VIII. MASSACHUSETTS
First Worcester Convention, 1850.
NAMES OF PERSONS WHO SIGNED THE CALL OF 1850.
MASSACHUSETTS.
Lucy Stone, B. S. Treanor, Dr. Seth Rogers, Wm. H. Channing, Mary M. Brooks, Eliza F. Taft, Harriot K. Hunt, T. W. Higginson, Dr. A. C. Taft, A. Bronson Alcott, Mary E. Higginson, Charles K. Whipple, Nathaniel Barney, Emily Winslow, Mary Bullard, Eliza Barney, R. Waldo Emerson, Emma C. Goodwin, Wendell Phillips, William L. Garrison, Abby Price, Ann Greene Phillips, Helen E. Garrison, Thankful Southwick, Adin Ballou, Charles F. Hovey, Eliza J. Kenney, Anna Q. T. Parsons, Sarah Earle Louisa M. Sewall, Mary H. L. Cabot, Abby K. Foster Sarah Southwick.
RHODE ISLAND.
Sarah H. Whitman, Sarah Brown, George Clarke, Thomas Davis, Elizabeth B. Chace, Mary Adams, Paulina W. Davis, Mary Clarke, George Adams. Joseph A. Barker, John L. Clarke,
NEW YORK
Gerrit Smith, Charlotte G. Coffin, Joseph Savage, Nancy Smith, Mary G. Taber, L. N. Fowler, Elizabeth C. Stanton, Elizabeth S. Miller, Lydia Fowler, Catharine Wilkinson, Elizabeth Russell, Sarah Smith, Samuel J. May, Stephen Smith, Charles D. Miller. Charlotte C. May, Rosa Smith,
PENNSYLVANIA.
William Elder, Jane G. Swisshelm, Myra Townsend, Sarah Elder, Charlotte Darlington, Mary Grew, Sarah Tyndale, Simon Barnard, Sarah Lewis, Warner Justice, Lucretia Mott, Sarah Pugh, Huldah Justice, James Mott, Hannah Darlington, William Swisshelm, W. S. Pierce, Sarah D. Barnard.
MARYLAND.
Mrs. Eliza Stewart.
OHIO.
Elizabeth Wilson, Mary Cowles, Benjamin S. Jones, Mary A. Johnson, Maria L. Giddings, Lucius A. Hine, Oliver Johnson, Jane Elizabeth Jones, Sylvia Cornell.
RESOLUTIONS.
Wendell Phillips presented, from the Business Committee, the following resolutions:
Resolved, That every human being of full age, and resident for a proper length of time on the soil of the nation, who is required to obey law, is entitled to a voice in its enactments; that every such person, whose property or labor is taxed for the support of the government, is entitled to a direct share in such government; therefore,
Resolved, That women are clearly entitled to the right of suffrage, and to be considered eligible to office; the omission to demand which on her part, is a palpable recreancy to duty, and the denial of which is a gross usurpation, on the part of man, no longer to be endured; and that every party which claims to represent the humanity, civilization, and progress of the age, is bound to inscribe on its banners, "Equality before the law, without distinction of sex or color."
Resolved, That political rights acknowledge no sex, and, therefore, the word "male" should be stricken from every State Constitution.
Resolved, That the laws of property, as affecting married parties, demand a thorough revisal, so that all rights may be equal between them; that the wife may have, during life, an equal control over the property gained by their mutual toil and sacrifices, be heir to her husband precisely to the same extent that he is heir to her, and entitled at her death to dispose by will of the same share of the joint property as he is.
Resolved, That since the prospect of honorable and useful employment, in after life, for the faculties we are laboring to discipline, is the keenest stimulus to fidelity in the use of educational advantages, and since the best education is what we give ourselves in the struggles, employments, and discipline of life; therefore, it is impossible that woman should make full use of the instruction already accorded to her, or that her career should do justice to her faculties, until the avenues to the various civil and professional employments are thrown open to arouse her ambition and call forth all her nature.
Resolved, That every effort to educate woman, until you accord to her her rights, and arouse her conscience by the weight of her responsibilities, is futile, and a waste of labor.
Resolved, That the cause we have met to advocate--the claim for woman of all her natural and civil rights--bids us remember the two millions of slave women at the South, the most grossly wronged and foully outraged of all women; and in every effort for an improvement in our civilization, we will bear in our heart of hearts the memory of the trampled womanhood of the plantation, and omit no effort to raise it to a share in the rights we claim for ourselves.
FROM MILDRED A. SPOFORD.
PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS.--Dear Madam:--I take the liberty of enclosing you an extract from a long epistle I have just received from Helene Marie Weber. It speaks of matter interesting to us all, and I ask of you the favor to submit it to the Convention. Miss Weber, as a literary character, stands in the front rank of essayists in France. She has labored zealously in behalf of her sex, as her numerous tracts on subjects of reform bear testimony. No writer of the present age, perhaps, has done more to exalt woman than she has by her powerful essays. My personal knowledge of Miss Weber enables me to speak confidently of her private character. It is utterly false that she is a masculine woman. Her deportment is strictly lady-like, modest, and unassuming, and her name is beyond reproach. She is a Protestant of the Lutheran order; exemplary in all her religious duties, and unaffectedly pious and benevolent.
She is, as you are doubtless aware, a practical agriculturist. The entire business of her farm is conducted by herself, and she has been eminently successful. She has proved the capacity of woman for business pursuits. Her success in this vocation is a practical argument worth a thousand theories. I find no difficulty with her because she dresses like a man. Her dress has not changed her nature. Those who censure her for abandoning the female dress, make up their judgment without proper reflection. She has violated no custom of her own country, and has merely acted according to the honest dictates of her mind--"Honi soit qui mal y pense."
Miss Weber is now about twenty-five years of age. She is a ripe scholar, and has a perfect command of the English language. I am decidedly of the opinion that her visit among us will do a vast deal of good to our cause, and we ought to give her a hearty welcome when she comes. I can assure our most rigid friends that they will all be reconciled to her attire on five minutes' acquaintance....
I remain, dear madam, yours sincerely, MILDRED A. SPOFORD.
Extract from a Letter of H. M. WEBER.
LA PELOUSE, August 8, 1850.
.... Circumstances place it out of my power to visit America during the present season.... The newspapers, both of England and America, have done me great injustice. While they have described my apparel with the minute accuracy of professional tailors, they have seen fit to charge me with a disposition to undervalue the female sex, and to identify myself with the other. Such calumnies are annoying to me. I have never wished to be an Iphis--never for a moment affected to be anything but a woman. I do not think any one ever mistook me for a man, unless it may have been some stranger who slightly glanced at me while passing along the street or the highway. I adopted male attire as a measure of convenience in my business, and not through any wish to appear eccentric or to pass for one of the male sex; and it has ever been my rule to dress with the least possible ostentation consistent with due neatness. I have never had cause to regret my adoption of male attire, and never expect to return to a female toilette. I am fully aware, however, that my dress will probably prejudice the great body of our friends in America against me, while present impressions on that subject exist; and it was with the view of allaying this feeling that I wished to address the assembly at Worcester.
By this means I think I could satisfy any liberal-minded person, of either sex, that there is no moral or political principle involved in this question, and that a woman may, if she like, dress in male habiliments without injury to herself or others.... Those who suppose that woman can be "the political, social, pecuniary, religious equal of man" without conforming to his dress, deceive themselves, and mislead others who have no minds of their own. While the superiority of the male dress for all purposes of business and recreation is conceded, it is absurd to argue that we should not avail ourselves of its advantages.
There are no well-founded objections to women dressing, as we term it, en cavalier. The only two I ever heard are these: "To do so is contrary to law, both human and divine," and, "The male dress is outre and less graceful than our own." These objections may be answered in a few words. The human statutes on this subject should be repealed, as they surely will be in due time, or be regarded as they now are in European States--as dead letters. The practice is not contrary to divine law. The alleged prohibition, as contained in the fifth book of Moses, had reference to a religious custom of the Amorites, and was limited in its application to the children of Israel, who had by Divine command dispossessed that pagan nation of their territory, and destroyed their temples of idolatrous worship.
The context will show two other prohibitions on this subject. In the 11th and 12th verses of the same chapter (Deut, xxii.) it is forbidden to "wear garments of divers sorts, as of woolen and linen together," and to wear fringes on the vesture. These prohibitions are all of the same character, and had an obvious reference to the ceremonies used by the pagans in their worship of idols. If one of these prohibitions be binding upon nations of the present age, the others are not less so. To the second objection, it may be said that beauty and grace in matters of dress are determined by no rules, and if the fashion of men's clothes be awkward it can easily be improved.
Women who prefer the gown should, of course, consult their own pleasure by continuing to wear it; while those whose preference is a male dress, ought not to be blamed for adopting it. I close this homily by recording my prediction, that in ten years male attire will be generally worn by the women of most civilized countries, and that it will precede the consummation of many great measures which are deemed to be of paramount importance. I hope to visit America next year. Thanks to the invention of steam, a voyage across the ocean is now a mere bagatelle. I have not much of the spirit of travel remaining. My agricultural pursuits confine me at home nearly the whole year, but my captivity is a delightful one.
Affectionately yours, H. M. WEBER.
William Henry Channing, from the Business Committee, suggested a plan for organization, and the principles which should govern the movement for establishing woman's co-sovereignty with man, and reported the following:
Resolved, That as women alone can learn by experience and prove by works, what is their rightful sphere of duty, we recommend, as next steps, that they should demand and secure:
1st. Education in primary and high-schools, universities, medical, legal, and theological institutions, as comprehensive and exact as their abilities prompt them to seek and their capabilities fit them to receive.
2d. Partnership in the labors, gains, risks, and remunerations of productive industry, with such limits only as are assigned by taste, intuitive judgment, or their measure of spiritual and physical vigor, as tested by experiment.
3d. A co-equal share in the formation and administration of law, Municipal, State, and National, through legislative assemblies, courts, and executive offices.
4th. Such unions as may become the guardians of pure morals and honorable manners--a high court of appeal in cases of outrage which can not be, and are not touched by civil or ecclesiastical organizations, as at present existing, and a medium for expressing the highest views of justice dictated by human conscience and sanctioned by holy inspiration.
Resolved, That a Central Committee be appointed by this Convention, empowered to enlarge its numbers, on (1st) Education; (2d) Industrial Avocations; (3d) Civil and Political Rights and Regulations; (4th) Social Relations; who shall correspond with each other and with the Central Committee, hold meetings in their respective neighborhoods, gather statistics, facts, and incidents to illustrate, raise funds for the movement; and through the press, tracts, books, and the living agent, guide public opinion upward and onward in the grand social reform of establishing woman's co-sovereignty with man.
Resolved, That the Central Committee be authorized to call Conventions at such times and places as they see fit, and that they hold office until the next Annual Convention.
To carry out the plan suggested by Mr. Channing, the following Committees were appointed:
MEMBERS OF COMMITTEES.
Central Committee.--Paulina W. Davis, Chairman; Sarah H. Earle, Secretary; Wendell Phillips, Treasurer; Mary A. W. Johnson, Wm. H. Channing, Gerrit Smith, John G. Forman, Martha H. Mowry, Lucy Stone, Abby K. Foster, Pliny Sexton, J. Elizabeth Jones, William Elder, William Stedman, Emily Robinson, Abby H. Price, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucretia Mott, Ernestine L. Rose, Elizabeth C. Stanton, Angelina Grimke Weld, Antoinette L. Brown, Harriot K. Hunt, Emma R. Coe, Clarina I. H. Nichols, Charles C. Burleigh, Adin Ballou, Sarah H. Hallock, Joseph A. Dugdale.
Educational Committee.--Eliza Barney, Chairman; Marian Blackwell, Secretary; Elizabeth C. Stanton, Eliza Taft, Clarina I. H. Nichols, Calvin Fairbanks, Hannah Darlington, Ann Eliza Brown, Elizabeth Oakes Smith.
Industrial Committee.--Elizabeth Blackwell, Harriot K. Hunt, Benjamin S. Treanor, Ebenezer D. Draper, Phebe Goodwin, Alice Jackson, Maria Waring, Sarah L. Miller.
Committee on Civil and Political Functions.--Ernestine L. Rose, Lucy Stone, Wendell Phillips, Hannah Stickney, Sarah Hallock, Abby K. Foster, Charles C. Burleigh, Elizabeth C. Stanton, William L. Garrison.
Committee on Social Relations.--Lucretia Mott, William H. Channing, Anna Q. T. Parsons, William H. Fish, Rebecca Plumley, Elizabeth B. Chace, John G. Forman, Henry Fish, Mary Grew.
Committee on Publication.--Wm. Henry Channing, Chairman; Ernestine L. Rose, Charlotte Fowler Wells.
MEMBERS WORCESTER CONVENTION, 1850.
Massachusetts.--James N. Buffam, W. A. Alcott, A. H. Johnson, W. H. Harrington, E. B. Briggs, A. C. Lackey, Ora Ober, Olive W. Hastings, Thomas Provan, Rebecca Provan, A. W. Thayer, M. M. Munyan, W. H. Johnson, G. W. Benson, Mrs. C. M. Carter, H. S. Brigham, E. A. Welsh, Mrs. J. H. Moore, Margaret S. Merritt, Martha Willard, A. N. Lamb, Mrs. Chaplin, N. B. Hill, K. H. Parsons, C. Jillson, L. Wait, Chas. Bigham, J. T. Partridge, Eliza C. Clapp, Daniel Steward, Sophia Foord, E. A. Clarke, E. H. Taft, Mrs. E. J. Henshaw, Edward Southwick, E. A. Merrick, Mrs. C. Merrick, Lewis Ford, J. T. Everett, Loring Moody, Sojourner Truth, E. Jane Alden, Elizabeth Dayton, Lima H. Ober, Thomas Hill, Elizabeth Frail, Eli Belknap, M. M. Frail, Valentine Belknap, Mary R. Metcalf, R. H. Ober, D. A. Mundy, Dr. S. Rogers, Elizabeth Earle, G. D. Williams, Dorothy Whiting, Emily Whiting, Abigail Morgan, Susan Fuller, Thomas Earle, Allen C. Earle, Martha B. Earle, Anne H. Southwick, Joseph A. Howland, Adeline H. Howland, O. T. Harris, Julia T. Harris, John M. Spear, E. D. Draper, D. R. P. Hewitt, L. C. Wilkins, J. H. Binney, Mary Adams, Anna Goulding, E. A. Parrington, Mrs. Parrington, Harriot K. Hunt, Chas. F. Hovey, Mrs. J. G. Hodgden, C. M. Shaw, Ophelia D. Hill, Mrs. P. Allen, Anna Q. T. Parsons, C. D. McLane, W. H. Channing, Wendell Phillips, Abby K. Foster, S. S. Foster, Effingham L. Capron, Frances H. Drake, E. M. Dodge, Eliza Barney, Lydia Barney, Wm. D. Cady, C. S. Dow, E. Goddard, Mary F. Gilbert, Josiah Henshaw, Andrew Wellington, Louisa Gleason, Paulina Gerry, Lucy Stone, Mary Abbot, Anna E. Fish, C. G. Munyan, Maria L. Southwick, F. H. Underwood, J. B. Willard, Perry Joslin, Elizabeth Johnson, Seneth Smith, Marian Hill, Wm. Coe, E. T. Smith, S. Aldrich, M. A. Maynard, S. P. R., J. M. Cummings, Nancy Fay, M. Jane Davis, D. R. Crandell, E. M. Burleigh, Sarah Chafee, Adeline Perry, Lydia E. Chase, J. A. Fuller, Sarah Prentice, Emily Prentice, H. N. Fairbanks, Mrs. A. Crowl, Dwight Tracy, J. S. Perry, Isaac Norcross, Julia A. McIntyre, Emily Sanford, H. M. Sanford, C. D. M. Lane, Elizabeth Firth, S. C. Sargeant, C. A. K. Ball, M. A. Thompson, Lucinda Safford, S. E. Hall, S. D. Holmes, Z. W. Harlow, N. B. Spooner, Ignatius Sargent, A. B. Humphrey, M. R. Hadwen, J. H. Shaw, Olive Darling, M. A. Walden, Mrs. Chickery, Mrs. F. A. Pierce, C. M. Trenor, R. C. Capron, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Emily Loveland, Mrs. S. Worcester, Phebe Worcester, Adeline Worcester, Joanna R. Ballou, Abby H. Price, B. Willard, T. Pool, M. B. Kent, E. H. Knowlton, G. Valentine, A. Prince, Lydia Wilmarth, J. G. Warren, Mrs. E. A. Stowell, Martin Stowell, Mrs. E. Stamp, C. M. Barbour, Annie E. Ruggles, T. B. Elliot, A. H. Metcalf, Eliza J. Kenney, Rev. J. G. Forman, Andrew Stone, M.D., Samuel May, Jr., Sarah R. May, M. S. Firth, A. P. B. Rawson, Nathaniel Barney, Sarah H. Earle, F. C. Johnson.
Maine.--Anna R. Blake, Ellen M. Prescott, Oliver Dennett, Lydia Dennett.
New York.--Frederick Douglass, Lydia Mott, S. H. Hallock, Ernestine L. Rose, Joseph Carpenter, Pliny Sexton, J. C. Hathaway, Lucy N. Colman, Antoinette L. Brown, Edgar Hicks.
New Hampshire.--P. B. Cogswell, Julia Worcester, Parker Pillsbury, Sarah Pillsbury, Asa Foster.
Vermont.--Clarina I. Howard Nichols. Mrs. A. E. Brown.
Pennsylvania.--Hannah M. Darlington, Sarah Tyndale, Emma Parker, Lucretia Mott, S. L. Miller, Isaac L. Miller, Alice Jackson, Janette Jackson, Anna R. Cox, Jacob Pierce, Lewis E. Capen, Olive W. Hastings, Rebecca Plumley, S. L. Hastings, Phebe Goodwin.
Connecticut.--C. C. Burleigh, Martha Smith, Lucius Holmes, Benj. Segur, Buel Picket, Asa Cutler, Lucy T. Dike, C. M. Collins, Anna Cornell, S. Monroe, Anna E. Price, M. C. Monroe, Gertrude R. Burleigh.
Rhode Island.--Betsy F. Lawton, Paulina W. Davis, Cynthia P. Bliss, Rebecca C. Capron, Martha Mowry, Mary Eddy, Daniel Mitchell, G. Davis, Susan Sisson, Dr. S. Mowry, Elizabeth B. Chase, Rebecca B. Spring, Susan R. Harris, A. Barnes.
Iowa.--Silas Smith.
Ohio.--Mariana Johnson, Oliver Johnson, Ellen Blackwell, Marian Blackwell, Diana W. Ballou.
California.--Mrs. Mary G. Wright.
Asenath Fuller, Denney M. F. Walker, Eunice D. F. Pierce, Elijah Houghton, L. H. Ober, A. Wyman, Silence Bigelow, Adeline S. Greene, Josephine Reglar, Anna T. Draper, E. J. Alden, Sophia Taft, Alice H. Easton, Calvin Fairbanks, D. H. Knowlton, E. W. K. Thompson, Caroline Farnum, Mary R. Hubbard.
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SECOND WORCESTER CONVENTION, 1851.
RESOLUTIONS.
1. Resolved, That while we would not undervalue other methods, the Right of Suffrage for Women is, in our opinion, the corner-stone of this enterprise, since we do not seek to protect woman, but rather to place her in a position to protect herself.
2. Resolved, That it will be woman's fault if, the ballot once in her hand, all the barbarous, demoralizing, and unequal laws relating to marriage and property, do not speedily vanish from the statute-book; and while we acknowledge that the hope of a share in the higher professions and profitable employments of society is one of the strongest motives to intellectual culture, we know, also, that an interest in political questions is an equally powerful stimulus; and we see, beside, that we do our best to insure education to an individual when we put the ballot into his hands; it being so clearly the interest of the community that one upon whose decisions depend its welfare and safety, should both have free access to the best means of education, and be urged to make use of them.
3. Resolved, That we do not feel called upon to assert or establish the equality of the sexes, in an intellectual or any other point of view. It is enough for our argument that natural and political justice, and the axioms of English and American liberty, alike determine that rights and burdens--taxation and representation--should be co-extensive; hence women, as individual citizens, liable to punishment for acts which the laws call criminal, or to be taxed in their labor and property for the support of government, have a self-evident and indisputable right, identically the same right that men have, to a direct voice in the enactment of those laws and the formation of that government.
4. Resolved, That the democrat, or reformer, who denies suffrage to women, is a democrat only because he was not born a noble, and one of those levelers who are willing to level only down to themselves.
5. Resolved, That while political and natural justice accords civil equality to woman; while great thinkers of every age, from Plato to Condorcet and Mill, have supported their claim; while voluntary associations, religious and secular, have been organized on this basis, still, it is a favorite argument against it, that no political community or nation ever existed in which women have not been in a state of political inferiority. But, in reply, we remind our opponents that the same fact has been alleged, with equal truth, in favor of slavery; has been urged against freedom of industry, freedom of conscience, and the freedom of the press; none of these liberties having been thought compatible with a well-ordered state, until they had proved their possibility by springing into existence as facts. Besides, there is no difficulty in understanding why the subjection of woman has been a uniform custom, when we recollect that we are just emerging from the ages in which might has been always right.
6. Resolved, That, so far from denying the overwhelming social and civil influence of women, we are fully aware of its vast extent; aware, with Demosthenes, that "measures which the statesman has meditated a whole year may be overturned in a day by a woman"; and for this very reason we proclaim it the very highest expediency to endow her with full civil rights, since only then will she exercise this mighty influence under a just sense of her duty and responsibility; the history of all ages bearing witness, that the only safe course for nations is to add open responsibility wherever there already exists unobserved power.
7. Resolved, That we deny the right of any portion of the species to decide for another portion, or of any individual to decide for another individual what is and what is not their "proper sphere"; that the proper sphere for all human beings is the largest and highest to which they are able to attain; what this is, can not be ascertained without complete liberty of choice; woman, therefore, ought to choose for herself what sphere she will fill, what education she will seek, and what employment she will follow, and not be held bound to accept, in submission, the rights, the education, and the sphere which man thinks proper to allow her.
8. Resolved, That we hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and we charge that man with gross dishonesty or ignorance, who shall contend that "men," in the memorable document from which we quote, does not stand for the human race; that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," are the "inalienable rights" of half only of the human species; and that, by "the governed," whose consent is affirmed to be the only source of just power, is meant that half of mankind only who, in relation to the other, have hitherto assumed the character of governors.
9. Resolved, That we see no weight in the argument that it is necessary to exclude women from civil life because domestic cares and political engagements are incompatible; since we do not see the fact to be so in the case of men; and because, if the incompatibility be real, it will take care of itself, neither men nor women needing any law to exclude them from an occupation when they have undertaken another incompatible with it. Second, we see nothing in the assertion that women, themselves, do not desire a change, since we assert that superstitious fears and dread of losing men's regard, smother all frank expression on this point; and further, if it be their real wish to avoid civil life, laws to keep them out of it are absurd, no legislator having ever yet thought it necessary to compel people by law to follow their own inclination.
10. Resolved, That it is as absurd to deny all women their civil rights because the cares of household and family take up all the time of some, as it would be to exclude the whole male sex from Congress, because some men are sailors, or soldiers in active service or merchants, whose business requires all their attention and energies.
GLEN HAVEN, Feb. 18, 1853.
PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS.--My Dear Friend:--Bless you for The Una, and for sending me a copy. I am pleased with its appearance and with the heartiness of your correspondents. Would you find room for some of my lucubrations? If so, I will drive my quill a little for you some of these evenings. Perhaps I might utter something readable.
I do not ask you to send me The Una, for the dollar must go with the request, and the dollar has yet to be earned by quill-work, a task quite as hard as was work when a child at the quill-wheel, winding yarn from the reel.
Drop me a line if you would like my assistance as a correspondent, and what I can do, I will cheerfully.
Very truly, your friend, J. C. JACKSON, M.D.[227]
FOOTNOTES:
[227] At present the head of the water-cure establishment, Dansville, New York. Dr. Jackson has been identified with all the leading reforms of his generation--Anti-slavery, Temperance, Woman Suffrage--and an earnest advocate for a new dress for woman that shall give freedom to her lungs and powers of locomotion.Return to passage
PETITION OF HARRIOT K. HUNT TO THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.
To the Constitutional Convention now sitting in Boston:
Your petitioner respectfully prays your honorable body to insert into the Constitution a clause securing to females paying town, county, and States taxes upon property held in their own right, and who have no husbands or other guardians to represent and act for them, the same right of voting possessed by male tax-paying citizens; or, should your honorable body not deem such females capable of exercising the right of suffrage with due discretion, at least excuse them from the paying of taxes, in the appropriation of which they have no voice, thus carrying out the great principle on which the American Revolution was based--that taxation and representation ought to go together. All of which your petitioner will ever pray.
PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS
Died August 24, 1876, after two years of great suffering. A large circle of friends gathered at her elegant residence near Providence, Rhode Island, to pay their last tributes of friendship and respect. The chief speaker on the occasion was, at her request, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She left her noble husband, Hon. Thomas Davis, and two adopted daughters, to mourn her loss. It was a soft, balmy day, just such as our friend would have chosen, when she was laid in her last resting-place. Dr. and Mrs. Channing, Theodore Tilton, and Joaquin Miller, were among those who followed in the funeral cortege.
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IX. INDIANA
Dublin Convention, October, 1851.
RESOLUTIONS.
Resolved, That all laws and customs having for their perpetuation the only plea that they are time-honored, which in any way infringe on woman's equal rights, cramp her energies, cripple her efforts, or place her before the eyes of her family or the world as an inferior, are wrong, and should be immediately abolished.
Resolved, That the avenues to gain, in all their varieties, should be as freely opened to woman as they now are to man.
Resolved, That the rising generation of boys and girls should be educated together in the same schools and colleges, and receive the same kind and degree of education.
Resolved, That woman should receive for equal labor, equal pay with man.
Resolved, That as the qualification for citizenship in this country is based on capacity and morality, and as the sexes in their mental condition are equal, therefore woman should enjoy the same rights of citizenship with man.
An association was organized and a constitution was adopted, to which the following names were appended: Amanda M. Way, Minerva Maulsby, Jane Morrow, Agnes Cook, Rebecca Shreves, Rebecca Williams, Wilson D. Schooley, Samuel Mitchell, Elda Ann Smith, Dr. O. P. Baer, Mrs. O. P. Baer, Hannah Birdsall, Melissa J. Diggs, Hannah Hiatt, Jas. P. Way, B. F. Diggs, Mary B. Birdsall, Fanny Hiatt, Henry Hiatt, Thomas Birdsall, Elizabeth Hoover, Elijah C. Wright, Elizabeth Wright, A. W. Pruyne, Dr. Mary F. Thomas, Dr. Owen Thomas, Emi B. Swank, Joel P. Davis. Lydia P. Davis, Thursey A. Way, Rebecca A. C. Murray.
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X. PENNSYLVANIA
SAXE, DANA, AND GRACE GREENWOOD.
MR. SAXE not long since, in a poem, satirized literary women very keenly, upon which Grace Greenwood wrote a severe criticism on his volume, which was published in The Evening Post. Mr. Saxe, after seeing the criticism, wrote a note to the editor of the Post, in which he makes an exception in favor of Grace. This calls forth another letter from her, from which we make the following extract:
NEW BRIGHTON, Jan. 22, 1850.
GENTLEMEN:--....At the time of my writing, I was feeling peculiarly sensitive in regard to my womanly, as well as literary position. The grandpapaish lectures of Mr. Dana had troubled and discouraged me. I said, "If so speak and write our poets, surely the age is on the backward line of march." I had become impatient and indignant for my sex, thus lectured to, preached at, and satirized eternally. I had grown weary of hearing woman told that her sole business here, the highest, worthiest aims of her existence were to be loving, lovable, feminine, to win thus a lover and a lord whom she might glorify abroad and make comfortable at home.
We have had enough of this. Man is not best qualified to mark out woman's life-path. He knows, indeed, what he desires her to be, but he does not yet understand all that God and nature require of her. Woman should not be made up of love alone, the other attributes of her being should not be dwarfed that this may have a large, unnatural growth. Hers should be a distinct individuality, an independent moral existence--or, at least, the dependence should be mutual. Woman can best judge of woman, her wants, capacities, aspirations, and powers. She can best speak to her on the life of the affections, on the loves of her heart, on the peculiar joys and sorrows of her lot. She can best teach her to be true to herself, to her high nature, to her brave spirit; and then, indeed, shall she be constant in her love and faithful to her duties, all, even to the most humble. Woman can strengthen woman for the life of self-sacrifice, of devotion, of ministration, of much endurance which lies before her.
A woman of intellect and right feeling would never dream of pointing out the weak and unfilial Desdemona as an example to her sex in this age; would never dare to hold up as "our destined end and aim," a one love, however romantic and poetical, which might be so selfishly sought and so unscrupulously secured.
Thank Heaven, woman herself is awaking to a perception of the causes which have hitherto impeded her free and perfect development, which have shut her out from the large experiences, the wealth and fullness of the life to which she was called. She is beginning to feel, and to cast off the bonds which oppress her--many of them, indeed, self-imposed, and many gilded and rarely wrought, covered with flowers and delicate tissues, but none the less bonds--bonds upon the speech, upon the spirit, upon the life.
There surely is a great truth involved in this question of "Woman's Rights," and agitated as it may be, with wisdom and mildness, or with rashness and the bold, high spirit which shocks and startles at the first, good will come out of it eventually, great good, and the women of the next age will be the stronger and the freer, aye, and the happier, for the few brave spirits who stood up fearlessly for unpopular truth against the world.
I know that I expose myself to the charge of being unfeminine in feeling, of ultraism. Well, better that than conservatism, though conservatism were safer and more respectable. Senselessness is always safety, and a mummy is a thoroughly respectable personage.
But to return to Mr. Saxe. Our poet satirized rather keenly literary women, as a class, in the poem on which I remarked, but afterwards, in his communication to the Post, most politely intimates that he excepts me as one of the "women of real talent." But I will not be excepted. I stand in the ranks, liable to all the penalties of the calling--exposed to the hot shot of satire and the stinging arrows of ridicule. I will not be received as an exception, where full justice is not done to the class to which I belong.
Suppose, now, that I should write a poem to deliver before some "Woman's Rights Convention" or "Ladies' Literary Association," on "The Times," which should come down sharp and heavy on the literary men of the day, for usurping the delicate employ by right and nature the peculiar province of woman, "the weaker vessel"; for neglecting their shops, their fields, their counting-houses, and their interesting families, and wasting their precious time in writing love-tales, "doleful ditties," and "distressful strains," for the magazines; for flirting with the muse, while their wives are wanting shoes, or perpetrating puns, while their children cry for "buns"! Suppose that, pointing every line with wit, I should hold them up to contempt as careless, improvident lovers of pleasure, given to self-indulgence; taking their Helicon more than dashed with gin; seekers after notoriety, eccentric in their habits and unmanly in all their tastes! After this, should I very handsomely make an exception in favor of Mr. Saxe, would he feel complimented?
As far as I have known literary women, and as far as they have been made known to us in literary biography, the unwomanly and unamiable, the poor wives, and daughters, and sisters, have been the rare exceptions. I mean not alone "women of genius," but would include those of mere talent, of mediocre talent even, devoted to letters as a profession, and who, by their estimable characters and blameless lives, are an honor to their calling.
I believe that for one woman whom the pursuits of literature, the ambition of authorship, and the love of fame have rendered unfit for home-life, a thousand have been made thoroughly undomestic by poor social strivings, the follies of fashion, and the intoxicating distinction which mere personal beauty confers.
GRACE GREENWOOD.
WESTCHESTER CONVENTION, JUNE 2 AND 3, 1852.
LETTER FROM MARY MOTT.
AUBURN, DE KALB COUNTY, INDIANA, May 17, 1852.
SISTERS:--You have called another Convention, and all who are the friends of equal rights are invited to attend and participate in the deliberations. The invitation will probably meet the eye of thousands who would gladly encourage you by their presence, did circumstances permit them to do so. Your aim is the moral, physical, and intellectual elevation of woman, and through her to benefit the whole human race. Can a Convention be called for a nobler purpose? Have men ever aimed so high? They have had Conventions without stint; old men and young men, Whigs, Democrats, Abolitionists, and Slaveholders, all have had Conventions; but how few have aimed at anything higher than political power for themselves and party. We have looked upon their contests without personal interest in their result. Some benefits might come to our husbands and brothers, but none to us. We are permitted to talk about liberty, but we may not enjoy it. We may water the tree with our tears, while our husbands pluck and enjoy the fruit. Of what advantage is it to us to live in a Republic? Our social position is no better than it was in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Men have made great progress since that day; from being subjects they have become sovereigns, ruling, as she professed to rule, by divine right. True, many of these sovereigns have not a foot of ground, and but one subject, a wife; but then he has absolute control over that one. Yes, they have made progress; but for that progress they are much indebted to men who, being in possession of power, were only anxious to retain and extend it. The Great Charter was extorted from King John by the barons in order to consolidate their power; they attended to the interests of the common people (who then were in a state of villanage) just so far as they could clearly see would be for their own interest, and no further. The world is much indebted to those sturdy barons; they did more good than they ever thought of doing. There were germs in that charter that have borne excellent fruit since that day.
Error delights in obscurity; surrounded with clouds and darkness, it is comparatively secure; but let these clouds be scattered, let the light of reason fall upon it, and it is dangerous no longer. Any act that causes men to think, is so far an advantage to society. The ideas will not be lost. When King James I talked and wrote upon the doctrine of the divine right of kings, he little thought it would result in the beheading of his son Charles, and the expulsion of his son James from the throne. Shrouded in mystery, it was approached with reverence, and seldom critically examined, until he lifted the veil and invited others to behold its beauty. What had been a mystery was a mystery no longer. He forgot what others remembered--that it might have different aspects for the sovereign and subject. It was judged unworthy of national homage, but very desirable as a household god. And men who thought Paul was in the dark when he wrote, "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever resisteth the powers resisteth the ordinance of God; and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation;" the men, I say, who could not and would not receive such doctrine from Paul, found him worthy of all praise when he said, "wives, obey your husbands." After a while England proposed taxing the Colonies. One party held that protection gave them the right of taxation. The other said the British Constitution gave the Government no power to tax, unless the persons were represented in Parliament. They declared their resolution to pay no taxes without representation. Much was said about the rights of man. And when at last a three-penny tax was laid upon tea, the men, being brimful of patriotism, cared nothing for the tax; it was the principle they cared for, and they would fight for their principles. How very sincere they were, let the millions of wives answer, whose very existence is ignored in law. There was one thing women gained by that contest; they gained a clearer knowledge of their rights, a better understanding of their wrongs, which, according to Blackstone, are a deprivation of rights. A knowledge of these has produced a strong desire to seek a remedy. Hence the call for a Woman's Convention. We must expect some difference of opinion as to the extent of the reforms proposed; but none who have carefully examined the subject will see reason to doubt that our rights run parallel with the rights of man. That being granted, we may then inquire into their expediency. Many things we have a right to do which are inexpedient; but it is for us to say what rights we will waive and what we will enjoy.
We claim that the professions should be open to woman, believing she can preach as acceptably, study the law as thoroughly, and practice medicine as successfully, as man. The business of a clerk seems to us to be peculiarly feminine, and we claim the right to choose any trade or business for which we have strength and capacity. If it is true that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, we would respectfully ask by what authority men legislate for us, and who gave them that authority? If the power is a just one, from what source did they derive it? Certainly not from the consent of the governed. We presume neither men nor women care for the privilege of voting, except as a means of securing the enjoyment of the rights with which they have been endowed by their Creator, and for the protection of which "Governments were first instituted among men." The rights of women have been long in abeyance, but no lapse of time can deprive her of them; they are not transferable. She does not ask the law to confer upon her new rights. She only asks to have her just rights recognized and protected. A glance at the present position of women will show that the law does not effect this. It places minors, idiots, insane persons, and married women in the same category. Man takes all that the wife has to his own use, and such robberies are so common that they excite no indignation in the breasts of his fellow-men. He can spend all she has at the gaming-table, and who can hinder him? He can spend it in dissipation, while his deceived wife is suffering at home for the necessaries of life. The law gives him the property, and with that he can usually find tools to work out his designs. The law interposes no barriers between him and his victim. If a married woman had equal protection with her husband, she would be ambitious to acquire property by her own industry, and the habit of industry and forethought thus acquired, would be found valuable in the marriage relation, and she would not be compelled to enter matrimony as a house of refuge. But we are told that marriage is a contract, voluntarily entered into by competent parties, and by this contract the rights of the woman are transferred to the man. But marriage is not a contract, it is an union instituted by God Himself, anterior to any contract whatever. Man was not pronounced good until woman was created, and God said, Let us make man in our image after our own likeness, and let them have dominion. But some one may meet us here with the question, did He not say to the woman, after the fall, "Thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee?" Yes, the Bible says so; and in the next chapter we are told that Adam and Eve had two sons, the eldest called Cain, the youngest Abel; and God said to Cain when speaking of Abel, "Unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." You see they are the very words used to Eve; therefore, if dominion was taken from the woman and given to the man, it was taken from all younger brothers and given to the first-born. If marriage be a contract, why is it not governed by the same rules that govern other contracts? A consideration is necessary to the existence of a contract. In marriage, the man offers love for love and hand for hand, but what is the consideration for those personal rights of which he dispossesses her? If a contract, why is there no remedy for its violation either in law or equity, as is the case with other contracts? The bridegroom says in the marriage service, "With all my worldly goods I thee endow." Those who framed that impressive service no doubt considered it but just that he who received all by the courtesy of England, should endow her as liberally, and they thus reminded every bridegroom of his duty, even before the altar; and what honest man will say he should not keep his word?
MARY MOTT.
LETTER FROM DR. ELIZABETH BLACKWELL.
NEW YORK, May 27, 1852.
MRS. DARLINGTON.--Dear Madam:---I thank you cordially for your very kind invitation, and would willingly attend your Convention did not my duties in New York prevent my leaving the city.
The Convention could not choose a more important subject than education for discussion, and great good will be done if public attention is roused to the imperfection of our present system, in which the physical nature and the duties of life are equally neglected. I believe that the chief source of the false position of women is, the inefficiency of women themselves--the deplorable fact that they are so often careless mothers, weak wives, poor housekeepers, ignorant nurses, and frivolous human beings. If they would perform with strength and wisdom the duties which lie immediately around them, every sphere of life would soon be open to them. They might be priests, physicians, rulers, welcome everywhere, for all restrictive laws and foolish customs would speedily disappear before the spiritual power of strong, good women.
In order to develop such women, our present method of educating girls, which is an injurious waste of time, must be entirely remodeled, and I shall look forward with great interest to any plan of action that may be suggested by your Convention.
With hearty sympathy in every aspiration, and the right hand of fellowship to every conscientious worker, believe me,
Very truly yours, ELIZABETH BLACKWELL.
LETTER FROM PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS.
It is also often asked if women want more rights, why do they not take them? Let us see how that may be. Does a woman desire a thorough medical education, where is the institution fully and property endowed to receive her? Two women, it is true, have made their way through two separate colleges, and when they had honorably won their diplomas, and even the voice of scandal could not cast a shadow upon them, they were publicly insulted by having the doors of those institutions closed upon all others of their sex. If she desires a course of thorough disciplinary study for any purpose whatsoever, where is she to find means or the institution to receive her? The academic shades are forbidden ground to her, while their massive doors turn with no harsh grating sound at the magic word of man for man. If we did not feel too deeply the injustice of this, we might comfort ourselves with the idea that our brains are so superior that we do not need the same amount of study and discipline as the other sex....
When Socrates was advocating the equal education of women for governmental offices, he was met by ridicule. His words in consideration of it are full of wisdom. Says the sage, "The man who laughs at women going through their exercises, reaps the unripe fruit of a ridiculous wisdom, and seems not rightly to know at what he laughs, or why he does it, for that ever was and will be deemed a noble saying, that the profitable is beautiful and the hurtful base."....
The harmony, unity, and oneness of the race, can not be secured while there is class legislation; while one half of humanity is cramped within a narrow sphere and governed by arbitrary power. This unrecognized half desires these factitious restraints removed, and to be placed side by side with the other, simply that there may be full, free, and equal development in the future. The moral life which urges this claim is the God within us. The force which opposes it, it matters not whence it comes, "is of the earth, earthy."....
LETTER FROM WM. H. AND MARY JOHNSON.
The influence of woman as a wife and a mother has been so often portrayed, that it would be difficult to find a moral writer who has not indulged in the fruitful theme, but we can not omit the occasion of quoting the sentiments of the eloquent Wm. Wirt on this subject: "Is not our conduct toward this sex ill-advised and foolish in relation to our own happiness? Is it not to reject a boon which Providence kindly offers to us, and which, were we to embrace and cultivate it with skill, would refine and enlarge the sources of our own enjoyment, and purify, raise, and ennoble our own character beyond the power of human calculation?
"As the companion of a man of sense and virtue, as an instrument and partner of his earthly happiness, what is the most beautiful woman in the world without a mind--without a cultivated mind, capable of an animated correspondence with his own, and of reciprocating all his thoughts and feelings?
Is not our conduct on this head ungenerous and ignoble to the other sex? Do we not deprive them of the brightest and most angelic portion of their character, degrade them from the rank of intelligence which they are formed to hold; and instead of making them the partners of our souls, attempt to debase them into mere objects of sense?
"Is not our conduct mean and dastardly? Does it not look as if we were afraid that, with equal opportunities, they would rival us in intelligence, and examine and refute our pretended superiority?"
We congratulate the Convention on the selection of the place for holding their deliberations. In no part of the State could a community be found better qualified to appreciate the objects of such a meeting, or the means for their accomplishment. Chester has undoubtedly taken the lead of all her sister counties in educational movements, as may be witnessed in her numerous flourishing schools for both sexes, which are attracting, as to a common focus, pupils from all parts of the country. And it affords us unmingled pleasure to observe the numerous female schools that have been established in this quarter, and the patronage that has been extended toward them. These are sure indications of an improved public sentiment in relation to the development of the female mind.
But there are other indications of advancement in this particular still more encouraging, because they exhibit fruits of the most ennobling powers of the human understanding. We allude to those benevolent associations particularly for promoting temperance, in which the females of Chester County have borne such a conspicuous and effective part. The reflection is, indeed, animating, that at a period when almost all kindred associations in the State, among the other sex, had languished, and intemperance seemed likely once more to overwhelm the land with more desolating evils than had ever yet been known, there was yet to be found in Chester County an association of females who were nobly bearing the standard of total abstinence, and by their well-timed labors giving evidence that there was yet vitality in the cause! Thus we have seen not only in this, but in other fields of moral reform, that the progress has uniformly been commensurate with the intellectual and moral culture of the female mind. Let the sex, then, give their influence in promoting a system of education that will, if carried out, secure to every woman in the land the blessings of thorough practical instruction. May the deliberations of the Convention tend to the promotion of this most desirable object. With such developments as must result from the more general diffusion of knowledge, not only rights, but duties that have been hidden by the suggestions of ignorance and bigotry will be brought to light, and the sex will realize the noble sentiment of one of New England's gifted sons, that
"New occasions teach new duties--Time makes ancient good uncouth, They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth!"
Desiring that your discussions may be guided by that spirit which has heretofore characterized them, we remain your friends,
WM. H. JOHNSON AND MARY JOHNSON.
RESOLUTIONS OF THE WESTCHESTER CONVENTION, 1852.
Resolved, That every party which claims to represent the humanity, the civilization, or the progress of the age, is bound to inscribe on its banner, "Equality before the laws, without distinction of sex."
Resolved, That the science of government is not necessarily connected with the violence and intrigue which are now frequently practised by party politicians, neither does the exercise of the elective franchise, or the PROPER discharge of governmental duties necessarily involve the sacrifice of the refinement or sensibilities of true womanhood.
Resolved, That in demanding for women that equal station among their brethren to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, we do not urge the claim in the spirit of an adverse policy, or with any idea of separate advantages, or in any apprehension of conflicting interests between the sexes.
Resolved, That while we regret the antagonism into which we are necessarily brought to some of the laws, customs, and monopolies of society, we have cause to rejoice that the exposure of the great wrongs of woman has been so promptly met by a kind spirit, and a disposition to redress these wrongs, to open avenues for her elevation, and to co-operate for her entire enfranchisement.
Resolved, That the greatest and most varied development of the human mind, and the widest sphere of usefulness, can be obtained only by the highest intellectual culture of the whole people, and that all obstructions should be removed which tend to prevent women from entering, as freely as men, upon the study of the physical, mental, and moral sciences.
Resolved, That we can not appreciate the justice or generosity of the laws which require women to pay taxes, and thus enable legislators richly to endow colleges and universities for their own sex, from which the female sex is entirely excluded.
Resolved, That the growing liberality of legislation and judicial construction, in regard to the property rights of married women, affords gratifying evidence of the equity of our demands and of their progress in public sentiment.
Resolved, That the disposition of property by law as affecting married parties, ought to be the same for the husband and the wife, "that she should have, during life, an equal control over the property gained by their mutual toil and sacrifices; and be heir to her husband, precisely to the extent that he is heir to her."
Resolved, That the mother being as much the natural guardian of the child as the father, ought so to be recognized in law, and if it is justly the province of the court to appoint guardians for minors, want of qualification in the surviving parent should be the required condition of the appointment.
Resolved, That the inequality of the remuneration paid for woman's labor compared with that of man, is unjust and degrading, for so long as custom awards to her smaller compensation for services of equal value, she will be held in a state of dependence, not by any order of nature, but by an arbitrary rule of man.
Resolved, That the distinctive traits of female character, like its distinct physical organism, having its foundation in nature, the widest range of thought and action, and the highest cultivation and development of all its varied powers, will only make more apparent those sensibilities and graces which are considered its peculiar charm.
Resolved, That in claiming for woman all the rights of human beings we are but asserting her humanity, leaving the differences actually existing in the male and female constitutions to take care of themselves, these differences furnishing no reason for subjecting one sex to the other.
Resolved, That a Committee be appointed to prepare and circulate petitions, asking of our Legislature such a change in the Constitution and laws of this State, as shall extend to woman the privilege of the elective franchise, and equality in the division and inheritance of property.
Resolved, That said Committee be instructed to collect information upon the rights acknowledged and privileges guaranteed to women by other States and Governments, publishing it in such way as by them shall be deemed best for promoting political and legal equality between the sexes.
Resolved, That H. M. Darlington, P. E. Gibbons, Hannah Wright, Mary Ann Fulton, Sarah E. Miller, Lea Pusey, and Ruth Dugdale be the Committee.
Oliver Johnson offered a resolution expressing the satisfaction afforded to the members of the Convention by the presence and labors of those friends who had come from their distant homes in other States to be with us on this occasion. It was unanimously adopted.
The Convention adjourned sine die.
FOURTH NATIONAL W. R. CONVENTION, PHILADELPHIA, OCTOBER 18, 19, 20, 1854.
RESOLUTIONS.
Resolved, That we congratulate the true friends of woman upon the rapid progress which her cause has made during the year past, in spite of the hostility of the bad and the prejudices of the good.
Resolved, That woman's aspiration is to be the only limit of woman's destiny.
Resolved, That so long as woman is debarred from an equal education, restricted in her employments, denied the right of independent property if married, and denied in all cases the right of controlling the legislation which she is nevertheless bound to obey, so long must the woman's rights agitation be continued.
Resolved, That in perfect confidence that what we desire will one day be accomplished, we commit the cause of woman to God and to humanity.
Resolved, That in demanding the educational rights of woman, we do not deny the natural distinctions of sex, but only wish to develop them fully and harmoniously.
Resolved, That in demanding the industrial rights of woman, we only claim that she should have "a fair day's wages for a fair day's work," which is, however, impossible while she is restricted to few ill-paid avocations, and unable (if married) to control her own earnings.
Resolved, That in demanding the political rights of woman, we simply assert the fundamental principle of democracy--that taxation and representation should go together, and that, if this principle is denied, all our institutions must fall with it.
Resolved, That our present democracy is an absurdity, since it deprives woman even of the political power which is allowed to her in Europe, and abolishes all other aristocracy only to establish a new aristocracy of sex, which includes all men and excludes all women.
Resolved, That it is because we recognize the beauty and sacredness of the family, that we demand for woman an equal position there, instead of her losing, as now, the control of her own property, the custody of her own children, and, finally, her own legal existence, under laws which have all been pronounced by jurists "a disgrace to a heathen nation."
Resolved, That we urge it upon the women of every American State: First, to petition the legislatures for universal suffrage and a reform in the rights of property; second, to use their utmost efforts to improve female education; third, to open as rapidly as possible new channels for female industry.
Mrs. Tracy Cutler made an address upon the objects of the movement.
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XI. LUCRETIA MOTT'S FUNERAL
Lueretia Mott died at her quiet home, "Roadside," near Philadelphia, Nov. 11, 1880. Notwithstanding the Associated Press dispatch said, "Funeral strictly private by special request," the attendance on that occasion was large. The Philadelphia Times thus describes it: The funeral of Lucretia Mott, attended by an immense concourse of people, at her residence as well as in the cemetery, was an impressive scene not soon to be forgotten. A handsome stone house, standing in tastefully laid out and carefully kept grounds studded with forest trees, just west of the old fork road in Cheltenham township, Montgomery County, was the home of Lucretia Mott. On this occasion the road and grounds were densely packed with carriages, people on horseback and on foot, coming from many miles about to pay their last tributes of respect to this noble woman.
The funeral was conducted according to the custom of the Society of Friends, and was in all its appointments simple and unostentatious, in keeping with the character of the noble woman who had passed away. No set forms were observed.
The body, in her usual Quaker costume, lay in a room adjoining the library, in a plain, unpolished walnut coffin, padded and lined with some white material, but without any ornamentation whatever. There were no flowers and no uttered demonstrations of grief, but a profound sadness seemed to pervade the house, and for half an hour no sound was heard in the densely thronged rooms save the muffled tread over the thick carpets of fresh arrivals and the whispered directions of a servant, pointing the way to the room where a last look at the dead might be had.
At half-past 12 o'clock Deborah Wharton arose from her seat in the parlor, and made a brief but touching address on the life and character of the deceased. She began by a quotation from the Bible: "This day a mighty prince has fallen in Israel." She then contrasted the condition in life of Lucretia Mott and that of a prince, and showed how she had accomplished more for humanity than the most powerful princes, but without noise and tumult and the shedding of blood.
Dr. Furness paid a beautiful tribute to the dead. He quoted the beatitudes from the the fifth chapter of Matthew, and applied them to her. "We are accustomed," he said, "to speak of the dead as having gone to their reward, but Lucretia Mott had her reward here, and she shall have it hereafter a hundred fold." Dr. Furness closed with an eloquent prayer that the example of the beautiful life ended upon earth might not be lost upon the living.
Phoebe Couzins paid a tender and loving tribute that touched every heart. Then loving hands took up the little coffin--it looked hardly larger than a child's--and bore it to the gravelled drive in front of the house. The route was down York road to Fairhill, the Friends' cemetery, at Germantown Avenue and Cambria Street, in this city, which was reached about three o'clock. Here several hundred people were already gathered to witness the interment. Fairhill is a little cemetery, about the size of a city square. It is mound-shaped, sloping up from all sides to the center. It is filled with trees and shrubbery, but does not contain a single monument, the graves being simply marked with little marble blocks, which do not rise more than six inches above the ground. In the highest part of the grounds was the open grave, by the side of the husband, James Mott, who was buried about twelve years ago. Above the grave spread the branches of an aspen tree, and near it is a weeping willow. While thousands stood about, the coffin was reverently, solemnly, and silently lowered. The grave was then filled up, the friends turned away, and slowly the cemetery was deserted.
Memorial services were held the same day and hour by Liberal Germans in Milwaukie, Wisconsin, and by the City Suffrage Association in New York. Dr. Clement Lozier, president of the society, presided. Charles G. Ames, of Philadelphia; Frederick Hinckley, of Providence; Robert Collyer, of New York, gave memorial sermons in their respective churches.
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XIII. MRS. STANTON'S REMINISCENCES
PETERBORO, December 1, 1855.
ELIZABETH C. STANTON.--My Dear Friend:--The "Woman's Rights Movement" has deeply interested your generous heart, and you have ever been ready to serve it with your vigorous understanding. It is, therefore, at the risk of appearing somewhat unkind and uncivil, that I give my honest answer to your question. You would know why I have so little faith in this movement. I reply, that it is not in the proper hands; and that the proper hands are not yet to be found. The present age, although in advance, of any former age, is, nevertheless, very far from being sufficiently under the sway of reason to take up the cause of woman, and carry it forward to success. A much stronger and much more widely diffused common sense than has characterized any of the generations, must play its mightiest artillery upon the stupendous piles of nonsense, which tradition and chivalry and a misinterpreted and superstitious Christianity have reared in the way of this cause, ere woman can have the prospect of the recognition of her rights and of her confessed equality with man.
The object of the "Woman's Rights Movement" is nothing less than to recover the rights of woman--nothing less than to achieve her independence. She is now the dependent of man; and, instead of rights, she has but privileges--the mere concessions (always revocable and always uncertain) of the other sex to her sex. I say nothing against this object. It is as proper as it is great; and until it is realized, woman can not be half herself, nor can man be half himself. I rejoice in this object; and my sorrow is, that they, who are intent upon it, are not capable of adjusting themselves to it--not high-souled enough to consent to those changes and sacrifices in themselves, in their positions and relations, essential to the attainment of this vital object.
What if a nation in the heart of Europe were to adopt, and uniformly adhere to, the practice of cutting off one of the hands of all their new-born children? It would from this cause be reduced to poverty, to helpless dependence upon the charity of surrounding nations, and to just such a measure of privileges as they might see fit to allow it, in exchange for its forfeited rights. Very great, indeed, would be the folly of this strange nation. But a still greater folly would it be guilty of, should it, notwithstanding this voluntary mutilation, claim all the wealth, and all the rights, and all the respect, and all the independence which it enjoyed before it entered upon this systematic mutilation.
Now, this twofold folly of this one-hand nation illustrates the similar twofold folly of some women. Voluntarily wearing, in common with their sex, a dress which imprisons and cripples them, they, nevertheless, follow up this absurdity with the greater one of coveting and demanding a social position no less full of admitted rights, and a relation to the other sex no less full of independence, than such position and relation would naturally and necessarily have been, had they scorned a dress which leaves them less than half their personal power of self-subsistence and usefulness. I admit that the mass of women are not chargeable with this latter absurdity of cherishing aspirations and urging claims so wholly and so glaringly at war with this voluntary imprisonment and this self-degradation. They are content in their helplessness and poverty and destitution of rights. Nay, they are so deeply deluded as to believe that all this belongs to their natural and unavoidable lot. But the handful of women of whom I am here complaining--the woman's rights women--persevere just as blindly and stubbornly as do other women, in wearing a dress that both marks and makes their impotence, and yet, O amazing inconsistency! they are ashamed of their dependence, and remonstrate against its injustice. They claim that the fullest measure of rights and independence and dignity shall be accorded to them, and yet they refuse to place themselves in circumstances corresponding with their claim. They demand as much for themselves as is acknowledged to be due to men, and yet they refuse to pay the necessary, the never-to-be-avoided price of what they demand--the price which men have to pay for it.
I admit that the dress of woman is not the primal cause of her helplessness and degradation. That cause is to be found in the false doctrines and sentiments of which the dress is the outgrowth and symbol. On the other hand, however, these doctrines and sentiments would never have become the huge bundle they now are, and they would probably have all languished, and perhaps all expired, but for the dress. For, as in many other instances, so in this, and emphatically so in this, the cause is made more efficient by the reflex influence of the effect. Let woman give up the irrational modes of clothing her person, and these doctrines and sentiments would be deprived of their most vital aliment by being deprived of their most natural expression. In no other practical forms of folly to which they might betake themselves, could they operate so vigorously and be so invigorated by their operation.
Were woman to throw off the dress, which, in the eye of chivalry and gallantry, is so well adapted to womanly gracefulness and womanly helplessness, and to put on a dress that would leave her free to work her own way through the world, I see not but that chivalry and gallantry would nearly or quite die out. No longer would she present herself to man, now in the bewitching character of a plaything, a doll, an idol, and now in the degraded character of his servant. But he would confess her transmutation into his equal; and, therefore, all occasion for the display of chivalry and gallantry toward her on the one hand, and tyranny on the other, would have passed away. Only let woman attire her person fitly for the whole battle of life--that great and often rough battle, which she is as much bound to fight as man is, and the common sense expressed in the change will put to flight all the nonsensical fancies about her superiority to man, and all the nonsensical fancies about her inferiority to him. No more will then be heard of her being made of a finer material than man is made of; and, on the contrary, no more will then be heard of her being but the complement of man, and of its taking both a man and a woman (the woman, of course, but a small part of it) to make up a unit. No more will it then be said that there is sex in mind--an original sexual difference in intellect. What a pity that so many of our noblest women make this foolish admission! It is made by the great majority of the women who plead the cause of woman.
I am amazed that, the intelligent women engaged in the "Woman's Rights Movement," see not the relation between their dress and the oppressive evils which they are striving to throw off. I am amazed that they do not see that their dress is indispensable to keep in countenance the policy and purposes out of which those evils grow. I hazard nothing in saying, that the relation between the dress and degradation of an American woman, is as vital as between the cramped foot and degradation of a Chinese woman; as vital as between the uses of the inmate of the harem and the apparel and training provided for her. Moreover, I hazard nothing in saying, that an American woman will never have made her most effectual, nor, indeed, any serviceable protest against the treatment of her sex in China, or by the lords of the harem, so long as she consents to have her own person clothed in ways so repugnant to reason and religion, and grateful only to a vitiated taste, be it in her own or in the other sex.
Women are holding their meetings; and with great ability do they urge their claim to the rights of property and suffrage. But, as in the case of the colored man, the great needed change is in himself, so, also, in the case of woman, the great needed change is in herself. Of what comparative avail would be her exercise of the right of suffrage, if she is still to remain the victim of her present false notions of herself and of her relations to the other sex?--false notions so emphatically represented and perpetuated by her dress? Moreover, to concede to her the rights of property would be to benefit her comparatively little, unless she shall resolve to break out from her clothes-prison, and to undertake right earnestly, as right earnestly as a man, to get property. Solomon says: "The destruction of the poor is their poverty." The adage that knowledge is power, is often repeated; and there are, indeed, many instances to verify it. Nevertheless, as a general proposition, it is a thousandfold more emphatically true that property is power. Knowledge helps to get property, but property is the power. That the slaves are a helpless prey, is chiefly because they are so poor and their masters so rich. The masses almost everywhere are well-nigh powerless, because almost everywhere they are poor. How long will they consent to be poor? Just so long as they shall consent to be robbed of their God-given right to the soil. That women are helpless is no wonder, so long as women are paupers.
As long as woman shall be silly enough to learn her lessons in the schools of gallantry and chivalry, so long will it be the height of her ambition to be a graceful and amiable burden upon the other sex. But as soon as she shall consent to place herself under the instructions of reason and common sense, and to discard, as wholly imaginary, those differences between the nature of man and the nature of woman, out of which have grown innumerable nonsensical doctrines and notions, and all sorts of namby pamby sentiments, so soon will she find that, to no greater extent than men are dependent on each other, are women to foster the idea of their dependence on men. Then, and not till then, will women learn that, to be useful and happy, and to accomplish the high purposes of their being, they must, no less emphatically than men, stand upon their own feet, and work with own hands, and bear the burdens of life with their own strength, and brave its storms with their own resoluteness.
The next "Woman's Rights Convention" will, I take it for granted, differ but little from its predecessors. It will abound in righteous demands and noble sentiments, but not in the evidence that they who enunciate these demands and sentiments are prepared to put themselves in harmony with what they conceive and demand. In a word, for the lack of such preparation and of the deep earnestness, which alone can prompt to such preparation, it will be, as has been every other Woman's Rights Convention, a failure. Could I see it made up of women whose dress would indicate their translation from cowardice to courage; from slavery to freedom; from the kingdom of fancy and fashion and foolery to the kingdom of reason and righteousness, then would I hope for the elevation of woman, aye, and of man too, as perhaps I have never yet hoped. What should be the parts and particulars of such dress, I am incapable of saying. Whilst the "Bloomer dress" is unspeakably better than the common dress, it nevertheless affords not half that freedom of the person which woman is entitled and bound to enjoy. I add, on this point, that however much the dresses of the sexes should resemble each other, decency and virtue and other considerations require that they should be obviously distinguishable from each other.
I am not unaware that such views as I have expressed in this letter will be regarded as serving to break down the characteristic delicacy of woman. I frankly admit that I would have it broken down; and that I would have the artificial and conventional, the nonsensical and pernicious thing give place to the natural delicacy which would be common to both sexes. As the delicacy, which is made peculiar to one of the sexes, is unnatural, and, therefore, false, this, which would be common to both, would be natural, and, therefore, true. I would have no characteristic delicacy of woman, and no characteristic coarseness of man. On the contrary, believing man and woman to have the same nature, and to be therefore under obligation to have the same character, I would subject them to a common standard of morals and manners. The delicacy of man should be no less shrinking than that of woman, and the bravery of woman should be one with the bravery of man. Then would there be a public sentiment very unlike that which now requires the sexes to differ in character, and which, therefore, holds them amenable to different codes--codes that, in their partiality to man, allow him to commit high crimes, and that, in their cruelty to woman, make the bare suspicion of such crimes on her part the justification of her hopeless degradation and ruin.
They who advocate that radical change in her dress which common sense calls for, are infidels in the eyes of such as subscribe to this interpretation of the Bible. For if the Bible teaches that the Heaven-ordained condition of woman is so subordinate and her Heaven-ordained character so mean, then they are infidels who would have her cast aside a dress so becoming that character and condition, and have her put on a dress so entirely at war with her humble nature, as to indicate her conscious equality with man, and her purpose to assert, achieve, and maintain her independence. Alas, how misapprehended are the true objects and true uses of the Bible! That blessed book is given to us, not so much that we may be taught by it what to do, as that we may be urged by its solemn and fearful commands and won by its melting entreaties, to do what we already know we should do. Such, indeed, is the greatest value of its recorded fact that Jesus Christ died to save us from our sins. We already know that we should repent of our sins and put them away; and it is this fact which furnishes our strongest possible motive for doing so. But men run to the Bible professedly to be taught their duty in matters where their very instincts--where the laws, written in large, unmistakable, ineffaceable letters upon the very foundations of their being--teach them their duty. I say professedly, for generally it is only so. They run to the Bible, not to learn the truth, but to make the Bible the minister to folly and sin. They run from themselves to the Bible, because they can more easily succeed in twisting its records into the service of their guilty passions and guilty purposes than they can their inflexible convictions. They run to the Bible for a paramount authority that shall override and supplant these uncomfortable convictions. They run from the teachings of their nature and the remonstrances of their consciences to find something more palatable. Hence, we find the rum-drinker, and slaveholder, and polygamist, and other criminals going to the Bible. They go to it for the very purpose of justifying their known sins. But not only may we not go to the Bible to justify what we ourselves have already condemned, but we must not take to the judicature of that book, as an open question, any of the wrongs against which nature and common sense cry out--any of the wrongs which nature and common sense call on us to condemn.
So fraught with evil, and ruinous evil, is this practice, on the part of the Church as well as the world, of inquiring the judgment of the Bible in regard to sins, which the natural and universal conscience condemns, but which the inquirer means to persist in, if only he can get the Bible to testify against his conscience and in favor of his sins; so baleful, I say, is this practice, as to drive me to the conclusion that the Bible can not continue to be a blessing to mankind in spite of it. The practice, in its present wide and well-nigh universal extent, turns the heavenly volume into a curse. Owing to this practice, the Bible is, this day, a hindrance rather than a help to civilization.
But if woman is of the same nature and same dignity with man, and if as much and as varied labor is needed to supply her wants as to supply the wants of man, and if for her to be, as she so emphatically is, poor and destitute and dependent, is as fatal to her happiness and usefulness and to the fulfillment of the high purposes of her existence, as the like circumstances would be to the honor and welfare of man, why then put her in a dress which compels her to be a pauper--a pauper, whether in ribbons or rags? Why, I ask, put her in a dress suited only to those occasional and brief moods, in which man regards her as his darling, his idol, and his angel; or to that general state of his mind in which he looks upon her as his servant, and with feelings certainly much nearer contempt than adoration. Strive as you will to elevate woman, nevertheless the disabilities and degradation of this dress, together with that large group of false views of the uses of her being and of her relations to man, symbolized and perpetuated, as I have already said, by this dress, will make your striving vain.
Woman must first fight against herself--against personal and mental habits so deep-rooted and controlling, and so seemingly inseparable from herself, as to be mistaken for her very nature. And when she has succeeded there, an easy victory will follow. But where shall be the battle-ground for this indispensable self-conquest? She will laugh at my answer when I tell her, that her dress, aye, her dress, must be that battle-ground. What! no wider, no sublimer field than this to reap her glories in! My further answer is, that if she shall reap them anywhere, she must first reap them there. I add, that her triumph there will be her triumph everywhere; and that her failure there will be her failure everywhere.
Affectionately yours, GERRIT SMITH.
MRS. STANTON'S REPLY.
SENECA FALLS, Dec. 21, 1855.
MY DEAR COUSIN:--Your letter on the "Woman's Right Movement" I have thoroughly read and considered. I thank you, in the name of woman, for having said what you have on so many vital points. You have spoken well for a man whose convictions on this subject are the result of reason and observation; but they alone whose souls are fired through personal experience and suffering can set forth the height and depth, the source and center of the degradation of women; they alone can feel a steadfast faith in their own native energy and power to accomplish a final triumph over all adverse surroundings, a speedy and complete success. You say you have but little faith in this reform, because the changes we propose are so great, so radical, so comprehensive; whilst they who have commenced the work are so puny, feeble, and undeveloped. The mass of women are developed at least to the point of discontent, and that, in the dawn of this nation, was considered a most dangerous point in the British Parliament, and is now deemed equally so on a Southern plantation. In the human soul, the steps between discontent and action are few and short indeed. You, who suppose the mass of women contented, know but little of the silent indignation, the deep and settled disgust with which they contemplate our present social arrangements. You claim to believe that in every sense, thought, and feeling, man and woman are the same. Well, now, suppose yourself a woman. You are educated up to that point where one feels a deep interest in the welfare of her country, and in all the great questions of the day, in both Church and State; yet you have no voice in either. Little men, with little brains, may pour forth their little sentiments by the hour, in the forum and the sacred desk, but public sentiment and the religion of our day teach us that silence is most becoming in woman. So to solitude you betake yourself, and read for your consolation the thoughts of dead men; but from the Bible down to Mother Goose's Melodies, how much complacency, think you, you would feel in your womanhood? The philosopher, the poet, and the saint, all combine to make the name of woman synonymous with either fool or devil. Every passion of the human soul, which in manhood becomes so grand and glorious in its results, is fatal to womankind. Ambition makes a Lady Macbeth; love, an Ophelia; none but those brainless things, without will or passion, are ever permitted to come to a good end. What measure of content could you draw from the literature of the past?
Again, suppose yourself the wife of a confirmed drunkard. You behold your earthly possessions all passing away; your heart is made desolate; it has ceased to pulsate with either love, or hope, or joy. Your house is sold over your head, and with it every article of comfort and decency; your children gather round you, one by one, each newcomer clothed in rags and crowned with shame; is it with gladness you now welcome the embrace of that beastly husband, feel his fevered breath upon your cheek, and inhale the disgusting odor of his tobacco and rum? Would not your whole soul revolt from such an union? So do the forty thousand drunkards' wives now in this State. They, too, are all discontented, and but for the pressure of law and gospel would speedily sunder all these unholy ties. Yes, sir, there are women, pure and virtuous and noble as yourself, spending every day of all the years of their existence in the most intimate association with infamous men, kept so by that monstrous and unnatural artifice, baptized by the sacred name of marriage. I might take you through many, many phases of woman's life, into those sacred relations of which we speak not in our conventions, where woman feels her deepest wrongs, where in blank despair she drags out days, and weeks, and months, and years of silent agony. I might paint you pictures of real life so vivid as to force from you the agonized exclamation, How can women endure such things!
We who have spoken out, have declared our rights, political and civil; but the entire revolution about to dawn upon us by the acknowledgment of woman's social equality, has been seen and felt but by the few. The rights, to vote, to hold property, to speak in public, are all-important; but there are great social rights, before which all others sink into utter insignificance. The cause of woman is, as you admit, a broader and a deeper one than any with which you compare it; and this, to me, is the very reason why it must succeed. It is not a question of meats and drinks, of money and lands, but of human rights--the sacred right of a woman to her own person, to all her God-given powers of body and soul. Did it ever enter into the mind of man that woman too had an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of her individual happiness? Did he ever take in the idea that to the mother of the race, and to her alone, belonged the right to say when a new being should be brought into the world? Has he, in the gratification of his blind passions, ever paused to think whether it was with joy and gladness that she gave up ten or twenty years of the heyday of her existence to all the cares and sufferings of excessive maternity? Our present laws, our religious teachings, our social customs on the whole question of marriage and divorce, are most degrading to woman; and so long as man continues to think and write, to speak and act, as if maternity was the one and sole object of a woman's existence--so long as children are conceived in weariness and disgust--you must not look for high-toned men and women capable of accomplishing any great and noble achievement. But when woman shall stand on an even pedestal with man--when they shall be bound together, not by withes of law and gospel, but in holy unity and love, then, and not till then, shall our efforts at minor reforms be crowned with complete success. Here, in my opinion, is the starting-point; here is the battle-ground where our independence must be fought and won. A true marriage relation has far more to do with the elevation of woman than the style and cut of her dress. Dress is a matter of taste, of fashion; it is changeable, transient, and may be doffed or donned at the will of the individual; but institutions, supported by laws, can be overturned but by revolution. We have no reason to hope that pantaloons would do more for us than they have done for man himself. The negro slave enjoys the most unlimited freedom in his attire, not surpassed even by the fashions of Eden in its palmiest days; yet in spite of his dress, and his manhood, too, he is a slave still. Was the old Roman in his toga less of a man than he now is in swallow-tail and tights? Did the flowing robes of Christ Himself render His life less grand and beautiful? In regard to dress, where you claim to be so radical, you are far from consistent.
Believing, as you do, in the identity of the sexes, that all the difference we see in tastes, in character, is entirely the result of education--that "man is woman and woman is man"--why keep up these distinctions in dress? Surely, whatever dress is convenient for one sex must be for the other also. Whatever is necessary for the perfect and full development of man's physical being, must be equally so for woman. I fully agree with you that woman is terribly cramped and crippled in her present style of dress. I have not one word to utter in its defense; but to me, it seems that if she would enjoy entire freedom, she should dress just like man. Why proclaim our sex on the house-tops, seeing that it is a badge of degradation, and deprives us of so many rights and privileges wherever we go? Disguised as a man, the distinguished French woman, "George Sand," has been able to see life in Paris, and has spoken in political meetings with great applause, as no woman could have done. In male attire, we could travel by land or sea; go through all the streets and lanes of our cities and towns by night and day, without a protector; get seven hundred dollars a year for teaching, instead of three, and ten dollars for making a coat, instead of two or three, as we now do. All this we could do without fear of insult, or the least sacrifice of decency or virtue. If nature has not made the sex so clearly defined as to be seen through any disguise, why should we make the difference so striking? Depend upon it, when men and women in their every-day life see and think less of sex and more of mind, we shall all lead far purer and higher lives.
Your letter, my noble cousin, must have been written in a most desponding mood, as all the great reforms of the day seem to you on the verge of failure. What are the experiences of days and months and years in the lifetime of a mighty nation? Can one man in his brief hour hope to see the beginning and end of any reform? When you compare the public sentiment and social customs of our day with what they were fifty years ago, how can you despair of the temperance cause? With a Maine Law and divorce for drunkenness, the rum-seller and drunkard must soon come to terms. Let woman's motto be, "No union with Drunkards," and she will soon bring this long and well-fought battle to a triumphant close.
Neither should you despair of the anti-slavery cause; with its martyrs, its runaway slaves, its legal decisions in almost every paper you take up, the topic of debate in our national councils, our political meetings, and our literature, it seems as if the nation were all alive on this question. True, four millions of slaves groan in their chains still, but every man in this nation has a higher idea of individual rights than he had twenty years ago.
As to the cause of woman, I see no signs of failure. We already have a property law, which in its legitimate effects must elevate the femme covert into a living, breathing woman, a wife into a property-holder, who can make contracts, buy and sell. In a few years we shall see how well it works. It needs but little forethought to perceive that in due time these large property-holders must be represented in the Government; and when the mass of women see that there is some hope of becoming voters and law-makers, they will take to their rights as naturally as the negro to his heels when he is sure of success. Their present seeming content is very much like Sambo's on the plantation. If you truly believe that man is woman, and woman is man; if you believe that all the burning indignation that fires your soul at the sight of injustice and oppression, if suffered in your own person, would nerve you to a life-long struggle for liberty and independence, then know that what you feel, I feel too, and what I feel the mass of women feel also. Judge by yourself, then, how long the women of this nation will consent to be deprived of their social, civil, and political rights; but talk not to us of failure. Talk not to us of chivalry, that died long ago. Where do you see it? No gallant knight presents himself at the bar of justice to pay the penalty of our crimes. We suffer in our own persons, on the gallows, and in prison walls. From Blackstone down to Kent, there is no display of gallantry in your written codes. In social life, true, a man in love will jump to pick up a glove or bouquet for a silly girl of sixteen, whilst at home he will permit his aged mother to carry pails of water and armfuls of wood, or his wife to lug a twenty-pound baby, hour after hour, without ever offering to relieve her. I have seen a great many men priding themselves on their good breeding--gentlemen, born and educated--who never manifest one iota of spontaneous gallantry toward the women of their own household.
Divines may preach thanksgiving sermons on the poetry of the arm-chair and the cradle; but when they lay down their newspapers, or leave their beds a cold night to attend to the wants of either, I shall begin to look for the golden age of chivalry once more. If a short dress is to make the men less gallant than they now are, I beg the women at our next convention to add at least two yards more to every skirt they wear. And you mock us with dependence, too. Do not the majority of women in every town support themselves, and very many their husbands, too? What father of a family, at the loss of his wife, has ever been able to meet his responsibilities as woman has done? When the mother dies the house is made desolate, the children are forsaken--scattered to the four winds of heaven--to the care of any one who chooses to take them. Go to those aged widows who have reared large families of children, unaided and alone, who have kept them all together under one roof, watched and nursed them in health and sickness through all their infant years, clothed and educated them, and made them all respectable men and women, ask them on whom they depended. They will tell you on their own hands, and on that never-dying, never-failing love, that a mother's heart alone can know. It is into hands like these--to these who have calmly met the terrible emergencies of life--who, without the inspiration of glory, or fame, or applause, through long years have faithfully and bravely performed their work, self-sustained and cheered, that we commit our cause. We need not wait for one more generation to pass away, to find a race of women worthy to assert the humanity of women, and that is all we claim to do.
Affectionately yours, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
FRANCES D. GAGE'S REPLY TO GERRIT SMITH.
[From Frederick Douglass' paper].
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.--Dear Sir:--In your issue of Dec. 1st, I find a letter from Hon. Gerrit Smith to Elizabeth C. Stanton, in reference to the Woman's Rights Movement, showing cause, through labored columns, why it has proved a failure.
This article, though addressed to Mrs. Stanton, is an attack upon every one engaged in the cause. For he boldly asserts that the movement "is not in proper hands, and that the proper hands are not yet to be found." I will not deny the assertion, but must still claim the privilege of working in a movement that involves not only my own interest, but the interests of my sex, and through us the interests of a whole humanity. And though I may be but a John the Baptist, unworthy to unloose the latchet of the shoes of those who are to come in short skirts to redeem the world, I still prefer that humble position to being Peter to deny my Master, or a Gerrit Smith to assert that truth can fail.
I do not propose to enter into a full criticism of Mr. Smith's long letter. He has made the whole battle-ground of the Woman's Rights Movement her dress. Nothing brighter, nothing nobler than a few inches of calico or brocade added to or taken from her skirts, is to decide this great and glorious question--to give her freedom or to continue her a slave. This argument, had it come from one of less influence than Gerrit Smith, would have been simply ridiculous. But coming from him, the almost oracle of a large portion of our reformers, it becomes worthy of an answer from every earnest woman in our cause. I will not say one word in defense of our present mode of dress. Not I; but bad as it is, and cumbersome and annoying, I still feel that we can wear it, and yet be lovers of liberty, speaking out our deep feeling, portraying our accumulated wrongs, saving ourselves for a time yet from that antagonism which we must inevitably meet when we don the semi-male attire. We must own ourselves under the law first, own our bodies, our earnings, our genius, and our consciences; then we will turn to the lesser matter of what shall be the garniture of the body. Was the old Roman less a man in his cumbrous toga, than Washington in his tights? Was Christ less a Christ in His vesture, woven without a seam, than He would have been in the suit of a Broadway dandy?
"Moreover, to concede to her rights of property, would be to benefit her comparatively little, unless she shall resolve to break out of her clothes-prison, and to undertake right earnestly, as earnestly as a man, to get property." So says Gerrit Smith. And he imputes the want of earnestness to her clothes. It in a new doctrine that high and holy purposes go from without inward, that the garments of men or women govern and control their aspirations. But do not women now work right earnestly? Do not the German women and our market women labor right earnestly? Do not the wives of our farmers and mechanics toil? Is not the work of the mothers in our land as important as that of the father? "Labor is the foundation of wealth." The reason that our women are "paupers," is not that they do not labor "right earnestly," but that the law gives their earnings into the hands of manhood. Mr. Smith says, "That women are helpless, is no wonder, so long as they are paupers"; he might add, no wonder that the slaves of the cotton plantation are helpless, so long as they are paupers. What reduces both the woman and the slave to this condition? The law which gives the husband and the master entire control of the person and earnings of each; the law that robs each of the rights and liberties that every "free white male citizen" takes to himself as God-given. Truth falling from the lips of a Lucretia Mott in long skirts is none the less truth, than if uttered by a Lucy Stone in short dress, or a Helen Maria Weber in pants and swallow-tail coat. And I can not yet think so meanly of manly justice, as to believe it will yield simply to a change of garments. Let us assert our right to be free. Let us get out of our prison-house of law. Let us own ourselves, our earnings, our genius; let us have power to control as well as to earn and to own; then will each woman adjust her dress to her relations in life.
Mr. Smith speaks of reforms as failures; what can he mean? "The Temperance Reform still drags." I have been in New York thirty-seven days; have given thirty-three lectures; have been at taverns, hotels, private houses, and depots; rode in stages, country wagons, omnibuses, carriages, and railroad cars; met the masses of people daily, and yet have not seen one drunken man, scarce an evidence that there was such a thing as intemperance in the Empire State. If the whole body has been diseased from childhood and a cure be attempted, shall we cry out against the physician that his effort is a failure, because the malady does not wholly disappear at once? Oh, no! let us rather cheer than discourage, while we see symptoms of amendment, hoping and trusting that each day will give renewed strength for the morrow, till the cure shall be made perfect. The accumulated ills of centuries can not be removed in a day or a year. Shall we talk of the Anti-Slavery Cause as a "failure," while our whole great nation is shaking as if an Etna were boiling below? When did the North ever stand, as now, defiant of slavery? Anti-slavery may be said to be written upon the "chariots and the bells of the horses." Our National Congress is nothing more or less than a great Anti-slavery Convention. Not a bill, no matter how small or how great its importance, but hinges upon the question of slavery. The Anti-Slavery Cause is no failure; RIGHT CAN NOT FAIL.
"The next Woman's Rights Convention will be, as has every other Woman's Rights Convention, a failure, notwithstanding it will abound in righteous demands and noble sentiments." So thinks Mr. Smith. Has any Woman's Rights Convention been a failure? No movement so radical, striking so boldly at the foundation of all social and political order, has ever come before the people, or ever so rapidly and widely diffused its doctrine. The reports of our conventions have traveled wherever newspapers are read, causing discussion for and against, and these discussions have elicited truth, and aroused public thought to the evils growing out of woman's position. New trades and callings are opening to us; in every town and village may be found advocates for the equality of privilege under the law, for every thinking, reasoning human soul. Shall we talk of failure, because forty, twenty, or seven years have not perfected all things? When intemperance shall have passed away, and the four million chattel slaves shall sing songs of freedom; when woman shall be recognized as man's equal, socially, legally, and politically, there will yet be reforms and reformers, and men who will despair and look upon one branch of the reform as the great battle-ground, and talk of the failure of the eternal law of progress. Still there will be stout hearts and willing hands to work on, honestly believing that truth and right are sustained by no single point, and their watchword will be "Onward!" We can not fail, for our cause is just.
FRANCES D. GAGE. ROCHESTER, Dec. 24, 1855.
The names of those who wore the Bloomer costume at that early day are: Elizabeth Smith Miller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Mrs. William Burleigh, Charlotte Beebe Wilbour, Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Helen Jarvis, Lydia Sayre Hasbrook, Amelia Williard, Celia Burleigh, Harriet N. Austin, Lydia Jenkins, and many patients at sanitariums, many farmers' wives, and many young ladies for skating and gymnastic exercises.
Looking back to this experiment, we are not surprised at the hostility of men in general to the dress, as it made it very uncomfortable for them to go anywhere with those who wore it. People would stare; some men and women make rude remarks; boys follow in crowds, or shout from behind fences, so that the gentleman in attendance felt it his duty to resent the insult by showing fight, unless he had sufficient self-control to pursue the even tenor of his way without taking the slightest notice of the commotion his companion was creating. No man went through the ordeal with the coolness and dogged determination of Charles Dudley Miller, escorting his wife and cousin on long journeyings, at fashionable resorts, in New York and Washington, to the vexation of all his gentleman friends and acquaintances.
AMELIA BLOOMER COMMENTS ON JANE G. SWISSHELM.
To the Editor of the Nonpareil:
Jane Grey Swisshelm thinks it is dare-devil independence that is ruining the women of this country.--Nonpareil.
And what woman of them all has shown so much "dare-devil independence" as Jane G. Swisshelm? One of the first women to wield the pen-editorial thirty years ago, she was so independent and fearless as to excite the wonder of her readers. The first woman admitted to the reporters' gallery in the Capitol of the nation, she astonished and shocked the country by her attacks upon Daniel Webster and other prominent senators at that day, and was expelled from the gallery for her "dare-devil independence." While publishing a paper at St. Cloud, she was so outspoken and offensive in her personalities, that her press and type were destroyed by indignant politicians. After the war she obtained an office in one of the departments at Washington, and started a paper called the Reconstructionist in that city. For her "dare-devil independence" as a writer in attacking President Johnson and charging that he had part in the assassination of President Lincoln, she was relieved of her office and her press destroyed.
And so in whatever she has part; to whatever she sets her hand, she ever displays a reckless independence that is truly a marvel to those who watch her uncertain course. She fearlessly attacks both friend and foe, if they go contrary to her views of right; and both people and measures that to-day have her countenance and approval, are liable to-morrow to receive an unmerciful lashing from her pen. No woman has set an example of more "dare-devil independence" before "the women of this country" than Jane G. Swisshelm, and if it is proving their ruin she has much to answer for. But we are not prepared to believe her assertion, and we can not think her a ruined woman, notwithstanding her many years of "dare-devil independence." The writer has known her long, has engaged in many a pen-tilt with her, but has never met her personally. She regards her as an able, outspoken defender of the wronged and oppressed, a fearless advocate of the right as she sees it, and an "independent dare-devil" writer on whatever subject she deems worthy of her pen.
AMELIA BLOOMER.
COUNCIL BLUFFS, July 30, 1880.
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