TERRIBLE AS AN ARMY WITH BANNERS--FIFTY THOUSAND WOMEN WITH THE
BALLOT--THEIR GRAND MISSION TO THE NATION--A FORESHADOWING OF THE
FUTURE OF THE WOMEN OF MORMONDOM.
"Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear
as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?"
The Daughter of Zion!
Fifty thousand daughters of Zion! Each with her banner!
Her banner, female suffrage!
It is the great battle of woman for woman's rights. The Lord of Hosts
is with her.
The rights of the women of Zion, and the rights of the women of all
nations.
Her battle-field: America first; the great world next. And the God of
Israel is in the controversy.
--
The chiefest right of woman is in the shaping and settlement of the
marriage question. The voice of civilization well enunciates this
supreme doctrine. To commit this all-sacred matter to a congress of
politicians, or to leave it to the narrow exactitude of the law-making
department, is as barbaric as any monstrous thing the imagination
can conceive. Not ruder was it in the warlike founders of Rome to
seize the virgins as spoil, and make them wives to accomplish their
empire-founding ambitions, than for a congress of American legislators
to seize and prostitute the marriage question to their own political
ends and popularity.
Can there be any doubt that the men of Washington have seized polygamy
for their own ends? And are these men of the parliamentary Sodom of
modern times the proper persons to decide the marriage question?
Will woman allow her sanctuary to be thus invaded and her supremest
subject thus defiled?
If there is anything divine in human affairs it is marriage, or the
relations between man and woman. Here love, not congressional law, must
be the arbitrator. Here woman, not man, must give consent. It is the
divine law of nature, illustrated in all civilized examples. What is
not thus is barbaric.
Woman is chief in the consents of marriage. It is her right, under God
her father and God her mother, to say to society what shall be the
relations between man and woman--hers, in plain fact, to decide the
marriage question.
The women of Mormondom have thus far decided on the marriage order of
the patriarchs of Israel; for they have the Israelitish genius and
conception of the object of man's creation. In the everlasting covenant
of marriage they have considered and honored their God-father and
God-mother.
In turn, the Gentile woman must decide the marriage question for
herself. The law of God and nature is the same to her. The question
still is the woman's. She can decide with or without God, as seemeth
her best; but the Mormon woman has decided upon the experience and
righteousness of her Heavenly Father and her Heavenly Mother.
A certain manifest destiny has made the marriage problem the supreme
of Mormonism. How suggestive, in this view, is the fact that Congress,
by special legislation, has made polygamy the very alpha and omega
of the Mormon problem. The Mormon women, therefore, must perforce of
circumstances, by their faith and action greatly influence the future
destiny of Mormonism.
The enfranchisement of the Mormon women was suggested by the country,
to give them the power to rule their own fate and to choose according
to their own free will. Nothing but their free will can now prevail.
Their Legislature enfranchised them--gave them the power absolute, not
only to determine their own lives, but to hold the very destiny of Utah.
If it was Brigham Young who gave to them that unparalleled power, no
matter what should be declared by the enemy as his motive, then has
he done more for woman than any man living. But Mormon apostles and
representatives executed this grand charter of woman's rights; and
George Q. Cannon's noble declaration at the time--that the charter
of female suffrage ought to be extended to the entire republic--is
deserving the acclamations of the women of America.
New civilizations are the chiefest boons of humanity. Never was a new
civilization more needed than now, for in the last century the world
has rushed over the track-way of a thousand years. A train dashing
forward at the rate of one hundred miles an hour would not be in
more danger than will soon be society, unless a safety-valve--a new
civilization--is opened.
This is the woman's age. The universal voice of society proclaims
the fact. Woman must, therefore, lay the corner-stone of the new
civilization. Her arm will be most potent in rearing the glorious
structure of the future. Man cannot prevent it, for in it is a divine
intending.
There is a providence in the very attitude of the Mormon women. The
prophesy is distinctly pronounced in the whole history of their lives,
that they shall be apostolic to the age.
A new apostleship is ever innovative. The Mormon women have established
an astounding innovation in polygamy. It has been infinitely offensive.
So much the better! For it has made a great noise in the world, and has
shaken the old and rotten institutions of Christendom. That shaking was
not only inevitable, but necessary, before a new civilization.
--
We have seen the daughters of Zion, with her sons, establish their
institutions upon the foundation of new revelation. We have seen them
rearing temples to the august name of the God of Israel. We have seen
their matchless faith, their devotion, their heroism.
We have seen them, because of their fidelity to their religion, driven
from city to city and from State to State.
We have seen them in the awful hour of martyrdom.
We have seen them in the exodus of modern Israel from Gentile
civilization, following their Moses.
The daughters of Zion were going up to the chambers of the mountains,
to hide from the oppressor till the day of their strength.
Their banners were then their pioneer whips. Their banner now is female
suffrage--on it inscribed, "Woman's Rights! in the name of the God of
Israel!"
Fifty thousand of the daughters of Zion! Each with her banner!
We have seen them on the cross, with their crown of thorns. We _shall_
see them on their throne, with their crown of glory. In this is divine
and everlasting justice.
They have sown in tears they shall reap in gladness.
With their pioneer whips in their hands they came up to the chambers of
refuge, as exiles.
With the scepter of woman's rights, they will go down as apostles to
evangelize the nation.
"Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear
as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?"
The Daughter of Zion!
End of Project Gutenberg's The Women of Mormondom, by Edward W. Tullidge