your argument will go further and require that women shall be
voted for and they may chance to receive votes enough for
election; and they may even go to the State Legislature or to
Congress. Suppose such a thing should happen, would a city which
is represented in the Congress of the United States by John
Morrissey and Fernando Wood, have reason to blush if by some
singular good fortune she should chance to be represented by
Elizabeth Cady Stanton? (Applause.) Would the halls of Congress
suffer any loss of dignity, or any loss of efficiency, even if
John Morrissey's place should be vacated to make room for Mrs.
Stanton, or if some Pennsylvania Democrat should be allowed to
remain at home while Lucretia Mott occupied his chair?
(Applause.) Is it so terrible that women who can utter sentiments
as noble and elevating as those to which you have listened, who
can sustain them by logic as clear, and who can expose with such
delicate wit the ridiculous absurdity of the opposite side,
should have a voice in the counsels of the nation? Somebody says
that "the child is father to the man." You know who govern the
children. Who governed you when you were children? Is it not as
safe that woman should govern in the halls of national
legislation as in the family and in the school? You will find in
hundreds of schools, governed a few years ago by men, only women
for teachers to-day. I remember that in a building which
contained some three hundred pupils, the last man employed as a
teacher was an assistant teacher under the supervision of a woman
as principal; a woman who has vindicated her right to the place
by her admirable administration, and her admirable adaptation to
the business of teaching, so that she has become, as it were, a
fixture in that schoolhouse. And that is only one case among
many. And if woman excels in government in those spheres in which
she has had an opportunity to prove her ability, it is at least
safe to try the experiment further.
We have just seen one folly, one absurdity refuted by the simple
process of trying an experiment. The time was when it was deemed
altogether unwomanly, and repugnant to female delicacy and
refinement, for a woman to ink the ends of her fingers in
handling a pen; for a woman to be what was derisively called a
"blue-stocking," or a literary woman. It was thought that nothing
but pedantry, nothing but slatternly habits and neglected
housekeeping, could come of it. But who would be willing to
banish from the literary world to-day such names as Browning,
Hemans, Stowe, and Gage? And if I were to fill out the catalogue
of names, I might close my speech at the end of it, having tired
you all with the length of the recital. So it was said that women
should not appear on the public platform. But who now would
banish the women who have delighted such vast congregations, and
who have drawn such applause from all classes and conditions of
men? Who, to-day, considers it improper for Lucy Stone, Anna
Dickinson, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Gage, to appear upon a public
platform? Who is willing to shut the pulpit against Mrs. Mott,
when she has filled it with such acceptance, in so many places,
and on so many occasions? Step by step, woman has advanced toward
her right position. Step by step, as she advanced, she has proved
her right, to the satisfaction of caviling skepticism itself....
She would now go a step further. She demands the rights, not of
womanhood, but of humanity. And I feel just as confident that
what she demands will be conceded, in reference to her political
rights, as that it has been conceded with regard to these other
rights, which are now settled in the estimation of thinking and
reasoning people. The tide sets that way, clearly and strongly.
Kansas is not to go alone, in granting this right to woman. The
agitation is to go on; and the more you resist the current of
events, the more earnestly will the agitation be continued until
reason shall be convinced; until prejudice shall be overcome by
the power of conviction; until men are constrained, from very
shame, to withdraw from a position which no argument, no
experience can justify, which no consideration of decency will
palliate.
One objection to our claim is, that the right of voting should
not belong to human beings as individuals, but rather to
households of human beings. This is not a denial of equality in
all respects, but an allegation that the right belongs neither to
the man nor to the woman, but to the household; and that for the
household, as its representative, the man casts the ballot.
Suppose I concede that, what then? Why should the head of the
household, or rather the _hand_ of the household, be masculine
rather than feminine? We have heard the argument over and over
again that woman should leave to man the counting-house, the
work-bench, and all the duties supposed peculiarly to appertain
to masculine humanity, and should attend to "household" matters.
If, then, suffrage is a household matter, why should not woman
attend to it, in her feminine capacity, as peculiarly within her
domestic province, and relieve man from the interruption of his
appropriate duties?
Rev. Mr. RAY inquired what was the basis for the right of
suffrage, if suffrage was not, as Mr. Burleigh had said yesterday
in another place, a natural right. If it does not belong to the
individual whence does it come? The Sultan of Turkey may claim
that the right belongs to him, and that he may delegate that
right to whomsoever he will to assist him in the government of
the people. But in a Republic the right must be in the
individual; and if so, it belongs to woman as well as to man, to
black as well as to white persons. If the right of suffrage is
not a natural right, why has not the Constitutional Convention
about to meet the right to limit the suffrage, if they think it
will secure the best interest of the State?
FRANCES D. GAGE said: I have but little to say because it is
almost two o'clock, and hungry and weary people are not good
listeners to speeches. I shall confine my remarks therefore to
one special point brought up this morning and not fully
discussed. Sojourner Truth gave us the whole truth in about
fifteen words: "If I am responsible for the deeds done in my
body, the same as the white male citizen is, I have a right to
all the rights he has to help him through the world." I shall
speak for the slave woman at the South. I have always lifted my
voice for her when I have spoken at all. I will not give up the
slave woman into the hands of man, to do with her as he pleases
hereafter. I know the plea that was made to me in South Carolina,
and down in the Mississippi valley. They said, "You give us a
nominal freedom, but you leave us under the heel of our husbands,
who are tyrants almost equal to our masters." The former slave
man of the South has learned his lesson of oppression and wrong
of his old master; and they think the wife has no right to her
earnings. I was often asked, "Why don't the Government pay my
wife's earnings to me?" When acting for the Freedman's Aid
Society, the orders came to us to compel marriage, or to separate
families. I issued the order as I was bound to do, as General
Superintendent of the Fourth Division under General Saxton. The
men came to me and wanted to be married, because they said if
they were married in the church, they could manage the women, and
take care of their money, but if they were not married in the
church the women took their own wages and did just as they had a
mind to. But the women came to me and said, "We don't want to be
married in the church, because if we are our husbands will whip
the children and whip us if they want to; they are no better than
old masters." The biggest quarrel I had with the colored people
down there, was with a plantation man because I would not furnish
a nurse for his child. "No, Nero," said I, "I can not hire a
nurse for your child while Nancy works in the cotton field." "But
what is we to do? I'se a poor miserable man and can't work half
the time, and Nancy is a good strong hand; and we must have a
nurse." He went away in utter disgust, and declared to the people
outside that I had got the miserablest notion he had ever heard,
to spoil a good field hand like his Nancy to nurse her own baby.
We were told the other day by Wendell Phillips, upon the
Anti-Slavery platform, that it takes people forty years to
outgrow an old idea. The slave population of the South is not yet
removed a hundred years from the barbarism of Africa, where women
have no rights, no privileges, but are trampled under foot in all
the savageism of the past. And the slave man has looked on to see
his master will everything as he willed, and he has learned the
lesson from his master. Mr. Higginson told us that the
slave-master never understood the slave. I know that to be the
fact. Neither does man understand woman to-day, because she has
always been held subservient to him. Now it is proposed to give
manhood the suffrage in all these Southern States, and to leave
the poor slave woman bound under the ban of the direst curse of
slavery to him who is the father of her children. It is decreed
upon all the statute books of slavery, that the child shall
follow the condition of the mother. That has been the decree from
the beginning of this awful slave system; that the whitest woman,
the child of a slave mother, whose hair curled down to her waist,
and whose blue eyes of beauty were a lure to the statesmen of the
South, should be a slave, though the Governor of the State were
her father. Are you to leave her there yet, and desecrate
marriage, by making it such a bond of slavery that the woman
shall say, "I do not want to be married, to suffer oppression!"
Are you to force prostitution and wrong upon those people by
these unjust laws? Are you to compel wickedness and crime? Are
you going to let it stand upon the statute books of the Southern
States that the only woman free to work for her own child shall
be the mother of illegitimate children? That is the consequence
of what you are doing to the people who in all time past, since
they have lived upon this continent, have been denied the right
of sacred marriage; and who must have, as Wendell Phillips tells
us, forty years to outgrow the past, or to educate them.
We are told by Mr. Phillips to flood the South with
spelling-books. Who is to carry them there? Who, to-day, is
teaching the Southern people;--for I am talking now in behalf of
the colored woman of the South, forgetting my own degradation.
Who have carried the spelling-book to the South? The women of the
North, gathering up their strength, have been sent down by all
these great societies to teach. The colored men of the South are
to vote, while they deny the ballot to their teacher! It is said
that women do not want to vote in this country. I tell you, it is
a libel upon womanhood. I care not who says it. I am in earnest.
They do want to vote. Fifty-two thousand pulpits in this country
have been teaching women the lesson that has been taught them for
centuries, that they must not think about voting. But when 52,000
pulpits, or 52,000 politicians, at the beginning of this war,
lifted up their voices and asked of women, "Come out and help
us," did they stand back? In every hamlet, in every village, in
every cabin, and every palace, in every home in the whole United
States, they rose up and went to work. They worked for the
Government; they worked for the nation; they worked for their
sons, their husbands, their fathers, their brothers, their
friends. They worked night and day. Who found women to stand back
when this great public opinion that had been crushing them so
long and forbidding them to work, at last lifted itself up and
said, "You may work"? (Applause).
I have been traveling all winter long, with a few intervals of
rest, talking not upon Equal Rights, but upon the subject of
Temperance; and whenever I said to my crowded audiences that we
must give to woman the right to vote that she may purify the
nation of this great sin, there went up shouts and clapping of
hands of men and women. They are ready for this work. What we
want is to crystallize the public opinion of all ranks of society
in its favor. There is great fear that if woman is allowed to
vote, she will lose something of her high and excellent
character. If it is right for woman to have the suffrage, it is
not right to talk of expediency. If giving woman the ballot will
cause her to lose her prestige, it is because she ought to lose
it. If she gains physical strength and loses that effeminate
delicacy that provides for nothing and cares for nothing but its
own selfish, quiet enjoyment, I shall rejoice with joy
unspeakable. My strong hands have tilled the fields; and in my
early childhood have harnessed the horse, and brought the wood to
the door; have led him to the blacksmith's shop to be shod. These
are things I do not often tell in public. I have braved public
opinion; I have tilled my garden; I have brought myself up from
fainting weakness occasioned by accident and broken bones. I have
taken care of myself, supported myself, and asked nothing from
the world; I find my womanhood not one bit degraded. (Applause).
A thousand times in the last years, in this struggle for bread,
have I been asked, "Why don't you let your sons support you?" My
answer is, "My six sons have their own duties. My six boys have
their own labors. God gives me strength to earn my own bread, and
I will do it as long as I can." (Applause). That is what I want
to teach the womanhood of the country. I did not mean to talk so
long; but I assure you I talk in earnest. If I sometimes, by a
slip of the tongue, make some little mistake--for I have not been
educated in the schools, (a log cabin schoolhouse in the
wilderness gave me all I have)--you will excuse me, for I mean no
injustice to any one. And if to-night it will not crowd some
better woman or man from the platform, I shall be glad to speak
to you again.
Mrs. MOTT.--The argument that has been made that women do not
want to vote is like that which we had to meet in the early days
of the Anti-Slavery enterprise, that the slaves did not want to
be free. I remember that in one of our earliest Woman's Rights
Conventions, in Syracuse, a resolution was offered to the effect
that as the assertion that the slave did not want his freedom,
and would not take it if offered to him, only proved the depth of
his degradation, so the assertion that woman had all the rights
she wanted only gave evidence how far the influence of the law
and customs, and the perverted application of the Scriptures, had
encircled and crushed her. This was fifteen or twenty years ago.
Times are altered since. In the temperance reformation, and in
the great reformatory movements of our age, woman's powers have
been called into action. They are beginning to see that another
state of things is possible for them, and they are beginning to
demand their rights. Why should this church be granted for such a
meeting as this, but for the progress of the cause? Why are so
many women present, ready to respond to the most ultra and most
radical sentiments here, but that woman has grown and is able to
assume her rights?
In many of the States the laws have been so modified that the
wife now stands in a very different position as regards the right
of property and other rights, from that which she occupied
fifteen or twenty years ago. You see the same advance in the
literary world. I remember when Maria Edgeworth and her sister
first published their works, that they were afraid to publish
their own name, and borrowed the name of their father. So Frances
Power Cobbe was not able to write over her own name, and she
issued her "Intuitive Morals" without a name; and her father was
so much pleased with the work, without knowing it was his
daughter's, that it led to an acknowledgment after a while.
STEPHEN S. FOSTER: Will you give us the evidence that the
statement that the women of this country do not want the ballot
is not true? I should be glad to believe that; but in my
experience the worst opposition to the progress of Woman's Rights
has come from woman herself. The greatest indifference to the
cause is to be found among women, and not among men. I wish it
were not so. I hope I am mistaken. But I believe nine out of
every ten of our public speakers will tell you that they find
more help, more sympathy from men than from women.
Rev. S. J. MAY: I should like to have that question settled, so
far as the women present are concerned. Will as many of you as
_will vote_ when the right is awarded to you, please to manifest
it by rising.
Nearly the whole of the ladies present immediately arose. Indeed,
those on the platform, could not see a single woman who retained her
seat.
Mrs. GAGE: During the last fifteen years, with the utmost
industry I could use in ascertaining the public opinion in this
country, I have never found one solitary instance of a woman,
whom I could meet alone by her fireside, where there was no fear
of public opinion, or the minister, or the law-maker, or her
father, or her husband, who did not tell me she would like to
vote. [Applause]. I never found a slave in my life, who, removed
from the eye of the people about him, would not tell me he wanted
liberty--never one. I have been in the slave States for years. I
have been in the slave-pens, and upon the plantations, and have
stood beside the slave as he worked in the sugar cane and the
cotton-field; and I never found one who dared in the presence of
white men to say he wanted freedom. When women and young girls
are asked if they want to vote, they are almost always in just
that situation where they are afraid to speak what they think;
and no wonder they so often say they do not want to vote.
EVENING SESSION.
The meeting was called to order by the President, Mrs. Mott, who
introduced as the first speaker Col. Charles E. Moss, of Missouri.
Mr. MOSS said: This is a subject upon which I have thought for a
number of years; and I have become fully convinced that no reason
can be assigned for extending the right of suffrage to any of the
male sex, that does not equally apply to the female.
When our fathers formed the national Constitution, they made it
their duty to secure to every State a republican form of
government. No government can be republican in form, unless it is
so in substance and in fact; based upon the consent of the
governed. After the troublesome war we have just passed through,
we are called upon not only to reconstruct the ten unrepresented
States of the nation, but to purify the republicanism of our
government in the Northern States and make it more consistent
with our professions. It is a fit time, then, to take up the
subject of suffrage, and to base it upon a well-established
principle. Some say that the right of suffrage is a privilege, to
be given or withheld at pleasure. That does not seem to me a very
safe foundation for so important a right. It is either a
privilege or a natural right. If we recognize it as a natural
right we have a peaceable, safe, legal mode of resistance against
the disfranchisement of the people. If we admit it to be a
privilege to be granted or withheld, no man and no woman has any
legal right to interpose any objection to his own
disfranchisement. But I see that our friend has come in who was
expected first to address you, and I will not take up more of
your time.
PARKER PILLSBURY was next introduced and said: The resolutions
just read refer to the comparative longevity of nations and of
individual men, and of their respective performance, while
existence lasts.
Among nations have arisen Franklins and Washingtons, Humboldts
and Howards; but what individual nation of any period has been
the Plato or Pythagoras, the Howard or the Humboldt of all the
rest? or has achieved proportionally, so long a life? or expired
at last in sunsets of serenity and glory, and been embalmed and
enshrined in the tears and gratitude of mankind? It is often said
that the life of a nation is as the life of an individual; with
beginning, progress, decay, and dissolution. But the resemblance
holds only in part. Consciousness comes to an individual, and
self-respect; and from that hour growth and greatness (it may be)
begin. But with nations it is not so. The world has not made the
same demand of nations as of individuals, and so nothing is
expected of them. Nations, hitherto, were badly brought up. In
the light of a thousand years hence, the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries will be "darker ages" than the eighth and
ninth are to-day. Accepting three-score and ten as the common
life of an individual, a degree at least of honorable manhood is
often achieved, both in personal virtues, and in noble
performance.
The canticles of the Almanac used to run:
At ten, a child; at twenty, wild;
At thirty, strong, if ever;
At forty, wise; at fifty, rich;
At sixty, good, or never.
But at what age has any nation of any period or place become
wise, rich, or even strong; to say nothing of good?
The Roman Catholic Church is older than any civilized government
on the globe. Lord Macaulay says:
It is the only institution left standing which carries the
mind back to the time when the smoke of sacrifice rose from
the Pantheon, and when tigers and camel leopards bounded in
the Flavian Amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but
of yesterday, compared with the line of the supreme
Pontiffs, traced back in unbroken series, from the Pope who
crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century, to the Pope who
crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond stretches the
august dynasty, until it fades into the twilight of fable!
She saw the commencement of all the governments on the
globe, and of all the ecclesiastical establishments now
existing; and there is no assurance that she is not destined
to see the end of them all!"
The world has an accepted chronology of six thousand years. Its
history and experience in government reach back forty centuries.
It would be an interesting inquiry with what results governments
have existed so long, especially in the later periods and among
the most enlightened of the nations. Charles the Fifth boasted
that his empire saw no setting sun. It included Spain and all her
vast American provinces, over large part of which to-day wave our
own Stars and Stripes. The national escutcheon bore two globes;
and the coin, the two Pillars of Hercules, the then acknowledged
boundary of the Eastern world, with the motto "More beyond."
Spain, under Philip Second, dictated law, learning, religion,
especially religion, to unknown millions, not alone in Europe,
but in North and South America, Africa and all the Indies. And
now in the remote south-western corner of Europe is all that
remains of this mighty power of the sixteenth century.
France in the eighth century under Charlemagne, was another
mistress of the globe. And Charlemagne was crowned by the Pope,
"Sovereign of the New Empire of the West." And yet, in less than
fifty years all that mountain of magnificence exploded; and many
rival nations sprang from its lava streams of blood and ashes! A
remnant, too, of France was preserved; and its history for almost
eight hundred years, "may be traced, like the tracks of a wounded
man through a crowd, by the blood;" until it culminated in the
French Revolution ("suicide of the eighteenth century," as
Carlyle calls that terrible phenomenon) and Napoleon Bonaparte!
And he also summoned to his coronation the Roman Pontiff, like
his great predecessor of a thousand years before. And beneath the
solemn arches and arcades of Notre Dame, was crowned by Pope Pius
the Seventh--"_The high and mighty Napoleon, the first Emperor of
the French!_" Plunging remorselessly into the most desolating
wars, he soon astonished the civilized world with his successes.
He made himself master of almost half the globe. The reign of
Napoleon was an earthquake which, for fifteen years, shook the
sea and the land, carrying down innumerable human lives in the
general cataclysm. But he sunk at last! He aspired to the very
heaven of heavens in his ambitions; and his conquests were the
wonder and terror of mankind. But he left France smaller, weaker,
poorer, and more debased and depraved than he found her.
Just eight hundred years ago last September, William the Norman
landed in Britain and commenced its subjugation. Since that
period, the history of Great Britain has not differed materially
from that of other European nations. As the sun is said never to
set on the British domain, so the thunder of its war-guns has
reverberated almost continually in some corner of the globe. To
trace her history, however rapidly, even had we time, could give
no pleasure to this audience, and would add nothing to my present
argument. It is sufficient to say that, with real estate almost
immeasurable, with personal property incalculable, with a wealth
of material resources of every conceivable description,
absolutely unknown and unknowable, she yet contrives to support
her costly establishment by a system of oppressive taxation
almost unparalleled in the annals of the human race. Some of you
must remember the graphic but not exaggerated description of
British taxation given by Sidney Smith in the _Edinburgh Review_.
It was almost fifty years ago; but no less revenue must be raised
in some way, still. He said:
We have taxes upon everything which enters into the mouth,
or covers the back, or is placed under the feet; taxes upon
everything which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell,
or taste; taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion; taxes on
everything on earth, and in the waters under the earth;
taxes on everything that comes from abroad, or is grown at
home; taxes on the raw material, taxes on every fresh value
added to it by the industry of man; taxes on the sauces
which pamper man's appetite, and the drugs that restore him
to health; taxes on the ermine which decorates the judge,
and on the rope which hangs the criminal; on the poor man's
salt and the rich man's spice; on the ribbons of the bride,
on the shroud of the corpse, and the brass nails of the
coffin. The school-boy whips his taxed top; the beardless
youth rides his taxed horse, with a taxed saddle and bridle,
on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his
medicine, which has paid seven per cent., into a spoon that
has paid fifteen per cent., flings himself back upon his
chintz-bed, which has paid twenty-two per cent., and expires
in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a license of a
hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death.
His whole property is then taxed from two to ten per cent.
Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him
in the chancel. His virtues are then handed down to
posterity on taxed marble, and he is gathered to his
fathers, to be taxed no more!
And we are told, what is doubtless true, that the enormous debt
of Great Britain is the chain that binds its many parts together,
and preserves its nationality. No nation, then, ever maintained a
more precarious existence. Chartism in Scotland, Repeal in
Ireland, Trades Strikes everywhere, East India Wars, Irish
Famines, Fenianism, Reform Leagues, Reform Riots, Bread
Riots--all these attest how volcanic is its under stratum, and
what dangers impend above. In some of the gloomy gorges of the
Alps, there are seasons of the year when no traveler passes but
at the expense of life, on account of the terrible "_thunderbolts
of snow_" that hang suspended on the sides or summits of the
mountains. None can know their hour; but descend they must, by
all the laws of gravitation, with resistless energy, sweeping all
before them. At such times, all who pass creep along with
trembling caution. They move in single file, at a distance from
each other, hurrying fast as possible, with velvet step, avoiding
all noise, even whispers--the guides meanwhile muffling the bells
of the mules, lest the slightest vibration communicated to the
air should untie the tremulous mass overhead and entomb them
forever. Great Britain, with her frightful debt, her terrible
taxation, her dissatisfied, restless, beggared myriads of the
lower working classes, her remorseless aristocracy, her bloated
spirit of caste, her enforced but heartless religion, has hung a
more terrible avalanche over her head than ever leaped down the
heights of the Tyrol.
Such are examples of success or failure in attempts at
government, among the proudest and most prosperous nations of the
Old World, in modern and what are called enlightened times. If
seventy years be the life of a man, what should be the life of a
nation? Half the children born die under five years old. But
proportionably a greater mortality prevails among nations and
governments. Not one nation has ever yet attained an honorable
manhood. There is something rotten in the state of every Denmark.
Will you tell me Democracy, Republicanism, consecrated by
Christianity, is the remedy for all these ills? Let us look,
then, at the best example. Our own nation is not yet a hundred
years old, but it had behind it in the beginning, the chronicles
of forty or sixty centuries, written mostly in tears and blood.
At the end of an eight years' revolutionary war, our new
governmental columns were reared, not, like some pagan temples,
on human skulls, but on the imbruted bodies and extinguished
souls of five hundred thousand chattel slaves. We had our
Declaration of Independence, our war of Revolution, and a new
Constitution and code of laws. We had a Washington for our first
President, a John Jay for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and
a constellation of senators, statesmen, and sages who challenged
the respect and admiration of mankind. We closed that
dispensation with James Buchanan as Chief Magistrate, and Roger
B. Taney as Chief-Justice, with his diabolical Dred Scott
Decision, and with a war of Treason and Rebellion which deluged
the land in the blood of more than half a million of men. We had
multiplied our slaves to four millions, with new cruelties and
horrors added to the system, and at least ten generations of them
were lost in unknown graves. The new Republican President pledged
his official word and honor to the rebels already in arms, that,
would they but return to their allegiance, he would favor
amendments to the Constitution that should not only render slave
property more secure than ever before, but also make all its old
guarantees and safeguards, _Fugitive Slave law and all_, forever
"_irrevocable_" by any act or decree of Congress! So were we
endeavoring to bulwark and balustrade our slave-system about, in
the name of a Christian Republicanism, when it was struck by the
lightnings of a righteous retribution, and the world is rid of it
forever. And our old nationality went down in the ruin. Now we
are divided, distracted, deranged in currency, commerce,
diplomacy, with State and Federal liabilities resting on the
people, amounting to not less than six thousand millions of
dollars, not to speak of current expenditures which are also
appalling; with a President whose weakness finds no parallel but
in his wickedness, with a Secretary of State who has become his
full counterpart in both, and a Senate too cowardly, or too
corrupt, to impeach the one or to seek the removal of the other!
For more than two years we have been attempting to restore the
fragments of our once boasted Union. With the history and
experience of forty centuries shining back upon us, so far we
have failed. And under any existing or proposed policy we shall
fail. By all the claims of justice and righteousness, we deserve
to fail; for we are still defying those claims. The son of Priam,
a priest of Apollo, was commissioned to offer a sacrifice to
propitiate the god of the sea. But the offering not being
acceptable, there came up two enormous serpents from the deep and
attacked the priest and his two sons who stood with him at the
altar. The father attempted to defend his sons; but the serpents
falling upon him, enfolded him and them in their complicated
coils, and strangled them to a terrible death. Let this
government beware. The very union proposed will only bind and
hold us together as in the deadly folds of a serpent more fearful
than all the fabled monsters of the past! And so, hitherto,
republics are no exception to the general law. Rickets in
infancy, convulsions in childhood, or premature rheumatisms, have
brought the nations of history to untimely deaths. Material
interests may flourish, and nations grow great and powerful, make
wars and conquests, and rule the world. The ancients did all
this, but where are those haughty omnipotences now? Charlemagne
did but little less, and in half a century his magnificence was
brought to nought. Spain survived a little longer in its glory
and grandeur; but now the scanty blood-splash on the map
describes it well. The United States, young among the nations,
the mother earth six thousand years old at their birth,
wet-nursed by forty centuries of history, and schooled by all the
experience of the ages, with almost half a globe for their
inheritance, with Christianity faith and Republicanism their
form of government, they survived a precocious childhood and then
fell a victim to their own vices and crimes. To-day they are in
the hands of many physicians, though of doubtful reputation, who
seem far less desirous to cure the patient than to divide and
share the estate.
My main point is this--we have had enough of the past in
government. It is time to change. Literally almost, more than
metaphorically, the "times are rotten ripe." We come to-day to
demand--first an extension of the right of suffrage to every
American citizen, of whatever race, complexion or sex. Manhood or
_male_-hood suffrage is not a remedy for evils such as we wish
removed. The Anti-Slavery Society demands that; and so, too, do
large numbers of both the political parties. Even Andrew Johnson
at first recommended it, in the reconstruction of the rebel
States, for three classes of colored men. The New York _Herald_,
in the exuberance of its religious zeal, demanded that "members
of Christian Churches" be added as a fourth estate to the three
designated by the President. The Woman's Rights Society
contemplated suffrage only for woman. But we, as an EQUAL RIGHTS
Association, recognize no distinctions based on sex, complexion
or race. The Ten Commandments know nothing of any such
distinctions. No more do we. The right of suffrage is as old, as
sacred and as universal as the right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. It is indeed the complement and safeguard
of these and all civil and political rights to every citizen. The
right to life would be nothing without the right to acquire and
possess the means of its support. So it were mockery to talk of
liberty and the pursuit of happiness, until the ballot in the
hand of every citizen seals and secures it. The right of the
black man to a voice in the government was not earned at Olustee
or Port Hudson. It was his when life began, not when life was
paid for it under the battle-axe of war. It was his with
Washington and Jefferson, James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln. Not
one of them could ever produce a higher, holier claim. Nor can
any of us. We are prating about _giving_ the right of suffrage to
black _male_ citizens, as complacently as we once gave our
compassion and corn to famishing Ireland. But this famine of
freedom and justice exists because we have produced it. Had our
fleets and armies robbed Ireland of its last loaf, and left its
myriads of inhabitants lean, ghastly skeletons, our charity would
not have been more a mockery when we sent them bread to preserve
them alive, than it is now when we talk of _giving_ the ballot to
those whom God created free and equal with ourselves.
And in the plenitude of our generosity, we even propose to extend
the _gift_ to woman also. It is proposed to make educated,
cultivated, refined, loyal, tax-paying, government-obeying woman
equal to the servants who groom her horses, and scour the pots
and pans of her kitchen. Our Maria Mitchells, our Harriet
Hosmers, Harriet Beecher Stowes, Lydia Maria Childs, and Lucretia
Motts, with millions of the mothers and matrons of quiet homes,
where they preside with queenly dignity and grace, are begging of
besotted, debauched white male citizens, legal voters, soaked in
whisky, simmered in tobacco, and parboiled in every shameless
vice and sin, to recognize them also as human, and graciously
accord to them the rights of intelligent beings!
And, singularly enough, in some of the States, it is proposed to
grant the prayer. But the wisest and best men have no idea that
they are only restoring what they have so long held by force,
based on fraud and falsehood. They only propose to _give_ woman
the boon which they claim was theirs by heavenly inheritance. But
they are too late with their sublime generosity. For God gave
that when he gave life and breath, passions, emotions,
conscience, and will. Give gold, give lands, give honors, give
office, give title of nobility, if you must: but talk not of
giving natural, inalienable and heaven-derived endowments. God
alone bestows these. He alone has them to give. Our trade in the
right of suffrage is contraband. It is bold buccaneering on the
commerce of the moral universe. If we have our neighbor's right
of suffrage and citizenship in our keeping, no matter of what
color, or race, or sex, then we have stolen goods in our
possession--and God's search-warrant will pursue us forever, if
those goods be not restored. And then we impudently assert that
"all just governments derive their powers, from the consent of
the governed." But when was the consent of woman ever asked to
one single act on all the statute books? We talk of "trial by
jury of our peers!" In this country of ours, women have been
fined, imprisoned, scourged, branded with red hot irons and hung;
but when, or where, or for what crime or offense, was ever woman
tried by a jury of her peers?
Suffrage was never in the hands of tyrants or of governments, but
by usurpation. It was never given by them to any of us. We
brought it; not bought it; nor conquered it; nor begged it; nor
earned it; nor inherited it. It was man's inalienable,
irrepealable, inextinguishable right from the beginning. It is so
still; the same yesterday, to-day, and while earthly governments
last. It came with the right to see and hear; to breathe and
speak; to think and feel; to love and hate; to choose and refuse;
or it did not come at all. The right to see came with the eye and
the light: did it not? and the right to breathe, with the lungs
and the air; and all these from the same infinite source. And has
not also the moral and spiritual nature its inalienable rights?
Have the mere bodily organs, which are but the larder of worms,
born of the dust, and dust their destiny--have they power and
prerogative that are denied to the reason, the understanding, the
conscience, the will, those attributes which constitute
responsibility, accountability, and immortality? Or shall God
give the power to choose, or refuse obedience to his law and
reign, leaving the human will free as his own; and must mortal
man, the mushroom of yesterday and perished to-morrow, usurp a
higher and more dreadful prerogative, and compel support of and
submission to laws in which the subject has no voice in making,
executing, or even consenting, on pain of perpetual imprisonment,
banishment, or death?
Must a brave soldier fight and bleed for the government, and,
pruned of limbs, plucked of eyes, and scarred all over with the
lead and iron hail of war--must he now hobble on his crutches up
to a Republican, Democratic, yea, and a Christian throne, and beg
the boon of a ballot in that government, in defense of which he
periled all, and lost all but bare life and breath, only because
an African instead of a more indulgent sun looked upon him or his
ancestors in their allotment of life? And then, when the claim of
immortal manhood is superadded, the inalienable rights of the
soul, in and of themselves, the rights of the reason, the
understanding, the conscience, the will--what desperation is that
which treads down all these claims, and rushes into seats of
higher authority than were ever claimed by the eternal God, and
denies him that right altogether! No white male citizen was ever
born with three ballots in his hand, one his own by birthright,
and to be used without restraint, the others to be granted, given
to women and to colored men at his pleasure or convenience! Such
an idea should never have outraged our common humanity. And any
bill or proposal for what is called "manhood suffrage," while it
ignores womanhood suffrage, whether coming from the President or
the Republican party and sanctioned by the Anti-Slavery Society,
should be repudiated as at war with the whole spirit and genius
of a true Democracy, and a deadly stab into the very heart of
justice itself.
I have referred to the age of the Roman Catholic Church. Lord
Macaulay, in accounting for her astonishing longevity as compared
with other institutions, turns with felicitous insight to female
influence as one of the principal causes. In her system, he says,
she assigns to devout women spiritual functions, dignities, and
even magistracies. In England, if a pious and devout woman enter
the cells of a prison to pray with the most unhappy and degraded
of her sex, she does so without any authority from the Church.
Indeed, the Protestant Church places the ban of its reprobation
on any such irregularity. "At Rome, the Countess of Huntingdon
would have a place in the calendar as St. Selina, and Mrs. Fry
would be Foundress and First Superior of the Blessed Order of
Sisters of the Jails." But even Macaulay overlooks another
element of power and permanence in the economy of the Catholic
Church. God, as Father, and as Son, and as Holy Ghost, might
inspire reverence and dread only in hearts that, at the shrine of
the ever blessed Mary, Mother of God, would kindle into humble,
holy and lasting love. Frances Power Cobbe, though deprecating
the doctrine of "Mariolatry," as she terms the worship of the
Virgin, yet says of it, "The Catholic world has found a great
truth, that love, motherly tenderness and pity is a divine and
holy thing, worthy of adoration.... What does this wide-spread
sentiment regarding this new divinity indicate? It can surely
only point to the fact that there was something lacking in the
elder creed, which, as time went on, became a more and more
sensible deficiency, till at last the instinct of the multitude
filled it up in this amazing manner." When Theodore Parker, in
his morning prayer on a beautiful summer Sunday, addressed the
All-loving as "Our Father and our Mother," he struck a chord
which will one day vibrate through the heart of universal
humanity. It was a thought worth infinitely more than all the
creeds of Christendom.
What if woman should even abuse the use of the ballot at first?
Man has been known to fail at first in a new pursuit. A maker of
microscopes told me that, in a new attempt on a different kind of
object-glass, he failed forty-nine times, but the fiftieth was a
complete success. The poet of Scotland intimates that even
Creative Nature herself improved at a second trial;
"Her 'prentice hand she tried on man;
And then she made the lasses, o!"
Must we be told that woman herself does not ask the ballot? Then
I submit to such, if such there be, the question is not one of
privilege, but of duty--of solemn responsibility. If woman does
not desire the ballot, demand it, take it, she sins against her
own nature and all the holiest instincts of humanity, and can not
too soon repent. After all, the question of suffrage is one of
justice and right. Unless human government be in itself an
unnatural and impious usurpation, whoever renders it support and
submission has a natural right to an equal voice in enacting and
executing the laws. Nor can one man, or millions on millions of
men acquire or possess the power to withhold that right from the
humblest human being of sane mind, but by usurpation, and by
rebellion against the constitution of the moral universe. It
would be robbery, though the giving of the right should induce
all the predicted and dreaded evils of tyrants, cowards and white
male citizens. Be justice done though the heavens fall and the
hells arise! Nay, it is only justice, reared as a lightning-rod,
that can shield any governmental fabric when the very heavens are
falling in righteous retribution.
The past mortality must last among nations, so long as they set
at nought the Divine economy and purpose in their formation. The
human body may yield to decay and die, though the soul be
imperishable and eternal. But nations, like souls, need not die.
Streams of new life flow into them, like rivers into the sea; and
why should not the sea and the nations on its shores, roll on
together with the ages? When governments shall learn to lay their
foundations in righteousness, with eternal justice the chief
corner-stone; when equal and impartial liberty shall be the
acknowledged birthright of all, then will national life begin to
be prolonged; and the death of a nation, were it possible, should
be as though more than a Pleiad had expired. No more would nation
then lift up sword against nation; and the New Jerusalem would
indeed descend from God out of heaven and dwell among men.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY made an appeal for contributions to the funds of
the Association, to enable it to carry on its work, especially in
Kansas.
Mrs ROSE said: After all, we come down to the root of all
evil--to money. It is rather humiliating, after the discourse
that we have just heard, that told us of the rise, and progress,
and destruction of nations, of empires, and of republics, that we
have to come down to dollars and cents. We live in an entirely
practical age. I can show you in a few words that if we only had
sufficient of that root of all evil in our hands, there would be
no need of holding these meetings. We could obtain the elective
franchise without making a single speech. Give us $1,000,000, and
we will have the elective franchise at the very next session of
our Legislature. (Laughter and applause). But as we have not the
$1,000,000 we want 1,000,000 voices. There are always two ways of
obtaining an object. If we had had the money, we could have
bought the Legislature and the elective franchise long before
now. But as we have not, we must create a public opinion, and for
that we must have voices.
I have always thought I was convinced not only of the necessity
but of the great importance of obtaining the elective franchise
for woman; but recently I have become satisfied that I never felt
sufficiently that importance until now. Just read your public
papers and see how our Senators and our members of the House are
running round through the Southern States to hold meetings, and
to deliver public addresses. To whom? To the freedmen. And why
now, and why not ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago? Why do they
get up meetings for the colored men, and call them fellow-men,
brothers, and gentlemen? Because the freedman has that talisman
in his hands which the politician is looking after? Don't you
perceive, then, the importance of the elective franchise? Perhaps
when we have the elective franchise in our hands, these great
senators will condescend to inform us too of the importance of
obtaining our rights.
You need not be afraid that when woman has the franchise, men
will ever disturb her. I presume there are present, as there
always are such people, those of timid minds, chicken-hearted,
who so admire and respect woman that they are dreadfully afraid
lest, when she comes to the ballot-box, rude, uncouth, and vulgar
men will say something to disturb her. You may set your hearts
all at rest. If we once have the elective franchise, upon the
first indication that any man will endeavor to disturb a woman in
her duty at the polls, Congress will enact another Freedman's
Bureau--I beg pardon, a Freedwoman's Bureau--to protect women
against men, and to guard the purity of the ballot-box at the
same time. I have sometimes been asked, even by sensible men, "If
woman had the elective franchise, would she go to the polls to
mix with rude men?" Well, would I go to the church to mix with
rude men? And should not the ballot-box be as respectable, and as
respected, and as sacred as the church? Aye, infinitely more so,
because it is of greater importance. Men can pray in secret, but
must vote in public. (Applause). Hence the ballot-box, of the
two, ought to be the most respected; and it would be if women
were once there; but it never will be until they are there.
Our rights are as old as humanity itself. Yet we are obliged to
ask man to give us the ballot, because he has it in his own hand.
It is ours, and at the same time we ask for it; and have sent our
petitions to Congress. We have been told that the Republic is not
destroyed; it has been destroyed root and branch, because, if it
were not, there would be no need to reconstruct it. And we have
asked Congress, in the reconstruction, to place it upon a sound
foundation. Why have all former republics vanished out of
existence? Simply because they were built upon the sand. In the
erection of a building, in proportion to the height of the walls
must be the depth and soundness of the foundation. If the
foundation is shallow or unsound, the higher you raise your
superstructure the surer its downfall. That is the reason a
republic has not existed as long as a monarchy, because it
embraced principles of human rights in its superstructure which
it denied in its foundation. Hence, before this Republic could
count a hundred years, it has had one of the mightiest
revolutions that ever occurred in any country or in any period of
human existence. Its foundation was laid wrong. It made a
republic for white men alone. It discriminated against color; it
discriminated against sex; and at the same time it pronounced
that all men are created free and equal, and endowed with certain
inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. It raised its superstructure to the clouds;
and it has fallen as low as any empire could fall. It is divided.
A house divided against itself can not stand. A wrong always
operates against itself and falls back on the wrong-doer. We have
proclaimed to the world universal suffrage; but it is universal
suffrage excluding the negro and the woman, who are by far the
largest number in this country. It is not the majority that rules
here, but the minority. White men are in the minority in this
nation. White women, black men, and black women compose the large
majority of the nation. Yet in spite of this fact, in spite of
common sense, in spite of justice, while our members of Congress
can prate so long about justice, and human rights, and the
rights of the negro, they have not the moral courage to say
anything for the rights of woman.
In proportion to power is responsibility. Our Republican senators
and members of Congress have taken upon themselves great power.
They have made great professions. There is a very good maxim, "Of
him to whom much is given, much shall be required." In proportion
to their claims to be friends of human freedom, lovers of human
rights, do we demand of them our rights and justice.
It is a shame to talk about licensing a social evil. It is a
shame to this Republic. It is a violation of woman's nature. It
is an insult to womanhood; and if woman has one drop of pure
blood stirring in her heart, she must revolt against it. At the
same time, I say to the Legislature that, if you enact laws
against social evils, whatever those laws are, let them be alike
for man and for woman. (Applause.) If you want to derive a
revenue from the corruption of the community, let it be drawn
alike from both sexes. The social evil belongs to both; the
social remedy must belong to both. Do not degrade woman any more
than she is already degraded. Perchance she is driven, through
your injustice, to that step to maintain her wretched existence,
because every office of emolument is barred against her. Let
woman have the franchise; let all the avenues of society be
thrown open before her, according to her powers and her
capacities, and there will be no need to talk about social evils.
Major JAMES HAGGERTY said: It is no new thing for me to be found
among Anti-Slavery people. I believe it was among Anti-Slavery
people that I received my American culture. I see the old faces
here upon this platform and in this house--some that I first met
when I landed in this country, in 1856--Parker Pillsbury, as
remorseless as ever; Mrs. Stanton, as bold and strong for the
truth as ever. I see the same uncompromising people here, and I
feel that I have been as uncompromising as any of them; for,
although I have been and am identified with the Republican party
in politics, no man ever heard me, on any platform, compromise
the rights of another. Woman's Rights is an idea against which my
prejudices array themselves, but my logic says, if you would be a
true man, you must raise your voice for equal rights. (Applause.)
I have seen the effect of the suffrage. In the District of
Columbia, during the election, I saw men who had been called
doughfaces walk up to the black man and profess to be so much
more Anti-Slavery than the best Anti-Slavery men, that I have got
the idea that it will not be five years before the northern
Democrat will be swearing to the black men that he has negro
blood in his veins: (Laughter.) ...
I come upon this platform to-night to identify myself with this
new effort. I hope you may prosper; and so far as a dollar of
mine, or my voice may go, you shall have it. I confess candidly
that it is logic that drives me here, in spite of my prejudices.
It is the discourses of Mrs. Stanton, of Mrs. Mott, of others
that have spoken and written; and it is coming in contact with
strong womanly mind. If we accept the convictions that come to
us, we shall be all right; and I will do as the lady who has just
spoken said that she would do--not be governed by mere party, but
by the moral bearings of the questions that arise, and vote upon
the side of God and justice. (Applause.)
FRANCES D. GAGE said: _Mrs. President_--It seems to be my fate to
come in at the eleventh hour. We have been talking about the
right to the ballot. Why do we want it? What does it confer? We
closed our argument at three o'clock to-day by a discussion
whether the women of this country and the colored men of this
country wanted the ballot. I said it was a libel on woman to say
she did not want it; and I repeat that assertion.... Last evening
I attended the meeting of the National Temperance Association at
Cooper Institute. A great audience was assembled there to listen
to the arguments against the most gigantic evil that now pervades
the American Republic. Men took the position that only a
prohibitory law could put an end to the great evil of
intemperance. New York has its two hundred millions of invested
capital to sell death and destruction to the men of this country
who are weak enough to purchase. There are eight thousand
licensed liquor establishments in this city, to drag down
humanity. It was asserted there by Wendell Phillips that
intemperance had its root in our Saxon blood, that demanded a
stimulus; and he argued from that standpoint. If intemperance has
its root in the Saxon blood, that demands a stimulus, why is it
that the womanhood of this nation is not at the grog-shops
to-day? Are women not Saxons? It was asserted, both by Mr.
Phillips and President Hopkins, of Union College, that the liquor
traffic must be regulated by law. A man may do what he likes in
his own house, said they; he may burn his furniture; he may take
poison; he may light his cigar with his greenbacks; but if he
carries his evil outside of his own house, if he increases my
taxes, if he makes it dangerous for me or for my children to walk
the streets, then it may be prohibited by law. I was at
Harrisburgh, a few days ago, at the State Temperance Convention.
Horace Greeley asserted that there was progress upon the subject
of temperance; and he went back to the time when ardent spirits
were drank in the household, when every table had its decanter,
and the wife, children, and husband drank together. Now, said he,
it is a rare thing to find the dram-bottle in the home. It has
been put out. But what put the dram-bottle out of the home? It
was put out because the education and refinement and power of
woman became so strong in the home, that she said, "It must go
out; we can't have it here." (Applause.) Then the voters of the
United States, the white male citizens, went to work and licensed
these nuisances that could not be in the home, at all the corners
of the streets. I demand the ballot for woman to-day, that she
may vote down these nuisances, the dram-shops, there also, as she
drove them out of the home. (Applause.)
What privilege does the vote give to the "white male citizen" of
the United States? Did you ever analyze a voter--hold him up and
see what he was? Shall I give you a picture of him? Not as my
friend Parker Pillsbury has drawn the picture to-night will I
draw it. What is the "white male citizen"--the voter in the
Republic of the United States? More than any potentate or any
king in all Europe. Louis Napoleon dares not walk the streets of
his own city without his body-guard around him with their
bayonets. The Czar of Russia is afraid for his own life among his
people. Kings and potentates are always afraid; but the "free
white male citizen" of the United States, with the ballot in his
hand, goes where he lists, does what he pleases. He owns himself,
his earnings, his genius, his talent, his eloquence, his power,
all there is of him. All that God has given him is his, to do
with as he pleases, subject to no power but such laws as have an
equal bearing upon every other man in like circumstances, and
responsible to no power but his own conscience and his God. He
builds colleges; he lifts up humanity or he casts it down. He is
the lawgiver, the maker as it were of the nation. His single vote
may turn the destiny of the whole Republic for good or ill. There
is no link in the chain of human possibilities that can add one
single power to the "white male citizen" of America.
Now we ask that you shall put into the hands of every human being
this same power to go forward and do good works wherever it can.
The country has rung within the last few days because one colored
girl, with a little black blood in her veins, has been cast out
of the Pittsburgh Methodist College. It ought to ring until such
a thing shall be impossible. But when Cambridge and Yale and
Union and all the other institutions of the country, West Point
included, aided by national patronage, shut out every woman in
the land, who has anything to say? There is not a single college
instituted by the original government patronage of lands to
public schools and colleges, that allows a woman to set her foot
inside of its walls as a student. Is this no injustice? Is it no
wrong? When men stand upon the public platform and deliver
elaborate essays on women and their right of suffrage, they talk
about their weakness, their devotion to fashion and idleness.
What else have they given women to do? Almost every profession in
the land is filled by men; every college sends forth the men to
fill the highest places. When the law said that no married woman
should do business in her own name, sue or be sued, own property,
own herself or her earnings, what had she to do? That laid the
foundation for precisely the state of things you see to-day. But
I deny that, as a class, the women of America, black or white,
are idle. We are always busy. What have we done? Look over this
audience, go out upon your streets, go through the world where
you will, and every human soul you meet is the work of woman. She
has given it life; she has educated it, whether for good or evil,
because God gave her the holiest mission ever laid upon the heart
of a human soul--the mission of the mother.
We are told that home is woman's sphere. So it is, and man's
sphere, too, for I tell you that that is a poor home which has
not in it a man to feel that it is the most sacred place he
knows. If duty requires him to go out into the world and fight
its battles, who blames him, or puts a ban upon him? Men complain
that woman does not love home now; that she is not satisfied with
her mission. I answer that this discontent arises out of the one
fact, that you have attempted to mould seventeen millions of
human souls in one shape, and make them all do one thing. Take
away your restrictions, open all doors, leave women at liberty to
go where they will. The caged bird forgets how to build its nest.
The wing of the eagle is as strong to soar to the sun as that of
her mate, who never says to her, "back, feeble one, to your nest,
and there brood in dull inactivity until I give you permission to
leave!" But when her duties called her there, who ever found her
unfaithful to her trust? The foot of the wild roe is as strong
and swift in the race as that of her antlered companion. She goes
by his side, she feeds in the same pasture, drinks from the same
running brook, but is ever true also to her maternal duties and
cares. If we are a nation of imbeciles, if womanhood is weak, it
is the laws and customs of society which have made us what we
are. If you want health, strength, energy, force, temperance,
purity, honesty, deal justly with the mothers of this country:
then they will give you nobler and stronger men than higgling
politicians, or the grog-shop emissaries that buy up the votes of
your manhood. It has been charged upon woman that she does
nothing well. What have you given us to do well? What freedom
have you given us to act independently and earnestly? When I was
in San Domingo, I found a little colony of American colored
people that went over there in 1825. They retained their American
customs, and especially their little American church, outside of
the Catholic, which overspread the whole country. In an obscure
room in an old ruin they sung the old hymns, and lived the old
life of the United States. I asked how this thing was, and they
answered that among those that went over so long ago were a few
from Chester County, Pennsylvania, who were brought up among the
Quakers, and had learned to read. Wherever a mother had learned
to read, she had educated all her children so that they could
read; but wherever there was a mother that could not read, that
family had lapsed off from the old customs of the past....
A friend of mine, writing from Charleston the other day, just
after the ballot went down there, says that he was told by a
colored man, "I met my old master, and he bowed so low to me I
didn't hardly know which was the negro and which was the white
man." When we hold the ballot, we shall stand just there. Men
will forget to tell us that politics are degrading. They will bow
low, and actually respect the women to whom they now talk
platitudes, and silly flatteries; sparkling eyes, rosy cheeks,
pearly teeth, ruby lips, the soft and delicate hands of
refinement and beauty, will not be the burden of their song; but
the strength, the power, the energy, the force, the intellect,
and the nerve, which the womanhood of this country will bring to
bear, and which will infuse itself through all the ranks of
society, must make all its men and women wiser and better.
[Applause].
The Association then adjourned until Friday morning, 10-1/2 o'clock.
SECOND DAY.
FRIDAY MORNING, _May 10, 1867_.
The meeting was called to order by the President, and the Secretary
read some additional resolutions.[72]
CHARLES L. REMOND objected to the last of the resolution, and
desired that the word "colored" might be stricken out. It might
be that colored men would obtain their rights before women; but
if so, he was confident they would heartily acquiesce in
admitting women also to the right of suffrage.
The PRESIDENT (Mrs. Mott) said that woman had a right to be a
little jealous of the addition of so large a number of men to the
voting class, for the colored men would naturally throw all their
strength upon the side of those opposed to woman's
enfranchisement.
GEORGE T. DOWNING wished to know whether he had rightly
understood that Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Mott were opposed to the
enfranchisement of the colored man, unless the ballot should also
be accorded to woman at the same time.
Mrs. STANTON said: All history proves that despotisms, whether of
one man or millions, can not stand, and there is no use of
wasting centuries of men and means in trying that experiment
again. Hence I have no faith or interest in any reconstruction on
that old basis. To say that politicians always do one thing at a
time is no reason why philosophers should not enunciate the broad
principles that underlie that one thing and a dozen others. We do
not take the right step for this hour in demanding suffrage for
any class; as a matter of principle I claim it for all. But in a
narrow view of the question as a matter of feeling between
classes, when Mr. Downing puts the question to me, are you
willing to have the colored man enfranchised before the woman, I
say, no; I would not trust him with all my rights; degraded,
oppressed himself, he would be more despotic with the governing
power than even our Saxon rulers are. I desire that we go into
the kingdom together, for individual and national safety demand
that not another man be enfranchised without the woman by his
side.
STEPHEN S. FOSTER, basing the demand for the ballot upon the
natural right of the citizen, felt bound to aid in conferring it
upon any citizen deprived of it irrespective of its being granted
or denied to others. Even, therefore, if the enfranchisement of
the colored man would probably retard the enfranchisement of
woman, we had no right for that reason to deprive him of his
right. The right of each should be accorded at the earliest
possible moment, neither being denied for any supposed benefit to
the other.
CHARLES L. REMOND said that if he were to lose sight of
expediency, he must side with Mrs. Stanton, although to do so was
extremely trying; for he could not conceive of a more unhappy
position than that occupied by millions of American men bearing
the name of freedmen while the rights and privileges _free_ men
are still denied them.
Mrs. STANTON said: That is equaled only by the condition of the
women by their side. There is a depth of degradation known to the
slave women that man can never feel. To give the ballot to the
black man is no security to the woman. Saxon men have the ballot,
yet look at their women, crowded into a few half-paid
employments. Look at the starving, degraded class in our 10,000
dens of infamy and vice if you would know how wisely and
generously man legislates for woman.
Rev. SAMUEL J. MAY, in reply to Mr. Remond's objection to the
resolution, said that the word "colored" was necessary to convey
the meaning, since there is no demand now made for the
enfranchisement of men, as a class. His amendment would take all
the color out of the resolution. No man in this country had made
such sacrifices for the cause of liberty as Wendell Phillips; and
if just at this moment, when the great question for which he has
struggled thirty years seemed about to be settled, he was
unwilling that anything should be added to it which might in any
way prejudice the success about to crown his efforts, it was not
to be wondered at. He was himself of the opinion, on the
contrary, that by asking for the rights of all, we should be much
more likely to obtain the rights of the colored man, than by
making that a special question. He would rejoice at the
enfranchisement of colored men, and believed that Mrs. Stanton
would, though that were all we could get at the time. Yet, if we
rest there, and allow the reconstruction to be completed, leaving
out the better half of humanity, we must expect further trouble;
and it might be a more awful and sanguinary civil war than that
which we have just experienced.
GEORGE T. DOWNING desired that the Convention should express its
opinion upon the point he had raised; and, therefore, offered the
following resolution:
_Resolved_, That while we regret that the right sentiment,
which would secure to women the ballot, is not as general as
we would have it, nevertheless we wish it distinctly
understood that we rejoice at the increasing sentiment which
favors the enfranchisement of the colored man.
Mr. DOWNING understood Mrs. Stanton to refuse to rejoice at a
_part_ of the good results to be accomplished, if she could not
achieve the whole, and he wished to ask if she was unwilling the
colored man should have the vote until the women could have it
also? He said we had no right to refuse an act of justice upon
the assumption that it would be followed by an act of injustice.
Mrs. STANTON replied she demanded the ballot for all. She asked
for reconstruction on the basis of self-government; but if we are
to have further class legislation, she thought the wisest order
of enfranchisement was to take the educated classes first. If
women are still to be represented by men, then I say let only the
highest type of manhood stand at the helm of State. But if all
men are to vote, black and white, lettered and unlettered, washed
and unwashed, the safety of the nation as well as the interests
of woman demand that we outweigh this incoming tide of
ignorance, poverty, and vice, with the virtue, wealth, and
education of the women of the country. With the black man you
have no new force in government--it is manhood still; but with
the enfranchisement of woman, you have a new and essential
element of life and power. Would Horace Greeley, Wendell
Phillips, Gerrit Smith, or Theodore Tilton be willing to stand
aside and trust their individual interests, and the whole welfare
of the nation, to the lowest strata of manhood? If not, why ask
educated women, who love their country, who desire to mould its
institutions on the highest idea of justice and equality, who
feel that their enfranchisement is of vital importance to this
end, why ask them to stand aside while 2,000,000 ignorant men are
ushered into the halls of legislation?
EDWARD M. DAVIS asked what had been done with Mr. Burleigh's
amendment.
The CHAIR--No action was taken upon it, as no one seconded it.
ABBY KELLY FOSTER said: I am in New York for medical treatment,
not for speech-making; yet I must say a few words in relation to
a remark recently made on this platform--that "The negro should
not enter the kingdom of politics before woman, because he would
be an additional weight against her enfranchisement." Were the
negro and woman in the same civil, social, and religious status
to-day, I should respond aye, with all my heart, to this
sentiment. What are the facts? You say the negro has the civil
rights bill, also the military reconstruction bill granting him
suffrage. It has been well said, "he has the title deed to
liberty, but is not yet in the possession of liberty." He is
treated as a slave to-day in the several districts of the South.
Without wages, without family rights, whipped and beaten by
thousands, given up to the most horrible outrages, without that
protection which his value as property formerly gave him. Again,
he is liable without farther guarantees, to be plunged into
peonage, serfdom or even into chattel slavery. Have we any true
sense of justice, are we not dead to the sentiment of humanity if
we shall wish to postpone his security against present woes and
future enslavement till woman shall obtain political rights?
Rev. HENRY WARD BEECHER said: It seems that my modesty in not
lending my name has been a matter of some grief. I will try
hereafter to be less modest. When I get my growth I hope to
overcome that. I certainly should not have been present to-day,
except that a friend said to me that some who were expected had
not come. When a cause is well launched and is prospering, I
never feel specially called to help it. When a cause that I
believe to be just is in the minority, and is struggling for a
hearing, then I should always be glad to be counted among those
who were laboring for it in the days when it lacked friends. I
come to bear testimony, not as if I had not already done it, but
again, as confirmed by all that I have read, whether of things
written in England or spoken in America, in the belief that this
movement is not the mere progeny of a fitful and feverish
_ism_--that it is not a mere frothing eddy whose spirit is but
the chafing of the water upon the rock--but that it is a part of
that great tide which follows the drawing of heaven itself. I
believe it to be so. I trust that it will not be invidious if I
say, therefore, I hope the friends of this cause will not fall
out by the way. If the division of opinion amounts merely to
this, that you have two blades, and therefore can cut, I have no
objection to it; but if there is such a division of opinion in
respect to mere details, how important those details are, among
friends that are one at the bottom where principles are, that
there is to be a falling out there, I shall exceedingly regret
it; I shall regret that our strength is weakened, when we need it
to be augmented most, or concentrated.
All my lifetime the great trouble has been that in merely
speculative things theologians have been such furious logicians,
have picked up their premises, and rushed with them with
race-horse speed to such remote conclusions, that in the region
of ideas our logical minds have become accustomed to draw results
as remote as the very eternities from any premises given. My
difficulty on the other hand, has been that in practical matters,
owing to the existence of this great mephitic swamp of slavery,
men have been utterly unwilling to draw conclusions at all; and
that the most familiar principles of political economy or
politics have been enunciated, and then always docked off short.
Men would not allow them to go to their natural results, in the
class of questions in society. We have had raised up before us
the necessity of maintaining the Union by denying conclusions.
The most dear and sacred and animating principles of religion
have been restrained, because they would have such a bearing upon
slavery, and men felt bound to hold their peace. Our most
profound and broadly acknowledged principles of liberty have been
enunciated and passed over, without carrying them out and
applying them to society, because it would interrupt the peace of
the nation. That time is passed away; and as the result of it has
come in a joy and a perfect appetite on the part of the public.
I have been a careful observer for more than thirty-five years,
for I came into public life, I believe, about the same time with
the lady who has just sat down (Mrs. Foster), although I am not
so much worn by my labors as she seems to have been. For
thirty-five years I have observed in society its impetus checked,
and a kind of lethargy and deadness in practical ethics, arising
from fear of this prejudicial effect upon public economy. I have
noticed that in the last five years there has been a revolution
as perfect as if it had been God's resurrection in the graveyard.
The dead men are living, and the live men are thrice alive. I can
scarcely express my sense of the leap the public mind and the
public moral sense have taken within this time. The barrier is
out of the way. That which made the American mind untrue
logically to itself is smitten down by the hand of God; and there
is just at this time an immense tendency in the public mind to
carry out all principles to their legitimate conclusions, go
where they will. There never was a time when men were so
practical, and so ready to learn. I am not a farmer, but I know
that the spring comes but once in the year. When the furrow is
open is the time to put in your seed, if you would gather a
harvest in its season. Now, when the red-hot plowshare of war has
opened a furrow in this nation, is the time to put in the seed.
If any man says to me, "Why will you agitate the woman's
question, when it is the hour for the black man?" I answer, it is
the hour for every man, black or white. (Applause.) The bees go
out in the morning to gather the honey from the morning-glories.
They take it when they are open, for by ten o'clock they are
shut, and they never open again until the next crop comes. When
the public mind is open, if you have anything to say, say it. If
you have any radical principles to urge, any organizing wisdom
to make known, don't wait until quiet times come. Don't wait
until the public mind shuts up altogether.
War has opened the way for impulse to extend itself. But progress
goes by periods, by jumps and spurts. We are in the favored hour;
and if you have great principles to make known, this is the time
to advance those principles. If you can organize them into
institutions, this is the time to organize them. I therefore say,
whatever truth is to be known for the next fifty years in this
nation let it be spoken now--let it be enforced now. The truth
that I have to urge is not that women have the right of
suffrage--not that Chinamen or Irishmen have the right of
suffrage--not that native born Yankees have the right of
suffrage--but that suffrage is the inherent right of mankind. I
say that man has the right of suffrage as I say that man has the
right to himself. For although it may not be true under the
Russian government, where the government does not rest on the
people, and although under our own government a man has not a
right to himself, except in accordance with the spirit and action
of our own institutions, yet our institutions make the government
depend on the people, and make the people depend on the
government; and no man is a full citizen, or fully competent to
take care of himself, or to defend himself, who has not all those
rights that belong to his fellows. I therefore advocate no
sectional rights, no class rights, no sex rights, but the most
universal form of right for all that live and breathe on the
continent. I do not put back the black man's emancipation; nor do
I put back for a single day or for an hour his admission. I ask
not that he should wait. I demand that this work shall be done,
not upon the ground that it is politically expedient now to
enfranchise black men; but I propose that you take expediency out
of the way, and that you put a principle that is more enduring
than expediency in the place of it--manhood and womanhood
suffrage for all. That is the question. You may just as well meet
it now as at any other time. You never will have so favorable an
occasion, so sympathetic a heart, never a public reason so
willing to be convinced as to-day. If anything is to be done for
the black man, or the black woman, or for the disfranchised
classes among the whites, let it be done, in the name of God,
while his Providence says, "Come; come all, and come welcome."
But I take wisdom from some with whom I have not always trained.
If you would get ten steps, has been the practical philosophy of
some who are not here to-day, demand twenty, and then you will
get ten. Now, even if I were to confine--as I by no means do--my
expectation to gaining the vote for the black man, I think we
should be much more likely to gain that by demanding the vote for
everybody. I remember that when I was a boy Dr. Spurzheim came to
this country to advocate phrenology, but everybody held up both
hands--"Phrenology! You must be running mad to have the idea that
phrenology can be true!" It was not long after that, mesmerism
came along; and then the people said, "Mesmerism! We can go
phrenology; there is some sense in that; but as for mesmerism--!"
Very soon spiritualism made its appearance, and then the same
people began to say, "Spiritualism! Why it is nothing but
mesmerism; we can believe in that; but as for spiritualism--!"
(Laughter.) The way to get a man to take a position is to take
one in advance of it, and then he will drop into the one you want
him to take. So that if, being crafty, I desire to catch men with
guile, and desire them to adopt suffrage for colored men, as good
a trap as I know of is to claim it for women also. Bait your trap
with the white woman, and I think you will catch the black man.
(Laughter.) I would not, certainly, have it understood that we
are standing here to advocate this universal application of the
principle merely to secure the enfranchisement of the colored
citizen. We do it in good faith. I believe it is just as easy to
carry the enfranchisement of all as the enfranchisement of any
class, and easier to carry it than carry the enfranchisement of
class after class--class after class. (Applause.)
I make this demand because I have the deepest sense of what is
before us. We have entered upon an era such as never before has
come to any nation. We are at a point in the history of the world
where we need a prophet, and have none to describe to us those
events rising in the horizon thick and fast. Sometimes it seems
to me that that Latter Day glory which the prophets dimly saw,
and which saints have ever since, with faintness of heart, longed
for and prayed for with wavering faith, is just before us. I see
the fountains of the great deep broken up. I think we are to have
a nation born in a day among us, greater in power of thought,
greater in power of conscience, greater therefore in
self-government, greater still in the power of material
development. Such thrift, such skill, such enterprise, such power
of self-sustentation I think is about to be developed, to say
nothing of the advance already made before the nations, as will
surprise even the most sanguine and far-sighted. Nevertheless,
while so much is promised, there are all the attendant evils. It
is a serious thing to bring unwashed, uncombed, untutored men,
scarcely redeemed from savagery, to the ballot-box. It is a
dangerous thing to bring the foreigner, whose whole secular
education was under the throne of the tyrant, and put his hand
upon the helm of affairs in this free nation. It is a dangerous
thing to bring men without property, or the expectation of it,
into the legislative halls to legislate upon property. It is a
dangerous thing to bring woman, unaccustomed to and undrilled in
the art of government, suddenly into the field to vote. These are
dangerous things; I admit it. But I think God says to us, "By
that danger I put every man of you under the solemn
responsibility of preparing these persons effectually for their
citizenship." Are you a rich man, afraid of your money? By that
fear you are called to educate the men who you are afraid will
vote against you. We are in a time of danger. I say to the top of
society, just as sure as you despise the bottom, you shall be
left like the oak tree that rebelled against its own
roots--better that it be struck with lightning. Take a man from
the top of society or the bottom, and if you will but give
himself to himself, give him his reason, his moral nature, and
his affections; take him with all his passions and his appetites,
and develop him, and you will find he has the same instinct for
self-government that you have. God made a man just as much to
govern himself as a pyramid to stand on its own bottom.
Self-government is a boon intended for all. This is shown in the
very organization of the human mind, with its counterbalances and
checks.... We are underpinning and undergirding society. Let us
put under it no political expediency, but the great principle of
manhood and womanhood, not merely cheating ourselves by a partial
measure, but carrying the nation forward to its great and
illustrious future, in which it will enjoy more safety, more
dignity, more sublime proportions, and a health that will know no
death. (Applause.)
HENRY C. WRIGHT said that circumstances had made Wendell Phillips
and others, leaders in the Anti-Slavery movement, as they had
made Mrs. Stanton and others leaders in this; and while they all
desired the enfranchisement of both classes, it was no more than
right that each should devote his energies to his own movement.
There need not be, and should not be any antagonism between the
two.
Miss ANTHONY said--The question is not, is this or that person
right, but what are the principles under discussion. As I
understand the difference between Abolitionists, some think this
is harvest time for the black man, and seed-sowing time for
woman. Others, with whom I agree, think we have been sowing the
seed of individual rights, the foundation idea of a republic for
the last century, and that this is the harvest time for all
citizens who pay taxes, obey the laws and are loyal to the
government. (Applause.)
Mr. REMOND said: In an hour like this I repudiate the idea of
expediency. All I ask for myself I claim for my wife and sister.
Let our action be based upon the rock of everlasting principle.
No class of citizens in this country can be deprived of the
ballot without injuring every other class. I see how equality of
suffrage in the State of New York is necessary to maintain
emancipation in South Carolina. Do not moral principles, like
water, seek a common level? Slavery in the Southern States
crushed the right of free speech in Massachusetts and made slaves
of Saxon men and women, just as the $250 qualification in the
Constitution of this State degrades and enslaves black men all
over the Union.
Mr. PILLSBURY protested against the use of the few last moments
of this meeting in these discussions. We should be now only "a
committee of ways and means," and future work should be the
business in hand. Mr. Downing presented an unnecessary issue.
Government will never ask us which should enter into citizenship
first, the woman or the colored man, or whether we prefer one to
the other. Indeed government has given the colored man the ballot
already. We are demanding suffrage equally, not unequally. Mrs.
Stanton's private opinion, be it what it may, has nothing to do
with the general question. The white voters are mostly opposed to
woman's suffrage. So will the colored men be, probably; at least
so she believes, as Mrs. Mott also suggested very strongly, and a
million or more of them added to the present opposition and
indifference, are not a slight consideration. Mrs. Stanton does
not believe in loving her neighbor _better_ than herself. Justice
to one class does not mean injustice to another. Woman has as
good a right to the ballot as the black man--no better. Were I a
colored man, and had reason to believe that should woman obtain
her rights she would use them to the prejudice of mine, how could
I labor very zealously in her behalf? It should be enough for Mr.
Downing and all who stand with him that Mrs. Stanton does not
demand one thing for herself as to rights, or time of obtaining
them, which she does not cheerfully, earnestly demand for all
others, regardless of color or sex.
Miss ANTHONY read the following telegram from Lucy Stone:
"ATCHISON, KANSAS, May 10, 1867.
"Impartial Suffrage, _without regard to color or sex_, will
succeed by overwhelming majorities. Kansas leads the world!
LUCY STONE."
Miss ANTHONY also read a hopeful and interesting letter from Hon.
S. N. Wood, of Kansas, showing his plans for the canvass of that
State.
JOSEPHINE GRIFFING said: I am well satisfied that this Convention
ought not to adjourn until a similar plan is laid out for all the
States in the Union, and especially for the District of Columbia.
This being a national convention, it seems peculiarly appropriate
that it should begin its work at the District of Columbia. The
proposition has already been made there, and the parties have
discussed its merits. The question of the franchise arose from
the great fact that at the South there were four millions of
people unrepresented. The fact of woman's being also
unrepresented is now becoming slowly understood. It is easier now
to talk and act upon that subject in the District of Columbia
than ever before, or than it will be again. Even the President
has said that if woman in the District of Columbia shall
intelligently ask for the right of franchise, he shall by no
means veto it. To my mind the enfranchisement of woman is a
settled fact. We can not reconstruct this government until the
franchise shall be given not merely to the four millions but to
the fifteen millions. We can not successfully reconstruct our
government unless we go to the foundation. Let us apply all the
force we can to the lever, for we have a great body to lift. No
matter how ready the public is, we can accomplish nothing unless
we have some plan, and unless we have workers. I presume none of
us are aware how many laws there are upon the statute books
disabling our rights. When the Judges in the District of Columbia
were to decide who were to vote and who were not to vote, the
question arose who could be appointed officers of the city; and
it was found that there was a law that no one could be appointed
a judge of elections who had not paid a tax upon real estate in
the District of Columbia, a law which almost defeats all the work
which has been done during the canvass of the last eight weeks in
that District. There is work yet to be done there, and so we
shall find it at every step. I am thankful with all my heart and
soul that the people have at last consented to the
enfranchisement of two millions of black men. I recognize that,
as the load is raised one inch, we must work by degrees,
accepting every inch, every hair's breadth gained toward the
right. I welcome the enfranchisement of the negro as a step
toward the enfranchisement of woman.
Miss ANTHONY said we seem to be blessed with telegrams, with
cheering news from Kansas, and read the following from S. N.
Wood:
ATCHISON, KANSAS, May 10, 1867.
"With the help of God and Lucy Stone, we shall carry Kansas!
The world moves! SAM WOOD."
These telegrams were received with much applause. The resolutions
were then put to vote, and unanimously carried, and officers were
elected for the ensuing year.[73]
SOJOURNER TRUTH was called for and said: I am glad to see that
men are getting their rights, but I want women to get theirs, and
while the water is stirring I will step into the pool. Now that
there is a great stir about colored men's getting their rights is
the time for women to step in and have theirs. I am sometimes
told that "Women aint fit to vote. Why, don't you know that a
woman had seven devils in her: and do you suppose a woman is fit
to rule the nation?" Seven devils aint no account; a man had a
legion in him. [Great laughter]. The devils didn't know where to
go; and so they asked that they might go into the swine. They
thought that was as good a place as they came out from. [Renewed
laughter]. They didn't ask to go into sheep--no, into the hog;
that was the selfishest beast; and man is so selfish that he has
got women's rights and his own too, and yet he won't give women
their rights. He keeps them all to himself. If a woman did have
seven devils, see how lovely she was when they were cast out, how
much she loved Jesus, how she followed Him. When the devils were
gone out of the man, he wanted to follow Jesus, too, but Jesus
told him to go home, and didn't seem to want to have him round.
And when the men went to look for Jesus at the sepulchre they
didn't stop long enough to find out whether he was there or not;
but Mary stood there and waited, and said to Him, thinking it was
the gardener, "Tell me where they have laid Him and I will carry
Him away." See what a spirit there is. Just so let women be true
to this object, and the truth will reign triumphant.
ALFRED H. LOVE (President of the Universal Peace Society) said:
Your President paid the Universal Peace Society two visits; and
some of us, in turn, are here to reciprocate. The Universal Peace
Society, knowing that we must have purity before we can have
peace, knowing that we need our mothers, wives, and daughters
with us, knowing that we need the morality, the courage, and the
patience of the colored man with us, adopted as our first
resolution that the ballot is a peacemaker, and that with
equality there can be no war; and in another resolution we have
said that women and colored men are entitled to the ballot.
Therefore, you have us upon the same platform, working for you in
the best way we can. We mean no cowardly peace; we mean such a
peace as demands justice and equality, and world-wide
philanthropy. I put the ballot of to-day under my foot, and say I
can not use it until the mother that reared me can have the same
privilege; until the colored man, who is my equal, can have it.
E. H. HEYWOOD of Boston, said he could hardly see what business
men had upon this platform, considering how largely responsible
they are for the conditions against which women struggle, except
to confess their sins. Men had usurped the government, and shut
up women in the kitchen. It was a sad fact that woman did not
speak for herself. It was because she was crowded so low that
she could not speak. Woman wanted not merely the right to vote,
but the right to labor. The average life of the factory girl in
Lowell was only four years, as shown by a legislative
investigation. New avenues for labor must be opened. It is said
that the women on this platform are coquetting with the
Democrats. Why shouldn't they? The Democrats say, "Talk of negro
suffrage, and then refuse women the right to vote. All I have to
say is, when the negroes of Connecticut go to the polls, my wife
and daughter will go, too."
EVENING SESSION.
The meeting was called to order by Mrs. Stanton.
Miss Anthony read another letter from Hon. S. N. Wood, of Kansas,
received since the Morning Session.
FRANCES D. GAGE was then introduced: It is not to-day as it was
before the war. It is not to-day as it was before woman took her
destiny in her hand and went out upon the battle-fields, and into
the camp, and endured hunger and cold for the sake of her
country. The whole country has been vitalized by this war. What
if woman did not carry the bayonet on the battle-field? She
carried that which gave more strength and energy. Traveling
through Illinois, I saw the women bind the sheaf, bring in the
harvest and plow the fields, that men might fight the battles.
When such women come up now and ask for the right of suffrage,
who will deny their request? In the winter of 1860, the law was
passed in New York giving to married women the right to their own
earnings. It was said frequently then that women did not want the
right to their own earnings. We were asked if we wanted to create
separation in families. But did any revolution or any special
trouble grow out of this recognition of woman's right? You see
women everywhere to-day earnestly striving to find a place to
earn their bread. Madame Demorest has become a leader of fashion,
teaching women to make up what Stewart imports; and she has a
branch establishment in every large city in the Union clear to
Montana. I do not know but some of those ladies cutting out
garments, and setting the fashions of the day, might aspire to
the Presidential chair; and perhaps they would be quite as
capable as the present incumbent--a tailor. [Applause].
Three years ago I found myself without the means of life. I
wanted a home. I had read about the beauties of a home, and
woman's appropriate sphere; and so I got a little home, and went
into it, and tried to get work. My old eyes would not see to sew
nicely, I was too feeble to wash, and so I tended the garden.
After a year had gone by I found that staying in this beautiful
home, and placing myself in woman's sphere had not brought me a
dollar to pay my bills. So setting all these theories at
defiance, I said I will go and lecture; and I went out into the
lecturing field. I have money to pay my bills to-day; but I could
not have it were I to cling to the sphere of home. If a woman is
doing the work of a good man's home, she is doing her part, and
she will not desire to go out from it for any ordinary cause. But
if she can make two dollars to his one, allowing him to carry out
his part of the appointments of life, why should not she do it?
When we can be allowed to do the thousand things that womanly
hands can do as well as those of men, we shall make our lives
useful. But take my word for it, as an old mother, with her
grandchildren gathered about her, you will not find woman
deserting the highest instincts of her nature, or leaving the
home of her husband and children.
Why do you scold us, poor weak women, for being fashionable and
dressy, when snares are set at every corner to tempt us? What
would become of your dry-goods merchants and your commerce if we
did not wear handsome dresses--if the women of this country were
to become thus sensible to-day? Your great stores on Broadway
would be closed, and your stalwart six-feet men would have to
find something else to do besides measuring tapes and ribbons.
The whole country would undergo a transformation. But it would be
better for the country. It would not take five years to pay the
national debt, interest and all, if you will apply the money
spent by men for tobacco and whisky--if men will learn to be
decent. I think it is a great deal better to wear a pretty flower
or ribbon than to smoke cigars. It is a great deal better, and
less damaging to the conscience, to wear a handsome silk dress,
than for a man to put "an enemy into his mouth to steal away his
brains."
I honestly and conscientiously believe that we ought to make the
rights of humanity equal for all classes of the community of
adult years and of sound mind. I do not ask that the girl should
vote at eighteen, but at twenty-one--the same age with the boy;
and having raised both boys and girls, I think I have a right to
say that. Give us freedom from these miserable prejudices, these
restrictions and tyrannies of society, and let us judge for
ourselves. If it is true, as science asserts, that girls inherit
more of the character of their father, while the boys follow in a
more direct line their mother, then how is it possible that women
should not have the same aspirations as men? I was born a
mechanic, and made a barrel before I was ten years old. The
cooper told my father, "Fanny made that barrel, and has done it
quicker and better than any boy I have had after six months'
training." My father looked at it and said, "What a pity that you
were not born a boy, so that you could be good for something. Run
into the house, child, and go to knitting." So I went and knit
stockings, and my father hired an apprentice boy, and paid him
two dollars a week for making barrels. Now, I was born to make
barrels, but they would not let me. Thousands of girls are born
with mechanical fingers. Thousands of girls have a muscular
development that could do the work of the world as well as men;
and there are thousands of men born to effeminacy and weakness.
Mrs. STANTON then addressed the meeting. As her line of argument
was a summary of that recently made before the Judiciary
Committee of the Legislature, and already published, it need not
here be repeated.
Miss ANTHONY announced that they would have another opportunity
to hear Sojourner Truth, and, for the information of those who
did not know, she would say that Sojourner was for forty years a
slave in this State. She is not a product of the barbarism of
South Carolina, but of the barbarism of New York, and one of her
fingers was chopped off by her cruel master in a moment of anger.
SOJOURNER TRUTH said: I have lived on through all that has taken
place these forty years in the anti-slavery cause, and I have
plead with all the force I had that the day might come that the
colored people might own their soul and body. Well, the day has
come, although it came through blood. It makes no difference how
it came--it did come. (Applause). I am sorry it came in that way.
We are now trying for liberty that requires no blood--that women
shall have their rights--not rights from you. Give them what
belongs to them; they ask it kindly too. (Laughter). I ask it
kindly. Now I want it done very quick. It can be done in a few
years. How good it would be. I would like to go up to the polls
myself. (Laughter). I own a little house in Battle Creek,
Michigan. Well, every year I got a tax to pay. Taxes, you see, be
taxes. Well, a road tax sounds large. Road tax, school tax, and
all these things. Well, there was women there that had a house as
well as I. They taxed them to build a road, and they went on the
road and worked. It took 'em a good while to get a stump up.
(Laughter). Now, that shows that women can work. If they can dig
up stumps they can vote. (Laughter). It is easier to vote than
dig stumps. (Laughter). It doesn't seem hard work to vote, though
I have seen some men that had a hard time of it. (Laughter). But
I believe that when women can vote there won't be so many men
that have a rough time gettin' to the polls. (Great laughter).
There is danger of their life sometimes. I guess many have seen
it in this city. I lived fourteen years in this city. I don't
want to take up time, but I calculate to live. Now, if you want
me to get out of the world, you had better get the women votin'
soon. (Laughter). I shan't go till I can do that.
CHARLES LENOX REMOND said: It requires a rash man to rise at this
stage of the meeting, with the hope of detaining the audience
even for a few moments. But in response to your call I rise to
add my humble word to the many eloquent words already uttered in
favor of universal suffrage. The present moment is one of no
ordinary interest. Since this platform is the only place in this
country where the whole question of human rights may now be
considered, it seemed to me fitting that the right of the colored
man to a vote should have a place at the close of the meeting;
and especially in this State, since the men who are to compose
the Convention called for the amendment of the Constitution of
this State, will, within a few short weeks, pass either favorably
or unfavorably upon that subject. I remember that Henry B.
Stanton once said at a foreign Court, "Let it be understood that
I come from a country where every man is a sovereign." At that
time the language of our friend was but a glittering generality,
for there were very many who could not be styled sovereigns in
any sense of the term. But I desire that the remark of Mr.
Stanton shall be verified in the State of New York this very
year. I demand that you so amend your Constitution as to
recognize the equality of the black man at the ballot box, at
least until he shall have proved himself a detriment to the
interests and welfare of our common country. It is no novelty
that two colored men were members of the last Legislature of
Massachusetts; for more than forty years ago a black man was a
member of the Massachusetts Legislature. People seem to have
forgotten our past history. The first blood shed in the
Revolutionary war ran from the veins of a black man; and it is
remarkable that the first blood shed in the recent rebellion also
ran from the veins of a black man. What does it mean, that black
men, first and foremost in the defense of the American nation and
in devotion to the country, are to-day disfranchised in the State
of Alexander Hamilton and John Jay?
These were the last conventions ever held in "the Church of the
Puritans," as it soon passed into other hands, and not one stone was
left upon another; not even an odor of sanctity about the old familiar
corner where so much grand work had been done for humanity. The
building is gone, the congregation scattered, but the name of George
B. Cheever, so long the honored pastor, will not soon be
forgotten.[74]
At the close of the Convention a memorial[75] to Congress was
prepared, and signed by the officers of the Convention.
In a letter to the _National Anti-Slavery Standard_, dated Concord,
April 20, 1867, Parker Pillsbury, under the title, "The Face of the
Sky," says:
I have just read in the papers of last week what follows:
Mr. Phillips, in the _Anti-Slavery Standard_ says: "All our duty
is to press constantly on the nation the absolute need of three
things. 1st. The exercise of the whole police power of the
government while the seeds of republicanism get planted. 2d. The
Constitutional Amendment securing universal suffrage in spite of
all State Legislation. 3d. A Constitutional Amendment authorizing
Congress to establish common schools, etc. To these necessaries,"
Mr. Phillips adds, "we must educate the public mind."
Mr. Greeley in the _Tribune_ says: "We are most anxious that our
present State Constitution shall be so amended as to secure
prompt justice through the courts, preclude legislative and
municipal corruption, and secure responsibility by concentrating
executive power." Through the approaching Constitutional
Convention, he says the people "can secure justice through
reformed courts, fix responsibility for abuses of executive
power;--in short, they can increase the value of property and the
reward of honest labor."
Mr. Tilton, in _The Independent_, in allusion to the recent
Republican defeat in Connecticut, concludes; "the policy of negro
suffrage is clearly seen to be the only policy for the National
welfare." ... "What then, is the next step," he asks, "in the
progress of reconstruction?" In italics he answered, "We must
make Impartial Suffrage the rule and practice of the Northern as
well as the Southern States." He proposes a new amendment to the
Federal Constitution which will secure to every American citizen,
black and white, North and South, the American citizen's
franchise. What is meant in this article of the _Independent_ by
impartial suffrage is understood by these words in another part
of it. "The Republican party in Connecticut was abundantly strong
enough to secure Impartial Suffrage. But it chose, instead, to
insult its black-faced brethren, and refused their alliance." Mr.
Raymond, in the New York _Times_, speaks without a stammer on the
suffrage question. It declares, "In New York suffrage is now
absolutely universal for all citizens except the colored people;
and upon them it is only restricted by a slight property
qualification."
A correspondent of the Boston _Congregationalist_, in a letter
from New York, tells us, "A Constitutional Convention is to be
held shortly in this State, and we expect to see universal
suffrage adopted.... The Strong-Minded Women aim to secure female
voting, but they will fail, as they should." The
_Congregationalist_ has also an editorial article headed, "The
steps to Reconstruction," in which it speaks excellently of "a
millennium of Republican governments," and of Impartial Suffrage
in them, as near at hand. But it too speaks only of freedmen to
be clothed with the rights of citizenship in the millennial,
latter-day glory so soon to be. Over the black male citizen this
editor shouts, "chattel, contraband, soldier, citizen, voter,
counselor, magistrate, representative, senator,--these all shall
be the successive steps of his wonderful progress!!"
I have produced these as the best representatives of the
different styles or types of the radical or progressive movement
in the work of reconstructing the government. That the _Standard_
and _Independent_ believe fully in the right of women to Equal
Suffrage and citizenship is known to every attentive reader of
those journals. But at an hour like this, it is painful to
witness anything like agreement even, with the language of the
others I have cited.... To rob the freed slave of citizenship
to-day is as much a crime as was slavery before the war on
Sumter; and to withhold the divinely conferred gift from woman is
every way as oppressive, cruel, and unjust as if she were a black
man....
FOOTNOTES:
[60] CALL FOR THE ELEVENTH NATIONAL WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION.--The
Convention will be held in the City of New York, at the Church of the
Puritans, Union Square, on Thursday, the 10th of May, 1866, at 10
o'clock. Addresses will be delivered by ERNESTINE L. ROSE, FRANCES D.
GAGE, WENDELL PHILLIPS, THEODORE TILTON, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, and
(probably) LUCRETIA MOTT and ANNA E. DICKINSON.
Those who tell us the republican idea is a failure, do not see the
deep gulf between our broad theory and partial legislation; do not see
that our Government for the last century has been but the repetition
of the old experiments of class and caste. Hence, the failure is not
in the principle, but in the lack of virtue on our part to apply it.
The question now is, have we the wisdom and conscience, from the
present upheavings of our political system, to reconstruct a
government on the one enduring basis that has never yet been
tried--"EQUAL RIGHTS TO ALL."
From the proposed class legislation in Congress, it is evident we have
not yet learned wisdom from the experience of the past; for, while our
representatives at Washington are discussing the right of suffrage for
the black man, as the only protection to life, liberty and happiness,
they deny that "necessity of citizenship" to woman; by proposing to
introduce the word "male" into the Federal Constitution. In securing
suffrage but to another shade of _man_hood, while we disfranchise
fifteen million tax-payers, we come not one line nearer the republican
idea. Can a ballot in the hand of woman, and dignity on her brow, more
unsex her than do a scepter and a crown? Shall an American Congress
pay less honor to the daughter of a President than a British
Parliament to the daughter of a King? Should not our petitions command
as respectful a hearing in a republican Senate as a speech of Victoria
in the House of Lords? Do we not claim that here all men and women are
nobles--all heirs apparent to the throne? The fact that this backward
legislation has roused so little thought or protest from the women of
the country, but proves what some of our ablest thinkers have already
declared, that the greatest barrier to a government of equality was
the aristocracy of its women. For, while woman holds an ideal position
above man and the work of life, poorly imitating the pomp, heraldry,
and distinction of an effete European civilization, we as a nation can
never realize the divine idea of equality.
To build a true republic, the church and the home must undergo the
same upheavings we now see in the State;--for, while our egotism,
selfishness, luxury and ease are baptized in the name of Him whose
life was a sacrifice,--while at the family altar we are taught to
worship wealth, power and position, rather than humanity, it is vain
to talk of a republican government:--The fair fruits of liberty,
equality and fraternity must be blighted in the bud, till cherished in
the heart of woman. At this hour the nation needs the highest thought
and inspiration of a true womanhood infused into every vein and artery
of its life; and woman needs a broader, deeper education, such as a
pure religion and lofty patriotism alone can give. From the baptism of
this second revolution should she not rise up with new strength and
dignity, clothed in all those "rights, privileges and immunities" that
shall best enable her to fulfill her highest duties to Humanity, her
Country, her Family and Herself?
On behalf of the National Woman's Rights Central Committee,
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, President.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Secretary.
New York (48 Beekman street), March 31, 1866.
[61] Ernestine L. Rose, Wendell Phillips, John T. Sargeant, O. B.
Frothingham, Frances D. Gage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B.
Anthony, Theodore Tilton, Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Stephen S.
and Abbey Kelley Foster, Margaret Winchester and Parker Pillsbury.
[62] As this was the first time Mr. Beecher had honored the platform,
we give copious extracts from his speech in preference to those who
were so often reported in the first volume. This speech is published
in full in tract form, and can be obtained from the Secretary of the
National Woman's Suffrage Association.
[63] A COLLOQUY.
When Mr. BEECHER took his seat, Mr. TILTON rose and said:
Mrs. PRESIDENT: In the midst of the general hilarity produced
throughout the house by my friend's speech, I myself have been greatly
solemnized by being made (as you have witnessed) the public custodian
of his New Testament. (Laughter). At first I shared in your
gratification at seeing that he carried so much of the Scripture with
him. (Laughter). But I found, on looking at the fly-leaf, that the
book after all, was not his own, but the property of a lady--I will
not mention her name. (Laughter). I have, therefore, no right to
accept my friend's gift of what is not his own. Now I remember that
when he came home from England, he told me a story of a company of ten
ministers who sat down to dine together. A dispute arose among them as
to the meaning of a certain passage of Scripture--for aught I know the
very passage in Galatians which he just now tried to quote, but
couldn't. (Laughter). Some one said, "Who has a New Testament?" It was
found that no one had a copy. Pretty soon, however, when the dinner
reached the point of champagne, some one exclaimed, "Who has a
corkscrew?" And it was found that the whole ten had, every man, a
corkscrew in his pocket! (Laughter). Now, as there is no telling where
a Brooklyn minister who made a temperance speech at Cooper Institute
last night is likely to take his dinner to-day, I charitably return
the New Testament into my friend's own hands. (Great merriment).
Mr. BEECHER--Now I know enough about champagne to know that it don't
need any corkscrew. (Laughter).
Mr. TILTON--How is it that you know so much more about corkscrews than
about Galatians? (Laughter).
Mr. BEECHER, after making some playful allusions to the story of the
ten ministers, remarked that he gave it as it was given to him, but
that he could not vouch for its truthfulness, as he was not present on
the occasion.
[64] Susan B. Anthony, Frances E. W. Harper, Sarah H. Hallock, Edwin
A. Studwell, Dr. C. S. Lozier, Margaret E. Winchester, Mary F.
Gilbert, Dr. Laura A. Ward, Edward M. Davis, Mrs. Calhoun.
[65] CONSTITUTION OF THE AMERICAN EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION.
PREAMBLE.--Whereas, by the war, society is once more resolved into its
original elements, and in the reconstruction of our government we
again stand face to face with the broad question of natural rights,
all associations based on special claims for special classes are too
narrow and partial for the hour; Therefore, from the baptism of this
second revolution--purified and exalted through suffering--seeing with
a holier vision that the peace, prosperity, and perpetuity of the
Republic rest on EQUAL RIGHTS TO ALL, we, to-day, assembled in our
Eleventh National Woman's Rights Convention, bury the woman in the
citizen, and our organization in that of the American Equal Rights
Association.
ARTICLE I.--This organization shall be known as The American Equal
Rights Association.
ART. II.--The object of this Association shall be to secure Equal
Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage,
irrespective of race, color, or sex.
ART. III.--Any person who consents to the principles of this
Association and contributes to its treasury, may be a member, and be
entitled to speak and vote in its meetings.
ART. IV.--The Officers of this Association shall be, a President,
Vice-Presidents, Corresponding Secretaries, a Recording Secretary, a
Treasurer, and an Executive Committee of not less than seven, nor more
than fifteen members.
ART. V.--The Executive Committee shall have power to enact their
by-laws, fill any vacancy in their body and in the offices of
Secretary and Treasurer; employ agents, determine what compensation
shall be paid to agents, and to the Corresponding Secretaries, direct
the Treasurer in the application of all moneys, and call special
meetings of the Society. They shall make arrangements for all meetings
of the Society, make an annual written report of their doings, the
expenditures and funds of the Society, and shall hold stated meetings,
and adopt the most energetic measures in their power to advance the
objects of the Society.
ART. VI.--The Annual Meeting of the Association shall be held each
year at such time and place as the Executive Committee may direct,
when the accounts of the Treasurer shall be presented, the annual
report read, appropriate addresses delivered, the officers chosen, and
such other business transacted as shall be deemed expedient.
ART. VII.--Any Equal Rights Association, founded on the same
principles, may become auxiliary to this Association. The officers of
each auxiliary shall be _ex officio_ members of the Parent
Association, and shall be entitled to deliberate and vote in the
transactions of its concerns.
ART. VIII.--This constitution may be amended, at any regular meeting
of the Society, by a vote of two-thirds of the members present,
provided the amendments proposed have been previously submitted in
writing to the Executive Committee, at least one month before the
meeting at which they are to be proposed.
Done in the City of New York on the tenth day of May, in the year
1866.
[66] President, Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Vice-Presidents, Frederick
Douglass, Frances D. Gage, Robert Purvis, Theodore Tilton, Josephine
S. Griffing, Martha C. Wright, Rebecca W. Mott; Corresponding
Secretaries, Susan B. Anthony, Mattie Griffith, Caroline M. Severance;
Recording Secretary, Henry B. Blackwell; Treasurer, Ludlow Patton;
Executive Committee, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Edwin A.
Studwell, Margaret E. Winchester, Aaron M. Powell, Susan B. Anthony,
Parker Pillsbury, Elizabeth Gay, Mary F. Gilbert, Stephen S. Foster,
Lydia Mott, Antoinette B. Blackwell, Wendell Phillips Garrison.
[67] Miss Anthony reported from the Finance Committee the receipt of
$255.50, as follows: Jessie Benton Fremont, $50; Abby Hutchinson
Patton, $50; Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, $20; Gerrit Smith, $10; Mrs. Dr.
Densmore, $10; James and Lucretia Mott, $10 Martha C. Wright, $8:
Elizabeth S. Miller, $5; Eliza W. Osborn, $5; Margaret E. Winchester,
$5; and the balance in sums of $1 each, from as many different
persons, whose names were enrolled as members of the Equal Rights
Association. Miss A. further stated that the proceedings would be
published in pamphlet form at the earliest possible day, and that
announcement of their place of sale would be made through the
_Tribune_, _Anti-Slavery Standard_, and other papers.
[68] At a reception one evening in Washington at the residence of Hon.
Schuyler Colfax, he rallied Mrs. Stanton on her defeat, regretting
that as Speaker of the House he had never had the pleasure of
introducing "the Lady from New York." Hon. William D. Kelly, standing
near, remarked by way of consolation, "There is still hope for Mrs.
Stanton; she received the same number of votes I did the first time I
ran for Congress (2,400), the only difference is, her ciphers were on
the wrong side (0024).
[69] The speakers were Rev. Olympia Brown, Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Frederick Douglass, Henry B. Blackwell,
Sarah P. Remond, Parker Pillsbury, Jane Elizabeth Jones, Charles Lenox
Remond, Bessie Bisbee, and Louise Jacobs.
[70] THE CALL.
The first Annual Meeting of the AMERICAN EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION will
be held in the City of New York, at the Church of the Puritans, on
Thursday and Friday, the 9th and 10th of May, 1867, commencing on
Thursday morning, at 10 o'clock.
The object of this Association is to "secure Equal Rights to all
American citizens, especially the Right of Suffrage, irrespective of
race, color, or sex." American Democracy has interpreted the
Declaration of Independence in the interest of slavery, restricting
suffrage and citizenship to a _white male minority_.
The black man is still denied the crowning right of citizenship, even
in the nominally free States, though the fires of civil war have
melted the chains of chattelism, and a hundred battle fields attest
his courage and patriotism. Half our population are disfranchised on
the ground of sex; and though compelled to obey the laws and taxed to
support the government, they have no voice in the legislation of the
country.
This Association, then, has a mission to perform, the magnitude and
importance of which can not be over-estimated. The recent war has
unsettled all our governmental foundations. Let us see that in their
restoration, all these unjust proscriptions are avoided. Let Democracy
be defined anew, as _the government of the people_, AND THE WHOLE
PEOPLE.
Let the gathering, then, at this anniversary be, in numbers and
character, worthy, in some degree, the demands of the hour. The black
man, even the black soldier, is yet but half emancipated, nor will he
be, until full suffrage and citizenship _are secured to him in the
Federal Constitution_. Still more deplorable is the condition of the
black woman; and legally, that of the white woman is no better! Shall
the sun of the nineteenth century go down on wrongs like these, in
this nation, consecrated in its infancy to justice and freedom? Rather
let our meeting be pledge as well as prophecy to the world of mankind,
that the redemption of at least one great nation is near at hand.
There will be four sessions--Thursday, May 9th, at 10 o'clock A.M.,
and 8 o'clock P. M.; Friday, May 13th, at 10 A.M., and 8 P.M. The
speakers will be Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Gen. Rufus Saxton, Frances D.
Gage, Parker Pillsbury, Robert Purvis, Mary Grew, Ernestine L. Rose,
Charles Lenox Remond, Frederick Douglass, Lucy Stone, Henry B.
Blackwell, Rev. Olympia Brown, Sojourner Truth (Mrs. Stowe's "Lybian
Sybil"), Rev. Samuel J. May, and others.
On behalf of the American Equal Rights Association,
LUCRETIA MOTT, President.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Cor. Secretary.
HENRY B. BLACKWELL, Rec. Secretary.
New York, 12th March, 1867.
[71] _Resolved_, That as republican institutions are based on
individual rights, and not on the rights of races or sexes, the first
question for the American people to settle in the reconstruction of
the government, is the RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUALS.
_Resolved_, That the present claim for "manhood suffrage," marked with
the words "equal," "impartial," "universal," is a cruel abandonment of
the slave women of the South, a fraud on the tax-paying women of the
North, and an insult to the civilization of the nineteenth century.
_Resolved_, That the proposal to reconstruct our government on the
basis of manhood suffrage, which emanated from the Republican party
and has received the recent sanction of the American Anti-Slavery
Society, is but a continuation of the old system of class and caste
legislation, always cruel and prescriptive in itself, and ending in
all ages in national degradation and revolution.
On motion of Miss Anthony, a Finance Committee was appointed,
consisting of Harriet Purvis, Mary F. Gilbert, Charles Lenox Remond,
and Anna Rice Powell.
On motion of Charles C. Burleigh, a Business Committee was appointed,
consisting of Ernestine L. Rose, Susan B. Anthony, Parker Pillsbury,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frances D. Gage, and Samuel J. May.
[72] _Resolved_, That the ballot alike to women and men means bread,
education, self-protection, self-reliance, and self-respect; to the
wife it means the control of her own person, property, and earnings;
to the mother it means the equal guardianship of her children; to the
daughter it means diversified employment and a fair day's wages for a
fair day's work; to all it means free access to skilled labor, to
colleges and professions, and to every avenue of advantage and
preferment.
_Resolved_, That Henry Ward Beecher, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and
Frederick Douglass, be invited to represent the Equal Rights
Association in the Constitutional Convention to be held in this State
in the month of June next.
_Resolved_, That while we are grateful to Wendell Phillips, Theodore
Tilton, and Horace Greeley, for the respectful mention of woman's
right to the ballot in the journals through which they speak, we ask
them now, when we are reconstructing both our State and National
Governments, to demand that the right of suffrage be secured to all
citizens--to women as well as black men, for, until this is done, the
government stands on the unsafe basis of class legislation.