DEAR GARRISON:--I am very glad to see in your paper that Henry

Ward Beecher avows himself a convert to the doctrine of woman's

voting. But I regret that this strong man is nevertheless not

strong enough to emancipate himself entirely from the dominion of

superstition. Mr. Beecher would not have his wife and sister

speak in public. Of course he means that he would not, however

competent they might be for such an exercise. I will suppose that

they all remove to Peterboro, and that a very important, nay, an

entirely vital question springs up in our community, and

profoundly agitates it; and I will further suppose that the wife

and sister of Mr. Beecher are more capable than any other persons

of taking the platform and shedding light upon the subject. Are

we not entitled to their superior light? Certainly. And certainly

therefore are they bound to afford it to us. Nevertheless Mr.

Beecher would have them withhold it from us. Pray what is it but

superstition that could prompt him to such violation of

benevolence and common-sense? Will Mr. Beecher go to the Bible

for his justification? That blessed book is to be read in the

life of Jesus Christ; and in that life is the fullness of

benevolence and common-sense, and no superstition at all. Will

Mr. Beecher limit his wife and sisters in the given case to their

pens?[130] Such limitation would he then be bound in consistency

to impose upon himself. Would he impose it? Again, it takes lips

as well as pens to carry instruction to the utmost.

Your friend,

GERRIT SMITH.

SARATOGA CONVENTIONS,

August, 1854-'55.

Seeing calls for two national conventions, by the friends of

Temperance, and the Anti-Nebraska movement, to be held in Saratoga the

third week of August, the State Woman Suffrage Committee decided to

embrace that opportunity to hold a convention there at the same

time.[131] As it was at the height of the fashionable season it was

thought much good might be accomplished by getting the ear of a new

class of hearers.

But after the arrangements were all made, and Miss Anthony on the

ground, she received messages from one after another of the speakers

on whom she depended, that none of them could be present. Accordingly,

encouraged by the Hon. William Hay, she decided to go through alone.

Happily, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Sarah Pellet being in Saratoga, came

forward and volunteered their services, and thus was the Convention

carried successfully through.[132] The meeting was held in St.

Nicholas Hall, which was well filled throughout, three-hundred dollars

being taken at the door. The following _resumé_ of this occasion is

from the pen of Judge William Hay, in a letter to _The North Star_ of

Rochester (Frederick Douglass, editor):

THE SARATOGA CONVENTION.

Miss Sarah Pellet addressed an audience of six hundred persons in

the afternoon, most of whom returned with others to St. Nicholas

Hall in the evening, thus manifesting their satisfaction with

what they had heard and their interest in the cause, which was

farther discussed by Mrs. Gage, whose address was an elaborate

argument for the removal of woman's legal and social

disabilities. Among other authorities she quoted with judgment,

was the following from Wm. W. Story: "In respect to the powers

and rights of married women, the law is by no means abreast the

spirit of the age. Here are seen the old fossil prints of

_feudalism_. The law relating to woman tends to make every family

a barony, a monarchy, or a despotism, of which the husband is

the baron, king, or despot, and the wife the dependent, the serf,

or slave. That this is not always the fact, is not due to the

law, but to the enlarged humanity which spurns the narrow limits

of its rules; for if the husband choose, he has his wife as

firmly in his grasp and dominion, as the _hawk_ has the _dove_

upon whom he has pounced. This age is ahead of the law. Public

opinion is a check to legal rules on this subject, but the rules

are feudal and stern. It can not, however, be concealed that the

position of woman is always the criterion of the freedom of a

people or an age, and when man shall despise that right which is

founded only on might, woman will be free to stand on an equal

level with him--a friend and not a dependent."

Mrs. Gage also, and with like effect, cited from the same learned

jurist, laws, which, had her lecture been a sermon, might have

been prefixed as a text. Such opinions, although but seldom known

to any but lawyers, and not appreciated by many of them, have

frequently been printed in books, which, however, being

professional, are perused by few persons only. Mrs. Gage[133]

concluded her excellent discourse with Bryant's celebrated

stanza, relative to truth and error.

Miss Anthony's situation had become embarrassing, if not

critical. At a late hour of a summer night, she was to follow

Mrs. Gage on the same subject, and before a fastidious audience,

almost surfeited during three days with public addresses in

several different conventions, and many of whom desired to

contrast her expected effort with the splendid platform eloquence

of Henry J. Raymond, Wm. H. Burleigh, and "their like,"

fearlessly advocating the redress of wrongs and the promotion of

human rights. Miss Anthony, who had conciliated her audience by

lady-like conduct and courtesy, in providing seats for the

accommodation of those standing, commenced with an appropriate

apology for unavoidable repetition, when it was her lot to follow

Mrs. Gage. Sufficient here to say that she acquitted herself

admirably. The simplicity and repose of her manner, the dignity

of her deportment, the distinctiveness of her enunciation, her

emphatic earnestness, the pathos of her appeals, and completeness

of her arguments, convinced the understanding and persuaded all

hearts.

The gossip of mustached dandies, and the half-suppressed giggle

of bedizened beauty, soon settled down into respectful attention,

if not appreciation. Indeed many of the most intelligent hearers

before retiring, audibly confessed that they came to find fault,

but had seen nothing to censure. So some who came to scoff

remained to applaud. With such advocates there can be no

retrogression of Woman's Rights. Equality is their motto, and

onward their destiny.

WM. HAY.

This Convention was so successful in point of numbers and receipts,

and the sale of woman suffrage literature, that it was decided to

repeat the experiment the next year; accordingly the following call

was issued early in the season:

SARATOGA CONVENTION, 1855.

A Convention will be held at Saratoga Springs on the 15th and

16th of August next, to discuss woman's right to suffrage.

In the progress of human events, woman now demands the

recognition of her civil existence, her legal rights, her social

equality with man.

How her claims can be the most easily and speedily established on

a firm, enduring basis, will be the subject of deliberation at

the coming Convention.

The friends of the movement, and the public generally, are most

respectfully invited to attend.

Many of the advocates of the cause are expected to be in

attendance.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, LYDIA MOTT,

ERNESTINE L. ROSE, ANTOINETTE L. BROWN,

SAMUEL J. MAY, SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

This Convention also was held in St. Nicholas Hall, and a large

audience greeted the speakers of the occasion as they appeared upon

the platform.

A brief report of the secretaries in _The Una_ of September, 1855,

says: A large audience assembled on the morning of August 15th at St.

Nicholas Hall. Susan B. Anthony called the meeting to order, and

presented a list of officers[134] nominated at a preliminary

gathering, which was accepted. Martha C. Wright, on taking the chair,

made a brief statement of the object of the Convention, and invited

all those who were opposed to our demands to come to the platform and

state their objections.

During the absence of the Business Committee, Ernestine L. Rose

briefly reviewed the rise and progress of the woman's rights movement.

Antoinette Brown reported a series of resolutions, on which she

commented at some length, when the Rev. Samuel J. May was introduced.

Although he spoke to the entire edification of the platform, yet he

was constantly interrupted by the audience. It was a novelty to hear

women speak, and the audience having assembled for that purpose,

preferred to listen to woman's pathetic statements of her wrongs, than

to the most gifted orators that men could boast. It was not until

after repeated requests for order from the president, and assurances

from several of the ladies that they would not speak until Mr. May had

finished his remarks, that quiet was restored.

It was at this Convention that Mary L. Booth[135] made her first

appearance on our platform, as one of the secretaries. One feature of

these meetings was the freedom and warm sympathy between the audience

and the platform. At the close of almost every speech, some one on the

floor asked questions, or stated some objections which were quickly

answered and refuted by the speakers in the most pleasant

conversational manner.

Mrs. Rose presented the wrongs of woman in her most happy manner,

demanding the ballot as the underlying power to protect all other

rights. Thomas Wentworth Higginson made an address especially adapted

to the fashionable audience. Many of the thoughtless ones whom idle

curiosity had led to the hall, must have felt like the woman of

Samaria (John iv. 29) at the well, when she reported that she had seen

a man who told her all the things that ever she had done, so nearly

did Mr. Higginson picture to them their thoughts and feelings, the

ennui of their daily lives. Lucy Stone, whom the papers now call Mrs.

Blackwell, arriving in the midst of the convention, was greeted with

long and repeated cheers, and spoke with her wonted simplicity and

earnestness. The resolutions covering all the different phases of the

movement were duly discussed through two entire days.

Antoinette Brown was called on as usual to meet the Bible argument. A

clergyman accused her of misapplying texts. He said Genesis iv. 7 did

not allude to Cain and Abel, and that the language in Genesis iii. 16,

as applied to Eve, did not mean the same thing. Miss Brown maintained

her position that the texts were the same in letter and spirit; and

that authority to all men over all women could be no more logically

inferred from the one, than authority to all elder brothers over the

younger could be from the other; and that there was no divine

authority granted in either case.

Miss Anthony announced that woman's rights tracts and papers were for

sale at the door, and urged all who had become interested in the

subject to procure them not only for their own benefit, but to

circulate among their neighbors. If they would be intelligent as to

the real claims of the movement, they must take _The Una_, a paper

owned and edited by one of its leaders. No one would expect to get

temperance truths from Bennett's _Herald_, nor anti-slavery facts from

_The New York Observer_, or _Christian Advocate_; no more can we look

to any of the popular newspapers, political or religious, for reliable

information on the woman's rights movement.

She also presented the claims of _The Woman's Advocate_, a paper just

started in Philadelphia by Anna E. McDowell, devoted chiefly to

woman's right to work--equal pay for equal service (she was sorry that

it did not see that the right of suffrage underlies the work problem);

nevertheless the existence of a paper owned, edited, published, and

printed all by women, was a living woman's rights fact, and she hoped

every one would give it encouragement and support. She then gave a

brief report of the work done in the State during the past year,[136]

and closed by presenting the form of petition that had just been

adopted.[137]

Mr. May moved the appointment of a committee of five[138] to engage

lecturing agents and raise funds for their compensation. The president

thanked the people for the respect and attention manifested during the

several sessions, and adjourned the Convention.[139]

The Saratoga papers were specially complimentary in their notices of

Ernestine L. Rose and Lucy Stone, pronouncing them logical and

eloquent, and Miss Anthony was highly praised for her skill in getting

contributions and distributing documents. She sold over twenty

thousand pamphlets that year. As there were many Southern people

always at Saratoga, this was considered a grand opportunity through

tracts to sow the seeds of rebellion all through the Southern States.

This Convention afforded a new theme for conversation at the hotels,

and was discussed for many days after with levity or seriousness, to

be laughed over and thought over by the women at their leisure.[140]

LETTERS TO THE CONVENTION.

BOSTON, _June 23, 1855_.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

DEAR MADAM:--Your note of the 20th has just come to hand. I am

sorry to say that my engagements are such that it will not be

possible for me to be present at the Woman's Rights Convention at

Saratoga, which I should very much rejoice to attend.

Heartily and hastily yours,

THEODORE PARKER.

SYRACUSE, _June 13, 1855_.

DEAR FRIEND:--I like your call to the Convention at Saratoga, and

I shall endeavor to be there on my return from Massachusetts,

where I deliver an oration on education on the 8th of August. By

all means put Judge Hay's name on the Central Committee. Invite

Theodore Parker without delay.

In great haste, but very truly yours,

SAMUEL J. MAY

PHILADELPHIA, _Sixth Mo., 11, 1855_.

MY DEAR SUSAN B. ANTHONY:--Returning home, I hasten to answer thy

letter forwarded to me a week ago by sister M. C. Wright. It is

always with regret that I have to answer any letter of the kind

in the negative. But the time fixed for the Saratoga Convention

renders it impracticable for me to be present. My husband and I

hope to attend the National Convention at Cincinnati in October.

Thy active interest and exertions in this cause are greatly

cheering. We are doing little hereaway. Pennsylvania is always

slow in every reformatory movement. We have circulated many of

the pamphlets.

Wishing you all success at the convention, and sure of thy "great

recompense and reward,"

I am thine affectionately,

LUCRETIA MOTT.

BOSTON, _June 6, 1855_.

DEAR FRIEND:--I have kept your letter by me, and omitted to

reply, hoping, and indeed expecting, that though I give up all

but two or three routine and neighboring engagements in the

summer. I might plan so as to accept yours. But I find I can not

come as you ask. My summer months must be devoted otherwise. I

hope you will not nickname me _No_, for my so constantly using

that monosyllable to you. Indeed, I will try to oblige you next

winter.

With much regard, yours truly,

WENDELL PHILLIPS.

HIGH ROCK, LYNN, MASS., _August 4, 1855_.

EARNEST FRIEND:--We have just received your hearty invitation to

the Convention at Saratoga. Nothing would give us more pleasure

than to be with you on that occasion. We are all interested in

Woman's Rights, and in liberty for all humanity.

Long submission has smothered the hope and extinguished the

desire in many for any change of condition. But the light of the

nineteenth century should awake all to earnest battle for their

God-given rights. We will consult together, and if we can make up

a quartette we will try and be with you to sing once more our

songs[141] of freedom for another struggling class. With much

esteem

I remain yours truly,

JOHN W. HUTCHINSON,

(for the family).

Following the Convention the usual attacks were made by the press,

accusing the members of "infidelity and free love," which Miss Brown

refuted through _The New York Tribune_. In this way, with conventions

being continually held at the fashionable watering places[142] in the

summer, and at the center of legislative assemblies in the winter, New

York was compelled to give some attention to the question. A Woman's

Eights meeting and a hearing were of annual occurrence as regular as

the convening of the Legislature.

ALBANY CONVENTION, 1855.

The second Convention at Albany was held in the Green Street

Universalist Church, February 13 and 14, 1855. Martha C. Wright

presided; the usual speakers[143] were present, and letters of

sympathy were received from Wendell Phillips, T. W. Higginson,

Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, expressing regret at

not being able to attend.

LETTER FROM HORACE GREELEY.

NEW YORK, _February 8, 1855_.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

DEAR FRIEND:--I can not be in Albany next week, because I some

time since promised to speak on Wednesday in Maine, and must keep

my engagement. Nor, indeed, can I deem it of any consequence that

I should attend your Convention. You know, already, that I am

thoroughly committed to the principle that _woman shall decide

for herself_ whether she shall have a voice and a vote in

legislation, or shall continue to be represented and legislated

for exclusively by man.

My own judgment is that woman's presence in the arena of politics

would be useful and beneficent; but I do not assume to judge for

her. She must consider, determine, and act for herself. Whenever

she shall in earnest have resolved that her own welfare and that

of the race will be promoted by her claiming a voice in the

direction of civil government, as I think she ultimately will do,

then the day of her emancipation will be near. That day I will

hope yet to see.

Yours,

HORACE GREELEY.

Of the hearings before the Legislature which followed this Convention,

we give the report from

_The Albany Register, February 17, 1855._

JUST AND EQUAL RIGHTS--HEARING BEFORE THE ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE.

The select Committee of the Assembly, to which was referred the

petition for Woman's Rights, granted a bearing to the petitioners

in the Assembly Chamber on Saturday evening, Ernestine L. Rose,

Antoinette Brown, and Susan B. Anthony represented the

petitioners. The arguments were able, and well received. Members

of the 'Committee and others sent up a number of questions which

the ladies promptly answered, with a due sprinkling of wit,

logic, and sarcasm, greatly to the entertainment of the audience,

which did not disperse until after eleven o'clock.

Mr. Rickerson, from the Select Committee, to whom was referred

"The Petition for the Right of Suffrage," stated that "after

mature consideration the Committee unanimously report adversely

to the prayer of the petitioners." Mr. Rickerson, from the same

Committee to whom was referred--the petition for the just and

equal civil rights of woman, said: "The Committee have given the

petition that examination which time and circumstances would

allow, and report favorably thereon, as embraced in the bill,"

which they introduced.[144]

The petitions of 1856 were referred to the Judiciary Committee, Samuel

A. Foote, Chairman. Mr. Foote was at one time a member of the bar of

New York, associating with some of the first families in the State--a

son, a husband, a father--and yet in his maturer years he had so

little respect for himself, his mother, wife, and daughters as to

present in a dignified legislative assembly the following report on a

grave question of human rights--a piece of buffoonery worthy only a

mountebank in a circus:

LEGISLATIVE REPORT ON WOMEN'S RIGHTS.

_The Register_, ALBANY, _March, 1856_.

Mr. Foote, from the Judiciary Committee, made a report on Women's

Rights that set the whole House in roars of laughter:

"The Committee is composed of married and single gentlemen. The

bachelors on the Committee, with becoming diffidence, have left

the subject pretty much to the married gentlemen. They have

considered it with the aid of the light they have before them and

the experience married life has given them. Thus aided, they are

enabled to state that the ladies always have the best place and

choicest titbit at the table. They have the best seat in the

cars, carriages, and sleighs; the warmest place in the winter,

and the coolest place in the summer. They have their choice on

which side of the bed they will lie, front or back. A lady's

dress costs three times as much as that of a gentleman; and, at

the present time, with the prevailing fashion, one lady occupies

three times as much space in the world as a gentleman.

"It has thus appeared to the married gentlemen of your Committee,

being a majority (the bachelors being silent for the reason

mentioned, and also probably for the further reason that they are

still suitors for the favors of the gentler sex), that, if there

is any inequality or oppression in the case, the gentlemen are

the sufferers. They, however, have presented no petitions for

redress; having, doubtless, made up their minds to yield to an

inevitable destiny.

"On the whole, the Committee have concluded to recommend no

measure, except that as they have observed several instances in

which husband and wife have both signed the same petition. In

such case, they would recommend the parties to apply for a law

authorizing them to change dresses, so that the husband may wear

petticoats, and the wife the breeches, and thus indicate to their

neighbors and the public the true relation in which they stand to

each other."

ASSEMBLY--WOMEN'S RIGHTS.

Mr. PRENDERGAST presented several petitions asking for an

extension of Women's Rights. Mr. P. stated that undoubtedly the

Judiciary was the proper Committee to receive these petitions;

but the petitioners had signified to him that, from a recent

manifestation on the part of the Chairman of that Committee

(Judge Foote), they would prefer that the petition should be

referred to some other Committee. He therefore moved their

reference to the Committee on Claims.

Mr. NORTHUP seconded the motion.

Mr. FOOTE remarked, that if there was any other Committee of this

House that would or could unsex the female sex, he had no

objection to the reference moved.

The motion prevailed.

Lydia Mott, in a letter to Susan B. Anthony, under date of Albany,

March 15, 1856, says:

I mail a paper to you, containing the Hon. Samuel A. Foote's

report on our petitions. I hardly expected any report this

winter. I am glad he made one; am only sorry it was verbal. There

ought to have been a large number printed for circulation. I hope

you won't get discouraged; remember the good work goes bravely

on, the Honorable Legislature to the contrary notwithstanding. We

shall get all we demand one of these days. Our reform is so

comprehensive, we must not expect a sudden change in public

opinion. Only see how long we have been laboring to convert

people to the one self-evident truth that a man has a right to

himself; and where are we now after a quarter of a century? No;

we must not be disheartened. Our labor has not been in vain. I

see its good effects every day, and they will continue to

multiply.

Only think, here in our midst we have a constant testimony borne

to good audiences every Sunday. I don't know whether I wrote you

what a true man we have in the Unitarian Church, and what a treat

his sermons are to me. You remember A. D. Mayo, who has written

letters to our Conventions; he doesn't come as an Unitarian, but

as an Independent. It can not be otherwise than that he will do a

world of good. He gave to day one of the boldest as well as

finest sermons I have ever heard--full of noble thoughts. He

always recognizes woman in every department. It amuses me to see

the effect on Rome of the women as he portrays woman side by side

with man, always making her his equal in every position. Mr. Mayo

is the first minister who has filled the church, and the only one

that has not seemed afraid of his own shadow. Mr. Garrison heard

him when here; said he could not wish to change one word or to

add one to his sermon. That from Garrison is saying a great deal.

The Hon. Wm. Hay, who always aided us and watched the Legislature very

closely in its action upon our question, in a letter to Miss Anthony,

dated March 20, 1856, said:

I write this in the Assembly Chamber which has so recently been

disgraced by an old fogy--Sam. A. Foote. He can not, however,

prevent the agitation as to Woman's Rights. That of Suffrage has

been discussed several times this week, incidentally, in both

Houses, and will be up here again to-morrow directly....

March 21st, he says: The petition from Milton, Ulster County, was

presented yesterday, and referred to the Committee on Claims,

instead of the Judiciary or a Select Committee. It is thus

manifest that the cause is not to be put down or even passed by

with contemptuous silence, vulgar abuse, or conservative scorn.

Foote squealed out his angry opposition, in the old stupid slang

(of Shakespeare perverted from "Macbeth"), about unsexing woman

with the right of suffrage, and endeavored to contrast it with

property-claims; as if the revolutionary maxim concerning

taxation and representation going together is not a property

rule. I suspect, too, that personal rights, secured by the right

preservative of all rights, are more important than mere property

rights. But they need not be distinguished in that respect. The

proceeding is (even if without any present beneficial result) a

triumph; because it proves to Judge Foote and others that the

Woman's Rights petitions (or rather demands) must receive

suitable consideration and, at least, a respectful report.

Next winter we may hope to be more successful--if not then,

success is merely postponed. It has become a question of time

only, and perhaps of place--probably Nebraska!

THE SEVENTH NATIONAL WOMAN'S EIGHTS CONTENTION.

Pursuant to a call issued by the Central Committee, the Seventh

National Woman's Rights Convention was held in New York, at the

Broadway Tabernacle, November 25 and 26, 1856.

The Convention was called to order by Martha C. Wright, President of

the last Convention.

The officers were duly appointed.[145]

LUCY STONE, on taking the chair, said: I am sure that all present

will agree with me that this is a day of congratulation. It is

our Seventh Annual National Woman's Rights Convention. Our first

effort was made in a small room in Boston, where a few women were

gathered, who had learned woman's rights by woman's wrongs. There

had been only one meeting in Ohio, and two in New York. The laws

were yet against us, custom was against us, prejudice was against

us, and more than all, women were against us. We were strong only

"in the might of our right"--and, now, when this seventh year has

brought us together again, we can say as did a laborer in the

Republican party, though all is not gained, "we are without a

wound in our faith, without a wound in our hope, and stronger

than when we began." Never before has any reformatory movement

gained so much in so short a time. When we began, the statute

books were covered with laws against women, which an eminent

jurist (Judge Walker) said would be a disgrace to the statute

books of any heathen nation.

Now almost every Northern State has more or less modified its

laws. The Legislature of Maine, after having granted nearly all

other property rights to wives, found a bill before it asking

that a wife should be entitled to what she earns, but a certain

member grew fearful that wives would bring in bills for their

daily service, and, by an eloquent appeal to pockets, the measure

was lost for the time, but that which has secured other rights

will secure this. In Massachusetts, by the old laws, a wife owned

nothing but the fee simple in her real estate. And even for that,

she could not make a will without the written endorsement of her

husband, permitting her to do so. Two years ago the law was so

changed that she now holds the absolute right to her entire

property, earnings included. Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode

Island have also very much amended their statutes. New York, the

proud Empire State, has, by the direct effort of this movement,

secured to wives every property right except earnings. During two

years a bill has been before the Legislature, which provides that

if a husband be a drunkard, a profligate, or has abandoned his

wife, she may have a right to her own earnings. It has not

passed. Two hundred years hence that bill will be quoted as a

proof of the barbarism of the times; now it is a proof of

progress.

Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana have also very materially modified

their laws. And Wisconsin--God bless these young States--has

granted almost all that has been asked except the right of

suffrage. And even this, Senator Sholes,[146] in an able minority

report on the subject, said, "is only a question of time, and as

sure to triumph as God is just." It proposed that the Convention

which meets in two years to amend the Constitution of the State

should consider the subject. In Michigan, too, it has been moved

that women should have a right to their own babies, which none of

you, ladies, have here in New York. The motion caused much

discussion in the Legislature, and it would probably have been

carried had not a disciple of Brigham Young's, a Mormon member,

defeated the bill. In Nebraska everything is bright for our

cause. Mrs. Bloomer is there, and she has circulated petitions,

claiming for women the right to vote. A bill to that effect

passed the House of Representatives, and was lost in the Senate,

only because of the too early closing of the session. That act of

justice to woman would be gained in Nebraska first, and scores

of women would go there that they might be made citizens, and be

no longer subjects.

In addition to these great legal changes, achieved so directly by

this reform, we find also that women have entered upon many new

and more remunerative industrial pursuits; thus being enabled to

save themselves from the bitterness of dependent positions, or

from lives of infamy. Our demand that Harvard and Yale Colleges

should admit women, though not yielded, only waits for a little

more time. And while they wait, numerous petty "female colleges"

have sprung into being, indicative of the justice of our claim

that a college education should be granted to women. Not one of

these female colleges (which are all second or third rate, and

their whole course of study only about equal to what completes

the sophomore year in our best colleges) meets the demand of the

age, and so will eventually perish. Oberlin and Antioch Colleges

in Ohio, and Lima College in New York, admit women on terms

nearly equal with men.

In England, too, the claims of women are making progress. The

most influential papers in London have urged the propriety of

women physicians. Also a petition was sent to Parliament last

year, signed by the Brownings, the Howitts, Harriet Martineau,

Mrs. Gaskell, and Mrs. Jameson, asking for just such rights as we

claim here. It was presented by Lord Brougham, and was

respectfully received by Parliament. The ballot has not yet been

yielded; but it can not be far off when, as in the last

Presidential contest,[147] women were urged to attend political

meetings, and a woman's name was made one of the rallying cries

of the party of progress. The enthusiasm which everywhere greeted

the name of Jessie[148] was so far a recognition of woman's right

to participate in politics. Encouraged by the success of these

seven years of effort, let us continue with unfailing fidelity to

labor for the practical recognition of the great truth, that all

human rights inhere in each human being. We welcome to this

platform man and women irrespective of creed, country, or color;

those who dissent from us as freely as those who agree with us.

ERNESTINE L. ROSE, from the Business Committee, reported a series

of resolutions.[149]

The President stated that several letters had been received, one from

Francis Jackson, of Boston, one of the noblest of the noble men of the

age, inclosing $50, which, he says, he gives "to help this righteous

cause along." Also a letter from the Rev. Samuel Johnson, of Salem,

Massachusetts, which would be read by Mr. Higginson.

Rev. T. W. HIGGINSON said he was much more willing to be called

upon to read the words of others at this time, than to utter poor

words of his own. There were many who came into a Woman's Rights

Convention and started to find men on the platform. He could only

say, that in these times, and with the present light, there was

no place where a man could redeem his manhood better than on the

Woman's Rights Platform. Gentlemen in distant seats were perhaps

trembling to think that they had actually got that far into this

dangerous place. They might think themselves well off--no, badly

off--if the maelstrom did not draw them nearer and nearer and

nearer in, as it did him. He began, like them, hesitating and

smiling on the back seats; they saw what he had got to now, and

he hoped they, too, might get into such noble company before

long. He was prouder to train in this band than to be at the head

of the play-soldiers who were marching through the streets

to-day, and immortalizing themselves by not failing, so utterly

as some of their companions, to hit some easy target. Those were

play-soldiers; these were soldiers in earnest.

Men talk a great deal of nonsense about the woman's rights

movement. He never knew a husband who was demolished in an

argument by his wife, or a young gentleman who found his

resources of reason entirely used up by a young lady, who did not

fall back at last when there was no retreat, and say: "It's no

use; you can't reason with a woman." Well, so it would seem in

their case. Others shelter themselves behind the general

statement, that they don't wish to marry a woman's rights woman.

I have no doubt the woman's rights women reciprocate the wish.

These appear to have some anxiety about dinner--that seems to be

the trouble. Jean Paul, the German, wanted to have a wife who

could cook him something good; and Mrs. Frederica Bremer, the

novelist, remarked, that a wife can always conciliate her husband

by having something to stop his mouth. In a conversation in

Philadelphia the other day, a young lawyer, when told that Mrs.

Emma R. Coe was studying law with the intention of practicing,

remarked, that he should never see her in Court, but she would

remind him of mince pies; to which the gentleman he was in

conversation with, observed that he had better not get her as his

antagonist in trying a suit, or she would remind him of minced

meat. Having given two or three examples of the nonsense of men

upon this subject, he would now read them some sense. The letter

was from one of the most eloquent and learned of the younger

clergy of New England; a man possessed of powers of genius and

practical wisdom which would yet make him heard in a larger

sphere than that which he now occupied. It was not the old

English Sam. Johnson who said that "there never was a lawsuit or

a quarrel where a woman was not at the bottom of it." This was

Sam. Johnson Americanized, and of course he was a woman's rights

man.

LETTER FROM REV. SAMUEL JOHNSON.

SALEM, _October 4, 1856_.

DEAR FRIEND:--In complying with your desire that I should send a

few words to the Woman's Rights Convention, I am quite aware that

in this matter infinitely more depends upon what women do than

upon what men say; nevertheless, if my confession of faith will

be of the least service, it shall not be wanting.

I regard this movement as no less than the sum and crown of all

our moral enterprises; as a proclamation of entire social

freedom, never practicable until now. I welcome it, not merely

because it aims at delivering half the human race from

constraints that degrade and demoralize the whole, but also

because it is opening a new spiritual hemisphere, destined to put

a new heart into our semi-barbarian theology, politics, manners,

literature, and law. And especially do I rejoice, that having

defrauded the feminine element of its due share in practical

affairs for so many ages, and found ourselves, as a natural

consequence, drifting toward barbarism with all our wealth and

wisdom, we are compelled at last to learn that justice to woman

is simply mercy to ourselves.

Doubtless the main obstacles to this work come from her own sex.

Strange if it were not so; if the meagre hope doled out to women

hitherto should have unfitted them to believe that such a

function awaits them. Strange if they did not fear a thousand

perils in the untried way of freedom. But the unwise distrust

will have to be abandoned; and so will the conventional flippancy

and contempt. I think the grand duty of every honorable man

toward this effort at emancipation is simply _not to stand in its

way_. For how much is really covered by that duty? It means that

he must wash his hands of every law or prejudice that dooms woman

to an inferior position, and makes her the victim of miserable

wages and fatal competitions with herself. It means that he must

clear himself of this senseless twaddle about "woman's sphere," a

matter surely no more for his legislation, than his "sphere" is

for hers; and one upon which, at this stage of their experience,

it is unbecoming in either to dogmatize; and it means that as a

simple act of justice, he must resign to her the control of her

own earnings, secure her fair and full culture, and welcome her

to the pulpit, the bar, the medical profession, and to whatever

other posts of public usefulness she may prepare herself to fill.

As long as he fails of doing this, he is unjustly interfering

with her sacred rights; and _after_ he has done this, he may

safely leave the rest to her.

It is humiliating indeed that numbers of well-disposed persons

should not recognize so plain a duty. I have no patience to argue

it. The moral logic of this movement is as patent as the simplest

rule in arithmetic. Every argument brought against it resolves

itself into a sneer at woman's capacity, or an anxiety lest the

distinction God has established between the sexes will not bear

testing; or, what is more common still, though covered up in a

thousand ways, the brutish assertion that "might makes right."

There is but one answer to these impertinences, and that is the

success of individual women in the work they set about. The

current ridicule at "doing justice to women" will pass for the

sheer vulgarity it is, when so many women shall do justice to

themselves, that they can not be taken as exceptions to prove the

rule. And this success depends on their own wills. The noble use

of God's gifts shall make its mark in this world. As sure as God

lives, it shall compel a becoming respect. For more and more of

these lessons in true honor do we pray; for the very name of

manhood must make us blush, so long as it is identified with

these airs of patronage and control, these insulting obeisances,

these flatterers of what is childish in women, these sarcasms

upon what is noblest; worse than all, this willingness to derive

gain from the degradation and suffering of the sex it professes

to adore. And words are poor to express the gratitude that shall

be forever due to those women whose moral energy shall rebuke

this littleness, and stir true manliness in man.

With sincere respect, I am truly your friend,

SAMUEL JOHNSON.

ERNESTINE L. ROSE remarked, that in the letter read by Mr.

Higginson there was one sentence that struck her with great

force, viz: that it is of far greater importance what woman does

than what man thinks; and, she would add, what woman thinks. The

influence of what she had done was felt not only in this country,

but throughout the entire continent of Europe.

The author of that letter had expressed another sentiment to

which she wished briefly to advert. He said that where ten men

could be convinced of the truth of Woman's Rights, hardly one

woman could be gained. At first sight it might so appear. But it

should be borne in mind, that men were more accustomed to think

and reflect and argue upon everything connected with the legal

and political rights of men, at least, and, therefore, they were

more easily convinced. Nevertheless, the subject, whenever

presented to the mind of woman in its proper light, would not

fail to find an echo in her heart. Whenever the subject was

broached to a woman hitherto unacquainted with it, it first

caused a smile, and, perchance, a sneer; but, put to her a few

common-sense questions, and the smile disappeared, and her

countenance assumed a serious expression. Ask her if she is not

entitled to self-government, to the full development of her

mental powers, to the free choice of her industrial avocations,

to proper remuneration for her labor, to equal control of her

offspring with that of her husband, to the possession and control

of her own property, and to a voice in making the laws that

impose taxes upon property that she may hold--ask her a few

simple, straight-forward questions like these, and see if an

immediate, hearty, and warm assent is not elicited.

In spite of a violent storm a large number assembled in the evening.

The speakers announced were Mrs. Elizabeth Jones and Wendell Phillips.

Mrs. Jones' address was a clear and logical statement of the whole

claim of woman. By her own request, it was not published.

WENDELL PHILLIPS:--Ladies and gentlemen. I am told that the

_Times_ of to-day warns the women of this Convention that if they

proceed in their crusade they will forfeit the protection of the

men. Perhaps, before it is offered, the question had better be

asked whether it is needed. I do not think that I should run the

risk of much difference of opinion if I claimed, that nine men

out of ten would not be able to defend their right to vote as

logically as the lady who has just addressed us has defended her

right to vote. I question whether one-quarter of what we call the

men educated by the colleges, and in active life--the better

education of the two--would be able, arrogating to themselves as

they do a far greater political and civil capacity, to state the

grounds of civil rights and responsibilities, to mark out the

limits, to vindicate the advantages, and to analyze the bases on

which these rest, as we have just had it done. If participation

in civil rights is based on mind--as in this country we claim it

to be--then certainly to-night we have no right to deny that the

cause is gained, for the friend who has preceded me has left very

little for any one to say; she has covered the whole ground.

In fact this question is a question of civilization, nothing

less. The position of woman anywhere is the test of civilization.

You need not ask for the statistics of education, of national

wealth, or of crime; tell me the position of woman, and you

answer the question of the nation's progress. Utah is barbarism;

we need no evidence; we read it in the single custom that lowers

the female sex. Wherever you go in history this is true. Step by

step as woman ascends, civilization ripens. I warn the anxious

and terrified that their first efforts should be to conquer their

fears, for the triumph of this crusade is written as certain on

the next leaf that turns in the great history of the race, as

that the twentieth century will open.

The time was when a Greek dared not let his wife go out of doors,

and in the old comic play of Athens, one of the characters says,

"Where is your wife?" "She has gone out." "Death and furies! what

does she do out?" Doubtless, if any "fanatic" had claimed the

right of woman to walk out of doors, he would have been deemed

crazy in Athens; had he claimed the right of a modest married

woman to be seen out of doors it would have been considered

fanaticism, and I do not know but that the _Herald_ of that day

would have branded him as an infidel. But spite of the anchored

conservatism of others, women got out of doors and the country

grew, and the world turned round, and so modern Europe has

progressed. Now the pendulum swung one way, and now another, but

woman has gained right after right until with us, to the

astonishment of the Greek, could he see it--of the Turk, when he

hears it--she stands almost side by side with man in her civil

rights. The Saxon race has led the van. I trample underfoot

contemptuously the Jewish--yes, the Jewish--ridicule which laughs

at such a Convention as this; for we are the Saxon blood, and the

first line of record that is left to the Saxon race is that line

of Tacitus, "On all grave questions they consult their women."

When the cycle of Saxondom is complete, when the Saxon element

culminates in modern civilization, another Tacitus will record in

the valley of the Mississippi, as he did in the valley of the

Rhine, "On all grave questions they consult their women." The

fact is, there is no use of blinking the issue. It is Paul

against the Saxon blood; it is a religious prejudice against the

blood of the race. The blood of the race accords to woman

equality; it is a religious superstition which stands in the way

and balks the effort.

Europe has known three phases. The first was the dominion of

force; the second the dominion of money; the third is

beginning--the dominion of brains. When it comes, woman will step

out on the platform side by side with her brother. The old Hindoo

dreamed that he saw the human race led out to its varied fortune,

and first he saw a man bitted and curbed, and the reins went back

to an iron hand. Then he saw a man led on and on, under various

changes, until, at last, he saw the man led by threads that came

from the brain and went back to an invisible hand. The first was

the type of despotism--the reign of force, the upper classes

keeping down the under. The last is ours--the dominion of brains.

We live in a government where _The New York Herald_ and _New York

Tribune_, thank God, are more really the government than Franklin

Pierce and Caleb Cushing. Ideas reign. I know some men do not

appreciate this fact; they are overawed by the iron arm, by the

marble capitol, by the walls of granite--palpable power, felt,

seen. I have seen the palace of the Cæsars, built of masses that

seemed as if giants alone could have laid them together, to last

for eternity, as if nothing that did not part the solid globe

could move them. But the tiny roots of the weeds of Italian

summers had inserted themselves between them, and the palace of

the Cæsars lies a shapeless ruin. So it is with your government.

It may be iron, it may be marble, but the pulses of right and

wrong push it aside; only give them time. I hail the government

of ideas.

There is another thing I claim. You laugh at Woman's Rights

Conventions; you ridicule socialism (I do not accept that); you

dislike the anti-slavery movement. The only discussion of the

grave social questions of the age, the questions of right and

wrong that lie at the basis of society--the only voices that have

stirred them and kept those questions alive have been those of

these three reforms. Smothered with gold--smothered with material

prosperity, the vast masses of our countrymen were living the

lives of mere getters of money; but the ideas of this half of the

nineteenth century have been bruited by despised reformers, kept

alive by three radical movements, and whoever in the next

generation shall seek for the sources of mental and intellectual

change will find it here; and in a progressive people like ours

that claim is a most vital and significant one....

I contend that woman, broadly considered, makes half the money

that is made. Go the world over, take either Europe or America,

the first source of money is intelligence and thrift; it is not

speculation.... Out of the twenty millions of American people

that make money, woman does more than half of the work that

insures the reward. I claim for that half of the race whose

qualities garner up wealth, the right to dispose of it, and to

control it by law.

Again, take thought. I know our sister has modestly told us how

utterly they are deprived of what are called the institutions of

education; but we know very well that book learning is a

miserably poor thing, and that the best education in the world is

what we clutch in the streets; and of that education, by hook or

by crook, woman has so far gained enough, that, Europe and

America through, where is the man presumptuous enough to doubt

that the hand of woman is not felt as much on the helm of public

opinion as that of man? To be sure, she does not have an outside

ambitious distinction; but at home, in the molding hours, in

youth, in the soft moments when the very balance-wheel of

character is touched, we all know that woman, though she may not

consciously enunciate ideas, does as much to form public opinion

as man. The time has been--and every man who has ever analyzed

history knows it--when in France, the mother to Europe of all

social ideas; France that has lifted up Germany from mysticism,

and told England what she means and what she wants: France that

has construed England to herself, and interpreted to her what she

was blindly reaching out for; when in that very France, at the

fountain-head of that eighteenth century of civil progress, it

was in the saloons of woman that man did his thinking, and it was

under the brilliant inspiration of her society that that mighty

revolution in the knowledge and science of civil affairs was

wrought. In this country, too, at this hour, woman does as much

to give the impulse to public opinion as man does.

Wherever I find silent power I want recognition of the

responsibility. I am not in favor of a power behind the throne. I

do not want half the race concealed behind the curtain and

controlling without being responsible. Drag them to the light,

hold them up as you do men to the utmost study of public

questions, and to a personal responsibility for their public

settlement. Corruption--it often takes the very form of the

passions of woman. In Paris, to-day, we are told, when the

government approaches a man, the way is, not to give him wealth

for his own enjoyment, but to dower his daughter. It is the pride

of woman through which they reach him. Drag that woman forward on

the platform of public life; give to her manifest ability a fair

field, let her win wealth by her own exertions, not by the

surrender of principle in the person of her husband; and although

my friend doubts it, I believe, when you put the two sexes

harmoniously in civil life, you will secure a higher state of

civilization--not because woman is better, not because she is

more merciful, or more just, or more pure than man, as man

naturally, but because God meant that a perfect human being

should be made up of man and woman allied, and it is only when

the two march side by side on the pathway of civilization that

the harmonious development of the race begins.

Then, again, you can not educate woman, in the sense that we use

education. She has no motive. As my friend said, when she

marries, education ceases. At that age the education of man

commences: he has wealth, ambition, social position, as his

stimulus: he knows that by keeping his mind on the alert he earns

them all. You furnish a woman with books--you give her no motive

to open them. You open to her the door of science: why should she

enter? She can gain nothing except in individual and exceptional

cases; public opinion drives her back, places a stigma upon her

of blue-stocking, and the consequence is, the very motive for

education is taken away. Now, I believe, a privileged class, an

aristocracy, a set of slaveholders, does just as much harm to

itself as it does to the victimized class. When man undertakes to

place woman behind him, to assume the reins of government and to

govern for her, he is an aristocrat; and all aristocracies are

not only unjust, but they are harmful to the progress of society.

I welcome this movement, because it shows that we have got a

great amount of civilization. Every other movement to redress a

wrong in the past generations of the world has been yielded to

only from fear. Bentham says truly, the governing race never

yielded a right unless they were bullied out of it. That is true

historically; but we have come to a time--and this movement shows

it--when civilization has rendered man capable of yielding to

something different from fear. This movement has only been eight

years on foot, and during that time, we who have watched the

statute-book are aware to admiration of the rapid changes that

have taken place in public opinion, and in legislation, all over

the States. Within the last four years, in different localities,

woman has been allowed the right to protect her earnings, and to

make a will--two of the great points of property. Aye, and one

little star of light begins to twinkle in the darkness of the

political atmosphere: Kentucky allows her to vote. Yes, from the

land where on one question they are so obstinate, the white race

have remembered justice to their white co-equals. In her

nobly-planned school system, Kentucky divides her State into

districts; the trustees are annually chosen for the State funds;

and it is expressly provided, that besides the usual voters in

the election of trustees for the school fund, which is coveted by

millions, there shall be allowed to vote, every widow who has a

child betwixt six and eighteen years old, and she shall go to the

ballot-box in person or by proxy. Kentucky repudiates the

doctrine that to go to the ballot-box forfeits the delicacy of

the sex; for she provides, in express terms, that she shall go to

the ballot-box in person, or by proxy, as she pleases. It is the

first drop of the coming storm--it is the first ray of light in

the rising sun.

Civilization can not defend itself, on American principles,

against this claim. My friend of Brooklyn claims the right to

make political speeches, as well as sermons, because he is a

citizen. Well, woman is a citizen too: and if a minister can

preach politics because he is a citizen, woman can meddle in

politics and vote, because she is a citizen too. When Mr. Beecher

based his right, not on the intellect which flashes from Maine to

Georgia, not on the strength of that nervous right arm, but

solely on his citizenship, he dragged to the platform twelve

millions of American women to stand at his side. But the

difficulty is, no man can defend his own right to vote, without

granting it to woman. The only reason why the demand sounds

strange, is because man never analyzed his own right. The moment

he begins to analyze it, he can not defend it without admitting

her. Our fathers proclaimed, sixty years ago, that government was

co-equal with the right to take money and to punish for crime.

Now, all that I wish to say to the American people on this

question is, let woman go free from the penal statute--let her

property be exempt from taxation, until you admit her to the

ballot-box--or seal up the history of the Revolution, make

Bancroft and Hildreth prohibited books, banish the argument of

'76, and let Mr. Simms have his own way with the history of all

the States, as well as South Carolina. Yes, the fact is, women

make opinion for us; and the only thing we shut them out from is

the ballot-box.

I would have it constantly kept before the public, that we do not

seek to prop up woman; we only ask for her space to let her grow.

Governments are not made; they grow. They are not buildings like

this, with dome and pillars; they are oaks, with roots and

branches, and they grow, by God's blessing, in the soil He gives

to them. Now man has been allowed to grow, and when Pharaoh tied

him down with bars of iron, when Europe tied him down with

privilege and superstition, he burst the bonds and grew strong.

We ask the same for woman. Göethe said that if you plant an oak

in a flower-pot, one of two things was sure to happen: either the

oak will be dwarfed, or the flower-pot will break. So we have

planted woman in a flower-pot, hemmed her in by restrictions, and

when we move to enlarge her sphere, society cries out, "Oh!

you'll break the flower-pot!" Well, I say, let it break. Man made

it, and the sooner it goes to pieces the better. Let us see how

broadly the branches will throw themselves, and how beautiful

will be the shape, and how glorious against the moonlit sky, or

glowing sunset, the foliage shall appear.

[Illustration: MARTHA C. WRIGHT (with autograph).]

I say the very first claim, the middle and last claim of all our

Conventions should be the ballot. Everywhere, in each State, we

should claim it; not for any intrinsic value in the ballot, but

because it throws upon woman herself the responsibility of her

position. Man never grew to his stature until he was provoked to

it by the pressure and weight of responsibility; and I take it

woman will grow up the same way.

The first three resolutions on the Presidential election were brought

up for discussion and adopted. Those persons in the audience who

desired to speak were urged to do so.

Mrs. ROSE said: In reference to this last election, though it was

not my good fortune to be here during the time of that great

excitement, being then on the continent of Europe; yet, even at

that great distance, the fire of freedom that was kindled here

spread itself across the Atlantic. The liberal, intelligent, and

reformatory portion of the people of Europe, as well as in

England, have most warmly, most heartily sympathized with us in

the last struggle of freedom against slavery. It is a most

glorious epoch. I will not enter into a political or anti-slavery

lecture, but simply state this fact--the time has come when the

political parties are entirely annihilated. They have ceased to

exist. There is no longer Whig and no longer Democrat--there is

Freedom or Slavery. We have here an equally great purpose to

achieve. This, too, is not woman's rights or man's rights, but it

is human rights. It is based on precisely the same fundamental

truths with the other question. In the last election the general

feeling prevailed that woman ought to take more interest in

political affairs, and with the noble work she did during the

campaign, it seems to me most extraordinary that the men who have

worked thus nobly for the freedom of one class, should yet refuse

freedom to the other class.

PHILLIP D. MOORE rose in the body of the building and said:

During this last Presidential canvass I heard more than once the

oldest member of Congress declare that Freedom was based upon the

law of God, which was declared in our Bill of Rights--our

Declaration of Independence--that it was the inalienable right of

all mankind to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness.

He placed this last Presidential struggle upon that right higher

than all human law; and upon that it seems this contest in

behalf of human rights is based. I think that we should adopt

these resolutions, and also appeal to the legislative bodies,

where, I believe, there are men who will hear and heed the voice

of justice.

Rev. T. W. HIGGINSON took the floor, and expressed his hope that

they would have more speaking from the floor and less from the

platform. As a Republican voter, he would take his stand in

support of these resolutions; and he would declare that it was

true that the close of the Presidential election was the time for

a woman's Convention to be held. It was true that the Republican

party was pledged, if it had any manliness in it, to support the

cause of women, to whom it had applied to support its cause every

day; and it was positively true that, if there were such a thing

in the land as a Democratic party, that party was the party of

the women also. As a further illustration of the idea expressed

by the gentleman who had preceded him, he would state the fact

that, when he was invited to Vermont to address the Legislature

in favor of the appropriation of $20,000 for Kansas,[150] the

meeting was postponed, on the ground that the shortness of the

notice would not allow time for procuring the attendance of the

women of the village to fill the galleries, and by their sympathy

to influence the determination of the members of the Legislature

who might be present. Accordingly they waited a little longer,

gave sufficient notice, got the gallery full of ladies, and

ultimately got the $20,000 appropriation, too. But always when

the women had given their sympathy and began to demand some in

return, it was found out that they were very "dependent"

creatures, and that, if they persisted in it, they would forfeit

the "protection" of the men; and this in the face of the fact,

that when politicians wanted votes and clergymen wanted money,

their invariable practice was to appeal to the women!

The last time he had considered woman's rights he was in a place

where man's rights needed to be defended--it was in Kansas. No

man could go to Kansas and see what woman had done there, and

come back and see the little men who squeak and shout on

platforms in behalf of Kansas, and then turn to deride and

despise women, without a feeling of disgust. He would like to

place some of these parlor orators and dainty platform speakers

where the women of Kansas had stood, and suffered, and acted. He

saw, while in Kansas, a New York woman[151]--whose story they

might remember in the newspapers--how she hospitably prepared, in

one day, three dinners for the marauders who were hovering around

her house, and in their starvation became respectful at last, and

asked her for the hospitality they did not then quite dare to

enforce; and how they ate her dinner and abused her husband,

until the good woman could stand it no longer, and at last opened

her lips and gave them a piece of her mind. He saw that woman.

She had lived for weeks together in the second story of a log

hut, with the windows of the lower story boarded up, so that the

inmates had to climb in by a ladder. She was surrounded by

pro-slavery camps; and while her husband was in the army, she was

left alone. The house had been visited again and again, and

plundered. The wretches would come at night, discharge their

rifles, and howl like demons. Her little girl, a nervous child,

had sickened and died from sheer fright. But still, after the

death of that child, the mother lived on, and still gave

hospitality to free-soil men, and still defended the property of

her husband by her presence. At last the marauders burned her

house over her head, and she retreated for a time. The speaker

saw her when she was on her way back to that homestead, to

rebuild the house which she had seen once reduced to ashes by the

enemy; and she said that if her husband was killed there in

Kansas, she should preempt that claim, and defend the property

for her children.

He saw another woman, a girl of twenty. He visited a mill which

had been burnt by Missourians, where piles of sawdust were still

in flames before his eyes, and there he met her; and when he

asked to whom that house belonged, she said to her father. And

when he inquired about her adventures in connection with that

burning house, this was the story. Twenty-eight hundred

Missourians were encamped around that house the morning after

they had burned it. The girl had fled with her mother a mile off,

but had come back to see if she could save any of the property.

She walked into the midst of the crowd, and found a man she had

previously known seated upon her favorite horse. Said she, "That

is my horse; get off." He laughed at her. She repeated her

demand. He loaded her with curses and insults. She turned to the

bystanders--the herd of ruffians who had burned her father's

house--and said: "This is my horse; make that man get off." Those

fellows obeyed her; they shrank before that heroic girl, and made

their companion dismount. She mounted the horse and rode off.

When she had gone about half a mile, she heard a trampling of

horses' hoofs behind her. The thief, mounted on a fleeter horse,

was riding after her. He overtook her, and reining his horse in

front of her, he seized hers by the bridle, and commanded her to

let go. She held on. Said he, "Let go, or it will be the worse

for you." She still held on. He took out his bowie-knife, and

drew it across her hand, so that she could feel the sharpness of

the edge. Said he, "If you don't let go, I will cut your hand

off." Said she, "Cut if you dare." He cut the rope close to her

hand, and took the bridle from her. It was useless to resist any

longer, so she slipped off and walked away. But it was not ten

minutes before she again heard trampling behind, and as she

looked around, she saw two companions of this miscreant--two men

less utterly villainous than he--bringing back her horse. Moved

by her heroism, they had compelled him again to give up the

horse, had brought it back to her, and she owns it now.

That was what great emergencies made out of woman. That girl had

splendid physical proportions, and though some accident had

deprived her of her left arm, she had a right arm, however, which

was worth a good many. She had one arm, and the editor of _The

New York Times_, he supposed, had two. He was not much

accustomed to seeking defence of anybody, but he must say that,

if he ever did get into difficulty as a Woman's Rights man, and

had to choose between the protection of the one arm of that girl

in Kansas, and the two of the New York editor, he thought his

first choice would not be the Lieutenant-Governor. Seeing the

heroism of the women of Kansas, he told the men of Lawrence, that

when the time came for them to assert their rights, he hoped they

would not imitate the border ruffians of the Eastern States, who

asserted rights for man, and denied them to woman.

Mr. Higginson then reported the following resolution from the Business

Committee:

_Resolved_, That the warm sympathies of this Convention are

respectfully offered to those noble women in England, who are

struggling against wrongs even greater than those of American

women, but the same in kind; and we trust that they will follow

on their demands in logical consistency, until they comprise the

full claim for the equality of the sexes before the law.

This resolution referred, as some of them knew, to the recent

action of some of the noblest women in England, in behalf of

juster rights of property and a larger construction of human

rights than had hitherto prevailed there. The list included a few

of the very noblest of the women who had helped to make England's

name glorious by their deeds in literature and in art. It

included Mrs. Norton, to whom Wendell Phillips had referred, as a

living proof of the intellectual greatness of woman; she had a

husband who, after blasting her life by an infamous charge

against her, which he confessed to his counsel he did not

believe, now lived on the earnings of the brains of his wife. It

included, also, Mrs. Somerville, a woman who had forever

vindicated the scientific genius of her sex, by labors that

caused the wonder and admiration of scientific men; a woman of

whom it is said, that she is in all respects true to her sex,

because while studying the motions of the heavenly bodies, she

does not forget the motion of the tea-cups around her own table,

and is as exquisite a housekeeper, as she is wise and

accomplished as a student. It included also Harriet Martineau,

that woman who, perhaps more than any other person in this age,

had contributed to place the last half century in Europe in a

clear light, by her admirable History, and shown in her treatise

on Political Economy, a grasp and clearness which few men attain.

It included also the name of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, that

woman of rarest genius, of whom her husband, himself the greatest

of England's living poets, had said that his wife's heart, which

few knew, was greater than her intellect, which everybody knew; a

woman whose inspiration had drawn from that husband, in the

closing poem of his latest volume, the very highest strain which

modern English poetry had struck, and the noblest utterance of

emotion that ever man produced toward woman, in the speaker's

judgment, since the world began. It also included Mary Howitt,

whose beautiful union with her husband is a proof of what true

marriage will be, when man and woman are equals, and whose genius

had brought forth the wonderful powers of another woman whom we

may fearlessly claim as a co-laborer, Frederica Bremer. These

were the women of England to whom the resolution referred; women

who had taken the first step in that movement, of which the full

enfranchisement of woman will be the last.

He could not quite accept the opinion by Mrs. Jones in her

admirable essay in regard to the superior education of the women

of England. The women of England, as he took it, did not equal

the women of America in their average education, although they

did surpass them in that physical vigor of constitution which, in

the end, gave greater power of action and thought. Whilst the

English woman was, by the necessity of the case, taught more of

the modern languages, she was not so commonly taught either the

ancient languages or the mathematics, and had not, therefore, the

same amount of mental training. In England, too, this Woman's

Rights movement was met by more serious obstacles. It had to

encounter all the thunders of _The Thunderer_--all the terrors of

_The Times_--whilst here it had to undergo the very diluted

thunders of _The Times the Little_. A recent traveler has

remarked that he could distinguish the Massachusetts women from

the women of any other State--not because they spoke through

their nose, or sung psalms, but because they had "views." Every

woman had her "views" upon every subject. It was true that the

English women had superb frames, grand muscles, fine energies,

that they spoke two or three languages, but then they usually

didn't have any "views"; and he thanked God that he lived in a

State where women had them.

He had spoken for woman and to woman, because he was a man. He

did not dare, as a Republican voter, to throw his vote with one

hand, without doing something for Woman's Rights with the other.

Men and women were one before God, and this union can not be

perfect until their equality be recognized. So long as woman is

cut off from education, man is deprived of his just education. So

long as woman is crushed into a slave, so long will man be

narrowed into a despot. Without this movement, the political

conventions of the present day would only prove to posterity that

the nation was half civilized; but now future historians will

record that in 1856, New York had not only her caucuses and her

ballot-boxes, but her Woman's Rights Convention also.

Mrs. Rose wished to remark, in reference to the resolution

offered by Mr. Higginson, that English women, to her knowledge,

were very active in forwarding the Woman's Rights movement

throughout Great Britain. And not only English women, but young

and noble English girls--girls, who were too timid to take part

publicly in the movement, but who were untiring and indefatigable

in making converts and enlisting aid. There was Miss Smith, Miss

Fox, the daughter of the celebrated W. J. Fox, the eloquent

lecturer and member of Parliament for Oldham, Miss Parkes, and

others. They had devoted themselves to the great work, which was

more difficult in that country than this. They had no declaration

of independence to appeal to, declaring that all men were created

equal, and endowed with the incalculable right to life, liberty,

and the pursuit of happiness. They had no such standard to appeal

to there, because men there were not recognized as free. Banking

interests, manufacturing interests, land monopolies, and

monopolies of every other kind were represented in England, but

not men. The principle of universal suffrage had not yet obtained

in England, and hence the greater difficulties that woman had to

encounter there.

Another obstacle was the division of the people into classes and

castes. No movement could make headway in England unless it was

commenced among what are termed the higher classes. Every

petition to Parliament must first have some names that have a

title attached to them before it can obtain other signatures.

The thinking portion of the middle classes were kept silent to a

great extent, because of their utter inability to do anything

unless it was taken up and supported by the higher classes. But

this state of things would not continue long; there was "a good

time coming" there as well as here. Signatures by thousands had

been obtained to the Woman's Petition, and she presumed by the

time it was presented to Parliament it would contain tens of

thousands of names.

Mrs. ROSE then offered the following resolution from the

Committee:

_Resolved_, That we also present our assurances of respect

and sympathy to the supporters of the cause of women in

Paris, the worthy successors of Pauline Roland and Jeanne

Deroine, who, in the face of imperial despotism, dare to

tell the truth.

In commenting on this resolution, Mrs. Rose remarked that if the

difficulties surrounding English women who advocated an

amelioration of woman's condition were great, how much greater

were those which surrounded the French women, owing to the blight

of despotism in that country. They could write their thoughts,

but their writings could not be published in France. They had to

send them to the one State in Italy which was not crushed by dark

and bitter despotism. That bright spot is Sardinia. The works of

the noble French women had to be sent to Turin, printed there,

and sent back to Paris for private, secret distribution. And when

these women met in consultation, they had to watch the doors and

windows, to see that all was secure. She knew many of them, but

dared not mention their names, for fear they might be borne

across the Atlantic, and lead to their oppression and

proscription. The noblest thoughts that had ever been uttered in

France were by women, not only before the Revolution, but down to

the present day. Madame Roland was imprisoned for uttering the

truth, in consequence of which imprisonment she lost her arm.

Jeanne Deroine was exiled, and now resides in London, where she

supports herself, two daughters and son. She was teaching them

herself, because she had no means to pay for their education. She

filled their minds with noble thoughts and feelings, even to the

very sacrifice of themselves for the benefit of the race, and

more especially for the elevation of woman, without which she

feels convinced that the elevation of man can never be

accomplished.

But while the names of a few such noble women were made public,

hundreds, nay, thousands, who had done as much, and even more

than these, were in obscurity. They were constantly watching to

find what was done in America. And there was one thing which

characterized these French women, and that was, the entire

absence of jealousy and envy of the talents and virtues of

others. Wherever they see a man or woman of intellect or virtue,

they recognize them as a brother or sister; and they never ask

from whom a great thought or a virtuous action comes, but, is it

good, is it noble? It seemed to her that the character of the

French women was the very essence of human nobility. They are

ready to welcome, with heart and hand, every reformer, without

stopping to inquire whether he is English, American, German, or

Turk. But poor France was oppressed as she never was before. The

usurper that now disgraces the throne, as well as the name he

bears, does not allow the free utterance of a single free

thought. Men and women are taken up privately and imprisoned, and

no newspaper dares to publish any account of it.

When Mrs. Rose had concluded, a young gentleman in the rear of the

hall rose from his seat, and desired to make a few remarks. We

subsequently understood he was from Virginia, and that his name was

Leftwich, a theological student. He asked whether the claims of woman,

which had been stated and advocated in the Convention, were founded on

Nature or Revelation? He wished Mr. Higginson would enlighten him and

several of his friends on that subject.

Rev. Mr. HIGGINSON said that he was very glad that it was not a

place for theological discussion. He was requested to answer the

query whether the claims of woman, as stated in this Convention,

were founded in Nature or Revelation. To define either what

Nature or Revelation was, would involve metaphysical argument and

abstract considerations that would take up the entire day. The

basis of the movement was not due to this or that creed. Every

Woman's Rights man or woman does his or her own thinking. He (the

speaker) did his own. Included in the movement were men and women

of all sects. There was Wendell Phillips, who thought himself a

strict Calvinist; there were on the other hand professed atheists

among them, and there were, he believed, Roman Catholics, so that

it would be, in the highest degree, presumptuous for any one man

to speak on that peculiar topic. Antoinette L. Brown had formed

her idea of Woman's Rights from the Bible, and some of her

friends thought that she was wasting her time in writing a

treatise on Woman's Rights, deduced from Scripture. She was an

orthodox Congregational minister, ordained in a Methodist

meeting-house, while a Baptist minister preached the ordination

sermon. There were some of the Woman's Rights friends who

believed that we could get support from the Bible, and some who

believed we could not, and who did not care whether we can or

not. There were, also, those who simply believed that God made

man and woman, and knew what He was about when He made

them--giving them rights founded on the eternal laws of nature.

It was upon these laws of nature that he (Mr. H.) founded his

Woman's Rights doctrines. If there was any book or teacher in the

world which contradicted them, he was sorry for that book and for

that teacher. Was the gentleman answered?

THE GENTLEMAN FROM VIRGINIA rose, in his place, in the rear of

the building, and replied that he was not answered. Although

earnestly invited to come upon the platform and address the

audience, he declined to do so. His remarks, in consequence, were

inaudible to about one-half the audience. He said it seemed to

him that there was an inconsistency and an antagonism between

theology and Mr. Higginson's views, as expressed by himself. The

gentleman had contradicted himself. He refused to treat the

question on the ground of revelation, and then declared that the

claim of Woman's Rights was founded on the fundamental laws of

God and nature. Here he took issue with Mr. H. The test of the

naturalness of a claim was its universality. The principles upon

which it was based must be found wherever man was found, and must

have existed through all time and under every condition of life.

What was found everywhere under all circumstances was natural.

This Woman's Rights claim was not found everywhere even in this

country, let alone others. He knew many enlightened and refined

districts which had never heard the principles of this society,

much less felt them. They were not popular anywhere in the age in

which they were inaugurated. Therefore they were not founded in

nature, and the claim of naturalism must fall to the ground. The

taste for the beautiful, and the love of right, were innate

faculties of the mind, because they existed everywhere; not so

with the recognition of the claim of Woman's Rights. Again, the

claim was not based on revelation, which he would prove in this

way: Revelation is never inconsistent with itself. The claim for

woman of the right to vote, inasmuch as she would of necessity

vote as she pleased, and therefore sometimes contrary to her

husband, involved a disobedience of her husband, which was

directly antagonistic to the injunction of the Scriptures

requiring wives to obey their husbands.

AN ELDERLY QUAKER LADY in the body of the audience rose, and told

the gentleman from the Old Dominion that if he wished to do any

good he must come on the platform where he could be heard. The

gentleman declined.

LUCY STONE said that men had rights as well as women, and she

would not insist on the gentleman coming to the platform if he

chose to remain where he was, but it would be more convenient if

he would come.

THE GENTLEMAN FROM VIRGINIA still declined, and proceeded to

quote Scripture against the Woman's Rights movement.

THE QUAKER LADY again started up, and told him he had got hold of

the letter of the Bible, but not the spirit.

LUCY STONE desired that each speaker would take his or her turn,

"in due order, so that all might be edified."

THE GENTLEMAN FROM VIRGINIA proceeded. Referring to a remark of

Mr. Phillips on the preceding evening, in connection with a

quotation from Tacitus, "that this movement was Paul against the

Anglo-Saxon blood," he stood by the apostle to the Gentiles, and

Mr. Phillips might stand by the corrupted Saxon blood.

A GENTLEMAN rose and requested him to go upon the platform, as

half the audience were breaking their necks by trying to listen

to him. Still the gentleman declined.

THE VIRGINIAN argued that woman was not fitted for the pulpit,

the rostrum, or the law court, because her voice was not powerful

enough. God gave her a mild, sweet voice, fitted for the parlor

and the chamber, for the places for which He had designed her.

God has not given her a constitution to sustain fatigue, to

endure as man endures, to brave the dangers which man can brave.

She was too frail, too slender--too delicate a flower for rough

blasts and tempests. In her whole physical organization there was

proof that she was not capable of what man was capable. Hers was

a more beautiful mission than man's--a pure atmosphere was hers

to breathe. Surrounded by all gentle influences, let her be

content with the holy and beautiful position assigned to her by

her Maker. He did not rise to make a speech. He was urged into it

by the desultory, erratic, shallow, superficial reasonings of the

gentleman who in one breath invited them to free discussion, and

in the next defamed and scandalized the editor of _The Times_,

because he took the liberty to discuss this question freely in

his paper.

Mr. HIGGINSON came forward promptly to reply. He thanked the

gentleman for his speech. Such speeches were just what the

Convention wanted. He was glad to hear from the applause which

followed the gentleman's remarks, that there was a large number

of persons present who were opposed to the views of the

Convention. It was of little use talking to friends who already

agreed with you, but it was always of advantage to talk to

opponents, whom you might hope to convert. He was glad that those

who differed with them were there, because it showed that the

question was one of interest, and was beginning to excite those

who probably had bestowed but little thought on it before. He did

not think the gentleman could have meant what he said when he

accused him of slander. He did not mean to slander anybody. And

he did not think he quite meant what he said about his erratic

and shallow reasonings. He would appeal to all if he had not

treated the gentleman with courtesy. He thought he had answered

the gentleman's inquiry, when in reply to the question whether he

founded this claim on nature or on revelation, he said that he

personally founded it on nature. If there was in the compass of

the English language any simpler way of answering the question

than that he did not know it. The gentleman, from the scope of

his remarks, evinced a considerable love for metaphysical

theology. His reasoning appeared to be a little dim; perhaps it

was for want of comprehension on his part. He liked to plant

himself on the fundamental principles of human nature, and work

out his opinions from them.

In reply to the gentleman's reasoning about the universality of a

thing being a test of its naturalness, he could say that there

were a good many races who did not know that two and two make

four. According to the gentleman's idea of natural laws,

therefore, it was not natural that two and two should make four.

But it had always been a question among metaphysicians, which was

really the most natural condition for man--the savage or the

civilized state? His own opinion was that the state of highest

cultivation was the most natural state of man. He tried to

develop his own nature in that way, and one of the consequences

of that development was the conviction that two and two made

four; while another was the conviction that his wife had as much

right to determine her sphere in life for herself as he had for

himself. And having come to that conviction, he should endeavor

to carry it out, and he hoped by the time the young gentleman

came to have a wife, he would be converted to that principle.

In reference to his attack on the editor of _The Daily Times_ for

the article on the Woman's Convention, which had appeared in the

edition of the previous day, he remarked that he had read that

article without any particular reverence for its author. He knew

the quarter from which it came. There was not a man in New York

who better understood on which side his bread is buttered than

the editor of _The Daily Times_. That gentleman always wished

people to understand that his journal was _The Times_, and was

not _The Tribune_, and never failed to avail himself of the

Woman's Rights movement as giving him such an opportunity. Have

you ever seen a little boy running along the street, and

carefully dodging between two big boys? If you have, that was the

editor of _The Times_ between Greeley and Bennett. _The Times_

seeks to be a journal and nothing else. I will always say of it,

continued the speaker, that the _reports_ in _The Times_ are

very perfect and very excellent. I do not mean any disrespect to

the other reporters present when I say that the report of

yesterday's proceedings of this Convention, published in this

morning's _Times_, was fuller and far more perfect than the

report of any other paper. And so it always is with the reports

of _The Times_. They are as full, as its criticisms on moral

subjects are empty.

LUCY STONE vacated the chair to address the meeting. She was more

than glad, for the sake of the cause, that this discussion had

arisen. She was glad that the question had been asked, whether

this claim was based on nature or on revelation. Many were asking

the same question, and it was proper that it should be answered.

If we were living in New Zealand where there is no revelation and

nobody has ever heard of one, there would yet be an everlasting

truth or falsehood on this question of woman's rights, and the

inhabitants of that island would settle it in some way, without

revelation. The true test of every question is its own merits.

What is true will remain. What is false will perish like the

leaves of autumn when they have served their turn.

But in regard to this question of Nature and Revelation, we found

our claim on both. By Revelation I suppose the gentleman means

Scripture. I find it there, "He who spake as never man spake"

held up before us all radiant with God's own sunlight the great

truth, "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you,

do ye even so to them"; and that revelation I take as the

foundation of our claim, and tell the gentleman who takes issue

with us, that if he would not take the position of woman, denied

right of access to our colleges, deprived of the right of

property, compelled to pay taxes, to obey laws that he never had

a voice in making, and be defrauded of the children of his love,

then, according to the revelation which he believes in, he must

not be thus unjust to me.

The gentleman says he believes in Paul. So do I. When Paul

declares that there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor

free, male nor female in Christ, I believe he meant what he said.

The gentleman says he believes in Paul more than in the

Anglo-Saxon blood. I believe in both. But when Paul tells us to

"submit ourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake,"

and to "fear God and honor the king," the heavy tread of the

Anglo-Saxon blood walks over the head of Paul and sweeps away

from this republic the possibility of a king. And the gentleman

himself, I presume, would not assent to the sway of a crowned

monarch, Paul to the contrary, notwithstanding. Just as the

people have outgrown the injunction of Paul in regard to a king,

so have the wives his direction to submit themselves to their

husbands. The gentleman intimates that wives have no right to

vote against their husbands, because the Scriptures command

submission, and he fears that it would cause trouble at home if

they were to do so. Let me give him the reply of an old lady,

gray with the years which bring experience and wisdom. She said

that when men wanted to get their fellow-men to vote in the way

they desire, they take especial pains to please them, they smile

upon them, ask if their wives and children are well, and are

exceedingly kind. They do not expect to win their vote by

quarreling with them--that would be absurd. In the same way, if a

man wanted his wife to vote for his candidate he will be sure to

employ conciliatory means.

The golden rule settles this whole question. We claim it as ours,

and whatever is found in the Bible contradictory to it, never

came from God. If men quote other texts in conflict with this, it

is their business, not mine, to make them harmonize. I did not

quite understand the gentleman's definition of what is natural.

But this I do know, that when God made the human soul and gave it

certain capacities, He meant these capacities should be

exercised. The wing of the bird indicates its right to fly; and

the fin of the fish the right to swim. So in human beings, the

existence of a power, presupposes the right to its use, subject

to the law of benevolence. The gentleman says the voice of woman

can not be heard. I am not aware that the audience finds any

difficulty in hearing us from this platform. All Europe and

America have listened to the voice of Madam Rachel and Jenny

Lind. The capacity to speak indicates the right to do so, and the

noblest, highest, and best thing that any one can accomplish, is

what that person ought to do, and what God holds him or her

accountable for doing, nor should we be deterred by the senseless

cry, "It is not our proper sphere."

As regards woman's voting, I read a letter from a lady traveling

in the British provinces, who says that by a provincial law of

Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, women were actually voters for

members of Parliament; and still the seasons come and go,

children are born, and fish flock to that shore. The voting there

is _viva voce_. In Canada it is well known that women vote on the

question of schools. A friend told me when the law was first

passed giving women who owned a certain amount of property, or

who paid a given rental, a right to vote, he went trembling to

the polls to see the result. The first woman who came was a large

property holder in Toronto; with marked respect the crowd gave

way as she advanced. She spoke her vote and walked quietly away,

sheltered by her womanhood. It was all the protection she needed.

In face of all the arguments in favor of the incapacity of woman

to be associated in government, stood the fact that women had sat

on thrones and governed as successfully as men. England owes more

to Queen Elizabeth than to any other sovereign except Alfred the

Great. We must not always be looking for precedents. New ideas

are born and old ones die. Ideas that have prevailed a thousand

years have been at last exploded. Every new truth has its

birth-place in a manger, lives thirty years, is crucified, and

then deified. Columbus argued through long years that there must

be a western world. All Europe laughed at him. Five crowned heads

rejected him, and it was a woman at last who sold her jewels and

fitted out his ships. So, too, the first idea of applying steam

to machinery was met with the world's derision. But its triumphs

are recognized now. What we need is to open our minds wide and

give hospitality to every new thought, and prove its truth.

I want to say a word upon the resolutions. The present time, just

after a presidential election, is most appropriate to consider

woman's demand for suffrage. The Republican party claims

especially to represent the principles of freedom, and during the

last campaign has been calling upon women for help. One of the

leaders of that party went to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and said he

wanted her help in this campaign; and before she told me what

answer she made, she asked me how I would have felt if the same

had been asked of me. I told her I should have felt as Samson did

when the Philistines put out his eyes, and then asked that he

should make merriment for them. The Republican party are a part

of those who compel us to obey laws we never had a voice in

making--to pay taxes without our consent; and when we ask for our

political and legal rights, it laughs in our face, and only says:

"Help _us_ to places of power and emolument, and _we_ will rule

over you." I know there are men in the Republican party who, like

our friend Mr. Higginson, take a higher stand, and are ready to

recognize woman as a co-sovereign; but they are the exceptions.

There is but one party--that of Gerrit Smith--that makes the same

claim for woman that it does for man. But while the Republican

and Democratic parties deny our political existence, they must

not expect that we shall respond to their calls for aid.

Madame de Staël said to Bonaparte, when asked why she meddled

with politics: "Sire, when women have their heads cut off, it is

but just they should know the reason." Whatever political

influence springs into being, woman is affected by it. We have

the same rights to guard that men have; we shall therefore insist

upon our claims. We shall go to your meetings, and by and by we

shall meet with the same success that the Roman women did, who

claimed the repeal of the Appian law. War had emptied the

treasury, and it was still necessary to carry it on; women were

required to give up their jewels, their carriages, etc. But by

and by, when the war was over, they wished to resume their old

privileges. They got up a petition for the repeal of the law; and

when the senators went to their places, they found every avenue

to the forum thronged by women, who said to them as they passed,

"Do us justice." And notwithstanding Cato, the Censor, was

against them, affirming that men must have failed in their duty

or women would not be clamorous for their rights, yet the

obnoxious law was repealed.

In that story of Mr. Higginson's, of the heroic woman in Kansas

whose left arm was cut off, there is a lesson for us to learn. I

tell you, ladies, though we have our left hand cut off by unjust

laws and customs, we have yet the right hand left; and when we

once demand the ballot with as much firmness as that Kansas

daughter did her horse, believe me, it will not be in the power

of men to withhold it--even the border ruffians among them will

hasten to restore it. After all, the fault is our own. We have

sat to

"Suckle fools, and chronicle small beer;"

and, in inglorious ease, have forgotten that we are integral

parts in the fabric of human society--that all that interests the

race, interests us. We have never once, as a body, claimed the

practical application of the principles of our government. It is

our own fault. Let it be so no longer. Let us say to men:

"Government is just only when it obtains the consent of the

governed": we are governed, _surrender to us our ballot_. If they

deride, still answer: Surrender our ballot! _and they will give

it up_. "It is not in our stars that we are underlings, but in

ourselves." Woman has sat, like Mordecai at the king's gate,

hoping that her silent presence would bring justice; but justice

has not come. The world has talked of universal suffrage; but it

has made it universal only to man. It is time we spoke and acted.

It is time we gave man faith in woman--and, still more, woman

faith in herself. It is time both men and women knew that

whatever has been achieved by woman in the realm of mind or

matter, has been achieved by right womanly women. Let us then

work, and continue to work, until the world shall assent to our

right to do whatever the capacities God has given us enable us to

do.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY rose and said that several gentlemen had handed

her contributions, one $40, another $25. She trusted that all New

York men and women would find they had something more to do than

listen to speeches.

LETTER FROM HORACE GREELEY.

NEW YORK, _November 22, 1856_.

MY FRIEND:--You are promised to be present and speak at the

approaching "Woman's Rights Convention." I, too, mean to attend

its deliberations, or some portion thereof, but not to take part

in them. For I find this evil apparently inseparable from all

Radical gatherings: a very large and influential portion of the

press, including, I grieve to say, religious as well as secular

journals, are prone and eager to expose to odium those whom they

would undermine and destroy, by attributing to them, not the

sentiments they have personally expressed, but those of others

with whom they are or have been associated in some reformatory

movement. He, then, who appears as a speaker at a Woman's Rights

Convention is made responsible for whatever may be uttered at

such Convention--no matter by whom--which is most likely to

excite popular prejudice and arouse popular hostility. I have

borne a good share of this unfairly exalted and unjust odium,

with regard to the dietetic, anti-slavery, and social reforms

suggested in our day, and shall bear on as patiently as I may;

but I grow older, and do not confront the world on a fresh issue

with so light a heart, so careless a defiance, as I might have

done twenty years ago. Allow me, then, through you, to say what I

think of the woman's rights movement, its objects, incitements,

and limitations. If I may thus attain perspicuity, I can bear the

imputation of egotism.

1. I deem the intellectual, like the physical capacities of women

unequal in the average to those of men; but I perceive no reason

in this natural diversity for a factitious and superinduced legal

inequality. On the contrary, it seems to me that the fact of a

natural and marked discrepancy in the average mental as well as

muscular powers of men and women ought to allay any apprehensions

that the latter, in the absence of legal interdicts and

circumscriptions, would usurp the functions and privileges of the

former.

2. I believe the range of employment for woman, in our age and

country, far too restricted, and the average recompense of her

labor, consequently far less than it should be. In saying this, I

do not intimate a doubt that the best possible employment for

most women is to be found in the care and management of their own

households respectively, with the rearing and training of their

children. But many women, including some of the most noble and

estimable, are never called to preside over households; while

some of the called are impelled to decline the invitation. In

point of fact, then, there is and always will be a large

proportion of the gentler sex who are, at least temporarily,

required to earn their own subsistence, and vindicate their own

usefulness in some other capacity than that of the loved and

honored wife and mother. The maiden or widow, blessed with

opulence, ought to be insured against the worse calamities of a

reverse of fortune, by the mastery of some handicraft or

industrial avocation; she ought to lead a life of persistent and

efficient industry, as the fulfillment of a universal duty; while

her unportioned sister must do this or grovel in degrading

idleness and dependence on a father's or brother's overtaxed

energies, looking to marriage as her only chance of escape

therefrom. For man's sake, no less than woman's, it is eminently

desirable that that large portion of our women, who are not

absorbed in domestic cares, should be attracted and stimulated to

industry by a wider range of pursuits, and a consequent increase

of recompense. I deem it at once unjust and--like all

injustice--impolitic, that a brother and sister, hired by the

same farmer, the one to aid him in his own round of labor, the

other to assist his wife in hers, should be paid, the one twelve

to twenty, the other but four to six dollars per month. The

difference in their wages should be no greater than in their

physical and mental ability. Still more glaring is this

discrepancy, when the two are employed as teachers, and, though

of equal efficiency, the one is paid five hundred dollars per

annum, the other but two, or in that proportion, merely because

the former is a man and the latter a woman. While such

disparities exist, right here in this metropolis of American

civilization and Christianity, it is in vain that Conservatism

stops its ears and raises its eyebrows at the announcement of a

Woman's Rights Convention.

3. Regarding marriage as the most important, most sacred, and

tender of human relations, and deeming it irrevocable, save by

death, it seems to me essential that woman should be proffered

such a range of employments, with such adequate recompense, as to

enable her at all times to support herself in honored and

virtuous independence, so that marriage shall be accepted by her

at the dictates of love, and not of hunger. Much might be urged

on this point, but I choose simply to commend it to the

consideration of others.

4. As to woman's voting or holding office, I defer implicitly to

herself. If the women of this or any other country believe their

rights would be better secured and their happiness promoted by

the assumption on their part of the political franchises and

responsibilities of men, I, a Republican in principle from

conviction, shall certainly interpose no objection. I perceive

what seem to be serious practical difficulties in the way of

realizing such assumption; but these are difficulties, not for

me, but for them. I deem it unjust that men should be so

constantly and unqualifiedly impeached as denying rights to woman

which the great majority of women seem quite as reluctant to

claim as men are to concede. I apprehend that whenever women

shall generally and earnestly desire an equality of political

franchises with men, they will meet with little impediment from

the latter.

5. I can not share at all in the apprehensions of those who are

alarmed at the Woman's Rights agitation, lest it should result in

the unsexing of woman, or her general deflection from her proper

sphere. On the contrary, I feel sure that the freest inquiry and

discussion will only result in a clearer and truer appreciation

of woman's proper position, and a more general and rigid

adherence thereto. "Let there be light!" for this is an

indispensable condition of all true and healthy growth. Let all

convictions find free utterance--all grievances be stated and

considered. In the range of my observation, I have found those

women who were conscious of defects in the present legal and

social position of their sex among the most zealous, faithful,

and efficient in the discharge of their household and parental

duties. I feel confident that a general discussion of the subject

of Woman's Rights will result in a more general recognition and

cheerful performance of woman's appropriate duties.

Very truly yours,

HORACE GREELEY.

Rev. SAMUEL J. MAY.

LETTER FROM HON. WILLIAM HAY, OF SARATOGA SPRINGS.

I acknowledge, with much pleasure, the receipt of a printed

circular, calling for the Seventh Woman's Rights Annual

Convention. I also acknowledge, with increased pleasure, and

perhaps with more pride than becomes me, the accompanying

invitation to attend that Convention, and take part in its

proceedings. I like this word, because it implies progress.

Pre-engagement will prevent my personal attendance at the

Broadway Tabernacle, but, be assured, my heart shall be there,

with all its desires and hopes for the future of humanity;

because I am convinced that until the individual and social

rights of our whole race, without distinction of caste or sex,

shall have been universally recognized, the tyrannies of earth

will not cease from oppressing it.

I wish that every woman in the United States could be at New

York, throughout the continuance of your Convention, where each

might see for herself, in Mrs. Lucretia Mott, what woman may be,

and should be, and must be, before her sex can attain,

individually and socially, "that equal station to which the laws

of Nature and of Nature's God entitle" her. For physical and

mental improvement of man's condition, according to his

birthright and educational capacity, there must be, in America,

more Marys, the mothers of Washingtons.

The great political and legal reform announced in your circular,

contemplating complete development of the entire human race, is

already operating, sympathetically and auspiciously, in Europe,

upon preeminent minds, like that of Lord Brougham, and may

favorably react, in practical adoption here, of Jefferson's

elementary truth (almost a self-evident proposition, and yet

treated as theory), that government derives its just powers from

suffrage-consent of all (not half) of the governed. Partial

consent (especially by and to a moiety of mankind, arrogantly

claiming, like Louis XIV., to be the State) can confer only

unjust power, which Heaven's higher law of liberty, equality, and

justice never sanctioned.

Your Convention is most opportune, for this Continent is

threatened with permanent and peculiar danger, produced by the

feudal condition of women. I allude to the increasing curse of

Mormonism, a consequence of woman's legalized inferiority or

nonentity. With power from your local situation and undoubted

sphere, to influence, for all time, the destiny of every

civilized country, the members of your Convention, conscious of

their duty, will never flinch from the responsibility of their

position. It requires an unequivocal and uncompromising claim for

perfect equality of rights in every department of manual and

machine labor, of thought, of speech, of government, of society,

and of life itself. Indeed, testamentary provision for assertion

of that claim, by those few fortunate women who have, like Mrs.

Blandina Dudley[152], wealth to bestow, should become a ruling

principle, instead of that passion, so strong in death, for

posthumous pulpit and newspaper applause, which Protestantism has

sagaciously substituted in lieu of the saving ordinances of the

Roman Catholic Church.

Respectfully yours,

WILLIAM HAY.

LETTER FROM FRANCES D. GAGE

ST. LOUIS, _November 19, 1856_.

DEAR LUCY STONE:--Most earnestly did I desire to attend this

Seventh National Convention, more especially as I felt that I

should be the only representative from the west side of the great

Father of Waters. But it is impossible for me to remove the

barriers just now opposed to so long a journey and absence from

home. There is much thought in the free States of the great

West--much less of conservatism and rigid adherence to the

old-time customs of law and theology among the masses, than in

the East. Thousands are becoming ready to be baptized into a new

faith, a broader and holier recognition of the rights of

humanity. The harvest-fields are ripening for the reapers.

The gloomy night is breaking--

E'en now the sunbeams rest

With a bright and cheering radiance

On the hill-tops of the West;

The mists are slowly rising

From the valley and the plain,

And a spirit is awaking

That shall never sleep again.

But since I can not meet you in your councils, I will endeavor to

allay the disappointment by striving to reach with my pen some of

the sunset homes in the far West, and endeavor to arouse woman

there to her duties and responsibilities, that she may sympathize

more fully with her Eastern sisters, who caught the first glow of

the sunrise hour of our great reform movement. With sincere and

earnest wishes for your advancement in right and truth,

I am respectfully yours,

FRANCES D. GAGE.

Mr. HIGGINSON was then introduced. Mrs. President, and Ladies and

Gentlemen: I think, as perhaps some of you do, that a

disproportionately large portion of the time of the meeting

to-day has been taken up by the speeches of men; therefore I do

not intend that this man's speech shall be a very long one. I

remember a certain sermon, of which it was said it had nothing

good in it except its subject and its shortness. My speech is

going to be like that sermon. But there is one great advantage

which men, enjoy in speaking on a Woman's Rights platform: they

can not help doing good to the movement, no matter how they

speak; for if a man speaks well, of course he helps it by his

speech; and if he speaks ill on the subject, he still helps it,

because there are women about him who won't speak ill, and the

comparison is useful.

I wish to take up a point which, as a man, I am entitled to claim

should have more prominence given it than has yet been the case;

a point touched upon by me previously, in something I said

yesterday, which some of you thought was not correct; and a point

touched upon by Wendell Phillips this afternoon. I mean the claim

of the Woman's Rights movement on woman; the wrong done by woman

to that movement; and the injustice of the charge against man,

that he especially resists it. And yet I can not fully accept the

position taken by Rev. Mr. Johnson and Horace Greeley, that man's

duty is only to stand aside and let woman take her rights. Not

so. It is not so easy as that, let me tell you, gentlemen, to get

rid of the responsibility of years of wrong. We men have been

standing for years with our hands crushing down the shoulders of

woman, so that she should not attain her true altitude; and it is

not so easy, after we have cramped, dwarfed, and crippled her, to

get rid of our responsibility by standing back at last, and

saying, "There, we will let you go; stand up for yourself." If it

is true, as these women say, that we have wronged them for

centuries, we have got to do something more than mere negative

duty. By as much as we have helped to wrong them, we have got to

help to right them; by as much as we have discouraged them

heretofore, we have got to encourage them hereafter; and that is

why I wish to speak to women to-night of their duties, as these

women have spoken to us of ours. I want to remind them that the

time has come when men must appeal to them; for be assured that

when women are ready to claim their rights, men will be ready to

grant them.

There are three special obstacles, Mrs. President, to the

willingness of woman to do her simple duty to the Woman's Rights

movement. The first is the obstacle of folly--sheer,

unadulterated folly--the folly in which women are trained, and in

which we men help to train them, and for which we then denounce

them. The reason why many women don't like the Woman's Rights

movement, is because they have too little real thought in them to

appreciate it at all. They have been brought up as fashionable

society brings up woman on one side, or as mere household

drudgery brings them up on the other--in each case, without power

to appreciate a great principle--without power to appreciate a

sublime purpose--without power to appreciate anything but a "good

match," and the way to obtain it. On their entrance into life,

their choice lies, for social position, for enjoyment, for

occupation, for usefulness, in this narrow alternative--between a

husband and nothing; and that, as Theodore Parker once said, is

very often a choice between two nothings. These women may have

literary culture and social polish; but, for want of an idea to

light up their eyes and strengthen their souls, these things are

only glitter and worthlessness.

A certain celebrated French woman in the last century (Mlle. de

Launay), who made mathematical science her study, at last had a

lover; whereupon she partially forgot her mathematics, and only

remembered enough of it for practical purposes. And, in her

Memoirs, she mentions the fact that her lover at length began to

be less attentive to her; so much so, that she observed that

whereas in walking home with her in the evening, he used to take

pains to go round the two sides of the public square, in order to

make the walk as long as possible, he now cut it short by always

striking across the center; "so that his love for me," she

observes, "must have decreased in the inverse ratio between the

diagonal of a rectangular parallelogram and the sum of two

adjacent sides." Who shall say that mathematics are wasted on a

woman after that? Now, that is the sum of the science that is

taught in half our institutions of education, in more than half

our fashionable boarding-schools, in nearly all the most

cultivated social circles in the land. How can you expect, from

such women, any nobleness or appreciation of nobleness? How can

you expect any from such a woman's husband, when all his thoughts

of woman have been crushed down, by sad experience, to the level

of his wife's capacities? When I find a man who is obstinate

against Woman's Rights, I try to find out either what sort of a

mother or what sort of a wife that man has, and there I find the

key to his position; for how can you expect any man to have a

noble and equal idea of woman, when his mother knows nothing in

the universe beyond a cooking-stove, and his wife has not much

experimental acquaintance even with that?

No; the first obstacle to this Woman's Rights movement is the

feminine, that builds all its hopes upon the wretched adulation

and flattery of men--that thinks "the gentlemen admire weakness

in a woman." Well, so they do admire to flatter it and to laugh

at it! Those are the women who have called out from gifted men,

age after age, those terrible denunciations of which literature

is full. Women who are here, who think men admire weakness in a

woman, let me tell you that if you want to know what men really

think of women, you must go beyond the flatteries of the

ball-room; you must go beyond the compliments of the public

speaker. You must follow your young admirer from the ball-room

into the bar-room, where he ridicules you among his companions,

and laughs at the folly he has been flattering. You must pass

from the public meeting into the office or study, to learn how

the man who flatters woman most may despise her in his heart.

Think what great men of the world have said of woman. Voltaire

said: "Ideas are like beards--women and young men have none."

Lessing, the German, says: "The woman who thinks is like a man

who puts on rouge--ridiculous." Dr. Maginn, that accomplished

literary man, says: "We like to hear a few words of wit from a

woman, just as we like to hear a few words of sense from a

parrot--because they are so unexpected." These things were never

said to women, but they were said of them. In the presence of

female intellect, men are very often like that Englishman who was

reproached by the judge in the police-court, because he, being a

very large, athletic man, allowed his wife, who was a very

delicate, puny woman, occasionally, to beat him. Said the judge:

"How can you allow it? you have ten times her strength." "Oh,"

said the giant, drawing himself up to his full stature, "it is no

great matter; it pleases her, and it don't hurt me." That is the

way men deal with female intellect--they like to amuse themselves

with it, to flatter it as an entertaining trifle. But when it

comes in earnest, and shows itself, then it is that these men

stand apart from the new spectacle of a woman transformed into a

thinker and worker; while true men rejoice to see nobleness in a

woman. There is not a man here who does not, in his own highest

moments, reverence in woman the same qualities he admires in

himself, if he thinks he claims them. Power of clear thought and

of heroic action--every man admires these in woman in the best

moments of his life. It is when he lowers himself to the level of

the public meeting, or of the fashionable drawing-room, that he

is changed into a flatterer, and he who flatters always despises

the object of his flattery.