amendment, which is simply striking the obnoxious word “male” out of
every statute of the land. She said the future great memorable day
would occur in March, because it was in this month that Mr. Julian
had offered this amendment to the Constitution. In changing the
fifteenth amendment the voice of every person should be heard in the
land. If women are not people, what are they? We are building a model
Republic and it needs a crowning glory. That glory is a perfected
womanhood.
Miss Anthony arose and proposed a vote. Those who demand that
Congress shall adopt the sixteenth amendment say “aye.” The ayes had
it. Miss Susan said she had been interviewing members, but did not
stop to tell the result. She said there was a factory girl on the
platform, Miss Jennie Collins, of Boston. The movement was not to
benefit those who had fathers and husbands, but those who had to earn
their own living.
Miss Collins was then introduced. She said she had not come to make
a speech, but to lay her offering at the feet of the imperial Susan.
We have a class of women who have not brains enough to comprehend a
comic almanac; but if you would have an opinion, go to the working
woman. She who has toiled knows her opinion. Why do girls not go into
the kitchen? Because no man will marry a woman from the kitchen;
but if she goes behind the counter a man will give her his arm. She
said the Republican party had accomplished its mission, and was now
dead. A new party was coming up from the people. The trades unions
will be heard from. These unions were formed around camp-fires to
protect each other, and they now girdle the land. She did not look
to the politicians for aid; it must come from the working people.
What helped the workingman? It was the ballot. Then why would it not
help the working women as well? If the Southerner had whipped the
slave woman, the New England stockholder would not stop the loom
long enough to do the whipping. She painted the hideous lives of the
48,000 factory girls of Massachusetts. Her presence breathed the
print of the nails. She made you hear the whir of the machinery, and
you could feel the flakes of cotton falling like snow. Miss Collins
abused General Grant, abused the Republican party, but the audience
was under her spell and did not raise a dissenting voice. A young
girl in the audience spoke loud enough to be heard by those around
her, “Isn’t she a frightful woman?” It was the savage looking out of
the New England factory prison, and the picture is the strongest that
has been presented in the convention.
Miss Anthony then announced that the Senate District Committee had
agreed to meet the leading women of the movement on Saturday at 10
o’clock a. m.
The meeting now adjourned, and the distinguished women proceeded
to the Arlington Hotel, where they had previously announced their
intention of holding a reception between the hours of 10 and 12 p. m.
This midnight reception was held to accommodate members and Senators
who were supposed to be disengaged during these hours. But, alas!
Senators one appeared, Pomeroy, of Kansas, whilst the gallant General
Logan was the sole representative of the House.
Mrs. Stanton was queenly, as usual, in black velvet; Mrs. Hooker
in gray moire antique; whilst Mrs. Wilbour eclipsed all the lesser
lights in black silk, embroidered with golden grain. Diamonds
glittered, wit and satire flashed, illuminating all the beholders;
but the grand dames, the philosophers, the politicians of the
capital were not there. If the strong-minded can talk better than
the fashionables, they must yet learn to “receive.” Mrs. Hooker held
up her moire train as if she were keeping it from the mire. But this
must have been owing to the neat training in the “land of steady
habits.” Mrs. Stanton “is at home” in the masculine way of doing
business. To be sure she had talked sense, but she made one long for
a little nonsense; for something upon which the mind could rest after
the severe tension of the day.
General Logan was dressed in black pants, not very much the worse for
wear, while a claret overcoat, bound in black silk braid, was thrown
open before. What his boots lacked in polish was made up by a mental
lustre which such insignificant things as bootblacks can neither add
to nor take away. He moved about hither and thither with as much
apparent ease as he intends to move the capital. Senator Pomeroy
wore his ordinary apparel with the exception of his hair. Nellie
Hutchinson of the _Tribune_ said the reception was a failure, and the
readers of _The Press_ can take her word for it.
Meeting called to order with very few on the stage. The usual prayer
was omitted. Mrs. Stanton opened the battle. Daughters should be
prepared for every emergency. Cultivate will power, and everything
else yields. She said she had visited fashionable women in their
luxurious homes and when she talked to them of these great questions,
they said they had been so happy they had never thought of these
things. She would say to these women, Do you live in Chinese walls?
Have you never read Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables”? What sort of a
soul must people have if they can only feel what sacrifices their own
flesh? She then told the drunkard’s story, but she always finishes a
convention with the same tale. When Mrs. Stanton tells this personal
experience she rises to the dignity of a great actress. The pauses,
the gestures, one learns by heart. Do the great and good men of the
world repeat themselves in the same way?
Miss Anthony having somewhat recovered, read a letter from Hon. Jacob
H. Ela, of New Hampshire, and he assured the convention that he was
with it hand and glove. During the evening a few members and Senator
Sherman were espied in the audience. Miss Anthony was interrupted
in her speaking, and Senator Sherman was called on by name to come
forward and answer how he stood on the sixteenth amendment. As he did
not seem inclined to give an opinion, Miss Anthony bade him, unless
he was for it, to say nothing at all.
Judge Woodward (Democrat) was also seen, and his name was called
out, but he arose from his seat and went quietly out. With the
encroachment upon good taste (for certainly Congressmen have some
rights which the public should respect) the convention has lived its
brief life, and left its mark upon the age.
OLIVIA.
GATHERING OF THE STRONG-MINDED.
THE WOMAN SUFFRAGISTS TELL OF THEIR TRIALS.
WASHINGTON, _January 21, 1870_.
The last evening’s session of the woman’s suffrage convention opened
under the most dazzling auspices. No movement of the kind at the
national capital has ever been so honored before. Quite a strong
solution of intellect, power, and fashion shaded its eyes before
the meteoric display. For the first time in convention, respectable
audiences have seen spiritualism, long-haired masculine, and
pantaloon feminine banished from the stage. Just as a flame flashes
up more brilliantly before it expires, the convention assumed a
vermillion hue before its final dissolution.
Mrs. Stanton appeared clad in solemn black velvet, but the bright
ribbons nestling in her snowy curls, the girlish ornaments in exactly
the right place, strangled all thoughts of a funereal aspect.
Mrs. Wilbour glimmered in the black silk of golden wheat memory, and
Mrs. Beecher was clad in royal purple; Phœbe Couzins smothered her
manifold attractions under a great white opera cloak, and Susan B.
Anthony was just as twisted and knotty as ever.
But whilst the beautiful feminine element which Mrs. Wilbour has so
faithfully portrayed formed the background of the picture, the great
central form of attraction was Professor Wilcox, otherwise known in
the capital as “the Knight of the Sorrowful Figure.” A description
of his person, as he corruscated upon the stage, is copied from
the Washington _Chronicle_: “Professor Wilcox appeared upon the
scene in wrappings of swallow-tail and patent leather. His polished
foundation was only eclipsed by the manifold attractions of the
other extremity. His whiskers were trimmed to an angle of forty-five
degrees, whilst his superb eyes rested in serene beneficence upon the
feminine elements that surged and rolled in grandeur on the stage.”
As the women were detained at home for the arrangement of their
toilettes beyond the hour appointed, Professor Wilcox moved that Mrs.
Griffing address the meeting. This most estimable woman proposed
a substitute in the person of Madame Anneke, who came forward and
said she could not talk, only “wid her heart.” She could not speak
English. “All my friends I embrace.” This last sentence must have
been a metaphor, for although Professor Wilcox was in grappling
distance, nothing occurred which could shock the most delicate mind.
Madame Anneke said that it had been told that Germany was not in
favor of this movement. This was a mistake. Germany was with us; all
Europe too. Twenty years ago she had started a paper to advocate
the cause, but it stopped in two years because of her sickness. One
hundred years ago a German philosopher said that women should have
equal rights with men. A hundred years ago a good man had said the
same things which these women were telling the people to-day. But she
could say no more, she was going to act.
Mrs. Stanton then came forward and said Madame Anneke was going
to travel all through the West for the “cause,” and this was what
she meant by the word act. If Madame Anneke can not talk English
to Western barbarians, she can make up by acting on the stage. Her
immense rotundity, quivering like a huge caldron of jelly, will stir
the human heart to its profoundest depths, and it can safely be said
by a Western woman who knows the taste of the home community that
Madame Anneke will be able to attract audiences.
Rev. Mr. May now came forward. He said that our late civil war was
brought on by the deprivation of the rights of four millions of the
people, and consequently certain things will follow like a natural
law, the taking away of the rights of fifteen millions more. Woman
cannot be denied her rights. She cannot be degraded without degrading
the other half of creation. God made man dual. How absurd for man to
assume the right to all power; to take all power into his hands. Why
do not women take all the power to themselves? It would be just as
reasonable. Barbarians subject the weak to the strong.
Miss Anthony now came forward and wanted to have a resolution
introduced into Congress to equalize wages. The motion was put and
carried with the exception of one male voice. Here was a chance for
Susan to score the Adam, and the opportunity was not lost. No eagle
from his eyrie ever pounced upon a chicken with more force than did
Susan upon this masculine biped. Nobody knew whether the unfortunate
had a wife, but Susan assumed that he had, and that it was his intent
and purpose to sneak away her wages. Susan finished him on the spot,
and the audience applauded the heroic act.
Mrs. Stanton then rose and said a woman had just visited her who was
connected with the Washington public schools. For a long time she had
tried to get her wages; that she was in debt, with all its attendant
evils; that she had applied time after time for her dues, but they
were withheld, but that a school trustee had put his hand in his
pocket and offered the teacher forty dollars instead of forty-five,
the amount due. She instanced this as an atrocious advantage taken
of a helpless woman. As she took her seat a man in a distant part of
the hall arose for an explanation. He painted the awful picture of
a depleted city treasury, of the inability of the school committee
to get blood out of a stone, and thought the man did a most generous
act to give the woman forty dollars and wait indefinitely for the
forty-five. He said the man was touched by her necessities, and no
doubt cramped himself to do a good act, for the school committee are
poor men.
A silence followed. Mr. May again came forward to bring forth some
mental gem that in his former speech had been forgotten. He wanted
to say something about woman as an inventor. A woman had invented
the cotton-gin, but in this case she had been maliciously deprived
of her rights. The audience listened patiently and his last talk
came to an end. Then Mrs. Charlotte Wilbour took the stand and read
one of her sleepy essays. But she made rather a handsome figure with
the gaslight dancing on the golden sheaves that bespangled her royal
drapery. Her costly fan was suspended from her waist by a heavy gold
chain, and this, with the length of her long train, made her look
anything else but “strong-minded.”
When her essay came to an end, Mr. May arose for an explanation, but
the decorous, good humored audience had swallowed enough of Mr. May,
and its stomach actually refused any more of the decoction. Stamp!
Stamp! Stamp! Motherly Mrs. Stanton came forward and said, “Be a good
child. Take it down; take it for the sake of free speech.” Mr. May
began. Hissing, stamping. Again Mrs. Stanton’s sweet face beams on
the audience and says, “Why will ye?”
Mr. May began and said: “I shall stand here until you hear me, if
stay till to-morrow morning.” Determination was written on that face,
with the broad lower jaw and mouth, which sprung together like the
shutting of a steel trap. His arms were folded, and his whole person
breathed the spirit of the Egyptian sphinx. The audience felt the
presence of its master, and yielded as good naturedly as it began the
battle. Mr. May told us something about a State’s prison, where there
were nothing but female convicts and female officers, but whether
this model prison is in his own State of New York or elsewhere
escaped the ear of the writer, but it is safe to say if it is not in
New York it certainly ought to be there.
Miss Anthony now came forward and told a good story, a noble one,
about Olympia Brown. Four months Olympia traveled in Kansas in
every way except by railroad. She spoke every day of the four
months, and oftener twice than otherwise. Generally she had met the
kindest treatment, but sometimes not, for in every audience there is
generally a fringe of humanity where there is more boot-heel than
brain. There was one district in Kansas where intelligent people
lived, where for years they were unable to get a schoolhouse. They
could get no majority to vote upon the question, because the claims
in the town were owned by single men, who did not want to vote to
be taxed, or else by non-residents who were never there to give a
decision one way or another. The father worked on year after year,
but all in vain. After the passage of the law giving woman the right
to vote on the school question, the mothers arose at 11 o’clock at
night, voted, and got a schoolhouse. Why the women should be obliged
to arise at 11 o’clock at night to vote, instead of waiting until
a respectable hour in the morning, Susan forgot to mention. Miss
Anthony said once upon a time she was announced to speak in Brooklyn,
at the same time with Miss Anna Dickinson. Just as she had changed
her frock, and got ready for starting, the fickle Anna telegraphed
that she could not be there. There was no time to prepare for this
unforeseen catastrophe, so she put on her bonnet and went over to
Brooklyn--went into the vast hall, crowded with humanity, who had
come to see Anna, not her. Had the heavens opened and buckets of
ice-water been showered down upon her head she could have felt no
worse. She looked around and there sat Henry Ward Beecher, and
Chapin, and a host of intellectual lights, which were enough to cook
any woman’s marrow to the bones, and she was as bare of thought as
New York is of honesty. She applied a forcing pump to her mind, but
still the water of thought wouldn’t come; her brain was as dry as a
squeezed orange. What should she do? She looked around on the hungry
audience, and at last her eyes rested on Henry Ward Beecher, and she
felt saved. Leaving her place on the platform, she advanced to the
great preacher, and, laying her hand on his shoulder she said, “You
must help me; I can’t do it.” Susan did not tell us whether it was
owing to her command or the pressure which she brought to bear on his
shoulder that conquered him. At any rate, he came gallantly to her
side; and never was such a rousing speech made by the great parson in
all the days of his life. Then she said, “What did I tell this story
for? Something I am sure! Let me see. Oh, yes! I wanted to prove
that men and women needed to work together side by side. When one
fails, the other can come to the rescue.” At this moment Susan gave
evidence of having touched the bottom of her remarkable strength and
vitality. The unmitigated drain upon her vital forces for three days
of convention seemed to have done its work. Any other woman would
have fainted, but not Susan. She only said, “I think I’ll sit down.”
Mrs. Stanton came forward and said she wanted to talk an hour to the
young ladies about health and strength. Napoleon could not make a
soldier of a sick man. If girls are left with white hands and poverty
an inheritance, as it often is when they are orphaned, the sin of it
lies at the parents’ door. Educate women for ministers, and there
will be better theology preached. Let them study the law. Would it
bring them more into notice than the public ball? There is no place
where there are such temptations as in fashionable life, for nowhere
are such sensuous men found. If marriage is contemplated, it is
not thought whether a man has character but whether he has wealth.
She said she had an interest in the perpetuity of the American
Constitution. Women will never respect themselves, but will be ground
down until they learn self-support. She had personal knowledge of
many girls who wanted to do something for themselves, but the fathers
stood by, saying, “Degrade women to go to the polls?” If a woman is
so rash as to marry a man, should she be afraid to go by his side to
the ballot-box? She had six men in her family, and, excepting the
tobacco, she found them very endurable. She thought men and women
ought to be together in every movement. A drunken man will try to
act sober when women are around. Conversation is never so good when
men are alone; nor is it so elevating among women as when a few
philosophers or well-informed men are present.
Senator Wilson arrives and is lustily cheered. He ascends the
platform and shakes hands with his personal friends. He said he did
not come to address an argument to this meeting; he did not come to
add his faith to the creed to be promulgated. Whenever he had a vote
to give to any practical measure which should benefit this country it
should be given to men and women alike. But he came there to redeem
a promise to Miss Anthony, who really would not let him say “no.”
“But I am with you. For the last thirty-four years I have tried,
in private and in public, to emancipate a race. The work is done.
Complete political equality is nearly accomplished; and what little
time may be allotted me I shall still go on with the work which has
given four and a half millions freedom. I am with you in sentiment,
feeling, and all which relates to the work.”
Mrs. Stanton having perceived several Congressmen in the hall,
invites them to the platform. They do not choose to come. Senator
Tipton is called by name, and rises and begs to be excused, and Mrs.
Stanton shows her weakness by excusing him.
Rachel Townsend, the Quakeress, takes the platform, and scores the
factory girl for her effective speech of the evening before. She says
she has a good word to say for Congress; a good word for President
Grant, who has taken the colored man by the hand and raised him to a
place he never occupied before. He had placed the despised Quakers
over the Indians and the Quakers had done what powder and bullets had
failed to do. Quaker women were amongst the Indians, Christianizing
them as much as the other sex.
Mrs. Jocelyn Gage was then introduced by a handsome preamble, in Mrs.
Stanton’s own style. She said Mrs. Gage was author of a pamphlet upon
“Woman as an Inventor,” and that the pamphlet went to prove that
women originated the cotton-gin. Mrs. Gage, however, did not tell the
audience any new facts about woman suffrage.
The majestic, most queenly Pauline Davis criticised Senator Wilson
because he had spoken of the black men and said nothing about the
black women.
Miss Anthony then offered a resolution on the sixteenth amendment,
and made just such a speech as only Susan can. She demanded that
Congress submit the amendment. She commanded the Judiciary Committee
of the District to present the bill before the House, and that it be
done quickly. She wanted something practical to work on. She said
there were black men so ignorant that when they went to the polls
they expected to have a mule given them at the same time. “Do you
suppose such women as Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Wright, and
others--I’ll say myself; yes, I’ll say we--have suffered hooting,
degradation, persecution, everything for all these years, and not
accomplish what we have to do!” Vesuvius could be painted more easily
than Susan at this supreme moment. What is this invisible force?
Heads were bowed until the whirlwind swept by. Susan went up like a
rocket but came down like a stick, but it did not hurt her. She said
she was tired of harping on one string. She looked so weary. Oh! that
Susan had a place softer than a pillow on which to lay that tired
head.
There is no time to tell all the strong words this woman said,
because it must be told that Mrs. Beecher Hooker tried to speak and
failed. Alas! for the Beechers. She said that Christ had come to
deliver woman. She had entered into this movement because undefiled,
pure religion was to be found there, I assure you. Few of us know the
burden which Christianity brings. Let us take hold and work together.
At this moment she said so many earnest faces gazing at her made it
impossible to go on, and she withdrew her beautiful face, suffused
with the pure Beecher blood, the sweetest picture the family has had
the honor to present for many days.
Miss Olympia Brown came to the rescue. It was like shifting a
panorama; Olympia is beyond criticism in some respects. Her face
glows with enthusiasm; she talks because she is in earnest, and
not for effect. She was followed by Miss Couzins, who could not be
compared with Olympia, and yet the former won the applause. But
men’s boots were heard in the uproar. Phœbe is pretty, and the rest
followed. The hall was crowded with the best and strongest audience
that ever greeted the woman suffrage movement in Washington.
OLIVIA.
AT A COMMITTEE HEARING.
THE LADIES PLEAD THEIR CAUSE AT THE CAPITOL.
WASHINGTON, _January 22, 1870_.
At a proper fashionable hour this morning the women delegates began
slowly to gather in the moderately sized room occupied by the Senate
Committee on the District of Columbia. Last of all came the most
prominent delegates. Mrs. Stanton went to a side table and laid down
her dainty little bonnet and shook out her curls. Then she took her
seat at the head of the table. Susan B. stood next, then Mrs. Beecher
Hooker, Pauline Davis, Josephine Griffing, Phœbe Couzins and Mrs.
Wright. The usual buzz of conversation was carried on whisperingly,
for the dignity of the Senate chamber extended to that floor. The
small audience was of the most exclusive and aristocratic kind. The
factory girl had been sent off North early in the morning, lest her
roar should alarm the Congressional doves. In the awful stillness
might have been seen wall flowers, to whose fragrance a whole nation
can testify. Grace Greenwood was there, in a lovely winter costume;
but there is no time to describe the attractive beauties of the scene.
After a little Senators Hamlin, Patterson, Pratt, and other gentlemen
connected with the committee came in, and a general introduction and
handshaking took place. The committee of the Senate were arranged on
one side of the long table, and the House committee on the other,
whilst the head of it was left for each woman who should make her
speech. The solemn occasion was opened, as usual, by Mrs. Stanton.