May 27th, 1859, an enthusiastic Convention was held in Mercantile

Hall. Long before the hour announced the aisles, ante-rooms,, and

lobbies were crowded. At three o'clock Mrs. Caroline H. Dall called

the meeting to order. Mrs. Caroline M. Severance was chosen President.

On taking the chair, she said:

This movement enrolls itself among the efforts of the age, and

the anniversaries of the week as the most radical, and yet in the

best sense the most conservative of them all. It bears the same

relation, to all the charities of the day, which strive nobly to

serve woman, that the Anti-Slavery movement bears to all

superficial palliations of slavery. Like that, it goes beneath

effects, and seeks to remove causes. After showing in a very

lucid manner the difference in the family institution, when the

mother is ignorant and enslaved, and when an educated,

harmoniously developed equal, she closed by saying: It will be

seen then, that instead of confounding the philosophy of the new

movement with theories that claim unlimited indulgence for

appetite or passion, the world should recognize in this the only

radical cure.... No statement could better define this movement

than Tennyson's beautiful stanzas:

The woman's cause is man's; they sink or rise

Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free,

If she be small, slight-natured, miserable,

How shall man grow?

The woman is not undeveloped man,

But diverse.

Yet in the long years, _liker_ must they grow;

The man be more of woman, she of man:

_He_ gain in sweetness and in moral height--

_She_ mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,

Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind.

And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time

Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers,

Self-reverent each, and reverencing each;

Distinct in individualities,

But like each other, as are those who love.

Then comes the statelier Eden back to man;

Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm;

Then springs the crowning race of humankind.

And we who are privileged with the poet to foresee this better

Eden; we who have

The Future grand and great,--

The safe appeal of Truth to Time,--

adopting the victorious cry of the Crusaders, "God wills it!" may

listen to hear above the present din and discord, the stern

mandate of His laws, bidding the world "Onward! onward!" and

catch the rhythmical reply of all its movements, "We advance."

Mrs. Severance then read an appropriate poem from the pen of Mrs.

Sarah Nowell, in which she eulogizes Florence Nightingale, Rosa

Bonheur, Harriet Hosmer, and asserts the equality of man and woman in

the creation.

Dr. Harriot K. Hunt made some pointed remarks on the education of

woman.

The Rev. James Freeman Clarke was then introduced. He said:

I understand the cause advocated on this platform to be an

unpopular one. It is a feeble cause, a misunderstood cause, a

misrepresented cause. Hence, it seems to me, if any one is asked

to say anything in behalf of it, and if he really believes it is

a good cause, he should speak; and so I have come.

Certainly any interest which concerns one-half the human race is

an important one. Every man, no matter how stern, hard, and

unrelenting he may have become in the bitter strife and struggle

of the world, every man was once a little infant, cradled on a

mother's knee, and taking his life from the sweet fountains of

her love. He was a little child, watched by her tender, careful

eye, and so secured from ill. He was a little, inquiring boy,

with a boundless appetite for information, which only his mother

could give. At her knee he found his primary school: it is where

we have all found it. He had his sisters--the companions of his

childhood; he had the little girls, who were to him the ideals of

some wonderful goodness and excellence, some strange grace and

beauty, though he could not tell what it was. With these

antecedents no man on the face of the round world can refuse to

hear woman, when she comes earnestly, but quietly saying, "We are

not where we ought to be;" "We do not have what we ought to

have." I think their demands are reasonable, all of them. What

are they? Occupation, education, and the highest sphere of work

of which they are capable. These I understand to be the three

demands.

1st. Occupation. When your child steals on a busy hour and asks

for "something to do," you feel ashamed that you have nothing for

him--that you can not give him the natural occupation which shall

develop all the faculties of mind and body. Is it not a

reasonable request which women make, when they ask for something

to do? They want to be useful in the world. They ask permission

to support themselves and those who are dear to them. What can

they do now? They can go into factories, a few of them; a few

more can be servants in your homes; they can cook your dinner if

they have been taught how. If they are women of genius, they can

take the pen and write; but how few are there in this world,

either men or women of genius. If they have extraordinary

business talent, they can keep a boarding-house. If they have

some education they can keep school. After this, there is the

point of the needle upon which they may be precipitated--and

nothing else.

We see the gloom that must fall on them, on their children, and

on all they love, when the male protector is taken away. This

demand for more varied occupation is not a new one. Many years

ago, one of the wisest and truest men of this country, a

philanthropist and reformer--Matthew Carey, of

Philadelphia--labored to impress upon the people the fact, that

what was wanted for the elevation of woman was to open to her new

avenues of business. A very sad book was written a few months

ago, "Dr. Sanger's work on Prostitution." It is a very dreadful

book; not calculated, I think, to excite any prurient feeling in

any one. In that book he says:

First, that the majority of the prostitutes of this country are

mere children, between the ages of fifteen and twenty. That the

lives of these poor, wretched, degraded creatures, last on an

average about four years. Now, when we hear of slaves used up in

six years on a sugar plantation, we think it horrible; but here

are these poor girls killed in a more dreadful way, in a shorter

time. And he adds that the principal cause of their prostitution

is that they have no occupation by which they can support

themselves. Without support, without resources, they struggle for

a while and then are thrown under the feet of the trampling city.

Give them occupation and they will take care of themselves: they

will rise out of the mire of pollution, out of this filth; for

it is not in the nature of woman to remain there. Give them at

least a chance; open wide every door; and whenever they are able

to get a living by their head or their hands in an honest way,

let them do it. This is the first claim; and it seems to me that

no one can reasonably object to it.

2d. Education. You say that public schools are open to girls as

well as boys. I know that, but what is it that educates? The

school has but little to do with it. When the boy goes there you

say, "Go there, work with a will, and fit yourself for an

occupation whereby you may earn your bread." But you say to the

girls, "Go to school, get your education, and then come home, sit

still, and do nothing." We must give them every chance to fit

themselves for new spheres of duty. If a woman wants to study

medicine, let her study it; if she wants to study divinity, let

her study it; if she wants to study anything, let her have the

opportunity. If she finds faculties within her, let them have a

chance to expand. That is the second demand--the whole of it.

And the third claim is for a Sphere of Influence. "That is not

it," do you say? "You want to take woman _out_ of her sphere."

Not at all, we wish to give her a sphere, not to take her from

any place she likes to fill; to give her a chance to exercise

those wonderful, those divine faculties that God has wrapped in

the feminine mind, in the woman's heart.

As regards voting, why should not women go to the polls? You

think it a very strange desire, I know; but we have thought many

things stranger which seem quite natural now. One need not live

long to find strange things grow common. Why not vote, then? Is

it because they have not as much power to understand what is true

and right as man? If you go to the polls, and see the style of

men who meet there voting, can you come away, and tell us that

the women you meet are not as able to decide what is right as

those men? "Ah, it will brush off every feminine grace, if woman

goes to the polls." Why? "Because she must meet rude men there."

Very well, so she must meet them in the street, and they do not

hurt her; nor will I believe that there is not sufficient

inventive power in the Yankee intellect to overcome this

difficulty. I can conceive of a broader and more generous

activity in politics. I can see her drawing out all the harshness

and bitterness when she goes to the polls. These three points are

all I intended to touch; and I will give way to those who are to

follow.

Mrs. CAROLINE H. DALL was then introduced. She said: I have

observed that all public orators labor under some embarrassment

when they rise to speak. Not to be behind the dignity of my

position, I labor under a _double_ embarrassment.

The first is the "embarras des richesses." There are so many

topics to touch, so many facts to relate, that it is impossible

to cover them in one half hour, and the second--perhaps you will

think that an embarrassment of riches also; for it is an

embarrassment of Clarke and Phillips. The orator needs no common

courage who follows the one and precedes the other. It is my duty

to speak of the progress of the cause; it is impossible to keep

pace with it. You may work day and night, but this thought of God

outstrips you, working hourly through the life of man. Yet we

must often feel discouraged. Our war is not without; our work

follows us into the heart of the family. We must sustain

ourselves in that dear circle against our nearest friends;

against the all-pervading law, "Thus far shalt thou come, and no

farther."

What have we gained since 1855? Many things, so important, that

they can not be worthily treated here. I have often mentioned in

my lectures, that in his first report to the French Government,

Neckar gave the credit of his retrenchments to his thrifty,

order-loving wife. Until this year, that acknowledgment stood

alone in history. But now John Stuart Mill, the great philosopher

and political economist of England, dedicates his "Essay on

Liberty" to the memory of his beloved wife, who has been the

_inspiration of all, and the author of much_ that was best in his

writings for many years past. Still farther, in a pamphlet on

"English Political Reform," treating of the extension of the

suffrage, he has gone so far as to recommend that all

householders, without distinction of sex, be adopted into the

constituency, upon proving to the registrar's officer that they

have a certain income--say fifty pounds--and "that they can read,

write, and calculate."

A great step was taken also in the establishment of the

Institution for the Advancement of Social Science. The sexes are

equal before it. It has five departments. 1. Jurisprudence, or

Law Reform; 2. Education; 3. Punishment and Reformation; 4.

Public Health; 5. Social Economy.

The first meeting at Liverpool considered the woman's question;

and, while it was debated, Mary Carpenter sat upon the platform,

or lifted her voice side by side with Brougham, Lord John

Russell, and Stanley. At the second meeting (last October), Lord

John Russell was in the chair. The Lord Chancellor of Ireland

presided over Law Reform; the Right Hon. W. F. Cooper, over the

department of Education; the Earl of Carlyle--personally known to

many on this platform--over that which concerns the Reformation

of Criminals; the Earl of Shaftesbury over Public Health; and

Conolly and Charles Kingsley and Tom Taylor and Rawlinson bore

witness side by side with Florence Nightingale. Sir James Stephen

presided over Social Economy. Isa Craig, the Burns poetess, is

one of its Secretaries.

Ten communications were read at this session by women; among

them, Florence Nightingale, Mary Carpenter, Isa Craig, Louisa

Twining, and Mrs. Fison. Four were on Popular Education, two upon

Punishment and Reformation, three on the Public Health in the

Army and elsewhere, one upon Social Economy. Still another proof

of progress may be seen in the examination of Florence

Nightingale by the Sanitary Commission.

[In the establishment of _The Englishwoman's Journal_ with an

honorable corps of writers, in the passage of the new Divorce

Bill, of the Married Woman's Property Bill in Canada, the cause

had gained much; on each of which Mrs. Dall spoke at some length,

especially this Property Bill, which some foolish member had

shorn of its most precious clause--that which secured her

earnings to the working-woman, lest, by tempting her to labor, it

should create a divided interest in the family].

Do you ask me why I have dwelt on this Institution for Social

Science, cataloguing the noble names that do it honor? To

strengthen the timorous hearts at the West End; to suggest to

them that a coronet of God's own giving may possibly rest as

secure as one of gold and jewels in the United Kingdom. I wish to

draw your attention to the social distinction of the men upon

that platform. No real nobleness will be imperiled by impartial

listening to our plea. Would you rest secure in our respect,

first feel secure in your own. If ten Beacon Street ladies would

go to work, and take pay for their labor, it would do more good

than all the speeches that were ever made, all the conventions

that were ever held. I honor women who act. That is the reason

that I greet so gladly girls like Harriet Hosmer, Louisa Lander,

and Margurèite Foley. Whatever they do, or do not do, for Art,

they do a great deal for the cause of Labor. I do not believe any

one in this room has any idea of the avenues that are open to

women already. Let me read you some of the results of the last

census of the United Kingdom. Talk of women not being able to

work! Women have been doing hard work ever since the world began.

You will see by this that they are doing as much as men now.

[Applause].

In 1841, there were engaged in agriculture, 66,329 women. In

1851, 128,418; nearly double the number. Of these, there are

64,000 dairy-women; women who lift enormous tubs, turn heavy

cheeses, slap butter by the hundred weight. Then come

market-gardeners, bee-mistresses, florists, flax producers and

beaters, haymakers, reapers, and hop-pickers.

In natural connection with the soil, we find seven thousand women

in the mining interest; not harnessed on all-fours to creep

through the shafts, but dressers of ore, and washers and

strainers of clay for the potteries. Next largest to the

agricultural is one not to be exactly calculated--the fishing

interest. The Pilchard fishery employs some thousands of women.

The Jersey oyster fishery alone employs one thousand. Then follow

the herring, cod, whale, and lobster fisheries.

Apart from the Christie Johnstones--the aristocrats of the

trade--the sea nurtures an heroic class like Grace Darling, who

stand aghast when society rewards a deed of humanity, and cry out

in expostulation, "Why, every girl on the coast would have done

as I did!" Then follow the kelp-burners, netters, and bathers.

The netters make the fisherman's nets; the bathers manage the

machines at the watering-places.

And, before quitting this subject, I should like to allude to the

French fishwomen; partly as a matter of curiosity, partly to

prove that women know how to labor. In the reign of Henry IV.,

there existed in Paris a privileged monopoly called the United

Corporation of Fishmongers and Herringers. In the reign of Louis

XIV. this corporation had managed so badly as to become

insolvent. The women who had hawked and vended fish took up the

business, and managed so well as to become very soon a political

power. They became rich, and their children married into good

families. You will remember the atrocities generally ascribed to

them in the first revolution. It is now known that these were

committed by ruffians disguised in their dress.

To return: there are in the United Kingdom 200,000 female

servants. Separate from these, brewers, custom-house searchers,

matrons of jails, lighthouse-keepers, pew-openers.

I have no time to question; but should not a Christian community

offer womanly ministrations to its imprisoned women? Oh, that

some brave heart, in a strong body, might go on our behalf to the

city jail and Charlestown! Pew-opening has never been a trade in

America; but, as there are signs that it may become so in this

democratic community, I would advise our women to keep an eye to

that. [Laughter].

There are in the United Kingdom 500,000 business women, beer-shop

keepers, butcher-wives, milk-women, hack-owners, and shoemakers.

As one item of this list, consider 26,000 butcher-wives--women

who do not merely preside over a business, but buy stock, put

down meat, drive a cart even if needed--butchers to all intents

and purposes. There are 29,000 shop-keepers, but only 1,742

shop-women.

Telegraph reporters are increasing rapidly. Their speed and

accuracy are much praised. From the Bright Festival, at

Manchester, a young woman reported, at the rate of twenty-nine

words a minute, six whole columns, with hardly a mistake, though

the whole matter was political, such as she was supposed not to

understand!

Phonographic reporters also. A year ago there were but three

female phonographers in America; and two of these did not get

their bread by the work. Now hundreds are qualifying themselves,

all over the land; and two young girls, not out of their teens,

are at this moment reporting my words. [Cheers].

I hope the phonographers will take that clapping to themselves. I

wish you would make it heartier. [Repeated cheers]. Now let us

turn to the American census. I must touch it lightly. Of factory

operatives, I will only say, that, in 1845, there were 55,828 men

and 75,710 women engaged in textile manufactures. You will be

surprised at the preponderance of women: it seems to be as great

in other countries. Then follow makers of gloves, makers of glue,

workers in gold and silver leaf, hair-weavers, hat and cap

makers, hose-weavers, workers in India rubber, lamp-makers,

laundresses, leechers, milliners, morocco-workers, nurses,

paper-hangers, physicians, picklers and preservers, saddlers and

harness-makers, shoemakers, soda-room keepers, snuff and

cigar-makers, stock and suspender-makers, truss-makers, typers

and stereotypers, umbrella-makers, upholsterers, card-makers.

Cards were invented in 1361. In less than seventy years the

German manufacture was in the hands of women--Elizabeth and

Margaret, at Nuremberg. Then grinders of watch crystals, 7,000

women in all.

My own observation adds to this list phonographers, house and

sign painters, fruit-hawkers, button-makers, tobacco-packers,

paper-box makers, embroiderers, and fur-sewers.

Perhaps I should say haymakers and reapers; since, for three or

four years, bands of girls have been so employed in Ohio, at

sixty-two and a half cents a day.

In New Haven, seven women work with seventy men in a clock

factory, at half wages. If the proprietor answered honestly, when

asked why he employed them, he would say, "To save money;" but he

does answer, "To help our cause."

In Waltham, a watch factory has been established, whose

statistics I shall use elsewhere.

In Winchester, Va., a father has lately taken a daughter into

partnership; and the firm is "J. Wysong and Daughter."

[Applause]. Is it not a shame it should happen first in a slave

State?

Then come registers of deeds and postmistresses. We all know that

the rural post-office is chiefly in the hands of irresponsible

women. Petty politicians obtain the office, take the money, and

leave wives and sisters to do the work.

[Here Mrs. Dall read an interesting letter from a female

machinist in Delaware; but, as it will be published in another

connection, it is here withheld].

Is it easy for women to break the way into new avenues? You know

it is not.

[Here Mrs. Dall referred to the opposition shown to the

employment of women in watch-making, by Mr. Bennett, in London;

to the school at Marlborough House; to the employment of women in

printing-offices--substantiating her statements by dates and

names].

When I first heard that women were employed in Staffordshire to

paint pottery and china--which they do with far more taste than

men--I heard, also, that the jealousy of the men refused to allow

them the customary hand-rest, and so kept down their wages. I

refused to believe anything so contemptible. [Applause]. Now the

Edinburgh Review confirms the story. Thank God! that could never

happen in this country. With us, Labor can not dictate to

Capital.

But the great evils which lie at the foundation of depressed

wages are:

1st. That want of respect for labor which prevents ladies from

engaging in it.

2d. That want of respect for women which prevents men from

valuing properly the work they do.

Women themselves must change these facts.

[Mrs. Dall here read some letters to show that wages were at a

starving-point in the cities of America as well as in Europe].

I am tired of the folly of the political economist, constantly

crying that wages can never rise till the laborers are fewer. You

have heard of the old law in hydraulics, that water will always

rise to the level of its source; but, if by a forcing-pump, you

raise it a thousand feet above, or by some huge syphon drop it a

thousand feet below, does that law hold? Very well, the

artificial restrictions of society are such a forcing-pump--are

such a syphon. Make woman equal before the law with man, and

wages will adjust themselves.

But what is the present remedy? A very easy one--for employers to

adopt the cash system, and be content with rational profits. In

my correspondence during the past year, master-tailors tell me

that they pay from eight cents to fifty cents a day for the

making of pantaloons, including the heaviest doeskins. Do you

suppose they would dare to tell me how they charge that work on

their slowly-paying customer's bills? Not they. The eight cents

swells to thirty, the fifty to a dollar or a dollar twenty-five.

Put an end to this, and master-tailors would no longer vault

into Beacon Street over prostrate women's souls; but neither

would women be driven to the streets for bread.

If I had time, I would show you, women, how much depends upon

yourselves. As it is, we may say with the heroine of "Adam Bede,"

which you have doubtless all been reading:

"I'm not for denying that the women are foolish. God Almighty

made 'em to match the men!" [Laughter].

Do you laugh? It is but a step from the ridiculous to the

sublime; and Goethe, who knew women well, was of the same mind

when he wrote:

"Wilt thou dare to blame the woman for her seeming sudden

changes--

Swaying east and swaying westward, as the breezes shake the

tree?

Fool! thy selfish thought misguides thee. Find the man that

never ranges.

Woman wavers but to seek him. Is not, then, the fault in thee?"

Mrs. Dall was followed by the Rev. JOHN T. SARGENT, who said:

MADAM PRESIDENT AND FRIENDS:--I appreciate the honor of an

invitation to this platform, but my words must be few; first,

because the call comes to me within a few hours, and amid the

cares and responsibilities of the chair on another platform, and

I had no time for preconcerted forms of address; second, because

the general principles of this organization, and the subject

matters for discussion, are so well sifted and disposed of by

previous speakers, that nothing new remains for me to say; and,

third, because we are all waiting for the words of one [Wendell

Phillips] whose sympathies are never wanting in any cause of

truth and justice, whose versatile eloquence never hesitates on

any platform where he waves aloft "the sword of the spirit" in

behalf of human rights. [Applause].

I may truly say, that this is my maiden speech in behalf of

maidens and others [laughter]; and, if it amount to nothing else,

I may say, as did my friend Clarke, I feel bound, at least, to

take my stand, and show my sympathy for the noble cause. I come

here under the pressure of an obligation to testify in behalf of

an interest truly Christian, and one of the greatest that can

engage the reason or the conscience of a community. I would that

you had upon this platform and every other, more women speakers

for the upholding and consummation of every righteous cause! And

so far am I from being frightened to death or embarrassed, as our

friend Mrs. Dall has intimated any one might be, at the prospect

of either following James Freeman Clarke or preceding Wendell

Phillips, I am much more concerned by the contrast of my speech

with such speakers as your President, or Dr. Hunt, or Mrs. Dall

herself.

There is one feature of the general question of "Woman's Rights"

on which I would say a single word; and it may constitute the

specialty of my address, so far as it has any. I mean the bearing

of social inequalities particularly upon the poor--the poor of a

city--the poor women of a city.

It may not be unknown to most of you, that for nearly two years

past, in connection with the so-called "Boston Provident

Association," I have been engaged in an agency wherein the

peculiar trials of this class have been revealed to me as never

before.

Hundreds of poor, desolate, forsaken women, especially in the

winter months, have come to that office with the same pitiable

tale of poverty, desertion, and tyranny on the part of their

worthless and drunken husbands, who had gone off to California,

Kansas, or the West, taking away from their wives and children

every possible means of support, and leaving them the pauper

dependents on a public charity. Now, if this be not the denial of

Woman's Rights, I know not what is. Had we time, I might fill the

hour with a journal of statistics in painful illustration of

these facts. Now, I say, that a system of society which can

tolerate such a state of things, and, by sufferance even, allow

such men to wrench away the plain rights of their wives and

families, needs reforming.

But let us look a little higher in the social scale, to the

rights and claims of a class of women not so dependent--a class

who, by their education and culture, are competent to fill, or

who may be filling, the position of clerks, secretaries, or

assistant agents. How inadequate and insufficient, as a general

thing, is the compensation they receive!

There was associated with me in the agency and office to which I

have referred, as office-clerk and coadjutor, among others, an

intelligent and very worthy young woman, whose term of service

there has been coeval and coincident with the Association itself,

even through the whole seven years or more; and there she still

survives, through all the vicissitudes of the General Agency by

death or otherwise, with a fidelity of service worthy of more

liberal compensation; for she receives, even now, for an amount

of service equal to that of any other in the office, only about

one-third the salary paid to a male occupant of the same sphere!

Look next at the professional sphere of women, properly so

called; and who shall deny her right and claim to that position?

A young brother clergyman came to my office one day, wanting his

pulpit supplied; and, in the course of conversation, asked very

earnestly, "How would it do to invite a woman-preacher into my

pulpit?" "Do!" said I (giving him the names of Mrs. Dall, Dr.

Hunt, etc., as the most accessible) "of course it'll do." And all

I have to say is, if I ever resume again the charge of a pulpit

myself, and either of those preachers want an exchange, I shall

be honored in the privilege of so exchanging.

Well, my young friend, the brother clergyman referred to, whom I

am glad to see in this audience, went and did according to my

suggestion; and, by the professional service of Mrs. Dall in his

pulpit, more than once, I think, ministered no little edification

to his people. And, in this connection, let me say: If the

argument against woman's preaching be, "Oh! it looks so awkward

and singular to see a woman with a gown on in the pulpit" (for

that's the whole gist of it), why, then, the same logic might as

well disrobe the male priesthood of their silken paraphernalia,

cassock and bands.

But there are other and better words in waiting, and I yield the

floor.

CHARLES G. AMES expressed his gratitude at being permitted to

occupy this platform, and identify himself with the cause of

those noblest of living women who had dared the world's

scorn--had dared to stand alone on the ground of their moral

convictions. He thought Rev. Mr. Clarke had spoken but half the

truth in saying, "Half the human race are concerned in the

Woman's Rights movement."

If the Mohammedan doctrine (that woman has no soul) be true,

then the opponents of this cause are justifiable. But concede

that she has a rational soul, and you concede the equality of her

rights. Concede that she is capable of being a Christian, and you

concede that she has a right to help do the Christian's work; and

the Christian's work includes all forms of noble activity, as

well as the duty of self-development.

But some people are afraid of agitation. You remember the story

of the rustic, who fainted away in the car when taking his first

railroad ride, and gasped out, on coming to himself, "Has the

thing lit?" He belonged, probably, to that large class of people

who go into hysterics every time the world begins to move, and

who are never relieved from their terror till quiet is restored.

Great alarm prevails lest this agitation should breed a fatal

quarrel between man and woman; as though there could be a want of

harmony, a collision of rights, between the sexes. Sad visions

are conjured up before us of family feuds, mutual hair-pullings,

and a general wreck of all domestic bliss. Certainly, there are

difficulties about settling some domestic questions. Marriage is

a partnership between two; no third person to give the casting

vote. Then they must "take turns"; the wife yielding to the

husband in those cases where he is best qualified to judge, and

the husband yielding to the wife in those matters which most

concern her, or concerning which she can best judge. Yet man is

the senior partner of the firm: his name comes first. Few women

would be pleased to see the firm styled in print as "Mrs.

So-and-So and Husband."

Woman wants more self-reliance. Has she not always been taught

that it is very proper to faint at the sight of toads and spiders

and fresh blood, and whenever a gentleman pops the question? Has

she not always been taught that man was the strong, towering oak,

and she the graceful, clinging vine, sure to collapse like an

empty bag whenever his mighty support was withdrawn? Until all

this folly is unlearned, how can she be self-dependent and truly

womanly?

Women are afraid to claim their rights; and not timidity only,

but laziness--the love of ease--keeps them back from the great

duty of self-assertion. True, it is a good deal like work to

summon up the soul to such a conflict with an opposing and

corrupt public opinion. But woman must do that work for herself,

or it will never be done.

Woman's _rights_ we talk of. There is a grandeur about these

great questions of right, which makes them the glory of our age;

and it is the shame of our age, that right and rights in every

form get so generally sneered at. What use have I for my

conscience, what remains of my noble manhood, if, when half the

human race complain that I am doing them a wrong, I only reply

with a scoff? A man without a conscience to make him quick and

sensitive to right and duty, is neither fit for heaven nor for

hell. He is an outsider, a monster!

Conservatism says, "Let the world be as it is"; but Christianity

says, "Make it what it should be." No man need call himself a

Christian, who admits that a wrong exists, and yet wishes it to

continue, or is indifferent to its removal. Let us

"Strike for that which ought to be,

And God will bless the blows."

[Illustration: PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS (with autograph).]

The speaker spoke of the abuse and injustice done to the Bible by

those who make it the shelter and apologist for all the wrong,

vileness, and sneaking meanness that the world bears up; and

closed with a testimony against the cowardice of those

time-serving ministers who allow their manhood to be suffocated

by a white cravat, and who never publicly take sides with what

they see to be a good cause, until "popular noises" indicate that

the time has come for speaking out their opinions.

The President then introduced to the audience WENDELL PHILLIPS,

Esq., of Boston:

MADAM PRESIDENT:--I am exceedingly happy to see that this

question calls together so large an audience; and perhaps that

circumstance will make me take exception to some representations

of the previous speakers as to the unpopularity of this movement.

The gentleman who occupied this place before me thought that

perhaps he might count the numbers of those that occupied this

platform as the real advocates of that question. Oh, no! The

number of those who sympathize with us must not be counted so.

Our idea penetrates the whole life of the people. The shifting

hues of public opinion show like the colors on a dove's neck; you

can not tell where one ends, or the other begins. [Cheers].

Everybody that holds to raising human beings above the popular

ideas, and not caring for artificial distinctions, is on our

side; I think I can show my friend that. Whenever a new reform is

started, men seem to think that the world is going to take at

once a great stride. The world never takes strides. The moral

world is exactly like the natural. The sun comes up minute by

minute, ray by ray, till the twilight deepens into dawn, and dawn

spreads into noon. So it is with this question. Those who look at

our little island of time do not see it; but, a hundred years

later, everybody will recognize it.

No one need be at all afraid; there is no disruption, no breaking

away from old anchorage--not at all. In the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries, there were two movements--first, the

peasants in the town were striving to fortify each man his own

house--to set up the towns against the kings; then, in the

colleges, the great philosophers were striving each to fortify

his own soul to make a revolution against Rome. The peasants

branded the collegians as "infidels," and the collegians showed

the peasants to be "traitors." Cordially they hated each other;

blindly they went down to their graves, thinking they had been

fighting each other; but, under the providence of God, they were

entwined in the same movement. Now, if I could throw you back

to-day into the civilization of Greece and Rome, I could show you

the fact that our question is two thousand years old. [Cheers.]

In the truest sense, it did not begin in 1848, as my friend Dr.

Hunt stated; it began centuries ago. Did you ever hear of the old

man who went to the doctor, and asked him to teach him to speak

prose? "Why, my dear fellow," was the reply, "you have been

speaking prose all your life." But he did not know it. So with

some people in regard to the movement for Woman's Rights.

Many think the steps taken since 1850 are shaking this land with

a new infidelity. Now, this infidelity is a good deal older than

the New Testament. When man began his pilgrimage from the cradle

of Asia, woman was not allowed to speak before a court of

justice. To kill a woman was just as great a sin as to kill a

cow, and no greater. To sell an unlicensed herb in the city of

Calcutta, was exactly the same crime as to kill a woman. She did

not belong to the human race. Come down thousands of years, and

the civilization of Greece said, "Woman has not got enough of

truth in her to be trusted in the court of justice;" and, if her

husband wants to give her to a brother or friend, he can take her

to their door, and say, "Here, I give you this." And so it

continues till you reach the feudal ages; when woman, though she

might be queen or duchess, was often not competent to testify in

a court of justice. She had not soul enough, men believed, to

know a truth from a lie. That is the code of the feudal system.

But all at once the world has waked up, and thinks a man is not a

man because he has a pound of muscle, or because he has a

stalwart arm; but because he has thoughts, ideas, purposes: he

can commit crime, and he is capable of virtue.

No man is born in a day. A baby is always six months old before

he is twenty-one. Our fathers, who first reasoned that God made

all men equal, said: "You sha'n't hang a man until you have asked

him if he consents to the law." Some meddlesome fanatic, engaged

in setting up type, conceived the idea, that he need not pay his

tax till he was represented before the law: then why should woman

do so? Now, I ask, what possible reason is there that woman, as a

mother, as a wife, as a laborer, as a capitalist, as an artist,

as a citizen, should be subjected to any laws except such as

govern man? What moral reason is there for this, under the

American idea? Does not the same interest, the same strong tie,

bind the mother to her children, that bind the father? Has she

not the same capacity to teach them that the father has? and

often more? Now, the law says: "If the father be living, the

mother is nothing; but, if the father be dead, the mother is

everything." Did she inherit from her husband his great

intellect? If she did not, what is the common sense of such a

statute? The mother has the same rights, in regard to her

children, that the father has: there should be no distinction.

Yours is not a new reform. The gentleman who occupied the

platform a few moments ago gave the common representation of this

cause: "If a husband doesn't do about right, his wife will pull

his hair; and, if you let her have her way, she may vote the

Democratic ticket, and he the Republican; and _vice versa_."

Well, now, my dear friend, suppose it were just so; it is too

late to complain. That point has long been settled; if you will

read history a little, you will see it was settled against you.

In the time of Luther, it was a question: "Can a woman choose her

own creed?" The feudal ages said: "No; she believes as her

husband believes, of course." But the reformers said: "She ought

to think for herself; her husband is not her God." "But," it was

objected, "should there be difference of opinion between man and

wife, the husband believing one creed and the wife another, there

would be continual discord." But the reply was: "God settled

that; God has settled it that every responsible conscience should

have a right to his own creed." And Christendom said: "Amen." The

reformers of Europe, to this day, have allowed freedom of

opinion; and who says that the experience of three centuries has

found the husband and wife grappling each other's throats on

religious differences? It would be Papal and absurd to deny woman

her religious rights. Then why should she not be allowed to

choose her party?

We claim the precedents in this matter. It was arranged and

agreed upon, in the reform of Europe, that women should have the

right to choose their religious creeds. I say, therefore, this is

not a new cause; it is an old one. It is as old as the American

idea. We are individuals by virtue of our brains, not by virtue

of our muscles. "Why do you women meddle in politics?" asked

Napoleon of De Staël. "Sire, so long as you will hang us, we must

ask the reason," was the answer. The whole political philosophy

of the subject is in that. The instant you say, "Woman is not

competent to go to the ballot-box," I reply: "She is not

competent to go to the gallows or the State prison. If she is

competent to go to the State prison, then she is competent to go

to the ballot-box, and tell how thieves should be punished."

[Applause].

Man is a man because he thinks. Woman has already begun to think.

She has touched literature with the wand of her enchantment, and

it rises to her level, until woman becomes an author as well as

reader. And what is the result? We do not have to expurgate the

literature of the nineteenth century before placing it in the

hands of youth. Those who write for the lower level sink down to

dwell with their kind.

Mr. Sargent and Mr. Clarke expatiated on the wholesome influence

of the side-by-side progress of the sexes. There are no women

more deserving of your honest approbation than those who dare to

work singly for the elevation of their sex....

Woman's Rights and Negro Rights! What rights have either women or

negroes that we have any reason to respect? The world says:

"None!"

There has lately been a petition carried into the British

Parliament, asking--for what? It asks that the laws of marriage

and divorce shall be brought into conformity with the creed and

civilization of Great Britain in the middle of the nineteenth

century. The state of British law, on the bill of divorce, was a

disgrace to the British statute-book. Whose was the intellect and

whose the heart to point out, and who had the courage to look in

the face of British wealth and conservatism, and claim that the

law of divorce was a disgrace to modern civilization? It was the

women of Great Britain that first said her statute-book disgraced

her. Who could say, that if those women had been voters, they

might not have reformed it?

Douglas Jerrold said: "Woman knows she is omnipotent"; and so she

is. She may be ignorant, she may not have a dollar, she may have

no right given her to testify in the court of justice; she may be

a slave, chained by a dozen statutes; but, when her husband loves

her, she is his queen and mistress, in spite of them all; and the

world knows it. All history bears testimony to this omnipotent

influence. What we are here for is to clear up the choked

channel; make hidden power confess itself, and feel its

responsibility, feel how much rests upon it, and therefore gird

itself to its duty. We are to say to the women: "Yours is

one-half of the human race. Come to the ballot-box, and feel,

when you cast a vote in regard to some great moral question, the

dread post you fill, and fit yourself for it." Woman at home

controls her son, guides her husband--in reality, makes him

vote--but acknowledges no responsibility, and receives no

education for such a throne. By her caprices in private life, she

often ruins the manhood of her husband, and checks the

enthusiastic purposes of her son.

Many a young girl, in her married life, loses her husband, and

thus is left a widow with two or three children. Now, who is to

educate them and control them? We see, if left to her own

resources, the intellect which she possesses, and which has

remained in a comparatively dormant state, displayed in its full

power. What a depth of heart lay hidden in that woman! She takes

her husband's business--guides it as though it were a trifle; she

takes her sons, and leads them; sets her daughters an example;

like a master-leader, she governs the whole household. That is

woman's influence. What made that woman? Responsibility. Call her

out from weakness, lay upon her soul the burden of her children's

education, and she is no longer a girl, but a woman!

Horace Greeley once said to Margaret Fuller: "If you should ask a

woman to carry a ship round Cape Horn, how would she go to work

to do it? Let her do this, and I will give up the question." In

the fall of 1856, a Boston girl, only twenty years of age,

accompanied her husband to California. A brain-fever laid him

low. In the presence of mutiny and delirium, she took his vacant

post, preserved order, and carried her cargo safe to its destined

port. Looking in the face of Mr. Greeley, Miss Fuller said: "Lo!

my dear Horace, it is done; now say, what shall woman: do next?"

[Cheers].

Mrs. CAROLINE H. DALL then dismissed the assembly.[52]

In _The Liberator_ of July 6, 1860, we find a brief mention of what

was called Mrs. Dall's "Drawing-room" Convention, in which it was

proposed to present the artistic and æsthetic view of the question.

The meeting was held June 1st, in the Melodeon. Mrs. Caroline M.

Severance presided. Mrs. Dall, Rev. Samuel J. May, R. J. Hinton, Moses

(Harriet Tubman), James Freeman Clarke, Dr. Mercy B. Jackson,

Elizabeth M. Powell, and Wendell Phillips took part in the

discussions.

We close our chapter on Massachusetts, with a few extracts from a

sermon by Theodore Parker, to show his position on the most momentous

question of his day and generation. In March, 1853, he gave two

discourses in Music Hall, Boston, one on the domestic, and one on the

public function of woman, in which he fully expressed himself on every

phase of the question.

THEODORE PARKER--THE PUBLIC FUNCTION OF WOMAN.

If woman is a human being, first, she has the Nature of a human

being; next, she has the Right of a human being; third, she has

the Duty of a human being. The Nature is the capacity to possess,

to use, to develop, and to enjoy every human faculty; the Right

is the right to enjoy, develop, and use every human faculty; and

the Duty is to make use of the Right, and make her human nature,

human history. She is here to develop her human nature, enjoy her

human rights, perform her human duty. Womankind is to do this for

herself, as much as mankind for himself. A woman has the same

human nature that a man has; the same human rights, to life,

liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the same human duties; and

they are as inalienable in a woman as in a man.

Each man has the natural right to the normal development of his

nature, so far as it is general-human, neither man nor woman, but

human. Each woman has the natural right to the normal development

of her nature, so far as it is general-human, neither woman nor

man. But each man has also a natural and inalienable right to the

normal development of his peculiar nature as man, where he

differs from woman. Each woman has just the same natural and

inalienable right to the normal development of her peculiar

nature as woman, and not man. All that is undeniable.

Now see what follows. Woman has the same individual right to

determine her aim in life, and to follow it; has the same

individual rights of body and of spirit--of mind and conscience,

and heart and soul; the same physical rights, the same

intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious rights, that man

has. That is true of womankind as a whole; it is true of Jane,

Ellen, and Sally, and each special woman that can be named.

Every person, man or woman, is an integer, an individual, a whole

person; and also a portion of the race, and so a fraction of

humankind. Well, the Rights of individualism are not to be

possessed, developed, used, and enjoyed, by a life in solitude,

but by joint action. Accordingly, to complete and perfect the

individual man or woman, and give each an opportunity to possess,

use, develop, and enjoy these rights, there must be concerted and

joint action; else individuality is only a possibility, not a

reality. So the individual rights of woman carry with them the

same domestic, social, ecclesiastical, and political rights, as

those of man.

The Family, Community, Church and State, are four modes of action

which have grown out of human nature in its historical

development; they are all necessary for the development of

mankind; machines which the human race has devised, in order to

possess, use, develop, and enjoy their rights as human beings,

their rights also as men.

These are just as necessary for the development of woman as of

man; and, as she has the same nature, right, and duty, as man, it

follows that she has the same right to use, shape, and control

these four institutions, for her general human purpose and for

her special feminine purpose, that man has to control them for

his general human purpose and his special masculine purpose. All

that is as undeniable as anything in metaphysics or mathematics.

If woman had been consulted, it seems to me theology would have

been in a vastly better state than it is now. I do not think that

any woman would ever have preached the damnation of babies

new-born; and "hell, paved with the skulls of infants not a span

long," would be a region yet to be discovered in theology. A

celibate monk--with God's curse writ on his face, which knew no

child, no wife, no sister, and blushed that he had a

mother--might well dream of such a thing. He had been through the

preliminary studies. Consider the ghastly attributes which are

commonly put upon God in the popular theology; the idea of

infinite wrath, of infinite damnation, and total depravity, and

all that. Why, you could not get a woman, that had intellect

enough to open her mouth, to preach these things anywhere. Women

think they think that they believe them; but they do not.

Celibate priests, who never knew marriage, or what paternity was,

who thought woman was a "pollution"--they invented these ghastly

doctrines; and when I have heard the Athanasian Creed and the

Dies Iræ chanted by monks, with the necks of bulls and the lips

of donkeys--why, I have understood where the doctrine came from,

and have felt the appropriateness of their braying out the

damnation hymns; woman could not do it. We shut her out of the

choir, out of the priest's house, out of the pulpit; and then the

priest, with unnatural vows, came in, and taught these "doctrines

of devils." Could you find a woman who would read to a

congregation, as words of truth, Jonathan Edwards' sermon on a

Future State--"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," "The

Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners," "Wrath upon the

Wicked to the Uttermost," "The Future Punishment of the Wicked,"

and other things of that sort? Nay, can you find a worthy woman,

of any considerable culture, who will read the fourteenth chapter

of Numbers, and declare that a true picture of the God she

worships? Only a she-dragon could do it in our day.

The popular theology leaves us nothing feminine in the character

of God. How could it be otherwise, when so much of the popular

theology is the work of men who thought woman was a "pollution,"

and barred her out of all the high places of the church? If women

had had their place in ecclesiastical teaching, I doubt that the

"Athanasian Creed" would ever have been thought a "symbol" of

Christianity. The pictures and hymns which describe the last

judgment are a protest against the exclusion of woman from

teaching in the church. "I suffer not a woman to teach, but to be

in silence," said a writer in the New Testament. The sentence has

brought manifold evil in its train. So much for the employments

of women.

* * * * *

By nature, woman has the same political rights that man has--to

vote, to hold office, to make and administer laws. These she has

as a matter of right. The strong hand and the great head of man

keep her down; nothing more. In America, in Christendom, woman

has no political rights, is not a citizen in full; she has no

voice in making or administering the laws, none in electing the

rulers or administrators thereof. She can hold no office--can not

be committee of a primary school, overseer of the poor, or

guardian to a public lamp-post. But any man, with conscience

enough to keep out of jail, mind enough to escape the

poor-house, and body enough to drop his ballot into the box, he

is a voter. He may have no character--even no money; that is no

matter--he is male. The noblest woman has no voice in the State.

Men make laws, disposing of her property, her person, her

children; still she must bear it, "with a patient shrug."

Looking at it as a matter of pure right and pure science, I know

no reason why woman should not be a voter, or hold office, or

make and administer laws. I do not see how I can shut myself into

political privileges and shut woman out, and do both in the name

of inalienable right. Certainly, every woman has a natural right

to have her property represented in the general representation of

property, and her person represented in the general

representation of persons.

Looking at it as a matter of expediency, see some facts. Suppose

woman had a share in the municipal regulation of Boston, and

there were as many alderwomen as aldermen, as many common council

women as common council men, do you believe that, in defiance of

the law of Massachusetts, the city government, last spring, would

have licensed every two hundred and forty-fourth person of the

population of the city to sell intoxicating drink? would have

made every thirty-fifth voter a rum-seller? I do not.

Do you believe the women of Boston would spend ten thousand

dollars in one year in a city frolic, or spend two or three

thousand every year, on the Fourth of July, for sky-rockets and

firecrackers; would spend four or five thousand dollars to get

their Canadian guests drunk in Boston harbor, and then pretend

that Boston had not money enough to establish a high-school for

girls, to teach the daughters of mechanics and grocers to read

French and Latin, and to understand the higher things which rich

men's sons are driven to at college? I do not.

Do you believe that the women of Boston, in 1851, would have

spent three or four thousand dollars to kidnap a poor man, and

have taken all the chains which belonged to the city and put them

round the court-house, and have drilled three hundred men, armed

with bludgeons and cutlasses, to steal a man and carry him back

to slavery? I do not. Do you think, if the women had had the

control, "fifteen hundred men of property and standing" would

have volunteered to take a poor man, kidnapped in Boston, and

conduct him out of the State, with fire and sword? I believe no

such thing.

Do you think the women of Boston would take the poorest and most

unfortunate children in the town, put them all together into one

school, making that the most miserable in the city, where they

had not and could not have half the advantages of the other

children in different schools, and all that because the

unfortunates were dark-colored? Do you think the women of Boston

would shut a bright boy out of the High-School or Latin-School,

because he was black in the face?

Women are said to be cowardly. When Thomas Sims, out of his

dungeon, sent to the churches his petition for their prayers, had

women been "the Christian clergy," do you believe they would not

have dared to pray?

If women had a voice in the affairs of Massachusetts, do you

think they would ever have made laws so that a lazy husband could

devour all the substance of his active wife--spite of her wish;

so that a drunken husband could command her bodily presence in

his loathly house; and when an infamous man was divorced from his

wife, that he could keep all the children? I confess I do not.

If the affairs of the nation had been under woman's joint

control, I doubt that we should have butchered the Indians with

such exterminating savagery, that, in fifty years, we should have

spent seven hundred millions of dollars for war, and now, in time

of peace, send twenty annual millions more to the same waste. I

doubt that we should have spread slavery into nine new States,

and made it national. I think the Fugitive Slave bill would never

have been an act. Woman has some respect for the natural law of

God.

I know men say woman can not manage the great affairs of a

nation. Very well. Government is political economy--national

housekeeping. Does any respectable woman keep house so badly as

the United States? with so much bribery, so much corruption, so

much quarrelling in the domestic councils?

But government is also political morality, it is national ethics.

Is there any worthy woman who rules her household as wickedly as

the nations are ruled? who hires bullies to fight for her? Is

there any woman who treats one-sixth part of her household as if

they were cattle and not creatures of God, as if they were things

and not persons? I know of none such. In government as

housekeeping, or government as morality, I think man makes a very

poor appearance, when he says woman could not do as well as he

has done and is doing.

I doubt that women will ever, as a general thing, take the same

interest as men in political affairs, or find therein an abiding

satisfaction. But that is for women themselves to determine, not

for men.

In order to attain the end--the development of man in body and

spirit--human institutions must represent all parts of human

nature, both the masculine and the feminine element. For the

well-being of the human race, we need the joint action of man and

woman, in the family, the community, the Church, and the State. A

family without the presence of woman--with no mother, no wife, no

sister, no womankind--is a sad thing. I think a community without

woman's equal social action, a church without her equal

ecclesiastical action, and a State without her equal political

action, is almost as bad--is very much what a house would be

without a mother, wife, sister, or friend.

You see what prevails in the Christian civilization of the

nineteenth century; it is Force--force of body, force of brain.

There is little justice, little philanthropy, little piety.

Selfishness preponderates everywhere in Christendom--individual,

domestic, social, ecclesiastical, national selfishness. It is

preached as gospel and enacted as law. It is thought good

political economy for a strong people to devour the weak nations;

for "Christian" England and America to plunder the "heathen" and

annex their land; for a strong class to oppress and ruin the

feeble class; for the capitalists of England to pauperize the

poor white laborer; for the capitalists of America to enslave the

poorer black laborer; for a strong man to oppress the weak men;

for the sharper to buy labor too cheap, and sell its product too

dear, and so grow rich by making many poor. Hence, nation is

arrayed against nation, class against class, man against man.

Nay, it is commonly taught that mankind is arrayed against God,

and God against man; that the world is a universal discord: that

there is no solidarity of man with man, of man with God. I fear

we shall never get far beyond this theory and this practice,

until woman has her natural rights as the equal of man, and takes

her natural place in regulating the affairs of the family, the

community, the Church, and the State. It seems to me God has

treasured up a reserved power in the nature of woman to correct

many of those evils which are Christendom's disgrace to-day.

Circumstances help or hinder our development, and are one of the

two forces which determine the actual character of a nation or of

mankind, at any special period. Hitherto, amongst men,

circumstances have favored the development of only intellectual

power, in all its forms--chiefly in its lower forms. At present,

mankind, as a whole, has the superiority over womankind, as a

whole, in all that pertains to intellect, the higher and the

lower. Man has knowledge, has ideas, has administrative skill;

enacts the rules of conduct for the individual, the family, the

community, the Church, the State, and the world. He applies these

rules of conduct to life, and so controls the great affairs of

the human race. You see what a world he has made of it. There is

male vigor in this civilization, miscalled "Christian"; and in

its leading nations there are industry and enterprise, which

never fail. There is science, literature, legislation,

agriculture, manufactures, mining, commerce, such as the world

never saw. With the vigor of war, the Anglo-Saxon now works the

works of peace. England abounds in wealth--richest of lands; but

look at her poor, her vast army of paupers, two million strong,

the Irish whom she drives with the hand of famine across the sea.

Martin Luther was right when he said: "The richer the nation, the

poorer the poor." Look at the cities of England and America. What

riches, what refinement, what culture of man and woman too! Ay;

but what poverty, what ignorance, what beastliness of man and

woman too! The Christian civilization of the nineteenth century

is well summed up in London and New York--the two foci of the

Anglo-Saxon tribe, which control the shape of the world's

commercial ellipse. Look at the riches and the misery; at the

"religious enterprise" and the heathen darkness; at the virtue,

the decorum, and the beauty of woman well-born and well bred; and

at the wild sea of prostitution, which swells and breaks and

dashes against the bulwarks of society--every ripple was a woman

once!

Oh, brother-men, who make these things, is this a pleasant sight?

Does your literature complain of it--of the waste of human life,

the slaughter of human souls, the butchery of woman? British

literature begins to wail, in "Nicholas Nickleby" and "Jane Eyre"

and "Mary Barton" and "Alton Locke," in many a "Song of the

Shirt"; but the respectable literature of America is deaf as a

cent to the outcry of humanity expiring in agonies. It is busy

with California, or the Presidency, or extolling iniquity in high

places, or flattering the vulgar vanity which buys its dross for

gold. It can not even imitate the philanthropy of English

letters; it is "up" for California and a market. Does not the

Church speak?--the English Church, with its millions of money;

the American, with its millions of men--both wont to bay the moon

of foreign heathenism? The Church is a dumb dog, that can not

bark, sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. It is a church

without woman, believing in a male and jealous God, and rejoicing

in a boundless, endless hell!

Hitherto, with woman, circumstances have hindered the development

of intellectual power, in all its forms. She has not knowledge,

has not ideas or practical skill to equal the force of man. But

circumstances have favored the development of pure and lofty

emotion in advance of man. She has moral feeling, affectional

feeling, religious feeling, far in advance of man; her moral,

affectional, and religious intuitions are deeper and more

trustworthy than his. Here she is eminent, as he is in knowledge,

in ideas, in administrative skill.

I think man will always lead in affairs of intellect--of reason,

imagination understanding--he has the bigger brain; but that

woman will always lead in affairs of emotion--moral, affectional,

religious--she has the better heart, the truer intuition of the

right, the lovely, the holy. The literature of women in this

century is juster, more philanthropic, more religious, than that

of men. Do you not hear the cry which, in New England, a woman is

raising in the world's ears against the foul wrong which America

is working in the world? Do you not hear the echo of that woman's

voice come over the Atlantic--returned from European shores in

many a tongue--French, German, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Russian,

Dutch? How a woman touches the world's heart! because she speaks

justice, speaks piety, speaks love. What voice is strongest,

raised in continental Europe, pleading for the oppressed and

down-trodden? That also is a woman's voice!

Well, we want the excellence of man and woman both united;

intellectual power, knowledge, great ideas--in literature,

philosophy, theology, ethics--and practical skill; but we want

something better--the moral, affectional, religious intuition, to

put justice into ethics, love into theology, piety into science

and letters. Everywhere in the family, the community, the Church,

and the State, we want the masculine and feminine element

co-operating and conjoined. Woman is to correct man's taste, mend

his morals, excite his affections, inspire his religious

faculties. Man is to quicken her intellect, to help her will,

translate her sentiments to ideas, and enact them into righteous

laws. Man's moral action, at best, is only a sort of general

human providence, aiming at the welfare of a part, and satisfied

with achieving the "greatest good of the greatest number."

Woman's moral action is more like a special human providence,

acting without general rules, but caring for each particular

case. We need both of these, the general and the special, to make

a total human providence.

If man and woman are counted equivalent--equal in rights, though

with diverse powers,--shall we not mend the literature of the

world, its theology, its science, its laws, and its actions too?

I can not believe that wealth and want are to stand ever side by

side as desperate foes; that culture must ride only on the back

of ignorance; and feminine virtue be guarded by the degradation

of whole classes of ill-starred men, as in the East, or the

degradation of whole classes of ill-starred women, as in the

West; but while we neglect the means of help God puts in our

power, why, the present must be like the past--"property" must be

theft, "law" the strength of selfish will, and

"Christianity"--what we see it is, the apology for every powerful

wrong.

* * * * *

To every woman let me say--Respect your nature as a human being,

your nature as a woman; then respect your rights, then remember

your duty to possess, to use, to develop, and to enjoy every

faculty which God has given you, each in its normal way.

And to men let me say--Respect, with the profoundest reverence,

respect the mother that bore you, the sisters who bless you, the

woman that you love, the woman that you marry. As you seek to

possess your own manly rights, seek also, by that great arm, by

that powerful brain, seek to vindicate her rights as woman, as

your own as man. Then we may see better things in the Church,

better things in the State, in the Community, in the Home. Then

the green shall show what buds it hid, the buds shall blossom,

the flowers bear fruit, and the blessing of God be on us all.

REMINISCENCES OF PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS.

BY E. C. S.

Hearing that my friend had returned from Europe too ill to leave her

room, I hastened to her charming home in the suburbs of Providence,

Rhode Island. There in her pleasant chamber, bright with the sunshine

of a clear December day,[53] surrounded with her books and pictures of

her own painting, looking out on an extensive lawn, grand old trees,

and the busy city in the distance, we passed three happy days together

reviewing our own lives, the progress of the reforms we advocated, and

in speculations of the unknown world. In my brief sketch of the

"Woman's Rights Movement" and its leaders for the "Eminent Women of

the Age," I made no mention of Mrs. Davis, being ignorant of the main

facts of her life. I waited for her return from Florida, until it was

too late, as the work was hurried to press. Hence I was glad of this

opportunity to dot down fresh from her own lips some of the incidents

and personal experiences of her life.

Paulina Kellogg was born in Bloomfield, New York, the very day, Capt.

Hall delivered up the fort at Detroit. Her father, Capt. Kellogg,

being a volunteer in the army at that time, would often jocosely refer

to those two great events on the 7th of August, 1813. Her grandfather

Saxton was a colonel in the Revolution, and on Lafayette's staff. Both

her father and mother possessed great personal beauty, and were

devotedly attached to each other, and were alike conservative in their

opinions and associations. When Paulina was four years old her

grandfather bought a large tract of land at Cambria, near Niagara

Falls, where all his children settled. That trip was the first memory

of her childhood. A cavalcade of six army wagons, men, women,

children, horses, cattle, dogs, hens, pushed their weary way eleven

days through wild woods, cutting their own roads, and fording creeks

and rivers. Crossing the Genesee in a scow, one immense cow walked off

into the water, others followed and swam ashore. The little girl

thinking that everything was going overboard, trembled like an aspen

leaf until she felt herself safe on land. The picnics under the trees,

the beds in the wagons drawn up in a circle to keep the cattle in, the

friendly meetings with the Indians, all charmed her childish fancies.

The summer the first bridge was built to Goat Island, her uncle caught

her in his arms, ran across the beams, and set her down, saying:

"There, you are probably the first white child that ever set foot on

Goat Island."

When seven years old she was adopted by an aunt, and moved to Le Roy,

New York, where she was educated. Her aunt was a strict orthodox

Presbyterian, a stern, strong Puritan. Her life in her new home was

sad and solitary, and one of constant restraint. In the natural

reaction of the human mind, with such early experiences, we can

readily account for Paulina's love of freedom, and courage in

attacking the wrongs of society. In referring to these early years,

she said: "I was not a happy child, nor a happy woman, until in mature

life, I outgrew my early religious faith, and felt free to think and

act from my own convictions." Having joined the church in extreme

youth, and being morbidly conscientious, she suffered constant torment

about her own sins, and those of her neighbors. She was a religious

enthusiast, and in time of revivals was one of the bright and shining

lights in exhortation and prayer.

She was roused to thought on woman's position by a discussion in the

church as to whether women should be permitted to speak and pray in

promiscuous assemblies. Some of the deacons protested against a

practice, in ordinary times, that might be tolerated during seasons of

revival. But those who had discovered their gifts in times of

excitement were not so easily remanded to silence; and thus the Church

was distracted then as now with the troublesome question of woman's

rights. Sometimes a liberal pastor would accord a latitude denied by

the elders and deacons, and sometimes one church would be more liberal

than others in the same neighborhood, or synod; hence individuals and

congregations were continually persecuted and arraigned for violation

of church discipline and God's law, according to man's narrow

interpretation. "Thus," she says, "my mind was confused and uncertain

with conflicting emotions and opinions in regard to all human

relations. And it was many years before I understood the philosophy of

life, before I learned that happiness did not depend on outward

conditions, but on the harmony within, on the tastes, sentiments,

affections, and ambitions of the individual soul."

On leaving school, Paulina had made up her mind to be a missionary to

the Sandwich Islands, as that was the Mecca in those days to which all

pious young women desired to go. But after five months of ardent

courtship, Mr. Francis Wright, a young merchant of wealth and position

in Utica, New York, persuaded her that there were heathen enough in

Utica to call out all the religious zeal she possessed, to say nothing

of himself as the chief of sinners, hence in special need of her

ministrations.

So they began life together, worshiped in Bethel church, and devoted

themselves to the various reforms that in turn attracted their

attention. They took an active part in the arrangements for the first

Anti-Slavery Convention, held in Utica, Oct. 21, 1835, a day on which

anti-slavery meetings were mobbed and violently dispersed in different

parts of the country. It was at this meeting that Gerrit Smith gave in

his adhesion to the anti-slavery movement and abandoned the idea of

the colonization of slaves to Liberia. As the mob would not permit a

meeting to be held in Utica, Mr. Smith invited them to Peterboro,

where they adjourned. It was a fearful day for Abolitionists

throughout that city, as the mob of roughs was backed by its leading

men. Mr. Wright's house was surrounded, piazzas and fences torn down

and piled up with wood and hay against it, with the evident intention

of burning it down. But several ladies who had come to attend the

Convention were staying there, and, as was their custom, they had

family prayers that night. The leaders of the mob peeping through the

windows, saw a number of women on their knees, and the sight seemed to

soften their wrath and change their purpose, for they quietly withdrew

their forces, leaving the women in undisturbed possession of the

house. The attitude of the Church at this time being strongly

pro-slavery, Mr. and Mrs. Wright withdrew, as most Abolitionists did,

from all church organizations, and henceforth their religious zeal was

concentrated on the anti-slavery, temperance, and woman's rights

reforms. Thus passed twelve years of happiness in mutual improvement

and co-operation in every good work. Having no children, they devoted

themselves unreservedly to one another. But Mr. Wright, being a man of

great executive ability, was continually overworking, taxing his

powers of mind and body to the uttermost, until his delicate

organization gave way and his life prematurely ended.

Having occupied her leisure hours in the study of anatomy and

physiology, Mrs. Wright gave a course of lectures to women. As early

as 1844 she began this public work. She imported from Paris the first

_femme modele_ that was ever brought to this country. She tells many

amusing anecdotes of the effect of unveiling this manikin in the

presence of a class of ladies. Some trembled with fear, the delicacy

of others was shocked, but their weaknesses were overcome as their

scientific curiosity was awakened. Many of Mrs. Wright's pupils

were among the first to enter the colleges, hospitals, and

dissecting-rooms, and to become successful practitioners of the

healing art.

While lecturing in Baltimore, a "Friend," by the name of Anna

Needles, attended the course. Another "Friend," seeing her frequently

pass, hailed her on one occasion, and said, "Anna, where does thee go

every day?" "I go to hear Mrs. Wright lecture." "What, Anna, does thee

go to hear that Fanny Wright?" "Oh, no! Paulina Wright!" "Ah! I warn

thee, do not go near her, she is of the same species." Many women, now

supporting themselves in ease, gratefully acknowledge her influence in

directing their lives to some active pursuits.

Thus passed the four years of her widowed life, lecturing to women

through most of the Eastern and Western States.

In 1849, she was married to the Hon. Thomas Davis, a solid, noble man

of wealth and position, who has since been a member of the Rhode

Island Legislature seven years, and served one term in Congress. As he

is very modest and retiring in his nature, I will not enumerate his

good qualities of head and heart, lest he should be pained at seeing

himself in print; and perhaps "the highest praise for a true _man_ is

never to be spoken of at all." With several successive summers in

Newport and winters in Providence, Mrs. Davis gave more time to

fashionable society than she ever had at any period of her life.

When her husband was elected to Congress, in 1853, she accompanied him

to Washington and made many valuable acquaintances. As she had already

called the first National Woman Suffrage Convention, and started _The

Una_, the first distinctively woman's rights journal ever published,

and was supposed to be a fair representative of the odious,

strong-minded "Bloomer," the ladies at their hotel, after some

consultation, decided to ignore her, as far as possible. But a lady of

her fine appearance, attractive manners, and general intelligence,

whose society was sought by the most cultivated gentlemen in the

house, could not be very long ostracised by the ladies.

What a writer in the British Quarterly for January, says of Mrs. John

Stuart Mill, applies with equal force to Mrs. Davis. "She seems to

have been saved from the coarseness and strenuous tone of the typical

strong-minded woman, although probably some of her opinions might

shock staid people who are innocent alike of philosophy and the

doctrines of the new era." Though in fact this typical strong-minded

woman of whom we hear so much in England and America, is after all a

"myth"; for the very best specimens of womanhood in both countries are

those who thoroughly respect themselves, and maintain their political,

civil, and social rights. For nearly three years Mrs. Davis continued

_The Una_, publishing it entirely at her own expense. It took the

broadest ground claimed to-day: individual freedom in the State, the

Church, and the home; woman's equality and suffrage a natural right.

In 1859, she visited Europe for the first time, and spent a year

traveling in France, Italy, Austria, and Germany, giving her leisure

hours to picture galleries and the study of art. She made many

valuable friends on this trip, regained her health, and returned home

to work with renewed zeal for the enfranchisement of woman.

Having decided to celebrate the second decade of the National Woman

Suffrage movement, in New York, Mrs. Davis took charge of all the

preliminary arrangements, including the foreign correspondence. She

gave a good report at the opening session of the Convention, of what

had been accomplished in the twenty years, and published the

proceedings in pamphlet form, at her own expense. One of Mrs. Davis'

favorite ideas was a Woman's Congress in Washington, to meet every

year, to consider the national questions demanding popular action;

especially to present them in their moral and humanitarian bearings

and relations, while our representatives discussed them, as men

usually do, from the material, financial, and statistical points of

view. In this way only, said she, "can the complete idea on any

question ever be realized. All legislation must necessarily be

fragmentary, so long as one-half the race give no thought whatever on

the subject."

In 1871, Mrs. Davis, with her niece and adopted daughter, again

visited Europe, and pursued her studies of art, spending much time in

Julian's life studio, the only one open to women. She took lessons of

Carl Marko in Florence. When in Paris she spent hours every day

copying in the Louvre and Luxembourg. The walls of her home were

decorated with many fine copies, and a few of her own creations. Her

enthusiasm for both art and reform may seem to some a singular

combination; but with her view of life, it was a natural one.

Believing, as she did, in the realization of the ultimate equality of

the human family, and the possibility of the race sometime attaining

comparative perfection, when all would be well-fed, clothed,

sheltered, and educated; humanity in its poverty, ignorance, and

deformity, were to her but the first rude sketch on the canvas, to be

perfected by the skillful hand of the Great Artist. Hence she labored

with faith and enthusiasm to realize her ideal alike in both cases.

In Naples she made the acquaintance of Mary Somerville, then in her

ninetieth year. She found her quite conversant with American affairs,

and she expressed great pleasure in reading Mrs. Davis' history of

the suffrage movement in this country. There too she met Mrs.

Merrycoyf, a bright, accomplished woman, a sister of Josephine Butler,

and like her, engaged in English reforms. She had many discussions

with Mrs. Proby, the wife of the English Consul, who thought Mrs.

Davis was wasting her efforts for the elevation of woman, as she

considered it a hopeless case to make women rational and self-reliant.

However, before they parted, Mrs. Davis inspired her with some faith

in her own sex. I read a very interesting letter from Mrs. Proby

acknowledging the benefit derived from her acquaintance with Mrs.

Davis, in giving her new hope for woman. At Rome she received the

blessing of the Pope, and met Père Hyacinthe and his charming wife,

and attended one of his lectures, but the crowd was so great she could

not get in, so she went the Sunday after to hear the prayers for the

Pope and the Church against the influence of the dangerous Père. She

says: "It was a most impressive occasion, the immense crowd, the grand

music swelling through the arches of that vast cathedral, the

responses of the ten thousand voices, rolling like the great tidal

waves of the mighty ocean, were altogether sublime beyond

description." At Paris she met Mrs. Crawford, wife of the

corresponding editor of _The London Times_, a woman of fine

conversational powers, and a brilliant writer, now the Paris

correspondent of _The New York Tribune_. She found her a woman of very

liberal opinions. At one of her breakfasts she met Martin, the

historian, and several members of the Assembly. She also visited the

Countess Delacoste, who sympathized deeply with the republican

movement, and had concealed Clusaret three months in her house. There

she met several distinguished Russians and Frenchmen. In London she

attended one of Mrs. Peter Taylor's receptions, where she met Mrs.

Margaret Lucas, sister of John Bright, and other notables. She visited

Josephine Butler at her home in Liverpool. Friends sent her tickets of

admission to the lady's gallery, in the House of Commons, where she

heard Jacob Bright make his opening speech on the woman's disability

bill, and Fawcett, the blind member, also on the same bill. And with

all these distinguished people, in different countries, speaking

different languages, she found the same interest in the progressive

ideas that had gladdened and intensified her own life.

On the 29th of May she sailed for America, and reached her home in

safety, but the disease that had been threatening her for years

(rheumatic gout) began to develop itself, until in the autumn she was

confined to her room, and unable at times even to walk. It was thus I

found her in a large arm-chair quietly making all her preparations for

the sunny land, resigned to stay or to go, to accept the inevitable,

whatever that might be.[54] As she was an enthusiastic spiritualist,

the coming journey was not to her an unknown realm, but an inviting

home where the friends of her earlier days were waiting with glad

hearts to give her tin heavenly welcome.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] Mercy Otis, born at Barnstable, Mass., September 35, 1728,

married James Warren, about 1754. Reference has been made to her

correspondence with the eminent men of the Revolution. Aside from her

patriotism, Mrs. Warren was a woman of high literary ability. She

wrote several dramatic and satirical works in 1773, against the

royalists, which, with two tragedies, were included in a volume of

Dramatic and Miscellaneous Poems, published in 1790. She also wrote "A

History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American

Revolution, interspersed with Biographical, Political, and Moral

Observations," in three volumes, published in Boston, 1805. Mrs.

Warren lived quite into the present century, dying October 19, 1814.

Mrs. Ellet, "Queens of Society," says: "In point of influence, Mercy

Warren was the most remarkable woman who lived in the days of the

American Revolution."

Rochefoucauld, "Tour in the United States," says: "Seldom has a woman

in any age acquired such ascendency by the mere force of a powerful

intellect, and her influence continued through her life."

Generals Lee and Gates were among her correspondents; Knox wrote: "I

should be happy to receive your counsels from time to time." Mrs.

Washington was frequently entertained by Mrs. Warren, at one time when

the former was in Massachusetts with the General, Mrs. Warren going

with her chariot to headquarters at Cambridge for her.

[26] Dried leaves of the raspberry.--LOSSING.

[27] Lossing, "Field-Book of the Revolution," says: "On February 9,

1769, the Mistresses of three hundred families met and formed a

league, and upon the second day the young ladies assembled in great

numbers, signing the following covenant: 'We, the daughters of those

patriots who have, and do now, appear for public interest, and in

proper regard for their posterity as such, do, with pleasure, engage

with them in denying ourselves the drink of foreign tea, in hopes to

frustrate a plan which tends to deprive a whole country of all that is

valuable in life."

[28] Lossing's "Field-Book of the Revolution" states that on the 12th

of June, 1769, the "Daughters of Liberty," met at the house of pastor

Moorehead, in such numbers that in one afternoon they spun two hundred

and ninety skeins of fine yarn, which they presented to him. After

supper they were joined by many "Sons of Liberty," who united with the

"Daughters" in patriotic songs.

[29] These girls, then only about twelve and fourteen years of age,

saw the enemy making preparations to land at an isolated point. No men

were near to defend the place, or to whom warning could be given. A

bright thought struck one of the girls. Accustomed to play the drum,

she well knew how to beat the call to arms, and no sooner had this

thought entered her mind, than she began a tattoo, calling her sister

to take the fife as an accompaniment. Together they marched toward the

shore, careful to keep hidden by the rocks, among whose intricacies

they wound back and forth, the sound of their instruments falling upon

the enemy's ears, now far, now near, as though a force of many hundred

men was marching down upon them, and thoroughly frightened, they beat

a retreat to their boats.

[30] "This dispute infused its spirit into everything. It interfered

with the levy of troops for the Pequot war; it influenced the respect

shown to the magistrates, the distribution of town lots, the

assessment of rates, and at last the continued existence of the two

parties was considered inconsistent with the public peace."--Bancroft,

"History of the United States."

[31] _Atlantic Monthly_, June, 1871.

[32] In three New England colonies church membership was required for

the franchise.--Frothingham, "Rise of the Republic."

[33] Dr. John Weis, of New York, now an aged gentleman, well remembers

his grandmother saying, that at an early day women were allowed to

vote in all the New England colonies.

[34] Mother of the late Daniel P. King, at that time a member of the

Massachusetts Legislature, and since then a Representative in

Congress.

[35] Benj. C. Pitkin, of Salem, at that time State Senator.

[36] Hon. Mr. Upham saying: "A great many of the members told me they

didn't believe a woman wrote it."

[37] This petition was put in the hands of a gentleman to secure his

mother's name (who had signed numbers of petitions before), and those

of certain other ladies, but unfaithful to this trust, he forwarded

the petition with but its single name, which, Mrs. Ferrin remarks, was

powerful in itself.

[38] James W. North, a lawyer, of Augusta, Maine, to his honor be it

said, assisted Mrs. Ferrin, by perfecting the divorce petition, in

circulation during her six years of petition work.

[39] A lady commenting upon unjust legislation, said: "When the laws

were made regarding women and children, the most impotent men were

employed to make them; decent men had other business to do."

From time to time, Mrs. Ferrin sent in memorials and addresses with

the petitions she yearly forwarded. One of these, in reply to the

oft-made boast of man's unsolicited amelioration of woman's condition,

carried the following retort: "The Powers tell us much has been done

to ameliorate the condition of woman without any effort on woman's

part. It would add a huge feather to their caps should they give us

the history of the cause of the need of such reformation. It can not

be because woman placed herself in so degrading a position. So, the

merit of the up-lifting hardly reaches the demerit of the

down-treading."

[40] Mrs. Davis herself.

[41] Wife of John Milton Earl, editor of the _Worcester Spy_.

[42] See Appendix.

[43] See Appendix.

[44] See Appendix.

[45] See Appendix

[46] See Appendix

[47] See Appendix.

[48] Mrs. Caroline Norton, a distinguished English author, who

separated from her husband because of cruel treatment. He robbed nor

of all the profits of her books, and of her children, and when she

appealed to the Courts, English law sustained the husband in all his

violations of natural justice.

[49] Abby May Alcott, Abby Kelly Foster, Lucy Stone, Thomas W.

Higginson, Ann Green Phillips, Wendell Phillips, Anna Q. T. Parsons,

Theodore Parker, William J. Bowditch, Samuel E. Sewall, Ellis Gray

Loring, Charles K. Whipple, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Harriot K. Hunt,

Thomas T. Stone, John W. Browne, Francis Jackson, Josiah F. Flagg,

Mary Flagg, Elizabeth Smith, Eliza Barney, Abby H. Price, William C.

Nell, Samuel May, Jr., Robert F. Wallcott, Robert Morris, A. Bronson

Alcott.

[50] Anthony Burns, the slave, was a Baptist minister In his Southern

home, and had sought freedom in Boston, but was pursued and

recaptured.

[51] A gentleman of wealth, who gave most liberally to all reforms,

and in his will bequeathed $5,000 to the cause of woman suffrage.

[52] The Publishing Committee do not willingly print the above report

of one of the ablest and most eloquent speeches ever delivered in

Boston. Mr. Phillips never writes his speeches. He is now too far

distant to be consulted. Two very young girl reporters--after a week's

hard practice, and three hours' excessive heat--wrote these heads

down, without the most distant idea of publication. All the Committee

can do is to rejoice that the accident did not happen to a young

speaker, but to one whose reputation is established, and whose

immortality is certain. C. H. D.

[53] In the year 1875.

[54] See Appendix.

CHAPTER IX.

INDIANA AND WISCONSIN.

Indiana Missionary Station--Gen. Arthur St. Clair--Indian

surprises--The terrible war whoop--One hundred women join the

army, and are killed fighting bravely--Prairie schooners--

Manufactures in the hands of women--Admitted to the Union in

1816--Robert Dale Owen--Woman Suffrage Conventions--Wisconsin--C.

L. Sholes' report.

The earliest settlement of Indiana was a missionary one, in 1777,

though it was not admitted as a Territory until 1800, then including

the present States of Michigan and Illinois. A number of Indian wars

took place in this part of the country during the twenty-five years

between 1780 and 1805. What was known as the Northwest Territory was

organized in 1789, and General Arthur St. Clair appointed Governor, an

office he held until 1802. In 1790 a war of unusually formidable

character broke out among the Indian tribes of the Northwest, and in

1791, St. Clair was created General-in-Chief of the forces against

them. Many of the settlers of this portion of the country joined his

army, among whom were one hundred women, who accompanied their

husbands in preference to being left at home subject to the surprises

and tortures of the savages with whom the country was at war. In

giving command of these forces to St. Clair, Washington warned him

against unexpected assaults from the enemy; but this general who was

of foreign birth, a Scotchman, was no match for the cunning of his

wily foe, who suddenly fell upon him, November 4th, near the Miami

villages (present site of Terra Haute), making great havoc among his

forces.

When, the terrible war-whoop was heard, the heroism of these hundred

women rose equal to the emergency. They did not cling helplessly to

their husbands--the women of those early days were made of sterner

stuff--but with pale, set faces, they joined in the defense, and the

records say, were most of them killed fighting bravely. They died a

soldier's death upon the field of battle in defense of home and

country. They died that the prairies of the West and the wilderness of

the North should at a later period become the peaceful homes of untold

millions of men and women. They were the true pioneers of the

Northwest, the advance-guard of civilization, giving their lives in

battle against a terrible enemy, in order that safety should dwell at

the hearth-stones of those who should settle this garden of the

continent at a future period. History is very silent upon their

record; not a name has been preserved; but we do know that they lived,

and how they died, and it is but fitting that a record of woman's work

for freedom should embalm their memory in its pages. Many other women

defended homes and children against the savage foe, but their deeds of

heroism have been forgotten.

There is scarcely a portion of the world so far from civilization as

Indiana was at that day. No railroads spanned the continent, making

neighbors of people a thousand miles apart; no steamboat sailed upon

the Western lakes, nor indeed upon the broad Atlantic; telegraphy,

with its annihilation of space, was a marvel as yet unborn; even the

Lucifer match, which should kindle fire in the twinkling of an eye,

lay buried in the dark future. Little was known of these settlements;

the Genesee Valley of New York was considered the _far West_, to which

people traveled (the Erie Canal was not then in existence) in strong,

spring less wagons, over which large hoops, covered with white cloth,

were securely fastened, thus sheltering the inmates from sun and

storm. These wagons, afterward known as "Prairie Schooners," were for

weeks and months the traveling homes of many a family of early

settlers.

But even in 1816 Indiana could boast her domestic manufactures, for

within the State at this time were "two thousand five hundred and

twelve looms and two thousand seven hundred spinning-wheels, most of

them in private cabins, whose mistresses, by their slow agencies,

converted the wool which their own hands had often sheared, and the

flax which their own fingers had pulled, into cloth for the family

wardrobe."[55]

Thus in 1816 the manufactures of Indiana were chiefly in the hands of

its women. It is upon the industries of the country that a nation

thrives. Its manufactures build up its commerce and make its wealth.

From this source the Government derives the revenue which is the

life-blood circulating in its veins. Its strength and its perpetuity

alike depend upon its industries, and when we look upon the work of

women through all the years of the Republic, and remember their

patriotic self-devotion and self-sacrifice at every important crisis,

we are no less amazed at the ingratitude of the country for their

services in war than at its non-recognition of their existence as

wealth-producers, the elements which build up and sustain every

civilized people.

Viewing its early record, we are not surprised that Indiana claims to

have organized the first State Woman's Rights Society, though we are

somewhat astonished to know that at the time of the first Convention

held in Indianapolis, a husband of position locked his wife within the

house in order to prevent her presence thereat, although doubtless, as

men have often done before and since, he deemed it not out of the way

that he himself should be a listener at a meeting he considered it

contrary to family discipline that his wife should attend.

December 11, 1816, Indiana was admitted into the Union. William

Henry Harrison, who had been Governor of the Territory, and

Brigadier-General in the army, with the command of the Northwest

Territory, was afterward President of the United States. He

encountered the Indians led by Tecumseh at Tippecanoe, on the Wabash,

and after a terrible battle they fled. This was the origin of the

song, "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," that was sung with immense effect by

the Whigs all over the country in the presidential campaign of 1840,

when Harrison and Tyler were the candidates; and when women, for the

first time, attended political meetings.

Indiana, though one of the younger States, by her liberal and rational

legislation on the questions of marriage and divorce, has always been

the land of freedom for fugitives from the bondage and suffering of

ill-assorted unions. Many an unhappy wife has found a safe asylum on

the soil of that State. Her liberality on this question was no doubt

partly due to the influence of Robert Owen, who early settled at New

Harmony, and made the experiment of communal life; and later, to his

son, the Hon. Robert Dale Owen, who was in the Legislature several

years, and in the Constitutional Convention of 1850. The following

letter from Mr. Owen gives a few facts worth perusing:

LAKE GEORGE, N. Y., _Sept. 20, 1876_.

DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--I know you will think the reply I am about to

make to your favor of September 18th unsatisfactory, but it is

the best I can do.

1. As regards Frances Wright: All the particulars regarding her

and her noble but unsuccessful experiment at Nashoba, near

Memphis, which I thought it important to make public, are

contained in an article of mine entitled "An Earnest Sowing of

Wild Oats," in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for July, 1874.

2. As to Ernestine L. Rose, I think it probable that you know

more of her than I do. I remember that she was the daughter of a

Polish rabbi; the wife of William Rose, a silversmith; and that

she came with her husband to this country at an early day. She

was a great admirer and follower of my father, Robert Owen, and

was a skeptic as to any future beyond the grave; greatly opposed

to Spiritualism.

3. As to my action in the Indiana Legislature: I was a member of

that body during the sessions of 1836-'7, and '8, and in 1851,

but I have not the materials here that would enable me to give

particulars. In a general way I had the State law so altered that

a married woman owned and had the right to manage her own

property, both real and personal; and I had the law of descents

so changed that a widow, instead of dower, which is a mere

tenancy or life interest, now has, in all cases, an absolute fee

in one-third of her husband's estate; if only one child, then a

half; and if no children, I think two-thirds. I also had an

additional clause added to the divorce law, making two years'

habitual drunkenness imperative cause for divorce.

I took no action in regard to suffrage while in the Legislature.

In those days it would have been utterly unavailing.

All this is very meagre, which I the more regret, sympathizing as

I do with the object you have in view.

Give my kindest regards to my old friend, Mrs. Stanton, and

believe me,

Faithfully your friend,

MISS ANTHONY. ROBERT DALE OWEN.

Before 1828, Frances Wright had visited Mr. Owen's colony, and

assisted him in the editorial department of the _New Harmony Gazette_,

changed afterward to the _Free Enquirer_, published in New York. Such

a circle of remarkably intelligent and liberal-minded people, all

effective speakers and able writers, was not without influence in

moulding the sentiment of that young community. As a glimpse into the

domestic life of this remarkable family may be interesting to the

reader, we give a pleasing sketch from the pen of Mr. Owen's daughter.

No monument of the whitest parian marble could shed such honor on the

memory of a venerated father and mother as this tribute from an

affectionate, appreciative child:

ROBERT DALE OWEN AND MARY ROBINSON.

BY ROSAMOND DALE OWEN.

Some fifty years ago a large audience was gathered in one of the

public halls of New York listening to a lecture. In the sea of faces

upturned to him, the speaker read a cold response, the opinions he was

expounding being exceedingly unpopular, and rarely expressed in those

days. The theme was the equality of the sexes, the right of woman to

control person and property in the marriage relation, the right to

breathe, to think, to act as an untrammeled citizen, the co-equal of

man. His eyes searched tier after tier, seeking in vain for that

magnetism of sympathy which is as wine to a man who stands before his

people pleading with them that he may save them from their errors.

Suddenly his wandering gaze was arrested by a face, a child's face,

with short, clustering curls, but a strong soul steadied the deep

eyes, and on the rounded cheek paled and glowed the earnestness of a

woman's searching thought. His words grew clear and strong as he

looked into the upturned eyes, as he answered the listening face. The

speaker was Robert Dale Owen; the hearer, Mary Robinson.

That night when she reached her own room, Mary Robinson flung off

bonnet and shawl with a swift gesture, and, slipping into her

accustomed seat, gazed at the steady-glowing background of coals, with

the blue flames licking in and out like the evil tongues of

fire-scourged elves. A strong excitement held her in thrall; she did

not seem to see her elder sister's wondering looks; she did not seem

to hear the great clocks, far and near, chiming out eleven, and then

twelve, with that deep resonance which sounds in the silence of the

night like a solemn requiem over lost hours. Presently she became

aware that her sister was kneeling beside her, with anxious

questioning look; she seemed, this elder sister, in her long, white

night-dress, with pale, straight hair pushed back from the

clear-tinted, oval face, like a youthful Madonna, and Mary drawing the

gentle face close to her own with sudden impulse, said: "I have seen

the man I shall marry, I have seen him to-night; he is the homeliest

man I have ever known, but if I am married at all, he is to be my

husband."

A few months later this prophecy was verified. On the 12th day of

April, 1832, Robert Dale Owen and Mary Robinson were joined in those

sacred bonds, which, in every true marriage, can be broken only by the

shadow hand of Death. The ceremony was simple and unique; it consisted

in signing a document written by the bridegroom himself, with a

Justice of the Peace and the immediate family as witnesses. The

following extracts will show the character of the compact:

NEW YORK, Tuesday, _April 12, 1832_.

This afternoon I enter into a matrimonial engagement with Mary

Jane Robinson, a young person whose opinions on all important

subjects, whose mode of thinking and feeling, coincide more

intimately with my own than do those of any other individual with

whom I am acquainted.... We have selected the simplest ceremony

which the laws of this State recognize.... This ceremony involves

not the necessity of making promises regarding that over which

we have no control, the state of human affections in the distant

future, nor of repeating forms which we deem offensive, inasmuch

as they outrage the principles of human liberty and equality, by

conferring rights and imposing duties unequally on the sexes. The

ceremony consists of a simply written contract in which we agree

to take each other as husband and wife according to the laws of

the State of New York, our signatures being attested by those

friends who are present.

Of the unjust rights which in virtue of this ceremony an

iniquitous law tacitly gives me over the person and property of

another, I can not legally, but I can morally divest myself. And

I hereby distinctly and emphatically declare that I consider

myself, and earnestly desire to be considered by others, as

utterly divested, now and during the rest of my life, of any such

rights, the barbarous relics of a feudal, despotic system, soon

destined, in the onward course of improvement, to be wholly swept

away; and the existence of which is a tacit insult to the good

sense and good feeling of this comparatively civilized age.

I concur in this sentiment, ROBERT DALE OWEN.

MARY JANE ROBINSON.

After a wedding tour in Europe, the young couple returning to America,

settled in New Harmony, Indiana, a small Western village, where their

father, Robert Owen, had been making experiments in Community life.

It was a strange, new world into which these two young creatures were

entering. The husband had passed his youth in a well-ordered, wealthy

English household; the wife had passed the greater part of her

girlhood in Virginia, among slaves. They were now thrown upon the

crudities of Western life, and encountered those daily wearing trials

which strain the marriage tie to the utmost, even though it be based

upon principles of justice. But there was a reserve of energy and

endurance in this delicately reared pair; they felt themselves to be

pioneers in every sense of the word, and the animus which sustains

many a struggling soul seeking to turn a principle into a living

reality, sustained these two.

We of a later civilization can scarcely realize the strain upon women

in those earlier days. The housekeepers of New Harmony were obliged to

buy their groceries in bulk, and have them shipped by slow stages from

Cincinnati; meat was bought from the surrounding farmers, a quarter of

a beef at a time, to be cut up and disposed of by the housewife;

vegetables and most of the small fruits could not be bought at all;

stoves were an unknown luxury, all cooking being done in huge

fire-places or brick ovens.

For thirty years my father and mother labored with unabated energy;

his work leading him into the highways of public affairs, while her

way lay through the by-paths of home and village life.

Through these thirty years my father used such influence as he had on

the side of the weak and oppressed. In the matter of procuring a more

respectful consideration of the property rights of women, he was a

pioneer. To attempt a detailed statement of the amelioration of those

legal hardships under which women labored, is beyond the scope or

purpose of this article. I will only mention, in brief, the more

important provisions he was instrumental in passing in the face of

ridicule and violent opposition. These amendments were: The abolition

of simple dower, giving to widows instead, a fee simple interest;

procuring for women the right to their own earnings; abolishing

tenancy by courtesy, which, in effect, made the husband the

beneficiary of the wife's lands, and in several matters of less

radical change rectifying, so far as he could, the injustice of the

common law toward widows; always keeping in view, however, the proper

heirship of children of a former marriage, and guarding the rights of

creditors.

In the matter of the divorce laws of Indiana, my father has not taken

as prominent a part as is generally supposed. These laws were referred

to him in conjunction with another member of the Legislature for the

revision, and they amended them in a single point, namely: by adding

to the causes for divorce "habitual drunkenness for two years." My

father has expressed himself in full on this point in a discussion

between Horace Greeley and himself, first published in the _New York

Tribune_.

As early as 1828, my father advocated an equal position for woman,

publishing these views through _The Free Enquirer_, a weekly paper

edited by Frances Wright and himself in New York.

My father's political life comprised several terms in the Legislature

of his own State, being elected in 1850 a member of the Convention

which amended the Constitution of Indiana, and chairman of its

Revision Committee. The debates in this Convention show the difference

in the position of my father and his antagonists.

CONSTITUTIONAL DEBATES.

Mr. OWEN: No subject of greater importance has come up since we

met here, as next in estimation to the right of enjoying life and

liberty, our Constitution enumerates the right of acquiring,

possessing, protecting property. And these sections refer to the

latter right, heretofore declared to be natural, inherent,

inalienable, yet virtually withheld from one-half the citizens of

our State. Women are not represented in our legislative halls;

they have no voice in selecting those who make laws and

constitutions for them; and one reason given for excluding women

from the right of suffrage, is an expression of confident belief

that their husbands and fathers will surely guard their

interests. I should like, for the honor of my sex, to believe

that the legal rights of women are, at all times, as zealously

guarded as they would be if women had votes to give to those who

watch over their interests.

Suffer me, sir, in defense of my skepticism on this point, to lay

before you and this Convention, an item from my legislative

recollection.

It will be thirteen years next winter, since I reported from a

seat just over the way, a change in the then existing law of

descent. At that time the widow of an intestate dying without

children, was entitled, under ordinary circumstances, to dower in

her husband's real estate, and one-third of his personal

property. The change proposed was to give her one-third of the

real estate of her husband absolutely, and two-thirds of his

personal property--far too little, indeed; but yet as great an

innovation as we thought we could carry. This law remained in

force until 1841. How stands it now? The widow of an intestate,

in case there be no children, and in case there be father, or

mother, or brother, or sister of the husband, is heir to no part

whatever of her deceased husband's real estate; she is entitled

to dower only, of one-third of his estate. I ask you whether your

hearts do not revolt at the idea, that when the husband is

carried to his long home, his widow shall see snatched from her,

by an inhuman law, the very property her watchful care had mainly

contributed to increase and keep together?

Yet this idea, revolting as it is, is carried out in all its

unmitigated rigor, by the statute to which I have just referred.

Out of a yearly rental of a hundred and fifty dollars, the widow

of an intestate rarely becomes entitled to more than fifty. The

other hundred dollars goes--whither? To the husband's father or

mother? Yes, if they survive! But if they are dead, what then? A

brother-in-law or a sister-in-law takes it, or the husband's

uncle, or his aunt, or his cousin! Do husbands toil through a

life-time to support their aunts, and uncles, and cousins? If but

a single cousin's child, a babe of six months, survive, to that

infant goes a hundred dollars of the rental, and to the widow

fifty. Can injustice go beyond this? What think you of a law like

that, on the statute book of a civilized and a Christian land?

When the husband's sustaining arm is laid in the grave, and the

widow left without a husband to cherish, then comes the law more

cruel than death, and decrees that poverty shall be added to

desolation!

Say, delegates of the people of Indiana, answer and say whether

you, whether those who sent you here are guiltless in this thing?

Have you done justice? Have you loved mercy?

But let us turn to the question more immediately before us. Let

us pass from the case of the widow and look to that of the wife:

First, the husband becomes entitled, from the instant of

marriage, to all the goods and chattels of his wife. His right is

absolute, unconditional. Secondly, the husband acquires, in

virtue of the marriage, the rents and profits (in all cases

during her life) of his wife's real estate. The flagrant

injustice of this has been somewhat modified by a statute barring

the marital right to the rent of lands, but this protection does

not extend to personal property. Is this as it should be? Are we

meting out fair and equal justice?... There is a species of very

silly sentimentalism which it is the fashion to put forth in

after-dinner toasts and other equally veracious forms, about

woman being the only tyrant in a free republic; about the chains

she imposes on her willing slaves, etc.; it would be much more to

our credit, if we would administer a little less flattery and a

little more justice.

From pages upon pages of eloquence delivered in reply, I cull the

following extracts, which are a sample of the spirit of the

opposition:

"I am of opinion that to adopt the proposition of the gentleman

from Posey (Mr. Owen), will not ameliorate the condition of

married women."

"I can not see the propriety of establishing for women a distinct

and separate interest, the consideration of which would, of

necessity, withdraw their attention from that sacred duty which

nature has, in its wisdom, assigned to their peculiar care. I

think the law which unites in one common bond the pecuniary

interests of husband and wife should remain. The sacred ordinance

of marriage, and the relations growing out of it, should not be

disturbed. The common law does seem to me to afford sufficient

protection."

"If the law is changed, I believe that a most essential injury

would result to the endearing relations of married life.

Controversies would arise, husbands and wives would become armed

against each other, to the utter destruction of true felicity in

married life."

"To adopt it would be to throw a whole population morally and

politically into confusion. Is it necessary to explode a volcano

under the foundation of the family union?"

"I object to the gentleman's proposition, because it is in

contravention of one of the great fundamental principles of the

Christian religion. The common law only embodies the divine law."

"Give to the wife a separate interest in law, and all those high

motives to restrain the husband from wrong-doing will be, in a

great degree, removed."

"I firmly believe that it would diminish, if it did not totally

annihilate woman's influence."

"Woman's power comes through a self-sacrificing spirit, ready to

offer up all her hopes upon the shrine of her husband's wishes."

"Sir, we have got along for eighteen hundred years, and shall we

change now? Our fathers have for many generations maintained the

principle of the common law in this regard, for some good and

weighty reasons."

"The immortal Jefferson, writing in reference to the then state

of society in France, and the debauched condition thereof,

attributes the whole to the effects of the civil law then in

force in France, permitting the wife to hold, acquire, and own

property, separate and distinct from the husband."