whose dress would indicate their translation from cowardice to courage; from slavery to freedom; from the kingdom of fancy and fashion and foolery to the kingdom of reason and righteousness, then would I hope for the elevation of woman, aye, and of man too, as perhaps I have never yet hoped. What should be the parts and particulars of such dress, I am incapable of saying. Whilst the "Bloomer dress" is unspeakably better than the common dress, it nevertheless affords not half that freedom of the person which woman is entitled and bound to enjoy. I add, on this point, that however much the dresses of the sexes should resemble each other, decency and virtue and other considerations require that they should be obviously distinguishable from each other.
I am not unaware that such views as I have expressed in this letter will be regarded as serving to break down the characteristic delicacy of woman. I frankly admit that I would have it broken down; and that I would have the artificial and conventional, the nonsensical and pernicious thing give place to the natural delicacy which would be common to both sexes. As the delicacy, which is made peculiar to one of the sexes, is unnatural, and, therefore, false, this, which would be common to both, would be natural, and, therefore, true. I would have no characteristic delicacy of woman, and no characteristic coarseness of man. On the contrary, believing man and woman to have the same nature, and to be therefore under obligation to have the same character, I would subject them to a common standard of morals and manners. The delicacy of man should be no less shrinking than that of woman, and the bravery of woman should be one with the bravery of man. Then would there be a public sentiment very unlike that which now requires the sexes to differ in character, and which, therefore, holds them amenable to different codes—codes that, in their partiality to man, allow him to commit high crimes, and that, in their cruelty to woman, make the bare suspicion of such crimes on her part the justification of her hopeless degradation and ruin.
They who advocate that radical change in her dress which common sense calls for, are infidels in the eyes of such as subscribe to this interpretation of the Bible. For if the Bible teaches that the Heaven-ordained condition of woman is so subordinate and her Heaven-ordained character so mean, then they are infidels who would have her cast aside a dress so becoming that character and condition, and have her put on a dress so entirely at war with her humble nature, as to indicate her conscious equality with man, and her purpose to assert, achieve, and maintain her independence. Alas, how misapprehended are the true objects and true uses of the Bible! That blessed book is given to us, not so much that we may be taught by it what to do, as that we may be urged by its solemn and fearful commands and won by its melting entreaties, to do what we already know we should do. Such, indeed, is the greatest value of its recorded fact that Jesus Christ died to save us from our sins. We already know that we should repent of our sins and put them away; and it is this fact which furnishes our strongest possible motive for doing so. But men run to the Bible professedly to be taught their duty in matters where their very instincts—where the laws, written in large, unmistakable, ineffaceable letters upon the very foundations of their being—teach them their duty. I say professedly, for generally it is only so. They run to the Bible, not to learn the truth, but to make the Bible the minister to folly and sin. They run from themselves to the Bible, because they can more easily succeed in twisting its records into the service of their guilty passions and guilty purposes than they can their inflexible convictions. They run to the Bible for a paramount authority that shall override and supplant these uncomfortable convictions. They run from the teachings of their nature and the remonstrances of their consciences to find something more palatable. Hence, we find the rum-drinker, and slaveholder, and polygamist, and other criminals going to the Bible. They go to it for the very purpose of justifying their known sins. But not only may we not go to the Bible to justify what we ourselves have already condemned, but we must not take to the judicature of that book, as an open question, any of the wrongs against which nature and common sense cry out—any of the wrongs which nature and common sense call on us to condemn.
So fraught with evil, and ruinous evil, is this practice, on the part of the Church as well as the world, of inquiring the judgment of the Bible in regard to sins, which the natural and universal conscience condemns, but which the inquirer means to persist in, if only he can get the Bible to testify against his conscience and in favor of his sins; so baleful, I say, is this practice, as to drive me to the conclusion that the Bible can not continue to be a blessing to mankind in spite of it. The practice, in its present wide and well-nigh universal extent, turns the heavenly volume into a curse. Owing to this practice, the Bible is, this day, a hindrance rather than a help to civilization.
But if woman is of the same nature and same dignity with man, and if as much and as varied labor is needed to supply her wants as to supply the wants of man, and if for her to be, as she so emphatically is, poor and destitute and dependent, is as fatal to her happiness and usefulness and to the fulfillment of the high purposes of her existence, as the like circumstances would be to the honor and welfare of man, why then put her in a dress which compels her to be a pauper—a pauper, whether in ribbons or rags? Why, I ask, put her in a dress suited only to those occasional and brief moods, in which man regards her as his darling, his idol, and his angel; or to that general state of his mind in which he looks upon her as his servant, and with feelings certainly much nearer contempt than adoration. Strive as you will to elevate woman, nevertheless the disabilities and degradation of this dress, together with that large group of false views of the uses of her being and of her relations to man, symbolized and perpetuated, as I have already said, by this dress, will make your striving vain.
Woman must first fight against herself—against personal and mental habits so deep-rooted and controlling, and so seemingly inseparable from herself, as to be mistaken for her very nature. And when she has succeeded there, an easy victory will follow. But where shall be the battle-ground for this indispensable self-conquest? She will laugh at my answer when I tell her, that her dress, aye, her dress, must be that battle-ground. What! no wider, no sublimer field than this to reap her glories in! My further answer is, that if she shall reap them anywhere, she must first reap them there. I add, that her triumph there will be her triumph everywhere; and that her failure there will be her failure everywhere.
Mrs. Stanton's Reply.
My Dear Cousin:—Your letter on the "Woman's Right Movement" I have thoroughly read and considered. I thank you, in the name of woman, for having said what you have on so many vital points. You have spoken well for a man whose convictions on this subject are the result of reason and observation; but they alone whose souls are fired through personal experience and suffering can set forth the height and depth, the source and center of the degradation of women; they alone can feel a steadfast faith in their own native energy and power to accomplish a final triumph over all adverse surroundings, a speedy and complete success. You say you have but little faith in this reform, because the changes we propose are so great, so radical, so comprehensive; whilst they who have commenced the work are so puny, feeble, and undeveloped. The mass of women are developed at least to the point of discontent, and that, in the dawn of this nation, was considered a most dangerous point in the British Parliament, and is now deemed equally so on a Southern plantation. In the human soul, the steps between discontent and action are few and short indeed. You, who suppose the mass of women contented, know but little of the silent indignation, the deep and settled disgust with which they contemplate our present social arrangements. You claim to believe that in every sense, thought, and feeling, man and woman are the same. Well, now, suppose yourself a woman. You are educated up to that point where one feels a deep interest in the welfare of her country, and in all the great questions of the day, in both Church and State; yet you have no voice in either. Little men, with little brains, may pour forth their little sentiments by the hour, in the forum and the sacred desk, but public sentiment and the religion of our day teach us that silence is most becoming in woman. So to solitude you betake yourself, and read for your consolation the thoughts of dead men; but from the Bible down to Mother Goose's Melodies, how much complacency, think you, you would feel in your womanhood? The philosopher, the poet, and the saint, all combine to make the name of woman synonymous with either fool or devil. Every passion of the human soul, which in manhood becomes so grand and glorious in its results, is fatal to womankind. Ambition makes a Lady Macbeth; love, an Ophelia; none but those brainless things, without will or passion, are ever permitted to come to a good end. What measure of content could you draw from the literature of the past?
Again, suppose yourself the wife of a confirmed drunkard. You behold your earthly possessions all passing away; your heart is made desolate; it has ceased to pulsate with either love, or hope, or joy. Your house is sold over your head, and with it every article of comfort and decency; your children gather round you, one by one, each newcomer clothed in rags and crowned with shame; is it with gladness you now welcome the embrace of that beastly husband, feel his fevered breath upon your cheek, and inhale the disgusting odor of his tobacco and rum? Would not your whole soul revolt from such an union? So do the forty thousand drunkards' wives now in this State. They, too, are all discontented, and but for the pressure of law and gospel would speedily sunder all these unholy ties. Yes, sir, there are women, pure and virtuous and noble as yourself, spending every day of all the years of their existence in the most intimate association with infamous men, kept so by that monstrous and unnatural artifice, baptized by the sacred name of marriage. I might take you through many, many phases of woman's life, into those sacred relations of which we speak not in our conventions, where woman feels her deepest wrongs, where in blank despair she drags out days, and weeks, and months, and years of silent agony. I might paint you pictures of real life so vivid as to force from you the agonized exclamation, How can women endure such things!
We who have spoken out, have declared our rights, political and civil; but the entire revolution about to dawn upon us by the acknowledgment of woman's social equality, has been seen and felt but by the few. The rights, to vote, to hold property, to speak in public, are all-important; but there are great social rights, before which all others sink into utter insignificance. The cause of woman is, as you admit, a broader and a deeper one than any with which you compare it; and this, to me, is the very reason why it must succeed. It is not a question of meats and drinks, of money and lands, but of human rights—the sacred right of a woman to her own person, to all her God-given powers of body and soul. Did it ever enter into the mind of man that woman too had an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of her individual happiness? Did he ever take in the idea that to the mother of the race, and to her alone, belonged the right to say when a new being should be brought into the world? Has he, in the gratification of his blind passions, ever paused to think whether it was with joy and gladness that she gave up ten or twenty years of the heyday of her existence to all the cares and sufferings of excessive maternity? Our present laws, our religious teachings, our social customs on the whole question of marriage and divorce, are most degrading to woman; and so long as man continues to think and write, to speak and act, as if maternity was the one and sole object of a woman's existence—so long as children are conceived in weariness and disgust—you must not look for high-toned men and women capable of accomplishing any great and noble achievement. But when woman shall stand on an even pedestal with man—when they shall be bound together, not by withes of law and gospel, but in holy unity and love, then, and not till then, shall our efforts at minor reforms be crowned with complete success. Here, in my opinion, is the starting-point; here is the battle-ground where our independence must be fought and won. A true marriage relation has far more to do with the elevation of woman than the style and cut of her dress. Dress is a matter of taste, of fashion; it is changeable, transient, and may be doffed or donned at the will of the individual; but institutions, supported by laws, can be overturned but by revolution. We have no reason to hope that pantaloons would do more for us than they have done for man himself. The negro slave enjoys the most unlimited freedom in his attire, not surpassed even by the fashions of Eden in its palmiest days; yet in spite of his dress, and his manhood, too, he is a slave still. Was the old Roman in his toga less of a man than he now is in swallow-tail and tights? Did the flowing robes of Christ Himself render His life less grand and beautiful? In regard to dress, where you claim to be so radical, you are far from consistent.
Believing, as you do, in the identity of the sexes, that all the difference we see in tastes, in character, is entirely the result of education—that "man is woman and woman is man"—why keep up these distinctions in dress? Surely, whatever dress is convenient for one sex must be for the other also. Whatever is necessary for the perfect and full development of man's physical being, must be equally so for woman. I fully agree with you that woman is terribly cramped and crippled in her present style of dress. I have not one word to utter in its defense; but to me, it seems that if she would enjoy entire freedom, she should dress just like man. Why proclaim our sex on the house-tops, seeing that it is a badge of degradation, and deprives us of so many rights and privileges wherever we go? Disguised as a man, the distinguished French woman, "George Sand," has been able to see life in Paris, and has spoken in political meetings with great applause, as no woman could have done. In male attire, we could travel by land or sea; go through all the streets and lanes of our cities and towns by night and day, without a protector; get seven hundred dollars a year for teaching, instead of three, and ten dollars for making a coat, instead of two or three, as we now do. All this we could do without fear of insult, or the least sacrifice of decency or virtue. If nature has not made the sex so clearly defined as to be seen through any disguise, why should we make the difference so striking? Depend upon it, when men and women in their every-day life see and think less of sex and more of mind, we shall all lead far purer and higher lives.
Your letter, my noble cousin, must have been written in a most desponding mood, as all the great reforms of the day seem to you on the verge of failure. What are the experiences of days and months and years in the lifetime of a mighty nation? Can one man in his brief hour hope to see the beginning and end of any reform? When you compare the public sentiment and social customs of our day with what they were fifty years ago, how can you despair of the temperance cause? With a Maine Law and divorce for drunkenness, the rum-seller and drunkard must soon come to terms. Let woman's motto be, "No union with Drunkards," and she will soon bring this long and well-fought battle to a triumphant close.
Neither should you despair of the anti-slavery cause; with its martyrs, its runaway slaves, its legal decisions in almost every paper you take up, the topic of debate in our national councils, our political meetings, and our literature, it seems as if the nation were all alive on this question. True, four millions of slaves groan in their chains still, but every man in this nation has a higher idea of individual rights than he had twenty years ago.
As to the cause of woman, I see no signs of failure. We already have a property law, which in its legitimate effects must elevate the femme covert into a living, breathing woman, a wife into a property-holder, who can make contracts, buy and sell. In a few years we shall see how well it works. It needs but little forethought to perceive that in due time these large property-holders must be represented in the Government; and when the mass of women see that there is some hope of becoming voters and law-makers, they will take to their rights as naturally as the negro to his heels when he is sure of success. Their present seeming content is very much like Sambo's on the plantation. If you truly believe that man is woman, and woman is man; if you believe that all the burning indignation that fires your soul at the sight of injustice and oppression, if suffered in your own person, would nerve you to a life-long struggle for liberty and independence, then know that what you feel, I feel too, and what I feel the mass of women feel also. Judge by yourself, then, how long the women of this nation will consent to be deprived of their social, civil, and political rights; but talk not to us of failure. Talk not to us of chivalry, that died long ago. Where do you see it? No gallant knight presents himself at the bar of justice to pay the penalty of our crimes. We suffer in our own persons, on the gallows, and in prison walls. From Blackstone down to Kent, there is no display of gallantry in your written codes. In social life, true, a man in love will jump to pick up a glove or bouquet for a silly girl of sixteen, whilst at home he will permit his aged mother to carry pails of water and armfuls of wood, or his wife to lug a twenty-pound baby, hour after hour, without ever offering to relieve her. I have seen a great many men priding themselves on their good breeding—gentlemen, born and educated—who never manifest one iota of spontaneous gallantry toward the women of their own household.
Divines may preach thanksgiving sermons on the poetry of the arm-chair and the cradle; but when they lay down their newspapers, or leave their beds a cold night to attend to the wants of either, I shall begin to look for the golden age of chivalry once more. If a short dress is to make the men less gallant than they now are, I beg the women at our next convention to add at least two yards more to every skirt they wear. And you mock us with dependence, too. Do not the majority of women in every town support themselves, and very many their husbands, too? What father of a family, at the loss of his wife, has ever been able to meet his responsibilities as woman has done? When the mother dies the house is made desolate, the children are forsaken—scattered to the four winds of heaven—to the care of any one who chooses to take them. Go to those aged widows who have reared large families of children, unaided and alone, who have kept them all together under one roof, watched and nursed them in health and sickness through all their infant years, clothed and educated them, and made them all respectable men and women, ask them on whom they depended. They will tell you on their own hands, and on that never-dying, never-failing love, that a mother's heart alone can know. It is into hands like these—to these who have calmly met the terrible emergencies of life—who, without the inspiration of glory, or fame, or applause, through long years have faithfully and bravely performed their work, self-sustained and cheered, that we commit our cause. We need not wait for one more generation to pass away, to find a race of women worthy to assert the humanity of women, and that is all we claim to do.
Frances D. Gage's Reply to Gerrit Smith.
[From Frederick Douglass' paper].
Frederick Douglass.—Dear Sir:—In your issue of Dec. 1st, I find a letter from Hon. Gerrit Smith to Elizabeth C. Stanton, in reference to the Woman's Rights Movement, showing cause, through labored columns, why it has proved a failure.
This article, though addressed to Mrs. Stanton, is an attack upon every one engaged in the cause. For he boldly asserts that the movement "is not in proper hands, and that the proper hands are not yet to be found." I will not deny the assertion, but must still claim the privilege of working in a movement that involves not only my own interest, but the interests of my sex, and through us the interests of a whole humanity. And though I may be but a John the Baptist, unworthy to unloose the latchet of the shoes of those who are to come in short skirts to redeem the world, I still prefer that humble position to being Peter to deny my Master, or a Gerrit Smith to assert that truth can fail.
I do not propose to enter into a full criticism of Mr. Smith's long letter. He has made do not propose to enter into a full criticism of Mr. Smith's long letter. He has made[Pg 843] the whole battle-ground of the Woman's Rights Movement her dress. Nothing brighter, nothing nobler than a few inches of calico or brocade added to or taken from her skirts, is to decide this great and glorious question—to give her freedom or to continue her a slave. This argument, had it come from one of less influence than Gerrit Smith, would have been simply ridiculous. But coming from him, the almost oracle of a large portion of our reformers, it becomes worthy of an answer from every earnest woman in our cause. I will not say one word in defense of our present mode of dress. Not I; but bad as it is, and cumbersome and annoying, I still feel that we can wear it, and yet be lovers of liberty, speaking out our deep feeling, portraying our accumulated wrongs, saving ourselves for a time yet from that antagonism which we must inevitably meet when we don the semi-male attire. We must own ourselves under the law first, own our bodies, our earnings, our genius, and our consciences; then we will turn to the lesser matter of what shall be the garniture of the body. Was the old Roman less a man in his cumbrous toga, than Washington in his tights? Was Christ less a Christ in His vesture, woven without a seam, than He would have been in the suit of a Broadway dandy?
"Moreover, to concede to her rights of property, would be to benefit her comparatively little, unless she shall resolve to break out of her clothes-prison, and to undertake right earnestly, as earnestly as a man, to get property." So says Gerrit Smith. And he imputes the want of earnestness to her clothes. It in a new doctrine that high and holy purposes go from without inward, that the garments of men or women govern and control their aspirations. But do not women now work right earnestly? Do not the German women and our market women labor right earnestly? Do not the wives of our farmers and mechanics toil? Is not the work of the mothers in our land as important as that of the father? "Labor is the foundation of wealth." The reason that our women are "paupers," is not that they do not labor "right earnestly," but that the law gives their earnings into the hands of manhood. Mr. Smith says, "That women are helpless, is no wonder, so long as they are paupers"; he might add, no wonder that the slaves of the cotton plantation are helpless, so long as they are paupers. What reduces both the woman and the slave to this condition? The law which gives the husband and the master entire control of the person and earnings of each; the law that robs each of the rights and liberties that every "free white male citizen" takes to himself as God-given. Truth falling from the lips of a Lucretia Mott in long skirts is none the less truth, than if uttered by a Lucy Stone in short dress, or a Helen Maria Weber in pants and swallow-tail coat. And I can not yet think so meanly of manly justice, as to believe it will yield simply to a change of garments. Let us assert our right to be free. Let us get out of our prison-house of law. Let us own ourselves, our earnings, our genius; let us have power to control as well as to earn and to own; then will each woman adjust her dress to her relations in life.
Mr. Smith speaks of reforms as failures; what can he mean? "The Temperance Reform still drags." I have been in New York thirty-seven days; have given thirty-three lectures; have been at taverns, hotels, private houses, and depots; rode in stages, country wagons, omnibuses, carriages, and railroad cars; met the masses of people daily, and yet have not seen one drunken man, scarce an evidence that there was such a thing as intemperance in the Empire State. If the whole body has been diseased from childhood and a cure be attempted, shall we cry out against the physician that his effort is a failure, because the malady does not wholly disappear at once? Oh, no! let us rather cheer than discourage, while we see symptoms of amendment, hoping and trusting that each day will give renewed strength for the morrow, till the cure shall be made perfect. The accumulated ills of centuries can not be removed in a day or a year. Shall we talk of the Anti-Slavery Cause as a "failure," while our whole great nation is shaking as if an Etna were boiling below? When did the North ever stand, as now, defiant of slavery? Anti-slavery may be said to be written upon the "chariots and the bells of the horses." Our National Congress is nothing more or less than a great Anti-slavery Convention. Not a bill, no matter how small or how great its importance, but hinges upon the question of slavery. The Anti-Slavery Cause is no failure; right can not fail.
"The next Woman's Rights Convention will be, as has every other Woman's Rights Convention, a failure, notwithstanding it will abound in righteous demands and noble sentiments." So thinks Mr. Smith. Has any Woman's Rights Convention been a failure? No movement so radical, striking so boldly at the foundation of all social and political order, has ever come before the people, or ever so rapidly and widely diffused its doctrine. The reports of our conventions have traveled wherever newspapers are read, causing discussion for and against, and these discussions have elicited truth, and aroused public thought to the evils growing out of woman's position. New trades and callings are opening to us; in every town and village may be found advocates for the equality of privilege under the law, for every thinking, reasoning human soul. Shall we talk of failure, because forty, twenty, or seven years have not perfected all things? When intemperance shall have passed away, and the four million chattel slaves shall sing songs of freedom; when woman shall be recognized as man's equal, socially, legally, and politically, there will yet be reforms and reformers, and men who will despair and look upon one branch of the reform as the great battle-ground, and talk of the failure of the eternal law of progress. Still there will be stout hearts and willing hands to work on, honestly believing that truth and right are sustained by no single point, and their watchword will be "Onward!" We can not fail, for our cause is just.
The names of those who wore the Bloomer costume at that early day are: Elizabeth Smith Miller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, Mrs. William Burleigh, Charlotte Beebe Wilbour, Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Helen Jarvis, Lydia Sayre Hasbrook, Amelia Williard, Celia Burleigh, Harriet N. Austin, Lydia Jenkins, and many patients at sanitariums, many farmers' wives, and many young ladies for skating and gymnastic exercises.
Looking back to this experiment, we are not surprised at the hostility of men in general to the dress, as it made it very uncomfortable for them to go anywhere with those who wore it. People would stare; some men and women make rude remarks; boys follow in crowds, or shout from behind fences, so that the gentleman in attendance felt it his duty to resent the insult by showing fight, unless he had sufficient self-control to pursue the even tenor of his way without taking the slightest notice of the commotion his companion was creating. No man went through the ordeal with the coolness and dogged determination of Charles Dudley Miller, escorting his wife and cousin on long journeyings, at fashionable resorts, in New York and Washington, to the vexation of all his gentleman friends and acquaintances.
Amelia Bloomer Comments On Jane G. Swisshelm.
To the Editor of the Nonpareil:
Jane Grey Swisshelm thinks it is dare-devil independence that is ruining the women of this country. — Nonpareil.
And what woman of them all has shown so much "dare-devil independence "as Jane G. Swisshelm? One of the first women to wield the pen-editorial thirty years ago, she was 60 independent and fearless as to excite the wonder of her readers. The first woman admitted to the reporters' gallery in the Capitol of the nation, she astonished and shocked the country by her attacks upon Daniel Webster and other prominent senators at that day, and was expelled from the gallery for her "dare-devil independence,'? While publishing a paper, at St: Cloud, she was so outspoken and offensive in her personalities, that her press and type were destroyed by indignant politicians. After the war she obtained an office in one of the departments at Washington, and started a paper called the Reconstructionist in that city. For her "dare-devil independence" as a writer in attacking President Johnson and charging that he had part in the assassination of President Lincoln, she was relieved of her office and her press destroyed.
And so in whatever she has part; to whatever she sets her hand, she ever displays a reckless independence that is truly a marvel to those who watch her uncertain course. She fearlessly attacks both friend and foe, if they go contrary to her views of right; and both people and measures that to-day have her countenance and approval, are liable tomorrow to receive an unmerciful lashing from her pen. No woman has set an example of more "dare-devil independence" before "the women of this country? than Jane G. Swisshelm, and if it is proving their ruin she has much to answer for. But we are not prepared to believe her assertion, and we can not think her a ruined woman, notwithstanding her many years of "dare-devil independence." The writer has known her long, has engaged in many a pen-tilt with her, but has never met her personally. She regards her as an able, outspoken defender of the wronged and oppressed, a fearless advocate of the right as she sees it, and an "independent dare-devil"" writer on whatever subject she deems worthy of her pen.
CHAPTER XIV.
new york.
NEW YORK STATE TEMPERANCE CONVENTION, ROCHESTER,
APRIL 2, 21, 1852.
Letter from Frances Dana Gage.
My Dear Miss Anthony: — Yours of March 22d, asking of me words of counsel and encouragement for the friends of temperance, who are to meet at Rochester on the 20th inst., is before me. Need I tell you how earnestly my heart responds to that request, and with what joy I hail every demonstration on the part of woman that evidences an awakening energy in her mind, to the great duties and responsibilities of her being!
If we examine the statistics of crime in the United States, we shall find that a very large proportion of the criminals of our land are the victims of intemperance. The records of poverty, shame, and degradation furnish the same evidence against the traffic and use of ardent spirits. Examine those same Statistics, and another great truth stares us in the face — that nine-tenths of all the manufacturers of ardent spirits, of all the drinkers of ardent spirits, and of all the criminals made by ardent spirits, are men. But we find, too, in our search, a fact equally interesting to us, that the greatest sufferers from all this crime and shame and wrong, are women. Is it not meet, then, that women should lay aside the dependent inactivity which has hitherto held them powerless, and give their strength to the cause of reform which is now agitating the minds of the people?
What is woman? The answer is returned to me in tones that shake my very soul. She is the mother of mankind! The living providence, under God, who gives to every human being its mental, moral, and physical organism — who stamps upon every human heart her seal for good or for evil! Who then, but she, should cry aloud, and spare not, when the children she has borne — forgetting their allegiance to her and their duty to themselves, have assumed the power to rule over her, shutting her out from their counsels, and surrounding her, without her own consent, with circumstances which lead to misery and death; and, in their pride and strength, trampling upon justice, love, and mercy, withering her heart by violence and oppression, and yet compelling her, in her dependence as a wife, to perpetuate in her offspring their own depraved appetites and disorganized faculties?
It will not be denied that woman in all past ages has been made, by both law and custom, the inferior of her own children. Man has assumed to himself the power of being "lord of creation"; yet what has he done for his kind? Look at the present state of society and receive your answer! He has filled the world with madness, with oppression and wrong; he has allowed snares to be laid at every turn, to entangle the feet of our children, and lead them away into vice and crime. He has legalized the causes which fill the jails, the penitentiaries, the houses of correction, the poorhouses, and asylums with the blood of our hearts, even our children, and our children's children. There is pot a drunkard in the land, not a criminal that has been made by strong drink, but is the child of a woman. Yet not one woman's vote has ever been given to legalize the sale of ardent spirits, that have maddened the brain of her child. No woman's vote ever sanctioned the rum-seller's bar, at which her husband has bartered away his manhood, and made himself more vile than the brutes that perish.
Shall I be answered that woman's home influence must keep her children and her husband in the paths of virtue and honor? What! disfranchised woman—made by her law-maker an appendage to himself, her intellect shackled, her labor underrated, her physical power dwarfed and enfeebled by custom—is she expected to do this mighty thing? I hear again an answer—"Woman is responsible for the moral atmosphere that surrounds her." Is this indeed so? Men have taken from her every power to protect herself, even the dignity and respect which the right of suffrage confers upon the lowest man in the community, and which makes his opinion worth its price among men, is denied her. Men are in the daily habit of indulging in immoralities and vices, while they enjoin it upon woman—"poor, frail, weak woman," as they call us—to destroy the influence they have created. They place the temptation before the child, then sternly demand of its suffering mother her vigilance and care to control the appetite, which he has, it may be, inherited from his fathers, back from the third and fourth generation. Perchance, even through her own breast, he has sucked the poison that is corrupting all the streams of his young life. She may have grappled with the tempter, and come off conqueror; but can she hold him, the drunkard's child—the drunkard's grandchild—with the twofold curse upon his brow, while men place this direful temptation ever within his reach, glaring out upon him in beautiful enticement at every corner of the street, and at every turn of his daily and nightly walks, and add their influence and example to draw him away from the counsels of a mother's love, and the endearments of home? Then, when, under the influence of men, he outrages society, and in his maniac madness violates the law of the land, and becomes a felon, wasting away his days in the gloomy prison, or expiating his crimes upon the gallows, they forget what they have done, and, turning to the poor, crushed, and bleeding heart, which they have pierced with a thousand sorrows, cry out, "You, O mother of that guilty man, have not done your duty, and society holds you responsible for all his suffering and for all his crimes. O God! is this not adding insult to injury? How can the weak control the strong? How can the servant, bound hand and foot by the master, do the bidding of the tyrant? But all men are not weak—all men are not oppressive—all men are not unjust. There is a strong force, ever in the field of battle, struggling for truth and right with earnest heart and firm resolve. Let us arouse, O my sisters, and add our strength to theirs. The time is coming, aye, now is, when we must shake off our dependence and inactivity, and live more true to ourselves; when we must refuse to live the wives of drunkards, perpetuating, as mothers, their vices and crimes, to pollute society.
Let us unite with the good and true among men, that our efforts may overcome the legions who have hitherto conquered on the side of wrong, and raise high the standard of love and humanity, where falsehood and hate have ruled rampant. Let every woman, everywhere, speak out her bold, free thought on the subject of temperance; and while we plead with our rulers to deliver our husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers from the temptations to sin, let us demand with earnestness the right hereafter to protect ourselves; that we may redeem ourselves from the unjust law that now taxes every woman, without her own consent, according to her property or ability to labor, to pay her proportion for the support of vice and crime—that hereafter, when such great moral questions are under public discussion, and we, as one-half of the people, send up our petitions to our law-makers for a redress of wrongs, or an abatement of evils, our voice of pleading shall not be spurned by the heartless sneer, "They are only women, and the voice of a woman can not affect us at the polls, or disturb the course of our political parties. What care we for her progress or her wrongs?" Thus have we too often been answered, and shall be again, if we do not prove worthy of the chaplet of freedom, by winning it for ourselves. Let us then unite heart and hand in this great temperance reform—laying aside all local animosities, all sectional prejudices and sectarian jealousies—and, as it were, with one voice and one spirit, take hold of the work before us, resolved, if we fail to-day, to rise with renewed energy to-morrow, and "Never give up!" be our motto, till, without bloodshed, without hate, or uncharitableness, we gain the victory over those who cater to the most uncontrollable and destructive passion that has ever cursed humanity—the passion for strong drink—and then, and not till then, will we fold our arms and take our rest, amid the hallelujahs of the redeemed.
Letter From Mrs. C. I. H. Nichols.
Sisters And Friends Of Temperance:—In resorting to the pen as a medium of communication with your Convention, I feel, most sensibly, its inferiority to a vis-à-vis talk—it tells so little, and that so meagerly! But, remembering that a single just thought, or vital truth, communicated to intelligent minds and willing hearts, is an investment sure of increase, I will bless God for the pen, and ask of Him to make it a tongue for humanity.
The limits of a written communication will forbid me to say much, and I would address myself to a single point broached in your Albany Convention, and a point that seems to me of the first importance; because a mistake in morals, a wrong perpetrated in the home relations, is the greatest of all wrongs to humanity. And marred, indeed, would be your triumph, if, in preventing the repeal of one unjust statute, you sanction the enactment of another. So true it is that one injustice becomes the source of another, I fear to contemplate the enactment of a trifling encroachment even upon inalienable rights or divinely sanctioned pursuits.
In addressing myself to the position that "drunkenness be made a good and sufficient cause for divorce," I am secured from any fear that you will regard me as warring with abstractions, since such a bill has found its way into your Legislature, proving that the popular sympathy for suffering women and children is already concentrating on divorce as the remedy. I have hesitated about addressing you on this subject, lest I might render myself obnoxious to the charge of diverting the objects of your meeting, to an occasion for the discussion of forbidden topics. But an irresistible conviction, that since the subject is already launched upon your reform, it is important that a just view of its bearings should be presented, impels me to throw myself upon your sympathy, trusting in the divine power of truth to commend both my motives and my positions to your judgments and your hearts.
And first, let me say, I would not be understood as opposed to emancipating the wretched victims of irremediable abuse. And if there be a benevolence, under the warm heaven of Almighty Love, it is the protecting of helplessness and innocence from the sufferings that result, inevitably, from the rum traffic. But while I fully agree with Mrs. Stanton, that no pure-hearted and understanding woman can innocently become the mother of a drunkard's offspring—while I rely upon the general diffusion of physiological truths to create a sentiment abhorrent to the idea of raising a posterity, the breath of whose life shall be derived from the animalized and morally tainted vitality of the drunkard—I differ with her in the remedy proposed.
If drunkenness were irremediable, and beyond the reach of legislation, then would I accept her remedy as the final resort. But regarding divorce as, at best, only affording a choice of evils, and drunkenness as equally within the power of legislation, I propose that drunkenness be legislated out of existence, and thus the necessity for divorce, which it creates, be avoided.
Let a thoroughly prohibitive law destroy the traffic, and the drunkard will be found "clothed" again and "in his right mind." It will come to this glorious consummation at last; and, though years may intervene, it becomes us to act with reference to the discerned future, and beware that transient evils do not betray us into planting life-long regrets. Allow me to illustrate my idea by narrating incidents of a case in point, and which is inwoven with the recollections and tenderest sympathies of my whole life.
The young and lovely mother of five little ones procured a divorce from her husband, whose incompetency and unkindness was the result solely of intemperance, and that intemperance the consequence of his strong social bias and inability to resist the temptations of a period, when every man put the bottle to his neighbor's month as proof of his generosity, his friendship, and his good-breeding. His father, on whom the family were dependent for support, urged it upon the wife, as a duty to her children and due to her own self-respect, to procure a divorce, when, at last, the miserable husband had been sent to prison for a forgery, involving a small sum, and which he had thought to meet—before the note came to maturity—undetected.
She submitted, and, before the period of his imprisonment expired, married again, by the advice and persuasion of her kind father-in-law, to a wealthy and excellent man, who offered a father's care and home to her children, in proof of his affection for herself. But the heart never yielded its first love; and, when more than twenty years had passed, she confessed to a friend "that, should he reform at the eleventh hour, she must be the most wretched of women." He did reform! and for many years has exhibited those cheerful graces of the Christian, which, added to his naturally amiable disposition and unselfish deportment, make his three-score and tenth year seem rather the morning than the evening of a life, stretching far away into the glories of eternity.
And now, tell me, friends, if the picture of that youthful affection, strengthened and intensified in the hearts of both by long years of unavailing regret, does not awaken in you a conviction of some better way for protecting helpless women and children from the evils of drunkenness? Oh, say, can you calmly contemplate the hundreds and thousands of hearts which would throb with repressed anguish, when the wretchedness which drove them to divorce shall have vanished with the doomed traffic, and reformed men, by the strong arm of law, reclaim their children from the weeping Rachels of the land?
But think not, friends, that I am unmindful of the misery of years, or months even, when I plead that divorce shall not be made the necessity of hunted and betrayed affections, the factitious barrier against abuse and starvation. I present to your consideration a remedy equally effective, and far more grateful to the delicate sensibilities and hopeful affection of the woman and the wife—a remedy which possesses the merit of a preventive power, and the collateral security of a reclaiming influence.
The advantage proposed to be secured to the wife of the drunkard, by divorce, is the release from his control of her property and person. Secure to the innocent and suffering wife the guardianship of her children, and the control of her own earnings—in short, make her a free, instead of a bond-woman—and you secure to the family of the drunkard all the alleviation in the power of legislation, and without compelling the wife, from pecuniary necessity or self-immolating regard for her children, to sever her conjugal relation, and quench the hope of a future of rational companionship.
The pauperism and extreme degradation of the drunkard's family is mainly chargeable to the laws, which wreck the energies, by merging the means of the wife and mother in the will of the irresponsible husband and father.
With these views—gathered from facts and heart-broken confidences open to few—I appeal to you in the name of the most sacred affections—I protest, in behalf of humanity, against compelling the unfortunate of my dependent sex to choose between their present bondage of means and divorce.
To the Christian, who shrinks from divorce, as separating what God hath joined, I appeal to carry out the principle, preserving everywhere what God hath joined. Hath He not joined mother and child in body and spirit? Sever them not. Hath He not joined in each human being necessities and ability to supply them? But, alas! by man's carpentry, the ability of woman to supply her wants is pressed into the service of man's carnal and wicked appetites, to supply him with liquid fire, while herself and babes become miserable paupers in body and in mind!
I leave the subject here, praying that God may bless your deliberations, and guide you into all truth.
Syracuse Convention, Sept. 8, 9, 10, 1852.
elizabeth cady stanton's letter.
My Dear Friends:—As I can not be present with you, I wish to suggest three points for your sincere and earnest consideration.
1. Should not all women living in States where woman has the right to hold property refuse to pay taxes, so long as she is unrepresented in the government of that State?
Such a movement, if simultaneous, would no doubt produce a great deal of confusion, litigation, and suffering on the part of woman; but shall we fear to suffer for the maintenance of the same glorious principle for which our forefathers fought, bled, and died? Shall we deny the faith of the old Revolutionary heroes, and purchase for ourselves a false power and ignoble ease, by declaring in action that taxation without representation is just? Ah, no! like the English Dissenters and high-souled Quakers of our own land, let us suffer our property to be seized and sold, but let us never pay another tax until our existence as citizens, our civil and political rights be fully recognized.... The poor, crushed slave, but yesterday toiling on the rice plantation in Georgia, a beast, a chattel, a thing, is to-day, in the Empire State (if he own a bit of land and a shed to cover him), a person, and may enjoy the proud honor of paying into the hand of the complaisant tax-gatherer the sum of seventy-five cents. Even so with the white woman—the satellite of the dinner-pot, the presiding genius of the wash-tub, the seamstress, the teacher, the gay butterfly of fashion, the feme covert of the law, man takes no note of her through all these changing scenes. But, lo! to-day, by the fruit of her industry, she becomes the owner of a house and lot, and now her existence is remembered and recognized, and she too may have the privilege of contributing to the support of this mighty Republic, for the "white male citizen claims of her one dollar and seventy-five cents a year, because, under the glorious institutions of this free and happy land, she has been able, at the age of fifty years, to possess herself of a property worth the enormous sum of three hundred dollars. It is natural to suppose she will answer this demand on her joyously and promptly, for she must, in view of all her rights and privileges so long enjoyed, consider it a great favor to be permitted to contribute thus largely to the governmental treasury.
One thing is certain, this course will necessarily involve a good deal of litigation, and we shall need lawyers of our own sex whose intellects, sharpened by their interests, shall be quick to discover the loopholes of retreat. Laws are capable of many and various constructions; we find among men that as they have new wants, that as they develop into more enlarged views of justice, the laws are susceptible of more generous interpretation, or changed altogether; that is, all laws touching their own interests; for while man has abolished hanging for theft, imprisonment for debt, and secured universal suffrage for himself, a married woman, in most of the States in the Union, remains a nonentity in law—can own nothing; can be whipped and locked up by her lord; can be worked without wages, be robbed of her inheritance, stripped of her children, and left alone and penniless; and all this, they say, according to law. Now, it is quite time that we have these laws revised by our own sex, for man does not yet feel that what is unjust for himself, is also unjust for woman. Yes, we must have our own lawyers, as well as our physicians and priests. Some of our women should go at once into this profession, and see if there is no way by which we may shuffle off our shackles and assume our civil and political rights. We can not accept man's interpretation of the law.
2. Do not sound philosophy and long experience teach us that man and woman should be educated together? This isolation of the sexes in all departments, in the business and pleasure of life, is an evil greatly to be deplored. We see its bad effects on all sides. Look at our National Councils. Would men, as statesmen, ever have enacted such scenes as the Capitol of our country has witnessed, had the feminine element been fairly represented in their midst? Are all the duties of husband and father to be made subservient to those of statesman and politician? How many of these husbands return to their homes as happy and contented, as pure and loving, as when they left? Not one in ten.... Experience has taught us that man has discovered the most profitable branches of industry, and we demand a place by his side. Inasmuch, therefore, as we have the same objects in life, namely, the full development of all our powers, and should, to some extent, have the same employments, we need precisely the same education; and we therefore claim that the best colleges of our country be open to us.... This point, the education of boys and girls together, is a question of the day; it was prominent at the late Educational Convention in Newark, and it is fitting that in our Convention it should be fully discussed. My ground is, that the boy and the girl, the man and the woman, should be always together in the business and pleasures of life, sharing alike its joys and sorrows, its distinction and fame; nor will they ever be harmoniously developed until they are educated together, physically, intellectually, and morally.
I hope, therefore, that in the proposed People's College, some place will be provided where women can be educated side by side with man. There is no better test of the spirituality of a man, than is found in his idea of the true woman. Men having separated themselves from women in the business of life, and thus made their natures coarse by contact with their own sex exclusively, now demand separate pleasures too; and in lieu of the cheerful family circle, its books, games, music, and pleasant conversation, they congregate in clubs to discuss politics, gamble, drink, etc., in those costly, splendid establishments, got up for such as can not find sufficient excitement in their own parlors or studios. It seems never to enter the heads of these fashionable husbands, that the hours drag as heavily with their fashionable wives, as they sit alone, night after night, in their solitary elegance, wholly given up to their own cheerless reflections; for what subjects of thought have they? Gossip and fashion will do for talk, but not for thought. Their theology is too gloomy and shadowy to afford them much pleasure in contemplation; their religion is a thing of form and not of life, so it brings them no joy or satisfaction. As to the reforms of the day, they are too genteel to feel much interest in them. There is no class more pitiable than the unoccupied woman of fashion thrown wholly upon herself.... Does not the abuse of the religious element in woman demand our earnest attention and investigation?
Priestcraft did not end with the beginning of the reign of Protestantism. Woman has always been the greatest dupe, because the sentiments act blindly, and they alone have been educated in her. Her veneration, not guided by an enlightened intellect, leads her as readily to the worship of saints, pictures, holy days, and inspired men and books, as of the living God and the everlasting principles of Justice, Mercy, and Truth.
There is the Education Society, in which women who can barely read and write and speak their own language correctly, form sewing societies, and beg funds to educate a class of lazy, inefficient young men for the ministry, who, starting in life on the false principle that it is a blessing to escape physical labor, begin at once to live on their piety. What is the result? Why, after going through college, theological seminaries, and a brief struggle at fitting up skeleton sermons, got up by older heads for the benefit of beginners, and after preaching them for a season to those who hunger and thirst for light and truth, they sink down into utter insignificance, too inefficient to keep a place, and too lazy to earn the salt to their porridge, whilst the women work on to educate more for the same destiny. Look at the long line of benevolent societies, all filled with these male agents, living, like so many leeches, on the religious element in our natures, most of them from the ranks of the clergy, who, unable to build up or keep a church, have taken refuge in some of these theological asylums for the intellectually maimed, halt, and blind of this profession.
Woman really thinks she is doing God service when she casts her mite into their treasury, when in fact not one-tenth of all the funds raised ever reach the ultimate object. Among the clergy we find our most violent enemies—those most opposed to any change in woman's position; yet no sooner does one of these find himself out of place and pocket, than, if all the places in the various benevolent societies chance to be occupied, he takes a kind of philanthropic survey of the whole habitable globe, and forthwith forms a Female Benevolent Society for the conversion of the Jews, perhaps, or for sending the Gospel to the Feejee Islands, and he is, in himself, the law for one and the gospel for the other. Now, the question is, not whether the Jews are converted, or whether the Gospel ever reaches the islands, but, Does the agent flourish? Is his post profitable? And does woman beg and stitch faithfully for his support and for the promotion of his glorious mission?
Now, I ask women with all seriousness, considering that we have little to give, had we not better bestow our own charities with our own hands? And instead of sending our benevolent outgushings in steamers to parts unknown, had we not better let them flow in streams whose length and breadth we can survey at pleasure, knowing their source and where they empty themselves? Instead of any further efforts in behalf of a pin-cushion ministry, I conjure my countrywomen to devote themselves from this hour to the education, elevation, and enfranchisement of their own sex. If the same amount of devotion and self-sacrifice could be given in this direction now poured out ou the churches, another generation would give us a nobler type of womanhood than any yet molded by any Bishop, Priest, or Pope.
Woman in her present ignorance is made to rest in the most distorted views of God and the Bible and the laws of her being; and like the poor slave "Uncle Tom," her religion, instead of making her noble and free, and impelling her to flee from all gross surroundings, by the false lessons of her spiritual teachers, by the wrong application of great principles of right and justice, has made her bondage but more certain and lasting, her degradation more helpless and complete.
To Mrs. Paulina W. Davis:Gloucester, Mass., August 24, 1853.
Dear Madam:— . . . . I have never questioned what I understand to be the central principle of the reform in which you are engaged. I believe that every mature soul is responsible directly to God, not only for its faith and opinions, but for the details of its life in the world. In every crisis of duty there can be consultation, at last, only between one spirit and its Creator. The assertion that woman is responsible to man for her belief or conduct, in any other sense than man is responsible to woman, I reject, not as a believer in any theory of "Woman's Rights," but as a believer in that religion which knows neither male nor female, in its imperative demand upon the individual conscience.
This being true, I know not by what logic the obligation of woman to form her own ideal of life, and pursue the career which her reason and conscience dictate, can be denied. The sphere of activity in which any person will shine, is always an open question until answered by experience. I may admire the wisdom of the mind which has discovered that half the people in the world are incompetent to act beyond one circle of duty; but until the fact has been established by the universal failure of your sex, everywhere outside that fatal line, I must admire rather than believe. Every real position in society is achieved by conquest. I must convince my people that I am a true minister of the Gospel, before I can claim their respect and support. And when a woman, in the possession of the powers and opportunities given her by God, tells me she must trade, or instruct the young, or heal the sick, or paint, or sing, or act upon the stage, or call sinners to repentance, I can say but one thing — just what I must say to the man who affirms the same — "My friend, show your ability to serve society in this way, and all creation can not deprive you of the right. If you can do this to which you aspire — can do it well, then you and everybody will be the gainers. And whoever says you have forfeited any essential grace or virtue of womanhood by your act, betrays, by the accusation, an utter incompetency to judge upon questions of human responsibility and obligation."
. . . . I therefore believe the method of this reform is that declared by God when He said to Adam: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." There is no "royal road "to womanhood, as there is certainly none to manhood. Yow must achieve what you desire. . . . . Woman must do much before man can help her. I suppose the sexes are about equally culpable; and I make no peculiar charge, when I say that until I can see more individual consecration, more clearness of perception and firmness of conduct in regions outside of the walls of the household among the mass of women, than now, I shall not cherish extravagant hopes of the great immediate success of your noble object,
. . . . Your movement is a part of the great onward march of society, and must be exposed to the reverses from outward hostility and inward faithlessness, that have always hindered the progress of the race. . . . . This reform will be a sword of division, and you will not be surprised when those who have entered it from any motive less exalted than consecration to duty, fall away in weariness and disgust. Yet all the more honorable will it be to those who are content to remain, and abide the fatal conditions of sincere human effort. You are not very near your journey's end; but you are doing much for your sex, in a mode which will "tell" inevitably upon society. I often encounter a new spirit of self-respect and honorable independence; a new hope, and works corresponding to it, among young women, which I can trace back to these Conventions. I believe cultivated men in all professions are becoming ashamed to treat your arguments with open ridicule or quiet contempt, and occupy a position, at least, of fair-minded neutrality, to a greater degree than ever before, while the popular sympathies are every year more enlisted in your success.—With great respect, I remain your friend and fellow-laborer in the cause of truth,
Samuel J. May read the following extract from a letter from Wm. Lloyd Garrison, of Boston:
"Much, very much, do I regret that I can not be at the Woman's Rights Convention which is to assemble to-morrow in Syracuse; but circumstances prevent. I shall be there in spirit, from its organization to its dissolution. It has as noble an object in view, aye, and as Christian a one, too, as was ever advocated beneath the sun. Heaven bless all its proceedings.
"Rev. S. J. May."
Comments of the Press after the Syracuse Convention.
The Syracuse Standard, Sept. 10th (a liberal Democratic paper).
Great interest was manifested in the proceedings yesterday, and the hall was densely crowded during the day and evening. Much difficulty was found in getting out of the Convention after the adjournment. Each lady covered at least three steps of the stairway with her dress, and little groups of ladies gathered in the passage-ways and went through the ceremony of shaking hands and kissing each other, as though they had been separated for years and never expected to meet again. This operates as a serious obstacle, and we noticed some ladies exhibiting a petulant spirit in being jostled by the crowd which they themselves had occasioned, as their dresses were torn and soiled by the feet of those who were using their utmost efforts to keep the crowd from pushing them all down-stairs together. This is a great annoyance to those who are not fond of going through the world at the slow and steady pace of a fashionable lady, and we suggest the practice of making the outside of the hall a place for retailing gossip. Those who sweep the dirty stairway with their dresses should don the Bloomer costume without delay.
The Star, belonging to that portion of the press called "the Satanic," held to its original character while speaking of the Convention. It was through this paper that Reverends Sunderland and Ashley made public their sermons against Woman's Rights.
The Star, September 10th.
The women at the Tomfoolery Convention now being held in this city, talk as fluently of the Bible and God's teachings in their speeches, as if they could draw an argument from inspiration in maintenance of their Woman's Rights stuff.... The poor creatures who take part in the silly rant of "brawling women" and Aunt Nancy men, are most of them "ismizers" of the rankest stamp, Abolitionists of the most frantic and contemptible kind, and Christian(?) sympathizers with such heretics as Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Parker Pillsbury, C. C. Burleigh, and S. S. Foster. These men are all Woman's Righters, and preachers of such damnable doctrines and accursed heresies, as would make demons of the pit shudder to hear.
We have selected a few appropriate passages from God's Bible for the consideration of the infuriated gang (Bloomers and all) at the Convention: Gen. iii. 16; Tit. ii. 4, 5; Prov. ix. 13, xxi. 9,19; 1 Cor. xi. 8, 9; 1 Tim. ii. 8-14; 1 Cor. xiv. 34, 35; Eph. v. 23-24.
Daily Star, Sept. 11th.
Our usual amount of editorial matter is again crowded out this morning by the extreme quantity of gabble the Woman's Righters got off yesterday. Perhaps we owe an apology for having given publicity to the mass of corruption, heresies, ridiculous nonsense, and reeking vulgarities which these bad women have vomited forth for the past three days. Our personal preference would have been to have entirely disregarded these folks per signe de mepris, but the public appetite cries for these novelties and eccentricities of the times, and the daily press is expected to gratify such appetites; furthermore, we are of opinion that reporting such a Convention as this, is the most effectual way of checking the mischief it might otherwise do. The proceedings of these three days' pow-wow are a most shocking commentary upon themselves, and awaken burning scorn for the participants in them.
The Convention adjourned sine die last evening at ten o'clock, and, for the credit of our city, we hope its members will adjourn out of town as soon as possible, and stay so adjourned, unless they can come among us for more respectable business. Syracuse has become a by-word all through the country because of the influence which goes out from these foolish Conventions held here, and it is high time that we should be looking after our good name.
When the pamphlet report of the Convention's proceedings appeared, The Star said:
It gives the written speeches quite full, but only the skeleton of the spoken ones, which in reality constituted the cream of the affair. . . . This portion of the world's history in relation to these agitating questions, is very appropriately treated upon by the Lord Himself: The sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on earth; for the power of heaven shall be shaken. We recognize the sea as symbolizing the ideas which are drifted over the earth's surface, and the waves roaring, the agitating topics which the times have brought upon us.
The New York Herald (editorial), Sept. 12, 1852.
The Woman'S Rights Convention — The Last Act Of The Drama.
The farce at Syracuse has been played out. We publish to-day the last act, in which it will be seen that the authority of the Bible, as a perfect rule of faith and practice for human beings, was voted down, and what are called the laws of nature set up instead of the Christian code. We have also a practical exhibition of the consequences that flow from woman leaving her true sphere where she wields all her influence, and coming into public to discuss questions of morals and politics with men. The scene in which Rev. Mr. Hatch violated the decorum of his cloth, and was coarsely offensive to such ladies present as had not lost that modest "feminine element," on which he dwelt so forcibly, is the natural result of the conduct of the women themselves, who, in the first place, invited discussion about sexes; and in the second place, so broadly defined the difference between the male and the female, as to be suggestive of anything but purity to the audience. The women of the Convention have no right to complain; but, for the sake of his clerical character, if no other motive influenced him, he ought not to have followed so bad an example. His speech was sound and his argument conclusive, but his form of words was not in the best taste. The female orators were the aggressors; but, to use his own language, he ought not to have measured swords with a woman, especially when he regarded her ideas and expressions as bordering upon the obscene. But all this is the natural result of woman placing herself in a false position. As the Rev. Mr. Hatch observed, if she ran with horses she must expect to be betted upon. The whole tendency of these Conventions is by no means to increase the influence of woman, to elevate her condition, or to command the respect of the other sex.
Who are these women? what do they want? what are the motives that impel them to this course of action? The dramatis personæ of the farce enacted at Syracuse present a curious conglomeration of both sexes. Some of them are old maids, whose persona! charms were never very attractive, and who have been sadly slighted by the masculine gender in general; some of them women who have been badly mated, whose own temper, or their husbands, has made life anything but agreeable to them, and they are therefore down upon the whole of the opposite sex; some, having so much of the Virago in their disposition, that nature appears to have made a mistake in their gender — mannish women, like hens that crow; some of boundless vanity and egotism, who believe that they are superior in intellectual ability to "all the world and the rest of mankind," and delight to see their speeches and addresses in print; and man shalt be consigned to his proper sphere — nursing the babies, washing the dishes, mending stockings, and sweeping the house. This is "the good time coming." Besides the classes we have enumerated, there is a class of wild enthusiasts and visionaries — very sincere, but very mad — having the same vein as the fanatical Abolitionists, and the majority, if not all of them, being, in point of fact, deeply imbued with the anti-slavery sentiment. Of the male sex who attend these Conventions for the purpose of taking a part in them, the majority are hen-pecked husbands, and all of them ought to wear petticoats.
In point of ability, the majority of the women are flimsy, flippant, and superficial. Mrs. Rose alone indicates much argumentative power.
How did woman first become subject to man as she now is all over the world? By her nature, her sex, just as the negro is and always will be, to the end of time, inferior to the white race, and, therefore, doomed to subjection; but happier than she would be in any other condition, just because it is the law of her nature. The women themselves would not have this law reversed. It is a significant fact that even Mrs. Swisshelm, who formerly ran about to all such gatherings from her husband, is now "a keeper at home," and condemns these Conventions in her paper. How does this happen? Because, after weary years of unfruitfulness, she has at length got her rights in the shape of a baby. This is the best cure for the mania, and we would recommend a trial of it to all who are afflicted.
What do the leaders of the Woman's Rights Convention want? They want to vote, and to hustle with the rowdies at the polls. They want to be members of Congress, and in the heat of debate to subject themselves to coarse jests and indecent language, like that of Rev. Mr. Hatch. They want to fill all other posts which men are ambitious to occupy — to be lawyers, doctors, captains of vessels, and generals in the field. How funny it would sound in the newspapers, that Lucy Stone, pleading a cause, took suddenly ill in the pains of parturition, and perhaps gave birth to a fine bouncing boy in court! Or that Rev. Antoinette Brown was arrested in the middle of her sermon in the pulpit from the same cause, and presented a "pledge "to her husband and the congregation; or, that Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, while attending a gentleman patient for a fit of the gout or fistula in ano, found it necessary to send for a doctor, there and then, and to be delivered of a man or woman child — perhaps twins. A similar event might happen on the floor of Congress, in a storm at sea, or in the raging tempest of battle, and then what is to become of the woman legislator?
WORLD'S TEMPERANCE CONVENTION.
comments of the press.
"The New York Herald" (editorial article), September 9, 1853.
. . . . "We are at length — praised be the stars! — drawing to the termination of the clamorous conventions, which have kept the city in a state of ferment and agitation, excitement and fun, for the past two weeks. ....
"The World's Temperance Convention commenced its sittings on Tuesday, and is still in session. This organization was calculated to effect much good, had it not been leavened with the elements of discord, which had brought contempt and ridicule on that of the 'Whole World.' The Rev. Miss Antoinette Brown cast the brand of disorder into it, by presenting herself as a delegate from the other association. This was a virtual declaration of Woman's Rights, and a resolute effort to have them recognized by the Convention. Neal Dow, as President and as a man of gallantry, decided on receiving Miss Antoinette's credentials, and for a time victory appeared to smile on the Amazons. The triumph, however, was only ephemeral and illusive. The motion was put and carried that none but the officers and invited guests of the Convention should be permitted to occupy places on the platform, and so, by this indirect movement, Miss Brown saw herself, in the moment of her brightest hopes, expelled from the stage, and once more the Anti-Woman's Righters were in the ascendancy.
"This was on Tuesday. Next day another stormy scene, arising from the same cause, was enacted. The meek, temperate Dow — the light of the reformation, the apostle of the Maine Liquor Law, the President of the World's Temperance Convention — no longer able to control the stormy elements which had developed themselves in the council, resolved by a coup d'état to give the world an Instance of his temperate demeanor and of the liberality of the reformers, and accordingly directed the police officers in attendance to clear the hall. The order was enforced, and even Miss Antoinette Brown, notwithstanding she was the bearer of credentials, was compelled to evacuate with the rest of the throng, and leave Metropolitan Hall to the quiet and peaceful possession of the male delegates to the World's Temperance Convention. Thus harmony was restored in that obstreperous assembly.
"'They made a solitude, and called it peace.'"
"Herald," September 10, 1858.
.... Thus stands the case, then. This World's Temperance, or Maine Law Convention, headed by Neal Dow, the founder of the aforesaid statute, has turned adrift the Woman's Rights party, male and female, black and white, the Socialists, the Amalgamationists, the Infidels, the Vegetarians, and the Free Colored Americans. ... . What is to follow from these proceedings, excluding Miss Brown, Phillips, Douglass, and Smith from the holy cause of temperance? Agitation? Of course. What else? Very likely a separate Maine Law coalition movement, comprising the Abolitionists, the strong-minded women, and Free Colored Americans all over the North, in opposition to Neal Dow and the orthodox Maine Law party. Thus the house will be divided — is, indeed, already divided — against itself. What then? The Scriptures say that such a house can't stand. It can't. And thus the Maine Law is crippled in a miserable squabble with fugitive slaves, Bloomers, and Abolitionists. How strange! Great country this, anyhow."
"National Democrat," September 5 (Rev. Chauncey C. Burr, editor).
"Time was when a full-blooded nigger meeting in New York would have been heralded with the cry of 'Tar and feathers!' but, alas! in these degenerate days, we are culled to lament only over an uproarious disturbance. The Tribune groans horribly, it is true, because a set of deistical fanatics were interrupted in their villainous orgies; but it should rather rejoice that no harsher means were resorted to than 'tufts of grass.' Talk about freedom! Is any land so lost in self-respect — so sunk in infamy — that God-defying, Bible abhorring sacrilege will be civilly allowed? Because the bell-wether of The Tribune accompanied by a phalanx of blue petticoats, is installed as the grand-master of outrages, is that any reason for personal respect and public humiliation? In view of all the aggravating circumstances of the case, we congratulate the foolhardy fanatics on getting off as easy as they did; and we commend the forbearance of the considerate crowd in not carrying their coercive measures to extremes, because, the humbug being exploded, all that is necessary now is to laugh, hiss, and vociferously applaud. When men make up their minds to vilify the Bible, denounce the Constitution, and defame their country (although this is a free country), they should go down in some obscure cellar, remote from mortal ken, and, even there, whisper their hideous treason against God and liberty."
MOB CONVENTION, 1853.
1. Resolved, That this movement for the rights of woman makes no attempt to decide whether woman is better or worse than man, neither affirms nor denies the equality of her intellect with that of man — makes no pretense of protecting woman — does not seek to oblige woman any more than man is now obliged, to vote, take office, labor in the professions, mingle in public life, or manage her own property.
2. Resolved, That what we do seek is to gain these rights and privileges for those women who wish to enjoy them, and so to change public opinion that it shall not be deemed indecorous for women to engage in any occupation which they deem fitted to their habits and talents.
3. Resolved, That the fundamental principle of the Woman's Rights movement is — that every human being, without distinction of sex, has an inviolable right to the full development and free exercise of all energies; and that in every sphere of life, private and public, Functions should always be commensurate with Powers.
4. Resolved, That each human being is the sole judge of his or her sphere, and entitled to choose a profession without interference from others,
5. Resolved, That whatever differences exist between Man and Woman, in the quality or measure of their powers, are originally designed to be and should become bonds of union and means of co-operation in the discharge of all functions, alike private and public.
6. Resolved, That the monopoly of the elective franchise, and thereby of all the powers of legislation and government, by men, solely on the ground of sex, is a monstrous usurpation — condemned alike by reason and common-sense, subversive of all the principles of justice, oppressive and demoralizing in its operations, and insulting to the dignity of human nature.
7. Resolved, That we see no force in the objection, that woman's taking part in politics would be a fruitful source of domestic dissension; since experience shows that she may be allowed to choose her own faith and sect without any such evil result, though religious disputes are surely as bitter as political — and if the objection be sound, we ought to go further, and oblige a wife to forego all religious opinions, or to adopt the religious as well as the political creed of her husband.
8. Resolved, That women, like men, must be either self-supported and self-governed, or dependent and enslaved; that an unobstructed and general participation in all the branches of productive industry, and in all the business functions and offices of common life, is at once their natural right, their individual interest, and their public duty; the claim and the obligation reciprocally supporting each other; that the idleness of the rich, with its attendant physical debility, moral laxity, passional intemperance and mental dissipation, and the ignorance, wretchedness, and enforced profligacy of the poor, which are everywhere the curse and reproach of the sex, are the necessary results of their exclusion from those diversified employments which would otherwise furnish them with useful occupation, and reward them with its profits, honors, and blessings, that this enormous wrong cries for redress, for reparation by those whose delinquency allows its continuance.
Whereas, The energies of Man are always in proportion to the magnitude of the objects to be obtained; and, whereas, it requires the highest motive for the greatest exertion and noblest action; therefore,
9. Resolved, That Woman must be recognized politically, legally, socially, and religiously the equal of man, and all the obstructions to her highest physical, intellectual, and moral culture and development be removed, that she may have the highest motive to assume her place in that sphere of action and usefulness which her capacities enable her to fill.
10. Resolved, That this movement gives to the cause of education a new motive and impulse; makes a vast stride toward the settlement of the question of wages and social reform; goes far to cure that widespread plague — the licentiousness of cities; adds to civilization a new element of progress; and in all these respects commends itself as one of the greatest reforms of the age.
FIRST APPEAL OF 1854.
Woman's Rights. — Circulate the Petition.
The Albany Woman's Rights Convention, held in February last, resolved to continue the work of Petitioning our State Legislature, from year to year, until the law of Justice and Equality shall be dispensed to the whole people, without distinction of sex.
In order to systematize and facilitate the labors of the friends who shall engage in the work of circulating the Petitions, a Committee was appointed to devise and present some definite plan of action. In the estimation of that Committee, the first and most important work to be done is to enlighten the people as to the real claims of the Woman's Rights Movement, thereby dispelling their many prejudices, and securing their hearty good-will. To aid in the accomplishment of this first great object, the Committee purpose holding Woman's Rights Meetings in all the cities and many of the larger villages of the State, during the coming fall and winter, and gladly, could they command the services of Lecturing Agents, would they thoroughly canvass the entire State. But, since to do so is impossible, they would urge upon the friends in every county, town, village school district, to hold public meetings in their respective localities, and, if none among their own citizens feel themselves competent to address the people, invite speakers from abroad. Let the question be fully and freely discussed, both pro and con, by both friends and opponents.
Though the living speaker can not visit every hearthstone throughout the length and breadth of the Empire State, and personally present the claims of our cause to the hearts and consciences of those who surround them, his arguments, by the aid of the invaluable art of printing, may. Therefore the Committee have resolved to circulate as widely as possible the written statement of Woman's Political and Legal Rights, as contained in the Address written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, of Seneca Falls, N. Y., and adopted by the Albany Convention—presented to our Legislature at its last session. This Address has been highly spoken of by many of the best papers in the State, and pronounced, by eminent lawyers and statesmen, an able and unanswerable argument. And the Committee, being fully confident of its power to convince every candid inquirer after truth of the justice and mercy of our claims, do urgently call upon the friends everywhere to aid them in giving to it a thorough circulation.
There is no reform question of the day that meets so ready, so full, so deep a response from the masses, as does this Woman's Rights question. To ensure a speedy triumph, we have only to take earnest hold of the work of disseminating its immutable truths. Let us, then, agitate the question, hold public meetings, widely circulate Woman's Rights Tracts, and show to the world that we are in earnest—that we will be heard—that our demands stop not short of justice and perfect equality to every human being. Let us, at least, see to it, that this admirable Address of Mrs. Stanton is placed in the hands of every intelligent man and woman in the State, and thus the way prepared for the gathering up of a mighty host of names to our petitions to be presented to our next Legislature, a mammoth roll, that shall cause our law-makers to know that the People are with us, and that if our prayer be not wisely and justly answered by them, other and truer representatives will fill those Legislative Halls.
The success of our first appeal to our Legislature, made last winter, encourages us to persevere. That the united prayer of only 6,000 men and women should cause the reporting and subsequent passage in the House, of a bill granting two of our most special claims—that of the wife to her earnings, and the mother to her children—is indeed a result the most sanguine scarce dared to hope for. What may we not expect from our next appeal, that shall be 20,000, nay, more, if we but be faithful, 100,000 strong. To the work, then, friends, of renovating public sentiment and circulating petitions. There is no time to be lost. Our Fourth of July gatherings will afford an opportunity for both distributing the Address and circulating the petitions. And, Women of the Empire State, it is for you to do the work, it is for you to shake from your feet the dust of tyrant custom, it is for you to remember that "he who would be free must himself strike the blow."
The petitions to be circulated are the same as last year—one asking for the Just and Equal Rights of Women, and the other for Woman's Right of Suffrage. The petitions are to be signed by both men and women, the men's names placed in the right column, and the women's in the left. All intelligent persons must be ready and willing to sign the first, asking a revision of the laws relative to the property rights of women, and surely no true republican can refuse to give his or her name to the second, asking for woman the Right of Representation—a practical application of the great principles of '76.
It is desirable that there shall be one person in each county to whom all the petitions circulated in its several towns, villages, and school districts, shall be forwarded, and who shall arrange and attach them in one roll, stating upon a blank sheet, placed between the petition and the signatures, the number of signers, the name of the county, and the number of towns represented, and forward them as early as the 1st of December next, to Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, N. Y. Where no person volunteers, or is appointed such county agent, the petitions, properly labeled, may be sent directly to Rochester.
Mrs. Stanton's Address is published in neat pamphlet form, in large type, and may be had at the following prices: $2 per 100, 37½ cts. per dozen; or if sent by mail, $3 per 100, and 50 cts. per dozen. Packages of over 25 may be sent by express to all places on the line of the railroads at a less cost than by mail.
It is hoped that every person who reads this notice, and feels an interest in the universal diffusion of the true aim and object of the Woman's Rights agitation, will, without delay, order copies of this address to distribute gratuitously or otherwise, among their neighbors and townsmen. Should there be any wishing to aid in this work, who can not command the money necessary to purchase the Address, their orders will be cheerfully complied with free of charge.
The Committee have on hand a variety of Woman's Rights Tracts, written by S. J. May, Wendell Phillips, Elizabeth C. Stanton, Mrs. C. I. H. Nichols, Ernestine L. Rowe, T. W. Higginson, and others. Also, the Reports of the several National Woman's Rights Conventions, all of which may be had at very low prices.
All correspondence and orders for Address, petitions, etc., should be addressed to
June 22, 1854
SECOND APPEAL OF 1854.
To the Women of the State of New York:
We purpose again this winter to send petitions to our State Legislature — one, asking for the Just and Equal Rights of Woman, and one for Woman's Right of Suffrage. The latter, we think, covers the whole ground, for we can never be said to have just and equal rights until the right of suffrage is ours. Some who will gladly sign the former may shrink from making the last demand. But be assured, our cause can never rest on a safe, enduring basis, until we get the right of suffrage. So long as we have no voice in the laws, we have no guarantee that privileges granted us to-day by one body of men, may not be taken from us to-morrow by another.
All man's laws, his theology, his daily life, go to prove the fixed idea in his mind of the entire difference in the sexes — a difference so broad that what would be considered cruel and unjust between man and man, is kind and just between man and woman. Having discarded the idea of the oneness of the sexes, how can man judge of the needs and wants of a being so wholly unlike himself? How can he make laws for his own benefit and woman's too at the same time? He can not. He never has, as all his laws relative to woman most clearly show. But when man shall fully grasp the idea that woman is a being of like feelings, thoughts, and passions with himself, he may be able to legislate for her, as one code would answer for both. But until then, a sense of justice, a wise self-love, impels us to demand a voice in his councils.
To every intelligent, thinking woman, we put the question, On what sound principles of jurisprudence, constitutional law, or human rights, are one-half of the people of this State disfranchised? If you answer, as you must, that it is done in violation of all law, then we ask you, when and how is this great wrong to be righted? We say now; and petitioning is the first step in its accomplishment. We hope, therefore, that every woman in the State will sign her name to the petitions. It is humiliating to know that many educated women so stultify their consciences as to declare that they have all the rights they want. Have you who make this declaration ever read the barbarous laws in reference to woman, to mothers, to wives, and to daughters, which disgrace our Statute Books? Laws which are not surpassed in cruelty and injustice by any slaveholding code in the United States; laws which strike at the root of the glorious doctrine for which our fathers fought and bled and died, "no taxation without representation"; laws which deny a right most sacredly observed by many of the monarchies of Europe — "the right of trial by a jury of one's own peers"; laws which trample on the holiest and most unselfish of all human affections — a mother's love for her child — and with ruthless cruelty snap asunder the tenderest ties; laws which enable the father, be he a man or a minor, to tear the infant from the mother's arms and send it, if he chooses, to the Feejee Islands — yea, to will the guardianship of the unborn child to whomsoever he may please, whether to the Sultan of Turkey or the Imam of Muscat; laws by which our sons and daughters may be bound to service to cancel their father's debts of honor, in the meanest rum-holes and brothels in the vast metropolis; laws which violate all that is most pure and sacred in the marriage relation, by giving to the cruel, beastly drunkard the rights of a man, a husband, and father; laws which place the life-long earnings of the wife at the disposal of the husband, be his character what it may; laws which leave us at the mercy of the rum-seller and the drunkard, against whom we have no protection for our lives, our children, or our homes; laws by which we are made the watch-dogs to keep a million and a half of our sisters in the foulest bondage the sun ever shone upon—which forbid us to give food and shelter to the panting fugitive from the land of slavery.
If, in view of laws like these, there be women in this State so lost to self-respect, to all that is virtuous, noble, and true, as to refuse to raise their voices in protest against such degrading tyranny, we can only say of that system which has thus robbed womanhood of all its glory and greatness, what the immortal Channing did of slavery, "If," said he, "it be true that the slaves are contented and happy—if there is a system that can blot out all love of freedom from the soul of man, destroy every trace of his Divinity, make him happy in a condition so low and benighted and hopeless, I ask for no stronger argument against such a slavery as ours." No! never believe it; woman falsifies herself and blasphemes her God, when in view of her present social, legal, and political position, she declares she has all the rights she wants. If a few drops of Saxon blood gave our Frederick Douglass such a clear perception of his humanity, his inalienable rights, as to enable him, with the slaveholder's Bible, the slaveholder's Constitution, a Southern public sentiment and education all laid heavy on his shoulders, to stand upright and walk forth in search of freedom, with as much ease as did Samson of old with the massive gates of the city, shall we, the daughters of our Hancocks and Adamses, we in whose veins flow the blood of the Pilgrim Fathers, shall we never try the strength of these withes of law and gospel with which in our blindness we have been bound hand and foot? Yes, the time has come.
"The slumber is broken, the sleeper is risen,
The day of the Goth and the Vandal is o'er.
And old Earth feels the tread of Freedom once more."
Fail not, Women of the Empire State, to swell our Petitions. Let no religious scruples hold you back. Take no heed to man's interpretation of Paul's injunctions to women. To any thinking mind, there is no difficulty in explaining those passages of the Apostle as applicable to the times in which they were written, as having no reference whatever to the Women of the nineteenth century.
"Honor the King," heroes of '76! Those leaden tea-chests of Boston Harbor cry out, "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's." When the men of 1854, with their Priests and Rabbis, shall rebuke the disobedience of their forefathers—when they shall cease to set at defiance the British lion and the Apostle Paul in their National Policy, then it will be time enough for us to bow down to man's interpretation of law touching our social relations, and acknowledge that God gave us powers and rights, merely that we might show forth our faith in Him by being helpless and dumb.
The writings of Paul, like our State Constitutions, are susceptible of various interpretations. But when the human soul is roused with holy indignation against injustice and oppression, it stops not to translate human parchments, but follows out the law of its inner being, written by the finger of God in the first hour of its creation.
Our Petitions will be sent to every county in the State, and we hope that they will find at least ten righteous Women to circulate them. But should there be any county so benighted that a petition can not be circulated throughout its length and breadth, giving to every man and woman an opportunity to sign their names, then we pray, not that "God will send down fire and brimstone" upon it, but that the "Napoleon" of this movement will flood it with Woman's Rights Tracts and Missionaries.
Chairman N. Y. State Woman's Rights Committee.
Seneca Falls, Dec. 11, 1854.
N. B.—All orders for forms of Petitions and Woman's Rights Tracts, and all communications relating to the movement in this State, should be addressed to our General Agent, Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, N. Y. Let the Petitions be returned, as soon as possible, to Lydia Mott, Albany, N. Y., as we wish to present them early in the session, and thereby give our Legislature due time for the consideration of this important question.
NATIONAL WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION, COOPER INSTITUTE, 1856.
Letter from Mrs. Stanton.
Dear Lucy Stone:—We may continue to hold our Conventions, we may talk of our right to vote, to legislate, to hold property, but until we can arouse in woman a proper self-respect, she will hold in contempt the demands we now make for our sex. We shall never get what we ask for until the majority of women are openly with us; and they will never claim their civil rights until they know their social wrongs. From time to time I put these questions to myself: How is it that woman can longer silently consent to her present false position? How can she calmly contemplate the barbarous code of laws which govern her civil and political existence? How can she devoutly subscribe to a theology which makes her the conscientious victim of another's will, forever subject to the triple bondage of the man, the priest, and the law? How can she tolerate our social customs, by which womankind is stripped of all true virtue, dignity, and nobility? How can she endure our present marriage relations, by which woman's life, health, and happiness are held so cheap, that she herself feels that God has given her no charter of rights, no individuality of her own. I answer, she patiently bears all this because in her blindness she sees no way of escape. Her bondage, though it differs from that of the negro slave, frets and chafes her just the same. She too sighs and groans in her chains; and lives but in the hope of better things to come. She looks to heaven; whilst the more philosophical slave sets out for Canada. Let it be the object of this Convention to show that there is hope for woman this side of heaven, and that there is a work for her to do before she leaves for the celestial city.
Marriage is a divine institution, intended by God for the greater freedom and happiness of both parties—whatever therefore conflicts with woman's happiness is not legitimate to that relation. Woman has yet to learn that she has a right to be happy in and of herself; that she has a right to the free use, improvement, and development of all her faculties, for her own benefit and pleasure. The woman is greater than the wife or the mother; and in consenting to take upon herself these relations, she should never sacrifice one iota of her individuality to any senseless conventionalisms, or false codes of feminine delicacy and refinement.
Marriage, as we now have it, is opposed to all God's laws. It is by no means an equal partnership. The silent partner loses everything. On the domestic sign, the existence of a second person is not recognized by even the ordinary abbreviation, Co. There is the establishment of John Jones. Perhaps his partner supplies all the cents and the senses—but no one knows who she is or whence she came. If John is a luminous body, she shines in his reflection; if not, she hides herself in his shadow. But she is nameless, for a woman has no name! She is Mrs. John or James, Peter or Paul, just as she changes masters; like the Southern slave, she takes the name of her owner. Many people consider this a very small matter; but it is the symbol of the most cursed monopoly on this footstool; a monopoly by man of all the rights, the life, the liberty, and happiness of one-half of the human family—all womankind. For what man can honestly deny that he has not a secret feeling that where his pleasure and woman's seems to conflict, the woman must be sacrificed; and what is worse, woman herself has come to think so too. She believes that all she tastes of joy in life is from the generosity and benevolence of man; and the bitter cup of sorrow, which she too often drinks to the very dregs, is of the good providence of God, sent by a kind hand for her improvement and development. This sentiment pervades the laws, customs, and religions of all countries, both Christian and heathen. Is it any wonder, then, that woman regards herself as a mere machine, a tool for men's pleasure? Verily is she a hopeless victim of his morbidly developed passions. But, thank God, she suffers not alone! Man too pays the penalty of his crimes in his enfeebled mind, dwarfed body, and the shocking monstrosities of his deformed and crippled offspring.
Call yourselves Christian women, you who sacrifice all that is great and good for an ignoble peace, who betray the best interests of the race for a temporary ease? It were nobler far to go and throw yourselves into the Ganges than to curse the earth with a miserable progeny, conceived in disgust and brought forth in agony. What mean these asylums all over the land for the deaf and dumb, the maim and blind, the idiot and the raving maniac? What all these advertisements in our public prints, these family guides, these female medicines, these Madame Restells? Do not all these things show to what a depth of degradation the women of this Republic have fallen, how false they have been to the holy instincts of their nature, to the sacred trust given them by God as the mothers of the race? Let Christians and moralists pause in their efforts at reform, and let some scholar teach them how to apply the laws of science to human life. Let us but use as much care and forethought in producing the highest order of intelligence, as we do in raising a cabbage or a calf, and in a few generations we shall reap an abundant harvest of giants, scholars, and Christians.
The first step in this improvement is the elevation of woman. She is the protector of national virtue; the rightful lawgiver in all our most sacred relations.
Letter From N. H. Whiting.
Dear Friend:—I do not see that I can do much to aid you in your effort for self-emancipation from the injustice your sex encounters in the present social and political arrangements of the world. You know the old maxim, "The gods help them who help themselves." This is true of all times and circumstances. The two inevitable conditions that are found in, and are essential to all bondage, are the spirit of oppression, the desire to exercise unlawful dominion on the one side, and ignorance, servility, the willingness, if not the desire to be enslaved on the other. The absence of either is fatal to the existence of the thing itself.
I apprehend the principal thing you want from our sex, as a preliminary to your growth and equal position in the great struggle of life, is what Diogenes wanted of Alexander, viz., that we shall "get out of your sunshine." In other words, that we shall remove the obstacles we have placed in your way. To this end, politically, all laws which discriminate between man and woman, to the injury of the latter, should at once be blotted out. Women should have an equal voice in the creation and administration of that government to which they are subject. This will be a fair start in that direction. The first thing to be done, socially, is to so regulate and arrange the industrial machinery that women shall have an equal chance to labor in all the departments, and that the same work shall receive the same pay whether done by man or woman. This will do much to clear the track, so that all can have a fair chance. This is all you ask, as I take it. This you should have. Justice demands it....
But, save in the removal of the outward forms of society, which now environ and hedge up your way, the active work in all this change in the most important human relations must be done by yourselves. "They who would be free, themselves must strike the blow." What woman is capable of we shall never know until she has a fair chance in the wide arena of universal human life.
If the love of frivolity and show and of empty admiration, which now so generally obtains, is an unfailing characteristic in the female sex, legislation can not help you. Encouragement, sympathy, can not help you. It is of no use to fight against the eternal laws. But if this be only a perversion or misdirection of noble and lovely powers and faculties, the result of accidental circumstances and vicious institutions, as I believe, then, when the outward pressure is removed, the elastic spring of the genuine human spirit, encased in the form of woman, shall return; the great curse of civil and domestic strife shall cease; the true marriage of the male and female heart can then take place, because that perfect equality, under which alone it can exist, will be recognized and established.
You are engaged in a great work. May you have faith and resolution to continue to the end. It is a long way before you. Man is a plant of slow growth. His education and development are the work of ages. It is only by a landmark extending far back into the dim and misty past we can trace his upward path.
But though the race grows so slow, and the forward wave is so often pressed backward by the prevailing currents of ignorance, superstition, and oppression, still, it is cheering to know that no true word was ever spoken, or good deed ever done, but it cast some rays of light into the surrounding darkness, while it gave strength and vigor to the spirit that sent it forth. That is a grand truth whose utterance is attributed to Jesus, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." By that gift we may relieve the want of others, but we gain far more to ourselves by creating from the chaos of human crime and misery a beautiful and godlike act. That act is wrought into the fibers of our own individual life, and we are nobler, better, happier than before.
So you, in the thankless task before you, subject to ribald jest, to the cold, heartless sneer, to obloquy and abuse of all sorts from our and even your sex, who are most immediately to be benefited by your labors, will have this great truth to console and stimulate you, that in every step of this grand procession in which you are marching, you will gather rich and substantial food for the sustenance and growth of your own mental and moral natures.
To the Seventh National Woman's Rights Convention:
The central claim for Woman is her right to be, and to do, as well as to suffer. Allow her everywhere to represent herself and her own interests.
Custom and law both deny her this right. If she is too cowardly to contend with custom, and to overcome it, let her remain its slave. But the Jaw has bound her hand and foot. Here she can not act. The law-makers have forged her chains and riveted them upon her. They alone can take them off. Shall we not, then, at once demand of them — demand of every sovereign State in the Union — the elective franchise for woman?
With this franchise she can make for herself a civil and political equality with man. Without it she is utterly without power to protect herself. She does not need to be protected like a child. She does need freedom to use the powers of self-protection with which her own nature is endowed.
Each of the several States has its specific laws — statutes and constitution — varying in details, but all more or less unjust to her as wife, mother, property-holder; in short, unjust to her in all her relations as citizen. Every State denies to her the right to represent herself politically. Once give her this, and she can take all the rest.
Would it not be wholly appropriate, then, for this National Convention to demand the right of suffrage for her from the Legislature of each State in the Nation? We can not petition the General Government on this point. Allow me, therefore, respectfully to suggest the propriety of appointing a committee, which shall be instructed to prepare a memorial adapted to the circumstances of each legislative body; and demanding of each, in the name of this Convention, the elective franchise for woman.
Such a memorial, presented to the several States during the coming winter, could not fail of doing good. [t would be pressing home this great question upon all the powers that be in the whole nation; and, with comparatively little effort, would, at least, create a healthful agitation. Who shall say that the just men of some State will not even accord to us the franchise we claim? With this hint to the wise, I remain, as ever,
Mr. Hattelle moved that a Committee be at once appointed to draft such a memorial, which was adopted.:
Wendell Phillips rose to offer as an amendment, that a recommendation go forth from this Convention to the women of each State, to inaugurate their presentation of the subject to their several Legislatures.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson proposed that the friends of Woman Suffrage should publish an almanac each year giving the advance steps in their movement. He issued one for 1858, from which we clip the following:
THE WOMAN'S RIGHTS ALMANAC.
The History Of Woman In Three Pictures.
I. Hindoo Laws. 2000 B. C. — "A man, both day and night, must keep his wife so much in subjection, that she by no means be mistress of her own actions. If the wife have her own free-will, notwithstanding she be of a superior caste, she will behave amiss."
"The Creator formed woman for this purpose, that man might have sexual intercourse with her, and that children might be born from thence."
"A woman shall never go out of the house without the consent of her husband . . . . and shall act according to the orders of her husband, and shall pay & proper respect to the Deity, her husband's father, the spiritual guide, and the guests; and shall not eat until she has served them with victuals (if it is physic, she may take it before they eat); a woman also shall never go to a stranger's house, and shall not stand at the door, and must never look out of a window."
'If a woman, following her own inclinations, goes whithersoever she choose, and does not regard the words of her master, such a woman shall be turned away."
"If a man goes on a journey, his wife shall not divert herself by play, nor shall see any public show, nor shall laugh, nor shall dress herself with jewels and fine clothes, nor shall see dancing, nor hear music, nor shall sit in the window, nor shall ride out, nor shall behold anything choice or rare, but shall fasten well the house-door and remain private; and shall not eat any dainty victuals, and shall not. view herself in a mirror; she shall never exercise herself in any such agreeable employment during the absence of her husband."y
"It is proper for every woman, after her husband's death, to burn herself in the fire with his corpse."
It will be seen that the following laws scarcely vary at all, in principle, from the preceding:
II, Anglo-Saxon Laws. 1818, — "By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law; that is, "the very being or existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage", or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband, under whose wing, protection, and covert she performs everything; and is, therefore, called in our Law-French a feme-covert, is said to be covert-baron, or under the protection and influence of her husband, her baron, or lord; and her condition during her marriage is called her coverture. Upon this principle, of an union of person in husband and wife, depend almost all the legal rights, duties, and disabilities that either of them acquire by the marriage." — I "Blackstone Com.," 356.
"The husband also, by the old law, might give his wife moderate correction. For, as he is to answer for her misbehavior, the law thought it reasonable to intrust him with this power of restraining her by domestic chastisement, in the same moderation that a man is allowed to correct his apprentices or children. But this power of correction was confined within reasonable bounds, and the husband was prohibited from using any violence to his wife, liter quam ad virum, ex causa regiminis et castigationis uxoris suae licite et rationabiliter pertinet (except as lawfully and reasonably belongs to a husband, for the sake of governing and disciplining his wife). The civil law gave the husband the same, or a larger authority over his wife, allowing him, for some misdemeanors, flagellis et Fustibus acriter verberare uxorem (to beat his wife severely with whips and cudgels); for others only modicam castigationem adhibere (to administer moderate chastisement). But with us, in the politer reign of Charles II., this power of correction began to be doubted, and a wife may now have security of peace against the husband, or, in return, a husband against his wife. Yet the lower rank of people, who were always fond of the old common law, still claim and exact their ancient privilege, and the courts of law will still permit a husband to restrain a wife of her liberty in case of any gross misbehavior." — 1 Blackstone, 366.
"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 are in a degree lost or suspended during the continuance of the matrimonial union."—2 Kent's Comm. on Am. Law, 129.
"Even now, in countries of the most polished habits, a considerable latitude is allowed to marital coercion. In England the husband has the right of imposing such corporal restraints as he may deem necessary, for securing to himself the fulfillment of the obligations imposed on the wife by virtue of the marriage contract. He may, in the plenitude of his power, adopt every act of physical coercion which does not endanger the life or health of the wife, or render cohabitation unsafe."—Petersdorff's Abridgement, note.
"The husband hath, by law, power and dominion over his wife, and may keep her by force within the bounds of duty, and may beat her, but not in a violent or cruel manner."—Bacon's Abridgement, title "Baron aud Feme," B. 9.
"The wife is only the servant of her husband."—Baron Alderson (Wharton's Laws relating to the Women of England), p. 168.
"It is probably not generally known, that whenever a woman has accepted an offer of marriage, all she has, or expects to have, becomes virtually the property of the man thus accepted as a husband; and no gift or deed executed by her between the period of acceptance and the marriage is held to be valid; for were she permitted to give away or otherwise settle her property, he might be disappointed in the wealth he looked to in making the offer."—Roper, Law of Husband and Wife, Book I., ch. xiii.
"A lady whose husband had been unsuccessful in business, established herself as a milliner in Manchester. After some years of toil, she realized sufficient for the family to live upon comfortably, the husband having done nothing meanwhile. They lived for a time in easy circumstances, after she gave up business, and then the husband died, bequeathing all his wife's earnings to his own illegitimate children. At the age of sixty-two, she was compelled, in order to gain her bread, to return to business."—Westminster Review, Oct., 1856.
Mr. Justice Coleridge's Judgment "in re Cochrane."—The facts were briefly these. A writ of habeas corpus had been granted to the wife, who, having been brought into the power of the husband by strategem, had since that time been kept in confinement by him. By the return to the writ, it appeared that the parties had lived together for about three years after their marriage on terms of apparent affection, and had two children; that in May, 1836, Mrs. Cochrane withdrew herself and offspring from his house and protection, and had resided away from him against his will, for nearly four years. While absent from her husband, Mrs. Cochrane had always resided with her mother, nor was there the slightest imputation on her honor. In ordering her to be restored to her husband, the learned judge, after stating the question to be whether by the common law, the husband, in order to prevent his wife from eloping, has a right to confine her in his own dwelling-house, and restrain her from liberty for an indefinite time, using no cruelty nor imposing any hardship or unnecessary restraint on his part, and on hers there being no reason from her past conduct to apprehend that she will avail herself of her absence from his control to injure either his honor or his property, stated, "That there could be no doubt of the general dominion which the law of England attributes to the husband over the wife."— 8 Dowling's P. C. 360. Quoted in Westminster Review, Oct., 1856.
III. Signs Of The Times. 1857.—It is obvious that the English common law, as above stated, is scarcely a step beyond barbarism. Yet this law remained almost unaltered in the United States, as respects woman, till the year 1848—the year of the first local Woman's Rights Convention, the first National one being held in 1850. Since then every year has brought improvements, and even those who denounce the Woman's Rights Movement, admit the value of these its results.
There is near Trenton, says The Newark Advertiser, a woman who is a skillful mechanic. She has made a carriage, and can make a violin or a gun. She is only 35 years old.
This is told as though it were something wonderful for a woman to have mechanical genius; when the fact is, that there are thousands all over the country who would make as good mechanics and handle tools with as much skill and dexterity as men, if they were only allowed to make manifest their ingenuity and inclinations. A girl's hands and head are formed very much like those of a boy, and if put to a trade at the age when boys are usually apprenticed, she will master her business quite as soon as the boy—be the trade what it may.
Sale Of A Wife At Worcester, England.—One of these immoral and illegal transactions was recently completed at Worcester. The agreement between the fellow who sold and the fellow who bought is given in The Worcester Chronicle:
"Thomas Middleton delivered up his wife, Mary Middleton, to Phillip Rostins, and sold her for one shilling and a quart of ale, and parted wholly and solely for life, not trouble one another for life. Witness, Signed Thomas x Middleton. Witness, Mary Middleton, his wife. Witness, Phillip x Rostins. Witness, S. H. Stone, Crown Inn, Friar Street."
Female Inventors.—"Man, having excluded woman from all opportunity of mechanical education, turns and reproaches her with having invented nothing. But one remarkable fact is overlooked. Society limits woman's sphere to the needle, the spindle, and the basket; and tradition reports that she herself invented all three. If she has invented her tools as fast as she has found opportunity to use them, can more be asked?"—T. W. Higginson.
In the ancient Hindoo dramas, wives do not speak the same language with their husbands, but employ the dialect of slaves.
A correspondent of The London Spectator suggests:—"The employment of women as clerks at railway stations would not be an unprecedented innovation; they not unfrequently fill that position abroad; and I can recall at least one instance, when, at a principal station in France, a female clerk displayed under difficult circumstances an amount of zeal and intelligence which showed her to be admirably suited to her office—'the right woman in the right place.'"
The word courage is, in the Spanish and Portuguese languages, a feminine noun.
Upwards of ten thousand females in New York, forty thousand in Paris, and eighty thousand in London, are said, by statisticians, to regularly earn a daily living by immoral practices. And yet all these are Christian cities!
A widow lady of Bury, Mary Chapman, who would appear to have been a warlike dame, making her will in 1649, leaves to one of her sons, among other things, "also my muskett, rest, bandileers, sword, and headpiece, my jacke, a fine paire of sheets, and a hutche."
Addison, in The Spectator, refers to a French author, who mentions that the ladies of the court of France, in his time, thought it ill-breeding and a kind of female pedantry, to pronounce a hard word right, for which reason they took frequent occasion to use hard words, that they might show a politeness in murdering them. The author further adds, that a lady of some quality at court, having accidentally made use of a hard word in a proper place, and pronounced it right, the whole assembly was out of countenance for her.
Sewing In New York.—"I am informed from one source, that based on a calculation some two years ago, the number of those who live by sewing in New York exceeds fifteen thousand. Another, who has good means of information, tells me there are forty thousand earning fifteen shillings ($1.87½) per week, and paying twelve shillings ($1.50) for board, making shirts at four cents."—-E. H. Chapin, "Moral Aspects of City Life."
The first "pilgrim" who stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock is said, by tradition, to have been a young girl, named Mary Chilton.
The St. Louis Republican mentions that there is one feature about the steamer Illinois Belle, of peculiar attractiveness — a lady clerk. "Look at her bills of lading, and 'Mary J. Patterson, clerk,' will be seen traced in a delicate and very neat style of chirography. A lady clerk on a Western steamer! It speaks strongly of our moral progress."
George Borrow, in his singular narrative, "The Romany Rye," states that the sale of a wife, with a halter round her neck, is still a legal transaction in England. It must be done in the cattle-market, as if she were a mare, "all women being considered as mares by old English law, and indeed called mares in certain counties where genuine old English is still preserved."
Testimonial To Miss Mirchell. — The fame of our talented countrywoman, Miss Maria Mitchell, of Nantucket, has spread far and wide among astronomers, 'and is cherished with pride by all Americans. We are glad to learn that it is proposed to present her a testimonial which will be at once an appropriate tribute to her talents, and an aid to the future prosecution of her astronomical researches. An observatory on Nantucket Island is for sale on very favorable terms, and a plan is on foot for its purchase, to be presented to her. The sum needed is $3,000, of which more than a third has been raised by ladies in Philadelphia and its neighborhood.
Miss Mitchell is now in Europe, visiting the principal observatories and astronomers there, and it is hoped that she will soon be gratefully surprised by learning that the very imperfect means hitherto at her disposal in pursuing her favorite science are to be replaced on her return by a collection of instruments which she will be delighted to possess. Drs. Bond, of Harvard College Observatory, and Hall, of Providence, have interested themselves in securing this object, and express strongly their opinion that valuable results to science can not fail to be realized by furnishing so skillful and diligent au observer as Miss Mitchell the proposed aids to her researches. Dr. Bond expresses the conviction that Nantucket enjoys special advantages as an astronomical site, on account of its comparative exemption from thermometrical disturbances of the atmosphere.
We hope this worthy tribute to our countrywoman's scientific merit will not fail to be paid. Miss Mitchell's friends have the refusal of the observatory only till September 1st, and several other purchasers are ready to take it at once. Dr. Geo. Choate, of Salem, has consented to receive the pledges of such as desire to be enrolled among the subscribers to the fund, among whose names are already the honored ones of Edward Everett, J. I., Bowditch, John C. Brown, of Providence, and F. Peabody, of Salem besides other munificent patrons of science. — Journal of Commerce.
Learn To Swim. — When the steamer Alida was sinking from her collision with the Fashion, a Kentucky girl of seventeen was standing on the guard, looking upon the confusion of the passengers, and occasionally turning and looking anxiously toward the shore. A gallant young man stepped up to her and offered to convey her safely to shore. "Thank you," replied the lady, "you need not trouble yourself; I am only waiting for the crowd to get out of the way, when I can take care of myself." Soon the crowd cleared the space, and the lady plunged into the water, and swam to the shore with ease, and without any apparent fear.
A Lady Horsebreaker in France. — In consequence of the success obtained by Madame Isabelle in breaking in horses for the Russian army, the French Minister of War lately authorized her to proceed officially before a commission, composed of general and superior officers of cavalry, with General Regnault de St. Jean d'Angely at their head, to a practical demonstration of her method on a certain number of young cavalry horses. After twenty days' training, the horses were so perfectly broken in, that the minister no longer hesitated to enter into an arrangement with Madame Isabelle to introduce her system into all the imperial schools of cavalry, beginning with that of Saumur. — Galignani's Messenger.
Since the passage of what is called the Married Woman's Act, in 1848, in Pennsylvania, there have been brought, in the Court of Common Pleas, one thousand one hundred and thirty-five suits for divorce. A large majority of the cases are brought by the wives, on the ground of cruel treatment and desertion.
"Women ruled all, and ministers of state
Were at the doors of women forced to wait —
Women, who've oft as sovereigns graced the land,
But never governed well at second-hand."
SENATOR ANTHONY.
"A Woman's Rights Convention is in session in New York. A collection of women arguing for political rights, and for the privileges usually conceded only to the other sex, is one of the easiest things in the world to make fun of. There is no end to the smart Speeches and the witty remarks that may be made on the subject. But when we Seriously attempt to show that a woman who pays taxes ought not to have a voice in the manner in which the taxes are expended, that a woman whose property uad liberty and person are controlled by the laws, should have no voice in framing those laws, it is not 60 easy. If women are fit to rule in monarchies, it is difficult to say why they are not qualified to vote in a republic; nor can there be greater indelicacy in a woman going up to the ballot-box than there is in a woman opening a legislature or issuing orders to an army. i
"We do not say that women ought to vote; but we say that it is a great deal easier to laugh down the idea than to argue it down. Moreover, there are a great many things besides voting that are confined to men, and that women can do quite as well, or even better. There are many employments which ought to be opened to women, there are many ways in which women can be made to contribute more largely to their own independence and comfort, and to the general good of society. Al! well-directed plans to this end should receive the support of thinking men. The danger is that conventions of this kind are apt to overlook the present and attainable good, in their efforts for results which are of less certain value and far less practicable." — Providence Journal, Edited by Ex-Governor Anthony.
WISCONSIN LEGISLATURE, 1857.
Wisconsin Report On The Suffrage Question. — The following extract from the report on the extension of the right of suffrage in Wisconsin, we find in The Milwaukee Free Democrat:
Perhaps no question ever submitted to a community would call forth so much of its mental activity, such a crusade into the realms of history, such a balancing of good and evil, of the past with the present, such an examination of the social and political rights and relations, as the question whether the right of suffrage ought to be extended to all citizens over the age of twenty-one, which would, of course, include both sexes. The giddy devotee of fashion would be surprised in the midst of her frivolity, and be compelled to think and reason, in view of a new responsibility which is menacing her. Even if opposed to the proposition, she would be compelled to organize and inspire the public Opinion necessary to defeat it. Whatever might be the event, woman's intellectual position would be changed, and changed forever, and with hers that of all other classes . . . .
"Let no one imagine that he can dispose of this question by a contemptuous fling at strong-minded women and hen-pecked husbands. The principle will gain more strength from the character of the arguments of its opponents than from any number of Bloomer conventions. The modern idea of the fashionable belle, floating like a bird of paradise through the soiree; the impersonation of motion and grace in the ball-room, indulging alternately in syncope and rapture over the marvelous adventures and despair of the hero of a mushroom romance, her rapid transition from one excitement to another, to fill up the dreary vacuum of life, provoking as it does the secret derision of sensible men; all this comes from that legislation, from that public opinion, which drives women away from real life; from the discussion of questions in which her happiness and destiny are involved. A senseless, though a false fondness, denies her a participation in all questions of the actual world around her. The novel writers therefore create a fictitious world, filled with fantastic and hollow characters, for her to range in. Awhile she believes she is an angel, till some unfortunate husband finds her to be a moth on his fortune, and a baleful shadow stretching across his pathway, without curiosity or interests in all those practical realities, which the world, outside of her charmed existence, is attending to. These are the abortions of a false public opinion. For ages they have been regarded as the natural results of female organism. Hence, woman has become famed as a gossip, because she would degrade herself by discussing Judge A.'s qualifications for Judge of Probate, though Judge A. may yet appoint a guardian for her children. In the sewing society, she sews scandal, or reads brocades, silks, and crinolines, because it would be extremely coarse and vulgar in her to read the statutes of Wisconsin, where her rights of person and property, marriage and divorce, are regulated. In those statutes she would find that though $350,000 are appropriated to build a University, she is as effectually excluded from that institution as though it was a convent of monks. So there is some inconvenience at last in being regarded as a bona-fide angel, for angels have no use for Universities. Some indignant school-ma'am begins to suspect the hollow compliments of moon-struck admirers, and demands a direct voice in the laws which provide for the mutual improvement of her sex. But the grave doctor of law puts on his spectacles, and tells her she is fully and exactly represented in man, only more so. When he eats, she eats; when he thinks, she thinks; when he gets drunk, she gets drunk; that it would be as absurd to provide for the board and education of one's own shadow as to provide a separate establishment for woman, who possesses all things, enjoys all things, and sways all things in man, as fully as though she did it herself. And a single woman, or widow, may pay taxes, but it would be outrageous for her to have a choice in the men who are to spend the money and then cry out for more. When married, ten years ago, her education was equal to her husband's, now she can not write a grammatical letter: her husband's mind has been enlarged by the influx of new ideas, and by contacts with the electric atmosphere of thought in the great world without; but denied as she has been the right of expressing her will by a direct vote, she has lost all interest in passing events; the globe has dwindled to a half-acre lot and the village church. Her partner finds the match unequal, spends his time with more congenial society, and is out-and-out in favor of Moses' law of a galloping divorce. The old stager has filled the political arena with frauds and brawls, and bruises and blood; and having levelled the morals of the ballot-box with those of the race-ground or box-ring, he has yet virtue enough left to declare that woman shall not enter this moral Aceldama.
"Yet it may be that democracy, for self-preservation, will be compelled to invite women to the ballot-box, to restrain and overawe the ruffianism of man. Though man smiles with secret derision at the competition of woman, in dress and show, yet he is too tender of her reputation to allow her the same field with himself wherein to exercise her powers. We believe that this contortion of character is justly attributable to the denial of the right of voting, the great mode by which the questions of the day are decided in this country. Politics are our national life. As civilization advances, its issues will penetrate still deeper into social and every-day life of the people; and no man or woman can be regarded as an entity, as a power in society, who has not a direct agency in governing its results. Without a direct voice in molding the spirit of the age, the age will disown us.
"But the objection is argued seriously. Political rivalry will arm the wife against the husband; a man's foes will be those of his own household. But we believe that political equality will, by lending the thoughts and purposes of the sexes, to a just degree, into the same channel, more completely carry out the designs of nature. Women will be possessed of a positive power, and hollow compliments and rose-water flatteries will be exchanged for a pure admiration and a well-grounded respect, when we see her nobly discharging her part in the great intellectual and moral struggles of the age, that wait their solution by a direct appeal to the ballot-box. Woman's power is, at present, poetical and unsubstantial; let it be practical and real. There is no reality in any power that can not be coined into votes. The demagogue has a sincere respect and a salutary fear of the voter; and he that can direct the lightning flash of the ballot-box is greater than he who possesses a continent of vapor, gilded with moonshine.
"It is true, the right of voting would carry with it the right to hold office; but since it is true that the sexes have appropriate spheres, the discretion of individual voter would recognize this fact, and seldom elect a woman to an office, for which she is unfitted by nature and education, as incompetent men are now elected. But the cruelty of our laws is seen in this — that where nature makes exceptions, the laws are inexorable.
"We have shown that woman is not correctly represented by man at the ballot-box. Could her voice be heard, it would alter the choice of public men and their character. With legislators compelled to respect her opinions, the law itself, constitutions, and politics reflect, to a just extent, her peculiar views and interests. Nor is it for us to decide whether these would be for the better or worse. Let the majority rule. Vox populi vox Dei. Woman's intellect would enlarge with her more commanding political condition, and though she might blight the hopes of many a promising aspirant, yet the Union would not be dissolved under her administration. Believing the time has come when an appeal on her behalf to the voters of this State will not be in vain, we have prepared to submit the question to the people, by our amendment to the Senate bill.
"J. T. Mills.
"I altogether prefer the Committee's amendment to the Senate bill. "February 27, 1857.
One Year's Work. — The following are a portion of the results of the Woman's Rights petitions, presented during the winter of 1856-7:
In Ohio and Wisconsin, Legislative Committees have reported favorably to the Right of Suffrage, and extracts from the reports are given above.
Ohio, Maine, Indiana, and Missouri have passed laws giving to married women the right to control their own earnings. The Ohio and Maine statutes are printed below; also a Maine act, giving the husband title to an allowance from a deceased wife's property, similar to that now given by the law to widows.
The memorial presented to the New York Legislature, owing to some mistake, was not offered till too late for action.
Ohio Statute. — Bill passed by the Ohio Legislature, April 17, 1857.
Sec. 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Ohio, that no married man shall sell, dispose of, or in any manner part with, any personal property, which is now, or may hereafter be, exempt from sale upon execution, without having first obtained the consent of his wife thereto.
Sec. 2. If any married man shall violate the provisions of the foregoing section, his wife may, in her own name, commence and prosecute to final Judgment and execution, in civil action, for the recovery of such property or its value in money.
Sec. 3. Any married woman, whose husband shall desert her, or from intemperance or other cause become incapacitated, or neglect to provide for his family, may, in her own name, make contracts for her own labor and the labor of her minor children, and in her own name, sue for and collect her own or their earnings.
Maine Statute. — At the recent session of the Legislature of Maine, the following acts were passed:
"An Act relating to the property of deceased married women. Be it enacted," etc.
"When a wife dies intestate and insolvent, her surviving husband shall be entitled to an allowance from her personal estate, and a distributive share in the residue thereof, in the same manner as a widow is in the estate of her husband; and if she leaves issue he shall have the use of one-third, if no issue, one-half of her real estate for life, to be received and assigned in the manner and with the rights of dower." Approved April 13, 1857.
"An Act in relation to the rights of married women.
"Any married woman may demand and receive the wages of personal labor performed other than for her own family, and may hold the same in her own right against her husband or any other person, and may maintain an action therefore in her own name." Approved April 17, 1857.
Female Suffrage In Kentucky. — Kentucky Revised Statutes, 1852, ch. 88. "Schools and Seminaries." Art. 6, Sec. 1:
"An election shall be held at the school-house of each school district, from nine o'clock in the morning till two o'clock in the evening, of the first Saturday of April of each year, for the election of three Trustees for the District for one year, and until others are elected and qualified. The qualified voters in each District shall be the electors, and any widow having a child between six and eighteen years of age, may also vote in person or by written proxy."
[But if the suffrage is not limited to widows who have a child between six and eighteen, but extended to unmarried, married, and childless men, why not give it to women in those positions also? Such a partial concession, though valuable as recognizing a principle, is not likely to be extensively used. For in this case, as in that of women who are stockholders in corporations, the female voters will be deterred by their own small numbers and by the prejudices of society. But give woman the equal right of suffrage, and the prejudice will soon be swept away].
Female Suffrage In Canada. — [The following is the Canadian law under which women vote. The omission of the word male was intentional, and was done to secure the weight of the Protestant property in the hands of women, against the Roman Catholic aggressions and demands for separate schools, The law works well. A friend of mine in Canada West told me," said Lucy Stone recently, "that 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."]
Xvi. And Xiiv. Victoria, Cap 48. — An Act for the better establishment and maintenance of Common Schools in Upper Canada. Passed July 24, 1850.
Sec. 1. Preamble — Repeals former acts.
Sec. 2. Enacts that the election of School Trustees shall take place on the second Wednesday of January in each year.
Sec. 22. And be it enacted, that in each Ward, into which any City or Town is or shall be divided according to Law, two fit and proper persons shall be elected School Trustees by a majority of all the taxable inhabitants.
Sec. 25. Enacts that on the second Wednesday in January there shall be a meeting of all the taxable inhabitants of every incorporated village, and at such meeting six fit and proper persons, from among the resident householders, shall be elected School Trustees.
Sec. 5. Provides that in all Country School Districts three trustees shall be similarly elected by a majority of the freeholders or householders of such school section.
"The Emancipation Of Women." — A very curious controversy, on paper, is going on at present in the Reveu Philosophique et Religieuse, between M. Proudhon and Mme. Jenny D'Hericourt. The latter defends, with great warmth, the moral, civil, and political emancipation of woman. Proudhon, in reply, declares that all the theories of Mme. D' Hericourt are inapplicable, in consequence of the inherent weakness of her sex. The periodical in which the contest is going on was founded and is conducted by the old St. Simoniens.
REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE OF THE OHIO SENATE, ON GIVING THE RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE TO FEMALES.
The following petition, numerously signed by both men and women, citizens of this State, was, at the first session of the Legislature, referred to the undersigned Select Committee:
"Whereas, The women of the State of Ohio are disfranchised by the Constitution solely on account of their sex;
"We do, respectfully, demand for them the right of suffrage — a right which involves all other rights of citizenship—one that can not, justly, be withheld, as the following admitted principles of government show:
"First. 'All men are born free and equal.'
"Second. 'Government derives its just power from the consent of the governed.'
"Third. 'Taxation and representation are inseparable.'
"We, the undersigned, therefore, petition your honorable body to take the necessary steps for a revision of the Constitution, so that all citizens may enjoy equal political rights."
Your Committee have given the subject referred to them a careful examination, and now
Report.
Your Committee believe that the prayer of the petitioners ought to be granted. Our opinion is based both upon grounds of principle and expediency, which we will endeavor to present as briefly as is consistent with a due consideration of this subject.
The founders of this Republic claimed and asserted with great emphasis, the essential equality of human rights as a self-evident truth. They scouted the venerable old dogma of the divine right of kings and titled aristocracies to rule the submissive multitude. They were equally explicit in their claim that "taxation and representation are inseparable."
The House of Representatives of Massachusetts, 1764, declared, "That the imposition of duties and taxes, by the Parliament of Great Britain, upon a people not represented in the House of Commons, is absolutely irreconcilable with their rights." A pamphlet entitled "The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted," was sent to the agent of the Colony in England, to show him the state of the public mind, and along with it an energetic letter. "The silence of the province," said this letter, alluding to the suggestion of the agent that he had taken silence for consent, "should have been imputed to any cause—even to despair—rather than be construed into a tacit cession of their rights, or the acknowledgment of a right in the Parliament of Great Britain, to impose duties and taxes on a people who are not represented In the House of Commons." "If we are not represented we are slaves!" Some of England's ablest jurists acknowledge the truth of this doctrine. Chief Justice Pratt said: "My position is this—taxation and representation are inseparable. The position is founded in the law of nature. It is more; it is itself an eternal law of nature." In defence of this doctrine they waged a seven years' war: and yet, when they had wrung from the grasp of Great Britain the Colonies she would not govern upon this principle, and undertook to organize them according to their favorite theory, most of the Colonies, by a single stroke of the pen, cut off one-half of the people from any representation in the government which claimed their obedience to its laws, the right to tax them for its support, and the right to punish them for disobedience.
This disparity between their theory and practice does not seem to have excited much, if any notice, at the time, nor until its bitter fruits had long been eaten in obscurity and sorrow by thousands who suffered, but did not complain. Indeed, so apathetic has been the public mind upon this subject, that no one is surprised to see such a remark as the following by a distinguished commentator upon American institutions: "In the free States, except criminals and paupers, there is no class of persons who do not exercise the elective franchise." It seems women are not even a class of persons. They are fairly dropped from the human race, and very naturally, since we have grown accustomed to recognize as universal suffrage, that which excludes by constitutional taboo one-half of the people. To declare that a voice in the government is the right of all, and then give it only to a part—and that the part to which the claimant himself belongs—is to renounce even the appearance of principle. As ought to have been foreseen, the class of persons thus cut off from the means of self-protection, have become victims of unequal and oppressive legislation, which runs through our whole code. We first bind the hands, by the organic law, and then proceed with deliberate safety, by the statute, to spoil the goods of the victim. Whatever palliation for the past hoary custom, false theology, and narrow prejudice may furnish, it is certainly time now to remedy those evils, and reduce to practice our favorite theory of government.
The citizens thus robbed of a natural right complain of the injustice. They protest against taxation without representation. They claim that all just government must derive its power from the consent of the governed. A forcible female writer says: "Even this so-called free government of the united States, as at present administered, is nothing but a political, hereditary despotism to woman; she has no instrumentality whatever in making the laws by which she is governed, while her property is taxed without representation."
But this feeling, it is claimed, is entertained but by few women; on the contrary, they generally disown such claim when made in their behalf. Supposing the fact to be true to the fullest extent ever asserted, if it proves that American women ought to remain as they are, it proves exactly the same with respect to Asiatic women; for they, too, instead of murmuring at their seclusion and at the restraint imposed upon them, pride themselves on it, and are astonished at the effrontery of women who receive visits from male acquaintances, and are seen in the streets unveiled. Habits of submission make women, as well as men, servile-minded. The vast population of Asia do not desire or value—probably would not accept—political liberty, nor the savages of the forest civilization; which does not prove that either of these things is undesirable for them, or that they will not, at some future time, enjoy it. Custom hardens human beings to any kind of degradation, by deadening that part of their nature which would resist it. And the case of woman is, in this respect even, a peculiar one, for no other inferior caste that we have heard of has been taught to regard its degradation as their, its, honor. The argument, however, implies a secret consciousness that the alleged preference of women for their dependent state is merely apparent, and arises from their being allowed no choice; for, if the preference be natural, there can be no necessity for enforcing it by law. To make laws compelling people to follow their inclinations, has not, hitherto, been thought necessary by any legislator.
The plea that women do not desire any change is the same that has been urged, times out of mind, against the proposal of abolishing any social evil. "There is no complaint," which is generally, and in this case certainly not true, and when true, only so because there is not that hope of success, without which complaint seldom makes itself audible to unwilling ears. How does the objector know that women do not desire equality of freedom? It would be very simple to suppose that if they do desire it they will all say so. Their position is like that of the tenants and laborers who vote against their own political interests to please their landlords or employers, with the unique admission that submission is inculcated in them from childhood, as the peculiar attraction and grace of their character. They are taught to think that to repel actively even an admitted injustice, done to themselves, is somewhat unfeminine, and had better be left to some male friend or protector. To be accused of rebelling against anything which admits of being called an ordinance of society, they are taught to regard as an imputation of a serious offence, to say the least, against the propriety of their sex. It requires unusual moral courage, as well as disinterestedness in a woman, to express opinions favorable to woman's enfranchisement, until, at least, there is some prospect of obtaining it.
The comfort of her individual life and her social consideration, usually depend on the good-will of those who hold the undue power; and to the possessors of power, any complaint, however bitter, of the misuse of it, is scarcely a less flagrant act of insubordination than to protest against the power itself. The professions of women in this matter remind us of the State offenders of old, who, on the point of execution, used to protest their love and devotion to the sovereign by whose unjust mandate they suffered. Grlselda, himself, might be matched from the speeches put by Shakespeare into the mouths of male victims of kingly caprice and tyranny; the Duke of Buckingham, for example, in "Henry VIII.," and even Wolsey.
The literary class of women are often ostentatious in disclaiming the desire for equality of citizenship, and proclaiming their complete satisfaction with the place which society assigns them; exercising in this, as in many other respects, a most noxious influence over the feelings and opinions of men, who unsuspectingly accept the servilities of toadyism as concessions to the force of truth, not considering that it is the personal interest of these women to profess whatever opinions they expect will be agreeable to men. It is not among men of talent, sprung from the people, and patronized and flattered by the personal interest of these women to profess whatever opinions they expect will be agreeable to men. It is not among men of talent, sprung from the people, and patronized and flattered by the[Pg 873] aristocracy, that we look for the leaders of a democratic movement. Successful literary women are just as unlikely to prefer the cause of woman to their own social consideration. They depend on men's opinion for their literary, as well as for their feminine successes; and such is their bad opinion of men, that they believe there is not more than one in a thousand who does not dislike and fear strength, sincerity, and high spirit in a woman. They are, therefore, anxious to earn pardon and toleration for whatever of these qualities their writings may exhibit on other subjects, by a studied display of submission on this; that they may give no occasion for vulgar men to say—what nothing will prevent vulgar men from saying—that learning makes woman unfeminine, and that literary ladies are likely to be bad wives.
But even if a large majority of women do not desire any change in the Constitution, that would be a very bad reason for withholding the elective franchise from those who do desire it. Freedom of choice, liberty to choose their own sphere, is what is asked. We have not heard that the most ardent apostles of female suffrage propose to compel any woman to make stump speeches against her will, or to march a fainting sisterhood to the polls under a police, in Bloomer costume. Women who condemn their sisters for discontent with the laws as they are, have their prototype in those men of America who, in our revolutionary struggle with England, vehemently denounced and stigmatized as fanatics and rebels the leaders and malcontents of that day. But neither their patriotism nor wisdom have ever been much admired by the American people, perhaps not even by the English.
The objection urged against female suffrage with the greatest confidence and by the greatest number, is that such a right is incompatible with the refinement and delicacy of the sex. That it would make them harsh and disputative, like male voters. This objection loses most, if not all of its force, when it is compared with the well-established usages of society as relates to woman. She already fills places and discharges duties with the approbation of most men, which are, to say the least, quite as dangerous to her refinement and retiring modesty, as the act of voting or even holding office would be. In our political campaigns all parties are anxious to secure the co-operation of women. They are urged to attend our political meetings, and even in our mass meetings, when whole acres of men are assembled, they are importunately urged to take a conspicuous part, sometimes as the representatives of the several States, and sometimes as the donors of banners and flags, accompanied with patriotic speeches by the fair donors. And in great moral questions, such as temperance, for example, in the right disposition of which woman is more interested than man, she often discharges a large amount of the labor of the campaign; but yet, when it comes to the crowning act of voting, she must stand aside—delicacy forbids—that is too masculine, too public, too exposing, though it could be done, in most cases, with as little difficulty and exposure as a letter can be taken out or put in the post-office.
Then there is that large class of concert singers and readers of the drama, who are eulogized and petted by those who are most shocked at the idea of women submitting themselves to the exposure of voting. In fact, the whole question of publicity is settled to the fullest extent; at least every man must be silent who acquiesces in the concert, the drama, or the opera. We need not dwell on the exposures of the stage or the indelicacies of the ballet, but if Jenny Lind was "an angel of purity and benevolence" for consenting to stand, chanting and enchanting, before three thousand excited admirers; if Madame Sontag could give a full-dress rehearsal (which does not commonly imply a superfluity of apparel) for the special edification of the clergy of Boston, and be rewarded with duplicate Bibles, it is difficult to see why a woman may not vote on questions vitally affecting the interests of herself, or children, or kindred.
But, with all our dainty notions of female proprieties, women are, by common consent, dragged into court as witnesses, and subjected to the most scrutinizing and often indelicate examinations and questions, if either party imagines he can gain a sixpence, or dull the edge of a criminal prosecution, by her testimony. The interest, convenience, and prejudices of men, and not any true regard for the delicacy of the sex, seem to be the standard by which woman's rights and duties are to be measured. It is prejudice, custom, long-established usage, and not reason, which demand the sacrifice of woman's natural rights of self-government; a relic of barbarism still lingering in all political, and nearly all religions organizations. Among the purely savage tribes, woman takes position as a domestic drudge—a mere beast of burden, whilst the sensual civilization of Asia regard her more in the light of a domestic luxury, to be jealously guarded from the profane sight of all men but her husband. Both positions equally and widely remote from the noble one God intended her to fill.
In Persia and Turkey women grossly offend the public taste if they suffer their faces to be seen in the streets. In the latter country they are prohibited by law, in common with "pigs, dogs, and other unclean animals," as the law styles them, from so much as entering their mosques. Our ideas of the proper sphere, duties, and capabilities of woman do not differ from these so much in kind as degree. They are all based upon the assumption that man has the right to decide what are the rights, to point out the duties, and to fix the boundaries of woman's sphere; which, taking for true, our cherished theory of government, to wit: the inalienability and equality of human rights can hardly be characterized by a milder term than that of an impudent and oppressive usurpation. Who has authorized us, whilst railing at miters, and crosiers, and scepters, and shouting in the ears of the British Lion, as self-evident truths, "representation and taxation are, and shall be, inseparable,"—"governments, to be just, must have the consent of the governed;" to say woman, one-half of the whole race, shall, nevertheless, be taxed without representation and governed without her consent? Who hath made us a judge betwixt her and her Maker?
It is said woman's mental and moral organization is peculiar, differing widely from that of man. Perhaps so. She must then have a peculiar fitness of qualification to judge what will be wise and just government for her. Let her be free to choose for herself, in the light of her peculiar organization, to what she is best adapted. She is better qualified to judge of her proper sphere than man can be. She knows her own wants and capabilities. Let us leave her, as God created her, a free agent, accountable to Him for any violation of the laws of her nature. He has mingled the sexes in the family relation; they are associated on terms of equality in some churches. They are active working and voting members of literary and benevolent societies. They vote as share-holders in stock companies, and in countries where less is said about freedom, and equality, and representation, they are often called to, and fill, with distinguished ability, very important positions, and often discharge the highest political trusts known to their laws. Which of England's kings has shown more executive ability than Elizabeth, or which has been more conscientious and discreet than Annie and Victoria? Spain, too, had her Isabella, and France her Maid of Orleans, her Madame Roland, yes, and her Charlotte Corday. Austria and Hungary their Maria Theresa. Russia her Catharine; and even the jealous Jewish Theocracy was judged forty years by a woman. It is too late, by thirty centuries, to put in the plea of her incompetency in political affairs.
But it is objected that it would not do for woman, particularly a married woman, to be allowed to vote. It might bring discord into the family if she differed from her husband. If this objection were worth anything at all, it would lie with tenfold greater force against religious than political organizations. No animosities are so bitter and implacable as those growing out of religions disagreements; yet we allow women to choose their religious creeds, attend their favorite places of worship, and in some of them take an equal part in the church business, and all this, though the husband is of another religion, or of no religion, and no one this side of Turkey claims that the law should compel woman to have no religion, or adopt that of her husband. But, even if that objection were a good one, more than half the adult women of the State are unmarried.
It is said, too, that as woman is not required to perform military duty, and work on the roads, she ought not to vote. None but "able-bodied" men, under a certain age, are required to do military duty, and the effect is practically the same in regard to the two days' work on the roads, whilst women pay tax for military and road purposes the same as man. A man's right to vote does not depend on his ability to perform physical labor, why should a woman's? By the exclusion of woman from her due influence and voice in the government, we lose that elevating and refining influence which she gives to religious, social, and domestic life. Her presence at our political meetings, all agree, contributes greatly to their order, decorum, and decency. Why should not the polls, also, be civilized by her presence?
Does not the morality of our politics demonstrate a great want of the two qualities so characteristic of woman, heart and conscience? The female element which works such miracles of reform in the rude manners of men, in all the departments of life where she has the freedom to go, is nowhere more needed than in our politics, or at the polls.
We have endeavored to show that the constitutional prohibition of female suffrage is not only a violation of natural right, but equally at war with the fundamental principles of the government. Let us now look at the practical results of this organic wrong. After having taken away from woman the means of protecting her person and property, by the peaceable, but powerful ballot, how have we discharged the self-imposed duty of legislating for her? By every principle of honor, or even of common honesty, we are bound to see that her interests do not suffer in our hands. That, if we depart at all from the principle of strict equality, it should be in her favor. Let as see what are the facts.
When a woman marries she becomes almost annihilated in the eyes of the law, except as a subject of punishment. She loses the right to receive and control the wages of her own labor. If she be an administratrix, or executrix, she is counted as dead, and another must be appointed. If she have children, they may be taken from her against her will, and placed in the care of any one, no matter how unfit, whom the father may select. He may even give them away by will. "The personal property of the wife, such as money, goods, cattle, and other chattels, which she had in possession at the time of her marriage, in her own right, and not in the right of another, vest immediately in the husband, and he can dispose of them as he pleases. On his death, they go to his representatives, like the residue of his property. So, if any such goods or chattels come to her possession in her own right, after the marriage, they, in like manner, immediately vest in the husband." "Such property of the wife, as bonds, notes, arrears of rent, legacies, which are termed choses in action, do not vest in the husband by mere operation of marriage. To entitle him to them, he must first reduce them into possession, by recovering the money, or altering the security, as by making them payable to himself. If the husband appoint an attorney to receive a debt or claim due the wife, and the attorney received it, or if he mortgaged the claim or debt, or assign it for a valuable consideration, or recover judgment by suit, in his own name, or if he release it, in all these cases the right of the wife, upon the decease of the husband, is gone."
The real estate of the wife, such as houses and lands, is in nearly the same state of subjection to the husband's will. He is entitled to all the rents and profits while they both live, and the husband can hold the estate during his life, even though the wife be dead. A woman may thus be stripped of every available cent she ever had in the world, and even see it squandered in ministering to the low appetite or passions of a drunken debauchee of a husband. And when, by economy and toil, she may have acquired the means of present subsistence, this, too, may be lawfully taken from her, and applied to the same base purpose. Even her Family Bible, the last gift of a dying mother, her only remaining comfort, can be lawfully taken and sold by the husband, to buy the means of intoxication. This very thing has been done. Can any one believe that laws, so wickedly one-sided as these, were ever honestly designed for the equal benefit of woman with man? Yet wives are said to have quite a sufficient representation in the government, through their husbands, to secure them protection.
But the cruel inequality of the laws relating to woman as wife are quite outdone by those relating to her as widow. It is these stricken and sorrowful victims, the law seems especially to have selected as its prey. Upon the death of the husband, the law takes possession of the whole of the estate. The smallest items of property must be turned out for valuation, to be handled by strangers. The clothes that the deceased had worn, the chair in which he sat, the bed on which he died, all these sacred memorials of the dead, must undergo the cold scrutiny of officers of the law. The widow is counted but as an alien, and an incumbrance on the estate, the bulk of which is designed for other hands. She is to have doled out to her, like a pauper, by paltry sixes, the furniture of her own kitchen. "One table, six chairs, six knives and forks, six plates, six tea-cups and saucers, one sugar-dish, one milk-pail, one tea-pot, and twelve spoons!" All this[Pg 876] munificent provision for, perhaps, a family of only a dozen-persons. Think of it, ye widows, and learn to be munificent provision for, perhaps, a family of only a dozen-persons. Think of it, ye widows, and learn to be grateful for man's provident care of you in your hour of need!
Then comes the sale of "the effects of the deceased," as they are called; and amid the fullness and freshness of her grief, the widow is compelled to see sold into the hands of strangers, amid the coarse jokes and levity of a public auction, articles to her beyond all price, and around which so many tender memories cling. Experience alone can fully teach the torture of this fiery ordeal. But this is only the beginning of her sorrows. If she have children, the estate is considered to belong to them, while she is but an "incumbrance" upon it. She is to have the rents and profits of one-third part of the real estate her lifetime, which, to the vast majority of cases, is so unproductive as to compel her to leave that spot, endeared to her by so many tender ties—the home of her early love, the birthplace of her children—for a cheaper and less comfortable home. But, bereaved of her husband and robbed of her property,
"The law hath yet another hold on her."
Following up the insulting and injurious assumption of her incompetency and untrustworthiness, implied in the denial of her right of suffrage, the guardianship of her children is taken from her. Her daughter, at the age of twelve, and her son, at fifteen, are to go through the mockery of choosing for themselves a competent guardian—a proceeding calculated to destroy the beautiful trust and confidence in the wisdom and fitness of the mother to govern and direct them, so natural and so essential to the happiness of children. When the justifying pretext for the infliction of all this misery is the benefit of the children, her maternal nature will struggle hard to endure it with patience. But, until the passage of the law of 1863, "regulating descents and distributions," when there were no children of either parent, the law did not abate its rigor toward her, in the disposition of the real estate, which is generally all that is left, after paying the debts and costs of "settlement," though the whole of the houses and lands might have been bought with her money, two-thirds were immediately handed over to the relatives of the husband, however above need; and though they might have been strangers, or even enemies, to her. She had but a life estate in the other third, which, at her death, also went, as the other, to her husband's heirs. She could not indulge her benevolent feelings or gratify her friendships, by devising by will, to approved charities or favorite friends, the means she no longer needed. With a bitter sense of injustice and despairing sorrow, she might well adopt the language of the unhappy Jew:
"Nay, take my life and all, pardon not that;
You take my house, when you do take the prop
That doth sustain my house; you take my life,
When you do take the means whereby I live."
Such is the famous right of dower, which has been the subject of so many stupid eulogies by lawyers and commentators.
Take an example of the effect of these laws upon an overburdened heart, which occurred just before the passage of the Act of 1853. A young couple, by their united means and patient industry, had secured for themselves a small, but comfortable home. It furnished the means of supplying all their simple wants. It was their own; doubly endeared by the struggles and sacrifices it had cost them. They were content. They had no children, but they had each other, and were happy in their mutual love. Death seemed a great way off; and life—it was a real joy. They knew little of the laws of estates. Owing nothing, they feared no intrusion upon the sanctity of their home. But the husband was killed by the falling of a tree; and, after some hours, was found dead by the agonized wife. There was no will. The wrung heart of the childless widow, in her utter bereavement, still clung to her home, which, though blighted and desolate, was still dear to her. There, at least, she would find shelter. But soon the inexorable law laid its cold, unwelcome hand upon that darkened home. There must be letters of administration had—an inventory of the "effects"—an appraisement. Everything was explained by sympathizing counsel. The "right of dower" set conspicuously in the foreground—"one equal third part"—at length she comprehended it all. Her home was to pass into other hands: henceforth she was to be counted only as an incumbrance on it. Looking from the misery of the present down the gloom of the future, she could see only widowhood and penury. And whilst the appraisers were performing their ungracious task of overhauling cupboards and drawers, and estimating the value in cash of presents received in her courtship, she, in her quiet despair at this last bitter drop added to her full cup, arrayed herself in her best apparel (which the law generously provides "she shall retain"), and, without uttering a word of complaint or farewell, walked to the nearest water and drowned herself.
If "oppression maketh even a wise man mad," ought we to wonder that a woman, almost crazed by a sudden and terrible bereavement, upon finding that her calamity, instead of giving her the jealous and compassionate protection of the law, was to be made the pretext for robbing her of what yet remained of earthly comforts, should, in the madness of her despair, cast away the burden of a life no longer tolerable? In India she would have been burned upon the funeral pile of her dead husband; we drive her to madness and suicide by the slower, but no less cruel torture, of starvation and a breaking heart. Whilst persisting in such legislation, how could we expect to escape the woe, denounced by the compassionate and long-suffering Saviour, against the "hypocrites who devour widows' houses"?
It is said woman can accomplish any object of her desire better by persuasion, by her smiles and tears and eloquence, than she could ever compel by her vote. But with all her powers of coaxing and eloquence, she has never yet coaxed her partner into doing her simple justice. Shall we never get beyond the absurd theory that every woman is legally and politically represented by her husband, and hence has an adequate guarantee? The answer is, that she has been so represented ever since representation began, and the result appears to be that, among the Anglo-Saxon race generally, the entire system of laws in regard to women is, at this moment, so utterly wrong, that Lord Brougham is reported to have declared it useless to attempt to amend it—"There must be a total reconstruction before a woman can have any justice." The wrong lies not so much in any special statute as in the fundamental theory of the law, yet no man can read the statutes on this subject of the most enlightened nation, without admitting that they were obviously made by man, not with a view to woman's interest, but his own. Our Ohio laws may not be so bad as the law repealed in Vermont in 1850, which confiscated to the State one-half the property of every childless widow, unless the husband had other heirs. But they must compel from every generous man the admission, that neither justice nor gallantry has yet availed to procure anything like impartiality in the legal provisions for the two sexes. With what decent show of justice, then, can man, thus dishonored, claim a continuance of this suicidal confidence? There is something respectable in the frank barbarism of the old Russian nuptial consecration, "Here, wolf, take thy lamb." But we can not easily extend the same charity to the civilized wolf of England and America, clad in the sheep's clothing of a volume of revised statutes, caressing the person of the bride and devouring her property.
It is said the husband can, by will, provide against these cases of hardship and injustice. True, he can, if he will, but does he? The number is few, some of the more thoughtful and conscientious; but this is only obtaining justice as a favor, and not as a natural right. But it is a majority of husbands who make these laws, and they generally have no desire to amend them by will. Besides, the will of the husband is sometimes even worse than the law itself. Such cases are by no means rare. Almost every man's memory may furnish one or more examples that have fallen under his immediate notice. One or two only we will mention. A woman, advanced in life, who owned a valuable farm in her own right, in the border of a flourishing town, married a man who had little or no property. The farm was soon cut up into town lots and sold at high prices. In a few years the husband died, leaving no children, but, by will, directed the division of nearly the whole of the estate among his relatives, persons who the wife never saw. The only remedy in this case was to fall back upon her right of dower, and submit to the robbery of the law, in order to escape the worse robbery of the will. This will was not the result of any disagreement between the husband and the wife. It was only the natural outgrowth of the whole policy of our laws as regards the property rights of woman. Permit us to notice one other case, which occurred in a neighboring State. Many similar ones, no doubt, have occurred in our own, the law in both States being the same.
A woman who had a fortune of fifty thousand dollars in "personal property," married. All this, by the law, belonged absolutely to the husband. In a year he died, leaving 3 will directing that the widow should have the proceeds of a certain part of this money, so long as she remained unmarried. If she married again, or at her death, it was to go to his heirs.
How different in all these cases is the condition of the husband upon the death of the wife. There is then no officious intermeddling of the law in his domestic affairs. His house, sad and desolate though it be, is still sacred and secure from the foot of unbidden guests. There is no legal "settlement' to eat up his estate. He is not told that "one equal third part "of all his lands and tenements shall be set apart for his use during his lifetime. "He has all, everything, even his wife's bridal presents too are his. If the wife had lands in her own right, and if they have ever had a living child, he has a life estate in the whole of it, not a beggarly 'third part.'"
Such is the result of man's government 9f woman without her consent. Such is the protection he affords her. She now asks the means of protecting herself, by the same instrumentality which man considers so essential to his freedom and security, representation, political equality — The Right of Suffrage. The removal of this constitutional restriction is of great consequence, because it casts upon woman a stigma of inferiority, of incompetency, of unworthiness of trust. It ranks her with criminals and madmen and idiots. It is essential to her, practically, as being the key to all her rights, which will open to her the door of equality and justice.
Does any one believe that if woman had possessed an equal voice in making our laws, we should have standing on our statute books, for generations, laws so palpably unequal and unjust toward her? The idea is preposterous.
If our sense of natural justice and our theory of government beth agree, that the being who is 10 suffer under laws shall first personally assent to them, and that the being whose industry the government is to burden should have a voice in fixing the character and amount of that burden, then, while woman is admitted to the gallows, the jail, and the tax-list, we have no right to debar her from the ballot-box.
Your Committee recommend the adoption of the following resolution:
Resolved, That the Judiciary Committee be instructed to report to the Senate, a bill to submit to the qualified electors at the next election for senators and representatives, an amendment to the Constitution whereby the elective franchise shall be extended to the citizens of Ohio, without distinction of sex.
J. D. Cattell,
- ↑ At present the head of the water-cure establishment, Dansville, New York. Dr. Jackson has been identified with all the leading reforms of his generation — Anti-slavery, Temperance, Woman Suffrage — and an earnest advocate for a new dress for woman that shall give freedom to her lungs and powers of locomotion.