I consider that the movement which unites us to-day is no whim, but an
organic impulse,—a right and proper inquiry,—honoring to the age. And
among the good signs of the times, this is of the best.
The distinctions of the mind of Woman we all recognize; their
affectionate, sympathetic, religious, oracular nature; their swifter and
finer perception; their taste, or love of order and beauty, influencing
or creating manners. We commonly say, Man represents Intellect; and
Woman, Love. Man looks for hard truth. Woman, with her affection for
goodness, benefit. Hence they are religious. In all countries and creeds
the temples are filled by women, and they hold men to religious rites
and moral duties. And in all countries the man—no matter how hardened a
reprobate he is—likes well to have his wife a saint. It was no historic
chance, but an instinct, which softened in the Middle Ages the terror
of the superstitious, by gradually lifting their prayers to the Virgin
Mary and so adopting the Mother of God as the efficient Intercessor. And
now, when our religious traditions are so far outgrown as to require
correction and reform, ’tis certain that nothing can be fixed and
accepted which does not commend itself to Woman.
I suppose women feel in relation to men as ’tis said geniuses feel among
energetic workers, that, though overlooked and thrust aside in the press,
they outsee all these noisy masters: and we, in the presence of sensible
women, feel overlooked, judged,—and sentenced.
They are better scholars than we at school, and the reason why they are
not better than we twenty years later may be because men can turn their
reading to account in the professions, and women are excluded from the
professions.
These traits have always characterized women. We are a little vain of our
women, as if we had invented them. I think we exaggerate the effect of
Greek, Roman and even Oriental institutions on the character of woman.
Superior women are rare anywhere, as superior men are. But the anecdotes
of every country give like portraits of womanhood, and every country in
its Roll of Honor has as many women as men. The high sentiment of women
appears in the Hebrew, the Hindoo; in Greek women in Homer, in the
tragedies, and Roman women in the histories. Their distinctive traits,
grace, vivacity, and surer moral sentiment, their self-sacrifice, their
courage and endurance, have in every nation found respect and admiration.
Her gifts make woman the refiner and civilizer of her mate. Civilization
is her work. Man is rude and bearish in colleges, in mines, in ships,
because there is no woman. Let good women go passengers in the ship, and
the manners at once are mended; in schools, in hospitals, in the prairie,
in California, she brings the same reform....
Her activity in putting an end to Slavery; and in serving the hospitals
of the Sanitary Commission in the war, and in the labors of the
Freedman’s Bureau, have opened her eyes to larger rights and duties. She
claims now her full rights of all kinds,—to education, to employment, to
equal laws of property. Well, now in this country we are suffering much
and fearing more from the abuse of the ballot and from fraudulent and
purchased votes. And now, at the moment when committees are investigating
and reporting the election frauds, woman asks for her vote. It is the
remedy at the hour of need. She is to purify and civilize the voting, as
she has the schools, the hospitals and the drawing-rooms. For, to grant
her request, you must remove the polls from the tavern and rum-shop, and
build noble edifices worthy of the State, whose halls shall afford her
every security for deliberate and sovereign action.
’Tis certainly no new thing to see women interest themselves in politics.
In England, in France, in Germany, Italy, we find women of influence and
administrative capacity,—some Duchess of Marlborough, some Madame de
Longueville, Madame Roland,—centres of political power and intrigue....
But we have ourselves seen the great political enterprise of our times,
the abolition of Slavery in America, undertaken by a society whose
executive committee was composed of men and women, and which held
together until this object was attained. And she may well exhibit the
history of that as her voucher that she is entitled to demand power which
she has shown she can use so well.
’Tis idle to refuse them a vote on the ground of incompetency. I wish our
masculine voting were so good that we had any right to doubt their equal
discretion. They could not easily give worse votes, I think, than we do.