Another source of opposition to this movement among women is

founded in Fear. It does not require much courage for a man to

stand on a Woman's Rights platform. I do not say that it does not

require more than a good many men have, for it would be difficult

to find a thing so easy as not to do that. He, of course, has to

run the gauntlet of the old nonsense of "strong-minded women and

weak-minded men." Well, I am willing to be accounted weak-minded

in the presence of strength of mind and heart, with which it has

been my privilege to be associated in this movement. That is a

small thing, and it is the experience of every man who has

entered into this reform, that if he had a fiber of manhood in

him heretofore, that fiber had been doubled, trebled, and

quadrupled before he had been in it a year. Instead of requiring

courage for a man to enter into this movement, it rather requires

courage to keep out of it, if he is a logical, clear-headed man.

But with a woman it is different. She needs much courage. A woman

who, for instance, has been engaged in some literary avocation,

and obtained some position, does not wish to risk her reputation

by connecting herself with those who advocate the right of woman,

not merely to write and to speak, but to vote also; hence, while

admitting, secretly admitting, the justice of the claim, she will

shrink back from avowing it for fear of "losing her position."

How can any brave man honor such a recreant woman as that, who,

having gained all she wants to herself, under cover of the bolder

efforts of these nobler spirits, then settles back upon the ease

and comfort of that position, and turns her small artillery on

her own sisters? I feel a sense of shame for American literature,

when I think how our literary women shrink, and cringe, and

apologize, and dodge to avoid being taken for "strong-minded

women." Oh, there's no danger. I don't wonder that their literary

efforts are stricken with the palsy of weakness from the

beginning. I don't wonder that our magazines are filled with

diluted stories, in which sentimental heroines sigh, cry, and die

through whole pages of weary flatness, and not a single noble

thought relieves that Sahara of emptiness and barrenness. It is a

retribution on them. A man or woman can not put in a book more

than they have in themselves, and if woman is not noble enough to

appreciate a great thought, she is not noble enough to write one.

I don't wonder that their fame does not keep the promise of its

dawn, when that dawn is so dastardly.

The time will come, let me tell you, ladies, when the first

question asked about any woman in this age who is worth

remembering will be, "Did that woman comprehend her whole sphere?

Did she stand beside her sisters who were laboring for the right?

If she did not this, it is no matter what she did." It is thus we

already begin to judge the American women of the past. The time

will come, when of all Mrs. Adams' letters, the passage best

remembered will be that, where she points out to her great

husband, that while emancipating the world, he still believes in

giving men the absolute control over women. So the time will come

when Harriet Beecher Stowe will be less honored, even as the

authoress of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," than as the woman who in _The

New York Independent_, that repository of religious thought,

dared to place it among her religious thoughts, that Antoinette

Brown had a right to stand in the pulpit. I wish Mrs. Stowe were

yet more consistent; I wish she were not satisfied with merely

wishing that others would attend Woman's Rights Conventions, and

support Woman's Rights Lectures, but would join and take part in

these things herself, as I believe she will when her brave spirit

has gone a little further. Her heroic brother, Henry Ward

Beecher, is with us already in the public advocacy of the right

of suffrage for women.

The third obstacle that sets woman against this movement is

_prejudice_. It is the honest feeling of multitudes of women that

their "natural sphere," their domestic duties, will be interfered

with by any other career. Let me tell you that so judging, you

have only learned half the story we have to tell. We encourage

these domestic duties most fully and amply. There is not a woman

here who is not proud to claim them. Of all the women who have

stood or spoken on this platform since this Convention began,

there is only one who is not a married woman; there are very few

who are not mothers; and among them all there is not one who does

not give, by the nobleness of her domestic life, a proof of the

consistency of that with the rest of the claims she makes for her

sex. Some there are who doubt this; some there are who do not see

how the elective franchise is any way connected with home duties

and cares. I tell you there is the closest connection. If any one

thing caps the sum of the argument for the rights of woman, it is

the fact of those domestic duties which some idly array against

it. What has a man at stake in society? What has he to risk by

his ballot? Ask him at the ballot-box, and you will hear his

statement. You will hear it in a thousand ways, and in a thousand

voices. His own personal interest. A man invests _himself_ in

society; woman invests infinitely more, for she throws in _her

child_. The man can run away to California with his interests,

and from his duties; the woman is anchored to her home. It is

important to him, you say, whether the community provides, by its

statutes, schools or dram-shops. Then how vast, how unspeakable

the importance to her! Deprive every man in the nation of the

ballot, if you will, but demand, oh, demand its protection for

the wife and the mother!

See the unjust workings of the present system. I knew in a town

in Massachusetts a widow woman, who paid the highest tax bill in

the town; nay, for every dollar that any man paid in the town,

she paid two, and yet that woman had not the right to the ballot,

which belonged to the most ignorant Irishman in her employ. She

hadn't the right to protect her child from the misappropriation

of his property; and if she had owned the whole town, and there

had not been any other person to pay a property tax except that

solitary woman, the case would have been the same, and not the

slightest power of protection would have been in her hands,

against the most outrageous misappropriation.

In another town of Massachusetts there is a story told of a man,

a member of the Society of Friends. He was once sending his wife

on a long journey. As she was about to set forth in the stage,

"My dear," said she, "thee has forgotten to give me any money for

my journey." "Why," said the Quaker, "thee knows very well that I

paid thy fare in the stage." "But thee knows," said she, "that I

am going to be away for some weeks, and perhaps it may be well

for me to have some little money, in case I should have any

expenses." "Rachel," said the astonished husband, "where is that

ninepence I gave thee day before yesterday?" That man had gained

all the money he had in the world through that wife. He obtained

her property by marriage; he invested that property in real

estate, and had grown richer and richer, until he grew rich

enough to spare a ninepence for Rachel the day before yesterday.

It is such marriages as that, that we wish to avert, by placing

woman in an honorable position, by substituting an equal union in

marriage; such a union as is shown in the lives of those who

stand behind me now.

The movement which these women urge is sweeping on with

resistless power. Within the last seven years, every legislature,

every school, every industrial avocation has been reached by it.

This is preliminary work. The final Malakoff, the right of

suffrage, is yet to be gained. Already it has been partially

conceded, in communities differing in all else, in Canada and in

Kentucky. We have only to press on. Strange to say, the reform is

reversing the ordinary weapons of the sexes, for the women have

all the logic, and the men only gossip and slander. But it finds

its answering echo in the very hostility it creates. It has a

million hearts. Silence every woman on this platform, and the

movement still goes on. Elevate woman at any point, and you lead

directly to this. The thousand schools of New York are educating

a Woman's Rights advocate in every house.

During the latter part of Mr. Higginson's remarks, a frequent

disturbance was made by some of the occupants of the galleries, who

were evidently curious to hear the female speakers.

The President then introduced Ernestine L. Rose, who said she wished

to say to all self-respecting men, that this is the last place in

which they should create a disturbance, especially in a matter which

concerns their sisters, their wives, and their mothers.

Mrs. ROSE: This morning a young man made some remarks in

opposition to our claims. We were glad to hear him, because he

gave evidence of an earnest, sincere spirit of inquiry, which is

always welcome in every true reform movement. And as we believe

our cause to be based on truth, we know it can bear the test of

reason, and, like gold doubly refined, will come out purer and

brighter from the fiery ordeal. The young man, who, I hope, is

present, based his principal argument against us, "Because," said

he, "you can bring no authority from revelation or from nature."

I will not enter into an inquiry as to what he meant by these

terms, but I will show him the revelation from which we derive

our authority, and the nature in which it is written in living

characters. It is true we do not go to revelations written in

books; but ours is older than all books, and whatever of good

there is in any written revelations, must necessarily agree with

ours, or it is not true, for ours only is the true revelation,

based in nature and in life. That revelation is no less than the

living, breathing, thinking, feeling, acting revelation

manifested in the nature of woman. In her manifold powers,

capacities, needs, hopes, and aspirations, lies her title-deed,

and whether that revelation was written by nature or nature's

God, matters not, for here it is. No one can disprove it. No one

can bring an older, broader, higher, and more sacred basis for

human rights. Do you tell me that the Bible is against our

rights? Then I say that our claims do not rest upon a book

written no one knows when, or by whom. Do you tell me what Paul

or Peter says on the subject? Then again I reply that our claims

do not rest on the opinions of any one, not even on those of Paul

and Peter, for they are older than they. Books and opinions, no

matter from whom they came, if they are in opposition to human

rights, are nothing but dead letters. I have shown you that we

derive our claims from humanity, from revelation, from nature,

and from your Declaration of Independence; all proclaim our right

to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and having life,

which fact I presume you do not question, then we demand all the

rights and privileges society is capable of bestowing, to make

life useful, virtuous, honorable, and happy.

But I am told that woman needs not as extensive an education as

man, as her place is only the domestic sphere; _only_ the

domestic sphere! Oh, how utterly ignorant is society of the true

import of that term! Go to your legislative halls, and your

Congress; behold those you have sent there to govern you, and as

you find them high or low, great or small, noble or base, you can

trace it directly or indirectly to the domestic sphere.

The wisest in all ages have acknowledged that the most important

period in human education is in childhood--that period when the

plastic mind may be moulded into such exquisite beauty, that no

unfavorable influences shall be able entirely to destroy it--or

into such hideous deformity, that it shall cling to it like a

thick rust eaten into a highly polished surface, which no

after-scouring shall ever be able entirely to efface. This most

important part of education is left entirely in the hands of the

mother. She prepares the soil for future culture; she lays the

foundation upon which a superstructure shall be erected that

shall stand as firm as a rock, or shall pass away like the

baseless fabric of a vision, and leave not a wreck behind. But

the mother can not give what she does not possess; weakness can

not impart strength.

Sisters, you have a duty to perform--and duty, like charity,

begins at home. In the name of your poor, vicious, outcast,

down-trodden sister! in the name of her who once was as innocent

and as pure as you are! in the name of her who has been made the

victim of wrong, injustice, and oppression! in the name of man!

in the name of all, I ask you, I entreat you, if you have an hour

to spare, a dollar to give, or a word to utter--spare it, give

it, and utter it, for the elevation of woman! And when your

minister asks you for money for missionary purposes, tell him

there are higher, and holier, and nobler missions to be

performed at home. When he asks for colleges to educate

ministers, tell him you must educate woman, that she may do away

with the necessity of ministers, so that they may be able to go

to some useful employment. If he asks you to give to the churches

(which means to himself) then ask him what he has done for the

salvation of woman. When he speaks to you of leading a virtuous

life, ask him whether he understands the causes that have

prevented so many of your sisters from being virtuous, and have

driven them to degradation, sin, and wretchedness. When he speaks

to you of a hereafter, tell him to help to educate woman, to

enable her to live a life of intelligence, independence, virtue,

and happiness here, as the best preparatory step for any other

life. And if he has not told you from the pulpit of all these

things; if he does not know them; it is high time you inform him,

and teach him his duty here in this life.

This subject is deep and vast enough for the wisest heads and

purest hearts of the race; it underlies our whole social system.

Look to your criminal records--look to your records of mortality,

to your cemeteries, peopled by mothers before the age of thirty

or forty, and children under the age of five; earnestly and

impartially investigate the cause, and you can trace it directly

or indirectly to woman's inefficient education; her helpless,

dependent position; her inexperience; her want of confidence in

her own noble nature, in her own principles and powers, and her

blind reliance in man. We ask, then, for woman, an education that

shall cultivate her powers, develop, elevate, and ennoble her

being, physically, mentally, and morally; to enable her to take

care of herself, and she will be taken care of; to protect

herself, and she will be protected. But to give woman as full and

extensive an education as man, we must give her the same motives.

No one gathers keys without a prospect of having doors to unlock.

Man does not acquire knowledge without the hope to make it useful

and productive; the highest motives only can call out the

greatest exertion. There is a vast field of action open to man,

and therefore, he is prepared to enter it; widen the sphere of

action for woman, throw open to her all the avenues of industry,

emolument, usefulness, moral ambition, and true greatness, and

you will give her the same noble motives, the same incentives for

exertion, application, and perseverance that man possesses--and

this can be done only by giving her her legal and political

rights--pronounce her the equal of man in all the rights and

advantages society can bestow, and she will be prepared to

receive and use them, and not before. It would be folly to

cultivate her intellect like that of man without giving her the

same chances to use it--to give her an industrial avocation

without giving her the right to the proceeds of her industry, or

to give her the right to the proceeds of her industry without

giving her the power to protect the property she may acquire; she

must therefore have the legal and political rights, or she has

nothing. The ballot-box is the focus of all other rights, it is

the pivot upon which all others hang; the legal rights are

embraced in it, for if once possessed of the right to the

ballot-box, to self-representation, she will see to it that the

laws shall be just, and protect her person and her property, as

well as that of man. Until she has political rights she is not

secure in any she may possess. One legislature may alter some

oppressive law, and give her some right, and the next legislature

may take it away, for as yet it is only given as an act of

generosity, as a charity on the part of man, and not as her

right, and therefore it can not be lasting, nor productive of

good.

Mothers, women of America! when you hear the subject of Woman's

Rights broached, laugh at it and us, ridicule it as much as you

please; but never forget, that by the laws of your country, you

have no right to your children--the law gives the father as

uncontrolled power over the child as it gives the husband over

the wife; only the child, when it comes to maturity, the father's

control ceases, while the wife never comes to maturity. The

father may bequeath, bestow, or sell the child without the

consent of the mother. But methinks I hear you say that no man

deserving the name of man, or the title of husband and father,

could commit such an outrage against the dearest principles of

humanity; well, if there are no such men, then the law ought to

be annulled, a law against which nature, justice, and humanity

revolt, ought to be wiped off from the statute book as a

disgrace; and if there are such--which unhappily we all know

there are--then there is still greater reason why the laws ought

to be changed, for bad laws encourage bad men and make them

worse; good men can not be benefited by the existence of bad

laws; bad men ought not to be; laws are not made for him who is a

law unto himself, but for the lawless. The legitimate object of

law is to protect the innocent and inexperienced against the

designing and the guilty; we therefore ask every one present to

demand of the Legislatures of every State to alter these unjust

laws; give the wife an equal right with the husband in the

property acquired after marriage; give the mother an equal right

with the father in the control of the children; let the wife at

the death of the husband remain his heir to the same extent that

he would be hers, at her death; let the laws be alike for both,

and they are sure to be right; but to have them so, woman must

help to make them.

We hear a great deal about the heroism of the battle-field. What

is it? Compare it with the heroism of the woman who stands up for

the right, and it sinks into utter insignificance. To stand

before the cannon's mouth, with death before him and disgrace

behind, excited to frenzy by physical fear, encouraged by his

leader, stimulated by the sound of the trumpet, and sustained by

the _still emptier sound of glory_, requires no great heroism;

the merest coward could be a hero in such a position; but to face

the fire of an unjust and prejudiced public opinion, to attack

the adamantine walls of long-usurped power, to brave not only the

enemy abroad, but often that severest of all enemies, your own

friends at home, requires a heroism that the world has never yet

recognized, that the battle-field can not supply, but which woman

possesses.

When the Allied Powers endeavored to take Sebastopol they found

that every incision and inroad they made in the fortress during

the day was filled up by the enemy during the night; and even

now, after the terrible sacrifice of life to break it down, they

are not safe, but the enemy may build it up again. But in a moral

warfare, no matter how thick and impenetrable the fortress of

prejudice may be, if you once make an inroad in it, that space

can never be filled up again; every stone you remove is removed

for aye and for good; and the very effort to replace it tends

only to loosen every other stone, until the whole foundation is

undermined, and the superstructure crumbles at our feet.

The PRESIDENT: Before this Convention closes, I want to say a

word to the women who hear me. This work lies chiefly in our

hands. We have undertaken no child's play. It is nothing less

than a change in customs hoary with age--in laws which have

existed through long years--in mistaken religious interpretations

and views of duty, which have received the sanction and

veneration of antiquity. It is to place woman where she may make

herself fit for life's duties, in whatever department she may

find herself, whether as woman, daughter, wife, or mother. Every

influence around us to-day tends to the reverse. The young girl

stands beside her brother in the world's wide arena, and looks

out to see what it shall assign her. To him, everything that

power can win is open, while the world cheers him, by so much as

he grasps and conquers. To her is presented, what kind of a life?

There is not a man in the world, who, if such a life were offered

him, would not sooner lie down peacefully in his grave, than in a

paltry cage fret away a life that ought to have been broad and

grand, as God who gave it intended it should be.

Horace Greeley says he thinks the intellect of woman is not equal

to that of man. Horace Greeley was a poor boy, and had to make

his way up in the world. He has reached a position that is

attained by few. When he speaks the nation listens. Suppose that

he had been told by his mother, as she placed her hand upon his

little head, with all the tenderness that gushes from a mother's

heart, "My son, here is your brother; he shall grow up in the

world of society, and no school or college shall be closed

against him; the great school of life shall be free to him; he

shall have a voice in making the laws he is to obey; he shall pay

taxes, and he shall direct the use of the tax; but for you, alas!

none of these places will be open; you must therefore rest

satisfied with helping your brother. He will win power and

wealth, but none of it shall be your own; if you seek to enter

into the same position that he is in, the world will scorn and

deride you." And if when he came into life he had found all that

his mother told him was true, what think you would have been the

success of Horace Greeley, with all this mountain-weight upon

him? Would he have taken the place he has now? I am glad he was

not hindered; I am only sorry that woman is. It is too early for

him or us to say what the intellect of woman is, till she has had

the freedom to try its powers. I am reminded of what Frederick

Douglass said of the negroes: "You shut us out of the schools and

colleges, you put your foot on us, and then say, Why don't you

know something?" That is just what is said to us.

Let us teach men who talk of the wrongs perpetrated in Kansas,

that they are doing the very same thing to us here. One need not

go to Kansas to find border ruffians, or bogus legislation, for

they can all be found here; and when the future historian shall

record that in Kansas, Missourians deprived free State men of the

franchise, and that New York men deprived the women of the same,

it will be said that the border ruffians of Missouri and the

border ruffians of New York were very much alike--one came with

the gloved hand, and smiled and bowed, saying, I can't let you

vote; while the other said, If you do I will blow out your

brains. The result is the same.

I look in the faces of men and marvel that they can meet us in

the way they do, when they have made such laws against us.

Clear-headed and far-sighted, they do not appear to realize that

the outrages they condemn in Kansas, they are themselves all the

while inflicting upon us. John Randolph, when the women of

Virginia were making garments for the Greeks, pointed to long

gangs of slaves, and said, "Ladies, the Greeks are at your

doors."

In addition to the annual canvass of the State, lectures from the most

popular orators were secured in the large cities. In the winter of

1856, by invitation of Miss Anthony, Theodore Parker, William Lloyd

Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Ralph Waldo Emerson, lectured in

Corinthian Hall, Rochester, to good audiences. In the spring of 1858,

Miss Emily Howland managed a course of lectures in Mozart Hall, New

York, in aid of "The Shirt-sewers' and Seamstresses' Union," viz:

George Wm. Curtis, "Fair Play for Women"; Lucy Stone, "Woman and the

Elective Franchise"; Hon. Eli Thayer, "Benefit to Women of Organized

Emigration"; and Rev. E. H. Chapin, "Woman and her Work." In the

autumn of the same year, through the enterprise of Elizabeth M.

Powell, Henry Ward Beecher, James T. Brady, Solon Robinson, and others

addressed a large audience in Dr. Chapin's church, Mayor Tieman

presiding, to aid in the establishment of a "Free Library for Working

Women."

In January, 1859, Antoinette L. Brown gave a series of Sunday sermons

in Rochester, and in 1860 she preached in Hope Chapel, New York, for

six months. In Rochester during the winter of 1859, Miss Anthony had a

series of lectures by George William Curtis, Wendell Phillips,

Antoinette Brown, Ernestine L. Rose, and others. The following letter

will show that Thomas Starr King was in full sympathy with our

movement:

BOSTON, _Sep. 20, 1858_.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

DEAR MADAM:--It would afford me great satisfaction to be able to

serve you as you request. I am compelled to say, however, that it

is entirely out of my power. I have already engaged for so much

work beyond my regular duties, that I shall have no leisure even

to prepare a new Lyceum address. Not having any lecture upon the

position of woman that is full enough, and adequate in any way to

the present state of the discussion, I must reluctantly decline

the opportunity you offer.

With sincere thanks, I remain truly yours,

T. S. KING.

In the autumn of 1858, Francis Jackson, of Boston, placed $5,000 in

the hands of Wendell Phillips for woman's enfranchisement, as will be

seen by the following letter:

BOSTON, _Nov. 6, 1858_.

DEAR FRIENDS:--I have had given me five thousand dollars, to be

used for the Woman's Rights cause; to procure tracts on that

subject, publish and circulate them, pay for lectures, and secure

such other agitation of the question as we deem fit and best to

obtain equal civil and social position for woman.

The name of the giver of this generous fund I am not allowed to

tell you; the only condition of the gift is, that the fund is to

remain invested in my keeping. In other respects, we three are a

Committee of Trustees to spend it wisely and efficiently.

Let me ask you to write me what plan strikes you as best to begin

with. I think some agitation specially directed to the

Legislature very important. It is wished that we should begin our

efforts at once.

Yours truly,

WENDELL PHILLIPS,

Miss SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

Mrs. LUCY STONE.

It was in the year 1859 that Charles F. Hovey of Boston left by

will,[153] a sum of $50,000 to be expended annually in the promotion

of various reforms. Woman's Rights among them.

MOZART HALL,

NEW YORK, MAY 13, 14, 1858.

The year 1857 seems to have passed without a National Convention,

although the work was still vigorously prosecuted in the State of New

York, but in the spring of 1858, the ninth National Convention was

called in New York during the week of the anniversaries when crowds

were always attracted to attend the various religious and reformatory

meetings. Henceforward, for many years, a Woman's Rights Convention

was a marked feature of this period in the month of May. There were

several persons at this Convention who had not before honored our

platform.[154] These, with the usual familiar speakers,[155] filled

the platform with quite a striking group of ladies and gentlemen. The

morning session was occupied with the usual preliminary business

matters, choosing officers, presenting resolutions, and planning new

aggressive steps for the coming year. Susan B. Anthony was President

on this occasion, and fulfilled her duties to the general

satisfaction. During the evening session the hall was crowded, all the

available space for either sitting or standing was occupied, the

platform and steps were densely packed, and this at twenty-five cents

admission.

Mr. Phillips, Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Rose, Mr. Garrison, Mr. Higginson, Miss

Brown, and Lucy Stone all spoke with their usual effect. Mrs. Eliza

Woodson Farnham, the author of "Woman and her Era," spoke at length on

the "Superiority of Woman."

She presented a series of resolutions, recognizing the right of

man in the primary era in his physical and cerebral structure, to

be the conqueror, the mechanic, the inventor, the clearer of

forests, the pioneer of civilization, but she looked to the

dawning of a higher era, when woman should assume her true

position in harmony with her superior organism, her delicacy of

structure, her beauty of person, her great powers of endurance,

and thus prove herself not only man's equal in influence and

power, but his superior in many of the noblest virtues. In

woman's creative power during maternity, she recognized her as

second only to God himself. Woman should recognize man as a John

the Baptist, going before to prepare the world for her coming, he

recognizing her greater divinity as equal in the Godhead, as

heavenly mother as well as father.

Mrs. Farnham[156] enforced her theory of woman's superiority in a long

speech, which was received with apparent satisfaction by the audience,

though several on the platform dissented from the claim of

superiority, thinking it would be a sufficient triumph over the

tyrannies of the past, if popular thought could be educated to the

idea of the equality of the sexes.

Mrs. Sarah Hallock read an extract from the Statutes of New York,

giving the items set aside by law for use of the wife and minor

children, in case the husband died without a will.

(Extract from the Statutes of New York).

ARTICLES INVENTORIED, BUT NOT APPROVED, BELONGING TO THE WIDOW

AND MINOR CHILDREN.

1st. All spinning-wheels, weaving-looms, or stoves put up for

use.

2d. The family Bible, family pictures, school-books, and books

not exceeding in value fifty dollars.

[Mrs. Hallock here interjected, husbands had better give their

wives cheap books].

3d. Ten sheep and their fleeces, and the yarn and cloth

manufactured from the same; one cow, two swine, and the pork of

such swine. [Laughter],

4th. All necessary wearing apparel, beds, bedsteads, and bedding;

the clothing of the widow and her ornaments proper to her station

(as to ornaments, tastes differ as to those proper to her

station), one table, six chairs (suppose there were seven or ten

children, what then? queried Mrs. Hallock [Laughter],) six knives

and forks, six tea-cups and saucers, one sugar-dish, one

milk-pot, one tea-pot, and six spoons. "So great a favorite is

the female sex of the laws of England and America," says

Blackstone.

Mrs. ROSE protested against _one_ tea-pot; the law didn't mention

tea-pot at all. [Great laughter].

Mrs. HALLOCK: Oh, yes! but not a coffee-pot. [Renewed laughter].

Mrs. GAGE: In Ohio they give twelve spoons. [Convulsive

laughter].

Mrs. HALLOCK: We'll get up a delegation to Ohio, then.

Mrs. FARNHAM: I would say that I will give up all these things if

the State will only give us in return one of our children.

[Applause and laughter].

Mrs. HALLOCK: Isn't it a pity that our laws--are they ours?

Mrs. ROSE: No.

Mrs. HALLOCK: Well, then, your laws. It is a pity that those

statutes should not be revised so as to give a widow a carpet and

other smaller articles of luxury. [Great laughter].

And such was the boasted "protection" secured to the wives and mothers

by the laws of the most civilized nations on the globe, and such the

law-makers in whose hands woman's interests were supposed to be

secure, when we began our battle for equality. Class laws, class

legislation, legalized robbery from the unborn child, down to the

commonest necessaries of life, has been the "protection" woman has

complained of from fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons. Those just

awaking to an interest in this reform, see but the smoke of the former

battles; they can not appreciate all the tyranny from which this

agitation has freed them. Step by step, custom by custom, law by law,

a partial victory has been wrested, and a public opinion slowly

created that promises other victories in the near future.

Those who have not been through the conflict will never realize how

dark the prospect was in starting. Denied education, and a place in

the world of work, denied the rights of property, whether of her own

earnings, or her inheritance, with the press and the pulpit, custom,

and public opinion sustaining the law, was there ever a struggle

entered upon, which at its beginning seemed more hopeless than this

for woman? But these constant presentations of the laws, with the

comments and arguments in our Conventions, gradually appealed to the

understanding of sensible men and women, and opened the eyes of the

community to the wrongs of woman, perpetrated under the specious name

of justice.

All the sessions of this Convention were interrupted by the rowdyism

of a number of men occupying the rear part of the hall.

PARKER PILLSBURY said he had attended three of these Conventions,

but had not spoken in one before. He thought the ladies

encroached a little on the men's rights, as in the first and

second, the Methodists gave the ladies the use of their church in

a city of the West, on condition that Parker Pillsbury should not

be allowed to speak. [Applause and laughter]. Now that the door

was open, and he had ventured in, he did not know what to say.

[Laughter and cries of "Go on"]. He would recommend the women to

hold their next Convention at the ballot-box, as that would do

more good than a hundred such as these. If their votes were

refused, let them look the tax collectors in the face and defy

them to come for taxes, as long as they were not allowed a voice

in the Government. And carry the war into the Church, too, demand

equality there as well as in the State.

He knew an orthodox church, consisting of twelve members. One was

a man and a deacon, the remainder were women. A vote had to be

taken for changing the day for the prayer-meeting, but some

difficulty arose between the minister and the deacon, and the

only way it could be settled was by the votes of the women. So

the deacon went round on tip-toe, and put his head under each

bonnet, and held a little private caucus meeting with one after

another, and then returned to the altar and reported to the

minister that the vote was unanimous. If women had any proper

self-respect, they would scorn to remain one hour in any church

in which they were not considered and recognized as equals.

OLIVER JOHNSON said there was a new church formed called

"Progressive Friends," in which men and women stood on perfect

equality. He said there was another church (Henry Ward Beecher's)

in Brooklyn, where women were expected to vote on all questions

connected with the business affairs of the congregation. Another

church in this city (Rev. Dr. Cheever's) had a difficulty in

which the capitalists tried to dismiss the pastor, because he

maintained the right of the slave to freedom, and of the woman to

the elective franchise. He agreed with Mr. Pillsbury that it was

woman's duty to test her equality in the Church as well as the

State.

AARON M. POWELL took the same ground. As women made the large

majority in the churches, they could easily secure equal rights

there if united in an effort to do so. Why, said he, are there no

young women sitting at the reporters' desks, taking note of the

proceedings of this Convention? He advocated the elective

franchise, saying that no class could be protected in all its

rights without a voice in the laws.

A Mr. WARREN said he had no objection to woman's claiming

equality, but when they declared their superiority, they injured

themselves and the rising generation in teaching the young to

disrespect the men of the household. (Great laughter and hisses).

Woman might be the savior of man, but was not God, and had no

place in the Godhead. (Laughter and cheers). He spoke from

experience when he said men had already suffered much from the

tyrannical usurpations of women. Let woman be the true helpmate

of man, religiously, politically, morally, socially; but, oh!

said he, in a sorrowful tone, it will be a sad day for the race

when woman takes command, and man is pushed aside. (Convulsive

laughter, and cries of "Give us your experience.")

Mrs. FARNHAM was glad the subject of woman's superiority had been

broached, and only regretted that as a scientific fact it could

not be more seriously discussed.

A gentleman deprecated the fact that Mr. Warren had not been more

fully heard.

THE PRESIDENT said it was the audience and not the platform that

laughed. Loud calls were made for

DOUGLASS, to which he responded, claiming woman's right to

freedom and equality on the same grounds he based his own.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON maintained woman's right to sit in

Congress and the legislatures--that there should be the same

number of women as men in all the national councils. He said

respect for his sainted mother, love for his noble wife, and for

the only daughter of his house and heart (my own Fanny), compel

me to defend the rights of all women. Those who have inaugurated

this movement are worthy to be ranked with the army of martyrs

and confessors in the days of old. Blessings on them! They should

triumph, and every opposition be removed, that peace and love,

justice and liberty, might prevail throughout the world.

A Mr. TYLER remarked that a fear had been expressed that in

coming to the polls, woman would be compelled to meet men who

drink and smoke. Do women encounter no such evils in their homes?

Whisky and tobacco are much greater obstacles at the marriage

altar than at the polls--in the relation of wife than in that of

citizen.

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, then in the height of his reputation (as

Howadji), spoke at length in favor of suffrage for woman, but amid

constant interruptions. With a short speech from Mrs. Rose, the

Convention adjourned amid great confusion.

NINTH NATIONAL CONVENTION.

In accordance with a call issued by the Central Committee, the Ninth

National Woman's Rights Convention was held in the City of New York on

Thursday, May 12, 1859.

The sessions commenced with a business meeting, on the afternoon of

that day, in Mozart Hall. The meeting was called to order by SUSAN B.

ANTHONY, of Rochester, New York, who made a few introductory remarks,

after which, the question of the expediency of memorializing the

Legislatures of the different States, on the subject of granting equal

rights to Woman, was discussed at some length. At the close of the

debate, a resolution was adopted, that it was expedient so to

memorialize the several Legislatures, and a committee[157] was

appointed for that purpose, and a series of resolutions[158] offered

by Caroline H. Dall.

These resolutions were discussed by Mrs. Dall, Mrs. Hallock, Mrs.

Elizabeth Neal Gay, Lucretia Mott, A. M. Powell, Charles C. Burleigh,

and others.

EVENING SESSION.

At an early hour, Mozart Hall was crowded to overflowing, every seat

being occupied, and crowds standing in the aisle, and the rear of the

hall.

LUCRETIA MOTT had been chosen to preside, but was not able, on account

of the crowd, to reach the platform at the hour appointed. The

Convention was therefore called to order by Susan B. Anthony.

Mrs. CAROLINE H. DALL, of Boston, was the first speaker. She desired

to commemorate the century which had just closed since the death of

Mary Woolstonecraft, and to show that what she did in the old world,

Margaret Fuller had done in the new; but the noise and restlessness

among the audience were so great (much of which, we charitably hope,

was attributable rather to the discomfort of their position than to

any want of respect for the speaker, or for the cause which the

Convention represented), that she yielded to the wish of the presiding

officer, and sat down without speaking of Margaret Fuller.

Short speeches were made by Lucretia Mott, Antoinette Brown Blackwell,

and Ernestine L. Rose; but as it proved to be another turbulent

meeting, Wendell Phillips, who understood from long experience how to

play with and lash a mob, and thrust what he wished to say into their

long ears, all with one consent yielded the platform to him, and for

nearly two hours he held that mocking crowd in the hollow of his hand.

In closing he said:

I will not attempt to detain you longer. ["Go on"--"Go on."] I

have neither the disposition nor the strength to trespass any

longer upon your attention. The subject is so large that it might

well fill days, instead of hours. It covers the whole surface of

American society. It touches religion, purity, political economy,

wages, the safety of cities, the growth of ideas, the very

success of our experiment. I gave to-night a character to the

city of Washington which some men hissed. You know it is true. If

this experiment of self-government is to succeed, it is to

succeed by some saving element introduced into the politics of

the present day. You know this: Your Websters, your Clays, your

Calhouns, your Douglases, however intellectually able they may

have been, have never dared or cared to touch that moral element

of our national life. Either the shallow and heartless trade of

politics had eaten out their own moral being, or they feared to

enter the unknown land of lofty right and wrong.

Neither of these great names has linked its fame with one great

moral question of the day. They deal with money questions, with

tariffs, with parties, with State law, and if by chance they

touch the slave question, it is only like Jewish hucksters

trading in the relics of Saints. The reformers--the fanatics, as

we are called--are the only ones who have launched social and

moral questions. I risk nothing when I say, that the anti-slavery

discussion of the last twenty years has been the salt of this

nation; it has actually kept it alive and wholesome. Without it,

our politics would have sunk beyond even contempt. So with this

question. It stirs the deepest sympathy; it appeals to the

highest moral sense; it enwraps within itself the greatest moral

issues. Judge it, then, candidly, carefully, as Americans, and

let us show ourselves worthy of the high place to which God has

called us in human affairs. (Applause).

MEMORIAL.

To the Honorable the Legislature of the State of ----

The National Woman's Rights Convention, held in New York City,

May 12, 1859, appointed your memorialists a Committee to call

your attention to the anomalous position of one-half the people

of this Republic.

All republican constitutions set forth the great truth that every

human being is endowed with certain inalienable rights--such as

life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--and as a

consequence, a right to the use of all those means necessary to

secure these grand results.

1st.--A citizen can not be said to have a right to life, who may

be deprived of it for the violation of laws to which she has

never consented--who is denied the right of trial by a jury of

her peers--who has no voice in the election of judges who are to

decide her fate.

2d.--A citizen can not be said to have a right to liberty, when

the custody of her person belongs to another; when she has no

civil or political rights--no right even to the wages she earns;

when she can make no contracts--neither buy nor sell, sue or be

sued--and yet can be taxed without representation.

3d.--A citizen can not be said to have a right to happiness, when

denied the right to person, property, children, and home; when

the code of laws under which she is compelled to live is far more

unjust and tyrannical than that which our fathers repudiated at

the mouth of the cannon nearly one century ago.

Now, we would ask on what principle of republicanism, justice, or

common humanity, a minority of the people of this Republic have

monopolized to themselves all the rights of the whole? Where,

under our Declaration of Independence, does the white Saxon man

get his power to deprive all women and negroes of their

inalienable rights?

The mothers of the Revolution bravely shared all dangers,

persecutions, and death; and their daughters now claim an equal

share in all the glories and triumphs of your success. Shall they

stand before a body of American legislators and ask in vain for

their right of suffrage--their right of property--their right to

the wages they earn--their right to their children and their

homes--their sacred right to personal liberty--to a trial by a

jury of their peers?

In view of these high considerations, we demand, then, that you

shall, by your future legislation, secure to women all those

rights and privileges and immunities which in equity belong to

every citizen of a republic.

And we demand that whenever you shall remodel the Constitution of

the State in which you live, the word "male" shall be expurgated,

and that henceforth you shall legislate for all citizens. There

can be no privileged classes in a truly democratic government.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, MARTHA C. WEIGHT,

WENDELL PHILLIPS, CAROLINE M. SEVERANCE,

CAROLINE H. DALL, THOMAS W. HIGGINSON,

ERNESTINE L. ROSE, SUSAN B. ANTHONY,

ANTOINETTE BROWN BLACKWELL, _Committee_.

The above memorial was extensively circulated and sent to the

Legislature of every State in the nation, but, owing to the John Brown

raid and the general unrest and forebodings of the people on the eve

of our civil war, it commanded but little attention.

FORM OF APPEAL AND PETITION CIRCULATED IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK

DURING THE SUMMER AND AUTUMN OF 1859.

_To the Women of the Empire State:_

It is the desire and purpose of those interested in the Woman's

Rights movement, to send up to our next Legislature an

overwhelming petition, for the civil and political rights of

woman. These rights must be secured just as soon as the majority

of the women of the State make the demand. To this end, we have

decided thoroughly to canvass our State before the close of the

present year. We shall hold conventions in every county,

distribute tracts and circulate petitions, in order, if possible,

to arouse a proper self-respect in woman.

The want of funds has heretofore crippled all our efforts, but as

large bequests have been made to our cause during the past year,

we are now able to send out agents and to commence anew our work,

which shall never end, until, in Church and State, and at the

fireside, the equality of woman shall be fully recognized.

We hope much from our Republican legislators. Their well-known

professions encourage us to believe that our task is by no means

a hard one. We shall look for their hearty co-operation in every

effort for the elevation of humanity. We have had bills before

the Legislature for several years, on some of which, from time to

time, have had most favorable reports. The property bill of '48

was passed by a large majority. The various bills of rights, to

wages, children, suffrage, etc., have been respectfully

considered. The bill presented at the last session, giving to

married women their rights to make contracts, and to their wages,

passed the House with only three dissenting votes, but owing to

the pressure of business at the close of the session, it was

never brought before the Senate.

Whilst man, by his legislation and generous donations, declares

our cause righteous and just--whilst the very best men of the

nation, those who stand first in Church and State, in literature,

commerce, and the arts, are speaking for us such noble words and

performing such God-like deeds--shall woman, herself, be

indifferent to her own wrongs, insensible to all the

responsibilities of her high and holy calling? No! No!! I Let the

women of the Empire State now speak out in deep and earnest tones

that can not be misunderstood, demanding all those rights which

are at the very foundation of Republicanism--a full and equal

representation with man in the administration of our State and

National Government.

Do you know, women of New York! that under our present laws

married women have no right to the wages they earn? Think of the

40,000 drunkards' wives in this State--of the wives of men who

are licentious--of gamblers--of the long line of those who do

nothing; and is it no light matter that all these women who

support themselves, their husbands and families, too, shall have

no right to the disposition of their own earnings? Roll up, then,

your petitions[159] on this point, if no other, and secure to

laboring women their wages at the coming session!

Now is the golden time to work! Before another Constitutional

Convention be called, see to it that the public sentiment of this

State shall demand suffrage for woman! Remember, "they who would

be free, themselves must strike the blow!"

E. CADY STANTON,

_Chairman Central Committee._

Of the canvass of 1859 and '60, we find the following letter in _The

New York Tribune_, February, 1860.

_To the Editor of The Tribune:_

SIR:--The readers of _The Tribune_ who have perused its columns

closely for the last six months will have noticed repeated

announcements of County Conventions in different parts of the

State to be addressed by certain ladies engaged in advocating

equal rights for woman. It may not be uninteresting to them to

know that every one of those appointments was filled by said

ladies. Over fifty counties of the State have been thus visited,

and petitions presented to the people for their signatures,

praying for equal property rights, and for steps to be taken to

so amend the Constitution as to secure to woman the right of

suffrage, which have been numerously signed and duly presented to

the Legislature. In the rural districts the success has been

wonderful, considering the unpopularity of the subject; our most

violent opposers being demagogical Democrats who frankly

acknowledge that if our doctrines prevail, anti-slavery,

temperance, moral reform, and Republicanism will conquer.

Large bequests have been made in the East for the furtherance of

this movement, and under the direction of a committee appointed

for that purpose, these ladies have gone forth to proclaim the

doctrine of civil and political equality for woman. No laggards

are they in their work. In the language of Mr. Greeley, they have

found a work to be done, and have gone at it with ready and

resolute will; they have not been able to answer all the calls

made upon their time and talent. One of them (I can speak but for

one) between the 11th of November and the 31st of January, has

given sixty-eight lectures, not missing one appointment, resting

only through the holidays and on Sundays. The others have

doubtless done as well. In most instances all have been able to

pay their own expenses, and in some cases their own salaries.

These ladies are not disappointed old maids, desolate widows, or

unhappy wives, though there is one widow and one who has passed

what is called the sunny side of twenty-five. Miss Susan B.

Anthony, the general agent, resides at Rochester, and is

unmarried. Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, of New York City, is too

widely known to need comment. The same may be said of Antoinette

Brown Blackwell, the eloquent minister, accomplished scholar,

and amiable wife and mother. Mrs. J. Elizabeth Jones, of Ohio, is

a lady in the ripeness of womanhood, to whom, equally with the

above, all these adjectives apply. Mrs. Hannah Tracy Cutler, of

Illinois, has been twice married, and has superintended two

families of children satisfactorily; she has been teacher in a

high school in Columbus, Ohio, and matron of a deaf and dumb

asylum, has taken premiums on sorghum sugar made by her own

hands, and is also a physician among the poor of her

neighborhood. Mrs. Lucy N. Colman, of New York, is a widow, and

has fought life's battle bravely and well for herself and

children. Mrs. Frances D. Gage, of Missouri, formerly of Ohio,

might claim the nomination for President under the authority of

Henry Ward Beecher, "having brought up six unruly boys," whose

aggregate height would form a column of thirty-six feet in honor

of their mother, who will all vote the Republican ticket in 1860

but one, and he is not old enough; and no one of them smokes or

chews, or stimulates the inner man with intoxicating beverages.

She is also the mother of two daughters.

Two years ago Mr. Greeley said to one of the ladies, "Why don't

you ladies go to work?" They have gone to work; and with the help

of such men as Garrison, Phillips, Parker, Giddings, Curtis,

Beecher, Chapin, Brady, and a host of others whom the world

delights to honor, their cause will surely triumph. It is a

question of time only; not of fact. God speed the day.

The State Convention of 1860 was held in Association Hall, Albany,

February 3d and 4th, with fine audiences throughout, and the usual

force of speakers. As the outpourings of Miss Anthony's love element

all flowed into the suffrage movement, she was sorely tried with the

imperative cares that the domestic experiments of most of her

coadjutors so constantly involved. Her urgent missives coming ever and

anon to arouse us to higher duties, are quite inspiring even at this

date. In a letter to Martha C. Wright, she says:

Mr. Bingham, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, will bring

in a radical report in favor of all our claims, but previous to

his doing so he wishes our strongest arguments made before the

Committee, and he says Mrs. Stanton must come. I write her this

mail, but I wish you would step over there and make her feel that

the salvation of the Empire State, at least the women in it,

depends upon her bending all her powers to moving the hearts of

our law-makers at this time. Mr. Bingham says our Convention here

has wrought wondrous changes with a large number of the members

who attended, and so says Mr. Mayo, of the Albanians; indeed our

claims are so patent they need only to be known to be approved.

Mrs. Stanton must move heaven and earth now to secure this bill,

and she can, if she will only try. I should go there myself this

very night, but I must watch and encourage friends here. The

Earnings Bill has passed the House, and is in Committee of the

Whole in the Senate. Then a Guardianship Bill must be drafted and

put through if possible. I returned from New York last evening;

have taken the "Cooper Union," for our National Convention in

May. Saw Miss Howland; she said Mr. Beecher's lecture is to be in

this week's _Independent_. Only think how many priestly eyes will

be compelled to look at its defiled page. Theodore Tilton told me

that Mr. Beecher had had a severe battle to get into _The

Independent_.

Mrs. Stanton, in answering Miss Anthony's appeal, says:

I am willing to do the appointed work at Albany. If Napoleon says

cross the Alps, they are crossed. I can not, my dear friend,

"move heaven and earth," but I will do what I can with pen and

brain. You must come here and start me on the right train of

thought, as your practical knowledge of just what is wanted is

everything in getting up the right document. Kind regards to the

anti-slavery host now with you. I did not think that the easy

arm-chair I occupied on the Auburn platform was to bring me so

much glory. Did you know the resolutions of that meeting were

read on the floor of Congress?--that pleased me greatly. I am

very proud to stand maternal sponsor for the whole string. I wish

our Albany resolutions had more snap in them. The Garrison clique

are the only men in this nation that know how to write a

resolution.

On the 18th of February Mrs. Stanton addressed the Legislature on

woman's right of suffrage and the bill then pending in the Senate. A

magnificent audience greeted her in the Capitol. She occupied the

Speaker's desk, and was introduced by Senator Hammond, and spoke as

follows:

GENTLEMEN OF THE JUDICIARY:--There are certain natural rights as

inalienable to civilization as are the rights of air and motion

to the savage in the wilderness. The natural rights of the

civilized man and woman are government, property, the harmonious

development of all their powers, and the gratification of their

desires. There are a few people we now and then meet who, like

Jeremy Bentham, scout the idea of natural rights in civilization,

and pronounce them mere metaphors, declaring that there are no

rights aside from those the law confers. If the law made man too,

that might do, for then he could be made to order to fit the

particular niche he was designed to fill. But inasmuch as God

made man in His own image, with capacities and powers as

boundless as the universe, whose exigencies no mere human law can

meet, it is evident that the man must ever stand first; the law

but the creature of his wants; the law giver but the mouthpiece

of humanity. If, then, the nature of a being decides its rights,

every individual comes into this world with rights that are not

transferable. He does not bring them like a pack on his back,

that may be stolen from him, but they are a component part of

himself, the laws which insure his growth and development. The

individual may be put in the stocks, body and soul, he may be

dwarfed, crippled, killed, but his rights no man can get; they

live and die with him.

Though the atmosphere is forty miles deep all round the globe, no

man can do more than fill his own lungs. No man can see, hear, or

smell but just so far; and though hundreds are deprived of these

senses, his are not the more acute. Though rights have been

abundantly supplied by the good Father, no man can appropriate to

himself those that belong to another. A citizen can have but one

vote, fill but one office, though thousands are not permitted to

do either. These axioms prove that woman's poverty does not add

to man's wealth, and if, in the plenitude of his power, he should

secure to her the exercise of all her God-given rights, her

wealth could not bring poverty to him. There is a kind of nervous

unrest always manifested by those in power, whenever new claims

are started by those out of their own immediate class. The

philosophy of this is very plain. They imagine that if the rights

of this new class be granted, they must, of necessity, sacrifice

something of what they already possess. They can not divest

themselves of the idea that rights are very much like lands,

stocks, bonds, and mortgages, and that if every new claimant be

satisfied, the supply of human rights must in time run low. You

might as well carp at the birth of every child, lest there should

not be enough air left to inflate your lungs; at the success of

every scholar, for fear that your draughts at the fountain of

knowledge could not be so long and deep; at the glory of every

hero, lest there be no glory left for you....

If the object of government is to protect the weak against the

strong, how unwise to place the power wholly in the hands of the

strong. Yet that is the history of all governments, even the

model republic of these United States. You who have read the

history of nations, from Moses down to our last election, where

have you ever seen one class looking after the interests of

another? Any of you can readily see the defects in other

governments, and pronounce sentence against those who have

sacrificed the masses to themselves; but when we come to our own

case, we are blinded by custom and self-interest. Some of you who

have no capital can see the injustice which the laborer suffers;

some of you who have no slaves, can see the cruelty of his

oppression; but who of you appreciate the galling humiliation,

the refinements of degradation, to which women (the mothers,

wives, sisters, and daughters of freemen) are subject, in this

the last half of the nineteenth century? How many of you have

ever read even the laws concerning them that now disgrace your

statute-books? In cruelty and tyranny, they are not surpassed by

any slaveholding code in the Southern States; in fact they are

worse, by just so far as woman, from her social position,

refinement, and education, is on a more equal ground with the

oppressor.

Allow me just here to call the attention of that party now so

much interested in the slave of the Carolinas, to the similarity

in his condition and that of the mothers, wives, and daughters of

the Empire State. The negro has no name. He is Cuffy Douglas or

Cuffy Brooks, just whose Cuffy he may chance to be. The woman has

no name. She is Mrs. Richard Roe or Mrs. John Doe, just whose

Mrs. she may chance to be. Cuffy has no right to his earnings; he

can not buy or sell, or lay up anything that he can call his own.

Mrs. Roe has no right to her earnings she can neither buy nor

sell, make contracts, nor lay up anything that she can call her

own. Cuffy has no right to his children; they can be sold from

him at any time. Mrs. Roe has no right to her children; they may

be bound out to cancel a father's debts of honor. The unborn

child, even by the last will of the father, may be placed under

the guardianship of a stranger and a foreigner. Cuffy has no

legal existence; he is subject to restraint and moderate

chastisement. Mrs. Roe has no legal existence; she has not the

best right to her own person. The husband has the power to

restrain, and administer moderate chastisement.

Blackstone declares that the husband and wife are one, and

learned commentators have decided that that one is the husband.

In all civil codes, you will find them classified as one. Certain

rights and immunities, such and such privileges are to be secured

to white male citizens. What have women and negroes to do with

rights? What know they of government, war, or glory?

The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no

stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause,

and manifested very much in the same way. The negro's skin and

the woman's sex are both _prima facie_ evidence that they were

intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man. The few

social privileges which the man gives the woman, he makes up to

the negro in civil rights. The woman may sit at the same table

and eat with the white man; the free negro may hold property and

vote. The woman may sit in the same pew with the white man in

church; the free negro may enter the pulpit and preach. Now, with

the black man's right to suffrage, the right unquestioned, even

by Paul, to minister at the altar, it is evident that the

prejudice against sex is more deeply rooted and more unreasonably

maintained than that against color. As citizens of a republic,

which should we most highly prize, social privileges or civil

rights? The latter, most certainly.

To those who do not feel the injustice and degradation of the

condition, there is something inexpressibly comical in man's

"citizen woman." It reminds me of those monsters I used to see in

the old world, head and shoulders woman, and the rest of the body

sometimes fish and sometimes beast. I used to think, What a

strange conceit! but now I see how perfectly it represents man's

idea! Look over all his laws concerning us, and you will see just

enough of woman to tell of her existence; all the rest is

submerged, or made to crawl upon the earth. Just imagine an

inhabitant of another planet entertaining himself some pleasant

evening in searching over our great national compact, our

Declaration of Independence, our Constitutions, or some of our

statute-books; what would he think of those "women and negroes"

that must be so fenced in, so guarded against? Why, he would

certainly suppose we were monsters, like those fabulous giants or

Brobdignagians of olden times, so dangerous to civilized man,

from our size, ferocity, and power. Then let him take up our

poets, from Pope down to Dana; let him listen to our Fourth of

July toasts, and some of the sentimental adulations of social

life, and no logic could convince him that this creature of the

law, and this angel of the family altar, could be one and the

same being. Man is in such a labyrinth of contradictions with his

marital and property rights; he is so befogged on the whole

question of maidens, wives, and mothers, that from pure

benevolence we should relieve him from this troublesome branch of

legislation. We should vote, and make laws for ourselves. Do not

be alarmed, dear ladies! You need spend no time reading Grotius,

Coke, Puffendorf, Blackstone, Bentham, Kent, and Story to find

out what you need. We may safely trust the shrewd selfishness of

the white man, and consent to live under the same broad code

where he has so comfortably ensconced himself. Any legislation

that will do for man, we may abide by most cheerfully....

But, say you, we would not have woman exposed to the grossness

and vulgarity of public life, or encounter what she must at the

polls. When you talk, gentlemen, of sheltering woman from the

rough winds and revolting scenes of real life, you must be either

talking for effect, or wholly ignorant of what the facts of life

are. The man, whatever he is, is known to the woman. She is the

companion, not only of the accomplished statesman, the orator,

and the scholar; but the vile, vulgar, brutal man has his mother,

his wife, his sister, his daughter. Yes, delicate, refined,

educated women are in daily life with the drunkard, the gambler,

the licentious man, the rogue, and the villain; and if man shows

out what he is anywhere, it is at his own hearthstone. There are

over forty thousand drunkards in this State. All these are bound

by the ties of family to some woman. Allow but a mother and a

wife to each, and you have over eighty thousand women. All these

have seen their fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, in the lowest

and most debased stages of obscenity and degradation. In your own

circle of friends, do you not know refined women, whose whole

lives are darkened and saddened by gross and brutal associations?

Now, gentlemen, do you talk to woman of a rude jest or jostle at

the polls, where noble, virtuous men stand ready to protect her

person and her rights, when, alone in the darkness and solitude

and gloom of night, she has trembled on her own threshold,

awaiting the return of a husband from his midnight revels?--when,

stepping from her chamber, she has beheld her royal monarch, her

lord and master--her legal representative--the protector of her

property, her home, her children, and her person, down on his

hands and knees slowly crawling up the stairs? Behold him in her

chamber--in her bed! The fairy tale of "Beauty and the Beast" is

far too often realized in life. Gentlemen, such scenes as woman

has witnessed at her own fireside, where no eye save Omnipotence

could pity, no strong arm could help, can never be realized at

the polls, never equaled elsewhere, this side the bottomless pit.

No, woman has not hitherto lived in the clouds, surrounded by an

atmosphere of purity and peace--but she has been the companion of

man in health, in sickness, and in death, in his highest and in

his lowest moments. She has worshiped him as a saint and an

orator, and pitied him as madman or a fool. In Paradise, man and

woman were placed together, and so they must ever be. They must

sink or rise together. If man is low and wretched and vile, woman

can not escape the contagion, and any atmosphere that is unfit

for woman to breathe is not fit for man. Verily, the sins of the

fathers shall be visited upon the children to the third and

fourth generation. You, by your unwise legislation, have crippled

and dwarfed womanhood, by closing to her all honorable and

lucrative means of employment, have driven her into the garrets

and dens of our cities, where she now revenges herself on your

innocent sons, sapping the very foundations of national virtue

and strength. Alas! for the young men just coming on the stage of

action, who soon shall fill your vacant places--our future

Senators, our Presidents, the expounders of our constitutional

law! Terrible are the penalties we are now suffering for the ages

of injustice done to woman.

Again, it is said that the majority of women do not ask for any

change in the laws; that it is time enough to give them the

elective franchise when they, as a class, demand it.

Wise statesmen legislate for the best interests of the nation;

the State, for the highest good of its citizens; the Christian,

for the conversion of the world. Where would have been our

railroads, our telegraphs, our ocean steamers, our canals and

harbors, our arts and sciences, if government had withheld the

means from the far-seeing minority? This State established our

present system of common schools, fully believing that educated

men and women would make better citizens than ignorant ones. In

making this provision for the education of its children, had they

waited for a majority of the urchins of this State to petition

for schools, how many, think you, would have asked to be

transplanted from the street to the school-house? Does the State

wait for the criminal to ask for his prison-house? the insane,

the idiot, the deaf and dumb for his asylum? Does the Christian,

in his love to all mankind, wait for the majority of the

benighted heathen to ask him for the gospel? No; unasked and

unwelcomed, he crosses the trackless ocean, rolls off the

mountain of superstition that oppresses the human mind, proclaims

the immortality of the soul, the dignity of manhood, the right of

all to be free and happy.

No, gentlemen, if there is but one woman in this State who feels

the injustice of her position, she should not be denied her

inalienable rights, because the common household drudge and the

silly butterfly of fashion are ignorant of all laws, both human

and Divine. Because they know nothing of governments, or rights,

and therefore ask nothing, shall my petitions be unheard? I stand

before you the rightful representative of woman, claiming a share

in the halo of glory that has gathered round her in the ages, and

by the wisdom of her past words and works, her peerless heroism

and self-sacrifice, I challenge your admiration; and, moreover,

claiming, as I do, a share in all her outrages and sufferings, in

the cruel injustice, contempt, and ridicule now heaped upon her,

in her deep degradation, hopeless wretchedness, by all that is

helpless in her present condition, that is false in law and

public sentiment, I urge your generous consideration; for as my

heart swells with pride to behold woman in the highest walks of

literature and art, it grows big enough to take in those who are

bleeding in the dust.

Now do not think, gentlemen, we wish you to do a great many

troublesome things for us. We do not ask our legislators to spend

a whole session in fixing up a code of laws to satisfy a class of

most unreasonable women. We ask no more than the poor devils in

the Scripture asked, "Let us alone." In mercy, let us take care

of ourselves, our property, our children, and our homes. True, we

are not so strong, so wise, so crafty as you are, but if any kind

friend leaves us a little money, or we can by great industry earn

fifty cents a day, we would rather buy bread and clothes for our

children than cigars and champagne for our legal protectors.

There has been a great deal written and said about protection.

We, as a class, are tired of one kind of protection, that which

leaves us everything to do, to dare, and to suffer, and strips us

of all means for its accomplishment. We would not tax man to take

care of us. No, the Great Father has endowed all his creatures

with the necessary powers for self-support, self-defense, and

protection. We do not ask man to represent us; it is hard enough

in times like these for man to carry backbone enough to represent

himself. So long as the mass of men spend most of their time on

the fence, not knowing which way to jump, they are surely in no

condition to tell us where we had better stand. In pity for man,

we would no longer hang like a millstone round his neck. Undo

what man did for us in the dark ages, and strike out all special

legislation for us; strike the words "white male" from all your

constitutions, and then, with fair sailing, let us sink or swim,

live or die, survive or perish together.

At Athens, an ancient apologue tells us, on the completion of the

temple of Minerva, a statue of the goddess was wanted to occupy

the crowning point of the edifice. Two of the greatest artists

produced what each deemed his masterpiece. One of these figures

was the size of life, admirably designed, exquisitely finished,

softly rounded, and beautifully refined. The other was of

Amazonian stature, and so boldly chiselled that it looked more

like masonry than sculpture. The eyes of all were attracted by

the first, and turned away in contempt from the second. That,

therefore, was adopted, and the other rejected, almost with

resentment, as though an insult had been offered to a discerning

public. The favored statue was accordingly borne in triumph to

the place for which it was designed, in the presence of

applauding thousands, but as it receded from their upturned eyes,

all, all at once agaze upon it, the thunders of applause

unaccountably died away--a general misgiving ran through every

bosom--the mob themselves stood like statues, as silent and as

petrified, for as it slowly went up, and up the soft expression

of those chiselled features, the delicate curves and outlines of

the limbs and figure, became gradually fainter and fainter, and

when at last it readied the place for which it was intended, it

was a shapeless ball, enveloped in mist. Of course, the idol of

the hour was now clamored down as rationally as it had been cried

up, and its dishonored rival, with no good will and no good looks

on the part of the chagrined populace, was reared in its stead.

As it ascended, the sharp angles faded away, the rough points

became smooth, the features full of expression, the whole figure

radiant with majesty and beauty. The rude hewn mass, that before

had scarcely appeared to bear even the human form, assumed at

once the divinity which it represented, being so perfectly

proportioned to the dimensions of the building, and to the

elevation on which it stood, that it seemed as though Pallas

herself had alighted upon the pinnacle of the temple in person,

to receive the homage of her worshippers.

The woman of the nineteenth century is the shapeless ball in the

lofty position which she was designed fully and nobly to fill.

The place is not too high, too large, too sacred for woman, but

the type that you have chosen is far too small for it. The woman

we declare unto you is the rude, misshapen, unpolished object of

the successful artist. From your stand-point, you are absorbed

with the defects alone. The true artist sees the harmony between

the object and its destination. Man, the sculptor, has carved out

his ideal, and applauding thousands welcome his success. He has

made a woman that from his low stand-point looks fair and

beautiful, a being without rights, or hopes, or fears but in

him--neither noble, virtuous, nor independent. Where do we see,

in Church or State, in school-house or at the fireside, the much

talked-of moral power of woman? Like those Athenians, we have

bowed down and worshiped in woman, beauty, grace, the exquisite

proportions, the soft and beautifully rounded outline, her

delicacy, refinement, and silent helplessness--all well when she

is viewed simply as an object of sight, never to rise one foot

above the dust from which she sprung. But if she is to be raised

up to adorn a temple, or represent a divinity--if she is to fill

the niche of wife and counsellor to true and noble men, if she is

to be the mother, the educator of a race of heroes or martyrs, of

a Napoleon, or a Jesus--then must the type of womanhood be on a

larger scale than that yet carved by man.

In vain would the rejected artist have reasoned with the

Athenians as to the superiority of his production; nothing short

of the experiment they made could have satisfied them. And what

of your experiment, what of your wives, your homes? Alas! for the

folly and vacancy that meet you there! But for your club-houses

and newspapers, what would social life be to you? Where are your

beautiful women? your frail ones, taught to lean lovingly and

confidingly on man? Where are the crowds of educated

dependents--where the long line of pensioners on man's bounty?

Where all the young girls, taught to believe that marriage is the

only legitimate object of a woman's pursuit--they who stand

listlessly on life's shores, waiting, year after year, like the

sick man at the pool of Bethesda, for some one to come and put

them in? These are they who by their ignorance and folly curse

almost every fireside with some human specimen of deformity or

imbecility. These are they who fill the gloomy abodes of poverty

and vice in our vast metropolis. These are they who patrol the

streets of our cities, to give our sons their first lessons in

infamy. These are they who fill our asylums, and make night

hideous with their cries and groans.

The women who are called masculine, who are brave, courageous,

self-reliant and independent, are they who in the face of adverse

winds have kept one steady course upward and onward in the paths

of virtue and peace--they who have taken their gauge of womanhood

from their own native strength and dignity--they who have learned

for themselves the will of God concerning them. This is our type

of womanhood. Will you help us raise it up, that you too may see

its beautiful proportions--that you may behold the outline of the

goddess who is yet to adorn your temple of Freedom? We are

building a model republic; our edifice will one day need a

crowning glory. Let the artists be wisely chosen. Let them begin

their work. Here is a temple to Liberty, to human rights, on

whose portals behold the glorious declaration, "All men are

created equal." The sun has never yet shone upon any of man's

creations that can compare with this. The artist who can mold a

statue worthy to crown magnificence like this, must be godlike in

his conceptions, grand in his comprehensions, sublimely beautiful

in his power of execution. The woman--the crowning glory of the

model republic among the nations of the earth--what must she not

be? (Loud applause).[160]

AN ACT CONCERNING THE RIGHTS AND LIABILITIES OF HUSBAND AND WIFE.

The Act of 1860[161] was offered by Andrew J. Colvin in the Senate as

a substitute for a bill from the Assembly, which was simply an

amendment of the law of 1848. Senators Hammond, Ramsey, and Colvin

constituted the Judiciary Committee, to whom the bill was referred.

Mr. Colvin objected to it for want of breadth in giving to married

women the rights to which he thought them entitled, and urged that a

much more liberal measure was demanded by the spirit of the times. In

one of Miss Anthony's interviews with Mr. Colvin, she handed him a

very radical bill just introduced in the Massachusetts Legislature,

which after due examination and the addition of two or three more

liberal clauses, was accepted by the Committee, reported to the Senate

by Mr. Colvin, and adopted by that body February 28, 1860[162]. The

bill was concurred in by the Assembly, and signed by the Governor,

Edwin D. Morgan. It is quite remarkable that the bill in its transit

did not receive a single alteration, modification, or amendment from

the time it left Mr. Colvin's hands until it took its place on the

statute-book. The women of the State who labored so persistently for

this measure, felt that the victory at last was due in no small degree

to the deep interest and patient skill of Andrew J. Colvin. Hon. Anson

Bingham, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who did good service in

the Assembly at this time, should be gratefully remembered by the

women of New York. Mr. Bingham acted in concert with Mr. Colvin, both

earnestly putting their shoulders to the wheel, one in the Assembly

and one in the Senate, and with the women pulling all the wires they

could outside, together they pushed the grand measure through.

Judge Bingham served our cause also by articles on all phases of the

question over the signature of "Senex," published in many journals

throughout the State. And this, too, at an early day, when every word

in favor of woman's rights was of immense value in breaking down the

prejudice of the ages.

In addition to this, another act of great benefit to a large number of

housekeepers, called the "Boarding House Law," was secured by the same

members. Miss Emily Howland, Mrs. Margaret Murray, Mrs. Manning, and

Mrs. Griffith Satterlee spent some weeks in Albany using their

influence in favor of this measure.

In February, 1860, Emily Howland arranged a course of lectures on

Woman's Rights, to be given in Cooper Institute, New York. Henry Ward

Beecher delivered his first lecture on the question in this course,

receiving his fee of $100 in advance, as it was said he considered no

engagement of that sort imperative without previous payment. Mr.

Beecher's speech was published in full in _The New York Independent_,

of which he was then editor-in-chief. The State Committee purchased a

large number, which Lydia Mott, of Albany, laid on the desk of every

member of both Houses. At the time we felt the speech worth to our

cause all it cost.

TENTH NATIONAL WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION.

COOPER INSTITUTE, NEW YORK, MAY 10-11, 1860.

A large audience assembled in Cooper Institute at 10-1/2 o'clock,

Thursday morning. Susan B. Anthony called the Convention to order, and

submitted a list of officers,[163] nominated at a preliminary meeting,

which was adopted without dissent.

The President, Martha C. Wright, of Auburn, on taking the Chair,

addressed the Convention as follows:

I have only to thank you for the honor you have conferred by

electing me to preside over the deliberations of this Convention.

I shall leave it to others to speak of the purposes of this great

movement and of the successes which have already been achieved.

There are those in our movement who ask, "What is the use of

these Conventions? What is the use of this constant iteration of

the same things?" When we see what has been already achieved, we

learn the use of this "foolishness of preaching:" and after all

that we demand has been granted, as it will be soon, _The New

York Observer_ will piously fold its hands and roll up its eyes,

and say, "This beneficent movement we have always advocated," and

the pulpits will say "Amen!" (Laughter and applause). Then will

come forward women who have gained courage from the efforts and

sacrifices of others, and the great world will say, "Here come

the women who are going to do something, and not talk."

There are those, too, who find fault with the freedom of our

platform, who stand aloof and criticise, fearful of being

involved in something that they can not fully endorse. Forgetting

that, as Macaulay says, "Liberty alone can cure the evils of

liberty," they fear to trust on the platform all who have a word

to say. But we have invited all to come forward and speak, and

not to stand aside and afterward criticise what has been said. We

trust that those present who have an opinion, who have a word to

say, whether they have ever spoken before or not, will speak now.

If they disapprove of our resolutions, if they disapprove of

anything that is said on this platform, let them oppose if they

can not unite with us. (Applause.)

Susan B. Anthony was then introduced, and read the following report:

For our encouragement in laboring for the elevation of woman, it

is well ever and anon to review the advancing steps. Each year we

hail with pleasure new accessions to our faith. Strong words of

cheer have come to us on every breeze. Brave men and true, from

the higher walks of literature and art, from the bar, the bench,

the pulpit, and legislative halls, are ready now to help woman

wherever she claims to stand. The Press, too, has changed its

tone. Instead of ridicule, we now have grave debate. And still

more substantial praises of gold and silver have come to us. A

gift of $5,000 from unknown hands; a rich legacy from the coffers

of a Boston merchant prince--the late Charles F. Hovey; and, but

a few days ago, $400,000 from Mr. Vassar, of Poughkeepsie, to

found a college for girls, equal in all respects to Yale and

Harvard.

We had in New York a legislative act passed at the last session,

securing to married women their rights to their earnings and

their children. Other States have taken onward steps. And, from

what is being done on all sides, we have reason to believe that,

as the Northern States shall one by one remodel their

Constitutions, the right of suffrage will be granted to women.

Six years hence New York proposes to revise her Constitution.

These should be years of effort with all those who believe that

it is the right and the duty of every citizen of a State to have

a voice in the laws that govern them.

Woman is being so educated that she will feel herself capable of

assuming grave responsibilities as lawgiver and administrator.

She is crowding into higher avocations and new branches of

industry. She already occupies the highest places in literature

and art. The more liberal lyceums are open to her, and she is

herself the subject of the most popular lectures now before the

public. The young women of our academies and high schools are

asserting their right to the discipline of declamation and

discussion, and the departments of science and mathematics.

Pewholders, of the most orthodox sects, are taking their right to

a voice in the government of the church, and in the face of

priests, crying "let your women keep silence in the churches,"

yes, at the very horns of the altar, calmly, deliberately, and

persistently casting their votes in the choice of church officers

and pastors.[164] Mass-meetings to sympathize with the "strikers"

of Massachusetts are being called in this metropolis by women.

Women are ordained ministers, and licensed physicians. Elizabeth

Blackwell has founded a hospital in this city, where she proposes

a thorough medical education, both theoretical and practical, for

young women. And this Institute in which we are now assembled,

with its school of design, its library and reading-room, where

the arts and sciences are freely taught to women, and this hall,

so cheerfully granted to our Convention, shows the magnanimity of

its founder, Peter Cooper. All these are the results of our

twenty years of agitation. And it matters not to us, though the

men and the women who echo back our thought do fail to recognize

the source of power, and while they rejoice in each onward step

achieved in the face of ridicule and persecution, ostracise those

who have done the work. Who of our literary women has yet

ventured one word of praise or recognition of the heroic

enunciators of the great idea of woman's equality--of Mary

Woolstonecraft, Frances Wright, Ernestine L. Rose, Lucretia Mott,

Elizabeth Cady Stanton? It matters not to those who live for the

race, and not for self alone, who has the praise, so that justice

be done to woman in Church, in State, and at the fireside--an

equal everywhere with man--they will not complain, though even

_The New York Observer_ itself does claim to have done for them

the work.

During the past six years this State has been thoroughly

canvassed, and every county that has been visited by our

lecturers and tracts has rolled up petitions by the hundreds and

thousands asking for woman's right to vote and hold office--her

right to her person, her wages, her children, and her home. Again

and again have we held Conventions at the capital, and addressed

our Legislature, demanding the exercise of all our rights as

citizens of the Empire State. During the past year, we have had

six women[165] lecturing in New York for several months each.

Conventions have been held in forty counties, one or more

lectures delivered in one hundred and fifty towns and villages,

our petitions circulated, and our tracts and documents sold and

gratuitously distributed throughout the entire length and breadth

of the State.

A State Convention was held at Albany early in February. Large

numbers of the members of the Legislature listened respectfully

and attentively to the discussions of its several sessions, and

expressed themselves converts to the claims for woman. The bills

for woman's right to her property, her earnings, and the

guardianship of her children passed both branches of the

Legislature with scarce a dissenting voice, and received the

prompt signature of the Governor.

Our Legislature passed yet another bill that brings great relief

to a large class of women. It was called the Boarding-House Bill.

It provides that the keepers of private boarding-houses shall

have the right of lien on the property of boarders, precisely the

same as do hotel-keepers. We closed our work by a joint hearing

before the Committees of the Judiciary at the Capitol on the 19th

of March. Elizabeth Cady Stanton addressed them. The Assembly

Chamber was densely packed, and she was listened to with marked

attention and respect. The Judiciary Committees of neither House

reported on our petition for the right of suffrage, though the

Chairman, with a large minority of the House Committee and a

majority of the Senate Committee, favored the claim. The Hon. A.

J. Colvin, of the Senate Committee, in a letter to me, says:

"The subject was presented at so late a day as to preclude

action. While a majority of the Senate Committee I think were

favorable, a majority of the House Committee, so far as I could

learn, were opposed. So many progressive measures had passed both

Houses that I felt apprehensive we might perhaps be running too

great a risk by urging this question of justice and reform at

this session. I did not therefore press it. Should I remain in

the Senate, I may take occasion at an early day in the next

session to bring up the subject and present my views at length.

The more reflection I give, the more my mind becomes convinced

that in a Republican Government, we have no right to deny to

woman the privileges she claims. Besides, the moral element which

those privileges would bring into existence would, in my

judgment, have a powerful influence in perpetuating our form of

government. It may be deemed best, at the next session, to urge

an early Constitutional Convention. In case one should be called,

your friends should be prepared to meet the emergency. Is the

public mind sufficiently enlightened to accept a constitution

recognizing the right of women to vote and hold office? You

should consider this."

The entire expense of the New York State work during the past

year is nearly four thousand dollars. The present year we

propose to expend our funds and efforts mostly in Ohio, to

obtain, if possible, for the women of that State, the liberal

laws we have secured for ourselves. Ohio, too, is soon to revise

her Constitution, and we trust she will not be far behind New

York in recognizing the full equality of woman. We who have

grasped the idea of woman's destiny, her power and influence, the

trinity of her existence as woman, wife, and mother, can most

earnestly work for her elevation to that high position that it is

the will of God she should ever fill. Though we have not yet

realized the fullness of our hopes, let us rest in the belief

that in all these years of struggle, no earnest thought, or word,

or prayer has been breathed in vain. The influence has gone

forth, the great ocean has been moved, and those who watch, e'en

now may see the mighty waves of truth slowly swelling on the

shores of time.

"One accent of the Holy Ghost,

A heedless word hath never lost."

ERNESTINE L. ROSE being introduced, said: Frances Wright was the

first woman in this country who spoke on the equality of the

sexes. She had indeed a hard task before her. The elements were

entirely unprepared. She had to break up the time-hardened soil

of conservatism, and her reward was sure--the same reward that is

always bestowed upon those who are in the vanguard of any great

movement. She was subjected to public odium, slander, and

persecution. But these were not the only things that she

received. Oh, she had her reward!--that reward of which no

enemies could deprive her, which no slanders could make less

precious--the eternal reward of knowing that she had done her

duty; the reward springing from the consciousness of right, of

endeavoring to benefit unborn generations. How delightful to see

the molding of the minds around you, the infusing of your

thoughts and aspirations into others, until one by one they stand

by your side, without knowing how they came there! That reward

she had. It has been her glory, it is the glory of her memory;

and the time will come when society will have outgrown its old

prejudices, and stepped with one foot, at least, upon the

elevated platform on which she took her position. But owing to

the fact that the elements were unprepared, she naturally could

not succeed to any great extent.

After her, in 1837, the subject of woman's rights was again taken

hold of--aye, taken hold of by woman; and the soil having been

already somewhat prepared, she began to sow the seeds for the

future growth, the fruits of which we now begin to enjoy.

Petitions were circulated and sent to our Legislature, and who

can tell the hardships that then met those who undertook that

great work! I went from house to house with a petition for

signatures simply asking our Legislature to allow married women

to hold real estate in their own name. What did I meet with? Why,

the very name exposed one to ridicule, if not to worse treatment.

The women said: "We have rights enough; we want no more"; and the

men, as a matter of course, echoed it, and said: "You have

rights' enough; nay, you have too many already." (Laughter). But

by perseverance in sending petitions to the Legislature, and, at

the same time, enlightening the public mind on the subject, we

at last accomplished our purpose. We had to adopt the method

which physicians sometimes use, when they are called to a patient

who is so hopelessly sick that he is unconscious of his pain and

suffering. We had to describe to women their own position, to

explain to them the burdens that rested so heavily upon them, and

through these means, as a wholesome irritant, we roused public

opinion on the subject, and through public opinion, we acted upon

the Legislature, and in 1848-49, they gave us the great boon for

which we asked, by enacting that a woman who possessed property

previous to marriage, or obtained it after marriage, should be

allowed to hold it in her own name. Thus far, thus good; but it

was only a beginning, and we went on. In 1848 we had the first

Woman's Rights Convention, and then some of our papers thought it

only a very small affair, called together by a few "strong-minded

women," and would pass away like a nine-days' wonder. They little

knew woman! They little knew that if woman takes anything

earnestly in her hands, she will not lay it aside unaccomplished.

(Applause). We have continued our Conventions ever since. A few

years ago, when we sent a petition to our Legislature, we

obtained, with but very little effort, upward of thirteen

thousand signatures. What a contrast between this number and the

five signatures attached to the first petition, in 1837! Since

then, we might have had hundreds of thousands of signatures, but

it is no longer necessary. Public opinion is too well known to

require a long array of names.

We have been often asked. "What is the use of Conventions? Why

talk? Why not go to work?" Just as if the thought did not precede

the act! Those who act without previously thinking, are not good

for much. Thought is first required, then the expression of it,

and that leads to action; and action based upon thought never

needs to be reversed; it is lasting and profitable, and produces

the desired effect. I know that there are many who take advantage

of this movement, and then say: "You are doing nothing; only

talking." Yes, doing nothing! We have only broken up the ground

and sowed the seed; they are reaping the benefit, and yet they

tell us we have done nothing! Mrs. Swisshelm, who has proclaimed

herself to be "no woman's rights, woman," has accepted a position

as inspector of logs and lumber. (Laughter). Well, I have no

objection to her having that avocation, if she have a taste and

capacity for it--far from it. But she has accepted still more,

and I doubt not with a great deal more zest and satisfaction--the

five hundred dollars salary; and I hope she will enjoy it. Then,

having accepted both the office and the salary, she folds her

arms, and says: "I am none of your strong-minded women; I don't

go for woman's rights." Well, she is still welcome to it. I have

not the slightest objection that those who proclaim themselves

not strong-minded, should still reap the benefit of a strong mind

(applause and laughter); it is for them we work. So there are

some ladies who think a great deal can be done in the Legislature

without petitions, without conventions, without lectures, without

public claim, in fact, without anything, but a little lobbying.

Well, if they have a, taste for it, they are welcome to engage in

it; I have not the slightest objection. Yes, I have. I, as a

woman, being conscious of the evil that is done by these lobby

loafers in our Legislature and in the halls of Congress, object

to it. (Loud cheers). I will wait five years longer to have a

right given to me legitimately, from a sense of justice, rather

than buy it in an underhand way by lobbying. Whatever my

sentiments may be, good, bad, or indifferent, I express them, and

they are known. Nevertheless, if any desire it, let them do that

work. But what has induced them, what has enabled them, to do

that work? The Woman's Rights movement, although they are afraid

or ashamed even of the name "woman's rights."

You have been told, and much more might be said on the subject,

that already the Woman's Rights platform has upon it lawyers,

ministers, and statesmen--men who are among the highest in the

nation. I need not mention Wm. Lloyd Garrison, or Wendell

Phillips; but there are others, those even who are afraid of the

name of reformer, who have stood upon our platform. Brady! Who

would ever have expected it? Chapin! Beecher! Think of it for a

moment! A minister advocating the rights of woman, even her right

at the ballot-box! What has done it? Our agitation has purified

the atmosphere, and enabled them to see the injustice that is

done to woman.

Mrs. ELIZABETH JONES, of Ohio, was the next speaker. She said: I

wish to preface my remarks with this resolution:

_Resolved_, That woman's sphere can not be bounded. Its

prescribed orbit is the largest place that in her highest

development she can fill. The laws of mind are as immutable

as are those of the planetary world, and the true woman most

ever revolve around the great moral sun of light and truth.

As a general proposition, we say that capacity determines the

true sphere of action, and indicates the kind of labor to be

performed. I often hear women discussing this subject, much more

in earnest than in jest, though they profess to be simply amusing

themselves. One says: "If I were a man, I should be a mechanic";

another says: "I should be a merchant." One says: "I am sure I

should be rich"; another, in the excess of her humor, thinks she

should be distinguished. Why do women talk thus? Because one

feels that she has mechanical genius; the power to construct, to

perfect. Another understands the secrets of trade, and would like

to incur the heavy responsibilities it involves. A third is

conscious that she was born a financier; while a fourth has an

intuitive perception of the elements of success.

Many women are beginning to judge for themselves the proper

sphere of action, and are not only jesting about what they should

do under other circumstances, but are already entering upon such

paths as their taste and capacity indicate. Some will doubtless

make mistakes, which experience will rectify, and others will

perhaps persist in striving to do that which it will be very

evident they have no ability to perform. This is the case with

men who have had freedom in every sphere. Look at the American

pulpit, for instance. Go through the country, and listen to those

who claim to be the messengers of God, and if you do not say that

many are destitute of capacity to fill the sphere they have

chosen, we shall regard it as an act of obedience on your part to

the command which says: "Judge not, lest ye be judged."

(Laughter). Let adaptation be the rule for pulpit occupancy, and

while it would eject some who are now no honor to the station,

and no benefit to the people, it would open the place to many an

Anna and Miriam and Deborah to fulfill the mission which God has

clearly indicated by the talents He has bestowed.

The world says now, man is God's minister, and woman is not fit

to call sinners to repentance; but let it say: "Those who have

faith in the principles of eternal right, and have power to give

it utterance; those who have the clearest perceptions of moral

truth; those who understand the wants of the people, are the

proper persons, whether they be men or women, to dispense to the

needy multitude the bread of life." This would elevate the

standard of pulpit qualifications, and bring into the field a far

greater amount of talent to choose from, and thus would the

intellectual and spiritual needs of the people be more fully

answered. What is true of this profession will apply with equal

force to others. Should I be told that the American bar needs no

more talent, I would reply that it needs decency, and a

well-founded self-respect. When you enter a court-room, and

listen to a cross-examination of a delicate nature, one where

woman is concerned, and she would rather die a hundred deaths, if

she could, than to have the case dragged before the public, you

will see it treated in the coarsest way, as if her holiest

affections and her most sacred functions were fitting themes for

brutish men to jeer at. And even in the most ordinary cases,

gentlemen who would spurn the imputation of incivility in social

life, will so browbeat and badger a witness, that the most

disgusting bear-baiting would become by comparison a refined

amusement. If the young aspirants for legal honors should meet

among the advocates and judges sensible, dignified, and highly

cultivated women, they would, if I am not much mistaken, get the

benefit of certain lessons, upon manners and morals, that it is

essential for all young men to learn. (Applause). It appears to

me that by association of men and women in this profession, the

bar might be purged of this indecorum, and possess the humanity,

the wisdom, and the dignity that should ever characterize a Court

of Justice.

You need not tell me that the profession would be overstocked, if

women should enter it, for, like men, they must stand on their

merits. Let there be no proscription on account of sex. Let

talent be brought fairly into competition, and although many a

young man, as well as young woman, would sit down forever

briefless, having neither the capacity nor the acquirements to

bring or retain clients, yet their loss would be for the public

good, and for the honor and respectability of the profession. Let

the talents of women be fully developed, and no man will lose any

place that he is qualified to fill in consequence, and no woman

will obtain that place who has not peculiar fitness. All these

matters will find their own level, ultimately. I can point you to

localities now where the people prefer women for teachers. A

Union School in Northern Ohio, which is made up of ten

departments, employs women for teachers, and a woman as

superintendent of the whole. The people reason this way: We

prefer women, because they bring us the best talent. Not that

they have better talents than men, but with the latter, teaching

is generally a stepping-stone to a profession. Woman accepts it

as her highest post, and brings her best energies. With man, it

is often a subordinate interest, and his best talents will be

exercised upon what he regards as something higher and better. As

in this, so in other things. The time will come when talent or

capacity will govern the choice and not sex. It is so now in Art,

to a great extent. I think there is not much known of sex there.

The world does not care who wrote "Aurora Leigh." It does not

recognize it as the production of a woman, but as the work of

genius. Let the artists say what they please, the world does not

care who chisels Zenobia, so that Zenobia be well chiseled. It

does not care whether Landseer or Rosa Bonheur paints animals, so

that animals are well painted. No one says this or that is well

done for a woman, but he says, this is the work of an artist,

that has no merit; not because a woman did it, not because a man

did it, but because the author was destitute of capacity to

embody the idea.

Again, read the little village newspapers, got out by little

editors, and you will find, in many cases, an utter want of

ability to fill the place that has been chosen. I hope young

women will not make such mistakes as these young men have done,

who might have been supposed to know something, if they had only

kept still. (Laughter). If these papers, to which I have

referred, were all in the hands of women, and so destitute of

editorial pith and point as they now are, I should counsel

against any further efforts for the elevation of the sex,

believing the case to be hopeless. (Applause). If I mistake not,

women have a peculiar fitness for trade. Mrs. Dall says, in her

second lecture, that on the Island of Nantucket, women have

engaged in commerce very successfully. They did it in the war,

and afterward, when destitution drove the men to the whale

fisheries, and again when they went to California. They have had

much experience; and Eliza Barney tells of seventy women who

engaged in trade, and retired with a competence, and besides

brought up and educated large families of children. She says,

also, that failures were very uncommon when women managed the

business, and some of the largest and safest fortunes in Boston

were founded by women. Whenever, therefore, one shows any ability

for trade, that is her license for engaging in it--a license

granted under the higher law, and therefore valid. I went into a

bonnet store the other day, and saw a man-milliner holding up a

bonnet on his soft white hand to a lady customer, and expatiating

upon the beauties of the article with an earnestness, if not the

eloquence, of an orator. She tried it on, and he went into

ecstacies. (Laughter). It was so becoming! It was so charming! He

complimented her, and he complimented the bonnet, and had she not

been a strong-minded woman, I do not know how much of the

flattery she would have taken for truth. I thought that man was

out of his sphere: and not only that, but he had crowded some

woman out of her appropriate place, out of the realm of taste and

fashion. (Applause). When I passed out on the street, the harsh,

discordant tone of a fish-woman fell upon my ear. I saw that she

bore a heavy tub upon her head, evidently seeking by this branch

of merchandise to procure a living for herself and family. So few

were the avenues open to her, as she thought, and so much had men

monopolized the places she could fill, that she was compelled to

carry fish on her head, until she could raise money enough to

procure a better conveyance.

Again, I see young men selling artificial flowers, and laces and

embroidery, crinolines and balmorals, and I think to myself they

had better be out digging coal or making brick. When I go back

home to the West, I could take a car-load with me, and set them

to work, and I would greatly benefit their condition, while the

places they vacate here might be filled by the girls who are now

starving in your garrets. (Applause). At a shoe-store, instead of

finding a sprightly miss, to select and fit the ladies gaiters,

you often see a strong, healthy man, kneeling before the customer

with a gallantry that would be admirable in a drawing-room, and

worth infinitely more than the price of the article he is

selling; and he fusses over the gaiters and over the lady's foot,

until you wonder if she is not tempted to propel him into a more

appropriate sphere. (Laughter). Whatever possessed men to imagine

that God designed them to fit ladies' gaiters, is more than I can

imagine. (Applause). I am unable to realize how they obtained the

revelation that for a woman to thus officiate would take her out

of her appropriate sphere. Shall I be held to my principles here,

and told that these men succeed in business, and success being

the test of sphere, therefore they are in their place? It remains

to be proved that they have succeeded. A man may jump Jim Crow

from morning till night, or make a fool of himself in any other

way, and succeed admirably in pleasing auditors and gathering

pennies; but when you take into consideration his high and

heavenly origin, and the noble purposes for which he was made,

you can hardly call it a success. Neither should I think a woman

was in suitable business, even if it were ever so lucrative and

well done, unless that business developed her talents; made her

stronger, more self-reliant, and better fitted her for life and

its duties. These stores would be a good discipline for young

girls, but not for men.

This whole question lies in a small compass. Our reform would

leave woman just where God placed her--a moral, accountable

being, endowed with talents whose scope and character indicate

the work she is to do; and who is responsible primarily to her

Creator for the use she makes of those talents. He says to every

man and to every woman, Go work in my vineyard! That vineyard I

understand to be the world, embracing all the varied

responsibilities of life. Whether man shall pursue science,

literature, or art, whether he shall engage in agriculture,

manufactures, or mechanics, is for _him_ to determine, and

whether woman shall engage in any of these things is for _her_ to

determine. Nothing but an internal consciousness of power to

perform certain work, and that it will be for her own good, can

aid her in her choice. If a woman can write vigorous verse, then

let her write verse. If she can build ships, then let her be a

ship-builder. I know no reason why. If she can keep house, and

that takes as much brains as any other occupation, let her be a

housekeeper. They tell us that "eternal vigilance is the price of

liberty"; eternal vigilance is the price of a well-ordered home,

and every woman before me knows it. (Applause). I know that the

conservative, in his fear, says, Surely you would not have woman

till the soil, sail the seas, run up the rigging of a ship like a

monkey (I use the language of one of your most distinguished

men), go to war, engage in political brawls? No! I would not have

her do anything. She must be her own judge. In relation to

tilling the soil, the last census of the United Kingdom reports

128,418 women employed in agriculture. Examples are by no means

rare where a woman carries on a farm which her deceased husband

has left, and I have, seen much skill evinced in the management.

"In Media, Pa., two girls named Miller carry on a farm of 300

acres, raising hay and grain, hiring labor, but working mostly

themselves." I have been on a farm in your own State where I saw,

not Tennyson's six mighty daughters of the plow, but I saw

three[166] who plowed, and not only that, but they plowed well.

Doubtless, some of our fastidious young ladies would be greatly

shocked at such an exhibition, and I must acknowledge that it was

to me a novel sight; but the more I considered it, the more I

thought that I would rather see a young woman holding the plow,

than to see her leading such an aimless, silly life as many a

young lady leads. I would rather see a young woman holding the

plow, than to see her decked out in her finery, and sitting idle

in the parlor, waiting for an offer of marriage. (Applause). I

hope women will not copy the vices of men. I hope they will not

go to war; I wish men would not. I hope they will not be

contentious politicians; I am sorry that men are. I hope they

will not regard their freedom as a license to do wrong; I am

ashamed to acknowledge that men do. But we need not fear. We may

safely trust the judgment of those who tell us that politics and

morals, and every department into which woman may enter, will be

elevated and refined by her influence.

So far as navigation is concerned, I think many women would not

be attracted to that life. There might be now and then a Betsy

Miller, who could walk the quarter-deck in a gale, and that

certainly would indicate constitutional ability to become a

sailor. I do not suppose so much violence would be done to her

nature by navigating the seas, as by helping a drunken husband to

navigate the streets habitually. (Applause). In relation to

running up the rigging like a monkey, or in regard to any other

monkey performance, I do not believe that women will ever enter

into competition with men in these things, because the latter

have shown such remarkable aptitude for that business. (Laughter

and applause). But after all that may be said on this subject, we

fail to reach one class in the community who have spare time,

spare energies, abundance of power for work. I mean young ladies

of wealth and rank. The world shows a degree of toleration now

toward any young woman who from necessity has engaged in any

industrial avocation to which women have not heretofore applied

themselves. But there is no such toleration for the rich. Many of

these are now striving to kill time with fancy-work and fiction,

with flirtation and flaunting. Some are destitute of aspiration

for anything better. These could be moved only by some convulsion

in the social system, like the earthquake, or like the volcano

that opens the ground at our feet and shows us our danger. But

there are others whose convictions lead them to desire something

better; who feel that they are living to no purpose; who know

that their own powers, good as any God ever created, are lying in

inglorious repose. Some of the advocates of our cause have said

that for these there is no profession but marriage. If they are

not literary, artistic, or philanthropic, what can they do? They

are held by a cable, made up of home influence, of fashion, and

of perverted Scripture, which binds them down to an insipid

existence. Hence, they suppress all desire for a fuller, larger

life; they smile graciously upon their fetters; they profess to

be the happiest of all happy women, and thus they glide along

through the thoroughfares of society with a lying tongue and an

aching heart.

I wish these had enough vitality of soul and enough energy of

character to rise superior to the circumstances around them, and

make some approach to their own ideal. I know this is asking them

to martyrize themselves. But could they see the beauty and the

glory that will invest the future woman, when she shall have her

proper place among the children of the Father; when she shall

infuse her love, her moral perceptions, her sense of justice,

into the ethics and governments of the earth; when she shall be

united to man in a Divine harmony, and her children shall go

forth to bless all coming generations, they would regard

martyrdom but dust in the balance compared with such blessing.

And when the world shall see the moral grandeur, the sublime

position of a race redeemed by the sanctifying influences of this

Divine harmony, it will weave for them a brighter chaplet than it

has ever woven for any of its martyrs who have suffered at the

stake. (Loud applause).

* * * * *

Rev. BERIAH GREEN, of Whitesboro', N. Y., was next introduced,

and said:

It is not, I suppose, at all the design of this platform in any

way to abolish what the grammarians call "the distinction of

sex"; and when we speak of "woman's rights," we admit, in the

very language which is thus employed, that she is a "woman"--that

that is appropriately her character--that under this name she is

fitly described. Now, a comprehensive description of all the

rights which any member of the human family, whoever and whatever

and wherever he may be, is entitled to challenge and maintain, we

have in the brief and simple expression, the right to be himself;

the right to be true to the nature which he has inherited; the

right to the free and full development of the powers with which

he is endowed; the right to lay out those resources of which he

is constructed happily, effectively, properly; the right to rise

to the highest position in excellence and in blessedness to which

his capacities and powers may elevate him. This is a

comprehensive description of man's rights, a comprehensive

description of woman's rights, and a comprehensive description of

human rights, under every form and phase of application of which

human rights may be supposed capable.

Now, I regard it as a repulsive feature of the age, that one sex

should feel itself constrained to come forward and defend itself

from the other sex; to demand a redress of the wrongs to which it

may be exposed, and a vindication of the rights to which it may

be entitled; for, look you! most obviously and clearly, the

relation between the sexes is naturally most intimate. The one

lives in and through the other. They do not make two distinct

classes, most obviously and certainly. They do not in nature;

they do not according to the Divine arrangement; and it always

seems to me to be most absurd, and in the highest degree

ungrateful, to present the subject with which we are now

occupied, under any such aspect. Mankind are divided,

doubtless--divided now by accident, and now by arrangement--into

different classes; but to make the women one class, and the men

another class, seems to me to be essentially and flagrantly

absurd. (Applause). Manifestly, the grand right of man (employing

the term man here not generally, but specifically), in his

relations to woman, as well as in all his other relations, is to

be grandly, vigorously beautiful; in every way a man; in all the

relations of life to be true to whatever may be characteristic of

his nature, and to whatever may be distinctive in his sex. And

what may be affirmed of him in this respect may be affirmed of

his mother, of his wife, of his sister.

It is a general law of our humanity, an all-comprehensive and all

controlling principle, that we belong, as human beings, to each

other. Every man belongs to the whole human family, and the whole

human family belongs to every one of its members. We are

mutually, as a matter of course, under the controlling influence

of this great law; we are mutually to contribute, as effectively

and wisely as we may, to each other's improvement and welfare.

This is the great general law which lies at the very basis of our

being; this is the law which asserts its majesty in the depths of

our consciousness. This law has manifestly a specific and

beneficent application to the relation which binds man to woman,

and unites woman to man. In a natural state of things, where the

ordinances of our true Father were regarded, where the principles

of our existence were reverently heeded, as a matter of course,

individually and generally, man would devote himself, as man,

generously, magnanimously, his entire self, whatever belongs to

his manhood, in every department of his being--he would devote

himself, as man, to woman; and woman, on the other hand, would

just as characteristically, just as nobly, just as cheerfully,

just as gratefully, just as effectively, devote herself to the

improvement and welfare of man; and according to the nature of

the relation which unites them, the one would supply whatever

might seem to be demanded in the construction of the other. A man

is never completely himself until he is united to woman, and a

woman is never completely herself until she is united to man; and

thus they become a beautiful unit, playing continually into each

other's hands, their hearts beating in delightful harmony with

each other. This is the great fundamental law of our social

existence. The very germ of the social is to be found in the

sexual relations which bind men and women together, and society,

in all its forms and phases, is nothing under heaven but the

development, the fit, symmetrical, and full development of the

germ to which I have thus referred.