WM. LLOYD GARRISON.
"Rev. S. J. MAY."
COMMENTS OF THE PRESS AFTER THE SYRACUSE CONVENTION.
_The Syracuse Standard, Sept. 10th_ (a liberal Democratic paper).
Great interest was manifested in the proceedings yesterday, and the
hall was densely crowded during the day and evening. Much difficulty
was found in getting out of the Convention after the adjournment. Each
lady covered at least three steps of the stairway with her dress, and
little groups of ladies gathered in the passage-ways and went through
the ceremony of shaking hands and kissing each other, as though they
had been separated for years and never expected to meet again. This
operates as a serious obstacle, and we noticed some ladies exhibiting
a petulant spirit in being jostled by the crowd which they themselves
had occasioned, as their dresses were torn and soiled by the feet of
those who were using their utmost efforts to keep the crowd from
pushing them all down-stairs together. This is a great annoyance to
those who are not fond of going through the world at the slow and
steady pace of a fashionable lady, and we suggest the practice of
making the outside of the hall a place for retailing gossip. Those who
sweep the dirty stairway with their dresses should don the Bloomer
costume without delay.
_The Star_, belonging to that portion of the press called "the
Satanic," held to its original character while speaking of the
Convention. It was through this paper that Reverends Sunderland and
Ashley made public their sermons against Woman's Rights.
_The Star, September 10th._
The women at the Tomfoolery Convention now being held in this city,
talk as fluently of the Bible and God's teachings in their speeches,
as if they could draw an argument from inspiration in maintenance of
their Woman's Rights stuff.... The poor creatures who take part in the
silly rant of "brawling women" and Aunt Nancy men, are most of them
"ismizers" of the rankest stamp, Abolitionists of the most frantic and
contemptible kind, and Christian(?) sympathizers with such heretics as
Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Parker Pillsbury, C. C. Burleigh, and S. S.
Foster. These men are all Woman's Righters, and preachers of such
damnable doctrines and accursed heresies, as would make demons of the
pit shudder to hear.
We have selected a few appropriate passages from God's Bible for the
consideration of the infuriated gang (Bloomers and all) at the
Convention: Gen. iii. 16; Tit. ii. 4, 5; Prov. ix. 13, xxi. 9,19; 1
Cor. xi. 8, 9; 1 Tim. ii. 8-14; 1 Cor. xiv. 34, 35; Eph. v. 23-24.
_Daily Star, Sept. 11th._
Our usual amount of editorial matter is again crowded out this morning
by the extreme quantity of gabble the Woman's Righters got off
yesterday. Perhaps we owe an apology for having given publicity to the
mass of corruption, heresies, ridiculous nonsense, and reeking
vulgarities which these bad women have vomited forth for the past
three days. Our personal preference would have been to have entirely
disregarded these folks _per signe de mepris_, but the public
appetite cries for these novelties and eccentricities of the times,
and the daily press is expected to gratify such appetites;
furthermore, we are of opinion that reporting such a Convention as
this, is the most effectual way of checking the mischief it might
otherwise do. The proceedings of these three days' pow-wow are a most
shocking commentary upon themselves, and awaken burning scorn for the
participants in them.
The Convention adjourned _sine die_ last evening at ten o'clock, and,
for the credit of our city, we hope its members will adjourn out of
town as soon as possible, and stay so adjourned, unless they can come
among us for more respectable business. Syracuse has become a by-word
all through the country because of the influence which goes out from
these foolish Conventions held here, and it is high time that we
should be looking after our good name.
When the pamphlet report of the Convention's proceedings appeared,
_The Star_ said:
It gives the written speeches quite full, but only the skeleton of the
spoken ones, which in reality constituted the cream of the affair....
This portion of the world's history in relation to these agitating
questions, is very appropriately treated upon by the Lord Himself:
"_The sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear,
and for looking after those things which are coming on earth; for the
power of heaven shall be shaken_." We recognize the sea as symbolizing
the ideas which are drifted over the earth's surface, and the waves
roaring, the agitating topics which the times have brought upon us.
_The New York Herald_ (editorial), _Sept. 12, 1852_.
THE WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION--THE LAST ACT OF THE DRAMA.
The farce at Syracuse has been played out. We publish to-day the last
act, in which it will be seen that the authority of the Bible, as a
perfect rule of faith and practice for human beings, was voted down,
and what are called the laws of nature set up instead of the Christian
code. We have also a practical exhibition of the consequences that
flow from woman leaving her true sphere where she wields all her
influence, and coming into public to discuss questions of morals and
politics with men. The scene in which Rev. Mr. Hatch violated the
decorum of his cloth, and was coarsely offensive to such ladies
present as had not lost that modest "feminine element," on which he
dwelt so forcibly, is the natural result of the conduct of the women
themselves, who, in the first place, invited discussion about sexes;
and in the second place, so broadly defined the difference between the
male and the female, as to be suggestive of anything but purity to the
audience. The women of the Convention have no right to complain; but,
for the sake of his clerical character, if no other motive influenced
him, he ought not to have followed so bad an example. His speech was
sound and his argument conclusive, but his form of words was not in
the best taste. The female orators were the aggressors; but, to use
his own language, he ought not to have measured swords with a woman,
especially when he regarded her ideas and expressions as bordering
upon the obscene. But all this is the natural result of woman placing
herself in a false position. As the Rev. Mr. Hatch observed, if she
ran with horses she must expect to be betted upon. The whole tendency
of these Conventions is by no means to increase the influence of
woman, to elevate her condition, or to command the respect of the
other sex.
Who are these women? what do they want? what are the motives that
impel them to this course of action? The _dramatis personæ_ of the
farce enacted at Syracuse present a curious conglomeration of both
sexes. Some of them are old maids, whose personal charms were never
very attractive, and who have been sadly slighted by the masculine
gender in general; some of them women who have been badly mated, whose
own temper, or their husbands, has made life anything but agreeable to
them, and they are therefore down upon the whole of the opposite sex;
some, having so much of the virago in their disposition, that nature
appears to have made a mistake in their gender--mannish women, like
hens that crow; some of boundless vanity and egotism, who believe that
they are superior in intellectual ability to "all the world and the
rest of mankind," and delight to see their speeches and addresses in
print; and man shall be consigned to his proper sphere--nursing the
babies, washing the dishes, mending stockings, and sweeping the
house. This is "the good time coming." Besides the classes we have
enumerated, there is a class of wild enthusiasts and visionaries--very
sincere, but very mad--having the same vein as the fanatical
Abolitionists, and the majority, if not all of them, being, in point
of fact, deeply imbued with the anti-slavery sentiment. Of the male
sex who attend these Conventions for the purpose of taking a part in
them, the majority are hen-pecked husbands, and all of them ought to
wear petticoats.
In point of ability, the majority of the women are flimsy, flippant,
and superficial. Mrs. Rose alone indicates much argumentative power.
How did woman first become subject to man as she now is all over the
world? By her nature, her sex, just as the negro is and always will
be, to the end of time, inferior to the white race, and, therefore,
doomed to subjection; but happier than she would be in any other
condition, just because it is the law of her nature. The women
themselves would not have this law reversed. It is a significant fact
that even Mrs. Swisshelm, who formerly ran about to all such
gatherings from her husband, is now "a keeper at home," and condemns
these Conventions in her paper. How does this happen? Because, after
weary years of unfruitfulness, she has at length got her rights in the
shape of a baby. This is the best cure for the mania, and we would
recommend a trial of it to all who are afflicted.
What do the leaders of the Woman's Rights Convention want? They want
to vote, and to hustle with the rowdies at the polls. They want to be
members of Congress, and in the heat of debate to subject themselves
to coarse jests and indecent language, like that of Rev. Mr. Hatch.
They want to fill all other posts which men are ambitious to
occupy--to be lawyers, doctors, captains of vessels, and generals in
the field. How funny it would sound in the newspapers, that Lucy
Stone, pleading a cause, took suddenly ill in the pains of
parturition, and perhaps gave birth to a fine bouncing boy in court!
Or that Rev. Antoinette Brown was arrested in the middle of her sermon
in the pulpit from the same cause, and presented a "pledge" to her
husband and the congregation; or, that Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, while
attending a gentleman patient for a fit of the gout or _fistula in
ano_, found it necessary to send for a doctor, there and then, and to
be delivered of a man or woman child--perhaps twins. A similar event
might happen on the floor of Congress, in a storm at sea, or in the
raging tempest of battle, and then what is to become of the woman
legislator?
WORLD'S TEMPERANCE CONVENTION.
COMMENTS OF THE PRESS.
"_The New York Herald_" (editorial article), _September 9, 1853_.
.... "We are at length--praised be the stars!--drawing to the
termination of the clamorous conventions, which have kept the city in
a state of ferment and agitation, excitement and fun, for the past two
weeks....
"The World's Temperance Convention commenced its sittings on Tuesday,
and is still in session. This organization was calculated to effect
much good, had it not been leavened with the elements of discord,
which had brought contempt and ridicule on that of the 'Whole World.'
The Rev. Miss Antoinette Brown cast the brand of disorder into it, by
presenting herself as a delegate from the other association. This was
a virtual declaration of Woman's Rights, and a resolute effort to have
them recognized by the Convention. Neal Dow, as President and as a man
of gallantry, decided on receiving Miss Antoinette's credentials, and
for a time victory appeared to smile on the Amazons. The triumph,
however, was only ephemeral and illusive. The motion was put and
carried that none but the officers and invited guests of the
Convention should be permitted to occupy places on the platform, and
so, by this indirect movement, Miss Brown saw herself, in the moment
of her brightest hopes, expelled from the stage, and once more the
Anti-Woman's Righters were in the ascendancy.
"This was on Tuesday. Next day another stormy scene, arising from the
same cause, was enacted. The meek, temperate Dow--the light of the
reformation, the apostle of the Maine Liquor Law, the President of the
World's Temperance Convention--no longer able to control the stormy
elements which had developed themselves in the council, resolved by a
_coup d'état_ to give the world an instance of his temperate demeanor
and of the liberality of the reformers, and accordingly directed the
police officers in attendance to clear the hall. The order was
enforced, and even Miss Antoinette Brown, notwithstanding she was the
bearer of credentials, was compelled to evacuate with the rest of the
throng, and leave Metropolitan Hall to the quiet and peaceful
possession of the male delegates to the World's Temperance Convention.
Thus harmony was restored in that obstreperous assembly.
"'They made a solitude, and called it peace.'"
"_Herald," September 10, 1853_.
.... "Thus stands the case, then. This World's Temperance, or Maine
Law Convention, headed by Neal Dow, the founder of the aforesaid
statute, has turned adrift the Woman's Rights party, male and female,
black and white, the Socialists, the Amalgamationists, the Infidels,
the Vegetarians, and the Free Colored Americans ... What is to follow
from these proceedings, excluding Miss Brown, Phillips, Douglass, and
Smith from the holy cause of temperance? Agitation? Of course. What
else? Very likely a separate Maine Law coalition movement, comprising
the Abolitionists, the strong-minded women, and Free Colored Americans
all over the North, in opposition to Neal Dow and the orthodox Maine
Law party. Thus the house will be divided--is, indeed, already
divided--against itself. What then? The Scriptures say that such a
house can't stand. It can't. And thus the Maine Law is crippled in a
miserable squabble with fugitive slaves, Bloomers, and Abolitionists.
How strange! Great country this, anyhow."
"_National Democrat," September 5_ (Rev. Chauncey C. Burr, editor).
"Time was when a full-blooded nigger meeting in New York would have
been heralded with the cry of 'Tar and feathers!' but, alas! in these
degenerate days, we are called to lament only over an uproarious
disturbance. _The Tribune_ groans horribly, it is true, because a set
of deistical fanatics were interrupted in their villainous orgies; but
it should rather rejoice that no harsher means were resorted to than
'tufts of grass.' Talk about freedom! Is any land so lost in
self-respect--so sunk in infamy--that God-defying, Bible-abhorring
sacrilege will be civilly allowed? Because the bell-wether of _The
Tribune_, accompanied by a phalanx of blue petticoats, is installed as
the grand-master of outrages, is that any reason for personal respect
and public humiliation? In view of all the aggravating circumstances
of the case, we congratulate the foolhardy fanatics on getting off as
easy as they did; and we commend the forbearance of the considerate
crowd in not carrying their coercive measures to extremes, because,
the humbug being exploded, all that is necessary now is to laugh,
hiss, and vociferously applaud. When men make up their minds to vilify
the Bible, denounce the Constitution, and defame their country
(although this is a free country), they should go down in some obscure
cellar, remote from mortal ken, and, even there, whisper their hideous
treason against God and liberty."
MOB CONVENTION, 1853.
1. _Resolved_, That this movement for the rights of woman makes no
attempt to decide whether woman is better or worse than man, neither
affirms nor denies the equality of her intellect with that of
man--makes no pretense of protecting woman--does not seek to oblige
woman any more than man is now obliged, to vote, take office, labor in
the professions, mingle in public life, or manage her own property.
2. _Resolved_, That what we do seek is to gain these rights and
privileges for those women who wish to enjoy them, and so to change
public opinion that it shall not be deemed indecorous for women to
engage in any occupation which they deem fitted to their habits and
talents.
3. _Resolved_, That the fundamental principle of the Woman's Rights
movement is--that every human being, without distinction of sex, has
an inviolable right to the full development and free exercise of all
energies; and that in every sphere of life, private and public,
Functions should always be commensurate with Powers.
4. _Resolved_, That each human being is the sole judge of his or her
sphere, and entitled to choose a profession without interference from
others.
5. _Resolved_, That whatever differences exist between Man and Woman,
in the quality or measure of their powers, are originally designed to
be and should become bonds of union and means of co-operation in the
discharge of all functions, alike private and public.
6. _Resolved_, That the monopoly of the elective franchise, and
thereby of all the powers of legislation and government, by men,
solely on the ground of sex, is a monstrous usurpation--condemned
alike by reason and common-sense, subversive of all the principles of
justice, oppressive and demoralizing in its operations, and insulting
to the dignity of human nature.
7. _Resolved_, That we see no force in the objection, that woman's
taking part in politics would be a fruitful source of domestic
dissension; since experience shows that she may be allowed to choose
her own faith and sect without any such evil result, though religious
disputes are surely as bitter as political--and if the objection be
sound, we ought to go further, and oblige a wife to forego all
religious opinions, or to adopt the religious as well as the political
creed of her husband.
8. _Resolved_, That women, like men, must be either self-supported and
self-governed, or dependent and enslaved; that an unobstructed and
general participation in all the branches of productive industry, and
in all the business functions and offices of common life, is at once
their natural right, their individual interest, and their public duty;
the claim and the obligation reciprocally supporting each other; that
the idleness of the rich, with its attendant physical debility, moral
laxity, passional intemperance and mental dissipation, and the
ignorance, wretchedness, and enforced profligacy of the poor, which
are everywhere the curse and reproach of the sex, are the necessary
results of their exclusion from those diversified employments which
would otherwise furnish them with useful occupation, and reward them
with its profits, honors, and blessings, that this enormous wrong
cries for redress, for reparation by those whose delinquency allows
its continuance.
_Whereas_, The energies of Man are always in proportion to the
magnitude of the objects to be obtained; and, whereas, it requires the
highest motive for the greatest exertion and noblest action;
therefore,
9. _Resolved_, That Woman must be recognized politically, legally,
socially, and religiously the equal of man, and all the obstructions
to her highest physical, intellectual, and moral culture and
development be removed, that she may have the highest motive to assume
her place in that sphere of action and usefulness which her capacities
enable her to fill.
10. _Resolved_, That this movement gives to the cause of education a
new motive and impulse; makes a vast stride toward the settlement of
the question of wages and social reform; goes far to cure that
widespread plague--the licentiousness of cities; adds to civilization
a new element of progress; and in all these respects commends itself
as one of the greatest reforms of the age.
FIRST APPEAL OF 1854.
WOMAN'S RIGHTS.--CIRCULATE THE PETITION.
The Albany Woman's Rights Convention, held in February last, resolved
to continue the work of Petitioning our State Legislature, from year
to year, until the law of Justice and Equality shall be dispensed to
the whole people, without distinction of sex.
In order to systematize and facilitate the labors of the friends who
shall engage in the work of circulating the Petitions, a Committee was
appointed to devise and present some definite plan of action. In the
estimation of that Committee, the first and most important work to be
done is to enlighten the people as to the real claims of the Woman's
Rights Movement, thereby dispelling their many prejudices, and
securing their hearty good-will. To aid in the accomplishment of this
first great object, the Committee purpose holding Woman's Rights
Meetings in all the cities and many of the larger villages of the
State, during the coming fall and winter, and gladly, could they
command the services of Lecturing Agents, would they thoroughly
canvass the entire State. But, since to do so is impossible, they
would urge upon the friends in every county, town, village, and
school district, to hold public meetings in their respective
localities, and, if none among their own citizens feel themselves
competent to address the people, invite speakers from abroad. Let the
question be fully and freely discussed, both pro and con, by both
friends and opponents.
Though the living speaker can not visit every hearthstone throughout
the length and breadth of the Empire State, and personally present the
claims of our cause to the hearts and consciences of those who
surround them, his arguments, by the aid of the invaluable art of
printing, may. Therefore the Committee have resolved to circulate as
widely as possible the written statement of Woman's Political and
Legal Rights, as contained in the Address written by Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, of Seneca Falls, N. Y., and adopted by the Albany
Convention--presented to our Legislature at its last session. This
Address has been highly spoken of by many of the best papers in the
State, and pronounced, by eminent lawyers and statesmen, an able and
unanswerable argument. And the Committee, being fully confident of its
power to convince every candid inquirer after truth of the justice and
mercy of our claims, do urgently call upon the friends everywhere to
aid them in giving to it a thorough circulation.
There is no reform question of the day that meets so ready, so full,
so deep a response from the masses, as does this Woman's Rights
question. To ensure a speedy triumph, we have only to take earnest
hold of the work of disseminating its immutable truths. Let us, then,
agitate the question, hold public meetings, widely circulate Woman's
Rights Tracts, and show to the world that we are in earnest--that we
will be heard--that our demands stop not short of justice and perfect
equality to every human being. Let us, at least, see to it, that this
admirable Address of Mrs. Stanton is placed in the hands of every
intelligent man and woman in the State, and thus the way prepared for
the gathering up of a mighty host of names to our petitions to be
presented to our next Legislature, a mammoth roll, that shall cause
our law-makers to know that the People are with us, and that if our
prayer be not wisely and justly answered by them, other and truer
representatives will fill those Legislative Halls.
The success of our first appeal to our Legislature, made last winter,
encourages us to persevere. That the united prayer of only 6,000 men
and women should cause the reporting and subsequent passage in the
House, of a bill granting two of our most special claims--that of the
wife to her earnings, and the mother to her children--is indeed a
result the most sanguine scarce dared to hope for. What may we not
expect from our next appeal, that shall be 20,000, nay, more, if we
but be faithful, 100,000 strong. To the work, then, friends, of
renovating public sentiment and circulating petitions. There is no
time to be lost. Our Fourth of July gatherings will afford an
opportunity for both distributing the Address and circulating the
petitions. And, Women of the Empire State, it is for you to do the
work, it is for you to shake from your feet the dust of tyrant custom,
it is for you to remember that "he who would be free must himself
strike the blow."
The petitions to be circulated are the same as last year--one asking
for the JUST AND EQUAL RIGHTS OF WOMEN, and the other for WOMAN'S
RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE. The petitions are to be signed by both men and
women, the men's names placed in the right column, and the women's in
the left. All intelligent persons must be ready and willing to sign
the first, asking a revision of the laws relative to the property
rights of women, and surely no true republican can refuse to give his
or her name to the second, asking for woman the Right of
Representation--a practical application of the great principles of
'76.
It is desirable that there shall be one person in each county to whom
all the petitions circulated in its several towns, villages, and
school districts, shall be forwarded, and who shall arrange and attach
them in one roll, stating upon a blank sheet, placed between the
petition and the signatures, the number of signers, the name of the
county, and the number of towns represented, and forward them as early
as the 1st of December next, to Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, N. Y.
Where no person volunteers, or is appointed such county agent, the
petitions, properly labeled, may be sent directly to Rochester.
Mrs. Stanton's Address is published in neat pamphlet form, in large
type, and may be had at the following prices: $2 per 100, 37-1/2 cts.
per dozen; or if sent by mail, $3 per 100, and 50 cts. per dozen.
Packages of over 25 may be sent by express to all places on the line
of the railroads at a less cost than by mail.
It is hoped that every person who reads this notice, and feels an
interest in the universal diffusion of the true aim and object of the
Woman's Rights agitation, will, without delay, order copies of this
address to distribute gratuitously or otherwise, among their neighbors
and townsmen. Should there be any wishing to aid in this work, who can
not command the money necessary to purchase the Address, their orders
will be cheerfully complied with free of charge.
The Committee have on hand a variety of Woman's Rights Tracts, written
by S. J. May, Wendell Phillips, Elizabeth C. Stanton, Mrs. C. I. H.
Nichols, Ernestine L. Rowe, T. W. Higginson, and others. Also, the
Reports of the several National Woman's Rights Conventions, all of
which may be had at very low prices.
All correspondence and orders for Address, petitions, etc., should be
addressed to
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, General Agent, Rochester, N. Y.
_June 22, 1854_.
SECOND APPEAL OF 1854.
_To the Women of the State of New York:_
We purpose again this winter to send petitions to our State
Legislature--one, asking for the Just and Equal Rights of Woman, and
one for Woman's Right of Suffrage. The latter, we think, covers the
whole ground, for we can never be said to have just and equal rights
until the right of suffrage is ours. Some who will gladly sign the
former may shrink from making the last demand. But be assured, our
cause can never rest on a safe, enduring basis, until we get the right
of suffrage. So long as we have no voice in the laws, we have no
guarantee that privileges granted us to-day by one body of men, may
not be taken from us to-morrow by another.
All man's laws, his theology, his daily life, go to prove the fixed
idea in his mind of the entire difference in the sexes--a difference
so broad that what would be considered cruel and unjust between man
and man, is kind and just between man and woman. Having discarded the
idea of the oneness of the sexes, how can man judge of the needs and
wants of a being so wholly unlike himself? How can he make laws for
his own benefit and woman's too at the same time? He can not. He never
has, as all his laws relative to woman most clearly show. But when man
shall fully grasp the idea that woman is a being of like feelings,
thoughts, and passions with himself, he may be able to legislate for
her, as one code would answer for both. But until then, a sense of
justice, a wise self-love, impels us to demand a voice in his
councils.
To every intelligent, thinking woman, we put the question, On what
sound principles of jurisprudence, constitutional law, or human
rights, are one-half of the people of this State disfranchised? If you
answer, as you must, that it is done in violation of all law, then we
ask you, when and how is this great wrong to be righted? We say now;
and petitioning is the first step in its accomplishment. We hope,
therefore, that every woman in the State will sign her name to the
petitions. It is humiliating to know that many educated women so
stultify their consciences as to declare that they have all the rights
they want. Have you who make this declaration ever read the barbarous
laws in reference to woman, to mothers, to wives, and to daughters,
which disgrace our Statute Books? Laws which are not surpassed in
cruelty and injustice by any slaveholding code in the United States;
laws which strike at the root of the glorious doctrine for which
our fathers fought and bled and died, "no taxation without
representation"; laws which deny a right most sacredly observed by
many of the monarchies of Europe--"the right of trial by a jury of
one's own peers"; laws which trample on the holiest and most unselfish
of all human affections--a mother's love for her child--and with
ruthless cruelty snap asunder the tenderest ties; laws which enable
the father, be he a man or a minor, to tear the infant from the
mother's arms and send it, if he chooses, to the Feejee Islands--yea,
to will the guardianship of the _unborn_ child to whomsoever he may
please, whether to the Sultan of Turkey or the Imam of Muscat; laws by
which our sons and daughters may be bound to service to cancel their
father's debts of _honor_, in the meanest rum-holes and brothels in
the vast metropolis; laws which violate all that is most pure and
sacred in the marriage relation, by giving to the cruel, beastly
drunkard the rights of a man, a husband, and father; laws which place
the life-long earnings of the wife at the disposal of the husband, be
his character what it may; laws which leave us at the mercy of the
rum-seller and the drunkard, against whom we have no protection for
our lives, our children, or our homes; laws by which we are made the
watch-dogs to keep a million and a half of our sisters in the foulest
bondage the sun ever shone upon--which forbid us to give food and
shelter to the panting fugitive from the land of slavery.
If, in view of laws like these, there be women in this State so lost
to self-respect, to all that is virtuous, noble, and true, as to
refuse to raise their voices in protest against such degrading
tyranny, we can only say of that system which has thus robbed
womanhood of all its glory and greatness, what the immortal Channing
did of slavery, "If," said he, "it be true that the slaves are
contented and happy--if there is a system that can blot out all love
of freedom from the soul of man, destroy every trace of his Divinity,
make him happy in a condition so low and benighted and hopeless, I ask
for no stronger argument against such a slavery as ours." No! never
believe it; woman falsifies herself and blasphemes her God, when in
view of her present social, legal, and political position, she
declares she has all the rights she wants. If a few drops of Saxon
blood gave our Frederick Douglass such a clear perception of his
humanity, his inalienable rights, as to enable him, with the
slaveholder's Bible, the slaveholder's Constitution, a Southern public
sentiment and education all laid heavy on his shoulders, to stand
upright and walk forth in search of freedom, with as much ease as did
Samson of old with the massive gates of the city, shall we, the
daughters of our Hancocks and Adamses, we in whose veins flow the
blood of the Pilgrim Fathers, shall we never try the strength of these
withes of law and gospel with which in our blindness we have been
bound hand and foot? Yes, the time has come.
"The slumber is broken, the sleeper is risen,
The day of the Goth and the Vandal is o'er.
And old Earth feels the tread of Freedom once more."
Fail not, Women of the Empire State, to swell our Petitions. Let no
religious scruples hold you back. Take no heed to man's interpretation
of Paul's injunctions to women. To any thinking mind, there is no
difficulty in explaining those passages of the Apostle as applicable
to the times in which they were written, as having no reference
whatever to the Women of the nineteenth century.
"Honor the King," heroes of '76! Those leaden tea-chests of Boston
Harbor cry out, "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's." When
the men of 1854, with their Priests and Rabbis, shall rebuke the
disobedience of their forefathers--when they shall cease to set at
defiance the British lion and the Apostle Paul in their National
Policy, then it will be time enough for us to bow down to man's
interpretation of law touching our social relations, and acknowledge
that God gave us powers and rights, merely that we might show forth
our faith in Him by being helpless and dumb.
The writings of Paul, like our State Constitutions, are susceptible of
various interpretations. But when the human soul is roused with holy
indignation against injustice and oppression, it stops not to
translate human parchments, but follows out the law of its inner
being, written by the finger of God in the first hour of its creation.
Our Petitions will be sent to every county in the State, and we hope
that they will find at least ten righteous Women to circulate them.
But should there be any county so benighted that a petition can not be
circulated throughout its length and breadth, giving to every man and
woman an opportunity to sign their names, then we pray, not that "God
will send down fire and brimstone" upon it, but that the "Napoleon" of
this movement will flood it with Woman's Rights Tracts and
Missionaries.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON,
_Chairman N. Y. State Woman's Rights Committee._
SENECA FALLS, _Dec. 11, 1854_.
N. B.--All orders for forms of Petitions and Woman's Rights Tracts,
and all communications relating to the movement in this State, should
be addressed to our General Agent, Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, N. Y.
Let the Petitions be returned, as soon as possible, to Lydia Mott,
Albany, N. Y., as we wish to present them early in the session, and
thereby give our Legislature due time for the consideration of this
important question.
NATIONAL WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION, COOPER INSTITUTE, 1856.
LETTER FROM MRS. STANTON.
SENECA FALLS, _November 24, 1856_.
DEAR LUCY STONE:--We may continue to hold our Conventions, we may talk
of our right to vote, to legislate, to hold property, but until we can
arouse in woman a proper self-respect, she will hold in contempt the
demands we now make for our sex. We shall never get what we ask for
until the majority of women are openly with us; and they will never
claim their civil rights until they know their social wrongs. From
time to time I put these questions to myself: How is it that woman can
longer silently consent to her present false position? How can she
calmly contemplate the barbarous code of laws which govern her civil
and political existence? How can she devoutly subscribe to a theology
which makes her the conscientious victim of another's will, forever
subject to the triple bondage of the man, the priest, and the law? How
can she tolerate our social customs, by which womankind is stripped of
all true virtue, dignity, and nobility? How can she endure our present
marriage relations, by which woman's life, health, and happiness are
held so cheap, that she herself feels that God has given her no
charter of rights, no individuality of her own. I answer, she
patiently bears all this because in her blindness she sees no way of
escape. Her bondage, though it differs from that of the negro slave,
frets and chafes her just the same. She too sighs and groans in her
chains; and lives but in the hope of better things to come. She looks
to heaven; whilst the more philosophical slave sets out for Canada.
Let it be the object of this Convention to show that there is hope for
woman this side of heaven, and that there is a work for her to do
before she leaves for the celestial city.
Marriage is a divine institution, intended by God for the greater
freedom and happiness of both parties--whatever therefore conflicts
with woman's happiness is not legitimate to that relation. Woman has
yet to learn that she has a right to be happy in and of herself; that
she has a right to the free use, improvement, and development of all
her faculties, for her own benefit and pleasure. The woman is greater
than the wife or the mother; and in consenting to take upon herself
these relations, she should never sacrifice one iota of her
individuality to any senseless conventionalisms, or false codes of
feminine delicacy and refinement.
Marriage, as we now have it, is opposed to all God's laws. It is by no
means an equal partnership. The silent partner loses everything. On
the domestic sign, the existence of a second person is not recognized
by even the ordinary abbreviation, Co. There is the establishment of
John Jones. Perhaps his partner supplies all the cents and the
senses--but no one knows who she is or whence she came. If John is a
luminous body, she shines in his reflection; if not, she hides herself
in his shadow. But she is nameless, for a woman has no name! She is
Mrs. John or James, Peter or Paul, just as she changes masters; like
the Southern slave, she takes the name of her owner. Many people
consider this a very small matter; but it is the symbol of the most
cursed monopoly on this footstool; a monopoly by man of all the
rights, the life, the liberty, and happiness of one-half of the human
family--all womankind. For what man can honestly deny that he has not
a secret feeling that where his pleasure and woman's seems to
conflict, the woman must be sacrificed; and what is worse, woman
herself has come to think so too. She believes that all she tastes of
joy in life is from the generosity and benevolence of man; and the
bitter cup of sorrow, which she too often drinks to the very dregs, is
of the good providence of God, sent by a kind hand for her improvement
and development. This sentiment pervades the laws, customs, and
religions of all countries, both Christian and heathen. Is it any
wonder, then, that woman regards herself as a mere machine, a tool for
men's pleasure? Verily is she a hopeless victim of his morbidly
developed passions. But, thank God, she suffers not alone! Man too
pays the penalty of his crimes in his enfeebled mind, dwarfed body,
and the shocking monstrosities of his deformed and crippled offspring.
Call yourselves Christian women, you who sacrifice all that is great
and good for an ignoble peace, who betray the best interests of the
race for a temporary ease? It were nobler far to go and throw
yourselves into the Ganges than to curse the earth with a miserable
progeny, conceived in disgust and brought forth in agony. What mean
these asylums all over the land for the deaf and dumb, the maim and
blind, the idiot and the raving maniac? What all these advertisements
in our public prints, these family guides, these female medicines,
these Madame Restells? Do not all these things show to what a depth of
degradation the women of this Republic have fallen, how false they
have been to the holy instincts of their nature, to the sacred trust
given them by God as the mothers of the race? Let Christians and
moralists pause in their efforts at reform, and let some scholar teach
them how to apply the laws of science to human life. Let us but use as
much care and forethought in producing the highest order of
intelligence, as we do in raising a cabbage or a calf, and in a few
generations we shall reap an abundant harvest of giants, scholars, and
Christians.
The first step in this improvement is the elevation of woman. She is
the protector of national virtue; the rightful lawgiver in all our
most sacred relations.
Yours truly,
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
LETTER FROM N. H. WHITING.
MARSHFIELD, MASS., _September 29, 1856_.
DEAR FRIEND:--I do not see that I can do much to aid you in your
effort for self-emancipation from the injustice your sex encounters in
the present social and political arrangements of the world. You know
the old maxim, "The gods help them who help themselves." This is true
of all times and circumstances. The two inevitable conditions that are
found in, and are essential to all bondage, are the spirit of
oppression, the desire to exercise unlawful dominion on the one side,
and ignorance, servility, the willingness, if not the desire to be
enslaved on the other. The absence of either is fatal to the existence
of the thing itself.
I apprehend the principal thing you want from our sex, as a
preliminary to your growth and equal position in the great struggle of
life, is what Diogenes wanted of Alexander, viz., that we shall "get
out of your sunshine." In other words, that we shall remove the
obstacles we have placed in your way. To this end, politically, all
laws which discriminate between man and woman, to the injury of the
latter, should at once be blotted out. Women should have an equal
voice in the creation and administration of that government to which
they are subject. This will be a fair start in that direction. The
first thing to be done, socially, is to so regulate and arrange the
industrial machinery that women shall have an equal chance to labor in
all the departments, and that the same work shall receive the same pay
whether done by man or woman. This will do much to clear the track, so
that all can have a fair chance. This is all you ask, as I take it.
This you should have. Justice demands it....
But, save in the removal of the outward forms of society, which now
environ and hedge up your way, the active work in all this change in
the most important human relations must be done by yourselves. "They
who would be free, themselves must strike the blow." What woman is
capable of we shall never know until she has a fair chance in the wide
arena of universal human life.
If the love of frivolity and show and of empty admiration, which now
so generally obtains, is an unfailing characteristic in the female
sex, legislation can not help you. Encouragement, sympathy, can not
help you. It is of no use to fight against the eternal laws. But if
this be only a perversion or misdirection of noble and lovely powers
and faculties, the result of accidental circumstances and vicious
institutions, as I believe, then, when the outward pressure is
removed, the elastic spring of the genuine human spirit, encased in
the form of woman, shall return; the great curse of civil and domestic
strife shall cease; the true marriage of the male and female heart can
then take place, because that perfect equality, under which alone it
can exist, will be recognized and established.
You are engaged in a great work. May you have faith and resolution to
continue to the end. It is a long way before you. Man is a plant of
slow growth. His education and development are the work of ages. It is
only by a landmark extending far back into the dim and misty past we
can trace his upward path.
But though the race grows so slow, and the forward wave is go often
pressed backward by the prevailing currents of ignorance,
superstition, and oppression, still, it is cheering to know that no
true word was ever spoken, or good deed ever done, but it cast some
rays of light into the surrounding darkness, while it gave strength
and vigor to the spirit that sent it forth. That is a grand truth
whose utterance is attributed to Jesus, "It is more blessed to give
than to receive." By that gift we may relieve the want of others, but
we gain far more to ourselves by creating from the chaos of human
crime and misery a beautiful and godlike act. That act is wrought into
the fibers of our own individual life, and we are nobler, better,
happier than before.
So you, in the thankless task before you, subject to ribald jest, to
the cold, heartless sneer, to obloquy and abuse of all sorts from our
and even your sex, who are most immediately to be benefited by your
labors, will have this great truth to console and stimulate you, that
in every step of this grand procession in which you are marching, you
will gather rich and substantial food for the sustenance and growth of
your own mental and moral natures.
Truly yours,
N. H. WHITING.
NEW YORK, _November 25, 1856_.
_To the Seventh National Woman's Rights Convention_:
The central claim for Woman is her right to be, and to do, as well as
to suffer. Allow her everywhere to represent herself and her own
interests.
Custom and law both deny her this right. If she is too cowardly to
contend with custom, and to overcome it, let her remain its slave. But
the law has bound her hand and foot. Here she can not act. The
law-makers have forged her chains and riveted them upon her. They
alone can take them off. Shall we not, then, at once demand of
them--demand of every sovereign State in the Union--the elective
franchise for woman? With this franchise she can make for herself a
civil and political equality with man. Without it she is utterly
without power to protect herself. She does not need to be protected
like a child. She does need freedom to use the powers of
self-protection with which her own nature is endowed.
Each of the several States has its specific laws--statutes and
constitution--varying in details, but all more or less unjust to her
as wife, mother, property-holder; in short, unjust to her in all her
relations as citizen. Every State denies to her the right to represent
herself politically. Once give her this, and she can take all the
rest.
Would it not be wholly appropriate, then, for this National Convention
to demand the right of suffrage for her from the Legislature of each
State in the Nation? We can not petition the General Government on
this point. Allow me, therefore, respectfully to suggest the propriety
of appointing a committee, which shall be instructed to prepare a
memorial adapted to the circumstances of each legislative body; and
demanding of each, in the name of this Convention, the elective
franchise for woman.
Such a memorial, presented to the several States during the coming
winter, could not fail of doing good. It would be pressing home this
great question upon all the powers that be in the whole nation; and,
with comparatively little effort, would, at least, create a healthful
agitation. Who shall say that the just men of some State will not even
accord to us the franchise we claim? With this hint to the wise, I
remain, as ever,
Yours, for equal human rights,
ANTOINETTE L. BROWN BLACKWELL.
Mr. HATTELLE moved that a Committee be at once appointed to draft such
a memorial, which was adopted.
WENDELL PHILLIPS rose to offer as an amendment, that a recommendation
go forth from this Convention to the women of each State, to
inaugurate their presentation of the subject to their several
Legislatures.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson proposed that the friends of Woman Suffrage
should publish an almanac each year giving the advance steps in their
movement. He issued one for 1858, from which we clip the following:
THE WOMAN'S RIGHTS ALMANAC.
THE HISTORY OF WOMAN IN THREE PICTURES.
I. HINDOO LAWS. 2000 B. C.--"A man, both day and night, must keep his
wife so much in subjection, that she by no means be mistress of her
own actions. If the wife have her own free-will, notwithstanding she
be of a superior caste, she will behave amiss."
"The Creator formed woman for this purpose, that man might have sexual
intercourse with her, and that children might be born from thence."
"A woman shall never go out of the house without the consent of her
husband.... and shall act according to the orders of her husband, and
shall pay a proper respect to the Deity, her husband's father, the
spiritual guide, and the guests; and shall not eat until she has
served them with victuals (if it is physic, she may take it before
they eat); a woman also shall never go to a stranger's house, and
shall not stand at the door, and must never look out of a window."
"If a woman, following her own inclinations, goes whithersoever she
choose, and does not regard the words of her master, such a woman
shall be turned away."
"If a man goes on a journey, his wife shall not divert herself by
play, nor shall see any public show, nor shall laugh, nor shall dress
herself with jewels and fine clothes, nor shall see dancing, nor hear
music, nor shall sit in the window, nor shall ride out, nor shall
behold anything choice or rare, but shall fasten well the house-door
and remain private; and shall not eat any dainty victuals, and shall
not view herself in a mirror; she shall never exercise herself in any
such agreeable employment during the absence of her husband."
"It is proper for every woman, after her husband's death, to burn
herself in the fire with his corpse."
It will be seen that the following laws scarcely vary at all, in
principle, from the preceding:
II. ANGLO-SAXON LAWS. 1848.--"By marriage, the husband and wife are
one person in law; that is, _the very being or existence of the woman
is suspended during the marriage_, or at least is incorporated and
consolidated into that of the husband, under whose wing, protection,
and _covert_ she performs everything; and is, therefore, called in our
Law-French a _feme-covert_, is said to be _covert-baron_, or under the
protection and influence of her husband, her baron, or lord; and her
condition during her marriage is called her _coverture_. Upon this
principle, of an union of person in husband and wife, depend almost
all the legal rights, duties, and disabilities that either of them
acquire by the marriage."--_1 Blackstone Com_., 356.
"The husband also, by the old law, might give his wife moderate
correction. For, as he is to answer for her misbehavior, the law
thought it reasonable to intrust him with this power of restraining
her by domestic chastisement, in the same moderation that a man is
allowed to correct his apprentices or children. But this power of
correction was confined within reasonable bounds, and the husband was
prohibited from using any violence to his wife, _aliter quam ad virum,
ex causa regiminis et castigationis uxoris suae licite et
rationabiliter pertinet_ (except as lawfully and reasonably belongs to
a husband, for the sake of governing and disciplining his wife). The
civil law gave the husband the same, or a larger authority over his
wife, allowing him, for some misdemeanors, _flagellis et Fustibus
acriter verberare uxorem_ (to beat his wife severely with whips and
cudgels); for others only _modicam castigationem adhibere_ (to
administer moderate chastisement). But with us, in the politer reign
of Charles II., this power of correction began to be doubted, and a
wife may now have security of peace against the husband, or, in
return, a husband against his wife. Yet the lower rank of people, who
were always fond of the old common law, still claim and exact their
ancient privilege, and the courts of law will still permit a
husband to restrain a wife of her liberty in case of any gross
misbehavior."--_1 Blackstone_, 366.
"The legal effects of marriage are generally deducible from the
principle of the common law by which the husband and wife are regarded
as one person, and her legal existence and authority are in a degree
lost or suspended during the continuance of the matrimonial
union."--_2 Kent's Comm. on Am. Law_, 129.
"Even now, in countries of the most polished habits, a considerable
latitude is allowed to marital coercion. In England the husband has
the right of imposing _such corporal restraints as he may deem
necessary_, for securing to himself the fulfillment of the obligations
imposed on the wife by virtue of the marriage contract. He may, in the
plenitude of his power, adopt every act of physical coercion which
does not endanger the life or health of the wife, or render
cohabitation unsafe."--_Petersdorff's Abridgement, note_.
"The husband hath, by law, power and dominion over his wife, and _may
keep her by force within the bounds of duty, and may beat her_, but
not in a violent or cruel manner."--_Bacon's Abridgement, title "Baron
aud Feme," B. 9_.
"_The wife is only the servant of her husband._"--_Baron Alderson_
(_Wharton's Laws relating to the Women of England_), _p. 168_.
"It is probably not generally known, that whenever a woman has
accepted an offer of marriage, all she has, or expects to have,
becomes virtually the property of the man thus accepted as a husband;
and no gift or deed executed by her between the period of acceptance
and the marriage is held to be valid; for were she permitted to give
away or otherwise settle her property, he might be disappointed in the
wealth he looked to in making the offer."--_Roper, Law of Husband and
Wife, Book I., ch. xiii_.
"A lady whose husband had been unsuccessful in business, established
herself as a milliner in Manchester. After some years of toil, she
realized sufficient for the family to live upon comfortably, the
husband having done nothing meanwhile. They lived for a time in easy
circumstances, after she gave up business, and then the husband died,
_bequeathing all his wife's earnings to his own illegitimate
children_. At the age of sixty-two, she was compelled, in order to
gain her bread, to return to business."--_Westminster Review, Oct.,
1856_.
MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE'S JUDGMENT "_in re Cochrane_."--The facts were
briefly these. A writ of _habeas corpus_ had been granted to the wife,
who, having been brought into the power of the husband by strategem,
had since that time been kept in confinement by him. By the return to
the writ, it appeared that the parties had lived together for about
three years after their marriage on terms of apparent affection, and
had two children; that in May, 1836, Mrs. Cochrane withdrew herself
and offspring from his house and protection, and had resided away from
him against his will, for nearly four years. While absent from her
husband, Mrs. Cochrane had always resided with her mother, nor was
there the slightest imputation on her honor. In ordering her to be
restored to her husband, the learned judge, after stating the question
to be whether by the common law, the husband, in order to prevent his
wife from eloping, _has a right to confine her in his own
dwelling-house, and restrain her from liberty for an indefinite time_,
using no cruelty nor imposing any hardship or unnecessary restraint on
his part, and on hers there being no reason from her past conduct to
apprehend that she will avail herself of her absence from his control
to injure either his honor or his property, stated, "_That there could
be no doubt of the general dominion which the law of England
attributes to the husband over the wife_."--_8 Dowling's P. C. 360_.
_Quoted in Westminster Review, Oct., 1856_.
III. SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 1857.--It is obvious that the English common
law, as above stated, is scarcely a step beyond barbarism. Yet this
law remained almost unaltered in the United States, as respects woman,
till the year 1848--the year of the first local Woman's Rights
Convention, the first National one being held in 1850. Since then
every year has brought improvements, and even those who denounce the
Woman's Rights Movement, admit the value of these its results.
There is near Trenton, says _The Newark Advertiser_, a woman who is a
skillful mechanic. She has made a carriage, and can make a violin or a
gun. She is only 35 years old.
This is told as though it were something wonderful for a woman to have
mechanical genius; when the fact is, that there are thousands all over
the country who would make as good mechanics and handle tools with as
much skill and dexterity as men, if they were only allowed to make
manifest their ingenuity and inclinations. A girl's hands and head are
formed very much like those of a boy, and if put to a trade at the age
when boys are usually apprenticed, she will master her business quite
as soon as the boy--be the trade what it may.
SALE OF A WIFE AT WORCESTER, ENGLAND.--One of these immoral and
illegal transactions was recently completed at Worcester. The
agreement between the fellow who sold and the fellow who bought is
given in _The Worcester Chronicle_:
"Thomas Middleton delivered up his wife, Mary Middleton, to Phillip
Rostins, and sold her for one shilling and a quart of ale, and parted
wholly and solely for life, not trouble one another for life. Witness,
Signed Thomas |x| Middleton. Witness, Mary Middleton, his wife.
Witness, Phillip |x| Rostins. Witness, S. H. Stone, Crown Inn, Friar
Street."
FEMALE INVENTORS.--"Man, having excluded woman from all opportunity of
mechanical education, turns and reproaches her with having invented
nothing. But one remarkable fact is overlooked. Society limits woman's
sphere to the needle, the spindle, and the basket; and tradition
reports that she _herself invented all three_. If she has invented her
tools as fast as she has found opportunity to use them, can more be
asked?"--_T. W. Higginson_.
In the ancient Hindoo dramas, wives do not speak the same language
with their husbands, but employ the dialect of slaves.
A correspondent of _The London Spectator_ suggests:--"The employment
of women _as clerks at railway stations_ would not be an unprecedented
innovation; they not unfrequently fill that position abroad; and I can
recall at least one instance, when, at a principal station in France,
a female clerk displayed under difficult circumstances an amount of
zeal and intelligence which showed her to be admirably suited to her
office--'the right _woman_ in the right place.'"
The word courage is, in the Spanish and Portuguese languages, a
_feminine_ noun.
Upwards of ten thousand females in New York, forty thousand in Paris,
and eighty thousand in London, are said, by statisticians, to
regularly earn a daily living by immoral practices. And yet all these
are Christian cities!
A widow lady of Bury, Mary Chapman, who would appear to have been a
warlike dame, making her will in 1649, leaves to one of her sons,
among other things, "also _my_ muskett, rest, bandileers, sword, and
headpiece, _my_ jacke, a fine paire of sheets, and a hutche."
Addison, in _The Spectator_, refers to a French author, who mentions
that the ladies of the court of France, in his time, thought it
ill-breeding and a kind of female pedantry, to pronounce a hard word
right, for which reason they took frequent occasion to use hard words,
that they might show a politeness in murdering them. The author
further adds, that a lady of some quality at court, having
accidentally made use of a hard word in a proper place, and pronounced
it right, the whole assembly was out of countenance for her.
SEWING IN NEW YORK.--"I am informed from one source, that based on a
calculation some two years ago, the number of those who live by sewing
in New York exceeds fifteen thousand. Another, who has good means of
information, tells me there are forty thousand earning fifteen
shillings ($1.87-1/2) per week, and paying twelve shillings ($1.50)
for board, making shirts at four cents."--_E. H. Chapin_, "_Moral
Aspects of City Life_."
The first "pilgrim" who stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock is said, by
tradition, to have been a young girl, named Mary Chilton.
The _St. Louis Republican_ mentions that there is one feature about
the steamer Illinois Belle, of peculiar attractiveness--a lady clerk.
"Look at her bills of lading, and 'Mary J. Patterson, clerk,' will be
seen traced to a delicate and very neat style of chirography. A lady
clerk on a Western steamer! It speaks strongly of our moral progress."
George Borrow, in his singular narrative, "The Romany Rye," states
that the sale of a wife, with a halter round her neck, is still a
legal transaction in England. It must be done in the cattle-market, as
if she were a mare, "all women being considered as mares by old
English law, _and indeed called mares in certain counties where
genuine old English is still preserved_."
TESTIMONIAL TO MISS MITCHELL.--The fame of our talented countrywoman,
Miss Maria Mitchell, of Nantucket, has spread far and wide among
astronomers, and is cherished with pride by all Americans. We are glad
to learn that it is proposed to present her a testimonial which will
be at once an appropriate tribute to her talents, and an aid to the
future prosecution of her astronomical researches. An observatory on
Nantucket Island is for sale on very favorable terms, and a plan is on
foot for its purchase, to be presented to her. The sum needed is
$3,000, of which more than a third has been raised by ladies in
Philadelphia and its neighborhood.
Miss Mitchell is now in Europe, visiting the principal observatories
and astronomers there, and it is hoped that she will soon be
gratefully surprised by learning that the very imperfect means
hitherto at her disposal in pursuing her favorite science are to be
replaced on her return by a collection of instruments which she will
be delighted to possess. Drs. Bond, of Harvard College Observatory,
and Hall, of Providence, have interested themselves in securing this
object, and express strongly their opinion that valuable results to
science can not fail to be realized by furnishing so skillful and
diligent an observer as Miss Mitchell the proposed aids to her
researches. Dr. Bond expresses the conviction that Nantucket enjoys
special advantages as an astronomical site, on account of its
comparative exemption from thermometrical disturbances of the
atmosphere.
We hope this worthy tribute to our countrywoman's scientific merit
will not fail to be paid. Miss Mitchell's friends have the refusal of
the observatory only till September 1st, and several other purchasers
are ready to take it at once. Dr. Geo. Choate, of Salem, has consented
to receive the pledges of such as desire to be enrolled among the
subscribers to the fund, among whose names are already the honored
ones of Edward Everett, J. I. Bowditch, John C. Brown, of Providence,
and F. Peabody, of Salem, besides other munificent patrons of
science.--_Journal of Commerce._
LEARN TO SWIM.--When the steamer Alida was sinking from her collision
with the Fashion, a Kentucky girl of seventeen was standing on the
guard, looking upon the confusion of the passengers, and occasionally
turning and looking anxiously toward the shore. A gallant young man
stepped up to her and offered to convey her safely to shore. "Thank
you," replied the lady, "you need not trouble yourself; I am only
waiting for the crowd to get out of the way, when I can take care of
myself." Soon the crowd cleared the space, and the lady plunged into
the water, and swam to the shore with ease, and without any apparent
fear.
A LADY HORSEBREAKER IN FRANCE.--In consequence of the success obtained
by Madame Isabelle in breaking in horses for the Russian army, the
French Minister of War lately authorized her to proceed officially
before a commission, composed of general and superior officers of
cavalry, with General Regnault de St. Jean d'Angely at their head, to
a practical demonstration of her method on a certain number of young
cavalry horses. After twenty days' training, the horses were so
perfectly broken in, that the minister no longer hesitated to enter
into an arrangement with Madame Isabelle to introduce her system into
all the imperial schools of cavalry, beginning with that of
Saumur.--_Galignani's Messenger_.
Since the passage of what is called the Married Woman's Act, in 1848,
in Pennsylvania, there have been brought, in the Court of Common
Pleas, one thousand one hundred and thirty-five suits for divorce. A
large majority of the cases are brought by the wives, on the ground of
cruel treatment and desertion.
"Women ruled all, and ministers of state
Were at the doors of women forced to wait--
Women, who've oft as sovereigns graced the land,
But never governed well at second-hand."
_Churchill's Satires, A.D. 1761._
SENATOR ANTHONY.
"A Woman's Rights Convention is in session in New York. A collection
of women arguing for political rights, and for the privileges usually
conceded only to the other sex, is one of the easiest things in the
world to make fun of. There is no end to the smart speeches and the
witty remarks that may be made on the subject. But when we seriously
attempt to show that a woman who pays taxes ought not to have a voice
in the manner in which the taxes are expended, that a woman whose
property and liberty and person are controlled by the laws, should
have no voice in framing those laws, it is not so easy. If women are
fit to rule in monarchies, it is difficult to say why they are not
qualified to vote in a republic; nor can there be greater indelicacy
in a woman going up to the ballot-box than there is in a woman opening
a legislature or issuing orders to an army.
"We do not say that women ought to vote; but we say that it is a great
deal easier to laugh down the idea than to argue it down. Moreover,
there are a great many things besides voting that are confined to men,
and that women can do quite as well, or even better. There are many
employments which ought to be opened to women, there are many ways in
which women can be made to contribute more largely to their own
independence and comfort, and to the general good of society. All
well-directed plans to this end should receive the support of thinking
men. The danger is that conventions of this kind are apt to overlook
the present and attainable good, in their efforts for results which
are of less certain value and far less practicable."--_Providence
Journal, Edited by Ex-Governor Anthony._
WISCONSIN LEGISLATURE, 1857.
WISCONSIN REPORT ON THE SUFFRAGE QUESTION.--The following extract from
the report on the extension of the right of suffrage in Wisconsin, we
find in _The Milwaukee Free Democrat_:
"Perhaps no question ever submitted to a community would call forth so
much of its mental activity, such a crusade into the realms of
history, such a balancing of good and evil, of the past with the
present, such an examination of the social and political rights and
relations, as the question whether the right of suffrage ought to be
extended to all citizens over the age of twenty-one, which would, of
course, include both sexes. The giddy devotee of fashion would be
surprised in the midst of her frivolity, and be compelled to think and
reason, in view of a new responsibility which is menacing her. Even if
opposed to the proposition, she would be compelled to organize and
inspire the public opinion necessary to defeat it. Whatever might be
the event, woman's intellectual position would be changed, and changed
forever, and with hers that of all other classes....
"Let no one imagine that he can dispose of this question by a
contemptuous fling at strong-minded women and hen-pecked husbands. The
principle will gain more strength from the character of the arguments
of its opponents than from any number of Bloomer conventions. The
modern idea of the fashionable belle, floating like a bird of paradise
through the soiree; the impersonation of motion and grace in the
ball-room, indulging alternately in syncope and rapture over the
marvelous adventures and despair of the hero of a mushroom romance,
her rapid transition from one excitement to another, to fill up the
dreary vacuum of life, provoking as it does the secret derision of
sensible men; all this comes from that legislation, from that public
opinion, which drives women away from real life; from the discussion
of questions in which her happiness and destiny are involved. A
senseless, though a false fondness, denies her a participation in all
questions of the actual world around her. The novel writers therefore
create a fictitious world, filled with fantastic and hollow
characters, for her to range in. Awhile she believes she is an angel,
till some unfortunate husband finds her to be a moth on his fortune,
and a baleful shadow stretching across his pathway, without curiosity
or interests in all those practical realities, which the world,
outside of her charmed existence, is attending to. These are the
abortions of a false public opinion. For ages they have been regarded
as the natural results of female organism. Hence, woman has become
famed as a gossip, because she would degrade herself by discussing
Judge A.'s qualifications for Judge of Probate, though Judge A. may
yet appoint a guardian for her children. In the sewing society, she
sews scandal, or reads brocades, silks, and crinolines, because it
would be extremely coarse and vulgar in her to read the statutes of
Wisconsin, where her rights of person and property, marriage and
divorce, are regulated. In those statutes she would find that though
$350,000 are appropriated to build a University, she is as effectually
excluded from that institution as though it was a convent of monks. So
there is some inconvenience at last in being regarded as a _bona-fide_
angel, for angels have no use for Universities. Some indignant
school-ma'am begins to suspect the hollow compliments of moon-struck
admirers, and demands a direct voice in the laws which provide for the
mutual improvement of her sex. But the grave doctor of law puts on his
spectacles, and tells her she is fully and exactly represented in man,
only more so. When he eats, she eats; when he thinks, she thinks; when
he gets drunk, she gets drunk; that it would be as absurd to provide
for the board and education of one's own shadow as to provide a
separate establishment for woman, who possesses all things, enjoys all
things, and sways all things in man, as fully as though she did it
herself. And a single woman, or widow, may pay taxes, but it would be
outrageous for her to have a choice in the men who are to spend the
money and then cry out for more. When married, ten years ago, her
education was equal to her husband's, now she can not write a
grammatical letter: her husband's mind has been enlarged by the influx
of new ideas, and by contacts with the electric atmosphere of thought
in the great world without; but denied as she has been the right of
expressing her will by a direct vote, she has lost all interest in
passing events; the globe has dwindled to a half-acre lot and the
village church. Her partner finds the match unequal, spends his time
with more congenial society, and is out-and-out in favor of Moses' law
of a galloping divorce. The old stager has filled the political arena
with frauds and brawls, and bruises and blood; and having levelled the
morals of the ballot-box with those of the race-ground or box-ring, he
has yet virtue enough left to declare that woman shall not enter this
moral Aceldama.
"Yet it may be that democracy, for self-preservation, will be
compelled to invite women to the ballot-box, to restrain and overawe
the ruffianism of man. Though man smiles with secret derision at the
competition of woman, in dress and show, yet he is too tender of her
reputation to allow her the same field with himself wherein to
exercise her powers. We believe that this contortion of character is
justly attributable to the denial of the right of voting, the great
mode by which the questions of the day are decided in this country.
Politics are our national life. As civilization advances, its issues
will penetrate still deeper into social and every-day life of the
people; and no man or woman can be regarded as an entity, as a power
in society, who has not a direct agency in governing its results.
Without a direct voice in molding the spirit of the age, the age will
disown us.
"But the objection is argued seriously. Political rivalry will arm the
wife against the husband; a man's foes will be those of his own
household. But we believe that political equality will, by lending the
thoughts and purposes of the sexes, to a just degree, into the same
channel, more completely carry out the designs of nature. Women will
be possessed of a positive power, and hollow compliments and
rose-water flatteries will be exchanged for a pure admiration and a
well-grounded respect, when we see her nobly discharging her part in
the great intellectual and moral struggles of the age, that wait their
solution by a direct appeal to the ballot-box. Woman's power is, at
present, poetical and unsubstantial; let it be practical and real.
There is no reality in any power that can not be coined into votes.
The demagogue has a sincere respect and a salutary fear of the voter;
and he that can direct the lightning flash of the ballot-box is
greater than he who possesses a continent of vapor, gilded with
moonshine.
"It is true, the right of voting would carry with it the right to hold
office; but since it is true that the sexes have appropriate spheres,
the discretion of individual voters would recognize this fact, and
seldom elect a woman to an office, for which she is unfitted by nature
and education, as incompetent men are now elected. But the cruelty of
our laws is seen in this--that where nature makes exceptions, the laws
are inexorable.
"We have shown that woman is not correctly represented by man at the
ballot-box. Could her voice be heard, it would alter the choice of
public men and their character. With legislators compelled to respect
her opinions, the law itself, constitutions, and politics reflect, to
a just extent, her peculiar views and interests. Nor is it for us to
decide whether these would be for the better or worse. Let the
majority rule. _Vox populi vox Dei._ Woman's intellect would enlarge
with her more commanding political condition, and though she might
blight the hopes of many a promising aspirant, yet the Union would not
be dissolved under her administration. Believing the time has come
when an appeal on her behalf to the voters of this State will not be
in vain, we have prepared to submit the question to the people, by our
amendment to the Senate bill.
"DAVID NOGGLE.
"J. T. MILLS.
"I altogether prefer the Committee's amendment to the Senate bill.
"_February 27, 1857_. HOPEWELL COXE."
ONE YEAR'S WORK.--The following are a portion of the results of the
Woman's Rights petitions, presented during the winter of 1856-7:
In Ohio and Wisconsin, Legislative Committees have reported favorably
to the Right of Suffrage, and extracts from the reports are given
above.
Ohio, Maine, Indiana, and Missouri have passed laws giving to married
women the right to control their own earnings. The Ohio and Maine
statutes are printed below; also a Maine act, giving the husband title
to an allowance from a deceased wife's property, similar to that now
given by the law to widows.
The memorial presented to the New York Legislature, owing to some
mistake, was not offered till too late for action.
OHIO STATUTE.--Bill passed by the Ohio Legislature, April 17, 1857.
Sec. 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Ohio,
that no married man shall sell, dispose of, or in any manner part
with, any personal property, which is now, or may hereafter be, exempt
from sale upon execution, without having first obtained the consent of
his wife thereto.
Sec. 2. If any married man shall violate the provisions of the
foregoing section, his wife may, in her own name, commence and
prosecute to final judgment and execution, in civil action, for the
recovery of such property or its value in money.
Sec. 8. Any married woman, whose husband shall desert her, or from
intemperance or other cause become incapacitated, or neglect to
provide for his family, may, in her own name, make contracts for her
own labor and the labor of her minor children, and in her own name,
sue for and collect her own or their earnings.
MAINE STATUTE.--At the recent session of the Legislature of Maine, the
following acts were passed:
"An Act relating to the property of deceased married women. Be it
enacted," etc.
"When a wife dies intestate and insolvent, her surviving husband shall
be entitled to an allowance from her personal estate, and a
distributive share in the residue thereof, in the same manner as a
widow is in the estate of her husband; and if she leaves issue he
shall have the use of one-third, if no issue, one-half of her real
estate for life, to be received and assigned in the manner and with
the rights of dower." Approved April 13, 1857.
"An Act in relation to the rights of married women.
"Any married woman may demand and receive the wages of personal labor
performed other than for her own family, and may hold the same in her
own right against her husband or any other person, and may maintain an
action therefore in her own name." Approved April 17, 1857.
FEMALE SUFFRAGE IN KENTUCKY.--Kentucky Revised Statutes, 1852, ch. 88.
"Schools and Seminaries." Art. 6, Sec. 1:
"An election shall be held at the school-house of each school
district, from nine o'clock in the morning till two o'clock in the
evening, of the first Saturday of April of each year, for the election
of three Trustees for the District for one year, and until others are
elected and qualified. The qualified voters in each District shall be
the electors, and _any widow having a child between six and eighteen
years of age, may also vote in person or by written proxy_."
[But if the suffrage is not limited to _widows_ who have a child
between six and eighteen, but extended to _unmarried, married_, and
_childless_ men, why not give it to women in those positions also?
Such a partial concession, though valuable as recognizing a principle,
is not likely to be extensively used. For in this case, as in that of
women who are stockholders in corporations, the female voters will be
deterred by their own small numbers and by the prejudices of society.
But give woman the equal right of suffrage, and the prejudice will
soon be swept away].
FEMALE SUFFRAGE IN CANADA.--[The following is the Canadian law under
which women vote. The omission of the word _male_ was intentional, and
was done to secure the weight of the Protestant property in the hands
of women, against the Roman Catholic aggressions and demands for
separate schools. The law works well. "A friend of mine in Canada West
told me," said Lucy Stone recently, "that when the law was first
passed giving women who owned a certain amount of property, or who
paid a given rental, a right to vote, he went trembling to the polls
to see the result. The first woman who came was a large property
holder in Toronto; with marked respect the crowd gave way as she
advanced. She spoke her vote and walked quietly away, sheltered by her
womanhood. It was all the protection she needed."]
XVIII. and XIV. VICTORIA, CAP 48.--An Act for the better establishment
and maintenance of Common Schools in Upper Canada. Passed July 24,
1850.
Sec. 1. Preamble--Repeals former acts.
Sec. 2. Enacts that the election of School Trustees shall take place
on the second Wednesday of January in each year.
Sec. 22. And be it enacted, that in each Ward, into which any City or
Town is or shall be divided according to Law, two fit and proper
persona shall be elected School Trustees by a majority of all the
_taxable inhabitants_.
Sec. 25. Enacts that on the second Wednesday in January there shall be
a meeting of all the taxable inhabitants of every incorporated
village, and at such meeting six fit and proper persons, from among
the resident householders, shall be elected School Trustees.
Sec. 5. Provides that in all _Country_ School Districts _three_
trustees shall be similarly elected by a majority of _the freeholders
or householders_ of such school section.
"THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN."--A very curious controversy, on paper, is
going on at present in the _Reveu Philosophique et Religieuse_,
between M. Proudhon and Mme. Jenny D'Hericourt. The latter defends,
with great warmth, the moral, civil, and political emancipation of
woman. Proudhon, in reply, declares that all the theories of Mme.
D'Hericourt are inapplicable, in consequence of the inherent weakness
of her sex. The periodical in which the contest is going on was
founded and is conducted by the old St. Simoniens.
* * * * *
REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE OF THE OHIO SENATE, ON GIVING THE RIGHT
OF SUFFRAGE TO FEMALES.
COLUMBUS, 1858.
The following petition, numerously signed by both men and women,
citizens of this State, was, at the first session of the Legislature,
referred to the undersigned Select Committee:
"WHEREAS, The women of the State of Ohio are disfranchised by the
Constitution solely on account of their sex;
"We do, respectfully, demand for them the right of suffrage--a right
which involves all other rights of citizenship--one that can not,
justly, be withheld, as the following admitted principles of
government show:
"First. 'All men are born free and equal.'
"Second. 'Government derives its just power from the consent of the
governed.'
"Third. 'Taxation and representation are inseparable.'
"We, the undersigned, therefore, petition your honorable body to take
the necessary steps for a revision of the Constitution, so that all
citizens may enjoy equal political rights."
Your Committee have given the subject referred to them a careful
examination, and now
REPORT.
Your Committee believe that the prayer of the petitioners ought
to be granted. Our opinion is based both upon grounds of
principle and expediency, which we will endeavor to present as
briefly as is consistent with a due consideration of this
subject.
The founders of this Republic claimed and asserted with
great emphasis, the essential equality of human rights as a
self-evident truth. They scouted the venerable old dogma of the
divine right of kings and titled aristocracies to rule the
submissive multitude. They were equally explicit in their claim
that "taxation and representation are inseparable."
The House of Representatives of Massachusetts, 1764, declared,
"That the imposition of duties and taxes, by the Parliament of
Great Britain, upon a _people not represented_ in the House of
Commons, is absolutely irreconcilable with their rights." A
pamphlet entitled "The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted,"
was sent to the agent of the Colony in England, to show him the
state of the public mind, and along with it an energetic letter.
"The silence of the province," said this letter, alluding to the
suggestion of the agent that he had taken silence for consent,
"should have been imputed to any cause--even to despair--rather
than be construed into a tacit cession of their rights, or the
acknowledgment of a right in the Parliament of Great Britain, to
impose duties and taxes on a people who are not represented In
the House of Commons." "_If we are not represented we are
slaves!_" Some of England's ablest jurists acknowledge the truth
of this doctrine. Chief Justice Pratt said: "My position is
this--taxation and representation are inseparable. The position
is founded in the law of nature. It is more; it is itself an
eternal law of nature." In defence of this doctrine they waged a
seven years' war: and yet, when they had wrung from the grasp of
Great Britain the Colonies she would not govern upon this
principle, and undertook to organize them according to their
favorite theory, most of the Colonies, by a single stroke of the
pen, cut off one-half of the people from any representation in
the government which claimed their obedience to its laws, the
right to tax them for its support, and the right to punish them
for disobedience.
This disparity between their theory and practice does not seem to
have excited much, if any notice, at the time, nor until its
bitter fruits had long been eaten in obscurity and sorrow by
thousands who suffered, but did not complain. Indeed, so
apathetic has been the public mind upon this subject, that no one
is surprised to see such a remark as the following by a
distinguished commentator upon American institutions: "In the
free States, except criminals and paupers, _there is no class of
persons_ who do not exercise the elective franchise." It seems
women are not even a class of persons. They are fairly dropped
from the human race, and very naturally, since we have grown
accustomed to recognize as _universal_ suffrage, that which
excludes by constitutional taboo one-half of the people. To
declare that a voice in the government is the right of _all_, and
then give it only to a _part_--and that the part to which the
claimant himself belongs--is to renounce even the appearance of
principle. As ought to have been foreseen, the class of persons
thus cut off from the means of self-protection, have become
victims of unequal and oppressive legislation, which runs through
our whole code. We first bind the hands, by the organic law, and
then proceed with deliberate safety, by the statute, to spoil the
goods of the victim. Whatever palliation for the past hoary
custom, false theology, and narrow prejudice may furnish, it is
certainly time now to remedy those evils, and reduce to practice
our favorite theory of government.
The citizens thus robbed of a natural right complain of the
injustice. They protest against taxation without representation.
They claim that all _just_ government must derive its power from
the consent of the governed. A forcible female writer says: "Even
this so-called free government of the united States, as at
present administered, is nothing but a political, hereditary
despotism to woman; she has no instrumentality whatever in making
the laws by which she is governed, while her property is taxed
_without_ representation."
But this feeling, it is claimed, is entertained but by few women;
on the contrary, they generally disown such claim when made in
their behalf. Supposing the fact to be true to the fullest extent
ever asserted, if it proves that American women ought to remain
as they are, it proves exactly the same with respect to Asiatic
women; for they, too, instead of murmuring at their seclusion and
at the restraint imposed upon them, pride themselves on it, and
are astonished at the effrontery of women who receive visits from
male acquaintances, and are seen in the streets unveiled. Habits
of submission make women, as well as men, servile-minded. The
vast population of Asia do not desire or value--probably would
not accept--political liberty, nor the savages of the forest
civilization; which does not prove that either of these things is
undesirable for them, or that they will not, at some future time,
enjoy it. Custom hardens human beings to any kind of degradation,
by deadening that part of their nature which would resist it. And
the case of woman is, in this respect even, a peculiar one, for
no other inferior caste that we have heard of has been taught to
regard its degradation as their, its, honor. The argument,
however, implies a secret consciousness that the alleged
preference of women for their dependent state is merely apparent,
and arises from their being allowed no choice; for, if the
preference be natural, there can be no necessity for enforcing
it by law. To make laws compelling people to follow their
inclinations, has not, hitherto, been thought necessary by any
legislator.
The plea that women do not desire any change is the same that has
been urged, times out of mind, against the proposal of abolishing
any social evil. "There is no complaint," which is generally, and
in this case certainly not true, and when true, only so because
there is not that hope of success, without which complaint seldom
makes itself audible to unwilling ears. How does the objector
know that women do not desire equality of freedom? It would be
very simple to suppose that if they do desire it they will all
say so. Their position is like that of the tenants and laborers
who vote against their own political interests to please their
landlords or employers, with the unique admission that submission
is inculcated in them from childhood, as the peculiar attraction
and grace of their character. They are taught to think that to
repel actively even an admitted injustice, done to themselves, is
somewhat unfeminine, and had better be left to some male friend
or protector. To be accused of rebelling against anything which
admits of being called an ordinance of society, they are taught
to regard as an imputation of a serious offence, to say the
least, against the propriety of their sex. It requires unusual
moral courage, as well as disinterestedness in a woman, to
express opinions favorable to woman's enfranchisement, until, at
least, there is some prospect of obtaining it.
The comfort of her individual life and her social consideration,
usually depend on the good-will of those who hold the undue
power; and to the possessors of power, any complaint, however
bitter, of the misuse of it, is scarcely a less flagrant act of
insubordination than to protest against the power itself. The
professions of women in this matter remind us of the State
offenders of old, who, on the point of execution, used to protest
their love and devotion to the sovereign by whose unjust mandate
they suffered. Grlselda, himself, might be matched from the
speeches put by Shakespeare into the mouths of male victims of
kingly caprice and tyranny; the Duke of Buckingham, for example,
in "Henry VIII.," and even Wolsey.
The literary class of women are often ostentatious in
disclaiming the desire for equality of citizenship, and
proclaiming their complete satisfaction with the place which
society assigns them; exercising in this, as in many other
respects, a most noxious influence over the feelings and opinions
of men, who unsuspectingly accept the servilities of toadyism as
concessions to the force of truth, not considering that it is the
personal interest of these women to profess whatever opinions
they expect will be agreeable to men. It is not among men of
talent, sprung from the people, and patronized and flattered by
the aristocracy, that we look for the leaders of a democratic
movement. Successful literary women are just as unlikely to
prefer the cause of woman to their own social consideration. They
depend on men's opinion for their literary, as well as for their
feminine successes; and such is their bad opinion of men, that
they believe there is not more than one in a thousand who does
not dislike and fear strength, sincerity, and high spirit in a
woman. They are, therefore, anxious to earn pardon and toleration
for whatever of these qualities their writings may exhibit on
other subjects, by a studied display of submission on this; that
they may give no occasion for vulgar men to say--what nothing
will prevent vulgar men from saying--that learning makes woman
unfeminine, and that literary ladies are likely to be bad wives.
But even if a large majority of women do not desire any change in
the Constitution, that would be a very bad reason for withholding
the elective franchise from those who do desire it. Freedom of
choice, liberty to choose their own sphere, is what is asked. We
have not heard that the most ardent apostles of female suffrage
propose to compel any woman to make stump speeches against her
will, or to march a fainting sisterhood to the polls under a
police, in Bloomer costume. Women who condemn their sisters for
discontent with the laws as they are, have their prototype in
those men of America who, in our revolutionary struggle with
England, vehemently denounced and stigmatized as fanatics and
rebels the leaders and malcontents of that day. But neither their
patriotism nor wisdom have ever been much admired by the American
people, perhaps not even by the English.
The objection urged against female suffrage with the greatest
confidence and by the greatest number, is that such a right is
incompatible with the refinement and delicacy of the sex. That it
would make them harsh and disputative, like male voters. This
objection loses most, if not all of its force, when it is
compared with the well-established usages of society as relates
to woman. She already fills places and discharges duties with the
approbation of most men, which are, to say the least, quite as
dangerous to her refinement and retiring modesty, as the act of
voting or even holding office would be. In our political
campaigns all parties are anxious to secure the co-operation of
women. They are urged to attend our political meetings, and even
in our mass meetings, when whole acres of men are assembled, they
are importunately urged to take a conspicuous part, sometimes as
the representatives of the several States, and sometimes as the
donors of banners and flags, accompanied with patriotic speeches
by the fair donors. And in great moral questions, such as
temperance, for example, in the right disposition of which woman
is more interested than man, she often discharges a large
amount of the labor of the campaign; but yet, when it comes
to the crowning act of voting, she must stand aside--delicacy
forbids--that is too masculine, too public, too exposing, though
it could be done, in most cases, with as little difficulty and
exposure as a letter can be taken out or put in the post-office.
Then there is that large class of concert singers and readers of
the drama, who are eulogized and petted by those who are most
shocked at the idea of women submitting themselves to the
exposure of voting. In fact, the whole question of publicity is
settled to the fullest extent; at least every man must be silent
who acquiesces in the concert, the drama, or the opera. We need
not dwell on the exposures of the stage or the indelicacies of
the ballet, but if Jenny Lind was "an angel of purity and
benevolence" for consenting to stand, chanting and enchanting,
before three thousand excited admirers; if Madame Sontag could
give a full-dress rehearsal (which does not commonly imply a
superfluity of apparel) for the special edification of the clergy
of Boston, and be rewarded with duplicate Bibles, it is difficult
to see why a woman may not vote on questions vitally affecting
the interests of herself, or children, or kindred.
But, with all our dainty notions of female proprieties, women
are, by common consent, dragged into court as witnesses, and
subjected to the most scrutinizing and often indelicate
examinations and questions, if either party imagines he can gain
a sixpence, or dull the edge of a criminal prosecution, by her
testimony. The interest, convenience, and prejudices of men, and
not any true regard for the delicacy of the sex, seem to be the
standard by which woman's rights and duties are to be measured.
It is prejudice, custom, long-established usage, and not reason,
which demand the sacrifice of woman's natural rights of
self-government; a relic of barbarism still lingering in all
political, and nearly all religions organizations. Among the
purely savage tribes, woman takes position as a domestic
drudge--a mere beast of burden, whilst the sensual civilization
of Asia regard her more in the light of a domestic luxury, to be
jealously guarded from the profane sight of all men but her
husband. Both positions equally and widely remote from the noble
one God intended her to fill.
In Persia and Turkey women grossly offend the public taste if
they suffer their faces to be seen in the streets. In the latter
country they are prohibited by law, in common with "pigs, dogs,
and other unclean animals," as the law styles them, from so much
as entering their mosques. _Our_ ideas of the proper sphere,
duties, and capabilities of woman do not differ from these so
much in kind as degree. They are all based upon the assumption
that man has the right to decide what are the rights, to point
out the duties, and to fix the boundaries of woman's sphere;
which, taking for true, our cherished theory of government, to
wit: the _inalienability and equality of human rights_ can hardly
be characterized by a milder term than that of an impudent and
oppressive usurpation. Who has authorized us, whilst railing at
miters, and crosiers, and scepters, and shouting in the ears of
the British Lion, as self-evident truths, "representation and
taxation are, and _shall_ be, inseparable,"--"governments, to be
_just_, must have the consent of the governed;" to say woman,
one-half of the whole race, shall, nevertheless, be taxed without
representation and governed without her consent? Who hath made us
a judge betwixt her and her Maker?
It is said woman's mental and moral organization is peculiar,
differing widely from that of man. Perhaps so. She must then have
a peculiar fitness of qualification to judge what will be wise
and just government for her. Let her be free to choose for
herself, in the light of her peculiar organization, to what she
is best adapted. She is better qualified to judge of her proper
sphere than man can be. She knows her own wants and capabilities.
Let us leave her, as God created her, a free agent, accountable
to Him for any violation of the laws of her nature. He has
mingled the sexes in the family relation; they are associated on
terms of equality in some churches. They are active working and
voting members of literary and benevolent societies. They vote as
share-holders in stock companies, and in countries where less is
said about freedom, and equality, and representation, they are
often called to, and fill, with distinguished ability, very
important positions, and often discharge the highest political
trusts known to their laws. Which of England's kings has shown
more executive ability than Elizabeth, or which has been more
conscientious and discreet than Annie and Victoria? Spain, too,
had her Isabella, and France her Maid of Orleans, her Madame
Roland, yes, and her Charlotte Corday. Austria and Hungary their
Maria Theresa. Russia her Catharine; and even the jealous Jewish
Theocracy was judged forty years by a woman. It is too late, by
thirty centuries, to put in the plea of her incompetency in
political affairs.
But it is objected that it would not do for woman, particularly a
married woman, to be allowed to vote. It might bring discord into
the family if she differed from her husband. If this objection
were worth anything at all, it would lie with tenfold greater
force against religious than political organizations. No
animosities are so bitter and implacable as those growing out of
religions disagreements; yet we allow women to choose their
religious creeds, attend their favorite places of worship, and in
some of them take an equal part in the church business, and all
this, though the husband is of another religion, or of no
religion, and no one this side of Turkey claims that the law
should compel woman to have no religion, or adopt that of her
husband. But, even if that objection were a good one, more than
half the adult women of the State are unmarried.
It is said, too, that as woman is not required to perform
military duty, and work on the roads, she ought not to vote. None
but "able-bodied" men, under a certain age, are required to do
military duty, and the effect is practically the same in regard
to the two days' work on the roads, whilst women pay tax for
military and road purposes the same as man. A _man's_ right to
vote does not depend on his ability to perform physical labor,
why should a _woman's?_ By the exclusion of woman from her due
influence and voice in the government, we lose that elevating and
refining influence which she gives to religious, social, and
domestic life. Her presence at our political meetings, all agree,
contributes greatly to their order, decorum, and decency. Why
should not the polls, also, be civilized by her presence?
Does not the morality of our politics demonstrate a great want of
the two qualities so characteristic of woman, heart and
conscience? The female element which works such miracles of
reform in the rude manners of men, in all the departments of life
where she has the freedom to go, is nowhere more needed than in
our politics, or at the polls.
We have endeavored to show that the constitutional prohibition of
female suffrage is not only a violation of natural right, but
equally at war with the fundamental principles of the government.
Let us now look at the practical results of this organic wrong.
After having taken away from woman the means of protecting her
person and property, by the peaceable, but powerful ballot, how
have we discharged the self-imposed duty of legislating for her?
By every principle of honor, or even of common honesty, we are
bound to see that her interests do not suffer in our hands. That,
if we depart at all from the principle of strict equality, it
should be in her favor. Let as see what are the facts.
When a woman marries she becomes almost annihilated in the eyes
of the law, except as a subject of punishment. She loses the
right to receive and control the wages of her own labor. If she
be an administratrix, or executrix, she is counted as dead, and
another must be appointed. If she have children, they may be
taken from her against her will, and placed in the care of any
one, no matter how unfit, whom the father may select. He may even
give them away by will. "The personal property of the wife, such
as money, goods, cattle, and other chattels, which she had in
possession at the time of her marriage, in her own right, and not
in the right of another, vest immediately in the husband, and he
can dispose of them as he pleases. On his death, they go to his
representatives, like the residue of his property. So, if any
such goods or chattels come to her possession in her own right,
after the marriage, they, in like manner, immediately vest in the
husband." "Such property of the wife, as bonds, notes, arrears of
rent, legacies, which are termed _choses in action_, do not vest
in the husband by mere operation of marriage. To entitle him to
them, he must first reduce them into possession, by recovering
the money, or altering the security, as by making them payable to
himself. If the husband appoint an attorney to receive a debt or
claim due the wife, and the attorney received it, or if he
mortgaged the claim or debt, or assign it for a valuable
consideration, or recover judgment by suit, in his own name, or
if he release it, in all these cases the right of the wife, upon
the decease of the husband, is gone."
The real estate of the wife, such as houses and lands, is in
nearly the same state of subjection to the husband's will. He is
entitled to all the rents and profits while they both live, and
the husband can hold the estate during his life, even though the
wife be dead. A woman may thus be stripped of every available
cent she ever had in the world, and even see it squandered in
ministering to the low appetite or passions of a drunken
debauchee of a husband. And when, by economy and toil, she may
have acquired the means of present subsistence, this, too, may be
_lawfully_ taken from her, and applied to the same base purpose.
Even her Family Bible, the last gift of a dying mother, her only
remaining comfort, can be lawfully taken and sold by the husband,
to buy the means of intoxication. _This very thing has been
done._ Can any one believe that laws, so wickedly one-sided as
these, were ever honestly designed for the equal benefit of woman
with man? Yet wives are said to have quite a sufficient
representation in the government, through their husbands, to
secure them protection.
But the cruel inequality of the laws relating to woman as wife
are quite outdone by those relating to her as widow. It is these
stricken and sorrowful victims, the law seems especially to have
selected as its prey. Upon the death of the husband, the law
takes possession of the whole of the estate. The smallest items
of property must be turned out for valuation, to be handled by
strangers. The clothes that the deceased had worn, the chair in
which he sat, the bed on which he died, all these sacred
memorials of the dead, must undergo the cold scrutiny of officers
of the law. The widow is counted but as an alien, and an
incumbrance on the estate, the bulk of which is designed for
other hands. She is to have doled out to her, like a pauper, by
paltry sixes, the furniture of her own kitchen. "One table, six
chairs, six knives and forks, six plates, six tea-cups and
saucers, one sugar-dish, one milk-pail, one tea-pot, and _twelve_
spoons!" All this munificent provision for, perhaps, a family of
only a dozen-persons. Think of it, ye widows, and learn to be
grateful for man's provident care of you in your hour of need!
Then comes the sale of "the effects of the deceased," as they are
called; and amid the fullness and freshness of her grief, the
widow is compelled to see sold into the hands of strangers, amid
the coarse jokes and levity of a public auction, articles to her
beyond all price, and around which so many tender memories cling.
Experience alone can fully teach the torture of this fiery
ordeal. But this is only the beginning of her sorrows. If she
have children, the estate is considered to belong to them, while
she is but an "incumbrance" upon it. She is to have the rents and
profits of one-third part of the real estate her lifetime, which,
to the vast majority of cases, is so unproductive as to compel
her to leave that spot, endeared to her by so many tender
ties--the home of her early love, the birthplace of her
children--for a cheaper and less comfortable home. But, bereaved
of her husband and robbed of her property,
"The law hath yet another hold on her."
Following up the insulting and injurious assumption of her
incompetency and untrustworthiness, implied in the denial of her
right of suffrage, the guardianship of her children is taken from
her. Her daughter, at the age of twelve, and her son, at fifteen,
are to go through the mockery of choosing for themselves a
_competent_ guardian--a proceeding calculated to destroy the
beautiful trust and confidence in the wisdom and fitness of the
mother to govern and direct them, so natural and so essential to
the happiness of children. When the justifying pretext for the
infliction of all this misery is the benefit of the children, her
maternal nature will struggle hard to endure it with patience.
But, until the passage of the law of 1863, "regulating descents
and distributions," when there were no children of either parent,
the law did not abate its rigor toward her, in the disposition of
the real estate, which is generally all that is left, after
paying the debts and costs of "settlement," though the whole of
the houses and lands might have been bought with her money,
two-thirds were immediately handed over to the relatives of the
husband, however above need; and though they might have been
strangers, or even enemies, to her. She had but a life estate in
the other third, which, at her death, also went, as the other, to
her husband's heirs. She could not indulge her benevolent
feelings or gratify her friendships, by devising by will, to
approved charities or favorite friends, the means she no longer
needed. With a bitter sense of injustice and despairing sorrow,
she might well adopt the language of the unhappy Jew:
"Nay, take my life and all, pardon not that;
You take my house, when you do take the prop
That doth sustain my house; you take my life,
When you do take the means whereby I live."
Such is the famous right of dower, which has been the subject of
so many stupid eulogies by lawyers and commentators.
Take an example of the effect of these laws upon an overburdened
heart, which occurred just before the passage of the Act of 1853.
A young couple, by their united means and patient industry, had
secured for themselves a small, but comfortable home. It
furnished the means of supplying all their simple wants. It was
their own; doubly endeared by the struggles and sacrifices it had
cost them. They were content. They had no children, but they had
each other, and were happy in their mutual love. Death seemed a
great way off; and life--it was a real joy. They knew little of
the laws of estates. Owing nothing, they feared no intrusion upon
the sanctity of their home. But the husband was killed by the
falling of a tree; and, after some hours, was found dead by the
agonized wife. There was no will. The wrung heart of the
childless widow, in her utter bereavement, still clung to her
home, which, though blighted and desolate, was still dear to her.
There, at least, she would find shelter. But soon the inexorable
law laid its cold, unwelcome hand upon that darkened home. There
must be letters of administration had--an inventory of the
"effects"--an appraisement. Everything was explained by
sympathizing counsel. The "right of dower" set conspicuously
in the foreground--"one equal third part"--at length she
comprehended it all. Her home was to pass into other hands:
henceforth she was to be counted only as an incumbrance on it.
Looking from the misery of the present down the gloom of the
future, she could see only widowhood and penury. And whilst the
appraisers were performing their ungracious task of overhauling
cupboards and drawers, and estimating the value in cash of
presents received in her courtship, she, in her quiet despair at
this last bitter drop added to her full cup, arrayed herself in
her best apparel (which the law generously provides "she shall
retain"), and, without uttering a word of complaint or farewell,
walked to the nearest water and drowned herself.
If "oppression maketh even a wise man mad," ought we to wonder
that a woman, almost crazed by a sudden and terrible bereavement,
upon finding that her calamity, instead of giving her the jealous
and compassionate protection of the law, was to be made the
pretext for robbing her of what yet remained of earthly comforts,
should, in the madness of her despair, cast away the burden of a
life no longer tolerable? In India she would have been burned
upon the funeral pile of her dead husband; we drive her to
madness and suicide by the slower, but no less cruel torture, of
starvation and a breaking heart. Whilst persisting in such
legislation, how could we expect to escape the woe, denounced by
the compassionate and long-suffering Saviour, against the
"hypocrites who devour widows' houses"?
It is said woman can accomplish any object of her desire better
by persuasion, by her smiles and tears and eloquence, than she
could ever compel by her vote. But with all her powers of coaxing
and eloquence, she has never yet coaxed her partner into doing
her simple justice. Shall we never get beyond the absurd theory
that every woman is legally and politically represented by her
husband, and hence has an adequate guarantee? The answer is, that
she has been so represented ever since representation began, and
the result appears to be that, among the Anglo-Saxon race
generally, the entire system of laws in regard to women is, at
this moment, so utterly wrong, that Lord Brougham is reported to
have declared it useless to attempt to amend it--"There must be a
total reconstruction before a woman can have any justice." The
wrong lies not so much in any special statute as in the
fundamental theory of the law, yet no man can read the statutes
on this subject of the most enlightened nation, without admitting
that they were obviously made by man, not with a view to woman's
interest, but his own. Our Ohio laws may not be so bad as the law
repealed in Vermont in 1850, which _confiscated to the State_
one-half the property of every childless widow, unless the
husband had other heirs. But they must compel from every generous
man the admission, that neither justice nor gallantry has yet
availed to procure anything like impartiality in the legal
provisions for the two sexes. With what decent show of justice,
then, can man, thus dishonored, claim a continuance of this
suicidal confidence? There is something respectable in the frank
barbarism of the old Russian nuptial consecration, "Here, wolf,
take thy lamb." But we can not easily extend the same charity to
the civilized wolf of England and America, clad in the sheep's
clothing of a volume of revised statutes, caressing the person of
the bride and devouring her property.
It is said the husband can, by will, provide against these cases
of hardship and injustice. True, he can, if he will, but does he?
The number is few, some of the more thoughtful and conscientious;
but this is only obtaining justice as a favor, and not as a
natural right. But it is a majority of husbands who make these
laws, and they generally have no desire to amend them by will.
Besides, the will of the husband is sometimes even worse than the
law itself. Such cases are by no means rare. Almost every man's
memory may furnish one or more examples that have fallen under
his immediate notice. One or two only we will mention. A woman,
advanced in life, who owned a valuable farm in her own right, in
the border of a flourishing town, married a man who had little or
no property. The farm was soon cut up into town lots and sold at
high prices. In a few years the husband died, leaving no
children, but, by will, directed the division of nearly the whole
of the estate among his relatives, persons who the wife never
saw. The only remedy in this case was to fall back upon her right
of dower, and submit to the robbery of the law, in order to
escape the worse robbery of the will. This will was not the
result of any disagreement between the husband and the wife. It
was only the natural outgrowth of the whole policy of our laws as
regards the property rights of woman. Permit us to notice one
other case, which occurred in a neighboring State. Many similar
ones, no doubt, have occurred in our own, the law in both States
being the same.
A woman who had a fortune of fifty thousand dollars in "personal
property," married. All this, by the law, belonged absolutely to
the husband. In a year he died, leaving a will directing that the
widow should have the proceeds of a certain part of this money,
_so long as she remained unmarried_. If she married again, or at
her death, it was to go to his heirs.
How different in all these cases is the condition of the
husband upon the death of the wife. There in then no officious
intermeddling of the law in his domestic affairs. His house, sad
and desolate though it be, is still sacred and secure from the
foot of unbidden guests. There is no legal "settlement" to eat
up his estate. He is not told that "one equal third part" of all
his lands and tenements shall be set apart for his use during
his lifetime. "He has all, everything, even his wife's bridal
presents too are his. If the wife had lands in her own right, and
if they have ever had a living child, he has a life estate in the
whole of it, not a beggarly 'third part.'"
Such is the result of man's government of woman without her
consent. Such is the protection he affords her. She now asks
the means of protecting herself, by the same instrumentality
which man considers so essential to his freedom and security,
representation, political equality--THE RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE.
The removal of this constitutional restriction is of great
consequence, because it casts upon woman a stigma of inferiority,
of incompetency, of unworthiness of trust. It ranks her with
criminals and madmen and idiots. It is essential to her,
practically, as being the key to all her rights, which will open
to her the door of equality and justice.
Does any one believe that if woman had possessed an equal voice
in making our laws, we should have standing on our statute books,
for generations, laws so palpably unequal and unjust toward her?
The idea is preposterous.
If our sense of natural justice and our theory of government both
agree, that the being who is to suffer under laws shall first
personally assent to them, and that the being whose industry the
government is to burden should have a voice in fixing the
character and amount of that burden, then, while woman is
admitted to the gallows, the jail, and the tax-list, _we have no
right_ to debar her from the ballot-box.
Your Committee recommend the adoption of the following
resolution:
_Resolved_, That the Judiciary Committee be instructed to report
to the Senate, a bill to submit to the qualified electors at the
next election for senators and representatives, an amendment to
the Constitution whereby the elective franchise shall be extended
to the citizens of Ohio, without distinction of sex.
J. D. CATTELL,
H. CANFIELD.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
The transcriber made changes as below indicated
to the text to correct obvious errors:
1. p. 18, "worhips" --> "worships"
2. p. 25, "evironments" --> "environments"
3. P. 54, "resoultion" --> "resolution"
4. p. 236, "spoliage" --> "spoilage"
5. p. 236, "pacifcally" --> "pacifically"
6. p. 269, "politicans" --> "politicians"
7. p. 303, "wilness" --> "wilderness"
8. p. 347, "itoxicating" --> "intoxicating"
9. p. 347, "probibitory" --> "prohibitory"
10. p. 349, "Legiture" --> "Legislature"
11. p. 373, "dipossessed" --> "dispossessed"
12. p. 383, "monoply" --> "monopoly"
13. p. 384, "Jospeh" --> "Joseph"
14. p. 405, "penalities" --> "penalties"
15. p. 448, "coup d'etat" --> "coup d'état"
16. p. 491, "recolletion" --> "recollection"
17. P. 507, "beleive" --> "believe"
18. p. 534, "wrold" --> "world"
19. p. 539, "familar" --> "familiar"
20. p. 584, "lawer" --> "lawyer"
21. p. 595, "prentence" --> "pretence"
22. p. 730, "womahood" --> "womanhood"
23. p. 742, "gods" --> "goods"
24. p. 792, "moden" --> "modern"
25. p. 834, "congratlate" --> "congratulate"
26. p. 837, "nonsenical" --> "nonsensical"
27. p. 838, "characacteristic" --> "characteristic"
28. p. 840, "virtuons" --> "virtuous"