the adultery of the husband ought not to be noticed or made
subject to the same animadversions as that of the wife, because
it is not evidence of such entire depravity, nor equally
injurious in its effects upon the morals, good order, and
happiness of domestic life. Montesquieu, Pothier, and Dr. Taylor
all insist that the cases of husband and wife ought to be
distinguished, and that the violation of the marriage vow, on the
part of the wife, is the most mischievous, and the prosecution
ought to be confined to the offense on her part.--"Esprit des
Loix," tom. 3, 186; "Traité du Contrat de Mariage," No. 516;
"Elements of Civil Law," p. 254.
Say you, "These are but the opinions of men"? On what else, I
ask, are the hundreds of women depending, who this hour demand in
our courts a release from burdensome contracts? Are not these
delicate matters left wholly to the discretion of courts? Are not
young women from the first families dragged into the public
courts--into assemblies of men exclusively--the judges all men,
the jurors all men?--no true woman there to shield them by her
presence from gross and impertinent questionings, to pity their
misfortunes, or to protest against their wrongs?
The administration of justice depends far more on the opinions of
eminent jurists, than on law alone, for law is powerless when at
variance with public sentiment.
Do not the above citations clearly prove inequality? Are not the
very letter and spirit of the marriage contract based on the idea
of the supremacy of man as the keeper of woman's virtue--her sole
protector and support? Out of marriage, woman asks nothing at
this hour but the elective franchise. It is only in marriage that
she must demand her rights to person, children, property, wages,
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. How can we discuss
all the laws and conditions of marriage, without perceiving its
essential essence, end, and aim? Now, whether the institution of
marriage be human or divine, whether regarded as indissoluble by
ecclesiastical courts, or dissoluble by civil courts, woman,
finding herself equally degraded in each and every phase of it,
always the victim of the institution, it is her right and her
duty to sift the relation and the compact through and through,
until she finds out the true cause of her false position. How can
we go before the Legislatures of our respective States, and
demand new laws, or no laws, on divorce, until we have some idea
of what the true relation is?
We decide the whole question of slavery by settling the sacred
rights of the individual. We assert that man can not hold
property in man, and reject the whole code of laws that conflicts
with the self-evident truth of that assertion.
Again I ask, is it possible to discuss all the laws of a
relation, and not touch the relation itself?
Yours respectfully,
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
HORACE GREELEY in _The New York Tribune_, May 14, 1860.
_One Thousand Persons Present, seven-eighths of them Women, and a
fair Proportion Young and Good-looking_.--Whether the Woman's
Rights Convention will finally succeed or not in enlarging the
sphere of woman, they have certainly been very successful in
enlarging that of their platform. Having introduced easy Divorce
as one of the reforms which the new order of things demands, we
can see no good reason why the platform should not be altogether
replanked. We respectfully suggest that with this change of
purpose there shall also be a change in name, and that hereafter
these meetings shall be called not by name of Woman, but in the
name of Wives Discontented. Hitherto we have supposed that the
aim of this movement related to wrongs which woman suffered as
woman, political and social inequalities, and disabilities with
which she was mightily burdened. A settlement of the marriage
relation, we conceive, does not come within this category. As
there can be no wives without husbands, the subject concerns the
latter quite as much as it does the former. One of the wrongs
which it is charged woman suffers from man, is that he legislates
for her when she is not represented. We acknowledge the justice
of that plea, and, for that very reason, complain that she, under
the name of Woman's Rights, should attempt to settle a question
of such vital importance to him where he is supposed to be
admitted only on suffrance. We believe in woman's rights; we have
some conclusions(?) on the rights of husbands and wives; we are
not yet, we confess, up to that advanced state which enables us
to consider the rights of wives as something apart from that of
husbands.
On the subject of marriage and divorce we have some very positive
opinions, and what they are is pretty generally known. But even
were they less positive and fixed, we should none the less
protest against the sweeping character of the resolutions
introduced at the Woman's Rights Convention on Friday by Mrs.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton. We can not look upon the marriage
relation as of no more binding force than that which a man may
make with a purchaser for the sale of dry-goods, or an engagement
he may contract with a schoolmaster or governess. Such doctrine
seems to us simply shocking.
The intimate relation existing between one man and one woman,
sanctified by, at least, the memory of an early and sincere
affection, rendered more sacred by the present bond of dependent
children, the fruit of that love, hallowed by many joys and many
sorrows, though they be only remembered joys and sorrows, with
other interests that can be broken in upon only to be
destroyed--such a relation, we are very sure, has elements of
quite another nature than those which belong to the shop or the
counting-house. In our judgment, the balance of duty can not be
struck like the balance of a mercantile statement of profit and
loss, or measured with the calculations we bestow on an account
current. Such a doctrine we regard as pernicious and debasing. We
can conceive of nothing that would more utterly sap the
foundations of sound morality, or give a looser rein to the most
licentious and depraved appetites of the vilest men and women.
Upon the physiological and psychological laws which govern
generation, we do not care here to enter, even if Mrs. Stanton
leads the way; but we believe that the progress of the world,
springing out of connections formed under such a dispensation of
humanity as is here indicated, with so little of duty or
conscience, with so little hope or expectation of abiding
affection, with so little intention of permanency as must
necessarily belong to them, would be more monstrous than the
world has ever dreamed of. For such a rule of married life
contemplates no married life at all, and no parental relation. It
destroys the family; it renders the dearest word in the Saxon
tongue (home) a vague and unmeaning term; it multiplies a
thousand-fold and renders universal all the evils which in the
imperfections of human nature are now occasional under the
binding force of a moral sense, the duty of continency, and the
remnant of nothing else is left of love.
There are some other things besides in these resolutions to which
we might object on the score of truth, some things which we
rather marvel, modest women should say, and that modest women, in
a mixed assembly, should listen to with patience. But these are
secondary matters. The thought--more than them all--that the
marriage tie is of the same nature as a mere business relation,
is so objectionable, so dangerous, that we do not care to draw
attention from that one point.
In asserting that marriage is an equal relation for husbands and
wives, Mr. Greeley, like Mr. Phillips, begs the whole question. If it
is legitimate to discuss all laws that bear unequally on man and woman
in woman's rights conventions, surely those that grow out of marriage,
which are the most oppressive and degrading on the statute-book,
should command our first consideration. There could be no slaveholders
without slaves; the one relation involves the other, and yet it would
be absurd to say that slaves might not hold a convention to discuss
the inequality of the laws sustaining that relation, and incidentally
the whole institution itself, because the slaveholder shared in the
evils resulting from it. There never has been a woman's convention
held in which the injustice suffered by wives and mothers has not been
a topic for discussion, and legitimately so. And if the only way of
escape from the infamous laws by which all power is placed in the
hands of man, is through divorce, then that is the hospitable door to
open for those who wish to escape. No proposition contained in Mrs.
Stanton's speech on divorce, viewed in any light, can be a tenth part
so shocking as the laws on the statute-books, or the opinions
expressed by many of the authorities in the English and American
systems of jurisprudence.
It is difficult to comprehend that the release of the miserable from
false relations, would necessarily seduce the contented from happy
ones, or that the dearest word in the Saxon tongue (home) should have
no significance, after drunkards and villains were denied the right to
enter it. It is a pleasant reflection, in view of the dolorous results
Mr. Greeley foresees from the passage of a divorce law, that the love
of men and women for each other and their children in no way depends
on the Statutes of New York. In the State of Indiana, where the laws
have been very liberal for many years, family life is as beautiful and
permanent as in South Carolina and New York, where the tie can be
dissolved for one cause only. When we consider how little protection
the State throws round the young and thoughtless in entering this
relation, stringent laws against all escape are cruel and despotic,
especially to woman, for if home life, which is everything to her, is
discordant, where can she look for happiness?
APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF NEW YORK.
WOMEN OF NEW YORK:--Once more we appeal to you to make renewed
efforts for the elevation of our sex. In our marital laws we are
now in advance of every State in the Union. Twelve years ago New
York took the initiative step, and secured to married women their
property, received by gift or inheritance. Our last Legislature
passed a most liberal act, giving to married women their rights,
to sue for damages of person or property, to their separate
earnings and their children; and to the widow, the possession and
control of the entire estate during the minority of the youngest
child. Women of New York! You can no longer be insulted in the
first days of your widowed grief by the coarse minions of the law
at your fireside, coolly taking an inventory of your household
goods, or robbing your children of their natural guardian.
While we rejoice in this progress made in our laws, we see also a
change in the employment of women. They are coming down from the
garrets and up from the cellars to occupy more profitable posts
in every department of industry, literature, science, and art. In
the church, too, behold the spirit of freedom at work. Within the
past year, the very altar has been the scene of well-fought
battles; women claiming and exercising their right to vote in
church matters, in defiance of precedent, priest, or Paul.
Another evidence of the importance of our cause is seen in the
deep interest men of wealth are manifesting in it. Three great
bequests have been given to us in the past year. Five thousand
dollars from an unknown hand,[171] a share in the munificent fund
left by that noble man of Boston, Charles F. Hovey, and four
hundred thousand dollars by Mr. Vassar, of Poughkeepsie, to found
a college for girls, equal in all respects to Yale and Harvard.
Is it not strange that women of wealth are constantly giving
large sums of money to endow professorships and colleges for boys
exclusively--to churches and to the education of the ministry,
and yet give no thought to their own sex--crushed in ignorance,
poverty, and prostitution--the hopeless victims of custom, law,
and Gospel, with few to offer a helping hand, while the whole
world combine to aid the boy and glorify the man?
Our movement is already felt in the Old World. The nobility of
England, with Lord Brougham at their head, have recently formed a
"Society for Promoting the Employments of Women."
All this is the result of the agitation, technically called
"Woman's Rights," through conventions, lectures, circulation of
tracts and petitions, and by the faithful word uttered in the
privacy of home. The few who stand forth to meet the world's cold
gaze, its ridicule, its contumely, and its scorn, are urged
onward by the prayers and tears, crushed hopes and withered
hearts of the sad daughters of the race. The wretched will not
let them falter; and they who seem to do the work, ever and anon
draw fresh courage and inspiration from the noblest women of the
age, who, from behind the scene, send forth good words of cheer
and heartfelt thanks.
Six years hence, the men of New York purpose to revise our State
Constitution. Among other changes demanded, is the right of
suffrage for women--which right will surely be granted, if
through all the intervening years every woman does her duty.
Again do we appeal to each and all--to every class and
condition--to inform themselves on this question, that woman may
no longer publish her degradation by declaring herself satisfied
in her present position, nor her ignorance by asserting that she
has "all the rights she wants."
Any person who ponders the startling fact that there are four
millions of African slaves in this republic, will instantly put
the question to himself, "Why do these people submit to the cruel
tyranny that our government exercises over them?" The answer is
apparent--"simply because they are ignorant of their power."
Should they rise _en masse_, assert and demand their rights,
their freedom would be secure. It is the same with woman. Why is
it that one-half the people of this nation are held in abject
dependence--civilly, politically, socially, the slaves of man?
Simply because woman knows not her power. To find out her natural
rights, she must travel through such labyrinths of falsehood,
that most minds stand appalled before the dark mysteries of
life--the seeming contradictions in all laws, both human and
divine. But, because woman can not solve the whole problem to her
satisfaction, because she can not prove to a demonstration the
rottenness and falsehood of our present customs, shall she,
without protest, supinely endure evils she can not at once
redress? The silkworm, in its many wrappings, knows not it yet
shall fly. The woman, in her ignorance, her drapery, and her
chains, knows not that in advancing civilization, she too must
soon be free, to counsel with her conscience and her God.
The religion of our day teaches that in the most sacred relations
of the race, the woman must ever be subject to the man; that in
the husband centers all power and learning; that the difference
in position between husband and wife is as vast as that between
Christ and the church; and woman struggles to hold the noble
impulses of her nature in abeyance to opinions uttered by a
Jewish teacher, which, alas! the mass believe to be the will of
God. Woman turns from what she is taught to believe are God's
laws to the laws of man; and in his written codes she finds
herself still a slave. No girl of fifteen could read the laws,
concerning woman, made, executed, and defended by those who are
bound to her by every tie of affection, without a burst of
righteous indignation. Few have ever read or heard of the
barbarous laws that govern the mothers of this Christian
republic, and fewer still care, until misfortune brings them into
the iron grip of the law. It is the imperative duty of educated
women to study the Constitution and statutes under which they
live, that when they shall have a voice in the government, they
may bring wisdom and not folly into its councils.
We now demand the ballot, trial by jury of our peers, and an
equal right to the joint earnings of the marriage copartnership.
And, until the Constitution be so changed as to give us a voice
in the government, we demand that man shall make all his laws on
property, marriage, and divorce, to bear equally on man and
woman.
{ E. CADY STANTON, _President_.
{ LYDIA MOTT,[172] _Sec. and Treas_.
_New York State Woman's Rights { ERNESTINE L. ROSE.
Committee_. { MARTHA C. WRIGHT.
{ SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
_November, 1860._
N. B.--Let every friend commence to get signatures to the
petition without delay, and send up to Albany early in January,
either to your representative or to Lydia Mott.
How can any wife or mother, who to-day rejoices in her legal
right to the earnings of her hands, and the children of her love,
withhold the small pittance of a few hours or days in getting
signatures to the petition, or a few shillings or dollars to
carry the work onward and upward, to a final glorious
consummation.
CONVENTION IN ALBANY AND HEARING BEFORE THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE IN THE
ASSEMBLY CHAMBER.
FEBRUARY 7TH AND 8TH, 1861.
The last Convention before the War was held in Albany. Ernestine L.
Rose, Lucretia Mott, William Lloyd Garrison, Rev. Beriah Green, Aaron
M. Powell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony were the
speakers. They had a hearing also before the Judiciary Committee on
the bill then pending asking divorce for various causes.[173] The
interest in the question was intense at this time, owing to several
very aggravated cases among leading families, both in this country and
England. The very liberal bill pending in the Legislature had drawn
special attention to it in the Empire State, which not only made the
whole question of marriage and divorce a topic of conversation at
every fireside, but of many editorial debates in our leading journals.
Among others, Horace Greeley, in _The New York Tribune_, had a
prolonged discussion with the Hon. Robert Dale Owen,[174] in which it
was generally thought that the weight of argument rested with Mr.
Owen; but it was evident that Mr. Greeley did not think so, as he
afterward republished the whole controversy at his own expense. _The
Albany Evening Journal_ also took strong grounds against the bill. But
the opponents invariably discussed the question on the basis that
marriage was an _equal_ relation, in which man suffered as much as
woman, ignoring the fact that _man_ had made the laws governing it,
and all to his own advantage.
From the following letter of Lucretia Mott, we see how clear she was
as to the merits of the position we had taken in the discussion of
this vital question:
ROADSIDE, near Philadelphia, 4th Mo., 30th, '61.
MY DEAR LYDIA MOTT:--I have wished ever since parting with thee
and our other dear friends in Albany to send thee a line, and
have only waited in the hope of contributing a little
"substantial aid" toward your neat and valuable "depository." The
twenty dollars enclosed is from our Female Anti-Slavery Society.
I see the annual meeting in New York is not to be held this
spring. Sister Martha is here, and was expecting to attend both
anniversaries. But we now think the Woman's Rights meeting had
better not be attempted, and she has written Elizabeth C. Stanton
to this effect.
I was well satisfied with being at the Albany meeting. I have
since met with the following from a speech of Lord Brougham's,
which pleased me, as being as radical as mine in your stately
Hall of Representatives:
"Before woman can have any justice by the laws of England, there
must be a total reconstruction of the whole system; for any
attempt to amend it would prove useless. The great charter, in
establishing the supremacy of law over prerogative, provides only
for justice between man and man; for woman nothing is left but
common-law, accumulations and modifications of original Gothic
and Roman heathenism, which no amount of filtration through
ecclesiastical courts could change into Christian laws. They are
declared unworthy a Christian people by great jurists; still they
remain unchanged."
So Elizabeth Stanton will see that I have authority for going to
the root of the evil.
We had a delightful golden-wedding on the 10th inst. All our
children and children's children were present, and a number of
our friends hereaway. Our sister Mary W. Hicks and her grand
daughter May were all of James's relatives from New York. Brother
Richard and daughter Cannie could not feel like coming. Brother
Silas and Sarah Cornell could not come.
Love to all,
LUCRETIA MOTT.
In 1861 came "the war of the rebellion," the great conflict between
the North and the South, the final struggle between freedom and
slavery. The women who had so perseveringly labored for their own
enfranchisement now gave all their time and thought to the nation's
life; their patriotism was alike spontaneous and enduring. In the
sanitary movement, in the hospitals, on the battle-field, gathering in
the harvests on the far-off prairies--all that heroic women dared and
suffered through those long dark years of anxiety and death, should
have made "justice to woman" the spontaneous cry on the lips of our
rulers, as we welcomed the return of the first glad days of peace. All
specific work for her own rights she willingly thrust aside. No
Conventions were held for five years; no petitions circulated for her
civil and political rights; the action of State Legislatures was
wholly forgotten. In their stead, Loyal Leagues were formed, and
petitions by the hundred thousand for the emancipation of the slaves
rolled up and sent to Congress--a measure which with speech and pen
they pressed on the nation's heart, seeing clearly as they did that
this was the pivotal point of the great conflict.
Thus left unwatched, the Legislature of New York amended the law of
1860, taking from the mother the lately guaranteed right to the equal
guardianship of her children, replacing it by a species of veto power,
which did not allow the father to bind out or will away a child
without the mother's consent in writing. The law guaranteeing the
widow the control of the property, which the husband should leave at
death, for the care and protection of minor children, was also
repealed. This cowardly act of the Legislature of 1862[175] is the
strongest possible proof of woman's need of the ballot in her own
hand for protection. Had she possessed the power to make and unmake
legislators, no State Assembly would have dared thus to rob the mother
of her natural rights. But without the suffrage she was helpless.
While, in her loyalty to the Government and her love to humanity, she
was encouraging the "boys in blue" to fight for the freedom of the
black mothers of the South, these dastardly law-makers, filled with
the spirit of slaveholders, were stealing the children and the
property of the white mothers in the Empire State!
When Susan B. Anthony heard of the repeal of 1862, she was filled with
astonishment, and wrote thus to Miss Lydia Mott:
DEAR LYDIA:--Your startling letter is before me. I knew some
weeks ago that that abominable thing was on the calendar, with
some six or eight hundred bills _before it_, and hence felt sure
it would not come up this winter, and that in the meantime we
should sound the alarm. Well, well; while the old guard sleep the
young "devils" are wide-awake, and we deserve to suffer for our
confidence in "man's sense of justice," and to have all we have
gained thus snatched from us. But nothing short of this can rouse
our women again to action. All our reformers seem suddenly to
have grown politic. All alike say, "Have no conventions at this
crisis"! Garrison, Phillips, Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Wright Mrs. Stanton,
etc., say, "Wait until the war excitement abates"; which is to
say, "Ask our opponents if they think we had better speak, or,
rather, if they do not think we had better remain silent." I am
sick at heart, but I can not carry the world against the wish and
the will of our best friends. But what can we do now, when even
the motion to retain the mother's joint guardianship is voted,
down? Twenty thousand petitions rolled up for that--a hard year's
work!--the law secured!--the echoes of our words of gratitude in
the capitol have scarce died away, and now all is lost!
And, worse still, in 1871,[176] after the black man was not only
emancipated, but enfranchised, by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments, which, overriding State Constitution and statute law,
abolished the property qualification for colored voters in the State
of New York, another step of retrogressive legislation was taken
against woman, in the repeal of section nine[177] of the Act of 1860,
re-enacting the spirit and letter of the old common law, which holds
that the children born in legal wedlock belong to the father alone.
Had woman held the ballot--that weapon of protection--in her hand to
punish legislators, by withholding her vote from those thus derelict
to duty, no repeal of the law of 1860 could have possibly taken place.
ALBANY, _April 8, 1881_.
DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--Your esteemed favor of the 6th duly received.
The Statute of 1862, Laws of 1862, chapter 90, page 157, repealed
the grandest and crowning section of the Statute of 1860, viz:
Sections 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, and 11, copies of which sections I
herewith inclose you. Had these sections remained, wives in this
State would have possessed equal rights with their husbands, save
simply the right of voting. It was a great mistake and wrong to
repeal them. Had I been a member of the Senate at that time, as I
was not, I don't think it would have been done.
I do not know who was the author of the repeal bill, nor did I
know of its existence until I saw it in the statute-book. I think
Judge Charles J. Folger, now Chief-Justice of the Court of
Appeals, was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the
bill of 1862 must therefore have passed through the hands of that
Committee, in which it originated, or through which it was
reported, and by the influence of which it must have been
adopted.
Strange that you women, so watchful and so regardful of your
rights, should have allowed the repeal of those important
sections, without strenuous opposition.
Very sincerely yours,
ANDREW J. COLVIN.
We were busily engaged rolling up petitions for the Thirteenth
Amendment to the Federal Constitution, our hearts and hands full of
work for the Government in the midst of the war, supposing all was
safe at Albany. But how comes it that the author of the bill of 1860,
residing at the capital, never heard of its repeal? If the bill was so
slyly passed that Mr. Colvin himself did not know of it until he saw
it in the statute-book, it is not remarkable that it escaped our
notice in time to prevent it.
GENENA, N. Y., _April 12, 1881_.
MISS ANTHONY, DEAR MADAM:--I was chairman of the Judiciary
Committee of the New York Senate in 1862-'3-'4-'5-'6-'7-'8-'9.
Judge John Willard, of Saratoga County, was a member of the State
Senate in that year, and a member of that Committee. He was the
author of the Act of 1862. His object, as I have always
understood it, was to simplify, make clear, consistent, and
practical some of the legislation in regard to married women. I
think, with deference I say it, that you are not strictly
accurate in calling the legislation of 1862 a repealing one. The
first section of the Act of 1862 (chap. 172, p. 343) _amends_ the
third section of the Act of 1860 (chap. 90, p. 157), by striking
out the provision requiring the assent of the husband, and giving
the wife the right (or privilege) to contract and convey as a
_feme sole_, and to covenant for title, etc., etc. That amendment
rendered unnecessary the fourth, fifth, and sixth sections of the
Act of 1860. They would have fallen of themselves, that is, have
been repealed by implication, as inconsistent with the greater
power and freedom attained by married women by the amendment of
1862 to the Act of 1860. But _ex abundanti cautela_, as Judge
Willard would have said, there was an express repeal of them. The
tenth and eleventh sections of the Act of 1860 were also repealed
expressly; but not to the sole detriment of married women. The
tenth section gave to married men and married women a life estate
in certain cases in one-third of all the real estate of which the
wife or husband died seized. The wife had before the Act of 1860,
and has now, that estate. The tenth section gave her nothing. The
repeal of it took nothing from her. The eleventh section, so far
as it gave a life estate, is the same as the tenth. So far as it
gave the use of all the real estate of the intestate for the
minority of the youngest child, it was an addition to the
property rights of the wife, but it was also an addition to the
property rights of the husband. I am not able from memory to say
why it was repealed; and it is remembrance and not reasoning that
you ask for. The third section of the Act of 1862 amends the
seventh of the Act of 1860 by striking out the phrase, "_except
her husband_," thus enabling a married woman to protect the
property given to her by the husband, in which the Act of 1860
was lame, and in other ways gave more freedom and power to
married women. The fourth section of the Act of 1862 amends the
eighth section of the Act of 1860, but only in its verbiage. The
fifth section of the Act of 1862 does not impair the Act of 1860;
it simply puts the woman before the courts, and the law as an
entity able to go alone. The sixth section of the Act of 1862
increases the powers of a married woman, by giving her a veto on
some acts of her husband. The seventh section is like the fifth.
In no other respect than those I have named did the Act of 1862
affect the Act of 1860. In but one thing did it repeal, in the
sense of taking away any right or power or privilege or freedom
that the Act of 1860 gave. On the contrary, in some respects, it
gave more or greater.
I am glad that you wrote to me. I am glad that I have the
opportunity to defend the memory of a good man, Judge John
Willard. I make bold to ask you to turn to the thirty-seventh
volume of Barbour's Supreme Court Reports, Appendix, pp. 670 et
seq., and read the words spoken of him by his peers. I am glad
also to have the opportunity to speak a word for my Judiciary
Committee.
And I will not close this lengthened answer, without suggesting a
suspicion, that those who have taken the notion that the Act of
1862 was a retrograde step, have done so without comparing for
themselves the two acts.
For myself, I have the distinction of being one of less than
half-a-dozen Senators who voted that women have the right to vote
for delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1866; and one
of about a dozen and a half members of that Convention who voted
to erase from the suffrage article the word "male." I have never
been convinced of the expediency of giving to females the
privilege of suffrage; but I have never been able to see the
argument by which they were not as much entitled to the _right_
as males.
Trusting that you will forgive the length of this epistle,
I am with respect, yours, etc., etc.,
CHARLES J. FOLGER.
MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
As will be seen by the above letters, both Mr. Colvin and Mr. Folger
make mistakes in regard to the effect of these bills. In speaking of
the complete equality of husbands and wives under the law of 1860, Mr.
Colvin said, "All the wife then had to ask was the right of suffrage,"
quite forgetting that the wife has never had an equal right to the
joint earnings of the copartnership, as no valuation has ever been
placed on her labor in the household, to which she gives all her time,
thought, and strength, the absolute sacrifice of herself, mind and
body, all possibility of self-development and self-improvement being
in most cases out of the question. Mr. Folger in saying the repeal of
section eleven affected man as much as woman, falls into the same
mistake, assuming that the joint earnings belong to man. We say that
the wife who surrenders herself wholly to domestic life, foregoing all
opportunities for pecuniary independence and personal distinction in
the world of work, or the higher walks of literature and art, in order
to make it possible for the husband to have home and family ties, and
at the same time, his worldly successes and ambitions, richly earns
the place of an equal partner. In their joint accumulations, her labor
and economy should be taken into account.
This is _the vital point_ of interest to the vast majority of married
women, since it is only the _few_ who ever possess anything through
separate earnings or inheritance. A law securing to the wife the
absolute right to one-half the joint earnings, and at the death of the
husband, the same control of property and children that he has when
she dies, might make some show of justice; but it is a provision not
yet on the statute-books of any civilized nation on the globe.
The seeming sophistry of Judge Folger may be traced to the universal
fact that man does not appreciate the arduous and unremitting labors
of the wife in the household, or her settled dissatisfaction in having
no pecuniary recompense for her labors. No man with cultured brain and
skilled hands would consider himself recompensed for a life of toil in
being provided with shelter, food, and clothes while his employer was
living, to be cut down in his old age to a mere pittance; yet such is
the fate of the majority of wives and widows under the most beneficent
provisions of our statutes in this favored republic. True, the law
says "the husband shall maintain the wife in accordance with his
circumstances"; he being judge, jury, executive. Though she may toil
incessantly, and her duties be far more exhaustive than his, yet he is
supposed to maintain her, and the joint property is always disposed of
on that basis. Legislation for woman proceeds on the assumption, that
all she needs is a bare support; and that she is destitute of the
natural human desire to accumulate, possess, and control the results
of her own labor.
[Illustration: MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE (with autograph).]
FOOTNOTES:
[89] Jerry McHenry was an athletic mulatto, a cooper by trade, who had
been living in Syracuse for many years, since his escape from slavery.
On the 13th of October, 1850, there was an attempt to kidnap him, but
the Abolitionists, with such men as Samuel J. May and Gerrit Smith at
their head, succeeded in rescuing him by a _coup d'état_, from the
officers of the law, which involved several trials in Auburn,
Canandaigua, Buffalo, and Albany. As this occurred soon after the
passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, the leading Abolitionists were
determined to test its constitutionality in the courts. It was so
systematically and universally violated, that it soon became a dead
letter.
[90] A HEROIC WOMAN.--Mrs. Margaret Freeland, of Syracuse, was
recently arrested upon a warrant issued on complaint of Emanuel
Rosendale, a rum-seller, charging her with forcing an entrance to his
house, and with stones and clubs smashing his doors and windows,
breaking his tumblers and bottles, and turning over his whisky barrels
and spilling their contents. Great excitement was produced by this
novel case. It seems that the husband of Mrs. Freeland was a
drunkard--that he was in the habit of abusing his wife, turning her
out of doors, etc., and this was carried so far that the police
frequently found it necessary to interfere to put a stop to his
ill-treatment of his family. Rosendale, the complainant, furnished
Freeland with the liquor which turned him into a demon. Mrs. Freeland
had frequently told him of her sufferings and besought him to refrain
from giving her husband the poison. But alas! she appealed to a heart
of stone. He disregarded her entreaties and spurned her from his door.
Driven to desperation she armed herself, broke into the house, drove
out the base-hearted landlord and proceeded upon the work of
destruction.
She was brought before the court and demanded a trial. The citizens
employed Charles B. Sedgwick, Esq., as her counsel, and prepared to
justify her assault upon legal grounds. Rosendale, being at once
arrested on complaint of Thomas L. Carson for selling liquor
unlawfully, and feeling the force of the storm that was gathering over
his head, appeared before the Justice, withdrew his complaint against
Mrs. Freeland, paid the costs, and gave bail on the complaint of Mr.
Carson, to appear at the General Sessions, and answer to an indictment
should there be one found.
Mrs. Freeland is said to be "the pious mother of a fine family of
children, and a highly respectable member of the Episcopal Church."
The _Carson League_ commenting on this affair says:
"The rum-seller cowered in the face of public feeling. This case shows
that public feeling will justify a woman whose person or family is
outraged by a rum-seller, for entering his grocery or tavern and
destroying his liquor. If the law lets loose a tiger upon her, she may
destroy it. She has no other resort but force to save herself and her
children. Were the women of this city to proceed in a body and destroy
all the liquor of all the taverns and groceries, they would be
justified by law and public opinion. Women should take this war into
their hands, when men take side with the murderers of their peace.
"A tavern or grocery which makes the neighbors drunken and insane is a
public nuisance, and may be pulled down and destroyed by the neighbors
who are injured by it. It is worse than the plague. And if men will
not put hands on it, then should the women do it. Tell us not it is
property. It ceases to be property when it is employed to destroy the
people. If a man lights his torch and sets about putting fire to the
houses about him, any person may seize the torch and destroy it. So if
a man takes a pistol and passes through the streets shooting the
people, the pistol ceases to be property and may be taken from him by
force and destroyed by any person who can do it. We sincerely hope
that the women of the State will profit by this example, and go to
destroying the liquor vessels; and their contents." To all of which we
respond AMEN.
_The Lily_, June, 1853.
[91] Mrs. Thompson, of Albany; Mrs. Cushman, of New York,
_Vice-Presidents_. Mrs. Fowler and Miss Anthony, _Secretaries_. Lydia
Mott, of Albany; Phebe Hoag Jones, of Troy; Eliza Hoxie Shove, of
Easton; and Elizabeth Van Alstine, of Canajoharie, _Business
Committee_.
[92] The following citizens of Rochester concur in the above call:
Samuel Richardson, Rev. Wm. H. Goodwin, Samuel Chipman, Geo. A. Avery,
James P. Fogg, J. O. Bloss, Wm. K. Hallowell, James Vick, Jr., E. C.
Williams, Daniel Anthony.
[93] _Vice-Presidents_.--Mary C. Vaughan, Olivia Fraser, Frances
Stanton Avery, Rhoda De Garmo, Sarah D. Fish, and Mrs. D. C. Ailing.
_Secretaries_.--Amelia Bloomer and Susan B. Anthony.
_Resolutions_.--Amy Post, Elizabeth Monroe, Rachel Van Lew.
_Finance_.--Susan B. Anthony, Mary H. Hallowell, H. Attilia Albro.
[94] See Appendix.
[95] See Appendix.
[96] _Vice-Presidents_--Mrs. Gerrit Smith, Peterboro; Mrs. E. C.
Delevan, Ballston Spa; Mrs. D. C. Alling, Rochester; Lydia F. Fowler,
Mrs. J. T. Coachman, Mary S. Rich, New York; Julia Clark Lewis,
Oswego; Olivia Fraser, Elmira; Emily Clark, Le Roy; Mrs. A. N. Cole,
Belfast; Betsy Hawks, Bethany Centre; Antoinette L. Brown, Henrietta.
_Recording Secretaries_--Susan B. Anthony, Rochester; Mary C. Vaughan,
Oswego.
_Corresponding Secretary_--Amelia Bloomer, Seneca Falls.
_Treasurer_--Elvira Marsh, Rochester.
_Executive Committee_--Sarah T. Gould, Mary H. Hallowell, and Mrs.
Samuel Richardson, Rochester.
[97] _The Lily_ was a temperance paper started in Seneca Falls, N. Y.,
in 1849. It was owned and edited by Mrs. Amelia Bloomer. Though
starting as the organ of a society, it soon became her individual
property. She carried it successfully six years, her subscription list
reaching 4,000. It was as pronounced on woman's rights as temperance,
and did good service in both reforms. We are indebted to _The Lily_
for most of our facts on the temperance movement in New York.
[98] _Nomination_--Lemira Kedzie, Lydia F. Fowler, Amy Post, Mary H.
Hallowell, Frederick Douglass, Lydia Jenkins.
_Business Committee_--Emily Clark, W. H. Channing, Mary H. Hallowell,
Rev. S. J. May, Mrs. Robie, Mrs. C. I. H. Nichols.
_Finance_--Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Bloomer, H. Attilia Albro. Also, on
motion, the President was added to the Business Committee.
[99] Throughout this protracted, disgraceful assault on American
womanhood, the clergy baptized each new insult and act of injustice in
the name of the Christian religion, and uniformly asked God's blessing
on proceedings that would have put to shame an assembly of Hottentots.
[100] _Vice-Presidents_--Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, Mass.; Charles C.
Burliegh, Ct.; Edward M. Davis, Pa.; Frances Dana Gage, Mo.; Ashby
Pierce, Oregon; Rowland T. Robinson, Vt.; Melissa J. Driggs, Ind.;
Thomas Garrett, Del.; Angelina Grimké Weld, N. J.; Hannah Tracy
Cutler, Ill.
[101] See page 152--Cleveland Convention--for the full description of
this mob by Miss Brown herself.
[102] _The Binghamton Daily Republican_ said: Miss Anthony vindicated
her resolutions with great eloquence, spirit, and dignity, and showed
herself a match, at least, in debate, for any member of the
Convention. She was _equal_ if not _identical_. Whatever may be
thought of her notions, or sense of propriety in her bold and
conspicuous positions, personally, intellectually, and socially
speaking, there can be but one opinion as to her superior ability,
energy, and moral courage; and she may well be regarded as an evangel
and heroine by her sex; especially by the "Strong Minded" portion of
them.
[103] _The Daily Standard_, Sept. 8th, 1852, said: The Woman's Rights
Convention will assemble at the City Hall this morning. Some of the
most able women of the country will be present, and the discussion can
not fail to be particularly interesting.
_The Daily Star_, a pro-slavery paper of the most pronounced and
reckless character, said: The women are coming! They flock in upon us
from every quarter, all to hear and talk about Woman's Rights. The
blue stockings are as thick as grasshoppers in hay-time, and mighty
will be the force of "jaw-logic" and "broom-stick ethics" preached by
the females of both sexes.
[104] THE NATIONAL WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION.
The friends of equality, justice, and truth are earnestly invited to
meet in Syracuse, N. Y., Sept. 8th, 9th, and 10th, 1852, to discuss
the important question of "Woman's Rights." We propose to review not
only the past and consider the present, but to mark out new and
broader paths for the future.
The time has come for the discussion of woman's social, civil, and
religious rights, and also for a thorough and efficient organization;
a well-digested plan of operation whereby these social rights, for
which our fathers fought, bled, and died, may be secured by us. Let
woman no longer supinely endure the evils she may escape, but with her
own right hand carve out for herself a higher, nobler destiny than has
heretofore been hers. Inasmuch as through the folly and imbecility of
woman, the race is what it is, dwarfed in mind and body; and as
through her alone it can yet be redeemed, all are equally interested
in the objects of this Convention.
We therefore solemnly urge those men and women who desire the
elevation of humanity, to be present at the coming Convention, and aid
us by their wisdom. Our platform will be free to all who are capable
of discussing the subject with candor and truth. On behalf of the
Central Committee,
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON,
PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS,
WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING,
LUCY STONE,
SAMUEL J. MAY.
[105] _President._--Lucretia Mott, Philadelphia.
_Vice-Presidents._--Paulina Wright Davis, Rhode Island; Caroline M.
Severance, Ohio; Elizabeth Oakes Smith, New York; Clarina I. H.
Nichols, Vermont; Gerrit Smith, Peterboro; Sarah L. Miller,
Pennsylvania.
_Secretaries._--Susan B. Anthony, Martha C. Wright, Samuel J. May,
Lydia F. Fowler.
_Business Committee._--Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Lucy Stone, Caroline M.
Severance, Harriot K. Hunt, Jane Elizabeth Jones, James Mott,
Ernestine L. Rose, Elizabeth W. Phillips, Pliny Sexton, Benjamin S.
Jones.
_Committee on Finance._--Rosa Smith, Joseph Savage, Caroline M.
Severance.
Many earnest friends beside the officers were present and took part in
the discussions; among them Amy Post, Mary and Sarah Hallowell,
Catharine A. F. Stebbins, Thomas and Mary Ann McClintock, Elizabeth
Smith Miller, Rev. Lydia Ann Jenkins, Rev. Antoinette L. Brown, Lydia
Mott, Phebe H. Jones, Mary A. Springstead, Abby H. Price, Rev. Abraham
Pryne, Eliza A. Aldrich, editor _Genius of Liberty_; Dr. Cutcheon, of
McGrawville College; Matilda Joslyn Gage, Lydia P. Savage, Sarah
Hallock, Griffith M. Cooper.
[106] See Appendix.
[107] See Pennsylvania Chapter, page 360.
[108] _The Syracuse Journal_ said: "Miss Anthony has a capital voice
and deserves to be made clerk of the Assembly."
[109] When Gerrit Smith was in Congress, elected on account of his
anti-slavery principles, his power to make friends even among foes was
fully illustrated. At his elegant dinners distinguished Southerners
were frequent guests. Hence it was said of him that he dined with
slaveholders, and would have wined with them but for his temperance
principles.
[110] See Appendix.
[111] See Appendix.
[112] This noble man was among the first to append his name to the
declaration of rights issued at Seneca Falls, and he did not withdraw
it when the press began to ridicule the proceedings of the Convention.
[113] Rev. Mr. Hatch gave his idea of female loveliness. It consisted
in that shrinking delicacy which, like the modest violet, hid itself
until sought; that modesty which led women to blush, to cast down
their eyes when meeting men, or walking up the aisle of a church to
drop the veil; to wear long skirts, instead of imitating the
sun-flower, which lifted up its head, seeming to say: "Come and admire
me." He repeated the remarks made near the door on some of the
speakers. The President hoped he would keep in order, and not relate
the vulgar conversation of his associates. He went on in a similar
strain until the indignation of the audience became universal, when he
was summarily stopped.
In the midst of his remarks Miss Anthony suggested that the Reverend
gentleman doubtless belonged to the pin-cushion ministry, educated by
women's sowing societies! which, on inquiry, proved true. It was
almost always the case that the "poor but pious" young man, who had
studied his profession at the expense of women, proved most narrow and
bigoted in his teachings.
[114] The Jewish.
[115] See Appendix for comments of _Syracuse Star_ and _New York
Herald_.
[116] This sermon was reviewed by Matilda Joslyn Gage, and a newspaper
controversy between Mr. Sunderland, Mrs. Gage, and others inaugurated.
For several months the press of the city was enlivened by these
supplementary debates.
[117] _President._--Lucretia Mott.
_Vice-Presidents._--Ernestine L. Rose, New York; Paulina W. Davis,
Rhode Island; Clarina I. H. Nichols, Vermont; Mary Jackson, England;
Caroline M. Severance, Ohio; S. M. Booth, Wisconsin; Wm. Lloyd
Garrison, Massachusetts; Mrs. J. B. Chapman, Indiana; Charlotte
Hubbard, Illinois; Ruth Dugdale, Pennsylvania; C. C. Burleigh,
Connecticut; Angelina G. Weld, New Jersey; Mathilde Franceska Anneké,
Germany.
_Secretaries._--Lydia F. Fowler, Sidney Peirce, Oliver Johnson.
_Business Committee._--Lucy Stone, Antoinette L. Brown, James Mott,
Harriot K. Hunt, Mariana Johnson, Lydia Mott, Wendell Phillips, Sarah
Hallock, Wm. H. Channing, Ruth Dugdale, Martha J. Tilden, Ernestine L.
Rose, Elizabeth Oakes Smith.
_Finance Committee._--Susan B. Anthony, Lydia A. Jenkins, Edward A.
Stansbury.
[118] See Appendix.
[119] Fanny Ellsler danced for the Bunker Hill monument.
[120] See p. 259.
[121] The Committee were: Lueretia Mott, Ernestine L. Rose, Marion C.
Houghton, Lucy Stone, Caroline H. Dall, Paulina Wright Davis, Dr.
Harriot K. Hunt, Mathilde Franceska Anneké, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.
[122]
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Seneca Falls; James M'Cune Smith, New York;
Mary Cheney Greeley, New York; S. G. Love, Randolph;
Ernestine L. Rose, New York; Mary F. Love, Randolph;
Samuel J. May, Syracuse; C. M. Crowley, Randolph;
George W. Jonson, Buffalo; R. T. Trail, New York;
Antoinette L. Brown, South Butler; Emily S. Trail, New York;
Frederick Douglass, Rochester; Oliver Johnson, New York;
Hiram Corliss, Greenwich; Mariana W. Johnson, New York;
Lydia A. Jenkins, Geneva; Sydney Howard Gay, New York:
William H. Channing, Rochester; Catharine E. Welling, Elmira;
William Hay, Saratoga Springs; Mrs. Holbrook, Elmira;
Amy Post, Rochester; H. A. Zoller, Little Falls;
Mary H. Hallowell, Rochester; Stephen Haight, Dutchess County;
Susan B; Anthony, Rochester; Sarah A. Burtis, Rochester;
William R. Hallowell, Rochester; Lydia P. Savage, Syracuse;
Isaac Post, Rochester; Lydia Mott, Albany;
Mary B. F. Curtis, Rochester; J. B. Sands, Canandaigua;
Lemira Kedzie, Rochester; Catharine H. Sands, Canandaigua.
[123] _Vice-Presidents._--Ernestine L. Rose, New York; S. C. Cuyler,
Wayne; Amy Post, Rochester; Mary F. Love, Randolph; Amelia Bloomer,
Seneca Falls; Caroline Keese, Cayuga; Griffith M. Cooper, Wayne.; Rev.
Antoinette L. Brown, South Butler; Matilda Joslyn Gage, Manlius; Rev.
J. W. Loguin, Syracuse; Sarah A. Burtis, Rochester; Emma R. Coe,
Buffalo.
_Secretaries._--Susan B. Anthony, Sarah Pellet, Wm. J. Watkins, and
Sarah Willis.
_Finance Committee._--Mary S. Anthony, Mary H. Hallowell, E. J.
Jenkins, Lucy Colman, and Mary Cooper.
_Business Committee._--Ernestine L. Rose, William Henry Channing,
Antoinette L. Brown, Frederick Douglass, Amy Post, and Samuel J. Love.
[124] Mr. Hopkins further stated that, tenancy by the courtesy
operates in favor of the husband, not of the wife. It is the husband's
right during his life to the use of the wife's real estate from her
death, in case of a child or children born of the marriage. It is
defeasible now by the wife's will.--Cow. Rep. 74, 2 K. S., 4th Ed.
331. Tenancy by right of dower is the wife's right during her life to
the use of one-third of the husband's real estate from his death. It
operates in favor of the wife and not in favor of the husband, and is
indefeasible by the husband's will or the husband's acts while living,
and does not depend upon the birth of a child by the marriage.
The order of distribution of the husband's personal property on his
death is as follows, viz.: 1st, the widow of a family takes articles
exempt from execution as hers, also $150 worth of property besides.
2d, she has one-third of the personal property, absolutely--if there
be no children, one-half, and if there be no parent or descendant, she
is entitled, of the residue, to $2,000, and if also no brother,
sister, nephew, or niece, all the residue. This order may be varied or
defeated by his will.
The order of distribution of the wife's personal property on her death
without will is as follows: It goes, after paying her debts, to her
husband, if living; if not, then 1st, to her children, 2d to her
father, 3d to her mother, 4th to her collateral relatives. This order
may be varied or defeated by her will. She may devise it as she may
please.
His property before marriage continues his after marriage, subject to
her inchoate rights of dower.
Her property before marriage continues hers absolutely.
Upon marriage he is liable to support her, and may be compelled to do
it if he prove refractory.
She is not liable to support him, however wealthy she may be, or poor
he may be.
He is liable to support the children. She is not so liable, though
possessed of millions.
The husband is the guardian of the wife, as against third persons.
(Page 488). But he has no power to preserve, retain, or regain the
custody of her against her will. (Page 47).
He may maintain his action against third persons for enticing her away
or harboring her. But this harboring, to be actionable, must be more
than a mere permission to her to stay with such third person. (4 Barb.
225).
If the husband seek to take away his wife by force, it is an assault
and battery upon her. If a third person, resists such force at her
request he is not liable to any action. (Barb. 156).
The wife is not the husband's guardian, but if he will desert her he
may be put under bonds for her support and the support of her children
by him. (2 Rev. Stat., 4th Ed., pp. 53, 54).
The husband is liable for the debts of the wife contracted before
marriage, but only now to the extent of her property received by him.
(7 W. R. 237, 1st Chitty Pl., 66 to 68, laws of 1853). And he is
liable for her debts contracted during marriage, if permitted by him,
or if for necessaries which he neglected to provide.
The wife is not liable for her husband's debts contracted at any time.
The law casts the custody of the minor children upon the father and
not upon the mother. But if this custody is abused, it is by the Court
to the mother.
The father may appoint a guardian for his infant children. (2 Rev.
Stat. 33.) But the Court will not allow such guardian to take the
children out of the State against the mother's will, much less to
separate them unjustly from the mother even though the father's will
command it. (5, page 596).
During the separation of husband and wife, it is for the court now to
decide, under the circumstances of each case, whether father or mother
has such custody. (2 R. S. 330, 332).
When both seek such custody, and both are equally qualified for it,
that of daughters and young children is usually given to the mother,
and that of the sons to the father, but this is in the discretion of
the Court.
The earnings of the husband are his. The earnings of the wife are his,
if she live with him and he support her.
But he can not compel her to work for him. And if she separate from
him for cause, he may be restrained for intermeddling with her
earnings.
The husband's abandonment and his refusal or neglect to provide for
her, are good causes of separation. (2 R. S. 329, sec. 53, sub. 3).
For the husband's torts the wife is not liable. For the wife's torts,
committed by her before marriage or during marriage the husband is
liable jointly with the wife. If committed by the wife and husband, or
committed by the wife in his presence and without objecting, the
husband is liable alone. (1 Chitty Pl., 105, 7th American edition).
Nay, even felonies (excepting murder, manslaughter, treason, and
robbery), are excusable in the wife if committed in the husband's
presence and by his coercion--and such coercion is presumed from his
presence. For this he must suffer and she must be spared. (Barb. Crim.
Law, 247 and 348, and cases there cited).
In actions or lawsuits between men and women, the law in theory claims
to be impartial, but in practice it has not been impartial. Before a
Court of male judges or a jury of men the bias is in favor of the
woman; and if she is pleasing, in person and manners, such bias is
sometimes pretty strong.
If the man and woman between whom litigation arises are husband and
wife, the Court may accord an allowance to be advanced by her husband,
to enable her to defray the expenses of the litigation.
[125] WOMAN'S RIGHTS.--_Circulate the Petitions_.--The design of the
Convention held last week in Rochester, was to bring the subject of
Woman's legal and civil disabilities, in a dignified form, before the
Legislature of New York. Convinced, as the friends of the movement
are, that in consistency with the principles of Republicanism,
females, equally with males, are entitled to Freedom, Representation,
and Suffrage, and confident as they are that woman's influence will be
found to be as refining and elevating in public as all experience
proves it to be in private, they claim that one-half of the people and
citizens of New York should no longer be governed by the other half,
without consent asked and given. Encouraged by reforms already made,
in the barbarous usages of common law, by the statutes of New York,
the advocates of woman's just and equal rights demand that this work
of reform be carried on, until every vestige of partiality is removed.
It is proposed, in a carefully prepared address to specify the
remaining legal disabilities from which the women of this State
suffer; and a hearing is asked before a joint committee of both
Houses, specially empowered to revise and amend the statutes. Now is
this movement right in principle? Is it wise in policy? Should the
females of New York be placed on a level of equality with males before
the law? If so, let us petition for impartial justice to Women. In
order to ensure this equal justice should the females of New York,
like the males, have a voice in appointing the law-makers and
law-administrators? If so let us petition for Woman's right to
Suffrage. Finally, what candid man will be opposed to a reference of
the whole subject to the Representatives of New York, whom the men of
New York themselves elected. Let us then petition for a hearing before
the Legislature. A word more, as to the petitions, given below. They
are two in number; one for the Just and Equal Rights of Woman; one for
Woman's Right to Suffrage. It is designed that they should be signed
by men and women, of lawful age--that is, of twenty-one years and
upwards. The following directions are suggested: 1. Let persons, ready
and willing, sign each of the petitions; but let not those, who desire
to secure Woman's Just and Equal Rights, hesitate to sign that
petition because they have doubts as to the right or expediency of
women's voting. The petitions will be kept separate, and offered
separately. All fair-minded persons, of either sex, ought to sign the
first petition. We trust that many thousands are prepared to sign the
second also. 2. In obtaining signatures, let men sign in one column,
and women in another parallel column. 3. Let the name of the town and
county, together with the number of signatures, be distinctly entered
on the petitions before they are returned. 4. Let every person, man or
woman, interested in this movement, instantly and energetically
circulate the petitions in their respective neighborhoods. We must
send in the name of every person in the State, who desires full
justice to woman, so far as it is possible. Up then, friends, and be
doing, to-day. 5. Let no person sign either petition but once. As many
persons will circulate petitions in the same town and county, it is
important to guard against this possible abuse. 6. Finally, let every
petition be returned to Rochester, directed to the Secretary of the
Convention, Susan B. Anthony, on the first of February, without fail.
In behalf of the Business Committee.
WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING.
ROCHESTER, _Dec. 8, 1853_.
PETITION FOR THE JUST AND EQUAL RIGHTS OF WOMEN.--The Legislature of
the State of New York have, by the Acts of 1848 and 1849, testified
the purpose of the people of this State to place married women on an
equality with married men, in regard to the holding, conveying, and
devising of real and personal property. We, therefore, the undersigned
petitioners, inhabitants of the State of New York, male and female,
having attained to the legal majority, believing that women, alike
married and single, do still suffer under many and grievous legal
disabilities, do earnestly request the Senate and Assembly of the
State of New York to appoint a Joint Committee of both Houses, to
revise the Statutes of New York, and to propose such amendments as
will fully establish the legal equality of women with men; and we
hereby ask a hearing before such Committee by our accredited
Representatives.
PETITION FOR WOMAN'S RIGHT TO SUFFRAGE.--Whereas, according to the
Declaration of our National Independence, governments derive their
just powers from the consent of the governed, we earnestly request the
Legislature of New York to propose to the people of the State such
amendments of the Constitution of the State as will secure to females
an equal right to the Elective Franchise with males; and we hereby ask
a hearing before the Legislature by our accredited Representatives.
N. B.--Editors throughout the State in favor of this movement are
respectfully requested to publish this address and the petitions.
[126] _President_.--Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
_Vice-Presidents_.--Rev. S. J. May, Ernestine L. Rose, New York; Hon.
William Hay Saratoga; William H. Topp, Albany; Lydia A. Jenkins,
Geneva; Lydia Mott, Albany; Mary F. Love, Randolph.
_Business Committee_.--Rev. Antoinette L. Brown, South Butler; W. H.
Channing, Rochester; Mrs. Catherine A. F. Stebbins, Mrs. Phebe H.
Jones, Troy.
_Secretaries_.--Susan B. Anthony, Sarah Pellet.
_Finance Committee_.--Mary S. Anthony, Rochester; Anna W. Anthony,
Cayuga.
[127] AN ACT RELATIVE TO THE RIGHTS OF MARRIED WOMEN:--_The People of
the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as
follows_:
1. Any married woman whose husband, from drunkenness, profligacy, or
any other cause, shall neglect and refuse to provide for her support
and education, or the support and education of her children, and any
married woman who may be deserted by her husband, shall have the
right, by her own name, to receive and collect her own earnings, and
apply the same for her own support, and the support and education of
her children, free from the control and interference of her husband,
or from any person claiming to be released from the same by and
through her husband.
2. Hereafter it shall be necessary to the validity of any indenture of
apprenticeship executed by the father, that the mother of such child,
if she be living, shall, in writing, consent to such indentures; nor
shall any appointment of a general guardian of the person of a child
by the father be valid, unless the mother of such child, if she be
living, shall, in writing, consent to such appointment.
[128] See Appendix.
[129] Ernestine L. Rose, Francis D. Gage, Hannah Tracy Cutler, Lucy N.
Coleman, Antoinette L. Brown, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Marietta Richmond,
Sarah Pellet, Carrie D. Filkins, Lydia A. Jenkins, Susan B. Anthony,
dividing their time and forces, held conventions in nearly every
county of the State, traversing some new section each year. In 1859,
Miss Anthony and Miss Brown made a successful tour of the fashionable
resorts and the northern counties. All this work the State Committee
assigned to its General Agent, giving her all honor and power, without
providing one dollar. But Miss Anthony with rare executive ability,
accomplished the work and paid all expenses.--E. C. S.
[130] It is pleasant to record that a few years later Mr. Beecher's
vision was clear on the whole question, and he was often found on the
woman's rights platform, not only speaking himself, but his sister,
Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, also. On one occasion he conducted Miss
Kate Field to the platform in Plymouth Church as gracefully as he ever
handed a lady out to dinner, introduced her to the audience, and
presided during her address. Sitting there he seemed to feel as much
at his ease as if Col. Robert G. Ingersoll had been the speaker.
[131] As this meeting was hastily decided upon, there was no call
issued; it was merely noticed in the county papers. _The Saratoga
Whig_, August 18, 1854, says:
WOMEN'S RIGHTS.--The series of conventions that have been holding
sessions in the village during the week, will close this day with a
meeting for the discussion of the social, legal, and political rights
of women, at which Miss Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage,
and Miss Sarah Pellet will appear. The meetings will be held at St.
Nicholas Hall this afternoon at 3 and a half o'clock, and in the
evening at 8 o'clock.
[132] Any one but the indomitable Susan B. Anthony would have
abandoned all idea of a meeting, but, as it was advertised, she felt
bound to make it a fact. This decision may seem the more remarkable in
view of other facts, that Miss Anthony had but little experience as a
speaker, and was fully aware of her deficiencies in that line; her
forte lay in planning conventions, raising money, marshalling the
forces, and smoothing the paths for others to go forward, make the
speeches, and get the glory. Having listened in St. Nicholas Hall for
several days to some of the finest orators in the country, it was with
great trepidation that she resolved to attempt to hold such audiences
as had crowded all the meetings during the week, and would no doubt
continue to do so. However, she had one written speech, which she
decided to divide, giving the industrial disabilities of women in the
afternoon, and their political rights in the evening, supplementing
each with whatever extemporaneous observations might strike her mind
as she proceeded. With Mrs. Gage to speak at one session and Miss
Pellet at the other, Miss Anthony rounded out both meetings to the
general satisfaction. It was thus she always stood ready for every
emergency; when nobody else would or could speak she did; when
everybody wished to speak she was silent.--E. C. S.
[133] _The Daily Saratogian_. August 19th, said: Mrs. Matilda Joslyn
Gage, a medium-sized, lady-like looking woman, dressed in a tasty
plum-colored silk with two flounces, made the first address upon some
of the defects in the marriage laws, quoting Story, Kent, and
Blackstone. She closed by speaking of Mrs. Marcet, an able writer on
political economy, her book much used in schools. She referred to Miss
Pinckney, of South Carolina, who in nullification times, wrote
powerfully on that subject. It was said that party was consolidated by
the nib of a lady's pen. She was the first woman in the United States
who was honored with a public funeral.
[134] _President_.--Martha C. Wright, of Auburn.
_Vice-Presidents_.--Rev. Samuel J. May, Syracuse; Lydia Mott, Albany;
Ernestine L. Rose, New York; Antoinette L. Brown, New York; Susan B.
Anthony, Rochester; Augusta A. Wiggins, Saratoga Springs.
_Secretaries_.--Emily Jaques, Nassau; Aaron M. Powell, Ghent; Mary L.
Booth, Williamsburgh.
_Finance Committee_.--Susan B. Anthony, Marietta Richmond, Mary S.
Anthony, Phebe H. Jones.
_Business Committee_.--Antoinette L. Brown, Ernestine L. Rose, T. W.
Higginson, Charles F. Hovey, of Boston; Phebe Merritt, of Michigan;
Hon. William Hay, of Saratoga Springs.
[135] Now the successful editor of _Harper's Bazar_.
[136] This year Miss Anthony canvassed the State, holding conventions
in fifty-four counties, organizing societies, getting signatures to
petitions, and subscribers to _The Una_. At some of these meetings
Mrs. Rose, Miss Brown, and Miss Filkins assisted by turn, but the
chief part she carried through alone. She had posters for the entire
State printed in Rochester, her father, brother Merritt, and Mary
Luther folding and superscribing to all the postmasters and the
sheriff of every county. The sheriffs, with but few exceptions, opened
the Court Houses for the meetings, posted the bills, and attended to
the advertising. Miss Anthony entered on this work without the pledge
of a dollar. But with free meetings and collections in the afternoon,
and a shilling admission in the evening, she managed to cover the
entire expenses of the campaign.
[137] WOMEN'S RIGHTS PETITION.
_To the Honorable, the Senate and Assembly of the State of New York_:
WHEREAS, the women of the State of New York are recognized as citizens
by the Constitution, and yet are disfranchised on account of sex; we
do respectfully demand the right of suffrage; a right which involves
all other rights of citizenship, and which can not be justly withheld,
when we consider the admitted principles of popular government, among
which are the following:
1st. That all men are born free and equal.
2d. That government derives its just powers from the consent of the
governed.
3d. That taxation and representation should go together.
4th. That those held amenable to laws should have a share in framing
them.
We do, therefore, petition that you will take the necessary steps so
to revise the Constitution of our State, as that all her citizens may
enjoy equal political privileges.
[138] The committee were Susan B. Anthony, Ernestine L. Rose,
Antoinette L. Brown, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Martha C. Wright, Lydia
Mott.
[139] At the close of this Convention, Charles F. Hovey, as was his
usual custom, planned an excursion for those who had taken part in the
meetings. He invited them to take a drive to the lake, a few miles out
of Saratoga, gave them a bountiful repast, and together they spent a
day rich in pleasant memories. Listening day after day to the wrongs
perpetrated on woman by law and Gospel of man's creation, Mr. Hovey
always seemed to feel that he was in duty bound to throw what sunshine
and happiness he could into the lives of women, and thus in a measure
atone for the injustice of his sex, and most royally he did this
whenever an opportunity offered, not only while he lived, but by
bequests at his death.
[140] Twenty years after this Mrs. Stanton met a lady in Texas, who
told her about this Saratoga Convention. She said her attention was
first called to the subject of woman's rights by some tracts a friend
of hers, then living in Georgia, brought home at that time, and that
we could form but little idea of the intense interest with which they
were read and discussed by quite a circle of ladies, who plied her
aunt with innumerable questions about the Convention and the
appearance and manners of the ladies who led the movement.
[141] It is now over forty years that the various branches of the
Hutchinson family have been singing the liberal ideas of their day on
the anti-slavery, temperance, and Woman's Rights platforms, and they
are singing still (1881) with the infusion of some new blood in the
second and third generation. Only one year ago traveling in Kansas, on
a dreary night train, with no sleeping car attached, I had worried
through the weary hours until three o'clock in the morning, when the
cars stopped at Fort Scott. I was slowly pacing up and down the aisle,
when in came Asa Hutchinson, violin in hand, and a troop of boys and
girls behind him. There we stood face to face, both well on the shady
side of sixty-five, our locks as white as snow, each thinking the
other was too old for such hard journeys, he still singing, I still
preaching "equal rights to all." "Well," said I, "Asa, this is a very
unchristian hour for you to be skylarking over the prairies of
Kansas." "Ah!" said he, dolorously, "this is no skylarking; we sung
last night until near eleven o'clock, shook hands, and talked until
twelve; arose about two, waited an hour at a cold depot, and we all
feel as cross as bears." "I can sympathize with you," I replied; "I
spent the hours until twelve as you did, entertaining my countrymen
and women, and have been trying to rest ever since." In talking over
old times until the day dawned we forgot our fatigue, and as I left
the cars they gave me a parting salute with the "good time coming."
How well I remember the power of the young Hutchinsons in the old mob
days; four brothers and one sister standing side by side on the
platform in Faneuil Hall, Boston. So hated were the Abolitionists and
their doctrines, that not even Wendell Phillips or Abby Kelly could
get a hearing, but when the sweet singers from the old Granite State
came forward silence reigned, to be broken, however, the moment the
last notes of harmony died upon their lips. E. C. S.
[142] Saratoga, Niagara, and Trenton Falls; Clifton, Avon, Sharon, and
Ballston Springs, Lake George, etc. In making the tour In 1859, Miss
Brown and Miss Anthony had some recherché out-door meetings in the
groves of Clifton and Trenton that were highly praised by the press
and the people, and in the long summer days most charming to
themselves.
[143] The speakers were Samuel J. May, Ernestine L. Rose, Antoinette
L. Brown, Carrie D. Filkins, Lydia A. Jenkins, Aaron M. Powell, Hon.
Wm. Hay, Susan B. Anthony.
[144] If the intestate be a married man living, and having lived with
his wife daring marriage, or if the intestate be a married woman
living or having lived with her husband during marriage, and shall die
without lawful descendants, born or to be born of such marriage, or a
prior marriage, the inheritance shall descend to the surviving husband
or wife, as the case may be, during his or her natural life, whether
the inheritance came to the intestate on the part of the mother or
father or otherwise.
[145] _President_.--Lucy Stone.
_Vice-Presidents_.--Lucretia Mott, of Pennsylvania; Elizabeth Jones,
of Ohio; Rev. T. W. Higginson, of Massachusetts; Cornelia Moore, of
New Jersey; A. Bronson Alcott, of New Hampshire; Sarah H. Hallock, of
New York.
_Secretaries_.--Martha C. Wright, of New York; Oliver Johnson, of New
York; Henrietta Johnson, of New Jersey.
_Business Committee_.--Ernestine L. Rose, Susan B. Anthony, Wendell
Phillips, James Mott, Mariana Johnson, T. W. Higginson, William Green,
Jr.
_Treasurer_.--Wendell Phillips.
_Finance_.--Susan B. Anthony.
[146] At the close of chapter on Indiana, p. 315.
[147] John C. Fremont's campaign.
[148] Mrs. Jessie Benton Fremont.
[149] 1. _Resolved_, That the close of a Presidential election affords
a peculiarly appropriate occasion to renew the demands of woman for a
consistent application of Democratic principles.
2. _Resolved_, That the Republican Party, appealing constantly,
through its orators, to female sympathy, and using for its most
popular rallying cry a female name, is peculiarly pledged by
consistency, to do justice hereafter in those States where it holds
control.
3. _Resolved_, That the Democratic Party must be utterly false to its
name and professed principles, or else must extend their application
to both halves of the human race.
4. _Resolved_, That the present uncertain and inconsistent position of
woman in our community, not fully recognized either as a slave or as
an equal, taxed but not represented, authorized to earn property but
not free to control it, permitted to prepare papers for scientific
bodies but not to read them, urged to form political opinions but not
allowed to vote upon them, all marks a transitional period in human
history which can not long endure.
5. _Resolved_, That the main power of the woman's rights movement lies
in this: that while always demanding for woman better education,
better employment, and better laws, it has kept steadily in view the
one cardinal demand for the right of suffrage; in a democracy the
symbol and guarantee of all other rights.
6. _Resolved_, That the monopoly of the elective franchise, and
thereby all the powers of legislative government by man, solely on the
ground of sex, is a usurpation, condemned alike by reason and
common-sense, subversive of all the principles of justice, oppressive
and demoralizing in its operation, and insulting to the dignity of
human nature.
7. _Resolved_, That while the constant progress of law, education, and
industry prove that our efforts for women in these respects are not
wasted, we yet proclaim ourselves unsatisfied, and are only encouraged
to renewed efforts, until the whole be gained.
[150] During the struggle to extend slavery into that free State.
[151] Jeannette Brown Heath, daughter of Nathan Brown, of Montgomery
County, New York. She traveled with Abby Kelly at one time as a
companion. Jeannette was a famous horsewoman; the young ladies of the
county thought themselves well off when they could purchase a steed
that she had trained for the saddle. I remember many an escapade in my
youth on a full-blooded black horse from Jeannette's equery, as I
lived in her neighborhood; she is now residing with two sons and one
daughter in Rochester, N. Y., enjoying the needed rest after such an
eventful life.--E. C. S.
[152] She gave $100,000 to the Observatory in Albany.
[153] EXTRACTS FROM THE WILL OF THE LATE CHARLES F. HOVEY, ESQ.
ARTICLE 16. After setting aside sufficient funds to pay all legacies
and bequests herein made, I direct my said Trustees to hold all the
rest and residue of my estate, real, personal and mixed, in special
trust for the following purposes, namely; to pay over, out of the
Interest and principal of said special trust, a sum of not less than
eight thousand dollars annually, until the same be all exhausted, to
said Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Stephen S. Foster, Abby
K. Foster, Parker Pillsbury, Henry C. Wright, Francis Jackson and
Charles K. Whipple, and their survivors and survivor, for them to use
and expend, at their discretion, without any responsibility to any
one, for promotion of the Anti-Slavery cause and other reforms, such
as Woman's Rights, Non-Resistance, Free Trade and Temperance, at their
discretion; and I request said Wendell Phillips and his said
associates to expend not less than eight thousand dollars annually, by
the preparation and circulation of books, newspapers, employing
agents, and the delivery of lectures that will, in their judgment,
change public opinion, and secure the abolition of Slavery in the
United States, and promote said other reforms. Believing that the
chain upon four millions of slaves, with tyrants at one end and
hypocrites at the other, has become the strongest bond of the Union of
the States, I desire said Phillips and his associates to expend said
bequest by employing such agents as believe and practice the doctrine,
of "No union with slaveholders, religiously or politically"; and by
circulating such publications as tend to destroy every pro-slavery
institution.
ARTICLE 17. In case chattel slavery should be abolished in the United
States before the expenditure of the said residue of my estate, as
stated in said sixteenth article of this Will; then, in that case, I
desire that the unexpended part of said residue be applied by said
Phillips and his associates, in equal proportions, for the promotion
of Non-Resistance, Woman's Rights and Free Trade; requesting that no
agents be employed by them for the promotion of said causes, except
such as believe it wrong to have any voluntary connection with any
government of violence, and such as believe that the natural rights of
men and women are equal. Whether slavery be abolished or not, I desire
that a part of the said residue of my estate may be applied to the
promotion of the kindred causes of Temperance, Woman's Rights,
Non-Resistance and Free Trade, at the discretion of the said Phillips
and his associates.
ARTICLE 22. I particularly request that no prayers be solicited from
any person, and that no priest be invited to perform any ceremony
whatever, over or after my body. The Priesthood are an order of men,
as I believe, falsely assuming to be reverend and divine, pretending
to be called of God; the great body of them in all countries have been
on the side of power and oppression; the world has been too long
cheated by them; the sooner they are unmasked, the better for
humanity. As I have heretofore borne my testimony against slavery,
intemperance, war, tariffs and all indirect taxation, banks and all
monopolies, I desire to leave on record my abhorrence of them all. The
fear of being buried before I am dead is slight, nevertheless it is
greater than the fear of death itself. I therefore request my
executors not to bury my body until at least three days after my
decease. In witness whereof, I have hereto set my hand and seal, this
twenty-eighth day of March, in the year eighteen hundred and
fifty-nine.
CHARLES F. HOVEY.
Signed, sealed, published and declared by the said Testator to be his
last Will and Testament, in presence of us, who, at his request, and
in his presence, and in the presence of each other, have hereto
subscribed our names as witnesses.
GEORGE L. LOVETT.
THOMAS MACK.
WILLIAM W. HOWE.
I do prove, approve and allow the same, and order it to be recorded.
Given under my hand and seal of office, the day and year above
written.
ISAAC AMES,
_May 30, 1859_. _Judge of Probate and Insolvency._
[154] George William Curtis, Mrs. Eliza W. Farnham, Parker Pillsbury,
Sarah Hallock, Mrs. Sidney Howard Gay, Sarah M. Grimké, Charles Lenox
Remond, Lucy A. Coleman, Sarah P. Remond, and the Hutchinson family,
consisting of Jessie, his wife, and two children, and Abby, who sung
among many other sweet ballads, "The Good Time Coming."
[155] Frederick Douglas, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Ernestine L.
Rose, Lucretia Mott, Frances Dana Gage, Wendell Phillips, Wm. Lloyd
Garrison, Oliver Johnson, Susan B. Anthony, Caroline H. Dall, Lucy
Stone, Antoinette Brown, Aaron M. Powell.
[156] Eliza Farnham was in many respects a remarkable woman. As matron
of the Sing Sing prison at one time, she introduced many humane
improvements in the occupation and discipline of the women under her
charge. She had a piano in the corridor, and with sweet music touched
the tender chords in their souls. Instead of tracts on hell-fire and
an angry God, she read aloud to them from Dickens' most touching
stories. In every way, assisted by Mariana Johnson and Georgiana
Bruce, she treated them as women, and not as criminals.
[157] Wendell Phillips, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Caroline H. Dall,
Caroline M. Severance, Ernestine L. Rose, Antoinette Brown Blackwell,
Thomas W. Higginson, Susan B. Anthony.
[158] _Resolved_, That while every newspaper in the land carries on
its face the record of woman's dishonor, the women who seek to elevate
their sex are bound to inquire into its causes and save from its
paralysis.
_Resolved_, That while we have no daughters too tender and pure, no
sons too innocent, to escape from the influence of such tragedies as
those at North Adams and Washington, the true modesty of every mother,
the true dignity of every wife, should forbid her to put aside the
questions they involve.
_Resolved_, That the dishonor of single women proceeds in great
measure from destitution, and the dishonor of married women as much
from their own want of education and utter absence of purpose in life
as from the inability of their husbands to inspire them with true
respect and help them to true living: therefore,
_Resolved_, That it is our bounden duty to open, in every possible
way, new vocations to women, to raise their wages by every advisable
means, and to secure to them an education which shall be less a
decoration to their persons than a tool to their hands.
_Resolved_, That while courts adjourn in honor of a man like Philip
Barton Key, while the whole Bar of the District of Columbia pass
resolutions in his honor, and vote to attend his funeral, as a mark of
respect, while the public opinion of a whole community sustains a man
who could not defend his murderous indignation by the witness of an
unspotted life, it is our duty to rate public opinion as a corrupting
power, and to bring up our children in the knowledge and sanction of a
higher law.
[159] FORM OF PETITION.
_To the Senate and Assembly of the Slate of New York:_
The undersigned, citizens of ----, New York, respectfully ask that you
will take measures to submit to the people an amendment of the
Constitution, allowing women to vote and hold office. And that you
will enact laws securing to married women the full and entire control
of all property originally belonging to them, and of their earnings
during marriage; and making the rights of the wife over the children
the same as a husband enjoys, and the rights of a widow, as to her
children, and as to the property left by her husband, the same that a
husband has in the property and over the children of his deceased
wife.
[160] Lydia Mott, in writing to a friend, says: "I have heard but one
opinion about the merits of the address and the manner of its
delivery, and the press is very complimentary. It was better that one
like Mrs. Stanton should speak on the occasion than two, unless the
other might have been Wendell Phillips. Mr. Mayo expressed himself
thoroughly satisfied; the whole effect was grand. Even old Father
Woolworth stood the whole time, and very often he would nod assent at
certain points. The House was packed, but so still that not one word
was lost. It was worth as much to our cause as our whole Convention,
though we could not have spared either."
[161] AN ACT CONCERNING THE RIGHTS AND LIABILITIES OF HUSBAND AND
WIFE.
Passed March 20, 1860.
_The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and
Assembly, do enact as follows:_
SECTION 1. The property, both real and personal, which any married
woman now owns, as her sole and separate property; that which comes to
her by descent, devise, bequest, gift, or grant; that which she
acquires by her trade, business, labor, or services, carried on or
performed on her sole or separate account; that which a woman married
in this State owns at the time of her marriage, and the rents, issues,
and proceeds of all such property, shall notwithstanding her marriage,
be and remain her sole and separate property, and may be used,
collected, and invested by her in her own name, and shall not be
subject to the interference or control of her husband, or liable for
his debts, except such debts as may have been contracted for the
support of herself or her children, by her as his agent.
§ 2. A married woman may bargain, sell, assign, and transfer her
separate personal property, and carry on any trade or business, and
perform any labor or services on her sole and separate account, and
the earnings of any married woman from her trade, business, labor, or
services shall be her sole and separate property, and may be used or
invested by her in her own name.
§ 3. Any married woman possessed of real estate as her separate
property may bargain, sell, and convey such property, and enter into
any contract in reference to the same; but no such conveyance or
contract shall be valid without the assent, in writing, of her
husband, except as hereinafter provided.
§ 4. In case any married woman possessed of separate real property, as
aforesaid, may desire to sell or convey the same, or to make any
contract in relation thereto, and shall be unable to procure the
assent of her husband as in the preceding section provided, in
consequence of his refusal, absence, insanity, or other disability,
such married woman may apply to the County Court in the county where
she shall at the time reside, for leave to make such sale, conveyance,
or contract, without the assent of her husband.
§ 5. Such application may be made by petition, verified by her, and
setting forth the grounds of such application. If the husband be a
resident of the county and not under disability from insanity or other
cause, a copy of said petition shall be served upon him, with a notice
of the time when the same will be presented to the said court, at
least ten days before such application. In all other cases, the County
Court to which such application shall be made, shall, in its
discretion, determine whether any notice shall be given, and if any,
the mode and manner of giving it.
§ 6. If it shall satisfactorily appear to such court, upon
application, that the husband of such applicant has willfully
abandoned his said wife, and lives separate and apart from her, or
that he is insane, or imprisoned as a convict in any state prison, or
that he is an habitual drunkard, or that he is in any way disabled
from making a contract, or that he refuses to give his consent without
good cause therefor, then such court shall cause an order to be
entered upon its records, authorizing such married woman to sell and
convey her real estate, or contract in regard thereto without the
assent of her husband, with the same effect as though such conveyance
or contract had been made with his assent.
§ 7. Any married woman may, while married, sue and be sued in all
matters having relation to her property, which may be her sole and
separate property, or which may hereafter come to her by descent,
devise, bequest, or the gift of any person except her husband, in the
same manner as if she were sole. And any married woman may bring and
maintain an action in her own name, for damages against any person or
body corporate, for any injury to her person or character, the same as
if she were sole; and the money received upon the settlement of any
such action, or recovered upon a judgment, shall be her sole and
separate property.
§ 8. No bargain or contract made by any married woman, in respect to
her sole and separate property, or any property which may hereafter
come to her by descent, devise, bequest, or gift of any person except
her husband, and no bargain or contract entered into by any married
woman in or about the carrying on of any trade or business under the
statutes of this State, shall be binding upon her husband, or render
him or his property in any way liable therefor.
§ 9. Every married woman is hereby constituted and declared to be the
joint guardian of her children, with her husband, with equal powers,
rights, and duties in regard to them, with the husband.
§ 10. At the decease of husband or wife, leaving no minor child or
children, the survivor shall hold, possess, and enjoy a life estate in
one-third of all the real estate of which the husband or wife died
seized.
§ 11. At the decease of the husband or wife intestate, leaving minor
child or children, the survivor shall hold, possess, and enjoy all the
real estate of which the husband or wife died seized, and all the
rents, issues, and profits thereof during the minority of the youngest
child, and one-third thereof during his or her natural life.
[162] On the final passage of the bill the following Senators, as _The
Journal_ shows, voted in favor of the measure, viz: Senators Abell,
Bell, Colvin, Conally, Fiero, Goss, Hillhouse, Kelly, Lapham,
Sessions, Manierre, Montgomery, Munroe, P. P. Murphy, Truman, Prosser,
Ramsey, Robertson, Rotch, Warner, Williams--21.
[163] _President._--Martha Wright, of Auburn, New York.
_Vice-Presidents._--Abby Hopper Gibbons, of New York; Asa Fairbanks,
of Rhode Island; Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, of New Jersey;
Thomas Garrett, of Delaware; Wendell Phillips, of Massachusetts;
Robert Purvis, of Pennsylvania; J. Elizabeth Jones, of Ohio; Giles B.
Stebbins, of Michigan.
_Secretaries._--Ellen Wright and Mary L. Booth.
_Finance Committee._--Susan B. Anthony, Lucy N. Colman, and Marietta
Richmond.
_Business Committee._--Ernestine L. Rose, A. L. B. Blackwell, Wm.
Lloyd Garrison, E. Cady Stanton, Mary Grew, and Wendell Phillips.
[164] In the Scotch Presbyterian Church at Johnstown, N. Y., there was
great excitement at one time on the question of temperance, the pastor
being a very active friend to that movement. The opposition were
determined to get rid of him, and called a church meeting for that
purpose. To the surprise of the leading men of the congregation, the
women came in force, armed with ballots, to defeat their proposed
measures. When the time came to vote, according to arrangement, my
mother headed the line marching up to the altar, where stood the
deacon, hat in hand, to receive the ballots. As soon as he saw the
women coming, he retreated behind the railing in the altar, closing
the little door after him, which the women deliberately opened, and
soon filled the space, completely surrounding the _inspector of
election_, and, whichever way he turned, the ballots were thrown into
the hat; and, when all had voted, my mother put her hand into the hat
and stirred them up with the men's votes, so that it would be
impossible to separate them. The pastor, representing the interests of
temperance, had a large majority for his retention. But the men
declared the election void because of the illegal voting, and,
barricading the women out, with closed doors, voted their own measures
the next day. Rev. Jeremiah Wood presided on the occasion, and whilst
the women were contending for their rights under the very shadow of
the altar, he recited various Scriptural texts on woman's sphere, to
which these rebellious ones paid not the slightest attention. One
dignified Scotch matron, looking him steadily in the face, indignant,
at the behavior of the men, said with sternness and emphasis: "I
protest against such high-handed proceedings." The result of this
outbreak, was a decree by the Judicature of the Church, "that the
women of the congregation should have the right to vote in all
business matters," which they have most judiciously done ever since.
E. C. S.
[165] Frances D. Gage, Hannah Tracy Cutler, J. Elizabeth Jones,
Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Lucy N. Colman, and Susan B. Anthony.
[166] Mrs. Roberts and her daughters in Niagara County.
[167] _Resolved_, That inasmuch as man, in the progress of his
development, found that at each advancing step new wants demanded new
rights, and naturally walked out of those places, customs, creeds, and
laws that in any way crippled and trammeled his freedom of thought,
word, or action, it is his duty to stand aside and leave to woman the
same rights--to grow up into whatever the laws of her being demand.
_Resolved_, That inasmuch as on woman are imposed by her Creator the
duties of self-support and self-defense, and by government the
responsibilities of taxation and penalties of violated law, she should
be protected in her natural, inalienable rights, and secured in all
the privileges of citizenship.
_Resolved_, That we demand a full recognition of our equal rights,
civil and political--no special legislation can satisfy us--the
enjoyment of a right to-day is no security that it will be continued
to-morrow, so long as it is granted to us by a privileged class, and
not secured to us as a sacred right.
WHEREAS, the essence of republican liberty is the principle that no
class shall depend for its rights on the mercy or justice of any other
class, therefore,
_Resolved_, That woman demands her right to the jury-box and the
ballot, that she may have, as man has, the means of her own protection
in her own hands.
_Resolved_, That woman, in consenting to remain in any organization or
church where she has no voice in the choice of officers, trustees, or
pastor--no right of protest against false doctrines or action--is
wanting in a proper self-respect, in that dignity which, as a
philanthropist and a Christian, she should ever manifest.
_Resolved_, That we from this platform instruct our legal
representatives to make no more appropriations to colleges for boys
exclusively. Now that we are large property holders and tax-payers, we
protest against the injustice of being compelled to build and endow
colleges into which we are forbidden to enter.
_Resolved_, That we advise women to apply to the trustees and heads of
public libraries, galleries of art, and similar institutions, for
employment as clerks and attendants, thus securing to themselves, when
admitted, a more liberal means of support, and furnishing a
stepping-stone to other occupations.
_Resolved_, That we return thanks to the Legislature of New York for
its acts of justice to woman during the last session. But the work is
not yet done. We still claim the ballot, the right of trial by a jury
of our own peers, the control and custody of our persons in marriage,
and an equal right to the joint earnings of the co-partnership. The
geographical position and political power of New York make her example
supreme; hence we feel assured that when she is right on this
question, our work is done.
[168] 1. _Resolved_, That, in the language (slightly varied) of John
Milton, "Those who marry intend as little to conspire their own ruin,
as those who swear allegiance, and as a whole people is to an ill
government, so is one man or woman to an ill marriage. If a whole
people, against any authority, covenant, or statute, may, by the
sovereign edict of charity, save not only their lives, but honest
liberties, from unworthy bondage, as well may a married party, against
any private covenant, which he or she never entered, to his or her
mischief, be redeemed from unsupportable disturbances, to honest peace
and just contentment."
2. _Resolved_, That all men are created equal, and all women, in their
natural rights, are the equals of men, and endowed by their Creator
with the same inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness.
3. _Resolved_, That any constitution, compact, or covenant between
human beings, that failed to produce or promote human happiness, could
not, in the nature of things, be of any force or authority; and it
would be not only a right, but a duty, to abolish it.
4. _Resolved_, That though marriage be in itself divinely founded, and
is fortified as an institution by innumerable analogies in the whole
kingdom of universal nature, still, a true marriage is only known by
its results; and, like the fountain, if pure, will reveal only pure
manifestations. Nor need it ever be said, "What God hath joined
together, let no man put asunder," for man could not put it asunder;
nor can he any more unite what God and nature have not joined
together.
5. _Resolved_, That of all insulting mockeries of heavenly truth and
holy law, none can be greater than that physical impotency is cause
sufficient for divorce, while no amount of mental or moral or
spiritual imbecility is ever to be pleaded in support of such a
demand.
6. _Resolved_, That such a law was worthy those dark periods when
marriage was held by the greatest doctors and priests of the Church to
be a work of the flesh only, and almost, if not altogether, a
defilement; denied wholly to the clergy, and a second time, forbidden
to all.
7. _Resolved_, That an unfortunate or ill-assorted marriage is ever a
calamity, but not ever, perhaps never, a crime--and when society or
government, by its laws or customs, compels its continuance, always to
the grief of one of the parties, and the actual loss and damage of
both, it usurps an authority never delegated to man, nor exercised by
God himself.
8. _Resolved_, That observation and experience daily show how
incompetent are men, as individuals, or as governments, to select
partners in business, teachers for their children, ministers of their
religion, or makers, adjudicators, or administrators of their laws;
and as the same weakness and blindness must attend in the selection of
matrimonial partners, the dictates of humanity and common sense alike
show that the latter and most important contract should no more be
perpetual than either or all of the former.
9. _Resolved_, That children born in these unhappy and unhallowed
connections are, in the most solemn sense, of unlawful birth--the
fruit of lust, but not of love--and so not of God, divinely descended,
but from beneath, whence proceed all manner of evil and uncleanliness.
10. _Resolved_, That next to the calamity of such a birth to the
child, is the misfortune of being trained in the atmosphere of a
household where love is not the law, but where discord and bitterness
abound; stamping their demoniac features on the moral nature, with all
their odious peculiarities--thus continuing the race in a weakness and
depravity that must be a sure precursor of its ruin, as a just penalty
of long-violated law.
[169] Thurlow Weed, editor of _The Albany Evening Journal_, opposed
the passage of the Divorce Bill before the New York Legislature in
1860.
[170] _Resolved_, That marriage is the voluntary alliance of two
persons of opposite sexes into one family, and that such an alliance,
with its possible incidents of children, its common interests, etc.,
must be, from the nature of things, as permanent as the life of the
parties.
_Resolved_, That if human law attempts to regulate marriage at all, it
should aim to regulate it according to the fundamental principles of
marriage; and that as the institution is inherently as continuous as
the life of the parties, so all laws should look to its control and
preservation as such.
_Resolved_, That as a parent can never annul his obligations towards
even a profligate child, because of the inseparable relationship of
the parties, so the married partner can not annul his obligations
towards the other, while both live, no matter how profligate that
other's conduct may be, because of their still closer and alike
permanent relationship; and, therefore, that all divorce is naturally
and morally impossible, even though we should succeed in annulling all
legalities.
_Resolved_, That gross fraud and want of good faith in one of the
parties contracting this alliance, such as would invalidate any other
voluntary relation, are the only causes which can invalidate this, and
this, too, solely upon the ground that the relation never virtually
existed, and that there are, therefore, no resulting moral
obligations.
_Resolved_, however, That both men and women have a first and
inviolable right to themselves, physically, mentally, and morally, and
that it can never be the duty of either to surrender his personal
freedom in any direction to his own hurt.
_Resolved_, That the great duty of every human being is to secure his
own highest moral development, and that he can not owe to society, or
to an individual, any obligation which shall be degrading to himself.
_Resolved_, That self-devotion to the good of another, and especially
to the good of the sinful and guilty, like all disinterestedness, must
redound to the highest good of its author, and that the husband or
wife who thus seeks the best interests of the other, is obedient to
the highest law of benevolence.
_Resolved_, That this is a very different thing from the culpable
weakness which allows itself to be immolated by the selfishness of
another, to the hurt of both; and that the miserable practice, now so
common among wives, of allowing themselves, their children and family
interests, to be sacrificed to a degraded husband and father, is most
reprehensible.
_Resolved_, That human law is imperatively obligated to give either
party ample protection to himself, to their offspring, and to all
other family interests, against wrong, injustice, and usurpation on
the part of the other, and that, if it be necessary to this, it should
grant a legal separation; and yet, that even such separation can not
invalidate any real marriage obligation.
_Resolved_, That every married person is imperatively obligated to do
his utmost thus to protect himself and all family interests against
injustice and wrong, let it arise from what source it may.
_Resolved_, That every woman is morally obligated to maintain her
equality in human rights in all her relations in life, and that if she
consents to her own subjugation, either in the family, Church or
State, she is as guilty as the slave is in consenting to be a slave.
_Resolved_, That a perfect union can not be expected to exist until we
first have perfect units, and that every marriage of finite beings
must be gradually perfected through the growth and assimilation of the
parties.
_Resolved_, That the permanence and indissolubility of marriage tend
more directly than anything else toward this result.
[171] Francis Jackson. This fund was drawn upon by several of the
States. $1,993.66 was expended in the campaigns in New York, the
publication of 60,000 tracts, and the appropriation of several hundred
to a series of sermons by the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell,
delivered in Hope Chapel, New York; $1,000 was expended in the Ohio
canvass of 1860, and tracts in large numbers were also sent there.
Both money and tracts were contributed to the Kansas campaign of 1859.
Lucy Stone had $1,500 to expend in Kansas in 1867, and thus in various
ways the fund was finally expended, Lucy Stone drawing out the last
$1,000 in 1871. So careful had been the management of this fund, that
the accumulation of the interest had greatly increased the original
sum.
[172] Lydia Mott was one of the quiet workers who kept all things
pertaining to the woman's rights reform in motion at the capital.
Living in Albany, she planned conventions and hearings before the
Legislature. She knew a large number of the members and men of
influence, who all felt a profound respect for that dignified,
judicious Quaker woman. Her home was not only one of the depots of the
underground railroad, where slaves escaping to Canada were warmed and
fed, but it was the hospitable resort for all reformers. Everything
about the house was clean and orderly, and the table always bountiful,
and the food appetizing. As such men as Seward and Marcy, leaders from
opposite political parties, Gerrit Smith, Garrison, Phillips,
Pillsbury, Remond, Foster, Douglass, representing all the reforms, met
in turn at Miss Mott's dinner-table, she had the advantage of hearing
popular questions discussed from every standpoint. And Miss Mott was
not merely hostess at her table, but on all occasions took a leading
part in the conversation. All of us who enjoyed her friendship and
hospitality deeply feel her loss in that conservative city.
[173] [Introduced, on notice, by Mr. Ramsey; read twice, and referred
to the Committee on the Judiciary; reported from said Committee for
the consideration of the Senate, and committed to the Committee of the
Whole].
AN ACT IN REGARD TO DIVORCES DISSOLVING THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT.
_The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and
Assembly, do enact as follows:_
SECTION 1. In addition to the cases in which a divorce, dissolving the
marriage contract, may now be decreed by the Supreme Court, such a
divorce may be decreed by said court in either of the cases following:
1. Where either party to the marriage shall, for the period of three
years next preceding the application for such divorce, have willfully
deserted the other party to the marriage, and neglected to perform to
such party the duties imposed by their relation.
2. Where there is and shall have been for the period of one year next
preceding the application for such divorce, continuous and repeated
instances of cruel and inhuman treatment by either party, so as
greatly to impair the health or endanger the life of the other party,
thereby rendering it unsafe to live with the party guilty of such
cruelty or inhumanity.
§2. The foregoing sections shall not apply to any person who shall not
have been an actual resident of this State for the period of five
years next preceding such application for such divorce.
§3. Specifications one, two, and three of original section
thirty-eight, of article three, of title one, of chapter eight, of
part two of the Revised Statutes, shall apply to these causes for
divorce as they now apply to the cause of adultery.
§4. The other provisions of the Revised Statutes relating to the
granting of divorces for adultery, and regulating the form and manner
of proceedings and decrees, and the effects thereof, and the
restrictions and defences to the application thereof, shall be
applicable to the granting of divorces for causes hereinabove
specified, and all proceedings therefor and therein, so far and in
such manner as the same may be capable of such application.
§5. This act shall take effect immediately.
[174] Published at the close of Mr. Greeley's "Recollections of a Busy
Life."
[175] Passed April 10, 1862.
SECT. 3. Any married woman, possessed of real estate as her separate
property, may bargain, sell, and convey such property, and enter into
any contract in reference to the same, with the like effect in all
respects as if she were unmarried; and she may in like manner enter
into such covenant or covenants for title as are usual in conveyances
of real estate, which covenants shall be obligatory to bind her
separate property, in case the same or any of them be broken.
§2. The fourth, fifth, sixth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh sections of
the said Act are hereby repealed.
7th. Any married woman may, while married, sue and be sued, in all
matters having relation to her sole and separate property, or which
may hereafter come to her by descent, devise, bequest, purchase, or
the gift or grant of any person, in the same manner as if she were
sole; and any married woman may bring and maintain an action in her
own name, for damages, against any person or body corporate, for any
injury to her person or character, the same as if she were sole; and
the money received upon the settlement of any such action, or
recovered upon a judgment, shall be her sole and separate property. In
case it shall be necessary in the prosecution or defense of any action
brought by or against a married woman, to enter into any bond or
undertaking, such bond or undertaking may be executed by such married
woman, with the same effect in all respects as if she were sole; and
in case the said bond or undertaking shall become broken or forfeited,
the same may be enforced against her separate estate.
8th. No bargain or contract made by any married woman, in respect to
her sole and separate property, or any property which may hereafter
come to her by descent, devise, bequest, purchase, or the gift or
grant of any person (except her husband), and no bargain or contract
entered into by any married woman, in or about the carrying on of any
trade or business, under any statute of this State, shall be binding
upon her husband, or render him or his property in any way liable
therefor.
5th. In an action brought or defended by any married woman in her
name, her husband shall not, neither shall his property, be liable for
the costs thereof, or the recovery therein. In an action brought by
her for an injury to her person, character, or property, if judgment
shall pass against her for costs, the court in which the action is
pending shall have jurisdiction to enforce payment of such judgment
out of her separate estate, though the sum recovered be less than one
hundred dollars.
6th. No man shall bind his child to apprenticeship or service, or part
with the control of such child or create any testamentary guardian
therefor, unless the mother, if living, shall in writing signify her
assent thereto.
7th. A married woman may be sued in any of the courts of this State,
and whenever a judgment shall be recovered against a married woman,
the same may be enforced by execution against her sole and separate
estate in the same manner as if she were sole.
[176] THE GUARDIANSHIP LAW, PASSED APRIL 25, 1871.
6th. The Surrogate, to whom application may be made under either of
the preceding sections, shall have the same power to allow and appoint
guardians as is possessed by the Supreme Court, and may appoint a
guardian for a minor whose father is living, upon personal service of
notice of the application for such appointment upon such father, at
least ten days prior thereto; and in all cases the Surrogate shall
inquire into the circumstances of the minor and ascertain the amount
of his personal property, and the value of the rents and profits of
his real estate, and for that purpose may compel any person to appear
before him and testify in relation thereto.