with the government of the Massachusetts Technological Institute, took
a step which deserves our public mention. They advertised classes for
both sexes, under the most eligible professors, for instruction in
French, mathematics, and natural science. As the training was to be
thorough, the number of pupils was limited, and the _women_ who
applied would have filled the seats many times over. These classes
have been wholly free, and have added to the obligation which the free
Art School for women had already conferred.
Elmira College showed its enterprise last summer by a visit to
Massachusetts, and Vassar College was organized and commenced its
operations in September, with Miss Mitchell in the Chair of
Mathematics, and Miss Avery in that of Physiology. I attempted to
visit this institution last summer for the purpose of investigating
the facilities its buildings and proposed courses might offer to
foreign students. The reluctance of the Trustees to subject it to
observation so early in its career interfered with my plan, but I have
since received a letter from Miss Mitchell speaking of it in the most
encouraging terms. "I have a class," she says, "of seventeen pupils,
between the ages of 16 and 22. They come to me for fifty minutes every
day. I allow them great freedom in questioning, and I am puzzled by
them daily. They show more mathematical ability and more originality
of thought than I had expected. I doubt whether young men would show
as deep an interest. Are there seventeen students in Harvard College
who take mathematical astronomy, do you think?" So Mr. Vassar's
magnificent donation is drawing interest at last.
On the 25th of June, 1865, the Ripley College, at Poultney, Vermont,
celebrated its commencement. Seventeen young ladies were graduated.
Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered the literary address, and two days were
devoted to the examination of incoming pupils. Feeling very little
satisfaction in the success of Colleges intended for the separate
sexes, I take more pleasure in speaking of the Baker University in
Kansas, which was chartered by the Legislature of that State in 1857
as a University for both sexes. It has now been in active operation
for seven years. A little more than a year ago Miss Martha Baldwin, a
graduate of the Baldwin University at Berea, Ohio, was appointed to
the chair of Greek and Latin. She is but twenty-one years of age, but
was elected by the government to make the address for the Faculty at
the opening of the commencement exercises, and seems to have given
entire satisfaction during her professors' year. In France, the
Imperial Geographical Society, which is in a certain sense a college,
has lately admitted to membership Madame Dora D'Istra as the successor
to Madame Pfeiffer. Madame D'Istra had distinguished herself by
researches in the Morea.
On the 26th of October, 1864, a a Workingwomen's College was opened in
London, with an address from Miss F. R. Malleson. It is governed by a
council of teachers. In addition to the ordinary branches, it offers
instruction in Botany, Physiology, and Drawing. Its fee is four
shillings a year, and the coffee and reading-room, about which its
social life centres, is open every evening from 7 to 11. But by far
the most interesting educational movement is Miss Nightingale's
"Training-school for Nurses," which has been in operation for three
years in Liverpool. It was founded after a correspondence with her, in
strict conformity to her counsel. As a training-school it may be said
to be self-supporting, but it is also a beneficent institution, and in
that regard is sustained by donations. A most admirable system of
district nursing is provided under its auspices for the whole city of
Liverpool, all of whose suffering sick become, in this way, the
recipients of intelligent care and of valuable instruction in cooking
and all sanitary matters. It is too tempting an experiment to dwell
upon, unless we could follow it into its details. Its Report occupies
101 pages.
As regards medical education, we know of two colleges, or rather of
one college and one hospital, in Boston, where education is given.
There is one in Springfield and one in Philadelphia. We should be glad
to get more statistics of this kind, for Cleveland, where Dr.
Zakrzewska took her degree, is no longer open to female students, and
Geneva is contenting herself with the honor of having graduated Dr.
Blackwell. There is a female Medical Society in London. This society
wishes to open the way for thorough medical instruction, which will
entitle its graduates to a degree from Apothecaries' Hall, and it
offered lectures from competent persons in 1864, upon Obstetrics and
General Medical Science. Madame Aillot's Hospital of the Maternity in
Paris, still offers its great advantages to women, of which two of our
countrywomen, Miss Helen Morton and Miss Lucy E. Sewall have taken
creditable advantage. They are both of them Massachusetts girls. Miss
Morton is retained in Paris, and Miss Sewall is the resident physician
of the Hospital for Women and Children in Boston.
A very great interest has been felt in this country in the success of
Miss Garrett in obtaining her degree from Apothecaries' Hall, after it
had been refused to her by the medical colleges. We regret to say that
this fact does not show any real advance in the public opinion of
Great Britain, nor does it secure any permanent advantage for women.
When the Apothecaries' Hall refused her, Miss Garrett looked up its
charter. She found the old Latin word indicating to whom degrees were
to be granted clearly _indeterminate_. Langues told her that the Hall
must grant her a degree or surrender its charter. She was wealthy and
in earnest. She pushed her advantage. The Apothecaries' Hall
prescribed certain courses of instruction to be pursued and certified
before the degree could be granted. These she attended in private,
paying the most exorbitant fees to her teachers. In one instance, in
which a man's fee would have been _five_ guineas she paid _fifty_! I
am credibly informed that the round cost of these preparatory steps
must have been £2,000. All honor to Miss Garrett. Should her genius as
a physician equal her energy and her wealth, she may yet gain
something for the cause she has espoused. Apart from this, she may be
said to have gained nothing. Bribery is not possible to ordinary
mortals, and the conditions of the degree make it generally
impracticable until the lecture-rooms are opened to students. At
present, to obtain thorough instruction in any branch, women are
obliged to pay exorbitant prices, and receive as the results of their
training but half wages. In Boston Dr. Zakrzewska has again
unsuccessfully asked permission to become a member of the
Massachusetts Medical Society. Many physicians, however, extend the
fellowship which the institution denies, and the _Medical Journal_
expresses itself courteously on this point.
In 1863 there existed in St. Petersburg a stringent regulation which
prohibited women from following the University courses. A Miss K., who
had a decided taste for medicine without the means to pay for
instruction, applied for such instruction to the authorities of
Orenburg. Orenburg is partly in Europe and partly in Asia, and its
territory includes the Cossack races of the Ural. These people have a
superstitious prejudice against male physicians, and are chiefly
attended in illness by sorceresses. Miss K. offered to put her medical
knowledge at the service of the Cossacks, and received permission to
attend the Academy of Medicine. The Cossacks promised her an annual
stipend of 28 roubles, but when she passed the half-yearly examination
as well as the male students, they sent her 300 roubles as a token of
good will.
In France, a Mlle. Reugger, from Algeria, lately passed a brilliant
examination, and received the degree of Bachelor of Letters. She
appealed to the Dean of the Faculty at Montpellier for permission to
follow the regular course, and was refused on account of her sex. She
then turned to the Minister of Public Instruction, who granted it on
condition that she should pledge herself to practice only in Algeria,
where the Arabs, like the Cossacks, refuse the attendance of male
physicians. Unlike our Russian friend, she refused to give the pledge.
She threw herself upon her rights, and appealed in person to the
Emperor. This was in December last, and I have not been able to find
his decision. It was doubtless given in her behalf, for Louis Napoleon
will always yield as a favor what he would stubbornly refuse as a
right. The physicians of this country have been occupied this winter
in discussing the discovery by one of their number of the active
infectant in fever and ague. It has been found in the dust-like spores
of a marsh plant--the Pamella. In Paris, at the same time, a woman of
rank claims to have discovered the cause of cholera in a microscopic
insect, developed in low and filthy localities. Her details were so
minute, that the Academy of Science, which began by laughing at the
introduction of the matter, has been compelled to listen, and the
subject is now under investigation.
THE PULPIT.
In spite of the bitter words of warning which John Ruskin has thought
it his duty to speak to such women as enter upon theological studies,
a good many women in Great Britain and this country have engaged in
what is properly the work of the Christian ministry. The only ordained
minister whose work has come under our notice since the marriage of
Antoinette Blackwell, is the Rev. Olympia Brown, settled over the
Universalist Society at Weymouth Landing, Mass. Her ministry has been
highly successful, and is to be mentioned here chiefly on account of a
legal decision to which it has given rise. The church at Weymouth
Landing made an appeal to the Legislature last winter as to the
legality of marriages solemnized by her. The Legislature gave the same
general construction to the masculine relatives in the enactment which
the English law gave to the old Latin word in the Charter of
Apothecaries' Hall, deciding that marriages so solemnized are legal,
and no further legislation necessary.
LABOR.
The advance of women, as regards all sorts of labor, in the United
States, has been such as might be expected by watchful eyes, and yet
reports on the general question will not read very differently from
those published ten years ago. In New York, women are still reported
as making shirts at 75 cents a dozen, and overalls at 50 cents. These
women have two protective unions of their own, not connected with the
workingmen's union, and most of them have naturally enough sympathized
with the eight-hour movement, not foreseeing, apparently, that the
necessary first result of that movement would be a decrease of wages
proportioned to the limitation of time. Ever since the beginning of
the war, women have been employed in the public departments North and
South. It has been a matter of necessity, rather than choice. The same
causes combined to drive women into field labor and printing-offices.
All through Minnesota and the surrounding regions, women voluntarily
assumed the whole charge of the farms, in order to send their husbands
to the field. A very interesting account has been recently published
of a farm in Dongola, Ill., consisting of two thousand acres, managed
by a highly educated woman, whose husband was a cavalry officer. It
was a great pecuniary success. In New Hampshire, last summer, I was
shown open-air graperies wholly managed by women, in several different
localities, and was very happy to be told that my own influence had
largely contributed to the experiment. In England field labor is now
recommended to women by Lord Houghton, better known as Mr. Monckton
Milnes, who considers it a healthful resource against the terrible
abuses of factory life. At a meeting of the British Association last
fall, he produced a well-written letter from a woman engaged in
brick-making. This letter claimed that brick-making paid three times
better than factory labor, and ten times better than domestic service.
In addition to persons heretofore mentioned in this country as
employing women in out-door work, I would name Mr. Knox, the great
fruit-grower, who, on his place near Pittsburg, Pa., employs two or
three hundred. I have seen it stated that, during the last four years,
twenty thousand women have entered printing-offices. I do not know the
basis of this calculation, but judging from my local statistics, I
should think it must be nearly correct. To the Committee of the
Massachusetts Legislature, on the eight-hour movement, the following
towns report concerning the wages and labor of women:
Boston--Glass Co., wages from $4 to $8 a week. Domestics, from $1.50
to $3 per week; seamstresses, $1 a day; Makers of fancy goods, 40 to
50 cents a day. Brookline--Washerwomen, $1 a day. Charlestown and New
Bedford are ashamed to name the wages, but humbly confess that they
are very low. Chicopee--Pays women 90 per cent the wages of men.
Concord--Pays from 8 to 10 cents an hour. Fairhaven--Gives to female
photographers one-third the wages of men. Hadley--Pays three-fourths.
To domestics, one-third; seamstresses, one-quarter to one-third.
Holyoke--In its paper mills, offers one-third to one-half.
Lancaster--Pays for pocket-book making from 50 to 75 cents a day.
Lee--Pays in the paper mills one-half the wages of men. Lowell--The
Manufacturing Co. averages 90 cents a day. The Baldwin Mills pay 60 to
75 cents a day. Newton--Pays its washerwomen 75 cents a day, or 10
cents an hour. North Becket--Pays to women one-third the wages of men.
Northampton--Pays $5 a week. Salisbury--For sewing hats, $1 a day.
South Reading--On rattan and shoe work, $5 to $10 a week. South
Yarmouth--Half the wages of men, or less. Taunton--One-third to
two-thirds the wages of men. Walpole--Pays two thirds the wages of
men. Wareham--Pays to its domestics from 18 to 30 cents a day; to
seamstresses, 50 cents to $1. Wilmington--Pays two-thirds the wages of
men. Winchester--Pays dressmakers $1 a day; washerwomen, 12 cents an
hour. Woburn--Keeps its women at work from 11 to 13 hours, and pays
them two-thirds the wages of men.
On the better side of the question, Fall River testifies that women,
in competition, earn nearly as much as men.
Lawrence--From the Pacific Mills, that the women are _liberally_ paid.
We should like to see the figures. The Washington Mills pays from $1
to $2 a day. Stoneham--Gives them $1.50 per week. Waltham--Reports the
wages of the watch factory as very _remunerative_. In 1860 I reported
this factory as paying from $2.50 to $4 a week. Here, also, we should
prefer figures to a general statement. Boston--Has now many
manufactories of paper collars. Each girl is expected to turn out
1,800 daily. The wages are $7 a week. In the paper-box factory, more
than 200 girls are employed, but I can not ascertain their wages, and
therefore suppose them to be low. I know individuals who earn here $6
a week, but that must be _above_ the average.
The best looking body of factory operatives that I have ever seen are
those employed in the silk and ribbon mills on Boston Neck, lately
under the charge of Mr. J. H. Stephenson, and those at the Florence
Silk Mills in Northampton, owned by Mr. S. L. Hill. The classes,
libraries, and privileges appertaining to these mills, make them the
best examples I know, and this is shown in the faces and bearing of
the women. We are always referred to political economy, when we speak
of the low wages of women, but a little investigation will show that
other causes co-operate with those, which can be but gradually
reached, to determine their rates.
1. The willfulness of women themselves, which when I see them in
positions I have helped to open to them, fills me with shame and
indignation.
2. The unfair competition proceeding from the voluntary labor, in
mechanical ways, of women well to do.
For the first, we can not greatly blame the women whom employers
chiefly choose for their _good looks_, for expecting to earn their
wages through them, rather than by the proper discharge of their
duties. Their conduct is not the less shameful on that account, but I
seem to see that only time and death and ruin will educate them.
For the second, we must strive to develop a public sentiment which,
while it continues to hold labor honorable, will stamp with ignominy
any women who, in comfortable country homes, compete with the
workwomen of great cities. There are thousands of wealthy farmers'
wives to-day, who just as much drive other women to sin and death, as
if they led them with their own hands to the houses in which they are
ultimately compelled to take refuge. Still further it has come to be
known to me that in Boston, and I am told in New York also, wealthy
women who do not even do their own sewing, have the control of the
finer kinds of fancy-work, dealing with the stores which sell such
work under various disguises. I can not prove these words, but they
will strike conviction to the hearts of the women themselves, and I
wish them to have some significance for men, for if these women had
the pocket-money which their taste and position require, they would
never dream of such competition. One thing these men should know, that
such women are generally known to their employers, and their domestic
relations are judged accordingly.
The recent investigations into factory labor in England concern rather
the condition than the wages of women. At flower-making, 11,000 girls
are employed from fourteen to eighteen hours daily. In hardware shops
and factories, they work, from six years of age, fourteen hours daily.
In glass factories, 5,000 women are employed from nine years of age
and upwards, eighteen hours daily. In tobacco factories, 7,000 women
are employed under conditions of great physical suffering. As
knitters, from six years old, they work fourteen hours daily for 1s.
3d. a week! This terrible state of things is partly owing to
competition with the labor of French machinery. A great deal of
ignorant prejudice against machines is one of its results. In
Sheffield files are still made by _hand_, while here in America we
make watches by _machinery_. The disposition of the whole community,
both here and in Great Britain, towards this labor question is kindly.
It has become a momentous social problem. During the fifteen years
that my attention has been riveted to this subject, I have seen a
great change in public feeling.
I have received the Sixth Annual Report of the Society for the
Employment of Women, of which the Earl of Shaftesbury is President,
and Mr. Gladstone a Vice-President. This Society has trained some
hair-dressers, clerks, glass engravers, book-keepers, and telegraph
operators, but its greatest service consists in the constant issue of
tracts, to bias developing public opinion. Such an association should
be started in New York. I should have been glad to inaugurate in
Boston, during the last six years, several important industrial
movements. The war checked the enthusiasm I had succeeded in rousing,
and I have not been able to pause in my special work of collecting and
observing facts, to stimulate it afresh or to solicit personally the
necessary means. How easy it would be for a few wealthy women to test
these experiments. I would first establish a Mending-School, and
having taught women how to darn and patch in a proper manner, I would
scatter them through the country to open shops of their own. As it is,
I do not know a city in which a place exists to which a housekeeper
could send a week's wash, sure that it would be returned with every
button-hole, button, hem, gusset and stay in proper condition. These
mending-shops should take on apprentices, who should be sent to the
house to do every sort of repairing with a needle. I would open
another school to train women to every kind of trivial service, now
clumsily or inadequately performed by men. If, for instance, you now
send to an upholsterer to have an old window-blind or blind fixture
repaired, his apprentice will replace the entire thing, at a
proportionate cost, leaving the old screw-holes to gape at the gazer.
I would train women to wash, repair, and replace in part, and to carry
in their pockets little vials of white or red lead to fill the gaping
holes. Full employment could be found for such apprentices.
LAW.
The number of laws passed the last six years affecting the condition
of women has been very small. The New York Assembly in February, 1865,
passed a law putting the legal evidence of a married woman on the same
basis as if she were a "femme sole." The Massachusetts Legislature
have legalized marriage ceremonies performed by an ordained woman, and
in January, 1866, Mr. Peckham, of Worcester, moved for a joint Special
Committee "to consider in what way a more just and equal compensation
shall be awarded to female labor." On the 4th of April just passed
Samuel E. Sewall and others petitioned for leave to appoint women on
School Committees. It is difficult to conceive on what ground such
petitioners had leave to withdraw. These things are only valuable as
indicating that public attention is still alive. Some remarkable
illustrations of the absurdity of old laws might be recorded. One of
these is to be found in the family history of Mad. de Bedout, recently
dead at Paris.
A very important convention came together at Leipsic, in September,
1865. One hundred and fifty women assembled, pledged to assert the
right to labor, and to bridge the gulf between the compensations of
the two sexes. Madame Louise Otto Peters opened the conference in an
able speech. She stated that there were five millions of women in
Germany who could each earn, if allowed, three thalers a week. A
thousand women might find employment as chemists, on salaries of one
hundred and fifty thalers a year, exclusive of board and lodging.
Another thousand might be employed as boot-closers. The foundation of
industrial and commercial schools was urged. The weak point of the
speech as reported, appeared to be, that it took no cognizance of the
fact that an influx of five millions of laborers must necessarily
lower the current rate of wages she proposed. I mention this
convention in a legal connection, believing that it was intended to
remove some local legal barriers.
SUFFRAGE.
Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, Sarah E. Wall, and a few other women, have
continued their annual protests without intermission. In somewhat the
same way have petitions recently been sent to Congress in behalf of
Universal Suffrage. We had no expectation that any favorable reception
would await such petitions, but it was a duty to put them on record.
What fate they met in Congress, you have so recently heard that I have
no occasion to record it. Minnesota, New York, and other States, have
petitioned their Legislatures to the same effect.
PROGRESS.
The real gain of a reform, starting from the heart of the family, must
necessarily be very slow. I remember that some years ago, when I
printed my book on labor, one of my kindest critics congratulated the
public that of my nine lectures, I had published only these. He
thought it was useless to contend for more book-learning for women,
and the subject of Civil Rights still disgusted his sensitive ear. The
common sense of the book on labor ought to have shown him how I should
treat the subject of education. He could not understand how the woman
who gets an education which does not make her a "bread-winner," is
essentially defrauded, nor how a woman well paid for her labor is
essentially wronged, when she is denied the privilege of protecting it
by her vote. There is, however, a surely growing sense of this shown
in the substantial advance of her civil rights.
In the early part of 1865, the people of Victoria, in Australia,
assembled to elect a member of Parliament, were surprised to find the
whole female population voting. Some quick-sighted woman had
discovered that the letter of the new law permitted it, and their
votes were accepted and wisely given. _The London Times_, in the month
of May, says that, in a _country like Australia_, it can easily
believe that such an extension of the franchise will be a _marked
improvement_, and thinks that the precedent will stand! The Government
of Moravia has also, within the past year, granted the municipal
franchise to widows who pay taxes. In January, 1864, the Court of
Queen's Bench in Dublin, Ireland, restored to woman the _old right_ of
voting for Town Commissioners. The Justice (Fitzgerald) desired to
state that ladies were entitled to sit as Town Commissioners as well
as to vote for them, and the Chief Justice took pains to make it clear
that there was nothing in either duty repugnant to womanly habits.
The inhabitants of Ain (or Aisne) in France, lately chose nine women
into their municipal council. At Bergeres, they elected the whole
council, and the Mayor, not being prepared for such good fortune,
resigned his office. A very remarkable autograph note of the Queen of
England attracted my attention in 1865. It expressed to Lord John
Russell the Queen's dissatisfaction with Lord Palmerston. It was a
very distinct assertion of her regal prerogative, and as such Lord
Palmerston submitted to it.
Our cause has found able advocates in John Stuart Mill, _The New York
Evening Post_, and Theodore Tilton. If I were asked whether, in
connection with this gain, we have lost any ground, I should reply
that we have decidedly lost it in connection with the daily press. I
do not know any newspaper, if I except _The Boston Commonwealth_,
which will print a letter touching civil rights from any woman,
precisely as it is written. I think what we need most is to purchase
the right to a daily use of half a column of _The New York Tribune_.
RECORD AND OBITUARIES.
I have been accustomed to connect with reports of this kind, some
honorable mention of distinguished women recently dead. I can not do
this at any length after a pause of so many years, but a few names
must be mentioned, a few facts recorded. I had occasion, some years
ago, to commemorate the services of Maria Sybilla Merian, painter,
engraver, linguist, and traveler, who published, at Amsterdam, two
volumes of engravings of insects and sixty magnificent plates,
illustrating the metamorphoses of the insects of Surinam. I did not at
that time know that some of her statements had been held open to
suspicion. In the first place, she asserted that a certain fly, the
Fulgoria Lantanaria, emitted so much light that she could read her
books by its aid. Still further, that one of the large spiders called
Mygale, entered the nests of the humming-bird in Surinam, sucked its
eggs and snared the birds. To all the contention which arose over
these statements, Madame Merian could oppose only her word. Men who
knew that her statements in regard to Europe were indisputable,
decided that her word could not be taken in Asia. A very common folly;
but two hundred years have passed, 1866 arrives, and her justification
with it. An English traveler named Bates, has recently rescued quite
large finches from the Mygale, and poisoned himself with its saliva in
preparing them for his cabinet.
I do not know how many years Madame Baring, the mother of the great
banker, has been dead. It is only recently that I have ascertained
that to her prudence, activity, and business habits, the family
attribute the sure foundation of their habits. Matthew Baring came to
Larkbeare, near Exeter, from Bremen. His wife superintended in his
day, the long rows of "burlers," or women who picked over the woolen
cloth he made. Her sons, John and Francis, sought a wider field for
the fortune their father left, but did not forget to erect a monument
to their mother's industry.
When I first investigated the labor of woman, I was told that the
great manufacturing interest, represented by the button factories at
Easthampton, Mass., had its origin in the persevering industry of a
woman. Last summer I went personally to see the factories and their
proprietor, and it was a pleasant surprise to find the woman of whom I
had heard still living. Samuel Williston told me that he did not
usually gratify the curiosity of his visitors, but added that if I
thought it would be any stimulus to the industry of other women, he
should be glad to tell me the story. About forty years ago he had been
an unsuccessful speculator in Merino sheep, and his wife strained
every nerve to help her family. On going one day to the country store
for a supply of knitting, she expressed so much disappointment on
being told that there was none for her, that a tailor in the
establishment asked her if she would cover some buttons for him. She
soon found that certain kinds of buttons were in steady demand. They
were then made wholly by hand. She provided herself with materials,
took the farmers' daughters for apprentices, and her husband went to
Boston, Hartford, and New York to solicit orders. From this small
beginning arose one of the most lucrative industries of Massachusetts.
About a year since Eliza W. Farnham laid down her weary head. I did
not know her, nor did I sympathize in her theories. They were
sustained by her imagination rather than her reason; by her impulses
rather than any practical judgment. No moral superiority can justly be
conferred on either sex of a being possessed of intellect and
conscience. God has conferred no such superiority; yet I gladly name
Mrs. Farnham here as a woman whose life--a bitter disappointment to
herself--was useful to all women, and whose books, published since her
death, show a marvelous mental range. I name her with sympathy and
admiration. During the last year Madam Charles Lemonnier has died in
Paris. She devoted her life to the professional education of women.
For six years she found it so difficult to raise the necessary funds,
that she had to content herself with sending her pupils to
institutions in Germany. In 1862 the Society for the Professional
Instruction of Women was at last constituted, and opened a school in
the Rue de Perle. Two other schools have since been opened; one in the
Rue de Val Sainte Catherine, the other in the Rue Roche. The morning
is occupied in these schools with general studies, the afternoon with
industrial drawing, wood engraving, the making up of garments, linen,
etc. She died after initiating a thoroughly successful work.
In July, 1865, there died at Corfu a Dr. Barry, attached to the
Medical Staff of the British Army. He was remarkable for skill,
firmness, decision, and great rapidity in difficult operations. He had
entered the army in 1813, and had served in all quarters of the globe
with such distinction, as to insure promotion without interest. He was
clever and agreeable, but excessively plain, weak in stature, and
with a squeaking voice which provoked ridicule. He had an irritable
temper, and answered some jesting on this topic by calling out the
offender and shooting him through the lungs. In 1840 he was made
Medical Inspector, and transferred from the Cape to Malta. He went
from Malta to Corfu, and when the English Government ceded the Ionian
Islands to Greece, resigned his position in the army and remained at
Corfu. There he died last summer, forbidding, with his latest breath,
any interference with his remains. The women who attended him regarded
this request with the shameless indifference now so common, and unable
to believe that an officer who had been forty-five years in the
British service, had received a diploma, fought a duel, and been
celebrated as a brilliant operator, was not only a woman, but at some
period in her life a _mother_; they called in a medical commission to
establish these facts. A sad, sad picture which those of us, who
inquire into the fortunes of women, can readily understand.
Last November deprived us of Lady Theresa Lewes and Mrs. Gaskell. Mrs.
Gaskell has perhaps done more than any woman of this century, not
confessedly devoted to our cause, to elevate the condition of her sex,
and disseminate liberal ideas as to their needs and culture. The first
part of her career was one of those brilliant successes which startle
us into surprise and admiration. It was checked midway by the
publication of her life of Charlotte Bronte, the best and noblest of
her works. Checked, because condemned, in that instance, without a
hearing. She could never afterward feel the elastic pleasure, which
was natural to her, in composing and printing, and for three long
years afterward never touched her pen. I would not allude to this
subject if every notice of her since her death had not done so,
repeating the old censure, as a matter of course. Here in America we
may exculpate her. The public was wrong in the first place, inasmuch
as it has come to demand biography before biography is possible. The
publisher was wrong in the second, for he ought to have known, and
could easily have ascertained, how plain a statement the English law
would permit. The public was still further wrong when it attributed
misapprehension and carelessness to a woman whom it very well knew to
be incapable of either. I, for one, shall never forgive nor forget the
officious censure of the _Westminster Review_--censure given by one
who must have known that the legal apology tendered in Mrs. Gaskell's
absence to protect her pecuniary interests, had the unfortunate effect
to put her in a position where explanation and self-defence were alike
impossible. Mrs. Gaskell had deserved the steady confidence of the
public.
In Paris, recently, died Mrs. Severn Newton. She was the daughter of
the artist Severn, the friend of Keats, and now British Consul at
Rome. About five years since she married Charles Newton,
Superintendent of Greek Antiquities at the British Museum. She was a
person in whom power and delicacy were singularly blended. Ary
Schæffer was accustomed to hold up her work as a model for his pupils.
Her renderings of classic sculpture were so true that they were termed
translations, and she had recently devoted herself to oil painting
with great success. She died of brain fever at the early age of
thirty-three, the most honored of female English artists.
I have kept till the last the name of Fredrika Bremer, whose good
fortune it was to secure lasting benefits to her sex. God sent to her
early years dark trials and privations. Her father's tyrannical hand
crushed all power and loveliness out of her life. At first she
rebelled against her sufferings, but when he died in her girlhood she
was able to see that they lent strength to her efforts for her sex. It
was the rumor of what we were doing in this country for women that
first drew her hither. It is not the fashion for Miss Bremer's friends
fully to recognize her position in this respect. I owe my own
convictions on the subject of suffrage to the reflections she
awakened. When I told her that my mind was undecided on this point,
she showed her disappointment so plainly, that I was forced to
reconsider the whole subject. Miss Bremer did not hurry her work. She
had a serene confidence that she should be permitted to finish what
she had begun. She secured popularity by her cheerful humor, her
genuine feeling, her true appreciation of men, and her insight into
the conditions of family happiness, before she made any direct appeal
against existing laws. Those who will read her novels thoughtfully,
however, will see that she was from the first intent upon making such
an effort possible. From the beginning she pleaded for the social
independence of wives; asked for them a separate purse; showed that
woman could not even give her love freely, until she was independent
of him to whom she owed it. To a just state of society, to noble
family relations, entire freedom is essential.
Under her influence females had been admitted to the Musical Academy.
The Directors of the Industrial School at Stockholm had attempted to
form a class, and Professor Quarnstromm had opened his classes at the
Academy of Fine Arts to women. Cheered by her sympathy, a female
surgeon had sustained herself in Stockholm, and Bishop Argardh
indorsed the darkest picture she had ever drawn, when he pleaded with
the state to establish a girls' school. It was at this juncture that
Miss Bremer published Hertha. This book was a direct blow aimed at the
laws of Sweden concerning women. By this time she had herself become
in Sweden what we might fitly call a "crowned head." She was
everywhere treated with distinction, and her sudden appearance in any
place was greeted with the enthusiasm usually shown by such nations
only to their princes. She said of her new book: "I have poured into
it more of my heart and life than into anything which I have ever
written," and, verily, she had her reward. She was at Rome, two years
after, in 1858, when the glad news reached her that King Oscar, at the
opening of the Diet, had proposed a bill entitling women to hold
independent property at the age of twenty-five. All Sweden had read
the book which moved the heart of the King, and the assembled
representatives rent the air with their acclamations.
In the following spring the old University town of Upsala, where her
friend Bergfalk occupies a chair, granted the _right of suffrage_ to
fifty women owning real estate, and to thirty-one doing business on
their own account. The representative their votes went to elect was to
sit in the House of Burgesses. Miss Bremer was not ashamed to shed
happy tears when this news reached her. If she had ever reproached
Providence with the bitter sorrow of her early years, she was penitent
and grateful now. Then was fulfilled the prophecy which she had
uttered, as she left our shores: "The nation which was first among
Scandinavians to liberate its slaves shall also be the first to
emancipate its women!"
BOSTON, _April 26, 1866_. CAROLINE H. DALL.
P. S.--To add one word to this deeply interesting and able report may
seem presumptuous, but it is fitting that something be said of those
women in our own country in whom we feel a proper pride. In
literature, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Lydia Maria Child are
unsurpassed by any writers of our day. The former is remarkable for
her descriptive powers, intuition of character, and rare common sense;
the latter for patient research, sound reason, and high moral tone. No
country has produced a woman of such oratorical powers as our peerless
Anna Dickinson. Young, beautiful, and always on the right side of
every question, her influence on the politics of this country for the
last four years has been as powerful as beneficent. She has more
invitations to speak before the first-class lyceums of the country, at
two hundred dollars an evening, than she can accept, and draws crowded
houses wherever she goes.
PHYSICAL CULTURE.
A friend who had visited Vassar College, after mentioning the fact of
its two women professors--Miss Mitchell and Miss Avery--informed us
that Elizabeth M. Powell is teacher of gymnastics there, and wonders
whether success may not win for Miss Powell a place in the Faculty.
There are literary societies in which the girls write and read essays,
and give recitations, and have discussions, and President Raymond
drills them in elocution or public entertainments. And yet, our friend
says, "I dare say that it would be pronounced a very improper thing
for women to speak in public, if the Faculty were to vote on the
question." The influences of Vassar are altogether conservative.
Miss Mitchell is a woman of great force of character, the very soul of
integrity, and entirely independent in her religious views. She thinks
the theory of Woman's Rights all right, but her tastes are all against
it. She dreads to be in the least conspicuous.
Miss Avery is a woman of great dignity and strength, and her presence
and lectures can not fail to stimulate the girls to a noble womanhood.
She tells them work is the necessity of the soul.
Miss Powell, a remarkably earnest young woman of rare moral and
intellectual worth, has a grand field, and opens her work with good
promise. Her first aim is to do away with tight-dressing. She believes
that when women have deeper breathing they will have higher
aspirations. That when women will apply conscience to their dress,
they will be prepared for more important truths.
In the great attention given to gymnasiums everywhere, we see the dawn
of a new day of physical and mental power in woman. Mrs. Plumb's
institution in this city, where hundreds of girls are trained every
year, is a complete success.
EQUAL EDUCATION.
ST. LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY, CANTON, N. Y., _May 4, 1866_.
MISS ANTHONY:--Your letter came into my hands after some delay. I
hasten to reply to your inquiries. Our college is young yet. The first
class of two graduated last year. Two young ladies are to graduate at
the close of this term.
We receive ladies and gentlemen on the same terms and conditions; take
them together into the recitation-room, where they recite side by
side; require them to pursue the same course of study; and, when
satisfactorily completed, give them degrees of the same rank and
honor--Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Arts to gentlemen, Laureate
of Science and Laureate of Arts to ladies. Both sexes are required to
pursue the same course of study, with the exception of civil
engineering and political economy, which are merely optional studies
with the ladies.
We have two departments--Academical and Collegiate. The sexes are
about equal in number in each department. We have only about twenty in
the Collegiate Department. Half of these are ladies, among whom are
some of our best in Mathematics, Languages, and Natural Sciences.
We have also a Theological Department, to which ladies have access. We
have received applications from only two yet. One, Miss Olympia Brown,
is pastor of a Society in Weymouth, Mass., and is succeeding very
well. She is a graduate of Antioch College as well of our Theological
department. The other is now here.
Lombard University, Galesburgh, Ill., receives ladies, and takes them
through the same course as gentlemen, and gives them equal degrees. I
deeply sympathize with you in your efforts to raise the character and
improve the condition of woman, though, perhaps, I should not be quite
so radical as some in your Convention. Your cause is a good one, and I
pray Heaven that it do good.
J. S. LEE,
_Principal of the Collegiate Department St. Lawrence University_.
Genesee College at Lima, New York--a Methodist institution--opens its
doors equally to women, and has graduated several young ladies. Then
we must never forget to mention and bless Oberlin for its pioneer work
in the equal education of women. It was Oberlin that gave us Lucy
Stone, Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Sallie Holley, and Frances
Ellen Watkins Harper, to speak early and brave words for woman and the
slave. And Antioch College that graduated the Rev. Olympia Brown.
Mention too should be made of Rev. Lydia A. Jenkins, who has been a
successful preacher among the Universalists for the last eight or ten
years, and is now settled at Binghamton, New York.
Of the MEDICAL PROFESSION it should be stated for the encouragement of
the young, that there are over three hundred graduates from the
several medical colleges for women, and that there is scarcely a
village throughout the country but has its woman physician of greater
or less skill. In New York city there are many successful physicians
besides the Drs. Blackwell. Dr. Clemence S. Lozier has a practice of
$15,000 a year, and owns two fine houses, all the proceeds of her own
perseverance. In Orange, New Jersey, Dr. Almira L. Fowler is very
popular, with a paying practice of $5,000 per year, besides a large
gratuitous service. In Philadelphia are Dr. Hannah E. Longshore, with
a $10,000 per annum practice, then there are Drs. Ann Preston, R.
Tressel, H. J. Sartain, E. Cleveland, J. Myres, and others, with
practices ranging from $5,000 to $2,000. In Utica, New York, Dr.
Pamelia Bronson is a successful physician. In Albion, is Dr. Vail. In
Weedsport, Dr. Harriet E. Seeley. In Rochester, Dr. Sarah R. A. Dolley
numbers among her patrons many persons of wealth and fashion, who but
a few years ago ridiculed the idea of a "lady doctor." Mrs. Dolley's
practice brings her fully $3,000 a year. In a letter to one of our
Committee Mrs. Dolley says, "May your labors be prospered, that the
women of our country may have a _sphere_ rather than a _hemi_sphere!
Dr. R. B. Glasson, of Elmira, Dr. S. Ivison, of Ithaca, New York, and
Dr. Green, late of Clifton Springs, who has opened a water-cure
somewhere in Western New York, all do a large amount of practice, and
with the greatest acceptance to those who favor Hydropathic treatment.
Dr. Ross, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has a large practice, and commands
the respect of the profession. And, as Mrs. Dall says of the many
noble women who served efficiently in our armies during the war
without even sounding the name of the wonderful Clara Barton, so we
have to say of our woman physicians, "their name is legion."
The following is an item from the Boston _Commonwealth_:
FURTHER PROGRESS IN WOMAN'S RIGHTS.--Miss Stebbins, of Chickasaw
County, Iowa, has received an appointment as Notary Public for that
county. She is the first female ever having received such a
commission, and is represented as eminently competent.
This from the National Anti-Slavery _Standard_:
WOMAN'S RIGHTS IN HUNGARY.--A curious petition has been presented to
the Hungarian Diet. It is signed by a number of widows and other women
who are landed proprietors, and asks for them the same equality of
political rights with the male inhabitants of the country as they
possessed in 1848. These ladies represent that they have much more
difficulty in bringing up their children and attending to their
estates than men; that they have to bear the same State burdens; that
they are not allowed to take part in the communal elections; and that,
although many of them possess much more ground than the male electors,
they have no political rights.
There is one point in the report open to objection. It is not fair to
say that Mrs. Farnham's life "was a bitter disappointment to herself."
Who does realize in life all that in starting was looked for? Who has
nothing to regret? With a heart so generous and sympathizing as
hers--a mind so disciplined and stored with general information--a
life so rich in practical usefulness, she was not only a blessing to
others, but she must have had a more than an ordinary share of that
peace and happiness that gladdens every Christian life. I have just
read her last great work. I took it up with prejudice, not believing
her theory of the superiority of woman. I lay it down with a higher
idea of woman's destiny, and a profound reverence for the author of
the glorious thoughts that thrill my heart. I never met Mrs. Farnham
on earth, but I know and honor and love her now, and from the
celestial shores feel the pulsations of a true and noble soul.
E. C. S.
* * * * *
LETTERS.
WAYLAND, _April 28_.
DEAR MRS. STANTON:-- ... What I most wish for women is that they
should go right ahead, and do whatever they can do well, without
talking about it. But the false position in which they are placed by
the laws and customs of society, renders it almost impossible that
they should be sufficiently independent to do whatever they can do
well, unless the world approves of it. They need a great deal of
talking to, to make them aware that they are in fetters. Therefore I
say, success to your Convention, and to all similar ones!...
I am very cordially yours, LYDIA MARIA CHILD.
NEW CASTLE, DEL., _April 21, 1866_.
DEAR MRS. STANTON:-- ... I am with you in heart and sympathy,
rejecting with contempt the antiquated idea that woman is only fit for
a plaything or a household drudge. Nor can I see how it is less
dignified to go to a public building to deposit a vote than to
frequent the concert-room, whirl through the waltz in happy repose on
some roue's bosom, or mingle in any public crowd which is, in modern
times, quite admissible in polite society. Dethrone the idol and raise
the soul to its true and noble elevation, supported on a foundation of
undying principle, and woman becomes a thing of life and beauty--then
only fit to raise sons to be rulers. Justice requires your success,
and I hope the age will prove itself sufficiently enlightened to mete
out to you the reward of your years of toil.
Yours sincerely, JANE VOORHEES LESLIE.
MONDAY, _April 22_.
DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--What I enclose is not much for the work you have
to do, but it is all I can proportion out for it just now. You are
quite right in relying on my regard for you, although I can not see
the subject as you do, and I was pleased to get your note saying so. I
am sure you take great interest in following Mr. Gladstone's bill for
the extension of suffrage in England. His speech upon it is in great
contrast to the shallow nonsense talked by many Americans against our
democratic form of government.
Very sincerely yours, JESSIE BENTON FREMONT.
13 CHESTNUT ST., BOSTON, _April 19, 1866_.
DEAR MRS. STANTON:--I have received yours of 14th inst., making
eloquent and friendly appeal to me for the expression of my sympathy,
written or spoken, in behalf of your forthcoming "Woman's Rights
Convention." Surely you need not my assurance that I most heartily
indorse all the claims and objects of your Association; that I
earnestly advocate whatever would advance or insure the rights of
humanity, whether for man or woman; that I as earnestly protest
against any and all prejudices, limitations, or legislations which
would interfere with those rights; that I claim for woman as ample
social and civil privileges as are conceded to man, whether in the
exercise of the franchise, the domain of our legislatures, or in the
sphere of the professions. We are no true men if we deny or would
barricade the exercise or the claim of those privileges, and have just
so much less of manhood as we dare to question or infringe them. I
agree with you, most fully, that the woman element is greatly needed
in the present crisis of our affairs for the right reconstruction of
our suffering Government. We have had, and still have, not men but too
many brutes making a very "bear garden" of our congressional halls,
rending and tearing this poor "body politic" of ours till, like the
raving demoniacs of old, it is now foaming and wandering crazily
around its own preconstructed tomb! while at the head of the
Government we have only a surly, self-conceited despot in embryo! "The
nation needs (as you say) at this hour the highest thought and
inspiration of a true womanhood infused into every vein and artery of
its life." There is no gainsaying your arguments on that head, for
just so far, and only so far as the refining influence of that womanly
element is so infused and felt in all our social and civil relations,
will the consummation of our national peace and prosperity be
effected.
Yours truly, J. T. SARGENT.
WEST NEWTON, _May 6, 1866_.
E. C. STANTON, _President Executive Committee Women's Rights
Association_:
MY DEAR MRS. S.:--I had hoped to be present at this, our eleventh
anniversary, but find it impossible. And so, at the last moment, I
hasten to express my earnest conviction that now, as never before, we
are called upon for vigorous, united action--that we are left no
alternative but an unflinching protest against the strange legislation
by which a Republican Congress, so-called, assumes to engraft upon our
national Constitution, as "amendments!" clauses which not only allow
rebels to disfranchise loyal soldiers, who have borne the flag of the
Republic victoriously against their treason and rebellion, but to keep
the ballot from the hands of all women!
If not moved by an enlightened appreciation of the first principles of
political economy and social justice in legislation touching them
heretofore, we could scarcely believe that after the record made by
both the proscribed classes during our late fearful struggle, our
legislators could gravely stoop to brand them anew as "aliens" and
outlaws! It is an act as discreditable to their hearts and their moral
sense as to their statesmanship. And upon their shoulders must rest
the responsibility of an agitation to which we are thus forced--an
agitation which we have hesitated to arouse while so many vital
questions touching the future of the negro were awaiting settlement,
and in which we are acting strictly on the defensive. Under the
magnificent utterance of our brave Senator Sumner--which was an
inspiration and a prophecy--we looked to see all faltering and
compromise, so fatal in all our past, so fatal always and everywhere,
swept like dew before the sun. But the old fears and falterings return
sevenfold reinforced to renew a puerile and patch-work legislation,
which, while asserting the truth, submits to, nay, invites a fresh
struggle over each separate application of the same "self-evident
truth." What remains for us, then, but to turn from a Congress from
which we had hoped so much, which might have dared anything in the
interest of loyalty and justice, as our brave brethren turned, from a
recreant President to the people, whom he and Congress have not dared
to trust, and resolve to do our utmost to awaken a public sentiment
which only slumbers, but is not dead, and which shall make impossible
such burlesques, such infamous "amendments" to our organic law. With
undiminished hope and faith, yours,
CAROLINE M. SEVERANCE.
HARTFORD, _April 22, 1866_.
DEAR MADAM:--I learn by a circular I have received that a Woman's
Rights Convention is to be held in New York in May. I can not have the
pleasure of attending it, but I would like to take this opportunity of
telling you I am with you, heart and soul, in this cause--of thanking
you, and those with whom you are associated, for the noble work you
have done, and are doing, in the cause of universal suffrage. There
never was a more opportune time for calling a convention of this kind
than the present, when it is evident that the United States
Constitution is about to undergo some repairs--when all the so-called
radicals in Congress are trying to have it so altered as to insure the
disfranchisement of one-half the nation. They have so strangely
perverted the meaning of the term "universal suffrage," that it is a
misnomer as at present used by them. It is rather significant of the
"universality" of the suffrage intended, that every one of these
special guardians of freedom refused to present Congress a petition
for woman's enfranchisement; that the Massachusetts Senator who leads
the van of freedom's host, did, finally, most reluctantly present it
with one hand, while taking good care to deal it a blow with the other
that would prove a most effectual quietus to it; that a representative
[Mr. Boutwell], after repeating the self-evident truth that "there can
be no just government without the consent of the governed," says that
"man is endowed by nature with the priority of right to the vote
rather than woman or child;" that the two Senators from Massachusetts
have each proposed amendments to the Constitution holding out
inducements to the States to enfranchise all male inhabitants, but
none to enfranchise women, when they could have included them by
omitting one word; that that light of freedom, Mr. Greeley, of the
_Tribune_, states that "men express the public sense as fully as if
women voted" [speech in Suffield, Conn., last June]. These are a few
of the straws pointing to that sham labeled "universal suffrage."
The conservatives of the slave-driving school have had an odious
enough reputation, but I never heard of any of them taking measures to
so amend the Constitution as to insure the perpetuation of the
disfranchisement of sixteen millions of the nation, as would the
proposed amendments of Messrs. Sumner and Wilson. And these
Massachusetts Senators are called the foremost workers in the ranks of
liberty's grand army. If these are the foremost, Heaven save us from
those in the rear! Why does Mr. Boutwell try to make it appear that he
believes that governments, to be founded on justice, should obtain
"the consent of the governed," when he believes the consent of only
one-half the governed should be obtained? when he classes adults as
fully capable of exercising an enlightened judgment as himself with
infants? If Mr. Greeley thinks it right for one-half the people to
represent the wants, and speak as they may think best for the other
half, that other half having no choice in the matter, he must admit,
if he have a tithe of the sense of justice attributed to him, that it
would be only fair to let each half take their turn--the men
expressing the public sense a part of the time, then the women--thus
alternating between the two, in order to balance the scales of justice
with perfect equilibrium.
It seems rather a difficult matter for men to appreciate the fact that
women are ordinary human beings, with the wants and reasoning
faculties of the same. If women lived on the plane where sword and
cannon are resorted to for the procuring of justice, men might then
see the necessity of establishing equality of rights for all. But the
power of women lies in spiritual, not in brute force; therefore men
have failed to comprehend them, or to see the necessity of granting
rights that are not contested at the point of the bayonet. Add to this
the ambitious but weak love of power--of having some one to
rule--inherent in the natures of most men, and the causes of woman's
bondage are pretty clear. In the light of the developments of
the past few months it is plain that the most thorough faced
abolitionists--those who wax eloquent for the negro--are as much in
favor of continuing the slavery of women as were Southern planters of
continuing negro slavery. There are a few exceptions to this, and but
a few.
Even the Boston _Commonwealth_, perhaps as radical a paper as any now
published, and which favors suffrage for women, is a good illustration
of the difficulty of the most liberal-minded men seeing this question
in its true light; for, in its issue of February 24, it says that
"suffrage for women is not a political necessity of a republican
government."
The _Nation_ thinks women ought to be deprived of the franchise
because they do not, as a general thing, express a wish for it,
stating at the same time that they have as good a right to it as men.
Remarkable logic this, to deprive the whole class of the power to
obtain their dues because they do not _en masse_ express a wish for
them. There are men who do not care enough about the franchise to make
use of it; therefore, according to this argument, they should be
immediately disfranchised.
There is no compulsion in exercising the right to the vote--all can
let it alone who choose; and did every woman in the land choose to let
it alone, it would be no argument for withholding from her the power
to make use of it whenever disposed. But the statement that they are
opposed to it is untrue. No woman--whether teacher, or telegraph
operator, or government clerk, or dry-goods clerk, all the way down to
the poor needle-woman who lives under a reign of oppression as
frightful as that in the manufacturing districts of England--is paid
more than half or a third what she earns, or what a man would be paid
performing the same services, and performing them no better, in many
cases not so well; and the needle-women are paid no more than a tenth
part of what they earn. And yet women do not rise up against the
oppression that denies them the just compensation; therefore these
logicians of the _Nation's_ school must, to be consistent, argue that
women do not wish to have just wages paid them, and they should not
have just wages offered them--the right of accepting or refusing being
at their own option.
It seems to be full time for the women of this country to demand a
settlement of the question whether they are still to be treated as
infants or as intelligent adults. If the former treatment is to be
continued it would be very appropriate to present Congress with a
protest against having one-half the basis of representation composed
of those who are to remain in a state of perpetual infancy (which
needs and can have representation; whose government must be as
absolute as that of the Czar's, the very word "representative"
implying a substitute chosen by another)--a protest that if they are
too good--as often stated, too divine--to have any voice in such
earthly matters as governments, they are also too good to be thrust
just so far into the body politic as to swell the basis of
representation one-half, merely for the furtherance of the interests
of ambitious politicians, and then to be put one side and utterly
ignored when the voice of a free intelligent being is required.
It seems to be full time for women to take soundings of the depth of
the professions, and make calculations of the latitude and longitude
of the party to which alone they have looked for redemption from the
slavery in which they have ever been held, when the chief ones of that
party--now that there is any possibility of attaining that
object--utterly refuse all efforts in that direction, and, worse than
that, give indications of taking positive measures in the opposite
direction. It is important that Congress be flooded with petitions on
this matter--that it be allowed no rest from them; and, in addition to
petitions, a bill is needed excluding women from the basis of
representation so long as they shall be excluded from the
franchise--excluding them from the list of taxable persons and from
those who are by law liable to the death-penalty.
Should such a bill be tabled by Congress; should they refuse all
action on it that would place them in their true light, showing that
they look upon this question the same as the Southern Congress under
Polk, Pierce, and Buchanan looked upon the anti-slavery
movement--very much afraid of having the subject agitated; should they
give it a decided veto, that would place them in their true
light--greatly opposed to universal suffrage, although it is their
policy to sail under that banner, like the pirate who sometimes finds
an advantage in substituting for his own black flag some more
respectable one. Should they pass such a bill it would place them in a
better light than they have ever had the fortune to be in before,
while it would make it for the interest of the States to have this
bill followed up by another, giving women the franchise; and it is
very doubtful whether we will ever obtain it in any other way than
from motives of self-interest on the part of legislators--motives of
pure justice and right occupying a secondary place.
The statutes of the land present a remarkable conglomeration of
inconsistencies and injustice in regard to women, and show the utter
failure of the plan of having one class govern another class without
any consent or participation in the matter on the part of the class so
governed. The law ought not in certain cases to treat women as infants
and wholly irresponsible beings, merely to foster a weak ambition and
love of power, and in other cases as wholly responsible adults. The
infant regimen should be enforced thoroughly from the day of their
birth to the day of their death, whether it be in one year or a
hundred, or they should come, in all respects, under a system adapted
to responsible, intelligent adults. Infants should not pay taxes and
they should not be hung. It is the general opinion that the infant
Surrat committed crimes equal in magnitude to those of any of the
conspirators who were hung with her, but her state of infancy should
have afforded her legal protection from the gallows. If this
government is too weak to decide the qualifications of voters; too
weak to extend freedom from the northern coast of Maine to the
southern coast of Florida; too weak to prevent any State
disfranchising its inhabitants; too weak to make ignorance,
criminality, and non-age the only political limitations for man or
woman, be they black or white, or a combination of all the hues of the
rainbow; too weak to send tyranny to the wall and make liberty the
universal rule for this broad land; then a party must and will arise
of sufficient metal to infuse into it the requisite strength--a party
that will "strengthen its weak hands and confirm its feeble knees."
Concentration of power for the establishment and extension of liberty
is not a tendency to despotism. Despotisms are never built out of that
material. But that is a despotism as bad as Austria that allows
one-half its citizens to govern the other half without any consent of
theirs; and it is none the less a despotism for being divided up into
petty State despotisms than if carried on by the general government,
so long as they are all agreed on disfranchising one-half the people.
Thirty-six despotisms make a pretty good sized one taken in the
aggregate. The party to inaugurate the reign of freedom must
inevitably arise, for the elements to bring it into power are at work.
Morally, it will tower as far above the present republican party as
that did above the old ones--whig and democratic. There are true
souls, women and men, in the Old World and the New, faithfully working
and watching for its advent.
Some months ago we got word from over the water that John Stuart Mill
had been elected to that formidable body of conservatism--the British
Parliament. Another significant fact, but this time significant of
good. The writings of Mill are illumined by the sun-clear radiance of
that liberty for which he appeals--a liberty that shines with the
steady light of a fixed star--and which I have watched for in vain in
the writings and speeches of the most noted reformers on this
continent. When men like him come into power I think we have good
ground for taking fresh courage. I have written more than I intended,
but the subject is one on which I do not feel like restricting myself,
especially when writing to one who fully appreciates the situation.
Sincerely hoping you may never weary in your good work.
Yours respectfully, F. ELLEN BURR.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
ALBANY, _April 9, 1866_.
MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--It will be out of my power to speak at your
Convention--my health will not permit my attendance--but I cordially
concur in your efforts to restore to woman her civil and political
rights, and for her emancipation from slavery, her actual, undeniable
status at present in the Government. I can suggest no plan to effect
this great object, except that of agitation and discussion, everywhere
throughout the land. Whenever the public mind shall become
sufficiently enlightened, and women themselves shall seriously and
earnestly demand, on their own behalf, equal rights and equal laws,
they will be accorded; and then we shall have, what the world has
never yet had or seen, a true republican system of government. Excuse
these hasty thoughts.
Truly yours, A. J. COLVIN.
_To the President and Members of the Eleventh National Woman's Rights
Convention in New York assembled_:
LADIES:--I notice with pleasure the call for your annual convention
The hour is pregnant with events, and this period is opportune for
opening and pressing upon the public attention the questions with
which you are occupied. As the claims of the slave in past years have
furnished to so many espousing them the occasion of manifold and large
emancipations little thought by them at first, so the claims of the
emerging freedman will lay open the way to the study and solution of
the gravest and widest social questions. The great problems of social
order: government, its fit aims and happiest methods, the nature and
just basis of suffrage, etc., are to be studied anew and brought to
true adjustment; false barriers and artificial distinctions must be
swept away, no child of Adam must be inhibited from wielding those
prerogatives which by birthright or attainment he may be entitled to.
The more obvious abuses, the flagrantly gratuitous distinctions,
involving very gross inequalities and oppressions, will be the first
to be exposed and abolished.
The natural and just basis of the right of suffrage is doubtless
qualification, wisdom, and substantial honesty. The right to wield the
ballot is not in the strict sense an inborn and original right, coeval
with our being, except as any right to which we may by culture attain
is of this character. It is ours potentially. It belongs to attainment
and possession, as the right, for instance, in a particular case to
survey land, or instruct minds. It is a right I am to rise to through
intelligence, discipline, manhood. It is conditioned upon discernment
and true faithfulness. Those too ignorant or uncaring to distinguish
between rule and misrule, government and lawlessness, science and a
juggle, supernal and infernal--those especially so profligate, who
seek only to reach through government the sanction of law, the baptism
of social order for their wickedness and misdeeds, have no business at
any ballot-box, save that of recorded resolution to amend and repent.
To put the ballot into the hands of the reckless, the besotted, and
the profligate, is the sheerest abuse possible, and suicidal to all
just protection and rule.
It may be a long day ere suffrage shall be adjusted carefully and
strictly to the normal basis. But before this the Gospel must be
preached to all nations, the rough places must be made smooth and the
paths straight for the coming of the Most High. Whatever unjust
barriers or factitious discrimination there may be against any must be
abolished, and equality must be for all. Wisdom or virtue is not the
monopoly of any class or sex or race. By all the proprieties of
nature, woman should have with man a voice in the enactment of laws
and the administration of government. She is the complement of man,
essential for the due poise, the right wisdom, and conduct in family,
in neighborhood, in Church or in State. Sharing in civil government,
she will be a redemptive agency for society in many ways little
thought at present. And agitation and overturning shall not cease
until the final realization is reached. Society shall yet be rewrought
and born again. All rule shall be justice, and obedience liberty.
Government shall be the reflection of the infinite kingdom, the
incarnation of truth, wisdom, benignity, power, the protector and help
of all, inviting and assisting each to full realization of the utmost
possibilities of attainment and strength for the individual soul,
building to perfect freedom, building also to perfect unity. Service,
sacrament, supreme reverence--this shall be the motto and norm of the
world, all society become a church and all life worship, the broad
anthem of souls. For this high consummation let us look and labor,
trusting and working on to the perfect end.
Yours sincerely, CHAS. D. B. MILLS.
DWIGHT, ILL., _April 30, 1866_.
MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--Your kind letter inviting me to attend the
Convention on the 10th of May, was duly received. I should be
extremely happy to be with you in your deliberations, but so much of
my time has of late been occupied in the work of the American Union
Commission, that I can hardly spare a moment for even your good work.
I, however, feel only selfish regrets, for I should be but a listener
and partaker of the rich mental feasts that will there be freely
offered to all who will partake. The great arguments have all been
made by our opponents, and they concede all that we ask, save that
they substitute expediency for principle. They have yet to learn that
God will not be dethroned; that when He decrees a human soul, He
surrounds it with all the dignity of free will and consequent
responsibility. He therefore endows the soul with rights, the exercise
and protection of which are the crown of humanity. We ask no new code
of rights. We simply ask to be included in the general method of
asserting and protecting them, which even the shadowy-browed children
of bondage are now perceived to claim without presumption. It has been
with no small degree of interest that I have seen that our wisest
statesmen begin to so far see and feel the importance of the issue
that lies inevitably in their path, that they stop to explain and
apologize; but they dare not deny, lest the logic they use should be
turned against themselves.
The great Christian doctrine of the equality of all before God, who is
declared to be no respecter of persons, is the axe laid at the root of
the tree of prejudice, which has for such long ages brought forth
injustice and oppression in a multitude of forms. Our good and great
men are reading with anointed eyes the declaration, "There is neither
Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free," and we may hope they will soon
read the final assertion, "Neither male nor female, for ye are all one
in Christ Jesus." In this full and broad assertion lies the completion
of the great Christian scheme, not limited to any number of parts, but
embracing the great whole, thus recognizing the fatherhood of God and
the brotherhood of man. What our cause now needs is the Christian
advocacy of good and wise men and women. Legally, our position is
conceded, so far as the logical sequences are concerned; but the
pulpit, on which woman is prone to lean for all her opinions on
questions of morality, has, with a few rare exceptions, been silent.
Henry Ward Beecher has dared to speak out in a manly, Christian way;
but even he has not laid upon the women of the Church that burden of
responsibility concerning government that they ought to be made to
feel. For what, let me ask, is to excuse them, if their want of
intelligence and activity should lead to a thorough corruption of
political morals such as we have seen in portions of our country
during a few years past. Will they not be among those who hide their
Lord's talent in the earth, and by and by come back with the little
morsel carefully wrapped up in a napkin, all beautifully embroidered,
it may be, and tender it back, saying, "Lo! there is thine own, take
it!" In this religious aspect women must come to consider the question
before it will become vital. Political action may give it a body, but
God only can breathe into it the breath of life that will constitute
it a living soul. Hence we see that without the best religious
sanction, little progress can really be assured. I am conscious that
my views are not identical with those of many who have reached the
same general conclusions; but as many are disposed to regard the
question from this standpoint, I have thought it best to express
myself with great frankness. With many regrets that I can not partake
in your deliberations,
I remain, truly yours, MRS. H. M. TRACY CUTLER.
1710 LOCUST STREET, PHILADELPHIA, _May 10, 1866_.
MY VERY DEAR SUSAN ANTHONY:--I fully intended coming to the
meetings--gave up Washington, made all my arrangements, packed my
bag--and stayed at home. Circumstances which I could not control, and
which I can't very well explain, put utterly out of my power the duty
and pleasure of coming. There's no use in saying how sorry I am, for
it would waste paper and time to state all my regrets. Suffice it to
declare that I have rarely been so extremely sorry and disappointed.
Affectionately and truly thine, ANNA E. DICKINSON.
OFFICE OF CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE FRIENDS OF THE MISSING MEN OF }
UNITED STATES ARMY, WASHINGTON, D. C.; _April 3, 1866_. }
DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--I am glad that my too kind and partial friends
have set me "right on the record." I am "with you," and with all who
labor for the advancement of humanity and the world through the
proper channels--the elevation of woman. You have my heart, my
sympathies (if needed), my prayers, and, best of all, my hopes, for
the success of your every endeavor; and my poor words you should have,
if they could add either strength or interest, but neither nature nor
art have contributed me anything in this direction. I sometimes work a
little, but it seems to me to be in the most common manner, and I am
sure I could not speak at all. But no one knows how happy I should be
to be present and listen to those who can; and if not prevented by
duties of a very pressing and positive nature, I shall indulge myself
so far. With assurances of the highest regard, believe me your friend,
CLARA BARTON.
NEWPORT, R. I., _May 14, 1866_.
MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY--_Dear Friend_:--It has proved impossible for me
to attend the Convention; and I hope it is unnecessary, so far as my
own position is concerned, for me to renew my allegiance to the Equal
Rights movement. It seems to me the most glaring of logical
absurdities to apply the name of Universal Suffrage to any system
which does not include both sexes. It seems, in this point of view, a
righteous retribution upon American men, that the disfranchisement of
woman has put such a weapon into the hands of those who would
disfranchise the negro also. I must say, however, that a still greater
share of this responsibility rests upon American women, for it is
their unwillingness to ask for their rights which chiefly renders our
legislators unwilling to concede them.
Cordially yours, THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.
A letter declining to speak at the Boston Equal Rights meeting, says:
"There has been a time when no one could do any better than I, to
speak in favor of women physicians, and then I was willing to come
forward and do my best. At present there are so many able and
eloquent, however, on the platform to advocate what we need--political
franchise--that I would appear presumptuous should I attempt to add
myself to the list. There is no other right which I want besides the
elective franchise, because the right to work on equality with man we
can obtain, with nothing but energy and firm will. My own case as a
physician illustrates that; while I am paying very nearly $400 taxes
(State and national), without the right to vote. These enormous taxes
come from money earned, dollar by dollar, on equality with men, and
yet there are all round me here many physicians of the stronger sex,
who do not pay half this amount of taxes, who vote and rule. I hope
before long a republic in the true sense of the word will be our share
in this glorious country. With sincere wishes for the best of results
in your present movement,
I am truly yours, M. E. ZAKRZEWSKA.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS,
In a letter, saying it would be impossible for him to attend the
Boston Equal Rights meeting on the 31st of May, says, "My best and
most earnest wishes for the success of your noble Convention. The
cause which it aims to subserve is the cause of the whole human
family, in a sense the broadest and most striking ever hit upon by any
other association."
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON,
In a letter stating that ill health prevented him from attending the
National Woman's Rights Convention in New York, says: "In some way I
will try to express my warm and hearty approval of the Equal Rights
movement at the approaching meeting in Boston. I hail it with
gladness, and as of far-reaching importance. The time has fully come
to drop the phrase "Woman's Rights" for that of "Equal Rights."
The following appeal, written by Parker Pillsbury, was issued in
behalf of the American Equal Rights Association in the autumn of 1866:
APPEAL FOR UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE.
In restoring the foundations of the Government, Justice, as the chief
corner-stone, can alone secure a permanence of Peace and Prosperity.
The eighteenth century gave the World the Declaration of Independence,
the war of the Revolution, and the Constitution of the United States;
but only in the light of the nineteenth are these sublime phenomena
to be interpreted to us. From the Government, the civilization, and
religion of Great Britain, we derived our chattel slave system; but it
survived the pen of Jefferson, the sword of Washington, and the
wisdom, humanity, and statesmanship of the founders and framers of the
Government; and until far louder thunders than Bunker Hill and
Saratoga dashed it to the ground, and almost whelmed the Government
itself with it in a common ruin. And the terrible lessons of the late
war will all be in vain, should we now attempt to relay our
foundations in injustice and oppression. Out of the jaws of rebellion
and treason was the nation snatched by the hand of negro valor. And
thus, surely, has that race earned the right of full citizenship and
equality in the State. Even Jefferson declared, more than half a
century ago, that whoever "fights and pays taxes" has the right of
suffrage against the world. But the right of humanity, of manhood, is
older and of higher and diviner appointment than any other. If the
right of liberty and the pursuit of happiness be the gift and
endowment of the Creator, then surely is the right to the ballot the
only possible or conceivable assurance and guaranty of it in
republican governments. And on this ground the claim of woman is no
less than that of man. But base and degrading as has been the position
of the negro in the Government, that of woman is far lower. At no
price within human power to pay, can she arrive at equality in the
Government she is compelled to support and obey. In the making or
executing of no law, however deeply her womanly interest or happiness
may be involved, can she bear a part. She is found guilty, not of a
crime, not of a color, but of a sex; and all her appeals to courts or
communities for equality and justice, are in vain, even in this
democratic and Christian Republic. She is a native, free-born citizen,
a property-holder, taxpayer, loyal and patriotic. She supports
herself, and in proportionable part, the schools, colleges,
universities, churches, poor-houses, jails, prisons, the army, the
navy, the whole machinery of government; and yet she has no vote at
the polls, no voice in the national councils. She has guided great
movements of philanthropy and charity; has founded and sustained
churches; established missions; edited journals; written and published
invaluable treatises on history and economy, political, social, and
moral, and on philosophy in all its departments; filled honorably
professors' chairs; governed nations; led armies; commanded ships;
discovered and described new planets; practiced creditably in the
liberal professions; and patiently explored the whole realm of
scientific research; and yet, because in life's allotment she is
_female_, not male, _woman_, not man, the curse of inferiority cleaves
to her through all her generations. Eden's anathema was to be removed
on the coming of the second Adam; and in the new dispensation there
was to be neither male nor female. Jewish outlawry from all the
nations, continuing through almost twenty centuries, is repealed by
common consent among all civilized governments. Nor does the curse of
eternal attainder longer blast the Ethiopian race to degradation and
slavery, through Canaan's sin and shame. But where shall woman look
for her redemption in this auspicious hour, when new dawnings of
liberty, new sunrises of human enfranchisement are illumining the
world? A man once said, "where liberty is, there is my country." But
on what continent or island, or in what vast wilderness shall woman
find a nationality where she shall be taxed to support no government
she did not aid in making, obey no law she did not help to enact, nor
suffer any penalty until adjudged, by a jury, in part at least, of her
peers? True, her privileges in some States have been, after long
struggle and conflict, enlarged and increased. Like the Southern
freedmen, she has had her Civil Rights bill. But all this is
compatible with the Dred Scott decision itself. The power that gives
can take away; but of that power woman is no part. Mr. Sumner says,
"The ballot is the one thing needful to the emancipated slave."
Without it, he declares, his liberty is but an illusion, a
jack-o'lantern which he will pursue in vain. Without the ballot, he
reiterates, the slave becomes only sacrifice. And shall it not also be
pre-eminently so with woman? Formed by Almighty power a little lower
than the angels, her ruling lords and masters have, by legislative
proscription, plunged her not a little but immeasurably below myriads
of the human race, whose only boast or claim is, that for some
inscrutable reason they were so constituted as to stand _men_ in the
tables of the census.
In the American Equal Rights Association, it is determined to
prosecute an agitation which shall wake the nation to new
consciousness of the injustice long inflicted and still suffered
through proscriptive distinctions on account of sex and complexion. To
the industrial, hard-toiling, property-producing, family-supporting
women, this appeal is made to come to the rescue of their own
long-lost rights. In New York the angel of a Constitutional Convention
is soon to stir the waters. Let all who need healing hasten to the
baptism. Nor is it one of the least cheering signs that multitudes of
the intelligent women of the country are fast waking to a full
consciousness of the wrongs they suffer. Even the war has taught
invaluable lessons on the dignity and worth of woman in a thousand new
spheres. Our Florence Nightingales have not been one, but many, yea
thousands. Woman as well as the freedman saved the nation in its hour
of peril, and invested herself with new dignity demanding new
distinction. Now emphatically is her hour. But no comparison need be
instituted, none surely should be urged, as to whose is the paramount
claim. The great clock of humanity has struck the hour, and its tones
are ringing across the continents, reverberating as well among the
Alps as the Alleghanies, and mingling sweet music in both the
hemispheres. We are coming to the rescue of justice and right, girded
with the panoply of a divine and holy cause, and Omnipotence is
pledged in our behalf. We propose to organize Equal Rights clubs or
committees in every city, town, and village; to hold meetings for
discussions and lectures; to circulate tracts and petitions, and to
raise funds to enable the Association to carry forward its work for
educating the popular sentiment. We shall endeavor to enlist the
pulpit and the press. Truth, justice, reason, humanity, must and will
triumph. Already a host is on our side, and our principles can never
be defeated. The prospect before us is full of encouragement, and we
confidently submit our enterprise to the heart and hand of a waiting
and expectant people.
LETTERS TO THE MAY ANNIVERSARY OF 1867.
LAWRENCE, KANSAS, _May 6, 1867_.
MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--I hope your Convention will not fail to set in
its true light the position of those editors in New York who are
branding as the "infamous thirteen" the men who, in the New Jersey
Legislature, voted against negro suffrage, while they themselves give
the whole weight of their journals against woman's right to vote. They
use the terms "universal and impartial suffrage," when they mean only
negro suffrage; and they do it to hide a dark skin and an unpopular
client. They know that a "lie will keep its throne a whole age longer
if it skulks behind the shadow of some fair seeming name." In New
Jersey a negro father is legally entitled to his children, but no
mother in New Jersey, black or white, has any legal right to her
children. In New Jersey a widow may live forty days in the house of
her deceased husband without paying rent, but the negro widower, just
like the white widower, may remain in undisturbed possession of house
and property. A negro man can sell his real estate and make a valid
deed, but no wife in that State can do so without her husband's
consent. A negro man in New Jersey may will all his property as he
pleases, but no wife in the State can will her personal property at
all, and if she will her real estate with her husband's consent, he
may revoke that consent any time before the will is admitted to
probate, and thus render her will null and void. The women of New
Jersey went to the Legislature last winter on their own petition, for
the right of suffrage. Twenty-three members voted for them, thirty-two
voted against them. But the editors who now find unmeasured words to
express their contempt for the "infamous thirteen" who voted against
the negro, were as dumb as death when this vote was cast against
woman. The Washington correspondent of the New York _Tribune_ says
that Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens give it as their opinion that
New Jersey will not have a republican form of government until they
put the word "white" out of their Constitution. Do these gentlemen
mean to say that when New Jersey has given her 8,000 negro men the
vote she will have a republican form of government, while 134,000
women of that State are still without it? and not only without it, but
blasted by laws which are a disgrace to the civilization of the age;
and of these laws not one afflicts or affects the negro man. The
rebels who starved our brave boys in Andersonville, and made ornaments
of their bones, these men, traitors, guilty of the highest crime known
to our laws, are to be punished by having their right to vote taken
away. Of what crime are American women guilty that they are to be
compelled to stand on a political platform with such men as these? Let
no man dream that national prosperity and peace can be secured by
merely giving suffrage to colored men, while that sacred right is
denied to millions of American women. That scanty shred of justice,
good as far it goes, is utterly inadequate to meet the emergency of
this hour. Men of every race and color may vote, but if the women are
excluded our legislation will still lack that moral tone, for want of
which the nation is to-day drifting toward ruin. There is no other
name given by which the country can be saved but that of woman.
"Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed." Women are governed, negroes are governed, and should give
their consent. Will men never learn that a principle which God has
made true He has also made it safe to apply? Aye, more, that a
principle He has made true, it is not safe not to apply? The problem
for the American statesmen to-day is no narrow question of races, but
how to embody in our institutions a guarantee for the rights of every
citizen. The solution is easy. Base government on the consent of the
governed, and each class will protect itself. Put this one great
principle of universal suffrage, irrespective of sex or color, into
the foundation of our temple of liberty, and it will rise in fair and
beautiful proportions, "without the sound of a hammer or the noise of
any instrument," to stand at last "perfect and entire, wanting
nothing." Omit it, and only "He who sees the end from the beginning"
knows through what other national woes we must be driven, before we
learn that the path of justice is the only path of peace and safety.
LUCY STONE.
BOSTON, _May 5, 1867_.
_To the American Equal Rights Association_:
Although not permitted to be present with you, yet, in spirit, I join
you in all your efforts to secure justice and equality to all the
children of God. I have so long felt deeply upon the subjects before
you, that I wish to add my word to the voices of those who are more
fortunate in being present. Since I was old enough to think upon
important subjects, I have constantly felt the pressure of injustice
that has borne so heavily upon my sex. At sixteen I earnestly desired
to enter some college, that I might have the benefit of those helps to
learning which were open to all boys, and I deeply felt the cruelty
and injustice that closed the doors of the universities to me, who was
longing and thirsting for knowledge, while they were invitingly open
to the youth of the other sex, who often only used them to waste their
time and give them the name of educated men. I could see no reason for
this exclusion, nor could I imagine how it would harm any one to allow
girls who desired to learn the privilege of going to the universities.
My next personal experience of the injustice done to women by the laws
was, when a widow, I buried one of my little daughters, and found that
I, who had borne her and nursed her and provided for all her wants,
was not her heir, but her little sister, who had done nothing for her,
and was still dependent on me for care, etc. This I felt very keenly,
not on account of the property involved, for it was but little, but on
account of the great injustice done to my maternal heart. My next
personal lesson in the law's iniquity was, when about to marry the
second time, both myself and husband desired to secure to me the
property I possessed. I employed a great lawyer in Maine, Gov.
Fessenden, the father of one of our senators, to make an instrument
that would secure that end. After thinking on the subject a week, and
doing the best he could, he handed me the paper, saying, "I have done
my best; but I can not assure you that this instrument will secure to
you your property if your husband should ever become insolvent!" This
surely astonished me. The law not only did not protect women in their
property rights, but did so much to prevent their getting or keeping
them, that an able lawyer could not frame an instrument that would
secure them even when signed by their intended husbands before
marriage! This was more than thirty years ago, and some improvements
have since been made in the laws in reference to women.
The next great wrong that pressed heavily upon me was when I again
became a widow. I found myself yearly taxed for State and county, and
later for revenue, without a voice in anything that concerned the
raising of money, or in any of the elections to office in the great
struggle that our country was passing through. With all the deep
feeling of my brethren, a clear appreciation of the all-important
issues at stake, and an intensely painful knowledge of the sin of
slavery and its concomitant evils, I could not cast a vote in favor
of the right, but must look on with folded hands, and give my money to
support the Government, without a chance of giving it an impetus,
however slight, in the direction of justice and liberty! In view of
all these wrongs, I felt that the women of America had as just cause
for rebellion against the Government as our fathers had against the
British Government when they resisted, on the ground that taxation and
representation were one and inseparable. The three great desires of my
life have been: That the halls of learning should be universally open
to all souls who desire to enter them; that the property rights of
all, without regard to sex, color, or race, should stand on the same
foundation, and be equal; that every person twenty-one years old, who
is a citizen of the United States, should have the ballot, unless
disfranchised by crime, idiocy, or insanity. When these three things
are granted, all else will follow in due time. But until these things
are assured to the citizens of America, our Government presents the
anomaly of being professedly founded upon the consent of the governed,
and yet shutting out two-thirds of its citizens from all voice in it.
* * * * *
MERCY B. JACKSON, M.D.
CHICAGO, _March 22, 1867_.
DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--I feel that I must do something for the "Woman's
Suffrage" movement in the West. There is much interest here
concerning it, but no movement is yet made. Matters are being
prepared, and when the movement is made in the West, it will
sweep onward majestically. Kansas and Iowa will first give women the
right to vote before any other States, East or West. "Man proposes,
but God disposes." I have always had a theory of my own concerning
this suffrage question. Ever since I began to think of it, and that
has been since Dr. Harriot Hunt's first protest against woman being
taxed when she had no representation, I have believed that, in my day,
woman would vote. But I have thought they would first obtain the right
to work and wages, and that the right to vote would naturally follow.
For woman's right to work and wages I have labored indefatigably. But
I see that my plan is not God's plan. The right to vote is to come
first, and work and wages afterwards, and easily. I "stumped" the
Northwest during the war. Two women of us, Mrs. Hoge and myself,
organized over 1,000 Aid Societies, and raised, in money and supplies,
nearly $100,000 for the soldiers; and to do it, we were compelled to
get people together in masses, and tell our story and our plans, and
make our appeals to hundreds at a time. So I can talk here, and can
help you here, when you are ready to lead. In the meanwhile, I have
begun to work for the cause through my husband's weekly paper, which
has a large circulation in the Northwest. I have announced myself as
henceforth committed to the cause of woman suffrage, and have become
involved, instanter, in a controversy on the subject. I am associate
editor of the paper, and have been these dozen years. I have just
completed a reply to an objector to the doctrine, which goes into this
week's issue. In my way, I am working with you. I have always believed
in the ballot for woman at some future time--always, since reading
Margaret Fuller's "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," which set me to
thinking a quarter of a century ago. Boston is my native city, and I
lived there till my marriage, and had one or two talks with Theodore
Parker which helped me wonderfully.
Yours truly, MARY A. LIVERMORE.
TOPEKA, KANSAS, _April 5, 1867_.
DEAR MADAM:--We are now arranging for a thorough canvass of our State
for impartial suffrage, without regard to sex or color. We are
satisfied that an argument in favor of colored suffrage is an argument
in favor of woman suffrage. Both are based upon the same principle. It
is the doctrine of our fathers "that governments derive their just
powers from the consent of the governed." We "white men" have no right
to ask privileges or demand rights for ourselves that we are unwilling
to grant to the whole human family. There never has been, and never
can be, an argument, based upon principle, against colored or woman
suffrage. Sneers and attempts at ridicule are not arguments. Henry B.
Blackwell, of New Jersey, and Mrs. Lucy Stone, are now canvassing our
State for impartial suffrage. Some of the most eminent men and women
of the United States have been invited, and promised to visit our
State this summer and fall; and we shall succeed. Kansas will be
free, and occupy the proudest place, in all time to come, in the
history of the world.
We desire to extend our meetings to every neighborhood in Kansas;
reach, if possible, the ear of every voter. For this purpose we must
enlist every home speaker possible. We shall arrange series of
meetings in all parts of the State, commencing about September 1st,
and running through September and October. We desire speakers to
advocate the broad doctrine of impartial suffrage, but welcome those
who advocate either. Those who desire colored suffrage alone, are
invited to take the field; also those who favor only female suffrage.
Each help the other. I am instructed by the State Impartial Suffrage
Executive Committee to ask you to aid us, and speak at as many of our
meetings as possible. Please answer at once, and let us know how much
time you can spend in the campaign, and what part of the State you
prefer to speak in.
Yours truly, S. N. WOOD,
_Cor. Sec'y Kansas Impartial Suffrage Association_.
BANGOR, ME., _May 9, 1867_.
DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--I should be truly glad to attend the Annual
Meeting; but, as you see, I am far from New York. Mr. Davis and I are
at work in another part of the great field of progress. While you and
your noble friend, Mrs. Stanton, are endeavoring to move the adult
population of our nation to just and righteous action, we are striving
to establish on earth the beginning of the kingdom of heaven, by
instituting a new and true method of moral and spiritual or religious
education for the children and youth of the New Dispensation.
Spiritualism, as a religious movement, has done more than any previous
dispensation to give woman an equal career with man; and we trust
that, through the influence of the "Children's Progressive Lyceums,"
the youth in our midst, rapidly advancing to the stage of action, will
form a powerful phalanx on the side of "Equal Rights" and the
elevation of humanity.
Yours fraternally, MARY F. DAVIS.
BUFFALO, _April 14, 1867_.
DEAR MRS. STANTON:--I thank you for your kind note.... I pray that God
will bless you in the noble work you are in, and that woman will soon
be admitted to her proper place where God intended she should be, and
from which to exclude her must, like any other great wrong, bring
misery and sorrow to the race.
Sincerely your friend, RUFUS SAXTON.
148 MADISON AVENUE, SUNDAY EVE., _April 14, 1867_.
MY DEAR MRS. STANTON:--your invitation to me to lift my voice at your
Annual Convention in behalf of the cause for which you have worked so
faithfully and so long, and, let me add, so efficiently, was duly
received; but I have an universal excuse for neglect of duty in the
multitudinous professional engagements that absorb my life and
strength. Believing in the justice of your cause, and that better laws
and better order would bless our race could they be submitted to the
arbitrament of woman, I yet am not able, individually, to give the
time to it now which would be requisite for an adequate public
presentation of its claims, but must content myself with only such
passing words of cheer as the moment calls forth in the daily
intercourse of life. I am grateful that you thought me competent to
advocate so great a principle; but he would be a bold man who would
attempt to add anything to the masterly effort of Mr. Beecher at the
last Convention.
I am, as of old, your friend, LUTHER R. MARSH.
148 MADISON AVENUE, _April 14, 1867_.
DEAR MRS. STANTON:--Please accept the trifle enclosed, $20, as a token
of my friendship to the good cause, whose mighty burden of
enlightenment is to hold the growth of future cycles with an
all-controlling destiny. I am glad to see that those who have been
willing to wear the sackcloth and ashes are beginning to receive the
crowns of the olive and the bay upon their consecrated heads. Many
will find it very agreeable, now, to sail in upon the sunny and ardent
tide of the rippling river, forgetting that once it was a darksome,
sluggish stream, not pleasant to launch forth upon. My father's[208]
early championship of a despised cause taught me to hold very sacred
those pioneers in holy efforts, which to embrace was to suffer the
pangs of a daily martyrdom.
Your friend, as of old, JEANNIE MARSH.
_May 29, 1867._
It is foolish to say that the advocates of the "Woman Movement" demand
"special legislation" for woman, or desire to array her in hostility
to man. It is the enemies of this movement who have made special
legislation necessary, since they declare woman not to be the equal of
man. We desire nothing but one common law alike for each, with woman
holding the ballot, not as the enemy, but as the peer and friend of
man.
ANNA E. DICKINSON.
KENOSHA, WIS., _May 1, 1868_.
I saw your notice of the meeting of the American Equal Rights
Association in that banner of freedom, the Boston _Investigator_. A
thousand times I wish you success. We, in this State, intend to make a
determined fight next year for female suffrage. The resolution
submitting it to the people passed the Assembly and Senate by more
than two to one (57 against 24. and 19 against 9); yet you must not
suppose that our cause is so favorable as that. I send a few extracts,
copied from the Racine _Advocate_; and to that number I am pleased to
add the Milwaukee _News_, the leading Democratic paper of the State.
Mr. Sholes, one of the leading Republicans of the State (elector on
the last Presidential ticket), is warmly in support of your cause.
Certainly the great car of progress is under motion, and no bigoted,
conservative fogyism can long stay its progress. In the meantime, I
really hope to see some of your best speakers in the Wisconsin field
before the election of 1868. Where can I get some pamphlets containing
the best arguments for universal suffrage? Go bravely on. Let not the
scoffs and sneers of the low, mean, and vulgar intimidate, defeat, or
discourage you.
Most respectfully, R. F. MILLS.
* * * * *
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
_Receipts at the Eleventh National Woman's Rights Convention, held in
New York, May 10, 1866._
Abby Hutchinson Patton $50 00
Jessie Benton Fremont 50 00
Mrs. C. Lozier, M.D. 20 00
James and Lucretia Mott 10 00
Anna Densmore, M.D. 10 00
Margaret E. Winchester 5 00
Eliza Wright Osborn 5 00
Martha C. Wright 8 00
Gerrit and Nancy Smith 10 00
Elizabeth Smith Miller 5 00
C. C. Williams 2 00
S. R. Ferris 50
Mrs. L. M. Ward. M.D. 2 00
M. P. Allen 1 00
M. A. Halsted 1 00
Mrs. J. B. Mix 1 00
H. Phelps 1 00
J. H. Smith 1 00
Frances V. Hallock 1 00
Ella M. Clymer 1 00
Sarah S. White 1 00
Cordelia Curtis 1 00
Mrs. D. T. Tompkins 1 00
Josephine S. Griffing 1 00
Mrs. F. Knapp 1 00
Mary M. Bingham 1 00
Harriet Clisby 1 00
Sarah E. Payson 1 00
Christiana T. Wallace 1 00
D. J. H. Wilcox 1 00
Albert O. Wilcox 1 00
J. H. H. Wilcox 1 00
Frances D. Gage 1 00
Louisa Humphrey 1 00
A. M. Odell 1 00
Dr. J. E. Snodgrass 1 00
Gustavus Muller 1 00
Charles Lenox Remond 1 00
Mary Curtis 1 00
Jane P. Thurston 1 00
Martha T. Ketchum 1 00
Sarah H. Hallock 1 00
Elizabeth Barton 1 00
Mrs. Geo. C. White 1 00
A. Raymond 1 00
Susan M. Davis 1 00
A. M. Powell 1 00
General collection 46 50
_Receipts at the Equal Rights Convention, held at Boston, May 27,
1866._
Anna E. Dickinson $100 00
E. D. and Anna F. Draper 50 00
Geo. J. and Mary B. H. Adams 20 00
Mr. and Mrs. A. M. McPhail 20 00
Anna Davis Hallowell 10 00
C. Prince 5 00
Mrs. M. P. Snow 5 00
Caroline M. Severance 5 00
R. H. Ober 4 00
Mrs. L. Prang 1 00
A. E. Heywood 2 00
Parker Pillsbury 1 00
Mrs. E. D. Cheney 1 00
L. H. Ober 1 00
Mrs. M. H. Prince 3 00
John T. Sargent 2 00
R. P. Hallowell 2 00
Mrs. C. A. Baker 1 00
E. H. Merrill 1 00
Maria S. Page 2 00
Mary C. Shannon 50
N. Allen 1 00
S. Reynolds 50
R. T. Greene 50
M. Halliburton 50
Harriet A. Foster 2 00
A. B. Morey 50
C. S. Perry 50
A. S. Sisson 50
S. Boynton 50
Henry Abbott 2 00
Lewis Ford 1 00
Sarah J. Nowell 1 00
Friend 35
Col. Wm. B. Green 5 00
R. H. Morrill 2 00
Mrs. M. A. Dotcher 1 00
M. C. Wolson 1 00
Mary Willey 50
Cash 1 15
Abby H. Stephenson 5 00
Lewis McLaughlin 1 00
Mrs. S. D. Young 3 25
Sarah H. Young, M.D. 5 00
M. E. Woods 1 00
M. E. Jameson 1 00
C. F. Haywood 1 00
H. A. Comly 2 00
Anna R. Southwick 1 00
H. E. Sawyer 1 00
Richard Plummer 1 00
R. Howland 1 00
S. R. Duzen 1 00
F. A. Green 5 00
D. B. Morey 1 00
J. Wetherbe 1 00
Isaac H. Marshall 1 00
Maria B. Clapp 1 00
J. E. Bruce 50
A. J. Patterson 50
Cash 3 05
T. B. Rice 50
Cash 1 00
Frances H. Drake 1 00
Kate C. Atkinson 50
Wilmot Wilson 1 00
Cash 50
Mary C. Sawyer 2 00
Elizabeth Mendum 5 00
H. W. Carter 50
L. F. Lalve, M.D. 50
K. E. Walker 50
Charles K. Whipple 1 00
Ruth Buffum 1 00
S. Cheney 50
K. C. Atkins 50
Elizabeth M. F. Denton 5 00
H. N. Green 50
M. E. Steward 1 00
Margaret N. Wood 1 00
Cash 2 50
Kate Reynolds 2 00
John L. Whiting 1 00
Universal Suffrage 1 00
M. E. Darey 1 00
General collection 41 00
_Receipts from June 1, 1866, to May 1, 1867._
Levi Coates $1 00
Mrs. A. C. L. Hyde 1 00
Jane Voorhees 25 00
Harriet V. Rice 10 00
Mary F. Gilbert 1 00
F. A. Hinckley 1 50
Louisa Frost 2 00
M. B. Linton 10 00
Olympia Brown 5 00
Mary E. Ranks 1 00
Mary E. Deuls 2 00
Sarah H. Hallock 50
Dansville E. R. Association (per James
C. Jackson, M.D.) 105 00
Gerrit Smith 100 00
James and Lucretia Mott 53 00
C. S. Lozier, M.D. 50 00
Samuel E. Sewall 40 00
Sinclair Tousey 10 00
G. P. Lowrey 10 00
Dr. Dio Lewis 5 00
Martha C. Wright 5 00
Eliza W. Osborn 5 00
E. V. Dickey 6 00
Edward M. Davis 5 00
Matilda E. J. Gage 5 00
E. D. Hudson 5 00
Job Parker 5 00
Aaron Stedman 1 00
Mrs. B. P. Markham 50
Mrs. D. F. Rogers 50
Emily Rogers 50
Maggie Clemmer 25
James Eaton 1 00
Addison B. Tuttle 1 00
Anna H. McAvoy 25
Isadore Harrison 25
Joseph A. Sherman 1 00
Frank Conway 25
Mary Jackson 25
J. D. Cook 50
J. G. Howe 2 00
R. Lippis 50
H. W. Hale 25
William Litch 50
Sarah Willis 1 00
Mrs. E. B. Judson 10 00
S. J. May 5 00
Joseph Savage 5 00
H. Delano 5 00
T. G. White 3 00
Dr. H. S. Sparks 2 00
Mr. and Mrs. L. Spalding 2 00
J. M. Wieting 2 00
Mrs. W. H. Williams 5 00
Anna Willets 5 00
Emily Jaques 5 00
Sarah E. Wall 5 00
James Freeman Clarke 5 00
Parker Pillsbury 4 00
Mrs. S. M. Doty 3 00
Mary Grew 2 00
Sarah Pugh 2 00
Margaret J. Burleigh 2 00
Geo. H. Sisson 3 00
E. G. Folsom 2 00
Joseph Carpenter 2 00
Susan Ormsby 1 00
Frances Ellen Burr 1 00
J. D. Stephenson 1 00
Paulina Gerry 1 00
J. H. Root 1 00
Mrs. Avery 1 00
Martha Pierce 1 00
James Pierce 1 00
A Friend 1 00
Equal Rights 1 00
Mrs. C. S. Lozier, M.D. 10 00
Mrs. E. Sanderson 5 00
Isaac Sherwood 5 00
Mrs. P. L. Upham 5 00
John B. Bassett 2 00
H. T. Douley 1 00
Sarah F. Rice, M.D. 1 00
Joseph Post 1 00
Huldah S. Warrington 1 00
Mary Styles 1 00
M. Parish 25
Mrs. Field 50
Martha Hudson 1 00
Sarah E. Johonnet 1 00
John Lancaster 1 00
Dr. and Mrs. A. L. Ward 2 00
Frances E. Smith 1 00
Mrs. Whitley 1 00
Mrs. D. B. Hontz 50
J. Sinclair 50
Anna Rice Powell 1 00
Mrs. Mix, M.D. 50
Alice Hall 50
Ella Clymer 1 00
Linda Dietz 1 00
Mrs. Dietz 50
Dr. James Burson 25
L. A. Van Cort 25
William Russel 1 00
Sarah B. Perry 50
D. H. Hoffman 50
P. A. Neale 50
Edward Kingsley 2 00
Fanny M. Callow 2 00
L. Jenny Kellogg 1 00
Caroline H. Sherwood 1 00
Delia A. Barker 1 00
Gustavus Muller 3 00
William L. Jaycox 25
E. P. Bailey 50
M. Newth 1 00
Cynthia DeLong 5 00
John Castor 25
W. R. and M. H. Hallowell 5 00
Mary B. F. Curtis 5 00
Sarah Smith 1 00
J. N. Holmes 1 00
M. Merrick 1 00
Charles D. B. Mills 1 00
A. P. Brown 50
Mrs. F. L. Brown 50
E. C. Lewis 1 00
Mrs. L. H. Hinsdale 50
Mrs. B. Brook 25
C. A. Abbott 25
Fayette Clark 50
Priscilla Clark 50
Louisa J. Phelps 1 00
Lydia P. Savage 1 00
Mrs. Charles B. Sedgwick 1 00
Mary A. Horton 25
J. T. Williams 25
Mrs. G. G. Sperry 50
A. D. Waters 25
S. Brewer 50
H. C. Todd 25
C. G. Alton 50
Mrs. L. A. Strowbridge 3 00
Martha C. Wright 5 00
Eliza W. Osborn 5 00
Mrs. Dr. Hall 1 00
Abby Thayer Chase 50
Philadelphia E. R. Convention 28 00
Esther Cole 1 00
L. Kelsey 1 00
J. S. Northrup 2 00
Mrs. A. Leaton 1 00
Samuel Sutton 50
Caroline Thompson 2 00
Elizabeth M. Atwell 2 00
Jacob and Eliza Powell 10 00
Zenus Brackett 10 00
Mrs. Judge Owen 1 00
Margaret Vanderpool 75
James McEntee 5 00
H. M. Crane 3 00
James G. Lindsley 1 00
Walter B. Crane 1 00
Horatio Falks 1 00
J. E. Lasher 1 00
Mrs. Vantassell 1 00
Jonathan Buffum 10 00
Luther Melendy 5 00
Anson Lapham 40 00
Mary S. Moses 3 00
Mrs. Oliver Dennett 10 00
Mr. Armstrong 5 00
Elisabeth J. Vail, M.D. 1 00
Matilda T. Saxton 5 00
Rosanna Thompson 2 00
Helen Philleo 1 00
James Halleck 1 10
P. H. Boyce 50
Ellis Ellis 1 00
Charlotte M. Schofield 25
John Cadawalder 10
David Perry 25
Le Grand Marvin 1 00
J. Van Vleck 1 00
Cyrus P. Lee 1 00
Aaron R. Vail 2 00
E. Cumming 31
Mrs. J. Watson 5 00
_Receipts at the First Anniversary, May 9 and 10, 1867._