remuneration for woman's work, in all departments of industry,
has sprung from her dependence, which dependence is prolonged and
increased by this most irrational and unjust habit of half pay;
therefore do we demand, in the name of common sense and common
conscience, that women equally with men, should be paid for their
services according to the quality and quantity of the work done,
and not the sex of the worker.
_Resolved_, That, whereas, the State of New York, in the acts of
1848 and 1849, has honorably and justly placed married women on
the footing of equality with unmarried women, in regard to the
receiving, holding, conveying, and devising of all property, real
and personal, we call upon the Legislature of the State to take
the next step--so plainly justified by its own precedents--of
providing that husbands and wives shall be joint owners of their
joint earnings--the community estate passing to the survivor at
the death of either party.
_Resolved_, That, whereas, the evident intent of the Legislature
of the State of New York has for many years been progressively to
do away with the legal disabilities of women, which existed under
the savage usages of the old common law, therefore we do urgently
call upon the Legislature of this State, at its next session, to
appoint a joint committee to examine and revise the statutes, and
to propose remedies for the redress of all legal grievances from
which women now suffer, and suitable measures for the full
establishment of women's legal equality with men.
_Resolved_, That, whereas, under the common law, the father is
regarded as the guardian, by nature, of his children, having the
entire control of their persons and education, while only upon
the death of the father, does the mother become the guardian by
nature; and, whereas, by the revised statutes of New York, it is
provided, that where an estate in lands shall become vested in an
infant, the guardianship of such infant, with the rights, powers,
and duties of a guardian in soccage, shall belong to the father,
and only in case of the father's death, to the mother; and,
whereas, finally and chiefly, by the revised statutes of New
York, it is provided, that every father may, by his deed or last
will, duly executed, dispose of the custody and tuition of his
children, during their minority, "to any person or persons in
possession or remainder"; therefore, do we solemnly protest
against the utter violation of every mother's rights, authorized
by existing laws, in regard to the guardianship of infants, and
demand, in the name of common humanity, that the Legislature of
New York so amend the statutes, as to place fathers and mothers
on equal footing in regard to the guardianship of their children.
Especially do we invite the Legislature instantly to pass laws,
entitling mothers to become their children's guardians, in all
cases where, by habitual drunkenness, immorality, or
improvidence, fathers are incompetent to the sacred trust.
_Resolved_, That, whereas, according to the amendments of the
Constitution of the United States, it is provided that "in all
criminal cases, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and
public trial, by an impartial jury," and that "in suits at common
law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars,
the right of trial by jury shall be preserved"; and, whereas,
according to the revised statutes of New York, it is provided,
that "no member of this State can be disfranchised or deprived of
any of the rights or privileges, secured to any citizen thereof,
unless by the law of the land, or the judgment of his peers";
therefore, do we demand, that women, as "members" and "citizens"
of this State, equally with men, should be entitled to claim a
trial by "an impartial jury of their peers." And especially do we
remonstrate against the partial, mean, and utterly inequitable
custom, everywhere prevalent, that in questions of divorce, men,
and men alone, should be regarded as "an impartial jury."
_Resolved_, That, whereas, in the Declaration of Independence of
the United States, one of the "injuries and usurpation"
complained of is Taxation without the consent of the persons
taxed; and, whereas, it is provided in the revised statutes of
New York, that "no tax, duty, aid or imposition whatever--except
such as may be laid by a law of the United States--can be taken
or levied within this State, without the grant and assent of the
people of this State; by their representatives in Senate and
Assembly"; and that "no citizen of this State can be compelled to
contribute to any gift, loan, tax, or other like charge, not laid
or imposed by a law of the United States, or by the Legislature
of the State"; therefore do we proclaim, that it is a gross act
of tyranny and usurpation, to tax women without their consent,
and we demand, either that women be represented by their own
appointed representatives, or that they be freed from the
imposition of taxes.
_Resolved_, That inasmuch as it is the fundamental principle of
the Nation and of every State in this Union, that all
"governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed"--it is a manifest violation of the Supreme Law of the
land for males to govern females without their consent; and
therefore do we demand, of the people of New York, such a change
in the Constitution of the State, as will secure to women the
right of suffrage which is now so unjustly monopolized by men.
_Resolved_, That Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Samuel J. May, Ernestine
L. Rose, William Hay, Susan B. Anthony, Burroughs Phillips,
Antoinette L. Brown, W. H. Channing, and Lydia A. Jenkins, be a
committee to prepare and to present an address to the Legislature
of New York, at its next session, stating, as specifically as
they shall see fit, the legal disabilities of women, and to ask a
hearing before a joint committee, specially appointed to consider
the whole subject of the just and equal rights of women.
_Resolved_, That Horace Greeley, Mary C. Vaughan, Abram Pryne,
Sarah Pellet, and Matilda Joslyn Gage be a committee to prepare
an address to capitalists and industrialists of New York, on the
best modes of employing and remunerating the industry of women.
The President invited any one who saw errors or fallacies in the
arguments brought forward, to make them apparent.
Mr. PRYNE, of Cazenovia, editor of the _Progressive Christian_,
said: If women desire to enter the ordinary avocations of men,
they must be brave enough to become shopkeepers and mechanics.
There is no law to prevent it, neither is there to woman's
voting. The men have made an arrangement by which their votes are
not counted, but still they might provide ballot-boxes, and
decide upon whom they would prefer as magistrates and
legislators. A man who was thus voted to stay at home, by an
overwhelming majority of women, even if elected by the men, would
find himself in an uncomfortable position.
Mr. CHANNING said he understood that in a town in Ohio the women
did so, and cast sixty votes.
Mr. PRYNE was glad to hear that there were practical women in
Ohio. Man is where he is because he is what he is, and when woman
gets the same elements of moral and physical power she will have
no more wrongs to complain of.
Mrs. ROSE said it was a true maxim that he who would be free,
himself must strike the blow. But woman could not, as things
were, help herself. As well might the slaveholder say that the
slave was fit for no other condition while he consents to occupy
that position. To a certain extent this is true, and the same
principles apply to both classes. But all human beings are not
martyrs; the majority accept the conditions in which they find
themselves, rather than make their lives one long struggle for
freedom. Woman must be educated to take the stand which Mr. Pryne
invites her to assume. The only object for which woman is now
reared is to be married; and is she fitted even for that; to
become a companion, an assistant, an aid, a comforter to man; and
above all, a mother? That alone; to fit a woman for that sphere;
she must possess all the extended education which would fit her
to take any position in life to which man aspires.
MARY F. LOVE said there might be hindrances in the way of woman
too great for her to surmount. Men in their straggles for liberty
have sometimes met insuperable obstacles; there have been
unsuccessful revolutions at all stages of human development.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS, in discussing the injustice to woman in the
world of work, said: Some one whispers in my ear that as teachers
women get one-fourth the pay men do, while a girl's tuition is
the same as a boy's.
The PRESIDENT observed, that the girl gets twice as much
education, being uniformly more studious and attentive.
E. A. HOPKINS, a lawyer of Rochester, spoke to the eighth
resolution, which asks fora committee to examine the whole
subject; he said: I believe if this question was properly
presented to the Legislature, we might have well grounded hope
for the relief of women from their legal disabilities, and
indicated the amendments which ought to be made in the present
laws regulating the relations of the married state. He argued
against making the man and wife joint owners of property, execpt
in certain specific cases.
Rev. Mr. CHANNING said that in Louisiana and California this
joint ownership was recognized by the laws.
Mr. HOPKINS was not aware of that; and he did not see why labor,
worth in the market no more than one or two dollars per week,
should be paid for at the rate of, it may be, $200 per week. He
thought the law should be altered so that the widow may have
control of property while her children are minors. The right to
vote, which was claimed under the idea that representation should
go before taxation, he discussed with ability, taking ground
against women voting. The arguments used by the other side were
shown to be fallacious, or at least partaking of the aristocratic
element. Women are already tried by "their peers," though not by
those of their own sex. As to women holding office, this movement
had proved the position of Dr. Channing, in his discussion with
Miss Martineau, that "influence was good, and office bad." Women
should be content to exercise influence, without seeking for the
spoils and risking the temptations of office. He argued upon the
maxim that "governments derive their just powers from the consent
of the governed," contending that it was not true; those powers
are derived from the majority who are brave enough to set up and
sustain the government.[124]
Frederick Douglass, in the course of his remarks, said he had seen two
young women assistants in the County Clerk's office, also young women
going into printing-offices to set type; and he might have added the
following, which we clip from the _The Una_ of the same date:
Female compositors have been employed in the offices of the three
Cincinnati daily papers which stood out against the demands of
the Printer's Union. The Pittsburg _Daily Dispatch_ is also set
up entirely by females. The experiment was commenced on that
paper two months ago, and the proprietors now announce its entire
success. The Louisville _Courier_ announces its intentions to try
the experiment in the spring.
Wherever the change has been made it seems to be completely
successful.--_Courier and Enquirer_.
Mr. MAY said: If a woman should not leave her family to go to the
Legislature, neither should a man. The obligation is mutual: and
while children require the care of both parents, both should
share the duty, and not leave them from ambitious motives. It is
only those who have well discharged their duties to their
families who are fit to become legislators. We are now giving the
nation into the hands of boys and half-grown men. Had we such
women as Lucretia Mott and Angelina Grimké in the Legislature,
there would be more wisdom there than we have to-day. When I
look through the nation and see the shameful mismanagement, I am
convinced that it is the result, in part, of the absence of the
feminine element in high stations; it is because the maternal
influence is wanting that we run riot as we do. The State is in a
condition of half orphanage, and needs the care and guidance of a
mother.
E. A. HOPKINS, Esq.: Thought the movement was not entirely
timely, wise, and practicable, though parts of it might be. He
took Up and answered each of the questions appended to the call
for the Convention. His speech was characteristic of the lawyer,
and the frequent recurrence of the idea, _it is right because it
is customary_, will illustrate its moral character. He stated
three several points where he thought woman was aggrieved and
should have legislative redress. Office was a temptation, and he
thought woman was better off without it.
Miss BROWN proposed that the men, for a while, be relieved from
this great evil, and excused from the burdens of office. If this
necessary duty was so burdensome, woman should be a helper and
share its burdens with him. We are taught to be grateful for
small favors. Our friend has been giving you milk, but to me it
seems, even at that, diluted with water. There is one law, "All
things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even
so to them." When our brothers are ready to be paid a dollar a
week for keeping house and nursing the children, let them dictate
this also to us. We women now offer to take the burden and
responsibility of government upon ourselves. We would be willing
to save our friends for a time from temptation and care, as they
have so generously done by us; if we are to be satisfied with
things as they are, so should the slave be. He should be grateful
for the care of his master, for according to the established
price paid for labor, he does not earn enough to take care of
himself. We should be satisfied with our present license laws;
they are right, just, and good, judged by our friend's reasoning.
If our offer to rule alone is not liked, we are ready, then, to
co-operate with man in this according to the original design and
arrangement of the Creator.
Mr. HOPKINS opposed with several objections, one of which was,
that private stations demand as high qualifications, and more
surely command a just recompense, than public offices; woman has
yet taken few lucrative private employments; why, then, till
these are taken, should she seek for public office?
FREDERICK DOUGLASS again raised the inquiry, in the investment of
money or the use of property, where there is joint ownership, and
in regard to which there may be disagreement between husband and
wife, how shall the matter be settled between them? Law is not a
necessity of human nature; if love ruled, statutes would be
obsolete; genuine marriages and harmonious co-operations would
prevent any such necessity.
Miss BROWN proposed to reply in a word: Law must regulate
differences where there is not true union, and as a business
copartnership, if the matter could not be adjusted between
themselves to mutual satisfaction, let it be referred to a third
person; where it is a property transaction, let the usual
business custom be observed; but if there be a difficulty of a
different nature, so serious that the parties, bound to each
other for life, can not enjoy existence together if they can not
make each other happy, but are to each other a mutual source of
discomfort, why, let them separate; let them not be divorced, but
let them each be content to live alone for the good of society.
Mrs. LOVE, of Randolph, read an address, flowery in style, but
full of truth, upon the discord that pervades social life. Homes
should be reformed; from domestic uncongeniality spring the chief
evils of society. She advised men and women to beware of
inharmonious alliances, and made a touching appeal in behalf of
the fallen of her sex.
Mr. CHANNING said: Whenever he heard a woman, in face of existing
prejudices, speak the simple truth in regard to the social wrongs
of her sisters, as Mrs. Love had done, asking no leave of the
Convention, and making no apology for her sincere words, however
they might startle false delicacy, he felt bound as a man, and in
the name of man, to offer her the tribute of his hearty respect.
Mr. Channing presented two forms of petitions--one for property
rights, the other for suffrage--which were adopted. Rev. Lydia A.
Jenkins read a carefully prepared address. Emma R. Coe made a full
review of the laws, which, at that early day, was the burden of
almost every speech. At the close of the sixth session, the audiences
having grown larger and larger, until the spacious and beautiful
Corinthian Hall was packed to its utmost, the Convention adjourned, to
begin its real work in canvassing the State with lectures and
petitions, preparing an address to the Legislature, securing a
hearing, and holding a Convention at Albany during the coming session
of that body.
An appeal[125] to the women of the State was at once issued, and all
editors requested to publish it with the forms of petitions. The
responses came back in the form of 13,000 signatures in two months,
gathered in thirty out of the sixty counties of the Empire State. The
lecturers were: Susan B. Anthony, Mary F. Love, Sarah Pellet, Lydia A.
Jenkins, and Matilda Joslyn Gage. Over sixty women were engaged in the
work of circulating the petitions.
Horace Greeley, chairman of the Committee on Industry, published in
_The New York Tribune_ the following report:
WOMAN AND WORK.
Whether women should or should not be permitted to vote, to hold
office, to serve on juries, and to officiate as lawyers, doctors,
or divines, are questions about which a diversity of opinions is
likely long to exist. But that the current rates of remuneration
for woman's work are entirely, unjustly inadequate, is a
proposition which needs only to be considered to insure its
hearty acceptance by every intelligent, justice-loving human
being. Consider a few facts:
Every able-bodied man inured to labor, though of the rudest sort,
who steps on shore in America from Europe, is worth a dollar per
day, and can readily command it. Though he only knows how to
wield such rude, clumsy implements as the pick and spade, there
are dozens of places where his services are in request at a
dollar per day the year through, and he can even be transported
hence to the place where his services are wanted, on the strength
of his contract to work and the credit of his future earnings. We
do not say this is the case every day in the year, for it may not
be at this most inclement and forbidding season; but it is the
general fact, as every one knows. And any careful, intelligent,
resolute male laborer is morally certain to rise out of the
condition of a mere shoveler, into a position where the work is
lighter and the pay better after a year or two of faithful
service.
But the sister of this same faithful worker, equally careful,
intelligent, and willing to do anything honest and reputable for
a living, finds no such chances proffered her. No agent meets
her on the dock to persuade her to accept a passage to Illinois
or Upper Canada, there to be employed on fair work at a dollar
per day and expectations. On the contrary, she may think herself
fortunate if a week's search opens to her a place where by the
devotion of all her waking hours she can earn five to six dollars
per month, with a chance of its increase, after several years'
faithful service, to seven or eight dollars at most.
The brother is in many respects the equal of his employer; may
sit down beside him at the hotel where they both stop for dinner;
their votes may balance each other at any election; the laborer
lives with those whose company suits him, and needs no character
from his last place to secure him employment or a new job when he
gets tired of the old one. But the sister never passes out of the
atmosphere of caste--of conscious and galling inferiority to
those with whom her days must be spent. There is no election day
in her year, and but the ghost of a Fourth of July. She must live
not with those she likes, but with those who want her; she is not
always safe from libertine insult in what serves her for a home;
she knows no ten-hour rule, and would not dare to claim its
protection if one were enacted. Though not a slave by law, she is
too often as near it in practice as one legally free can be.
Now this disparity between the rewards of man's and woman's labor
at the base of the social edifice, is carried up to its very
pinnacle. Of a brother and sister equally qualified and effective
as teachers, the brother will receive twice as much compensation
as the sister. The mistress who conducts the rural district
school in summer, usually receives less than half the monthly
stipend that her brother does for teaching that same school in
winter, when time and work are far less valuable; and here there
can be no pretence of a disparity in capacity justifying that in
wages. Between male and female workers in the factories and
mills, the same difference is enforced.
Who does not feel that this is intrinsically wrong? that the
sister ought to have equal (not necessarily identical)
opportunities with the brother--should be as well taught,
industrially as well as intellectually, and her compensation made
to correspond with her capacity, upon a clear understanding of
the fact that, though her muscular power is less than his, yet
her dexterity and celerity of manipulation are greater?
Where does the wrong originate? Suppose that, by some inexorable
law in the spirit of Hindoo caste, it were settled that negroes,
regardless of personal capacity, could do nothing for a living
but black boots, and that red-haired men were allowed to engage
in no avocation except horse-currying; who does not perceive
that, though boot-blacking and horse-currying might be well and
cheaply done, black-skinned and also red-haired men would have
but a sorry chance for making a living? Who does not see that
their wages, social standing, and means of securing independence,
would be far inferior to those they now enjoy?
The one great cause, therefore, of the inadequate compensation
and inferior position of woman, is the unjust apportionment of
avocation. Man has taken the lion's share to himself, and
allotted the residue to woman, telling her to take that and be
content with it, if she don't want to be regarded as a forward,
indelicate, presuming, unwomanly creature, who is evidently no
better than she should be. And woman has come for the most part
to accept the lot thus assigned her, with thankfulness, or,
rather, without thought, just as the Mussulman's wife rejoices in
her sense of propriety which will not permit her to show her face
in the street, and the Brahmin widow immolates herself on the
funeral pyre of her husband.
What is the appropriate remedy?
Primarily and mainly, a more rational and healthful public
sentiment with regard to woman's work; a sentiment which shall
welcome her to every employment wherein she may be useful and
efficient without necessarily compromising her purity or
overtasking her strength. Let her be encouraged to open a store,
to work a garden, plant and tend an orchard, to learn any of the
lighter mechanical trades, to study for a profession, whenever
her circumstances and her tastes shall render any of these
desirable. Let woman, and the advocates of justice to women,
encourage and patronize her in whatever laudable pursuits she may
thus undertake; let them give a preference to dry-goods stores
wherein the clerks are mainly women; and so as to hotels where
they wait at table, mechanics' shops in which they are
extensively employed and fairly paid. Let the ablest of the sex
be called to the lecture-room, to the temperance rostrum, etc.;
and whenever a post-office falls vacant and a deserving woman is
competent to fill and willing to take it, let her be appointed,
as a very few have already been. There will always be some widow
of a poor clergyman, doctor, lawyer, or other citizens
prematurely cut off, who will be found qualified for and glad to
accept such a post if others will suggest her name and procure
her appointment. Thus abstracting more and more of the competent
and energetic from the restricted sphere wherein they now
struggle with their sister for a meager and precarious
subsistence, the greater mass of self-subsisting women will find
the demand for their labor gradually increasing and its
recompense proportionally enhancing. With a larger field and more
decided usefulness will come a truer and deeper respect; and
woman, no longer constrained to marry for a position, may always
wait to marry worthily and in obedience to the dictates of
sincere affection. Hence constancy, purity, mutual respect, a
just independence and a little of happiness, may be reasonably
anticipated.
HORACE GREELEY, MARY VAUGHAN, ABRAHAM PRYNE,
SARAH PELLET, MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE.
ALBANY CONVENTION.
FEBRUARY 14 AND 15, 1854.
Although the weather was inclement, a large audience assembled in
Association Hall on the morning of the 14th, representing the
different portions of the State. Susan B. Anthony called the
Convention to order and read the call, which had been written by Rev.
Wm. Henry Channing, and published in all the leading papers of the
State.
JUSTICE TO WOMEN--CONVENTION AT ALBANY, FEB. 14 AND 15, 1854.
The petition asking for such amendments in the Statutes and
Constitution of New York as will secure to the women of the State
legal equality with the men, and to females equally with the
males a right to suffrage, will be presented to the Legislature
about the middle of February. We, the Committee appointed at the
Convention held at Rochester in December--by whose authority
these petitions were issued--do hereby invite all
fellow-citizens, of either sex, who are in favor of these
measures, to assemble in Convention, at Albany, on Tuesday and
Wednesday, February 14th and 15th.
The so-called "Woman's Rights Movement" has been so much
misrepresented, that it is desirable to make the appeal for
justice earnest, imposing, and effective, by showing how
eminently equitable are its principles, how wise and practical
are its measures. Let the serious-minded, generous, hopeful men
and women of New York then gather in council, to determine
whether there is anything irrational or revolutionary in the
proposal that fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, should treat
their daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers as their peers. This
reform is designed, by its originators, to make woman womanly in
the highest sense of that term--to exalt, not to degrade--to
perfect, not to impair her refining influence in every sphere.
The demand is made only to take off burdens, to remove
hindrances, to leave women free as men are free, to follow
conscience and judgment in all scenes of duty. On what
ground--except the right of might--do men, claiming to be
Republicans and Christians, deny to woman privileges which they
would die to gain and keep for themselves? What evil--what but
good can come from enlarging woman's power of usefulness? How can
society be otherwise than a gainer by the increased moral and
mental influence of one-half of its members? Let these and
similar questions be fairly, candidly, thoroughly discussed in
the hearing of the Legislature of New York.
Come then, fellow-citizens, to this Convention prepared to speak,
to hear, to act. Lucy Stone, Wendell Phillips, Mrs. C. I. H.
Nichols, and other earnest friends of the cause from New England
and the West, as well as from our own State, are to be with us.
And may the spirit of Truth preside over all.
ELIZABETH C. STANTON, SAMUEL J. MAY, ERNESTINE L. ROSE,
ANTOINETTE L. BROWN, WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING, WM. HAY,
BURROUGHS PHILLIPS, LYDIA ANN JENKINS, SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
Those having petitions in their hands will please send them to
Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, until the first of February, after
which they should be forwarded to Lydia Mott, Albany.
N. B.--Editors please copy.
_January 23, 1854._
The officers[126] of the Convention being reported, Mrs. Elizabeth
Cady Stanton (President) took the chair, and after returning her
acknowledgments for the honor conferred, introduced Rev. Antoinette L.
Brown, who read a series of resolutions:
1. _Resolved_, That the men who claim to be Christian
Republicans, and yet class their mothers, sisters, wives, and
daughters among aliens, criminals, idiots, and minors, unfit to
be their coequal citizens, are guilty of absurd inconsistency and
presumption; that for males to govern females, without consent
asked or granted, is to perpetuate an aristocracy, utterly
hostile to the principles and spirit of free institutions; and
that it is time for the people of the United States and every
State in the Union to put away forever that remnant of despotism
and feudal oligarchy, the caste of sex.
2. _Resolved_, That women are human beings whose rights
correspond with their duties; that they are endowed with
conscience, reason, affection, and energy, for the use of which
they are individually responsible; that like men they are bound
to advance the cause of truth, justice, and universal good in the
society and nation of which they are members; that in these
United States women constitute one-half the people; men
constitute the other half; that women are no more free in honor
than men are to withhold their influence and example from
patriotic and philanthropic movements, and that men who deny
women to be their peers, and who shut them out from exercising a
fair share of power in the body politic, are arrogant usurpers,
whose only apology is to be found in prejudices transmitted from
half-civilized and half-christianized ages.
WHEREAS, The family is the nursery of the State and the
Church--the God-appointed seminary of the human race. Therefore
3. _Resolved_, That the family, by men as well as women, should
be held more sacred than all other institutions; that it may not,
without sin, be abandoned or neglected by fathers any more than
by mothers, for the sake of any of the institutions devised by
men--for the government of the State or the Nation any more than
for the voluntary association of social reformers.
4. _Resolved_, That women's duties and rights as daughters,
sisters, wives, and mothers, are not bounded within the circle of
home; that in view of the sacredness of their relations, they are
not free to desert their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons
amidst scenes of business, politics, and pleasure, and to leave
them alone in their struggles and temptations, but that as
members of the human family, for the sake of human advancement,
women are bound as widely as possible to give to men the
influence of their aid and presence; and finally, that universal
experience attests that those nations and societies are most
orderly, high-toned, and rich in varied prosperity, where women
most freely intermingle with men in all spheres of active life.
5. _Resolved_, That the fundamental error of the whole structure
of legislation and custom, whereby women are practically
sustained, even in this republic, is the preposterous fiction of
law, that in the eye of the law the husband and wife are one
person, that person being the husband; that this falsehood
itself, the deposit of barbarism, tends perpetually to brutalize
the marriage relation by subjecting wives as irresponsible tools
to the capricious authority of husbands; that this degradation of
married women re-acts inevitably to depress the condition of
single women, by impairing their own self-respect and man's
respect for them; and that the final result is that system of
tutelage miscalled protection, by which the industry of women is
kept on half-pay, their affections trifled with, their energies
crippled, and even their noblest aspirations wasted away in vain
efforts, ennui, and regret.
6. _Resolved_, That in consistency with the spirit and intent of
the Statutes of New York, enacted in 1848 and 1849, the design of
which was to secure to married women the entire control of their
property, it is the duty of the Legislature to make such
amendments in the laws of the State as will enable married women
to conduct business, to form contracts, to sue and be sued in
their own names--to receive and hold the gains of their industry,
and be liable for their own debts so far as their interests are
separate from those of their husbands--to become joint owners in
the joint earnings of the partnership, so far as these interests
are identified--to bear witness for or against their husbands,
and generally to be held responsible for their own deeds.
7. _Resolved_, That as acquiring property by all just and
laudable means, and the holding and devising of the same is a
human right, women married and single are entitled to this right,
and all the usages or laws which withhold it from them are
manifestly unjust.
8. _Resolved_, That every argument in favor of universal suffrage
for males is equally in favor of universal suffrage for females,
and therefore if men may claim the right of suffrage as necessary
to the protection of all their rights in any Government, so may
women for the same reason.
9. _Resolved_, That if man as man, has any peculiar claim to a
representation in the government, for himself, woman as woman,
has a paramount claim to an equal representation for herself.
10. _Resolved_, Therefore, that whether you regard woman as like
or unlike man, she is in either case entitled to an equal joint
participation with him in all civil rights and duties.
11. _Resolved_, That although men should grant us every specific
claim, we should hold them all by favor rather than right, unless
they also concede, and we exercise, the right of protecting
ourselves by the elective franchise.
12. _Resolved_, That if the essence of a trial by an "impartial
jury" be a trial by one's own equals, then has never a woman
enjoyed that privilege in the hour of her need as a culprit. We,
therefore, respectfully demand of our Legislature that, at least,
the right of such trial by jury be accorded to women equally with
men--that women be eligible to the jury-box, whenever one of
their own sex is arraigned at the bar.
13. _Resolved_, That could the women of the State be heard on
this question, we should find the mass with us; as the mother's
reluctance to give up the guardianship of her children; the
wife's unwillingness to submit to the abuse of a drunken husband,
the general sentiment in favor of equal property rights, and the
thousands of names in favor of our petition, raised with so
little effort, conclusively prove.
WHEREAS, The right of petition is guaranteed to every member of
this republic; therefore
14. _Resolved_, That it is the highest duty of legislators
impartially to investigate all claims for the redress of wrong,
and alter and amend such laws as prevent the administration of
justice and equal rights to all.
_Resolved_, That all true-hearted men and women pledge themselves
never to relinquish their unceasing efforts in behalf of the full
and equal rights of women, until we have effaced the stigma
resting on this republic, that while it theoretically proclaims
that all men are created equal, deprives one-half of its members
of the enjoyment of the rights and privileges possessed by the
other.
The salient points of the question as embodied in the resolutions and
the address were ably presented by William Henry Channing, Samuel J.
May, Mrs. Nichols, Mrs. Rose, Mrs. Love, Miss Brown, Miss Anthony,
Mrs. Jenkins, Hon. William Hay, and Giles B. Stebbins. At the evening
session Mrs. Stanton read her address prepared for the Legislature,
which Miss Anthony had stereotyped and published. A copy was laid on
the desk of every legislator, and twenty thousand scattered like
snow-flakes over the State.
MRS. STANTON'S ADDRESS.
_To the Legislature of the State of New York_:
"The thinking minds of all nations call for change. There is a
deep-lying struggle in the whole fabric of society; a boundless,
grinding collision of the New with the Old."
The tyrant, Custom, has been summoned before the bar of
Common-Sense. His majesty no longer awes the multitude--his
sceptre is broken--his crown is trampled in the dust--the
sentence of death is pronounced upon him. All nations, ranks, and
classes have, in turn, questioned and repudiated his authority;
and now, that the monster is chained and caged, timid woman, on
tiptoe, comes to look him in the face, and to demand of her brave
sires and sons, who have struck stout blows for liberty, if, in
this change of dynasty, she, too, shall find relief. Yes,
gentlemen, in republican America, in the nineteenth century, we,
the daughters of the revolutionary heroes of '76, demand at your
hands the redress of our grievances--a revision of your State
Constitution--a new code of laws. Permit us then, as briefly as
possible, to call your attention to the legal disabilities under
which we labor.
1st. Look at the position of woman as woman. It is not enough for
us that, by your laws we are permitted to live and breathe, to
claim the necessaries of life from our legal protectors--to pay
the penalty of our crimes; we demand the full recognition of all
our rights as citizens of the Empire State. We are persons;
native, free-born citizens; property-holders, tax-payers; yet are
we denied the exercise of our right to the elective franchise. We
support ourselves, and, in part, your schools, colleges,
churches, your poor-houses, jails, prisons, the army, the navy,
the whole machinery of government, and yet we have no voice in
your councils. We have every qualification required by the
Constitution, necessary to the legal voter, but the one of sex.
We are moral, virtuous, and intelligent, and in all respects
quite equal to the proud white man himself, and yet by your laws
we are classed with idiots, lunatics, and negroes; and though we
do not feel honored by the place assigned us, yet, in fact, our
legal position is lower than that of either; for the negro can be
raised to the dignity of a voter if he possess himself of $250;
the lunatic can vote in his moments of sanity, and the idiot,
too, if he be a male one, and not more than nine-tenths a fool;
but we, who have guided great movements of charity, established
missions, edited journals, published works on history, economy,
and statistics; who have governed nations, led armies, filled the
professor's chair, taught philosophy and mathematics to the
savants of our age, discovered planets, piloted ships across the
sea, are denied the most sacred rights of citizens, because,
forsooth, we came not into this republic crowned with the dignity
of manhood! Woman is theoretically absolved from all allegiance
to the laws of the State. Sec. 1, Bill of Rights, 2 R. S., 301,
says that no authority can, on any pretence whatever, be
exercised over the citizens of this State but such as is or shall
be derived from, and granted by the people of this State.
Now, gentlemen, we would fain know by what authority you have
disfranchised one-half the people of this State? You who have so
boldly taken possession of the bulwarks of this republic, show us
your credentials, and thus prove your exclusive right to govern,
not only yourselves, but us. Judge Hurlburt, who has long
occupied a high place at the bar in this State, and who recently
retired with honor from the bench of the Supreme Court, in his
profound work on Human Rights, has pronounced your present
position rank usurpation. Can it be that here, where we
acknowledge no royal blood, no apostolic descent, that you, who
have declared that all men were created equal--that governments
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, would
willingly build up an aristocracy that places the ignorant and
vulgar above the educated and refined--the alien and the
ditch-digger above the authors and poets of the day--an
aristocracy that would raise the sons above the mothers that bore
them? Would that the men who can sanction a Constitution so
opposed to the genius of this government, who can enact and
execute laws so degrading to womankind, had sprung, Minerva-like,
from the brains of their fathers, that the matrons of this
republic need not blush to own their sons!
Woman's position, under our free institutions, is much lower than
under the monarchy of England. "In England the idea of woman
holding official station is not so strange as in the United
States. The Countess of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery held the
office of hereditary sheriff of Westmoreland, and exercised it in
person. At the assizes at Appleby, she sat with the judges on the
bench. In a reported case, it is stated by counsel, and
substantially assented to by the court, that a woman is capable
of serving in almost all the offices of the kingdom, such as
those of queen, marshal, great chamberlain and constable of
England, the champion of England, commissioner of sewers,
governor of work-house, sexton, keeper of the prison, of the
gate-house of the dean and chapter of Westminster, returning
officer for members of Parliament, and constable, the latter of
which is in some respects judicial. The office of jailor is
frequently exercised by a woman.
"In the United States a woman may administer on the effects of
her deceased husband, and she has occasionally held a subordinate
place in the post-office department. She has therefore a sort of
post mortem, post-mistress notoriety; but with the exception of
handling letters of administration and letters mailed, she is the
submissive creature of the old common law." True, the unmarried
woman has a right to the property she inherits and the money she
earns, but she is taxed without representation. And here again
you place the negro, so unjustly degraded by you, in a superior
position to your own wives and mothers; for colored males, if
possessed of a certain amount of property and certain other
qualifications, can vote, but if they do not have these
qualifications they are not subject to direct taxation; wherein
they have the advantage of woman, she being subject to taxation
for whatever amount she may possess. (Constitution of New York,
Article 2, Sec. 2). But, say you, are not all women sufficiently
represented by their fathers, husbands, and brothers? Let your
statute books answer the question.
Again we demand in criminal cases that most sacred of all rights,
trial by a jury of our own peers. The establishment of trial by
jury is of so early a date that its beginning is lost in
antiquity; but the right of trial by a jury of one's own peers is
a great progressive step of advanced civilization. No rank of men
have ever been satisfied with being tried by jurors higher or
lower in the civil or political scale than themselves; for
jealousy on the one hand, and contempt on the other, has ever
effectually blinded the eyes of justice. Hence, all along the
pages of history, we find the king, the noble, the peasant, the
cardinal, the priest, the layman, each in turn protesting against
the authority of the tribunal before which they were summoned to
appear. Charles the First refused to recognize the competency of
the tribunal which condemned him: For how, said he, can subjects
judge a king? The stern descendants of our Pilgrim Fathers
refused to answer for their crimes before an English Parliament.
For how, said they, can a king judge rebels? And shall woman here
consent to be tried by her liege lord, who has dubbed himself
law-maker, judge, juror, and sheriff too?--whose power, though
sanctioned by Church and State, has no foundation in justice and
equity, and is a bold assumption of our inalienable rights. In
England a Parliament-lord could challenge a jury where a knight
was not empanneled; an alien could demand a jury composed half of
his own countrymen; or, in some special cases, juries were even
constituted entirely of women. Having seen that man fails to do
justice to woman in her best estate, to the virtuous, the noble,
the true of our sex, should we trust to his tender mercies the
weak, the ignorant, the morally insane? It is not to be denied
that the interests of man and woman in the present undeveloped
state of the race, and under the existing social arrangements,
are and must be antagonistic. The nobleman can not make just laws
for the peasant; the slaveholder for the slave; neither can man
make and execute just laws for woman, because in each case, the
one in power fails to apply the immutable principles of right to
any grade but his own.
Shall an erring woman be dragged before a bar of grim-visaged
judges, lawyers, and jurors, there to be grossly questioned in
public on subjects which women scarce breathe in secret to one
another? Shall the most sacred relations of life be called up and
rudely scanned by men who, by their own admission, are so coarse
that women could not meet them even at the polls without
contamination? and yet shall she find there no woman's face or
voice to pity and defend? Shall the frenzied mother, who, to save
herself and child from exposure and disgrace, ended the life
that had but just begun, be dragged before such a tribunal to
answer for her crime? How can man enter into the feelings of that
mother? How can he judge of the agonies of soul that impelled her
to such an outrage of maternal instincts? How can he weigh the
mountain of sorrow that crushed that mother's heart when she
wildly tossed her helpless babe into the cold waters of the
midnight sea? Where is he who by false vows thus blasted this
trusting woman? Had that helpless child no claims on his
protection? Ah, he is freely abroad in the dignity of manhood, in
the pulpit, on the bench, in the professor's chair. The
imprisonment of his victim and the death of his child, detract
not a tithe from his standing and complacency. His peers made the
law, and shall law-makers lay nets for those of their own rank?
Shall laws which come from the logical brain of man take
cognizance of violence done to the moral and affectional nature
which predominates, as is said, in woman?
Statesmen of New York, whose daughters, guarded by your
affection, and lapped amidst luxuries which your indulgence
spreads, care more for their nodding plumes and velvet trains
than for the statute laws by which their persons and properties
are held--who, blinded by custom and prejudice to the degraded
position which they and their sisters occupy in the civil scale,
haughtily claim that they already have all the rights they want,
how, think ye, you would feel to see a daughter summoned for such
a crime--and remember these daughters are but human--before such
a tribunal? Would it not, in that hour, be some consolation to
see that she was surrounded by the wise and virtuous of her own
sex; by those who had known the depth of a mother's love and the
misery of a lover's falsehood; to know that to these she could
make her confession, and from them receive her sentence? If so,
then listen to our just demands and make such a change in your
laws as will secure to every woman tried in your courts, an
impartial jury. At this moment among the hundreds of women who
are shut up in prisons in this State, not one has enjoyed that
most sacred of all rights--that right which you would die to
defend for yourselves--trial by a jury of one's peers.
2d. Look at the position of woman as wife. Your laws relating to
marriage--founded as they are on the old common law of England, a
compound of barbarous usages, but partially modified by
progressive civilization--are in open violation of our
enlightened ideas of justice, and of the holiest feelings of our
nature. If you take the highest view of marriage, as a Divine
relation, which love alone can constitute and sanctify, then of
course human legislation can only recognize it. Men can neither
bind nor loose its ties, for that prerogative belongs to God
alone, who makes man and woman, and the laws of attraction by
which they are united. But if you regard marriage as a civil
contract, then let it be subject to the same laws which control
all other contracts. Do not make it a kind of half-human,
half-divine institution, which you may build up, but can not
regulate. Do not, by your special legislation for this one kind
of contract, involve yourselves in the grossest absurdities and
contradictions.
So long as by your laws no man can make a contract for a horse or
piece of land until he is twenty-one years of age, and by which
contract he is not bound if any deception has been practiced, or
if the party contracting has not fulfilled his part of the
agreement--so long as the parties in all mere civil contracts
retain their identity and all the power and independence they had
before contracting, with the full right to dissolve all
partnerships and contracts for any reason, at the will and option
of the parties themselves, upon what principle of civil
jurisprudence do you permit the boy of fourteen and the girl of
twelve, in violation of every natural law, to make a contract
more momentous in importance than any other, and then hold them
to it, come what may, the whole of their natural lives, in spite
of disappointment, deception, and misery? Then, too, the signing
of this contract is instant civil death to one of the parties.
The woman who but yesterday was sued on bended knee, who stood so
high in the scale of being as to make an agreement on equal terms
with a proud Saxon man, to-day has no civil existence, no social
freedom. The wife who inherits no property holds about the same
legal position that does the slave on the Southern plantation.
She can own nothing, sell nothing. She has no right even to the
wages she earns; her person, her time, her services are the
property of another. She can not testify, in many cases, against
her husband. She can get no redress for wrongs in her own name in
any court of justice. She can neither sue nor be sued. She is not
held morally responsible for any crime committed in the presence
of her husband, so completely is her very existence supposed by
the law to be merged in that of another. Think of it; your wives
may be thieves, libelers, burglars, incendiaries, and for crimes
like these they are not held amenable to the laws of the land, if
they but commit them in your dread presence. For them, alas!
there is no higher law than the will of man. Herein behold the
bloated conceit of these Petruchios of the law, who seem to say:
"Nay, look not big, nor stamp, nor stare, nor fret,
I will be master of what is mine own;
She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything;
And here she stands, touch her whoever dare;
I'll bring my action on the proudest he,
That stops my way, in Padua."
How could man ever look thus on woman? She, at whose feet
Socrates learned wisdom--she, who gave to the world a Saviour,
and witnessed alike the adoration of the Magi and the agonies of
the cross. How could such a being, so blessed and honored, ever
become the ignoble, servile, cringing slave, with whom the fear
of man could be paramount to the sacred dictates of conscience
and the holy love of Heaven? By the common law of England, the
spirit of which has been but too faithfully incorporated into our
statute law, a husband has a right to whip his wife with a rod
not larger than his thumb, to shut her up in a room, and
administer whatever moderate chastisement he may deem necessary
to insure obedience to his wishes, and for her healthful moral
development! He can forbid all persons harboring or trusting her
on his account. He can deprive her of all social intercourse with
her nearest and dearest friends. If by great economy she
accumulates a small sum, which for future need she deposit,
little by little, in a savings bank, the husband has a right to
draw it out, at his option, to use it as he may see fit.
"Husband is entitled to wife's credit or business talents
(whenever their inter-marriage may have occurred); and goods
purchased by her on her own credit, with his consent, while
cohabiting with him, can be seized and sold in execution against
him for his own debts, and this, though she carry on business in
her own name."--7 _Howard's Practice Reports, 105, Lovett agt.
Robinson and Whitbeck, sheriff, etc_.
"No letters of administration shall be granted to a person
convicted of infamous crime; nor to any one incapable by law of
making a contract; nor to a person not a citizen of the United
States, unless such person reside within this State; nor to any
one who is under twenty-one years of age; nor to any person who
shall be adjudged incompetent by the surrogate to execute duties
of such trust, by reason of drunkenness, improvidence, or want of
understanding, nor to any married woman; but where a married
woman is entitled to administration, the same may be granted to
her husband in her right and behalf."
There is nothing that an unruly wife might do against which the
husband has not sufficient protection in the law. But not so with
the wife. If she have a worthless husband, a confirmed drunkard,
a villain, or a vagrant, he has still all the rights of a man, a
husband, and a father. Though the whole support of the family be
thrown upon the wife, if the wages she earns be paid to her by
her employer, the husband can receive them again. If, by
unwearied industry and perseverance, she can earn for herself and
children a patch of ground and a shed to cover them, the husband
can strip her of all her hard earnings, turn her and her little
ones out in the cold northern blast, take the clothes from their
backs, the bread from their mouths; all this by your laws may he
do, and has he done, oft and again, to satisfy the rapacity of
that monster in human form, the rum-seller.
But the wife who is so fortunate as to have inherited property,
has, by the new law in this State, been redeemed from her lost
condition. She is no longer a legal nonentity. This property law,
if fairly construed, will overturn the whole code relating to
woman and property. The right to property implies the right to
buy and sell, to will and bequeath, and herein is the dawning of
a civil existence for woman, for now the "femme covert" must have
the right to make contracts. So, get ready, gentlemen; the
"little justice" will be coming to you one day, deed in hand, for
your acknowledgment. When he asks you "if you sign without fear
or compulsion," say yes, boldly, as we do. Then, too, the right
to will is ours. Now what becomes of the "tenant for life"? Shall
he, the happy husband of a millionaire, who has lived in yonder
princely mansion in the midst of plenty and elegance, be cut down
in a day to the use of one-third of this estate and a few hundred
a year, as long he remains her widower? And should he, in spite
of this bounty on celibacy, impelled by his affections, marry
again, choosing for a wife a woman as poor as himself, shall he
be thrown penniless on the cold world--this child of fortune,
enervated by ease and luxury, henceforth to be dependent wholly
on his own resources? Poor man! He would be rich, though, in the
sympathies of many women who have passed through just such an
ordeal. But what is property without the right to protect that
property by law? It is mockery to say a certain estate is mine,
if, without my consent, you have the right to tax me when and how
you please, while I have no voice in making the tax-gatherer,
the legislator, or the law. The right to property will, of
necessity, compel us in due time to the exercise of our right to
the elective franchise, and then naturally follows the right to
hold office.
3d. Look at the position of woman as widow. Whenever we attempt
to point out the wrongs of the wife, those who would have us
believe that the laws can not be improved, point us to the
privileges, powers, and claims of the widow. Let us look into
these a little. Behold in yonder humble house a married pair,
who, for long years, have lived together, childless and alone.
Those few acres of well-tilled land, with the small, white house
that looks so cheerful through its vines and flowers, attest the
honest thrift and simple taste of its owners. This man and woman,
by their hard days' labor, have made this home their own. Here
they live in peace and plenty, happy in the hope that they may
dwell together securely under their own vine and fig-tree for the
few years that remain to them, and that under the shadow of these
trees, planted by their own hands, and in the midst of their
household gods, so loved and familiar, they may take their last
farewell of earth. But, alas for human hopes! the husband dies,
and without a will, and the stricken widow, at one fell blow,
loses the companion of her youth, her house and home, and half
the little sum she had in bank. For the law, which takes no
cognizance of widows left with twelve children and not one cent,
instantly spies out this widow, takes account of her effects, and
announces to her the startling intelligence that but one-third of
the house and lot, and one-half the personal property, are hers.
The law has other favorites with whom she must share the
hard-earned savings of years. In this dark hour of grief, the
coarse minions of the law gather round the widow's hearth-stone,
and, in the name of justice, outrage all natural sense of right;
mock at the sacredness of human love, and with cold familiarity
proceed to place a moneyed value on the old arm-chair, in which,
but a few brief hours since, she closed the eyes that had ever
beamed on her with kindness and affection; on the solemn clock in
the corner, that told the hour he passed away; on every garment
with which his form and presence were associated, and on every
article of comfort and convenience that the house contained, even
down to the knives and forks and spoons--and the widow saw it
all--and when the work was done, she gathered up what the law
allowed her and went forth to seek another home! This is the
much-talked-of widow's dower. Behold the magnanimity of the law
in allowing the widow to retain a life interest in one-third the
landed estate, and one-half the personal property of her husband,
and taking the lion's share to itself! Had she died first, the
house and land would all have been the husband's still. No one
would have dared to intrude upon the privacy of his home, or to
molest him in his sacred retreat of sorrow. How, I ask you, can
that be called justice, which makes such a distinction as this
between man and woman?
By management, economy, and industry, our widow is able, in a few
years, to redeem her house and home. But the law never loses
sight of the purse, no matter how low in the scale of being its
owner may be. It sends its officers round every year to gather in
the harvest for the public crib, and no widow who owns a piece of
land two feet square ever escapes this reckoning. Our widow, too,
who has now twice earned her home, has her annual tax to pay
also--a tribute of gratitude that she is permitted to breathe the
free air of this republic, where "taxation without
representation," by such worthies as John Hancock and Samuel
Adams, has been declared "intolerable tyranny." Having glanced at
the magnanimity of the law in its dealings with the widow, let us
see how the individual man, under the influence of such laws,
doles out justice to his helpmate. The husband has the absolute
right to will away his property as he may see fit. If he has
children, he can divide his property among them, leaving his wife
her third only of the landed estate, thus making her a dependent
on the bounty of her own children. A man with thirty thousand
dollars in personal property, may leave his wife but a few
hundred a year, as long as she remains his widow.
The cases are without number where women, who have lived in ease
and elegance, at the death of their husbands have, by will, been
reduced to the bare necessaries of life. The man who leaves his
wife the sole guardian of his property and children is an
exception to the general rule. Man has ever manifested a wish
that the world should indeed be a blank to the companion whom he
leaves behind him. The Hindoo makes that wish a law, and burns
the widow on the funeral pyre of her husband; but the civilized
man, impressed with a different view of the sacredness of life,
takes a less summary mode of drawing his beloved partner after
him; he does it by the deprivation and starvation of the flesh,
and the humiliation and mortification of the spirit. In
bequeathing to the wife just enough to keep soul and body
together, man seems to lose sight of the fact that woman, like
himself, takes great pleasure in acts of benevolence and charity.
It is but just, therefore, that she should have it in her power
to give during her life, and to will away at her death, as her
benevolence or obligations might prompt her to do.
4th. Look at the position of woman as mother. There is no human
love so strong and steadfast as that of the mother for her child;
yet behold how ruthless are your laws touching this most sacred
relation. Nature has clearly made the mother the guardian of the
child; but man, in his inordinate love of power, does continually
set nature and nature's laws at open defiance. The father may
apprentice his child, bind him out to a trade, without the
mother's consent--yea, in direct opposition to her most earnest
entreaties, prayers and tears.
He may apprentice his son to a gamester or rum-seller, and thus
cancel his debts of _honor_. By the abuse of this absolute power,
he may bind his daughter to the owner of a brothel, and, by the
degradation of his child, supply his daily wants: and such
things, gentlemen, have been done in our very midst. Moreover,
the father, about to die, may bind out all his children wherever
and to whomsoever he may see fit, and thus, in fact, will away
the guardianship of all his children from the mother. The Revised
Statutes of New York provide that "every father, whether of full
age or a minor, of a child to be born, or of any living child
under the age of twenty-one years, and unmarried, may by his deed
or last will, duly executed, dispose of the custody and tuition
of such child during its minority, or for any less time, to any
person or persons, in possession or remainder." 2 R. S., page
150, sec. 1. Thus, by your laws, the child is the absolute
property of the father, wholly at his disposal in life or at
death.
In case of separation, the law gives the children to the father;
no matter what his character or condition. At this very time we
can point you to noble, virtuous, well-educated mothers in this
State, who have abandoned their husbands for their profligacy and
confirmed drunkenness. All these have been robbed of their
children, who are in the custody of the husband, under the care
of his relatives, whilst the mothers are permitted to see them
but at stated intervals. But, said one of these mothers, with a
grandeur of attitude and manner worthy the noble Roman matron in
the palmiest days of that republic, I would rather never see my
child again, than be the medium to hand down the low animal
nature of its father, to stamp degradation on the brow of another
innocent being. It is enough that one child of his shall call me
mother.
If you are far-sighted statesmen, and do wisely judge of the
interests of this commonwealth, you will so shape your future
laws as to encourage woman to take the high moral ground that the
father of her children must be great and good. Instead of your
present laws, which make the mother and her children the victims
of vice and license, you might rather pass laws prohibiting to
all drunkards, libertines, and fools, the rights of husbands and
fathers. Do not the hundreds of laughing idiots that are crowding
into our asylums, appeal to the wisdom of our statesmen for some
new laws on marriage--to the mothers of this day for a higher,
purer morality?
Again, as the condition of the child always follows that of the
mother, and as by the sanction of your laws the father may beat
the mother, so may he the child. What mother can not bear me
witness to untold sufferings which cruel, vindictive fathers have
visited upon their helpless children? Who ever saw a human being
that would not abuse unlimited power? Base and ignoble must that
man be who, let the provocation be what it may, would strike a
woman; but he who would lacerate a trembling child is unworthy
the name of man. A mother's love can be no protection to a child;
she can not appeal to you to save it from a father's cruelty, for
the laws take no cognizance of the mother's most grievous wrongs.
Neither at home nor abroad can a mother protect her son. Look at
the temptations that surround the paths of our youth at every
step; look at the gambling and drinking saloons, the club rooms,
the dens of infamy and abomination that infest all our villages
and cities--slowly but surely sapping the very foundations of all
virtue and strength.
By your laws, all these abominable resorts are permitted. It is
folly to talk of a mother moulding the character of her son, when
all mankind, backed up by law and public sentiment, conspire to
destroy her influence. But when woman's moral power shall speak
through the ballot-box, then shall her influence be seen and
felt; then, in our legislative debates, such questions as the
canal tolls on salt, the improvement of rivers and harbors, and
the claims of Mr. Smith for damages against the State, would be
secondary to the consideration of the legal existence of all
these public resorts, which lure our youth on to excessive
indulgence and destruction.
Many times and oft it has been asked us, with, unaffected
seriousness, "What do you women want? What are you aiming at?"
Many have manifested a laudable curiosity to know what the wives
and daughters could complain of in republican America, where
their sires and sons have so bravely fought for freedom and
gloriously secured their independence, trampling all tyranny,
bigotry, and caste in the dust, and declaring to a waiting world
the divine truth that all men are created equal. What can woman
want under such a government? Admit a radical difference in sex,
and you demand different spheres--water for fish, and air for
birds.
It is impossible to make the Southern planter believe that his
slave feels and reasons just as he does--that injustice and
subjection are as galling as to him--that the degradation of
living by the will of another, the mere dependent on his caprice,
at the mercy of his passions, is as keenly felt by him as his
master. If you can force on his unwilling vision a vivid picture
of the negro's wrongs, and for a moment touch his soul, his logic
brings him instant consolation. He says, the slave does not feel
this as I would. Here, gentlemen, is our difficulty: When we
plead our cause before the law-makers and savants of the
republic, they can not take in the idea that men and women are
alike; and so long as the mass rest in this delusion, the public
mind will not be so much startled by the revelations made of the
injustice and degradation of woman's position as by the fact that
she should at length wake up to a sense of it.
If you, too, are thus deluded, what avails it that we show by
your statute books that your laws are unjust--that woman is the
victim of avarice and power? What avails it that we point out the
wrongs of woman in social life; the victim of passion and lust?
You scorn the thought that she has any natural love of freedom
burning in her breast, any clear perception of justice urging her
on to demand her rights.
Would to God you could know the burning indignation that fills
woman's soul when she turns over the pages of your statute books,
and sees there how like feudal barons you freemen hold your
women. Would that you could know the humiliation she feels for
sex, when she thinks of all the beardless boys in your law
offices, learning these ideas of one-sided justice--taking their
first lessons in contempt for all womankind--being indoctrinated
into the incapacities of their mothers, and the lordly, absolute
rights of man over all women, children, and property, and to know
that these are to be our future presidents, judges, husbands, and
fathers; in sorrow we exclaim, alas! for that nation whose sons
bow not in loyalty to woman. The mother is the first object of
the child's veneration and love, and they who root out this holy
sentiment, dream not of the blighting effect it has on the boy
and the man. The impression left on law students, fresh from your
statute books, is most unfavorable to woman's influence; hence
you see but few lawyers chivalrous and high-toned in their
sentiments toward woman. They can not escape the legal view
which, by constant reading, has become familiarized to their
minds: "_Femme covert_," "dower," "widow's claims," "protection,"
"incapacities," "incumbrance," is written on the brow of every
woman they meet.
But if, gentlemen, you take the ground that the sexes are alike,
and, therefore, you are our faithful representatives--then why
all these special laws for woman? Would not one code answer for
all of like needs and wants? Christ's golden rule is better than
all the special legislation that the ingenuity of man can devise:
"Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." This, men
and brethren, is all we ask at your hands. We ask no better laws
than those you have made for yourselves. We need no other
protection than that which your present laws secure to you.
In conclusion, then, let us say, in behalf of the women of this
State, we ask for all that you have asked for yourselves in the
progress of your development, since the _Mayflower_ cast anchor
beside Plymouth rock; and simply on the ground that the rights of
every human being are the same and identical. You may say that
the mass of the women of this State do not make the demand; it
comes from a few sour, disappointed old maids and childless
women.
You are mistaken; the mass speak through us. A very large
majority of the women of this State support themselves and their
children, and many their husbands too. Go into any village you
please, of three or four thousand inhabitants, and you will find
as many as fifty men or more, whose only business is to discuss
religion and politics, as they watch the trains come and go at
the depot, or the passage of a canal boat through a lock; to
laugh at the vagaries of some drunken brother, or the capers of a
monkey dancing to the music of his master's organ. All these are
supported by their mothers, wives, or sisters.
Now, do you candidly think these wives do not wish to control the
wages they earn--to own the land they buy--the houses they build?
to have at their disposal their own children, without being
subject to the constant interference and tyranny of an idle,
worthless profligate? Do you suppose that any woman is such a
pattern of devotion and submission that she willingly stitches
all day for the small sum of fifty cents, that she may enjoy the
unspeakable privilege, in obedience to your laws, of paying for
her husband's tobacco and rum? Think you the wife of the
confirmed, beastly drunkard would consent to share with him her
home and bed, if law and public sentiment would release her from
such gross companionship? Verily, no! Think you the wife with
whom endurance has ceased to be a virtue, who, through much
suffering, has lost all faith in the justice of both heaven and
earth, takes the law in her own hand, severs the unholy bond, and
turns her back forever upon him whom she once called husband,
consents to the law that in such an hour tears her child from
her--all that she has left on earth to love and cherish? The
drunkards' wives speak through us, and they number 50,000. Think
you that the woman who has worked hard all her days in helping
her husband to accumulate a large property, consents to the law
that places this wholly at his disposal? Would not the mother
whose only child is bound out for a term of years against her
expressed wish, deprive the father of this absolute power if she
could?
For all these, then, we speak. If to this long list you add the
laboring women who are loudly demanding remuneration for their
unending toil; those women who teach in our seminaries,
academies, and public schools for a miserable pittance; the
widows who are taxed without mercy; the unfortunate ones in our
work-houses, poor-houses, and prisons; who are they that we do
not now represent? But a small class of the fashionable
butterflies, who, through the short summer days, seek the
sunshine and the flowers; but the cool breezes of autumn and the
hoary frosts of winter will soon chase all these away; then they,
too, will need and seek protection, and through other lips demand
in their turn justice and equity at your hands.
The friends of woman suffrage may be said to have fairly held a
protracted meeting during the two following weeks in Albany, with
hearings before both branches of the Legislature, and lectures evening
after evening in Association Hall, by Mrs. Rose, Mr. Channing, Mr.
Phillips, and Miss Brown, culminating in a discussion by the entire
press of the city and State; for all the journals had something to say
on one side or the other, Mrs. Rose, Mr. Channing, Miss Brown, and
several anonymous writers taking part in the newspaper debate. As this
was the first Convention held at the Capitol, it roused considerable
agitation on every phase of the question, not only among the
legislators on the bills before them, but among the people throughout
the State.
_The Albany Transcript_ thus sums up the WOMAN'S RIGHTS
CONVENTION.--The meeting last evening was attended by the largest
and most brilliant audience of the series. A large number of
members of the Legislature were there, and a full representation
of our most influential citizens. Indeed they could not have
asked for a more numerous or talented body of hearers. Mrs. Rose
was the sole speaker, owing to the necessity which had called the
others away.... She was listened to with the most profound
attention, and encouraged by frequent and prolonged applause.
Thus has ended the first Convention of women designed to
influence political action. On Monday the 6,000 petitions will be
presented in the Legislature, and the address be placed on the
members' tables. Whatever may be the final disposition of the
matter, it is well to make a note of this _first effort_ to
influence the Legislature. It was originated by Miss Susan B.
Anthony, and has been managed financially by her. Though a
stranger amongst us, she has made the contracts for the room,
advertised in the papers, employed the speakers, published the
address, and performed much other arduous labor.
Mrs. Nichols, one of the speakers, has long been connected with
the press, and is a woman of no mean ability. Her mild, beaming
countenance and the affectionate tones of her voice, disprove
that she is any less a woman than those who do not "speak in
public on the stage." Mrs. Love is a new caterer to public favor,
and promises well. Some have remarked that she is well named,
being a "Love of a woman." Mrs. Jenkins is a fluent and agreeable
speaker, and has a good degree of power in swaying an audience.
But Mrs. Rose is the queen of the company. On the educational
question in particular, she rises to a high standard of
oratorical power. When speaking of Hungary and her own crushed
Poland, she is full of eloquence and pathos, and she has as great
a power to chain an audience as any of our best male speakers.
_The Evening Journal_ (Thurlow Weed, editor): WOMAN'S
RIGHTS.--Mr. Channing and Mrs. Rose pleaded the cause of woman's
rights before the Senate Committee of bachelors yesterday. The
only effect produced was a determination more fixed than ever in
the minds of the committee, to _remain_ bachelors in the event of
the success of the movement. And who would blame them?
The same champions, with others probably, will speak to the House
Committee in the Assembly Chamber this afternoon; and Mr.
Channing and Mrs. Rose make addresses in Association Hall this
evening. Price twenty-five cents.
_The Albany Register_: WOMEN IN THE SENATE CHAMBER.--The Senate
was alarmed yesterday afternoon. It surrendered to progress. The
Select Committee to whom the women's rights petitions had been
referred, took their seats on the president's platform, looking
as grave as possible. Never had Senators Robertson, Yost, and
Field been in such responsible circumstances. They were calm, but
evidently felt themselves in great peril.
In the circle of the Senate, ranged in invincible row, sat seven
ladies, from quite pretty to quite plain.
Ernestine L. Rose and Rev. William Henry Channing presented the
arguments and appeals to the Committee, and Mrs. Rose invited them to
ask questions. _The Register_ concludes:
The Honorable Senators quailed beneath the trial. There was a
terrible silence, and the audience eager to hear what the other
ladies had to say, were wretched when they found that the
Committee had silently dissolved--surrendered. Oh, what a fall
was there, my countrymen!
_The Albany Argus_ of March 4th, says: THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN
DEFINED BY THEMSELVES.--Miss Anthony and Mrs. Rose before the
House Committee, March 3d. The Committee took their seats in the
clerk's desk, and the ladies took possession of the members'
seats, filling the chamber, many members of the Legislature being
present. Miss Anthony presented a paper prepared by Judge William
Hay, of Saratoga, asking that husband and wife should be tenants
in common of property without survivorship, but with a partition
on the death of one; that a wife shall be competent to discharge
trusts and powers the same as a single woman; that the statute in
respect to a married woman's property descend as though she had
been unmarried; that married women shall be entitled to execute
letters testamentary, and of administration; that married women
shall have power to make contracts and transact business as
though unmarried; that they shall be entitled to their own
earnings, subject to their proportionable liability for support
of children; that post-nuptial acquisitions shall belong equally
to husband and wife; that married women shall stand on the same
footing with single women, as parties or witnesses in legal
proceedings; that they shall be sole guardians of their minor
children; that the homestead shall be inviolable and inalienable
for widows and children; that the laws in relation to divorce
shall be revised, and drunkenness made cause for absolute
divorce; that better care shall be taken of single women's
property, that their rights may not be lost through ignorance,
that the preference of males in descent of real estate shall be
abolished; that women shall exercise "the right of suffrage," and
be eligible to all offices, occupations, and professions;
entitled to act as jurors; eligible to all public offices; that
courts of conciliation shall be organized as peace-makers; that a
law shall be enacted extending the masculine designation in all
statutes of the State to females.
Mrs. Rose then addressed the Committee, saying: The right of
petition is of no avail unless the reform demanded be candidly
considered by the legislators. We judge of the intellectual
inferiority of our fellow-men by the amount of resistance they
oppose to oppression, and to some extent we judge correctly by
this test. The same rule holds good for women; while they tamely
submit to the many inequalities under which they labor, they
scarcely deserve to be freed from them.... These are not the
demands of the moment or the few; they are the demands of the
age; of the second half of the nineteenth century. The world will
endure after us, and future generations may look back to this
meeting to acknowledge that a great onward step was here taken
in the cause of human progress.
Mrs. Rose took her seat amidst great applause from the galleries
and lobbies. The Committee adjourned.
* * * * *
_Albany Register_, March 7: WOMAN'S RIGHTS IN THE
LEGISLATURE.--While the feminine propagandists of women's rights
confined themselves to the exhibition of short petticoats and
long-legged boots, and to the holding of Conventions, and
speech-making in concert-rooms, the people were disposed to be
amused by them, as they are by the wit of the clown in the
circus, or the performances of Punch and Judy on fair days, or
the minstrelsy of gentlemen with blackened faces, on banjos, the
tambourine, and bones. But the joke is becoming stale. People are
getting cloyed with these performances, and are looking for some
healthier and more intellectual amusement. The ludicrous is
wearing away, and disgust is taking the place of pleasurable
sensations, arising from the novelty of this new phase of
hypocrisy and infidel fanaticism. People are beginning to inquire
how far public sentiment should sanction or tolerate these
unsexed women, who make a scoff of religion, who repudiate the
Bible and blaspheme God; who would step out from the true sphere
of the mother, the wife, and the daughter, and taking upon
themselves the duties and the business of men, stalk into the
public gaze, and by engaging in the politics, the rough
controversies, and trafficking of the world, upheave existing
institutions, and overturn all the social relations of life.
It is a melancholy reflection, that among our American women who
have been educated to better things, there should be found any
who are willing to follow the lead of such foreign propagandists
as the ringleted, glove-handed exotic, Ernestine L. Rose. We can
understand how such men as the Rev. Mr. May, or the sleek-headed
Dr. Channing may be deluded by her to becoming her disciples.
They are not the first instances of infatuation that may overtake
weak-minded men, if they are honest in their devotion to her and
her doctrines. Nor would they be the first examples of a low
ambition that seeks notoriety as a substitute for true fame, if
they are dishonest. Such men there are always, and honest or
dishonest, their true position is that of being tied to the
apron-strings of some "strong-minded woman," and to be exhibited
as rare specimens of human wickedness, or human weakness and
folly. But, that one educated American woman should become her
disciple and follow her infidel and insane teachings, is a
marvel.
Ernestine L. Rose came to this country, as she says, from Poland,
whence she was compelled to fly in pursuit of freedom. Seeing her
course here, we can well imagine this to be true. In no other
country in the world, save possibly one, would her infidel
propagandism and preachings in regard to the social relations of
life be tolerated. She would be prohibited by the powers of
government from her efforts to obliterate from the world the
religion of the Cross--to banish the Bible as a text-book of
faith, and to overturn social institutions that have existed
through all political and governmental revolutions from the
remotest time. The strong hand of the law would be laid upon
her, and she would be compelled back to her woman's sphere. But
in this country, such is the freedom of our institutions, and we
rejoice that it should be so, that she, and such as she, can give
their genius for intrigue full sway. They can exhibit their
flowing ringlets and beautiful hands, their winning smiles and
charming stage attitudes to admiring audiences, who, while they
are willing to be amused, are in the main safe from their
corrupting theories and demoralizing propagandism.
The laws and the theory of our government suppose that the people
are capable of taking care of themselves, and hence need no
protection against the wiles of domestic or foreign mountebanks,
whether in petticoats or in breeches and boots. But it never was
contemplated that these exotic agitators would come up to our
legislators and ask for the passage of laws upholding and
sanctioning their wild and foolish doctrines. That was a stretch
of folly, a flight of impudence which was hardly regarded as
possible. It was to be imagined, of course, that they would
enlist as their followers, here and there one among the restless
old maids and visionary wives who chanced to be unevenly
tempered, as well as unevenly yoked. It was also to be assumed,
as within the range of possibility, that they might bring within
the sphere of their attractions, weak-minded, restless men, who
think in their vanity that they have been marked out for great
things, and failed to be appreciated by the world, men who comb
their hair smoothly back, and with fingers locked across their
stomachs, speak in a soft voice, and with upturned eyes. But no
man supposed they would abandon their "private theatricals" and
walk up to the Capitol, and insist that the performances shall be
held in legislative halls. And yet so it is.
This Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, with a train of followers, like a
great kite with a very long tail, has, for a week, been amusing
Senatorial and Assembly Committees, with her woman's rights
performances, free of charge, unless the waste of time that might
be better employed in the necessary and legitimate business of
legislation, may be regarded as a charge. Those committees have
sat for hours, grave and solemn as owls, listening to the
outpourings of fanaticism and folly of this Polish propagandist,
Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, and her followers in pantalets and short
gowns. The people outside, and especially those interested in the
progress of legislation, are beginning to ask one another how
long this farce is to continue. How long this most egregious and
ridiculous humbug is to be permitted to obstruct the progress of
business before the Committees and the Houses, and whether Mrs.
Ernestine L. Rose and her followers ought not to be satisfied
with the notoriety they have already attained. The great body of
the people regard Mrs. Rose and her followers as making
themselves simply ridiculous, and there is some danger that these
legislative committees will make themselves so too.
LECTURE OF THE REV. ANTOINETTE L. BROWN.--It will be seen the
Rev. Antoinette L. Brown delivers a lecture at Association Hall
to-morrow evening. It has been said that we have done the women's
rights people injustice in charging upon them the infidelity of
Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose. If we have done them injustice in this
matter it is but right that we should make amends by calling
attention to the lecture of Miss Brown, which, as we understand,
will embrace the Bible argument in favor of the measures which
they advocate. Miss Brown is a talented woman, and we have no
doubt an exemplary Christian.
_For the Albany Daily State Register._
WOMAN'S RIGHTS.
Mr. EDITOR:--In your paper of Monday the 6th inst., I perceive
you pass judgment upon the woman's rights cause, upon those
engaged in it, and particularly upon myself--how justly, I leave
to your conscience to decide.
Every one who ever advanced a new idea, no matter how great and
noble, has been subjected to criticism, and therefore we too must
expect it. And, in accordance with the spirit of the critic, will
be the criticism. Whether dictated by the spirit of justice,
kindness, gentleness, and charity, or by injustice, malice,
rudeness, and intolerance, it is still an index of the man. But
it is quite certain that no true soul will ever be deterred from
the performance of a duty by any criticism.
But there is one thing which I think even editors have no right
to do, namely: to state a positive falsehood, or even to imply
one, for the purpose of injuring another. And, as the spirit of
charity induces me to believe that in your case it was done more
from a misunderstanding than positive malice, therefore I claim
at your hands the justice to give this letter a place in your
paper.
In the article alluded to, you say: "Ernestine L. Rose came to
this country, as she says, from Poland, whence she was compelled
to fly in pursuit of freedom." It is true that I came from
Poland; but it is false that I was compelled to fly from my
country, except by the compulsion, or dictates of the same spirit
of "propagandism," that induced so many of my noble countrymen to
shed their blood in the defence of the rights of this country,
and the rights of man, wherever he struggles for freedom. But I
have no desire to claim martyrdom which does not belong to me. I
left my country, not flying, but deliberately. I chose to make
this country my home, in preference to any other, because if you
carried out the theories you profess, it would indeed be the
noblest country on earth. And as my countrymen so nobly aided in
the physical struggle for Freedom and Independence, I felt, and
still feel it equally my duty to use my humble abilities to the
uttermost in my power, to aid in the great moral struggle for
human rights and human freedom.
Hoping that you will acede to my (I think) just claim to give
this a place in your paper,
I am, very respectfully,
ERNESTINE L. ROSE.
NEW YORK, _Mar. 7, 1854_.
WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING asks the following questions in the _Albany
Evening Journal_:
WOMAN'S RIGHTS.
A lady actively and prominently connected with, the movement
which is expected to secure "justice to woman," personally
requested us to publish the following communication. It is
proper to state that it is written in reply to an article of one
of our morning contemporaries, published a day or two ago:
"Let us take it for granted that your pop-gun of pleasantry has
killed off the six thousand 'strong-minded' women and
'weak-minded' men who signed the petitions to the Legislature for
Justice to Woman. And thus having disposed of personalities, will
you be pleased to pass on to a discussion of the following
questions:
"1. Are women, in New York, persons, people, citizens, members of
the State? If they are not, then why are they numbered in the
census, taxed by assessors, and subjected to legal penalties? If
they are, then why is authority exercised over them without their
consent asked or granted?
"2. If among the male half of the people, only criminals, aliens,
and minors are excluded from the right of suffrage are all women
excluded from exercising this right, on the ground of
criminality, idiocy, foreign associations, or infantile
imbecility?
"3. If the mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters of New York are
the peers and equals of their fathers, brothers, husbands, and
sons, why should they not enjoy all civil and political rights
equally with them? If they are, on the contrary, an inferior
caste, how can a jury of men thus avowedly superior, be regarded
as peers and equals of any woman whom they are summoned to try?
"4. Would the editor of _The Register_ consider himself justly
treated if he would some day find himself governed by women,
without his consent, taxed by women without power of voting for
his representative, tried by a jury of women under laws made and
administered by women?
"5. If prosecuted under the law of libel before a court of women
for his late remarks, does he think he would get his deserts?
"FAIR PLAY."
_Knickerbocker_, Albany, March 8, 1854: GOING IT BLIND.--The
editor of _The State Register_ is going it blind on woman's
rights matters. He was out on Monday with a half column leader
that touched everything except the matter in dispute. We quote a
paragraph:
"People are beginning to inquire how far public sentiment should
sanction or tolerate these unsexed women, who make a scoff at
religion, who repudiate the Bible, and blaspheme God; who would
step out from the true sphere of the mother, the wife, and the
daughter, and take upon themselves the duties and the business of
men; stalk into the public gaze, and by engaging in the politics,
the rough controversies, and trafficking of the world, upheave
existing institutions, and overturn all the social relations of
life."
_The Register_ either misunderstands matters, or else willfully
misrepresents them. The leading women connected with this new
movement do not scoff at religion, repudiate the Bible, nor
blaspheme God. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Brown are no more opposed to
God and religion than the editor of _The Register_ is. They are
educated, Christian women, and would no sooner "overturn society"
than they would bear false witness against their neighbors.
Before _The Register_ again attacks the reforms proposed by the
Woman's Rights Conventions, it should become acquainted with
them. "Going it blind," not only exposes one's prejudices, but
ignorance. Many of the innovations proposed by Mrs. Stanton are
such as every common-sense man would or should vote for. We mean
those improvements which she would have made in the rights of
property and the care of children. There are other propositions
in her platform which we should dissent from. _The State
Register_ may do the same. All the "Woman's Rights" women claim
is fair play and truthful criticism. They object, however, to any
misstatements. They are willing to fall before truth, but not
before detraction. _The State Register_ will please notice and
act accordingly.
Mrs. Stanton's address to the Legislature was laid upon the members'
desks Monday morning, Feb. 20, 1854. When the order of petitions was
reached, Mr. D. P. Wood, of Onondaga, presented in the Assembly a
petition signed by 5,931 men and women, praying for the just and equal
rights of women, which, after a spicy debate, was referred to the
following Select Committee: James L. Angle, of Monroe Co.; George W.
Thorn, of Washington Co.; Derrick L. Boardman, of Oneida Co.; George
H. Richards, of New York; James M. Munro, of Onondaga; Wesley Gleason,
of Fulton; Alexander P. Sharpe, of New York.
In the Senate, on the same day, Mr. Richards, or Warren County,
presented a petition signed by 4,164 men and women, praying for the
extension of the right of suffrage to women, and on his motion it was
referred to the following Select Committee: George Yost, of Montgomery
Co.; Ben. Field, of Orleans Co.; W. H. Robertson, of Westchester Co.
We give the report of the presentation and discussion of the petitions
from _The Albany Evening Journal_ of Feb. 20, 1854:
WOMAN'S RIGHTS.
ASSEMBLY, Monday, _February 20, 1854_.
Mr. D. P. WOOD: I am requested by a Committee of the Woman's
Rights Convention recently assembled in this city, to present to
this body their address, together with a petition signed by 5,931
men and women, asking that certain withheld rights shall be
granted to the women of the State. I ask the reference of these
two documents to a Select Committee of seven; and in making this
motion, I wish the Speaker to waive the courtesy which would
require him, under ordinary circumstances, to place me at the
head of this Committee. I am already on several Committees which
are pressed with business, and I would not, in my present state
of health, be able to give the subject that careful consideration
which the importance requires. I am satisfied, sir, that these
ladies are entitled to some relief. They think so, and they say
so, in language equally eloquent and impressive.
Mr. BURNETT: I hope the House will not act at all on this subject
without due consideration. I hope before even this motion is put,
gentlemen will be allowed to reflect upon the important question
whether these individuals deserve any consideration at the hands
of the Legislature. Whatever may be their pretensions or their
sincerity, they do not appear to be satisfied with having unsexed
themselves, but they desire to unsex every female in the land,
and to set the whole community ablaze with unhallowed fire. I
trust, sir, the House may deliberate before we suffer them to
cast this firebrand into our midst. (Here was heard a "hiss" from
some part of the chamber). True, as yet, there is nothing
officially before us, but it is well known that the object of
these unsexed women is to overthrow the most sacred of our
institutions, to set at defiance the Divine law which declares
man and wife to be one, and establish on its ruins what will be
in fact and in principle but a species of legalized adultery.
That this is their real object, however they may attempt to
disguise it, is well known to every one who has looked, not
perhaps at the intentions of all who take part in it, but at the
practical and inevitable result of the movement.
It is, therefore, a matter of duty, a duty to ourselves, to our
consciences, to our constituents, and to God, who is the source
of all law and of all obligations, to reflect long and
deliberatively before we shall even seem to countenance a
movement so unholy as this. The Spartan mothers asked no such
immunities as are asked for by these women. The Roman mothers
were content to occupy their legitimate spheres; and our own
mothers, who possessed more than Spartan or Roman virtue, asked
for no repudiation of the duties, obligations, or sacred
relations of the marital rite.
Are we, sir, to give the least countenance to claims so
preposterous, disgraceful, and criminal as are embodied in this
address? Are we to put the stamp of truth upon the libel here set
forth, that men and women, in the matrimonial relation, are to be
equal? We know that God created man as the representative of the
race; that after his creation, his Creator took from his side the
material for woman's creation; and that, by the institution of
matrimony, woman was restored to the side of man, and became one
flesh and one being, he being the head. But this law of God and
creation is spurned by these women who present themselves here as
the exponents of the wishes of our mothers, wives, and daughters.
They ask no such exponents, and they repel their sacrilegious
doctrines.
But again, sir, our old views of matrimony were, that it was a
holy rite, having holy relations based on mutual love and
confidence; and that while woman gave herself up to man, to his
care, protection, and love, man also surrendered something in
exchange for this confidence and love. He placed his happiness
and his honor, all that belongs to him of human hopes and of
human happiness, in the keeping of the being he received in the
sacred relationship of wife. I say, sir, that this ordinance,
sought to be practically overthrown by these persons, was
established by God Himself; and was based on the mutual love and
confidence of husband and wife. But we are now asked to have this
ordinance based on jealousy and distrust; and, as in Italy, so in
this country, should this mischievous scheme be carried out to
its legitimate results, we, instead of reposing safe confidence
against assaults upon our honor in the love and affection of our
wives, shall find ourselves obliged to close the approaches to
those assaults by the padlock. (The "hiss" was here repeated).
Mr. LOZIER: Mr. Speaker, twice I have heard a hiss from the
lobby. I protest against the toleration of such an insult to any
member of this House, and call for proper action in view of it.
The SPEAKER: The chair observed the interruption, and was
endeavoring to discover its source, but has been unable to do so.
If, however, its author can be recognized, the chair will
immediately order the person to the bar of the House.
Mr. BURNETT: I have nothing further. The leading features of this
address are well known; and I do not wish at present to further
enter upon the argument of its character. I merely wish that
members be afforded time for consideration. I therefore move to
lay the pending motion on the table.
D. P. WOOD: I am surprised that the gentleman from Essex, who
professes to desire light, and to afford members time for
examination, should make a motion which, if carried, will
preclude light and prevent examination. The gentleman sees fit to
regard the memorial of these 6,000 men and women as a firebrand.
I do not believe the ladies who presented it intended it as such;
and they will be surprised to learn that a gentleman of his age
and experience should have taken fire from it. Their requests are
simple. They ask for "justice and equal rights," and this simple
request is made the excuse for an attack upon them as unheard of
as it is unjust. They ask only for "justice and equal rights." If
the House does not see fit to grant them what they ask, let my
motion be voted down, and send the memorial to the Judiciary
Committee, of which the gentleman from Essex is chairman. Let
such a disposition be made of it, and there will then be no
danger that any one will be fired up by it, for it will then be
sure to sleep the sleep of death.
Sir, when a petition like this comes before the Legislature, it
should not only be respectfully received, but courteously
considered; particularly when it asks, as this petition does, a
review of the entire code of our statute laws. It should not be
sent to a Committee adverse to its request. That would be
unparliamentary and the end of it. If sent to such a Committee it
would be smothered. The House, I am sure, is not prepared for any
such disposition of the matter, but is willing to look candidly
at the alleged grievances, and, if consistent with public policy,
redress them, although in doing so we may infringe upon
time-honored notions and usages.
Mr. PETERS: I am not surprised at the direction which the
gentleman from Essex seeks to give this memorial. Any gentleman
who would assail these ladies as he has done, would be prepared
to make any disrespectful disposition of their rights. I may
regret that he has sought to deny a hearing to these petitioners,
but I am not surprised that he has done so. I trust that no other
member on this floor will refuse, practically, to receive this
petition--refuse to our mothers, wives, and sisters, what we
every day grant to our fathers, brothers, and sons. These women
come here with a respectful petition, and we should give them a
candid and respectful hearing. If it be true, and true it is,
that there are real grievances complained of, I hope they may be
redressed after careful and candid consideration.
The time has gone by, sir, when we may say progress must stop. It
is well known that in many particulars the laws are glaringly
unjust in regard to the female sex. The education of the sex is
defective; and this fact unfolds the secret germ of this
movement. We should review the structure of our institutions of
learning, and see whether there be not there room for reform. I
do not believe it to be a part of the duty of women to sit in the
jury-box, to vote, or to participate in all the tumultuous
strifes of life; but I do believe that those who differ from me
in opinion should have respectful hearing. Nor, because women are
not allowed to vote, do I admit that they are precluded from all
agency in the direction of national affairs. They, more than
their husbands, have power over the future history of the
country, by imparting a correct fireside education to their sons.
But there are legal disabilities imposed upon women which I would
be willing to see removed, in regard to property, etc. Whether
those disabilities are of a character to justify affirmative
action on the part of this House or not, is not now the question.
The question simply is, shall this petition be received? I trust
that it may be, and that it may afterward be sent to a select
committee.
Mr. BENEDICT: The gentleman from Onondaga asks that this petition
shall be sent to a select committee of seven, although he admits
that the Judiciary Committee would be more appropriate, if it
would not be sure, if sent to that Committee, to sleep the sleep
of death. Sir, I am one of that Committee, and protest against
any such imputation upon it. I will not only not vote to reject
any petition offered the House, but I will give every petition
sent to any committee of which I am a member a respectful
hearing. This is a petition signed by some 6,000 men and women.
They ask "justice" and relief. What kind of relief they may
desire is no matter. It is enough for me to know that they ask to
be heard. I shall vote to give them a hearing; and I can assure
the gentleman from Onondaga that if sent to the Judiciary
Committee it will sleep no sleep of death, but will be
respectfully considered. A contrary intimation is an unjust
reflection on that Committee.
Mr. WOOD: My remark was not intended to reflect upon that
Committee. I referred merely to the great amount of business
before it.
Mr. BENEDICT: There the gentleman is equally at fault. That
Committee is a working Committee, and disposed of all the
business before it on Friday last. I am, however, in favor of the
motion for a select committee, and desire that the petition
should receive legitimate and careful consideration, not only
because the petition is largely signed, but because every
petition from any portion of the people on any subject, should
receive a respectful hearing from the people's representatives. I
I hope, therefore, that not a single member may vote against the
reception of this petition, whatever his views may be in regard
to granting its prayer. I am in favor of the right of petition.
Mr. BURNETT: It was not my wish in the motion I made to have this
petition rejected. Had I intended any such thing I should have
said so; for I always go directly at what I want to accomplish,
and never fail to call things by their right names. I merely
wished, before any disposition was made of the petition, that the
members should have time to examine the address, which is the key
of the whole subject. This is all I desire; and it was simply an
expression of this desire that has awakened all this windy gust
of passion. After members shall examine the address which
accompanies this petition, they can make such disposition of the
petition itself as they shall deem wise and proper. This is the
length and breadth of my object and desire.
Mr. WOOD: I think the House understands the subject sufficiently
to justify action upon my motion of reference.
The motion for the Select Committee prevailed, ayes, 84; the Committee
appointed, and Mr. Wood excused from serving.
REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE.
IN ASSEMBLY, MONDAY, _March 27, 1854_.
The Select Committee, to whom was referred the various petitions
requesting "the Senate and Assembly of the State of New York to
appoint a joint committee to revise the Statutes of New York, and
to propose such amendments as will fully establish the legal
equality of women with men," report: That they have examined the
said petition, and have heard and considered the suggestions of
persons who have appeared before them on behalf of the
petitioners.
Your Committee are well aware that the matters submitted to them
have been, and still are, the subject of ridicule and jest; but
they are also aware that ridicule and jest never yet effectually
put down either truth or error; and that the development of our
times and the progression of our age is such, that many thoughts
laughed at to-day as wild vagaries, are to-morrow recorded as
developed principles or embodied as experimental facts.
A higher power than that from which emanates legislative
enactments has given forth the mandate that man and woman shall
not be equal; that there shall be inequalities by which each in
their own appropriate sphere shall have precedence to the other;
and each alike shall be superior or inferior as they well or ill
act the part assigned them. Both alike are the subjects of
Government, equally entitled to its protection; and civil power
must, in its enactments, recognize this inequality. We can not
obliterate it if we would, and legal inequalities must follow.
The education of woman has not been the result of statutes, but
of civilization and Christianity; and her elevation, great as it
has been, has only corresponded with that of man under the same
influences. She owes no more to these causes than he does. The
true elevation of the sexes will always correspond. But
elevation, instead of destroying, show? more palpably those
inherent inequalities, and makes more apparent the harmony and
happiness which the Creator designed to accomplish by them.
Your Committee will not attempt to prescribe, or, rather, they
will not attempt to define the province and peculiar sphere which
a power that we can not overrule has prescribed for the different
sexes. Every well-regulated home and household in the land
affords an example illustrative of what is woman's proper sphere,
as also that of man. Government has its miniature as well as its
foundation in the homes of our country; and as in governments
there must be some recognized head to control and direct, so must
there also be a controlling and directing power in every smaller
association; there must be some one to act and to be acted with
as the embodiment of the persons associated. In the formation of
governments, the manner in which the common interest shall be
embodied and represented is a matter of conventional arrangement;
but in the family an influence more potent than that of contracts
and conventionalities, and which everywhere underlies humanity,
has indicated that the husband shall fill the necessity which
exists for a head. Dissension and distraction quickly arise when
this necessity is not answered. The harmony of life, the real
interest of both husband and wife, and of all dependent upon
them, require it. In obedience to that requirement and necessity,
the husband is the head--the representative of the family.
It was strongly urged upon your Committee that women, inasmuch as
their property was liable to taxation, should be entitled to
representation. The member of this House who considers himself
the representative only of those whose ballots were cast for him,
or even of all the voters in his district, has, in the opinion of
your Committee, quite too limited an idea of his position on this
floor. In their opinion he is the representative of the
inhabitants of his district, whether they be voters or not,
whether they be men or women, old or young; and he who does not
alike watch over the interests of all, fails in his duty and is
false to his trust.
Your Committee can not regard marriage as a _mere contract_, but
as something above and beyond; something more binding than
records, more solemn than specialties; and the person who reasons
as to the relations of husband and wife as upon an ordinary
contract, in their opinion commits a fatal error at the outset;
and your Committee can not recommend any action based on such a
theory.
As society progresses new wants are felt, new facts and
combinations are presented which constantly call for more or less
of addition to the body of our laws, and often for innovations
upon customs so old that "the memory of man runneth not to the
contrary thereof." The marriage relation, in common with
everything else, has felt the effects of this progress, and from
time to time been the subject of legislative action. And while
your Committee report adversely to the prayer of the petitions
referred to them, they believe that the time has come when
certain alterations and amendments are, by common consent,
admitted as proper and necessary.
Your Committee recommend that the assent of the mother, if she be
living, be made necessary to the validity of any disposition
which the father may make of her child by the way of the
appointment of guardian or of apprenticeship. The consent of the
wife is now necessary to a deed of real estate in order to bar
her contingent interest therein; and there are certainly far more
powerful reasons why her consent should be necessary to the
conveyance or transfer of her own offspring to the care,
teaching, and control of another.
When the husband from any cause neglects to provide for the
support and education of his family, the wife should have the
right to collect and receive her own earnings and the earnings of
her minor children, and apply them to the support and education
of the family free from the control of the husband, or any person
claiming the same through him.
There are many other rules of law applicable to the relation of
husband and wife which, in occasional cases, bear hard upon the
one or the other, but your Committee do not deem it wise that a
new arrangement of our laws of domestic relations should be
attempted to obviate such cases; they always have and always will
arise out of every subject of legal regulation.
There is much of wisdom (which may well be applied to this and
many other subjects) in the quaint remark of an English lawyer,
philosopher, and statesman, that "it were well that men in their
innovations would follow the example of time, which innovateth
greatly but quietly, and by degrees scarcely to be perceived. It
is good also in states not to try experiments, except the
necessity be urgent and the utility evident; and well to beware
that it be the reformation that draweth on the change, and not
the desire of change that pretendeth the reformation."
In conclusion, your Committee recommend that the prayer of the
petitioners be denied; and they ask leave to introduce a
bill[127] corresponding with the suggestions hereinbefore
contained.
The report was signed by James L. Angle and all the members of the
Committee except Mr. Richards.
Of the report on the petitions, Mr. Weed says:
Mr. Angle, from the Select Committee of the Assembly, to which
the woman's rights petitions were referred, made a report last
evening, which we publish elsewhere to-day. It is a compact,
lucid, and ably drawn document, highly creditable to its author,
and becomingly respectful to the petitioners. The Committee
report adversely to the petitions, but recommend one or two
changes in our existing law, which will, we think, commend
themselves as well to the opponents, as to the advocates of
woman's rights.
The work in the State of New York was now thoroughly systematized.
Susan B. Anthony was appointed General Agent, and it was decided to
hold a series of Conventions in all the counties and chief cities of
the State, in order to roll up mammoth petitions with which to bombard
the Legislature at every annual session. Two appeals[128] were issued
to the women of the State, one in June, prepared by Mr. Channing, and
one in December, by Mrs. Stanton. A number of able speakers[129]
joined in the work, and the State was thoroughly canvassed every year
until the war, and petitions presented by the thousands until the bill
securing the civil rights of married women was passed in March, 1860.
Lest our readers should think that there was no variety to our lives
in these early days, that we did nothing but resolve, complain,
petition, protest, hold conventions, and besiege Legislatures, we
record now and then some cheerful item from the Metropolitan papers
concerning some of our leading women.
NEW YORK, _March 14, 1854_.
ANNIVERSARY OF THE 83D BIRTHDAY OF ROBERT OWEN AT 600 BROADWAY.
When the reporter entered the room he found the ladies and
gentlemen assembled there tripping the light fantastic toe to the
music of a harp, piano, and violin. Ernestine L. Rose was
president of the occasion, and gave a very interesting sketch of
the life and labors of this noble man. After which they had a
grand supper, and Lucy Stone replied to the toast, "Woman,
coequal with man." The ladies not only danced and made speeches,
but they partook of the supper. They did not sit in the
galleries, as the custom then was, to look at the gentlemen eat,
and listen to their after-dinner speeches, but enjoyed an equal
share in the whole entertainment. Mrs. Rose and Miss Stone seemed
to feel as much at home on this festive occasion, as amid the
more important proceedings of a convention.
As the agitation was kept up from year to year with frequent
conventions, ever and anon some prominent person who had hitherto
been silent, would concede a modicum of what we claimed, so timidly,
however, and with so many popular provisos, that the concessions were
almost buried in the objections. It was after this manner that Henry
Ward Beecher, then in the zenith of his popularity, vouchsafed an
opinion. He believed in woman's right to vote and speak in public.
There was no logical argument against either, but he would not like to
see his wife or mother go to the polls or mount the platform. This
utterance called out the following letter from Gerrit Smith in _The
Boston Liberator_:
PETERBORO, N. Y., _Nov. 19, 1854_.