Africa,” and “Darkest England,” lies in the two facts, that one is
the darkness of ignorance and savage races who are in the very night
of barbarism; while the other is the moral darkness of christian
civilization, in the very center of Christendom, after 2,000 years
of church teaching and priestly influence. A few years since, in
Massachusetts, an action for cruelty on part of a husband came before a
court, the charge being that he came home one night in February, when
the thermometer was ten degrees below zero, and turned his wife and
little child, with his wife’s mother of eighty, out of the house.[115]
While the wife was giving testimony, the judge interrupted, saying:
The husband had a right to do so, there was a quarrel between
the husband and wife, and he had a legal right to turn her out
and take possession of the house, that was not cruelty.
From the newspapers of April, 1886, we learn that:
At Salem, W. Va., Thomas True drove his wife out of doors and
swore he would kill any one who would give her shelter. Robert
Miller took her into his house, and was killed by True.
The system of marriage recognized by the church has ever been that
of ownership and power by the husband and father, over the wife and
children, and during the Middle Ages the ban of the church fell with
equal force upon the woman, who for any cause left her husband, as
upon the witch. The two were under the same ban as the excommunicated,
denounced as one whom all others must shun, whom no one must succor
or harbor, and with whom it was unlawful to hold any species of
intercourse.
The “boycott” is not an invention of the present century, but was
in use many hundred years since against a recalcitrant wife, under
sanction of both church and state. The advertisements of absconding
wives seen at the present day, whom the husband sets forth as having
left his bed and board and whom all persons are thereafter forbidden to
trust upon his account, are but a reminiscence of the wife-boycott of
former years, when all persons, were forbidden to “harbor her” under
penalty unless it could be proven that her life was in danger without
such aid. The husband was held to possess vested rights in the wife,
not only as against herself, but as against the world, and it is not
half a decade since the notice below, appeared in a Kansas paper,[116]
accompanied by the cut of a fleeing woman.
A $50 CAPTURE.
A woman who ran away from her husband at Lawrence some time
ago, was found at Fort Leavenworth yesterday by a Lawrence
detective and taken back to her home. The officer received a
reward of $50 for her capture.—_Leavenworth Standard_, Kas.,
Dec. 21, 1886.
This advertisement and others of a similar character to be seen in the
daily and weekly press of the country, are undeniable proofs of the
low condition under the law, of woman in the marriage relation, and
read very much like the notices in regard to absconding slaves a few
years since. Kansas was one of the very first states which recognized
the right of a married mother to her own child, that provision having
been incorporated in its constitution at early date as an enticement
for bringing women emigrants into that state, at a period when the
anti-slavery and pro-slavery contests within its borders had made it
bloody ground. Although the married woman’s property law and the spirit
of free thought has rendered such action less frequent than formerly,
it is less than forty years, as before noted, since the New York Court
of Common Pleas rendered a judgment of $10,000 in favor of a husband
against the relatives of his wife, who at her own request “harbored and
sheltered” her. The Christian principle of man’s ownership of woman,
for many hundred years under English law, rendered the party giving
shelter to a fleeing wife liable to the husband in money damages, upon
the ground of having aided a runaway servant to the master’s injury.
Under but one circumstance was such shelter admissible. In case the
wife was in danger of perishing, she could be harbored until morning,
when she must be returned to her master by the person who had thus
temporarily taken care of his perishable property. In England as late
as 1876, the case of a Mrs. Cochrane, who had lived apart from her
husband for years, and showing another phase of property law in the
wife, came up before Judge Coleridge. Her character was not at all
impeached, but she indulged in amusements which her husband considered
reprehensible, and through stratagem she was brought to his lodgings
and there kept a prisoner. A writ of _habeas corpus_ being sued out,
the husband was compelled to bring her before the court of the Queen’s
Bench. The decision of the judge rendered in favor of the husband’s
right of forcible detention, was declared by him to be upon ground
that English law virtually considered the wife as being under the
guardianship of the husband, not a person in her own right, and this
distinctly upon the ground of her perpetual infancy;[117] she must
be restored to her husband. As late as 1886, the _Personal Rights
Journal_ of England called attention to the suit of a clergyman for the
“restitution of conjugal rights” and custody of child. The wife not
being able to live in agreement with the husband, had taken her child
and left him. A decree for such restitution having been pronounced by
court, the husband Rev. Joseph Wallis, advertised for his absconding
wife, Caroline Wallis, offering one hundred pounds reward for such
information as should lead to her discovery.
£100 REWARD.
Whereas, A Decree was pronounced in the Probate, Divorce,
and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice, on the
5th day of June, 1886, in the suit of Samuel Joseph Wallis
_versus_ Caroline Wallis, for restitution of conjugal rights,
and for custody of the child, May Wallis, to the petitioner,
the said Samuel Joseph Wallis. And Whereas it has been
ascertained that the said Caroline Wallis has lately been seen
at Whitstable and the Neighborhood,
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN,
That the above Reward will be paid to any Person or Persons
who shall give such information as will lead to the discovery
of the whereabouts of the said Caroline Wallis, and the
recovery by the said S. J. Wallis of the custody of the said
Child.
Information to be sent to me, Richard Howe Brightman, of
Sheerness, Kent, Solicitor to the said Samuel Joseph Wallis.
This brutal advertisement in the dying hours of the nineteenth
century had the effect of rousing public attention to woman’s
enslaved condition in the marital relation, and a rapid growth of
public sentiment in recognition of a wife’s individual and distinct
personality, took place between 1886 and 1890, a period of four years.
During the latter year another English husband, one Jackson, forcibly
abducted his wife who lived apart from him, holding her prisoner with
gun and bayonet, threatening her friends with death—as was his legal
right in case of her attempted rescue. When this was known, hundreds
of letters poured into the press, upholding the right of a wife to
the control of her own person, and writ of _habeas corpus_ compelled
her production in court. Under the pressure of a public sentiment he
found it wise to conciliate, the judge decided in favor of her right
to live away from her husband, who was also restrained from farther
molesting her. The Supreme Court of Georgia recently rendered a
decision in regard to the rights of husbands as related to the wife’s
rights of property, in which the church theory of her subordination was
maintained.
The wife has been much advanced by the general tenor of
legislation of late years in respect to her property. She has
acquired a pretty independent position as to title, control
and disposition, but this relates to her own property, not
to his. The law has not yet raised her to the station of
superintendent of her husband’s contracts and probably never
will. In taking a wife a man does not put himself under an
overseer. He is not a subordinate in his own family but the
head of it. A subjugated husband is a less energetic member of
society than one who keeps his true place, yet knows how to
temper authority with affection.
During the famous Beecher trial, Hon. Wm. M. Evarts defined woman’s
legal position as one of subordination to man, declaring “that
notwithstanding changing customs and the amenities of modern life,
women were not free, but were held in the hollow of man’s hand, to
be crushed at his will.” In exemplification of this statement he
referred to a recent decision of the New York Court of Appeals, and to
the highest tribunals of England. He gave his own sanction to these
principles of law, all of which owe their foundation to church teaching
regarding woman, enforced by the peculiar forms of marriage ceremony it
has instituted.
The church everywhere strenuously opposes civil marriage. The Plenary
Council of 1884, and the celebration of the hundredth anniversary
of the Catholic hierarchy in the United States, each making church
marriage a prominent part of their discussions. Different parts of
Europe and of South America have recently been shaken by church action
in regard to it. Prussia, Belgium, Italy, France, have fallen under the
odium of the church in consequence of the civil laws declaring marriage
valid without the aid of the church. The celebrated M. Godin, founder
of the cooperative Familistere, at Guise, was married in 1886 under
civil form, to a lady member of the French League for the Rights of
Women, and thus announced the marriage to their friends:
M. Godin, manufacturer, founder of Familistere, and Madame
Marie Godin, nee Moret, his secretary and co-laborer in the
work of the Familistere, and in the propagation of social
reform, have the honor of announcing to you the purely civil
marriage which they contracted at Guise, the 14th day of July,
1886, that they might manifest to all their union, and the
common purpose of all the efforts of their lives.
Civil marriage, where the church is supreme, is followed by
excommunication and odious insults. In 1885 a remarkable instance of
this kind occurred in the city of Concepcion, Chili. A young couple
were married with consent of their parents, according to the civil law.
Their social and political prominence made the occasion conspicuous,
as it was the first wedding among the aristocracy in that country,
dispensing with the aid of a priest. The church paper edited by a
Jesuit priest thus commented:
The “Libertad” calls this “a happy union,” but it should
remember that “happy unions” of this sort have hitherto
existed only in the animal kingdom.
The bride, groom, and all their families suffered excommunication from
the church. But it is not alone the Catholic church which desires
to retain its hold upon marriage. Less than two years since certain
clergymen of the Anglican church agreed to officiate at marriage
without a fee, for the purpose of retaining control of this relation;
and so strong has been the influence of the church during the ages,
that few people look upon a ceremony under the civil law with the
same respect as one performed by a priest, even of a Protestant
denomination. The control of marriage by the church while throwing
wealth into its own coffers, has ever had a prejudicial effect upon
morals, as impediments to marriage of whatever character increase
immorality. In the city of Concepcion referred to, of 200,000
inhabitants, there are two thousand children of unknown parentage.
In 1884, statistics showed sixty-two per cent of the children to
be illegitimate. The parents of those little ones were mostly
known, being persons too poor to pay the cost of a church marriage,
twenty-five dollars, its price, being quite beyond the means of the
humbler classes. The Liberal party, in establishing civil marriage as
legitimate, authorized any magistrate to perform the ceremony, and
furnish a certificate for twenty-five cents. This assault upon the
ancient prerogative of the church depriving priests of the largest
source of their revenue, at once made a religious-political issue
of the question, the church taking strenuous action against all
connected with framing the law, and its repeal became the prominent
political issue, to aid which all the faithful were called. Using
its old weapons, the church through the Archbishop issued an edict
excommunicating the president of the republic, the members of his
cabinet and the members of congress who voted for the statute;
directing that a similar penalty should fall upon every communicant who
obeyed it and neglected to recognize the church as the only authority
competent to solemnize the marriage rite.
A correspondent of the _New York Sun_, in Chili, wrote:
This brought matters to a crisis. On the one hand, the State
declared all marriages not under the civil law illegal,
and their issue illegitimate, refusing to recognize rites
performed by the priests. On the other, those who obey the law
are excommunicated from the church, and their cohabitation
forbidden by the highest ecclesiastical authority. Thus
matrimony is practically forbidden, and those who choose to
enter it have their choice between arrest and excommunication.
A young member of Congress, a man of gifts and influence,
who stands as one of the leaders of the Liberal party, and
who voted and argued for civil marriage, is engaged to
the daughter of a wealthy merchant with proud lineage and
aristocratic connections. He is willing to accept the civil
authority, which he helped to create, and she and her father
are also willing, but her mother is a devout church woman
and cannot regard marriage as sacred without the blessing
of a priest. She favors the alliance, but insists that the
Church shall be recognized. The bishop declines to permit the
ceremony unless the young man shall go to the confessional and
retract his political record, with a vow to hereafter remain
steadfast to the church. This he refuses to do. The couple
will go to Europe or the States and there have the ceremony
performed.
This action of the Chilian republic in substituting a civil for a
religious ceremony in marriage and declaring the latter to be illegal,
is a most important step in civilization, of which freedom for woman
is such an essential factor; and its results in that country must
be left in woman’s every relation of life, promoting self-respect,
self-reliance and security in place of the degradation, self-distrust
and fear to which its church has so long condemned her.
_Chapter Seven_
+Polygamy+
It is of indisputed historic record that both the Christian Church
and the Christian State in different centuries and under a number of
differing circumstances gave their influence in favor of polygamy.
The Roman emperor, Valentinian I, in the fourth century, authorized
christians to take two wives; in the eighth century the great
Charlemagne holding power over both church and state, in his own person
practiced polygamy, having six, or according to some authorities, nine
wives. With the Reformation this system entered Protestantism. As the
first synod in North America was called for the purpose of trying a
woman for heresy, so the first synod of the reformation was assembled
for the purpose of sustaining polygamy, thus farther debasing woman
in the marital relation. The great German reformer, Luther, although
perhaps himself free from the lasciviousness of the old priesthood
was not strictly monogamic in principle. When applied to by Philip,
Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, for permission to marry a second wife while
his first wife, Margaret of Savoy, was still living, he called together
a synod of six of the principal reformers—Melancthon and Bucer among
them—who in joint consultation decided “that as the Bible nowhere
condemns polygamy, and as it has been invariably practiced by the
highest dignitaries of the church,” such marriage was legitimate, and
the required permission was given. Luther himself with both the Old and
the New Testaments in hand, saying, “I confess for my part that if a
man wishes to marry two or more wives, I cannot forbid him, nor is his
conduct repugnant to the Holy Scriptures.” Thus we have the degrading
proof that the doctrine of polygamy was brought into reformation by its
earliest promoters under assertion that it was not inconsistent with
the Bible or the principles of the Gospel. The whole course of Luther
during the reformation proved his disbelief in the equality of woman
with man; when he left the Catholic church he took with him the old
theory of her created subordination. It was his maxim that “No gown or
garment worse becomes a woman than that she will be wise,” thus giving
the weight of his influence against woman’s intellectual freedom and
independent thought. Although he opposed monastic life, the home for
woman under the reformation was governed by many of its rules.
First: She was to be under obedience to man as head of the house.
Second: She was to be constantly employed for his benefit.
Third: Her society was strictly chosen for her by this master and head.
Fourth: This “head” was a general-father confessor, to whom she was
held accountable in word and deed.
Fifth: Neither genius nor talent could free her from his control
without his consent.
Luther’s views regarding polygamy have been endorsed and sanctioned
since that period by men eminent in church and state. Lord Seldon
known as “The Light of England” in the seventeenth century, published
a work under title of “Uxor Haebraica” for the purpose of proving that
polygamy was permitted to the Hebrews. His arguments were accepted by
the church as indisputable. Bishop Burnet, who while holding the great
Protestant Episcopal See of Salisbury, so successfully opposed the plan
inaugurated by Queen Anne for the establishment of a woman’s college
in England, added to his infamy by writing a tract entitled “Is a
Plurality of Wives in any case Lawful under the Gospel?” This question
he answered in the affirmative sustaining the rightfulness of polygamy
under the Christian dispensation. Quoting the words of Christ upon
divorce, he said:
We must not by a consequence condemn a plurality of wives
since it seems not to have fallen within the scope of what our
Lord does there disapprove. Therefore I see nothing so strong
against a plurality of wives as to balance the great and
visible imminent hazards that hang over so many thousands if
it be not allowed.
The famous Puritan Poet of England, John Milton, known in the
University as “The Lady of Christ College,” writing upon “The Special
Government of Man,” says:
I have not said the marriage of one man with one woman lest I
should by implication charge the holy patriarchs and pillars
of our faith, Abraham and others who had more than one wife,
at the same time, with habitual sin; and lest I should be
forced to exclude from the sanctuary of God as spurious, the
whole offspring which sprang from them, yea, the whole of
the sons of Israel, for whom the sanctuary itself was made.
For it is said in Deuteronomy (xxii. 2,) “A bastard shall
not enter into the congregation of Jehovah even to the tenth
generation.” Either, therefore polygamy is a true marriage,
or all children born in that state are spurious, which would
include the whole race of Jacob, the twelve tribes chosen by
God. But as such an assertion would be absurd in the extreme,
not to say impious, and as it is the height of injustice as
well as an example of the most dangerous tendency in religion,
to account as sins what is not such in reality it appears to
me that so far from the question respecting the lawfulness of
polygamy being trivial, it is of the highest importance that
it should be decided. Not a trace appears of the interdiction
of polygamy throughout the whole law, not even in any of the
prophets.
The Paradise Lost of Milton is responsible among English speaking
people for many existing views that are inimical to woman, and while
his essays upon liberty have been of general beneficial influence upon
the world, his particular teachings in regard to woman have seriously
injured civilization. This man of polygamous beliefs, this tyrant
over his own household who could not gain the love of either wives—of
whom he had three—or of daughters, did much to popularize the idea
of woman’s subordination to man. “He for God; she for God in him” as
expressed by the lips of Eve and so often quoted as proclaiming the
true relationship between husband and wife in the line, “God thy law;
thou mine.”
While the record of Milton’s life shows him to have been an
intolerable domestic tyrant, yet for the wife who could not live
with him, the daughters whom social conditions and lack of education
deprived of the necessary means for their support, thus compelling
them to remain his victims looking forward to his death as their only
means of release, the world has as yet exhibited but little sympathy.
His genius, undisputed as its record must be in many directions, has
made his views of overpowering influence upon the world since his day.
But above all, more than all that created and sustained this influence
were his views as to the polygamous rights of man, his depictment of
Eve as looking upward to Adam as her God, and his general maintenance
of the teaching of the church in regard to woman. Although it has been
affirmed that after his blindness he dictated his great epic to his
daughter and a Scotch artist has painted a scene (a picture owned by
the Lenox Library), yet this is one of the myths men call history and
amuse themselves in believing. Voltaire declared history to be only a
parcel of tricks we play with the dead; and this tale of blind Milton
dictating Paradise Lost to his daughters is a trick designed to play
upon our sympathies. Old Dr. Johnson is authority for the statement
that Milton would not allow his daughters to learn to write and it is
quite certain that he did not permit them a knowledge of any language
except the English, saying “one tongue is enough for a woman.” Between
Milton and his family it is known there was tyranny upon one side,
hatred upon the other.[1]
The number of eminent Protestants both lay and clerical who have
sanctioned polygamy has not been small. In the sixteenth century a
former Capuchin monk, a general of that order who had been converted
to the Protestant faith, published a work entitled “Dialogues in favor
of Polygamy.” In the latter part of the seventeenth century, John
Lyser, another divine of the reformed church strongly defended it in
a work entitled “Polygamia Triumphatrix” or the triumphant defense
of polygamy. Rev. Dr. Madden, still another Protestant divine, in a
treatise called “Thalypthora,” maintained that Paul’s injunction that
bishops should be the husbands of one wife, signified that laymen
were permitted to marry more than one. The scholarly William Ellery
Channing could find no prohibition of polygamy in the New Testament.
In his “Remarks on the Character and Writings of John Milton” he says,
“We believe it to be an indisputable fact that although Christianity
was first preached in Asia which had been from the earliest days the
seat of polygamy, the apostles never denounced it as a crime and never
required their converts to put away all wives but one. No express
prohibition of polygamy is found in the New Testament.” That eminent
American divine, Henry Ward Beecher, the influence of whose opinions
over all classes was for many years so great as to constitute him a
veritable Protestant pope in the United States, a few years before his
death was selected to reply at a New England dinner to a toast upon the
Mormon question, the subject of polygamy then being under discussion by
Congress. He not only deprecated the use of force in its suppression,
but quoted Milton in seeming approval. We can therefore consistently
rank Mr. Beecher as among the number of Protestant divines who believed
there was scriptural warrant for this degradation of woman.