Segur, Buel Picket, Asa Cutler, Lucy T. Dike, C. M. Collins, Anna
Cornell, S. Monroe, Anna E. Price, M. C. Monroe, Gertrude R. Burleigh.
_Rhode Island._--Betsy F. Lawton, Paulina W. Davis, Cynthia P. Bliss,
Rebecca C. Capron, Martha Mowry, Mary Eddy, Daniel Mitchell, G. Davis,
Susan Sisson, Dr. S. Mowry, Elizabeth B. Chase, Rebecca B. Spring,
Susan R. Harris, A. Barnes.
_Iowa._--Silas Smith.
_Ohio._--Mariana Johnson, Oliver Johnson, Ellen Blackwell, Marian
Blackwell, Diana W. Ballou.
_California._--Mrs. Mary G. Wright.
Asenath Fuller, Denney M. F. Walker, Eunice D. F. Pierce, Elijah
Houghton, L. H. Ober, A. Wyman, Silence Bigelow, Adeline S. Greene,
Josephine Reglar, Anna T. Draper, E. J. Alden, Sophia Taft, Alice H.
Easton, Calvin Fairbanks, D. H. Knowlton, E. W. K. Thompson, Caroline
Farnum, Mary R. Hubbard.
* * * * *
SECOND WORCESTER CONVENTION, 1851.
RESOLUTIONS.
1. _Resolved_, That while we would not undervalue other methods, the
Right of Suffrage for Women is, in our opinion, the corner-stone of
this enterprise, since we do not seek to protect woman, but rather to
place her in a position to protect herself.
2. _Resolved_, That it will be woman's fault if, the ballot once in
her hand, all the barbarous, demoralizing, and unequal laws relating
to marriage and property, do not speedily vanish from the
statute-book; and while we acknowledge that the hope of a share in the
higher professions and profitable employments of society is one of the
strongest motives to intellectual culture, we know, also, that an
interest in political questions is an equally powerful stimulus; and
we see, beside, that we do our best to insure education to an
individual when we put the ballot into his hands; it being so clearly
the interest of the community that one upon whose decisions depend its
welfare and safety, should both have free access to the best means of
education, and be urged to make use of them.
3. _Resolved_, That we do not feel called upon to assert or establish
the equality of the sexes, in an intellectual or any other point of
view. It is enough for our argument that natural and political
justice, and the axioms of English and American liberty, alike
determine that rights and burdens--taxation and representation--should
be co-extensive; hence women, as individual citizens, liable to
punishment for acts which the laws call criminal, or to be taxed in
their labor and property for the support of government, have a
self-evident and indisputable right, identically the same right that
men have, to a direct voice in the enactment of those laws and the
formation of that government.
4. _Resolved_, That the democrat, or reformer, who denies suffrage to
women, is a democrat only because he was not born a noble, and one of
those levelers who are willing to level only down to themselves.
5. _Resolved_, That while political and natural justice accords civil
equality to woman; while great thinkers of every age, from Plato to
Condorcet and Mill, have supported their claim; while voluntary
associations, religious and secular, have been organized on this
basis, still, it is a favorite argument against it, that no political
community or nation ever existed in which women have not been in a
state of political inferiority. But, in reply, we remind our opponents
that the same fact has been alleged, with equal truth, in favor of
slavery; has been urged against freedom of industry, freedom of
conscience, and the freedom of the press; none of these liberties
having been thought compatible with a well-ordered state, until they
had proved their possibility by springing into existence as facts.
Besides, there is no difficulty in understanding why the subjection of
woman has been a _uniform custom_, when we recollect that we are just
emerging from the ages in which _might_ has been always right.
6. _Resolved_, That, so far from denying the overwhelming social and
civil influence of women, we are fully aware of its vast extent;
aware, with Demosthenes, that "measures which the statesman has
meditated a whole year may be overturned in a day by a woman"; and for
this very reason we proclaim it the very highest expediency to endow
her with full civil rights, since only then will she exercise this
mighty influence under a just sense of her duty and responsibility;
the history of all ages bearing witness, that the only safe course for
nations is to add open responsibility wherever there already exists
unobserved power.
7. _Resolved_, That we deny the right of any portion of the species to
decide for another portion, or of any individual to decide for another
individual what is and what is not their "proper sphere"; that the
proper sphere for all human beings is the largest and highest to which
they are able to attain; what this is, can not be ascertained without
complete liberty of choice; woman, therefore, ought to choose for
herself what sphere she will fill, what education she will seek, and
what employment she will follow, and not be held bound to accept, in
submission, the rights, the education, and the sphere which man thinks
proper to allow her.
8. _Resolved_, That we hold these truths to be self-evident: That all
men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments
are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed; and we charge that man with gross dishonesty or
ignorance, who shall contend that "men," in the memorable document
from which we quote, does not stand for the human race; that "life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," are the "inalienable rights"
of half only of the human species; and that, by "the governed," whose
consent is affirmed to be the only source of just power, is meant that
_half_ of mankind only who, in relation to the other, have hitherto
assumed the character of _governors_.
9. _Resolved_, That we see no weight in the argument that it is
_necessary_ to exclude women from civil life because domestic cares
and political engagements are incompatible; since we do not see the
fact to be so in the case of men; and because, if the incompatibility
be real, it will take care of itself, neither men nor women needing
any law to exclude them from an occupation when they have undertaken
another incompatible with it. Second, we see nothing in the assertion
that women, themselves, do not desire a change, since we assert that
superstitious fears and dread of losing men's regard, smother all
frank expression on this point; and further, if it be their real wish
to avoid civil life, laws to keep them out of it are absurd, no
legislator having ever yet thought it necessary to compel people by
law to follow their own inclination.
10. _Resolved_, That it is as absurd to deny all women their civil
rights because the cares of household and family take up all the time
of some, as it would be to exclude the whole male sex from Congress,
because some men are sailors, or soldiers in active service or
merchants, whose business requires all their attention and energies.
GLEN HAVEN, _Feb. 18, 1853_.
PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS.--_My Dear Friend_:--Bless you for _The Una_, and
for sending me a copy. I am pleased with its appearance and with the
heartiness of your correspondents. Would you find room for some of my
lucubrations? If so, I will drive my quill a little for you some of
these evenings. Perhaps I might utter something readable.
I do not ask you to send me _The Una_, for the dollar must go with the
request, and the dollar has yet to be earned by _quill-work_, a task
quite as hard as was work when a child at the _quill-wheel_, winding
yarn from the reel.
Drop me a line if you would like my assistance as a correspondent, and
what I can do, I will cheerfully.
Very truly, your friend,
J. C. JACKSON, M.D.[227]
FOOTNOTES:
[227] At present the head of the water-cure establishment,
Dansville, New York. Dr. Jackson has been identified with all the
leading reforms of his generation--Anti-slavery, Temperance, Woman
Suffrage--and an earnest advocate for a new dress for woman that
shall give freedom to her lungs and powers of locomotion.
PETITION OF HARRIOT K. HUNT TO THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTIONAL
CONVENTION.
_To the Constitutional Convention now sitting in Boston_:
Your petitioner respectfully prays your honorable body to insert into
the Constitution a clause securing to females paying town, county, and
States taxes upon property held in their own right, and who have no
husbands or other guardians to represent and act for them, the same
right of voting possessed by male tax-paying citizens; or, should your
honorable body not deem such females capable of exercising the right
of suffrage with due discretion, at least excuse them from the paying
of taxes, in the appropriation of which they have no voice, thus
carrying out the great principle on which the American Revolution was
based--that taxation and representation ought to go together. All of
which your petitioner will ever pray.
PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS
Died August 24, 1876, after two years of great suffering. A large
circle of friends gathered at her elegant residence near Providence,
Rhode Island, to pay their last tributes of friendship and respect.
The chief speaker on the occasion was, at her request, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton. She left her noble husband, Hon. Thomas Davis, and two
adopted daughters, to mourn her loss. It was a soft, balmy day, just
such as our friend would have chosen, when she was laid in her last
resting-place. Dr. and Mrs. Channing, Theodore Tilton, and Joaquin
Miller, were among those who followed in the funeral _cortège_.
* * * * *
CHAPTER IX.
INDIANA.
_Dublin Convention, October, 1851._
RESOLUTIONS.
_Resolved_, That all laws and customs having for their perpetuation
the only plea that they are time-honored, which in any way infringe on
woman's equal rights, cramp her energies, cripple her efforts, or
place her before the eyes of her family or the world as an inferior,
are wrong, and should be immediately abolished.
_Resolved_, That the avenues to gain, in all their varieties, should
be as freely opened to woman as they now are to man.
_Resolved_, That the rising generation of boys and girls should be
educated together in the same schools and colleges, and receive the
same kind and degree of education.
_Resolved_, That woman should receive for equal labor, equal pay with
man.
_Resolved_, That as the qualification for citizenship in this country
is based on capacity and morality, and as the sexes in their mental
condition are equal, therefore woman should enjoy the same rights of
citizenship with man.
An association was organized and a constitution was adopted, to which
the following names were appended: Amanda M. Way, Minerva Maulsby,
Jane Morrow, Agnes Cook, Rebecca Shreves, Rebecca Williams, Wilson D.
Schooley, Samuel Mitchell, Elda Ann Smith, Dr. O. P. Baer, Mrs. O. P.
Baer, Hannah Birdsall, Melissa J. Diggs, Hannah Hiatt, Jas. P. Way,
B. F. Diggs, Mary B. Birdsall, Fanny Hiatt, Henry Hiatt, Thomas
Birdsall, Elizabeth Hoover, Elijah C. Wright, Elizabeth Wright, A. W.
Pruyne, Dr. Mary F. Thomas, Dr. Owen Thomas, Emi B. Swank, Joel P.
Davis. Lydia P. Davis, Thursey A. Way, Rebecca A. C. Murray.
* * * * *
CHAPTER X.
PENNSYLVANIA.
SAXE, DANA, AND GRACE GREENWOOD.
MR. SAXE not long since, in a poem, satirized literary women very
keenly, upon which Grace Greenwood wrote a severe criticism on his
volume, which was published in _The Evening Post_. Mr. Saxe, after
seeing the criticism, wrote a note to the editor of the _Post_, in
which he makes an exception in favor of Grace. This calls forth
another letter from her, from which we make the following extract:
NEW BRIGHTON, _Jan. 22, 1850_.
GENTLEMEN:--....At the time of my writing, I was feeling peculiarly
sensitive in regard to my womanly, as well as literary position. The
grandpapaish lectures of Mr. Dana had troubled and discouraged me. I
said, "If so speak and write our poets, surely the age is on the
backward line of march." I had become impatient and indignant for my
sex, thus lectured to, preached at, and satirized eternally. I had
grown weary of hearing woman told that her sole business here, the
highest, worthiest aims of her existence were to be loving, lovable,
feminine, to win thus a lover and a lord whom she might glorify abroad
and make comfortable at home.
We have had enough of this. Man is not best qualified to mark out
woman's life-path. He knows, indeed, what he desires her to be, but he
does not yet understand all that God and nature require of her. Woman
should not be made up of love alone, the other attributes of her being
should not be dwarfed that this may have a large, unnatural growth.
Hers should be a distinct individuality, an independent moral
existence--or, at least, the dependence should be mutual. Woman can
best judge of woman, her wants, capacities, aspirations, and powers.
She can best speak to her on the life of the affections, on the loves
of her heart, on the peculiar joys and sorrows of her lot. She can
best teach her to be true to herself, to her high nature, to her brave
spirit; and then, indeed, shall she be constant in her love and
faithful to her duties, all, even to the most humble. Woman can
strengthen woman for the life of self-sacrifice, of devotion, of
ministration, of much endurance which lies before her.
A woman of intellect and right feeling would never dream of pointing
out the weak and unfilial Desdemona as an example to her sex in this
age; would never dare to hold up as "our destined end and aim," a one
love, however romantic and poetical, which might be so selfishly
sought and so unscrupulously secured.
Thank Heaven, woman herself is awaking to a perception of the causes
which have hitherto impeded her free and perfect development, which
have shut her out from the large experiences, the wealth and fullness
of the life to which she was called. She is beginning to feel, and to
cast off the bonds which oppress her--many of them, indeed,
self-imposed, and many gilded and rarely wrought, covered with flowers
and delicate tissues, but none the less bonds--bonds upon the speech,
upon the spirit, upon the life.
There surely is a great truth involved in this question of "Woman's
Rights," and agitated as it may be, with wisdom and mildness, or with
rashness and the bold, high spirit which shocks and startles at the
first, good will come out of it eventually, great good, and the women
of the next age will be the stronger and the freer, aye, and the
happier, for the few brave spirits who stood up fearlessly for
unpopular truth against the world.
I know that I expose myself to the charge of being unfeminine in
feeling, of ultraism. Well, better that than conservatism, though
conservatism were safer and more respectable. Senselessness is always
safety, and a mummy is a thoroughly respectable personage.
But to return to Mr. Saxe. Our poet satirized rather keenly literary
women, as a class, in the poem on which I remarked, but afterwards, in
his communication to the _Post_, most politely intimates that he
excepts me as one of the "women of real talent." But I will not be
excepted. I stand in the ranks, liable to all the penalties of the
calling--exposed to the hot shot of satire and the stinging arrows of
ridicule. I will not be received as an exception, where full justice
is not done to the class to which I belong.
Suppose, now, that I should write a poem to deliver before some
"Woman's Rights Convention" or "Ladies' Literary Association," on "The
Times," which should come down sharp and heavy on the literary men of
the day, for usurping the delicate employ by right and nature the
peculiar province of woman, "the weaker vessel"; for neglecting their
shops, their fields, their counting-houses, and their interesting
families, and wasting their precious time in writing love-tales,
"doleful ditties," and "distressful strains," for the magazines; for
flirting with the muse, while their wives are wanting shoes, or
perpetrating puns, while their children cry for "buns"! Suppose that,
pointing every line with wit, I should hold them up to contempt as
careless, improvident lovers of pleasure, given to self-indulgence;
taking their Helicon more than dashed with gin; seekers after
notoriety, eccentric in their habits and unmanly in all their tastes!
After this, should I very handsomely make an exception in favor of Mr.
Saxe, would he feel complimented?
As far as I have known literary women, and as far as they have been
made known to us in literary biography, the unwomanly and unamiable,
the poor wives, and daughters, and sisters, have been the rare
exceptions. I mean not alone "women of genius," but would include
those of mere talent, of mediocre talent even, devoted to letters as a
profession, and who, by their estimable characters and blameless
lives, are an honor to their calling.
I believe that for one woman whom the pursuits of literature, the
ambition of authorship, and the love of fame have rendered unfit for
home-life, a thousand have been made thoroughly undomestic by poor
social strivings, the follies of fashion, and the intoxicating
distinction which mere personal beauty confers.
GRACE GREENWOOD.
WESTCHESTER CONVENTION, JUNE 2 AND 3, 1852.
LETTER FROM MARY MOTT.
AUBURN, DE KALB COUNTY, INDIANA, _May 17, 1852_.
SISTERS:--You have called another Convention, and all who are the
friends of equal rights are invited to attend and participate in the
deliberations. The invitation will probably meet the eye of thousands
who would gladly encourage you by their presence, did circumstances
permit them to do so. Your aim is the moral, physical, and
intellectual elevation of woman, and through her to benefit the whole
human race. Can a Convention be called for a nobler purpose? Have men
ever aimed so high? They have had Conventions without stint; old men
and young men, Whigs, Democrats, Abolitionists, and Slaveholders, all
have had Conventions; but how few have aimed at anything higher than
political power for themselves and party. We have looked upon their
contests without personal interest in their result. Some benefits
might come to our husbands and brothers, but none to us. We are
permitted to talk about liberty, but we may not enjoy it. We may water
the tree with our tears, while our husbands pluck and enjoy the fruit.
Of what advantage is it to us to live in a Republic? Our social
position is no better than it was in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Men
have made great progress since that day; from being subjects they have
become sovereigns, ruling, as she professed to rule, by _divine
right_. True, many of these sovereigns have not a foot of ground, and
but one subject, a wife; but then he has absolute control over that
one. Yes, they have made progress; but for that progress they are much
indebted to men who, being in possession of power, were only anxious
to retain and extend it. The Great Charter was extorted from King John
by the barons in order to consolidate their power; they attended to
the interests of the common people (who then were in a state of
villanage) just so far as they could clearly see would be for their
own interest, and no further. The world is much indebted to those
sturdy barons; they did more good than they ever thought of doing.
There were germs in that charter that have borne excellent fruit since
that day.
Error delights in obscurity; surrounded with clouds and darkness, it
is comparatively secure; but let these clouds be scattered, let the
light of reason fall upon it, and it is dangerous no longer. Any act
that causes men to think, is so far an advantage to society. The ideas
will not be lost. When King James I talked and wrote upon the doctrine
of the divine right of kings, he little thought it would result in the
beheading of his son Charles, and the expulsion of his son James from
the throne. Shrouded in mystery, it was approached with reverence, and
seldom critically examined, until he lifted the veil and invited
others to behold its beauty. What had been a mystery was a mystery no
longer. He forgot what others remembered--that it might have different
aspects for the sovereign and subject. It was judged unworthy of
national homage, but very desirable as a household god. And men who
thought Paul was in the dark when he wrote, "Let every soul be subject
unto the higher powers, for there is no power but of God. The powers
that be are ordained of God. Whosoever resisteth the powers resisteth
the ordinance of God; and they that resist shall receive to themselves
damnation;" the men, I say, who could not and would not receive such
doctrine from Paul, found him worthy of all praise when he said,
"wives, obey your husbands." After a while England proposed taxing the
Colonies. One party held that protection gave them the right of
taxation. The other said the British Constitution gave the Government
no power to tax, unless the persons were represented in Parliament.
They declared their resolution to pay no taxes without representation.
Much was said about the rights of man. And when at last a three-penny
tax was laid upon tea, the men, being brimful of patriotism, cared
nothing for the tax; it was the principle they cared for, and they
would fight for their principles. How very sincere they were, let the
millions of wives answer, whose very existence is ignored in law.
There was one thing women gained by that contest; they gained a
clearer knowledge of their rights, a better understanding of their
wrongs, which, according to Blackstone, are a deprivation of rights. A
knowledge of these has produced a strong desire to seek a remedy.
Hence the call for a Woman's Convention. We must expect some
difference of opinion as to the extent of the reforms proposed; but
none who have carefully examined the subject will see reason to doubt
that our rights run parallel with the rights of man. That being
granted, we may then inquire into their expediency. Many things we
have a right to do which are inexpedient; but it is for us to say what
rights we will waive and what we will enjoy.
We claim that the professions should be open to woman, believing she
can preach as acceptably, study the law as thoroughly, and practice
medicine as successfully, as man. The business of a clerk seems to us
to be peculiarly feminine, and we claim the right to choose any trade
or business for which we have strength and capacity. If it is true
that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed, we would respectfully ask by what authority men legislate
for us, and who gave them that authority? If the power is a just one,
from what source did they derive it? Certainly not from the consent of
the governed. We presume neither men nor women care for the privilege
of voting, except as a means of securing the enjoyment of the rights
with which they have been endowed by their Creator, and for the
protection of which "Governments were first instituted among men." The
rights of women have been long in abeyance, but no lapse of time can
deprive her of them; they are not transferable. She does not ask the
law to confer upon her new rights. She only asks to have her just
rights recognized and protected. A glance at the present position of
women will show that the law does not effect this. It places minors,
idiots, insane persons, and married women in the same category. Man
takes all that the wife has to his own use, and such robberies are so
common that they excite no indignation in the breasts of his
fellow-men. He can spend all she has at the gaming-table, and who can
hinder him? He can spend it in dissipation, while his deceived wife is
suffering at home for the necessaries of life. The law gives him the
property, and with that he can usually find tools to work out his
designs. The law interposes no barriers between him and his victim. If
a married woman had equal protection with her husband, she would be
ambitious to acquire property by her own industry, and the habit of
industry and forethought thus acquired, would be found valuable in
the marriage relation, and she would not be compelled to enter
matrimony as a house of refuge. But we are told that marriage is a
contract, voluntarily entered into by competent parties, and by this
contract the rights of the woman are transferred to the man. But
_marriage is not a contract_, it is an union instituted by God
Himself, anterior to any contract whatever. Man was not pronounced
good until woman was created, and God said, Let us make man in our
image after our own likeness, and let them _have dominion_. But some
one may meet us here with the question, did He not say to the woman,
after the fall, "Thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule
over thee?" Yes, the Bible says so; and in the next chapter we are
told that Adam and Eve had two sons, the eldest called Cain, the
youngest Abel; and God said to Cain when speaking of Abel, "Unto thee
shall be his desire, and _thou shalt rule over him_." You see they are
the very words used to Eve; therefore, if dominion was taken from the
woman and given to the man, it was taken from all younger brothers and
given to the first-born. If marriage be a contract, why is it not
governed by the same rules that govern other contracts? A
consideration is necessary to the existence of a contract. In
marriage, the man offers love for love and hand for hand, but what is
the consideration for those personal rights of which he dispossesses
her? If a contract, why is there no remedy for its violation either in
law or equity, as is the case with other contracts? The bridegroom
says in the marriage service, "With all my worldly goods I thee
endow." Those who framed that impressive service no doubt considered
it but just that he who received all by the courtesy of England,
should endow her as liberally, and they thus reminded every bridegroom
of his duty, even before the altar; and what honest man will say he
should not keep his word?
MARY MOTT.
LETTER FROM DR. ELIZABETH BLACKWELL.
NEW YORK, _May 27, 1852_.
MRS. DARLINGTON.--_Dear Madam_:---I thank you cordially for your very
kind invitation, and would willingly attend your Convention did not my
duties in New York prevent my leaving the city.
The Convention could not choose a more important subject than
education for discussion, and great good will be done if public
attention is roused to the imperfection of our present system, in
which the _physical nature_ and the _duties of life_ are equally
neglected. I believe that the chief source of the false position of
women is, the _inefficiency of women themselves_--the deplorable fact
that they are so often careless mothers, weak wives, poor
housekeepers, ignorant nurses, and frivolous human beings. If they
would perform with strength and wisdom the duties which lie
immediately around them, every sphere of life would soon be open to
them. They might be priests, physicians, rulers, welcome everywhere,
for all restrictive laws and foolish customs would speedily disappear
before the spiritual power of strong, good women.
In order to develop such women, our present method of educating girls,
which is an injurious waste of time, must be entirely remodeled, and I
shall look forward with great interest to any plan of action that may
be suggested by your Convention.
With hearty sympathy in every aspiration, and the right hand of
fellowship to every conscientious worker, believe me,
Very truly yours,
ELIZABETH BLACKWELL.
LETTER FROM PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS.
It is also often asked if women want more rights, why do they not take
them? Let us see how that may be. Does a woman desire a _thorough_
medical education, where is the institution fully and property endowed
to receive her? Two women, it is true, have made their way through two
separate colleges, and when they had honorably won their diplomas, and
even the voice of scandal could not cast a shadow upon them, they were
publicly insulted by having the doors of those institutions closed
upon all others of their sex. If she desires a course of thorough
disciplinary study for any purpose whatsoever, where is she to find
means or the institution to receive her? The academic shades are
forbidden ground to her, while their massive doors turn with no harsh
grating sound at the magic word of man for man. If we did not feel
too deeply the injustice of this, we might comfort ourselves with the
idea that our brains are so superior that we do not need the same
amount of study and discipline as the other sex....
When Socrates was advocating the equal education of women for
governmental offices, he was met by ridicule. His words in
consideration of it are full of wisdom. Says the sage, "The man who
laughs at women going through their exercises, reaps the unripe fruit
of a ridiculous wisdom, and seems not rightly to know at what he
laughs, or why he does it, for that ever was and will be deemed a
noble saying, that the profitable is beautiful and the hurtful
base."....
The harmony, unity, and oneness of the race, can not be secured while
there is class legislation; while one half of humanity is cramped
within a narrow sphere and governed by arbitrary power. This
unrecognized half desires these factitious restraints removed, and to
be placed side by side with the other, simply that there may be full,
free, and equal development in the future. The moral life which urges
this claim is the God within us. The force which opposes it, it
matters not whence it comes, "is of the earth, earthy."....
LETTER FROM WM. H. AND MARY JOHNSON.
The influence of woman as a wife and a mother has been so often
portrayed, that it would be difficult to find a moral writer who has
not indulged in the fruitful theme, but we can not omit the occasion
of quoting the sentiments of the eloquent Wm. Wirt on this subject:
"Is not _our_ conduct toward this sex ill-advised and foolish in
relation to our own happiness? Is it not to reject a boon which
Providence kindly offers to us, and which, were we to embrace and
cultivate it with skill, would refine and enlarge the sources of our
own enjoyment, and purify, raise, and ennoble our own character beyond
the power of human calculation?
"As the companion of a man of sense and virtue, as an instrument and
partner of his earthly happiness, what is the most beautiful woman in
the world without a mind--without a cultivated mind, capable of an
animated correspondence with his own, and of reciprocating all his
thoughts and feelings?
Is not our conduct on this head ungenerous and ignoble to the other
sex? Do we not deprive them of the brightest and most angelic portion
of their character, degrade them from the rank of intelligence which
they are formed to hold; and instead of making them the partners of
our souls, attempt to debase them into mere objects of sense?
"Is not our conduct mean and dastardly? Does it not look as if we were
afraid that, with equal opportunities, they would rival us in
intelligence, and examine and refute our pretended superiority?"
We congratulate the Convention on the selection of the place for
holding their deliberations. In no part of the State could a community
be found better qualified to appreciate the objects of such a meeting,
or the means for their accomplishment. Chester has undoubtedly taken
the lead of all her sister counties in educational movements, as may
be witnessed in her numerous flourishing schools for both sexes, which
are attracting, as to a common focus, pupils from all parts of the
country. And it affords us unmingled pleasure to observe the numerous
female schools that have been established in this quarter, and the
patronage that has been extended toward them. These are sure
indications of an improved public sentiment in relation to the
development of the female mind.
But there are other indications of advancement in this particular
still more encouraging, because they exhibit fruits of the most
ennobling powers of the human understanding. We allude to those
benevolent associations particularly for promoting temperance, in
which the females of Chester County have borne such a conspicuous and
effective part. The reflection is, indeed, animating, that at a period
when almost all kindred associations in the State, among the other
sex, had languished, and intemperance seemed likely once more to
overwhelm the land with more desolating evils than had ever yet been
known, there was yet to be found in Chester County an association of
females who were nobly bearing the standard of total abstinence, and
by their well-timed labors giving evidence that there was yet vitality
in the cause! Thus we have seen not only in this, but in other fields
of moral reform, that the progress has uniformly been commensurate
with the intellectual and moral culture of the female mind. Let the
sex, then, give their influence in promoting a system of education
that will, if carried out, secure to every woman in the land the
blessings of thorough practical instruction. May the deliberations of
the Convention tend to the promotion of this most desirable object.
With such developments as must result from the more general diffusion
of knowledge, not only rights, but duties that have been hidden by the
suggestions of ignorance and bigotry will be brought to light, and the
sex will realize the noble sentiment of one of New England's gifted
sons, that
"New occasions teach new duties--Time makes ancient good uncouth,
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth!"
Desiring that your discussions may be guided by that spirit which has
heretofore characterized them, we remain your friends,
WM. H. JOHNSON AND MARY JOHNSON.
RESOLUTIONS OF THE WESTCHESTER CONVENTION, 1852.
_Resolved_, That every party which claims to represent the humanity,
the civilization, or the progress of the age, is bound to inscribe on
its banner, "Equality before the laws, without distinction of sex."
_Resolved_, That the science of government is not necessarily
connected with the violence and intrigue which are now frequently
practised by party politicians, neither does the exercise of the
elective franchise, or the _PROPER_ discharge of governmental duties
necessarily involve the sacrifice of the refinement or sensibilities
of true womanhood.
_Resolved_, That in demanding for women that equal station among their
brethren to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them,
we do not urge the claim in the spirit of an adverse policy, or with
any idea of separate advantages, or in any apprehension of conflicting
interests between the sexes.
_Resolved_, That while we regret the antagonism into which we are
necessarily brought to some of the laws, customs, and monopolies of
society, we have cause to rejoice that the exposure of the great
wrongs of woman has been so promptly met by a kind spirit, and a
disposition to redress these wrongs, to open avenues for her
elevation, and to co-operate for her entire enfranchisement.
_Resolved_, That the greatest and most varied development of the human
mind, and the widest sphere of usefulness, can be obtained only by the
highest intellectual culture of the whole people, and that all
obstructions should be removed which tend to prevent women from
entering, as freely as men, upon the study of the physical, mental,
and moral sciences.
_Resolved_, That we can not appreciate the justice or generosity of
the laws which require women to pay taxes, and thus enable legislators
richly to endow colleges and universities for their own sex, from
which the female sex is entirely excluded.
_Resolved_, That the growing liberality of legislation and judicial
construction, in regard to the property rights of married women,
affords gratifying evidence of the equity of our demands and of their
progress in public sentiment.
_Resolved_, That the disposition of property by law as affecting
married parties, ought to be the same for the husband and the wife,
"that she should have, during life, an equal control over the property
gained by their mutual toil and sacrifices; and be heir to her
husband, precisely to the extent that he is heir to her."
_Resolved_, That the mother being as much the natural guardian of the
child as the father, ought so to be recognized in law, and if it is
justly the province of the court to appoint guardians for minors, want
of qualification in the surviving parent should be the required
condition of the appointment.
_Resolved_, That the inequality of the remuneration paid for woman's
labor compared with that of man, is unjust and degrading, for so long
as custom awards to her smaller compensation for services of equal
value, she will be held in a state of dependence, not by any order of
nature, but by an arbitrary rule of man.
_Resolved_, That the distinctive traits of female character, like its
distinct physical organism, having its foundation in nature, the
widest range of thought and action, and the highest cultivation and
development of all its varied powers, will only make more apparent
those sensibilities and graces which are considered its peculiar
charm.
_Resolved_, That in claiming for woman all the rights of human beings
we are but asserting her humanity, leaving the differences actually
existing in the male and female constitutions to take care of
themselves, these differences furnishing no reason for subjecting one
sex to the other.
_Resolved_, That a Committee be appointed to prepare and circulate
petitions, asking of our Legislature such a change in the Constitution
and laws of this State, as shall extend to woman the privilege of the
elective franchise, and equality in the division and inheritance of
property.
_Resolved_, That said Committee be instructed to collect information
upon the rights acknowledged and privileges guaranteed to women by
other States and Governments, publishing it in such way as by them
shall be deemed best for promoting political and legal equality
between the sexes.
_Resolved_, That H. M. Darlington, P. E. Gibbons, Hannah Wright, Mary
Ann Fulton, Sarah E. Miller, Lea Pusey, and Ruth Dugdale be the
Committee.
Oliver Johnson offered a resolution expressing the satisfaction
afforded to the members of the Convention by the presence and labors
of those friends who had come from their distant homes in other States
to be with us on this occasion. It was unanimously adopted.
The Convention adjourned _sine die_.
FOURTH NATIONAL W. R. CONVENTION, PHILADELPHIA, OCTOBER 18, 19, 20,
1854.
RESOLUTIONS.
_Resolved_, That we congratulate the true friends of woman upon the
rapid progress which her cause has made during the year past, in spite
of the hostility of the bad and the prejudices of the good.
_Resolved_, That woman's aspiration is to be the only limit of woman's
destiny.
_Resolved_, That so long as woman is debarred from an equal education,
restricted in her employments, denied the right of independent
property if married, and denied in all cases the right of controlling
the legislation which she is nevertheless bound to obey, so long must
the woman's rights agitation be continued.
_Resolved_, That in perfect confidence that what we desire will one
day be accomplished, we commit the cause of woman to God and to
humanity.
_Resolved_, That in demanding the educational rights of woman, we do
not deny the natural distinctions of sex, but only wish to develop
them fully and harmoniously.
_Resolved_, That in demanding the industrial rights of woman, we only
claim that she should have "a fair day's wages for a fair day's work,"
which is, however, impossible while she is restricted to few ill-paid
avocations, and unable (if married) to control her own earnings.
_Resolved_, That in demanding the political rights of woman, we simply
assert the fundamental principle of democracy--that taxation and
representation should go together, and that, if this principle is
denied, all our institutions must fall with it.
_Resolved_, That our present democracy is an absurdity, since it
deprives woman even of the political power which is allowed to her in
Europe, and abolishes all other aristocracy only to establish a new
aristocracy of sex, which includes _all_ men and excludes all women.
_Resolved_, That it is because we recognize the beauty and sacredness
of the family, that we demand for woman an equal position there,
instead of her losing, as now, the control of her own property, the
custody of her own children, and, finally, her own legal existence,
under laws which have all been pronounced by jurists "a disgrace to a
heathen nation."
_Resolved_, That we urge it upon the women of every American State:
First, to petition the legislatures for universal suffrage and a
reform in the rights of property; second, to use their utmost efforts
to improve female education; third, to open as rapidly as possible new
channels for female industry.
Mrs. Tracy Cutler made an address upon the objects of the movement.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XI.
LUCRETIA MOTT'S FUNERAL.
Lueretia Mott died at her quiet home, "Roadside," near Philadelphia,
Nov. 11, 1880. Notwithstanding the Associated Press dispatch said,
"Funeral strictly private by special request," the attendance on that
occasion was large. _The Philadelphia Times_ thus describes it: The
funeral of Lucretia Mott, attended by an immense concourse of people,
at her residence as well as in the cemetery, was an impressive scene
not soon to be forgotten. A handsome stone house, standing in
tastefully laid out and carefully kept grounds studded with forest
trees, just west of the old fork road in Cheltenham township,
Montgomery County, was the home of Lucretia Mott. On this occasion the
road and grounds were densely packed with carriages, people on
horseback and on foot, coming from many miles about to pay their last
tributes of respect to this noble woman.
The funeral was conducted according to the custom of the Society of
Friends, and was in all its appointments simple and unostentatious, in
keeping with the character of the noble woman who had passed away. No
set forms were observed.
The body, in her usual Quaker costume, lay in a room adjoining the
library, in a plain, unpolished walnut coffin, padded and lined with
some white material, but without any ornamentation whatever. There
were no flowers and no uttered demonstrations of grief, but a profound
sadness seemed to pervade the house, and for half an hour no sound was
heard in the densely thronged rooms save the muffled tread over the
thick carpets of fresh arrivals and the whispered directions of a
servant, pointing the way to the room where a last look at the dead
might be had.
At half-past 12 o'clock Deborah Wharton arose from her seat in the
parlor, and made a brief but touching address on the life and
character of the deceased. She began by a quotation from the Bible:
"This day a mighty prince has fallen in Israel." She then contrasted
the condition in life of Lucretia Mott and that of a prince, and
showed how she had accomplished more for humanity than the most
powerful princes, but without noise and tumult and the shedding of
blood.
Dr. Furness paid a beautiful tribute to the dead. He quoted the
beatitudes from the the fifth chapter of Matthew, and applied them to
her. "We are accustomed," he said, "to speak of the dead as having
gone to their reward, but Lucretia Mott had her reward here, and she
shall have it hereafter a hundred fold." Dr. Furness closed with an
eloquent prayer that the example of the beautiful life ended upon
earth might not be lost upon the living.
Phoebe Couzins paid a tender and loving tribute that touched every
heart. Then loving hands took up the little coffin--it looked hardly
larger than a child's--and bore it to the gravelled drive in front of
the house. The route was down York road to Fairhill, the Friends'
cemetery, at Germantown Avenue and Cambria Street, in this city, which
was reached about three o'clock. Here several hundred people were
already gathered to witness the interment. Fairhill is a little
cemetery, about the size of a city square. It is mound-shaped, sloping
up from all sides to the center. It is filled with trees and
shrubbery, but does not contain a single monument, the graves being
simply marked with little marble blocks, which do not rise more than
six inches above the ground. In the highest part of the grounds was
the open grave, by the side of the husband, James Mott, who was buried
about twelve years ago. Above the grave spread the branches of an
aspen tree, and near it is a weeping willow. While thousands stood
about, the coffin was reverently, solemnly, and silently lowered. The
grave was then filled up, the friends turned away, and slowly the
cemetery was deserted.
Memorial services were held the same day and hour by Liberal Germans
in Milwaukie, Wisconsin, and by the City Suffrage Association in New
York. Dr. Clement Lozier, president of the society, presided. Charles
G. Ames, of Philadelphia; Frederick Hinckley, of Providence; Robert
Collyer, of New York, gave memorial sermons in their respective
churches.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XIII
MRS. STANTON'S REMINISCENCES.
PETERBORO, _December 1, 1855_.
ELIZABETH C. STANTON.--_My Dear Friend_:--The "Woman's Rights
Movement" has deeply interested your generous heart, and you have ever
been ready to serve it with your vigorous understanding. It is,
therefore, at the risk of appearing somewhat unkind and uncivil, that
I give my honest answer to your question. You would know why I have so
little faith in this movement. I reply, that it is not in the proper
hands; and that the proper hands are not yet to be found. The present
age, although in advance, of any former age, is, nevertheless, very
far from being sufficiently under the sway of reason to take up the
cause of woman, and carry it forward to success. A much stronger and
much more widely diffused common sense than has characterized any of
the generations, must play its mightiest artillery upon the stupendous
piles of nonsense, which tradition and chivalry and a misinterpreted
and superstitious Christianity have reared in the way of this cause,
ere woman can have the prospect of the recognition of her rights and
of her confessed equality with man.
The object of the "Woman's Rights Movement" is nothing less than to
recover the rights of woman--nothing less than to achieve her
independence. She is now the dependent of man; and, instead of rights,
she has but privileges--the mere concessions (always revocable and
always uncertain) of the other sex to her sex. I say nothing against
this object. It is as proper as it is great; and until it is realized,
woman can not be half herself, nor can man be half himself. I rejoice
in this object; and my sorrow is, that they, who are intent upon it,
are not capable of adjusting themselves to it--not high-souled enough
to consent to those changes and sacrifices in themselves, in their
positions and relations, essential to the attainment of this vital
object.
What if a nation in the heart of Europe were to adopt, and uniformly
adhere to, the practice of cutting off one of the hands of all their
new-born children? It would from this cause be reduced to poverty, to
helpless dependence upon the charity of surrounding nations, and to
just such a measure of privileges as they might see fit to allow it,
in exchange for its forfeited rights. Very great, indeed, would be the
folly of this strange nation. But a still greater folly would it be
guilty of, should it, notwithstanding this voluntary mutilation, claim
all the wealth, and all the rights, and all the respect, and all the
independence which it enjoyed before it entered upon this systematic
mutilation.
Now, this twofold folly of this one-hand nation illustrates the
similar twofold folly of some women. Voluntarily wearing, in common
with their sex, a dress which imprisons and cripples them, they,
nevertheless, follow up this absurdity with the greater one of
coveting and demanding a social position no less full of admitted
rights, and a relation to the other sex no less full of independence,
than such position and relation would naturally and necessarily have
been, had they scorned a dress which leaves them less than half their
personal power of self-subsistence and usefulness. I admit that the
mass of women are not chargeable with this latter absurdity of
cherishing aspirations and urging claims so wholly and so glaringly at
war with this voluntary imprisonment and this self-degradation. They
are content in their helplessness and poverty and destitution of
rights. Nay, they are so deeply deluded as to believe that all this
belongs to their natural and unavoidable lot. But the handful of women
of whom I am here complaining--the woman's rights women--persevere
just as blindly and stubbornly as do other women, in wearing a dress
that both marks and makes their impotence, and yet, O amazing
inconsistency! they are ashamed of their dependence, and remonstrate
against its injustice. They claim that the fullest measure of rights
and independence and dignity shall be accorded to them, and yet they
refuse to place themselves in circumstances corresponding with their
claim. They demand as much for themselves as is acknowledged to be
due to men, and yet they refuse to pay the necessary, the
never-to-be-avoided price of what they demand--the price which men
have to pay for it.
I admit that the dress of woman is not the primal cause of her
helplessness and degradation. That cause is to be found in the false
doctrines and sentiments of which the dress is the outgrowth and
symbol. On the other hand, however, these doctrines and sentiments
would never have become the huge bundle they now are, and they would
probably have all languished, and perhaps all expired, but for the
dress. For, as in many other instances, so in this, and emphatically
so in this, the cause is made more efficient by the reflex influence
of the effect. Let woman give up the irrational modes of clothing her
person, and these doctrines and sentiments would be deprived of their
most vital aliment by being deprived of their most natural expression.
In no other practical forms of folly to which they might betake
themselves, could they operate so vigorously and be so invigorated by
their operation.
Were woman to throw off the dress, which, in the eye of chivalry and
gallantry, is so well adapted to womanly gracefulness and womanly
helplessness, and to put on a dress that would leave her free to work
her own way through the world, I see not but that chivalry and
gallantry would nearly or quite die out. No longer would she present
herself to man, now in the bewitching character of a plaything, a
doll, an idol, and now in the degraded character of his servant. But
he would confess her transmutation into his equal; and, therefore, all
occasion for the display of chivalry and gallantry toward her on the
one hand, and tyranny on the other, would have passed away. Only let
woman attire her person fitly for the whole battle of life--that great
and often rough battle, which she is as much bound to fight as man is,
and the common sense expressed in the change will put to flight all
the nonsensical fancies about her superiority to man, and all the
nonsensical fancies about her inferiority to him. No more will then be
heard of her being made of a finer material than man is made of; and,
on the contrary, no more will then be heard of her being but the
complement of man, and of its taking both a man and a woman (the
woman, of course, but a small part of it) to make up a unit. No more
will it then be said that there is sex in mind--an original sexual
difference in intellect. What a pity that so many of our noblest women
make this foolish admission! It is made by the great majority of the
women who plead the cause of woman.
I am amazed that, the intelligent women engaged in the "Woman's Rights
Movement," see not the relation between their dress and the oppressive
evils which they are striving to throw off. I am amazed that they do
not see that their dress is indispensable to keep in countenance the
policy and purposes out of which those evils grow. I hazard nothing in
saying, that the relation between the dress and degradation of an
American woman, is as vital as between the cramped foot and
degradation of a Chinese woman; as vital as between the uses of the
inmate of the harem and the apparel and training provided for her.
Moreover, I hazard nothing in saying, that an American woman will
never have made her most effectual, nor, indeed, any serviceable
protest against the treatment of her sex in China, or by the lords of
the harem, so long as she consents to have her own person clothed in
ways so repugnant to reason and religion, and grateful only to a
vitiated taste, be it in her own or in the other sex.
Women are holding their meetings; and with great ability do they urge
their claim to the rights of property and suffrage. But, as in the
case of the colored man, the great needed change is in himself, so,
also, in the case of woman, the great needed change is in herself. Of
what comparative avail would be her exercise of the right of suffrage,
if she is still to remain the victim of her present false notions of
herself and of her relations to the other sex?--false notions so
emphatically represented and perpetuated by her dress? Moreover, to
concede to her the rights of property would be to benefit her
comparatively little, unless she shall resolve to break out from her
clothes-prison, and to undertake right earnestly, as right earnestly
as a man, to get property. Solomon says: "The destruction of the poor
is their poverty." The adage that knowledge is power, is often
repeated; and there are, indeed, many instances to verify it.
Nevertheless, as a general proposition, it is a thousandfold more
emphatically true that property is power. Knowledge helps to get
property, but property is the power. That the slaves are a helpless
prey, is chiefly because they are so poor and their masters so rich.
The masses almost everywhere are well-nigh powerless, because almost
everywhere they are poor. How long will they consent to be poor? Just
so long as they shall consent to be robbed of their God-given right
to the soil. That women are helpless is no wonder, so long as women
are paupers.
As long as woman shall be silly enough to learn her lessons in the
schools of gallantry and chivalry, so long will it be the height of
her ambition to be a graceful and amiable burden upon the other sex.
But as soon as she shall consent to place herself under the
instructions of reason and common sense, and to discard, as wholly
imaginary, those differences between the nature of man and the nature
of woman, out of which have grown innumerable nonsensical doctrines
and notions, and all sorts of namby pamby sentiments, so soon will she
find that, to no greater extent than men are dependent on each other,
are women to foster the idea of their dependence on men. Then, and not
till then, will women learn that, to be useful and happy, and to
accomplish the high purposes of their being, they must, no less
emphatically than men, stand upon their own feet, and work with own
hands, and bear the burdens of life with their own strength, and brave
its storms with their own resoluteness.
The next "Woman's Rights Convention" will, I take it for granted,
differ but little from its predecessors. It will abound in righteous
demands and noble sentiments, but not in the evidence that they who
enunciate these demands and sentiments are prepared to put themselves
in harmony with what they conceive and demand. In a word, for the lack
of such preparation and of the deep earnestness, which alone can
prompt to such preparation, it will be, as has been every other
Woman's Rights Convention, a failure. Could I see it made up of women
whose dress would indicate their translation from cowardice to
courage; from slavery to freedom; from the kingdom of fancy and
fashion and foolery to the kingdom of reason and righteousness, then
would I hope for the elevation of woman, aye, and of man too, as
perhaps I have never yet hoped. What should be the parts and
particulars of such dress, I am incapable of saying. Whilst the
"Bloomer dress" is unspeakably better than the common dress, it
nevertheless affords not half that freedom of the person which woman
is entitled and bound to enjoy. I add, on this point, that however
much the dresses of the sexes should resemble each other, decency and
virtue and other considerations require that they should be obviously
distinguishable from each other.
I am not unaware that such views as I have expressed in this letter
will be regarded as serving to break down the characteristic delicacy
of woman. I frankly admit that I would have it broken down; and that I
would have the artificial and conventional, the nonsensical and
pernicious thing give place to the natural delicacy which would be
common to both sexes. As the delicacy, which is made peculiar to one
of the sexes, is unnatural, and, therefore, false, this, which would
be common to both, would be natural, and, therefore, true. I would
have no characteristic delicacy of woman, and no characteristic
coarseness of man. On the contrary, believing man and woman to have
the same nature, and to be therefore under obligation to have the same
character, I would subject them to a common standard of morals and
manners. The delicacy of man should be no less shrinking than that of
woman, and the bravery of woman should be one with the bravery of man.
Then would there be a public sentiment very unlike that which now
requires the sexes to differ in character, and which, therefore, holds
them amenable to different codes--codes that, in their partiality to
man, allow him to commit high crimes, and that, in their cruelty to
woman, make the bare suspicion of such crimes on her part the
justification of her hopeless degradation and ruin.
They who advocate that radical change in her dress which common sense
calls for, are infidels in the eyes of such as subscribe to this
interpretation of the Bible. For if the Bible teaches that the
Heaven-ordained condition of woman is so subordinate and her
Heaven-ordained character so mean, then they are infidels who would
have her cast aside a dress so becoming that character and condition,
and have her put on a dress so entirely at war with her humble nature,
as to indicate her conscious equality with man, and her purpose to
assert, achieve, and maintain her independence. Alas, how
misapprehended are the true objects and true uses of the Bible! That
blessed book is given to us, not so much that we may be taught by it
what to do, as that we may be urged by its solemn and fearful commands
and won by its melting entreaties, to do what we already know we
should do. Such, indeed, is the greatest value of its recorded fact
that Jesus Christ died to save us from our sins. We already know that
we should repent of our sins and put them away; and it is this fact
which furnishes our strongest possible motive for doing so. But men
run to the Bible professedly to be taught their duty in matters where
their very instincts--where the laws, written in large, unmistakable,
ineffaceable letters upon the very foundations of their being--teach
them their duty. I say _professedly_, for generally it is only so.
They run to the Bible, not to learn the truth, but to make the Bible
the minister to folly and sin. They run from themselves to the Bible,
because they can more easily succeed in twisting its records into the
service of their guilty passions and guilty purposes than they can
their inflexible convictions. They run to the Bible for a paramount
authority that shall override and supplant these uncomfortable
convictions. They run from the teachings of their nature and the
remonstrances of their consciences to find something more palatable.
Hence, we find the rum-drinker, and slaveholder, and polygamist, and
other criminals going to the Bible. They go to it for the very purpose
of justifying their known sins. But not only may we not go to the
Bible to justify what we ourselves have already condemned, but we must
not take to the judicature of that book, as an open question, any of
the wrongs against which nature and common sense cry out--any of the
wrongs which nature and common sense call on us to condemn.
So fraught with evil, and ruinous evil, is this practice, on the part
of the Church as well as the world, of inquiring the judgment of the
Bible in regard to sins, which the natural and universal conscience
condemns, but which the inquirer means to persist in, if only he can
get the Bible to testify against his conscience and in favor of his
sins; so baleful, I say, is this practice, as to drive me to the
conclusion that the Bible can not continue to be a blessing to mankind
in spite of it. The practice, in its present wide and well-nigh
universal extent, turns the heavenly volume into a curse. Owing to
this practice, the Bible is, this day, a hindrance rather than a help
to civilization.
But if woman is of the same nature and same dignity with man, and if
as much and as varied labor is needed to supply her wants as to supply
the wants of man, and if for her to be, as she so emphatically is,
poor and destitute and dependent, is as fatal to her happiness and
usefulness and to the fulfillment of the high purposes of her
existence, as the like circumstances would be to the honor and welfare
of man, why then put her in a dress which compels her to be a
pauper--a pauper, whether in ribbons or rags? Why, I ask, put her in a
dress suited only to those occasional and brief moods, in which man
regards her as his darling, his idol, and his angel; or to that
general state of his mind in which he looks upon her as his servant,
and with feelings certainly much nearer contempt than adoration.
Strive as you will to elevate woman, nevertheless the disabilities and
degradation of this dress, together with that large group of false
views of the uses of her being and of her relations to man, symbolized
and perpetuated, as I have already said, by this dress, will make your
striving vain.
Woman must first fight against herself--against personal and mental
habits so deep-rooted and controlling, and so seemingly inseparable
from herself, as to be mistaken for her very nature. And when she has
succeeded there, an easy victory will follow. But where shall be the
battle-ground for this indispensable self-conquest? She will laugh at
my answer when I tell her, that her dress, aye, her dress, must be
that battle-ground. What! no wider, no sublimer field than this to
reap her glories in! My further answer is, that if she shall reap them
anywhere, she must first reap them there. I add, that her triumph
there will be her triumph everywhere; and that her failure there will
be her failure everywhere.
Affectionately yours,
GERRIT SMITH.
MRS. STANTON'S REPLY.
SENECA FALLS, _Dec. 21, 1855_.
MY DEAR COUSIN:--Your letter on the "Woman's Right Movement" I have
thoroughly read and considered. I thank you, in the name of woman, for
having said what you have on so many vital points. You have spoken
well for a man whose convictions on this subject are the result of
reason and observation; but they alone whose souls are fired through
personal experience and suffering can set forth the height and depth,
the source and center of the degradation of women; they alone can feel
a steadfast faith in their own native energy and power to accomplish a
final triumph over all adverse surroundings, a speedy and complete
success. You say you have but little faith in this reform, because the
changes we propose are so great, so radical, so comprehensive; whilst
they who have commenced the work are so puny, feeble, and undeveloped.
The mass of women are developed at least to the point of discontent,
and that, in the dawn of this nation, was considered a most dangerous
point in the British Parliament, and is now deemed equally so on a
Southern plantation. In the human soul, the steps between discontent
and action are few and short indeed. You, who suppose the mass of
women contented, know but little of the silent indignation, the deep
and settled disgust with which they contemplate our present social
arrangements. You claim to believe that in every sense, thought, and
feeling, man and woman are the same. Well, now, suppose yourself a
woman. You are educated up to that point where one feels a deep
interest in the welfare of her country, and in all the great questions
of the day, in both Church and State; yet you have no voice in either.
Little men, with little brains, may pour forth their little sentiments
by the hour, in the forum and the sacred desk, but public sentiment
and the religion of our day teach us that silence is most becoming in
woman. So to solitude you betake yourself, and read for your
consolation the thoughts of dead men; but from the Bible down to
Mother Goose's Melodies, how much complacency, think you, you would
feel in your womanhood? The philosopher, the poet, and the saint, all
combine to make the name of woman synonymous with either fool or
devil. Every passion of the human soul, which in manhood becomes so
grand and glorious in its results, is fatal to womankind. Ambition
makes a Lady Macbeth; love, an Ophelia; none but those brainless
things, without will or passion, are ever permitted to come to a good
end. What measure of content could you draw from the literature of the
past?
Again, suppose yourself the wife of a confirmed drunkard. You behold
your earthly possessions all passing away; your heart is made
desolate; it has ceased to pulsate with either love, or hope, or joy.
Your house is sold over your head, and with it every article of
comfort and decency; your children gather round you, one by one, each
newcomer clothed in rags and crowned with shame; is it with gladness
you now welcome the embrace of that beastly husband, feel his fevered
breath upon your cheek, and inhale the disgusting odor of his tobacco
and rum? Would not your whole soul revolt from such an union? So do
the forty thousand drunkards' wives now in this State. They, too, are
all discontented, and but for the pressure of law and gospel would
speedily sunder all these unholy ties. Yes, sir, there are women, pure
and virtuous and noble as yourself, spending every day of all the
years of their existence in the most intimate association with
infamous men, kept so by that monstrous and unnatural artifice,
baptized by the sacred name of marriage. I might take you through
many, many phases of woman's life, into those sacred relations of
which we speak not in our conventions, where woman feels her deepest
wrongs, where in blank despair she drags out days, and weeks, and
months, and years of silent agony. I might paint you pictures of real
life so vivid as to force from you the agonized exclamation, How can
women endure such things!
We who have spoken out, have declared our rights, political and civil;
but the entire revolution about to dawn upon us by the acknowledgment
of woman's social equality, has been seen and felt but by the few. The
rights, to vote, to hold property, to speak in public, are
all-important; but there are great social rights, before which all
others sink into utter insignificance. The cause of woman is, as you
admit, a broader and a deeper one than any with which you compare it;
and this, to me, is the very reason why it must succeed. It is not a
question of meats and drinks, of money and lands, but of human
rights--the sacred right of a woman to her own person, to all her
God-given powers of body and soul. Did it ever enter into the mind of
man that woman too had an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of her individual happiness? Did he ever take in the idea that
to the mother of the race, and to her alone, belonged the right to say
when a new being should be brought into the world? Has he, in the
gratification of his blind passions, ever paused to think whether it
was with joy and gladness that she gave up ten or twenty years of the
heyday of her existence to all the cares and sufferings of excessive
maternity? Our present laws, our religious teachings, our social
customs on the whole question of marriage and divorce, are most
degrading to woman; and so long as man continues to think and write,
to speak and act, as if maternity was the one and sole object of a
woman's existence--so long as children are conceived in weariness and
disgust--you must not look for high-toned men and women capable of
accomplishing any great and noble achievement. But when woman shall
stand on an even pedestal with man--when they shall be bound together,
not by withes of law and gospel, but in holy unity and love, then, and
not till then, shall our efforts at minor reforms be crowned with
complete success. Here, in my opinion, is the starting-point; here is
the battle-ground where our independence must be fought and won. A
true marriage relation has far more to do with the elevation of woman
than the style and cut of her dress. Dress is a matter of taste, of
fashion; it is changeable, transient, and may be doffed or donned at
the will of the individual; but institutions, supported by laws, can
be overturned but by revolution. We have no reason to hope that
pantaloons would do more for us than they have done for man himself.
The negro slave enjoys the most unlimited freedom in his attire, not
surpassed even by the fashions of Eden in its palmiest days; yet in
spite of his dress, and his manhood, too, he is a slave still. Was the
old Roman in his toga less of a man than he now is in swallow-tail and
tights? Did the flowing robes of Christ Himself render His life less
grand and beautiful? In regard to dress, where you claim to be so
radical, you are far from consistent.
Believing, as you do, in the identity of the sexes, that all the
difference we see in tastes, in character, is entirely the result of
education--that "man is woman and woman is man"--why keep up these
distinctions in dress? Surely, whatever dress is convenient for one
sex must be for the other also. Whatever is necessary for the perfect
and full development of man's physical being, must be equally so for
woman. I fully agree with you that woman is terribly cramped and
crippled in her present style of dress. I have not one word to utter
in its defense; but to me, it seems that if she would enjoy entire
freedom, she should dress just like man. Why proclaim our sex on the
house-tops, seeing that it is a badge of degradation, and deprives us
of so many rights and privileges wherever we go? Disguised as a man,
the distinguished French woman, "George Sand," has been able to see
life in Paris, and has spoken in political meetings with great
applause, as no woman could have done. In male attire, we could travel
by land or sea; go through all the streets and lanes of our cities and
towns by night and day, without a protector; get seven hundred dollars
a year for teaching, instead of three, and ten dollars for making a
coat, instead of two or three, as we now do. All this we could do
without fear of insult, or the least sacrifice of decency or virtue.
If nature has not made the sex so clearly defined as to be seen
through any disguise, why should we make the difference so striking?
Depend upon it, when men and women in their every-day life see and
think less of sex and more of mind, we shall all lead far purer and
higher lives.
Your letter, my noble cousin, must have been written in a most
desponding mood, as all the great reforms of the day seem to you on
the verge of failure. What are the experiences of days and months and
years in the lifetime of a mighty nation? Can one man in his brief
hour hope to see the beginning and end of any reform? When you compare
the public sentiment and social customs of our day with what they were
fifty years ago, how can you despair of the temperance cause? With a
Maine Law and divorce for drunkenness, the rum-seller and drunkard
must soon come to terms. Let woman's motto be, "No union with
Drunkards," and she will soon bring this long and well-fought battle
to a triumphant close.
Neither should you despair of the anti-slavery cause; with its
martyrs, its runaway slaves, its legal decisions in almost every paper
you take up, the topic of debate in our national councils, our
political meetings, and our literature, it seems as if the nation were
all alive on this question. True, four millions of slaves groan in
their chains still, but every man in this nation has a higher idea of
individual rights than he had twenty years ago.
As to the cause of woman, I see no signs of failure. We already have a
property law, which in its legitimate effects must elevate the _femme
covert_ into a living, breathing woman, a wife into a property-holder,
who can make contracts, buy and sell. In a few years we shall see how
well it works. It needs but little forethought to perceive that in due
time these large property-holders must be represented in the
Government; and when the mass of women see that there is some hope of
becoming voters and law-makers, they will take to their rights as
naturally as the negro to his heels when he is sure of success. Their
present seeming content is very much like Sambo's on the plantation.
If you truly believe that man is woman, and woman is man; if you
believe that all the burning indignation that fires your soul at the
sight of injustice and oppression, if suffered in your own person,
would nerve you to a life-long struggle for liberty and independence,
then know that what you feel, I feel too, and what I feel the mass of
women feel also. Judge by yourself, then, how long the women of this
nation will consent to be deprived of their social, civil, and
political rights; but talk not to us of failure. Talk not to us of
chivalry, that died long ago. Where do you see it? No gallant knight
presents himself at the bar of justice to pay the penalty of our
crimes. We suffer in our own persons, on the gallows, and in prison
walls. From Blackstone down to Kent, there is no display of gallantry
in your written codes. In social life, true, a man in love will jump
to pick up a glove or bouquet for a silly girl of sixteen, whilst at
home he will permit his aged mother to carry pails of water and
armfuls of wood, or his wife to lug a twenty-pound baby, hour after
hour, without ever offering to relieve her. I have seen a great many
men priding themselves on their good breeding--gentlemen, born and
educated--who never manifest one iota of spontaneous gallantry toward
the women of their own household.
Divines may preach thanksgiving sermons on the poetry of the arm-chair
and the cradle; but when they lay down their newspapers, or leave
their beds a cold night to attend to the wants of either, I shall
begin to look for the golden age of chivalry once more. If a short
dress is to make the men less gallant than they now are, I beg the
women at our next convention to add at least two yards more to every
skirt they wear. And you mock us with dependence, too. Do not the
majority of women in every town support themselves, and very many
their husbands, too? What father of a family, at the loss of his wife,
has ever been able to meet his responsibilities as woman has done?
When the mother dies the house is made desolate, the children are
forsaken--scattered to the four winds of heaven--to the care of any
one who chooses to take them. Go to those aged widows who have reared
large families of children, unaided and alone, who have kept them all
together under one roof, watched and nursed them in health and
sickness through all their infant years, clothed and educated them,
and made them all respectable men and women, ask them on whom they
depended. They will tell you on their own hands, and on that
never-dying, never-failing love, that a mother's heart alone can know.
It is into hands like these--to these who have calmly met the terrible
emergencies of life--who, without the inspiration of glory, or fame,
or applause, through long years have faithfully and bravely performed
their work, self-sustained and cheered, that we commit our cause. We
need not wait for one more generation to pass away, to find a race of
women worthy to assert the humanity of women, and that is all we claim
to do.
Affectionately yours,
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
FRANCES D. GAGE'S REPLY TO GERRIT SMITH.
[From Frederick Douglass' paper].
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.--_Dear Sir_:--In your issue of Dec. 1st, I find a
letter from Hon. Gerrit Smith to Elizabeth C. Stanton, in reference to
the Woman's Rights Movement, showing cause, through labored columns,
why it has proved a failure.
This article, though addressed to Mrs. Stanton, is an attack upon
every one engaged in the cause. For he boldly asserts that the
movement "is not in proper hands, and that the proper hands are not
yet to be found." I will not deny the assertion, but must still claim
the privilege of working in a movement that involves not only my own
interest, but the interests of my sex, and through us the interests of
a whole humanity. And though I may be but a John the Baptist, unworthy
to unloose the latchet of the shoes of those who are to come in _short
skirts_ to redeem the world, I still prefer that humble position to
being Peter to deny my Master, or a Gerrit Smith to assert that truth
_can_ fail.
I do not propose to enter into a full criticism of Mr. Smith's long
letter. He has made the whole battle-ground of the Woman's Rights
Movement her dress. Nothing brighter, nothing nobler than a few inches
of calico or brocade added to or taken from her skirts, is to decide
this great and glorious question--to give her freedom or to continue
her a slave. This argument, had it come from one of less influence
than Gerrit Smith, would have been simply ridiculous. But coming from
_him_, the almost oracle of a large portion of our reformers, it
becomes worthy of an answer from every earnest woman in our cause. I
will not say one word in defense of our present mode of dress. Not I;
but bad as it is, and cumbersome and annoying, I still feel that we
can wear it, and yet be lovers of liberty, speaking out our deep
feeling, portraying our accumulated wrongs, saving ourselves for a
time yet from that antagonism which we must inevitably meet when we
don the semi-male attire. We _must own ourselves under the law first_,
own our bodies, our earnings, our genius, and our consciences; then we
will turn to the lesser matter of what shall be the garniture of the
body. Was the old Roman less a man in his cumbrous toga, than
Washington in his tights? Was Christ less a Christ in His vesture,
woven without a seam, than He would have been in the suit of a
Broadway dandy?
"Moreover, to concede to her rights of property, would be to benefit
her comparatively little, unless she shall resolve to break out of her
clothes-prison, and to undertake right earnestly, as earnestly as a
man, to get property." So says Gerrit Smith. And he imputes the want
of earnestness to her clothes. It in a new doctrine that high and holy
purposes go from without inward, that the garments of men or women
govern and control their aspirations. But do not women _now_ work
right earnestly? Do not the German women and our market women labor
right earnestly? Do not the wives of our farmers and mechanics toil?
Is not the work of the _mothers_ in our land as important as that of
the father? "Labor is the foundation of wealth." The reason that our
women are "paupers," is not that they do not labor "right earnestly,"
but that the law gives their earnings into the hands of manhood. Mr.
Smith says, "That women are helpless, is no wonder, so long as they
are paupers"; he might add, no wonder that the slaves of the cotton
plantation are helpless, so long as they are paupers. What reduces
both the woman and the slave to this condition? The law which gives
the husband and the master entire control of the person and earnings
of each; the law that robs each of the rights and liberties that every
"free white male citizen" takes to himself as God-given. Truth falling
from the lips of a Lucretia Mott in long skirts is none the less
truth, than if uttered by a Lucy Stone in short dress, or a Helen
Maria Weber in pants and swallow-tail coat. And I can not yet think so
meanly of manly justice, as to believe it will yield simply to a
change of garments. Let us assert our right to be free. Let us get out
of our prison-house of law. Let us own ourselves, our earnings, our
genius; let us have power to control as well as to earn and to own;
then will each woman adjust her dress to her relations in life.
Mr. Smith speaks of reforms as failures; what can he mean? "The
Temperance Reform still drags." I have been in New York thirty-seven
days; have given thirty-three lectures; have been at taverns, hotels,
private houses, and depots; rode in stages, country wagons, omnibuses,
carriages, and railroad cars; met the masses of people daily, and yet
have not seen one drunken man, scarce an evidence that there was such
a thing as intemperance in the Empire State. If the whole body has
been diseased from childhood and a cure be attempted, shall we cry out
against the physician that his effort is a failure, because the malady
does not wholly disappear at once? Oh, no! let us rather cheer than
discourage, while we see symptoms of amendment, hoping and trusting
that each day will give renewed strength for the morrow, till the cure
shall be made perfect. The accumulated ills of centuries can not be
removed in a day or a year. Shall we talk of the Anti-Slavery Cause as
a "failure," while our whole great nation is shaking as if an Etna
were boiling below? When did the North ever stand, as now, defiant of
slavery? Anti-slavery may be said to be written upon the "chariots and
the bells of the horses." Our National Congress is nothing more or
less than a great Anti-slavery Convention. Not a bill, no matter how
small or how great its importance, but hinges upon the question of
slavery. The Anti-Slavery Cause is no failure; RIGHT CAN NOT FAIL.
"The next Woman's Rights Convention will be, as has every other
Woman's Rights Convention, a failure, notwithstanding it will abound
in righteous demands and noble sentiments." So thinks Mr. Smith. Has
any Woman's Rights Convention been a failure? No movement so radical,
striking so boldly at the foundation of all social and political
order, has ever come before the people, or ever so rapidly and widely
diffused its doctrine. The reports of our conventions have traveled
wherever newspapers are read, causing discussion for and against, and
these discussions have elicited truth, and aroused public thought to
the evils growing out of woman's position. New trades and callings are
opening to us; in every town and village may be found advocates for
the equality of privilege under the law, for every thinking, reasoning
human soul. Shall we talk of failure, because forty, twenty, or seven
years have not perfected all things? When intemperance shall have
passed away, and the four million chattel slaves shall sing songs of
freedom; when woman shall be recognized as man's equal, socially,
legally, and politically, there will yet be reforms and reformers, and
men who will despair and look upon one branch of the reform as the
great _battle-ground_, and talk of the failure of the eternal law of
progress. Still there will be stout hearts and willing hands to work
on, honestly believing that truth and right are sustained by no single
point, and their watchword will be "Onward!" We can not fail, for our
cause is just.
FRANCES D. GAGE.
ROCHESTER, _Dec. 24, 1855_.
The names of those who wore the Bloomer costume at that early day are:
Elizabeth Smith Miller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer, Sarah
and Angelina Grimké, Mrs. William Burleigh, Charlotte Beebe Wilbour,
Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Helen Jarvis, Lydia Sayre Hasbrook,
Amelia Williard, Celia Burleigh, Harriet N. Austin, Lydia Jenkins, and
many patients at sanitariums, many farmers' wives, and many young
ladies for skating and gymnastic exercises.
Looking back to this experiment, we are not surprised at the hostility
of men in general to the dress, as it made it very uncomfortable for
them to go anywhere with those who wore it. People would stare; some
men and women make rude remarks; boys follow in crowds, or shout from
behind fences, so that the gentleman in attendance felt it his duty to
resent the insult by showing fight, unless he had sufficient
self-control to pursue the even tenor of his way without taking the
slightest notice of the commotion his companion was creating. No man
went through the ordeal with the coolness and dogged determination of
Charles Dudley Miller, escorting his wife and cousin on long
journeyings, at fashionable resorts, in New York and Washington, to
the vexation of all his gentleman friends and acquaintances.
AMELIA BLOOMER COMMENTS ON JANE G. SWISSHELM.
_To the Editor of the Nonpareil:_
Jane Grey Swisshelm thinks it is dare-devil independence that is
ruining the women of this country.--_Nonpareil_.
And what woman of them all has shown so much "dare-devil independence"
as Jane G. Swisshelm? One of the first women to wield the
pen-editorial thirty years ago, she was so independent and fearless as
to excite the wonder of her readers. The first woman admitted to the
reporters' gallery in the Capitol of the nation, she astonished and
shocked the country by her attacks upon Daniel Webster and other
prominent senators at that day, and was expelled from the gallery for
her "dare-devil independence." While publishing a paper at St. Cloud,
she was so outspoken and offensive in her personalities, that her
press and type were destroyed by indignant politicians. After the war
she obtained an office in one of the departments at Washington, and
started a paper called the _Reconstructionist_ in that city. For her
"dare-devil independence" as a writer in attacking President Johnson
and charging that he had part in the assassination of President
Lincoln, she was relieved of her office and her press destroyed.
And so in whatever she has part; to whatever she sets her hand, she
ever displays a reckless independence that is truly a marvel to those
who watch her uncertain course. She fearlessly attacks both friend and
foe, if they go contrary to her views of right; and both people and
measures that to-day have her countenance and approval, are liable
to-morrow to receive an unmerciful lashing from her pen. No woman has
set an example of more "dare-devil independence" before "the women of
this country" than Jane G. Swisshelm, and if it is proving their ruin
she has much to answer for. But we are not prepared to believe her
assertion, and we can not think her a ruined woman, notwithstanding
her many years of "dare-devil independence." The writer has known her
long, has engaged in many a pen-tilt with her, but has never met her
personally. She regards her as an able, outspoken defender of the
wronged and oppressed, a fearless advocate of the right as she sees
it, and an "independent dare-devil" writer on whatever subject she
deems worthy of her pen.
AMELIA BLOOMER.
COUNCIL BLUFFS, _July 30, 1880_.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XIV.
NEW YORK.
NEW YORK STATE TEMPERANCE CONVENTION, ROCHESTER,
APRIL 20, 21, 1852.
LETTER FROM FRANCES DANA GAGE.
MCCONNELLSVILLE, O., _April 5, 1852_.
MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--Yours of March 22d, asking of me words of
counsel and encouragement for the friends of temperance, who are to
meet at Rochester on the 20th inst., is before me. Need I tell you how
earnestly my heart responds to that request, and with what joy I hail
every demonstration on the part of woman that evidences an awakening
energy in her mind, to the great duties and responsibilities of her
being!
If we examine the statistics of crime in the United States, we shall
find that a very large proportion of the criminals of our land are the
victims of intemperance. The records of poverty, shame, and
degradation furnish the same evidence against the traffic and use of
ardent spirits. Examine those same statistics, and another great truth
stares us in the face--that nine-tenths of all the manufacturers of
ardent spirits, of all the drinkers of ardent spirits, and of all the
criminals made by ardent spirits, are men. But we find, too, in our
search, a fact equally interesting to us, that the greatest sufferers
from all this crime and shame and wrong, are women. Is it not meet,
then, that women should lay aside the dependent inactivity which has
hitherto held them powerless, and give their strength to the cause of
reform which is now agitating the minds of the people?
What is woman? The answer is returned to me in tones that shake my
very soul. She is the mother of mankind! The living providence, under
God, who gives to every human being its mental, moral, and physical
organism--who stamps upon every human heart her seal for good or for
evil! Who then, but she, should cry aloud, and spare not, when the
children she has borne--forgetting their allegiance to her and their
duty to themselves, have assumed the power to rule over her, shutting
her out from their counsels, and surrounding her, without her own
consent, with circumstances which lead to misery and death; and, in
their pride and strength, trampling upon justice, love, and mercy,
withering her heart by violence and oppression, and yet compelling
her, in her dependence as a wife, to perpetuate in her offspring their
own depraved appetites and disorganized faculties?
It will not be denied that woman in all past ages has been made, by
both law and custom, the inferior of her own children. Man has assumed
to himself the power of being "lord of creation"; yet what has he done
for his kind? Look at the present state of society and receive your
answer! He has filled the world with madness, with oppression and
wrong; he has allowed snares to be laid at every turn, to entangle the
feet of our children, and lead them away into vice and crime. He has
legalized the causes which fill the jails, the penitentiaries, the
houses of correction, the poorhouses, and asylums with the blood of
our hearts, even our children, and our children's children. There is
not a drunkard in the land, not a criminal that has been made by
strong drink, but is the child of a woman. Yet not one woman's vote
has ever been given to legalize the sale of ardent spirits, that have
maddened the brain of her child. No woman's vote ever sanctioned the
rum-seller's bar, at which her husband has bartered away his manhood,
and made himself more vile than the brutes that perish.
Shall I be answered that woman's home influence must keep her children
and her husband in the paths of virtue and honor? What! disfranchised
woman--made by her law-maker an appendage to himself, her intellect
shackled, her labor underrated, her physical power dwarfed and
enfeebled by custom--is she expected to do this mighty thing? I hear
again an answer--"Woman is responsible for the moral atmosphere that
surrounds her." Is this indeed so? Men have taken from her every power
to protect herself, even the dignity and respect which the right of
suffrage confers upon the lowest man in the community, and which makes
his opinion worth its price among men, is denied her. Men are in the
daily habit of indulging in immoralities and vices, while they enjoin
it upon woman--"poor, frail, weak woman," as they call us--to destroy
the influence they have created. They place the temptation before the
child, then sternly demand of its suffering mother her vigilance and
care to control the appetite, which he has, it may be, inherited from
his fathers, back from the third and fourth generation. Perchance,
even through her own breast, he has sucked the poison that is
corrupting all the streams of his young life. She may have grappled
with the tempter, and come off conqueror; but can she hold him, the
drunkard's child--the drunkard's grandchild--with the twofold curse
upon his brow, while men place this direful temptation ever within his
reach, glaring out upon him in beautiful enticement at every corner of
the street, and at every turn of his daily and nightly walks, and add
their influence and example to draw him away from the counsels of a
mother's love, and the endearments of home? Then, when, under the
influence of men, he outrages society, and in his maniac madness
violates the law of the land, and becomes a felon, wasting away his
days in the gloomy prison, or expiating his crimes upon the gallows,
they forget what they have done, and, turning to the poor, crushed,
and bleeding heart, which they have pierced with a thousand sorrows,
cry out, "You, O mother of that guilty man, have not done your duty,
and society holds you responsible for all his suffering and for all
his crimes. O God! is this not adding insult to injury? How can the
weak control the strong? How can the servant, bound hand and foot by
the master, do the bidding of the tyrant? But all men are not
weak--all men are not oppressive--all men are not unjust. There is a
strong force, ever in the field of battle, struggling for truth and
right with earnest heart and firm resolve. Let us arouse, O my
sisters, and add our strength to theirs. The time is coming, aye, now
is, when we must shake off our dependence and inactivity, and live
more true to ourselves; when we must refuse to live the wives of
drunkards, perpetuating, as mothers, their vices and crimes, to
pollute society.
Let us unite with the good and true among men, that our efforts may
overcome the legions who have hitherto conquered on the side of wrong,
and raise high the standard of love and humanity, where falsehood and
hate have ruled rampant. Let every woman, everywhere, speak out her
bold, free thought on the subject of temperance; and while we plead
with our rulers to deliver our husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers
from the temptations to sin, let us demand with earnestness the right
hereafter to protect ourselves; that we may redeem ourselves from the
unjust law that now taxes every woman, without her own consent,
according to her property or ability to labor, to pay her proportion
for the support of vice and crime--that hereafter, when such great
moral questions are under public discussion, and we, as one-half of
the people, send up our petitions to our law-makers for a redress of
wrongs, or an abatement of evils, our voice of pleading shall not be
spurned by the heartless sneer, "They are only women, and the voice of
a woman can not affect us at the polls, or disturb the course of our
political parties. What care we for her progress or her wrongs?" Thus
have we too often been answered, and shall be again, if we do not
prove worthy of the chaplet of freedom, by winning it for ourselves.
Let us then unite heart and hand in this great temperance
reform--laying aside all local animosities, all sectional prejudices
and sectarian jealousies--and, as it were, with one voice and one
spirit, take hold of the work before us, resolved, if we fail to-day,
to rise with renewed energy to-morrow, and "Never give up!" be our
motto, till, without bloodshed, without hate, or uncharitableness, we
gain the victory over those who cater to the most uncontrollable and
destructive passion that has ever cursed humanity--the passion for
strong drink--and then, and not till then, will we fold our arms and
take our rest, amid the hallelujahs of the redeemed.
Yours, in the cause of humanity,
FRANCES D. GAGE.
S. B. ANTHONY, _Chairman of Committee_.
LETTER FROM MRS. C. I. H. NICHOLS.
BRATTLEBORO, Vt., _April 13, 1852_.
SISTERS AND FRIENDS OF TEMPERANCE:--In resorting to the pen as a
medium of communication with your Convention, I feel, most sensibly,
its inferiority to a _vis-à-vis_ talk--it tells so little, and that so
meagerly! But, remembering that a single just thought, or vital truth,
communicated to intelligent minds and willing hearts, is an investment
sure of increase, I will bless God for the pen, and ask of Him to make
it a tongue for humanity.
The limits of a written communication will forbid me to say much, and
I would address myself to a single point broached in your Albany
Convention, and a point that seems to me of the first importance;
because a mistake in morals, a wrong perpetrated in the home
relations, is the greatest of all wrongs to humanity. And marred,
indeed, would be your triumph, if, in preventing the repeal of one
unjust statute, you sanction the enactment of another. So true it is
that one injustice becomes the source of another, I fear to
contemplate the enactment of a trifling encroachment even upon
inalienable rights or divinely sanctioned pursuits.
In addressing myself to the position that "drunkenness be made a good
and sufficient cause for divorce," I am secured from any fear that you
will regard me as warring with abstractions, since such a bill has
found its way into your Legislature, proving that the popular sympathy
for suffering women and children is already concentrating on divorce
as the remedy. I have hesitated about addressing you on this subject,
lest I might render myself obnoxious to the charge of diverting the
objects of your meeting, to an occasion for the discussion of
forbidden topics. But an irresistible conviction, that since the
subject is already launched upon your reform, it is important that a
just view of its bearings should be presented, impels me to throw
myself upon your sympathy, trusting in the divine power of truth to
commend both my motives and my positions to your judgments and your
hearts.
And first, let me say, I would not be understood as opposed to
emancipating the wretched victims of irremediable abuse. And if there
be a benevolence, under the warm heaven of Almighty Love, it is the
protecting of helplessness and innocence from the sufferings that
result, inevitably, from the rum traffic. But while I fully agree with
Mrs. Stanton, that no pure-hearted and understanding woman can
innocently become the mother of a drunkard's offspring--while I rely
upon the general diffusion of physiological truths to create a
sentiment abhorrent to the idea of raising a posterity, the breath of
whose life shall be derived from the animalized and morally tainted
vitality of the drunkard--I differ with her in the remedy proposed.
If drunkenness were irremediable, and beyond the reach of legislation,
then would I accept her remedy as the final resort. But regarding
divorce as, at best, only affording a choice of evils, and drunkenness
as equally within the power of legislation, I propose that drunkenness
be legislated out of existence, and thus the necessity for divorce,
which it creates, be avoided.
Let a thoroughly prohibitive law destroy the traffic, and the drunkard
will be found "clothed" again and "in his right mind." It will come to
this glorious consummation at last; and, though years may intervene,
it becomes us to act with reference to the discerned future, and
beware that transient evils do not betray us into planting life-long
regrets. Allow me to illustrate my idea by narrating incidents of a
case in point, and which is inwoven with the recollections and
tenderest sympathies of my whole life.
The young and lovely mother of five little ones procured a divorce
from her husband, whose incompetency and unkindness was the result
solely of intemperance, and that intemperance the consequence of his
strong social bias and inability to resist the temptations of a
period, when every man put the bottle to his neighbor's month as proof
of his generosity, his friendship, and his good-breeding. His father,
on whom the family were dependent for support, urged it upon the wife,
as a duty to her children and due to her own self-respect, to procure
a divorce, when, at last, the miserable husband had been sent to
prison for a forgery, involving a small sum, and which he had thought
to meet--before the note came to maturity--undetected.
She submitted, and, before the period of his imprisonment expired,
married again, by the advice and persuasion of her kind father-in-law,
to a wealthy and excellent man, who offered a father's care and home
to her children, in proof of his affection for herself. But the heart
never yielded its first love; and, when more than twenty years had
passed, she confessed to a friend "that, should he reform at the
eleventh hour, she must be the most wretched of women." He did reform!
and for many years has exhibited those cheerful graces of the
Christian, which, added to his naturally amiable disposition and
unselfish deportment, make his three-score and tenth year seem rather
the morning than the evening of a life, stretching far away into the
glories of eternity.
And now, tell me, friends, if the picture of that youthful affection,
strengthened and intensified in the hearts of both by long years of
unavailing regret, does not awaken in you a conviction of some better
way for protecting helpless women and children from the evils of
drunkenness? Oh, say, can you calmly contemplate the hundreds and
thousands of hearts which would throb with repressed anguish, when the
wretchedness which drove them to divorce shall have vanished with the
doomed traffic, and reformed men, by the strong arm of law, reclaim
their children from the weeping Rachels of the land?
But think not, friends, that I am unmindful of the misery of years, or
months even, when I plead that divorce shall not be made the necessity
of hunted and betrayed affections, the factitious barrier against
abuse and starvation. I present to your consideration a remedy equally
effective, and far more grateful to the delicate sensibilities and
hopeful affection of the woman and the wife--a remedy which possesses
the merit of a preventive power, and the collateral security of a
reclaiming influence.
The advantage proposed to be secured to the wife of the drunkard, by
divorce, is the release from his control of her property and person.
Secure to the innocent and suffering wife the guardianship of her
children, and the control of her own earnings--in short, make her a
free, instead of a bond-woman--and you secure to the family of the
drunkard all the alleviation in the power of legislation, and without
compelling the wife, from pecuniary necessity or self-immolating
regard for her children, to sever her conjugal relation, and quench
the hope of a future of rational companionship.
The pauperism and extreme degradation of the drunkard's family is
mainly chargeable to the laws, which wreck the energies, by merging
the means of the wife and mother in the will of the irresponsible
husband and father.
With these views--gathered from facts and heart-broken confidences
open to few--I appeal to you in the name of the most sacred
affections--I protest, in behalf of humanity, against compelling the
unfortunate of my dependent sex to choose between their present
bondage of means and divorce.
To the Christian, who shrinks from divorce, as separating what God
hath joined, I appeal to carry out the principle, preserving
everywhere what God hath joined. Hath He not joined mother and child
in body and spirit? Sever them not. Hath He not joined in each human
being necessities and ability to supply them? But, alas! by man's
carpentry, the ability of woman to supply her wants is pressed into
the service of man's carnal and wicked appetites, to supply him with
liquid fire, while herself and babes become miserable paupers in body
and in mind!
I leave the subject here, praying that God may bless your
deliberations, and guide you into all truth.
Yours, for the oppressed, ever,
C. I. H. NICHOLS.
SYRACUSE CONVENTION, SEPT. 8, 9, 10, 1852.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON'S LETTER.
SENECA FALLS, _Sept. 6_.
MY DEAR FRIENDS:--As I can not be present with you, I wish to suggest
three points for your sincere and earnest consideration.
1. Should not all women living in States where woman has the right to
hold property refuse to pay taxes, so long as she is unrepresented in
the government of that State?
Such a movement, if simultaneous, would no doubt produce a great deal
of confusion, litigation, and suffering on the part of woman; but
shall we fear to suffer for the maintenance of the same glorious
principle for which our forefathers fought, bled, and died? Shall we
deny the faith of the old Revolutionary heroes, and purchase for
ourselves a false power and ignoble ease, by declaring in action that
taxation without representation is just? Ah, no! like the English
Dissenters and high-souled Quakers of our own land, let us suffer our
property to be seized and sold, but let us never pay another tax until
our existence as citizens, our civil and political rights be fully
recognized.... The poor, crushed slave, but yesterday toiling on the
rice plantation in Georgia, a beast, a chattel, a thing, is to-day, in
the Empire State (if he own a bit of land and a shed to cover him), a
person, and may enjoy the proud honor of paying into the hand of the
complaisant tax-gatherer the sum of seventy-five cents. Even so with
the white woman--the satellite of the dinner-pot, the presiding genius
of the wash-tub, the seamstress, the teacher, the gay butterfly of
fashion, the _feme covert_ of the law, man takes no note of her
through all these changing scenes. But, lo! to-day, by the fruit of
her industry, she becomes the owner of a house and lot, and now her
existence is remembered and recognized, and she too may have the
privilege of contributing to the support of this mighty Republic, for
the "white male citizen claims of her one dollar and seventy-five
cents a year, because, under the glorious institutions of this free
and happy land, she has been able, at the age of fifty years, to
possess herself of a property worth the enormous sum of three hundred
dollars. It is natural to suppose she will answer this demand on her
joyously and promptly, for she must, in view of all her rights and
privileges so long enjoyed, consider it a great favor to be permitted
to contribute thus largely to the governmental treasury.
One thing is certain, this course will necessarily involve a good deal
of litigation, and we shall need lawyers of our own sex whose
intellects, sharpened by their interests, shall be quick to discover
the loopholes of retreat. Laws are capable of many and various
constructions; we find among men that as they have new wants, that as
they develop into more enlarged views of justice, the laws are
susceptible of more generous interpretation, or changed altogether;
that is, all laws touching their own interests; for while man has
abolished hanging for theft, imprisonment for debt, and secured
universal suffrage for himself, a married woman, in most of the States
in the Union, remains a nonentity in law--can own nothing; can be
whipped and locked up by her lord; can be worked without wages, be
robbed of her inheritance, stripped of her children, and left alone
and penniless; and all this, they say, according to law. Now, it is
quite time that we have these laws revised by our own sex, for man
does not yet feel that what is unjust for himself, is also unjust for
woman. Yes, we must have our own lawyers, as well as our physicians
and priests. Some of our women should go at once into this profession,
and see if there is no way by which we may shuffle off our shackles
and assume our civil and political rights. We can not accept man's
interpretation of the law.
2. Do not sound philosophy and long experience teach us that man and
woman should be educated together? This isolation of the sexes in all
departments, in the business and pleasure of life, is an evil greatly
to be deplored. We see its bad effects on all sides. Look at our
National Councils. Would men, as statesmen, ever have enacted such
scenes as the Capitol of our country has witnessed, had the feminine
element been fairly represented in their midst? Are all the duties of
husband and father to be made subservient to those of statesman and
politician? How many of these husbands return to their homes as happy
and contented, as pure and loving, as when they left? Not one in
ten.... Experience has taught us that man has discovered the most
profitable branches of industry, and we demand a place by his side.
Inasmuch, therefore, as we have the same objects in life, namely, the
full development of all our powers, and should, to some extent, have
the same employments, we need precisely the same education; and we
therefore claim that the best colleges of our country be open to
us.... This point, the education of boys and girls together, is a
question of the day; it was prominent at the late Educational
Convention in Newark, and it is fitting that in our Convention it
should be fully discussed. My ground is, that the boy and the girl,
the man and the woman, should be always together in the business and
pleasures of life, sharing alike its joys and sorrows, its distinction
and fame; nor will they ever be harmoniously developed until they are
educated together, physically, intellectually, and morally.
I hope, therefore, that in the proposed People's College, some place
will be provided where women can be educated side by side with man.
There is no better test of the spirituality of a man, than is found in
his idea of the true woman. Men having separated themselves from women
in the business of life, and thus made their natures coarse by contact
with their own sex exclusively, now demand separate pleasures too; and
in lieu of the cheerful family circle, its books, games, music, and
pleasant conversation, they congregate in clubs to discuss politics,
gamble, drink, etc., in those costly, splendid establishments, got up
for such as can not find sufficient excitement in their own parlors or
studios. It seems never to enter the heads of these fashionable
husbands, that the hours drag as heavily with their fashionable wives,
as they sit alone, night after night, in their solitary elegance,
wholly given up to their own cheerless reflections; for what subjects
of thought have they? Gossip and fashion will do for talk, but not for
thought. Their theology is too gloomy and shadowy to afford them much
pleasure in contemplation; their religion is a thing of form and not
of life, so it brings them no joy or satisfaction. As to the reforms
of the day, they are too genteel to feel much interest in them. There
is no class more pitiable than the unoccupied woman of fashion thrown
wholly upon herself.... Does not the abuse of the religious element in
woman demand our earnest attention and investigation?
Priestcraft did not end with the beginning of the reign of
Protestantism. Woman has always been the greatest dupe, because the
sentiments act blindly, and they alone have been educated in her. Her
veneration, not guided by an enlightened intellect, leads her as
readily to the worship of saints, pictures, holy days, and inspired
men and books, as of the living God and the everlasting principles of
Justice, Mercy, and Truth.
There is the Education Society, in which women who can barely read and
write and speak their own language correctly, form sewing societies,
and beg funds to educate a class of lazy, inefficient young men for
the ministry, who, starting in life on the false principle that it is
a blessing to escape physical labor, begin at once to live on their
piety. What is the result? Why, after going through college,
theological seminaries, and a brief struggle at fitting up skeleton
sermons, got up by older heads for the benefit of beginners, and after
preaching them for a season to those who hunger and thirst for light
and truth, they sink down into utter insignificance, too inefficient
to keep a place, and too lazy to earn the salt to their porridge,
whilst the women work on to educate more for the same destiny. Look at
the long line of benevolent societies, all filled with these male
agents, living, like so many leeches, on the religious element in our
natures, most of them from the ranks of the clergy, who, unable to
build up or keep a church, have taken refuge in some of these
theological asylums for the intellectually maimed, halt, and blind of
this profession.
Woman really thinks she is doing God service when she casts her mite
into their treasury, when in fact not one-tenth of all the funds
raised ever reach the ultimate object. Among the clergy we find our
most violent enemies--those most opposed to any change in woman's
position; yet no sooner does one of these find himself out of place
and pocket, than, if all the places in the various benevolent
societies chance to be occupied, he takes a kind of philanthropic
survey of the whole habitable globe, and forthwith forms a Female
Benevolent Society for the conversion of the Jews, perhaps, or for
sending the Gospel to the Feejee Islands, and he is, in himself, the
law for one and the gospel for the other. Now, the question is, not
whether the Jews are converted, or whether the Gospel ever reaches the
islands, but, Does the agent flourish? Is his post profitable? And
does woman beg and stitch faithfully for his support and for the
promotion of his _glorious mission?_
Now, I ask women with all seriousness, considering that we have little
to give, had we not better bestow our own charities with our own
hands? And instead of sending our benevolent outgushings in steamers
to parts unknown, had we not better let them flow in streams whose
length and breadth we can survey at pleasure, knowing their source
and where they empty themselves? Instead of any further efforts in
behalf of a pin-cushion ministry, I conjure my countrywomen to devote
themselves from this hour to the education, elevation, and
enfranchisement of their own sex. If the same amount of devotion and
self-sacrifice could be given in this direction now poured out on the
churches, another generation would give us a nobler type of womanhood
than any yet molded by any Bishop, Priest, or Pope.
Woman in her present ignorance is made to rest in the most distorted
views of God and the Bible and the laws of her being; and like the
poor slave "Uncle Tom," her religion, instead of making her noble and
free, and impelling her to flee from all gross surroundings, by the
false lessons of her spiritual teachers, by the wrong application of
great principles of right and justice, has made her bondage but more
certain and lasting, her degradation more helpless and complete.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
GLOUCESTER, MASS., _August 24, 1852_.
_To Mrs. Paulina W. Davis:_
DEAR MADAM:...--I have never questioned what I understand to be the
central principle of the reform in which you are engaged. I believe
that every mature soul is responsible directly to God, not only for
its faith and opinions, but for the details of its life in the world.
In every crisis of duty there can be consultation, at last, only
between one spirit and its Creator. The assertion that woman is
responsible to man for her belief or conduct, in any other sense than
man is responsible to woman, I reject, not as a believer in any theory
of "Woman's Rights," but as a believer in that religion which knows
neither male nor female, in its imperative demand upon the individual
conscience.
This being true, I know not by what logic the obligation of woman to
form her own ideal of life, and pursue the career which her reason and
conscience dictate, can be denied. The sphere of activity in which any
person will shine, is always an open question until answered by
experience. I may admire the wisdom of the mind which has discovered
that half the people in the world are incompetent to act beyond one
circle of duty; but until the fact has been established by the
universal failure of your sex, everywhere outside that fatal line, I
must admire rather than believe. Every real position in society is
achieved by conquest. I must convince my people that I am a true
minister of the Gospel, before I can claim their respect and support.
And when a woman, in the possession of the powers and opportunities
given her by God, tells me she must trade, or instruct the young, or
heal the sick, or paint, or sing, or act upon the stage, or call
sinners to repentance, I _can_ say but one thing--just what I must say
to the man who affirms the same--"My friend, show your _ability_ to
serve society in this way, and all creation can not deprive you of the
right. If you _can do_ this to which you aspire--can do it well, then
you and everybody will be the gainers. And whoever says you have
forfeited any essential grace or virtue of womanhood by your act,
betrays, by the accusation, an utter incompetency to judge upon
questions of human responsibility and obligation."
.... I therefore believe the method of this reform is that declared by
God when He said to Adam: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat
bread." There is no "royal road" to womanhood, as there is certainly
none to manhood. _You_ must achieve what you desire.... Woman must do
much before man can help her. I suppose the sexes are about equally
culpable; and I make no peculiar charge, when I say that until I can
see more individual consecration, more clearness of perception and
firmness of conduct in regions outside of the walls of the household
among the mass of women, than now, I shall not cherish extravagant
hopes of the great immediate success of your noble object.
.... Your movement is a part of the great onward march of society, and
must be exposed to the reverses from outward hostility and inward
faithlessness, that have always hindered the progress of the race....
This reform will be a sword of division, and you will not be surprised
when those who have entered it from any motive less exalted than
consecration to duty, fall away in weariness and disgust. Yet all the
more honorable will it be to those who are content to remain, and
abide the fatal conditions of sincere human effort. You are not very
near your journey's end; but you are doing much for your sex, in a
mode which will "tell" inevitably upon society. I often encounter a
new spirit of self-respect and honorable independence; a new hope, and
works corresponding to it, among young women, which I can trace back
to these Conventions. I believe cultivated men in all professions are
becoming ashamed to treat your arguments with open ridicule or quiet
contempt, and occupy a position, at least, of fair-minded neutrality,
to a greater degree than ever before, while the popular sympathies are
every year more enlisted in your success.--With great respect, I
remain your friend and fellow-laborer in the cause of truth,
A. D. MAYO.
Samuel J. May read the following extract from a letter from Wm. Lloyd
Garrison, of Boston:
"Much, very much, do I regret that I can not be at the Woman's Rights
Convention which is to assemble to-morrow in Syracuse; but
circumstances prevent. I shall be there in spirit, from its
organization to its dissolution. It has as noble an object in view,
aye, and as Christian a one, too, as was ever advocated beneath the
sun. Heaven bless all its proceedings.