The Project Gutenberg EBook of History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of
III), by Various
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III)
Author: Various
Editor: Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Susan B. Anthony
Matilda Joslyn Gage
Release Date: April 11, 2009 [EBook #28556]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE ***
Produced by Richard J. Shiffer and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this
text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant
spellings and other inconsistencies. Text that has been changed to
correct an obvious error is noted at the end of this ebook.
Also, many occurrences of mismatched single and double quotes
remain as they were in the original.]
[Illustration: Phoebe W. Couzins.]
HISTORY
of
WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
EDITED BY
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON,
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, AND
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE.
ILLUSTRATED WITH STEEL ENGRAVINGS.
_IN THREE VOLUMES._
VOL. III.
1876-1885.
"WOMEN ARE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES, ENTITLED TO ALL
THE RIGHTS, PRIVILEGES AND IMMUNITIES GUARANTEED
TO CITIZENS BY THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION."
SUSAN B. ANTHONY,
17 MADISON ST., ROCHESTER, N. Y.
Copyright, 1886, by SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
PREFACE.
The labors of those who have edited these volumes are not only
finished as far as this work extends, but if three-score years and
ten be the usual limit of human life, all our earthly endeavors
must end in the near future. After faithfully collecting material
for several years, and making the best selections our judgment has
dictated, we are painfully conscious of many imperfections the
critical reader will perceive. But since stereotype plates will not
reflect our growing sense of perfection, the lavish praise of
friends as to the merits of these pages will have its antidote in
the defects we ourselves discover. We may however without egotism
express the belief that this volume will prove specially
interesting in having a large number of contributors from England,
France, Canada and the United States, giving personal experiences
and the progress of legislation in their respective localities.
Into younger hands we must soon resign our work; but as long as
health and vigor remain, we hope to publish a pamphlet report at
the close of each congressional term, containing whatever may be
accomplished by State and National legislation, which can be
readily bound in volumes similar to these, thus keeping a full
record of the prolonged battle until the final victory shall be
achieved. To what extent these publications may be multiplied
depends on when the day of woman's emancipation shall dawn.
For the completion of this work we are indebted to Eliza Jackson
Eddy, the worthy daughter of that noble philanthropist, Francis
Jackson. He and Charles F. Hovey are the only men who have ever
left a generous bequest to the woman suffrage movement. To Mrs.
Eddy, who bequeathed to our cause two-thirds of her large fortune,
belong all honor and praise as the first woman who has given alike
her sympathy and her wealth to this momentous and far-reaching
reform. This heralds a turn in the tide of benevolence, when,
instead of building churches and monuments to great men, and
endowing colleges for boys, women will make the education and
enfranchisement of their own sex the chief object of their lives.
The three volumes now completed we leave as a precious heritage
to coming generations; precious, because they so clearly
illustrate--in her ability to reason, her deeds of heroism and her
sublime self-sacrifice--that woman preeminently possesses the three
essential elements of sovereignty as defined by Blackstone:
"wisdom, goodness and power." This has been to us a work of love,
written without recompense and given without price to a large
circle of friends. A thousand copies have thus far been distributed
among our coadjutors in the old world and the new. Another thousand
have found an honored place in the leading libraries, colleges and
universities of Europe and America, from which we have received
numerous testimonies of their value as a standard work of reference
for those who are investigating this question. Extracts from these
pages are being translated into every living language, and, like so
many missionaries, are bearing the glad gospel of woman's
emancipation to all civilized nations.
Since the inauguration of this reform, propositions to extend the
right of suffrage to women have been submitted to the popular vote
in Kansas, Michigan, Colorado, Nebraska and Oregon, and lost by
large majorities in all; while, by a simple act of legislature,
Wyoming, Utah and Washington territories have enfranchised their
women without going through the slow process of a constitutional
amendment. In New York, the State that has led this movement, and
in which there has been a more continued agitation than in any
other, we are now pressing on the legislature the consideration
that it has the same power to extend the right of suffrage to women
that it has so often exercised in enfranchising different classes
of men.
Eminent publicists have long conceded this power to State
legislatures as well as to congress, declaring that women as
citizens of the United States have the right to vote, and that a
simple enabling act is all that is needed. The constitutionality of
such an act was never questioned until the legislative power was
invoked for the enfranchisement of women. We who have studied our
republican institutions and understand the limits of the executive,
judicial and legislative branches of the government, are aware that
the legislature, directly representing the people, is the primary
source of power, above all courts and constitutions. Research into
the early history of this country shows that in line with English
precedent, women did vote in the old colonial days and in the
original thirteen States of the Union. Hence we are fully awake to
the fact that our struggle is not for the attainment of a new
right, but for the restitution of one our fore-mothers possessed
and exercised.
All thoughtful readers must close these volumes with a deeper sense
of the superior dignity, self-reliance and independence that belong
by nature to woman, enabling her to rise above such multifarious
persecutions as she has encountered, and with persistent
self-assertion to maintain her rights. In the history of the race
there has been no struggle for liberty like this. Whenever the
interest of the ruling classes has induced them to confer new
rights on a subject class, it has been done with no effort on the
part of the latter. Neither the American slave nor the English
laborer demanded the right of suffrage. It was given in both cases
to strengthen the liberal party. The philanthropy of the few may
have entered into those reforms, but political expediency carried
both measures. Women, on the contrary, have fought their own
battles; and in their rebellion against existing conditions have
inaugurated the most fundamental revolution the world has ever
witnessed. The magnitude and multiplicity of the changes
involved make the obstacles in the way of success seem almost
insurmountable.
The narrow self-interest of all classes is opposed to the
sovereignty of woman. The rulers in the State are not willing to
share their power with a class equal if not superior to themselves,
over which they could never hope for absolute control, and whose
methods of government might in many respects differ from their own.
The annointed leaders in the Church are equally hostile to freedom
for a sex supposed for wise purposes to have been subordinated by
divine decree. The capitalist in the world of work holds the key to
the trades and professions, and undermines the power of labor
unions in their struggles for shorter hours and fairer wages, by
substituting the cheap labor of a disfranchised class, that cannot
organize its forces, thus making wife and sister rivals of husband
and brother in the industries, to the detriment of both classes. Of
the autocrat in the home, John Stuart Mill has well said: "No
ordinary man is willing to find at his own fireside an equal in the
person he calls wife." Thus society is based on this fourfold
bondage of woman, making liberty and equality for her antagonistic
to every organized institution. Where, then, can we rest the lever
with which to lift one-half of humanity from these depths of
degradation but on "that columbiad of our political life--the
ballot--which makes every citizen who holds it a full-armed
monitor"?
LIST OF ENGRAVINGS.
VOL. III.
PHOEBE W. COUZINS _Frontispiece._
MARILLA M. RICKER page 112
FRANCES E. WILLARD 129
JANE H. SPOFFORD 192
HARRIET H. ROBINSON 273
PHEBE A. HANAFORD 337
ARMENIA S. WHITE 369
LILLIE DEVEREUX BLAKE 417
RACHEL G. FOSTER 465
CORNELIA C. HUSSEY 481
MAY WRIGHT SEWALL 545
ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT 592
SARAH BURGER STEARNS 656
CLARA BEWICK COLBY 689
HELEN M. GOUGAR 704
LAURA DEFORCE GORDON 753
ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY 769
CAROLINE E. MERRICK 801
MARY B. CLAY 817
MENTIA TAYLOR 833
PRISCILLA BRIGHT MCLAREN 864
GEORGE SAND 896
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE CENTENNIAL YEAR--1876.
The Dawn of the New Century--Washington Convention--Congressional
Hearing--Woman's Protest--May Anniversary--Centennial Parlors in
Philadelphia--Letters and Delegates to Presidential
Conventions--50,000 Documents sent out--The Centennial Autograph
Book--The Fourth of July--Independence Square--Susan B. Anthony
reads the Declaration of Rights--Convention in Dr. Furness' Church,
Lucretia Mott, Presiding--The Hutchinson Family, John and Asa--The
Twenty-eighth Anniversary, July 19, Edward M. Davis,
Presiding--Letters, Ernestine L. Rose, Clarina I. H. Nichols--The
_Ballot-Box_--Retrospect--The Woman's Pavilion 1
CHAPTER XXVIII.
NATIONAL CONVENTIONS, HEARINGS AND REPORTS.
1877-1878-1879.
Renewed Appeal for a Sixteenth Amendment--Mrs. Gage Petitions for a
Removal of Political Disabilities--Ninth Washington Convention,
1877--Jane Grey Swisshelm--Letters, Robert Purvis, Wendell
Phillips, Francis E. Abbott--10,000 Petitions Referred to the
Committee on Privileges and Elections by Special Request of the
Chairman, Hon. O. P. Morton, of Indiana--May Anniversary in New
York--Tenth Washington Convention, 1878--Frances E. Willard and
30,000 Temperance Women Petition Congress--40,000 Petition for a
Sixteenth Amendment--Hearing before the Committee on Privileges and
Elections--Madam Dahlgren's Protest--Mrs. Hooker's Hearing on
Washington's Birthday--Mary Clemmer's Letter to Senator
Wadleigh--His Adverse Report--Thirtieth Anniversary, Unitarian
Church, Rochester, N. Y., July 19, 1878--The Last Convention
Attended by Lucretia Mott--Letters, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell
Phillips--Church Resolution Criticised by Rev. Dr.
Strong--International Women's Congress in Paris--Washington
Convention, 1879--Favorable Minority Report by Senator Hoar--U. S.
Supreme Court Opened to Women--May Anniversary at St.
Louis--Address of Welcome by Phoebe Couzins--Women in Council
Alone--Letter from Josephine Butler, of England--Mrs. Stanton's
Letter to _The National Citizen and Ballot-Box_ 57
CHAPTER XXIX.
CONGRESSIONAL REPORTS AND CONVENTIONS.
1880-1881.
Why we Hold Conventions in Washington--Lincoln Hall
Demonstration--Sixty-six Thousand Appeals--Petitions Presented in
Congress--Hon. T. W. Ferry of Michigan in the Senate--Hon. Geo. B.
Loring of Massachusetts in the House--Hon. J. J. Davis of North
Carolina Objected--Twelfth Washington Convention--Hearings before
the Judiciary Committee of both Houses, 1880--May Anniversary at
Indianapolis--Series of Western Conventions--Presidential
Nominating Conventions--Delegates and Addresses to
each--Mass-Meeting at Chicago--Washington Convention,
1881--Memorial Service to Lucretia Mott--Mrs. Stanton's
Eulogy--Discussion in the Senate on a Standing Committee--Senator
McDonald of Indiana Champions the Measure--May Anniversary in
Boston--Conventions in the chief cities of New England 150
CHAPTER XXX.
CONGRESSIONAL DEBATES AND CONVENTIONS.
1882-1883.
Prolonged Discussions in the Senate on a Special Committee to Look
After the Rights of Women, Messrs. Bayard, Morgan and Vest in
Opposition--Mr. Hoar Champions the Measure in the Senate, Mr. Reed
in the House--Washington Convention--Representative Orth and
Senator Saunders on the Woman Suffrage Platform--Hearings Before
Select Committees of Senate and House--Reception Given by Mrs.
Spofford at the Riggs House--Philadelphia Convention--Mrs. Hannah
Whitehall Smith's Dinner--Congratulations from the Central
Committee of Great Britain--Majority and Minority Reports in the
Senate--E. G. Lapham, J. Z. George--Nebraska Campaign--Conventions
in Omaha--Joint Resolution Introduced by Hon. John D. White of
Kentucky, Referred to the Select Committee--Washington Convention,
January 24, 25, 26, 1883--Majority Report in the House. 198
CHAPTER XXXI.
MASSACHUSETTS.
The Woman's Hour--Lydia Maria Child Petitions Congress--First New
England Convention--The New England, American and Massachusetts
Associations--_Woman's Journal_--Bishop Gilbert Haven--The
Centennial Tea-Party--County Societies--Concord
Convention--Thirtieth Anniversary of the Worcester
Convention--School Suffrage Association--Legislative Hearing--First
Petitions--The Remonstrants Appear--Women in Politics--Campaign of
1872--Great Meeting in Tremont Temple--Women at the
Polls--Provisions of Former State Constitutions--Petitions,
1853--School-Committee Suffrage, 1879,--Women Threatened with
Arrest--Changes in the Laws--Woman Now Owns her own
Clothing--Harvard Annex--Woman in the Professions--Samuel E. Sewall
and William I. Bowditch--Supreme-Court Decisions--Sarah E.
Wall--Francis Jackson--Julia Ward Howe--Mary E. Stevens--Lucia M.
Peabody--Lelia Josephine Robinson--Eliza (Jackson) Eddy's Will 265
CHAPTER XXXII.
CONNECTICUT.
Prudence Crandall--Eloquent Reformers--Petitions for Suffrage--The
Committee's Report--Frances Ellen Burr--Isabella Beecher Hooker's
Reminiscences--Anna Dickinson in the Republican Campaign--State
Society Formed October 28, 29, 1869--Enthusiastic Convention in
Hartford--Governor Marshall Jewell--He recommends More Liberal Laws
for Women--Society Formed in New Haven, 1871--Governor Hubbard's
Inaugural, 1877--Samuel Bowles of the _Springfield
Republican_--Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford, Chaplain, 1870--John Hooker,
Esq., Champions the Suffrage Movement--The Smith Sisters--Mary
Hall--Chief-Justice Park--Frances Ellen Burr--Hartford Equal Rights
Club 316
CHAPTER XXXIII.
RHODE ISLAND.
Senator Anthony in _North American Review_--Convention in
Providence--State Association organized, Paulina Wright Davis,
President--Report of Elizabeth B. Chase--Women on School
Boards--Women's Board of Visitors to the Penal and Correctional
Institutions--Dr. Wm. F. Channing--Miss Ida Lewis--Letter of
Frederick A. Hinckley--Last Words of Senator Anthony 339
CHAPTER XXXIV.
MAINE.
Women on School Committees--Elvira C. Thorndyke--First Suffrage
Society organized, 1868, Rockland--Portland Meeting, 1870--John
Neal--Judge Goddard--Colby University Open to Girls, August 12,
1871--Mrs. Clara Hapgood Nash Admitted to the Bar, October 26,
1872--Tax-Payers Protest--Ann F. Greeley, 1872--March, 1872, Bill
for Woman Suffrage Lost in the House, Passed in the Senate by Seven
Votes--Miss Frank Charles, Register of Deeds--Judge Reddington--Mr.
Randall's Motion--Moral Eminence of Maine--Convention in Granite
Hall, Augusta, January, 1873, Hon. Joshua Nye, President--Delia A.
Curtis--Opinions of the Supreme Court in Regard to Women Holding
Offices--Governor Dingley's Message, 1875--Convention,
Representatives Hall, Portland, Judge Kingsbury, President, Feb.
12, '76--The two Snow Families--Hon. T. B. Reed 351
CHAPTER XXXV.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.
Nathaniel P. Rogers--Parker Pillsbury--Galen Foster--The Hutchinson
Family--First Organized Action, 1868--Concord Convention--William
Lloyd Garrison's Letter--Rev. S. L. Blake Opposed--Rev. Mr. Sanborn
in Favor--_Concord Monitor_--Armenia S. White--A Bill to Protect
the Rights of Married Men--Minority and Majority Reports--Women too
Ignorant to Vote--Republican State Convention--Women on School
Committees, 1870--Voting at School District Meetings, 1878--Mrs.
White's Address--Mrs. Ricker on Prison Reform--Judicial Decision in
Regard to Married Women, 1882--Letter from Senator Blair 367
CHAPTER XXXVI.
VERMONT.
Clarina Howard Nichols--Council of Censors--Amending the
Constitution--St. Andrew's Letter--Mr. Reed's Report--Convention
Called--H. B. Blackwell on the _Vermont Watchman_--Mary A.
Livermore in the _Woman's Journal_--Sarah A. Gibbs' Reply to Rev.
Mr. Holmes--School Suffrage, 1880 383
CHAPTER XXXVII.
NEW YORK--1860-1885.
Saratoga Convention, July 13, 14, 1869--State Society Formed,
Martha C. Wright, President--_The Revolution_ Established,
1868--Educational Movement--New York City Society, 1870, Charlotte
B. Wilbour, President--Presidential Campaign, 1872--Hearings at
Albany, 1873--Constitutional Commission--An Effort to Open Columbia
College, President Barnard in Favor--Centennial Celebration,
1876--School Officers--Senator Emerson of Monroe, 1877--Governor
Robinson's Veto--School Suffrage, 1880--Governor Cornell
Recommended it in his Message--Stewart's Home for Working
Women--Women as Police--An Act to Prohibit
Disfranchisement--Attorney-General Russell's Adverse Opinion--The
Power of the Legislature to Extend Suffrage--Great Demonstration in
Chickering Hall, March 7, 1884--Hearing at Albany, 1885--Mrs.
Blake, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Rogers, Mrs. Howell, Gov. Hoyt of Wyoming
395
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
PENNSYLVANIA.
Carrie Burnham--The Canon and Civil Law the Source of Woman's
Degradation--Women Sold with Cattle in 1768--Women Arrested in
Pittsburg--Mrs. McManus--Opposition to Women in Colleges and
Hospitals; John W. Forney Vindicates their Rights--Ann
Preston--Women in Dentistry--James Truman's Letter--Swarthmore
College--Suffrage Association Formed in 1866, in Philadelphia--John
K. Wildman's Letter--Judge William S. Pierce--The Citizens'
Suffrage Association, 333 Walnut Street, Edward M. Davis,
President--Petitions to the Legislature--Constitutional Convention,
1873--Bishop Simpson, Mary Grew, Sarah C. Hallowell, Matilda
Hindman, Mrs. Stanton, Address the Convention--Messrs. Broomall and
Campbell Debate with the Opposition--Amendment Making Women
Eligible to School Offices--Two Women Elected to Philadelphia
School Board, 1874--The Wages of Married Women Protected--J. Edgar
Thomson's Will--Literary Women as Editors--The Rev. Knox
Little--Anne E. McDowell--Women as Physicians in Insane
Asylums--The Fourteenth Amendment Resolution, 1881--Ex-Gov. Hoyt's
Lecture on Wyoming 444
CHAPTER XXXIX.
NEW JERSEY.
Women Voted in the Early Days--Deprived of the Right by Legislative
Enactment in 1807--Women Demand the Restoration of Their Rights in
1868--At the Polls in Vineland and Roseville Park--Lucy Stone
Agitates the Question--State Suffrage Society Organized in
1867--Conventions--A Memorial to the Legislature--Mary F.
Davis--Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford--Political Science Club-- Mrs.
Cornelia C. Hussey--Orange Club, 1870--Mrs. Devereux Blake gives
the Oration, July 4, 1884--Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell's Letter--The
Laws of New Jersey in Regard to Property and
Divorce--Constitutional Commission, 1873--Trial of Rev. Isaac M.
See--Women Preaching in his Pulpit--The Case Appealed--Mrs. Jones,
Jailoress--Legislative Hearings 476
CHAPTER XL.
OHIO.
The First Soldiers' Aid Society--Mrs. Mendenhall--Cincinnati Equal
Rights Association, 1868--Homeopathic Medical College and
Hospital--Hon. J. M. Ashley--State Society, 1869--Murat Halstead's
Letter--Dayton Convention, 1870--Women Protest Against
Enfranchisement--Sarah Knowles Bolton--Statistics on Coëducation by
Thomas Wentworth Higginson--Woman's Crusade, 1874--Miriam M.
Cole--Ladies' Health Association--Professor Curtis--Hospital for
Women and Children, 1879--Letter from J. D. Buck, M. D.--March,
1881, Degrees Conferred on Women--Toledo Association, 1869--Sarah
Langdon Williams--_The Sunday Journal_--_The
Ballot-Box_--Constitutional Convention--Judge Waite--Amendment
Making Women Eligible to Office--Mr. Voris, Chairman Special
Committee on Woman Suffrage--State Convention, 1873--Rev. Robert
McCune--Centennial Celebration--Women Decline to Take
Part--Correspondence--Newbury Association--Women Voting,
1871--Sophia Ober Allen--Annual Meeting, Painesville, 1885--State
Society, Mrs. Frances M. Casement, President--Adelbert College 491
CHAPTER XLI.
MICHIGAN.
Women's Literary Clubs and Libraries--Mrs. Lucinda H.
Stone--Classes of Girls in Europe--Ernestine L. Rose--Legislative
Action, 1849-1885--State Woman Suffrage Society, 1870--Annual
Conventions--Northwestern Association--Wendell Phillips'
Letter--Nannette Gardner votes--Catharine A. F. Stebbins
Refused--Legislative Action--Amendments Submitted--An Active Canvas
of the State by Women--Election Day--The Amendment Lost, 40,000 Men
Voted in Favor--University at Ann Arbor Opened to Girls,
1869--Kalamazoo Institute--J. A. B. Stone--Miss Madeline Stockwell
and Miss Sarah Burger Applied for Admission to the University in
1857--Episcopal Church Bill--Local Societies--Quincy--Lansing--St.
Johns--Manistee--Grand Rapids--Sojourner Truth--Laura C.
Haviland--Sybil Lawrence 513
CHAPTER XLII.
INDIANA.
The First Woman Suffrage Convention After the War, 1869--Amanda M.
Way--Annual Meetings, 1870-85, in the Larger Cities--Indianapolis
Equal Suffrage Society, 1878--A Course of Lectures--In May, 1880,
National Convention in Indianapolis--Zerelda G. Wallace--Social
Entertainment--Governor Albert G. Porter--Susan B. Anthony's
Birthday--Schuyler Colfax--Legislative Hearings--Temperance Women
of Indiana--Helen M. Gougar--General Assembly--Delegates to
Political Conventions--Women Address Political Meetings--Important
Changes in the Laws for Women, from 1860 to 1884--Colleges Open to
Women--Demia Butler--Professors--Lawyers--Doctors--Ministers--Miss
Catharine Merrill--Miss Elizabeth Eaglesfield--Rev. Prudence Le
Clerc--Dr. Mary F. Thomas--Prominent Men and Women--George W.
Julian--The Journals--Gertrude Garrison 533
CHAPTER XLIII.
ILLINOIS.
Chicago a Great Commercial Centre--First Woman Suffrage Agitation,
1855--A. J. Grover--Society at Earlville--Prudence
Crandall--Sanitary Movement--Woman in Journalism--Myra
Bradwell--Excitement in Elmwood Church, 1868--Mrs. Huldah
Joy--Pulpit Utterances--Convention, 1869, Library Hall,
Chicago--Anna Dickinson, Robert Laird Collier Debate--Manhood
Suffrage Denounced by Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony--Judge Charles
B. Waite on the Constitutional Convention--Hearing before the
Legislature--Western Suffrage Convention, Mrs. Livermore,
President--Annual Meeting at Bloomington--Women Eligible to School
Offices--Evanston College--Miss Alta Hulett Medical
Association--Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson--"Woman's Kingdom" in the
_Inter-Ocean_--Mrs. Harbert--Centennial Celebration at
Evanston--Temperance Petition, 180,000--Frances E. Willard--Social
Science Association--Art Union--Jane Graham Jones at International
Congress in Paris--Moline Association 559
CHAPTER XLIV.
MISSOURI.
Missouri the first State to Open Colleges of Law and Medicine to
Woman--Liberal Legislation--Harriet Hosmer--Wayman Crow--Dr. Joseph
N. McDowell--Works of Art--Women in the War--Adeline
Couzins--Virginia L. Minor--Petitions--Woman Suffrage Association,
May 8, 1867--First Woman Suffrage Convention, Oct. 6, 1869--Able
Resolutions by Francis Minor--Action Asked for in the Methodist
Church--Constitutional Convention--Mrs. Hazard's Report--National
Suffrage Association, 1879--Virginia L. Minor Before the Committee
on Constitutional Amendments--Mrs. Minor Tries to Vote--Her Case in
the Supreme Court--Mrs. Annie R. Irvine--"Oregon Woman's
Union"--Miss Phoebe Couzins Graduates From the Law School,
1871--Reception by Members of the Bar--Speeches--Dr. Walker--Judge
Krum--Hon. Albert Todd--Ex-Governor E. O. Stanard--Ex-Senator
Henderson--Judge Reber--George M. Stewart--Mrs. Minor--Miss Couzins
594
CHAPTER XLV.
IOWA.
Beautiful Scenery--Liberal in Politics and Reforms--Legislation for
Women--No Right yet to Joint Earnings--Early Agitation--Frances
Dana Gage, 1854--Mrs. Amelia Bloomer Lectures in Council Bluffs,
1856--Mrs. Martha H. Brinkerhoff--Mrs. Annie Savery, 1868--County
Associations Formed in 1869--State Society Organized at Mt.
Pleasant, 1870, Henry O'Connor, President--Mrs. Cutler Answers
Judge Palmer--First Annual Meeting, Des Moines--Letter from Bishop
Simpson--The State Register Complimentary--Mass-Meeting at the
Capitol--Mrs. Savery and Mrs. Harbert--Legislative
Action--Methodist and Universalist Churches Indorse Woman
Suffrage--Republican Plank, 1874--Governor Carpenter's Message,
1876--Annual Meeting, 1882, Many Clergymen Present--Five Hundred
Editors Interviewed--Miss Hindman and Mrs. Campbell--Mrs. Callanan
Interviews Governor Sherman, 1884--Lawyers--Governor Kirkwood
Appoints Women to Office--County Superintendents--Elizabeth S.
Cook--Journalism--Literature--
Medicine--Ministry--Inventions--President of a National Bank-- The
Heroic Kate Shelly--Temperance--Improvement in the Laws 612
CHAPTER XLVI.
WISCONSIN.
Progressive Legislation--The Rights of Married Women--The
Constitution Shows Four Classes Having the Right to Vote--Woman
Suffrage Agitation--C. L. Sholes' Minority Report, 1856--Judge
David Noggle and J. T. Mills' Minority Report, 1859--State
Association Formed, 1869--Milwaukee Convention--Dr. Laura
Ross--Hearing Before the Legislature--Convention in Janesville,
1870--State University--Elizabeth R. Wentworth--Suffrage Amendment,
1880, '81, '82--Rev. Olympia Brown, Racine, 1877--Madam
Anneké--Judge Ryan--Three Days' Convention at Racine, 1883--Eveleen
L. Mason--Dr. Sarah Munro--Rev. Dr. Corwin--Lavinia Godell,
Lawyer--Angie King--Kate Kane 638
CHAPTER XLVII.
MINNESOTA.
Girls in State University--Sarah Burger Stearns--Harriet E. Bishop,
the First Teacher in St. Paul--Mary J. Colburn Won the Prize--Mrs.
Jane Grey Swisshelm, St. Cloud--Fourth of July Oration, 1866--First
Legislative Hearing, 1867--Governor Austin's Veto--First Society at
Rochester--Kasson--Almira W. Anthony--Mary P. Wheeler--Harriet M.
White--The W. C. T. U.--Harriet A. Hobart--Literary and Art
Clubs--School Suffrage, 1876--Charlotte O. Van Cleve and Mrs. C. S.
Winchell Elected to School Board--Mrs. Governor
Pillsbury--Temperance Vote, 1877--Property Rights of Married
Women--Women as Officers, Teachers, Editors, Ministers, Doctors,
Lawyers 649
CHAPTER XLVIII.
DAKOTA.
Influences of Climate and Scenery--Legislative Action, 1872--Mrs.
Marietta Bones--In February, 1879, School Suffrage Granted
Women--Constitutional Convention, 1883--Matilda Joslyn Gage
Addressed a Letter to the Convention and an Appeal to the Women of
the State--Mrs. Bones Addressed the Convention in Person--The
Effort to get the Word "Male" out of the Constitution
Failed--Legislature of 1885--Major Pickler Presents the
Bill--Carried Through Both Houses--Governor Pierce's Veto--Major
Pickler's Letter 662
CHAPTER XLIX.
NEBRASKA.
Clara Bewick Colby--Nebraska Came into the Possession of the United
States, 1803--The Home of the Dakotas--Organized as a Territory,
1854--Territorial Legislature--Mrs. Amelia Bloomer Addresses the
House--Gen. Wm. Larimer, 1856--A Bill to Confer Suffrage on
Women--Passed the House--Lost in the Senate--Constitution
Harmonized with the Fourteenth Amendment--Admitted as a State March
1, 1867--Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony Lecture in the State,
1867--Mrs. Tracy Cutler, 1870--Mrs. Esther L. Warner's
Letter--Constitutional Convention, 1871--Woman Suffrage Amendment
Submitted--Lost by 12,676 against, 3,502 for--Prolonged
Discussion--Constitutional Convention, 1875--Grasshoppers Devastate
the Country--_Inter-Ocean_, Mrs. Harbert--Omaha _Republican_,
1876--Woman's Column Edited by Mrs. Harriet S. Brooks--"Woman's
Kingdom"--State Society Formed, January 19, 1881, Mrs. Brooks
President--Mrs. Dinsmoor, Mrs. Colby, Mrs. Brooks, before the
Legislature--Amendment again Submitted--Active Canvass of the
State, 1882--First Convention of the State Association--Charles F.
Manderson--Unreliable Politicians--An Unfair Count of Votes for
Woman Suffrage--Amendment Defeated--Conventions in Omaha--Notable
Women in the State--Conventions--_Woman's Tribune_ Established in
1883 670
CHAPTER L.
KANSAS.
Effect of the Popular Vote on Woman Suffrage--Anna C. Wait--Hannah
Wilson--Miss Kate Stephens, Professor of Greek in State
University--Lincoln Centre Society, 1879--The Press--The Lincoln
_Beacon_--Election, 1880--Sarah A. Brown, Democratic
Candidate--Fourth of July Celebration--Women Voting on the School
Question--State Society, 1884--Helen M. Gougar--Clara Bewick
Colby--Bertha H. Ellsworth--Radical Reform Association--Mrs. A. G.
Lord--Prudence Crandall--Clarina Howard Nichols--Laws--Women in the
Professions--Schools--Political Parties--Petitions to the
Legislature--Col. F. G. Adams' Letter 696
CHAPTER LI.
COLORADO.
Great American Desert--Organized as a Territory, February 28,
1860--Gov. McCook's Message Recommending Woman Suffrage,
1870--Adverse Legislation--Hon. Amos Steck--Admitted to the Union,
1876--Constitutional Convention--Efforts to Strike Out the Word
"Male"--Convention to Discuss Woman Suffrage--School Suffrage
Accorded--State Association Formed, Alida C. Avery,
President--Proposition for Full Suffrage Submitted to the Popular
Vote--A Vigorous Campaign--Mrs. Campbell and Mrs. Patterson of
Denver--Opposition by the Clergy--Their Arguments Ably Answered--D.
M. Richards--The Amendment Lost--_The Rocky Mountain News_ 712
CHAPTER LII.
WYOMING.
The Dawn of the New Day, December, 1869--The Goal Reached in
England and America--Territory Organized, May, 1869--Legislative
Action--Bill for Woman Suffrage--William H. Bright--Gov. Campbell
Signs the Bill--Appoints Esther Morris, Justice of the Peace,
March, 1870--Women on the Jury, Chief-Justice Howe, Presiding--J.
W. Kingman, Associate-Justice, Addresses the Jury--Women Promptly
Take Their Places--Sunday Laws Enforced--Comments of the
Press--Judge Howe's Letter--Laramie _Sentinel_--J. H.
Hayford--Women Voting, 1870--Grandma Swain the First to Cast her
Ballot--Effort to Repeal the Law, 1871--Gov. Campbell's Veto--Mr.
Corlett--Rapid Growth of Public Opinion in Favor of Woman Suffrage
726
CHAPTER LIII.
CALIFORNIA.
Liberal Provisions in the Constitution--Elizabeth T. Schenck--Eliza
W. Farnham--Mrs. Mills' Seminary, now a State Institution--Jeannie
Carr, State Superintendent of Schools--First Awakening--_The
Revolution_--Anna Dickinson--Mrs. Gordon Addresses the Legislature,
1868--Mrs. Pitts Stevens Edits _The Pioneer_--First Suffrage
Society on the Pacific Coast, 1869--State Convention, January 26,
1870, Mrs. Wallis, President--State Association Formed, Mrs.
Haskell of Petaluma, President--Mrs. Gordon Nominated for
Senator--In 1871, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony Visit
California--Hon. A. A. Sargent Speaks in Favor of Suffrage for
Women--Ellen Clark Sargent Active in the Movement--Legislation
Making Women Eligible to Hold School Offices, 1873--July 10, 1873,
State Society Incorporated, Sarah Wallis, President--Mrs. Clara
Foltz--A Bill Giving Women the Right to Practice Law--The Bill
Passed and Signed by the Governor--Contest Over Admitting Women
into the Law Department of the University--Supreme Court Decision
Favorable--Hon. A. A. Sargent on the Constitution and
Laws--Journalists and Printers Silk Culture--Legislative
Appropriation--Mrs. Knox Goodrich Celebrates July 4, 1876--Imposing
Demonstration--Ladies in the Procession 749
CHAPTER LIV.
THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST.
The Long Marches Westward--Abigail Scott Duniway--Mary Olney
Brown--The First Steps in Oregon--Col. C. A. Reed--Judge G. W.
Lawson--1870--The New Northwest, 1871--Campaign, Mrs. Duniway and
Miss Anthony--They Address the Legislature in Washington
Territory--Hon. Elwood Evans--Suffrage Societies Organized at
Olympia and Portland--Before the Oregon Legislature--Donation Land
Act--Hon. Samuel Corwin's Suffrage Bill--Married Woman's _Sole_
Traders' Bill--Temperance Alliance--Women Rejected--Major Williams
Fights Their Battles and Triumphs--Mrs. H. A. Loughary--Progressive
Legislation, 1874--Mob-Law in Jacksonville, 1879--Dr. Mary A.
Thompson--Constitutional Convention, 1878--Woman Suffrage Bill,
1880--Hon. W. C. Fulton--Women Enfranchised in Washington
Territory, Nov. 15, 1883--Great Rejoicing, Bonfires, Ratification
Meetings--Constitutional Amendment Submitted in Oregon and Lost,
June, 1884--Suffrage by Legislative Enactment Lost--Fourth of July
Celebrated at Vancouvers--Benjamin and Mary Olney Brown--Washington
Territory--Legislation in 1867-68 Favorable to Women--Mrs. Brown
Attempts to Vote and is Refused--Charlotte Olney French--Women Vote
at Grand Mound and Black River Precincts, 1870--Retrogressive
Legislation, 1871--Abby H. Stuart in Land-Office--Hon. William H.
White--Idaho and Montana 767
CHAPTER LV.
LOUISIANA--TEXAS--ARKANSAS--MISSISSIPPI.
St. Anna's Asylum, Managed by Women--Constitutional Convention,
1879--Women Petition--Clara Merrick Guthrie--Petition Referred to
Committee on Suffrage--A Hearing Granted--Mrs. Keating--Mrs.
Saxon--Mrs. Merrick--Col. John M. Sandige--Efforts of the Women all
in Vain--Action in 1885--Gov. McEnery--The _Daily Picayune_--Women
as Members of the School Board--Physiology in the Schools--Miss
Eliza Rudolph--Mrs. E. J. Nicholson--Judge Merrick's Digest of
Laws--Texas--Arkansas--Mississippi--Sarah A. Dorsey 789
CHAPTER LV. (CONTINUED).
DISTRICT OF
COLUMBIA--MARYLAND--DELAWARE--KENTUCKY--TENNESSEE--VIRGINIA--WEST
VIRGINIA--NORTH CAROLINA--SOUTH
CAROLINA--FLORIDA--ALABAMA--GEORGIA.
Secretary Chase--Women in the Government Departments--Myrtilla
Miner--Mrs. O'Connor's Tribute--District of Columbia Suffrage
Bill--The Universal Franchise Association, 1867--Bill for a
Prohibitory Law Presented by Hon. S. C. Pomeroy, 1869--A Bill for
Equal Wages for the Women in the Departments, Introduced by Hon. S.
M. Arnell, 1870--In 1871 Congress Passed the Organic Act for the
District Confining the Right of Suffrage to Males--In 1875 it
Withdrew all Legislative Power from the People--Women in Law,
Medicine, Journalism and the Charities--Dental College Opened to
Women--Mary A. Stewart--The Clay Sisters--The School of
Pharmacy--Elizabeth Avery Meriwether--Judge Underwood--Mary Bayard
Clarke--Dr. Susan Dimock--Governor
Chamberlain--Coffee-Growing--Priscilla Holmes Drake--Alexander H.
Stephens 808
CHAPTER LV. (CONCLUDED).
CANADA.
Miss Phelps of St. Catharines--The Revolt of the Thirteen
Colonies--First Parliament--Property Rights of Married
Women--School Suffrage Thirty Years--Municipal Suffrage, 1882,
1884--Women Voting in Toronto, 1886--Mrs. Curzon--Dr. Emily H.
Stone--Woman's Literary Club of Toronto--Nova Scotia--New
Brunswick--Miss Harriet Stewart 831
CHAPTER LVI.
GREAT BRITAIN.
Women Send Members to Parliament--Sidney Smith, Sir Robert Peel,
Richard Cobden--The Ladies of Oldham--Jeremy Bentham--Anne
Knight--Northern Reform Society, 1858--Mrs. Matilda
Biggs--Unmarried Women and Widows Petition Parliament--Associations
Formed in London, Manchester, Edinburgh, 1867--John Stuart Mill in
Parliament--Seventy-three Votes for his Bill--John Bright's
Vote--Women Register and Vote--Lord-Chief-Justice of England
Declares their Constitutional Right--The Courts Give Adverse
Decisions--Jacob Bright Secures the Municipal Franchise--First
Public Meeting--Division on Jacob Bright's Bill to Remove Political
Disabilities--Mr. Gladstone's Speech--Work of 1871-72--Fourth Vote
on the Suffrage Bill--Jacob Bright Fails of Reëlection--Efforts of
Mr. Forsyth--Memorial of the National Society--Some Account of the
Workers--Vote of the New Parliament, 1875--Organized
Opposition--Diminished Adverse Vote of 1878--Mr. Courtney's
Resolution--Letters--Great Demonstrations at
Manchester--London--Bristol--Nottingham--Birmingham--Sheffield--
Glasgow--Victory in the Isle of Man--Passage of the Municipal
Franchise Bill for Scotland--Mr. Mason's Resolution--Reduction
of Adverse Majority to 16--Liberal Conference at Leeds--Mr.
Woodall's Amendment to Reform Bill of 1884--Meeting at
Edinburgh--Other Meetings--Estimated Number of Women
Householders--Circulars to Members of Parliament--Debate on
the Amendment--Resolutions of the Society--Further Debate--Defeat
of the Amendment--Meeting at St. James Hall--Conclusion 833
CHAPTER LVII.
CONTINENTAL EUROPE.
The Woman Question in the Back-ground--In France the Agitation
Dates from the Upheaval of 1789;--International Women's Rights
Convention in Paris, 1878--Mlle. Hubertine Auclert Leads the Demand
for Suffrage--Agitation Began in Italy with the Kingdom--Concepcion
Arenal in Spain--Coëducation in Portugal--Germany: Leipsic and
Berlin--Austria in Advance of Germany Caroline Svetlá of
Bohemia--Austria Unsurpassed in Contradictions--Marriage
Emancipates from Tutelage in Hungary--Dr. Henrietta Jacobs of
Holland--Dr. Isala Van Diest of Belgium--In Switzerland the
Catholic Cantons Lag Behind--Marie Goegg, the Leader--Sweden Stands
First--Universities Open to Women in Norway--Associations in
Denmark--Liberality of Russia toward Women--Poland--The
Orient--Turkey--Jewish Wives--The Greek Woman in Turkey--The Greek
Woman in Greece--An Unique Episode--Woman's Rights in the American
Sense not Known 895
CHAPTER LVIII.
REMINISCENCES.
BY E. C. S. 922
Appendix 955
INDEX 985
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE CENTENNIAL YEAR--1876.
The Dawn of the New Century--Washington Convention--Congressional
Hearing--Woman's Protest--May Anniversary--Centennial Parlors in
Philadelphia--Letters and Delegates to Presidential
Conventions--50,000 Documents sent out--The Centennial Autograph
Book--The Fourth of July--Independence Square--Susan B. Anthony
reads the Declaration of Rights--Convention in Dr. Furness'
Church, Lucretia Mott, Presiding--The Hutchinson Family, John and
Asa--The Twenty-eighth Anniversary, July 19, Edward M. Davis,
Presiding--Letters, Ernestine L. Rose, Clarina I. H. Nichols--The
_Ballot-Box_--Retrospect--The Woman's Pavilion.
During the sessions of 1871-72 congress enacted laws providing for
the celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of American
independence, to be held July 4, 1876, in Philadelphia, the
historic city from whence was issued the famous declaration of
1776.
The first act provided for the appointment by the president of a
"Centennial Commission," consisting of two members from each State
and territory in the Union; the second incorporated the Centennial
Board of Finance and provided for the issue of stock to the amount
of $10,000,000, in 1,000,000 shares of $10 each. It was at first
proposed to distribute the stock among the people of the different
States and territories according to the ratio of their population,
but subscriptions were afterward received without regard to States.
The stockholders organized a board of directors, April 1, 1873. The
design of the exhibition was to make it a comprehensive display of
the industrial, intellectual and moral progress of the nation
during the first century of its existence; but by the earnest
invitation of our government foreign nations so generally
participated that it was truly, as its name implied, an
"International and World's Exposition."
The centennial year opened amid the wildest rejoicing. In honor of
the nation's birthday extensive preparations were made for the
great event. Crowds of people eager to participate in the
celebration, everywhere flocked from the adjacent country to the
nearest village or city, filling the streets and adding to the
general gala look, all through the day and evening of December 31,
1875. From early gas-light upon every side the blowing of horns,
throwing of torpedos, explosion of fire-crackers, gave premonition
of more enthusiastic exultation. As the clock struck twelve every
house suddenly blossomed with red, white and blue; public and
private buildings burst into a blaze of light that rivaled the
noon-day sun, while screaming whistles, booming cannon, pealing
bells, joyous music and brilliant fire-works made the midnight
which ushered in the centennial 1876, a never-to-be-forgotten hour.
Portraits of the presidents from Washington and Lincoln
laurel-crowned, to Grant, sword in hand, met the eye on every side.
Stars in flames of fire lighted the foreign flags of welcome to
other nations. Every window, door and roof-top was filled with gay
and joyous people. Carriages laden with men, women and children in
holiday attire enthusiastically waving the national flag and
singing its songs of freedom. Battalions of soldiers marched
through the streets; Roman candles, whizzing rockets, and
gaily-colored balloons shot upward, filling the sky with trails of
fire and adding to the brilliancy of the scene, while all minor
sounds were drowned in the martial music. Thus did the old world
and the new commemorate the birth of a nation founded on the
principle of self-government.
The prolonged preparations for the centennial celebration naturally
roused the women of the nation to new thought as to their status as
citizens of a republic, as well as to their rightful share in the
progress of the century. The oft-repeated declarations of the
fathers had a deeper significance for those who realized the
degradation of disfranchisement, and they queried with each other
as to what part, with becoming self-respect, they could take in the
coming festivities.[1] Woman's achievements in art, science and
industry would necessarily be recognized in the Exposition; but
with the dawn of a new era, after a hundred years of education in a
republic, she asked more than a simple recognition of the products
of her hand and brain; with her growing intelligence, virtue and
patriotism, she demanded the higher ideal of womanhood that should
welcome her as an equal factor in government, with all the rights
and honors of citizenship fully accorded. During the entire
century, women who understood the genius of free institutions had
ever and anon made their indignant protests in both public and
private before State legislatures, congressional committees and
statesmen at their own firesides; and now, after discussing the
right of self-government so exhaustively in the late anti-slavery
conflict, it seemed to them that the time had come to make some
application of these principles to the women of the nation. Hence
it was with a deeper sense of injustice than ever before that the
National Suffrage Association issued the call for the annual
Washington Convention of 1876:
CALL FOR THE EIGHTH ANNUAL WASHINGTON CONVENTION.--The National
Woman Suffrage Association will hold its Eighth Annual Convention
in Tallmadge Hall, Washington, D. C., January 27, 28, 1876. In
this one-hundredth year of the Republic, the women of the United
States will once more assemble under the shadow of the national
capitol to press their claims to self-government.
That property has its rights, was acknowledged in England long
before the revolutionary war, and this recognized right made "no
taxation without representation" the most effective battle-cry of
that period. But the question of property representation fades
from view beside the greater question of the right of each
individual, millionaire or pauper, to personal representation. In
the progress of the war our fathers grew in wisdom, and the
Declaration of Independence was the first national assertion of
the right of individual representation. That "governments derive
their just powers from the consent of the governed,"
thenceforward became the watchword of the world. Our flag, which
beckons the emigrant from every foreign shore, means to him
self-government.
But while in theory our government recognizes the rights of all
people, in practice it is far behind the Declaration of
Independence and the national constitution. On what just ground
is discrimination made between men and women? Why should women,
more than men, be governed without their own consent? Why should
women, more than men, be denied trial by a jury of their peers?
On what authority are women taxed while unrepresented? By what
right do men declare themselves invested with power to legislate
for women? For the discussion of these vital questions friends
are invited to take part in the convention.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _President_, Fayetteville, N. Y.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Ch'n Ex. Com._, Rochester, N. Y.
At the opening session of this convention the president, Matilda
Joslyn Gage, said:
I would remind you, fellow-citizens, that this is our first
convention in the dawn of the new century. In 1776 we inaugurated
our experiment of self-government. Unbelief in man's capacity to
govern himself was freely expressed by every European monarchy
except France. When John Adams was Minister to England, the
newspapers of that country were filled with prophecies that the
new-born republic would soon gladly return to British allegiance.
But these hundred years have taught them the worth of liberty;
the Declaration of Independence has become the alphabet of
nations; Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and the isles of the
sea, will unite this year to do our nation honor. Our flag is
everywhere on sea and land. It has searched the North Pole,
explored every desert, upheld religious liberty of every faith
and protected political refugees from every nation, but it has
not yet secured equal rights to women.
This year is to be one of general discussion upon the science of
government; its origin, its powers, its history. If our present
declaration cannot be so interpreted as to cover the rights of
women, we must issue one that will. I have received letters from
many of the Western States and from this District, urging us to
prepare a woman's declaration, and to celebrate the coming Fourth
of July with our own chosen orators and in our own way. I notice
a general awakening among women at this time. But a day or two
since the women of this District demanded suffrage for themselves
in a petition of 25,000 names. The men are quiet under their
disfranchisement, making no attempt for their rights--fit slaves
of a powerful ring.
The following protest was presented by Mrs. Gage, adopted by the
convention, printed and extensively circulated:
_To the Political Sovereigns of the United States in Independence
Hall assembled:_
We, the undersigned women of the United States, asserting our
faith in the principles of the Declaration of Independence and in
the constitution of the United States, proclaiming it as the best
form of government in the world, declare ourselves a part of the
people of the nation unjustly deprived of the guaranteed and
reserved rights belonging to citizens of the United States;
because we have never given our consent to this government;
because we have never delegated our rights to others; because
this government is false to its underlying principles; because it
has refused to one-half its citizens the only means of
self-government--the ballot; because it has been deaf to our
appeals, our petitions and our prayers;
Therefore, in presence of the assembled nations of all the world,
we protest against this government of the United States as an
oligarchy of sex, and not a true republic; and we protest against
calling this a centennial celebration of the independence of the
people of the United States.
Letters[2] were read and a series of resolutions were discussed and
adopted:
_Resolved_, That the demand for woman suffrage is but the
next step in the great movement which began with _Magna
Charta_, and which has ever since tended toward vesting
government in the whole body of the people.
_Resolved_, That we demand of the forty-fourth congress, in
order that it may adequately celebrate the centennial year,
the admission to the polls of the women of all the
territories, and a submission to the legislatures of the
several States of an amendment securing to women the
elective franchise.
_Resolved_, That the enfranchisement of women means wiser
and truer wedlock, purer and happier homes, healthier and
better children, and strikes, as nothing else does, at the
very roots of pauperism and crime.
_Resolved_, That if Colorado would come into the Union in a
befitting manner for the celebration of the centennial of
the Declaration of Independence, she should give the ballot
to brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, and thus
present to the nation a truly free State.
_Resolved_, That the right of suffrage being vested in the
women of Utah by their constitutional and lawful
enfranchisement, and by six years of use, we denounce the
proposition about to be again presented to congress for the
disfranchisement of the women in that territory, as an
outrage on the freedom of thousands of legal voters and a
gross innovation of vested rights; we demand the abolition
of the system of numbering the ballots, in order that the
women may be thoroughly free to vote as they choose, without
supervision or dictation, and that the chair appoint a
committee of three persons, with power to add to their
number, to memorialize congress, and otherwise to watch over
the rights of the women of Utah in this regard during the
next twelve months.
BELVA A. LOCKWOOD presented the annual report: The question of
woman suffrage is to be submitted to the people of Iowa during
the present centennial year, if this legislature ratifies the
action of the previous one. Colorado has not embodied the word
"male" in her constitution, and a vigorous effort is being made
to introduce woman suffrage there. In Minnesota women are allowed
to vote on school questions and to hold office by a recent
constitutional amendment. In Michigan, in 1874, the vote for
woman suffrage was 40,000, about 1,000 more votes than were
polled for the new constitution. The Connecticut legislature,
during the past year appointed a committee to consider and report
the expediency of making women eligible to the position of
electors for president and vice-president. The committee made a
unanimous report in its favor, and secured for its passage 82
votes, while 101 votes were cast against it. In Massachusetts,
Governor Rice, in his inaugural address, recommended to the
legislature to secure to women the right to vote for presidential
electors. An address to the legislature of New York by Mesdames
Gage, Blake and Lozier upon this question, was favorably received
and extensively quoted by the press. At an agricultural fair in
Illinois the Hon. James R. Doolittle advocated household
suffrage. In the Senate of the thirteenth legislature of the
State of Texas, Senator Dohoney, Chairman of the Judiciary
Committee, made a report strongly advocating woman suffrage; and
in 1875, when a member of the Constitutional Convention, he
advocated the same doctrine, and was ably assisted by Hon. W. G.
L. Weaver. The governor of that State, in his message,
recommended that women school teachers should receive equal pay
for equal work. The word "male" does not occur in the new
constitution. In the territories of Wyoming and Utah, woman
suffrage still continues after five years' experiment, and we
have not learned that households have been broken up or that
babies have ceased to be rocked.
Women physicians, women journalists and women editors have come
to be a feature of our institutions. Laura De Force Gordon, a
member of our association, is editing a popular daily--the
_Leader_--in Sacramento, Cal. Women are now admitted to the bar
in Kansas, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Utah, Wyoming and
the District of Columbia. They are eligible and are serving as
school superintendents in Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, Iowa and
Wisconsin. Illinois allows them to be notaries public. As
postmasters they have proved competent, and one woman, Miss Ada
Sweet, is pension agent at Chicago. Julia K. Sutherland has been
appointed commissioner of deeds for the State of California. In
England women vote on the same terms as men on municipal,
parochial and educational matters. In Holland, Austria and
Sweden, women vote on a property qualification. The Peruvian
Minister of Justice has declared that Peru places women on the
same footing as men. Thus all over the world is the idea of human
rights taking root and cropping out in a healthful rather than a
spasmodic outgrowth.
The grand-daughter of Paley, true to her ancestral blood, has
excelled all the young men in Cambridge in moral science. Julia
J. Thomas, of Cornell University, daughter of Dr. Mary F. Thomas,
of Indiana, in the recent inter-collegiate contest, took the
first prize of $300, over eight male competitors, in Greek. The
recent decision in the United States Supreme Court, of Minor
_vs._ Happersett, will have as much force in suppressing the
individuality and self-assertion of women as had the opinion of
Judge Taney, in the Dred-Scott case, in suppressing the
emancipation of slavery. The day has come when precedents are
made rather than blindly followed. The refusal of the Superior
Court of Philadelphia to allow Carrie S. Burnham to practice law,
because there was no precedent, was a weak evasion of common law
and common sense. One hundred years ago there was no precedent
for a man practicing law in the State of Pennsylvania, and yet we
have not learned that there was any difficulty in establishing a
precedent. I do not now remember any precedent for the
Declaration of Independence of the United Colonies, and yet
during a century it has not been overturned. The rebellion of the
South had no precedent, and yet, if I remember, there was an
issue joined, and the United States found that she had
jurisdiction of the case.
The admission of women to Cornell University; their reception on
equal footing in Syracuse University, receiving in both equal
honorary degrees; the establishment of Wellesley College, with
full professorships and capable women to fill them; the agitation
of the question in Washington of the establishment of a
university for women, all show a mental awakening in the popular
mind not hitherto known. A new era is opening in the history of
the world. The seed sown twenty-five years ago by Mrs. Stanton
and other brave women is bearing fruit.
SARA ANDREWS SPENCER said it was interesting to pair off the
objections and let them answer each other like paradoxes. Women
will be influenced by their husbands and will vote for bad men to
please them. Women have too much influence now, and if we give
them any more latitude they will make men all vote their way.
Owing to the composition and structure of the female brain, women
are incapable of understanding political affairs. If women are
allowed to vote they will crowd all the men out of office, and
men will be obliged to stay at home and take care of the
children. That is, owing to the composition and structure of the
female brain, women are so exactly adapted to political affairs
that men wouldn't stand any chance if women were allowed to enter
into competition with them. Women don't want it. Women shouldn't
have it, for they don't know how to use it. Grace Greenwood (who
was one of the seventy-two women who tried to vote) said men were
like the stingy boy at school with a cake. "Now," said he, "all
you that don't ask for it don't want it, and all you that do ask
for it sha'n't have it."
REV. OLYMPIA BROWN, pastor of the Universalist church in
Bridgeport, Conn., gave her views on the rights of women under
the constitution, and believed that they were entitled to the
ballot as an inalienable right. In this country, under existing
rulings of the courts as to the meaning of the constitution, no
one appeared likely to enjoy the ballot for all time except the
colored men, unless the clause, "previous condition of
servitude," as a congressman expressed it, referred to widows.
That being true, the constitution paid a premium only on colored
men, and widows. If the constitution did not guarantee suffrage,
and congress did not bestow it, then the republic was of no
account and its boast devoid of significance and meaning. Its
life had been in vain--dead to the interests for which it was
created. She wanted congress to pass a sixteenth amendment,
declaring all its citizens enfranchised, or a declaratory act
setting forth that the constitution already guaranteed to them
that right.
Hon. FREDERICK DOUGLASS said he was not quite in accord with all
the sentiments that had been uttered during the afternoon, yet he
was willing that the largest latitude should be taken by the
advocates of the cause. He was not afraid that at some distant
period the blacks of the South would rise and disfranchise the
whites. While he was not willing to be addressed as the ignorant,
besotted creature that the negro is sometimes called, he was
willing to be a part of the bridge over which women should march
to the full enjoyment of their rights.
Miss PHOEBE COUZINS of St. Louis reviewed in an able manner the
decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Virginia L. Minor.
Mrs. DEVEREUX BLAKE spoke on the rights and duties of
citizenship. She cited a number of authorities, including a
recent decision of the Supreme Court, to prove that women are
citizens, although deprived of the privileges of citizenship.
Taking up the three duties of citizenship--paying taxes, serving
on jury, and military service--she said woman had done her share
of the first for a hundred years; that the women of the country
now contributed, directly and indirectly, one-third of its
revenues, and that the House of Representatives had just robbed
them of $500,000 to pay for a centennial celebration in which
they had no part. As for serving on jury, they did not claim that
as a privilege, as it was usually regarded as a most disagreeable
duty; but they did claim the right of women, when arraigned in
court, to be tried by a jury of their peers, which was not
accorded when the jury was composed wholly of men. Lastly, as to
serving their country in time of war, it was a fact that women
had actually enlisted and fought in our late war, until their sex
was discovered, when they were summarily dismissed without being
paid for their services.
Hon. Aaron A. Sargent, of California, in the United States
Senate, and Hon. Samuel S. Cox, of New York, in the House of
Representatives, presented the memorial asking the enfranchisement
of the women of the District of Columbia, as follows:
IN THE SENATE, Tuesday, January 25, 1876.
Mr. SARGENT: I present a memorial asking for the establishment of
a government in the District of Columbia which shall secure to
its women the right to vote. This petition is signed by many
eminent ladies of the country: Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage,
President of the National Woman Suffrage Association, and the
following officers of that society: Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Henrietta Payne Westbrook, Isabella
Beecher Hooker, Mathilde F. Wendt, Ellen Clark Sargent; also by
Mary F. Foster, President of the District of Columbia Woman's
Franchise Association; Susan A. Edson, M. D.; Mrs. E. D. E. N.
Southworth, the distinguished authoress; Mrs. Dr. Caroline B.
Winslow; Belva A. Lockwood, a practicing lawyer in this District;
Sara Andrews Spencer, and Mrs. A. E. Wood.
These intelligent ladies set forth their petition in language and
with facts and arguments which I think should meet the ear of the
Senate, and I ask that it be read by the secretary in order that
their desires may be known.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: Is there objection? The chair hears
none, and the secretary will report the petition. The secretary
read:
_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States in Congress assembled:_
Whereas the Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed
the decision of the Supreme Court of the District of
Columbia in the cases of Spencer _vs._ The Board of
Registration, and Webster _vs._ The Judges of Election, and
has decided that "by the operation of the first section of
the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United
States, women have been advanced to full citizenship and
clothed with the capacity to become voters; and further,
that this first section of the fourteenth amendment does not
execute itself, but requires the supervision of legislative
power in the exercise of legislative discretion to give it
effect"; and whereas the congress of the United States is
the legislative body having exclusive jurisdiction over the
District of Columbia, and in enfranchising the colored men
and refusing to enfranchise women, white or colored, made an
unjust discrimination against sex, and did not give the
intelligence and moral power of the citizens of said
District a fair opportunity for expression at the polls; and
whereas woman suffrage is not an experiment, but has had a
fair trial in Wyoming, where women hold office, where they
vote, where they have the most orderly society of any of the
territories, where the experiment is approved by the
executive officers of the United States, by their courts, by
their press and by the people generally, and where it has
"rescued that territory from a state of comparative
lawlessness" and rendered it "one of the most orderly in the
Union"; and whereas upon the woman suffrage amendment to
Senate bill number 44 of the second session of the
forty-third congress, votes were recorded in favor of woman
suffrage by the two senators from Indiana, the two from
Florida, the two from Michigan, the two from Rhode Island,
one from Kansas, one from Louisiana, one from Massachusetts,
one from Minnesota, one from Nebraska, one from Nevada, one
from Oregon, one from South Carolina, one from Texas, and
one from Wisconsin; and whereas a fair trial of equal
suffrage for men and women in the District of Columbia,
under the immediate supervision of congress, would
demonstrate to the people of the whole country that justice
to women is policy for men; and whereas the women of the
United States are governed without their own consent, are
denied trial by a jury of their peers, are taxed without
representation, and are subject to manifold wrongs resulting
from unjust and arbitrary exercise of power over an
unrepresented class; and whereas in this centennial year of
the republic the spirit of 1776 is breathing its influence
upon the people, melting away prejudices and animosities and
infusing into our national councils a finer sense of justice
and a clearer perception of individual rights; therefore,
We pray your honorable body to establish a government for
the District of Columbia which shall secure to its women the
right to vote.
Mr. SARGEANT: Even if this document were not accompanied by the
signatures of eminent ladies known throughout the land for their
virtues, intelligence and high character, the considerations
which it presents would be worthy of the attention of the senate.
I have no doubt that the great movement of which this is a part
will prevail. It is working its progress day by day throughout
the country. It is making itself felt both in social and
political life. The petitioners here well say that there has been
a successful experiment of the exercise of female suffrage in one
of our territories; that a territory has been redeemed from
lawlessness; that the judges, the press, the people generally of
Wyoming approve the results of this great experiment. I know of
no better place than the capital of a nation where a more
decisive trial can be made, if such is needed, to establish the
expediency of woman suffrage. As to its justice, who shall deny
it? I ask, for the purpose of due consideration, that this
petition be referred to the Committee on the District of
Columbia, so that in preparing any scheme for the government of
the District which is likely to come before this congress, due
weight may be given to the considerations presented.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The petition will be referred to the
Committee on the District of Columbia.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Friday, March 31, 1876.
Mr. COX: Mr. Speaker, I am requested to present a memorial,
asking for a form of government in the District of Columbia which
shall secure to its women the right to vote; and I ask the grace
and favor to have this memorial printed in the _Record_.
Mr. BANKS: Mr. Speaker, I beg the privilege of saying a few words
in favor of the request made by the gentleman from New York who
presents this memorial. It is a hundred years this day since Mrs.
Abigail Adams, of Massachusetts, wrote to her husband, John
Adams, then a member of the continental convention, entreating
him to give to women the power to protect their own rights and
predicting a general revolution if justice was denied them. Mrs.
Adams was one of the noblest women of that period, distinguished
by heroism and patriotism never surpassed in any age. She was
wife of the second and mother of the sixth president of the
United States, and her beneficent influence was felt in political
as well as in social circles. It was perhaps the first demand for
the recognition of the rights of her sex made in this country,
and is one of the centennial incidents that should be remembered.
It came from a good quarter. This memorial represents half a
million of American women. They ask for the organization of a
government in the District of Columbia that will recognize their
political rights. I voted some years ago to give women the right
to vote in this District, and recalling the course of its
government I think it would have done no harm if they had enjoyed
political rights.
Mr. KASSON: I suggest that the memorial be printed without the
names.
Mr. COX: There are no names appended except those of the officers
of the National Woman Suffrage Association; and I hope they will
be printed with the memorial.
Mr. HENDEE: I trust the gentleman will allow this petition to be
referred to the committee of which I am a member: the Committee
for the District of Columbia. There being no objection, the
memorial was read and referred to the Committee for the District
of Columbia, and ordered to be printed in the _Record_.
At the close of the convention a hearing was granted to the ladies
before the committees of the Senate and House of Representatives on
the District of Columbia.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, of New York, said: _Mr. Chairman and
Gentlemen of the Committee_: On behalf of the National
Association, which has its officers in every State and territory
of the Union, and which numbers many thousands of members, and on
behalf of the Woman's Franchise Association of the District of
Columbia, we appear before you, asking that the right of suffrage
be secured equally to the men and women of this District. Art. 1,
sec. 8, clauses 17, 18 of the Constitution of the United States
reads:
Congress shall have power to exercise exclusive legislation
in all cases whatsoever over such district as may become the
seat of government of the United States, * * * * * to make
all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying
into execution the foregoing powers.
Congress is therefore constitutionally the special guardian of
the rights of the people of the District of Columbia. It
possesses peculiar rights, peculiar duties, peculiar powers in
regard to this District. At the present time the men and women
are alike disfranchised. Our memorial asks that in forming a new
government they may be alike enfranchised. It is often said as
an argument against granting suffrage to women that they do not
wish to vote; do not ask for the ballot. This association,
numbering thousands in the United States, through its
representatives, now asks you, in this memorial, for suffrage in
this District. Petitions from every State in the Union have been
sent to your honorable body. One of these, signed by thirty-five
thousand women, was sent to congress in one large roll; but what
is the value of a petition signed by even a million of an
unrepresented class?
The city papers of the national capital, once bitterly opposed to
all effort in this direction, now fully recognize the dignity of
the demand, and have ceased to oppose it. One of these said,
editorially, to-day, that the vast audiences assembling at our
conventions, the large majority being women, and evidently in
sympathy with the movement, were proof of the great interest
women take in this subject, though many are too timid to openly
make the demand. The woman's temperance movement began two years
ago as a crusade of prayer and song, and the women engaged
therein have now resolved themselves into a national
organization, whose second convention, held in October last,
numbering delegates from twenty-two States, almost unanimously
passed a resolution demanding the ballot to aid them in their
temperance work. We who make our constant demand for suffrage,
knew that these women were in process of education, and would
soon be forced to ask for the key to all reform.
The ballot says yes or no to all questions. Without it women are
prohibited from practically expressing their opinions. The very
fact that the women of this District make this demand of you more
urgently than men proves that they desire it more and see its
uses better. The men of this District who quietly remain
disfranchised have the spirit of slaves, and if asking for the
ballot is any proof of fitness for its use, then the women who do
ask for it here prove themselves in this respect superior to men,
more alive to the interests of this District, and better fitted
to administer the government. Women who are not interested in
questions of reform would soon become so if they possessed the
ballot. They are now in the condition we were when we heard of
the famine in Persia two years ago. Our sympathies were aroused
for a brief while, but Persia was far away, we could render it no
certain aid, and the sufferings of the people soon passed from
our minds.
Our approaching centennial celebration is to commemorate the
Declaration of Independence, which was based on individual
rights. For ages it was a question where the governing power
rightfully belonged; patriarch, priest, and monarch each claimed
it by divine right. Our country declared it vested in the
individual. Not only was this clearly stated in the Declaration
of Independence, but the same ground was maintained in the secret
proceedings upon framing the constitution. The old confederation
was abandoned because it did not secure the independence and
safety of the people. It has recently been asked in congressional
debates, "What is the grand idea of the centennial?" The answer
was, "It is the illustration in spirit and truth of the
principles of the Declaration of Independence and of the
constitution."
These principles are:
_First_--The natural rights of each individual.
_Second_--The exact equality of these rights.
_Third_--That rights not delegated are retained by the
individual.
_Fourth_--That no person shall exercise the rights of others
without delegated authority.
_Fifth_--That non-use of rights does not destroy them.
Rights did not come new-born into the world with the revolution.
Our fathers were men of middle age before they understood their
own rights, but when they did they compelled the recognition of
the world, and now the nations of the earth are this year invited
to join you in the celebration of these principles of free
government.
We have special reasons for asking you to secure suffrage to the
women of the District of Columbia. Woman Suffrage has been tried
in Wyoming, and ample testimony of its beneficial results has
been furnished, but it is a far distant territory, and those not
especially interested will not examine the evidence. It has been
tried in Utah, but with great opposition on account of the
peculiar religious belief and customs of the people. But the
District of Columbia is directly under the eye of congress. It is
the capital of the nation, and three-fifths of the property of
the District belongs to the United States. The people of the
whole country would therefore be interested in observing the
practical workings of this system on national soil. With 7,316
more women than men in this District, we call your special
attention to the inconsistency and injustice of granting suffrage
to a minority and withholding it from a majority, as you have
done in the past. If the District is your special ward, then
women, being in the majority here, have peculiar claims upon you
for a consideration of their rights. The freedom of this country
is only half won. The women of to-day have less freedom than our
fathers of the revolution, for they were permitted local
self-government, while women have no share in local, State, or
general government.
Our memorial calls your attention to the Pembina debate in 1874,
when senators from eighteen States recognized the right of
self-government as inhering in women. One senator said: "I
believe women never will enjoy equality with men in taking care
of themselves until they have the right to vote." Another, "that
the question was being considered by a large portion of the
people of the United States." When the discussion was concluded
and the vote taken, twenty-two senators recorded their votes for
woman suffrage in that distant territory. During the debate
several senators publicly declared their intention of voting for
woman suffrage in the District of Columbia whenever the
opportunity was presented. These senators recognize the fact that
the ballot is not only a right, but that it is opportunity for
woman; that it is the one means of helping her to help herself.
In asking you to secure the ballot to the women of the District
we do not ask you to create a right. That is beyond your power.
We ask you to protect them in the exercise of a right.
Mrs. SARA ANDREWS SPENCER, Secretary of the District of Columbia
Woman's Franchise Association, said: For no legal or political
right I have ever claimed in the District of Columbia do I ask a
stronger, clearer charter than the Declaration of Independence,
and the constitution of the United States as it stood before the
fourteenth amendment had entered the minds of men. A judicial
decision, rendered by nine men, upon the rights of ten millions
of women of this republic, need not, does not, change the
convictions of one woman in regard to her own heaven-endowed
rights, duties, and responsibilities.
We have resorted to all the measures dictated by those who rule
over us for securing the freedom to exercise rights which are
sacredly our own, rights which are ours by Divine inheritance,
and which men can neither confer nor take away. We are not only
daughters of our Father in heaven, and joint heirs with you
there; but we are daughters of this republic, and joint heirs
with you here. Every act of legislation which has been placed as
a bar in our way as citizens has been an act of injustice, and
every expedient to which we have resorted for securing
recognition of citizenship has been with protest against the
existence of these acts of unauthorized power.
When any man expresses doubt to me as to the use that I or any
other woman might make of the ballot if we had it, my answer is,
What is that to you? If you have for years defrauded me of my
rightful inheritance, and then, as a stroke of policy, or from
late conviction, concluded to restore to me my own domain, must I
ask you whether I may make of it a garden of flowers, or a field
of wheat, or a pasture for kine? If I choose I may counsel with
you. If experience has given you wisdom, even of this world, in
managing your property and mine, I should be wise to learn from
you. But injustice is not wont to yield wisdom; grapes do not
grow of thorns, nor figs of thistles.
Born of the unjust and cruel subjection of woman to man, we have
in these United States a harvest of 116,000 paupers, 36,000
criminals, and such a mighty host of blind, deaf and dumb,
idiotic, insane, feeble-minded, and children with tendencies to
crime, as almost to lead one to hope for the extinction of the
human race rather than for its perpetuation after its own kind.
The wisdom of man licenses the dram-shop, and then rears
station-houses, jails, and gibbets to provide for the victims. In
this District we have 135 teachers of public schools and 238
police officers, and the last report shows that public safety
demands a police force of 900. We have 31,671 children of school
age; 31,671 reasons why I want to vote. We have here 7,000 more
children of school age than there are seats in all the public
schools, and from the swarm of poor, ignorant, and vagrant
children, the lists of criminals and paupers are constantly
supplied. To provide for these evils there is an annual
expenditure of $350,000, not including expenses of courts, while
for education the annual expenditure is $280,000.
Will you say that the wives and the mothers, the house and
homekeepers of this small territory, have no interest in all
these things? If dram-shops are licensed and brothels protected,
are not our sons, our brothers, tempted and ruined, our daughters
lured from their homes, and lost to earth and heaven? Long and
patiently women have borne wrongs too deep to be put into words;
wrongs for which men have provided no redress and have found no
remedy. When five years ago, with our social atmosphere poisoned
with vices which as women we had no power to remove, men in
authority began a series of attempts to fasten upon us by law the
huge typical vice of all the ages--the social evil--in a form so
degrading to all womanhood that no man, though he were the prince
of profligates, would submit to its regulations for a day; then
we cried out so that the world heard us. We know the plague is
only stayed for a brief while. The hydra-headed monster every now
and then lifts a new front, and must be smitten again. Four times
in four successive years a little company of women of the
District have appeared before committees and compelled the
discussion and defeat of bills designed to fasten these measures
upon the community under the guise of security for public health
and morality. The last annual report of the board of health
speaks tenderly of the need of protecting vicious men by these
regulations, and says:
The legalization of houses of ill-fame for so humane a
purpose, startling as it may be to the moral sense, has many
powerful advocates among the thoughtful, wise, and
philanthropic of communities.
The report quotes approvingly Dr. Gross, of Philadelphia, who
says in behalf of laws to license the social evil:
The prejudices which surround the subject must be swept
away, and men must march to the front and discharge their
duty, however much they may be reproached and abused by the
ignorant and foolish.
Aside from the higher ground of our inherent right to
self-government, we declare here and now that the women of this
District are not safe without the ballot. Our firesides, our
liberties are in constant peril, while men who have no concern
for our welfare may legislate against our dearest interests. If
we would inaugurate any measure of protection for our own sex, we
are bound hand and foot by man. The law is his, the treasury is
his, the power is his, and he need not even hear our cry, except
at his good will and pleasure.
If man had legislated justly and wisely for the interests of this
District, if its financial condition was sound, its social and
moral atmosphere pure, and all was well, there would be some show
of reason in your refusing to hazard a new experiment, even
though we could demonstrate it to be founded upon eternal
justice. But the history of the successive forms of government in
the District of Columbia is a history of failures. So will it
continue to be until you adopt a plan founded upon truly
republican principles. When, a few years ago, you put the ballot
into the hands of the swarming masses of freedmen who had
gathered here with the ignorance and vices of slaves, and refused
to enfranchise women, white or colored, you gave this District no
fair trial of a republican form of government. You did not even
protect the interests of the colored race. You admitted that the
colored man was not really free until he held the ballot in his
hand, and therefore you enfranchised him and left the woman twice
his slave. I know colored women in Washington far the superiors,
intellectually and morally, of the masses of men, who declare
that they now endure wrongs and abuses unknown in slavery.
There is not an interest in this District that is not as vital to
me as to any man in Washington--that is not more vital to me than
it can be to any member of this honorable body. As a citizen,
seeking the welfare of this community, as a wife and mother
desiring the safety of my children, which of you can claim a
deeper interest than I in questions of markets, taxes, finance,
banks, railroads, highways, the public debt and interest thereon,
boards of health, sanitary and police regulations, station-houses
(wherein I find many a wreck of womanhood, ruined in her youth
and beauty), schools, asylums, and charities? Why deny me a voice
in any or all of these? Do you doubt that I would use the ballot
in the interests of order, retrenchment, and reform? Do you deny
a right of mine, which you will admit I know how to prize,
because there are women who do not appreciate its value, do not
demand it, possibly might not (any better than men) know how to
use it? What a mockery of justice! What a flagrant violation of
individual rights! I would cry out against it if no other woman
in the land felt the wrong. But among the 10,000,000 of mothers
of 14,000,000 of children in this country, vast numbers of
thoughtful, philanthropic, and pure women have come to see this
truth, and desire to express their mother love and home love at
the ballot-box!
Frederick Douglass once said: "Whole nations have been bathed in
blood to establish the simplest possible propositions. For
instance, that a man's head is _his_ head; his body is _his_
body; his feet are _his_ feet, and if he chooses to run away with
them it is nobody's business"; and all honor to him, he added,
"Now, these propositions have been established for the colored
man. Why does not man establish them for woman, his wife, his
mother?"
Determined to surround the colored man with every possible
guarantee of protection in the possession of his freedom,
congress stopped the wheels of legislation, and made the whole
country wait, while day after day and night after night his
friends fought inch by inch the ground for the civil rights bill.
During that debate Senator Frelinghuysen said:
When I took the oath as senator, I took the oath to support
the Constitution of the United States, which declares
equality for all: and in advocating this bill I am doing my
sworn duty in endeavoring to secure equal rights for every
citizen of the United States.
But where slept his "sworn duty" when he recorded his vote in the
Senate against woman suffrage? With marvelous inconsistency, as a
reason for opposing woman suffrage, during the Pembina debate,
May 27, 1874, Senator Merrimon said of the relation of women to
the Constitution of the United States:
They have sustained it under all circumstances with their
love, their hands, and their hearts; with their smiles and
their tears they have educated their children to live for
it, and to die for it.
Therefore the honorable gentleman denies them the right to vote.
Upon the civil rights bill, Senator Howe said:
I do not know but what the passage of this bill will break
up the common schools. I admit that I have some fear on that
point. Every step of this terrible march has been met with a
threat; but let justice be done although the common schools
and the heavens do fall.
In reply to the point made by Mr. Stockton that the people of the
United States would not accept this bill, Mr. Howe said:
I would not turn back if I knew that of the forty million
people of the United States not one million would sustain
it. If this generation does not accept it there is a
generation to come that will accept it. What does this
provide? Not that the black man should be helped on his way;
not at all; but only that, as he staggers along, he shall
not be retarded, shall not be tripped up and made to fall.
Brave and tender words these for our black brother; but see how
prone men are to invert truth, justice, and mercy in dealing with
women. During the Pembina debate, Senator Merrimon said:
I know there are a few women in the country who complain;
but those who complain, compared with those who do not
complain, are as one to a million.
As a literal fact, the women who have complained, have
petitioned, sued, reasoned, plead, have knocked at the doors of
your legislatures and courts, are as one to fifty in this
country, as we who watch the record know; and even that is a
small proportion of those who would, but dare not; who are bound
hand and foot, and will be bound until you make them free. But if
no others feel the wrong but those who have dared to complain; if
the poor, the ignorant, the betrayed, the ruined do not
understand the question, and the well-fed and comfortable "have
all the rights they want," do you give that for answer to our
just demand? What do we ask? Not that poor woman "shall be helped
on her way"--not at all; but only that, "as she staggers along,
she shall not be retarded, shall not be tripped up, shall not be
made to fall."
And here on this national soil, for the women of this District of
Columbia--your peculiar wards--I ask you to try the experiment of
exact, even-handed justice; to give us a voice in the laws under
which we must live, by which we are tried, judged and condemned.
I ask it for myself, that I may the better help other women. I
ask it for other women, that they may the better help themselves.
As you hope for justice and mercy in your hour of need, may you
hear and answer.
Rev. Olympia Brown, of Connecticut; Belva A. Lockwood, of
Washington; and Phoebe Couzins, of St. Louis, also addressed the
committees; enforcing their arguments with wit, humor, pathos and
eloquence.
On her way home from Washington, Mrs. Gage stopped in Philadelphia
to secure rooms for the National Association during the centennial
summer, and decided upon Carpenter Hall, in case it could be
obtained. This hall belongs to the Carpenter Company of
Philadelphia, perhaps the oldest existing association of that city,
it having maintained an uninterrupted organization from the year
1724, about forty years after the establishment of the colonial
government by William Penn, and was much in use during the early
days of the revolution. The doors of the State House, where the
continental congress intended to meet, were found closed against
it; but the Carpenter Company, numbering many eminent patriots,
offered its hall for their use; and here met the first continental
congress, September 5, 1774. John Adams, describing its opening
ceremonies, said:
Here was a scene worthy of the painter's art. Washington was
kneeling there, and Randolph, Rutledge, Lee and Jay; and by their
side there stood, bowed in reverence, the Puritan patriots of New
England, who at that moment had reason to believe that an armed
soldiery was wasting their humble households. It was believed
that Boston had been bombarded and destroyed.[3] They prayed
fervently for America, for the congress, for the province of
Massachusetts Bay, and especially for the town of Boston. Who can
realize the emotions with which in that hour of danger they
turned imploringly to heaven for Divine interposition. It was
enough to melt a heart of stone. I saw the tears gush into the
eyes of old, gray, pacific Quakers of Philadelphia.
The action of this congress, which sat but seven weeks, was
momentous in the history of the world. "From the moment of their
first debate," said De Tocqueville, "Europe was moved." The
convention which in 1781 framed the constitution of the United
States, also met in Carpenter Hall in secret session for four
months before agreeing upon its provisions. This hall seemed the
most appropriate place for establishing the centennial rooms of the
National Woman Suffrage Association, but the effort to obtain
it proved unavailing[4] as will be seen by the following
correspondence:
_To the President and Officers of the Carpenter Company of
Philadelphia:_
The National Woman Suffrage Association will hold its
headquarters in Philadelphia the centennial season of 1876, and
desires to secure your historic hall for that purpose. We know
your habit and custom of denying its use to all societies, yet we
make our request because our objects are in accord with the
principles which emanated from within its walls a hundred years
ago, and we shall use it in carrying out those principles of
liberty and equality upon which our government is based.
We design to advertise our headquarters to the world, and old
Carpenter Hall, if used by us, would become more widely
celebrated as the birth-place of liberty. Our work in it would
cause it to be more than ever held in reverence by future ages,
and pilgrimages by men and women would be made to it as to
another Mecca shrine.
We propose to place a person in charge, with pamphlets, speeches,
tracts, etc., and to hold public meetings for the enunciation of
our principles and the furtherance of our demands. Hoping you
will grant this request,
I am respectfully yours, MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE,
_President of the National Woman Suffrage Association._
Two months afterward, the following reply was received:
HALL, CARPENTER COURT, 322 Chestnut St.,}
PHILADELPHIA, April 24, 1876.}
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _President of the Woman Suffrage
Association_:
Your communication asking permission to occupy Carpenter Hall for
your convention was duly received, and presented to the company
at a stated meeting held the 16th instant, when on motion it was
unanimously resolved to postpone the subject indefinitely.
[Extract of minutes]. GEORGE WATSON, _Secretary_.
It was a matter of no moment to those men that women were soon to
assemble in Philadelphia, whose love of liberty was as deep, whose
patriotism was as pure as that of the fathers who met within its
walls in 1774, and whose deliberations had given that hall its
historic interest.
In the midst of these preparations the usual May anniversary was
held:
CALL FOR THE MAY ANNIVERSARY, 1876.--The National Woman Suffrage
Association will hold its Ninth Annual Convention in Masonic
Hall, New York, corner of Sixth avenue and Twenty-third street,
May 10, 11, 1876.
This convention occuring in the centennial year of the republic,
will be a most important one. The underlying principles of
government will this year be discussed as never before; both
foreigners and citizens will query as to how closely this country
has lived up to its own principles. The long-debated question as
to the source of the governing power was answered a century ago
by the famous Declaration of Independence which shook to the
foundation all recognized power and proclaimed the right of the
individual as above all forms of government; but while thus
declaring itself, it has held the women of the nation accountable
to laws they have had no share in making, and taught as their one
duty, that doctrine of tyrants, unquestioning obedience. Liberty
to-day is, therefore, but the heritage of one-half the people,
and the centennial will be but the celebration of the
independence of one-half the nation. The men alone of this
country live in a republic, the women enter the second hundred
years of national life as political slaves.
That no structure is stronger than its weakest point is a law of
mechanics that will apply equally to government. In so far as
this government has denied justice to woman, it is weak, and
preparing for its own downfall. All the insurrections,
rebellions, and martyrdoms of history have grown out of the
desire for liberty, and in woman's heart this desire is as strong
as in man's. At every vital time in the nation's life, men and
women have worked together; everywhere has woman stood by the
side of father, brother, husband, son in defense of liberty;
without her aid the republic could never have been established;
and yet women are still suffering under all the oppressions
complained of in 1776; which can only be remedied by securing
impartial suffrage to all citizens without distinction of sex.
All persons who believe republican principles should be carried
out in spirit and in truth, are invited to be present at the May
convention.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _President_.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Chairman Executive Committee_.
This May anniversary, commencing on the same day with the opening
of the centennial exhibition, was marked with more than usual
earnestness. As popular thought naturally turned with increasing
interest at such an hour to the underlying principles of
government, woman's demand for political equality received a new
impulse. The famous Smith sisters, of Glastonbury, Connecticut,
attended this convention, and were most cordially welcomed. The
officers[5] for the centennial year were chosen and a campaign[6]
and congressional[7] committee appointed to take charge of affairs
at Philadelphia and Washington. The resolutions show the general
drift of the discussions:[8]
WHEREAS, The right of self-government inheres in the individual
before governments are founded, constitutions framed, or courts
created; and
WHEREAS, Governments exist to protect the people in the enjoyment
of their natural rights, and when any government becomes
destructive of this end, it is the right of the people to resist
and abolish it; and
WHEREAS, The women of the United States, for one hundred years,
have been denied the exercise of their natural right of
self-government and self-protection; therefore,
_Resolved_, That it is the natural right and most sacred duty of
the women of these United States to rebel against the injustice,
usurpation and tyranny of our present government.
WHEREAS, The men of 1776 rebelled against a government which did
not claim to be of the people, but, on the contrary, upheld the
"divine right of kings"; and
WHEREAS, The women of this nation to-day, under a government
which claims to be based upon individual rights, to be "of the
people, by the people, and for the people," in an infinitely
greater degree are suffering all the wrongs which led to the war
of the revolution; and WHEREAS, The oppression is all the more
keenly felt because our masters, instead of dwelling in a foreign
land, are our husbands, our fathers, our brothers and our sons;
therefore,
_Resolved_, That the women of this nation, in 1876, have greater
cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution, than the men of
1776.
_Resolved_, That with Abigail Adams, in 1776, we believe that
"the passion for liberty cannot be strong in the breasts of those
who are accustomed to deprive their fellow-creatures of liberty";
that, as Abigail Adams predicted, "We are determined to foment a
rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by laws in which we
have no voice or representation."
WHEREAS, We believe in the principles of the Declaration of
Independence and of the Constitution of the United States, and
believe a true republic is the best form of government in the
world; and
WHEREAS, This government is false to its underlying principles in
denying to women the only means of self-government, the ballot;
and
WHEREAS, One-half of the citizens of this nation, after a century
of boasted liberty, are still political slaves; therefore,
_Resolved_, That we protest against calling the present
centennial celebration a celebration of the independence of the
people of the United States.
_Resolved_, That we meet in our respective towns and districts on
the Fourth of July, 1876, and declare ourselves no longer bound
to obey laws in whose making we have had no voice, and, in
presence of the assembled nations of the world gathered on this
soil to celebrate our nation's centennial, demand justice for the
women of this land.
WHEREAS, The men of this nation have established for men of all
nations, races and color, on this soil, at the cost of countless
lives, the proposition (in the language of Frederick Douglass)
"that a man's head is his head, his body is his body, his feet
are his feet"; therefore,
_Resolved_, That justice, equity and chivalry demand that man at
once establish for his wife and mother the corresponding
proposition, that a woman's head is her head, her body is her
body, her feet are her feet, and that all ownership and mastery
over her person, property, conscience, and liberty of speech and
action, are in violation of the supreme law of the land.
_Resolved_, That we rejoice in the resistance of Julia and Abby
Smith, Abby Kelly Foster, Sarah E. Wall and many more resolute
women in various parts of the country, to taxation without
representation.
_Resolved_, That the thanks of the National Woman Suffrage
Association are hereby tendered to Hon. A. A. Sargent, of
California, for his earnest words in behalf of woman suffrage on
the floor of the United States Senate, Jan. 25, 1876; and to Hon.
N. P. Banks, of Massachusetts, for his appeal in behalf of the
centennial woman suffrage memorial in the United States House of
Representatives, March 31, 1876.
_Resolved_, That the repeated attempts to license the social evil
are a practical confession of the weakness, profligacy and
general unfitness of men to legislate for women, and should be
regarded with alarm as a proof that their firesides and liberties
are in constant peril while men alone make and execute the laws
of this country.
WHEREAS, There are 7,000 more women than men in the District of
Columbia, and no form of government for said District has allowed
women any voice in making the laws under which they live;
therefore,
_Resolved_, That in this centennial year the congress of the
United States having exclusive jurisdiction over that territory
should establish a truly republican form of government by
granting equal suffrage to the men and women of the District of
Columbia.
Immediately at the close of the May convention Mrs. Gage again went
to Philadelphia to complete the arrangements in regard to the
centennial headquarters. Large and convenient rooms were soon
found upon Arch street, terms agreed upon and a lease drawn, when
it transpired that a husband's consent and signature must be
obtained, although the property was owned by a woman, as by the
laws of Pennsylvania a married woman's property is under her
husband's control. Although arrangements for this room had been
made with the real owner, the terms being perfectly satisfactory to
her, the husband refused his ratification, tearing up the lease,
with abuse of the women who claimed control of their own property,
and a general defiance of all women who dared work for the
enfranchisement of their sex. Thus again were women refused rooms
in Philadelphia in which to enter their protest against the tyranny
of this republic, and for the same reason--they were slaves. Had
the patriots of the revolutionary period asked rooms of King
George, in which to foster their treason to his government, the
refusal could have been no more positive than in these cases.
The quarters finally obtained were very desirable; fine large
parlors on the first floor, on Chestnut street, at the fashionable
west end, directly opposite the Young Men's Christian Association.
The other members of the committee being married ladies, Miss
Anthony, as a _feme sole_, was alone held capable of making a
contract, and was therefore obliged to assume the pecuniary
responsibility of the rooms. Thus it is ever the married women who
are more especially classed with lunatics, idiots and criminals,
and held incapable of managing their own business. It has always
been part of the code of slavery, that the slave had no right to
property; all his earnings and gifts belonging by law, to the
master. Married women come under this same civil code. The
following letter was extensively circulated and published in all
the leading journals:
NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE PARLORS, }
1,431 Chestnut Street, PHILADELPHIA, PA. }
The National Woman Suffrage Association has established its
centennial headquarters in Philadelphia, at 1,431 Chestnut
street. The parlors, in charge of the officers of the
association, are devoted to the special work of the year,
pertaining to the centennial celebration and the political party
conventions; also to calls, receptions, conversazioni, etc. On
the table a centennial autograph book receives the names of
visitors. Friends at a distance, both men and women, who cannot
call, are invited to send their names, with date and residence,
accompanied by a short expressive sentiment and a contribution
toward expenses. In the rooms are books, papers, reports and
decisions, speeches, tracts, and photographs of distinguished
women; also mottoes and pictures expressive of woman's
condition. In addition to the parlor gatherings, meetings and
conventions will be held during the season in various halls and
churches throughout the city.
On July Fourth, while the men of this nation and the world are
rejoicing that "All men are free and equal" in the United States,
a declaration of rights for women will be issued from these
headquarters, and a protest against calling this centennial a
celebration of the independence of the people, while one-half are
still political slaves.
Let the women of the whole land, on that day, in meetings, in
parlors, in kitchens, wherever they may be, unite with us in this
declaration and protest. And, immediately thereafter, send full
reports, in manuscript or print, of their resolutions, speeches
and action, for record in our centennial book, that the world may
see that the women of 1876 know and feel their political
degradation no less than did the men of 1776.
The first woman's rights convention the world ever knew, called
by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, met at Seneca Falls,
N. Y., July 19, 20, 1848. In commemoration of the twenty-eighth
anniversary of that event, the National Woman Suffrage
Association will hold in ---- hall, Philadelphia, July 19, 20, of
the present year, a grand mass convention, in which eminent
reformers from the new and old world will take part. Friends are
especially invited to be present on this historic occasion.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Chairman Executive Committee_.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Corresponding Secretary_.
From these headquarters numberless documents were issued during the
month of June. As the presidential nominating conventions were soon
to meet, letters were addressed to both the Republican and
Democratic parties, urging them to recognize the political rights
of women in their platforms. Thousands of copies of these letters
were scattered throughout the nation:
_To the President and Members of the National Republican
Convention, Cincinnati, O., June 14, 1876._
GENTLEMEN: The National Woman Suffrage Association asks you to
place in your platform the following plank:
_Resolved_, That the right to the use of the ballot inheres
in every citizen of the United States; and we pledge
ourselves to secure the exercise of this right to all
citizens, irrespective of sex.
In asking the insertion of this plank, we propose no change of
fundamental principles. Our question is as old as the nation. Our
government was framed on the political basis of the consent of
the governed. And from July 4, 1776, until the present year,
1876, the nation has constantly advanced toward a fuller practice
of our fundamental theory, that the governed are the source of
all power. Your nominating convention, occurring in this
centennial year of the republic, presents a good opportunity for
the complete recognition of these first principles. Our
government has not yet answered the end for which it was framed,
while one-half the people of the United States are deprived of
the right of self-government. Before the Revolution, Great
Britain claimed the right to legislate for the colonies in all
cases whatsoever; the men of this nation now as unjustly claim
the right to legislate for women in all cases whatsoever.
The call for your nominating convention invites the coöperation
of "all voters who desire to inaugurate and enforce the rights of
every citizen, including the full and free exercise of the right
of suffrage." Women are citizens; declared to be by the highest
legislative and judicial authorities; but they are citizens
deprived of "the full and free exercise of the right of
suffrage." Your platform of 1872 declared "the Republican party
mindful of its obligations to the loyal women of the nation for
their noble devotion to the cause of freedom." Devotion to
freedom is no new thing for the women of this nation. From the
earliest history of our country, woman has shown herself as
patriotic as man in every great emergency in the nation's life.
From the Revolution to the present hour, woman has stood by the
side of father, husband, son and brother in defense of liberty.
The heroic and self-sacrificing deeds of the women of this
republic, both in peace and war, must not be forgotten. Together
men and women have made this country what it is. And to-day, in
this one-hundredth year of our existence, the women--as members
of the nation--as citizens of the United States--ask national
recognition of their right of suffrage.
The Declaration of Independence struck a blow at every existent
form of government, by declaring the individual the source of all
power. Upon this one newly proclaimed truth our nation arose. But
if States may deny suffrage to any class of citizens, or confer
it at will upon any class--as according to the Minor-Happersett
decision of the Supreme Court--a decision rendered under the
auspices of the Republican party against suffrage as a
constituent element of United States citizenship--we then possess
no true national life. If States can deny suffrage to citizens of
the United States, then States possess more power than the United
States, and are more truly national in the character of their
governments. National supremacy does not chiefly mean power "to
levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish
commerce"; it means national protection and security in the
exercise of the right of self-government, which comes alone, by
and through the use of the ballot.
Even granting the premise of the Supreme-Court decision that "the
Constitution of the United States does not confer suffrage on any
one"; our national life does not date from that instrument. The
constitution is not the original declaration of rights. It was
not framed until eleven years after our existence as a nation,
nor fully ratified until nearly fourteen years after the
commencement of our national life. This centennial celebration of
our nation's birth does not date from the constitution, but from
the Declaration of Independence. The declared purpose of the
civil war was the settlement of the question of supremacy between
the States and the United States. The documents sent out by the
Republican party in this present campaign, warn the people that
the Democrats intend another battle for State sovereignty, to be
fought this year at the ballot-box.
The National Woman Suffrage Association calls your attention to
the fact that the Republican party has itself reopened this
battle, and now holds the anomalous position of having settled
the question of State sovereignty in the case of black men, and
again opened it, through the Minor-Happersett decision, not only
in the case of women citizens, but also in the case of men
citizens, for all other causes save those specified in the
fifteenth amendment. Your party has yet one opportunity to
retrieve its position. The political power of this country has
always shown itself superior to the judicial power--the latter
ever shaping and basing its decisions on the policy of the
dominant party. A pledge, therefore, by your convention to secure
national protection in the enjoyment of perfect equality of
rights, civil and political, to all citizens, will so define the
policy of the Republican party as to open the way to a full and
final adjustment of this question on the basis of United States
supremacy.
Aside from the higher motive of justice, we suggest your adoption
of this principle of equal rights to women, as a means of
securing your own future existence. The party of reform in this
country is the party that lives. The party that ceases to
represent the vital principles of truth and justice dies. If you
would save the life of the Republican party you should now take
broad national ground on this question of suffrage.
By this act you will do most to promote the general welfare,
secure the blessings of liberty to yourselves and your posterity,
and establish on this continent a genuine republic that shall
know no class, caste, race, or sex--where all the people are
citizens, and all citizens are equal before the law.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Chairman Executive Committee_.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Corresponding Secretary_.
_Centennial Headquarters_,
1,431 Chestnut street, _Philadelphia_, June 10, 1876.
_To the President and Members of the National Democratic
Convention assembled at St. Louis, June 27, 1876_:
GENTLEMEN: In reading the call for your convention, the National
Woman Suffrage Association was gratified to find that your
invitation was not limited to voters, but cordially extended to
all citizens of the United States. We accordingly send delegates
from our association, asking for them a voice in your
proceedings, and also a plank in your platform declaring the
political rights of women.
Women are the only class of citizens still wholly unrepresented
in the government, and yet we possess every qualification
requisite for voters in the several States. Women possess
property and education; we take out naturalization papers and
passports; we preëmpt lands, pay taxes, and suffer for our own
violation of the laws. We are neither idiots, lunatics, nor
criminals; and, according to your State constitutions, lack but
one qualification for voters, namely, sex, which is an
insurmountable qualification, and therefore equivalent to a bill
of attainder against one-half the people; a power no State nor
congress can legally exercise, being forbidden in article 1,
sections 9, 10, of our constitution. Our rulers may have the
right to regulate the suffrage, but they can not abolish it
altogether for any class of citizens, as has been done in the
case of the women of this republic, without a direct violation of
the fundamental law of the land.
As you hold the constitution of the fathers to be a sacred legacy
to us and our children forever, we ask you to so interpret that
_Magna Charta_ of human rights as to secure justice and equality
to all United States citizens irrespective of sex. We desire to
call your attention to the violation of the essential principle
of self-government in the disfranchisement of the women of the
several States, and we appeal to you, not only because as a
minority you are in a position to consider principles, but
because you were the party first to extend suffrage by removing
the property qualification from all white men, and thus making
the political status of the richest and poorest citizen the same.
That act of justice to the laboring masses insured your power,
with but few interruptions, until the war.
When the District of Columbia suffrage bill was under discussion
in 1866, it was a Democratic senator (Mr. Cowan, of Pennsylvania)
who proposed an amendment to strike out the word "male," and thus
extend the right of suffrage to the women, as well as the black
men of the District. That amendment gave us a splendid discussion
on woman suffrage that lasted three days in the Senate of the
United States. It was a Democratic legislature that secured the
right of suffrage to the women of Wyoming, and we now ask you in
national convention to pledge the Democratic party to extend this
act of justice to the women throughout the nation, and thus call
to your side a new political force that will restore and
perpetuate your power for years to come.
The Republican party gave us a plank in their platform in 1872,
pledging themselves to a "respectful consideration" of our
demands. But by their constitutional interpretations, legislative
enactments, and judicial decisions, so far from redeeming their
pledge, they have buried our petitions and appeals under laws in
direct opposition to their high-sounding promises and
professions. And now (1876) they give us another plank in their
platform, approving the "substantial advance made toward the
establishment of equal rights for women"; cunningly reminding us
that the privileges and immunities we now enjoy are all due to
Republican legislation--although, under a Republican dynasty,
inspectors of election have been arrested and imprisoned for
taking the votes of women; temperance women arrested and
imprisoned for praying in the streets; houses, lands, bonds, and
stock of women seized and sold for their refusal to pay unjust
taxation--and, more than all, we have this singular spectacle: a
Republican woman, who had spoken for the Republican party
throughout the last presidential campaign, arrested by Republican
officers for voting the Republican ticket, denied the right of
trial by jury by a Republican judge, convicted and sentenced to a
fine of one hundred dollars and costs of prosecution; and all
this for asserting at the polls the most sacred of all the rights
of American citizenship--the right of suffrage--specifically
secured by recent Republican amendments to the federal
constitution.
Again, the Supreme Court of the United States, by its recent
decision in the Minor-Happersett case, has stultified its own
interpretation of constitutional law. A negro, by virtue of his
United States citizenship, is declared under recent amendments a
voter in every State in the Union; but when a woman, by virtue of
her United States citizenship, applies to the Supreme Court for
protection in the exercise of this same right, she is remanded to
the State by the unanimous decision of the nine judges on the
bench, that "the Constitution of the United States does not
confer the right of suffrage upon any one."
All concessions of privileges or redress of grievances are but
mockery for any class that has no voice in the laws and
lawmakers. Hence we demand the ballot--that scepter of power--in
our own hands, as the only sure protection for our rights of
person and property under all conditions. If the few may grant or
withhold rights at their own pleasure, the many cannot be said to
enjoy the blessings of self-government. Jefferson said, "The God
who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time. The hand of
force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them." While the first and
highest motive we would urge on you is the recognition in all
your action of the great principles of justice and equality that
underlie our form of government, it is not unworthy to remind you
that the party that takes this onward step will reap its just
reward.
Had you heeded our appeals made to you in Tammany Hall, New York,
in 1868, and again in Baltimore, in 1872, your party might now
have been in power, as you would have had, what neither party can
boast to-day, a live issue on which to rouse the enthusiasm of
the people. Reform is the watchword of the hour; but how can we
hope for honor and honesty in either party in minor matters, so
long as both consent to rob one-half the people--their own
mothers, sisters, wives and daughters--of their most sacred
rights? As a party you defended the right of self-government in
Louisiana ably and eloquently during the last session of
congress. Are the rights of women in all the Southern States,
whose slaves are now their rulers, less sacred than those of the
men of Louisiana? "The whole art of government," says Jefferson,
"consists in being honest."
It needs but little observation to see that the tide of progress,
in all countries, is setting toward the emancipation and
enfranchisement of women; and this step in civilization is to be
taken in our day and generation. Whether the Democratic party
will take the initiative in this reform, and reap the glory of
crowning fifteen million women with the rights of American
citizenship, and thereby vindicate our theory of self-government,
is the momentous question we ask you to decide in this eventful
hour, as we round out the first century of our national life.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, _President_.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Chairman Executive Committee_.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Corresponding Secretary_.
_Centennial Headquarters_,
1,431 Chestnut street, _Philadelphia_, June 20, 1876.
In addition to these letters delegates were sent to both the
Republican and Democratic conventions. Sara Andrews Spencer and
Elizabeth Boynton Harbert were present at the Republican convention
at Cincinnati; both addressed the committee on platform and
resolutions, and Mrs. Spencer, on motion of Hon. George F. Hoar,
was permitted to address the convention. Mrs. Virginia L. Minor and
Miss Phoebe W. Couzins were the delegates to the Democratic
convention at St. Louis, and the latter addressed that vast
assembly.[9]
For a long time there had been a growing demand for a woman's
declaration to be issued on July Fourth, 1876. "Let us then protest
against the falsehood of the nation"; "If the old Declaration does
not include women, let us have one that will"; "Let our rulers be
arraigned"; "A declaration of independence for women must be issued
on the Fourth of July, 1876," were demands that came from all parts
of the country. The officers of the association had long had such
action in view, having, at the Washington convention, early in
1875, announced their intention of working in Philadelphia during
the centennial season, and were strengthened in their determination
by the hearty indorsement they received. At the May convention in
New York, Matilda Joslyn Gage, in her opening speech, announced
that a declaration of independence for women would be issued on the
Fourth of July, 1876. In response to this general feeling, the
officers of the National Association prepared a declaration of
rights of the women of the United States, and articles of
impeachment against the government.
Application was made by the secretary, Miss Anthony, to General
Hawley, president of the centennial commission, for seats for fifty
officers of the association. General Hawley replied that "only
officials were invited"--that even his own wife had no place--that
merely representatives and officers of the government had seats
assigned them. "Then" said she, "as women have no share in the
government, they are to have no seats on the platform," to which
General Hawley assented; adding, however, that Mrs. Gillespie, of
the woman's centennial commission, had fifty seats placed at her
disposal, thus showing it to be in his power to grant places to
women whenever he so chose to do. Miss Anthony said: "I ask seats
for the officers of the National Woman Suffrage Association; we
represent one-half the people, and why should we be denied all part
in this centennial celebration?" Miss Anthony, however, secured a
reporter's ticket by virtue of representing her brother's paper,
_The Leavenworth Times_, and, ultimately, cards of invitation were
sent to four others,[10] representing the 20,000,000 disfranchised
citizens of the nation.
Mrs. Stanton, as president of the association, wrote General
Hawley, asking the opportunity to present the woman's protest and
bill of rights at the close of the reading of the Declaration of
Independence. Just its simple presentation and nothing more. She
wrote:
We do not ask to read our declaration, only to present it to the
president of the United States, that it may become an historical
part of the proceedings.
Mrs. Spencer, bearer of this letter, in presenting it to General
Hawley, said:
The women of the United States make a slight request on the
occasion of the centennial celebration of the birth of the
nation; we only ask that we may silently present our declaration
of rights.
General HAWLEY replied: It seems a very slight request, but our
programme is published, our speakers engaged, our arrangements
for the day decided upon, and we can not make even so slight a
change as that you ask.
Mrs. SPENCER replied: We are aware that your programme is
published, your speakers engaged, your entire arrangements
decided upon, without consulting with the women of the United
States; for that very reason we desire to enter our protest. We
are aware that this government has been conducted for one hundred
years without consulting the women of the United States; for this
reason we desire to enter our protest.
General HAWLEY replied: Undoubtedly we have not lived up to our
own original Declaration of Independence in many respects. I
express no opinion upon your question. It is a proper subject of
discussion at the Cincinnati convention, at the St. Louis
convention,, in the Senate of the United States, in the State
legislatures, in the courts, wherever you can obtain a hearing.
But to-morrow we propose to celebrate what we have done the last
hundred years; not what we have failed to do. We have much to do
in the future. I understand the full significance of your very
slight request. If granted, it would be the event of the day--the
topic of discussion to the exclusion of all others. I am sorry to
refuse so slight a demand; we cannot grant it.
General Hawley also addressed a letter to Mrs. Stanton:
DEAR MADAM: I regret to say it is impossible for us to make any
change in our programme, or make any addition to it at this late
hour.
Yours very respectfully,
JOS. R. HAWLEY, _President U. S. C. C._
As General Grant was not to attend the celebration, the acting
vice-president, Thomas W. Ferry, representing the government, was
to officiate in his place, and he, too, was addressed by note, and
courteously requested to make time for the reception of this
declaration. As Mr. Ferry was a well-known sympathizer with the
demands of woman for political rights, it was presumable that he
would render his aid. Yet he was forgetful that in his position
that day he represented, not the exposition, but the government of
a hundred years, and he too refused; thus this simple request of
woman for a half moment's recognition on the nation's centennial
birthday was denied by all in authority.[11] While the women of
the nation were thus absolutely forbidden the right of public
protest, lavish preparations were made for the reception and
entertainment of foreign potentates and the myrmidons of monarchial
institutions. Dom Pedro, emperor of Brazil, a representative of
that form of government against which the United States is a
perpetual defiance and protest, was welcomed with fulsome
adulation, and given a seat of honor near the officers of the day;
Prince Oscar of Sweden, a stripling of sixteen, on whose shoulder
rests the promise of a future kingship, was seated near. Count
Rochambeau of France, the Japanese commissioners, high officials
from Russia and Prussia, from Austria, Spain, England, Turkey,
representing the barbarism and semi-civilization of the day, found
no difficulty in securing recognition and places of honor upon that
platform, where representative womanhood was denied.
Though refused by their own countrymen a place and part in the
centennial celebration, the women who had taken this presentation
in hand were not to be conquered. They had respectfully asked for
recognition; now that it had been denied, they determined to seize
upon the moment when the reading of the Declaration of Independence
closed, to proclaim to the world the tyranny and injustice of the
nation toward one-half its people. Five officers of the National
Woman Suffrage Association, with that heroic spirit which has ever
animated lovers of liberty in resistance to tyranny, determined,
whatever the result, to present the woman's declaration of rights
at the chosen hour. They would not, they dared not sacrifice the
golden opportunity to which they had so long looked forward; their
work was not for themselves alone, nor for the present generation,
but for all women of all time. The hopes of posterity were in their
hands and they determined to place on record for the daughters of
1976, the fact that their mothers of 1876 had asserted their
equality of rights, and impeached the government of that day for
its injustice toward woman. Thus, in taking a grander step toward
freedom than ever before, they would leave one bright remembrance
for the women of the next centennial.
That historic Fourth of July dawned at last, one of the most
oppressive days of that terribly heated season. Susan B. Anthony,
Matilda Joslyn Gage, Sara Andrews Spencer, Lillie Devereux Blake
and Phoebe W. Couzins made their way through the crowds under the
broiling sun to Independence Square, carrying the Woman's
Declaration of Rights. This declaration had been handsomely
engrossed by one of their number, and signed by the oldest and most
prominent advocates of woman's enfranchisement. Their tickets of
admission proved open sesame through the military and all other
barriers, and a few moments before the opening of the ceremonies,
these women found themselves within the precincts from which most
of their sex were excluded.
The declaration of 1776 was read by Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia,
about whose family clusters so much of historic fame. The close of
his reading was deemed the appropriate moment for the presentation
of the woman's declaration. Not quite sure how their approach might
be met--not quite certain if at this final moment they would be
permitted to reach the presiding officer--those ladies arose and
made their way down the aisle. The bustle of preparation for the
Brazilian hymn covered their advance. The foreign guests, the
military and civil officers who filled the space directly in front
of the speaker's stand, courteously made way, while Miss Anthony in
fitting words presented the declaration. Mr. Ferry's face paled, as
bowing low, with no word, he received the declaration, which thus
became part of the day's proceedings; the ladies turned, scattering
printed copies, as they deliberately walked down the platform. On
every side eager hands were stretched; men stood on seats and asked
for them, while General Hawley, thus defied and beaten in his
audacious denial to women the right to present their declaration,
shouted, "Order, order!"
Passing out, these ladies made their way to a platform erected for
the musicians in front of Independence Hall. Here on this old
historic ground, under the shadow of Washington's statue, back of
them the old bell that proclaimed "liberty to all the land, and all
the inhabitants thereof," they took their places, and to a
listening, applauding crowd, Miss Anthony read[12] the Declaration
of Rights for Women by the National Woman Suffrage Association,
July 4, 1876:
While the nation is buoyant with patriotism, and all hearts are
attuned to praise, it is with sorrow we come to strike the one
discordant note, on this one-hundredth anniversary of our
country's birth. When subjects of kings, emperors, and czars,
from the old world join in our national jubilee, shall the women
of the republic refuse to lay their hands with benedictions on
the nation's head? Surveying America's exposition, surpassing in
magnificence those of London, Paris, and Vienna, shall we not
rejoice at the success of the youngest rival among the nations of
the earth? May not our hearts, in unison with all, swell with
pride at our great achievements as a people; our free speech,
free press, free schools, free church, and the rapid progress we
have made in material wealth, trade, commerce and the inventive
arts? And we do rejoice in the success, thus far, of our
experiment of self-government. Our faith is firm and unwavering
in the broad principles of human rights proclaimed in 1776, not
only as abstract truths, but as the corner stones of a republic.
Yet we cannot forget, even in this glad hour, that while all men
of every race, and clime, and condition, have been invested with
the full rights of citizenship under our hospitable flag, all
women still suffer the degradation of disfranchisement.
The history of our country the past hundred years has been a
series of assumptions and usurpations of power over woman, in
direct opposition to the principles of just government,
acknowledged by the United States as its foundation, which are:
_First_--The natural rights of each individual.
_Second_--The equality of these rights.
_Third_--That rights not delegated are retained by the
individual.
_Fourth_--That no person can exercise the rights of others
without delegated authority.
_Fifth_--That the non-use of rights does not destroy them.
And for the violation of these fundamental principles of our
government, we arraign our rulers on this Fourth day of July,
1876,--and these are our articles of impeachment:
_Bills of attainder_ have been passed by the introduction of
the word "male" into all the State constitutions, denying to
women the right of suffrage, and thereby making sex a
crime--an exercise of power clearly forbidden in article I,
sections 9, 10, of the United States constitution.
_The writ of habeas corpus_, the only protection against
_lettres de cachet_ and all forms of unjust imprisonment,
which the constitution declares "shall not be suspended,
except when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public
safety demands it," is held inoperative in every State of
the Union, in case of a married woman against her
husband--the marital rights of the husband being in all
cases primary, and the rights of the wife secondary.
_The right of trial by a jury of one's peers_ was so
jealously guarded that States refused to ratify the original
constitution until it was guaranteed by the sixth amendment.
And yet the women of this nation have never been allowed a
jury of their peers--being tried in all cases by men, native
and foreign, educated and ignorant, virtuous and vicious.
Young girls have been arraigned in our courts for the crime
of infanticide; tried, convicted, hanged--victims,
perchance, of judge, jurors, advocates--while no woman's
voice could be heard in their defense. And not only are
women denied a jury of their peers, but in some cases, jury
trial altogether. During the war, a woman was tried and
hanged by military law, in defiance of the fifth amendment,
which specifically declares: "No person shall be held to
answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime, unless on
a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases
... of persons in actual service in time of war." During the
last presidential campaign, a woman, arrested for voting,
was denied the protection of a jury, tried, convicted, and
sentenced to a fine and costs of prosecution, by the
absolute power of a judge of the Supreme Court of the United
States.
_Taxation without representation_, the immediate cause of
the rebellion of the colonies against Great Britain, is one
of the grievous wrongs the women of this country have
suffered during the century. Deploring war, with all the
demoralization that follows in its train, we have been taxed
to support standing armies, with their waste of life and
wealth. Believing in temperance, we have been taxed to
support the vice, crime and pauperism of the liquor traffic.
While we suffer its wrongs and abuses infinitely more than
man, we have no power to protect our sons against this giant
evil. During the temperance crusade, mothers were arrested,
fined, imprisoned, for even praying and singing in the
streets, while men blockade the sidewalks with impunity,
even on Sunday, with their military parades and political
processions. Believing in honesty, we are taxed to support a
dangerous army of civilians, buying and selling the offices
of government and sacrificing the best interests of the
people. And, moreover, we are taxed to support the very
legislators and judges who make laws, and render decisions
adverse to woman. And for refusing to pay such unjust
taxation, the houses, lands, bonds, and stock of women have
been seized and sold within the present year, thus proving
Lord Coke's assertion, that "The very act of taxing a man's
property without his consent is, in effect, disfranchising
him of every civil right."
_Unequal codes for men and women._ Held by law a perpetual
minor, deemed incapable of self-protection, even in the
industries of the world, woman is denied equality of rights.
The fact of sex, not the quantity or quality of work, in
most cases, decides the pay and position; and because of
this injustice thousands of fatherless girls are compelled
to choose between a life of shame and starvation. Laws
catering to man's vices have created two codes of morals in
which penalties are graded according to the political status
of the offender. Under such laws, women are fined and
imprisoned if found alone in the streets, or in public
places of resort, at certain hours. Under the pretense of
regulating public morals, police officers seizing the
occupants of disreputable houses, march the women in
platoons to prison, while the men, partners in their guilt,
go free. While making a show of virtue in forbidding the
importation of Chinese women on the Pacific coast for
immoral purposes, our rulers, in many States, and even under
the shadow of the national capitol, are now proposing to
legalize the sale of American womanhood for the same vile
purposes.
_Special legislation for woman_ has placed us in a most
anomalous position. Women invested with the rights of
citizens in one section--voters, jurors,
office-holders--crossing an imaginary line, are subjects in
the next. In some States, a married woman may hold property
and transact business in her own name; in others, her
earnings belong to her husband. In some States, a woman may
testify against her husband, sue and be sued in the courts;
in others, she has no redress in case of damage to person,
property, or character. In case of divorce on account of
adultery in the husband, the innocent wife is held to
possess no right to children or property, unless by special
decree of the court. But in no State of the Union has the
wife the right to her own person, or to any part of the
joint earnings of the co-partnership during the life of her
husband. In some States women may enter the law schools and
practice in the courts; in others they are forbidden. In
some universities girls enjoy equal educational advantages
with boys, while many of the proudest institutions in the
land deny them admittance, though the sons of China, Japan
and Africa are welcomed there. But the privileges already
granted in the several States are by no means secure. The
right of suffrage once exercised by women in certain States
and territories has been denied by subsequent legislation. A
bill is now pending in congress to disfranchise the women of
Utah, thus interfering to deprive United States citizens of
the same rights which the Supreme Court has declared the
national government powerless to protect anywhere. Laws
passed after years of untiring effort, guaranteeing married
women certain rights of property, and mothers the custody of
their children, have been repealed in States where we
supposed all was safe. Thus have our most sacred rights been
made the football of legislative caprice, proving that a
power which grants as a privilege what by nature is a right,
may withhold the same as a penalty when deeming it necessary
for its own perpetuation.
_Representation of woman_ has had no place in the nation's
thought. Since the incorporation of the thirteen original
States, twenty-four have been admitted to the Union, not one
of which has recognized woman's right of self-government. On
this birthday of our national liberties, July Fourth, 1876,
Colorado, like all her elder sisters, comes into the Union
with the invidious word "male" in her constitution.
_Universal manhood suffrage_, by establishing an aristocracy
of sex, imposes upon the women of this nation a more
absolute and cruel depotism than monarchy; in that, woman
finds a political master in her father, husband, brother,
son. The aristocracies of the old world are based upon
birth, wealth, refinement, education, nobility, brave deeds
of chivalry; in this nation, on sex alone; exalting brute
force above moral power, vice above virtue, ignorance above
education, and the son above the mother who bore him.
_The judiciary above the nation_ has proved itself but the
echo of the party in power, by upholding and enforcing laws
that are opposed to the spirit and letter of the
constitution. When the slave power was dominant, the Supreme
Court decided that a black man was not a citizen, because he
had not the right to vote; and when the constitution was so
amended as to make all persons citizens, the same high
tribunal decided that a woman, though a citizen, had not the
right to vote. Such vacillating interpretations of
constitutional law unsettle our faith in judicial authority,
and undermine the liberties of the whole people.
These articles of impeachment against our rulers we now submit to
the impartial judgment of the people. To all these wrongs and
oppressions woman has not submitted in silence and resignation.
From the beginning of the century, when Abigail Adams, the wife
of one president and mother of another, said, "We will not hold
ourselves bound to obey laws in which we have no voice or
representation," until now, woman's discontent has been steadily
increasing, culminating nearly thirty years ago in a simultaneous
movement among the women of the nation, demanding the right of
suffrage. In making our just demands, a higher motive than the
pride of sex inspires us; we feel that national safety and
stability depend on the complete recognition of the broad
principles of our government. Woman's degraded, helpless position
is the weak point in our institutions to-day; a disturbing force
everywhere, severing family ties, filling our asylums with the
deaf, the dumb, the blind; our prisons with criminals, our cities
with drunkenness and prostitution; our homes with disease and
death. It was the boast of the founders of the republic, that the
rights for which they contended were the rights of human nature.
If these rights are ignored in the case of one-half the people,
the nation is surely preparing for its downfall. Governments try
themselves. The recognition of a governing and a governed class
is incompatible with the first principles of freedom. Woman has
not been a heedless spectator of the events of this century, nor
a dull listener to the grand arguments for the equal rights of
humanity. From the earliest history of our country woman has
shown equal devotion with man to the cause of freedom, and has
stood firmly by his side in its defense. Together, they have made
this country what it is. Woman's wealth, thought and labor have
cemented the stones of every monument man has reared to liberty.
And now, at the close of a hundred years, as the hour-hand of the
great clock that marks the centuries points to 1876, we declare
our faith in the principles of self-government; our full equality
with man in natural rights; that woman was made first for her own
happiness, with the absolute right to herself--to all the
opportunities and advantages life affords for her complete
development; and we deny that dogma of the centuries,
incorporated in the codes of all nations--that woman was made for
man--her best interests, in all cases, to be sacrificed to his
will. We ask of our rulers, at this hour, no special favors, no
special privileges, no special legislation. We ask justice, we
ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that
belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and
our daughters forever.[13]
The declaration was warmly applauded at many points, and after
scattering another large number of printed copies, the delegation
hastened to the convention of the National Association. A meeting
had been appointed for twelve, in the old historic First Unitarian
church, where Rev. Wm. H. Furness preached for fifty years, but
whose pulpit was then filled by Joseph May, a son of Rev. Samuel J.
May. To this place the ladies made their way to find the church
crowded with an expectant audience, which greeted them with thanks
for what they had just done; the first act of this historic day
taking place on the old centennial platform in Independence Square,
the last in a church so long devoted to equality and justice. The
venerable Lucretia Mott, then in her eighty-fourth year, presided.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton read the Declaration of Rights. Its
reception by the listening audience proclaimed its need and its
justice. The reading was followed by speeches upon the various
points of the declaration.
Belva A. Lockwood took up the judiciary, showing the way that body
lends itself to party politics. Matilda Joslyn Gage spoke upon the
writ of _habeas corpus_, showing what a mockery to married women
was that constitutional guarantee. Lucretia Mott reviewed the
progress of the reform from the first convention. Sara Andrews
Spencer illustrated the evils arising from two codes of morality.
Mrs. Devereux Blake spoke upon trial by jury; Susan B. Anthony upon
taxation without representation, illustrating her remarks by
incidents of unjust taxation of women during the present year.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton spoke upon the aristocracy of sex, and the
evils arising from manhood suffrage. Judge Esther Morris, of
Wyoming, said a few words in regard to suffrage in that territory.
Mrs. Margaret Parker, president of the woman suffrage club of
Dundee, Scotland, and of the newly-formed Christian Woman's
International Temperance Union, said she had seen nothing like this
in Great Britain--it was worth the journey across the Atlantic. Mr.
J. H. Raper, of Manchester, England, characterized it as the
historic meeting of the day, and said the patriot of a hundred
years hence would seek for every incident connected with it, and
the next centennial would be adorned by the portraits of the women
who sat upon that platform.
The Hutchinsons, themselves of historic fame, were present. They
were in their happiest vein, interspersing the speeches with
appropriate and felicitous songs. Lucretia Mott did not confine
herself to a single speech, but, in Quaker style, whenever the
spirit moved made many happy points. When she first arose to speak,
a call came from the audience for her to ascend the pulpit in order
that she might be seen. As she complied with this request,
ascending the long winding staircase into the old-fashioned octagon
pulpit, she said, "I am somewhat like Zaccheus of old who climbed
the sycamore tree his Lord to see; I climb this pulpit, not because
I am of lofty mind, but because I am short of stature that you may
see me." As her sweet and placid countenance appeared above the
pulpit, the Hutchinsons, by happy inspiration, burst into "Nearer,
my God, to Thee." The effect was marvelous; the audience at once
arose, and spontaneously joined in the hymn.
Phoebe W. Couzins, with great pathos, referred to woman's work in
the war, and the parade of the Grand Army of the Republic the
preceding evening; she said:
In such an hour as this, with my soul stirred to its deepest
depths, I feel unequal to the task of uttering words befitting
the occasion, and to follow the dear saint who has just spoken;
how can I? I am but a beginner, and to-day I feel that to sit at
the feet of these dear women who have borne the heat and burden
of this contest, and to learn of them is the attitude I should
assume. It is not the time for argument or rhetoric. It is the
time for introspection and prayer. We have come from Independence
Square, where the nation is celebrating its centennial birthday
of a masculine freedom. You have just heard from Mrs. Stanton the
reading of Woman's Declaration of Rights; that document has
already been presented in engrossed form, tied with the symbolic
red, white and blue, to the presiding officer of the day, Senator
Thomas W. Ferry, on their platform in yonder square; and the John
Hampden of our cause, the immortal Susan B. Anthony, rendered it
historic, by reading it from the steps of Independence Hall, to
an immense audience there gathered, that could not gain access to
the square or platform. [Great applause.] I cannot express to you
in fitting language the thoughts and feelings which stirred me as
I sat on the platform, awaiting the presentation of that
document.
We were about to commit an overt act. Gen. Hawley, president of
the centennial commission and manager of the programme, had
peremptorily forbidden its presentation. Yet in the face of
this--in the face of the assembled nation and representatives
from the crowned heads of Europe, a handful of women actuated by
the same high principles as our fathers, stirred by the same
desire for freedom, moved by the same impulse for liberty, were
to again proclaim the right of self-government; were again to
impeach the spirit of King George manifested in our rulers, and
declare that taxation without representation is tyranny, that the
divine right of one-half of the people to rule the other half is
also despotism. As I followed the reading of Richard Henry Lee,
and marked the wild enthusiasm of its reception, and remembered
that at its close, a document, as noble, as divine, as grand, as
historic as that, was to be presented _in silence_; an act, as
heroic, as worthy, as sublime, was to be performed in the face of
the contemptuous amazement of the assembled world, I trembled
with suppressed emotion. When Susan Anthony arose, with a look of
intense pain, yet heroic determination in her face, I silently
committed her to the Great Father who seëth not in part, to
strengthen and comfort her heroic heart, and then she was lost to
view in the sudden uprising caused by the burst of applause
instituted by General Hawley in behalf of the Brazilian emperor.
And thus at the close of the reading of a document which
repudiated kings and declared the right of every person to life,
to liberty and the pursuit of individual happiness, the American
people, applauding a crowned monarch, received _in silence_ the
immortal document and protest of its discrowned queens!
Shall I recount the emotion that swayed me, as I thought of all
that woman had done to build up this country; to sustain its
unity, to perpetuate its principles; of its self-denying and
heroic Pilgrim and revolutionary mothers; of the work of woman in
the anti-slavery cause; the agony and death of her travail in its
second birth for freedom; sustaining the nation by prayers, by
self-sacrificing contributions, by patriotic endeavors, by
encouraging words; and, reviewing the programme, and all the
attendant pageants, remembered that in these grand centennial
celebrations, when the nation rounded out its first century, _not
a tribute_, not a recognition in any shape, form or manner was
paid to woman; that upon the platform, as honored guests, sat
those who had been false in the hour of our country's peril; that
upon this historic soil, stood the now freeman, once a slave,
whose liberty and life were given him at the hands of woman; that
the inhabitants of the far off isles of the sea, India, Asia,
Africa, Europe, were gladly welcomed as free citizens, while
woman, a suppliant beggar, pleaded of one man, invested with
autocratic power, for the simple boon of presenting a protest in
silence, against her degradation, and was _denied_!
I stood yesterday on the corner of Broad and Chestnut streets,
watching the march of the Grand Army of the Republic. As the torn
and tattered battle flags came by, all the terrors of that war
tragedy suddenly rushed over me, and I sat down and wept. Looking
again, I saw the car of wounded, soldiers; as in thought I was
suddenly transported to the banks of the Mississippi I felt the
air full of the horrors of the battle of Shiloh, and saw two
young girls waiting the landing of a steamer that had been
dispatched to succor the wounded on that terrible field. They
were watching for "mother"--who for the first time had left her
home charge, and hushing her own heart's pleadings, heard only
her country's call, and gone down to that field of carnage to
tenderly care for the soldier. As they boarded the steamer; what
a sight met their eyes! Maimed, bleeding, dying soldiers by the
hundreds, were on cots on deck, on boxes filled with amputated
limbs, and the dead were awaiting the last sad rites. Like
ministering angels walked two women, their mother and the now
sainted Margaret Breckenridge of Kentucky, amid these rows of
sufferers, with strong nerve and steady arm, comforting the
soldier boy, so far from friends and home; binding up the ghastly
wound, bathing the feverish brow, smoothing the dying pillow, and
with tender mother's prayer and tear, closing the eyes of the
dead. The first revelation of war; how it burned our youthful
brain! How it moved us to divine compassion, how it stirred us to
even give up our mother to the work for years, as we heard the
piteous pleading, "Don't leave us, mother"--"Oh, mother, we can
never forget." But alas they _did_ forget! This scene repeated
again, and again, during that long conflict, with hundreds of
women offering a like service in camp and floating hospital,
leaving sweet homes, without money, price or thought of
emolument, going to these battle-fields and tenderly nursing the
army of the republic to life again; while back of them were tens
of thousands other women of the great sanitary army, who, in
self-sacrifice at home, were sending lint, bandages, clothing,
delicacies of food and raiment of all kinds, by car-load and
ship-load, to comfort and ameliorate the sufferings of the grand
army of the republic, and yet as I watched its march in this
centennial year, its gala day--_not a tribute_ marked its
gratitude to her who had proved its savior and friend, in the
hour of peril.
Again, came the colored man in rank and file--and in thought I
saw the fifteenth-amendment jubilee, which proclaimed his
emancipation. As banner after banner passed me, with the name of
Garrison, of Phillips, of Douglass, I looked in vain for the name
of Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose one book, "Uncle Tom's
Cabin"--did more to arouse the whole world to the horrors of
slavery, than did the words or works of any ten men. I searched
for a tribute to Lucretia Mott and other women of that conflict,
but none appeared. And so to-day, standing here with heart and
brain convulsed with all these memories and scenes, can you
wonder that we are stirred to profoundest depths, as we review
the base ingratitude of this nation to its women? It has taxed
its women, and asked the women, in whose veins flows the blood of
their Pilgrim and Revolutionary mothers, to assist by money,
individual effort and presence, to make it a year of jubilee for
the proclamation of a ransomed male nationality. Zenobia, in
gilded chains it may be, but chains nevertheless, marches through
the streets of Philadelphia to-day, an appendage of the chariot
wheels which proclaim the coming of her king, her lord, her
master, whether he be white or black, native or foreign-born,
virtuous or vile, lettered or unlettered. As the state-house
bell, with its inscription, "Proclaim liberty--throughout the
land, unto all the inhabitants thereof," pealed forth its
jubilant reiteration,--the daughters of Jefferson, of Hancock, of
Adams, and Patrick Henry, who have been politically outlawed and
ostracized by their own countrymen, here had no liberty
proclaimed for them; they are not inhabitants, only sojourners in
the land of their fathers, and as the slaves in meek subjection
to the will of the master placed the crown of sovereignty on the
alien from Europe, Asia, Africa, she is asked to sing in dulcet
strains: "The king is dead--long live the king!"
And thus to-day we round out the first century of a professed
republic,--with woman figuratively representing freedom--and yet
all free, save woman.
For five long hours of that hot mid-summer's day, that crowded
audience listened earnestly to woman's demand for equality of
rights before the law. When the convention at last adjourned, the
Hutchinsons singing, "A Hundred Years Hence,"[14] it was slowly
and reluctantly that the great audience left the house. Judged by
its immediate influence, it was a wonderful meeting. No elaborate
preparations had been made, for not until late on Friday evening
had it been decided upon, hoping still, as we did, for a
recognition in the general celebration on Independence Square.
Speakers were not prepared, hardly a moment of thought had been
given as to what should be said, but words fitting for the hour
came to lips rendered eloquent by the pressure of intense emotion.
Day after day visitors to the woman suffrage parlors referred to
this meeting in glowing terms. Ladies from distant States, in
Philadelphia to visit the exposition, said that meeting was worth
the whole expense of the journey. Young women with all the
attractions of the day and the exposition enticing them, yet said,
"The best of all I have seen in Philadelphia was that meeting."
Women to whom a dollar was of great value, said, "As much as I need
money, I would not have missed that meeting for a hundred dollars";
while in the midst of conversation visitors would burst forth, "Was
there _ever_ such a meeting as that in Dr. Furness' church?" and
thus was Woman's Declaration of Rights joyously received.
The day was also celebrated by women in convocations of their own
all over the country.[15]
An interesting feature of the centennial parlors was an immense
autograph book, in which the names of friends to the movement were
registered by the thousands, some penned on that historic day and
sent from the old world and the new, and others written on the spot
during these eventful months. From the tidings of all these
enthusiastic assemblies and immense number of letters[16] received
in Philadelphia, unitedly demanding an extension of their rights,
it was evident that the thinking women of the nation were hopefully
waiting in the dawn of the new century for greater liberties to
themselves.
From "Aunt Lottie's Centennial Letters to her Nieces and Nephews,"
we give the one describing this occasion:
MY DEARS: I suppose I had best tell you in this letter about the
Fourth of July celebration at the centennial city--at least that
portion of it that I know about, and which I would not have
missed for the exhibition itself, and which I would not have you
miss for all the rest of my letters. I cannot expect you to be as
much interested in it as was I, but it is time you were becoming
interested in the subject; and, if you live a half century from
this time (in less than that, I hope,) you will see that what I
am about to relate was, as General Hawley admitted it would be,
"the event of the occasion."
At the commencement of the exhibition, Miss Susan B. Anthony and
Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage came to Philadelphia and procured the
parlors of 1,431 Chestnut street for the accommodation of the
National Woman Suffrage Association. These rooms were open to the
friends of the association, and public receptions were held and
well attended every Tuesday and Friday evening. During these
months these two ladies--assisted the latter part of the time by
Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton--were engaged in preparing a history
of the suffrage movement and a declaration of rights to be
presented at the great centennial celebration of the Fourth of
July, 1876. This document is in form like the first declaration
of a hundred years ago, handsomely engrossed by Mrs. Sara Andrews
Spencer, of Washington--a lady delegate to the Cincinnati
Republican convention, June 12.
The celebration was held in Independence Square, just back of the
old state-house where the first declaration was signed. There was
a great crowd of people collected; a poem was read by Bayard
Taylor and a speech delivered by William M. Evarts. But I knew it
was useless to go there expecting to hear any portion of either;
so I waited until twelve o'clock and then rode down in the cars
to Dr. Furness' church, corner of Broad and Locust streets, where
these ladies were to hold their meeting. The church was full, and
the exercises were opened by Mrs. Mott--the venerable and
venerated president--a Quaker lady of slight form, attired in a
plain, light-silk gown, white muslin neckerchief and cap, after
that exquisitely neat and quaint fashion. Then the Hutchinsons
sang a hymn, in which all were requested to join. Afterward Mrs.
Stanton came to the front of the pulpit, the house was hushed, to
a reverential stillness, and I never yet heard anything so solemn
and impressive as her reading of the Declaration of Rights of the
Women of the United States.
A printed copy had been given me the day before, when between the
sessions of the New England American Association in the Academy
of Music, where were Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, Rev. Antoinette
Brown Blackwell, Elizabeth K. Churchill and other pleasant-faced,
sweet-voiced ladies, I had called at the rooms on Chestnut street
and folded declarations, for half an hour with Mrs. Stanton,
which they were distributing by post and in every way all over
the land. When I read it at home that night I realized its
importance, but as the next day (the Fourth) was excessively
warm, I very nearly gave up going, and then I should have missed
the impressiveness of her reading. When she first commenced, her
voice seemed choked with emotion. She must have realized what she
was doing, as we all knew it was the grandest thing that had been
done in a hundred years. Thrill after thrill went through my
veins, and the whole scene formed a picture that will yet be the
subject of artists' pencils and poets' pens. I should have been
contented to have had the meeting closed then with that best song
of the Hutchinsons upon the progress of reform, where the young
gentleman was so much applauded for his solo, "When Women Shall
be Free." Still we were all interested in Mrs. Spencer's account
of her interview with General Hawley, and his refusal to permit
the silent handing-in of the declaration, which, after her
persistence, assuring him "it would not take three minutes," he
was obliged to confess was because he was "very well aware it
would be the event of the occasion." "Immediately," said Mrs.
Spencer, "you cannot imagine what an inspiration we all had to do
it; for," added the slight, fair-haired, fluent lady, in a
humorous manner that called forth laughter and applause, "I never
yet was forbidden by a man to do a thing, but that I resolved to
do it."
We were also pleased to hear from that earnest woman, Susan B.
Anthony, inspired by the immutable abstract truths of justice and
equity. Reports say that she has the air of a Catholic devotee.
She said that in defiance of "the powers that be" she took a
place on that platform in Independence square, and at the proper
time delivered the engrossed copy of the declaration to the Hon.
T. W. Ferry, who received it with a courteous bow; and afterward
on the steps of Independence Hall she read it to an assembled
multitude. She had done her centennial day's work for all time;
and small wonder that mind and body craved rest after such
tension. She is yet under a hundred dollars fine for voting at
Rochester, and although from her lectures the last six years she
has paid $10,000 indebtedness on _The Revolution_, she said she
never would have paid that fine had she been imprisoned till now.
Mrs. Lucretia Mott, whom the younger Hutchinson[17] assisted into
the pulpit--a beautiful sight to see cultured youth supporting
refined old age--stated that she went up there, "not because she
was higher-minded than the rest, but so that her enfeebled voice
might be better heard." The dear old soul is so much stronger
than her body, that it would seem that she must have greatly
overtasked herself; though an inspired soul has wonderful
recuperative forces at command for the temple it inhabits. A
goodly number of gentlemen were present at this meeting and that
of the day before--three or four of them making short speeches. A
Mr. Raper of England, strongly interested in the temperance and
woman suffrage cause, told us that in his country "all women
tax-payers voted for guardians of the poor, upon all educational
matters, and also upon all municipal affairs. In that respect she
was in advance of this professed republic. In England there is an
hereditary aristocracy, here, an aristocracy of sex"; or, as the
spirited Lillie Devereux Blake who was present once amusingly
termed it, of "the bifurcated garment." And now perhaps some
materially-minded person will ask, "What are you going to do
about it? You can't fight!" forgetting that we are now fighting
the greatest of all battles, and that the weapons of woman's
warfare, like her nature at its best development, are moral and
spiritual.
LEWISE OLIVER.
_Philadelphia_, July 13, 1876.
The press of the country commented extensively upon the action of
the women:
At noon to-day, in the First Unitarian church, corner Tenth and
South, the National Woman Suffrage Association will present the
Woman's Declaration of Rights. The association will hold a
convention at the same time and place, at which Lucretia Mott is
announced to preside, and several ladies to make speeches. Most
of the ladies are known as women of ability and earnest apostles
of the creed they have espoused for the political enfranchisement
of women. Their declaration of rights, we do not doubt, will be
strongly enforced. These ladies, or some of them, have been
assigned places upon the platform at the grand celebration
ceremonies to take place in Independence Square to-day; and they
have requested leave to present their declaration of rights in
form on that occasion. They do not ask to have it read, we
believe, but simply that the statement of their case shall go on
file with the general archives of the day, so that the women of
1976 may see that their predecessors of 1876 did not let the
centennial year of independence pass without
protest.--[Philadelphia _Ledger_, July 4.
There was yet another incident of the Fourth, in Independence
Square. Immediately after the Declaration of Independence had
been read by Richard Henry Lee, and while the strains of the
"Greeting from Brazil" were rising upon the air, two ladies
pushed their way vigorously through the crowd and appeared upon
the speaker's platform. They were Susan B. Anthony and Matilda
Joslyn Gage. Hustling generals aside, elbowing governors, and
almost upsetting Dom Pedro in their charge, they reached
Vice-President Ferry, and handed him a scroll about three feet
long, tied with ribbons of various colors. He was seen to bow and
look bewildered; but they had retreated in the same vigorous
manner before the explanation was whispered about. It appears
that they demanded a change of programme for the sake of reading
their address; but if so, this was probably a mere form intended
for future effect. More than six months ago some of the advocates
of female suffrage began in this city their crusade against
celebrating the centennial anniversary of a nation wherein women
are not permitted to vote. The demand of Miss Anthony and Mrs.
Gage to be allowed to take part in a commemoration which many of
their associates discouraged and denounced, would have been a
cool proceeding had it been made in advance. Made, as it was,
through a very discourteous interruption, it pre-figures new
forms of violence and disregard of order which may accompany the
participation of women in active partisan politics.--[New York
_Tribune_.
The letter of a correspondent, printed in another column,
describing the presentation of a woman's bill of rights, in
Independence Square on the Fourth of July, will interest all
readers, whether or not they think with the correspondent, that
this little affair was the most important of the day's
proceedings. We have not a doubt that the persons who were
concerned in the affair enjoyed it heartily. Those of them who
made speeches naturally regarded their eloquence as a thing to
stir the nation. All persons who make speeches do. The day was a
warm one, and imagination, like the fire-cracker, was on fire. In
the heat of the occasion, of course, the women who want to vote
and who desire the protection of the writ of _habeas corpus_
against the tyranny of actual or possible husbands, felt that
they were making great folios of history; but the sagacity of the
press agents and reporters was not at fault. The gatherers of
news know very well what they are about; and when they decided to
omit this part of the proceedings from their reports, they simply
obeyed that instinct upon which their livelihood depends--the
instinct, namely, to write only of matters in which the public is
interested.
The good women who wrote and published this declaration, fancying
that they were throwing a bombshell into the gathered crowds of
American (male) citizens, are very much in earnest, doubtless,
and are entitled--we have platform authority for saying it--to
"respectful consideration"; but their movement scarcely rises, as
yet at least, to the dignity of a great historical event. There
is a prevailing indifference to their cause which is against it.
The public is not aroused to a fever heat of indignation over the
wrongs which women are everywhere suffering at the hands of the
tyrants called husbands. The popular mind is not yet awake to the
fact that men usually imprison their wives in back parlors and
maltreat them shamefully. The witnesses, wives to wit, refuse to
bear testimony to this effect, and the public placidly accepts
appearance for reality and believes that the gentlewomen who ride
about in their carriages or haunt the shops of our cities in gay
apparel are reasonably well contented with their lot in life. In
a word, it is not hostility so much as calm indifference with
which the advocates of woman suffrage have to contend, and
unluckily for them the indifference is very largely
feminine.--[New York _Evening Post_.
There is something awful in the thought that should the woman
suffragists be continually refused a voice in the affairs of the
nation they might at last in a fit of desperation, do what our
fathers did, and frame a declaration of independence, No, 2. Just
think of an army of crinolines willing to take arms against the
tyrant man, and sacrifice their lives, if need be, to carry out
their principles! It is easier to ridicule the woman suffrage
movement than to answer the arguments advanced by some of the
leading advocates of that question. It is only the innate
mildness of the position of women in general that has prevented a
revolution on this same subject long ago. One hundred thousand
such fire-eaters as Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Stanton in
the land, could raise a rumpus which would cause the late
unpleasantness to pale into insignificance. Armed and equipped,
what a sight would be presented by an army of strong-minded
women! There would be no considering the question of whether the
cavalry should ride side-saddle, or _a la_ clothes-pin. Such
detail would be of too small importance to receive the slightest
attention; the more vital questions would be, "How can we
slaughter the most men?" "How can we soonest convince the demons
that we have rights which must be respected?" The fact is, that
if these down-trodden women would take a firm stand in any thing
like respectable numbers, and assert their claims to suffrage at
the point of the bayonet, they would be allowed everything they
asked for. There is not a man in the land who would dare to take
up arms against a woman. Such a dernier resort on the part of the
women would be truly laughable, but the matter would cease to be
a joke, if General Susan B. Anthony, in command of a bloomer
regiment, should march into the halls of congress, armed
_cap-a-pie_, and demand the passage of a law in behalf of woman
suffrage, or the alternative of the general cleaning out of the
whole body. There is no immediate prospect of such an event, but
"hell hath no furies like a woman scorned." Long and loud have
been the appeals of the fair sex for recognition at the
ballot-box. With that faithful zeal so truly characteristic of
her sex, she has each time, for many years in the history of this
country, presented herself before the curious gaze of our
national conventions, asking, with no little stress of argument,
for a woman's plank in the platforms. If she has been heard at
all in the framed resolutions of the parties, the feeling
prevailing in the conventions has been rather to pacify and put
her off, than to grant her request through motives of political
policy. If perseverance is to be awarded, the agitators of the
woman question will yet carry off the prize they seek. Death
alone can silence such women as Susan B. Anthony and Cady
Stanton, and their teachings will live after them and unite
others of their sex into strong bands of sisterhood in a common
cause. It is safe to say, if events march on in the same
direction they have since the calling of the first National
Woman's Convention, another centennial will see woman in the
halls of legislation throughout the land, and so far as we are
concerned we have no objection, so long as she behaves
herself.--[St. Louis _Dispatch_, July 13.
It is a curious anomaly that the movement for national woman
suffrage in our country is most obstructed by women, and that
even where the men have doubts, their natural admiration for the
gentler sex almost converts them into champions. Certain it is
that the Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States
that the National Woman Suffrage Association presented to the
vice-president, Mr. Ferry, while he was surrounded by foreign
princes and potentates and by the governors of most of the States
of the union, faced at the same time by a countless mass of
American and foreign visitors--certain it is, we repeat, that
when this altogether unique paper was presented by Miss Susan B.
Anthony and her sisters, it became a record in the minds and
memory of all who witnessed the strange proceeding. And it is a
very well written statement, and no doubt one hundred years hence
it will be read with an interest not less ecstatic than the
enthusiasm of its present pioneers; for, in the interval, these
advanced women may have won for their withholding sisters the
entire list of male prerogatives. What adds to the force of the
present woman suffrage party is the dignity, intelligence and
purity of its participants. The venerable Lucretia Mott; the
honest, straightforward Susan B. Anthony; the cultivated Ellen
Clark Sargent (wife of the California senator); the beloved
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and indeed all the names attached to the
declaration command our respect. Whatever we may think of the
points of the declaration itself, with all our sincere admiration
of these gentlewomen, increased by the knowledge everywhere that
they are ardent republicans, we fear that their weakness, to
employ a paradox, consists in their strength, or, in other words,
that it is difficult to induce even the most benevolent and
sympathetic observer to believe that they are really as much
persecuted and oppressed as they claim to be. When the colored
man demanded his rights they were given to him because these
rights in republican constitutions were regarded as inherent, and
also because he had reciprocal duties to discharge, and heavy
burdens to carry, and when the Southern confederate demanded
restitution of his rights, he rested his claim upon the double
basis that he had earned forgiveness by his bravery, and that
political disfranchisement did not belong to a republican
example. Fortunately or unfortunately, it is very different with
the ladies; and so when they come forward insisting upon rights
heretofore accorded to men alone, they must encounter all the
differences created by the delicacy of their own sisters and the
reverence and love of the men, and the hard fact that these two
influences have made it heretofore impossible for women to
descend to the arena of politics. Having said this much, we
present a few of the cardinal points of the woman's declaration
of rights laid before the august memorial centennial celebration
last Tuesday, July 4, 1876.--[Philadelphia _Press_, July 15.
On July 19, the Citizens' Suffrage Association, of Philadelphia,
joined with the National Association in commemorating the first
woman's rights convention called by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, at Seneca Falls, N. Y., July 19, 1848--thus
celebrating the twenty-eighth anniversary of that historic event.
The meeting was presided over by Edward M. Davis, president of the
association, son-in-law of Lucretia Mott, and one of the most
untiring workers in the cause. The venerable Lucretia Mott
addressed the meeting, and Miss Anthony read letters from several
of the earliest and most valued pioneers of the movement:
TENAFLY, New Jersey, July 19, 1876.
LUCRETIA MOTT--_Esteemed Friend_: It is twenty-eight years ago
to-day since the first woman's rights convention ever held
assembled in the Wesleyan chapel at Seneca Falls, N. Y. Could we
have foreseen, when we called that convention, the ridicule,
persecution, and misrepresentation that the demand for woman's
political, religious and social equality would involve; the long,
weary years of waiting and hoping without success; I fear we
should not have had the courage and conscience to begin such a
protracted struggle, nor the faith and hope to continue the work.
Fortunately for all reforms, the leaders, not seeing the
obstacles which block the way, start with the hope of a speedy
success. Our demands at the first seemed so rational that I
thought the mere statement of woman's wrongs would bring
immediate redress. I thought an appeal to the reason and
conscience of men against the unjust and unequal laws for women
that disgraced our statute books, must settle the question. But I
soon found, while no attempt was made to answer our arguments,
that an opposition, bitter, malignant, and persevering, rooted in
custom and prejudice, grew stronger with every new demand made,
with every new privilege granted.
How well I remember that July day when the leading ladies and
gentlemen of the busy town crowded into the little church;
lawyers loaded with books, to expound to us the laws; ladies with
their essays, and we who had called the convention, with our
declaration of rights, speeches, and resolutions. With what
dignity James Mott, your sainted husband, tall and stately, in
Quaker costume, presided over our novel proceedings. And your
noble sister, Martha C. Wright, was there. Her wit and wisdom
contributed much to the interest of our proceedings, and her
counsel in a large measure to what success we claimed for our
first convention. While so many of those early friends fell off
through indifference, fear of ridicule and growing conservatism,
she remained through these long years of trial steadfast to the
close of a brave, true life. She has been present at nearly every
convention, with her encouraging words and generous
contributions, and being well versed in Cushing's Manual, has
been one of our chief presiding officers. And my heart is filled
with gratitude, even at this late day, as I recall the
earnestness and eloquence with which Frederick Douglass advocated
our cause, though at that time he had no rights himself that any
white man was bound to respect. I marvel now, that in our
inexperience the interest was so well sustained through two
entire days, and that when the meeting adjourned everybody signed
the declaration and went home feeling that a new era had dawned
for woman. What had been done and said seemed so preëminently
wise and proper that none of us thought of being ridiculed,
ostracised, or suspected of evil. But what was our surprise and
chagrin to find ourselves, in a few days, the target for the
press of the nation; the New York _Tribune_ being our only strong
arm of defense.
Looking over these twenty-eight years, I feel that what we have
achieved, as yet, bears no proportion to what we have suffered in
the daily humiliation of spirit from the cruel distinctions based
on sex. Though our State laws have been essentially changed, and
positions in the schools, professions, and world of work secured
to woman, unthought of thirty years ago, yet the undercurrent of
popular thought, as seen in our social habits, theological
dogmas, and political theories, still reflects the same customs,
creeds, and codes that degrade women in the effete civilizations
of the old world. Educated in the best schools to logical
reasoning, trained to liberal thought in politics, religion and
social ethics under republican institutions, American women
cannot brook the discriminations in regard to sex that were
patiently accepted by the ignorant in barbarous ages as divine
law. And yet subjects of emperors in the old world, with their
narrow ideas of individual rights, their contempt of all
womankind, come here to teach the mothers of this republic their
true work and sphere. Such men as Carl Schurz, breathing for the
first time the free air of our free land, object to what we
consider the higher education of women, fitting them for the
trades and professions, for the sciences and arts, and
self-complacently point Lucretia Mott, Maria Mitchell, Harriet
Beecher Stowe, Susan B. Anthony, to their appropriate sphere, as
housekeepers with a string of keys, like Madam Bismark, dangling
around their waists.
The Rev. J. G. Holland, the Tupper of our American literature,
thanks his Creator that woman has no specialty. She was called
into being for man's happiness and interest--his helpmeet--to
wait and watch his movements, to second his endeavors, to fight
the hard battle of life behind him whose brain may be dizzy with
excess, whose limbs may be paralyzed, or if sound in body, may be
without aim or ambition, without plans or projects, destitute of
executive ability or good judgment in the business affairs of
life. And such sentimentalists, after demoralizing women with
their twaddle, discourage our demand for the right of suffrage by
pointing us to the fact that the majority of women are
indifferent to this movement in their behalf. Suppose they are;
have not the masses of all oppressed classes been apathetic and
indifferent until partial success crowned the enthusiasm of the
few? Carl Schurz would not have been exiled from his native land
could he have roused the majority of his countrymen to the same
love of liberty which burned in his own soul. Were his dreams of
freedom less real because the stolid masses were not awake to
their significance? Shall a soul that accepts martyrdom for a
principle be told he is sacrificing himself to a shadow because
the multitude can neither see nor appreciate the idea?
I do not feel like rejoicing over any privileges already granted
to my sex, until all our rights are conceded and secured and the
principle of equality recognized and proclaimed, for every step
that brings us to a more equal plane with man but makes us more
keenly feel the loss of those rights we are still denied--more
susceptible to the insults of his assumptions and usurpations of
power. As I sum up the indignities toward women, as illustrated
by recent judicial decisions--denied the right to vote, denied
the right to practice in the Supreme Court, denied jury trial--I
feel the degradation of sex more bitterly than I did on that July
19, 1848, and never more than in listening to your speech in
Philadelphia on the Fourth of July, our nation's centennial
birthday, remembering that neither years nor wisdom, brave words
nor noble deeds, could secure political honor or call forth
national homage for women. Let it be remembered by our daughters
in future generations that Lucretia Mott, in the eighty-fourth
year of her age, asked permission, as the representative woman of
this great movement for the enfranchisement of her sex, to
present at the centennial celebration of our national liberties,
Woman's Declaration of Rights, and was refused! This was the
"respectful consideration" vouchsafed American women at the close
of the first century of our national life.
May we now safely prophesy justice, liberty, equality for our
daughters ere another centennial birthday shall dawn upon us!
Sincerely yours, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
DETROIT, July 17, 1876.
_To Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Ann McClintock
and daughters, Amy Post, and all associated with them and myself
in the first Woman's Rights Convention, held in Seneca Falls, N.
Y., July 19, 1848, as well as to our later and present
associates, Greeting:_
Not able to be with you in your celebration of the nineteenth, I
will yet give evidence that I prize your remembrance of our first
assemblage and of our earliest work. That is, and will ever be as
the present is a memorable year; and may this be memorable too
for the same reason, a brave step in advance for human freedom. I
would that it could be a conclusive step in legislation for the
political freedom of the women of the nation. For it is only in
harmony with reason and experience to predict that the men as
well as the women of the near future will rejoice if this
centennial year is thus marked and glorified by so grand a deed.
We may well congratulate each other and have satisfaction in
knowing that we have changed the public sentiment and the laws of
many States by our advocacy and labors. We also know that while
helping the growth of our own souls, we have set many women
thinking and reading on this vital question, who in turn have
discussed it in private and public, and thus inspired others. So
that at this present time few who have examined can deny our
claim. But we are grateful to remember many women who needed no
arguments, whose clear insight and reason, pronounced in the
outset that a woman's soul was as well worth saving as a man's;
that her independence and free choice are as necessary and as
valuable to the public virtue and welfare; who saw and still see
in both, equal children of a Father who loves and protects all.
Men do not need to be convinced of the righteousness of entire
freedom for us; they have long been convinced of its justice;
they confess that it is only expediency which makes them withhold
that which they profess is precious to them. We await only an
awakened conscience and an enlarged statesmanship.
I bid you and the women of the republic God-speed, and close in
the language of one who went before us, Mary Wollstonecraft, who
did so much in a thoughtless age to bring both men and women back
to virtue and religion. She says: "Contending for the rights of
woman, my main argument is built on this simple principle, that
if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of
man, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue; for
truth must be common to all or it will be inefficacious with
respect to its influence in general practice. And how can woman
be expected to coöperate unless she know why she ought to be
virtuous; unless freedom strengthen her reason till she
comprehends her duty and sees in what manner it is connected with
her real good? If children are to be educated to understand the
true principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot; and
the love of mankind from which an orderly train of virtues
spring, can only be produced by considering the moral and civil
interests of mankind; but the education and situation of woman at
present, shuts her out from such investigations."
With the greatest possible interest in your celebration and
deliberations, and assuring you that I shall be with you in
thought and spirit, I am most earnestly and cordially yours,
CATHARINE A. F. STEBBINS.
ROCHESTER, N. Y., June 27, 1876.
MY DEAR SUSAN ANTHONY: I thank thee most deeply for the assurance
of a welcome to your deliberative councils in our country's
centennial year, to reannounce our oft-repeated protest against
bondage to tyrant law. Most holy cause! Woman's equality, why so
long denied?... I was ready at the first tap of the drum that
sounded from that hub of our country, Seneca Falls, in 1848,
calling for an assembly of men and women to set forth and
remonstrate against the legal usurpation of our rights.... I
cannot think of anything that would give me as much pleasure as
to be able to meet with you at this time. I am exceedingly glad
that you appreciate the blessings of frequent visits and wise
counsel from our beloved and venerated pioneer, Lucretia Mott. I
hope her health and strength will enable her to see and enjoy the
triumphant victory of this work, and I wish you all the blessings
of happiness that belong to all good workers, and my love to them
all as if named.
AMY POST.
POMO, Mendocino Co., California, June 26, 1876.
July 4, 1776, our revolutionary fathers--in convention
assembled--declared their independence of the mother country;
solemnly asserted the divine right of self-government and its
relation to constituted authority. With liberty their shibboleth,
the colonies triumphed in their long and fierce struggle with the
mother country, and established an independent government. They
adopted a "bill of rights" embodying their ideal of a free
government.
With singular inconsistency almost their first act, while it
secured to one-half the people of the body politic the right to
tax and govern themselves, subjected the other half to the very
oppression which had culminated in the rebellion of the colonies,
"taxation without representation," and the inflictions of an
authority to which they had not given their consent. The
constitutional provision which enfranchised the male population
of the new State and secured to it self-governing rights,
disfranchised its women, and eventuated in a tyrannical use of
power, which, exercised by husbands, fathers, and brothers, is
infinitely more intolerable than the despotic acts of a foreign
ruler.
As if left ignobly to illustrate the truths of their noble
declarations, no sooner did the enfranchised class enter upon the
exercise of their usurped powers than they proceeded to alienate
from the mothers of humanity rights declared to be inseparable
from humanity itself! Had they thrust the British yoke from the
necks of their wives and daughters as indignantly as they thrust
it from their own, the legal subjection of the women of to-day
would not stand out as it now does--the reproach of our
republican government. As if sons did not follow the condition of
the mothers--as if daughters had no claim to the birthright of
the fathers--they established for disfranchised woman a "dead
line," by retaining the English common law of marriage, which,
unlike that of less liberal European governments, converts the
marriage altar into an executioner's block and recognizes woman
as a wife only when so denuded of personal rights that in legal
phrase she is said to be--"dead in law"!
More considerate in the matter of forms than the highwayman who
kills that he may rob the unresisting dead, our gallant fathers
executed women who must need cross the line of human
happiness--legally; and administered their estate; and decreed
the disposition of their defunct personalities in legislative
halls; only omitting to provide for the matrimonial crypt the
fitting epitaph: "Here lies the relict of American freedom--taxed
to pauperism, loved to death!"
With all the modification of the last quarter, of a century, our
English law of marriage still invests the husband with a
sovereignty almost despotic over his wife. It secures to him her
personal service and savings, and the control and custody of her
person as against herself. Having thus reduced the wife to a dead
pauper owing service to her husband, our shrewd forefathers, to
secure the bond, confiscated her natural obligations as a child
and a mother. Whether married or single, only inability excuses a
son from the legal support of indigent and infirm parents. The
married daughter, in the discharge of her wifely duties, may
tenderly care and toil for her husband's infirm parents, or his
children and grandchildren by a prior marriage, while her own
parents, or children by a prior marriage--legally divested of any
claim on her or the husband who absorbs her personal services and
earnings--are sent to the poor-house, or pine in bitter
privation; except with consent of her husband, she can give
neither her personal care nor the avails of her industry, for
their benefit. So, to be a wife, woman ceases, in law, to be
anything else--yields up the ghost of a legal existence! That she
escapes the extreme penalty of her legal bonds in any case is
due to the fact that the majority of men, married or single, are
notably better than their laws.
Our fathers taught the quality and initiated the form of free
government. But it was left to their posterity to learn from the
discipline of experience, that truths, old as the eternities, are
forever revealing new phases to render possible more perfect
interpretations; and to accumulate unanswerable reasons for their
extended application. That the sorest trials and most appreciable
failures of the government our fathers bequeathed, to us, have
been the direct and inevitable results of their departures from
the principles they enunciated, is so patent to all Christendom,
that free government itself has won from our mistakes material to
revolutionize the world--lessons that compel depotisms to change
their base and constitutional monarchies to make broader the
phylacteries of popular rights.
Is it not meet then, that on this one-hundredth anniversary of
American independence the daughters of revolutionary sires should
appeal to the sons to fulfill what the fathers promised but
failed to perform--should appeal to them as the constituted
executors of the father's will, to give full practical effect to
the self-evident truths, that "taxation without representation is
tyranny"--that "governments derive their just powers from the
consent of the governed"? With an evident common interest in all
the affairs of which government properly or improperly takes
cognizance, we claim enfranchisement on the broad ground of human
right, having proved the justice of our claim by the injustice
which has resulted to us and ours through our disfranchisement.
We ask enfranchisement in the abiding faith that with our
coöperative efforts free government would attain to higher
averages of intelligence and virtue; with an innate conviction,
that the sequestration of rights in the homes of the republic
makes them baneful nurseries of the monopolies, rings, and
fraudulent practices that are threatening the national integrity;
and that so long as the fathers sequester the rights of the
mothers and train their sons to exercise, and the daughters to
submit to the exactions of usurped powers, our government offices
will be dens of thieves and the national honor trail in the dust;
and honest men come out from the fiery ordeals of faithful
service, denuded of the confidence and respect justly their due.
Give us liberty! We are mothers, wives, and daughters of freemen.
C. I. H. NICHOLS.
LONDON, Eng., July 4, 1876.
MY DEAR SUSAN: I sincerely thank you for your kind letter. Many
times I have thought of writing to you, but I knew your time was
too much taken up with the good cause to have any to spare for
private correspondence. Occasionally I am pleased to see a good
account of you and your doings in the Boston _Investigator_. Oh,
how I wish I could be with you on this more than ordinarily
interesting and important occasion; or that I could at least send
my sentiments and views on human rights, which I have advocated
for over forty years, to the convention.
This being the centenary day of the proclamation of American
independence, I must write a few lines, if but to let the friends
know that though absent in body I am with you in the cause for
which, in common with you, I have labored so long, and I hope not
labored in vain.
The glorious day upon which human equality was first proclaimed
ought to be commemorated, not only every hundred years, or every
year, but it ought to be constantly held before the public mind
until its grand principles are carried into practice. The
declaration that "All men [which means all human beings
irrespective of sex] have an equal right to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness," is enough for woman as for man. We
need no other; but we must reassert in 1876 what 1776 so
gloriously proclaimed, and call upon the law-makers and the
law-breakers to carry that declaration to its logical consistency
by giving woman the right of representation in the government
which she helps to maintain; a voice in the laws by which she is
governed, and all the rights and privileges society can bestow,
the same as to man, or disprove its validity. We need no other
declaration. All we ask is to have the laws based on the same
foundation upon which that declaration rests, viz.: upon equal
justice, and not upon sex. Whenever the rights of man are
claimed, moral consistency points to the equal rights of woman.
I hope these few lines will fill a little space in the convention
at Philadelphia, where my voice has so often been raised in
behalf of the principles of humanity. I am glad to see my name
among the vice-presidents of the National Association. Keep a
warm place for me with the American people. I hope some day to be
there yet. Give my love to Mrs. Mott and Sarah Pugh. With kind
regards from Mr. Rose,
Yours affectionately, ERNESTINE L. ROSE.
A new paper, _The Ballot-Box_, was started in the centennial year
at Toledo, Ohio, owned and published by Mrs. Sarah Langdon
Williams. The following editorial on the natal day of the republic
is from her pen:
THE RETROSPECT.--Since our last issue the great centennial
anniversary of American independence has come and gone; it has
been greeted with rejoicing throughout the land; its events have
passed into history. The day in which the great principles
embodied in the Declaration of Independence were announced by the
revolutionary fathers to the world has been celebrated through
all this vast heritage, with pomp and popular glorification, and
the nation's finest orators have signalized the event in
"thoughts that breathe and words that burn." Everywhere has the
country been arrayed in its holiday attire--the gay insignia
which, old as the century, puts on fresh youth and brilliancy
each time its colors are unfurled. The successes which the
country has achieved have been portrayed with glowing eloquence,
the people's sovereignty has been the theme of congratulation and
the glorious principles of freedom and equal rights have been
enthusiastically proclaimed. In the magnificent oration of Mr.
Evarts delivered in Independence Square, the spot made sacred by
the signing of the Declaration of Independence which announced
that "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of
the governed," these words occur:
The chief concern in this regard, to us and the rest of the
world is, whether the proud trust, the profound radicalism,
the wide benevolence which spoke in the declaration and were
infused into the constitution at the first, have been in
good-faith adhered to by the people, and whether now the
living principles supply the living forces which sustain and
direct government and society. He who doubts needs but to
look around to find all things full of the original spirit
and testifying to its wisdom and strength.
Yet that very day in that very city was a large assemblage of
women convened to protest against the gross wrongs of their
sex--the representatives of twenty millions of citizens of the
United States, composing one-half of the population being
governed without their consent by the other half, who, by virtue
of their superior strength, held the reins of power and
tyrannically denied them all representation. At that very meeting
at which that polished falsehood was uttered had the women, but
shortly before, been denied the privilege of silently presenting
their declaration of rights. More forcibly is this mortifying
disregard of the claims of women thrust in their faces from the
fact that, amid all this magnificent triumph with which the
growth of the century was commemorated, amid the protestations of
platforms all over the country of the grand success of the
principle of equal rights for all, the possibility of the future
according equal rights to women as well as to men was, with the
exception of one or two praiseworthy instances, as far as reports
have reached us, utterly ignored. The women have no
country--their rights are disregarded, their appeals ignored,
their protests scorned, they are treated as children who do not
comprehend their own wants, and as slaves whose crowning duty is
obedience.
Whether, on this great day of national triumph and national
aspiration, the possibilities of a better future for women were
forgotten; whether, from carelessness, willfulness, or
wickedness, their grand services and weary struggles in the past
and hopes and aspirations for the future were left entirely out
of the account, certain it is that our orators were too much
absorbed in the good done by men and for men, to once recur to
the valuable aid, self-denying patriotism and lofty virtues of
the nation's unrepresented women. There were a few exceptions:
Col. Wm. M. Ferry, of Ottawa county, Michigan, in his historical
address delivered in that county, July Fourth, took pains to make
favorable mention of the daughter of one of the pioneers, as
follows:
Louisa Constant, or "Lisette," as she was called, became her
father's clerk when twelve years old, and was as well known
for wonderful faculties for business as she was for her
personal attractions. In 1828, when Lisette was seventeen
years old, her father died. She closed up his business with
the British Company, engaged with the American Fur Company,
at Mackinaw, receiving from them a large supply of
merchandise, and for six years conducted the most successful
trading establishment in the northwest.
Think of it, ye who disparage the ability of woman! This little
tribute we record with gratification. Colonel Ferry remembered
woman. Henry Ward Beecher, in his oration, delivered at
Peekskill, is reported, to have said:
And now there is but one step more--there is but one step
more. We permit the lame, the halt and the blind to go to
the ballot-box; we permit the foreigner and the black man,
the slave and the freeman, to partake of the suffrage; there
is but one thing left out, and that is the mother that
taught us, and the wife that is thought worthy to walk side
by side with us. It is woman that is put lower than the
slave, lower than the ignorant foreigner. She is put among
the paupers whom the law won't allow to vote; among the
insane whom the law won't allow to vote. But the days are
numbered in which this can take place, and she too will
vote.
But these words are followed by others somewhat problematical, at
least in the respect rendered to women:
As in a hundred years suffrage has extended its bounds till
it now includes the whole population, in another hundred
years everything will vote, unless it be the power of the
loom, and the locomotive, and the watch, and I sometimes
think, looking at these machines and their performances,
that they too ought to vote.
But Mr. Evarts approached the close of his oration with these
words--and may they not be prophetic--may not the orator have
spoken with a deeper meaning than he knew?
With these proud possessions of the past, with powers
matured, with principles settled, with habits formed, the
nation passes as it were from preparatory growth to
responsible development of character and the steady
performance of duty. What labors await it, what trials shall
attend it, what triumphs for human nature, what glory for
itself, are prepared for this people in the coming century,
we may not assume to foretell.
Whether the wise (?) legislators see it or not--whether the
undercurrent that is beating to the shore speaks with an
utterance that is comprehensible to their heavy apprehensions or
not, the coming century has in preparation for the country a
truer humanity, a better justice of which the protest and
declaration of the fathers pouring its vital current down through
the departed century, and surging on into the future, is, to the
seeing eye, the sure forerunner, the seed-time, of which the
approaching harvest will bring a better fruition for women--and
they who scoff now will be compelled to rejoice hereafter. But as
Mr. Evarts remarked in his allusions to future centennials:
By the mere circumstance of this periodicity our generation
will be in the minds, in the hearts, on the lips of our
countrymen at the next centennial commemoration in
comparison with their own character and condition and with
the great founders of the nation. What shall they say of us?
How shall they estimate the part we bear in the unbroken
line of the nation's progress? And so on, in the long reach
of time, forever and forever, our place in the secular roll
of the ages must always bring us into observation and
criticism.
Shall it then be recorded of us that the demand and the protest
of the women were not made in vain? Shall it be told to future
generations that the cry for justice, the effort to sunder the
shackles with which woman has been oppressed from the dim ages of
the past, was heeded? Or, shall it be told of us, in the
beginning of this second centennial, that justice has been
ignored, that only liberty to men entered at this stage of
progress, into the American idea of self-government? Freedom to
men and women alike is but a question of time--is America now
equal to the great occasion? Has her development expanded to that
degree where her legislators can say in very truth, as of the
colored man, "Let the oppressed go free"?
The woman's pavilion upon the centennial grounds was an
after-thought, as theologians claim woman herself to have been.[18]
The women of the country after having contributed nearly $100,000
to the centennial stock, found there had been no provision made for
the separate exhibition of their work. The centennial board, Mrs.
Gillespie, president, then decided to raise funds for the erection
of a separate building to be known as the Woman's Pavilion. It
covered an acre of ground and was erected at an expense of $30,000,
a small sum in comparison with the money which had been raised by
women and expended on the other buildings, not to speak of State
and national appropriations which the taxes levied on them had
largely helped to swell.
The pavilion was no true exhibit of woman's work. First, few women
are as yet owners of business which their industry largely makes
remunerative. Cotton factories in which thousands of women work,
are owned by men. The shoe business, in some branches of which
women are doing more than half, is under the ownership of men. Rich
embroideries from India, rugs of downy softness from Turkey, the
muslin of Dacca, anciently known as "The Woven Wind," the pottery
and majolica ware of P. Pipsen's widow, the cartridges and
envelopes of Uncle Sam, Waltham watches whose finest mechanical
work is done by women, and ten thousand other industries found no
place in the pavilion. Said United States Commissioner Meeker,[19]
of Colorado, "Woman's work comprises three-fourths of the
exposition; it is scattered through every building; take it away
and there would be no exposition."
But this pavilion rendered one good service to woman in showing her
capabilities as an engineer. The boiler which furnished the force
for running its work was under the management of a young Canadian
girl, Miss Alison, who from a child loved machinery, spending much
time in the large saw and grist mills of her father, run by engines
of two- and three-hundred horse-power, which she sometimes managed
for amusement. When her name was proposed for running the pavilion
machinery it brought much opposition. It was said the committee
would some day find the pavilion blown to atoms; that the woman
engineer would spend her time reading novels, instead of watching
the steam gauge; that the idea was impracticable and should not be
thought of. But Miss Alison soon proved her own capabilities and
the falseness of these prophecies by taking her place in the
engine-room and managing its workings with the ease that a child
spins a top. Six power looms on which women wove carpets, webbing,
silks, etc., were run by this engine. At a later period the
printing of _The New Century for Women_, a paper published by the
centennial commission in the woman's building, was also done by its
means. Miss Alison declared the work to be more cleanly, more
pleasant, and infinitely less fatiguing than cooking over a kitchen
stove. "Since I have been compelled to earn my own livelihood," she
said, "I have never been engaged in work I liked so well. Teaching
school is much harder, and one is not paid as well." She expressed
confidence in her ability to manage the engine of an ocean steamer,
and said there were thousands of small engines in use in various
parts of the country, and no reason existed why women should not be
employed to manage them--following the profession of engineer as a
regular business--an engine requiring far less attention than is
given by a nurse-maid or mother to a child.
But to have made the woman's pavilion grandly historic, upon its
walls should have been hung the yearly protest of Harriet K. Hunt
against taxation without representation; the legal papers served
upon the Smith sisters when their Alderny cows were seized and sold
for their refusal to pay taxes while unrepresented; the papers held
by the city of Worcester for the forced sale of the house and lands
of Abby Kelly Foster, the veteran abolitionist, because she refused
to pay taxes, giving the same reason our ancestors gave when they
resisted taxation; a model of Bunker Hill monument, its foundation
laid by Lafayette in 1825, but which remained unfinished nearly
twenty years until the famous French _danseuse_ Fanny Ellsler, gave
the proceeds of an exhibition for that purpose. With these should
have been exhibited framed copies of all the laws bearing unjustly
upon woman--those which rob her of her name, her earnings, her
property, her children, her person; also, the legal papers in the
case of Susan B. Anthony, who was tried and fined for seeking to
give consent to the laws which governed her; and the decision of
Mr. Justice Miller (Chief-Justice Chase dissenting) in the case of
Myra Bradwell, denying national protection for woman's civil
rights; and the later decision of Chief-Justice Waite of the
Supreme Court against Virginia L. Minor, denying to women national
protection for their political rights, decisions in favor of
state-rights which imperil the liberties not only of all women, but
of every white man in the nation.
Woman's most fitting contributions to the centennial exposition
would have been these protests, laws and decisions which show her
political slavery. But all this was left for rooms outside of the
centennial grounds, upon Chestnut street, where the National Woman
Suffrage Association hoisted its flag, made its protests, and wrote
the Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States.
To many thoughtful people it seemed captious and unreasonable for
women to complain of injustice in this free land, amidst such
universal rejoicings. When the majority of women are seemingly
happy, it is natural to suppose that the discontent of the minority
is the result of their unfortunate individual idiosyncrasies, and
not of adverse influences in their established conditions.
But the history of the world shows that the vast majority in every
generation passively accept the conditions into which they are
born, while those who demand larger liberties are ever a small,
ostracised minority whose claims are ridiculed and ignored. From
our stand-point we honor the Chinese women who claim the right to
their feet and powers of locomotion, the Hindoo widows who refuse
to ascend the funeral pyre of their husbands, the Turkish women who
throw off their masks and veils and leave the harem, the Mormon
women who abjure their faith and demand monogamic relations; why
not equally honor the intelligent minority of American women who
protest against the artificial disabilities by which their freedom
is limited and their development arrested? That only a few under
any circumstances protest against the injustice of long established
laws and customs does not disprove the fact of the oppressions,
while the satisfaction of the many, if real, only proves their
apathy and deeper degradation. That a majority of the women of the
United States accept without protest the disabilities that grow out
of their disfranchisement, is simply an evidence of their ignorance
and cowardice, while the minority who demand a higher political
status clearly prove their superior intelligence and wisdom.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Some suggested that the women in their various towns and
cities, draped in black, should march in solemn procession, bells
slowly tolling, bearing banners with the inscriptions: "Taxation
without representation is tyranny," "No just government can be
formed without the consent of the governed," "They who have no
voice in the laws and rulers are in a condition of slavery."
Others suggested that instead of women wearing crape during the
centennial glorification, the men should sit down in sackcloth and
ashes, in humiliation of spirit, as those who repented in olden
times were wont to do. The best centennial celebration, said they,
for the men of the United States, the one to cover them with glory,
would be to extend to the women of the nation all the rights,
privileges and immunities that they themselves enjoy.
Others proposed that women should monopolize the day, have their
own celebrations, read their own declarations and protests
demanding justice, liberty and equality. The latter suggestion was
extensively adopted, and the Fourth of July, 1876, was remarkable
for the large number of women who were "the orators of the day" in
their respective localities.
[2] Letters were read from the Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, of
Georgia; William J. Fowler, of Rochester, N. Y.; Isabella Beecher
Hooker, of Connecticut, and Susan B. Anthony.
[3] News of the cannonade of Boston had been received the day
previous.
[4] Though thus discourteously refused to an association to secure
equality of rights for women, it was subsequently rented to "The
International Peace Association."
[5] _President_--Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Tenafly, New Jersey.
_Vice-Presidents_--Lucretia Mott, Pa.; Ernestine L. Rose, England;
Paulina Wright Davis, R. I.; Clarina I. H. Nichols, Cal.; Amelia
Bloomer, Iowa; Mathilde Franceska Anneke, Wis.; Virginia L. Minor,
Mo.; Catharine A. F. Stebbins, Mich.; Julia and Abby Smith, Conn.;
Abby P. Ela, N. H.; Mrs. W. H. H. Murray, Mass.; Ann T. Greely,
Me.; Eliza D. Stewart, Ohio; Mary Hamilton Williams, Ind.;
Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Ill.; Sarah Burger Stearns, Minn.; Ada
W. Lucas, Neb.; Helen E. Starrett, Kan.; Ann L. Quinby, Ky.;
Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, Tenn.; Mrs. L. C. Locke, Texas; Emily
P. Collins, La.; Mary J. Spaulding, Ga.; Mrs. P. Holmes, Drake,
Ala.; Flora M. Wright, Fla.; Frances Annie Pillsbury, S. C.;
Cynthia Anthony, N. C.; Carrie F. Putnam, Va.; Anna Ella Carroll,
Md.; Abigail Scott Duniway, Oregon; Hannah H. Clapp, Nevada; Dr.
Alida C. Avery, Col.; Mary Olney Brown, Wash. Ter.; Esther A.
Morris, Wyoming Ter.; Annie Godbe, Utah.
_Advisory Committee_--Sarah Pugh, Pa.; Isabella Beecher Hooker,
Conn.; Charlotte B. Wilbour, N. Y.; Mary J. Channing, R. I.;
Elizabeth B. Schenck, Cal.; Judith Ellen Foster, Iowa; Lavinia
Goodell, Wis.; Annie R. Irvine, Mo.; Marian Bliss, Mich.; Mary B.
Moses, N. H.; Sarah A. Vibbart, Mass.; Lucy A. Snowe, Me.; Marilla
M. Ricker, N. H.; Mary Madden, Ohio; Emma Molloy, Ind.; Cynthia A.
Leonard, Ill.; Mrs. Dr. Stewart, Minn.; Julia Brown Bemis, Neb.;
Mrs. N. H. Cramer, Tenn.; Mrs. W. V. Tunstall, Tex.; Mrs. A.
Millspaugh, La.; Hannah M. Rogers, Fla.; Sally Holly, Va.; Sallie
W. Hardcastle, Md.; Mary P. Sautelle, Oregon; Mary F. Shields,
Col.; Amelia Giddings, Wash. Ter.; Amalia B. Post, Wyoming Ter.
_Corresponding Secretaries_--Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, N. Y.;
Laura Curtis Bullard, New York; Jane Graham Jones, Chicago, Ill.
_Recording Secretary_--Lillie Devereux Blake, New York.
_Treasurer_--Ellen Clark Sargent, Washington, D. C.
_Executive Committee_--Matilda Joslyn Gage, Fayetteville, N. Y.;
Clemence S. Lozier, M. D., Elizabeth B. Phelps, Mathilde F. Wendt,
Phebe H. Jones, New York; Rev. Olympia Brown, Connecticut; Sarah R.
L. Williams, Ohio; M. Adeline Thomson, Pennsylvania; Henrietta
Payne Westbrook, Pennsylvania; Nancy R. Allen, Iowa.
[6] _1876 Campaign Committee_--Susan B. Anthony, N. Y.; Matilda
Joslyn Gage, N. Y.; Phoebe W. Couzins, Mo.; Rev. Olympia Brown,
Conn.; Jane Graham Jones, Ill.; Abigail Scott Duniway, Oregon;
Laura De Force Gordon, Cal.; Annie C. Savery, Iowa.
[7] _Resident Congressional Committee_--Sara Andrews Spencer, Ellen
Clark Sargent, Ruth Carr Denison, Belva A. Lockwood, Mrs. E. D. E.
N. Southworth.
[8] Among those who took part in the discussions were Dr. Clemence
Lozier, Susan B. Anthony, Helen M. Slocum, Sarah Goodyear, Helen M.
Cook, Abby and Julia Smith, Sara Andrews Spencer, Miss Charlotte
Ray, Lillie Devereux Blake and Matilda Joslyn Gage.
[9] Letters were written to these conventions from different
States. Mrs. Elizabeth L. Saxon, New Orleans, La.; Elizabeth A.
Meriwether, Memphis, Tenn.; Mrs. Margaret V. Longley, Cincinnati,
O., all making eloquent appeals for some consideration of the
political rights of women.
[10] Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Gage, and Mrs. Spencer.
[11] On the receipt of these letters a prolonged council was held
by the officers of the association at their headquarters, as to
what action they should take on the Fourth of July. Mrs. Mott and
Mrs. Stanton decided for themselves that after these rebuffs they
would not even sit on the platform, but at the appointed time go to
the church they had engaged for a meeting, and open their
convention. Others more brave and determined insisted that women
had an equal right to the glory of the day and the freedom of the
platform, and decided to take the risk of a public insult in order
to present the woman's declaration and thus make it an historic
document.--[E.C.S.
[12] During the reading of the declaration to an immense concourse
of people, Mrs. Gage stood beside Miss Anthony, and held an
umbrella over her head, to shelter her friend from the intense heat
of the noonday sun; and thus in the same hour, on opposite sides of
old Independence Hall, did the men and women express their opinions
on the great principles proclaimed on the natal day of the
republic. The declaration was handsomely framed and now hangs in
the vice-president's room in the capitol at Washington.
[13] This document was signed by Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Paulina Wright Davis, Ernestine L. Rose, Clarina I. H.
Nichols, Mary Ann McClintock, Mathilde Franceska Anneke, Sarah
Pugh, Amy Post, Catharine A. F. Stebbins, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda
Joslyn Gage, Clemence S. Lozier, Olympia Brown, Mathilde F. Wendt,
Adleline Thomson, Ellen Clark Sargent, Virginia L. Minor, Catherine
V. Waite, Elizabeth B. Schenck, Phoebe W. Couzins, Elizabeth
Boynton Harbert, Laura De Force Gordon, Sara Andrews Spencer,
Lillie Devereux Blake, Jane Graham Jones, Abigail Scott Duniway,
Belva A. Lockwood, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Sarah L. Williams, Abby
P. Ela.
[14]
One hundred years hence, what a change will be made,
In politics, morals, religion and trade,
In statesmen who wrangle or ride on the fence,
These things will be altered _a hundred years hence_.
Our laws then will be uncompulsory rules,
Our prisons converted to national schools.
The pleasure of sinning 'tis all a pretense,
And the people will find it so, _a hundred years hence_.
Lying, cheating and fraud will be laid on the shelf,
Men will neither get drunk, nor be bound up in self,
But all live together, good neighbors and friends,
Just as _Christian folks_ ought to, _a hundred years hence_.
Then woman, man's partner, man's equal shall stand,
While beauty and harmony govern the land,
To think for oneself will be no offense,
The world will be thinking _a hundred years hence_.
Oppression and war will be heard of no more,
Nor the blood of a slave leave his print on our shore,
Conventions will then be a useless expense,
For we'll all go _free-suffrage a hundred years hence_.
Instead of speech-making to satisfy wrong,
All will join the glad chorus to sing Freedom's song;
And if the Millenium is not a pretense,
We'll all be good brothers _a hundred years hence_.
This song was written in 1852, at Cleveland, Ohio, by Frances Dana
Gage, expressly for John W. Hutchinson. Several of the friends were
staying with Mrs. Caroline M. Severance, on their way to the Akron
convention, where it was first sung.
[15] Protests and declarations were read by Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton
Harbert, in Evanston, Ill.; Sarah L. Knox, California; Mrs. Rosa L.
Segur, Toledo, Ohio; Mrs. Mary Olney Brown, Olympia, Washington
territory; Mrs. Henrietta Paine Westbrook, New York city. In
Maquoketa, Iowa; Mrs. Nancy R. Allen read the declaration at the
regular county celebration. Madam Anneke, Wis.; Elizabeth Avery
Meriwether, Tenn.; Lucinda B. Chandler, N. J.; Jane E. Telker,
Iowa; S. P. Abeel, D. C.; Mrs. J. A. Johns, Oregon; Elizabeth Lisle
Saxon, La.; Mrs. Elsie Stewart, Kan.; and many others impossible to
name, sent in protests and declarations.
[16] See Appendix.
[17] Henry Hutchinson, the son of John.
[18] A German legend says, God first made a mouse, but seeing he
had made a mistake he made the cat as an afterthought, therefore if
woman is God's afterthought, man must be a mistake.
[19] Afterwards killed by the Indians in Colorado.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
NATIONAL CONVENTIONS, HEARINGS AND REPORTS.
1877-1878-1879.
Renewed Appeal for a Sixteenth Amendment--Mrs. Gage Petitions for
Removal of Political Disabilities--Ninth Washington Convention,
1877--Jane Grey Swisshelm--Letters, Robert Purvis, Wendell
Phillips, Francis E. Abbott--10,000 Petitions Referred to the
Committee on Privileges and Elections by Special Request of the
Chairman, Hon. O. P. Morton, of Indiana--May Anniversary in New
York--Tenth Washington Convention, 1878--Frances E. Willard and
30,000 Temperance Women Petition Congress--40,000 Petition for a
Sixteenth Amendment--Hearing before the Committee on Privileges
and Elections--Madam Dahlgren's Protest--Mrs. Hooker's Hearing on
Washington's Birthday--Mary Clemmer's Letter to Senator
Wadleigh--His Adverse Report--Favorable Minority Report by
Senator Hoar--Thirtieth Anniversary, Unitarian Church, Rochester,
N. Y., July 19, 1878--The Last Convention Attended by Lucretia
Mott--Letters, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips--Church
Resolution Criticised by Rev. Dr. Strong--International Women's
Congress in Paris--Washington Convention, 1879--U.S. Supreme
Court Opened to Women--May Anniversary at St. Louis--Address of
Welcome by Phoebe Couzins--Women in Council Alone--Letter from
Josephine Butler, of England--Mrs. Stanton's Letter to _The
National Citizen and Ballot-Box_.
With the close of the centennial year the new departure under the
fourteenth amendment ended. Though defeated at the polls, in the
courts, in the national celebration, in securing a plank in the
platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties, and in our own
conventions--so far as the few were able to rouse the many to
simultaneous action--nevertheless a wide-spread agitation had been
secured by the presentation of this phase of the question.
Although the unanswerable arguments of statesmen and lawyers in the
halls of congress and the Supreme Court of the United States, had
alike proved unavailing in establishing the civil and political
rights of women on a national basis, their efforts had not been in
vain. The trials had brought the question before a new order of
minds, and secured able constitutional arguments which were
reviewed in many law journals. The equally able congressional
debates, reported verbatim, read by a large constituency in every
State of the Union, did an educational work on the question of
woman's enfranchisement that cannot be overestimated.
But when the final decision of the Supreme Court in the case of
Virginia L. Minor made all agitation in that direction hopeless,
the National Association returned to its former policy, demanding a
sixteenth amendment. The women generally came to the conclusion
that if in truth there was no protection for them in the original
constitution nor the late amendments, the time had come for some
clearly-defined recognition of their citizenship by a sixteenth
amendment.
The following appeal and petition were extensively circulated:
_To the Women of the United States:_
Having celebrated our centennial birthday with a national
jubilee, let us now dedicate the dawn of the second century to
securing justice to women. For this purpose we ask you to
circulate a petition to congress, just issued by the National
Association, asking an amendment to the United States
Constitution, that shall prohibit the several States from
disfranchising citizens on account of sex. We have already sent
this petition throughout the country for the signatures of those
men and women who believe in the citizen's right to vote.
To see how large a petition each State rolls up, and to do the
work as expeditiously as possible, it is necessary that some
person in each county should take the matter in charge, urging
upon all, thoroughness and haste. * * * The petitions should be
returned before January 16, 17, 1877, when we shall hold our
Eighth Annual Convention at the capital, and ask a hearing before
congress.
Having petitioned our law-makers, State and national, for years,
many from weariness have vowed to appeal no more; for our
petitions, say they, by the tens of thousands, are piled up in
the national archives, unheeded and ignored. Yet it is possible
to roll up such a mammoth petition, borne into congress on the
shoulders of stalwart men, that we can no longer be neglected or
forgotten. Statesmen and politicians alike are conquered by
majorities. We urge the women of this country to make now the
same united effort for their own rights that they did for the
slaves at the South when the thirteenth amendment was pending.
Then a petition of over 300,000 was rolled up by the leaders of
the suffrage movement, and presented in the Senate by the Hon.
Charles Sumner. But the statesmen who welcomed woman's untiring
efforts to secure the black man's freedom, frowned down the same
demands when made for herself. Is not liberty as sweet to her as
to him? Are not the political disabilities of sex as grievous as
those of color? Is not a civil-rights bill that shall open to
woman the college doors, the trades and professions--that shall
secure her personal and property rights, as necessary for her
protection as for that of the colored man? And yet the highest
judicial authorities have decided that the spirit and letter of
our national constitution are not broad enough to protect woman
in her political rights; and for the redress of her wrongs they
remand her to the State. If our _Magna Charta_ of human rights
can be thus narrowed by judicial interpretations in favor of
class legislation, then must we demand an amendment that, in
clear, unmistakable language, shall declare the equality of all
citizens before the law.
Women are citizens, first of the United States, and second of the
State wherein they reside; hence, if robbed by State authorities
of any right founded in nature or secured by law, they have the
same right to national protection against the State, as against
the infringements of any foreign power. If the United States
government can punish a woman for voting in one State, why has it
not the same power to protect her in the exercise of that right
in every State? The constitution declares it the duty of congress
to guarantee to every State a republican form of government, to
every citizen, equality of rights. This is not done in States
where women, thoroughly qualified, are denied admission into
colleges which their property is taxed to build and endow; where
they are denied the right to practice law and are thus debarred
from one of the most lucrative professions; where they are denied
a voice in the government, and thus, while suffering all the ills
that grow out of the giant evils of intemperance, prostitution,
war, heavy taxation and political corruption, stand powerless to
effect any reform. Prayers, tears, psalm-singing and
expostulation are light in the balance compared with that power
at the ballot-box that coins opinions into law. If women who are
laboring for peace, temperance, social purity and the rights of
labor, would take the speediest way to accomplish what they
propose, let them demand the ballot in their own hands, that they
may have a direct power in the government. Thus only can they
improve the conditions of the outside world and purify the home.
As political equality is the door to civil, religious and social
liberty, here must our work begin.
Constituting, as we do, one-half the people, bearing the burdens
of one-half the national debt, equally responsible with man for
the education, religion and morals of the rising generation, let
us with united voice send forth a protest against the present
political status of woman, that shall echo and reëcho through the
land. In view of the numbers and character of those making the
demand, this should be the largest petition ever yet rolled up in
the old world or the new; a petition that shall settle forever
the popular objection that "women do not want to vote."
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, _President._
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Chairman Executive Committee._
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Corresponding Secretary._
_Tenafly, N. J._, November 10, 1876.
_To the Senate and House of Representatives in Congress
assembled:_
The undersigned citizens of the United States, residents of
the State of ----, earnestly pray your honorable bodies to
adopt measures for so amending the constitution as to
prohibit the several States from disfranchising United
States citizens on account of sex.
In addition to the general petition asking for a sixteenth
amendment, Matilda Joslyn Gage, this year (1877) sent an individual
petition, similar in form to those offered by disfranchised male
citizens, asking to be relieved from her political disabilities.
This petition was presented by Hon. Elias W. Leavenworth, of the
House of Representatives, member from the thirty-third New York
congressional district. It read as follows:
_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States
in Congress assembled:_
Matilda Joslyn Gage, a native born citizen of the United States,
and of the State of New York, wherein she resides, most earnestly
petitions your honorable body for the removal of her political
disabilities and that she may be declared invested with full
power to exercise her right of self government at the ballot-box,
all State constitutions, or statute laws to the contrary
notwithstanding.
The above petition was presented January 24, and the following bill
introduced February 5:
AN ACT _to relieve the political disabilities of Matilda Joslyn
Gage_:
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in congress assembled, that all
political disabilities heretofore existing in reference to
Matilda Joslyn Gage, of Fayetteville, Onondaga county, State of
New York, be removed and she be declared a citizen of the United
States, clothed with all the political rights and powers of
citizenship, namely: the right to vote and to hold office to the
same extent and in the same degree that male citizens enjoy these
rights. This act to take effect immediately.
The following year a large number of similar petitions were sent
from different parts of the country, the National Association
distributing printed forms to its members in the various States.
The power of congress to thus enfranchise women upon their
individual petitions is as undoubted as the power to grant
individual amnesty, to remove the political disabilities of men
disfranchised for crime against United States laws, or to clothe
foreigners, honorably discharged from the army, with the ballot.
The first convention[20] after the all-engrossing events of the
centennial celebration assembled in Lincoln Hall, Washington,
January 16, with a good array of speakers, Mrs. Stanton presiding.
After an inspiring song by the Hutchinsons and reports from the
various States, Sara Andrews Spencer, chairman of the congressional
committee, gave some encouraging facts in regard to the large
number of petitions being presented to congress daily, and read
many interesting letters from those who had been active in their
circulation. Over 10,000 were presented during this last session of
the forty-fourth congress. At the special request of the chairman,
Senator Morton of Indiana, they were referred to the Committee on
Privileges and Elections; heretofore they had always been placed in
the hands of the Judiciary Committee in both Senate and House. A
list of committees[21] was reported by Mrs. Gage which was adopted.
Mrs. Swisshelm of Pennsylvania, was introduced. She said:
In 1846 she inherited an estate from her parents, and then she
learned the injustice of the husband holding the wife's property.
In 1848, however, she got a law passed giving equal rights to
both men and women, and everybody decried her for the injury she
had done to all homes by thus throwing the apple of discord into
families. So in Pennsylvania women now hold property absolutely,
and can sell without the consent of the husband. But actually no
woman is free. As in the days of slavery the master owned the
services, not the body of his slaves, so it is with the wife. The
husband owns the services and all that can be earned by his wife.
It is quite possible, as things now stand, to legislate a woman
out of her home, and yet she cooks, and bakes, and works, and
saves, but it all belongs to the man, and if she dies the second
wife gets it all, for she always manages him. The extravagance of
dress is due alone to-day to the fact that from what woman saves
in her own expenses and those of her house she gets no benefit at
all, nor do her children, for it goes to the second wife, who,
perhaps, turns the children out of doors.
The resolutions called out a prolonged discussion, especially the
one on compulsory education, and that finally passed with a few
dissenting voices:
WHEREAS one-half of the citizens of the republic being
disfranchised are everywhere subjects of legislative caprice, and
may be anywhere robbed of their most sacred rights; therefore,
_Resolved_, That it is the duty of the Congress of the United
States to submit a proposition for a sixteenth amendment to the
national constitution prohibiting the several States from
disfranchising citizens on account of sex.
WHEREAS a monarchial government lives only through the ignorance
of the masses, and a republican government can live only through
the intelligence of the people; therefore,
_Resolved_, That it is the duty of Congress to submit to the
State legislatures propositions to so amend the Constitution of
the United States as to make education compulsory, and to make
intelligence a qualification for citizenship and suffrage in the
United States; said amendments to take effect January 1, 1880,
when all citizens of legal age, without distinction of sex, who
can read and write the English language, may be admitted to
citizenship.
WHEREAS a century of experience has proven that the safety and
stability of free institutions and the protection of all United
States citizens in the exercise of their inalienable rights and
the proper expression of the will of the whole people, are not
guaranteed by the present form of the Constitution of the United
States; therefore,
_Resolved_, That it is the duty of the several States to call a
national convention to revise the Constitution of the United
States, which, notwithstanding its fifteen amendments, does not
establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, promote the
general welfare, nor secure the blessings of liberty to us and to
our posterity.
_Resolved_, That the thanks of the women of this nation are due
to the Rev. Isaac M. See, of the Presbytery of Newark, for his
noble stand in behalf of woman's right to preach.
_Resolved_, That the action of the Presbytery of Newark in
condemning the Rev. I. M. See for his liberal course is an
indication of the tyranny of the clergy over the consciences of
women, and a determination to fetter the spirit of freedom.
Among the many letters to the convention we give the following:
BOSTON, 16th January, 1877.
DEAR FRIEND: These lines will not reach you in time to be of use.
I am sorry. But absence and cares must apologize for me. I think
you are on the right track--the best method to agitate the
question; and I am with you. I mean always to help everywhere and
every one.
WENDELL PHILLIPS.
Miss ANTHONY.
MANCHESTER, Eng., January 3, 1877.
MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY: It is with great pleasure that I write a
word of sympathy and encouragement, on the occasion of your Ninth
Annual Convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association.
Beyond wishing you a successful gathering, I will say nothing
about the movement in the United States. Women of either country
can do nothing directly in promoting the movement in the other;
and if they attempt to do so, there is danger that they may
hinder and embarrass those who are bearing the burden and heat of
the day. The only way in which mutual help can be given is
through the women of each nation working to gain ground in their
own country. Then, every step so gained, every actual advance of
the boundaries of civil and political rights for women is a gain,
not only to the country which has secured it, but to the cause of
human freedom all over the world.
This year marks the decennial of the movement in the United
Kingdom. In the current number of our journal, there is a sketch
of the political history of the movement here, which I commend to
the attention of your convention, and which I need not repeat.
The record will be seen to be one of great and rapid advance in
the political rights of women, but there has been an equally
marked change in other directions; women's interests in
education, and women's questions generally, are treated now with
much more respectful consideration than they were ten years ago.
We are gratified in believing that much of this consideration is
due to the attention roused by our energetic and persistent
demand for the suffrage, and in believing that infinitely greater
benefits of the same kind will accrue when women shall be in
possession of the franchise. Beyond the material gains in
legislation, we find a general improvement in the tone of feeling
and thought toward women--an approach, indeed, to the sentiment
recently expressed by Victor Hugo, that as man was the problem of
the eighteenth century, woman is the problem of the nineteenth
century. May our efforts to solve this problem lead to a happy
issue.
Yours truly,
LYDIA E. BECKER.
BOSTON, Mass., January 10, 1877.
DEAR MRS. STANTON: It is with some little pain, I confess, that I
accept your very courteous invitation to write a letter for your
Washington convention on the 19th instant; for what I must say,
if I say anything at all, is what I know will be very
unacceptable--I fear very displeasing--to the majority of those
to whom you will read it. If you conclude that my letter will
obstruct, and not facilitate the advancement of the cause you
have so faithfully labored for these many years, you have my most
cheerful consent to deliver it over to that general asylum of
profitless productions--the waste-basket.
Running this risk, however, I have this brief message to send to
those who now meet on behalf of woman's full recognition as
politically the equal of man, namely: that every woman suffragist
who upholds Christianity, tears down with one hand what she seeks
to build up with the other--that the Bible sanctions the slavery
principle itself, and applies it to woman as the divinely
ordained subordinate of man--and that by making herself the great
support and mainstay of instituted Christianity, woman rivets the
chain of superstition on her own soul and on man's soul alike,
and justifies him in obeying this religion by keeping her in
subjection to himself. If Christianity and the Bible are true,
woman is man's servant, and ought to be. The Bible gave to
negro-slavery its most terrible power--that of summoning the
consciences of the Christians to its defense; and the Bible gives
to woman-slavery the same terrible power. So plain is this to me
that I take it as a mere matter of course, when all the eloquence
of the woman-suffrage platform fails to arouse the Christian
women of this country to a proper assertion of their rights. What
else could one expect? Women will remain contented subjects and
subordinates just so long as they remain devoted believers in
Christianity; and no amount of argument, or appeal, or agitation
can change this fact. If you cannot educate women as a whole out
of Christianity, you cannot educate them as a whole into the
demand for equal rights.
The reason of this is short: Christianity teaches the rights of
God, not the rights of man or woman. You may search the Bible
from Genesis to Revelations, and not find one clear, strong, bold
affirmation of _human rights as such_; yet it is on human rights
as such--on the equality of all individuals, man or woman, with
respect to natural rights--that the demand for woman suffrage
must ultimately rest. I know I stand nearly alone in this, but I
believe from my soul that the woman movement is fundamentally
_anti-Christian_, and can find no deep justification but in the
ideas, the spirit, and the faith of free religion. Until women
come to see this too, and to give their united influence to this
latter faith, political power in their hands would destroy even
that measure of liberty which free-thinkers of both sexes have
painfully established by the sacrifices of many generations. Yet
I should vote for woman suffrage all the same, because it is
woman's right.
Yours very cordially,
FRANCIS E. ABBOT.
WASHINGTON, D. C., January 16, 1877.
MY DEAR FRIENDS: I thank you for your generous recognition of me
as an humble co-worker in the cause of equal rights, and regret
deeply my inability to be present at this anniversary of your
association. I tender to you, however, my hearty congratulations
on the marked progress of our cause. Wherever I have been, and
with whomsoever I have talked, making equal rights invariably the
subject, I find no opposing feeling to the simple and just
demands we make for our cause. The chief difficulty in the way is
the indifference of the people; they need an awakening. Some
Stephen S. Foster or Anna Dickinson should come forward, and with
their thunder and lightning, arouse the people from their deadly
apathy. I am glad to know that you are to have with you our
valued friend, E. M. Davis, of Philadelphia. We are indebted to
him more than all besides for whatever of life is found in the
movement in Pennsylvania. He has spared neither time, money, nor
personal efforts. Hoping you will have abundant success, I am,
dear friends, with you and the cause for which you have so nobly
labored, a humble and sincere worker.
ROBERT PURVIS.
OAKLAND, Cal., January 9, 1877.
_To the National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D. C.:_
Our incorporated State society has deputed Mrs. Ellen Clark
Sargent, the wife of Hon. A. A. Sargent, our fearless champion in
the United States Senate, to represent the women of California in
your National Convention, and with one so faithful and earnest,
we know our cause will be well represented; but there are many
among us who would gladly have journeyed to Washington to
participate in your councils. Many and radical changes have taken
place in the past year favorable to our sex, not the least of
which was the nomination and election of several women to the
office of county superintendent of common schools, by both the
Democratic and Republican parties, in which, however, the
Democrats led. Important changes in the civil code favorable to
the control of property by married women, have been made by the
legislatures during the last four years, through the untiring
efforts of Mrs. Sarah Wallis, Mrs. Knox and Mrs. Watson, of Santa
Clara county. In our schools and colleges, in every avenue of
industry, and in the general liberalization of public opinion
there has been marked improvement.
Yours very truly,
LAURA DEFORCE GORDON,
_Pres. California W. S. S._ (Incorporated).
Mrs. Stanton's letter to _The Ballot-Box_ briefly sums up the
proceedings of the convention:
TENAFLY, N. J., January 24, 1877.
DEAR EDITOR: If the little _Ballot-Box_ is not already stuffed to
repletion with reports from Washington, I crave a little space to
tell your readers that the convention was in all points
successful. Lincoln Hall, which seats about fifteen hundred
people, was crowded every session. The speaking was good, order
reigned, no heart-burnings behind the scenes, and the press
vouchsafed "respectful consideration."
The resolutions you will find more interesting and suggestive
than that kind of literature usually is, and I ask especial
attention to the one for a national convention to revise the
constitution, which, with all its amendments, is like a kite with
a tail of infinite length still to be lengthened. It is evident a
century of experience has so liberalized the minds of the
American people, that they have outgrown the constitution adapted
to the men of 1776. It is a monarchial document with republican
ideas engrafted in it, full of compromises between antagonistic
principles. An American statesman remarked that "The civil war
was fought to expound the constitution on the question of
slavery." Expensive expounding! Instead of further amending and
expounding, the real work at the dawn of our second century is to
make a new one. Again, I ask the attention of our women to the
educational resolution. After much thought it seems to me we
should have education compulsory in every State of the Union, and
make it the basis of suffrage, a national law, requiring that
those who vote after 1880 must be able to read and write the
English language. This would prevent ignorant foreigners voting
in six months after landing on our shores, and stimulate our
native population to higher intelligence. It would dignify and
purify the ballot-box and add safety and stability to our free
institutions. Mrs. Jane Grey Swisshelm, who had just returned
from Europe, attended the convention, and spoke on this subject.
Belva A. Lockwood, who had recently been denied admission to the
Supreme Court of the United States, although a lawyer in good
practice for three years in the Supreme Court of the District,
made a very scathing speech, reviewing the decision of the Court.
It may seem to your disfranchised readers quite presumptuous for
one of their number to make those nine wise men on the bench,
constituting the highest judicial authority in the United States,
subjects for ridicule before an audience of the sovereign people;
but, when they learn the decision in Mrs. Lockwood's case, they
will be reassured as to woman's capacity to cope with their
wisdom. "To arrive at the same conclusion, with these judges, it
is not necessary," said Mrs. Lockwood, "to understand
constitutional law, nor the history of English jurisprudence, nor
the inductive or deductive modes of reasoning, as no such
profound learning or processes of thought were involved in that
decision, which was simply this: 'There is no precedent for
admitting a woman to practice in the Supreme Court of the United
States, hence Mrs. Lockwood's application cannot be considered.'"
On this point Mrs. Lockwood showed that it was the glory of each
generation to make its own precedents. As there was none for Eve
in the garden of Eden, she argued there need be none for her
daughters on entering the college, the church, or the courts.
Blackstone--of whose works she inferred the judges were
ignorant--gives several precedents for women in the English
courts. As Mrs. Lockwood--tall, well-proportioned, with dark hair
and eyes, regular features, in velvet dress and train, with
becoming indignation at such injustice--marched up and down the
platform and rounded out her glowing periods, she might have
fairly represented the Italian Portia at the bar of Venice. No
more effective speech was ever made on our platform.
Matilda Joslyn Gage, whose speeches are always replete with
historical research, reviewed the action of the Republican party
toward woman from the introduction of the word "male" into the
fourteenth amendment of the constitution down to the celebration
of our national birthday in Philadelphia, when the declaration of
the mothers was received in contemptuous silence, while Dom Pedro
and other foreign dignitaries looked calmly on. Mrs. Gage makes
as dark a chapter for the Republicans as Mrs. Lockwood for the
judiciary, or Mrs. Blake for the church. Mrs. B. had been an
attentive listener during the trial of the Rev. Isaac See before
the presbytery of Newark, N. J., hence she felt moved to give the
convention a chapter of ecclesiastical history, showing the
struggles through which the church was passing with the
irrepressible woman in the pulpit. Mrs. Blake's biblical
interpretations and expositions proved conclusively that Scott's
and Clark's commentaries would at no distant day be superceded by
standard works from woman's standpoint. It is not to be supposed
that women ever can have fair play as long as men only write and
interpret the Scriptures and make and expound the laws. Why would
it not be a good idea for women to leave these conservative
gentlemen alone in the churches? How sombre they would look with
the flowers, feathers, bright ribbons and shawls all gone--black
coats only kneeling and standing--and with the deep-toned organ
swelling up, the solemn bass voice heard only in awful solitude;
not one soprano note to rise above the low, dull wail to fill the
arched roof with triumphant melody! One such experiment from
Maine to California would bring these bigoted presbyteries to
their senses.
Miss Phoebe Couzins, too, was at the convention, and gave her new
lecture, "A Woman without a Country," in which she shows all that
woman has done--from fitting out ships for Columbus, to sharing
the toils of the great exposition--without a place of honor in
the republic for the living, or a statue to the memory of the
dead. Hon. A. G. Riddle and Francis Miller spoke ably and
eloquently as usual; the former on the sixteenth amendment and
the presidential aspect, modestly suggesting that if twenty
million women had voted, they might have been able to find out
for whom the majority had cast their ballots. Mr. Miller
recommended State action, advising us to concentrate our forces
in Colorado as a shorter way to success than constitutional
amendments.
His speech aroused Susan B. Anthony to the boiling point; for, if
there is anything that exasperates her, it is to be remanded, as
she says, to John Morrissey's constituency for her rights. She
contends that if the United States authority could punish her for
voting in the State of New York, it has the same power to protect
her there in the exercise of that right. Moreover, she said, we
have two wings to our movement. The American Association is
trying the popular-vote method. The National Association is
trying the constitutional method, which has emancipated and
enfranchised the African and secured to that race all their civil
rights. To-day by this method they are in the courts, the
colleges, and the halls of legislation in every State in the
Union, while we have puttered with State rights for thirty years
without a foothold anywhere, except in the territories, and it is
now proposed to rob the women of their rights in those
localities. As the two methods do not conflict, and what is done
in the several States tells on the nation, and what is done by
congress reacts again on the States, it must be a good thing to
keep up both kinds of agitation.
In the middle of November the National Association sent out
thousands of petitions and appeals for the sixteenth amendment,
which were published and commented on extensively by the press in
every State in the Union. Early in January they began to pour
into Washington at the rate of a thousand a day, coming from
twenty-six different States. It does not require much wisdom to
see that when these petitions were placed in the hands of the
representatives of their States, a great educational work was
accomplished at Washington, and public sentiment there has its
legitimate effect throughout the country, as well as that already
accomplished in the rural districts by the slower process of
circulating and signing the petitions. The present uncertain
position of men and parties, has made politicians more ready to
listen to the demands of their constituents, and never has woman
suffrage been treated with more courtesy in Washington.
To Sara Andrews Spencer we are indebted, for the great labor of
receiving, assorting, counting, rolling-up and planning the
presentation of the petitions. It was by a well considered _coup
d'etat_ that, with her brave coadjutors, she appeared on the
floor of the House at the moment of adjournment, and there,
without circumlocution, gave each member a petition from his own
State. Even Miss Anthony, always calm in the hour of danger, on
finding herself suddenly whisked into those sacred enclosures,
amid a crowd of stalwart men, spittoons, and scrap-baskets, when
brought _vis-a-vis_ with our champion, Mr. Hoar, hastily
apologized for the intrusion, to which the honorable gentleman
promptly replied, "I hope, Madam, yet to see you on this floor,
in your own right, and in business hours too." Then and there the
work of the next day was agreed on, the members gladly accepting
the petitions. As you have already seen, Mr. Hoar made the motion
for the special order, which was carried and the petitions
presented. Your readers will be glad to know, that Mr. Hoar has
just been chosen, by Massachusetts, as her next senator--that
gives us another champion in the Senate. As there are many
petitions still in circulation, urge your readers to keep sending
them until the close of the session, as we want to know how many
women are in earnest on this question. It is constantly said,
"Women do not want to vote." Ten thousand told our
representatives at Washington in a single day that they did! What
answer?
Yours sincerely, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
The press commented as follows:
SIXTEENTH AMENDMENT.--The woman suffragists, who had a benefit in
the House of Representatives, on Friday, when their petitions
were presented, transferred their affections to the Senate on
Saturday to witness the presentation of a large number of
petitions in that body. It is impossible to tell whether the
results desired by the women will follow this concerted action,
but it is certain that they have their forces better organized
this year than they ever had before, and they have gone to work
on a more systematic plan.--[_National Republican._
SIXTEENTH AMENDMENT IN THE SENATE--THE TEN THOUSAND PETITIONERS
ROYALLY TREATED.--That women will, by voting, lose nothing of
man's courteous, chivalric attention and respect is admirably
proven by the manner in which both houses of congress, in the
midst of the most anxious and perplexing presidential conflict in
our history, received their appeals from twenty-three States for
a sixteenth amendment protecting the rights of women.
In both houses, by unanimous consent, the petitions were
presented and read in open session. The speaker of the House
gallantly prepared the way yesterday, and the most prominent
senators to-day improved the occasion by impressing upon the
Senate the importance of the question. Mr. Sargent reminded the
senators that there were forty thousand more votes for woman
suffrage in Michigan than for the new State constitution, and Mr.
Dawes said, upon presenting the petition from Massachusetts, that
the question was attracting the attention of both political
parties in that State, and he commended it to the early and
earnest consideration of the Senate. Mr. Cockrell of Missouri,
merrily declared that his petitioners were the most beautiful and
accomplished daughters of the State, which of course he felt
compelled to do when Miss Couzins' bright eyes were watching the
proceedings from the gallery. Mr. Cameron of Pennsylvania,
suggested that it would have been better to put them all together
and not consume the time of the Senate with so many
presentations.
The officers of the National Woman Suffrage Association held a
caucus after the adjournment of the Senate, and decided to thank
Mr. Cameron for his suggestion, and while they had no anxiety
lest senators should consume too much time attending to the
interests of women whom they claim to represent, and might
reasonably anticipate that ten millions of disfranchised citizens
would trouble them considerably with petitions while this
injustice continued, yet they would promptly adopt the senator's
counsel and roll up such a mammoth petition as the Senate had not
yet seen from the thousands of women who had no opportunity to
sign these. Accordingly they immediately prepared the
announcement for the friends of woman suffrage to send on their
names to the chairman of the congressional committee. They
naturally feel greatly encouraged by the evident interest of both
parties in the proposed sixteenth amendment, and will work with
renewed strength to secure the coöperation of the women of the
country.--[_Washington Star._
The time has evidently arrived when demands for a recognition of
the personal, civil and political rights of
one-half--unquestionably the better half--of the people cannot be
laughed down or sneered down, and recent indications are that
they cannot much longer be voted down. It was quite clear on
Friday and Saturday, when petitions from the best citizens of
twenty-three States were presented in House and Senate, that the
leaders of the two political parties vied with each other in
doing honor to the grave subject proposed for their
consideration. The speaker of the House set a commendable example
of courtesy to women by proposing that the petitions be delivered
in open House, to which there was no objection. The early
advocates of equal rights for women--Hoar, Kelley, Banks, Kasson,
Lawrence, and Lapham--were, if possible, surpassed in courtesy by
those who are not committed, but are beginning to see that a
finer element in the body politic would clear the vision, purify
the atmosphere and help to settle many vexed questions on the
basis of exact and equal justice.
In the Senate the unprecedented courtesy was extended to women of
half an hour's time on the floor for the presentation of
petitions, exactly alike in form, from twenty-one States, and
while this kind of business this session has usually been
transacted with an attendance of from seven to ten senators, it
was observed that only two out of twenty-three senators who had
sixteenth amendment petitions to present were out of their seats.
Senator Sargent said the presence of women at the polls would
purify elections and give us a better class of public officials,
and the State would thus be greatly benefited. The subject was
receiving serious consideration in this country and in England.
Senator Dawes, in presenting the petition from Massachusetts,
said the subject was commanding the attention of both political
parties in his own State.
The officers of the National Association, who had been able to
give only a few days' time to securing the coöperation of the
women of the several States in their present effort, held a
caucus after the adjournment of the Senate, and decided to
immediately issue a new appeal for a mammoth petition, which
would even more decidedly impress the two houses with the
importance of protecting the rights of women by a constitutional
amendment. Considering the many long days and weeks consumed in
both houses in discussing the political rights of the colored
male citizens, there is an obvious propriety in giving full and
fair consideration to the protection of the rights of wives,
mothers and daughters.--[_The National Republican_, January 22,
1877.
The National Association held its anniversary in Masonic Temple,
New York, May 24, 1877. Isabella Beecher Hooker, vice-president for
Connecticut, called the meeting to order and invited Rev. Olympia
Brown to lead in prayer. Mrs. Gage made the annual report of the
executive committee. Dr. Clemence S. Lozier of New York was elected
president for the coming year. Pledges were made to roll up
petitions with renewed energy; and resolutions were duly
discussed[22] and adopted:
WHEREAS, Such minor matters as declaring peace and war, the
coining of money, the imposition of tariff, and the control of
the postal service, are forbidden the respective States; and
whereas, upon the framing of the constitution, it was wisely
held that these property rights would be unsafe under the
control of thirteen varying deliberative bodies; and whereas, by
a curious anomaly, power over suffrage, the basis and
corner-stone of the nation, is held to be under control of the
respective States; and
WHEREAS, the experience of a century has shown that the personal
right of self-government inhering in each individual, is wholly
insecure under the control of thirty-eight varying deliberative
bodies; and
WHEREAS, the right of self-government by the use of the ballot
inheres in the citizen of the United States; therefore,
_Resolved_, That it is the immediate and most important duty of
the government to secure this right on a national basis to all
citizens, independent of sex.
_Resolved_, That the right of suffrage underlies all other
rights, and that in working to secure it women are doing the best
temperance, moral reform, educational, and religious work of the
age.
_Resolved_, That we solemnly protest against the recent memorial
to congress, from Utah, asking the disfranchisement of the women
of that territory, and that we ask of congress that this request,
made in violation of the spirit of our institutions, be not
granted.
_Resolved_, That the thanks of the National Woman Suffrage
Association are hereby tendered to the late speaker of the House
of Representatives, Hon. Samuel J. Randall, Pa.; and to
Representatives Banks, Mass.; Blair, N. H.: Bland, Mo.; Brown,
Kan.; Cox, N. Y.; Eames, R. I.; Fenn, Col.; Hale, Me.; Hamilton,
N. J.; Hendee, Vt.; Hoar, Mass.; Holman, Ind.; Jones, N. H.;
Kasson, Iowa; Kelley, Pa. Knott, Ky.; Lane, Oregon; Lapham, N.
Y.; Lawrence, O.; Luttrel, Cal.; Lynde, Wis.; McCrary, Iowa;
Morgan, Mo.; O'Neill, Pa.; Springer, Ill.; Strait, Minn.;
Waldron, Mich.; Warren, Conn.; Wm. B. Williams, Mich.; and
Senators Allison, Iowa; Bogy, Mo.; Burnside, R. I. (for Conn. and
R. I.); Cameron, Pa.; Cameron, Wis.; Chaffee, Col.; Christiancy,
Mich.; Cockrell, Mo.; Conkling, N. Y.; Cragin, N. H.; Dawes,
Mass.; Dorsey, Ark. (a petition from Me.); Edmunds, Vt.;
Frelinghuysen, N. J.; Hamlin, Me.; Kernan, N. Y.; McCreery, Ky.;
Mitchell, Oregon; Morrill, Vt.; Morton, Ind.; Oglesby, Ill.;
Sargent, Cal.; Sherman, Ohio; Spencer, Ala. (a petition from the
District); Thurman, Ohio (a petition from Kansas); Wadleigh, N.
H.; Wallace, Pa.; Windom, Minn.; Wright, Iowa, for representing
the women of the United States in the presentation of the
sixteenth amendment petitions from ten thousand citizens, in open
House and Senate, at the last session of congress.
_Resolved_, That while we recognize with gratitude the opening of
many new avenues of labor and usefulness to women, and the
amelioration of their condition before the law in many States, we
still declare there can be no fair play for women in the world of
business until they stand on the same plane of citizenship with
their masculine competitors.
_Resolved_, That in entering the professions and other
departments of business heretofore occupied largely by men, the
women of to-day should desire to accept the same conditions and
tests of excellence with their brothers, and should demand the
same standard for men and women in business, art, education, and
morals.
_Resolved_, That the thanks of this association are hereby
tendered to the Hon. Geo. F. Hoar of Massachusetts, for rising in
his place in the Cincinnati presidential convention, and asking
in behalf of the disfranchised women of the United States that
the convention grant a hearing to Mrs. Spencer, of Washington,
the accredited delegate of the National Woman Suffrage
Association.
Great unanimity was reached in these sentiments and the enthusiasm
manifested gave promise of earnest labor and more hopeful results.
It was felt that there was reason to thank God and take courage.
The day before the opening of the Tenth Washington Convention a
caucus was held in the ladies' reception-room[23] in the Senate
wing of the capitol. A roll-call of the delegates developed the
fact that every State in the Union would be represented by women
now here and _en route_, or by letter. Mrs. Spencer said she had
made a request in the proper quarter, that the delegates should be
allowed to go on the floor when the Senate was actually in session,
and present their case to the senators. She had been met with the
statement that such a proceeding was without precedent. Mrs. Hooker
suggested that inasmuch as there was a precedent for such a course
in the House, the delegates should meet the following Thursday to
canvass for votes in the House of Representatives. Another delegate
recalled the fact that Mrs. General Sherman and Mrs. Admiral
Dahlgren had been admitted upon the floor of the Senate while it
was in session, to canvass for votes against woman suffrage.
This agitation resulted in a resolution introduced by Hon. A. A.
Sargent, January 10:
WHEREAS, Thousands of women of the United States have
petitioned congress for an amendment to the constitution
allowing women the right of suffrage; and whereas, many of
the representative women of the country favoring such
amendment are present in the city and have requested to be
heard before the Senate in advocacy of said amendment,
_Resolved_, That at a session of the Senate, to be held on
----, said representative women, or such of them as may be
designated for that purpose, may be heard before the Senate;
but for one hour only.
Mr. EDMUNDS demanded the regular order.
Mr. SARGENT advocated the resolution, and urged immediate action,
as delay would detain the women in the city at considerable
expense to them. He thought the question not so intricate that
senators require time for consideration whether or not the women
should be heard.
Mr. EDMUNDS said there was a rule of long standing that forbids
any person appearing before the Senate. There was much to be said
in favor of the petitions, but it was against the logic of the
resolution that the petitioners required more than was accorded
any others. He, therefore, insisted on his demand for the regular
order.
Mr. SARGENT gave notice that he would call up his resolution
to-morrow, and reminded the senators that no rule was so sacred
that it could not be set aside by unanimous consent.
On the next day there was a lively discussion, Senators Edmunds,
Thurman and Conkling insisting there was no precedent; Mr. Sargent,
assisted by Senators Burnside, Anthony and Dawes, reminding them
of several occasions when the Senate had extended similar
courtesies. The resolution was voted down--31 to 13.[24]
Hon. Wm. D. Kelly, of Pennsylvania, performed like service in the
House:
Mr. KELLY asked leave to offer a resolution, reciting that
petitions were about to be presented to the House of
Representatives from citizens of thirty-five States of the Union,
asking for the adoption of an amendment to the constitution to
prohibit the disfranchisement of any citizen of any State; and
that there be a session of the House on Saturday, January 12, at
which time the advocates of the constitutional amendment may be
heard at the bar. These petitions ask the House to originate a
movement which it cannot consumate, but which it can only submit
to the States for their action. The resolution only asks that the
House will hear a limited number of the advocates of this
amendment, who are now in the city, and on a day when there is
not likely to be a session for business. They only ask the
privilege of stating the grounds of their belief why the
constitution should be amended in the direction they indicate.
Many of these ladies who petition are tax-payers, and they
believe their rights have been infringed upon.
Mr. CRITTENDEN of Missouri, objected, and the resolution was not
entertained.
This refusal to women pleading for their own freedom was the more
noticeable, as not only had Mesdames Sherman and Dahlgren been
heard upon the floor of the Senate in opposition, but the floor of
the House was shortly after granted to Charles Stewart Parnell, M.
P., that he might plead the cause of oppressed Ireland. The
Washington _Union_ of January 11, 1878, largely sustained by
federal patronage, commented as follows:
To allow the advocates of woman suffrage to plead their cause on
the floor of the Senate, as proposed yesterday by Mr. Sargent,
would be a decided innovation upon the established usages of
parliamentary bodies. If the privilege were granted in this case
it would next be claimed by the friends and the enemies of the
silver bill, by the supporters and opponents of resumption, by
hard money men and soft money men, by protectionists and
free-traders, by labor-reformers, prohibitionists and the Lord
knows whom besides. In fact, the admission of the ladies to speak
on the floor of the Senate would be the beginning of lively times
in that body.
The convention was held in Lincoln Hall, January, 8, 9, 1878. The
house was filled to overflowing at the first session. A large
number of representative women occupied the platform.[25] In
opening the meeting the president, Dr. Clemence Lozier, gave a
résumé of the progress of the cause. Mrs. Stanton made an argument
on "National Protection for National Citizens."[26] Mrs. Lockwood
presented the following resolutions, which called out an amusing
debate on the "man idea"--that he can best represent the home, the
church, the State, the industries, etc., etc.:
_Resolved_, That the president of this convention appoint a
committee to select three intelligent women who shall be paid
commissioners to the Paris exposition; and also six other women
who shall be volunteer commissioners to said exposition to
represent the industries of American women.
_Resolved_, That to further this object the committee be
instructed to confer with the President, the Secretary of State,
and Commissioner McCormick.
A committee was appointed[27] and at once repaired to the
white-house, where they were pleasantly received by President
Hayes. After learning the object of their visit, the president
named the different classes of industries for which no
commissioners had been appointed, asked the ladies to nominate
their candidates, and assured them he would favor a representation
by women.
Miss JULIA SMITH of Glastonbury, Conn., the veteran defender of
the maxim of our fathers, "no taxation without representation,"
narrated the experience of herself and her sister Abby with the
tax-gatherers. They attended the town-meeting and protested
against unjust taxation, but finally their cows went into the
treasury to satisfy the tax-collector.
ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT of the Chicago _Inter-Ocean_, spoke on
the temperance work being done in Chicago, in connection with the
advocacy of the sixteenth amendment.
LILLIE DEVEREUX BLAKE reviewed the work in New York in getting
the bill through the legislature to appoint women on school
boards, which was finally vetoed by Governor Robinson.
Dr. MARY THOMPSON of Oregon, and Mrs. CROMWELL of Arkansas, gave
interesting reports from their States, relating many laughable
encounters with the opposition.
ROBERT PURVIS of Philadelphia, read a letter from the suffragists
of Pennsylvania, in which congratulations were extended to the
convention.
MARY A. S. CAREY, a worthy representative of the District of
Columbia, the first colored woman that ever edited a newspaper in
the United States, and who had been a worker in the cause for
twenty years, expressed her views on the question, and said the
colored women would support whatever party would allow them their
rights, be it Republican or Democratic.
Rev. OLYMPIA BROWN believed that a proper interpretation of the
fourteenth and fifteenth amendments did confer suffrage on women.
But men don't so understand it, and as a consequence when Mahomet
would not come to the mountain the mountain must go to Mahomet.
She said the day was coming, and rapidly, too, when women would
be given suffrage. There were very few now who did not
acknowledge the justice of it.
ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER gave her idea on "A Reconstructed
Police," showing how she would rule a police force if in her
control. Commencing with the location of the office, she
proceeded with her list of feminine and masculine officers, the
chief being herself. She would have a superintendent as aid, with
coördinate powers, and, besides the police force proper, which
she would form of men and women in equal proportions; she would
have matrons in charge of all station-houses. Her treatment of
vagrants would be to wash, feed, and clothe them, make them
stitch, wash and iron, take their history down for future
reference, and finally turn them out as skilled laborers. The
care of vagrant children would form an item in her system.
Mrs. LAWRENCE of Massachusetts, said the country is in danger,
and like other republics, unless taken care of, will perish by
its own vices. She said twelve hundred thousand men and women of
this country now stand with nothing to do, because their
legislators of wealth were working not for the many, but the few,
drunkenness and vice being superinduced by such a state of
things. She insisted that women were to blame for much of the
evil of the world--for bringing into life children who grow up in
vice from their inborn tendencies.
Dr. CAROLINE B. WINSLOW of Washington, referred to the speech of
Mrs. Lawrence, saying she hoped God would bless her for having
the courage to speak as she did. There is no greater reform than
for man and woman to be true to the marital relations.
BELVA A. LOCKWOOD said the only way for women to get their rights
is to take them. If necessary let there be a domestic
insurrection. Let young women refuse to marry, and married women
refuse to sew on buttons, cook, and rock the cradle until their
liege-lords acknowledge the rights they are entitled to. There
were more ways than one to conquer a man; and women, like the
strikers in the railroad riots, should carry their demands all
along the line. She dwelt at length upon the refusal of the
courts in allowing Lavinia Dundore to become a constable, and
asked why she should not be appointed.
The Rev. OLYMPIA BROWN said that if they wanted wisdom and
prosperity in the nation, health and happiness in the home, they
must give woman the power to purify her surroundings; the right
to make the outside world fit for her children to live in. Who
are more interested than mothers in the sanitary condition of our
schools and streets, and in the moral atmosphere of our towns and
cities?
Marshal FREDERICK DOUGLASS said his reluctance to come forward
was not due to any lack of interest in the subject under
discussion. For thirty years he had believed in human rights to
all men and women. Nothing that has ever been proposed involved
such vital interests as the subject which now invites attention.
When the negro was freed the question was asked if he was capable
of voting intelligently. It was answered in this way: that if a
sober negro knows as much as a drunken white man he is capable of
exercising the elective franchise.
LAVINIA C. DUNDORE, introduced as the lady who had made
application for an appointment as a constable and been refused,
made a pithy address, in which she alluded to her recent
disappointment.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE spoke of the influence of the church on
woman's liberties, and then referred to a large number of law
books--ancient and modern, ecclesiastical and lay--in which the
liberties of woman were more or less abridged; the equality of
sexes which obtained in Rome before the Christian era, and the
gradual discrimination in favor of men which crept in with the
growth of the church.
Mrs. DEVEREUX BLAKE said there is no aspect of this question that
strikes us so forcibly as the total ignoring of women by public
men. However polite they may be in private life, when they come
to public affairs they seem to forget that women exist. The men
who framed the last amendment to the constitution seemed to have
wholly forgotten that women existed or had rights.... Huxley said
in reply to an inquiry as to woman suffrage, "Of course I'm in
favor of it. Does it become us to lay additional burdens on those
who are already overweighted?" It is always the little men who
oppose us; the big-hearted men help us along. All in this
audience are of the broad-shouldered type, and I hope all will go
out prepared to advocate our principles. In reply to the
objection that women do not need the right to vote because men
represent them so well, she asked if any man in the audience ever
asked his wife how he should vote, and told him to stand up if
there was such a one. [Here a young man in the back part of the
hall stood up amidst loud applause.]
The various resolutions were discussed at great length and adopted,
though much difference of opinion was expressed on the last, which
demands that intelligence shall be made the basis of suffrage:
_Resolved_, That the National Constitution should be so amended
as to secure to United States citizens at home the same
protection for their individual rights against State tyranny, as
is now guaranteed everywhere against foreign aggressions.
_Resolved_, That the civil and political rights of the educated
tax-paying women of this nation should take precedence of all
propositions and debates in the present congress as to the future
status of the Chinese and Indians under the flag of the United
States.
WHEREAS, The essential elements of justice are already recognized
in the constitution; and, whereas, our fathers proposed to
establish a purely secular government in which all forms of
religion should be equally protected, therefore,
_Resolved_, That it is preëminently unjust to tax the property of
widows and spinsters to its full value, while the clergy are made
a privileged class by exempting from taxation $1,500 of their
property in some States, while in all States parsonages and other
church property, amounting to millions of dollars, are exempted,
which, if fairly taxed, would greatly lighten the national debt,
and thereby the burdens of the laboring masses.
_Resolved_, That thus to exempt one class of citizens, one kind
of property, from taxation, at the expense of all others, is a
great national evil, in a moral as well as a financial point of
view. It is an assumption that the church is a more important
institution than the family; that the influence of the clergy is
of more vital consequence in the progress of civilization than
that of the women of this republic; from which we emphatically
dissent.
_Resolved_, That universal education is the true basis of
universal suffrage; hence the several States should so amend
their constitutions as to make education compulsory, and, as a
stimulus to the rising generation, declare that after 1885 all
who exercise the right of suffrage must be able to read and write
the English language. For, while the national government should
secure the equal right of suffrage to all citizens, the State
should regulate its exercise by proper attainable qualifications.
On January 10, 1878, our champion in the Senate, Hon. A. A.
Sargent, of California, by unanimous consent, presented the
following joint resolution, which was read twice and referred to
the Committee on Privileges and Elections:
JOINT RESOLUTION _proposing an Amendment to the Constitution of
the United States_.--
_Resolved_ by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in congress assembled, two-thirds of
each House concurring therein, That the following article be
proposed to the legislatures of the several States as an
amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which, when
ratified by three-fourths of the said legislatures, shall be
valid as part of the said constitution, namely:
ARTICLE 16, SEC. 1.--The right of citizens of the United States
to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or
by any State on account of sex.
SEC. 2.--Congress shall have power to enforce this article by
appropriate legislation.
The Committee on Privileges and Elections granted hearings to the
National Association on January 11, 12, when the delegates,[28]
representing the several States, made their respective arguments
and appeals. Clemence S. Lozier, M. D., president of the
association, first addressed the committee and read the following
extract from a recent letter from Victor Hugo:
Our ill-balanced society seems as if it would take from woman all
that nature had endowed her with. In our codes there is something
to recast. It is what I call the woman-law. Man has had his law;
he has made it for himself. Woman has only the law of man. She by
this law is civilly a minor and morally a slave. Her education is
embued with this twofold character of inferiority. Hence many
sufferings to her which man must justly share. There must be
reform here, and it will be to the benefit of civilization,
truth, and light.
In concluding, Dr. Lozier said: I have now the honor to introduce
Miss Julia E. Smith, of Glastonbury, Conn., who will speak to you
concerning the resistance of her sister and herself to the
payment of taxes in her native town, on the ground that they are
unrepresented in all town meetings, and therefore have no voice
in the expenditure of the taxes which they are compelled to pay.
Miss SMITH said: _Gentlemen of the Committee_--This is the first
time in my life that I have trod these halls, and what has
brought me here? I say, oppression--oppression of women by men.
Under the law they have taken from us $2,000 worth of
meadow-land, and sold it for taxes of less than $50, and we were
obliged to redeem it, for we could not lose the most valuable
part of our farm. They have come into our house and said, "You
must pay so much; we must execute the laws"; and we are not
allowed to have a voice in the matter, or to modify laws that are
odious.
I have come to Washington, as men cannot address you for us. We
have no power at all; we are totally defenseless. [Miss Smith
then read two short letters written by her sister Abby to the
Springfield _Republican_.] These tell our brief story, and may I
not ask, gentlemen, that they shall so plead with you that you
will report to the Senate unanimously in favor of the sixteenth
amendment, which we ask in order that the women of these United
States who shall come after us may be saved the desecration of
their homes which we have suffered, and our country may be
relieved from the disgrace of refusing representation to that
half of its people that men call the better half, because it
includes their wives and daughters and mothers?
ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT, vice-president for Illinois:
_Gentlemen of the Committee_--We recognize your duty as men
intrusted with the control and guidance of the government to
carefully weigh every phase of this momentous question. Has the
time arrived when it will be safe and expedient to make a
practical application of these great principles of our government
to one-half of the governed, one-half of the citizens of the
United States? The favorite argument of the opposition has been
that women are represented by men, hence have no cause for
complaint. Any careful student of the progress of liberty must
admit that the only possible method for securing justice to the
represented is for their representatives to be made entirely
responsible to their constituents, and promptly removable by
them. We are only secure in delegating power when we can dictate
its use, limit the same, or revoke it. How many of your honorable
committee would vote to make the presidency an office for life,
said office to descend to the heirs in a male line forever, with
no reserved power of impeachment? Yet you would be more fairly
represented than are American women, since they have never
elected their representatives. So far as women are concerned you
are self-constituted rulers. We cannot hope for complete
representation while we are powerless to recall, impeach, or
punish our representatives. We meet with a case in point in the
history of Virginia. Bancroft gives us the following quotation
from the official records:
The freedom of elections was further impaired by "frequent
false returns," made by the sheriffs. Against these the
people had no sufficient redress, for the sheriffs were
responsible neither to them nor to officers of their
appointment. And how could a more pregnant cause of
discontent exist in a country where the elective franchise
was cherished as the dearest civil privilege?--If land is to
be taxed, none but landholders should elect the
legislature.--The other freemen, who are the more in number,
may refuse to be bound by those laws in which they have no
representation, and we are so well acquainted with the
temper of the people that we have reason to believe they had
rather pay their taxes than lose that privilege.
Would those statesmen have dared to tax those landholders and yet
deny them the privilege of choosing their representatives? And
if, forsooth, they had, would not each one of you have declared
such act unconstitutional and unjust? We are the daughters of
those liberty-loving patriots. Their blood flows in our veins,
and in view of the recognized physiological fact that special
characteristics are transmitted from fathers to daughters, do you
wonder that we tax-paying, American-born citizens of these United
States are here to protest in the name of liberty and justice? We
recognize, however, that you are not responsible for the present
political condition of women, and that the question confronting
you, as statesmen called to administer justice under existing
conditions, is, "What are the capacities of this great class for
self-government?" You have cautiously summoned us to adduce proof
that the ballot in the hands of women would prove a help, not a
hindrance; would bring wings, not weights.
First, then, we ask you in the significant name of history to
read the record of woman as a ruler from the time when Deborah
judged Israel, and the land had rest and peace forty years, even
down to this present when Victoria Regina, the Empress Queen,
rules her vast kingdom so ably that we sometimes hear American
men talk about a return "to the good old ways of limited
monarchy," with woman for a ruler. John Stuart Mill, after
studious research, testifies as follows:
When to queens and emperors we add regents and viceroys of
provinces, the list of women who have been eminent rulers of
mankind swells to a great length. The fact is so undeniable
that some one long ago tried to retort the argument by
saying that queens are better than kings, because under
kings women govern, but under queens, men. Especially is her
wonderful talent for governing evinced in Asia. If a Hindoo
principality is strongly, vigilantly, and economically
governed; if order is preserved without oppression; if
cultivation is extending, and the people prosperous, in
three cases out of four that principality is under a woman's
rule. This fact, to me an entirely unexpected one, I have
collected from a long official knowledge of Hindoo
governments. There are many such instances; for though by
Hindoo institutions a woman cannot reign, she is the legal
regent of a kingdom during the minority of the heir--and
minorities are frequent, the lives of the male rulers being
so often prematurely terminated through their inactivity and
excesses. When we consider that these princesses have never
been seen in public, have never conversed with any man not
of their own family, except from behind a curtain; that they
do not read, and if they did, there is no book in their
languages which can give them the smallest instruction on
political affairs, the example they afford of the natural
capacity of women for government is very striking.
In view of these facts, does it not appear that if there is any
one distinctively feminine characteristic, it is the
mother-instinct for government? But now with clearer vision we
reread the record of the past. True, we find no Raphael or
Beethoven, no Phidias or Michael Angelo among women. No woman has
painted the greatest picture, carved the finest statue, composed
the noblest oratorio or opera. Not many women's names appear
after Joan of Arc's in the long list of warriors; but, as a
ruler, woman stands to-day the peer of man.
While man has rendered such royal service in the realm of art,
woman has not been idle. Infinite wisdom has intrusted to her the
living, breathing marble or canvas, and with smiles and tears,
prayers and songs has she patiently wrought developing the latent
possibilities of the divine Christ-child, the infant Washington,
the baby Lincoln. Ah! since God and men have intrusted to woman
the weightiest responsibility known to earth, the development and
education of the human soul, need you fear to intrust her with
citizenship? Is the ballot more precious than the soul of your
child? If it is safe in the home, in the school-room, the
Sunday-school, to place in woman's hands the education of your
children, is it not safe to allow that mother to express her
choice in regard to which one of these sons, her boys whom she
has taught and nursed, shall make laws for her guidance?
Just here, in imagination, is heard the question, "How much help
could we expect from women on financial questions?" We accept the
masculine idea of woman's mathematical deficiencies. We have had
slight opportunity for discovering the best proportions of a
silver dollar, owing to the fact that the family specimens have
been zealously guarded by the male members; and yet, we may have
some latent possibilities in that direction, since already the
"brethren" in our debt-burdened churches wail out from the depths
of masculine indebtedness and interest-tables, "Our sisters, we
pray you come over and help us!" And, in view of the fact of the
present condition of finances, in view of the fact of the
enormous taxes you impose upon us, can you look us calmly in the
face and assert that matters might, would, should, or could have
been worse, even though Julia Ward Howe, Mary A. Livermore, or
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, had voted on the silver bill?
A moment since I referred to the great responsibilities of
motherhood, and doubtless your mental comment was, "Yes, that is
woman's peculiar sphere; there she should be content to remain."
It _is_ our sphere--beautiful, glorious, almost infinite in its
possibilities. We accept the work; we only ask for opportunity to
perform it. The sphere has enlarged, that is all. There has been
a new revelation. That historic "first gun" proclaimed a
wonderful message to the daughters of America; for, when the
smoke of the cannonading had lifted, the entire horizon of woman
was broadened, illuminated, glorified. On that April morn, when a
nation of citizens suddenly sprang into an army of warriors, with
a patriotism as intense, a consecration as true, American women
quietly assumed their vacated places and became citizens. New
boundaries were defined. A Mary Somerville or Maria Mitchell
seized the telescope and alone with God and the stars, cast a new
horoscope for woman. And the new truth, electrifying, glorifying
American womanhood to-day, is the discovery that the State is
but the larger family, the nation the old homestead, and that in
this national home there is a room and a corner and a duty for
"mother." A duty recognized by such a statesman as John Adams,
who wrote to his wife in regard to her mother:
Your mother had a clear and penetrating understanding and a
profound judgment, as well as an honest, a friendly and
charitable heart. There is one thing, however, which you
will forgive me if I hint to you. Let me ask you rather if
you are not of my opinion. Were not her talents and virtues
too much confined to private, social and domestic life? My
opinion of the duties of religion and morality comprehends a
very extensive connection with society at large and the
great interests of the public. Does not natural morality
and, much more, Christian benevolence make it our
indispensable duty to endeavor to serve our fellow-creatures
to the utmost of our power in promoting and supporting those
great political systems and general regulations upon which
the happiness of multitudes depends? The benevolence,
charity, capacity and industry which exerted in private life
would make a family, a parish or a town happy, employed upon
a larger scale and in support of the great principles of
virtue and freedom of political regulations, might secure
whole nations and generations from misery, want and
contempt.
Intense domestic life is selfish. The home evidently needs
fathers as much as mothers. Tender, wise fatherhood is beautiful
as motherhood, but there are orphaned children to be cared for.
These duties to the State and nation as mothers, true to the
highest needs of our children, we dare not ignore; and the nation
cannot much longer afford to have us ignore them.
As statesmen, walking on the shore piled high with the
"drift-wood of kings," the wrecks of nations and governments, you
have discovered the one word emblazoned as an epitaph on each and
every one, "Luxury, luxury, luxury!" You have hitherto placed a
premium upon woman's idleness, helplessness, dependence. The
children of most of our fashionable women are being educated by
foreign nurses. How can you expect them to develop into patriotic
American statesmen? For the sake of country I plead--for the sake
of a responsible, exalted womanhood; for the sake of a purer
womanhood; for home and truth, and native land. As a daughter,
with holiest, tenderest, most grateful memories clinging to the
almost sacred name of father; as a wife, receiving constant
encouragement, support, and coöperation from one who has revealed
to her the genuine nobility of true manhood; as a mother, whose
heart still thrills at the first greeting from her little son;
and as a sister, watching with intense interest the entrance of a
brother into the great world of work, I could not be half so
loyal to woman's cause were it not a synonym for the equal rights
of humanity--a diviner justice for all!
With one practical question I rest my case. The world objected to
woman's entrance into literature, the pulpit, the lyceum, the
college, the school. What has she wrought? Our wisest thinkers
and historians assert that literature has been purified. Poets
and judges at international collegiate contests award to woman's
thought the highest prize. Miss Lucia Peabody received upon the
occasion of her second election to the Boston school board the
highest vote ever polled for any candidate. Since woman has
proved faithful over a few things, need you fear to summon her to
your side to assist you in executing the will of the nation? And
now, yielding to none in intense love of womanhood; standing here
beneath the very dome of the national capitol overshadowed by the
old flag; with the blood of the revolutionary patriots coursing
through my veins; as a native-born, tax-paying American citizen,
I ask equality before the law.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON said: _Gentlemen of the Committee_: In
appearing before you to ask for a sixteenth amendment to the
United States Constitution, permit me to say that with the Hon.
Charles Sumner, we believe that our constitution, fairly
interpreted, already secures to the humblest individual all the
rights, privileges and immunities of American citizens. But as
statesmen differ in their interpretations of constitutional law
as widely as they differ in their organizations, the rights of
every class of citizens must be clearly defined in concise,
unmistakable language. All the great principles of liberty
declared by the fathers gave no protection to the black man of
the republic for a century, and when, with higher light and
knowledge his emancipation and enfranchisement were proclaimed,
it was said that the great truths set forth in the prolonged
debates of thirty years on the individual rights of the black
man, culminating in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to
the constitution, had no significance for woman. Hence we ask
that this anomalous class of beings, not recognized by the
supreme powers as either "persons" or "citizens" may be defined
and their rights declared in the constitution.
In the adjustment of the question of suffrage now before the
people of this country for settlement, it is of the highest
importance that the organic law of the land should be so framed
and construed as to work injustice to none, but secure as far as
possible perfect political equality among all classes of
citizens. In determining your right and power to legislate on
this question, consider what has been done already.
As the national constitution declares that "all persons born or
naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction
thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the State
wherein they reside," it is evident: _First_--That the immunities
and privileges of American citizenship, however defined, are
national in character, and paramount to all State authority.
_Second_--That while the constitution leaves the qualification of
electors to the several States, it nowhere gives them the right
to deprive any citizen of the elective franchise; the State may
regulate but not abolish the right of suffrage for any class.
_Third_--As the Constitution of the United States expressly
declares that no State shall make or enforce any law that shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United
States, those provisions of the several State constitutions that
exclude citizens from the franchise on account of sex, alike
violate the spirit and letter of the Federal constitution.
_Fourth_--As the question of naturalization is expressly withheld
from the States, and as the States would clearly have no right to
deprive of the franchise naturalized citizens, among whom women
are expressly included, still more clearly have they no right to
deprive native-born women-citizens of the right.
Let me give you a few extracts from the national constitution
upon which these propositions are based:
_Preamble:_ We, the people of the United States, in order to
form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure
domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense,
promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of
liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and
establish this constitution.
This is declared to be a government "of the people." All power,
it is said, centers in the people. Our State constitutions also
open with the words, "We, the people." Does any one pretend to
say that men alone constitute races and peoples? When we say
parents, do we not mean mothers as well as fathers? When we say
children, do we not mean girls as well as boys? When we say
people, do we not mean women as well as men? When the race shall
spring, Minerva-like, from the brains of their fathers, it will
be time enough thus to ignore the fact that one-half the human
family are women. Individual rights, individual conscience and
judgment are our great American ideas, the fundamental principles
of our political and religious faith. Men may as well attempt to
do our repenting, confessing, and believing, as our voting--as
well represent us at the throne of grace as at the ballot-box.
ARTICLE 1, SEC. 9.--No bill of attainder, or _ex post facto_
law shall be passed; no title of nobility shall be granted
by the United States.
SEC. 10.--No State shall pass any bill of attainder, _ex
post facto_ law, or law impairing the obligation of
contracts, or grant any title of nobility.
Notwithstanding these provisions of the constitution, bills of
attainder have been passed by the introduction of the word "male"
into all the State constitutions denying to woman the right of
suffrage, and thereby making sex a crime. A citizen disfranchised
in a republic is a citizen attainted. When we place in the hands
of one class of citizens the right to make, interpret and execute
the law for another class wholly unrepresented in the government,
we have made an order of nobility.
ARTICLE 4, SEC. 2.--The citizens of each State shall be
entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in
the several States.
The elective franchise is one of the privileges secured by this
section approved in Dunham _vs._ Lamphere (3 Gray Mass. Rep.,
276), and Bennett _vs._ Boggs (Baldwin's Rep., p. 72, Circuit
Court U. S.).
ARTICLE 4, SEC. 4.--The United States shall guarantee to
every State in the Union a republican form of government.
How can that form of government be called republican in which
one-half the people are forever deprived of all participation in
its affairs?
ARTICLE 6.--This Constitution, and the laws of the United
States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, ... shall
be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every
State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution
or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
ARTICLE 14, SEC. 1.--All persons born or naturalized in the
United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States.... No State shall make or
enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and
immunities of citizens of the United States.
In the discussion of the enfranchisement of woman, suffrage is
now claimed by one class of thinkers as a privilege based upon
citizenship and secured by the Constitution of the United States,
as by lexicographers as well as by the constitution itself, the
definition of citizen includes women as well as men. No State can
rightfully deprive a woman-citizen of the United States of any
fundamental right which is hers in common with all other
citizens. The States have the right to regulate, but not to
prohibit the elective franchise to citizens of the United States.
Thus the States may determine the qualifications of electors.
They may require the elector to be of a certain age--to have had
a fixed residence--to be of sane mind and unconvicted of
crime,--because these are qualifications or conditions that all
citizens, sooner or later, may attain. But to go beyond this, and
say to one-half the citizens of the State, notwithstanding you
possess all of these qualifications, you shall never vote, is of
the very essence of despotism. It is a bill of attainder of the
most odious character.
A further investigation of the subject will show that the
constitutions of all the States, with the exception of Virginia
and Massachusetts, read substantially alike. "White male
citizens" shall be entitled to vote, and this is supposed to
exclude all other citizens. There is no direct exclusion except
in the two States above named. Now the error lies in supposing
that an enabling clause is necessary at all. The right of the
people of a State to participate in a government of their own
creation requires no enabling clause, neither can it be taken
from them by implication. To hold otherwise would be to
interpolate in the constitution a prohibition that does not
exist.
In framing a constitution, the people are assembled in their
sovereign capacity, and being possessed of all rights and powers,
what is not surrendered is retained. Nothing short of a direct
prohibition can work a deprivation of rights that are
fundamental. In the language of John Jay to the people of New
York, urging the adoption of the constitution of the United
States: "Silence and blank paper neither give nor take away
anything." And Alexander Hamilton says (_Federalist_, No. 83):
Every man of discernment must at once perceive the wide
difference between silence and abolition. The mode and
manner in which the people shall take part in the government
of their creation may be prescribed by the constitution, but
the right itself is antecedent to all constitutions. It is
inalienable, and can neither be bought nor sold nor given
away.
But even if it should be held that this view is untenable, and
that women are disfranchised by the several State constitutions,
directly or by implication, then I say that such prohibitions are
clearly in conflict with the Constitution of the United States
and yield thereto.
Another class of thinkers, equally interested in woman's
enfranchisement, maintain that there is, as yet, no power in the
United States Constitution to protect the rights of all United
States citizens, in all latitudes and longitudes, and in all
conditions whatever. When the constitution was adopted, the
fathers thought they had secured national unity. This was the
opinion of Southern as well as Northern statesmen. It was
supposed that the question of State rights was then forever
settled. Hon. Charles Sumner, speaking on this point in the
United States Senate, March 7, 1866, said the object of the
constitution was to ordain, under the authority of the people, a
national government possessing unity and power. The
confederation had been merely an agreement "between the States,"
styled, "a league of firm friendship." Found to be feeble and
inoperative through the pretension of State rights, it gave way
to the constitution which, instead of a "league," created a
"union," in the name of the people of the United States.
Beginning with these inspiring and enacting words, "We, the
people," it was popular and national. Here was no concession to
State rights, but a recognition of the power of the people, from
whom the constitution proceeded. The States are acknowledged; but
they are all treated as component parts of the Union in which
they are absorbed under the constitution, which is the supreme
law. There is but one sovereignty, and that is the sovereignty of
the United States. On this very account the adoption of the
constitution was opposed by Patrick Henry and George Mason. The
first exclaimed, "That this is a consolidated government is
demonstrably clear; the question turns on that poor little thing,
'We, the people,' instead of the States." The second exclaimed,
"Whether the constitution is good or bad, it is a national
government, and no longer a confederation." But against this
powerful opposition the constitution was adopted in the name of
the people of the United States. Throughout the discussions,
State rights was treated with little favor. Madison said: "The
States are only political societies, and never possessed the
right of sovereignty." Gerry said: "The States have only
corporate rights." Wilson, the philanthropic member from
Pennsylvania, afterward a learned Judge of the Supreme Court of
the United States and author of the "Lectures on Law," said:
"Will a regard to State rights justify the sacrifice of the
rights of men? If we proceed on any other foundation than the
last, our building will neither be solid nor lasting."
Those of us who understand the dignity, power and protection of
the ballot, have steadily petitioned congress for the last ten
years to secure to the women of the republic the exercise of
their right to the elective franchise. We began by asking a
sixteenth amendment to the national constitution. March 15, 1869,
the Hon. George W. Julian submitted a joint resolution to
congress, to enfranchise the women of the republic, by proposing
a sixteenth amendment:
ARTICLE 16.--The right of suffrage in the United States
shall be based on citizenship, and shall be regulated by
Congress, and all citizens of the United States, whether
native or naturalized, shall enjoy this right equally,
without any distinction or discrimination whatever founded
on sex.
While the discussion was pending for the emancipation and
enfranchisement of the slaves of the South, and popular thought
led back to the consideration of the fundamental principles of
our government, it was clearly seen that all the arguments for
the civil and political rights of the African race applied to
women also. Seeing this, some Republicans stood ready to carry
these principles to their logical results. Democrats, too, saw
the drift of the argument, and though not in favor of extending
suffrage to either black men, or women, yet, to embarrass
Republican legislation, it was said, they proposed amendments for
woman suffrage to all bills brought forward for enfranchising the
negroes.
And thus, during the passage of the thirteenth, fourteenth and
fifteenth amendments, and the District suffrage bill, the
question of woman suffrage was often and ably discussed in the
Senate and House, and received both Republican and Democratic
votes in its favor. Many able lawyers and judges gave it as their
opinion that women as well as Africans were enfranchised by the
fourteenth and fifteenth Amendments. Accordingly, we abandoned,
for the time being, our demand for a sixteenth amendment, and
pleaded our right of suffrage, as already secured by the
fourteenth amendment--the argument lying in a nut-shell. For if,
as therein asserted, all persons born or naturalized in the
United States are citizens of the United States; and if a
citizen, according to the best authorities, is one possessed of
all the rights and privileges of citizenship, namely, the right
to make laws and choose lawmakers, women, being persons, must be
citizens, and therefore entitled to the rights of citizenship,
the chief of which is the right to vote.
Accordingly, women tested their right, registered and voted--the
inspectors of election accepting the argument, for which
inspectors and women alike were arrested, tried and punished; the
courts deciding that although by the fourteenth amendment they
were citizens, still, citizenship did not carry with it the right
to vote. But granting the premise of the Supreme Court decision,
"that the constitution does not confer suffrage on any one," then
it inhered with the citizen before the constitution was framed.
Our national life does not date from that instrument. The
constitution is not the original declaration of rights. It was
not framed until eleven years after our existence as a nation,
nor fully ratified until nearly fourteen years after the
inauguration of our national independence.
But however the letter and spirit of the constitution may be
interpreted by the people, the judiciary of the nation has
uniformly proved itself the echo of the party in power. When the
slave power was dominant the Supreme Court decided that a black
man was not a citizen, because he had not the right to vote; and
when the constitution was so amended as to make all persons
citizens, the same high tribunal decided that a woman, though a
citizen, had not the right to vote. An African, by virtue of his
United States citizenship, is declared, under recent amendments,
a voter in every State of the Union; but when a woman, by virtue
of her United States citizenship, applies to the Supreme Court
for protection in the exercise of this same right, she is
remanded to the State, by the unanimous decision of the nine
judges on the bench, that "the Constitution of the United States
does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one." Such
vacillating interpretations of constitutional law must unsettle
our faith in judicial authority, and undermine the liberties of
the whole people. Seeing by these decisions of the courts that
the theory of our government, the Declaration of Independence,
and recent constitutional amendments, have no significance for
woman, that all the grand principles of equality are glittering
generalities for her, we must fall back once more to our former
demand of a sixteenth amendment to the federal constitution,
that, in clear, unmistakable language, shall declare the status
of woman in this republic.
The Declaration of Independence struck a blow at every existent
form of government by making the individual the source of all
power. This is the sun, and the one central truth around which
all genuine republics must keep their course or perish. National
supremacy means something more than power to levy war, conclude
peace, contract alliances, establish commerce. It means national
protection and security in the exercise of the right of
self-government, which comes alone by and through the use of the
ballot. Women are the only class of citizens still wholly
unrepresented in the government, and yet we possess every
requisite qualification for voters in the United States. Women
possess property and education; we take out naturalization-papers
and passports and register ships. We preëmpt lands, pay taxes
(women sometimes work out the road-tax with their own hands) and
suffer for our own violation of laws. We are neither idiots,
lunatics, nor criminals, and according to our State constitution
lack but one qualification for voters, namely, sex, which is an
insurmountable qualification, and therefore equivalent to a bill
of attainder against one-half the people, a power neither the
States nor the United States can legally exercise, being
forbidden in article 1, sections 9, 10, of the constitution. Our
rulers have the right to regulate the suffrage, but they cannot
abolish it for any class of citizens, as has been done in the
case of the women of this republic, without a direct violation of
the fundamental law of the land. All concessions of privileges or
redress of grievances are mockery for any class that have no
voice in the laws, and law-makers; hence we demand the ballot,
that scepter of power in our own hands, as the only sure
protection for our rights of person and property under all
conditions. If the few may grant and withhold rights at their
pleasure, the many cannot be said to enjoy the blessings of
self-government.
William H. Seward said in his great speech on "Freedom and
Union," in the United States Senate, February 29, 1860:
Mankind have a natural right, a natural instinct, and a
natural capacity for self-government; and when, as here,
they are sufficiently ripened by culture, they will and must
have self-government, and no other.
Jefferson said:
The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time;
the hand of freedom may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.
Few people comprehend the length and breadth of the principle we
are advocating to-day, and how closely it is allied to everything
vital in our system of government. Our personal grievances, such
as being robbed of property and children by unjust husbands;
denied admission into the colleges, the trades and professions;
compelled to work at starving prices, by no means round out this
whole question. In asking for a sixteenth amendment to the United
States Constitution, and the protection of congress against the
injustice of State law, we are fighting the same battle as
Jefferson and Hamilton fought in 1776, as Calhoun and Clay in
1828, as Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis in 1860, namely, the
limit of State rights and federal power. The enfranchisement of
woman involves the same vital principle of our government that is
dividing and distracting the two great political parties at this
hour.
There is nothing a foreigner coming here finds it so difficult to
understand as the wheel within a wheel in our national and State
governments, and the possibility of carrying them on without
friction; and this is the difficulty and danger we are fast
finding out. The recent amendments are steps in the right
direction toward national unity, securing equal rights to all
citizens, in every latitude and longitude. But our congressional
debates, judicial decisions, and the utterances of campaign
orators, continually falling back to the old ground, are bundles
of contradictions on this vital question. Inasmuch as we are,
first, citizens of the United States, and second, of the State
wherein we reside, the primal rights of all citizens should be
regulated by the national government, and complete equality in
civil and political rights everywhere secured. When women are
denied the right to enter institutions of learning, and practice
in the professions, unjust discriminations made against sex even
more degrading and humiliating than were ever made against color,
surely woman, too, should be protected by a civil-rights bill and
a sixteenth amendment that should make her political status equal
with all other citizens of the republic.
The right of suffrage, like the currency of the post-office
department, demands national regulation. We can all remember the
losses sustained by citizens in traveling from one State to
another under the old system of State banks. We can imagine the
confusion if each State regulated its post-offices, and the
transit of the mails across its borders. The benefits we find in
uniformity and unity in these great interests would pervade all
others where equal conditions were secured. Some citizens are
asking for a national bankrupt law, that a person released from
his debts in one State may be free in every other. Some are for a
religious freedom amendment that shall forever separate church
and State; forbidding a religious test as a condition of suffrage
or a qualification for office; forbidding the reading of the
Bible in the schools and the exempting of church property and
sectarian institutions of learning or charity from taxation. Some
are demanding a national marriage law, that a man legally married
in one State may not be a bigamist in another. Some are asking a
national prohibitory law, that a reformed drunkard who is
shielded from temptation in one State may not be environed with
dangers in another. And thus many individual interests point to a
growing feeling among the people in favor of homogeneous
legislation. As several of the States are beginning to legislate
on the woman suffrage question, it is of vital moment that there
should be some national action.
As the laws now are, a woman who can vote, hold office, be tried
by a jury of her own peers--yea, and sit on the bench as justice
of the peace in the territory of Wyoming, may be reduced to a
political pariah in the State of New York. A woman who can vote
and hold office on the school board, and act as county
superintendent in Kansas and Minnesota, is denied these rights in
passing into Pennsylvania. A woman who can be a member of the
school board in Maine, Wisconsin, Iowa, and California, loses all
these privileges in New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware. When
representatives from the territories are sent to congress by the
votes of women, it is time to have some national recognition of
this class of citizens.
This demand of national protection for national citizens is fated
to grow stronger every day. The government of the United States,
as the constitution is now interpreted, is powerless to give a
just equivalent for the supreme allegiance it claims. One sound
democratic principle fully recognized and carried to its logical
results in our government, declaring all citizens equal before
the law, would soon chase away the metaphysical mists and fogs
that cloud our political views in so many directions. When
congress is asked to put the name of God in the constitution, and
thereby pledge the nation to some theological faith in which some
United States citizens may not believe and thus subject a certain
class to political ostracism and social persecution, it is asked
not to protect but to oppress the citizens of the several States
in their most sacred rights--to think, reason, and decide all
questions of religion and conscience for themselves, without fear
or favor from the government. Popular sentiment and church
persecution is all that an advanced thinker in science and
religion should be called on to combat. The State should rather
throw its shield of protection around those uttering liberal,
progressive ideas; for the nation has the same interest in every
new thought as it has in the invention of new machinery to
lighten labor, in the discovery of wells of oil, or mines of
coal, copper, iron, silver or gold. As in the laboratory of
nature new forms of beauty are forever revealing themselves, so
in the world of thought a higher outlook gives a clearer vision
of the heights man in freedom shall yet attain. The day is past
for persecuting the philosophers of the physical sciences. But
what a holocaust of martyrs bigotry is still making of those
bearing the richest treasures of thought, in religion and social
ethics, in their efforts to roll off the mountains of
superstition that have so long darkened the human mind!
The numerous demands by the people for national protection in
many rights not specified in the constitution, prove that the
people have outgrown the compact that satisfied the fathers, and
the more it is expounded and understood the more clearly its
monarchical features can be traced to its English origin. And it
is not at all surprising that, with no chart or compass for a
republic, our fathers, with all their educational prejudices in
favor of the mother country, with her literature and systems of
jurisprudence, should have also adopted her ideas of government,
and in drawing up their national compact engrafted the new
republic on the old constitutional monarchy, a union whose
incompatibility has involved their sons in continued discussion
as to the true meaning of the instrument. A recent writer says:
The Constitution of the United States is the result of a
fourfold compromise: _First_--Of unity with individual
interests; of national sovereignty with the so-called
sovereignty of States; _Second_--Of the republic with
monarchy; _Third_--Of freedom with slavery; _Fourth_--Of
democracy with aristocracy.
It is founded, therefore, on the fourfold combination of
principles perfectly incompatible and eternally excluding each
other; founded for the purpose of equally preserving these
principles in spite of their incompatibility, and of carrying
out their practical results--in other words, for the purpose of
making an impossible thing possible. And a century of discussion
has not yet made the constitution understood. It has no settled
interpretation. Being a series of compromises, it can be
expounded in favor of many directly opposite principles.
A distinguished American statesman remarked that the war of the
rebellion was waged "to expound the constitution." It is a
pertinent question now, shall all other contradictory principles
be retained in the constitution until they, too, are expounded by
civil war? On what theory is it less dangerous to defraud twenty
million women of their inalienable rights than four million
negroes? Is not the same principle involved in both cases? We ask
congress to pass a sixteenth amendment, not only for woman's
protection, but for the safety of the nation. Our people are
filled with unrest to-day because there is no fair understanding
of the basis of individual rights, nor the legitimate power of
the national government. The Republican party took the ground
during the war that congress had the right to establish a
national currency in every State; that it had the right to
emancipate and enfranchise the slaves; to change their political
status in one-half the States of the union; to pass a civil
rights bill, securing to the freedman a place in the schools,
colleges, trades, professions, hotels, and all public conveyances
for travel. And they maintained their right to do all these as
the best measures for peace, though compelled by war.
And now, when congress is asked to extend the same protection to
the women of the nation, we are told they have not the power, and
we are remanded to the States. They say the emancipation of the
slave was a war measure, a military necessity; that his
enfranchisement was a political necessity. We might with
propriety ask if the present condition of the nation, with its
political outlook, its election frauds daily reported, the
corrupt action of men in official position, governors, judges,
and boards of canvassers, has not brought us to a moral necessity
where some new element is needed in government. But, alas! when
women appeal to congress for the protection of their natural
rights of person and property, they send us for redress to the
courts, and the courts remand us to the States. You did not trust
the Southern freedman to the arbitrary will of courts and States!
Why send your mothers, wives and daughters to the unwashed,
unlettered, unthinking masses that carry popular elections?
We are told by one class of philosophers that the growing
tendency to increase national power and authority is leading to a
dangerous centralization; that the safety of the republic rests
in local self-government. Says the editor of the Boston _Index_:
What is local self-government? Briefly, that without any
interference from without, every citizen should manage his
own personal affairs in his own way, according to his own
pleasure; that every town should manage its own town affairs
in the same manner and under the same restriction; every
county its own county affairs, every State its own State
affairs. But the independent exercise of this autonomy, by
personal and corporate individuals, has one fundamental
condition, viz.: the maintenance of all these
individualities intact, each in its own sphere of action,
with its rights uninfringed and its freedom uncurtailed in
that sphere, yet each also preserving its just relation to
all the rest in an all comprehensive social organization.
Every citizen would thus stand, as it were, in the center of
several concentric and enlarging circles of relationship to
his kind; he would have duties and rights in each relation,
not only as an individual but also as a member of town,
county, State and national organization. His local
self-government will be at his highest possible point of
realization, when in each of these relations his individual
duties are discharged and his rights maintained.
On the other hand, what is centralization?
It is such a disorganization of this well-balanced,
harmonious and natural system as shall result in the
absorption of all substantial power by a central authority,
to the destruction of the autonomy of the various
individualities above mentioned; such as was produced, for
instance, when the _municipia_ of the Roman empire lost
their corporate independence and melted into the vast
imperial despotism which prepared the way for the collapse
of society under the blows of Northern barbarism. Such a
centralization must inevitably be produced by decay of that
stubborn stickling for rights, out of which local
self-government has always grown. That is, if individual
rights in the citizen, the town, the county, the State,
shall not be vindicated as beyond all price, and defended
with the utmost jealousy, at whatever cost, the spirit of
liberty must have already died out, and the dreary process
of centralization be already far advanced. It will thus be
evident that the preservation of individual rights is the
only possible preventative of centralization, and that free
society has no interest to be compared for an instant in
importance with that of preserving these individual rights.
No nation is free in which this is not the paramount
concern. Woe to America when her sons and her daughters
begin to sneer at rights! Just so long as the citizens are
protected individually in their rights, the towns and
counties and States cannot be stripped; but if the former
lose all love for their own liberties as equal units of
society, the latter will become the empty shells of
creatures long perished. The nation as such, therefore, if
it would be itself free and non-centralized, must find its
own supreme interest in the protection of its individual
citizens in the fullest possible enjoyment of their equal
rights and liberties.
As this question of woman's enfranchisement is one of national
safety, we ask you to remember that we are citizens of the United
States, and, as such, claim the protection of the national flag
in the exercise of our national rights, in every latitude and
longitude, on sea, land, at home as well as abroad; against the
tyranny of States, as well as against foreign aggressions. Local
authorities may regulate the exercise of these rights; they may
settle all minor questions of property, but the inalienable
personal rights of citizenship should be declared by the
constitution, interpreted by the Supreme Court, protected by
congress and enforced by the arm of the executive. It is nonsense
to talk of State rights until the graver question of personal
liberties is first understood and adjusted. President Hayes, in
reply to an address of welcome at Charlottesville, Va., September
25, 1877, said:
Equality under the laws for all citizens is the corner-stone
of the structure of the restored harmony from which the
ancient friendship is to rise. In this pathway I am going,
the pathway where your illustrious men led--your Jefferson,
your Madison, your Monroe, your Washington.
If, in this statement, President Hayes is thoroughly sincere,
then he will not hesitate to approve emphatically the principle
of national protection for national citizens. He will see that
the protection of all the national citizens in all their rights,
civil, political, and religious--not by the muskets of United
States troops, but by the peaceable authority of United States
courts--is not a principle that applies to a single section of
the country, but to all sections alike; he will see that the
incorporation of such a principle in the constitution cannot be
regarded as a measure of force imposed upon the vanquished, since
it would be law alike to the vanquished and the victor. In short,
he will see that there is no other sufficient guarantee of that
equality of all citizens, which he well declares to be the
"corner-stone of the structure of restored harmony." The Boston
_Journal_ of July 19, said:
There are cases where it seems as if the constitution should
empower the federal government to step in and protect the
citizen in the State, when the local authorities are in
league with the assassins; but, as it now reads, no such
provision exists.
That the constitution does not make such provision is not the
fault of the president; it must be attributed to the leading
Republicans who had it in their power once to change the
constitution so as to give the most ample powers to the general
government. When Attorney-General Devens was charged last May
with negligence in not prosecuting the parties accused of the
Mountain Meadow massacre, his defense was, that this horrible
crime was not against the United States, but against the
territory of Utah. Yet, it was a great company of industrious,
honest, unoffending United States citizens who were foully and
brutally murdered in cold blood. When Chief-Justice Waite gave
his charge to the jury in the Ellentown conspiracy cases, at
Charleston, S. C., June 1, 1877, he said:
That a number of citizens of the United States have been
killed, there can be no question; but that is not enough to
enable the government of the United States to interfere for
their protection. Under the constitution that duty belongs
to the State alone. But when an unlawful combination is made
to interfere with any of the rights of natural citizenship
secured to citizens of the United States by the national
constitution, then an offense is committed against the laws
of the United States, and it is not only the right but the
absolute duty of the national government to interfere and
afford the citizens that protection which every good
government is bound to give.
General Hawley, in an address before a college last spring, said:
Why, it is asked, does our government permit outrages in a
State which it would exert all its authority to redress,
even at the risk of war, if they were perpetrated under a
foreign government? Are the rights of American citizens more
sacred on the soil of Great Britain or France than on the
soil of one of our own States? Not at all. But the
government of the United States is clothed with power to act
with imperial sovereignty in the one case, while in the
other its authority is limited to the degree of utter
impotency, in certain circumstances. The State sovereignty
excludes the Federal over most matters of dealing between
man and man, and if the State laws are properly enforced
there is not likely to be any ground of complaint, but if
they are not, the federal government, if not specially
called on according to the terms of the constitution, is
helpless. Citizen A.B., grievously wronged, beaten, robbed,
lynched within a hair's breadth of death, may apply in vain
to any and all prosecuting officers of the State. The forms
of law that might give him redress are all there; the
prosecuting officers, judges, and sheriffs, that might act,
are there; but, under an oppressive and tyrannical public
sentiment, they refuse to move. In such an exigency the
government of the United States can do no more than the
government of any neighboring State; that is, unless the
State concerned calls for aid, or unless the offense rises
to the dignity of insurrection or rebellion. The reason is,
that the framers of our governmental system left to the
several States the sole guardianship of the personal and
relative private rights of the people.
Such is the imperfect development of our own nationality in this
respect that we have really no right as yet to call ourselves a
nation in the true sense of the word, nor shall we have while
this state of things continues. Thousands have begun to feel this
keenly, of which a few illustrations may suffice. A communication
to the New York _Tribune_, June 9, signed "Merchant," said:
Before getting into a quarrel and perhaps war with Mexico
about the treatment of our flag and citizens, would it not
be as well, think you, for the government to try and make
the flag a protection to the citizens on our own soil?
That is what it has never been since the foundation of our
government in a large portion of our common country. The kind of
government the people of this country expect and intend to
have--State rights or no State rights, no matter how much blood
and treasure it may cost--is a government to protect the humblest
citizen in the exercise of all his rights.
When the rebellion of the South against the government began, one
of the most noted secessionists of Baltimore asked one of the
regular army officers what the government expected to gain by
making war on the South. "Well," the officer replied, laying his
hand on the cannon by which he was standing, "we intend to use
these until it is as safe for a Northern man to express his
political opinions in the South, as it is for a Southern man to
express his in the North." Senator Blaine, at a banquet in
Trenton, N. J., July 2, declared that a "government which did not
offer protection to every citizen in every State had no right to
demand allegiance." Ex-Senator Wade, of Ohio, in a letter to the
Washington _National Republican_ of July 16, said of the
president's policy:
I greatly fear this policy, under cover of what is called
local self-government, is but an ignominious surrender of
the principles of nationality for which our armies fought
and for which thousands upon thousands of our brave men
died, and without which the war was a failure and our
boasted government a myth.
Behind the slavery of the colored race was the principle of State
rights. Their emancipation and enfranchisement were important,
not only as a vindication of our great republican idea of
individual rights, but as the first blow in favor of national
unity--of a consistent, homogeneous government. As all our
difficulties, State and national, are finally referred to the
constitution, it is of vital importance that that instrument
should not be susceptible of a different interpretation from
every possible standpoint. It is folly to spend another century
in expounding the equivocal language of the constitution. If
under that instrument, supposed to be the _Magna Charta_ of
American liberties, all United States citizens do not stand equal
before the law, it should without further delay be so amended as
in plain, unmistakable language to declare what are the rights,
privileges, and immunities that belong to citizens of a republic.
There is no reason why the people of to-day should be governed by
the laws and constitutions of men long since dead and buried.
Surely those who understand the vital issues of this hour are
better able to legislate for the living present than those who
governed a hundred years ago. If the nineteenth century is to be
governed by the opinions of the eighteenth, and the twentieth by
the nineteenth, the world will always be governed by dead men....
The cry of centralization could have little significance if the
constitution were so amended as to protect all United States
citizens in their inalienable rights. That national supremacy
that holds individual freedom and equality more sacred than State
rights and secures representation to all classes of people, is a
very different form of centralization from that in which all the
forces of society are centered in a single arm. But the
recognition of the principle of national supremacy, as declared
in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, has been practically
nullified and the results of the war surrendered, by remanding
woman to the States for the protection of her civil and political
rights. The Supreme Court decisions and the congressional reports
on this point are in direct conflict with the idea of national
unity, and the principle of States rights involved in this
discussion must in time remand all United States citizens alike
to State authority for the protection of those rights declared to
inhere in the people at the foundation of the government.
You may listen to our demands, gentlemen, with dull ears, and
smile incredulously at the idea of danger to our institutions
from continued violation of the civil and political rights of
women, but the question of what citizens shall enjoy the rights
of suffrage involves our national existence; for, if the
constitutional rights of the humblest citizen may be invaded with
impunity, laws interpreted on the side of injustice, judicial
decisions based not on reason, sound argument, nor the spirit and
letter of our declarations and theories of government, but on the
customs of society and what dead men are supposed to have
thought, not what they said--what will the rights of the ruling
powers even be in the future with a people educated into such
modes of thought and action? The treatment of every individual in
a community--in our courts, prisons, asylums, of every class of
petitioners before congress--strengthens or undermines the
foundations of that temple of liberty whose corner-stones were
laid one century ago with bleeding hands and anxious hearts, with
the hardships, privations, and sacrifices of a seven years' war.
He who is able from the conflicts of the present to forecast the
future events, cannot but contemplate with anxiety the fate of
this republic, unless our constitution be at once subjected to a
thorough emendation, making it more comprehensively democratic.
A review of the history of our nation during the century will
show the American people that all the obstacles that have impeded
their political, moral and material progress from the dominion of
slavery down to the present epidemic of political corruptions,
are directly and indirectly traceable to the federal constitution
as their source and support. Hence the necessity of prompt and
appropriate amendments. Nothing that is incorrect in principle
can ever be productive of beneficial results, and no custom or
authority is able to alter or overrule this inviolate law of
development. The catch-phrases of politicians, such as "organic
development," "the logic of events," and "things will regulate
themselves," have deceived the thoughtless long enough. There is
just one road to safety, and that is to understand the law
governing the situation and to bring the nation in line with it.
Grave political problems are solved in two ways--by a wise
forethought, and reformation; or by general dissatisfaction,
resistance, and revolution.
In closing, let me remind you, gentlemen, that woman has not been
a heedless spectator of all the great events of the century, nor
a dull listener to the grand debates on human freedom and
equality. She has learned the lesson of self-sacrifice,
self-discipline, and self-government in the same school with the
heroes of American liberty.[29]
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, of New York, corresponding secretary of the
association, said: _Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the
Committee_--You have heard the general argument for woman from
Mrs. Stanton, but there are women here from all parts of the
Union, and each one feels that she must say a word to show how
united we stand. It is because we have respect for law that we
come before you to-day. We recognize the fact that in good law
lies the security of all our rights, but as woman has been denied
the constructive rights of the declaration and constitution, she
is obliged to ask for a direct recognition in the adoption of a
sixteenth amendment.
The first principle of liberty is division of power. In the
country of the czar or the sultan there is no liberty of thought
or action. In limited monarchies power is somewhat divided, and
we find larger liberty and a broader civilization. Coming to the
United States we find a still greater division of power, a still
more extended liberty--civil, religious, political. No nation in
the world is as respected as our own; no title so proud as that
of American citizen; it carries with it abroad a protection as
large as did that of Rome two thousand years ago. But as proud as
is this name of American citizen, it brings with it only shame
and humiliation to one-half of the nation. Woman has no part nor
lot in the matter. The pride of citizenship is not for her, for
woman is still a political slave. While the form of our
government seems to include the whole people, one-half of them
are denied a right to participate in its benefits, are denied the
right of self-government. Woman equally with man has natural
rights; woman equally with man is a responsible being.
It is said women are not fit for freedom. Well, then, secure us
freedom and make us fit for it. Macaulay said many politicians of
his time were in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident
proposition that no people were fit to be free till they were in
a condition to use their freedom; "but," said Macaulay, "this
maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to
go into the water till he had learned to swim. If men [or women]
are to wait for liberty till they become good and wise in
slavery, they may indeed wait forever."
There has been much talk about precedent. Many women in this
country vote upon school questions, and in England at all
municipal elections. I wish to call your attention a little
further back, to the time that the Saxons first established free
government in England. Women, as well as men, took part in the
Witenagemote, the great national council of our Saxon ancestors
in England. When Whightred, king of Kent, in the seventh century,
assembled the national legislature at Baghamstead to enact a new
code of laws, the queen, abbesses, and many ladies of quality
signed the decrees. Also, at Beaconsfield, the abbesses took part
in the council. In the reign of Henry III. four women took seats
in parliament, and in the reign of Edward I. ten ladies were
called to parliament and helped to govern Great Britain. Also, in
1252, Henry left his Queen Elinor as keeper of the great seal, or
lord chancellor, while he went abroad. She sat in the Aula Regia,
the highest court of the kingdom, holding the highest judicial
power in great Britain. Not only among our forefathers in Britain
do we find that women took part in government, but, going back to
the Roman Empire, we find the Emperor Heliogabalus introducing
his mother into the senate, and giving her a seat near the
consuls. He also established a senate of women, which met on the
Collis Quirinalis. When Aurelian was emperor he favored the
representation of women, and determined to revive this senate,
which in lapse of time had fallen to decay. Plutarch mentions
that women sat and deliberated in councils, and on questions of
peace and war. Hence we have precedents extending very far back
into history.
It is sometimes said that women do not desire freedom. But I tell
you the desire for freedom lives in every heart. It may be hidden
as the water of the never-freezing, rapid-flowing river Neva is
hidden. In the winter the ice from Lake Lagoda floats down till
it is met by the ice setting up from the sea, when they unite and
form a compact mass over it. Men stand upon it, sledges run over
it, splendid palaces are built upon it; but beneath all the Neva
still rapidly flows, itself unfrozen. The presence of these women
before you shows their desire for freedom. They have come from
the North, from the South, from the East, from the West, and from
the far Pacific slope, demanding freedom for themselves and for
all women.
Our demands are often met by the most intolerable tyranny. The
Albany _Law Journal_, one of the most influential legal journals
of the great State of New York, had the assurance a few years ago
to tell Miss Anthony and myself if we were not suited with "our
laws" we could leave the country. What laws did they mean? Men's
laws. If we were not suited with these men's laws, made by them
to protect themselves, we could leave the country. We were
advised to expatriate ourselves, to banish ourselves. But we
shall not do it. It is our country, and we shall stay here and
change the laws. We shall secure their amendment, so that under
them there shall be exact and permanent political equality
between men and women. Change is not only a law of life; it is an
essential proof of the existence of life. This country has
attained its greatness by ever enlarging the bounds of freedom.
In our hearts we feel that there is a word sweeter than mother,
home, or heaven. That word is LIBERTY. We ask it of you now. We
say to you, secure to us this liberty--the same liberty you have
yourselves. In doing this you will not render yourselves poor,
but will make us rich indeed.
Mrs. STEWART of Delaware, in illustrating the folly of adverse
arguments based on woman's ignorance of political affairs, gave
an amusing account of her colored man servant the first time he
voted. He had been full of bright anticipations of the coming
election day, and when it dawned at last, he asked if he could be
spared from his work an hour or so, to vote. "Certainly, Jo,"
said she, "by all means; go to the polls and do your duty as a
citizen." Elated with his new-found dignity, Jo ran down the
road, and with a light heart and shining face deposited his vote.
On his return Mrs. Stewart questioned him as to his success at
the polls. "Well," said he, "first one man nabbed me and gave me
the tickets he said I ought to vote, and then another man did the
same. I said yes to both and put the tickets in my pocket. I had
no use for those Republican or Democratic bits of paper." "Well,
Jo," said Mrs. Stewart, "what did you do?" "Why I took that piece
of paper that I paid $2.50 for and put it in the box. I knew that
was worth something." "Alas! Jo," said his mistress, "you voted
your tax receipt, so your first vote has counted nothing." Do you
think, gentlemen, said Mrs. Stewart, that such women as attend
our conventions, and speak from our platform, could make so
ludicrous a blunder? I think not.
The Rev. OLYMPIA BROWN, a delegate from Connecticut, addressed
the committee as follows: _Gentlemen of the Committee_--I would
not intrude upon your time and exhaust your patience by any
further hearing upon this subject if it were not that men are
continually saying to us that we do not want the ballot; that it
is only a handful of women that have ever asked for it; and I
think by our coming up from these different States, from
Delaware, from Oregon, from Missouri, from Connecticut, from New
Hampshire, and giving our testimony, we shall convince you that
it is not a few merely, but that it is a general demand from the
women in all the different States of the Union; and if we come
here with stammering tongues, causing you to laugh by the very
absurdity of the manner in which we advocate our opinions, it
will only convince you that it is not a few "gifted" women, but
the rank and file of the women of our country unaccustomed to
such proceedings as these, who come here to tell you that we all
desire the right of suffrage. Nor shall our mistakes and
inability to advocate our cause in an effective manner be an
argument against us, because it is not the province of voters to
conduct meetings in Washington. It is rather their province to
stay at home and quietly read the proceeding of members of
congress, and if they find these proceedings correct, to vote to
return them another year. So that our very mistakes shall argue
for us and not against us.
In the ages past the right of citizenship meant the right to
enjoy or possess or attain all those civil and political rights
that are enjoyed by any other citizen. But here we have a class
who can bear the burdens and punishments of citizens, but cannot
enjoy their privileges and rights. But even the meanest may
petition, and so we come with our thousands of petitions, asking
you to protect us against the unjust discriminations imposed by
State laws. Nor do we find that there is any conflict between the
duties of the national government and the functions of the State.
The United States government has to do with general interests,
but everything that is special, has to do with sectional
interests, belongs to the State. Said Charles Sumner:
The State exercises its proper functions when it makes local
laws, promotes local charities, and by its local knowledge
brings the guardianship of government to the homes of its
citizens; but the State transcends its proper functions when
in any manner it interferes with those equal rights recorded
in the Declaration of Independence.
The State is local, the United States is universal. And, says
Charles Sumner, "What can be more universal than the rights of
man?" I would add, "What can be more universal than the rights of
woman?" extending further than the rights of man, because woman
is the heaven-appointed guardian of the home; because woman by
her influence and in her office as an educator makes the
character of man; because women are to be found wherever men are
to be found, as their mothers bringing them into the world,
watching them, teaching them, guiding them into manhood. Wherever
there is a home, wherever there is a human interest, there is to
be felt the interest of women, and so this cause is the most
universal of any cause under the sun; and, therefore, it has a
claim upon the general government. Therefore we come petitioning
that you will protect us in our rights, by aiding us in the
passage of the sixteenth amendment, which will make the
constitution plain in our favor, or by such actions as will
enable us to cast our ballots at the polls without being
interfered with by State authorities. And we hope you will do
this at no distant day. I hope you will not send my sister, the
honorable lady from Delaware, to the boy, Jo, to ask him to
define her position in the republic. I hope you will not bid any
of these women at home to ask ignorant men whether they may be
allowed to discharge their obligations as citizens in the matter
of suffrage. I hope you will not put your wives and mothers in
the power of men who have never given a half hour's consideration
to the subject of government, and who are wholly unfit to
exercise their judgment as to whether women should have the right
of suffrage.
I will not insult your common sense by bringing up the old
arguments as to whether we have the right to vote. I believe
every man of you knows we have that right--that our right to vote
is based upon the same authority as yours. I believe every man
understands that, according to the declaration and the
constitution, women should be allowed to exercise the right of
suffrage, and therefore it is not necessary for me to do more
than bear my testimony from the State of Connecticut, and tell
you that the women from the rank and file, the law-abiding women,
desire the ballot; not only that they desire it, but they mean
to have it. And to accomplish this result I need not remind you
that they will work year in and year out, that they will besiege
members of congress everywhere, and that they will come here year
after year asking you to protect them in their rights and to see
that justice is done in the republic. Therefore, for your own
peace, we hope you will not keep us waiting a long time. The fact
that some States have made, temporarily, some good laws, does not
weaken our demand upon you for the protection which the ballot
gives to every citizen. Our interests are still uncared for, and
we do not wish to be thus sent from pillar to post to get our
rights. We wish to take our stand as citizens of the United
States, as we have been declared to be by the Supreme Court, and
we wish to be protected in the rights of citizenship. We hope the
day is at hand when our prayers will be heard by you. Let us have
at an early day in the _Congressional Record_, a report of the
proceedings of this committee, and the action of the Senate in
favor of woman's right to vote.
Brief remarks were also made by Mrs. Lawrence of Massachusetts,
Mary A. Thompson, M. D., of Oregon, Mary Powers Filley of New
Hampshire, Mrs. Blake of New York, Mrs. Hooker of Connecticut, and
Sara Andrews Spencer of Washington.
At the close of these two day's hearings before the Committee on
Privileges and Elections,[30] Senator Hoar of Massachusetts,
offered, and the committee adopted the following complimentary
resolution:
_Resolved_, That the arguments upon the very important questions
discussed before the committee have been presented with
propriety, dignity and ability, and that the committee will
consider the same on Tuesday next, at 10 A.M.
The Washington _Evening Star_ of January 11, 1876, said:
The woman suffrage question will be a great political issue some
day. A movement in the direction of alleged rights by a body of
American citizens cannot be forever checked, even though its
progress may for many years be very gradual. Now that the
advocates of suffrage for woman have become convinced that the
thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments are not
sufficiently explicit to make woman's right to vote unquestioned,
and that a sixteenth amendment is necessary to effect the
practical exercise of the right, the millennial period that they
look for is to all intents and purposes indefinitely postponed,
for constitutional amendments are not passed in a day. But there
are so many sound arguments to be advanced in favor of woman
suffrage that it cannot fail in time to be weighed as a matter of
policy, after it shall have been overwhelmingly conceded as a
matter of right. And it is noticeable that the arguments of the
opponents are coming more and more to be based on expediency, and
hardly attempt to answer the claim that as American citizens
women are entitled to the right. If the whole body of American
women desired the practical exercise of this right, it is hard to
see what valid opposition to their claims could be made. All this
however does not amend the constitution. Woman suffrage must
become a matter of policy for a political party before it can be
realized. Congress does not pass revolutionary measures on
abstract considerations of right. This question is of a nature to
become a living political issue after it has been sufficiently
ridiculed.
On Saturday evening, January 12, a reception was given to the
delegates to the convention by Hon. Alexander H. Stephens of
Georgia, at the National Hotel. The suite of rooms so long occupied
by this liberal representative of the South, was thus opened to
unwonted guests--women asking for the same rights gained at the
point of the sword by his former slaves! Seated in his wheel-chair,
from which he had so often been carried by a faithful attendant to
his place in the House of Representatives, he cordially welcomed
the ladies as they gathered about him, assuring them of his
interest in this question and promising his aid.
For the first time Miss Julia Smith of anti-tax fame, of
Glastonbury, Connecticut, was present at a Washington convention.
She was the recipient of much social attention. A reception was
tendered her by Mrs. Spofford of the Riggs House, giving people an
opportunity to meet this heroic woman of eighty-three, who, with
her younger sister Abby, had year after year suffered the sale of
their fine Jersey cows and beautiful meadow lands, rather than pay
taxes while unrepresented. Many women, notable in art, science and
literature, and men high in political station were present on this
occasion. All crowded about Miss Smith, as, supported by Mrs.
Hooker, in response to a call for a speech, particularly in regard
to the Gladstonbury cows, as famous as herself, she said:
There are but two of our cows left at present, Taxey and Votey.
It is something a little peculiar that Taxey is very obtrusive;
why, I can scarcely step out of doors without being confronted by
her, while Votey is quiet and shy, but she is growing more docile
and domesticated every day, and it is my opinion that in a very
short time, wherever you find Taxey there Votey will be also.
At the close of Miss Smith's remarks, Abby Hutchinson Patton sang
"Auld Lang Syne" in a very effective manner; one or two readings
followed, a few modern ballads were sung, and thus closed the
first of the many delightful receptions given by Mr. and Mrs.
Spofford to the officers and members of the National Association.
Mrs. Hooker spent several weeks at the Riggs House, holding
frequent woman suffrage conversazioni in its elegant parlors; also
speaking upon the question at receptions given in her honor by the
wives of members of congress, or residents of Washington.[31]
During the week of the convention, public attention was called to a
scarcely known Anti-Woman Suffrage Society, formed in 1871, of
which Mrs. General Sherman, Mrs. Admiral Dahlgren and Mrs. Almira
Lincoln Phelps were officers, by the publication of an undelivered
letter from Mrs. Phelps to Mrs. Hooker:
_To the Editor of the Post:_
The following was written nearly seven years since, but was never
sent to Mrs. Hooker. The letter chanced to appear among old
papers, and as there is a meeting of women suffragists, with Mrs.
Hooker present, and, moreover, as they have mentioned the names
of Mrs. Dahlgren and Mrs. General Sherman, opposers, I am willing
to bear my share of the opposition, as I acted as corresponding
secretary to the Anti-Suffrage Society, which was formed under
the auspices of these ladies.
Mrs. DAHLGREN.
EUTAW PLACE, BALTIMORE, January, 30, 1871.
_To Mrs. Beecher Hooker:_
DEAR MADAM--Hoping you will receive kindly what I am about to
write, I will proceed without apologies. I have confidence in
your nobleness of soul, and that you know enough of me to believe
in my devotion to the best interests of woman. I can scarcely
realize that you are giving your name and influence to a cause,
which, with some good but, as I think, misguided women, numbers
among its advocates others with loose morals. * * * We are, my
dear madam, as I suppose, related through our common ancester
Thomas Hooker. * * * Your husband, I believe, stands in the same
relation to that good and noble man. Perhaps he may think with
you on this woman suffrage question, but it does seem to me that
a wife honoring her husband would not wish to join in such a
crusade as is now going on to put woman on an equality with the
rabble at the "hustings." If we could with propriety petition the
Almighty to change the condition of the sexes and let men take a
turn in bearing children and in suffering the physical ailments
peculiar to women, which render them unfit for certain positions
and business, why, in this case, if we really wish to be men, and
thought God would change the established order, we might make our
petition; but why ask congress to make us men? Circumstances drew
me from the quiet of domestic life while I was yet young; but
success in labors which involved publicity, and which may have
been of advantage to society, was never considered as an
equivalent to my own heart for the loss of such retirement. In
the name of my sainted sister, Emma Willard, and of my friend
Lydia Sigourney, and I think I might say in the name of the women
of the past generation, who have been prominent as writers and
educators (the exception may be made of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Frances Wright, and a few licentious French writers) in our own
country and in Europe, let me urge the high-souled and honorable
of our sex to turn their energies into that channel which will
enable them to act for the true interests of their sex.
Yours respectfully,
ALMIRA LINCOLN PHELPS.
To which Mrs. Hooker, through _The Post_, replied:
WASHINGTON, January 15, 1878.
Mrs. DAHLGREN--_Dear Madam_: Permit me to thank you for the
opportunity to exonerate myself and the women of the suffrage
movement all over the United States from the charge of favoring
immorality in any form. I did not know before that Mrs. Phelps,
whom I have always held in highest esteem as an educator and as
one of the most advanced thinkers of her day, had so misconceived
the drift of our movement; and you will pardon me, dear madam,
for saying that it is hardly possible that Mrs. Sherman and
yourself, in your opposition to it, can have been influenced by
any apprehension that the women suffragists of the United States
would, if entrusted with legislative power, proceed to use it for
the desecration of their own sex, and the pollution of the souls
of their husbands, brothers and sons. But having been publicly
accused through your instrumentality of sympathy with the
licentious practices of men, I shall take the liberty to send you
a dozen copies of a little book entitled, "Womanhood; its
Sanctities and Fidelities," which I published in 1874 for the
specific purpose of bringing to the notice of American women the
wonderful work being done across the water in the suppression of
"State Patronage of Vice." * * * It is with a deep sense of
gratitude to God that I am able to say that, according to my
knowledge and belief, every woman in our movement, whether
officer or private, is in sympathy with the spirit of this little
book. I know of no inharmony here, however we may differ upon
minor points of expediency as to the best methods of working for
the political advancement of woman. And further, it is the deep
conviction of us all that the chief stumbling-block in the way of
our obtaining the use of the ballot, is the apprehension among
men of low degree that they will surely be limited in their base
and brutal and sensual indulgencies when women are armed with
equal political power.
As to my husband, to whose ancestry Mrs. Phelps so kindly
alludes, permit me to say that he is not only descended from
Thomas Hooker, the beloved first pastor of the old Centre Church
in Hartford, and founder of the State of Connecticut, but further
back his lineage takes root in one of England's most honored
names, Richard Hooker, surnamed "The Judicious"; and I have been
accustomed to say that, however it may be as to learning and
position, the characteristic of judiciousness has not departed
from the American stock. I will only add that Mr. Hooker is
treasurer of our State suffrage association, and has spoken on
the platform with me as president, whenever his professional
duties would permit, and that he is the author of a tract on "The
Bible and Woman Suffrage." Our society has printed several
thousand copies of this tract, and the London National Women's
Suffrage Society has reprinted it with words of high commendation
for distribution in Great Britain. * * * And now, dear madam,
thanking you once more for this most unexpected and most grateful
opportunity for correcting misapprehensions that others may have
entertained as well as Mrs. Phelps in regard to the design and
tendencies of our movement, may I not ask that you will kindly
read and consider the papers I shall take the liberty to send
you, and hand them to your co-workers at your convenience?
That we all, as women who love our country and our kind, may be
led to honor each other in our personal relations, while we work
each in her respective way for that higher order of manhood and
womanhood that alone can exalt our nation to the ideal of the
fathers and mothers of the early republic, and preserve us an
honored place among the peoples of the earth, is the prayer of
Yours sincerely,
ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER.
Evidently left without even the name of Mrs. Sherman or the
Anti-Suffrage Society to sustain her, Mrs. Dahlgren memorialized
the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections against the
submission of the sixteenth amendment:
_To the Honorable Committee on Privileges and Elections:_
GENTLEMEN--Allow me, in courtesy, as a petitioner, to present one
or two considerations regarding a sixteenth amendment, by which
it is proposed to confer the right of suffrage upon the women of
the United States. I ask this favor also in the interests of the
masses of silent women, whose silence does not give consent, but
who, in most modest earnestness, deprecate having the political
life forced upon them.
This grave question is not one of simple expediency or the
reverse; it might properly be held, were this the case, as a
legitimate subject for agitation. Our reasons of dissent to this
dangerous inroad upon all precedent, lie deeper and strike
higher. They are based upon that which in all Christian nations
must be recognized as the higher law, the fundamental law upon
which Christian society in its very construction must rest; and
that law, as defined by the Almighty, is immutable. Through it
the women of this Christian land, as mothers, wives, sisters,
daughters, have distinct duties to perform of the most complex
order, yet of the very highest and most sacred nature.
If in addition to all these responsibilities, others,
appertaining to the domain assigned to men, are allotted to us,
we shall be made the victims of an oppression not intended by a
kind and wise Providence, and from which the refining influences
of Christian civilization have emancipated us. We have but to
look at the condition of our Indian sister, upon whose bended
back the heavy pack is laid by her lord and master; who treads in
subjection the beaten pathway of equal rights, and compare her
situation with our own, to thank the God of Christian nations who
has placed us above that plane, where right is might, and might
is tyranny. We cannot without prayer and protest see our
cherished privileges endangered, and have granted us only in
exchange the so-called equal rights. We need more, and we claim,
through our physical weakness and your courtesy as Christian
gentlemen, that protection which we need for the proper discharge
of those sacred and inalienable functions and rights conferred
upon us by God. To these the vote, which is not a natural right
(otherwise why not confer it upon idiots, lunatics, and adult
boys) would be adverse.
When women ask for a distinct political life, a separate vote,
they forget or they willfully ignore the higher law, whose logic
may be thus condensed: Marriage is a sacred unity. The family,
through it, is the foundation of the State. Each family is
represented by its head, just as the State ultimately finds the
same unity, through a series of representations. Out of this come
peace, concord, proper representation, and adjustment--union.
The new doctrine, which is illusive, may be thus defined:
Marriage is a mere compact, and means diversity. Each family,
therefore, must have a separate individual representation, out of
which arises diversity or division, and discord is the
corner-stone of the State.
Gentlemen, we cannot displace the corner-stone without
destruction to the edifice itself! The subject is so vast, has so
many side issues, that a volume might as readily be laid before
your honorable committee as these few words hastily written with
an aching woman's heart. Personally, if any woman in this vast
land has a grievance by not having a vote, I may claim that
grievance to be mine. With father, brother, husband, son, taken
away by death, I stand utterly alone, with minor children to
educate and considerable property interests to guard. But I would
deem it unpatriotic to ask for a general law which must prove
disastrous to my country, in order to meet that exceptional
position in which, by the adorable will of God, I am placed. I
prefer, indeed, to trust to that moral influence over men which
intelligence never fails to exercise, and which is really more
potent in the management of business affairs than the direct
vote. In this I am doubtless as old-fashioned as were our
grandmothers, who assisted to mold this vast republic. They knew
that the greatest good for the greatest number was the only safe
legislative law, and that to it all exceptional cases must
submit.
Gentlemen, in conclusion, a sophism in legislation is not a mere
abstraction; it must speedily bear fruit in material results of
the most disastrous nature, and I implore your honorable
committee, in behalf of our common country, not to open a
Pandora's box by way of experiment from whence so much evil must
issue, and which once opened may never again be closed.
Very respectfully,
MADELEINE VINTON DAHLGREN.
Mrs. Dahlgren was ably reviewed by Virginia L. Minor of St. Louis,
and the Toledo Woman Suffrage Association. Mrs. Minor said:
In assuming to speak for the "silent masses" of women, Mrs.
Dahlgren declares that silence does not give consent; very
inconsequently forgetting, that if it does not on one side of the
question, it may not on the other, and that she may no more
represent them than do we.
The Toledo society, through its president Mrs. Rose L. Segur, said:
We agree with you that this grave question is not one of
expediency. It is simply one of right and justice, and therefore
a most legitimate subject for agitation. As a moral force woman
must have a voice in the government, or partial and unjust
legislation is the result from which arise the evils consequent
upon a government based upon the enslavement of half its
citizens.
To this Mrs. Dahlgren replied briefly, charging the ladies with
incapacity to comprehend her.
The week following the convention a hearing was granted by the
House Judiciary Committee to Dr. Mary Walker of Washington, Mary A.
Tillotson of New Jersey and Mrs. N. Cromwell of Arkansas, urging a
report in favor of woman's enfranchisement. On January 28, the
House sub-committee on territories granted a hearing to Dr. Mary
Walker and Sara Andrews Spencer, in opposition to the bill
proposing the disfranchisement of the women of Utah as a means of
suppressing polygamy.
On January 30 the House Judiciary Committee granted Mrs. Hooker a
hearing. Of the eleven members of the committee nearly all were
present.[32] The room and all the corridors leading to it were
crowded with men and women eager to hear Mrs. Hooker's speech. At
the close of the two hours occupied in its delivery, Chairman Knott
thanked her in the name of the committee for her able argument.
Immediately after this hearing Mr. Frye of Maine, in presenting in
the House of Representatives the petitions of 30,000 persons asking
the right of women to vote upon the question of temperance,
referred in a very complimentary manner to Mrs. Hooker's argument,
to which he had just listened. Upon this prayer a hearing was
granted to the president and ex-president of the Woman's Christian
Temperance Union, Frances E. Willard and Annie E. Wittenmyer.
Hon. George F. Hoar of Massachusetts, February 4, presented in the
Senate the 120 petitions with their 6,261 signatures, which, by
special request of its officers, had been returned to the
headquarters of the American Association, in Boston. In her appeal
to the friends to circulate the petitions, both State and national,
Lucy Stone, chairman of its executive committee, said:
The American Suffrage Association has always recommended
petitions to congress for a sixteenth amendment. But it
recognizes the far greater importance of petitioning the State
legislatures. _First_--Because suffrage is a subject referred by
the constitution to the voters of each State. _Second_--Because
we cannot expect a congress composed solely of representatives of
States which deny suffrage to women, to submit an amendment which
their own States have not yet approved. Just so it would have
been impossible to secure the submission of negro suffrage by a
congress composed solely of representatives from States which
restricted suffrage to white men. While therefore we advise our
friends to circulate both petitions together for signature, we
urge them to give special prominence to those which apply to
their own State legislatures, and to see that these are presented
and urged by competent speakers next winter.
By request of a large number of the senators,[33] the Committee on
Privileges and Elections granted a special hearing to Mrs. Hooker
on Washington's birthday--February 22, 1878. It being understood
that the wives of the senators were bringing all the forces of
fashionable society to bear in aid of Mrs. Dahlgren's protest
against the pending sixteenth amendment, the officers of the
National Association issued cards of invitation asking their
presence at this hearing. We copy from the Washington _Post_:
The conflicting rumors as to who would be admitted to hear Mrs.
Hooker's argument before the Senate Committee on Privileges and
Elections, led to the assembling of large numbers of women in
various places about the capitol yesterday morning. At 11 o'clock
the doors were opened and the committee-room at once filled.[34]
Mrs. Hooker, with the fervor and eloquence of her family,
reviewed all the popular arguments against woman suffrage. She
said she once believed that twenty years was little time enough
for a foreigner to live in this country before he could cast a
ballot. She understands the spirit of our institutions better
now. If disfranchisement meant annihilation, there might be
safety in disfranchising the poor, the ignorant, the vicious. But
it does not. It means danger to everything we hold dear.
The corner-stone of this republic is God's own doctrine of
liberty and responsibility. Liberty is the steam, responsibility
the brakes, and election-day, the safety-valve. The foreigner
comes to this country expecting to find it a paradise. He finds,
indeed, a ladder reaching to the skies, but resting upon the
earth, and he is at the bottom round. But on one day in the year
he is as good as the richest man in the land. He can make the
banker stand in the line behind him until he votes, and if he has
wrongs he learns how to right them. If he has mistaken ideas of
liberty, he is instructed what freedom means.
Wire-pulling politicians may well fear to have women
enfranchised. There are too many of them, and they have had too
much experience in looking after the details of their households
to be easily duped by the tricks of politicians. You can't keep
women away from primary meetings as you do intelligent men. Women
know that every corner in the house must be inspected if the
house is to be clean. Fathers and brothers want women to vote so
that they can have a decent place for a primary meeting, a decent
place to vote in and a decent man to vote for.
The Indian question would have been peacefully and righteously
settled long ago without any standing army, if Lucretia Mott
could have led in the councils of the nation, and the millions
spent in fighting the Indians might have been used in
kindergartens for the poor, to some lasting benefit. Down with
the army, down with appropriation bills to repair the
consequences of wrong-doing, when women vote. Millions more of
women would ask for this if it were not for the cruelty and abuse
men have heaped upon the advocates of woman suffrage. Men have
made it a terrible martyrdom for women even to ask for their
rights, and then say to us, "convert the women." No, no, men have
put up the bars. They must take them down. Mrs. Hooker reviewed
the Chinese question, the labor question, the subjects of
compulsory education, reformation, police regulations, the social
evil, and many other topics upon which men vainly attempt to
legislate without the loving wisdom of mothers, sisters and
daughters. The senators most interested in the argument were
observed to be those previously most unfriendly to woman
suffrage.
It was during this winter that Marilla M. Ricker of New Hampshire,
then studying criminal law in Washington and already having quite
an extensive practice, applied to the commissioners of the District
of Columbia for an appointment as notary public. The question of
the eligibility of woman to the office was referred to the
district-attorney, Hon. Albert G. Riddle, formerly a member of
congress from Ohio, and at that time one of the most prominent
criminal and civil lawyers before the bar. Mr. Riddle's reply was
an able and exhaustive argument, clearly showing there was no law
to prevent women from holding the office. But notwithstanding this
opinion from their own attorney, the commissioners rejected Mrs.
Ricker's application.[35]
Bills to prohibit the Supreme Court from denying the admission of
lawyers on the ground of sex had been introduced at each session of
congress during the past four years. The House bill No. 1,077,
entitled "A bill to relieve certain disabilities of women," was
this year championed by Hon. John M. Glover of Missouri, and passed
by a vote of 169 ayes to 87 nays. In the Senate, Hon. George F.
Edmunds of Vermont, chairman of the Judiciary Committee reported
adversely. While the question was pending, Mrs. Lockwood addressed
a brief to the Senate, ably refuting the assertion of the Court
that it was contrary to English precedent:
_To the Honorable, the Senate of the United States:_
The provisions of this bill are so stringent, that to the
ordinary mind it would seem that the conditions are hard enough
for the applicant to have well earned the honor of the
preferment, without making _sex_ a disability. The fourteenth
amendment to the constitution declares that:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are _citizens_ of the
United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State
shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.
Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or
property without due process of law, nor deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
To deny the right asked in this bill would be to deny to women
citizens the rights guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence
to be self-evident and inalienable, "life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness"; a denial of one of the fundamental rights
of a portion of the citizens of the commonwealth to acquire
property in the most honorable profession of the law, thereby
perpetuating an invidious distinction between male and female
citizens equally amenable to the law, and having an equal
interest in all of the institutions created and perpetuated by
this government. The articles of confederation declare that:
The free inhabitants of each of these States--paupers and
fugitives from justice excepted--shall be entitled to all
privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several
States.
Article 4 of the constitution says:
Full faith and credit shall be given in each State to the
public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every
other State.
Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Wyoming,
Utah, and the District of Columbia admit women to the bar. What
then? Shall the second coördinate branch of the government, the
judiciary, refuse to grant what it will not permit the States to
deny, the privileges and immunities of citizens, and say to
women-attorneys when they have followed their cases through the
State courts to that tribunal beyond which there is no appeal,
"You cannot come in here we are too holy," or in the words of the
learned chancellor declare that:
By the uniform practice of the court from its organization
to the present time, and by a fair construction of its
rules, none but men are admitted to practice before it as
attorneys and counselors. This is in accordance with
immemorial usage in England, and the law and practice in all
the States until within a recent period, and the court does
not feel called upon to make a change until such a change is
required by statute, or a more extended practice in the
highest courts of the States.
With all due respect for this opinion, we beg leave to quote the
rule for admission to the bar of that court as laid down in the
rule book:
RULE NO. 2.--_Attorneys_: It shall be requisite to the
admission of attorneys or counselors to practice in this
court, that they shall have been such for three years past
in the Supreme Courts of the States to which they
respectively belong, and that their private and professional
character shall appear to be fair.
There is nothing in this rule or in the oath which follows it,
either express or implied, which confines the membership of the
bar of the United States Supreme Court to the male sex. Had any
such term been included therein it would virtually be nullified
by the first paragraph of the United States Revised Statutes,
ratified by the forty-third congress, June 20, 1875, in which
occur the following words:
In determining the meaning of the Revised Statutes, or of
any act or resolution of congress passed subsequent to
February 25, 1871, words importing the singular number may
extend and be applied to several persons or things; words
importing the masculine gender may be applied to _females_,
etc., etc.
Now, as to "immemorial usage in England." The executive branch of
that government has been vested in an honored and honorable woman
for the past forty years. Is it to be supposed if this
distinguished lady or any one of her accomplished daughters
should ask to be heard at the bar of the Court of the Queen's
Bench, the practice of which the United States Supreme Court has
set up as its model, that she would be refused?
Blackstone recounts that Ann, Countess of Pembroke, held the
office of sheriff of Westmoreland and exercised its duties in
person. At the assizes at Appleby she sat with the judges on the
bench. (See Coke on Lit., p. 326.) The Scotch sheriff is properly
a judge, and by the statute 20, Geo., II, c. 43, he must be a
lawyer of three years standing.
Eleanor, Queen of Henry III. of England, in the year 1253, was
appointed lady-keeper of the great seal, or the supreme
chancellor of England, and sat in the _Aula Regia_, or King's
Court. She in turn appointed Kilkenny, arch-deacon of Coventry,
as the sealer of writs and common-law instruments, but the more
important matters she executed in person.
Queen Elizabeth held the great seal at three several times during
her remarkable reign. After the death of Lord-keeper Bacon she
presided for two months in the _Aula Regia_.
It is claimed that "admission to the bar constitutes an office."
Every woman postmaster, pension agent and notary public
throughout the land is a bonded officer of the government. The
Western States have elected women as school superintendents and
appointed them as enrolling and engrossing clerks in their
several legislatures, and as State librarians. Of what use are
our seminaries and colleges for women if after they have passed
through the curriculum of the schools there is for them no
preferment, and no emolument; no application of the knowledge of
the arts and sciences acquired, and no recognition of the
excellence attained?
But this country, now in the second year of the second century of
her history, is no longer in her leading strings, that she should
look to Mother England for a precedent to do justice to the
daughters of the land. She had to make a precedent when the first
male lawyer was admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme
Court. Ah! this country is one that has not hesitated when the
necessity has arisen to make precedents and write them in blood.
There was no precedent for this free republican government and
the war of the rebellion; no precedent for the emancipation of
the slave; no precedent for the labor strikes of last summer. The
more extended practice, and the more extended public opinion
referred to by the learned chancellor have already been
accomplished. Ah! that very opinion, telegraphed throughout the
land by the associated press, brought back the response of the
people as on the wings of the wind asking you for that special
act now so nearly consummated, which shall open this professional
door to women.
BELVA A. LOCKWOOD, _Attorney and Solicitor_.
_Washington, D. C._, March 7, 1878.
Mrs. Lockwood's bill, with Senator Edmond's adverse report, was
reached on the Senate calendar April 22, 1878, and provoked a
spirited discussion. Hon. A. A. Sargent, made a gallant fight in
favor of the bill, introducing the following amendment:
No person shall be excluded from practicing as an attorney
and counselor at law in any court of the United States on
account of sex.
Mr. SARGENT: Mr. President, the best evidence that members of the
legal profession have no jealousy against the admission of women
to the bar who have the proper learning, is shown by this
document which I hold in my hand, signed by one hundred and
fifty-five lawyers of the District of Columbia, embracing the
most eminent men in the ranks of that profession. That there is
no jealousy or consideration of impropriety on the part of the
various States is shown by the fact that the legislatures of many
of the States have recently admitted women to the bar; and my own
State, California, has passed such a law within the last week or
two; Illinois has done the same thing; so have Michigan,
Minnesota, Missouri and North Carolina; and Wyoming, Utah and the
District of Columbia among the territories have also done it.
There is no reason in principle why women should not be admitted
to this profession or the profession of medicine, provided they
have the learning to enable them to be useful in those
professions, and useful to themselves. Where is the propriety in
opening our colleges, our higher institutions of learning, or any
institutions of learning, to women, and then when they have
acquired in the race with men the cultivation for higher
employment, to shut them out? There certainly is none. We should
either restrict the laws allowing the liberal education of women,
or, we should allow them to exercise the talents which are
cultivated at the public expense in such departments of
enterprise and knowledge as will be useful to society and will
enable them to gain a living. The tendency is in this direction.
I believe the time has passed to consider it a ridiculous thing
for women to appear upon the lecture platform or in the pulpit,
for women to attend to the treatment of diseases as physicians
and nurses, to engage in any literary employment, or appear at
the bar. Some excellent women in the United States are now
practicing at the bar, acceptably received before courts and
juries; and when they have conducted their cases to a successful
issue or an unsuccessful one in any court below, why should the
United States courts to which an appeal may be taken and where
their adversaries of the male sex may follow the case up, why
should these courts be closed to these women? * * *
Mr. GARLAND: I should like to ask the senator from California if
the courts of the United States cannot admit them upon their own
motion anyhow?
Mr. SARGENT: I think there is nothing in the law prohibiting it,
but the Supreme Court of the United States recently in passing
upon the question of the admission of a certain lady, said that
until some legislation took place they did not like to depart
from the precedent set in England, or until there was more
general practice among the States. The learned chief-justice,
perhaps, did not sufficiently reflect when he stated that there
were no English precedents. The fact is that Elizabeth herself
sat in the _Aula Regia_ and administered the law, and in both
Scotland and England women have fulfilled the function of judges.
The instances are not numerous but they are well established in
history. I myself have had my attention called to the fact that
in the various States the women are now admitted by special
legislation to the bar. I do not think there is anything in the
law, properly considered, that would debar a woman from coming
into this profession. I think the Supreme Court should not have
required further legislation, but it seems to have done so, and
that makes the necessity for the amendment which I have now
offered.
The chairman of the committee in reporting this bill back from
the Judiciary Committee said that the bill as it passed the House
of Representatives gave privileges to women which men did not
enjoy; that is to say, the Supreme Court can by a change of rule
require further qualification of men, whereas in regard to women,
if this provision were put into the statute, the Supreme Court
could not rule them out even though it may be necessary in its
judgment to get a higher standard of qualifications than its
present rules prescribe. Although I observe that my time is up, I
ask indulgence for a moment or two longer. As this is a question
of some interest and women cannot appear here to speak for
themselves, I hope I may be allowed to speak for them a moment.
Now, there is something in the objection stated by the chairman
of the Committee on the Judiciary--that is to say, the bill would
take the rule of the Supreme Court and put it in the statute and
apply it to women, thereby conferring exceptional privileges; but
that is not my intention at all, and therefore I have proposed
that women shall not be excluded from practicing law, if they are
otherwise qualified, on account of sex, and that is the provision
which I want to send back to the Judiciary Committee.
Mr. GARLAND: I wish to ask one question of the senator from
California. Suppose the court should exclude women, but not on
account of sex, then what is their remedy?
Mr. SARGENT: I do not see any pretense that the court could
exclude them on except on account of sex.
Mr. GARLAND: If I recollect the rule of the Supreme Court in
regard to the admission of practitioners (and I had to appear
there twice to present my claim before I could carry on my
profession in that court), I do not think any legislation is
necessary to aid them by giving them any more access to that
court than they have at present under the rules of the Supreme
Court.
Mr. SARGENT: I believe if the laws now existing were properly
construed (of course I speak with all deference to the Supreme
Court, but I express the opinion) they would be admitted, but
unfortunately the court does not take that view of it, and it
will wait for legislation. I purpose that the legislation shall
follow. If there is anything in principle why this privilege
should not be granted to women who are otherwise qualified, then
let the bill be defeated on that ground; but I say there is no
difference in principle whatever, not the slightest. There is no
reason because a citizen of the United States is a woman that she
should be deprived of her rights as a citizen, and these are
rights of a citizen. She has the same right to life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness and employment, commensurate with her
capacities, as a man has; and, as to the question of capacity,
the history of the world shows from Queen Elizabeth and Queen
Isabella down to Madame Dudevant and Mrs. Stowe, that capacity is
not a question of sex.
Mr. MCDONALD: I have simply to say, Mr. President, that a number
of States and territories have authorized the admission of women
to the legal profession, and they have become members of the bar
of the highest courts of judicature. It may very frequently
occur, and has in some instances I believe really occurred, that
cases in which they have been thus employed have been brought to
the Supreme Court of the United States. To have the door closed
against them when the cause is brought here, not by them, or when
in the prosecution of the suits of their clients they find it
necessary to come here, seems to me entirely unjust. I therefore
favor the bill with the amendment. The proposed amendment is
perhaps better because it does away with any tendency to
discrimination in regard to the admissibility of women to
practice in the Supreme Court.
The PRESIDING OFFICER: The senator from California moves that the
bill be recommitted to the Committee on Judiciary.
Mr. SARGENT: I have the promise of the chairman of the committee
that the bill will soon be reported back, and therefore I am
willing that it go to the committee, and I make the motion that
it be recommitted. [The motion was agreed to.]
Mr. SARGENT: I ask that the amendment which I propose be printed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER: The order to print will be made.
Mary Clemmer, the gifted correspondent of the New York
_Independent_, learning that Senator Wadleigh was about to report
adversely upon the sixteenth amendment, wrote the following private
letter, which, as a record of her own sentiments on the question,
she gave to Miss Anthony for publication in this history:
Hon. BAINBRIDGE WADLEIGH--_Dear Sir_: The more I think of it the
more I regret that, as chairman of the Committee on Privileges
and Elections, you regard with less favor the enfranchisement of
women than did your distinguished predecessor, Senator Morton. At
this moment, when your committee is discussing that subject, I
sigh for the large outlook, the just mind, the unselfish decision
of that great legislator. You were his friend, you respected his
intellect, you believed in his integrity, you sit in his seat.
You are to prepare the report that he would prepare were he still
upon the earth. May I ask you to bring to that labor as fair a
spirit, as unprejudiced an outlook, as just a decision as he
would have done?
I ask this not as a partisan of woman's rights, but as a lover of
the human race. In this faint dawn of woman's day, I discern not
woman's development of freedom merely, but the promise of that
higher, finer, purer civilization which is to redeem the world,
the lack of which makes men tyrants and women slaves. You cannot
be unconscious of the fact that a new race of women is born into
the world, who, while they lack no womanly attribute, are the
peers of any man in intellect and aspiration. It will be
impossible long to deny to such women that equality before the
law granted to the lowest creature that crawls, if he happens to
be a man; denied to the highest creature that asks it, if she
happens to be a woman.
On what authority, save that of the gross regality of physical
strength, do you deny to a thoughtful, educated, tax-paying
person the common rights of citizenship because she is a woman? I
am a property-owner, the head of a household. By what right do
you assume to define and curtail for me my prerogatives as a
citizen, while as a tax-payer you make not the slightest
distinction between me and a man? Leave to my own perception what
is proper for me as a lady, to my own discretion what is wise for
me as a woman, to my own conscience what is my duty to my race
and to my God. Leave to unerring nature to protect the subtle
boundaries which define the distinctive life and action of the
sexes, while you as a legislator do everything in your power to
secure to every creature of God an equal chance to make the best
and most of himself.
If American men could say as Huxley says, "I scorn to lay a
single obstacle in the way of those whom nature from the
beginning has so heavily burdened," the sexes would cease to war,
men and women would reign together, the equal companions,
friends, helpers, and lovers that nature intended they should be.
But what is love, tenderness, protection, even, unless rooted in
justice? Tyranny and servitude, that is all. Brute supremacy,
spiritual slavery. By what authority do you say that the country
is not prepared for a more enlightened franchise, for political
equality, if six women citizens, earnest, eloquent,
long-suffering, come to you and demand both? No words can express
my regret if to the minority report I see appended only the
honored name of George F. Hoar of Massachusetts.
Your friend, MARY CLEMMER.
In response to all these arguments, appeals and petitions, Senator
Wadleigh, from the Committee on Privileges and Elections, presented
the following adverse report, June 14, 1878:
_The Committee on Privileges and Elections, to whom was referred
the Resolution (S. Res. 12) proposing an Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States, and certain Petitions for and
Remonstrances against the same, make the following Report:_
This proposed amendment forbids the United States, or any State
to deny or abridge the right to vote on account of sex. If
adopted, it will make several millions of female voters, totally
inexperienced in political affairs, quite generally dependent
upon the other sex, all incapable of performing military duty and
without the power to enforce the laws which their numerical
strength may enable them to make, and comparatively very few of
whom wish to assume the irksome and responsible political duties
which this measure thrusts upon them. An experiment so novel, a
change so great, should only be made slowly and in response to a
general public demand, of the existence of which there is no
evidence before your committee.
[Illustration: Marilla M. Ricker]
Petitions from various parts of the country, containing by
estimate about 30,000 names, have been presented to congress
asking for this legislation. They were procured through the
efforts of woman suffrage societies, thoroughly organized, with
active and zealous managers. The ease with which signatures may
be procured to any petition is well known. The small number of
petitioners, when compared with that of the intelligent women in
the country, is striking evidence that there exists among them no
general desire to take up the heavy burden of governing, which so
many men seek to evade. It would be unjust, unwise and impolitic
to impose that burden on the great mass of women throughout the
country who do not wish for it, to gratify the comparatively few
who do.
It has been strongly urged that without the right of suffrage,
women are, and will be, subjected to great oppression and
injustice.
But every one who has examined the subject at all knows that,
without female suffrage, legislation for years has improved and
is still improving the condition of woman. The disabilities
imposed upon her by the common law have, one by one, been swept
away, until in most of the States she has the full right to her
property and all, or nearly all, the rights which can be granted
without impairing or destroying the marriage relation. These
changes have been wrought by the spirit of the age, and are not,
generally at least, the result of any agitation by women in their
own behalf.
Nor can women justly complain of any partiality in the
administration of justice. They have the sympathy of judges and
particularly of juries to an extent which would warrant loud
complaint on the part of their adversaries of the sterner sex.
Their appeals to legislatures against injustice are never
unheeded, and there is no doubt that when any considerable part
of the women of any State really wish for the right to vote, it
will be granted without the intervention of congress.
Any State may grant the right of suffrage to women. Some of them
have done so to a limited extent, and perhaps with good results.
It is evident that in some States public opinion is much more
strongly in favor of it than it is in others. Your committee
regard it as unwise and inexpedient to enable three-fourths in
number of the States, through an amendment to the national
constitution, to force woman suffrage upon the other fourth in
which the public opinion of both sexes may be strongly adverse to
such a change.
For these reasons, your committee report back said resolution
with a recommendation that it be indefinitely postponed.
This adverse report was all the more disappointing because Mr.
Wadleigh, as Mrs. Clemmer's letter states, filled the place of Hon.
Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, one of the most steadfast friends of
woman suffrage, who, at the last session of congress, had asked as
a special favor the reference of our petitions to the Committee on
Privileges and Elections, of which he was chairman, that they might
receive proper attention and that he might report favorably upon
them. In the discussion on the Pembina bill in 1874, Senator
Morton made an earnest speech in favor of woman's enfranchisement.
In his premature death our cause lost one of its bravest champions.
Senator Wadleigh's report called forth severe criticism; notably
from the _New Northwest_ of Oregon, the _Woman's Journal_ of
Boston, the _Inter-Ocean_ of Chicago, the _Evening Telegram_ and
the _National Citizen_ of New York. We quote from the latter:
The report is not a statesman-like answer based upon fundamental
principles, but a mere politician's dodge--a species of
dust-throwing quite in vogue in Washington. "Several millions of
voters totally inexperienced in political affairs"! They would
have about as much experience as the fathers in 1776, as the
negroes in 1870, as the Irish, English, Italians, Norwegians,
Danes, French, Germans, Portuguese, Scotch, Russians, Turks,
Mexicans, Hungarians, Swedes and Indians, who form a good part of
the voting population of this country. Did Mr. Wadleigh never
hear of Agnes C. Jencks--the woman who has stirred up politics to
its deepest depth; who has shaken the seat of President Hayes;
who has set in motion the whole machinery of government, and who,
when brought to the witness stand has for hours successfully
baffled such wily politicians as Ben Butler and McMahon;--a woman
who thwarts alike Republican and Democrat, and at her own will
puts the brakes on all this turmoil of her own raising? Does
Senator Wadleigh know nothing of that woman's "experience in
politics"?
"Quite dependent upon the other sex." It used to be said the
negroes were "quite dependent" upon their masters, that it would
really be an abuse of the poor things to set them free, but when
free and controlling the results of their own labor, it was found
the masters had been the ones "quite dependent," and thousands of
them who before the war rolled in luxury, have since been in the
depths of poverty--some of them even dependent upon the bounty of
their former slaves. When men cease to rob women of their
earnings they will find them generally, as thousands now are,
capable of self-care.[36]
"Military duty." When women hold the ballot there will not be
quite as much military duty to be done. They will then have a
voice and a vote in the matter, and the men will no longer be
able to throw the country into a war to gratify spite or
ambition, tearing from woman's arms her nearest and dearest. All
men do not like "military duty." "The key to that horrible
enigma, German socialism, is antagonism to the military system,"
and nations are shaken with fear because of it. But when there is
necessity for military duty, women will be found in line. The
person who planned the Tennessee campaign, in which the Northern
armies secured their first victories, was a woman, Anna Ella
Carroll. Gen. Grant acted upon her plan, and was successful. She
was endorsed by President Lincoln, Seward, Stanton, Wade, Scott,
and all the nation's leaders in its hour of peril, and yet
congress has not granted her the pension which for ten years her
friends have demanded. Mr. Wadleigh holds his seat in the United
States Senate to-day, because of the "military duty" done by this
woman.
"About 30,000 names," to petitions. There have been 70,000 sent
in during the present session of congress, for a sixteenth
amendment, besides hundreds of individual petitions from women
asking for the removal of their own political disabilities. Men
in this country are occasionally disfranchised for crime, and
sometimes pray for the removal of their political disabilities.
Nine such disfranchised men had the right of voting restored to
them during the last session of congress. But not a single one of
the five hundred women who individually asked to have their
political disabilities removed, was even so much as noticed by an
adverse report, Mr. Wadleigh knows it would make no difference if
300,000 women petitioned. But whether women ask for the ballot or
not has nothing to do with the question. Self-government is the
natural right of every individual, and because woman possesses
this natural right, she should be secured in its exercise.
Mr. Wadleigh says, "nor can woman justly complain of any
partiality in the administration of justice." Let us examine: A
few years ago a married man in Washington, in official position,
forced a confession from his wife at the mouth of a pistol, and
shot his rival dead. Upon trial he was triumphantly acquitted and
afterwards sent abroad as foreign minister. A few months ago a
married woman in Georgia, who had been taunted by her rival with
boasts of having gained her husband's love, found this rival
dancing with him. She drew a knife and killed the woman on the
spot. She was tried, convicted, and, although nursing one infant,
and again about to become a mother, was sentenced to be hanged by
the neck till she was 'dead, dead, dead.' There is Mr. Wadleigh's
equal administration of justice between man and woman! There is
"the sympathy of judges and juries." There is the "extent which
would warrant loud complaint on the part of their adversaries of
the sterner sex." And this woman escaped the gallows not because
of "the sympathy of the judge" or "jury," but because her own sex
took the matter up, and from every part of the country sent
petitions by the hundreds to Governor Colquitt of Georgia, asking
her pardon. That pardon came in the shape of ten years'
imprisonment;--ten years in a cell for a woman, the mother of a
nursing and an unborn infant, while for General Sickles the
mission to Madrid with high honors and a fat salary.
Messrs. Wadleigh of New Hampshire, McMillan of Minnesota, Ingalls
of Kansas, Saulsbury of Delaware, Merrimon of North Carolina and
Hill of Georgia, all senators of the United States, are the
committee that report it "inexpedient" to secure equal rights to
the women of the United States. But we are not discouraged; we
are not disheartened; all the Wadleighs in the Senate, all the
committees of both Houses, the whole congress of the United
States against us, would not lessen our faith, nor our efforts.
We know we are right; we know we shall be successful; we know the
day is not far distant, when this government and the world will
acknowledge the exact and permanent political equality of man and
woman, and we know that until that hour comes woman will be
oppressed, degraded; a slave, without a single right that man
feels himself bound to respect. Work then, women, for your own
freedom. Let the early morning see you busy, and dusky evening
find you planning how you may become FREE.
But the most severe judgment upon Mr. Wadleigh's action came from
his own constituents, who, at the close of the forty-fifth congress
excused his further presence in the United States Senate, sending
in his stead the Hon. Henry W. Blair, a valiant champion of
national protection for national citizens.[37]
In April, 1878, Mrs. Williams transferred the _Ballot-Box_ to Mrs.
Gage, who removed it to Syracuse, New York, and changed its name to
the _National Citizen_. In her prospectus Mrs. Gage said:
The _National Citizen_ will advocate the principle that suffrage
is the citizen's right, and should be protected by national law,
and that, while States may regulate the suffrage, they should
have no power to abolish it. Its especial object will be to
secure national protection to women in the exercise of their
right to vote; it will oppose class legislation of whatever form.
It will support no political party until one arises which is
based upon the exact equality of man and woman.
As the first step towards becoming well is to know you are ill,
one of the principal aims of the _National Citizen_ will be to
make those women discontented who are now content; to waken them
to self-respect and a desire to use the talents they possess; to
educate their consciences aright; to quicken their sense of duty;
to destroy morbid beliefs, and fit them for their high
responsibilities as citizens of a republic. The _National
Citizen_ has no faith in that old theory that "a woman once lost
is lost forever," neither does it believe in the assertion that
"a woman who sins, sinks to depths of wickedness lower than man
can reach." On the contrary it believes there is a future for the
most abandoned, if only the kindly hand of love and sympathy be
extended to rescue them from the degradation into which they have
fallen. The _National Citizen_ will endeavor to keep its readers
informed of the progress of women in foreign countries, and will,
as far as possible, revolutionize this country, striving to make
it live up to its own fundamental principles and become in
reality what it is but in name--a genuine republic.
Instead of holding its usual May anniversary in New York city, the
National Association decided to meet in Rochester to celebrate the
close of the third decade of organized agitation in the United
States, and issued the following call:
The National Association will hold a convention in Rochester, N.
Y., July 19, 1878. This will be the thirtieth anniversary of the
first woman's rights convention, held July 19, 1848, in the
Wesleyan church at Seneca Falls, N. Y., and adjourned to meet,
August 2, in Rochester. Some who took part in that convention
have passed away, but many others, including both Mrs. Mott and
Mrs. Stanton, are still living. This convention will take the
place of the usual May anniversary, and will be largely devoted
to reminiscences. Friends are cordially invited to be present.
CLEMENCE S. LOZIER, M. D., _President_.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Chairman Executive Committee_.
The meeting was held in the Unitarian church on Fitzhugh street,
occupied by the same society that had opened its doors in 1848; and
Amy Post, one of the leading spirits of the first convention, still
living in Rochester and in her seventy-seventh year, assisted in
the arrangements. Rochester, known as "The Flower City,"
contributed of its beauty to the adornment of the church. It was
crowded at the first session. Representatives from a large number
of States were present,[38] and there was a pleasant interchange of
greetings between those whose homes were far apart, but who were
friends and co-workers in this great reform. The reunion was more
like the meeting of near and dear relatives than of strangers whose
only bond was work in a common cause. Such are the compensations
which help to sustain reformers while they battle ignorance and
prejudice in order to secure justice. In the absence of the
president, Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, Mrs. Stanton took the chair and
said:
We are here to celebrate the third decade of woman's struggle in
this country for liberty. Thirty years have passed since many of
us now present met in this place to discuss the true position of
woman as a citizen of a republic. The reports of our first
conventions show that those who inaugurated this movement
understood the significance of the term "citizens." At the very
start we claimed full equality with man. Our meetings were
hastily called and somewhat crudely conducted; but we intuitively
recognized the fact that we were defrauded of our natural rights,
conceded in the national constitution. And thus the greatest
movement of the century was inaugurated. I say greatest, because
through the elevation of woman all humanity is lifted to a higher
plane. To contrast our position thirty years ago, under the old
common law of England, with that we occupy under the advanced
legislation of to-day, is enough to assure us that we have passed
the boundary line--from slavery to freedom. We already see the
mile-stones of a new civilization on every highway.
Look at the department of education, the doors of many colleges
and universities thrown wide open to women; girls contending for,
yea, and winning prizes over their brothers. In the working world
they are rapidly filling places and climbing heights unknown to
them before, realizing, in fact, the dreams, the hopes, the
prophesies of the inspired women of by-gone centuries. In many
departments of learning woman stands the peer of man, and when by
higher education and profitable labor she becomes self-reliant
and independent, then she must and will be free. The moment an
individual or a class is strong enough to stand alone, bondage is
impossible. Jefferson Davis, in a recent speech, says: "A Cæsar
could not subject a people fit to be free, nor could a Brutus
save them if they were fit for subjugation."
Looking back over the past thirty years, how long ago seems that
July morning when we gathered round the altar in the old Wesleyan
church in Seneca Falls! It taxes and wearies the memory to think
of all the conventions we have held, the legislatures we have
besieged, the petitions and tracts we have circulated, the
speeches, the calls, the resolutions we have penned, the
never-ending debates we have kept up in public and private, and
yet to each and all our theme is as fresh and absorbing as it was
the day we started. Calm, benignant, subdued as we look on this
platform, if any man should dare to rise in our presence and
controvert a single position we have taken, there is not a woman
here that would not in an instant, with flushed face and flashing
eye, bristle all over with sharp, pointed arguments that would
soon annihilate the most skilled logician, the most profound
philosopher.
To those of you on this platform who for these thirty years have
been the steadfast representatives of woman's cause, my friends
and co-laborers, let me say our work has not been in vain. True,
we have not yet secured the suffrage, but we have aroused public
thought to the many disabilities of our sex, and our countrywomen
to higher self-respect and worthier ambition, and in this
struggle for justice we have deepened and broadened our own lives
and extended the horizon of our vision. Ridiculed, persecuted,
ostracised, we have learned to place a just estimate on popular
opinion, and to feel a just confidence in ourselves. As the
representatives of principles which it was necessary to explain
and defend, we have been compelled to study constitutions and
laws, and in thus seeking to redress the wrongs and vindicate the
rights of the many, we have secured a higher development for
ourselves. Nor is this all. The full fruition of these years of
seed-sowing shall yet be realized, though it may not be by those
who have led in the reform, for many of our number have already
fallen asleep. Another decade and not one of us may be here, but
we have smoothed the rough paths for those who come after us. The
lives of multitudes will be gladdened by the sacrifices we have
made, and the truths we have uttered can never die.
Standing near the gateway of the unknown land and looking back
through the vista of the past, memory recalls many duties in
life's varied relations we would had been better done. The past
to all of us is filled with regrets. We can recall, perchance,
social ambitions disappointed, fond hopes wrecked, ideals in
wealth, power, position, unattained--much that would be
considered success in life unrealized. But I think we should all
agree that the time, the thought, the energy we have devoted to
the freedom of our countrywomen, that the past, in so far as our
lives have represented this great movement, brings us only
unalloyed satisfaction. The rights already obtained, the full
promise of the rising generation of women more than repay us for
the hopes so long deferred, the rights yet denied, the
humiliation of spirit we still suffer.
And for those of you who have been mere spectators of the long,
hard battle we have fought, and are still fighting, I have a
word. Whatever your attitude has been, whether as cold,
indifferent observers--whether you have hurled at us the shafts
of ridicule or of denunciation, we ask you now to lay aside your
old educational prejudices and give this question your earnest
consideration, substituting reason for ridicule, sympathy for
sneers. I urge the young women especially to prepare themselves
to take up the work so soon to fall from our hands. You have had
opportunities for education such as we had not. You hold to-day
the vantage-ground we have won by argument. Show now your
gratitude to us by making the uttermost of yourselves, and by
your earnest, exalted lives secure to those who come after you a
higher outlook, a broader culture, a larger freedom than have yet
been vouchsafed to woman in our own happy land.
Congratulatory letters[39] and telegrams were received from all
portions of the United States and from the old world. Space admits
the publication of but a few, yet all breathed the same hopeful
spirit and confidence in future success. Abigail Bush, who presided
over the first Rochester convention, said:
No one knows what I passed through upon that occasion. I was born
and baptized in the old Scotch Presbyterian church. At that time
its sacred teachings were, "if a woman would know anything let
her ask her husband at home." * * * I well remember the incidents
of that meeting and the thoughts awakened by it. * * * Say to
your convention my full heart is with them in all their
deliberations and counsels, and I trust great good to women will
come of their efforts.
Ernestine L. Rose, a native of Poland, and, next to Frances Wright,
the earliest advocate of woman's enfranchisement in America, wrote
from England:
How I should like to be with you at the anniversary--it reminds
me of the delightful convention we had at Rochester, long, long
ago--and speak of the wonderful change that has taken place in
regard to woman. Compare her present position in society with the
one she occupied _forty_ years ago, when I undertook to
emancipate her from not only barbarous laws, but from what was
even worse, a barbarous public opinion. No one can appreciate the
wonderful change in the social and moral condition of woman,
except by looking back and comparing the past with the present. *
* * Say to the friends, Go on, go on, halt not and rest not.
Remember that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" and of
right. Much has been achieved; but the main, the vital thing, has
yet to come. The suffrage is the magic key to the statute--the
insignia of citizenship in a republic.
Caroline Ashurst Biggs, editor of the _Englishwoman's Review_,
London, wrote:
I have read with great interest in the _National Citizen_ and the
_Woman's Journal_ the announcement of the forthcoming convention
in Rochester. * * * I cannot refrain from sending you a cordial
English congratulation upon the great advance in the social and
legal position of women in America, which has been the result of
your labor. The next few years will see still greater progress.
As soon as the suffrage is granted to women, a concession which
will not be many years in coming either in England or America,
every one of our questions will advance with double force, and
meanwhile our efforts in that direction are simultaneously
helping forward other social, legal, educational and moral
reforms. Our organization in England does not date back so far as
yours. There were only a few isolated thinkers when Mrs. John
Stuart Mill wrote her essay on the enfranchisement of women in
1851. For twenty years, however, it has progressed with few
drawbacks. In some particulars the English laws in respect of
women are in advance of yours, but the connection between England
and America is so close that a gain to one is a gain to the
other.
Lydia E. Becker, editor of the _Women's Suffrage Journal_,
Manchester, England, wrote:
* * * I beg to offer to the venerable pioneers of the movement,
more especially to Lucretia Mott, a tribute of respectful
admiration and gratitude for the services they have rendered in
the cause of enfranchisement. * * * As regards the United
kingdom, the movement in a practical form is but twelve years
old, and in that period, although we have not obtained the
parliamentary franchise, we have seen it supported by at least
one-third of the House of Commons, and our claim admitted as one
which must be dealt with in future measures of parliamentary
reform. We have obtained the municipal franchise and the
school-board franchise. Women have secured the right to enter the
medical profession and to take degrees in the University of
London, besides considerable amendment of the law regarding
married women, though much remains to be done.
Senator Sargent, since minister to Berlin, wrote:
I regret that the necessity to proceed at once to California will
deprive me of the pleasure of attending your convention of July
19, the anniversary of the spirited declaration of rights put
forth thirty years ago by some of the noblest and most
enlightened women of America. Women's rights have made vast
strides since that day, in juster legislation, in widened spheres
of employment, and in the gradual but certain recognition by
large numbers of citizens of the justice and policy of extending
the elective franchise to women. It is now very generally
conceded that the time is rapidly approaching when women will
vote. The friends of the movement have faith in the result; its
enemies grudgingly admit it. Courage and work will hasten the
day. The worst difficulties have already been overcome. The
movement has passed the stage of ridicule, and even that of
abuse, and has entered that of intelligent discussion, its worst
adversaries treating it with respect. You are so familiar with
all the arguments in favor of this great reform that I will not
attempt to state them; but I wish to say that as an observer of
public events, it is my deliberate judgment that your triumph is
near at hand. There are vastly more men and women in the United
States now who believe that women should have the right to vote
than there were in 1848 who believed the slave should be freed.
This is a government of opinions and the growing opinion will be
irresistible.
Respectfully yours, A. A. SARGENT.
The following letters from the great leaders of the anti-slavery
movement were gratefully received. As Mr. Garrison soon after
finished his eventful life, this proved to be his last message to
our association:
BOSTON, June 30, 1878.
MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY--Your urgent and welcome letter, inviting me
to the thirtieth anniversary of the woman's rights movement at
Rochester, came yesterday. Most earnestly do I wish I could be
present to help mark this epoch in our movement, and join in
congratulating the friends on the marvelous results of their
labors. No reform has gathered more devoted and self-sacrificing
friends. No one has had lives more generously given to its
service; and you who have borne such heavy burdens may well
rejoice in the large harvest; for no reform has, I think, had
such rapid success. You who remember the indifference which
almost discouraged us in 1848, and who have so bravely faced
ungenerous opposition and insult since, must look back on the
result with unmixed astonishment and delight. Temperance, and
finance--which is but another name for the labor movement--and
woman's rights, are three radical questions which overtop all
others in value and importance. Woman's claim for the ballot-box
has had a much wider influence than merely to protect woman.
Universal suffrage is itself in danger. Scholars dread it; social
science and journalists attack it. The discussion of woman's
claim has done much to reveal this danger, and rally patriotic
and thoughtful men in defense. In many ways the agitation has
educated the people. Its success shows that the masses are sound
and healthy; and if we gain, in the coming fifteen years, half as
much as we have in the last thirty, woman will hold spear and
shield in her own hands. If I might presume to advise, I should
say close up the ranks and write on our flag only one claim--the
ballot. Everything helps us, and if we are united, success cannot
long be delayed.
Very cordially yours,
WENDELL PHILLIPS.
BOSTON, July 16, 1878.
MY DEAR FRIEND--The thirtieth anniversary of the first woman's
rights convention ever held with special reference to demanding
the elective franchise irrespective of sex well deserves to be
commemorated in the manner set forth in the call for the same, at
Rochester, on the 19th instant. As a substitute for my personal
attendance, I can only send a brief but warm congratulatory
epistle on the cheering progress which the movement has made
within the period named. For how widely different are the
circumstances under which that convention was held, and those
which attend the celebration of its third decade! Then, the
assertion of civil and political equality, alike for men and
women, excited widespread disgust and astonishment, as though it
were a proposition to repeal the laws of nature, and literally to
"turn the world upside down"; and it was ridiculed and
caricatured as little short of lunacy. Now, it is a subject of
increasing interest and grave consideration, from the Atlantic to
the Pacific, and what at first appeared to be so foolish in
pretension is admitted by all reflecting and candid minds to be
deserving of the most respectful treatment. Then, its avowed
friends, were indeed "few and far between," even among those
disfranchised as the penalty of their womanhood. Now, they can be
counted by tens of thousands, and their number is
augmenting--foremost in intelligence, in weight of character, in
strength of understanding, in manly and womanly development, and
in all that goes to make up enlightened citizenship. Then, with
rare exceptions, women were everywhere remanded to poverty and
servile dependence, being precluded from following those
avocations and engaging in those pursuits which make competency
and independence not a difficult achievement. Now, there is
scarcely any situation or profession, in the arrangements of
society, to which they may not and do not aspire, and in which
many of them are not usefully engaged; whether in new and varied
industrial employment, in the arts and sciences, in the highest
range of literature, in philosophic and mathematical
investigations, in the professions of law, medicine, and
divinity, in high scholarship, in educational training and
supervision, in rhetoric and oratory, in the lyceum, or in
discharging the official duties connected with the various
departments of the State and national governments.
Almost all barriers are down except that which prevents women
from going to the polls to help decide who shall be the
law-makers and what shall be the laws, so that the general
welfare may be impartially consulted, and the blessings of
freedom and equal rights be enjoyed by all. That barrier, too,
must give way wherever erected, as sure as time outlasts and
baffles every device of wrong-doing, and truth is stronger than
falsehood, and the law of eternal justice is as reliable as the
law of gravitation. Yes! the grand fundamental truths of the
Declaration of Independence shall yet be reduced to practice in
our land--that the human race are created free and equal; that
government derives its just powers from the consent of the
governed, and that taxation without representation is tyranny.
And I confidently predict that this will be witnessed before the
expiration of another decade.
Yours, to abate nothing of heart or hope,
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.
Mrs. Mott never seemed more hopeful for the triumph of our
principles than on this occasion. She expressed great satisfaction
in the number of young women who for the first time that day graced
our platform.[40] Though in her eighty-sixth year, her enthusiasm
in the cause for which she had so long labored seemed still
unabated, and her eye sparkled with humor as of yore while giving
some amusing reminiscences of encounters with opponents in the
early days. Always apt in biblical quotations she had proved
herself a worthy antagonist of the clergy on our platform. She had
slain many Abimelechs with short texts of Scripture, whose defeat
was the more humiliating because received at the hand of a woman.
As she recounted in her happiest vein the triumphs of her
coadjutors she was received with the heartiest manifestations of
delight by her auditors. She took a lively interest in the
discussion of the resolutions that had been presented by the
chairman of the committee, Matilda Joslyn Gage:
_Resolved_, That a government of the people, by the people and
for the people is yet to be realized; for that which is formed,
administered and controlled only by men, is practically nothing
more than an enlarged oligarchy, whose assumptions of natural
superiority and of the right to rule are as baseless as those
enforced by the aristocratic powers of the old world.
_Resolved_, That in celebrating our third decade we have reason
to congratulate ourselves on the marked change in woman's
position--in her enlarged opportunities for education and labor,
her greater freedom under improved social customs and civil laws,
and the promise of her speedy enfranchisement in the minor
political rights she has already secured.
_Resolved_, That the International Congress[41] called in Paris,
July 20, to discuss the rights of woman--the eminent Victor Hugo,
its presiding officer--is one of the most encouraging events of
the century, in that statesmen and scholars from all parts of the
world, amid the excitement of the French Exposition, propose to
give five days to deliberations upon this question.
_Resolved_, That the majority report of the chairman of the
Committee on Privileges and Elections, Senator Wadleigh of New
Hampshire, against a sixteenth amendment to secure the political
rights of woman in its weakness, shows the strength of our
reform.
_Resolved_, That the national effort to force citizenship on the
Indians, the decision of Judge Sawyer in the United States
Circuit Court of California against the naturalization of the
Chinese, and the refusal of congress to secure the right of
suffrage to women, are class legislation, dangerous to the
stability of our institutions.
WHEREAS, Woman's rights and duties in all matters of legislation
are the same as those of man.
_Resolved_, That the problems of labor, finance, suffrage,
international rights, internal improvements, and other great
questions, can never be satisfactorily adjusted without the
enlightened thought of woman, and her voice in the councils of
the nation.
_Resolved_, That the question of capital and labor is one of
special interest to us. Man, standing to woman in the position of
capitalist, has robbed her through the ages of the results of her
toil. No just settlement of this question can be attained until
the right of woman to the proceeds of her labor in the family and
elsewhere is recognized, and she is welcomed into every industry
on the basis of equal pay for equal work.
_Resolved_, That as the first duty of every individual is
self-development, the lessons of self-sacrifice and obedience
taught woman by the Christian church have been fatal, not only to
her own vital interests, but through her, to those of the race.
_Resolved_, That the great principle of the Protestant
Reformation, the right of individual conscience and judgment
heretofore exercised by man alone, should now be claimed by
woman; that, in the interpretation of Scripture, she should be
guided by her own reason, and not by the authority of the church.
_Resolved_, That it is through the perversion of the religious
element in woman--playing upon her hopes and fears of the future,
holding this life with all its high duties in abeyance to that
which is to come--that she and the children she has trained have
been so completely subjugated by priestcraft and superstition.
This was the last convention ever attended by Lucretia Mott. Her
family had specially requested that she should not be urged to go;
but on seeing the call, she quietly announced her intention to be
at the meeting, and, with the ever faithful Sarah Pugh as her
companion, she made the journey from Philadelphia in the intense
heat of those July days. Mrs. Mott was the guest of her husband's
nephew, Dr. E.M. Moore, who, fearing that his aunt would be utterly
exhausted, called for her while she was in the midst of her closing
remarks. As she descended the platform, she continued speaking
while she slowly moved down the aisle, shaking hands upon either
side. The audience simultaneously rose, and on behalf of all,
Frederick Douglass ejaculated, "Good-by, dear Lucretia!"
The last three resolutions called out a prolonged discussion[42]
not only in the convention but from the pulpit and press of the
State.
One amusing encounter in the course of the debate is worthy of
note. Perhaps it was due to the intense heat that Mr. Douglass,
usually clear on questions of principle, was misled into opposing
the resolutions. He spoke with great feeling and religious
sentiment of the beautiful Christian doctrine of self-sacrifice.
When he finished, Mrs. Lucy Coleman, always keen in pricking
bubbles, arose and said: "Well, Mr. Douglass, all you say may be
true; but allow me to ask you why you did not remain a slave in
Maryland, and sacrifice yourself, like a Christian, to your master,
instead of running off to Canada to secure your liberty, like a
man? We shall judge your faith, Frederick, by your deeds."
An immense audience assembled at Corinthian Hall in the evening to
listen to the closing speeches[43] of the convention. Mrs. Robinson
of Boston gave an exhaustive review of the work in Massachusetts,
and her daughter, Mrs. Shattuck, gave many amusing experiences as
her father's[44] clerk in the legislature of that State.
The resolutions provoked many attacks from the clergy throughout
the State, led by Rev. A.H. Strong, D.D., president of the Baptist
Theological Seminary in Rochester, Of his sermon the _National
Citizen_ said:
None too soon have we issued our resolutions, proclaiming woman's
right to self-development--to interpret Scripture for herself, to
use her own faculties. In speaking of what Christianity has done
for woman, Dr. Strong stultifies his own assertions by referring
to Switzerland and Germany "where you may see any day hundreds of
women wheeling earth for railroad embankments." Does he not
remember that Switzerland and Germany are Christian countries and
that it is part of their civilization that while women do this
work, some man takes the pay and puts it in his own pocket quite
in heathen fashion? The reverend doctor in the usual style of
opposition to woman--which is to quote something or other having
no bearing upon the question--refers to Cornelia's "jewels,"
forgetting to say that Cornelia delivered public lectures upon
philosophy in Rome, and that Cicero paid the very highest tribute
to her learning and genius.
Dr. Strong advocates the old theory that woman and man are not
two classes standing upon the same level, but that the two are
one--that one on the time-worn theory of common law, the husband;
and talks of the "dignity and delicacy of woman" being due to the
fact of her not having been in public life, and that this
"dignity and delicacy" would all evaporate if once she were
allowed to vote, which reminds one of the story of Baron
Munchausen's horn, into which a certain coach-driver blew all
manner of wicked tunes. The weather being very cold, these tunes
remained frozen in the horn. When hung by the fire, the horn
began to thaw out, and these wicked tunes came pealing forth to
the great amazement of the by-standers. The reverend gentlemen
seems to think women are full of frozen wickedness, which if they
enter public life will be thawed out to the utter demolition of
their "dignity and delicacy" and the disgust of society. He deems
it "too hazardous" to allow women to vote. "Bad women would
vote." Well, what of it? Have they not equal right with bad men,
to self-government? Bad is a relative term. It strikes us that
the very reverend Dr. Strong is a "bad" man--a man who does not
understand true Christianity--who is not just--who would strike
those who are down--who would keep woman in slavery--who quotes
the Bible as his authority: thus fettering woman's conscience,
binding her will, and playing upon her hopes and fears to keep
her in subjection.
From Augustine, down, theologians have tried to compel people to
accept their special interpretation of the Scripture, and the
tortures of the inquisition, the rack, the thumb-screw, the
stake, the persecutions of witchcraft, the whipping of naked
women through the streets of Boston, banishment, trials for
heresy, the halter about Garrison's neck, Lovejoy's death, the
branding of Captain Walker, shouts of infidel and atheist, have
all been for this purpose.
We know the ignorance that exists upon these points. Few have yet
begun to comprehend the influence that ecclesiasticism has had
upon law. Wharton, a recognized authority upon criminal law,
issued his seventh edition before he ascertained the vast bearing
canon law had had upon the civil code, and we advise readers to
consult the array of authorities, English, Latin, German, to
which he, in his preface, refers. We hope to arouse attention
and compel investigation of this subject by lawyers and
theologians as well as by women themselves.
Francis E. Abbot, editor of _The Index_, the organ of the Free
Religious Association, spoke grandly in favor of the resolutions.
He said:
These resolutions we have read with astonishment, admiration and
delight. We should not have believed it possible that the
convention could have been induced to adopt them. They will make
forever memorable in the history of the organized woman movement,
this thirtieth anniversary of its birth. They put the National
Woman Suffrage Association in an inconceivably higher and nobler
position than that occupied by any similar society. They go to
the very root of the matter. They are a bold, dignified, and
magnificent utterance. We congratulate the convention on a record
so splendid in the eyes of all true liberals. From this day forth
the whole woman movement must obey the inspiration of a higher
courage and a grander spirit than have been known to its past.
Opposition must be encountered, tenfold more bitter than was ever
yet experienced. But truth is on the side of these brave women;
the ringing words they have spoken at Rochester will thrill many
a doubting heart and be echoed far down the long avenue of the
years.
During the same week of the Rochester convention, the Paris
International Congress opened it sessions, sending us a telegram of
greeting to which we responded with two hundred and fifty francs as
a tangible evidence of our best wishes. The two remarkable features
of that congress were the promise of so distinguished a man as
Victor Hugo to preside over its deliberations, though at last
prevented by illness; and the fact that the Italian government sent
Mlle. Mozzoni as an official delegate to the congress to study the
civil position of woman in various countries, in order that an
ameliorating change of its code, in respect to woman, could be
wisely made.
The newspapers of the French capital in general treated the
congress with respect. The _Rappel_, Victor Hugo's organ, spoke of
it in a most complimentary manner. Theodore Stanton, in a letter to
the _National Citizen_, said:
In one important respect this congress differed entirely from an
American convention of like character--it made no demand for
suffrage. The word was never mentioned except by the American
delegates. In continental Europe the idea of demanding for woman
a share in the government, is never considered. This is the more
remarkable in France, as this claim was made at the time of the
revolution. But every imaginable side of the question was
discussed, except the side that comprehends all the others. To an
American, therefore, European woman's rights is rather tame; it
is like the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out. But Europe is
moving, and the next international congress will, undoubtedly,
give more attention to suffrage and less to hygiene.
The Eleventh Washington Convention was held January 9, 10, 1879.
The resolutions give an idea of the status of the question, and the
wide range of discussion covered by the speakers:[45]
_Resolved_, That the forty-fifth congress, in ignoring the
individual petitions of more than three hundred women of high
social standing and culture, asking for the removal of their
political disabilities, while promptly enacting special
legislation for the removal of the political disabilities of
every man who petitioned, furnishes an illustration of the
indifference of this congress to the rights of citizens deprived
of political power.
WHEREAS, Senator Blaine says, it is the very essence of tyranny
to count any citizens in the basis of representation who are
denied a voice in their laws and a choice in their rulers;
therefore,
_Resolved_, That counting women in the basis of representation,
while denying them the right of suffrage, is compelling them to
swell the number of their tyrants and is an unwarrantable
usurpation of power over one-half the citizens of this republic.
WHEREAS, In President Hayes' last message, he makes a truly
paternal review of the interests of this republic, both great and
small, from the army, the navy, and our foreign relations, to the
ten little Indians in Hampton, Va., our timber on the western
mountains, and the switches of the Washington railroads; from the
Paris Exposition, the postal service, the abundant harvests, and
the possible bull-dozing of some colored men in various southern
districts, to cruelty to live animals, and the crowded condition
of the mummies, dead ducks and fishes in the Smithsonian
Institute--yet forgets to mention twenty million women robbed of
their social, civil and political rights; therefore,
_Resolved_, That a committee of three be appointed from this
convention to wait upon the president and remind him of the
existence of one-half of the American people whom he has
accidentally overlooked, and of whom it would be wise for him to
make some mention in his future messages.
WHEREAS, All of the vital principles involved in the thirteenth,
fourteenth and fifteenth constitutional amendments have been
denied in their application to women by courts, legislatures and
political parties; therefore,
_Resolved_, That it is logical that these amendments should fail
to protect even the male African for whom said courts,
legislatures and parties declare they were expressly designed and
enacted.
_Resolved_, That the judges of the Supreme Court of the United
States in denying Belva A. Lockwood admission to its bar, while
she was entitled under the law and under its rules to that right,
violated their oath of office.
_Resolved_, That the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Edmonds
chairman, in its report on the bill to allow women to practice
law in the courts of the United States in which it declares that
"further legislation is not necessary," evaded the plain question
at issue before it in a manner unworthy of judges learned in the
honorable profession of the law, and thereby sanctioned an
injustice to the women of the whole country.
WHEREAS, The general government has refused to exercise federal
power to protect women in their right to vote in the various
States and territories; therefore,
_Resolved_, That it should forbear to exercise federal power to
disfranchise the women of Utah, who have had a more just and
liberal spirit shown them by Mormon men than Gentile women in the
States have yet perceived in their rulers.
WHEREAS, The proposed legislation for the Chinese women on the
Pacific slope and for outcast women in our cities, and the
opinion of the press that no respectable woman should be seen in
the streets after dark, are all based upon the presumption that
woman's freedom must be forever sacrificed to man's licence;
therefore,
_Resolved_, That the ballot in woman's hand is the only power by
which she can restrain the liberty of those men who make our
streets and highways dangerous to her, and secure the freedom
that belongs to her by day and by night.
[Illustration: Frances E. Willard]
At the close of the convention it was decided at a meeting of the
executive committee to present an address to the president and both
houses of congress, and that a printed copy of the resolutions
should be laid on the desk of every member. The president having
granted a hearing,[46] the following address was presented:
_To his Excellency, the President of the United States_:
WHEREAS, Representatives of associations of women waited upon
your excellency before the delivery of your first and second
annual messages, asking that in those documents you would
remember the disfranchised millions of citizens of the United
States; and,
WHEREAS, Upon careful examination of those messages, we find
therein specifically enumerated, the interests, great and small,
of all classes of men, and recommendations of needful legislation
to protect their civil and political rights, but find no mention
made of any need of legislation to protect the political, civil,
or social rights of one-half of the people of this republic, and,
WHEREAS, There is pending in the Senate a constitutional
amendment to prohibit the several States from disfranchising
United States citizens on account of sex, and a similar amendment
is pending upon a tie vote in the House Judiciary Committee; and
as petitions to so amend the constitution have been presented to
both houses of congress from more than 40,000 well-known citizens
of thirty-five States and five territories,
THEREFORE, we respectfully ask your excellency, in your next
annual message, to make mention of the disfranchised millions of
wives, mothers and daughters of this republic, and to recommend
to congress that women equally with men be protected in the
exercise of their civil and political rights.
On behalf of the National Woman Suffrage Association.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, _President_.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Corresponding Secretary_.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Chairman Executive Committee_.
The delegates from the territory of Utah were also received by the
president. They called his attention to the effect of the
enforcement of the law of 1862 upon 50,000 Mormon women, to render
them outcasts and their children nameless, asking the chief
executive of the nation to give some time to the consideration of
the bill pending under different headings in both houses. The
president asked them to set forth the facts in writing, that he
might carefully weigh so important a matter. A memorial was also
presented to congress by these ladies, closing thus:
We further pray that in any future legislation concerning the
marriage relation in any territory under your jurisdiction you
will consider the rights and the consciences of the women to be
affected by such legislation, and that you will consider the
permanent care and welfare of children as the sure foundation of
the State.
And your petitioners will ever pray.
EMMELINE B. WELLS.
ZINA YOUNG WILLIAMS.
Mr. Cannon of Utah moved that the memorial be referred to the
Committee on the Judiciary with leave to report at any time. It was
so referred. The Judiciary Committee of the Senate brought in a
bill legitimatizing the offspring of plural marriages to a certain
date; also authorizing the president to grant amnesty for past
offenses against the law of 1862.
The _Congressional Record_ of January 24, under the head of
petitions and memorials, said:
The vice-president, Mr. Wheeler of New York, presented the
petition of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Susan
B. Anthony, officers of the National Association, praying for the
passage of Senate joint resolution No. 12, providing for an
amendment to the Constitution of the United States, protecting
the rights of women, and also that the House Judiciary Committee
be relieved from the further consideration of a similar
resolution.
Mr. FERRY--If there be no objection I ask that the petition be
read at length.
The VICE-PRESIDENT--The Chair hears no objection, and it will be
reported by the secretary.
The petition was read and referred to the Committee on Privileges
and Elections, as follows:
_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States, in Congress assembled:_
WHEREAS, More than 40,000 men and women, citizens of
thirty-five States and five territories, have petitioned the
forty-fifth congress asking for an amendment to the federal
constitution prohibiting the several States from
disfranchising United States citizens on account of sex; and
WHEREAS, A resolution providing for such constitutional
amendment is upon the calendar (Senate resolution No. 12,
second session forty-fifth congress), and a similar
resolution is pending upon a tie vote in the Judiciary
Committee of the House of Representatives; and
WHEREAS, The women of the United States constitute one-half
of the people of this republic and have an inalienable right
to an equal voice with men in the nation's councils; and
WHEREAS, Women being denied the right to have their opinions
counted at the ballot-box, are compelled to hold all other
rights subject to the favors and caprices of men; and
WHEREAS, In answer to the appeals of so large a number of
honorable petitioners, it is courteous that the forty-fifth
congress should express its opinion upon this grave question
of human rights; therefore,
We pray your honorable body to take from the calendar and
pass Senate resolution No. 12, providing for an amendment to
the constitution protecting the rights of women; and
We further pray you to relieve the House Judiciary Committee
from the further consideration of the woman suffrage
resolution brought to a tie vote in that committee, February
5, 1878, that it may be submitted to the House of
Representatives for immediate action.
And your petitioners will ever pray.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, _President_.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Corresponding Secretary_.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Chairman Executive Committee_.
At the opening of the last session of the forty-fifth congress most
earnest appeals (copies of which were sent to every member of
congress) came from all directions for the presentation of a
minority report from the Committee on Privileges and Elections. The
response from our representatives was prompt and most encouraging.
The first favorable report our question had ever received in the
Senate of the United States was presented by the Hon. George F.
Hoar, February 1, 1879:
_The undersigned, a minority of the Committee on Privileges and
Elections, to whom were referred the resolution proposing an
amendment to the constitution prohibiting discrimination in the
right of suffrage on account of sex, and certain petitions in aid
of the same, submit the following minority report:_
The undersigned dissent from the report of the majority of the
committee. The demand for the extension of the right of suffrage
to women is not new. It has been supported by many persons in
this country, in England and on the continent, famous in public
life, in literature and in philosophy. But no single argument of
its advocates seems to us to carry so great a persuasive force as
the difficulty which its ablest opponents encounter in making a
plausible statement of their objections. We trust we do not fail
in deference to our esteemed associates on the committee when we
avow our opinion that their report is no exception to this rule.
The people of the United States and of the several States have
founded their political institutions upon the principle that all
men have an equal right to a share in the government. The
doctrine is expressed in various forms. The Declaration of
Independence asserts that "all men are created equal" and that
"governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed." The Virginia bill of rights, the work of Jefferson and
George Mason, affirms that "no man or set of men are entitled to
exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the rest of
the community but in consideration of public services." The
Massachusetts bill of rights, the work of John Adams, besides
reaffirming these axioms, declares that "all the inhabitants of
this commonwealth, having such qualifications as they shall
establish by their frame of government, have an equal right to
elect officers, and to be elected for public employment." These
principles, after full and profound discussion by a generation of
statesmen whose authority upon these subjects is greater than
that of any other that ever lived, have been accepted by
substantially the whole American people as the dictates alike of
practical wisdom and of natural justice. The experience of a
hundred years has strengthened their hold upon the popular
conviction. Our fathers failed in three particulars to carry
these principles to their logical result. They required a
property qualification for the right to vote and to hold office.
They kept the negro in slavery. They excluded women from a share
in the government. The first two of these inconsistencies have
been remedied. The property test no longer exists. The fifteenth
amendment provides that race, color, or previous servitude shall
no longer be a disqualification. There are certain qualifications
of age, of residence, and, in some instances of education,
demanded; but these are such as all sane men may easily attain.
This report is not the place to discuss or vindicate the
correctness of this theory. In so far as the opponents of woman
suffrage are driven to deny it, for the purpose of an argument
addressed to the American people, they are driven to confess that
they are in the wrong. This people are committed to the doctrine
of universal suffrage by their constitutions, their history and
their opinions. They must stand by it or fall by it. The poorest,
humblest, feeblest of sane men has the ballot in his hand, and no
other man can show a better title to it. Those things wherein men
are unequal--intelligence, ability, integrity, experience, title
to public confidence by reason of previous public service--have
their natural and legitimate influence under a government wherein
each man's vote is counted, to quite as great a degree as under
any other form of government that ever existed.
We believe that the principle of universal suffrage stands to-day
stronger than ever in the judgment of mankind. Some eminent and
accomplished scholars, alarmed by the corruption and recklessness
manifested in our great cities, deceived by exaggerated
representations of the misgovernment of the Southern States by a
race just emerging from slavery, disgusted by the extent to which
great numbers of our fellow-citizens have gone astray in the
metaphysical subtleties of financial discussion, have uttered
their eloquent warnings of the danger of the failure of universal
suffrage. Such utterances from such sources have been frequent.
They were never more abundant than in the early part of the
present century. They are, when made in a serious and patriotic
spirit, to be received with the gratitude due to that greatest of
public benefactors--he who points out to the people their dangers
and their faults.
But popular suffrage is to be tried not by comparison with ideal
standards of excellence, but by comparison with other forms of
government. We are willing to submit our century of it to this
test. The crimes that have stained our history have come chiefly
from its denial, not from its establishment. The misgovernment
and corruption of our great cities have been largely due to men
whose birth and training have been under other systems. The
abuses attributed by political hostility to negro governments at
the South--governments from which the intelligence and education
of the State held themselves sulkily aloof--do not equal those
which existed under the English or French aristocracy within the
memory of living men. There have been crimes, blunders,
corruptions, follies in the history of our republic. Aristides
has been banished from public employment, while Cleon has been
followed by admiring throngs. But few of these things have been
due to the extension of the suffrage. Strike out of our history
the crimes of slavery, strike out the crimes, unparalleled for
ferocity and brutality, committed by an oligarchy in its attempt
to overthrow universal suffrage, and we may safely challenge for
our national and State governments comparison with monarchy or
aristocracy in their best and purest periods.
Either the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence and the
bills of rights are true, or government must rest on no principle
of right whatever, but its powers may be lawfully taken by force
and held by force by any person or class who have strength to do
it, and who persuade themselves that their rule is for the public
interest. Either these doctrines are true, or you can give no
reason for your own possession of the suffrage except that you
have got it. If this doctrine be sound, it follows that no class
of persons can rightfully be excluded from their equal share in
the government, unless they can be proved to lack some quality
essential to the proper exercise of political power.
A person who votes helps, first, to determine the measures of
government; second, to elect persons to be intrusted with public
administration. He should therefore possess, first, an honest
desire for the public welfare; second, sufficient intelligence to
determine what measure or policy is best; third, the capacity to
judge of the character of persons proposed for office; and,
fourth, freedom from undue influence, so that the vote he casts
is his own, and not another's. That person or class casting his
or their own vote, with an honest desire for the public welfare,
and with sufficient intelligence to judge what measure is
advisable and what person may be trusted, fulfill every condition
that the State can rightfully impose.
We are not now dealing with the considerations which should
affect the admission of citizens of other countries to acquire
the right to take part in our government. All nations claim the
right to impose restrictions on the admission of foreigners
trained in attachment to other countries or forms of rule, and to
indifference to their own, whatever they deem the safety of the
State requires. We take it for granted that no person will deny
that the women of America are inspired with a love of country
equal to that which animates their brothers and sons. A capacity
to judge of character, so sure and rapid as to be termed
intuitive, is an especial attribute of woman. One of the greatest
orators of modern times has declared:
I concede away nothing which I ought to assert for our sex
when I say that the collective womanhood of a people like
our own seizes with matchless facility and certainty on the
moral and personal peculiarities and character of marked and
conspicuous men, and that we may very wisely address
ourselves to such a body to learn if a competitor for the
highest honors has revealed that truly noble nature that
entitled him to a place in the hearts of a nation.
We believe that in that determining of public policies by the
collective judgment of the State which constitutes
self-government, the contribution of woman will be of great
importance and value. To all questions into the determination of
which considerations of justice or injustice enter, she will
bring a more refined moral sense than that of man. The most
important public function of the State is the provision for the
education of youths. In those States in which the public school
system has reached its highest excellence, more than ninety per
cent. of the teachers are women. Certainly the vote of the women
of the State should be counted in determining the policy that
shall regulate the school system which they are called to
administer.
It is seldom that particular measures of government are decided
by direct popular vote. They are more often discussed before the
people after they have taken effect, when the party responsible
for them is called to account. The great measures which go to
make up the history of nations are determined not by the voters,
but by their rulers, whether those rulers be hereditary or
elected. The plans of great campaigns are conceived by men of
great military genius and executed by great generals. Great
systems of finance come from the brain of statesmen who have made
finance a special study. The mass of the voters decide to which
party they will intrust power. They do not determine particulars.
But they give to parties their general tone and direction, and
hold them to their accountability. We believe that woman will
give to the political parties of the country a moral temperament
which will have a most beneficent and ennobling effect on
politics.
Woman, also, is specially fitted for the performance of that
function of legislative and executive government which, with the
growth of civilization, becomes yearly more and more
important--the wise and practical economic adjustment of the
details of public expenditures. It may be considered that it
would not be for the public interest to clothe with the suffrage
any class of persons who are so dependent that they will, as a
general rule, be governed by others in its exercise. But we do
not admit that this is true of women. We see no reason to believe
that women will not be as likely to retain their independence of
political judgment, as they now retain their independence of
opinion in regard to the questions which divide religious sects
from one another. These questions deeply excite the feelings of
mankind, yet experience shows that the influence of the wife is
at least as great as that of the husband in determining the
religious opinion of the household. The natural influence exerted
by members of the same family upon each other would doubtless
operate to bring about similarity of opinion on political
questions as on others. So far as this tends to increase the
influence of the family in the State, as compared with that of
unmarried men, we deem it an advantage. Upon all questions which
touch public morals, public education, all which concern the
interest of the household, such a united exertion of political
influence cannot be otherwise than beneficial.
Our conclusion, then, is that the American people must extend the
right of suffrage to woman or abandon the idea that suffrage is a
birthright. The claim that universal suffrage will work mischief
in practice is simply a claim that justice will work mischief in
practice. Many honest and excellent persons, while admitting the
force of the arguments above stated, fear that taking part in
politics will destroy those feminine traits which are the charm
of woman, and are the chief comfort and delight of the household.
If we thought so we should agree with the majority of the
committee in withholding assent to the prayer of the petitioners.
This fear is the result of treating the abuses of the political
function as essential to its exercise. The study of political
questions, the forming an estimate of the character of public men
or public measures, the casting a vote, which is the result of
that study and estimate, certainly have in themselves nothing to
degrade the most delicate and refined nature. The violence, the
fraud, the crime, the chicanery, which, so far as they have
attended masculine struggles for political power, tend to prove,
if they prove anything, the unfitness of men for the suffrage,
are not the result of the act of voting, but are the expressions
of course, criminal and evil natures, excited by the desire for
victory. The admission to the polls of delicate and tender women
would, without injury to them, tend to refine and elevate the
politics in which they took a part. When, in former times, women
were excluded from social banquets, such assemblies were scenes
of ribaldry and excess. The presence of women has substituted for
them the festival of the Christian home.
The majority of the committee state the following as their
reasons for the conclusion to which they come:
_First_--If the petitioners' prayer be granted it will make
several millions of female voters.
_Second_--These voters will be inexperienced in public
affairs.
_Third_--They are quite generally dependent on the other
sex.
_Fourth_--They are incapable of military duty.
_Fifth_--They are without the power to enforce the laws
which their numerical strength may enable them to make.
_Sixth_--Very few of them wish to assume the irksome and
responsible duties which this measure thrusts upon them.
_Seventh_--Such a change should only be made slowly and in
obedience to a general public demand.
_Eighth_--There are but thirty thousand petitioners.
_Ninth_--It would be unjust to impose "the heavy burden of
governing, which so many men seek to evade, on the great
mass of women who do not wish for it, to gratify the few who
do."
_Tenth_--Women now have the sympathy of judges and juries
"to an extent which would warrant loud complaint on the part
of their adversaries of the sterner sex."
_Eleventh_--Such a change should be made, if at all, by the
States. Three-fourths of the States should not force it on
the others. In any State in which "any considerable part of
the women wish for the right to vote, it will be granted
without the intervention of congress."
The first objection of the committee is to the large increase of
the number of the voting population. We believe on the other
hand, that to double the numbers of the constituent body, and to
compose one-half that body of women, would tend to elevate the
standard of the representative both for ability and manly
character. Macaulay in one of his speeches on the Reform bill
refers to the quality of the men who had for half a century been
members for the five most numerous constituencies in
England--Westminster, Southwark, Liverpool, Bristol and Norwich.
Among them were Burke, Fox, Sheridan, Romilly, Windham, Tierney,
Canning, Huskisson. Eight of the nine greatest men who had sat in
parliament for forty years sat for the five largest represented
towns. To increase the numbers of constituencies diminishes the
opportunity for corruption. Size is itself a conservative force
in a republic. As a permanent general rule the people will desire
their own best interest. Disturbing forces, evil and selfish
passions, personal ambitions, are necessarily restricted in their
operation. The larger the field of operation, the more likely are
such influences to neutralize each other.
The objection of inexperience in public affairs applies, of
course, alike to every voter when he first votes. If it be valid,
it would have prevented any extension of the suffrage, and would
exclude from the franchise a very large number of masculine
voters of all ages.
That women are quite generally dependent on the other sex is
true. So it is true that men are quite generally dependent on the
other sex. It is impossible so to measure this dependence as to
declare that man is more dependent on woman or woman upon man. It
is by no means true that the dependence of either on the other
affects the right to the suffrage.
Capacity for military duty has no connection with capacity for
suffrage. The former is wholly physical. It will scarcely be
proposed to disfranchise men who are unfit to be soldiers by
reason of age or bodily infirmity. The suggestion that the
country may be plunged into wars by a majority of women who are
secure from military dangers is not founded in experience. Men of
the military profession, and men of the military age are commonly
quite as eager for war as non-combatants, and will hereafter be
quite as indifferent to its risks and hardships as their mothers
and wives.
The argument that women are without the power to enforce the laws
which their numerical strength may enable them to make, proceeds
from the supposition that it is probable that all the women will
range themselves upon one side in politics and all the men on the
other. Such supposition flatly contradicts the other arguments
drawn from the dependence of women and from their alleged
unwillingness to assume political burdens. So men over fifty
years of age are without the power to enforce obedience to laws
against which the remainder of the voters forcibly rebel. It is
not physical power alone, but power aided by the respect for law
of the people, on which laws depend for their enforcement.
The sixth, eighth and ninth reasons of the committee are the same
proposition differently stated. It is that a share in the
government of the country is a burden, and one which, in the
judgment of a majority of the women of the country, they ought
not to be required to assume. If any citizen deem the exercise of
this franchise a burden and not a privilege, such person is under
no constraint to exercise it. But if it be a birthright, then it
is obvious that no other power than that of the individual
concerned can rightfully restrain its exercise. The committee
concede that women ought to be clothed with the ballot in any
State where any considerable part of the women desire it. This is
a pretty serious confession. On the vital, fundamental question
whether the institutions of this country shall be so far changed
that the number of persons in it who take a part in the
government shall be doubled, the judgment of women is to be and
ought to be decisive. If woman may fitly determine this question,
for what question of public policy is she unfit? What question of
equal importance will ever be submitted to her decision? What has
become of the argument that women are unfit to vote because they
are dependent on men, or because they are unfit for military
duty, or because they are inexperienced, or because they are
without power to enforce obedience to their laws?
The next argument is that by the present arrangement the
administration of justice is so far perverted that one-half the
citizens of the country have an advantage from the sympathies of
juries and judges which "would warrant loud complaint" on the
part of the other half. If this be true, it is doubtless due to
an instinctive feeling on the part of juries and judges that
existing laws and institutions are unjust to women, or to the
fact that juries composed wholly of men are led to do injustice
by their susceptibility to the attractions of women. But
certainly it is a grave defect in any system of government that
it does not administer justice impartially, and the existence of
such a defect is a strong reason for preferring an arrangement
which would remove the feeling that women do not have fair play,
or for so composing juries that, drawn from both sexes, they
would be impartial between the two.
The final objection of the committee is that "such a change
should be made, if at all, by the States. Three-fourths of the
States should not force it upon the others. Whenever any
considerable part of the women in any State wish for the right to
vote, it will be granted without the intervention of congress."
Who can doubt that when two-thirds of congress and three-fourths
of the States have voted for the change, a considerable number of
women in the other States will be found to desire it, so that,
according to the committee's own belief, it can never be forced
by a majority on unwilling communities? The prevention of unjust
discrimination by States against large classes of people in
respect to suffrage is even admitted to be a matter of national
concern and an important function of the national constitution
and laws. It is the duty of congress to propose amendments to the
constitution whenever two-thirds of both houses deem them
necessary. Certainly an amendment will be deemed necessary, if it
can be shown to be required by the principles on which the
constitution is based, and to remove an unjust disfranchisement
from one-half the citizens of the country. The constitutional
evidence of general public demand is to be found not in
petitions, but in the assent of three-fourths of the States
through their legislatures or conventions.
The lessons of experience favor the conclusion that woman is fit
for a share in government. It may be true that in certain
departments of intellectual effort the greatest achievements of
women have as yet never equaled the greatest achievements of
men. But it is equally true that in those same departments women
have exhibited an intellectual ability very far beyond that of
the average of men and very far beyond that of most men who have
shown very great political capacity. But let the comparison be
made in regard to the very thing with which we have to deal. Of
men who have swayed chief executive power, a very considerable
proportion have attained it by usurpation or by election,
processes which imply extraordinary capacity on their part as
compared with other men. The women who have held such power have
come to it as sovereigns by inheritance, or as regents by the
accident of bearing a particular relation to the lawful sovereign
when he was under some incapacity. Yet it is an undisputed fact
that the number of able and successful female sovereigns bears a
vastly greater proportion to the whole number of such sovereigns,
than does the number of able and successful male sovereigns to
the whole number of men who have reigned. An able, energetic,
virtuous king or emperor is the exception and not the rule in the
history of modern Europe. With hardly an exception the female
sovereigns or regents have been wise and popular. Mr. Mill, who
makes this point, says:
We know how small a number of reigning queens history
presents in comparison with that of kings. Of this small
number a far larger proportion have shown talents for rule,
though many of them have occupied the throne in difficult
periods. When to queens and empresses we add regents and
viceroys of provinces, the list of women who have been
eminent rulers of mankind swells to a great length....
Especially is this true if we take into consideration Asia
as well as Europe. If a Hindoo principality is strongly,
vigilantly and economically governed; if order is preserved
without oppression; if cultivation is extending and the
people prosperous, in three cases out of four that
principality is under a woman's rule. This fact, to me an
entirely unexpected one, I have collected from a long
official knowledge of Hindoo governments.
Certainly history gives no warning that should deter the American
people from carrying out the principles upon which their
government rests to this most just and legitimate conclusion.
Those persons who think that free government has anywhere failed,
can only claim that this tends to prove, not the failure of
universal suffrage, but the failure of masculine suffrage. Like
failure has attended the operation of every other great human
institution, the family, the school, the church, whenever woman
has not been permitted to contribute to it her full share. As to
the best example of the perfect family, the perfect school, the
perfect church, the love, the purity, the truth of woman are
essential, so they are equally essential to the perfect example
of the self-governing State.
GEO. F. HOAR,
JOHN H. MITCHELL,
ANGUS CAMERON.
Thousands of copies of this report were published and franked to
every part of the country. On February 7, just one week after the
presentation of the able minority report, the bill allowing women
to practice before the Supreme Court passed the Senate[47] and
received the signature of President Hayes. Senators McDonald, Hoar
and Sargent made the principal speeches. We give Mr. Hoar's speech
in full because of its terse and vigorous presentation of the fact
that congress is a body superior to the Supreme Court of the United
States. Mr. Hoar said:
_Mr. President_--I understand the brief statement which was made,
I think, during this last session by the majority of the
Judiciary Committee in support of their opposition to this bill,
did not disclose that the majority of that committee were opposed
to permitting women to engage in the practice of law or to be
admitted to practice it in the Supreme Court of the United
States, but the point they made, was that the legislation of the
United States left to the Supreme Court the power of determining
by rule who should be admitted to practice before that tribunal,
and that we ought not by legislation to undertake to interfere
with its rules. Now, with the greatest respect for that tribunal,
I conceive that the law-making and not the law-expounding power
in this government ought to determine the question what class of
citizens shall be clothed with the office of the advocate. I
believe that leaving to the Supreme Court by rule to determine
the qualifications or disqualifications of attorneys and
counselors in that court is an exception to the nearly uniform
policy of the States of the Union. Would it be tolerated if the
Supreme Court undertook by rule to establish any other
disqualification, any of those disqualifications which have
existed in regard to holding any other office in the country?
Suppose the court were of the opinion we had been too fast in
relieving persons who took part in the late rebellion from their
disabilities, and that it would not admit persons who had so
taken part to practice before the Supreme Court; is there any
doubt that congress would at once interfere? Suppose the Supreme
Court were of opinion that the people of the United States had
erred in the amendment which had removed the disqualification
from colored persons and declined to admit such persons to
practice in that court; is there any doubt that congress would
interfere and would deem it a fit occasion for the exercise of
the law-making power?
Now, Mr. President, this bill is not a bill merely to admit women
to the privilege of engaging in a particular profession; it is a
bill to secure to the citizen of the United States the right to
select his counsel, and that is all. At present a case is tried
and decided in the State courts of any State of this Union which
may be removed to the Supreme Court of the United States. In the
courts of the State, women are permitted to practice as
advocates, and a woman has been the advocate under whose
direction and care and advocacy the case has been won in the
court below. Is it tolerable that the counsel who has attended
the case from its commencement to its successful termination in
the highest court of the State should not be permitted to attend
upon and defend the rights of that client when the case is
transferred to the Supreme Court of the United States? Everybody
knows, at least every lawyer of experience knows, the
impossibility of transferring with justice to the interests of a
client, a cause from one counsel to another. A suit is instituted
under the advice of a counsel on a certain theory, a certain
remedy is selected, a certain theory of the cause is the one on
which it is staked. Now that must be attended to and defended by
the counsel under whose advice the suit has taken its shape; the
pleadings have been shaped in the courts below.
Under the present system, a citizen of any State in the Union
having selected a counsel of good moral character who has
practiced three years, who possesses all-sufficient professional
and personal qualifications, and having had a cause brought to a
successful result in the State court, is denied by the present
existing and unjust rule having counsel of his choice argue the
cause in the Supreme Court of the United States.
The greatest master of human manners, who read the human heart
and who understood better than any man who ever lived the
varieties of human character, when he desired to solve just what
had puzzled the lawyers and doctors, placed a woman upon the
judgment seat; and yet, under the present existing law, if Portia
herself were alive, she could not defend the opinion she had
given, before the Supreme Court of the United States.
The press commented favorably upon this new point gained for women.
We give a few extracts:
The senators who voted to-day against the bill "to relieve
certain legal disabilities of women" are marked men and have
reason to fear the result of their action.--[Telegraph to the New
York _Tribune_, February 7.
The women get into the Supreme Court in spite of the
determination of the justices. They gained a decided advantage
to-day in the passage by the Senate of a bill providing that any
woman who shall have been a member of the highest court in any
State or territory, or of the Supreme Court of the District of
Columbia, for three years, may be admitted to the Supreme Court.
The bill was called up by Senator McDonald, in antagonism to Mr.
Edmunds' amendment to the constitution which was the pending
order. Mr. Edmunds objected to the consideration of the bill and
voted against it. There was not much discussion, the main
speeches being by Mr. Sargent and Mr. Hoar.--[Special dispatch to
the New York _World_, February 7.
A WOMAN'S RIGHTS VICTORY IN THE SENATE.--The Lockwood bill,
giving women authority to practice before the Supreme Court of
the United States, passed the Senate yesterday by a vote of two
to one, and now it only requires the approval of Mr. Hayes to
become a law. The powerful effect of persistent and industrious
lobbying is manifested in the success of this bill. When it was
first introduced, it is doubtful if one-fourth the members of
congress would have voted for it. Some of the strong-minded
women, who were interested in the bill, stuck to it, held the
fort from day to day, and talked members and senators into
believing it a just measure. Senator McDonald gave Mr. Edmunds a
rebuff yesterday that he will not soon forget. The latter
attempted to administer a rebuke to the Indiana senator for
calling up a bill during the absence of the senator who had
reported it. Mr. McDonald retorted that he knew the objection of
the senator from Vermont was made for the purpose of defeating
the bill and not, as pretended, to give an absent senator
opportunity to speak upon it.--[Washington _Post_, February 8.
The credit for this victory belongs to Mrs. Belva Lockwood, of
this city, who, having been refused admission to the bar of the
United States Supreme Court, appealed to congress, and by dint of
hard work has finally succeeded in having her bill passed by both
houses. She called on Mrs. Hayes last evening, who complimented
her upon her achievement, and informed her that she had sent a
bouquet to Senator Hoar, in token of his efforts in behalf of the
bill.--[Washington _Star_, February 8.
The bill was carried through merely by the energetic advocacy of
Senators McDonald, Sargent and Hoar, whose oratorical efforts
were reënforced by the presence of Mrs. Lockwood. After the
struggle was over, all the senators who advocated the bill were
made the recipients of bouquets, while the three senators whose
names we have given received large baskets of flowers. This is a
pleasing omen of that purification of legal business which it is
hoped will flow from the introduction of women to the courts. It
was not flowers that used to be distributed at Washington and
Albany in the old corrupt times, among legislators, in testimony
of gratitude for their votes. Let us hope that venal legislation
at Washington will be extirpated by the rise of this beautiful
custom.--[New York _Nation_.
It was noticeable that all the presidential candidates dodged the
issue except Senator Blaine, who voted for the bill.--[Chicago
_Inter-Ocean_.
How humiliated poor old Judge Magruder must feel, since the
congress of the United States paid the woman whom he forbade to
open her mouth in his august presence, in his little court, so
much consideration as to pass an act opening to her the doors of
the Supreme Court of the United States. All honor to the brave
woman, who by her own unaided efforts thus achieved honor,
fortune and fame--the just rewards of her own true
worth.--[_Havre Republican_, Havre de Grace, Maryland.
ENTER PORTIA.--An act of congress was not necessary to authorize
women to be lawyers, if their legal acquirements fitted them for
that vocation; nor was it necessary to state, as an expression of
opinion by the national legislature, that some women are so fully
qualified for the legal profession that no barriers should be
permitted to stand in their way. It was needed simply as a key
whereby the hitherto locked door of the Supreme Court of the
United States may be opened if a woman lawyer, with the usual
credentials, should knock thereon. That is all; and there is no
new question opened for profitless debate. The ability of some
women to be lawyers is like the ability of others to make
bread--it rests upon the facts. There is no room for elaborate
argument to prove either their fitness or unfitness for legal
studies, so long as in Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan, the
District of Columbia, Iowa and North Carolina there are women in
more or less successful practice and repute. * * * Nowhere are
these great attributes of civilization and regulated
liberty--law, conservatism, justice, equity and mercy in the
administration of human affairs put in broader light or truer,
than they are by the words that Shakespeare puts in the mouth of
this woman jurist.--[_Public Ledger_, Philadelphia, February 12.
When congress recently passed a law allowing women to practice in
the Supreme Court, it was not a subject of any special or eager
comment. A woman who is a lawyer sent flowers to the desks of the
members who voted for the bill, and before they had faded,
comment was at an end. The home was still safe and the country
was not in peril. It was one of the questions which had settled
itself and was a foregone conclusion. * * * United States Senator
Edmunds of Vermont, has fallen into disfavor with the ladies for
voting against the above bill.--[From John W. Forney's
_Progress_, February 22.
On March 3, by motion of Hon. A. G. Riddle, Mrs. Lockwood was
admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court,[48] taking
the official oath and receiving the classic sheep-skin; and the
following week she was admitted to practice before the Court of
Claims. The forty-sixth congress contained an unusually large
proportion of new representatives, fresh from the people, ready for
the discussion of new issues, and manifesting a chivalric spirit
toward the consideration of woman's claims as a citizen. On
Tuesday, April 29, the following resolution was submitted to the
Committee on Rules in the House of Representatives:
_Resolved_, That a select committee of nine members be appointed
by the speaker, to be called a Committee on the Rights of Women,
whose duty it shall be to consider and report upon all petitions,
memorials, resolutions and bills that may be presented in the
House relating to the rights of women.
Admitting the justice of a fair consideration of a question
involving every human right of one-half of the population of this
country, Alex. H. Stephens of Georgia, James A. Garfield of Ohio,
Wm. P. Frye of Maine, immediately declared themselves in favor of
the appointment of said committee, and Speaker Randall, the
chairman, ordered it reported to the House. A similar resolution
was introduced in the Senate, before the adjournment of the special
session. This showed a clearer perception of the magnitude of the
question, and the need of its early and earnest consideration, than
at any time during the previous thirty years of argument, heroic
struggle and sacrifice on the altar of woman's freedom.
The anniversary of 1879 was held in St. Louis, Missouri, May 7, 8,
9. Mrs. Virginia L. Minor and Miss Phoebe W. Couzins made all
possible arrangements for the success of the meeting and the
comfort of the delegates.[49] Mrs. Minor briefly stated the object
of the convention and announced that, as the president of the
association had not arrived, Mrs. Joslyn Gage would take the chair.
Miss Couzins gave the address of welcome:
_Mrs. President and Members of the National Woman Suffrage
Association:_
It becomes my pleasant duty to welcome you to the hospitalities
of my native city. To extend to you who for the first time meet
beyond the Mississippi, a greeting--not only in behalf of the
friends of woman suffrage, but for those of our citizens who,
while not in full sympathy with your views, have a desire to hear
you in deliberative council and to cordially tender you the same
courtesies offered other conventions which have chosen St. Louis
as their place of annual gathering.
And I am the more happy to do this because of the opportunity it
affords me to disabuse your minds of certain impressions which
have gone abroad concerning our slowness of action in the line of
advanced ideas. Certainly in some phases of that reformation to
which you and your co-laborers have pledged your lives, your
fortunes--the cause of woman--St. Louis is the leader.
When, eighteen or twenty years since, Harriet Hosmer desired to
study anatomy, to perfect herself in her art, not a college in
New England would open its doors to her; she traveled West, and
through the generous patronage of Wayman Crow of this city, she
became a pupil of the dean of the St. Louis Medical college.
When other cities had refused equality of wages and position, St.
Louis placed Miss Brackett at the head of our normal school,
giving her--a heretofore exclusively male prerogative--the
highest wages, added to the highest educational rank.
And here in St. Louis began the advance march which has finally
broken down the walls of the highest judicial fortress, the
Supreme Court of the United States. Washington University, in
response to my request, unhesitatingly opened its doors, and for
the first time in the history of America, woman was accorded the
right to a legal course of training with man, and, at its close,
after successful examination, I was freely accorded the degree of
Bachelor of Laws! A city or a State that could perpetrate the
anomaly of a female bachelor, is certainly not far behind the
radicalism of the age.
Again, as I turn to its record on suffrage, I find as early as
1866 the Hon. B. Gratz Brown of Missouri made a glowing speech
for woman's enfranchisement, in the United States Senate, on Mr.
Cowan's motion to strike out "male" from the District of Columbia
suffrage bill, which resulted in an organization in 1867, through
the efforts of Mrs. Virginia L. Minor, its first president. And
again, I remember when that hydra-headed evil arose in our midst,
degrading all women and violating all the sweet and sacred
sanctities of life--a blow at our homes and a lasting stigma on
our civilization--the people of this community, led by the
chancellor of Washington University, at the ballot-box but
recently laid that monster away in a tomb, never, I trust, to be
resurrected.
And now, Mrs. President, let me add, in words which but faintly
express the emotion of my heart, the gratitude we feel towards
the noble women who have borne the burden and heat of the day.
They who have been ridiculed, villified, maligned, but through it
all maintained an unswerving allegiance to truth. In the name of
all true womanhood I welcome this association in our midst as
worthy of the highest honor.
We have lived to see the enlargement of woman's thought in all
directions. From our laboratories, libraries, observatories,
schools of medicine and law, universities of science, art and
literature, she is advancing to the examination of the problems
of life, with an eye single only to the glory of truth. Like the
Spartan of old she has thrown her spear into the thickest of the
fray, and will fight gloriously in the midst thereof till she
regains her own. No specious sophistry or vain delusion--no
time-honored tradition or untenable doctrine can evade her
searching investigation.
Mrs. Gage responded to this address in a few earnest, appropriate
words.
Of the many letters[50] read in the convention none was received
with greater joy than the few lines, written with trembling hand,
from Lucretia Mott, then in the eighty-seventh year of her age:
ROADSIDE, Fourth Month, 26, 1879.
MY DEAR SUSAN ANTHONY--It would need no urgent appeal to draw me
to St. Louis had I the strength for the journey. You will have no
need of my worn-out powers. Our cause itself has become
sufficiently attractive. Edward M. Davis has a joint letter on
hand for my signature, so this is enough, with my mite toward
expenses. And to all assembled in St. Louis best wishes for--yes,
full faith in your success. I have signed Edward's letter, so it
is hardly necessary for me to say,
LUCRETIA MOTT.
The distinguishing feature of this convention was an afternoon
session of ladies alone, prompted by an attempt to reënact a law
for the license of prostitution, which had been enforced in St.
Louis a few years before and repealed through the united efforts of
the best men and women of the city. Mrs. Joslyn Gage opened the
meeting by reading extracts from the Woman's Declaration of Rights
presented at the centennial celebration, and drew especial
attention to the clause referring to two separate codes of morals
for men and women, arising from woman's inferior political
position:
There are two points which may be considered open for discussion
during the afternoon--one, the fact that there are existing in
all forms of society, barbaric, semi-civilized, civilized or
enlightened, two separate codes of morals; the strict code to
which women are held accountable, and the lax code which governs
the conduct of men.
The other question which can very properly be discussed at the
present time is, "Why in this country, and in all civilized
nations, do one-half of the population die under five years of
age, and in some countries a very large proportion under one
year?"
A letter was read from Mrs. Josephine E. Butler. As the experiment
of licensing prostitution had been extensively tried in England,
and she had watched the effects of the system not only in her own
country but on the continent, her opinions on this question are
worthy of consideration:
_To the Annual Meeting of the National Suffrage Association in
St. Louis:_
DEAR FRIENDS--As I am unable to be present at your convention on
May 7, 8, 9, and as you ask for a communication from me, I gladly
write you on some of the later phases of our struggle against
legalized prostitution. A brave battle has been fought in St.
Louis against that iniquity, and we have regarded it with
sympathy and admiration; but you are not yet safe against the
devices of those who uphold this white slavery, nor are we safe,
although we know that in the end we shall be conquerors. You tell
me that "England is held up as an example of the beneficial
working of the legalizing of vice." England holds a peculiar
position in regard to the question. She was the last to adopt
this system of slavery and she adopted it in that thorough manner
which characterizes the Anglo-Saxon race. In no other country has
prostitution been regulated by law. It has been understood by the
Latin races, even when morally enervated, that the law could not
without risk of losing its majesty violate justice. In England
alone the regulations are law. Their promoters, by their
hardihood in asking parliament to decree injustice, have brought
on unconsciously to themselves, the beginning of the end of the
whole system. The Englishman is a powerful agent for evil as for
good. In the best times of our history my countrymen possessed
preëminently vigorous minds in vigorous bodies. But when the
animal nature has outgrown the moral, the appetites burst their
proper restraints, and man has no other notion of enjoyment save
bodily pleasure; he passes by a quick and easy transition into a
powerful brute. And this is what the upper-class Englishman has
to a deplorable extent become. There is no creature in the world
so ready as he to domineer, to enslave, to destroy. But together
with this development towards evil, there has been in our country
a counter development. Moral faith is still strong among us.
There are powerful women, as well as strong, pure, and
self-governed men, of the real old Anglo-Saxon type. It was in
England then, which adopted last the hideous slavery, that there
arose first a strong national protest in opposition. English
people rose up against the wicked law before it had been in
operation three months. English men and women determined to carry
abolition not at home only, but abroad, and they promptly carried
their standard to every country on the continent of Europe. In
all these countries men and women came forward at the first
appeal, and said, "We are ready, we only waited for you,
Anglo-Saxons, to take the lead; we have groaned under the
oppression, but there was not force enough among us to take the
initiative step."
We have recently had a visit from Monsieur Aimi Humbert of
Switzerland, our able general secretary for the continent. Much
encouragement was derived from the reports which reached us from
France, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and even Spain, where a noble
lady, Donna Concepcion Arenal of Madrid, and several gentlemen
have warmly espoused our cause. The progress is truly
encouraging; yet, on the other hand, it is obvious that the
partisans of this legislation have recently been smitten with a
kind of rage for extending the system everywhere, and are on the
watch to introduce it wherever we are off our guard. In almost
all British colonies they are very busy. At the Cape of Good
Hope, where the Cape parliament had repealed the law, the
governor, Sir Bartle Frere, has been induced by certain
specialists and immoral men, to reïntroduce it. But since he
could not count on the parliament at Cape Town for doing this, he
has reintroduced the miserable system by means of a proclamation
or edict, without the sanction and probably, to a great extent,
without the knowledge of parliament. The same game is being
played in other colonies. These facts seem to point to a more
decided and bitter struggle on the question than we have yet
seen. An energetic member of our executive committee, M. Pierson
of Zetten, in Holland, says:
I look upon legalized prostitution as the system in which
the immorality of our age is crystalized, and that in
attacking it we attack in reality the great enemies which
are hiding themselves behind its ramparts. But if we do not
soon overthrow these ramparts we must not think our work is
fruitless. A great work is already achieved; sin is once
more called sin instead of necessary evil, and the true
standard of morality--equal for men and women, for rich and
poor--is once more raised in the face of all the nations.
This legalization of vice which recognized the "necessity" of
impurity for man and the institution of slavery for woman, is the
most open denial which modern times have seen of the principle of
the sacredness of the individual human being. It is the
embodiment of socialism in its worst form. An English high-class
journal confessed this, when it dared to demand that women who
are unchaste shall henceforth be dealt with "not as human beings,
but as foul sewers," or some such "material nuisance" without
souls, without rights and without responsibilities. When the
leaders of public opinion in a country have arrived at such a
point of combined depotism as to recommend such a manner of
dealing with human beings, there is no crime which that country
may not legalize. Were it possible to secure the absolute
physical health of a whole province, or an entire continent by
the destruction of one, only one poor and sinful woman, woe to
that nation which should dare, by that single act of destruction,
to purchase this advantage to the many! It will do it at its
peril.
We entreat our friends in America to renew their alliance with us
in the sacred conflict. Union will be strength. The women of
England are beginning to understand their responsibilities. Like
yourselves, we are laboring to obtain the suffrage. The wrong
which has fallen upon us in this legalizing of vice has taught us
the need of power in legislation. Meanwhile, the crusade against
immorality is educating women for the right use of suffrage when
they obtain it. The two movements must go hand in hand.
Altogether this was an impressive occasion in which women met heart
to heart in discussing the deepest humiliations of their sex. After
eloquent speeches by Mrs. Meriwether, Mrs. Spencer, Mrs. Leonard,
Mrs. Thompson and Rev. Olympia Brown, the audience slowly
dispersed.
The closing scenes of the evening were artistic and interesting.
The platform was tastefully decked with flags and flowers, and the
immense audience that had assembled at an early hour--hundreds
unable to gain admission--made this the crowning session of the
convention. Miss Couzins announced the receipt of an invitation
from Mr. John Wahl, inviting the convention to visit the Merchants'
Exchange, "with assurances of high regard." The announcement was
heard with considerable merriment by those who remembered her
criticisms on Mr. Wahl for his failure to deliver the address of
welcome at the opening of the convention. She also announced the
receipt of an invitation from Secretary Kalb to visit the
fair-grounds, and moved that the convention first visit the
Exchange and then proceed to the fair-grounds in carriages, the
members of the Merchants' Exchange, of course paying the bill. The
motion was carried amidst applause. An invitation was also received
from Dr. Eliot, chancellor of Washington University, to attend the
art lecture of Miss Schoonmaker at the Mary Institute, Monday
evening. In a letter to the editor of the _National Citizen_, Mrs.
Stanton thus describes the incident of the evening:
The delegates from the different States, through May Wright
Thompson of Indianapolis, presented Miss Anthony with two baskets
of exquisite flowers. She referred in the most happy way to Miss
Anthony's untiring devotion to all the unpopular reforms through
years of pitiless persecution, and thanked her in behalf of the
young womanhood of the nation, that their path had been made
smoother by her brave life. Miss Anthony was so overcome with the
delicate compliments and the fragrant flowers at her feet, that
for a few moments she could find no words to express her
appreciation of the unexpected acknowledgement of what all
American women owe her. As she stood before that hushed audience,
her silence was more eloquent than words, for her emotion was
shared by all. With an effort she at last said:
Friends, I have no words to express my gratitude for this
marked attention. I have so long been the target for
criticism and ridicule, I am so unused to praise, that I
stand before you surprised and disarmed. If any one had come
to this platform and abused all womankind, called me hard
names, ridiculed our arguments or denied the justice of our
demands, I could with readiness and confidence have rushed
to the defence, but I cannot make any appropriate reply for
this offering of eloquent words and flowers, and I shall not
attempt it.
Being advertised as the speaker of the evening, she at once began
her address, and as she stood there and made an argument worthy a
senator of the United States, I recalled the infinite patience
with which, for upwards of thirty years, she had labored for
temperance, anti-slavery and woman suffrage, with a faithfulness
worthy the martyrs in the early days of the Christian church, and
said to myself, verily the world now as ever crucifies its
saviors.
Thanks to the untiring industry of Mrs. Minor and Miss Couzins,
the convention was in every way a success, morally, financially,
in crowded audiences, and in the fair, respectful and
complimentary tone of the press. Looking over the proceedings and
resolutions, the thought struck me that the National Association
is the only organization that has steadily maintained the
doctrine of federal power against State rights. The great truths
set forth in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments of United
States supremacy, so clearly seen by us, seem to be vague and dim
to our leading statesmen and lawyers if we may judge by their
speeches and decisions. Your superb speech on State rights should
be published in tract form and scattered over this entire nation.
How can we ever have a homogeneous government so long as
universal principles are bounded by State lines.
The delegates remaining in the city went on Change in a body at 12
o'clock Saturday, on invitation of the president, John Wahl. They
were courteously received and speeches were made by Mesdames
Couzins, Stanton, Anthony, Meriwether and Thompson. Mrs.
Meriwether's speech was immediately telegraphed in full to Memphis.
All wore badges of silk on which in gold letters appeared "N. W. S.
A., May 10, 1879, Merchants' Exchange." From the Exchange the
ladies proceeded in carriages to the fair-grounds, and Zoölogical
Gardens where they took refreshments.
On Saturday evening Miss Couzins gave a delightful reception. Her
parlors were crowded until a late hour, where the friends of woman
suffrage had an opportunity to use their influence socially in
converting many distinguished guests. On Sunday night Mrs. Stanton
was invited by the Rev. Ross C. Houghton to occupy his pulpit in
the Union Methodist church, the largest in the city of that
denomination. She preached from the text in Genesis i., 27, 28. The
sermon was published in the _St. Louis Globe_ the next morning.[51]
Mrs. Thompson was also invited to occupy a Presbyterian pulpit,
but imperative duties compelled her to leave the city.
The enthusiasm aroused by the convention in woman's enfranchisement
was encouraging to those who had so long and earnestly labored in
this cause.[52] This was indeed a week of profitable work. With
arguments and appeals to man's reason and sense of justice on the
platform, to his religious emotions and conscience in the pulpit,
to his honor and courtesy in the parlor, all the varied influences
of public and private life were exerted with marked effect; while
the press on the wings of the wind carried the glad tidings of a
new gospel for woman to every town and hamlet in the State.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] The annual convention of the National Woman Suffrage
Association will be held in Lincoln Hall, Washington, D. C.,
January 16, 17, 1877.
As by repeated judicial decisions, woman's right to vote under the
fourteenth amendment has been denied, we must now unitedly demand a
sixteenth amendment to the United States Constitution, that shall
secure this right to the women of the nation. In certain States and
territories where women had already voted, they have been denied
the right by legislative action. Hence it must be clear to every
thinking mind that this fundamental right of citizenship must not
be left to the ignorant majorities in the several States; for
unless it is secured everywhere, it is safe nowhere.
We urge all suffrage associations and friends of woman's
enfranchisement throughout the country to send delegates to this
convention, freighted with mammoth petitions for a sixteenth
amendment. Let all other proposed amendments be held in abeyance to
the sacred rights of the women of this nation. The most reverent
recognition of God in the constitution would be justice and
equality for woman. On behalf of the National Woman Suffrage
Association,
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, _President_.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Chairman Ex. Committee_.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Corresponding Secretary_.
_Tenafly, N. J._, November 10, 1876.
[21] Committees: _Finance_--Sara A. Spencer, Ellen Clark Sargent,
Lillie Devereux Blake. _Resolutions_--Matilda Joslyn Gage, Susan B.
Anthony. Belva A. Lockwood, Edward M. Davis, C. B. Purvis, M. D.,
Jane G. Swisshelm. _Business_--John Hutchinson. Mary F. Foster,
Rosina M. Parnell, Mary A. S. Carey, Ellen H. Sheldon, S. J.
Messer, Susan A. Edson, M. D.
[22] The speakers at this May anniversary were Mrs. Devereux Blake,
Rev. Olympia Brown, Clara Neyman, Helen Cooke, Helen M. Slocum,
Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. Gage and Acting-Governor Lee of Wyoming
territory.
[23] This reception-room, a great convenience to the ladies
visiting the Capitol, has since been removed; and a small, dark,
inaccessible room on the basement floor set aside for their use.
[24] _Yeas_--Anthony, Bruce, Burnside, Cameron of Wis., Dawes,
Ferry, Hoar, Matthews, Mitchell, Rollins, Sargent, Saunders,
Teller--13.
_Nays_--Bailey, Bayard, Beck, Booth, Butler, Christiancy, Cockrell,
Coke, Conkling, Davis of W. Va., Eaton, Edmunds, Eustis, Grover,
Hamlin, Harris, Hereford, Hill, Howe, Kernan, Kirkwood, Lamar,
McDonald, McMillan, McPherson, Morgan, Plumb, Randolph, Saulsbury,
Thurman, Wadleigh--31.
[25] Grace Greenwood, Clara Barton, Abby Hutchinson Patton, Mrs.
Juan Lewis, Mrs. Morgan of Mississippi, Dr. Mary A. Thompson of
Oregon, Marilla M. Ricker, Julia E. Smith, Rev. Olympia Brown, Mrs.
Blake, Mrs. Lockwood, Mrs. Spencer, Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Stanton, Dr.
Lozier and others.
[26] This argument was subsequently given before the Committee on
Privileges and Elections and will be found on page 80.
[27] The members of the committee were Belva A. Lockwood, Matilda
Joslyn Gage, Mary A. Thompson, M. D., Marilla M. Ricker, Elizabeth
Boynton Harbert.
[28] At this hearing the speakers were Clemence S. Lozier, M. D.,
New York; Julia E. Smith, Connecticut; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, New
Jersey; Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Illinois; Matilda Joslyn Gage,
New York; Priscilla Rand Lawrence, Massachusetts; Rev. Olympia
Brown, Connecticut; Mary A. Thompson, M. D., Oregon; Mary Powers
Filley, New Hampshire; Lillie Devereux Blake, New York; Sara
Andrews Spencer, District of Columbia; Isabella Beecher Hooker,
Connecticut; Mary A. Stewart, Delaware.
[29] In the whole course of our struggle for equal rights I never
felt more exasperated than on this occasion, standing before a
committee of men many years my juniors, all comfortably seated in
armchairs, I pleading for rights they all enjoyed though in no
respect my superiors, denied me on the shallow grounds of sex. But
this humiliation I had often felt before. The peculiarly
aggravating feature of the present occasion was the studied
inattention and contempt of the chairman, Senator Wadleigh of New
Hampshire. Having prepared my argument with care, I naturally
desired the attention of every member of the committee, all of
which, with the exception of Senator Wadleigh, I seemingly had. He
however took special pains to show that he did not intend to
listen. He alternately looked over some manuscripts and newspapers
before him, then jumped up to open or close a door or window. He
stretched, yawned, gazed at the ceiling, cut his nails, sharpened
his pencil, changing his occupation and position every two minutes,
effectually preventing the establishment of the faintest magnetic
current between the speakers and the committee. It was with
difficulty I restrained the impulse more than once to hurl my
manuscript at his head.--[E. C. S.
[30] The first hearing was held in the committee room, but that not
being large enough to accommodate the crowds that wished to hear
the arguments, the use of the Senate reception room was granted for
the second, which although very much larger, was packed, with the
corridors leading to it, long before the committee took their
places.
[31] Mr. and Mrs. Holt, of 1,339 L street, entertained their
friends and a numerous company of distinguished guests on Friday
evening, in honor of Mrs. Beecher Hooker. She delivered one of her
ablest speeches on the woman suffrage question. She was listened to
with breathless silence by eminent men and women, who confessed, at
the termination of her speech, that they were "almost persuaded" to
join her ranks--the highest tribute to her eloquent defense of her
position. Mrs. Hooker's intellect is not her only charm. Her
beautiful face and attractive manners all help to make converts.
Mrs. Julia N. Holmes, the poet, one of the most admired ladies
present, and Mrs. Southworth, the novelist, wore black velvet and
diamonds. Mrs. Hodson Burnett, that "Lass o' Lowrie," in colored
and rose silk with princess scarf, looked charmingly. Mrs. Senator
Sargent, Mrs. Charles Nordhoff and her friends, the elegant Miss
Thurman, of Cincinnati, and Miss Joseph, a brilliant brunette with
scarlet roses and jet ornaments, of Washington, were much observed.
Mrs. Dr. Wallace, of the _New York Herald_, wore cuir colored
gros-grain with guipure lace trimmings, flowers and diamonds. Miss
Coyle was richly attired. Mrs. Ingersoll, wife of the exceptional
orator, was the center of observation with Mrs. Hooker; she wore
black velvet, roses, and diamonds--has a noble presence and Grecian
face. General Forney, of Alabama, Hon. John F. Wait, M. C., Captain
Dutton and Colonel Mallory, of U. S. Army, Judge Tabor (Fourth
Auditor), Dr. Cowes, Col. Ingersol, Mrs. Hoffman, of New York, a
prominent lady of the Woman's Congress, lately assembled in this
city, wore a distinguished toilette. Mrs. Spofford, of the Riggs
House, was among the most noticeable ladies present, elegant and
delightful in style and manner. Dr. Josephs and Col. G. W. Rice, of
Boston, were of the most conspicuous gentlemen present, who retired
much edified with the entertainment of the evening.
H. LOUISE GATES.
Society was divided Saturday evening between the literary club
which met at Willard's under the auspices of Mrs. Morrell, and the
reception given at the residence of Senator Rollins, on Capitol
Hill, to Mrs. Beecher Hooker, who spoke on the question of woman
suffrage. It was said of Theodore Parker, if all his hearers stood
on the same lofty plane that he did, his theology would be all
right for them, and so in this matter of woman's rights. If all the
advocates were as cultivated, refined, and convincing as Mrs.
Hooker, one might almost be tempted to surrender. She certainly
possesses that rare magnetic influence which seems to say, "Lend me
your ears and I shall take your heart." Among her listeners we
noticed Mrs. Joseph Ames, Grace Greenwood, Senator and Mrs.
Rollins, Senator and Mrs. Wadleigh, Miss Rollins, Mrs. Solomon
Bundy, Mrs. J. M. Holmes, Mrs. Brainerd, Mr. and Mrs. Doolittle,
Dr. Patton and son, Prof. Thomas Taylor, Miss Robena Taylor, Mrs.
Spofford, of the Riggs House, Prof. G. B. Stebbins, Mrs. Captain
Platt, and Mr. and Mrs. Holt.--[Washington _Post_.
[32] The members of the committee present were Hon. Proctor Knott
(the chairman), General Benjamin F. Butler, Messrs. Lynde, Frye,
Conger, Lapham, Culberson, McMahon. Among the ladies were Mesdames
Knott, Conger, Lynde, Frye.
[33] Mrs. Hooker has won, just as we predicted she would. Senators
Howe, Ferry, Coke, Randolph, Jones, Blaine, Beck, Booth, Allison,
Wallace, Eaton, Johnston, Burnside, Saulsbury, Merrimon, and
Presiding-officer Wheeler, together with nineteen other senators,
have formally invited her to address the Committee on Privileges
and Elections on February 22, an invitation which she has
enthusiastically accepted. Nobody but congressmen will be admitted
to hear the distinguished advocate of woman suffrage.--[Washington
_Post_.
[34] Among those present were Mrs. Senator Beck, Mrs. Stanley
Matthews, Mrs. Sargent, Mrs. Spofford, Mrs. Holmes, Mrs. Snead,
Mrs. Baldwin, Miss Blodgett of New York; Mrs. Baldwin, Mrs.
Spencer, Mrs. Juan Lewis of Philadelphia; Mrs. Morgan of
Mississippi, Mrs. Brooks, Mrs. Olcott, Mrs. Bartlett, Miss Sweet,
Mrs. Myers, Mrs. Gibson, Miss Jenners, Mrs. Levison, Mrs. Hereford,
Mrs. Folsom, Mrs. Mitchell, Mrs. Lynde, Mrs. Eldridge, Miss Snowe,
Mrs. Curtis, Mrs. Hutchinson Patton, Mrs. Boucher and many others.
Of the committee and Senate there were Senators Wadleigh, Cameron
of Wisconsin; Merrimon, Mitchell, Hoar, Vice-president Wheeler,
Senators Jones, Bruce, Beck and others. Several representatives
and their wives also were there, and seemed deeply
interested.--[Washington _Post_.
[35] Mrs. Ricker makes a specialty of looking after the occupants
of the jail--so freely is her purse opened to the poor and
unfortunate that she is known as the prisoners' friend. Many an
alleged criminal owes the dawning of a new life, and the
determination to make it a worthy one, to the efforts of this noble
woman. And Mrs. Ricker's special object in seeking this office was
that prisoners might make depositions before her and thus be saved
the expense of employing notaries from the city.
[36] THE SELFISH RATS--A FABLE BY LILLIE DEVEREUX BLAKE.--Once some
gray old rats built a ship of State to save themselves from
drowning. It carried them safely for awhile until they grew eager
for more passengers, and so took on board all manner of rats that
had run away from all sorts of places--Irish rats and German rats,
and French rats, and even black rats and dirty sewer rats.
Now there were many lady mice who had followed the rats, and the
rats therefore thought them very nice, but in spite of that would
not let them have any place on the ship, so that they were forced
to cling to a few planks and were every now and then overwhelmed by
the waves. But when the mice begged to be taken on board saying,
"Save us also, we beg you!" The rats only replied, "We are too
crowded already; we love you very much, and we know you are very
uncomfortable, but it is not expedient to make room for you." So
the rats sailed on safely and saw the poor little mice buffeted
about without doing the least thing to save them.
_Moral_: Woe to the weaker.
[37] Senator Blair has just been elected (June, 1885) to a second
term, thus insuring his services to our cause in the Senate for
another six years.
[38] DELEGATES TO THE THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY.--Alabama, Priscilla
Holmes Drake; California, Ellen Clark Sargent; District of
Columbia, Frederick Douglass, Belva A. Lockwood, Sara Andrews
Spencer, Caroline B. Winslow, M. D.; Indiana, Margaret C. Conklin,
Mary B. Naylor, May Wright Thompson; Massachusetts, Harriet H.
Robinson, Harriette R. Shattuck; Maryland, Lavinia C. Dundore;
Michigan, Catherine A. F. Stebbins, Frances Titus, Sojourner Truth;
Missouri, Phoebe W. Couzins; New Hampshire, Parker Pillsbury; North
Carolina, Elizabeth Oakes Smith; New Jersey, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Sarah M. Hurn; New York, _Albany county_, Arethusa L.
Forbes; _Dutchess_, Helen M. Loder; _Lewis_, Mrs. E. M. Wilcox;
_Madison_, Helen Raymond Jarvis; _Monroe_, Susan B. Anthony, Amy
Post, Sarah H. Willis, Mary H. Hallowell, Mary S. Anthony, Lewia C.
Smith and many others; _Orleans_, Mrs. Plumb, Mrs. Clark;
_Onondaga_, Lucy N. Coleman, Dr. Amelia F. Raymond, Matilda Joslyn
Gage; _Ontario_, Elizabeth C. Atwell, Catherine H. Sands, Elizabeth
Smith Miller, Helen M. Pitts; _Queens_, Mary A. Pell; _Wayne_,
Sarah K. Rathbone, Rebecca B. Thomas; _Wyoming_, Charlotte A.
Cleveland; _Genesee_, the Misses Morton; _New York_, Clemence S.
Lozier, M. D., Helen M. Slocum, Sara A. Barret, M. D., Hamilton
Wilcox; Ohio, Mrs. Ellen Sully Fray; Pennsylvania, Lucretia Mott,
Sarah Pugh, Adeline Thomson, Maria C. Arter, M. D., Mrs. Watson;
South Carolina, Martha Schofield; Wisconsin, Mrs. C. L. Morgan.
[39] From Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucy Stone,
Caroline H. Dall, Boston; Hon. A. A. Sargent, Washington; Clara
Barton, Mathilde F. Wendt, Abby Hutchinson Patton, Aaron M. Powell,
Father Benson, Margaret Holley, Mary L. Booth, Sarah Hallock,
Priscilla R. Lawrence, Lillie Devereux Blake, New York; Samuel May,
Elizabeth Powell Bond, John W. Hutchinson, Lucinda B. Chandler,
Sarah E. Wall, Massachusetts; Caroline M. Spear, Robert Purvis,
Edward M. Davis, Philadelphia; Isabella Beecher Hooker, Julia E.
Smith, Lavinia Goodell, Connecticut; Lucy A. Snowe, Ann T. Greeley,
Maine; Caroline F. Barr, Bessie Bisbee Hunt, Mary A. Powers Filley,
New Hampshire; Catherine Cornell Knowles, Rhode Island; Antoinette
Brown Blackwell, New Jersey; Annie Laura Quinby, Joseph B. Quinby,
Sarah R. L. Williams, Rosa L. Segur, Ohio; Sarah C. Owen, Michigan;
Laura Ross Wolcott, M. D., Mary King, Angie King, Wisconsin;
Frances E. Williard, Clara Lyons Peters, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert,
Illinois; Rachel Lockwood Child, Janet Strong, Nancy R. Allen,
Amelia Bloomer, Iowa; Sarah Burger Stearns, Hattie M. White,
Minnesota; Mary F. Thomas, M. D., Emma Molloy, Indiana; Matilda
Hindman, Sarah L. Miller, Pennsylvania; Anna K. Irvine, Virginia L.
Minor, Missouri; Elizabeth H. Duvall, Kentucky; Mrs. G.W. Church,
Tennessee; Mrs. Augusta Williams, Elsie Stuart, Kansas; Ada W.
Lucas, Nebraska; Emeline B. Wells, Annie Godbe, Utah; Mary F.
Shields, Alida C. Avery, M. D., Colorado; Harriet Loughary, Mrs. L.
F. Proebstel, Mrs. Coburn, Abigail Scott Duniway, Oregon; Clarina
I. H. Nichols, Elizabeth B. Schenck, Sarah J. Wallis, Abigail Bush,
Laura de Force Gordon, California; Mrs. A.H.H. Stuart, Washington
Territory; Helen M. Martin, Arkansas; Helen R. Holmes, District of
Columbia; Caroline V. Putnam, Virginia; Elizabeth Avery Meriwether,
Tennessee; Elizabeth L. Saxon, Louisiana; Martha Goodwin Tunstall,
Texas; Priscilla Holmes Drake, Buell D. M'Clung, Alabama; Ellen
Sully Fray, Ontario; Theodore Stanton, France; Ernestine L. Rose,
Caroline Ashurst Biggs, Lydia E. Becker, England.
[40] While May Wright Thompson was speaking she turned to Mrs.
Stanton and said. "How thankful I am for these bright young women
now ready to fill our soon-to-be vacant places. I want to shake
hands with them all before I go, and give them a few words of
encouragement. I do hope they will not be spoiled with too much
praise."
[41] For account of this International Congress, see chapter on
Continental Europe in this volume.
[42] Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Coleman, Mr. Wilcox,
Mrs. Slocum, Mrs. Dundore, Mrs. Stebbins, Mrs. Sands, Mrs. Amy
Post, and Mrs. Elizabeth Oakes-Smith, who having resided in North
Carolina had not been on our platform for many years, were among
the speakers.
[43] By Miss Couzins, Mr. Douglass, Mrs. Spencer.
[44] Mr. Robinson, as "Warrington," was well known as one of the
best writers on the _Springfield Republican_.
[45] Ellen Clark Sargent, California; Elizabeth Oakes Smith, North
Carolina; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, New Jersey; Mrs. Devereux Blake,
Mrs. Joslyn Gage, Helen M. Slocum, Helen Cooke, Susan B. Anthony,
New York; Julia Brown Dunham, Iowa; Marilla M. Ricker, New
Hampshire; Lavinia C. Dundore, Maryland; Robert Purvis, Julia and
Rachel Foster, Pennsylvania; Emeline B. Wells, Zina Young Williams,
Utah; Ellen H. Sheldon, Dr. Caroline Winslow, Sara Andrews Spencer,
Belva A. Lockwood, Frederick Douglass, Julia A. Wilbur, Dr. Cora M.
Bland, Washington.
[46] The president invited the ladies into the library, that they
might be secure from interruption, and gave them throughout a most
respectful and courteous hearing, asking questions and showing
evident interest in the subject, and at the close promising sincere
consideration of the question.
[47] At its final action, the bill was called up by Hon. J. E.
McDonald of Indiana. After some discussion it was passed without
amendment--40 to 20. _Yeas_--Allison, Anthony, Barnum, Beck,
Blaine, Booth, Burnside, Cameron (Pennsylvania), Cameron
(Wisconsin), Dawes, Dorsey, Ferry, Garland, Gordon, Hamlin, Hoar,
Howe, Ingalls, Jones (Florida), Jones (Nevada), Kellogg, Kirkwood,
McCreery, McDonald, McMillan, McPherson, Matthews, Mitchell,
Oglesby, Ransom, Rollins, Sargent, Teller, Voorhees, Wadleigh,
Windom, Withers. _Nays_--Baily, Chaffee, Coke, Davis (Illinois),
Davis (West Virginia), Eaton, Edmunds, Eustis, Grover, Harris,
Hereford, Hill, Kernan, Maxey, Merrimon, Morgan, Randolph,
Saulsbury, Wallace, White.
[48] Conspicuous in the large and distinguished audience present
were Senator M'Donald, Attorney-general Williams, Hon. Jeremiah
Wilson, Judge Shellabarger, Hon. George W. Julian, who with many
others extended hearty congratulations to Mrs. Lockwood.
[49] _Washington, D. C._--Sara A. Spencer. _Illinois_--Clara Lyon
Peters, Watseka; Mrs. G. P. Graham, Martha L. Mathews, Amanda E.
and Matilda S. Frazer, Aledo; Hannah J. Coffee, Abby B. Trego,
Orion; Mrs. Senator Hanna, Fairfield; Sarah F. Nourse, Moline;
Mrs. E. P. Reynolds, Rock Island; Cynthia Leonard, Chicago.
_Missouri_--Virginia L. Minor, Mrs. M. A. Peoquine, Mrs. P. W.
Thomas, Eliza J. Patrick, Mrs. E. M. Dan, Eliza A. Robbins, Phoebe
W. Couzins, Alex. Robbins, St. Louis; James L. Allen, Oregon; Miss
A. J. Sparks, Warrensburg. _Wisconsin_--Rev. Olympia Brown, Racine.
_New York_--Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Mary R. Pell,
Florence Pell. _Indiana_--Helen Austin, Richmond; May Wright
Thompson, Amy E. Dunn, Gertrude Garrison, Mary E. Haggart,
Indianapolis. _Tennessee_--Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, Minor Lee
Meriwether, Memphis, _Kentucky_--Mary B. Clay, Richmond.
_Louisiana_--Emily P. Collins, Ponchatoula. _Ohio_--Eva L. Pinney,
South Newbury. _Pennsylvania_--Mrs. L. P. Danforth, Julia and
Rachel Foster, Philadelphia.
[50] Letters sympathizing with the purposes of the convention were
received from Lucretia Mott, Pa.; Clarina I. H. Nichols, Cal.;
Lucinda B. Chandler, N. J.; Annie Laura Quinby, Ky.; Mrs. N. R.
Allen, Ia.; Isabella B. Hooker, Ct.; Emeline B. Wells, Utah; Sarah
Burger Stearns, Minn.; Mary A. Livermore, Mass.; Elizabeth Oakes
Smith, N. Y.; Hannah Tracy Cutler, M. D., Ill.; Mrs. S. F.
Proebstell, Ore.; Mrs. C. C. Knowles, R. I.; Dr. Clemence S.
Lozier, Lillie Devereux Blake, N. Y. (with a fable, "Nothing New");
Lavinia Goodell, Wis.; Elizabeth H. Duvall, Ky.; Alida C. Avery, M.
D., Col.; Hattie M. Crumb, Mo.; Mrs. J. H. Pattee, Ill.; Caroline
B. Winslow, M. D., Washington; Miss Kate Trimble, Ky.; Mrs. M.
M'Clellan Brown, Pa.; Alice Black, Mo.; Margaret M. Baker, Mo.;
Mrs. Elsie Stewart, Kan.; Edward M. Davis, Pa.; Mrs. Scott Saxton,
Louisville; Kate Gannett Wells, Boston; Anna R. Irvine, Mo.; Sarah
M. Kimball, Salt Lake; Lelia E. Partridge, Pa.; Ellen H. Sheldon,
D. C.; Rev. W. C. Gannett, Minn.; Elizabeth L. Saxon, New Orleans;
Mrs. J. Swain, Ill.; Geo. M. Jackson, John Finn, A Practical Woman,
St. Louis; Maria Harkner, Mrs. J. Martin, Kate B. Ross, Ill.; Emma
Molloy, Ind.; Maria J. Johnston, Mo.; Zenas Brockett, N.Y.; Kate N.
Doggett, president of the Association for the Advancement of Women;
Rebecca N. Hazard, president of the American Woman Suffrage
Society; Madam Anneke, for the Wisconsin Suffrage Association; The
Hutchinson Family ("Tribe of John"); South Newbury Ohio Woman
Suffrage Society. Foreign letters were also received from Jessie
Morrison Wellstood, Edinburgh; Lydia E. Becker, Manchester,
England, editor _Woman's Suffrage Journal_.
[51] Though an extra edition was struck off not a paper was to be
had by 10 o'clock in the morning. Gov. Stannard and other prominent
members of the suffrage association bought and mailed every copy
they could obtain.
[52] On the Tuesday following the convention a large number of St.
Louis people met and formed a woman suffrage society, auxiliary to
the National. Miss Anthony who had remained over, called the
meeting to order; Mrs. E. C. Johnson made an effective speech; Mrs.
Minor was chosen president. Over fifty persons enrolled as
members. The second meeting held a fortnight after, was also
crowded--twenty-five new members were obtained.
CHAPTER XXIX.
CONGRESSIONAL REPORTS AND CONVENTIONS.
1880-1881.
Why we Hold Conventions in Washington--Lincoln Hall
Demonstration--Sixty-six Thousand Appeals--Petitions Presented in
Congress--Hon. T. W. Ferry of Michigan in the Senate--Hon. George
B. Loring of Massachusetts in the House--Hon. J. J. Davis of
North Carolina Objected--Twelfth Washington Convention--Hearings
before the Judiciary Committees of both Houses--1880--May
Anniversary at Indianapolis--Series of Western
Conventions--Presidential Nominating Conventions--Delegates and
Addresses to each--Mass-meeting at Chicago--Washington
Convention, 1881--Memorial Service to Lucretia Mott--Mrs.
Stanton's Eulogy--Discussion in the Senate on a Standing
Committee--Senator McDonald of Indiana Championed the
Measure--May Anniversary in Boston--Conventions in the Chief
Cities of New England.
The custom of holding conventions at the seat of government in
mid-winter has many advantages. Congress is then in session, the
Supreme Court sitting, and society, that mystic, headless, power,
at the height of its glory. Being the season for official
receptions, where one meets foreign diplomats from every civilized
nation, it is the time chosen by strangers to visit our beautiful
capital. Washington is the modern Rome to which all roads lead, the
bright cynosure of all eyes, and is alike the hope and fear of
worn-out politicians and aspiring pilgrims. From this great center
varied influences radiate to the vast circumference of our land.
Supreme-court decisions, congressional debates, presidential
messages and popular opinions on all questions of fashion,
etiquette and reform are heralded far and near, awakening new
thought in every State in our nation and, through their
representatives, in the aristocracies of the old world. Hence to
hold a suffrage convention in Washington is to speak to the women
of every civilized nation.
The Twelfth Annual Convention of the National Association assembled
in Lincoln Hall, January 21, 1880. Many distinguished ladies and
gentlemen occupied the platform, which was tastefully decorated
with flags and flowers, and around the walls hung familiar
mottoes,[53] significant of the demands of the hour. On taking the
chair Susan B. Anthony made some appropriate remarks as to the
importance of the work of the association during the presidential
campaign. Mrs. Spencer called the roll, and delegates[54] from
sixteen States responded.
Mrs. Gage read the call:
The National Association will hold its twelfth annual convention
in Lincoln Hall, Washington, D. C., January 21, 22, 1880.
The question as to whether we are a nation, or simply a
confederacy of States, that has agitated the country from the
inauguration of the government, was supposed to have been settled
by the war and confirmed by the amendments, making United States
citizenship and suffrage practically synonymous. Not, however,
having been pressed to its logical results, the question as to
the limits of State rights and national power is still under
discussion, and is the fundamental principle that now divides the
great national parties. As the final settlement of this principle
involves the enfranchisement of woman, our question is one of
national politics, and the real issue of the hour. If it is the
duty of the general government to protect the freedmen of South
Carolina and Louisiana in the exercise of their rights as United
States citizens, the government owes the same protection to the
women in Massachusetts and New York. This year will again witness
an exciting presidential election, and this question of momentous
importance to woman will be the issue then presented. Upon its
final decision depends not only woman's speedy enfranchisement,
but the existence of the republic.
A sixteenth amendment to the national constitution, prohibiting
the States from disfranchising United States citizens on the
ground of sex, will be urged upon the forty-sixth congress by
petitions, arguments and appeals. The earnest, intelligent and
far-seeing women of every State should assemble at the coming
convention, and show by their wise counsels that they are worthy
to be citizens of a free republic. All associations in the
United States which believe it is the duty of congress to submit
an amendment protecting woman in the exercise of the right of
suffrage, are cordially invited to send delegates. Those who
cannot attend the convention, are urged to address letters to
their representatives in congress, asking them to give as careful
attention to the proposed amendment and to the petitions and
arguments urged in its behalf, as though the rights of men, only,
were involved. A delegate from each section of the country will
be heard before the committees of the House and Senate, to whom
our petitions will be referred.[55]
Mrs. Spencer presented a series of resolutions which were ably
discussed by the speakers and adopted:
_Resolved_, That we are a nation and not a mere confederacy, and
that the right of citizens of the United States to
self-government through the ballot should be guaranteed by the
national constitution and protected everywhere under the national
flag.
_Resolved_, That while States may have the right to regulate the
time, place and manner of elections, and the qualifications of
voters upon terms equally applicable to all citizens, they should
be forbidden under heavy penalties to deprive any citizen of the
right to self-government on account of sex.
_Resolved_, That it is the duty of the forty-sixth congress to
immediately submit to the several States the amendment to the
national constitution recently proposed by Senator Ferry and
Representative Loring, and approved by the National Suffrage
Association.
_Resolved_, That it is the duty of the House of Representatives
to pass immediately the resolution recommended by the Committee
on Rules directing the speaker to appoint a committee on the
rights of women.
_Resolved_, That the giant labor reform of this age lies in
securing to woman, the great unpaid and unrecognized laborer and
producer of the whole earth, the fruits of her toil.
_Resolved_, That the theory of a masculine head to rule the
family, the church, or the State, is contrary to republican
principles, and the fruitful source of rebellion and corruption.
_Resolved_, That the assumption of the clergy, that woman has no
right to participate in the ministry and offices of the church is
unauthorized theocratic tyranny, placing a masculine mediator
between woman and her God, which finds no authority in reason,
and should be resisted by all women as an odious form of
religious persecution.
_Resolved_, That it is the duty of the congress of the United
States to provide a reform school for girls and a home for the
children whom no man owns or protects, and who are left to die
upon the streets of the nation's capital, or to grow up in
ignorance, vice and crime.
_Resolved_, That since man has everywhere committed to woman the
custody and ownership of the child born out of wedlock, and has
required it to bear its mother's name, he should recognize
woman's right as a mother to the custody of the child born in
marriage, and permit it to bear her name.
_Resolved_, That the National Association will send a delegate
and an alternate to each presidential nominating convention to
demand the rights of woman, and to submit to each party the
following plank for presidential platform: _Resolved_, That the
right to use the ballot _inheres_ in the citizen of the United
States, and we pledge ourselves to secure protection in the
exercise of this right to all citizens irrespective of sex.
_Resolved_, That one-half of the number of the supervisors of the
tenth census, and one-half of the collectors of said census,
should be educated, intelligent women, who can be safely
entrusted to enumerate women and children, their occupations,
ages, diseases and deaths, and who would not be likely to
overlook ten millions of housekeepers.
_Resolved_, That Ulysses S. Grant won his first victories through
the military plans and rare genius of a woman, Anna Ella Carroll,
of Maryland, and while he has been rewarded with the presidential
office through two terms, and a royal voyage around the world,
crowned with glory and honor, Miss Carroll has for fifteen years
been suffering in poverty unrecognized and unrewarded.
_Resolved_, That the thanks of this association are hereby
tendered to Governor Chas. B. Andrews, of Connecticut, for
remembering in each annual message to ask for justice to women.
The comments of the press[56] were very complimentary, and their
daily reports of the convention full and fair. Among the many
letters[57] to the convention, the following from a Southern lady
is both novel and amusing:
MEMPHIS, Tenn., December 11, 1889.
DEAR MRS. SPENCER: You want petitions. Well I have two which I
got up some time ago, but did not send on because I thought the
names too few to count much. The one is of _white_ women 130 in
number. The other contains 110 names of black women. This last is
a curiosity, and was gotten up under the following circumstances:
Some ladies were dining with me and we each promised to get what
names we could to petitions for woman suffrage. My servant who
waited on table was a coal-black woman. She became interested
and after the ladies went away asked me to explain the matter to
her, which I did. She then said if I would give her a paper she
could get a thousand names among the black women, that many of
them felt that they were as much slaves to their husbands as ever
they had been to their white masters. I gave her a petition, and
said to her, "Tell the women this is to have a law passed that
will not allow the men to _whip their wives_, and will put down
drinking saloons." "Every black woman will go for that law!" She
took the paper and procured these 110 signatures against the
strong opposition of black men who in some cases threatened to
whip their wives if they signed. At length the opposition was so
great my servant had not courage to face it. She feared some
bodily harm would be done her by the black men. You can see this
is a genuine negro petition from the odd way the names are
written, sometimes the capital letter in the middle of the name,
sometimes at the end.
Yours, ELIZABETH AVERY MERIWETHER.
In response to 66,000 documents containing appeals to women, issued
by the National Association, 250 petitions, signed by over 12,000,
arrived in Washington in time for presentation to congress before
the assembling of the convention, and were read on the floor of the
Senate, with the leading names, January 14, 16, 20, 21, by
forty-seven senators.
In the House of Representatives this courtesy (reading petitions
and names), requires unanimous consent, and one man, Hon. J. J.
Davis of North Carolina, who had no petition from the women of his
State, objected. Sixty-five representatives presented the petitions
at the clerk's desk, under the rule, January 14, 15, 16. In answer
to these appeals to both Houses, on Monday, January 19, Hon. T. W.
Ferry, of Michigan, introduced in the Senate a joint resolution for
a sixteenth amendment, which with all the petitions was referred to
the Committee on the Judiciary. Tuesday, January 20, Hon. George B.
Loring, of Massachusetts, introduced the same resolution in the
House of Representatives, and it was referred, with all the
petitions, to the Committee on the Judiciary. There were also
during this congress presented over 300 petitions from law-abiding,
tax-paying women, praying for the removal of their political
disabilities.
On Friday and Saturday, January 23, 24, these committees granted
hearings of two hours each to delegates from ten States who had
been in attendance at the convention. Thoughtful attention was
given to arguments upon every phase of the question, and senators
and representatives expressed a strong determination to bring the
subject fairly before the people.
The committees especially requested that only the delegates should
be present, wishing, as they said, to give their sole attention to
the arguments undisturbed by the crowds who usually seek
admittance. Even the press was shut out. These private sessions
with most of the members present, and the close attention they gave
to each speaker, were strong proof of the growth of our reform, as
but a few years before representatives sought excuses for absence
on all such occasions.
THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, U. S. SENATE, }
Friday, Jan. 23, 1880. }
The committee assembled at half-past 10 o'clock A.M. Present, Mr.
Thurman, _chairman_, Mr. McDonald, Mr. Bayard, Mr. Davis of
Illinois, Mr. Edmunds.
The CHAIRMAN: Several members of the committee are unable to be
here. Mr. Lamar is detained at his home in Mississippi by
sickness; Mr. Carpenter is confined to his room by sickness; Mr.
Conkling has been unwell; I do not know how he is this morning;
and Mr. Garland is chairman of the Committee on Territories,
which has a meeting this morning that he could not fail to
attend. I do not think we are likely to have any more members of
the committee than are here now, and we will hear you, ladies.
Mrs. ZERELDA G. WALLACE of Indiana said: _Mr. Chairman, and
Gentlemen of the Committee_: It is scarcely necessary to say that
there is not an effect without a cause. Therefore it would be
well for the statesmen of this nation to ask themselves the
question, What has brought the women from all parts of this
nation to the capital at this time? What has been the strong
motive that has taken us away from the quiet and comfort of our
own homes and brought us before you to-day? As an answer to that
question I will read an extract from a speech made by one of
Indiana's statesmen. He found out by experience and gave us the
benefit of it:
You can go to meetings; you can vote resolutions; you can
attend great demonstrations in the street; but, after all,
the only occasion where the American citizen expresses his
acts, his opinions, and his power is at the ballot-box; and
that little ballot that he drops in there is the written
sentiment of the times, and it is the power that he has as a
citizen of this great republic.
That is the reason why we are here; the reason why we want to
vote. We are not seditious women, clamoring for any peculiar
rights; it is not the woman question that brings us before you
to-day; it is the human question underlying this movement. We
love and appreciate our country; we value its institutions. We
realize that we owe great obligations to the men of this nation
for what they have done. To their strength we owe the subjugation
of all the material forces of the universe which give us comfort
and luxury in our homes. To their brains we owe the machinery
that gives us leisure for intellectual culture and achievement.
To their education we owe the opening of our colleges and the
establishment of our public schools, which give us these great
and glorious privileges. This movement is the legitimate result
of this development, and of the suffering that woman has
undergone in the ages past.
A short time ago I went before the legislature of Indiana with a
petition signed by 25,000 of the best women in the State. I
appeal to the memory of Judge McDonald to substantiate the truth
of what I say. Judge McDonald knows that I am a home-loving,
law-abiding, tax-paying woman of Indiana, and have been for fifty
years. When I went before our legislature and found that one
hundred of the vilest men in our State, merely by the possession
of the ballot, had more influence with our lawmakers than the
wives and mothers it was a startling revelation.
You must admit that in popular government the ballot is the most
potent means for all moral and social reforms. As members of
society, we are deeply interested in all the social problems with
which you have grappled so long unsuccessfully. We do not intend
to depreciate your efforts, but you have attempted to do an
impossible thing; to represent the whole by one-half, and because
we are the other half we ask you to recognize our rights as
citizens of this republic.
JULIA SMITH PARKER of Glastonbury, Conn., said: _Gentlemen_: You
may be surprised to see a woman of over four-score years appear
before you at this time. She came into the world and reached
years of discretion before any person in this room was born. She
now comes before you to plead that she can vote and have all the
privileges that men have. She has suffered so much individually
that she thought when she was young she had no right to speak
before the men; but still she had courage to get an education
equal to that of any man at the college, and she had to suffer a
great deal on that account. She went to New Haven to school, and
it was noised around that she had studied the languages. It was
such an astonishing thing for girls at that time to have the
advantages of education, that I had actually to go to cotillon
parties to let people see that I had common sense. [Laughter.]
She has had to pay $200 a year in taxes without knowing what
becomes of it. She does not know but that it goes to support
grog-shops. She knows nothing about it. She has had to suffer her
cows to be sold at the sign-post six times. She suffered her
meadow land, worth $2,000, to be sold for a tax less than $50. If
she could vote as the men do she would not have suffered this
insult; and so much would not have been said against her as has
been said if men did not have the whole power. I was told that
they had the power to take anything that I owned if I would not
exert myself to pay the money. I felt that I ought to have some
little voice in determining what should be done with what I paid.
I felt that I ought to own my own property; that it ought not to
be in these men's hands; and I now come to plead that I may have
the same privileges before the law that men have. I have seen
what a difference there is, when I have had my cows sold, by
having a voter to take my part.
I have come from an obscure town on the banks of the Connecticut,
where I was born. I was brought up on a farm. I never had an idea
that I should come all the way to Washington to speak before
those who had not come into existence when I was born. Now, I
plead that there may be a sixteenth amendment, and that women may
be allowed the privilege of owning their own property. I have
suffered so much myself that I felt it might have some effect to
plead before this honorable committee. I thank you, gentlemen,
for hearing me so kindly.
ELIZABETH L. SAXON of Louisiana, said: _Gentlemen_: I feel that
after Mrs. Wallace's plea there is no necessity for me to say
anything. I come from the extreme South, she from the West.
People have asked me why I came. I care nothing for suffrage
merely to stand beside men, or rush to the polls, or to take any
privilege outside of my home, only, as Mrs. Wallace says, for
humanity. I never realized the importance of this cause, until we
were beaten back on every side in the work of reform. If we
attempted to put women in charge of prisons, believing that
wherever woman sins and suffers women should be there to teach,
help and guide, every place was in the hands of men. If we made
an effort to get women on the school-boards we were combated and
could do nothing.
In the State of Texas, I had a niece living whose father was an
inmate of a lunatic asylum. She exerted as wide an influence as
any woman in that State; I allude to Miss Mollie Moore, who was
the ward of Mr. Cushing. I give this illustration as a reason why
Southern women are taking part in this movement. Mr. Wallace had
charge of that lunatic asylum for years. He was a good,
honorable, able man. Every one was endeared to him; the State
appreciated him as superintendent of this asylum. When a
political change was made and Gov. Robinson came in, Dr. Wallace
was ousted for political purposes. It almost broke the hearts of
some of the women who had sons, daughters or husbands there. They
determined at once to try and have him reinstated. It was
impossible, he was out, and what could they do?
A gentleman said to me a few days ago, "These women ought to
marry." I am married; I am a mother; and in our home the sons and
brothers are all standing like a wall of steel at my back. I have
cast aside the prejudices of the past. They lie like rotted hulks
behind me.
After the fever of 1878, when our constitutional convention was
about to convene, I suppressed the agony and grief of my own
heart (for one of my children had died) and took part in the
suffrage movement in Louisiana with the wife of Chief-Justice
Merrick, Mrs. Sarah A. Dorsey, and Mrs. Harriet Keating of New
York, the niece of Dr. Lozier. These three ladies aided me
faithfully and ably. I went to Lieutenant-Governor Wiltz, and
asked him if he would present or consider a petition which I
wished to bring before the convention. He read the petition. One
clause of our State law is that no woman can sign a will. Some
ladies donated property to an asylum. They wrote the will and
signed it themselves, and it was null and void, because they were
women. That clause, perhaps, will be wiped out. Many gentlemen
signed the petition on that account. Governor Wiltz, then
lieutenant-governor, told me he would present the petition. He
was elected president of the convention. I presented my first
petition, signed by the best names in the city of New Orleans
and in the State. I had the names of seven of the most prominent
physicians. Three prominent ministers signed it for moral
purposes alone. When Mrs. Dorsey was on her dying bed the last
time she ever signed her name was to a letter to go before that
convention. Mrs. Merrick and myself addressed the convention. We
made the petition then that we make here; that we, the mothers of
the land, should not be barred on every side in the cause of
reform. I pledged my father on his dying bed that I would never
cease work until woman stood with man equal before the law.
I beg of you, gentlemen, to consider this question seriously. We
stand precisely in the position of the colonies when they plead,
and, in the words of Patrick Henry, were "spurned with contempt
from the foot of the throne." We have been jeered and laughed at;
but the question has passed out of the region of ridicule. This
clamor for woman suffrage, for woman's rights, for equal
representation, is extending all over the land.
I plead because my work has been combated in the cause of reform
everywhere that I have tried to accomplish anything. The children
that fill the houses of prostitution are not of foreign blood and
race. They come from sweet American homes, and for every woman
that went down some mother's heart broke. I plead by the power of
the ballot to be allowed to help reform women and benefit
mankind.
MARY A. STEWART of Delaware said: The negroes are a race
inferior, you must admit, to your daughters, and yet that race
has the ballot, and why? It is said they earned it and paid for
it with their blood. Whose blood paid for yours? The blood of
your forefathers and our forefathers. Does a man earn a hundred
thousand dollars and lie down and die, saying, "It is all my
boys'"? Not a bit of it. He dies saying, "Let my children, be
they cripples, be they idiots, be they boys, or be they girls,
inherit all my property alike." Then let us inherit the sweet
boon of the ballot alike. When our fathers were driving the great
ship of State we were willing to sail as deck or cabin
passengers, just as we felt disposed; we had nothing to say; but
to-day the boys are about to run the ship aground, and it is high
time that the mothers should be asking, "What do you mean to do?"
In our own little State the laws have been very much modified in
regard to women. My father was the first man to blot out the old
English law allowing the eldest son the right of inheritance to
the real-estate. He took the first step, and like all those who
take first steps in reform he received a mountain of curses from
the oldest male heirs.
Since 1868 I have, by my own individual efforts, by the use of
hard-earned money, gone to our legislature time after time and
have had this law and that law passed for the benefit of women;
and the same little ship of State has sailed on. To-day our men
are just as well satisfied with the laws in force in our State
for the benefit of women as they were years ago. A woman now has
a right to make a will. She can hold bonds and mortgages of her
own. She has a right to her own property. She cannot sell it
though, if it is real-estate, simply because the moment she
marries, her husband has his right of courtesy. The woman does
not grumble at that; but still when he dies owning real-estate,
she gets only the rental value of one-third, which is called the
widow's dower. Now I think the man ought to have the rental value
of one-third of the woman's maiden property or real-estate, and
it ought to be called the widower's dower. It would be just as
fair for one as for the other. All that I want is equality.
The women of our State, as I said before, are taxed without
representation. The tax-gatherer comes every year and demands
taxes. For twenty years I have paid tax under protest, and if I
live twenty years longer I shall pay it under protest every time.
The tax-gatherer came to my place not long since. "Well," said I,
"good morning, sir." Said he, "Good morning." He smiled and said,
"I have come bothering you." Said I, "I know your face well. You
have come to get a right nice little woman's tongue-lashing."
Said he, "I suppose so, but if you will just pay your tax I will
leave." I paid the tax, "But," said I, "remember I pay it under
protest, and if I ever pay another tax I intend to have the
protest written and make the tax-gatherer sign it before I pay
the tax, and if he will not sign that protest then I shall not
pay, and there will be a fight at once," Said he, "Why do you
keep all the time protesting against paying this small tax?" Said
I, "Why do you pay your tax?" "Well," said he, "I would not pay
it if I did not vote." Said I, "That is the very reason why I do
not want to pay it. I cannot vote." Who stay at home from the
election? The women, and the black and white men who have been to
the whipping-post. Nice company to put your wives and daughters
in.
It is said that the women do not want to vote. Every woman
sitting here wants to vote, and must we be debarred the privilege
of voting because some luxurious woman, rolling around in her
carriage in her little downy nest that some good, benevolent man
has provided for her, does not want to vote? There was a society
that existed up in the State of New York called the Covenanters
that never voted. Were all you men disfranchised because that
class or sect up in New York would not vote? Did you all pay your
taxes and stay at home and refrain from voting because the
Covenanters did not vote? Not a bit of it. You went to the
election and told them to stay at home if they wanted to, but
that you, as citizens, were going to take care of yourselves.
That was right. We, as citizens, want to take care of ourselves.
One more thought, and I will be through. The fourteenth and
fifteenth amendments, in my opinion, and in the opinion of a
great many smart men in the country, and smart women, too, give
the right to women to vote without any "if's" or "and's" about
it, and the United States protects us in it; but there are a few
who construe the law to suit themselves, and say that those
amendments do not mean that, because the congress which passed
the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments had no such intention.
Well, if that congress overlooked us, let the wiser congress of
to-day take the eighth chapter and the fourth verse of the
Psalms, which says, "What is man that Thou art mindful of him?"
and amend it by adding, "What is woman, that they never thought
of her?"
NANCY R. ALLEN of Iowa said: _Mr. Chairman, and Gentlemen of the
Judiciary Committee_: I am a representative of a large class of
women of Iowa, who are heavy taxpayers. There is now a petition
being circulated throughout our State, to be presented to the
legislature, praying that women be exempted from taxation until
they have some voice in the management of the affairs of the
State. You may ask, "Do not your husbands protect you? Are not
all the men protecting you?" We answer that our husbands are
grand, noble men, who are willing to do all they can for us, but
there are many who have no husbands and who own a great deal of
property in the State of Iowa. Particularly in great moral
reforms the women there feel the need of the ballot. By
presenting long petitions to the legislature they have succeeded
in having better temperance laws enacted, but the men have failed
to elect the officials who will enforce those laws. Consequently
they have become as dead letters upon the statute books.
To refer again to taxes. I have a list showing that in my city
three women pay more taxes than all the city officials together.
They are good temperance women. Our city council is composed
almost entirely of saloon-keepers, brewers and men who patronize
them. There are some good men, but they are in the minority, and
the voices of these women are but little regarded. All these
officials are paid, and we have to help support them. As Sumner
said, "Equality of rights is the first of rights." If we can only
be equal with man under the law, it is all that we ask. We do not
propose to relinquish our domestic life, but we do ask that we
may be represented.
Remarks were also made by Mrs. Chandler, Mrs. Archibald and Mrs.
Spencer. The time having expired, the committee voted to give
another hour to Miss Anthony to state the reasons why we ask
congress to submit a proposition to the several legislatures for a
sixteenth amendment, instead of asking the States to submit the
question to the popular vote of their electors.[58] When Miss
Anthony had finished, the chairman, Senator Thurman of Ohio, said:
I have to say, ladies, that you will admit that we have listened
to you with great attention, and I can certainly say, with great
interest; your appeals will be duly and earnestly considered by
the committee.
Mrs. WALLACE: I wish to make just one remark in reference to what
Senator Thurman said as to the popular vote being against woman
suffrage. The popular vote is against it, but not the popular
voice. Owing to the temperance agitation in the last six years,
the growth of the suffrage sentiment among the wives and mothers
of this nation has largely increased.
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, D. C., Jan. 24, 1880.
The CHAIRMAN _pro tem._ (Mr. HARRIS of Virginia): The order of
business for the present session of the committee is the delivery
of arguments by delegates of the Woman Suffrage Convention now
holding its sessions in Washington. I am informed that the
delegates are in attendance upon the committee. We will be
pleased to hear them. A list of the names, of the ladies
proposing to speak, with a memorandum of the limit of time
allotted to each, has been handed to me for my guidance; and, in
the absence of the chairman [Mr. Knott] it will be my duty to
confine the speakers to the number of minutes apportioned to them
respectively upon the paper before me. As an additional
consideration for adhering to the regulation, I will mention that
members of the committee have informed me that, having made
engagements to be at the departments and elsewhere on business
appointments, they will be compelled to leave the committee-room
upon the expiration of the time assigned. The first name upon the
list is that of Mrs. Emma Mont. McRae of Indiana, to whom five
minutes are allowed.
Mrs. MCRAE said: _Mr. Chairman, and Gentlemen of the Judiciary
Committee_: In Indiana the cause of woman has made marked
advancement. At the same time we realize that we need the right
to vote in order that we may have protection. We need the ballot
because through the medium of its power alone we can hope to
wield that influence in the making of laws affecting our own and
our children's interests.
Some recent occurences in Indiana, one in particular in the
section of the State from which I come, have impressed us more
sensibly than ever before with the necessity of this right. The
particular incident to which I refer was this: In the town of
Muncie, where I reside, a young girl, who for the past five years
had been employed as a clerk in the post-office, and upon whom a
widowed mother was dependent for support, was told on the first
of January that she was no longer needed in the office. She had
filled her place well; no complaint had been made against her.
She very modestly asked the postmaster the cause of her
discharge, and he replied: "We have a man who has done work for
the party and we must give that man a place; I haven't room for
both of you." Now, there you have at once the reason why we want
the ballot; we want to be able to do something for the party in a
substantial way, so that men may not tell us they have no room
for us because we do nothing _for the party_. When they have the
ballot women will work for "the party" as a means of enabling
them to hold places in which they may get bread for their mothers
and for their children if necessity requires.
Miss JESSIE T. WAITE of Illinois said: _Mr. Chairman, and
Gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee_: In the State of Illinois
we have attained to almost every right except that of the ballot.
We have been admitted to all the schools and colleges; we have
become accustomed to parliamentary usages; to voting in literary
societies and in all matters connected with the interests of the
colleges and schools; we are considered members in good standing
of the associations, and, in some cases, the young ladies in the
institutes have been told they hold the balance of power. The
same reason for woman suffrage that has been given by the
delegate from Indiana [Mrs. McRae] holds good with reference to
the State of Illinois. Women must have the ballot that they may
have protection in getting bread for themselves and their
families, by giving to the party that looks for their support
some substantial evidence of their strength. Experience has
demonstrated, especially in the temperance movement, how
fruitless are all their efforts while the ballot is withheld from
their hands. They have prayed; they have petitioned; they have
talked; they have lectured; they have done all they could do,
except to vote; and yet all avails them nothing. Miss Frances
Williard presented to the legislature of Illinois a petition of
such length that it would have reached around this room. It
contained over 180,000 signatures. The purpose of the petition
was to have the legislature give the women of the State the right
to vote upon the question of license or no license in their
respective districts.
In some of the counties of our State we have ladies as
superintendents of schools and professors in colleges. One of the
professors in the Industrial University at Champaign is a lady.
Throughout the State you may find ladies who excel in every
branch of study and in every trade. It was a lady who took the
prize at "the Exposition" for the most beautiful piece of
cabinet-work. This is said to have been a marvel of beauty and
extraordinary as a specimen of fine art. She was a foreigner; a
Scandinavian, I believe. Another lady is a teacher of
wood-carving. We have physicians, and there are two attorneys,
Perry and Martin, now practicing in the city of Chicago.
Representatives of our sex are also to be found among real-estate
agents and journalists, while, in one or two instances as
preachers they have been recognized in the churches.
CATHERINE A. STEBBINS of Michigan said: "Better fifty years of
Europe than a cycle of Cathay!" So said the poet; and I say,
Better a week with these inspired women in conference than years
of an indifferent, conventional society! Their presence has been
a blessing to the people of this District, and will prove in the
future a blessing to our government. These women from all
sections of our country, with a moral and spiritual enthusiasm
which seeks to lift the burdens of our government, come to you,
telling of the obstacles that have beset their path. They have
tried to heal the stricken in vice and ignorance; to save our
land from disintegration. One has sought to reform the drunkard,
to save the moderate drinker, to convert the liquor-seller;
another, to shelter the homeless; another, to lift and save the
abandoned woman. "Abandoned?" once asked a prophet-like man of
our time, who added, "There never was an abandoned woman without
an abandoned man!" Abandoned of whom? let us ask. Surely not by
the merciful Father. No; neither man nor woman is ever abandoned
by him, and he sends his instruments in the persons of some of
these great-hearted women, to appeal to you to restore their
God-given freedom of action, that "the least of these" may be
remembered.
But in our councils no one has dwelt upon _one_ of the great
evils of our civilization, the scourge of war; though it has been
said that women will fight. It is true there are instances in
which they have considered it a duty; there were such in the
rebellion. But the majority of women would not declare war, would
not enlist soldiers and would not vote supplies and equipments,
because many of the most thoughtful believe there _is_ a better
way, and that women can bring a moral power to bear that shall
make war needless.
Let us take one picture representative of the general features of
the war--we say nothing of our convictions in regard to the
conflict. Ulysses S. Grant or Anna Ella Carroll makes plans and
maps for the campaign; McClellan and Meade are commanded to
collect the columbiads, muskets and ammunition, and move their
men to the attack. At the same time the saintly Clara Barton
collects her cordials, medicines and delicacies, her lint and
bandages, and, putting them in the ambulance assigned, joins the
same moving train. McClellan's men meet the enemy, and
men--brothers--on both sides fall by the death-dealing missiles.
Miss Barton and her aids bear off the sufferers, staunch their
bleeding wounds, soothe the reeling brain, bandage the crippled
limbs, pour in the oil and wine, and make as easy as may be the
soldier's bed. What a solemn and heartrending farce is here
enacted! And yet in our present development men and women seek to
reconcile it with the requirements of religion and the
necessities of our conflicting lives. So few recognize the
absolute truth!
Mrs. DEVEREUX BLAKE said: _Mr. Chairman, and Gentlemen of the
Committee_: I come here with your own laws in my hands--and the
volume is quite a heavy one, too--to ask you whether women are
citizens of this nation? I find in this book, under the heading
of the chapter on "Citizenship," the following:
Sec. 1,992. All persons born in the United States and not
subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed,
are declared to be citizens of the United States.
I suppose you will admit that women are, in the language of the
section, "persons," and that we cannot reasonably be included in
the class spoken of as "Indians not taxed." Therefore I claim
that we are "citizens." The same chapter also contains the
following:
Sec. 1,994. Any woman who is now or may hereafter be married
to a citizen of the United States, and who might herself be
lawfully naturalized, shall be deemed a citizen.
Under this section also we are citizens. I am myself, as indeed
are most of the ladies present, married to a citizen of the
United States; so that we are citizens under this count if we
were not citizens before. Then, further, in the legislation known
as "The Civil Rights Bill," I find this language:
All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States
shall have the same right, in every State and territory, to
make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give
evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and
proceedings for the security of persons and property as is
enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like
punishments, pains, penalties, etc.
One would think the logical conclusion from that which I have
last read would be that _all citizens_ are entitled to equal
protection everywhere. It appears to mean that. Then I turn to
another piece of legislation--that which is known as "The
Enforcement Act"--one which some of you, gentlemen, did not like
very much when it was enacted--and there I find another
declaration on the same question. The act is entitled "An Act to
Enforce the Right of Citizens of the United States to Vote in the
Several States of this Union, and for other purposes." The right
of "citizens" to vote appears to be conceded by this act. In the
second section it says:
It shall be the duty of every such person and officer to
give to all citizens of the United States the same and equal
opportunity to perform such prerequisite, and to become
qualified to vote, without distinction of race, color or
previous condition of servitude.
I ask you, gentlemen of the committee, as lawyers, whether you do
not think that, after we have been declared to be citizens, we
have the right to claim the protection of this enforcement act?
When you gentlemen from the North rise in your places in the
halls of congress and make these walls ring with your eloquence,
you are prone to talk a great deal about the right of every
United States citizen to the ballot, and the necessity of
protecting every such citizen in its exercise. What do you mean
by it?
It occurs to me here to call your attention to a matter of recent
occurrence. As you know, there has been a little unpleasantness
in Maine--a State which is not without a representative among the
members of the Judiciary Committee--and certain gentlemen there,
especially Mr. Blaine, have been greatly exercised in their minds
because, as they allege, the people of Maine have not been
permitted to express their will at the polls. Why, gentlemen, I
assert that a majority of the people of Maine have never been
permitted to express their will at the polls. A majority of the
people of Maine are women, and from the foundation of this
government have never exercised any of the inalienable rights of
citizens. Mr. Blaine made a speech a day or two ago in Augusta.
He began by reciting the condition of affairs, owing to the
effort, as he states, "to substitute a false count for an honest
ballot," and congratulated his audience upon the
instrumentalities by which they had triumphed--
Without firing a gun, without shedding a drop of blood,
without striking a single blow, without one disorderly
assemblage. _The people_ have regained their own right
through the might and majesty of their own laws.
He goes on in this vein to speak of those whom he calls "the
people of Maine." Well, gentlemen, I do not think you will deny
that _women are people_. It appears to me that what Mr. Blaine
said in that connection was nonsense, unless indeed he forgot
that there were any others than men among the people of the State
of Maine. I don't suppose that you, gentlemen, are often so
forgetful. Mr. Blaine said further:
The Republicans of Maine and throughout the land felt that
they were not merely fighting the battle of a single year,
but for all the future of the State; not merely fighting the
battle of our own State alone, but for all the States that
are attempting the great problem of State government
throughout the world. The corruption or destruction of the
ballot is a crime against free government, and when
successful is a subversion of free government.
Does that mean the ballot _for men only_ or the ballot _for the
people_, men and women too? If it is to be received as meaning
anything, it ought to mean not for one sex alone, but for both.
Mr. Lincoln declared, in one of his noblest utterances, that no
man was good enough to govern another man without that man's
consent. Of course he meant it in its broadest terms; he meant
that no man or woman was good enough to govern another man or
woman without that other man's or woman's consent.
Mr. Blaine, on another occasion, in connection with the same
subject-matter, had much to say of the enormity of the oppression
practiced by his political opponents in depriving the town of
Portland of the right of representation in view of its paying
such heavy taxes as it does pay. He expressed the greatest
indignation at the attempt, forgetting utterly that great body of
women who pay taxes but are deprived of the right of
representation. In this connection it may be pertinent for me to
express the hope, by way of a suggestion, that hereafter, when
making your speeches, you will not use the term "citizens" in a
broad sense, unless you mean to include women as well as men, and
that when you do not mean to include women you will speak of male
citizens as a separate class, because the term, in its general
application, is illogical and its meaning obscure if not
self-contradictory.
President Hayes was so pleased with one of the sentences in his
message of a year ago that in his message of this year he has
reiterated it. It reads thus:
That no temporary or administrative interests of government
will ever displace the zeal of our people in defense of the
primary rights of citizenship, and that the power of public
opinion will override all political prejudices and all
sectional and State attachments in demanding that all over
our wide territory the name and character of citizen of the
United States shall mean one and the same thing and carry
with them unchallenged security and respect.
Let me suggest what he ought to have said unless he intended to
include women, although I am afraid that Mr. Hayes, when he wrote
this, forgot that there were women in the United States,
notwithstanding that his excellent wife, perhaps, stood by his
side. He ought to have said:
An act having been passed to enforce the rights of _male_
citizens to vote, the true vigor of _half_ the population is
thus expressed, and no interests of government will ever
displace the zeal of _half_ of our people in defense of the
primary rights of our _male_ citizens. _The prosperity of
the States depends upon the protection afforded to our male
citizens_; and the name and character of _male_ citizens of
the United States shall mean one and the same thing and
carry with them unchallenged security and respect.
If Mr. Hayes had thus expressed himself, he would have made a
perfectly logical and clear statement. Gentlemen, I hope that
hereafter, when speaking or voting in behalf of the citizens of
the United States, you will bear this in mind and will remember
that women are citizens as well as men, and that they claim the
same rights.
This question of woman suffrage cannot much longer be ignored. In
the State from which I come, although we have not a right to
vote, we are confident that the influence which women brought to
bear in determining the result of the election last fall had
something to do with sending into retirement a Democratic
governor who was opposed to our reform, and electing a
Republican who was in favor of it. Recollect, gentlemen, that the
expenditure of time and money which has been made in this cause
will not be without its effect. The time is coming when the
demand of an immense number of the women of this country cannot
be ignored. When you see these representatives coming from all
the States of the Union to ask for this right, can you doubt
that, some day, they will succeed in their mission? We do not
stand before you to plead as beggars; we ask for that which is
our right. We ask it as due to the memory of our ancestors, who
fought for the freedom of this country just as bravely as did
yours. We ask it on many considerations. Why, gentlemen, the very
furniture here, the carpet on this floor, was paid for with our
money. We are taxed equally with the men to defray the expenses
of this congress, and we have a right equally with them to
participate in the government.
In closing, I have only to ask, is there no man here present who
appreciates the emergencies of this hour? Is there no one among
you who will rise on the floor of congress as the champion of
this unrepresented half of the people of the United States? The
time is not far distant when we shall have our liberties, and the
politician who can now understand the importance of our cause,
the statesman who can now see, and will now appreciate the
justice of it, that man, if true to himself, will write his name
high on the scroll of fame beside those of the men who have been
the saviors of the country. Gentlemen I entreat you not to let
this hearing go by without giving due weight to all that we have
said. You can no more stay the onward current of this reform than
you can fight against the stars in their courses.
Mr. WILLITS of Michigan: _Mr. Chairman_: I would like to make a
suggestion here. The regulation amendment, as it has heretofore
been submitted, provided that the right of citizens of the United
States to vote should not be abridged on account of sex. I notice
that the amendment which the ladies here now propose has prefixed
to it this phrase: "The right of suffrage in the United States
shall be based on citizenship." I call attention to this because
I would like to have them explain as fully as they may why they
incorporate the phrase, "shall be based on citizenship." Is the
meaning this, that all citizens shall have the right to vote, or
simply that citizenship shall be the basis of suffrage? The
words, "or for any reason not applicable to all citizens of the
United States," also seem to require explanation. The proposition
in the form in which it is now submitted, I understand, covers a
little more than has been covered by the amendment submitted in
previous years.
SARA A. SPENCER of Washington, D. C.: If the committee will
permit me, I will say that the amendment in its present form is
the concentrated wish of the women of the United States. The
women of the country sent to congress petitions asking for three
different forms of constitutional amendment, and when preparing
the one now before the committee these three were concentrated in
the one now before you (identical with that of the resolution
offered in the House by Hon. George B. Loring and by Hon. T. W.
Ferry in the Senate), omitting, at the request of each of the
three classes of petitioners, all phrases which were regarded by
any of them as objectionable. The amendment as now presented is
therefore the combined wish of the women of the country, viz.,
that citizenship in the United States shall mean suffrage, and
that no one shall be deprived of the right to vote for reasons
not equally applicable to all citizens.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE said: It is necessary to refer to a
remarkable decision of the Supreme Court. The case of Virginia L.
Minor, claiming the right to vote under the fourteenth amendment,
was argued before the Supreme Court of the United States, October
term, 1874; decision rendered adversely by Chief-Justice Waite,
March, 1875, upon the ground that "the United States had no
voters in the States of its own creation." This was a most
amazing decision to emanate from the highest judicial authority
of the nation, and is but another proof how fully that body is
under the influence of the dominant political party.
Contrary to this decision, I unhesitatingly affirm that the
United States has possessed voters in States of its own creation
from the very date of the constitution. In Article I, Sec. 2, the
constitution provides that
The House of Representatives shall be composed of members
chosen every second year by the people of the several
States, and the electors in each State shall have the
qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous
branch of the State legislature.
The persons so designated are voters under State laws; but by
this section of the national constitution they are made United
States voters. It is directed under what conditions of State
qualification they may cast votes in their respective States for
members of the lower house of congress. The constitution here
created a class of United States voters by adoption of an already
voting class. Did but this single instance exist, it would be
sufficient to nullify Chief-Justice Waite's decision, as Article
VI, Sec. 2, declares
The constitution and the laws of the United States which
shall be made in pursuance thereof * * * shall be the
supreme law of the land.
This supreme law at its very inception created a class of United
States voters. If in the Minor case alone, the premises of the
Supreme Court and Chief-Justice Waite were wrong, the decision
possesses no legal value; but in addition to this class, the
United States, by special laws and amendments has from time to
time created other classes of United States voters.
Under the naturalization laws citizenship is recognized as the
basis of suffrage. No State can admit a foreigner to the right of
the ballot, even under United States laws, unless he is already a
citizen, or has formally declared his intention of becoming a
citizen of the United States. The creation of the right here is
national; its regulation, local.
Men who commit crimes against the civil laws of the United States
forfeit their rights of citizenship. State law cannot
re-habilitate them, but within the last five years 2,500 such men
have been pardoned by congressional enactment, and thus again
been made voters in States by United States law. Is it not
strange that with a knowledge of these facts before him
Chief-Justice Waite could base his decision against the right of
a woman to the ballot, on the ground that the United States had
no voters in the States of its own creation?
Criminals against the military law of the United States, who
receive pardon, are still another class of voters thus created. A
very large body of men, several hundred thousand, forfeited their
rights of citizenship, their ballot, by participation in the
rebellion; they were political criminals. When general amnesty
was proclaimed they again secured the ballot. They had been
deprived of the suffrage by United States law and it was restored
to them by the same law.
It may be replied that the rebellious States had been reduced to
the condition of territories, over whose suffrage the general
government had control. But let me ask why, then, a large class
of men remained disfranchised after these States again took up
local government? A large class of men were especially exempted
from general amnesty and for the restoration of their political
rights were obliged to individually petition congress for the
removal of their political disabilities, and these men then
became "voters in States," by action of the United States. Here,
again, the United States recognized citizenship and suffrage as
synonymous. If the United States has no voters of its own
creation in the States, what are these men? A few, the leaders in
the rebellion, are yet disfranchised, and no State has power to
change this condition. Only the United States can again make them
voters in States.
Under the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments the colored men of
the South, who never had possessed the ballot, and those colored
men of the North over whom some special disqualification hung,
were alike made voters by United States law. It required no
action of Delaware, Indiana, New York, or any of those States in
which the colored man was not upon voting equality with the white
men, to change their constitutions or statutes in order to do
away with such disqualifications. The fourteenth amendment
created another class of United States voters in States, to the
number of a million or more. The fourteenth amendment, and the
act of congress to enforce it, were at once recognized to be
superior to State law--abrogating and repealing State
constitutions and State laws contradictory to its provisions.
By an act of congress March 3, and a presidential proclamation of
March 11, 1865, all deserters who failed to report themselves to
a provost marshall within sixty days, forfeited their rights of
citizenship as an additional penalty for the crime of desertion,
thus losing their ballot without possibility of its restoration
except by an act of congress. Whenever this may be done
collectively or individually, these men will become State voters
by and through the United States law.
As proving the sophistry used by legal minds in order to hide
from themselves and the world the fact that the United States has
power over the ballot in States, mention may be made of a case
which, in 1866, came before Justice Strong, then a member of the
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, but since a justice of the Supreme
Court of the United States. For sophistical reasoning it is a
curiosity in legal decisions. One point made by Judge Strong was,
that congress may deprive a citizen of the opportunity to enjoy
a right belonging to him as a citizen of a State even the right
of voting, but cannot deprive him of the right itself. This is on
a par with saying that congress may deprive a citizen of the
opportunity to enjoy a right belonging to him as an individual,
even the right of life, but cannot deprive him of life itself.
A still more remarkable class of United States voters than any
yet mentioned, exists. Soon after the close of the war congress
enacted a law that foreigners having served in the civil war and
been honorably discharged from the army, should be allowed to
vote. And this, too, without the announcement of their intention
of becoming citizens of the republic. A class of United States
voters were thus created out of a class of non-citizens.
I have mentioned eight classes of United States voters, and yet
not one of the States has been deprived of the powers necessary
to local self-government. To States belong all matters of
strictly local interest, such as the incorporation of towns and
cities, the settlement of county and other boundaries; laws of
marriage, divorce, protection of life and property, etc. It has
been said, the ordaining and establishment of a constitution for
the government of a State is always the act of a State in its
highest sovereign capacity, but if any question as to nationality
ever existed, it was settled by the war. Even State constitutions
were found unable to stand when in conflict with a law of the
United States or an amendment to its constitution. All are bound
by the authority of the nation.
This theory of State sovereignty must have a word. When the Union
was formed several of the States did not even frame a
constitution. It was in 1818 that Connecticut adopted her first
State constitution. Rhode Island had no constitution until 1842.
Prior to these years the government of these States was
administered under the authority of royal charters brought out
from England.
Where was their State sovereignty? The rights even of suffrage
enjoyed by citizens of these States during these respective
periods of forty-two and sixty-six years, were either secured
them by monarchial England or republican United States. If by the
latter all voters in these two States during these years were
United States voters. It is a historical fact that no State save
Texas was ever for an hour sovereign or independent. The
experience of the country proves there is but one real
sovereignty. It has been said, with truth,
There is but one sovereign State on the American continent
known to international or constitutional law, and that is
the republic itself. This forms the United States and should
be so called.
I ask for a sixteenth amendment because this republic is a nation
and not a confederacy of States. I ask it because the United
States not only possesses inherent power to protect its citizens
but also because of its national duty to secure to all its
citizens the exercise of their rights of self-government. I ask
it because having created classes of voters in numberless
instances, it is most flagrant injustice to deny this protection
to woman. I ask it because the Nation and not the State is
supreme.
PHOEBE W. COUZINS of Missouri, to whom had been assigned the
next thirty minutes, said: _Mr. Chairman, and Gentlemen of the
Judiciary Committee_: I am invited to speak of the dangers which
beset us at this hour in the decision of the Supreme Court of the
United States in Mrs. Minor's case, which not only stultifies its
previous interpretation of the recent constitutional amendments
and makes them a dead letter, but will rank, in the coming ages,
in the history of the judiciary, with the Dred Scott decision.
The law, as explained in the Dred Scott case, was an infamous
one, which trampled upon the most solemn rights of the loyal
citizens of the government, and declared the constitution to mean
anything or nothing, as the case might be. Yet the decision in
that case had a saving clause, for it was not the unanimous voice
of a Democratic judiciary. Dissenting opinions were nobly uttered
from the bench. In the more recent case, under the rule of a
Republican judiciary created by a party professing to be one of
justice, the rights of one-half of the people were deliberately
abrogated without a dissenting voice. This violation of the
fundamental principles of our government called forth no protest.
In all of the decisions against woman in the Republican court,
there has not been found one Lord Mansfield, who, rising to the
supreme height of an unbiased judgment, would give the immortal
decree that shall crown with regal dignity the mother of the
race: "I care not for the dictates of judges, however eminent, if
they be contrary to principle. If the parties will have judgment,
let justice be done, though the heavens fall."
The Dred Scott decision declared as the law of citizenship, "to
be a citizen is to have actual possession and enjoyment, or the
perfect right to the acquisition and enjoyment of an entire
equality of privileges, civil and political." But the slave-power
was then dominant and the court decided that a black man was not
a citizen because he had not the right to vote. But when the
constitution was so amended as to make "all persons born or
naturalized in the United States citizens thereof," a negro, by
virtue of his United States citizenship, was declared, under the
amendments, a voter in every State in the Union. And the Supreme
Court reaffirmed this right in the celebrated slaughter-house
cases (16 Wallace, 71). It said, "The negro, having by the
fourteenth amendment, been declared to be a citizen of the United
States, is thus made a voter in every State in the Union."
But when the loyal women of Missouri, apprehending that "all
persons beneath the flag were made citizens and voters by the
fourteenth amendment," through Mrs. Minor, applied to the Supreme
Court for protection in the exercise of that same right, this
high tribunal, reversing all its former decisions, proclaims
State sovereignty superior to national authority. This it does in
this strange language: "Being born in the United States, a woman
is a person and therefore a citizen"--we are much obliged to them
for that definition of our identity as persons--"but the
constitution of the United States does not confer the right of
suffrage upon any one." And then, in the face of its previous
decisions, the court declared: "The United States has no voters
in the States of its own creation", that the elective officers of
the United States are all elected, directly or indirectly by
State voters. It remands woman to the States for her protection,
thus giving to the State the supreme authority and overthrowing
the entire results of the war, which was fought to maintain
national supremacy over any and all subjects in which the rights
and privileges of the citizens of the United States are involved.
No supreme allegiance, gentlemen of the committee, can be claimed
for or by a government, if it has no citizens of its own
creation, and constitutional amendments cannot confer authority
over matters which have no existence in the constitution. Thus,
our supreme law-givers hold themselves up for obloquy and
ridicule in their interpretation of the most solemn rights of
loyal citizens, and make our constitutional law to mean anything
or nothing as the case may be. You will see, gentlemen, that the
very point which the South contended for as the true one is here
acknowledged to be the true one by the Supreme Court--that of
State rights superior to national authority. The whole of the
recent contest hinged upon this. The appeal to arms and the
constitutional amendments were to establish the subordination of
the State to national supremacy, to maintain the national
authority over any and all subjects in which the rights and
privileges of the citizens of the United States were involved;
but this decision in Mrs. Minor's case completely nullifies the
supreme authority of the government, and gives the States more
than has hitherto been claimed for them by the advocates of State
rights. The subject of the franchise is thus wholly withdrawn
from federal supervision and control. If "the United States has
no citizens of its own creation," of course no supreme allegiance
can be claimed over the various citizens of the States.
The constitutional amendments cannot confer authority over a
matter which has no existence in the constitution. If it has no
voters, it can have nothing whatever to do with the elections and
voting in the States; yet the United States invaded the State of
New York, sent its officers there to try, convict, and sentence
Miss Anthony for exercising a right in her own State which they
declared the United States had no jurisdiction over. They send
United States troops into the South to protect the negro in his
right to vote, and then declare they have no jurisdiction over
his voting. Then, mark the grave results which may and can follow
this decision and legislation. I do not imagine that the Supreme
Court, in its cowardly dodging of woman's right to all the rights
and privileges which citizenship involves, designed to completely
abrogate the principles established by the recent contest, or to
nullify the ensuing legislation on the subject. But it certainly
has done all this; for it must logically follow that if the
United States has no citizens, it cannot legislate upon the
rights of citizens, and the recent amendments are devoid of
authority. It has well been suggested by Mr. Minor, in his
criticism of the decision, that if members of the House of
Representatives are elected by _State_ voters, as the Supreme
Court has declared, there is no reason why States may not refuse
to elect them as in 1860, and thus deprive congress of its power.
And if a sufficient number could be united to recall at their
pleasure these representatives, what authority has the federal
government, under this decision, for coërcing them into
subjection or refusing them a separation, if all these voters in
the States desired an independent existence? None whatever. Mr.
Garfield, in the House, in his speech last March, calls attention
to this subject, but does not allude to the fact that the Supreme
Court has already opened the door. He says:
There are several ways in which our government may be
annihilated without the firing of a gun. For example,
suppose the people of the United States should say, we will
elect no representatives to congress. Of course this is a
violent supposition; but suppose that they do not. Is there
any remedy? Does our constitution provide any remedy
whatever? In two years there would be no House of
Representatives; of course, no support of the government and
no government. Suppose, again, the States should say,
through their legislatures, we will elect no senators. Such
abstention alone would absolutely destroy this government;
and our system provides no process of compulsion to prevent
it. Again, suppose the two houses were to assemble in their
usual order, and a majority of one in this body or in the
Senate should firmly band themselves together and say, we
will vote to adjourn the moment the hour of meeting arrives,
and continue so to vote at every session during our two
years of existence--the government would perish, and there
is no provision of the constitution to prevent it.
The States may inform their representatives that they can do
this; and, under this position, they have the power and the right
so to do.
Gentlemen, we are now on the verge of one of the most important
presidential campaigns. The party in power holds its reins by a
very uncertain tenure. If the decision shall favor the one which
has been on the anxious bench for lo! these twenty years, and in
probation until hope has well-nigh departed, what may be its
action if invested again with the control of the destinies of
this nation? The next party in power may inquire, and answer, by
what right and how far the Southern States are bound by the
legislation in which they had no part or consent. And if the
Supreme Court of a Republican judiciary now declares, _after_ the
war, _after_ the constitutional amendments, that federal suffrage
does not exist and never had an existence in the constitution, it
follows that the South has the right to regulate and control all
of the questions arising upon suffrage in the several States
without any interference on the part of an authority which
declares it has no jurisdiction. An able writer has said:
All injustice at last works out a loss. The great ledger of
nations does not report a good balance for injustice. It has
always met fearful losses. The irrepealable law of justice
will, sooner or later, grind a nation to powder if it fail
to establish that equilibrium of allegiance and protection
which is the essential end of all government. Woe to that
nation which thinks lightly of the duties it owes to its
citizens and imagines that governments are not bound by
moral laws.
It was the tax on tea--woman's drink prerogative--which
precipitated the rebellion of 1776. To allay the irritation of
the colonies, all taxes were rescinded save that on tea, which
was left to indicate King George's dominion. But our
revolutionary fathers and mothers said, "No; the tax is paltry,
but the principle is great"; and Eve, as usual, pointed the moral
for Adam's benefit. A most suggestive picture, one which aroused
the intensest patriotism of the colonies, was that of a woman
pinioned by her arms to the ground by a British peer, with a
British red-coat holding her with one hand and with the other
forcibly thrusting down her throat the contents of a tea-pot,
which she heroically spewed back in his face; while the figure of
Justice, in the distance, wept over this prostrate Liberty. Now,
gentlemen, we might well adopt a similar representation. Here is
Miss Smith of Glastonbury, Conn., whose cows have been sold every
year by the government, contending for the same principle as our
forefathers--that of resistance to taxation without
representation. We might have a picture of a cow, with an
American tax-collector at the horns, a foreign-born assessor at
the heels, forcibly selling the birthright of an American
citizen, while Julia and Abby Smith, in the background, with
veiled faces, weep over the degeneracy of Republican leadership.
But there are those in authority in the government who do not
believe in this decision by the Supreme Court of the United
States. The attorney-general, in his instructions to the United
States marshals and their deputies or assistants in the Southern
States, when speaking of the countenance and support of all good
citizens of the United States in the respective districts of the
marshals, remarks:
It is not necessary to say that it is upon such countenance
and support that the United States mainly rely in their
endeavor to enforce the right to vote which they have given
or have secured.
You notice the phraseology. Again, he says:
The laws of the United States are supreme, and so,
consequently, is the action of officials of the United
States in enforcing them.
Secretary Sherman said in his speech at Steubenville, July 6:
The negroes are free and are citizens and voters. That, at
least, is a part of the constitution and cannot be changed.
And President Hayes in his two last messages, as Mrs. Blake
recited to you, has declared that--
United States citizenship shall mean one and the same thing
and carry with it all over our wide territory unchallenged
security and respect.
And that is what we ask for women.
In conclusion, gentlemen, I say to you that a sense of justice is
the sovereign power of the human mind, the most unyielding of
any; it rewards with a higher sanction, it punishes with a deeper
agony than any earthly tribunal. It never slumbers, never dies.
It constantly utters and demands justice by the eternal rule of
right, truth and equity. And on these eternal foundation-stones
we stand.
Crowning the dome of this great building there stands the
majestic figure of a woman representing Liberty. It was no
idealistic thought or accident of vision which gave us Liberty
prefigured by a woman. It is the great soul of the universe
pointing the final revelation yet to come to humanity, the
prophecy of the ages--the last to be first.[59]
When the proposition to print these speeches came before the House
a prolonged debate against it showed the readiness of the
opposition to avail themselves of every legal technicality to
deprive women of equal rights and privileges. But the measure
finally passed and the documents were printed. To the Hon. Elbridge
G. Lapham of New York we were largely indebted for the success of
this measure.
The Washington _Republican_ of February 6, 1880, describes a novel
event that took place at that time:
In the Supreme Court of the United States, on Monday, on motion
of Mrs. Belva Lockwood, Samuel R. Lowry of Alabama was admitted
to practice. Mr. Lowry is president of the Huntsville, Ala.,
industrial school, and a gentleman of high attainments. It was
quite fitting that the first woman admitted to practice before
this court should move the admission of the first Southern
colored man. Both will doubtless make good records as
representatives of their respective classes. This scene was
characterized by George W. Julian as one of the most impressive
he ever witnessed--a fitting subject for an historical painting.
In 1880, women were for the first time appointed census
enumerators. Gen. Francis Walker, head of that department, said
there was no legal obstacle to the appointment of women as
enumerators, and he would gladly confirm the nomination of suitable
candidates. Very different was the action of the head of the
post-office department, who refused, on the ground of sex, the
application of 500 women for appointment as letter-carriers.
In view of the important work to be done in a presidential
campaign, the National Association decided to issue an appeal to
the women of the country to appoint delegates from each State and
territory, and prepare an address to each of the presidential
nominating conventions. In Washington a move was made for an act of
incorporation in order that the Association might legally receive
bequests. Tracts containing a general statement of the status of
the movement were mailed to all members of congress and officers of
the government.
At a meeting of the Committee on Rules, Mr. Randall, a Democratic
member of Pennsylvania, and Mr. Garfield, a Republican member of
Ohio, reminded Mr. Frye of Maine that he had been instructed by
that committee, nearly a year before, to present to the House a
resolution on the rights of women. The _Congressional Record_ of
March 27 contains the following:
Mr. FRYE: I am instructed by the Committee on Rules to report a
resolution providing for the appointment of a special committee
on the political rights of women, and to move that it be placed
on the House calendar.
Mr. CONGER: Let it be read.
The clerk read the resolution as follows:
_Resolved by the House of Representatives_, That the speaker
appoint a special committee of nine members, to whom shall
be referred all memorials, petitions, bills and resolutions
relating to the rights of the women of the United States,
with power to hear the same and report thereon by bill or
otherwise. The resolution was referred to the House
calendar.
This was a proof of the advancing status of our question that both
Republican and Democratic leaders regarded the "rights of women"
worthy the consideration of a special committee.
In the spring of 1880, the National Association held a series of
mass meetings in the States of Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and
Michigan, commencing with the May anniversary in Indianapolis, at
which sixteen States were represented.[60] The convention was held
in Park Theatre, Miss Anthony presiding. The arrangements devolved
chiefly on Mrs. May Wright Thompson, who discharged her
responsibilities in a most praiseworthy manner, providing
entertainment for the speakers, and paying all the expenses from
the treasury of the local association. A series of resolutions was
presented, discussed by a large number of the delegates, and
adopted.
In accordance with the plan decided upon in Washington of attending
all the nominating conventions, the next meeting was held in
Chicago, beginning on the same day with the Republican convention.
Farwell Hall was filled at an early hour; Miss Anthony in the
chair. A large number of delegates[61] were present from every
part of the Union, among whom were many of the most distinguished
advocates of woman suffrage. Mrs. Harbert gave an eloquent address
of welcome.
Committees were appointed to visit the delegates from the different
States to the Republican convention, to secure seats for the
members of the National Association, and to ask that a plank
recommending a sixteenth amendment be incorporated in the platform
adopted by the Republican party. The proprietor of the Palmer House
gave the use of a large parlor to the Association for business
meetings and the reception of Republican delegates, many of whom
were in favor of a woman's plank in their platform, and of giving
the ladies seats in the convention. Strenuous efforts had been made
to this end. One hundred and eighteen senators and representatives
addressed a letter to the chairman of the National Republican
committee--Don Cameron--asking that seventy-six seats should be
given in the convention to the representatives of the National
Woman Suffrage Association. It would naturally be deemed that a
request, proceeding from such a source, would be heeded. The men
who made it were holding the highest positions in the body politic;
but the party managers presumed to disregard this request, and also
the vote of the committee. The question of furnishing seats for our
delegates was brought up before the close of their deliberations by
Mr. Finnell, of Kentucky, who said:
A committee of women have been here and they ask for seventy-six
seats in this convention. I move that they be furnished.
Mr. Cary of Wyoming, made some remarks showing that woman suffrage
in his territory had been to the advantage of the Republican party,
and seconded the motion of Mr. Finnell, which was adopted. The
following resolution of the Arkansas delegation to the National
Republican convention was read and received with enthusiasm:
_Resolved_, That we pledge ourselves to secure to women the
exercise of their right to vote.
It is here to be noted that not only were the Arkansas delegation
of Republicans favorable to the recognition of woman suffrage in
the platform of that party, but that the Southern delegates were
largely united in that demand. Mr. New told the ladies that the
Grant men had voted as a unit in favor of the women, while the
Blaine and Sherman men unanimously voted against them.
But the ladies, well knowing the uncertainty of politicians, were
soon upon the way to the committee-room, to secure positive
assurance from the lips of the chairman himself--Don Cameron of
Pennsylvania--that such tickets should be forthcoming, when they
were stopped by a messenger hurrying after them to announce the
presence of the secretary of the committee, Hon. John New, at their
headquarters, in the grand parlor of the Palmer House, with a
communication in regard to the tickets. He said the seventy-six
seats voted by the committee had been reduced to _ten_ by its
chairman, and these ten were not offered to the Association in its
official capacity, but as complimentary or "guest tickets," for a
seat on the platform back of the presiding officers.
The Committee on Resolutions, popularly known as the platform
committee, held a meeting in the Palmer House, June 2, to which
Belva A. Lockwood obtained admission. On motion of Mr. Fredley of
Indiana, Mrs. Lockwood was given permission to present the memorial
of the National Woman Suffrage Association to the Republican party.
_To the Republican Party in Convention assembled, Chicago, June
2, 1880_:
Seventy-six delegates from local, State and National suffrage
associations, representing every section of the United States,
are here to-day to ask you to place the following plank in your
platform:
_Resolved_, That we pledge ourselves to secure to women the
exercise of their right to vote.
We ask you to pledge yourselves to protect the rights of one-half
of the American people, and to thus carry your own principles to
their logical results. The thirteenth amendment of 1865,
abolishing slavery, the fourteenth of 1867, defining citizenship,
and the fifteenth of 1870, securing United States citizens in
their right to vote, and your prolonged and powerful debates on
all the great issues involved in our civil conflict, stand as
enduring monuments to the honor of the Republican party. Impelled
by the ever growing demand among women for a voice in the laws
they are required to obey, for their rightful share in the
government of this republic, various State legislatures have
conceded partial suffrage. But the great duty remains of securing
to woman her right to have her opinions on all questions counted
at the ballot-box.
You cannot live on the noble words and deeds of those who
inaugurated the Republican party. You should vie with those men
in great achievements. Progress is the law of national life. You
must have a new, vital issue to rouse once more the enthusiasm of
the people. Our question of human rights answers this demand. The
two great political parties are alike divided upon finance,
free-trade, labor reform and general questions of political
economy. The essential point in which you differ from the
Democratic party is national supremacy, and it is on this very
issue we make our demand, and ask that our rights as United
States citizens be secured by an amendment to the national
constitution. To carry this measure is not only your privilege
but your duty. Your pledge to enfranchise ten millions of women
will rouse an enthusiasm which must count in the coming closely
contested election. But above expediency is right, and to do
justice is ever the highest political wisdom.
The committee then adjourned to meet at the Sherman-house club
room, where they reässembled at 8 o'clock. Soon after the calling
to order of our own convention in Farwell Hall, word came that a
hearing had been accorded before the platform committee. This
proved to be a sub-committee. Ten minutes were given Miss Anthony
to plead the cause of 10,000,000--yes, 20,000,000 citizens of this
republic(?), while, watch in hand, Mr. Pierrepont sat to strike the
gavel when this time expired. Ten minutes!! Twice has the great
Republican party, in the plentitude of its power, allowed woman
_ten_ minutes to plead her cause before it. Ten minutes twice in
the past eight years, while all the remainder of the time it has
been fighting for power and place and continued life, heedless of
the wrongs and injustice it was constantly perpetrating towards
one-half the people. Ten minutes! What a period in the history of
time. Small hope remained of a committee, with such a chairman,
introducing a plank for woman suffrage.
The whole Arkansas delegation had expressed itself in favor; most
of the Kentucky delegation were known to be so, while New York not
only had friends to woman suffrage among its number, but even an
officer of the State association was a delegate to the Republican
convention. These men were called upon, a form of plank placed in
their hands and they were asked to offer it as an amendment when
the committee reported, but that plan was blocked by a motion that
all resolutions should be referred to the committee for action.
Senator Farr of Michigan, a colored man, was the only member of the
platform committee who suggested the insertion of a woman suffrage
plank, the Michigan delegation to a man, favoring such action. The
delegates were ready in case opportunity offered, to present the
address to the convention. But no such moment arrived.
The mass convention had been called for June 2, but the crowds in
the city gave promise of such extended interest that Farwell Hall
was engaged for June 1, and before the second day's proceedings
closed, funds were voluntarily raised by the audience to continue
the meeting the third day. So vast was the number of letters and
postals addressed to the convention from all parts of the country
from women who desired to vote, that the whole time of each session
could have been spent in reading them--one day's mail alone
bringing letters and postals from twenty-three States and three
territories. Some of these letters contained hundreds of names,
others represented town, county, and State societies. Many were
addressed to the different nominating conventions, Republican,
Greenback, Democratic, while the reasons given for desiring to
vote, ranged from the simple demand, through all the scale of
reasons connected with good government and morality. So highly
important a contribution to history did the Chicago Historical
Society[62] deem these expressions of woman's desire to vote, that
it made a formal request to be put in possession of _all_ letters
and postals, with a promise that they should be carefully guarded
in a fire-proof safe.
After the eloquent speeches[63] of the closing session, Miss Alice
S. Mitchell sang Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic,"
Mrs. Harbert playing the accompaniment, and the immense audience of
3,000 people joining in the chorus. This convention held three
sessions each day, and at all except the last an admission fee was
charged, and yet the hall was densely crowded throughout. For
enthusiasm, nothing ever surpassed these meetings in the history of
the suffrage movement. A platform and resolution were adopted as
the voice of the convention.
The special object of the National Woman Suffrage Association is
to secure national protection for women in the exercise of their
right of suffrage. It recognizes the fact that our government was
formed on the political basis of the consent of the governed, and
that the Declaration of Independence struck a blow at every
existing form by declaring the individual to be the source of all
power. The members of this association, outside of our great
question, have diverse political affiliations, but for the
purpose of gaining this great right to the ballot, its members
hold their party predilections in abeyance; therefore,
_Resolved_, That in this year of presidential nominations and
political campaigns, we announce our determination to support no
party by whatever name called, unless such party shall, in its
platform, first emphatically endorse our demand for a recognition
of the exact and permanent political equality of all citizens.
A delegation[64] went to the Greenback convention and presented the
following memorial:
When a new political party is formed it should be based upon the
principles of justice to all classes hitherto unrecognized. The
finance question, as broad as it is, does not reach down to the
deepest wrong in the nation. Beneath this question lies that of
the denial of the right of self-government to one-half the
people. It is impossible to secure the property rights of the
people without first recognizing their personal rights. More than
any class of men, woman represents the great unpaid laborer of
the world--a slave, who, as wife and daughter, absolutely works
for her board and clothes. The question of finance deeply
interests woman, but her opinions upon it are valueless while
deprived of the right of enforcing them at the ballot box. You
are here in convention assembled, not alone to nominate a
candidate for president, but also to promulgate your platform of
principles to the world. Now is your golden opportunity. The
Republican party presents no vital issue to the country; its
platform is a repetition of the platitudes of the past twenty
years. It has ceased to be a party of principles. It lives on the
past. The deeds of dead men hold it together. Its disregard of
principles has thrown opportunity into your hands. Will you make
yourselves the party of the future? Will you recognize woman's
right of self-government? Will you make woman suffrage an
underlying principle in your platform? If you will make these
pledges, the National Association will work for the triumph of
your party in the approaching closely contested campaign.
The ladies were accorded hearings by several delegations previous
to the assembling of the convention. A resolution committee of one
from each State was appointed, and each member allowed two minutes
to present either by speech or writing such principles as it
requested incorporated in the platform. Lucinda B. Chandler, being
a Greenbacker on principle, was a regularly elected delegate and by
courtesy was added to a sub-committee on resolutions. The one
prepared by the National Association was placed in her hands, but,
as she was forbidden to speak upon it, her support could only be
given by vote, and a meaningless substitute took its place. The
courtesy of placing Mrs. Chandler upon the committee was like much
of man's boasted chivalry to woman, a seeming favor at the expense
of right.
After trying in vain for recognition as a political factor from the
Republican and Greenback nominating conventions the delegates went
to Cincinnati.[65]
Committees were at once appointed to visit the different
delegations. Women were better treated by the Democrats at
Cincinnati than by the Republicans at Chicago. A committee-room in
Music Hall was at once placed at their disposal, placards pointing
to their headquarters were printed by the local committee at its
own expense, and sixteen seats given to the ladies upon the floor
of the house, just back of the regular delegates. A hearing[66]
before the platform committee was granted with no limit as to time.
At the close a delegate approached the table, saying, "I favor
giving woman a plank," "So do I," replied Mr. Watterson, chairman
of the committee. Many delegates in conversation, favored the
recognition of woman's political rights, and a large number of the
platform committee favored the introduction of the following plank:
That the Democratic party, recognizing the rapid growth of the
woman suffrage question, suggests a consideration of this
important subject by the people in anticipation of the time, near
at hand, when it must become a political issue.
But although the platform committee sat until 2 A.M., no such
result was reached, in consequence, it was said, of the objection
of the extreme Southern element which feared the political
recognition of negro women of the South.
The delegations from Maine, Kansas and New York were favorable, and
offered the Association the use of their committee-rooms at the
Burnett House and the Grand Hotel whenever desired. Mayor Prince of
Boston not only offered a committee-room but secured seats for the
delegates on the floor of the house. Mr. Henry Watterson, of the
Louisville _Courier-Journal_, as chairman of the Platform
Committee, extended every courtesy within his power. Mayor Harrison
of Chicago did his best to secure to the delegates a hearing before
the convention. He offered to escort Miss Anthony to the platform
that she might at least present the address. "You may be
prevented," suggested one. "I'd like to see them do it," he
replied. "Have I not just brought about a reconciliation between
Tammany and the rest of New York?" Taking Miss Anthony upon his arm
and telling her not to flinch, he made his way to the platform,
when the chairman, Hon. Wade Hampton of South Carolina, politely
offered her a seat, and ordered the clerk to read the address:
_To the Democratic Party in Nominating Convention Assembled,
Cincinnati, June 22, 1880:_
On behalf of the women of the country we appear before you,
asking the recognition of woman's political rights as one-half
the people. We ask no special privileges, no special legislation.
We simply ask that you live up to the principles enunciated by
the Democratic party from the time of Jefferson. By what
principle of democracy do men assume to legislate for women?
Women are part of the people; your very name signifies government
by the people. When you deny political rights to women you are
false to your own principles.
The Declaration of Independence recognized human rights as its
basis. Constitutions should also be general in character. But in
opposition to this principle the party in power for the last
twenty years has perverted the Constitution of the United States
by the introduction of the word "male" three times, thereby
limiting the application of its guarantees to a special class. It
should be your pride and your duty to restore the constitution to
its original basis by the adoption of a sixteenth amendment,
securing to women the right of suffrage; and thus establish the
equality of all United States citizens before the law.
Not for the first time do we make of you these demands. At your
nominating convention in New York, in 1868, Susan B. Anthony
appeared before you, asking recognition of woman's inherent
natural rights. At your convention of 1872, in Baltimore,
Isabella Beecher Hooker and Susan B. Anthony made a similar
appeal. In 1876, at St. Louis, Phoebe W. Couzins and Virginia L.
Minor presented our claims. Now, in 1880, our delegates are
present here from the Middle States, from the West and from the
South. The women of the South are rapidly uniting in their demand
for political recognition, as they have been the most deeply
humiliated by a recognition of the political rights of their
former slaves.
To secure to 20,000,000 of women the rights of citizenship is to
base your party on the eternal principles of justice; it is to
make yourselves the party of the future; it is to do away with a
more extended slavery than that of 4,000,000 of blacks; it is to
secure political freedom to half the nation; it is to establish
on this continent the democratic theory of the equal rights of
the people.
In furtherance of this demand we ask you to adopt the following
resolution:
WHEREAS, Believing in the self-evident truth that all
persons are created with certain inalienable rights, and
that for the protection of these rights governments are
instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of
the governed; therefore,
_Resolved_, That the Democratic party pledges itself to use
all its powers to secure to the women of the nation
protection in the exercise of their right of suffrage.
On behalf of the National Woman Suffrage Association.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Chairman Executive Committee_.
That the women however, in the campaign of 1880, received the best
treatment at the hands of the National Prohibition party is shown
by the following invitation received at the Bloomington convention:
_To the National Woman Suffrage Association of the United
States:_
The woman suffragists are respectfully invited to meet with and
participate in the proceedings of the National Prohibition
Convention to be held at Cleveland, Ohio, June, 1880.
JAMES BLACK, _Chairman of National Committee._
Per J. W. HAGGARD.
A letter was received from Mr. Black urging the acceptance of the
invitation. Accordingly Miss Phoebe Couzins was sent as a delegate
from the association. The Prohibition party in its eleventh plank
said:
We also demand that women having privileges as citizens in other
respects, shall be clothed with the ballot for their own
protection, and as a rightful means for a proper settlement of
the liquor question.
After attending all these nominating conventions, some of the
delegates[67] went to Wisconsin where the State and National
Associations held a joint convention, in the Opera House at
Milwaukee, June 4, 5. Madam Anneke gave the address of welcome.[68]
Fresh from the exciting scenes of the presidential conventions, the
speakers were unusually earnest and aggressive. The resolutions
discussed at the Indianapolis convention were considered and
adopted. Carl Doerflinger read a greeting in behalf of the German
Radicals of the city. Letters were read from prominent persons,
expressing their interest in the movement.[69] Dr. Laura Ross
Wolcott made all the arrangements and contributed largely to the
expenses of the convention. The roll of delegates shows that the
State, at least, was well represented.[70]
Thus through the terrible heat of June this band of earnest women
held successive conventions in Bloomington, Ill., Grand Rapids,
Mich., Lafayette and Terre Haute, Ind. They were most hospitably
entertained, and immense audiences greeted them at every point.
Mrs. Cordelia Briggs took the entire responsibility of the social
and financial interests of the convention at Grand Rapids, which
continued for three days with increasing enthusiasm to the close.
Mrs. Helen M. Gougar made the arrangements for Lafayette which were
in every way successful.
After the holding of these conventions, delegations from the
National Association called on the nominees of the two great
parties to ascertain their opinions and proposed action, if any, on
the question of woman suffrage. Mrs. Blake, and other ladies
representing the New York city society, called on General Hancock
at his residence and were most courteously received. In the course
of a long conversation in which it was evident that he had given
some thought to the question, he said he would not veto a District
of Columbia Woman Suffrage bill, provided such a bill should pass
congress, thereby putting himself upon better record than Horace
Greely the year of his candidacy, who not only expressed himself as
opposed to woman suffrage, but also declared that, if elected, he
would veto such a bill provided it passed congress.
Miss Anthony visited James A. Garfield at his home in Mentor, Ohio.
He was very cordial, and listened with respect to her presentation
of the question. Although from time to time in congress he had
uniformly voted with our friends, yet he expressed serious doubts
as to the wisdom of pressing this measure during the pending
presidential campaign.
As it was deemed desirable to get some expression on paper from the
candidates the following letter, written on official paper, was
addressed to the Republican and Democratic nominees:
ROCHESTER, N. Y., August 17, 1880.
Hon. JAMES A. GARFIELD: _Dear Sir_: As vice-president-at-large of
the National Woman Suffrage Association, I am instructed to ask
you, if, in the event of your election, you, as President of the
United States, would recommend to congress, in your message to
that body, the submission to the several legislatures of a
sixteenth amendment to the national constitution, prohibiting the
disfranchisement of United States citizens on account of sex.
What we wish to ascertain is whether you, as president, would use
your _official influence_ to secure to the women of the several
States a _national guarantee_ of their right to a voice in the
government on the same terms with men. Neither platform makes any
pledge to secure political equality to women--hence we are
waiting and hoping that one candidate or the other, or both, will
declare favorably, and thereby make it possible for women, with
self-respect, to work for the success of one or the other or both
nominees. Hoping for a prompt and explicit statement, I am, sir,
very respectfully yours,
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
To this General Hancock vouchsafed no reply, while General Garfield
responded as follows:
MENTOR, O., August 25, 1880.
Dear MISS ANTHONY: Your letter of the 17th inst. came duly to
hand. I take the liberty of asking your personal advice before I
answer your official letter. I assume that all the traditions and
impulses of your life lead you to believe that the Republican
party has been and is more nearly in the line of liberty than its
antagonist the Democratic party; and I know you desire to advance
the cause of woman. Now, in view of the fact that the Republican
convention has not discussed your question, do you not think it
would be a violation of the trust they have reposed in me, to
speak, "as their nominee"--and add to the present contest an
issue that they have not authorized? Again, if I answer your
question on the ground of my own private opinion, I shall be
compelled to say, that while I am open to the freest discussion
and fairest consideration of your question, I have not yet
reached the conclusion that it would be best for woman and for
the country that she should have the suffrage. I may reach it;
but whatever time may do to me, that fruit is not yet ripe on my
tree. I ask you, therefore, for the sake of your own question, do
you think it wise to pick my apples now? Please answer me in the
frankness of personal friendship. With kind regards, I am very
truly yours,
JAMES A. GARFIELD.
Miss SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Rochester, N. Y.
ROCHESTER, N. Y., September 9, 1880.
Hon. JAMES A. GARFIELD: _Dear Sir_: Yours of the 25th ult. has
waited all these days that I might consider and carefully reply.
_First_. The Republican party did run well for a season in the
"line of liberty"; but since 1870, its congressional enactments,
majority reports, Supreme Court decisions, and now its
presidential platform, show a retrograde movement--not only for
women, but for colored men--limiting the power of the national
government in the protection of United States citizens against
the injustice of the States, until what we gained by the sword is
lost by political surrenders. And we need nothing but a
Democratic administration to demonstrate to all Israel and the
sun the fact, the sad fact, that all _is lost_ by the
_Republican_ party, and not _to be lost_ by the _Democratic_
party. I mean, of course, the one vital point of national
supremacy in the protection of United States citizens in the
enjoyment of their right to vote, and the punishment of States or
individuals thereof, for depriving citizens of the exercise of
that right. The first and fatal mistake was in ceding to the
States the right to "abridge or deny" the suffrage to
foreign-born men in Rhode Island, and all women throughout the
nation, in direct violation of the principle of national
supremacy. And from that time, inch by inch, point by point has
been surrendered, until it is only in _name_ that the Republican
party is the party of national supremacy. Grant did not protect
the negro's ballot in 1876--Hayes cannot in 1880--nor could
Garfield in 1884--for the "sceptre has departed from Judah."
_Second_. For the candidate of a party to _add_ to the
discussions of the contest an issue unauthorized or unnoted in
its platform, when that issue was one vital to its very life,
would, it seems to me, be the grandest act imaginable. And, for
doing that very thing, with regard to the protection of the
negroes of the South, you are to-day receiving more praise from
the best men of the party, than for any and all of your
utterances _inside_ the line of the platform. And I _know_, if
you had in your letter of acceptance, or in your New York speech,
declared yourself in favor of "perfect equality of rights for
women, civil and political," you would have touched an electric
spark that would have fired the heart of the women of the entire
nation, and made the triumph of the Republican party more grand
and glorious than any it has ever seen.
_Third_. As to picking fruit before it is ripe! Allow me to
remind you that very much fruit is _never_ picked; some gets
nipped in the blossom; some gets worm-eaten and falls to the
ground; some rots on the trees before it ripens; some, too slow
in ripening, gets bitten by the early frosts of autumn; while
some rich, rare, ripe apples hang unpicked, frozen and worthless
on the leafless trees of winter! Really, Mr. Garfield, if, after
passing through the war of the rebellion and sixteen years in
congress;--if, after seeing, and hearing, and repeating, that _no
class_ ever got justice and equality of chances from any
government except it had the power--the ballot--to clutch them
for itself;--if, after all your opportunities for growth and
development, you cannot yet see the truth of the great principle
of individual self-government;--if you have only reached the idea
of class-government, and that, too, of the most hateful and cruel
form--bounded by sex--there must be some radical defect in the
ethics of the party of which you are the chosen leader.
No matter which party administers the government, women will
continue to get only subordinate positions and half-pay, not
because of the party's or the president's lack of chivalric
regard for woman, but because, in the nature of things, it is
impossible for any government to protect a disfranchised class in
equality of chances. Women, to get justice, must have political
freedom. But pardon this long trespass upon your time and
patience, and please bear in mind that it is not for the many
_good_ things the Republican party and its nominee have done in
extending the area of liberty, that I criticise them, but because
they have failed to place the women of the nation on the plane of
political equality with men. I do not ask you to go beyond your
convictions, but I do most earnestly beg you to look at this
question from the stand-point of woman--alone, without father,
brother, husband, son--battling for bread! It is to help the
millions of these unfortunate ones that I plead for the ballot in
the hands of all women. With great respect for your frank and
candid talk with one of the disfranchised, I am very sincerely
yours,
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
As Mr. Garfield was the only presidential nominee of either of the
great parties who deigned a reply to the National Association, we
have given his letter an honored place in our history, and desire
to pay this tribute to his memory, that while not fully endorsing
our claims for political equality he earnestly advocated for woman
all possible advantages of education, equal rights in the trades
and professions, and equal laws for the protection of her civil
rights.
The Thirteenth Annual Washington Convention assembled in Lincoln
Hall, January 18, 1881. The first session was devoted to memorial
services in honor of Lucretia Mott. A programme[71] for the
occasion was extensively circulated, and the response in character
and numbers was such an audience as had seldom before crowded that
hall. The spacious auditorium was brilliant with sunlight and the
gay dresses, red shawls and flowers of the ladies of the
fashionable classes. Mrs. Hayes with several of her guests from the
White House occupied front seats. The stage was crowded with
members of the association, Mrs. Mott's personal friends and wives
of members of congress. The decorations which had seldom been
surpassed in point of beauty and tastefulness of arrangement,
formed a fitting setting for this notable assemblage of women. The
background was a mass of colors, formed by the graceful draping of
national flags, here and there a streamer of old gold with heavy
fringe to give variety, while in the center was a national shield
surmounted by two flags. On each side flags draped and festooned,
falling at the front of the stage with the folds of the rich maroon
curtains. Graceful ferns and foliage plants had been arranged,
while on a table stood a large harp formed of beautiful red and
white flowers.[72] At the other end was a stand of hot-house
flowers, while in the center, resting on a background of maroon
drapery, was a large crayon picture of Lucretia Mott. Above the
picture a snow-white dove held in its beak sprays of smilax,
trailing down on either side, and below was a sheaf of ripened
wheat, typical of the life that had ended. The occasion which had
brought the ladies together, the placid features of that kind and
well-remembered face, had a solemnizing effect upon all, and
quietly the vast audience passed into the hall. The late-comers
finding all the seats occupied stood in the rear and sat in the
aisles.
Presently Miss Couzins, stepping to the front of the stage said
gently, "In accordance with the custom of Mrs. Mott and the
time-honored practice of the Quakers, I ask you to unite in an
invocation to the Spirit." She bowed her head. The audience
followed her example. For several minutes the solemn stillness of
devotion pervaded the hall. When Miss Couzins had taken her seat
the quartette choir of St. Augustine's church (colored) which was
seated on the platform, sang sweetly an appropriate selection,
after which Mrs. Stanton delivered the eulogy,[73] holding the
rapt attention of her audience over an hour. At the close Frederick
Douglass said:
He had listened with interest to the fine analysis of the life
and services of Lucretia Mott. He was almost unwilling to have
his voice heard after what had been said. He was there to show by
his presence his profound respect and earnest love for Lucretia
Mott. He recognized none whose services in behalf of his race
were equal to hers. Her silence even in that cause was more than
the speech of others. He had no words for this occasion.
Robert Purvis at the request of a number of colored citizens of
Washington, presented a beautiful floral harp to Mr. Davis, the
son-in-law of Lucretia Mott, the only representative of her family
present. He paid a tender tribute to the noble woman whose
life-long friendship he had enjoyed. Mr. Davis having a seat on the
platform, received the gift with evident emotion, and returning
thanks, he said:
He would follow the example of Mrs. Mott who seldom kept a gift
long, and present these rare flowers to Mrs. Spofford, the
treasurer of the Association.
Miss ANTHONY said: The highest tribute she could pay, was, that
during the past thirty years she had always felt sure she was
right when she had the approval of Lucretia Mott. Next to that of
her own conscience she most valued the approval of her sainted
friend. And it was now a great satisfaction that in all the
differences of opinion as to principles and methods in our
movement, Mrs. Mott had stood firmly with the National
Association, of which she was to the day of her death the honored
and revered vice-president.
Mrs. Sewall, after speaking of the many admirable qualities of Mrs.
Mott, said:
In looking around this magnificent audience I cannot help asking
myself the question, Where are the young girls? They should be
here. It is the birthright of every girl to know the life and
deeds of every noble woman. I think Lucretia Mott was as much
above the average woman as Abraham Lincoln above the average man.
Miss Couzins closed with a few graceful words. She expressed her
pleasure in meeting so magnificent an audience, and thought the
whole occasion was a beautiful tribute to one of America's best and
noblest women. She hoped the mothers present would carry away the
impressions they had received and teach their daughters to hold the
name of Lucretia Mott ever in grateful remembrance. The choir sang
"Nearer, My God, to Thee." The entire audience arose and joined in
the singing, after which they slowly dispersed, feeling that it had
indeed been a pentacostal occasion.
An able paper from Alexander Dumas, on "Woman Suffrage as a means
of Moral Improvement and Prevention of Crime,"[74] was translated
for this meeting by Thomas Mott, the only son of James and Lucretia
Mott. This convention continued two days, with the usual number of
able speakers.[75] It was announced at the last session that an
effort would be made by Senator McDonald, next day, to call up a
resolution providing for the appointment of a standing committee
for women; accordingly the ladies' gallery in the Senate was well
filled with delegates.
From the _Congressional Record_, January 20, 1881:
Mr. MCDONALD: On February 16, 1880, I submitted a resolution
providing for the appointment of a committee of nine senators,
whose duty it shall be to receive, consider and report upon all
petitions, memorials, resolutions and bills relating to the
rights of women of the United States, said committee to be called
"Committee on the Rights of Women." It is on the calendar, and I
ask for its present consideration.
The VICE-PRESIDENT (Mr. Wheeler of New York): The senator from
Indiana calls up for consideration a resolution on the calendar,
which will be reported.
The chief clerk read the resolution, as follows:
_Resolved_, That a committee of nine senators be appointed
by the Senate, whose duty it shall be to receive, consider
and report upon all petitions, memorials, resolutions and
bills relating to the rights of women of the United States,
said committee to be called the Committee on the Rights of
Women.
The VICE-PRESIDENT: The question is, Will the Senate agree to the
resolution?
Mr. MCDONALD: Mr. President, it seems to me that the time has
arrived when the rights of the class of citizens named in the
resolution should have some hearing in the national legislature.
We have standing committees upon almost every other subject, but
none to which this class of citizens can resort. When their
memorials come in they are sometimes sent to the Committee on the
Judiciary, sometimes to the Committee on Privileges and
Elections, and sometimes to other committees. The consequence is
that they pass around from committee to committee and never
receive any consideration. In the organization and growth of the
Senate a number of standing committees have been from time to
time created and continued from congress to congress, until many
of them have but very little duty now to perform. It seems to me
to be very appropriate to consider this question now, and provide
some place in the capitol, some room of the Senate, some branch
of the government, where this class of applicants can have a full
and fair hearing, and have such measures as may be desired to
secure to them such rights brought fairly and properly before
the country. I hope there will be no opposition to the resolution
but that it will be adopted by unanimous consent.
Mr. CONKLING: Does the senator from Indiana wish to raise a
permanent committee on this subject to take its place and remain
on the list of permanent committees?
Mr. MCDONALD: That is precisely what I propose to do.
Mr. CONKLING: Mr. President, I was in hopes that the honorable
senator from Indiana, knowing how sincere and earnest he is in
this regard, intended that an end should be made soon of this
subject; that the prayer of these petitioners should be granted
and the whole right established; but now it seems that he wishes
to create a perpetual committee, so that it is to go on
interminably, from which I infer that he intends that never shall
these prayers be granted. I suggest to the senator from Indiana
that, if he be in earnest, if he wishes to crown with success
this great and beneficent movement, he should raise a special
committee, which committee would understand that it was to
achieve and conclude its purpose, and this presently, and not
postpone indefinitely in the vast forever the realization of this
hope. I trust, therefore, that the senator from Indiana will make
this a special committee, and will let that special committee
understand that before the sun goes down on the last day of this
session it is to take final, serious, intelligent action, for
which it is to be responsible, whether that action be one way or
the other.[76]
Mr. MCDONALD: The senator from New York misapprehends one purpose
of this committee. I certainly have no desire that the rights of
this class of our citizens should be deferred to that far-distant
future to which he has made reference, nor would this committee
so place them. If it be authorized by the Senate, it will be the
duty of the committee to receive all petitions, memorials,
resolutions and bills relating to the rights of women, not merely
presented now but those presented at any future time. It is
simply to provide a place where one-half the people of the United
States may have a tribunal in this body before which they can
have their cases considered. I apprehend that these rights are
never to be ended. I do not suppose that the time will ever come
in the history of the human race when there will not be rights of
women to be considered and passed upon. Therefore, to make this
merely a special committee would not accomplish the purpose I had
in view. While it would of course give a committee that would
receive and hear such petitions as are now presented and consider
such bills as should now be brought forward, it would be better
to have a committee from term to term, where these same plaints
could be heard, the same petitions presented, the same bills
considered, and where new rights, whatever they might be, can be
discussed and acted upon. Therefore I cannot accept the
suggestion of the senator from New York to make this a special
committee.
Mr. DAVIS of West Virginia: I think it a bad idea to raise an
extra committee. I move that the resolution be referred to the
Committee on Rules, I think it ought to go there. That is where
the rules generally require all such resolutions to be referred.
The VICE-PRESIDENT: The question is on the motion of the senator
from Virginia, that the resolution be referred to the Committee
on Rules.
Which was agreed to by a vote of 26 yeas to 23 nays.[77]
Amid all the pleasure of political excitement the social amenities
were not forgotten. A brilliant reception[78] and supper were given
to the delegates by Mrs. Spofford at the Riggs House. During the
evening Mrs. Stanton presented the beautiful life-size photograph
of Lucretia Mott which had adorned the platform at the convention,
to Howard University, and read the following letter from Edward M.
Davis:
Mrs. ELIZABETH CADY STANTON--_Dear Madam_: As an expression of my
gratitude to the colored people of the District for their
beautiful floral tribute to the memory of my dear mother, I
desire in the name of her children to present to Howard
University the photograph of Lucretia Mott which adorned the
platform during the convention. It is a fitting gift to an
institution that so well illustrates her principles in opening
its doors to all youth without regard to sex or color. With
sincere regret that I cannot be present this evening at the
reception, I am gratefully yours,
EDWARD M. DAVIS.
In receiving the beautiful gift, Dr. Patton, president of the
institution, made a graceful response.
In the spring of 1881, the National Association held a series of
conventions through New England, beginning with the May anniversary
in Boston, of which we give the following description from the
_Hartford Courant_:
Among the many anniversaries in Boston the last week in May, one
of the most enthusiastic was that of the National Woman Suffrage
Association, held in Tremont Temple. The weather was cool and
fair and the audience fine throughout, and never was there a
better array of speakers at one time on any platform. The number
of thoughtful, cultured young women appearing in these
conventions, is one of the hopeful features for the success of
this movement. The selection of speakers for this occasion had
been made at the Washington convention in January, and different
topics assigned to each that the same phases of the question
might not be treated over and over again.
[Illustration: Jane H. Spofford]
Mrs. Harriet Hansom Robinson (wife of "Warrington," so long the
able correspondent of the _Springfield Republican_), who with her
daughter made the arrangements for our reception, gave the
address of welcome, to which the president, Mrs. Stanton,
replied. Rev. Frederic Hinckley of Providence, spoke on "Unity of
Principle in Variety of Method," and showed that while differing
on minor points the various woman suffrage associations were all
working to one grand end. Anna Garlin Spencer made a few remarks
on "The Character of Reformers." Rev. Olympia Brown gave an
exceptionally brilliant speech a full hour in length on
"Universal Suffrage"; Harriette Robinson Shattuck's theme was
"Believing and Doing"; Lillie Devereux Blake's, "Demand for
Liberty"; Matilda Joslyn Gage's, "Centralization"; Belva A.
Lockwood's, "Woman and the Law". Mary F. Eastman followed showing
that woman's path was blocked at every turn, in the professions
as well as the trades and the whole world of work; Isabella
Beecher Hooker gave an able argument on the "Constitutional Right
of Women to Vote"; Martha McLellan Brown spoke equally well on
the "Ethics of Sex"; Mrs. Elizabeth Avery Meriwether of
Tennessee, gave a most amusing commentary on the spirit of the
old common law, cuffing Blackstone and Coke with merciless
sarcasm. Mrs. Elizabeth L. Saxon of Louisiana spoke with great
effect on "Woman's Intellectual Powers as Developed by the
Ballot." These two Southern ladies are alike able, witty and
pathetic in their appeals for justice to woman. Mrs. May Wright
Sewall's essay on "Domestic Legislation," showing how large a
share of the bills passed every year directly effect home life,
was very suggestive to those who in answer to our demand for
political power, say "Woman's sphere is home," as if the home
were beyond the control and influence of the State. Beside all
these thoroughly prepared addresses, Susan B Anthony, Dr.
Clemence Lozier, Dr. Caroline Winslow, ex-Secretary Lee of
Wyoming, spoke briefly on various points suggested by the several
speakers.
The white-haired and venerable philosopher, A. Bronson Alcott,
was very cordially received, after being presented in
complimentary terms by the president. Mr. Alcott paid a glowing
tribute to the intellectual worth of woman, spoke of the divinity
of her character, and termed her the inspiration font from which
his own philosophical ideas had been drawn. Not until the women
of our nation have been granted every privilege would the liberty
of our republic be assured.[79] The well-known Francis W. Bird
of Walpole, who has long wielded in the politics of the Bay
State, the same power Thurlow Weed did for forty years in New
York, being invited to the platform, expressed his entire
sympathy with the demand for suffrage, notwithstanding the common
opinion held by the leading men of Massachusetts, that the women
themselves did not ask it. He recommended State rather than
national action.
Rev. Ada C. Bowles of Cambridge, and Rev. Olympia Brown, of
Racine, Wis., opened the various sessions with prayer--striking
evidence of the growing self-assertion of the sex, and the rapid
progress of events towards the full recognition of the fact that
woman's hour has come. Touching deeper and tenderer chords in the
human soul than words could reach, the inspiring strains of the
celebrated organist, Mr. Ryder, rose ever and anon, now soft and
plaintive, now full and commanding, mingled in stirring harmony
with prayer and speech. And as loving friends had covered the
platform with rare and fragrant flowers, the æsthetic taste of
the most fastidious artist might have found abundant
gratification in the grouping and whole effect of the assemblage
in that grand temple. Thus through six prolonged sessions the
interest was not only kept up but intensified from day to day.
The National Association was received right royally in Boston. On
arriving they found invitations waiting to visit Governor Long at
the State House, Mayor Prince at the City Hall, the great
establishment of Jordan, Marsh & Co., and the Reformatory Prison
for Women at Sherborn. Invitations to take part were extended to
woman suffrage speakers in many of the conventions of that
anniversary week. Among those who spoke from other platforms,
were Matilda Joslyn Gage, Ellen H. Sheldon, Caroline B. Winslow,
M. D., editor of _The Alpha_, and Rev. Olympia Brown. The
president of the association, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
received many invitations to speak at various points, but had
time only for the "Moral Education," "Heredity," and "Free
Religious" associations. Her engagement at Parker Memorial Hall,
prevented her from accepting the governor's invitation, but
Isabella Beecher Hooker and Susan B Anthony led the way to the
State house and introduced the delegates from the East, the West,
the North and the South, to the honored executive head of the
State, who had declared himself, publicly, in favor of woman
suffrage. The ceremony of hand-shaking over, and some hundred
women being ranged in a double circle about the desk, Mrs. Hooker
stepped forward, saying:
Speak a word to us, Governor Long, we need help. Stand here,
please, face to face with these earnest women and tell us
where help is to come from.
The Governor responded, and then introduced his secretary, who
conducted the ladies through the building.
Mrs. HOOKER said: Permit me, sir, to thank you for this
unlooked-for and unusual courtesy in the name of our
president who should be here to speak for herself and for
us, and in the name of these loyal women who ask only that
the right of the _people_ to govern themselves shall be
maintained. In this great courtesy extended us by good old
Massachusetts as citizens of this republic unitedly
protesting against being taxed without representation, and
governed without our consent, we see the beginning of the
end--the end of our wearisome warfare--a warfare which
though bloodless, has cost more than blood, by as much as
soul-suffering exceeds that of mere flesh. I see as did
Stephen of old, a celestial form close to that of the Son of
Man, and her name is Liberty--always a woman--and she bids
us go on--go on--even unto the end.
Miss Anthony standing close to the governor, said in low,
pathetic tones:
Yes, we are tired. Sir, we are weary with our work. For
forty years some of us have carried this burden, and now, if
we might lay it down at the feet of honorable men, such as
you, how happy we should be.
The next day Mayor Prince, though suffering from a late severe
attack of rheumatism, cordially welcomed the delegates in his
room at the City Hall, and chatting familiarly with those who had
been at the Cincinnati convention and witnessed his great
courtesy, some one remarked that from that time Miss Anthony had
proclaimed him the prince among men, and Mrs. Stanton immediately
suggested that if the party with which he was identified were
wise in their day and generation they would accept his
leadership, even to the acknowledgement of the full citizenship
of this republic, and thus secure not only their gratitude but
their enthusiastic support in the next presidential election.
Having compassion upon his Honor because of his manifest physical
disability, the ladies soon withdrew and went directly to the
house of Jordan, Marsh & Co., where were assembled in a large
hall at the top of the building such a crowd of handsome, happy,
young girls as one seldom sees in this work-a-day world; that
well-known Boston firm within the last six months having fitted
up a large recreation room for the use of their employés at the
noon hour. Half a hundred girls were merrily dancing to the music
of a piano, but ceased in order to listen to words of cheer from
Mrs. Lockwood, Mrs. Hooker and Mrs. Sewall. At the close of their
remarks Mr. Jordan brought forward a reluctant young girl who
could give us, if she would, a charming recitation from "That
Lass o' Lowrie's," in return for our kindness in coming to them.
And after saying in a whisper to one who kindly urged compliance
to this unexpected call, that this had been such a busy day she
feared her dress was not all right, her face became unconscious
of self in a moment, and with true dramatic instinct, she gave
page after page of that wonderful story of the descent into the
mine and the recognition there of one whom she loved, precisely
as you would desire to hear it were the scene put upon the stage
with all the accessories of scenery and companion actors.
From Jordan, Marsh & Co.'s a large delegation proceeded to visit
the Reformatory Prison at Sherborn which was established three or
four years ago. The board of directors, consisting of three women
and two men, has charge of all the prisons of the State. Mrs.
Johnson, one of the directors, a noble, benevolent woman,
interested in the great charities of Boston, was designated by
Governor Long--through whose desire the Association visited the
prison--to do the honors and accompany the party from Boston. The
officers, matron and physician of the Sherborn prison, are all
women. Dr. Mosher, the superintendent, formerly the physician, is
a fair, noble-looking woman about thirty-five years of age. She
has her own separate house connected with the building. The
present physician, a delicate, cultured woman, with sympathy for
her suffering charges, is a recent graduate of Ann Arbor.
The entire work is done by the women sent there for restraint,
and the prison is nearly self-supporting; it is expected that
within another year it will be entirely so. Laundry work is done
for the city of Boston, shirts are manufactured, mittens knit,
etc. The manufacturing machinery will be increased the coming
year. The graded system of reward has been found successful in
the development of better traits. It has four divisions, and
through it the inmates are enabled to work up by good behavior
toward more pleasant surroundings, better clothes and food and
greater liberty. From the last grade they reach the freedom of
being bound out; of seventy-eight thus bound during the past year
but seven were returned. The whole prison, chapel, school-room,
dining-room, etc., possesses a sweet, clean, pure atmosphere. The
rooms are light, well-ventilated, vines trailing in the windows
from which glimpses of green trees and blue sky can be seen.
Added to all the other courtesies, there came the invitation to a
few of the representatives of the movement to dine with the Bird
Club at the Parker House, in the same cozy room where these
astute politicians have held their councils for so many years,
and whose walls have echoed to the brave words of many of New
England's greatest sons. The only woman who had ever been thus
honored before was Mrs. Stanton, who, "escorted by Warrington,"
dined with these honorable gentlemen in 1871. On this occasion
Susan B. Anthony and Harriet H. Robinson accompanied her. Around
the table sat several well-known reformers and distinguished
members of the press and bar. There was Elizur Wright whose name
is a household word in many homes as translator of La Fontaine's
fables for the children. Beside him sat the well-known Parker
Pillsbury and his nephew, a promising young lawyer in Boston. At
one end of the table sat Mr. Bird with Mrs. Stanton on his right
and Miss Anthony on his left. At the other end sat Frank Sanborn
with Mrs. Robinson (wife of "Warrington") on his right. On either
side sat Judge Adam Thayer of Worcester, Charles Field, Williard
Phillips of Salem, Colonel Henry Walker of Boston, Mr. Ernst of
the Boston _Advertiser_, and Judge Henry Fox of Taunton. The
condition of Russia and the Conkling imbroglio in New York; the
new version of the Testament and the reason why German Liberals,
transplanted to this soil, immediately become conservative and
exclusive, were all considered. Carl Schurz, with his narrow
ideas of woman's sphere and education, was mentioned by way of
example. In reply to the question how the Suffrage Association
felt in regard to Conkling's reëlection. Mrs. Robinson said:
That the leaders, who are students of politics were unitedly
against him. Their only hope is in the destruction of the
Republican party, which is too old and corrupt to take up
any new reform.
Frank Sanborn, fresh from the perusal of the New Testament, asked
if women could find any special consolation in the Revised
Version regarding everlasting punishment. Mrs. Stanton replied:
Certainly, as we are supposed to have brought "original sin"
into the world with its fearful forebodings of eternal
punishment, any modification of Hades in fact or name, for
the _men_ of the race, the innocent victims of our
disobedience, fills us with satisfaction.
From the club the ladies hastened to the beautiful residence of
Mrs. Fenno Tudor, fronting Boston Common, where hundreds of
friends had already gathered to do honor to the noble woman so
ready to identify herself with the unpopular reforms of her day.
Among the many beautiful works of art, a chief attraction was the
picture of the grand-mother of Parnell, the Irish agitator, by
Gilbert Stuart. The house was fragrant with flowers, and the
unassuming manners of Mrs. Tudor, as she moved about among her
guests, reflected the glory of our American institutions in
giving the world a generation of common-sense women who do not
plume themselves on any adventitous circumstances of wealth or
position, but bow in respect to morality and intelligence
wherever they find it. At the close of the evening Mrs. Stanton
presented Mrs. Tudor with the "History of Woman Suffrage" which
she received with evident pleasure and returned her sincere
thanks.
At the close of the anniversary week in Boston, successful meetings
were held in various cities,[80] beginning at Providence, where Dr.
Wm. F. Channing made the arrangements. These conventions were the
first that the National Association ever held in the New England
States, presenting the national plan of woman's enfranchisement
through a sixteenth amendment to the United States Constitution.
FOOTNOTES:
[53] "True labor reform: the ballot for woman, the unpaid laborer
of the whole earth."
"Man's work is from sun to sun,
But woman's work is never done."
"Taxation without representation is tyranny. Woman is taxed to
support pauperism and crime, and is compelled to feed and clothe
the law-makers who oppress her."
"Women are voting on education, the bulwark of the republic, in
Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, Oregon, New Hampshire and
Massachusetts."
"Women are voting on all questions in Wyoming and Utah. The vote of
women transformed Wyoming from barbarism to civilization."
"The financial problem for woman: equal pay for equal work, and one
hundred cents on the dollar."
"When a woman _Will_, she WILL, and you may depend on it, she WILL
vote."
[54] _California_, Jane B. Archibald; _Connecticut_, Julia E. Smith
(Parker), E. C. Champion; _Delaware_, Mary A. Stuart; _District of
Columbia_, Sara Andrews Spencer, Jane H. Spofford, Ellen H.
Sheldon, Sara J. Messer, Amanda M. Best, Belva A. Lockwood, Mary A.
S. Carey, Rosina M. Parnell, Mary L. Wooster, Helen Rand Tindall,
Lura McNall Orme; _Illinois_, Miss Jessie Waite, daughter of
Caroline V. and Judge Waite; _Indiana_, Zerelda G. Wallace, Emma
Mont McRae; Flora M. Hardin; _Iowa_, Nancy R. Allen; _Kansas_,
Della Ross; _Louisiana_, Elizabeth L. Saxon, _Maine_, Sophronia C.
Snow; _Maryland_, Lavinia Dundore; _Michigan_, Catherine A. F.
Stebbins; _Missouri_, Phoebe W. Couzins; _New Hampshire_, Marilla
M. Ricker; _New Jersey_, Lucinda B. Chandler; _New York_, Susan B.
Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Lillie Devereux Blake, Dr. A.
W. Lozier, Jennie de M. Lozier, M. D., Helen M. Slocum;
_Pennsylvania_, Rachel G. Foster, Julia T. Foster; _South
Carolina_, Mary R. Pell.
[55] Signed by Matilda Joslyn Gage, _Chairman Executive Committee_:
Susan B. Anthony, _Vice-president-at-large_; Sara Andrews Spencer,
_Corresponding Secretary_: Jane H. Spofford, _Treasurer_.
[56] This week has been devoted almost exclusively to the women,
who as temperance leaders, female suffragists and general
reformers, have become a power in the land which can no longer be
ridiculed or ignored. Yesterday Lincoln Hall was packed to its
utmost capacity with such an audience as no other entertainment or
amusement has ever before gathered in this city. Women of
refinement and cultivation, of thought and purpose, women of
standing and position in society, mothers of families, wives of
clergymen, were there by the hundreds, to listen to the words of
wisdom and eloquence that fell from the lips of that assembly, the
most carefully organized, thoroughly governed, harmoniously acting
association in this great country. Members of congress, professors
of colleges, judges and gentlemen of leisure, sat or stood in
admiration of the progress of the women, who are so earnestly
striving to regenerate our beloved republic, over which the shadow
of anarchy and dissolution is hovering with outspread wings. These
women are no longer trembling suppliants, feeling their way
cautiously and feebly amid an overpowering mass of obstructions;
they are now strong in their might, in their unity, and in the
righteousness of their cause. Men will do wisely if they attract
this power instead of repelling it; if they permit women to work in
concert with them, instead of compelling them to be arrayed against
them. The fate of Governor Robinson and Senator Ecelstine of New
York, indicates what they can do, and what they will do, if obliged
to assume the attitude of aggressors. Congress has heard no such
eloquence upon its floors this week as we have listened to from the
lips of these noble women.--[Washington correspondent of the
Portland (Me.) _Transcript_, Jan. 23, 1880.
These conventions occur yearly and although the ladies have fought
long and hard, and seem to have not yet reached a positive
assurance of success, still they continue to force the fight with
greater earnestness and redoubled energy, and their meetings are
conducted with much wisdom and decided spirit. There is one thing
to the credit of these ladies which cannot be said of the opposite
sex, and that is, their conventions are models of good order and
parliamentary eloquence, and they put their work through in a
graceful, business-like manner.--[Washington _Critic_, Jan. 21,
1880.
The announcement that the public session of the National Woman
Suffrage Convention would begin at one o'clock yesterday afternoon
at Lincoln Hall sufficed to attract a most brilliant audience,
composed principally of ladies, occupying every seat and thronging
the aisles. The inconvenience of remaining standing was patiently
endured by hundreds who seemed loth to leave while the convention
was in progress.--[Washington _National Republican_, Jan. 22, 1880.
The session of the Woman Suffrage Convention in Washington this
week has developed the fact that these strong-minded women are
making progress. The convention itself was composed of women of
marked ability, and its proceedings were marked by dignity and
decorum. The very best citizens of the city attended the
meetings.--[Washington correspondent Syracuse _Daily Standard_.
[57] Letters were read from Mary Powers Filley, N. H.; Martha G.
Tunstall, Texas; M. A. Darling, Mich.; May Wright Thompson, Ind.;
Sarah Burger Stearns, Minn.; Miss Martin, Ill.; W. G. Myers, O.;
Annie L. Quinby, Ky.; Zina Young Williams, Utah; Barbara J.
Thompson, Neb.; Mira L. Sturgis, Me.; Orra Langhorne, Va.; Emily P.
Collins, La.; Charles P. Wellman, esq., Ga.
[58] Judge Edmunds meeting Miss Anthony afterwards, complimented
her on having made an argument instead of what is usually given
before committees, platform oratory. He said her logic was sound,
her points unanswerable. Nor were the delegates familiar with that
line of argument less impressed by it, given as it was without
notes and amid many interruptions. It was one of those occasions
rarely reached, in which the speaker showed the full height to
which she was capable of rising. We have not space for the whole
argument, and the train of reasoning is too close to be
broken.--[M. J. G.
[59] Speeches were also made by Mrs. Saxon, Mrs. Spencer and Miss
Anthony.
[60] _Alabama_, Mrs. P. Holmes Drake, Huntsville. _Connecticut_,
Elizabeth C. Champion, Bridgeport. _District of Columbia_, Belva A.
Lockwood, Eveleen L. Mason, Jerusha G. Joy, Ellen H. Sheldon, Sara
Andrews Spencer, Jane H. Spofford. _Illinois_, Elizabeth Boynton
Harbert, vice-president of the National Association and editor of
the "Woman's Kingdom" in the _Chicago Inter-Ocean_, Evanston;
Dr. Ann M. Porter, Danville. _Indiana_, Mary E. Haggart,
vice-president; Martha Grimes, Zerelda G. Wallace, May Wright
Thompson, A. P. Stanton, Indianapolis; Salome McCain, Frances
Joslin, Crawfordsville; Mrs. Helen M. Gougar, editor of the
"Bric-a-brac department" of the _Lafayette Courier_, Lafayette;
Thomas Atkinson, Oxford; Mrs. Dr. Rogers, Greencastle; Florence M.
Hardin, Pendelton. _Iowa_, Mrs. J. C. M'Kinney, Mrs. Weiser,
Decorah. _Kentucky_, Mary B. Clay, Richmond; Mrs. Carr, Mrs. E. T.
Housh, Louisville. _Louisiana_, Elizabeth L. Saxon, New Orleans,
_Maryland_; Mary A. Butler, Baltimore. _Michigan_, Catherine A. F.
Stebbins, Detroit. _Missouri_, Mrs. Virginia L. Minor, Mrs. Eliza
J. Patrick, Mrs. Annie T. Anderson, Mrs. Caroline Johnson Todd,
Mrs. Endie J. Polk, Miss Phoebe Couzins, Miss M. A. Baumgarten,
Miss Emma Neave, Miss Eliza B. Buckley, St. Louis; Mrs. Frances
Montgomery, Oregon. _New Hampshire_, Parker Pillsbury, Concord.
_New Jersey_, Lucinda B. Chandler. _New York_, Mrs. Blake, Mrs.
Gage, Miss Anthony. _Ohio_, Mrs. Amanda B. Merrian, Mrs. Cordelia
A. Plimpton, Cincinnati; Sophia L. O. Allen, Eva L. Pinney, South
Newberry; Mrs. N. L. Braffet, New Paris. _Pennsylvania_, Rachel
Foster, Julia T. Foster, Philadelphia. _South Carolina_, Mary R.
Pell, Cowden P. O.
[61] _Colorado_, Florence M. Haynes, Greely. _Connecticut_,
Elizabeth C. Champion, Bridgeport. _District of Columbia_; Belva A.
Lockwood, Sara Andrews Spencer, Jane H. Spofford, Ellen H. Sheldon,
Eveleen L. Mason, Jersuha G. Joy, Helen Rand Tindall, Amanda M.
Best, Washington. _Illinois_, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Sarah
Hackett Stephenson, Kate Newell Doggett, Catherine V. Waite,
Elizabeth J. Loomis, Alma Van Winkle, Chicago; Dr. Ann Porter,
Danville; Mrs. F. Lillebridge, Rockford; Ann L. Barnett, Lockport;
Mrs. F. A. Ross, Mrs. I. R. Lewison, Mansfield; Amanda Smith,
Prophetstown. _Indiana_, Helen M. Gougar, Lafayette; Dr. Rachel B.
Swain, Gertrude Garrison, Indianapolis. _Iowa_, Nancy R. Allen,
Maquoketa; Jane C. M'Kinney, Mrs. Weiser, Decorah; Virginia
Cornish, Hamburg; Ellen J. Foster, Clinton; Clara F. Harkness,
Humboldt. _Kansas_, Amanda B. Way, Elizabeth M'Kinney, Kenneth.
_Kentucky_, Mary B. Clay, Sallie Clay Bennett, Richmond.
_Louisiana_, Elizabeth L. Saxon, New Orleans. _Maryland_, Mary A.
Butler, Baltimore. _Massachusetts_, Addie N. Ayres, Boston.
_Minnesota_, A. H. Street, Albert Lee. _Michigan_, Catherine A. F.
Stebbins, Detroit; Eliza Burt Gamble, Miss Mattie Smedly, East
Saginaw; P. Engle Travis, Hartford; Dr. Elizabeth Miller, South
Frankford. _Missouri_, Virginia L. Minor, Phoebe W. Couzins, Annie
T. Anderson, Caroline J. Todd, St. Louis; Dr. Augusta Smith,
Springfield. _New Hampshire_, Parker Pillsbury, Concord.
_Nebraska_, Harriet S. Brooks, Omaha; Dr. Amy R. Post, Hastings.
_New Jersey_, Margaret H. Ravenhill. _New York_, Susan B. Anthony,
Rochester; Matilda Joslyn Gage, Fayetteville; Lillie Devereux
Blake, New York city. _Ohio_, Eva L. Pinney, South Newbury; Julia
B. Cole. _Oregon_, Mrs. A. J. Duniway (as substitute), Portland.
_Pennsylvania_, Rachel Foster, Julia T. Foster, Lucinda B.
Chandler, Philadelphia; Cornelia H. Scarborough, New Hope. _South
Carolina_, Mary R. Pell, Cowden P. O. _Tennessee_, Elizabeth Avery
Meriwether, Memphis. _Wisconsin_, Rev. Olympia Brown, Racine;
Almedia B. Gray, Schofield Mills. _Wyoming Territory_, Amelia B.
Post.
[62] HISTORICAL SOCIETY ROOMS, 140-42 DEARBORN AVE.,
CHICAGO, May 19, 1880.
_Mrs. E. C. Stanton, President National Woman Suffrage Association,
476 West Lake street:_
_Dear Madam:_ I write you in behalf of the Chicago Historical
Society, and with the hope that you will obligingly secure for and
present to this society a full manuscript record of the
_mass-meeting_ to be held in Farwell Hall in this city, June 2,
1880, duly signed by its officers. We hope too you will do the
society the great favor to deposit in its archives all the letters
and postals which you may receive in response to your invitations
to attend that meeting.
This meeting may be an important one and long to be remembered. It
is hard to measure the possibilities of 1880. I hope this meeting
will mark an epoch in American history equal to the convention held
in Independence Hall in 1776. How valuable would be the attested
manuscript record of that convention and the correspondence
connected therewith! The records of the Farwell-hall meeting may be
equally valuable one hundred years hence. Please let the records be
kept in the city in which the convention or mass-meeting is held.
I am a Republican. I hope the party to which I belong will be
consistent. On the highest stripe of its banner is inscribed
"Freedom and Equal Rights." I hope the party will not be so
inconsistent as to refuse to the "better half" of the people of the
United States the rights enjoyed by the liberated slaves at the
South.
The leaders should not be content _to suffer it to be so_, but
should work with a will to make it so. I have but little confidence
in the sincerity of the man who will shout himself hoarse about
"shot guns" and "intimidation" at the South, when ridicule and
sneers come from his "shot gun" pointed at those who advocate the
doctrine that our mothers, wives and sisters are as well qualified
to vote and hold official position as the average Senegambian of
Mississippi.
We should be glad to have you and your friends call at these rooms,
which are open and free for all.
Very Respectfully, A. D. HAGER, _Librarian_.
[63] By Mrs. Saxon of New Orleans, La.; Mrs. Meriwether of Memphis,
Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett, daughter of Cassius M. Clay of Richmond
Ky.; and others. Mrs. Bennett related a little home incident. She
said: A few days ago she was in her front yard planting with her
own hands some roses, when "our ex-governor," passing by,
exclaimed: "Mrs. Bennett, I admire that in you; whatever one wants
well done he must do himself." She immediately answered: "That is
true Governor, and that is why we women suffragists have determined
to do our own voting hereafter." She then informed him that she
wanted to speak to him on that great question. He was rather
anxious to avoid the argument, and expressed his surprise and "was
sorry to see a woman like her, surrounded by so many blessings,
with a kind husband, numerous friends and loving children,
advocating woman suffrage! She ought to be contented with these.
She was not like Miss Anthony--" "Stop, Governor," I exclaimed,
"Don't think of comparing me to that lady, for I feel that I am not
worthy to touch the hem of her garments." She was, she said, indeed
the mother of five dear children, but she [Miss Anthony] is the
mother of a nation of women. She thought the women feared God
rather than man, and it was only this which encouraged them to
speak on this subject, so dear to their hearts, in public. One lady
gave as a reason why she wanted to vote, that it was because "the
men did not want them to," which evoked considerable merriment.
This induced the chair to remind the audience of Napoleon's rule:
"Go, see what your enemy does not want you to do and do it." Of the
audience the _Inter-Ocean_ said: "The speakers of all the sessions
were listened to with rapt attention by the audience, and the
points made were heartily applauded. It would be difficult to
gather so large an audience of our sex whose appearance would be
more suggestive of refinement and intelligence."
[64] Miss Anthony, Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Chandler, Mrs. Spencer and Mrs.
Haggart.
[65] Twenty delegates from eleven different States, who had been in
attendance at Chicago, went to Cincinnati.
[66] Before which Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Meriwether, Miss Anthony, Mrs.
Spencer and Mrs. Blake spoke.
[67] Miss Anthony, Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Meriwether, Mrs.
Saxon, Miss. Couzins, Rev. Olympia Brown, Misses Rachel and Julia
Foster.
[68] This was the last time this noble German woman honored our
platform, as her eventful life closed a few years after.
[69] Among others, from Assemblyman Lord,
State-Superintendent-of-Public-Instruction Whitford, J. M. Bingham
and Superintendent MacAlister.
[70] The delegates were Olympia Brown, _Racine_; L. C. Galt, M. M.
Frazier, _Mukwonago_; E. A. Brown, _Berlin_; E. M. Cooley,
_Eureka_; E. L. Woolcott, _Ripon_; O. M. Patton, M. D., _Appleton_;
H. Suhm, E. Hohgrave, _Sauk City_; M. W. Mabbs, C. M. Stowers,
_Manitowoc_; S. C. Guernsey, _Janesville_; H. T. Patchin, _New
London_; Jennie Pomeroy, _Grand Rapids_; Mrs. H. W. Rice,
_Oconomowoc_; Amy Winship, _Racine_; Almedia B. Gray, Matilda
Graves, Jessie Gray, _Scholfield Mills_; Mrs. Mary Collins,
_Mukwonago_; Mrs. Jere Witter, _Grand Rapids_; Mrs. Lucina E.
DeWolff, _Whitewater_. The Milwaukee delegates were: Dr. Laura R.
Wolcott, Mme. Mathilde Franceske Anneke, Mrs. A. M. Bolds, Mrs. A.
Flagge, Agnes B. Campbell, Mary A. Rhienart, Matilda Pietsch, N. J.
Comstock, Sarah R. Munro, M. D., Juliet H. Severance, M. D., Mrs.
Emily Firega, Carl Doerflinger. Maximillian Grossman and Carl
Herman Boppe.
[71] 1. Silent Invocation. 2. Music. 3. Eulogy, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton. 4. Tributes, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony. 5.
Music. 6. Tributes, Robert Purvis, May Wright Sewall, Phoebe W.
Couzins. 7. Closing Hymn--"_Nearer, my God, to Thee_."
[72] Of the floral decorations, to which reference is made above as
contributing so largely to the handsome appearance of the stage,
the harp was furnished through Mr. Wormley in behalf of the colored
admirers of Mrs. Mott, and the _epergne_ was provided for the
occasion by the National Association. There was also a basket of
flowers, conspicuous for its beauty, sent in by Senator Cameron of
Pennsylvania.
[73] The eulogy will be found in Volume I., page 407.
[74] See _National Citizen_ of February, 1881.
[75] Edward M. Davis, Susan B. Anthony, Marilla M. Ricker, Rachel
and Julia Foster, Frederick Douglass, Belva A. Lockwood, Robert
Purvis, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. This was the first time that Mrs.
Martha M'Clellan Brown, Miss Jessie Waite, Mrs. May Wright Sewall
and Mrs. Thornton Charles were on our Washington platform. The
latter read a poem on woman's sphere.
[76] A standing committee is a permanent one about which no
question can be raised in any congress. A special committee is a
transient one to be decided upon at the opening of each congress;
hence may be at any time voted out of existence. No one understood
this better than New York's Stalwart senator, and his plausible
manner of killing the measure deceived the very elect. Enough
senators were pledged to have carried Mr. McDonald's motion had it
been properly understood, but they, as well as some of the ladies
in the gallery, were entirely misled by Mr. Conkling's seeming
earnest intention to hasten the demands of the women by a
short-lived committee, and while those in the gallery applauded,
those on the floor defeated the measure they intended to carry.
[77] _Yeas_--Messrs. Beck, Booth, Brown, Coke, Davis (W. Va.),
Eaton, Edmunds, Farley, Garland, Groome, Hill (Ga.), Harris,
Ingalls, Kernan, Lamar, Morgan, Morrill, Pendleton, Platt, Pugh,
Ransom, Saulsbury, Slater, Vance, Vest and Withers--26.
_Nays_--Messrs. Anthony, Blair, Burnside, Butler, Call, Cameron
(Pa.), Cameron (Wis.), Conkling, Dawes, Ferry, Hoar, Johnston,
Jonas, Kellogg, Logan, McDonald, McMillan, McPherson, Rollins,
Saunders, Teller, Williams and Windom--23.
[78] Of this reception the _National Republican_ said: The
attractions presented by the fair seekers of the ballot were so
much superior to those of the dancing reception going on in the
parlors above, that it was almost impossible to form a set of the
lanciers until after the gathering in the lower parlors had
entirely dispersed.
[79] Miss Anthony was presented with a beautiful basket of flowers
from Mrs. Mary Hamilton Williams of Fort Wayne, Ind., and returned
her thanks. Another interesting incident during the proceedings of
the convention was the presentation of an exquisite gold cross from
the "Philadelphia Citizens' Suffrage Association," to Miss Anthony.
Mrs. Sewall of Indianapolis, in a speech so tender and loving as to
bring tears to many eyes, conveyed to her the message and the gift.
Miss Anthony's acceptance was equally happy and impressive. As
during the last thirty years the press of the country has made
Susan B. Anthony a target for more ridicule and abuse than any
other woman on the suffrage platform, it is worth noting that all
who know her now vie with each other in demonstrations of love and
honor.--[E. C. S.
[80] PROVIDENCE, R. I.--First Light Infantry Hall, May 30, 31. Rev.
Frederick A. Hinckley gave the address of welcome.
PORTLAND, Me.--City Hall, June 2, 3. Rev. Dr. McKeown of the M. E.
Church made the address of welcome. Letter read from Dr. Henry C.
Garrish. Among the speakers were Charlotte Thomas, A. J. Grover.
DOVER, N. H.--Belknap Street Church, June 3, 4. Marilla M. Ricker
took the responsibility of this meeting.
CONCORD, N. H.--White's Opera House, June 4, 5. Speakers
entertained by Mrs. Armenia Smith White. Olympia Brown and Miss
Anthony spoke before the legislature in Representatives
Hall--nearly all the members present--the latter returned on Sunday
and spoke on temperance and woman suffrage at the Opera House in
the afternoon, Universalist church in the evening.
KEENE, N. H.--Liberty, Hall, June 9, 10. Prayer offered by Rev. Mr.
Enkins. Mayor Russell presided and gave the address of welcome.
HARTFORD, Ct.--Unity Hall. June 13, 14. Mrs. Hooker presiding;
Frances Ellen Burr, Emily P. Collins, Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford,
Caroline Gilkey Rogers, Mary A. Pell taking part in the meetings.
NEW HAVEN, Ct.--Athæneum, June 15, 16. Joseph and Abby Sheldon,
Catherine Comstock and others entertained the visitors and
speakers.
The speakers who made the entire New England tour were Rev. Olympia
Brown, Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Saxon, Mrs. Meriwether, the Misses Foster
and Miss Anthony. The arrangements for all these conventions were
made by Rachel Foster of Philadelphia.
CHAPTER XXX.
CONGRESSIONAL DEBATES AND CONVENTIONS.
1882-1883.
Prolonged Discussions in the Senate on a Special Committee to
Look After the Rights of Women, Messrs. Bayard, Morgan and Vest
in Opposition--Mr. Hoar Champions the Measure in the Senate, Mr.
Reed in the House--Washington Convention--Representative Orth and
Senator Saunders on the Woman Suffrage Platform--Hearings Before
Select Committees of Senate and House--Reception Given by Mrs.
Spofford at the Riggs House--Philadelphia Convention--Mrs. Hannah
Whitehall Smith's Dinner--Congratulations from the Central
Committee of Great Britain--Majority and Minority Reports in the
Senate--Nebraska Campaign--Conventions in Omaha--Joint Resolution
Introduced by Hon. John D. White of Kentucky, Referred to the
Select Committee--Washington Convention, January 24, 25, 26,
1883--Majority Report in the House.
Although the effort to secure a standing committee on the political
rights of women was defeated in the forty-sixth congress, by New
York's Stalwart Senator, Roscoe Conkling, motions were made early
in the first session of the forty-seventh congress, by Hon. George
F. Hoar in the Senate, and Hon. John D. White in the House, for a
special committee to look after the interests of women.[81] It
passed by a vote of 115 to 84 in the House, and by 35 to 23 in the
Senate. On December 13, 1881, the Senate Committee on Rules
reported the following resolution for the appointment of a special
committee on woman suffrage:
_Resolved_, That a select committee of seven senators be
appointed by the Chair, to whom shall be referred all
petitions, bills and resolves providing for the extension of
suffrage to women or the removal of their legal
disabilities.
DECEMBER 14.
Mr. HOAR: I move to take up the resolution reported by the
Committee on Rules yesterday, for the appointment of a select
committee on the subject of woman suffrage.
Mr. VEST: Mr. President, I am constrained to object to the
passage of this resolution, and I do it with considerable
reluctance. At present we have thirty standing committees of the
Senate; four joint and seven special committees, in addition to
the one now proposed.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The Chair will inform the senator
from Missouri that a majority of the Senate has to decide whether
the resolution shall be considered.
Mr. VEST: I understood the Chair to state that it was before the
Senate.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: It is before the Senate if there be
no objection. The Chair thought the senator made objection to its
consideration.
Mr. HOAR: It went over under the rule yesterday and comes up now.
Mr. EDMUNDS: It is the regular order now.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: Certainly. The Chair thought the
senator from Missouri objected to its consideration.
Mr. VEST: No, sir.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The resolution is before the Senate
and open to debate.
Mr. VEST: I have had the honor for a few years to be a member of
the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and my colleagues
on that committee will bear witness with me to the trouble and
annoyance which at every session have arisen in regard to giving
accommodations to the special committees. Two sessions ago there
was a conflict between the Senate and House in regard to
furnishing committee-rooms for three special committees, and it
is only upon the doctrine of _pedis possessio_ that the Senate
to-day holds three committee-rooms in the capitol, the House
still laying claim as a matter of law, through their Committee on
Public Buildings and Grounds, for the possession of these rooms.
At the special session, on account of the exigencies in regard to
rooms, we were compelled to take the retiring-room assigned near
the gallery to the ladies, and cut it into two rooms, to
accommodate select committees.
At this session we have created two special committees more, and
I should like to make the inquiry when and where this manufacture
of special committees is to cease? As soon as any subject becomes
one of comment in the newspapers, or, respectfully I say it, a
hobby with certain zealous partisans throughout the country,
application is made to the Senate of the United States and a
special committee is to be appointed. For this reason, and for
the simple reason that a stop must be had somewhere to the
raising of special committees, I oppose the proposition now
before the Senate.
But, Mr. President, I will be entirely ingenuous and give another
reason. This is simply a step toward the recognition of woman
suffrage, and I am opposed to it upon principle in its inception.
In my judgment it has nothing but mischief in it to the
institutions and to the society of this whole country. I do not
propose to enter into a discussion of that subject to-day, but it
will be proper for me to make this statement, and I make it
intending no reflection upon the zealous ladies who have engaged
for the past ten years in manufacturing a public sentiment upon
this question. I received to-day a letter from a distinguished
lady in my own State, for whom I have personally the greatest
admiration and respect, calling my attention to the fact that I
propose to deny justice to the women of the country. Mr.
President, I deny it. It is because I believe that the
conservative influence of society in the United States rests with
the women of the country that I propose not to degrade the wife
and mother to the ward politician, the justice of the peace, or
the notary public. It is because I believe honestly that all the
best influences for the conservation of society rest upon the
women of the country in their proper sphere that I shall oppose
this and every other step now and henceforth as violating, as I
believe, one of the great essential fundamental laws of nature
and of society.
Mr. President, the revenges of nature are sure and unerring, and
these revenges are just as certain in political matters and in
social matters as in the physical world. Now and here I desire to
record once for all my conviction that in this movement to take
the women of the country out of their proper sphere of social
influence, that great and glorious sphere in which nature and
nature's God have placed them, and rush them into the political
arena, the attempt is made to put them where they were never
intended to be; and I now and here record my opposition to it.
This may seem to be but a small matter, but as this letter shows,
and I reveal no private confidence, it recognizes the first great
step in this reform, as its advocates are pleased to term it. My
practice and conviction as a public man is to fight every wrong
wherever I believe it to exist. I am opposed to this movement. I
am opposed to it upon principle, upon conviction, and I shall
call for the yeas and nays in order to record my vote against it.
DECEMBER 15.
The Senate resumed the consideration of the resolution reported
from the Committee on Rules by Mr. Hoar on the 13th inst.
Mr. VEST: Mr. President, I disclaim any intention again to incite
or excite any general discussion in regard to woman suffrage. The
senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Hoar], for whom I have very great
regard, was yesterday pleased to observe that the State
governments furnished by the senator from Missouri and other
senators in the past had been no argument in favor of manhood
suffrage. Mr. President, I have been under the impression that
the American people to-day are the best governed, the best
clothed, the best fed, the best housed, the happiest people upon
the face of the globe, and that, too, notwithstanding the fact
that they have been under the domination of the Republican party
for twenty long years. I have also been under the impression that
the institutions of the States and of the United States are an
improvement upon all governmental theories and schemes hitherto
known to mortal man; but we are to learn to-day from the senator
from Massachusetts that this government and the State governments
have been failures, and that woman suffrage must be introduced in
order to purify the political atmosphere and elevate the
suffrage.
Mr. HOAR: Will the senator allow me to interrupt him for a
moment?
Mr. VEST: Of course.
Mr. HOAR: I desire to disclaim the meaning which the honorable
senator seems to have put upon my words. I agree with him that
the American governments have been the best on the face of the
earth, but it is because of their adoption of that principle of
equality more than any other government, the logical effect of
which will compel them to yield the right prayed for to women,
that they are the best. But still best as they are, I said, and
mean to say, that the business of governing mankind has been the
one business on the face of the earth which has been done most
clumsily, which has been, even where most excellent, full of
mistakes, expense, injustice, and wrong-doing. What I said was
that I did not think the persons to whom that privileged function
had been committed so far were entitled to claim any special
superiority for the masculine intellect in the results which it
had achieved.
Mr. VEST: To say that the governments, State and national, now in
existence upon this continent are imperfect is but to announce
the truism that everything made by man is necessarily imperfect.
But I stand here to declare to-day that the governments of the
States, and the national government, in theory, although failing
sometimes in practice, are a standing monument to the genius and
intellect of the men who created them. But the senator from
Massachusetts was pleased to say further, that woman suffrage
should obtain in this country in the interest of education. I
permit not that senator to go further than myself in the line of
universal public education. I have declared, over and over again,
in every county in my State for the past ten years, that
universal education should accompany universal suffrage, that the
school-house should crown every mound in prairie and forest, that
it was the temple of liberty and the altar of law and order.
I well remember that I was thrilled with the eloquence of the
distinguished senator from Massachusetts at the last session of
the last congress, when, upon a bill to provide for general
education by a donation of the public lands, he so pathetically
and justly described the mass of dark ignorance and illiteracy
projected upon the people of the South under the policy of the
Republican party, and the senator then stood here and said that
the people of Massachusetts extended the public lands to relieve
the people of the South from this monstrous burden. What does the
senator propose to do to-day? He proposes with one stroke of the
pen to double, and more than double, the illiterate suffrage of
the United States. The senator says that one-half the people of
the United States are represented in this measure of woman
suffrage. I deny it, sir. If the senator means that the women of
America, comprising one-half of the population, are interested in
this measure, I deny it most emphatically and most peremptorily.
Not one-tenth of them want it. Not one-tenth of the mothers and
sisters and Christian women of this land want to be turned into
politicians or to meddle in a sphere to which God and nature have
not assigned them.
Sir, there are some ladies--and I do not intend to term them
anything but ladies--who are zealously engaged in this cause, and
they have flooded this hall with petitions, and have called their
women's rights conventions all over the land. I assail not their
motives, but I deny that they represent the women of the United
States. I say that if woman suffrage obtains, the worst class of
the women of the country will rush to the polls and the best
class will remain away by a large majority. That is my deliberate
judgment and firm conviction. But, Mr. President, a word in
regard to the committees. I desire no general discussion upon
woman suffrage, and simply alluded in passing to what had been
said by the senator from Massachusetts.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The hour of one o'clock has arrived,
and the morning hour is closed.
DECEMBER 16.
Mr. JONES of Florida: I desire to call up a resolution now lying
on the table, which I introduced on the 14th instant, calling for
information from the Secretary of War touching a ship-canal
across the peninsula of Florida.
Mr. HOAR: Mr. President--
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The senator from Florida asks leave
to call up a resolution submitted by him.
Mr. HOAR: My resolution was before the Senate yesterday, and
comes up in order. I hope we shall vote on it.
Mr. JONES of Florida: I will only say that my resolution was laid
over temporarily on the objection of the senator from Vermont
[Mr. Edmunds], which he will not insist upon.
Mr. HOAR: Allow me to call the attention of the Chair to the
fact; it is not the question of a resolution which has not been
taken up. The resolution reported by me from the Committee on
Rules was taken up, and was under discussion when the senator
from Missouri [Mr. Vest] was taken from the floor by the
expiration of the morning hour, in the midst of his remarks.
Certainly his right to conclude his remarks takes precedence of
other business under the usual practice of the Senate.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The Chair thought the senator from
Missouri had ended his remarks, or he would not have interposed
when he did.
Mr. HOAR: No, sir.
Mr. JONES of Florida: My resolution involves no debate. It is
merely a resolution of inquiry.
Mr. HOAR: The other will be disposed of, I hope, in a few
moments.
Mr. JONES of Florida: The resolution to which I refer went over
informally on the objection of the senator from Vermont, and I
think he has no objection now.
Mr. HOAR: The other will be disposed of in a moment, and I hope
we shall vote on it.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The Chair lays before the Senate the
resolution of the senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Hoar].
The Senate resumed the consideration of the resolution reported
from the Committee on Rules by Mr. Hoar on the 13th instant.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The Chair would state to the senator
from Missouri [Mr. Vest] that the Chair supposed yesterday that
he had finished his remarks, or the Chair would not have stopped
him at that moment. The question is on agreeing to the
resolution, on which the senator from Missouri [Mr. Vest] is
entitled to the floor.
Mr. VEST: Mr. President, I was on the eve of finishing my remarks
yesterday when the morning hour expired, and I do not now wish to
detain the Senate. I was about to say at that time that the
Senate now has forty-one committees, with a small army of
messengers and clerks, one-half of whom, without exaggeration,
are literally without employment. I shall not pretend to specify
the committees of this body which have not one single bill,
resolution, or proposition of any sort pending before them, and
have not had for months. I am very well aware that if I should
name one of them, Liberty would lie bleeding in the streets at
once, and that committee would become the most important on the
list of committees of the Senate. I shall not venture to do that.
I am informed by the Sergeant-at-arms that if this resolution is
adopted he must have six additional messengers to be added to
that body of ornamental employés who now stand or sit at the
doors of the respective committee-rooms. I have heard that this
committee is for the purpose of giving a committee to a senator
in this body. I have heard the statement made, but I cannot
believe it, and I am very certain that no senator will undertake
to champion the resolution upon any such ground.
The senator from Massachusetts was pleased to say that the
Committee on the Judiciary had so many important questions
pending before it, that the subject of woman suffrage should not
be added to them. The Committee on Territories is open to any
complaint or suggestion by the ladies who advocate woman
suffrage, in regard to this subject in the territories; and the
Committee on Privileges and Elections to which this subject
should go most appropriately, as affecting the suffrage, has not
now before it, as I am informed, one single bill, resolution, or
proposition of any sort whatever. That committee is also open to
inquiry upon this subject.
But, Mr. President, out of all committees without business, and
habitually without business, in this body, there is one that
beyond any question could take jurisdiction of this matter and do
it ample justice. I refer to that most respectable and antique
institution, the Committee on Revolutionary Claims. For thirty
years it has been without business. For thirty long years the
placid surface of that parliamentary sea has been without one
single ripple. If the senator from Massachusetts desires a
tribunal for calm judicial equilibrium and examination, a
tribunal far from the "madding crowd's ignoble strife," a
tribunal eminently respectable, dignified and unique, why not
send this question to the Committee on Revolutionary Claims? When
I name the _personnel_ of that committee it will be evident that
any consideration on any subject touching the female sex would
receive not only deliberate but immediate attention, for the
second member upon that committee is my distinguished friend from
Florida [Mr. Jones], and who can doubt that he would give his
undivided attention to the subject? [Laughter.] It is eminently
proper that this subject should go to that committee because if
there is any revolutionary claim in this country it is that of
woman suffrage. [Laughter.] It revolutionizes society; it
revolutionizes religion; it revolutionizes the constitution and
laws; and it revolutionizes the opinions of those so
old-fashioned among us as to believe that the legitimate and
proper sphere of woman is the family circle as wife and mother
and not as politician and voter--those of us who are proud to
believe that--
A woman's noblest station is retreat;
Her fairest virtues fly from public sight;
Domestic worth--that shuns too strong a light.
Before that Committee on Revolutionary Claims why could not this
most revolutionary of all claims receive immediate and ample
attention? More than that, as I said before, if there is any
tribunal that could give undivided time and dignified attention,
is it not this committee? If there is one peaceful haven of rest,
never disturbed by any profane bill or resolution of any sort, it
is the Committee on Revolutionary Claims. It is, in parliamentary
life, described by that ecstatic verse in Watts' hymn:
There shall I bathe my wearied soul
In seas of endless rest,
And not one wave of trouble roll
Across my peaceful breast.
For thirty years there has been no excitement in that committee,
and it needs to-day, in Western phrase, some "stirring-up." By
all natural laws stagnation breeds disease and death; and what
could stir up this most venerable and respectable institution
more than an application of the strong-minded, with short hair
and shorter skirts, invading its dignified realm and elucidating
all the excellences of female suffrage? Moreover, if these ladies
could ever succeed, in the providence of God, in obtaining a
report from that committee, it would end this question forever;
for the public at large and myself included, in view of that
miracle of female blandishment and female influence, would
surrender at once, and female suffrage would become
constitutional and lawful. Sir, I insist upon it that in
deference to this committee, in deference to the fact that it
needs this sort of regimen and medicine, this whole subject
should be so referred. [Laughter.]
Mr. MORRILL: Mr. President, I do not desire to say anything as to
the merits of the resolution, but I understand the sole purpose
of raising this committee is to have a committee-room. So far as
I know, there are some five or six committees now which are
destitute of rooms, and it would be impossible for the Committee
on Public Buildings and Grounds to assign any room to this
committee--the object which I understand is at the foundation of
the introduction of the proposition; that is to say, to give
these ladies an opportunity to be heard in some appropriate
committee-room on the questions which they wish to agitate and
submit.
Mr. HOAR: They would find room in some other committee-room. They
could have the room of the Committee on Privileges and Elections,
if there were no other place.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The question is on the adoption of
the resolution reported by the senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. HARRIS: Did not the senator from Missouri [Mr. Vest] offer an
amendment?
Mr. GARLAND: As I understand, he moved to refer the subject to
the Committee on Revolutionary Claims.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: Does the Chair understand that the
senator from Missouri has offered an amendment?
Mr. VEST: Yes, sir; I move to refer the matter to the Committee
on Revolutionary Claims.
Mr. CONGER: Let the resolution be reported.
The acting secretary read the resolution.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The senator from Missouri offers an
amendment, that the subject be referred to the standing Committee
on Revolutionary Claims. The question is on the amendment of the
senator from Missouri. [Putting the question.] The noes appear to
have it.
Mr. FARLEY called for the yeas and nays, and they were ordered
and taken.
Mr. BLAIR [after having voted in the negative]: I have voted
inadvertently. I am paired with the senator from Alabama [Mr.
Pugh]. Were he present he would have voted "yea," as I have voted
"nay." I withdraw my vote.
Mr. WINDOM: I am paired with the senator from West Virginia [Mr.
Davis], but as I understand he would vote "nay" on this question,
I vote "nay."
Mr. INGALLS: I am paired with the senator from Mississippi [Mr.
Lamar].
The result was announced--yeas 22, nays 31. So the motion was not
agreed to.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The question recurs on the adoption
of the resolution.
Mr. BAYARD: Is it in order for me to move the reference of the
subject to the Committee on the Judiciary?
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: It is in order to move to refer the
resolution to the Committee on the Judiciary, the Chair
understands.
Mr. BAYARD: Then I make a motion that the resolution be sent to
the Committee on the Judiciary. I would state that I voted with
some regret and hesitancy upon the motion of the senator from
Missouri [Mr. Vest] to refer this matter to the Committee on
Revolutionary Claims. My regret was owing to the fact that I do
not wish even to seem to treat a subject of this character in a
spirit of levity, or to indicate the slightest disrespect by such
a reference, to those whose opinions upon this subject differ
essentially from my own. I cast the vote because I considered it
would be taking the subject virtually away from the consideration
of congress at its present session. I do, however, hold that
there is no necessity for the creation of a special committee to
attend to this subject. The Committee on the Judiciary has within
the last few years, upon many occasions, attempted to deal with
it. Since you, sir, and I have been members of that committee--
Mr. HOAR: Mr. President--
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: Will the senator from Delaware yield
to the senator from Massachusetts?
Mr. BAYARD: I will, if he thinks it necessary to interrupt me.
Mr. HOAR: I desire to ask the senator, if he is willing, having
been lately a member of the committee to which he refers, whether
it is not the rule of that committee to allow no hearings to
individual petitioners, a rule which is departed from only in
very rare and peculiar cases?
Mr. BAYARD: I will reply to the honorable senator that the
occasion which arose to my mind and caused me to remember the
action of that committee was the audience given by it to a very
large delegation of woman suffragists, _to wit_, the
representatives of a convention held in this city, who to the
number, I think, of twenty-five, came into the committee-room of
the Committee on the Judiciary, and were heard, as I remember,
for more than one day, or certainly had more than one hearing,
before that committee, of which you, sir, and I were members.
Mr. HOAR: If the senator will pardon me, however, he has not
answered my question. I asked the senator not whether on one
particular occasion they gave a hearing on this subject, but
whether it is not the rule of that committee, occasioned by the
necessity of its business, from which it departs only in very
rare cases, not to give hearings?
Mr. BAYARD: I cannot answer whether a rule so defined as that
suggested by the honorable senator from Massachusetts exists in
that committee. It is my impression, however, that cases are
frequently, by order of that committee, argued before it. We have
had very elaborate and able arguments upon subjects connected
with the Pacific railroads, I remember; and we have had arguments
upon various subjects. It is constantly our pleasure to hear
members of the Senate upon a variety of questions before that
committee. It may be only a proof that women's rights are not
unrecognized nor their influence unfelt when I state the fact
that if there be such a rule as is suggested by the honorable
senator from Massachusetts of excluding persons from the audience
of that committee, on the occasion of the application of the
ladies a hearing was granted, and they came in force,--not only
force in numbers, but force in the character and intelligence of
those who appeared before the committee. They were listened to
with great respect, but their views were not concurred in by the
committee as it was then composed. We were all entertained by the
bright wit, the clever and, in my judgment, in many respects, the
just sarcasm of our honorable friend from Missouri [Mr. Vest],
but my habit is not to consider public measures in a jocular
light; it is not to consider a question of this kind in a jocular
light. Whatever may be the merits or demerits of this
proposition, whatever may be the reasons for or against it, no
man can doubt that it will strike at the very roots of the
present organization of society, and that its consequences will
be most profound and far-reaching should the advocates of the
measure proposed prevail.
Therefore it is that I think this subject should not be
considered separately; it should not have a special
committee--either of advocates or opponents arranged for its
consideration; but it should go where proposed amendments to the
fundamental law of the land have always been sent for
consideration,--to that committee to which judicial questions,
questions of a constitutional nature, have always in the history
of this government been committed. There is no need, there is no
justice, there is no wisdom in attempting to separate the fate of
this question, which affects society so profoundly and generally,
from the other questions that affect society. It cannot be made a
specialty: it ought not to be. You cannot tear this question from
the great contest of human passions, affections, and interests
which surround it, and treat it as a thing by itself. It has many
sides from which it may be viewed, some that are not proper or
fitting for this forum, and a discussion now in public. There are
the claims of religion itself to be considered in connection with
this case. Civil rights, social rights, political rights,
religious rights, all are bound up in the consideration of a
measure like this. In its consideration you cannot safely attempt
to segregate this question and leave it untouched and
uninfluenced by all those other questions by which it is
surrounded and in the consideration of which it is bound to be
connected and concerned. Therefore, without going further,
prematurely, into a discussion of the merits of the proposition
itself or its desirability, I say that it should take the usual
course which the practice and laws of this body have given to
grave public questions. Let it go to the Committee on the
Judiciary, and let them, under their sense of duty, deal with it
according to its gravity and importance, and if it be here
returned let it be passed upon by the grave deliberations of the
Senate itself. I hope the special committee proposed will not be
raised, and I trust the Senate will concur with me in thinking
that the subject should be sent to the Committee on the
Judiciary.
Mr. LOGAN rose.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The morning hour has expired.
Mr. LOGAN: I want to say just one word.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: It requires unanimous consent.
Mr. LOGAN: I do not wish to make a speech; I merely desire to say
a word in response to what the senator from Delaware [Mr. Bayard]
has said in relation to the reference to the Judiciary Committee.
Mr. HARRIS: I ask unanimous consent that the senator from
Illinois may proceed.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: There being no objection unanimous
consent will be presumed to have been given for the senator from
Illinois to make his explanation.
Mr. LOGAN: This question having been once before the Judiciary
Committee, and it being a request by many ladies, who are
citizens of the United States just as we are, that they should
have a special committee of the Senate before which they can be
heard, I deem it proper and right, without any committal whatever
in reference to my own views, that they should have that
committee. It is nothing but fair, just, and right that they
should have a committee organized as nearly as can be in the
Senate in favor of the views they desire to present. It is
treating them only as other citizens would desire to be treated
before a body of this character. I am, therefore, opposed to the
reference of the proposition to the Judiciary Committee, and I
hope the Senate will give these ladies a special committee where
they can be heard, and that that committee may be so organized as
that it will be as favorable to their views as possible, so that
they may have a fair hearing. That is all I desire to say.
Mr. MORRILL: I hope this subject will be concluded this morning,
otherwise it is to come up constantly and monopolize all the time
of the morning hour. I do not think it will require many minutes
more to dispose of it now.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The Chair will entertain a motion on
that subject.
Mr. MORRILL: I move to set aside other business until this
resolution shall be disposed of. If it should continue any length
of time of course I would withdraw the suggestion.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The senator from Vermont--
Mr. VOORHEES: Mr. President, I feel constrained to call for the
regular order.
DECEMBER 19, 1881.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: Are there further "concurrent or
other resolutions"?
Mr. HOAR: I call up the resolution in regard to woman suffrage,
reported by me from the Committee on Rules.
Mr. JONES of Florida: I ask for information how long the morning
hour is to extend?
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The regular business of the morning
hour is closed. The morning hour, however, will not expire until
twenty minutes past one. The senator from Massachusetts asks to
have taken up the resolution reported by him from the Committee
on Rules.
Mr. HOAR: I hope we may have a vote on the resolution this
morning.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The question is on the amendment
proposed by the senator from Delaware [Mr. Bayard], that the
subject be referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
Mr. HOAR: It is not intended by the resolution to commit the
Senate, or any senator in the slightest degree to any opinion
upon the question of woman suffrage, but it is merely the
question of a convenient mode of hearing. I hope we shall be
allowed to have a vote on the resolution.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: Is the Senate ready for the question
on the motion of the senator from Delaware?
Mr. BAYARD and Mr. FARLEY called for the yeas and nays, and they
were ordered.
Mr. BECK: Mr. President, I have received a number of
communications from very respectable ladies in my own State upon
this important question; but I am unable to comply with their
request and support the female suffrage which they advocate. I
shall vote for the reference to the Committee on the Judiciary in
order that there may be a thorough investigation of the question.
I wholly disagree with the suggestion of the senator from
Illinois [Mr. Logan], that a committee ought to be appointed as
favorable to the views of these ladies as possible. I desire a
committee that will have no views, for or against them, except
what is best for the public good. Such a committee I understand
the Committee on the Judiciary to be.
I desire to say only in a word that the difficulty I have and the
question I desire the Committee on the Judiciary to report upon
is, the effect of this question upon suffrage. By the fifteenth
amendment to the Constitution of the United States there can be
no discrimination made in regard to voting on account of race,
color or previous condition. Intelligence is properly regarded as
one of the fundamental principles of fair suffrage. We have been
compelled in the last ten years to allow all the colored men of
the South to become voters. There is a mass of ignorance there to
be absorbed that will take years and years of care in order to
bring that class up to the standard of intelligent voters. The
several States are addressing themselves to that task as
earnestly as possible. Now it is proposed that all the women of
the country shall vote; that all the colored women of the South,
who are as much more ignorant than the colored men as it is
possible to imagine, shall vote. Not one perhaps in a hundred of
them can read or write. The colored men have had the advantages
of communication with other men in a variety of forms. Many of
them have considerable intelligence; but the colored women have
not had equal chances. Take them from their wash-tubs and their
household work and they are absolutely ignorant of the new duties
of voting citizens. The intelligent ladies of the North and the
West and the South cannot vote without extending that privilege
to that class of ignorant colored people. I doubt whether any man
will say that it is safe for the republic now, when we are going
through the problem we are obliged to solve, to fling in this
additional mass of ignorance upon the suffrage of the country.
Why, sir, a rich corporation or a body of men of wealth could buy
them up for fifty cents apiece, and they would vote without
knowing what they were doing for the side that paid most. Yet we
are asked to confer suffrage upon them, and to have a committee
appointed as favorable to that view as possible, so as to get a
favorable report upon it!
I want the Committee on the Judiciary to tell the congress and
the country whether they think it is good policy now to confer
suffrage on all the colored women of the South, ignorant as they
are known to be, and thus add to the ignorance that we are now
struggling with, and whether the republic can be sustained upon
such a basis as that. For that reason, and because I want that
information from an unbiased committee, because I know that
suffrage has been degraded sufficiently already, and because it
would be degraded infinitely more if a report favorable to this
extension of suffrage should be adopted and passed through
congress, I am opposed to this movement. No matter if there are a
number of respectable ladies who are competent to vote and desire
it to be done, because of the very fact that they cannot be
allowed this privilege without giving all the mass of ignorant
colored women in the country the right to vote, thus bringing in
a mass of ignorance that would crush and degrade the suffrage of
this country almost beyond conception, I shall vote to refer the
subject to the Judiciary Committee, and I shall await their
report with a good deal of anxiety.
Mr. MORGAN: Mr. President--
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The morning hour has expired, and
the unfinished business is before the Senate.
DECEMBER 20, 1881.
Mr. HOAR: I now call up the resolution for appointing a special
committee on woman suffrage.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The morning hour having expired, the
senator from Massachusetts calls up the resolution which was
under consideration yesterday.
Mr. INGALLS: What is the regular order?
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: There is no regular unfinished
business. The senator from Florida [Mr. Call] gave notice
yesterday that he would ask the indulgence of the Senate to-day
to consider the subject of homestead rights.
Mr. HOAR: I hope this matter may be disposed of. It is very
unpleasant to me to stand before the Senate in this way, taking
up its time with this matter in a five minutes' debate every day
in succession for an unlimited period of time. It is a matter
which every senator understands. It has nothing to do with the
merits of the woman suffrage question at all. It is a mere desire
on the part of these people to have a particular form of hearing,
which seems to me the most convenient for the Senate, and I hope
the Senate will be willing to vote on the resolution and let it
pass.
Mr. MORGAN: I have no objection to proceeding to the
consideration of the resolution, but I desire to address the
Senate upon it.
Mr. HOAR: I think I must ask now as a favor of the senator from
Alabama that he let the resolution be disposed of promptly.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The senator from Alabama states that
he has no objection to the present consideration of the
resolution, but he asks leave to make some remarks upon it. The
Chair hearing no objection to the consideration of the
resolution, it is before the Senate.
Mr. FARLEY: I object to the consideration of the resolution.
Mr. HOAR: I move to take it up.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The senator from Massachusetts calls
it up as a matter of right. If a majority of the Senate agree to
take up the resolution it is before the Senate, and the Chair
will put the question. The question is on agreeing to the motion
of the senator from Massachusetts to proceed to the consideration
of the resolution. [The motion was agreed to; and the Senate
resumed the consideration of the resolution reported from the
Committee on Rules by Mr. Hoar on the 13th instant, which was
read.]
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The pending question is on the
motion of the senator from Delaware [Mr. Bayard] to refer the
subject to the Committee on the Judiciary, on which the yeas and
nays have been ordered.
Mr. MORGAN: Mr. President, I stand in a different relation to
this question from that of the senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck],
who said yesterday that he had received a number of
communications from very respectable ladies in his own State upon
this very important subject, and yet felt constrained by a sense
of duty to deny the action which they solicited at the hands of
congress. I am not informed that any woman from Alabama has ever
sent a petition to the Senate, or to either house, upon this
matter. Indeed, it is my impression that no petitions or letters
have ever been addressed by any lady in the State of Alabama to
either house of congress upon this question. It may be that that
peculiar type of civilization which drives women from their homes
to the ballot-box to seek redress and protection against their
husbands has never yet reached the State of Alabama, and I shall
not be disagreeably disappointed if it should never come upon our
people, for they have lived in harmony and in prosperity now for
many years. Besides the relief which the State has seen proper to
give to married women in respect of their separate estates, we
have not thought it wise or politic in any sense to go further
and undertake to make a line of demarkation between the husband
and wife as politicians. On the contrary, according to our
estimate of a proper civilization, we look to the family relation
as being the true foundation of our republican institutions.
Strike out the family relation, disband the family, destroy the
proper authority of the person at the head of the family, either
the wife or the husband, and you take from popular government all
legitimate foundation.
The measure which is now brought before the Senate of the United
States is but the initial measure of a series which has been
urged upon the attention of States and territories, and upon the
attention of the Congress of the United States in various forms
to draw a line of political demarkation through a man's
household, through his fireside, and to open to the intrusion of
politics and politicians that sacred circle of the family where
no man should be permitted to intrude without the consent of both
the heads of the family. What picture could be more disagreeable
or more disgusting than to have a pot-house politician introduce
himself into a gentleman's family, with his wife seated at one
side of the fireplace and himself at the other, and this man
coming between to urge arguments why the wife should oppose the
policy that the husband advocates, or that the husband should
oppose the policy that the wife advocates?
If this measure means anything it is a proposition that the
Senate of the United States shall first vote to carry into effect
this unjust and improper intrusion into the home circle. Suppose
this resolution to raise a select committee should be passed:
that committee will have its hands full and its ears full of
petitions and applications and speeches from strong-minded women,
and of course it must make some report to the Senate; and we
shall have this subject introduced in here as one that requires a
peculiar application of the powers of the Senate for its
digestion and for the completion of the bills and measures
founded upon it. At the next session of congress this select
committee will become a standing committee of the Senate, and
then we shall have that which appears to be the most potential
and at the same time the most dangerous element in politics
to-day, agitation, agitation, agitation. It seems that the
legislators of the United States Government are not to be allowed
to pass in quiet judgment upon measures of this character, but
like many other things which are addressing themselves to the
attention of the people on this side of the water and the other,
they must all be moved against the Senate and against the House
by agitation. You raise your committee and allow the agitators to
come before them, yea, more than that, you invite them to come;
and what is the result? The Congress of the United States will
for the next ten or perhaps twenty years be continually assailed
for special and peculiar legislation in favor of the women of the
land.
I do not understand that a woman in this country has any more
right to a select committee than a man has. It would be just as
rational and as proper in every legislative and parliamentary
sense to have a select committee for the consideration of the
rights of men as to have a committee for the consideration of the
rights of women. I object, sir, to this disseverance between the
sexes, and I object to the Senate of the United States giving its
sanction in advance or in any way to this character of
legislation. It is a false principle, and it will work evil, and
only evil, in this country.
What jurisdiction do you expect to exercise in the Senate of the
United States for the benefit of the women in respect of suffrage
or in respect of separate estates? Where are the boundaries of
your jurisdiction? You find them in the territories and in the
District of Columbia. If you expect to proceed into the States
you must have the Constitution of the United States amended so as
to put our wives and our daughters upon the footing of those who
are provided for in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. Your
jurisdiction is limited to the territories and to the District of
Columbia.
Inasmuch as this measure, I understand, has been made a party
measure by the decree of a caucus, I propose to make some little
inquiry into the past legislation of the Congress of the United
States under Republican rule in respect of the extension of the
right of suffrage to certain classes of people in this country. I
will take up first the territories.
Let us look for a moment at the result of woman suffrage in some
of the territories. The territorial legislature of Utah has gone
forward and conferred the right of suffrage upon women. The
population in the last decade has reached from 64,000, I believe,
to about 150,000. The territorial legislature of Utah conferred
upon the females of that territory the right of suffrage, and how
have they exercised that right? Sir, I am ashamed to say it, but
it is known to the world that the power of Mormonism and polygamy
in Utah territory is sustained by female suffrage. You cannot get
rid of those laws. Ninety per cent. of the legislative power of
Utah territory is Mormon and polygamous. If female suffrage is to
be incorporated into the laws of our country with a view to the
amelioration of our morals or our political sentiments, we stand
aghast at the spectacle of what has been wrought by its exercise
in the territory of Utah. There stands a power supporting the
crime of polygamy through what they call a divine inspiration, or
teaching from God, and all the power of the judges of the United
States and of the Congress of the United States has been
unavailing to break it down. Who have upheld it? Those who in the
family circle represent one husband to fifteen women. A continual
accumulation of the power of the church and of polygamy is going
on, and when the Gentiles, as they are called, enter that
territory with the view of breaking it up they are confronted by
the women, who are allowed to vote, and from whom we should
naturally expect a better and a higher morality in reference to
subjects of the kind. But this only shows the power of man over
woman. It only shows how through her tender affections, her
delicate sensibilities, and her confiding spirit she can be made
the very slave and bond-servant of man, and can scarcely ever be
made an independent participant in the stronger exercise of the
powers which God seems to have intrusted to him. Never was there
a picture more disgusting or more condemnatory of the extension
of the franchise to women as contradistinguished from men than is
presented in the territory of Utah to-day.
Where is the necessity of raising the number of voters in the
United States from 10,000,000 to 20,000,000? That would be the
direct effect of conferring suffrage upon the women, for they are
at least one-half, if not a little more than one-half, of the
entire population of the country above the age of twenty-one. We
have now masses of voters so enormous in numbers as that it seems
to be almost beyond the power of the law to execute the purposes
of the elective franchise with justice, with propriety, and
without crime. How much would these difficulties and these
intrinsic troubles be increased if we should raise the number of
voters from 10,000,000 to 20,000,000 in the United States? That
would be the direct and immediate effect of conferring the
franchise upon the women. What would be the next effect of such
an extension of the suffrage? It was described by my friend from
Missouri [Mr. Vest] and by other senators who have spoken upon
this subject. The effect would be to drive the ladies of the
land, as they are termed, the well-bred and well-educated women,
the women of nice sensibilities, within their home circle, there
to remain, while the ruder of that sex would thrust themselves
out on the hustings and at the ballot-box, and fight their way to
the polls through negroes and others who are not the best of
company even at the polls, to say nothing of the disgrace of
association with them. You would paralyze one-third at least of
the women of this land by the very vulgarity of the overture made
to them that they should go struggling to the polls in order to
vote in common with the herd of men. They would not undertake it.
The most intelligent and trustworthy part of the suffrage thus
placed upon the land would never be available, while that which
was not worthy of respect either for its character or for its
information would take the matter in hand and move along in the
circle of politicians to cast their suffrages at the ballot-box.
As the States to be formed out of the territories are admitted
into the Union, they will come stamped with the characteristics
which the legislatures of the territories have imprinted upon
them; and if after due consideration in those territories the men
who have the regulation of public affairs should come to the
conclusion that it was best to have woman suffrage, then we can
allow them, under existing laws, to go on and perfect their
systems and apply for admission into the Union with them as they
may choose to adopt them and to shape them. The law upon that
subject as it exists is liberal enough, for it gives to the
legislatures the right to regulate the qualifications of
suffrage. It leaves it to each local community, wherever it may
be throughout the territories of the United States, to determine
for itself what it may prefer to have.
Is it the object in the raising of this committee only that it
shall have so many speeches made, so much talk about it, or is it
to be the object of the committee to have legislation brought
here? If you bring legislation here, what will you bring? An
amendment to the constitution like the fourteenth amendment, or
else some provision obligatory upon the territories by which
female suffrage shall be allowed there, whether the people want
it or whether they do not? For my part, before this session of
congress ends I intend to introduce a bill to repeal woman
suffrage in the territory of Utah, knowing and believing that
that will be the most effectual remedy for the extirpation of
polygamy in that unfortunate territory. If you choose to repeal
the laws of any territory conferring the right of suffrage upon
women you have the power in congress to do it; but there are no
measures introduced here and none advocated in that direction.
The whole drift of this movement is in the other direction. This
committee is sought to be raised either for the accommodation of
some senator who wants a chairmanship and a clerk, or it is
sought to be raised for the purpose of encouraging a raid on the
laws and traditions of this country, which I think would end in
our total demoralization, I therefore oppose this measure in the
beginning, and I expect to oppose it as far as it may go.
Now let us notice for a moment the case of the District of
Columbia. There are some senators here who have given themselves
a great deal of trouble in the advocacy of the right of suffrage
of the people of the United States, and especially of the colored
people. They put themselves to great trouble, and doubtless at
some expense of feeling, to worry and beset and harry gentlemen
who come from certain States of this Union, in reference to the
votes of the negroes: and yet these very gentlemen have been
either in this House or in the other when the Republican party
has had a two-thirds majority of both branches and has
deliberately taken from the people of the District of Columbia
the right to elect any officer from a constable to a mayor, all
because when the experiment was tried here it was found that the
negroes were a little too strong. There was too much African
suffrage in the ballot-box, and they must get rid of it, and to
get rid of it on terms of equality they have disfranchised every
man in the District of Columbia.
I shall have more faith in the sincerity of the declarations of
gentlemen of their desire to have the women vote when I see that
they have made some step toward the restoration of the right of
suffrage to the people of the District of Columbia. While they
let this blot remain upon our law, while they allow this damning
conviction to stand, they may stare us in the face and accuse us
continually of a want of candor and sincerity on this subject,
but they will address their arguments to me in vain, even as
coming from men who have an infatuation upon the subject. I do
not believe a word of it, Mr. President.
I cannot be convinced against these facts that this new movement
in favor of female suffrage means anything more than to add
another patch to the worn-out garment of Republicanism, which
they patched with Mahoneism in Virginia, with repudiation
elsewhere, and which they now seek to patch further by putting on
the delicate little silk covering of woman suffrage. I do not
believe that this movement has its root and branch in any sincere
desire to give to the women of this land the right of suffrage. I
think it is a mere party movement with a view of attempting to
draw into the reach of the Republican party some little support
from the sympathy and interest they suppose the ladies will take
in their cause if they should advocate it here. No bill, perhaps,
is expected to be reported. The committee will sit and listen and
profess to be charmed and enlightened and instructed by what may
be said, and then the subject will be passed by without any
actual effort to secure the passage of a bill.
Introduce your bills and let them go to the Judiciary Committee,
where the rights of men are to be considered as well as the
rights of women. If this subject is of that pressing national
importance which senators seem to think it is, it is not to be
supposed that the Committee on the Judiciary will fail to give it
profound and early attention. When you bring a select committee
forward under the circumstances under which this is to be raised,
you must not expect us to give credit generally to the idea that
the real purpose is to advance the cause of woman suffrage, but
rather that the real purpose is to advance the cause of political
domination in this country. I can see no reason for the raising
of this select committee, unless it be to furnish some senator,
as I have remarked, with a clerk and messenger. If that were the
avowed reason or could even be intimated, I think I should be
disposed to yield that courtesy to the senator, whoever he might
be; but I cannot do it under the false pretext that the real
object is to bring forward measures here for the introduction of
woman suffrage into the District of Columbia, where we have no
suffrage, or into the territories, where they have all the
suffrage that the territorial legislatures see proper to give
them. I therefore shall oppose the resolution.
Mr. BAYARD: I move the that Senate proceed to the consideration
of executive business. [The motion was agreed to.]
JANUARY 9, 1882.
Mr. HOAR: I now ask for the consideration of the resolution
relating to a select committee on woman suffrage.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: There being ten minutes left of the
morning hour, the senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Hoar] asks for
the consideration of the resolution relating to woman suffrage.
The pending question is on the motion of the senator from
Delaware [Mr. Bayard] to refer the subject-matter to the
Committee on the Judiciary, on which the yeas and nays have been
ordered.
The principal legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BUTLER (when Mr. Pugh's name was called): I was requested by
the senator from Alabama [Mr. Pugh] to announce his pair with the
senator from New York [Mr. Miller].
The roll-call was concluded.
Mr. TELLER: On this question I am paired with the senator from
Alabama [Mr. Morgan]. If the senator from Alabama were present, I
should vote "nay."
Mr. MCPHERSON (after having voted in the affirmative): I rise to
ask the privilege of withdrawing my vote. I am paired with my
colleague [Mr. Sewell] on all political questions, and this seems
to have taken a political shape.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The senator from New Jersey
withdraws his vote.
The result was announced--yeas 27, nays 31. So the motion was not
agreed to.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The question recurs on the adoption
of the resolution.
Mr. EDMUNDS: Let it be read for information. The secretary read
the resolution.
Mr. EDMUNDS: "Shall" ought to be stricken out and "may" inserted,
because the Senate ought always to have the power to refer any
particular measure as it pleases.
Mr. HOAR: I have no objection to that modification.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The senator from Massachusetts
accepts the suggestion of the senator from Vermont, and the word
"may" will be substituted for "shall."
Mr. HILL of Georgia: I wish to say that I have opposed all
resolutions, whether originating on the other side of the chamber
or on this side, appointing special committees. They are all
wrong. They are not founded, in my judgment, on a correct
principle. There is no necessity to raise a select committee for
this business. The standing committees of the Senate are ample to
do everything that it is proposed the select committee asked for
shall do. The only result of appointing more special committees
is to have just that many more clerks, just that much more
expense, just that many more committee-rooms. This is not the
first time I have opposed the raising of a select committee.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The morning hour has expired, and it
requires unanimous consent for the senator from Georgia to
proceed with his remarks.
JANUARY 21, 1882.
Mr. HOAR: I move that the Senate proceed with the consideration
of the resolution.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: If there is no objection, unanimous
consent will be assumed.
Mr. FARLEY and others: I object.
Mr. HOAR: I move that the Senate proceed with the consideration
of the resolution.
Mr. SHERMAN: Let it be proceeded with informally, subject to the
call for other business.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The question is on the motion of the
senator from Massachusetts. [Putting the question.] The Chair is
uncertain from the sound and will ask for a division.
The motion was agreed to; there being on a division--ayes 32,
noes 20.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The resolution is before the Senate
and the senator from Georgia [Mr. Hill] has the floor.
Mr. HILL of Georgia: Mr. President, I do not intend to say one
word on the subject of woman suffrage. I shall not get into that
discussion which was alluded to by the senator from
Massachusetts. The senator will remember, if he refreshes his
recollection, that when my late colleague, now no longer a
senator, made a motion for the appointment of a select committee
in relation to the inter-oceanic canal, I opposed it distinctly,
though it came from my colleague, upon the ground that the
appointment of select committees ought to stop, that it was
wrong; and I oppose this resolution for the same reason. I voted
against a resolution to raise a select committee offered by a
senator on this side of the chamber at the present session, and I
have voted against all resolutions of that character.
No senator, in my judgment, will rise in his place in the Senate
and say that it is necessary to appoint a special committee to
consider the matters referred to in the resolution. It is true I
am a member of the committee, and perhaps ought not to refer to
it, but we have a standing committee, of which the distinguished
senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Hoar] is chairman, the Committee
on Privileges and Elections, that, I take occasion to say, is a
very proper committee for this matter to go to; and that
committee has almost nothing on earth to do. There is but one
single subject-matter now before it, and I believe there will be
scarcely another question before that committee at this session.
There is not a contested election; there is not a dispute about
anybody's seat; and yet it is a Committee on Privileges and
Elections. What is the reason for going on continually and
appointing these select committees, when there are standing
committees here, properly organized to consider the very question
specified by the resolution, with nothing to do?
Now, I am going to say one other thing, I do not pretend that the
purpose I am now about to state is the purpose of the senator
from Massachusetts. I have no reflections to make as to what this
resolution is intended for, but we do know that there is an idea
abroad that select committees are generally appointed for the
purpose of giving somebody a chairmanship, that somebody may have
a clerk. That is not the case here, I dare say. I do not mean to
intimate that it is the case here, but it ought to be put a stop
to; it is all wrong. I think, though, that there ought to be a
resolution passed by this body giving every senator who has not a
committee a clerk. Everybody knows that every chairman of a
committee has a clerk in the clerk of that committee. The other
senators, at least in my opinion, ought each to have a clerk. I
would vote for such a resolution. I believe it would be right,
and I believe the country would approve it. Every senator knows
that he has more business to attend to here than he can possibly
perform. Why, sir, if I were to attend to all the business in the
departments and otherwise that my constituents ask me to perform,
I could not discharge half my duties in this chamber; and every
senator, I dare say, has the same experience. It is to the
public interest, therefore, in my judgment, that every senator
should have a clerk. I am unable to employ a clerk from my own
funds; many other senators are more fortunately situated; but
still I must do that or move the appointment of a special
committee for the purpose in an indirect way of getting a clerk.
It is not right.
It has been said that if senators each have a clerk, for
instance, a clerk at $100 a month salary during the session,
which would be a very small matter, the members of the other
House would each want a clerk. It does not follow. There is a
vast difference. A member of the other House represents a narrow
district, a single district; a senator represents a whole State.
Take the State of New York. There are thirty-three
representatives in the House from the State of New York; there
are but two senators here from that State. Those two senators in
all likelihood have as much business to perform here for their
constituents as the thirty-three members of the House. There is,
therefore, an eminent reason why a senator should have a clerk
and why a member of the House should not.
I cannot vote for the appointment of select committees unless you
raise a select committee for every senator in the body so as to
give him a clerk. You have appointed select committees for this
business and for that. It gives a few men an advantage when the
business of the country does not require it, whereas if you
appointed a clerk for each senator, with a nominal salary of $100
per month during the session, it would enable every senator to do
his work more efficiently both here and for his constituents; it
would put all the senators on a just equality; it would be in
furtherance of the public interest; and it would avoid what I
consider (with all due deference and not meaning to be offensive)
the unseemly habit of constantly moving the appointment of select
committees in this body. This is all I have to say. I vote
against the resolution simply because I am opposed to the
appointment of a select committee for this or any other purpose
that I can now think of.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The question is on the adoption of
the resolution.
Mr. VEST called for the yeas and nays, and they were ordered, and
the principal legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. JONES of Florida (when his name was called): I propose to
vote for this resolution, but at the same time I do not regard my
vote as in any way committing myself on the subject of female
suffrage. If they think an investigation of this subject should
be had in this way, I for one am willing to have it. I vote
"yea."
Mr. TELLER, (when his name was called): On this question I am
paired with the senator from Alabama [Mr. Morgan]; otherwise I
should vote "yea."
The roll-call having been concluded, the result was
announced--yeas 35, nays 23; so the resolution was agreed
to.[82]
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, December 20, 1881.
Mr. WHITE of Kentucky: I ask consent to offer for consideration
at this time the resolution which I send to the clerk's desk.
The clerk read as follows:
_Resolved_, That a select committee of seven members of the
House of Representatives be appointed by the Speaker, to
whom shall be referred all petitions, bills and resolves
providing for the extension of suffrage to women, or for the
removal of legal disabilities.
Mr. MILLS of Texas: I object.
Mr. KELLEY of Pennsylvania: A similar resolution has already been
referred to the Committee on Rules.
The SPEAKER (Mr. Keifer of Ohio): Objection being made to its
consideration at this time, the resolution will be referred to
the Committee on Rules.
The resolution was referred accordingly.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, February 25, 1882.
Mr. REED of Maine: I rise to make a privileged report. The
Committee on Rules, to whom were referred sundry resolutions
relating to the subject, have instructed me to report the
resolution which I send to the desk.
The clerk read as follows:
_Resolved_, That a select committee of nine members be
appointed, to whom shall be referred all petitions, bills
and resolves asking for the extension of suffrage to women
or the removal of their legal disabilities.
The SPEAKER: The question is on the adoption of the report of the
Committee on Rules.
Mr. HOLMAN of Indiana: I ask that the latter portion of the
resolution be again read. It was not heard in this part of the
house.
The resolution was again read.
Mr. TOWNSHEND of Illinois: I rise to make a parliamentary
inquiry.
The SPEAKER: The gentleman will state it.
Mr. TOWNSHEND: My inquiry is whether that resolution should not
go to the House calendar.
The SPEAKER: It is a privileged report under the rules of the
House from the Committee on Rules. The question is on the
adoption of the resolution.
Mr. MCMILLIN of Tennessee: I make the point of order that it must
lie over for one day.
The SPEAKER: It is the report of a committee privileged under the
rules.
Mr. MCMILLIN: The committee are privileged to report, but under
the rule the report has to lie over a day.
The SPEAKER: The gentleman from Tennessee will oblige the Chair
by directing his attention to any rule which requires such a
report to lie over one day. It changes no standing rule or order
of the House.
Mr. MCMILLIN: It does, by making a change in the number and
nature of the committees. All measures of a particular class, the
resolution states, must be referred to the proposed committee,
whereas heretofore they have been referred to a different
committee. Therefore the resolution changes the rules of the
House.
The SPEAKER: The Chair is of opinion the resolution does not
rescind or change any standing rule of the House. The question is
on the adoption of the resolution.
Mr. SPRINGER: Mr. Speaker, I desire to call the attention of the
Chair to the fact that this does distinctly change one of the
standing rules of the House. One of the standing rules is--
The SPEAKER: The Chair has passed on that question, and no appeal
has been taken from his decision.
Mr. SPRINGER: I desire to call the attention of the Chair to Rule
10, which specifically provides for the appointment of the full
number of committees this House is to have, and this is not one
of them.
The SPEAKER: Not one of the standing committees, but a select
committee.
Mr. SPRINGER: That rule provides there shall be a certain number
of committees, the names of which are therein given.
Mr. REED: I sincerely hope this will not be made a matter of
technical discussion or debate. It is a matter upon which members
of this House must have opinions which they can express by
voting, in a very short time, without taking up the attention of
the House beyond what is really necessary for a bare discussion
of the merits of the question.
Mr. MCMILLIN: Will the gentleman permit me to ask him a question?
Mr. REED: Certainly.
Mr. MCMILLIN: Would you not, as a parliamentarian, concede that
this does change the existing rules of the House?
Mr. REED: By no manner of means, especially when the accomplished
Speaker has decided the other way, and no gentleman has taken an
appeal from his decision. [Laughter.]
Mr. MCMILLIN: Then you have no opinion beyond his decision?
The SPEAKER: The Chair will state to the gentleman from Illinois
[Mr. Springer] that this resolution does not change any of the
standing committees of the House which are provided for in Rule
10.
Mr. SPRINGER: It provides for a new committee.
The SPEAKER: It provides for a select committee. The subject was
referred to the Committee on Rules by order of the House, and
this is a report on the resolution so referred.
Mr. SPRINGER: The rule provides that no standing rule or order of
the House shall be rescinded or changed without one day's notice.
The SPEAKER: The Chair would decide that this does not propose
any change or rescinding of any standing rule of the House.
Mr. SPRINGER: Does the Chair hold that the making of a new rule
is not a change of the existing rules?
The SPEAKER: The Chair does not decide anything of the kind.
Mr. SPRINGER: What does the Chair decide?
The SPEAKER: The Chair does not undertake to decide any such
question, for it is not now presented.
Mr. SPRINGER: Is this not a new rule?
The SPEAKER: It is not.
Mr. SPRINGER: It is not?
The SPEAKER: It is a provision for a select committee.
Mr. SPRINGER: Can you have a committee without a rule of the
House providing for it?
The SPEAKER: The question is on the adoption of the resolution
reported from the Committee on Rules.
Mr. ATKINS: On that question I call for the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The question was taken and there were--yeas 115, nays 84, not
voting 93; so the resolution was carried.[83]
Mr. REED moved to reconsider the vote by which the resolution was
adopted; and also moved that the motion to reconsider be laid on
the table. The latter motion was agreed to.
On Monday, March 13, 1882, the Chair announced the appointment of
the following gentlemen as the Select Committee on Woman Suffrage
authorized by the House: Mr. Camp of New York, Mr. White of
Kentucky, Mr. Sherwin of Illinois, Mr. Stone of Massachusetts,
Mr. Hepburn of Iowa, Mr. Springer of Illinois, Mr. Vance of North
Carolina, Mr. Muldrow of Mississippi and Mr. Stockslager of
Indiana.
The Annual Washington Convention was held in Lincoln Hall as usual,
January 18, 19, 20, 1882. The afternoon before the convention, at
an executive session held at the Riggs House, forty delegates were
present from fourteen different States.[84] Among these were five
from Massachusetts, and for the first time that State was
represented on the platform of the National Association. Mrs.
Stanton gave the opening address, and made some amusing criticisms
on a recent debate on Senator Hoar's proposition for a special
committee on the rights and disabilities of women. Such a committee
had been under debate for several years and it was during this
convention that the bill passed the Senate.
Invitations to attend the convention were sent to all the members
of congress, and many were present during the various sessions.
Miss Ellen H. Sheldon, secretary, read the minutes of the last
convention, and, instead of the usual dry skeleton of facts, she
gave a glowing description of that eventful occasion. Clara B.
Colby gave an interesting narration of the progress of woman
suffrage in Nebraska, and of the efforts being made to carry the
proposition pending before the people, to strike the word "male"
from the constitution in the coming November election.
Rev. Frederick A. Hinckley of Providence, R. I., spoke upon "Our
Demand in the Light of Evolution." He said:
It is about a century since our forefathers declared that
"governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed," and about a half century since woman began to see that
she ought to be included in this declaration. At present the
expressions of the Declaration of Independence are a "glittering
generality," for only one-half of the people "consent." Modern
science has demonstrated the truth of evolution--like causes
produce like results--and this is seen in the progress of
government and of woman. From the time when physical force ruled,
up to the present, when _ostensibly_ in the United States every
person is his own ruler, there have been many steps. The
importance of the masses has steadily taken the place of the
importance of individuals. At first the idea was "You shall obey
because I say so"; then, "You shall obey because I am your
superior, and will protect you"; now it is "Everyone shall be his
own protector." But we do not live up to this idea while only
one-half instead of the whole of "everyone" is his own protector.
The phases of woman's advancement are fitly described by the four
words--slave, subject, inferior, dependent; and no step in this
advance has been accomplished without a hard struggle. The logic
of evolution in government points to universal suffrage. The same
logic points to unqualified individual freedom for woman.
Mrs. Blake in reporting from her State said:
Governor Cornell was the first New York Governor to mention woman
in an inaugural address, and the bill allowing women to vote in
school elections was passed the same winter. There was a great
deal of opposition in different parts of the State to the voting
of women. In some country districts where the polls are in the
school-houses, certain men went early and locked the doors,
filled the room with smoke and even put tobacco on the stoves to
make it as disagreeable for the women as possible. More
respectable men had to ventilate and clean the rooms to make them
decent for either man or woman. From this lowest class of
opponents up to those who say: "My dear, you'd better not make
yourself conspicuous!" the spirit is the same. Believing that
under our constitution women are already entitled to the ballot,
we do not ask for a constitutional amendment, but for a bill
extending the suffrage at once.
Mrs. COLBY in contrast to this stated that in Nebraska the
greatest courtesy had always been shown to women who voted at
school elections. There is only one organized effort against
woman suffrage, and that is made by the "Sons of Liberty!" "O,
Consistency, thou art a jewel!"
The following resolution introduced into the Senate, January 11, by
Mr. Morgan of Alabama, was finally referred to the Committee on
Woman Suffrage. This was the first subject brought before them for
action.
_Resolved_, That the committee on "The extension of suffrage
to women, or the removal of their disabilities," be directed
to examine into the state of the law regulating the right of
suffrage in the territory of Utah, and report a bill to set
aside and annul any law or laws enacted by the legislature
of said territory conferring upon women the right of
suffrage.
Miss Couzins made an admirable speech on the following resolution:
_Resolved_, That Senator Morgan's bill to deprive the
_women_ of Utah of the right of suffrage because of the
social institutions and religious faith originated and
maintained by the _men_ of the territory, is a travesty on
common justice. While the wife has not absolute possession
of even one husband, and the husband has many wives, surely
the men and not the women, if either, should be deprived of
the suffrage.
Miss COUZINS said: The task of dealing fairly and justly with
this territorial complication should never be committed to the
blundering legislation of man alone. His success as a legislator
and executive for woman in the past does not inspire a confidence
that in this most serious problem he will be any the less an
unbiased judge and law-giver. This government of men permitted
the establishment of a religious colony, so called, whose basis
of faith was the complete humiliation of women; recognized the
system by appointing its chief, Brigham Young, governor of the
territory, under whose fostering care polygamy grew to its
present proportions.
That woman has not thrown off the yoke of religious despotism can
be readily appreciated when we recognize the fact that man, from
time immemorial, has played upon her religious faith to exalt his
own attributes and degrade hers; that through this teaching her
abiding belief in his superior capacity to interpret scriptural
truths for her has been the means of sacrificing her power of
mind, her tender affections, her delicate sensibilities, on the
altar of his base selfishness throughout the ages. Orthodoxy
recognizes no "inspiration" for woman to-day. She is not "called"
save to serve man. Under its teaching her thought has been
padlocked in the name of Divinity, and her lips sealed in
sacrilegious pretense of authority from heaven; and nothing so
clearly bespeaks the degenerating influence of the ages of this
masculine teaching as the absolute faith manifested by the women
of Utah in this _ipse dixit_ of man's religious doctrine. Their
emancipation must necessarily be slow.
The paternal government allowed polygamy to be planted, take
root, and grow in a wilderness where the attraction of nobler
minds and freer thoughts was not known. The victims came from the
political despotisms of the old world to be shackled in a land of
freedom with a still darker despotism, and under the ægis of the
American flag they have borne children as a religious duty they
owed to God and man; and surely it can not be expected, even with
that grand emancipator, from king and priestcraft rule, the
ballot, that at once they will vote themselves outcast and their
children illegitimate.
It took the white men of this nation one hundred years to put
away that relic of barbarism, slavery; the removal of the twin
relic will come through liberty for woman, higher education for
children, and the incoming tide of Gentile immigration. The
fitting act of justice is not disfranchisement of woman, as
Senator Morgan proposes, and the reënactment of that old Adamic
cry: "The woman whom thou gavest," but the disfranchisement of
man, who is the only polygamist, and the stepping down and out of
the sex as a legislator under whose fostering care this evil has
grown. Retire to your sylvan groves and academic shades,
gentlemen, as Mrs. Stanton suggests, and let the Deborahs, the
Huldahs, and the Vashtis come to the front, and let us see what
we can do toward the remedy of your wretched legislation. But
suffrage for women in Utah has accomplished great good. I spent
one week there in close observation. Outside of their religious
convictions, the women are emphatic in condemnation of wrong.
Their votes banished the liquor saloon. I saw no drunkenness
anywhere; the poison of tobacco smoke is not allowed to vitiate
the air of heaven, either on the streets or in public assemblies.
Their court-room was a model of neatness and good order. Plants
were in the windows and handsome carpets graced the floor. During
my stay, the daughter of a Mormon, the then advocate-general of
the territory, was admitted to the bar by Chief-Justice McKean of
the United States Court, who, in fitting and beautiful language,
welcomed her to the profession as a woman whose knowledge of the
law fitted her to be the peer of any man in his court. She told
me that she detested polygamy, but felt that she could render
greater service to the emancipation of her sex inside of Utah
than out. At midnight I wandered, with one of my own sex, about
the streets to test the assertion that it was as safe for women
then as at mid-day. No bacchanalian shout rent the air; no man
was seen reeling in maudlin imbecility to his home. No guardians
put in an appearance, save the stars above our heads; no sound
awoke the stillness but the purling of the mountain brooks which
washed the streets in cleanliness and beauty. What other city on
this continent can present such a showing? With murder for man
and rapine for woman where man alone is maker and guardian of the
laws, it behooves him to pause ere he launches invectives at the
one result of woman's votes.
Mrs. Gougar, on our Washington platform for the first time,
delighted the audience with her readiness and wit. She has a good
voice, fine presence, and speaks fluently, without notes.
She spoke of the reformatory prison for women in her State, and
said that the statistics showed that eighty-two per cent. of the
women confined there were sent out reformed. Speaking of the
gallantry of men, she cited a case of a man who came to an
Indiana lawyer and desired him to make a will. The following
conversation ensued: "I want you to make this will so that my
wife will have $400 a year; that's enough for any woman." "Is she
the only wife you ever had?" "Yes." "How long have you been
married?" "Forty-two years." "How many children have you had?"
"Eleven." "Did you have all your property before marriage?" "No;
didn't have a cent; I've earned it all." "Has your wife helped
you in any way to earn it?" "Why, yes, I suppose she has; but
then I want to fix my will so she can only have $400 a year; it's
enough." "Well, sir, you will have to move out of the State of
Indiana then, for the law provides for the wife better than that,
and you will have to get another lawyer." It is needless to say
that this lawyer is a staunch champion of woman suffrage, and it
is pleasant to know that there are more such men being educated
by this agitation.
Mrs. Maxwell gave a fine recitation of "The Dying Soldier," at one
of the evening sessions. It was evident by the sparkling eyes of
the Indiana delegation that the ladies had in reserve some pleasant
surprise for the convention, which at last revealed itself in the
person of Judge Orth, a live member of congress from Indiana, who
stood up like a man and avowed his belief in woman suffrage. His
words were few but to the point, and his hearers all knew exactly
where he stood on the question.
The next evening the Nebraska delegation, determining not to be
outdone, captured one of their United States senators and
triumphantly brought him on the platform. It was a point gained to
have a congressman publicly give in his adhesion to the question,
but how much greater the achievement to appear in the convention
with a United States senator. It was a proud moment for Mrs. Colby
when Senator Saunders, a large man of fine proportions, stepped to
the front. But alas! her triumph over the Indiana ladies was short
indeed, for while the senator surpassed the representative in size
and official honors, he fell far below him in the logic of his
statements and the earnestness of his principles. In fact the
audience and the platform were in doubt at the close of his remarks
as to his true position on the question. Mrs. May Wright Sewall,
who followed him, sparkled with the satisfaction she expressed in
paying most glowing tributes to the men of Indiana and their State
institutions. She said:
The principal objection to woman suffrage has always been that it
will take women from their homes and destroy all home life. She
showed that there is not an interest of home which is not
represented in the State, and that the subordination of the State
to the family has kept pace with the subordination of physical to
spiritual force. Woman has an interest in everything which
affects the State, and only lacks the legitimate instrument of
these interests--the ballot--with which to enforce them. Life
regulates legislation. Domestic life is woman's sphere, but a
sphere of much larger dimensions than has ever yet been accorded
it, these dimensions reaching out and controlling the functions
of the State. The ballot is not a political or a military, but a
domestic necessity.
Mrs. Harriette R. Shattuck spoke on the golden rule, asking men to
put themselves in the place of disfranchised women, and then
legislate for them as they would be legislated for. Mrs. Robinson
gave a résumé of the legal, political and educational position of
women in Massachusetts. Mrs. Hooker showed that political equality
would dignify woman in home life, give added weight to her opinions
on all questions, and command new respect for her from all classes
of men. Mrs. Colby gave an interesting address on "The Social
Evolution of Woman":
She traced the history of woman from the time when she was bought
and sold, up to the present. She said that the first believer in
woman's rights was the one who first proposed that women should
be allowed to eat with their husbands. This once granted,
everything else has followed of necessity, and the ballot will be
the crowning right. Once women were not allowed to sing soprano
because it was the "governing part." From these and many like
indignities woman has gradually evolved until she now stands on
an equality with man in many social rights.
Martha McClellan Brown read an able essay on "The Power of the
Veto." She is a woman of fine presence, pleasing manners and a well
trained voice that can fill any hall. Her address was one of the
best in the convention and all felt that in her we had a valuable
acquisition to our Association. Mrs. Gage gave an able address on
"The Moral Force of Woman Suffrage."
During the first day of the convention a request, signed by the
officers of the association, was sent to the Special Committee on
Woman Suffrage in the Senate, asking for a hearing on the sixteenth
amendment to the constitution. The hearing was granted on Friday
morning, January 20, 1882. A distinguished speaker in England
having advised the friends of suffrage there to employ young and
attractive women to advocate the measure, as the speediest means of
success, Miss Anthony took the hint in making the selection for the
first hearing before the committee of those who had never been
heard before,[85] of whom some were young, and all attractive as
speakers. Miss Anthony said that she would introduce some new
speakers to the committee, in order to disprove the allegation that
"it was always the same old set." The committee listened to them
with undivided attention throughout, and at the conclusion of the
hearing the following resolution, offered by Senator George of
Mississippi, was adopted unanimously:
_Resolved_, That the committee are under obligations to the
representatives of the women of the United States for their
attendance this morning, and for the able and instructive
addresses which have been made, and that the committee
assure them that they will give to the subject of woman
suffrage the careful and impartial consideration which its
grave importance demands.
In describing the occasion for the _Boston Transcript_, Mrs.
Shattuck said:
As we stood in the committee-room and presented our plea for
freedom, we felt that at last we had obtained a fair hearing,
whatever its result might be. And the most encouraging sign of
the impression made by our words was the change in the faces of
some of the members of the committee as the speaking went on. At
first there was a look of indifference and scorn--merely
toleration; this gradually changed to interest mingled with
surprise; finally, as Miss Anthony closed with one of her most
eloquent appeals, all the faces showed a decided and almost eager
interest in what we had to say. Senator George, who certainly
looked more unpropitious than any other one, assured the ladies
that he would give to the subject of woman suffrage that careful
and impartial consideration which its grave importance demands.
This, from one who heralded his entrance by inquiring of Miss
Anthony, in stentorian tones, if she "wanted to go to war," was,
to say the least, a concession. The speakers were closely
questioned by some members of the committee, who afterwards told
us "that they had never heard a speech on the subject before and
were surprised to find so much in the demand, and to see such
ability as was manifested by the women before them."
The committee having expressed a wish to hear others on the
subject, appointed the next morning at 10 o'clock.[86] Mrs.
Stanton, being introduced by the chairman, said:
Gentlemen, when the news of the appointment of this committee was
flashed over the wires, you cannot imagine the satisfaction that
thrilled the hearts of your countrywomen. After fourteen years of
constant petitioning, we are grateful for even this slight
recognition at last. I never before felt such an interest in any
congressional committee, and I have no doubt that all who are
interested in this reform, share in my feelings. Fortunately your
names make a great couplet in rhyme,
Lapham, Anthony and Blair,
Jackson, George, Ferry and Fair.
which will enable us to remember them always. This I discovered
in writing your names in this volume, which allow me to present
you.
The gentlemen rising in turn received with a gracious bow "The
History of Woman Suffrage" which, Mrs. Stanton told them, would
furnish all the arguments they needed to defend their clients
against the ignorance and prejudice of the world. Mr. George of
Mississippi asked why this agitation was confined to Northern
women; he had never heard the ladies of the South express the wish
to vote. Mrs. Stanton referred him to those to whom the volume
before him was dedicated. "There," said she, "you will find the
names of two ladies from one of the most distinguished families in
South Carolina, who came North over forty years ago, and set this
ball for woman's freedom in motion. But for those noble women,
Sarah and Angelina Grimkè, we might not stand here to-day pleading
for justice and equality." As the speakers had requested the
committee to ask questions, they were frequently interrupted. All
urged the importance of a national protection, preferring
congressional action, to submitting the proposition to the popular
vote of the several States. On this point Mr. Jackson of Tennessee
asked many pertinent questions. Mrs. Shattuck, writing of this
occasion to the _Boston Transcript_, said:
One of the speakers eloquently testified to the interest of many
Southern women in this subject, and urged the Southern members of
the committee not to declare that the women of the South do not
want the ballot until they have investigated the matter. After
the hearing three Southern ladies, wives of congressmen, thanked
her for what she had said. The member from Mississippi showed a
great deal of interest and really became quite waked up before
the session ended. But, when we look at it in one light, there is
something exceedingly humiliating in the thought that women
representing the best intellect and the highest morality of our
country, should come here in their grand old age and ask men for
that which is theirs by right. Is it not time that this
aristocracy of sex should be overthrown? Several of the senators
were so moved by the speeches that they personally expressed
their thanks, and one who has long been friendly, said the
speeches were far above the average committee-hearings on any
subject. We might well have replied that the reason is because
all the speakers feel what they say and know that the question is
one of vital importance.
In securing these hearings before this special committee of the
Senate the friends feel they have reached a milestone in the
progress of their reform. To secure the attention for four hours
of seven representative men of the United States, must have more
effect than would a hundred times that amount of time and labor
expended upon their constituents. If one of these senators, for
instance, should become convinced of the justice of woman's claim
to the ballot, his constituency would begin to look upon that
question with respect, whereas it would take years to bring that
same constituency up to the position where they could elect such
a representative. To convince the representatives is to sound the
keynote, and it is for this reason that these hearings before the
Senate committee are of such paramount importance to the suffrage
cause.
At the close of the hearing Mrs. Robinson presented each member
of the committee with her little volume, "Massachusetts in the
Woman Suffrage Movement."
January 23 the House Committee on Rules[87] gave a hearing to Mrs.
Jane Graham Jones of Chicago, Mrs. May Wright Sewall and Miss
Anthony. During this congress the question of admitting the
territory of Dakota as a State was discussed in the Senate. Our
committee stood ready to oppose it unless the word "male" were
stricken from the proposed constitution.
Immediately after this most of the speakers went[88] to
Philadelphia where Rachel Foster had made arrangements for a
two-days convention. Rev. Charles G. Ames gave the address of
welcome.
He told of his conversion to woman suffrage from the time when he
believed women and men were ordained to be unequal, just as in
nature the mountain is different from the valley--he looking down
at her, she gazing up at him--until the time when he began to see
that women are not of necessity the valleys, nor men of necessity
the mountains; and so on, until now he believes women entitled
to stand on an equal plane with men, socially and politically.
The President, Mrs. Stanton, responded. Hannah Whitehall Smith of
Germantown, prominent in the temperance movement, spoke of the
hardship of farmers' wives, and asked:
If that condition was not one of slavery which obliged a woman to
rise early and cook the family breakfast while her husband lay in
bed; to work all day long, and then in the evening, while he
smoked his pipe or enjoyed himself at the corner grocery, to mend
and patch his old clothes. But she thought the position of woman
was changing for the better. Even among the Indians a better
feeling is beginning to prevail. It is Indian etiquette for the
man to kill the deer or bear, and leave it on the spot where it
is struck down for the woman to carry home. She must drag it over
the ground or carry it on her back as best she may, while he
quietly awaits her coming in the family wigwam. A certain Indian,
after observing that white folks did differently by their women,
once resolved to follow their example. But such was the force of
public opinion that, when it was discovered that he brought home
his own game, both he and his wife were murdered. This shows what
fearful results prejudice may bring about; and the only
difference between the prejudice which ruled his tribe in regard
to woman and that which rules white American men to-day, is a
difference in degree, dependent upon the difference in
enlightenment. The principle is the same. The result would be the
same were each equally ignorant.
The familiar faces of Edward M. Davis, Mary Grew, Adeline Thompson,
Sarah Pugh, Anna McDowell and two of Lucretia Mott's noble
daughters, gladdened many a heart during the various sessions of
the convention. Beautiful tributes were paid to Mrs. Mott by
several of the speakers. The Philadelphia convention was
supplemented by a most delightful social gathering, without mention
of which a report of the occasion would be incomplete:
Like many historical events, this was entirely unpremeditated, no
one who participated in its pleasures had any forewarning, aside
from an informal invitation to lunch with Mrs. Hannah Whitehall
Smith and her generous husband, both earnest friends of
temperance and important allies of the woman suffrage movement.
Mrs. Smith met the guests at the station in Philadelphia, tickets
in hand, marshaling them to their respective seats in the cars as
if born to command, and on arriving at Germantown, transferred
them to carriages in waiting, with the promptness of a railroad
official. Without noise or confusion one and all crossed the
threshold of her well-ordered mansion, and with other invited
guests were soon seated in the spacious parlor, talking in groups
here and there. "Ah!" said Mrs. Smith on entering, "this will
never do, think of all the good things that will be lost in these
side talks. My plan is to have a general conversation, a kind of
love-feast, each telling her experience. It would be pleasant to
know how each has reached the same platform, through the tangled
labyrinths of human life." Soon all was silence and one after
another related the special incidents in childhood, girlhood and
mature years that had turned her thoughts to the consideration of
woman's position. The stories were as varied as they were
pathetic and amusing, and were listened to amidst smiles and
tears with the deepest interest. And when all[89] had finished
the tender revelations of the hopes and fears, the struggles and
triumphs through which each soul had passed, these sacred
memories seemed to bind us anew together in a friendship that we
hope may never end. A sumptuous lunch followed, and amid much
gaiety and laughter the guests dispersed, giving the hospitable
host and hostess a warm farewell--a day to be remembered by all
of us.
Our Senate committee, through its chairman, Hon. Elbridge G.
Lapham, very soon reported in favor of the submission of a
sixteenth amendment. We had had a favorable minority report in the
House in 1871 and in the Senate in 1879--but this was the first
favorable majority report we had ever had in either house:
IN THE SENATE, MONDAY, June 5, 1882.
Mr. LAPHAM: I am instructed by the Select Committee on Woman
Suffrage, to whom was referred the joint resolution (S. R. No.
60) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United
States, to report it with a favorable recommendation, without
amendment, for the consideration of the Senate. This is a
majority report, and the minority desire the opportunity to
present their report also, and have printed the reasons which
they give for dissenting. As this is a question of more than
ordinary importance, I should like to have 1,000 extra copies of
the report printed for the use of the committee.
Mr. GEORGE: I present the views of the minority of the committee,
consisting of the senator from Tennessee [Mr. Jackson], the
senator from Nevada [Mr. Fair], and myself.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: It is moved that 1,000 extra copies
of the report be printed for the use of the Senate.
Mr. ANTHONY: The motion should go by the statute to the Committee
on Printing.
Mr. LAPHAM: I will present it in the form of a resolution for
reference to the Committee on Printing.
The resolution was referred to the Committee on Printing, as
follows:
_Resolved_, That 1,000 additional copies of the report and
views of the minority on Senate Joint Resolution No. 60 be
printed for the use of the Select Committee on Woman
Suffrage.
In the Senate of the United States, June 5, 1882, Mr. Lapham, from
the Committee on Woman Suffrage, submitted the following report:
_The Select Committee on Woman Suffrage, to whom was referred
Senate Resolution No. 60, proposing an amendment to the
Constitution of the United States to secure the right of suffrage
to all citizens without regard to sex, having considered the
same, respectfully report: _
The gravity and importance of the proposed amendment must be
obvious to all who have given the subject the consideration it
demands.
A very brief history of the origin of this movement in the United
States and of the progress made in the cause of female suffrage
will not be out of place at this time. A World's Anti-slavery
Convention was held in London on June 12, 1840, to which
delegates from all the organized societies were invited. Several
of the American societies sent women as delegates. Their
credentials were presented, and an able and exhaustive discussion
was had by many of the leading men of America and Great Britain
upon the question of their being admitted to seats in the
convention. They were allowed no part in the discussion. They
were denied seats as delegates, and, by reason of that denial, it
was determined to hold conventions after their return to the
United States, for the purpose of asserting and advocating their
rights as citizens, and especially the right of suffrage. Prior
to this, and as early as the year 1836, a proposal had been made
in the legislature of the State of New York to confer upon
married women their separate rights of property. The subject was
under consideration and agitation during the eventful period
which preceded the constitutional convention of New York in the
year 1846, and the radical changes made in the fundamental law in
that year. In 1848 the first act "For the More Effectual
Protection of the Property of Married Women" was passed by the
legislature of New York and became a law. It passed by a vote of
93 to 9 in the Assembly and 23 to 1 in the Senate. It was
subsequently amended so as to authorize women to engage in
business on their own account and to receive their own earnings.
This legislation was the outgrowth of a bill prepared several
years before under the direction of the Hon. John Savage,
chief-justice of the Supreme Court, and of the Hon. John C.
Spencer, one of the ablest lawyers in the State, one of the
revisers of the statutes of New York, and afterward a cabinet
officer. Laws granting separate rights of property and the right
to transact business, similar to those adopted in New York, have
been enacted in many, if not in most of the States, and may now
be regarded as the settled policy of American legislation on the
subject.
After the enactment of the first law in New York, as before
stated, and in the month of July, 1848, the first convention
demanding suffrage for women was held at Seneca Falls in said
State. The same persons who had been excluded from the World's
Convention in London were prominent and instrumental in calling
the meeting and in framing the declaration of sentiments adopted
by it, which, after reciting the unjust limitations and wrongs to
which women are subjected, closed in these words:
Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half of
the people of this country and their social and religious
degradation; in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and
because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed and
fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist
that they have immediate admission to all the rights and
privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United
States. In entering upon the great work before us we
anticipate no small amount of misconception,
misrepresentation and ridicule; but we shall use every
instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We
shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State
and national legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit
and the press in our behalf. We hope this convention will be
followed by a series of conventions embracing every part of
the country.
The meeting also adopted a series of resolutions, one of which
was in the following words:
_Resolved_, That it is the duty of the women of this country
to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective
franchise.
This declaration was signed by seventy of the women of Western
New York, among whom was one or more of those who addressed your
committee on the subject of the pending amendment, and there were
present, participating in and approving of the movement, a large
number of prominent men, among whom were Elisha Foote, a lawyer
of distinction, and since that time Commissioner of Patents, and
the Hon. Jacob Chamberlain, who afterwards represented his
district in the other House. From the movement thus inaugurated,
conventions have been held from that time to the present in the
principal villages, cities and capitals of the various States, as
well as the capital of the nation.
The First National Convention upon the subject was held at
Worcester, Mass., in October, 1850, and had the support and
encouragement of many leading men of the republic, among whom we
name the following: Gerrit Smith, Joshua R. Giddings, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, John G. Whittier, A. Bronson Alcott, Samuel J. May,
Theodore Parker, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Elizur
Wright, William J. Elder, Stephen S. Foster, Horace Greeley,
Oliver Johnson, Henry Ward Beecher, Horace Mann. The Fourth
National Convention was held at the city of Cleveland, Ohio,
October, 1853. The Rev. Asa Mahan, president of Oberlin College,
and Hon. Joshua R. Giddings were there. Horace Greeley and
William Henry Channing addressed letters to the convention. The
letter of Mr. Channing stated the proposition to be that--
The right of suffrage be granted to the people, universally,
without distinction of sex; and that the age for attaining
legal and political majority be made the same for women as
for men.
In 1857, Hon. Salmon P. Chase, chief-justice of the Supreme Court
of the United States, then governor of Ohio, recommended to the
legislature a constitutional amendment on the subject, and a
select committee of the Senate made an elaborate report,
concluding with a resolution in the following words:
_Resolved_, That the Judiciary Committee be instructed to
report to the Senate a bill to submit to the qualified
electors, at the next general election for senators and
representatives, an amendment to the constitution, whereby
the elective franchise shall be extended to the citizens of
Ohio _without distinction of sex_.
During the same year a similar report was made in the legislature
of Wisconsin. From the report on the subject we quote the
following:
We believe that political equality, by leading the thoughts
and purposes of men and women into the same channel, will
more completely carry out the designs of nature. Woman will
be possessed of a positive power, and hollow compliments
will be exchanged for well-grounded respect when we see her
nobly discharging her part in the great intellectual and
moral struggles of the age that wait their solution by a
direct appeal to the ballot-box. Woman's power is at present
poetical and unsubstantial; let it be practical and real.
There is no reality in any power that cannot be coined in
votes.
The effect of these discussions and efforts has been the gradual
advancement of public sentiment towards conceding the right of
suffrage without distinction of sex. In the territories of
Wyoming and Utah, full suffrage has already been given. In regard
to the exercise of the right in the territory of Wyoming, the
present governor of that territory, Hon. John W. Hoyt, in an
address delivered in Philadelphia, April 3, 1882, in answer to a
question as to the operation of the law, said:
First of all, the experience of Wyoming has shown that the
only actual trial of woman suffrage hitherto made--a trial
made in a new country where the conditions were not
exceptionably favorable--has produced none but the most
desirable results. And surely none will deny that in such a
matter a single ounce of experience is worth a ton of
conjecture. But since it may be claimed that the sole
experiment of Wyoming does not afford a sufficient guaranty
of general expediency, let us see whether reason will not
furnish a like answer. The great majority of women in this
country already possess sufficient intelligence to enable
them to vote judiciously on nearly all questions of a local
nature. I think this will be conceded. Secondly, with their
superior quickness of perception, it is fair to assume that
when stimulated by a demand for a knowledge of political
principles--such a demand as a sense of the responsibility
of the voter would create--they would not be slow in rising
to at least the rather low level at present occupied by the
average masculine voter. So that, viewing the subject from
an intellectual stand-point merely, such fears as at first
spring up, drop away, one by one, and disappear. But it must
not be forgotten that a very large proportion of questions
to be settled by the ballot, both those of principle and
such as refer to candidates, have in them a _moral_ element
which is vital. And here we are safer with the ballot in the
hands of woman; for her keener insight and truer moral sense
will more certainly guide her aright--and not her alone, but
also, by reflex action, all whose minds are open to the
influence of her example. The weight of this answer can
hardly be overestimated. In my judgment, this moral
consideration far more than offsets all the objections that
can be based on any assumed lack of an intellectual
appreciation of the few questions almost wholly commercial
and economical. Last of all, a majority of questions to be
voted on touch the interests of woman as they do those of
man. It is upon her finer sensibilities, her purer
instincts, and her maternal nature that the results of
immorality and vice in every form fall with more crushing
weight.
A criticism has been made upon the exercise of this right by the
women of Utah that the plural wives in that territory are under
the control of their polygamous husbands. Be that as it may, it
is an undoubted fact that there is probably no city of equal size
on this continent where there is less disturbance of the peace,
or where the citizen is more secure in his person or property,
either by day or night, than in the city of Salt Lake. A
qualified right of suffrage has also been given to women in
Oregon, Colorado, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Vermont, New
Hampshire, Massachusetts, Michigan, Kentucky, and New York. Of
the operation of the law in the last-named State, Governor
Cornell in a message to the legislature on May 12, said:
The recent law, 1882, making women eligible as school
trustees, has produced admirable results, not only in
securing the election of many of them as trustees of
schools, but especially in elevating the qualifications of
men proposed as candidates for school-boards, and also in
stimulating greater interest in the management of schools
generally. The effect of these new experiences is to widen
the influence and usefulness of women.
So well satisfied are the representatives in the legislature of
that State with these results that the assembly, by a large
majority, recently passed to a third reading an act giving the
full right of suffrage to women, the passage of which has been
arrested in the Senate by an opinion of the attorney-general that
a constitutional amendment is necessary to accomplish the object.
In England women are allowed to vote at all municipal elections,
and hold the office of guardian of the poor. In four States,
Nebraska, Indiana, Oregon, and Iowa, propositions have passed
their legislatures and are now pending, conferring the right of
suffrage upon women.
Notwithstanding all these efforts, it is the opinion of the best
informed men and women, who have devoted more than a third of a
century to the consideration and discussion of the subject, that
an amendment to the federal constitution, analogous to the
fifteenth amendment of that instrument, is the most safe, direct,
and expeditious mode of settling the question. It is the question
of the enfranchisement of half the race now denied the right, and
that, too, the most favored half in the estimation of those who
deny the right. Petitions, from time to time, signed by many
thousands, have been presented to congress, and there are now
upon our files seventy-five petitions representing eighteen
different States. Two years ago treble the number of petitions,
representing over twenty-five States, were presented.
If congress should adopt the pending resolution, the question
would go before the intelligent bodies who are chosen to
represent the people in the legislatures of the various States,
and would receive a more enlightened and careful consideration
than if submitted to the masses of the male population, with all
their prejudices, in the form of an amendment to the
constitutions of the several States. Besides, such an amendment,
if adopted, would secure that uniformity in the exercise of the
right which could not be expected by action from the several
States. We think the time has arrived for the submission of such
an amendment to the legislatures of the States. We know the
prejudices which the movement for suffrage to all without regard
to sex, had to encounter from the very outset, prejudices which
still exist in the minds of many. The period for employing the
weapons of ridicule and enmity has not yet passed. Now, as in the
beginning, we hear appeals to prejudice and the baser passions of
men. The anathema, "woe betide the hand that plucks the wizard
beard of hoary error," is yet employed to deter men from acting
upon their convictions as to what ought to be done with reference
to this great question. To those who are inclined to cast
ridicule upon the movement, we quote the answer made while one of
the early conventions was in session in the State of New York:
A collection of women arguing for political rights and for
the privileges usually conceded only to the other sex is one
of the easiest things in the world to make fun of. There is
no end to the smart speeches and the witty remarks that may
be made on the subject. But when we seriously attempt to
show that a woman who pays taxes ought not to have a voice
in the manner in which the taxes are expended, that a woman
whose property and liberty and person are controlled by the
laws should have no voice in framing those laws, it is not
so easy. If women are fit to rule in a monarchy, it is
difficult to say why they are not qualified to vote in a
republic; nor can there be greater indelicacy in a woman
going to the ballot-box than there is in a woman opening a
legislature or issuing orders to an army.
To all who are more serious in their opposition to the movement,
we would remind them of the words of a few distinguished men:--
I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who
assist in bearing its burdens, by no means excluding
women.--[ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
I believe that the vices in our large cities will never be
conquered until the ballot is put into the hands of
women.--[Bishop SIMPSON.
I do not think our politics will be what it ought to be till
women are legislators and voters.--[Rev. JAMES FREEMAN
CLARKE.
Women have quite as much interest in good government as men,
and I have never heard or read of any satisfactory reason
for excluding them from the ballot-box; I have no more doubt
of their ameliorating influence upon politics than I have of
the influence they exert everywhere else.--[GEORGE WILLIAM
CURTIS.
In view of the terrible corruption of our politics, people
ask, can we maintain universal suffrage? I say no, not
without women. The only bear-gardens in our community are
the town-meeting and the caucus. Why is this? Because these
are the only places at which women are not present.--[Bishop
GILBERT HAVEN.
I repeat my conviction of the right of woman suffrage.
Because suffrage is a right and not a grace, it should be
extended to women who bear their share of the public cost,
and who have the same interest that I have in the selection
of officials and the making of laws which affect their
lives, their property, and their happiness.--[Governor LONG
of Massachusetts.
However much the giving of political power to woman may
disagree with our notions of propriety, we conclude that,
being required by that first prerequisite to greater
happiness, the law of equal freedom, such a concession is
unquestionably right and good.--[HERBERT SPENCER.
In the administration of a State neither a woman as a woman,
nor a man as a man has any special functions, but the gifts
are equally diffused in both sexes. The same opportunity for
self-development which makes man a good guardian will make
woman a good guardian, for their original nature is the
same.--[PLATO.
It has become a custom, almost universal, to invite and to
welcome the presence of women at political assemblages, to listen
to discussions upon the topics involved in the canvass. Their
presence has done much toward the elevation, refinement, and
freedom from insincerity and hypocrisy, of such discussions. Why
would not the same results be wrought out by their presence at
the ballot-box? Wherever the right has been exercised by law,
both in England and this country, such has been its effect in the
conduct of elections.
The framers of our system of government embodied in the
Declaration of Independence the statement that to secure the
rights which are therein declared to be inalienable and in
respect to which all men are created equal, "governments are
instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed." The system of representative government they
inaugurated can only be maintained and perpetuated by allowing
all citizens to give that consent through the medium of the
ballot-box--the only mode in which the "consent of the governed"
can be obtained. To deny to one-half of the citizens of the
republic all participation in framing the laws by which they are
to be governed, simply on account of their sex, is political
despotism to those who are excluded, and "taxation without
representation" to such of them as have property liable to
taxation. Their investiture with separate estates leads,
logically and necessarily, to their right to the ballot as the
only means afforded them for the protection of their property, as
it is the only means of their full protection in the enjoyment of
the immeasurably greater right to life and liberty. To be
governed without such consent is clear denial of a right declared
to be inalienable.
It is said that the majority of women do not desire and would not
exercise the right, if acknowledged. The assertion rests in
conjecture. In ordinary elections multitudes of men do not
exercise the right. It is only in extraordinary cases, and when
their interests and patriotism are appealed to, that male voters
are with unanimity found at the polls. It would doubtless be the
same with women. In the exceptional instances in which the
exercise of the right has been permitted, they have engaged with
zeal in every important canvass. Even if the statement were
founded in fact, it furnishes no argument in favor of excluding
women from the exercise of the franchise. _It is the denial of
the right of which they complain._ There are multitudes of men
whose vote can be purchased at an election for the smallest and
most trifling consideration. Yet all such would spurn with scorn
and unutterable contempt a proposition to purchase their _right
to vote_, and no consideration would be deemed an equivalent for
such a surrender. Women are more sensitive upon this question
than men, and so long as this right, deemed by them to be sacred,
is denied, so long the agitation which has marked the progress of
this contest thus far will be continued.
Entertaining these views, your committee report back the proposed
resolution without amendment for the consideration of the Senate,
and recommend its passage.
E. G. LAPHAM,
T. M. FERRY,
H. W. BLAIR.
The constitution is wisely conservative in the provision for its
own amendment. It is eminently proper that whenever a large
number of the people have indicated a desire for an amendment,
the judgment of the amending power should be consulted. In view
of the extensive agitation of the question of woman suffrage, and
the numerous and respectable petitions that have been presented
to congress in its support, I unite with the committee in
recommending that the proposed amendment be submitted to the
States.
H. B. ANTHONY.
June 5, 1882, Mr. George, from the Committee on Woman Suffrage,
submitted the following views of the minority:
The undersigned are unable to concur in the report of the
majority recommending the adoption of the joint resolution
proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States,
for reasons which they will now proceed to state.
We do not base our dissent upon any ground having relation to the
expediency or inexpediency of vesting in women the right to vote.
Hence we shall not discuss the very grave and important social
and political questions which have arisen from the agitation to
admit to equal political rights the women of our country, and to
impose on them the burden of discharging, equally with men,
political and public duties. Whether so radical a change in our
political and social system would advance the happiness and
welfare of the American people, considered as a whole, without
distinction of sex, is a question on which there is a marked
disagreement among the most enlightened and thoughtful of both
sexes. Its solution involves considerations so intimately
pertaining to all the relations of social and private life--the
family circle--the status of women as wives, mothers, daughters,
and companions, to the functions in private and public life which
they ought to perform, and their ability and willingness to
perform them--the harmony and stability of marriage, and the
division of the labors and cares of that union--that we are
convinced that the proper and safe discussion and weighing of
them would be best secured by deliberations in the separate
communities which have so deep an interest in the rightful
solution of this grave question. Great organic changes in
government, especially when they involve, as this proposed change
does, a revolution in the modes of life, long-standing habits,
and the most sacred domestic relations of the people, should
result only upon the demand of the people, who are to be affected
by them. Such changes should originate with, and be molded and
guided in their operation and extent by, the people themselves.
They should neither precede their demand for them, nor be delayed
in opposition to their clearly expressed wishes. Their happiness,
their welfare, their advancement, are the sole objects of the
institution of government; of these they are not only the best,
but they are the exclusive judges. They have commissioned us to
exercise for their good the great powers which they have
intrusted to us by their letter of attorney, the constitution;
not to assume to ourselves a superior wisdom, or usurp a
guardianship over them, dictating reforms not demanded by them,
and attempting to grasp power not granted.
The organization of our political institutions is such that the
great mass of the powers of government, the proper exercise of
which so deeply concerns the welfare of the people, is left to
the States. In that depository the will of the people is most
certainly ascertained, and the exercise of power is more directly
under their guidance. Our free institutions have had their great
development and owe their stability more to causes connected with
the direct exercise of the power of the people in local
self-government than to all other causes combined. Recent events,
though tending strongly to centralization, have not destroyed in
the public mind the inestimable value of local self-government.
Among the powers which have hitherto been esteemed as most
essential to the public welfare is the power of the States to
regulate their domestic institutions in their own way; and among
those institutions none has been preserved by the States with
greater jealousy than their absolute control over marriage and
the relation between the sexes.
Another power of the States, deemed by the people when they
assented to the Constitution of the United States most essential
to the public welfare, was the right of each State to determine
the qualifications of electors. Wherever the federal constitution
speaks of elections for a federal office, it adopts the
qualifications for electors prescribed by the State in which the
election is to be held.
Nor has this fundamental rule been departed from in the fifteenth
amendment. That impairs it only to the extent that race, color,
or previous condition of servitude shall not be made a ground of
exclusion from the right of suffrage. In all else that pertains
to the qualifications of electors the absolute will of the State
prevails. This amendment was inserted from considerations which
pertain to no other part of the question of suffrage. The negro
race had been recently emancipated; it was supposed that the
antagonism between them and their old masters and the prejudice
of race would be such as to obstruct the equal enjoyment of the
rights of freedom conferred by the national forces, and would
prevent the white race of the South from admitting the negro
race, however deserving it might be, to equal political
privileges. And, moreover, it was deemed by the North a point of
honor that, having conferred freedom on the negro, he should be
provided with the right of suffrage.
None of these considerations applies in the present case. It is
not pretended that any such antagonism or prejudice exists
between the sexes. It is not pretended that women have been
redeemed from an intolerable slavery by the power of the
government. It is not pretended that the sex in whose hands is
the political power of the States is unwilling, from any cause,
to do full justice to the other; for it is conceded that if the
proposed amendment should be adopted, its incorporation into the
constitution must result from the voluntary action of that sex in
which is vested this political power. No good reason has been
given why the congress of the United States should force or even
hasten the States into such action, and no such reason can be
given without a reversal of the theories on which our free
institutions are based.
The history given by the majority, of the legislation of the
several States in relation to the rights of persons and property
of married women showing as it does a steady advance in the
abolition of their common-law disabilities, conclusively
demonstrates that this question may be safely left for solution
where it now is and has always hitherto belonged. The public mind
is now being agitated in many of the States as to the rights of
women, not only as to suffrage, but as to their engaging in the
various employments from which they have hitherto been excluded.
This exclusion from certain employments has not been the result
of municipal but of social laws--the strongest of all human
regulations. As these social laws have been modified, so the
sphere of woman's activities and usefulness has been enlarged.
These social laws are in the main the groundwork of the exclusion
of women from the right of suffrage. In the establishment of
these laws, as in their modification, women themselves have even
a greater influence than men. Their disability to vote is,
therefore, self-imposed; when they shall will otherwise, it is
not too much to say that the disability will no longer exist. If
in the future it shall be found that these laws deny a right to
women the enjoyment of which they desire, and for the exercise of
which they are qualified, it cannot be doubted that they will
give way. If, on the contrary, neither of these shall be
discovered, it will happen that the exclusion of suffrage will
not be considered as a denial of a right, but as an exemption
granted to women from cares and burdens which a tender and
affectionate regard for womanhood refuses to cast on them.
We are convinced, therefore, that the best mode of disposing of
the question is to leave its solution to that power most amenable
to the influences and usages of society in which women have so
large and so potential a share, confident that at no distant day
a right result will be reached in each State which will be
satisfactory to both sexes and perfectly consistent with the
welfare and happiness of the people. Certainly this must be so if
the people themselves, the source and foundation of all power,
are capable of self-government.
At two of its meetings the committee listened with great pleasure
to several eminent ladies who appeared before it as advocates of
the proposed amendment. At none of the meetings of the committee,
including that at which the members voted on the proposed
amendment, was there any discussion of this important subject;
none was asked for or desired by any member of the committee, and
the vote was taken. The reports of the majority and of the
minority of the committee are therefore to be construed only as
the individual opinions of the members who respectively concur in
them. They are in no sense to be treated as the judgment of a
deliberative body charged with the examination of this important
subject.
The foregoing leads us to but one recommendation: that the
committee should be discharged from the further consideration of
the subject, that the resolution raising it be rescinded, and
that the proposed amendment be rejected.
J. Z. GEORGE,
HOWELL E. JACKSON,
JAMES G. FAIR.
In a letter from Miss Caroline Biggs to the president of the
National Association the following congratulations came from the
friends of suffrage in England:
CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE NATIONAL SOCIETY FOR }
WOMAN SUFFRAGE, 64 Berners Street, LONDON, W. }
At a meeting of the Executive Committee, on May 18, 1882, the
following resolution was proposed by Mrs. Lucas, seconded by Miss
Jane Cobden, and passed unanimously:
_Resolved_, That the Executive Committee of the National
Society for Woman Suffrage have heard with hearty
satisfaction that a select committee of the United States
Senate in Washington has passed by a majority of votes the
recommendation to adopt a constitutional amendment in favor
of women's suffrage. They feel that the cause of woman is
one in all countries, and they offer their most cordial
congratulations to the women of America on the important
step which has just been gained, and their warmest
good-wishes for a speedy success in obtaining a measure
which will guarantee justice and equal rights to half the
population of a sister country.
Nebraska now became the center of interest, as a constitutional
amendment to secure the right of suffrage to woman was submitted to
be voted upon in the November election. As the submission of such a
proposition makes an important crisis in the history of a State, as
well as in the suffrage movement, the notes of preparation were as
varied as multitudinous throughout the nation, rousing all to
renewed earnestness in the work. Both the American and National
associations decided to hold their annual conventions in Omaha, the
chief city of the State, and to support as many speakers[90] as
possible through the campaign, that meetings might be held and
tracts distributed in every county of the State, an Herculean
undertaking, as Nebraska comprises 230,000 inhabitants scattered
over an area of 76,000 square miles, divided into sixty-six
counties; and yet this is what the friends of the measure proposed
to do. The American Association[91] held its convention September
12, 13, 14. The National[92] continued three days, September 27,
28, 29.
The Opera House, in which the National Association held its
meeting, was completely filled during all the sessions. The address
of welcome was given by Hon. A. J. Poppleton, one of the most
distinguished lawyers in that State. He said:
I deem it no light compliment that, in the face of an explicit
declaration that I am not in favor of woman suffrage, I have been
asked to make, on behalf of the people of Omaha and the State, an
address of welcome to the many distinguished men and women whom
this occasion has brought together. Doubtless the consideration
shown me is a recognition of the fact that I have been a
life-long advocate of the advancement of women through the
agencies of equality in education, equality in employment,
equality in wages, equality in property-rights and personal
liberty, in short, a fair, open, equal field in the struggle for
life. That I cannot go beyond this and embrace equal suffrage, is
due rather to long adherence to the political philosophy of
Edmund Burke than any lack of conviction of the absolute equality
of men and women in natural rights.
In the winter of 1852-3, when a student at Poughkeepsie, N. Y.,
while the spot on which we now stand was Indian country as yet
untouched by the formative power of national legislation, I
listened to Miss Susan B. Anthony, Miss Antoinette Brown and
others in the advocacy of the rights of women. It seems a strange
fortune that brings now, nearly thirty years after, one of those
speakers, crowned with a national reputation, into a State carved
out of that Indian country and containing 60,000 people, in
advocacy of equal suffrage for her sex. This single fact
proclaims in thunder tones the bravery, the fidelity, the
devotion of these pioneers of reform, and challenges for them the
sympathy, respect, esteem and admiration of every good man and
woman in America.
The thirty years commencing about 1850 have been prolific of
momentous changes. It is the era of the sewing machine, of the
domestication of steam and electricity, the overthrow of the
great rebellion, the destruction of slavery, the consolidation of
the German empire, the fall of the second Napoleon, the birth of
the French republic, the incorporation of India into the British
empire, and the revolution of commerce by the Pacific railways
and the Suez canal. Great changes have likewise taken place in
the structure of our own State and national legislation, the most
conspicuous and pronounced result being the centralization of
power in the federal government. It has been preëminently a
period of amelioration, a long stride in the direction of
tolerance of opinion, belief, speech and creed. Hospitals,
asylums, schools, colleges and the manifold agencies of an
advanced Christian civilization for alleviating the average lot
of humanity, have grown and multiplied beyond the experience of
former times, and men like Matthew Vassar, George Peabody and
John Hopkins have hastened to consecrate the abundant fruits of
honorable lives to the exaltation and advancement of the race.
But in no direction have greater changes occurred in this country
than in the condition of woman in respect to employment, wages,
personal and property rights. In all heathen countries at this
hour the mass of women are slaves or worse, wholly deprived of
civil rights. In most Christian countries their legal status is
one of absolute subordination in person and property to men. In
this republic alone have we attained an altitude where some small
measure of justice is meted out to women by the laws. In 1850 a
fair measure of her rights was the grim edict of the common law
holding her in guardianship prior to marriage, and upon marriage
making her and all her possessions practically the property of
her husband, while a cruel, unreasonable and vicious public
opinion excluded her from all except menial and ill-paid service.
One by one and year by year these barriers have given way, until
in many States her property and personal rights enjoy the
complete shelter of the law. Now more than half the occupations
and employments of this age of industrial activity and progress
are thronged with the faithful, efficient and contented labor of
women.
The law has broken forever the thraldom of an odious and hopeless
marriage by reasonable laws for divorce for just cause, given her
the custody of her children, vested her with the absolute power
of disposition and control over her property, inherited or
acquired, freed it from the claims of her husband's creditors,
and clothed her with ample legal remedies even against her
husband. Perhaps Nebraska alone of all the States, by its court
of last resort, has upheld the power of the wife to make
contracts with her husband and enforce them against him in her
own name by the appropriate legal remedies. This surely is
progress. Beyond this there lies but one field to win or fortress
to reduce. Then surely the worn soldier in the long campaign
crowned with the garlands of victory may rest from the battle.
Not many years ago, coming from Wisconsin, I think, a girl
presented herself in the Illinois courts for admission to the
bar, and after a rigid and unsparing examination she was admitted
with public compliment. She took an office in the great city of
Chicago and in the short remnant of an uncertain life so wrought
in her profession as to attain an average professional income,
and win the undivided respect and esteem of her professional
associates. And when from a far country, whither she had gone in
hope to escape a fell disease, her lifeless corpse was brought
back for sepulture, many of the foremost lawyers of Chicago
gathered about her bier and bore emphatic testimony to her
virtues as a woman and her attainments as a lawyer. To me no
greater work has been done by any American woman. When Alta
Hulett unobtrusively, silently but indomitably pressed her way to
the front of the legal profession, and established herself there,
she vindicated the right of her sex to contend for the highest
prizes of life, and left her countrywomen a legacy which will
ultimately blazon her name imperishably in the history of the
advancement of women; and every American woman who, like her,
goes to the front of any honorable occupation, employment or
profession, and stays there, becomes her coädjutor in work and a
sharer in her reward.
Laden with the trophies of thirty years of conflict, of progress,
of measurable success, the vice-president of the National Woman
Suffrage Association and her associates present themselves to
Nebraska and ask a hearing upon the final issue, "Shall this work
be crowned by granting to women in this State the highest
privilege of the citizen--suffrage?" On behalf of the people of a
State whose legislature has granted everything else to
women--whose devotion to free speech, untrammeled discussion and
an independent press has been conspicuous in its constitutional
and legislative history--I welcome them to this city and State,
and bespeak for them a patient, candid, respectful, appreciative
hearing.
Miss Anthony replied briefly to Mr. Poppleton's eloquent address
and returned the thanks of the convention for the courtesy with
which its members had been received by the citizens of Omaha.[93]
She then read a letter from the president of the convention:
TOULOUSE, France, September 1, 1882.
_To the National Woman Suffrage Association in Convention
assembled:_
DEAR FRIENDS: People never appreciate the magnitude and
importance on any step in progress, at the time it is taken, nor
the full moral worth of the characters who inspire it, hence it
will be in line with the whole history of reform from the
beginning if woman's enfranchisement in Nebraska should in many
minds seem puerile and premature, and its advocates fanatical and
unreasonable. Nevertheless the proposition speaks for itself. A
constitutional amendment to crown one-half of the people of a
great State with all their civil and political rights, is the
most vital question the citizens of Nebraska have ever been
called on to consider; and the fact cannot be gainsaid that some
of the purest and ablest women America can boast, are now in the
State advocating the measure.
For the last two months I have been assisting my son in the
compilation of a work soon to be published in America, under the
title, "The Woman Question in Europe," to which distinguished
women in different nations have each contributed a sketch of the
progress made in their condition. One interesting and significant
fact as shown in this work, is, that in the very years we began
to agitate the question of equal rights, there was a simultaneous
movement by women for various privileges, industrial, social,
educational, civil and political, throughout the civilized world.
And this without the slightest concert of action, or knowledge of
each other's existence, showing that the time had come in the
natural evolution of the species, in the order of human
development, for woman to assert her rights, and to demand the
recognition of the feminine element in all the vital interests of
life.
To battle against a palpable fact in philosophy and the
accumulated facts in achievement that can be seen on all sides in
woman's work for the last forty years, from slavery to equality,
is as vain as to fight against the law of gravitation. We shall
as surely reach the goal we purposed when we started, as that the
rich prairies of Nebraska will ere long feed and educate millions
of brave men and women, gathered from every nation on the globe.
Every consideration for the improvement of your home life, for
the morality of your towns and cities, for the elevation of your
schools and colleges, and the loftiest motives of patriotism
should move you, men of Nebraska, to vote for this amendment.
Galton in his great work on Heredity says:
We are in crying want of a greater fund of ability in all
stations of life, for neither the classes of statesmen,
philosophers, artisans nor laborers, are up to the modern
complexity of their several professions. An extended
civilization like ours comprises more interests than the
ordinary statesmen or philosophers of our race are capable
of dealing with, and it exacts more intelligent work than
our ordinary artisans and laborers, are capable of
performing. Our race is overweighted, and appears likely to
be dragged into degeneracy by demands that exceed its
powers. If its average ability were raised a grade or two, a
new class of statesmen would conduct our complex affairs at
home and abroad, as easily as our best business men now do
their own private trades and professions. The needs of
centralization, communication, and culture, call for more
brains and mental stamina, than the average of our race
possesses.
Does it need a prophet to tell us where to begin this work? Does
not the physical and intellectual condition of the women of a
nation decide the capacity and power of its men? If we would give
our sons the help and inspiration of woman's thought and interest
in the complex questions of our present civilization, we must
first give her the power that political responsibility secures.
With the ballot in her own right hand, she would feel a new sense
of dignity, and command among men a respect they have never felt
before.
Nebraska has now the opportunity of making this grand experiment
of securing justice, liberty, equality, for the first time in the
world's history, to woman, through her education and
enfranchisement, of lifting man to that higher plane of thought
where he may be able wisely to meet all the emergencies of the
period in which he is called on to act. Let every man in Nebraska
now so do his duty, that, when the sun goes down on the eighth of
November, the glad news may be sent round the world that at last
one State in the American republic has fully accorded the sacred
right of self-government to all her citizens, black and white,
men and women. With sincere hope for this victory,
Cordially yours, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
Many interesting letters were received from friends at home and
abroad, of which we give a few. The following is from our Minister
Plenipotentiary at the German Court:
BERLIN, September 9, 1882.
Miss ANTHONY: _Esteemed Friend_: At this great distance I can
only sympathize with the earnest effort to be made this fall to
secure political recognition for women in Nebraska. I am glad
that the prospect is so good and that Nebraska, which gave a
name, with Kansas, to the first successful resistance to the
encroachments of slavery, is the arena where the battle is to be
fought under such promise of a just result. By recognizing the
right of its women to an equal share in all the duties and
responsibilities of life, Nebraska will honor itself while
securing for all time wholesome laws and administration.
I believe society would more benefit itself than grant a favor to
women by extending the suffrage to them. All the interests of
women are promoted by a government that shall guard the family
circle, restrain excess, promote education, shield the young from
temptation. While the true interests of men lie in the same
direction, women more generally appreciate these facts and
illustrate in their lives a desire for their attainment. Could we
bring to the ballot-box the great fund of virtue, intelligence
and good intention stored up in the minds and hearts of our wives
and sisters, how great the reinforcement would be for all that is
noble, patriotic and pure in public life! Who should fear the
result who desires the public welfare? From the stand-point of
better principles applied to the direction of public affairs and
the best individuals in office, the argument seems impregnable.
It is getting late to resist this measure on the ground that the
character of women themselves would be lowered by contact with
politics. That objection is identical with the motive which
causes the Turk to shut up his women in a harem and closely veil
them in public. He fears their delicacy will be tarnished if they
speak to any man but their proprietor. So prejudice feared woman
would be unsexed if she had equal education with man. The
professions were closed to women for the same consideration.
Women have vindicated their ability to endure the education and
engage in the dreaded pursuits, yet society is not dissolved, and
these fearful imaginings have proved idle dreams. As every
advance made by woman since the days when it was a mooted
law-point how large could be the stick with which her husband
could punish her, down to the day when congress opened to her the
bar of the United States Supreme Court, has been accompanied by
constantly refuted assertions that she and society were about to
be ruined. I think we can safely trust to her good sense, virtue
and delicacy to preserve for us the loved and venerated object we
have always known, even if society shall yield the still further
measure of complete enfranchisement, and thus add to her social
dignity, duties and responsibilities.
No class has ever been degraded by the ballot. All have rather
been elevated by it. We cannot rationally anticipate less
desirable personal consequences to those whose tendencies are
naturally good, than to those on whom the ballot has been
conferred belonging to a lower plane of being. But these
considerations go only to show the policy of granting suffrage to
women. From the stand-point of justice the argument is more
pressing. If woman asks for the ballot shall man deny it? By what
right? Certainly not by the right of a majority; for women are at
least as numerous. Certainly not by any right derived from
nature; for our common mother has set no brand on woman. If one
woman shall ask for a voice in the regulation of society of
which she is at least one-half, who shall say her nay? If any
woman shall ask it, who shall deny it because another woman does
not ask it? There are many men who do not value their
citizenship; shall other men therefore be deprived of the ballot?
Suppose many women would not avail themselves of such a function,
are those with higher, or other views, to be therefore kept in
tutelage?
I trust you may succeed in this work in Nebraska. It is of
supreme importance to the cause. The example of Nebraska would
soon be followed by other States. The current of such a reform
knows no retiring ebb. The suffrage once acquired will never be
relinquished; first, because it will recommend itself, as it has
in Wyoming, by its results; second, because the women will
jealously guard their rights, and defend them with their ballots.
Wishing I could do more than send you good wishes for the
cause,[94] I am, respectfully yours,
A. A. SARGENT.
The following letter is from a daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(a graduate of Vassar College, and classmate of Miss Elizabeth
Poppleton), who two years before, on the eve of her departure for
Europe, gave her eloquent address on Edmund Burke in that city:
TOULOUSE, France, September 3, 1882.
_To the Voters of my Generation in Nebraska:_
It is not my desire to present to you any argument, but only to
give you an episode in my own life. I desire to lay before you a
fact, not a fiction; a reality, not a supposition; an experience
not a theory.
I was born in a free republic and in my veins runs very
rebellious blood. An ancestor of my father was one of those
intrepid men who left the shores of old England and sailed forth
to establish on a distant continent the grandest republic that
has ever yet been known. That, you see, is not good blood to
submit to injustice. And on my mother's side we find a sturdy old
Puritan from whom our stock is traced, fleeing from England
because of the faith that was in him, and joining his rebellious
life to one of that honest Holland nation which had defied so
nobly the oppressions of the Catholic church and Spanish
inquisition. As if this were not sufficiently independent blood
to pass on to other generations, my own father became an
abolitionist, and step by step fought his belief to victory, and
my mother early gave her efforts to the elevation of woman. It is
all this, together with my living in the freëst land on the globe
and in a century rife with discussions of all principles of
government, that has made me in every fiber a believer in
republican institutions.
Having been reared in a large family of boys where we enjoyed
equal freedom, and having received the same collegiate education
as my brothers, it is not until lately that I have felt the crime
of my womanhood. I have dwelt thus upon the antecedents and
influences of my life in order to ask you one question: Do you
not think I can appreciate the real meaning, the true sacredness
of a republic? Do you not believe I feel the duties it demands
of its citizens? But I want you to hold your reply in abeyance,
till I give you one bit more of history.
A ship at sea crossing on the Atlantic between Europe and
America. Of two persons on this vessel I wish to speak to you. Of
one I have already told you much; I need but add that my two
years spent in Europe,[95] previous to my return to America for a
few months last winter, had not made me less American, less a
lover of republicanism. And now this ship, baffling the February
storm, was sweeping nearer the land where the people reign. My
heart beat high as I thought it was in my native country where
women were free, more honored than in any nation in the world. As
I stood on the deck, the strong sea-wind blowing wildly about me,
and the ocean bearing on its heart-wave mountains, visions of the
grandeur of the nation lying off beyond the western horizon, rose
before me. And it was a proud heart that cried--"My Country!"
And the other person I want to speak of? It is a man, a German,
coming to the United States to escape military service in
Prussia. He came in the steerage; was poor and ignorant. He could
speak no English, not one word of your language and mine. His
fellows were all Irish, so I offered to be an interpreter for
him. I visited the steerage quarters, and returned with a heavy
heart. Such brutal faces as I saw! Ignorance, cruelty,
subserviency, were everywhere depicted. Herds of human beings
that I feared, they looked so dull and brutal. The full meaning
of a terrible truth rushed upon me. Soon these men would be my
sovereigns--I their subject!
I had just spent a year in that German's native land, and I
remembered that I had seen their women doing the work of men in
the fields, husbands returning from their day's labor
empty-handed, and their wives toiling on behind bent under heavy
burdens, and as I thought on this, our ship bore him and me
towards the land that glories in having given birth to Lucretia
Mott. In the country where he had been reared, I had seen women
harnessed with beasts of burden, dragging laden wagons, and yet
our vessel carried him and me at each moment towards a safe
harbor, in a land that pays homage to the memory of Margaret
Fuller. Our ship sailed on, taking him from a land where he had
been taught to worship royalty, whatever its worth or crime;
where he had paid cringing submission to an arbitrary rule of
police; where he had been surrounded by the degrading effects of
the mightiest military system on the globe. The ship plowed on
and on through the waves, bringing him to a republic, not one
principle of which he comprehended.
And now we sail up New York bay. The day is bright, and a
softening haze hangs over all. Surely this is some vision-land.
Yes, it is indeed a vision-land, for it has never known the
presence of a royal line; against its oppressors it fought in no
mean rebellious spirit, but rose in revolution with its motto,
"Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed," written on its brow to be known of all men. And I
think as we slowly sail up the bay on our vessel, Does that
deadened soul respond to what lies before him? Does there in his
heart rise the prayer, Oh, God! make me true to the duties about
to be laid upon me; make me worthy of being free? Yes, then, for
the first time I felt the full depth of the indignity offered to
my womanhood. I felt my enthusiasm for America wavering--love of
country dead. _My_ country!--I have no country.
Young men of Nebraska, I ask you to free your minds from
prejudice, to be just towards the demands of another human soul,
to be frank, to be wholly truthful, and answer my demand: Why
should I not be a citizen of this republic? In replying, read
between the lines of my tedious story and bear in mind the words
of Voltaire: "Who would dare change a law that time has
consecrated? Is there anything more respectable than an ancient
abuse! Reason is more ancient, replied Zadig."
Respectfully, HARRIOT STANTON.
MANCHESTER NATIONAL SOCIETY FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE, }
MANCHESTER, England, September 5, 1882. }
DEAR MISS ANTHONY: Will you accept a word of cheer and God-speed
from your sisters in England in your crusade for the emancipation
of woman in Nebraska? You carry with you the hopes and
sympathetic wishes of all on this side of the water. If you win,
as I trust you may, your victory will have a distinct influence
on the future of our parliamentary campaign, which we hope to
begin in early spring in England. In the name of English women I
would appeal to the men of Nebraska to assent to the great act of
justice to women which is proposed to them by their elected
representatives, and by so doing to aid in the enfranchisement of
women all over the world.
Yours faithfully, LYDIA E. BECKER.
LONDON, September 1, 1882.
DEAR MISS ANTHONY: Having heard that the next convention of the
National Woman Suffrage Association will meet at Omaha this
month, I cannot refrain from sending a few lines to assure our
friends who are working so steadfastly in America for the same
sacred cause as our own, of our loving sympathy and good-wishes
for success in the coming struggle. The eyes and hearts of
hundreds of women are, like my own, turned to Nebraska, where so
momentous an issue is to be decided two months hence. The news of
their vote, if rightly given, will "echo round the world" like
the first shot fired at Concord. It will be the expression of
their determination to establish their freedom by giving freedom
to others, and their example will be followed by Indiana and
Oregon, and soon by the other States of the Union and by England.
Everything points with us to a speedy triumph of the principle of
equal justice for woman. Next November, about the time when
Nebraska will be voting for equal suffrage, the women in Scotland
will be voting for the first time in their municipal elections.
The session of 1882 will be memorable in future for having passed
the act which gives a married woman the right to hold her own
property, make contracts, sue and be sued, in the same manner as
if she were a single woman. It is nearly thirty years since we
first began our efforts in this matter, and each succeeding step
has been won very slowly and with great difficulty through the
efforts of those who are working to obtain the suffrage. Mr.
Gladstone still expresses the hope that next session will place
the franchise on a "fair" basis, meaning thereby the same right
of voting for counties as for boroughs. We maintain that the
franchise can never be said to be on a fair basis while women are
debarred from the right of voting. Our progress and your progress
will keep even pace together, for if women are free in America no
long time can elapse before they are free here. We can but offer
you our sympathy and we beg this favor of you, that as soon as
you have the returns of the vote ascertained, you will telegraph
the news to us, that our English societies may keep the day of
rejoicing heart in heart with the American National Association.
With cordial sympathy in all your efforts, I am, faithfully
yours,
CAROLYN ASHURST BIGGS.
_To the National Woman Suffrage Association, in Convention
assembled, at Omaha, Nebraska, September 26, 27, 28:_
DEAR FRIENDS: The most pressing work before the National Woman
Suffrage Convention, is bringing all its forces to bear upon
congress for the submission of a sixteenth amendment to the
national constitution, which shall prohibit States from
disfranchising citizens of the United States, on the ground of
sex, or for any cause not equally applicable to all citizens.
While we of the National are glad to see an amendment to a State
constitution proposed, securing suffrage to woman, as is the case
in Nebraska this fall, we must not be led by it to forget or
neglect our legitimate work, an amendment to the national
constitution, which will secure suffrage at one and the same
moment to the women of each State. While all action of any kind
and everywhere is good because it is educational, the only real,
legitimate work of the National Woman Suffrage Association, is
upon congress. Never have our prospects been brighter than
to-day. A select committee on woman suffrage having been
appointed in both houses during the last session of congress, and
a resolution introduced in the Senate, proposing an amendment to
the Constitution of the United States, to secure the right of
suffrage to all citizens irrespective of sex, having been
referred to this select committee and receiving a favorable
majority report thereon, we have every reason to expect the
submission of such an amendment at the next session of congress.
The work then, most necessary, is with each representative and
senator; and the legislatures of the several States should be
induced to pass resolutions requesting the senators and
representatives from each State to give voice and vote in favor
of the submission of such an amendment. This work is vitally
important for the coming winter, and none the less so, even
should Nebraska vote aye November 7, upon the woman suffrage
amendment to its own constitution. In view of the probability of
the submission of a sixteenth amendment at the coming session of
congress, I offer the following resolution, which I consider one
of the most important of the series I have been asked to prepare
for adoption by the convention:
_Resolved_, That it is the duty of every woman to work with
the legislature of her own State, to secure from it the
passage of a joint resolution requesting its senators and
representatives in congress to use voice and vote in favor
of the submission of an amendment to the national
constitution which shall prohibit States from disfranchising
citizens on the ground of sex.
I hope the above resolution will be unanimously adopted, and that
each woman will strive to carry its provisions into effect as a
religious duty. With my best wishes for a grand and successful
convention, and the hope that Nebraska will set itself right
before the world by the adoption of the woman suffrage amendment
this fall, I am,
Very truly yours, MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE.[96]
_The Republican_ in describing the closing scenes of the
convention, said:
Fully 2,500 people assembled last evening to listen to the
closing proceedings of the convention. The stage, which was
beautifully furnished and upholstered, was completely occupied by
the ladies of the Association; and as they all were in full
dress, in preparation for the reception at the Paxton Hotel, the
sight was a brilliant one. As respects the audience, not only the
seats, but the lobbies were crowded, and hundreds upon hundreds
were turned away. Manager Boyd remarked as we passed in, "You
will see to-night the most magnificent gathering that has ever
been in the Opera House," and such truly it was--the intellect,
fashion and refinement of the city. Addresses were given by M'me
Neyman, whose earnest and eloquent words were breathlessly heard;
Mrs. Minor of St. Louis, whose utterances were serious and
weighty; and Miss Phoebe Couzins, who touched the springs of
sentiment, sympathy, pathos and humor by turns. After answering
two or three objections that had not been fully touched upon,
Miss Couzins fairly carried away the house, when she said in
conclusion, "Miss Anthony and myself, and another who has
addressed you are the only spinsters in the movement. We, indeed,
expect to marry, but we don't want our husbands to marry slaves
[great merriment]; we are waiting for our enfranchisement. And
now, if you want Miss Anthony and myself to move into your
State--" this hit, with all it implied, set the audience into a
convulsion of cheers and laughter which was quite prolonged; and
after the merriment had subsided, Miss Couzins completed her
sentence by saying, "We are under sailing orders to receive
proposals!" whereupon the applause broke out afresh. "However,"
she added, seeing Miss Anthony shake her head, "it takes a very
superior woman to be an old maid, and on this principle I think
Miss Anthony will stick to her colors." Miss Couzins quoted
Hawthorne as speaking through "Zenobia":
"It is my belief, yea, my prophecy, that when my sex shall
have attained its freedom there will be ten eloquent women
where there is now one eloquent man," and instanced this
convention as an illustration of what might be expected.
Miss Couzins was followed by Mrs. Saxon, Mrs. Neyman and Miss
Hindman. The resolutions,[97] which were presented by Mrs. Sewall,
among their personal commendations expressed the appreciation of
the Association for the services rendered by Mrs. Clara Bewick
Colby, in making preparations for the convention. Mrs. Colby in
making her acknowledgments said:
There was another to whom the Association owed much for the work
done which has made possible the brilliant success of the
convention--one to whom, while across the water their thoughts
and hearts had often turned; and she was sure that all present
would gladly join in extending a welcome to the late president,
and now chairman of the executive committee of the State
association, Mrs. Harriet S. Brooks.
Mrs. Brooks came forward amid applause, and said:
That at this late hour while a speech might be silvern, silence
was golden; and she would say no more than, on behalf of all the
members and officers of the State association, and the friends of
the cause in Omaha, to tender their most grateful thanks to the
National Association for "the feast of reason and the flow of
soul" with which they have been favored during the last three
days.
At the close of the convention the spacious parlors of the Paxton
House were crowded. Over a thousand ladies and gentlemen passed
through, shaking hands with the delegates and congratulating them
on the great success of the convention.
Another enthusiastic meeting was held at Lincoln, the capital of
the State, and radiating from this point in all directions these
missionaries of the new gospel of woman's equality traversed the
entire State, scattering tracts and holding meetings in churches,
school-houses and the open air, and thus the agitation was kept up
until the day of election. As it was the season for agricultural
fairs, the people were more easily drawn together, and the ladies
readily availed themselves, as they had opportunity, of these great
gatherings. Two notable debates were held in Omaha in answer to the
many challenges sent by the opposition. Miss Couzins, the first to
enter the arena, was obliged to help her antagonist in his
scriptural quotations, while Miss Anthony was compelled to supply
hers with well-known statistics. It was evident that neither of the
gentlemen had sharpened his weapons for the encounter.
To look over the list of counties visited and the immense distances
traveled in public and private conveyances, enables one in a
measure to appreciate the physical fatigue these ladies endured. In
reading of their earnest speeches, debates, conversations at every
fireside and dinner-table, in every car and carriage as they
journeyed by the way or waited at the station, their untiring
perseverance must command the unqualified admiration of those who
know what a political campaign involves. During those six weeks of
intense excitement they were alike hopeful and anxious as to the
result. At last the day dawned when the momentous question of the
enfranchisement of 75,000 women was to be decided. Every train
brought some of the speakers to their headquarters in Omaha, with
cheering news from the different localities they had canvassed. And
now one last effort must be made, they must see what can be done at
the polls. Some of the ladies went in carriages to each of the
polling booths and made earnest appeals to those who were to vote
for or against the woman's amendment. Others stood dispensing
refreshments and the tickets they wished to see voted, all day
long. And while the men sipped their coffee and ate their viands
with evident relish, the women appealed to their sense of justice,
to their love of liberty and republican institutions. Vain would be
the attempt to describe the patient waiting, the fond hopes, the
bright visions of coming freedom, that had nerved these brave women
to these untiring labors, or to shadow in colors dark enough the
fears, the anxieties, the disappointments, all centered in that
November election. A fitting subject for an historical picture was
that group of intensely earnest women gathered there, as the last
rays of the setting sun warned them that whether for weal or for
woe the decisive hour had come; no word of theirs could turn defeat
to victory.
The hours of anxious waiting were not long, the verdict soon came
flashing on every wire, from the north, the south, the west: "No!"
"No!" "No!" The mothers, wives and daughters of Nebraska must still
wear the yoke of slavery; they who endured with man the hardships
of the early days and bravely met the dangers of a pioneer life,
they who have reared two generations of boys and taught them the
elements of all they know, who have stood foremost in all good
works of charity and reform, who appreciate the genius of free
institutions, native-born American citizens, are still to be
governed by the ignorant, vicious classes from the old world. What
a verdict was this for one of the youngest States in the American
republic in the nineteenth century!
But these heroic women did not sit down in sackcloth and ashes to
weep over the cruel verdict. Anticipating victory, they had engaged
the Opera House to hold their jubilee if the women of Nebraska were
enfranchised; or, if the returns brought them no cause for
rejoicing, they would at least exalt the educational work that had
been done in the State, and dedicate themselves anew to this
struggle for liberty. They had survived three defeats, in Kansas,
Michigan, Colorado, and tasted the bitterness of repeated
disappointments, and another could not crush them. When the hour
arrived, an immense audience welcomed them in the Opera House, and
from this new baptism of sorrow they spoke more eloquently than
ever before. In their calm, determined manner they seemed to say
with Milton's hero:
"All is not lost: the unconquerable will is ours."
A report of the Fifteenth Annual Washington Convention, Jan. 23,
24, 25, 1883, was written by Miss Jessie Waite of Chicago, and
published in the _Washington Chronicle_, from which we give the
following extracts:
The proceedings of the Association were inaugurated at Lincoln
Hall Monday evening by a novel lecture, entitled "Zekle's Wife,"
by Mrs. Amy Talbot Dunn of Indianapolis. The personality of Mrs.
Dunn is so entirely lost in that of Zekle's wife that it is hard
to realize that the old lady of so many and so varied experiences
is a happy young wife. As a character sketch Mrs. Dunn's "Zekle's
Wife" stands on an equality with Denman Thompson's "Joshua
Whitcomb" and with Joe Jefferson's "Rip Van Winkle." To sustain a
conception so foreign to the natural characteristics of the actor
without once allowing the interest of the audience to flag,
requires originality of thought, independence of idea, and genius
for action. Mrs. Dunn, herself the author of her sketch,
possesses to a remarkable degree the power to impress upon her
audience the feeling that the old lady from "Kaintuck" is before
them, not only to say things for their amusement, but also to
impress upon them those great truths which have presented
themselves to her mind during the fifty years of her married
life. "Zekle's Wife" is a keen, shrewd, warm-hearted, lovable old
woman, without education or culture, yet with an innate sense of
refinement and a touching undercurrent of desire "not to be too
hard on Zekle." As she tells her story, which she informs us is a
true one from real life, she engages the attention and wins the
sympathy of all her hearers, and frequent bursts of applause
evidence the satisfaction of the audience.
The convention proper opened on Tuesday morning with the
appointment of various committees,[98] and reports[99] from the
different States filled up most of the time during the day. May
Wright Sewall said:
Women must learn that power gives power; that intelligence
alone can appreciate or be influenced by intelligence; that
justice alone is moved by appeals based on justice. More
than anything in the course of suffrage labor does the
Nebraska campaign justify the primary method of this
National Association. We have a right to expect that each
legislature will be composed of the picked men of the State.
We have a right to believe that as the intelligence, wisdom
and justice of the picked men of the nation are superior to
the same qualities in the mass of men, so is the fitness of
national and State legislators to consider the demands for
the ballot.
Mrs. Mills of Washington sang, as a solo, "Barbara Fritchie," in
excellent style. Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (wife of Francis
Miller, esq., late assistant attorney for the District of
Columbia) spoke with the greatest ease and most remarkable
command of language. She is in every sense a strong woman. She
said that, born and reared as she was in a Virginia town noted
for its intense conservatism, where she had seen a woman stripped
to the waist and brutally beaten by order of the law (her skin
happened to be of a dark color) whose only crime was that of
alleged impertinence, and that impertinence provoked by improper
conduct on the part of a young man; that, reared in such a cradle
as this, still, through the blessing of a good home, she had
learned to deeply appreciate the noble efforts of women who dared
to tread new paths, to break their own way through the dense
forest of prejudice and ignorance. Man cannot represent woman. If
woman breaks any law of man, of nature, or of God, she alone must
suffer the penalty. "This fact seems to me," said Mrs. Miller,
"to settle the whole question."
Miss Anthony read the following letter from Hon. Benjamin F.
Butler, who, she said, had the honor of being an advocate of this
cause, in addition to being governor of Massachusetts:
WASHINGTON, D. C., Jan. 23, 1883.
MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY: I received your kind note asking me to
attend the National Convention of the friends of woman
suffrage at Washington, for which courtesy I am obliged. My
engagements, which have taken me out of the commonwealth,
cover all, and more than all, of my time, and I find I am to
hurry back, leaving some of them undisposed of. It will
therefore be impossible for me to attend the convention.
As I have already declared my conviction that the fourteenth
amendment fully covers the right of all persons to vote, and
as I assume that the women of the country are persons, and
very important persons to its happiness and prosperity, I
never have been able to see any reason why women do not come
within its provisions. I think such will be the decision of
the court, perhaps quite as early as you may be able to get
through congress and the legislatures of the several States
another amendment. But both lines of action may well be
followed, as they do not conflict with each other. This
course was taken in the case of the fifteenth amendment,
which was supposed to be necessary to cover the case of the
negro, although many of the friends of the colored man
looked coldly upon that amendment, because it seemed to be
an admission that the fourteenth amendment was not
sufficient. Therefore I can without inconsistency, I think,
bid you "God speed" in your agitation for the sixteenth
amendment. It will have the effect to enlighten the public
mind as to the scope of the fourteenth amendment. I am very
truly, your friend and servant,
BENJ. F. BUTLER.
Mrs. Blake presented a series of resolutions, which were laid on
the table for consideration:
WHEREAS, In larger numbers than ever before the women of the
United States are demanding the repeal of arbitrary
restrictions which now debar them from the use of the
ballot; and
WHEREAS, The recent defeat in Nebraska of a constitutional
amendment, giving the women of the State the right to vote,
proves that failure is the natural result of an appeal to
the masses on a question which is best understood and
approved by the more intelligent citizens; therefore,
_Resolved_, That we call upon this congress to pass, without
delay, the sixteenth amendment to the federal constitution
now pending in the Senate.
_Resolved_, That all competitive examinations for places in
the civil service of the United States should be open on
equal terms to citizens of both sexes, and that any
so-called civil service reform that does not correct the
existing unjust discrimination against women employés, and
grade all salaries on merit and not sex, is a dishonest
pretense at reform.
WHEREAS, The Constitution of the United States declares that
no State shall be admitted to the Union unless it have a
republican form of government; and whereas, no true republic
can exist unless all the inhabitants are given equal civil
and political rights; therefore,
_Resolved_, That we earnestly protest against the admission
of Dakota as a State, unless the right of suffrage is
secured on equal terms to all her citizens.
_Resolved_, That the women of these United States have not
deserved the infliction of this punishment of
disfranchisement, and do most earnestly demand that they be
relieved from the cruelties it imposes upon them.
WHEREAS, During the war hundreds of women throughout our
land entered the service of the nation as hospital nurses;
and
WHEREAS, Many of these women were disabled by wounds and by
disease, while many were reduced to permanent invalidism by
the hardships they endured; therefore,
_Resolved_, That these women should be placed on the pension
list and rewarded for their services.
After the reading of the resolutions an animated discussion
followed, Miss Anthony showing in scathing terms the injustice of
the employment of women to do equal work with men at half the
salaries, in the departments at Washington and elsewhere. An
additional resolution was adopted declaring that paying Dr. Susan
A. Edson for her services as attendant physician to President
Garfield, $1,000 less than was paid for an equivalent service
rendered by Dr. Boynton, a more recent graduate of the same
college from which she received her diploma, is an unjust
discrimination on account of sex.
Mrs. SEWALL said men in the departments were given extra
leave of absence each year to go home to vote, and suggested
that women be given (until the time comes for them to vote)
extra leave to meditate upon the ballot.
Miss ANTHONY said she had addressed a letter to each
secretary asking that such women as desired be given
permission to attend the meetings of this convention without
loss of time to them. She had received but one answer, which
was from Secretary Folger, who wrote: "_The condition of the
public business prevents us from acceding to your request_."
Mrs. HARRIETTE R. SHATTUCK of Boston said: Tired as some of
the audience must be of hearing the same old argument in
favor of the ballot for women repeated from year to year,
they could not possibly be more tired than the friends of
the cause were of hearing the same old objections repeated
from year to year. While the forty-year-old objections are
raised the forty-year-old rejoinders must be given. We must
continue to agitate until we force people to listen. It is
like the ringing of a bell. At first no one notices it; in a
little while, a few will listen; finally, the perpetual
ding-dong, ding-dong, will force itself to be heard by every
one. The oldest of all the old arguments is that of right
and justice, and the tune which my little bell shall ring is
merely this: "_It is right!_" This cry of woman for liberty
and equality increases every day, and it is a cry that must
some day be heard and responded to.
Mrs. Virginia L. Minor of St. Louis was then introduced as the
woman who stands to this cause in the same relation that Dred
Scott had stood to the Republican party. Miss Couzins said that
in introducing Mrs. Minor she wanted to say one word about the
work Mrs. Minor had done for the soldiers, during the sanitary
fair and all through the war. She had canned fruit, refusing the
money offered in payment, returning it all to be used for the
sick and wounded soldiers [applause]. Mrs. Minor spoke in a calm,
deliberate manner, with perfect conviction in the truth of her
statements and with a winning sweetness of expression that
indicated the highest sensibilities of a refined nature. She
showed that women voted in the early days of the country, and
that undoubtedly it was the intention of the framers of the
constitution that they should do so. This right had been taken
away when the constitution was amended and the word "male"
inserted. What is now desired is simply restoration of that which
had been taken away. She believed that this restoration was made,
unwittingly, by the addition of the fourteenth amendment, which,
without doubt, makes women citizens. It is men who have abused
the republican institution of suffrage; it is women who desire to
restore it to its proper exercise. Miss Anthony read a letter
from Mrs. Wallace, the wife of one of the former governors of
Indiana:
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind., January 21, 1883.
DEAR MISS ANTHONY: When in the call I read that for fourteen
consecutive years the National Woman Suffrage Association
had held a convention in Washington, I was oppressed by two
thoughts: First, how hard it is to overcome prejudice and
ignorance when they have been fortified by the usages and
customs of ages; and secondly, the sublime faith, courage
and perseverance of the advocates of woman's
enfranchisement, and their confidence in the ultimate
triumph of justice. After all, by what are governments
organized and maintained? By brute force alone? Despotisms
may be, but republics never. What are the qualifications for
the ballot? The power to fight? Are they not rather
intelligence, virtue, truth and patriotism? I scarce think
the most obstinate and egotistical of our opponents will
assert that men possess a monopoly of these virtues, or even
a moiety of them. As to their fighting capacities, of which
we hear so much, I think they would have cut a sorry figure
in the wars which they have been compelled to wage in order
to establish and maintain this government, if they had not
had the sympathy and coöperation of woman. I entirely agree
with you that, while agitation in the States is necessary as
a means of education, a sixteenth amendment to the national
constitution is the quickest, surest and least laborious way
to secure the success of this great work for human liberty.
Any legislature of Indiana in the last six years would have
ratified such an amendment. With highest regards for
yourself and the best wishes for the success of the
convention, I remain,
Yours, etc., ZERELDA G. WALLACE.
After several other speakers,[100] Madame Clara Neyman of New
York city, delivered what was, without question, one of the best
addresses of the convention. She spoke with a slightly German
accent, which only served to enhance the interest and hold the
attention of the audience. Her eloquence and argument could not
fail to convince all of her earnest purpose. After showing the
philosophy of reform movements, and every step of progress, she
said:
Woman's enfranchisement will be wrought out by peaceful
means. We shall use no fire-arms, no torpedoes, no heavy
guns to gain our freedom. No precious human lives will be
sacrificed; no tears will be shed to establish our right. We
shall capture the fortresses of prejudice and injustice by
the force of our arguments; we shall send shell after shell
into these strongholds until their defective reasoning gives
way to victorious truth. "Inability to bear arms," says
Herbert Spencer, "was the reason given in feudal times for
excluding woman from succession," and to-day her position is
lowest where the military spirit prevails. A sad
illustration of this is my own country. Being a born German,
and in feeling, kindred, and patriotism attached to the
country of my birth and childhood, it is hard for me to make
such a confession. But the truth must be told, even if it
hurts. It has been observed by those who travel in Europe,
that Germany, which has the finest and best universities,
which stands highest in scholarship, nevertheless tolerates,
nay, enforces the subjection of woman. The freedom of a
country stands in direct relation to the position of its
women. America, which has proclaimed the freedom of man, has
developed _pari passu_ a finer womanhood, and has done more
for us than any other nation in existence. A new type of
manhood has been reared on American soil--a type which
Tennyson describes in his Princess:
Man shall be more of woman, she of man;
He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
Nor lose the thews that wrestle with the world;
She, mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,
Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind;
Till at the last they set them each to each,
Like perfect music unto noble words.
Then comes the statelier Eden back to man;
Then springs the crowning race of human kind.
At the evening session the time was divided between Lillie
Devereux Blake and Phoebe W. Couzins. Mrs. Blake spoke on the
question, "Is it a Crime to be a Woman?"
She showed in a clear, logical manner that wherever a woman
was apprehended for crime the discrimination against her was
not because of the crime she had committed, but because the
crime was committed by a woman. Every woman in this country
is treated by the law as if she were to blame for being a
woman. In New York an honorable married woman has no right
to her children. A man may beat his wife all he pleases; but
if he beats another man the law immediately interferes,
showing that the woman is not protected simply because she
is so indiscreet as to _be a woman_. If it is not a crime to
be a woman, why are women subjected to unequal payment with
men for the same service? Why are they forced at times to
don men's clothes in order to obtain employment that will
keep them from starvation?
Miss COUZINS said that the American-born woman was "a woman
without a country"; but before she had closed she had proved
that this country belonged exclusively to the women. It was
a woman, Queen Isabella, that enabled a man to discover this
country, and in the old flag the initials were "I" and "F,"
representing Isabella and Ferdinand, showing that it was
acknowledged that the woman's initial was the more important
in this matter and to be first considered. It was a woman,
Mary Chilton, that first landed on Plymouth rock. It was a
woman, Betsy Ross, that designed our beautiful flag, the
original eagle on our silver dollar, and the seal of the
United States without which no money is legal. All the way
down in our national history woman has been hand in hand
with man, has assisted, supported and encouraged him, and
now there are women ready to help reform the life of the
body politic, and side by side with man work to purify,
refine and ennoble the world. Miss Couzins seemed Inspired
by her own thoughts and carried the audience along with her
in her flights of eloquence.
Being asked to make a few closing remarks, Mrs. May Wright Sewall
said:
Difficult, indeed, is the task of closing a three days'
convention; vain is the hope to do it with fitting words
which shall not be mere repetitions of what has been said on
this platform. The truth which bases this claim lies in a
nut-shell, and the shell seems hard to be cracked. It is
unfair, when comparing the ability of men and women, to
compare the average woman to the exceptional man, but this
is what man always does. If, perchance, he admits not only
the equality but the superiority of woman, he tells her she
must not vote because she is so nearly an angel, so much
better than he is, and this, in the face of the fact that
every angel represented or revealed has been shown in the
form of a _handsome young man_. If any class then must
abstain from meddling in politics on account of relation to
the angels, it is the men! But she informed the gentlemen
she had no fears for them on that ground, for their
relationship was not _near_ enough to cause any serious
inconvenience. Speaking of the objections to women
undertaking grave or deep studies, that woman lacks the
logical faculty, that she has only intuition, nerve-force,
etc., Mrs. Sewall said: It is true of every woman who has
done the worthiest work in science, literature, or reform,
from Diotima, the teacher of Socrates, to Margaret Fuller,
the pupil of Channing and the peer of Emerson, that ignoring
the methods of nerves and instincts, she has placed herself
squarely on the basis of observation, investigation and
reason. Men will admit that these women had strength and
logic, but say they are exceptional women. So are Gladstone,
Bismarck, Gambetta, Lincoln and Garfield exceptional men.
She mentioned Miss Anthony's proposed trip to Europe, and
said that she had not had a holiday for thirty years.
Miss ANTHONY said she wished to call attention to the report
of the Special Committee of the Senate, which distinctly
stated that the question had had "general agitation," and
that the petitions at different times presented were both
"_numerous_ and respectable." This was sufficient answer,
coming from such high authority, that of Senator Anthony, to
all the insinuations and unjust remarks about the petitions
presented to congress, and with regard to the assertion that
women themselves did not want the ballot. She expressed her
obligations to the press, and mentioned that the _Sunday
Chronicle_ had announced its intention of giving much
valuable space to the proceedings, and that when she had
learned this, she had ordered 1,000 copies, which she would
send to the address of any friend in the audience free of
charge.
The "Star Spangled Banner" was then sung, Miss Couzins and Mrs.
Shattuck singing the solos, Mr. Wilson of the Foundry M. E.
Church, leading the audience in the chorus, the whole producing a
fine effect. Miss Anthony said the audience could see how much
better it was to have a man to help, even in singing. This
brought down the house.
In closing this report, a word may be said of the persons most
conspicuous in it. This year several remarkable additions have
been made to our number, and it is of these especially that we
would speak. Mrs. Minor of St. Louis, in her manner has all the
gentleness and sweetness of the high-born Southern lady; her
personal appearance is very pleasant, her hair a light chestnut,
untouched with gray; her face has lost the color of youth, but
her eyes have still their fire, toned down by the sorrow they
have seen. Madame Neyman is also new to the Washington platform.
She is a piquant little German lady, with vivacious manner, most
agreeable accent, and looked in her closely-fitting black-velvet
dress as if she might have just stepped out of a painting. In
direct contrast is Mrs. Miller of Maryland--a large, dark-haired
matron, past middle age, but newly born in her enthusiasm for the
cause. She is a worker as well as a talker, and is a decided
acquisition to the ranks. The other novice in the work is Mrs.
Amy Dunn, who has taken such a novel way to render assistance.
Mrs. Dunn is tall and slender, with dark hair and eyes. She is a
shrewd observer, does not talk much socially, but when she says
anything it is to the point. Her character sketch, "Zekle's
Wife," will be a stepping-stone to many a woman on her way to the
suffrage platform.
Two women who have done and are doing a great work in this city,
and who are not among the public speakers, are Mrs. Spofford, the
treasurer, wife of the proprietor of the Riggs House, and Miss
Ellen H. Sheldon, secretary of the Association. To these ladies
is due much of the success of the convention. Mrs. Sheldon is of
diminutive stature, with gray hair, and Mrs. Spofford is of large
and queenly figure, with white hair. Her magnificent presence is
always remarked at the meetings.
The following were among the letters read at this convention:
10 DUCHESS STREET, PORTLAND PLACE, LONDON, Eng., Jan. 12.
DEAR MISS ANTHONY: To you and our friends in convention
assembled, I send greeting from the old world. It needs but
little imagination to bring Lincoln Hall, the usual fine
audiences, and the well-known faces on the platform, before
my mind, so familiar have fifteen years of these conventions
in Washington made such scenes to me. How many times, as I
have sat in your midst and listened to the grand speeches of
my noble coädjutors, I have wondered how much longer we
should be called upon to rehearse the oft-repeated arguments
in favor of equal rights to all. Surely the grand
declarations of statesmen at every period in our history
should make the principle of equality so self-evident as to
end at once all class legislation.
It is now over half a century since Frances Wright with
eloquent words first asserted the political rights of women
in our republic; and from that day to this, inspired
apostles in an unbroken line of succession have proclaimed
the new gospel of the motherhood of God and of humanity. We
have plead our case in conventions of the people, in halls
of legislation, before committees of congress, and in the
Supreme Court of the United States, and our arguments still
remain unanswered. History shows no record of a fact like
this, where so large a class of virtuous, educated,
native-born citizens have been subjugated by the national
government to foreign domination. While our American
statesmen scorn the thought that even the most gifted son of
a monarch, an emperor or a czar should ever occupy the proud
position of a president of these United States, and by
constitutional provision deny to all foreigners this high
privilege, they yet allow the very riff-raff of the old
world to make laws for the proudest women of the republic,
to make the moral code for the daughters of our people, to
sit in judgment on all our domestic relations.
England has taken two grand steps within the last year in
extending the municipal suffrage to the woman of Scotland
and in passing the Married Woman's Property bill. They are
holding meetings all over the country now in favor of
parliamentary suffrage. Statistics show that women generally
_exercise_ the rights already accorded. They have recently
passed through a very heated election for members of the
school-board in various localities. Miss Lydia Becker was
elected in Manchester, and Miss Eva Müller in one of the
districts of London, and several other women in different
cities.
A little incident will show you how naturally the political
equality of woman is coming about in Queen Victoria's
dominions. I was invited to dine at Barn Elms, a beautiful
estate on the banks of the Thames, a spot full of classic
associations, the residence of Mr. Charles McLaren, a member
of parliament. Opposite me at dinner sat a bright young girl
tastefully attired; on my right the gentleman to whom she
was engaged; at the head of the table a sparkling matron of
twenty-five, one of the most popular speakers here on the
woman suffrage platform. The dinner-table talk was such as
might be heard in any cultivated circle--art, literature,
amusements, passing events, etc., etc.--and when the repast
was finished, ladies and gentlemen, in full dinner dress,
went off to attend an important school-board meeting, our
host to preside and the young lady opposite me to make the
speech of the evening, and all done in as matter-of-fact a
way as if the party were going to the opera. Members of
parliament and lord-mayors preside and speak at all their
public meetings and help in every way to carry on the
movement, giving money most liberally; and yet how seldom
any of our senators or congressmen will even speak at our
meetings, to say nothing of sending us a check of fifty or a
hundred dollars. I trust that we shall accomplish enough
this year to place the women of republican America at least
on an even platform with monarchical England. With sincere
wishes for the success of the convention, cordially yours,
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
LONDON, January 10, 1883.
DEAR MISS ANTHONY: I was very glad indeed to receive notice
of your mid-winter conference in time to send you a few
words about the progress of our work in England. I believe
our disappointment at the result of the vote in Nebraska
must have been greater than yours, as, being on the spot,
you saw the difficulties to be surmounted. I had so hoped
that the men of a free new State would prove themselves
juster and wiser than the men of our older civilizations,
whose prejudice and precedents are such formidable barriers.
But we cannot, judging from a distance, look upon the work
of the campaign as thrown away. Twenty-five thousand votes
in favor of woman suffrage in the face of such enormous odds
is really a victory, and the legislatures of these States
are deeply pledged to ratify the constitutional amendment,
if passed by congress. We look forward hopefully to the
discussion in congress. The majority report of the Senate
cannot fail to secure attention, and I hope your present
convention will bring together national forces that will
greatly influence the debate.
CAROLINE A. BIGGS.
51 RUE DE VARENNE, PARIS, January 15, 1883.
MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY: Perhaps a brief account of what has
been done with the two packages of "The History of Woman
Suffrage" which you sent me for distribution in Europe may
prove interesting to the convention. In the first place,
sets in sheep have been deposited already, or will have been
before spring, in all the great continental libraries from
Russia to France, and from Denmark to Turkey. In the second
place, copies in cloth have been presented to reformers,
publicists, editors, etc, in every country of the old
world. This generous distribution of a costly work has
already begun to produce an effect. Besides a large number
of private letters from all parts of Europe acknowledging
the receipt of the volumes and bestowing on their contents
the highest praise, the History has been reviewed in
numerous reform, educational and socialistic periodicals and
newspapers in almost every modern European tongue. Nor is
this all. Every week a new pamphlet or book is sent me, or
comes under my notice, in which this History is cited,
sometimes at great length, and is pronounced to be the
authority on the American women's movement. I have carefully
kept all these letters, newspaper notices, etc., and at the
proper time I hope to prepare a little pamphlet for your
publisher on European opinion concerning your great work.
Very truly yours, THEODORE STANTON.
51 RUE DE VARENNE, PARIS, January 15, 1883.
DEAR MISS ANTHONY: My husband has just read me a letter he
has written you concerning the enthusiastic reception your
big History has had among liberal people on this side of the
Atlantic, but he did not inform you that he should send the
American public next spring a similar though much smaller
work, entitled "The Woman Question in Europe." The Putnams
of New York are now busy on the volume. You in the new world
have little idea how the leaders of the women's movement
here watch everything you do in the United States. The great
fact which my husband's volume will teach you in America is
the important and direct influence your movement is having
on the younger, less developed, but growing revolution in
favor of our sex, now in progress in every country of the
old world. While assisting in the preparation of the
manuscript for this book this fact has been thrust upon my
notice at every instant, and never before did I fully
realize the grand rôle the United States is acting in this
nineteenth century, for, rest assured, the moment European
women are emancipated monarchy gives way to the republic
everywhere.
Most sincerely yours, MARGUERITTE BERRY STANTON.
134 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, S. E., January 25, 1883.
DEAR SUSAN ANTHONY: I believe that this is the only week of
the whole winter when I could not come to you nor attend
your convention, much as I wish to do so. It has been an
exceptional week to me in the way of work and engagements,
full of both as I always am. I could not call on you last
Monday, as I was in my own crowded parlors from 1 till 10
o'clock at night. I tell you this that you may know that I
did not of my own accord stay away from you. I have not had
a moment to write you a coherent letter, such as I would be
willing you should read. But I _have_ saved the best reports
of the convention, and it shall have a good notice in the
_Independent_ of week after next. It shall have only praise.
Of course I could write a brighter, more characteristic
notice could I myself have attended. Should you stay over
next Sunday I can see you yet; but if not, remember I think
of you always with the warmest interest, and meet you always
with unchanged affection.
Ever your friend, MARY CLEMMER.
May God bless and keep you, I ever pray.[101]
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, THURSDAY, March 1, 1883.
Mr. WHITE, by unanimous consent, from the Special Committee on
Woman Suffrage, reported back the joint resolution (H. Res., 255)
proposing an amendment to the constitution, which was referred to
the House calendar, and, with the accompanying report, ordered to
be printed.
Mr. SPRINGER: As a member of that committee I have not seen the
report, and do not know whether it meets with my
concurrence.[102]
Mr. WHITE: I ask by unanimous consent that the minority may have
leave to submit their views, to be printed with the majority
report.
The SPEAKER: The Chair hears no objection.
MR. WHITE, from the Select Committee on Woman Suffrage, submitted
the following:
_The Select Committee on Woman Suffrage, to whom was
referred House Resolution No. 255, proposing an amendment to
the Constitution of the United States to secure the right of
suffrage to citizens of the United States without regard to
sex, having considered the same, respectfully report:_
In attempting to comprehend the vast results that could and
would be attained by the adoption of the proposed article to
the constitution, a few considerations are presented that
are claimed by the friends of woman suffrage to be worthy of
the most serious attention, among which are the following:
I. There are vast interests in property vested in women,
which property is affected by taxation and legislation,
without the owners having voice or representation in regard
to it. The adoption of the proposed amendment would remove a
manifest injustice.
II. Consider the unjust discriminations made against women
in industrial and educational pursuits, and against those
who are compelled to earn a livelihood by work of hand or
brain. By conferring upon such the right of suffrage, their
condition, it is claimed, would be greatly improved by the
enlargement of their influence.
III. The questions of social and family relations are of
equal importance to and affect as many women as men. Giving
to women a voice in the enactment of laws pertaining to
divorce and the custody of children and division of property
would be merely recognizing an undeniable right.
IV. Municipal regulations in regard to houses of
prostitution, of gambling, of retail liquor traffic, and of
all other abominations of modern society, might be shaped
very differently and more perfectly were women allowed the
ballot.
V. If women had a voice in legislation, the momentous
question of peace and war, which may act with such fearful
intensity upon women, might be settled with less bloodshed.
VI. Finally, there is no condition, status in life, of rich
or poor; no question, moral or political; no interest,
present or future; no ties, foreign or domestic; no issues,
local or national; no phase of human life, in which the
mother is not equally interested with the father, the
daughter with the son, the sister with the brother.
Therefore the one should have equal voice with the other in
molding the destiny of this nation.
Believing these considerations to be so important as to
challenge the attention of all patriotic citizens, and that
the people have a right to be heard in the only
authoritative manner recognized by the constitution, we
report the accompanying resolution with a favorable
recommendation in order that the people, through the
legislatures of their respective States, may express their
views:
JOINT RESOLUTION _proposing an amendment to the Constitution
of the United States_:
_Resolved_ by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in congress assembled, (two-thirds
of each House concurring therein), That the following
article be proposed to the legislatures of the several
States as an amendment to the Constitution of the United
States, which, when ratified by three-fourths of the said
legislatures, shall be valid as part of said constitution,
namely:
SECTION 1. The right of citizens of the United States to
vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or
by any State on account of sex.
SEC. 2. The congress shall have power, by appropriate
legislation, to enforce the provisions of this article.
Thus closed the forty-seventh congress, and although with so little
promise of any substantial good for women, yet this slight
recognition in legislation was encouraging to those who had so long
appealed in vain for the attention of their representatives. A
committee to even consider the wrongs of woman was more than had
ever been secured before, and one to propose some measures of
justice, sustained by the votes of a few statesmen awake to the
degradation of disfranchisement, gave some faint hope of more
generous action in the near future. The tone of the debates[103] in
these later years even, on the nature and rights of women, is
wholly unworthy the present type of developed womanhood and the age
in which we live.
FOOTNOTES:
[81] During the autumn Miss Anthony, Mrs. Jones, Miss Snow and Miss
Couzins, spending some weeks in Washington, asked for an audience
with President Chester A. Arthur, and urged him to recommend in his
first message to congress the appointment of a standing committee
and the submission of a sixteenth amendment.
[82] _Yeas_--Aldrich, Allison, Anthony, Blair, Cameron of Pa.,
Cameron of Wis., Conger, Davis of Ill., Dawes, Edmunds, Ferry,
Frye, Harrison, Hawley, Hill of Col., Hoar, Jones of Fla., Jones of
Nev., Kellogg, Lapham, Logan, McDill, McMillan, Miller of Cal.,
Mitchell, Morrill, Platt, Plumb, Ransom, Rollins, Saunders, Sawyer,
Sewell, Sherman, Windom--35.
_Nays_--Bayard, Beck, Brown, Butler, Camden, Cockrell, Coke, Davis
of W. Va., Fair, Farley, Garland, Hampton, Hill of Ga., Jackson,
Jonas, McPherson, Maxey, Saulsbury, Slater, Vance, Vest, Walker,
Williams--23.
_Absent_--Call, George, Gorman, Groome, Grover, Hale, Harris,
Ingalls, Johnston, Lamar, Mahone, Miller of N. Y., Morgan,
Pendleton, Pugh, Teller, Van Wyck, Voorhees--18.
The members of the committee were Senators Lapham of New York,
Anthony of Rhode Island, Blair of New Hampshire, Jackson of
Tennessee, George of Mississippi, Ferry of Michigan and Fair of
Nevada.
[83] _Yeas_--Aldrich, Anderson, Bayne, Beach, Belford, Bingham,
Black, Bliss, Brewer, Briggs, Browne, Brumm, Buck, Burrows, Julius
C., Butterworth, Calkins, Camp, Campbell, Candler, Cannon,
Carpenter, Caswell, Converse, Crapo, Davis, George R., Dawes,
Deering, De Motte, Dezendorf, Dingley, Dwight, Farwell, Sewall S.,
Finley, Flower, Geddes, Grout, Hardenburgh, Harris, Henry, S.,
Haseltine, Haskell, Hawk, Hazelton, Heilman, Henderson, Hepburn,
Hill, Hiscock, Horr, Houk, Hubbell, Humphrey, Hutchinson, Jacobs,
Jadwin, Jones, Phineas, Kasson, Kelley, Ladd, Lord, Marsh, Mason,
McClure, McCoid, McCook, McKinley, Miles, Miller, Moulton, Murch,
Nolan, Norcross, O'Neill, Orth, Page, Parker, Paul, Payson, Poole,
Pierce, Pettibone, Pound, Prescott, Ranney, Ray, Reed, Rice. Theron
M., Richardson, D. P., Ritchie, Robeson, Robinson, Geo. D.,
Robinson, James S., Ryan, Scranton, Shallenberger, Sherwin,
Skinner, Smith, A. Herr, Smith, Dietrich C., Spaulding, Spooner,
Steele, Stephens, Stone, Strait, Taylor, Updegraff, J. T.,
Updegraff, Thomas, Valentine, Van Aernam, Walker, Watson, West,
White, Williams, Chas. G., Willits--115.
_Nays_--Aiken, Atkins, Berry, Blackburn, Bland, Blount, Bragg,
Buchanan, Buckner, Cabell, Caldwell, Cassiday, Chapman, Clark,
Clements, Cobb, Colerick, Cox, William R., Covington, Cravens,
Culberson, Curtin, Deuster, Dibrell, Dowd, Evins, Forney, Frost,
Fulkerson, Garrison, Guenther, Gunter, Hammond, N. J., Hatch,
Herbert, Hewitt, G. W. Hoge, Holman, House, Jones, George W.,
Jones, James K., Joyce, Kenna, Klotz, Knott, Latham, Leedom,
Manning, Martin, Matson, McMillin, Mills, Money, Morrison,
Mutchler, Oates, Phister, Reagan, Rosecrans, Ross, Schackleford,
Shelley, Simonton, Singleton, Jas. W., Singleton, Otho R., Sparks,
Speer, Springer, Stockslager, Thompson, P. B., Thompson, Wm. G.,
Tillman, Tucker, Turner, Henry G., Turner, Oscar, Upson, Vance,
Warner, Whittihore, Williams, Thomas, Willis, Wilson, Wise, George
D., Young--84.
[84] _Connecticut_, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Frances Ellen Burr.
_Colorado_, Mrs. Elizabeth G. Campbell, _District of Columbia_,
Ellen H. Sheldon, Jane H. Spofford, Dr. Caroline B. Winslow, Ellen
M. O'Conner, Eliza Titus Ward, Belva A. Lockwood, Mrs. H. L.
Shephard, Martha Johnson. _Indiana_, Helen M. Gongar, May Wright
Sewall, Laura Kregelo, Alexiana S. Maxwell. _Maine_, Sophronia C.
Snow. _Massachusetts_, Mrs. Harriet H. Robinson, Harriette R.
Shattuck, Laura E. Brooks, Mary R. Brown, Emma F. Clary.
_Nebraska_, Clara B. Colby. _New Jersey_, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs.
Chandler. _New York_, Mrs. Caroline Gilkey Rogers, Mrs. Blake, Mrs.
Gage, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Helen M. Loder. _Pennsylvania_, Mrs.
McClellan Brown, Rachel G. Foster, Emma C. Rhodes. _Rhode Island_,
Rev. Frederick A Hinckley, Mrs. Burgess. _Wisconsin_, Miss Eliza
Wilson and Mrs. Painter.
[85] Short speeches were made by Mrs. Robinson and Mrs. Shattuck of
Massachusetts, Mrs. Sewall and Mrs. Gougar of Indiana, Mrs. Saxon
of Louisiana, Mrs. Colby of Nebraska.
[86] When Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Gage and Mrs. Blake of New York, Mrs.
Hooker of Connecticut and Mrs. Saxon of Louisiana, and Mrs. Sewall,
by special request of the chairman, again addressed the committee.
[87] Mr. Blackburn, Mr. Robeson, and Mr. Reed were present.
[88] Mrs. Saxon, Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Sewall, Mrs. McClellan Brown, Mrs.
Colby, Miss Couzins, Miss Anthony, Edward M. Davis, Robert Purvis,
Mrs. Shattuck, Rev. Frederick A. Hinckley, Mrs. Robinson.
[89] Those present were Mesdames Spofford, Stanton, Robinson,
Shattuck, Sewall and Saxon; Misses Thompson, Anthony, Couzins and
Foster. Many pleasant ladies from the Society of Friends were there
also and contributed to the dignity and interest of the occasion.
[90] The speakers in the American convention were Lucy Stone, Henry
B. Blackwell, Margaret W. Campbell, Mary E. Haggart, Judge Kingman
and Governor Hoyt of Wyoming, Hannah Tracy Cutler, Mary B. Clay,
Dr. Mary F. Thomas, Rebecca N. Hazzard, Ada M. Bittenbender, Mrs.
O. C. Dinsmore, Matilda Hindman, Rev. W. E. Copeland, Erasmus M.
Correll.
The speakers at the National convention were Virginia L. Minor,
Phoebe Couzins, Mrs. Saxon, Mrs. Bloomer, Mrs. McKinney, Mrs.
Shattuck, Mrs. Neyman, Mrs. Colby, Mrs. Sewall, Mrs. Mason, Mrs.
Brooks, Mrs. Blake, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Dinsmore, Miss Hindman, Mrs.
Gougar, Mr. Correll and Mrs. Harbert. Many of those from both
associations took part in the canvass. Miss Rachel G. Foster went
out in the spring and made all the arrangements for the work of the
National. She studied the geography of the State, and the
railroads, and mapped out all the meetings for its twelve speakers.
[91] For full reports of the American convention see the _Woman's
Journal_, edited by Lucy Stone and published in Boston.
[92] For reports of the National see _Our Herald_, edited by Helen
M. Gougar and published in Lafayette, Ind. The daily papers of
Omaha had full reports, the most fair by the _Republican_, edited
by Mr. Brooks.
[93] Their many courtesies are well summed up by Miss Foster in a
letter to _Our Herald_:--DEAR HERALD: As your readers will know
from the report of the executive meetings, it was decided to have a
headquarters for National Woman Suffrage Association speakers at
Omaha. When your editor left, the arrangements had not been
completed for office-room and furnishings. It is finally decided
that I, as secretary of the National Woman's Suffrage Association,
remain in charge of this Omaha office, with Mrs. C. B. Colby as my
associate, while Mrs. Bittenbender has charge of the headquarters
at Lincoln, and manages the American and State speakers, these two
officers of the campaign committee being in constant consultation.
I cannot too strongly express the gratitude which our committee,
and especially our National Woman's Suffrage Association, owes to
the kind firm of Kitchen Brothers, proprietors of the Paxton Hotel.
During our late convention their attention has been unremitting,
and they now crown it by giving us, rent free, a large,
well-lighted office to be occupied until election as the Omaha
headquarters of our campaign committee. I was somewhat puzzled
about the suitable furnishings for the room, but Mr. Kitchen told
me he would attend to that himself, and through his kindness it
will be made very comfortable for us to occupy for the next five
weeks.
Messrs. Dewey and Stone of this city, large dealers in furniture,
have given the use of a handsome and convenient desk which will
enable us to bring order out of chaos. So you can imagine us,
surrounded by all convenient appliances, hard at work in our new
quarters a good part of every day for this last month before
election. We can certainly not complain that we are not made
welcome to the best the city affords by these kind citizens of
Omaha. Why, we even had a special engine and car given us by the
accommodating manager of the Burlington & Missouri railroad to run
one of our speakers from Omaha to Lincoln to enable her to attend a
meeting which would otherwise have lacked a speaker. Mr.
Montmorency, on behalf of the Burlington & Missouri railroad,
extended this courtesy (and in our need at that hour it was highly
appreciated) to us because of the work in which we are engaged. As
all know ere this, both this road and the Union Pacific have given
to our speakers and delegates generous reductions over all their
lines in this State.
Mayor Boyd, owner of the Opera House, has also done his share to
aid us toward success, in his great reduction of ordinary rates to
us while we occupy his handsome building with our suffrage mass
meetings. We have the Opera House now secured for October 4, 13,
19, 26, November 2 and 6, on which dates large meetings will be
addressed by some of our principal speakers. The first date is to
be filled by Miss Phoebe Couzins, on "The Woman Without a Country."
The full report of our proceedings at the Omaha and Lincoln
conventions, with the newspaper comments upon the size and
character of the audiences there assembled, as well as the
courtesies which I have just mentioned, will convince our readers
that we are seemingly welcome guests here in Nebraska, and I may
say especially in Omaha. I will keep the _Herald_ posted from week
to week upon campaign committee work.
Yours for success, RACHEL G. FOSTER.
Headquarters of Suffrage Campaign Committee, Paxton House, Omaha,
October 2, 1882.
[94] A private letter was received from Mrs. Ellen Clark Sargent,
enclosing a check for $50.
[95] Miss Stanton, having studied astronomy with Professor Maria
Mitchell, went to Europe to take a degree in Mathematics from the
College of France; but before completing her course, she shared the
fate of too many of our American girls; she expatriated herself by
marrying a foreigner.
[96] Letters were also received from Rebecca Moore, England; Mrs.
Z. G. Wallace, Indianapolis; Frederick Douglass, Washington, D. C.;
Theodore Stanton, Paris, France; Sarah Knox Goodrich, Clarina
Howard Nichols, California, and many others.
[97] WHEREAS, The National Woman Suffrage Association has labored
unremittingly to secure the appointment of a committee in the
congress of the United States to receive and consider the petitions
of women and whereas, this Association realizes the importance of
such a committee,
_Resolved_, That the thanks of this Association are due and are
hereby tendered to congress for the appointment at its last session
of a Select Woman Suffrage Committee in each house.
_Resolved_, That the thanks of this Association are hereby tendered
to Senators Lapham, Ferry, Blair and Anthony, of the Select
Committee, for their able majority report.
_Resolved_, That it is the paramount duty of congress at its next
session to submit a sixteenth amendment to the constitution which
shall secure the enfranchisement of the women of the republic.
_Resolved_, That the recent action of King Christian of Denmark, in
conferring the right of municipal suffrage upon the women in
Iceland, and the similar enlargement of woman's political freedom
in Scotland, India and Russia, are all encouraging evidences of the
progress of self-government even in monarchical countries. And
farther, that while the possession of these privileges by our
foreign sisters is an occasion of rejoicing to us, it still but
emphasizes the inconsistency of a republic which refuses political
recognition to one-half of its citizens.
_Resolved_, That the especial thanks of the officers and delegates
of this convention are due and are hereby most cordially tendered
to Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby, for the exceptionally efficient manner
in which she has discharged the onerous duties which devolved upon
her in making all preparations for this convention and for the
grand success which her efforts have secured.
_Resolved_, That the National Woman Suffrage Association on the
occasion of this, its fourteenth annual convention, does, in the
absence of its honored president, desire to send greeting to
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and to express to her the sympathetic
admiration with which the members of this body have followed her in
her reception in a foreign land.
[98] Committee on Resolutions, composed of Lillie Devereux Blake of
New York city, Virginia L. Minor of St. Louis, Harriet R. Shattuck
of Boston, May Wright Sewall of Indianapolis, and Ellen H. Sheldon
of the District of Columbia.
[99] Mrs. Spofford, the treasurer, reported that $5,000 were spent
in Nebraska in the endeavor to carry the amendment in that State.
[100] Short speeches were made by Mrs. Rogers, Mrs. Lockwood, Mrs.
McKinney, Mrs. Loder and others.
[101] This was the last word from this dear friend to one of our
number. I met her afterward as Mrs. Hudson with her husband in
London. We dined together one evening at the pleasant home of
Moncure D. Conway. She was as full as ever of plans for future
usefulness and enjoyment. From England she went for a short trip on
the continent. In parting I little thought she would so soon finish
her work on earth. E. C. S.
[102] Mr. Springer had never been present at a single meeting of
the committee, though always officially notified. Neither did Mr.
Muldrow of Mississippi ever honor the committee with his presence.
However, Mr. Stockslager of Indiana and Mr. Vance of North Carolina
were always in their places, and the latter, we thought, almost
persuaded to consider with favor the claims of women to political
equality.
[103] Reports of congressional action and the conventions of
1884-85 have been already published in pamphlet form, and we shall
print the reports hereafter once in two years, corresponding with
the terms of congress. Our plan is to bind these together once in
six years, making volumes of the size of those already published.
These pamphlets, as well as the complete History in three volumes,
are for sale at the publishing house of Charles Mann, 8 Elm Park,
Rochester, N. Y.
CHAPTER XXXI.
MASSACHUSETTS.
BY HARRIET H. ROBINSON.
The Woman's Hour--Lydia Maria Child Petitions Congress--First New
England Convention--The New England, American and Massachusetts
Associations--_Woman's Journal_--Bishop Gilbert Haven--The
Centennial Tea-party--County Societies--Concord
Convention--Thirtieth Anniversary of the Worcester
Convention--School Suffrage Association--Legislative
Hearing--First Petitions--The Remonstrants Appear--Women in
Politics--Campaign of 1872--Great Meeting in Tremont
Temple--Women at the Polls--Provisions of Former State
Constitutions--Petitions, 1853--School-Committee Suffrage,
1879--Women Threatened with Arrest--Changes in the Laws--Woman
Now Owns her own Clothing--Harvard Annex--Woman in the
Professions--Samuel E. Sewall and William I. Bowditch--Supreme
Court Decisions--Sarah E. Wall--Francis Jackson--Julia Ward
Howe--Mary E. Stevens--Lucia M. Peabody--Lelia Josephine
Robinson--Eliza (Jackson) Eddy's Will.
From 1860 to 1866 there is no record to be found of any public
meeting on the subject of woman's rights, in Massachusetts.[104]
During these years the war of the rebellion had been fought.
Pending the great struggle the majority of the leaders, who were
also anti-slavery, had thought it to be the wiser policy for the
women to give way for a time, in order that all the working energy
might be given to the slave. "It is not the woman's but the negro's
hour"; "After the slave--then the woman," said Wendell Phillips in
his stirring speeches, at this date. "Keep quiet, work for us,"
said other of the anti-slavery leaders to the women. "Wait! help us
to abolish slavery, and then we will work for you." And the women,
who had the welfare of the country as much at heart as the men,
kept quiet; worked in hospital and field; sacrificed sons and
husbands; did what is always woman's part in wars between man and
man--and waited. If anything can make the women of the State regret
that they were silent as to their own claims for six eventful years
that the freedom of the black man might be secured, it is the
fact that now in 1885 his vote is ever adverse to women's
enfranchisement. When the fourteenth amendment to the United States
Constitution was proposed, in which the negro's liberty and his
right to the ballot were to be established, an effort was made to
secure in it some recognition of the rights of woman. Massachusetts
sent a petition, headed with the name of Lydia Maria Child, against
the introduction of the word "male" in the proposed amendment. When
this petition was offered to the greatest of America's emancipation
leaders, for presentation to congress, he received and presented it
under protest. He thought the woman question should not be
forced at such a time, and the only answer from congress this
"woman-intruding" petition received was found in the fourteenth
amendment itself, in which the word "male," with unnecessary
iteration, was repeated, so that there might be no mistake in
future concerning woman's rights, under the Constitution of the
United States.[105]
The war was over. The rights of the black man, for whom the women
had worked and waited, were secured, but under the new amendment,
by which his race had been made free, the white women of the United
States were more securely held in political slavery. It was time,
indeed, to hold conventions and agitate anew the question of
woman's rights. The lesson of the war had been well learned. Women
had been taught to understand politics, the "science of
government," and to take an interest in public events; and some who
before the war had not thought upon the matter, began to ask
themselves why thousands of ignorant _men_ should be made voters
and they, or their sex, still kept in bondage under the law.
In 1866, May 31, the first meeting of the American Equal Rights
Association was held at the Meionaon in Boston.[106] In 1868 the
call for a New England convention was issued and the meeting was
held November 18, 19, at Horticultural Hall, Boston. James Freeman
Clarke presided. In this convention sat many of the distinguished
men and women of the New England States,[107] old-time advocates,
together with newer converts to the doctrine, who then became
identified with the cause of equal rights irrespective of sex. This
convention was called by the Rev. Olympia Brown.[108] The hall was
crowded with eager listeners anxious to hear what would be said on
a subject thought to be ridiculous by a large majority of people in
the community. Some of the teachers of Boston sent a letter to the
convention, signed with their names, expressing their interest as
women. Henry Wilson avowed his belief in the equal rights of woman,
but thought the time had not yet come for such a consummation, and
said that, for this reason, he had voted against the question in
the United States Senate; "though," he continued, "I was afterwards
ashamed of having so voted." Like another celebrated Massachusetts
politician, he believed in the principle of the thing, but was
"agin its enforcement." At this date the popular interest
heretofore given to the anti-slavery question was transferred to
the woman suffrage movement.
The New England Woman Suffrage Association was formed at this
convention. Julia Ward Howe was elected its president, and made her
first address on the subject of woman's equality with man. On its
executive board were many representative names from the six New
England States.[109] By the formation of this society, a great
impetus was given to the suffrage cause in New England. It held
conventions and mass-meetings, printed tracts and documents, and
put lecturers in the field. It set in motion two woman suffrage
bazars, and organized subscription festivals, and other enterprises
to raise money to carry on the work. It projected the American, and
Massachusetts suffrage associations; it urged the formation of
local and county suffrage societies, and set up the _Woman's
Journal_. The New England Association held its first anniversary in
May, 1869, and the meeting was even more successful than the
opening one of the preceding year. On this occasion Mrs. Livermore
spoke in Boston for the first time, and many new friends coming
forward gave vigor and freshness to the movement.[110] Wendell
Philips, Lucy Stone and Gilbert Haven, spoke at this convention. It
was on this occasion that the "good Bishop," as he afterward came
to be called, was met on leaving the meeting by one who did not
know his opinion on the subject. This person expressed surprise on
seeing him at a woman's rights meeting, and said: "_What! you_
here?" "Yes," said he, "I _am_ here! I _believe_ in this reform. I
am going to start in the beginning, and ride with the procession."
After this, not until his earthly journey was finished, was his
place in "the procession" found vacant. Since 1869 the New England
Association has held its annual meeting in Boston during
anniversary week, in May, when reports from various States are
offered, concerning suffrage work done during the year. The
American Woman Suffrage Association was organized in 1869. Since
its formation it has held its annual conventions in some of the
chief cities of the several States.[111] A meeting was held in
Horticultural Hall, Boston, January 28, 1870, to organize the
Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association.[112]
The Massachusetts Association is the most active of the three
societies named. Its work is generally local though it has sent
help to Colorado, Michigan, and other Western States. It has kept
petitions in circulation, and has presented petitions and memorials
to the State legislatures. It has asked for hearings and secured
able speakers for them. It has held conventions, mass-meetings,
Fourth of July celebrations. It has helped organize local Woman
suffrage clubs and societies, and has printed for circulation
numerous woman suffrage tracts. The amount of work done by its
lecturing agents can be seen by the statement of Margaret W.
Campbell, who alone, as agent of the American, the New England and
the Massachusetts associations, traveled in twenty different States
and two territories, organizing and speaking in conventions.[113]
As part of the latest work of this society may be mentioned its
efforts to present before the women of the State, in clear and
comprehensive form, an explanation of the different sections of the
new law "allowing women to vote for school committees." As soon as
the law passed the legislature of 1879, a circular of instructions
to women was carefully prepared by Samuel E. Sewall, an eminent
lawyer and member of the board of the Massachusetts Association, in
which all the points of law in relation to the new right were ably
presented. Thousands of copies of this circular were sent to women
all over the State.
The Centennial Tea Party was held in Boston, December 15, 1873, in
response to the following call:
The women of New England who believe that "taxation without
representation is tyranny," and that our forefathers were
justified in defying despotic power by throwing the tea into
Boston harbor, invite the men and women of New England to unite
with them in celebrating the one-hundredth anniversary of that
event in Fanueil Hall.[114]
Three thousand people were in attendance, and it was altogether an
enthusiastic occasion and one long to be remembered.
The record of conventions and meetings held by the Massachusetts
Association by no means includes all such gatherings held in
different towns and cities of the State. The county and local
societies have done a vast amount of work. The Hampden society was
started in 1868, with Eliphalet Trask, Frank B. Sanborn and
Margaret W. Campbell as leading officers. This was the first county
society formed in the State. Julia Ward Howe, a fresh convert of
the recent convention went to Salem to lecture on woman suffrage,
and the Essex county society was formed with Mrs. Sarah G. Wilkins
and Mrs. Delight R. P. Hewitt--the only two Salem women who went to
the 1850 convention at Worcester--on its executive board. The
Middlesex county society followed, planned by Ada C. Bowles and
officered by names well known in that historic old county. The
Hampshire and Worcester societies brought up the rear; the former
planned by Seth Hunt of Northampton. Notable conventions were held
by the Middlesex society in 1876--one in Malden, one in Melrose and
one in Concord, organized and conducted by its president, Harriet
H. Robinson. This last celebrated town had never before been so
favored. These meetings were conducted something after the style of
local church conferences. They were well advertised, and many
people came. A collation was provided by the ladies of each town,
and the feast of reason was so judiciously mingled with the
triumphs of cookery, that converts to the cause were never so
easily won. Many women present said to the president: "I never
before heard a woman's rights speech. If these are the reasons why
women should vote, I believe in voting."
The Concord convention was held about a month after the great
centennial celebration of April 19, 1875--a celebration in which no
woman belonging to that town took any official part. Nor was there
any place of honor found for the more distinguished women who had
come long distances to share in the festivities. Some of the women
were descendents of Governor John Hancock, Dr. Samuel Prescott,
Major John Buttrick, Rev. William Emerson and Lieutenant Emerson
Cogswell. Though no seat of honor in the big tent in which the
speeches were made was given to the women of to-day, silent
memorials of those who had taken part in the events of one hundred
years ago, had found a conspicuous place there--the scissors that
cut the immortal cartridges made by the women on that eventful day,
and the ancient flag that the fingers of some of the mothers of the
Revolution had made. Though the Concord women were not permitted to
share the centennial honors, they were not deprived of the
privilege of paying their part of the expenses incident to the
occasion. To meet these, an increased tax-rate was assessed upon
all the property owners in the town; and, since one-fifth of the
town tax of Concord is paid by women, it will be seen what was
their share in the great centennial celebration of 1876.
The knowledge of the proceedings at Concord added new zest to the
spirit of the three conventions, and the events of the day were
used by the speakers to point the moral of the woman's rights
question. Lucy Stone made one of her most effective and eloquent
speeches upon this subject. She said:
FELLOW CITIZENS (I had almost said fellow subjects): What we need
is that women should feel their mean position; when that happens,
they will soon make an effort to get out of it. Everything is
possible to him that wills. All that is needed for the success of
the cause of woman suffrage is to have women know that they want
to vote. Concord and Lexington got into a fight about the
centennial, and Concord voted $10,000 for the celebration in
order to eclipse Lexington. One-fifth of the tax of Concord is
paid by the women, yet not one of these women dared to go to the
town hall and cast her vote upon that subject. This is exactly
the same thing which took place one hundred years ago--taxation
without representation, against which the _men_ of Concord then
rebelled. If I were an inhabitant of Concord, I would let my
house be sold over my head and my clothes off my back and be
hanged by the neck before I would pay a cent of it! Men of
Melrose, Concord and Malden, why persecute us? Would you like to
be a slave? Would you like to be disfranchised? Would you like to
be bound to respect the laws which you cannot make? There are
15,000,000 of women whom the government denies legal rights.
It might be supposed that a spot upon which the battle for freedom
and independence was first begun would always be the vantage ground
of questions relating to personal liberty. But such is not the
fact. Concord was never an anti-slavery town, though some of its
best citizens took active part in all the abolition movements. When
the time came that women were allowed to vote for school
committees, the same intolerant spirit which ignored and shut them
out of the centennial celebration was again manifested toward
them--not only by the leading magnates, but also by the petty
officials of the town. Some of them have from the first shown a
great deal of ingenuity in inventing ways to intimidate and mislead
the women voters.
At the annual convention of the Massachusetts Association, in May,
1880, the following resolution was passed:
WHEREAS, We believe in keeping the land-marks and traditions of
our movement; and
WHEREAS, It will be thirty years next October since the first
woman's rights meeting was held in the State, and it seems
fitting that there should be some celebration of the event;
therefore,
_Resolved_, That we will hold a woman suffrage jubilee in
Worcester, October 23 and 24 next, to commemorate the anniversary
of our first convention.
A committee[115] of arrangements was chosen, and the meeting was
held. There were present many whose silver hairs told of long and
faithful service. The oldest ladies there were Mrs. Lydia Brown of
Lynn, Mrs. Wilbour of Worcester, and Julia E. Smith Parker of
Glastonbury, Conn. On the afternoon of the first day there was an
informal gathering of friends in the ante-room of Horticultural
Hall. Old-time memories were recalled by those who had not seen
each other for many years, and the common salutation was: "How gray
you've grown!" Many of them had indeed grown gray in the service,
and their faces were changed, but made beautiful by a life devoted
to a noble purpose. There were many present who had attended the
convention of thirty years ago--Abby Kelley Foster, Lucy Stone,
Antoinettë Brown Blackwell, Paulina Gerry, Rev. Samuel May, Rev. W.
H. Channing, Joseph A. Howland, Adeline H. Howland, Dr. Martha H.
Mowry and many, many others. It was very pleasant indeed to hear
these veterans whose clear voices have spoken out so long and so
bravely for the cause. The speaking[116] at all the sessions was
excellent, and the spirit of the convention was very reverent and
hopeful.
The tone of the press concerning woman's rights meetings had
changed greatly since thirty years before. "Hen conventions" had
gone by, and a woman's meeting was now called by its proper name.
Representatives of leading newspapers from all parts of the State
were present, and the reports were written in a just and friendly
spirit.
[Illustration: Harriet H. Robinson]
The Massachusetts School Suffrage Association was formed in 1880,
Abby W. May, president.[117] Its efforts are mostly confined to
Boston. An independent movement of women voters in Boston, distinct
from all organizations, was formed in 1884, and subdivided into
ward and city committees. These did much valuable work and secured
a larger number of voters than had qualified in previous years. In
1880 the number of registered women in the whole State was 4,566,
and in Boston 826. In 1884, chiefly owing to the ward and city
committees, the number in Boston alone was 1,100. This year (1885)
a movement among the Roman Catholic women has raised the number who
are assessed to vote to 1,843; and it is estimated that when the
tax-paying women are added, the whole number will be about 2,500.
The National Woman Suffrage Association[118] of Massachusetts was
formed in January, 1882, of members who had joined the National
Association at its thirteenth annual meeting, held in Tremont
Temple, Boston, May 26, 27, 1881. According to Article II. of its
constitution, its object is to secure to women their right to the
ballot, by working for national, State, municipal, school, or any
other form of suffrage which shall at the time seem most expedient.
While it is auxiliary to the National Association, it reserves
to itself the right of independent action. It has held
conventions[119] in Boston and some of the chief cities of the
State, sent delegates to the annual Washington Convention[120] and
published valuable leaflets.[121] It has rolled up petitions to the
State legislature and to congress. Its most valuable work has been
the canvass made in certain localities in the city and country in
1884, to ascertain the number of women in favor of suffrage, the
number opposed and the number indifferent. The total result showed
that there were 405 in favor, 44 opposed, 166 indifferent, 160
refusing to sign, 39 not seen; that is, over nine who would sign
themselves in favor to one who would sign herself opposed. This
canvass was made by women who gave their time and labor to this
arduous work, and the results were duly presented to the
legislature.
In 1883 this Association petitioned the legislature to pass a
resolution recommending congress to submit a proposition for a
sixteenth amendment to the national constitution. The Senate
Committee on Woman Suffrage granted a hearing March 23, and soon
after presented a favorable report; but the resolution, when
brought to a vote, was lost by 21 to 11. This was the first time
that the National doctrine of congressional action was ever
presented or voted upon in the Massachusetts legislature. A second
hearing[122] was granted on February 28, 1884, before the Committee
on Federal Relations. They reported leave to withdraw.
The associations mentioned are not the only ones that are aiding
the suffrage movement. Its friends are found in all the women's
clubs, temperance associations, missionary movements, charitable
enterprises, educational and industrial unions and church
committees. These agencies form a network of motive power which is
gradually carrying the reform into all branches of public work.
The _Woman's Journal_ was incorporated in 1870 and is owned by a
joint stock company, shares being held by leading members of the
suffrage associations of New England. Shortly after it was
projected, the _Agitator_, then published in Chicago by Mary A.
Livermore, was bought by the New England Association on condition
that she should "come to Boston for one year, at a reasonable
compensation, to assist the cause by her editorial labor and
speaking at conventions." Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell,
invited by the same society to "return to the work in
Massachusetts," at once assumed the editorial charge. T. W.
Higginson, Julia Ward Howe and W. L. Garrison were assistant
editors. "Warrington," Kate N. Doggett, Samuel E. Sewall, F. B.
Sanborn, and many other good writers, lent a helping hand to the
new enterprise. The _Woman's Journal_ has been of great value to
the cause. It has helped individual women and brought their
enterprises into public notice. It has opened its columns to
inexperienced writers and advertised young speakers. To sustain the
paper and furnish money for other work, two mammoth bazars or fairs
were held in Music Hall in 1870, 1871. Nearly all the New England
States and many of the towns in Massachusetts were represented by
tables in these bazars. Donations were sent from all directions and
the women worked, as they generally do in a cause in which they are
interested, to raise money to furnish the sinews of war. The
newspapers from day to day were full of descriptions of the
splendors of the tables, and the reporters spoke well of the women
who had taken this novel method to carry on their movement. People
who had never heard of woman suffrage before came to see what sort
of women were those who thus made a public exhibition of their zeal
in this cause. In remote places, as well as nearer the scene of
action, many people who had never thought of the significance of
the woman's rights movement, began to consider it through reading
the reports of the woman suffrage bazar.
Female opponents of the suffrage movement began to make a stir as
early as 1868. A remonstrance was sent into the legislature, from
two hundred women of Lancaster, giving the reasons why women should
not enjoy the exercise of the elective franchise: "It would
diminish the purity, the dignity and the moral influence of woman,
and bring into the family circle a dangerous element of discord."
In _The Revolution_ of August 5, 1869, Parker Pillsbury said:
Dolly Chandler and the hundred and ninety-four other women who
asked the Massachusetts legislature not to allow the right of
suffrage, were very impudent and tyrannical, too, in petitioning
for any but themselves. They should have said: "We, Dolly
Chandler and her associates, to the number of a hundred and
ninety-five in all, do not want the right of suffrage; and we
pray your honorable bodies to so decree and enact that we shall
never have it." So far they might go. But when they undertake to
prevent a hundred and ninety-four thousand other women who do
want the ballot and who have an acknowledged right to it, and are
laboring for it day and night, it is proper to ask, What business
have Dolly Chandler and her little coterie to interpose? Nobody
wants them to vote unless they themselves want to. They can stay
at home and see nobody but the assessor, the tax-gatherer and the
revenue collector, from Christmas to Christmas, if they so
prefer. Those gentlemen they will be pretty likely to see,
annually or quarterly, and to feel their power, too, if they have
pockets with anything in them, in spite of all petitions to the
legislature.
It did not occur to these women that by thus remonstrating they
were doing just what they were protesting against. What _is_ a
vote? An expression of opinion or a desire as to governmental
affairs, in the shape of a ballot. The "aspiring blood of
Lancaster" should have mounted higher than this, since, if it
really was the opinion of these remonstrants that woman cannot vote
without becoming defiled, they should have kept themselves out of
the legislature, should have kept their hands from petitioning and
their thoughts from agitation on either side of the subject. Just
such illogical reasoning on the woman suffrage question is often
brought forward and passes for the profoundest wisdom and
discreetest delicacy! The same arguments are used by the
remonstrants of to-day, who are now fully organized and doing very
efficient political work in opposing further political action by
women. In their carriages, with footman and driver, they solicit
names to their remonstrances. As a Boston newspaper says:
The anti-woman suffrage women get deeper and deeper into politics
year by year in their determination to keep out of politics. By
the time they triumph they will be the most accomplished
politicians of the sex, and unable to stop writing to the papers,
holding meetings, circulating remonstrances, any more than the
suffrage sisterhood.
These persons, men and women, bring their whole force to bear
before legislative committees at woman suffrage hearings, and use
arguments that might have been excusable forty years ago. However
this is merely a phase of the general movement and will work for
good in the end. It can no more stop the progress of the reform
than it can stop the revolution of the globe.
Political agitation on the woman suffrage question began in
Massachusetts in 1870. A convention to discuss the feasibility of
forming a woman suffrage political party was held in Boston, at
which Julia Ward Howe presided, and Rev. Augusta Chapin offered
prayer. The question of a separate nomination for State officers
was carefully considered.[123] Delegates were present from the
Labor Reform and Prohibition parties, and strong efforts were made
by them to induce the convention to nominate Wendell Phillips, who
had already accepted the nomination of those two parties, as
candidate for governor. The convention at one time seemed strongly
in favor of this action, the women in particular thinking that in
Mr. Phillips they would find a staunch and well tried leader. But
more politic counsels prevailed, and it was finally concluded to
postpone a separate nomination until after the Republican and
Democratic conventions had been held. A State central committee was
formed, and at once began active political agitation. A memorial
was prepared to present to each of the last-named conventions; and
the candidates on the State tickets of the four political parties
were questioned by letter concerning their opinions on the right of
the women to the ballot. At the Republican State convention held
October 5, 1870, the question was fairly launched into politics, by
the admission, for the first time, of two women, Lucy Stone and
Mary A. Livermore, as regularly accredited delegates. Both were
invited to speak, and the following resolution drawn up by Henry B.
Blackwell, was presented by Charles W. Slack:
_Resolved_, That the Republican party of Massachusetts is mindful
of its obligations to the loyal women of America for their
patriotic devotion to the cause of liberty; that we rejoice in
the action of the recent legislature in making women eligible as
officers of the State; that we thank Governor Claflin for having
appointed women to important political trusts; that we are
heartily in favor of the enfranchisement of women, and will hail
the day when the educated, intelligent and enlightened conscience
of the women of Massachusetts has direct expression at the ballot
box.
This resolution was presented to the committee, who did not agree
as to the propriety of reporting it to the convention, and they
instructed their chairman, George F. Hoar, to state the fact and
refer the resolution back to that body for its own action. A warm
debate arose, in which several members of the convention made
speeches on both sides of the question. The resolution was finally
defeated, 137 voting in its favor, and 196 against it. Although
lost, the large vote in the affirmative was thought to mean a great
deal as a guaranty of the good faith of the Republican party, and
the women were willing to trust to its promises. It was thought
then, as it has been thought since, that most of the friends of
woman suffrage were in the Republican party, and that the interests
of the cause could best be furthered by depending on its action.
The women were, however, mistaken, and have learned to look upon
the famous resolution in its true light. It is now known as the
_coup d'état_ of the Worcester convention of 1870, which
really had more votes than it was fairly entitled to. After
that,--"forewarned, forearmed," said the enemies of the enterprise,
and woman suffrage resolutions have received less votes in
Republican conventions.
When the memorial prepared by the State Central Committee was
presented to the Democratic State convention, that body, in
response, passed a resolution conceding the _principle_ of women's
right to suffrage, but at the same time declared itself against its
being _enforced_, or put into practice. To finish the brief record
of the dealings of the Democratic party, with the women of the
State, it may be said that since 1870, it has never responded to
their appeals, nor taken any action of importance on the question.
In 1871 a resolution endorsing woman suffrage was passed in the
Republican convention. In June, 1872, the national convention at
Philadelphia, passed the following:
_Resolved_, That the Republican party is mindful of its
obligations to the loyal women of America for their noble
devotion to the cause of freedom; their admission to wider fields
of usefulness is viewed with satisfaction; and the honest demand
of any class of citizens for additional rights, should be treated
with respectful consideration.
The Massachusetts Republican State Convention, following this lead,
again passed a woman suffrage resolution:
_Resolved_, That we heartily approve the recognition of the
rights of woman contained in the fourteenth clause of the
national Republican platform; that the Republican party of
Massachusetts, as the representative of liberty and progress, is
in favor of extending suffrage to all American citizens
irrespective of sex, and will hail the day when the educated
intellect and enlightened conscience of woman shall find direct
expression at the ballot-box.
This was during the campaign of 1872, when General Grant's chance
of reëlection was thought to be somewhat uncertain, and the
Republican women in all parts of the country were called on to
rally to his support. The National Woman Suffrage Association had
issued "an appeal to the women of America," asking them to
coöperate with the Republican party and work for the election of
its candidates. In response to this appeal a ratification meeting
was held at Tremont Temple, in Boston, at which hundreds stayed to
a late hour listening to speeches made by women on the political
questions of the day. An address was issued from the "Republican
women of Massachusetts to the women of America." In this address
they announced their faith in and willingness to "trust the
Republican party and its candidates, as saying what they mean and
meaning what they say, and in view of their honorable record we
have no fear of betrayal on their part." Mrs. Livermore, Lucy Stone
and Huldah B. Loud took part in the canvass, and agents employed by
the Massachusetts Association were instructed to speak for the
Republican party.[124] Women writers furnished articles for the
newspapers and the Republican women did as much effective work
during the campaign as if each one had been a "man and a voter."
They did everything but vote. All this agitation was a benefit to
the Republican party, but not to woman suffrage, because for a time
it arrayed other political parties against the movement and caused
it to be thought merely a party issue, while it is too broad a
question for such limitation.
General Grant was reëlected and the campaign was over. When the
legislature met and the suffrage question came up for discussion,
that body, composed in large majority of Republicans, showed the
women of Massachusetts the difference between "saying what you mean
and meaning what you say," the Woman Suffrage bill being defeated
by a large majority. The women learned by this experience that
nothing is to be expected of a political party while it is in
power. To close the subject of suffrage resolutions in the platform
of the Republican party, it may be said that they continued to be
put in and seemed to mean something until after 1875, when they
became only "glittering generalities," and were as devoid of real
meaning or intention as any that were ever passed by the old Whig
party on the subject of abolition. Yet from 1870 to 1874 the
Republican party had the power to fulfill its promises on this
question. Since then, it has been too busy trying to keep breath in
its own body to lend a helping hand to any struggling reform. At
the Republican convention, held in Worcester in 1880, an attempt
was made by Mr. Blackwell to introduce a resolution endorsing the
right conferred upon women in the law allowing them to vote for
school committees, passed by the legislature of 1879. This
resolution was rejected by the committee, and when offered in
convention as an amendment, it was voted down without a single
voice, except that of the mover, being raised in its support. Yet
this resolution only asked a Republican convention to endorse an
existing right, conferred on the women of the State by a Republican
legislature! A political party as a party of freedom must be very
far spent when it refuses at its annual convention to endorse an
act passed by a legislature the majority of whose members are
representatives elected from its own body. Since that time the
Republican party has entirely ignored the claims of woman. In 1884,
at its annual convention, an effort was made, as usual, by Mr.
Blackwell, to introduce a resolution, but without success, and yet
some of the best of our leaders advised the women to "stand by the
Republican party."[125]
The question of forming a woman suffrage political party had, since
1870, been often discussed.[126] In 1875 Thomas J. Lothrop proposed
the formation of a separate organization. But it was not until 1876
that any real effort in this direction was made. The Prohibitory
(or Temperance) party sometimes holds the balance of political
power in Massachusetts, and many of the members of that party are
also strong advocates of suffrage. The feeling had been growing
for several years that if forces could be joined with the
Prohibitionists some practical result in politics might be reached,
and though there was a difference of opinion on this subject, many
were willing to see the experiment tried.
The Prohibitory party had at its convention in 1876 passed a
resolution inviting the women to take part in its primary meetings,
with an equal voice and vote in the nomination of candidates and
transaction of business. After long and anxious discussions, the
Massachusetts Woman Suffrage State Central Committee, in whose
hands all political action rested, determined to accept this
invitation. A woman suffrage political convention was held, at
which the Prohibitory candidates were endorsed and a joint State
ticket was decided on, to be headed "Prohibition and Equal Rights."
These tickets were sent to women all over the State, and they were
strongly urged to go to the polls and distribute them on election
day. Lucy Stone, Mary A. Livermore and other leading speakers took
part in the campaign, and preparations were completed by which it
was expected both parties would act harmoniously together. Clubs
were formed at whose headquarters were seen men and women gathered
together to organize for political work. From some of these
headquarters hung transparencies with "Baker and Eddy" on one side,
and "Prohibition and Equal Rights" on the other. Caucuses and
conventions were held in Chelsea, Taunton, Malden, Lynn, Concord,
and other places. A Middlesex county (first district) senatorial
convention was called and organized by women, and its proceedings
were fully reported by the Boston newspapers.[127]
The nominations made at these caucuses were generally unanimous,
and it seemed at the time as if the two wings of the so-called
"Baker party" would work harmoniously together. But, with a few
honorable exceptions, the Prohibitionists, taking advantage of the
fact that the voting power of the women was over, once outside the
caucus, repudiated the nominations, or held other caucuses and shut
the doors of entrance in the faces of the women who represented
either the suffrage or the Prohibitory party. This was the case
invariably, excepting in towns where the majority of the voting
members of the Prohibitory party were also in favor of woman
suffrage. This result is what might have been expected. Of what use
was woman in the ranks of any political party, with no vote outside
the caucus?
After being thus ignored in one of their caucuses in Malden,
Middlesex county, the suffragists in that town determined to hold
another caucus. This was accordingly done, and two "straight"
candidates were nominated as town representatives to the
legislature. A "Woman Suffrage ticket"[128] was thereupon printed
to offer to the voters on election day. The next question was, who
would distribute these ballots most effectively at the polls. Some
men thought that the women themselves should go and present in
person the names of their candidates. At first the women who had
carried on the campaign shrank from this last test of their
faithfulness; but, after carefully considering the matter, they
concluded that it was the right thing to do. The repugnance felt at
that time, at the thought of "women going to the polls" can hardly
be appreciated to-day. Since they have begun to vote in
Massachusetts the terror expressed at the idea of such a proceeding
has somewhat abated; but in 1876 it was thought to be a rash act
for a woman to appear at the polls in company with men. Some
attempt was made to deter them from their purpose, and stories of
pipes and tobacco and probable insults were told; but they had no
terrors for women who knew better than to believe that their
neighbors would be turned into beasts (like the man in the fairy
tale) for this one day in the year.[129]
It was a sight to be remembered, to behold women "crowned with
honor" standing at the polls to see the freed slave go by and vote,
and the newly-naturalized fellow-citizen, and the blind, the
paralytic, the boy of twenty-one with his newly-fledged vote, the
drunken man who did not know Hayes from Tilden, and the man who
read his ballot upside down. All these voted for the men they
wanted to represent them, but the women, being neither colored, nor
foreign, nor blind, nor paralytic, nor newly-fledged, nor drunk,
nor ignorant, but only _women_, could not vote for the men they
wanted to represent them.[130]
The women learned several things during this campaign in
Massachusetts. One was, that weak parties are no more to be trusted
than strong ones; and another, that men grant but little until the
ballot is placed in the hands of those who make the demand. They
learned also how political caucuses and conventions are managed.
The resolution passed by the Prohibitionists enabled them to do
this. So the great "open sesame" is reached. It is but fair to
state that since 1876 the Prohibitory party has treated the woman
suffrage question with consideration. In its annual convention it
has passed resolutions endorsing woman's claims to political
equality, and has set the example to other parties of admitting
women as delegates. At the State convention in 1885 the following
resolution was adopted by a good majority:
_Resolved_, That women having interests to be promoted and rights
to be protected, and having ability for the discharge of
political duties, should have the right to vote and to be voted
for, as is accorded to man.
In the early history of Massachusetts, when the new colony was
governed by laws set down in the Province charter (1691, third year
of William and Mary) women were not excluded from voting. The
clause in the charter relating to this matter says:
The great and general court shall consist of the governor and
council (or assistants for the time being) and of such
freeholders as shall be from time to time elected or deputed by
the major part of the freeholders and other inhabitants of the
respective towns or places, who shall be present at such
elections.
In the original constitution (1780) women were excluded from voting
except for certain State officers.[131] In the constitutional
convention of 1820, the word "male" was first put into the
constitution of the State, in an amendment to define the
qualifications of voters. In this convention, a motion was made at
three different times, during the passage of the act, to strike out
the intruding word, but the motion was voted down. Long before the
second attempt was made to revise the constitution of the State,
large numbers of women began to demand suffrage. Woman's sphere of
operations and enterprise had become so widened, that they felt
they had not only the right, but also an increasing fitness for
civil life and government, of which the ballot is but the sign and
the symbol.
In the constitutional convention of 1853, twelve petitions were
presented, from over 2,000 adult persons, asking for the
recognition of woman's right to the ballot, in the proposed
amendments to the constitution of the State. The committee reported
leave to withdraw, giving as their reason that the "consent of the
governed" was shown by the small number of petitioners. Hearings
before this committee were granted.[132] The chairman of this
committee, in presenting the report, moved that all debate on the
subject should cease in thirty minutes, and on motion of Benjamin
F. Butler of Lowell, the whole report, excepting the last clause,
was stricken out. There was then left of the whole document
(including more than two closely-printed pages of reasoning) only
this: "It is inexpedient for this convention to take any action."
Legislative action on the woman's rights question began in 1849,
when William Lloyd Garrison presented the first petition on the
subject to the State legislature. Following him was one from
Jonathan Drake and others, "for a peaceable secession of
Massachusetts from the Union." Both these petitions were probably
considered by the legislature to which they were addressed as of
equally incendiary character, since they both had "leave to
withdraw." In 1851 an order was introduced asking "whether any
legislation was necessary concerning the wills of married women?"
In 1853 a bill was enacted "to exempt certain property of widows
and unmarried women from taxation." In the legislature of 1856 the
first great and important act relating to the property rights of
women was passed. It was to the effect that women could hold all
property earned or acquired independently of their husbands. This
act was amended and improved the next session.
In 1857 a hearing was held before the Committee on the Judiciary to
listen to arguments in favor of the petition of Lucy Stone and
others for equal property rights for women and for the "right of
suffrage." Another hearing was held in the same place in February,
1858, before the Joint Special Committee on the Qualifications of
Voters. A second hearing on the right of suffrage for women was
held the following week before the same committee. Thomas W.
Higginson made an address and Caroline Kealey Dall read an essay.
In 1858, Stephen A. Chase of Salem, from the same Committee on the
Qualifications of Voters, made a long report on the petitions. This
report closed with an order that the State Board of Education make
inquiry and report to the next legislature "whether it is not
practicable and expedient to provide by law some method by which
the women of this State may have a more active part in the control
and management of the schools." There is nothing in legislative
records to show that the State Board of Education reported
favorably; but from the above statement it appears that ten years
before Samuel E. Sewall's petition on the subject, a movement was
made towards making women "eligible to serve as members of
school-committees."
The petitions for woman's rights were usually circulated by women
going from house to house. They did the drudgery, endured the
hardships and suffered the humiliations attendant upon the early
history of our cause; but their names are forgotten, and others
reap the benefit of their labors. These women were so modest and so
anxious for the success of their petitions, that they never put
their own names at the head of the list, preferring the signature
of some leading man, so that others seeing his name, might be
induced to follow his example. Among the earliest of these silent
workers was Mary Upton Ferrin. Her petitions were for a change in
the laws concerning the property rights of married women, and for
the political and legal rights of all women. In 1849 she prepared a
memorial to the Massachusetts legislature in which are embodied
many of the demands for woman's equality before the law, which have
so often been made to that body since that time.[133]
In 1861 the legislature debated a bill to allow a widow, "if she
have woodland as a part of her dower, the privilege of cutting wood
enough for one fire." This bill failed, and the widow, by law, was
_not_ allowed to keep herself warm with fuel from her own wood-lot.
In 1863 a bill providing that "a wife may be allowed to be a
witness and proceed against her husband for desertion," was
reported inexpedient, and a bill was passed to _prevent_ women from
forming copartnerships in business. In 1865, Gov. John A. Andrew,
seeing the magnitude of the approaching woman question, in his
annual message to the legislature, made a memorable suggestion:
I know of no more useful object to which the commonwealth can
lend its aid, than that of a movement, adopted in a practical
way, to open the door of emigration to young women who are wanted
for teachers and for every appropriate, as well as domestic,
employment in the remote West, but who are leading anxious and
aimless lives in New England.
By the "anxious and aimless" it was supposed the governor meant the
widowed, single or otherwise unrepresented portion of the citizens
of the State. No action was taken by the legislature on this
portion of the governor's message. But a member of the Senate
actually made the following proposition before that body:
That the "anxious and aimless women" of the State should assemble
on the Common on a certain day of the year (to be hereafter
named), and that Western men who wanted wives, should be invited
to come here and select them.
Legislators who make such propositions, do not foresee that the
time may come, when perhaps those nearest and dearest to them, may
be classed among the superfluous or "anxious and aimless" women!
In 1865 bills allowing married women to testify in suits at law
where their husbands are parties, and permitting them to hold trust
estates were rejected. It will be seen that though all this
legislation was adverse to woman's interest, the question had
forced itself upon the attention of the members of both House and
Senate. In 1866 a joint committee of both houses was appointed to
consider:
If any additional legislation can be adopted, whereby the means
of obtaining a livelihood by the women of this commonwealth may
be increased and a more equal and just compensation be allowed
for their labor.
In 1867, Francis W. Bird presented the petition of Mehitable
Haskell of Gloucester for "an amendment to the constitution
extending suffrage to women." In 1868 Mr. King of Boston presented
the same petition, and it was at this time, and in answer thereto,
that the subject first entered into the regular orders of the day,
and became a part of the official business of the House of
Representatives. Attempts to legislate on the property question
were continued in 1868, in bills "to further protect the property
of married women," "to allow married women to contract for
necessaries," and if "divorced from bed and board, to allow them to
dispose of their own property." These bills were all defeated.
Annual legislative hearings on woman suffrage began in 1869. These
were first secured through the efforts of the executive committee
of the New England Woman Suffrage Association. Eight thousand women
had petitioned the legislature that suffrage might be allowed them
on the same terms as men, and in answer, two hearings were held in
the green room at the State House.[134] In 1870 a joint special
committee on woman suffrage was formed, and since that time there
have been one or more annual hearings on the question. To what
extent legislative sentiment has been created will be shown later
in the improvement of many laws with regard to the legal status of
woman.
William Claflin was the first governor of Massachusetts to present
officially to the voters of the commonwealth the subject of woman's
rights as a citizen. In his address to the legislature of 1871, he
strongly recommended a change in the laws regarding suffrage and
the property rights of woman. His attitude toward this reform made
an era in the history of the executive department of the State.
Since that time nearly every governor of the State has, in
his annual message, recommended the subject to respectful
consideration. In 1879 Governor Thomas Talbot proposed a
constitutional amendment which should secure the ballot to women on
the same terms as to men. In response to this portion of the
governor's message, and to the ninety-eight petitions presented on
the subject, a general suffrage bill passed the Senate by a
two-thirds majority, and an act to "give women the right to vote
for members of school committees," passed both branches of the
legislature and became a law of the State.[135] Governor John D.
Long, in his inaugural address before the legislature of 1880,
expressed his opinion in favor of woman suffrage perhaps more
decidedly than any who had preceded him in that high official
position. He said:
I repeat my conviction of the right of woman suffrage. If the
commonwealth is not ready to give it in full by a constitutional
amendment, I approve of testing it in municipal elections.
The law allowing women to vote for school committees is one of the
last results of the legislative agitations, though it is true that
the petition, the answer to which was the passage of this act, did
not emanate from any suffrage association. It was the outcome of a
conference on the subject, held in the parlors of the New England
Women's Club.[136]
But the petitions of the suffragists had always been for general
and unrestricted suffrage, and they opposed any scheme for securing
the ballot on a class or a restricted basis, holding that the true
ground of principle is equality of rights with man. The practical
result, so far, of voting for school committees has justified this
position; for, as shown by the recent elections, the women of the
State have not availed themselves to any extent of their new right
to vote, and, therefore, the measure has not forwarded the cause of
general suffrage. In fact, the school-committee question is not a
vital one with either male or female voters, and it is impossible
to get up any enthusiasm on the subject. As a test question upon
which to try the desire of the women of the State to become voters,
it is a palpable sham. Our Revolutionary fathers would not have
fought, bled and died for such a figment of a right as this; and
their daughters, or grand-daughters, inherit the same spirit, and
if they vote at all, want something worth voting for. The result
is, that the voting has been largely done by those women who have
long been in favor of suffrage, and who have gone to the polls on
election day from pure principle and a sense of duty.[137]
The law allowing women to vote for school committees was very
elastic and capable of many interpretations. It reminded one of the
old school exercise in transposing the famous line in Gray's Elegy,
"The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,"
which has been found to be capable of over twenty different
transpositions. The collectors and registrars in some towns and
cities took advantage of this obscurity of expression, and
interpreted the law according to their individual opinion on the
woman suffrage question. In places where these officials were in
sympathy, a broad construction was put upon the provisions of the
law, the poll-tax payers were allowed to vote upon the payment of
one dollar (under the divided tax law of 1879), and the women
voters generally were given all necessary information, and treated
courteously both by the assessors and registrars and at the polls.
In places where leading officials were opposed to women's voting,
the case was far different. Without regarding the clause in the law
which said that a woman may vote upon paying either State or county
poll-tax, such officials have threatened the women with arrest when
they refused to pay both. In some towns they have been treated with
great indignity, as if they were doing an unlawful act. In one town
the women were actually required to pay a poll-tax the second year,
in spite of the clause in the law that a female citizen who has
paid a State or county tax within two years shall have the right to
vote. The town assessor, whose duty it was to inform the women on
this point of the law when asked concerning the matter, _willfully_
withheld the desired information, saying he "did not know," though
he afterwards said that he _did_ know, but intended to let the
women "find out for themselves." This assessor forgot that the
women, as legal voters, had a right to ask for this information,
and that by virtue of his official position he was legally obliged
to answer. In another town two ladies who were property tax-payers
were made to pay the two dollars poll-tax, and the record of this
still stands on the town books. Some ladies were frightened and
paid the tax under protest; others ran the risk. Here is a letter
addressed to a lady 83 years of age:
MALDEN, Dec. 2, 1879.
HARRIET HANSON: There is a balance of ninety cents due on your
poll-tax of 1879, duly assessed upon you. Payment of the same is
hereby demanded, and if not paid within fourteen days from this
date, with twenty cents for the summons, the collector is
required to proceed forthwith to collect the same in manner
provided by law.
THEODORE N. FOGUE, _Collector_.
Mrs. Hanson paid no attention to the summons, and that was the end
of it.
In 1881, under the amended act the poll-tax was reduced to fifty
cents, and the property tax-paying women (who are not required to
pay a poll-tax) are no longer obliged to make a return of property
exempt from taxation, as was required under the original statute.
Though some of the disabilities were removed, yet the privileges
are no greater; and it is for members of school-committees and for
nothing else, that the women of this State can vote. This is hardly
worthy to be called "school suffrage"! It is to be regretted that a
better test than that of school-committee suffrage, could not have
been given to the women of the State, so that the issue of what
under the circumstances cannot be called a fair trial of their
desire to vote, might be more nearly what the friends of reform had
desired.
The first petition to the Massachusetts legislature, asking that
women might be allowed to serve on school-boards was presented in
1866 by Samuel E. Sewall of Boston. The same petition was again
presented in 1867. About this time Ashfield and Monroe, two of the
smallest towns in the State, elected women as members of the school
committee. Worcester and Lynn soon followed the good example, and
in 1874, Boston, for the first time, chose six women to serve in
this capacity.[138] There had hitherto been no open objection to
this innovation, but the school committee of Boston not liking the
idea of women co-workers, declared them ineligible to hold such
office. Miss Peabody applied to the Supreme Court for its opinion
upon the matter, but the judges refused to answer, and dismissed
the petition on the ground that the school committee itself had
power to decide the question of the qualifications of members of
the board. The subject was brought before the legislature of the
same year, and that body, almost unanimously, passed "An Act to
Declare Women Eligible to Serve as Members of School Committees."
Thus the women members were reïnstated.[139]
This refusal on the part of the Supreme Judicial Court of
Massachusetts to answer a question relating to woman's rights under
the law, was received with a knowing smile by those who remembered
the three adverse decisions relating to women which had been given
by that august body. The first of these was on the case of Sarah E.
Wall of Worcester. The second was concerning a clause in the will
of Francis Jackson of Boston, who left $5,000 and other property to
the woman's rights cause. Its third adverse decision was given in
1871. In that year, Julia Ward Howe and Mary E. Stevens were
appointed by Governor Claflin as justices of the peace. Some member
of the governor's council having doubted whether women could
legally hold the office, the opinion of the Supreme Court was asked
and it decided substantially that because women were women, or
because women were not _men_, they could _not_ be justices of the
peace; and the appointment was not confirmed.
Changes in the common law began in 1845 with reference to the
wife's right to hold her own property. In 1846 she could legally
sign a receipt for money earned or deposited by herself.[140]
Before 1855 a woman could not hold her own property, either earned
or acquired by inheritance. If unmarried, she was obliged to place
it in the hands of a trustee, to whose will she was subject. If she
contemplated marriage, and desired to call her property her own,
she was forced by law to make a contract with her intended husband,
by which she gave up all title or claim to it. A woman, either
married or unmarried, could hold no office of trust or power. She
was not a person. She was not recognized as a citizen. She was not
a factor in the human family. She was not a unit; but a zero, a
nothing, in the sum of civilization.
To-day, a married woman can hold her own property, if it is held or
bought in her own name, and can make a will disposing of it. A man
is no longer the sole heir of his wife's property. A married woman
can make contracts, enter into co-partnerships, carry on business,
invest her own earnings for her own use and behoof,--and she is
also responsible for her own debts. She can be executor,
administrator, guardian or trustee. She can testify in the courts
for or against her husband. She can release, transfer, or convey,
any interest she may have in real estate, subject only to the life
interest which the husband may have at her death. Thirty years ago,
when the woman's rights movement began, the status of a married
woman was little better than that of a domestic servant. By the
English common law, her husband was her lord and master. He had the
sole custody of her person, and of her minor children. He could
"punish her with a stick no bigger than his thumb," and she could
not complain against him.[141] But the real "thumb" story seems to
have originated with a certain Judge Buller of England, who lived
about one hundred years ago. In his ruling on one of those cases of
wife-beating, now so common in our police courts, he said that a
man had a right to punish his wife, "with a stick no bigger than
his thumb." That was his opinion. Shortly after this some ladies
sent the judge a letter in which they prayed him to give the size
of his thumb! We are not told whether he complied with their
request.]
The common law of this State held man and wife to be one person,
but that person was the husband. He could by will deprive her of
every part of his property, and also of what had been her own
before marriage. He was the owner of all her real estate and of her
earnings. The wife could make no contract and no will, nor, without
her husband's consent, dispose of the legal interest of her real
estate. He had the income of her real estate till she died, and if
they ever had a living child his ownership of the real estate
continued to his death. He could forbid her to buy a loaf of bread
or a pound of sugar, or contract for a load of wood to keep the
family warm. She did not own a rag of her own clothing. She had no
personal rights, and could hardly call her soul her own.
Her husband could steal her children, rob her of her clothing, and
her earnings, neglect to support the family; and she had no legal
redress. If a wife earned money by her labor, the husband could
claim the pay as his share of the proceeds. There is a clause
sometimes found in old wills, to the effect that if a widow marry
again, she shall forfeit all right to her husband's property. The
most conservative judge in the commonwealth would now rule that a
widow cannot be kept from her fair share of the property, by any
such unjust restriction. In a husband's eyes of a hundred and fifty
years ago, a woman's mission was accomplished after she had been
_his_ wife and borne _his_ children. What more could be desired of
her, he argued, but a corner somewhere in which, respectably
dressed as his _relict_, she could sit down and mourn for him, for
the rest of her life.[142]
The law no longer sanctions such a will, but provides that the
widow shall have a fair share of all personal property. If a widow
permits herself to-day to be defrauded of her legal rights in the
division of property, it is her own fault, and because she does not
study and understand for herself the general statutes of
Massachusetts, and the laws concerning the rights of married women.
The result of thirty years of property legislation for women is
well stated by Mr. Sewall in his admirable pamphlet, in which he
says, "the last thirty years have done more to improve the law for
married women than the four hundred preceding." The legislature
has, during this time, enacted laws allowing women to vote in
parishes and religious societies, declaring that women _must_
become members of the board of trustees of the three State primary
and reform schools, of the State workhouse, of the State almshouse
at Tewksbury, and of the board of prison commissioners; also, that
certain officers and managers of the reformatory prison for women
at Sherborn "shall be women." Without legislation, women now are
school supervisors, overseers of the poor, trustees of public
libraries and members of the State Board of Education and of the
State Board of Health, Lunacy and Charity.[143]
These great changes in legislation for the women of Massachusetts
are the result of their own labors. By conventions and documents
they have informed the people and enlightened public sentiment. By
continued agitation the question has been kept prominently before
their representatives in the legislature. And, though so much has
been gained, they are still hard at work, nor will they rest until,
woman's equality with man before the law is firmly established.
Among the most important acts passed recently is one of 1879, by
which a married woman is the owner of her own clothing to the value
of $2,000, although the act granting this calls such apparel the
"gifts of her husband," not recognizing the fact that most married
women earn or help to earn their own clothes. A law was passed, in
1881, to "mitigate the evils of divorce." Two important acts were
passed by the legislature of 1882, one allowing women to become
practising attorneys, and the other providing, that in case of the
death of a married woman intestate and leaving children, one-half
only of her personal estate shall go to her husband, instead of the
whole, as in previous years. In 1883, a wife was given the right of
burial in any lot or tomb belonging to her husband. In 1884, the
only measures were a bill providing for the appointment of women on
the board of State lunatic hospitals, and another providing for the
appointment of women assistant physicians in the same hospitals,
and an act giving women the power to dispose of their separate
estates by will or deed. In 1885, very little was done to improve
the legal status of women.
When any vote on the Suffrage bill is taken, it is enough to make
the women who sit in the gallery weep to hear the "O's" and the
"Mc's," almost to a man, thunder forth the emphatic "_No!_"; and to
think that these men (some of whom a few years ago were walking
over their native bogs, with hardly the right to live and breathe)
should vote away so thoughtlessly the rights of the women of the
country in which they have found a shelter and a home. When they
came to this country, poor, and with no inheritance but the
"shillalah," the ballot was freely given to them, as the poor man's
weapon for defence. Why cannot men, who have been political serfs
in their own country, see the incongruity of voting against the
enfranchisement of over one-half of the inhabitants of the State
which has made free human beings of them? It is not long since one
of these adopted citizens, in a discussion, said:
When the women show that they want to vote, I am willing to give
them all the rights they want.
Give! I thought. Where did you get the right to _give_
Massachusetts women the right to vote? You did not inherit it. In
what consists your prerogative over the women whose ancestors
fought to secure the very right of suffrage of which you so glibly
talk, and which neither you, nor your father before you, did aught
to establish or maintain?
The improvement in the social or general condition of woman has
been even greater than that in legislation. Previous to 1840, women
were employed only as teachers of summer schools, to "spell the
men" during the haying season; and this only occasionally. They
held no responsible position in any public school in the State.
To-day there are eight women to one man employed in all grades of
this profession, and there are numerous instances where women are
head-teachers of departments, or principals of high, normal and
grammar schools. Previous to 1825, girls could attend only the
primary schools of Boston. Through the influence of Rev. John
Pierpont, the first high-school for girls was opened in that city.
There was a great outcry against this innovation; and, because of
the excitement on the subject, and the _great number of girls_ who
applied for admission, the scheme was abandoned. The public-school
system, as it is now called, was established in Boston in 1789;
boys were admitted the whole year round; girls, from April to
October. This inequality in the opportunities for education roused
John Pierpont's indignation, and moved him to make strenuous
efforts to secure justice for girls. Now there are 6,246 schools,
seventy-two academies, six normal schools, two colleges, Boston
University and the "Harvard Annex" all open to girls. In the town
of Plymouth, where the Pilgrim fathers and mothers first landed,
when the question whether girls should receive any public
instruction first came up in town-meeting, there was great
opposition to it. However, the majority showed a liberal spirit,
and voted to give the girls one hour of instruction daily. This
was in 1793. In 1853 a normal school for girls was established in
Boston; in 1855 its name was changed to the Girls' High and Normal
School. In 1878 the Girls' Latin School in Boston was founded. The
establishment of this successful institution was the result of
discussions on the subject first brought before the public by
ladies of Boston. High schools in almost all the towns and cities
of the State have long been established, in which the boys and
girls are educated together. In 1880 the pupils in the high and
normal schools of Boston were about 2,000 girls to 1,000 boys. In
1867 the Lowell Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology advertised classes free to both sexes in French,
mathematics and in practical science.[144] Since that time Chauncy
Hall School and Boston University have been opened to women, with
the equal privileges of male students. It might be explained here
that the "Harvard Annex," or "Private Collegiate Instruction for
Women," is not an organic part of the University itself. Under a
certain arrangement, a limited number of young women are allowed a
few of the privileges of the young men. They are also permitted to
use all the books belonging to the library and to attend many of
the lectures. No college-building is appropriated for this purpose,
but recitation-rooms are provided in private houses. A witty
Cambridge lady called this mythical college the "Harvard Annex";
the public adopted the name, and many people suppose that there is
such a building. From the last annual report of the "Private
Collegiate Instruction for Women," it appears that in 1885
sixty-five women availed themselves of the privilege of attending
this course of instruction.[145] Three-fourths of this number are
Massachusetts girls. Some of the professors say that the average of
scholarship there is higher than in the University. Fifty courses
of studies are open to women students. Miss Brown of Concord, a
graduate of 1884, astonished the faculty by her high per cent. in
the classics. Her average was higher than that reached by any young
man. These students go unattended to the lectures and to the
library of the college. A great change indeed, since the time when
women began to attend the Lowell Institute lectures! Then it was
thought almost disgraceful to go to a public meeting without male
protection, and they went with veiled faces, as if ashamed to be
seen of men. The "Annex" has some advantages, but they cannot
compare with Girton and Newnham of Cambridge, England.
The treasurer of the "Harvard Annex" declares the great need that
exists for funds to provide a suitable building, etc., for the
numerous women who continue to apply there for admission; and he
appeals to the generosity of the public for contributions of money
to be used for this purpose. The casual observer might suggest that
those women who will hereafter become the benefactors of this
university should remember the needs of their own sex, and leave
their donations or bequests so that they can be used for the
benefit of the "Harvard Annex," which is a wholly private
enterprise, conducted by the University instructors and supervised
by a committee of ladies.
Colleges for women have also been founded. Wellesley and Smith have
long been doing good university work. Thirty years ago there was no
college in the country, except Oberlin, to which women were
admitted. To-day, even conservative Harvard begins to melt a little
under this regenerating influence, and invites women, through the
doors of its "Annex," to come and enjoy some of the privileges
found within its sacred halls of learning. This was a late act of
grace from a college whose inception was in the mind of a
woman[146] longing for a better opportunity than the new colony
could give to educate her afterward ungrateful son.
The number of young men educated by the individual efforts of women
cannot be estimated. T. W. Higginson, in the _Woman's Journal_,
says:
The late President Walker once told me that, in his judgment,
one-quarter of the young men in Harvard College were being
carried through by the special self-denial and sacrifices of
women. I cannot answer for the ratio, but I can testify to having
been an instance of this, myself; and to having known a
never-ending series of such cases of self-devotion.
Some of these men, educated by the labor and self-sacrifice of
others, look down upon the social position in which their women
friends are still forced to remain. The result to the recipient has
often been of doubtful value, so far as the development of the
affections is concerned. Sometimes the great obligation has been
forgotten. Only in rare instances, to either party did the
life-long sacrifice on the part of the women of the family become
of permanent and spiritual value!
The average woman of forty years ago was very humble in her notions
of the sphere of woman. What if she did hunger and thirst after
knowledge? She could do nothing with it, even if she could get it.
So she made a _fetich_ of some male relative, and gave him the
mental food for which she herself was starving, and devoted all her
energies towards helping him to become what she felt, under better
conditions, she herself might have been. It was enough in those
early days to be the _mother_ or _sister_ of somebody. Women were
almost as abject in this particular as the Thracian woman of old,
who said:
"I am not of the noble Grecian race,
I'm poor Abrotonon, and born in Thrace;
Let the Greek women scorn me, if they please,
I was the mother of Themistocles."
There are women still left who believe their husbands, sons, or
male friends can study, read and _vote_ for them. They are like
some frugal house-mothers, who think their is no need of a dinner
if the good-man of the family is not coming home to share it. Just
as if the man-half of the human family can "eat, learn and inwardly
digest," to make either physical or mental strength for the other
half!
Maria Mitchell of Massachusetts became Professor of Astronomy and
Mathematics at Vassar, in 1866, the first woman in the country to
hold such a position. Since that time women have become members of
the faculty in several of the large colleges in the country.
In the early days of the commonwealth women practiced midwifery,
and were very successful. Mrs. John Eliot, Anne Hutchinson, Mrs.
Fuller and Sarah Alcock were the first in the State. Janet
Alexander, a Scotchwoman, was a well-trained midwife.[147] She
lived in Boston, and was always recognized as a good practitioner
in her line by the leading doctors in that city. Dr. John C. Warren
of Boston invited this lady to come to this country. His biography,
recently published, contains a short record of the matter, in which
he says: "We determined to recommend Mrs. Alexander. She was a
Scotchwoman, regularly educated, and having Dr. Hamilton's
diploma." Quite a storm was raised among the younger physicians of
Boston by this attempted innovation, because they thought Dr.
Warren was trying to deprive them of profitable practice. But Mrs.
Alexander, supported by Dr. Warren, and perhaps other physicians,
continued her occupation and educated her daughter in the same
profession. Dr. Harriot K. Hunt practiced in Boston as early as
1835. She sought admission to the Harvard Medical School, and was
many times refused. She was not what is called a "regular
physician." In her day there existed no schools or colleges for the
medical education of women, but she studied by herself, and
acquired some knowledge of diseases peculiar to women. Her success
was so great in her line of practice that she proved the need
existing for physicians of her own sex.
Dr. Hunt's tussle with the medical faculty will long be remembered.
She was the first woman in the State who dared assert her right to
recognition in this profession. For this, and for her persistent
efforts to secure for them a higher education, she deserves the
gratitude of every woman who has since followed her footsteps into
a profession over which the men had long held undisputed control.
In 1853 the degree of M. D. was conferred on her by the Woman's
Medical College of Pennsylvania. The first medical college for
women, organized by Dr. Samuel Gregory of Boston, was chartered in
1856, under the name of the New England Female Medical College, and
in 1874, by an act of the legislature, united with the Boston
University School of Medicine. In 1868 it had graduated seventy-two
women, among whom were Dr. Lucy E. Sewall and Dr. Helen Morton (who
afterwards went to Paris and studied obstetrics at Madame Aillot's
Hospital of Maternity) and Dr. Mercy B. Jackson.[148] There are now
205 regular practitioners in the State.
In 1863, Dr. Zakrzewska, in coöperation with Lucy Goddard and Ednah
D. Cheney, established the New England Hospital for Women and
Children. Its avowed objects were: (1) to provide women the medical
aid of competent physicians of their own sex; (2) to assist
educated women in the practical study of medicine; (3) to train
nurses for the care of the sick. This was the first hospital in New
England over which women have had entire control, both as
physicians and surgeons. Boston University is open to both sexes,
with equal studies, duties and privileges. This institution was
incorporated in 1869, and includes, among other schools and
colleges, schools of theology, law and medicine. The faculty
consists of many distinguished men and women. Boston University
School of Medicine (homeopathic) was organized in 1873. Of the
thirty-two lecturers and professors who constitute the faculty,
five are women. In 1884 the three highest of the four prizes for
the best medical thesis were won by women. Of the 610 pupils in
1884, 155 were women; sixty of these were in the school of
medicine. There are women in all departments, except agriculture
and theology. They do not study theology because they cannot be
ordained to preach in any of the leading churches.
The Massachusetts Medical Society in 1884, on motion of Dr. Henry
I. Bowditch, voted to admit women to membership. Dr. Emma L. Call
and Dr. Harriet L. Harrington were the first two women admitted.
January 11, 1882, at the monthly meeting of Harvard overseers, the
question of admitting women to the Medical School came before the
board. An individual desiring to contribute a fund for the medical
education of women in Harvard University asked the president and
fellows whether such a fund would be accepted and used as designed.
Majority and minority reports were submitted by the committee in
charge, and after a long discussion it was voted, 11 to 6, to
accept the fund, the income to be ultimately used for the medical
education of women. At the April meeting, the Committee on the
Medical Education of Women presented a report, which was adopted by
a vote of 13 to 12:
That, in the opinion of the board, it is not advisable for the
University to hold out any encouragement that it will undertake
the medical education of women.
The Harvard Divinity School at Cambridge sometimes admits women,
but does not recognize them publicly, nor grant them degrees; but
there are other theological schools in the State where a complete
preparation for the ministerial profession can be obtained. The
attitude of the churches toward women has changed greatly within
thirty years. As early as 1869, women began to serve on committees,
and to be ordained deaconesses of churches. They also hold
important offices connected with the different church
organizations. They serve on the boards of State and national
religious associations. There are also missionary associations,
both home and foreign, and Christian unions, all officered and
managed exclusively by women. Even the treasurers of these large
bodies are women, and their husbands or trustees are no longer
required to give bonds for them.[149] At the general conference of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, the word "male" was stricken from
the discipline, and the word "person" inserted in its place, in all
cases save those that concerned the ordination of clergy.
Olympia Brown was the first woman settled as pastor in the State.
Her parish was at Weymouth Landing. In 1864 she petitioned the
Massachusetts legislature "that marriages performed by a woman
should be made legal." The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom the
matter was referred, reported that no legislation was necessary, as
marriages solemnized by women were already legal.[150] Thus the
legislature of the State established the precedent, that "he" meant
"she" under the law, in one instance at least. Phebe Hanaford, Mary
H. Graves and Lorenza Haynes were the first Massachusetts women to
be ordained preachers of the gospel. Rev. Lorenza Haynes has been
chaplain of the Maine House of Representatives.
The three best-known women sculptors in this country were born and
bred in Massachusetts. They are Harriet Hosmer, Margaret Foley and
Anne Whitney. Harriet Hosmer was the first to free herself from the
traditions of her sex and follow her profession as a sculptor. When
she desired to fit herself for her vocation there was no art school
east of the Mississippi river where she could study anatomy, or
find suitable models. Margaret Foley, who, amid the hum of the
machinery of the Lowell cotton mills, first conceived the idea of
chiseling her thought on the surface of a "smooth-lipped shell,"
was obliged to go to Rome in order to get the necessary instruction
in cameo-cutting. There her genius developed so much that she began
to model in clay, and soon became a successful sculptor in marble.
Lucy Larcom, in her "Idyl of Work," says of Miss Foley:
"That broad-browed delicate girl will carve at Rome
Faces in marble, classic as her own."
One of her finest creations is "The Fountain," first exhibited in
Horticultural Hall at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia,
1876. A free art-school was opened to women in Boston in 1867, and
Anne Whitney was not obliged to go to Rome for instruction in the
appliances of her art. Harriet Hosmer and Margaret Foley have both
made statues which adorn the public buildings and parks of their
native country; and Anne Whitney's statues of Samuel Adams and
Harriet Martineau are the crowning works of her genius.
No great work has yet been done by Massachusetts women in oil
painting; but in water colors, and in decorative art, many have
excelled, first prizes in superiority of design having been taken
by them over their masculine competitors. Lizzie B. Humphrey,
Jessie Curtis, Sarah W. Whitman and Fidelia Bridges, take high rank
as artists. Helen M. Knowlton, a pupil of William M. Hunt, is a
skillful artist in charcoal and has produced some fine pictures.
Women form a large proportion of the students in the school of
design recently opened in Boston. A great deal of the ornamental
painting now so fashionable on cards and all fancy articles is done
by the deft fingers of women. The census of 1880 reports 268
artists and 1,270 musicians and teachers of music.
Of woman as actress and public singer, it is unnecessary to speak,
since she has the right of way in both these professions. Here,
fortunately, the supply does not exceed the demand; consequently
she has her full share of rights, and what is better, equitable pay
for her labor. In 1880 there were 111 actresses. Charlotte Cushman,
Clara Louise Kellogg and Annie Louise Cary were born in
Massachusetts.
The drama speaks too feebly on the right side of the woman
question. No successful modern dramatist has made this "humour" of
the times the subject of his play. An effort was made in 1879, by
the executive committee of the New England Association, to secure a
woman suffrage play: but it was not successful, and there is yet to
be written a counteractive to that popular burlesque, "The Spirit
of '76." It is to be regretted that the stage still continues to
ridicule the woman's rights movement and its leaders; for, as
Hamlet says:
"The play's the thing,
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."
In 1650, when Anne Bradstreet lived and wrote her verses, a woman
author was almost unknown in English literature. This lady was the
wife of the governor of Massachusetts, and because of her literary
tendencies was looked upon by the people of her time as a marvel of
womankind. Her contemporaries called her the "tenth muse lately
sprung up in America," and one of them, Rev. Nathaniel Ward, was
inspired to write an address to her, in which he declares his
wonder at her success as a poet, and playfully foretells the
consequences if women are permitted to intrude farther into the
domain of man. The closing lines express so well the conflicting
emotions which torment the minds of the opponents of the woman
suffrage movement, that I venture to quote them:
"Good sooth," quoth the old Don, "tell ye me so?
I muse whither at length these Girls will go.
It half revives my chil, frost-bitten blood
To see a woman once do aught that's good.
And, chode by Chaucer's Boots and Homer's Furrs,
Let men look to't least Women wear the Spurrs."
In 1818, Hannah Mather Crocker, grand-daughter of Cotton Mather,
published a book, called "Observations on the Rights of Women." In
speaking of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mrs. Crocker says, that while that
celebrated woman had a very independent mind, and her "Rights of
Woman" is replete with fine sentiments, yet, she continues,
patronizingly, "we do not coincide with her respecting the total
independence of the sex." Mrs. Crocker evidently wanted her sex to
be not too independent, but just independent enough.[151]
In 1841, when Lydia Maria Child edited the _Anti-Slavery Standard_,
Margaret Fuller the _Dial_, and Harriot F. Curtis and Harriet
Farley the _Lowell Offering_, there were perhaps in New England no
other well-known women journalists or editors. Cornelia Walter of
the _Evening Transcript_ was the first woman journalist in Boston.
To-day, women are editors and publishers of newspapers all over the
United States; and the woman's column is a part of many leading
newspapers. Sallie Joy White was the first regular reporter in
Boston. She began on the _Boston Post_, a Democratic newspaper, in
1870. Her first work was to report the proceedings of a woman
suffrage meeting. She is now on the staff of the _Boston Daily
Advertiser_. Lilian Whiting is on the staff of the _Traveller_, and
most of the other Boston newspapers have women among their editors
and reporters. Some of the best magazine writing of the time is
done by women; one needs but to look over the table of contents of
the leading periodicals to see how large a proportion of the
articles is written by them. Really, the sex seems to have taken
possession of what Carlyle called the "fourth estate"--the literary
profession, and they journey into unexplored regions of thought to
give the omniverous modern reader something new to feed upon. The
census of 1880 reports 445 women as authors and literary persons.
The newspaper itself, that great engine "whose ambassadors are in
every quarter of the globe, whose couriers upon every road," has
slowly swung round, and is at last headed in the right direction.
Reporters for the daily press in Massachusetts no longer write in a
spirit of flippancy or contempt, and there is not an editor in the
State of any account who would permit a member of his staff to
report a woman's meeting in any other spirit than that of courtesy.
Teachers occupying high positions and presidents of colleges have
given pronounced opinions in favor of the reform. Said President
Hopkins of Williams College, in 1875:
I would at this point correct my teaching in "The Law of Love,"
to the effect that _home_ is peculiarly the sphere of woman, and
civil government that of man. I now regard the home as the joint
sphere of man _and_ woman, and the sphere of civil government
more of an open question between the two.
The New England Women's Club, parent[152] of the modern clubs and
associations for the advancement of women, has been one of the
factors in the woman's rights movement. Its members have, in their
work and in their lives, illustrated the doctrine of woman's
equality with man. It was formed in February, 1868.[153]
There has never been, from time immemorial, much difference of
opinion concerning woman's right to do a good share in the
_drudgery_ of the world. But in the remunerative employments,
before 1850, she was but sparsely represented. In 1840, when
Harriet Martineau visited this country, she found to her surprise
that there were only seven vocations, outside home, into which the
women of the United States had entered. These were "teaching,
needlework, keeping boarders, weaving, type-setting, and folding
and stitching in book-bindery." In contrast, it is only necessary
to mention that in Massachusetts alone, woman's ingenuity is now
employed in nearly 300 different branches of industry. It cannot be
added that for doing the same kind and amount of work women are
paid men's wages. The census does not include the services of the
mother and daughter among the _paid_ vocations, though, as is well
known, in many instances they do all the housework of the family.
They get no wages, and therefore do not appear among the
"useful classes." They are not earners, but savers of money. A
money-_saver_ is not a recognized factor, either in political
economy or in the State census. The mother, daughter or wife is put
down in its pages as "keeping house." If they were paid for their
services they would be called "housekeepers," and would have their
place among the paid employments.
Among the many rights woman has appropriated to herself must be
included the "patent right." The charge has often been made that
women never invent anything, but statistics on the subject declare
that in 1880 patents for their own inventions were issued to
eighty-seven different women in the United States. A fair
proportion of these were from Massachusetts.
This progress in the various departments encountered great
opposition from certain teachers and writers. Dr. Bushnell's
"Reform Against Nature," Dr. Fulton's talk both in and out of the
pulpit, served to show the weakness of that side of the question.
Frances Parkman, Dr. Holland, Dr. W. H. Hammond, Rev. Morgan Dix,
and even some women have added their so-called arguments in the
vain attempt to keep woman as they think "God made her."
Much the stronger writers and speakers have been found on the right
side of this question. The names of leading speakers, such as
William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker, have
already been mentioned. Perhaps the most suggestive articles in
favor of the reform were T. W. Higginson's "Ought Women to Learn
the Alphabet," published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ of February,
1859, and Samuel Bowles' "The Woman Question and Sex in Politics,"
published at a later date in the _Springfield Republican_.
"Warrington," in his letters to the same newspaper, from 1868 to
1876, never failed to present a good and favorable argument on some
phase of the woman question. Caroline Healey Dall's lectures before
1860, and her book "The College, the Market and the Court,"
published in 1868, were seed-grain sown in the field of this
reform. Samuel E. Sewall's able digest of the laws relating to the
legal condition of married women, and William I. Bowditch's
admirable pamphlets,[154] have done incalculable service.
Of women in the civil service, there are: 58 clerks, 266 employés
and 387 officials--total, 411. This includes postmasters and clerks
in bureaus. In 1880, General F. A. Walker, superintendent of the
census, instructed the supervisors of the several districts to
appoint women as enumerators when practicable. They were
accordingly so appointed in many parts of the United States.
Carroll D. Wright, supervisor of the district of Massachusetts was
in favor of General Walker's instructions, and out of the 903
enumerators appointed by him, thirty were women. This was an
exceedingly large proportion compared with the number appointed in
States where supervisors were not in favor of women enumerators.
Thanks to the efforts of Caroline Healey Dall, the American Social
Science Association, formed in 1865, put women on its board of
officers, as did the Boston Social Science Association, organized
the same year. These were the first large organizations in the
country to admit women on an absolute equality with men. The result
of this action vindicated at once and forever woman's fitness to
occupy positions of honor in associations that man had hitherto
claimed for himself alone. This has encouraged women to express
themselves in the presence of the wisest men, and enabled them to
present to the public the woman side of some great questions. Women
are officers as well as members of many societies originally
established exclusively for men. A national society for political
education, formed in 1880, of which women are members, has at least
one woman on its board of officers. What would have been thought
thirty years ago, if women had studied finance, banks and banking,
money, currency, sociology and political science?
The Summer School of Philosophy at Concord was founded in
1879.[155] A majority of the students are women, as was not the
case in the elder schools of philosophy, and they come from far and
near to spend a few weeks of their summer vacation in the enjoyment
of this halcyon season of rest. Day after day they sit patiently on
the æsthetic benches of the Hillside chapel and bask in the calm
light of mild philosophy. Its seed was sown forty years ago, in
what was called the Transcendental movement in New England. The
Concord school finds in Mr. Sanborn its executive spirit, without
which it could no more have come into existence at this time than
its first seed could have been planted forty years ago, without the
conceptive thought of Mr. Emerson, Mr. Alcott and Margaret Fuller.
Boston University long ago offered the advantages of its law-school
to women, but they do not much avail themselves of this privilege.
Lelia J. Robinson, in March, 1881, made her application for
admission to the bar. In presenting her claim before the court,
April 23, Mr. Charles R. Train admitted that it was a novel one;
but in a very effective manner he went on to state the cogent
reasons why a woman who had carefully prepared herself for the
profession of the law should be permitted to practice in the
courts. At the close, Chief-Justice Gray gave the opinion,
informally, that the laws, as they now exist, preclude woman from
being attorney-at-law; but he reserved the matter for the
consideration of the full bench. The Supreme Judicial Court
rendered an adverse decision. Petitions were then sent to the
legislature of 1882, and that body passed an act[156] declaring
that, "The provisions of law relating to the qualification and
admission to practice of attorneys-at-law shall apply to women."
The petition of Lelia Josephine Robinson to the Supreme Court was
as follows:
1. The best administration of justice may be most safely secured
by allowing the representation of all classes of the people in
courts of justice.
2. To allow women to practice at the bar as attorneys is only to
secure to the people the right to select their own counsel. It is
to give the women of Massachusetts the opportunity of consulting
members of their own sex for that advice and assistance which
none but authorized attorneys and counsellors are legally
qualified to give.
3. To exclude women from the bar would be to do an injustice to
the community, in preventing free and wholesome competition of
existing talent, and to do still greater injustice to those women
who are qualified for the profession, by shutting them out from
an honorable and remunerative means of gaining a livelihood.
4. To exclude women from the bar because there are certain
departments of the profession which are peculiarly ill-adapted to
their sex and nature, would be to assume arbitrarily that, with
entire lack of judgment or discretion, modesty or policy, they
would seek or accept such business; and to close to them those
avenues of the profession for which they are generally admitted
to be eminently well adapted, for such a reason, and upon such an
assumption, would be so grossly unjust that no argument can be
based on such an impossible contingency.
Your applicant, having faithfully and diligently pursued the
study of law for three years, being a graduate of the Boston
University Law School, and having complied with the other
requirements of the statute and the rules of court upon the
subject, respectfully prays that her petition for examination,
which was duly filed, may be favorably considered, and that it be
included in the general notice to the Board of Examiners of
Suffolk county. LELIA JOSEPHINE ROBINSON.
The opinion given by the Supreme Judicial Court, so far as it
relates to the main point at issue, is as follows:
The question presented by this petition and by the report on
which it has been reserved for our determination, is whether,
under the laws of the commonwealth, an unmarried woman is
entitled to be examined for admission as an attorney and
counsellor of this Court. This being the first application of the
kind in Massachusetts, the Court, desirous that it might be fully
argued, informed the executive committee of the Bar Association
of the city of Boston of the application, and has received
elaborate briefs from the petitioner in support of her petition
and from two gentlemen of the bar as _amici curiæ_ in opposition
thereto. The statute under which the application is made is as
follows: "A citizen of this State, or an alien who has made the
primary declaration of his intention to become a citizen of the
United States, and who is an inhabitant of this State, at the age
of twenty-one years and of good moral character, may, on the
recommendation of an attorney, petition the Supreme Judicial or
Superior Court to be examined for admission as an attorney,
whereupon the Court shall assign a time and place for the
examination, and if satisfied with his acquirements and
qualifications he shall be admitted." St. 1876, c. 107.
The word "citizen," when used in its most common and most
comprehensive sense, doubtless includes women; but a woman is
not, by virtue of her citizenship, vested by the Constitution of
the United States, or by the constitution of the commonwealth,
with any absolute right, independent of legislation, to take part
in the government, either as voter or as an officer, or to be
admitted to practice as an attorney. _Miuor vs. Happersett, 51
Wall. 162. Bradwell vs. Illinois, 16 Wall. 130._ The rule that
"words importing the masculine gender maybe applied to females,"
like all other general rules of construction of statutes, must
yield when such construction would be either "repugnant to the
context of the same statute," or "inconsistent with the manifest
intent of the legislature." Gen. Sts. c. 3, § 7.
The only statute making any provisions concerning attorneys, that
mentions women, is the poor-debtor act, which, after enumerating
among the cases in which an arrest of the person may be made on
execution in an action of contract, that in which "the debtor is
attorney-at-law," who has unreasonably neglected to pay to his
client money collected, enacts, in the next section but one,
"that no woman shall be arrested on any civil process except for
tort." Gen. Sts. c. 124, §§ 5, 7. If these provisions do not
imply that the legislature assumed that women should not be
attorneys, they certainly have no tendency to show that it
intended that they should. The word "citizen," in the statute
under which this application is made, is but a repetition of the
word originally adopted with a view of excluding aliens, before
the statute of 1852, c. 154, allowed those aliens to be admitted
to the bar who had made the preliminary declaration of intention
to become citizens. Rev. Sts., c. 88, § 19. Gen. Sts., c. 121, §
28.
The reënactment of the act relating to the admission of attorneys
in the same words without more so far as relates to the personal
qualifications of the applicant, since other statutes have
expressly modified the legal rights and capacity of women in
other important respects, tends rather to refute than to advance
the theory that the legislature intended that these words should
comprehend women. No inference of an intention of the legislature
to include women in the statutes concerning the admission of
attorneys can be drawn from the mere omission of the word "male."
The only statute to which we have referred, in which that word is
inserted, is the statute concerning the qualifications of voters
in town affairs, which, following the language of the article of
the constitution that defines the qualifications of voters for
governor, lieutenant-governor, senators and representatives,
speaks of "every male citizen of twenty-one years of age," etc.
Gen. Sts. c. 18, § 19. Const. Mass. Amendments, art. 3. Words
which taken by themselves would be equally applicable to women
and to men are constantly used in the constitution and statutes,
in speaking of offices which it could not be contended, in the
present state of law, that women were capable of holding.
The Courts of the commonwealth have not assumed by their rules to
admit to the bar any class of persons not within the apparent
intent of the legislature as manifested in the statutes. The word
"persons," in the latest rule of Court upon the subject, was the
word used in the rule of 1810 and in the statutes of 1785 and
1836, at times when no one contemplated the possibility of a
woman's being admitted to practice as an attorney. 121 Mass. 600.
6. Mass. 382. St. 1785, c. 23. Rev. St. c. 18, 20. Gen. Sts. c.
121, § 29. The United States Court of Claims, at December term,
1873, on full consideration, denied an application of a woman to
be admitted to practice as an attorney upon the ground "that
under the constitution and laws of the United States a Court is
without power to grant such an application, and that a woman is
without legal capacity to take the office of an attorney."
_Lockwood's Case, 9 Ct. of Claims, 346, 356._ At October terms
1876 of the Supreme Court of the United States, the same
petitioner applied to be admitted to practice as an attorney and
counsellor of that Court, and her application was denied.
The decision has not been officially reported, but upon the
record of the Court, of which we have an authentic copy, it is
thus stated: "Upon the presentation of this application, the
chief-justice said that notice of this application having been
previously brought to his attention, he had been instructed by
the Court to announce the following decision upon it: By the
uniform practice of the Court from its organization to the
present time, and by the fair construction of its rules, none but
men are permitted to practice before it as attorneys and
counsellors. This is in accordance with immemorial usages in
England, and the law and the practice in all the States until
within a recent period, and the Court does not feel called upon
to make a change until such change is required by statute or a
more extended practice in the highest Courts of the States." The
subsequent act of congress of February 15, 1879, enables only
those women to be admitted to practice before the Supreme Court
of the United States who have been for three years members of the
bar of the highest Court of a State or territory, or of the
Supreme Court of the District of Columbia.
The conclusion that women cannot be admitted to the bar under the
existing statutes of the commonwealth is in accordance with
judgments of the highest Courts of the States of Illinois and
Wisconsin. _Bradwell's Case, 55 Ill., 525. Goodell's Case, 39
Wis., 232._ The suggestion in the brief of the petitioner that
women have been admitted in other States can have no weight here,
in the absence of all evidence that (except under clear
affirmative words in a statute) they have ever been so admitted
upon deliberate consideration of the question involved, or by a
Court whose decisions are authoritative.
It is hardly necessary to add that our duty is limited to
declaring the law as it is, and that whether any change in that
law would be wise or expedient is a question for the legislative
and not for the judicial department of the government.
Petition dismissed. MARCUS MORTON, _Chief-Justice_,
[Signed:] CHARLES DEVENS, WILLIAM E. ENDICOTT,
WILLIAM ALLEN, OTIS P. LORD,
CHARLES ALLEN, WALBRIDGE A. FIELD.
The three preceding decisions of the Supreme Judicial Court of
Massachusetts against the rights of the women of the commonwealth
were as follows:
The first decision was in the case of Sarah E. Wall of Worcester,
who had refused to pay her taxes under the following protest:
Believing with the immortal Declaration of Independence that
taxation and representation are inseparable; believing that the
constitution of the State furnishes no authority for the taxation
of woman; believing also that the constitution of the higher law
of God, written on the human soul, requires us, if we would be
worthy the rich inheritance of the past and true to ourselves and
the future, to yield obedience to no statute that shall tend to
fetter its aspirations, I shall henceforth pay no taxes until the
word _male_ is stricken from the voting clauses of the
constitution of Massachusetts.
Worcester _Daily Spy_, October 5, 1858. SARAH E. WALL.
Miss Wall was prosecuted by the city collector, and she carried her
case before the Supreme Court, where she appeared for herself, W.
A. Williams appearing for the collector. In an account of this
matter in 1881, Miss Wall says: "Although it was in 1858 that my
resistance to taxation commenced, it was not until 1863 that the
contest terminated and the decision was rendered. I think the
Supreme Court would always find some way to evade a decision on
this question."
_Wheeler vs. Wall, 6 Allen, 558_: By the constitution of
Massachusetts, c. 1, § 1, article 4, the legislature has power to
impose taxes upon all the inhabitants of and persons resident,
and estates lying within the said commonwealth. By the laws
passed by the legislature in pursuance of this power and
authority, the defendant is liable to taxation, although she is
not qualified to vote for the officers by whom the taxes were
assessed. The Court, acting under the constitution, and bound to
support it and maintain its provisions faithfully, cannot declare
null and void a statute which has been passed by the legislature,
in pursuance of an express authority conferred by the
constitution.--[Opinion by the chief-justice, George Tyler
Bigelow.
The second decision on the will of Francis Jackson is copied
_verbatim_ from _Allen's Reports_:
_Jackson vs. Phillips and others, 14 Allen, 539_: A bequest to
trustees, to be expended at their discretion, * * * * "to secure
the passage of laws granting whether women, married or unmarried,
the right to vote, to hold office, to hold, manage and devise
property, and all other civil rights enjoyed by men," is not a
charity.
_Bill in equity by the executor of the will of Francis Jackson of
Boston, for instructions as to the validity and effect of the
following bequests and devises:_
Art. 6th. "I give and bequeath to Wendell Phillips of said
Boston, Lucy Stone, formerly of Brookfield, Mass., now the wife
of Henry Blackwell of New York, and Susan B. Anthony of
Rochester, N. Y., their successors and assigns, $5,000, not for
their own use, but in trust, nevertheless, to be expended by them
without any responsibility to any one, at their discretion, in
such sums, at such times and in such places as they may deem fit,
to secure the passage of laws granting women, whether married or
unmarried, the right to vote, to hold office, to hold, manage and
devise property, and all other civil rights enjoyed by men; and
for the preparation and circulation of books, the delivery of
lectures, and such other means as they may judge best; and I
hereby constitute them a board of trustees for that intent and
purpose, with power to add two other persons to said board if
they deem it expedient. And I hereby appoint Wendell Phillips
president and treasurer, and Susan B. Anthony secretary of said
board. I direct the treasurer of said board not to loan any part
of said bequest, but to invest, and, if need be, sell and
reïnvest the same in bank or railroad shares, at his discretion.
I further authorize and request said board of trustees, the
survivor and survivors of them, to fill any and all vacancies
that may occur from time to time by death or resignation of any
member or any officer of said board. One other bequest,
hereinafter made, will, sooner or later, revert to this board of
trustees. My desire is that they may become a permanent
organization, until the rights of women shall be established
equal with those of men; and I hope and trust that said board
will receive the services and sympathy, the donations and
bequests, of the friends of human rights. And being desirous that
said board should have the immediate benefit of said bequest,
without waiting for my exit, I have already paid it in advance
and in full to said Phillips, the treasurer of said board, whose
receipt therefor is on my files."
OPINION.--Gray, J. IV. It is quite clear that the bequest in
trust to be expended "to secure the passage of laws granting
women, whether married or unmarried, the right to vote, to hold
office, to hold, manage and devise property, and all other civil
rights enjoyed by men," cannot be sustained as a charity. No
precedent has been cited in its support. This bequest differs
from the others, in aiming directly and exclusively to change the
laws; and its object cannot be accomplished without changing the
constitution also. Whether such an alteration of the existing
laws and frame of government would be wise and desirable, is a
question upon which we cannot, sitting in a judicial capacity,
properly express any opinion. Our duty is limited to expounding
the laws as they stand. And those laws do not recognize the
purpose of overthrowing or changing them, in whole or in part, as
a charitable use. This bequest, therefore, not being for a
charitable purpose, nor for the benefit of any particular
persons, and being unrestricted in point of time, is inoperative
and void. For the same reason, the gift to the same object, of
one-third of the residue of the testator's estate after the death
of his daughter, Mrs. Eddy, and her daughter, Mrs. Bacon, is also
invalid, and will go to his heirs-at-law as a resulting trust.
Decision third was on the right of women to hold judicial offices.
To quote again from _Allen's Reports_:
On June 8, 1871, the following order was passed by the governor
and council, and on June 10 transmitted to the Justices of the
Supreme Judicial Court, who, on June 29, returned the reply which
is annexed. _Ordered_, That the opinion of the Supreme Judicial
Court be requested as to the following questions: _First_--Under
the constitution of this commonwealth, can a woman, if duly
appointed and qualified as a justice of the peace, legally
perform all acts appertaining to that office? _Second_--Under the
laws of this commonwealth, would oaths and acknowledgments of
deeds, taken before a married or unmarried woman duly appointed
and qualified as a justice of the peace, be legal and valid?
OPINION.--By the constitution of the commonwealth, the office of
justice of the peace is a judicial office, and must be exercised
by the officer in person, and a woman, whether married or
unmarried, cannot be appointed to such an office. The law of
Massachusetts at the time of the adoption of the constitution,
the whole frame and purport of the instrument itself, and the
universal understanding and unbroken practical construction for
the greater part of a century afterwards, all support this
conclusion, and are inconsistent with any other. It follows that,
if a woman should be formally appointed and commissioned as a
justice of the peace, she would have no constitutional or legal
authority to exercise any of the functions appertaining to that
office. Each of the questions proposed must, therefore, be
respectfully answered in the negative.
[Signed:] REUBEN A. CHAPMAN, HORACE GRAY, JR.,
JOHN WELLS, JAMES D. COLT,
SETH AMES, MARCUS MORTON.
_Boston_, June 29, 1871.
It is to be remarked that the clause on which the court determined
its judgment was of no practical consequence, since the money
devised had already been paid to Wendell Phillips, who had disposed
of it as the bequest required, and he had given his receipt to the
testator for the amount.
Even the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has begun to
understand the trend of the woman's rights movement, and has
rendered its first favorable decision, in the famous Eddy-will
case. Wendell Phillips told me that he drew up this will, and that
its provisions were so carefully worded, that even the Supreme
Court could find no flaw in it. It is in his own hand-writing, and
Chandler R. Ransom was the executor. Eliza F. Eddy was the daughter
of Francis Jackson, and just before her death in 1882, desiring to
help the suffrage cause and thus carry out her father's intentions,
she made her will in which she bequeathed $40,000 for this purpose.
The clause relating to this bequest is as follows:
Whatever is left, after paying the above legacies, I direct shall
be divided into equal portions. One of said portions I leave to
Susan B. Anthony of Rochester, N. Y.; and the other portion I
leave to Lucy Stone, wife of Henry B. Blackwell, as her own
absolute separate property, free from any control by him. I
request said Susan and Lucy to use said fund thus given to
further what is called the "Woman's Rights' Cause"; but neither
of them is under any legal responsibility to any one or any court
to do so.
Her will was filed and the Probate Court declared its validity.
This decision was appealed from for several unimportant reasons by
relatives of Mrs. Eddy, Francis W. and Jerome A. Bacon, minors; and
the case was carried to the Supreme Judicial Court. After many
delays it was finally decided in favor of the validity of the will,
March, 1885, R. M. Morse, jr., and S. J. Elder for the plaintiff,
and B. F. Butler and F. L. Washburn for the defendants. The court's
final decision, rendered by Hon. Charles Devens, is as follows:
ALBERT F. BACON and others, executors and others _vs._ CHANDLER
R. RANSOM, executor, and others.
Suffolk. March 18, 19, 1885. W. ALLEN, COLBURN AND HOLMES, _Js._,
absent.
After a bequest in trust to A. and B., to be by them expended in
securing the passage of laws granting women the right to vote,
had been decreed void as not being a charity, a daughter of the
testator bequeathed the residue of her estate (being about the
amount she had received from her father's estate) to A. and B.
"as their absolute property"; and added: "I request said A. and
B. to use said fund thus given to further what is called the
Woman's Rights Cause. But neither of them is under any legal
responsibility to any one or any court to do so." _Held_, that
the bequest was valid, and did not create a trust.
Bill in equity by the executors of the will of Lizzie F. Bacon,
and certain legatees thereunder, against the executor of the will
of Eliza F. Eddy, Lucy Stone, wife of H. B. Blackwell, Susan B.
Anthony, and other legatees thereunder, and the attorney-general,
to compel the executor of said Eddy's will to pay over to the
plaintiffs the residue of her estate. The bill alleged the
following facts:
Francis Jackson, the father of said Eliza F. Eddy, died in 1861,
leaving a will, by the sixth article of which he gave $5,000 to
Wendell Phillips, Lucy Stone Blackwell and Susan B. Anthony, in
trust, "to be expended by them without any responsibility to any
one, at their discretion, in such sums, at such times, and in
such places as they may deem fit, to secure the passage of laws
granting women, whether married or unmarried, the right to vote,
to hold office, to hold, manage and devise property, and all
other civil rights enjoyed by men; and for the preparation and
circulation of books, the delivery of lectures, and such other
means as they may judge best." By the eighth article he gave
one-third of the residue to a trustee, to pay the income to his
daughter, Eliza F. Eddy, during her life, and upon her death
one-half of the income to the trustees and on the trusts named in
the sixth article, and the other half to Mrs. Eddy's daughter,
Mrs. Lizzie F. Bacon, during her life, and, on the death of Mrs.
Bacon, the principal to the trustees and on the trusts named in
the sixth article.
It was held by this court that these bequests were not a charity
(see _Jackson vs. Phillips, 14 Allen, 539_).
In consequence of this decision, certain agreements, releases,
and a partition were made, by which one-third of the residue of
Mr. Jackson's estate became the property of Mrs. Eddy, subject to
being held in trust for herself for life, and thereafter, as to
one-half, for her daughter, Mrs. Bacon, during her life. Mrs.
Eddy died December 29, 1881, leaving a will by which she gave
absolute legacies to the amount of $24,500 to various persons
therein named. This disposed of all her estate except what came
to her from her father's estate. Her will then provided as
follows:
"What is left, after paying the above legacies, I direct shall be
divided into two equal portions; one of said portions I leave to
Miss Susan B. Anthony of Rochester, in the State of New York, as
her absolute property, and the other portion I leave to Lucy
Stone, wife of H. B. Blackwell, as her own absolute and separate
property, free from any control of him. I request said Susan and
Lucy to use said fund thus given to further what is called the
woman's rights cause; but neither of them is under any legal
responsibility to any one or any court to do so."
The will further alleged that this residue was substantially the
estate received from Francis Jackson; that the will was intended
by the testatrix to defeat the decision of this court, before
mentioned; that the testatrix had no personal acquaintance with
Lucy Stone or Susan B. Anthony; that said gift was intended as a
gift _in perpetuam_ to the said cause, and was, without limit of
time, upon trust in favor of said cause; and that said cause was
not a charity within the meaning of the law, and was null and
void.
The defendants demurred to the bill for want of equity. The case
was heard by C. Allen, _J._, on the bill and demurrer, and a
decree was entered sustaining the demurrer and dismissing the
bill. The plaintiffs appealed to the full court.
R. M. MORSE, Jr., and S. J. ELDER, for the plaintiffs.
B. F. BUTLER and F. L. WASHBURN, for the defendants.
Judge CHARLES DEVENS. The fact that the respective portions of
the estate bequeathed by Mrs. Eddy to Mrs. Stone and Miss Anthony
were in amount equal to-or precisely the same as those which came
to her by descent from her father, Francis Jackson, is not of
importance in the case at bar. It had been held in _Jackson vs.
Phillips, 14 Allen, 539_, that a certain bequest made by Mr.
Jackson in trust was not, legally speaking, a public charity, and
that it could not therefore pass to the beneficiaries named in
his will. The property which he thus attempted to bequeath
descended therefore to his legal representatives, of whom Mrs.
Eddy was one. She received it with the same right to deal with it
or dispose of it in her lifetime, or by will at her decease, that
she had in any other estate which was her lawful property.
The bill alleges "that said will was intended by the testatrix to
defeat the decision of the court, before mentioned; that the
testatrix had no personal acquaintance with Lucy Stone or Susan
B. Anthony; that said gift was intended as a gift _in perpetuam_
to the said cause." But if Mrs. Eddy has complied with the rules
of law in the disposition of her property, even if she has hoped
thereby to attain the same object as that desired by her father,
the decision referred to is not defeated, but is recognized and
conformed to; and, whatever her intention may have been, her
bequest is to be upheld.
Her gift to her beneficiaries is absolute in terms. They may do
what they will with the property bequeathed to them, as they may
with any other property which is lawfully their own. It is true
that the gift is accompanied by a request that they will use the
fund bequeathed "to further what is called the woman's rights
cause." A request made by one who has the right to direct is
often, perhaps generally, interpreted as a command. For this
reason, recommendatory or precatory words used in a bequest are
frequently treated as an express direction. Thus, if a legacy
were given to A., with a request that out of the sum bequeathed
he would pay to another a certain sum, or a portion thereof, it
might well be construed as a legacy, to the amount named, to such
person. The expression of the desire of the testator would be the
expression of his will, and the words in form recommendatory
would be held to be mandatory and imperative. Where such words
are used, it is therefore a question of the fair construction to
be attributed to them (_Whipple vs. Adams, 1 Met., 444; Warner
vs. Bates, 98 Mass., 274; Spooner vs. Lovejoy, 108 Mass., 529_).
But the testatrix in the case at bar has left nothing to
construction. Apparently aware that a request, where she had a
right to direct, might be treated as a command, and desirous to
make it entirely clear that no restraint or duty in any legal
sense was imposed upon her legatees, and that the request of the
will was such in the limited sense of the word only, and in no
respect mandatory, she adds thereto, referring to the legatees,
"But neither of them is under any legal responsibility to any one
or to any court to do so." Each of the legatees is therefore the
sole judge of whether she will follow, or how far or in what way
she will follow, the suggestion of the testatrix in the
disposition of the estate absolutely bequeathed to her. It is a
matter in which she is to be guided only by her judgment and
conscience, and no trust is imposed upon the property she
receives.
As no trust is created, it would be superfluous to consider
whether, if the request of the testatrix were treated as a
command, one would then be indicated capable of enforcement
according to the rules of law.
_Bill dismissed._ [Signed:] MARCUS MORTON, _Chief-Justice_,
WALBRIDGE ABNER FIELD, CHARLES DEVENS,
WILLIAM ALLEN, CHARLES ALLEN,
WALDO COBURN, OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, Jr.
* * * * *
From these decisions our daughters should learn the importance of
having some knowledge of law. Had not Mrs. Eddy learned from
experience in her father's case that property could not be left in
trust to any societies except those called religious and
charitable, and made her bequest absolutely to persons, the gift of
$56,000 would have been lost to the woman suffrage movement. As it
was, nearly $10,000 was swallowed up in litigation to secure what
the donees did finally obtain. Considering that Mrs. Eddy[157] is
the only woman who has ever had both the desire and the power to
make a large bequest to this cause, its friends have great reason
to rejoice in her wisdom as well as her generosity.
Civilization would have been immeasurably farther advanced than it
now is, had the many rich women, who have left large bequests to
churches, and colleges for boys, concentrated their wealth and
influence on the education, elevation and enfranchisement of their
own sex. We trust that Mrs. Eddy's example may not be lost on the
coming generation of women.--[EDITORS.
FOOTNOTES:
[104] For details of early history see vol. I., chap. viii. See
also "Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement," Roberts Bros.,
Boston.
[105] As an original question, no friend of woman suffrage can deny
that it was a mean thing to put the word "male" into the fourteenth
amendment. It was, doubtless, wise to adopt that amendment. It was
an extension of the right of suffrage, and so far in the line of
American progress, yet it was also an implied denial of the
suffrage to women.--[Warrington in the _Springfield Republican_.
[106] See Vol. II., page 178.
[107] John Neal came from Maine; Nathaniel and Armenia White from
New Hampshire; Isabella Hooker from Connecticut; Thomas W.
Higginson from Rhode Island; and John G. Whittier, Samuel May, jr.,
Gilbert Haven, John T. Sargent, Frank W. Bird, Wendell Phillips,
William Lloyd Garrison, William S. Robinson, Stephen and Abby
Kelley Foster, with a host of others, from Massachusetts. Lucy
Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, who then lived in New Jersey, were
also among the speakers.
[108] In giving an account of her efforts in this direction she
says: "After my return from Kansas in 1867, I felt that we ought to
do something for the cause in Massachusetts. There was at that time
no organization in the State, and there had been no revival of the
subject in the minds of the people since the war, which had
swallowed up every other interest. In the spring of 1868, I wrote
to Abby Kelley Foster, telling her my wish to have something done
in our own State, and she advised me to call together a few persons
known to be in favor of suffrage, some day during anniversary week,
in some parlor in Boston. I corresponded with Adin Ballou, E. D.
Draper, and others, on the subject, and talked the matter over with
Prof. T. T. Leonard, teacher of elocution, who offered his hall for
a place of meeting. I wrote a notice inviting all persons
interested in woman suffrage to come to Mr. Leonard's hall, on a
certain day and hour. At the time appointed the hall was full of
people. I opened the meeting, and stated why I had called it;
others took up the theme, and we had a lively meeting. All agreed
that something should be done, and a committee of seven was
appointed to call a convention for the purpose of organizing a
woman suffrage association. Caroline M. Severance, Stephen S.
Foster, Sarah Southwick and myself, were of this committee. We held
a number of meetings and finally decided to call a convention early
in the autumn of 1868. This convention was held in Horticultural
Hall, and the result was the organization of the New England Woman
Suffrage Association."
[109] _President_, Julia Ward Howe; _Vice-presidents_, William
Lloyd Garrison, Boston; Paulina W. Davis, Providence, R. I.; James
Freeman Clarke, Boston; Sarah Shaw Russell, Boston; Neil Dow, Me.;
Lucy Goddard, Boston; Samuel E. Sewall, Melrose; Lidian Emerson,
Concord; John Hooker, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Hartford, Ct.;
Harriot K. Hunt, Boston; James Hutchinson, jr., West Randolph, Vt.;
Armenia S. White, Concord, N. H.; Louisa M. Alcott, Concord; L.
Maria Child, Wayland; John Weiss, Watertown. _Corresponding
Secretary_, Sara Clark, Boston. _Recording Secretary_, Charles K.
Whipple, Boston. _Treasurer_, E. D. Draper, Boston. _Executive
Committee_: Lucy Stone, Newark, N. J.; T. W. Higginson, Newport, R.
I.; Caroline M. Severance, West Newton; Francis W. Bird, East
Walpole; Mary E. Sargent, Boston; Nathaniel White, Concord, N. H.;
Richard P. Hallowell, Boston; Stephen S. Foster, Worcester; Sarah
H. Southwick, Grantville; Rowland Connor, Boston; B. F. Bowles,
Cambridge; George H. Vibbert, Rockport; Olympia Brown, Weymouth;
Samuel May, jr., Leicester; Nina Moore, Hyde Park.
[110] Ednah D. Cheney, Rev. C. A. Bartol, Rev. F. E. Abbot, Rev.
Phoebe Hanaford and Hon. George F. Hoar.
[111] For report of American Association see Vol. II., page 756.
[112] Lucy Stone, Mary A. Livermore, Stephen S. and Abby Kelley
Foster, H. B. Blackwell, Rev. W. H. Channing, Rev. J. F. Clarke,
Rev. Gilbert Haven, Julia Ward Howe and Elizabeth K. Churchill made
eloquent speeches.
The first board of officers of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage
Association was: _President_, Julia Ward Howe. _Vice-presidents_:
William Lloyd Garrison, Roxbury; Anne B. Earle, Worcester; John G.
Whittier, Amesbury; Lidian Emerson. Concord; Hon. Robert C. Pitman,
New Bedford; Mrs. Richmond Kingman, Cummington; Rev. R. B.
Stratton, Worcester; Edna D. Cheney, Jamaica Plain; Hon. Isaac
Ames, Haverhill; Sarah Shaw Ames, Boston; J. Ingersoll Bowditch,
West Roxbury; Lydia Maria Child, Wayland; Mary Dewey, Sheffield;
Hon. George F. Hoar, Worcester; Sarah Grimke, Hyde Park; Sarah R.
Hathaway, Boston; William I. Bowditch, Boston; Harriot K. Hunt, M.
D., Boston; Hon. Samuel E. Sewall, Melrose; A. Bronson Alcott,
Concord; Angelina G. Weld, Hyde Park; Hon. Henry Wilson, Natick;
Rev. James Freeman Clarke, Boston; Charlotte A. Joy, Mendon; Jacob
M. Manning, D. D., Lucy Sewall, M. D., Boston; Rev. Joseph May,
Newburyport; Maria Zakrzewska, M. D., Roxbury; Rev. William B.
Wright, Boston; Rev. Jesse H. Jones, Natick; Phoebe A. Hanaford,
Reading; Seth Hunt, Northampton: Maria S. Porter, Melrose.
_Executive Committee_: Rev. Rowland Connor, Boston; Caroline M.
Severance, West Newton; Rev. W. H. H. Murray, Boston; Gordon M.
Fiske, Palmer; Sarah A. Vibbert, Rockport; Rev. Gilbert Haven,
Maiden; Caroline Remond Putman, Salem; Frank B. Sanborn,
Springfield; Mercy B. Jackson, M. D., Boston; Samuel May, jr.,
Leicester; Margaret W. Campbell, Springfield; Rev. C. M. Wines,
Brookline; Mary A. Livermore, Melrose; William S. Robinson, Maiden;
Henry B. Blackwell, Boston; Lucy Stone, Boston; S. S. Foster,
Worcester; Mrs. Wilcox, Worcester; Ada R. Bowles, Cambridge.
_Corresponding Secretary_, Nina Moore, Hyde Park. _Recording
Secretary_, Charles C. Whipple, Boston. _Treasurer_, E. D. Draper,
Hopedale.
[113] Mary F. Eastman, Ada C. Bowles, Lorenza Haynes, Elizabeth K.
Churchill, Hulda B. Loud, Matilda Hindman and other agents in the
lecture field have also done a great deal of missionary work.
[114] The committee of arrangements were Mrs. Isaac Ames, Harriet
H. Robinson, Sarah B. Otis, Philip Wheeler, Jane Tenney, Mrs. A. A.
Fellows, Mrs. Jackson, Miss Talbot and Miss Halsey.
The speakers were: Wendell Phillips, Mary A. Livermore, Frederick
Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Elizabeth K. Churchill, Margaret
W. Campbell, Mary F. Eastman, Henry B. Blackwell, Lucy Stone and
others. Julia Ward Howe and Mr. C. P. Cranch, read original poems.
Two old-time tea-party songs, curiosities in their line, were read.
One, dated Boston, 1773, entitled "Lines on Bohea Tea," was written
by Susannah Clarke, great-aunt of W. S. Robinson; the other, copied
from Thomas' _Boston Journal_, of December 2, 1773, was written by
Mrs. Ames, a tailoress.
[115] _Committee of Arrangements_--Lucy Stone, Abby Kelley Foster,
Thomas J. Lothrop, Timothy K. Earle, Sarah E. Wall, Harriet H.
Robinson and E. H. Church. At this public gathering, Athol, Boston,
Haverhill, Leicester, Leominster, Lowell, Malden, Melrose, Milford,
North Brookfield, Taunton, and many other Massachusetts towns were
well represented.
[116] The speakers were Lucy Stone, Rev. W. H. Channing, Mary A.
Livermore, Mary F. Eastman, Kate N. Doggett, Rev. F. A. Hinckley,
Ednah D. Cheney, T. Wentworth Higginson, Isabella Beecher Hooker,
Anna Garlin Spencer and Julia E. Parker. Harriet H. Robinson read a
condensed history of Massachusetts in the woman suffrage movement.
Interesting letters were received from Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, F.
W. Bird, H. B. Blackwell, Margaret W. Campbell, Mrs. C. I. H.
Nichols and Frances D. Gage. Two original woman suffrage songs,
written by Anna Q. T. Parsons and Caroline A. Mason, were sung on
the occasion.
[117] Board of officers for 1885: _President_, Miss Abby W. May;
_Vice-president_, Mrs. Edna Dean Cheney; _Secretary_, Miss Brigham;
_Treasurer_, Miss S. F. King; _Assistant-secretary_, Miss Von
Arnim; _Directors_, Miss H, Lemist, Mrs. J. W. Smith, Mrs. M. P.
Lowe, Mrs. H. G. Jackson, Mrs. L. H. Merrick, Mrs. G. L. Ruffin,
Mrs. Walton, Mrs. Whitman, Miss Rogers, Miss E. Foster, Miss Shaw,
Miss Lougee, Miss L. M. Peabody, Dr. A. E. Fisher, Mrs. Buchanan,
Mrs. O. A. Cheney, Mrs. E. Hilt, Mrs. M. W. Nash, Mrs. M. H. Bray,
Mrs. Fifield, Mrs. J. F. Clarke, Miss L. P. Hale, Mrs. A. H.
Spalding; _Lecture Committee_, Miss Lucia M. Peabody, Mrs. Fifield
and Mrs. L. H. King.
[118] It is the only organization in the State whose business is
managed by its members. Its officers are a president, one or more
vice-presidents for each county, a secretary, treasurer, auditor,
and a standing committee of seven with power to add to its number.
These officers are elected annually. Executive meetings, in which
all members participate, are held monthly. _President_, Harriette
R. Shattuck; _Vice-presidents_, Dr. Salome Merritt, Joan D. Foster,
Emma F. Clarry, Louisa E. Brooks, Esther P. Hutchinson, Sarah S.
Eddy, Harriet M. Spaulding, Martha E. S. Curtis, Dr. Sarah E.
Sherman, Sarah G. Todd, Abbie M. Meserve, Sophia A. Forbes, Esther
B. Smith, Emma A. Todd. _Treasurer_, Sara A. Underwood; _Auditor_,
Lavina A. Hatch; _Secretaries_, Hannah M. Todd, Elizabeth B.
Atwell, Harriet H. Robinson; _Standing Committee_, H. R. Shattuck,
Dr. S. Merritt, H. H. Robinson, Lydia E. Hutchings, Mary R. Brown,
E. B. Attwill, Lucretia H. Jones.
[119] South Framingham, South Boston, Winchester, Rockland,
Wakefield, Uxbridge, Millbury, Bedford, Westboro', Salem, Lynn,
Lowell, Rowley, Concord, Woburn, Malden, Cambridge, Beverly Farms.
[120] Two of these, Harriet H. Robinson and Harriette R. Shattuck,
spoke at the first hearing before the Senate committee. It chanced
that Mrs. Robinson was the first woman to speak before this Special
Committee. The other delegates were: Mary R. Brown, Emma F. Clarry,
Louisa E. Brooks, Mrs. G. W. Simonds, Sarah S. Eddy, Mr. and Mrs.
D. W. Forbes, Mary H. Semple, Louisa A. Morrison and Cora B. Smart.
[121] The authors and compilers of these leaflets are Harriette R.
Shattuck, Sara A. Underwood, Hannah M. Todd and Mary R. Brown.
[122] The speakers at these hearings were Harriette R. Shattuck,
Mary R. Brown, Sidney D. Shattuck, Nancy W. Covell, Dr. Julia C.
Smith, Mr. S. C. Fay, Louisa A. Morrison, Sara A. Underwood and
Harriet H. Robinson.
[123] The speakers were Rev. J. T. Sargent, A. Bronson Alcott, H.
B. Blackwell, Dr. Mercy B. Jackson, S. S. Foster, Mary A.
Livermore, Rev. B. F. Bowles, F. B. Sanborn, W. S. Robinson,
Gilbert Haven and many others.
[124] In the records of the executive meetings of this Association
I find the following votes. In October, 1872, it was voted, That
any invitation to speak at Republican meetings, extended to our
agents by Republican committees in this State, be accepted by them
until the coming election, their usual salaries being paid by this
Association; that Miss Loud be notified by Lucy Stone of our
arrangement in regard to Republican meetings, and be requested,
after the 15th instant, to hold her meetings in that manner as far
as practicable; that the balance of expenses of the woman's meeting
held at Tremont Temple be paid by this Association. [This was a
political meeting held by the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage
Association to endorse General Grant as the presidential candidate
of the Republican party.]
[125] The National Association of Massachusetts at its executive
session, August 23, passed the following:
_Resolved_, That while we respect the advice of our leaders, as
their private political opinion, we deem it worse than useless to
"stand by the Republican" or any other party while we are
deprived of the only means of enforcing a political opinion; and
that we advise all associations, to concentrate their efforts
upon securing the ballot to women, withholding all attempt at
political influence until they possess the right which alone can
make their influence effective.
[126] At the executive meeting of the New England Association, May,
1874, it was voted that a circular be sent to the friends of woman
suffrage, requesting them to meet in Boston, May 25, to consider
the expediency of calling a convention to form a political party
for woman suffrage.
[127] The call for this convention was signed by Harriet H.
Robinson, Rev. A. D. Sargent, Rev. G. H. Vibbert, William Johnson,
Mrs. T. R. Woodman, Helen Gale and Mrs. M. Slocum. Judge Robert C.
Pitman was the candidate for governor.
[128] This "Woman Suffrage ticket," the first ever offered to a
Massachusetts voter, received 41 votes out of the 1,340 cast in all
by the voters of the town, a larger proportion than that first cast
by the old Liberty party in Massachusetts, which began with only
307 votes in the whole State, and ended in the Free Soil and
Republican parties.
[129] Election day dawned and it rained hard, but the women braved
the storm. There they stood from 9 o'clock A.M. till a quarter of 5
P.M. and distributed votes, only leaving their positions long
enough to get a cup of coffee and a luncheon, which was provided at
the headquarters. They distributed 1,700 woman suffrage ballots and
1,000 circulars containing arguments on the rights of women. They
were treated with unexceptionable politeness and kindness by the
voters.
[130] The first time women went to the polls in Massachusetts was
in 1870, when forty-two women of Hyde Park, led by Angelina Grimké
Weld and Sarah Grimké, deposited their ballots, in solemn protest
"against the political ostracism of women, against leaving every
vital interest of a majority of the citizens to the monopoly of a
male minority." It is hardly needful to record that these ballots
were not counted.
[131] For summary of voting laws relating to women from 1691 to
1822, see "Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement," by
Harriet H. Robinson: Roberts Brothers, Boston.
[132] Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Lucy Stone, Theodore Parker,
Wendell Phillips, and other speakers of ability, presented able
arguments in favor of giving women the right to vote.
[133] This memorial was printed by order of the legislature (Leg.
Doc. Ho. 57) and is called "Memorial of the Female Signers of the
Several Petitions of Henry A. Hardy and Others," presented March 1,
1849. The document is not signed and Mrs. Ferrin's name is not
found with it upon the records, neither does her name appear in the
journal of the House in connection with any of the petitions and
addresses she caused to be presented to the legislature of the
State. But for the loyal friendship of the few who knew of her work
and were willing to give her due credit, the name of Mary Upton
Ferrin [see Vol. I., page 208] and the memory of her labors as well
as those of many another silent worker, would have gone into the
"great darkness."
[134] The committee was addressed by Wendell Phillips, Julia Ward
Howe, Lucy Stone, Rev. James Freeman Clarke and Hon. George F.
Hoar.
[135] Two years before (1869), while sitting as visitor in the
gallery of the House of Representatives, I heard the whole subject
of woman's rights referred to the (bogus) committee on graveyards!
[136] It was perhaps intended to serve as a means of reïnstating
Abby W. May and other women who had been defeated as candidates for
reëlection on the Boston school-board. The names of Isa E. Gray,
Mrs. C. B. Richmond, Elizabeth P. Peabody and John M. Forbes led
the lists of petitioners.
[137] At the first annual election for school committees in cities
and towns in 1879-80, about 5,000 women became registered voters.
[138] Lucretia P. Hale, Abby W. May, Lucia M. Peabody, Mary J. S.
Blake, Kate G. Wells, Lucretia Crocker.
[139] This act, so brief and so _expressive_, is worthy to be
remembered. It simply reads: "_Be it enacted, etc., as follows_:
SEC. 1. No person shall be deemed ineligible to serve upon a school
committee by reason of sex.
SEC. 2. This act shall take effect upon its passage. (_Approved
June 30, 1874._)
By force of habit, the legislature said not a word in the law about
_women_. There are now (1885) 102 women members of school-boards in
Massachusetts.
[140] See "Women under the law of Massachusetts," Henry H. Sprague.
Boston: W. B. Clarke & Carruth.
[141] The authority for this old "thumb" tradition, that "a man had
the right to whip his wife with a stick no bigger than his thumb,"
is found in an early edition of _Phillip's Evidence_. That book was
authority in English common law and in it Phillips is quoted as
saying, that according to the law of his day a husband "might
lawfully chastise his wife with a reasonable weapon, as a
_broomstick_," adding, however, "but if he use an unreasonable
weapon, such as an iron bar, and death ensue, it would be
murder."--[Chamberlin, p. 818.
[142] In an old will, made a hundred and fifty years ago, a husband
of large means bequeathed to his "dearly beloved wife" $50 and a
new suit of clothes, with the injunction that she should return to
her original, or family home. And with this small sum, as her share
of his property, he returned her to her parents.
[143] The little actual gain in votes since 1874, in favor of
municipal or general suffrage for women, might cause the careless
observer to draw the inference that no great progress had been made
in legislative sentiment during all these years. In 1870 the vote
in the House of Representatives on the General Woman Suffrage Bill
was 133 to 68. In 1885 the bill giving municipal suffrage was
defeated in the House by a vote of 130 to 61. But this is not a
true index of the progress of public opinion.
[144] Mrs. Ellen M. Richards was the first woman who entered.
[145] The Harvard Annex, so called, began its seventh year with
sixty-five young ladies enrolled for study. The enrollment for the
preceding six years was as follows: First year, 29: second, 47;
third 40; fourth, 39; fifth, 49, sixth, 55. Some of the students
come from distant places, but a majority are from the Cambridge and
neighboring high-schools. The institution occupies this year for
the first time a building which has been conveniently arranged for
its purposes. The endowment of the association which manages the
work now amounts to $85,000.
[146] This lady was Lucy Downing, a sister of the first governor of
Massachusetts. She was the wife of Emanuel Downing, a lawyer of the
Inner Temple, a friend of Governor Winthrop and afterward a man of
mark in the infant colony. In a letter to her brother, Lucy Downing
expresses the desire of herself and husband to come to New England
with their children, but laments that if they do come her son
George cannot complete his studies. She says: "You have yet noe
societies nor means of that kind for the education of youths in
learning. It would make me goe far nimbler to New England, if God
should call me to it, than otherwise I should, and I believe a
colledge would put noe small life into the plantation." This letter
was written early in 1636, and in October of the same year the
General Court of the Massachusetts colony agreed to give £400
towards establishing a school or college in Newtowne (two years
later called Cambridge). Soon afterwards Rev. John Harvard died and
left one-half of his estate to this "infant seminary," and in 1638
it was ordered by the General Court that the "Colledge to be built
at Cambridge shall be called Harvard Colledge."
Early in 1638 Lucy Downing and her husband arrived in New England,
and the name of George Downing stands second on the list of the
first class of Harvard graduates in 1642. The Downings had other
sons who do not seem to have been educated at Harvard, and
daughters who were put out to service. The son for whom so much was
done by his mother, was afterwards known as Sir George Downing, and
he became rich and powerful in England. Downing street in London is
named for him. In after life he forgot his duty to his mother, who
so naturally looked to him for support; and her last letter written
from England after her husband died, when she was old and feeble,
tells a sad story of her son's avarice and meanness, and leaves the
painful impression that she suffered in her old age for the
necessaries of life.
It is hard to estimate how much influence the earnest longing of
this one woman for the better education of her son, had in the
founding of this earliest college in Massachusetts. But for her
thinking and speaking at the right time the enterprise might have
been delayed for half a century. It is to be deplored that Lucy
Downing established the unwise precedent of educating one member of
the family at the expense of the rest; an example followed by too
many women since her time. Harvard College itself has followed it
as well, in that it has so long excluded from its privileges that
portion of the human family to which Lucy Downing belonged.
Although women have never been permitted to become students of this
college, or of any of the schools connected with it, yet they have
always taken a great interest in its pecuniary welfare, and the
University is largely indebted to the generosity of women for its
endowment and support. From the records of Harvard College, it
appears that funds have been contributed by 167 women, which
amount, in the aggregate, to $325,000. Out of these funds a
proportion of the university scholarships were founded, and at
least one of its professors' chairs. In its Divinity school alone
five of the ten scholarships bear the names of women. Caroline A.
Plummer of Salem gave $15,000 to found the Plummer Professorship of
Christian Morals. Sarah Derby bequeathed $1,000 towards founding
the Hersey Professorship of Anatomy and Physic. The Holden Chapel
was built with money given for that purpose by Mrs. Samuel Holden
and her daughters. Anna E. P. Sever, in 1879, left a legacy to this
college of $140,000. [See Harvard Roll of Honor for women in
_Harvard Register_ in 1880-81.] Other known benefactors of Harvard
University are: Lady Moulson, Hannah Sewall, Mary Saltonstall,
Dorothy Saltonstall, Joanna Alford, Mary P. Townsend, Ann Toppan,
Eliza Farrar, Ann F. Schaeffer, Levina Hoar, Rebecca A. Perkins,
Caroline Merriam, Sarah Jackson, Hannah C. Andrews, Nancy Kendall,
Charlotte Harris, Mary Osgood, Lucy Osgood, Sarah Winslow, Julia
Bullock, Marian Hovey, Anna Richmond, Caroline Richmond, Clara J.
Moore and Susan Cabot.--[H. H. R.
The question is often asked, why are women so much more desirous
than men to see their children educated? Because it is a right that
has been denied to themselves. To them education means liberty,
wealth, position, power. When the black race at the South were
emancipated, they were far more eager for education than the poor
whites, and for the same reason.--[EDS.
[147] Ruth Barnaby, aged 101 in 1875, Elizabeth Phillips and Hannah
Greenway were also members of this branch of the profession. The
last was midwife to Mrs. Judge Sewall, who was the mother of
nineteen children. Judge Samuel E. Sewall mentions this fact in his
diary, recently published.
[148] Dr. Jackson had a large practice in Boston, and filled for
five years the chair of professor of diseases of children in the
Boston University School of Medicine.
[149] In 1840, a Massachusetts woman could not legally be treasurer
of even a sewing society without having some man responsible for
her. In 1809, it was necessary that the subscriptions of a married
woman for a newspaper or for charities should be in the name of her
husband.
[150] Olympia Brown's own account of this transaction is as
follows: In 1864, soon after my settlement in Weymouth, I
solemnized a marriage. It was the first time a woman had officiated
in this capacity, and there was so much talk about the legality of
the act, that I petitioned the legislature to take such action as
was necessary in order to make marriages solemnized by me legal.
The committee to whom it was referred reported that no legislation
was necessary.
[151] This little book is worthy of mention, from the fact that it
is probably the first publication of its kind in Massachusetts, if
not in America. The whole title of the book is, "Observations on
the Rights of Women, with their appropriate duties agreeable to
Scripture, reason and common sense." Mrs. Crocker, in her
introduction, says: "The wise author of Nature has endowed the
female mind with equal powers and faculties, and given them the
same right of judging and acting for themselves as he gave the male
sex." She further argues that, "According to Scripture, woman was
the first to transgress and thus forfeited her original right of
equality, and for a time was under the yoke of bondage, till the
birth of our blessed Savior, when she was restored to her equality
with man."
This is a very fine beginning, and would seem to savor strongly of
the modern woman's rights doctrine; but, unfortunately, the author,
with charming inconsistency, goes on to say,--"We shall strictly
adhere to the principle of the impropriety of females ever
trespassing on masculine grounds, as it is morally incorrect, and
physically impossible."
[152] In 1836 there was a small woman's club of Lowell factory
operatives, officered and managed entirely by women. This may be a
remote first cause of the origin of the New England Women's Club,
since it bears the same relation to that flourishing institution,
that the native crab does to the grafted tree. This was the first
woman's club in the State, if not in the whole country.
[153] A few ladies met at the house of Dr. Harriot K. Hunt to
consider a plan for organization. Its avowed object was "to supply
the daily increasing need of a great central resting place, for the
comfort and convenience of those who may wish to unite with us, and
ultimately become a center for united and organized social thought
and action." Its first president was Caroline M. Severance. On the
executive board were the names of Julia Ward Howe, Ednah D. Cheney,
Lucy Goddard, Harriet M. Pitnam, Jane Alexander, Abby W. May, and
many others who have since become well known. This club held its
first meetings in private houses, but it has for several years
occupied spacious club rooms on Park street in Boston. Julia Ward
Howe is its president. The club has its own historian, and when
this official gives the result of her researches to the public,
there will be seen how many projects for the elevation of women and
the improvement of social life have had their inception in the
brains of those who assemble in the parlors of the New England
Woman's Club. In 1874, it projected the movement by which women
were first elected on the school committee of Boston, and also
prepared the petition to be sent to the Massachusetts legislature
of 1879, the result of which was the passage of the law allowing
women to vote for school committees. In the _Woman's Journal_ for
1883 will be found a sketch of this club.
[154] "Taxation of Women in Massachusetts"; "Woman Suffrage
a Right, not a Privilege," and "The Forgotten Woman in
Massachusetts."
[155] Its projectors were A. Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Professor W. T. Harris, Frank B. Sanborn, Professor Benjamin
Pierce, Dr. H. K. Jones, Elizabeth P. Peabody and Ednah D. Cheney.
[156] This act is almost as brief as a certain clause in one of the
election laws of the State of Texas, which says: "The masculine
gender shall include the feminine and neuter."
[157] We deeply regret that we have been unable to procure a good
photograph of our generous benefactor, as it was our intention to
make her engraving the frontispiece of this volume, and thus give
the honored place to her through whose liberality we have been
enabled at last to complete this work. We are happy to state that
Mrs. Eddy's will was not contested by any of the descendents of the
noble Francis Jackson, but by Jerome Bacon, a millionaire, the
widower of her eldest daughter who survived the mother but one
week. When the suit was entered the daughters of Mrs. Eddy, Sarah
and Amy, her only surviving children, in a letter to the executor
of the estate, Hon. C. R. Ransom, said: "We hereby consent and
agree that, in case this suit now pending in the court shall be
decided against the claims of Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony, we
will give to them the net amount of any sum that as heirs may be
awarded to us, in accordance with our mother's will."
CHAPTER XXXII.
CONNECTICUT.
Prudence Crandall--Eloquent Reformers--Petitions for
Suffrage--The Committee's Report--Frances Ellen Burr--Isabella
Beecher Hooker's Reminiscences--Anna Dickinson in the Republican
Campaign--State Society Formed, October 28, 29,
1869--Enthusiastic Convention in Hartford--Governor Marshall
Jewell--He Recommends More Liberal Laws for Women--Society Formed
in New Haven, 1871--Governor Hubbard's Inaugural, 1877--Samuel
Bowles of the _Springfield Republican_--Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford,
Chaplain, 1870--John Hooker, esq., Champions the Suffrage
Movement.
While Connecticut has always been celebrated for its puritanical
theology, political conservatism and rigid social customs, it was
nevertheless the scene of some of the most hotly contested of the
anti-slavery battles. While its leading clergymen and statesmen
stoutly maintained the letter of the old creeds and constitutions,
the Burleighs, the Mays, and the Crandalls strove to illustrate the
true spirit of religion and republicanism in their daily lives by
"remembering those that were in bonds as bound with them."
The example of one glorious woman like Prudence Crandall,[158] who
suffered shameful persecutions in establishing a school for colored
girls at Canterbury, in 1833, should have been sufficient to rouse
every woman in Connecticut to some thought on the basic principles
of the government and religion of the country. Yet we have no
record of any woman in that State publicly sustaining her in that
grand enterprise, though no doubt her heroism gave fresh
inspiration to the sermons of Samuel J. May, then preaching in the
village of Brooklyn, and the speeches and poems of the two eloquent
reformers, Charles C. and William H. Burleigh. The words and deeds
of these and other great souls, though seeming to slumber for many
years, gave birth at last to new demands for another class of
outraged citizens. Thus liberty is ever born of the hateful spirit
of persecution. One question of reform settled forever by
the civil war, the initiative for the next was soon taken. In
_The Revolution_ of January 16, 1868, we find the following
well-considered report on woman's enfranchisement, presented by a
minority of the Committee on Constitutional Amendments to the
legislature of Connecticut at its session of 1867:
The undersigned members of the committee believe that the prayer
of the petitioners ought to be granted. It would be much easier
for us to reject the petition and silently to acquiesce in the
opinions of the majority upon the subject to which it relates,
but our attention was challenged and an investigation invited by
the bold axioms upon which the cause of suffrage for woman was
claimed to rest, and the more we have examined the subject the
more convinced we have become that the logic of our institutions
requires a concession of that right. It is claimed by some that
the right to vote is not a natural right, but that it is a
privilege which some have acquired, and which may be granted to
others at the option of the fortunate holders. But they fail to
inform us how the possessors first acquired the privilege, and
especially how they acquired the rightful power to withhold that
privilege from others, according to caprice or notions of
expediency. We hold this doctrine to be pernicious in tendency,
and hostile to the spirit of a republican government; and we
believe that it can only be justified by the same arguments that
are used to justify slavery or monarchy--for it is an obvious
deduction of logic that if one thousand persons have a right to
govern another thousand without their consent, one man has a
right to govern all.
Mr. Lincoln tersely said, "If slavery is not wrong nothing is
wrong." So it seems to us that if the right to vote is not a
natural right, there is no such thing as a natural right in human
relations. The right to freedom and the right to a ballot both
spring from the same source. The right to vote is only the right
to a legitimate use of freedom. It is plain that if a man is not
free to govern himself, and to have a voice in the taxation of
his own property, he is not really free in any enlightened sense.
Even Edward I. of England said, "It is a most equitable rule that
what concerns all should be approved by all." This must
rightfully apply to women the same as to men. And Locke, in his
essay on civil government, said, "Nothing is more evident than
that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born
to the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same
faculties, should also be equal, one with another, without
subordination or subjection." Talleyrand said, as an argument for
monarchy, "The moment we reject an absolutely universal suffrage,
we admit the principle of aristocracy." The founders of this
nation asserted with great emphasis and every variety of
repetition, the essential equality of human rights as a
self-evident truth. The war of the Revolution was justified by
the maxim, "Taxation without representation is tyranny"; and all
republics vindicate their existence by the claim that
"Governments derive their just power from the consent of the
governed." Yet woman, in Connecticut, is governed without her
consent, and taxed without representation.
Lord Camden, one of England's ablest jurists, long ago declared,
"My position is this--taxation and representation are
inseparable. The position is founded in a law of nature--nay
more, it is itself an eternal law of nature." Our forefathers
held to this principle, and fought seven years to establish it.
They maintained their favorite theory of government against
immense odds, and transmitted to their posterity the great work
of putting it logically into practice. It is acknowledged by this
legislature that "taxation without representation is tyranny,"
and that "governments derive their just power from the consent of
the governed." If these phrases are anything more than the
meaningless utterances of demagogues, anything more than the
hypocritical apologies of rebellious colonies in a strait--then
we submit that a _primâ facie_ case for woman's right to vote has
already been made out. To declare that a voice in the government
is the right of all, and then give it to less than half, and that
to the fraction to which the theorist himself happens to belong,
is to renounce even the appearance of principle.
It is plain to your committee that neither the State nor the
nation can have peace on this suffrage question until some fair
standard shall be adopted which is not based on religion, or
color, or sex, or any accident of birth--a test which shall be
applicable to every adult human being. In a republic the ballot
belongs to every intelligent adult person who is innocent of
crime. There is an obvious and sufficient reason for excluding
minors, state-prison convicts, imbeciles and insane persons, but
does the public safety require that we shall place the women of
Connecticut with infants, criminals, idiots and lunatics? Do they
deserve the classification? It seems to your committee that to
enfranchise woman--or rather to cease to deprive her of the
ballot, which is of right hers, would be reciprocally beneficial.
We believe that it would elevate the character of our
office-holders; that it would purify our politics; that it would
render our laws more equitable; that it would give to woman a
protection against half the perils which now beset her; that it
would put into her hands a key that would unlock the door of
every respectable occupation and profession; that it would insure
a reconstruction of our statute laws on a basis of justice, so
that a woman should have a right to her own children, and a right
to receive and enjoy the proceeds of her own labor. John Neal
estimates that the ballot is worth fifty cents a day to every
American laborer, enabling each man to command that much higher
wages. Does not gentlemanly courtesy, as well as equal justice,
require that that weapon of defense shall be given to those
thousands of working women among us who are going down to
prostitution through three or four half-paid, over-crowded
occupations?
It is said that woman is now represented by her husband, when she
has one; but what is this representation worth when in
Connecticut, two years ago, all of the married woman's personal
property became absolutely her husband's, including even her
bridal presents, to sell or give away, as he saw fit--a statute
which still prevails in most of the States? What is that
representation worth when even now, in this State, no married
woman has the right to the use of her own property, and no woman,
even a widow, is the natural guardian of her own children? Even
in Connecticut, under man's representation, a widow whose husband
dies without a will is regarded by law as an encumbrance on the
estate which she, through years of drudgery, has helped to
acquire. She can inherit none of the houses or land, but has
merely the use of one-third, while the balance goes to his
relatives--rich, perhaps, and persons whom she never saw. Does
not this suggest reasons why woman should wish to represent
herself?
It is said that women do not desire the ballot. This is by no
means certain. It can be ascertained only by taking a vote. It is
not proved by the fact that they have not yet generally clamored
for the right, nor by the fact that some protest against it. In
Persia, it is a law of society that virtuous women shall appear
in public with their faces covered, and instead of murmuring at
the restraint, they are universal in upholding it, and wonder at
the immodesty and effrontery of English women who appear upon the
streets unveiled. Custom hardens us to any kind of degradation.
When woman was not admitted to the dinner-table as an equal with
man, she undoubtedly thought the exclusion was perfectly proper,
and quite in the nature of things, and the dinner-table became
vile and obscene. When she was forbidden to enter the church, she
approved the arrangement, and the church became a scene of
hilarity and bacchanalian revel. When she was forbidden to take
part in literature, she thought it was not her sphere, and
disdained the alphabet, and the consequence was that literature
became unspeakably impure, so that no man can now read in public
some of the books that were written before woman brought chastity
and refinement into letters. The Asiatics are probably not in
favor of political liberty, or the American Indians in favor of
civilization; but that does not prove that these would be bad for
them, especially if thousands of the most enlightened did desire
and demand the change. It is assumed that women are not in favor
of this right; how can this be better ascertained than by
submitting to them the question to vote upon--"yes" or "no."
If this legislature shall be averse to trusting woman to give her
opinion even on the question of her own enfranchisement, we
recommend that an amendment, striking the word "male" from the
State constitution, be submitted to the qualified electors of the
State. Can there be any possible danger in trusting those who
have trusted us? They, not we, are the law-makers. An assembly is
elected only because it would be inconvenient for all the
citizens to vote upon every statute. But when any change in the
fundamental law is seriously asked, it should be remitted to the
people without hesitation, especially when that proposed change
will render our logic consistent, and our institutions
harmonious; when it will enforce the democratic doctrine that, in
society, every human being has a right to do anything that does
not interfere with the rights of others, and when it will
establish equality in place of partiality, and vindicate the
principle of All Rights for All. We therefore recommend the
adoption of the following resolution: [Here follows a resolution
submitting to the people an amendment of the constitution giving
women the right to vote equally with men.]
The members of the committee who signed this early declaration in
favor of the rights of women should be remembered with honor. They
are Henry Ashley, William Steele and J. D. Gallup, jr. The
resolution recommended received 93 votes in the House of
Representatives, against 111 in opposition. So strong an expression
in favor of it at that time is a noteworthy fact in the history of
the cause.
The petitions that called out this able report were secured through
the influence of Frances Ellen Burr, who may be said to have been
the pioneer of woman suffrage in Connecticut. She had made several
attempts, through conversations with influential friends, to
organize a State society many years before. From the inauguration
of the State association until the present time Miss Burr has been
one of its most efficient members, and has done more to popularize
the question of woman suffrage throughout the State than any other
person. Her accomplishments as a writer and speaker, as a reporter
and stenographer, as well as her connection with the _Hartford
Times_ (a journal that has a very large circulation in the State),
edited by her brother, have qualified her for wide and efficient
influence. Her niece, Mrs. Ella Burr McManus, edits a column in
that paper, under the head of "Social Notes." She is also an
advocate of suffrage for women, and makes telling points, from week
to week, on this question. In issuing the first numbers of _The
Revolution_, the earliest words of good cheer came from Frances
Ellen Burr.[159]
The general rebellion among women against the old conditions of
society and the popular opinions as to their nature and destiny,
has been organized in each State in this Union by the sudden
awakening of some self-reliant woman, in whose soul had long
slumbered new ideas as to her rights and duties, growing out of
personal experiences or the distant echoes of onward steps in other
localities. In Connecticut this woman was Isabella Beecher Hooker,
who had scarcely dared to think, and much less to give shape in
words, to the thoughts that, like unwelcome ghosts, had haunted her
hours of solitude from year to year. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
describes a hero as one who does what others do but say; who says
what others do but think; and thinks what others do but dream. The
successive steps by which Mrs. Hooker's dreams at last took shape
in thoughts, words and actions, and brought her to the woman
suffrage platform, are well told by herself:
My mind had long been disturbed with the tangled problem of
social life, but it involved so many momentous questions that I
could not see where to begin nor what to do. I could only protest
in my heart, and leave the whole matter for God[160] to deal with
in his wisdom. Thus matters stood until the year 1861, when Anna
Dickinson, then a girl of nineteen, came to Hartford to speak in
behalf of the Republican party, particularly on its hostility to
the extension of slavery. I shall never forget the dismay--I know
not what else to call it--which I felt at the announcement of her
first speech in one of our public halls, lest harm should come to
the political cause that enlisted my sympathies, and anxiety
about the speaker, who would have to encounter so much adverse
criticism in our conservative and prejudiced city. It was
certainly a most startling occurrence, that here in my very home,
where there had been hardly a lisp in favor of the rights of
women, this girl should speak on political subjects, and that,
too, upon the invitation of the leaders of a great political
party. Here was a stride, not a mere step; and a stride almost to
final victory for the suppressed rights of women.
My husband and I, full of anxiety and apprehension, but full,
too, of determination to stand by one who so bravely shook off
her trammels, went to hear this new Joan of Arc, and in a few
minutes after she began we found ourselves, with the rest of the
large audience, entranced by her eloquence. At the close of the
meeting we went with many others to be introduced and give her
the right hand of fellowship. She came home with us for the
night, and after the family retired she and I communed together,
heart to heart, as mother and daughter, and from this sweet,
grand soul, born to the freedom denied to all women except those
known as Quakers, I learned to trust as never before the
teachings of the inner light, and to know whence came to them the
recognition of equal rights with their brethren in the public
assembly.
It was she who brought me to the knowledge of Mrs. John Stuart
Mill, and her remarkable paper on "The Enfranchisement of Women,"
in _The Westminster Review_. She told me, too, of Susan B.
Anthony, a fearless defender of true liberty and woman's right of
public speech; but I allowed an old and ignorant prejudice
against her and Mrs. Stanton to remain until the year 1864, when,
going South to nurse a young soldier who was wounded in the war,
I met Mrs. Caroline Severance from Boston, who was residing in
South Carolina, where her husband was in the service of the
government, who confirmed what Miss Dickinson had told me of Miss
Anthony, and unfolded to me the whole philosophy of the woman
suffrage movement.
She afterwards invited me to her home near Boston, where I joined
Mr. Garrison and others in issuing a call for a convention, which
I attended, and aided in the formation of the New England Woman
Suffrage Association. At this meeting, which I will not attempt
to describe, I met Paulina Wright Davis, whose mere presence upon
the platform, with her beautiful white hair and her remarkable
dignity and elegance, was a most potent argument in favor of
woman's participation in public affairs. I sought an introduction
to her, and confessing my prejudice against Mrs. Stanton and Miss
Anthony, whom I had never yet seen, she urged me to meet them as
guests at her home in Providence; and a few weeks later, under
the grand old trees of her husband's almost ducal estate, we went
over the whole subject of man's supremacy and woman's subjection
that had lain so many years a burden upon my heart, and, sitting
at their feet, I said: "While I have been mourning in secret over
the degradation of woman, you have been working, through
opposition and obloquy, to raise her to self-respect and
self-protection through enfranchisement, knowing that with equal
political rights come equal social and industrial opportunities.
Henceforth, I will at least share your work and your obloquy."
In September, 1869, just one year from that time, after spending
several weeks in correspondence with friends all over the State,
and making careful preliminary arrangements, I issued a call for
the first woman suffrage convention that was ever held in
Connecticut, at which a State society was formed. To my surprise
and satisfaction, the city press each day devoted several columns
to reports of our proceedings, and the enthusiasm manifested by
the large audiences was as unexpected as it was gratifying. The
speakers were worthy of the reception given them, and few
occasions have gathered upon one platform so notable an
assemblage of men and women.[161] The resolutions which formed
the basis of the discussions were prepared and presented by Mr.
Hooker:
_Resolved_, That there is no consideration whatever that
makes the right of suffrage valuable to men, or that makes
it the duty or the interest of the nation to concede it to
men, that does not make it valuable to women, and the duty
and interest of the nation to concede it to women.
_Resolved_, That the ballot will bring to woman a higher
education, larger industrial opportunities, a wider field
for thought and action, a sense of responsibility in her
relations to the public welfare, and, in place of mere
complaisance and flattery, the higher and truer respect of
men.
_Resolved_, That political affairs, involving nearly all
those questions that relate to the welfare of the nation and
the progress of society towards a perfect Christian
civilization, ought to interest deeply every intelligent
mind and every patriotic heart; and, while women love their
country and the cause of Christian progress no less than
men, they ought to have the same opportunity with men to
exert a political power in their behalf.
_Resolved_, That in the alarming prevalence of public
dishonesty and private immorality, which the present forces
on the side of public and private virtue are proving wholly
unable to control, it is our firm conviction that women,
educated to the responsibilities of a participation with men
in political rights, would bring to the aid of virtuous men
a new and powerful element of good, which cannot be spared,
and for which there can be no substitute.
_Resolved_, That in advocating the opening to woman of this
larger sphere, we do not undervalue her relations as a wife
and mother, than which none can be more worthy of a true
woman's love and pride; but it is only by a full development
of her faculties and a wide range for her thought that she
can become the true companion of an intelligent husband, and
the wise and inspiring educator of her children; while mere
domestic life furnishes no occupation to the great number of
women who never marry, and a very inadequate one to those
who, at middle age, with large experience and ripe wisdom,
find their children grown up around them and no longer
needing their care.
_Resolved_, That all laws which recognize a superior right
in the husband to the children whom the wife has borne, or a
right on the part of the husband to the property of the
wife, beyond the right given to her in his property, and all
laws which hold that husband and wife do not stand in all
respects in the relation of equals, ought to be abrogated,
and the perfect equality of husband and wife established.
_Resolved_, That this equality of position and rights we
believe to have been intended by the Creator as the ultimate
perfection of the social state, when he said, "Let us make
man in our image, after our likeness, and let THEM have
dominion"; and to have been a part of our Savior's plan for
a perfect Christian society, in which an Apostle says,
"there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor
female."
The _Hartford Courant_, in its description of the convention, said:
After a speech by Mr. Garrison, the Hutchinsons sang some of the
religious songs of the Southern negroes with excellent taste, and
then, led by them, the whole audience united in the chorus; and
as the melody rose strong and clear a pathos fell upon the
assembly that brought tears to many eyes. The tableau upon the
stage was striking and memorable. There stood the family of
singers, with the same cheerful, hopeful courage in their
uplifted faces with which for twenty years they have sung of the
good time _almost_ here, of every reform; there stood William
Lloyd Garrison, stern Puritan, inflexible apostle, his work
gloriously done in one reform, lending the weight of his
unwearied, solid intellect to that which he believes is the last
needed; there was Mrs. Paulina Wright Davis, a Roman matron in
figure, her noble head covered with clustering ringlets of white,
courageous after a quarter of a century of unsullied devotion,
though she had just confessed that sometimes she was almost
weary; there was Miss Anthony, unselfish, patient, wise and
practical; the graceful Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, the poet of the
movement; the tall and elegant Mrs. Celia Burleigh; the
benevolent Dr. Clemence Lozier; Mrs. Isabella B. Hooker, with
spiritual face and firm purpose, just taking her place in the
reform that has long had her heart and deep conviction, and many
others of fine presence and commanding beauty--matrons, with gray
hair and countenances illuminated with lives of charity; young
women, flushed with hope; and as the grand Christian song went
on, many a woman, leaning against a supporting pillar, gave way
to the tears that would come, tears of hope deferred, tears of
weary longings, tears of willing, patient devotion--e'en though
it be a cross that raiseth me--and then the benediction, and the
assembly dispersed, touched, it may be, into a moment's sympathy.
* * *
At the closing evening session the opera house was completely
filled by an audience whose attendance was a compliment. * * *
The chairman, Rev. N. J. Burton, said: "Has not this convention
been a success? I say, emphatically, it has. We have had the very
best of audiences at every session, and we have provided speakers
as good as the audience. We have not given you even one poor
speech. I thank the audience and the speakers, one and all. I
feel like thanking everybody, myself included, as chairman. In
Stewart's store in New York they told me 1,500 persons were
employed, all guided by one brain up-stairs, and that one brain
giving the store a national reputation. This convention has been
inspired and managed by one person--Mrs. Hooker of this city."
After speculating as to the possible oratorical power of Mrs. H.,
had she received the advantages and enjoyed the practice of her
brother, who spoke the previous evening, he said: "But of course
Mrs. Hooker couldn't vote, nor be a member of the legislature, or
even a justice of the peace. Insufferable nonsense! If such women
don't vote before I die--well, like Gough's obstinate deacon, I
won't die till they do."
On motion of Franklin Chamberlin, esq., the thanks of the
convention were tendered to Mrs. Hooker for her efforts. At her
request the chairman said that she was wholly surprised by this
reference to herself. She would only say, "Thank God for our
success," to which the chairman added, "Amen and Amen." He then
introduced Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, daughter of the late
Judge Cady of Albany, wife of the Hon. Henry B. Stanton of New
York, and editor of _The Revolution_. She is perhaps fifty, and
in general appearance much resembles Mrs. Davis. She is
apparently in robust health, dresses in black, with just enough
of white lace, and, with her gray hair loosely gathered, and her
strong, symmetrical and refined face and perfect self-possession,
is a noble-looking woman. Her address, or oration, was before
her, but she was not hampered by it. Her voice is clear, her
gesticulation simple, and her general manner not surpassed by
Wendell Phillips. Rough notes of an oration so finished can only
indicate the main drift of her thoughts. * * * The eloquent
peroration was heard in profound silence, followed by
enthusiastic applause. * * * The chairman read the constitution
and offered it for signatures, and the officers of the
Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association were chosen.[162]
In _The Revolution_ of November 11, 1869, Mrs. Stanton giving a
description of the convention, refers to the liberality of the
governor, Marshall Jewell, and the genial hospitalities of his
noble wife:[163]
In company with Mrs. Howe and Miss Anthony, we were entertained
at the governor's mansion, a fine brick building in the heart of
the town. It has a small pond on one side, and eight acres of
land, laid out in gardens, walks and lawns, with extensive
greenhouses and graperies. The house is spacious, elegantly and
tastefully furnished, with all the comforts and luxuries that
wealth can command. With a conservatory, library, pictures,
statuary, beautiful (strong-minded) wife and charming daughters,
the noble governor is in duty bound to remain the happy, genial,
handsome man he is to-day. Though the governor, owing to his
pressing executive duties, did not honor our convention with his
presence, we feel assured, in reading over his last able message,
that he feels a deep interest in the education and elevation of
women. In speaking of their school system, he calls attention to
the low wages of female teachers, and the injustice of excluding
girls from the scientific schools and polytechnic institutions in
the State. He says:
I would especially call the attention of the legislature to
the importance of furnishing to women such educational
facilities as will better fit them for the industrial
pursuits which the true progress of the times is opening to
them.
On the rights of married women, he says:
While our laws with regard to married women have been
amended from time to time for several years past, so as to
secure to them in a more ample manner their property, held
before or acquired after marriage, yet we are still
considerably behind many of our sister States, and even
conservative England, in our legislation on the subject. I
would recommend to your favorable consideration such an
amendment of our laws as will secure to a married woman all
her property, with the full control of it during her married
life, and free from liability for any debts, except those
contracted by herself or for which she has voluntarily made
herself responsible, with the same right on the part of the
husband to an interest in her property, on his surviving
her, that she now has, or that it may be best to give her,
in his.
On the subject of divorce the governor says:
I recommend a revision of our laws with regard to divorce.
According to the report of the State librarian there were in
the State last year 4,734 marriages and 478 divorces.
Discontented people come here from other States, to take
advantage of what is called our liberal legislation, to
obtain divorces which would be denied them at home. As the
sacredness of the marriage relation lies at the foundation
of civilized society, it should be carefully guarded. Under
our present laws the causes of divorce are too numerous, and
not sufficiently defined, and too wide a discretion is given
to the courts. I think the law of 1849 should be modified,
and so much of the statute as grants divorces for "any such
misconduct as permanently destroys the happiness of the
petitioner, and defeats the purposes of the marriage
relation," should be repealed. I would also suggest that the
law provide that no decree of divorce shall take effect till
one year after it is granted.
In conversation with the governor on this point in his
message he stated the singular fact that the majority of the
applications for divorce were made by women. If this be so,
we suggested that the laws of Connecticut should stand as
they are until the women have the right of suffrage, that
they may have a voice in a social arrangement in which they
have an equal interest with man himself. If Connecticut,
with its blue laws, disloyal Hartford convention, and
Democracy, has, nevertheless, been a Canada for fugitive
wives from the yoke of matrimony, pray keep that little
State, like an oasis in the desert, sacred to sad wives, at
least until the sixteenth amendment of the federal
constitution shall give the women of the republic the right
to say whether they are ready to make marriage, under all
circumstances, for better or worse, an indissoluble tie. We
have grave doubts as to the sacredness of a relation in
which the subject-class has no voice whatever in the laws
that regulate it. We shall never know what "laws lie at the
foundation of all civilized society" until woman's thought
finds expression in the State, the church and the home. It
is presumption for man longer to legislate alone on this
vital question, when woman, too, should have a word to say
in the matter.
The morning after the convention we had a pleasant breakfast
under Mr. and Mrs. Hooker's hospitable roof, where Boston
and New York amicably broke bread and discussed the
fifteenth amendment together. All the wise and witty sayings
that passed around that social board, time fails to
chronicle.
In 1877 Governor Hubbard called the attention of the legislature
to the wrongs of married women, in the following words:
There has been for the last few years in this State much
slip-shod and fragmentary legislation in respect to the
property rights of married women. The old common law assumed
the subjugation of the wife, and stripped her of the better
part of her rights of person and nearly all her rights of
property. It is a matter of astonishment that Christian
nations should have been willing for eighteen centuries to
hold the mothers of their race in a condition of legal
servitude. It has been the scandal of jurisprudence. Some
progress has been made in reforming the law in this State,
but it has been done, as I have already said, by patch-work
and shreds, sometimes ill-considered, and often so
incongruous as to provoke vexatious litigation and defy the
wisdom of the courts. The property relations of husband and
wife do not to-day rest on any just or harmonious system.
Not only has the husband absolute disposal of all his own
property freed from all dower rights, but he is practically
the owner during coverture of all his wife's estate not
specially limited to her separate use; and after her death
has, in every case, a life use in all her personal, and in
most cases in all her real property, by a title which the
wife, no matter what may have been his ill-deserts, is
powerless to impair or defeat; whereas, on the other hand,
the wife has during the husband's life no more power of her
own right to sell, convey, or manage her own estate than if
she were a lunatic or slave, and in case of his death has a
life use in only one-third part of the real estate of which
he dies possessed, and no indefeasible title whatever in any
of his personal estate. As a consequence, a husband may
strip his wife, by mere voluntary disposition to strangers,
of all claim on his estate after his death, and thus add
beggary to widowhood.
I am sure this cannot seem right to any fair-minded man.
Neither is it strange that some of our countrywomen, stung
by the injustice of the law towards their sex, should be
demanding, as a mode of redress, a part in the making of the
laws which govern them. I am confident there is manhood
enough in our own sex to right this obvious wrong to which I
have alluded.
I therefore recommend that the law on this subject be so
recast that, in all marriages hereafter contracted, the wife
shall hold her property and all her earnings for personal
services not rendered to her husband or minor children, as a
sole and separate estate, with absolute power of disposition
in her own name, and that the surviving wife shall have, by
law, the same measure of estate in the property of the
deceased husband, as the surviving husband shall be allowed
to have in the property of his deceased wife. This will
reduce their property relations to a principle of equality,
and, in my judgment, is demanded by the most obvious
dictates of justice and equity. Those who are not satisfied
with this can make a different law for themselves by
ante-nuptial settlements.
I am not unmindful that the husband alone is liable in the
first instance for the support of the family; but this is
much more than neutralized by the fact that, in most cases,
the wife's whole life is spent in the toilsome and unpaid
service of the household, and that the whole drift of her
estate, in consequence of her more unselfish and generous
nature, is towards the husband's pockets, in spite of all
the guards of the law and every consideration of prudence.
Calling attention to this stirring appeal, the _Hartford Times_,
Democratic, used the following language:
Another notable feature of the message is its outspoken and
manly call for a reformation in our laws concerning the
property rights of married women. Here as in other points it
is a model message. The governor's experience as a lawyer
has brought him often face to face with this disgraceful
one-sidedness of our laws on this subject, and in some terse
sentences he shows up the injustice more effectively than
has ever been done in any of the so-called women's rights
conventions.[164]
The following editorial from the _Springfield Republican_, gives
a good digest of the new law passed upon Governor Hubbard's
recommendation:
Connecticut has taken a great leap forward in the reform of
the property relations of married persons. The law had been
long neglected in that State, the obvious right of a married
woman to property acquired before marriage, which is now
secured in most States by constitutional provision, having
been there denied. In Massachusetts, the modification of the
former inequalities has gone on by piecemeal, till it is
said that in some respects the woman is now the more favored
party.
The new Connecticut statute also puts the burden of the
family maintenance on the man, as under most circumstances
the real bread-winner. It simply lays down the principle of
absolute equality in the rights and privileges of the
husband and wife, with the above exception. In all marriages
hereafter contracted, neither husband nor wife shall acquire
any right to or interest in any property of the other,
whether held before the marriage or acquired after the
marriage, except as provided in this law. The separate
earnings of the wife shall be her sole property. She shall
have the same right to make contracts with third persons as
if she were not married, and to convey her real and personal
estate. Her property is liable for her debts and not for
his; his is not liable for her debts, except those
contracted for the support of the family. Purchases made by
either party shall be presumed to be on the private account
of the party, but both shall be liable where any article
purchased by either shall have in fact gone to the support
of the family, or for the joint benefit of both, or for the
reasonable apparel of the wife, or for her reasonable
support while abandoned by her husband. It shall, however,
be the duty of the husband to support his family, and his
property, when found, shall be first applied to satisfy any
such joint liability. The wife shall be entitled to
indemnity for any money of her own used to pay such claims.
We have used almost the precise language of the first and
second sections of the act.
On the death of either, the survivor shall be entitled to
the use for life of one-third the estate of the deceased,
which right cannot be defeated by will. If the deceased
leaves no children or representatives of children, the
survivor is entitled to one-half instead of one-third. When
either party gives a legacy to the other, the latter may
choose between its rights under the will, and those under
the statute. Abandonment without cause may defeat this
provision, and a marriage contract may supersede it
entirely. Parties already married may contract to surrender
their present rights for those secured by this statute, such
contracts to be recorded in the probate court.
Thus we have a new and clear statute framed in accordance
with a simple principle of reform, for which the
_Republican_ has long done battle--the equality of married
persons in their rights and responsibilities of property.
The adoption of the reform is due deeply to the general
agitation of the rights of women, the efforts of Mrs.
Isabella Beecher Hooker, the Smith girls' cows, and perhaps
some flagrant instance of injustice to rich wives by tyrant
husbands near the capital. But the great occasion and
immediate cause, without which this generation might have
pleaded for it in vain, was the perception of the justice of
it by Governor Hubbard, and his open advocacy of it in his
message. Lawyers have one answer for all reforms regarding
property or civil contracts--they are impossible. But here
was undeniably the best lawyer in the State who said, and
threw the weight of his first State paper on the
proposition, that this thing was possible, and, if he said
it was possible, there was no man who could gainsay it. The
legislature took the reform on its own sense of justice and
on the assurance of Richard D. Hubbard, that it would work.
On June 6, 1870, at a second hearing[165] before the Joint
Committee on Woman Suffrage, in the capitol at New Haven, Rev.
Phebe A. Hanaford of the Universalist church, Mrs. Benchley and
Mrs. Russell were the speakers. During that session of the
legislature Mrs. Hanaford acted as chaplain both in the Senate and
House of Representatives, and received a check for her services
which she valued chiefly as a recognition of woman's equality in
the clerical profession.
Mrs. Hooker was ably sustained in her new position by her husband,
a prominent lawyer of the State. Being equally familiar with civil
and canon law, with Blackstone and the Bible, he was well equipped
to meet the opponents of the reform at every point. While Mrs.
Hooker held meetings in churches and school-houses through the
State, her husband in his leisure hours sent the daily press
articles on the subject. And thus their united efforts stirred the
people to thought and at last roused a Democratic governor of the
State to his duty on this question. From the many able tracts
issued and articles published in the journals we give a few
extracts. In answer to the common objections of "free love" and
"easy divorce," in the _Evening Post_ of January 17, 1871, Mr.
Hooker said:
The persons who advocate easy divorce would advocate it just as
strongly if there was no woman suffrage movement. The two have no
necessary connection. Indeed one of the strongest arguments in
favor of woman suffrage is, that the marriage relation will be
safer with women to vote and legislate upon it than where the
voting and legislation are left wholly to the men. Women will
always be wives and mothers, above all things else. This law of
nature cannot be changed, and I know of nobody who desires to
change it. The marriage relation will therefore always be more to
woman than to man, and we, who would give her the right to vote,
have no fear to trust to her the sanctity and purity of that
relation. It is the opponents of woman suffrage who distrust the
fidelity of woman to her divine instincts and dare not let her
vote. Our little State has been two hundred years under male
legislation, and yet a long memorial from hundreds of clergymen
and other Christian men went up to our legislature two years ago,
representing our legislation on divorce as demoralizing and as
fatal to the best interests of the marriage relation. It really
seems as if the incompetency for the management of public affairs
which by mere assumption is charged in advance upon women, has
been proved with regard to men by an actual experience of many
years. The true idea is for man and woman to share together the
responsibilities and duties of legislation, and until this is
done I have no hope for any real progress towards purity in the
administration of our public affairs. We who favor woman suffrage
speak confidently on this subject because the reform works so
well wherever it has been tried, in England, Sweden, Austria and
Wyoming Territory.
No rational man can suppose for a moment that with woman suffrage
established in England and on the continent of Europe, we in this
country, which so specially stands on equal representation, are
going to refuse it. It must be set down as one of the certain
things of the future. And when it has come, and women vote, it
will excite no more attention or comment than the voting of our
colored people.
Now if woman suffrage is to come, is it worth while to be making
the impression that the women of our country are not to be
trusted with it, and that the marriage relation is to be
imperiled by it? Above all, is it manly or just to be charging
corrupt motives on nine-tenths of those who advocate the reform?
The notoriety which to some extent its advocates must get is
almost universally painful to the women who are the subjects of
it. One noble woman, whose whole soul is in this cause, and the
purity of whose motives in this, as in everything else, I have
had good opportunity to learn, said to me, on reading Dr.
Bushnell's remark in his book on woman suffrage, that these women
were only trying to make themselves men: "Cruel, cruel words! If
so noble a man as Dr. Bushnell so utterly fails to comprehend a
woman's nature, shall not she be allowed to speak for herself,
and no testimony be taken but hers?"[166]
Much might be said in regard to the most famous women of
Connecticut, the historic "Maids of Glastonbury," celebrated for
their resistance to taxation. After the death of Abby, July 23,
1878, Mrs. Elizabeth Oakes Smith, in a beautiful tribute to the
sisters, said:
Many years ago they took a stand akin to that of the illustrious
Hampden, which has made his name a synonym for patriotism as well
as just and manly opposition to unconstitutional revenue
exaction. "The tax may be a small matter for an English gentleman
to pay, but it is too much for a British freeman to pay," was
the ground of his noble resistance, and this view precipitated
that great Revolution which more than all other modern movements
consolidated and strengthened the rights of the British subject.
These two women deserve to stand upon a platform side by side
with the great Hampden. Other women have paid their taxes under
protest, but Abby and Julia Smith have done more than protest;
they have suffered loss as well as inconvenience, their property
having been seized and sold again and again because of their
honest conviction that taxation without representation was as
unjust to women as to men. Their steadfastness has been the more
remarkable because, by their social position, their learning and
their wealth, they might be supposed to be indifferent to the
ballot-box, as so many thus situated claim to be. Abby and her
sister were no ordinary women. The family originally consisted of
five sisters, all more or less accomplished. The father was a man
of learning, a graduate of Yale and a clergyman. The mother was
familiar with French and Italian, and no mean astronomer. Thus
parented, it is not surprising that the Glastonbury sisters were
of marked individualism as well as superior scholarship. They
were more or less acquainted with Hebrew, Greek and Latin, and
have made a translation of the Bible from these sources, giving
its original meaning.
The maids of Glastonbury planted themselves upon the right of the
sex to suffrage, from purely philosophic and statesman-like
grounds. They had no other disabilities of which to complain--no
other grievance--no social ostracism, as is so often charged, and
most unjustly, against other advocates of the doctrine. They were
unmarried, studious, upright, simple-minded gentlewomen, and were
much esteemed and honored in the community in which they lived.
They occupied the old homestead, doing their own work, their
interests well cared for in the person of Mr. Kellogg, an
intelligent tenant of theirs, as well as friend and neighbor.
_The Hartford Post_, in a tender mention of the life and death of
Abby, with a brief sketch of the family, thus bears honorable
testimony to her worthiness:
In the death of Miss Smith the cause of woman suffrage has
met with a severe loss, as her firm resistance to what she
believed to be the unjust treatment of women greatly
encouraged her companions in the contest; her sister has
lost her chief support, and the community in which she lived
a faithful friend and a worthy exponent of the virtues of
truthfulness, firmness, and adherence to the right as she
understood it.
_The Hartford Times_ said:
A notable woman who died last week was Miss Abigail H.
Smith, of Glastonbury, Conn., one of the two sisters who
resisted the collection of their taxes on the ground that
they had no voice in the levy. It will be remembered that
their cows were seized and some of their personal property
sold two years ago. Of course there were friends who were
willing and anxious to pay the taxes, but the plucky old
ladies were fighting for a principle, and they would allow
no one to stand in the way. The notoriety, which they
neither sought nor avoided, undoubtedly did a great deal to
call public attention to the anomalous condition of woman
under the law. It would be very hard for any man to argue
successfully that he possessed any stronger natural claim to
the suffrage than was possessed by these shrewd, honest,
energetic old ladies.
Many encouraging letters were written the sisters during their many
trials, of which the following is a fair specimen:
Near BOSTON, January 14, 1874.
MY DEAR MADAM: The account of your hardships is interesting, and
your action will be highly beneficial in bringing the subject to
public notice, and in leading to the correction of a great
injustice. The taxation of the property of women, without
allowing them any representation, even in town affairs, is so
unfair that it seems only necessary to bring it to public view to
make it odious and to bring about a change. Therefore you deserve
the greater honor, not only because you have suffered in a good
cause, but because you have set an example that will be followed,
and that will lead to happy results.
Your case has its parallel in every township of New England. In
the town where this is written a widow pays into the treasury
$7,830 a year, while 600 men, a number equal to half the whole
number of voters, pay $1,200 in all. Another lady pays $5,042.
Yet neither has a single vote, not even by proxy. That is, each
one of 600 men who have no property, who pay only a poll-tax, and
many of whom cannot read or write, has the power of voting away
the property of the town, while the female _owners_ have no power
at all. We have lately spent a day in celebrating the heroism of
those who threw overboard the tea; but how trifling was the
tea-tax, and how small the injustice to individuals compared with
this one of our day! The principle, however, was the same--that
there should be no taxation where there is no representation. And
this is what we ought to stand by. Please to accept the sympathy
and respect of one of your fellow citizens. No doubt you will
have the same from all in due time; or, at any rate, from all who
love to see fair play.
Very truly yours, AMOS A. LAWRENCE.
_Miss Abby H. Smith, Glastonbury, Conn._
A marked evidence of the advance of public sentiment was manifested
by a decision of the Supreme Court in 1882, by which the women of
Connecticut were held to have the right to practice law. The
opinion of Chief-Justice Park concerning the legality of the
admission of Miss Mary Hall of Hartford to the bar, giving her the
right to practice in the courts of the State, is as follows:
This is an application by a woman for admission to the bar of
Hartford county. After having completed the prescribed term of
study she has passed the examination required and has been
recommended by the bar of the county to the Superior Court for
admission, subject to the opinion of the court upon the question
whether, as a woman, she can legally be admitted. The Superior
Court has reserved the case for our advice.
The statute with regard to the admission of attorneys by the
court is the 29th section of chapter 3, title 4, of the General
Statutes, and is in the following words: "The Superior Court may
admit and cause to be sworn as attorneys such persons as are
qualified therefor agreeably to the rules established by the
judges of said court; and no other person than an attorney so
admitted shall plead at the bar of any court of this State,
except in his own cause."
It is not contended, in opposition to the application, that the
language of this statute is not comprehensive enough to include
women, but the claim is that at the time it was passed its
application to women was not thought of, while the fact that
women have never been admitted as attorneys, either by the
English courts or by any of the courts of this country, had
established a common-law disability, which could be removed only
by a statute intended to have that effect.
It is hardly necessary to consider how far the fact that women
have never pursued a particular profession or occupied a
particular official position, to the pursuit or occupancy of
which some governmental license or authority was necessary,
constitutes a common-law disability for receiving such license or
authority, because here the statute is ample for removing that
disability if we can construe it as applying to women; so that we
come back to the question whether we are by construction to limit
the application of the statute to men alone, by reason of the
fact that in its original enactment its application to women was
not intended by the legislators that enacted it. And upon this
point we remark, in the first place, that an inquiry of this sort
involves very serious difficulties. No one would doubt that a
statute passed at this time in the same words would be sufficient
to authorize the admission of women to the bar, because it is now
a common fact and presumably in the minds of legislators, that
women in different parts of the country are, and for some time
have been, following the profession of law. But if we hold that
the construction of the statute is to be determined by the
admitted fact that its application to women was not in the minds
of the legislators when it was passed, where shall we draw the
line? All progress in social matters is gradual. We pass almost
imperceptibly from a state of public opinion that utterly
condemns some course of action to one that strongly approves it.
At what point, in the history of this change, shall we regard a
statute, the construction of which is to be affected by it, as
passed in contemplation of it? When the statute we are now
considering was passed, it probably never entered the mind of a
single member of the legislature that black men would ever be
seeking for admission under it. Shall we now hold that it cannot
apply to black men? We know of no distinction in respect to this
rule between the case of a statute and that of a constitutional
provision. When our State constitution was adopted in 1818 it was
provided in it that every elector should be "eligible to any
office in the State," except where otherwise provided in the
constitution. It is clear that the convention that framed, and
probably all the people who voted to adopt the constitution, had
no idea that black men would ever be electors, and contemplated
only white men as within any possible application of the
provision, for the same constitution provided that only white men
should be electors. But now that black men are made electors,
will it do to say that they are not entitled to the full rights
of electors in respect to holding office, because an application
of the provision to them was never thought of when it was
adopted? Events that gave rise to enactments may always be
considered in construing them. This is little more than the
familiar rule that in construing a statute we always inquire what
particular mischief it was designed to remedy. Thus, the Supreme
Court of the United States has held that in construing the recent
amendments of the federal constitution, although they are general
in their terms, it is to be considered that they were passed with
reference to the exigencies growing out of the emancipation of
the slaves, and for the purpose of benefiting the blacks
(_Slaughter-house Cases, 16 Wall., 67_; _Strauder vs. West
Virginia, 100 U. S. Reps., 306_). But this statute was not passed
for the purpose of benefiting men as distinguished from women. It
grew out of no exigency caused by the relation of the sexes. Its
object was wholly to secure the orderly trial of causes and the
better administration of justice. Indeed, the preamble to the
first statute providing for the admission of attorneys, states
its object to be "for the well-ordering of proceedings and pleas
at the bar."
The statute on this subject was not originally passed in its
present form. The first act with regard to the admission of
attorneys was that of 1708, which was as follows: "That no
person, except in his own cause, shall be admitted to make any
plea at the bar without being first approved by the court before
whom the plea is to be made, nor until he shall take in the said
court the following oath," etc. (Col. Records, 1706 to 1716, page
48). This act seems to have contemplated an approval by the court
in each particular case in which an attorney appeared before it.
The first act with regard to the general admission of attorneys
appears in the revision of 1750, and is as follows: "That the
county courts of the respective counties in this colony shall
appoint, and they are hereby empowered to approve, nominate and
appoint attorneys in their respective counties, as there shall be
occasion, to plead at the bar; * * and that no person, except in
his own case, shall make any plea at the bar in any court but
such as are allowed and qualified attorneys, as aforesaid." Thus
the statute stood until the revision of 1821; when, for the first
time, it took essentially its present form. Up to this time the
word "person" had been used in this statute only in the clause
that "no person" should be allowed to practice before the courts
except where formally admitted by the court, a use of the word
which, of course, could not be regarded as limited to the male
sex, as women would undoubtedly have been held to be included in
the term. The language of the statute as now adopted was as
follows: "The county courts may make such rules and regulations
as to them shall seem proper relative to the admission and
practice of attorneys; and may approve of, admit and cause to be
sworn as attorneys, such persons as are qualified therefor
agreeably to the rules established; * * and no person not thus
admitted, except in his own cause, shall be admitted or allowed
to plead at the bar of any court." The statute in this form
passed through the compilations of 1835 and 1838, the revision of
1849 and the compilation of 1854, and appears, with a slight
modification, in the revision of 1866. The county courts had now
been abolished, and the power to admit attorneys, as well as to
make rules on the subject, had been given to the Superior Court;
the expression, "such persons," being preserved, and the
provision that "no person" not thus admitted should be allowed to
plead, being omitted.
The statute finally took its present form in the revision of
1875. It retains the provision that the Superior Court may make
rules for the admission of attorneys, and provides that the court
"may admit and cause to be sworn as attorneys such persons as are
qualified therefor agreeably to the rules established," and
restores the provision, dropt in the revision of 1866, that "no
person other than an attorney so admitted shall plead at the bar
of any court in this State, except in his own cause."
These changes, though not such as to affect the meaning of the
statute at any point of importance to the present question, are
yet not wholly without importance. The adoption by the
legislature of the revision of the statutes becomes, both in law
and in fact, a reënactment of the whole body of statutes; and
though in determining the meaning of a statute, we are not to
regard it as then enacted for the first time, especially if there
be no change in its phraseology, yet, where there is such a
change, it follows that the attention of the revisers had been
particularly directed to that statute, as of course also that of
the legislature, and that with the changes made it expresses the
present intent of both. Thus, in this case, it is clear that the
revisers gave particular thought to the phraseology of the
statute we are considering, and put it in a form that seemed to
them best with reference to the present state of things, and
decided to leave the words "such persons" to stand with full
knowledge that they were sufficient to include women, and that
women were already following the profession of law in different
parts of the country. The legislators must be presumed to have
acted with the same consideration and knowledge. It would have
been perfectly easy, if either had thought best, to insert some
words of limitation or exclusion, but it was not done. Not only
so, but a clause omitted in the revision of 1866 was restored,
providing that no "person" not regularly admitted should act as
an attorney--a term which necessarily included women, and the
insertion of which made it necessary, if the word "persons" as
used in the first part of the statute should be held not to
include women, to give two entirely different meanings to the
same word where occurring twice in the same statute and with
regard to the same subject matter.
The object of a revision of statutes is, that there may be such
changes made in them as the changes in political and social
matters may demand, and where no changes are made it is to be
presumed that the legislature is satisfied with it in its present
form. And where some changes are made in a particular statute,
and other parts of it are left unchanged, there is the more
reason for the inference from this evidence that the matter of
changing the statute was especially considered, that the parts
unchanged express the legislative will of to-day, rather than
that of perhaps a hundred years ago, when it was originally
enacted.
But this statute, in the revision of 1875, is placed immediately
after another with regard to the appointment of commissioners of
the Superior Court, the necessary construction of which, we
think, throws light upon the construction of the statute in
question. That act was passed in 1855, after women had begun,
with general acceptance, to occupy a greatly enlarged field of
industry and some professional and even public positions; and it
has been held by the Superior Court, very properly we think, as
applying to women, a woman having three years ago been appointed
commissioner under it. Its language is as follows: "The Superior
Court in any county may appoint any number of persons in such
county to be commissioners of the Superior Court, who, when
sworn, may sign writs and subpoenas, take recognizances,
administer oaths and take depositions and the acknowledgement of
deeds, and shall hold office for two years from their
appointment." Here the very language is used which is used in the
statute with regard to attorneys. In one it is, "any number of
persons," in the other, "such persons as are qualified." These
two statutes are placed in immediate juxtaposition in the
revision of 1875 and deal with kindred subjects, and it is
reasonable to presume that the revisers and legislature intended
both to receive the same construction. It would seem strange to
any common-sense observer that an entirely different meaning
should be given to the same word in the two statutes, especially
when in giving the narrower meaning to the word in the statute
with regard to attorneys, we are compelled to give it a different
meaning from that which the same word requires in the next line
of the same statute.
We are not to forget that all statutes are to be construed, as
far as possible, in favor of equality of rights. All restrictions
upon human liberty, all claims for special privileges, are to be
regarded as having the presumption of law against them, and as
standing upon their defense, and can be sustained if at all by
valid legislation, only by the clear expression or clear
implication of the law.
We have some noteworthy illustrations of the recognition of women
as eligible or appointable to office under statutes of which the
language is merely general. Thus, women are appointed in all
parts of the country as postmasters. The act of congress of 1825
was the first one conferring upon the postmaster-general the
power of appointing postmasters, and it has remained essentially
unchanged to the present time. The language of the act is, that
"the postmaster-general shall establish post-offices and appoint
postmasters." Here women are not included, except in the general
term "postmasters," a term which seems to imply a male person;
and no legislation from 1825 down to the present time authorizes
the appointment of women, nor is there any reference in terms to
women until the revision of 1874, which recognizes the fact that
women had already been appointed, in providing that "the bond of
any married woman who may be appointed postmaster shall be
binding on her and her sureties." Some of the higher grades of
postmasters are appointed by the president, subject to
confirmation by the Senate, and such appointments and
confirmations have repeatedly been made. The same may be said of
pension agents. The acts of congress on the subject have simply
authorized "the President, by and with the advice and consent of
the Senate, to appoint all pension agents, who shall hold their
offices for the term of four years, and shall give bond," etc. At
the last session of congress a married woman in Chicago was
appointed for a third term pension agent for the State of
Illinois, and the public papers stated that there was not a
single vote against her confirmation in the Senate. Public
opinion is everywhere approving of such appointments. They
promote the public interest, which is benefitted by every
legitimate use of individual ability, while mere justice, which
is of interest to all, requires that all have the fullest
opportunity for the exercise of their abilities. These cases are
the more noteworthy as being cases of public offices, to which
the incumbent is appointed for a term of years, upon a
compensation provided by law, and in which he is required to give
bond. If an attorney is to be regarded as an officer, it is in a
lower sense.
We have had pressed upon us by the counsel opposed to the
applicant, the decisions of the courts of Massachusetts,
Wisconsin and Illinois, and the United States Court of Claims,
adverse to such an application. While not prepared to accede to
all the general views expressed in those decisions, we do not
think it necessary to go into a discussion of them, as we regard
our statute, in view of all the considerations affecting its
construction, as too clear to admit of any reasonable question as
to the interpretation and effect which we ought to give it.
In this opinion Carpenter and Loomis, Js., concurred; Pardee, J.,
dissented.
In 1884, the State society held a spirited and successful
convention.[167] Julia Smith gave an extemporaneous talk to the
great delight of the audience, who applauded continually; Mrs.
Crane, a fine elocutionist, gave a reading from Carlyle; Mrs.
Hooker closed with a brief résumé of the work the society had
accomplished.
We are also indebted to Frances Ellen Burr for many facts, as the
following letter will show:
HARTFORD, September 17, 1885.
MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY: I have received your letter of inquiry. As
to that petition in 1867, I was one of the signers, and, probably
had something to do with getting the other signatures, though I
have nothing but my memory to depend on as to that; but I was
pretty much alone here in those days, on the woman suffrage
question. Who the other signers were I made an attempt to find
out in the secretary of state's office the other day, but found
that it would take days, instead of the few hours I had at my
command. I find in my journal a reference to Lucy Stone and Mr.
Blackwell addressing the committee in the House of
Representatives, and that was the committee that made the report
afterwards published in _The Revolution_. Mr. Croffut made the
opening address on the day of the hearing. He was always ready to
aid us in whatever way he could, and I felt grateful to him, for
a helping hand was doubly appreciated in those days. I find by
the journal of the House for that year that the vote on the
question was 93 yeas to 111 nays. The name of Miss Susie
Hutchinson heads one petition, with 70 others. How many other
petitions there were that year I do not know, but I believe there
have been several every year since, besides a number of
individual petitions. Since that time the House has voted
favorably on the question twice, at least, but I believe we have
never had a majority in the Senate.
You ask when I first wrote or spoke for the ballot. My first
venture in that line was in 1853. I was then at the age of
twenty-two, living with my sister in Cleveland, O., and had never
given any attention to the subject of woman suffrage, and cared
nothing about it any further than the spirit of rebellion--born
with me--against everything unjust, might be said to have made me
a radical by nature. In the fall of that year a woman's rights
convention met in Cleveland, and I attended it alone, none of the
rest of the family caring to go. In my old journal I find this
entry:
October 7, 1853. Attended a woman's rights convention which
has met here. Never saw anything of the kind before. A Mr.
Barker spent most of the morning trying to prove that
woman's rights and the Bible cannot agree. The Rev.
Antoinette L. Brown replied in the afternoon in defense of
the Bible. She says the Bible favors woman's rights. Miss
Brown is the best-looking woman in the convention. They
appear to have a number of original and pleasing characters
upon their platform, among them Miss Lucy Stone--hair short
and rolled under like a man's; a tight-fitting velvet waist
and linen collar at the throat; bombazine skirt just
reaching the knees, and trousers of the same. She is
independent in manner and advocates woman's rights in the
strongest terms:--scorns the idea of woman _asking_ rights
of man, but says she must boldly assert her own rights, and
_take_ them in her own strength. Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, a
Polish lady with black eyes and curls, and rosy cheeks,
manifests the independent spirit also. She is graceful and
witty, and is ready with sharp replies on all occasions.
Mrs. Lucretia Mott, a Philadelphia Quaker, is meek in dress
but not in spirit. She gets up and hammers away at woman's
rights, politics and the Bible, with much vigor, then
quietly resumes her knitting, to which she industriously
applies herself when not speaking to the audience. She wears
the plain Quaker dress and close-fitting white cap. Mrs.
Frances D. Gage, the president, is a woman of sound sense
and a good writer of prose and poetry. Mrs. Caroline
Severance has an easy, pleasing way of speaking. Mr. Charles
Burleigh, a Quaker, appears to be an original character. He
has long hair, parted in the middle like a woman's, and
hanging down his back. He and Miss Stone seem to reverse the
usual order of things.
My first speech in public, I find by my old journal--which serves
me better than I thought it would--was given in Music Hall in
this city in November, 1870. This meeting was held under the
auspices of the State association, and was presided over by the
Rev. Olympia Brown. I find that in the winter of 1871 I made
addresses in various parts of the State. The journal also tells
of a good deal of trotting about to get signatures to petitions,
for I had more time to do that thing then than I have now.
The first woman suffrage meeting ever held in Hartford, and the
first, probably, in Connecticut, was the one you and Mrs. Stanton
held in Allyn Hall in December, 1867. Our State Suffrage
Association was organized in October, 1869. The signers[168] to
the call for that convention were quite influential persons.
In my hunt through the journals of the two legislative houses I
found in the House journal for 1878 that Mr. Pratt of Meriden had
presented the petition of Mr. and Mrs. Isaac C. Lewis. Mr. Clark
of Enfield, presented the petition of Lucy A. Allen; Mr.
Gallagher of New Haven presented several petitions that year, one
of them being headed by Mr. Henry A. Stillman of Wethersfield,
followed by 532 names, and another by Mrs. D. F. Connor, M. D.
Mr. Broadhead of Glastonbury presented the petition of the Smith
sisters. This unique petition Miss Mary Hall, who was with me in
the secretary's office, chanced to light upon, and she copied it.
It is a document well worth handing down on the page of history,
and runs as follows:
_The Petition of Julia E. Smith and Abby H. Smith, of
Glastonbury, to the Senate of the State of Connecticut:_
This is the first time we have petitioned your honorable
body, having twice come before the House of Assembly, which
the last time gave a majority that we should vote in town
affairs; but it was negatived in the Senate.
We now pray the highest court in our native State that we
may be relieved from the stigma of birth. For forty years
since the death of our father have we suffered intensely for
being born women. We cannot even stand up for the principles
of our forefathers (who fought and bled for them) without
having our property seized and sold at the sign-post, which
we have suffered four times; and have also seen eleven acres
of our meadow-land sold to an ugly neighbor for a tax of
fifty dollars--land worth more than $2,000. And a threat is
given out that our house shall be ransacked and despoiled of
articles most dear to us, the work of lamented members of
our family who have gone before us, and all this is done
without the least excuse of right or justice. We are told
that it is the law of the land made by the legislature and
done to us, two defenceless women, who have never broken
these laws, made by not half the citizens of this State. And
it was said in our Declaration of Independence that
"Governments derive their just powers from the consent of
the governed."
For being born women we are obliged to help support those
who have earned nothing, and who, by gambling, drinking, and
the like, have come to poverty, and these same can vote away
what we have earned with our own hands. And when men meet to
take off the dollar poll-tax, the bill for the dinner comes
in for the women to pay. Neither have we husband, or
brother, or son, or even nephew, or cousin, to help us. All
men will acknowledge that it is as wrong to take a woman's
property without her consent as to take a man's without his
consent; and such wrong we suffer wholly for being born
women, which we are in no wise to blame for. To be sure, for
our consolation, we are upheld by the learned, the wise and
the good, from all parts of the country, having received
communications from thirty-two of our States, as well as
from over the seas, that we are in the right, and from many
of the best men in our own State. But they have no power to
help us. We therefore now pray your honorable body, who have
power, with the House of Assembly, to relieve us of this
stigma of birth, and grant that we may have the same
privileges before the law as though we were born men. And
this, as in duty bound, we will ever pray.
JULIA and ABBY SMITH.
_Glastonbury, Conn., January 29, 1878._
The story of the Smith sisters, from 1873 and on, will be handed
down as one of the most original and unique chapters in the
history of woman suffrage. Abby Smith, with my friend Mrs.
Buckingham, attended with me the first meeting of the Woman's
Congress, in New York, in October, 1873. While there, she said
she should, on her return, address her town's people on woman
suffrage and taxation, as they had not been treated fairly in the
matter of their taxes. She did so on the fifth of November,
addressing the Glastonbury town meeting in the little red-brick
town-house of that place--a building that will always hereafter
be connected with the names of Abby and Julia Smith. Several
years after, wishing to address them again, she was refused
entrance there, so she and Julia addressed the people from an
ox-cart that stood in front. This was after their continued
warfare against "taxation without representation" had aroused the
opposition of their townsmen, but that first speech in 1873 was
the beginning of their fame. Abby sent it to me for publication
in the _Times_ of this city, but the editor not having room for
it sent it to the _Courant_, which gave it a place in its
columns, thus (unwittingly) setting a ball in motion that ran all
round the country, and even over the ocean. The simplicity and
uniqueness of the story of "Abby Smith and her cows," gave a boom
to the cause of woman suffrage as welcome as it was unexpected.
The Glastonbury mails were more heavily laden than ever before in
the history of this hitherto unknown town, for letters came
pouring in from all quarters to the sisters. The fame did not
rest entirely on Abby and her cows; Julia and her Bible came in
for an important share, and the newspaper articles in regard to
them were a remarkable blending of cows and Biblical lore, dairy
products and Greek and Hebrew. Many of the articles were wide of
the facts, being written with a view to make a bright and
readable column. For instance, a Chicago paper got up a highly
colored article in which it said that Abby Smith's mother--Hannah
Hickok--was such an intense student that her father had a glass
cage made for her to study in. The only vestage of truth in this
story was that, lacking our modern facilities for heating, Mr.
Hickok had an extra amount of glass put into the south side of
his daughter's room that the sun might give it a little more heat
in cold weather. Hannah Hickok seems to have had a mental
equipment much above that of the average woman of that day; she
had a taste for literature, and was something of a linguist, and
wrote, moreover, at different times, quite an amount of readable
verse. She had a taste for mathematics, and also for astronomy,
and made for her own use an almanac, for these were not so plenty
then as now; she could, on awakening, tell any hour of the night
by the position of the stars. Evidently Hannah Hickok Smith was
not an ordinary woman; and it is quite as evident that her
daughters were equally original, though in a different direction.
Women who have translated the Bible are not to be met with every
day--nor men either, for that matter, but Julia Smith not only
did this, but translated it five times,--twice from the Hebrew,
twice from the Greek, and once from the Latin; and thirty years
later, or after the age of eighty, published the translation; and
then, to crown the list of marvels, married at the age of
eighty-five.
[Illustration: Phebe A. Hanaford]
One point more, and the one nearest my heart. You ask me about my
"dear friend Mrs. Buckingham." I can give no details of her
suffrage work, but her heart was in it, and her name should be
handed down in your History. She was at one time chairman of the
executive committee of our State association, and she would, if
she had thought it necessary, have spent of her little income to
the last cent to help along the cause. She made public addresses
and wrote many suffrage articles and letters that were published
in different papers, but she made no noise about it; her work was
all done with her own characteristic gentleness. Generous to a
fault, winning and beautiful as the flowers she scattered on the
pathway of her friends, she passed on her way; and one memorable
Easter morning she left us so gently that none knew when the
sleep of life passed into the sleep of death; we only knew that
the glorious light of her eyes--a light like that which "never
shone on sea or land"--had gone out forever.
"She died in beauty like the dew
Of flowers dissolved away;
She died in beauty like a star
Lost on the brow of day."
The Hartford Equal Rights Club[169] was organized in March, 1885,
and holds semi-monthly meetings. Its membership is not large, but
what it lacks in numbers it makes up in earnestness. Its
proceedings are reported pretty fully and published in the
_Hartford Times_, which has a large circulation, thus gaining an
audience of many thousands and making its proceedings much more
important than they would otherwise be. It is managed as simply
as possible, and is not encumbered with a long list of officers.
There are simply a president, Mrs. Emily P. Collins;[170] a
vice-president, Miss Mary Hall; and a secretary, Frances Ellen
Burr, who is also the treasurer. Debate is free to all, the
platform being perfectly independent, as far as a platform can be
independent within the limits of reason. Essays are read and
debated, and many interesting off-hand speeches are made. It is
an entirely separate organization from the Connecticut State
Suffrage Association, founded in 1869. But its membership is not
confined to the city; it invites people throughout the State, or
in other States, to become members--people of all classes and of
all beliefs. Opponents of woman suffrage are always welcome, for
these furnish the spice of debate. Among the topics discussed has
been that of woman and the church, and upon this subject Mrs.
Stanton has written the club several letters.
Last spring (1885) a number of the members of the club were given
hearings before the Committee on Woman Suffrage in the
legislature in reference to a bill then under consideration,
which was exceedingly limited in its provisions. The House of
Representatives improved it and then passed it, but it was
afterwards defeated in the Senate. Some of the meetings of the
club have been held in Hartford's handsome capitol, a room having
been allowed for its use, and a number of members of the House of
Representatives have taken part in the discussions. Mrs. Collins,
president of the club, is always to be depended upon for good
work, and Miss Hall, its vice-president, is active and efficient.
She is in herself an illustration of what women can become if
they only have sufficient confidence and force of will. She is a
practicing lawyer, and a successful one.
FOOTNOTES:
[158] The life of William Lloyd Garrison, Vol. 1.: The Century
Company, New York.
[159] She was soon followed by Mrs. Middlebrook and Mrs. Lucy R.
Elms, with warm benedictions. The latter called some meetings in
her neighborhood in the autumn of 1868, and entertained us most
hospitably at her beautiful home.
[160] Those who leave the tangled problem of life to God for
solution find, sooner or later, that God leaves it to them to
settle in their own way.--[E. C. S.
[161] Among them were Paulina Wright Davis, Dr. Clemence Lozier,
Mary A. Livermore, Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan
B. Anthony, Celia Burleigh, Caroline M. Severance, Rev. Olympia
Brown, Frances Ellen Burr, Charlotte B. Wilbour, William Lloyd
Garrison, Henry Ward Beecher, Nathaniel I. Burton, John Hooker, the
Hutchinsons, with Sister Abby and her husband, Ludlow Patton.
[162] _President_, Rev. N. J. Burton, Hartford. _Vice-presidents_,
Brigadier-general B. S. Roberts, U. S. A., New Haven; Mrs. Harriet
Beecher Stowe, Hartford; Rev. Dr. Joseph Cummings, Middletown; Rev.
William L. Gage, Hartford; Rev. Olympia Brown, Bridgeport.
_Secretary_, Miss Frances Ellen Burr. _Executive Committee_, Mrs.
Isabella B. Hooker, Mrs. Lucy Elmes, Derby; Mrs. J. G. Parsons and
Miss Emily Manning, M. D., Hartford. _Treasurer_, John Hooker.
[163] On her departure for St. Petersburg, where her husband was
minister plenipotentiary, Mrs. Jewell left a check of $200 for the
State society. She was an honored officer of the National Suffrage
Association until the time of her death, in 1883.
[164] Mrs. Hooker writes us that the act passed upon Governor
Hubbard's recommendation was prepared at his request by Mr. Hooker,
and was essentially the same that had been unsuccessfully urged by
him upon the legislature eight years before. She then goes on to
say: "What part our society had in our bringing about so beneficent
a change in legislation, cannot be better set forth than in two
private letters from Samuel Bowles of the _Springfield Republican_,
and Governor Hubbard. While these gentlemen were friends of Mr.
Hooker and myself, yet, as politically opposed to each other, their
united testimony is exceedingly valuable, and since they have both
passed on to a world of more perfect adjustments, I feel that
nothing would give them greater satisfaction than to be put upon
record here as among the earliest defenders of the rights of women.
"SPRINGFIELD, Mass., March 28, 1877.
"MY DEAR MRS. HOOKER:--I return your letters and paper as you
desired. It is an interesting story, and a most gratifying
movement forward. I am more happy over the bill passed, than I am
sorry over the bill that failed. We shall move fast enough. The
first great step is this successful measure in Connecticut--the
establishment in practice of the principle of equal, mutual,
legal rights, and equal, mutual, legal responsibilities, for
which I have been preaching and praying these twenty years. We
owe the success this year, _first_ to the right of the matter;
_second_, to the agitation of the whole question which has
disseminated the perception of that right; _third_, to you and
your husband in particular; and _fourth_, to the fact that you
had in Connecticut this year a governor who was recognized as the
leading lawyer of the State, a genuine natural conservative who
yet said the measure was right and ought to go. It is this last
element that has given Connecticut its chief leadership. It is a
bigger thing than it seems at first to have an eminent
conservative lawyer on the side of such legislative reform. I
hate very much to take your husband's side against you, and yet
now that I am over fifty years old, I find I more and more
sympathize with his patience and philosophy with the slow-going
march of reform. But with such things going forward in national
politics, and such a sign in the heavens as this in Connecticut,
we ought all to be very happy--and I believe I am, in spite of
debts, hard work, fatigue and more or less chronic invalidism. At
any rate I salute you both with honor and with affection."
"Very faithfully yours, SAMUEL BOWLES.
"This letter I enclosed to Governor Hubbard and received the
following reply:
"EASTER, April 1, 1877.
"MY GOOD FRIEND:--It was a 'Good Friday' indeed that brought your
friendly missive. And what a dainty and gracious epistle Sam.
Bowles does know how to write! He is a good fellow, upon my word,
full of generous instincts and ideas. He ought to be at the head
of the _London Times_ and master of all the wealth it brings. Add
to this, that the Good Physician should heal him of his 'chronic
invalidism' and then--well what's the use of dreaming? Thank
_yourself_, and such as you for what there is of progress in
respect of woman's rights amongst us. I do believe our bill is a
'great leap forward' as Bowles says in his editorial. 'Alas!'
says my friend ----, 'it has destroyed the divine conception of
the unity of husband and wife.' As divine, upon my soul, as the
unity of the lamb and the devouring wolf. * * * But enough of
this. I salute you my good friend, with a thousand salutations of
respect and admiration. I do not agree with you in all things,
but I cannot tell you how much I glorify you for your courage and
devotion to womanhood. I am a pretty poor stick for anything like
good work in the world, but I am not without respect for it in
others. And so I present myself to yourself and to your good and
noble husband whom I take to be one of the best, with every
assurance of affection and esteem. Thanking you for your kind
letter, I remain, dear madam,
"Yours very truly, R. D. HUBBARD."
[165] At the various hearings Mrs. Anna Middlebrook, Mr. and Mrs.
Joseph Sheldon, Julia and Abby Smith, Rev. Olympia Brown, Mr. and
Mrs. Hooker were the speakers.
[166] See Appendix for Mr. Hooker's article, "Is the Family the
Basis of the State?"
[167] At the convention of March 17 and 18, 1884, the speakers were
Mrs. Hooker, Susan B. Anthony, the Rev. Charles Stowe, Julia Smith
Parker, Mrs. Emily Collins, Abigail Scott Duniway, Miss Leonard,
Mrs. C. G. Rogers, the Rev. Dr. A. J. Sage, Mrs. Ellis, Miss Gage,
the Rev. J. C. Kimball, the Rev. Mr. Everts of Hartford, Mary Hall
and F. E. Burr. The officers elected at this meeting were: Isabella
B. Hooker, _President_: F. Ellen Burr, _Secretary_; Mary Hall,
_Assistant-secretary_; John Hooker, _Treasurer_. _Executive
Committee_; Mrs. Ellen Burr McManus, Mrs. Emily P. Collins, Mrs.
Amy A. Ellis, Mrs. J. G. Parsons Hartford; Mrs. Susan J. Cheney,
South Manchester; Mrs. John S. Dobson, Vernon Depot; Judge Joseph
Sheldon, Charles Atwater, James Gallagher, New Haven.
[168] John Hooker, Isabella B. Hooker, the Rev. N. J. Burton,
Rachel C. Burton, Franklin Chamberlin, Francis Gillette, Eliza D.
Gillette, Frances Ellen Burr, Catharine E. Beecher, Esther E.
Jewell, Calvin E. Stowe, Harriet Beecher Stowe and others,
Hartford; Joseph Cummings, Middletown, President of Wesleyan
University; Thomas Elmes, Lucy R. Elmes, Derby; Charles Atwater,
New Haven; Thomas T. Stone, Laura Stone, Brooklyn. The officers
elected for the Association were: _President_, the Rev. N. J.
Burton, Hartford; _Secretary_, Frances Ellen Burr; _Executive
Committee_, Isabella B. Hooker; Mrs. Lucy R. Elmes, Derby; Mrs. J.
G. Parsons, Miss Emily Manning, M. C., Hartford; Mr. Charles
Atwater, New Haven; Mr. Ward Cheney, Mrs. Susan J. Cheney, South
Manchester; Mrs. Virginia Smith, Hartford. _Treasurer_, William B.
Smith, Hartford. There was a long list of vice-presidents, which I
presume you do not care for, nor for the other names that were
added as changes had to be made in the years that followed.
[169] A member of the club says: "We receive more of our life and
enthusiasm from Frances Ellen Burr than all other members combined;
indeed, the chief part of the work rests on her shoulders."
[170] See Mrs. Collins's Reminiscences, chapter V., Vol. I.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
RHODE ISLAND.
Senator Anthony in _North American Review_--Convention in
Providence--Work of State Association--Report of Elizabeth B.
Chace--Miss Ida Lewis--Letter of Frederick A. Hinckley--Last
Words from Senator Anthony.
Rhode Island, though one of the smallest, is, in proportion to the
number of its inhabitants, one of the wealthiest states in the
Union. In political organization Rhode Island, in colonial times,
contrasted favorably with the other colonies, nearly all of which
required a larger property qualification, and some a religious test
for the suffrage. The home of Roger Williams knew nothing of such
narrowness, but was an asylum for those who suffered persecution
elsewhere. Nevertheless this is now, in many respects, the most
conservative of all the States.
In the November number of the _North American Review_ for 1883,
Senator Anthony, in an article on the restricted suffrage in Rhode
Island, stoutly maintains that suffrage is not a natural right, and
that in adhering to her property qualification for foreigners his
State has wisely protected the best interests of the people. In his
whole argument on the question, he ignores the idea of women being
a part of the people, and ranks together qualifications of sex,
age, and residence. He quite unfairly attributes much of Rhode
Island's prosperity--the result of many causes--to her restricted
suffrage. His position in this article, written so late in life, is
the more remarkable as he had always spoken and voted in his place
in the United States Senate (where he had served nearly thirty
years) strongly in favor of woman's enfranchisement. And the
_Providence Journal_, which he owned and controlled, was invariably
respectful and complimentary towards the movement.
While such a man as Senator Anthony, one of the political leaders
in his State, regarded suffrage as a privilege which society may
concede or withhold at pleasure, we need not wonder that so little
has been accomplished there in the way of legislative enactments
and supreme-court decisions. Nevertheless that State has shared in
the general agitation and can boast many noble men and women who
have taken part in the discussion of this subject.
The first woman suffrage association was formed in Rhode Island in
December, 1868. In describing the initiative steps, Elizabeth B.
Chace in a letter to a friend, says:
In October 1868, while in Boston attending the convention that
formed the New England society, Paulina Wright Davis[171]
conceived the idea that the time had come to organize the friends
of suffrage in Rhode Island. After consultation with a few of the
most prominent friends of the cause, a call was issued for a
convention, to be held in Roger Williams Hall, Providence,
December 11th, signed by many leading names. No sooner did the
call appear than, as usual, some clergyman publicly declared
himself in opposition. The Rev. Mark Trafton, a Methodist
minister, gave a lecture in his vestry on "The Coming Woman," who
was to be a good housekeeper, dress simply, and not to vote. This
was published in the _Providence Journal_, and called out a
gracefull vindication of woman's modern demands from the pen of
Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, the poet, and Miss Norah Perry, a
popular writer of both prose and verse. The convention was all
that its most ardent friends could have desired, and resulted in
forming an association.[172] The audience numbered over a
thousand, at the different sessions, and among the speakers were
some of the ablest men in the State. Though the friends were
comparatively few in the early days, yet there was no lack of
enthusiasm and self-sacrifice. Weekly meetings were held, tracts
and petitions circulated; conventions[173] and legislative
hearings were as regular as the changing seasons, now in
Providence, and now in Newport, following the migratory
government.
Mrs. Davis was president of the association for several successive
years in which her labors were indefatigable. Finally failing
health compelled her to resign her position as president of the
association.[174] Since then her able coadjutor Elizabeth B. Chace,
has been president of the Rhode Island Suffrage Association, and
with equal faithfulness and persistence, carried on the work. She
steadily keeps up the annual conventions and makes her appeals to
the legislature. Among the names[175] of those who have appeared
from year to year before the Rhode Island legislature we find many
able men and women from other States as well as many of their own
distinguished citizens.
In this State an effort was made early to get women on the board of
managers for schools, prisons and charitable institutions. In a
letter to Mrs. Davis, John Stuart Mill says:
I am very glad to hear of the step in advance made by Rhode
Island in creating a board of women for some very important
administrative purpose. Your proposal that women should be
empanneled on every jury where women are to be tried seems to me
very good, and calculated to place the injustice to which women
are subjected at present by the entire legal system in a very
striking light.
In 1873 an effort was made to place women on the Providence School
Board, with what success the following extracts from the daily
papers show. The _Providence Press_ of April 25, 1873, says:
A shabby trick was perpetrated by the friends of John W. Angell,
which was certainly anything but "angelic," and which ought to
consign the parties who committed it to political infamy.
Yesterday, for the first time in the history of this city, women
were candidates for political honors--in the fifth ward, Mrs.
Sarah E. H. Doyle, and in the fourth ward, Mrs. Rhoda A. F.
Peckham, were candidates for positions on the school committee;
both, however, failed of an election. Mrs. Doyle received the
unanimous nomination of the large primary meeting of the National
Union Republican party, and Mrs. Peckham was run as an outside
candidate against the regular nominee. These ladies would
undoubtedly have made excellent members of the committee, and
unlike a great portion of that body, would have been found in
their places at the meetings, and we should have been glad to
have seen the experiment tried of women in the position for which
their names were presented. When the polls opened in the fifth
ward, instead of Mrs. Doyle's name being on the ballots for the
place to which she had been nominated there appeared the name of
John W. Angell, esq., and until about 11 o'clock A. M. he had
the field to himself. At that hour, however, Mrs. Doyle's friends
appeared with the "_regular_" nomination, and from that time to
the close of the polls she received 145 votes; Mr. Angell,
notwithstanding his several hours' start in the race, only
winning by a majority of 38. From this fact it is clear that had
Mrs. Doyle's name been in its proper place at the opening of the
polls she would have beaten her opponent handsomely. Mrs.
Peckham's opponent obtained but 23 majority in a poll of 349. It
is evident from the vote yesterday, that if they have but a fair
show, women will at the next election be successful as candidates
for the school committee. Had the intelligent ladies of the fifth
ward been allowed to vote, Mrs. Doyle would have led even the
gubernatorial vote of that ward.
The _Providence Journal_ makes the following comment:
We are sorry to observe that the two estimable and admirably
qualified ladies whose names were presented for school committee
in this city, failed of success. Their influence in official
connection with the schools could not have been other than
salutary. The treatment accorded Mrs. Doyle in the fifth ward was
wofully shabby. Without her solicitation, the Republican caucus
unanimously nominated her for a member of the school committee.
Being a novice in political proceedings, she naturally enough
supposed that the party that desired her services so much as to
place her in nomination, would make provision for electing their
candidate. There was not gallantry enough in the ward, however,
for that duty, and it was not until 11 o'clock on election day
that any tickets bearing the name of Mrs. Doyle were to be found
in the ward-room; but a ticket with the names of two men was on
hand at sunrise, and the time lost in procuring tickets for the
regular nominee proved fatal to her success. Mrs. Doyle has now
learned something of the ways of politicians, and is not likely
to put her trust again in the faithfulness of ward committees.
At a meeting of the State association, held in Providence, on
Thursday, May 18, 1871, the following preamble and resolutions
were, after a full and earnest discussion, unanimously adopted:
WHEREAS, It is claimed, in opposition to the demand that the
elective franchise shall be given to women, that they are
represented in the government by men, so that they do not need
the ballot for their protection, inasmuch as all their rights are
secured to them by the interest of these men in their welfare;
and, whereas, in February last, in view of the appalling facts
frequently coming to our notice, consequent upon the
mismanagement of poor-houses and asylums for the insane, this
association did earnestly petition our State legislature to enact
a law providing for the appointment of women in all the towns in
our State to act as joint commissioners with men in the care and
control of these institutions; and, whereas, in utter disregard
of our request, the Committee on State Charities, to whom it was
referred, in reporting back our petition to the House of
Representatives, did recommend that the petitioners be given
leave to withdraw, and the House, without (so far as we could
learn) one word of protest from any member thereof, did so
dispose of our petition; therefore,
_Resolved_, That this association do most solemnly declare, that
so far from being represented in our legislature, the rights of
the women of this State were in this instance trampled under foot
therein, and the best interests of humanity, in the persons of
the poorest and most unfortunate classes, were not sufficiently
regarded, under this system of class legislation.
_Resolved_, That, despairing of obtaining for women even the
privileges which would enable them to look after the welfare of
the destitute and the suffering, with any power or authority to
improve their condition, until equal rights in the government
itself are guaranteed to all without regard to sex, we will
henceforth make use of this treatment we have received as a new
argument in favor of the emancipation of women from the legal
status of idiots and criminals, and, with this weapon in our
hands, we will endeavor to arouse the women of our State to a
keener sense of their degraded condition, and we will never abate
our demand until an amendment to the constitution is submitted to
the people granting suffrage to the women of Rhode Island.
_Resolved_, That this preamble and these resolutions be offered
for publication to the daily papers of this city.
ELIZABETH B. CHACE, _President_.
SUSAN B. P. MARTIN, _Secretary_.
For several years the philanthropic women of Rhode Island made many
determined efforts to secure some official positions in the
charitable institutions of the State, with what success the
following report by Elizabeth B. Chace, at the annual meeting of
the American Association, in Philadelphia, in 1876, will show:
The Rhode Island Woman Suffrage Association, while holding its
monthly meetings through the year, circulating petitions to the
legislature, and, in other ways, constantly endeavoring to
revolutionize the entire sentiment of the State on the question
of woman suffrage, still has less progress to report than its
friends would have desired. Our last annual meeting, as usual,
drew together a large audience. Among our speakers from abroad
was William Lloyd Garrison, who, in a speech of almost
anti-slavery force and fervor, appeared to send conviction into
many minds. Our home speakers included a clergyman of Providence
and one of our ablest lawyers, and an ex-legislator who had never
stood on our platform before.
As usual, our petitions went into the legislature. They were
referred to the Judiciary Committee, before whom we had a
hearing, at which three Providence lawyers gave us their
unqualified support and earnest advocacy. One of these men set
forth in the strongest light the injustice of our laws in regard
to the property of married women and their non-ownership of their
minor children. The committee made no report to the legislature,
and so our petitions lie over until the next session, when we
hope for some evidence of progress. In the meantime we intend to
very much increase their number. For many years we have been
begging of our law-makers to permit women to share in the
management of the penal, correctional and charitable institutions
of the State; we have, however, only succeeded in obtaining an
advisory board of women, which has been in operation for the last
six years.
Last spring a majority of these women, having become weary of the
service in which they had no power to decide that any improvement
should be made in the management of these institutions, resigned
their positions on this board, some of them giving through the
press their reasons therefor. When the time came for making the
new appointments for the year, the governor earnestly urged
these women to permit him to appoint them, voluntarily pledging
himself to recommend at the opening of the next session of the
legislature, that a bill should be passed providing for the
appointment of women on the boards of management of all these
prisons and reformatories, with the same power and authority with
which the men are invested, who now alone decide all questions
concerning them. On this condition these women consented to serve
on the advisory board a few months longer, with the understanding
that, if the legislature fails to make this important provision,
their advice will be withdrawn, and the men will be left to take
care of thieves, criminals and paupers until they are ready to
ask for our help on terms of equality and justice.
In the _Providence Journal_ appeared the following:
Mrs. Doyle seems to have learned by experience that the board, as
now constituted under the law, can have no real efficiency. The
ladies are responsible for the management of no part of any of
the institutions which they are permitted officially to visit.
Their reports are not made to the boards which are charged with
the responsibility of managing these institutions, and, in the
case of the reform school, are not made to the body which elects
and controls the board of management. The State ought not to
place ladies in such an anomalous position. The women's board
should have positive duties and direct responsibilities in its
appropriate sphere, or it should be abolished. The following is
Mrs. Doyle's letter of resignation:
_To His Excellency Henry Lippitt, Governor of the State:_
SIR: Please accept my resignation as member of the Board of
Lady Visitors to the Penal and Correctional Institutions of
the State. The recent action of a part of the board, in
regard to the annual report made to the General Assembly,
makes it impossible for me to continue longer as a member.
Before the report was submitted, it was carefully examined
by the members signing it, and was acquiesced in by them, as
their signatures testify. Still further, I am confirmed in
the opinion that so important a trust as this should be
coupled with some power for action; without this we are
necessarily confined to suggestions only to the male boards,
which suggestions receive only the attention they may
consider proper. Believing that this board, as now
empowered, can have no efficiency except where its
suggestions or criticisms meet the entire approval of the
male boards, and failing to see any good which can result
from our inspections under such conditions, or any honor to
the board thus examining, I respectfully tender my
resignation.
SARAH E. H. DOYLE,
_Providence, R. I._
Three more ladies of the Women's Board of Visitors to the Penal
and Correctional Institutions of the State attest the correctness
of the repeated suggestions that the board, as organized under
the existing laws, must be comparatively powerless for good. The
question now comes, will the Rhode Island General Assembly enact
a law which shall give to women certain definite duties and
responsibilities in connection with the care and correction of
female offenders? We propose to refer to this matter further. We
are requested to publish the following communications to his
excellency, the governor:
_To Henry Lippitt, Governor of Rhode Island:_
My appointment on the Women's Board of Visitors to the Penal
and Correctional Institutions of the State, which I received
from your hands for this year, I am now compelled
respectfully to resign. My experience in this board for
nearly six years has convinced me that this office, which
confers on its holders no power to decide that any
improvement shall be made in the government or workings of
these institutions, is so nearly useless that I am forced to
the conclusion that, for myself, the time spent in the
performance of its duties can be more effectively employed
elsewhere. That the influence of women is indispensable to
the proper management of these institutions I was never more
sure than I am at this moment; but to make it effectual,
that influence must be obtained by placing women on the
boards of direct control, where their judgment shall be
expressed by argument and by vote.
A board of women, whose only duties, as defined by the law,
are to visit the penal and correctional institutions, elect
its own officers and report annually to the legislature,
bears within itself the elements of weakness and
insufficiency. And if the annual reports contain any
exposure of abuses, they are sure to give offense to the
managers, to be followed by timidity and vacillation in the
board of women itself. Our late report, written with great
care and conscientious adherence to the truth, which called
the attention of the legislature to certain abuses in one of
our institutions, and to some defect in the systems
established in the others, has, thus far, elicited no
official action, has brought censure upon us from the press,
while great dissatisfaction has been created in our own body
by the failure of a portion of its members to sustain the
allegations to which the entire board, with the exception of
one absentee, had affixed their names.
When the State of Rhode Island shall call its best women to
an equal participation with men in the direction of its
penal and reformatory institutions, I have no doubt they
will gladly assume the duties and responsibilities of such
positions; and I am also sure that the beneficent results of
such coöperation will soon be manifest, both in benefit to
individuals and in safety to the State. But under present
circumstances I most respectfully decline to serve any
longer on the advisory board of women.
_Valley Falls, R. I._ ELIZABETH B. CHACE.
GOVERNOR LIPPITT: _Dear Sir_: When I accepted an appointment
on the Ladies' Board of Visitors to the Penal and
Correctional Institutions of the State, I did so with the
hope that much good might be accomplished, especially toward
the young girls at the reform school, in whose welfare I
felt a deep interest. To that institution my attention has
been chiefly devoted during my brief experience in this
office. This experience, however, has convinced me that a
board of officers constituted and limited like this can have
very little influence toward improvement in an institution
whose methods are fixed, and which is under the exclusive
control of another set of officers, who see no necessity for
change. Those causes render this women's board so weak in
itself that I cannot consent to retain my position therein.
I therefore respectfully tender to you my resignation.
ABBY D. WEAVER.
_Providence, R. I._
GOVERNOR LIPPITT: Please accept the resignation of my
commission as a member of the Ladies' Board of Visitors to
the Penal and Correctional Institutions of the State,
conferred by you in June, 1875.
Yours respectfully,
_Westerly, R. I._ ELIZA C. WEEDEN.
Early in the year 1880 the State association issued the following
address:
_To the friends of Woman Suffrage throughout the State of Rhode
Island:_
In behalf of the Rhode Island Woman Suffrage Association, we beg
leave to call your attention to the result of our last year's
work, and to our plans for future effort. We went before the
General Assembly with petitions for suffrage for women on all
subjects, and also with petitions asking only for school
suffrage. The former, bearing nearly 2,500 names, was presented
in the Senate and finally referred, with other unfinished
business, to the next legislature; they will thus be subject to
attention the coming year. The latter, bearing nearly 3,500
names, was presented in the House and referred to the Committee
on Education. This committee reported unanimously:
_Resolved_, That the following amendment to the constitution
of the State is hereby proposed: Article ----. Women
otherwise qualified are entitled to vote in the election of
school committees and in all legally organized
school-district meetings.
This resolution was adopted in the House by 48 to 11, but
rejected in the Senate by 20 to 13.[176] Nineteen members being
required to make a majority of a full Senate, the amendment
failed by six votes. Had the ballots in the two branches been
upon a proposition to extend general suffrage to women, they
would have been the most encouraging, and, as it is, they show
signs of progress; but a resolve to submit the question of school
suffrage to the voters of Rhode Island, ought to have been
successful this year. Why was it defeated? Simply for the lack of
political power behind it. To gain this, our cause needs a
foothold in every part of the State. We need some person or
persons in each town, to whom we can look for hearty coöperation.
If our work is to be effective, it must not only continue as
heretofore--one of petitioning--but must include also a constant
vigilance in securing senators and representatives in the General
Assembly, favorable to woman suffrage. We propose the coming
year:
_First_--To petition congress in behalf of the following
amendment to our national constitution, viz.:
ARTICLE XVI. Section 1--The right of citizens of the United
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United
States or by any State on account of sex. Section
2--Congress shall have power to enforce this article by
appropriate legislation.
_Second_--To secure a hearing and action upon the petitions
referred from the last Assembly, for such amendment to our State
constitution as shall extend general suffrage to women.
_Third_--To petition the General Assembly for the necessary
legislation to secure school suffrage to women.[177]
The arguments in the various hearings before the legislature with
the majority and minority reports, are the same as many already
published, in fact nothing new can be said on the question. As none
of the women in this State, by trying to vote, or resisting
taxation, have tested the justice of their laws, they have no
supreme-court decisions to record.
Honorable mention should be made of Dr. William F. Channing, who
has stood for many years in Providence the noblest representative
of liberal thought. He is a worthy son of that great leader of
reform in New England, Rev. William Ellery Channing. In him the
advocates of woman's rights have always found a steadfast friend.
He sees that this is the fundamental reform; that it is the key to
the problems of labor, temperance, social purity and the
coöperative home. Those who have had the good fortune of a personal
acquaintance with Dr. Channing have felt the sense of dignity and
self-respect that the delicate courtesy and sincere reference of a
noble man must always give to woman.
Though Mrs. Channing has not been an active participant in the
popular reforms, having led a rather retired life, yet her
sympathies have been with her husband in all his endeavors to
benefit mankind. She has given the influence of her name to the
suffrage movement, and extended the most generous hospitalities to
the speakers at the annual conventions. Their charming daughters,
Mary and Grace, fully respond to the humanitarian sentiments of
their parents, constituting a happy family united in life's
purposes and ambitions.
The New York _Evening Post_ of September, 1875, gives the following
of one of Rhode Island's brave women, but the State has not as yet,
thought it worth while to honor her in any fitting manner:
Yesterday noon Miss Ida Lewis again distinguished herself by
rescuing a man who was in danger of drowning in the lower Newport
harbor. Miss Lewis first came into prominence in 1866, when she
saved the life of a soldier who had set out for a sail in a light
skiff. It was one of the coldest and most blustering days ever
known in this latitude, yet a girl but 25 years old, impelled by
the noblest spirit of humanity, ventured to the assistance of a
man who had brought himself into a sorry plight through sheer
fool-hardiness. One day, during the autumn of the next year,
while a terrible gale was raging, two men sat out to cross the
harbor with several sheep. One of the animals fell overboard
while the boat was rocked by the heavy sea, and its keepers, in
trying to save it, were in imminent peril of swamping their
craft. Ida Lewis saw them from the window of her father's
lighthouse on Lime Rock, and in a few minutes was rowing them in
safety toward the shore. After landing the men, she went back
again and rescued the sheep.
These brave deeds, with others of a less striking character, made
Miss Lewis' name famous throughout the world, and won for her the
title of "the Grace Darling of America"; but in 1869 the
newspapers were filled with the story of what was perhaps her
greatest exploit. On March 29 two young soldiers set sail from
Newport for Fort Adams in a small boat, under the guidance of a
boy who pretended to understand the simple rules of navigation.
Mrs. Lewis chanced to be looking out of the lighthouse window,
and saw a squall strike the boat and overturn it. She called to
her daughter, telling her of the casualty. Ida, though ill at the
time, rushed out of the house, launched her life-boat and sprang
in, with neither hat on her head nor shoes on her feet. By the
time she reached the scene of the disaster the boy had perished,
and the two soldiers were clinging desperately to the wreck,
almost ready to loose their hold from exhaustion. They were
dragged into the life-boat, and carried to Lime Rock, and, with
careful nursing, were soon sufficiently restored to proceed to
Fort Adams.
Miss Lewis' repeated acts of philanthropy have been recognized by
gifts at various times, but no national testimonial, so far as we
are aware, has yet been offered to her. True generosity, like
true virtue, is its own reward, and we of the world are not often
disposed to meddle with its quiet enjoyment by its possessor. It
seems eminently fitting, however, that among the first to receive
the new decoration to be bestowed by congress for heroic deeds in
saving life, should be the heroine of Newport harbor.
Writing from Valley Falls September 9, 1885, Elizabeth B. Chace,
president of the Rhode Island Association, in summing up the steps
of progress, says:
On December 4, 1884, by unanimous consent of our General Assembly
the state-house was granted to us for the first time, for a woman
suffrage convention. A large number of our best men and women,
and some of our ablest speakers[178] were present. An immense
audience greeted them and listened with eager interest
throughout. The occasion was one of the most pleasant and
profitable we have enjoyed in a long time. At the following
session of our Legislature, 1885, an amendment to our State
constitution was proposed giving the franchise to women, on equal
terms with men. It passed both Houses by a large majority vote,
but by some technicality, for which no one seemed to blame, it
was not legally started on its round to the vote of the people.
Hence the proposition to submit the amendment will be again
passed upon this year, and with every promise of success. We have
strong hopes of making our little commonwealth the banner State
in this grand step of progress.
The following letter from Frederick A. Hinckley, makes a fitting
mention of some of the noble women who have represented this
movement in his State:
PROVIDENCE, R. I., Sept. 14, 1885.
DEAR FRIENDS: You ask for a few words from me concerning salient
points in the history of the woman suffrage movement in Rhode
Island. As you know, ours is a very small State--the smallest in
the Union--and has a very closely compacted population. With us
the manufacturing interest overshadows everything else,
representing large investments of capital. On the one hand we
have great accumulations of wealth by the few; on the other hand,
a large percentage of unskilled foreign labor. For good or for
ill we feel all those conservative influences which naturally
grow out of this two-fold condition. This accounts in the main,
for the Rhode Islander's extreme and exceptionally tenacious
regard for the institutions of his ancestors. This is why we have
the most limited suffrage of any State, many _men_ being debarred
from voting by reason of the property qualification still
required here of foreign-born citizens. Such a social atmosphere
is not favorable to the extension of the franchise, either to men
or women, and makes peculiarly necessary with us, the educational
process of a very large amount of moral agitation before much can
be expected in the way of political changes.
My own residence here dates back only to 1878, though before that
from my Massachusetts home I was somewhat familiar with
Rhode-Island people and laws. Our work has consisted of monthly
meetings, made up usually of an afternoon session for address and
discussion, followed by a social tea; of an annual State
convention in the city of Providence; and of petitioning the
legislature each year, with the appointment of the customary
committees and hearings. For many years the centre of the woman
movement with us has been the State association, and since my own
connection with that, the leader about whom we have all rallied,
has been your beloved friend and mine, Elizabeth B. Chace. Hers
is that clear conception of, and untiring devotion to principles,
which make invincible leadership, tide over all disaster, and
overcome all doubt. By her constant appearance before legislative
committees, her model newspaper articles which never fail to
command general attention even among those who would not think of
agreeing with her, and by her persistent fidelity to her sense of
duty in social life, she is the recognized head of our agitation
in Rhode Island. But she has not stood alone. She has been the
centre of a group of women whose names will always be associated
with our cause in this locality. Elizabeth K. Churchill lived and
died a faithful and successful worker. The Woman's Club in this
city was her child; temperance, suffrage, and the interests of
working-women were dear to her heart. She was independent in her
convictions, and true to herself, even when it compelled dissent
from the attitude of trusted leaders and friends, but her work on
the platform, in the press, and in society, made her life a tower
of strength to the woman's rights cause and her death a
lamentable loss. Another active leader in the work here, though
not a speaker, who has passed on since my residence in
Providence, was Susan B. P. Martin. I think those of us
accustomed to act with her always respected Mrs. Martin's
judgment and felt sure of her fidelity. What more can be said of
any one than that?
It is difficult to speak publicly of one's friends while living.
But no history of woman suffrage agitation in Rhode Island would
be complete which did not place among those ever to be relied on,
the names of Anna Garlin Spencer, Sarah E. H. Doyle, Anna E.
Aldrich and Fanny P. Palmer. Mrs. Spencer moved from the State
just as I came into it, but the influence of her logical mind was
left behind her and the loss of her quick womanly tact has been
keenly felt. Mrs. Doyle has long been chairman of the executive
committee of the association, Mrs. Aldrich a safe and trusted
counsellor, and Mrs. Palmer as member of the Providence school
committee, and more recently as president of the Woman's Club,
has rendered the cause eminent service.
If final victory seems farther off here than in some of the newer
States, as it certainly does, that is only the greater reason for
earnest, and ceaseless work. We know we are right, and be it
short or long I am sure we have all enlisted for the war.
Always sincerely yours, FREDERIC A. HINCKLEY.
Below is the last utterance of Senator Anthony on this question. In
writing to Susan B. Anthony, he said:
UNITED STATES SENATE CHAMBER, WASHINGTON, March 4, 1884.
MY DEAR COUSIN: I am honored by your invitation to address the
National Woman Suffrage Association at the convention to be held
in this city. I regret that it is not in my power to comply with
your complimentary request. The enfranchisement of woman is one
of those great reforms which will come with the progress of
civilization, and when it comes those who witness it will wonder
that it has been so long delayed. The main argument against it is
that the women themselves do not desire it. Many men do not
desire it, as is evidenced by their omission to exercise it, but
they are not therefore deprived of it. I do not understand that
you propose compulsory suffrage, although I am not sure that that
would not be for the public advantage as applied to both sexes. A
woman has a right to vote in a corporation of which she is a
stockholder, and that she does not generally exercise that right
is not an argument against the right itself. The progress that is
making in the direction of your efforts is satisfactory and
encouraging.
Faithfully yours, H. B. ANTHONY.
Senator Anthony was one of the ever-to-be-remembered nine senators
who voted for woman suffrage on the floor of the United States
Senate in 1866. He also made a most logical speech on our behalf
and has ever since been true to our demands.
FOOTNOTES:
[171] To Mrs. Davis, a native of the State of New York, belongs the
honor of inaugurating this movement in New England, as she called
and managed the first convention held in Massachusetts in 1850, and
helped to arouse all these States to action in 1868. With New
England reformers slavery was always the preëminently pressing
question, even after the emancipation of the slaves, while in New
York woman's civil and political rights were considered the more
vital question.--[E. C. S.
[172] _The Revolution_ of December 17, 1868, says: The meeting last
week in Providence, was, in numbers and ability, eminently
successful. Mrs. Elizabeth B. Chace, of Valley Falls, presided, and
addresses were made by Colonel Higginson, Paulina Wright Davis,
Lucy Stone, Frederick Douglass, Mrs. O. Shepard, Rev. John Boyden,
Dr. Mercy B. Jackson, Stephen S. and Abbey Kelly Foster. The
officers of the association were: _President_, Paulina Wright
Davis. _Vice-presidents_, Elizabeth B. Chace of Valley Falls, Col.
T. W. Higginson of Newport, Mrs. George Cushing, J. W. Stillman,
Mrs. Buffum of Woonsocket and P. W. Aldrich. _Recording Secretary_,
Martha W. Chase. _Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs. Rhoda Fairbanks.
_Treasurer_, Mrs. Susan B. Harris. _Executive Committee_, Mrs.
James Bucklin, Catharine W. Hunt, Mrs. Lewis Doyle, Anna Aldrich,
Mrs. S. B. G. Martin, Dr. Perry, Mrs. Churchill, Arnold B. Chace.
[173] Among the speakers at these annual conventions we find
Rowland G. Hazard, Rev. John Boyden, Rev. Charles Howard Malcolm,
the brilliant John Neal, Portland, Maine, Hon. James M. Stillman
Gen. F. G. Lippett, Theodore Tilton, Rev. Olympia Brown, Rev. Phebe
A. Hanaford, Elizabeth K. Churchill. For a report of the convention
held at Newport during the fashionable season, August 25, 26, 1869,
see vol. II., page 403, also _The Revolution_, September 2, 1869.
[174] Mrs. Chace says in a letter, speaking of Mrs. Davis: "After
several years absence in Europe she returned, a helpless invalid,
unable to resume her labors. But her devotion in early years will
long remain fresh in the memory of those associated with her, who
were inspired by her self-sacrifice and enthusiasm." For farther
details of Mrs. Davis' earlier labors, see vol. I, pages 215, 283.
[175] Julia Ward Howe, Celia Burleigh, William Lloyd Garrison,
Aaron M. Powell, Caroline H. Dall, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, Miss Mary
F. Eastman, Elizabeth K. Churchill, Rev. Augustus Woodbury Hon.
Amasa M. Eaton, Mr. Stillman, Hon. Thomas Davis, Hon George L.
Clarke, Rev. Frederick Hinckley, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Hon.
A. Payne.
[176] IN THE HOUSE. _For the Amendment._--Davis Aldrich, North
Smithfield; Thomas Arnold, Warwick; Clark Barber, Richmond; Thos.
P. Barnefield, Pawtucket; Frank M. Bates, Pawtucket; John Beattie,
Cranston; Amos M. Bowen, Providence; Issac B. Briggs, Jamestown;
Albert Buffum, Burillville; John C. Barrington, Barrington; Chas.
Capwell, West Greenwich; Geo. B. Carpenter, Hopkinton; Obadiah
Chase, Warren; Albert I. Chester, Westerly; Chas. E. Chickering,
Pawtucket; John F. Clark, Cumberland; LeBaron B. Colt, Bristol;
James Davis, Pawtucket; Benjamin T. Eames, Providence; Henry H.
Fay, Newport; Edward L. Freeman, Lincoln; Z. Herbert Gardner,
Exeter; John P. Gregory, Lincoln; Henry D. Heydon, Warwick; Edwin
Jenckes, Pawtucket; Thos. E. Kenyon, East Greenwich; Israel B.
Mason, Providence; B. B. Mitchell, jr., New Shoreham; Francis L.
O'Reilly, Woonsocket; Joseph Osborn, Tiverton; Abraham Payne,
Providence; James M. Pendleton, Westerly; Wm. A. Pirce, Johnston;
Clinton Puffer, Woonsocket; Olney W. Randall, No. Providence; John
P. Sanborn, Newport; Wm. P. Sheffield, Newport; Israel R. Sheldon,
Warwick; Martin S. Smith, Scituate; Wm. H. Spooner, Bristol; Henry
A. Stearns, Lincoln; Simon S. Steere, Smithfield; Joseph
Tillinghast, Coventry; Wm. C. Townsend, Newport; Stephen A. Watson,
Portsmouth; Stillman White, Providence; Benj. F. Wilbor, Little
Compton; Andrew Winsor, Providence--48.
IN THE SENATE. _For the Amendment._--Lieut.-Gov. Howard, E.
Providence; Ariel Ballou, Woonsocket; Cyrus F. Cooke, Foster;
Edward T. DeBlois, Portsmouth; Rodney F. Dyer, Johnston; Anson
Greene, Exeter; Daniel W. Lyman, No. Providence; Jabez W. Mowry,
Smithfield; Dexter B. Potter, Coventry; Stafford W. Razee,
Cumberland; T. Mumford Seabury, Newport; Lewis B. Smith,
Barrington; John F. Tobey, Providence--13.
[177] [Signed:] _President_, Elizabeth B. Chace; _Secretaries_,
Fanny P. Palmer, Elizabeth C. Hinckley; _Treasurer_, Susan B. P.
Martin; _Executive Committee_, Sarah E. H. Doyle, Susan Sisson,
William Barker, Francis C. Frost, Anna E. Aldrich, Frederick A.
Hinckley, Susan G. Kenyon, Rachael E. Fry, A. A. Tyng, Arnold B.
Chace.
[178] The speakers were Abraham Payne, John Wyman, Matilda Hindman,
Frederick A. Hinckley, Rev. Mr. Wendt, Elizabeth B. Chace, William
I. Bowditch, Mary F. Eastman, William Lloyd Garrison, jr., Lucy
Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Henry B. Blackwell.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
MAINE.
Women on School Committees--Elvira C. Thorndyke--Suffrage
Society, 1868--Rockland--The Snow Sisters--Portland Meeting,
1870--John Neal--Judge Goddard--Colby University Open to Girls,
August 12, 1871--Mrs. Clara Hapgood Nash Admitted to the Bar,
October 26, 1872--Tax-payers Protest--Ann F. Greeley,
1872--March, 1872, Bill for Woman Suffrage Lost in the House,
Passed in the Senate by Seven Votes--Miss Frank Charles, Register
of Deeds--Judge Reddington--Mr. Randall's Motion--Moral Eminence
of Maine--Convention in Granite Hall, Augusta, January, 1873,
Hon. Joshua Nye, President--Delia A. Curtis--Opinions of the
Supreme Court in Regard to Women Holding Offices--Governor
Dingley's Message, 1875--Convention, Representatives Hall,
Portland, Judge Kingsbury, President, February 12, 1876.
The first movement in Maine, in 1868, turned on the question of
women being eligible on school committees. Here, as in Vermont, the
men inaugurated the movement. The following letter, from the
_Portland Press_, gives the initiative steps:
HIRAM, March 15, 1868.
MR. EDITOR: A statement is going the rounds of the press that the
Democrats of Hiram supported a lady for a member of the school
committee. I am unwilling that any person or party shall be
ridiculed or censured for an act of which I was the instigator,
and for which I am chiefly responsible. I am in favor of electing
ladies to that office, and accordingly voted for one, without her
knowledge or consent; several Democrats as well as Republicans
voted with me. I have reason to believe that scores of Democrats
voted for the able and popular candidate of the Republicans (Dr.
William H. Smith), and but for my peculiar notion I should have
voted for him myself, as I always vote with the Republican party.
I am in favor, however, of laying aside politics in voting for
school committees, and the question of capability should outweigh
the question of sex. A few years ago we had a large number of boy
schoolmasters, but agents are learning to appreciate teachers of
tact, experience and natural qualifications, as well as
book-knowledge. Of eleven schools under the care of the writer
the past year, but one had a male teacher, and by turning to the
reports I find that of forty-nine schools in Hiram during the
past two years, forty-two were taught by ladies. Four of these
teachers of the past year have taught respectively twenty,
twenty-one, twenty-three and thirty schools. I put the question,
why should a lady who has taught thirty schools be considered
less suitable for the office of school committee than the
undersigned, who has taught but two, or scores of men who never
taught school at all? Slowly and with hesitation over the ice of
prejudice comes that unreasonable reason--"_O, 'cause._" But
regardless of pants or crinoline, the question remains unanswered
and unanswerable. It is not deemed improper for the ladies of
Hiram to go with their husbands to the town-house to a cattle
show and fair, and serve as committees on butter and cheese, but
it is considered unreasonable for ladies to serve as
superintendents of school committees.
General Washington gave a lieutenant's commission to a woman for
her skill and bravery in manning a battery at the battle of
Monmouth. He also granted her half-pay during life. It is stated
in "Lincoln's Lives of the Presidents" that "she wore an
epaulette, and everybody called her Captain Molly." And yet I do
not read in history that General Washington was ever impeached.
Females have more and better influence than males, and under
their instruction our schools have been improving for some years.
There is less kicking and cudgeling, and more attention is given
to that best of all rules, "The Golden Rule." If they are more
efficient as teachers is it not fair to presume that they would
excel as committees?
Very respectfully yours,
LLEWELLYN A. WADSWORTH.
The editor of the _Press_ adds to the above his own endorsement, in
these words:
We are pleased to have Mr. Wadsworth's explanation of the reform
movement in Hiram, which we had been misled into crediting to the
Democrats. * * * Go on, Mr. Wadsworth, you have our best wishes.
There is nothing in the way of the general adoption of your ideas
but a lot of antiquated and obsolete notions, sustained by the
laughter of fools.
The same year we have the report of the first suffrage society in
that State, which seems to place Maine in the van of her New
England sisters, notwithstanding the great darkness our
correspondent deplores:
DEAR REVOLUTION: A society has just been organized here called
the Equal Rights Association of Rockland. It bids fair to live,
although it requires all the courage of heroic souls to contend
against the darkness that envelopes the people. But the
foundation is laid, and many noble women are catching the
inspiration of the hour. When we are fully under way, we shall
send you a copy of our preamble and resolutions.
ELVIRA C. THORNDYKE, _Cor. Sec'y_.
The Hon. John Neal, who was foremost in all good work in Maine, in
a letter to _The Revolution_, describes the first meeting called in
Portland, in May, 1870, to consider the subject of suffrage for
woman. He says:
DEAR REVOLUTION: According to my promise, I sent an advertisement
to all three of our daily papers last Saturday, in substance like
the following, though somewhat varied in language:
ELEVATION OF WOMAN.--All who favor Woman Suffrage, the
Sixteenth Amendment, and the restoration of woman to her
"natural and inalienable rights," are wanted for
consultation at the audience room of the Portland Institute
and Public Library, on Wednesday evening next, at half-past
seven o'clock. Per order
JOHN NEAL.
The weather was unfavorable; nevertheless, the small room,
holding from sixty to seventy-five, to which the well-disposed
were invited for consultation and organization, was crowded so
that near the close not a seat could be had; and crowded, too,
with educated and intelligent women, and brave, thoughtful men,
so far as one might judge by appearances, and about in equal
proportions. Among the latter were Mr. Talbot, United States
district-attorney, a good lawyer and a self-convinced fellow
laborer, so far as suffrage is concerned; but rather unwilling to
go further at present, lest if a woman should be sent to the
legislature (against her will, of course!) she might neglect her
family, or be obliged to take her husband with her, to keep her
out of mischief; just as if Portland, with 35,000 inhabitants and
four representatives, would not be likely to find _two_ unmarried
women or widows, or married women not disqualified by matrimonial
incumbrances or liabilities, to represent the sex; or lest, if
she should get into the post-office, being by nature so curious
and inquisitive, she might be found peeping--as if the chief
distinction between superior and inferior minds was not this very
disposition to inquire and investigate; as if, indeed, that which
distinguishes the barbarous from the civilized, were not this
very inquisitiveness and curiosity; the savage being satisfied
with himself and averse to inquiry; the civilized ever on the
alert, in proportion to his intelligence, and, like the
Athenians, always on the look-out for some "new thing."
And then, too, we had Judge Goddard, of the Superior Court, one
of our boldest and clearest thinkers, who could not be persuaded
to take a part in the discussion, though declaring himself
entirely opposed to the movement. And yet, he is the very man
who, at a Republican convention several years ago, offered a
resolution in favor of impartial suffrage, only to find himself
in a minority of two; but persevered nevertheless, year after
year, until the very same resolution, word for word, was
unanimously adopted by another Republican convention! Of course,
Judge Goddard will not be likely to shrink from giving his
reasons hereafter, if the movement should propagate itself, as it
certainly will.
We had also for consideration a synopsis of what deserves to be
called most emphatically "The Maine Law," in relation to married
women, prepared by Mr. Drummond, our late speaker and formerly
attorney-general, and one of our best lawyers, where it was
demonstrated, both by enactments and adjudications, running from
March, 1844, to February, 1866, that a married woman--to say
nothing of widows and spinsters--has little to complain of in our
State, her legal rights being far ahead of the age, and not only
acknowledged, but enforced; she being mistress of herself and of
her earnings, and allowed to trade for herself, while "her
contracts for any lawful purpose are made valid and binding, and
to be enforced, as if she were sole agent of her property, but
she cannot be arrested."
Then followed Mr. S. B. Beckett, just returned from a trip to the
Holy Land, who testified, among other things, that he had seen
women both in London and Ireland who knew "how to keep a hotel,"
which is reckoned among men as the highest earthly
qualification--and proved it by managing some of the largest and
best in the world.
And then Mr. Charles Jose, late one of our aldermen, who, half in
earnest and half in jest, took t'other side of the question,
urging, first, that this was a political movement--as if that
were any objection, supposing it true; our whole system of
government being a political movement, and that, by which we
trampled out the last great rebellion, another, both parties and
all parties coöperating in the work; next, that women did not ask
for suffrage--it was the men who asked for it, in their names;
that there were no complaints and no petitions from women! As if
petitions had not gone up and complaints, too, by thousands, from
all parts of the country, from school-teachers and office clerks
and others, as well as from the women at large, both over sea and
here.
But enough. The meeting stands adjourned for a week. Probably no
organization will be attempted, lest it might serve to check free
discussion.
J. N.
_May 5, 1870._
Mr. W. W. McCann wrote to the _Woman's Journal_ of this suffrage
meeting in Portland, in 1870:
Judge Howe's voice, when he addressed the jury of Wyoming as
"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Grand Jury," fell upon the ears of
that crowded court-room as a strange and unusual sound. Equally
strange and impracticable seemed the call for a "woman suffrage
meeting," at the city building, to the conservative citizens of
Portland. However, notwithstanding the suspicion and prejudice
with which this movement is regarded, quite a large and highly
respectable audience assembled at an early hour to witness the
new and wonderful phenomenon of a meeting to aid in giving the
ballot to woman.
Hon. John Neal, who issued the call for the meeting, was the
first to speak. He reviewed the history of this movement, both in
this country and in England. He gave some entertaining
reminiscences of his acquaintance with John Stuart Mill forty
years ago. Mr. Mill was not then in favor of universal suffrage;
he advocated the enfranchisement of the male sex only. Mr. Neal
claimed the right for women also. He was happy to learn that
since then Mr. Mill has thrown all the weight of his influence
and his masterly intellect in favor of universal suffrage. He
then entered into an elaborate discussion of some of the
objections brought against woman suffrage, and, much to the
surprise of many present, showed that the rights which women
demand are just and reasonable, and ought to be granted. John M.
Todd remarked that he was not so much impressed by the logical
arguments in favor of suffrage as by the shallow and baseless
arguments of the opposition. The friends of woman suffrage are
becoming active and earnest in their efforts, and discussion is
freely going on through the daily papers.
To-day, the _Eastern Argus_, a leading Democratic organ of this
city, denounces this movement as the most "damnable heresy of
this generation." We venture the prediction that its friends, if
true to the progressive tendencies of the day, will realize the
consummation of their cherished heresy in the proposed sixteenth
amendment, which will abolish all distinction of class and sex.
On August 12, 1871, the announcement that Colby University would be
opened to girls gave general satisfaction to the women of Maine. A
correspondent says:
Hereafter young women will be admitted to this institution on
"precisely the same terms as young men." They may take the
regular course, or such a course as they may select, taking at
least two studies each term. They will room and board in families
in the village, and simply attend the required exercises at the
college. The next examination for entrance will be on Wednesday,
August 30. One young lady has already signified her purpose to
enter the regular course. Four New England colleges are now open
to women--Bates, at Lewiston; Colby, at Waterville, Me.; Vermont
University, at Burlington, Vt., and Wesleyan, at Middletown,
Conn. Let's have no more women's colleges established, for the
next decade will make them unnecessary, as by that time all the
colleges of the country will be opened to them.
October 26, 1872, another advance step was heralded abroad:
On motion of the Hon. James S. Milliken, Mrs. Clara Hapgood Nash,
of Columbia Falls, was formally admitted to the bar as an
attorney-at-law. During the session of the court in the forenoon,
Mrs. Nash had presented herself before the examining committee,
Messrs. Granger, Milliken and Walker, and had passed a more than
commonly creditable examination. After the opening of the court
in the afternoon, Mr. Milliken arose and said: "May it please the
court, I hold in my hand papers showing that Mrs. Hapgood Nash,
of Columbia Falls, has passed the committee appointed by the
court to examine candidates for admission to the bar as
attorneys-at-law and has paid to the county treasurer the duty
required by the statute; and I now move the court that she be
admitted to this bar as an attorney-at-law. In making the motion
I am not unaware that this is a novel and unusual proceeding. It
is the first instance in this county and this State, and, so far
as I am aware, the first instance in New England, of the
application of a woman to be formally admitted to the bar as a
practitioner. But knowing Mrs. Nash to be a modest and refined
lady, of literary and legal attainments, I feel safe in assuring
Your Honor that by a course of honorable practice, and by her
courteous intercourse with the members of the profession, she
will do her full part to conquer any prejudice that may now exist
against the idea of women being admitted as attorneys at law."
Judge Barrows, after examining the papers handed to him, said: "I
am not aware of anything in the constitution or laws of this
State prohibiting the admission of a woman, possessing the proper
qualifications, to the practice of the law. I have no sympathy
with that feeling or prejudice which would exclude women from
any of the occupations of life for which they may be qualified.
The papers put into my hands show that Mrs. Nash has received the
unanimous approval of the examining committee, as possessing the
qualifications requisite for an acceptable attorney, and that she
has paid the legal duty to the county treasurer, and I direct
that she be admitted."
On May 10, 1873, the trustees of the Industrial School for Girls
issued the following appeal to the people of the State:
The undersigned, trustees of the Maine Industrial School for
Girls, hereby earnestly appeal to the generosity of the State, to
the rich and poor alike, for aid to this important movement. Our
call is to mothers and fathers blessed with virtuous and obedient
children; to those who have suffered by the waywardness of some
beloved daughter; and to all who would gladly see the neglected,
exposed and erring girls in our midst reclaimed. For six years
has this subject been agitated in the State and presented to the
consideration of several legislatures; and during that time the
objects, plans and practical workings of such an institution,
have become familiar to the public mind. The project is now so
near consummation that by prompt and liberal response to this
appeal, the school can be in active operation by the first of
July next.
By the terms of the resolution of the legislature granting State
aid of five thousand dollars, the sum of twenty thousand dollars
must first be secured from other sources. Of this, five thousand
at least has been contributed by two generous ladies in
Hallowell. For the balance the trustees confidentially look to
the citizens of the whole State as equally to be benefited. Let
them send their contributions, whether large or small, freely and
at once, to either of the undersigned and the receipt of the same
shall be duly acknowledged.[179]
Some of the women tax-payers[180] in Ellsworth, Maine, sent the
following protest to the assessors of that city:
We the undersigned residents of the city of Ellsworth, believing
in the declaration of our forefathers, that "governments derive
their just powers from the consent of the governed," and that
"taxation without representation is tyranny," beg leave to
protest against being taxed for support of laws that we have no
voice in making. By taxing us you class us with aliens and
minors, the only males who are taxed and not allowed to vote, you
make us the political inferiors of the most ignorant foreigners,
negroes, and men who have not intellect enough to learn to write
their names, or to read the vote given them. Our property is at
the disposal of men who have not the ability to accumulate a
dollar's worth and who pay only a poll-tax. We therefore protest
against being taxed until we are allowed the rights of citizens.
AUGUSTA, March 1, 1872.
EDITORS WOMAN'S JOURNAL: I have never seen a letter in the
_Woman's Journal_ written from Augusta, the capital of Maine, and
as some things have transpired lately which might interest your
readers, I take the liberty of writing a few lines. The bill for
woman suffrage was defeated in the House, fifty-two to forty-one.
In the Senate the vote was fifteen in favor to eight against. I
think the smallness of the vote was owing to the indifference of
some of the members and the determination of a few to kill the
bill. Some politicians are afraid of this innovation just now,
lest the Republican party be more disrupted than it already is.
Day after day, when the session was drawing to a close, women
went to the state-house expecting to hear the question debated.
Wednesday every available place was filled with educated women.
The day was spent--if I should say how, my criticism might be too
severe. Gentlemen from Thomaston, Biddeford, Burlington and
Waldoborough had the floor most of the time during the afternoon.
In the evening, while those same women and some of the members of
the legislature were attending a concert, the bill was taken up
and voted upon, _without any discussion whatever_. Now, I submit
to any fair-minded person if this was right. I have listened to
discussions upon that floor this winter for which I should have
hung my head in shame had they been conducted by women. The whole
country, from Maine to California, calls loudly for better
legislation--for morality in politics.
A member of the House said to me yesterday, that he thought that
some of the members from the rural districts were not
sufficiently enlightened upon the question of woman suffrage, and
the bill ought to have been thoroughly discussed. Yes, and
perhaps treated with respect by its friends. I saw the member
from Calais while a vote was being taken. Standing in his seat,
with his hand stretched toward the rear of the House, where it is
generally supposed that members sit who are a little slow in
voting at the beck of politicians, he said: "_Yes_ is the way to
vote, gentlemen! Yes! Yes!" When women have such politicians for
champions equal suffrage is secured. But do we want such men? The
member from Calais voted against woman's right of suffrage. He is
said to be an ambitious aspirant in the fifth congressional
district. See to it, women of the fifth district, that you do not
have him as an opponent of equal rights in congress. There is a
throne behind a throne. Let woman be _regal_ in the background,
where she must stand for the present, in Maine.
But I am happy and proud to state that some very high-minded men,
and some of the best legislators in the House, did vote for the
bill, viz.: Brown of Bangor, Judge Titcomb of Augusta, General
Perry of Oxford, Porter of Burlington, Labroke of Foxcroft, and
many others; in the Senate, the president and fourteen others,
the real bone and marrow of the Senate, voted for the bill. The
signs of the times are good. The watchman of the night discerns
the morning light in the broad eastern horizon.
[Signed:] PATIENCE COMMONSENSE.
The _Portland Press_, in a summary of progress in Maine for 1873,
says:
Women certainly have no reason to complain of the year's dealings
with them, for they have been recognized in many ways which
indicate the gradual breaking down of the prejudices that have
hitherto given them a position of _quasi_ subjection. Mrs. Mary
D. Welcome has been licensed to preach by the Methodists; Mrs.
Fannie U. Roberts of Kittery has been commissioned by the
governor to solemnize marriages; Clara H. Nash, of the famous law
firm of F. C. & C. H. Nash, of Columbia Falls, has argued a case
before a jury in the Supreme Court; Miss Mary C. Lowe of Colby
University has taken a college prize for declamation. They are
the first Maine women who have ever enjoyed honors of the kind.
Miss Cameron spoke, too, at the last Congregational conference,
and Miss Frank Charles was appointed register of deeds in Oxford
county.
It is further to be noted that the legislature voted as follows
on the question of giving the ballot to women: Senate--14 yeas,
14 nays; House--62 yeas, 69 nays. Women are rapidly obtaining a
recognized position in our colleges. There are now five young
women at Colby, three at Bates, and three at the Agricultural
College--eleven in all. Bates has already graduated two. In the
latter college a scholarship for the benefit of women has been
endowed by Judge Reddington. Finally, the first Woman Suffrage
Association ever formed in Maine held its first meeting at
Augusta last January, and was a great success. Carmel, Monroe,
Etna and some other towns have elected women superintendents of
schools, but this has been done in other years. For a little
movement in the right direction we must credit Messrs. Amos,
Abbott & Co., woolen manufacturers of Dexter, who divide ten per
cent. of their profits with their operatives.
Clara H. Nash, the lady who, in partnership with her husband, has
recently entered upon the practice of law in Maine, says:
Scarcely a day passes but something occurs in our office to rouse
my indignation afresh by reminding me of the utter insignificance
with which the law, in its every department, regards woman, and
its utter disregard of her rights as an individual. Would that
women might feel this truth; then, indeed, would their
enfranchisement be speedy.
In the _Woman's Journal_ of January 1, 1873, we find the following
call:
The people of Maine who believe in the extension of the elective
franchise to women as a beneficent power for the promotion of the
virtues and the correction of the evils of society, and all who
believe in the principles of equal justice, equal liberty and
equal opportunity, upon which republican institutions are
founded, and have faith in the triumph of intelligence and reason
over custom and prejudice, are invited to meet at Granite Hall,
in the city of Augusta, on Wednesday, January 29, 1873, for the
purpose of organizing a State Woman Suffrage Association, and
inaugurating such measures for the advancement of the cause as
the wisdom of the convention may suggest.[181]
The _Portland Press_, in a leading editorial on the "Moral Eminence
of Maine," says:
Maine has been first in many things. She has taught the world how
to struggle with intemperance, and pilgrims come hither from all
quarters of the earth to learn the theory and practice of
prohibition. She was among the first to practically abolish
capital punishment and to give married women their rights in
respect to property. She is, perhaps, nearer giving them
political rights, also, than any of her sister commonwealths. If
Maine should be first among the States to give suffrage to women,
she would do more for temperance than a hundred prohibitory laws,
and more for civilization and progress than Massachusetts did
when she threw the tea into Boston harbor in 1773, or when she
sent the first regiment to the relief of Washington in 1861.
The leaders of the temperance reform in Maine are fully alive to
the necessity of woman suffrage as a means to that end. At the
meeting of the State Temperance Association of Maine, in Augusta,
recently, Mr. Randall said that "as the woman suffrage convention
has adjourned over this afternoon in order to attend the
temperance meeting, he would move that when we adjourn it be to
Thursday morning, as the work at both conventions is intimately
connected. If the women of Maine went to the ballot-box, we
should have officers to enforce the law." Mr. Randall's motion
was carried, and the temperance convention adjourned.
The Woman Suffrage Association assembled Wednesday, January 29, in
Granite Hall, Augusta. There was a very large attendance, a
considerable number of those present being members of the
legislature. Hon. Joshua Nye presided. He made a few remarks
relating to the removal of political disabilities from women, and
introduced Mrs. Agnes A. Houghton of Bath, who spoke on the
"Turning of the Tide," contending that woman should be elevated
socially, politically and morally, enjoying the same rights as man.
She was followed by Judge Benjamin Kingsbury, jr., of Portland, who
declared himself unequivocally in favor of giving woman the right
to vote, and who trusted that she would be accorded this right by
the present legislature. More than 1,000 persons were in the
audience, and great enthusiasm prevailed. The morning session was
devoted to business and the election of officers.[182] In order not
to conflict with a meeting of the State Temperance Association, no
afternoon session was held, and, in return, the State Temperance
Society gave up its evening meeting to enable its members to attend
the suffrage convention.
Speeches were made by Henry B. Blackwell of Boston, Rev. Ellen
Gustin of Mansfield, Mary Eastman of Lowell, and others.
Resolutions were passed pledging the association not to cease its
efforts until the unjust discrimination with regard to voting is
swept away; that in the election of president, and of all officers
where the qualifications of voters are not prescribed by the State
constitution, the experiment should be tried of allowing women to
vote; that in view of the large amount of money which has been
expended in Maine for the exclusive benefit of the Boys' Industrial
School during the past twenty years, it is the prayer of the ladies
of Maine that the present legislature vote the sum asked for the
establishment of an Industrial School for girls.
In 1874 we find notices of other onward steps:
EDITORS JOURNAL: Woman's cause works slowly here, though in one
respect we have been successful. Our county school-superintendent
is a lady. She had a large majority over our other candidate, and
over two gentlemen, and she is decidedly "the right person in the
right place." She is a graduate from the normal school, the
mother of four children, a widow for some six years past, and a
lady. What more can we ask, unless, indeed, it be for a very
conscientious idea of duty? That, too, she has, and also energy,
with which she carries it out. The sterner sex admit that women
are competent to hold office. But some say we are not intelligent
enough to vote. What an appalling amount of wisdom they show in
this idea! It would be "unwomanly" in us to suggest such a word
as inconsistency.
Fraternally, M. J. M.
_Cairo, Me., April, 1874._
In Searsport a woman was elected one of the two
school-superintendents of the town. The following advertisement
appears in the local newspaper:
SEARSPORT SCHOOL NOTICE.--The superintending school-committee of
Searsport will meet to examine teachers at the town library,
April 17 and May 1, 1874, at 1 o'clock P. M.
DELIA A. CURTIS,
JOHN NICHOLS,
_S. S. Com. of Searsport._
Teachers will be expected to discountenance the use of tobacco
and intoxicating liquors, and to use their best endeavors to
impress on the minds of the children and youth committed to their
care and instruction a proper understanding of the evil tendency
of such habits; and no teacher need apply for a certificate to
teach in this town, the ensuing year, who uses either.
DELIA A. CURTIS.
DEAR JOURNAL: Aroostook, though occupying the extreme
northeastern portion of our good State of Maine, and still in the
blush of youth, is not behind her sister counties in recognition
of woman's fitness for office. The returns of town elections, so
far as I have yet seen, give three towns in the county which have
elected ladies[183] to serve as members of the school committee.
L. J. Y. W.
_Houlton, Maine._
In the autumn of 1874 the governor and council requested the
opinion of the Supreme Judicial Court on the following questions:
_First_--Under the constitution and laws of this State, can a
woman, if duly appointed and qualified as a justice of the peace,
legally perform all acts pertaining to that office?
_Second_--Would it be competent for the legislature to authorize
the appointment of a married woman to the office of justice of
the peace; or to administer oaths, take acknowledgment of deeds
or solemnize marriages, so that the same may be legal and valid?
The following responses to these inquiries were received by the
governor: the opinion of the court, drawn by Chief-justice
Appleton, and concurred in by Justices Cutting, Peters, Danforth
and Virgin; a dissenting opinion from Justices Walton and Barrows
and one from Justice Dickerson. The opinion of the court is given
below:
To the questions proposed we have the honor to answer as follows:
Whether it is expedient that women should hold the office of
justice of the peace is not an inquiry proposed for our
consideration. It is whether, under the existing constitution,
they can be appointed to such office, and can legally discharge
its duties.
By the constitution of Massachusetts, of which we formerly
constituted a portion, the entire political power of that
commonwealth was vested under certain conditions, in its male
inhabitants of a prescribed age. They alone, and in the exclusion
of the other sex, as determined by its highest court of law,
could exercise the judicial function as existing and established
by that instrument.
By the act relating to the separation of the district of Maine
from Massachusetts, the authority to determine upon the question
of separation, and to elect delegates to meet and form a
constitution was conferred upon the "inhabitants of the several
towns, districts and plantations in the district of Maine
qualified to vote for governor or senators," thus excluding the
female sex from all participation in the formation of the
constitution, and in the organization of the government under it.
Whether the constitution should or should not be adopted, was
especially, by the organic law of its existence, submitted to the
vote of the male inhabitants of the State.
It thus appears that the constitution of the State was the work
of its male citizens. It was ordained, established, and ratified
by them, and by them alone; but by the power of government was
divided into three distinct departments: legislative, executive
and judicial. By article VI., section 4, justices of the peace
are recognized as judicial officers.
By the constitution, the whole political power of the State is
vested in its male citizens. Whenever in any of its provisions,
reference is made to sex, it is to duties to be done and
performed by male members of the community. Nothing in the
language of the constitution or in the debates of the convention
by which it was formed, indicates any purpose whatever of any
surrender of political power by those who had previously enjoyed
it or a transfer of the same to those who had never possessed it.
Had any such design then existed, we cannot doubt that it would
have been made manifest in appropriate language. But such
intention is nowhere disclosed. Having regard then, to the rules
of the common law as to the rights of women, married and
unmarried, as then existing--to the history of the past--to the
universal and unbroken practical construction given to the
constitution of this State and to that of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts upon which that of this State was modeled, we are
led to the inevitable conclusion that it was never in the
contemplation or intention of those framing our constitution that
the offices thereby created should be filled by those who could
take no part in its original formation, and to whom no political
power was intrusted for the organization of the government then
about to be established under its provisions, or for its
continued existence and preservation when established.
The same process of reasoning which would sanction the conferring
judicial power on women under the constitution would authorize
the giving them executive power by making them sheriffs and
major-generals. But while the offices enacted by the constitution
are to be filled exclusively by the male members of the State, we
have no doubt that the legislature may create new ministerial
offices not enumerated therein, and if it deem expedient, may
authorize the performance of the duties of the offices so created
by persons of either sex.
To the _first_ question proposed, we answer in the negative.
To the _second_, we answer that it is competent for the
legislature to authorize the appointment of married or unmarried
women to administer oaths, take acknowledgment of deeds or
solemnize marriages, so that the same shall be legal and valid.
JOHN APPLETON, JOHN A. PETERS,
JONAS CUTTING, WM. WIRT VIRGIN,
CHARLES DANFORTH.
The dissenting opinion was as follows:
We, the undersigned, Justices of the Supreme Judicial Court,
concur in so much of the foregoing opinion as holds that it is
competent for the legislature to authorize the appointment of
women to administer oaths, take the acknowledgment of deeds and
solemnize marriages. But we do not concur in the conclusion that
it is not equally competent for the legislature to authorize the
appointment of women to act as justices of the peace.
The legislature is authorized to enact any law which it deems
reasonable and proper, provided it is not repugnant to the
constitution of this State, nor to that of the United States. A
law authorizing the appointment of women to act as justices of
the peace would not, in our judgment, be repugnant to either. We
fail to find a single word, or sentence, or clause of a sentence,
which, fairly construed, either expressly or impliedly forbids
the passage of such a law. So far as the office of justice of the
peace is concerned, there is not so much as a masculine pronoun
to hang an objection upon.
It is true that the right to vote is limited to males. But the
right to vote and the right to hold office are distinct matters.
Either may exist without the other. And it may be true that the
framers of the constitution did not contemplate--did not
affirmatively intend--that women should hold office. But it by no
means follows that they intended the contrary. The truth probably
is that they had no intention one way or the other; that the
matter was not even thought of. And it will be noticed that the
unconstitutionality of such a law is made to rest, not on any
expressed intention of the framers of the constitution that women
should not hold office, but upon a presumed absence of intention
that they should.
This seems to us a dangerous doctrine. It is nothing less than
holding that the legislature cannot enact a law unless it appears
affirmatively that the framers of the constitution intended that
such a law should be enacted. We cannot concur in such a
doctrine. It would put a stop to all progress. We understand the
correct rule to be the reverse of that; namely, that the
legislature may enact any law they may think proper, unless it
appears affirmatively that the framers of the constitution
intended that such a law should not be passed. And the best and
only safe rule for ascertaining the intention of the makers of
any written law, is to abide by the language which they have
used. And this is especially true of written constitutions; for
in preparing such instruments it is but reasonable to presume
that every word has been carefully weighed, and that none is
inserted and none omitted without a design for so doing. Taking
this rule for our guide we can find nothing in the constitution
of the United States, or of this State, forbidding the passage of
a law authorizing the appointment of women to act as justices of
the peace. We think such a law would be valid.
C. W. WALTON,
WM. G. BARROWS.
The right of women to hold office was affirmed in the message of
Governor Dingley, January, 1875:
In response to the questions propounded by the governor and
council, a majority of the justices of the Supreme Court have
given an opinion that, under the constitution of Maine, women
cannot act as justices of the peace, nor hold any other office
mentioned in that instrument; but that it is competent for the
legislature to authorize persons of either sex to hold any
ministerial office created by statute. As there can be no valid
objection to, but on the contrary great convenience in, having
women who may be acting as clerks in public or private offices
authorized to administer oaths and take acknowledgment of deeds,
I recommend the passage of an act providing for the appointment
of persons of either sex, to perform such official duties.
Indeed, if further legislation be necessary to establish that
principle, I suggest the justice and expediency of an enabling
act recognizing the eligibility of women to office in the same
manner as men; for I know of no sufficient reason why a woman,
otherwise qualified, should be excluded from any position adapted
to her tastes and acquirements, which the people may desire she
should fill.
The legislature passed the bill recommended by the governor.
In 1875 the Constitutional Committee, by a vote of six to two,
defeated the proposition to so amend the constitution as to make
women electors under the same regulations and restrictions as men.
The Maine Woman Suffrage Association held its third annual
meeting at Augusta on January 12, 1876, in the hall of the House
of Representatives, the use of which had been courteously
extended to the association. The hall and galleries were crowded
in every part with an intelligent audience, whose close attention
through all the sessions showed an earnest interest in the cause.
The meeting was called to order by Judge Kingsbury of Portland,
president of the association.[184] Prayer was offered by Miss
Angell of Canton, N. Y. Judge Kingsbury made the introductory
address. Addresses were also made by H. B. Blackwell, Miss
Eastman and Lucy Stone, showing the right and need of women in
politics, and the duty of law-makers to establish justice for
them. It was especially urged that the centennial celebration
would be only a mockery if the Fourth of July, 1876, finds this
government still doing to women what the British government did
to the colonists a hundred years ago. Rev. Mr. Gage of Lewiston
urged the right of women to vote in the interest of civilization
itself. In the perilous times upon which we have fallen in the
great experiment of self-government, some new force is needed to
check growing evils. The influence in the home is that which is
needed in legislation, and it can only be had by the ballot in
the hand of woman. Mrs. Quinby, from the Business Committee,
reported a series of resolutions. After their adoption Mrs. Abba
G. Woolson, in an earnest and forcible speech, claimed the right
of women to vote, as the final application of the theory of the
consent of the governed. She had personally noticed the good
effects of the ballot conferred upon the women in Wyoming, and
should be glad to have her native State of Maine lead in this
matter, and give an illustration of the true republic. Miss
Lorenza Haynes, who had been the day before ordained over the
Universalist Church in Hallowell, followed with a speech of
remarkable wit and brilliancy, to which no report can do justice.
A writer in the _Woman's Journal_ about this time said:
During the early part of the session of our late legislature
woman suffrage petitions were numerously signed by the leading
men and women throughout the State receiving an earnest and
respectful consideration from the people generally, even from
those who were not quite ready to sign petitions. Consequently,
it seemed an easy matter to get a bill before the legislature,
and we were almost certain of a majority in one branch of the
House, at least, especially as it was generally understood that
our new governor favored the cause; and it is believed yet that
Governor Dingley does sympathize with it, even though he failed
to mention it in his otherwise admirable message. The petitions
were duly presented and referred to a joint committee, where the
matter was allowed to quietly drop.
It is neither riches, knowledge, nor culture that constitutes the
electoral qualifications, but gender and a certain implied brute
force. By this standard legislative bodies have been wont to
judge the exigency of this mighty question. More influential than
woman, though unacknowledged as such by the average legislator of
States and nations, even the insignificant lobster finds earnest
champions where woman's claims fail of recognition; which
assertion the following incident will substantiate: Being present
in the Representatives Hall in Augusta when the "lobster
question" came up for discussion (the suffrage question was then
struggling before the committee), I was struck by the air of
earnestness that pervaded the entire House on that memorable
occasion. And why not? It was a question that appealed directly
to man's appetite, and there he is always interested. After the
morning hour a dozen ready debators sprang to their feet,
eloquent in advocating the rights of this important member of the
crustacean family. The discussion waxed into something like
enthusiasm, when finally an old tar exclaimed with terrific
violence: "Mr. Speaker, I insist upon it, this question must be
considered. It is a great question; one before which all others
will sink into insignificance; one of vastly more importance than
any other that will come before this honorable body during this
session!"
DIRIGO.
In closing this chapter it is fitting to mention some of our
faithful friends in Maine, whose names have not appeared in
societies and conventions as leaders or speakers, but whose
services in other ways have been highly appreciated.
Rockland is the home of Lucy and Lavinia Snow, who, from the
organization of the first society in 1868, have never failed to
send good words of cheer and liberal contributions to all our
National conventions. Another branch of the worthy Snow family,
from the town of Hamlin, has given us equally generous coädjutors
in Mrs. Spofford and her noble sisters in Washington.
As early as 1857, Mrs. Anna Greeley and Miss Charlotte Hill of
Ellsworth constituted themselves a committee to inaugurate a course
of lyceum lectures in that town, taking the entire financial
responsibility. Miss Hill was an excellent violinist and taught a
large class of boys and girls, and also played at balls and
parties, thus gaining a livelihood. Some of her patrons threatened
that if she persisted in bringing such people[185] to that town and
affiliated with them, they would no longer patronize her. "Very
well" she replied, "I shall maintain my principles, and if you
break up my classes I can go back to the sea-shore and dig clams
for a living as I have done before." Tradition says the lecture
course was a success. She continued her classes and the neighbors
danced as ever to her music.
Gail Hamilton, who resides in Maine at least half her time, is one
of the most brilliant and pungent American writers. In denouncing
the follies and failures of her sex, her critical pen has
indirectly aided the suffrage movement by arousing thought upon all
phases of the question as to what are the rights and duties of
woman, though she stoutly maintains that she is opposed to woman's
enfranchisement.
In Portland there has always been a circle of noble men and women,
steadfast friends alike of the anti-slavery, temperance and woman
suffrage movements. The names of Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Dennett, Miss.
Charlotte A. Thomas and Mrs. Ellen French Foster are worthy of
mention. That untiring reformer, the Hon. Neal Dow, has clearly
seen and declared in the later years of his labors, that suffrage
for women is the short path to the advancement of prohibition.
The Hon. Thomas B. Reed has done us great service in congress as
leader of the Republican party in the House, and member of the
Judiciary Committee. His report,[186] in 1884, on the submission of
the sixteenth amendment has had an extended influence. It is an
able argument, and as a keen piece of irony it is worthy the pen of
a Dean Swift. In the Senate we have a fast friend in William P.
Frye, who has always voted favorably in both houses on all
questions regarding the interests of woman. In 1878, in presenting
Miss Willard's petition of 30,000 for woman's right to vote on the
temperance question, he made an able speech recommending the
measure.[187]
And in closing, the name of Maine's venerable statesman, Hannibal
Hamlin, so long honored by his State in a succession of official
positions from year to year, must not be forgotten. As chairman of
the Committee on the District of Columbia in 1870 he presided at
the first hearing of the National Woman Suffrage Association,
listened with respect and courtesy, and at the close introduced the
ladies to each member of the committee, and said "he had been
deeply impressed by the arguments, and was almost persuaded to
accept the new gospel of woman's equality." Mr. Hamlin's vote has
always been favorable and we have no words of his recorded in the
opposition.
Hon. James G. Blaine has generally maintained a dignified silence
on the question. Thus far in his History, a reviewer says, "he has
ignored the existence of woman"; but perhaps in his researches he
has not yet reached the garden of Eden, nor taken cognizance of the
part the daughters of Eve have played in the rise and fall of
mighty nations.
Nevertheless in our prolonged struggle of half a century for equal
rights for woman, we have found in every State the traditional ten
righteous men necessary to save its people from destruction.
FOOTNOTES:
[179] Signed: _President_, Benj. Kingsbury, Portland; _Secretary_,
E. R. French, S. Chesterville; _Treasurer_, William Deering
Portland; _ex officio_, Gov. Sidney Perham, Secretary of State Geo.
G. Stacy, Superintendent of Schools Warren Johnson; John B.
Nealley, S. Berwick; Nelson Dingley, jr., Lewiston; J. S.
Wheelright, Bangor; H. K. Baker, Hallowell; Mrs. C. A. L. Sampson,
Bath; Mrs. James Fernald, Portland.
[180] Ann F. Greely, Sarah Jarvis, C. B. Grant, E. E. Tinker, A. D.
Hight, M. J. Brooks, C. W. Jarvis, E. B. Jarvis, Rebecca M. Avery.
[181] Signed by John Neal, S. T. Pickard, Mrs. Oliver Dennet, Mrs.
Eleanor Neal, Portland; J. J. Eveleth, mayor, Joshua Nye, Chandler
Beal, William H. Libbey, George W. Quinby, William P. Whitehouse,
General Selden Conner. H. H. Hamlen, H. S. Osgood, Mrs. C. A.
Quinby, Mrs. W. K. Lancey, Mrs. D. M. Waitt, Mrs. William B.
Lapham, Mrs. S. M. Barton, Augusta; Mary A. Ross and fifty others;
Rev. W. L. Brown, Mrs. E. A. Dickerson, Mrs. W. H. Burrill, Mrs. N.
Abbott, Mrs. Thomas N. Marshall, Miss A. A. Hicks, Belfast; John D.
Hopkins, Rev. William H. Savary, C. J. Peck, mayor, A. E.
Drinkwater, Mrs. Ann F. Greely, Ellsworth; Mrs. A. H. Savary and
twenty others; Mrs. M. C. Crossman, Mrs. S. D. Morison, Mrs. J.
Tillson, Mrs. Sarah J. Prentiss, Mrs. Amos Pickard, Bangor; Miss M.
Phillips and twelve others; Rev. John W. Hinds, Lewiston; Rev. T.
P. Adams, Bowdoinham; A. H. Sweetser and twenty others, Rockland;
Rev. W. H. Bolster, Wiscasset; W. T. C. Runnels, Searsport; Rev. M.
V. B. Stinson, Kittery; John U. Hubbard, Alfred Winslow, West
Waterville; Mrs. M. S. Philbrick, Skowhegan; Mrs. Simeon Conner,
Fairfield; George Gifford, Mrs. Mary W. Southwick, H. M. N. Bush,
M. A. Bush, A. E. Prescott, Vassalboro; A. R. Dunham and fourteen
others; R. C. Caldwell and eight others, Gardiner; Albert Crosby,
Mrs. S. G. Crosby, Albion; Noah F. Norton, Mercy G. Norton,
Penobscot.
[182] _President_, Benjamin Kingsbury of Portland; _Secretary_,
Miss Addie Quimby of Augusta; _Treasurer_, Mrs. W. K. Lancey of
Augusta. Among the vice-presidents are the Hon. S. F. Hersey of
Bangor, and John Neal of Portland. An Executive Committee was
elected, which included John P. Whitehouse, Hon. Joshua Nye, Neal
Dow, jr., and other leading citizens.
[183] Miss Louisa Coffin, Dalton; Miss Annie Lincoln, Mapleton;
Miss Ada DeLaite, Littleton.
[184] The following officers were elected: _President_, Hon.
Benjamin Kingsbury of Portland; _Chairman Executive Committee_,
Hon. Joshua Nye; _Corresponding Secretary_, Mr. C. A. Quinby,
Augusta; _Recording Secretary_, Mrs. W. D. Eaton, Dexter;
_Treasurer_, Mrs. W. K. Lancey, Pittsfield.
[185] Those invited were Wendell Philips, Harriet K. Hunt, Caroline
H. Dall and Susan B. Anthony.
[186] Mr. Reed's report is published in full in our annual report,
of 1884, which can be obtained of Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, N.
Y.
[187] See page 104.
CHAPTER XXXV.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.
Nathaniel P. Rogers--First Organized Action, 1868--Concord
Convention--William Lloyd Garrison's Letter--Rev. S. L. Blake
Opposed--Rev. Mr. Sanborn in Favor--_Concord Monitor_--Armenia S.
White--A Bill to Protect the Rights of Married Men--Minority and
Majority Reports--Women too Ignorant to Vote--Republican State
Convention--Women on School Committees--Voting at School-District
Meetings--Mrs. White's Address--Mrs. Ricker on Prison
Reform--Judicial Decision in Regard to Married Women,
1882--Letter from Senator Blair.
A State that could boast four such remarkable families as the
Rogers, the Hutchinsons, the Fosters, and the Pillsburys, all
radical, outspoken reformers, furnishes abundant reason for its
prolonged battles with the natural conservatism of ordinary
communities. Every inch of its soil except its mountain tops, where
no man could raise a school-house for a meeting, has been overrun
by the apostles of peace, temperance, anti-slavery, and woman's
rights in succession.
To the early influence of Nathaniel P. Rogers and his revolutionary
journal, _The Herald of Freedom_, we may trace the general
awakening of the true men and women of that State to new ideas of
individual liberty. But while some gladly accepted his words as
harbingers of a new and better civilization, others resisted all
innovations of their time-honored customs and opinions. And when
the clarion voices of Foster and Pillsbury arraigned that State for
its compromises with slavery, howling mobs answered their arguments
with brickbats and curses; mobs that nothing could quell but the
sweet voices of the Hutchinson family. Their peans of liberty, so
readily accepted when set to music, were obstinately resisted when
uttered by others, though in most eloquent speech. Thus with music,
meetings and mobs, New Hampshire was at least awake and watching,
and when the distant echoes of woman's uprising reverberated
through her mountains she gave a ready response.
In 1868, simultaneously with other New England States, she felt the
time had come to organize for action on the question of suffrage
for women. A call for a convention was issued to be held in
Concord, December 22, 23, and signed by one hundred and twenty men
and women,[188] some of the most honored and influential classes of
all callings and professions. Nathaniel P. White, always ready to
aid genuine reformatory movements, was the first to sign the call.
As a member of the legislature he had helped to coin into law many
of the liberal ideas sown broadcast in the early days[189] by the
anti-slavery apostles. Galen Foster, a brother of Stephen, used his
influence also as a member of the legislature, to vindicate the
rights of women to civil and political equality. This first
convention was held in Eagle Hall, Concord, with large and
enthusiastic audiences. A long and interesting letter was read from
William Lloyd Garrison:
BOSTON, December 21, 1868.
DEAR MRS. WHITE: I must lose the gratification of being present
at the Woman Suffrage Convention at Concord and substitute an
epistolary testimony for a speech from the platform.
The two conventions recently held in furtherance of the movement
for universal and impartial suffrage--one in Boston, the other in
Providence--were eminently successful in respect to numbers,
intellectual ability, moral strength and unity of action; and
their proceedings such as to challenge attention and elicit
wide-spread commendation. I have no doubt that the convention in
Concord will exhibit the same features, be animated by the same
hopeful spirit and produce as cheering results.
The only criticism seemingly of a disparaging tone, I have seen,
of the speeches made at the conventions alluded to, is, that
there was nothing new advanced on the occasion; as though novelty
were the main thing, and the reiteration of time-honored truths,
with their latest application to the duties of the hour, were
simply tedious! For one, I ask no more light upon the subject;
nor am I so vain as to assume to be capable of throwing any
additional light upon it. One drop of water is very like another,
but it is the perpetual dropping that wears away the stone. The
importunate widow had nothing fresh or new to present to the
unjust judge, but by her persistent coming she wearied him into
compliance with her petition. The end of the constant assertion
of a right withheld is restitution and victory. The whole
anti-slavery controversy was expressed and included in the Golden
Rule, morally, and in the Declaration of Independence,
politically; nor could anything new be added to these by the
wisest, the most ingenious, or the most eloquent. "Line upon
line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little";
that is the essential method of reform. If there is nothing new
to be said in favor of suffrage for women, is there anything new
to be urged against it? But though the objections are exceedingly
trite and shallow, it is still necessary to examine and refute
them by arguments and illustrations none the less forcible
because exhausted at an earlier period.
[Illustration: Armenia S. White]
The first objection is positively one of the most urgent reasons
for granting suffrage to women; for it is predicated on the
concession of the superiority of woman over man in purity of
purpose and excellence of character. Hence the cry is, that it
will not only be descending, but degrading for her to appear at
the polls. But, if government is absolutely necessary, and voting
not wrong in practice, it is surely desirable that the admittedly
purest and best in the nation should find no obstacle to their
reaching the ballot-box. Nay, the way should be opened at once,
by every consideration pertaining to the public welfare, the
justice of legislation, the preservation of popular liberty. It
is impossible for a portion of the people, to be wiser and more
trustworthy than the whole people, or better qualified to decide
what shall be the laws for the government of all. The more minds
consulted, the more souls included, the more interests at stake,
in determining the form and administration of government, the
more of justice and humanity, of security and repose, will be the
result. The exclusion of half the population from the polls, is
not merely a gross injustice, but an immense loss of brain and
conscience, in making up the public judgment. As a nation we have
discarded absolutism, monarchy, and hereditary aristocracy; but
we have not fully attained even to manhood suffrage. Men are
proscribed on account of their complexion, women because of their
sex. The entire body politic suffers from this proscription.
The second objection refutes the first; it is based on the
alleged natural inferiority of woman to man, and the transition
is thus quickly made for her, from a semi-angelic state, to that
of a menial, having no rights that men are bound to respect
beyond what they choose to allow. In the scale of political
power, therefore, one male voter, however ignorant or depraved,
outweighs all the women in America! For, no matter how
intelligent, cultured, refined, wealthy, intellectually vigorous,
or morally great, any of their number may be,--no matter what
rank in literature, art, science, or medical knowledge and skill
they may reach,--they are political non-entities, unrepresented,
discarded, and left to such protection under the laws, as brute
force and absolute usurpation may graciously condescend to give.
Yet they are as freely taxed and held amendable to penal law as
strictly as though they had their full share of representation in
the legislative hall, on the bench, in the jury-box, and at the
polls. This cry of inferiority is not peculiar in the case of
woman. It was the subterfuge and defiance of negro slavery. It
has been raised in all ages by tyrants and usurpers against the
toiling, over-burdened millions, seeking redress for their
wrongs, and protection for their rights. It always indicates
intense self-conceit, and supreme selfishness. It is at war with
reason and common-sense, and is a bold denial of the oneness of
the human race.
The third objection is, that women do not wish to vote. If this
were true, it would not follow that they should not be
enfranchised, and left free to determine the matter for
themselves. It was confidently declared that the slaves at the
south neither wished to be free, nor would they take their
liberty if offered them by their masters. Had that assertion been
true, it would have furnished no justification whatever, for
making man the property of his fellow-man, or for leaving the
slaves in their fetters. But it was not true. Nor is it true that
women do not wish to vote. Tens of thousands are ready to go to
the polls and assume their share of political responsibility, as
soon as they shall be legally permitted to do so; and they are
not the ignorant and degraded of their sex, but women remarkable
for their intelligence and moral worth. The great mass will, ere
long, be sufficiently enlightened to claim what belongs to them
of right. I hope to be permitted to live to see the day when
neither complexion nor sex shall be made a badge of degradation,
but men and women shall enjoy the same rights and privileges, and
possess the same means for their protection and defense.
Very faithfully yours, WM. LLOYD GARRISON.
Mrs. A. S. WHITE.
At the close of this convention a State association was formed with
Mrs. Armenia S. White president.[190] This society has been
unremitting in its efforts to rouse popular thought, holding annual
conventions, scattering tracts, rolling up petitions, and
addressing legislatures. Many of the best speakers, from time to
time, from other States[191] have rendered valuable aid in keeping
up the agitation.
The opposition of a clergyman produced a sensation in Concord.
On last fast-day, 1871, Rev. S.L. Blake of the Congregational
church in Concord, preached a sermon in which he came out against
the woman's rights convention held there last January, bringing
the stale charge of "free-love" against its advocates--a charge
that always leaps to the lips of men of prurient
imagination--with much similar clap-trap of the Fulton type. Rev.
Mr. Sanborn of the Universalist church replied to him the next
Sunday evening, an immense audience being in attendance, and
completely disproved the baseless allegations of the reverend
maligner, to the satisfaction of all. Rev. Mr. Blake has
published his discourse in pamphlet form, repeating his disproved
charges, whereupon Rev. J.F. Lovering of the Unitarian church
came out with a reply, in which he characterized Mr. Blake's
charges as "unmitigated falsehoods" and "an insult to every
member of the convention," and demanded of the author to "unsay
his words."
Brainard Cogswell, in his journal, the _Concord Monitor_, of July
2, 1870, published the following letter:
Petitions for woman's enfranchisement have been pouring into the
New Hampshire legislature, until at last they have been referred
to a special committee. On Thursday week this committee gave the
petitioners a hearing; and on their invitation, Mrs. Julia Ward
Howe, Mrs. Elizabeth K. Churchill and ourself went to Concord to
give "the reasons why" women should have the ballot. The members
of the legislature came out in force to hear, and our good, tried
friends, Nathaniel and Armenia White, learning their intention in
advance, opened the spacious Eagle Hall for their convenience,
and that of the towns-people who wished to see and to hear. Warm
as the evening was, the thermometer up in the nineties, the hall
was packed, and great numbers went away that could not gain
admittance. Rev. Mr. Blake, a Congregationalist minister of
Concord, has done the cause good service by vilifying and abusing
it, until he roused quite an interest. It was partly owing to his
efforts that we had so grand an audience.
General Wilson, who twenty years ago was famed throughout New
Hampshire for his eloquence and oratory, was chairman of the
committee, and presided at the meeting, and very handsomely
introduced the speakers. Mrs. Howe spoke with more pointed and
pungent power than usual, dwelling on the deterioration of
American womanhood, showing the cause, and suggesting the remedy.
We have never been so impressed by her as on this occasion. Mrs.
Churchill read a letter from Rev. Mr. Savage, a Congregationalist
clergyman of the State, who advocates woman suffrage, and who, in
a late ministerial gathering, took up the gauntlet thrown down by
Mr. Blake, and defended the woman's cause and its advocates from
the slanders of his brother minister.
The president of the New Hampshire association, in writing from
Concord to the _Woman's Journal_, January 30, 1871, says:
Our second annual meeting was a grand success, if we count by
money and numbers. The intense cold on Wednesday and Thursday
made our audiences thinner than heretofore, but they were large
in spite of the elements, Mrs. Churchill and Mrs. Emma Coe Still,
who had never presented the subject here before, were well
received. Rev. Dr. Savage of Franklin made an excellent address,
and encouraged us by timely suggestions. Stephen S. Foster
aroused us, as he always does, with his bold declarations. The
resolutions adopted look toward future work, and embody the
principles which move us to act.
Lucy Stone, in the _Woman's Journal_ of June 14, 1871, says:
The Select Committee, Harry Bingham, chairman, to whom was
referred a bill for the further protection of the rights of
married men, reported the bill in a new draft as follows:
Marriages shall not hereafter render the husband liable for
the debts contracted by his wife prior to their marriage:
_Second section_--No marriage shall hereafter discharge the
wife from liability to pay the debts contracted by her
before such marriage, but she, and all property which she
may hold in her own right, shall be held liable for the
payment of all debts, whether contracted before or after
marriage; in the same manner as if she continued sole and
unmarried.
This report was signed by eight of the ten members of the
committee. The minority, through Mr. Sprague of Swanzey, made a
report recommending that the whole subject be postponed to the
time when women in New Hampshire have the right to vote. Mr.
Sprague moved that the minority report be substituted for the
majority, but the motion was lost by an almost unanimous vote.
The majority report was sustained in remarks by Messrs. Wadleigh
of Milford and Cogswell of Gilman. The latter, hard pushed by an
interrogatory concerning his social status, admitted that he was
not married, but intended to be soon. The bill reported by the
majority was then ordered to a second reading.
If this action should be sustained by the legislature, we can
imagine some future suitor for a lady's hand telling her that he
shall expect her duly to keep his house and his wardrobe in
order, to prepare his meals, to entertain his visitors, to bear
his children, and that she will be required by law to pay her own
bills; that for this inestimable privilege she shall be called
Mrs. John Snooks, and may, perhaps, have the honor of being
written in the newspapers, and on her tombstone, as the relic of
Mr. John Snooks. Could any woman withstand that?
The following statistics have been used by speakers in the
opposition, to show that women are too ignorant to vote:
A decided sensation has been produced throughout the country by
the publication in the third number of the "Transactions of the
American Social Science Association" of statistics concerning the
illiteracy of women in the United States. The subject has
received very general discussion, and these are the conclusions
reached:
1. That there is a large excess of female illiteracy. 2.
That from 1850 to 1860 there was an increase of illiterate
women to the extent of 53 per cent. in New Hampshire, 27 in
Vermont, 24 in Massachusetts, 33 in Rhode Island, 16 in
Connecticut, 37 in the District of Columbia, 33 in
Wisconsin and 32 in Minnesota. 3. That this state of things
is alarming, and ought to be remedied.
When the London _Saturday Review_ raised the cry of alcoholic
drunkenness among women, the conservative journals all over the
world swelled the sound and confirmed the charges. Now that that
story has run itself to death, a new assault is projected, and a
general clamor concerning their illiteracy follows. If the
charges are true, there is nothing very astonishing about them.
The education of women has been considered a matter of secondary
importance until very recently, and with our foreign population
the education of girls has been almost wholly neglected. When the
customs and usages of the world have made ignorance largely
compulsory in women, it is somewhat inconsistent in men to go
into spasms about the results.
January 17, 1874, at the Republican State convention, Mayor Briggs
of Manchester, on taking the chair, made a speech, rehearsing the
history of the party and laying out its programme for the future,
closing as follows:
The Republican party has future duties. Its mission cannot end
and its work should not, so long as any radical reform shall yet
urge its demands in behalf of humanity. The civil service reform
is eminent and important. In this regard the movement of the
present administration is in the right direction, and yet it is
only a first step of many which must ultimately be taken. To the
people, not to a part of the people, belongs the sovereignty of
this nation. Let them keep it. To this end great care should be
taken to guard against the caucus system. Nothing should be more
scrupulously avoided in the management of political parties.
Anti-republican in spirit, it is sometimes exclusive in practice.
The people have the same right to nominate that they have to
elect their own officers. Why not? Ultimately, too, they will
take that right, and for its own sake no party can afford to make
itself the nursery of caucus power. The political machinery
should be simplified, that nothing which mere politicians can
desire shall stand between the people and their government. In a
genuine republic, every act of the government should be but a
practical expression of its subjects. All the subjects, too,
should share equally the power of such expression. There should
be no exclusion among intelligent, qualified classes. Involved in
this principle is the idea of woman suffrage, the next great
moral issue, in my judgment, which this country must meet, and a
reform which no party can afford to despise. Indubitably right,
as I believe it to be, I regard its success as inevitable, and
that whatever party opposes it is as surely destined to defeat,
as was the party which arrayed itself in opposition to the
anti-slavery cause.
The following letter in the _Woman's Journal_ shows that something
of the spirit of the Connecticut Smith-sisters has been found in
New Hampshire:
I have long felt a deep interest in the subject of woman's
rights, and some fifteen years ago I resisted taxation two
successive years. The second year I worked out my highway tax,
for which crime I brought down upon my guilty head a severe
persecution from both men and women, from clergymen and lawyers,
as well as other classes of my fellow townsmen. The
tax-collectors came into my house and attached furniture and sold
it at auction in order to collect my tax, one of whom made me all
the cost the laws would allow. The most incensed town officers
threatened that if I resisted taxation the next year, they would
take my house from me and sell it at auction. One of the
tax-gatherers asked me what I thought I could do alone in
resisting taxation. He said he did not believe there was another
woman in the State of New Hampshire who possessed the hardihood
to take such a stand against the laws. The editor of one of our
weekly journals, who professed to be an advocate of woman's
rights, and who was a candidate for representative in the State
legislature, condemned me through the columns of his paper, in
order to secure the votes of his fellow townsmen who were opposed
to woman's rights. He had nothing to fear from me, knowing that I
was only a disfranchised slave. Such unjust treatment seemed so
cruel that I sometimes felt I could willingly lay down my life,
if it would deliver my sex from such degrading oppression. I
have, every year since, submissively paid my taxes, humbly hoping
and praying that I may live to see the day that women will not be
compelled to pay taxes without representation.
MARY L. HARRINGTON.
_Claremont, N. H., January 17, 1874._
In 1870 a law was passed allowing women to be members of school
committees; and eight years later a law was enacted permitting
women to vote at school meetings. On the evening of August 7, 1878,
the House Special Committee granted a hearing to the friends[192]
of the School-suffrage bill, which had already passed the Senate by
a unanimous vote; and the next day, when the bill came up for final
action in the House, the following debate occurred:
Mr. BATCHELDER of Littleton said: This bill is one of the
greatest importance, and before we vote upon it let us have the
views of the committee.
Mr. GALEN FOSTER of Canterbury called upon Mr. Blodgett to give
his opinion as to the power of the legislature upon the question.
Mr. BLODGETT of Franklin said he had no doubt of the
constitutionality of the bill. School districts were created by
statute and not by the constitution; hence the legislature had a
perfect right to say who should vote in controlling their
affairs.
Mr. FOSTER said: The mothers of our children should have a voice
in their education. We have allowed women to hold certain offices
in connection with schools, but we have never given them a voice
in the control of the money expended upon them. The mothers take
ten times more interest in the education of the young than the
fathers do, and should have an equal voice in the affairs of the
school districts. This is a matter of right and justice.
Mr. SINCLAIR of Bethlehem said: There ought not to be any
objection to this bill. If there is any class that ought to have
a voice in the education of children, it is the mothers.
[Applause.] Some of the best school committees in the State are
women. If they can be elected to that office, is it proper to say
they shall have no voice in the elections?
Mr. WHICHER of Strafford thought they would get a little mixed in
carrying out the provisions of this bill, in the face of the
statutes relating to school-district meetings. He would move to
indefinitely postpone the bill.
Mr. MOSHER of Dover said: There ought to be a new motion gotten
up; to "indefinitely postpone" is getting to be stereotyped. This
bill needs no further championing. Its justice is apparent.
Mr. HOBBS of Ossippee said: If women are capable of holding
office they are also capable of saying who shall hold it.
[Applause.]
Mr. PATTEN of Manchester favored the bill and hoped the motion of
Mr. Whicher would be voted down.
The SPEAKER [Mr. WOOLSON of Lisbon] said: The bill had passed the
Senate unanimously, been reported unanimously by the committee,
and he hoped it would be passed promptly by the House.
[Applause.]
Mr. PATTERSON of Hanover said he would congratulate the gentleman
from Bethlehem on being orthodox on this question.
Mr. SINCLAIR congratulated his friend from Hanover on his display
of courage in waiting until the ice was broken all round before
making a forward step.
Mr. Whicher withdrew his motion to postpone and then moved to lay
the bill upon the table. This being lost, the bill was passed,
August 8, 1878. Mrs. White, the president of the State association,
in a letter to a friend, wrote as follows:
To our surprise and delight the bill allowing women to vote at
school-district meetings passed the House yesterday amid much
cheering and clapping of hands, the ladies in the gallery joining
in the demonstration. Thus conservative New Hampshire leads New
England in this branch of reform for women.
The governor, B. F. Prescott, signed the bill without delay and
words of cheer poured into the capital city from all quarters;
especially were Mr. and Mrs. White congratulated upon this good
result of their earnest and persistent labors. The following is
from the _Woman's Journal_:
At the first election at the State capital of New Hampshire under
the new law allowing women to vote on school questions, the
result was a wonderfully full vote, not less than 2,160 ballots
being cast, of which over half were deposited by women. The
Boston _Investigator_, from which we gather these facts, says:
The balloting extended over three meetings and the number of
women who participated was almost exactly doubled on the
second and third evenings--150, 299, 662. Another
interesting feature of this election was the fact that the
sexes did not rally to the support of opposing tickets, but
men and women divided their votes very evenly. A ticket
bearing the names of two men was elected by a narrow
majority over another which bore the names of a man and
woman.
Of the first evening's election the telegraphic dispatch to the
_Boston Globe_ was headed, "Crowds of Women Voting in New
Hampshire":
CONCORD, N. H., March 22.--The occasion of the annual
meeting of the Union-school district of this city, which
comprises all of the city proper, this evening, was one of
unprecedented interest. For months school matters have been
sharply agitated and the election has been looked forward to
as an opportunity by all parties. To the uncommon interest
centered in the matter the right of women to vote at school
meetings, delegated by the last session of the legislature,
greatly added. The new condition of affairs had been fully
canvassed and the women had determined on making the best of
their first opportunity and winning a decisive victory if
possible. The night of the meeting proved inauspicious, but
notwithstanding the severe storm of snow and sleet that was
falling the newly constituted citizens were out in force. At
the hour of opening the meeting the City Hall was packed to
suffocation, 500 of the audience, at least, being ladies.
The first business was the choice of a moderator, and in
this the ladies may claim a victory, as the candidate a
majority of them supported was elected in the person of
ex-mayor John Kimball. After this came the reading of the
report of the board of education, which was strenuously
objected to by the male supporters of the ladies. In this
they were beaten by a large majority. The reading completed,
the meeting commenced to ballot for three members of the
board. The scene then became one beyond the power of the
reportorial pen to describe. It was an old-fashioned New
Hampshire town-meeting, with the concomitant boisterousness
and profanity subdued by the presence of the ladies. A line
was formed to the polls and a struggling mass of humanity in
which male and female citizens were incongruously and
indecorously mixed, surged towards the ballot-box. The
crowding, squeezing and pushing were severe enough for the
taste of the masculine voter, and were harsh enough to make
it extremely unpleasant for the dear creatures who were
undergoing so much to cast their maiden vote. To add to the
delay the Hon. Nathaniel White had planted his somewhat
corpulent form directly in front of the ballot-box and
stayed the surging tide to shake hands with every woman that
voted. Having voted, the men were only too glad to leave the
crowded hall and let the anxious crowd rush in. The vote was
at last all in, and the work of counting completed shortly
before 11 o'clock. It was found that there were some ten
different tickets in the field, and forty-two candidates
voted for; but from this mass of votes there was no choice,
though the regular candidates, the outgoing members of the
board, who would have been elected had it not been for the
new element in the election, were ahead, having a plurality.
The meeting was then adjourned till next Saturday evening,
when the scenes of to-night will be intensified by a larger
attendance and still greater interest. The meeting to-night
obtains importance in New Hampshire, as this is the center
of female suffrage sentiment in this State, and the women
are determined to win here if possible.
In the opening convention of November 5, 1879, Mrs. White, the
president, made the following address:
_Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends of the N. H. Woman Suffrage
Association_: We hold the seventh meeting of this association
under circumstances that mark an epoch in the progress of equal
rights, irrespective of sex, in this State. After more than a
decade of agitation, and petitioning of our legislature, women
hold in their hand the ballot on one important matter. Let us
exchange congratulations on this occasion, that so much has been
gained toward the final triumph of our cause.
You will remember when this association was last in session,
July, 1878, that the bill giving the women of New Hampshire the
right to vote on the public-school questions, was pending in our
legislature. At our first hearing before that body, we hardly
dared anticipate the passage of the bill during that session. But
agitation, vigilance and perseverance ever bring their sure
reward in the end, therefore we continued to press our claim, and
soon learned to our great satisfaction that our allies in behalf
of this bill, were the very _cream_ of our legislature. We at
once took courage, and as day after day we went up to the
state-house, with friends who plead for it before the committee,
who kindly gave us several hearings; we saw the gradual growth of
interest in behalf of this bill soon ripen into a final decision
causing it to pass; thereby enacting a law, to which our worthy
governor, B. F. Prescott, immediately gave his willing signature,
securing to the women of this State the high privilege many of
them gladly exercised last spring. Many feared this law would be
repealed; but to show with what favor it has been received, we
have only to refer to the legislature of the present year, which
passed an additional law, giving to women not only the right to
vote for and serve on school boards, but also the power to serve
as moderator or clerk in school meetings, for which the former
law did not provide. This, it would seem must remove all fears of
a repeal.
Petitions asking municipal suffrage for women, were sent to our
last legislature, and a bill to that effect, introduced in the
House, was referred to a special committee, who reported in its
favor: and after more or less discussion, although the bill did
not pass, about one hundred members voted for it, and their names
are registered, and with the committee, will be kindly remembered
by those women whose cause they did not desert. From past
experience we see the importance of continued labor and proper
measures for the accomplishment of our work. The present degree
of progress indicates the fact that we are not to obtain the full
recognition of our rights at one bound, but that they are coming
step by step. To note the growth of our principles in the various
reform movements, let us look at the temperance organizations
throughout the length and breadth of this country; we find nearly
all of them now discussing the ballot for women. Why, no sooner
had Massachusetts, following the example of New Hampshire,
obtained the school ballot for women, than the Woman's Christian
Temperance Unions all over the State were a unit for the
temperance ballot, and the past year have had their agents
canvassing the State in the interest of school suffrage and "home
protection."
All who read the reports last winter of Frances E. Willard's
labors in Illinois in behalf of her Home Protection bill (for it
originated with her), of the list of petitioners of both sexes
she secured and took to Springfield, of the delegation of women
who accompanied her there to advocate her bill, must acknowledge
the educating force of all such untiring devotion for the right
to vote. Although she was not victorious, she was successful
beyond all expectation, for it is said, "Success is not always a
victory, nor is victory always a success in the end." Let me say
here, Miss Willard believes in the entire enfranchisement of her
sex, but in her earnest and faithful labors makes a specialty of
the temperance ballot.
At the annual meeting of the New Hampshire Woman's Christian
Temperance Union, held here one year ago, a resolution was
offered by a most worthy lady, indorsing suffrage for women on
all temperance questions. It was at once vigorously opposed by
some, while others, although believing in it, feared it would
divide their ranks if it passed, and felt too timid to give it
their support. The lady offering it, seeing it would be defeated,
withdrew it, at the same time giving notice that she should
present the same, or one similar, to that body every year as long
as she lived, or until it passed. Last month the same
organization held its annual meeting in Portsmouth, and that
lady, as good as her word, was there with her resolution on
temperance suffrage, and it passed unanimously, about 100
delegates being present and voting, many of whom acknowledged the
timidity they felt last year, but now earnestly gave it their
support. Such experiences give us some idea of the different
instrumentalities by which our cause is forced upon conservative
minds for consideration, ending in honest conviction.
In closing, I know you will all unite with me in tributes to Mr.
Garrison. Now that he has gone to join that innumerable host of
philanthropists in the higher life, let us rejoice that he was
one of the leaders of that reform which brings us here to-day.
And now, friends, in view of the present status of our cause,
have we not much to encourage us in our work? May we go forward
in that spirit of good-will that shall bring us a speedy victory.
Resolutions of respect to the memory of Mrs. Abby P. Ela, William
Lloyd Garrison and Angelina Grimké Weld were adopted by a rising
vote.
In the _National Citizen_ of December 14, 1879, we find the
following:
Marilla M. Ricker of New Hampshire had an executive hearing
before the governor and council of that State, November 18, in
regard to the management of the State prison. Mrs. Ricker, who in
winter practices law in Washington, and is known as "the
prisoner's friend," referred to the cruel treatment of convicts
in various States, notably in New Hampshire, where prisoners are
not permitted to read the magazines or the weekly newspapers
which contain no record of crime, nor to receive words from their
friends, as in other States they are allowed at stated times to
do. When Mrs. Ricker desired to see a certain prisoner and let
him know he had friends who were yet mindful of his comfort, the
warden replied that he did not wish that man "to think he had a
friend in the world." Mrs. Ricker warmly protested against such
brutality. The attorney-general agreed with Mrs. Ricker,
remarking that the line between crimes punished and those not
punished, and the lines between those in prison and those
outside who ought to be there, were so dim and shadowy that great
care should be exercised in order to secure just and humane
treatment for prisoners. Mrs. Ricker's remarks were earnest and
dignified, and were listened to with the closest attention by the
governor and his official advisers. At the close of the hearing
the governor referred the subject to the special prison committee
of the council, directing its members to procure all possible
information as to the management of penitentiaries in other
States, and report at the next meeting. Through Mrs. Ricker's
influence the last legislature passed an act providing that any
convict may send sealed letters to the governor or council
without their being read by the warden.
In 1882 a judicial decision in New Hampshire recognized the advance
legislation of that State in regard to the position of married
women. This decision shows that they are no longer under the shadow
of the old common law, but now hold equal dignity and power as
individuals and joint heads in family life. The "divinely ordained
head," with absolute control in the home, to rule according to his
will and pleasure, is at last ruled out of the courts altogether,
as the following case illustrates:
Mrs. Harris and her husband sued Mrs. Webster and her husband for
slanders uttered by Mrs. Webster against Mrs. Harris. The suit
was brought on the old theory that the legal personality of the
wife is merged in that of her husband; that she is under his
control, his chattel, his ox, and therefore he is responsible for
her trespasses as for those of his other domestic cattle. The
Court held that the wife is no longer an "ox" or "chattel," but a
person responsible for her acts, and that her innocent husband
could not be held responsible for her wrong. In rendering the
decision in this case, Judge Foster further said: "It is no
longer possible to say that in New Hampshire a married woman is a
household slave or a chattel, or that in New Hampshire the
conjugal unity is represented solely by the husband. By custom
and by statute the wife is now joint master of the household, and
not a slave or a servant. The rule now is that her legal
existence is not suspended. So practically has the ancient unity
become dissevered and dissolved that the wife may not only have
her separate property, contracts, debts, wages, and causes of
separate action growing out of a violation of her personal
rights, but she may enter into legal contract with her husband
and enforce it by suit against him."
The writer of the following letter is a successful farmer,
remarkable for her executive ability in all the practical affairs
of life, as well as for her broad philanthropy. One year she sent,
as a contribution to our Washington convention, a tub of butter
holding about sixty pounds, which was sold on the platform and the
proceeds put into the treasury of the National Association:
_Dear Friends assembled in the Washington Convention:_
Last week our new town-house was dedicated. The women accompanied
their husbands. One man spoke in favor of woman suffrage--said it
was "surely coming." In this town, at the Corners, for several
years they tried to get a graded school, but the men voted it
down. After the women had the school-suffrage, one lady, who had
a large family and did not wish to send her children away from
home, rallied all the women of the Corners, carried the vote, and
they now have a good graded school. Our village is moving down,
that the boys and girls may have the benefit of the good school
there. I think the women who have been indifferent and not
availed themselves of their small voting privilege, by which we
might have established the same class of school in our village,
will now regret their negligence, at least every time they have
to send three miles for a doctor. Thus, stupid people, blind to
their own interest, punish themselves. I regret not being able to
send a fuller report of the good that woman's use of the ballot,
in a limited form, has done for us in this State. The voting in
the town-hall is the "infant school" for women in the use of the
ballot. Thanking the ladies all for meeting at the capital of the
nation, and regretting not to be counted among the number, I am,
Yours sincerely, MARY A. P. FILLEY.
_North Haverill, January 5, 1884._
In closing this chapter some mention should be made of the
invaluable services of Senator Blair,[193] who, in his place, has
always nobly defended the rights of women. He was a member of the
first special committee ever appointed to look after the interests
of women in the United States Senate. The leaders of the movement
in that State claim that they helped to place Senator Blair in his
present position by defeating his predecessor, Mr. Wadleigh, who
was hostile to the enfranchisement of women.
UNITED STATES SENATE, WASHINGTON, D. C., March 5, 1884.
MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY: I had the honor duly to receive your
invitation to address the National Association during its
sessions in this city, for which I heartily thank you; but the
pressure of duties in the Senate, service upon committees being
just now specially exacting, makes it impossible for me to
accept.
I trust that I need not assure you of my full belief that woman
has the right and ought to have the privilege to vote. Whenever a
fundamental right exists both public and individual welfare are
promoted by its exercise and injured by its suppression. The
exercise of rights is only another name for the discharge of
duties, and the denial of the suffrage to an adult human being,
not deprived of it for mental or penal disability, is an
intolerable wrong. Such denial is not only a deprivation of right
to the individual, but it is an injury to the State, which is
only well governed when controlled by the conflicting opinions,
sentiments and interests of the whole, harmonized in the
ballot-box, and, by its fiat, elevated to the functions of law.
But you have no occasion for expression of theoretical views from
me.
If I may be pardoned a suggestion, it would be the specification
to the public mind of the practical uses and benefits which would
result from the exercise of the suffrage by women. Men are not
conscious that women lack the practical protection of the laws or
the comforts and conveniences of material and social relations
more than themselves. The possession of the ballot as a practical
means of securing happiness does not appear to the masses to be
necessary to women in our country. Men say: "We do the best we
can for our wives and children and relatives. They are as well
off as we." In a certain sense this appears to be true. The other
and higher truth is that woman suffrage is necessary in order
that society may advance. The natural conservatism of an existing
order of things will not give way to a new factor in the control
of affairs, until it has been shown in what way enlightened
selfishness may hope for good to society if the change be made.
Here it seems to me that the convention may now strike a blow
more powerful than for many years. Society has not so labored
with the great problems which concern its own salvation for
generations.
What would woman do with the ballot if she had it? What for
education? What for sobriety? What for social purity? What for
equalizing the conditions and the rewards of labor--the labor of
her own sex first--and towards a just division of production
among all members of the community? What for the removal, or for
the amelioration when removal is impossible, of hunger, cold,
disease and degradation, from the daily lives of human beings?
What could and what _would_ woman do with the ballot which is not
now as well done by man alone, to improve the conditions which
envelope individual existence as with bands of iron? What good
things--state them _seriatim_, as the lawyers say--could woman do
in New Hampshire and in New York city, and ultimately among the
savage tribes of the earth, which she cannot do as well without
as with the suffrage? Would woman by her suffrage even _help_ to
remove illiteracy from Louisiana, intemperance from New England,
and stop society from committing murder by the tenement-house
abuses of New York? Let the convention specify what practical
good woman will try to achieve with her God-given rights,
provided that men will permit her to enjoy them. Show us wherein
you will do _us_ good if we will rob you no longer. It might
influence us greatly. Why should we do right for nothing? In
fact, unless you show that the exercise of your alleged right
will be useful, can you logically conclude that you have any? We
must have proof that the experiment will not fail before we will
even try it. You must connect the ballot with progress and reform
and convince men that they, as well as women, will be better off
for its possession by the whole of the adult community rather
than only by a part. Theories may be true, but they are seldom
reduced to practice by society unless it can be clearly seen that
their adoption will heal some hurt or introduce some broad and
general good.
The increasing discussion of industrial, educational, sanitary,
and social questions generally, indicates the domain of argument
and effort where victories for the advocates of enlarged suffrage
are most likely, and I think are sure to be won. Woman should
study specially what is called, for the want of a better term,
the labor problem--a problem which includes in its scope almost
everything important to everybody. I know this is an unnecessary
suggestion, for it is just what you are doing. I only write it
because repetition of the important is better than to recite
platitudes or even to quote the declaration. I believe in your
success because I believe in justice and in the advancement of
mankind.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant, HENRY W. BLAIR.
FOOTNOTES:
[188] _Concord_, Nathaniel P. White, Mrs. Sarah Pillsbury, Rev. J.
F. Lovering, P. B. Cogswell, Mrs. Eliza Morrill, Mrs. Louisa W.
Wood, Col. James E. Larkin, Mrs. J. F. Lovering, Charles S. Piper,
Mrs. Armenia S. White, Mrs. M. M. Smith, Mrs. F. E. Kittredge, Mrs.
Sarah Piper, Mrs. Ira Abbott, Mrs. L. M. Bust, Dr. A. Morrill, Mrs.
P. Ladd, Mrs. R. A. Smith, George W. Brown, Mr. and Mrs. J. V.
Aldrich, Mr. and Mrs. M. B. Smith, Mrs. T. H. Brown, Mrs. R. Hatch,
Mrs. J. L. Crawford, Mrs. Anna Dumas, Miss Harriet C. Edmunds, Miss
Salina Stevens, Miss Mary A. Denning, Miss N. E. Fessender, Miss M.
L. Noyes, Miss Clara Noyes, James H. Chase, Peter Sanborn;
_Lancaster_, Rev. J. M. L. Babcock; _Rochester_, Mrs. Abby P. Ela;
_Bradford_, Mrs. L. A. T. Lane, Miss M. J. Tappan; _Laconia_, Rev.
J. L. Gorman, William M. Blair; _Manchester_, Dr. M. O. A. Hunt;
_Plymouth_, Hon. D. R. Burnham; _Portsmouth_, Hon. A. W. Haven;
_Canterbury_, Mr. and Mrs. D. M. Clough; _Lebanon_, A. M. Shaw;
_Keene_, Col. and Mrs. Wilson; _Grafton_, Mr. and Mrs. Peter
Kimball; _Northfield_, Mrs. D. E. Hill; _Franklin_, Rev. Wm. T.
Savage; _Canaan_, William W. George; _Littleton_, R. D. Runneville.
[189] They had their influence in the church as well as the State,
as the following item in _The Revolution_, July 16, 1868, shows:
"The New Hampshire convention of Universalists, at their late
anniversary, adopted unanimously a resolution in favor of woman's
elevation to entire equality with man in every civil, political and
religious right."
[190] _President_, Mrs. Armenia S. White. _Vice-Presidents_, Rev.
J.F. Lovering, Concord; Mrs. A.L. Thomas, Laconia; Ossian Ray,
Lancaster; Mrs. S. Pillsbury, Concord; J.V. Aldrich, West Concord;
Mrs. Mary Worcester, Nashua; Mrs. Mary Barker, Alton; Peter
Kimball, Grafton; E.J. Durant, Lebanon; Mrs. Fannie V. Roberts,
Dover; Miss A.C. Payson, Peterboro; Mrs. E.A. Bartlett, Kingston;
Mr. Springfield, South Wolfboro; Galen Foster, Canterbury; Mrs.
R.M. Miller, Manchester; Mrs. Nancy Gilman, Tilton; C. Ballou,
North Weare; D. Burnham, Plymouth. _Executive Committee_, Nathaniel
White, Mrs. E.C. Lovering, Col. J.E. Larkin, Concord; Mrs. J. Abby
Ela, Rochester; Rev. Wm. T. Savage, Franklin; Mrs. Eliza Morrill,
Mrs. Daniel Holden, West Concord; Miss Caroline Foster, Canterbury;
P.B. Cogswell, Mrs. Louisa Wood, Mrs. M.M. Smith, Concord; Dr.
M.V.A. Hunt, Manchester. _Recording Secretary_, Mrs. E.C. Lovering,
Concord. _Corresponding Secretary_, Dr. J. Gallinger. _Treasurer_,
Jas. H. Chase.
[191] Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, Frederick Hinckley, Lucy Stone, Frances Ellen Harper,
Dr. Sarah H. Hathaway, Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford, Rev. Mr. Connor,
Rev. Ada C. Bowles, Emma Coe Still, Rev. Lorenza Haynes, Mary Grew,
Mary A. Livermore, Elizabeth K. Churchill, Margaret W. Campbell,
Anna Dickinson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Rev.
Olympia Brown, Lillie Devereux Blake, Elizabeth A. Meriwether,
Elizabeth Lisle Saxon, Susan B. Anthony.
[192] The speakers at this hearing were Mr. Galen Foster of
Canterbury, Senators Gallinger and Shaw, Mrs. Abby Goold Woolson,
H. P. Rolfe, S. B. Page, Rev. E. L. Conger and Mrs. Armenia S.
White.
[193] Reëlected to the Senate, June, 1885.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
VERMONT.
Clarina Howard Nichols--Council of Censors--Amending the
Constitution--St. Andrew's Letter--Mr. Reed's Report--Convention
Called--H. B. Blackwell on the _Vermont Watchman_--Mary A.
Livermore in the _Woman's Journal_--Sarah A. Gibbs' Reply to Rev.
Mr. Holmes--School Suffrage.
After the miseries growing out of the civil war were in a measure
mitigated, there was a general awakening in the New England States
on the question of suffrage for women, and in 1868 one after
another organized for action. What Nathaniel P. Rogers was to New
Hampshire in the anti-slavery struggle that was Clarina Howard
Nichols[194] to Vermont in early calling attention to the unjust
laws for woman. From 1843 to 1853 she edited the _Windham County
Democrat_, in which she wrote a series of editorials on the
property rights of women, and from year to year made her appeals in
person to successive legislatures. Her patient labors for many
years prepared the way for the organized action of 1868. The women
of that State can never too highly appreciate all that it cost that
noble woman to stand alone, as she did, through such bitter
persecutions, vindicating for them the great principles of
republican government.
And now, after a quarter of a century, instead of that one solitary
voice in the district school-house and the State capitol, are heard
in all Vermont's towns and cities, echoing through her valleys and
mountains, the clarion voices of a whole band of distinguished men
and women from all the Eastern States. The revival of the woman
question in Vermont began with propositions to amend the
constitution. We are indebted to a series of letters, written by a
citizen of Burlington, signed "St. Andrew," for many of the
interesting incidents and substantial facts as to the initiative
steps taken in this campaign. He said:
The only way of amending the constitution is for the people
(meaning the male voters) to elect, every seventh year, a board
called the Council of Censors, consisting of thirteen persons.
This council can, within a certain time, propose amendments to
the constitution, and call a convention of one delegate from each
town, elected by the freemen, to adopt or reject the articles of
amendment proposed by the council. The Council of Censors,
elected in March, 1869, proposed six amendments: (1) In relation
to the creation of corporations; (2) in relation to biënnial
sessions and elections; (3) in relation to filling vacancies in
the office of senators and town representatives; (4) in relation
to the appointment, terms, etc., of judges of the Supreme Court;
(5) providing that women shall be entitled to vote, and with no
other restrictions than the law shall impose on men; (6) in
relation to the manner of amending the constitution.
The election of delegates occurs on Tuesday, May 10, and the
convention meets on the first Wednesday in June. There is no
general excitement in the State in relation to any of the
proposed changes; and now, upon the eve of the election, it is
impossible for the most sagacious political observer to predict
the fate of any of the amendments. The fifth is the only one in
support of which public meetings have been held, and those took
place the early part of the spring at the larger places in the
State. The friends have never expected to obtain a majority, nor
even a considerable vote in the convention, and the meetings that
have been held were not expected to settle the question, but to
awaken the public mind upon the subject. These meetings have been
a decided success, attended by hundreds of intelligent citizens,
many of whom for the first time listened to an address upon the
subject. It is true that ladies were advised to remain away, but
such advice generally resulted in a larger attendance; and to-day
the measure has a firmer support than ever before, and its
advocates are more confident of final success. We may not have
more than "_ten righteous_" men elected to the convention, but
that number was enough to save the cities of the _plain_, and we
have full faith that as small a number can save the cities of the
_mountains_.
The press of the State is divided on the subject. We have two
dailies--one, the _Rutland Herald_, the oldest paper in the
State, in favor of the movement, and the _Free Press_ of
Burlington, opposed to it. After the coming convention, no change
can be made in our constitution for seven years, at least, and if
the sixth amendment be adopted, not for ten years. But, in the
meantime, the question will assume more importance by a constant
agitation as to the equality of the sexes, the admission of women
to the State University, the professions, and other rights to
which men are entitled. Vermont can never emulate in wealth and
population the manufacturing States of the seaboard, or the
prairie States of the West; but she can win a nobler preëminence
in the quality of her institutions. She may be the first State,
as Wyoming already is the first territory, to give political
equality to woman, and to show the world the model of a true
republic.
ST. ANDREW.
_Burlington, Vt., May 1, 1870._
Mr. Reed of Washington county submitted the report in favor of the
woman suffrage amendment, from which we give the following:
One-half of the people of our State are denied the right of
suffrage. Yet woman has all the qualifications--the capacity, the
desire for the public welfare, that man has. She is among the
governed. She pays taxes. Even-handed justice, a fair application
of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and of our
State constitution, give woman the ballot. There is no reason why
woman should not be allowed to do what she is so eminently fit to
do. We know no good reason why the most ignorant man should vote
and the intelligent woman be refused. Our present political
institutions were formed and shaped when men had their chief
interests and pursuits out of doors, and women remained the
humble slaves at home. The social change has been immense. Now
woman sits by the side of man, is his companion and associate in
his amusements, and in his labors, save the one of governing the
country. And it is time that she should be in this.
The position of woman in regard to the common schools of the
State is the most unjust. She must always be the chief instructor
of the young in point of time and influence. She is their best
teacher at home and in the school. And her share in this
ever-expanding work is becoming vaster every day. Woman as
mother, sister, teacher, has an intelligence, a comprehension of
the educational needs of our youth, and an interest in their
development, far in advance of the other sex. She can organize,
control and teach the most difficult school in the State; yet she
has no vote in the selection of teachers, the building,
arrangements and equipments of school-houses, nor in the method
and extent of instruction. She can pay her share of the expenses
of schools, but can have no legal voice in their management. She
can teach, but she can have no vote in determining what shall be
taught. She is the very corner-stone of institutions which she
has no power in shaping. Let us have her open, avowed and public
coöperation--always safer than indirect influence.
The submission of an amendment to the constitution necessarily
aroused a general agitation on the proposed changes. The fifth
amendment decided on by the board of censors seemed to create a
more general interest than either of the others, and accordingly a
meeting was called for its full consideration, that efficient steps
might be taken for a thorough canvass of the State, preparatory to
the May election, and issued the following call:
The friends of woman suffrage in Vermont are requested to meet in
mass convention at Montpelier on Wednesday, February 2, at 10
o'clock, for the purpose of considering and advancing the best
interests of the cause in this State, in view of the
constitutional amendment proposed by the council of censors. The
convention will be addressed by several ladies and prominent
gentlemen of this State, and by William Lloyd Garrison, Julia
Ward Howe and Rev. Ada C. Bowles of Massachusetts; Lucy Stone and
Henry B. Blackwell of New Jersey, and Mary A. Livermore of
Illinois. A public meeting will also be held the evening before
the convention, which will be addressed by some of the eminent
speakers above named. The Hutchinson family will be present and
sing their woman suffrage songs. The Vermont Central, Passumpsic,
Rutland and Burlington and Bennington and Rutland lines of
railroad will extend the courtesy of free return checks, provided
they shall be applied for by twenty-five or more persons paying
full fare one way over an average distance of each of their
respective roads, which will be determined by the secretary.
C. W. WILLARD, JAMES HUTCHINSON, JR.,
GEORGE H. BIGELOW, CHARLES REED,
NEWMAN WEEKS, JONATHAN ROSS,
JAMES S. PECK.
_Ex. Com. Vermont Woman Suffrage Association_.[195]
_Montpelier_, January 10, 1870.
It is a noticeable fact that the movement for the enfranchisement
of woman in Vermont was inaugurated wholly by men. Not a woman was
on its official board, nor was there one to speak in the State. Men
called the first woman's rights convention, and chose Hon. Charles
Reed of Montpelier as its presiding officer, as well as president
of the State association.
However, these gentlemen invited ladies from other States, and a
series of meetings[196] was inaugurated through the chief towns and
cities of Vermont. The speakers[197] were heartily welcomed at some
points and rudely received at others. The usual "free-love" cry was
started by some of the opposition papers--a cry that like "infidel"
in the anti-slavery days, oft' times frightened even the faithful
from their propriety. Henry B. Blackwell came to the rescue, and
ably answered the _Vermont Watchman_:
The _Vermont Watchman_ evades the discussion of the question
whether women shall be entitled to vote, by raising false issues.
The editor asserts that "many of the advocates of suffrage have
thrown scorn upon marriage and upon the Divine Word." That
assertion we denounced as an unfounded and wicked calumny. We
also objected to it as an evasion of the main question. Thereupon
the _Watchman_, instead of correcting its mistake and discussing
the question of suffrage, repeats the charge, and seeks to
sustain it by garbled quotations and groundless assertions, which
we stigmatized accordingly. The _Watchman_ now calls upon us to
retract the stigma. We prefer to prove that our censure is
deserved, and proceed to do so.
The first quotation of the _Watchman_ is from an editorial in the
_Woman's Journal_, entitled "Political Organization." The object
of which was to show the propriety of doing what the _Watchman_
refuses to do--viz.: of discussing woman suffrage upon its own
merits. It showed the unfairness of complicating the question
with other topics upon which friends of woman suffrage honestly
differ. It regretted that "many well-meaning people insist on
dragging in their peculiar views on theology, temperance,
marriage, race, dress, finance, labor, capital--it matters not
what." It condemned "a confusion of ideas which have no logical
connection," and protested "against loading the good ship, Woman
Suffrage, with a cargo of irrelevant opinions." The _Watchman_
cites this article as an admission that some of the friends of
suffrage advocate free-love. Not at all. The editor of the
_Watchman_ is himself one of the well-meaning people alluded to.
He insists on dragging in irrelevant theological and social
questions. He refuses to confine himself to the issue of
suffrage. The _Watchman_ quotes a single sentence of the
following statement:
The advocates of woman's equality differ utterly upon every
other topic. Some are abolitionists, others hostile to the
equality of races. Some are evangelical Christians; others
Catholics, Unitarians, Spiritualists, or Quakers. Some hold
the most rigid theories with regard to marriage and divorce;
others are latitudinarian on these questions. In short,
people of the most opposite views agree in desiring to
establish woman suffrage, while they anticipate very
different results from the reform, when effected.
The above is cited as evidence against us. How so? A man may hold
"latitudinarian theories in regard to marriage and divorce"
without "throwing scorn upon the marriage relation," or having
the slightest sympathy with free-love. For instance: The present
law of Vermont is latitudinarian is these very particulars. It
grants divorce for many other causes than adultery. Measured by
the more conservative standard of Henry Ward Beecher and Mary A.
Livermore, it allows divorce upon insufficient grounds. This law
represents the public sentiment of a majority of the people of
Vermont. Will the _Watchman_ assert that the people of Vermont
"throw scorn on the marriage relation"? Or that he is in "low
company" because he is surrounded by the citizens of a State who
entertain views upon the marriage relation less rigid than his
own? Our indignant protest against the injustice of the common
law, which subjects the person, property, earnings and children
of married women to the irresponsible control of their husbands,
is not a protest against marriage. It is a vindication of
marriage, against the barbarism of the law which degrades a
noble and life-long partnership of equals into a mercenary and
servile relation between superior and dependant.
The _Watchman_ assails prominent supporters of woman suffrage,
and misquotes and misrepresents them. Because Theodore Tilton is
unwilling "that men or women shall be compelled to live together
as husband and wife against the inward protest of their own
souls," therefore he is charged with advocating free-love. Is it
possible that the editor regards such a relation of protest and
disgust as consistent with the unity of Christian marriage? Is it
right that a pure and noble man, the tender husband of a happy
wife, the loving father of affectionate children, should be thus
causelessly traduced for showing that the essential fact of
marriage is in that unity of soul which is recognized and
affirmed by the outward form? When the _Watchman_ undertakes to
brand men and women of irreproachable character for an
intellectual difference, he is engaged in a very unworthy
business. When he charges immorality upon the _New York
Independent_ and infidelity upon John Stuart Mill, he forgets
that his readers have minds of their own.
But, suppose it were true that newspapers and individuals who
believe in woman suffrage held objectionable views on other
subjects, what has this to do with the merit of the proposed
reform? There are impure and intemperate men in the Republican
party. Is the Republican party therefore "low company"? There are
brutal and ignorant and disloyal men in the Democratic party.
Does this prove that Dr. Lord and every other Democrat in the
State of Vermont is brutal and ignorant and disloyal? The Supreme
Court of the United States has just decided that a divorce
obtained under the laws of Indiana is legal and binding in every
other State. In thus affirming Mrs. McFarland's right to marry
Mr. Richardson, has the Supreme Court of the United States
sanctioned free-love? Will the _Watchman_ call Chief-Justice
Chase and the Supreme Court free-lovers? We have very little hope
that the _Watchman_ will treat this question with fairness or
candor. Our cause is too strong. The argument from reason, from
revelation, from nature, from history, is on our side. The
_Watchman_ is fighting against the Declaration of Independence,
the bill of rights of the State of Vermont, and the principles of
representative government. No wonder that it raises false issues.
No wonder that it evades the question.
H. B. B.
The following editorial in the _Woman's Journal_, from the pen of
Mary A. Livermore, does not give a very rose-colored view of the
reception of the Massachusetts missionaries on their first advent
into Vermont:
The Vermont constitutional convention has rejected a proposition
to give the ballot to woman, by a vote of 231 to 1. It flouted
all discussion of the question, and voted it down with the utmost
alacrity. No one cognizant of the bigotry, narrowness and general
ignorance that prevail there will be surprised at this result. It
is not a progressive State, but the contrary. Great stress has
been laid on the fact that "Vermont never owned a slave"--and
from this it has been argued that the Green Mountain State is
and has been especially liberty-loving. But during the two brief
visits we made last winter, we were told again and again, by
Vermont men, that the only reason for the non-introduction of
slavery was the impracticability of that form of labor among the
Green Mountains--that slavery could never have been made
profitable there, and that this, and not principle and heroic
love of freedom, prevented Vermont from ever being a slave State.
Nowhere, not even in the roughest and remotest West, have we met
with such vulgar rudeness, ill-manners and heroic lying as we
encountered in Vermont. The lecturers who were invited into the
State by the Vermont Woman Suffrage Association, composed wholly
of men, were in many instances left unsupported by them, allowed
to meet the frequently rough audiences as best they could, to pay
their own bills, and to manage the campaign as they might. At the
very first intimation of opposition on the part of the
_Montpelier Argus_, the _Watchman_ and the _Burlington Free
Press_--an unworthy trio of papers that appear to control the
majority--many members of the State association showed the "white
feather," and either apologetically backed out of the canvass, or
ignominiously kept silent in the background. There was,
therefore, nothing like a thorough discussion of the question, no
fair meeting of truth and error, not even an attempt to canvass
the State. For, not ambitious to waste their efforts on such
flinty soil, the men and women who were invited to labor there
shook off the dust (snow) of Vermont from their feet, and turned
to more hopeful fields of labor.
Let it not be supposed, however, that this vote of the delegates
of the constitutional convention is any indication of the
sentiment of the women on this question. The fact that 231 women
of lawful age, residents of Brattleborough, and 96 of Newfane,
sent a petition for woman suffrage, with their reasons for asking
it, to Charles K. Field, delegate from that town to the
constitutional convention; that petitions from other hundreds of
women have been forwarded to congress, praying for a sixteenth
amendment; that, by letters and personal statements, we know the
most intelligent and thoughtful women everywhere rebel against
the State laws whose heathenism, despotism and absurdity were so
well shown by Mrs. Nichols in 1845--all these facts are proofs
that the sentiment of Vermont women is not represented by the
constitutional convention now in session at Montpelier.--[M. A.
L.
August 12, 1871, our Burlington correspondent says:
While conventions, picnics and bazar meetings, in the cause of
woman suffrage, have been held in our sister States, an event has
very quietly occurred with us which we deem an important step in
the right direction, viz.: the admission of women to the
University. By an almost unanimous vote of the corporation, a few
conservatives opposing it, the matter was referred to the
faculty, who are understood to be heartily in favor of the "new
departure." The college that has thus thrown its doors wide open
to all, is the University of Vermont and State Agricultural
College, founded by the munificence of General Ira Allen in 1791.
It commenced operations in 1800; the Federal troops used its
buildings for barracks in the war of 1812; the buildings (and
library) were burned in 1824, and reconstructed in the following
year, when the corner-stone was laid by General Lafayette. It
sent forth nearly all its sons to the great rebellion. Indeed, at
one time its condition served to remind one of the lines of
Holmes--
"Lord, how the _Senior_ knocked about
That Freshman class of _one_."
It has graduated such men as the late Senator Collamer, John G.
Smith, president of the Northern Pacific Railroad; William G. T.
Shedd, the learned theologian; the late Henry J. Raymond of the
New York _Times_; John A. Kasson of Iowa, Frederick Billings, and
a host of others, eminent in all the walks of life. Its late
president, who was an "Angell from Providence," and has just been
elected president of Michigan University, is heartily in favor of
the movement, and the president-elect, Matthew H. Buckham, is no
less so. With its new president and its "new departure" the
future bids fair even to outshine the past.
It may be well to inquire the reason why a college located in a
State regarded by outsiders "as the most conservative of the
Union on the woman suffrage question," should take a step so far
in advance of what has been deemed the prevailing sentiment.
Editors who have been battling the new reform with a zeal equaled
only by that manifested against abolitionism a few years since,
can see no necessary connection between the new movement and the
general cause of woman's emancipation. Whether necessary or not,
there is a practical connection between them which is being felt
more and more every day. I assert, with no fear of contradiction
by any observing man, that Vermont is no more committed against
woman suffrage than any other State in the East, and the fact
that but one man in our late convention voted to extend the right
of suffrage to all, can well be explained when we consider the
manner of choosing delegates by towns; one town, for instance,
with twelve voters, having the same voice in the representation
that this city has with 1,500. With a popular vote upon that
question the State would give such a majority as would fairly
astonish all those who regarded the late convention as a complete
demolition of the "reformers."
ST. ANDREW.
The following criticism of the Rev. Mr. Holmes, from the pen of a
woman, shows the growing self-assertion of a class hitherto held in
a condition of subordination by clerical authority. Such
tergiversation in the pulpit as his has done much to emancipate
woman from the reverence she once felt for the teaching of those
supposed to be divinely ordained of heaven:
BENSON, Vt., June 20, 1871.
I have heard it stated from the pulpit within a year that the
woman suffrage question in Vermont is dead. Well, we believe in
the resurrection. Week by week this question of the hour and of
the age confronts those who claim to have given it decent burial.
The same clergyman who pronounced it dead has since spoken of it
as one of the "growing evils of the times," and in this beautiful
summer weather he has felt called upon to preach another sermon,
ostensibly on "marriage," really upon this "dead question,"
dragging it out to daylight again, that we might see how easily
he could bury it fifty fathoms deep--with mud. It reminded me of
Robert Laird Collier's sermon, "The Folly of the Woman Movement,"
in its logic and its spirit. Mr. Collier and our Mr. Holmes see
but one thing in all this struggle for truth and justice, and
that is "free-love." Here are some specimens of Mr. Holmes'
assertions:
The advocates of woman's rights want, not the ballot so much
as the dissolution of the marriage tie. They propose to form
a tie for the term of five, six or seven years. Mark the men
or women who are the most strenuous advocates of woman
suffrage. They are irreligious and immoral.
Who are more strenuous advocates of woman suffrage than Mrs.
Julia Ward Howe, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs. Isabella
Beecher Hooker, Mrs. Lucy Stone, Mrs. Lucretia Mott, Mrs.
Livermore, T. W. Higginson, Henry Ward Beecher, Bishop Simpson,
Governor Claflin, Gilbert Haven, Wendell Phillips, and scores of
others whose lives are as pure and intellects as fine as his who
dares stand in the sacred desk and call these persons
"irreligious and immoral"? His argument seems to be like this:
Some advocates of woman suffrage are in favor of easy divorces.
These men and women advocate woman suffrage; therefore these men
and women are in favor of easy divorces. Or, to make the matter
still plainer, some ministers of the Gospel are immoral. Mr. H.
is a minister of the Gospel; therefore Mr. H. is immoral. The
method of reasoning is the same, but it don't sound quite fair
and honorable, does it?
"In our land woman is a queen; she is loved and cared for," says
Mr. Holmes. In sight from the window where I write is a sad
commentary upon this. One of these queens, so tenderly cared for,
is hoeing corn, while her five-months-old baby--the youngest of
nine children--lies on the grass while she works. Her husband is
away from home, but has left word for the "old woman" to "take
care of the corn and potatoes, for he has to support the family."
When they are out of meat, she must go out washing and earn some,
for "he has to support the family," and cannot have her idle. Not
long since they were planting corn together, she doing as much as
he. At noon, although she had a pail of milk and another of eggs,
he brought her the two hoes to carry home, as he could not be
troubled with them. Had he ever read:
"I will be master of what is my own;
She is my goods, my chattels--
My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything"?
"No woman reaches such dignity as the New England wife and
mother," says Mr. H. Is wifehood more honorable, or motherhood
more sacred, in New England than in other places? Is to be a wife
and mother, and nothing else, the sole end and aim of woman? Or
is there not other work in God's universe which some woman may
possibly be called upon to do? Is Florence Nightingale or Anna
Dickinson less dignified than Mrs. John Smith, who happens
physically to be the mother of half-a-dozen children, but
mentally and morally is as much of a child as any of them?
"Woman has just the sphere she wants. She has more privileges
than she could vote herself into," says Mr. H. Has she, indeed? I
know women, who would gladly vote themselves into the privilege
of having the custody of their own children, whose husbands are
notoriously drunken and licentious. They are pure, good women,
who, rather than part with their children, live on with men whose
very breath is pollution. I know others who would like to vote
themselves into the privilege of retaining their own hard
earnings instead of having them sacrificed by a drunken husband.
Widows have been literally turned out of doors after their
husbands' death, and the property they had helped to accumulate
divided among those who never earned it. Do you think such women
would not change the laws of inheritance if they had the power?
"Husband and wife are one, hence one vote is sufficient," says
Mr. H. Follow out the reasoning, if you please. "Both one," hence
one dinner is sufficient, "both one," hence if a man is a member
of a church his wife is also. In plain English, "the husband and
wife are both one," and the husband is that one. Now in case
_that one_ should die, is it fair, or just, or fitting, that the
widow--"the relict"--or, in the words of Mr. H., "the feminine
spirit that has supplemented this masculine nature," whose hands
have been tied all these years, should be called upon to pay
taxes upon the share of property the law allows her? Taxation
without representation was the immediate cause of the famous
tea-party in Boston harbor, and, in fact, of a good many other
unpleasant things that followed.
"Woman has just the sphere she wants," says Mr. H., closing the
discussion. No, sir, she has not. Had those young ladies in
Philadelphia who were studying medicine, and were insulted day
after day by the male medical students, the sphere they wanted?
Our American girls have been to Europe for the sake of pursuing
their studies in medicine, and have met with kindness and
courtesy, while in this land, where they are called "queens,"
they received only hisses. Last winter Governor Claflin of
Massachusetts--one of those "irreligious and immoral" advocates
of woman suffrage--reminded the gentlemen of that State who claim
to be woman's representatives in the legislature, "that a wife in
that State is deprived of the free control of property that was
her own before marriage, and is denied an equal right in the
property accumulated during the marriage partnership; that a
married mother has no legal right to her child; and that a widow
has not equal rights with a widower." When woman has the sphere
she wants, these things will be changed.
As a majority of the men in this community are opposed to woman
suffrage, I will relate one circumstance that will do to "point a
moral or adorn a tale." Of course, the voters in this or any
other place always elect their best men to hold office, and the
board of selectmen would naturally be the very wisest and best,
the "_crème de la crème_." Now it so happens that one selectman
being away from home, there was not enough arithmetic left with
the other two to make out the tax-bills for the town, and they
hired a woman, the mother of two children, to do it for them. It
certainly took more of her time than it would for her to have
walked across the street and voted for men who could make out
their own tax-bills. Then arithmetic is not a womanly
accomplishment, like tatting, crocheting, etc. These things sink
into our hearts, and will bear fruit in due season.
SARAH A. GIBBS.
In 1877, July 21, Miss Thyrza F. Pangborn, for the last six years
the capable and efficient recorder in the probate office of
Burlington, was appointed and sworn as a notary public. In a letter
of December 7, 1872, our correspondent says:
In the year 1870, the world was somewhat startled by the fact
that in the constitutional convention, held that year in Vermont,
but one vote was cast for the enfranchisement of woman; and no
one wonders that the friends of that movement exclaimed, "Can any
good come out of--Vermont"? Yesterday the first biënnial session
of the legislature closed its session of fifty-seven days. A bill
has been pending in each House, giving female tax-payers a right
to vote at all school-district meetings. It was advocated by Mr.
Butterfield, one of the leading members of the House, in an able
and learned speech, and received 64 votes to 103 against. Is not
that doing well for such a staid old State as Vermont, and one
where the enemies of equal suffrage supposed, two years since,
that the measure was indefinitely postponed? But this is not all.
The measure was introduced in the Senate, composed of thirty
members, who are supposed to be the balance-wheel of the General
Assembly. It was warmly discussed by several Senators, and the
vote taken, when there were three members absent, resulting in,
yeas 13, nays 14. Had the Senate been full, the vote would have
been, yeas 14,[198] nays 16. A change of one of the "no" votes
would have carried the measure, as the lieutenant-governor, who
presides in the Senate, would have given the casting vote in its
favor.
The supporters of the measure included some of the ablest members
of the Senate, among them the chairmen of the very important
Committees on Finance, Claims, Education, Agriculture,
Manufactures, Railroads and Printing.
Following the defeat of the above-mentioned bill came up a
measure granting to women the same right to vote as men have in
all elections everywhere in the State. It received the support of
all who voted for the school measure, save two, Mr. Mason and Mr.
Rogers, who prefer to see the first tried as an experiment in the
school meetings. You thus perceive that twelve out of our thirty
grave and reverend Senators are real out-and-out equal suffrage
men. Verily, the world moves! Another year, 1874, we hope will
carry off the measure. Meanwhile, we say, three cheers for old
Vermont, and glory enough for one day!
ST. ANDREW.
_Burlington, Vt._
In 1880 the School Suffrage bill passed the Vermont House of
Representatives, with only four dissenting votes. When the bill
came to a third reading and only four men stood up for the
negative, there was so marked an expression of derision that the
speaker called for "order," and reminded the House that "no man was
to be scorned for voting alone any more than with a crowd." The
action and the voting came cheerily. More than one man, to the
objection of "an entering wedge," said "he was ready to grant the
whole." The bill passed the Senate triumphantly and was approved by
the governor, December 18, 1880:
Women shall have the same right to vote as men have, in all
school-district meetings and in the election of school
commissioners in towns and cities, and the same right to
hold office relating to school affairs.
An item in the _Woman's Journal_, from Vergennes, March 22, 1881,
says:
At the city election to-day General J. H. Lucia, a staunch friend
of woman suffrage, was elected mayor, and principally through his
management Miss Electa S. Smith has been chosen to the office of
city clerk, which office he has held for the past two years. The
legislature of 1880 authorized the election of women to the
offices of superintendent of schools and town clerk, and some of
the friends of the cause were disposed to try the working of the
law here. They selected a candidate whose ability, qualifications
and thorough fitness all had to concede, and against whom the
only objection that could be raised was her being a woman. It
took the conservatives some time to get over their surprise at
the first suggestion of her name, but they admitted the propriety
of the thing and gallantly lent a hand, so that when the election
came all the candidates who had been talked about were
conspicuous by their absence, and Miss Smith was elected by
acclamation. Surely the world does move.
SPRINGFIELD, February 7, 1884.
_Miss Lydia Putnam, Brattleboro', Vt.:_
Your letter is at hand. I think but few women have, as yet,
availed themselves of the privilege of voting in school meetings
in this State, and I am not able to say what the effect upon our
schools has been up to the present time.
Very respectfully, JUSTUS DARTT.
Notwithstanding the above reply from the state-superintendent of
the public schools of Vermont, the Associated Press reports of
every year[199] since 1881 make mention of women being elected to
school offices in the various towns and counties of the State.
FOOTNOTES:
[194] No woman in so many varied fields of action has more steadily
and faithfully labored than Mrs. Nichols, as editor, speaker,
teacher, farmer, in Vermont, New York, Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio,
Kansas, and California where she spent the closing years of her
life; and though always in circumstances of hardship and privation,
yet no annual convention was held without a long letter from her
pen, uniformly the most cheerful and able of all that were
received. A great soul that seemed to rise above the depressing
influences of her surroundings! The last letter she ever wrote us
was in January, 1885, a few days before she passed away. See Volume
I., page 171.
[195] Officers of the Vermont Woman Suffrage Association:
_President_, Hon. Charles Reed, Montpelier. _Vice-presidents_, Hon.
John B. Hollister, Bennington; Hon. Seneca M. Dorr, Rutland; Rev.
Addison Brown, Brattleboro'; Col. Lynus E. Knapp, Middlebury; Hon.
James Hutchinson, jr., West Randolph; Hon. Russell S. Taft,
Burlington; Hon. A. J. Willard, St. Johnsbury; Hon. H. Henry
Powers, Hyde Park; Hon. Jasper Rand, St. Albans. _Recording
Secretary_, Henry Clark, Rutland. _Corresponding Secretary_, Albert
Clarke, St. Albans. _Treasurer_, Albert D. Hager, Proctorsville.
_Executive Committee_, Hon. C. W. Willard, Montpelier; Hon. Charles
Reed, Montpelier; George H Bigelow, Burlington; Newman Weeks,
Rutland; Hon. Jonathan Ross, St. Johnsbury; Rev. Eli Ballou, D. D.,
Montpelier.
[196] Following the convention at Montpelier, meetings were held at
St. Albans, Northfield, Barre, Burlington, St. Johnsbury,
Brattleboro', Rutland, Fairhaven, Castleton, Springfield and
Bellows Falls.
[197] Among the speakers were Mr. Garrison, Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Stone,
Leo Miller, Mrs. Churchill, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Campbell, Dr.
Sarah Hathaway, Mrs. Bowles, Mr. Blackwell, Hon. A. J. Williard.
Mr. Taft, Mr. Clark, Judge Carpenter, Mr. Ivison, the Rev. Messrs.
Brigham, Eastwood, Brown and Emerson.
[198] The fourteen who favored the bill were: Mr. Bigelow of
Burlington, one of the leading editors in the State; Mr.
Butterfield of Grafton, one of the most experienced legislators in
the State; Mr. Carpenter of Northfield, who is known to be right on
all questions that concern humanity, Mr. Colton of Irasburgh, now
serving his second term in the Senate; Mr. Estey of Brattleboro',
the manufacturer of the celebrated cottage organ; Mr. Houghton of
North Bennington, a leading banker and business man who has just
been elected one of the directors of our state-prison; Mr. King of
North Montpelier, farmer; Mr. Lamb of Royalton, the oldest member
in the Senate, a lawyer; Mr. Mason of Richmond, a man who would be
described by a Yankee as "chock full of honesty and common-sense";
Mr. Rogers of Wheelock and Mr. Stiles of Montgomery, both farmers,
and as near like Mr. Mason as two peas are alike; Mr. Reynolds of
Alburgh Springs, one of the absentees, but in favor of the bill, a
prominent merchant; Mr. Powers, one of the ablest lawyers in the
State, and, finally, Mr. Sprague of Brandon, a leading banker and
manufacturer, the head and principal owner of the Brandon
Manufacturing Company.
[199] In 1885 there were thirty-three women elected to the office
of school superintendent in eleven of the fourteen counties of the
State, as follows: _Addison_, Miss A. L. Huntley; _Bennington_,
Mrs. R. R. Wiley; _Caledonia_, Miss Nellie Russell, Mrs. A. F.
Stevens, Mrs. E. Bradley, Miss S. E. Rogers; _Chittenden_, Mrs. S.
M. Benedict, Mrs. L. M. Bates, Mrs. J. C. Draper; _Essex_, Mrs.
Henry Fuller, Hettie W. Matthews, Jennie K. Stanley, Mrs. S. M.
Day; _Franklin_, none; _Grand Isle_, Miss I. Montgomery; _La
Moille_, Carrie P. Carroll, Miss C. A. Parker; _Orange_, Miss F. H.
Graves, Miss A. A. Clement, Miss V. L. Farnham, Miss F. Martin;
_Orleans_, none; _Rutland_, Mrs. I. C. Adams, Miss H. M.
Bromley, Miss M. A. Mills, Lillian Tarbell, Mrs. H. M. Crowley;
_Washington_, none; _Windham_, Mrs. J. M. Powers, Mrs. J. E.
Phelps; _Windsor_, Mrs. E. G. White, Miss C. A. Lamb, Mrs. H. F.
VanCor, Clara E. Perkins, Mrs. E. M. Lovejoy, Mrs. L. M. Hall.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
NEW YORK--1860-1885.
Saratoga Convention, July 13, 14, 1869--State Society Formed,
Martha C. Wright, President--_The Revolution_ Established,
1868--Educational Movement--New York City Society, 1870,
Charlotte B. Wilbour, President--Presidential Campaign,
1872--Hearings at Albany, 1873--Constitutional Commission--An
Effort to Open Columbia College, President Barnard in
Favor--Centennial Celebration, 1876--School Officers--Senator
Emerson of Monroe, 1877--Gov. Robinson's Veto--School Suffrage,
1880--Gov. Cornell Recommended it in his Message--Stewart's Home
for Working Women--Women as Police--An Act to Prohibit
Disfranchisement--Attorney-General Russell's Adverse Opinion--The
Power of the Legislature to Extend Suffrage--Great Demonstration
in Chickering Hall, March 7, 1884--Hearing at Albany, 1885--Mrs.
Blake, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Rogers, Mrs. Howell, Gov. Hoyt of
Wyoming.
The New York chapter in Volume I. closes with an account of some
retrogressive legislation on the rights of married women,[200]
showing that until woman herself has a voice in legislation her
rights may be conceded or withheld at the option of the ruling
powers, and that her only safety is in direct representation. The
chapter on "Trials and Decisions" in Volume II., shows the
injustice women have suffered in the courts, where they have never
yet enjoyed the sacred right of trial by a jury of their own peers.
After many years of persistent effort for the adjustment of special
grievances, many of the leaders, seeing by what an uncertain tenure
their civil rights were maintained by the legislative and judicial
authorities, ceased to look to the State for redress, and turned to
the general government for protection in the right of suffrage, the
fundamental right by which all minor privileges and immunities are
protected. Hence the annual meeting of the National Association,
which had been regularly held in New York as one of the May
anniversaries, was, from 1869, supplemented by a semi-annual
convention in Washington for special influence upon congress.
Until the war the work in New York was conducted by a central
committee; but in the summer of 1869, the following call was issued
for a convention at Saratoga Springs, to organize a State Society:
The advocates of woman suffrage will hold a State convention at
Saratoga Springs on the thirteenth and fourteenth of July, 1869.
The specific business of this convention will be to effect a
permanent organization for the State of New York. Our friends in
the several congressional districts should at once elect their
delegates, in order that the whole State may be represented in
the convention. In districts where delegates cannot be elected,
any person can constitute himself or herself a representative.
The convention will be attended by the ablest advocates of
suffrage for woman, and addresses may be expected from Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, president of the National Association, Celia
Burleigh, president of the Brooklyn Equal Rights Association,
Matilda Joslyn Gage, advisory counsel for the State, Susan B.
Anthony, of _The Revolution_, Charlotte B. Wilbour of New York
city, and others. Every woman interested for her personal freedom
should attend this convention, and by her presence, influence and
money, aid the movement for the restoration of the rights of her
sex.
Mrs. ELIZABETH B. PHELPS,
_Vice-President for the State of New York_.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Advisory Counsel_.
The opening session of the convention was held in the spacious
parlors of Congress Hall the audience composed chiefly of
fashionable ladies[201] from all parts of the country, who listened
with evident interest and purchased the tracts intended for
distribution. The remaining sessions were held in Hawthorn Hall,
Matilda Joslyn Gage presiding. A series of spirited resolutions was
adopted, also a plan of organization presented by Charlotte B.
Wilbour, for a State association.[202] Many able speakers[203] were
present. The formation of this society was the result of a very
general agitation in different localities on several vital
questions in the preceding year:
_First_--On taxation. Women being large property holders, had felt
the pressure during the war, especially of the tax on incomes, and
had resolved on resistance: Accordingly, large meetings[204] were
called at various points, in 1868. While women of wealth were
organizing to resist taxation, the working women[205] were uniting
to defend their earnings, and secure better wages. It seemed for a
few months as if they were in a chronic condition of rebellion. But
after many vain struggles for redress in the iron teeth of the law,
and equally vain appeals to have unjust laws amended, the women
learned the hopelessness of all efforts made by disfranchised
classes.
_Second_--On prostitution. For the first time in the history of the
government, a bill was presented in the New York legislature, in
1868, proposing to license prostitution. This showed the
degradation of woman's position as no other act of legislation
could have done, and although the editors of _The Revolution_ were
the only women who publicly opposed the bill (which they did both
before the committee of the legislature, and in their journal), yet
there was in the minds of many, a deep undercurrent of resistance
to the odious provisions of that bill. Horace Greeley, too, in his
editorials in the New York _Tribune_, denounced the proposition in
such unmeasured terms that, although pressed at three different
legislative sessions, no member of the committee could be found
with sufficient moral hardihood to present the bill.
In connection with this question, the necessity of "women as
police," was for some time a topic of discussion. They had proved
so efficient in many cases, that it was seriously proposed to have
a standing force in New York and Brooklyn, to look after young
girls,[206] new to the temptations and dangers of city life. In
_The Revolution_ of March 26, 1868, we find the following:
It is often asked, would you make women police officers? It has
already been done. At least a society of women exists in this
country, for the discovery of crimes, conspiracies and such
things. The chief of this band was Mrs. Kate Warn, a native of
this State, who lately died in Chicago. She was engaged in this
business, fifteen years ago, by Mr. Pinkerton, of the National
Police Agency. She did good service for many years in watching,
waylaying, exploring and detecting; especially on the critical
occasion of President Lincoln's journey to Washington in 1861. In
1865 she was sent to New Orleans, as head of the Female Police
Department there.
There was a general movement in these years for the more liberal
education of women in various departments of art and industry, as
well as in letters. First on the list stands Vassar College,
founded in 1861, richly endowed with fine grounds and spacious
buildings. We cannot estimate the civilizing influence of the
thousands of young women graduating at that institution, now, as
cultivated wives and mothers, presiding in households all over this
land. Cornell University[207] was opened to girls in 1872, more
richly endowed than Vassar, and in every way superior in its
environments; beautifully situated on the banks of Cayuga Lake,
with the added advantage and stimulus of the system of coëducation.
To Andrew D. White, its president, all women owe a debt of
gratitude for his able and persevering advocacy of the benefits to
both sexes, of coëducation. The university at Syracuse, in which
Lima College was incorporated, is also open alike to boys and
girls. Rochester University,[208] Brown, Columbia, Union, Hamilton,
and Hobart College at Geneva, still keep their doors barred against
the daughters of the State, and the three last, in the small number
of their students, and their gradual decline, show the need of the
very influence they exclude. Could all the girls desiring an
education in and around Rochester, Geneva,[209] Clinton and
Schenectady, enter these institutions, the added funds and
enthusiasm they would thus receive would soon bring them renewed
life and vigor.
Peter Cooper and Catharine Beecher's efforts for the working
classes of women were equally praiseworthy. Miss Beecher formed
"The American Woman's Educational Association," for the purpose of
establishing schools all over the country for training girls in the
rudiments of learning and practical work. The Cooper Institute,
founded in 1854, by Peter Cooper, has been invaluable in its
benefits to the poorer classes of girls, in giving them advantages
in the arts and sciences, in evening as well as day classes. Here
both boys and girls have free admission into all departments,
including its valuable reading-room and library. It had long been a
cherished desire of Mr. Cooper to found an institution to be
devoted forever to the union of art and science in their
application to the useful purposes of life. The School of Design is
specially for women.
The Ladies Art Association of New York was founded in 1867, now
numbering over one hundred members. One of the most important
things accomplished by this society has been the preparation of
thoroughly educated teachers, many of whom are now filling
positions in Southern and Western colleges.
NEW YORK, June 3, 1869.
EDITORS OF THE REVOLUTION: Inclosed please find the report of a
meeting of New York ladies to consider the important subject of
woman's education. The within slip will show that this is a
movement quite as earnest and pronounced as the woman suffrage
agitation of the day, and more in consonance with prevailing
public opinion. We trust that you will aid the effort by
inserting the report and resolutions into your columns, and add
at least a brief editorial notice.
Very respectfully, MRS. MARSHALL O. ROBERTS.
IMPORTANT MEETING OF NEW YORK LADIES.--WOMAN'S EDUCATION.--On
Monday, the 31st of May, a large number of influential ladies
gathered at Dr. Taylor's, corner Sixth avenue and Thirty-eighth
street, in response to the call of the secretary of The American
Woman's Educational Association. A meeting was organized, Mrs.
Marshall O. Roberts presiding, and after a long and interesting
discussion the following resolutions were unanimously passed. It
is proper to state that the society has been an organized and
efficient power in woman's education for over twenty years. The
object of its present action is to forward a movement to secure
endowed institutions for the training of women to their special
duties and professions as men are trained for theirs,
particularly the science and duties of home-life:
_Resolved_, That one cause of the depressed condition of
woman is the fact that the distinctive profession of her
sex, as the nurse of infancy and of the sick, as educator of
childhood, and as the chief minister of the family state,
has not been duly honored, nor such provision been made for
its scientific and practical training as is accorded to the
other sex for their professions; and that it is owing to
this neglect that women are driven to seek honor and
independence in the institutions and the professions of men.
_Resolved_, That the science of domestic economy, in its
various branches, involves more important interests than any
other human science; and that the evils suffered by women
would be extensively remedied by establishing institutions
for training woman for her profession, which shall be as
generously endowed as are the institutions of men, many of
which have been largely endowed by women.
_Resolved_, That the science of domestic economy should be
made a study in all institutions for girls; and that certain
practical employments of the family state should be made a
part of common school education, especially the art of
sewing, which is so needful for the poor; and that we will
use our influence to secure these important measures.
_Resolved_, That every young woman should be trained to some
business by which she can earn an independent livelihood in
case of poverty.
_Resolved_, That in addition to the various in-door
employments suitable for woman, there are other out-door
employments especially favorable to health and equally
suitable, such as raising fruits and flowers, the culture of
silk and cotton, the raising of bees and the superintendence
of dairy farms and manufactures. All of these offer avenues
to wealth and independence for women as properly as men, and
schools for imparting to women the science and practice of
these employments should be provided and as liberally
endowed as are the agricultural schools for men.
_Resolved_, That the American Woman's Educational
Association is an organization which aims to secure to women
these advantages, that its managers have our confidence, and
that we will coöperate in its plans as far as we have
opportunity.
_Resolved_, That the Protestant clergy would greatly aid in
these efforts by preaching on the honor and duties of the
family state. In order to this, we request their attention
to a work just published by Miss Beecher and Mrs. Stowe,
entitled "The American Woman's Home," which largely
discusses many important topics of this general subject,
while the authors have devoted most of their profits from
this work to promote the plans of the American Woman's
Educational Association.
_Resolved_, That editors of the religious and secular press
will contribute important aid to an effort they must all
approve by inserting these resolutions in their columns.
Among the influences that brought new thought to the question of
woman suffrage was the establishment of _The Revolution_ in 1868.
Radical and defiant in tone, it awoke friends and foes alike to
action. Some denounced it, some ridiculed it, but all read it. It
needed just such clarion notes sounded forth long and loud each
week to rouse the friends of the movement from the apathy into
which they had fallen after the war. One cannot read its glowing
pages to-day without appreciating the power it was just at that
crisis.[210]
Miss Lucy B. Hobbs of New York was the first woman that ever
graduated in the profession of dentistry. She matriculated in the
Cincinnati Dental College in the fall of 1864--passing through a
full course of study, missing but two lectures, and those at the
request of the professor of anatomy. She graduated from that
institution in February, 1866. A letter from the dean of the
college testifies to her worth as follows:
She was a woman of great energy and perseverance. Studious in her
habits, modest and unassuming, she had the respect and kind
regard of every member of the class and faculty. As an operator
she was not surpassed by her associates. Her opinion was asked
and her assistance sought in difficult cases almost daily by her
fellow-students. And though the class of which she was a member
was one of the largest ever in attendance, it excelled all
previous ones in good order and decorum--a condition largely due
to the presence of a lady. In the final examination she was
second to none.
Having received her diploma, she opened an office in Iowa; from
thence she removed to Chicago, and practiced successfully. The
following letter from Mrs. Taylor (formerly Miss Hobbs) gives
further interesting details. Writing to Matilda Joslyn Gage, she
says:
I am grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to place in
history the fact of my study of dentistry. I was born in Franklin
county, New York, in 1833. You ask my reason for entering the
profession. It was to be independent. I first studied medicine,
but did not like the practice. My preceptor, Professor Cleveland,
advised me to try dentistry, and I commenced with Dr. Samuel
Warde of Cincinnati, finishing my studies in March, 1861. At that
time the faculty of the Ohio Dental College would not permit me
to attend, and there was not a college in the United States that
would admit me, and no amount of persuasion could change their
minds. So far as I know, I was the first woman who had ever taken
instruction of a private tutor.
I went to Iowa to commence practice, and was so successful that
the dentists of the State insisted I should be allowed to attend
the college. Their efforts prevailed, and I graduated from the
Ohio Dental College at Cincinnati in the spring of 1866--the
first woman in the world to take a diploma from a dental college.
I am a New-Yorker by birth, but I love my adopted country--the
West. To it belongs the credit of making it possible for women to
be recognized in the dental profession on equal terms with men.
Should you wish any further proof, write to Dr. Watt, who was
professor of chemistry at the time I graduated, and I know he
will take pleasure in giving you any additional information.
As early as 1866 a system of safe-deposit companies was inaugurated
in New York, which has proved a boon to women, enabling them to
keep any private papers they may wish to preserve. In 1880, we find
the following in the _National Citizen_:
A ladies' exchange for railroad and mining stocks has been
started at 71 Broadway, New York. The rooms are provided with an
indicator, desks and such other conveniences as are required for
business. Messenger boys drop in and out, and a telephone
connects with the office of a prominent Wall-street brokerage
firm. Miss Mary E. Gage, daughter of Frances Dana Gage, is the
manager and proprietor of the business. In reply to the inquiries
of a _Graphic_ reporter, Miss Gage said she had found so much
inconvenience and annoyance in transacting her own operations in
stocks that she concluded to establish an office. After Miss Gage
was fairly settled, other women who labored under the same
disadvantages, began to drop in, their number increasing daily. A
ladies' stock exchange also exists at No. 40 Fourth street, under
charge of Mrs. Favor. The banking houses of Henry Clews and the
wealthy Russell Sage are said to be working in union with this
exchange. In January we chronicled the formation of a woman's
mining company and this month of a woman's stock exchange, each
of them an evidence of the wide range of business women are
entering.
In _The Revolution_ of May 14, 1868, we find the following:
SOROSIS.--This is the name of a new club of literary women, who
meet once a month and lunch at Delmonico's, to discuss questions
of art, science, literature and government. Alice Carey, who is
president, in her opening speech states the object of the club,
which is summed up in this brief extract:
We have proposed the inculcation of deeper and broader ideas
among women, proposed to teach them to think for themselves
and get their opinions at first hand, not so much because it
is their right as because it is their duty. We have also
proposed to open new avenues of employment to women--to make
them less dependent and less burdensome--to lift them out of
unwomanly self-distrust and disqualifying diffidence into
womanly self-respect and self-knowledge. To teach them to
make all work honorable, by each doing the share that falls
to her, or that she may work out to herself agreeably to her
own special aptitude, cheerfully and faithfully--not going
down to it, but bringing it up to her. We have proposed to
enter our protest against all idle gossip, against all
demoralizing and wicked waste of time, also, against the
follies and the tyrannies of fashion, against all external
impositions and disabilities; in short, against each and
every thing that opposes the full development and use of the
faculties conferred upon us by our Creator.
We most heartily welcome all movements for the cultivation of
individual thought and character in woman, and would recommend
the formation of such clubs throughout the country. The editors
of the New York press have made known their dissatisfaction that
no gentlemen were to be admitted into this charmed circle. After
a calm and dispassionate discussion of this question, it was
decided to exclude gentlemen, not because their society was not
most desirable and calculated to add brilliancy to the club, but
from a fear lest the natural reverence of woman for man might
embarrass her in beginning to reason and discuss; lest she should
be awed to silence by their superior presence. It was not because
they love man less, but their own improvement more. For the
comfort of these ostracised ones, we would suggest a hope for the
future. After these ladies become familiar with parliamentary
tactics, and the grave questions that are to come before them for
consideration, it is proposed to admit gentlemen to the
galleries, that they may enjoy the same privileges vouchsafed to
the fair sex in the past, to look down upon the feast, to listen
to the speeches, and to hear "the pale, thoughtful brow," "the
silken moustache," "the flowing locks," "the manly gait and form"
toasted in prose and verse.
This club has met regularly ever since the day of its inauguration,
and has been remarkable for the harmony maintained by its members.
Mrs. Charlotte Wilbour was president for several years, until she
went to reside in Paris, in 1874. Since that time Mrs. Croly has
been, from year to year, elected to that office. Beginning with 12
members,[211] this club now numbers 320.
The most respected live-stock reporter in New York is a woman. Miss
Middie Morgan, pronounced the best judge of horned cattle in this
country. She can tell the weight of a beef on foot at a glance, and
reports the cattle market for the New York _Times_. A correspondent
says:
Her father was a cattle-dealer, and taught her to handle
fearlessly the animals he delighted in. She learned to tell at a
glance the finest points of live-stock, and to doctor bovine and
equine ailments with the utmost skill. With all this, she became
a proficient in Italian and French, and a terse and rapid writer.
A few years ago, after her father's death, she traveled in Italy
with an invalid sister, having an eye to her pet passion--the
horse. While there she met Prince Poniatowsky, also an ardent
admirer of that animal. He mentioned her zoölogical
accomplishments to Victor Emanuel, and the consequence was Miss
Middie was deputed by His Majesty to purchase a hundred or so of
fine horses. She had charge of the blood-horses of King Victor
Emanuel, who owns the finest stud in Europe, and breeds horses of
a superior shape, vigor and fire. He beats Grant in his
admiration for that noble animal. When she decided to come to
this country, she made known the fact to Hon. George P. Marsh,
our minister to Italy; and he gave her a letter of recommendation
to Mr. Bigelow, of the _Times_, who employed her. She is an
expert among all kinds of animals. Her judgment about the
different breeds is sought after and much quoted. She can discuss
the nice points about cattle as easily as Rosa Bonheur can paint
them.[212]
From the Woman's Journal, Oct. 1, 1870:
Miss Barkaloo, the lady just admitted to the St. Louis bar as a
lawyer, and who has received a license to practice as
attorney-at-law from the Supreme Court of that State, is a native
of Brooklyn, N. Y., and is a woman of more than ordinary ability.
Two years ago, after having read Blackstone and other elementary
law-books, she made application for admission as a student at
Columbia College, New York, and was promptly refused. Nothing
daunted, she went to St. Louis, where she was admitted to the Law
School. For eighteen months she assiduously devoted her energies
to the study of the science, and her fellow-students all agreed
in declaring her by far the brightest member of the class. That
there was no question of her ability was clearly shown at her
examination. Judge Knight, although overflowing with gallantry,
gave the lady no quarter. The most abstruse and erudite questions
were propounded to the applicant, but not once did the judge
catch the fair student tripping. Miss Barkaloo was about 22 years
of age, of a fine figure, intelligent face and large, expressive
eyes. The St. Louis papers of last week reported her sudden death
of typhoid fever. According to custom, a meeting of the members
of the St. Louis bar was held to take suitable action and pay
respect to her memory. It was the first meeting of the kind in
the United States, and was largely attended, not only by the
young members of the bar, but by the most distinguished
attorneys. Miss Phoebe Couzins, herself a member of the Law
School, was in attendance, attired in deep mourning for the
recent death of a beloved sister. The following resolutions were
adopted:
_Resolved_, That in the death of Miss Helena Barkaloo we
deplore the loss of the first of her sex ever admitted to
the bar of Missouri.
_Resolved_, That in her erudition, industry and enterprise
we have to regret the loss of one who, in the morning of her
career, bade fair to reflect credit on our profession, and a
new honor upon her sex.
_Resolved_, That our sympathy and condolence be extended to
the relatives of the deceased.
Major Lucien Eaton, into whose office she had entered to seek
opportunities of perfecting herself in the knowledge of her
profession, said that--
He had been requested by an accomplished lady of St. Louis
to afford her that opportunity, and at first had hesitated
to do so; yet he felt that she should have a trial, and
when he took her into his office his conduct met with the
approbation of the legal fraternity generally. That
fraternity cordially sympathized with the efforts she was
making, and both old lawyers and young ones tried to put
business into her hands, the taking of depositions and other
such work as she could perform. He testified to finding her
a true woman; modest and retiring, carefully shunning all
unnecessary publicity, and avoiding all display. She was
earnest in her studies, and being gifted with a fine
intellect and a good judgment, gave promise of great
attainments. He had never known a student more assiduous in
study; she wanted to become mistress of her profession. Her
death is a calamity, not to her friends alone, but to all
who are making an effort for the enlargement of woman's
sphere.
After the closing of the doors of the Geneva Medical School to
women, the Central Medical College of Syracuse was the first to
admit them. Four were graduated in 1852. Since then the two medical
colleges in New York city have graduated hundreds of women. Among
the many in successful practice are Clemence S. Lozier, Emily
Blackwell, Mary Putnam Jacobi, New York; Eliza P. Mosher, Brooklyn;
Sarah R. A. Dolley, Anna H. Searing, Fannie F. Hamilton, Rochester;
Amanda B. Sanford, Auburn; Eveline P. Ballintine, Le Roy; Rachel E.
Gleason, Elmira.
In May, 1870, the New York City Society was formed, with efficient
officers,[213] and pleasant rooms, at 16 Union Square, where
meetings were regularly held on Friday afternoon of each week.
These meetings were well attended and sustained with increasing
interest from month to month. This society held its first meeting
November 27, 1871, which was addressed by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe; and
on January 13, 1872, another, addressed by Jennie Collins, the
indefatigable Bostonian who has done so much for the benefit of the
working girls. A series of meetings was held under the auspices of
this association in many of the chief cities around New York and on
the Hudson, the chief speakers being the officers of the
association. An active German society was soon after formed, with
Mrs. Augusta Lillienthal, president, and Mrs. Matilda F. Wendt,
secretary. The latter published a paper, _Die Neue Zeit_, devoted
to woman suffrage. She was also the correspondent of several
leading journals in Germany. The society held its first public
meeting March 21, 1872, in Turner Hall, Mrs. Wendt presiding. Mrs.
Lillienthal, Mrs. Clara Neyman and Dr. Adolphe Doney were the
speakers. Clara Neyman became afterwards a popular speaker in many
suffrage and free-religious associations.
Petitions were rolled up by both the German and American societies
to the legislature, praying for the right of suffrage, and on
April 3, 1871, the petitioners[214] were granted a hearing, before
the Judiciary Committee of the Assembly, Hon. L. Bradford Prince
presiding. Mrs. Wilbour's able address made a most favorable
impression. The question was referred to the Judiciary Committee.
The majority report was adverse, the minority, signed by Robert A.
Strahan and C. P. Vedder, favorable.
A grand demonstration was made April 26, 1872, in Cooper Institute,
intended specially to emphasize the claims of wives and mothers to
the ballot, and to show that the City Association had no sympathy
with any theories of free-love. Five thousand cards of invitation
were distributed.
In 1871 women attempted to vote in different parts of the State,
among whom were Matilda Joslyn Gage at Fayetteville, and Mrs.
Louise Mansfield at Nyack, but were repulsed. In 1872 others did
vote under the fourteenth amendment, conspicuously Susan B.
Anthony, who, as an example for the rest, was arrested, tried,
convicted and fined.[215] Mrs. Gage published a woman's rights
catechism to answer objections made at that time to woman's voting,
which proved a valuable campaign document. We find the names of
Mary R. Pell of Flushing, Helen M. Loder of Poughkeepsie, and
Elizabeth B. Whitney of Harlem, frequently mentioned at this time
for their valuable services.
The following items show the varied capacity of women for many
employments:
In March, 1872, Miss Charlotte E. Ray (colored) of New York, was
graduated at the Howard University Law School, and admitted to
practice in the courts of the District of Columbia at
Washington.--The headquarters of the Women's National Relief
Association is in New York; its object is supplying government
stations along the coast with beds, blankets, warm clothing and
other necessaries for shipwrecked persons.----Miss Leggett, for a
long time proprietor of a book and paper store in New York,
established a home, in 1878, for women, on Clinton Square, which
is in all respects antipodal to Stewart's Hotel. It is governed
by no stringent rules or regulations. No woman is liable without
cause, at the mere caprice of the founder, to be suddenly
required to leave, as was the case in Judge Hilton's home. On the
contrary, it is the object of the founder to provide a _real_
home for women. The house is not only provided with a library,
piano, etc., but its inmates are allowed to bring their
sewing-machines, hang pictures upon the walls, put up private
book-racks, etc. The price, too, but $4 a week, falls more nearly
within the means of laboring women than the $6 to $10 of the
Stewart Hotel.----The first penny lunch-room in New York was
established by a woman, who made it a source of revenue.----The
inventor of the submarine telescope, a woman, has received
$10,000 for her invention.----Deborah Powers, now over ninety
years of age, is the head of a large oil-cloth manufactory in
Troy. Her sons are engaged in business with her, but she, still
bright and active, remains at the head of the firm. This is the
largest oil-cloth factory in the United States. She was left a
widow with three sons, with a heavy mortgage on her estate. She
secured an extension of time, built up the business and educated
her sons to the work. She is also president of a bank.----A
successful nautical school in New York is conducted by two
ladies, Mrs. Thorne and her daughter, Mrs. Brownlow. These ladies
have made several voyages and studied navigation, both
theoretically and practically. During the late war they prepared
for the navy 2,000 mates and captains bringing their knowledge of
navigation up to the standard required by the strict examiners of
the naval board.----Mrs. Wilson, since a New York custom-house
inspector, took charge, in 1872, of her husband's ship, disabled
in a terrific gale off Newfoundland in which his collar-bone was
broken and a portion of the crew badly hurt. The main-mast having
been cut down she rigged a jury-mast, and after twenty-one days
brought ship and crew safe to port.
Miss Jennie Turner, a short-hand writer of New York, is a notary
public. In a recent law-suit some of the papers were "sworn to"
before her in her official capacity, and one of the attorneys
claimed that it was not verified, inasmuch as a woman "could not
legally hold public office." The judge decided that the paper
must be accepted as properly verified, and said that the only way
to oust her was in a direct action by the attorney-general. The
judge said:
Whether a female is capable of holding public office has
never been decided by the courts of this State, and is a
question about which legal minds may well differ. The
constitution regulates the right of suffrage and limits it
to "male" citizens. Disabilities are not favored, and are
seldom extended by implication, from which it may be argued
that if it required the insertion of the term "male" to
exclude female citizens of lawful age from the right of
suffrage, a similar limitation would be required to
disqualify them from holding office. Citizenship is a
condition or status and has no relation to age or sex. It
may be contended that it was left to the good sense of the
executive and to the electors to determine whether or not
they would select females to office, and that the power
being lodged in safe hands was beyond the danger of abuse.
If, on the other hand, it be seriously contended that the
constitution, by necessary implication, disqualifies females
from holding office, it must follow as a necessary
consequence that the act of the legislature permitting
females to serve as school officers, and all other
legislative enactments of like import removing such
disqualification, are unconstitutional and void. In this
same connection it may be argued that if the use of the
personal pronoun "he" in the constitution does not exclude
females from public office, its use in the statute can have
no greater effect. The statute, like the constitution, in
prescribing the qualifications for office, omits the word
"male," leaving the question whether female citizens of
lawful age are included or excluded, one of construction.
Miss Anna Ballard, a reporter on the staff of the New York _Sun_,
was elected a member of the Press Club, in 1877, by a vote of 24
to 10. Within the last ten years women contributors to the press
have become numerous. The book-reviewer of the _Herald_ is a
woman; one of the book-reviewers of the _Tribune_, one of its
most valued correspondents and several of its regular
contributors are women; the agricultural and market reporter of
the New York _Times_ is a woman; the New York _Sun's_ fashion
writer is a woman, and also one of its most industrious and
sagacious reporters. Female correspondents flood the evening
papers with news from Washington. We instance these not at all as
a complete catalogue; for there are, we doubt not, more than a
hundred women known and recognized in and about Printing-house
Square as regular contributors to the columns of the daily and
weekly press. As a rule they are modest, reputable pains-taking
servants of the press; and it is generally conceded that if they
are willing to put up with the inconveniences attending
journalistic work, it is no part of men's duty to interfere with
their attempt to earn an honest livelihood in a profession which
has so many avenues as yet uncrowded. Miss Ellen A. Martin,
formerly of Jamestown, N. Y., a graduate of the Law School of Ann
Arbor, in 1875, was admitted to the bar by the Supreme Court of
Illinois, at the January term, and is practicing in Chicago,
occupying an office with Miss Perry, Room 39, No. 143 La Salle
street. Mrs. Martha J. Lamb was the first woman ever admitted to
membership in the New York State Historical Society. Her "History
of New York City" is recognized as a standard authority, and has
already taken rank among the great histories of the world.
During the summer of 1872 the presidential campaign agitated the
country. As Horace Greeley, who was opposed to woman suffrage, was
running against Grant and Wilson, who were in favor, and as the
Republican platform contained a plank promising some consideration
for the loyal women of the nation, a great demonstration was held
in Cooper Institute, New York, October 7. The large hall was
crowded by an excited throng. Hon. Luther R. Marsh presided. The
speakers[216] were all unusually happy. Mrs. Blake's[217] address
was applauded to a recall, when she went forward and asked the
audience to give three cheers for the woman suffrage candidates,
Grant and Wilson, which they did with hearty good will.
During the winter of 1873 a commission was sitting at Albany to
revise the constitution of New York. As it seemed fitting that
women should press their claims to the ballot, memorials were
presented and hearings requested by both the State and City
societies. Accordingly Mr. Silliman, the chairman, appointed
February 18, to hear the memorialists. A large delegation of ladies
went from New York.[218] The commission was holding its sessions in
the common-council chamber, and when the time arrived for the
hearing the room was crowded with an attentive audience. The
members of the Committee on Suffrage were all present, Mr. Silliman
presided. Matilda Joslyn Gage represented the State association,
speaking upon the origin of government and the rights pertaining
thereto. Mrs. Wilbour and Mrs. Blake represented the New York City
Society, and each alike made a favorable impression. The Albany
_Evening Journal_ gave a large space to a description of the
occasion. The respectful hearing, however, was the beginning and
the end, as far as could be seen, of all impression made on the
committee, which coolly recommended that suffrage be secured to
colored men by ratifying the fifteenth amendment, while making no
recognition whatever of the women of the State. A memorial was at
once sent to the legislature and another hearing was granted on
February 27. Mrs. Blake[219] was the only speaker on that occasion.
The Hon. Bradford Prince, of Queens, presided. At the close of Mrs.
Blake's remarks James W. Husted of Westchester, in a few earnest
words, avowed himself henceforth a champion of the cause. Shortly
afterwards the Hon. George West presented a constitutional
amendment giving to every woman possessed of $250 the right to
vote, thus placing the women of the State in the same position with
the colored men before the passage of the fifteenth amendment; but
even this was denied. The amendment was referred to the Judiciary
Committee and there entombed. Large meetings[220] were held at
Robinson Hall during the winter, and at Apollo Hall in May, and in
different localities about New York.
July 2, 1873, an indignation meeting was held by the City Society
to protest against the sentence pronounced by Judge Hunt in the
case of Susan B. Anthony. De Garmo Hall was crowded. The platform
was decorated with the United States flag draped with black
bunting, while on each side were banners, one bearing the
inscription, "Respectful Consideration for a Loyal Woman's Vote!
$100 Fine!" the other, "Shall One Federal Judge Abolish Trial by
Jury?" Dr. Clemence Lozier presided, and Mrs. Devereux Blake made a
stirring speech reviewing Miss Anthony's trial and Judge Hunt's
decision.[221] Mr. Hamilton Wilcox made a manly protest against
Judge Hunt's high-handed act of oppression, and Mrs. Marie Rachel
made another, in behalf of the German association.
In October, 1873, Mrs. Devereux Blake made an effort to open the
doors of Columbia College to women. A class of four young
ladies[222] united in asking admission. Taking them with her, Mrs.
Blake went before the president and faculty, who gave her a
respectful hearing. She argued that the charter of the college
itself declared that it was founded for "the education of the youth
of the city", and that the word _youth_ was defined in all
dictionaries as "young persons of both sexes," so that by its very
foundation it was intended that girls as well as boys should enjoy
the benefits of the university, and it was no more than just that
they should, seeing that the original endowment was by the "rectors
and inhabitants of the city of New York," one-half of these
inhabitants being women. Mrs. Blake's[223] application was referred
to "the Committee on the Course of Instruction," and after some
weeks of consideration was refused, on the ground that "it was
inexpedient," the Rev. Morgan Dix being especially active in his
opposition. However, soon after this, the lectures of the college
were open to ladies, and a few years later President Barnard warmly
recommended that young women should be admitted as students to all
the privileges of the university.
A Woman's Congress was organized at New York, October 15, 16, 17,
1873, in the Union League Theater. Representative women[224] were
there from all parts of the country. Its object was similar to the
social science organizations--the discussion of a wider range of
subjects than could be tolerated on the platforms of any specific
reform. Mary A. Livermore presided, and the meeting was considered
a great success. The speeches and proceedings were published in
pamphlet form, and still are from year to year. This had been an
idea long brewing in many minds, and was at last realized through
the organizing talent of Mrs. Charlotte B. Wilbour, the originator
of Sorosis. From year to year they have held regular meetings in
the chief cities of the different States.
Dr. Clemence Lozier,[225] president of the city society, early
opened her spacious parlors to the monthly meetings, where they
have been held for many years. This association has been active and
vigilant, taking note of and furthering every step of progress in
Church and State. Mrs. Lozier and Mrs. Blake have worked most
effectively together, the former furnishing the sinews of war, and
the latter making the attack all along the line, to the terror of
the faint-hearted.
The era of centennial celebrations was now approaching, and it was
proposed to hold a suitable commemoration on the one-hundredth
anniversary of the Boston tea-party, December 16, 1873. Union
League Theater was, on the appointed evening, filled to its utmost
capacity. The platform was decorated with flowers and filled with
ladies, Dr. Lozier presiding. Miss Anthony was the speaker of the
evening, and made a most effective address; Helen Potter gave a
recitation; Hannah M'L. Shepherd read letters of sympathy; Mrs.
Blake made a short closing address, and presented a series of
resolutions, couched in precisely the same language as that adopted
by our ancestors in protesting against taxation without
representation:
_Resolved_, That as an expression of the sentiments of the
tax-paying women of New York, we reïterate, as applied to
ourselves, the declaration contained in the bill of rights put
forth by our ancestors 100 years ago: _First_--That the women of
the country are entitled to equal rights and privileges with the
men; _Second_--That it is inseparably essential to the freedom of
a people, and the undoubted right of all men and women, that no
taxes be imposed on them but by their own consent, given in
person or by their representatives; _Third_--That the only
representatives of these women are persons chosen by themselves,
and that no taxes ever have been or can be constitutionally
imposed upon them but by legislatures composed of persons so
chosen.
The report of the State assessors[226] of 1883 brought forcibly to
view the injustice done in taxing non-voters. At their meeting with
the supervisors of Onondaga county, Mr. Pope of Fabius said: "Mrs.
Andrews is assessed too much." Mr. Hadley replied: "Well, Mr.
Briggs says that is the way all the women are assessed." Mr. Briggs
responded: "Yes, that is the way we find the assessors treat the
women; they can't vote, you know! I am in favor of letting the
women vote now."
Two women in the village of Batavia were assessed for more personal
property than the entire assessment of like property, exclusive of
corporations, in the city of Rochester with a population of 70,000!
While declaring they had found very little personal property
assessed, Mr. Fowler said: "We found some cases where town
assessors had taxed the personal property of women, and one case
of a ward who was assessed to full value, while upon the guardian's
property there was no assessment at all." This report not only
proved a good woman suffrage document, but the work done by the
State assessors, Messrs. Hadley, Briggs and Fowler, convinced them
personally of woman's need of the ballot for the protection of her
property.
Early in the year 1874, memorials from societies in different parts
of the State were sent to the legislature, asking "that all taxes
due from women be remitted until they are allowed to vote." The
most active of these anti-tax societies was the one formed in
Rochester through the efforts of Mrs. Lewia C. Smith, whose
earnestness and fidelity in this, as in many another good word and
work, have been such as to command the admiration even of
opponents--a soul of that sweet charity that makes no account of
self. A hearing was appointed for the memorialists on January 24,
and the journals[227] made honorable mention of the occasion.
The centennial was approaching and the notes of preparation were
heard on all sides. The women who understood their status as
disfranchised citizens in a republic, regarded the coming event as
one for them of humiliation rather than rejoicing, inasmuch as the
close of the first century of the nation's existence found one half
the people still political slaves. At the February meeting of the
association, Mrs. Blake presented the following resolution:
_Resolved_, That the members of this society do hereby pledge
themselves not to aid either by their labor, time or money, the
proposed celebration of the independence of the men of the
nation, unless before July 4, 1876, the women of the land shall
be guaranteed their political freedom.
In their own way, however, the members of the society intended to
observe such centennials as were fitting, and so preparation was
made for a suitable commemoration of the battle of Lexington. They
held a meeting[228] in the Union League Theatre, the evening of
April 19, to protest against their disfranchisement. The journals
contained fair reports, with the exception of _The Tribune_, which
sent no reporter, and closed its account next day of many
observances elsewhere by saying, "there was no celebration in New
York city." Several of the papers published Mrs. Blake's speech:
Just as the first rays of dawn stole across our city this
morning, the century was complete since the founders of this
nation made their first great stand for liberty. The early April
sunshine a hundred years ago saw a group of men and boys gathered
together, "a few rods north of the meeting-house," in the
Massachusetts village of Lexington. Un-uniformed and
undisciplined, standing in the chilly morning, that handful of
patriots represented the great Republic which on that day was to
spring from their martyrdom. The rebellious colonists had
collected in the hamlets near Boston some military stores; these
the British officers in command at Boston resolved should be
seized and destroyed. Warned of their design Paul Revere made his
famous ride to arouse the country to resistance, and in the dead
of night Adams and Hancock went out to summon their comrades to
arms. As the last stars vanished before the dawn, the drum beat
to summon the patriots to action, and in response a little band
of about eighty men and boys assembled on the village green. Few
as they were in numbers, they presented a brave front as the
British regulars came up the quiet street, 200 strong. What
followed was not a battle, but a butchery. The minute-men refused
to surrender to Major Pitcairn's haughty demand, and a volley of
musketry, close and deadly, was poured on this devoted band. In
response only a few random shots were fired, which did absolutely
no harm, and then, seeing the hopelessness of resistance, the
commander of the minute-men ordered them to disperse. The
British, elated with their easy victory, pushed on toward
Concord, thinking that there another speedy success awaited them.
In this they soon bitterly learned their error. Although they
were reinforced on the way, when they reached that village they
were met by such a resistance as drove them back, broken and
disorganized, on the road they had so proudly followed in the
morning. Concord nobly avenged the slaughter at Lexington.
So much for what men did on that day, and let us see what share
the women had in its dangers and its sorrows. Jonathan Harris was
shot in front of his own house, while his wife was watching him
from a window, seeing him fall with such anguish as no poor words
of mine can describe. He struggled to his feet, the blood gushing
from a wound in his breast, staggered forward a few paces and
fell again, and then crawled on his hands and knees to his
threshold only to expire just as his wife reached him. Did not
this woman bear her portion of the martyrdom? Isaac Davis, a man
in the prime of life, went forth from his home in the morning,
and before the afternoon sunlight had grown yellow, was brought
back to it dead, and was laid, pale and cold, in his wife's bed,
only three hours after he had left her with a solemn benediction
of farewell. Did not this woman also suffer? She was left a widow
in the very flower of her youth, and for seventy years she
faithfully mourned his taking off! Nor were these the only ones;
for every man who fell that day, some woman's heart was wrung.
There were others who endured actual physical hardship and
suffering. Hannah Adams lay in bed with an infant only a week old
when the British reached her house in their disorderly retreat
to Boston; they forced her to leave her sick room and to crawl
into an adjoining corn shed, while they burned her house to ashes
in her sight. Three companies of British troops went to the house
of Major Barrett and demanded food. Mrs. Barrett served them as
well as she was able, and when she was offered compensation,
refused it, saying gently, "We are commanded if our enemy hunger
to feed him." So, in toil or suffering or anguish the women
endured their share of the sorrows of that day. Do they not
deserve a share of its glories also? The battles of Lexington and
Concord form an era in our country's history. When, driven to
desperation by a long course of oppression, the people first
resolved to revolt against the mother country. Discontent,
resentment and indignation had grown stronger month by month
among the hardy settlers of the land, until they culminated in
the most splendid act of audacity that the world has ever seen. A
few colonies, scattered at long intervals along the Atlantic
seaboard, dared to defy the proudest nation in Europe, and a few
rustics, undisciplined, and almost unarmed, actually ventured to
encounter in battle that army which had boasted its conquests
over the flower of European chivalry. What unheard of oppressions
drove these people to the mad attempt? What unheard of atrocities
had the rulers of these people practiced, what unjust
confiscations of property, what cruel imprisonments and wicked
murders? None of all these; the people of this land were not
starving or dying under the iron heel of an Alva or a
Robespierre, but their civil liberties had been denied, their
political freedom refused, and rather than endure the loss of
these precious things, they were willing to encounter danger and
to brave death. The men and women who suffered at Concord and at
Lexington 100 years ago to-day, were martyrs to the sacred cause
of personal liberty! Looking over the records of the past we
find, again and again repeated, the burden of their complaints.
Not that they were starving or dying, but that they were taxed
without their consent, and that they were denied personal
representation.
The congress which assembled at Philadelphia in 1774, declared
that "the foundation of liberty and of all free governments is
the right of the people to participate in their legislative
council"; and the House of Burgesses, assembled in Virginia in
the same year, asserted "That a determined system is formed and
pressed for reducing us to slavery, by subjecting us to the
payment of taxes imposed without our consent." Strong language
this, as strong as any we women have ever employed in addressing
the men of this nation. Our ancestors called the imposition of
taxes without their consent, slavery, and the denial of personal
representation, tyranny. Slavery and tyranny! words which they
tell us to-day are too strong for our use. We must find some mild
and lady-like phrases in which to describe these oppressions. We
must employ some safe and gentle terms to indicate the crimes
which our forefathers denounced! My friends, what was truth a
century ago is truth to-day! Other things may have changed, but
justice has not changed in a hundred years!
In 1876 a presidential election was again approaching, and to meet
the exigencies of the campaign a woman suffrage committee was
formed to ask the legislature to grant presidential suffrage to
women, as it was strictly within their power to do without a
constitutional amendment. To this end Mrs. Gage prepared an appeal
which was widely circulated throughout the State:
Within a year the election of President and Vice-President of the
United States, will again take place. The right to vote for these
functionaries is a National and not a State right; the United
States has unquestioned control of this branch of suffrage, and
in its constitution has declared to whom it has delegated this
power. Article 2 of the Constitution of the United States, is
devoted to the president; the manner of choosing him, his power,
his duties, etc. In regard to the method of choosing the
president, Par. 2, Sec. 1, Art. 2, reads thus: "Each State shall
appoint in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a
number of electors, equal to the whole number of senators and
representatives to which the State may be entitled in the
congress." There is no other authority for the appointment of
presidential electors, either in the Constitution of the United
States, or in the constitution of any State. The constitution of
the State of New York is entirely silent upon the appointment of
presidential electors, for the reason that the constitution of
the United States declares that they _shall_ be appointed in such
manner as the legislature may direct. With the exception of South
Carolina, every State in the Union has adopted the plan of
choosing presidential electors by ballot, and it is in the power
of the legislature of each State to prescribe the qualifications
of those who shall be permitted to vote for such electors.
The authority to prescribe the qualifications of those persons in
the State of New York who shall be permitted to vote for electors
of President and Vice-President of the United States, therefore
lies alone in the legislature of this State. That body has power
in this respect superior to the State constitution; it rises
above the constitution; it is invested with its powers by the
Constitution of the United States; it is under national
authority, and need in no way be governed by any representative
clause which may exist in the State constitution. In prescribing
the qualifications of those persons who shall vote for electors,
the legislature has power to exclude all persons who cannot read
and write. It has power to say that no person unless possessing a
freehold estate of the value of two hundred and fifty dollars,
shall vote for such electors. It has power to declare that only
tax-payers shall vote for such electors, it is even vested with
authority to say that no one but church members shall be entitled
to vote for electors of President and Vice-President of the
United States. The legislature of this State at its next session
has even power to cut off the right of all white men to vote for
electors at the presidential election next fall. It matters not
what qualifications the State itself may have prescribed for
electors of State officers, the question who shall vote for
president and vice-president is on an entirely different basis,
and prescribing the qualifications for such electors lies in
entirely different hands. It is a question of national import
with which the State (in its constitution) has nothing to do, and
over which even congress has no power. The legislature which is
to assemble in Albany, the first Tuesday in January next, will
have power, by the passage of a simple bill, to secure to the
women of this State the right to vote for electors at the
presidential election in the fall of 1876, and thus to inaugurate
the centennial year by an act of equity and justice that will be
in accordance with that part of the Declaration of Independence
which declares that "governments derive their _just_ powers from
the consent of the governed." Shall it not be done?
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE,
LILLIE DEVEREUX BLAKE,
CLEMENCE S. LOZIER, M. D.,
_N. Y. State Woman Suffrage Com._
[Illustration: Lillie Devereux Blake]
A memorial embodying this claim was presented to the legislature,
and on, January 18, the committee went to Albany and were heard by
the Judiciary Committee of the Assembly, to whom their paper had
been referred. Hon. Robert H. Strahan of New York presided. On
February 8, the memorialists[229] had another meeting before the
Judiciary Committee of the Senate, in the Senate chamber, Hon.
Bradford L. Prince presiding. The audience was overflowing, and the
corridors so crowded that the meeting adjourned to the Assembly
chamber by order of the chairman. Soon after, Hon. George H. West
of Saratoga presented a bill giving the women of the State the
right to vote for president. It was referred to the Judiciary
Committee and reported adversely, notwithstanding it was twice
called up and debated by its friends, Messrs. Strahan, Husted,
Ogden, Hogeboom and West. No vote was reached on the measure, but
this much of consideration was a gain over previous years, when
nothing had been done beyond the presentation of a bill and its
reference to a committee.
In 1876 Governor Samuel J. Tilden appointed Mrs. Josephine Shaw
Lowell as commissioner of the State Board of Charities, the first
official position a woman ever held in this State.
During the winter of 1877 a memorial was sent to the legislature,
asking that women be allowed to serve as school officers. The Hon.
William N. Emerson, senator from Monroe, presented the following
bill:
AN ACT _to Authorize the Election of Women to School Offices._
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and
Assembly, do enact as follows:
SECTION 1. Any woman of the age of twenty-one years and upwards,
and possessing the qualifications prescribed for men, shall be
eligible to any office under the general or special school laws
of this State, subject to the same conditions and requirements as
prescribed to men.
SEC. 2. This act shall take effect immediately.
Petitions and memorials from all parts of the State were poured
into the legislature, praying for the passage of the bill. Mr.
Emerson made an eloquent speech in its favor, and labored earnestly
for the measure. It passed the Senate by a vote of 19 to 9; the
Assembly by a vote of 84 to 19. This success was hailed with great
rejoicing by the women of the State who understood the progress of
events. But their delight was turned into indignation and
disappointment when the governor, Lucius Robinson, returned the
bill to the Senate with the following veto:
STATE OF NEW YORK, EXECUTIVE CHAMBER, }
ALBANY, May 8, 1877. }
_To the Senate:_
I return without approval Senate bill No. 61, entitled "An act to
authorize the election of women to school offices."
This bill goes too far or not far enough. It provides that women
may hold any or all of the offices connected with the department
of education, that is to say, a woman may be elected
superintendent of public instruction, women may be appointed
school commissioners, members of boards of education and trustees
of school districts. In some of these positions it will become
their duty to make contracts, purchase materials, build and
repair school-houses, and to supervise and effect all the
transactions of school business, involving an annual expenditure
of over twelve million dollars in this State. There can be no
greater reason that women should occupy these positions than the
less responsible ones of supervisors, town clerks, justices of
the peace, commissioners of highways, overseers of the poor, and
numerous others. If women are physically and mentally fitted for
one class of these stations, they are equally so for the others.
But at this period in the history of the world such enactments as
the present hardly comport with the wisdom and dignity of
legislation. The God of nature has appointed different fields of
labor, duty and usefulness for the sexes. His decrees cannot be
changed by human legislation. In the education of our children
the mother stands far above all superintendents, commissioners,
trustees and school teachers. Her influence in the family, in
social intercourse and enterprises, outweighs all the mere
machinery of benevolence and education. To lower her from the
high and holy place given her by nature, is to degrade her power
and to injure rather than benefit the cause of education itself.
In all enlightened and Christian nations the experience and
observations of ages have illustrated and defined the relative
duties of the sexes in promoting the best interests of society.
Few, if any, of the intelligent and right-minded among women
desire or would be willing to accept the change which such a law
would inaugurate.
The bill is moreover a clear infraction of the spirit if not the
letter of the constitution. Under that instrument women have no
right to vote, and it cannot be supposed that it is the intention
of the constitution that persons not entitled to the right of
suffrage should be eligible to some of the most important offices
in the State.
L. ROBINSON.
On May 24, 25, 1877, the National and State conventions were again
held in New York, at Steinway Hall. Both conventions passed
resolutions denouncing Governor Robinson's action in his veto. The
following address was issued by the State association:
_To the Voters and Legislators of New York:_
The women of the State of New York, in convention assembled, do
most earnestly protest against the injustice with which they are
treated by the State, where in point of numbers they are in
excess of the men:
_First_--They are denied the right of choosing their own
rulers, but are compelled to submit to the choice of a
minority consisting of its male residents, fully one-third
of whom are of foreign birth. _Second_--They are held
amenable to laws they have had no share in making and in
which they are forbidden a voice--laws which touch all their
most vital interests of education, industry, children,
property, life and liberty. _Third_--While compelled to bear
the burdens and suffer the penalties of government, they are
debarred the honors and emoluments of civil service, and the
control of offices in the righteous discharge of whose
duties their interest is equal to that of men.
_Fourth_--They are taxed without their consent to sustain
men in office who enact laws directly opposing their
interests, and inasmuch as the State of New York pays
one-sixth the taxes of the United States, its women feel the
arm of oppression--like Briareus with his hundred
hands--touching and crushing them with its burdens.
_Fifth_--They are under the power of an autocrat whose
salary they must pay, but who, in opposition to the will of
the people--as recently shown in the passage of the School
bill by the legislature--has by his veto denied them all
official authority in the control of the public schools, and
this despite the fact of there being 3,670 more girls of
school age than boys, and 14,819 more women than men
teaching in the State. _Sixth_--Under pretence of regulating
public morals, women of the _femme de pave_ class, many of
whom have been driven to this mode of life as a livelihood,
are subjected to more oppressive laws than their partners in
vice. _Seventh_--The laws treat married women as criminals
by taking from them all legal control of their children,
while those born outside of marriage belong absolutely to
the mothers. _Eighth_--They forbid the mother's inheritance
of property from her children in case the father is living,
thus making her of no consideration in the eyes of those to
whom she has given birth. _Ninth_--They give the husband
control of the common property--allow him to spend the whole
personal estate in riotous living, or even to sell the home
over his wife's head, subject only to her third
life-interest in case she survives him. _Tenth_--They allow
the husband to imprison her at his pleasure within his own
house, the court sustaining him in this coërcion until the
wife "submits herself to her husband's will."
_Eleventh_--They allow the husband while the common property
is in his possession, "without even the formality of a legal
complaint, the taking of an oath or the filing of a bond for
the good faith of his action," to advertise his wife through
the public press as a deserter and to forbid her credit.
_Twelfth_--They deny the widow the right of inheritance in
the common property that they give the widower, allow her
but forty days' residence in the family mansion before
paying rent to her husband's heirs, thus treating her as if
she were an alien to her own children--set off to her a few
paltry articles of household use, close the estate through a
process of law, and make the days of her bereavement doubly
days of sorrow.
The above laws of marriage, placing irresponsible authority in
the hands of the husband, have given him a power of moral
coërcion over the wife, making her virtually his slave. Without
entering into fuller details of the injustice and oppression of
the laws upon all women, married and single, we will sum the
whole subject up in the language of the French Woman's Rights
League, which characterizes woman's position thus:
(1) Woman is held _politically_ to have no existence; (2)
_civilly_, she is a minor; (3) in marriage she is a serf;
(4) in labor she is made inferior and robbed of her
earnings; (5) in public instruction she is sacrificed to
man; (6) out of marriage, answers to the faults committed by
both; (7) as a mother is deprived of her right to her
children; (8) she is only deemed equally responsible,
intelligent and answerable in taxes and crimes.
By order of the New York State Woman Suffrage Society.
May, 1877. MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Secretary_.
In the summer of 1877 another effort was made by women of wealth to
be relieved from taxation. Several memorials to that effect were
sent to the legislature, one headed by Susan A. King[230] of New
York, a self-made woman who had accumulated a large fortune and
owned much real estate. Her memorial, signed by a few others,
represented $9,000,000. The committee bearing these waited on many
members of the legislature to secure their influence when such a
bill should be presented, which was done March 11, by Col. Alfred
Wagstaff, with warm recommendations. He was followed by Senator
McCarthy of Onondaga, who also introduced a bill for an amendment
to the constitution to secure to women the right of suffrage. Both
these bills called out the determined opposition of Thomas C.
Ecclesine, senator from the eleventh district, and the ridicule of
others. The delegation of ladies, sitting there as representatives
of half the people of the State, felt insulted to have their
demands thus sneered at; it was for them a moment of bitter
humiliation. In the evening, however, their time for retaliation
came, as they had a hearing in the Senate chamber, before the
Judiciary Committee, where an immense crowd assembled at an early
hour. The chairman of the committee Hon. William H. Robertson,
presided. Each of the ladies, in the course of her speech, referred
to the insulting remarks of Mr. Hughes of Washington county. That
gentleman, being present, looked as if he regretted his unfortunate
jokes, and winced under the sarcasm of the ladies.
Soon after this, great excitement was created by the close of
Stewart's Home for Working Women. This fine building, on the corner
of Thirty-second street and Fourth avenue, had been erected by the
merchant prince for the use of working women, who could there find
a home at a moderate expense. The millionaire dead, his large
fortune passed into other hands. The building was completed and
furnished in a style of elegance far beyond what was appropriated
to that purpose. On April 2, with a great flourish, the immense
building was thrown open for public inspection. A large number of
women applied at once for admission, but encountered a set of rules
that drove most of them away. This gave Judge Hilton an excuse for
violating his obligation to carry out the plan of his dead
benefactor, and in a few weeks he closed the house to working women
and opened it as the Park Hotel, for which it was so admirably
furnished and fitted that it was the general opinion that it was
intended for this from the beginning. Great indignation was felt in
the community, the women calling a meeting to express their
disappointment and dissatisfaction. This was held in Cooper
Institute, under the auspices of the Woman Suffrage
Association.[231] Had Mr. Stewart provided a permanent home for
working women it would have been but a meager return for the
underpaid toil of the thousands who had labored for half a century
to build up his princely fortune. But even the idea of such an act
of justice died with him.
In 1879 that eminent philanthropist Dr. Hervey Backus Wilbur,
superintendent of the State Idiot Asylum at Syracuse, urged the
passage of a law requiring the employment of competent women as
physicians in the female wards of the State insane asylums.
Petitions prepared by him were circulated by the officers of the
Women's Medical College, of the New York Infirmary, by Mrs.
Josephine Shaw Lowell of the State Board of Charities, and by Drs.
Willard Parker, Mary Putnam Jacobi, and other eminent physicians of
New York. The bill prepared by Dr. Wilbur was introduced in the
Assembly by Hon. Erastus Brooks, and required the trustees of each
of the four State asylums for the insane, "to employ one or more
competent, well-educated female physicians to have the charge of
the female patients of said asylum, under the direction of the
medical superintendents of the several asylums, as in the case of
the other or male assistant physicians, and to take the place of
such male assistant physician or physicians in the wards of the
female patients." Although Dr. Wilbur stood at the head of his
profession, his authority upon everything connected with the
feeble-minded being not only recognized in this country but in
Europe also as absolute, yet this bill, which did not contemplate
placing a woman in charge of such an institution, and which was so
purely moral in its character, met with ridicule and opposition
from the press of the State, to which Dr. Wilbur made an exhaustive
reply, showing the need of women as physicians in all institutions
in which unfortunate women are incarcerated.
When the fall elections of 1879 approached, a circular letter was
sent to every candidate for office in the city, asking his views on
the question of woman suffrage, and delegations waited on the
nominees for mayor. Mr. Edward Cooper, the Republican candidate,
declared he had no sympathy with the movement, while Hon. Augustus
Schell, the Democratic candidate, received the ladies with great
courtesy, and avowed himself friendly at least to the demand for
equal wages and better opportunities for education, and in the
trades and professions. From the answers received, a list of
candidates was prepared. On the evening of October 30, a crowded
mass-meeting was held in Steinway Hall to advocate the election of
those men who were favorable to the enfranchisement of woman. Mr.
Schell was chosen Mayor. The re-nomination in 1879, of Lucius
Robinson for governor by the Democratic convention, aroused the
opposition of the women who understood the politics of the State.
He had declared that "the God of Nature did not intend women for
public life"; they resolved that the same power should retire Mr.
Robinson from public life, and held mass-meetings to that end.[232]
These meetings were all alike crowded and enthusiastic, and the
speakers[233] felt richly paid for their efforts. A thorough
canvass of the State was also made, and a protest[234] extensively
circulated, condemning the governor for his veto of the
school-bill.
Mr. F. B. Thurber, and Miss Susan A. King contributed liberally to
this campaign. Handbills containing the protest and a call for a
series of mass-meetings, were distributed by the thousands all over
the State. The last meeting was held at the seventh ward Republican
wigwam, an immense structure, in Brooklyn: its use was given by the
unanimous vote of the club.[235] At every one of these meetings
resolutions were passed condemning Mr. Robinson, and electors were
urged to cast their votes against him. No doubt the enthusiasm the
women aroused for his opponent helped in a measure to defeat him.
In the meantime, women in the eleventh senatorial district were
concentrating their efforts for the defeat of Thomas H. Eccelsine.
His Republican opponent, Hon. Chas. E. Foster, was a pronounced
advocate of woman suffrage. Miss King,[236] who resided in this
district, exerted all her influence for his election, giving time,
money and thought to the canvass. On the morning of November 5, the
day after election, the papers announced that Mr. Cornell was
chosen governor, and that Mr. Ecclesine, who two years before had
been elected by 7,000 majority, was defeated by 600, and Mr. Foster
chosen senator in his stead.
This campaign attracted much attention. The journals throughout the
country commented upon the action of the women. It was conceded
that their efforts had counted for something in influencing the
election, and from this moment the leaders of the woman suffrage
movement in New York regarded themselves as possessing some
political influence.
In January, 1880, Governor Alonzo B. Cornell, in his first message
to the legislature, among other recommendations, embodied the
following:
The policy of making women eligible as school officers has been
adopted in several States with beneficial results, and the
question is exciting much discussion in this State. Women are
equally competent with men for this duty, and it cannot be
doubted that their admission to representation would largely
increase the efficacy of our school management. The favorable
attention of the legislature is earnestly directed to this
subject.
With such words from the chief executive it was an easy matter to
find friends for a measure making women eligible as school
officers. Early in the session the following bill was introduced by
Hon. Lorraine B. Sessions of Cattaraugus:
No person shall be deemed ineligible to serve as any school
officer, or to vote at any school meeting, by reason of sex, who
has the voter's qualifications required by law.
Senator Edwin G. Halbert of Broome rendered efficient aid and the
bill passed at once in the Senate by a nearly unanimous vote. Hon.
G. W. Husted of Westchester introduced it at once in the assembly
and earnestly championed the measure. It passed by a vote of 87 to
3. The bill was laid before the governor, who promptly affixed his
signature to it, and thus, at last, secured to the women of the
Empire State the right to vote on all school matters, and to hold
any school offices to which they might be chosen. The bill was
signed on February 12, and the next day being Friday, was the last
day of registration in the city of Syracuse, the election there
taking place on the following Tuesday. The news did not reach there
until late in the day, the evening papers being the first to
contain it. But, although so little was known of the measure,
thirteen women registered their names as voters, and cast their
ballots at the election. This was the first time the women of New
York ever voted, and Tuesday, February 18, 1880, is a day to be
remembered.[237] The voting for officers, like all other-school
matters, was provided for, not under the general laws, but by the
school statutes. There are two general elections in chartered
cities and universal suffrage for school as well as all other
officers; no preparation being required of voters but registration.
In the rural districts school meetings are held for elections, and
there are, by the statutes, three classes of voters described by
law.
1. Every person (male or female) who is a resident of the
district, of the age of twenty-one years, entitled to hold lands
in this State, who either owns or hires real estate in the
district liable to taxation for school purposes.
2. Every citizen of the United States (male or female) above the
age of twenty-one years, who is a resident of the district, and
who owns any personal property assessed on the last preceding
assessment roll of the town exceeding $50 in value, exclusive of
such as is exempt from execution.
3. Every citizen of the United States (male or female) above the
age of twenty-one years, who is a resident of the district and
who has permanently residing with him, or her, a child or
children of school age, some one or more of whom shall have
attended the school of the district for a period of at least
eight weeks within the year preceding the time at which the vote
is offered.
Several of the large cities hold their elections on the first
Tuesday in March, while the majority of the rural districts hold
their school meetings on the second Tuesday in October.
Preparations were at once made to call out a large vote of women in
the cities holding spring elections, but all such efforts were
checked by official action. The mayor of Rochester wrote to the
governor, asking him if the new law applied to cities. Mr. Cornell
laid the question before Attorney-General Ward, who promptly gave
an opinion that inasmuch as the words "school meeting" were used in
the law, women could only vote where such meetings were held, but
were not entitled to vote at the elections in large cities.
Meantime the New York City Association called a meeting of
congratulation on the passage of the bill on February 25, when
Robinson Hall was crowded to overflowing with the friends of woman
suffrage, some of whom addressed the vast audience.[238]
A mass-meeting of women was held at Albany, in Geological Hall,
Mrs. Blake presiding. It was especially announced that the meeting
was only for ladies, but several men who strayed in were permitted
to remain, to take that part in the proceedings usually allowed to
women in masculine assemblies, that is, to be silent spectators.
Resolutions were passed, urging the women to vote at the coming
election, and the names of several ladies were suggested as
trustees. March 19, 1880, the Albany County Woman Suffrage
Association[239] was formed, whose first active duty was to rouse
the women to vote in the coming school election, which they did, in
spite of the attorney-general's opinion.
Mr. Edwin G. Halbert of Broome also introduced a bill in the
Senate, for a constitutional amendment, to secure to women the
right of suffrage, which was passed by that conservative body just
before its adjournment. Meantime Mr. Wilcox urged the passage of
the bill to prohibit disfranchisement, which was brought to a third
reading in the Assembly. He prepared and circulated among the
members of the legislature a brief,[240] showing their power to
extend the suffrage. The argument is unanswerable, establishing the
fact that women had voted through the early days of the Colonies,
and proving, by unanswerable authorities, their right to do so;
thus establishing the right of women to vote in 1885. Mr.
Wilcox' researches on this point will prove invaluable in the
enfranchisement of woman, as his facts are irresistible. Following
is the proposed bill:
AN ACT _to Prohibit Disfranchisement_.
Introduced in the Assembly by Hon. Alex. F. Andrews, March 31,
1880. Reported by the Judiciary Committee for consideration, May
24. Ordered to third reading, May 27. Again so reported,
unanimously, March 16, 1881. Again ordered to third reading, May
3, 1881; ayes 60, noes 40. Vote on passage, May 11, 1881; ayes
59, noes 55, majority 4. (65 necessary to pass).
_Whereas_, the common law entitles women to vote under the same
qualifications as men; and
_Whereas_, said common law has never been abrogated in this
State; and
_Whereas_, a practice nevertheless obtains of treating as
disfranchised all persons to whom suffrage is not secured by
express words of the constitution; and
_Whereas_, the constitution makes no provision for this practice,
but on the contrary declares that its own object is to secure the
blessings of freedom to the people, and provides that no member
of this State shall be disfranchised or deprived of any of the
privileges secured to any citizen unless by constitutional
provision and judicial decision thereunder; and
_Whereas_, this practice, despite the want of authority therefor,
has by continuance acquired the force of law; and
_Whereas_, many citizens object to this practice as a violation
of the spirit and purpose of the constitution, as well as against
justice and public policy; and
_Whereas_, the legislature has corrected this practice in
repeated instances, its power to do so being in such instances
fully recognized and exercised; therefore
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and
Assembly, do enact as follows:
SECTION 1. Every woman shall be free to vote, under the
qualifications required of men, or to refrain from voting, as she
may choose; and no person shall be debarred, by reason of sex,
from voting at any election, or at any town meeting, school
meeting, or other choice of government functionaries whatsoever.
SEC. 2. All acts and parts of acts inconsistent with this act,
are hereby repealed.
SEC. 3. This act shall take effect immediately.
Various memorials were sent to the legislature in behalf of this
bill, and a hearing was granted to its advocates.[241] The
Assembly chamber in the beautiful new capitol was crowded as it
had never been before. A large proportion of the senators and
assemblymen were present, many of the judges from the various
courts, while the governor and lieutenant-governor occupied
prominent places, and large crowds of fashionable ladies and
leading gentlemen filled the seats and galleries. The chairman of
the committee, Hon. George L. Ferry, presided. The ladies were
graciously received by the governor, who, at their request, gave
them the pen with which he signed the bill providing "school
suffrage for women," and in return they presented him a handsome
gold-mounted pen, a gift from the City Society.
The first voting by women after the passage of the new law, was at
Syracuse, February 17, only five days after the bill received the
governor's signature, but the great body of women had not the
opportunity until October. At that time in Fayetteville, the home
of Matilda Joslyn Gage, women voted in large numbers; the three who
had been placed upon the ticket, trustee, clerk and librarian were
all elected. It was an hour of triumph for Mrs. Gage who was
heartily congratulated upon the result. It was remarked that so
quiet an election had seldom been known. At Middletown, Orange
county, Dr. Lydia Sayre Hasbrook urged the women to take advantage
of their new privilege, and when the day of election came, although
it was cold and stormy, over 200 voted, and elected the entire
ticket of women for trustees, Mrs. Hasbrook herself being chosen as
one.
There were many places, however, where no women voted, for the
reform had all the antagonisms and prejudices of custom to
overcome. Many obstacles were thrown in the way to prevent them
from exercising this right. The men of their families objecting,
and misconstruing the law, kept them in doubt both as to their
rights and duties. The clergy from their pulpits warned the women
of their congregations not to vote, fathers forbade their
daughters, husbands their wives. The wonder is that against such a
pressure so many women did vote after all.
October 12, 1880, the elections took place in a large proportion of
the eleven thousand school districts of the State, and the daily
journals were full of items as to the result. We copy a few of
these:
LOWVILLE, Lewis County, Oct. 16, 1880.--The business meeting was
held on the evening of the 12th, and was attended by twenty
ladies. On the following day at 1 P.M., the election was held.
The ladies had an independent ticket opposing the incumbent clerk
and trustee. Seven voted. Four were challenged. They swore their
votes in. Boys just turned twenty-one years of age voted
unchallenged. The clerk, who is a young sprig of a lawyer, made
himself conspicuous by challenging our votes. He first read the
opinion of the State superintendent of public instruction, and
said that the penalty for illegal voting was not less than six
months' imprisonment. My vote was challenged, and although my
husband is an owner of much real estate and cannot sell one foot
of it without my consent, I could not vote.
From Penn Yan a woman writes:--About seventy ladies voted here,
but none who did not either own or lease real estate. The
argument so often used against woman suffrage--viz: that the
first to avail themselves of the privilege would be those least
qualified to do so, is directly refuted, in this town at least,
since the ladies who voted are without doubt those who by natural
ability and by culture are abundantly competent to vote
intelligently as well as conscientiously.
A woman in Nunda writes:--Only six women attended the school
meeting in the first district on the 12th, but over forty went to
the polls on the 13th. Two women were on one of the tickets; the
opposition ticket was made up entirely of males. We were
supported by the best men in the village. The ticket bearing the
names of Mrs. Fidelia J. M. Whitcomb, M. D., and Mrs. S. Augusta
Herrick, was elected.
From Poland a woman writes:--Our school meeting was attended by
about thirty men and two women. The population of the village is
between three and four hundred. My neighbor and I were proud of
the privilege of casting our first vote. There was nothing of
special interest to call out voters, as our trustees are
satisfactory to all. If circumstances required, there would be
many women voters here.
David Hopkins and Gustave Dettloff were candidates for school
trustee in district No. 1 of New Lots, Long Island, at the last
election. Mr. Hopkins is a farmer and was seeking reëlection. Mr.
Dettloff is connected with an insurance company in this city, and
is a well-known resident of the town. The friends of Mr. Hopkins
about an hour before the closing of the polls, perceived that
there was danger of their candidate's defeat. A consultation was
held, and it was decided to utilize the new law giving women the
privilege of voting. Accordingly, several farm wagons were
procured and sent through the district to gather in the farmers'
wives and daughters. The wagons returned to the polls with 107
women, all of whom voted for Mr. Hopkins, thus saving him from
defeat. It was too late to use a counter poison. The total number
of votes cast was 329, Mr. Hopkins receiving eighty majority.
PORT JERVIS. Oct. 13.--The annual election of school trustees
occurred to-day and was attended with unusual excitement. Eight
hundred and thirty votes were polled, 150, for the women's
ticket, the remainder being divided. Only fifty ladies voted, a
great many being kept from the polls by the crowd of loafers
standing around. The Protestant ticket, composed of three men,
was elected. The election was held in a small room, and this was
crowded with men who amused themselves by passing remarks about
the ladies until the police were called in. Every lady who
offered her vote was challenged and a great many left the polls
in disgust. In Carpenter's Point and Sparrowbush, two suburbs of
the village, the ladies voted and were not molested.
Only a few women voted on Tuesday evening at the election for
school trustees in the first district of Southfield, Staten
Island. When the poll was opened Judge John G. Vaughan, the
retiring trustee, presided. A motion was made to reëlect him by
acclamation. Amid great confusion Judge Vaughan put the motion
and declared it carried. Then Officers Fitzgerald and Leary had
to take charge of the meeting to preserve order, and Judge
Vaughan's opponents withdrew, threatening proceedings to have the
election declared invalid. Abram C. Wood was elected school
trustee in the West New Brighton (S. I.) district by 69 majority,
which included the votes of eight of eleven women present. Other
women promised to vote if Mr. Wood needed their support. Mr.
Robert B. Minturn presided.
SING SING, Oct. 13.--Five women voted at the school meeting last
night.
MOUNT MORRIS, Oct. 13.--One hundred and twenty women voted at the
school election here last evening.
GLEN'S FALLS, Oct. 13.--I am informed that women did vote here
and in the neighborhood last evening.
PERRY, Oct. 13.--A large woman vote was cast here. Two women were
elected members of the school-board.
PEEKSKILL, Oct. 13.--Five women voted in one district.
SHELTER ISLAND, Oct. 13.--Women voted at our school meeting.
COFFIN SUMMIT, Oct. 15.--Six women voted at the school meeting
here. A lady was nominated for trustee and received many votes,
but was defeated.
STAMFORD, Oct. 15.--Four ladies voted at the school meeting.
PORT RICHMOND, Oct. 15.--Six ladies attended the school meeting.
The chairman, Mr. Sidney P. Ronason, made a speech, welcoming
them, stating that an unsuccessful effort had been made by
citizens to induce a leading lady to become a candidate for
trustee; also, that Lester A. Scofield, the retiring trustee,
would cheerfully give way if any competent lady would take his
place. This Mr. Scofield confirmed, but, no lady being nominated,
he was reëlected without opposition.
BALDWINVILLE, Oct. 15.--Thirty-three ladies voted at the school
election.
LOCKPORT, Oct. 15.--Two Quaker ladies voted at the school meeting
of the first district of this township. One of them, Dr. Sarah
Lamb Cushing, was chosen tax-collector by 23 votes out of 26. On
the entrance of the ladies, smoking and all disorder ceased, and
the meeting was uncommonly well-conducted.
LAWTON STATION, Oct. 15.--Of the 16 votes cast at the school
meeting here, 15 were given by women. A woman received the
highest vote for school trustee, but withdrew in favor of one of
the male candidates. The proceedings were enlivened with singing
by the pupils under the direction of the teacher. Several
improvements in the building were ordered at the instance of the
ladies.
KNOWLESVILLE, Oct. 15.--Many women meant to vote at the school
meeting, but a person went from house to house and threatened
them with legal penalties if they did. Mrs. James Kernholtz was
nominated for tax-collector at the meeting, but declined, saying
the pay was too small. Miss Adelina Lockwood, being nominated for
librarian, declined, but was elected by acclamation, amid great
applause. The meeting was very large, but unusually orderly.
FLUSHING, Oct. 15.--Forty women voted at the school meeting here,
and in the adjoining district.
SYRACUSE, Oct. 14, 1881.--At the Fayetteville, Onondaga county,
school district election yesterday, a direct issue was made on
the question of woman's rights. The candidate of the women was
chosen. This is the women's second victory in that place, giving
them control of the school-board.
A correspondent describing what the voters had to encounter, said:
Is the question asked, why have not more women voted? I answer,
hundreds of women in this State were debarred by falsehood and
intimidation. No sooner had the school suffrage law passed than
the wildest statements about it were made. It was given out that
the Governor had recalled the bill from the Secretary of State
after signing it (which he could not do), and vetoed it; that the
law was unconstitutional; that it was defective and inoperative;
that it did not apply to cities and villages; that it had been
repealed; and like untruths. Pains was taken to hide its
existence by corrupt officials, who told the women that the law
did not apply to the places where they lived, or who withheld the
fact of its passage. The State was flooded just before the
elections with an incorrect statement that only the rich women
could vote; that the children's mothers could not unless they
held real estate. The story was also set afloat that the
attorney-general had indorsed this statement; which that
gentleman promptly repudiated. All this we corrected as fast and
as far as we could; but it unavoidably did much harm.
Wholesale hindrance and terrorism too, were used. A few samples
are these: In Albany, many women were threatened by their own
husbands with expulsion from house and home, imprisonment, bodily
violence or death if they dared vote; while many others were
deterred by insults and threats of social persecution. Many
persons ridiculed and abused those who sought to vote. In some
districts the inspectors refused to register qualified women,
while in others votes were refused. Statements were widely
published that the law did not apply to Albany. In Knowersville,
the village teacher went to every house, and threatened the women
with state-prison if they dared to vote. In Mount Morris, the
president of the Board of Education denounced the ladies who
induced others to vote. In Fayetteville, Saratoga and elsewhere,
the ladies' request for some share in making the tickets was
scornfully ignored. In Port Jervis, the Board of Education
declined a hall that was offered, and had the election in a low,
dirty little room. Smoke was puffed in the ladies' faces,
challenges were frequent, and all sorts of impudent questions
were asked of the voters. In Long Island City many ladies were
challenged, and stones were thrown in the street at Mrs. Emma
Gates Conkling, the lady who was most active in bringing out the
new voters. In New Brighton, the village paper threatened the
women with jail if they voted; and when a motion was made in one
district that the ladies be invited to attend, a large negative
vote was given, one man shouting, "We have enough of women at
home; we don't want'em here!" At West New Brighton it was openly
announced that the meeting should be too turbulent for ladies,
insomuch that many who intended to go staid away, and the few who
went were obliged to wait till all the men had voted. In Newham a
gang of low fellows took possession of the polling place early,
filled it with smoke of the worst tobacco, and covered the floor
with tobacco juice; and through all this the few ladies who
ventured to vote had to pass. In New York a man who claims to be
a gentleman said: "If my wife undertook to vote I would trample
her under my feet." In New Rochelle the school trustee told the
women they were not entitled to vote, and tried to prevent a
meeting being held to inform them. Clergymen from the pulpit
urged women not to vote, and a mob gathered at the polls and
blocked the way. These are but samples of the difficulties under
which the new law went into operation; and it is the truth that
there was as much bulldozing of voters in New York as ever in the
South, though sometimes by other means.
In 1880 Mrs. Blake was sent by the New York society to the
Republican and Democratic presidential conventions at Chicago and
Cincinnati, and on her return a meeting was called in Republican
Hall, July 9, to hear her report as to the comparative treatment
received by the delegates in the two conventions. Soon afterwards a
delegation of ladies[242] waited on Winfield S. Hancock, the
Democratic nominee, who received them with much courtesy, saying he
was quite willing to interpret, in its broadest sense, that clause
of his letter of acceptance wherein he said: "It is only by a full
vote and a fair count that the people can rule in fact, as required
by the theory of our government." "I am willing, ladies," said the
general, "to have you say that I believe in a free ballot for all
the people of the United States, women as well as men."
Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Slocum and Mr. Wilcox made quite an extensive
canvass through many counties of the State, to rouse the women to
use their right to vote on all school matters.
The bill to prohibit disfranchisement was again introduced in the
legislature of 1881, by Joseph M. Congdon, and ordered to a third
reading May 3, by a vote of 60 to 40, and on May 11 came up for
final action, when the ladies, by special courtesy, were admitted
to the floor of the Assembly chamber to listen to the discussion.
General Francis B. Spinola and General James W. Husted made earnest
speeches in favor of the bill, and Hon. Erastus Brooks and General
George A. Sharpe in opposition. The roll-call gave 57 ayes to 55
noes--a majority of those present, but not the majority (65) of all
the members of the Assembly, which the constitution of New York
requires for the final passage of a bill. The vote astonished the
opponents, and placed the measure among the grave questions of the
day. This substantial success inspired the friends to renewed
efforts.[243]
The necessity of properly qualified women in the police stations
again came up for consideration. The condition of unfortunate women
nightly consigned to these places had long been set forth by the
leaders of the suffrage movement. In New York there were thirty-two
station-houses in which, from night to night, from five to forty
women were lodged, some on criminal charges, some from extreme
poverty. All there, young and old, were entirely in the hands of
men, in sickness or distress. If search was to be made on charge of
theft, it was always a male official who performed the duty. If the
most delicate and refined lady were taken ill on the street, or
injured in any way, she was liable to be taken to the nearest
station, where the needful examinations to ascertain if life yet
lingered must be made by men. In view of these facts, a resolution
was again passed at the State convention, and request made to the
police commissioners, to permit a delegation of ladies to meet with
them in conference. The commissioners deigned no reply, but gave
the letter to the press, whereupon ensued a storm of comment and
ridicule.
On consultation with Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, commissioner of
the State Board of Charities, a bill was drawn up and sent to
Albany, providing for the appointment of one or more police-matrons
at every station-house in cities of 50,000 inhabitants and upwards,
the salaries to be $600 each. Hon. J. C. Boyd presented the bill in
the Senate, where it passed April 18. In the Assembly its passage
was urged by Hon. Michael C. Murphy, chairman of the Committee on
Cities. Meantime Mayor Grace and Comptroller Campbell entered their
protest against the bill, declaring the measure ought to originate
in the city departments, where there was full power to appoint
police-matrons; also, that the proposed salaries would be a heavy
drain upon the city treasury. The comptroller was at once informed
of the previous application to the police commissioners, from whom
no reply had been received, which virtually compelled appeal to the
legislature. And as to salaries, it was suggested that there were
now on the pay-roll of the police of New York 2,500 men whose
salaries amounted to over $2,500,000, whereas the bill before the
legislature asked for only sixty matrons, whose salaries would
amount to but $36,000. This was certainly a most reasonable demand
for the protection of one-half the people of the city, who paid
fully half the indirect taxes as well as a fair proportion of the
direct taxes. Finally, it was proposed to the comptroller that the
bill should be withdrawn if he would recommend the appointment of
police-matrons in the city departments. This was not accepted. The
Committee on Cities gave a hearing to Mrs. Blake, and reported
unanimously in favor of the bill. Public sentiment supported the
measure, the press generally advocated it, and the Assembly passed
the bill by a vote of 96 to 7; but it failed to receive the
signature of the governor,--a most striking proof of the need of
the ballot for women; since, friendly as he was to woman's
enfranchisement, when he found the police department, with its
thousands of attachés, _all with votes_ in their hands, opposed,
Governor Cornell was found wanting in courage and conscience to
sign this bill for women who had no votes.[244] The next year
application was again made to the city authorities for the
appointment of matrons, but they refused to act. The bill was
reïntroduced in the legislature, passed by a large majority in the
Assembly, but defeated in the Senate by the adverse report of the
Committee on Cities. A mass-meeting to discuss this question of
police-matrons was held in Steinway Hall, March 1, at which the
speakers[B] all urged such appointments.
During the winter of 1882 an effort was made in New York city to
secure the enforcement of the law enacted by the previous
legislature, which provided that seats should be furnished for the
"shop-girls." Mrs. Emma Gates Conkling caused the arrest of certain
prominent shop-keepers on the charge of not complying with the law,
but on coming to trial the suits were withdrawn on the promise of
the delinquents to give seats to their employés.
During the winter of 1882 agitation for the higher education of
women was renewed, and a society organized by some of the most
influential ladies in the city. They rolled up a petition of 1,200,
asking that Columbia College be opened to women. President Barnard
had recommended this in his reports for three years. The agitation
culminated in a grand meeting[245] in the new Union League Theater.
Parke Godwin of the _Evening Post_ presided. The audience was
chiefly composed of fashionable ladies, whose equipages filled
Thirty-eighth street blocks away, yet not a woman sat on the
platform; not a woman's voice was heard; even the report of the
society was read by a man, and every inspiration of the occasion
was filtered through the brain of some man. Among other things, Mr.
Godwin, son-in-law of the poet Bryant, said:
We speak of the higher education of women. Why not also of men?
Because they already have the opportunity for obtaining it. The
idea upon which our government is built is the idea of equal
rights for all; and that means equal opportunities. Every society
needs all the best intellect that it can get. We have many evil
influences acting upon our society here, and we need the
all-controlling influence of woman. We cannot fix a standard for
her. History shows what she has done, in a Vespasia, Vittoria
Colonna, De Staël, Bremer, Evans, Somerville and Maria Mitchell.
She does not go out of her sphere when she is so highly educated.
She can darn her stockings just as well if she does know the word
in half-a-dozen languages. There is no longer novelty in this
movement; it has been tried successfully here and abroad in the
universities, and always with success.
Addresses were also made by Rev. Dr. Stowe, Dr. William Draper,
Joseph Choate, and others eminent in one way or another. The
meeting closed by circulating a petition for presentation to the
trustees of Columbia College, asking that properly qualified women
be admitted to lectures and examinations.
The bill to prohibit disfranchisement on account of sex was again
introduced in the Assembly by Hon. J. Hampden Robb, and referred to
the Committee on Grievances, of which Major James Haggerty was
chairman, who gave to it his hearty approval and granted two
hearings to the officers of the State society, on behalf of the
large number of memorialists who had sent in their petitions from
all parts of the State. The women of Albany were indefatigable in
their personal appeals to the different members of the Assembly,
urging them to vote for the bill, while Major Haggerty was untiring
in his advocacy of the measure. On May 3 there was an animated
discussion:[246] the bill passed to its third reading by an
overwhelming vote, which alarmed the opponents into making a
thorough canvass, that proved to them the necessity of some
decisive action for the defeat of the bill. The Hon. Erastas Brooks
presented a resolution, calling on the attorney-general for his
opinion on the constitutionality of the proposed law, which was
passed in a moment of confusion, and when many of our friends were
absent. Following is the opinion elicited:
STATE OF NEW YORK. OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL,}
ALBANY, May 10, 1882.}
_To the Assembly:_
I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the resolution of
the Assembly requesting the attorney-general to report his
opinion as to the constitutionality of Assembly bill No. 637,
which provides that "every woman shall be free to vote under the
qualifications required of men, or to refrain from voting, as she
may choose; and no person shall be debarred by reason of sex from
voting at any election, or at any town meeting, school meeting,
or other choice of government functionaries whatsoever," and
whether, without an amendment to the constitution, suffrage can
be granted to any class of persons not named in the constitution.
I reply:
_First_--It has been decided so often by the judicial tribunals
of the various States of the Union, and by the Supreme Court of
the United States, that suffrage is not a natural inherent right,
but one governed by the law-making power and regulated by
questions of availability and expediency, instead of absolute,
inalienable right (1, 3), that the question is no longer open for
discussion, either by the judicial forum or legislative
assemblies (_Burnham vs. Laning, 1 Legal Gazette Rep., 411,
Supreme Court Penn.; Minor vs. Happersett, 21 Wallace, 162; Day
vs. Jones, 31 California, 261; Anderson vs. Baker, 23 Maryland,
531; Abbott vs. Bayley, 6 Pickering, 92; 2 Dallas, 471-2; In re
Susan B. Anthony, 11 Blatchford, 200_). At the common law women
had no right to vote and no political status (2, 4) (_Maine's
Ancient Law, 140; Cooley's Const. Lim., 599; Blackstone's Comm.,
171_).
_Second_--Therefore the constitution of the State of New York,
providing that every male citizen of the age of 21 years who
shall have certain other qualifications, may vote, the
determination of the organic law specifying who shall have the
privilege of voting, excludes all other classes (5), such as
women, persons under 21 years of age and aliens. The argument
that, because women are not expressly prohibited, they may vote,
fails to give the slightest force to the term "male" in the
constitution; and by the same force of reasoning, the expression
of the term "citizen" and the statement of the age of 21 years
would not necessarily exclude aliens and those under 21 years of
age from voting (6). Therefore, assuming that our organic law was
properly adopted without the participation of women either in
making or adopting it (7), that organic law controls.
_Third_--It follows, therefore, as a logical consequence that the
proposed reform cannot be accomplished except by an amendment of
the constitution ratified by two successive legislatures and the
people, or by a constitutional convention, whose work shall be
sanctioned by a vote of the people.
LESLIE W. RUSSELL, _Attorney-General_.[247]
Weak as was this document, and untenable as were its assertions, it
had great weight with many of the members of the legislature coming
as the opinion did from the attorney-general of the State. The
friends of the bill resolved to call for the vote when the bill
should be reached, and on May 16, the women were present in large
numbers, listening with intense interest to the brief speeches of
the members for and against, and watching and counting the vote as
the roll-call proceeded, which resulted in 54 ayes and 59 noes,
lacking three votes of a majority of those present and only eleven
of the requisite number, sixty-five. In view of the official
opinion against its constitutionality amounting to a legal
decision, this was a most gratifying vote.[248]
The presence of Leslie W. Russell in Albany, as attorney-general,
rendered it useless to reïntroduce the bill to prohibit
disfranchisement on account of sex in the legislature of 1883, but
in its stead, Dr. John G. Boyd of New York introduced a proposition
to strike "male" from the suffrage clause of the constitution,
which, however, received only fifteen votes.
To pass from the State to the Church, the winter of 1883 was
notable for the delivery of a series of Lenten lectures on woman by
the Rev. Morgan Dix, D. D., rector of Trinity Church, New York,
afterwards published in book form under the title, "The Calling of
a Christian Woman and her Training to Fulfill it." The lectures
were delivered each Friday evening during Lent, in Trinity Chapel,
and at once attracted attention from their conservative,
reäctionary, almost monastic views of woman's position and duties.
After reading a report of one of these remarkable essays in which
women were gravely told their highest happiness should be found in
singing hymns, Mrs. Blake decided to reply to them. She secured a
hall on Fourteenth street, and on successive Sunday evenings gave
addresses in reply. Both courses of lectures were well attended.
The moderate audiences of Trinity Chapel soon became a throng that
more than filled the large building, while the hall in which Mrs.
Blake spoke was packed to suffocation, hundreds going away unable
to gain admittance. The press everywhere favored the broad and
liberal views presented by Mrs. Blake, and denounced the old-time
narrow theories of Dr. Dix. Mrs. Blake's lectures were also
published in book form with the title of "Woman's Place To-day" and
had a large circulation.
The Republicans again nominating Mr. Russell for attorney-general,
an active campaign was organized against him and in favor of the
Democratic nominee, Mr. Dennis O'Brien. Protests[249] against
Russell were circulated throughout the State; Republican tickets
were printed with the name of Denis O'Brien for attorney-general,
and on election day women distributed these tickets, and made every
possible effort to ensure the defeat of Russell; and he was
defeated by 13,000 votes.
The legislature of 1884 showed a marked gain; Hon. Erastus Brooks,
General George A. Sharpe, and other prominent opponents had been
retired, and their seats filled by active friends. Our bill was
introduced by Mr. William Howland of Cayuga, and referred to the
Committee on the Judiciary. Mr. Howland also secured the passage of
a special act, granting women the right to vote at the charter
elections of Union Springs, Cayuga county. Under similar enactments
women have the right to vote for municipal officers in Dansville,
Newport and other villages and towns in the State.
On March 11, 12, the annual meeting of the State society was held
in the City Hall, Albany, with a good representation[250] from the
National Convention at Washington, added to our own State
speakers.[251] On the last evening there was an overflow meeting
held in Geological Hall, presided over by Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage.
Governor Cleveland accorded the delegates a most courteous
reception in his room in the capitol. A hearing was had before the
Judiciary Committee March 13. The assembly-chamber was crowded.
General Husted, chairman of the committee, presided, and Mrs.
Blake, the president of the society, introduced the speakers.[252]
A few days later the same committee gave a special hearing to Mrs.
Gougar, who made the journey from Indiana to present the case. The
committee reported adversely, but by the able tactics of General
Husted, after an animated debate the bill was placed on the
calendar by a vote of 66 to 62, and shortly after ordered to a
third reading by a vote of 74 to 39. On May 8 the bill was reached
for final action. Frederick B. Howe of New York was the principal
opponent, trying to obstruct legislation by one and another
pretext. General Husted took the floor in an able speech on the
constitutionality of the bill, and the vote stood 57 ayes to 61
noes, lacking eight votes of the requisite 65.
While the right of suffrage is still denied, gains in personal and
property rights have been granted:
In 1880, the law requiring the private acknowledgment by a
married woman of her execution of deeds, or other written
instruments, without the "fear or compulsion" of her husband, was
abolished, leaving the wife to make, take and certify in the same
manner as if she were a _feme sole_.
March 21, 1884, the penal code of the State was amended, raising
the age of consent from ten to sixteen years, and also providing
penalties[253] for inveigling or enticing any unmarried woman,
under the age of twenty-five years, into a house of ill-fame or
assignation.
Under the act of May 28, 1884, a married woman may contract to
the same extent, with like effect and in the same form as if
unmarried, and she and her separate estate shall be liable
thereon, whether such contract relates to her separate business
or estate, or otherwise, and in no case shall a charge upon her
separate estate be necessary.
It is by court decisions that we most readily learn the legal
status of married women, under the favorable legislation of the
period covered by this History. While referring the reader to
Abbott's Digest of New York Laws for full knowledge upon this
point, we give a few of the more recent decisions as illustrating
general legal opinion:
TROY, March 23, 1882.--The Court of Appeals decided that married
women are the rightful owners of articles of personal adornment
or convenience coming from husbands, and can bequeath them to
their heirs. The court held that separate and personal possession
by a wife of articles specially fitted for and adapted to her
personal use, and differing in that respect from household goods
kept for the common use of husband and wife, would draw after it
a presumption of the executed gift if the property came from the
husband, and of the wife's ownership, but for disabilities of the
marital relations. Now that these disabilities are removed the
separate existence and separate property of the wife are
recognized, and her capacity to take and hold as her own the gift
in good faith and fairly made to her by her husband established,
it seemed to the court time to clothe her right with natural and
proper attributes, and apply to the gift to her, although made by
her husband, the general rules of law unmodified and unimpaired
by the old disabilities of the marriage relations.
This decision was important as further destroying the old
common-law theory of the husband's absolute ownership of his wife's
person, property, services and earnings. The same year (1882) the
Supreme Court, at its general term, rendered a decision that a
married woman could sue her husband for damages for assault and
battery; that by the act of 1860 the legislature intended to, and
did, change the common-law rule, that a wife could not sue her
husband. Judge Brady rendered the opinion, Judge Daniels
concurring; Presiding Judge Noah Davis dissenting. Judge Brady
said:
To allow the right (to sue) in an action of this character, in
accordance with the language of the statute, would be to promote
greater harmony by enlarging the rights of married women and
increasing the obligations of husbands, by affording greater
protection to the former, and by enforcing greater restraint upon
the latter in the indulgence of their evil passions. The
declaration of such a rule is not against the policy of the law.
It is in harmony with it, and calculated to preserve peace and,
in a great measure, prevent barbarous acts, acts of cruelty,
regarded by mankind as inexcusable, contemptible, detestable. It
is neither too early nor too late to promulgate the doctrine that
if a husband commits an assault and battery upon his wife he may
be held responsible civilly and criminally for the act, which is
not only committed in violation of the laws of God and man, but
in direct antagonism to the contract of marriage, its
obligations, duties, responsibilities, and the very basis on
which it rests. The rules of the common law on this subject have
been dispelled, routed, and justly so, by the acts of 1860 and
1862. They are things of the past which have succumbed to more
liberal and just views, like many other doctrines of the common
law which could not stand the scrutiny and analysis of modern
civilization.
The utter insecurity of woman without the ballot is shown in the
reversal of this decision within a few months, by the Court of
Appeals, on the ground that it would be "contrary to the policy of
the law, and destructive to the conjugal union and tranquility
which it had always been the object of the law to guard and
protect." Could satire go farther? We record with satisfaction the
fact that Judge Danforth uttered a strong dissenting opinion.
The friends of woman suffrage in the legislature of 1884 secured
the passage of a bill empowering women to vote on all questions of
taxation submitted to a popular vote in the village of Union
Springs. Governor Cleveland was urged to veto it; but after hearing
all the objections he signed the bill and it became a law.
At Clinton, Oneida county, twenty-two women voted on June 21, 1884,
at an election on the question of establishing water-works. Eight
voted for the tax, fourteen against it. Fifteen other women
appeared at the polls, but were excluded from voting because,
though they were real-estate tax-payers, the assessor had left
their names off the tax-roll. Judge Theodore W. Dwight, president
of the Columbia Law School, pronounced women tax-payers entitled to
vote under the general water-works act, and therefore that the
election-officials violated the law in refusing to accept the votes
of the women whose names were omitted from the assessors' tax-list.
In 1879, there was a report of the committee to allow widows an
active voice in the settlement of the family estate and to have the
sole guardianship of minor children. A petition in favor of the
bill had upon it the names of such well-known men as Peter Cooper,
George William Curtis, Henry Bergh and J. W. Simonton.
September 13, 1879, Mrs. MacDonald of Boston argued her own case
before the United States Circuit Court in New York city, in a
patent suit. It was a marked event in court circles, she being the
first lady pleader that ever appeared in that court, and the second
woman who ever argued a case in this State. Anne Bradstreet was for
years a marked character in Albany courts, but her claims for
justice were regarded as an amusing lunacy.
In 1880, Governor Cornell appointed Miss Carpenter on the State
Board of Charities.
In the suit of Mr. Edward Jones to recover $860 which he alleged he
had loaned to the Rev. Anna Oliver for the Willoughby Avenue
Methodist Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, of which she was pastor, a
verdict for the defendant was rendered. Miss Oliver addressed the
following letter to the court:
_To his Honor, the Judge, the Intelligent Jury, the Lawyers and
all who are engaged in the case of Jones vs. Oliver_:
GENTLEMEN:--Thanking you for the politeness, the courtesy, the
chivalry even, that has been shown me to-day, allow me to make of
you the following request: Please sit down at your earliest
leisure, and endeavor to realize in imagination how you would
feel if you were sued by a woman, and the case was brought before
a court composed entirely of women; the judge a woman; every
member of the jury a woman; women to read the oath to you, and
hold the Bible, and every lawyer a woman. Further, your case to
be tried under laws framed entirely by women, in which neither
you nor any man had ever been allowed a voice. Somewhat as you
would feel under such circumstances, you may be assured, on
reading this, I have felt during the trial to-day. Perhaps the
women would be lenient to you (the sexes do favor each other),
but would you be satisfied? Would you feel that such an
arrangement was exactly the just and fair thing? If you would
not, I ask you on the principle of the Golden Rule, to use your
influence for the enfranchisement of women.
_New York, 1881._
Mrs. Roebling, wife of the engineer in charge of the construction
of the marvelous Brooklyn bridge, made the patterns for various
necessary shapes of iron and steel such as no mills were making,
after her husband and other engineers had for weeks puzzled their
brains over the difficulties.
When Frank Leslie died, his printing-house was involved, and Mrs.
Leslie undertook to redeem it, which she did, and in a very short
time. Speaking of it she says:
"I had the property in reach, and the assignees were ready to
turn it over to me, but to get it, it was necessary for me to
raise $50,000, I borrowed it from a woman. How happy I was when
she signed the check, and how beautiful it seemed to me to see
one woman helping another. I borrowed the money in June, and was
to make the first payment of $5,000, on the 1st of November. On
the 29th of October I paid the $50,000 with interest. From June
to the 29th of October, I made $50,000 clear. I had also to pay
$30,000 to the creditors who did not come under the contract.
While I was paying this $80,000 of my husband's debts, I spent
but $30 for myself, except for my board. I lived in a little
attic room, without a carpet, and the window was so high that I
could not get a glimpse of the sky unless I stood on a chair and
looked out. When I had paid the debts and raised a monument to my
husband, then I said to myself, 'now for a great big pair of
diamond earrings,' and away I went to Europe, and here are the
diamonds." The diamonds are perfect matches, twenty-seven carats
in weight, and are nearly as large as nickles.
In Lansingburgh the women tax-payers offered their ballots and were
repulsed, as follows:
September 2, 1885, the special election of the taxable
inhabitants of the village of Lansingburgh took place, to vote
upon a proposition to raise by tax the sum of $15,000 for
water-works purposes. The measure was voted by 102 for it to 46
against. But a small amount of interest was manifested in the
election. Several women tax-payers offered their votes, but the
inspectors would not receive them, and the matter will be
contested in the courts. The call for the election asked for an
expression from "the taxable inhabitants," and women tax-payers
in the 'burgh claim under the law their rights must be
recognized. Lansingburgh inspectors have on numerous occasions
refused to receive the ballots thus tendered, and the women have
lost patience. They are to employ the best of counsel and settle
the question at as early a day as possible. Women pay tax upon
$367,394 of the property within the village boundaries, and they
believe that they, to the number of 317 at least, are entitled to
votes on all questions involving a monetary expenditure. In
Saratoga, Clinton, and a number of other places in this State,
where elections in relation to water-works have taken place, it
has been held by legal authority that women property owners have
a right to vote, and they have voted accordingly the same as
other tax-payers.
In regard to recent efforts to secure legislation favorable to
women, Mr. Wilcox writes:
The impression that the School Act, passed in 1880, did not apply
to cities, led to the introduction by the Hon. Charles S. Baker
of Rochester, of a bill covering cities. A test vote showed the
Assembly practically unanimous for it, but it was referred to the
Judiciary Committee to examine its constitutionality. The
chairman, Hon. Geo. L. Ferry, and other members, asked me to
look up the point and inform the committee, supposing a
constitutional amendment needful. When the point was made on this
bill, I for the first time closely examined the constitution, and
finding there was nought to prevent the legislature enfranchising
anyone, promptly apprised the committee of the discovery. The
acting-chairman, Major Wm. D. Brennan, requested me to furnish
the committee a legal brief on the matter. This (Feb. 19, 1880) I
did, and arranged a public hearing before them in the
assembly-chamber, which was attended by Governor Cornell,
Lieutenant-Governor Hoskins, many senators, assemblymen, and
State officers; at which Mrs. Blake, the sainted Helen M. Slocum
and Mrs. Elizabeth L. Saxon were the speakers. From that year to
the present there has been a "Bill to Prohibit Disfranchisement"
before each legislature. In 1881, it was carried to a majority
vote in the Assembly. In 1883, two-thirds of the Assembly were
ready to pass the bill when the attorney-general declared it
unconstitutional. In 1884, Governor Cleveland had approved two
suffrage acts, and promised to sign all the friends could carry.
In 1885, growing tired of the senseless clamor of
"unconstitutionality," I resolved to show how little law the
clamorers knew. To the knowledge gained by five years'
discussion, I added that obtained by several months' research in
the State Library at Albany, that of the New York Bar
Association, those of the New York Law Institute and Columbia
College, and elsewhere. The result was the publication of "Cases
of the Legislature's Power over Suffrage," wherein it was shown,
condensed from a great number of authorities, that all classes
have received suffrage, not from the constitution but from the
legislature, and that the latter has exercised the power of
extending suffrage in hundreds of cases. This document received
high praise from General James W. Husted and Major James
Haggerty, who have manfully championed our bills in the Assembly,
General Husted reading from it in his speech and it was signally
sanctioned by the Assembly which, after being supplied with
copies, voted down by more than three to one a motion to
substitute a constitutional amendment.
But while working at this document, I was fortunate enough to
make a still greater discovery--that portions of statute law
which formerly prevented women's voting were repealed long since;
that the constitution and statutes in their present shape secure
women the legal right to vote.
February 19, 1885, a hearing was granted to Mrs. Stanton, Mrs.
Rogers and Mrs. Blake in the assembly-chamber before the Committee
on Grievances, on the "Bill to Prohibit Disfranchisement." The
splendid auditorium was crowded for two hours, and members of the
committee lingered a long time after the audience had dispersed to
discuss the whole question still further with the speakers. On the
next day Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell and Governor John W. Hoyt of
Wyoming Territory had a second hearing. The committee reported for
consideration. When the bill came up for a third reading, General
Martin L. Curtis of St. Lawrence moved that it be sent to
the Judiciary Committee with instructions to substitute a
constitutional amendment; lost, ayes 25, noes 75; carried to a
third reading by _viva voce_ vote. The vote on the final passage
was, ayes 57, noes 56; the constitutional majority in this State
being 65 of the 128 members, it was lost by eight votes. Of the 73
Republicans, 29 voted for the bill; of the 55 Democrats, 28 voted
for the bill, showing that more than half the Democratic vote was
in favor, and only two-fifths of the Republican; thus our defeat
was due to the Republican party.
Thus stands the question of woman suffrage in the Empire State
to-day, where women are in the majority.[254] After long years of
unremitting efforts who can read this chapter of woman's faith and
patience, under such oft-repeated disappointments, but with pity
for her humiliations and admiration for her courage and
persistence. For nearly half a century the petitions, the appeals,
the arguments of the women of New York have been before the
legislature for consideration, and the trivial concessions of
justice thus far wrung from our rulers bear no proportion to the
prolonged labors we have gone through to achieve them.
FOOTNOTES:
[200] It has recently been ascertained that the first woman's
rights petition sent to the New York State legislature was by Miss
Mary Ayers, in 1834, for a change in the property laws. It was ten
or fifteen feet long when unrolled, and is still buried in the
vaults of the capitol at Albany.
[201] Many years afterwards, lecturing in Texas, I met a party of
ladies from Georgia, thoroughly awake on all questions relating to
women. Finding ourselves quite in accord, I said, "how did you get
those ideas in Georgia?" "Why," said one, "some of our friends
attended a woman's convention at Saratoga, and told us what was
said there, and gave us several tracts on all phases of the
question, which were the chief topics of discussion among us long
after." Southern women have suffered so many evils growing out of
the system of slavery that they readily learn the lessons of
freedom.--[E. C. S.
[202] The following were elected officers of the association.
_President_, Martha C. Wright, Auburn. _Vice-Presidents_, Celia
Burleigh, Brooklyn; Rachel S. Martin, Albany; Lydia A. Strowbridge,
Cortland; Jennie White, Syracuse; Eliza W. Osborn, Auburn; Sarah G.
Love, Ithaca; W. S. V. Rosa, Watertown; Mary M. R. Parks, Utica;
Amy Post, Rochester; Candace S. Brockett, Brockett's Bridge; Ida
Greeley, Chappaqua; Mary Hunt, Waterloo. _Secretary_, Matilda
Joslyn Gage, Fayetteville. _Executive Committee_, Lucy A. Brand,
Emeline A. Morgan, Mrs. H. Stewart, Samuel J. May, Rhoda Price, all
of Syracuse. _Advisory Counsel_, for First Judicial District, Susan
B. Anthony, New York; Second, Sarah Schram, Newburgh; Third, Sarah
H. Hallock, Milton; Fourth, Caroline Mowry Holmes, Greenwich;
Fifth, Ann T. Randall, Oswego; Sixth, Mrs. Professor Sprague,
Ithaca, Seventh, Harriet N. Austin, Dansville; Eighth, Helen P.
Jenkins, Buffalo.
[203] The speakers were Celia Burleigh, Susan B. Anthony, Charlotte
B. Wilbour, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Mrs. Bedortha, of Saratoga, Mrs.
Strowbridge, of Cortland, Mrs. Norton, J. N. Holmes, esq., Judge
McKean, Rev. Mr. Angier, Hon. Wm. Hay. See Vol. II., page 402, for
Mrs. Burleigh's letter on this Saratoga convention.
[204] The Board of Trustees of Mt. Vernon, Westchester county,
called a meeting of taxpayers of that village on July 19, 1868, to
vote upon the question of levying a tax of $6,000 for the purpose
of making and repairing highways and sidewalks, and for sundry
other public improvements. Over sixty per cent. of the real-estate
owners being women, they resolved upon asserting their right to a
voice in the matter, and issued a call for a meeting, signed by the
following influential ladies: Mrs. M. J. Law, Mrs. H. H. Leaver,
Mrs. Olive Leaver, Mrs. J. Haggerty, Mary H. Macdonald, Mrs.
Dorothy Ferguson, Mrs. M. J. Farrand, Mrs. Jeanette Oron, Mrs.
Thirza Clark, Mrs. S. J. Clark, Mrs. Nettie Morgan, Mrs. D. Downs,
Miss L. M. Hale, Miss Susie Law, Mrs. Celia Pratt, Mrs. Sabra
Talcott, Mrs. Mary Wilkie, Mrs. Elizabeth Latham, Mrs. Mary C.
Brown, Mrs. J. M. Lockwood, Mrs. May Howe, Mrs. Adaline Baylis,
Mrs. J. Harper, Miss Elizabeth Eaton, Miss C. Frederiska Scharft,
Mrs. S. A. Hathaway, Mrs. Margaret Hick, Mrs. Rebecca Dimmic, Mrs.
Catharine Alphonse, Miss Julia Cheney, Mrs. E. Watkins, Mrs. L. M.
Pease, Mrs. Margaret Coles, Mrs. Ruth Smith, Mrs. Mary A. Douglas,
Mrs. Sarah Valentine, Mrs. H. C. Jones, Mrs. J. Tomlinson, Mrs.
Amanda Carr, Mrs. Margaret Wooley, Mrs. S. Seeber, Mrs. B. Powers,
Mrs. S. A. Waterhouse, Mrs. H. M. Smith. But notwithstanding the
numbers, wealth, and social influence of the women, their demand
was rejected, while hundreds of men, who had never paid a dollar's
tax into the village treasury, were permitted to deposit their
votes, though challenged by friends, and well known to the officers
as not possessors of a foot of real estate.
[205] The Working Women's Association was organized in New York,
September 17, 1868, with Mrs. Anna Tobitt, _President_;
Miss Augusta Lewis, Miss Susan Johns, Miss Mary Peers.
_Vice-Presidents_; Miss Elizabeth C. Browne, _Secretary_, and Miss
Julia Browne, _Treasurer_. The three vice-presidents were young
ladies of about twenty. Miss Lewis worked upon a newly invented
type-setting machine.
[206] "Sergeant Robinson, of the Twenty-sixth Precinct, made a raid
on the abandoned women patroling the park last evening. At 11 p. m.
six unfortunates were caged." Thus runs the record. Will some one
now be kind enough to tell us whether Sergeant Robinson, or any
other sergeant, made a raid upon the abandoned men who were
patrolling Broadway at the same hour? Did any one on that night,
or, indeed, upon any other night, within the memory of the oldest
Knickerbocker, make a raid upon the gamblers, thieves, drunkards
and panders that infest Houston street? By what authority do the
police call women "abandoned" and arrest them because they are
patrolling any public park or square? If these women belonged to
the class euphemistically called "unfortunate," they were doubtless
there because men were already there before them. And if it was
illegal in women and deserving of punishment, why should men
escape? _Prima facie_, if crime were committed, the latter are the
greater criminals of the two. We humbly suggest to all who are
endeavoring to reform this class of women, that they turn their
attention to reforming the opposite sex. If you can make men so
pure that they will not seek the society of prostitutes, you will
soon have no prostitutes for them to seek; in other words,
prostitution will cease when men become sufficiently pure to make
no demand for prostitutes. In any event, the police should treat
both sexes alike. Making a raid, as it is called, upon abandoned
women, and shutting them up in prison, never can procure good
results. The most repulsive and bestial features of "the social
evil" have their origin in the treatment that women receive at the
hands of the police; and society itself would be much better if the
police would keep their hands off such women.--[P. P. in _The
Revolution_.
[207] An important decision relating to the eligibility of
candidates for the Cornell free scholarship has been rendered by
Judge Martin of the Supreme Court. Mary E. Wright, who stood third
in the recent examination here for the scholarship, contested the
appointment on the ground that the candidates who were first and
second in the examination were not pupils of a school in the
county. The judge decided that candidates for the position must be
residents of the county and pupils of a school therein, to be
eligible, and he awarded the scholarship to Miss Wright. This is
the first contested scholarship since the establishment of the
University.--_Ithaca dispatch to New York Times._
[208] Dr. Lewis H. Morgan, who died in 1882, famed in both
hemispheres as an ethnologist, left a considerable estate to be
devoted at the death of his wife (which has since occurred) and of
his son without issue, to the establishment, in connection with the
University of Rochester, of a collegiate institution for women.
This makes it very probable that Rochester will ultimately offer
equal opportunities to both sexes.
[209] At one time it was said that Hobart College had more
professors than students, and one year had arrived at such a point
of exhaustion as to graduate but one young man. When the
proposition to incorporate Geneva Medical College with the Syracuse
University was made, Hon. George F. Comstock, a trustee of the
latter institution, vigorously opposed it unless equal advantages
were pledged to women.
[210] See Volume II., page 264.
[211] The twelve were:. Mrs. H. M. Field, Mrs. Anna Lynch Botta,
Miss Kate Field, Mrs. Anna B. Allen, Miss Josephine Pollard, Mrs.
Celia Burleigh, Mrs. Fanny Barrow, Mrs. C. B. Wilbour, Mrs. J. C.
Croly, Miss Ella Dietz, Alice and Phebe Cary.
[212] She now reports the cattle-market for four New York papers
including the _Tribune_ and _Times_.
[213] _President_, Charlotte B. Wilbour; _Vice-Presidents_, Dr.
Clemence S. Lozier, Mrs. Devereux Blake; _Secretary_, Frances V.
Hallock; _Treasurer_, Miss Jeannie McAdam.
[214] The petitioners were represented by Mrs. Wilbour, Mrs. Hester
M. Poole, Elizabeth B. Phelps, Elizabeth Langdon, Mrs. I. D. Hull,
Mrs. Charlotte L. Coleman, Mrs. M. E. Leclover, Matilda Joslyn
Gage.
[215] See Vol. II., page 628.
[216] Isabella Beecher Hooker, Susan B. Anthony, Rev. Olympia
Brown, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Dr. Clemence Lozier, Helen M. Slocum,
Lillie Devereux Blake.
[217] Lillie Devereux Blake was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in
August, 1833. Her father, George Devereux, was a wealthy Southern
gentleman of Irish descent. Her mother's maiden name was Sarah
Elizabeth Johnson of Stratford, Connecticut, a descendant of
William Samuel Johnson who was one of the first two senators from
that State. Both her parents were descended from Jonathan Edwards.
Her father died in 1837, and the widow subsequently removed to New
Haven, Conn., where she was well known for her large and generous
hospitality. Her daughter, the future favorite writer and lecturer,
was a much admired belle, and in 1855 was married to Frank Umsted,
a lawyer of Philadelphia, with whom she lived two years in St.
Louis, Mo. Mr. Umsted died in 1859, and his widow, who had written
sketches for _Harper's Magazine_ and published a novel called
"Southwold," from that date contributed largely to leading
newspapers and magazines. She was Washington correspondent of the
_Evening Post_ in the winter of 1861, published "Rockford" in 1862,
and wrote many stories for _Frank Leslie's Weekly_, the
_Philadelphia Press_ and other publications. In 1866 she married
Greenfill Blake of New York. In 1872 Mrs. Blake published "Fettered
for Life," a novel designed to show the legal disadvantages of
women. Ever since she became interested in the suffrage movement
Mrs. Blake has been one of the most ardent advocates. She has taken
several lecturing tours in different States of the Union. Mrs.
Blake is an easy speaker and writer, and of late has contributed to
many of our popular magazines. Much of the recent work in the New
York legislature is due to her untiring zeal.
[218] Mrs. Jennie McAdam, Mrs. Hester Poole, Charlotte Coleman,
Mrs. Hull, Mrs. Morse and others. A month before, January 23, Miss
Anthony was invited to address the commission, giving her
constitutional argument, showing woman's right to vote under the
fourteenth amendment. Hon. Henry R. Selden was in the audience,
being in the city on Miss Anthony's case. At the close of her
argument he said: "If I had heard that speech before, I could have
made a stronger plea before Judge Hall this morning."
[219] She was escorted to the capitol by Phoebe H. Jones and the
venerable Lydia Mott, who for a quarter of a century had
entertained at their respective homes the various speakers that had
come to Albany to plead for new liberties, and had accompanied
them, one after another, to the halls of legislation.
[220] Addressed by Mrs. Wilbour, Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Lozier, Mrs.
Hallock, Hamilton Wilcox and Dr. Hallock.
[221] For Judge Hunt's decision, see Volume II., page 677.
[222] Miss Charlotte C. Jackson, the valedictorian of the Normal
College of New York; Miss Mary Hussey of Orange, New Jersey; Miss
Mosher of Ann Arbor, Michigan; Miss Emma Wendt, daughter of
Mathilde Wendt. In 1867, Mrs. Stanton had made a similar
application to Theodore D. Dwight, that the law school might be
opened to young women. In the course of their conversation
Professor Dwight said; "Do you think girls know enough to study
law?" Mrs. Stanton replied: "All the liberal laws for women that
have been passed in the last twenty years are the results of the
protests of women; surely, if they know enough to protest against
bad laws, they know enough to study our whole system of
jurisprudence."
[223] It was peculiarly fitting that this application should be
made by Mrs. Blake, as two of her ancestors had been presidents of
the college. The first it ever had, when founded as King's
College in 1700, was the Rev. Samuel Johnson, D. D., her
great-great-grandfather. His son, the Hon. Samuel William Johnson,
was the first president after the Revolution, when the name was
changed to Columbia College.
[224] Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Antoinette Brown
Blackwell, Mary F. Eastman, Helen Potter, Sarah Andrews Spencer,
Augusta Cooper Bristol, Alice Fletcher, Maria Mitchell, professor
at Vassar College, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Frances Ellen Burr,
Abby Smith, Rossella E. Buckingham, and others.
[225] Dr. Clemence Lozier was born of a good family in New Jersey.
She was married at the early age of 16, and widowed at 27, left
with a young family without means of support. But being an
excellent teacher, she soon found employment. For eleven years she
was principal of a young ladies' seminary. By natural instinct a
physician and a healer, she determined to fit herself for that
profession. A physician of the old school assisted her in her
medical studies, and in 1853 she received a diploma from the
Eclectic College of Syracuse, and shortly after established herself
in New York, where her practice steadily increased, until her
professional income was one of the largest in the city. In 1860 she
began a course of free medical lectures to women, which continued
for three years, culminating in "The New York Medical College for
Women," which was chartered in 1863. The foundation and
establishment of this institution was the crowning work of her
life, to which she has devoted time and money. From the first she
has been dean of the faculty, and after years of struggle at last
has the satisfaction of seeing it a complete success, owning a fine
building up town, with hospital and dispensary attached.
[226] Several ladies appeared last week before the New York
Supervisors' Committee to protest against excessive taxation. The
New York _World_ informs us that Mrs. Harriet Ramsen complained
that the appraisement of lot 5 West One Hundred and Twenty-second
street, was increased from $7,000 to $9,000. Mrs. P. P. Dickinson,
house 48 West Fifty-sixth street, increased from $15,000 to
$20,000; Mrs. Cynthia Bunce, house 37 West Fifty-fourth street,
last year's valuation $10,000; this year's, $15,000. Mrs. Daly, who
owns a house in Seventy-second street, informed the committee that
the assessment on the house (a small dwelling) was put at $2,000,
an increase of $700 over last year's valuation. This house stands
in an unopened street. Supervisor McCafferty said that the
committee would do all in its power to have the assessment reduced,
and also remarked that it was a positive outrage to assess such a
small house at so high a figure. Mrs. Louisa St. John, who is
reputed to be worth $2,000,000, complained because three lots on
Fifth avenue, near Eighty-sixth street, and five lots on the
last-named street, have been assessed at much higher figures than
other lots in the neighborhood. Mrs. St. John addressed the
committee with much eloquence and force. Said she: "I do not
complain of the assessments that have been laid on my property. I
complain of the inequalities practiced by the assessors, and I
should like to see them set right." Supervisor McCafferty assured
Mrs. St. John that everything in the power of the committee would
be done to equalize assessments in future. Mrs. St. John is a heavy
speculator in real estate. She attends sales and has property
"knocked down" to her. She makes all her own searches in the
register's office, and is known, in fact, among property-owners as
a very thorough real-estate lawyer. Many years ago she was the
proprietor of the Globe Hotel, now Frankfort House, corner of
Frankfort and William streets.
[227] The Albany _Evening Journal_ of January 22 said: A hearing
was granted by the Judiciary Committee to-night, on the petition of
the Woman's Tax-payers Association of the City of Rochester, for
either representation or relief from taxation. The petitioners were
heard in the assembly chamber, and in addition to members of the
committee, a large audience of ladies and gentlemen were drawn
together, including the president of the Senate, speaker of the
House, and nearly all the leading members of both branches of the
legislature. The first speaker was Mrs. Blake, the youngest of the
trio, who occupied about twenty minutes and was well received. She
was followed by Miss Anthony, who made a telling speech, frequently
eliciting applause. She recounted her long service in the woman's
rights cause, and gave a brief history of the different enactments
and repeals on the question for the last thirty years. She related
her experience in voting, and said she was fined $100 and costs,
one cent of which she had never paid and never meant to. She
claimed Judge Waite was in favor of woman suffrage, and believed
the present speaker of the Assembly of New York was also in favor
of the movement. Calls being made for General Husted, that
gentleman replied that Miss Anthony was perfectly correct in her
statement. She summed up by asking the committee to report in favor
of legislation exempting women from taxation unless represented by
the ballot, remarking that she would not ask for the right to vote,
as that was guaranteed her by the Constitution of the United
States. Miss Anthony then introduced Mrs. Joslyn Gage, who said if
any member of the committee had objections to offer or questions to
ask she would like the privilege of answering; but as none of the
committee availed themselves, she proceeded for fifteen minutes in
about the same strain as her predecessors. Calls being made for Mr.
Spencer and eliciting no reply from that gentleman, Mrs. Blake said
they should consider him a convert.
[228] The speakers were Dr. Clemence Lozier, Helen M. Slocum,
Henrietta Westbrook, Mrs. Devereux Blake. Mrs. J. E. Frobisher
recited Paul Revere's ride, and Helen M. Cooke read the
resolutions.
[229] Helen M. Slocum, Dr. Clemence Lozier, Mrs. Devereux Blake.
[230] Miss King, the head of a New York tea-dealing firm composed
of women, who control a capital of $1,000,000, has recently gone to
China to make purchases. Her previous business experience, as
narrated by a correspondent of the Chicago _Tribune_, explains her
fitness for her mission, while it incidentally throws some light on
the secrets of the tea-company business:
"Previous to the outbreak of our civil war Miss King was
extensively engaged in utilizing the leaves of the great blackberry
and raspberry crops running to waste in the rich lowlands of
Georgia and Alabama, and kept in that fertile region a large levy
of Northern women--smart, like herself--to superintend the
gathering of the leaves and their preparation for shipment to
headquarters in New York. These leaves were prepared for the market
at their manipulating halls in one of the narrow streets on the
Hudson side of New York city. Over this stage of the tea
preparations Miss King had special supervision, and, by a generous
use of the genuine imported teas, worked up our American
productions into all the accredited varieties of the black and
green teas of commerce. Here the female supervision apparently
ended. In their extensive tea ware-rooms in Walker street the
business was conducted by the shrewdest representatives of
Gothamite trade, with all the appliances of the great Chinese
tea-importing houses. Here were huge piles of tea-chests, assorted
and unassorted, and the high-salaried tea-taster with his row of
tiny cups of hot-drawn tea, delicately sampling and classifying the
varieties and grades for market. The breaking out of the war
stopped the Southern supplies and sent Miss King's female agents to
their Northern homes. But the business was made to conform to the
new order of things. Large cargoes of imported black teas were
bought as they arrived and were skillfully manipulated into those
high-cost varieties of green teas so extensively purchased by the
government for its commissary and medical departments."
[231] Mrs. Lozier presided. Addresses were made by Matilda Fletcher
of Iowa, Mrs. Helen Slocum and Mrs. Devereux Blake.
[232] In Poughkeepsie, Yonkers, Harlem, Williamsburgh, Brighton,
and in several districts in the city of New York.
[233] Matilda Joslyn Gage, Helen M. Loder, Mrs. Clara Neyman, Mrs.
Slocum, Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Blake.
[234] _To the Women of the State of New York:_
The undersigned, citizens of the State of New York, who if free to
do so, would express themselves at the ballot box, but who by
unjust enactments are debarred the exercise of that political
freedom whereto "the God of nature" entitles them, earnestly
protest against the proposed reëlection of Lucius Robinson as
governor. They say naught against his honor as a man, but they
protest because when the legislature of the Empire State had passed
a bill making women eligible to school-boards. Lucius Robinson, by
his veto, kept this bill from becoming law. They therefore call on
all men and women who respect themselves and dare maintain their
rights, to do all in their power to defeat the reëlection of one
who has set himself against the advance made by Iowa, Kansas,
Oregon, Illinois, Michigan, Colorado, California, Minnesota,
Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, in many of which
States woman's right to vote on school questions is also
recognized.
[Signed:] Matilda Joslyn Gage, _President N. Y. State Woman
Suffrage Association_. Jennie M. Lozier, M. D., _Secretary_. Lillie
Devereux Blake, _Vice-President National Association_. Clemence S.
Lozier, M. D., _President N. Y. City Association_. Susan A. King,
Cordelia S. Knapp, Helen M. Slocum, Susan B. Anthony, Amanda Deyo,
Helen M. Cooke, Elizabeth B. Phelps, Charlotte Fowler Wells, Emma
S. Allen.
[235] Chester A. Arthur, chairman of the Republican campaign
committee, presented the motion.
[236] She threw her spacious apartments open, and gave some of the
voters a free lunch, that she might have the opportunity of adding
her personal persuasions to the public protests. Miss King and Miss
Helen Potter, the distinguished reader, then residing with Miss
King, assisted in raising a banner for Cornell and Foster,
applauded by the multitude of by-standers.
[237] Mrs. Lucy A. Brand, principal of the Genesee school of this
city, a woman with abilities as good as those of any male
principal, but who, because she is a woman, receives $550 less
salary a year than a male principal, was the first woman in the
State of New York to cast a vote under the new school law. On
Saturday afternoon she was at a friend's house, when the _Journal_
was thrown in, containing the first editorial notice of the passage
of the law. Mrs. Brand saw the welcome announcement. "Let us go and
register," she at once said, her heart swelling with joy and
thankfulness that even this small quantity of justice had been done
woman. "Where is my shawl? I feel as if I should die if I don't get
there," for the hour was late, and the time for closing the
registry lists was near at hand. To have lost this opportunity
would have placed her in the position of a second Tantalus, the cup
withdrawn just as it touched her lips. But she was in time, and the
important act of registering accomplished, she had but to possess
her soul in patience until the following Tuesday. Who shall say how
long the two intervening days were to her; but Tuesday morning at
last arrived, when, for the first time, Mrs. Brand was to exercise
the freeman's right of self-government. A gentleman, the owner of
the block in which she resided, offered to accompany her to the
polls, although he was a Democrat and knew Mrs. Brand would vote
the Republican ticket. Although not hesitating to go alone, Mrs.
Brand accepted this courtesy. As she entered the polling place the
men present fell back in a semi-circle. Not a sound was heard, not
a whisper, not a breath. In silence and with a joyous solemnity
well befitting the occasion, Mrs. Brand cast her first vote, at
five minutes past eight in the morning. The post-master of the
city, Mr. Chase, offered his congratulations. A few ordinary
remarks were exchanged, and then Mrs. Brand left the place. And
that was all; neither more nor less. No opposition, no rudeness, no
jostling crowd of men, but such behavior as is seen when Christians
come together at the sacrament. I have long known Mrs. Brand as a
noble woman, but talking with her a few days since I could but
notice the added sense of self-respecting dignity that freedom
gives. "I feel a constant gratitude that even some portion of my
rights have been recognized," said she, and I left her, more than
ever impressed, if that is possible, with the beauty and sacredness
of freedom.--[M. J. G.
[238] Rev. Robert Collyer, Elizabeth L. Saxon, Clara Neyman,
Augusta Cooper Bristol, Helen M. Slocum, Hamilton Wilcox, Mrs.
Devereux Blake, and Dr. Clemence Lozier who presided.
[239] Mary Seymour Howell, _President_; Miss Kate Stoneman,
_Secretary_. Miss Stoneman cast the first vote at the school
election in Albany.
[240] See appendix.
[241] Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Slocum, Mrs. Saxon, of Louisiana.
[242] Miss Helen Potter, Miss Susan A. King, Miss Helen M. Slocum,
Miss Harriet K. Dolson and Mrs. Devereux Blake.
[243] Mrs. Rogers organized a society in Lansingburg, Mrs. Loder in
Poughkeepsie, Miss Stoneman held meetings in Chautauqua county,
Mrs. Howell in Livingston county, Mrs. Blake in ten other counties,
and held several parlor meetings in New York city. The annual
convention of the State society was held in Chickering Hall,
February 1, 2, 1882.
[244] The press generally commented unfavorably. The _Herald_ said:
"The legislature passed a bill in the interest of decency and
humanity, authorizing the appointment of matrons in the several
police stations in the city of New York to look after female
prisoners who might be placed in the station-houses. This bill was
recommended by our best charitable and religious societies, but
failed to receive the sanction of the governor, although he very
promptly signed a bill to increase the number of the detective
force."
[245] Mrs. Emma Gates Conkling, Mrs. Clara Neyman, Dr. Clemence
Lozier and Mrs. Blake.
[246] Major Haggerty, ex-Governor Thomas G. Alvord and Hon. James
D. McMellan in its favor; Hon. Erastus Brooks and General Sharpe
against.
[247] Mr. Hamilton Wilcox at once prepared an able paper, refuting
the attorney-general's assertion. It was widely circulated
throughout the State.
[248] When the vote was announced, the ladies sent the pages with
bouquets to the leading speakers in behalf of the bill, and
button-hole sprigs to the fifty-four who voted aye.
[249] _To the Women of the State of New York_:
The undersigned urge you to exert yourselves to turn every
vote possible against Leslie W. Russell's reëlection as
attorney-general. His official acts prove him the unscrupulous foe
of your liberties. By informing the legislature that you have no
right to vote at common law, he has denied your sacred rights and
misrepresented the law to your hurt. By stating that you have no
natural right to vote, he has denied your title to freedom and
sought to keep your rights at the mercy of those in power. By
informing the legislature that the bill to repeal the statutes
which keep you from voting was unconstitutional he misled the
legislature and kept you disfranchised. By thus continuing your
disfranchisement, he has subjected you to many misfortunes and
wrongs which the repeal of your disfranchisement would cure, and is
personally responsible for these sufferings. He has also sought to
rob the mothers of this State of their votes at school elections,
and thus to deprive them of the power to control their children's
education.
[Signed:] Clemence S. Lozier, M. D., New York; Mary R. Pell,
Queens; Lillie Devereux Blake, New York; Caroline A. Bassett, Erie;
Susan A. King, New York; Lucy Shawler, Chenango; Mary E. Tallman,
Oneida; Hannah M. Angel, Allegany; Ida Louise Dildine, Broome;
Zerivah L. Watkeys, Onondaga; Asenath C. Coolidge, Jefferson; Sarah
H. Hallock, Ulster; N. W. Cooper, Jefferson, and others.
_To the Republican and Independent Voters of the State of New
York_:
The undersigned earnestly ask you to cast your votes against Leslie
W. Russell, the present attorney-general. When the legislature last
year was about to repeal the election laws which prevent women from
exercising the right of suffrage, Leslie W. Russell stated to that
body that women had no right at common law to vote, and that this
bill was unconstitutional. By these misstatements he misled the
legislature, defeated this most righteous bill and prolonged the
disfranchisement of women. Thus he inflicted on a majority of our
adult citizens, who had committed no offense, the penalty of
disfranchisement and the great mischiefs which flow thence, and,
like Judge Taney in the Dred-Scott decision, perverted law and
constitution to justify injustice and continue wrong. A vote for
Leslie W. Russell is a vote to keep these women disfranchised and
to prolong these mischiefs. He who thus blocks the way of freedom
should be removed from the place which enables him to do this. You
can vote at this election for fifteen or more officers. It is but a
small thing to ask, that each of you cast one-fifteenth part of his
vote to represent women's interest at the polls.
[Signed:] Clemence S. Lozier, M. D., Bronson Murray, Susan A. King,
Hamilton Wilcox, Lillie Devereux Blake, Albert O. Wilcox.
[250] Abigail Scott Duniway, editor _New Northwest_, Oregon;
Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, editor "Woman's Kingdom," Chicago
_Inter-Ocean_; Helen M. Gougar, editor _Our Herald_, Indiana.
[251] On the evening of March 8 the New York city society gave a
reception in honor of the delegates to the National Convention,
recently held at Washington, in the elegant parlors of the Hoffman
House.
[252] Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Howell, Mrs. Rogers, Mrs. Duniway and Mrs.
Gougar.
[253] Imprisonment for not more than five years, or a fine of not
more than $1,000, or both.
[254] The last census shows there are 72,224 more women than men in
New York; that there are 360,381 women and girls over ten years of
age who support themselves by work outside their own homes, not
including the house-keepers who, from the raw material brought into
the family, manufacture food and clothing three times its original
value.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
PENNSYLVANIA.
Carrie Burnham--The Canon and Civil Law the Source of Woman's
Degradation--Women Sold with Cattle in 1768--Women Arrested in
Pittsburgh--Mrs. McManus--Opposition to Women in the Colleges and
Hospitals; John W. Forney Vindicates their Rights--Ann
Preston--Women in Dentistry--James Truman's Letter--Swarthmore
College--Suffrage Association Formed in 1866, in
Philadelphia--John K. Wildman's Letter--Judge William S.
Pierce--The Citizens' Suffrage Association, 333 Walnut Street,
Edward M. Davis, President--Petitions to the
Legislature--Constitutional Convention, 1873--Bishop Simpson,
Mary Grew, Sarah C. Hallowell, Matilda Hindman, Mrs. Stanton,
Address the Convention--Messrs. Broomall and Campbell Debate With
the Opposition--Amendment Making Women Eligible to School
Offices--Two Women Elected to Philadelphia School Board,
1874--The Wages of Married Women Protected--J. Edgar Thomson's
Will--Literary Women as Editors--The Rev. Knox Little--Anne E.
McDowell--Women as Physicians in Insane Asylums--The Fourteenth
Amendment Resolution, 1881--Ex-Governor Hoyt's Lecture on
Wyoming.
In the demand for the right of suffrage, women are constantly asked
by the opposition if they cannot trust their own fathers, husbands
and brothers to legislate for them. The answer to this question may
be found in an able digest of the old common laws and the Revised
Statutes of Pennsylvania,[255] prepared by Carrie S. Burnham[256]
of Pennsylvania. A careful perusal of this paper will show the
relative position of man and woman to be that of sovereign and
subject.
To get at the real sentiments of a people in regard to the true
status of woman we must read the canon and civil laws that form the
basic principles of their religion and government. We must not
trust to the feelings and actions of the best men towards the
individual women whom they may chance to love and respect. The
chivalry and courtesy that the few command through their beauty,
wealth and position, are one thing; but justice, equality, liberty
for the multitude, are quite another. And when the few, through
misfortune, are made to feel the iron teeth of the law, they regret
that they had not used their power to secure permanent protection
under just laws, rather than to have trusted the transient favors
of individuals to shield them in life's emergencies.
The law securing to married women the right to property,[257]
inherited by will or bequest, passed the legislature of
Pennsylvania, and was approved by the governor April 11, 1848, just
five days after a similar law had been passed in New York. Judge
Bovier was the mover for the Pennsylvania Married Women's Property
Law. His feelings had been so often outraged with the misery caused
by men marrying women for their property, that he was bound the law
should be repealed. He prevailed on several young Quakers who had
rich sisters, to run for the legislature. They were elected and did
their duty. Judge Bovier was a descendent of the Waldenses, a
society of French Quakers who fled to the mountains from
persecution. Their descendants are still living in France.[258]
The disabilities and degradation that women suffer to-day grow out
of the spirit of laws that date from a time when women were viewed
in the light of beasts of burden. Scarce a century has passed since
women were sold in this country with cattle. In the _Pennsylvania
Gazette_ for January 7, 1768, is the following advertisement:
TO BE SEEN.--At the Crooked Billet, near the Court-house,
Philadelphia (Price Three Pence), A Two Year Old Hogg, 12 Hands
high, and in length 16 Feet; thought to be the largest of its
Kind ever seen in America.
In the same paper of the following week occurs this yet more
extraordinary announcement:
TO BE SOLD.--A Healthy Young Dutch Woman, fit for town or country
business; about 18 years old; can spin well; she speaks good
English, and has about five years to serve. Inquire at James Der
Kinderen's, Strawberry alley.
In one century of growth a woman's sewing machine was better
protected than the woman herself under the old common law:
AN ACT _to exempt Sewing Machines belonging to Seamstresses in
this Commonwealth from levy and sale on execution or distress for
rent_:
SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of
Representatives of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania in general
assembly met, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the
same, That hereafter all sewing machines belonging to
seamstresses in this commonwealth shall be exempt from levy and
sale on execution or distress for rent, in addition to any
article or money now exempt by law. Approved, April 17, 1869.
While the following order reflects the spirit of the seventeenth
century, the comments show the dawning of the right idea, and are
worthy the time in which the great State of Pennsylvania could
boast such women as Lucretia Mott, Anna E. Dickinson, Jane G.
Swisshelm and Sarah J. Hale:
A WOMAN ORDER IN PITTSBURGH.--The mayor of Pittsburgh has ordered
the arrest of every woman found on the streets alone after 9
o'clock in the evening; the consequence of which has been that
some respectable ladies have recently seen the inside of the
lock-up.--_Exchange, June, 1869._
Now let the mothers, wives and daughters of Pittsburgh obtain the
passage, by the city council, of an ordinance causing the arrest
of every _man_ found in the streets after 9 o'clock in the
evening, and the law will then be equal in its operation. This
legislating upon the behavior of one sex by the other
exclusively, is one-sided and despotic. Give both sexes a chance
at reforming each other.
Another step in progress was indicated by the assumption of some
women to influence civil administration, not only for their own
protection, but for that of their sires and sons:
An exchange says that women are becoming perfect nuisances, and
to substantiate the assertion adds that 1,500 women in Chester
county, Pennsylvania, have petitioned the court to grant no more
liquor licenses.
Suppose wives should come reeling home, night after night, with
curses on their lips, to destroy the food, the dishes, the
furniture for which husbands toiled; to abuse trembling children,
making the home, from year to year, a pandemonium on earth--would
the good men properly be called "nuisances," who should rise up and
say this must end; we must protect our firesides, our children,
ourselves, society at large? To have women even suggest such
beneficent laws for the men of their families is called "a
nuisance," while the whole barbarous code for women was declared by
Lord Coke to be the "perfection of reason."
The prejudice against sex has been as bitter and unreasonable as
against color, and far more reprehensible, because in too many
cases it has been a contest between the inferior, with law on his
side, and the superior, with law and custom against her, as the
following facts in the _Sunday Dispatch_, by Anne E. McDowell,
fully show:
The decision of the Court of Common Pleas in the case of Mrs.
McManus, elected principal of the Mount Vernon Boys' Grammar
School, is to the effect that, no rule being in existence
prohibiting the exercise of the duties of such office by a woman,
the resolution of the controllers against the exercise of the
duties of that office by the lady was unjustifiable and illegal.
Since the decision was pronounced the controllers have come up to
the boundary of the principle held by the court, and a rule has
been proposed that in future women shall be ineligible to be
principals of boys' grammar schools--the case of Mrs. McManus
being specially excepted. That lady, therefore, will be
undisturbed. But she may be, like the celebrated "Lady
Freemason." an exception to her sex. The controllers have not
favored the public with their reasons for opposition to the
employment of females in the higher positions of teaching. Women
are good enough for inferior service about a boys'
grammar-school, it seems, but they are not capable of
superintending it. They may be, and are, teachers in all the
classes in such schools, even to the highest; but when the
question arises whether a woman, perfectly competent, shall be
superintendent of all the classes--for a principal is little
more--the controllers say _no_. If this action is influenced by a
belief that women cannot control a school of boys, we hope that
the experience in the case of Mrs. McManus will dispel the
illusion, and the public can afford to await the result of the
trial. But if it is caused by a regard to tradition or precedent,
or because there never has yet been an instance of a woman being
a principal of a boys' grammar-school before this case of Mrs.
McManus, we hope that the controllers will soon see the error of
their course. The complaints from the sections are to the effect
that it is very difficult to get a competent male teacher to
remain principal of a boys' grammar-school for any length of
time. The salary attached to that position is inadequate,
according to the increased cost of living of the times. Gentlemen
who are competent to act as principals of the public schools find
that they can make more money by establishing private schools;
and hence they are uneasy and dissatisfied while in the public
service. A woman able to take charge of a boys' grammar-school
will be paid a more liberal salary (such is the injustice of our
social system in relation to female labor) in that position than
in any other connected with education that she can command, and
she will therefore be likely to be better satisfied with the
duties and to perform them more properly. That such advantage
ought to be held out to ladies competent to be teachers of the
highest grade, we firmly believe. The field of female avocations
should be extended in every legitimate direction; and it seems to
us, unless some reason can be given for the exception, which has
not yet been presented in the case of Mrs. McManus, that the
principalships of the boys' grammar-schools ought to be
accessible to ladies of the proper character and qualification,
without the imputation that by reason of their sex they must
necessarily be unfitted for such duties.
In preparing themselves for the medical profession, for which the
most conservative people now admit that women are peculiarly
adapted, students have encountered years of opposition, ridicule
and persecution. After a college for women was established in
Philadelphia,[259] there was another long struggle before their
right to attend the clinics in the hospitals was accorded. The
faculty and students alike protested against the admission of women
into mixed classes; but as there was no provision to give them the
clinics alone, a protest against mixed classes was a protest
against such advantages to women altogether. One would have
supposed the men might have left the delicacy of the question to
the decision of the women themselves. But in this struggle for
education men have always been more concerned about the loss of
modesty than the acquirement of knowledge and wisdom. From the
opinions usually expressed by these self-constituted guardians of
the feminine character, we might be led to infer that the virtues
of women were not a part of the essential elements of their
organization, but a sort of temporary scaffolding, erected by
society to shield a naturally weak structure that any wind could
readily demolish.
At a meeting convened November 15 at the University of
Pennsylvania, to consider the subject of clinical instruction to
mixed classes the following remonstrance was unanimously adopted:
The undersigned, professors in the University of Pennsylvania,
professors in Jefferson Medical College, members of the medical
staff of various hospitals of Philadelphia, and members of the
medical profession in Philadelphia at large, out of respect for
their profession, and for the interests of the public, do feel it
to be their duty, at the present time, to express their
convictions upon the subject of "clinical instruction to _mixed
classes_ of male and female students of medicine." They are
induced to present their views on this question, which is of so
grave importance to medical education, from the fact that it is
misunderstood by the public, and because an attempt is now being
made to force it before the community in a shape which they
conceive to be injurious to the progress of medical science, and
to the efficiency of clinical teaching. They have no hesitation
in declaring that their deliberate conviction is adverse to
conducting clinical instruction in the presence of students of
_both sexes_. The judgment that has been arrived at is based upon
the following considerations:
I. Clinical instruction in practical medicine demands an
examination of all the organs and parts of the body, as far as
practicable; hence, personal exposure becomes for this purpose
often a matter of absolute necessity. It cannot be assumed, by
any right-minded person, that male patients should be subjected
to inspection before a class of females, although this inspection
may, without impropriety, be submitted to before those of their
own sex. A thorough investigation, as well as demonstration, in
these cases--so necessary to render instruction complete and
effective--is, by a mixed audience, precluded; while the clinical
lecturer is restrained and embarrassed in his inquiries, and must
therefore fall short in the conclusions which he may draw, and in
the instruction which he communicates.
II. In many operations upon male patients exposure of the body is
inevitable, and demonstrations must be made which are unfitted
for the observation of students of the opposite sex. These
expositions, when made under the eye of such a conjoined
assemblage, are shocking to the sense of decency, and entail the
risk of unmanning the surgeon--of distracting his mind, and
endangering the life of his patient. Besides this, a large class
of surgical diseases of the male is of so delicate a nature as
altogether to forbid inspection by female students. Yet a
complete understanding of this particular class of diseases is of
preëminent importance to the community. Moreover, such affections
can be thoroughly studied only in the clinics of the large
cities, and the opportunity for studying them, so far from being
curtailed, should be extended to the utmost possible degree. To
those who are familiar with such cases as are here alluded to, it
is inconceivable that females should ever be called to their
treatment.
III. By the joint participation, on the part of male and female
students, in the instruction and in the demonstrations which
properly belong to the clinical lecture-room, the barrier of
respect is broken down, and that high estimation of womanly
qualities, which should always be sustained and cherished, and
which has its origin in domestic and social associations, is
lost, by an inevitable and positive demoralization of the
individuals concerned, thereby entailing most serious detriment
to the morals of society. In view of the above considerations,
the undersigned[260] do earnestly and solemnly protest against
the admixture of the sexes at clinical instruction in medicine
and surgery, and do respectfully lay these their views before the
board of managers of the hospitals in Philadelphia.
_November 15, 1869._
At meetings held at the University and Jefferson Medical Colleges,
by the students, on Wednesday evening, the following preambles and
resolutions were adopted:
WHEREAS, The managers of the Pennsylvania Hospital have seen fit
to admit female students to the clinics of that establishment,
thereby excluding from the lectures many cases, medical and
surgical; and
WHEREAS, We consider that in our purchase of tickets of admission
there was a tacit agreement that we should have the benefit of
all cases which the medical and surgical staff of that hospital
should deem fit for our instruction:
_Resolved_, That a respectful request be made to the managers of
the Pennsylvania Hospital that we be informed as to whether the
usual character of the clinics will be changed.
_Resolved_, That pending the action of the managers on this
question, we as a class and individually absent ourselves from
the clinical lectures. And
WHEREAS, The levity of a few thoughtless young men in the
presence of the females at the hospital has caused the journals
of this city to assume that the whole class of medical students
are utterly devoid of all the attributes of gentlemen,
_Resolved_, That while we do not by any means concede that the
published accounts of the affair are correct, we deplore the fact
that _any_ demonstration should have taken place; for although
the female students may be considered by their presence at the
hospital where male students are present, to have cast aside that
delicacy and modesty which constitutes the ægis of their sex,
they are women, and as such demand our forbearance, if not our
respect.
_Resolved_, That these preambles and resolutions be published in
some respectable journal of this city.[261]
On these remonstrances of the faculty and students, _The Press_,
John W. Forney, editor, had many able editorials condemning the
action of the medical fraternity. The leading journals throughout
the country advocated the right of the women to enjoy the
advantages of the hospital clinics. _The Press_, November 22, 1869,
said:
The proceedings of the meeting held by the faculties of our two
leading medical schools evince the disposition which lurks at the
bottom of the movement against women as physicians. The hospital
managers are to be browbeaten into the stand taken by the
students, and now sanctioned by the professors. If the women are
to be denied the privilege of clinical lectures, why do not
learned professors, or students, or both, have the manliness to
suggest and advocate some means of solving the difficulty so that
the rights of neither sex shall be impaired? Would any professor
agree to lecture to the women separately? Would any professor
favor the admission of women into the female wards of the
hospitals? Would any professor agree to propose anything, or do
anything that would weaken the firm stand taken against the
admission of women to professional privileges? If so, why not do
it at once? Nothing else will make protestations of fairness
appear at all genuine. Nothing else will remove the stigma of
attempting to drag the hospitals into a support of this crusade
against women. * * * How absurd the solemn declaration, "it
cannot be assumed by any right-minded person that male patients
should be subjected to inspection before a class of females,
although this inspection may, without impropriety, be submitted
to before those of their own sex." This cuts both ways. If it be
improper for female students to be present when patients of the
other sex are treated, is it proper for male students to witness
the treatment of female patients?
The practical good sense shown in the following report of a
committee of the Faculty of the Woman's Medical College of
Pennsylvania, makes a very favorable contrast with the unreasonable
remonstrances of the so-called superior sex:
PHILADELPHIA, NOV. 15, 1869.
As the relation of students of medicine to public clinics, and
the views entertained by those entitled to speak for their
medical education, are now extensively discussed in the public
journals, it seems necessary for us to state our position.
Considering it decided that, as practitioners of medicine, the
guardianship of life and health is to be placed in the keeping of
women, it becomes the interest of society and the duty of those
entrusted with their professional training to endeavor to provide
for them all suitable means for that practical instruction which
is gained at hospital clinics.
The taunt has heretofore been frequently thrown out that ladies
have not attended the great clinical schools of the country, nor
listened to its celebrated teachers, and that, consequently, they
cannot be as well prepared as men for medical practice. We
believe, as we have always done, that in all special diseases of
men and women, and in all operations necessarily involving
embarrassing exposure of person, it is not fitting or expedient
that students of different sexes should attend promiscuously;
that all special diseases of men should be treated by men in the
presence of men only, and those of women, where it is
practicable, by women in the presence of women only. It was this
feeling, founded on the respect due to the delicacy of women as
patients, perhaps more than any other consideration, which led to
the founding of the Women's Hospital in Philadelphia. There the
clinical demonstration of special diseases is made by and before
women alone. As we would not permit men to enter these clinics,
neither would we be willing--out of regard to the feelings of men
as patients, if for no other considerations--that our students
should attend clinics where men are specially treated, and there
has been no time in the history of our college when our students
could intentionally do so, save in direct contravention of our
known views. In nearly all the great public hospitals, however,
by far the larger proportion of cases suited for clinical
illustration--whether medical or surgical--is of those which
involve no necessary exposure, and are the results of diseases
and accidents to which man and woman are subject alike, and which
women are constantly called upon to treat. Into these clinics,
women also--often sensitive and shrinking, albeit poor--are
brought as patients to illustrate the lectures, and we maintain
that wherever it is proper to introduce women as patients, there
also is it but just and in accordance with the instincts of the
truest womanhood for women to appear as physicians and students.
We had arranged when our class was admitted to the Pennsylvania
hospital to attend on alternate clinic days only, so as to allow
ample opportunity for the unembarrassed exhibition of special
cases to the other students by themselves. We encouraged our
students to visit the hospital upon this view, sustained by our
confidence in the sound judgment and high-minded courtesy of the
medical gentlemen in charge of the wards. All the objections that
have been made to our students' admission to these clinics seem
to be based upon the mistaken assumption that they had designed
to attend them indiscriminately. As we state distinctly and
unequivocally that this was not the fact, that they had no idea
or intention of being present except on one day of the week, and
when no cases which it would not be proper to illustrate before
both classes of students would necessarily be brought in--it
seems to us that all these objections are destroyed, and we
cannot but feel that those fair-minded professional gentlemen,
who, under this false impression as to facts, have objected to
our course, will, upon a candid reconsideration, acknowledge that
our position is just and intrinsically right. The general
testimony of those who attended the Saturday clinics last winter
at the Philadelphia Hospital at Blockley, when about forty ladies
made regular visits, was that the tone and bearing of the
students were greatly improved, while the usual cases were
brought forward and the full measure of instruction given without
any violation of refined propriety.
We maintain, in common with all medical men, that science is
impersonal, and that the high aim of relief to suffering humanity
sanctifies all duties: and we repel, as derogatory to the science
of medicine, the assertion that the physician who has risen to
the level of his high calling need be embarrassed, in treating
general diseases, by the presence of earnest women. The movement
for woman's medical education has been sustained from the
beginning by the most refined, intelligent, and religious women,
and by the noblest and best men in the community. It has ever
been regarded by these as the cause of humanity, calculated in
its very nature to enlarge professional experience, bless women,
and refine society. It has in our own city caused a college and a
hospital not only to be founded, but to be sustained and endowed
by those who have known intimately the character and objects of
this work, and the aims and efforts of those connected with it.
It has this year brought to this city some fifty educated and
earnest women to study medicine, women who have come to this
labor enthusiastically but reverently, as to a great
life-interest and a holy calling. These ladies purchased tickets,
and entered the clinic of the Pennsylvania Hospital, with no
obtrusive spirit, and with no intention of interfering with the
legitimate advantages of other students. If they have been forced
into an unwelcome notoriety, it has not been of their own
seeking.
ANN PRESTON, M. D., _Dean_.
EMELINE H. CLEVELAND, M. D., _Secretary_.
We are indebted to James Truman, D. D. S., of the Pennsylvania
College of Dental Surgery, for the following account of the
admission of women into that branch of the medical profession:
The general agitation of the question: What are women best
qualified for in the struggle for existence? naturally led
liberal minds to the opening of new avenues for the employment of
their talents, shared equally with men. Her right to practice in
medicine had been conceded after a long and severe conflict. Even
the domain of the theologian had been invaded, but law and
dentistry were as yet closed, and in the case of the latter,
unthought of as an appropriate avocation for women. The subject,
however, seemed so important, presenting a field of labor
peculiarly suited to her, that one gentleman, then professor in
the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, felt it his duty to
call public attention to this promising work. In a valedictory
delivered by him to the class of 1866, at Musical Fund Hall of
Philadelphia, he included in his theme the peculiar fitness of
dentistry for women. The question was briefly stated, but it
rather startled the large audience by its novelty, and the effect
was no less surprising on the faculty, board of trustees and
professional gentlemen on the platform.
In the fall of 1868 the dean of the Pennsylvania College of
Dental Surgery was waited upon by a German gentleman, who desired
to introduce a lady who had come to this country with the
expectation that all colleges were open to women. Although
informed that this was not the case, he still entertained the
hope that she might be admitted as a student of dentistry. She
gave her name as Henrietti Hirschfeld, of Berlin. The matter came
up before the faculty, and after a free discussion of the whole
subject, she was rejected by a majority vote, but two voting in
her favor.
In a subsequent interview with Professor Truman, he learned that
she had left her native land with the full assurance that she
would have no difficulty in "free America" in securing a dental
education. She had also the positive sanction of her government,
through the then minister of instruction, Dr. Falk, that on
condition of receiving an American diploma she would be permitted
to practice on her return. Her distress, therefore, at this
initial failure was, naturally, very great. The excitement that
this application made was intensified when it was rumored among
the students that a woman desired to be matriculated. The
opposition became very bitter, and manifested itself in many
petty annoyances. In the course of a day or two one gentleman of
the faculty, and he the dean, concluded to change his vote, and
as this decided the question, she was admitted. The opposition of
the professor of anatomy, who belonged to the old school of
medical teachers, was so manifest that it was deemed advisable to
have her take anatomy in the Woman's Medical College for that
winter. The first year of this was in every way satisfactory.
Although the students received her and Mrs. Truman, who
accompanied her on the first visit, with a storm of hisses, they
gradually learned not only to treat her with respect, but she
became a favorite with all, and while not convinced as to the
propriety of women in dentistry, they all agreed that Mrs.
Hirschfeld might do as an exception. The last year she was
permitted by the irate professor of anatomy, Dr. Forbes, to take
that subject under him.
She graduated with honor, and returned to Berlin to practice her
profession. This was regarded as an exceptional case, and by no
means settled the status of the college in regard to women. The
conservative element was exceedingly bitter, and it was very
evident that a long time must elapse before another woman could
be admitted. The great stir made by Mrs. Hirschfeld's graduation
brought several other applications from ladies of Germany, but
these were without hesitation denied. Failing to convince his
colleagues of the injustice of their action, Dr. Truman tried to
secure more favorable results from other colleges, and applied
personally to Dr. Gorgas of the Baltimore College of Dental
Surgery. The answer was favorable, and he accompanied the
applicant and entered her in that institution. This furnished
accommodation for the few applicants. The loss in money began to
tell on the pockets, if not the consciences, of the faculty of
the Philadelphia school. They saw the stream had flown in another
direction, swelling the coffers of another institution, when,
without an effort, they could have retained the whole. They
concluded to try the experiment again, and accepted three ladies
in 1872 and 1873--Miss Annie D. Ramborger of Philadelphia,
Fraulein Veleske Wilcke and Dr. Jacoby of Germany. Their first
year was very satisfactory, but at its close it was very evident
that there was a determination on the part of the minority of the
class to spare no effort to effect their removal from the school.
A petition was forwarded to the faculty to this effect, and
although one was presented by the majority of the students in
their favor, the faculty chose to accept the former as
representing public sentiment, and it was decided not to allow
them to take another year at this college. This outrage was not
accomplished without forcible protest from the gentleman
previously named, and he appealed from this decision to the
governing power, the board of trustees.[262] To hear this appeal
a special meeting was called for March 27, 1873, at which the
communication of Professor Truman was read and ordered filed. A
similar communication, in opposition, was received, signed by
Professors T. L. Buckingham, E. Wildman, George T. Barker, James
Tyson and J. Ewing Mears. The matter was referred to a committee
consisting of Hon. Henry C. Carey, W. S. Pierce and G. R.
Morehouse, M. D. At a special meeting convened for this purpose,
March 31, 1873, this committee made their report. They say:
Three ladies entered as students of this college at the
commencement of the session, 1872-73, paid their
matriculation fees, attended the course of lectures, and
were informed, by a resolution adopted by a majority of the
faculty at the close of the session, that they would not be
permitted to attend the second course of lectures. No other
cause was assigned for the action of the faculty than that
they deemed it against the interest of the college to permit
them to do so, on account of the dissatisfaction which it
gave to certain male students, etc. * * * The goal to which
all medical and dental students look, is graduation and the
diploma, which is to be the evidence of their qualification
to practice their art. To qualify themselves for this they
bestow their time, their money and their labor. To deprive
them of this without just cause is to disappoint their
hopes, and to receive from them money and bestowal of time
and labor without the full equivalent which they had a right
to expect.
After discussing at length the legal aspects of the case, the
summing up is as follows:
We, therefore, respectfully report that in our opinion it is
the legal right of these ladies to attend, and it is the
legal duty of this college to give them, as students, a
second course of lectures on the terms of the announcement
which forms the basis of the contract with them.
This report was signed by all the committee, and read by W. S.
Pierce, one of the number, and judge of the Court of Common Pleas
of Philadelphia. It carried with it, therefore, all the force of
a judicial decision, and was so accepted by the board, and
adopted at once. This left the majority of the faculty no choice
but to accept the decision as final as far as these ladies were
concerned. This they did, and the three were invited to resume
their studies. Two, Misses Ramborger and Wilcke, accepted, Miss
Jacoby refused and went to Baltimore.
The most interesting feature of this matter, and that which
clearly demonstrated a marked advance in public opinion, was the
stir it made in the press. The daily and Sunday papers bristled
with strong leaders, the faculty being denounced in no measured
terms for their action. To such an extent was this carried, and
so overwhelming was the indignation, that it practically settled
the question for Philadelphia, although several years elapsed
after these ladies were graduated before others were accepted.
When that time did arrive, under the present dean, Dr. C. N.
Pierce, they were accorded everything, without any reservation,
and the school has continued ever since to accept them. At the
meeting of the National Association of Dentists, held at
Saratoga, 1869, Dr. Truman introduced a resolution looking to the
recognition of women in the profession. The resolution and the
remarks were kindly received, but were, of course, laid on the
table. This was expected, the object being to make the thought
familiar in every section of the country.
These efforts have borne rich fruit, and now women are being
educated at a majority of the prominent dental colleges, and no
complaints are heard of coëducation in this department of work.
The college that first accepted and then rejected--the
Pennsylvania of Philadelphia--has a yearly average of seven to
eight women, nearly equally divided between America and Germany.
Of the three dental schools in Philadelphia, two accept women,
and the third--the Dental Department of the University of
Pennsylvania--would, if the faculty were not overruled by the
governing powers.
The learned theories that were promulgated in regard to the
injury the practice of dentistry would be to women, have all
fallen to the ground. The advocates of women in dentistry were
met at the outstart with the health question, and as it had never
been tested, the most favorably inclined looked forward with some
anxiety to the result. Fifteen years have elapsed since then, and
almost every town in Germany is supplied with a woman in this
profession. Many are also established in America. These have all
the usual requisites of bodily strength, and the writer has yet
to learn of a single failure from physical deterioration.
The first lady, Miss Lucy B. Hobbs, to graduate in dentistry, was
sent out from the Cincinnati College, and she, I believe, is
still in active practice in Kansas. She graduated in 1866. Mrs.
Hirschfeld, before spoken of, returned to Germany and became at
once a subject for the fun of the comic papers, and for the more
serious work of the _Bajan_ and _Úberlana und Meer_, both of them
containing elaborate and illustrated notices of her. She had some
friends in the higher walks of life; notable amongst these was
President Lette of the _Trauen-Verein_, whose aid and powerful
influence had assisted her materially in the early stages of her
effort. The result of these combined forces soon placed her in
possession of a large practice. She was patronized by ladies in
the highest circles, including the crown princess. She
subsequently married, had two boys to rear and educate, and a
large household to supervise. She has assisted several of her
relatives into professions, two in medicine and two in dentistry,
besides aiding many worthy persons. She has established a clinic
for women in Berlin, something very badly needed there. This is
in charge of two physicians, one being her husband's sister, Dr.
Fanny Tiburtius. She has also started a hospital for women.
These are mainly supported by her individual exertions.
Notwithstanding all these multifarious and trying duties, she
practices daily, and is as well physically and mentally as when
she commenced. Fraulein Valeske Wilcke of Königsberg has been
over twelve years in a very large practice with no evil results;
Miss Annie D. Ramborger, an equal time, with an equally large
practice, and enjoys apparently far better health than most
ladies of thirty.
Dentistry is, probably, one of the most trying professions, very
few men being equal to the severe strain, and many are obliged to
succumb. No woman has as yet failed, though it would not be at
all remarkable if such were the case. The probabilities are that
comparatively few will choose it as a profession, but that
another door has been opened for employment is a cause for
congratulation with all right-thinking minds.
For opening this profession to women a debt of gratitude is due to
Dr. Truman from all his countrywomen, as well as to those noble
German students, who have so ably filled the positions he secured
for them. Similar struggles, both in medicine and dentistry, were
encountered in other States, but the result was as it must be in
every case, the final triumph of justice for women. Already they
are in most of the colleges and hospitals, and members of many of
the State and National associations.
In 1870, the Society of Friends founded Swarthmore College[263] for
the education of both sexes, erecting a fine building in a
beautiful locality. At the dedication of this institution, Lucretia
Mott was elected to honorary membership and invited to the
platform. With her own hands she planted the first tree, which now
adorns those spacious grounds.
The persecutions that women encountered in every onward step soon
taught them the necessity of remodeling the laws and customs for
themselves. They began to see the fallacy of the old ideas, that
men looked after the interests of women, "that they were their
natural protectors," that they could safely trust them to legislate
on their personal and property rights; for they found in almost
every case that whatever right and privilege man claimed for
himself, he proposed exactly the opposite for women. Hence the
necessity for them to have a voice as to the laws and the rulers
under which they lived. Whatever reform they attempted they soon
found their labors valueless, because they had no power to remedy
any evils protected by law. After laboring in temperance,
prison-reform, coëducation, and women's rights in the trades and
professions, their hopes all alike centered at last in the suffrage
movement.
In 1866, a suffrage association was formed in Philadelphia at a
meeting of the American Equal Rights Society,[264] held in Franklin
Institute. This convention was marked by a heated debate on the
duty of the abolitionists now that the black man was emancipated,
to make the demand for the enfranchisement of women, as well as the
freedmen.
We are indebted to John K. Wildman of Philadelphia for the
following:
The Pennsylvania association was organized December 22, 1869, in
Mercantile Library Hall, Philadelphia. The meeting was called to
order by John K. Wildman, who said: "The time has arrived when it
is necessary for us to take some action towards promoting the
cause of woman suffrage. We desire to do our part as far as
practicable, in the work of enlightening the people of our State
upon this important subject. With this end in view we propose to
organize, hoping that all friends of the movement will cordially
give us their influence." Edward M. Davis then proposed the
appointment of Judge William S. Pierce as chairman of the
meeting. This was agreed to, and Judge Pierce announced that the
meeting was ready for business, reserving for another stage of
the proceedings any remarks he might wish to make. Annie Heacock
was chosen to act as secretary. In accordance with a motion that
was adopted, the chairman appointed a committee of five
persons[265] to prepare a constitution, and present the same for
the action of the meeting. Mary Grew spoke at length in her
earnest and impressive manner, presenting forcibly those familiar
yet solid arguments in favor of woman suffrage which form the
basis of the discussion, and which should irrevocably settle the
question. Dr. Henry T. Child followed with a brief address,
showing his zealous interest in the object of the meeting, and
trusting that at no distant period the ballot would be placed in
the hands of the women of the land. Judge Pierce said:
I am in favor of giving woman a chance in the world. I feel
very much in regard to woman as Diogenes did when Alexander
the Great went to see him. When the monarch arrived at the
city in which Diogenes lived, he sent a request for him to
come to see him. Diogenes declined to go. The monarch then
went to the place of his residence, and found him lying in
his court-yard sunning himself. He did not even rise when
Alexander approached. Standing over him, the warrior asked,
"Diogenes, what can I do for you?" And the philosopher
answered, "Nothing, except to stand out of my sunshine."
Now, I am disposed to stand out of woman's sunshine. If she
wants the light of the sun upon her, and the breath of
heaven upon her, and freedom of action necessary to develop
herself, heaven forbid that I should stand in her way. I
believe that everything goes to its own place in God's
world, and woman will go to her place if you do not impede
her. We should not be afraid to trust her, or to apply the
same principles to her in regard to suffrage that we apply
to ourselves. There should be no distinction. Her claims to
the ballot rest upon a just and logical foundation.
The venerable Sojourner Truth spoke a few words of encouragement,
showing in her humble and fervid way a reverent faith in the
final triumph of justice. After the adoption of the constitution,
the organization was completed by the election of officers[266]
to serve for the ensuing year.
The first thing that claimed the attention of the officers of the
new society was the representation of the different counties on
the executive committee; and for this purpose the chairman wrote
to nearly all of the sixty-three counties, chiefly to the
postmasters of the principal towns. The replies that were
received presented a curious medley of sentiment and opinion
touching the object in view, disclosing every shade of tone and
temper between the two extremes of cold indifference and warm
enthusiasm. It was evident that, in a large number of cases, the
inquiries promptly found their resting-place in the waste-basket.
Before the close of the year twenty-two counties were
represented. Thus reinforced, the committee took immediate steps
towards distributing documents and circulating petitions
throughout the State. Many of the county members coöperated
earnestly in this work. Some of them, not satisfied to limit
their action to this particular form of service, aided the
movement by collecting funds and holding public meetings in their
respective localities. Matilda Hindman, representing Alleghany
county, evinced both energy and enterprise in forwarding the
movement through the agency of public meetings. She did good
service from the beginning, relying almost solely upon her own
determined purpose. Her deep interest in the work and its object,
and the courage that animated her at the first impulse of duty,
have continued without abatement to the present time. Her
usefulness and activity have not confined themselves within the
limits of Pennsylvania, but have extended to other States, both
in the East and West.
Miss Matilda Hindman, of Philadelphia, pays the following tribute
to her parents:
In 1837, my father being a member of the school committee of
the Union township, Washington county, secured equal
salaries for women; and in spite of steady opposition, there
was no difference made for four years. The women who taught
the schools in the summer were paid the same as the men who
taught in the winter. At the death of my father the board
returned to the old system of half pay for women; the result
was "incompetent teachers," furnishing the opposition with
just the plea they desired--that women were not fit for
school teachers. My mother remonstrated, but in vain. They
replied, "women never received as much as men for any work";
"it did not cost as much to keep a woman as a man," and
moreover, these school matters belonged to men, and women
had no right to interfere. In 1842, my mother offered to
board the teacher in her district, gratis, if the board
would raise her salary proportionally. They received her
proposition with scorn. She then refused to pay her taxes.
Such was the respect for her in the community, and the sense
of justice in regard to the teachers, that the authorities
suffered the tax to go unpaid, and at the end of the year
accepted the proposition, and for many years after, she
boarded the teacher in her district, making the woman's net
salary equal to that of the man.
My mother lived to see her daughters employed in her
township on equal salaries with men. But in process of time,
another board, for the express purpose of humiliating mother
and daughters alike, passed a resolution to take two dollars
a month from each of their salaries, when all three
resigned. They all honored her, by carrying into their
life-work the noble principles for which she suffered so
much.
She was the grand-daughter of a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian
minister, who, with his young family, was among the earliest
settlers in the wilderness of what is now known as the
prosperous and beautiful county of Washington, Pennsylvania.
Her name was Sarah Campbell. She was born in 1798. From her
earliest girlhood she rebelled against the injustice done
women by the law. She felt acutely the wrong done her and
her sisters by being denied an education equal to their
brothers, and denied also an equal share of their
inheritance. While the father possessed a large estate, and
provided liberally for his sons, he left his daughters a
mere pittance.
In view of such facts, it is folly to say that women were ever
satisfied with the humiliating discriminations of sex they have
endured in all periods, and in all ranks in society.
The first annual report of the association was prepared by Eliza
Sproat Turner. She said:
We do not complain that man is slow to realize the injustice
of his present attitude towards woman--an attitude once,
from necessity, endurable; now, from too long continuance,
grown intolerable. It would not be natural for him to feel
it with equal keenness. It takes a great-minded fox to find
out, what every goose knows, that foxes' teeth are cruel.
And while we do not complain of this incapacity on his part,
the advocates of this cause feel the necessity for woman to
take upon herself whatever share in the management of their
mutual affairs shall be needed to right the balance;
concluding that the defects in legislation which she is, by
reason of her position, more competent to understand, she
should be more competent to remedy. Not these innovations
alone, but others involving matters beyond individual
interests, she expects to achieve by the power she shall
gain through the exercise of her right of suffrage. We
discern, in the consideration of nearly all questions of
national welfare, a disposition to press unduly the
interests of trade and commerce rather than the interests of
the fireside.
Mary Grew presided, and has been elected president of the
association every year from the beginning, performing the duties
of the position with ability, earnestness and satisfaction. In
the winter of 1870-71 the executive committee recommended the
passage of a law that should give married women the control of
their own earnings. The appeal to the legislature in behalf of
such a law was renewed the following winter, and its passage
finally secured. Among the resolutions adopted at the annual
meeting was the following:
_Resolved_, That the vote of the legislature of this State
for a convention to amend the constitution, makes it our
duty to work for the exclusion of the word "male" from the
provision defining the qualifications for the elective
franchise, and that we call upon all friends of justice to
give their best energies to the sustaining of this object.
Subsequently the executive committee prepared a petition with
reference to the formation of the constitutional convention,
asking the legislature, in making the needful regulations, to
frame them in such a way as to secure the representation of the
women of the State. This petition was unavailing. At the next
annual meeting, which was held at the time the constitutional
convention was in session, a resolution was adopted containing an
appeal to that body, earnestly requesting it to present to the
people of the State a constitution that should secure the right
of suffrage to its citizens without distinction of sex,
accompanied by a request for a hearing at such time and place as
the convention should decide. The request was willingly granted,
and an evening assigned for that purpose. An evening was also
given to the Citizens' Suffrage Society of Philadelphia for a
like object. These meetings were held in the hall of the
convention, and were largely attended by the members and by the
people generally. Addresses were delivered by various friends of
woman suffrage, as representatives of the two societies.[267]
Still another evening was granted the Pennsylvania association
for a meeting to be addressed by Bishop Matthew Simpson of the
Methodist Episcopal Church. The earnest and forcible words of the
eloquent speaker, and his solid array of arguments, made a deep
impression on the attentive audience.
In the convention the question was discussed during five
successive days. Hon. John M. Broomall introduced a provision in
favor of making the ballot free to men and women alike, proposing
that it be incorporated in the new constitution. This provision
was ably advocated by Mr. Broomall and many other members of the
convention. Their firm convictions in behalf of equal and exact
justice, however well sustained by sound reasoning and earnest
appeal, was an unequal match for the rooted conservatism which
recoiled from such a new departure. Although the measure was
defeated, its discussion had an influence. It was animated,
intelligent and exhaustive, and drew public attention more
directly to the subject than anything that had occurred since the
beginning of its agitation in the State.
The only act of the convention that gave hope to the friends of
impartial suffrage was the adoption of the third section of
Article X.: "Women twenty-one years of age and upwards shall be
eligible to any office of control or management under the school
laws of this State." It was a very faint gleam of comfort, too
small to stir more than a breath of praise. It had the merit of
being a step in the right direction, though timid and feeble, and
as it has never disturbed the equilibrium of society, it may
ultimately be followed by others of more importance.
The annual meetings of the association have been held in
Philadelphia, Westchester, Bristol, Kennett Square and Media,
respectively. An interesting feature of the Westchester meeting
was the reading of an essay, entitled "Four quite New Reasons why
you should wish your Wife to Vote." It was written for the
occasion by Eliza Sproat Turner, and was subsequently printed and
re-printed in tract form by order of the executive committee, and
freely circulated among the people. It was likewise published in
the _Woman's Journal_. Other documents relative to the question
have been printed from time to time by authority of the
committee, and large numbers of suffrage tracts have been
purchased for distribution year after year, embodying the best
thoughts, the soundest arguments, and the most forcible reasoning
that the question has elicited. Frequent petitions have been sent
to the legislature and to congress, all having in view the one
paramount object, and showing by their repeated and persistent
appearance the indefatigable nature of a living, breathing
reform. The executive committee at one time employed Matilda
Hindman as State agent. Meetings were held by her chiefly in the
western part of the State. In 1874 her services extended to the
State of Michigan, where the question of woman suffrage was
specially before the people. Lelia E. Patridge also represented
the association in Michigan at that time, where she performed
excellent service in addressing numerous meetings in different
parts of the State. In 1877 Miss Patridge was appointed to
represent the society in Colorado. There she labored with others
to secure the adoption of a constitutional amendment providing
for suffrage without regard to sex. On several occasions the
executive committee has contributed to woman suffrage purposes in
other States. Massachusetts, Michigan, Colorado and Oregon have
been recipients of the limited resources of the association. The
executive committee has felt the cramping influence of an
unfriended treasury. Its provision has been the fruit of
unwearied soliciting, and should the especial object of the
association ever be accomplished, the honors of success may be
fitly contested by the fine art of begging.
The following report was sent us by Mrs. Mary Byrnes:
March 22, 1872, the Citizens' Suffrage Association of
Philadelphia was formed, William Morris Davis, president, with
fifty members. The name of the society was chosen to denote the
view of its members as to the basis of the elective franchise.
The amendments to the United States constitution had clearly
defined who were citizens, and shown citizenship to be without
sex. Woman was as indisputably a citizen as man. Whatever rights
he possessed as a citizen she possessed also. The supreme law of
the land placed her on the same plane of political rights with
him. If man held the right of suffrage as a citizen of the United
States, either by birthright within the respective States, or by
naturalization under the United States, then the right of the
female citizen to vote was as absolute as that of the male
citizen; and woman's disfranchisement became a wrong inflicted
upon her by usurped power. Men became voters by reason of their
citizenship, having first complied with certain police
regulations imposed within and by the respective States. The
Citizens' Suffrage Association demanded the same political rights
for all citizens, nothing more, nothing less. It repudiated the
idea that one class of citizens should ask of another class
rights which that other class never possessed, and which those
who were denied them never had lost. This society held that the
right to give implied the right to take away; and further, that
the right to give implied a right lodged somewhere in society,
which society had never acquired by any direct concession from
the people.
This society held also, that the theory of the right to the
franchise, as a gift, bore with it the power somewhere to
restrict the male citizen's suffrage, and to strike at the
principle of self-government. They had seen this doctrine
earnestly advanced. They knew that there was a growing class in
the country who were inimical to universal suffrage. In view of
this they chose the name of citizen suffrage, as the highest and
broadest term by which to designate their devotion to the
political rights of all citizens. They held that the political
condition of the white women of the United States was totally
unlike that of the slave population in this: that while the
slaves were not considered citizens until the adoption of the
fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, white women had always been
citizens, and always entitled to all the political rights of
citizenship. The colored male citizen became a voter--subject to
the police regulations of the different States--upon acquiring
citizenship. No constitutional enactment denied equal political
rights to women as citizens. No constitutional enactment was
therefore required to enable them to exercise the right to vote,
which became the right of male slaves upon their securing
citizenship under the law. The first legal argument on the
subject of woman's right to the ballot as a citizen of the United
States, was made by Jacob F. Byrnes before the Pennsylvania
Society. Had it been published as soon as written, instead of
being circulated privately, surprising person after person with
the position taken, it would have antedated the report of General
Benjamin F. Butler in the House of Representatives in the winter
of 1871.
Edward M. Davis, president for many years, was one of the most
active and untiring officers of this association, giving generously
of his time and money not only to its support but to the general
agitation of the suffrage question in every part of the country.
The meetings were held regularly at his office, 333 Walnut street,
as were also those of the Radical Club. This was composed largely
of the same members as the suffrage society, but in this
organization they had a greater latitude in discussion, covering
all questions of political, religious and social interest. As the
division in the National Society produced division everywhere,
some of the friends in Philadelphia made themselves auxiliary to
the American Association, and the sympathy of others was with the
National, thus forming two rival societies, which together kept the
suffrage question before the people and roused their attention,
particularly to the fact of a pending constitutional convention.
Hence the necessity of holding meetings throughout the State, and
rolling up petitions asking that the constitution be so amended as
to secure to women the right to vote. The following appeal was
issued by this association:
_To the Editor of the Post:_
SIR: There is no political question now before the people of this
commonwealth more important than the consideration of the changes
to be made in our constitution. The citizens of the State, by an
enormous majority of votes, have re-claimed the sovereign powers
of government, and evinced a determination to re-form the
fundamental law, the constitution of this State, in the interest
of a government "of the people, by the people, and for the
people." In this new adaptation of old rules of government to the
advanced ideas of the age, it seems to us fitting and opportune
that woman in her new status as a citizen of the United States
(under the fourteenth amendment of the constitution), should be
allowed the exercise of rights which have been withheld under old
rules of action. Therefore we respectfully ask you to give this,
with our appeal, an insertion in your paper, and to continue the
appeal until further notice. And we ask all the friends of woman
suffrage to aid our association in placing this appeal in each
paper of our city, as well as of the neighboring towns.
"There is no distinction in citizenship as has been determined by
the fourteenth amendment to the constitution of the United
States. The citizens of Pennsylvania have decided on a revision
of the constitution of the commonwealth. The power of revision is
to be delegated by the citizens of the commonwealth to a
convention. The foundation of free government is based on the
consent of the governed. Therefore, the Citizens' Suffrage
Association of Pennsylvania appeals to the sense of right and
justice in the hearts of the citizens of this State, to aid in
securing to every citizen, irrespective of sex, an equal voice in
the selection of delegates, and an equal right, if elected
thereto, to a seat in said constitutional convention."
WM. MORRIS DAVIS, _Controller_.
Mr. Robert Purvis, at the request of the Citizens' Suffrage
Association of Philadelphia, waited upon Mrs. President Hayes and
presented to her an address adopted by that society. Mr. Purvis
wrote:
I have just returned from a very satisfactory and delightful
interview with Mrs. Hayes. She received me most cordially. I read
to her the eloquent address from the Citizens' Suffrage
Association. She listened with marked attention, was grateful for
the high favor conferred upon her, and sent her best wishes for
the success of the cause. I made reference to the fact that the
address bore the honored name of Lucretia Mott, which she
received with a ready acknowledgment of her great worth and
usefulness, and her distinguished place as a reformer and
philanthropist.
Through the liberality of Edward M. Davis, this society was able to
publish and circulate an immense number of tracts covering all
phases of the question. He has been one of the few abolitionists
who have thrown into this movement all the old-time fervor
manifested in the slavery conflict. A worthy son of the sainted
Lucretia Mott, her mantle seems to have fallen on his shoulders.
The Hon. John M. Broomall was ever ready to champion the cause of
equality of rights for women, not only in the legislature and in
the constitutional conventions of his own State, but on the floor
of congress as well. In a letter giving us valuable information on
several points, he says:
You ask when I made my first declaration for woman suffrage. I
cannot tell. I was born in 1816, and one of the earliest settled
convictions I formed as a man was that no person should be
discriminated against on account of sect, sex, race or color, but
that all should have an equal chance in the race which the Divine
Ruler has set before all; and I never missed an opportunity to
give utterance to this conviction in conversation, on the stump,
on the platform and in legislative bodies. My views were set out
concisely in my remarks in congress, on January 30, 1869, and I
cite the commencement and conclusion, as I find them in _The
Globe_ of that date:
Every person owing allegiance to the government and not
under the legal control of another, should have an equal
voice in making and administering the laws, unless debarred
for violating those laws; and in this I make no distinction
of wealth, intelligence, race, family or sex. If just
government is founded upon the consent of the governed, and
if the established mode of consent is through the
ballot-box, then those who are denied the right of suffrage
can in no sense be held as consenting, and the government
which withholds that right is as to those from whom it is
withheld no just government. * * * * The measure now before
the House is necessary to the complete fulfillment of what
has gone before it. To hesitate now is to put in peril all
we have gained. Let this, too, pass into history as an
accomplished fact. Let it be followed, in due course of
time, by the last crowning act of the series--an amendment
to the constitution securing to all citizens of full age,
without regard to sex, an equal voice in making and amending
the laws under which they live, to be forfeited only for
crime. Then the great mission of the party in power will be
fulfilled; then will have been demonstrated the capacity of
man for self-government; then a just nation, founded upon
the full and free consent of its citizens will be no longer
a dream of the optimist.
Mrs. Virginia Barnhurst writes:
I think you should make mention of the few men who, against the
greatest opposition, stood boldly up and avowed themselves in
favor of woman's cause. When I think of some of the speeches that
I heard from the opposite side--expressions which sent the hot
blood to my face, and which showed the low estimate law-makers
put upon woman, those few men who dared to defend mothers and
sisters, stand out in my mind as worthy of having their names go
down in history--and especially in a history written by women. I
had a good talk with Lawyer Campbell. He is one of the most
ardent in the cause; he believes the ballot to be a necessity to
woman, as a means of self-protection, this necessity being seen
in the unequal operation of many laws relating to the
guardianship of children and the ownership of property. Caleb
White's words have in them the just consciousness of their own
immortality: "I want my vote to be recorded; not to be judged of
here, but to be judged of by coming generations, who, at least,
will give to woman the rights which God intended she should
have."
[Illustration: Rachel G. Foster]
The constitutional convention to which reference has been so
frequently made in this chapter, assembled November 12, 1872, and
as early as the 22d, resolutions relative to women holding
school-offices and to the property-rights of women were presented.
Numberless petitions for these and full suffrage for women were
sent in during the entire sitting of the convention. February 3,
1873, John H. Campbell presented the minority report of the
Committee on Suffrage and Elections:
The undersigned, members of the Committee on Suffrage, Election
and Representation, dissent from that part of the majority report
of said committee, which limits the right of suffrage to male
electors. We recommend that the question, "Shall woman exercise
the right of suffrage," be submitted by the convention to the
qualified electors of this commonwealth, and also upon the same
day therewith, to those women of the commonwealth who upon the
day of voting shall be of the age of twenty-one years and
upwards, and have been residents of the State one year, and in
the district where they offered to vote at least sixty days prior
thereto; and that if the majority of all the votes cast at said
election should be in the affirmative, then the word "male" as a
qualification for an elector, contained in section ----, article
---- on suffrage and election shall be stricken out, and women in
this State shall thereafter exercise the right of suffrage,
subject only to the restrictions placed upon the male voters.
JOHN H. CAMPBELL,
LEWIS C. CASSIDY,
LEVI ROOKE.
The amendment for full suffrage was lost by a vote of 75 to 25,
with 33 absent, while the amendment making women eligible for
school offices was carried by a vote of 60 to 32.[268] The debate
by those in favor of the amendment was so ably and eloquently
conducted that we would gladly reproduce it, had not all the
salient points been so often and so exhaustively presented on the
floor of congress, and by some of the members from Pennsylvania.
After the passage of the school law of 1873, it was immediately
tested all over the State, rousing opposition and conflict
everywhere, but the struggle resulted favorably to women, who now
hold many offices to which they were once ineligible. At the first
election of school directors in Philadelphia the nomination of two
women was hotly contested. The _Evening Telegraph_ of February 6,
1874, gives the following:
There is progressing in the Thirteenth ward a contest which
involves so peculiar and important an issue as to merit the
widest publicity. It illustrates how the rights guaranteed to
women under the new constitution are to be denied them, if
cunning and bold chicanery are to be tolerated, by a few ward
politicians. At the Republican primary election, held January 20,
Mrs. Harriet W. Paist and Mrs. George W. Woelpper were duly
nominated as candidates for members of the board of school
directors of the ward. Both of these ladies received their
certificates, that given to Mrs. Paist reading as follows:
This is to certify that at a meeting of the judges of the
different divisions of the Thirteenth ward, held in accordance
with the rules of the Republican party, on the evening of January
20, 1874, Mrs. Harriet W. Paist was found to be elected as
candidate upon the Republican ticket from the Thirteenth ward,
for school director.
CHARLES M. CARPENTER, _President_.
JAMES M. STEWART, } _Clerks_.
DAVID J. SMITH, }
No sooner was it ascertained that the ladies had actually become
candidates on the Republican ticket than a movement was
inaugurated to oust them, the old war tocsin of "Anything to beat
Grant" being for this purpose amended thus: "Anything to beat the
women." This antagonism to the fair candidates was based entirely
upon the supposition that their names would so materially weaken
the ticket as to place the election of the Republican common
councilman, Henry C. Dunlap, in the greatest jeopardy. To save
him, therefore, the managers of the movement must sacrifice
Mesdames Woelpper and Paist. How was this to be accomplished?
Each was fortified in her position by a genuine certificate of
election, and had, furthermore, expressed her determination to
run. What could not be done fairly must be accomplished by
strategy. Mr. Ezra Lukens called upon Mrs. Paist, stating that if
she did not withdraw the Republicans who were opposed to the lady
candidates would unite with the "other party" and defeat the
Republican ward ticket. Mrs. Paist inquired if she had not been
regularly nominated, and his reply was that she had been, but
that her opponents in the party would unite with the "other
party" and defeat her. Mrs. Paist was firm, and Mr. Lukens
retired foiled. A day or two after, the chairman of the
Thirteenth ward Republican executive committee received somehow
this letter:
PHILADELPHIA, February 2, 1874.
DEAR SIR: Please accept this as my declination as school director
on the Thirteenth ward Republican ticket. Hoping it will please
those opposed to a lady director.
Respectfully yours, HARRIET W. PAIST.
A week previous to this the husband of Mrs. Woelpper was called
upon by Mr. William B. Elliott, a member of this executive
committee, and was informed by him that Mrs. Paist had withdrawn,
and that it would be unpleasant, if not inexpedient, for Mrs.
Woelpper to run alone. Mr. Woelpper expressed his belief that if
such were the case his wife would withdraw. At a meeting of the
executive committee a short time after, it was announced that
both the ladies had withdrawn, and everything looked serene for
victory, when the next day the members were individually informed
that the letter of declination written above was a base forgery,
and that neither of the ladies intended to withdraw from the
contest. Another meeting of the executive committee was held on
the 2d inst., at which Mr. Woelpper, jr., was present. He
declared that the statement made to his father was false, and
that he was present to say for his mother that she was still a
candidate. This announcement fell like a bomb in a peaceful camp,
causing great confusion. After order was restored, William B.
Elliott, the collector, offered a resolution declaring it
inexpedient to have any ladies on the ticket at this time. This
resolution was opposed by F. Theodore Walton and a number of the
members, who denied the power of the committee to change the
ticket regularly chosen at the primary election. They favored the
fair candidates, for whose election as school directors the
constitution had made special provisions, and whose presence in
the school-boards had been very favorably commented upon by all
the papers of the city. Besides, the ladies were as legitimately
entitled to their candidacy as Mr. Dunlap, and it would be a
gross and unparalelled outrage to sacrifice them from mere
prejudice, or in the belief that their presence would injure the
chances of Mr. Dunlap. Then arose Collector Elliott, his face
fairly glowing with honest indignation, and his voice sharp and
stinging in his tirade against the newspapers. What did he care
what the newspapers said? What are the newspapers but sheets sold
out to the highest bidder? The newspapers, he cried, are all in
the market, to be bought and sold the same as coal! That was
their business, and they didn't want stability so long as there
was cash to be got. Then he came down upon them in a perfect
whirlwind of wrath for daring to favor the women candidates for
school directors of the Thirteenth ward, and sat down as though
he had accomplished a noble purpose.
The question on the resolution was pressed, and resulted in its
adoption by a vote of 20 to 12.[269] A resolution was offered by
David T. Smith that Mrs. Paist and Mrs. Woelpper be thrown off
the ticket, and this resolution was carried by the same vote as
the preceding one. The meeting then adjourned. In consequence of
this action Mrs. Paist addressed to the citizens of the
Thirteenth ward the following card, in which she declares that
she does not intend to resign:
_To the Citizens of the Thirteenth Ward.:_
Unpleasant though it may be to thus appear before the public, I
feel that I must, in justice to myself, expose the fraud and
deception that have been practiced to defeat my election on the
17th of February next. I received the nomination and certificate
of election signed by James M. Stewart, David T. Smith, clerks,
and Charles M. Carpenter, president. Certainly they would not be
guilty of deceiving, for are they not "all honorable men"? John
B. Green, George M. Taylor and A. W. Lyman then (Ezra Lukens
having been on a similar fruitless mission) called on the eve of
January 30, 1874, wishing me to withdraw; stating that Mrs.
Woelpper had done so (which was false), and they thought it would
not be pleasant for me to serve. They also placed it on the
ground of expediency, fearing that their candidate for council
(Mr. Dunlap) was so weak that a woman on the ticket might
jeopardize the election. I knew not before that woman held the
balance of power. After sending their emissaries under the false
garb of friendship to induce me to decline, without success, they
were reduced to the desperate means of producing a letter, which
was read by the secretary of the executive meeting, February 2,
purporting to come from me, and withdrawing my name. I pronounce
it publicly to be a forgery. I have not withdrawn, neither do I
intend to withdraw. Would that I had the power of Brutus or a
Patrick Henry, that I might put these designing, intriguing
politicians in their true light! They deserve to be held up to
the contumely and scorn of the community.
_February 3, 1874._ HARRIET W. PAIST.
Despite the action of the committee, these talented ladies will
be run as the regular candidates for school directors. A
committee of citizens of the Republican party will prepare the
tickets and see that they are properly distributed, and take all
precautions against fraud at the election and against any effort
that may be made to count out the fair candidates at the meeting
of the ward return judges. It is of the greatest importance that
all good citizens of the ward shall do all in their power to
secure not only the fullest possible number of votes for the lady
candidates, but a fair count when they have been received. It
remains to be seen whether the Republican citizens of the ward
will endorse the action of a committee which from mere prejudice
can throw off regularly-elected candidates from a ticket.
The ladies were elected, and Mrs. Paist served her term. Mrs.
Woelpper died immediately after the election.
Anna McDowell, in the _Sunday Republic_ of April 8, 1877, in a long
article shows the necessity of some legal knowledge for women,
enough at least to look after their own interests, and not be
compelled through their ignorance to trust absolutely to the
protection of others. They should be trained to understand that all
pecuniary affairs should be placed on a business basis as strictly
between themselves and their fathers and brothers as men require in
their contracts with each other. After giving many instances in
which women have been grossly defrauded by their relatives, she
points to the will of the great railroad king of Pennsylvania:
Let us glance for a moment at the will of the late J. Edgar
Thomson, than which no more unjust testament was ever offered for
probate. This gentleman, the sole object of affection of two most
worthy and self-sacrificing sisters, married late in life without
making any adequate settlement upon the relatives to whom, in a
great measure, he owed his success. He always promised to provide
for them amply, saying, repeatedly, in effect, in letters which
we have seen, "As my fortune advances so also shall yours; my
prosperity will be your prosperity," etc. Oblivious to the ties
of nature and affection, however, when he came to make his will
he, out of a fortune of two millions, bequeathed to these
sisters, during life, an annuity of $1,200 per annum only,
leaving the rest of the income of his estate to his wife and her
niece, the latter a young lady whom he had previously made
independent by his skilful investment of a few thousand dollars
left her by her father. Not content with the will which gave her
also a large income for life out of Mr. Thomson's estate, this
niece of his wife brought suit against the executors to recover
bonds found after the death of the testator in an envelope on
which her name was written, and through the ruling of Judge
Thayer, a relation by marriage to the husband of the lady, the
case was decided in her favor, and $100,000 was thus absolutely
and permanently taken from the fund designed for the asylum which
it was Mr. Thomson's long-cherished desire to found for the
benefit and education of orphan girls whose fathers had been or
might be killed by accident on the Pennsylvania and other
railroads. The injustice of this decision is made manifest when
we reflect that the Misses Anna and Adeline Thomson, who worked
side by side with their brother as civil engineers in their
father's office, and labored, without pay, therein, that he might
be educated and sent abroad further to perfect himself in his
profession, were cut off with a comparatively paltry stipend for
life, this being still further reduced by the
collateral-inheritance tax. As high an authority as Dr. William
A. Hammond says that, "for a man to cut off his natural heirs in
his will is _prima facie_ evidence of abberation of mind," and we
believe this to be true.
Had these sisters[270] been brothers they would have been
recognized as partners and had their legal proportion of the
accumulations of the business in which they labored in early years
with equal faithfulness, side by side. This is but another instance
of women's blind faith in the men of their families and of the
danger in allowing business matters to adjust themselves on the
basis of honor, courtesy and protection.
Among the literary women of the State are Sarah C. Hallowell, on
the editorial staff of the _Public Ledger_; the daughters of John
W. Forney, for many years in charge of the woman's department of
_Forney's Progress_; Anne McDowell, editor of the woman's
department in _The Sunday Republic_; Mrs. E. A. Wade; "Bessie
Bramble" of Pittsburg has for many years ably edited a woman's
department in the _Sunday Leader_; Matilda Hindman, an excellent
column in the _Pittsburg Commercial Gazette_. In science Grace Anna
Lewis stands foremost. Her paper read before the Woman's Congress
in Philadelphia in 1876, attracted much attention. These ladies
with others organized "The Century Club"[271] in 1876, for
preëminently practical and benevolent work. Its objects are
various: looking after working girls, sending children into the
country for fresh air during summer, and improving the houses of
the poor and needy. The Club has a large house to which is attached
a cooking-school and lodgings for unfortunates in great
emergencies.
Woman's ambition was not confined at this period to literature and
the learned professions; she found herself capable of practical
work on a large scale in the department of agriculture. The
_Philadelphia Press_ has the following:
The beautiful farm of Abel C. Thomas, at Tacony, near
Philadelphia, is remarkable chiefly because it is managed by a
woman, Mrs. Louise H. Thomas. Her husband, the intimate friend of
Horace Greeley, and well known as an author and theologian, in
time past, has long been too feeble to take any part in managing
the property. That duty has devolved upon Mrs. Thomas. The house,
two hundred yards from the Pennsylvania railroad, is hidden from
view by the trees which surround it. The grounds are tastefully
laid out, and the lawn mowed with a regularity that indicates
constant feminine attention. The plot is 20 acres in extent. Six
acres comprise the orchard and garden. In addition to apple,
apricot, pear, peach, plum and cherry, there are specimens of all
kinds of trees, from pine to poplar.
A _Press_ reporter recently walked over the premises, and Mrs.
Thomas explained her manner of doing business. "I look after
everything about the farm; take my little sample bags of wheat to
the mills, and sell the crop by it; and twice I got ten cents
more a bushel than any of my neighbors. But the things I take
most interest in are my cows, chickens and bees. My cattle are
from Jersey island, and pure Alderney. They are very gentle and
good milkers. From four of them I get about 800 pounds of butter
a year. The price of this butter varies from 50 cents to $1.00
per pound. There's my dog. When it's milking time, the hired man
says to the dog, 'Shep, go after the cows,' and away he goes, and
in a little while the herd come tinkling up. Why send a man to do
a boy's work, or a boy to do that which a shepherd dog can do
just as well? The cows understand him, and readily come when they
are sent after. Well, so much for the milk department. Now, as to
the garden; I don't sell much from that. Still, if the vegetables
were not grown, they would have to be bought, and I take all that
into consideration in closing accounts. And that's one thing most
farmers don't do; they don't put on the cash side of the ledger
the cost of their living, for which they have been to no expense.
Now, as to the bees. The first cost is about the only expense
attached to these little workers. I have twenty-five colonies,
and can, and do handle them with as much safety as if they were
so much dry wheat. I sell about $100 worth of honey yearly, and
consume half as much at home. The bees are not troublesome when
you know how to handle them, but they require to be delicately
handled at swarming time.
"Now, as to chickens. My stock consists exclusively of the light
Brahma breed. They come early, grow fast, sell readily, are
tender, and have no disposition to forage; they are not all the
time wandering round and flying over the garden fence, and
scratching up flower and vegetable seeds. In fact, if you'll
notice, there is a docility about my live-stock that is very
attractive. The cows and chickens only need articulation to carry
on conversation. You didn't see the hatching department of my
chicken-house? I modeled the building after one used by a Madame
de Linas, a French lady living near Paris, and am much pleased
with it. I sometimes raise 1,000 chickens a season. I sell them
at prices all the way up from $1 to $3 apiece. You must remember
that they are full-blooded, and I always have my stock
replenished. I keep the best and sell for the highest prices.
They are generally sold to private families, who wish to get the
stock, and I always sell them alive. They are not much trouble to
raise, provided you know how, and have the accommodations for
doing it. I feed them corn, milk, meal and water, and pay
particular attention to their being properly housed. The eggs of
this breed are very rich, and I charge one dollar and a half for
a setting--that is, thirteen eggs.
"I have some three or four acres of wheat growing and it is
heading out finely. Oh!" said Mrs. Thomas, becoming more
enthusiastic, as she reviewed the incomes from the cereals, cows,
and chickens, "I am making money, and money is a standard of
success, although there is to me a greater pleasure than the mere
financial part of the business, which comes from the passion I
have for the life. I wish, indeed, that young ladies would turn
their attention to this matter. To me, it seems to open to them
an avenue for acquiring a competency in an independent way; and
to one who would pursue it earnestly, I know of no avocation
scarcely worth being classed with it."
"And you are not lonesome out here?"
"Oh! no. I never was lonesome an hour in my life--don't have
time; I have a great deal of work to do, and am always ready to
do it. Indeed, the only people I pity are those who do not work,
or find no interest in it. No, no; I have plenty of visitors, and
last week Jennie June, Lucretia Mott, and Anna Dickinson paid me
a visit and were very much pleased while here. I have two
grown-up boys, one in New York and the other in California; and
have reared thirteen children besides my own family--colored,
French, Italian, and I know not what nationalities."
Mrs. Thomas, who is certainly a remarkable woman, is a thoroughly
educated one; has traveled extensively both in Europe and this
country. Herself and husband have been intimate acquaintances of
many eminent men, among whom were President Lincoln and Secretary
Stanton. The activity displayed in managing the estate indicates
the possession of marked executive ability, and the exercise she
thus receives has doubtless had its share in keeping her young,
well-preserved, and good-natured.
When the Rev. Knox Little visited this country in 1880, thinking
the women of America specially needed his ministrations, he
preached a sermon that called out the general ridicule of our
literary women. In the Sunday _Republic_ of December 12, Anne E.
M'Dowell said:
The reverend gentlemen of St. Clement's Church, of this city,
with their frequent English visiting clergymen, are not only
trying their best to carry Christianity back into the dark ages,
by reinvesting it with all old-time traditions and mummeries, but
they are striving anew to forge chains for the minds,
consciences, and bodies of women whom the spirit of Christian
progress has, in a measure, made free in this country. The sermon
of the Rev. Knox Little, rector of St. Alban's Church,
Manchester, England, recently delivered at St. Clement's in this
city, and reported in the daily _Times_, is just such an one as
might be looked for from the class of thinkers whom he on that
occasion represented. These ritualistic brethren are bitterly
opposed to divorce, and hold the belief that so many Britons
adhere to on their native soil, viz., that "woman is an inferior
animal, created only for man's use and pleasure, and designed by
Providence to be in absolute submission to her lord and master."
The feeling engendered by this belief breeds contempt for and
indifference to the nobler aspirations of women amongst men of
the higher ranks, while it crops out in tyranny in the middle,
and brutality in the lower classes of society. Even the gentry
and nobility of Great Britain are not all exempt from brutal
manifestations of power toward their wives. We once sheltered in
our own house for weeks the wife of an English Earl who had been
forced to leave her home and family through the brutality of her
high-born husband--brutality from which the law could not or
would not protect her. She died at our house, and when she was
robed for her last rest much care had to be taken to arrange the
dress and hair so that the scars of wounds inflicted on the
throat, neck and cheek by her cruel husband might not be too
apparent.
The reports of English police courts are full of disclosures of
ill-treatment of women by their husbands, and year by year our
own courts are more densely thronged by women asking safety from
the brutality of men who at the altar have vowed to "love, honor
and protect" them. In nearly all these cases, the men who are
brought into our courts on the charge of maltreating women are of
foreign birth who have been born and brought up under the
spiritual guidance of such clergymen as the Rev. Knox-Little, who
tell them, as he told the audience of women to whom he preached
in this city: "To her husband a wife owes the duty of unqualified
obedience. There is _no crime that a man can commit which
justifies his wife in leaving him_ or applying for that monstrous
thing, a divorce. It is her duty to submit herself to him
_always_, and no crime he can commit justifies her lack of
obedience. If he is a bad or wicked man she may gently
remonstrate with him, but disobey him, never." Again, addressing
his audience at St. Clement's, he says: "You may marry a bad man,
but what of that? You had no right to marry a bad man. If you
knew it, you deserved it. If you did not know it, you must endure
it all the same. You can pray for him, and perhaps he will
reform; but leave him--never. Never think of that accursed
thing--divorce. Divorce breaks up families--families build up the
church. The Christian woman lives to build up the church." This
is the sort of sermonizing, reïterated from year to year, that
makes brutes of Englishmen, of all classes, and sinks the average
English woman to the condition of a child-bearing slave,
valuable, mostly, for the number of children she brings her
husband. She is permitted to hold no opinion unaccepted by her
master, denied all reason and forced to frequent churches where
she is forbidden the exercise of her common-sense, and where she
is told: "Men are logical; women lack this quality, but have an
intricacy of thought. There are those who think that women can be
taught logic; this is a mistake. They can never, by any process
of education, arrive at the same mental status as that enjoyed by
man; but they have a quickness of apprehension--what is usually
called leaping at conclusions--that is astonishing."
Divorce is a question over which woman now disputes man's absolute
control. His canon and civil laws alike have made marriage for
her a condition of slavery, from which she is now seeking
emancipation; and just in proportion as women become independent and
self-supporting, they will sunder the ties that bind them in
degrading relations.
In September, 1880, Governor Hoyt was petitioned to appoint a woman
as member of the State Board of Commissioners of Public Charities.
The special business of this commission is to examine into the
condition of all charitable, reformatory and correctional
institutions within the State, to have a general oversight of the
methods of instruction, the well-being and comfort of the inmates,
with a supervision of all those in authority in such institutions.
Dr. Susan Smith of West Philadelphia, from the year of the cruel
imprisonment of the unfortunate Hester Vaughan, regularly for
twelve years poured petitions into both houses of the legislature,
numerously signed by prominent philanthropists, setting forth the
necessity of women as inspectors in the female wards of the jails
of the State, and backing them by an array of appalling facts, and
yet the legislature, from year to year, turned a deaf ear to her
appeals. Happily for the unfortunate wards of the State, the law
passed in 1881.
STATE HOSPITAL FOR THE INSANE, NORRISTOWN, Pa., Sept. 28, 1885.
MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY: I have referred your letter to my old
friend, Dr. Hiram Corson, of Plymouth, Pa., who can, if he will,
give a much better history of the movement in this State, than
any one else, being one of the pioneers. I hope that you will
hear from him. If, however, he returns your letter to me, I will
give you the few facts that I know. I should be glad to have you
visit our hospital and see our work.
Very respectfully yours, ALICE BENNETT.
PLYMOUTH MEETING, Pa., Oct. 2, 1885.
MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY: _Esteemed Friend_:--Dr. Alice Bennett has
referred your letter with questions to me. Alice Bennett, M. D.,
Ph. D., is chief physician of the female department of the
eastern hospital of Pennsylvania, for the insane. She is also
member of the Montgomery County Medical Society, and member of
the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania. She is the only
woman in the civilized world, of whom I have ever heard, who has
entire charge of the female patients in an institution for the
care and treatment of the insane. We have in the Harrisburg
hospital, Dr. Jane Garver, as physician for the female insane,
but she is subordinate to the male physician. She has a female
physician to assist her. Dr. Bennett was appointed and took
charge in July, 1880, with Dr. Anna Kingler as her assistant. Dr.
Kingler resigned, and went to India as medical missionary; was
succeeded by Dr. Rebecca S. Hunt, who, after more than a year's
service, also resigned to go to India as medical missionary. Dr.
Bennett has now two women physicians to assist her in the care of
more than six hundred patients, nearly as many as, if not more
than, are in the female departments of the Harrisburg, Danville,
and Warren hospitals all combined.
Dr. Bennett's hospital is a model one. There is a total absence
of physical restraint, as used formerly under male
superintendents, and, I may say, as still used in other hospitals
than that of Norristown. Her skill in providing amusement,
instruction and employment of various kinds, for the comfort and
restoration of her patients to sanity and physical health, I feel
sure has never been equaled in any hospital for the treatment of
insane women. It is exceedingly interesting to see the school
which she has established, and in which a large number of the
insane are daily instructed, amused and interested. It is well
known, now, that when the mind of the insane can be drawn away
from their delusions by employment, or whatever else may interest
them and absorb their attention, they are on the road to health.
The public are not yet fully awake to the great reform effected
in having women physicians for the women insane. Insane women
have been treated as though there were no diseases peculiar to
the sex. Never, so far as I have been able to learn, have they
been treated by the means used for the relief of women in their
homes. An eminent surgeon of Philadelphia informed me a few days
since, that thirty years ago he was an assistant to Dr.
Kirkbride, and desired to treat a patient for uterine troubles,
but was rebuked by Dr. K., and told never to attempt to use the
appliances relied on in private practice. My informant added that
he believed not a single insane woman had ever received special
treatment for affections in any of the hospitals under the care
of male physicians. While we realize that great advantages would
have come to these poor unfortunates by proper treatment, we feel
that no male physician having due regard for his own reputation,
should attempt to treat an insane woman for uterine diseases by
means used in private practice, or even in hospitals with sane
women. And this shows the importance of women physicians for
women insane. One of the most intellectual and prominent women of
this State was, 30 years ago, on account of domestic application,
an inmate of our then champion hospital for the insane, for
several months, during all of which time her sufferings were, to
use her own words, indescribable, and yet she was not once asked
in relation to her physical condition. Let us turn aside from
this, and glance at the last annual report of Dr. Alice Bennett.
She reports 180 patients examined for uterine diseases; 125 were
placed under treatment; 67 treated for a length of time; 60
benefited by treatment. While Dr. Bennett does not say that their
insanity was caused by the uterine disease, or that they were
cured by curing that affection, she observes that in some cases
the relief of the mind kept pace with the progress of cure of
the uterine affections. I have, perhaps, written more than was
needed on this subject, but I am so anxious that we shall have
women doctors in every hospital for the treatment of insane
women, and know, too, what influence yourself and good Mrs.
Stanton can exert by turning your attention to it, which I am
sure you will as you become informed in relation to the facts,
that I could not stop short of what I have said. I have prepared
a full account of our struggles with the State Society during six
years to obtain for women doctors their proper recognition by the
profession, and also the obstacles and opposition we encountered
in our attempt to procure the law empowering boards of trustees
to appoint women to hospitals for the insane of their sex. It
will give me pleasure to send them to you if they would be of any
use to you.
Respectfully, HIRAM CORSON.
As I am within a week of my 82d birthday, and am writing while my
heart is beating one hundred and sixty times per minute, you must
not criticise me too sharply.
H. C.
January 24, 1882, Miss Rachel Foster made all the arrangements for
a national convention, to be held in St. George's Hall,
Philadelphia.[272] She also inaugurated a course of lectures, of
which she took the entire financial responsibility, in the popular
hall of the Young Men's Christian Association. Ex-Governor Hoyt of
Wyoming, in his lecture, gave the good results of thirteen years'
experience of woman's voting in that Territory. Miss Foster
employed a stenographer to report the address, had 20,000 copies
printed, and circulated them in the Nebraska campaign during the
following summer.
At its next session (1883) the legislature passed a resolution
recommending congress to submit a sixteenth amendment, securing to
women the right to vote:
HARRISBURG, Pa., March 21, 1883.--In the House, Mr. Morrison of
Alleghany offered a resolution urging congress to amend the
national constitution so that the right of suffrage should not be
denied to citizens of any State on account of sex. It was adopted
by 78 ayes[273] to 76 noes, the result being greeted with both
applause and hisses.
The Philadelphia _Evening Bulletin_ of November 8, 1882, mentions
an attempt to open the University of Pennsylvania to women:
The trustees held several meetings to consider the applications.
Beside Miss Craddock's, there were two others which the faculty
referred to the trustees, and which appear not to have been
reached in the regular course of business. Miss Florence Kelley,
a post-graduate from Cornell University, daughter of Judge
Kelley, who applied for admission as a special student in Greek,
and Miss Frances Henrietta Mitchell, a junior student from
Cornell, who asked to be admitted in the junior class. Our
information comes from these ladies, who were notified that their
cases would be presented. The question of coëducation, which has
been seriously occupying the minds of the trustees of the
University of Pennsylvania, was settled last evening, at least
for the present, by the passage of a resolution refusing the
admission of girls to the department of arts, but proposing to
establish a separate collegiate department for them, whenever the
requisite cost, about $300,000, is provided. There has been an
intelligent and honest difference among both trustees and
professors on this interesting question, and the diversity has
been complicated by the various grounds upon which the _pros_ and
_cons_ are maintained. There are those who advocate the admission
of girls to the University as a proper thing _per se_. Others
consent to it, because the University cannot give the desired
education separately. Others hold that girls should be admitted
because of their equal rights to a university education, although
their admission is very undesirable. Others oppose coëducation in
the abstract, conceding that girls should be as well educated as
boys, but insisting that they must be differently and therefore
separately educated. These draw a clear line between "equal" and
"similar" education, and hold that no university course of
studies can be laid out that will not present much of classical
literature and much of the mental, moral and natural sciences,
that cannot be studied and recited by boys and girls together,
without serious risk of lasting injury to both.
Would it not be better, all things considered, to abjure this kind
of classical literature, and instead of subjecting our sons to its
baneful influence, give them the refining, elevating companionship
of their sisters? If we would preserve the real modesty and purity
of our daughters, it is quite as important that we should pay some
attention to the delicacy and morality of the men with whom they
are to associate.
If a girl cannot read the classics with a young man without
contamination, how can she live with him in all the intimacies of
family life without a constant shock to her refined sensibilities?
So long as society considers that any man of known wealth is a fit
husband for our daughters, all this talk of the faculties and
trustees of our colleges about protecting woman's modesty is the
sheerest nonsense and hypocrisy. It is well to remember that these
professors and students have mothers, wives and sisters, and if man
is coarse and brutal, he invariably feels free to show his worst
passions at his own fireside. To warn women against coëducation is
to warn them against association with men in any relation
whatsoever.
FOOTNOTES:
[255] See Appendix.
[256] Carrie S. Burnham after long years of preparation and
persistent effort for admission to the bar of Philadelphia, was
admitted in 1884. She was thoroughly qualified to enter that
profession and to practice in the courts of that State, and the
only reason ever offered for her rejection from time to time was,
"that she was a woman."
[257] By an oversight this law was not mentioned in Vol. I. in its
proper place.
[258] George W. Childs married Judge Bovier's grand-daughter.
[259] Transcriber's Note: Footnote text is missing in original.
[260] _University of Pennsylvania_--Joseph Carson, Robert E.
Rogers, Joseph Leidy, Henry H. Smith, Francis G. Smith, R. A. T.
Penrose, Alfred Stille, George B. Wood, Samuel Jackson, Hugh L.
Hodge, R. La Roche, George W. Norris. _Jefferson Medical
College_--Joseph Pancoast, S. D. Gross, Samuel Henry Dickson,
Ellerslie Wallace, B. Howard Rand, John B. Biddle, James Aitken
Meigs. _Pennsylvania Hospital_--J. Forsyth Meigs, James H.
Hutchinson, J. M. Da Costa, Addinell Hewson, William Hunt, D. Hayes
Agnew. _Philadelphia Hospital_--R. J. Levis, William H. Pancoast,
F. F. Maury, Alfred Stille, J. L. Ludlow, Edward Rhodes, D. D.
Richardson, E. L. Duer, E. Scholfield, R. M. Girvin, John S. Parry,
William Pepper, James Tyson. _Medical Staff of Episcopal
Hospital_--John H. Packard., John Ashhurst, jr., Samuel Ashhurst,
Alfred M. Slocum, Edward A. Smith, William Thomson, William S.
Forbes. _Wills Hospital for the Blind and Lame_--Thomas George
Morton, A. D. Hall, Harrison Allen, George C. Harlan, R. J. Levis.
_St. Joseph's Hospital_--William V. Keating, Alfred Stille, John J.
Reese, George R. Morehouse, A. C. Bournonville, Edward A. Page,
John H. Brinton, Walter F. Atlee, C. S. Boker. _St. Mary's
Hospital_--C. Percy La Roche, J. Cummiskey, A. H. Fish, J.
H. Grove, W. W. Keen, W. L. Wells, L. S. Bolles. _German
Hospital_--Albert Fricke, Emil Fischer, Joseph F. Koerper, Julius
Schrotz, Julius Kamerer, Karl Beeken, Theodore A. Demme,
_Children's Hospital_--Thomas Hewson Bache, D. Murray Cheston, H.
Lenox Hodge, F. W. Lewis, Hilborn West. _Charity Hospital_--A. H.
Fish. L. K. Baldwin, Horace Y. Evans, John M. McGrath, H. St. Clair
Ash, J. M. Boisnot, N. Hatfield, W. M. Welch, H. Lycurgus Law, H.
Leaman, J. A. McArthur. _Howard Hospital_--Thomas S. Harper,
Laurence Turnbull, T. H. Andrews, Horace Williams, Joseph Klapp,
William B. Atkinson, S. C. Brincklee. _Physicians-at-Large of the
City of Philadelphia_--E. Ward, George H. Beaumont, William W.
Lamb, Thomas B. Reed, Charles Schaffer, J. Heritage, W. Stump
Forwood, W. J. Phelps, Richard Maris, Frank Muhlenberg, George M.
Ward, James Collins, William F. Norris, Samuel Lewis, Isaac Hays,
G. Emerson, W. W. Gerhard, Caspar Morris, B. H. Coates, George
Strawbridge, S. Weir Mitchell, I. Minis Hays, Edward B. Van Dyke,
J. Sylvester Ramsey, G. W. Bowman, W. H. H. Githens, T. W. Lewis,
T. M. Finley, S. W. Butler, Robert P. Harris, C. Moehring, George
L. Bomberger, Philip Leidy, D. F. Willard, James V. Ingham, Edward
Hartshorne, W. S. W. Ruschenberger, Thomas Stewardson, James
Darrach, S. L. Hollingworth, William Mayburry, Lewis Rodman, Casper
Wister, A. Nebinger, Horace Binney Hare, Edward Shippen, S.
Littell, F. W. Lewis, Robert Bridges, William H. Gloninger, James
Markoe, Charles Hunter, D. F. Woods, Herbert Norris, Harrison
Allen, Charles B. Nancrede, W. J. Grier, Edward J. Nolan, Richard
Thomas, Lewis H. Adler, G. B. Dunmire, John Neill, Wharton Sinkler,
George Pepper, J. J. Sowerby, Henry C. Eckstein, Eugene P.
Bernardy, Charles K. Miles, J. Solis Cohen.
[261] C. L. Schlatter, J. Wm. White, Daniel Bray, C. E. Cassady,
Robert B. Burns, Albert Trenchard, John G. Scott, J. J. Bowen, P.
Collings, E. Cullen Brayton, joint committee of the University and
Jefferson Medical Colleges.
[262] As through the influence of Dr. Truman Miss Hirschfeld had
first been admitted to the college, he felt in a measure
responsible for the fair treatment of her countrywomen who came to
the United States to enjoy the same educational advantages. When
the discussion in regard to expelling the young women was pending,
Dr. Truman promptly and decidedly told the faculty that if such an
act of injustice was permitted he should leave the college also.
Much of Dr. Truman's clearsightedness and determination may be
traced to the influence of his noble wife and no less noble
mother-in-law, Mary Ann McClintock, who helped to inaugurate the
movement in 1848 in Central New York. She lamented in her declining
years that she was able to do so little. But by way of consolation
I often suggested that her influence in many directions could never
be measured; and here is one: Her influence on Dr. Truman opened
the Dental College to women, and kept it open while Miss Hirschfeld
acquired her profession. With her success in Germany, in the royal
family, every child in the palace for generations that escapes a
toothache will have reason to bless a noble friend, Mary Ann
McClintock, that she helped to plant the seeds of justice to woman
in the heart of young James Truman. We must also recognize in Dr.
Truman's case that he was born and trained in a liberal Quaker
family, his own father and mother having been disciples of Elias
Hicks.
[263] PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 10, 1870.--The formal opening of
Swarthmore College took place this afternoon, when a large number
of its friends were conveyed thither in a special train on the
Westchester railroad. The audience assembled in the lecture room,
where addresses were delivered by Samuel Willets and John D. Hyoks,
of New York, Edward Parrish, president of the college, Wm. Dorsey,
and Lucretia Mott. It was stated that the amount spent in land and
buildings amounted to $205,000 and contributions were solicited for
$100,000 additional to fully furnish the building, and supply a
library, philosophical and astronomical apparatus. The building is
a massive one of five stories, constructed of Pennsylvania
granite, and appointed throughout, from dormitory, bathroom,
recitation-hall, to parlor, kitchen and laundry, in the most
refined and substantial taste. It is 400 feet in length, by 100
deep, presenting two wings for the dormitories of the male and
female students respectively, and a central part devoted to parlor,
library, public hall, etc. Especially interesting in this division
of the college is a room devoted to Quaker antiquities, comprising
portraits and writings of the founders of the sect. Among them we
notice the treaty of William Penn, a picture of the treaty
assembly, a letter of George Fox, etc. The college opens with 180
pupils, about equally divided between the sexes, the system of
instruction being a joint education of boys and girls, though each
occupy separate wings of the building. The institution was built by
the Hicksite branch of the Society of Friends, but the pupils are
not confined to members of that persuasion.
[264] The speakers at this convention were Lucretia Mott, Frances
Dana Gage, Wendell Phillips, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B.
Anthony, Edward M. Davis, Robert Purvis, Aaron M. Powell. The
officers of the society were: _President_, Robert Purvis;
_Vice-presidents_, Lucretia Mott, William Whipper, Dinah
Mendenhall; _Recording Secretary_, Mary B. Lightfoot;
_Corresponding Secretary_, Frances B. Jackson; _Treasurer_, John K.
Wildman; _Executive Committee_, William Still, Ellen M. Child,
Harriet Purvis, Elisha Meaner, Octavius Catts, Sarah S. Hawkins,
Sarah Pugh, Clementina Johns, Alfred H. Love, Louisa J. Roberts,
Jay Chapel.
[265] J. K. Wildman, Miss A. Ramborger, Clementina L. John, Ellen
M. Child, and Passmore Williamson.
[266] _President_, Mary Grew; _Vice-Presidents_, Edward M. Davis,
Mrs. C. A. Farrington, Mary K. Williamson; _Recording Secretary_,
Annie Heacock; _Corresponding Secretary_, Eliza Sproat Turner;
_Treasurer_, Gulielma M. S. P. Jones; _Executive Committee_, John
K. Wildman, Ellen M. Child, Annie Shoemaker, Charlotte L. Pierce,
and Dr. Henry T. Child.
[267] Among those who addressed the members of the convention were
Bishop Matthew Simpson, Rev. Charles G. Ames, Fanny B. Ames, Mary
Grew, Sarah C. Hallowell, Matilda Hindman, Elizabeth S. Bladen and
Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
[268] Among the men who spoke for woman's enfranchisement were John
M. Broomall, John M. Campbell, Lewis C. Cassidy, Benjamin L.
Temple, Levi Rooke, George F. Horton, H. W. Palmer, William
Darlington, Harry White, Frank Mantor, Thomas MacConnell, Henry
Carter, Thomas E. Cochran. In addition to those who spoke, those
who voted _yes_ are John E. Addicks, William H. Ainey, William D.
Baker, Charles O. Bowman, Charles Brodhead, George N. Corson, David
Craig, Matthew Edwards, J. Gillingham Tell, Thomas Howard, Edward
C. Knight, George Lear, John S. Mann, H. W. Patterson, T. H. B.
Patton, Thomas Struthers, John W. F. White.
[269] _Ayes_--William Styles, William McLain, clerks in the water
department; A. W. Lyman, clerk in the custom-house; M. C. Coppeck,
clerk in the highway department, who was defeated by one of the
ladies for school directorship; John B. Green, a member of the
board of education; John Buckley, clerk in the post-office;
Theodore Canfield, sergeant of police; John Murray, contractor of
the highway department; George W. Schrack, an ex-clerk, lately
resigned from the tax receiver's office; Daniel T. Smith,
ex-detective; Asher W. Dewees, Oliver Bowler, Mr. Agnew, Ezra
Lukens, clerk in the United States assistant treasurer's office,
president of the Republican Invincibles, candidate last year
against Mr. Jonathan Pugh for commissioner of city property, and a
candidate for the same office next year; William B. Elliott,
collector of internal revenue; Charles M. Carpenter, alderman, who
signed Mrs. Paist's certificate; Jackson Keyser, an employé in the
navy yard; Alfred Ruhl, clerk in the custom-house; Mr. Jones, and
Henry C. Dunlap, who is Republican candidate for common
council--20. _Nays_--James W. Sayre, Joseph B. Ridge, Samuel
Caldwell, Dr. Charles Hooker, John E. Lane, Lewis Bogy, John
Mansfield. Daniel Rieff, William Githens, Thomas Evans, George
Schimpf and F. Theodore Walton--12. So the resolution was carried
by 20 yeas to 12 nays.
[270] Their modest home at 114 North Eleventh street has long been
a hospitable retreat for reformers, where many of us identified
with the suffrage movement have been most courteously entertained.
Anna and Adeline Thomson after long lives of industry have been,
too, the steadfast representatives of great principles in religious
and political freedom, always giving freely of their means to the
unpopular reforms of their day and generation.--[E. C. S.
[271] The Executive Board of the New Century Club for 1879-1880,
was: _President_, Mrs. Eliza S. Turner; _Vice-Presidents_, Mrs.
Emily W. Taylor, Mrs. S. C. F. Hallowell; Mrs. Henry C. Townsend,
Mrs. Aubrey H. Smith; _Corresponding Secretary_, Miss Louise
Stockton; _Recording Secretary_, Miss Anna C. Bliss; _Treasurer_,
Mrs. Charlotte L. Pierce; _Directors_, Mrs. Susan I. Lesley, Mrs.
Henry Cohen, Mrs. Huldah Justice, Miss Emily Sartain, Miss Mary
Grew, Mrs. S. B. F. Greble, Mrs. M. W. Coggins, Miss Mary A.
Burnham, Mrs. Ellison L. Perot, Mrs. Thomas Roberts. Others names
found in its annual report as contributing to the efficiency of the
club are: Mrs. Fannie B. Ames, Miss Grace Anna Lewis, Mrs. Emma J.
Bartol, Mrs. E. L. Head, Miss Mary C. Coxe, Mrs. Charlotte L.
Pierce, Madam Emma Seiler, Miss Amanda L. Dods, Miss Lelia
Patridge, Miss Lily Ray, Miss Ella Cole, Mrs. Susan I. Lesley, Mrs.
E. C. Mayer, Miss Bennett, Mlle. Frasson. The work of the club has
its divisions of science, literature, art, music, entertainment,
cooking, hospitalities, charities, employment for women, legal
protection for working women, prisons and reformatory institutions.
[272] See Chapter 30 for an account of this Philadelphia
convention.
[273] The _yeas_ were as follows: Messrs. Ayers, Barnes, Blackford,
Boyer, Boyle, Brooks, W. C. Brown, I. B. Brown, J. L. Brown,
Brosius, Burnite, Burchfield, Chadwick, Coburn, E. L. Davis,
Deveney, Duggan, Eckels, Ellsworth, Emery, Fetters, Gahan, Gardner,
Gavitt, Gentner, Glenn, Grier, G. W. Hall, F. Hall, A. W. Hayes,
Hines, Higgins, Hoofnagle, Hulings, Hughes, Jenkins, Klein,
Kavanaugh, Landis, Lafferty, Merry, B. B. Mitchell, S. N. Mitchell,
Millor, Molineaux, A. H. Morgan, W. D. Morgan, J. W. Morrison, E.
Morrison, Myton, McCabe, McClaran, Neill, Neeley, Nelson, Nesbit,
Nicholson, Parkinson, Powell, Romig, Schwartz, Short, Sinex,
Slocum, J. Smith, Sneeringer, Snodgrass, Stees, Sterett, Stewart,
Stubbs, Sweeney, Trant, Vanderslice, Vaughn, Vogdes, Wayne and
Ziegler--78.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
NEW JERSEY.
Women Voted in the Early Days--Deprived of the Right by
Legislative Enactment in 1807--Women Demand the Restoration of
Their Rights in 1868--At the Polls in Vineland and Roseville
Park--Lucy Stone Agitates the Question--State Suffrage Society
Organized in 1867--Conventions--A Memorial to the
Legislature--Mary F. Davis--Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford--Political
Science Club--Mrs. Cornelia C. Hussey--Orange Club, 1870--July 4,
1874, Mrs. Devereux Blake Gives the Oration--Dr. Elizabeth
Blackwell's Letter--The Laws of New Jersey in Regard to Property
and Divorce--Constitutional Commission, 1873--Trial of Rev. Isaac
M. See--Women Preaching in His Pulpit--The Case Appealed--Mrs.
Jones, Jailoress--Legislative Hearings.
New Jersey was the only State that, in adopting her first
constitution, recognized woman's right to suffrage which she had
exercised during the colonial days, and from time immemorial in the
mother country. The fact that she was deprived of this right from
1807 to 1840 by a legislative enactment, while the constitution
secured it,[274] proves that the power of the legislature, composed
of representatives from the people, was considered at that early
day to be above the State constitution. If, then, the legislature
could abridge the suffrage, it must have the power to extend it,
and all the women of this State should demand is an act of the
legislature. They need not wait for the slow process of a
constitutional amendment submitted to the popular vote. In 1868, in
harmony with a general movement in many other States, the women of
New Jersey began to demand the restoration of their ancient rights.
The following is from _The Revolution_ of November 19, 1868,
written by Elizabeth A. Kingsbury:
VINELAND, N. J., Nov. 5, 1868.
At a meeting of women, held the week before election, a unanimous
vote was taken that we would go to the polls. John Gage, chairman
of the Woman Suffrage Association of Vineland, called a meeting,
and though the day was an inclement one, there was a good
attendance. A number of earnest men as well as women addressed
the audience. Among them were Colonel Moss of Missouri, and James
M. Scovel of Camden, State senator, who strengthened us by their
words of earnest eloquence. At 7:30 A. M., November 3, John and
Portia Gage and myself entered Union Hall, where the judges of
election had already established themselves for the day. Instead
of occupying the center of the platform, they had taken one side
of it, apparently for the purpose of leaving us room on the
other. We seated ourselves in chairs brought for the occasion,
when one gentleman placed a small table for our use. Another
inquired if we were comfortable and the room sufficiently warm.
"Truly," we thought, "this does not look like a very terrible
opposition." As time passed, there came more men and women into
the hall. Quite a number of the latter presented their votes
first at the table where those of men were received, where they
were rejected with politeness, and then taken to the other side
of the platform and deposited in our box. Shall I describe this
box, twelve inches long and six wide, and originally a grape-box?
Very significant of Vineland. Soon there came to the aid of Mrs.
Gage and myself a blooming and beautiful young lady, Estelle
Thomson, who, with much grace and dignity, sat there throughout
the day, recording the names of the voters. It would have done
you good to have witnessed the scene. Margaret Pryor,[275] who is
better known to you perhaps than to many of your readers, as one
whose life has been active in the cause of freedom for the negro
and for woman; a charming old lady of eighty-four years, yet with
the spirit, elasticity and strength of one of thirty-five, sat
there in her nice Quaker bonnet by the side of Miss Thomson a
great part of the day. Sarah Pearson, also advanced in years and
eminent for her labors of love for the suffering and oppressed
everywhere; with her peculiarly delicate organization and placid
countenance, remained with us till the last moment. There was no
lack of friends and supporters. The platform was crowded with
earnest, refined, intellectual women, who felt that it was good
for them to be there. One beautiful girl said in my hearing, "I
feel so much stronger for having voted." It was pleasant to see
husbands and wives enter the hall together, only they had to
separate, one turning to the right hand and the other to the
left, when no separation should have taken place.
Some women spent the day in going after their friends and
bringing them to the hall. Young ladies, after voting, went to
the homes of their acquaintances, and took care of the babies
while the mothers came out to vote. Will this fact lessen the
alarm of some men for the safety of the babies of enfranchised
women on election day? One lady of refinement and aristocratic
birth brought her little girl of ten years with her, and I assure
you it did the men good as well as us. They said they never had
so quiet and pleasant a time at the polls before, though it is
always more quiet here than in many other towns, because the sale
of ardent spirits is forbidden. John Gage--bless his dear
soul--identifies himself completely with this glorious cause, and
labors with an earnestness and uniformity of purpose that is
truly charming. His team was out all day, bringing women to vote,
half-a-dozen at a time, while his personal efforts were
unremitting and eminently successful. He and his noble wife,
Portia, seem to be, indeed, one in thought and action. Some time
ago he sent a pledge to the candidates for office in this State.
By signing it, they promise to sustain the cause of woman
suffrage by every means in their power. Nixon, candidate for the
Senate, signed it last year. House, candidate for the Assembly,
signed the pledge at the eleventh hour, and though he lost two of
our votes by the delay, yet he, too, is elected. Thus we have, at
least, three public men in New Jersey pledged to sustain the
woman suffrage cause. We think it is time to say to candidates
for office: "You tell us we have a good deal of influence, and
ask us to exert it for your election. We will do so, if you will
promise to advocate our cause. If you do not, we will oppose your
election." The result of the ballots cast by the women of
Vineland is this: For president--Grant, 164; Seymour, 4; E. Cady
Stanton, 2; Fremont, 1; and Mrs. Governor Harvey of Wisconsin, 1.
The president of the Historical Society of Vineland, S. C.
Campbell, has petitioned for the ballot-box and list of voters,
to put into its archives. He will probably get them.
A gentleman said to me last week: "What is the use of your doing
this? Your votes will count nothing in the election." "It will do
good in two ways," I replied. "You say there will not be five
women there. We will show you that you are mistaken; that women
do want to vote, and it will strengthen them for action in the
future." Both these ends have been accomplished; and on November
12 we are to meet again, to consider and decide what to do about
the taxation that is soon coming upon us.
While the Vineland women expressed their opinion by voting, other
true friends of woman's enfranchisement were moved to do the same.
_The Revolution_ of November 12, 1868, gave the following:
The Newark _Daily Advertiser_ says that Mrs. Hannah Blackwell, a
highly esteemed elderly lady, long resident in Roseville, and
Mrs. Lucy Stone, her daughter-in-law, both of them
property-holders and tax-payers in the county, appeared at the
polls in Roseville Park, accompanied by Messrs. Bathgate and
Blackwell as witnesses, and offered their votes. The judges of
election were divided as to the propriety of receiving the votes
of the ladies, one of them stating that he was in favor of doing
so, the two others objecting on the ground of their illegality.
The ladies stated that they had taken advice of eminent lawyers,
and were satisfied that in New Jersey, women were legally
entitled to vote, from the fact that the old constitution of the
State conferred suffrage upon "all inhabitants" worth $250. Under
that constitution women did in fact vote until, in 1807, by an
arbitrary act of the legislature, women were excluded from the
polls. The new constitution, adopted in 1844, was framed by a
convention and adopted by a constituency, from both of which
women were unconstitutionally excluded, so that they have never
been allowed to vote upon the question of their own
disfranchisement. The article in the present constitution on the
right of suffrage confers it upon white male citizens, but does
not expressly limit it to such. It is claimed that from the
absence of any express limitation in the present constitution,
and from the compulsory exclusion of the parties interested from
its adoption, the political rights of women under the old
constitution still remain. Mrs. Stone stated these points to the
judges of election with clearness and precision. After
consultation, the votes of the ladies were refused. The crowd
surrounding the polls gathered about the ballot-box and listened
to the discussion with respectful attention; but every one
behaved with the politeness which gentlemen always manifest in
the presence of ladies.
The women of New Jersey may have been roused to assert their right
to vote by an earnest appeal of that veteran of equal rights,
Parker Pillsbury, in _The Revolution_ of March 25, 1868, suggested
by the following:
At the recent election in Vineland, New Jersey, a unanimous vote
in favor of "no rum" was polled. The Vineland _Weekly_ says:
"Among the incidents of the late election was the appearance of a
woman at the polls. Having provided herself with a ballot, she
marched up to the rostrum and tendered it to the chairman of the
board of registry. The veteran politician, John Kandle, covered
with blushes, was obliged to inform the lady that no one could
vote unless his name was registered. She acquiesced in the
decision very readily, saying she only wished to test a
principle, and retired very quietly from the hall."
While thus mentioning the women with uncounted votes, it may be
well to embalm here a historical fact, published in April, 1868:
In the year 1824 widows were allowed to vote in New Jersey on
their husbands' tax receipts. The election officers paid great
deference to the widows on these occasions, and took particular
care to send carriages after them, so as to get their votes early
and make sure of them. The writer of this has often heard his
grandmother state that she voted for John Quincy Adams for
president of the United States when he was elected to that
office. Her name was Sarah Sparks, and she voted at Barnsboro',
her husband having died the year previous.
N. M. WALLINGTON, Washington, D. C.
Miss Anthony held a spirited meeting in Rahway on Christmas eve,
December 24, 1867. The following October, 1868, Mrs. Stanton and
Miss Anthony attended a two days' convention in Vineland, and
helped to rouse the enthusiasm of the people. A friend, writing
from there, gives us the following:
The Unitarian church in this town is highly favored in having for
its pastor a young man of progressive and thoroughly liberal
ideas. Rev. Oscar Clute is well known as an earnest advocate in
the cause of woman. Last Sunday the communion or Lord's Supper
was administered in his church. One of the laymen who usually
assists in the distribution of the bread and wine, was absent,
and Mr. Clute invited one of the women to officiate in his stead.
She did so in such a sweet and hospitable manner that it gave new
interest to the occasion. Even those who do not like innovations
could not find fault. And why should any one be displeased? The
Christ of the sacrament was the emancipator of women. In olden
time they had deaconesses, and in most of our churches women
constitute a majority of the communicants, so it seems
particularly appropriate that they should be served by women.
Women vote on all matters connected with this church, they are on
all "standing committees," and sometimes are chosen and act as
trustees.
Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford sends us the following reports of the
progress of the movement in this State:
While Lucy Stone resided in New Jersey, she held several series
of meetings in the chief towns and cities before the formation of
the State Society.[276] The agitation that began in 1867 was
probably due to her, more than to any other one person in that
State. The State society was organized in the autumn of 1867, and
from year to year its annual meetings have been held in Vineland,
Newark, Trenton, and other cities. On its list of officers[277]
are some of the best men and women in the State. Several
distinguished names from other States are among the speakers[278]
who have taken part in their conventions. County and local
societies too have been extensively organized. These associations
have circulated tracts and appeals, memorialized the legislature,
and had various hearings before that body. At the annual meeting
held in Newark February 15, 1871, the following memorial to the
legislature, prepared by Mary F. Davis, was unanimously adopted:
_To the Honorable the Senate and General Assembly of the
State of New Jersey:_
Section 2, Article 1, of the constitution of the State of
New Jersey, expressly declares that "All political power is
inherent in the people. Government is instituted for the
protection, security, and benefit of the people, and they
have the right at all times to alter or reform the same,
whenever the public good may require it." Throughout the
entire article the words "people" and "person" are used, as
if to apply to all the inhabitants of the State. In direct
contradiction to this broad and just affirmation, section 1,
article 2, begins with the restrictive and unjust sentence:
"Every white male citizen of the United States, at the age
of twenty-one years * * * shall be entitled to vote," etc.,
and the section ends with the specification that "no pauper,
idiot, insane person, or person convicted of a crime * * *
shall enjoy the right of an elector."
Of the word "white" in this article your memorialists need
not speak, as it is made a dead letter by the limitations of
the fifteenth amendment to the United States constitution.
To the second restriction, indicated by the word "male" we
beg leave to call the attention of the legislature, as we
deem it unjust and arbitrary, as well as contradictory to
the spirit of the constitution, as expressed in the first
article. It is also contrary to the precedent established by
the founders of political liberty in New Jersey. On the
second of July, 1776, the provincial congress of New Jersey,
at Burlington, adopted a constitution which remained in
force until 1844; in which section 4 specified as voters,
"all the inhabitants of this Colony, of full age," etc. In
1790, a committee of the legislature reported a bill
regulating elections, in which the words "he and she" are
applied to voters, thus giving legislative endorsement to
the alleged meaning of the constitution.
The legislature of 1807 departed from this wise and just
precedent, and passed an arbitrary act, in direct violation
of the constitutional provision, restricting the suffrage to
white male adult citizens, and this despotic ordinance was
deliberately endorsed by the framers of the State
constitution which was adopted in 1844. This was plainly an
act of usurpation and injustice, as thereby a large
proportion of the law-abiding citizens of the State were
disfranchised, without so much as the privilege of
signifying their acceptance or rejection of the barbarous
fiat which was to rob them of the sacred right of
self-protection by means of a voice in the government, and
to reduce them to the political level of the "pauper, idiot,
insane person, or person convicted of crime."
If this flagrant wrong, which was inflicted by one-half the
citizens of a free commonwealth on the other half, had been
aimed at any other than a non-aggressive and
self-sacrificing class, there would have been fierce
resistance, as in the case of the United Colonies under the
British yoke. It has long been borne in silence. "The right
of voting for representatives," says Paine, "is the primary
right, by which other rights are protected. To take away
this right is to reduce man to a state of slavery, for
slavery consists in being subject to the will of another,
and he that has not a vote in the electing of
representatives is in this condition." Benjamin Franklin
wrote: "They who have no voice nor vote in the electing of
representatives do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely
enslaved to those who have votes and to their
representatives; for to be enslaved is to have governors
whom other men have set over us, and be subject to laws made
by the representatives of others, without having had
representatives of our own to give consent in our behalf."
This is the condition of the women of New Jersey. It is
evident to every reasonable mind that these unjustly
disfranchised citizens should be reïnstated in the right of
suffrage. Therefore, we, your memorialists, ask the
legislature at its present session to submit to the people
of New Jersey an amendment to the constitution, striking out
the word "male" from article 2, section 1, in order that the
political liberty which our forefathers so nobly bestowed on
men and women alike, may be restored to "all inhabitants" of
the populous and prosperous State into which their brave
young colony has grown.
[Illustration: Cornelia Collins Hussey]
With but a slight change of officers and arguments, these
conventions were similar from year to year. There were on all
occasions a certain number of the clergy in opposition. At one of
these meetings the Rev. Mr. McMurdy condemned the ordination of
women for the ministry. But woman's fitness[279] for that
profession was successfully vindicated by Lucretia Mott and Phebe
A. Hanaford. Mrs. Portia Gage writes, December 12, 1873:
There was an election held by the order of the township
committee of Landis, to vote on the subject of bonding the
town to build shoe and other factories. The call issued was
for all legal voters. I went with some ten or twelve other
women, all taxpayers. We offered our votes, claiming that we
were citizens of the United States, and of the State of New
Jersey, also property-holders in and residents of Landis
township, and wished to express our opinion on the subject
of having our property bonded. Of course our votes were not
accepted, whilst every _tatterdemalion_ in town, either
black or white, who owned no property, stepped up and very
pompously said what he would like to have done with his
property. For the first time our claim to vote seemed to
most of the voters to be a just one. They gathered together
in groups and got quite excited over the injustice of
refusing our vote and accepting those of men who paid no
taxes.
In 1879, the Woman's Political Science Club[280] was formed in
Vineland, which held its meetings semi-monthly, and discussed a
wide range of subjects. Among the noble women in New Jersey who
have stood for many years steadfast representatives of the
suffrage movement, Cornelia Collins Hussey of Orange is worthy of
mention. A long line of radical and brave ancestors[281] made it
comparatively easy for her to advocate an unpopular cause. Her
father, Stacy B. Collins, identified with the anti-slavery
movement, was also an advocate of woman's right to do whatever
she could even to the exercise of the suffrage. He maintained
that the tax-payer should vote regardless of sex, and as years
passed on he saw clearly that not alone the tax-payer, but every
citizen of the United States governed and punished by its laws,
had a just and natural right to the ballot in a country claiming
to be republican. The following beautiful tribute to his memory,
by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, is found in a letter to his daughter:
LONDON, July 27, 1873.
My last letter from America brought me the sad intelligence
of your dear father's departure from amongst you; and I
cannot refrain from at once writing and begging you to
accept the sincere sympathy and inevitable regret which I
feel for your loss. The disappearance of an old friend
brings up the long past times vividly to my remembrance--the
time when, impelled by irresistible spiritual necessity, I
strove to lead a useful but unusual life, and was able to
face, with the energy of youth, both social prejudice and
the hindrance of poverty. I have to recall those early days
to show how precious your father's sympathy and support were
to me in that difficult time; and how highly I respected his
moral courage in steadily, for so many years, encouraging
the singular woman doctor, at whom everybody looked askance,
and in passing whom so many women held their clothes aside,
lest they should touch her. I know in how many good and
noble things your father took part; but, to me, this brave
advocacy of woman as physician, in that early time, seems
the noblest of his actions.
Speaking of the general activity of the women of Orange, Mrs.
Hussey says:
The Women's Club of Orange was started in 1871. It is a
social and literary club, and at present (1885) numbers
about eighty members. Meetings are held in the rooms of the
New England Society once in two weeks, and a reception, with
refreshments, given at the house of some member once a year.
Some matter of interest is discussed at each regular
meeting. This is not an equal suffrage club, yet a steady
growth in that direction is very evident. Very good work has
been done by this club. An evening school for girls was
started by it, and taught by the members for awhile, until
adopted by the board of education, a boys' evening school
being already in operation. Under the arrangements of the
club, a course of lectures on physiology, by women, was
recently given in Orange, and well attended. At the house of
one of the members a discussion was held on this subject:
"Does the Private Character of the Actor Concern the
Public?" Although the subject was a general one, the
discussion was really upon the proper course in regard to
M'lle Sarah Bernhardt, who had recently arrived in the
country. Reporters from the New York _Sun_ attended the
meeting, so that the views of the club of Orange gained
quite a wide celebrity.
Of Mrs. Hussey's remarks, the Newark _Journal_ said:
The sentiments of the first speaker, Mrs. Cornelia C.
Hussey, were generally approved, and therefore are herewith
given in full: "I have so often maintained in argument that
one has no right to honor those whose lives are a dishonor
to virtue or principle, that I cannot see any other side to
our question than the affirmative. That the stage wields a
potent influence cannot be doubted. Let the plays be
immoral, and its influence must be disastrous to virtue. Let
the known character of the actor be what we cannot respect,
the glamour which his genius or talent throws around that
bad character will tend to diminish our discrimination
between virtue and vice, and our distaste for the latter.
Some one says: 'Let me write the songs of a nation, and I
care not who makes the laws.' The poetry that Byron wrote,
together with his well-known contempt for a virtuous life,
is said to have had a very pernicious influence on the young
men of his time, and probably, too, blinded the eyes of the
young women. I recall being quite startled by reading the
essay of Whittier on Byron, which showed him as he was, and
not with the halo of his great genius thrown around his
vices. It seemed to me that our national government
dethroned virtue when it sent a homicide, if not a murderer,
to represent us at a foreign court; and again when it sent
as minister to another court on the continent a man whose
private character was well known to be thoroughly immoral.
Even to trifle with virtue, or to be a coward in the cause
of principle, is a fearful thing; but when, a person comes
before the public, saying by his life that he prefers the
pleasures of sin to the paths of virtue, it seems to me that
the way is plain--to withhold our patronage as a matter of
public policy."
On the Fourth of July, 1874, Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake was
invited to make the usual address in East Orange, which she
did before a large audience in the public hall. Says the
_Journal_: "Mrs. Blake's speech was characterized by
simplicity of style and appropriateness of sentiment." She
made mention of Molly Pitcher, Mrs. Borden and Mrs. Hall of
New Jersey, and of noted women of other States, who did good
service in Revolutionary times, when the country needed the
help of her daughters as well as her sons.
In the summer of 1876 a noteworthy meeting was held in
Orange in the interest of women. A number of ladies and
gentlemen met in my parlor to listen to statements in
relation to what is called the "social evil," to be made by
the Rev. J. P. Gledstone and Mr. Henry J. Wilson, delegates
from the "British, Continental and General Federation for
the Abolition of Government Regulation of Prostitution." It
is due to the English gentlemen to say that they gave some
very strong reasons for bringing the disagreeable subject
before the meeting, and that they handled it with becoming
delicacy, though with great plainness.
"Ann A. Horton, who died in June, 1875, at the Old Ladies'
Home, Newark, bequeathed $2,000 to Princeton College, to
found a scholarship to be called by her name." Would not the
endowment of a "free bed" in Mrs. Horton's true alma-mater,
the Old Ladies' Home, have been a far wiser bequest than the
foundation of a scholarship in Princeton--a college which,
while fattening on enormous dole received from women, offers
them nothing in return?
In relation to the law giving the mothers of New Jersey some
legal claim to their children, Mrs. Hussey writes:
I have often heard it said that Kansas is the only State
where the married mother has any legal ownership in her
children; but the women of New Jersey have enjoyed this
_privilege_ since 1871, when it was gained for them by the
efforts of Mrs. Ann H. Connelly of Rahway. She was an
American woman, the mother of one daughter, and unhappily
married. She desired to be divorced from her husband, but
she knew that in such case he might legally take her child
from her. Such a risk could not be thought of for a moment;
so she applied to the legislature for a change of the law.
She was assisted by many influential citizens, both men and
women; petitions largely signed were presented, and the
result was the amendment of the law making the mother and
father equal in the ownership of their children. When a copy
of the new law appeared in our papers I wrote to Mrs.
Connelly, inclosing a resolution of thanks from the Essex
County Woman Suffrage Society, of which I was then
secretary. In her reply she said: "This unexpected and
distinguishing recognition of my imperfect, but earnest,
efforts for justice is inexpressibly gratifying." Several
years after, I went with my daughter to Rahway to see Mrs.
Connelly. She seemed to be well known and much respected.
She was teaching in one of the public schools, but seemed
quite feeble in health. In 1881 I saw the notice of her
death. She was a woman of much intelligence, and strongly
interested in suffrage, and should certainly be held in
grateful remembrance by the mothers of New Jersey, to whom
she restored the right which nature gave them, but which
men had taken away by mistaken legislation.
This law of February 21, 1871, composed of several acts
purporting to give fathers and mothers equal rights in cases of
separation and divorce, is not so liberal as it seems in
considering this provision:
Upon a decree of divorce the court may make such further
decree as may be deemed expedient concerning the custody and
maintenance of minor children, and determine with which of
the parents the children shall remain.
This act, though declaring that the mother and father are equal,
soon shows by its specifications that the courts can dispose of
all woman's interests and affections as they may see fit. What
avails a decree of divorce or separation for woman, if the court
can give the children to the father at its pleasure? Here is the
strong cord by which woman is held in bondage, and the courts,
all composed of men, know this, and act on it in their decisions.
A petition was addressed to the constitutional commission of
1873, requesting an amendment restoring to the women of New
Jersey their original right to vote, which that body decided
would be "inexpedient." A bill introduced in the legislature by
Senator Cutler, of Morris county, making women eligible to the
office of school-trustee, became a law March 25, 1873:
Be it enacted, That hereafter no person shall be eligible to
the office of school-trustee, unless he or she can read and
write; and women who are residents in the district and over
twenty years of age, shall also be eligible to the office of
school-trustee, and may hold such office and perform the
duties of the same, when duly elected by ten votes of the
district.--[Chap. 386.
February 26, 1874, a law for the better protection of the
property of married women was passed:
1. Be it enacted by the Senate and General Assembly of the
State of New Jersey, That any married woman who now is, or
may hereafter become, entitled, by gift, devise or bequest,
to any contingent estate, or any interest in any real or
personal property or estate, may, with the concurrence of
her husband, compound and receipt for, assign and convey the
same, in all cases where she lawfully might, if a _feme
sole_; and every release, receipt, assignment, discharge,
agreement, covenant, or contract, thereupon entered into by
her in regard to the same and to the said property, shall be
as valid and binding in every respect, upon her, her heirs,
executors, administrators, and assigns, and any and all
persons claiming under her, them or either of them, as if
she were at the time of entering into the same, a _feme
sole_, and when duly executed and acknowledged in the manner
provided by law for conveyance of real estate, may be
recorded in the surrogate's office, and whenever it relates
to real estate in the clerk's or recorder's office, of the
proper county or counties, in the same manner and with like
effect as other receipts and discharges may now be recorded
therein. 2. And be it enacted. That this act shall take
effect immediately.
A most remarkable trial, lately held in Newark, New Jersey, which
involved the question whether it was contrary to Scripture, and a
violation of the rules of the Presbyterian Church, to admit women
to the pulpit, is well reported by the New York _World_, January
1, 1877:
Since the time that the Rev. Theodore Cuyler was obliged by
the Presbytery of Long Island to apologize for inviting Miss
Sarah Smiley, the Quaker preacher, to occupy the pulpit of
the Lafayette Avenue Church in Brooklyn, the question of the
right of women to preach in Presbyterian churches, has come
up in various parts of the country, but has never been
brought judicially before any ecclesiastical body until
yesterday, when it occupied the attention of the Newark
Presbytery, under the following circumstances. October 29,
1876, Mrs. L. S. Robinson and Mrs. C. S. Whiting, two ladies
who were much interested in the temperance movement, asked
and received permission of the Rev. Isaac M. See, of the
Wickliffe Presbyterian Church at Newark, to occupy his
pulpit, morning and evening of that day. They accordingly
addressed the congregation on the subject of temperance. To
this the Rev. E. R. Craven, of the Third Presbyterian
Church, of Newark, objected, and brought before the Newark
Presbytery the following charge:
"The undersigned charges the Rev. Isaac M. See, pastor of
the Wickliffe Church, of Newark, N. J., a member of your
body, with disobedience to the divinely enacted ordinance in
reference to the public speaking and teaching of women in
churches, as recorded in I. Corinthians, xiv., 33 to 37, and
I. Timothy, ii., 13, in that: First specification--On
Sunday, October 29, 1876, in the Wickliffe Church of the
city of Newark, N. J., he did, in the pulpit of the said
church, and before the congregation there assembled for
public worship at the usual hour of the morning service,
viz., 10:30 A.M., introduce a woman, whom he permitted and
encouraged then and there publicly to preach and teach." The
second specification is couched in similar language, except
that it charges Mr. See with introducing another woman at
the evening service upon the same day. The charge was
presented at the regular meeting of the Presbytery, a short
time ago, and the hearing of the case was adjourned until
yesterday. The meeting was held in the lecture room of the
Second Presbyterian Church in Washington street. Rev. John
L. Wells, pastor of the Bethany Mission Chapel, presided,
and there was a fair attendance of the members of the body.
Of the audience at least nine-tenths were women.[282] Dr.
Craven, the prosecutor, sat on the front row of seats, near
to the clerk's table, while Dr. See, who is very stout, with
a double chin, and the picture of good-nature, sat in the
rear of the members of the Presbytery, and among the front
rows of spectators. Dr. McIllvaine introduced the following
resolution:
_Resolved_, That this charge, by common consent of the
parties, be dismissed at this stage of the proceedings, with
affectionate council to the Rev. Dr. See not to go contrary
to the usages of the Presbyterian Church for the future.
This brought Brother See to his feet. He could not, he said,
assent to Brother McIllvaine's resolution. He had not
consented that the charge should be dismissed, as in the
resolution. Brother McIllvaine expressed himself as sure
that Brother See had consented, but Brother See was again
equally sure that he had not. Some member here suggested
that Dr. Craven should first have been asked if he consented
to dismiss the charge, and this brought that gentleman to
his feet. A more complete antithesis to Dr. See cannot be
imagined. He is tall, gaunt, with full beard and mustache,
short, bristling hair, that stands upright in a row from the
centre of his forehead to the crown of his head. He said
that at the request of Dr. McIllvaine and another respected
member of the Presbytery he had said that if the party
charged would give full and free consent to the resolution,
he would also assent; "and," he added, "such is now my
position." Dr. McIllvaine then gave at length his reasons
for desiring to arrest the case where it was. No good could
come of its discussion, and the result could not but be
productive of discord. The Moderator reminded Dr. See that
they waited for an answer from him.
Dr. See--May we have a season of prayer, sir? The Moderator
said there was no objection. Dr. See explained that the
matter at issue was not a personal one; it was a question as
to the meaning of the Scriptures upon a certain point, and
he was there simply to know what the Presbytery would do.
Rev. Drs. Brinsmayd and Fewsmith then prayed, but Dr. See's
frame of mind was not in the least changed. He still
insisted that his was the passive part, to sit and see what
they would do with his case. Rev. Dr. Wilson thought that if
Brother See did not desire to do anything contrary to the
usages of the church, he might say so. Brother See said it
was a question of whether God Almighty had said certain
things or not, and that he could not answer. In his formal
answer to the charge the accused then said: "I believe
myself to be not guilty of the charge, but I admit the
specifications." Dr. Craven, in his speech, said it was in
no spirit of animosity that he had brought the charge. He
believed that the law of God had been broken in this case;
not designedly, perhaps, but really. A custom had found
lodgment in a Presbyterian church that would impair its
efficiency and would also injure woman in the sphere which
she was called upon by God to fill. No judicial decision had
been arrived at upon this question. The case of Dr. Cuyler
was the first that had come before a Presbytery, and that
was hardly a trial of the question. "Why should I," he
continued, "bring this charge? Because I have felt it to be
wrong, and feeling thus, resolved to take the duty upon
myself, painful and agonizing as the task may be. I deem it
my duty to God to do so." Dr. See (_sotto voce_)--"And the
Lord will bless you for it."
Dr. Craven, continuing, read the passages of Scripture
referred to in this charge. He did not, he said, affirm that
woman had no work in the church. She had a great and
glorious sphere; she had no right to teach and speak in
public meetings, but she could teach children and ignorant
men in private. He would not affirm that some women could
not preach as well as, or better than some men, and he did
not know but that in the future she might occupy the
platform on an equality with men; but at present she could
not, and it was expressly forbidden in the passages which he
had read. "You may run to hear another man's wife preach, or
another man's daughter," said he, "but who would have his
own wife stand upon the platform, or his own daughter face
the mob? Woman is the heart of man, but man is the head. Let
woman go upon the platform, and she loses that shrinking
modesty that gives her such power over children. What child
would wish to have a public-speaking mother? I trust this
evil will not creep in upon the church. I felt bound to
resist it at the outset, and unless I am convinced of my
error shall withstand it to the death." * * * *
January 2, 1877, Rev. Dr. See continued his defense of
himself for letting a woman into his pulpit. Then the roll
was called for the views of the Presbytery. Dr. McIllvaine
said that the two sources of light, as he understood it,
were the teachings of the Lord and his disciples. The Lord
didn't select women for his twelve, and vacancies were not
filled by women. It wasn't a woman who was chosen to do
Paul's work. He was the chosen teacher of the church in that
and all succeeding ages, and he had said, "I suffer not
women to teach, or to usurp authority in the church." Dr.
Brinsmade, who was the pastor of the Wickliffe Church before
Dr. See was called there, admitted that women could preach
well, but thought the Presbytery had better stick by the
divine command. Dr. Canfield also agreed with Paul. He loved
women and loved their work, but it seemed from the
experience of the world that God intended that the pulpit
should be the place for men. Such, at any rate, had been the
principle and the practice of the Presbyterian Church; and
if Brother See could not conform to its rules, he would say
to him, "Go, brother; there are other churches in which you
can find a place." Dr. Canfield was called to order for that
addendum. Dr. Hutchings, of Orange, referred to the ancient
justification of slavery from the Bible, and in view of
honest differences of construction accepted by the church,
thought the question should be left to the discretion of
pastors and church-sessions. Rev. Jonathan F. Stearns,
pastor of the First Church, demurred to this and stood by
the Scripture text. Nine-tenths of the ladies of the church,
he said, would vote against preaching by women.
Rev. James E. Wilson, pastor of the South Park Church, said
that in churches where women had been permitted to preach,
they had lost ground. "I have never heard a Quaker woman,"
said he, "preach a sermon worth three cents (laughter), and
yet I have heard the spirit move them to get up and speak at
most improper times and on most inopportune occasions, and
have heard them say most improper and impertinent things."
In the Methodist Church he did not believe that there were
over twenty-five women preachers, so the women were losing
ground, and not gaining. Even the woman suffragists, who
made so much noise a few years ago, had subsided, and he did
not believe there were a hundred agitators in the whole
country now. "See," he said, "where Brother See's argument
would carry him. Any woman that has the spirit upon her may
speak, and so, by and by, two or three women may walk up
into Brother See's pulpit and say,'Come down; it's our turn
now, we are moved by the spirit.' (Laughter). A woman's
voice was against her preaching; a man's voice came out with
a 'thud,' but a woman spoke soft and pleasing; however, here
were the plain words of the text, and any man that could
throw it overboard could throw over the doctrine of the
atonement. If a mother should teach her son from the pulpit
by preaching to him, thus disobeying the plain words of the
apostle, she must not be surprised if her son went contrary
to some other teaching of the apostle. But the fact was, the
women did not desire to preach; otherwise they would have
preached long ago. He rejoiced when that convention of
temperance women assembled in Newark, but he could not help
pitying their husbands and families away out in Chicago and
elsewhere. (Laughter).
Rev. Ferd. Smith, the pastor of the Second Church, said the
president of the Woman's Temperance Union had asked him if
they could have the use of the church, and he had said
"yes"; "and," said Dr. Smith, "I am glad that I did it, and
I am sorry that I was not there to hear the address; and
now, brethren, I am going to confess that I have sinned a
little in this matter of women preaching. Two or three years
ago I went and heard Miss Smiley preach. I had heard in the
morning--I won't mention his name--one of the most
distinguished men of the country preach a very able
sermon--a very long one, too. [Laughter.] I had heard in the
afternoon a doctor of divinity; I don't see him here now,
but I have seen him, and I won't mention his name; and I
heard Miss Smiley in the evening. It may be heresy to say
it, but I do think I was more fed that evening than I had
been by both the others; but I do not on that account say
that it is good for women to go, as a regular thing, into
the pulpit. If I had heard her a dozen times, I should not
have been so much moved. Woman-preaching may do for a little
time, but it won't do for a permanency. I heard at Old
Orchard, at a temperance convention, the most beautiful
argument I ever listened to, delivered with grace and
modesty and power. The words fell like dew upon the heart,
enriching it, and the speaker was Miss Willard; but for all
this, brethren, I do not approve of women preaching. [Great
laughter.] We must not, for the sake of a little good,
sacrifice a great principle." Dr. Pollock of Lyons Farms
wanted to shelter women, to prevent them from being talked
about as ministers are and criticised as ministers are; it
was for this that he would keep them out of the pulpit. Rev.
Drs. Findley and Prentiss de Neuve were in favor of
sustaining the charge. Rev. Dr. Haley contended that Brother
See ought not to be condemned, because he had not offended
against any law of the church. Drs. Seibert, Ballantine and
Hopwood spoke in favor of sustaining the charge. A vote of
16 to 12 found Rev. Dr. See guilty of violating the
Scriptures by allowing women to preach, and the case was
appealed to the General Assembly.
The General Assembly adopted the following report on this case:
The Rev. Isaac W. See, pastor of the Wickliffe Church,
Newark, N. J., was charged by Rev. Elijah R. Craven, D. D.,
with disobedience to the divinely enacted ordinance in
reference to the public speaking and teaching of women in
the churches as recorded in I Corinthians, xiv., 33-37, and
in I Timothy, ii., 11-13, in that twice on a specified
Sabbath, in the pulpit of his said church, at the usual time
of public service, he did introduce a woman, whom he
permitted and encouraged then and there publicly to preach
and teach.
The Presbytery of Newark sustained the charge, and from its
decision Mr. See appealed to the synod of New Jersey, which
refused by a decided vote to sustain the appeal, expressing
its judgment in a minute of which the following is a part:
In sustaining the Presbytery of Newark as against the appeal
of the Rev. I. M. See, the synod holds that the passages of
scripture referred to in the action of the Presbytery, do
prohibit the fulfilling by women of the offices of public
preachers in the regular assemblies of the church.
From this decision Mr. See has further appealed to the
General Assembly, which, having thereupon proceeded to issue
the appeal, and having fully heard the original parties and
members of the inferior judicatory, decided that the said
appeal from the synod of New Jersey be not sustained by the
following vote: To sustain, 85. To sustain in part, 71. Not
to sustain, 201.
From the following description by Mrs. Devereux Blake, we have
conclusive evidence of woman's capacity to govern under most
trying circumstances:
A certain little woman living in Jersey City has, from time
to time, occupied a portion of public consideration; this is
Mrs. Ericka C. Jones, for four years and a half warden of
the Hudson county jail, probably the only woman in the world
who holds such a position. Her history is briefly this: Some
seven years ago her husband obtained the appointment of
jailor at this institution, and moved to it with his bride.
From the time of their incoming a marked improvement in the
administration of the jail became apparent, which continued,
when, after two years, Mr. Jones was stricken down with
softening of the brain, which reduced him to a condition of
idiocy for six months before his death. When at last this
occurred, by unanimous vote of the board of freeholders the
woman who had really performed the duties of jailor was
appointed warden of Hudson county jail. All this has been a
matter of report in the papers, as well as the attempt to
oust her from the position, which was made last fall, when
certain male politicians wanted the place for some friend
and voter, and appealed to Attorney-General Vanetta, who
gave an opinion adverse to the lady's claims. Resolutions on
the subject were passed by various woman suffrage societies,
and anxious to see the subject of so much dispute, and hear
her story from her own lips, a party of ladies was made up
to call upon her.
Hudson-county jail stands in the same inclosure with the
court-house, a small, neatly-kept park, well shaded by fine
trees, and being on very high ground commands a view over
the North River and New York Bay. The building is a
substantial one of stone, with nothing of the repulsive
aspect of a jail about it. Asking for Mrs. Jones, we were at
once shown into the office. We had expected to see a woman
of middle age and somewhat stern aspect. Instead, we beheld
a pretty, young person, apparently not more than twenty-five
years old, with bright, black eyes, waving brown hair, good
features and plump figure. She was very neatly dressed and
pleasant in manner, making us cordially welcome. We were
conducted into the parlor and at once begged her to tell us
all about her case, which she did very clearly and
concisely. When she was left a widow with two little
children she had no idea that this place would be given her,
but it was tendered to her by unanimous vote of the board of
freeholders. At that time there were in jail three desperate
criminals, Proctor, Demsing and Foley, bank robbers, and
some persons feared that a woman could not hold them, but
they were safely transferred at the proper time from the
jail to the state-prison. "And," she added, with a bright
smile, "I never have lost a prisoner, which is more than
many men-jailors can say. Some of them tried to escape last
fall, but I had warning in time, sent for the police, and
the attempt was prevented."
"And do you think there is any danger of your being turned
out?" "I don't know. I intend to remain in the place until
the end of my term, if possible, since as long as the effort
to dismiss me is based solely on the ground of my sex and
not of my incompetency, it ought justly to be resisted."
"But Attorney-General Vanetta gave an adverse opinion as to
the legality of your appointment?" "Yes, but
ex-Attorney-General Robert Gilchrist, a very able lawyer,
has given an opinion in my favor, while Mr. Lippincott,
counsel of the board when I was appointed, also held that I
was eligible for the place."
She then went on to tell us some of the petty persecutions
and indirect measures Which have been resorted to in order
to induce her to resign, as her term of office will not
expire for two years. When her husband was given the
position, the allowance consisted of 40 cents a day for each
prisoner, 50 cents for each sick person, 25 cents for every
committal, and 12-1/2 cents for every discharge. The daily
allowance has been cut down from 40 to 25 cents, and all the
other allowances have been entirely done away with. She is,
therefore, at this moment running that jail on 25 cents a
day for each prisoner. Out of this sum she must pay for all
food, all salaries of assistant jailors, etc., all wages of
servants, and even the furniture of the place. She is
supplied with fuel and gas, but no stores of any
description. She has also had other annoyances. The payment
of money justly due has been opposed or delayed; and whereas
her husband was required to give bond for only $5,000, she
has been forced to give one for $10,000. She has also been
troubled by the visits of persons representing themselves to
be reporters of papers, who have wished to borrow money of
her, and failing in this, have printed disagreeable articles
about her. She has, of course, no salary whatever. "However,
I do as well as I can with the money I receive," she said,
with that pleasant smile. "And now would you like to see the
jail?" * * * *
Ex-Attorney Gilchrist's opinion on her case is an able
indorsement of her position. He says, in the first place,
that as Attorney-General Vanetta's adverse view was not
given officially, it is not binding on the Board of
Freeholders, and then goes on to cite precedents. "Alice
Stubbs, in 1787, was appointed overseer of the poor in the
county of Stafford, England, and the Court of King's Bench
sustained her in the office. A woman was appointed governor
of the work-house at Chelmsford, England, and the court held
it to be a good appointment. Lady Brangleton was appointed
keeper of the Gate-House jail in London. Lady Russell was
appointed keeper of the Castle of Dunnington. All these
cases are reported in _Stranges R._, as clearly establishing
the right and duty of woman to hold office. The case of Ann,
Countess of Pembroke, Dorsett and Montgomery, who was
sheriff of Westmoreland, is very well known." The opinion
winds up by saying: "The argument that a woman is
incompetent to perform the duties of such an office is
doubly answered--first, by the array of cases in which it is
held that she is competent; second, by the resolution of the
board when Mrs. Jones was appointed, that she had for a long
time prior thereto actually kept the jail while her husband
was jailor." How this whole matter would be simplified if
women could vote and hold office, so that merit and not sex
should be the only qualification for any place.--_New York
Record, 1876._
The following incident shows not only what physical training will
do in giving a girl self-reliance in emergencies, but it shows
the nice sense of humor that grows out of conscious power with
which a girl can always take a presuming youth at disadvantage.
No doubt Miss McCosh, as a student in Princeton, could as easily
distance her compeers in science, philosophy and the languages,
as she did the dude on the highway. Why not open the doors of
that institution and let her make the experiment?
The distinguished president of Princeton College, Dr.
McCosh, has two daughters who are great walkers. They are in
the habit of going to Trenton and back, a distance of about
twenty miles, where they do their shopping. One day a dude
accosted Miss Bridget on the road, and said, in the usual
manner: "Beg pardon, but may I walk with you?" She replied,
"Certainly," and quickened her pace a little. After the
first half-mile the masher began to gasp, and then, as she
passed on with a smile, he sat down panting on a mile-stone,
and mopped the perspiration from his brow.
At the sixteenth national convention, held in Washington, March,
1884, the State was well represented;[283] Mrs. Hanaford gave an
address on "New Jersey as a Leader." In her letter to the
convention, Mrs. Hussey wrote:
An old gentleman, Aaron Burr Harrison, a resident of East
Orange, has just passed on to his long home, full of
years--eighty-eight--and with a good record. He told me
about his sister's voting in New jersey, when he was a
child--probably about 1807. The last time I took a petition
for woman suffrage to him, he signed it willingly, and his
daughter also.
February 12, 1884, a special committee of the New Jersey Assembly
granted a hearing[284] on the petition of Mrs. Celia B.
Whitehead, and 220 other citizens of Bloomfield, asking the
restoration of woman's right to vote; fully one-half of the
members of the Assembly were present. Mrs. Seagrove handed the
committee an ancient printed copy of the original constitution of
New Jersey, dated July 2, 1776. The name of James Seagrove, her
husband's grandfather, is endorsed upon it in his own
hand-writing. In the suffrage clause of this document the words
"all inhabitants" were substituted for those of "male
freeholders" in the provincial charter. Hence the constitution of
1776 gave suffrage to women and men of color. Mrs. Seagrove made
an appeal on behalf of the women of the State. Mr. Blackwell gave
a résumé of the unconstitutional action of the legislature in its
depriving women of their right to vote. Mrs. Hanaford, in answer
to a question of the committee, claimed the right for women not
only to vote but to hold office; and instanced from her own
observation the need of women as police officers, and especially
as matrons in the police stations. The result of these appeals
may be seen in a paragraph from the Boston _Commonwealth_, a
paper in hearty sympathy:
In the lower House of the New Jersey legislature a
Democratic member recently moved that the word "male" be
stricken from the constitution of the State. After some
positive discussion a non-partisan vote of 27 to 24 defeated
the motion. This occurrence, it is to be observed, is
chronicled of one of the most conservative States in the
Union. The arguments used on both sides were not new or
remarkable. But the vote was very close. If such a measure
could in so conservative a State be nearly carried, we can
have reasonable hope of its favorable reception, in more
radical sections. In New Jersey we did not expect success
for the resolution proposed. The favorable votes really
surprised us. We do not mistake the omen. Gradually the
point of woman's responsibility is being conceded. The
arbitrary lines now drawn politically and socially are
without reason. Indeed, one of the members of the New Jersey
Assembly called attention to the fact that to grant suffrage
now would not be the conferring of a new gift on women, but
only a restoration of rights exercised in colonial times.
FOOTNOTES:
[274] See Vol. I., page 447.
[275] Mrs. Pryor lived formerly in Waterloo, New York. She was
present at the first convention at Seneca Falls, and sustained the
demand for woman suffrage with earnest sympathy. I have been
indebted to her for a splendid housekeeper, trained by her in all
domestic accomplishments, who lived in my family for thirty years,
a faithful, devoted friend to me and my children. Much that I have
enjoyed and accomplished in life is due to her untiring and
unselfish services. My cares were the lighter for all the heavy
burdens she willingly took on her shoulders. The name of Amelia
Willard should always be mentioned with loving praise by me and
mine. Her sympathies have ever been in our reform. When Abby Kelly
was a young girl, speaking through New York in the height of the
anti-slavery mobs, Margaret Pryor traveled with her for company and
protection. Abby used to say she always felt safe when she could
see Margaret Pryor's Quaker bonnet.--[E. C. S.
[276] In a letter to Mary F. Davis, February 13, 1882, asking her
for some facts in regard to that period, Lucy Stone says: "I have
never kept any diary or record of my work. I have been too busy
with the work itself. I could not answer your questions without a
search among old letters and papers, which have been packed away
for years, and I have not time to make the search, and cannot be
accurate without. I know we had many meetings in New Jersey in all
the large towns, beginning in Newark and Orange, and following the
line of the railroad to Trenton, Camden, and Vineland, and then
another series that included towns reached by stage, Salem being
one, but I cannot tell whether these meetings were before or after
the formation of the State Society." The records show that they
were before, says Mrs. Davis; newspaper reports of them are in the
archives of the Historical Society.
[277] _President_, Lucy Stone, Roseville; _Vice-Presidents_,
Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Thomas B. Peddie, Portia Gage, Rev.
Robert McMurdy, Cornelia Collins Hussey, George T. Cobb, Sarah E.
Webb, Dr. James Brotherton, Isaac Stevens, Rev. H. A. Butler, A. J.
Davis, James H. Nixon, Dr. G. H. Haskell, I. M. Peebles, Rev. C. H.
Dezanne, William Baldwin; _Corresponding Secretaries_, Phebe A.
Pierson, Miss P. Fowler; _Recording Secretary_, C. A. Paul;
_Treasurer_, S. G. Silvester; _Executive Committee_, Mary F. Davis,
Mrs. E. L. Bush, H. B. Blackwell, Rev. Oscar Clute, Miss Charlotte
Bathgate, Rowland Johnson, Mrs. Robert McMurdy, Dr. D. N. Allen,
Sarah Pierson, Lizzie Prentice, W. D. Conan, John Whitehead.
[278] Among those who addressed the conventions and the legislature
we find the names of Lucretia Mott, Ernestine L. Rose, Lucy Stone,
Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Mary F. Davis, Charlotte B. Wilbour,
Elizabeth R. Churchill, Elizabeth A. Kingsbury, Deborah Butler,
Olive F. Stevens, Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford, Mrs. Devereux Blake, Rev.
Oscar Clute, Rev. Olympia Brown, Rev. Mr. McMurdy, Mr. Taylor, John
Whitehead, Mrs. Seagrove, Henry B. Blackwell, Hon. James Scovell.
[279] This has been well illustrated by Mrs. Hanaford in her own
case, she having preached for nearly twenty years with but three
changes of place, and ten of these passed successively in the
Universalist churches in Jersey City.--[E. C. S.
[280] VINELAND, July 15, 1879.--Club met at the residence of Mrs.
Bristol. The meeting was opened with music by Mrs. Parkhurst,
followed by a recitation by Miss Etta Taylor. Mrs. Andrew read an
excellent essay, opposing the national bank system. Mrs. Bristol
gave an instructive lesson in political economy on "Appropriation."
The next lesson will be upon "Changes of Matter in Place."
Appropriate remarks were made by Mrs. Neyman of New York, Mr.
Broom, Mrs. Duffey and Mr. Bristol. Several new names were added to
the list of membership. Miss Etta Taylor gave another recitation,
which closed the exercises of the afternoon. In the evening a
pleasant reception was held, and many invited guests were present.
The exercises consisted of vocal and instrumental music, social
converse and dancing. The club will meet again in two weeks.--[C.
L. LADD, _Secretary_.
[281] Isaac Collins, her grandfather, died at Burlington, March 21,
1817, a man remarkable alike for his uprightness, industry,
intelligence and enterprise. He was a Quaker by birth and
conviction, and a printer, appointed by King George III. for the
province of New Jersey. He printed many valuable books, almanacs,
Bibles, revised laws, government money, and a weekly paper, _The
New Jersey Gazette_. In making his will he so divided his property
that each of his six daughters received twice the sum that he gave
to each of the seven sons. This he explained by saying that the
latter could go into business and support themselves, but his
daughters must have enough to live upon, if they chose to remain
single; he did not wish them to be forced to marry for a support.
[282] In the audience were several advocates of woman suffrage,
probably there to take observations of the manner in which
Christian clergymen conduct their meetings. This class of men had
been so severe in their criticisms of woman suffrage conventions
that we hoped to learn lessons of wisdom from the dignity,
refinement and parliamentary order of their proceedings. Among
these ladies were Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford, Miss Arathusia Forbes,
Mrs. Devereux Blake and Miss Susan King of New York, a wealthy
tea-merchant and extensive traveler, and myself. That day the Rev.
Dr. Craven was the principal speaker. The whole tenor of his
remarks were so insulting to women that Miss King proposed to send
an artist the following Sunday to photograph the women possessing
so little self-respect as to sit under his ministrations. He
punctuated his four-hours' vulgar diatribe by a series of
resounding whacks with the Bible on the table before him.--[M. J.
G.
[283] Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford, Miss Ellen Miles and Mrs. Jackson of
Jersey City.
[284] Mrs. Theresa Walling Seagrove of Keyport, Rev. Phebe A.
Hanaford of Jersey City and Henry B. Blackwell of Boston were the
speakers.
CHAPTER XL.
OHIO.
The First Soldiers' Aid Society--Mrs. Mendenhall--Cincinnati
Equal Rights Association, 1868--Homeopathic Medical College and
Hospital--Hon. J. M. Ashley--State Society, 1869--Murat
Halstead's Letter--Dayton Convention, 1870--Women Protest against
Enfranchisement--Sarah Knowles Bolton--Statistics on
Coëducation--Thomas Wentworth Higginson--Woman's Crusade,
1874--Miriam M. Cole--Ladies' Health Association--Professor
Curtis--Hospital for Women and Children, 1879--Letter from J. D.
Buck, M. D.--March, 1881, Degrees Conferred on Women--Toledo
Association, 1869--Sarah Langdon Williams--_The Sunday
Journal_--_The Ballot-Box_--Constitutional Convention--Judge
Waite--Amendment Making Women Eligible to Office--Mr. Voris,
Chairman Special Committee on Woman Suffrage--State Convention,
1873--Rev. Robert McCune--Centennial Celebration--Women Decline
to Take Part--Correspondence--Newbury Association--Women Voting,
1871--Sophia Ober Allen--Annual Meeting, Painesville, 1885--State
Society, Mrs. Frances M. Casement, President--Adelbert College.
Early in the year 1862, Cincinnati became a hospital for the army
operations under General Grant and was soon filled with wounded
heroes from Fort Donelson and Pittsburg Landing, and the women
here, as in all other cities, were absorbed in hospital and
sanitary work. To the women of Cleveland is justly due the honor of
organizing the first soldiers' aid society, a meeting being called
for this purpose five days after the fall of Fort Sumter. Through
the influence of Mrs. Mendenhall were inaugurated the great
sanitary fairs[285] there, and by her untiring energy and that of
the ladies who labored with her, many of our brave soldiers were
restored to health. Mrs. Annie L. Quinby writes:
In the autumn of 1867 Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony made a
lecturing tour through Ohio and roused popular thought on the
question of suffrage. March 28, 1868, the Cincinnati Equal Rights
Association[286] was formed, auxiliary to the National Society,
of which Lucretia Mott was president. April 7, 1869, Mrs. Ryder
called the attention of the meeting to a resolution offered by
Mr. Gordon in the State legislature, to amend the constitution so
as to strike out the word male, proposing that at the October
election, "in all precincts in the State, there shall be a
separate poll, at which all white women over 21 years of age
shall be permitted to vote, and if the votes cast be a majority
of all the white women, the constitution shall be amended." Mrs.
Ryder seemed to think the proposition a very fair one, or
intended by the mover to give the women, if they wanted to vote,
the opportunity of saying so on this amendment to the
constitution. Mrs. Blangy also concurred in this view of the
subject. Mrs. Quinby expressed her indignation at the
proposition, saying she believed its passage by the legislature
would be detrimental to the cause, both on account of its
provisions and the mode of accomplishing the object of the
resolution. As it stood, it could but fail, as women were not
prepared for it at the present time, and the proposition was not
that the majority of votes cast should settle the question, but
that the number cast in favor of it should be a majority of all
the women in the State 21 years of age. She therefore thought we
should express our decided disapproval of this amendment. Mrs.
Leavitt also declared her opposition to this resolution,
believing it to have been offered for the sole purpose of
stalling the woman suffrage movement for years to come. She
thought this association should express its decided opposition to
this resolution. Mrs. Butterwood and others followed in the same
strain, and it was finally agreed unanimously that the
corresponding secretary be instructed to write to the mover of
the resolution, expressing disapprobation of some of the terms of
the amendment, with the hope that it will not pass in the form
offered, and politely requesting Mr. Gordon to define his
position as the resolution is susceptible of being construed both
for and against equal rights.
At a meeting held April 21, 1869, delegates[287] were elected to
attend the May anniversary of the American Equal Rights
Association in New York. Mrs. Margaret V. Longley was placed on
the executive committee of the National Association to represent
Ohio. On her return from New York she joined with the Cincinnati
Equal Rights Society in a call for a convention in Pike's Hall,
September 15, 16, 1869, for the organization of an Ohio State
Society.[288] Mrs. Longley presided; the audiences were large and
enthusiastic;[289] the press of the city gave extended reports.
Murat Halstead, editor of the Cincinnati _Commercial_, sent the
following reply to his invitation:
CINCINNATI, July 28, 1869.
Mrs. M. V. LONGLEY: _Dear Madam_--I cannot sign your call
for a woman suffrage convention, for I do not feel a serious
interest in the subject. That there are woman's wrongs that
the law-makers should right, I believe. For instance, I
think married women should hold property independently; that
they should be able to save and enjoy the fruits of their
own industry; and that they should not be absolutely in the
power of lazy, dissipated or worthless husbands. But I
cannot see clearly how the possession of the ballot would
help women in the reform indicated. If, however, a majority
of the women of Ohio should signify by means proving their
active interest in the subject that they wanted to acquire
the right of suffrage, I don't think I would offer
opposition.
M. HALSTEAD.
Mrs. Livermore and Miss Anthony made some amusing strictures on
Mr. Halstead's letter, which called out laughter and cheers from
the audience. April 27 and 28, 1870, a mass-meeting was held in
Dayton. Describing the occasion, Miss Sallie Joy, in a letter to
a Boston paper, says:
The west is evidently wide awake on the suffrage question.
The people are working with zeal almost unknown in the East,
except to the more immediately interested, who are making a
life-labor of the cause. The two days' convention at Dayton
was freighted with interest. Earnest women were there from
all parts of the State. They of the west do not think much
of distances, and consequently nearly every town of note was
represented. Cleveland sent her women from the borders of
the lake; Cincinnati sent hers from the banks of the Ohio;
Columbus, Springfield, Toledo and Sydney were represented.
Not merely the leaders were there, but those who were
comparatively new to the cause; all in earnest,--young girls
in the first flush of youth, a new light dawning on their
lives and shining through their eyes, waiting, reaching
longing hands for this new gift to womanhood,--mothers on
the down-hill side of life, quietly but gladly expectant of
the good that was coming so surely to crown all these human
lives. Most of the speakers were western women--Mrs. Cutler,
Mrs. Cole, Mrs. Stewart, of Ohio, and Miss Boynton, of
Indiana. The East sent our own Susan B. Anthony, and Mrs.
Livermore of Boston. Like every other convention, it grew
more interesting the longer it continued, and just when the
speakers were so tired that they were glad the work for the
time was done, the listeners, like a whole army of Oliver
Twists, were crying for more. They are likely to have
more--a great deal more--before the work is done completely,
for it is evident the leaders don't intend to let the thing
rest where it is, but to push it forward to final success.
From the list of resolutions considered and adopted, I send
the following:
_Resolved_, That as the Democratic party has long since
abolished the political aristocracy of wealth; and the
Republican party has now abolished the aristocracy of race;
so the true spirit of Republican Democracy of the present,
demands the abolition of the political aristocracy of sex.
_Resolved_, That as the government of the United States has,
by the adoption of the fifteenth amendment, admitted the
theory that one man cannot define the rights and duties of
another man, so we demand the adoption of a sixteenth
amendment on the same principle, that one sex cannot define
the rights and duties of another sex.
_Resolved_, That we rejoice in the noble action of the men
of Wyoming, by which the right of suffrage has been granted
to the women of that territory.
_Resolved_, That we feel justly proud of the action of those
representatives of the General Assembly of Ohio, who have
endeavored to secure an amendment to the State constitution,
striking out the word "male" from that instrument.
It is rather remarkable that in a State which so early established
two colleges admitting women--Oberlin in 1834, and Antioch in
1853--any intelligent women should have been found at so late a
date as April 15, 1870, to protest against the right of
self-government for themselves, yet such is the case, as the
following protest shows:
We acknowledge no inferiority to men. We claim to have no less
ability to perform the duties which God has imposed upon us than
they have to perform those imposed upon them. We believe that God
has wisely and well adapted each sex to the proper performance of
the duties of each. We believe our trusts to be as important and
as sacred as any that exist on earth. We feel that our present
duties fill up the whole measure of our time and abilities; and
that they are such as none but ourselves can perform. Their
importance requires us to protest against all efforts to compel
us to assume those obligations which cannot be separated from
suffrage; but which cannot be performed by us without the
sacrifice of the highest interests of our families and of
society. It is our fathers, brothers, husbands and sons, who
represent us at the ballot-box. Our fathers and brothers love us.
Our husbands are our choice, and one with us. Our sons are what
_we_ make them. We are content that they represent us in the
corn-field, the battle-field, at the ballot-box and the jury-box,
and we them, in the church, the school-room, at the fireside and
at the cradle; believing our representation, even at the
ballot-box, to be thus more full and impartial than it could
possibly be, were all women allowed to vote. We do, therefore
respectively protest against legislation to establish woman
suffrage in Ohio.
The above paper, signed by more than one hundred ladies of Lorain
county, was presented, March 14, 1870, to the legislature assembled
at Columbus. Mrs. Sarah Knowles Bolton, criticising the Oberlin
protestants, said:
That so many signed is not strange, because the non-suffrage side
is the popular one at present. Years hence, when it shall be
customary for women to vote, it is questionable whether the lady
who drew up that document would have many supporters.
If "we are not inferior to men," we must have as clear opinions
and as good judgment as they. To say, then, that we are not
capable of judging of political questions, is untrue. To say that
we are not interested in such things is absurd, for who can be
more anxious for good laws and good law-makers than women, who,
for the most part, have sons and daughters in this whirlpool of
temptation, called social and business life. If we are too
ignorant to have an opinion, the fault lies at our own door.
These ladies reason upon the premises that the duties imposed
upon us as we find them in this nineteenth century, are the
duties, conditions, and relations established of God. Two things
we do certainly find in the Bible with regard to this matter;
that women are to bear children, and men to earn bread. The first
duty we believe has been confined entirely to the female sex, but
the male sex have not kept the other in all cases. If anybody has
belonged for any considerable time to a benevolent institution,
he has ascertained that women sometimes are obliged to earn bread
and bear children also. A century or two ago, when women seldom
thought of writing books, or being physicians or lawyers,
professors or teachers, or doing anything but housework, probably
they thought, as the ladies of Lorain county do to-day, they were
in the blessed noonday of woman's enlightenment and happiness.
Their husbands, very likely, needed something of the same
companionship as the men of the present, but it was unpopular for
girls to attend school. If these ladies, after careful study and
thought, believe that woman suffrage will work evil in the land,
they ought to say that, rather than base it upon lack of time.
The enfranchisement of 15,000,000 women will be a balance of
power for good or evil that will need looking after. As for our
representing men at the fireside, I think it a great deal
pleasanter that they be there in person. Nothing is more blessed
than the home circle, and here I think if husbands were not so
often represented by their wives, while they are absent evening
after evening on "important business," the condition of things
would be improved. If the ladies aforesaid cannot vote without
the highest interests of their families being sacrificed, they
ought to be allowed to remain in peace. I am glad they made this
protest, not only because this is a country where honest views
ought to be expressed, but because agitation pushes forward
reform. I am glad that nearly half of our representatives were in
favor of submitting this question to the women of the State, and
that our interests were so ably defended by a talented
representative from our own district. I do not think, however, by
submitting it to the women, they would get a correct expression
upon the subject. A good many would vote for suffrage, a few
against it, and thousands would be afraid to vote. If it is
granted, I do not suppose all women will vote immediately. Many
prejudices will first have to give way. If women vote what they
wish to vote, and there is no disorderly conduct at the polls in
consequence, and no general disorder in the body politic, I do
not see any objection to the voting being continued from year to
year.
When women like Miss Jones of our city, now in California, take a
few more professorships in a university over half-a-hundred
competitors, write a few more libraries, show themselves capable
of solving great questions, become ornaments to their
professions, it will seem more absurd for them not to be
enfranchised than it does now for them to be so.
Hon. J. M. Ashley, of Toledo, in a speech on the floor of congress,
June 1, 1868, said:
I want citizenship and suffrage to be synonymous. To put the
question beyond the power of States to withhold it, I propose the
amendment to article fourteen, now submitted. A large number of
Republicans who concede that the qualifications of an elector
ought to be the same in every State, and that it is more properly
a national than a State question, do not believe congress has the
power under our present constitution to enact a law conferring
suffrage in the States, nevertheless they are ready and willing
to vote for such an amendment to the constitution as shall make
citizenship and suffrage uniform throughout the nation. For this
purpose I have added to the proposed amendment for the election
of president a section on suffrage, to which I invite special
attention.
This is the third or fourth time I have brought forward a
proposition on suffrage substantially like the one just presented
to the House. I do so again because I believe the question of
citizenship suffrage one which ought to be met and settled now.
Important and all-absorbing as many questions are which now press
themselves upon our consideration, to me no one is so vitally
important as this. Tariffs, taxation, and finance ought not to be
permitted to supersede a question affecting the peace and
personal security of every citizen, and, I may add, the peace and
security of the nation. No party can be justified in withholding
the ballot from any citizen of mature years, native or foreign
born, except such as are _non compos_ or are guilty of infamous
crimes; nor can they justly confer this great privilege upon one
class of citizens to the exclusion of another class.
The _Revolution_ of March 19, 1868, said:
Notwithstanding the most determined hostility to the demands of
the age for female physicians, institutions for their educational
preparation for professional responsibilities are rapidly
increasing. The ball first began to move in the United
States,[290] and now a female medical college is in successful
operation in London, where the favored monopolizers of physic and
surgery were resolved to keep out all new ideas in their line by
acts of parliament. But the ice-walls of opposition have melted
away, and even in Russia a woman has graduated with high medical
honors.
The following statistics from Thomas Wentworth Higginson settle
many popular objections to a collegiate education for women:
GRADUATES OF ANTIOCH COLLEGE.--In a paper read before the Social
Science Association in the spring of 1874 I pointed out the
presumption to be, that if a desire for knowledge was implanted
in the minds of women, they had also as a class the physical
capacity to gratify it; and that therefore the burden of proof
lay on those who opposed such education, on physiological
grounds, to collect facts in support of their position. In
criticising Dr. Clarke's book, "Sex in Education," I called
attention to the fact that he has made no attempt to do this, but
has merely given a few detached cases, whose scientific value is
impaired by the absence of all proof whether they stand for few
or many. We need many facts and a cautious induction; not merely
a few facts and a sweeping induction. I am now glad to put on
record a tabular view[291] of the graduates of Antioch, with
special reference to their physical health and condition; the
facts being collected and mainly arranged by Professor J. B.
Weston of Antioch--who has been connected with that institution
from its foundation--with the aid of Mrs. Weston and Rev. Olympia
Brown, both graduates of the college. For the present form of the
table, however, I alone am responsible.
It appears that of the 41 graduates, ranging from the year 1857
to 1873, no fewer than 36 are now living. Of these the health of
11 is reported as "very good"; 19 "good"; making 30 in all; 1 is
reported as "fair"; 1 "uncertain"; 1 "not good," and 3 "unknown."
Of the 41 graduates, 30 are reported as married and 11 are
single, five of these last having graduated within three years.
Of the 30 married, 24 have children, numbering 48 or 49 in all.
Of the 6 childless, 3 are reported as very recently married; one
died a few months after marriage, and the facts in the other
cases are not given. Thirty-four of the forty-one have taught
since graduated, and I agree with Professor Weston that teaching
is as severe a draft on the constitution as study. Taking these
facts as a whole, I do not see how the most earnest advocate of
higher education could ask for a more encouraging exhibit; and I
submit the case without argument, so far as this pioneer
experiment at coëducation is concerned. If any man seriously
believes that his non-collegiate relatives are in better physical
condition than this table shows, I advise him to question
forty-one of them and tabulate the statistics obtained.
In the following editorial in the _Woman's Journal_ Mr. Higginson
pursues the opposition still more closely, and answers their
frivolous objections:
I am surprised to find that Professor W.S. Tyler of Amherst
College, in his paper on "The Higher Education of Woman," in
_Scribner's Monthly_ for February, repeats the unfair statements
of President Eliot of Harvard, in regard to Oberlin College. The
fallacy and incorrectness of those statements were pointed out on
the spot by several, and were afterwards thoroughly shown by
President Fairchild of Oberlin; yet Professor Tyler repeats them
all. He asserts that there has been a great falling off in the
number of students in that college; he entirely ignores the
important fact of the great multiplication of colleges which
admit women; and he implies, if he does not assert, that the
separate ladies' course at Oberlin has risen as a substitute for
the regular college course. His words are these, the italics
being my own:
In Oberlin, where the experiment has been tried under the
most favorable circumstances, it has proved a failure so far
as the regular college course is concerned. The number of
young women in that course, instead of increasing with the
prosperity of the institution, _has diminished, so that it
now averages only two or three to a class_. The rest pursue
a different curriculum, live in a separate dormitory, and
study by themselves in a course of their own, reciting,
indeed, with the young men, and by way of reciprocity and in
true womanly compassion, allowing some of them to sit at
their table in the dining-hall, but yet constituting
substantially a female seminary, or, if you please, a
woman's college in the university.--_Scribner, February,
page 457._
Now, it was distinctly stated by President Fairchild last summer,
that this "different curriculum" was the course originally marked
out for women, and that the regular college course was an
after-thought. This disposes of the latter part of Professor
Tyler's statement. I revert, therefore, to his main statement,
that "the number of young women in the collegiate course has
diminished, so that it now averages only two or three to a
class." Any reader would suppose his meaning to be that taking
one year with another, and comparing later years with the early
years of Oberlin, there has been a diminution of women. What is
the fact? The Oberlin College triennial catalogue of 1872 lies
before me, and I have taken the pains to count and tabulate the
women graduated in different years, during the thirty-two years
after 1841, when they began to be graduated there. Dividing them
into decennial periods, I find the numbers to be as follows:
1841-1850, thirty-two women were graduated; 1851-1860, seventeen
women were graduated; 1861-1870, forty women were graduated. From
this it appears that during the third decennial period there was
not only no diminution, but actually a higher average than
before. During the first period the classes averaged 3.2 women;
during the second period 1.7 women, and during the third period 4
women. Or if, to complete the exhibit, we take in the two odd
classes at the end, and make the third period consist of twelve
classes, the average will still be 3.8, and will be larger than
either of the previous periods. Or if, disregarding the even
distribution of periods, we take simply the last ten years, the
average will be 3.1. Moreover, during the first period there was
one class (1842) which contained no women at all; and during the
second period there were three such classes (1852-3, 7); while
during the third period every class has had at least one woman.
It certainly would not have been at all strange if there had been
a great falling off in the number of graduates of Oberlin. At the
outset it had the field to itself. Now the census gives
fifty-five "colleges" for women, besides seventy-seven which
admit both sexes. Many of these are inferior to Oberlin, no
doubt, but some rose rapidly to a prestige far beyond this
pioneer institution. With Cornell University on the one side, and
the University of Michigan on the other--to say nothing of minor
institutions--the wonder is that Oberlin could have held its own
at all. Yet the largest class of women it ever graduated
(thirteen) was so late as 1865, and if the classes since then
"average but two or three," so did the classes for several years
before that date. Professor Tyler knows very well that classes
fluctuate in every college, and that a decennial period is the
least by which the working of any system can be tested. Tried by
this test, the alleged diminution assumes a very different
aspect. If, however, there were a great decline at Oberlin, it
would simply show a transfer of students to other colleges, since
neither Professor Tyler nor President Eliot will deny that the
total statistics of colleges show a rapid increase in the number
of women.
Moreover, I confess that my confidence in Professor Tyler's sense
of accuracy is greatly impaired by these assertions about
Oberlin, and also by his statement, which I must call reckless,
at least, in regard to the inferiority in truth, purity and
virtue of those women who seek the suffrage. He asserts (page
456) that "women--women generally--the truest, purest and best of
the sex--do not wish for the right of suffrage." Now, if the
women who oppose suffrage are truest, purest and best, the women
who advocate it must plainly be inferior at all these points; and
that is an assertion which not only these women themselves, but
their brothers, husbands and sons are certainly entitled to
resent. Mr. Tyler has a perfect right to argue for his own views,
for or against suffrage, but he has no right to copy the Oriental
imprecation, and say to his opponents, "May the grave of your
mother be defiled!." He claims that he holds official relations
to one "woman's college," one "female seminary" and one "young
ladies' institute." Will it conduce to the moral training of
those who enter those institutions that their officers set them
the example of impugning the purity and virtue of those who
differ in opinion from themselves?
But supposing Professor Tyler not to be bound by the usual bonds
of courtesy or of justice, he is at least bound by the
consistency of his own position. Thus, he goes out of his way to
compliment Mrs. Somerville and Miss Mitchell. Both these ladies
are identified with the claim for suffrage. He lauds "Uncle Tom's
Cabin," but Mrs. Stowe has written almost as ably for the
enfranchisement of woman as for the freedom of the blacks. He
praises the "sacramental host of authoresses," who, he says,
"will move on with ever-growing power, overthrowing oppression,
restraining vice and crime, reforming morals and manners,
purifying public sentiment, revolutionizing business, society and
government, till every yoke is broken and all nations are won to
the truth." But it has been again and again shown that the
authoresses of America are, with but two or three exceptions, in
favor of woman suffrage, and, therefore, instead of being
"sacramental," do not even belong to Professor Tyler's class of
"wisest, truest and best." He thus selects for compliment on one
page the very women whom he has traduced on another. His own
witnesses testify against him. It is a pity that such phrases of
discourtesy and unfairness should disfigure an essay which in
many respects says good words for women, recommends that they
should study Greek, and says, in closing, that their elevation
"is at once the measure and the means of the elevation of
mankind."
In the autumn of 1884 an effort was made to exclude women from
Adelbert College. We give an account thereof from the pen of Mrs.
Sarah Knowles Bolton, published in the _English Woman's Review_ of
January, 1885:
DEAR EDITOR: The city of Cleveland has been stirred for weeks on
this question of woman's higher education. Western Reserve
College, founded in 1826, at Hudson, was moved to Cleveland in
1874, because of a gift of $100,000 from Mr. Amasa Stone, with
the change of name to Adelbert College, in memory of an only son.
A few young women had been students since 1873. In Cleveland,
about twenty young ladies availed themselves of such admirable
home privileges. Their scholarship was excellent--higher than
that of the young men. They were absent from exercises only half
as much as the men. Their conduct was above reproach. A short
time since the faculty, except the president, Dr. Carroll Cutler,
petitioned the board of trustees to discontinue coëducation at
the college, for the assumed reasons that girls require different
training from boys, never "identical" education; that it is
trying to their health to recite before young men; "the strain
upon the nervous system from mortifying mistakes and serious
corrections is to many young ladies a cruel additional burden
laid upon them in the course of study"; "that the provision we
offer to girls is not the best, and is even dangerous"; that
"where women are admitted, the college becomes second or
third-rate, and that, worst of all, young men will be deterred
from coming to this college by the presence of ladies." An
"annex" was recommended, not with college degrees, but a
subordinate arrangement with "diploma examinations, so far and so
fast as the resources of the college shall allow."
As soon as the subject became known, the newspapers of the city
took up the question. As the public furnishes the means and the
students for every college, the public were vitally interested.
Ministers preached about it, and they, with doctors and lawyers,
wrote strong articles, showing that no "annex" was desired; that
parents wished thorough, high, self-reliant education for their
daughters as for their sons; that health was not injured by the
embarrassment (?) of reciting before young men; that young men
had not been deterred from going to Ann Arbor, Oberlin, Cornell,
and other institutions where there are young women; that it was
unjust to make girls go hundreds of miles away to Vassar or Smith
or Wellesley, when boys were provided with the best education at
their very doors; that, with over half the colleges of this
country admitting women, with the colleges of Italy, Switzerland,
Sweden, Holland and France throwing open their doors to women,
for Adelbert College to shut them out, would be a step backward
in civilization.
The women of the city took up the matter, and several thousands
of our best names were obtained to a petition, asking that girls
be retained members of the college; judges and leading persons
gladly signed. The trustees met November 7, 1884. The whole city
eagerly waited the result. The chairman of the committee, Hon. I.
W. Chamberlain of Columbus, who had been opposed to coëducation
at first, from the favorable reports received by him from
colleges all over the country, had become a thorough convert, and
the report was able and convincing.
President Angell of Michigan University, where there are 1,500
students, wrote: "Women were admitted here under the pressure of
public sentiment against the wishes of most of the professors.
But I think no professor now regrets it, or would favor the
exclusion of women. We made no solitary modification of our rules
or requirements. The women did not become hoydenish; they did not
fail in their studies; they did not break down in health; they
have been graduated in all departments; they have not been
inferior in scholarship to the men. We count the experiment here
successful."
Galusha Anderson, president of Chicago University, wrote: "Our
only law here is that the students shall act as gentlemen and
ladies. They mingle freely together, just as they do in society,
as I think God intended that they should, and the effect in all
respects is good. I have never had the slightest trouble from the
association of the sexes."
Chancellor Manatt of Nebraska University, for four years engaged
in university work at Yale, in answer to the questions as to
whether boys would be driven away from the institution, replied:
"This question sounds like a joke in this longitude. As well say
a girl's being born into a family turns the boys out of doors. It
rather strengthens the home attraction. So in the university. I
believe there is not a professor or student here who would not,
for good and solid reasons, fight for the system."
President Warren of Boston University, lately the recipient of,
£200,000, wrote: "The only opponents of coëducation I have ever
known are persons who know nothing about it practically, and
whose difficulties are all speculative and imaginary. Men are
more manly and women more womanly when concerted in a wholly
human society than when educated in a half-human one."
President White of Cornell wrote: "I regard the 'annex' for women
in our colleges as a mere make-shift and step in the progress
toward the full admission of women to all college classes, and I
think that this is a very general view among men who have given
unprejudiced thought to the subject. Having now gone through one
more year, making twelve in all since women were admitted, I do
not hesitate to say that I believe their presence here is good
for us in every respect."
Professor Moses Coit Tyler of Cornell said: "My observation has
been that under the joint system the tone of college life has
grown more earnest, more courteous and refined, less flippant and
cynical. The women are usually among the very best scholars, and
lead instead of drag, and their lapses from good health are
rather, yes, decidedly, less numerous than those alleged by the
men. There is a sort of young man who thinks it not quite the
thing, you know, to be in a college where women are; and he goes
away, if he can, and I am glad to have him do so. The vacuum he
causes is not a large one, and his departure is more than made up
by the arrival in his stead of a more robust and manlier sort."
The only objectors to coëducation were from those colleges which
had never tried it; President Porter of Yale thought it a
suitable method for post-graduate classes, and President Seeley
for a course of "lower grade" than Amherst.
President Cutler of Adelbert College made an able report, showing
that the progress of the age is towards coëducation. Only
fifty-three Protestant colleges, founded since 1830, exclude
women; while 156 coëducational institutions have been established
since that date.
Some of the trustees thought it desirable to imitate Yale,[292]
and others felt that _they_ knew what studies are desirable for
woman better than she knew herself! When the vote was taken, to
their honor be it said, it was twelve to six, or two to one, in
favor of coëducation. The girls celebrated this just and manly
decision by a banquet.
The inauguration of the women's crusade at this time (1874) in Ohio
created immense excitement, not only throughout that State, but it
was the topic for the pulpit and the press all over the nation.
Those identified with the woman suffrage movement, while deeply
interested in the question of temperance, had no sympathy with what
they felt to be a desecration of womanhood and of the religious
element in woman. They felt that the fitting place for petitions
and appeals was in the halls of legislation, to senators and
congressmen, rather than rumsellers and drunkards in the dens of
vice and the public thoroughfares. It was pitiful to see the faith
of women in God's power to effect impossibilities. Like produces
like in the universe of matter and mind, and so long as women
consent to make licentious, drunken men the fathers of their
children, no power in earth or heaven can save the race from these
twin vices. The following letter from Miriam M. Cole makes some
good points on this question:
If the "woman's war against whisky" had been inaugurated by the
woman suffrage party, its aspect, in the eyes of newspapers,
would be different from what it now is. If Lucy Stone had set the
movement on foot, it would have been so characteristic of her!
What more could one expect from such a disturber of public peace?
She, who has no instinctive scruples against miscellaneous crowds
at the polls, might be expected to visit saloons and piously
serenade their owners, until patience ceases to be a virtue. But
for women who are so pressed with domestic cares that they have
no time to vote; for women who shun notoriety so much that they
are unwilling to ask permission to vote; for women who believe
that men are quite capable of managing State and municipal
affairs without their interference; for them to have set on foot
the present crusade, how queer! Their singing, though charged
with a moral purpose, and their prayers, though directed to a
specific end, do not make their warfare a whit more feminine, nor
their situation more attractive. A woman knocking out the head of
a whisky barrel with an ax, to the tune of Old Hundred, is not
the ideal woman sitting on a sofa, dining on strawberries and
cream, and sweetly warbling, "The Rose that All are Praising."
She is as far from it as Susan B. Anthony was when pushing her
ballot into the box. And all the difference between the musical
saint spilling the precious liquid and the unmusical saint
offering her vote is, that the latter tried to kill several birds
with one stone, and the former aims at only one.
Intemperance, great a curse as it is, is not the only evil whose
effects bear most heavily on women. Wrong is hydra-headed, and to
work so hard to cut off one head, when there is a way by which
all may be dissevered, is not a far-sighted movement; and when
you add to this the fact that the head is not really cut off, but
only dazed by unexpected melodies and supplications, there is
little satisfaction in the effort. We learn that, outside of town
corporations that have been lately "rectified," the liquor
traffic still goes on, and the war is to be carried into the
suburbs. What then? Where next? Which party can play this game
the longer? Tears, prayers and songs will soon lose their
novelty--this spasmodic effort will be likely soon to spend
itself; is there any permanent good being wrought? Liquor traffic
opposes woman suffrage, and with good reasons. It knows that
votes change laws, and it also knows that the votes of women
would change the present temperance laws and make them worth the
paper on which they are printed. While this uprising of women is
a hopeful sign, yet it cannot make one law black or white. It
may, for a time, mold public opinion, but depraved passions and
appetites need wholesome laws to restrain them. If women would
only see this and demand the exercise of their right of suffrage
with half the zeal and unanimity with which they storm a man's
castle, it would be granted. This is the only ax to lay at the
root of the tree.
Springfield, Ohio, has just had a case in a Justice Court which
attracted much attention and awakened much interest. A woman
whose husband had reduced his family to utter want by
drunkenness, entered a suit against the rumseller. An appeal from
the drunkard's wife to the ladies of Springfield had been
circulated in the daily papers, which so aroused them that a
large delegation of the most respectable and pious women of the
city came into the court. But the case was adjourned for a week.
During this time the excitement had become so great that when the
trial came on the court-room was full of spectators, and the
number of ladies within the rail was increased three-fold. Mrs.
E. D. Stewart made the plea to the jury. A verdict was rendered
against the rumseller. An appeal will be taken; but the citizens
of Springfield will never forget the influence which the presence
of women, in sympathy with another wronged woman, had upon the
court. And what added power those women would have had as
judges, jurors and advocates; citizens crowned with all the
rights, privileges and immunities justly theirs by law and
constitution.
Of the work in Geauga county, Mrs. Sophia Ober Allen, of South
Newbury writes:
In the winter of 1851-2, Anson Read circulated a petition praying
the legislature to protect married women in their property
rights; and from that time the subject of women's rights was
frequently discussed in social and literary gatherings. In 1871,
Mrs. Lima Ober proposed to be one of six women to go to the
township election and offer her vote. Nine[293] joined her, but
all their votes were rejected, the judges saying they feared
trouble would be the result if they received them. From that year
to 1876 these heroic women of South Newbury persisted in offering
their votes at the town, state and presidential elections; and
though always refused, they would repair to another room with the
few noble men who sustained them, and there duly cast their
ballots for justice and equality. On one occasion they polled
fifty votes--thirty-one women and nineteen men. In 1876 they
adopted a series of stirring resolutions with a patriotic
declaration of principles.
In 1873, large meetings were held, and a memorial sent to the
constitutional convention, asking for an amendment, that "the
right to vote shall not be denied or abridged to any adult
citizen except for crime, idiocy or lunacy." On January 12, 1874,
a political club was organized,[294] which has been active in
holding meetings and picnics, circulating petitions and tracts.
On July 4, 1874, a basket picnic was held in Ober and Allen's
grove, at which Gen. A. C. Voris was among the speakers.[295]
Hon. A. G. Riddle, whose early life was spent mostly in Newbury,
encouraged and assisted the work, both by voice and pen. During
the winter of 1878, Susan B. Anthony, in company with my husband
and myself, lectured in several towns under the auspices of the
club. Miss Eva L. Pinney, a native of Newbury, was employed by
the club to canvass the county. Her success was marked. In 1879
the treasury received a bequest of $50, from Reuben H. Ober, who,
though spending much of his time in the East, ever sustained a
live interest in the home society.[296]
Mrs. Sarah Langdon Williams sends us the following report from the
Toledo society:
In the winter of 1869, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony returning
from an extended trip through the West, spent a few days in
Toledo. In addition to public meetings, their coming was the
occasion for many pleasant and hospitable gatherings. A large
circle of intelligent and earnest women were longing and waiting
to do something to speed the movement for woman suffrage, when
the coming of these pioneers of reform roused them to action. It
was like the match to the fire all ready for kindling, and an
organization was speedily effected.[297] From that time forward,
the air seemed magnetized with reform ideas, and to the loyal
band who stood true to their flag, new members were added from
time to time, and from this little band went forth an influence,
a steady force which has operated silently though continuously
through both visible and invisible channels, moulding the thought
and action of the community. The meetings of this association
were regularly reported by the daily press, with more or less
justice, according as the reporter present, or the newspaper
which reported the proceedings, was more or less friendly.
A letter published in _The Revolution_ of June 10, 1869,
indicates the practical work of our association:
The first skirmish along the line of the suffrage army in
Ohio has been fought, and the friends of reformation may
well rejoice at the result. In this city there has existed
for a long time a library association to which women were
admitted as members, but in the control or management of
which they had no voice. Under the pressure of influences
set in motion by your visit, it was resolved that this relic
of the past should be swept away, that women should be
represented in the management as well as in the membership
of the association. At the late election six directors were
to be chosen among other officers, and Miss Anna C.
Mott,[298] Mrs. M. W. Bond and Mrs. M. J. Barker were
candidates upon a ticket called the Equal Rights Ticket,
headed by Mr. A. W. Gleason, for president. The dangerous
proposition, not only of allowing women to vote, but of
giving them offices, was a bombshell in the camp of
conservatism, and every influence that could be, was brought
to bear against this ticket. After an exciting contest, the
result showed that notwithstanding a powerful and
influential opposition, the ticket was elected by a vote of
from 186 to 220 out of 327 votes. This result has been all
the more grateful, because in the opposition were to be
found many of the most wealthy and respected citizens of
Toledo.
As an index of the interest the women manifested in that
election, three-fourths of them voted. It was interesting to
notice the firmness with which the women walked up to the
ballot-box. No trembling was perceptible. They carried the
ballot with ease, deposited it with coolness, watched to see
that no fraud was perpetrated, and then departed as
noiselessly as they came. The deed was done. Woman's honor,
woman's purity, woman's domestic felicity, woman's conjugal
love, woman's fidelity to her home duties, all these and a
thousand other of the finer qualities were destroyed. No
more peace in families; no more quiet home evenings; no more
refined domestic women; but wrangling and discords instead.
Soldiers and sailors, policemen and gravel-shovelers had
taken the place of wives and mothers. Sick at heart I went
to my home and wept for American womanhood. But the sun rose
as usual, and the world still revolved. I went to the
police-court--all was quiet. I passed to the county-court,
and looked over the docket--no new divorce cases met my
gaze. With unsteady hand I have opened the morning papers
for the past few days, but nothing there betrayed the
terrible results of that false step. Oh, women! women! In
the days of Indian warfare, the skilled hunter would tell
you that after an attack, when all was quiet, and you
thought the enemy had departed, the greatest danger awaited,
and the most careful vigilance was required. So I still keep
watching, for I know the vengeance of the gods must fall
upon this worse than Sodom, for since women have voted,
surely there be not five righteous within the city. Real
estate is not falling, however, but then!--
The evening after the election, the friends of the
association and of the successful tickets, gathered to
witness the incoming of the new administration. Hearty words
of cheer for the future were spoken. The president, Mr.
Gleason, delivered a beautiful inaugural address, of which I
send you a few sentences, and the meeting adjourned.
The president said: While thanking you most heartily, ladies
and gentlemen, for the distinguished honor conferred upon me
in the election, I do not forget that it is due to the great
principles of equal rights and universal suffrage--not to
any merits of my own. We live in an age of progress. In my
humble opinion we have taken a great step forward in
admitting ladies to the management of this association--not
only from the fact that in this particular institution they
hold an equal footing with ourselves, and of right are
entitled to all its privileges, but from the more important
fact that it is a recognition here of those principles which
are now claiming recognition in the political institutions
of our country. It is in the natural order of events that
this "equal rights" movement should meet with opposition.
All movements of a novel and radical character at their
commencement meet with opposition. This is the ordeal
through which they must pass, but their success or failure
depends upon their intrinsic merit. Nothing is to be feared
from opposition to any movement that possesses these
elements. Whatsoever idea has its origin in the recesses of
human nature, will, sooner or later, become embodied in
living action, and so we have this assurance--that as here,
so also in the political institutions of our country--this
principle of equal rights, both to man and woman, will at
last prevail.
In 1871 the _Sunday Journal_ offered the association half a
column, which was gratefully accepted, and Mrs. Sarah Langdon
Williams appointed editor. The department increased to a full
page, and the circulation of the paper became as large as that of
either of the city dailies. When there was danger of its being
sold to opponents of the cause, Mrs. Williams purchased one-half
interest, and by so doing kept the other half in the hands of the
friendly proprietor. In the _Sunday Journal_ the association had
a medium through which it could promptly answer all unjust
attacks, and thus kept up a constant agitation. In November,
1875, the sale of the paper closed for a while direct
communication between the association and the public. But soon
becoming restive without any medium through which to express
itself, the society started _The Ballot-Box_ in April, 1876,
raising money among the citizens in aid of the enterprise. With
this first assistance the paper became at once self-supporting,
and continued thus until April, 1878,[299] when it was
transferred to Matilda Joslyn Gage, and published at Syracuse, N.
Y.
The convention for the remodeling of the constitution of the
State, in 1873-74, afforded an opportunity for unflagging efforts
of the members of the association in the circulation of
petitions; and so successful were they that when their delegates
presented themselves with 1,500 signatures, asking for an
amendment securing the right of suffrage to women, a member of
the convention, on scanning the roll, exclaimed: "Why, you have
here all the solid men of Lucas county." Mr. M. R. Waite, since
chief-justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, was
president of the convention, and in presenting the petition said
the names on that paper represented fifteen millions of dollars.
Mr. Waite's courtesy indicated stronger convictions regarding the
rights of women than he really possessed. In an interview with
our committee, appointed to secure a hearing from the
members-elect--Mr. Waite and Mr. Scribner--Mr. Waite declared
himself in favor of according equal wages to women, and believed
them entitled to all other rights, except the right to vote. He
thought women were entitled to a hearing in the convention, and
would aid them all he could to secure the privilege. Mr. Waite,
with great kindness of nature, possesses an inborn conservatism
which curbs his more generous impulses. He adhered to this
position in his decision in the case of _Minor vs. Happersett_,
declaring that "the constitution of the United States has no
voters." Many of the most sanguine friends were greatly
disappointed. They had fully believed his love of justice would
lead him to the broad interpretation of the constitution, so
clearly the true one, set forth in the first article of the
fourteenth amendment. It did prevail, however, when, after saying
the constitution does not confer the right of suffrage with
citizenship, he said: "If the law is wrong, it ought to be
changed; but the power is not with the Supreme Court."
When, in February, 1873, an irascible judge of the Court of
Common Pleas refused to ratify the appointment of a woman--Miss
Mary Sibley--to the office of deputy clerk, which she had filled
for eight years with unusual acceptance, on the ground that not
being an elector she was legally disqualified, the association
determined to dispute the decision in her behalf, and on applying
through their president to Mr. Waite to act as counsel, he gave
his unhesitating acceptance, and declared that if the appointment
was illegal, the law ought to be changed at once. True to his
promise, he defended her most ably, and engaged other counsel to
act with him. His services were given gratuitously.
Subsequently, in the constitutional convention, an amendment was
adopted making women eligible to appointive offices, and also to
any office under the school control, with the exception of State
commissioner. But when voted upon, the new constitution was lost,
and with it these amendments. The cause had able advocates in the
convention, leading whom was General A. C. Voris of Akron, who
was made chairman of the Special Committee on Woman Suffrage. The
Standing Committee on Elective Franchise was extremely
unfriendly, conspicuously so the chairman, Mr. Sample. A Special
Committee on Woman Suffrage was appointed, which performed its
duty faithfully, and reported unanimously in favor. Mr. Voris
worked for the measure with an enthusiasm equaled only by his
ability. When the report came up for discussion he made a
masterly speech of two hours, during which the attention was so
close that a pin could be heard to drop. Other able speeches were
also made in favor of the measure by some of the most talented
members of the convention. It came within two votes of being
carried. The defeat was largely due to the liquor influence in
the convention. The cause, however, received a new impetus
through the exertions of General Voris, to whom, second to no
other person in Ohio, should the thanks of the women be rendered.
During the contest the Toledo society was constantly on the
alert. On three occasions it sent its delegates to the
convention; but it has not limited its work to Ohio alone; it has
given freely of its means whenever it could to aid the struggle
in other States, and has rolled up large petitions to congress
asking for a sixteenth amendment.
When the State convention met in Toledo, February, 1873, the
members of the city society exerted themselves to the utmost to
have all arrangements for their reception and entertainment of
the most satisfactory character, and the delegates unanimously
agreed they had never before had so delightful and successful a
meeting. Many lasting friendships were formed. The opera-house
was well filled at every session of the three days' convention.
At the opening session a cordial address of welcome was given by
Rev. Robert McCune, one of Toledo's most eloquent Republicans.
The mayor of the city, Dr. W. W. Jones, a staunch Democrat, also
made a courteous speech.
The Toledo Society has always held itself an independent
organization, though its members, individually, have identified
themselves as they chose with other associations. Its attitude
has been of the most uncompromising character. It has never been
cajoled into accepting a crumb in any way in the place of the
whole loaf. Sometimes this has brought upon it the condemnation
of friends, but in the long run it has won respect, even from
bitter opponents. An illustration of this was given in its action
with regard to the centennial celebration. The Fourth of July,
1876, was to be observed in Toledo as a great gala day. Long
before its arrival preparations were in progress through which
patriotic citizens were to express their gratitude over the
nation's prosperity on the one-hundredth anniversary of freedom.
All trades, professions and organizations were to join in one
vast triumphal procession. A call was issued for a meeting, to
which all organizations were requested to send representatives.
The Woman Suffrage Association was not neglected, and a circular
of invitation was mailed to its president. This raised a delicate
question, for how could women take part in celebrating the
triumphs of their country whose laws disfranchised them? But,
having received a courteous recognition, they must respond with
equal courtesy. The letter was laid before the society, and the
president instructed to politely decline the honor. _The
Ballot-Box_ of May, 1876, contains the correspondence:
TOLEDO, Ohio, April 8, 1876.
At a meeting of citizens, held at White's Hall, on the
evening of the 6th inst., the undersigned were instructed to
invite your organization, with others, to send a
representative to a meeting to be held at White's Hall, on
the evening of Monday, April 17, which will elect an
executive committee, and make other arrangements for a
celebration by Toledo of the one-hundredth anniversary of
American independence in a manner befitting the occasion and
the character of our city. It is earnestly desired that
every organization, of whatever nature, in Toledo, be
represented at this meeting. We would, therefore, ask of you
that you lay the matter before your organization at its next
regular meeting, or in case it shall hold no meeting before
the 17th, that you appear as a representative yourself.
GUIDO MARX, _Chairman_.
D. R. LOCKE, JAMES H. EMORY, _Secretaries_.
This was laid before the association at a meeting which occurred
the same afternoon, and by the order of the society the
invitation therein conveyed was replied to in season to be read
at the meeting at White's Hall, April 17:
TOLEDO, Ohio, April 15, 1876.
_Hon. Guido Marx, Messrs. D. R. Locke and James H. Emory_:
GENTLEMEN: The printed circular, with your names attached,
inclosed to my address as president of the Toledo Woman
Suffrage Association, inviting that body to send a
representative to a meeting to be held at White's Hall,
Monday evening, April 17, to elect an executive committee
and make other arrangements for a celebration by Toledo of
the one-hundredth anniversary of American independence, was
received just in time to lay before the meeting held April
10. It was there decided that while the members of the
association fully appreciate the generosity of the men of
Toledo, and feel grateful for the implied recognition of
their citizenship, yet they manifestly have no centennial to
celebrate, as the government still holds them in a condition
of political serfdom, denying them the greatest right of
citizenship--representation.
Conscious, however, of the great results which the nation's
hundred years have achieved in building up a great people,
we are aware that you, as American men, have cause for
rejoicing, and we bid you God-speed in all efforts which you
may make in the approaching celebration. In an equal degree
we feel it inconsistent, as a disfranchised class, to unite
with you in the celebration of that liberty which is the
heritage of but one-half the people. It is the will,
therefore, of the association that I respond to the above
effect, thanking you for your courteous invitation, and
recognizing with pleasure among your names those who have
heretofore extended to us their sympathy and aid. I remain,
with sincere respect, yours,
SARAH R. L. WILLIAMS, _President T. W. S. A._
The letter was intended to be in all respects courteous, as the
writer and the society which she represented had naught but the
kindest of feelings toward those who, in so friendly a manner,
recognized their citizenship by inviting them to take part in the
meeting, and also toward the Toledo public, who, as a general
thing, had treated their organization with friendly
consideration. It appears, however, that their attitude was
misconstrued, according to articles subsequently published in the
_Blade_ and _Commercial_, which we reproduce below:
The women say they "manifestly have no centennial to
celebrate." If we are not mistaken, the women of this
country have enjoyed greater progress than the men under our
free government, and it illy becomes them now to steadily
and persistently pout because they have not yet attained the
full measure of their earthly desires--the ballot-box.
Better by far give a hearty show of appreciation of benefits
received, and thereby materially aid in further progress.
Nothing can be gained by their refusing to celebrate the
one-hundredth anniversary of civil and religious liberty.
The rights of all are necessarily restricted wherever there
is a government, and time and experience can alone
demonstrate just what extension or contraction of rights and
liberties may be essential to the general good. In our
judgment the women, by refusing to participate in the coming
Fourth of July celebration, have committed an error, the
influence of which cannot but prove prejudicial to the
interests of their association. The opposite course would
undoubtedly have won friends.--_Blade._
A singularly uncourteous letter was the one sent by the
Woman Suffrage Association to the meeting at White's Hall.
Ninety-nine-hundredths of the women of the country will be
surprised to learn that they "have no centennial to
celebrate," and will be still more surprised when they
discover that it is "inconsistent" for them to unite with
their brothers, fathers, sons and husbands "in the
celebration of the liberty which is the heritage" of _all_
the people. We cannot but feel that the claims set forth by
the association would command more respectful consideration
with the display of a different spirit. The maids and
matrons of 1776 were of a different mold.--_Commercial._
The _Blade_ has been a good friend to woman suffrage for many
years, but we feel that the present article was written in a
spirit of needless irritability, such as we should think might
ensue from a fit of indigestion. The _Commercial_, since its
change of management, has certainly not been unfriendly, and we
have thought fair. Its present comments are unjust. The following
editorial appeared in _The Ballot-Box_ of the same date:
WHY WE CANNOT CELEBRATE THE CENTENNIAL.--The city dailies
criticise the suffrage association somewhat severely for
declining to unite in the centennial celebration. Perhaps
from the outlook of masculine satisfaction it may seem
astonishing that patriotism should not inspire us with
gratitude for the crumbs from the national table; that we
should not rejoice at the great banquet being prepared. But
it is as impossible for us to look from their standpoint, as
for them to see from ours. While appreciating the kindnesses
measured out to us in this city by our friends and the
press, yet laboring without visible results for the
recognition of our rights as citizens of the United States,
we cannot, even through the potent incentive of sympathizing
with our "husbands, fathers, brothers and sons," lay aside
our grievances and rejoice in a triumph which more clearly
marks our own humiliation.
Can our friends inform us what is our crime, that we are
denied the right of representation? Can they point to any
mental or moral deficiency, to render justifiable our being
denied political rights? If not--if there is no just cause
for our disfranchisement, it surely should not excite
surprise that we cannot rejoice with those who
systematically persist in perpetrating this great wrong.
With no discredit to any of the sovereign voters of this
nation, we cannot forget that the most ignorant negro, the
most degraded foreigner, even refugees from justice, are
accorded the rights which we have been demanding in vain;
and we are conscious every day and hour these privileges are
denied us, that we are not only wronged by the American
government, but insulted. Every year that our appeals for
political rights to congress and the legislature are denied,
insult is heaped upon injury. Women are told by those who
are in the full enjoyment of all the privileges which this
government can confer, to rejoice in what little they have,
and wait patiently until more is bestowed. Wait we must,
because they have the reins of power, but to wait patiently,
with the light we have to perceive our relative condition,
would be doing that for which we should despise ourselves.
We are not laboring for to-day alone, but for the fruïtion
which must come from the establishment of justice. If we
fail in this memorial year, a brighter day must surely come.
Our failure now will be the failure of the country to
improve its opportunities. All the successes which may be
rejoiced over, all the triumphs of trade, commerce and
invention are secondary to the rights of citizens, to those
principles which lie at the foundation of national liberty.
When women are recognized as citizens of this republic,
there will be some occasion for their thankfulness and
rejoicing; then they can join in the jubilee which
celebrates the birthday of a mighty nation.
At the June meeting of the association, a declaration of rights,
and a series of radical resolutions were adopted. The president
urged the society to stand firm in the determination to take no
part in the centennial celebration, and the members of the
suffrage association passed the Fourth of July quietly at their
own homes, but they caused a banner, bearing the inscription,
"Woman Suffrage and Equal Rights," to be hung across one of the
principal streets, under which the whole procession passed. Of
the original members of the society,[300] some who during its
earlier years took an active part have removed elsewhere, and a
few have passed to the beyond. But the majority still remain, and
are earnest in their labors with the hope for a better day,
undampened by the delays and disappointments which attend every
step in progress.
There is a flourishing association at Cleveland called the Western
Reserve Club;[301] Mrs. Sarah M. Perkins and her highly educated
daughters, graduates of Vassar College, are among the leading
members. They hold regular meetings, have a course of lectures
every winter and are exerting a wide influence. The club consists
of thirty members, paying five dollars annually into the treasury.
The Painesville Equal Rights Society,[302] formed November 20,
1883, is one of the most flourishing county associations in the
State. It numbers 150 members, and it has organized many local
societies in the vicinity. The annual meeting of the State
society,[303] held at Painesville, May 11, 12, 13, 1885, with a
large representation of the most active friends present, by a
unanimous vote declared itself no longer auxiliary to the
American, and thereby secured the coöperation of the Toledo,
South Newbury, and other independent local organizations of the
State.
We are indebted to Annie Laurie Quinby for the following account of
the founding of a hospital for women and children, and of some of
the difficulties women encountered in gaining admittance into the
medical colleges:
Mrs. Quinby says: In 1867, some Cincinnati ladies met at the
residence of Mrs. J. L. Roberts and organized a health
association, the object of which was to obtain and disseminate
knowledge in regard to the science of life and health. Mrs.
Leavett addressed the ladies on the importance of instituting a
medical school for women, stating a recent conversation she had
with Prof. Curtis, and suggesting that he be invited to lay his
views before them. A vote to that effect was passed, and in his
address Professor Curtis touched the following points:
Women have greater need than men of the knowledge of the
science of life, and can make more profitable use of it.
_First_: They need this knowledge. In a practice of
thirty-six years, full seven-tenths of my services have been
devoted to women who, had they been properly instructed in
the science of life, and careful to obey those instructions,
would not have needed one-seventh of those services, while
they would have prevented six-sevenths of their sickness,
suffering and loss of time, and a like proportion of the
expenses of doctoring, nursing, medicines, etc., etc.
_Second_: They can make a far better and more profitable use
of this knowledge than men can, because they can better
appreciate the liabilities, sufferings and wants of their
sex, which are far more numerous and imperative than ours;
and they are always with us, from infancy to boyhood and
womanhood, to watch us and protect us from injury, and to
relieve us promptly from the sufferings that may afflict us,
as well as to teach us how to avoid them. _Third_: Their
intellectual power to learn principles is as great as ours,
their perceptions are quicker than ours, their sympathies
are more tender and persistent, and their watchfulness and
patient perseverance with the sick are untiring. I regard
the teaching and practice of the science of life as woman's
peculiarly appropriate sphere. Its value to the family of
the wife and the mother, is beyond estimation in dollars and
cents, by the husband and father. No money that he can
properly spend to secure it to his daughters, should be
otherwise appropriated; for, should they never enter the
family relation, it will be a means of escape from sickness
mortification and expense to themselves, and of useful and
honorable subsistence, not only priceless in its possession,
but totally inalienable by any reverses of fortune. The
possession of this knowledge from their infancy up, would do
more to prevent their becoming poor and "friendless," than
do all the alms houses for the former, and "homes" for the
latter that society can build, while it would cost less to
each individual than does an elegant modern piano. Forty
years ago your speaker obtained from the legislature of Ohio
a liberal university charter under the title of "The
Literary and Botanical Medical College of Ohio," which was
afterwards changed to "The Cincinnati Literary and
Scientific Institute and Physio-Medical College." By the aid
of able assistants he conducted this institution for the
benefit of men only, till, in 1851, the students of the
class were between eighty and ninety. From that time to the
present, he has received women into the classes and
demonstrated that they are not only as competent as men to
learn all parts of the science of life, but, in very many
particulars, far better qualified for the practice of the
art of curing disease. The last session of the college was
suspended that he might travel in the country and learn the
disposition of the friends of progress to establish the
institution on a permanent foundation, and is happy to say
that all that seems necessary to that glorious consummation
is the prompt and concentrated effort of a few judicious and
influential ladies and their friends to secure pecuniary
aid.
June 11, 1879, a dispensary for women and children was opened in
Cincinnati, by Drs. Ellen M. Kirk, and M. May Howells, graduates
of the New York College and Hospital for Women. Their undertaking
proving successful, with other ladies of wealth and ability they
soon after established a hospital. November 1, 1881, the
certificate of incorporation[304] was filed in the office of the
secretary of state. The ladies labored unweariedly for the
support of these institutions. At two public entertainments they
realized nearly a thousand dollars. For the establishment of a
homeopathic college they manifested equal earnestness and
enthusiasm. Many of them interested in this mode of practice,
seeing the trials of Dr. Pulte in introducing this new theory of
medicine, determined to help him in building up a college and
hospital for that practice. By one fair they raised $13,500, net
profits, and the Pulte Medical College was established. But the
remarkable fact about these institutions is that after being
started through the labors of women, women appealed in vain for
admission for scholarships for a long time. For a clear
understanding of the matter, and a knowledge of the defense made
in behalf of the right of women to enter the college, I send you
the following from Dr. J. D. Buck:
Pulte Medical College, of Cincinnati, was organized under
the common law, and opened in 1872, for the admission of
students, with no provision, either for or against the
admission of women. From time to time, during the first
seven years, the subject of the admission of women was
broached, but generally bullied out of court amid sneers and
ridicule. The faculty stood five against and four for. The
opposition was the most pronounced and bitter imaginable,
the staple argument being that the mingling of the sexes in
medical colleges led always and necessarily to
licentiousness.
Finally, in the fall of 1877, seven of the nine members of
the faculty voted to admit women. One professor voted no,
and the leader of the opposition, Prof. S. R. Beckwith--a
life-long opponent of the broader culture of women--left the
meeting with the purpose of arresting all action. In this,
however, he failed; the vote was confirmed.
On the following day another meeting was held, when the vote
was re-considered and again confirmed, each of the seven
members agreeing to stand by it. Still again, another
meeting was called, at the instance of the leader of the
opposition, and in the absence of two of the staunch
friends, a bare majority of the whole faculty voted to
exclude women, as heretofore, and notified the applicants
for admission, who had been officially informed of the
previous resolution to admit them, that they would not be
admitted.
Forbearance on the part of the friends of justice was no
more to be thought of, and notice was given that the wrong
should be righted, at all hazards. For the next two years
war raged persistent and unflinching on the part of the
friends of the rights of women, bitter and slanderous on the
part of the opposition. All the tricks of the politician
were resorted to to defeat the cause of right, and more than
once by misrepresentation they obtained the announcement in
the public press that the case was decided, and women
forever excluded. Still the cause moved on to complete
triumph, and to the disgrace and final exclusion from the
college of two of the most bitter leaders of the opposition.
In the fall of 1879 it was announced in the annual
catalogue, "that students will be admitted to the lectures
of Pulte college without distinction of sex," a very simple
result indeed, as the outcome of two years' warfare. At the
opening of lectures the first of October, four female
students presented themselves, and were admitted to
matriculation. Every prophecy of disaster had failed. The
class was an increase in numbers over that of any preceding
year, and showed a marked improvement in deportment and
moral tone from the presence of ladies, who from their high
character and bearing exerted a restraining influence, as
they always do, on those disposed to be gentlemen. At the
commencement exercises in March, 1881, three women, viz:
Miss S. C. O'Keefe, Mrs. Mary N. Street, and Mrs. M. J.
Taylor, received the degree of the college, after having
attended the same lectures and been submitted to the same
examination as the male graduates. The prize for the best
examination (in writing) in physiology, was awarded to Miss
Stella Hunt, of Cincinnati. The right of women to admittance
to this college cannot again be raised except by a
two-thirds vote of both faculty and trustees--a majority
which will be difficult to obtain after the record which the
women have already made as students in the institution.
Yours truly, J. D. BUCK.
After all this educational work and this seeming triumph for the
recognition of an equal status in the colleges for women, we find
this item going the rounds of the daily journals, under date of
Cleveland, March 29, 1885:
Considerable excitement prevails among the homeopathists of
Cleveland. Commencement exercises of the college are to be held
next Tuesday evening, and Miss Madge Dickson, of Chambers, Pa.,
was to have delivered the salutatory address. Dr. H. H. Baxter, a
prominent professor of the college, objected, saying a woman
salutatorian would disgrace the college. Miss Dickson resigned
the honor, and no address will be delivered.
In April, 1873, Miss Nettie Cronise of Tiffin, was admitted to the
bar. In the following September, her sister Florence was admitted,
and they practiced as N. & F. Cronise, until Miss Nettie's marriage
with N. B. Lutes, with whom she has since been associated under the
firm name of Lutes & Lutes. Miss Florence Cronise has her office in
Tiffin. Soon after commencing practice Mrs. Lutes was appointed to
examine applicants for admission to the bar, the first instance of
a woman serving in this capacity in the United States, although
Florence Cronise and one or two other women have since done like
duty. These ladies and Miss Hulett were the first women to open law
offices and begin an active, energetic practice of the profession.
In 1885, Miss Mary P. Spargo of Cleveland, was admitted to the bar.
FOOTNOTES:
[285] Among those associated with Mrs. Mendenhall were Mrs. Calvin
W. Starbuck, Mrs. W. Woods, Miss Elizabeth Morris, Miss Ellen
Thomas, Mrs. Kendrick, sister to General Anderson, Mrs. Caldwell,
Mrs. Annie Ryder, Mrs. Mary Graham, Mrs. Louisa Hill, Mrs. Hoadly.
[286] The officers of Cincinnati Equal Rights Society were:
_President_, Mrs. H. A. Leavitt; _Vice-President_, Mr. J.
B. Quinby; _Corresponding-Secretary_, Mrs. A. L. Ryder;
_Recording-Secretary_, Mrs. L. H. Blangy; _Treasurer_, Mrs. Mary
Moulton; _Executive Committee_, Mrs. J. B. Quinby, Mr. ---- Hill,
Mrs. A. L. Ryder. Mrs. Dr. Mortell, Mrs. Mary Moulton, Mrs. Mary
Graham, Mrs. Annie Laurie Quinby, Mrs. L. H. Blangy and Mrs. Dr.
Gibson.
[287] The delegates appointed were, Mr. and Mrs. J. B. Quinby, Mrs.
Mary Graham, Mrs. Charles Graham, Mrs. Mary Moulton, Mrs. Dr.
Morrel, Mrs. Blangy, Mrs. M. V. Longley, Mr. and Mrs. A. G. W.
Carter, and Mrs. Soula and daughter.
[288] The officers of the State Society were: _President_, Mrs. H.
Tracy Cutler, M. D., Cleveland; _Vice-President_, Mrs. M. V.
Longley; _Recording Secretary_, Mrs. H. M. Downey, Xenia;
_Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs. Miriam M. Cole, Sidney;
_Treasurer_, Mrs. L. H. Crall, Cincinnati; _Warden_, Mr. J. B.
Quinby, Cincinnati; _Business Committee_, A. J. Boyer, esq.,
Dayton; Elias Longley, esq., Cincinnati; Mrs. R. L. Segur, Toledo;
Mrs. Morgan K. Warwick, Cleveland; Dr. M. T. Organ, Urbana; Mrs. E.
D. Stewart, Springfield; Miss Rebecca S. Rice, Yellow Springs.
[289] The speakers at Pike's Hall were Susan B. Anthony, Mary A.
Livermore, Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell, Mrs. Dr. Chase, Miriam
M. Cole, Mr. A. J. Boyer, Dr. Mary Walker, J. J. Bellville, Mary B.
Hall, Mrs. Dr. Keckeler, Mrs. Longley, Mrs. Graham, Mrs. Griffin,
and Elizabeth Boynton.
[290] At a meeting of the corporators of the Cleveland Homeopathic
Medical College and Hospital for Women, the following board of
trustees was appointed: Stillman Witt, T. S. Beckwith, Bolivar
Butts, N. Schneider, M. D., T. S. Lindsey, Mrs. D.R. Tilden, Mrs.
S. F. Lester, Mrs. Peter Thatcher, Mrs. C. A. Seaman, M. D., Mrs.
M. K. Merrick, M. D., Mrs. S. D. McMillan, Mrs. M. B. Ambler, Mrs.
Lemuel Crawford, Mrs. Henry Chisholm, Mrs. G. B. Bowers. At a
subsequent meeting of the board of trustees, the following
officers were chosen: _President_, Mrs. C. A. Seaman, M. D.;
_Vice-president_, Mrs. S. F. Lester; _Secretary_, Mrs. M. B.
Ambler; _Treasurer_, Mrs. S. D. McMillan.
[291]
A = Individual.
B = Year of Graduation.
C = Married or Single.
D = Number of Children.
E = Health.
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
| A| B | C | D | E |Remarks |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
| 1|1857|Married| 3 |Not living|Died, 1874. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
| 2| " | " | 1 | Good |Taught eleven years; now in Indiana.|
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
| 3| " | " | 2 | " |Has taught ever since graduating; |
| | | | | |now in Ohio. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
| 4|1858| " | 2 |Very good |Taught five years; now in Ohio. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
| 5| " | " | 6 | Good |Has taught school; slight bronchial |
| | | | | |trouble. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
| 6|1859| " | 3 | " | |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
| 7| " | " | 3 |Uncertain |Has taught school. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
| 8| " | " | | Good |Taught thirteen years, till married,|
| | | | | |in 1872. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
| 9| " | " |2 or 3 | |No recent intelligence; health good |
| | | | | |so far as known. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|10|1860|Single | | " |Taught some years; now in England. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|11| " |Married| 2 | |Taught three years. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|12| " |Single | | " |Has taught school. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|13| " | " | |Very good |Physician in Missouri. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|14| " |Married| 1 | " " |Has taught school. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|15| " |Single | | " " |Constantly a teacher, except two |
| | | | | |years in Europe. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|16| " |Married| | " " |Minister in Connecticut; lately |
| | | | | |married. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|17|1861| " | | Good |Taught three years; journalist in |
| | | | | |Ohio. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|18| " | " | 1 | |Has taught school. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|19|1862| " | 1 |Not living|Died of hereditary consumption. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|20| " | " | 1 | " " | |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|21| " | " | 1 | Good | |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|22| " | " | 2 |Very good |Resides in Ohio. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|23| " | " | 2 | " " |Resides in Vermont. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|24| " | " | 2 | " " |Resides in New York. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|25| " | " | | Good |Lately married. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|26| " | " | 3 | " |Has taught school. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|27|1863| " | 2 |Very good |Taught four years, till married. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|28|1864| " | 3 | " " |Taught one year. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|29|1866| " | | Not good |Troubled with scrofula, dating back |
| | | | | |earlier than her school days; |
| | | | | |practices medicine in Missouri. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|30|1868|Single | | Good |Very good & Has just returned from |
| | | | | |three years in Europe, where she |
| | | | | |took long pedestrian journeys. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|31| " |Married| 1 | " |Has taught school and is teaching |
| | | | | |now. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|32| " | " | 2 | " |Taught three years. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|33|1869|Single | | |Taught constantly and is teaching |
| | | | | |now. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|34|1870|Married| |Not living|Died, 1871. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|35| " | " | 1 | Good |Has taught school in Missouri. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|36| " | " | 1 | " |Taught one year. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|37|1871|Single | | Unknown |Came to college in delicate health, |
| | | | | |which improved while there; the |
| | | | | |youngest woman ever graduated at |
| | | | | |Antioch. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|38|1872| " | |Not living|Died, 1873, of hereditary |
| | | | | |consumption. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|39| " | " | | Fair |Teaching in Massachusetts. |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|40|1873| " | | Good | |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
|41| " | " | | " | |
+--+----+-------+-------+----------+------------------------------------+
[292] But even old Yale has to succumb to the on-sweeping tide of
equal chances to women, as will be seen by the following Associated
Press item in the New York _Sun_ of October 2, 1885: "NEW HAVEN,
Conn., Oct. 1.--Miss Alice B. Jordin, of Coldwater, Mich., a
graduate of the academic and law departments of the University of
Michigan, entered the Yale law school to-day. She is the first
woman ever entered in any department of Yale outside of the art
school.
[293] Mesdames Lima H. Ober, Lovina Greene, Hophni Smith, Ruth F.
Munn, Perleyette M. Burnett, Sophia L. O. Allen, Mary Hodges, Lydia
Smith, Sarah A. Knox. The men who sustained and voted with these
women were Deacon Amplias Greene, Darius M. Allen, Ransom Knox,
Apollos D. Greene, Wesley Brown. Their tickets were different each
year; their first read, "Our Motto--Equal Rights for all--Taxation
without Representation is Tyranny. Our Foes--Tradition and
Superstition." Among the speakers invited to address the people at
the polls were Mrs. Organ, of Yellow Springs, and Mrs. Hope
Whipple, of Clyde.
[294] _President_, Ruth F. Munn; _Vice-Presidents_, Joel Walker, D.
M. Allen; _Recording Secretary_, Ellen Munn; _Corresponding
Secretary_, Julia P. Greene; _Treasurer_, Mary Hodges; _Executive
Committee_, William Munn, Sophia L. O. Allen, Amanda M. Greene,
Apollos D. Greene, Ransom Knox.
[295] At other picnics the speakers were, Mrs. S. B. Chase, M. D.,
Colonel S. D. Harris, J. W. Tyler Jane O. DeForrest, T. W. Porter.
[296] The Society of South Newbury, like that of Toledo, refrained
from auxiliaryship with the State Association from the time of its
organization to June, 1885, when such relationship was made
possible by the State Society voting itself an independent
organization, free to coöperate with all national or local
associations that have for their object the enfranchisement of
women; and to Mrs. Allen may be ascribed a large share of the
credit for the good work and broad platform of the South Newbury
club.
[297] The presidents of the Toledo Society have been, Emma J.
Ashley, Elizabeth R. Collins, Sarah R. L. Williams, Rosa L. Segur,
Julia P. Cole, Sarah S. Bissell, Ellen S. Fray, Mary J. Cravens.
The vice-presidents, Martha Stebbins, Julia Harris, S. R. L.
Williams, Sarah S. Bissell, Ellen Sully Fray, Mary J. Barker. Miss
Charlotte Langdon Williams rendered valuable service in the
business department of _The Ballot-Box_, and served for three years
as secretary and treasurer of the association.
[298] Miss Anna C. Mott, and her father, Richard Mott, were two
strong pillars of the woman suffrage movement in Ohio; their
beautiful home has for many years been a harbor of rest alike to
the advocates of anti-slavery, temperance and woman's rights.
[299] Mrs. Williams further adds that _The Ballot-Box_ became also
a foster child of the National Association, Miss Anthony canvassing
for it after each of her lectures during the winters of 1877 and
1878, thus largely increasing the circulation. It, on the other
hand, gave full and faithful account of the work of the National
Association, so that in reality it was the organ of the National as
well as of the Toledo society.
[300] The officers of the Toledo Society are, 1885, _President_,
Mrs. Mary J. Cravens; _Vice-president_, Sarah R. L. Williams;
_Recording Secretary_ Mrs. E. R. Collins; _Corresponding
Secretary_, Mrs. Sarah S. Bissell; _Treasurer_, Mrs. Mary J.
Barker; _Executive Committee_, Mrs. Rosa L. Segur, Mrs. Julia P.
Cole, Mrs. Caroline T. Morgan, Miss Anna C. Mott, Mrs. E. M.
Hawley.
[301] _President_, Mrs. Judge Caldwell; _Secretary_, Mrs. Bushnell;
_Treasurer_, Mrs. Ammon.
[302] The officers of the Painesville Society, 1885, are,
_President_, Mrs. Frances Jennings Casement; _Vice-Presidents_,
Mrs. Eliza P. Chesney, Mrs. Lydia Wilcox, Mrs. Cornelia Swezey;
_Recording Secretary_, Mrs. Martha Paine; _Corresponding
Secretary_, Mrs. Lou J. Bates; _Treasurer_, Mrs. Adelia J. Bates;
_Trustees_, Mrs. J. B. Burrows, Mrs. A. G. Smith, Mrs. C. C.
Beardslee.
[303] The officers of the Ohio State Association for 1885
are, _President_, Mrs. Frances M. Casement, Painesville;
_Vice-Presidents_, Mrs. N. Coe Stewart, Cleveland; Mrs. C. C.
Swezey, Painesville; Hon. Richard Mott, Toledo; Mrs. U. R. Walker,
Cincinnati; Mrs. Dr. Warren, Elyria; _Recording Secretary_, Miss
Mary P. Spargo, Cleveland; _Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs. Rosa L.
Segur, Toledo; _Treasurer_, Mrs. Elizabeth Coit, Columbus;
_Executive Committee_, Dr. N. S. Townshend, Columbus; Mrs. M. B.
Haven, Cleveland; Mrs. M. Cole, Painesville; Mrs. W. J. Sheppard,
Cleveland; Mrs. Elizabeth Coit, Columbus; Mrs. Ports Wilson,
Warren; Mrs. Sarah M. Perkins, Cleveland.
[304] The incorporators were, Mrs. Davies Wilson, Mrs. John
Goddard, Mrs. Jane Wendte, Mrs. William N. Hobart, Dr. Ellen M.
Kirk, Dr. M. May Howells, Miss Jennie S. Smith, and Miss Harriet M.
Hinsdale; _Resident Physician_, Dr. Sarah J. Bebout; _Visiting
Physicians_, Drs. Ellen M. Kirk, M. May Howells.
CHAPTER XLI.
MICHIGAN.
Women's Literary Clubs and Libraries--Mrs. Lucinda H.
Stone--Classes of Girls in Europe--Ernestine L. Rose--Legislative
Action, _1849-1885_--State Woman Suffrage Society, 1870--Annual
Conventions--Northwestern Association--Wendell Phillips'
Letter--Nannette Gardner Votes--Catharine A. F. Stebbins
Refused--Legislative Action--Amendments Submitted--An Active
Canvass of the State by Women--Election Day--The Amendment Lost,
40,000 Men Voted in Favor--University at Ann Arbor Opened to
Girls, 1869--Kalamazoo Institute--J. A. B. Stone, Miss Madeline
Stockwell and Miss Sarah Burger Applied for Admission to the
University in 1857--Episcopal Church Bill--Local
Societies--Quincy--Lansing--St. Johns--Manistee--Grand
Rapids--Sojourner Truth--Laura C. Haviland--Sybil Lawrence.
Traveling through the State of Michigan, sufficiently at leisure to
make acquaintances, one would readily remark the unusual
intelligence and cultivation of the women. Every large town can
boast a woman's literary club, a reading-room, nicely furnished,
with a library containing, in many cases, one and two thousand
volumes, a choice collection of scientific, historical and
classical works. This may be attributed in part to the fact that
the population is largely from New York and New England, partly to
the many institutions of learning early opened to girls, and partly
to the extensive social influence of Mrs. Lucinda H. Stone,[305]
whose rare culture, foreign travels and liberal views have fitted
her, both as a woman and as a teacher, to inspire the girls of
Michigan with a desire for thorough education. Mrs. Stone has
traveled through many countries in the old world with large classes
of young ladies under her charge, superintending their reading and
studies, and giving them lectures on history and art on classic
ground, where some of the greatest tragedies of the past were
enacted; in ancient palaces, temples and grand cathedrals; upon the
very spots still rich with the memories of kings and popes, great
generals, statesmen, poets and philosophers. We cannot estimate the
advantages to these young travelers of having one always at hand,
able to point out the beauties in painting and statuary, to
interpret the symbols and mysteries of architecture, the language
of music, the facts of history, and the philosophy of the rise and
fall of mighty nations. Mrs. Stone has also given courses of parlor
lectures to large classes of ladies in every city of the State,
thus, with her rare experiences and extensive observations,
enriching every circle of society in which she moved.
To Catharine A. F. Stebbins we are indebted for compiling many of
the facts contained in this chapter. Reviewing the last forty
years, she says:
The agitation on the question of woman suffrage began in this
State in 1846, with the advent of Ernestine L. Rose,[306] who
spoke twice in the legislative hall in Detroit--once on the
"Science of Government," and once on the "Antagonisms in
Society." A resolution was passed by the House of
Representatives, expressing a high sense of her ability,
eloquence and grace of delivery. Her work in Detroit, Ann Arbor
and other places was three or four years prior to the first
report by the Special Committee of the Senate in the general
revision of the constitution, nine years before the House
Committee's report on elections in response to women's petitions,
and a dozen years before the favorable "report of the Senate upon
the memorial of ladies praying for the privilege of the elective
franchise," signed by Thomas W. Ferry.
_The Revolution_ of April 30, 1868, gives an account of the
manner the women of Sturgis voted on the question of prohibition:
"A few weeks ago, at a large meeting of the citizens of
Sturgis, Michigan, the ladies were asked to help in the
coming election the cause of prohibition. They replied that
they would if they were allowed to vote. At a subsequent
meeting the gentlemen could do no less than to invite them.
A committee of twelve was appointed. They canvassed the
village and invited all the ladies to come out and join in
the demonstration. At 2 o'clock on election day they
assembled at Union School Hall and marched to the room where
the election was held, and one hundred and fourteen
deposited their votes in favor of prohibition, and six
against it. Whilst they were marching through the room the
utmost order prevailed, and when they were retiring three
hearty cheers were given for the ladies of Sturgis. Great
credit is due to Mrs. William Kyte, chairman of the
committee, as well as to all the other members, for their
management of the whole affair. The utmost good feeling
prevailed, and not a sneer or a jeer was heard from the
lords of creation, but a large majority seemed to hail this
as a precursor of what they expect in the future, when the
people shall be educated to respect the rights of all."
We find the above in the Sturgis _Journal_, by the way, one
of the best in tone and talent of all our western
exchanges. Its editor, Mr. Wait, is a prominent leader in
the State, a member of the legislature, and a believer in
the equal civil and political rights of women. We have more
than once suggested in _The Revolution_ that the women
should appear at the polls on election days and demand their
rights as citizens. The effect could not but be beneficial
wherever tried. Any considerable number of intelligent women
in almost any locality would in this way soon inaugurate a
movement to result in a speedy triumph. Let these noble
Sturgis women persevere. Methodist Bishop Simpson was right
when he declared the vote of woman at the polls would soon
extinguish the perdition fires of intemperance. The Sturgis
women have begun the good work, a hundred and fourteen to
six! Surely, blessed are the husbands and children of such
wives and mothers.
P. P.
In _The Revolution_ of September 3, 1868, we find the following
from the Sturgis _Star_:
Last spring the ladies of Sturgis went to the polls one
hundred and twenty in number, and demonstrated the propriety
of the movement. Their votes did not count, for they could
only be cast in a separate box, and the movement was only
good in its moral effect. But at the school meeting the
ladies have an equal right to vote with the men. Whatever
qualifications a man must possess to exercise privileges in
that meeting, any woman possessing like qualifications can
exercise like privileges there. To substantiate this, it is
only necessary to read the school law. Section 145 of the
Primary School law: "The words 'qualified voter' shall be
taken and construed to mean and include _all taxable
persons_ residing in the district of the age of twenty-one
years, and who have resided therein three months next
preceding the time of voting."
Ex-State Superintendent John M. Gregory's opinion of that
is, that "under this section (145) all persons liable to be
taxed in the district, and twenty-one years of age, and
having resided three months in the district, without
distinction of sex, color, or nationality, may vote in the
district meetings." In districts where they elect only a
director, assessor and moderator, the women can vote on all
questions except the election of officers. In graded
districts they can vote on all questions, election of
trustees included. Men having no taxable property, but who
vote at town meetings and general elections, can only vote
for trustees at a school meeting. Any woman, then, having a
watch, cow, buggy, or personal property of any kind, subject
to tax, or who has real estate in her own name, or jointly
with her husband, can vote. Here, then, is a lawful right
for women to vote at school meetings, and as there can be no
impropriety in it, we advocate it. We believe that it will
work good. Our Union school is something that all should
feel an active interest in. We hope, then, that those ladies
entitled to vote will exercise the rights that the law
grants them. To give these suggestions a practical effect,
we cheerfully publish the following notice:
The undersigned respectfully request those ladies residing
in District No. 3, of the township of Sturgis, who are
entitled to vote at the annual meeting, to assemble in Mrs.
Pendleton's parlor, at the Exchange Hotel, on Friday evening
next, August 28, at 7:30 o'clock, to consider the matter of
exercising the privilege which the law gives them.
This call is signed by about twenty of the best women of the
borough. Last week we called attention in _The Revolution_
to the earnestness of the English women in urging their
claim to the right of suffrage, and appealed to American
women from their example. We hear from different sources
that American women will attempt, to some extent, to be
registered this year as voters, and we hope so brave an
example will become a contagion. A boastful warrior once
demanded of his foe, "Deliver up your arms." The answer was,
"Come, if you dare, and take them!" Let women become brave
enough to take their rights, and there will not be much
resistance. According to their faith and their courage, so
shall it be.
P. P.
The Michigan State Suffrage Society--always an independent
association--was organized at the close of the first convention
held in Hamblin's Opera-house, Battle Creek,[307] January 20,
1870, and has done the usual work of aiding in the formation of
local societies, circulating tracts and petitions, securing
hearings before the legislature, and holding its annual meetings
from year to year in the different cities of the State.
The Northwestern Association held its first annual convention in
the Young Men's Hall, Detroit, November 28, 29, 1870, with large
and appreciative audiences.[308] Legislative action on the
question of woman suffrage began in Michigan in 1849, when:
The special report favorable to Senate document No. 10, for
universal suffrage, was signed by Dwight Webb, Edward H.
Thompson and Rix Robinson.--House document No. 31,
legislature of 1855: "The Committee on Elections, to whom
was referred the petition of Betsy P. Parker, Lucinda Knapp,
Nancy Fleming, Electa Myers, and several other
'strong-minded' ladies of Lenawee county, asking such
amendments to the constitution of the State as will secure
to women an equal right to the elective franchise with men,"
reported adversely, ridiculed the petitioners, and was
signed by A. P. Moorman.--Senate document No. 27, in the
session of 1857: On a memorial of ladies praying the
legislature to grant them the elective franchise, the report
was signed by Thomas W. Ferry, and was favorable and
respectful.--House document No. 25, legislature of 1859: On
constitutional amendments in favor of universal suffrage,
the report was favorable for extending suffrage to colored
men, but doubtful as to the wisdom of extending it to women.
This was signed by Fabius Miles, chairman.--Senate document
No. 12: Upon the same constitutional amendments, in the
legislature of 1859, the report signed by R. E. Trowbridge,
chairman of the committee, was adverse to extending suffrage
to women.
On February 13, 1873, Mr. Lamb introduced "a joint
resolution granting the privilege of the elective franchise
to the women of the State." Mr. Bartholomew introduced "a
joint resolution proposing an amendment to section 1,
article 1., of the constitution, in relation to the
qualifications of electors." Both were referred to the
Committee on Elections, which made the following report:
The Committee on Elections, to whom was referred the joint
resolution granting the privilege of the elective franchise
to women of this State, respectfully report that they have
had the same under consideration, and have directed me to
report the same back to the House without recommendation. We
think the time has not arrived for us to decide on so
important a matter. We await further developments, and are
under the impression that there is no popular demand for the
change--at least not sufficient to warrant us in
recommending so important a change in our form of government
at the present session of the legislature--and ask to be
discharged from the further consideration of the subject.
[Signed:] A. HEWITT, _Acting Chairman._
Motion carried to lay the joint resolution on the table.
March 4, it was taken from the table and referred to the
Committee of the Whole, who recommended its passage, and
April 10 it was lost by a vote of 50 to 24:
The committee have considered the matters embraced in the
several resolutions referred to them relative to providing
for woman's suffrage, and have instructed me to report
against adding any such provision to the constitution at
present. The committee ask to be discharged from the further
consideration of the subject.
[Signed:] E. W. MEDDAUGH, _Chairman._
October 14.--A bill for separate submission to a vote of the
people of an amendment to the constitution relating to
woman's suffrage, was lost by a tie vote--7 for and 7
against.
At the extra session of the legislature, 1874, in the House,
March 10, Mr. Hoyt introduced a joint resolution for
separate submission to a vote of the people of an amendment
to the constitution relating to woman suffrage. Referred to
the Committee on Elections and State Affairs, jointly. On
March 12 the following memorial from the State Woman
Suffrage Association[309] was presented in the House:
_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of
Michigan, in Special Session Convened: _
The Executive Committee of the Michigan State Woman Suffrage
Association, at their meeting held in Kalamazoo, February
10, 1874, voted to memorialize your honorable body, at your
special session now being held.
We beg leave to represent to you that the object of this
association is to secure, in a legal way, the
enfranchisement of the women of the State. They are, as you
well know, already recognized as citizens of the State
according to the laws of the United States. They are now
taxed for all purposes of public interest as well as the
men. But they are not represented in the legislature, nor in
any branch of the State government, thus affording a great
example, and an unjust one for women, of taxation without
representation, which our fathers declared to be tyranny;
and which is contrary to the genius of our republican
institutions, and to the general polity of this
commonwealth. Women are also governed, while they have no
direct voice in the government, and made subject to laws
affecting their property, their personal rights and liberty,
in whose enactment they have no voice.
We therefore petition your honorable body, that in preparing
a new constitution, to be submitted for adoption or
rejection by the people of this State, you will strike out
the word "male" from the article defining the qualifications
of electors; or if deemed best by you, will provide for the
separate submission of an article for the enfranchisement of
the women of Michigan, giving them equal rights and
privileges with the men. By thus taking the lead of the
States of the Union, to more fully secure the personal
rights of all the citizens, you will show yourselves in
harmony with the spirit of the age and worthy to be called
pioneers in this cause, as you are already most honorably
accounted pioneers in your educational system, which affords
equal and impartial advantages to the population of our
State, irrespective of sex or condition in life--thus aiming
to elevate the entire people to the highest practicable
plane of intelligence and true civilization.
By order, and in the name of the Michigan Woman Suffrage
Association.
LUCINDA H. STONE, _Corresponding Secretary._
Mrs. A. H. WALKER, _President._
On March 14, the joint committee made the following report:
The committees on State affairs and elections, to whom was
referred the joint resolution proposing an amendment to
section I, article VII., of the constitution, in relation to
the qualifications of electors, respectfully report that
they have had the same under consideration, and have
directed us to report the same back to the House without
amendment, and recommend that it do pass and ask to be
discharged from the further consideration of the subject.
The reasons which have influenced the committee in
recommending an amendment so radical and sweeping in the
changes which it will create if finally adopted by the
people, are briefly these: The question of granting the
right of suffrage to women equally with men, is one that has
been seriously and widely agitated for years, and while,
like other political reforms which change in any
considerable degree the old and established order of things,
it has met with strong opposition, on the other hand it has
been ably advocated by men and women distinguished alike for
their intellectual ability and their excellent judgment.
Although we believe that there should be certain necessary
and proper restrictions to the exercise of the elective
franchise, we are of the opinion that there are reasonable
grounds to doubt whether the distinction of sex in the
matter of voting, is not, in a large measure, a fictitious
one. The interests of women in all matters pertaining to
good government are certainly identical with those of men.
In the matter of property their rights conceded by law are
equal, and in some respects superior to those of men; and if
the principle of no taxation without representation is a
just one as applied among men, it would seem that it might
in justice be extended to women. As the reasons given above
are strongly urged by the advocates of woman suffrage, and
as several petitions, numerously signed by citizens of the
State, asking for some action on the part of the House in
this matter, are in the hands of the committee, we have
deemed it advisable, although not equally agreed as to the
main question involved, to recommend the passage of the
resolution by the House, in order that the people of the
State may have an opportunity of expressing their will at
the ballot-box as to the expediency of extending the right
of suffrage to women.
SAMUEL H. BLACKMAN, _Chairman of Committee on State Affairs._
JAMES BURNES, _Chairman of Committee on Elections._
Report accepted, and joint resolution placed on the general
order.
On March 18 the following joint resolution passed the House
by a vote of 67 to 27, and passed the Senate by a vote of 26
to 4,[310] proposing an amendment to section I of article
VII. of the constitution, in relation to the qualification
of electors:
_Resolved, By the Senate and House of Representatives of the
State of Michigan_, That at the election when the amended
constitution shall be submitted to the electors of this
State for adoption or rejection, there shall be submitted to
such electors the following propositions, to be substituted
in case of adoption, for so much of section I, of article
VII., as precedes the proviso therein, in the present
constitution of this State as it now stands, and substituted
for section I, article VII., in said amended constitution,
if the latter is adopted, to wit:
SECTION 1. In all elections, every person of the age of
twenty-one years who shall have resided in this State three
months, and in the township or ward in which he or she
offers to vote ten days next preceding an election,
belonging to either of the following classes, shall be an
elector and entitled to vote:
_First_--Every citizen of the United States; _Second_--Every
inhabitant of this State, who shall have resided in the
United States two years and six months, and declared his or
her intention to become a citizen of the United States
pursuant to the laws thereof, six months preceding an
election; _Third_--Every inhabitant residing in this State
on the twenty-fourth day of June, one thousand eight hundred
and seventy-five.
Said proposition shall be separately submitted to the
electors of this State for their adoption or rejection, in
form following, to wit: A separate ballot may be given by
every person having the right to vote, to be deposited in a
separate box. Upon the ballot given for said proposition
shall be written, or printed, or partly written and partly
printed, the words, "Woman Suffrage,--Yes"; and upon ballots
given against the adoption thereof, in like manner, the
words, "Woman Suffrage,--No." If at said election a majority
of the votes given upon said proposition shall contain the
words, "Woman Suffrage,--Yes," then said proposition shall
be substituted for so much of section I, of article VII., as
includes the proviso therein in the present constitution of
the State as it now stands, or substituted for section I, of
article VII., in said amended constitution, if the latter is
adopted.
This bill was promptly signed by Governor Bagley, and from that
hour the attention of the advocates of suffrage for women was
centered on Michigan.
The submission of this amendment to a vote of the people, gave an
unusual interest and importance to the annual meeting held at
Lansing, May 6, 1874,[311] at which plans were to be made, and
money raised for a vigorous campaign throughout the State. The
large number of women ready to do the speaking, and the equally
large number of men ready to make generous contributions, were
most encouraging in starting. Women who could not aid the cause
in any other way cast their gold watches into the treasury. From
the large number of letters received at this convention we may
judge how thoroughly aroused the friends were all over the
country. Lydia Maria Child wrote:
It is urged, that if women participated in public affairs,
puddings would be spoiled, and stockings neglected.
Doubtless some such cases might occur; for we have the same
human nature as men, and men are sometimes so taken up with
elections as to neglect their business for a while. But I
apprehend that puddings and stockings, to say nothing of
nurseries, suffer much greater detriment from the present
expenditure of time and thought upon the heartless
ostentation of parties, and the flounces and fripperies of
fashion, than can possibly accrue from the intellectual
cultivation of women, or their participation in public
affairs. Voting is a mere incident in the lives of men. It
does not prevent the blacksmith from shoeing horses, or the
farmer from planting fields, or the lawyer from attending
courts; so I see no reason why it need to prevent women from
attending to their domestic duties. On certain subjects,
such as intemperance, licentiousness and war, women would be
almost universally sure to exert their influence in the
right directions, for the simple reason that they peculiarly
suffer from the continuance of these evils. In the discharge
of this new function, they would doubtless make some
mistakes, and yield to some temptations, just as men do. But
the consciousness of being an acknowledged portion of the
government of the country would excite a deeper interest in
its welfare, and produce a serious sense of responsibility,
which would gradually invigorate and ennoble their
characters.
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON wrote: I believe that we fail to
establish a truly republican government, or to test the
principle of universal suffrage, so long as we enfranchise
one sex only.
A. BRONSON ALCOTT wrote: * * * Where women lead--the best
women--is it unsafe for men to follow? Woman's influence
cannot be confined to her household; woman is, and will be,
womanly wherever placed. No condition can unsex the sexes.
The ten commandments will not suffer in her keeping. Her
vote will tell for the virtues, against the vices all. Plato
said: "Either sex alone is but half itself." Socially, we
admit his assertion, and are just beginning to suspect that
our republican institutions need to be complemented and
rounded with woman's counsels, and administrations also.
Good republicans are asking if our legislation is not
unsettled, demoralized by the debauchery of hasty politics,
by private vices, and the want of manly integrity, woman's
honor. Let our courtesy to women be sincere--paid to her
modesty as to her person; her intelligence as to her
housekeeping; her refining influence in political as in
social circles. Where a husband would blush to take his wife
and daughters, let him blush to be seen by his sons. "Revere
no god," says Euripides, "whom men adore by night." And
Sophocles: "Seek not thy fellow-citizens to guide till thou
canst order well thine own fireside." Mrs. Alcott and Louisa
join in hearty hopes for your success.
EDNA D. CHENEY wrote: * * * How I long for the time when
this question being settled, we can all go forward, working
together, to discuss and settle the really great questions
of political and social economy, of labor, of education, and
the full development of human life in State and society.
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER wrote: * * * I hope and trust the
electors will be wise and generous enough to decide it in
your favor. Were I a citizen of the State I should esteem it
alike a duty and a privilege to vote in the affirmative.
ASA MAHAN, president of Oberlin College, wrote: The cause
which has called you together is a very plain one. It is
simply this, whether "taxation without representation" is
tyranny to all but one-half of the human race, and the
principle that rulers derive their authority to make and
administer law from the consent of the governed, holds true
of the white man and the black man, of man native or foreign
born, and even of the "heathen Chinee," if he belong to the
male sex, and is a lie in its application to woman.[312]
Dr. Stone, of Kalamazoo, read an able report of what had been
done, and all it was necessary to do if the friends desired to
carry the pending amendment. The following extract will give some
idea of the momentous undertaking in canvassing a State:
When the governor decided to call an extra session of the
legislature, so as to submit the new constitution to a
popular vote next November, the committee had but little
time for the circulation of petitions; but enough was done
to secure the vote in favor of submission. This was the more
easily accomplished because we have in the present
legislature so many warm and active friends, who gave that
body no rest until their point was carried. And here we find
ourselves suddenly brought into a campaign almost as novel
as momentous, with scarce a precedent to guide us. We ask
the electors of Michigan to share their civil and political
power with those who have always been denied all electoral
rights--to vest the popular sovereignty not merely in
themselves, in a quarter of a million of men, as hitherto,
but in half a million of men and women, and so make our
State what it is not now, a truly republican commonwealth.
We have a great work before us, and no time should be lost
in organizing a general canvass of the entire State.
Competent lecturers should be employed wherever hearers can
be found, and money raised to defray the expenses. Printed
documents too, must be circulated; arguments and conclusions
framed by those who have thought on these subjects for men,
and sometimes for women, who are too indolent to think for
themselves. And there are many other things which we must do
before the November election; ballots must be furnished for
every township and polling place, especially affirmative
ballots, and placed in the hands of all the voters. The
Executive Committee cannot be ubiquitous enough to
discharge all these multifarious duties. We therefore
suggest that there be appointed during this meeting,
_First_, a Committee on Finance. _Second_, a Committee on
Printed Documents. _Third_, a Committee on Lecturers.
_Fourth_, a County Committee of perhaps three persons in
each county, who shall have power also to appoint a
sub-committee in each township. Whether so many distinct
committees will be needed, or more than one class of duties
can be entrusted to the same committee, the association can
determine. We do not want too much, nor too complicated
machinery, but just enough to accomplish the work. We must
fall into line; woman expects every man to do his duty;
surely she will not fail to be true to herself.
Representatives from the different counties gave their names[313]
as ready to begin the work arranged by the several committees.
With this large and enthusiastic convention the campaign may be
said fairly to have opened at Lansing early in May, a political
organization being formed of Republicans and Democrats alike,
representing nearly every district in the State. Governor Bagley
having promptly signed the bill, and his wife being an earnest
advocate of the measure, the social influence of the family was
all in the right direction. The influence of the church, too, was
in a measure favorable. The Methodist denomination, in its
general conference, passed a resolution indorsing woman suffrage.
Mrs. Stanton, in a letter to the _Golden Age_, said:
During the time I spent in Michigan, speaking every night
and twice on Sunday to crowded houses, I had abundant
opportunities of feeling the pulse of the people, both in
public and private, and it seemed to me that the tide of
popular thought and feeling was running in the right
direction. The people are beginning to regard the idea of
woman's equality with man as not only a political, but a
religious truth, Methodist, Congregational, Presbyterian,
Baptist and Unitarian churches being all alike thrown open
to its consideration. Sitting Sunday after Sunday in the
different pulpits with reverend gentlemen, my discourses
given in the place of the sermon, in the regular services, I
could not help thinking of the distance we had come since
that period in civilization when Paul's word was law, "Let
your women keep silence in the churches." Able men and women
are speaking in every part of the State, and if our triumph
should not be complete at the next election, at all events a
great educational work will have been accomplished in the
distribution of tracts, in the public debates, and in
reviewing the fundamental principles of our government and
religion. Being frequently told that women did not wish to
vote, I adopted the plan of calling for a rising vote at the
close of my lectures, and on all occasions a majority of the
women would promptly rise. Knowing that the men had the
responsibility of voting before their eyes, and might be
diffident about rising, I reversed the manner of expression
in their case, requesting all those in favor of woman
suffrage to keep their seats, and those opposed to rise up,
thus throwing the onerous duty of changing their attitudes
on the opposition. So few arose under such circumstances
that it was somewhat embarrassing for those who did.
Those who were engaged in the canvass[314] had enthusiastic
meetings everywhere. They not only filled all their regular
appointments, but spoke in the prisons, asylums; even the deaf
and dumb were refreshed with the gospel of woman suffrage. The
press, too, was generally favorable, though the opposition
magnified the occasional adverse criticisms out of all proportion
to their severity and number. Towards the last of September Miss
Anthony, by invitation of Mrs. Briggs and Mrs. Bliss of Grand
Rapids, came into the State and remained until election day. She
often brought down the house with her witty comments on the
criticisms of the press.[315]
Everything that could be done was done by the friends of the
amendment throughout the State; meetings held and tracts on every
phase of the question scattered in all the most obscure
settlements; inspiring songs sung, earnest prayers offered, the
press vigilant in its appeals, and on election day women
everywhere at the polls, persuading voters to cast their ballots
for temperance, moral purity and good order, to be secured only
by giving the right of suffrage to their mothers, wives and
daughters. But the sun went down, the polls were closed, and in
the early dawn of the next morning the women of Michigan learned
that their status as citizens of the United States had not been
advanced one iota by the liberal action of their governor, their
legislature, the appeals of the women nor the votes of 40,000 of
the best men of the State.
When the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the national
constitution were passed, many advocates of suffrage believed
that the right was conferred on women. In a letter to a State
convention held at that time, Wendell Phillips said:
The new phase of the woman movement--that claiming the right
to vote under the fourteenth amendment--is attracting great
attention in Washington. Whether it ever obtains judicial
sanction or not, it certainly gives a new and most effective
means of agitation. The argument of the minority report,
understood to be written by General Butler, is most able. *
* * The statement of the argument, and the array of cases
and authorities, are very striking. Nothing more cogent can
be imagined or desired. When two years ago a Western
advocate of woman's rights started this theory, we never
expected to see it assume such importance.
In accordance with this opinion, certain women resolved to apply
for registration, and offer their votes. On March 25, 1871,
Catherine A. F. Stebbins and Mrs. Nannette B. Gardner of Detroit
made the attempt to have their names regularly enrolled as
legally qualified voters. Mrs. Stebbins, accompanied by her
husband, made application in the fifth ward to have her name
registered, but was refused. She then proposed to her friend,
Mrs. Gardner, to make the trial in her ward, to which she
assented. Accordingly, they went to the first district of the
ninth ward, where Peter Hill was the enrolling officer. Mrs.
Gardner gave her name, saying she was a "person" within the
meaning of the fourteenth amendment, and that she was a widow,
and a tax-payer without representation. Mr. Hill, seeing the
justice of her demand, entered her name upon the register.
This action took some of the board of registration by surprise,
and a motion was made to erase her name, but was decided in the
negative.[316] The board was now asked for a decision in regard
to Mrs. Stebbins' name, as the question very naturally suggested
itself to the inspectors, if one woman can vote why not another.
Mrs. Stebbins was notified that her case would have a hearing.
When asked to submit her reasons for demanding the right to vote,
Mrs. S. stated that she asked it simply as the right of a human
being under the constitution of the United States. She had paid
taxes on personal and real estate, and had conformed to the laws
of the land in every respect. Since the fourteenth amendment had
enfranchised woman as well as the black man, she had the
necessary qualifications of an elector.
A long debate followed. Inspectors Bagg, Hill and Folsom argued
in favor of the petitioner; Allison, Brooks, Henderson and Hughes
against. The opposition confessed that the negro had voted before
the word "white" had been expunged from the State constitution;
but that was done from a "political necessity." The question of
acceptance being put to vote, was negatived--13 to 10. This was
counted a victory, and stimulated the opposition to make another
effort to strike Mrs. Gardner's name from the register; but
failing in that, the board adjourned. There was now much
curiosity to know if Alderman Hill would have the nerve to stand
by his initiative; but with him the Rubicon was passed, and on
April 3, Messrs. Hill and Durfee accepted Mrs. Gardner's vote,
Mr. Bond protesting. The Detroit _Post_ gave the following
account:
Mrs. Gardner arrived at the polls of the first precinct of
the ninth ward at about half-past ten o'clock in a carriage,
accompanied by her son, a lad of ten years, Mrs. Starring
and Mrs. Giles B. Stebbins. Barely a dozen by-standers were
present, and the larger part of these were laboring men. No
demonstration followed the appearance of the ladies, the men
remaining quiet, and contenting themselves with comments
_sotto voce_ on this last political development, and with
speculations as to how the newly enfranchised would vote.
Mrs. Gardner presented herself at the polls with a vase of
flowers and also a prepared ballot, which she had decorated
with various appropriate devices. The inspectors asked the
questions usually put to all applicants, and her name being
found duly registered, her ballot was received and deposited
in the box. There was no argument, no challenge, no
variation from the routine traversed by each masculine
exerciser of the elective franchise. Mrs. Gardner voted, as
we understand; for the Republican candidates generally, with
one Democrat and one lady.
At Battle Creek, Mrs. Mary Wilson voted at the election of 1871.
When she registered, she was accompanied by her lawyer.
In the fall of 1872, Peter Hill again registered Mrs. Gardner,
and received her vote. Mr. Hill had been exposed to many
animadversions for his persistence, and as an acknowledgment of
her appreciation of his course, Mrs. Gardner presented him a silk
banner suitably inscribed. A city paper gives this account of it:
Mrs. Gardner, who has for years been a recognized voter in
the ninth ward of Detroit, again voted on Tuesday. She came
on foot, with Mrs. Stebbins, in a drenching rain, as no
carriage could be obtained. After voting, she presented a
beautiful banner of white satin, trimmed with gold fringe,
on which was inscribed, "A Woman's Voting Hymn." The reverse
side, of blue silk, contained the dedication: "To Peter
Hill, Alderman of the Ninth Ward, Detroit. First to Register
a Woman's Vote. By recognizing civil liberty and equality
for woman, he has placed the last and brightest jewel on the
brow of Michigan."
The city board now felt called upon to pass a vote of censure
upon Mr. Hill's action. The record runs thus:
Canvasser BAXTER: _Resolved_, That the act of the inspectors
of election of the first district of the ninth ward, in
receiving the vote of Mrs. Nannette B. Gardner at the
election just passed, is emphatically disapproved by this
board, on the ground that said act is a plain violation of
the election laws and constitution of the State of Michigan,
and is liable to lead to the grossest abuses and
complications.
Canvasser FULDA moved to lay the resolution on the
table--lost. Adopted as follows: _Yeas_--Langley, Flower,
House, Lichtenberg, Phelps, Parsons, Christian, Allison,
Buehle, Dullea, Daly, Barbier, Baxter--13. _Nays_--Wooley
and Fulda--2.
CHAS A. BORGMAN, _Secretary_.
PHILO PARSONS, _Chairman_.
Mrs. Stebbins attempted to register at this election with the
same result as before. Upon the fourth of November she provided
herself with a sworn statement that she had been "wrongfully
prevented" the record of her name, and offered her vote at the
polls, calling attention to the "enforcing act," provided for
such cases. It had no terror, however, for the valiant inspectors
of the fifth ward. In the fall of 1873, there was the following
correspondence between the board and the city counselor:
_Hon. D. C. Holbrook, City Counselor_: DEAR SIR:--Mrs. Giles
B. Stebbins has applied to this board and demands the right
to register. This board has declined to grant the request on
the ground that it does not believe her to be a legal
elector. Mrs. Stebbins would have all the required
qualifications of an elector, but for the fact of her being
a woman, and we therefore respectfully request that you
instruct us as to our duty in the premises. Very
respectfully,
S. B. WOOLLEY,
ALBERT BOTSFORD,
_Inspectors of First Ward_.
Woman cannot be enrolled or registered. Let her try it
on.[317]
_Oct. 24, 1873._ D. C. HOLBROOK, _City Counselor_.
In company with Mrs. H. J. Boutelle, Mrs. Stebbins offered her
vote in the fifth ward. Mr. Farwell was in favor of receiving it,
and wished to leave the question to a dozen responsible citizens
whom he called in as referees, but Col. Phelps would not be
influenced by the judgment of outsiders, and would not agree to
the proposal.[318]
Mrs. Gardner's name was retained on the ward voting list, and she
voted every year until she left the city for the education of her
children.
Before the University at Ann Arbor was opened to girls in 1869,
there had been several attempts to establish seminaries for girls
alone.[319] But they were not successful for several reasons. As
the State would not endow these private institutions, it made the
education of daughters very expensive, and fathers with
daughters, seeing their neighbors' sons in the State University
educated at the public expense, from financial considerations
were readily converted to the theory of coëducation. Again the
general drift of thought was in favor of coëducation throughout
the young western States. Then institutions of learning were too
expensive to build separate establishments for girls and boys,
and the number of boys able to attend through a collegiate course
could not fill the colleges ready for their reception. Hence from
all considerations it was a double advantage both to the State
and the girls, to admit them to the universities.
James A. B. Stone and Mrs. Lucinda H. Stone went to Kalamazoo in
1843, immediately after his election to take charge of the
Literary Institute. The name was afterwards changed to Kalamazoo
College. It is the oldest collegiate institute in the State,
having been chartered in 1833, and was designed from the outset
for both sexes. In the beginning it did not confer degrees, but
was the first, after Oberlin, to give diplomas to women.
Kalamazoo was an object of derision with some of the professors
of the University, because it was, they averred, of doubtful
gender. But a liberal-minded public grew more and more in favor
of epicene colleges. Literary seminaries had been established for
coëducation at Albion, Olivet, Adrian and Hillsdale, but some of
their charters were not exactly of a collegiate grade, and it was
doubtful whether under the new constitution, new college charters
would be granted, so that Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor had the field.
In January, 1845, a bill was introduced in the legislature to
organize literary institutions under a general law, no collegiate
degrees being allowed, unless on the completion of a curriculum
equal to that of the State University. The championship of this
bill fell to Dr. Stone, for while it would have no special effect
on Kalamazoo, it concerned the cause of coëducation in the State,
and the friends of the University made it a kind of test of what
the State policy should be in reference to the higher learning
for women. Dr. Tappan, then the able president of the University,
appeared at Lansing, supported by Rev. Dr. Duffield and a force
of able lawyers, to oppose it, and the far-seeing friends of
education in the legislature and in the lobby, rallied with Dr.
Stone for its support. For several weeks the contest was carried
on with earnestness, almost with bitterness, before the
legislative committees, before public meetings called in the
capitol for discussion, and on the floor of both houses. Dr.
Tappan made frantic appeals to Michigan statesmen not to disgrace
the State by such a law, which he prophesied would result in
"preparatory schools for matrimony," and, shocking to
contemplate, young men would marry their classmates. Among the
friends of the measure present, were President Fairfield,
Professor Hosford, and Hon. Mr. Edsell, of Otsego, all graduates
of Oberlin, who had married their classmates, and "been glad ever
since." They replied, "What of it? Are not those who have met
daily in the recitation-room for four years, as well prepared to
judge of each other's fitness for life-companionship, as if they
had only met a few times at a ball, a dress party, or in private
interview?" The legislature was an intelligent one, and the bill
passed amid great excitement, crowds of interested spectators
listening to the final discussions in the lower House. Governor
Bingham was friendly to the bill from the first. After its
passage, he sent a handsome copy signed by himself and other
officers, to Dr. and Mrs. Stone, at Kalamazoo, to be preserved as
a record of the Thermopylæ fight for coëducation in Michigan.
Rev. E. O. Havens succeeded Dr. Tappan in the presidency, and was
supposed to be less strong in his prejudices, but when efforts
were made to open the doors to both sexes, he reported it
difficult and inexpedient, if not impossible. But he counted
without the broad-minded people of Michigan. A growing conviction
that the legislature would stop the appropriations to the
University unless justice was done to the daughters of the State,
finally brought about, at Ann Arbor, a change of policy. Under
the light that broke in upon their minds, the professors found
there was really no law against the admission of women to that
very liberal seat of learning. "To be sure, they never had
admitted women, but none had formally applied." This, though
somewhat disingenuous, was received in good faith, and soon
tested by Miss Madeline Stockwell, who had completed half her
course at Kalamazoo, and was persuaded by Mrs. Stone to make
application at Ann Arbor. Mrs. Stone knew her to be a thorough
scholar, as far as she had gone, especially in Greek, which some
had supposed that women could not master. When she presented
herself for examination some members of the faculty were far from
cordial, but they were just, and she entered in the grade for
which she applied. She sustained herself ably in all her studies,
and when examined for her degree--the first woman graduate from
the literary department--she was commended as the peer of any of
her class-mates, and took an honorable part in the commencement
exercises. Moreover, she fulfilled the doleful prophecy of Dr.
Tappan, as women in other schools had done before her, and
married her class-mate, Mr. Turner, an able lawyer.
The statement by the faculty, or regents, that "no woman had
formally applied," was untrue, as we shall see. The University
was opened to them in 1869; eleven years before, Miss Sarah
Burger, now Mrs. Stearns, made the resolve, the preparation, and
the application to enter the University of Michigan; and young as
she was, her clear-sightedness and courage called forth our
admiration. As a child, in Ann Arbor, from 1845, to 1852, she had
often attended the commencement exercises of the University, and
on those occasions had felt very unhappy, because all the culture
given to mind and heart and soul by this institution was given to
young men alone. It seemed a cruel injustice to young women that
they could not be there with their brothers, enjoying the same.
In connection with her efforts and those of her friends to enter
those enchanted portals, she bears grateful testimony to the
discussions on the question of woman's rights, as follows:
When it was my blessed privilege to attend a women's rights
convention at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1853,--and it was a grand
meeting--where dear Lucretia Mott, Ernestine L. Rose,
Frances D. Gage, Antoinette Brown, Lucy Stone, and others,
dwelt upon the manifold wrongs suffered by women, and called
upon them to awake and use their powers to secure justice to
all, I felt their words to mean that the Michigan University
as well as all others, should be opened to girls, and that
women themselves should first move in the matter.
Thus aroused, though but sixteen years old, she resolved at once
to make application for admission to the State University. Early
in the autumn of 1856, she entered the high school at Ann Arbor,
and studied Greek and Latin two years, preparatory to taking the
classical course. Four young ladies besides herself, recited with
the boys who were preparing for college, and they were all
declared by a university professor who had attended frequent
examinations, to stand head and shoulders in scholarship above
many of the young men. Miss Burger wishing as large a class as
possible to appeal for admission, wrote to a number of classical
schools for young women, asking coöperation, and secured the
names of eleven[320] who would gladly apply with her. In the
spring of 1858, she sent a note to the regents, saying a class of
twelve young ladies would apply in June, for admission to the
University in September. A reporter said "a certain Miss B. had
sent the regents warning of the momentous event." At the board
meeting in June, the young ladies presented their promised letter
of application, and received as reply, that the board should have
_more time to consider_. In September their reply was, that it
seemed inexpedient for the University to admit ladies at present.
In the meantime, a great deal had been said and done on the
subject; some members of the faculty had spoken in favor, some
against. University students, and citizens of Ann Arbor also
joined in the general discussion. The subject was widely
discussed in the press and on the platform; members of the
faculty and board of regents applied to the presidents of
universities east and west, for their opinions. The people of
Michigan, thus brought to consider the injustice of the exclusion
of their daughters from this State institution, there was offered
for signature during the winter of 1859, the following petition:
_To the Regents of the University of Michigan:_
The undersigned, inhabitants of ----, in the county of ----,
and State of Michigan, respectfully request that young women
may be admitted as students in the University, for the
following among other reasons: _First_--It is incumbent on
the State to give equal educational advantages to both
sexes. _Second_--All can be educated in the State University
with but little more expense than is necessary to educate
young men alone. _Third_--It will save the State from the
expenditure of half a million of dollars, necessary to
furnish young ladies in a separate institution with the
advantages now enjoyed by young men. _Fourth_--It will admit
young ladies at once to the benefits of the highest
educational privileges of the State.
Among the most active in lectures, debates, circulation of
petitions and general advocacy were James B. Gott, Judge Edwin
Lawrence, Giles B. Stebbins and O. P. Stearns, the last at that
time a student, since a lawyer, and the husband of Mrs. Sarah
Burger Stearns of Minnesota.
In the spring of 1859 formal application was again made to the
regents by a class of young ladies, only to receive the same
answer. But the discussion was not dropped; indeed, that was
impossible. Some of the most intelligent on this question believe
that the final admission of women to the University was due to a
resolve on the part of the people of the State to place upon the
board of regents, as the terms of old members expired, men well
known to be favorable. On the election of Professor Estabrook of
the State Normal School there was one more noble man "for us,"
who, with other new members, made a majority in favor of justice.
In the autumn of that year (1869) young women were admitted to
full privileges in Michigan University, and, like political
freedom in Wyoming, it has for years been confessed to have
yielded only beneficent results. As long ago, however, as the
first application was made (1858) women were permitted to attend
certain lectures. They could not join a class or read a book, but
it was the custom for them to go and listen to the beautiful and
highly instructive lectures by Professor Andrew D. White on
history, sculpture, and mediæval architecture, and they highly
appreciated the privilege.
In March, 1869, President Havens said in the House of
Representatives at Lansing, "he believed the University should be
opened to those who desired to obtain the benefit of the branches
of education which they could not obtain elsewhere." The Rev.
Gilbert Haven wrote to the American Society's meeting held in
Detroit, in 1874: "I have been identified with your cause through
its evil report, and, I was going to add, good report, but that
part has not yet very largely set in. I also had the honor to
preside over the first ecclesiastical body that has, just now,
pronounced in your favor." This church assembly was the Methodist
State Association, which adopted the following in October, 1874,
without a negative vote, though several of the delegates refused
to vote:
WHEREAS, The legislature of Michigan, at its recent session,
has submitted to the electors of the State a proposition to
change the State constitution so as to admit the women of
Michigan to the elective franchise; therefore,
_Resolved_, That this convention recognizes the action of
the legislature as a step toward a higher and purer
administration of the government of our country, and we hope
the provision will be adopted.
But the above was not the strongest utterance of Bishop Gilbert
Haven. Once at an equal rights society convention in the Academy
of Music, Brooklyn, where from floor to ceiling was gathered an
admirable and immense audience, with profound respect I heard
these memorable words:
"I shall never be satisfied until a _black woman_ is seated in
the presidential chair of the United States," than which no more
advanced claim for the complete legal recognition of woman has
been made in our country.
In February, 1879, a spirited debate took place in the
legislature upon an amendment to the Episcopal Church bill, which
struck out the word "male" from the qualification of voters. The
Detroit _Post and Tribune_ says a vigorous effort was made to
defeat the measure, but without success. The justice of allowing
women to take part in church government was recognized, and the
amendment carried.
We have written persistently to leading women all over the State
for facts in regard to their local societies, and such responses
as have been received are embodied in this chapter. We give
interesting reports of a few of the county societies in which
much has been accomplished.
Of the work in Quincy Mrs. Sarah Turner says:
We never organized a woman suffrage society, although our
literary club has done much for the cause in a general way.
We had crowded houses on the occasions of a very able speech
from Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a most spirited one from
Miss Phoebe Couzins. For the past eight years a dozen
tax-paying women of this town have availed themselves of the
privilege granted them years ago, and voted at the school
meetings; and two years ago a woman was elected member of
the school-board.
Lansing reports for January, 1871, Mrs. Livermore's lecture
on "The Reasons Why" [women should be enfranchised]; the
organization of a city society with sixty members at the
close of the annual meeting of the State Association held in
that city in March; a lecture from Mrs. Stanton before the
Young Men's Association; the adoption of a declaration of
rights by the Ingham County Society, March, 1872, signed by
169 of the best people of the county. In 1874, of the many
meetings held those of Mrs. Stanton and Miss Couzins are
specially mentioned.
The St. Johns society, formed in 1872 with six members,
reported sixty at the State annual meeting of 1874, and also
$171.71, raised by fees and sociables, mainly expended in
the circulation of tracts and documents throughout the
county.
From Manistee Mrs. Fannie Holden Fowler writes:
In the campaign of 1874 Hon. S. W. Fowler, one of the
committee for Northern Michigan appointed by the State
Society, canvassed Manistee county and advocated the cause
through his paper, the _Times and Standard_. The election
showed the good of educational work, as a large vote was
polled in the towns canvassed by Mr. Fowler, two of them
giving a majority for the amendment. In an editorial, after
the election, Mr. Fowler said: "The combined forces of
ignorance, vice and prejudice have blocked the wheels of
advancing civilization, and Michigan, once the proudest of
the sisterhood of States, has lost the opportunity of
inaugurating a reform; now let the women organize for a
final onset." However, no active suffrage work was done
until December 3, 1879, when Susan B. Anthony was induced to
stop over on her way from Frankfort to Ludington and give
her lecture, "Woman Wants Bread; Not the Ballot." She was
our guest, and urged the formation of a society, and through
her influence a "Woman's Department" was added to the _Times
and Standard_, which is still a feature of the paper. In the
following spring (April, 1880), Elizabeth Cady Stanton gave
her lecture, "Our Girls," with two "conversations," before
the temperance women and others, which revived the courage
of the few who had been considering the question of
organization. A call was issued, to which twenty-three
responded, and the society was formed June 8, 1880,[321]
adopting the constitution of the National and electing
delegates to attend a convention to be held under the
auspices of that association the following week at Grand
Rapids. The society at once made a thorough canvass of the
city, which resulted in the attendance of seventy tax-paying
women at the school election in September, when the first
woman's vote was cast in Manistee county. Each succeeding
year has witnessed more women at the school election, until,
in 1883, they outnumbered the men, and would have elected
their ticket but for a fraud perpetrated by the old
school-board, which made the election void.
In August 1881, Mrs. May Wright Sewall delivered two
lectures in Manistee. In February 1882, a social,
celebrating Miss Anthony's birthday, was given by the
association at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Fowler, and was
voted a success. Through the untiring efforts of Mrs. Lucy
T. Stansell, who was also a member of the Ladies' Lever
League, Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert gave a Manistee
audience a rich treat in her "Homes of Representative
Women," and her conversation on suffrage elicited much
interest.
During the autumn of 1882, petitions asking for municipal
suffrage were circulated. The venerable Josiah R. Holden of
Grand Rapids, father of Mrs. Fowler, then in his 88th year,
obtained the largest number of signatures to his petition of
any one in the State. A bill granting municipal suffrage to
women was drawn by Mrs. Fowler, introduced in the
legislature by Hon. George J. Robinson, and afterwards
tabled. At the session of 1885 a similar bill came within a
few votes of being carried.
In Grand Rapids there was no revival of systematic work
until 1880, when the National Association held a very
successful two days' convention in the city. In response to
a petition from the society, the legislature in the winter
of 1885 passed a law, giving to the tax-paying women of the
city the right to vote on school questions at the charter
elections. At the first meeting a hundred women were
present, and hundreds availed themselves of their new power
and voted at the first election.
The State Society held its annual meeting at Grand Rapids,
October 7, 8, 9, 1885, at which the address of welcome was given
by Mrs. Loraine Immen, president of the City Society,[322] and
responded to by Mrs. Stebbins of Detroit.[323]
The only religious sect in the world, unless we except the
Quakers, that has recognized the equality of woman, is the
Spiritualists. They have always assumed that woman may be a
medium of communication from heaven to earth, that the spirits of
the universe may breathe through her lips messages of loving
kindness and mercy to the children of earth. The Spiritualists in
our country are not an organized body, but they are more or less
numerous in every State and Territory from ocean to ocean. Their
opinions on woman suffrage and equal rights in all respects must
be learned from the utterances of their leading speakers and
writers of books, from their weekly journals, from resolutions
passed at large meetings, and from their usage and methods. A
reliable person widely familiar with Spiritualism since its
beginning in 1848, says that he has known but very few
Spiritualists who were not in favor of woman suffrage; that all
their representative men and women, and all their journals
advocate it, and have always done so; that expressions in its
favor in public meetings meet with hearty approval, and that men
and women have spoken on their platforms, and held official
places as co-workers in their societies through all of these
thirty-seven years. All this has taken place with very little
argument or discussion, but from an intuitive sense of the
justice and consequent benefits of such a course. A single
testimony, of many that might be given from their writings, must
suffice. In the _Religio-Philosophical Journal_, Chicago, Ill.,
November 22, 1884, its editor, J. C. Bundy, says: "Although not
especially published in the interest of woman, this journal is a
stalwart advocate of woman's rights, and has for years given
weekly space to 'Woman and the Household,' a department under the
care of Mrs. Hester M. Poole, who has done much to encourage
women to renewed and persistent effort for their own
advancement."
It has been the custom of some of our journals to ask for letters
of greeting from distinguished people for New Year's day. We find
the following in the _Inter-Ocean_: "Sojourner Truth, the Miriam
of the later Exodus, sends us this remarkable letter. She is the
most wonderful woman the colored race has ever produced, and thus
conveys her New Year's greeting to our readers:
"DEAR FRIENDS: More than a hundred New Years have I seen
before this one, and I send a New Year's greeting to one and
all. We talk of a beginning, but there is no beginning but
the beginning of a wrong. All else is from God, and is from
everlasting to everlasting. All that has a beginning will
have an ending. God is without end, and all that is good is
without end. We shall never see God, only as we see him in
one another. He is a great ocean of love, and we live and
move in Him as the fishes in the sea, filled with His love
and spirit, and His throne is in the hearts of His people.
Jesus, the Son of God, will be as we are, if we are pure,
and we will be like him. There will be no distinction. He
will be like the sun and shine upon us, and we will be like
the sun and shine upon him; all filled with glory. We are
the children of one Father, and he is God; and Jesus will be
one among us. God is no respecter of persons, and we will be
as one. If it were not so, there would be jealousy. These
ideas have come to me since I was a hundred years old, and
if you, my friends, live to be a hundred years old, too, you
may have greater ideas than these. This has become a new
world. These thoughts I speak of because they come to me,
and for you to consider and look at. We should grow in
wisdom as we grow older, and new ideas will come to us about
God and ourselves, and we will get more and more the wisdom
of God. I am glad to be remembered by you, and to be able to
send my thoughts; hoping they may multiply and bear fruit.
If I should live to see another New Year's Day I hope to be
able to send more new thoughts.
SOJOURNER TRUTH.
"_Grand Rapids, Mich._, Dec. 26, 1880."
This was accompanied by a note from her most faithful friend,
Mrs. Frances W. Titus, relating matters of interest as to her
present circumstances. She also said: "We have recently another
proof that she is over one hundred years old. Mention of the
'dark day' May 19, 1780, was made in her presence, when she said,
'I remember the dark day'; and gave a description of that
wonderful phenomenon. As the narrative of Sojourner's life has
long been before the public, we prefer to anything this latest
thought of hers, standing then on the verge of the life of the
spirit."
Sojourner was long a resident and laborer in reform in Michigan,
from which State she went out to the District of Columbia to
befriend her people, as well as to other distant fields. She went
to help feed and clothe the refugees in Kansas in 1879-80, and in
reaching one locality she rode nearly a hundred miles in a lumber
wagon. She closed her eventful life in Battle Creek, where she
passed her last days, having reached the great age of one hundred
and ten years.
Mrs. Laura C. Haviland is another noble woman worthy of
mention. She has given a busy life to mitigating the
miseries of the unfortunate. She helped many a fugitive to
elude the kidnappers; she nursed the suffering soldiers, fed
the starving freedmen, following them into Kansas,[324] and
traveled thousands of miles with orphan children to find
them places in western homes. She and her husband at an
early day opened a manual-labor school, beginning by taking
nine children from the county-house, to educate them with
their own on a farm near Adrian. Out of her repeated
experiments, and petitions to the legislature for State aid,
grew at last the State school for homeless children at
Coldwater, where for years she gave her services to train
girls in various industries.
Mrs. Sybil Lawrence, a woman of strong character, and
charming social qualities, exerted a powerful influence for
many years in Ann Arbor. Being in sympathy with the suffrage
movement, and in favor of coëducation, she did all in her
power to make the experiment a success, by her aid and
counsels to the girls who first entered the University. Her
mother, sister, and nieces made a charming household of
earnest women ready for every good work. Their services in
the war were indispensable, and their sympathies during the
trying period of reconstruction were all on the side of
liberty and justice.
There are many other noble women in Michigan worthy of mention
did space permit, such as Miss Emily Ward, a woman of remarkable
force of character and great benevolence; Mrs. Lucy L. Stout, who
has written many beautiful sentiments in prose and verse: Eliza
Legget and Florence Mayhew, identified with all reform movements;
Mrs. Tenney, the State librarian; and Mrs. Euphemia Cochrane, a
Scotch woman by birth, who loved justice and liberty, a staunch
friend alike of the slave and the unfortunate of her own sex.
Under her roof the advocates of abolition and woman suffrage
always found a haven of rest. Henry C. Wright, Wendell Phillips,
William Lloyd Garrison, Sojourner Truth, Theodore Tilton,
Frederick Douglass, Abbey Kelley and Stephen Foster could all
bear testimony to her generous and graceful hospitality. She was
president of the Detroit Woman Suffrage Association at the time
she passed from earth to a higher life.
FOOTNOTES:
[305] Having made many lyceum trips through Michigan, I have had
several opportunities of meeting Mrs. Stone in her own quiet home,
and I can readily understand the wide influence she exerted on the
women of that State, and what a benediction her presence must have
been in all the reform associations in which she took an active
part. I always felt that Michigan would be a grand State in which
to make the experiment of woman suffrage, especially as in
Mrs. Stone we had an enthusiastic coädjutor. In paying this
well-deserved tribute to Mrs. Stone, I must not forget to mention
that Mrs. Janney of Flint, a woman of great executive ability,
started the first woman's reading-room and library many years
ago.--[E. C. S.
[306] A sketch of this brilliant Polish woman, who has taken such
an active part in the woman suffrage movement, both in this country
and England, will be found in Volume I., page 95.
[307] The speakers at the Battle Creek convention were Miriam M.
Cole, editor of _The Woman's Advocate_, Dayton, Ohio; Mary A.
Livermore, editor _Woman's Journal_, Boston; Hannah Tracy Cutler,
Illinois; Rev. J. M. McCarthy, Saginaw; Mrs. J. C. Dexter, Ionia;
Mrs. D. C. Blakeman, Lucinda H. Stone, Kalamazoo; Adelle Hazlett,
Hillsdale; Rev. J. S. Loveland, D. M. Fox, Battle Creek; Mary T.
Lathrop, Jackson. Letters of sympathy were received from B. F.
Cocker and Moses Coit Tyler, professors of the Michigan State
University. The officers of the State association were:
_President_, Professor Moses Coit Tyler, Ann Arbor;
_Vice-President_, Lucinda H. Stone; _Recording Secretary_, Mary T.
Lathrop; _Corresponding Secretary_, Euphemia Cochran, Detroit;
_Treasurer_, Colin Campbell, Detroit; _Executive Committee_, Dr. S.
B. Thayer, Frances W. Titus, Battle Creek; Eliza Burt Gamble, East
Saginaw; Catharine A. F. Stebbins, Detroit; Hon. J. G. Wait,
Sturgis; Mrs. D. C. Blakeman, Kalamazoo; Mrs. L. H. T. Dexter,
Ionia.
[308] The speakers at the Northwestern convention were Mrs.
Hazlett, the president; Hon. C. B. Waite, Professor D. C. Brooks,
Chicago; Susan B. Anthony, Celia Burleigh, New York; Lillie
Peckham, Wisconsin; Mrs. Lathrop, Jackson; Giles B. Stebbins, Adam
Elder, J. B. Bloss, Detroit. Letters were reported from Henry Ward
Beecher, Wendell Phillips, Rev. E. O. Haven, Professor B. F.
Cocker, Moses Coit Tyler, Mrs. Livermore, Lucy Stone, H. B.
Blackwell, Mrs. Josephine Griffing, T. W. Higginson, Theodore
Tilton, Phoebe Couzins, Anna E. Dickinson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Miriam M. Cole and Rev. Robert Collyer. The officers elected were:
_President_, Mrs. A. M. Hazlett, Michigan; _Recording Secretary_,
Mrs. Rebecca W. Mott, Chicago; _Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs.
Harriet S. Brooks, Chicago; _Treasurer_, Hon. Fernandol Jones,
Chicago; _Vice-Presidents_, J. B. Bloss, Michigan; Mrs. Myra
Bradwell, Illinois; Mrs. E. R. Collins, Ohio; Mrs. Dr. Ferguson,
Indiana; Miss Phoebe Couzins, Missouri; _Executive Committee_, C.
B. Waite, Chicago; Colin Campbell, Detroit; Mrs. Francis Minor,
Missouri; Madame Anneke, Wisconsin; Mrs. Charles Leonard and Mrs.
E. J. Loomis, Chicago.
[309] _President_, Mrs. A. H. Walker; _Corresponding Secretary_,
Lucinda H. Stone; _Recording Secretary_, Mrs. S. E. Emory;
_Treasurer_, Mrs. E. Metcalf; _Executive Committee_, Dr. J. A.B.
Stone, Mrs. Frances Titus, Mrs. O. A. Jennison, Mrs. C. A. F.
Stebbins, Mrs. D. C. Blakeman, Mrs. L. B. Curtiss, Dr. J. H.
Bartholomew.
[310] The following named representatives voted _yea_: Messrs,
Armstrong, Bailey, Bartholomew, Blackman, Briggs, Brown, Brunson,
Buell, Burns, Cady, Carter, Chamberlain, Collins, Dintruff, Drake,
Drew, Edwards, Fancher, Ferguson, Garfield, Gravelink, Gilmore,
Goodrich, Gordon, Green, Haire, Harden, Hewitt, Hosner, Howard,
Hoyt, Kellogg, Knapp, Lamb, Luce, E. R. Miller, R. C. Miller,
Mitchell, Morse, O'Dell, Parker, Parsons, Pierce, Priest, Remer,
Rich, Robinson, Sanderson, Scott, Sessions, Shaw, Smith, Taylor,
Thomas, Thompson, VanAken, VanScoy, A. Walker, F. Walker, Walton,
Warren, Welch, Welker, Wheeler, Withington, Wixon, Speaker--67. The
following named Senators voted _yea_: Messrs. Anderson, Beattie,
Brewer, Butterfield, Childs, Clubb, Cook, Crosby, Curry, DeLand,
Ely, Goodell, Gray, Hewitt, Isham, Lewis, Mickley, Mitchell,
McGowan, Neasmith, Prutzman, Richardson, Sparks, Sumner, Sutton,
Wells--26.
[311] Officers of the Michigan State Woman Suffrage Association:
_President_, Hon. Jonas H. McGowan, Coldwater; _Vice-Presidents_,
Rev. Richmond Fiske Jr., Grand Haven, Mrs. John J. Bagley, Detroit;
_Recording Secretary_, Mrs. N. Geddes, Lenawee; _Secretary and
Treasurer_, George H. Stickney, Grand Haven; _Executive Committee_,
Chairman, Hon. William M. Ferry, Grand Haven; First District--Giles
B. Stebbins, Z. R. Brockway, Wayne; Second District--Hon. Charles
E. Mickley, Lenawee, Mrs. M. A. Hazlett, Hillsdale; Third
District--Hon. W. H. Withington, Jackson, Morgan Bates, Calhoun;
Fourth District--James H. Stone, Kalamazoo, Miss Sarah Clute, St.
Joseph; Fifth District--Hon. B. A. Harlan, Mrs. M. C. Bliss, Kent;
Sixth District--Hon. I. H, Bartholomew, Ingham, Mrs. A. Jenney,
Genesee; Seventh District--Hon. J. C. Lamb, Lapeer, J. P. Hoyt,
Tuscola; Eighth District--Hon. C. V. DeLand, Saginaw, Hon. J. D.
Lewis, Bay; Ninth District--Hon. E. L. Gray, Newaygo, Mrs. J. G.
Ramsdell, Grand Traverse; _Vice-Presidents by Congressional
Districts_, First District--Mrs. Eliza Leggett, Hon. W. N. Hudson,
Wayne; Second District--Hon. W. S. Wilcox, Lenawee, Hon. Talcott E.
Wing, Monroe; Third District--Mrs. Ann E. Graves, Calhoun, Mrs.
Mary Lathrop, Jackson; Fourth District--Hon. Levi Sparks, Berrien,
Rev. H. C. Peck, Kalamazoo; Fifth District--Hon. S. L. Withey, Hon.
James Miller, Kent; Sixth District--Hon. Randolph Strickland,
Clinton, C. F. Kimball, Oakland; Seventh District--Hon. Ira
Butterfield, Lapeer, John M. Potter, Macomb; Eighth District--Hon.
Ralph Ely, Gratiot, Mrs. S. M. Green, Bay; Ninth District--Elvin L.
Sprague, Grand Traverse, S. W. Fowler, Manistee.
[312] Among many others were letters from Amos Dresser, Parker
Pillsbury, Henry B. Blackwell, Rev. S. Reed, of Ann Arbor, William
Lloyd Garrison, Lucy Stone, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Lucretia Mott,
Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Dr. Henry B. Baker, Miriam M. Cole,
Margaret V. Longley, Abby and Julia Smith, of Glastonbury, Conn.,
A. C. Voris, from the Ohio constitutional convention, Hon. J. Logan
Chipman.
[313] The following persons were announced and requested to
communicate at once with the Executive Committee, George H.
Stickney, Secretary, Grand Haven, Mich.: _Allegan_, Mrs. E. S.
Nichols; _Barry_, Mrs. Goodyear; _Bay_, Mrs. S. M. Green, Mrs.
Judge Holmes; _Berrien_, Hon. Levi Sparks, O. E. Mead; _Branch_,
Mrs. Celia Woolley, Mrs. H. J. Boutelle; _Calhoun_, W. F. Neil,
Mrs. Judge Graves, Morgan Bates, Dr. G. P. Jocelyn; _Cass_, Mr.
Rice, William L. Jaques; _Chippewa_, Mrs. Charles G. Shepherd;
_Clinton_, Mrs. Lee, Mrs. Gole; _Eaton_, J. Chance, Hon. A. K.
Warren, Mrs. J. Musgrave, Mr. and Mrs. E. A. Foote; _Genesee_, Mrs.
D. Stewart; _Grand Traverse_, Hon. W. H. C. Mitchell, Hon. J. G.
Ramsdell; _Gratiot_, Hon. Ralph Ely; _Hillsdale_, Mrs. M. A.
Pendill, Mrs. Dr. Swift, Mrs. E. Samm; _Ingham_, Dr. I. H.
Bartholomew, Mrs. O. A. Jenison, A. R. Burr; _Ionia_, Mrs. A.
Williams, Mrs. Chaddock, Mr. J. B. Smith; _Isabella_, Mrs. Douglas
Nelson; _Jackson_, Mrs. Mary Lathrop, Fidus Livermore; _Kalamazoo_,
J. H. Stone, Col. F. W. Curtenius, Merritt Moore. Dr. N. Thomas;
_Kent_, Mrs. E. L. Briggs, E. G. D. Holden, E. P. Churchill;
_Lapeer_, Hon. J. C. Lamb, Mrs. J. B. Wilson; _Lenawee_, Mrs. Dr.
Fox, Mrs. F. A. Rowley, Hon. Charles E. Mickley; _Livingston_, E.
P. Gregory; _Macomb_, Mrs. Ambrose Campbell, Daniel B. Briggs;
_Manistee_, S. W. Fowler, Hon. B. M. Cutcheon, T. J. Ramsdell;
_Marquette_, Sidney Adams, Hiram A. Burt; _Mason_, Mr. Foster;
_Midland_, Dr. E. Jennings, Mrs. Sumner; _Missaukee_, S. W. Davis;
_Monroe_, Hon. J. J. Sumner; _Montcalm_, Mr. J. M. Fuller;
_Muskegon_, Lieutenant-Governor H. H. Holt, Mrs. O. B. Ingersoll,
Mrs. Barney; _Newaygo_, Hon. E. L. Gray, Mrs. Lucy Utley;
_Oakland_, Mrs. D. B. Fox, J. Holman, jr., Mrs. Alexander;
_Oceana_, John Halsted; _Osceola_, B. F. Gooch; _Ottawa_, Dwight
Cutler, Mrs. W. C. Sheldon; _Roscommon_, Messrs. Davis & Hall;
_Saginaw_, Mrs. Whiting, Mrs. Gamble, J. F. Driggs, W. P. Burdick;
_Shiawassee_, Mrs. Dr. Parkill, J. H. Hartwell, Hon. J. M. Goodell,
Dr. King; _St. Clair_, Hon. B. W. Jenks; _St. Joseph_, W. S. Moore,
Mrs. Mary Peck; _Tuscola_, Mrs. J. P. Hoyt; _Van Buren_, Mr. and
Mrs. C. D. Van Vechten, A. S. Dyckman, Hon. S. H. Blackman;
_Washtenaw_, Mrs. Israel Hall, Mrs. Seth Reed, D. Cramer, Mary E.
Foster; _Wayne_, Mrs. C. A. F. Stebbins, Colin Campbell, G. W.
Bates, Lucy L. Stout.
[314] Miss Eastman, Miss Hindman, Phoebe Couzins, Margaret W.
Campbell, Elizabeth K. Churchill, Lelia Partridge, Mrs. Hazlett,
Mrs. Samms, Miss Matilda Victor; George W. Julian of Indiana, Giles
B. Stebbins and Clinton R. Fisk, representing the Michigan
Association, and the following among volunteer workers: B. A.
Harlan of Grand Rapids, Mrs. Hathaway of Cass county, Mrs. Judge
Fuller, the Hon. J. H. McGowan and Mrs. Boutelle of Branch county;
Mrs. L. A. Pearsall of Macomb, Mrs. F. W. Gillette of Oakland, Miss
Strickland of Clinton, J. B. Stone of Kalamazoo, Mrs. Lucy L. Stout
of Wayne, and the Rev. T. H. Stewart of Indiana.
[315] It was in this campaign that an editor in a Kalamazoo journal
said: "That ancient daughter of Methuselah, Susan B. Anthony,
passed through our city yesterday, on her way to the Plainwell
meeting, with a bonnet on her head looking as if she had recently
descended from Noah's ark." Miss Anthony often referred to this
description of herself, and said, "Had I represented 20,000 votes
in Michigan, that political editor would not have known nor cared
whether I was the oldest or the youngest daughter of Methuselah, or
whether my bonnet came from the ark or from Worth's.--[E. C. S.
[316] The inspectors voting were: _Yeas_--Adams, Baxter, Brooks,
Dullea, Henderson, Smith. _Nays_--Bragg, Balch, Barclay, Barry,
Bond, Christian, Hill, Hughes, Langley, Mahoney, O'Keefe,
Sutherland.
[317] We can easily see how little the opponents who talk so much
of chivalry, respect women or themselves, by the language they use
when they are opposed on this very question.
[318] Mrs. Boutelle and Mrs. Stebbins were in the polling place two
or three hours, while Mr. Farwell made efforts to gain favorable
opinions enough to convert Colonel Phelps; many excellent men were
in favor of her vote. The ladies lunched from a daintily filled
basket, prepared by the wife of inspector Farwell.
[319] Miss Abby Rogers, Miss Delia Rogers, Miss Emily Ward, and
Miss Clapp, were all deeply interested in establishing a seminary
where girls could have equal advantages with students in the
university. This seminary was in existence ten years, but without
State aid the struggle was too great, and Miss Abby Rogers, the
founder, abandoned the undertaking.
[320] The names of the eleven young women Mrs. Stearns is unable to
recall.
[321] The officers of the Manistee Society are (1885): _President_,
Mrs. Lucy T. Stansell; _Corresponding Secretary_, Fannie Holden
Fowler; _Recording Secretary_, Miss Nellie Walker; _Treasurer_,
Mrs. Susan Seymour.
[322] The officers of the Grand Rapids Society are: _President_,
Mrs. Cordelia F. Briggs; _Vice-Presidents_, Loraine Immen, Emma
Wheeler; _Treasurer_, Mrs. Henry Spring; _Secretary_, Mrs. J. W.
Adams.
[323] Following is a complete list of all officers elected in 1885:
_President_, Mrs. Mary L. Doe of Carrollton; _Vice-President_, Mrs.
Loraine Immen of Grand Rapids; _Recording Secretary_, Mrs. H. S.
Spring of Grand Rapids; _Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs. Fannie H.
Fowler of Manistee; _Treasurer_, Mrs. C. A. F. Stebbins of Detroit;
_Advisory Committee_, Mrs. E. L. Briggs of Grand Rapids, and Mrs.
S. E. V. Emery of Lansing; _Executive Committee_--First District,
Mrs. Harriet J. Boutell of Detroit; Second District, Mrs. Annette
B. Gardner Smith of Ann Arbor; Fifth District, Mrs. Emily H.
Ketchum of Grand Rapids; Sixth District, Francis M. Stuart of
Flint; Eighth District, Mrs. Frances C. Stafford of Milwaukee;
Ninth District, Col. S. W. Fowler of Manistee; Eleventh and Twelfth
Districts, Mrs. R. A. Campbell, Traverse City.
[324] Spending the summer of 1865 at Leavenworth, I frequently
visited Mrs. Haviland, then busily occupied in ministering to the
necessities of the 10,000 refugees just then from the Southern
States. On May 29, I aided her in collecting provisions for the
steamer, which was to transport over a hundred men, women and
children, for whom she was to provide places in Michigan. I shall
never forget that day nor the admiration and reverence I felt for
the magnanimity and self-sacrifice of that wonderful woman.--[S. B.
A.
CHAPTER XLII.
INDIANA.
The First Woman Suffrage Convention After the War, 1869--Amanda
M. Way--Annual Meetings, 1870-85, in the Larger
Cities--Indianapolis Equal Suffrage Society, 1878--A Course of
Lectures--In May, 1880, National Convention in
Indianapolis--Zerelda G. Wallace--Social Entertainment--Governor
Albert G. Porter--Susan B. Anthony's Birthday--Schuyler
Colfax--Legislative Hearings--Temperance Women of Indiana--Helen
M. Gougar--General Assembly--Delegates to Political
Conventions--Women Address Political Meetings--Important Changes
in the Laws for Women, from 1860 to 1884--Colleges Open to
Women--Demia
Butler--Professors--Lawyers--Doctors--Ministers--Miss Catherine
Merrill--Miss Elizabeth Eaglesfield--Rev. Prudence Le Clerc--Dr.
Mary F. Thomas--Prominent Men and Women--George W. Julian--The
Journals--Gertrude Garrison.
This was one of the first States to form a Woman Suffrage
Society[325] for thoroughly organized action, with a president,
secretary, treasurer, and constitution and by-laws. From October,
1851, this association held annual meetings, sent petitions and
appeals to the legislature, and had frequent hearings at the
capitol, diligently pressing the question of political equality for
woman for ten consecutive years. Then, although the society did not
disband, we find no record of meetings or aggressive action until
1869, for here, as elsewhere, all other interests were forgotten in
the intense excitement of a civil war. But no sooner were the
battles fought, victory achieved, and the army disbanded, than
woman's protests against her wrongs were heard throughout the
Northern States; and in Indiana the same Amanda M. Way who took the
initiative step in 1851 for the first woman's convention, summoned
her coädjutors once more to action in 1869[326], and with the same
platform and officers renewed the work with added determination for
a final victory.
For this interesting chapter we are indebted to Mrs. May Wright
Sewall, who has patiently gathered and arranged this material, and
laid it, as a free gift, at our feet. Those who have ever attempted
to unearth the most trivial incidents of history, will appreciate
the difficulties she must have encountered in this work, as well as
in condensing all she desired to say within the very limited space
allowed to this chapter. Mrs. Sewall writes:
The first convention after the war, June 8, 9, 1869, was held in
Masonic Hall, and continued two days. The Indianapolis _Journal_
devoted several columns daily to the proceedings, closing with
the following complimentary editorial:
As a deliberative assembly it compared favorably with the
best that have ever been conducted by our own sex. To say
that there was as much order, propriety and dignity as
usually characterizes male conventions of a political
character is but to put the matter in a very mild shape.
Whatever was said, was said with earnestness and for a
purpose, and while several times the debate was considerably
spiced, the ladies never fell below their brothers in sound
sense. We have yet to see any sensible man who attended the
convention whose esteem for woman has been lowered, while
very many have been converted by the captivating speeches of
Mrs. Cole, Mrs. Swank and Mrs. Livermore.
In the _Sentinel_ of June 11, 1869, an editorial appeared whose
evident object was to reässure the public mind and to restore to
peace and confidence any souls that might have been agitated
during the convention by so unusual and novel an exercise as
thought. The nature of the sedative potion thus editorially
administered to an alarmed public may be inferred from this
sample:
No amount of human ingenuity can change the arrangement of
nature. The history of the race furnishes the evidence that
the species of man and woman are opposite. The distinctions
that now exist have existed from the time that the "Lord God
caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam," and said: "Thy
desire shall be to thy husband; he shall rule over thee."
This brief story comprises the history of man and woman, and
defines the relations which shall ever exist between them.
When woman ceases to be womanly, woman's rights associations
become her fitting province.
The editor of the _Journal_ at that time was Colonel W. R.
Holloway, the present very liberal manager of the _Times_. The
editor of the _Sentinel_ was Joseph J. Bingham. The State was
then Republican, and as the organ of that party the _Journal_
probably had the larger number of readers.
The State Woman Suffrage Association convened in Indianapolis,
June 8, 1870, and held a two days' meeting. The _Journal_
contains, as usual, a full report. The _Sentinel's_ tone is quite
different from that which distinguished its utterances the
preceding year. Its reports are full and perfectly respectful.
This convention is memorable as that at which the Indiana Society
became auxiliary to the American Association. The records show
that this union was accomplished by a majority of _one_, the
ballot on the proposition standing 15 for and 14 against. As soon
as the union was thus effected the following was adopted:
_Resolved_, That this association is in favor of the union
of the National and American Associations as soon as
practicable.
On the same day Judge Bradwell of Chicago submitted a resolution
favoring the union of the two national societies, which was laid
on the table. Of the annual meetings from 1871 to 1878 the
Indianapolis papers contain no reports, save the briefest mention
of those of 1873-4. From 1878 to 1885 short but fair reports may
be found. Since 1870, the conventions of this society[327] have
been held in different towns throughout the State.[328] The
minutes show that the propriety of withdrawing from the American
Association and remaining independent was brought before the
convention of 1871, under the head of _special business_; that it
was decided to postpone action until the next annual meeting, and
to make the matter of withdrawal a special order of business, but
it does not appear that from that time the subject has ever been
broached. At the annual meeting of 1875, held at a time when
preparations for celebrating our national centennial were in
progress, the following resolution was passed:
_Resolved_, That we congratulate the voters of the United
States on their enjoyment of the right of suffrage, and
commend them for the great centenary celebration of the
establishment of that right, which they are about to have.
But we do earnestly protest against the action of the
Indiana legislature by which it made appropriations for that
purpose of moneys collected by taxing women's property.
In November, 1878, the ninth annual meeting of the American
Association was held in Indianapolis, by invitation from the
State Society.[329]
In the month of March, 1878, some very mysterious whisperings
advertised the fact that there was to be a meeting of the ladies
of Indianapolis known to have "advanced ideas" concerning their
sex. In response to a secretly circulated summons, there met at
No. 18 Circle Hall nine women and one man, who, though not
mutually acquainted, were the most courageous of those to whom
the call had come. Probably each of the ten often thinks with
amusement of the suspicious glances with which they regarded one
another. As a participant, I may say that the company had the air
of a band of conspirators. Had we convened consciously to plot
the ruin of our domestic life, which opponents predict as the
result of woman's enfranchisement, we could not have looked more
guilty or have moved about with more unnatural stealth. That
demeanor I explain as an unconscious tribute to what "Madam
Grundy" would have thought had she known of our conclave.
At that meeting one point only was definitely settled; which was,
whether the new society should take a name which would conceal
from the public its primary object, or one which would clearly
advertise it. The honesty of the incipient organization was
vindicated by its deciding upon the latter. I do not record in
detail the initiative steps of this flourishing society in order
to awaken in its members any humiliating memories, but because
the fact that ten conscientious, upright persons could thus
secretly convene in an obscure room, and that such a question
could agitate them for more than two hours, is the best
indication that could be given of the conservative atmosphere
which enveloped Indianapolis, even as late as 1878. The next
meeting was appointed for April 2, at the residence of Mrs.
Zerelda G. Wallace. Notices were inserted in the papers, and in
the meantime some pains was taken to secure not only the presence
of persons who had not previously been identified with any reform
movement, but also that of some well-known friends. It was
attended by twenty-six men and women, representing various
religious and political parties, most of whom enjoyed the
advantages of education and social position, and resulted in a
permanent organization under a constitution whose first article
is as follows:
This organization shall be known as the Indianapolis Equal
Suffrage Society, and shall consist of such men and women as
are willing to labor for the attainment of equal rights at
the ballot-box for all citizens on the same conditions.
On the principle that that which has some restrictions is most
desired, membership was at first hedged about with certain
formalities. While most reform organizations welcome as members
all who will pay their annual fee and subscribe to the
constitution, this society requires that the names of candidates
be presented at one meeting and formally balloted on at the next,
thus providing a month for consideration. Since 1878 this
society[330] has held forty-three public meetings, and
distributed throughout the city several thousand tracts. At
intervals the society has engaged speakers from abroad. Miss
Anthony gave her "Bread and Ballot" to a large audience in
Masonic Hall, and many date their conversion from that evening.
Mrs. Stanton has appeared twice under the auspices of the
society. On the first occasion it secured for her the court-room
in which the upper house of the general assembly was then
sitting. Tickets of admission were sent to all the members of
both houses. Her lecture on "The Education of Girls," made a
profound impression. On her second appearance she spoke in the
First Christian Church, on "Boys." For Miss Frances E. Willard,
Robert's Park Church was obtained, and thus suffrage principles
were presented to a new class of minds. Mrs. J. Ellen Foster
spoke on "Women before the Law," in the Criminal-court room. The
society made every effort to secure the general attendance of
members of the bar. Before one of its regular meetings in the
Christian chapel, Mrs. Louise V. Boyd read a very bright paper on
"A Cheerful Outlook for Women." At its present parlors, Mrs.
Harbert delivered an address for the benefit of the suffrage
campaign in Oregon.
In May, 1880, this society invited the National Association to
hold its annual convention in Indianapolis. Entertainment was
provided for eighty-seven delegates, besides the friends who came
from different parts of the State. In Park Theatre, the largest
auditorium of the city, eloquent voices for two days pleaded the
cause of freedom. The reports in the city press were full and
fair, and the editorials commendatory. The fact that the
_Sentinel_ contained a long editorial advocating the doctrines of
equal suffrage, shows the progress since 1869. The evening after
the convention a reception was given to the members and friends
of the National Association in the spacious parlors of Mrs. John
C. New.
From its origin the Indianapolis society has held aloof from all
formal alliances. Thus it has been free to work with individuals
and organizations that have woman suffrage for their aim. It
habitually sends delegates to the State annual conventions, and
in those of the American and National it is usually represented.
In December, 1880, the society issued a letter, secured its
publication in the leading papers of the State, and addressed a
copy to each member of the General Assembly, in order to advise
that body that there were women ready to watch their official
careers and to demand from them the consideration of just claims:
INDIANAPOLIS, Dec. 22, 1880.
DEAR SIR: The Equal Suffrage Society of Indianapolis, in
behalf of citizens of Indiana who believe that liberty to
exercise the right of suffrage should neither be granted nor
denied on the ground of sex, would respectfully notify you
that during the next session of the State legislature it
will invite the attention of that body to the consideration
of what is popularly called "The Suffrage Question." The
society will petition the legislature to devote a day to
hearing, from representative advocates of woman suffrage,
appeals and arguments for such legislation as may be
necessary to abolish the present unjust restriction of the
elective franchise to one sex, and to secure to women the
free exercise of the ballot, under the same conditions and
such only, as are imposed upon men. To this matter we ask
your unprejudiced attention, that when our cause shall be
brought before the legislature its advocates may have your
coöperation.
Very respectfully yours, ZERELDA G. WALLACE, _President_.
MAY WRIGHT SEWALL, _Secretary_,
By order of the Equal Suffrage Society of Indianapolis.
The society has lately taken a new departure, giving lunches,
parties and literary entertainments, to which invitations[331]
are issued, by the officers, thus becoming a factor in the social
life of the city. The invitation, programme, and press comments
of its last entertainment indicate the character of these
reünions, and the esteem in which they are held. These occasions
have been the means of securing for the society greater popular
favor than it has hitherto enjoyed. At the conclusion of the
formal toasts, the president called upon Gov. Albert G. Porter,
who had come in a few minutes before. He thanked the meeting for
its reference to what he had done for the cause of equal
suffrage, and announced that while he remained governor of
Indiana he would do all he could for the rights of women.[332] He
referred to the progress made, and to the refining influence that
women would have on political matters. Of all the social
entertainments given, none has secured more converts than the
celebration of Susan B. Anthony's sixty-second birthday. The
arrangements for this event were placed in the hands of Mrs. Mary
E.N. Carey and Mrs. May Wright Sewall. The following account,
prepared by the author of this chapter for the Indianapolis
_Times_ of February 18, 1882, will sufficiently indicate the
spirit of the occasion:
The anniversary was a unique event. A number of invitations
were issued to citizens interested in suffrage who were not
formally connected with the association. As a result, on the
evening of February 15, there were gathered in the spacious
parlors of Dr. Carey's hospitable home, one hundred and
fifty persons representing the best circles of Indianapolis
society. A portrait of Miss Anthony rested upon an easel,
conspicuously placed, that all might see the serene face of
the woman who for thirty years has preached the gospel of
political freedom, and expounded the constitution of the
United States in favor of justice to all. The programme was
somewhat informal, all but two of the speeches[333] being
spontaneous expressions of admiration for Miss Anthony and
her fidelity to principle. There were two regrets connected
with the programme. These were caused by the absence of Gov.
Porter and Hon. Schuyler Colfax; but the gracious presence
of Mrs. Colfax was a reminder of her husband's fidelity to
our cause, and Mrs. Porter's sympathetic face was a scarcely
less potent support than would have been a speech from the
governor. Just before the close of the meeting the following
telegram was sent to Miss Anthony:
_Susan B. Anthony, Tenafly, New Jersey_.
The Indianapolis Equal Suffrage Society, in meeting
assembled with many friends sends you greeting on this
anniversary occasion, in recognition of your devotion to the
cause of women.
MAY WRIGHT SEWALL, _Secretary_.
To report the details of this social gathering would be
wearisome, but some reflections to which the occasion gave rise
may be permitted. One lady upon seeing the invitation to the
meeting exclaimed: "This little bit of paper is an indication of
a higher civilization than I supposed we had yet entered upon.
Until recently it has been like the betrayal of a secret for a
woman, particularly for an unmarried woman, to have a birthday."
This exclamation but expresses a historical fact and a prophetic
truth. So long as woman's only value depended upon physical
charms, the years which destroyed them were deemed enemies. The
fact that an unmarried woman's sixty-second birthday can be
celebrated, shows the dawning of the idea that the loss of youth
and its fresh beauty may be more than compensated by the higher
charms of intellectual attainments. The time will never come when
women, or men either, will delight in the possession of
crows-feet, gray hairs and wrinkles; but the time will come, aye,
and now is, when they will view these blemishes as but a petty
price to pay for the joy of new knowledge, for the deeper joy of
closer contact with humanity, and for the deepest joy of worthy
work well done.
The first legislative hearing since 1860, was that granted
January, 1871, to Miss Amanda Way and Mrs. Emma B. Swank. The two
houses received them in joint session, the lieutenant-governor and
speaker of the house occupying the speaker's desk. Mr. William
Cumback introduced Miss Way, who read the following memorial:
_Mr. President and Gentlemen_--We come before you as a
committee appointed by the Woman Suffrage Association to
memorialize your honorable body in behalf of the women of
Indiana. We ask you to take the necessary steps to so amend
the State constitution as to secure to women the right of
suffrage. We believe the extension of the full rights of
citizenship to all the people of the State, is in accordance
with the fundamental principles of a just government. We
believe that as woman has an equal interest with man in all
public questions, she should therefore have an equal voice
in their decision. We believe that as woman's life,
prosperity and happiness are equally dependent upon the
order and morality of society, she should have an equal
voice in the laws regulating her surroundings. We believe
that as woman is human, she has human needs and rights, and
as she is held responsible to law, she should have an equal
voice in electing her law-makers.
We believe that the interests of man and woman are equally
improved in securing to both equal education, a place in the
trades and professions, equal honor and dignity everywhere;
and as the first step to this end is equality before the
law, we, your petitioners, ask that you extend to the women
of Indiana the right of suffrage, and thus enable one-half
the citizens of the State to protect themselves in their
most sacred rights.
Miss Way spoke briefly to the points in the memorial, urging the
legislators to give to women the same chances for improvement,
the same means for defense, and the same weapons for protection
that they have secured to themselves. Mrs. Swank also made a
logical and eloquent speech. No action was taken by the
legislature.
On January 22, 1875, the two houses of the General Assembly
convened in joint session, to receive petitions from the
"Temperance Women of Indiana," who were on this occasion
represented by Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace, Mrs. Avaline and Mrs.
Robinson, who had been appointed by the State Temperance
Association. Mrs. Wallace read a memorial and stated that it was
signed by 10,000 women, and then argued its various points and
pleaded for the action of the "Honorable Body." Mrs. Avaline and
Mrs. Robinson followed in briefer, but not less earnest appeals.
The only answer elicited by these ladies was the assurance made
by Dr. Thompson, a member of the Senate, that he and his
colleagues were there, "not to represent their _consciences_, but
to represent their _constituents_," whose will was directly
opposed to the petition offered.
On January 3, 1877, a resolution to the effect that the
fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution of the
United States give the ballot to women, came to its third reading
in the lower House. On that occasion, Mrs. Wallace and Dr. Mary
F. Thomas represented the women of Indiana, and Mrs. Mary A.
Livermore was present to lend the assistance of her oratory. The
speeches created a profound impression, but neither native nor
foreign eloquence was able to secure the requisite vote. When the
ayes and nays were called, the resolution was lost--51 to 22.
On February 24, 1879, once again in joint session, the General
Assembly received a committee appointed by the State Association
and the Equal Suffrage Society of Indianapolis, to support
woman's claim to the ballot. Mrs. Wallace, Dr. Mary F. Thomas,
Mary E. Haggart and Amy E. Dunn, each spoke at length on the
points clearly set forth in the memorial. Whatever arguments
could reach the intellect, whatever could touch the
sensibilities, were urged by these ladies on that occasion, and
the gentlemen did not fail to compliment their abilities,
although the exercise of them had no palpable effect upon
legislation.
Before the General Assembly of 1880-81, had convened, it was
known by its members-elect that the women of the State would be a
constant factor in their deliberations. They had been notified of
this intention by the circular letter from the City Society, and
by the published fact that the State Association had already
appointed representatives, whose duty it should be to secure a
hearing for such an amendment to the constitution of the State as
should enable women to vote. As soon as the legislature
assembled, committees on women's claims were appointed in both
branches; Simeon P. Yancey being the chairman of the Senate, and
J. M. Furnas of the House, committee. Two points had been
determined upon. These were to try to secure the passage of a
bill which should immediately authorize women to vote for
presidential electors, and such an amendment to the constitution
of the State as should enable women to exercise the right of
suffrage on all questions.
In connection with the first of these points the name of Helen M.
Gougar deserves especial mention. At the Washington convention of
the American Association, Mr. Blackwell suggested that the States
try to secure the electoral ballot for women, and as soon as Mrs.
Gougar returned she urged the members of the legislature to take
the matter up. At her suggestion, Dr. Mary F. Thomas addressed a
letter to W. D. Wallace, esq., a prominent lawyer of Lafayette,
asking him if, in his opinion, the extension of the electoral
ballot to women would be incompatible with the present
constitution of the State; in reply to this Mr. Wallace set forth
an exhaustive argument,[334] proving the entire constitutionality
of such an act. Five thousand were printed and gratuitously
distributed throughout the State.
The Committee on Women's Claims in both Houses met at sundry
times with members of the Suffrage Association to discuss the
merits of these bills and to become familiar with the arguments.
During the regular session Mrs. Wallace and Mrs. Gougar spent two
consecutive weeks in attendance at the legislature, watching the
attitude of the different members and lobbying, in the good sense
of that word. The immediate object was to secure the passage of
the electoral bill, for that once gained, and women by act of the
legislature made voters upon the most important question, it was
reasonably thought that the passage of the amendment would be
thereby facilitated. A hearing was granted on February 16, 1881,
and the House took a recess to listen to the speeches of the
women appointed by the State Association, Mrs. Haggart and Mrs.
Gougar. The next day, February 17, the Senate afforded a similar
opportunity, and the same ladies addressed that body.
In addition to the faithful exertions of Mrs. Wallace and Mrs.
Gougar, and the public hearing granted by both houses, much quiet
but most effective work was done with individual members. To no
one is more due than to Paulina T. Merritt, whose reputation for
intelligent charity is widely known. Mrs. Merritt was a frequent
attendant upon the sessions of the legislature and her untiring
efforts in private conversations with members were invaluable. In
spite of all these influences, when the electoral bill was
brought to a vote upon its third reading, it was lost on the
ground that it was unconstitutional.
At the special session all efforts centered upon the bill for
amending section 2, of article II., of the State constitution, so
as to give women the right to vote in all elections. Mrs. Wallace
and Mrs. Gougar gave another week to the work, and on April 7 the
bill was brought to a vote in the House, and passed--ayes 62,
nays 24; in the Senate, on April 8, it also passed--ayes 25, nays
18; and so the first entrenchment was won.
No one believed that the bill to amend the constitution would
have passed had it not been preceded by the battle over the
electoral bill and the consequent education of the General
Assembly in regard to this great question of political rights.
Immediately a conference was held as to the proper manner of
expressing our gratitude to the committees on women's political
claims. It was at first thought the recognition should come from
the Equal Suffrage Society, but it was finally considered wiser
to have a reception given the honorable body by a voluntary
committee of women who should act quite independently of any
society.[335]
The passage of the amendment by the legislature of 1881 gave the
advocates of our cause a common objective point, and the efforts
of all during the two years immediately succeeding were directed
toward securing the election of such a legislature as might be
relied upon to repass the bill in 1883. The State society at its
annual meeting enlarged its central committee and instructed it
to arrange meetings in various parts of the State, to send out
speakers, and to organize local societies.[336] This committee
prepared a letter, for general distribution, indicating to the
women of the State their duty in the premises, and suggesting
various lines of work. Blanks for a special petition to the
General Assembly were sent to every township, which were
industriously circulated and numerously signed.
In the spring of 1882 the officers of the State society issued a
call for a mass-meeting, to which "all women within the
boundaries of the State who believed in equal suffrage, or were
interested in the fate of the pending amendment," were invited.
The meeting was held on May 19, at the Grand Opera House, and
the attendance exceeded the most extravagant hopes of those who
had called it. If any came to scoff, they remained to participate
with pride in this remarkable convention, which is yet frequently
referred to as the largest and most impressive meeting ever held
in the Hoosier capital. The call had invited those who could not
attend the meeting to manifest their sympathy by sending
postal-cards to the corresponding secretary. These were received
in such numbers for several days that Mrs. Adkinson and the
half-dozen clerks appointed to assist her in counting them,
unable to bring in a full report, announced at the close of the
evening session, that having reached 5,000, they desisted from
further enumeration.
No effort was spared to make the demonstration truly
representative of the suffrage interest throughout the State. All
the sessions were presided over by Mrs. Sewall, who called the
roll by congressional districts, some one of whose
representatives responded. The ease and dignity with which women,
many of whom had never spoken before any audience save their own
neighbors gathered in Sunday-school or prayer-meeting, reported
the status of their respective communities on the suffrage
question, was matter of astonishment as well as of
admiration.[337] So exceptional in all regards was the conduct of
the meeting that the papers united in expressing surprise at the
strength of the suffrage sentiment in the State as indicated by
the mass-convention.
This meeting of May 19, 1882, struck the key on which the friends
in the State spoke during the summer and fall of that year. Large
numbers of societies were organized and numerous meetings held;
the immediate object being to secure the election of a
legislature that should vote to submit the amendment passed by
the General Assembly of 1881 to the decision of what is mis-named
"a popular vote." The degree to which this action influenced the
politicians of the State cannot be accurately known, but we are
compelled to believe that it was one of the causes which induced
the Republicans in convention assembled to declare for the
"submission of the pending amendments." The Republican State
convention was held August 8, 1882, and the first plank in the
platform reads thus:
_Resolved, First_--That reposing trust in the people as the
fountain of power, we demand that the pending amendments to
the constitution shall be agreed to and submitted by the
next legislature to the voters of the State for their
decision thereon. These amendments were not partisan in
their origin, and are not so in character, and should not be
made so in voting upon them. Recognizing the fact that the
people are divided in sentiment in regard to the propriety
of their adoption or rejection, and cherishing the right of
private judgment, we favor the submission of these
amendments at a special election, so that there may be an
intelligent decision thereon, uninfluenced by partisan
issues.
At the mass-meeting of May 19, Mrs. P. T. Merritt of
Indianapolis, Mrs. M. E. M. Price of Kokomo, and Mrs. J. C.
Ridpath of Greencastle were appointed as delegates to the
different political State conventions. As a Republican, Mrs.
Merritt was received with great courtesy and accorded time to
speak. Her address was characterized by sound logic and dignity
of expression, and was reported in full with the rest of the
proceedings of the Republican convention. As a prohibition
amendment had also been passed by the legislature of 1881, the
interests of suffrage and prohibition in the campaign of 1882
were identical. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Indiana
sent Mrs. Helen M. Gougar to the Republican State convention, by
which she was respectfully received and which she ably addressed.
The advocates of suffrage did not content themselves during the
summer of 1882 by merely holding suffrage meetings proper, and
addressing political bodies, but they sought every opportunity to
reach the ears of the people for whatever purpose convened. The
Equal Suffrage Society received from the managers of the Acton
camp-meeting a place on their programme; accordingly Mrs. Haggart
and Mrs. Gougar, as delegates, addressed immense audiences. Both
of these ladies labored indefatigably, discussing the question of
submission of the amendments before Sunday-school conventions,
teachers' associations, agricultural fairs, picnics and
assemblies of every name. Others rendered less conspicuous, but
not less earnest or constant service; and when the political
campaign proper opened, it was evident that every candidate would
firmly and unreservedly answer the challenge: "Submission, or
non-submission?"
For the first time in the history of Indiana, women were employed
by party managers to address political meetings and advocate the
election of candidates. Mrs. Gougar addressed Republican rallies
at various points; she and Mrs. Haggart together made a canvass
of Tippecanoe county on behalf of the Republican candidate for
representative in the General Assembly, Captain W. De Witt
Wallace, who was committed not only to the submission of the
amendments, but also to the advocacy of both woman suffrage and
prohibition. The animosity of the liquor league was aroused, and
this powerful association threw itself against submission. The
result was the election of a legislature containing so large a
Democratic majority that there was no ground for hoping that the
amendments would be re-passed and sent to the voters of the State
for final adoption or rejection.
Though the submission of the amendments was one of the chief
issues in the campaign, many candidates who pledged themselves on
the ground that they involved questions which it was the
privilege of the voters to decide, reserved their own opinions
upon their merits. There were, however, candidates who openly
espoused woman suffrage _per se_.[338] Knowing that a majority of
the members of the General Assembly were pledged to vote down the
pending amendments, the friends tacitly agreed to maintain a
dignified silence toward that body concerning them. The Suffrage
Society at the capital, however, appointed a committee[339] to
watch the interests of woman in the legislature; and through its
influence, special committees on women's claims were obtained in
both Houses. Disappointed by the result in the legislature of
1883, but not discouraged, the society continued to labor with
undiminished zeal, and sought every legitimate opportunity to
prove woman a factor in State politics.
Several weeks prior to the Republican nominating convention at
Chicago, June 3, 1884, this society appointed committees to
correspond with each of the gentlemen prominently named as
candidates for nomination to the office of president, and also
appointed committees[340] to press upon the attention of the
different parties the political claims of women. The society
instructed each committee to carry on its work according to the
united judgment of its members and continue it until the close of
the legislative session of 1885. The committee appointed to
communicate with the Republicans addressed a letter to each of
the thirty delegates sent by Indiana to the nominating convention
at Chicago. They also addressed letters to the Republican State
central committee, and through the courtesy of Mr. John
Overmeyer, chairman, they were given an opportunity to appear
before the committee on resolutions. Mrs. Sewall presented a
resolution, and in a brief speech urged its adoption and
incorporation into the platform of the Republican party. Mrs.
Merritt and Mrs. Sewall were offered an opportunity to speak
before the convention, which they declined in the belief that it
was a greater gain to the cause to appear before the resolution
and platform committee than before the convention itself.
To what an appalling degree women were discriminated against by
the law prior to 1860, may be inferred from subsequent
legislative enactments. At almost every sitting of the biënnial
legislature, since 1860, some important change will be observed.
In 1861 was passed the following:
AN ACT _to enlarge the Legal Capacity of Married Women whose
Husbands are Insane, and to enable them to Contract as if
they were Unmarried._
SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the
State of Indiana: That all married women, or those who may
hereafter be married, whose husbands are or may be insane,
are, during the continuance of such insanity, hereby enabled
and authorized to make and to execute all such contracts,
and to be contracted with in relation to their separate
property, as they could if they were unmarried, and they may
sue and be sued as if they were _sole_.
The legislature of 1863 was undisturbed by any question
concerning women. In 1865 the legislature discriminated against
women by the passage of a very long act, prescribing the manner
in which enumerations of _white male citizens_ shall be made;
thus implying that a _white male citizen_ is an honorable and
important person, whose existence is to be noted with due care;
with a care that distinguishes him equally above the _white
female_ and the _black male_ citizen, and in effect places these
two unenumerated divisions of human beings into one class.
Another act of 1865 reäffirmed an act of 1852 which prescribed
the classes of persons capable of making a will, from which
married women were excluded.
[Illustration: May Wright Sewall]
The legislature of 1867 passed an act in regard to conveyance of
lands by wives of persons of unsound mind, which read as follows:
SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Indiana:
That in cases where the guardian of any person of unsound
mind, under the direction of any court of competent
jurisdiction has made, or may hereafter make, sale of any
lands of such person of unsound mind, the wife of such
person of unsound mind may by her separate deed release and
convey all her interest in and title to such land, and her
deed so made shall thereafter debar her from all claim to
such land, and shall have the same effect on her rights as
if her husband had been of sound mind and she had joined
with such husband in the execution of such conveyance.
In 1869, an act passed by the legislature of 1852, providing for
the settlement of a decedent's estate, was so amended as to
provide that the widow might select articles to the value of
$500, or receive the first $500 derived from the sale, or in case
it was worth no more than $500, might hold it. In 1871 the
amendment of 1869 was further amended so that in case the
personal property was less than $500 the deficit could be a lien
on the real estate, to be settled with other judgments and
mortgages.
In 1873 the possible ability of women to serve the State
officially was recognized by the passage of the following bill:
SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Indiana:
That women are hereby declared to be eligible to any office,
the election to which is or shall be vested in the General
Assembly of this State; or the appointment to which is or
shall be vested in the governor thereof.
SEC. 2. The foregoing shall not include women who shall
labor under any disability which may prevent them from
binding themselves by an official bond.
The legislature of 1873 also passed an act regulating the liquor
traffic, in which it is formally provided that a wife shall have
the same right to sue, to control the suit, and to control the
sum recovered by the suit, as a _feme sole_.
In 1875 an act passed the General Assembly making it impossible
to sell real property in which a woman has, by virtue of her
marriage; an inchoate right, for less than four-ninths of its
appraised value: and also providing that upon the sale of any
piece or aggregate of pieces of real property not exceeding
$2,000, the wife has her absolute right; and moreover providing
that in case of a judicial sale, the wife's inchoate interests
become absolute, and she may demand a partition.
In 1877 the General Assembly passed an act enabling married women
whose husbands are insane to sell and to convey real-estate
belonging to such married women, in the same way as if _femes
soles_.
When the act for establishing a female prison passed the
legislature of 1860, it provided that the board managing its
affairs should consist of three men, who should be assisted by an
advisory board composed of one man and two women. By the
legislature of 1877 this section was so amended as to make the
managing board consist of women exclusively, and the advisory
board was abolished.[341]
Of all the changes effected in the statutory law of Indiana since
1860, the following is the most important and may be regarded, so
far as women are concerned, the measure of the highest
legislative justice thus far attained in any State. This bill was
prepared by Addison C. Harris, then representing Indianapolis in
the State Senate, and was approved March 25, 1879:
AN ACT _concerning Married Women--Approved March 25, 1879:_
SEC. 1.--Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State
of Indiana: A married woman may bargain, sell, assign and
transfer her separate personal property the same as if she
were _sole_.
SEC. 2.--A married woman may carry on any trade or business,
and perform any labor or service on her sole and separate
account. The earnings and profits of any married woman
accruing from her trade, business, services or labor, other
than labor for her husband or family, shall be her sole and
separate property.
SEC. 3.--A married woman may enter into any contract in
reference to her personal estate, trade, business, labor or
service, and the management and improvement of her separate
real property, the same as if she were _sole_; and her
separate estate, real and personal, shall be liable therefor
on execution or other judicial process.
SEC. 4.--No conveyance or contract made by a married woman
for the sale of her lands or any interest therein, other
than leases for a term not exceeding three years, and
mortgages on lands to secure the purchase money of such
lands, shall be valid, unless her husband shall join
therein. Provided, however, that if she shall have attempted
to convey her real estate or shall have agreed to convey the
same, and shall have received the whole or any part of the
consideration therefor, the person paying such
consideration, or the person for whose benefit the same was
paid, shall have the right to sue and recover judgment
therefor, and the same may be enforced against the property
of such married woman.
SEC. 5.--A married woman shall be bound by the covenants of
the title in a deed of conveyance of her real property.
SEC. 6.--A married woman may bring and maintain an action in
her own name against any person or body corporate for
damages for any injury to her person or character, the same
as if she were _sole_; and the money recovered shall be her
separate property, and her husband in such case shall not be
liable for costs.
SEC. 7.--Whenever the husband causes repairs or improvements
to be made on the real property of the wife, with her
knowledge and consent thereto in writing, delivered to the
contractor or person performing the labor or furnishing the
material, she shall alone be liable for material furnished
or labor done.
SEC. 8.--A husband shall not be liable for any debts
contracted by the wife in carrying on any trade, labor or
business on her sole and separate account, nor for
improvements made by her authority on her separate real
property.
SEC. 9.--Whenever a judgment is recovered against a married
woman, her separate property may be sold on execution to
satisfy the same, as in other cases. Provided, however, that
her wearing apparel and articles of personal adornment
purchased by her, not exceeding two hundred dollars in
value, and all such jewelry, ornaments, books, works of art
and _virtu_, and other such effects for personal or
household use as may have been given to her as presents,
gifts and keep-sakes, shall not be subject to execution. And
provided further, that she shall hold as exempt, except for
the purchase money therefor, other property to the amount of
three hundred dollars to be set apart and appraised in the
manner provided by law for exemption of property.
SEC. 10.--A married woman shall not mortgage or in any
manner encumber her separate property acquired by descent,
devise or gift, as a security for the debt or liability of
her husband or any other person.
The legislature of 1881 enacted the following, which is really a
sequence of the property-rights statute of 1879:
A married woman may sue alone when: _First_--The action
concerns her own property. _Second_--When the action is
between herself and her husband. But in no case shall she
be required to sue or defend by guardian or next friend,
unless she be under twenty-one years.
It further enacted, making it section 28, to act 38, that:
When a husband or father has deserted his family, or is
imprisoned, the wife or mother may prosecute or defend in
his name any action which he might have prosecuted or
defended, and shall have the same powers and rights therein
as he might have had.
The legislature of 1881 also passed the following:
AN ACT _to Authorize the Election of Women to School
Offices_:
SEC. 1.--Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Indiana,
that any woman, married or single, of the age of twenty-one
years and upwards, and possessing the qualifications
prescribed for men, shall be eligible to any office under
the general or special school laws of the State.
SEC. 2.--That any woman elected or appointed to any office
under the provisions of this act, before she enters upon the
discharge of the duties of her office, shall qualify and
give bond as required by law; and such bond shall be binding
upon her and her securities.
The following, enacted by this same legislature of 1881, would
indicate that fidelity to his domestic obligations is not even
yet esteemed in man as a virtue of high order; the value attached
to the fidelity can be measured by the penalty incurred by
infidelity, which is thus stated:
Whoever without cause deserts his wife or children, and
leaves wife and child or children as a charge upon any
county of this State, shall be fined not more than $100 nor
less than $10.
As has been indicated in another connection, it was the
legislature of 1881 which distinguished itself by passing a bill
for amending section 2 of article II. of the State constitution
so as to give women the right to vote in all elections. The
legislature of 1883 did nothing to further ameliorate the legal
condition of women; and the highest legal rights enjoyed by women
of Indiana are indicated in the foregoing recital of legislative
action upon the subject from 1860 to 1884 inclusive.
For some years after public schools were established in Indiana,
women had no recognition. I am told by a reliable gentleman, Dr.
R. T. Brown, who served from 1833 to 1840 as examiner in one of
the most advanced counties of the commonwealth, that during that
period no woman ever applied to him for a license to teach, and
that up to 1850 very few were employed in the public schools. At
that time it was permitted women to teach "subscription" schools
during the vacations, for which purpose the use of the district
school-house was frequently granted. It was by demonstrating
their capacity in this unobtrusive use of holidays, that women
obtained employment in the regular schools. The tables show that
in 1861 there were 6,421 men and 1,905 women employed in the
primary schools, and 128 men and 72 women in the high schools.
From that time up to 1866, owing to the war, the number of men
decreased while that of women rapidly increased. The tables for
that year show 5,330 men and 4,163 women in the schools. The
number of men employed in 1880 was 7,802, of women, 5,776. While
the very best places are held by men, the majority of the
second-rate places are filled by women, and men fill a majority
of the lowest places. The average daily wages received by men
engaged in the public schools in 1880 was $1.86, while the
average daily wages of women was $1.76.
Of the twenty-six academies, colleges and universities, all are,
with two notable exceptions--Hanover and Wabash--open to women.
Of these, Butler, at Irvington, formerly known as the
Northwestern Christian University, was the first to admit women
to a "female course," which its managers arranged to meet the
needs of the female mind. In its laudable endeavor to adapt its
requirements to this intermediate class of beings, the university
substituted music for mathematics, and French for Greek. Few,
however, availed themselves of this course, and it was utterly
rejected by Demia Butler, a daughter of the founder of the
institution, who entered it in 1860, and graduated from what was
then known as the male course, in 1864, thus winning the right to
be remembered as the first woman in Indiana to demonstrate the
capacity of her sex to cope with the classics and higher
mathematics. From that time the "female course" became gradually
less popular, until it was discarded. One after another, private
and denominational schools have fallen into line, until nearly
all of them are open to women without humiliating conditions.
Up to 1867 the Indiana University exhibited the anomaly of a
great institution of learning supported by the State, and
regarding itself as the crown of the public-school system, free
to but one-half of the children of the commonwealth. Since that
date it has been open equally to both sexes in all three of its
departments--the State Normal School, located at Terre Haute, the
Agricultural College, located at Lafayette and commonly known as
Purdue University, and the State University proper, including
literary and scientific departments located at Bloomington. Of
this last branch, 30 per cent. are women. That there is no longer
any discrimination in these higher institutions of learning is
not true. Girls must always feel that they are regarded as
belonging to a subordinate class, wherever women are not found in
the faculty and board of managers. The depressing influence of
their absence in superior positions cannot be measured.
Very few women are found in college faculties in Indiana, and
none on boards of trustees. Those most conspicuous in ability are
Mrs. Sarah A. Oren,[342] who, having served two successive terms
as State librarian, was called from that position to fill a chair
at Purdue University, where she remained several years; Miss
Catharine Merrill, professor of English literature in Butler
University, who throughout her term of service from 1869 to 1883
enjoyed the deserved reputation of being one of the strongest
members of the faculty;[343] and Miss Rebecca I. Thompson, who is
professor of mathematics at Franklin College, the leading Baptist
school in the State. The women occupying these conspicuous
positions are all identified with the suffrage movement;
Professor Thompson, of Franklin, is the president of the Johnson
County Suffrage Association. Miss N. Cropsey has served the cause
of public education in Indianapolis in some capacity for twenty
years, and has for several years been superintendent of the
primary schools, a place which she fills with acknowledged
ability. Miss Cropsey is another living denial of the common
assertion, that only half-cultured and ill-paid women want the
ballot.
Of the four medical colleges in Indianapolis, two admit women and
two exclude them. No theological school in the State receives
women, nor does the only law school, which is located at
Indianapolis; but its former president, Hon. James B. Black, told
me that it was ready to receive them upon application.
Formerly, many questions now decided by the board of trustees of
each school district, were directly settled by the people
themselves at the annual school meeting. For instance, the
teacher for the coming term was elected from among the candidates
for that place; the salary to be paid, the length of term, the
location of the school-house, were all questions to be decided by
ballot. I have reliable authority for the assertion that in some
parts of the State, as early as 1860, widows, and wives whose
husbands were necessarily absent from the school meetings, voted
upon these questions. During the years of the war this practice
became very common, but fell into disuse upon the return of
peace.
There are many physicians in Indiana enjoying the merited esteem
of their respective communities and having a lucrative practice.
The most notable example of success in this profession is Dr.
Mary F. Thomas of Richmond.[344] Another living testimony to
woman's right in the medical profession is Dr. Rachel Swain of
Indianapolis, whose patrons are among the first families of the
city. By zealous devotion to her profession she has secured the
respect and social recognition of the community in which she
moves. As an avowed friend of suffrage, whose word in season is
never lacking, Dr. Swain carries a knowledge of our principles
into circles where it would otherwise slowly penetrate. Dr. Mary
Wilhite of Crawfordsville ranks with the best physicians of that
city. In her practice she has gained a competence for herself and
disseminated among her patients a knowledge of hygienic laws that
has improved the health and the morals of the community to which
she has ministered. She, too, advocates political equality for
woman. Dr. Sarah Stockton of Lafayette settled in Indianapolis in
the autumn of 1883, and was soon, on the petition of leading
citizens, including both men and women, appointed as physician to
the Woman's Department of the Hospital for the Insane. Her
professional labors at the hospital and in general practice
indicate both learning and skill. In November, Dr. Marie Haslep
was elected attendant physician at the Woman's Reformatory, a
State institution having some four hundred inmates, where her
services have been characterized by faithfulness and caution.
Elizabeth Eaglesfield, a graduate of the law department of
Michigan University, was admitted to the bar of Marion county in
the spring of 1885, and is the first woman to open an independent
law-office in this State.
Very few women have served in the ministry. The only one who ever
secured any prominence in this profession was Miss Prudence
LeClerc, who was pastor of the Universalist church in Madison in
1870-71, and served parishes at different points in
south-eastern Indiana until her death in 1878. Miss LeClerc
frequently spoke at suffrage conventions, and called meetings
wherever she preached, instructing the people in the philosophy
of this reform.
To obtain accurate statistics as to the professions and
industries is extremely difficult, as the year 1881 was the first
in which the State considered women at all. That year the head of
the bureau of statistics sent to each town and county
commissioner certain sets of questions relative to women's
occupations. The grace with which they were received, the
seriousness with which they were considered, the consequent
accuracy with which they were answered, may be inferred from the
fact that one trustee replied, "The women in our county are
mostly engaged in baby-tending," and that his response was
generally copied by the press as a manifestation of brilliant
wit. Although some commissioners felt their time too valuable to
spend in gathering information relative to the work of women,
from the reports of those who seriously undertook to canvass this
matter, a table has been arranged and published, which, though
incomplete, must be regarded, both in variety of occupations and
in the numbers of women registered, as a most favorable showing
for this Western State. The total number of women engaged outside
of home, in non-domestic and money-making industries, is 15,122;
the number of industries represented by them is 51. Add to these
the number of teachers, and we have over 20,000 women in the
trades and professions denied the ballot, that sole weapon
pledged by a republic to every citizen for the protection of
person and property.
Of the men and women prominent in this movement since 1860, whose
names are not mentioned in the first volume, the one meriting the
first place is beyond doubt Dr. R. T. Brown of Indianapolis. He
has the longest record as an advocate of suffrage to be found in
the State. As a speaker in the first Harrison campaign (1836) he
advocated suffrage without regard to sex. Engaged as a teacher or
inspector in the public schools in the early years, Dr. Brown
argued the adaptation of women to the teacher's profession, and
insisted that salaries should be independent of sex; and in many
individual cases where he had authority, women secured this
recognition before it was generally admitted even in theory to be
just.
When, in 1855, the Northwestern Christian (now Butler) University
was founded, Dr. Brown, as one of the trustees, advocated
coëducation; in 1858 he took the chair of natural science, and in
that branch taught classes of both sexes until 1871. In 1868 he
was active in organizing the Indiana Medical College on the basis
of equal rights to women, and filled the chair of chemistry until
1872; in 1873 he was appointed to the chair of physiology, which
he held until 1877, and then resigned because the board of
trustees determined to exclude women. This proves that Dr.
Brown's devotion to the doctrine of equal rights is of that rare
degree which will bear the crucial test of official and pecuniary
sacrifice. He has been an active member of the State and city
suffrage associations from the beginning.
The name of Mary E. Haggart first appears as a member of the
State Association at the convention held in Indianapolis in 1869.
In 1870, Mr. Hadley made a speech in the State Senate against
woman suffrage, to which Mrs. Haggart wrote an able reply which
was published and widely commented on by the press of the State.
Her next notable effort was in a discussion through several
numbers of the _Ladies' Own Magazine_, published by Mrs. Cora
Bland, where she completely refuted the objections urged by her
opponent, a literary gentleman of some note. Mrs. Haggart has
addressed the legislatures of her own State, of Massachusetts,
Rhode Island and Kentucky, as well as the Judiciary Committee of
the House of Representatives at the hearing granted the National
Association. She seldom speaks without the most careful
preparation, and never without manifesting abilities of the
highest order. Perhaps no woman in the State, as a speaker, has
won higher encomiums from the press or has better deserved them.
The first active step taken in suffrage by Mrs. Florence M.
Adkinson (then Miss Burlingame) was to call a convention in
Lawrenceburg. In 1871, 1872, she gave several lectures on
suffrage and temperance in Ohio, and held a series of meetings in
southeastern Indiana. Though an acceptable speaker, it is as a
writer that Mrs. Adkinson is best known; she is an officer in
both the State and the city organizations, and in every capacity
serves the cause with rare fidelity.
The name of Lizzie Boynton of Crawfordsville frequently occurs in
suffrage reports between 1865 and 1870. She was a member of the
State Association and a frequent speaker at its conventions.
Besides working in that body, she assisted in the organization of
the local society at Crawfordsville, wrote poems, stories,
essays, and won high rank in the State in literature and reform.
From mature womanhood her record as Mrs. Harbert belongs to
Illinois rather than Indiana.
The first time I met Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace she was circulating
a temperance petition to present to the legislature. One day
while busy on the third floor of the high-school building a
fellow-teacher sent up word that a lady wished to see me.
Descending, I was introduced to Mrs. Wallace, who, in a bland
way, requested me to sign the paper which she extended. Never
doubting that I might do so, I had taken my pen when my eye
caught the words: "While we do not clamor for any additional
civil or political rights." "But I do clamor," I exclaimed, and
threw down the paper and pen and went back to my work, vexed in
soul that I should have been dragged down three flights of stairs
to see one more proof of the degree to which honorable women love
to humiliate themselves before men for sweet favor's sake. Mrs.
Wallace went forward with her work of solicitation, thinking me,
no doubt, to be a very impetuous, if not impertinent, young
woman.
When, however, upon the presentation of her petition, whose
framers had taken such care to disclaim any desire "for
additional civil and political rights," Mrs. Wallace was startled
by Dr. Thompson's avowal (having known the doctor, as she naïvely
says, "as a Christian gentleman"), that he was not there "to
represent his conscience, but to obey his constituents," in her
aroused soul there was that instant born the determination to
become a "constituent." As soon as the hearing was at an end,
Mrs. Wallace confessed this determination to Dr. Thompson,
thanking him for unintentionally awakening her to a sense of
woman's proper position in the republic. This change in Mrs.
Wallace's attitude was not generally known until the following
May, when the annual State Temperance convention was held in
Indianapolis; then, in her address before that body, she avowed
her conviction that it was woman's duty to seek the ballot as a
means of exerting her will upon legislation. From that time Mrs.
Wallace has neglected no opportunity to propagate suffrage
doctrines, and has been most potent in influencing her temperance
coädjutors to embrace these principles. Earnestness and logic are
Mrs. Wallace's abiding forces. Her literary work is chiefly
confined to correspondence, in which she is so faithful that it
is doubtful if any man in public life in Indiana can plead
ignorance of the arguments in favor of suffrage. Mrs. Wallace has
been an officer in the National, the American and the State
suffrage societies, and has served the Equal Suffrage Society of
Indianapolis as president most of the time since its formation.
Having lived in this city more than half a century, related to
many men who have held high official positions, she has had an
opportunity to exert a wide influence, and it may be safe to say
that, by virtue of her own consecrated life, she exerts more
moral power in this community than any other woman in Indiana.
Mrs. Helen M. Gougar has addressed the legislatures of New York,
Kansas and Wisconsin, besides that of her own State. As an
extempore speaker she has no peer among her co-workers; her first
suffrage speech was made at Delphi, May, 1877. In July, 1881,
Mrs. Gougar became the editor of _Our Herald_, a weekly which she
conducted with great ability and success in the interest of the
two constitutional amendments then pending. In 1884, in an
extensive lecturing tour, she addressed large audiences in
Washington, Philadelphia, New York and Albany. In the year 1883,
Mrs. Josephine R. Nichols of Illinois, and Mrs. L. May Wheeler of
Massachusetts, came to reside in Indianapolis. Both these ladies
have lectured frequently and with marked effect in various parts
of the State.
I cannot close without a mention of those public men who have
honored this State by their adherence to the principle of woman
suffrage and thereby earned a title to the fame which will belong
to the advocates of this cause in the hour of its triumph. Among
these Hon. George W. Julian is most conspicuous. Referring to his
services in congress, Mr. Julian once wrote:
My opinions about woman suffrage, however, date much further
back. The subject was first brought to my attention in a
brief chapter on the "Political Non-existence of Women," in
Miss Martineau's book on "Society in America," which I read
in 1847. She there pithily stated the substance of all that
has since been said respecting the logic of woman's right to
the ballot; and finding myself unable to answer, I accepted
it. On recently referring to this chapter I find myself more
impressed by its force than when I first read it. * * * My
interest in anti-slavery was awakened about the same time,
and I regarded it as the _previous_ question, and as less
abstract and far more important and absorbing than that of
suffrage for women. For the sake of the negro I accepted
Mr. Lincoln's philosophy of "one war at a time," though
always ready to own and defend my position as to woman's
right to the ballot.
The sincerity of Mr. Julian's belief in woman suffrage is proved
by his repeated efforts to further the cause in the United States
congress. On December 8, 1868, he submitted an amendment to the
constitution, guaranteeing suffrage to all United States
citizens, which, as the negro had not then been enfranchised, he
numbered article fifteen. On March 15, 1869, he submitted the
same amendment, with the exception that the words "race" and
"color" were omitted; on the same day Mr. Julian offered a bill
providing for the immediate enfranchisement of women in all the
territories of the United States, thus doubling on one day his
claim to the gratitude of American women. On April 4, 1870, he
offered another amendment, numbered article sixteen, which
followed the exact form and phraseology of the fifteenth. On
January 20, 1871, he offered an amendment to the bill, providing
a government for the District of Columbia, striking out the word
"male" in the section defining the right of suffrage. It is
interesting to note that even so long ago that amendment received
55 yeas against 117 nays.[345] The bills which Mr. Julian thus
submitted to congress when he was a member of that body prove his
constancy to a cause early espoused, his conversion to which was
due to that remarkable English woman whose claims to the
gratitude of her American sisters are thus enhanced. Mr. Julian
has not worked much with the suffrage societies of his own State,
but he has never failed in his repeated canvasses to utter the
seasonable word. His conviction that it is the duty of the
national government to take the initiative in defining the
political rights of its citizens has naturally led him to present
this question to the nation as represented in its congress,
rather than to agitate it in the State.
Oliver P. Morton and Joseph E. McDonald are two other names
conspicuous in Indiana history which occur frequently in
connection with "aye" in the records which have preserved the
action of every member of congress on the various amendments
brought before it involving woman's political equality.
Albert G. Porter, ex-governor of Indiana, has on more than one
public occasion avowed his belief in woman's equality as a
citizen, and has assented to the proposition that under a
republic the only sign of such equality is the ballot. Ardent
advocates have often thought him inexcusably reticent in
expressing his convictions upon this subject, but such have
learned that it is given to but few mortals to "remember those in
bonds as bound with them," and no other governor of Indiana has
ever taken occasion to remind the General Assembly of its duties
to women, as Governor Porter habitually did. In his address of
1881 he called the attention of the legislature to the improved
condition of women under the laws, pointed out disabilities still
continuing, and bespoke the respectful attention of the General
Assembly to the women who proposed to come before it with their
claims. In his biënnial message, 1883, the governor recommended
the enactment of a statute which should require that at least
one of the physicians appointed to attend in the department for
women in the hospital for the insane should be a woman. The whole
tone of Governor Porter's administration was liberal toward
women; he invariably implied his belief in their equality, and on
one or two occasions has evinced his respect for their ability by
conferring on them responsible offices. Many of the leading men
in the Republican party, and a few in the Democratic, are
favorable, and while they do not labor for the enfranchisement of
their sisters with the same enthusiasm which personal bondage
excites, their constant influence is on the side of woman's
emancipation.
As to the charities conducted by Indiana women, for a condensed
narrative of the efficient service of Mrs. L. B. Wishard and Miss
Susan Fussell, I must refer readers to the account kindly
prepared for me by Mrs. Paulina T. Merritt.[346]
Whether or not justified by the facts, the feeling is current
that those whom the masses favor hold themselves aloof from those
whom personal experience, or a sense of justice, compels to walk
the stony path of reform. The _litteratéurs_ often form a sort of
pseudo-intellectual aristocracy, and do not willingly affiliate
with reformers, whom they are ready to assume to be less
cultivated than themselves. Of this weakness our literary women
have not been guilty. Most of them are members of the suffrage
society.[347]
A system is now developing which will not only stimulate women to
engage in competitive industries and secure justice in rewarding
such labor, but will greatly facilitate the work of ascertaining
what part women do take in the general industries of the State.
Indiana, being mainly agricultural, is divided into sixteen
districts, each of which has organized an agricultural society.
Besides these there are also county societies. These
organizations are composed of men and women, the latter having
nominally the same powers and privileges as the former. Annually
the State Agricultural Association holds a meeting at
Indianapolis. This is a delegate body, consisting of
representatives from the district and county societies. There is
no constitutional check against sending women as delegates,
though it has not hitherto been done. One chief duty of the
primary convention is to elect a State board of agriculture. This
board consists of sixteen members, one for each agricultural
district. The managers of the Woman's State Fair Association have
called an industrial convention, whose sessions will be held at
the same time that the Agricultural Association holds its annual
meeting.[348]
If the press reflects the public, it also moulds it; and its
conservative attitude is doubtless to a very considerable degree
responsible for the tone of opinion which prevailed here up to
recent years. Papers throughout the State naturally take their
cue from the party organs published at the capital, while the few
papers identified with no party are wont to adapt themselves even
more carefully to popular opinion upon general subjects.
The citations made in the earlier part of this chapter from the
_Sentinel_ and the _Journal_ clearly show the spirit of their
management in 1869. But it must not be inferred that the
_Journal_ has through all these years maintained the position
occupied by it at that time. Had it done so, one may reasonably
believe that the women of Indiana would before to-day have been
enfranchised. On the contrary, that sheet has been very
vacillating, speaking for or against the cause according to the
principles of its managers, the paper having frequently changed
hands; and until recently the principles of the same managers
upon this question have been shifting; but for the last five or
six years the _Journal_ has been a consistent, though somewhat
mild, supporter of woman suffrage.
On the contrary, the _Sentinel_ had been constant in its
opposition, until, about eight years since, Mr. Shoemaker
becoming the manager, it announced a Sunday issue devoted to the
interests of women. The pledge then made has been nobly kept, and
although for a few months the _Sentinel_ seemed to edit its
week-day issues with a view to counteracting the possible good
effect of its Sunday utterances, the better spirit gradually
triumphed, until at last, so far as the woman question is
concerned, the paper is from Sunday to Saturday in harmony with
itself. For some time it gave one column in each Sunday issue to
the control of the State Central Suffrage Committee, and printed
two hundred copies of the column for special distribution among
the country papers.
The _Saturday Herald_, established in 1873, under the editorial
management of George C. Harding, deserves mention. From the
outset, this paper was the advocate of woman's right to be paid
for work done according to its market value, and to protect
herself and her property by the ballot. Perhaps the best service
rendered to women by Mr. Harding, was that of securing in 1874
Gertrude Garrison as assistant editor of the _Herald_. Mrs.
Garrison is, beyond question, one of the ablest journalists
Indiana can boast, and the influence of her pen in modifying the
popular estimate of woman's capabilities has been incalculable.
From 1874 she did half the work, editorial articles, locals,
sketches, and all the varieties of writing required upon a weekly
paper, but at her own request her name was not announced as
associate editor until 1876. In this capacity she remained upon
the _Herald_ until January 1, 1880, when the paper passed from
Mr. Harding's into other hands. During her connection with the
_Herald_, if there was anything particularly strong in the paper,
her associate received the credit. The public will not permit
itself to believe a woman capable of humor, though I think Mrs.
Garrison did as much to sustain the paper's reputation for wit as
even Mr. Harding. A. H. Dooley succeeded Mr. Harding as editor of
the _Saturday Herald_, and it remained under his management a
sturdy advocate of woman's enfranchisement. The _Saturday
Review_ was established by Mr. Harding in October, 1880, with
Mrs. Garrison associate editor. Upon the death of Mr. Harding,
May 8, 1881, Mr. Charles Dennis became chief editor, Mrs.
Garrison[349] remaining on the staff as his assistant.
The _Times_ was founded in June, 1881. From the first it devoted
a column to notes on women's work. From September of that year
there appeared in each Saturday issue a department devoted to the
interests of women, particularly to woman suffrage, under the
editorial management of May Wright Sewall. This department
reäppeared in the weekly and was thus widely circulated among
country readers. The _Times_ is under the management of Colonel
W. R. Holloway. Although from the first fair in its discussions
of all reform questions, it did not avow itself to be an advocate
of woman suffrage until the week after the public entertainment
of the Equal Suffrage Society, 1881, when there appeared an
editorial nearly one column in length, setting forth its views
upon the whole subject. This editorial contained the following
paragraph:
As the question is likely to become a prominent theme of
discussion during the next few years, the _Times_ will now
say that it is decidedly and unequivocally in favor of woman
suffrage. We believe that women have the same right to vote
that men have, that it is impolitic and unjust to deprive
them of the right, and that its free and full bestowal would
conserve the welfare of society and the good of government.
In the daily _Evening News_, Mr. J. H. Holliday, with his
editorial aids, has set himself to stem the tide of progress
which he evidently thinks will, unless a manful endeavor on his
part shall prevent it, bear all things down to ruin. The
character of his efforts may be inferred from the following
extracts which appeared in January and December of 1881:
We wish our legislators would go home and ponder this thing.
Read the Bible and understand the scheme of creation. Read
the New Testament, and appreciate the creation of the
Christian home, and the headship of things. Reflect upon
what rests the future of this government we have reared, and
ask what would become of it if the Christian homes in which
it is founded were broken up; then reflect upon what would
become of the Christian homes if men and women were to
attend to the same duties in life. To get a realistic
notion, let every man who has a wife ask himself how he
would relish being told by her, "I have an engagement with
John Smith to-night to see about fixing up a slate to get
Mrs. Jones nominated for sheriff," and being left to go his
own way while she goes with Smith. If that wouldn't make
hell in the household in one act we don't know what would,
yet this is merely one little trivial episode of what this
anti-christian woman suffrage scheme means.
To what straits must the advocates of suffrage for women be
driven when they needs must seek to show that the ballot is
not degrading. What becomes of all our fine talk of the
ballot as an educator if they who seek to secure it for
women must advocate as a reason why it should not be
withheld that it is not degrading! But what better can one
expect from those who, when it is suggested that there are
duties attaching to the ballot as well as rights, solemnly
say that the few moments necessary to deposit a ballot will
not interfere with women's duties of sweeping and dusting
and baby-tending. When one hears talk of this sort, there is
indeed a grave doubt as to whether the ballot really is an
educator after all.
The first of the above citations is from what might be called an
article of instruction addressed to the legislature then in
session, and considering the question of woman suffrage. The
occasion which inspired the second paragraph may be readily
inferred. It seems "profitable for the instruction" of the future
to preserve a few extracts like the above, that it may be seen
how weak and wild, strength itself becomes, when the ally of
prejudice and precedent.
The _Indiana Farmer_, exceptionally well edited, having a wide
circulation in the agricultural sections of the State, and
enjoying there a powerful influence, is an outspoken advocate of
equal suffrage. From statistics regarding papers published
outside of Indianapolis, it may be safe to say that two hundred
of them favor, with varying degrees of constancy, giving the
ballot to women. On the staff of nearly all the papers whose
status is above given, are women, who in their respective
departments faithfully serve the common cause. During the last
few years, efforts have been directed to the capture of the local
press, and many of the county papers now have a department edited
by women. In most instances this work is done gratuitously, and
their success in this new line, entering upon it as they have
without previous training, illustrates the versatility of woman's
powers. Mrs. M. E. Price of Kokomo, Mrs. Sarah P. Franklin of
Anderson, Mrs. Laura Sandafur of Franklin, and Mrs. Ida M. Harper
of Terre Haute, deserve especial mention for their admirable work
in the papers of their respective towns. Mrs. Laura C. Arnold is
the chief editor of the Columbus _Democrat_, and is the only
woman in the State having editorial charge of a political party
paper, _Our Herald_, under the able editorial management of Mrs.
Helen M. Gougar, was a weekly published at Lafayette. It was
devoted to securing the re-passage and adoption of the woman
suffrage and prohibition amendments. It was a strong, aggressive
sheet, and deserved its almost unparalleled success.[350]
In closing this able report for Indiana a few facts in regard to
the author may interest the general reader as well as the student
of history.
Mrs. May Wright Sewall has been well known for many years in
Indianapolis in the higher departments of education, and has
recently crowned her efforts as a teacher by establishing a model
classical school for girls, in which she is not only training their
minds to vigorous thought, but taking the initiative steps to
secure for them an equally vigorous physical development. Her
pupils are required to wear a comfortable gymnastic costume, all
their garments loosely resting on their shoulders; corsets, tight
waists and high-heeled boots forbidden, for deep thinking requires
deep breathing. The whole upper floor of her new building is a
spacious gymnasium, where her pupils exercise every day under the
instruction of a skillful German; and on every Saturday morning
they take lessons from the best dancing master in the city. The
result is, she has no dull scholars complaining of headaches. All
are alike happy in their studies and amusements.
Mrs. Sewall is a preëminently common-sense woman, believing that
sound theories can be put into practice. Although her tastes are
decidedly literary and æsthetic, she is a radical reformer. Hence
her services in the literary club and suffrage society are alike
invaluable. And as chairman of the executive committee of the
National Association, she is without her peer in planning and
executing the work.
As her husband, Mr. Theodore L. Sewall, is also at the head of a
classical school, and equally successful in training boys, it may
be said that both institutions have the advantage of the united
thought of man and woman. As educators, Mr. and Mrs. Sewall have
reaped much practical wisdom from their mutual consultations and
suggestions, the results of which have been of incalculable benefit
to their pupils.
Peering into the homes of the young women in the suffrage movement,
one cannot but remark the deference and respect with which these
intelligent, self-reliant wives are uniformly treated by their
husbands, and the unbounded confidence and affection they give in
return. For happiness in domestic life, men and women must meet as
equals. A position of inferiority and dependence for even the best
organized women, will either wither all their powers and reduce
them to apathetic machines, going the round of life's duties with a
kind of hopeless dissatisfaction, or it will rouse a bitter
antagonism, an active resistance, an offensive self-assertion,
poisoning the very sources of domestic happiness. The true ideal of
family life can never be realized until woman is restored to her
rightful throne. Tennyson, in his "Princess," gives us the
prophetic vision when he says:
"Everywhere
Two heads in council, two beside the hearth,
Two in the tangled business of the world,
Two in the liberal offices of life,
Two plummets dropped for one, to sound the abyss
Of science, and the secrets of the mind."
FOOTNOTES:
[325] See Vol. I., page 306.
[326] The call for this convention was signed by Amanda M. Way,
Mrs. M. C. Bland, Mrs. M. M. B. Goodwin, Mrs. Henry Blanchard, Mrs.
Emma B. Swank, Indianapolis; Mrs. Isaac Kinley, Richmond; Dr. Mary
F. Thomas, Camden; Dr. Mary H. Wilhite, Miss Lizzie Boynton, Miss
Mollie Krout, Dr. E. E. Barrett, Crawfordsville; Mrs. Abula Pucket
Nind, Fort Wayne; Mrs. L. S. Bidell, Crown Point; Rev. E. P.
Ingersoll, J. V. R. Miller, Rev. Henry Blanchard, Rev. William
Hannaman, Professor A. C. Shortridge, Professor R. T. Brown,
Professor Thomas Rhodes, Dr. T. A. Bland, Indianapolis; Hon. Isaac
Kinley, Isaac H. Julian, Richmond; Hon. L. M. Nind, Fort Wayne;
Hon. S. T. Montgomery, Kokomo; D. R. Pershing and Rev. T. Sells,
Warsaw.
[327] The officers of the State Association in 1883 were:
_President_, Dr. Mary F. Thomas: _Vice-Presidents_, Mrs. Helen V.
Austin, Mrs. S. S. McCain, Mrs. M. V. Berg, Mrs. G. Gifford, Mrs.
M. P. Lindsey, Mrs. C. A. P. Smith and Mrs. F. G. Scofield;
_Secretary_, Mrs. M. E. M. Price; _Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs.
F. M. Adkinson; _Treasurer_, Miss Mary D. Naylor; _State Central
Committee_, Mrs. Mary E. Haggart, Mrs. Z. G. Wallace and May Wright
Sewall.
[328] Annual--1871, June 21, 22, Bloomington; 1872, June 5, 6,
Dublin; 1873, June 11, 12, Terre Haute; Semi-Annual, November 19,
Richmond. Annual--1874, May 28, 29, Fort Wayne; 1875, May 25, 26,
Liberty; Semi-Annual, November 23, 24, Winchester. Annual--1876,
May 30, 31, Anderson; 1877, September 4, 5, Knightstown; 1878, June
11, 12, Richmond: 1879, May 14, 15, Kokomo; 1880, April 27, 28,
Crawfordsville; 1881, June 15, 16, Kokomo; Semi-Annual, October 29,
Dublin. Annual--1882, May, Columbus; 1883, June, Logansport; 1884,
Kokomo; 1885, November 22, 23, Warsaw.
[329] See Vol. II., page 851.
[330] The Equal Suffrage Society has now, 1885, a membership of
175, including many representatives of whatever in Indianapolis is
best in character, culture and social place. The society has lately
districted the city for local work, assuming the boundaries of the
school districts as its own for this purpose; its present plan is
to place each of these twenty-six districts under the especial care
of a committee whose business shall be to hold meetings, distribute
literature and circulate petitions. The society thus hopes to
create a stimulating suffrage atmosphere at the capital which shall
inspire the legislators with courage to do good work for women at
their next session.
[331] INVITATION.--The Indianapolis Equal Suffrage Society requests
the pleasure of your company at a literary and social entertainment
to be given in the Bates House parlors, Friday evening, November 4,
1881. _Committee_--May Wright Sewall, Mary C. Raridan, Mrs. H.G.
Carey, Mrs. Charles Kregelo, and Miss Lydia Halley. Please present
invitation at the door.
PROGRAMME.--1. Music, piano solo, Miss Dietrich; 2. Toast,
Yorktown, Henry D. Pierce; 3. Toast, The True Republic, Mrs. Z.G.
Wallace; 4. Music, solo (vocal), Mrs. J.J. Cole; 5. Toast, Women in
Indiana, Gen. John Coburn; 6. Toast, Women in the "Revised
Version," Arthur W. Tyler; 7. Music, solo (vocal), Arthur Miller:
8. Toast. The Literary Women of Indiana. 9. Toast, Women in the
U.S. School System, Horace S. Tarbell; 10. Recitation, Lida Hood
Talbott; 11. Toast, Our Forefathers, Rev. Myron W. Reed; 12. A
Reply, Mary C. Raridan; 13. Music, solo (vocal), Mrs. J.C. New.
Music In charge of Mrs. John C. New. W.B. Stone, accompanist.
[332] The speakers were Helen M. Gouger, Florence M. Adkinson, Mary
A. Haggart, Ex-Gov. Baker, Judge Martindale, Mrs. Wallace, Messrs.
Walker and Dooley, editors of the _Times_ and _Herald_, Mr.
Tarbell, superintendent of the city schools, and May Wright Sewall.
[333] See Indiana Appendix, note A.
[334] See Appendix to Indiana, note B.
[335] The following invitation was sent to every member of the
legislature who had voted for the amendment, and also to all the
leading people of the city: The pleasure of your company is
requested at the parlors of the New-Denison, Friday evening, April
15, from 8 to 12, where a social entertainment will be given in
honor of the passage of the suffrage amendment by our State
legislature. [Signed:] Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace, Miss Catherine
Merrill, Mrs. Harvey G. Carey, Mrs. Charles Kregelo, Mrs. Henry D.
Pierce, Mrs. Thomas A. Hendricks, May Wright Sewall, Mrs. George
Merritt, Mrs. John C. New and Mrs. John M. Judah. The programme was
as follows: 1. Music, Solo (vocal), Zelda Seguin Wallace. 2. Toast,
Our Legislature, Senator Spann. 3. Toast, Our Opponents, Colonel
DeWitt Wallace. 4. Toast, The Press and Progress, Laura Ream. 5.
Toast, The Indiana Woman under the Law, William Wallace. 6. Music,
Solo (vocal), Mrs. John C. New. 7. Toast, The Ideal Man, Mrs. J. M.
Judah. 8. Toast, The Ideal Woman, Mr. A. S. Caldwell. 9. Toast, The
Home of the Future, May Wright Sewall. 10. Music, German Song,
Professor John Fiske. 11. Toast, The Woman who "Don't want to
Vote," Gertrude Garrison. 12. Recitation, Lida Hood Talbot. 13.
Toast, The Attitude of the Pulpit toward Reform, Rev. Myron W.
Reed. 14. Music, Solo (vocal), Zelda Seguin Wallace.
[336] The persons thus authorized by the central committee to hold
meetings and organize societies were Dr. Mary F. Thomas, Mary E.
Haggart, Zerelda G. Wallace, Helen M. Gougar, May Wright Sewall and
L. May Wheeler.
[337] Besides these five-minute reports, addresses were delivered
by Rev. Myron W. Reed, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of
Indianapolis; Captain DeWitt Wallace of Lafayette, Dr. Ridpath of
DePaun University, Colonel Maynard, chief editorial writer on the
_Sentinel_; Mrs. Haggart, Mrs. Gougar, Mrs. Josephine R. Nichols,
and other men and women of less prominence, but on that occasion of
hardly less interest.
[338] Among these the names of William Dudley Foulke of Richmond,
W. DeWitt Wallace of Lafayette, G. H. Thomas of Huntington, and S.
P. Yancey, merit honorable mention.
[339] Mrs. Sewall, Mrs. Merritt and Mrs. Mary E. Newman Carey.
[340] Republican, May Wright Sewall and Paulina T. Merritt;
Democratic, Mary E. Haggart and Florence M. Adkinson.
[341] For an account of this prison, see Appendix to Indiana
chapter, note C.
[342] See Appendix to Indiana chapter, note G.
[343] Miss Merrill resigned in the autumn of 1883, and was
immediately succeeded by Miss Harriet Noble of Vincennes, a
graduate of Vassar, and a lady of most admirable qualities, whose
success is assured by the record of her first year in this
responsible position.
[344] See sketch of Dr. Thomas, Vol. I., page 324.
[345] For these bills and amendments, see Vol. II., pages 325, 333.
[346] See Appendix, Indiana chapter, notes E and F.
[347] Mrs. Sarah T. Bolton, Laura Ream, Mrs. Lew Wallace, Mary H.
Korut, Mary Dean, Margaret Holmes (Mrs. M. V. Bates), Mrs. M. E.
Banta, Mrs. Louise V. Boyd, Mrs. Helen V. Austin, Mrs. Hettie A.
Morrison, Mrs. E. S. L. Thompson, Mrs. Amy E. Dunn, Mrs. A. D.
Hawkins, Miss Rena L. Miner, Miss Edna C. Jackson and Mrs. D. M.
Jordan are all literary women who sympathize with and aid this
reform.
[348] The woman's department has constantly grown in extent and
value, until it has become one of the most important features of
the State fair, and this year, 1885, the managers have allowed to
it twice the space hitherto occupied. It is worthy of note that
suffrage papers, tracts and books are always to be found among the
exhibits.
[349] Mrs. Garrison left Indianapolis for New York in May of 1882.
Success followed her to the metropolis and she now has, 1885, the
entire editorial management of the literary department of the
American Press Association, and her work goes into more than fifty
of the best weekly papers in the country.
[350] _Our Herald_ did royal service in the campaign of 1882; it
subsequently became a monthly and in addition to other admirable
efforts, undertook to introduce leading western women to the larger
world by publishing a series of biographical sketches of the most
prominent. In the winter of 1885 Mrs. Gougar sold _Our Herald_ to
Mrs. Harbert, who published it in Chicago as the _The New Era_.
CHAPTER XLIII.
ILLINOIS.
Chicago a Great Commercial Center--First Woman Suffrage
Agitation, 1855--A. J. Grover--Society at Earlville--Prudence
Crandall--Sanitary Movement--Woman in Journalism--Myra
Bradwell--Excitement in Elmwood Church, 1868--Mrs. Huldah
Joy--Pulpit Utterances--Convention, 1869, Library Hall,
Chicago--Anna Dickinson--Robert Laird Collier Debate--Manhood
Suffrage Denounced by Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony--Judge
Charles B. Waite on the Constitutional Convention--Hearing Before
the Legislature--Western Suffrage Convention, Mrs. Livermore,
President--Annual Meeting at Bloomington--Women Eligible to
School Offices--Evanston College--Miss Alta Hulett--Medical
Association--Dr. Sarah Hackett Stephenson--"Woman's Kingdom," in
the _Inter-Ocean_--Mrs. Harbert--Centennial Celebration at
Evanston--Temperance Petition, 180,000--Frances E.
Willard--Social Science Association--Art Union--International
Congress at Paris--Jane Graham Jones--Moline Association.
Illinois, one of the Central States in our vast country, stretching
over five and a half degrees of latitude, was admitted to the Union
in 1818. Its chief city, Chicago, extending for miles round the
southern shores of Lake Michigan, is the great commercial center of
the boundless West. We may get some idea of the magnitude of her
commerce from the fact that the receipts and shipment of flour,
grain and cattle from that port alone in 1872 were valued at
$370,000,000.
When the battles with the Indians were finally ended, the
population of the State rapidly increased, and in 1880 the census
gave 1,586,523 males and 1,491,348 females. In the school
statistics we find about the same proportionate number of women and
girls as teachers and scholars in the public schools and in all the
honest walks of life; while men and boys in the criminal ranks are
out of all proportion. For example, in the state-prison at Joliet
there were, in 1873, 1,321 criminals; fifteen only were women. And
yet the more virtuous, educated, self-governed part of the
population, that shared equally the hardships of the early days,
and by industry and self-sacrifice helped to build up that great
State, is still denied the civil and political rights declared by
the constitution to belong to every citizen of the commonwealth.
The trials and triumphs of the women of Illinois are vividly
portrayed in the following records sent us by Elizabeth Boynton
Harbert, Ph. D.:
His biographer asserts that Bernini, the celebrated Florentine
artist, architect, painter and poet, once gave a public opera in
Rome, for which he painted the scenes, composed the music, wrote
the poem, carved the statues, invented the engines, and built the
theater. Because of his versatile talents the man Bernini has
passed into history. Of almost equal versatility were the women
of the equal-rights movement, since in many instances their names
appear and reäppear in the records we have consulted as authors,
editors, journalists, lecturers, teachers, physicians, lawyers,
ordained ministers and home-makers; and in many localities a
woman, to be eligible for the lyceum, was expected to be
statesmanlike as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, executive as Susan B.
Anthony, spiritual as Lucretia Mott, eloquent as Anna Dickinson,
graceful as Celia Burleigh, fascinating as Paulina Wright Davis;
a social queen, very domestic, a skillful musician, an excellent
cook, very young, and the mother of at least six children; even
then she was not entitled to the rights, privileges and
immunities of an American citizen. So "the divine rights of the
people" became the watchword of thoughtful men and women of the
Prairie State, and at the dawn of the second half of the present
century many caught the echoes of that historic convention at
Seneca Falls and insisted that the fundamental principles of our
government should be applied to all the citizens of the United
States.
In view of the fearless heroism and steady adherence to principle
of many comparatively unknown lives, the historian is painfully
conscious of the meagerness of the record, as compared with the
amount of labor that must necessarily have been performed. In
almost every city, village and school district some earnest man
or woman has been quietly waging the great moral battle that will
eventually make us free; and while it would be a labor of love to
recognize every one who has wrought for freedom, doubtless many
names worthy of mention may unintentionally be omitted.
The earliest account of specific work that we have been able to
trace is an address delivered in Earlville by A. J. Grover, esq.,
in 1855, who from that time until the present has been an able
champion of the constitutional rights of women. As a result of
his efforts, and the discussion that followed, a society was
formed, of which Mrs. Susan Hoxie Richardson (a cousin of Susan
B. Anthony) was elected president, and Mrs. Octavia Grover
secretary. This, we believe, was the first suffrage society in
Illinois. Its influence was increased by the fact that, during
two years of Mr. Grover's editorial control, the Earlville
_Transcript_ was a fearless champion of equal rights. While that
band of pioneers was actively at work, Prudence Crandall, who was
mobbed and imprisoned in Connecticut for teaching a school for
colored girls, was actively engaged in Mendota, in the same
county. A few years later, lectures were delivered[351] on the
subject of equal rights for women in different parts of the
State.
Copies of two of the early appeals have been secured. One by A.
J. Grover, published in pamphlet form, was extensively
circulated; the other by Mrs. Catharine V. Waite, appeared in the
Earlville _Transcript_. Both of these documents are yellowed with
age, but the arguments presented are as logical as the more
recent utterances of our most radical champions. There is a
tradition of a convention at Galesburg some years later, but we
have failed to find any accurate data. During the interim between
these dates and that never-to-be-forgotten April day in 1861, but
little agitation of this great subject can be traced, and during
the six years subsequent to that time we witness all previously
defined boundaries of spheres brushed away like cobwebs, when
women, north and south, were obliged to fill the places made
vacant by our civil war. An adequate record of the work
accomplished during those eventful years by Illinois women,
notably among them being Mary A. Livermore and Jane C. Hoge, lies
before us in a bound volume of the paper published under the
auspices of the Northwestern Sanitary Fair, edited by the Hon.
Andrew Shuman. This little journal was called the _Voice of the
Fair_, a prophetic name, as really through the medium of these
sanitary fairs were the voices of the _fair_ all potent, and
through their patriotic services to our soldiery did the women of
the United States first discover their talent for managing and
administering great enterprises. In his first editorial
Lieutenant-Governor Shuman says:
On motion of Mrs. Elizabeth A. Loomis, it was decided to
open the fair on February 22, 1865, Washington's birthday,
and to continue it till March 4, the presidential
inauguration day. A committee, consisting of Mrs. H. H.
Hoge, Mrs. D. P. Livermore and Mrs. E. W. Blatchford for the
commission, and Mrs. O. E. Hosmer, Mrs. C. P. Dickinson and
Mr. L. B. Bryan for the Home, was appointed as executive.
This was the little cloud, scarcely larger than a man's
hand, which grew till it almost encircled the heavens,
spreading into every corner of our broad land, and including
every department of industry in its ample details.
The undertaking was herculean, and on the grand occasion of the
opening of the fair, although we do not find any account of women
sharing in the honors of the day, yet they were vouchsafed
honorable mention in the following terms by the governor of the
State: "I do not know how to praise women, but I can say nothing
so good as our late president once said on a similar occasion,
'God bless the women of America.' They have been our faithful
allies during this fearful war. They have toiled steadily by our
side, with the most enduring constancy through the frightful
contest." Amid the first impulses of genuine gratitude men
recognized what at present they seem to forget, that by
inheritance and patriotic service woman has an equal right with
man to a share in the rights and privileges of this government.
In the winter of 1860 Hannah Tracy Cutler, M. D., and Mrs.
Frances D. Gage made a canvass of the interior and western parts
of the State, procuring signatures to petitions asking for
equality before the law, and especially for the right of married
women to earn and hold and dispose of property the same as a
_feme-sole_. Also, that property acquired before marriage, or
that may afterward accrue to a married woman by gift, devise,
descent or deed, may be held, controlled and disposed of by
herself where it had not been intentionally converted to common
property by her consent. In response to a request for data on
this point, Mrs. Cutler writes:
At the close of our campaign we were summoned to Ohio to
assist in the canvass in that State. Returning to Illinois,
I learned that no action had been taken on our petitions.
The member to whom we had consigned them, and who had
promised to act in our behalf, had found no convenient
opportunity. I at once repaired to Springfield, and, on
inquiry, was told that it was now too late in the
session--that members were so busy that no one could be
induced to draft a bill for an act granting such laws as we
desired. I found one member ready to assist to the full
measure of his ability--Mr. Pickett of Rock Island. By his
encouragement I went to the State library and there drew up
a bill giving women, during coverture, certain personal and
property rights. Mr. Pickett presented our petitions, got a
special committee, took my bill before it, got a favorable
report, and a law was passed to that effect. Some decisions
occurred under this law. I think, however, that in a
codification a year or two after, this law was left out, I
know not by what authority, and some years later Mrs.
Livermore, Mrs. Bradwell and others presented the matter
afresh, and succeeded in procuring again a similar
enactment. The winter following I presented petitions for
the right of guardianship; also, I asked that for estates
not exceeding $5,000 the widow should not be required to
take out letters of administration, but should be permitted
to continue in possession, the same as the husband on the
decease of the wife, the property subject to the same
liabilities for the payment of debts and the maintenance of
children as before the decease of the husband. I made this
small claim for the relief of many wives whose husbands had
gone into the army, leaving them with all the
responsibility; and there seemed no sufficient reason for
disturbing and distributing either the family or the estate,
when the husband exchanged the battle-field for the "sleep
that knows no waking." This petition, asking for these
reasonable and righteous laws, was, by motion of Colonel
Mack, in a spirit of burlesque, referred to the Committee on
Internal Navigation, and a burlesque report was made in open
Senate, too indecent to be entered on the records. The grave
and reverend seigniors, on this, indulged in a hearty
guffaw, hugely enjoyed by his honor Lieutenant-Governor
Hoffman, and, to this day, no further action has been taken
to give the wife and mother this small modicum of justice,
though many of the senators at that time promised the
question an early consideration.
On Saturday, October 3, 1868, a genuine sensation was produced by
the appearance of the Chicago _Legal News_, edited by Mrs. Myra
Bradwell. At this day it is impossible to realize with what
supreme astonishment this journal was received. Neither can we
estimate its influence upon the subsequent legislation of the
State. Looking through its files we find that no opportunity was
lost for exposing all laws unjust to woman, or for noting each
indication of progress throughout the world. Under date of
October 31, 1868, a short article in regard to the "Citizenship
of Women" reads thus:
The act of congress provides that any alien, being a free
white person, may become a citizen of the United States.
While congress was very careful to limit this great
privilege of citizenship to the free white person, it made
no distinction or limitation whatever on account of sex.
Under this statute it has been held that a married woman
may be naturalized and become a citizen of the United
States, and that, too, without the consent of her husband. A
woman may be a citizen of the United States, be subject to
the laws, own property, and be compelled to pay taxes to
support a government she has no voice in administering or
vote in electing its officers.
In the same issue of the _News_ we meet with an earnest appeal
for the prompt passage of a law conferring upon woman a right to
her earnings. When we realize that one of the Supreme Judges soon
after this assured Mrs. Bradwell that she was editing a paper
that no lawyer could afford to do without, we shall understand
how important a part this journal has played in the courts. In
the sixth number of the _News_ we find the attention of the legal
fraternity called to the fact that in the reign of James I. it
was held in the cases of _Coats vs. Lyall_ and _Holt vs. Lyall_,
tried in Westminster Hall, that a single woman, if a freeholder,
had the right to vote for a parliament man; and in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth, Lady Packington, in right of property held by
her, did actually vote for a return of two burgesses to
parliament for the borough of Aylesburg; and in the time of
Charles I., Mrs. Copley voted, in right of her property, for the
return of a burgess for Gratton. The subject of their return was
brought before parliament, and amended by joining other persons
with Mrs. Copley in the right of returning burgesses for Gratton.
Women have actually sat and voted in the English parliament.
In 1868, Sorosis, a woman's club, was organized in Chicago, with
Mrs. Delia Waterman president, and soon after several periodicals
were established; _The Chicago Sorosis_, with Mrs. Mary L.
Walker, Cynthia Leonard and Agnes L. Knowlton, editors; _The
Inland Monthly_, Mrs. Charlotte Clark, editor and publisher; and
_The Agitator_, with Mary A. Livermore and Mary L. Walker
editors. Though all were short-lived, they serve to show woman's
ambition in the direction of journalism.
In 1868 there was a decided "awakening" on the question of woman
suffrage in central Illinois. In the town of Elmwood, Peoria
county, the question drew large audiences to lyceum discussions,
and was argued in school, church and caucus. The conservatives
became alarmed, and announced their determination to "nip the
innovation in the bud." A spirited editorial in the New York
_Independent_ was based upon the following facts, given by
request of some of the disfranchised women:
Rev. W. G. Pierce was the pastor of the Elmwood
Congregational Church. A large majority of the members were
women, and there was no discrimination against them in the
church manual. The pastor and two or three members decided
that a change of rules was needed. A church meeting was held
in March, 1868, at which the number in attendance was very
small, owing to some irregularities in issuing the call. The
suffrage question was brought up by the pastor, and the talk
soon became so insulting that the women present felt
compelled to leave the house. The manual was then amended so
as to exclude women from voting "in matters pertaining to
the welfare of the church," and making a two-thirds vote of
adult males necessary to any change thereafter. This was
carried by five yeas to one nay--only six votes out of a
membership of 210! The church was taken by surprise, and
there was no little excitement when the fact became known
next day. A vigorous protest and a call for reconsideration
was quickly signed by nearly a hundred members and sent to
the pastor. The meeting was not called for weeks, and when
at last it was secured, he, as moderator, ruled
reconsideration out, on the ground that there was an error
in the announcement of the business (by himself!) from the
pulpit. At a later meeting a vote on reconsideration was
reached, and enough of the male adult minority were in
attendance to make the vote stand 19 to 17, not two-thirds
of the male adult element voting for reconsideration.
The contention now became bitter, and twenty-eight of the
more intelligent and earnest members withdrew and asked for
letters to other churches. Such of the "adult males" as
"tarried by the altar," refused to give the outgoing members
the usual letters, to join in a mutual council on an equal
footing, or to discipline the seceders. The latter called an
ex-parte council, composed of such men as Dr. Bascom, of
Princeton; Dr. Edward Beecher, of Galesburg; Dr. Haven, of
Evanston; Dr. C. D. Helmer, of Chicago, and others. This
council gave the desired letters, but advised
reconciliation. Among the seceders, Mrs. Huldah Joy, an
educated and intensely religious woman, was one of the most
active and earnest, her husband, F. R. Joy, and her
daughters, also doing good service. Mrs. H. E.
Sunderland,[352] another woman of culture, and Mrs. Mary Ann
Cone and Mrs. S. R. Murray were faithful, brave and earnest.
The church, which previous to the secession, was strong and
flourishing, became an inharmonious organization, and has
never rallied from the effects of that unjust action.
At a meeting held in Chicago, in the autumn of 1868, a resolution
was offered to the effect that "a State association be formed,
having for its object the advocacy of universal suffrage." Among
the many interesting facts connected with the "rise and progress"
of the equal-rights movement is the large number of
representative men and women who have from the first been
identified with it.[353] January 25, 1860 we find among the most
progressive utterances from the pulpit, a sermon by the Rev.
Sumner Ellis of Chicago, while Rev. Charles Fowler and Dr. H. W.
Thomas were ever fearless and earnest in their advocacy of this
measure. In February, 1869, the _Legal News_ said:
A call has been issued, inviting all persons in favor of
woman suffrage to meet in convention in Library Hall,
Chicago. There are many hundred names appended, including
the judges of all the courts of Cook county, leading members
of the bar throughout the State, representatives of the
press, ministers of the gospel, from all denominations, and
representatives from every profession and business.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and the Rev.
Olympia Brown have been invited and are expected to attend.
Pursuant to the foregoing "call," a notable convention was
held.[354] The _Tribune_ devoted nine columns to an account of
the proceedings, respectful in tone and fair in statement. During
its two days' session, Library Hall was packed to its utmost
capacity with the beauty and fashion of the city. Able lawyers,
eloquent and distinguished divines and gallant generals occupied
seats upon the platform and took part in the deliberations. The
special importance of this convention at this time, was the
consideration of the immediate duty of securing a recognition of
the rights of women in the new constitution, for the framing of
which a convention had been called.
All the speakers had strong convictions and showed broad
differences, continually making sharp points against each other.
Several clergymen were present, some in favor of woman suffrage,
some opposed, some in doubt. Among these were the two
Collyers--one, the Rev. Robert, the English blacksmith of former
days, liberal, progressive, of large physical proportions; the
other, the Rev. Robert Laird, a much smaller man, and of
conservative tendencies.
The Rev. Robert Collyer dissented so entirely from what the
preceding speaker, Dr. Hammond, had said, that he was
determined to run the risk of attempting to reply. He
thought that a majority of men who began by being reformers,
ended by being old fogies, and he thought that might be the
case with Mr. Hammond. He felt no doubt that the whole
movement of women's rights was to be established in America.
He had seen the effects of woman's presence in associations
upon men, and he was sure that this same agency would have
the effect of bringing politics to such a condition as that
decent people of either sex might take part in it. As to the
Bible declaring that man shall rule over woman, he found a
similar case where it used to be quoted in support of the
institution of slavery, but when the grander and more
beautiful principles of the Bible came to be applied the
contrary was clearly established. So it was with the
question of woman's rights. To him the Bible seemed like an
immense pasture wherein any and every species of animal
might find its own peculiar food. In regard to what Mr.
Hammond said as to the rights of infants, he wished he had
conferred with his wife and got her approval before he said
it. The speaker was sure his own wife would not have advised
him to say it. He believed that when maternal and home
duties conflicted, the children and the home relations would
take the preference invariably, and the remarks of Mr.
Hammond seemed to imply a terrible want of confidence in
woman. He believed that woman would always do her duty to
her children and her home. Then, too, he had been surprised,
that Mr. Hammond, in speaking of preventing children from
coming into the world, had failed to speak of the
complicity of man, in reality the greatest criminal, in that
matter. As to the excitement attendant upon political
issues, was it worse, viewed as mere excitement, than that
which is so earnestly sought to be aroused at religious
meetings? Elizabeth, Anne, and Victoria were, with the
exception, perhaps, of Cromwell, the best rulers England
ever had, and, when the administration of Andrew Johnson was
remembered, he thought we might do worse than to have a
woman for president, after Grant's term shall have expired.
[Applause.] In conclusion, Mr. Collyer said that, even if
the fearful picture drawn by Mr. Hammond, of 70,000 immoral
women marching to the polls in New York, were realized, he
could draw another picture--that of 75,000 good and pure
women marching to the polls to vote the others down.
[Applause.]
Rev. Edward Beecher, of Galesburg, said: Exclusive class
legislation was not safe; it was oppressive and degrading.
Female influence has procured the repeal of some obnoxious
laws, and that proved it was a powerful element. He thought
the Bible, as regards man being the head, had been
misinterpreted. When man took the attitude in relation to
women which Christ sustains to the church, that of love, of
service, of helpfulness and sacrifice, he would be an
example of true headship. He read an extract from an
editorial in the _Tribune_, of February 11, in regard to the
giving way of moral integrity in the affairs of the nation,
and commended the question to the consideration of all. The
country was never in greater danger than now of having the
whole political system destroyed. Some great moral influence
ought to be brought to eradicate the corruption so prevalent
among public men. There were two great vices in
existence--drunkenness and licentiousness--and in both,
woman was the victim of man in the majority of cases. The
legislation which pressed down women was wrong, and should
be remedied. He admitted it was an experiment to introduce
the female element into legislation, but the success of the
male element had thus far been such that, according to his
judgment, things could not be much worse than they are.
Women were always deeply interested in all public questions.
If responsibilities were put upon them they would become
greater intellectually, morally and socially.
Several able lawyers also took part in the convention, who
brought their legal learning to bear on the question. Mrs.
Stanton and Miss Anthony, hostile to the action of the Republican
party as manifested in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments,
were present with their stern criticisms and scathing resolutions
on "manhood suffrage," submitting the following to the
convention:
_Resolved_, That a man's government is worse than a white
man's government, because in proportion as you increase the
rulers you make the condition of the ostracised more
hopeless and degraded.
_Resolved_, That as the Democratic cry of "a white man's
government" created an antagonism between the Irish and the
negro, culminating in the New York riots of '63, so the
Republican cry of "manhood suffrage" creates an antagonism
between the black man and all women, and will culminate in
fearful outrages on womanhood, especially in the Southern
States.
_Resolved_, That by the establishment of an aristocracy of
sex in the District of Columbia, by the introduction of the
word "male" into the federal constitution in article XIV.,
section 2, and by the proposition to enforce manhood
suffrage in all the States of the Union, the Republican
party has been guilty of three successive arbitrary acts,
three retrogressive steps in legislation, alike invidious
and insulting to women and suicidal to the nation.
After a long and earnest discussion, the resolutions were voted
down. Mrs. Stanton's speech setting forth six reasons against a
"male aristocracy"[355] was pronounced able and eloquent, though
directly in opposition to the general sentiment of the
convention, which was mainly Republican. Miss Anna Dickinson,
having a lyceum engagement in Chicago, was present at one of the
sessions, and had quite a spirited encounter with Robert Laird
Collier. As she appeared on the platform at the close of some
remarks by that gentleman, loud calls were made for her, when she
came forward and spoke as follows:
MRS. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: It is impossible for
me to continue in my seat after so kind and cordial a call
from this house, and I thank you for the pleasant and
friendly feeling you have shown. I have but a word to say. I
had gone out of the room, not because of the discussion, but
because it was too warm and the atmosphere so stifling, when
I was recalled by hearing something to this effect: "That
there had not been a single logical argument used on this
platform in behalf of woman suffrage; that woman is
abundantly represented by some man of her family; that when
a woman lifts herself up in opposition against her husband,
she lifts herself up, if I properly and rightly understood
the declaration, against God; that the inspired assertion is
that the husband is the head of the wife." Oh! but Mr.
Collier forgot to say the husband is the head of the wife as
Christ is the head of the church. In my observation, and it
has not been a limited one, though I confess I am not an
unprejudiced observer, I have never yet discovered a man who
is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.
Furthermore, he announces that these women, being
represented by men, if they lift themselves up in opposition
to their husbands, lose that womanly and feminine element
which is so admirable and pure and beautiful, and nothing
can preserve them from the contamination of politics. Woman
is to lift herself against God if she lifts herself against
her husband, and woman is abundantly represented by this
same husband, or by some man in her own family. There are a
multitude of women who have no husbands [laughter]. There
are a multitude of women who never will have any husbands
[renewed laughter]. There are a great many women who have no
men in their own households to represent them, either for
their wrongs or their rights. Mr. Collier, I suppose,
however, is talking about women who have husbands.
He says the woman loses her purity, her delicacy, her
feminine attributes when she lifts her voice and sentiments
against the man whose name she bears. We will say, then,
look across these western prairies to Utah. If the women
there dare to say to the congress of the United States,
"Amend this constitution that we women of Utah can have one
husband, and that the husband can take but one wife"; if
these women demand decency in the marriage relation, demand
justice for themselves, demand purity, they are lifting
themselves against the laws of womanhood and the laws of
God. Every woman represented by her husband is to lose her
purity, her delicacy, her refinement, if she dares to lift
her hand against him and his will. You have here, within the
limits of your State of Illinois, 100,000 drunkards. Every
woman who dares to lift her hand, cry out with her voice,
"Give me the ballot that may offset the votes of these
drunkards at the polls and save my children from starvation
and myself from being put into the workhouse"--this woman is
lifting herself against the laws of God and womanhood. That
is not all! Last summer this question of prohibition was
being tested in Massachusetts by votes. I went from town to
town--my engagements taking me all over the State at that
time--and said my say upon this question of woman suffrage.
In whatever city or town I went, women, bowed down with
grief, who desired to preserve their womanhood, their
persons from blows and abuse, their sons from going to
gambling hells and rum shops, their girls from being sent to
houses of abomination, came to me and said: "Anna Dickinson,
if you are a woman, speak and use your influence for our
cause." Women who have drunken husbands, whether they lived
in Beacon street or at the North End, whether they lived in
luxury or poverty, said: "For the sake of womanhood, for the
sake of motherhood, for the sake of all things good and true
in the world, lift up our hands and voices, through
yourself, to protest against these men whose names we bear."
Ah! that Mr. Collier could have seen these drunkards' wives,
standing with tears streaming down their cheeks, and
begging for power, begging for the ballot to save their
homes, and themselves, and their children. Do you tell this
audience--do you tell any mother or daughter here this
afternoon, that she protests against the purity of
womanhood, and lifts her powers against the laws of God?
Pardon me for taking this much of your time. I will simply
add a thought. This is the cause of purity. This is the
cause which is to strengthen young girls, which is to give
them self-reliance and self-respect. This is the thing that
is to put these girls on their feet; say to them "you are an
independent being; you are to earn the clothes that cover
you," and this will allow them to walk with steady feet
through rough places. This thing which is to give these
women such power, certainly will be strengthening to them by
making them independent and self-reliant. The ballot is to
save womanhood and save purity, which he says is in
danger--the feminine element of dependence and weakness and
tenderness, of clinging helplessness, which he so much
adores. Let justice be done. Give us the ballot. Here is the
power to defend yourself when your rights are assailed; when
your home is entered. Here is the authority to tell the
spoiler to stand back; when our sons are being brought up to
wickedness and our daughters to lives of shame, here is the
power in the mother's hand which says these children shall
be taken from the wrong place and put in the right one. For
the rights of mothers I plead. Let us allow, from one end of
this country to the other, every man and woman, black and
white, to go to the polls to defend their own rights and the
rights of their homes.
The Rev. R. L. COLLIER said he would to God that every woman
in America had such a heart and such a voice for woman's
rights. But sympathy was one thing and logic was another. If
he thought the ballot in the hand of woman would cure the
wrongs she speaks of, he would favor female suffrage, but he
was firmly convinced that it would only aggravate their
wrongs. He could not fight Anna Dickinson.
ANNA DICKINSON: I certainly do not intend to fight Mr.
Collier. I believe I have the name of not being a
belligerent woman. Mr. Collier says sympathy is one thing
and logic is another. Very true! I did not speak of the
40,000 women in the State of Massachusetts who are wives of
drunkards, as a matter which shall appeal to your
sympathies, or move your tears. Mr. Collier says that these
women are to find their rights by influence at home.
Mr. COLLIER: That is what I mean.
Miss DICKINSON: That they are to do it by womanly and
feminine love, and I tell him that is the duty of this same
feminine element which is so admirable and adorable. I have
seen men on your street corners, as I have seen men on the
street corners of every city of America, with bloated faces,
with mangled forms, and eyes blackened by the horrible vice
and orgies carried on in their dens of iniquity and
drunkenness and sin. I have seen men with not a semblance of
humanity in their form or in their face, and not a sentiment
of manhood in their souls. I have seen these men made
absolute masters of wives and children; men who reel to
their homes night after night to beat some helpless child;
to beat some helpless woman. A woman was beaten here in
Chicago the other day until there was scarcely a trace of
the woman's face left, and scarcely a trace of the woman's
form remaining. Mr. Collier tells me, then, that these women
whose husbands reel home at 12, 1, 2, 3 o'clock at night, to
demolish the furniture, beat the children, and destroy their
wives' peace and lives--that these women are to find their
rights by influence, by argument, by tenderness. These
brutes who deserve the gallows if any human being can
deserve anything so atrocious in these days--are these
women, their wives, to find their safety, their security for
themselves and their children, by influence, through
argument and tenderness, or love, when nothing can influence
save drink? The law gives man the power to say, "I will have
drink; I will put this into my mouth." If the ballot were
given to women they would vote against drunkenness. It is
not sentiment, it is logic, if there be any logic in votes
and in a home saved.
The Rev. R. L. COLLIER, in reply to Miss Dickinson, quoted a
story from an English author of a drunkard who was reclaimed
by a daughter's love and devotion. He never wanted to hear a
woman say that law could accomplish what love could not.
Miss DICKINSON: I only want to ask Mr. Collier a question,
and it is this: Whether he does not think that man would
have been a great deal better off if this woman's vote could
have offset his vote, and the rum thereby prevented from
being sold at the outset?
Mr. COLLIER: I wish to say that law never yet cured crime;
that men are not our only drunkards. Women are drunkards as
well as men.
Miss DICKINSON (excitedly): It is not so, in anything like
the same proportion; a drunken woman is a rare sight.
Mr. COLLIER: I wish to say that intemperance can never be
cured by law.
Miss DICKINSON: Very well. You tell me that there are woman
in the land who are drunkards. Doubtless there are. Then I
stand here as a woman to entreat, to beseech, to pray
against this sin. For the sake of these drunken woman, I ask
the ballot to drag them back from the rum-shops and shut
their doors [applause]. God forbid that I should underrate
the power of love; that I should discard tenderness. Let us
have entreaty, let us have prayers, and let us have the
ballot, to eradicate this evil. Mr. Collier says he is full
of sympathy, and intimates that women should stand here and
elevate love above law. So long as a man can be influenced
by love, well and good. When a man has sunk to the point
where he beats his wife and children, and burns the house
over them, reduces his family to starvation to get this
accursed drink; when a man has sunk to such a level, is
woman to stand still and entreat? Is this all woman is to
do? No! She is to have the power added that will drag the
firebrand out of his hand, and when sense and reason return,
when the fire is extinguished, then, I say, let us have the
power of love to interfere. I think keeping a man out of sin
is better than trying to drag him out afterward by love.
Mr. COLLIER said he was placed in a false position of
prominence because, unfortunately, he was the only gentleman
on the platform who entertained serious convictions on the
negative side of the subject. The only question was, would
the ballot cure these wrongs? If so, he would like to hear
the reasons, philosophical and logical, set forth. The
appeals that had been made to the convention were illogical
and sympathetic. He believed the persecutors of women were
women. Fashion and the prejudice in the minds of women had
been the barriers to their own elevation. That the ballot in
the hands of women would cure these evils he denied.
Miss DICKINSON: Mr. Collier says, "The worst enemies of
women are women"; that the worst opponents of this measure
are fashion, dress and idleness. I confess there are no
bitterer opponents or enemies of this measure than women. On
that very ground I assert that the ballot will prove woman's
best friend. If woman has something else to think about than
simply to please men, something else than the splendor of
her diamonds, or the magnificence of her carriage, you may
be sure, with broader fields to survey, it would be a good
thing for her. If women could earn their bread and buy the
houses over their heads, in honorable and lucrative
avocations; if they stood in the eye of the law men's
equals, there would be better work, more hopeful hearts,
more Christian magnanimity, and less petty selfishness and
meanness than, I confess with sorrow and tears, are found
among women to-day.
One of the ablest speeches of the convention was made by Judge
Chas. B. Waite, on woman's position before the law. Immediately
after this enthusiastic convention[356] the Illinois State
Suffrage Association was formed, a committee[357] appointed to
visit Springfield and request the legislature to so "change the
laws that the earnings of a married woman may be secured to her
own use; that married women may have the same right to their own
property that married men have; and that the mother may have an
equal right with the father to the custody of the children." The
need of such a committee existed in that year of 1869, and they
seemed to have wrought effective service, since on March 24 the
married woman's earnings act was approved.
AN ACT _in Relation to the Earnings of Married Women._
SEC. 1.--Be it enacted by the people of the State of
Illinois, represented in the General Assembly, That a
married woman shall be entitled to receive, use and possess
her own earnings, and sue for the same in her own name, free
from the interference of her husband or his creditors:
_Provided_, This act shall not be construed to give to the
wife any compensation for any labor performed for her minor
children or husband.
Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Stanton, Judge Waite, Judge and Mrs.
Bradwell, had an enthusiastic meeting in the Opera House,
Springfield, most of the members of the legislature being
present.
September 9, 10, 1869, the Western Convention was held in Library
Hall, Chicago; Mrs. Livermore presided. This influential
gathering was largely attended by leading friends from other
States.[358] Mrs. Kate Doggett and Dr. Mary Safford were
appointed to attend the Woman's Industrial Congress at Berlin.
Letters were read from Wm. Lloyd Garrison and others.[359]
February 8, 9, 1870, the first annual meeting of the State
Association was held at Springfield in the Opera House, Hon.
James B. Bradwell in the chair. Many members of the legislature
were present during the various sessions and a hearing[360]
before the House was granted next day. Resolutions were discussed
and adopted, declaring that women were enfranchised under the
fourteenth amendment. As a constitutional convention was in
session, and there was an effort being made to have an amendment
for woman suffrage submitted to a vote of the people, greater
interest was felt in all that was said at this convention.
The strange inconsistency of the opponents of woman suffrage was
perhaps never more fully illustrated than by the following
occurrence: While the patriotic and earnest women of Illinois
were quietly acting upon the advice of their representatives, and
relying upon their "quiet, moral influence" to secure a just
recognition of their rights in the constitutional convention, a
conservative woman of Michigan, who, afraid that the women of
Illinois were about to lose their womanliness by asking for the
right to have their opinions counted, deserted her home in the
Peninsular State, went to Springfield, secured the hall of the
convention, and gave two lectures against woman suffrage. A
meeting was called at the close of the second lecture, and in a
resolution moved by a member of the convention, as Mrs. Bradwell
pertinently says, "the people of the State were told that _one
woman_ had proved herself competent and well qualified to
enlighten the constitutional convention upon the evils of woman
suffrage."[361] Such was the effect of this self-appointed
obtruder from another State that the members of the convention,
without giving a woman of their own State opportunity for reply,
not only struck out the clause submitting the question to the
people in a separate article, but actually incorporated in the
body of the constitution a clause which would not allow a woman
to hold any office, public position, place of trust or emolument
in the State. Through the efforts of such staunch friends as
Judge Bradwell, Judge Waite and others, this latter clause was
stricken out, and one inserted which, under a fair construction,
will allow a woman to hold almost any office, provided she
receives a sufficient number of votes.
By the accidental insertion of another clause in the constitution
under consideration, Section 1, of Article VII., any foreign born
woman, naturalized previous to January, 1870, was given the right
to vote. So that Illinois was the first State in the Union, since
the time when the women of New Jersey were disfranchised, to give
to foreign-born women the elective franchise. This mistake of the
wise Solons was guarded as a State secret.
Previous to the great fire of 1871, the most popular and
influential woman's club in Chicago was the organization known as
Sorosis. This club, by the generous aid of many prominent
gentlemen of the city, established pleasant headquarters, where,
in addition to bright carpets and artistic decorations, were
books, flowers, birds, and other refined accessories. Mrs.
Elizabeth Loomis says of the meetings held in those delightful
parlors: "At every successive session we could see that we were
gaining ground and receiving influential members. I well remember
how it encouraged us to number the Rev. Dr. Thomas among our
friends; and how gladly I made the motion to have him appointed
temporary chairman in the absence of the president--a position
which he cheerfully accepted." One of the most brilliant reunions
ever enjoyed by the club, was a reception given to Mrs. Stanton
and Miss Anthony, as they were _en route_ to California, early in
June, 1871. Of this reception, Miss Anthony, in a letter from Des
Moines, Iowa, to _The Revolution_, said: "Mrs. Stanton and I were
in Chicago the evening the Illinois State and Cook County
Association held their opening reception at their new central
bureau, a suite of fine rooms handsomely carpeted and furnished
by prominent merchants of the city, where, with music,
conversation, speeches, etc., the hours passed delightfully
away," forming, as Miss Anthony might have added, a delightful
oasis amid the many discomforts of a continuous appeal to the
people to deal justly.
In November, 1871, Mrs. Catharine V. Waite, of Hyde Park, made a
written application to the board of registration, asking them to
place her name upon the register as a voter, which they refused
to do on the ground that she was a woman, whereupon Mrs. Waite
filed a petition in the Supreme Court of Cook county, stating the
facts, and praying that the board be compelled by mandamus to
place her name upon the register. Chief-Justice Jameson granted
an alternative writ, returnable on the following Monday,
commanding the board to show cause, if any they have, why Mrs.
Waite's name should not be placed upon the register. Judge
Charles B. Waite, the husband of the plaintiff, made an
exhaustive and unanswerable argument before Judge Jameson, but to
no purpose as far as the result of that case was concerned, as
the opinion of the court delivered January 12, 1872, which was
very lengthy,[362] denied the relator with costs.
In 1872, Norman T. Gassette, esq., clerk of the Circuit Court of
Cook county, and recorder of deeds, remembering the limited
number of industrial occupations open to women, and seeing no
reason why they could not perform the work of that office,
resolved to try the experiment. A room was fitted up for the
special use of women, a number of whom gladly accepted the
proffered positions and received the same pay per folio as that
earned by men. The experiment proved entirely satisfactory, Major
Brockway having officially testified in regard to woman's
especial fitness for the work.
There was an attempt this year to get a law licensing houses of
ill-fame in Chicago, and an immense petition was rolled up and
presented to the legislature by ladies who desired to defeat the
proposed enactment. They carried their point by as neat a flank
movement as Sherman ever executed. A quiet move to Springfield
with a petition signed by thousands of the best men and women of
the city, and our enemies found themselves checkmated before the
game had fairly begun.
February 13, 14, 1872, the State Association held its annual
meeting at Bloomington, with large and interested audiences.[363]
March 28 Mrs. Jane Graham Jones secured a hearing before the
legislature for Miss Anthony, who made one of her most convincing
arguments, and had in her audience nearly every member of that
body who voted for what was termed the Alta Hulett bill.
To Myra Bradwell and Alta C. Hulett belongs the credit of a long
and persevering struggle to open the legal profession to women.
The latter succeeded at last in slipping the bolt which had
barred woman from her right to practice law. We take the
following statement in regard to Miss Hulett's experience from
the "Women of the Century":
At the age of seventeen, Miss Alta Hulett entered the law
office of Mr. Lathrop, of Rockford, as a student, and after
a few months' study passed the required examination, and
sent her credentials to the Supreme Court, which, instead of
granting or refusing her plea for admission, ignored it
altogether. Myra Bradwell, the successful editor of the
_Legal News_, had just been denied admission. Her case,
stated in brief, is this: Mrs. Bradwell made application
for a license to practice law. The court refused it on the
ground of her being a married woman. She immediately brought
a suit to test the legality of this decision. This
interesting case was carried to the Supreme Court of the
United States, which sustained the decision of the lower
courts.[364] Miss Hulett had reason to expect that since she
was unmarried, this decision would not prejudice her case.
Just on the threshold of her chosen profession, the rewards
of youthful aspirations and earnest study apparently within
her grasp, her dismay may be imagined when no response
whatever was vouchsafed her petition. A fainter heart would
have accepted the situation. To battle successfully with old
prejudices, entrenched in the strongholds of the law,
required not only marked ability, but also a courage which
could not surrender. Miss Hulett took a country school for
four months, and bravely went to work again. While teaching
and "boarding round," she prepared a lecture, "Justice vs.
The Supreme Court," in which she vigorously and eloquently
stated her case. This lecture was delivered in Rockford,
Freeport, and many other towns, enlisting everywhere
sympathy and admiration in her behalf. After taking counsel
with Lieutenant-Governor Early and other prominent members
of the legislature, she drafted a bill, the provisions of
which are:
_Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois
represented in the General Assembly_, That no person shall
be precluded or debarred from any occupation, profession, or
employment (except military), on account of sex. Provided
this act shall not be construed to affect the eligibility of
any person to an elective office.
Nothing in this act shall be construed as requiring any
female to work on streets or roads, or serve on juries. All
laws inconsistent with this act are hereby repealed.
Friends obtained for this bill a very favorable introduction
into the legislature, where it passed and received the
Governor's signature. Passing up the steps to her home one
rainy day, the telegram announcing that the bill had become
a law was placed in her hands, and in referring to the
incident, Miss Hulett said: "I shall never again know a
moment of such supreme happiness." We can only add in this
connection that after a most vigorous examination she stood
at the head of a class of twenty-eight, all the other
members being gentlemen. This time the Supreme Court made
the amende honorable, courteously and cordially welcoming
her into the ranks of the profession on her birthday, June
4, 1873, and at the age of nineteen Miss Hulett commenced
the practice of law.
But Miss Hulett's career, so full of promise, was soon ended. The
announcement of her untimely death, which occurred at San Diego,
Cal., March 26, 1877, sent a pang to the hearts of those who knew
her personally, and of thousands who regarded her with pride as a
representative woman. A Chicago correspondent says:
The daily press of the city have already borne ample
testimony to her professional talents and success and to the
esteem and admiration accorded her by the bar of Chicago and
by the general public; for her somewhat exceptional position
as well as her ability had made her one of the marked
characters of the city. Her short life, so successful and
brilliant to the public eye, was not without its dark and
thorny places. Unusual responsibilities of a domestic
nature, opposition of various kinds and keen disappointments
only nerved her to greater persistency, and her courage was
upheld by the generous and abundant recognition which she
received on every hand from leading members of the bar--a
recognition for which she never failed, when opportunity
offered, to express her sense of profound obligation--and
she was accustomed to say that the law was the most liberal
of the professions. Much as Miss Hulett had accomplished
hitherto, it was felt that she had only crossed the
threshold of a career of surpassing usefulness; all things
seemed possible to one so richly endowed; her mental vigor
seemed matched by a _physique_, the apparent type of
blooming health; but the seeds of disease were inherited and
only awaited a combination of circumstances to assert their
fatal power. Absorbing enthusiasm for her profession, and
the cares of a rapidly increasing practice, made her
overlook the insidious danger lurking in a cold, and not
until her alarmed physician ordered her to the soft climate
of Southern California did she comprehend her danger. This
peremptory order was a terrible shock, and the forced exile
from the field of her hopes and ambitions, more bitter than
death. She never rallied, but continued rapidly to fail
until the end came. At a meeting of the bar of Chicago, held
to take action in commemoration of the death of Miss Alta M.
Hulett, attorney-at-law, the following was one of the
resolutions adopted:
_Resolved_, That although the legal profession has hitherto
been almost, if not altogether, considered as exclusively
for men to practice, yet we freely recognize Miss Hulett's
right to adopt it as her pursuit in life, and cheerfully
bear testimony to the fact that in her practice she never
demeaned herself in any way unbecoming a woman. She was
always true to her clients and their interests, but she was
equally true to her sex and her duty; and if women who now
are, or hereafter shall become, members of our profession
shall be equally true, its honor will never be tarnished,
nor the respect, good-will and esteem which it is the duty
and pride of man to accord to woman be in the least
diminished by their membership.
Which, translated, means that men are not only ready to
welcome into one of their own professions women having the
requisite intellectual qualifications, but that the welcome
will be the warmer if the women entering shall not leave
behind the more feminine attributes of the sex. Portia did
deliver judgment, but the counselor's cap became the pretty
locks it could not hide, and the jurist's cloak lent
additional grace to the symmetry and litheness of female
youth.
M. Fredrica Perry began the study of law in the office of Shipman
& Loveridge, Coldwater, Michigan, in the winter of 1870-71. She
spent two years in the law-office and then two years in the
law-school of Michigan University. On graduating from the
law-school in March, 1875, she was admitted to the Michigan bar.
She located in Chicago in August, and in September was admitted
to the Illinois bar and began practice. A few weeks later she
was, on motion of Miss Hulett, admitted to the U.S. Circuit and
District Courts for the Northern District of Illinois. She was in
partnership with Ellen A. Martin under the name of Perry &
Martin. Her death occured June 3, 1883, and was the result of
pneumonia. Miss Perry was a successful lawyer and combined in an
eminent degree the qualities which distinguish able barristers
and jurists; her mind was broad and catholic, clear, quick,
logical and profound; her information on legal and general
matters was extensive. She was an excellent advocate, a skillful
examiner of witnesses, and understood as few do, save
practitioners who have grown old in experience, the nice
discriminations of common-law pleading and the rules of evidence.
She was engrossed in the study and practice of law, and gained
steadily in efficiency and power year by year. She had the genius
and ability for the highest attainment in all branches of civil
practice, and joined with these the power of close application
and hard work. She belonged to the Strong family which has
furnished a good deal of the legal talent of the United States.
Judge Tuley, a chancery judge of Chicago before whom she often
appeared, said of her at the bar meeting called to take action
upon her death: "I was surprised at the extent of her legal
knowledge and the great legal acumen she displayed." And of her
manner and method of conducting a certain bitterly-contested case
in his court: "I became satisfied that the influence of woman
would be highly beneficial in preserving and sustaining that
high standard of professional courtesy which should always exist
among the members of our profession."----Ellen A. Martin, of
Perry & Martin, Chicago, spent two years in a law-office and two
years in Michigan University law-school, and was graduated and
admitted to practice in Michigan at the same time with Miss
Perry. She was admitted in Illinois in January, 1876, and since
then to the U. S. Circuit Court.----In the summer of 1879, Mrs.
M. B. R. Shay, Streator, graduating from the Bloomington
law-school, was admitted to the bar. She has published a book
entitled, "Students Guide to Common-Law Pleading."----In 1880,
Cora A. Benneson, Quincy, was graduated from the Michigan
University law-school and admitted to the Michigan and Illinois
bar.----Ada H. Kepley, in practice with her husband at Effingham,
was graduated from the Chicago law-school in June, 1870, but was
refused admission to the bar. In November of that year, a motion
was made in the Court at Effingham that she should be allowed to
act as attorney in a case at that bar, and Judge Decius said that
though the Supreme Court had refused to license a woman, he yet
thought the motion was proper and in accord with the spirit of
the age and granted the motion. Mrs. Kepley was finally admitted,
January, 1881.----Miss Bessie Bradwell, graduated from the Union
College of Law of Chicago and admitted to the bar in 1882, is
associated with her parents, Judge and Mrs. Bradwell, on the
_Legal News_ and in the preparation of Bradwell's Appellate Court
Reports.
July 1, 1873, the bill making women eligible as school officers
became a law, and in the fall elections of the same year the
people gave unmistakable indorsement of the champions of the
bill, by electing women as superintendent of schools in ten
counties, while in sixteen others women were nominated. Many of
these earnest women have been in the service ever since. As the
practical results of woman's controlling influence as
superintendents of schools seems to epitomize her work in all
official positions, we submit a report compiled by Miss Mary
Allen West, made at the request of the Illinois Social Science
Association, regretting that we have not space for one of the
model reports of Miss Sarah Raymond, also for ten years
superintendent of the schools of Bloomington:
During the session of 1872-3, Judge Bradwell introduced into
the legislature the following bill, which became a law April
3, 1873: "Be it enacted by the people of Illinois,
represented in General Assembly, that any woman, married or
single, of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, and
possessing the qualifications prescribed for men, shall be
eligible to any office under the general school laws of this
State." A second section provides for her giving bonds.
At the next election, November, 1873, ten ladies were
elected to the office of county superintendent of schools
for a term of four years. As this term has now expired, it
is a favorable time to inquire how women have succeeded in
this new line of labor. That the work that devolves upon
county superintendents may be understood, I give a part of
the synopsis of the duties pertaining to the office, as
enumerated by Dr. Newton Bateman:
_First_--She must carefully inspect and pass upon the bonds
of all township treasurers, and upon the securities given in
each case, and is personally liable as well upon her
official bond for any loss to the school funds sustained
through her neglect or careless performance of duty.
_Second_--She must keep herself fully and carefully informed
as to what townships have and what have not complied with
the provisions of the law in respect to maintenance of
schools; so that no funds may in ignorance be paid to
townships having no legal claim to them.
_Third_--She must collect, transcribe, classify, verify,
tabulate, and transmit annually to the State superintendent
the school statistics of her county, together with a
detailed written report of the condition of the common
schools therein.
_Fourth_--She must arrange, classify, file and preserve all
books, papers, bonds, official correspondence and other
documents belonging to her office.
_Fifth_--She must impart instruction and give directions to
inexperienced teachers in the science, art and method of
teaching, and must be ready, at all times, to counsel,
advise and assist the school officers of her county.
_Sixth_--She must take an active part in the management of
County Teachers' Institutes, and labor in every way to
improve the quality of teaching in her county.
_Seventh_--She must hear, examine, and determine all
questions and controversies under school law, which may be
referred to her, and must carefully prepare, to the best of
her knowledge and ability, such replies to all letters from
school officers and teachers as each case demands.
_Eighth_--She must examine all candidates desiring to teach
in her county, and grant certificates to such, and such
only, as she honestly thinks are of good moral character and
sufficient scholastic attainments. As no one can teach in a
public school without such certificate, this gives her the
veto power over all teachers. Dr. Bateman, commenting on
fourteen specifications, of which the foregoing constitute
but eight, says these are _some_ of the _many_ duties made
obligatory upon the county superintendent by law. Besides
all these, is the visitation of schools, which every true
superintendent considers a very important part of the work.
For convenience we will group these duties in three classes:
1. Those concerning finance. 2. Legal duties. 3. Duties to
teachers and schools.
I. To give an idea of the financial interests intrusted to
the hands of these women, we find by reference to the State
superintendent's report for last year that the total
receipts for school purposes in these ten counties which
they superintend was $1,009,441. So far as can be learned
from the records, not one cent of the large sums over which
they had supervision has been lost through their dishonesty,
or, what was more to be feared, their ignorance of business.
Unlike those of Dora Copperfield, their accounts _will_ "add
up." In the county (Knox) where the receipts are greatest,
aggregating $182,423.22, the greatest difference between
receipts and expenditures, as shown by the superintendent's
books, is ten cents. In many of these counties the financial
affairs were in the greatest confusion when the ladies came
into office. In one, perhaps more, the preceding
superintendent was a defaulter, in another he was engaged in
a law-suit with the county board, and in still others
strange irregularities were discovered. In every instance,
so far as we can ascertain, these crookednesses have been
straightened out, the finances put upon a surer basis,
hundreds, we believe thousands, of dollars of bad debts have
been collected, treasurers and directors have been induced
to keep their books with greater care and in better shape,
reckless expenditure of school funds has been discouraged,
and directors encouraged to expend the money for things
which will permanently benefit the schools. So much for
finance.
II. _Legal Duties._--Rightly to discharge the duties imposed
by specification 7, the county superintendent needs to be a
very good lawyer, for school law in its ramifications
reaches many other departments of law. Especially is it
inextricably mixed up with election laws, and all know that
cases arising under election laws are among the most complex
and difficult to handle. Probably a school election never
occurrs in which some such cases are not referred to the
county superintendent. In the settlement of these and other
cases arising under school law, these women have been
peculiarly successful, and some of them have earned the
blessing bestowed upon the peacemakers. We know of one
county where, after last spring's election, five contested
cases were referred to the superintendent for settlement;
these were all satisfactorily adjusted by her. During her
four years' administration, scores of controversies were
referred to her, and there has never been a single appeal
from her decisions. Another most complicated case involving
a defaulting treasurer, was conducted entirely by the county
superintendent until it became necessary to employ a lawyer
to argue the case in court. What she had done was then
submitted to one of the leading lawyers of the State, and he
sanctioned and approved each step. Numerous other instances
might be cited to show that woman has not failed in the
legal part of her work as superintendent of schools.
III. _Her Work with Teachers and Schools._--Here our
superintendents were perfectly at home. Each of the ten had
taught successfully for years, and so knew the wants of the
school-room. This knowledge was invaluable, both in the
examination of teachers and in the supervision of schools.
Fears were expressed lest in the examination of candidates,
womanly sympathy would lead them to grant certificates to
needy applicants who were not altogether qualified. But the
motherliness which is in every true woman's heart, warded
off this danger. As one remarked, "I have a great deal of
the milk of human kindness in my nature, but its streams
flow toward the roomful of children to be injured by an
incompetent teacher, rather than toward that teacher,
however needy he may be. If his claims rest on his needs
rather than his merits, let the poormaster attend to his
wants, not the superintendent. School money is not a pauper
fund." This motherliness comes in good play in school
visitation. It draws the children to the superintendent;
keeps them from being afraid of her, and hence leads them to
work naturally during her visit; thus she can obtain a true
idea of the status of the school, and know just how to
advise and direct the teacher. The same thing holds true in
regard to teachers; the majority of them are ladies, and
they will come to a lady for the solution of their doubts
and difficulties much more freely than to a gentleman. This
gives her better opportunity to "impart instruction and give
directions to inexperienced teachers." Woman's power to lift
up the teachers under her control to a higher plane, both
intellectually and morally, has been signally demonstrated
by the experience of the past four years.
In looking after the details of official work, those
tiresome minutiæ so often left at "loose ends," producing
endless confusion, woman has shown great aptitude. You say,
"this is but the clean sweeping of a new broom." May be so,
in part; but in part it comes from the womanly instinct to
"look well to the ways of her household," whether that
household be the occupants of a cottage or the schools of a
county. In the work of the State Association of County
Superintendents, the ladies have well sustained their part.
When placed on the programme, they have come prepared with
carefully written papers, showing their desire to give the
Association the benefit of their best thoughts, and not put
off upon it such crudely digested ideas as may spring up at
the moment. At the last meeting at Springfield, four out of
the nine superintendents now in office were present, 44 per
cent.; out of the 93 gentlemen in the same office, 18 were
present, 19 per cent. The ratio of attendance has been about
the same for the four years.
How has woman's work as county superintendent impressed
other educators? State-Superintendent Etter, who confesses
that he was not in favor of the plan, said at the State
Teachers' Association, above referred to: "The ladies
compare very favorably with their gentlemen co-laborers."
Mr. E.L. Wells, for twelve years county superintendent of
Ogle county, and thoroughly conversant with the work
throughout the State, concurs in this opinion. President
Newton Bateman, than whom no man in the State is better
fitted to speak on this subject, in his political-economy
class in Knox college, took occasion to commend the
efficiency of women as county superintendents of our State.
A gentleman who travels extensively, and looks into school
affairs closely, says he is convinced that in every county
where a woman was elected four years ago, the efficiency of
the office had been doubled and in some cases increased four
or even ten fold. If this be not an exaggeration, an
explanation may be found in the fact that in most of these
counties the best ladies were put in the place of gentlemen
most poorly fitted for the place. The office had become a
political foot-ball, kicked about as party exigencies
demanded, and often came into possession of political hacks
who "must be provided for," and for whom no other place
could be found. They had no qualifications for the office,
and, of course, could not perform its duties. The people,
disgusted, turned to the women for relief, and took good
care to elect the ones best fitted to do the work. Had equal
care been used in the selection of their predecessors, they
might have done equally good work. In quoting opinions, I
have purposely confined myself to those given by gentlemen.
The limits of this paper have restricted this discussion to
the work of woman as a county superintendent; but in other
school offices she is doing efficient work. All over the
State we have examples of her efficiency as school director.
Miss Sarah E. Raymond, in Bloomington, and Miss Ludlow, in
Davenport (by the way, the Iowa State Teachers' Association
last year honored itself by electing her president),
abundantly proves woman's ability to superintend the schools
of large cities. M.A.W.
In _Zion's Herald_ 1873, on the origin of the Woman's College in
Evanston, Miss Frances E. Willard writes:
In 1866, when we were all tugging away to build Heck Hall
for ministers, I heard several thoughtful women say, "We
ought to be doing this for our own sex. Men have help from
every side, while no one thinks of women." In the summer of
1868 Mrs. Mary F. Haskins, who had been treasurer of the
American Methodist Ladies' Centenary Association, which
built Heck Hall, raising for the purpose $50,000, invited
the ladies of Evanston to her home to talk over the subject
of founding a Woman's College, which should secure to young
women the highest educational advantages. Mrs. Haskin
originated the thought--with her own hands assisted in
laying the corner-stone, and in her first address as
president she said: "I have often thought that to the
successful teacher the words must be full of hope and
promise, which a great writer uses of education: 'It is a
companion which no misfortune can distress, no crime
destroy, no enemy alienate, no despot enslave; at home a
friend, abroad an introduction; in solitude a solace, in
society an ornament. It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it
adds a grace to genius. Without it what is man?'--and I
would add with emphasis, Without an education, what is
woman?"
This Woman's College at Evanston is the first on record to which
a charter, granting full collegiate powers, was ever given by
legislative act, including only names of women in its board of
trustees. This board, elected Miss Frances E. Willard president,
who presided over the institution for two years, during which
term a class of young women was graduated, the first in history
to whom diplomas were voted and conferred by women. The degree of
A. M. was given Mrs. Jennie Fowler Willing, of Chicago, who
preached the baccalaureate sermon at the unique commencement
exercises. Mrs. Mary F. Haskin, and Mrs. Elizabeth Greenleaf were
respectively presidents of the board of trustees.
Later on, as a higher evolution of the central thought, an
arrangement was made between the Woman's College and the
Northwestern University, by which the former became the woman's
department of the latter, on condition that in its board of
trustees, faculty of instruction, and all its departments of
culture, women should be admitted on an equality with men, as to
opportunities, positions and salaries. Miss Willard was then
chosen dean of the Woman's College, and professor of æsthetics in
the University. Mrs. Emily Huntington Miller was placed on the
executive committee of the board, and Mrs. R. F. Queal, Mrs.
Jennie Fowler Willing, Mrs. Mary Bannister Willard, and Mrs. L.
L. Greenleaf were elected trustees. One year later, Miss Willard
entered the temperance work since which time Miss Ellen M. Soule
and Miss Jane Bancroft have successively served in the position
of dean.
The young women have led in scholarship, taken prizes in
composition and oratory, while upon one occasion the delighted
students dragged forth the only artillery in the village to voice
their enthusiasm over the fact that to Miss Lizzie R. Hunt had
been awarded at the great international contest the first prize
for the best English essay.
In 1873, while filling the duties of professor in Wesleyan
University, Mrs. Jennie Fowler Willing was licensed as a local
preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church, the first woman
engaged as evangelist in Illinois.
The Monticello Ladies' Seminary at Godfrey is worthy of mention.
Miss Harriet N. Haskell, its president, has done a noble work
there in making possible for many girls, by labor under her roof
to pay in part for a liberal education. She has been at the head
of this institution for thirty years. Mrs. F.A. Shiner at Mt.
Carroll, is another grand woman worthy of mention. She, too,
gives poor girls an opportunity in her household to pay in part
for their education. In this way many are being trained in
domestic accomplishments as well as the higher branches of
education. There is no distinction made between those who work a
certain number of hours each day and those who pay in full for
their advantages; and in many cases the best scholars have been
found from year to year among those who had the stimulus of
labor. As Miss Haskell and Mrs. Shiner have uniformly entertained
all the lyceum lecturers[365] at their beautiful homes, many have
had the pleasure of seeing and talking with these bright girls,
and the worthy presidents of the institutions.
We believe to Illinois belongs the distinction of being the
birthplace of the first woman admitted to the American Medical
Association--Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson, born at Buffalo Grove,
Ogle county. Dr. Stevenson was admitted to this time-honored
association June, 1876. The Philadelphia _Evening Bulletin_ thus
refers to the innovation:
The doctors have combined millennial with centennial
glories. The largest assemblage of the medical profession
ever held in America yesterday honored itself by bursting
the bonds of ancient prejudice, and admitting a woman to its
membership by a vote that proved the battle won, and that
henceforth professional qualification, and not sex, is to be
the test of standing in the medical world. Looking over the
past fierce resistance by which every advance of woman into
the field of medical life was met, yesterday's action seems
like the opening of a scientific millennium. It was a most
appropriate time and place for the beginning of this new era
of medical righteousness and peace. Here, in the centennial
year, in the "City of Brotherly Love," where the first
organized effort for the medical education of women was
made, where the oldest medical college for women in the
world is located, and where the fight against woman's entry
into the medical profession was most hotly waged, was the
place to take the manly new departure, which, so far as the
National Association is concerned, began yesterday in the
election of Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson as a member in full
standing from the State of Illinois.
Dr. Mary H. Thompson, who was graduated at Boston in 1863, and
who, removing to Chicago, succeeded in establishing a woman's
hospital, is included in a short list of notable alumnæ of the
Boston Medical School. Dr. Lelia G. Bedell, Dr. E. G. Cook, Dr.
Julia Holmes Smith, Dr. Alice B. Stockham, and many others have
won honorable distinction in this profession.
One of the marked crises in the history of the reform we trace
was the centennial Fourth of July. The daughters of the Pilgrims
realized as never before the cruel injustice by which they were
deprived of their birthright, and from the Western prairies and
Eastern hills their earnest protest was given to the nation. As
early as May 2, 1876, at a special convention of the Illinois
Woman Suffrage Association, two vigorous protests were read as
the official utterances of State and National Associations. The
convention was called to order by Mrs. Alma Van Winkle, who
stated that Mrs. Jane Graham Jones,[366] the beloved and
efficient president of the association, having determined upon a
European sojourn, had sent her resignation to the executive
committee, and that Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, recently
removed to the State, had been elected to fill her place. This
action being ratified, Susan B. Anthony was introduced, and
although she had just concluded an intensely vigorous lyceum
tour, extending through many months, she spoke with unusual
power. Just here I wish to emphasize the great loss to women in
the fact that as Miss Anthony's speeches were never written, but
came with thrilling effect from her patriotic soul, scarce any
record of them remains, other than the intangible memories of her
grateful countrywomen. At this convention the following address
was read and adopted:
_To the Women of the United States of America, greeting:_
While the centennial clock is striking the hour of
opportunity for the Pilgrims' daughters to prove themselves
regenerate children of a worthy ancestry, while the air
reverberates to the watchwords of the statesmen of the
Revolution, let the daughters of the nation, in clear,
steady and womanly voices, chorus through the States:
"Taxation without representation is tyranny," and "all
governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed."
Womanly hands, firm, capable and loving, have been steadily,
persistently and unceasingly knocking, knocking at the doors
of judicial, ecclesiastical and legislative halls, until at
last the rusty bars are yielding and the persistent knocking
is beginning to tell upon iron nerves and all kinds of
masculine constitutions. Just now, in the centennial year,
another door has opened, preparing the way for the Pilgrims'
daughters to present their claim before the assembled nation
on the "Fourth of July, 1876."
A joint resolution of congress, signed by the president of
the United States, and made the subject of proclamation by
the governor of the State, reads as follows:
_Be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives
of the United States of America_, That it be, and is hereby,
recommended by the Senate and the House of Representatives
to the people of the several States, that they assemble in
the several counties and towns on the approaching centennial
anniversary of our national independence, and that they
cause to have delivered on such day an historical sketch of
said county or town from its foundation, and that a copy of
said sketch may be filed, in print or manuscript, in the
clerk's office of said county, and an additional copy be
filed in the office of the librarian of congress at the city
of Washington, to the intent that a complete record may thus
be obtained of the progress of our institutions during the
first centennial of their existence.
The governor of this State earnestly recommends that prompt
measures be taken in each county and town for the selection
of one or more persons who shall prepare complete, thorough
and accurate historical sketches of each county, city, town
or village, from the date of the settlement to the present
time.
In view of the fact that since our civil war thousands of
charitable, scientific, philanthropic, religious and
political associations have been organized among women, of
which but few accurate records are now accessible to the
general public, and in view of the fact that the Supreme
Court and many of our legislators construe "persons" to
indicate only men (except when persons are to be taxed,
fined or executed), we respectfully suggest that in all
cases one member of the committee shall be a woman, to the
end that there may be submitted to future historians
accurate data of the extent and scope of the work of
American women; that this historian of woman shall carefully
and impartially record the literary, educational,
journalistic, industrial, charitable and political work of
woman as expressed in temperance, missionary and woman
suffrage organization.
Let a meeting of every woman suffrage organization
throughout the State, or, where none exists, let any friend
of the cause call a meeting, at which a committee shall be
appointed to present this suggestion to the people as they
may meet in the different cities, villages and towns, to
perfect arrangements for their local celebration.
As American citizens we salute the tri-color, emblem of the
rights obtained and liberties won by husbands, fathers and
sons, meanwhile pledging, if need be, another century of
toil and effort to the sacred cause of human rights, and the
establishment of a genuine republic.
ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT,
_Pres. Ill. Woman Suffrage Society._
It was decided at this convention to celebrate the Fourth of July
in some appropriate manner. Under the auspices of Mrs. Harbert
this was done at Evanston. The occasion was heralded as "The
Woman's Fourth," and programmes[367] were scattered through the
village.
The auditorium of the large Methodist Church was tastefully
decorated with exquisite flowers; flags were gracefully festooned
about the pulpit, and all the appointments were pronounced
artistic by the most critical, and Mrs. Harbert's oration, of
which we give a few extracts, aimed to be in keeping with her
surroundings:
If possessed of artistic genius, I would seize the pencil
and imprison in rich and gorgeous coloring two pictures for
the woman's pavilion of our centennial; for the first I
would reproduce that prophetically symbolic scene at the
dawn of our history, when with a faith and generosity worthy
of honorable mention, Isabella of Castile placed her jewels
in the almost discouraged mariner's hands, and bade Columbus
give to the world Columbia. The second scene would be the
antithesis of the first, as to-day, the women of the United
States make haste to lay at the feet of our statesmen and
prophets their jewels of thought and influence, bidding
them, in the name of woman, give to the world a perfected
government, a genuine republic, a purer civilization. Now,
as then, there are many ready with mocking jeers; but,
turning not to the right nor the left, the faith of woman
and the courage of man move on apace to sure success. That
historic "first gun" not only jarred loose every rivet in
the manacles of 4,000,000 slaves, but when the smoke of the
cannonading had lifted, the entire horizon of woman was
broadened, illuminated, glorified. On that April day when a
nation of citizens were suddenly transformed into an army of
warriors, American women, with a patriotism as intense as
theirs, a consecration as true, quietly assumed their
vacated places and became citizens. Out from market-place
and forum, counting-house and farm--keeping time to the
chime of the music of the Union--marched father, husband and
son; into office, store and farm, called there by no
ambitious desire to wander out of their sphere, but by the
same dire military necessity that called our men to the
front stepped orphaned daughter and widowed wife. Anna
Dickinson captured the lyceum and platform. The almost
classic scene of "Corinne at the Capitol" is not more
remarkable than that historic scene of the Quaker girl at
Washington, called there to receive the plaudits of the
highest officials of our nation, for services rendered in
the then vital political campaigns of New Hampshire,
Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New York.
The cruel, scarlet days of war dragged wearily on. Up from
the Southern battle-fields, borne northward in the lull of
the war tempest, came a wailing appeal from "the boys," who
hitherto had never appealed to "mother" in vain: "We are
wounded, sick and starving." Instantly the mother-heart
responded--waiting not for "orders," snapping official
red-tape, as though it had been woven of cob-webs, two women
started southward with the needed supplies, and this great,
anxious, agonized North gave a sob of relief when the
message thrilled through the land that Jane C. Hoge and Mary
A. Livermore had arrived at the front with the needed
supplies. Idle, helpless, dependent queens were not then in
demand, but women fitted to be wives of heroes. Because our
lake-bordered, tree-fringed village was once her home, I
lovingly trace first on Evanston's scroll of honor the name
of Jane C. Hoge, while just underneath it I write that of
our venerable philanthropist, who was the first woman in
these United States to receive the badge of the Christian
commission, Mrs. Arza Brown.
And now, standing here upon the border-land of two
centuries, over-shadowed by the dear old flag, re-baptized
with the blood of my beloved as of yours--standing here, a
native-born citizen, as a woman to whom the honor, purity,
peace and freedom of native land is dear as life; as a wife
vitally interested in the interests of manhood; as a mother
responsible for the best development of her children; as a
human being, responsible to her Creator for the highest
possible usefulness, I claim equality before the law.
Mrs. Mary Bannister Willard gave some surprising facts in regard
to woman's work in connection with the North Western University,
and reminded us that foremost among the women of the dawning
century was Eliza Garret of Chicago, who secured to the Garret
Biblical Institute its endowment of a quarter of a million of
dollars, with the proviso that a certain increase of income from
the same after the wants of the young theologues had been met,
should be applied to the erection and endowment of a seminary for
young ladies. But alas! the theological appetite has been
insatiate, even unto this last, and deliverance has come to our
girls from another quarter. And this was the throwing down of
university gates and bars, and a free extension of all
educational privileges to women. Upon the roll of honor
connected with this work we gratefully place the names of many
brave, self-sacrificing women.[368]
The Rev. Mr. Chappell, pastor of the Baptist church, then gave a
most eloquent, liberal oration. In closing, he said: "But what
think you, sisters, of the dangers that threaten the republic? Do
they lie on your hearts? Are they in your prayers? Do they enter
into your plans? All compliments and gallantries aside, it makes
a vast difference in the destiny of the republic whether you
understand and feel its dangers. The scale has turned. No longer
need we dread oppression, disability, power; but on the other
hand, license, luxury, listlessness, forgetfulness of God and the
wholesome truth. This watch-night of the republic augurs well.
This gathering of the sisterhood has its meaning. You are the
power behind the throne; with you and with God lies the destiny
of the republic." After the benediction the audience dispersed,
all expressing of the entire programme the most enthusiastic
approval.
About the close of the year 1876, a noticeable change in the
direction of thought and effort was very apparent in the State of
Illinois. As a result of the ravages of the fire and the severe
mental strain to which business men were subjected, women sprang
to the rescue, and actively engaged in business. These additional
burdens assumed by the many, the few were left to bear the weight
of religious, philanthropic and social duties. Women had tested
their powers sufficiently to realize their strength, and were
impatient for immediate results, hence many of the active friends
of woman suffrage, believing that the temperance ballot could be
more speedily secured than entire political equality, joined the
home-protection movement, while through the broadening and
helpful influence of the Grange in the farm-homes of the
northwest, requests for aids to organization came from all
quarters. In order that the earnest thoughts of the one class and
the practical methods of the other, might be rendered mutually
beneficial, I one day entered the sanctum of the progressive
editor of the _Inter-Ocean_, and asked for a ten-minute audience.
The request was granted, and Wm. Penn Nixon, esq., courteously
listened to the following questions: "As a progressive
journalist, and one who must recognize the philanthropic activity
of the women of the Northwest, has it ever occurred to you that
there is nowhere in journalism a special recognition of their
interests? We have special fashion departments, special cooking
departments, but no niche or corner devoted to the moral,
industrial, educational, philanthropic and political interests of
women; and does not your judgment assure you that such a
department could be rendered popular?" As a result of this
conversation a special corner of the _Inter-Ocean_ was yielded to
woman's interests, designated by the editors, "Woman's Kingdom,"
and on January 6, 1877, the following announcement appeared:
Congratulations to women that we have at last found a home
in journalism; that amid the clashing of sabers of our
modern press tournament, the knights of the quill recognize
that women have some rights that journalists are bound to
respect. These columns are in the interest of no class,
clique, sect, or section, and we earnestly request accurate
data of woman's work. All missionary, literary, temperance
and woman suffrage organizations, will be accorded space for
announcing their aims. With an occasional review of new
books, we will confer in regard to what woman has written;
wandering through studios and sanctums, we will record what
she is painting and preaching. Pleading an intense and
loving interest in the splendid opportunities now opening to
American women, we shall hope that some truth may be evolved
that may enrich their lives.
Notwithstanding this was the first special department of the
kind, much of the best journalistic work of the State was being
done by women,[369] who seemed to have received a new baptism to
serve the higher interests of humanity. From the desire for
coöperation expressed by many contributors to "Woman's Kingdom,"
the following little item was set afloat in May, 1877:
Many facts recently arresting attention, in connection with
the industrial, political, and moral interests of women,
seem to render a conference of their representatives in
regard to business aims, expedient. There is need of a
bureau through which the industrial interests of women can
be promoted and some practical answer given to the question
everywhere heard, "How can we earn a living?" There is a
demand for an educational bureau of correspondence and also
a lyceum bureau through whose agency good lectures upon
practical subjects can be secured in every city and village.
All interested in such a conference are requested to send
their names to Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Evanston,
Ill., or Mrs. Louise Rockwood Wardner, Cairo, Ill.
Hon. Frank Sanborn, in his annual report to the American Social
Science Association, mentioned the formation of a branch
society[370] in this State. He said:
Like the State Charities Aid Association of New York, which
was organized and is directed by women, the Illinois
Association devotes itself chiefly to practical applications
of social science, though in a somewhat different direction.
It was formed in October, 1877, with a membership of some
two hundred women; it publishes a monthly newspaper, _The
Illinois Social Science Journal_, full of interesting
communications, and it has organized in its first seven
months' existence eight smaller associations in other
States.
The enthusiasm in this society branching out in so many practical
directions, absorbed for a time the energies of the Illinois
women. Our membership reached 400. This may account for the
apparent lethargy of the Suffrage Association during the years of
1877-78. Caroline F. Corbin dealt an effective blow in her
novel, entitled "Rebecca; or, A Woman's Secret." Jane Grey
Swisshelm, with trenchant pen, wrote earnest strictures against
the shams of society. Elizabeth Holt Babbitt wrote earnestly for
all reform movements. Myra Bradwell persistently held up to the
view of the legislators of the State the injustice of the laws
for woman. Mrs. Julia Mills Dunn and Mrs. Hannah J. Coffee were
doing quiet but most effective work in Henry county. Miss Eliza
Bowman was consecrating her young womanhood to the care of the
Foundlings' Home. Mrs. Wardner, Mrs. Candee, Mrs. George, and
other women in the southern part of the State, were founding the
library at Cairo, while in every village and hamlet clubs for
study or philanthropic work were being organized. Mrs. Kate N.
Doggett, as president of the Association for the advancement of
Women, was lending her influence to the formation of art clubs.
And all this in addition to the vast army of faithful teachers,
represented by Sarah B. Raymond, Professor Louisa Allen Gregory
and Mary C. Larned. Mrs. Louise Rockwood Wardner, president of
the Illinois Industrial School for Girls, and the noble band of
women associated with her, were earnestly at work in the endeavor
to secure to the vagrant girls of the State an industrial
education. Miss Frances E. Willard and the dauntless army of
temperance workers were petitioning for the right to vote on all
questions pertaining to the liquor traffic.
Meanwhile many of the members of the Illinois Social Science
Association were beginning to realize that every measure proposed
for progressive action was thwarted because of woman's inability
to crystallize her opinions into law. This has been the uniform
experience in every department of reform, and sooner or later all
thinking women see plainly that the direct influence secured by
political power gives weight and dignity to their words and
wishes. Mrs. Jane Graham Jones, ex-president of the State
Association, continued her effective work in Europe, and, as a
delegate from the National Association, prepared the following
address of welcome to the International Congress, convened in
Paris, July 5, 1878:
Friends, compatriots, and confrères of the International
Congress assembled to discuss the rights of women: Allow me
to extend to you the congratulations of the National Woman
Suffrage Association of America, which I have the honor to
represent. I congratulate you upon this important, this
sublime moment, this auspicious place for the meeting of a
woman's congress. Paris, gorgeous under the grand monarch
who surrounded his royal person with a splendid galaxy of
beauty, genius, and chivalry; attractive and influential
under the great emperor whose meteoric genius held
spell-bound the wondering gaze of a world; to-day, with
neither king nor court, nor man of destiny, is grander, more
gorgeous, more beautiful and more influential than ever
before. To-day this is the shrine toward which the pilgrims
from every land turn their impatient steps.
Each balmy breeze comes to us heavily laden with the
dialects of all nations. Not only are the different parts
represented in their economic and industrial products, but
each thought, idea, motive and need is brought before the
world in the various congresses assembled during this great
union festival of liberty, peace and labor. Literature,
science, religion, education, philosophy, and labor, each
has had its eloquent advocates. At this time, when the great
ones of the earth are met together in earnest thought and
honest discussion, when each mind and conscience is attuned
to the highest motive, how appropriate that woman, whose
labor, wealth and brain have cemented the stones in every
monument that man has reared to himself; that woman, the
oppressed, woman, the hater of wars, the faithful, quiet
drudge of the centuries, watching while others slept,
working while others plundered and murdered; woman, who has
died in prison and on the scaffold for liberty, should here
and now have her audience and her advocates.
As a child of America I love and venerate France. We cannot
forget LaFayette, although a hundred years have passed since
generous France sent him to our aid in our great struggle
for freedom. But as a woman I glory in her. [Great and
deafening applause.] All true women love and honor France.
[At this point the reader was interrupted with wild cries of
"Bravo! bravo!" "Live America!" "True, true."] France, in
whose prolific soil great and progressive ideas generate and
take root, in spite of king, emperor, priest or tyrant;
France, the protectress of science, art, and philosophy;
France, the home of the scholar and thinker; France, the
asylum which generously received the women who came hither
seeking those intellectual advantages and privileges cruelly
denied them at home; France, that compelled republican
America and civilized England to open their educational
institutions to women; France, the birth-place of a host of
women whose splendid genius, devoted lives, and heroic
deaths have encouraged and inspired women of other lands in
their struggles to strike off the ignominious shackles which
the ages have riveted upon them! [Loud applause.] How
apropos it is, then, that the women from all nations meet on
the free soil of France to give to the world their
declaration of rights. To-day we clasp hands and pledge
hearts to the sacred cause of woman's emancipation. To-day
we meet to thank France for the grand women whose lofty
utterances come echoing and reëchoing to us through the
corridors of time, and to thank her for her great men who
have been the beacon lights to guide the world to higher
civilization and greater hatred of oppression. In the name
of my great countrywomen, inaugurators and leaders of the
woman's rights movement in America, the eloquent and ardent
advocates of liberty for men and women alike, both black and
white; in the name of the officers of the National Woman
Suffrage Association; in the name of those grand women,
Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony,
I salute the women of France and of the world assembled in
this congress, and bid them god-speed. When we call to mind
what has been accomplished by noble women everywhere, we are
encouraged to renewed effort.
In America we have accomplished wonders, and yet we demand
more; and shall continue to demand until we are equal in the
state, in the church, and in the home. Twenty years ago
woman entered our courts of law only as a criminal to be
tried; now she enters as an advocate to plead the cause of
justice, and invoke the spirit of mercy. Twenty years ago
woman entered the sick room only as the poorly-paid nurse;
now she is the trusted medical adviser, friend and
counsellor. To-day she is in many respects the peer of man,
to-morrow she will be in all respects his acknowledged
equal. [Great and continued applause.]
Who can measure the influence this congress may have on
woman's advancement toward that perfect equality which
justice and humanity demand. Women of France and of the
world, be of good cheer, and continue to agitate for the
right, for in the elevation of woman lies the progress of
the world. [Deafening applause, and cries of hear, hear.]
A letter to the Chicago _Times_ commenting upon the above address
says:
Mrs. Jones being indisposed, was replaced momentarily by her
daughter, a beautiful young lady of about sixteen summers,
who read the opening address of her mother; her rich voice
pronouncing with such distinctness and beauty, the earnest
words, translated into French, won all hearts, and gave to
the opening of the congress such a prestige as it would
otherwise never have had. After its close, Miss Jones
regained her seat amidst the hearty congratulations of the
throng assembled in that great hall, and I was proud of our
little American. Her beauty and courage, coupled with her
extreme youth, were the principal topics discussed during
the day by outsiders. I was thankful that our nation was so
well represented at the very first meeting, and the Parisian
journals were all loud in their praise of Mrs. Jones'
welcoming address, as well as the charming apparition of her
young and accomplished daughter.
As indicating the numerous lines along which woman's aroused
energies have found expression, we would call attention to the
Art Union of central Illinois. It is composed of nine societies,
"The Historical," and "The Palladium," of Bloomington; the art
class at Decatur; "Art Society," of Lincoln; "Art Association,"
of Jacksonville; "Art Society," of Peoria; "Art Society," of
Springfield, and "Art Club," of Champagne. Mrs. Lavilla Wyatt
Latham, wife of Col. Robert G. Latham, of Lincoln, was the
originator of the Art Union. Their spacious home, built with
large piazzas in true southern style, is a museum of curiosities.
Its library, cabinet, pictures, and statuary, make it a most
attractive harbor of rest to the wandering band of lecturers,
especially as the cultivated host and hostess are in warm
sympathy with all reform movements. Mr. Latham was a warm friend
of Abraham Lincoln, and entertained him many times under his
roof.
The _Woman's Journal_ of March 24, 1877, said:
Seventy women of Illinois, appointed by the Woman's State
Temperance Union, went to the legislature, bearing a
petition signed by 7,000 persons, asking that no licenses to
sell liquor be granted, which are not asked for by a
majority of the citizens of the place.
Mr. SHERMAN moved a suspension of the rules to admit of the
presentation of the petition.
Mr. MERRITT objected, but, by a decided vote, the rules were
suspended, and the petition was received and read.
Mr. SHERMAN moved that Mrs. Prof. S. M. D. Fry of Wesleyan
University of Bloomington, be invited to address the House
upon the subject of the petition.
Mr. HERRINGTON objected to the obtrusion of such trifling
matter upon the House, which had business to do. It was well
enough to let the petition be received, but he wanted nobody
to be allowed to interfere with the business of the House.
Referring to some forty or fifty ladies of the Union who had
been admitted to the floor of the House, he wanted to know
by what authority persons not entitled to the privilege of
the floor had been admitted. He insisted on his prerogative
as a member, and asked that the floor and lobbies be cleared
of all persons not entitled to the privilege of the House.
According to the Chicago _Tribune_, this speech of
Herrington created a slight sensation, among the ladies
especially, but Mr. Herrington's demand was ignored, and a
recess of thirty minutes was taken to allow Mrs. Fry to
address the House in support of the petition, which she did
in a speech put in very telling phrases. At its conclusion,
some of the members opposed to temperance legislation,
signalized their ill-breeding, to say the least, by derisive
yells for Mr. Herrington and others to answer Mrs. Fry.
Presently the hall was resonant with yells and cheers,
converting it into a a very babel, and the hubbub was kept
up until, at the expiration of the half-hour recess, Speaker
Shaw called "order" and the House immediately adjourned.
If any body of men bearing a petition of 7,000 voting men,
had gone to the same legislature, and by courtesy been
admitted to speak for their petition, no member would have
dared to insult them. It is because they had no recognized
political rights that these women were insulted. Claim your
right, ladies, to be equal members of the legislature, then
you can enact temperance laws, and have an unquestioned
right "to the privilege of the floor."
In 1879, under the lead of their president, Frances E. Willard,
the women of Illinois rolled up a mammoth petition of 180,000,
asking the right to vote on the question of license. This
prayer, like that of the 7,000, met the fate of all attempts of
disfranchised classes to influence legislation. Following this
repulse, in some ten or fifteen of the smaller cities of the
State, boards of common council were prevailed upon to pass
ordinances giving the women the right to vote on the question.
Without an exception, the result was overwhelming majorities for
"No License." In the cities where officers were elected at the
same time, almost without exception, the majority of them were in
favor of license, while in those in which the old board of
officers held over, no licenses were granted, until the new board
elected only by the votes of the men of the city, was installed.
Dr. Alice B. Stockham, in her report at the Washington convention
of 1885, said:
After the city ordinance of Keithsburg allowed women to
vote, the hardest work was to convert the women themselves.
Committees were appointed who visited from house to house to
persuade women to go to the polls for the suppression of the
rule of liquor. On the morning of election they met in a
church for conference and prayer. At 10 o'clock forty brave
women marched to the polls and cast their first ballot for
home protection. Carriages were running to and fro all day
to bring the invalid and the aged. For once they were
induced to leave the making of ruffles and crazy quilts, to
give their silent voice for the suppression of vice. Three
weeks later not a woman could be found in the town opposed
to suffrage, and for one year not a glass of liquor could be
bought in Keithsburg.
Under the act of 1872, the women of Illinois thought their right
to pursue every avocation, except the military, secure. But in
1880, a judicial decision proved the contrary. We quote from the
_National Citizen_:
In June, 1879, the Circuit Court of Union County, Judge John
Dougherty presiding, appointed Helen A. Schuchardt, resident
of the county, to the office of Master in Chancery. Mrs.
Schuchardt gave bond with security approved by the court,
taking and subscribing the required oath of office. Since
that day, she has been the acting Master of Chancery of that
county, taking proofs, making judicial rules, and performing
the other various duties incident to such office. At the
last term of the court the State attorney, at the instance
of Mr. Frank Hall, relator, filed an information in the
nature of a _quo warranto_ charging that Mrs. Schuchardt had
usurped and was unlawfully holding and exercising the
office. Mrs. Schuchardt filed pleas setting forth the order
of the court appointing her, her bonds with the order of
approval, and the oath of office filed by her. To these
pleas a general demurrer was interposed and argued.
The questions presented by the demurrer were: _First_--Is
the defendant eligible to this office, she being neither a
practicing nor a learned lawyer? _Second_--Is the defendant
eligible to this office, she being a female? The court
dismissed the first question on the ground that the statute
does not require admission to the bar as a qualification. Of
the eleven Masters in Chancery in that Judicial Circuit, it
was shown that only five had been admitted to the bar. As to
the second objection, _i. e._, that Mrs. Schuchardt was a
female (!) it was decided that the common law never
contemplated the admittance of a woman to the office of
Master in Chancery, and that doubtless it was the first
instance in which a woman had been admitted to the office.
It was also decided that the act of March 22, 1872, did not
make women eligible to this office; Master in Chancery--for
woman--did not mean "occupation, profession, or employment,"
and that "persons do not select an office, but are selected
for the office."
Judge Harker, in delivering this opinion, said: "It is due
to Mrs. Schuchardt to say in conclusion, that while I am
constrained to sustain this demurrer and hold that under the
law she cannot retain this office, there is not one of the
Masters in Chancery in the four counties where I preside,
who has been more faithful or attentive in the discharge of
his duties, and none who has exhibited higher qualifications
to discharge well those duties. And it is my sincere hope
that at its next session the legislature will make this
office accessible to females."
One of the most influential local associations has been that of
Chicago, or Cook county.[371] From 1870 to 1876 Mrs. Jane Graham
Jones was its president, as well as the leading spirit in the
State Society.[372] She was the one to plan and execute the
attacks upon the board of education, the common council, and the
legislature, holding many meetings in Chicago, and at
Springfield, the seat of government. Another flourishing
association is that of Moline. We give the following from its
secretary:
In May, 1877, Mrs. Eunice G. Sayles, and Mrs. Julia Mills
Dunn, secured Mrs. Stanton to give a lecture on woman
suffrage in Moline, and at a reception given to her by Mrs.
Sayles, a society with 22 members was organized, which has
held meetings regularly since that time, with the reading of
papers on topics previously arranged by the president. It is
a matter of pride that not a failure has ever occurred, each
member always cheerfully performing the duty assigned her.
An evening reception is held annually to celebrate the
organization of the society, to which two hundred or more
guests are invited, each member being entitled to bring
several outside of her own family. The meetings have been
valuable, not only in promoting friendly relations between
the members, but also in the mental stimulus they have
afforded. Much of the success of this society is due to the
literary culture and earnestness of Mrs. Anne M. J. Dow, who
was our president for three years. We have sustained a great
loss in the death of Mrs. Sarah D. Nourse, who for
thirty-five years was an earnest friend of all reforms.
Soon after its organization, our society became auxiliary to
the National Association. We have circulated petitions and
forwarded them to Springfield and Washington, where they
have met the fate common to all prayers of the
disfranchised; we have circulated tracts, placed on file in
the public reading room all the suffrage journals, and
secured the best lecturers on the question. We are
organizing an afternoon reading society, to have read aloud
"The History of Woman Suffrage," and shall soon place it on
the shelves of the public library of the village. While we
cannot point to any wonderful revolution in public sentiment
because of our work, we are nevertheless full of courage,
and under the leadership of our State president, Elizabeth
Boynton Harbert, we shall go forward in faith and good
works, hoping for the end of woman's political slavery.[373]
In concluding this meager record of the methods of earnest men
and women of Illinois in their brave work for liberty, we are
painfully conscious of a vast aggregate of personal toil and
self sacrifice which can never be reported. We write of petitions
presented to State and National legislative assemblies, but it is
impossible to record the personal sacrifice and moral heroism of
the women who went from house to house in the cities and
villages, or traveled long distances across the broad prairies to
secure the signatures. Only those who have carried a petition
from door to door can know the fatigue and humiliation of spirit
it involves. Though these earnest women ask only the influence of
the names of persons to help on our reform, they are often
treated with less courtesy than the dreaded book-agent and
peddler.
WATSEKA, Ill.
I send you petitions, the one circulated by me has 270
names--the other by Clara L. Peters, 139.[374] We are
interested heart and soul in the movement, and our efforts
here have made many friends for the cause. Have been an
ardent worker since I was a child, and well remember that
grand hero of moral reforms, Samuel J. May of Syracuse, N.
Y., at a Woman's Temperance Convention held in Rochester in
1852, when I was eight years old.
VIOLA HAWKS ARCHIBALD.[375]
The following letter from Mary L. Davis, gives some idea of the
toils of circulating petitions:
DAVIS, Stephenson Co., Ill., May 28, 1877.
EDITOR _Ballot-Box_:--The question of suffrage for woman has
been thoroughly discussed in our society, and last week I
started out with my petition. I could work but a short time
each day, but I systematically canvassed our beautiful
little village, taking it by streets, and although I have
been over but a small portion, I have ninety signatures. I
met with but little opposition, and with kind wishes in
abundance; with some amusing, some provoking, some pathetic,
and some disgusting phases of human nature--with very
agreeable disappointments, and very disagreeable ones. Very
often some person would say to me, there is no use in
calling at such a house; the man will not, and the woman
dare not, sign. I went to such a place last week, was met
with all the courtesy one could ask. The man looked over the
petition thoughtfully, affixed his own name, and asked his
wife if she did not wish to do so, and called in a beautiful
sister who was out playing ball with the children, telling
her as it was for the especial benefit of women, she ought
to sign it too. I write these things to encourage our young
girls, who will take up the work. Take every house, ask
every person; "No," will not hurt or kill you. Be prepared
to meet every argument that can possibly be advanced. The
one which I meet oftenest, is that woman cannot fight, and
therefore she shall not vote; and strange to relate, it is
almost always advanced by a person who was never a soldier,
through physical disability, cowardice, or over or under
age.
The shortest "No," without the slightest shadow of courtesy,
was shot from the lips of a man who is doing business on
capital furnished by his wife, and who lives in a house
purchased with his wife's money. Graceful return for her
devotion, wasn't it? I suppose he prefers to keep her in her
present state of serfdom, as, if she should ever find out
that she was of any importance in the world, except as his
housekeeper, cook, washerwoman, and waiter-in-general, she
might possibly inquire into the stewardship of her lord and
master. And it seemed to me if that ever came to pass, a man
who could say "no" so cavalierly, without even a "thank you,
ma'am," or, "you're quite welcome," both could and would
manage to make surroundings rather disagreeable to the party
of the second part. So far no person who has thought much,
read much, or suffered much, has refused to sign, and in the
few hours which I have devoted to the work, three
grandmothers nearly ninety years of age, wished to have
their names recorded on the right side of the question, and
in two of those instances the grandmother, daughter, and
grandfather affixed their signatures, one after
another.[376]
We have been permitted to copy the following private letter from
A.J. Grover to Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who is now at her
home in Tenafly, N. J., busily at work with Miss Anthony and Mrs.
Gage on the second volume of the "History of Woman Suffrage." The
first volume should be on the center-table of every family in the
land as a complete text-book on the woman suffrage question,
which is to be one of the great issues, social and political, in
the coming years. These three women have grown old and won their
crowns of white hair in the cause of not only their sex, but of
mankind:
CHICAGO, November 29, 1881.
MY DEAR FRIEND: You represent a movement of more importance
to mankind than any that ever before claimed attention in
the whole history of the race, viz.: the freedom of one-half
of it. You have enforced this claim by half a century of
heroic discussion--of persistent, unanswerable logic and
appeal against the theory and practice of all nations,
against all governments, codes and creeds. You proclaimed
fifty years ago the novel doctrine that woman by nature is,
and by law and usage should be, the absolute equal of man. A
claim so self-evident should only have to be stated to be
recognized by all civilized nations; and yet to this hour
the highest civilization, equally with the lowest, is built
on the slavery of woman. In the darkest corners of the earth
and on the sunlit heights of civilization, the mothers of
the race are by law, religion and custom doomed to
degradation. And if the seal of their bondage is never to be
broken, they themselves as well as the lords and masters
they serve, are equally unconscious of the servitude. No
religion, no civil government, has ever taught or recognized
any other condition for woman than that of subjection.
Against the accumulated precedents of all the ages, you and
your noble coädjutors have rebelled in the face of derision
for fifty long, weary years. Was ever such sublime womanly
heroism and self-sacrifice before known? Was ever such worth
of culture, such wealth of womanhood, laid on the altar of
country and humanity? And all this comparatively
unrecognized and unrewarded. Where is the boasted chivalry
of the English-speaking nations? It is a virtue we boast of,
but do not possess. It never, in fact, had any real
existence based on genuine respect for woman. It is a bitter
sarcasm in the mouth of an American male citizen. A few men
like Theodore Parker, Joshua R. Giddings, William Lloyd
Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Gerrit Smith, Samuel J. May and
Parker Pillsbury have measurably redeemed this nation,
recognizing your claim for woman as self-evidently just and
righteous, and coöperating with you in maintaining it. There
are only a score or two of such men in a generation with
sufficient chivalry or perception of justice to publicly
claim for women the rights they themselves possess.
Science has demonstrated that men to be manly must be well
born, must have noble mothers. How can a mother give birth
to a noble soul while herself a slave? How can she impart a
free spirit when her own is servile? A stream cannot rise
higher than its fountain.
We have thought to bring about a high order of civilization
by freeing our sons, while chaining our daughters, by
sending sons to college and daughters to menial service for
a mere pittance as wages, or selling them in marriage to the
highest bidder--by robbing them on the very threshold of
life of all noble ambition. By the degradation of our women
we take from the inherited qualities of the race as much as
is added by culture. We take from the metal before casting
as much as we restore by polish afterwards, and thus we
curse and stultify both sexes.
The law and religion of man can be no better than man
himself. If religion, law, justice and social order are to
improve, man must first be improved. Religion and law are
effects, not causes. They are fruits, not the tree--the
products of the human mind. If these are to be improved,
mankind must first be improved. This will be impossible
until freedom and culture shall become the inalienable
rights of woman. It would be a thousand times better, if
either must be a slave to the other, that man should be a
slave to woman. The History of Woman Suffrage, on which you
are engaged, if the second volume shall prove equal to the
first, will be the richest legacy this age will bequeath to
the future. It is a revelation from God, in which, if men
believe, they shall be saved. Religion itself, without this
great salvation, will continue to remain little else than "a
wretched record of inspired crime" against woman. Woman must
be free! Protection as an underling from man, savage or
civilized, she in reality never had and never will have.
Protection she does not want. What she needs is equal
rights, when she can protect herself--rights of person,
rights of labor, rights of property, rights of culture,
rights of leisure, rights to participate in the making and
administering of the laws. Give her equality in exchange for
protection; give her her earnings in exchange for support;
give her justice in exchange for charity. Let man trust
woman as woman trusts man, with entire liberty of action,
and she will show the world that liberty is her highest
good.
In conclusion, let me confess that I read your first volume
with a feeling of inexpressible shame and mortification for
my sex.
Yours faithfully,
A.J. GROVER.
[Illustration: Elizabeth Boynton Harbert]
Mrs. Boynton Harbert, to whom we are indebted for this chapter, has
from girlhood been an enthusiastic advocate of the rights of women.
Growing up in Crawfordsville, Indiana, under the very shadow of a
collegiate institution into which girls were not permitted to
enter, she early learned the humiliation of sex. After vain
attempts to slip the bolts riveted with precedent and prejudice
that barred the daughters of the State outside, she tried with pen
and voice to rouse those whose stronger hands could open wide the
doors to the justice of her appeals. Her youthful peäns to liberty
in prose and verse early found their way into our Eastern journals,
and later in arguments before conventions and legislative
assemblies in Illinois, Iowa and other Western States. As editor
for seven years of the "Woman's Kingdom" in the Chicago
_Inter-Ocean_--one of the most popular journals in the nation--she
has exerted a widespread influence over the lives of women,
bringing new hope and ambition into many prairie homes. As
editor-in-chief of the _New Era_, in which she is free to utter her
deepest convictions; as wife and mother, with life's multiplied
experiences, a wider outlook now opens before her, with added
wisdom for the responsibilities involved in public life. In all her
endeavors she has been nobly sustained by her husband, Mr. William
Harbert, a successful lawyer, many years in practice in Chicago,
whose clear judgment and generous sympathies have made his services
invaluable in the reform movements of the day.
FOOTNOTES:
[351] Judge and Mrs. Catharine V. Waite, Mrs. Hannah M. Tracy
Cutler, Amelia Bloomer, Dr. Ellen B. Ferguson, Mrs. E. O. G.
Willard, the Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Harrison of Earlville; Professor and
Mrs. D. L. Brooks, Mrs. M. E. De Geer, Mrs. Frances D. Gage.
[352] Mrs. Sunderland was one of the many New England girls who in
the early days went West to teach. Speaking of the large number of
women elected to the office of county superintendent (one of them
her own daughter), she told me that thirty years ago when she
arrived at the settlement where she had been engaged as teacher,
the trustees being unable to make the "examination" deputed one of
their number to take her to an adjoining county, where another New
England girl was teaching. The excursion was made in a lumber wagon
with an ox-team. All the ordinary questions asked and promptly
answered, the trustee rather hesitatingly said, "Now, while you're
about it, wouldn't you just as lief write out the certificate?"
This was readily done, and the man affixing his cross thereto,
triumphantly carried the applicant back to his district, announcing
her duly qualified to teach; and that trio of unlettered
men installed the cultivated New England girl in their log
school-house, probably without the thought entering the heads of
trustees or teacher, that woman, when better educated, should hold
the superior position.--[S. B. A.
[353] Dr. Mary Safford, Mrs. A. M. Freeman, Hon. and Mrs. Sharon
Tyndale, Hon. E. Haines, Fernando Jones, Jane Graham Jones,
Professor Bailey, Mr. and Mrs. Ezra Prince, Mr. and Mrs. R. M.
Fell, Mrs. Belle S. Candee, General J. M. Thompson, Mrs. Professor
Noyes of Evanston, Charles B. Waite, Catharine V. Waite, Susan
Bronson, E. S. Williams, Kate N. Doggett, C. B. Farwell, L. Z.
Leiter, J. L. Pickard, Henry M. Smith, Frank Gilbert, Ann Telford,
Mrs. L. C. Levanway, Myra Bradwell, Mary E. Haven, Mrs. A. L.
Taylor, Elizabeth Eggleston, P. D. Livermore, James B. Bradwell,
Joseph Haven, J. H. Bayliss, D. Blakely, R. E. Hoyt, C. D. Helmer,
Alfred L. Sewell, George D. Willigton, H. Allen, R. N. Foster, W.
W. Smith, M. B. Smith, Amos G. Throop, Robert Collyer, L. I.
Colburn, G. Percy English, Arthur Edwards, A. Reed and Sons, S. M.
Booth, Sumner Ellis, George B. Marsh, Sarah Marsh, Ruth Graham,
John Nutt, J. W. Butler, Mrs. J. Butler, Mrs. S. A. Richards, Mrs.
S. W. Roe, F. W. Hall, Mrs. Fanny Blake, Mary S. Waite, J. F.
Temple, A. W. Kellogg, W. H. Thomson, J. W. Loomis, James E.
Curtis, Elizabeth Johnston, E. F. Hurlbut, E. E. Pratt, Mrs. E. M.
Warren, William Doggett, Edward Beecher, James P. Weston, E. R.
Allen, J. E. Forrester, Mrs. J. F. Temple, Mrs. F. W. Adams, L.
Walker, Mary A. Whitaker, Elvira W. Ruggles, W. W. Corbett, H. B.
Norton, W. H. Davis, I. S. Dennis, G. T. Flanders, Mrs. H. B.
Manford, Edward Eggleston, Sarah G. Cleveland, G. G. Lyon, E.
Manford, William D. Babbitt, Elizabeth Holt Babbitt, I. S. Page, W.
O. Carpenter, Mrs. W. O. Carpenter, Mrs. H. W. Cobb, T. D. Fitch,
Harriet Fitch, Mary A. Livermore, T. W. Eddy, A. G. Brackett,
Andrew Shuman, John A. Jameson, John V. Farwell, B. W. Raymond, E.
G. Taylor, Mems Root and lady, Rev. John McLean, Mrs. Owen Lovejoy,
Mrs. Noyes Kendall.
[354] The officers were: _President_, Mrs. M. Livermore;
_Vice-Presidents_, the Rev. Dr. Goodspeed, Mrs. Helen M. Beveridge,
Judge Bradwell, the Rev. Edward Beecher, the Rev. D. Eggleston,
Miss Eliza Bowman, the Rev. Dr. Fowler, Mrs. Elizabeth Loomis, Mrs.
M. Hawley, Mrs. M. Wheeler, Mrs. Myra Bradwell; _Secretaries_, Mrs.
Jeanne Fowler Willing, of Rockford, Mrs. Elizabeth Babbitt, and
George Graham, Esq.; _Committee on Finance_, Judge Bradwell,
General Beveridge and the Hon. S. M. Booth. The speakers were Anna
Dickinson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Rev. Robert
Collyer, Rev. Mr. Hammond, Rev. Robert Laird Collier, Kate N.
Doggett, and many of the officers of the convention.
[355] For this speech see Vol. II., page 348.
[356] The officers of the convention were: _President_, Mary A.
Livermore; _Vice-Presidents_, the Rev. Robert Collyer, Professor
Haven; _Recording Secretary_, Jeanne Willing, of Rockford;
_Corresponding Secretary_, Myra Bradwell; _Executive Committee_,
Professor Haven, chairman; the Rev. Dr. Edward Beecher, Elizabeth
J. Loomis, Hannah B. Manford, the Rev. E. Eggleston, the Rev. C. H.
Fowler the Rev. E. J. Goodspeed, Rebecca Mott, Charlotte L.
Levanway.
[357] The committee to visit Springfield were Hon. James B.
Bradwell, Mrs. Myra Bradwell, Mrs. Kate N. Doggett, the Rev. E.
Goodspeed, the Hon. C. B. Waite, and Mrs. Rebecca Mott.
[358] _Indiana_--Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Dr. Mary Wilhite, Emma
Mallory, and Amanda Way; _Missouri_--Rebecca N. Hazzard;
_Wisconsin_--Lelia Peckham; _Iowa_--Mary Newbury Adams, Matilda
Fletcher; _Minnesota_--Mrs. Bishop; _Kansas_--Mrs. Henry;
_Ohio_--Margaret V. Longley; _Michigan_--Professor Stone;
_Massachusetts_--Henry B. Blackwell, and Lucy Stone; _New
York_--Susan B. Anthony, most of whom took part in the discussions.
[359] Letters were also received from Paulina Wright Davis,
Frederick Douglass, Hon. Sharon Tyndale, Rev. D. H. N. Powers, Mrs.
Arabella Mansfield, Rev. Willis Lord.
[360] The speakers were Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Stone, Hon. Sharon
Tyndale, Hon. E. Haines, and Judge Bradwell.
[361] One thousand three hundred and eighty women of Peoria also
prayed that the constitution might not be so amended as to
enfranchise women; another evidence of the demoralizing influence
of any form of slavery upon the human mind. Had not these women
been lacking in a proper self-respect they would not have protested
against the right to govern themselves.--[E. C. S.
[362] Our limited space prevents the publication of Judge Waite's
argument and Judge Jameson's decision.
[363] Jane Graham Jones and Elizabeth Loomis represented the Cook
County Association. Delegates from several other districts were
present. The speakers were A. J. Grover, Mrs. Jane Graham Jones,
Miss Anthony, Mrs. Adelle Hazlett of Michigan, Dr. Ellen B.
Furguson of Indiana, Mr. and Mrs. Fell, Mr. and Mrs. Prince.
[364] For Mrs. Bradwell's case see Vol. II., page 601.
[365] Those who have traveled and lectured through the West and
spent many rainy Sundays in dreary hotels, know how to appreciate a
few days rest in the delightful homes scattered over the country as
well as in the towns and cities. How many of these memory recalls
in the State of Illinois! What a hospitable reception we had in the
cozy farm-house of Mrs. Owen Lovejoy at Princeton, and in the
stately residence of Mrs. Noyes Kendall at La Moile, in the home of
Judge Lawrence at Galesburg, Mrs. Judge Joslyn at Woodstock, Mrs.
R.M. Patrick, Marengo; Mrs. A.W. Brayton, Mt. Morris; Mrs. Eldridge
Norwood, Olney; Rev. Dr. Moffatt, Monticello; Col. E.B. Loop,
Belvidere; Mrs. Judge Greer, Decatur; Mr. and Mrs. Prince,
Bloomington; Col. and Mrs. Latham, Lincoln, and others too numerous
to mention in all the Western States.--[S.B.A.
[366] At her beautiful home, 910 Prairie avenue, her social
influence was even more than her public work. An unfriendly report
in any journal was uniformly followed by an invitation to dinner to
the editor or some one of his staff, to meet the lady criticised,
or discuss the point of attack. Miss Emily Faithful, Mrs. Stanton,
Miss Anthony and Miss Couzins have all in turn shared these dinners
and discussions. If the Methodist Episcopal conference sent an
opponent to preach in their church, and a little social attention
did not convert him, two persons left the church. Neither Mrs.
Jones nor her husband would listen to the Rev. Dr. Hatfield, for
Fernando Jones was always as staunch an advocate of the suffrage
for women as his wife, and had no faith in a religion that did not
teach human equality.--[S. B. A.
[367] "_Ducit Amor Patriæ_"; "1876."--Centennial Commemoration,
Evanston, Ill. Music, prayer, music; recitation, Miss M. E. Brown;
music, "Battle Hymn"; salutatory, "Woman and Philanthropy," Mrs.
Elizabeth Boynton Harbert; "Historical Record of the Educational
Work of Our Women," Mrs. Mary Bannister Willard; music, "Whittier's
Hymn; recitation, Miss M. E. Brown; Missionary Roll of Honor, Miss
Jessie Brown; oration, Rev. F. L. Chapell; benediction.
[368] Mary F. Haskin, Melinda Hamline, Caroline Bishop, Elizabeth
M. Greenleaf, Harriet S. Kidder, Mary T. Willard, Mary I. K. Huse,
Cornelia Lunt, Harriet N. Noyes, Maria Cook, Margaret P. Evans,
Sarah I. Hurd, Annie H. Thornton, Abby L. Brown, and Virginia S.
Kent.
[369] Prominent among these journalists were Margaret Buchanan
Sullivan and Mrs. Annie Kerr of the Chicago _Times_, Mrs. Hubbard
of the _Tribune_, Miss Farrand of the _Advance_, Virginia
Fitzgerald and Alice Hobbins of the _Inter-Ocean_, Mrs. Myra
Bradwell, editor of the _Legal News_, Mrs. Catharine V. Waite and
Mrs. DeGeer of the _Crusader_, Mrs. Louisa White of the Moline
_Dispatch_, Mrs. C. B. Bostwick of the Mattoon _Gazette_, Mrs. J.
Oberly of the Cairo _Bulletin_, Miss Mary West of the Galesburg
_Republican_, Mrs. Celia Wooley, Miss Eliza Bowman, Mrs. Clara Lyon
Peters of the Watseka _Times_, Jane Grey Swisshelm, Elizabeth Holt
Babbitt, and many others.
[370] The officers of the Illinois Social Science Association were:
_President_, Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Evanston; _Recording
Secretary_, Miss Sarah A. Richards, Chicago; _Corresponding
Secretary_, Mrs. W. E. Clifford, Evanston; _Treasurer_, Mrs. H. H.
Candee, Cairo; _Directors_, Mrs. Helen M. Beveredge, Evanston; Mrs.
Frank Denman, Quincy; Mrs. C. A. Beck, Centralia; Mrs. R.
McLoughrey, Joliet; Mrs. W. O. Carpenter, Chicago; Miss M.
Fredricka Perry, Chicago; _Vice-Presidents_, First Congressional
District, Mrs. Eliza R. Sunderland, Chicago; Second, Mrs. W. D.
Babbitt, Chicago; Third, Mrs. Chas. E. Brown. Evanston; Fourth,
Mrs. Carrie A. Potter, Rockford; Fifth, Mrs. F. A. W. Shimer, Mt.
Carroll; Sixth, Mrs. Sarah C. McIntosh, Joliet; Thirteenth, Mrs. B.
M. Prince, Bloomington; Fourteenth, Mrs. C. B. Bostwick, Mattoon;
Sixteenth, Mrs. J. W. Seymour, Centralia; Nineteenth, Mrs. J. H.
Oberly, Cairo.
[371] _President_, Mrs. Fernando Jones; _Vice-Presidents_, Mrs.
Robert Collyer, Mrs. Richard Somers, Rev. C. D. Helmer;
_Corresponding-Secretary_, Mrs. C. B. Waite; _Recording-Secretary_,
Mrs. S. H. Pierce; _Treasurer_, Mrs. J. W. Loomis; _Executive
Committee_, Mrs. Rebecca Mott, Mrs. H. W. Fuller, Mrs. Dr. C. D. R.
Levanway, Fernando Jones, Miss Thayer, Rev. J. M. Reid, Mrs. Jno.
Jones, Mrs. Wm. Coker, Dr. S. C. Blake.
[372] The officers of the Illinois State Association are now,
1885; _President_, Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Evanston;
_Vice-President-at-large_, Mrs. M. E. Holmes, Galva; _Secretary_,
Rev. Florence Kollock, Englewood; _Treasurer_, Dr. L. C. Bedell,
354 N. La Salle street, Chicago; _Executive Committee_, Hon. M. B.
Castle, Sandwich: Mrs. E. J. Loomis, 2,939 Wabash avenue, Chicago;
Mrs. Clara L. Peters, Watseka; Mrs. L. R. Wardner, Anna; Mrs. Julia
Mills Dunn, Moline; Mrs. Helen E. Starrett, Lake Side Building,
Chicago; Capt. W. S. Harbert, Evanston; Rev. C. C. Harrah, Galva.
[373] From time to time we have had for president, Mrs. Eunice G.
Sayles, Mrs. Anna M. J. Dow, Mrs. Flora N. Candee, Mrs. Julia Mills
Dunn, Mrs. Nettie H. Wheelock; for secretaries, Mrs. C. W. Heald,
Mrs. Lucy Anderson, Mrs. Kate Anderson; among those who have been
active members of the society from its formation are, Harriet B. G.
Lester, Ida Peyton, L. F. M'Clennan, Catharine H. Calkins, Dr. Jane
H. Miller, Margaret Osborne, Harriet M. Gillette, Laoti Gates, Mary
F. Barnes, Mary Wright, M. M. Hubbard, Emma Jones, Mary A. Stewart,
Kate S. Holt, Mary A. Stephens, Abbie A. Gould, Mrs. M'Cord, Lydia
Wheelock, Mrs. E. P. Reynolds, J. A. Tallman, Ann Eliza Reator, Dr.
S. E. Bailey, Dr. E. A. Taylor, Lucy Ainsworth, Jerome B. Wheelock,
M. A. Young, Mary Knowles, M. E. Abbot, Lois Forward, Mrs. Young.
[374] Mrs. Clara Lyon Peters of Watseka, furnished the largest
petition ever sent from Illinois; W. B. Wright of Greenview, Mrs.
S. Eliza Lyon of Toulon, Mrs. Hannah J. Coffee of Orion, Mrs. Eva
Edwards of Plymouth, Mrs. C. E. Larned of Champaign, Mrs. Barbara
M. Prince of Bloomington, Mrs. F. B. Rowe of Freedom, Mrs. Jane
Barnett, Mrs. E. H. Blacfan, and Mrs. E. T. Lippincott of Orion,
Mrs. Julia Dunn of Moline, Mrs. Clara P. Bourland of Peoria,
Sybilla Leek Browne of Odell, Mrs. Jacob Martin, Cairo, Mary E.
Higbee, Kirkland Grove, Mary Thompson, LaSalle, Emily Z. Hall of
Savoy, Elizabeth J. Loomis of Chicago, have all done worthy work in
circulating petitions, both to congress and the State legislature.
[375] Mrs. Archibald is the daughter of Betsey Hawks, of Genesee
county, N. Y. I well remember the brave-hearted mother in the early
days of the movement, when in 1852 I made my first stammering
speech in the town-hall at Batavia. She arranged the meeting, and
entertained the speakers, and was indeed "the cause" in that
conservative village.--[S. B. A.
[376] When at Durand, near Davis, in 1877, Mrs. Davis and her
husband drove over, and at the close of my lecture, she gave me her
maiden name and said, "Do you not remember me? I sat by your side
and fairly pushed you up in that teachers' convention at Rochester,
in 1853, when you made that first speech you told about; and I have
been most earnestly hoping and working for the enfranchisement of
women ever since."--[S.B.A.
CHAPTER XLIV.
MISSOURI.
Missouri the First State to Open Colleges of Law and Medicine to
Woman--Liberal Legislation--Eight Causes for Divorce--Harriet
Hosmer--Wayman Crow--Works of Art--Women in the War--Adeline
Couzins--Virginia L. Minor--Petitions--Woman Suffrage
Association, May 8, 1867--First Woman Suffrage Convention, Oct.
6, 1869--Able Resolutions by Francis Minor--Action Asked for in
the Methodist Church--Constitutional Convention--Mrs. Hazard's
Report--National Suffrage Association, 1879--Virginia L. Minor
Before the Committee on Constitutional Amendments--Mrs. Minor
Tries to Vote--Her Case in the Supreme Court--Miss Phoebe Couzins
Graduated from the Law School, 1871--Reception by Members of the
Bar--Speeches--Dr. Walker--Judge Krum--Hon. Albert
Todd--Ex-Governor E. O. Stanard--Ex-Senator Henderson--Judge
Reber--George M. Stewart--Mrs. Minor--Miss Couzins--Mrs. Annie R.
Irvine--"Oregon Woman's Union."
It has often been a subject for speculation why it was that a slave
State like Missouri should have been the first to open her medical
and law schools to women, and why the suffrage movement from the
beginning should there have enlisted so large a number of men[377]
and women of wealth and position, who promptly took an active
interest in the inauguration of the work. A little research into
history shows that there must have been some liberal statesmen,
some men endowed with wisdom and a sense of justice, who influenced
the early legislation in Missouri.
By the constitution, imprisonment for debt is forbidden, except for
fines and penalties imposed for violation of law. A homestead not
exceeding $3,000 in value in cities of 40,000 inhabitants or more,
and not exceeding $1,500 in smaller cities and in the country, is
exempt from levy on execution. The real estate of a married woman
is not liable for the debts of her husband. There are eight causes
for divorce, so many doors of escape for unfortunate wives from the
bondage of a joyless union.
The memory of the unjust treatment of Miss Hosmer will always be a
reproach to Massachusetts. That she enjoyed the privileges of
education in Missouri denied her in Massachusetts was due in no
small measure to the generosity and public spirit of Wayman Crow.
Speaking of the gifted sculptor, a correspondent says:
Harriet Hosmer was born in 1830. She studied sculpture in the
studio of Mr. Stephenson, in Boston, and also with her father. In
1830, after being denied admission to anatomical lectures in
Harvard and many other colleges at the East, she went to St.
Louis, where, through the spirited determination of Wayman Crow,
a most liberal benefactor of Washington University, she was
admitted to the Missouri Medical College through the kindness and
courtesy of Dr. Joseph N. McDowell, its founder and head. Here
for a whole winter she pursued her studies under the instruction
of Dr. McDowell and Dr. Louis T. Pim, the able demonstrator of
anatomy of the college, who gave her the benefit of their
constant and unremitting aid; also Dr. B. Gratz Moses and Dr. J.
B. Johnson were particularly kind in inviting her to be present
when important cases were before them. The names of these men are
gratefully mentioned, now that the doors of hundreds of colleges
have opened to women. While in St. Louis Miss Hosmer had a
constant companion and friend in Miss Jane Peck, a lady well
known in society circles, and together they daily attended at the
college; indeed, Miss Peck informed the writer, that on no
occasion did Miss Hosmer go to the college without her. So
quietly was this done, it was not until the month of February
that the students became aware of their attending, and when
informed of it the entire class, numbering about one hundred and
thirty, gave them a most cordial and hearty endorsement, and from
that time on until the day of graduation they were treated by the
young gentlemen with marked attention. The students were not
aware of their attending in the earlier part of the course,
because it had been the custom for the ladies to attend in the
amphitheater after the class had left to go to the various
hospitals. On one occasion while on their way to the college, a
number of the students being behind them, they heard the
gentlemen say to some men they met, "These ladies are under our
charge, and if you offer them an insult we will shoot you down."
They did not hear the language of the men, only the reply of the
students. At the close of the session the students gave a ball
and not only were Miss Hosmer and Miss Peck invited, but a
carriage was specially sent to take them to it.
In March, 1869, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony again visited St.
Louis. In a letter to _The Revolution_ the former said:
We went to the Mercantile Library to see Miss Hosmer's works of
art, and there read the following letter to Wayman Crow, who had
been a generous friend to her through all those early days of
trial and disappointment. One of the best of her productions is
an admirable bust of her noble benefactor:
BOSTON, October 18, 1857.
DEAR MR. CROW: Will you allow me to convey through you to
the Mercantile Library Association "The Beatrice Cenci."
This statue is in execution of a commission I received three
years ago from a friend who requested me not only to make a
piece of statuary for that institution, but to present it in
my own name. I have finished the work, but cannot offer it
as my own gift--but of one who, with a most liberal hand,
has largely ministered to the growth of the arts and
sciences in your beautiful city. For your sake, and for
mine, I would have made a better statue if I could. The will
was not wanting, but the power--but such as it is, I rejoice
sincerely that it is destined for St. Louis, a city I love,
not only because it was there I first began my studies, but
because of the many generous and indulgent friends who dwell
therein--of whom I number you most generous and indulgent of
all, whose increasing kindness I can only repay by striving
to become more and more worthy of all your friendship and
confidence, and so I am ever affectionately and gratefully
yours,
_Wayman Crow, Esq._ H.G. HOSMER.
The very active part that the women of Missouri had taken in the
civil war, in the hospitals and sanitary department, had aroused
their enthusiasm in the preservation of the Union and their sense
of responsibility in national affairs. The great mass-meetings of
the Loyal Women's Leagues, too, did an immense educational work in
broadening their sympathies and the horizon of their sphere of
action. So wholly absorbed had they been in the intense excitement
of that period, that when peace came their hands and hearts,
unoccupied, naturally turned to new fields of achievement. While in
some States it was the temperance question, in St. Louis it was
specifically woman suffrage.
We are indebted for the main facts of this chapter to Mr. Francis
Minor, Mrs. Rebecca N. Hazard, Miss Couzins and Miss Arathusa
Forbes, who have kindly sent us what information they had or could
hastily glean from the journals of the time or the imperfect
records of the association.
The labors of Mrs. Minor and Mrs. Couzins were exceptionally
protracted and severe. The latter offered her services as nurse
at the very opening of the war. The letters received from men in
authority show how highly their services were appreciated. Dr.
Pope who writes the following, was the leading surgeon in St.
Louis:
ST. LOUIS, April 26, 1861.
Mrs. J. E. D. COUZINS--_Dear Madam_: Your note in which, in
case of collision here, you generously offer your services
in the capacity of nurse, is just received. Should so dire a
calamity befall us (which God forbid), I shall, in case of
need, most assuredly remember your noble offer. With high
regard and sincere thanks, I am,
Yours very truly, CHAS. A. POPE.
HEADQUARTERS 2D BRIG., MO. VOL., ST. LOUIS, MO.,
Aug. 23, 1861.
Mrs. J. E. D. COUZINS, _present--Madam_: I received your
kind letter, dated Aug. 17. Accept my heartfelt thanks for
your generous offer. I regard the nursing of our wounded
soldiers by the tender hands of patriotic ladies as a most
effectual means of easing their condition and encouraging
them to new efforts in defense of our glorious cause. You
will please confer with Mrs. von Wackerbarth, corner Seventh
and Elm streets, in regard to the steps to be taken in this
matter.
Your obedient servant, F. SIGEL, _Brig.-Gen. Com._
HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE MISSOURI, February 18th, 1862.
The commanding officers at Cairo, Paducah, or vicinity, are
hereby requested to grant any facilities consistent with the
public interests that may be desired by the bearers of this
note. They are Mrs. Couzins and Crawshaw, of the Ladies'
Union Aid Society, who wish to administer relief to our sick
and wounded. By order of
J. T. PRICE, _A. D. C._ Maj.-Gen'l HALLECK.
ROOMS WESTERN SANITARY COMMISSION, ST. LOUIS, Oct, 6th, 1862.
MY DEAR MRS. COUZINS: The surgeon-general has notified me
that he may want me to send nurses and surgeons to Columbus
and Corinth. I look to you, my dear madam, as one ever ready
to volunteer when you can be of real service. In case it
should become necessary, may I rely on your valuable
services? Such other names as you may suggest I would be
pleased to have.
Very respectfully,
JAS. E. YEATMAN.
OFFICE OF WESTERN SANITARY COMMISSION, }
SAINT LOUIS, MO., Oct. 8th, 1862. }
Mrs. Couzins has been detailed to service in the hospital
steamer T.L. McGill, as volunteer nurse.
N.B.--If the place of service is changed, a new certificate
will be issued.
JAMES E. YEATMAN, President of Sanitary Commission.
CORINTH, Oct. 13, 1862.
Pass Mrs. Couzins from Corinth to Columbus.
W. S. ROSECRANZ, _Maj.-Gen'l U. S. A._
HEADQUARTERS DEP'T OF THE TENNESSEE, }
BEFORE VICKSBURG, Feb'y 21st, 1863. }
The quartermaster in charge of transportation at Memphis,
Tenn., will furnish transportation on any chartered steamer
plying between Memphis, Tenn., and St. Louis, to Mrs.
Couzins and five other ladies, members of the Western
Sanitary Commission, and who have been with this fleet
distributing sanitary goods for the benefit of sick
soldiers.
U.S. GRANT, _Maj.-Gen. Com_.
Capt. J. B. LEWIS,
_A. Q. M. and Master of Transportation_, Memphis, Tenn.
While Mrs. Couzins thus gave herself to mitigating the sufferings
of the "boys in blue," in camp and hospital, Mrs. Minor was no
less active and energetic in the equally important department of
preserving supplies for the sanitary commission. Although Mrs.
Minor resided too far from the city to attend the evening
meetings, and her name does not appear in the accounts of such
gatherings, she was one of the first members of the Ladies' Union
Aid Society of St. Louis, and took part in the meeting of loyal
women called and presided over by Gen. Curtis. Having an orchard
and dairy on her place, she furnished the hospital with milk and
fruit, and for more than two years, sent a supply every day to
the soldiers in camp at Benton barracks. When the news came that
the army around Vicksburg was suffering with scurvy, she took her
carriage and drove through the country soliciting fruit, and in
one week she canned with her own hands, a wagon-load of cherries,
the sanitary commission finding the cans and sugar, and from time
to time she continued the work until the end of the war. When the
great fair was held under the auspices of the Western Sanitary
Commission, she was a member of the floral department, and
worked with her accustomed energy. The sanitary commission,
feeling that she had done so much, wrote her a letter of thanks,
and enclosed her a check for a liberal amount; but she returned
the check, saying that hers was a work of love, and not for
money. Although the official letter of the commission thanking
Mrs. Minor for her most valuable services, is lost, the following
to Mr. Minor may fairly be considered as including her also:
ROOMS WESTERN SANITARY COMMISSION, St. Louis, Oct. 7, 1863.
FRANCIS MINOR, Esq.--_My Dear Sir_: I am directed by our
board to return you their thanks in behalf of the soldiers
in the hospitals, for your long-continued remembrance of
them, and for the daily supply of fresh fruits, vegetables
and milk, which you have furnished for the sick, now more
than two years. Your garner and sympathy have been like the
widow's cruse, and may they ever continue to be so. What you
have done has been in the most quiet and unobtrusive way.
The sick soldier has had no more constant, uniform and
untiring friend, and it is with pleasure that I convey the
thanks of the board, both to yourself and wife, who have
been as indefatigable at home in preparing canned fruits and
other delicacies for the sick soldiers in the field, as you
have been in providing for those in the hospitals. With
grateful feelings and many thanks and best wishes, I remain,
Very respectfully yours,
JAMES E. YEATMAN,
_President Western Sanitary Commission_.
The submission of a constitutional amendment in Kansas, and the
preparations for a thorough canvass of that State, had its
influence in heightening the enthusiasm and increasing the
agitation in Missouri, as most of the speakers going to Kansas
held meetings at various points. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony
stopped at St. Louis both going and returning, held large
meetings in Library Hall, and had a pleasant reception in the
parlors of the Southern Hotel, where many warm friendships that
have lasted ever since, were formed.
The subject of woman's enfranchisement had doubtless often
occurred to the thoughtful men and women of Missouri, long before
the movement in its behalf assumed anything like a practical
shape. The manifest absurdity and injustice of declaring, as the
constitution of the State did, "that all political power is
vested in, and derived from the people; that all government of
right originates from the people, is founded upon their will
only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole," and at
the same time, denying to one-half of the people any voice
whatever in framing their government or making their laws, could
not fail to strike the attention of any one who gave the subject
the slightest consideration. But no attempt was made towards an
organization in behalf of woman suffrage until the winter of
1866-7; and the movement then had its origin from the following
circumstance: During the debate in the Senate of the United
States, on the district suffrage bill, December 12, 1866, Senator
Brown, of Missouri, in the course of his remarks said:
I have to say then, sir, here on the floor of the American
Senate, I stand for universal suffrage, and as a matter of
fundamental principle do not recognize the right of society
to limit it on any ground of race, color, or sex. I will go
further, and say that I recognize the right of franchise as
being intrinsically a natural right; and I do not believe
that society is authorized to impose any limitation upon it
that does not spring out of the necessities of the social
state itself.
When Mrs. Francis Minor, of St. Louis, who had given the subject
much thought, read the report of Senator Brown's speech, she
considered that it was due to him from the women of the State
that he should receive a letter of thanks for his bold and
out-spoken utterances in their behalf. She accordingly wrote him
such a letter, obtaining to it all the signatures she could, and
it was presented to Senator Brown on his return home. But
although first an advocate of the measure, he soon recanted, and
gave his influence against it.
It was next determined to petition the legislature of the State
then in session, January, 1867, to propose an amendment to the
constitution, striking out the word "male," in the article on
suffrage. Such a petition was presented, and attracted much
attention, as it was the first instance of the kind in the
history of the State. This move was followed by a formal
organization of the friends of the cause, and on May 8, 1867, the
"Missouri Woman Suffrage Association" was organized, and officers
elected.[378]
We find the following letter from Mr. Minor in _The Revolution_
of January 22, 1868:
_Editors of The Revolution_: In order to show the steady
progress that the grand idea of equal rights is slowly but
surely making among the people of these United States, I
think it would be well, in the beginning, at least, to make
a record in _The Revolution_ of the fact of each successive
State organization; and for that purpose I send you the list
of officers for the association in Missouri not yet a year
old; as also their petition to the legislature for a change
in the organic law, and a brief address to the voters of the
State, in support of the movement:
_To the Voters of Missouri:_
The women of this State, having organized for the purpose of
agitating their claims to the ballot, it becomes every
intelligent and reflecting mind to consider the question
fairly and dispassionately. If it has merits, it will
eventually succeed; if not, it will fail. I am of the number
of those who believe that claim to be just and right, for
the following, among other reasons:
Taxation and Representation should go hand in hand. This is
the very corner-stone of our government. Its founders
declared, and the declaration cannot be too often repeated,
"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 those
rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed." The man who
believes in that declaration, cannot justly deny to women
the right of suffrage. They are citizens, they are
tax-payers; they bear the burdens of government--why should
they be denied the rights of citizens? We boast about
liberty and equality before the law, when the truth is, our
government is controlled by one-half only of the population.
The others have no more voice in the making of their laws,
or the selection of their rulers, than the criminals who are
in our penitentiaries; nay, in one respect, their condition
is not as good as that of the felon, for he may be pardoned
and restored to a right which woman can never obtain. And
this, not because she has committed any crime, or violated
any law, but simply because she is, what God made her--a
woman! Possessed of the same intelligence--formed in the
same mold--having the same attributes, parts and
passions--held by her Maker to the same measure of
responsibility here and hereafter, her actual position in
society to-day is that of an inferior. No matter what her
qualifications may be, every avenue of success is virtually
closed against her. Even when she succeeds in obtaining
employment, she gets only half the pay that a man does for
the same work. But, it is said, woman's sphere is at home.
Would giving her the right to vote interfere with her home
duties any more than it does with a man's business? Again it
is said, that for her to vote would be unfeminine. Is it at
all more indelicate for a woman to go to the polls, than it
is for her to go to the court-house and pay her taxes? The
truth is, woman occupies just the position that man has
placed her in, and it ill becomes him to urge such
objections. Give her a chance--give her the opportunity of
proving whether these objections are well founded or not.
Her influence for good is great, notwithstanding all the
disadvantages under which she at present labors; and my firm
belief is, that that influence would be greatly enhanced and
extended by the exercise of this new right. It would be felt
at the ballot-box and in the halls of legislation. Better
men, as a general rule, would be elected to office, and
society in all its ramifications, would feel and rejoice at
the change.
A VOTER.
_To the General Assembly of the State of Missouri: _
GENTLEMEN: The undersigned women of Missouri, believing that
all citizens who are taxed for the support of the government
and subject to its laws, should have a voice in the making
of those laws, and the selection of their rulers; that, as
the possession of the ballot ennobles and elevates the
character of man, so, in like manner, it would ennoble and
elevate that of woman by giving her a direct and personal
interest in the affairs of government; and further,
believing that the spirit of the age, as well as every
consideration of justice and equity, requires that the
ballot should be extended to our sex, do unite in praying
that an amendment to the constitution may be proposed,
striking out the word "male" and extending to women the
right of suffrage.
And, as in duty bound, your petitioners will ever pray.
On behalf of the Missouri Woman Suffrage Association.
[Signed:] _President_, Mrs. Francis Minor; _Vice-President_,
Mrs. Beverly Allen; _Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs. Wm. T.
Hazard; _Recording Secretary_, Mrs. Geo. D. Hall;
_Treasurer_, Mrs. N. Stevens, St. Louis, Missouri.
Copies of the petition, and information furnished upon
addressing either of above named officers. Formation of
auxiliary associations in every county requested. Petitions
when completely signed, to be returned to the head office.
These papers will serve to show that the idea has taken root
in other States beyond the Mississippi besides Kansas; and
may also be somewhat of a guide to others, who may desire to
accomplish the same purpose elsewhere. A work of such
magnitude requires, of course, time for development; but the
leaven is working. The fountains of the great deep of public
thought have been broken up. The errors and prejudices of
six thousand years are yielding to the sunlight of truth. In
spite of pulpits and politicians, the great idea is making
its way to the hearts of the people; and woman may rejoice
in believing that the dawn of her deliverance, so long hoped
for and prayed for, is at last approaching.
F. M.
_St. Louis_, January, 1868.
The following from _The Revolution_ shows that the women of St.
Louis were awake on the question of taxation:
The women here have endeavored to find out to what extent
taxation without representation, because of sex, obtains in this
city, and as the result of their inquiries they are enabled to
place on their records the following very suggestive document.
ASSESSOR'S OFFICE, ST. LOUIS, January 30, 1869.
_To Mrs. Couzins and Emma Finkelnburg, Committee of the
Ladies' Suffrage Association:_
In reply to your request to report to your association the
amount of property listed in the city of St. Louis in the
name of ladies, permit me to state that the property in
question is represented by over 2,000 tax-paying ladies, and
assessed at the value of $14,490,199.
Yours very respectfully,
ROBT. J. ROMBAUER, _Assessor_.
This exhibit has opened the eyes of a good many people. "Two
thousand on 'em," exclaimed a male friend of mine, "and over
fourteen millions of property! Whew! What business have these
women with so much money?" Well, they have it, and now they ask
us, "Shall 2,000 men, not worth a dollar, just because they wear
pantaloons go to the polls and vote taxes on us, while we are
excluded from the ballot-box for no other reason than sex?" What
_shall_ we say to them? They ask us if the American Revolution
did not turn on this hinge, _No taxation without representation_.
Who can answer?
The advocates of suffrage in St. Louis made their attacks at once
in both Church[379] and State, and left no means of agitation
untried. There has never been an association in any State that
comprised so many able men and women who gave their best thoughts
to every phase of this question, and who did so grand a work,
until the unfortunate division in 1871, which seemed to chill the
enthusiasm of many friends of the movement.
In the winter of 1869 the association sent a large delegation of
ladies to the legislature with a petition containing about 2,000
signatures. A correspondent in _The Revolution_, February 6,
1869, said:
It will not be feminine to say, yet I fear I must say, the
women of Missouri have stormed their capitol, and if it is
not yet taken, the outworks are in our hands, and I believe
with a few more well-directed blows the victory will be
ours. On February 3 a large delegation of ladies,
representing the Suffrage Association of Missouri, visited
Jefferson City for the purpose of laying before the
legislature a large and influentially signed petition,
asking the ballot for women; and we were gratified to see
the great respect and deference shown to the women of
Missouri by the wisest and best of her legislators in their
respectful and cordial reception of the delegates. Both
Houses adjourned, and gave the use of the house for the
afternoon, when eloquent addresses were made by Mrs. J.G.
Phelps of Springfield, Dr. Ada Greunan of St. Louis, and the
future orator of Missouri, Miss Phoebe Couzins, whose able
and effective address the press has given in full. Of the
brave men who stood up for us, it is more difficult to
speak. To give a list would be impossible; for every name
would require a eulogy too lengthy for the pages of _The
Revolution_. We will, therefore, record them on the tablets
of our memory with a hand so firm that they shall stand out
brightly till time shall be no more. Of the small majority
who oppose us we will say nothing, but throw over them the
pall of merciful oblivion.
The first woman suffrage convention ever held in the city of St.
Louis, or the State of Missouri, assembled in Mercantile Library,
October 6, 7, 1869. Many distinguished people were on the
platform.[380] At this convention Mr. Francis Minor introduced a
very able series of resolutions, on which Mrs. Minor made a
remarkably logical address.[381] The following letter from Mr.
Minor shows the careful research he gave to the consideration of
this question:
ST. LOUIS, December 30, 1869.
DEAR REVOLUTION: So thoroughly am I satisfied that the
surest and most direct course to pursue to obtain a
recognition of woman's claim to the ballot, lies through the
courts of the country, that I am induced to ask you to
republish the resolutions that I drafted, and which were
unanimously adopted by the St. Louis convention. And I will
here add, that to accomplish this end, and to carry these
resolutions into practical effect, it is intended by Mrs.
Minor, the president of the State Association, to make a
test case in her instance at our next election; take it
through the courts of Missouri, and thence to the Supreme
Court of the United States at Washington. I think it will be
admitted that these resolutions place the cause of woman
upon higher ground than ever before asserted, in the fact
that for the first time suffrage is claimed as a privilege
based upon citizenship, and secured by the Constitution of
the United States. It will be seen that the position taken
is, that the States have the right to regulate, but not to
prohibit, the elective franchise to citizens of the United
States. Thus the States may determine the qualifications of
electors. They may require the elector to be of a certain
age, to have had a fixed residence, to be of a sane mind,
and unconvicted of crime, etc., because these are
qualifications or conditions that all citizens, sooner or
later, may attain; but to go beyond this, and say to
one-half the citizens of the State, notwithstanding you
possess all these qualifications you shall never vote, is of
the very essence of despotism. It is a bill of attainder of
the most odious character.
A further investigation of the subject will show that the
language of the constitutions of all the States, with the
exception of those of Massachusetts and Virginia, on the
subject of suffrage is peculiar. They almost all read
substantially alike: "White male citizens, etc., shall be
entitled to vote," and this is supposed to exclude all other
citizens. There is no direct exclusion, except in the two
States above named. Now the error lies in supposing that an
enabling clause is necessary at all. The right of the people
of a State to participate in a government of their own
creation requires no enabling clause; neither can it be
taken from them by implication. To hold otherwise would be
to interpolate in the constitution a prohibition that does
not exist. In framing a constitution the people are
assembled in their sovereign capacity; and being possessed
of all rights and all powers, what is not surrendered is
retained. Nothing short of a direct prohibition can work a
disseizin of rights that are fundamental. In the language of
John Jay to the people of New York, urging the adoption of
the Constitution of the United States, "silence and blank
paper neither give nor take away anything," and Alexander
Hamilton says (_Federalist_, No. 83), "Every man of
discernment must at once perceive the wide difference
between silence and abolition."
The mode and manner in which the people shall take part in
the government of their creation may be prescribed by the
constitution, but the right itself is antecedent to all
constitutions. It is inalienable, and can neither be bought,
nor sold, nor given away. But even if it should be held that
this view is untenable, and that women are disfranchised by
the several State constitutions directly, or by implication,
then I say that such prohibitions are clearly in conflict
with the Constitution of the United States, and yield
thereto. The language of that instrument is clear and
emphatic: "All persons born or naturalized in the United
States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States, and of the State wherein they
reside." "No State shall make, or enforce any law that shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States." It would be impossible to add to the force
or effect of such language, and equally impossible to
attempt to explain it away.
Very respectfully, FRANCIS MINOR.
The St. Louis _Democrat_ spoke of the convention as follows:
Readers of our report have doubtless been interested to
observe the fair spirit and dignified manner of the woman
suffrage convention, and the ability displayed in some of
the addresses. It is but due to the managers to say that
they extended most courteous invitations to gentlemen not
identified with the movement to address the convention, and
state freely their objections to the extension of the
franchise. Of those invited some were prevented by duties
elsewhere from attending. Others, it may be, felt that it
would scarcely be a gracious thing, in spite of the
liberality of the invitation, to occupy the time of a
convention in favor of the extension of the franchise with
arguments against it. But the objections which, after all,
probably have most weight with candid men are those which it
is not easy to discuss in public, namely: "Will not
extension of suffrage to women have an injurious effect upon
the family and sexual relations?" "Will not the ballot be
used rather by that class who would not use it wisely than
by those who are most competent?" We do not argue these
questions, but are sure that some frank discussion of them,
however delicate the subject may be, is necessary to
convince the great majority of those who are still doubting
or opposed. Meanwhile the reports are of interest, and
reflect no little credit upon the women of this city who
have taken so prominent a part in the movement.
The officers of the Missouri Society were annually reëlected for
several years, and the work proceeded harmoniously until the
division in the National Association. The members of the Missouri
Society took sides in this division as preference dictated. Mr.
and Mrs. Minor, Miss Forbes, Miss Couzins and others were already
members of the National Association, and sympathized with its
views and modes of pushing the question.
In order that there might be no division in the Missouri
Association, a resolution was introduced by Mr. Minor and
unanimously adopted, declaring that each member of the society
should be free to join the National body of his or her choice,
and that the Missouri Association, as a society, should not
become auxiliary to either the "National" or the "American." The
good faith of the association was thus pledged to respect the
feelings and wishes of each member, and as long as this course
was observed all went well. But, at the annual meeting in 1871,
just after Mrs. Minor had for the fifth time been unanimously
reëlected president, in violation of the previous action of the
association a resolution was introduced and passed, declaring
that the association should henceforth become auxiliary to the
American. This gross disregard of the wishes and feelings of
those who were members of the National Association left them no
alternative, with any feeling of self-respect, but to withdraw;
and accordingly Mrs. Minor at once tendered her resignation as
president and her withdrawal as a member of the association. She
was followed in this course by Mr. Minor, Miss Couzins, Miss
Forbes and others.[382] However, the work went steadily on.
Meetings were held regularly from week to week, with occasional
grand conventions, tracts and petitions were circulated, and
constant agitation in some way kept up.
In answer to an earnest solicitation for facts and incidents of the
suffrage movement in Missouri, Mrs. Rebecca N. Hazard, one of the
earliest and most active friends in that State, sends us the
following:
I think the cruel war had much to do in educating the women of
Missouri into a sense of their responsibilities and duties as
citizens; at least all who first took part in the suffrage
movement had been active on the Union side during the war, and
that having ended in the preservation of the government, they
naturally began to inquire as to their own rights and privileges
in the restored Union. My own feelings were first fully awakened
by the hanging of Mrs. Surrat; for, although a Unionist and an
abolitionist, I could but regard her execution by the government,
considering her helpless position, as judicial murder. I wrote on
the subject to the editor of the New York _Independent_. The
letter was handed to Miss Anthony, and resulted in an invitation
to the next meeting of the Equal Rights Society. This almost
frightened me, for I had hitherto looked askance at the woman's
rights movement.
Meeting an old friend and neighbor not long after, the talk
turned upon negro suffrage. I expressed myself in favor of that
measure, and timidly added, "And go farther--I think women also
should vote." She grasped my hand cordially, saying, "And so do
I!" This was Mrs. Virginia L. Minor. We had each cherished this
opinion, supposing that no other woman in the community held it;
and this we afterwards found to have been the experience of many
others. This was in 1866; and in the following autumn Mrs. Minor
prepared and circulated for signatures a card of thanks to Hon.
B. Gratz Brown for the recognition of woman's political rights he
had given in the United States Senate in a speech upon extending
the suffrage to the women of the District of Columbia.[383] This
card received enough names to justify another step--that of a
petition to the Missouri General Assembly. This was headed by
Mrs. Minor, and circulated with untiring energy by her, receiving
several hundred signatures, and was sent to the legislature
during the winter, where it received some degree of favor.
But as yet no effort had been made toward an organization. The
first step in that direction was in May, 1867, by Mrs. Lucretia
P. Hall and her sister, Miss Penelope Allen, daughters of Mrs.
Beverly Allen, and nieces of General Pope, in the parlors of Mrs.
Anna L. Clapp, the president of the Union Aid Society during the
war. Mrs. Hall, Mrs. Clapp and myself called a public meeting on
May 8, when the Woman Suffrage Society of Missouri was organized,
with Mrs. Minor president.
In the winter of 1868 the association sent a large delegation of
ladies to Jefferson with a petition containing about 2,000 names,
to present to the legislature. The Republicans were then in the
ascendency, and the ladies having many professed friends among
the members, were received with every demonstration of respect.
Addresses were made by Miss Phoebe Couzins and Dr. Ada Greunan.
The petition was respectfully considered and a fair vote given
for the submission of an amendment.
Subsequent sessions of the legislature have been besieged, as was
also the constitutional convention in 1875; but beyond the
passage of several laws improving the general status of women, we
have not made much impression upon the law-making power of our
State; not so much since the State passed into the hands of the
Democrats, as while the Republicans were in the majority.
But the public meetings and social influence of our association
have done much for the cause of woman suffrage. Strangers are
surprised to find so little prejudice existing against a movement
so decidedly unpopular in many places. The convention held in St.
Louis in October, 1869, was one of the very best I have ever
known, and its influence was long felt for good. In the spring of
1871 our association became auxiliary to the American, and in
consequence several of our active members seceded, viz.: Mr. and
Mrs. Minor, Miss Couzins, Dr. Greunan and others. In the autumn
of 1872 the American Association held its annual meeting in St.
Louis.
The law school of Washington University has always been open to
women. Miss Couzins was the first to avail herself of its
advantages in 1869, though Miss Barkaloo of Brooklyn, denied
admission to Columbia Law School, soon joined her, and was
admitted to the bar in 1870. While Miss Barkaloo was not the
first woman admitted to the bar in the United States, she
doubtless was the first to try a case in court. She died after a
few months of most promising practice.[384] Miss Couzins was
admitted to the bar in May, 1871.
The St. Louis School of Design, which has done much for woman,
was originated by members of our association; principally by Mrs.
Mary F. Henderson, who has given untiring effort in that
direction. Our members were also instrumental in opening to women
the St. Louis Homeopathic Medical College, and active in opposing
what was known as the St. Louis "Social Evil Law." They aided Dr.
Eliot in his valiant struggle against that iniquity. Mrs. E.
Patrick and myself called the first public meeting to protest
against the law. It was repealed March 27, 1874.
You are probably familiar with Mrs. Minor's suit to obtain
suffrage under the fourteenth amendment. We all admired her
courageous efforts for that object. Previous to that attempt our
society had earnestly advocated a sixteenth amendment for the
protection of woman's right to vote, but held the matter in
abeyance pending the suit. After its failure, we again renewed
our efforts for a sixteenth amendment, circulating and sending to
Washington our petitions. Our association holds monthly meetings
and proposes to continue the agitation.[385] I ought to say,
perhaps, that our society lends all the help possible to other
States. It gave $520 to Michigan in 1874, and $200 to Colorado in
1877.
R. N. H.
To bring the question of woman's right as a citizen of the United
States to vote for United States officers before the judiciary,
Mrs. Minor attempted to register in order to vote at the national
election in November, 1872, and being refused on account of her
sex, brought the matter before the courts in the shape of a suit
against the registering officer.[386] The point was decided
adversely to her in all the courts, being finally reported in
Vol. 21 of Wallace's U. S. Supreme Court Reports. The importance
of this decision cannot be over-estimated. It affects every
citizen of the United States, male as well as female, if, as
there pronounced, the United States has no voters of its own
creation. The Dred-Scott decision is insignificant in comparison.
Mrs. Minor made the following points in her petition:
1. As a _citizen_ of the United States, the plaintiff is
entitled to any and all the "privileges and immunities" that
belong to such position however defined; and as are held,
exercised and enjoyed by other citizens of the United
States.
2. The elective franchise is a "privilege" of citizenship,
in the highest sense of the word. It is the privilege
preservative of all rights and privileges; and especially of
the right of the citizen to participate in his or her
government.
3. The denial or abridgment of this privilege, if it exist
at all, must be sought only in the fundamental charter of
government--the Constitution of the United States. If not
found there, no inferior power or jurisdiction can legally
claim the right to exercise it.
4. But the Constitution of the United States, so far from
recognizing or permitting any denial or abridgment of the
privileges of citizens, expressly declares that "no State
shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."
5. It follows that the provisions of the Missouri
constitution and registry law before recited are in conflict
with, and must yield to the paramount authority of, the
Constitution of the United States.
At a mass meeting held in St. Louis January 25, 1875, a
committee[387] was appointed to prepare an address to the people
of the State, setting forth the necessity of such action by the
constitutional convention, soon to assemble, as would insure to
all citizens the right of choice in their lawmakers and in the
officers whose duty it should be to execute the laws. The address
was prepared and widely circulated over the State. In June, the
convention being in session at Jefferson, Mrs. Minor, Miss
Couzins, and Mrs. Dickinson went to the capitol and were granted
a gracious hearing, but no action was conceded.
In May, 1879, the National Woman Suffrage Association held its
annual meeting at St. Louis, holding its session through the day,
morning, afternoon and evening, and so much interest was aroused
that on May 13 a local society was organized under the head of
the National Woman Suffrage Association for St. Louis,[388] with
Mrs. Minor president, which has continued to do most efficient
service to the present. During the summer of 1879, Mrs. Minor
refused to pay the tax assessed against her:
ST. LOUIS, MO., August 26, 1879.
Hon. DAVID POWERS, _President Board of Assessors_: I
honestly believe and conscientiously make oath that I have
not one dollars' worth of property subject to taxation. The
principle upon which this government rests is representation
before taxation. My property is denied representation, and
therefore can not be taxable. The law which you quote as
applicable to me in your notice to make my tax return is in
direct conflict with section 30 of the bill of rights of the
constitution of the State which declares, "No person shall
be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due
process of law," And that surely cannot be due process of
law wherein one of the parties only is law-maker, judge,
jury and executioner, and the other stands silenced, denied
the power either of assent or dissent, a condition of
"involuntary slavery" so clearly prohibited in section 31 of
the same article, as well as in the Constitution of the
United States, that no legislation or judicial prejudice can
ignore it. I trust you will believe it is from no disrespect
to you that I continue to refuse to become a party to this
injustice by making a return of property to your honorable
body, as clearly the duties of a citizen can only be exacted
where rights and privileges are equally accorded.
Respectfully, VIRGINIA L. MINOR.
Again, in February, 1881, Mrs. Minor made an able argument before
the legislative committee on constitutional amendments in support
of the petition for the enfranchisement of the women of the
State. Her pivotal point was, "By whatever tenure you, as
one-half of the people, hold it, we, the other half, claim it by
the same." And again in December of the same year at a meeting of
the Knights and Ladies of the Father Matthew Debating Club, at
which the subject was, "Is the woman's rights movement to be
encouraged?" Patrick Long, Daniel O'Connel Tracy, Richard D.
Kerwen, spoke in the affirmative; several gentlemen and two
ladies in opposition, when Mrs. Minor, who was in the audience,
was called out amid great applause, to which she responded in an
able speech, showing that the best temperance weapon in the hands
of woman is the ballot.
Of the initial steps taken for the elevation of women in the little
village of Oregon, Mrs. Annie R. Irvine writes:
The Woman's Union, an independent literary club, designed to
improve the mental, moral, and physical condition of women, held
its first meeting in Oregon, Holt county, on the evening of
January 6, 1872, at the residence of Dr. Asher Goslin. Temporary
officers were elected, and a committee appointed to prepare
by-laws for the government of the club. Six ladies[389] were
present. The succeeding meetings grew in interest, and took
strong hold upon the minds of all classes, from the fact that
hitherto no outlet had been found for the energies of our women
outside the circle of home and church. During the first two years
of its existence, the Woman's Union had to bear in a small way,
many of the sneers and taunts attending more pretentious
organizations, but luckily, when the novelty wore off, we were
allowed to pursue the quiet tenor of our way, with an occasional
slur at the "strong-minded" tendency of the organization. During
nearly fourteen years we have held regular meetings in a hall
rented for the purpose, and paid for by earnings of the society.
An excellent organ is owned by the club; they have a library of
several hundred volumes, book-cases, carpet, curtains, pictures,
tables, chairs, stove, etc., and the members take great pride in
their cosy headquarters. At this writing, interesting meetings
are held on each Wednesday evening at the homes of the different
members of the society.[390] In the course of so long a time,
this organization has had many changes. Members have removed to
all parts of the United States, and many similar clubs elsewhere
trace their origin to our society.
Several years ago an open letter from here to "Woman's Kingdom,"
in the Chicago _Inter-Ocean_ called attention to our plan of work
for small towns; as a result fifteen similar Unions were
organized, some of them still flourishing. In northwest Missouri
the same kind of clubs were formed in Maryville, Nodaway county,
and Savannah, Andrew county, but neither of them became
permanent. In the course of twelve years many of the best
speakers on the American platform have addressed Oregon
audiences, brought here by the determined efforts of a few women.
To-day, public opinion in this part of Missouri is in advance of
other sections on all questions relating to the great interests
of humanity. In March, 1879, a call signed by prominent
citizens[391] brought together a large assembly of men and women
in the court-house. An address in favor of woman suffrage was
delivered by Rev. John Wayman of the M. E. Church of St. Joseph.
Mr. James L. Allen acted as chairman of the meeting, and a
society was then organized, to bear the name of the Holt County
Woman Suffrage Society. At the National Woman Suffrage Convention
held at St. Louis later in the same year, Jas. L. Allen acted as
delegate from this association and reported our progress. The
best organized woman's society in the State is probably the
Women's Christian Temperance Union. In its different departments,
although hampered by too much theological red tape, it is
reaching thousands of ignorant, prejudiced, good sectarian women
who would expect the "heavens to fall" if they accidentally got
into a meeting where "woman's rights" was mentioned even in a
whisper. Mrs. Clara Hoffman, of Kansas City, is State president,
and a woman of great force. She, as well as other leading lights
in the Women's Christian Temperance Union, is strongly advocating
woman suffrage as a _sine qua non_ in the temperance work. The
women of this part of the State have been given quite a prominent
place among organizations mentioned in a late "History of
Missouri, by Counties." The Woman's Union has taken the place of
honor.[392] From the very outset we have had the most bitter and
persistent opposition from the churches, more particularly the
Presbyterian, although some of our most capable members were of
that faith. Exceptions should be made in favor of the Christian,
or Campbellite, and as a general thing, the M. E. churches. The
greatest shock we have had to resist, however, came a few months
since in the shape of a division among our own members, and has
really discouraged the more independent among us more than
anything else. The W. C. T. U. sent their Mascatine organizer
here, to wake up the women in the interests of the State society.
Although ignorant and prejudiced, he created a fanatical
stampede, and in the goodness of their hearts and the weakness of
their heads, our church women in the Woman's Union proposed to
give to the three temperance clubs, numbering perhaps 150, the
free use of our rooms and property, and suspend our own club,
claiming that our mission was ended, and that a field of greater
usefulness was opened in the W. C. T. U. line of work. The
liberal element refused to abandon the old organization, although
many joined in the W. C. T. U. work and attended both clubs.
However, in a small community, where the consciences of many good
women are not free, we have met with serious drawbacks. We have
had to submit to a sort of boycotting process, for some time, the
orthodox, goody-goody people evidently trying to freeze us out;
although I must claim that nearly every member of the Woman's
Union is strongly interested in the temperance cause, and as the
different departments in the W. C. T. U. fail to cover the ground
we occupy, quite a respectable number seem determined to hold on
in their own way, trying little by little to better the condition
of all, and particularly to increase and strengthen the feeble
germ of independent thought in women, so often smothered and
destroyed by too much theology. What we need for women is not
more spirituality but more hard common-sense, applied to reform
as well as religion. One thing connected with our organization is
a matter of pride to all women, namely, that no pecuniary
obligation has ever been repudiated by the Woman's Union. Besides
paying our debts we have given hundreds of dollars to works of
charity and education, and keep a standing fund of $100, to be
used in case of emergency, when, as often happens, we fail to
make expenses on lectures, entertainments, etc. It would not be
claiming too much if the Woman's Union of Oregon was to go upon
the historic page as the only free, independent woman's club ever
successfully carried on for any length of time, in the great
State of Missouri.[393]
Missouri has always felt a becoming pride in the gifted daughter,
Miss Phoebe Couzins, who was the first woman to enter the law
school, go through the entire course, and graduate with honor to
herself and her native State. Hence, a reception to her, to mark
such an event, was preëminently fitting. This compliment was paid
to her by Dr. and Mrs. G. A. Walker, and a large gathering of the
elite of St. Louis honored her with their presence.[394] The
drawing-rooms were festooned with garlands of evergreens and
brilliant forest leaves and hanging-baskets of roses; the bountiful
tables were elaborately decorated with fruits and flowers and
statuettes, while pictures of distinguished women looked down from
the wall on every side. After the feast came letters, toasts and
speeches, a brilliant address of welcome was given by Dr. Walker,
and an equally brilliant reply by Miss Couzins. Witty and
complimentary speeches were made by Judge Krum, Hon. Albert Todd,
Mrs. Francis Minor, ex-Governor Stanard, Judge Reber, Professor
Riley, I. E. Meeker, Mrs. Henrietta Noa. Congratulatory letters
were received from several ladies and gentlemen of national
reputation, and the following regrets:
Rev. W. G. Eliot, chancellor of the University, with "compliments
and thanks to Dr. and Mrs. Walker. I regret that engagements this
evening prevent me from enjoying the pleasure of meeting Miss
Couzins and welcoming her to her new and well-deserved honors, as
I had expected to do until an hour ago."
James E. Yeatman sent regrets accompanied with "his warmest
congratulations to Miss Couzins, with best wishes for her success
in the noble profession of the law."
George Partridge regrets, "hoping every encouragement will be
given to those who aspire to high honors by their intellectual
and moral attainments."
General J. H. Hammond, Kansas City, Mo.: "I would feel honored in
being allowed the privilege of congratulating this lady who so
practically honors her sex."
In addition to the many congratulations showered upon Miss Couzins,
she was the recipient of testimonials of a more enduring and
equally flattering character. Among many valuable presents were
twelve volumes of Edmund Burke from Miss A. L. Forbes, who wished
to testify her appreciation of the event by deeds rather than
words. Mrs. E. O. Stanard presented a handsomely-bound set of
"Erskine's Speeches," in five volumes.
There were other gifts of great intrinsic worth. These tokens of
regard were sent from admiring friends scattered all over the
country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Although Miss Couzins has never practiced in her chosen profession,
yet the knowledge and discipline acquired in the study of our
American system of jurisprudence and constitutional law have been
of essential service to her in the prolonged arguments on the
enfranchisement of woman, in which she has so ably and eloquently
advocated the case of the great plaintiff of the nineteenth
century, in that famous law-suit begun by Margaret Fuller in 1840,
"Woman versus Man." Our junior advocate has taken the case into the
highest courts and made her appeals to a jury of the sovereign
people and "the judgment of a candid world." On all principles of
precedent and importance our case now stands first on the calendar.
When will the verdict be rendered and what will it be?
FOOTNOTES:
[377] Among them were Isaac H. Sturgeon, Francis Minor, James E.
Yeatman, Judge John M. Krum, Judge Arnold Krekel, Hon. Thomas Noël,
Ernest Decker, Dr. G. A. Walker, John E. Orrick, J. B. Roberts,
Rev. G. W. Eliot, Bishop Bowman, Albert Todd, Rev. John Snyder,
John Datro, J. B. Case, H. E. Merille, Mrs. Virginia L. Minor, Mrs.
Rebecca N. Hazard, Mrs. Adeline Couzins, Miss Phoebe Couzins, Mrs.
Beverly Allen, Miss Mary Beedy, Miss Arathusa Forbes, Mrs. Isaac
Sturgeon, Mrs. Hall, and many others.
[378] _President_, Mrs. Virginia L. Minor; _Vice-President_, Mrs.
Beverly Allen; _Secretaries_, Mrs. Rebecca N. Hazard, and Mrs.
George D. Hall; _Treasurer_, Mrs. George W. Banker. There were
present, besides the officers, Mrs. Anna L. Clapp, Miss Penelope
Allen, Mrs. Frank Fletcher, Miss Arathusia L. Forbes, Mrs. Nannie
C. Sturgeon, Mrs. Harriet B. Roberts, Mrs. N. Stevens, Mrs. Joseph
Hodgman, Miss A. Greenman, etc. Among the men who aided the
movement were Francis Minor, Isaac W. Sturgeon, James E. Yeatman,
Judge John M. Krum, Judge Arnold Krekel, Hon. Thomas Noël, who gave
the society its first twenty-five dollars, Ernest Decker, Dr. G.A.
Walker, John C. O'Neill, J.B. Roberts, Wayman Crow, Rev. Dr. Wm. G.
Eliot, Bishop Bowman, Albert Todd, Rev. John Snyder, John Datro,
J.B. Case, H.C. Leville.
[379] The following we find in the St. Louis papers. It is
significant of the sentiment of the Methodist women of the West:
"We, the undersigned, join in a call for a mass-meeting of the M.E.
Church in St. Louis, to meet at Union Church on the 15th inst., at
3 o'clock P.M., to consider a plan for memorializing the General
Conference to permit the ordination of women as ministers. All
women of the M.E. Church are requested to attend. Mrs. Henry
Kennedy, Mrs. T.C. Fletcher, Mrs. E.O. Stanard, Mrs. A.C. George,
Mrs. Lucy Prescott, Mrs. U.B. Wilson, Mrs. L. Jones, Mrs. E.L.
Case, Mrs. W.F. Brink, Mrs. S.C. Cummins, Mrs. R.N. Hazard, Mrs.
Dutro, Mrs. M.H. Himebaugh." The result of this meeting of the
ladies of the Methodist churches to discuss a plan for admitting
women into the pulpit as preachers was the appointment of a
committee to draft a memorial to the General Conference to meet at
Brooklyn, N.Y., asking that body to sanction and provide for the
ordination of women as ministers of the Methodist Church.
[380] On the platform were Julia Ward Howe, Massachusetts; Lillie
Peckham, Wisconsin; Miriam M. Cole, Ohio; Mary A. Livermore, Hon.
Sharon Tyndale, Judge Waite and Rev. Mr. Harrison, Illinois; Susan
B. Anthony, New York. The officers of the Woman Suffrage
Association of Missouri: _President_, Mrs. Francis Minor:
_Vice-President_, Mrs. Beverly Allen: _Secretary_, Mrs. William T.
Hazard: _Treasurer_, Mrs. George B. Hall; Miss Mary Beady, Miss
Phoebe Couzins, Mrs. E. Tittman, Mrs. Alfred Clapp, Miss A. L.
Forbes, Isaac H. Sturgeon, Mrs. J. C. Orrick, Mrs. R. J. Lackland,
Francis Minor, and many others.
[381] For speech and resolutions, see Vol. II., page 408.
[382] Dissension and division were the effect in every State,
except where the associations wisely remained independent and all
continued to work together, and the forces otherwise expended in
rivalry were directed against the common enemy.
[383] For this speech of B. Gratz Brown see Vol. II., page 136.
[384] For full account of Miss Barkaloo see New York chapter, page
404.
[385] Besides those already named, there are many other women
worthy of mention--Mrs. Hannah Stagg, Mrs. George H. Rha, Mrs. S.
F. Gruff, Miss N. M. Lavelle, Mrs. Helen E. Starrett, Mrs. A. E.
Dickinson, Mrs. E. R. Case, Miss S. Sharman, Mrs. Mary S. Phelps,
Miss Mary E. Beedy, Mrs. Fanny O'Haly, Mrs. J. C. Orrick, Miss
Henrietta Moore, Mrs. Stephen Ridgeley, Mrs. M. E. Bedford, Mrs. M.
Jackson; and among our German friends are Mrs. Rosa Tittman, Mrs.
Dr. Fiala, Mrs. Lena Hildebrand, Mrs. G. G. Fenkelnberg, Mrs.
Rombauer, Miss Lidergerber.
[386] For a full report of Mrs. Minor's trial, see History of Woman
Suffrage, Vol. II., page 715.
[387] The committee were: J. B. Merwin, Virginia L. Minor, John
Snyder, Lydia F. Dickinson, Maria E. F. Jackson.
[388] The officers were: _President_, Mrs. Virginia L. Minor;
_Vice-Presidents_, Mrs. Eliza J. Patrick, Mrs. Caroline J. Todd,
Miss Phoebe W. Couzins; _Executive Committee_, Mrs. E. P. Johnson,
Mrs. W. W. Polk; _Secretary_, Miss Eliza B. Buckley; _Treasurer_,
Miss Maggie Baumgartner.
[389] They were, Mrs. S. L. Goslin, Mis. A. E. Goslin, Mrs. M. M.
Soper, Annie E. Batcheller, Mary Curry, Annie R. Irvine.
[390] _President_, Emma G. Dobyns; _Vice-President_, Kate Evans
Thatcher; _Secretary_, Matilda C. Shutts; _Treasurer_, Lucy S.
Rancher; _Corresponding Secretary_, Annie R. Irvine.
[391] Believing that the best interests of society, as well as
government, would be best served by admitting all citizens to the
full rights of citizenship, we, the undersigned, hereby give notice
that a meeting will be held at the court-house, Oregon, on
Saturday, March 1, 1879, at 2 p. m., for the purpose of organizing
a Woman Suffrage Association. Those interested are urged to attend.
Clarke Irvine, C. W. Lukens, James L. Allen, S. B. Lukens, Samuel
Stuckey, Sudia Johnson, D. J. Lukens, Elvira Broedbeck, Mary Curry,
Jas. B. Curry, Annie R. Irvine.
[392] In 1875 I made my first visit to Oregon, and remember my
surprise at meeting so large a circle of bright, intelligent women.
After taking an old stage at Travesty city, and lumbering along two
miles or more over bad roads on a dull day in March into a very
unpropitious looking town, my heart sank at the prospect of the
small audience I should inevitably have in such a spot. Wondering
as to the character of the people I should find, we jolted round
the town to the home of the editor and his charming wife, Mrs. Lucy
S. Rancher. Their cordial welcome and generous hospitalities soon
made the old stage, the rough roads, and the dull town but dim
memories of the past. One after another the members of the Union
club came to greet me, and I saw in that organization of strong,
noble women, wisdom enough to redeem the whole State of Missouri
from its apathy on the question of woman's rights. One of the
promising features of the efforts of the immortal six women who
took the initiative, was the full sympathy shown by their husbands
in their attempts to improve themselves and the community. Miss
Couzins and Miss Anthony soon followed me, and were alike surprised
and delighted with the Literary Club of Oregon. I was there again
in '77, and was entertained by Mrs. R. A. Norman, now living in St.
Joseph, and in '79, I stayed in a large, old-fashioned brick house
near the public square with Mrs. Montgomery, then "fat, fair and
forty," and all three visits, with the teas and dinners at the
homes of different members of the club, I thoroughly enjoyed.--[E.
C. S.
[393] Among progressive women in this part of Missouri, Mrs. Adela
M. Kelly, of Savannah, wife of Circuit Judge Henry S. Kelly, is
prominent; in Mound City, Mrs. Emma K. Hershberger, Mrs. Mary L.
Mamcher, Mrs. Mary C. Tracy, Mrs. Fanny Smith, and others, are
leading women, and were once residents here, and members of the
Woman's Union. Among those actively interested here now, I shall
only mention a few, Mrs. Nancy Hershberger, Mary Curry, Elvira
Broedbeck, Lucy A. Christian, Ella O. Fallon, Mary Stirrell, and
many others.
[394] Among those present were the following ladies and gentlemen:
Dr. and Mrs. Walker, Phoebe Couzins, esq., Hon. and Mrs. John B.
Henderson, Gov. and Mrs. E. O. Stanard, Mr. and Mrs. Chester H.
Krum, Mr. and Mrs. Francis Minor, Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Patrick, Major
and Mrs. J. E. D. Couzins, Major and Mrs. J. R. Meeker, Major and
Mrs. W. S. Pope, Mr. and Mrs. Lippmann, Mr. and Mrs. Leopold Noa,
Miss Noa, Miss A. L. Forbes, Judge Krum, Judge Reber, Judge Todd,
Geo. M. Stuart (dean), Prof. Riley, State Entomologist; Prof.
Hager, State Geologist; J. R. Stuart, artist, and others.
CHAPTER XLV.
IOWA.
Beautiful Scenery--Liberal in Politics and Reforms--Legislation
for Women--No Right yet to Joint Earnings--Early
Agitation--Frances Dana Gage, 1854--Mrs. Bloomer Before the
Territorial Legislature, 1856--Mrs. Martha H. Brinkerhoff--Mrs.
Annie Savery, 1868--County Associations Formed in 1869--State
Society Organized at Mt. Pleasant, 1870, Henry O'Connor,
President--Mrs. Cutler Answers Judge Palmer--First Annual
Meeting, Des Moines--Letter from Bishop Simpson--The State
Register Complimentary--Mass-Meeting at the Capitol--Mrs. Savery
and Mrs. Harbert--Legislative Action--Methodist and Universalist
Churches Indorse Woman Suffrage--Republican Plank, 1874--Governor
Carpenter's Message, 1876--Annual Meeting, 1882, Many Clergymen
Present--Five Hundred Editors Interviewed--Miss Hindman and Mrs.
Campbell--Mrs. Callanan Interviews Governor Sherman,
1884--Lawyers--Governor Kirkwood Appoints Women to Office--County
Superintendents--Elizabeth S. Cook--Journalism--Literature--
Medicine--Ministry--Inventions--President of a National Bank--
The Heroic Kate Shelly--Temperance--Improvement in the Laws.
The euphonious Indian name, Iowa, signifying "the beautiful land,"
is peculiarly appropriate to those gently undulating prairies,
decorated in the season of flowers with a brilliant garniture of
honey-suckles, jassamines, wild roses and violets, watered with a
chain of picturesque lakes and rivers, chasing each other into the
bosom of the boundless Mississippi. The motto on the great seal of
the State, "Our liberties we prize and our rights we will
maintain," is the key-note to the successive struggles made there
to build up a community of moral, virtuous, intelligent people,
securing justice, liberty and equality to all. Iowa has been the
State to give large Republican majorities; to prohibit the
manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors by a constitutional
amendment; and to present propositions before her legislature for
eight successive sessions to give the right of suffrage to woman.
In the article on Iowa, in the American Cyclopædia, the writer
says: "No distinction is made in law between the husband and the
wife in regard to property. One-third in value of all the real
estate of either, upon the death of the other, goes to the survivor
in fee simple. Neither is liable for the separate debts of the
other. The wife may make contracts and incur liabilities which may
be enforced by or against her in the same manner as if she was
unmarried; and so a married woman may sue and be sued without the
husband being joined in the action." Many women living in Iowa
often quote these laws with pride, showing the liberality of their
rulers as far as they go. But in new countries the number of women
that inherit property is very small compared to the number that
work all their days to help pay for their humble homes. It is in
the right to these joint earnings where the wife is most cruelly
defrauded, because the mother of a large family, who washes, irons,
cooks, bakes, patches and darns, takes care of the children, labors
from early dawn to midnight in her own home, is not supposed to
earn anything, hence owns nothing, and all the labors of a long
life, the results of her thrift and economy, belong absolutely to
the husband, so that when he dies they call it liberality for the
husband to make his partner an heir, and give her one-third of
their joint earnings.
For this chapter we are indebted to Mrs. Amelia Bloomer, who moved
into this State from New York in the spring of 1855 with her
husband, who commenced the practice of law in Council Bluffs, where
they have resided ever since. Mrs. Bloomer had been the editor for
several years of a weekly paper called the _Lily_, which advocated
both temperance and woman's rights, and for the six years of its
publication was of inestimable value alike to both reforms. She was
one of the earliest champions of the woman's rights movement, and
as writer, editor and lecturer, did much to forward the cause in
its infancy.[395]
The first agitation of the question of woman suffrage in Iowa was
in the summer of 1854, when Frances Dana Gage of Ohio gave a
series of lectures in the southeastern section of the State on
temperance and woman's rights. Letters written to _Lily_ at the
time show that large audiences congregated to see and hear a
woman publicly proclaiming the wrongs of her sex, and demanding
equal rights before the law. During the year 1855 the writer gave
several lectures at Council Bluffs, and in January, 1856, by
invitation, addressed the second territorial legislature of
Nebraska, in Representative Hall, Omaha; and in the year
following lectured in Council Bluffs, Omaha, Nebraska City,
Glenwood and other towns.
In 1868 Mrs. Martha H. Brinkerhoff made a very successful
lecture-tour through the northern counties of Iowa. She roused
great interest and organized many societies, canvassing meanwhile
for subscribers to _The Revolution_. In the same year Mrs. Annie
C. Savery gave a lecture for the benefit of a blind editor at Des
Moines. In February, 1870, by invitation, she responded to a
toast at a Masonic festival in that city; and during that and the
year following she lectured in several places on woman suffrage,
and wrote many able articles for the press.
On April 17, 1869, the "Northern Woman Suffrage Association" was
organized at Dubuque.[396] This was the first society in Iowa,
though about the same time others were being organized in
different localities. J. L. McCreery, in his editorial position,
advocated the enfranchisement of woman, and wrote an able paper
in favor of the object of the organization. Mrs. Mary N. Adams
opened a correspondence with friends of the movement in other
parts of the State; Henry O'Connor, Mary A. Livermore and others
lectured before the society, thus educating the people into a
better understanding of woman's rights and needs. Mrs. Adams not
only addressed the home society, but gave lectures before lyceums
and educational institutions.
Des Moines has always maintained the most successful organization
having a band of earnest women enlisted in the work, and being
the capital of the State, where every opportunity was afforded to
facilitate their efforts. The liberality of the press, too, aided
vastly in moulding public sentiment in favor of the cause. About
the earliest work done in that city was in June, 1870, when
Hannah Tracy Cutler and Amelia Bloomer (immediately on returning
from the formation of the State Society at Mt. Pleasant) held two
meetings there--one in the open air on the grounds where the new
capitol now stands, on the question of temperance, Sunday
afternoon, presided over by Governor Merrill; the other in the
Baptist Church, on woman suffrage, the following evening, Mrs.
Annie C. Savery presiding.
The Polk County Woman Suffrage Society was formed October 25, and
has never failed to hold its meetings regularly each month since
that time. Every congress and every legislature have been
appealed to by petitions signed by thousands of the best
citizens, and it is on record that the senators and
representatives of Polk county, with one exception,[397] have
always voted in favor of submitting the question of woman's
enfranchisement to the electors of the State. When men are talked
of for legislative honors they are interviewed by a committee
from the society, and pledges secured that they will vote "aye"
on any woman suffrage bill that may come before them.
This society has from time to time engaged the services of
prominent lecturers,[398] and nearly all of the ministers and
lawyers of the city have given addresses in favor of the cause.
Only one minister has openly and bitterly opposed the measure,
and his sermon on the "Subordination of Woman," published in the
_Register_, called out spirited replies from Mrs. Savery and Mrs.
Bloomer in the same journal, which completely demolished the
flimsy fancies of the gentleman.
About 1874 Mrs. Maria Orwig edited a column in the _Record_, and
Mary A. Work a column in the _Republican_. Since 1880, Mesdames
Hunter, Orwig, Woods and Work have filled two columns in _The
Prohibitionist_, of which Laura A. Berry is one of the editors.
Mrs. M. J. Coggeshall has for several years served the society as
reporter for the _Register_, proving herself a very ready and
interesting writer. All of these ladies are efficient and
untiring in whatever pertains to woman's interest.[399] The
_Register_ says:
The field of labor in Des Moines is pretty well occupied by
the ladies. You will find them at the desks in the county
and United States court-houses, in the pension office, in
the insurance office, in the State offices, behind the
counters in stores, in attorneys' offices--and there is one
woman who assists her husband at the blacksmith's trade, and
she can strike as hard a blow with a sledge as the brawniest
workman in the shop.
In the autumn of 1870 a society was organized at Burlington, with
fifty members. One of the earliest advocates of the cause in this
place was Mary A. P. Darwin, president of the association, who
lectured through the southern tier of counties during the summer
of 1870. She was an earnest and forcible speaker.
At Oskaloosa the opening work was done in 1854 by Frances D.
Gage, who gave four lectures there, and roused the people to
thought and discussion. Mattie Griffith Davenport has long filled
a prominent place in the woman suffrage movement in that city.
She commenced lecturing in 1868, and during that and the two
succeeding years traveled over much of the State, speaking upon
temperance and woman's rights. During 1879 she edited a column of
the Davenport _News_ in the interest of suffrage. In the summer
of 1870 Mrs. Cutler and Mrs. Bloomer held two meetings in
Oskaloosa, in one of which a gentleman engaged in the
discussions, and as is usual in such encounters, the women having
right and justice on their side, came out the victors; at least
so said the listeners. Following this a Woman's Suffrage Society
was organized.[400] Many prominent speakers lectured here in
turn, and helped to keep up the interest.
Council Bluffs also organized a society[401] in 1870, holding
frequent meetings and sociables. There is here a large element in
favor of the ballot for woman; and though we are unfortunate in
not having an advocate in the press, still Council Bluffs will
give a good report of itself when the question of woman's
enfranchisement shall come before the electors for action. The
trustees of the public library of this city are women; the
librarian is a woman: the post-office is in the hands of a woman;
the teachers in the public schools, with one or two exceptions,
are women; the principal of the high school is a woman; and a
large number of the clerks in the dry goods stores are women.
Miss Ingelletta Smith received the nomination of the Republican
party for school superintendent in the fall of 1881, but was
defeated by her Democratic competitor.
Marshalltown had a suffrage organization as early as July,
1870.[402] Nettie Sanford lectured in several of the central
counties of the State during that and the previous year.
Josephine Guthrie, professor of Belles-Lettres at Le Grand
College, in a series of able articles in the Marshalltown _Times_
in 1869, claimed for women equality of rights before the law. In
1873, Aubie Gifford, a woman of high culture and an experienced
teacher, was elected to the office of county superintendent of
the public schools of Marshall county, by a handsome majority;
she was reëlected, serving, in all, four years.
At Algona a society[403] was formed in 1871. At the annual
meeting of the State Society at Des Moines, in 1873, Lizzie B.
Read delivered an address entitled, "Coming Up Out of the
Wilderness," and in July, 1875, at a mass-meeting at Clear Lake,
one on "The Bible in Favor of Woman Suffrage." Mrs. Read,
formerly as Miss Bunnel, published a paper called the
_Mayflower_, at Peru, Indiana, and in 1865 a county paper in this
State called the _Upper Des Moines_.
Since 1875 Jackson county has had an efficient Equal Rights
Society.[404] On July 4, 1876, Nancy R. Allen, at the general
celebration at Maquoketa, the county-seat, read the "Protest and
Declaration of Rights," issued by the National Association from
its Centennial Parlors in Philadelphia. It was well received by
the majority of the people assembled; but, as usual, there were
some objectors. The Presbyterian minister published a series of
articles in the _Sentinel_, to each of which Mrs. Allen replied
ably defending the principles of the Woman Suffrage party. The
Maquoketa Equal Rights Society celebrated the thirtieth
anniversary of the woman's rights movement July 19, 1878, by
holding a public meeting in Dr. Allen's grounds, in the shade of
the grand old trees. It was a large gathering, and many prominent
gentlemen of the city, by their presence and words of cheer, gave
dignity to the occasion. Jackson county has long honored women
with positions of trust. The deputy recorder is a woman; Mrs.
Allen was notary public; Mrs. Patton was nominated for auditor by
the Greenback party in 1880, but was defeated with the rest of
the ticket. Women are book-keepers, merchants, clerks, teachers;
and, in fact, almost every avenue is open to them.
Of Fort Dodge, Mrs. Haviland writes: "The subject has never been
much agitated here. I have stood almost alone these long years,
watching the work done by my sisters in other parts of the State,
and hoping the time would soon come when some move could be made
in this place. Last spring the annual meeting of our State
Society was held here, but it was with difficulty that I found
places where the few who came could be entertained, people were
so afraid of woman's rights. After the refusal of the other
churches, the Baptists opened theirs; the crowd of curious ones
looked on and seemed surprised when they failed to discover the
'horns.'" Mrs. A.M. Swain also writes: "Miss Anthony came here
first in June, 1871, and has been here twice since. Mrs.
Swisshelm was here in 1874. Both were my guests when no other
doors were open to the advocates of woman suffrage. The late
convention of the State Society held here was a decided success;
the best class of ladies attended; the dignity and ability shown
in the management, and the many interesting and logical papers
read disarmed all criticism and awakened genuine interest. I have
handed in my ballot for several years, but it has never been
received or counted."
Societies were organized in 1869 and 1870, in Independence and
Monticello. Humboldt, Nevada, West Union, Corning, Osceola,
Muscatine, Sigourney, Garden Grove, Decorah, Hamburg, and scores
of other towns have their local societies. At West Liberty Mrs.
Mary V. Cowgill and her good husband are liberal contributors to
the work, both State and National.
At a convention held at Mt. Pleasant, June 17, 18, 1870,
different sections of the State being well represented, the Iowa
Woman Suffrage Society[405] was formed. Belle Mansfield,
president, Frank Hatton,[406] editor of the Mt. Pleasant
_Journal_, secretary. W.R. Cole opened the convention with
prayer. After many able addresses from various speakers,[407] in
response to an invitation from the president, Judge Palmer in a
somewhat excited manner stated his objections to woman's voting.
He wanted some guarantee that good would result from giving her
the ballot. He thought "she did not understand driving, and would
upset the sleigh. Men had always rowed the boat, and therefore
always should. Men had more force and muscle than women, and
therefore should have all the power in their hands." He spoke of
himself as the guardian of his wife, and said she did not want to
vote. After talking an hour in this style, he took his seat,
greatly to the relief of his hearers. Mrs. Cutler, in her calm,
dignified, deliberate manner, answered his arguments. She proved
conclusively that muscular force was not the power most needed in
our government. If it were, all the little, weak men and women,
no matter how intellectual must stand aside, and let only the
strong, muscular do the voting and governing. In clearness of
perception, and readiness of debate, she distanced her opponent
altogether in the opinion of the convention.
The first annual meeting of the State Society was held at Des
Moines, October 19, 1871. Mrs. Bloomer presided[408] in the
absence of the president, Gen. O'Connor. Speakers had been
engaged for this convention, a good representation secured, and
every arrangement made for a successful meeting. And such it was,
barring a difference of opinion among the friends of the movement
as to what questions should properly come before a society whose
only object, as declared in its constitution, was to secure
suffrage for women. The following letters were received:
IOWA CITY, October 11, 1871.
Mrs. ANNIE SAVERY--_Dear Madam_: Your kind and very
flattering invitation to address the Woman's State Suffrage
Convention, in Des Moines, reached me just prior to my
departure for this city, and I avail myself of my first
leisure to respond. It would not only give me great
pleasure, but I should esteem it among my higher duties to
accept your invitation, and give my emphatic endorsement to
the great reform movement represented by the woman suffrage
convention, were it at all practicable. But I have just
reached my new charge, and can not dispose of immediate
pressing claims upon my time and effort here. Please accept
my apology for declining, and believe me, ever yours for
woman's enfranchisement.
C. R. POMEROY.
INDIANOLA, Sept. 30, 1871.
Mrs. ANNIE SAVERY--_Madam_: I am in receipt of your letter,
asking me to take part in your annual convention. I thank
you for the honor, as I expect from such a convention
results the most salutary, not only to the condition of
woman, but also to the progress of our young and vigorous
commonwealth. I have read carefully the circular enclosed in
your letter, and consider the logic irrefutable, and its
suggestions well worthy the attention of all who desire the
complete enfranchisement of woman. I fear that I shall not
be able to attend, but if I am, I shall be with you, should
I do no more than say "Amen" to the words of my eloquent
countryman, O'Connor, whom I learn you have honored with the
presidency of your association. Wishing for your cause the
fullest success, I subscribe myself--one for the
enfranchisement of woman.
ALEXANDER BURNS.
A letter was also received from Bishop Matthew Simpson, of the
Methodist church, who was always ready to declare his adherence
to this great reform:
OWATOMA, Oct. 2, 1871.
Hon. J. HARLAN--_Dear Senator_: Yours, inclosing Mrs.
Savery's kind invitation, was received before I left
Mankota. I would be pleased to comply with her invitation,
joined as it is with your earnest solicitation. But I am
under bonds--if not to keep the peace, at least to keep
silence--so far as either sermons or public addresses are
concerned, until the full restoration of my health. I am
glad to say my health is improving. I have presided at five
conferences this fall--two still await me. But I have not
ventured any extra labor, nor dare I for some time to come.
Please convey to Mrs. Savery my thanks for her kind
invitation, and say to her that I sympathize fully with the
suffrage association in its desire to attain for women the
ballot.
A series of resolutions was discussed, other letters read, and a
large number of new converts joined the association. The _State
Register_ spoke in a very complimentary manner of the
deliberations of this convention:
It is but just, perhaps, that we should say, in general
terms, of the State woman suffrage convention, in session in
Des Moines the past week, that its proceedings were
characterized with good sense, dignity, and the best of
order. The world has had an impression for five or six
thousand years that women cannot talk without wrangling,
counsel without confusion. Again, many are so unjust as to
imagine that a convention composed of ladies, assembled to
discuss serious subjects, can be nothing more than a
quilting party or tattlers' club enlarged and let loose.
We have never seen a convention conducted with more decorum,
or a greater degree of intelligent accord exhibited in the
routine of proceedings, than was noticeable in this first
annual gathering of the friends of suffrage in Iowa. A
majority of the members were women. They opened the
convention and conducted the discussions with a spirit and
in a manner after which men might well pattern. In some
respects, the ladies who took the lead, showed themselves
better posted in general information, in all matters of
deliberation, than men.
We would not endorse all that was done at the convention,
but we would be fair enough to give to it the meed of having
been, in all respects, well conducted. The convention
strengthened those in whose name it met, not only among
themselves, but with the public. All who attended it were
impressed with the conviction that its members were earnest
and honest, and could see that they were intelligent and
well armed. Whatever it may have done directly, and that we
know was much, it accomplished more good for its cause by
impressing the public mind that its adherents in Iowa are
banded together in union, and bound to make every honorable
effort for success.
In January, 1872, I received a letter from a very prominent
member of the legislature, from which the following is an
extract:
After consultation I believe the House would resolve itself
into committee of the whole (when senators would be likely
also to come in), and hear you on the question of woman
suffrage. Should you desire to press it to vote this
session, I should advise that course. As to the time of your
hearing, it should be in the day, and appointed soon after
the recess. We meet again on February 13. I think it could
be arranged for Friday, the 16th, if agreeable to you. With
kind regards,
JOHN A. KASSON.
Notwithstanding this kind proposal of Mr. Kasson, I did not act
upon his suggestion. But Mrs. Harbert and Mrs. Savery, feeling
that something must be done, had the courage and the conscience,
on their individual responsibility, to call a mass-meeting at the
capitol on the evening previous to the day appointed for the vote
on the amendment in the House. Mrs. Harbert presided and opened
the meeting with an earnest appeal; Mrs. Savery, Mr. C.P. Holmes,
Senator Converse, and Governor Carpenter, made eloquent speeches.
The governor, in opening his address said he voted to strike
"black" from the constitution sixteen years ago, and would then,
as now, had the opportunity been presented, have voted to strike
out "male."
On the following day when the amendment came up in the House for
the final vote, it was carried by 58 to 39. In the Senate there
was a spirited discussion, Hon. Charles Beardsley making an
earnest speech in favor of the resolution. The vote on engrossing
the bill for the third reading stood 26 ayes to 20 nays. Hope
ran high with the friends; but alas! on a final vote, taken but a
few minutes later, the bill was lost by 24 nays to 22 ayes.[409]
The general sentiment was well stated by the Iowa _State
Register_:
The Senate disposed of the woman suffrage question yesterday
by voting it down. We think it made a mistake. Certainly
there was, at the lowest count, thirty out of every hundred
voters in the State who desired to have this legislature
ratify the action of the last Assembly, and submit the
question at the polls this fall. The Republican party has
its own record to meet here. The first time the negro
suffrage question was submitted to the people of Iowa, it
was submitted by a Republican legislature, and the
submission was made when not over one voter in a hundred
desired it done. This latter thing was a plain proposition,
a most justly preferred petition. The people who were
anxious to have the question submitted, are, it is
confidently claimed, in majority. We think their wishes
might well and fitly have been granted. Even those who were
opposed to them must see that the advocates of the reform
will now have a chance to claim that the opponents of it are
afraid to go with them to the people. This is not merely a
defeat for the present year, but practically for four years.
Our State constitution can be amended only after two
legislatures have acted upon the amendment, and the people
have voted upon it. The legislature of two years ago passed
the resolution voted down yesterday. Now, we presume, it
will have to take another start. Four years of waiting and
working before the friends of the reform can be given a
chance to get a verdict from the people, is a long and
painful ordeal. It will not be endured with patience. It
would be asking too much of human nature to expect that.
At the annual convention of 1874, at Des Moines, Bishop Gilbert
Haven of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a clear and liberal
thinker, made a very impressive speech on the power woman could
wield with the ballot in her own hand in making our towns and
cities safe for our sons and daughters to live in. This year, the
Des Moines annual conference of the M. E. Church passed
resolutions advocating woman suffrage as a great moral reform;
while the State convention of the Universalist Association in its
resolution said: "This convention recognizes that women are
entitled to all the social, religious, and political rights which
men enjoy."
At the Diocesan Convention held at Davenport May 1881, the
Episcopal Church took a step forward by striking the word male
out of a canon, thus enabling women to vote for vestrymen, a
right hitherto withheld. It is but a straw in the right
direction, but "straws show which way the wind blows," and we may
hope for more good things to follow.
The Republican party, in convention assembled, at Des Moines,
July 1, 1874, inserted the following, as the tenth plank of its
platform:
_Resolved_, That since the people may be entrusted with all
questions of governmental reform, we favor the final
submission to them of the question of amending the
constitution so as to extend the right of suffrage to women,
pursuant to the action of the fifteenth General Assembly.
The reading of the resolution called forth cheers of approval,
and was adopted without a dissenting vote, Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton
Harbert is entitled to great credit for this "woman's plank," she
having gone before the committee on resolutions and made an
earnest appeal for woman's recognition by the Republican party.
The _State Record_ said:
When the Republicans, in national convention, recognized
woman, and gave her a plank in the platform of the party, it
reflected back a spirit of justice and progress which is
looked for in vain in the party opposing, of whatever name.
But when the Republicans of Iowa gave to a woman the
privilege of bringing in a plank of her own production, and
that plank was added to the State platform without a
dissenting voice, it placed Iowa, men and women alike, in
the vanguard of the world's onward march to a more rational
life, more even justice, and purer government.
In the Republican State platform of Iowa is the first real
and purely woman's plank that ever entered into any
political platform--because it originated in the brain of
woman. It was by a woman carried to the committee, and in
response to an able, dignified, and true womanly appeal, it
was accepted, and by the convention incorporated into the
platform of the party. It may seem to be a small plank, but
it has strength and durability. It is the live oak of a
living principle, that will remain sound while other planks
of greater bulk around it will have served their purpose and
wasted away.
It argues thus: if woman is competent to present a political
issue, clothed in her own language, with a dignity and
modesty that silence opposition, is she not competent to
exercise with prudence and intelligence the elective
franchise? and would she not, if entrusted with it, exercise
it for the elevation of a common humanity? The _Record_
tenders hearty congratulations not only to Mrs. Harbert, who
we know will bear the honors modestly, but also to those who
by their presence in the convention gave encouragement to
greater respect for woman's wishes, and by whose work is
demonstrated woman's fitness to be in truth a helpmeet for
man. We had a mother, and have sisters, wife, and daughter,
and that is why we would have woman enjoy every privilege
and opportunity to be useful to herself and her country that
we claim for ourself.
At the annual meeting of 1875, held at Oskaloosa, the following
letter from the governor of the State was received:
EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, Des Moines, Iowa.
Mrs. R. G. ORWIG, _Cor. Sec. I. W. S. S.--Dear Madam_: I
have your letter inviting me to be present at your annual
meeting. Thanking you and the association for the
consideration implied, I have to express my regrets that
business of an official character will prevent me from
coming. I hope your proceedings may be characterized by such
wisdom, moderation, and sincerity as to advance the cause to
which your efforts are given. I have never been able to
discover any argument to sustain my own right to vote that
does not equally apply to woman. Whether my right is founded
upon the interest I have, in common with my fellows, in the
preservation of the free institutions of my country; or upon
the protection of my personal interests as a citizen; or
upon my right to a voice in the creation of laws to which I
am held amenable; or upon my right to influence by a vote
the direction given to revenues which I am taxed to help
supply; or upon any other right, personal, political or
moral, I have never been able to see why the reasons which
make the vote valuable to me do not apply with equal force
to woman. You doubtless think your efforts are comparatively
fruitless; but I need not tell you that while your agitation
has failed, so far, to bring you the ballot, it has
ameliorated the condition of woman in very many particulars.
Her property rights are better protected; her sphere of
activity has been enlarged, and her influence for good is
more widely recognized. So I wish you well. Yours truly,
C. C. CARPENTER.
This year women were members of a lay delegation in the Methodist
conference, and also lay delegates to the Presbyterian synod. And
in two or three instances women have been invited to address
these bodies, and have received a vote of thanks. Many of the
orthodox clergy are openly advocating our cause, and in some
instances women have been invited by them to occupy their desks
on Sunday to preach the Gospel to the people. This is a wonderful
advance in sentiment since 1852, when in New York the clergy
would not permit women to speak, even on temperance in a public
hall.
In 1876 the society secured the services of Matilda Hindman, of
Pittsburg, Pa., who traveled over the greater part of the State,
lecturing and organizing societies, and was everywhere spoken of
as an eloquent and logical speaker. She was followed by Margaret
W. Campbell, and those who know her feel that the State gained in
her a valuable friend in everything pertaining to the interests
of woman. What is said of Miss Hindman as a speaker may also be
said of Mrs. Campbell.
The first governor of Iowa to officially recognize woman's right
to the ballot was the Hon. C. C. Carpenter, who in his message to
the General Assembly of 1876, said:
The proposed amendment to the constitution, adopted by your
predecessors, and which requires your sanction before being
submitted to the voters of the State, will come before you.
I venture to suggest, that the uniform expression in Wyoming
Territory, where woman suffrage is a fact, is favorable to
its continuance, and that wherever in Europe and America
women have voted for school or minor officers the influence
of their suffrage has been beneficent; and in view of the
peculiar appropriateness of submitting this question in this
year, 1876, when all America is celebrating achievements
which were inspired by the doctrine that taxation and
representation are of right inseparable, it is recommended
that you give the people of Iowa an opportunity to express
their judgment upon the proposed amendment at the
ballot-box.
At the request of the State Association, Miss Matilda Hindman was
granted a hearing before the legislature, and most respectful
attention was accorded to her able address. Miss Anthony was also
invited, and, at the suggestion of Mrs. Savery, she engaged the
opera-house. The seats reserved for the members were all filled,
and every part of the house occupied. The day following, the vote
in the House was taken, and carried by 54 to 40. After a careful
canvass of the Senate, it was found that there were ten votes to
spare; but alas! when the day for final action came the amendment
was lost by one vote.[410]
In 1880 Senator Gaylord of Floyd county made a speech, giving
twenty-one reasons why he voted against the submission of the
proposition for the enfranchisement of women, which was published
in full in the Des Moines _Register_, and thus sent broadcast
over the State. Mrs. Bloomer replied to Mr. Floyd through the
same paper, meeting and refuting every objection, thus in a
measure antidoting the poisonous influence of the senator's
pronunciamento.
In the spring of this year Dr. Harriette Bottsford and Mrs. Jane
C. McKinney were appointed by a caucus of Republican women, to
the Powesheik county convention, to choose delegates to the State
convention. They presented their credentials to the committee,
and the chairman reported them as delegates. On motion, they were
accepted--but some men soon bethought them that this was
establishing a bad precedent, and began maneuvering to get rid of
them. This was finally done by declaring the delegation full
without them--two men having been quietly appointed to fill
vacancies after the ladies had presented their credentials. Mrs.
McKinney made a spicy speech, saying they did not expect to be
received as delegates, but wished to remind the men that women
were citizens, tax-payers and Republicans, but unrepresented.
At the Greenback State convention of 1881, Mrs. Mary E. Nash was
nominated as the candidate of that party for State superintendent
of schools. Mrs. Nash declined the honor intended, and said that
her political flag, if it were to float at all, would be found in
another camp. She would not desert her colors for office. In 1884
Mrs. H. J. Bellangee and Mrs. A. M. Swain were regularly
accredited delegates to the National Greenback convention, held
at Indianapolis, Ind., to nominate a candidate for the
presidency, where they were received with the greatest courtesy.
The annual meeting of 1882, at Des Moines, was remarkable for the
number of clergymen, representing nearly all the different
denominations, who took part in its proceedings, each of the nine
seeming to vie with the others in expressing his belief that the
ballot for woman, as for man, was a right, not a privilege.
Bishop Hurst of the M. E. Church, made an able speech. The
executive committee sent a memorial to the Republican convention,
held in June for the nomination of State officers, asking a plank
in their platform favoring the submission of the woman suffrage
amendment. The request was not granted. Leading politicians who
professed to believe in equality of rights for women feared that
to do so would make too heavy a weight for the party to carry, it
having already incorporated a prohibition plank in its platform.
The committee also interviewed 500 editors, asking them to open
the columns of their papers to the advocacy of woman suffrage.
One hundred and twenty replied favorably, while many were
courteous and others brusque in their refusals.
A committee on legislation (Mrs. Narcissa T. Bemis, chairman) did
good work during this session of the legislature, and also
published a tract composed of contributions from twelve leading
ministers of the State, called "The Clergymen's Tract." This was
sent broadcast. Nine hundred of the clergy were favored with a
copy. The Ministerial Association, held in Des Moines, passed the
following:
_Resolved_, That we are heartily in favor of woman suffrage
as advocated by your association, and regard the same as a
proper subject for pulpit-teaching, and, as opportunity
offers of furthering said cause in our pulpit ministry, we
will avail ourselves of the same.
During this year the State Society contributed liberally to the
Nebraska campaign. Mrs. Nancy R. Allen and Mrs. Mary B. Lee each
left a small legacy to the association.
Of the annual meeting of 1883,[411] held at Ottumwa, the local
papers gave full and fair reports; while 200 papers of the State
published a condensed statement prepared by the secretary. Miss
Hindman and Mrs. Campbell were again invited to the State. No
grander work than theirs was ever done in Iowa. There is scarcely
a county which they have not canvassed; holding meetings, forming
associations, circulating petitions, distributing tracts,
preaching on Sundays in the churches, traveling, often for months
at a time, without a pledge of pecuniary aid, depending for their
expenses wholly on funds contributed at their meetings.
The State convention of 1884 met at the Christian Church at Des
Moines; Mrs. Nacissa T. Bemis presided. Mrs. Helen M. Gougar of
Indiana was one of the speakers. A committee, of which Mrs.
Martha C. Callanan was chairman, interviewed the governor, asking
a recognition of woman's right of suffrage, and were told it
should receive consideration. Accordingly, in his message to the
legislature, Governor Sherman said:
Your attention is respectfully directed to the question of
impartial suffrage, in respect to which the nineteenth
General Assembly proposed an amendment to the constitution.
Should this meet your approval, as preliminary to taking the
judgment of the voters, I recommend that it be submitted at
a special election, in order that it may be freed from the
influence of partisan politics, and thus receive an
unprejudiced vote of our citizens. Not caring to here
express an opinion upon the question itself, it is
sufficient to say that now, as heretofore, I am in favor of
the submission of any question which is of importance and
general interest.
Governor Sherman also gave it as his opinion that a good woman
should be placed on the board of trustees of every public
institution. This was the second time that an Iowa governor had
referred to this great political question in his message to the
General Assembly, Governor Carpenter having heartily indorsed the
measure in 1876. It is said, however, that Governor Newbold had
written a clause on the subject in his message in 1878, but that
it was suppressed by the careful counsel of some guardian angel
of his party.
Previous to the assembling of this legislature, petitions had
been widely circulated,[412] praying for the submission of the
amendment. Over 6,000 signatures were obtained. Each petition was
placed in the hands of a senator or member from the county in
which the names were gathered, for presentation in the respective
Houses.
For fifteen consecutive years the State Society has met annually,
made reports, passed resolutions, elected officers, listened to
speeches and transacted what other business has come before it.
Though its anniversaries have usually been held at Des Moines,
its influence through the press has pervaded the whole State.
Since 1875, the annual meetings have been held in different
cities[413] outside the capital, thus giving the people of all
sections of the State an opportunity to participate in the
deliberations. Petitions to the legislature and to congress have
been circulated by the society, delegates sent to the conventions
of the National and American Suffrage Associations,[414] and
letters addressed to the delegates of the State and National
nominating conventions of the political parties, asking for a
recognition of woman's right to the ballot in their platforms.
A brief recital of the proceedings of the Iowa legislature will
show that a large majority of the Representatives have been in
favor of submitting the question of woman suffrage to a direct
vote of the men of the State. The proposition was first presented
in the House by Hon. John P. Irish, in 1870. The resolution
passed both Houses with very little debate, was approved by the
governor, and submitted to the next General Assembly. In the
session of 1872 it was discussed in both Houses at considerable
length, and again passed in the Lower House by the strong vote of
58 ayes to 39 nays; while in the Senate it was lost by only two
majority. The House has never failed at any session since that
time, until 1884, to give a majority in its favor; but the Senate
has not made for itself so good a record. In 1872 the vote in the
Senate stood: ayes, 22; nays, 24. In 1876 it was lost by one
vote; and in 1880 lost on engrossment. In 1884 the tables were
turned; when the amendment came up in the twentieth General
Assembly for ratification, the Senate passed the bill, while the
House, for the first time, defeated it by a small majority.
By the constitution of Iowa an amendment must be approved by two
consecutive legislatures, convened in regular session. When so
approved it is then submitted to the popular vote of the
electors. As in this State the legislature meets but once in two
years, the reader can see how easily a bill passed at one session
may, two years later, be defeated by the election of new members
who are opposed to it. And thus through all these years those who
claim the ballot for woman in this State have been elated or
depressed by the action of each succeeding legislature.
The thirteenth General Assembly not only earned a good name for
enlightened statesmanship by passing the constitutional amendment
in favor of woman suffrage, but it also, by chapter 21, approved
March 8, 1870, passed an act admitting women to the practice of
law. It was under this that Judith Ellen Foster--so widely known
as an eloquent lecturer and able lawyer--Annie C. Savery, Mrs.
Emma Haddock, Louisa H. Albert, Jessie M. Johnson, and several
others have passed the necessary examination and been admitted to
practice as attorneys and counselors in all the courts of the
State. Mrs. Arabella Mansfield was admitted to the bar in 1869,
just a year previous to the enactment of the law.
Miss Linda M. Ramsey, now Mrs. Hartzell, was employed as a clerk
by Adjutant-General Baker in 1864, and held the office for some
time after the war closed. The _Record_ says she was the first
woman regularly employed and paid by the State for clerical
services. Miss Augusta Matthews served as military secretary for
Governor Stone during the war under pay of the State.
It was the thirteenth General Assembly, 1870, that first elected
a woman, Miss Mary E. Spencer, to the office of engrossing clerk;
and upon her it devolved to convey the message from the House to
the Senate, announcing the passage of the woman suffrage
amendment. In 1872 each House elected one woman among its
officers; and each succeeding General Assembly since that time
has elected from three to six women. The office of postmaster has
been filled by women for the last ten years, and is now held by
the venerable widow of General N. A. Baker, for many years the
popular adjutant-general of the State. The office of State
librarian was filled by Mrs. Ada North for seven years, and is
now held by Mrs. S. B. Maxwell. Mrs. North is (1885) librarian of
the State University at Iowa City.
The State insane hospitals are inspected by a visiting
commission, one of whom is a woman. Several of the city hospitals
are managed by women of the Catholic orders. The reform schools
have a woman on their board of trustees, of whom Governor Sherman
was graciously pleased to say that "she discovered more of the
true inwardness of the institution in three days than her
honorable colleague had done in three years."
In 1876 Governor Kirkwood appointed Mrs. Nancy R. Allen notary
public. He also appointed Mrs. Merrill as teacher and chaplain at
the State penitentiary, Miss McCowen as physician of the State
insane asylum, and Dr. Sara A. Pangborn, one of the staff of
physicians of the insane hospital at Independence.
In 1874 Governor Carpenter appointed Mrs. Deborah Cattell a
commissioner to investigate the alleged cruelty in the State
Reform School at Eldora; and for this service she was paid the
same as men who served on the same commission. Governor Gear
appointed Dr. Abbie M. Cleaves delegate from Iowa to the National
Conference of Charities and Correction, and to the National
Association for the Protection of the Insane and the Prevention
of Insanity, which was held in Cleveland, Ohio, July, 1880. Mrs.
Mary Wright and Dr. Abbie Cleaves were commissioned to the
conference of the same associations at Louisville, Ky., in 1883.
The legislature of 1880 appointed Jane C. McKinney one of the
trustees of the Hospital for the Insane, at Independence.
The eighteenth General Assembly, 1880, passed an act to extend to
women the right to hold the office of county recorder. A bill
giving them the right to hold the office of county auditor passed
the House, but was lost in the Senate. Under the above law Miss
Addie Hayden was elected recorder of Warren county by a majority
of 397 votes. She ran on an independent ticket. Mrs. C. J. Hill
was chosen recorder of Osceola county at the same election.
The instruction of the youth of Iowa has fallen largely into the
hands of women. During the year 1879 the number of women employed
as teachers was 13,579, while the number of men was 7,573. In the
larger towns and cities women are almost exclusively engaged as
teachers. Miss Phebe Ludlow, after having for several years
acceptably discharged the duties of city superintendent of
schools at Davenport, was elected professor of English language
and literature in the State University at Iowa City. The chair is
still occupied by a woman, as is that of instructor of
mathematics and several other branches in that institution,
which, to the honor of Iowa be it said, always opened its doors
to both sexes alike.
The question of the eligibility of women to the office of county
superintendent of public schools having arisen by the election of
Miss Julia C. Addington in the autumn of 1869, the matter was
referred to the attorney-general by the State superintendent of
public instruction, and the following was his reply:
_Hon. A. S. Kissell, Superintendent of Public Instruction:_
DEAR SIR: Rights and privileges of persons (citizens) are
frequently extended but never abridged by implication. The
soundness and wisdom of this rule of construction is, I
believe, universally conceded. Two clauses of the
constitution, only, contain express provisions excluding
women from the rights and privileges in said provisions.
Section 1, of Article I., as to the right of suffrage, and
Section 4, of Article III., which provides that members of
the legislature must be free white male citizens. "Free" and
"white" have lost their meaning (if the words in that use
ever had any suitable or good meaning), but the word "male"
still retains its full force and effect. If this express
restriction exists in the constitution as to any other
office, it has escaped my notice. It is true that the words
"person" and "citizen" frequently occur in other parts of
the constitution in connection with eligibility and
qualification for office, and I fully admit that by
usage--"time-honored usage," if you will--these phrases have
in common acceptation been taken to mean man in the
masculine gender only, and to exclude woman. But a recent
decision in the Court Exchequer, England, holding that the
generic term "man" includes woman also, indicates our
progress from a crude barbarism to a better civilization.
The office of county superintendent was created by chapter
52 of the acts of the seventh General Assembly, laws of
1868, pages 52-72. Neither in that act, nor in any
subsequent legislation on the subject, have I been able to
find any express provisions making male citizenship a test
of eligibility for the place, or excluding women; and when I
look over the duties to be performed by that officer--as I
have with some care, and, I trust, not without interest--I
deem it exceedingly fortunate for the cause of education in
Iowa that there is no provision in the law preventing women
from holding the office of county superintendent of common
schools. I know that the pronoun "he" is frequently used in
different sections of the act, and referring to the officer;
but, as stated above, this privilege of the citizen cannot
be taken away or denied by intendment or implication; and
women are citizens as well and as much as men.
I need scarcely add that, in my opinion, Miss Addington is
eligible to the office to which she has been elected; that
she will be entitled to her pay when she qualifies and
discharges the duties of the office, and that her decisions
on appeal, as well as all her official acts, will be legal
and binding. It is perhaps proper to state that an opinion
on this question, substantially in agreement with the
present one, was sent from this office to a gentleman
writing from Osage, in Mitchell county, several weeks ago,
which for some reason unknown to me, seems not to have been
made public in the county. I have the honor to be, etc.,
HENRY O'CONNOR, _Attorney-General_.
Miss Addington, in her short letter of inquiry to the
superintendent, has the following modest conclusion: "The
position is not one I should have chosen for myself, but since my
friends have shown so much confidence in me, and many of them are
desirous that I should accept the office, I feel inclined to
gratify them, if it be found there is nothing incompatible in my
doing so."
The question of the eligibility of women to hold school offices
was again raised at the October election of 1875. Miss Elizabeth
S. Cooke was elected to the office of superintendent of common
schools in Warren county. The question of her right to hold the
office was carried by her opponent, Mr. Huff, to the District
Court of that county, by appeal; and that court decided that the
defendant, Miss Cooke, "being a woman, was ineligible to the
office." It was then carried to the Supreme Court of the State,
which held that "there is no constitutional inhibition upon the
rights of women to hold the office of county superintendent." In
the meantime, however, and immediately following the decision of
the Warren county judge, the General Assembly, March 2, 1876,
promptly came to the rescue and passed the following act, almost
unanimously:
SECTION 1. No person shall be deemed ineligible, by reason
of sex, to any school office in the State of Iowa.
SEC. 2. No person who may have been, or shall be, elected or
appointed to the office of county superintendent of common
schools, or director, in the State of Iowa, shall be
deprived of office by reason of sex.
Under the provisions of this law, and the above-cited decision of
the Supreme Court, Miss Cooke was allowed to serve out her term
of office without hindrance. Since that time women have been
elected, and discharged the duties of county superintendent with
great credit to themselves and advantage to the public. Women
have also been elected to other school offices in different parts
of the State. Mrs. Mary A. Work was unanimously elected
sub-director in district No. 6, Delaware township, Polk county,
in the spring of 1880; and soon after was made president of the
board--the first woman, so far as known, to fill the position of
president of a school board.
In 1877, in Frederica, Bremer county, Mrs. Mary Fisher attended
the school meeting, and was elected as one of the three
directors. The two others were men, one of whom immediately
resigned, saying he would not hold office with a woman. His
resignation was at once accepted. He further remarked that
"woman's place was _to hum_; she was out of her _spear_ to school
_meetin's_, _holdin'_ office," etc. Mrs. Fisher had been a
teacher for six years. Mrs. Shirley, another successful teacher,
accompanied Mrs. Fisher to the next school meeting, and both
ladies voted on all questions that came up for action, and
nothing was said against their doing so.
This year (1885) the school board of Des Moines elected Mrs. Lou.
M. Wilson to the office of city superintendent of public schools,
with a salary of $1,800 a year. She has in charge eighty
teachers, among whom are two men in the position of principals.
At the woman's congress, held at Des Moines in October, 1885, Dr.
Jennie McCowen, in her report for this State, said:
An increasing number of women have been elected on
school-boards, and are serving as officers and county
superintendents of schools. Last year six women served as
presidents, thirty-five as secretaries, and fifty as
treasurers of school-boards. Of the superintendents and
principals of graded schools about one in five is a woman;
of county superintendents, one in nine; of teachers in
normal institutes, one in three; of principals of secondary
institutions of learning, one in three; of tutors and
instructors in colleges, one in two; and in the twenty-three
higher institutions of learning, thirteen young women are
officiating as professors, and in three of these colleges
the secretary of the faculty is a woman. The State board of
examiners has one woman--Miss Ella A. Hamilton of Des
Moines--and the State superintendent of public instruction
has for a number of years availed himself of the valued
services of a woman for private secretary. The _Northwestern
Educational Journal_ is edited by a woman. At the last
meeting of the State Teachers' Association a committee was
appointed to prepare a regular course of reading for
teachers. This course is mainly professional and literary,
with a leaning toward the latter. A large number of these
reading circles have already been organized, and much
interest, and even enthusiasm, is being manifested by
teachers in all parts of the State. The school of Domestic
Economy, in connection with the Agricultural College, is in
charge of a woman as dean, and, although but a year old, has
made an auspicious beginning. A number of young ladies,
graduates of the State University and other literary
schools, have gone to the School of Domestic Economy to
finish their education.
Iowa has many women engaged as journalists. Prominent among these
is Miss Maggie VanPelt, city editor of the Dubuque _Times_. She
conducts her department very ably, and acceptably to her readers.
Whether an advocate for suffrage or not, she is certainly a
practical woman's rights woman. Independent and fearless, she
goes about day and night where she pleases, and wherever her
business calls her. A revolver, which she is known to carry,
makes it safe for her to walk the street at all hours. Mrs. Will
Hollingsworth, of the Sigourney _Review_, does a large part of
the writing for that paper, and assists in the management of the
establishment. _Woman's Hour_, edited by Mary J. Coggeshall, was
published by women at Des Moines two seasons, during the
exposition. Ten thousand copies were printed for free
distribution, and a handsomely decorated department granted the
society in the exposition for their work. Mrs. E. H. Hunter and
Mrs. Woods represented the society. Mrs. Pauline Swaim is noted
for her journalistic ability. Besides working on her husband's
paper, the Oskaloosa _Herald_, she has done much for the _State
Register_, reporting for it the proceedings of the Senate. In
October, 1875, Nettie Sanford started a paper at Marshalltown,
called _The Woman's Bureau_, which she published for two years.
During 1878 she published the _San Gabriel Valley News_, in
California. Mrs. L. M. Latham for many years conducted a suffrage
column in the Cedar Rapids _Times_; since 1884 she has been
associated with Mrs. J. L. Wilson on the _Transcript_, an eight
column paper devoted to general news, temperance and woman
suffrage. The paper is owned by Mrs. Wilson. Mrs. Nettie P. Fox
edits the _Spiritual Offering_ at Ottumwa; Mrs. Hattie Campbell,
a suffrage department in _The Advance_, at Des Moines; Mary
Osborne edits the _Osceola Sentinel_, and is superintendent of
the public schools of Clark county; Mrs. Lafayette Young is
engaged on the _Atlantic Telegraph_. Very many papers in the
State have women in charge of one or more columns.
In the humbler walks of literature Iowa can boast quite a number
of women who have made successful attempts at authorship.[415] In
sculpture Mrs. Harriet A. Ketcham, of Mt. Pleasant, deserves
mention. She has the exclusive contract to model the prominent
men of Iowa for the new capitol. Mrs. Estelle E. Vore, Mrs. Cora
R. Fracker, and Miss Emma G. Holt, are known as musical
composers.
Among the lecturers of Iowa, Mrs. Matilda Fletcher is worthy of
mention. Though she has never made woman suffrage a specialty,
she is sound on that question, and frequently introduces it
incidentally in her lectures. In 1869 she was living in obscurity
in Council Bluffs, her husband being employed as a teacher in one
of the suburban schools. Young, girlish-looking, no one seeing
her would have dreamed of her possessing the capabilities she has
since displayed. She started out under many discouragements, but
has shown a perseverance, a self-reliance, and an indomitable
will that few women manifest in the same direction. Mrs. Fletcher
has been employed by the Republican party during some of the most
important and exciting campaigns, speaking throughout the State,
in halls, tents, and in the open air. Every such effort on the
part of woman is an advantage to the cause we advocate, bringing
it nearer to final success. But it is to Mrs. Stanton, Miss
Anthony, Anna Dickinson, Mrs. Livermore, and other lyceum
lecturers[416] that our State is especially indebted for a
knowledge of the true principles upon which woman founds her
claim to equal civil and political rights with man. In all
sections of our land their voices have been heard by interested
and delighted audiences.
There are about one hundred and fifty women in the medical
profession in the different cities of the State. Mrs. Yeomans, of
Clinton, is a successful practitioner. Mrs. King, allopathist,
and Mrs. Hortz, homeopathist, are regular graduates in good
practice at Des Moines. Dr. Harding, electrician, and Dr. Hilton,
allopathist, also graduates, have all the practice they can
attend to in Council Bluffs. In 1883, Dr. Jennie McCowen was
elected president of the Scott County Medical Society. This was
the first time a woman was ever elected to that office in this
State, if not in the United States.
It is quite sure that Iowa may justly claim the first woman in
the profession of dentistry--Mrs. Lucy B. Hobbs, as early as
1863.[417] At Cresco there is the firm of Dr. L. F. & Mrs. M. E.
Abbott, dental surgeons. At Mt. Pleasant, Mrs. M. E. Hildreth is
a licensed dentist in successful practice.
Rev. Augusta Chapin was, I think, the first woman to enter the
sacred office in this State. Miss Safford, Algona; Mrs. Gillette,
Knoxville; Mrs. M. A. Folsom, Marshalltown; Florence E. Kollock,
Waverly; Mrs. M. J. Janes, Spencer; Mrs. Hartsough, Ft. Dodge,
are regularly ordained preachers of the Universalist and
Unitarian faiths. There are several licensed preachers of the M.
E. Church, but none have received regular ordination.
Iowa furnished the following women who went to the front as
nurses during the war: Mrs. Harlan, wife of Senator Harlan; Mrs.
Almira Fales, Mrs. Anne Wittenmeyer, Miss Phebe Allen, Mrs.
Jerusha R. Small, Miss Melcena Elliott, Mrs. Arabella Tannehill.
These all did good service in hospital and on the field, and some
of them laid down their lives as a sacrifice. We copy the
following as one of the many facts of the war:
Some years ago Adjutant-General Baker of Des Moines received
a letter of inquiry asking about a certain soldier in the
Twenty-fourth Iowa infantry. The tone of the letter was so
peculiar as to attract considerable attention and create
much comment in the office. In reply the general stated that
the records of the regiment and the record of the soldier
(whom, for the sake of convenience, we will call Smith,
although that is far from the real name) were in his office.
A few days afterwards a gentleman from Northern Iowa
appeared, inquired for General Baker, and was closeted with
him long enough to divulge the following singular tale:
When the war broke out Miss Mary Smith, daughter of the
general's visitor, was residing in Ohio, working for a
farmer. Her father's family had moved to Iowa the fall
preceding the attack on Sumter, leaving Mary behind to
follow in the spring. Various causes conspired to delay her
departure for her Iowa home until autumn, and it was
September before she landed at Muscatine, from which place
she expected to travel by land to her father's house. She
was a large-sized, hearty-looking girl, eighteen years of
age. Arriving at Muscatine, some strange freak induced her
to assume man's apparel and enlist in the Twenty-fourth
infantry, then in rendezvous at that city. She did this
without exciting any suspicion, burned all her feminine
garments and papers, neglected to inform her friends of her
arrival, and became a soldier. Some comment was elicited by
her beardless face and girlish appearance, but as she did
her duty promptly and was particularly handy in cooking and
taking care of the sick, the young warrior speedily became a
general favorite alike with officers and men.
She passed through all the campaigns in which the regiment
was engaged without a scratch, except a close call from a
minie ball at Sabine's Cross Roads, which took the skin off
the back of her left hand, voted with the other members of
the regiment for president in 1864, and was finally mustered
out with her comrades at the close of the war. When she was
discharged she procured female apparel--although in doing so
she was obliged to make a confidant of one of her own
sex--and procured work in Illinois, not far from Rock
Island. Six months elapsed before the tan of five summers
wore off, and when she had again become "white," and had
re-learned the almost forgotten customs of womanhood, she
presented herself at her father's house, where she was
received with open arms.
To all the questions which were asked by the various members
of the family she replied that she had been honestly
employed, and had never forsaken the right way. She had been
economical in the army, and invested several hundred dollars
in land in Northern Iowa, which rapidly appreciated in
value, and to-day she is well off. With the remainder of her
money she attended school. Last January a worthy man, who
had been in the same regiment, but in a different company,
made her an offer of marriage. Like a true woman she was
unwilling to bestow her hand when any part of her former
life was unknown, and before accepting the offer she made to
him a full revelation of her soldier-days. At first he could
not believe it, but when she proceeded to narrate events and
incidents which could be known only to active participants
in them, told of marches, camps, skirmishes, battles, and
the thousand and one things which never appear in print, but
which ever remain living pictures with "old soldiers," he
was obliged to accept the strange tale as true. The story,
however, did not lessen his regard for her, and about the
first of February they were married.
The lady's father, after hearing the tale of her life, was
still incredulous, and only satisfied himself of its truth
by a visit to the adjutant-general's office and an
inspection of the records. By comparing dates furnished him
by his daughter with the original rolls there on file he
became fully convinced that it was all true.
A few of the inventions patented by women of Iowa are the
following:
Fly-screen door-attachment, by Phoebe R. Lamborne, West
Liberty; photograph-album, Viola J. Angie, Spencer;
step-ladder, Mrs. Mary J. Gartrell, Des Moines;
baking-powder can with measure combined, Mrs. Lillie
Raymond, Osceola; egg-stand, Mrs. M. E. Tisdale, Cedar
Rapids; egg-beater, and self-feeding griddle-greaser, Mrs.
Eugenia Kilborn, Cedar Rapids; tooth-pick holder, Mrs.
Ayers, Clinton; thermometer to regulate oven heat, Mrs. F.
Grace, Perry; the excelsior ironing-table, Mrs. S. L. Avery,
Marion; neck-yoke and pole-attachment, by which horses can
be instantly detached from the vehicle, Maria Dunham,
Dunlap; invalid bed, Mrs. Anna P. Forbes, Dubuque.
In the various business avocations I find the following:
Mrs. T. Nodles is the largest fancy grocer in the State,
doing a yearly business of $80,000. Mrs. C. F. Barron, Cedar
Rapids, designs and manufactures perforated embroidery
patterns. Statistics show there are nine hundred and
fifty-five Iowa women who own and direct farms; eighteen
manage farms; six own and direct stock-farms; twenty manage
dairy-farms; five own green-houses; nine manage
market-gardens; thirty-seven manage high institutions of
learning; one hundred and twenty-five are physicians; five
attorneys-at-law; ten ministers; three dentists; one hundred
and ten professional nurses, and one civil engineer.
In the summer of 1884, the Fort Dodge _Messenger_ had this
paragraph about a Des Moines family:
Miss Kate Tupper, of Des Moines, has been in town, visiting
at Mr. Bassett's for a few days. Kate comes of a family
which is remarkable for intelligent womanly effort and
success. Her mother is Mrs. Ellen S. Tupper, the Bee-queen
of Iowa, whose work on bee-culture is a recognized
authority everywhere; her eldest sister is a very eloquent
preacher at Colorado Springs; Miss Kate is studying
medicine, having taken herself through a full course at the
Agricultural College by her own work; and Miss Madge, who is
only sixteen, is a famous poultry raiser, and an officer of
the State Poultry Association, who has made money enough in
this business to defray her entire expenses through a full
collegiate course. Mrs. Tupper's family is a sufficient
answer to the question of woman's work, if there were no
other. Let any mother in Iowa show three boys who can beat
this.
In this year Mrs. Louisa B. Stevens was elected president of the
First National Bank at Marion, Linn county. The important
position women are taking in the business world is illustrated by
the presence of two delegates at the meeting of the American
Street Railway Association held in St. Louis in the autumn of
1885--Mrs. L. V. Gredenburg, proprietor and treasurer of the New
Albany Street Railway of New Albany, Ind., and Mrs. M. A. Turner,
secretary and treasurer of the Des Moines Railway, Des Moines,
Ia. One of the gentlemen expressed the belief that fully
$25,000,000 of street-railway stock in this country is owned by
women.
As to the distribution of the cardinal virtues between men and
women it is generally claimed that the former possess courage,
the latter fortitude. Although the pages of history are gilded
with innumerable instances of the remarkable courage of women of
all ages and conditions, and oftimes dimmed with the records of
cowardice in men of all classes, yet what has been said for
generations will probably be repeated, even in the face of so
remarkable a fact as the following:
On March 1, 1882, the Iowa House of Representatives, on
motion of Hon. A. J. Holmes, suspended the rules and passed
a bill introduced by that gentleman providing for the
presentation of a gold medal and the thanks of the General
Assembly of the State of Iowa to Miss Kate Shelly, to which
was added a money appropriation of two hundred dollars,
which passed both Houses and became a law.
In support of the bill, Mr. Holmes spoke as follows:
Mr. Speaker: No apology is required for the introduction of
this bill, and I shall make no explanation in regard to it,
save a brief _résumé_ of the facts upon which the bill is
based. Miss Kate Shelly, with her widowed mother and little
sisters and brother, lives in a humble home on the
hill-side, in a rugged country skirting the Des Moines
River. Her father had died years ago in the service of the
great railway company whose line for some distance is
overlooked by her home, while her mother, by economy, severe
toil, and the assistance of Kate, was able to support her
little family.
On the night of July 6, 1881, about 8 o'clock, there
commenced one of the most memorable storms that ever visited
Central Iowa; nothing like it had ever been witnessed by the
oldest inhabitants. The Des Moines river rose over six feet
in one hour--little rills that were dry almost the year
round, suddenly developed into miniature rivers--massive
railway bridges and lines of track were swept away as if
they had been cobwebs. It was while looking out of her
window toward the high railroad bridge over Honey Creek,
that Kate Shelley saw the advancing head-light of a
locomotive descend into an abyss and become extinguished,
carrying with it the light of two lives. It was then she
realized in all its force that a terrible catastrophe had
occurred, and another more terrible, if not averted, would
soon follow to the east-bound express train, heavily laden
with passengers from the Pacific. She announced to her
mother, sisters and brother, that she must go to the scene
of the accident, and render assistance if possible, and also
warn the oncoming passenger train.
It was in vain they tried to dissuade her. Although she was
obliged to almost improvise a lantern in many of its parts,
it was but a few minutes before she was ready to set out.
Realizing then that her mission was one of peril, and that
she might not again look upon those dear faces, she kissed
each of them affectionately, and amid their sobs, hurried
out into the gloom, into the descending floods, toward the
rushing torrents--drenched to the skin, on she passed toward
the railroad to the well remembered foot-log, only to find
the waters rushing along high above and beyond the place
where it had been. Then she thought of the great bluff
rising to the west of her home and extending southward
toward the railroad track, and she determined to ascend it
and reach the bridge over this barrier to the waters. Need I
recount how she struggled on and up through the thick oak
undergrowth, that, being storm-laden drooped and made more
difficult her passage; how with clothing torn, and hands and
face bleeding she arrived at the end of the bridge, and
standing out upon the last tie she peered down into the
abyss of waters with her dim light, and called to know if
any one was there alive. In answer to her repeated calls
came the answer of the engineer, who had caught hold of and
made a lodgment in a tree-top, and around whom the waters
were still rapidly rising, sending floating logs, trees, and
driftwood against his frail support, and threatening
momentarily to dislodge and engulf him.
It took but a moment to be assured that he was the survivor
of four men who went down with the engine, and after a
moment's hurried consultation, she started for Moingona, a
mile distant, to secure assistance and to warn the
eastward-bound passenger train then nearly due. As she
passed along the high grade it seemed as if she must be
blown over the embankment, and still the heavens seemed to
give not rain but a deluge. As she approached the railway
bridge over the Des Moines river the light in her lantern,
her only guide and protection, went out. It was then that
the heroic soul of this child of only sixteen years became
most fully apparent; facing the storm which almost took away
her breath, and enveloped in darkness that rendered every
object in nature invisible, she felt her way to the railroad
bridge. Here she must pass for a distance of four or five
hundred feet over the rushing river beneath on the naked
ties. As the wind swept the bridge she felt how unsafe it
would be to attempt walking over it, and getting down upon
her hands and knees, clutching the timbers with an almost
despairing energy, she painfully and at length successfully
made the passage. She reached the station, and having told
of the catastrophe at the bridge, and requested the stoppage
of the passenger train then about due, she fainted and fell
upon the platform. This very briefly, wanting in much that
is meritorious in it, is the story of Kate Shelly and the
6th of July. Her parents were countrymen of Sarsfield, of
Emmett, and O'Connell--of the land that has given heroes to
every other and dishonored none. It was an act well worthy
to rank her with that other heroine, who, launching her
frail craft from the long stone pier, braved the terrible
seas on that Northumberland coast to save the lives of
others at the risk of her own.
Mr. Holmes then produced a copy of the _State Register_, and
requested the clerk to read the article therein contained,
giving the details of the heroic girl's action, written at
the time of its occurrence, and after the clerk had read the
article, concluded by saying: "I hope, Mr. Speaker, that
this bill may pass, believing that it is right, and further
believing that the State of Iowa will do itself as much
honor as the young lady named in the bill, in thus
recognizing the greatest debt in our power to pay--that to
humanity." Mr. Pickler moved to amend by instructing the
gentleman from Boone (Mr. Holmes) to make the presentation.
Carried, and the bill was amended accordingly, as above. On
motion of Mr. Holmes, the rules were suspended, and the bill
passed by a vote of 90 to 1. The governor of the State, Hon.
A. J. Holmes, and Hon. J. D. Gillett were authorized to
procure a medal of design and inscription to be approved by
them, and present the same to the donee with the thanks of
the General Assembly of the State of Iowa.
The medal, which is of elegant design and workmanship, was
executed by Messrs Tiffany & Co., of New York, and was
presented to Miss Shelly during the holidays of 1883. It is
round in form, about three inches in diameter and weighs
four ounces five and a half pennyweights. On both sides it
is sunken below the circular edges and the figures and
decorations are then displayed in bold relief. On the face
is a figure emblematic of Kate Shelly's daring exploit. It
represents a young girl with a lantern in her left hand and
her right thrown far out in warning, her hair streaming in
the wind and her wet drapery clinging to her form, making
her way over the ties of a high railroad bridge, in storm
and tempest, with the lightning playing about her. In a
semi-circle over the figure are the words: "Heroism, Youth,
Humanity." On the reverse is the following inscription:
"Presented by the State of Iowa to Kate Shelly, with the
thanks of the General Assembly, in recognition of the
courage and devotion of a child of fifteen years, whom
neither the terror of the elements nor the fear of death
could appal in her efforts to save human life during the
terrible storm and flood in the Des Moines valley on the
night of July 6, 1881."
Surrounding the inscription is a wreath of leaves and
beneath it the great seal of Iowa.
The presentation was made at Ogden in the presence of 3,000
people. It was given in the name of the State of Iowa by Mr.
Welker Given, secretary to Governor Sherman, July 4, 1884,
who represented the governor in his necessary absence. Hon.
J. A. T. Hull, Secretary of State, introduced Miss Shelly
and recounted her heroic deed of that fearful night, after
which Mr. Given made the presentation speech. The response
on behalf of Miss Shelly was made by Professor J. D. Curran,
an old friend and teacher.
All very well, but how much better to have placed Kate Shelly
(bearing the name of one of England's great poets) in the
University at Des Moines, and given her a thorough education,
from the primary through the whole collegiate course, and the
school for law, medicine, or theology. A girl capable of such
heroism and self-sacrifice must possess capacities and powers
worthy the highest opportunities for development. Kate Shelly,
with the scientific training of a civil engineer, might shed far
more honor on her native State than sitting in ignorance and
poverty on the banks of the Des Moines river with a gold medal
round her neck.
The Patrons of Husbandry, having at one time as many as 1,998
Granges in the State, admit women to equal membership and equal
rights. They have the same privileges in debate as men, and an
equal vote in all matters concerning the Grange. The Grangers do
not seem to fear that the children will suffer, or home interests
be neglected, on account of this liberty given to women. Miss
Garretson is State agent and lecturer for this order, and has
accomplished much good by her labors among the people of the
rural districts. She claims equal rights for woman even to the
ballot. The Independent Order of Good Templars passed resolutions
unqualifiedly committing the grand lodge of the State in favor of
granting suffrage to woman, and pledging themselves to labor for
the furtherance of that object. Temperance women who have
heretofore opposed the enfranchisement of their sex, and objected
to mixing the two questions, are coming to see that a powerless,
disfranchised class can do little toward removing the great evil
that is filling the land with pauperism and crime, and sending
sixty thousand victims annually to a drunkard's grave. They have
prayed and plead with the liquor-seller; they have petitioned
electors and law-makers, but all in vain; and now they begin to
see that work must accompany prayer, and that if they would save
their sons from destruction they must strike a blow in their
defense that will be felt by the enemy. Hence the Christian
Temperance Union, which at the outset declared itself opposed to
woman suffrage, has now resolved in favor of that measure as a
necessity for the furtherance of their cause.
On March 31, 1880, Judith Ellen Foster, of Clinton, made an able
and eloquent argument before the Senate Committee on Education
and Labor, at Washington, on Senator Logan's proposition to
constitute the revenue on alcoholic liquors a national
educational fund. At a meeting of the State Union held in 1883,
resolutions were passed, declaring woman's efforts in temperance
of no avail, until with ballots in their own hands, they could
coin their ideas and sympathies into law, and that henceforward
they would labor to secure that power, that would speedily make
their prayers and tears of some avail. This action gave a new
impetus to the suffrage movement. At the State convention, Mrs.
Jane Amy M'Kinney was appointed Superintendent of Franchise.
Circulars were issued advising the Unions to make suffrage a part
of their local work, and the advice was promptly followed in many
sections of the State. At the election on the prohibitory
amendment, June 29, 1882, women rallied at the polls, and
furnished tickets to all whom they could persuade to take them,
and this helped to roll up a large vote in favor of the
amendment.
The laws of Iowa have been comparatively liberal to woman, and
with each successive codification have been somewhat improved. By
the code of 1857, the old right of dower, or life interest in
one-third of the real estate of a deceased husband, was made an
absolute interest; and this is the law at the present time. Of
the personal property, the wife takes one-third if there are
children, and one-half if there are no children to inherit. The
same rule applies to the husband of a deceased wife. The codes of
1857 and 1860 each provided that the husband could not remove the
wife, nor their children, from their homestead without the
consent of the wife; and the code of 1875, now in force, changed
this only so as to provide that neither shall the wife remove the
husband without his consent. Deeds of real estate must be signed
by both husband and wife, but no private examination of either
has ever been required in Iowa. A husband and wife may deed
property directly to each other.
By the code of 1851 the personal property of the wife did not
vest at once in the husband, but if left within his control it
became liable for his debts, unless she filed a notice with the
recorder of deeds, setting forth her claim to the property, with
an exact description. And the same rule applied to specific
articles of personal property. Married women abandoned by their
husbands could be authorized, on proper application to the
District Court, to transact business in their own name. The same
provisions were substantially reënacted in the code of 1860.
Under both codes the husband was entitled to the wages and
earnings of his wife, and could sue for them in the courts.
But the code of 1873 made a great advance in recognizing the
rights of married women; and it is said the revisers sought, as
far as possible, to place the husband and wife on an entire
equality as to property rights. By its provisions, a married
woman may own, in her own right, real and personal property
acquired by descent, gift or purchase; and she may manage, sell,
convey, and devise the same by will to the same extent, and in
the same manner, that the husband can property belonging to him.
And this provision is followed by others which fully confer on
the married woman the control of her own property. Among other
things it is enacted, that a wife may receive the wages of her
personal labor, and maintain an action therefor in her own name,
and hold the same in her own right; and she may prosecute and
defend all actions at law, or in equity, for the preservation and
protection of her rights and property. Contracts may be made by a
wife, and liabilities incurred, and the same may be enforced by,
or against her, to the same extent as though she were unmarried.
The property of both husband and wife is equally liable for the
expenses of the family and the education of their children, and
neither is liable for the debts of the other contracted before
marriage. By the code of 1873, now in force, it is declared that
the parents are the natural guardians of their children, and are
equally entitled to their care and custody; and either parent
dying before the other, the survivor becomes the guardian.
But notwithstanding the seemingly equal provisions of our code,
there is still a great disparity in the laws relating to the
joint property of husband and wife--or property accumulated
during marriage by their joint earnings and savings. Such
property, whether real or personal, is generally held in the name
of the husband--no matter how much his wife may have helped to
accumulate it. If the wife dies, the husband still holds it all,
and neither law nor lawyers can molest him, or question his right
to it. But if the husband dies, the case is very different.
Instead of being left in quiet possession of what is rightfully
her own, to use and guard with all a mother's care and
watchfulness for the benefit of her children, the law comes in
and claims the right to appoint administrators and guardians--to
require bonds and a strict accountability from her, and to set
off to her a certain share of what should be as wholly hers as it
is the husband's when the wife dies.
This is the old common law, that has come down to us from
barbarous times, and the light of the nineteenth century has not
yet been sufficient to so illumine the minds of Iowa legislators
as to enable them to render exact justice to woman.
FOOTNOTES:
[395] In 1849 her husband was, appointed post-master, she became
his deputy, was duly sworn in, and during the administration of
Taylor and Fillmore served in that capacity. When she assumed her
duties the improvement in the appearance and conduct of the office
was generally acknowledged. A neat little room adjoining became a
kind of ladies' exchange where those coming from different parts of
the town could meet to talk over the contents of the last _Lily_
and the progress of the woman suffrage movement in general. Those
who enjoyed the brief interregnum of a woman in the post-office,
can readily testify to the loss to the ladies of the village and
the void felt by all when Mrs. Bloomer and the _Lily_ left for the
West and men again reigned supreme.
Mr. and Mrs. Bloomer removed to Mt. Vernon, Ohio, in 1853, and the
publication of the _Lily_ was continued; she was also the associate
editor of the _Western Home Visitor_. Mrs. Bloomer lectured in the
principal cities of Ohio and throughout the north-west, and was one
of a committee of five appointed to memorialize the legislature of
Ohio for a prohibitory law, and assisted in the formation of
several lodges of Good Templars.
[396] The officers were: _President_, Mrs. D. S. Wilson;
_Vice-President_, Mrs. W. P. Sage; _Secretary_, Mrs. J. S.
McCreery; _Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs. Mary N. Adams.
[397] Frank Allen.
[398] Lucy Stone, Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Cutler, Mrs.
Livermore, Anna Dickinson, Phoebe Couzins, Mrs. Swisshelm, Miss
Hindman and Mrs. Campbell, from abroad; Mesdames Savery, Callanan,
Gray, Pittman, Boynton, Harbert, Brown, and Messrs. Fuller,
Pomeroy, Rutkay, Cole, and Maxwell, of the city, have each in turn
come to the aid and encouragement of the society's work.
[399] For information regarding Des Moines I am indebted to Mary A.
Work, one of the most able advocates of woman suffrage in the
State.
[400] _President_, Porte Welch; _Secretary_, Mattie Griffith
Davenport.
[401] _President_, Amelia Bloomer; _Vice-Presidents_, C. Munger
and Mary McPherson; _Recording Secretary_, Ada McPherson;
_Corresponding Secretary_, Will Shoemaker; _Treasurer_, E. S.
Barnett.
[402] Its officers were: _President_, Nettie Sanford; _Secretary_,
Mrs. Fred. Baum; _Treasurer_, Mrs. Dr. Whealen.
[403] _President_, M. W. Stough; _Secretary_, Lizzie B. Read. Mrs.
Read was president of the State society in 1873, and Mrs. C. A.
Ingham in 1881.
[404] _President_, Hon. John E. Goodenow; _Vice-Presidents_, Nancy
R. Allen, Mrs. M. J. Stephens, Mrs. A. B. Wilbur; _Secretary_, Mrs.
E. D. Stewart; _Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs. Julia Dunham;
_Treasurer_, Mrs. T. P. Connell; _Executive Committee_, Mrs. S.
Stephens, Mrs. Julia Doe, Mrs. Polly Hamley, Dr. J. H. Allen, W. S.
Belden.
[405] _President_, Henry O'Connor; _Vice-Presidents_, Amelia
Bloomer, Nettie Sanford, Mrs. Frank Palmer, Joseph Dugdale, John P.
Irish; _Secretary_, Belle Mansfield; _Corresponding Secretary_,
Annie C. Savery; _Executive Committee_, Mary A. P. Darwin, Mattie
Griffith Davenport, Mrs. J.L. McCreery, Rev. Augusta Chapin, Hon.
Charles Beardsley.
[406] Assistant postmaster-general under President Arthur.
[407] Mary A.P. Darwin, professor of the college, and Hon. Charles
Beardsley, editor of the _Hawkeye_, Burlington; Hon. Henry
O'Connor, Muscatine; Mary N. Adams, Dubuque; Annie C. Savery, Des
Moines; Amelia Bloomer, Council Bluffs; A.P. Lowrie, Marshalltown;
Mrs. Beavers, Valisca. Hannah Tracy Cutler of Illinois, was the
leading speaker; Edwin A. Studwell of New York representing _The
Revolution_, Col. George Corkhill, Joseph Dugdale, Rev. Mr. Cooper,
Mt. Pleasant, were also in attendance.
[408] The speakers were Mr. Rutkay, Mrs. Sanford, Mrs. Bloomer,
Mrs. Spaulding, Mrs. Savery. Encouraging letters were read from
Joseph A. Dugdale, and Hon. Henry O'Connor, president of the
association. The officers for 1871 were: _President_, Mrs.
Amelia Bloomer; _Recording Secretary_, Mrs. Belle Mansfield;
_Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs. Annie Savery; _Treasurer_, Mrs. M.
Callanan.
[409] _Yeas_, Senators Beardsley, Bemis, Burke, Campbell, Chambers,
Converse, Dague, Dashiell, Dysart, Howland, Hurley, Kephart,
Maxwell, McCold, McKean, McNutt, Read, Shane, Smith, Vale, West,
Young--22. _Nays_, Senators Allen, Boomer, Claussen, Crary,
Fairall, Fitch, Gault, Havens, Ireland, Ketcham, Kinne, Larrabee,
Leavitt, Lowry, McCollough, Merrill, Miles, Murray, Russell, Stone,
Stewart, Taylor, Willett, Wonn--24. Senator Murray had voted in the
affirmative in the first instance, but changed his vote in order to
be able to move a reconsideration of the vote, by which the
resolution was lost.
[410] The names of the representatives voting on the Woman Suffrage
amendment are as follows (Republicans in Roman, Democrats in
Italics): YEAS--Allen, _Baker_, _Bolter_, Brooks, Brush, Calvin,
Campbell, Case, Chapman, Clark of Johnson, Cleveland, Colvin,
Craver, Deweese, Giltner, Given, Glendenning, Glover, Hall, Hoag,
Homer, Horton, _Hotchkiss_, _Hunt_, Irwin of Warren, Jaqua, Jordan,
Johnson of Benton, Kauffman, Lane, Lathrop, _Lynch_, McCartney,
McHugh, McNeill, Madden of Polk, _Madison_, Maris, Mills, Moffit,
Morse of Wright, Norris, Palmer, Proudfoot, Rae, Reed of Howard,
Robinson, Said, Scott, Smith, Tice, Underwood, Ure, Wilson--54.
NAYS--Auld, Benton, _Birchard_, _Brown_, Bush, _Christy_, _Clark_
of Marion, _Crawford_ of Dubuque, Danforth, _Dixon_, _Elliot_,
Evans, Fuller, _Gibbons_, Gilliland, _Gray_, _Harned_, Hemenway,
_Hobbs_, _Horstman_, _Johnston_ of Dubuque, Johnson of Winneshiek,
McCune, _Madden_ of Taylor, Manning, _Mentzel_, Morse of Adams,
_Mueller_, Reed of Jackson, Rees, Shaw, Simmons, Stone, Stuart,
_Stuckey_, _Thayer_, _White_, Williams, _Young_, Mr. Speaker (John
W. Gear)--40. Absent--Shepardson, Graves, Irwin of Lee, Seevers,
McElderry, _Crawford_ of Scott.
The vote in the Senate was: YEAS--Arnold, Bailey, Campbell,
Conaway, Dashiell, Dwelle, Gallup, Gilmore, Graham, Harmon, Hersey,
Jessup, McCoid, Miller of Appanoose, Miller of Blackhawk, Mitchell,
Newton, Nichols, Perkins, Thornburg, Wood, Woolson--22.
NAYS--Bestow, Carr, Clark, Cooley, Dows, Hartshorn, Hebard,
_Kinne_, Larrabee, Lovell, _McCormack_, _Maginnis_, _Merrell_ of
Clinton, Merrill of Wapello, _Pease_, Rothert, Rumple, Teale,
Willett, Williams, _Wilson_, _Wonn_, Wright--23. ABSENT--Hitchcock
(who was sick and died in a few days), yea; _Murphy_, nay; Shane
(resigned on account of being appointed district judge), yea;
_Stoneham_, nay; Young, nay.
[411] Narcissa T. Bemis of Independence was reëlected president,
and Mary A. Work chairman of the executive committee, with
headquarters at Des Moines; Mrs. Margaret W. Campbell was made
State lecturer and organizer, and Mariana T. Folsom financial
secretary of the association.
[412] Mrs. M. A. Darwin, Mrs. Martha Callanan, Mrs. Judith Ellen
Foster, superintendents of the franchise department of the W. C. T.
U. of the State, rolled up petitions in their respective districts;
and Mrs. Campbell and Miss Hindman aided largely in gathering the
signatures.
[413] In August, 1875, at Oskaloosa; October, 1880, Fort Dodge;
1881, Marshalltown; 1883, Ottumwa; 1885, Cedar Rapids; all of the
intervening anniversaries have been held at Des Moines. The
presidents of the State society since its organization have been
Attorney-General Henry O'Connor, Amelia Bloomer, Lizzie B. Read,
Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Mrs. Dr. Porter, James Callanan, Martha
C. Callanan, Mrs. Caroline A. Ingham, Narcissa T. Bemis, Margaret
W. Campbell. When the society was organized, in 1870, it declared
itself independent and remained thus until 1879, when, by a small
vote, it was made auxiliary to the American Association. The
officers for 1885 are: _President_, Mrs. M. W. Campbell, Des
Moines; _Treasurer_, Mrs. Eliza H. Hunter, Des Moines; _Recording
Secretary_, Mrs. Jennie Wilson, Cedar Rapids; _Corresponding
Secretary_, Mrs. Martha C. Callanan, Des Moines; _Executive
Committee_, Mary J. Coggeshall, _Chairman_; R. Amanda Stewart,
Harriet G. Bellanger, Des Moines; Orilla M. James, Knoxville;
Florence English, Grinnell; Ellen Armstrong, Ottumwa; Narcissa T.
Bemis, Independence; Angeline Allison, Cedar Rapids; Elizabeth P.
Gue, Des Moines.
[414] At the State Fair held September, 1885, at Des Moines, the
women had a very handsomely decorated booth where they received
many hundred calls, distributed an immense amount of suffrage
literature, obtained a thousand signatures to a petition to the
legislature and wrote notes of the fair for various newspapers, in
all of which woman suffrage was freely discussed.
[415] In literature there is "Europe through a Woman's Eye," by
Mrs. Cutler of Burlington; "The Waverly Dictionary," by Miss May
Rogers, Dubuque; "Common-School Compendium," by Mrs. Lamphere, Des
Moines; "Hospital Life," by Mrs. Sarah Young, Des Moines; "Wee
Folks of No Man's Land," by Mrs. Wetmore, Dubuque; "Two of Us," by
Calista Patchin, Des Moines; "For Girls," by Mrs. E. R. Shepherd,
Marshalltown; "Autumn Leaves," by Mrs. Scott, Greencastle;
"Phonetic Pronunciation," by Mrs. Henderson, Salem; "Her Lovers,"
by Miss Claggett, Keokuk; "Practical Ethics," by Matilda Fletcher.
There are several writers of cook-books, of medical and sanitary
papers, of poems, of legal papers and of musical compositions. Miss
Adeline M. Payne of Nevada has compiled catalogues of stock.
[416] Miss Anthony has given her lecture, entitled "Woman Wants
Bread, not the Ballot," in over one hundred of the cities and
villages of the State; and Mrs. Stanton and the others have
doubtless lectured in fully as many places.
[417] See New York chapter, page 401.
CHAPTER XLVI.
WISCONSIN.
Progressive Legislation--The Rights of Married Women--The
Constitution Shows Four Classes Having the Right to Vote--Woman
Suffrage Agitation--C. L. Sholes' Minority Report, 1856--Judge
David Noggle and J. T. Mills' Minority Report, 1859--State
Association Formed, 1869--Milwaukee Convention--Dr. Laura
Ross--Hearing Before the Legislature--Convention in Janesville,
1870--State University--Elizabeth R. Wentworth--Suffrage
Amendment, 1880, '81, '82--Rev. Olympia Brown, Racine,
1877--Madame Anneke--Judge Ryan--Three Days' Convention at
Racine, 1883--Eveleen L. Mason--Dr. Sarah Munro--Rev. Dr.
Corwin--Lavinia Goodell, Lawyer--Angie King--Kate Kane.
For this digest of facts in regard to the progress of woman in
Wisconsin we are indebted to Dr. Laura Ross Wolcott,[418] who was
probably the first woman to practice medicine in a Western State.
She was in Philadelphia during all the contest about the admission
of women to hospitals and mixed classes, maintained her dignity and
self-respect in the midst of most aggravating persecutions, and was
graduated with high honors in 1856 from the Woman's Medical College
of Pennsylvania, of which Ann Preston,[419] M. D., was professor
for nineteen years, six years dean of the faculty, and four years
member of the board of incorporators. After graduation Laura Ross
spent two years in study abroad, and, returning, commenced practice
in Milwaukee, where she has been ever since.
By an act of Congress approved May 29, 1848, Wisconsin was
admitted to the Union. Its diversity of soil and timber, the
healthfulness of its climate and the purity of its waters,
attracted people from the New England and Middle States, who
brought with them fixed notions as to moral conduct and political
action, and no little repugnance to many of the features of the
old common law. Hence in Wisconsin's territorial conventions and
legislative assemblies many of the progressive ideas of the East
were incorporated into her statutes. Failing to lift married
women into any solid position of independence, the laws yet gave
them certain protective rights concerning the redemption of lands
sold for taxes, and the right to dispose of any estate less than
a fee without the husband's consent. In case of divorce the wife
was entitled to her personal estate, dower and alimony, and with
the consent of her husband she could devise her real estate. She
was entitled to dower in any lands of which the husband was
seized during marriage. Gen. A. W. Randall was active in making
the first digest and compilation of the laws of Wisconsin.
The legislature of 1850 was composed of notably intelligent men.
Nelson Dewey was governor, Moses M. Strong, a leading lawyer,
speaker of the Assembly, and the late Col. Samuel W. Beal,
lieutenant-governor. Early in the session a bill was introduced,
entitled "An act to provide for the protection of married women
in the enjoyment of their own property," which provoked a stormy
debate. Some saw the dissolution of marriage ties in the
destruction of the old common-law doctrine that "husband and wife
are one, and that one the husband"; while arguments were made in
its favor by Hon. David Noggle, George Crasey, and others.
Conservative judges held that the right to own property did not
entitle married women to convey it; therefore in 1858 the law was
amended, giving further security to the wife to transact business
in her own name, if her husband was profligate and failed to
support her; but not until 1872 did the law protect a married
woman in her right to transact business, make contracts, possess
her separate earnings, and sue and be sued in her own name. The
legislature of 1878 reënacted all the former laws; and married
women may now hold, convey and devise real estate; make contracts
and transact business in their own names; and join with their
husbands in a deed, without being personally liable in the
covenants. In the matter of homesteads, the husband cannot convey
or encumber without the signature of the wife, and thus a liberal
provision is always secure for her and the children.
By the law of 1878, if the husband dies leaving no children and
no will, his entire estate descends to his widow.[420] If the
owner of a homestead dies intestate and without children, the
homestead descends, free of judgments and claims--except
mortgages and mechanics' liens--to his widow; if he leaves
children, the widow retains a life interest in the homestead,
continuing until her marriage or death.
Thus from the organization of the State, Wisconsin has steadily
advanced in relieving married women from the disabilities of the
old common law. The same liberal spirit which has animated her
legislators has admitted women to equality of opportunities in
the State University at Madison; elected them as county
superintendents of public schools; appointed them on the State
board of charities, and as State commissioners to a foreign
exposition;[421] and welcomed them to the professions of
medicine, law and the ministry.
By the constitution of Wisconsin the right of suffrage was
awarded to four classes of citizens, twenty-one years and over,
who have resided in the State for one year next preceding an
election.
_First_--Citizens of the United States.
_Second_--Persons of foreign birth who have declared their
intention to become citizens of the United States.
_Third_--Persons of Indian blood who have already been declared
by act of congress citizens of the United States.
_Fourth_--Civilized persons of Indian descent who are not members
of any tribe.
While thus careful to provide for all males, savage and
civilized, down to one thousand Indians outside their tribe, the
constitution in no way recognizes the women of the State,
one-half its civilized citizens. However, the question of woman
suffrage was early agitated in this State, and its advocates were
able men. In 1856 there was an able minority report published,
from C. L. Sholes, of the Committee on Expiration and Reënactment
of Laws, to whom were referred sundry petitions praying that
steps might be taken to confer upon women the right of suffrage.
In 1857, there was another favorable minority report by Judge
David Noggle, and J. T. Mills. It has been twice considered by
the legislatures of 1868-69, and 1880-81, failing each time by a
small majority. A constitutional amendment is supposed by some to
be necessary to effect this needed reform, but the legislature is
competent to pass a bill declaring women possessed of the right
to vote, without any constitutional amendment. The legislature of
New York all through the century has extended the right of
suffrage to certain classes and deprived others of its exercise,
without changing the constitution. The power of the legislature
which represents the people is anterior to the constitution, as
the people through their representatives make the constitution.
The women, both German and American, awoke to action and
organized a local suffrage society at Janesville in 1868. _The
Revolution_ said:
From the report of a recent convention held in Janesville,
we find the leading men and women of that city have formed
an Impartial Suffrage organization, and are resolved to make
all their citizens equal before the law. Able addresses were
made by the Rev. S. Farrington, Rev. Sumner Ellis, and a
stirring appeal issued to the people of the State, signed by
Hon. J. T. Dow, G. B. Hickox, Mrs. J. H. Stillman, Joseph
Baker and Mrs. F. Harris Reed. Mrs. Paulina J. Roberts of
Racine, a practical farmer in a very large sense, delivered
an address which was justly complimented.
The first popular convention held in Wisconsin, with national
speakers, convened in Milwaukee February 15, 16, 1869.[422] The
bill then pending in the legislature to submit the question of
woman suffrage to the electors of the State added interest to
this occasion. Parker Pillsbury, in _The Revolution_, said:
The Wisconsin convention seems to have been quite equal in
all respects to its predecessors at Chicago and other
places. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony were accompanied to
Milwaukee by Mrs. Livermore, a new Western star of "bright
particular effulgence," and the proceedings throughout were
characterized by argument, eloquence and interest beyond
anything of the kind ever witnessed there before. The
Milwaukee papers teem with accounts of it, most of them of
very friendly tone and spirit, even if opposed to the
objects under consideration. The _Evening Wisconsin_ said,
if any one supposed for an instant that the call for a
Woman's Suffrage convention would draw out only that class
known as strong-minded, such a one was never more deceived
in his or her life. At the opening of the convention[423]
yesterday, the City Hall was crowded with as highly
intelligent an audience of ladies and gentlemen as ever
gathered there before.
Mrs. Stanton spoke at the evening session to an immense audience
on the following resolutions:
_Resolved_, That a man's government is worse than a white
man's government, because in proportion as you increase the
rulers you make the condition of the ostracised more
hopeless and degraded.
_Resolved_, That, as the cry of a "white man's government"
created an antagonism between the Irish and the negro,
culminating in the New York riots of '63, so the Republican
cry of "Manhood Suffrage" creates an antagonism between the
black man and all women, and will culminate in fearful
outrages on womanhood, especially in the Southern States.
_Resolved_, That by the establishment of an aristocracy of
sex in the District of Columbia, by the introduction of the
word "male" into the Federal Constitution in Article 14,
Section 2, and by the proposition now pending to enforce
manhood suffrage in all the States of the Union, the
Republican party has been guilty of three excessively
arbitrary acts, three retrogressive steps in legislation,
alike invidious and insulting to woman, and suicidal to the
nation.
Miss Anthony followed showing that every advance step in manhood
suffrage added to woman's degradation. Quite a number of ladies
and gentlemen[424] of Wisconsin spoke well of the various
sessions of the convention. Altogether it was a most enthusiastic
meeting, and the press and the pulpit did their part to keep up
the discussion for many weeks after.
These resolutions, readily passed in the Milwaukee convention,
had been rejected at all others held in the West during this
campaign, although Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony had earnestly
advocated them everywhere. They early foresaw exactly what has
come to pass, and did their uttermost to rouse women to the
danger of having their enfranchisement indefinitely postponed.
They warned them that the debate once closed on negro suffrage,
and the amendments passed, the question would not be opened again
for a generation. But their warnings were unheeded. The fair
promises of Republicans and Abolitionists that, the negro
question settled, they would devote themselves to woman's
enfranchisement, deceived and silenced the majority. How well
they have kept their promises is fully shown in the fact that
although twenty years have passed, the political status of woman
remains unchanged. The Abolitionists have drifted into other
reforms, and the Republicans devote themselves to more
conservative measures. The Milwaukee convention was adjourned to
Madison, where Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony
addressed the legislature, Gov. Fairchild presiding.
In 1870, March 16, 17, a large and enthusiastic convention was
held at Janesville, in Lappin's Hall. Rev. Dr. Maxon, Lilia
Peckham and Mrs. Stanton were among the speakers. After this, the
latter being on a lyceum trip, spoke in many of the chief cities
of the State and drew general attention to the question.
The following clear statement of the petty ways in which girls
can be defrauded of their rights to a thorough education by
narrow, bigoted men entrusted with a little brief authority, is
from the pen of Lilia Peckham, a young girl of great promise, who
devoted her rare talents to the suffrage movement. Her early
death was an irreparable loss to the women of Wisconsin:[425]
ED. NEWS:--We find proofs at every step that one class
cannot legislate for another, the rich for the poor, nor men
for women.
The State University, supported by the taxes of the people
and for the benefit of the people, should offer equal
advantages to men and women. By amendment of the
Constitution in 1867, it was declared that the University
shall be open to female as well as male students, under such
regulations and restrictions as the board of regents may
deem proper. At first the students recited together, but Mr.
Chadbourne made it a condition of accepting the presidency
that they should be separated. I do not speak of the
separation of the sexes to find fault. I conceive that if
equal advantages be given women by the State, whether in
connection with or apart from men, they have no ground for
complaint. My object is to compare the advantages given to
the sexes and see the practical effect of legislation by men
alone in this department. From all the facts that are now
pressed upon us, confused, contradictory and obscure, we
begin to obtain a glimpse of the general law that informs
them. The University has a college of arts (including the
department of agriculture, of engraving and military
tactics), a college of letters, preparatory department, law
department, post-graduate course, last and certainly least,
a female college. The faculty and board of instructors
number twenty-one. The college of arts has nine professors,
one of natural philosophy, one each of mental philosophy,
modern languages, rhetoric, chemistry, mathematics,
agriculture, and comparative anatomy, and a tutor. In the
department of engineering is an officer of the United States
Army. In the college of letters is the same faculty, with
the addition of William F. Allen, professor of ancient
languages and history, one coming from a family of scholarly
teachers and thoroughly fitted for his post. In the law
department are such names as L. S. Dixon and Byron Paine.
Read now the names composing the faculty of the female
college, Paul A. Chadbourne, M. D., president; T. N.
Haskell, professor of rhetoric and English literature; Miss
Elizabeth Earle, preceptress; Miss Brown, teacher of music;
Miss Eliza Brewster, teacher of drawing and painting.
Compare these faculties and note what provision is made here
for the sciences and languages. Look at the course of
instruction in the college of arts. During the first year
the men study higher algebra, conic sections, plane
trigonometry, German (Otto's) botany, Gibbon's Rome. In the
college of letters the course is similar, but more attention
is given to classical studies; to Livy, Xenophon and Horace.
During the same years in the female college, they are
studying higher arithmetic, elementary algebra, United
States history, grammar, geography and map drawing. Truly a
high standard! The studies in the first term of the
preparatory department (to which none can be admitted under
twelve years of age) are identical with those in the female
college at the same time, except the Latin. Indeed, I cannot
see why it would not be an advantage to the students of the
female college to go into the preparatory department during
their first college year, since they can get their own
course with geometry added, and if they stay three years a
proportional amount of Latin and Greek. I could compare the
whole course in the same way, but my time and the reader's
patience would fail. There is no hint either of any thorough
prescribed course in any of the languages. In the first and
fourth year no foreign language is put down. In each term of
the second year French and Latin are written as elective,
the same for Latin or German in the third. This is a
wretched course at the best. I have no faith in a course set
down so loosely as "Latin" instead of being defined as to
what course of Latin, and what authors are read. In that
case we know exactly how much is required and expected, and
what the standard of scholarship. In the college of letters
we know that they go from Livy to Cicero on Old Age, then to
Horace and Tacitus. Similar definiteness would be
encouraging in the female catalogue. Its absence gives us
every reason to believe that the course does not amount to
enough to add any reputation to the college by being known.
Under the head of special information we are told that in
addition to this prescribed course of "thorough education
young ladies will be instructed in any optional study taught
in the college of letters or arts, for which they are
prepared." By optional I understand any of the studies
marked elective, since they are the only optional studies.
In the college of letters there is but one, and that is the
calculus. In the college of arts the optional studies are
generally, not always, those that they could not be prepared
for in the course prescribed by their own college. Under the
head of degrees we find a long account of the A. B., A. M.,
P. B., S. B., S. M., L. B., Ph. D., to which the fortunate
gentlemen are entitled after so much study. Lastly, the
students of the female college may receive "such appropriate
degrees as the regents may determine." I wonder how often
that solemn body deliberates as to whether a girl shall be
A. B., P. B., or A. M., or whether they ever give them any
degree at all. It makes little difference. With such a
college course a degree means nothing, and only serves to
cheapen what may be well earned by the young men of the
college.
In 1870, the stockholders of the Milwaukee Female College elected
three women on their board of trustees: Mrs. Wm. P. Lynde, Mrs.
Wm. Delos Love and Mrs. John Nazro. This is the first time in the
history of the institution that women have been represented in
the board of trustees.
Elizabeth R. Wentworth was an earnest and excellent writer and
kept up a healthy agitation through the columns of her husband's
paper at Racine.
RACINE, August 4, 1875.
MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY: Would it not be well for us women to
accept the hint afforded by these Englishmen, and bind
ourselves together by a constitution and by-laws. By so
doing we might sooner be enabled to secure the rights which
men seem so persistently determined to withhold from us.
Very respectfully yours,
E. R. WENTWORTH.
The growing strength of woman suffrage in England has caused
considerable commotion in that country, among officials and
others. Its growth has led the men to form a club in opposition
to it, composed of such men as Mr. Bouverie, a noted member of
Parliament; Sir Henry James, late attorney-general; Mr. Childers,
late first lord of the admiralty.
The formation of this club calls out a few words from Mrs.
Stanton, who sarcastically says:
Is not this the first organized resistance in the history of
the race, against the encroachment of women; the first manly
confession by those high in authority--by lords,
attorney-generals, sirs, and gentlemen--of fear at the
progressive steps of the daughters of men? These
conservative gentlemen had no doubt found Lady Amberly,
Lydia Becker, and Mrs. Fawcett too much for them in debate;
they had probably winced under the satire of Frances Power
Cobbe, and trembled before the annually swelling lists of
suffrage petitions. Single-handed they saw they were
helpless against this incoming tide of feminine
persuasiveness, and so it seems they called a meeting of
faint-hearted men, and bound themselves together by a
constitution and by-laws to protect the franchise from the
encroachment of women.
In the legislature of 1880, the proposition to submit an
amendment for woman suffrage to a vote of the people, passed both
Houses. In 1881 it passed one branch and was lost in the other.
Senator Simpson introduced another bill in 1882[426] which was
lost. These successive defeats discouraged the women and they
instructed their friends in the legislature to make no further
attempts for a constitutional amendment, because they had not the
slightest hope of its passage.
The growing interest in the temperance question at this time
produced some divisions in the suffrage ranks. Some thought it
had been one of the greatest obstacles to the success of the
suffrage cause, rousing the opposition of a very large and
influential class. Millions of dollars are invested in this State
in breweries and distilleries, and members are elected to the
legislature to watch these interests. Knowing the terrible
sufferings of women and children through intemperance, they
naturally infer that the ballot in the hands of women would be
inimical to their interests, hence the opposition of this wealthy
and powerful class to the suffrage movement. Others thought the
agitation was an advantage, especially in bringing the women in
the temperance movement to a sense of their helplessness to
effect any reform without a voice in the laws. They thought, too,
that the power behind the liquor interests was readily outweighed
by the moral influence of the best men and women in the State,
especially as the church began to feel some responsibility in the
question. The Milwaukee _Wisconsin_ of June 4, 1883, gives this
interesting item:
The Rev. Father Mahoney, of St. John's Cathedral, preached a
temperance sermon to a large concourse of people yesterday
morning, in which he heartily indorsed the action of Mayor
Stowell in his war against the ordinary saloon, and declared
that he should be reëlected. He also said that the men who
opposed him were covering themselves with infamy, and that
he could not conscientiously administer the sacraments to
any saloon-keeper who refused to obey the commands of the
Church or the laws of the State concerning the good order
and welfare of the city. The sermon caused quite a stir, and
was much discussed in secular as well as religious circles.
The State Association[427] has maintained an unswerving course,
between fanatacism and ultra-conservatism. Since 1869 it has
stood as on the watch-tower, quick to see opportunities, and ever
ready to coöperate with the legislative bodies in the State, and
well may we be proud of our achievements when we remember that by
the census of 1870 Wisconsin is the first foreign and the second
Roman Catholic State in the Union, and that at our centennial
exposition in 1876 our public schools stood number one.
Rev. Olympia Brown Willis moved into the State of Wisconsin in
1877, and became pastor of the church of the Good Shepherd, in
Racine, and exerted a wide influence, not only as a liberal
theologian, but as an earnest advocate of suffrage for woman. As
a result of her efforts a most successful Woman's Council was
held in Racine, March 26, 1883, alternating in the church of the
Good Shepherd and Blake's Opera House. One of the chief
speakers[428] was Dr. Corwin, pastor of the First Presbyterian
Church, who was also on the managing committee. The cordiality of
many of the western clergy, in strong contrast with those in the
east, makes their favorable action worthy of comment, though the
liberality of the few is of little avail until in their
ecclesiastical assemblies, as organizations, they declare the
equality of woman not only before the law, but in all the offices
of the church. Mrs. Katharine R. Doud was chosen president of the
convention; Mrs. Olin gave the address of welcome, to which Mrs.
Sewall responded. Mrs. Doud, in the _Advocate_, thus sums up the
three days' meetings:
During the past week a woman's council has been held in
Racine, the success of which has been most noticeable. The
different sessions have been attended by large audiences of
intelligent men and women, who have very thoughtfully and
carefully weighed and discussed the various questions under
consideration.
From the beginning to the end there has never been a hitch
or jar; the myriad wheels of the machinery required to make
smooth the workings of such large assemblies have moved so
quietly, and have been so well oiled and in such perfect
order as to be absolutely unnoticed; really, one might have
been tempted to feel that the machine had no master, no
controlling hand.
But now that the council is over; now that we can pause and
begin to estimate the good that has been done; now that the
seed is sown, from which, please God, a grand harvest shall
be reaped--now we can look back and see how one brain has
planned it all. One clear-eyed, far-seeing will gathered
together these women of genius, who have been with us; one
practical, mathematical brain made all estimates of expense,
and accepted all risks of failure; one hospitable heart
received a house full of guests, and induced others to be
hospitable likewise; and one earnest, prayerful soul--and
this the best of all--besought and entreated God's blessing
upon the work. Need we tell you where to find this
master-hand which has planned so wisely? the strong will,
the clear brain, the warm heart, the pure soul? We all know
her; she is indeed a noble woman, and her name--let us
whisper lest she hear--is Olympia Brown Willis.
The following sketch of the leading events of her life, shows how
active and useful she has been in all her public and private
relations:
Olympia Brown was born in Kalamazoo county, Michigan,
January 5, 1835. At the age of fifteen she began to teach
school during the winter months, attending school herself in
the summer. At eighteen she entered Holyoke seminary, but
finding the advantages there inadequate for a thorough
education, her parents removed, for her benefit, to Yellow
Springs, Ohio, where she entered Antioch college, Horace
Mann, one of the best educators of his day, being president.
There her ambition was thoroughly satisfied, and she was
graduated with honor in 1860. She then entered Canton
Theological school, was graduated in 1863, and, duly
ordained as a Universalist minister, commenced preaching in
Marshfield and Montpelier, Vermont, often walking fifteen
miles to fill her appointments. In 1864 she was regularly
installed over her first parish at Weymouth, Massachusetts.
Her energy and fidelity soon raised that feeble society into
one of numbers and influence.
In 1869, she accepted a call to Bridgeport, Connecticut,
where she remained seven years. In 1878, with her husband,
John Henry Willis, and two children she removed to Racine,
Wisconsin, where she became pastor of the church of the Good
Shepherd, without the promise of a dollar. The church had
been given up as hopeless by several men in succession,
because of the influence of the Orthodox theological
seminary. But she soon gathered large audiences and earnest
members about her; established a Sunday school, had courses
of lectures in her church during the winter, which she made
quite profitable financially for the church, beside
educating the people. Outside her profession she has also
done a grand work, in temperance and woman suffrage.[429]
She is rarely out of her own pulpit; has generally been
superintendent of her own Sunday school, and head of the
young ladies' club, doing at all times more varied duties
than any man would deem possible, and with all this she is a
pattern wife, mother and housekeeper, and her noble husband,
while carrying on a successful business of his own, stands
ever ready to second her endeavors with generous aid and
wise counsel, another instance of the happy homes among the
"strong minded."
Among the estimable women who have been identified with the cause
of woman suffrage in this country, Mathilde Franziska Anneke, a
German lady, is worthy of mention:
She was born in Westphalia, April 3, 1817. Her childhood was
passed in happy conditions in a home of luxury, where she
received a liberal education, yet her married life was
encompassed with trials and disappointments. From her own
experiences she learned the injustice of the laws for
married women and early devoted her pen to the redress of
their wrongs. Her articles appeared in leading journals of
Germany and awoke many minds to the consideration of the
social and civil condition of woman.
She was identified with the liberal movement of '48, her
home being the resort for many of the leaders of the
revolution. She published a liberal paper which freely
discussed all the abuses of the government, a whole edition
of which was destroyed. At length denounced by the
government, she secretly made here escape from Cologne, and
joined her husband at the head of his command in active
preparation for a struggle against the Prussians.
She immediately declared her determination to share the
toils of the expedition. Accordingly Col. Anneke appointed
her _Tolpfofsort_, the duties of which she continued to
discharge to the end of the campaign. In one of her works
published in 1853, she has given a graphic description of
the disastrous termination of the revolution, of their
flight into France, of their expulsion from France and
Switzerland, and of their final determination to come to the
United States.
They reached New York in the fall of 1849. Madame Anneke
lectured in most of the Eastern cities on the social and
civil condition of women, claiming for them the right of
suffrage and more liberal education. She also published a
woman's journal in New York, and was soon recognized as one
of the earnest representative women in America. For many
years she made her home in Milwaukee, where she taught a
successful school for young ladies. Madame Anneke, a widow
with one son and two daughters, lived quietly the closing
years of her life, and in death found the peace and rest she
had never known in her busy life on earth.
Prof. G. S. Albee, president of the State Normal School at
Oshkosh, is a firm friend and outspoken advocate of equal right
of the sexes to all the privileges of education, not excepting
the education of the ballot-box. John Bascom, president of the
Wisconsin University, has been an advocate of suffrage for women
many years. While connected with Williams College he worked to
secure the admission of women thereto. As one of a committee of
five to whom the matter was referred, he, together with David
Dudley Field, presented a minority report favoring their
admission. Since he has been at the head of our State University
he has been in perfect sympathy with its liberal coëducational
policy, and has insured to the young women equal advantages in
every respect with the young men. To his wise management may be
attributed the success of higher coëducation in Wisconsin. He
gave an able and scholarly address before our convention at
Madison in '82, and is always found ready to speak for woman
suffrage, both in public and private. His influence has done much
for the advancement of the cause in our State. A cordial letter
was received from Mrs. Bascom at the last Washington convention,
which was listened to with interest and prized by the officers of
the National Association:
MADISON, Wis., January 16, 1885.
MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY: I am sorry I cannot be present and
meet the many wise and great women who will respond to your
call for the Seventeenth Annual Convention.
What a glorious record these words reveal of unwavering
faith in the right, and heroic persistency in its pursuit on
one side, and what blindness of prejudice and selfishness of
power on the other. The struggle has indeed been a long one,
and yet no other moral movement involving so many and so
great social changes ever made more rapid progress. You and
your fellow-laborers are truly to be congratulated on the
full and abundant harvest your faithful seed-sowing has
brought to humanity. The irrational sentiment, based upon
the methods and customs of barbarous times, is rapidly
yielding to reason. The world is learning--women are
learning--that character, even womanly character, does not
suffer from too much breadth of thought, or from too active
a sympathy in human interests and human affairs, but is ever
enriched by a larger circle of ideas, larger experience, and
more extended activities.
The advance of women in position and influence has been
especially great during the past year, and in directions
especially cheering and hopeful to the heart of every woman.
In national political conventions, as your call so justly
says, she has "actively participated in the discussion of
candidates, platforms and principles." The last mile-stone
before the goal has been reached and passed!
Your convention will offer the final opportunity to the
Republican party. Will it be wise enough to seize it for
self preservation, if not from principle? Will there be
found in this party enough of spiritual life to lay hold of
the help now proffered it, and once more renew its strength
thereby? Or will it, as so repeatedly in the past, turn a
deaf ear to reason, and still continue to deny the rights of
half the human family? If so, if it continue deaf, dumb and
blind, then the Republican party has no longer any function,
and the power of government will pass forever from its
hands. The sixteenth amendment to the national constitution
is coming, but it will be the crown of blessing and of fame
of another party that will inaugurate this era in social
life! I take the liberty to send loving greetings to you and
the convention in the name of our Wisconsin Equal Suffrage
society. I hope our bright, eloquent Rev. Olympia Brown will
be with you. Of Wisconsin's eleven representatives in
congress, I am happy to make honorable mention, as
broad-minded advocates of our cause, of three, Cameron,
Price and Stephenson. In earnest sympathy with the object
and method of the convention, and with high regard for
yourself, I remain yours truly,
EMMA C. BASCOM.
In this, as in many other States there was a prolonged struggle
over the equal rights of women in the courts. The first woman to
practice law in Wisconsin was Lavinia Goodell. She was admitted
in the First Judicial Circuit Court, June 17, 1874, Judge H. S.
Conger, presiding. She commenced practicing in Janesville. The
following year she had a case which was appealed to the Supreme
Court. When the appeal was made, Miss Goodell applied to the
Supreme Court for the right to go with her case. She argued her
own case and based her claim upon a statute which provides, "That
words of the masculine gender may be applied to females; unless
such construction would be inconsistent with the manifest
intention of the legislature." After she had shown clearly that
she had an equal right in the courts in an able and unanswerable
argument, Judge Ryan considered her application for two months
and rendered an adverse decision. As a result of the agitation
induced by this case, the legislature of 1877 passed a law that
"no person shall be refused admission to the bar of this State on
account of sex," thus showing the power of the legislative branch
of the government to over-ride all judicial decisions. Miss
Goodell immediately commenced practice in the Supreme Court. She
reviewed the judicial decision with keen satire,[430] and ably
illustrated the comparative capacity of an educated man and woman
to reason logically on American jurisprudence and constitutional
law.
In the early part of 1879 Kate Kane and Angie J. King were
admitted to the bar. Miss Kane studied in a law office and in the
law school of Michigan University. She practiced in Milwaukee
until 1883, when she located in Chicago. Miss King practices in
Janesville and was at first associated with Miss Goodell, under
the name of Goodell & King. Cora Hurtz, Oshkosh, was admitted and
began practice in 1882.
FOOTNOTES:
[418] Mrs. Wolcott is a remarkable woman, of rare intelligence,
keen moral perceptions and most imposing presence. Much of her
success in life is due no doubt to her gracious manners. Her
graceful figure, classic face, rich voice and choice language make
her attractive in the best social circles, as well as in the
laboratory and lecture-room. She is a perfect housekeeper and a
most hospitable hostess. Having enjoyed many visits at her
beautiful home I can speak alike of her public and domestic
virtues.--[E. C. S.
[419] See Vol. I., page 389.
[420] During a visit with my school-friend, Mrs. Elizabeth Ford
Proudfit, at Madison, in 1879, I heard a great deal said of the
injustice of this law as illustrated in two notable cases of widows
in the enjoyment of their husbands' entire estates, while the dead
men's relatives, many of them, were living in poverty. This was
most shocking! though widowers, from time immemorial, have
possessed the life-earnings and inheritance of their wives, while
the dead women's mothers and sisters were starving and freezing
within sight of the luxurious homes that rightfully belonged to
them! It makes a mighty odds whose ox is gored--the widower's or
the widow's!--[S. B. A.
[421] In 1867 the governor, General Lucius Fairchild, appointed
Laura J. Ross, M. D., as commissioner to the World's Exposition in
Paris. In 1871 Mrs. Mary E. Lynde was appointed on the State Board
of Charities and Corrections by Governor Fairchild.
[422] The committee on resolutions were: Dr. Laura J. Ross, N. S.
Murphey, Mrs. Livermore, Madame Annecke, Geo. W Peckham and Rev.
Mr. Gannett. The officers of the convention were: _President_, Rev.
Miss Augusta J. Chapin; _Vice-Presidents_, O. P. Wolcott, M. D.,
Laura J. Ross, M. D., and Madame Matilde F. Annecke; _Secretary_,
Miss Lilia Peckham.
[423] For a further description of this convention see Mrs.
Stanton's letters from _The Revolution_, Vol. I., page 873.
[424] Miss Lilia Peckham, G. W. Peckham, esq., Mrs. Mary A.
Livermore, Madam Matilde Annecke, Rev. Augusta J. Chapin, Rev. Mr.
Eddy, Rev. Mr. English, Rev. Mr. Fallows.
[425] Miss Lilia Peckham died in Milwaukee, the city of her
residence. She had been ill but a few weeks, her physicians
considering her recovery certain up to within an hour of her death;
but a sudden and unlooked-for change took place. One of the truest,
purest and best spirits we have ever met has thus passed from earth
to heaven. All who met her soon came to appreciate her gifted
nature, her rare talent and spiritual insight. But only those who
knew her well can bear witness to her wonderful unselfishness, her
remorseless honesty of speech and deed, the loftiness of her ideal
and the beauty of her womanly soul. The Milwaukee _Sentinel_ closes
a brief obituary notice of our friend and co-worker as follows:
"This talented young woman is well known throughout the country as
an earnest advocate of the woman's rights movement. Only a few
weeks since she made a successful tour through the West, speaking
in various city pulpits. Fearlessly she spoke all that she had come
to feel was truth, though it shook the very foundations of old
creeds and ideas. Many efforts from her scholarly pen attest to her
devotion to every onward movement of the hour. She was to have
entered the Cambridge Divinity School early in the present autumn,
having chosen the ministry for her life-work. That a life so full
of promise of usefulness should be so suddenly stopped is
irreconcilable with our finite judgment. It is hard to say, 'it is
well,' though God's fact may be that this young life, with its
beauty of character, its sisterly affection, its still larger
sisterly sympathy with a suffering humanity, its longings and
aspirations, its zealous strivings after the true and good, is full
and complete _now_; still we shall mourn her loss, her brief though
beautiful career."
[426] The members of the Wisconsin Senate who voted against the
woman suffrage amendment were: Ackley, Adams, Burrows, Chase,
Coleman, Delaney, Flinkelberg, Flint, Kusel, Palmetier, Pingel,
Rankin, Ryland, Smith and Van Schaick--15. No better work can be
done by Wisconsin suffragists than to try to defeat every one of
them at the next election. The following voted for the measure:
Bennett, Crosby, Ellis, Hamilton, Hill, Hudd, Kingston, Meffert,
Phillipps, Scott, Simpson, Wiley, Randall--13. Senators Wing and
McKeeby were paired, and Senators Erwin and Richardson were absent.
[427] The officers of the Wisconsin State society for 1885 were:
_President_, Harriet T. Griswold, Columbus; _Vice-Presidents_,
Laura Ross Wolcott, Milwaukee; Rev. Olympia Brown, Racine;
Emma C. Bascom, Madison; F. A. Delagise, Antigo; Laura James,
Richland Center; _Recording Secretary_, Helen R. Olin, Madison;
_Corresponding Secretary_, M. W. Bentley, Schofield; _Treasurer_,
Dr. Sarah R. Munro, Milwaukee; _Chairman Executive Committee_,
Amelia B. Gray, Schofield. Among others active in the movement are
Eliza T. Wilson, Menominee; Alura Collins, Muckwonago; Mrs. S. C.
Burnham, Bear Valley; Sarah H. Richards, Milwaukee; Mrs. W. Trippe,
Whitewater.
[428] Eveleen Mason, May Wright Sewall, Mary A. Livermore, Dr.
Sarah Munro, Mrs. Haggart, Mrs. K. R. Doud, Miss Comstock, the
Grand Worthy Vice-Templar from Milwaukee, Mrs. Le Page, and Mrs.
Amy Talbot Dunn, as Zekel's wife, made a deep impression.
[429] See vol. II. page 259.
[430] For her argument see _Woman's Journal_, April, 1876.
CHAPTER XLVII.
MINNESOTA.
Girls in State University--Sarah Burger Stearns--Harriet E.
Bishop the First Teacher in St. Paul--Mary J. Colburn Won the
Prize--Mrs. Jane Grey Swisshelm, St. Cloud--Fourth of July
Oration, 1866--First Legislative Hearing, 1867--Governor Austin's
Veto--First Society at Rochester--Kasson--Almira W. Anthony--Mary
P. Wheeler--Harriet M. White--The W. C. T. U.--Harriet A.
Hobart--Literary and Art Clubs--School Suffrage, 1876--Charlotte
O. Van Cleve and Mrs. C. S. Winchell Elected to School
Board--Mrs. Governor Pillsbury--Temperance Vote, 1877--Property
Rights of Married Women--Women as Officers, Teachers, Editors,
Ministers, Doctors, Lawyers.
Minnesota was formally admitted to the Union May 11, 1858. Owing to
its high situation and dry atmosphere the State is a great resort
for invalids, and nowhere in the world is the sun so bright, the
sky so blue, or the moon and stars so clearly defined. Its early
settlers were from New England; hence, the church and the
school-house--monuments of civilization--were the first objects in
the landscape to adorn those boundless prairies, as the red man was
pushed still westward, and the white man seized his hunting-ground.
This State is also remarkable for its admirable system of free
schools, in which it is said there is a larger proportion of pupils
to the population than in any other of the Western States. All
institutions of learning have from the beginning been open alike to
boys and girls.
Mrs. Sarah Burger Stearns, to whom we are indebted for this
chapter, was one of the first young women to apply for admission to
the Michigan University.[431] Being denied, she finished her
studies at the State Normal School, and in 1863 married Mr. O. P.
Stearns, a graduate of the institution that barred its doors to
her. Mr. Stearns, at the call of his country, went to the front,
while his no less patriotic bride remained at home, teaching in
the Young Ladies' Seminary at Monroe and lecturing for the benefit
of the Soldiers' Aid Societies.
The war over, they removed to Minnesota in 1866, where by lectures,
newspaper articles, petitions and appeals to the legislature, Mrs.
Stearns has done very much to stir the women of the State to
thought and action upon the question of woman's enfranchisement.
She has been the leading spirit of the State Suffrage Association,
as well as of the local societies of Rochester and Duluth, the two
cities in which she has resided, and also vice-president of the
National Association since 1876. As a member of the school-board,
she has wrought beneficent changes in the schools of Duluth. She is
now at the head of a movement for the establishment of a home for
women needing a place of rest and training for self-help and
self-protection. Mrs. Stearns has the full sympathy of her husband
and family, as she had that of her mother, Mrs. Susan C. Burger,
whose last years were passed in the home of her daughter at Duluth.
Mrs. Stearns writes:
The advocates of suffrage in Minnesota were so few in the early
days,[432] and their homes so remote from each other, that there
was little chance for coöperation, hence the history of the
movement in this State consists more of personal efforts than of
conventions, legislative hearings and judicial decisions. The
first name worthy of note is that of Harriet E. Bishop. She was
invited by Rev. Thomas Williamson, M. D., a missionary among the
Dakotas, to come to his mission home and share in his labors in
1847, where she was introduced to the leading citizens of St.
Paul. She was the first teacher of a public school in that
settlement. She lectured on temperance, wrote for the daily
papers, and preached as a regular pastor in a Baptist pulpit. She
published several books, was one of the organizers of the State
Suffrage Association in 1881, and in 1883 rested from her labors
on earth.
The first lecture in the State on the "Rights and Wrongs of
Woman," was by Mrs. Mary J. Colburn, in the village of Champlin,
in 1858, the same year that Minnesota was admitted to the Union.
In 1864, the State officers promised two prizes for the first and
second best essays on "Minnesota as a Home for Emigrants,"
reserving to the examining committee the right to reject all
manuscripts offered if found unworthy. The first prize was
accorded to Mrs. Colburn. Most of the other competitors were men,
some of them members of the learned professions. Mrs. Colburn
says, in writing to a friend, "I am doing but little now on the
suffrage question, for I will not stoop longer to ask of any
congress or legislature for that which I know to be mine by the
divine law of nature."
In 1857, Mrs. Jane Grey Swisshelm settled at St. Cloud, where she
lived until 1863, editing the St. Cloud _Democrat_, the organ of
the Republican party, and making a heroic fight for freedom and
equality. In 1860 she spoke in the Hall of Representatives, on
Anti-slavery; in 1862 she was invited to speak before the Senate
on woman's rights, and was listened to with great respect.[433]
In 1866, at a Fourth of July celebration, Mrs. Stearns accepted
an invitation to respond to the sentiment, "Our young and growing
State; may she ever be an honor to her citizens." This offered
her an opportunity for an off-hand woman suffrage speech, which
elicited hearty cheers, and gave, as an old gentleman present
said, "something fresh to think of and act upon." About this time
the friends of equality began petitioning the legislature for an
amendment to the constitution, striking out the word "male."
Through the efforts of Mr. A. G. Spaulding--the editor of the
_Anoka Star_--and others, these petitions were referred to a
special committee which granted a hearing to Mrs. Colburn and
Mrs. Stearns in 1867. Mrs. Colburn read a carefully prepared
argument, and Mrs. Stearns sent a letter, both of which were
ordered to be printed. In 1868 a bill was introduced proposing to
submit the desired amendment, but when brought to a vote it was
defeated by a majority of one.
In March, 1869, _The Revolution_ copied from the Martin County
_Atlas_ the following:
Show us the man who from the bottom of his heart, laying
aside his prejudices and speaking the unbiased truth, will
not say that women should have the same rights that he
himself enjoys, and we will show you a narrow-minded
sycophant, a cruel, selfish tyrant, or one that has not the
moral courage to battle for a principle he knows to be just.
Equal rights before the law is justice to all, and the more
education we give our children and ourselves, as a people,
the sooner shall we have equal rights. May the glorious
cause speed on.
In 1869, a suffrage society was organized in the city of
Rochester, with fifty members, and another at Champlin; the homes
of Mrs. Stearns and Mrs. Colburn. Petitions were again circulated
and presented to the legislature early in the session of 1870. It
had not then been demonstrated by Kansas, Michigan, Colorado,
Nebraska and Oregon, that the votes of the ignorant classes on
this question would greatly outnumber those of the intelligent.
The legislature granted the prayer of the petitioners and passed
a bill for the submission of an amendment, providing that the
women of the State, possessing the requisite qualifications,
should also be allowed to vote upon the proposition, and that
their votes should be counted as legal. The governor, Hon. Horace
Austin, vetoed the bill, saying it was not passed in good faith,
and that the submission of the question at that time would be
premature. In a private letter to Mrs. Stearns, the governor
said: "Had the bill provided for the voting of the women, simply
to get an expression of their wishes upon the question, without
requiring their votes to be counted as legal in the adoption or
rejection of it, the act would not have been vetoed,
notwithstanding my second objection that it was premature."
In 1871, petitions to congress were circulated in Minnesota,
asking a declaratory act to protect the women of the nation in
the exercise of "the citizen's right to vote" under the new
guarantees of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. During
that year the National Woman Suffrage Association appointed Mrs.
Addie Ballou its vice-president for Minnesota.
In 1872 a suffrage club was formed at Kasson. Its three
originators[434] entered into a solemn compact with each other
that while they lived in that city there should always be an
active suffrage society until the ballot for women should be
obtained. Their secretary, Mrs. H. M. White, writes:
Although our club was at first called a ladies' literary
society, the suspicion that its members wished to vote was
soon whispered about. Our working members were for some
years few in number, and our meetings far between. But our
zeal never abating, we tried in later years many plans for
making a weekly meeting interesting. The most successful
was, that every one should bring something that had come to
her notice during the week, which she should read aloud,
thus furnishing topics of conversation in which all could
join. This never failed to make an interesting and
profitable meeting. And still later we invited speakers from
other States. In our various courses of lectures, Kasson
audiences have enjoyed the brave utterances of Anna
Dickinson, Julia Ward Howe, Susan B. Anthony, and others.
The pulpit of Kasson we have found about evenly balanced for
and against us; but those claiming to be friendly generally
maintained a "masterly inactivity." Our editors have always
shown us much kindness by gratuitously advertising our
meetings and publishing our articles. Our members were all
at the first meeting after school suffrage was granted to
women, and one lady was elected director for a term of three
years. The next year another lady was elected. While they
were members of the board, a new and beautiful school house
was erected, though some men said, "nothing in the line of
building could be safely done until after the women's term
of office had expired." Our co-workers have always treated
us with great courtesy. In this respect our labors were as
pleasant as in any church work.
At a temperance convention in 1874, a woman suffrage resolution
was ably defended by Mrs. Julia Ballard Nelson and Mrs. Harriet
A. Hobart; Mrs. Asa Hutchinson, of beloved memory, also spoke at
this meeting.
As the women in several of the States voted on educational
matters, the legislature of 1875 wished to confer the same
privilege upon the women of Minnesota. But instead of doing so by
direct legislation, as the other States had done, they passed a
resolution submitting a proposition for an amendment to the
constitution to the electors of the State, as follows:
An amendment to the State constitution giving the
legislature power to provide by law that any woman of the
age of twenty-one years and upwards, may vote at any
election held for the purpose of choosing any officers of
schools; or upon any measure relating to schools; and also
that any such woman shall be eligible to hold any office
pertaining solely to the management of schools.
No effort was made to agitate the question, lest more should be
effected in rousing the opposition than in educating the masses
in the few months intervening between the passage of the bill and
the election in November. Mrs. Stearns, however, as the day for
the decision of the question approached, wishing to make sure of
the votes of the intelligent men of the State, wrote to the
editor of the _Pioneer Press_, the leading paper of Minnesota,
begging him to urge his readers to do all in their power to
secure the adoption of the amendment. The request was complied
with, and the editor in a private letter, thanking Mrs. Stearns,
said he "had quite forgotten such an amendment had been
proposed."
At this last moment the question was, what could be done to
secure the largest favorable vote. Finding that it would be
legal, the friends throughout the State appealed to the
committees of both political parties to have "For the amendment
of Article VII. relating to electors--Yes," printed upon all
their tickets. This was very generally done, and thereby the most
ignorant men were led to vote as they should, with the
intelligent, in favor of giving women a voice in the education of
the children of the State, while all who were really opposed
could scratch the "yes," and substitute a "no." When election day
came, November 5, 1875, the amendment was carried by a vote of
24,340 for, to 19,468 against. The following legislature passed
the necessary law, and at the spring election of 1876, the women
of Minnesota voted for school officers, and in several cases
women were elected as directors.
I have given these details because the great wonder has been how
the combined forces of ignorance and vice failed to vote down
this amendment, as they always have done every other proposition
for the extension of suffrage to women in this and every other
State where the question has been submitted to a popular vote. I
believe our success was largely, if not wholly, attributable to
our studied failure to agitate the question, and the affirmative
wording of all the tickets of both parties, by which our
bitterest opponents forgot the question was to be voted upon, and
the ignorant classes who could not, or did not read their
ballots, voted unthinkingly for the measure.
In the cities the school officers are elected at the regular
municipal elections usually held in the spring, while in the
rural districts and smaller villages they are chosen at school
meetings in the autumn. In East Minneapolis, Hon. Richard Chute,
chairman of the Republican nominating convention, having, without
their knowledge, secured the nomination of Mrs. Charlotte O.
VanCleve[435] and Mrs. Charlotte S. Winchell[436] as school
directors, called a meeting of the women of the city to aid in
their election. It was a large and enthusiastic gathering. Mrs.
Mary C. Peckham presided, Mrs. Stearns of Duluth, and Mrs.
Pillsbury, wife of the governor, made stirring speeches, after
which the candidates were called upon, and responded most
acceptably. When election day came, the names of Mrs. VanCleve
and Mrs. Winchell received a handsome majority of the votes of
their districts. A correspondent in the _Ballot-Box_ said:
The women of Minnesota are rejoicing in the measure of
justice vouchsafed them,--the right to vote and hold office
in school matters. Two hundred and seventy women voted in
Minneapolis, the governor's wife among others. Although it
rained all day they went to the polls in great numbers.
Including both East and West Minneapolis, fully 1,000 women
voted; and while the numbers in other cities and villages were
not so great, they were composed of the more intelligent. In St.
Charles, where Dr. Adaline Williams was elected to the
school-board, some of the gentlemen requested her to resign, on
the ground that she had not been properly elected. Her reply was,
"If I have not been elected, I have no need to resign; and if I
have been elected, I do not choose to resign." But to satisfy
those who doubted, she proposed that another election should be
held, which resulted in an overwhelming majority for the Doctor.
As the law says women are "eligible to any office pertaining
solely to the management of schools," one might be elected as
State superintendent of public instruction. There have been many
women elected to the office of county superintendent, and in
several counties they have been twice reëlected,[437] and
wherever women have held school offices, they have been reported
as doing efficient service. Although the law provided that women
might "vote at any election for the purpose of choosing any
officers of schools," the attorney-general gave an opinion that
it did not entitle them to vote for county superintendent; hence
"an act to entitle women to vote for county superintendent of
schools," was passed by the legislature of 1885.
The ladies' city school committee. Miss A. M. Henderson,
chairman, secured the appointment of a committee of seven women
in Minneapolis, to meet with a like number of men from each of
the political parties, to select such members of the school-board
as all could agree upon. Having thus aided in the nominations,
women were interested in their election. In 1881 Mrs. Merrill and
Miss Henderson stood at the polls all day and electioneered for
their candidates. It was said that their efforts not only decided
the choice of school officers, but elected a temperance alderman.
In many cities of the State the temperance women exert a great
influence at the polls in persuading men to vote for the best
town-officers. At the special election held in Duluth for
choosing school officers, one of the judges of election, and the
clerks at each of the polling places have for the last two years
been women who were teachers in our public schools.
The early homestead law of Minnesota illustrates how easily men
forget to bestow the same rights upon women that they carefully
secure to themselves. In 1869, the "protectors of women" enacted
a law which exempted a homestead from being sold for the payment
of debts so long as the man who held it might live, while it
allowed his widow and children to be turned out penniless and
homeless. It was not until 1875 that this law was so amended that
the exemption extended to the widow and fatherless children.
In 1877, a law was passed which gave the widow an absolute
title--or the same title her husband had--to one-third of all the
real estate, exclusive of the homestead, and of that, it gave her
the use, during her lifetime. So that now the widow has the
absolute ownership, instead of the life use of one-third of
whatever she and her husband may have together earned and saved.
That is, should there be any real estate left, over and above the
homestead, after paying all the husband's debts, she now has, not
merely the difference, as heretofore, between the amount of the
tax and the income on one-third, but she may avoid the tax and
other costs of keeping it, by selling her third, if she prefers,
and putting the money at interest. The law still puts whatever
may be left of the other two-thirds, after payment of debts, into
the hands of the probate judge and others, and the interest
thereof, or even the principal, may go to reward them for their
services, or, if falling into honest hands, it may be left for
the support and education of the children.
The legislature of 1877 submitted a constitutional amendment
giving women a vote on the temperance question. This seemed
likely to be carried by default of agitation, as was that of
school suffrage, until within a few weeks of the election, when
the liquor interest combined all its forces of men and money and
defeated it by a large majority. The next year the temperance
people made a strong effort to get the proposition re-submitted,
but to no purpose.
In 1879, acting upon the plan proposed to all the States by the
National Association, we petitioned for the adoption of a joint
resolution asking congress to submit to the several State
legislatures an amendment to the National constitution,
prohibiting the disfranchisement of woman. Mrs. Stearns and
others followed up the petitions with letters to the most
influential members, in which they argued that the legislatures
of the States, not the rank and file of the electors, ought to
decide this question; and further, that the same congress that
had granted woman the privilege of pleading a case before the
Supreme Court of the United States would doubtless pass a
resolution submitting to the legislatures the decision of the
question of her right to have her opinion on all questions
counted at the ballot-box. The result was a majority of six in
the Senate in favor of the resolution, while in the House there
was a majority of five against it.
Since 1879, our legislature has met biënnially. In 1881 the
temperance women of the State again petitioned for the right to
vote on the question of licensing the sale of liquor. Failing to
get that, or a prohibitory law, they became more than ever
convinced of the necessity of full suffrage. The annual meetings
of the State Union[438] have ever since been spoken of by the
press as "suffrage conventions," because they always pass
resolutions making the demand.
Mr. L. Bixby, editor of the _State Temperance Review_, gives
several columns to the temperance and suffrage societies. Mrs.
Helen E. Gallinger, the editor of these departments, is a lady of
great ability and earnestness. Mr. Charles H. Dubois, editor of
_The Spectator_, gives ample space in his columns to notes of
women. Miss Mary C. Le Duc is connected with _The Spectator_.
Other journals have aided our cause, though not in so pronounced
a way. Mrs. C. F. Bancroft, editor of the _Mantorville Express_,
and Mrs. Bella French, of a county paper at Spring Valley, Mrs.
Annie Mitchell, the wife of one editor and the mother of another,
for many years their business associate, have all given valuable
services to our cause, while pecuniarily benefiting themselves.
The necessity of finding a voice when something needed to be
said, and of using a pen when something needed to be written, has
developed considerable talent for public speaking and writing
among the women of this State.[439]
All our State institutions are favorable to coëducation, and give
equal privileges to all. The Minnesota University has been open
to women since its foundation, and from 1875 to 1885 fifty-six
young women were graduated with high honor to themselves and
their sex.[440] Miss Maria L. Sanford has been professor of
rhetoric and elocution for many years. The faculties of the State
Normal Schools are largely composed of women. Hamline University
and Carlton College are conducted on principles of true equality.
At Carlton Miss Margaret Evans is preceptress and teacher of
modern languages. Of the Rochester High School, Miss Josephine
Hegeman is principal; of Wasioga, Miss C. T. Atwood; of Eyota
Union School, Miss Adell M'Kinley.[441]
For many years Mrs. M. R. Smith was employed as State Librarian.
Mrs. H. J. M'Caine for the past ten years has been librarian at
St. Paul, with Miss Grace A. Spaulding as assistant. Among the
engrossing and enrolling clerks of our legislature, Miss Alice
Weber is the only lady's name we find, though the men holding
those offices usually employ a half dozen women to assist them in
copying, allowing each two-thirds of the price paid by the State,
or ten cents per folio.
[Illustration: Sarah Burger Stearns]
In this State the suffrage cause has had the sympathy of not a
few noble women in the successful practice of the healing art;
thus lending their influence for the political emancipation of
their sex, while blessing the community with their medical skill.
To Doctors Hood and Whetstone is due the credit of establishing
the Northwestern Hospital for Women and Children, and training
school for nurses, of which they are now the attending
physicians; and Dr. Hood also attends the Bethany Home, founded
by the sisterhood of Bethany, for the benefit of friendless girls
and women. In the town of Detroit may be seen a drug store neatly
fitted up, with "Ogden's Pharmacy" over the door, and upon it, in
gilt letters, "Emma K. Ogden, M. D." While the doctor practices
her profession, she employs a young woman as prescription clerk.
The Minnesota State Medical Society has admitted nine women to
membership.[442]
Conspicuous among evangelists in this State are Mrs. Mary C.
Nind, Minneapolis, Mrs. Mary A. Shepardson, Wasioga, Mrs. Ruth
Cogswell Rowell, Winona, and Rev. Eliza Tupper Wilkes, Rochester.
Thus far this chapter has been given mainly to individuals in the
State, and to the home influences that have aided in creating
sentiment in favor of full suffrage for woman. United with these
have been other influences coming like the rays of the morning
sun directly from the East where so many noble women are at work
for the freedom of their sex. Among them are some of the most
popular lecturers in the country.[443]
In September, 1881, representative women from various localities
met at Hastings and organized a State Woman Suffrage
Association[444] auxiliary to the National. During the first year
one hundred and twenty-four members were enrolled. During the
second the membership more than doubled. In October, 1882, the
association held its first annual meeting. The audiences were
large, and the speakers[445] most heartily applauded. Mrs. Nelson
presided. In her letter of greeting to this meeting, from which
ill-health obliged her to be absent, the president urged the
association to firmly adhere to the principles of the National
Association. Let us not ask for an amendment to the State
constitution, and thus put it in the power of ignorance and
prejudice to deny the boon we seek; while we are auxiliary to the
National let us work according to its plans. Mrs. Stearns was
unanimously reëlected president, and her views heartily endorsed.
In the spring of '83, at the request of the State society, and
with the generous consent of Mr. Bixby, the editor of the _State
Temperance Review_, Mrs. Helen E. Gallinger commenced editing a
woman suffrage column in that paper. This has been a very
convenient medium of communication between the State society and
the local auxiliaries which have since been organized by Mrs. L.
May Wheeler, who was employed as lecturer and organizer,[446] in
the summer and fall of 1883. Auxiliary societies had previously
been organized by Mrs. Stearns, in St. Paul and Minneapolis. The
Kasson society, formed in 1872, also became auxiliary to the
State.
During the Northwestern Industrial Exhibition, held in
Minneapolis August, 1883, a woman suffrage headquarters was
fitted up on the fair-grounds, in a fine large tent, made
attractive by flags, banners and mottoes. The State and local
societies were represented, officers and members being there to
receive all who were in sympathy, to talk suffrage to opposers,
to pass out good leaflets, and to exhibit copies of the Woman
Suffrage History. At the annual convention this year we were
honored by the presence of Julia Ward Howe and Mrs. Marianna
Folsom of Iowa, and many of the clergymen[447] of Minneapolis.
Rev. E. S. Williams gave the address of welcome, and paid a
beautiful tribute to the self-sacrificing leaders in this holy
crusade. Mrs. Howe not only encouraged us with her able words of
cheer, but she presided at the piano while her Battle Hymn of the
Republic was sung, and seemed to give it new inspiration. In the
course of her remarks the president said:
Should congress finally adopt that long-pending amendment in
the winter of 1883-4 enfranchising women, we should still
have work to do in 1885 to secure the ratification of this
amendment by our State legislature. But should congress
still refuse, let us be thankful that the way is opening for
women to secure their freedom by the power of the
legislature independent of all constitutional amendments, as
there is nothing in ordinary State constitutions to prevent
legislators from extending suffrage to women by legislative
enactment. The constitution of the State of Minnesota simply
enfranchises men, and does not even mention women; we have
clearly nothing to do but to convince our legislators that
they are free to give educated women full suffrage.
With this view the society adopted the following resolution:
_Resolved_, That we accept with joy the argument that comes
to us from the east and from the west declaring suffrage
amendments to State constitutions unnecessary, because the
word "male," occurring as it does in most State
constitutions, in no wise restrains legislatures from
extending full suffrage to women, should they feel inclined
to do so. Be it also
_Resolved_, That it therefore becomes our duty to talk with
all men and women who are friendly to our cause, and ask
them to examine the argument, and if it commends itself to
their judgment, to give us the benefit of their convictions.
Though passing the above resolutions at that time, the State
Association of course waits to see what may be done, in view of
this new idea, by older and stronger States whose constitutions
are similar to ours. Although failing health induced Mrs.
Stearns, in the fall of 1883, to resign her suffrage work into
other hands, and ask to be excused from any office whatever, she
has, with improving health lately accepted the presidency of an
Equal Rights League in Duluth. Dr. Ripley was not present
herself at the convention[448] which chose her for president for
the ensuing year, being then at the East, but immediately after
returning, she entered upon her new duties with enthusiasm. As
there was to be no legislature in 1884, there could be no
petitioning, except to continue the work commenced as long ago as
1871, of petitioning congress for a sixteenth amendment. The work
was carried on with vigor, and many hundreds of names obtained in
a short time. Early in 1884 Mrs. L. May Wheeler continued to
lecture in the interests of the suffrage cause. While so engaged
she issued her "Collection of Temperance and Suffrage Melodies."
In 1884 a woman suffrage headquarters was again fitted up in
Newspaper Row, on the grounds of the Northwestern Industrial
Exhibition. The large tent was shared by the State W. C. T. U.,
and appropriately decked within and without to represent both of
the State organizations and their auxiliaries. A large amount of
suffrage and temperance literature was distributed among the many
who were attracted by the novelty of the sight and sentiments
displayed on banners and flags.
As Minneapolis had already become headquarters for the suffrage
work of the State, it was thought best to again hold the annual
meeting in that city. This was in October, continuing two days,
and was both interesting and encouraging. Dr. Martha G. Ripley
presided. Many interesting letters were read, and cheering
telegrams received.[449] Miss Marion Lowell recited "The Legend,"
by Mary Agnes Ticknor, and "Was he Henpecked?" by Phebe Cary,
Mrs. A. M. Tyng of Austin, made a good speech, also recited a
poem entitled "Jane Conquest." Mr. Lars Oure of Norway, spoke
well upon the "Claims of Woman." Dr. L. W. Denton of Minneapolis,
gave a very good address. Dr. Martha G. Ripley spoke on suffrage
as a natural right, and in support of this view read extracts
from a pamphlet entitled, "Woman Suffrage a Right, and not a
Privilege," by Wm. I. Bowditch; Eliza Burt Gamble of St. Paul,
read a very able paper on "Woman and the Church"; Mrs. Stearns
spoke upon the new era to be inaugurated when women have the
ballot. Miss Emma Harriman read a bright and entertaining paper.
The fine address of the occasion was given by Rev. W. W.
Satterlee, showing the nation's need of woman's vote. Judge and
Mrs. Hemiup, of Minneapolis, just returned from a visit to
Wyoming Territory, were present. The judge made several speeches,
and was enthusiastic in his praise of the workings of woman
suffrage there. He and his wife are now active members of the
State and city (Minneapolis) suffrage societies. The judge is
also a member of the State executive committee.
Wishing to give honor to whom honor is due, we would mention the
brave young women who have formed the Christian Temperance
Unions, the leading spirits[450] in this grand movement in
Minneapolis, St. Paul, Winona and St. Cloud. Their names will be
usually found as delegates to the annual meetings of all the
State Unions. The small army of noble girls who have helped to
make the Good Templars' lodges attractive and worthy resorts for
their brothers and friends, have done an inestimable work in
elevating the moral tone of the community all over the State.
They have also done their full share in petitioning congress for
a sixteenth amendment, in which they have received most untiring
help from the young men of the lodges. In 1884 Miss Frances
Willard again visited the State, advocating the ballot as well as
the Bible as an aid to temperance work. Her eloquent voice here
as elsewhere woke many to serious thought on the danger of this
national vice to the safety and stability of our republican
institutions. It was through Miss Willard's influence, no doubt,
that the friends of temperance established a department of
franchise for the State, and made Mrs. E. L. Crockett its
superintendent.
The women of Minnesota seem thus far to have no special calling
to the legal profession. Mrs. Martha Angle Dorsett is the only
woman as yet admitted to the bar. She was graduated from the law
school at Des Moines, and admitted to practice before the Supreme
Court of Iowa in June, 1876. She was refused admission at first
in Minnesota, whereupon she appealed to the legislature, which in
1877 enacted a law securing the right to women by a vote of 63 to
30 in the House, and 26 to 6 in the Senate.
In some of the larger cities and towns the literary, musical and
dramatic taste of our women[451] is evidenced by societies and
clubs for mutual improvement. Many are attending classes for the
study of natural history, classic literature, social science,
etc. There is an art club in Minneapolis, composed wholly of
artists, both ladies and gentlemen, which meets every week, the
members making sketches from life. Miss Julie C. Gauthier had on
exhibition at the New Orleans Exposition, a full-length portrait,
true to life, of a colored man, "Pony," a veteran wood-sawer of
St. Paul, which received very complimentary notices from art
critics of that city, as well as from the press generally.
In the Business Colleges of Mr. Curtis at St. Paul and
Minneapolis, many women are teachers, and many more are educated
as shorthand reporters, telegraphers, and book-keepers. These
have no difficulty in finding places after completing their
college course. Nearly fifty young women are employed in the
principal towns of the State as telegraphers alone. Miss Mary M.
Cary has been employed for seven years as operator and station
agent at Wayzata, for the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba R. R.
Her services are highly valued, as well they may be, for during
her absence from the station two men are required to do her work.
By her talents and industry she has acquired a thorough education
for herself, besides educating her two younger sisters. Mrs. Anna
B. Underwood of Lake City, has for many years been secretary of a
firm conducting a large nursery of fruit trees, plants and
flowers. Her husband being one of the partners, she has taken a
large share of the general management. The orchard yields a
profit of over $1,000 a year.
From the list of names to be found in the Appendix, we see that
Minnesota is remarkable for its galaxy of superior women actively
engaged as speakers and writers[452] in many reforms, as well as
in the trades and professions, and in varied employments. One of
the great advantages of pioneer life is the necessity to man of
woman's help in all the emergencies of these new conditions in
which their forces and capacities are called into requisition.
She thus acquires a degree of self-reliance, courage and
independence, that would never be called out in older
civilizations, and commands a degree of respect from the men at
her side that can only be learned in their mutual dependence.
FOOTNOTES:
[431] The names of the young women who applied for admission to the
classical course of the Michigan State University, in 1858, were
Sarah Burger, Clara Norton, Ellen F. Thompson, Ada A. Alvord, Rose
Anderson, Helen White, Amanda Kieff, Lizzie Baker, Nellie Baker,
Anna Lathrop, Carrie Felch, Mary Becker, Adeline Ladd and Harriet
Patton.
[432] See Appendix, Chapter XLVII., note A.
[433] For further account of Mrs. Swisshelm's patriotic work in
Minnesota see her "Reminiscences of Half a Century": Janson,
McClurg & Co., Chicago, Ill.
[434] The three women were, Mrs. Almira W. Anthony (whose husband
was a cousin of Susan B. Anthony), Mrs. Mary Powell Wheeler and
Mrs. Hattie M. White.
[435] In a volume of Minnesota biography, Mrs. VanCleve is reported
as a woman of great force of character, strong in her convictions
of what is right, and fearless in following the dictates of her
conscience. She was one of the original founders of the Sisterhood
of Bethany, a society for the reformation of unfortunate women, and
has held the position of president since its formation. Through the
medium of lectures and social influence, she has enlisted the
sympathy of a large number of the community. She has served
faithfully as a member of the East Minneapolis board of education,
and has always improved every opportunity to advocate the right of
suffrage for women. She is a member of the State Suffrage Society,
and has been for many years honorary vice-president for this State,
of the National Suffrage Association. The following interesting
fact is told of her, on the authority of Major-General R. W.
Johnson. It was given in an address delivered by that gentleman
before the old settlers' association of Hennepin county, at a
reunion in the city of Minneapolis: Many years ago a soldier at
Fort Snelling received an injury to his feet, and mortification
ensued. Amputation became necessary and the case could not be
postponed until a surgeon could be sent for, because there was none
nearer than the post-surgeon at Prairie du Chien. No gentleman in
the garrison was willing to undertake so difficult an operation.
Equal to any emergency, Mrs. VanCleve, on hearing of the case,
resolved to make the attempt. She performed the operation
skillfully, and saved the soldier's life.
[436] Mrs. Charlotte S. Winchell was a graduate of Albion College,
Michigan, and came to this State in 1873, with her husband, Prof.
Newton H. Winchell, widely known as Minnesota's State geologist.
Mrs. Winchell has always been an advocate of suffrage for woman,
and cheerfully accepted the position on the school board, serving
as clerk. She took an active part in the nominations and elections
of school officers. She was chairman of the committee for
introducing temperance text books into the schools, secretary of
the Woman's Board of Foreign Missions, a member of the State and
City Suffrage Societies, and of the Association for the Advancement
of Women.
[437] For names of women elected as school directors and county
superintendents, see Appendix to Minnesota, Chapter XLVII., Note B.
[438] The officers of the Minnesota State W. C. T. U. are:
_President_, Mrs. H. A. Hobart; _Vice-Presidents_, Mrs. Mary A.
Shepardson, Mrs. E. J. Holley, Mrs. R. C. C. Gale, Mrs. H. C. May,
Mrs. L. M. Wylie; _Recording Secretary_, Mrs. D. S. Haywood;
_Corresponding Secretaries_, Mrs. E. S. Wright, Miss M. E.
Mclntyre; _Treasurer_, Miss A. M. Henderson. Editor W. C. T. U.
department of _Temperance Review_, Mrs. Helen E. Gallinger.
[439] See Appendix, Chapter XLVII., Note C.
[440] During the same decade 138 young men were graduated from the
different departments of the University.
[441] For names of graduates and professors, see Appendix, Chapter
XLVII., Note D.
[442] See Appendix, Chapter XLVII., Note F.
[443] Miss Anna Dickinson, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Howe, Miss Alice
Fletcher, Miss Frances Willard, Mrs. Wittenmeyer, Mrs. Sarah B.
Chase, M. D. In the years 1875-6, Mrs. Stanton favored our State
with a series of lectures that awakened much interest. In 1878-9,
Miss Anthony came, and spoke in the principal cities. From Iowa
came Mrs. J. Ellen Foster, Matilda Fletcher, and Marianna Folsom,
and from Missouri, Miss Phoebe Couzins.
[444] _President_, Sarah Burger Stearns; _Vice-President_, Julia
Bullard Nelson; _Recording Secretary_, Mrs. C. Smith; _Treasurer_,
Mrs. H. J. Moffit; _Executive Committee_, Mrs. Minnie Reed, Mrs. L.
H. Clark, Mrs. R. Coons; _Corresponding Sec'y_, Mrs. Laura Howe
Carpenter. The following were the charter members: Mrs. Harriet E.
Bishop, Mrs. Martha Luly, St. Paul; Mrs. A. T. Anderson, Mrs. H. J.
Moffit, Mrs. C. Smith, Minneapolis; Mrs. Harriet A. Hobart, Julia
Bullard Nelson, Mrs. R. Coons, Red Wing; Sarah Burger Stearns,
Duluth; Mrs. L. C. Clarke, Worthington; Mrs. L. G. Finen, Albert
Lea; Mrs. K. E. Webster, Mrs. Minnie Reed, Mrs. M. A. VanHoesen,
Hastings.
[445] Mrs. Nelson, Mrs. Hobart, Mr. Satterlee, Mrs. Charlotte O.
Van Cleve, Mrs. Laura Howe Carpenter, Mrs. Viola Fuller Miner.
[446] The societies organized were at Wayzata, Farmington, Red
Wing, Mantorille, Excelsior, Rochford, Lake City, Shakopee, and
Jordan: committees for suffrage work were also formed in the
following places: Anoka, Armstrong, Blakely, Brooklyn Center,
Champlin, Frontenac, Long Prairie, Long Lake, and Wabashaw.
[447] Rev. W. W. Satterlee, Rev. H. M. Simmons, Rev. F. J. Wagner,
whose church we occupied, and others. The speakers at this
convention were Mr. and Mrs. Dubois, Mrs. Wheeler, Mrs. Elliott,
Mrs. Hobart, Mrs. Carpenter, Miss Harriman. Letters were received
from Mrs. Devereux Blake, Dr. Clemence Lozier, Rev. J. B. Tuttle,
H. B. Blackwell, Lucy Stone and Col. T. W. Higginson.
[448] The officers elected at this convention were: _President_,
Martha G. Ripley, M. D., Minneapolis; _Vice-President_, Mrs. Lizzie
Manson, Shakopee; _Recording Secretary_, Mary T. Emery, M. D., St.
Paul; _Corresponding Secretary_, Emma Harriman, Minneapolis;
_Treasurer_, Mrs. Helen E. Gallinger, Minneapolis; _Executive
Committee_, Mrs. S. K. Crawford, Anoka; Mrs. M. A. Warner, Hamline;
Mrs. F. G. Gould, Excelsior; Rev. E. S. Williams, Prof. W. A.
Carpenter, Mrs. A. T. Anderson and Mrs. Laura Howe Carpenter,
Minneapolis.
[449] From John G. Whittier, Mrs. Julia B. Nelson (teaching school
in Tennessee) and Henry B. Blackwell.
[450] Miss Carrie Holbrook, Miss Eva McIntyre, Miss Harriman.
[451] See Appendix, Chapter XLVII., Note F.
[452] See Appendix, Chapter XLVII., Note G.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
DAKOTA.
Influences of Climate and Scenery--Legislative Action, 1872--Mrs.
Marietta Bones--In February, 1879, School Suffrage Granted
Women--Constitutional Convention, 1883--Matilda Joslyn Gage
Addressed a Letter to the Convention and an Appeal to the Women
of the State--Mrs. Bones Addressed the Convention in Person--The
Effort to Get the Word "Male" Out of the Constitution
Failed--Legislature of 1885--Major Pickler Presents the
Bill--Carried Through Both Houses--Governor Pierce's Veto--Major
Pickler's Letter.
Philosophers have had much to say of the effect of climate and
scenery upon the human family--the inspiring influence of the grand
and the boundless in broadening the thought of the people and
stimulating them to generous action. Hence, one might naturally
look for liberal ideas among a people surrounded with such vast
possessions as are in the territory of Dakota. But alas! there
seems to be no correspondence in this republic between areas and
constitutions. Although Dakota comprises 96,595,840 acres, yet
one-half her citizens are defrauded of their rights precisely as
they are in the little States of Delaware and Rhode Island. The
inhabitants denied the right of suffrage by their territorial
constitution are, the Indians not taxed (a hint that those who pay
taxes vote), idiots, convicts and women. But from records sent us
by Mrs. Marietta Bones, to whom we are indebted for this chapter,
there seem to have been some spasmodic climatic influences at work,
though not sufficiently strong as yet to get that odious word
"male" out of the constitution. Our Dakota historian says:
The territorial legislature, in the year 1872, came within one
vote of enfranchising women. That vote was cast by Hon. W. W.
Moody, who, let it be said to his credit, most earnestly espoused
the cause in our constitutional convention in 1883, and said in
the course of his remarks: "Are not my wife and daughter as
competent to vote as I am to hold office?" which question caused
prolonged laughter among the most ignorant of the delegates, and
cries of, "You're right, Judge!" Although it is deeply to be
regretted that through one vote twelve years ago our women were
deprived of freedom, yet we must forgive Judge Moody on the
ground that "it is never too late to mend."
In February, 1879, the legislature revised the school law, and
provided that women should vote at school meetings. That law was
repealed in March, 1883, by the school township law, which
requires regular polls and a private ballot, so, of course,
excluding women from the small privilege given them in 1879. That
act, however, excepted fifteen counties[453]--the oldest and most
populous--which had districts fully established, and therein
women still vote at school meetings.
In townships which are large and have many schools under one
board and no districts, the people select which school they
desire their children to attend. The persons who may so select
are parents: first, the father; next, the mother, if there be no
father living; guardians (women or men), and "persons having in
charge children of school age." These persons hold a meeting
annually of their "school," and such women vote there, and one of
them may be chosen moderator for the school, to hold one year.
This office is a sort of responsible agency for the school, and
between it and the township board.
Since the legislation upon the subject of school suffrage there
has not been much work done for the promotion of the cause. The
wide distances between towns and the sparsely settled country
make our people comparative strangers to each other. We lack
organization; the country is too new; in fact, the most and only
work for woman suffrage has been done by Matilda Joslyn Gage and
myself, and, owing to disadvantages mentioned, that has been but
little. Mrs. Gage reached Dakota just at the close of the Huron
convention, held in June, 1883, to discuss the question of
territorial division. The resolutions of the convention declared
that just governments derived their powers from the consent of
the governed; that Dakota possessed a population of 200,000,
women included; that the people of a territory have the right, in
their sovereign capacity, to adopt a constitution and form a
State government. Accordingly, a convention was called for the
purpose of enabling those residing in that part of Dakota south
of the forty-sixth parallel to organize a State. Mrs. Gage at
once addressed a letter to the women of the territory and to the
constitutional convention assembled at Sioux Falls:
_To the Women of Dakota:_
A convention of men will assemble at Sioux Falls, September
4, for the purpose of framing a constitution and pressing
upon congress the formation of a State of the southern half
of the territory. This is the moment for women to act; it is
the decisive moment. There can never again come to the women
of Dakota an hour like the present. A constitution is the
fundamental law of the State; upon it all statute laws are
based, and upon the fact whether woman is inside or outside
the pale of the constitution, her rights in the State
depend.
The code of Dakota, under the head of "Personal Relations,"
says: "The husband is the head of the family. He may choose
any reasonable place, or mode of living, and the wife must
conform thereto." Under this class legislation, which was
framed by man entirely in his own interests, the husband
may, and in many cases does, file a preëmption claim, build
a shanty, and place his wife upon the ground as "a
reasonable place and mode of living," while he remains in
town in pursuit of business or pleasure.
Let us examine this condition of affairs a little closer. If
the wife is not pleased with this "place and mode of
living," but should leave it, she is, under this law of
class legislation, liable to be advertised as having left
the husband's bed and board, wherefore he will pay no debts
of her contracting. And how is it if she remains on this
until her continued residence upon it has enabled her
husband to prove up? Does she then share in its benefits? Is
she then half owner of the land? By no means. Chapter 3,
section 83, article V. of the Code, says: "No estate is
allowed the husband or tenant by courtesy upon the death of
his wife, nor is any estate in dower allowed to the wife
upon the death of the husband."
This article carries a specious fairness on its face, but it
is a bundle of wrongs to woman. By the United States law,
only "the head of the family" is allowed to enter
lands--either a preëmption, homestead or tree claim. In
unison with the United States, the law of Dakota (see
chapter 3, section 76) recognizes the husband as the head of
the family, and then declares that no estate in dower is
allowed to the wife upon the death of her husband. Neither
has she any claim upon any portion of this land the husband,
as head of the family, may take, except the homestead, in
which she is recognized as joint owner. The preëmption claim
upon which, in a comfortless claim-shanty, she may have
lived for six months, or longer, if upon unsurveyed land, as
"the reasonable place and mode of living" her husband has
selected for her, does not belong to her at all. She has no
part nor share in it. Upon proving, her husband may at once
sell, or deed it away as a gift, and she has no redress. It
was not hers. The law so declares; but she is her husband's,
to the extent that she can be thus used to secure 160 acres
of land for him, over which she has no right, title, claim
or interest. I have not space to pursue this subject
farther, but will assure the women of Dakota that reading
the code, and the session laws of the territory will be more
interesting to them than any novel. If they wish to still
farther know their wrongs, let them look in the code under
the heads of "Parent and Child," "Crimes Defined," "Probate
Court," etc., etc.
Every woman in Dakota should be immediately at work.
Inasmuch as the constitution is the fundamental law of the
State, it should be the effort of the women of Dakota to
prevent the introduction of the restrictive word "male." The
delegates to the Sioux Falls convention have now largely
been elected. Address letters of protest to them against
making the constitution an organ of class legislation. In as
far as possible have personal interviews with these
delegates, and by speech make known your wishes on this
point. These are your only methods of representation. You
have in no way signified your desire for a constitution. You
have not been permitted to help make these laws which rob
you of property, and many other things more valuable. Many
women are settling in Dakota. Unmarried women and widows in
large numbers are taking up claims here, and their property
is taxed to help support the government and the men who make
these iniquitous laws.
I have not mentioned a thousandth part of the wrongs done
woman by her being deprived of the right of self-government.
Every injustice under which she suffers, as wife, mother,
woman, child, in property and person, is due to the fact
that she is not recognized as man's political equal--and her
only power is that of protest. Lose not a moment, then,
women of Dakota, in objecting to the introduction of the
word "male" into the proposed new constitution. Besides
seeing and writing to delegates, make effort to be present
at Sioux Falls during the time of the convention, to labor
with delegates from distant points, and to go before
committees, and the convention itself, with your protests.
Above all, remember that _now_ is the decisive hour.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Vice-President-at-Large_,
_National Woman Suffrage Association_.
Mrs. Gage also addressed the following to the constitutional
convention:
_Gentlemen of the Convention_: The work upon which you are
now engaged is an important one in the interests of liberty,
that of framing a constitution for a proposed new State. As
a constitution is the fundamental law, its provisions should
be general in their character, equally recognizing the
rights of all its citizens by its protective powers. Our
National principle, that governments derive their just
powers from the consent of the governed, is becoming more
and more widely recognized.
At an early day suffrage was restricted by qualifications of
property and education in many of the States, and the
removal of such restrictions has been left entirely to the
States, except in the one instance of color. Within the last
two decades, by amendments to the national constitution, all
States are forbidden to exclude citizens from the ballot
upon that account.
As "sex" is now the only remaining disqualification, on
behalf of the National Woman Suffrage Association I ask you
to omit the word "male" from your proposed constitution, and
leave the women of Dakota free to exercise the right of
suffrage. We simply ask you to make your State a true
republic, in which all your citizens may stand equal before
the law. While foreign men of every nation are welcomed to
your magnificent prairies as equals, it is humiliating to
the women of the territory, who are helping you to develop
its resources, who have endured with you all the hardships
of pioneer life, to be treated as inferiors, outside the
pale of political consideration. It should be the pride of
Dakota to take the initiative step in the legislation of the
period, now steadily growing more liberal, and by one
generous and graceful act accord to the women of this
territory all the rights, privileges and immunities that men
claim for themselves.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE,
_Vice-President-at-Large, N. W. S. A._
_Aberdeen, Dakota, Sept. 3, 1883._
It is to be regretted that the argument presented by Mrs. Gage
could not convince that honorable body of the injustice of laws
towards woman. To me was given the privilege of addressing the
convention. I said:
_Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention_: The honor
conferred on me, of being allowed to address you on this
important occasion is fully appreciated. I am here in behalf
of the women of our territory, who are opposed to being left
in the State organization with no more authority in the
government than paupers, lunatics and idiots. We are willing
to do one-half of the manual labor in this country, and will
promptly pay our portion of the taxes. As sober and peaceful
citizens, we compare favorably with the other sex. I have
the honor to present to you a petition signed by hundreds of
Day county voters, praying your honorable body not to allow
the word "male" to be incorporated within our State
constitution. There is no doubt that this petition speaks
the honest sentiment of the people throughout the territory.
In but a single instance was I refused a name, and in a
second case a man hesitated, saying, "Well, now, if it's as
many rights you're wantin' es I hev got fur meself, you'll
be after signin' my name fur me--fur I niver do any writin'
at all fur meself." And yet that man whose name I had to
write has more rights in this, his adopted country, than I
and all other women have in this our native land. The right
of franchise, which has heretofore been regarded as a
privilege, should more properly be considered a right--a
right to be exercised by every citizen for the public good.
If there is not another woman in Dakota who wants to vote, I
do! There is no doubt that many women are indifferent upon
this subject, but when once given the ballot you will see
that their progress will equal, if not exceed, that of the
emancipated slaves in the South. Look at Wyoming Territory,
where woman suffrage has a fair test; no one will deny it
has proved a marked success. Elections there now are quiet
and more orderly than they are elsewhere. Before the
enfranchisement of the women of Wyoming, election days were
a terror generally, being both boisterous and riotous. It is
really true that Dakota men are the most energetic and
enterprising anywhere to be found, and in number they
largely exceed our women. Gentlemen, make this the most
advantageous State for women, and they will soon be wending
their way hither. Women have been granted select committees
in both Houses of congress, and better still, each of those
committees has given us a majority report in favor of a
sixteenth amendment to the constitution of the United
States, prohibiting the disfranchisement of citizens on
account of sex. Gentlemen, delegates of this State
constitutional convention, I now appeal to your highest
sense of honor and justice to give us the right to
vote--give it to us, not because we possess any particular
merit, but give it to us because it is our right! Then
Dakota will in fact be "a home of the free"--honored by all
nations, and the Banner State of the Union [applause].
But, after all our work and pleading, they turned a deaf
ear--infinitely worse, they were dishonest; at least this was
true of the committee on elections. I was present at every
meeting of that committee. At their last, I was with them three
hours (the entire session) to answer objections. One member made
the motion, "that the word 'male' be not incorporated within our
State constitution." The vote on the motion was a tie, when the
chairman cast his vote in the affirmative. After weeks of hard
work I had reached the goal! and with eyes brim full of tears,
thanked that committee. They then adjourned, to report in open
convention the next morning to my utter surprise, that "Women may
vote at school elections and for school officers." No words of
mine can express the disappointment and humiliation this defeat
of justice caused me.
Among the hundreds of questions asked me by that committee were
these: "Do you want a prohibitory plank in our State
constitution?" Answer: "No; prohibition should be settled by the
people; it cannot be with one-half our citizens disfranchised,
and that half its most earnest advocates." "Do you think
prohibition prohibits?" "No; man's prohibitory laws are good
enough, but he does not enforce them; women have not the
authority to do so; but if you will give us the power, we will
soon have prohibition that _will_ prohibit." A voice: "I believe
it!" "Do you think the majority of women want to vote?" "I do
not; but is that any reason why you should deprive the one who
does? You do not force men to vote; women, as a rule, have not
given this subject the attention they should; many of them are as
ignorant of the advantages the ballot would secure as were the
negroes when John Brown raised the insurrection at Harper's
Ferry."
There is a trite saying: "The darkest hour is just before the
dawn." The day cannot be far distant when Dakota's women will be
free; for the most intelligent men, and those occupying the most
prominent positions in our territory, are avowed friends of
suffrage. Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court for Dakota, Hon. A.
J. Edgerton, said in his Fourth of July oration here: "How
necessary it is for us to elect only good and honest men to
office! To do this, woman likewise must act her part in the labor
of arresting the advance of crime and corruption, although
through timidity the politician is slow to invest her with the
higher duties and obligations of American citizenship."
This same just judge has appointed a woman (Mrs. Washburn of
Chamberlain) stenographer of his judicial district--the best
salaried office in his gift.[454] With the assistance of this
grand man (occupying the highest position in our territory), and
many others equally efficient, it is not to be supposed that our
most intelligent women will be obliged to wait for the education
of the most ignorant men to consent to their enfranchisement.
In the last legislature (1885) Major John A. Pickler introduced a
bill enfranchising the women of the territory, which, after full
discussion, passed the House by 29 to 18,[455] and the Council by
14 to 10. The hopes of the friends were soon disappointed by the
governor's veto:
EXECUTIVE OFFICE, BISMARK, D. T., March 13, 1885.
_To the Speaker of the House of Representatives:_
I herewith return House file No. 71, with my objections to
its becoming a law. A measure of this kind demands careful
and candid consideration, both because of its importance and
because of the acknowledged sincerity and high character of
those who favor it. There are certain reasons, however, why
I cannot approve such a measure at this time, and other
reasons why I cannot approve this particular bill. It is
desirable, in my judgment, that we act, so far as possible,
as if we were governed, restrained and guided by a
constitution adopted by ourselves. If we had a constitution
modeled after those of the States, an extraordinary
proposition like this would be submitted to the people. If
congress thinks woman suffrage wise, it has the power to
establish it. It is unfair to shift the responsibility on
the territory and then hold it responsible for alleged
imprudent legislation. I am assured the enactment of this
law will delay our claims to statehood, and in so critical a
period it is better that no pretext whatever be given for
such postponement. It is doubted by many if a majority of
the women of Dakota want the franchise. The point is made,
and a very good one, that the fact that one woman does not
want a right is not a justifiable reason for refusing it to
another who does, yet it must not be forgotten that the
enfranchisement of women confers not only a privilege but a
grave burden and responsibility. We condemn the man who
neglects to vote as recreant to his duty. If women are
enfranchised, the right conferred becomes an obligation as
imperious to them as to men; on those opposed as on those
who favor the act. I think the women of Dakota should have a
voice in determining whether they should assume this burden
or not. So much for the general proposition. There are two
other features of this bill which I can scarcely think
satisfactory to the advocates of woman suffrage themselves.
I am satisfied that they should appear in a measure claiming
to advance the rights of women. If the vote of a woman is
needed anywhere, it is in our cities. In many existing city
charters a distinct clause appears, providing that males
alone shall possess the qualifications of electors. In this
bill the word "male" is only stricken out of one chapter of
the code, leaving the disability still standing against
hundreds of women equally entitled to recognition. The women
of Sioux Falls, the women of Mitchell, the women of
Brookings, the women of Chamberlain, of Watertown and a
great many of the more important cities in southern Dakota,
would be disqualified from voting under these special
enactments, even though this bill became a law at this very
session. Charters have been created with that provision
retained, and they would make this bill abortive and largely
inoperative. A still more objectionable feature, and one
deliberately inserted, is the clause debarring women from
the right to hold office. If the word "male" had been
stricken out of the code, and no other action taken, they
would have been eligible, and I believe there is a wide
feeling that many offices, particularly those connected with
penal and benevolent institutions, could be most
appropriately filled with women, but this clause practically
forbids their appointment. If women are good enough to vote
they are good enough to be voted for. If they are qualified
to choose officials, they are qualified to be chosen. I
don't say that I would approve this measure were it
otherwise worded, but I certainly would not indorse a bill
which thus keeps the word of promise to the ear and breaks
it to the hope, which deliberately and avowedly debars and
disqualifies women while assuming to exalt and honor them.
These objections are apart from the abstract right of women
to the ballot, but they show how necessary it is to approach
such a subject with deliberation. If women are to be
enfranchised, let it be done, not as a thirty days' wonder,
but as a merited reform resulting from mature reflection,
approved by the public conscience and sanctioned by the
enlightened judgment of the people.
[Signed:] GILBERT A. PIERCE, _Governor_.
An effort was promptly made to carry the measure over the
governor's veto, which failed by a vote of 18 to 26.
During the last session of the legislature a large public meeting
was held in Bismarck, at which many of the members spoke strongly
in favor of the woman suffrage amendment, the chief-justice and a
majority of his associates advocating the measure. Mrs. Gage, in
a letter from Dakota, said:
An acquaintance of mine, the owner of a green-house, sent
each of the members voting "aye" a buttonhole bouquet, a
badge of honor which marked our friends for a few hours at
least. It is a pertinent fact that, while the opposition
insist that women do not want to vote, in a single county of
this sparsely settled territory 222 women did vote in the
midst of a severe storm. In a series of articles signed
"Justice," published in the Bismarck _Tribune_, we find the
following:
The women of Dakota do desire the power to vote. One year
ago a majority of the commissioners of Kingsbury county
signed a request that at an election to be held March 4,
1884, the women should, with the men, express their wishes
by vote upon a specified question of local policy. The women
immediately responded, prepared their separate ballot-boxes,
placed them in charge of the election officers by the side
of the men's boxes upon the same table at De Smet and other
towns, and voted all day side by side with the men, casting
throughout the county 222 votes. A more orderly election was
never known. No self-respect was lost and no woman was
lowered in public esteem. Clergymen, lawyers, merchants,
farmers, all voted with their wives, the ballots going into
different boxes. One thousand men voted in the county. The
day was stormy and snow deep on the ground. If 222 women in
one county would without previous experience spring forward
to vote on a week's notice, is it to be supposed they do not
appreciate the right?
JUSTICE.
Mr. Pickler, who had taken an active part in the discussion on
the amendment, received many letters of thanks from the friends
of woman suffrage throughout the nation, and made his
acknowledgments in the following cordial letter to Mrs. Matilda
Joslyn Gage:
FAULKTON, D. T., April 20, 1885.
_Matilda Joslyn Gage, Syracuse, N. Y._:
DEAR MADAM: Your kind letter addressed to me on the Woman
Suffrage bill, at Bismarck, would have been earlier
acknowledged had it not been that I suffered quite a severe
illness upon my return from the legislature. I beg to assure
you that words of encouragement from such able and
distinguished personages as yourself have been highly
appreciated in my effort to secure suffrage for women in
Dakota. I am half inclined to think that your indication as
to a coming political party, with woman suffrage as one
plank in its platform, may not be without foundation.
I introduced the bill in the Dakota legislature, having
previously supported a like measure in the Iowa legislature,
really without consultation with any one, or without
knowledge as to the sentiment of the members upon the
question. I have had my convictions since my college days
that simple justice demands that woman should have the
ballot, and in this opinion I am warmly seconded by my wife,
who desires to vote, as I think all sensible women should. I
was pleased with the favor the bill received, and after a
week or two believed it possible to have it pass the House,
with constant exertion and watchfulness. Those who at first
laughed at the idea, learning I was very much in earnest,
stopped to consider and to discuss, and finally came to vote
for it.
It passed the House, and after considerable difficulty in
getting it out of the hands of an adverse committee in the
Council, who insisted on having it referred to them, it
passed with an amendment "to submit to a vote of the
people." I managed to have the House refuse to concur in
this amendment, which resulted in a conference committee,
five out of six of whom reported in favor of the Council
receding from their amendment, which they did, and yet,
after all, and when we thought it safe, it was vetoed. Few,
if any, supposed that Governor Pierce, a governor only
appointed over us less than six months, would place himself
a barrier in the way of the will of the people, and opposed
to the advancement of human rights. I deeply regret that he
did not rise to the grandest opportunity of his life, but he
failed to do so.
Your words were particularly encouraging, being personally
interested in Dakota as you are, and I dare say you will
bear witness that we have an intelligent people, and a great
many good women, land-owners and property-holders, who
should have a voice in the taxation of their property, real
and personal. We shall not give it up; we shall continue in
the work, not doubting that success will finally crown our
efforts. Our constitution is not yet formed, and if ever the
political parties cease to exercise their tyranny over us,
by allowing us to be admitted as a State, we shall endeavor
at least to secure it so the legislature may grant or
prescribe the qualifications of voters without requiring a
change in the constitution.
Will you visit Dakota again? In another contest we would be
much aided by your presence and assistance, confidently
believing that "Heaven will one day free us from this
slavery." If your children[456] reside in this section of
the territory, I should be pleased to form their
acquaintance. Again thanking you for your kind words, I am,
Yours truly, J. A. PICKLER.
As Dakota has thus deliberately trampled upon the rights of
one-half her people, it is to be hoped that congress will not admit
her into the Union until that odious word "male" is stricken from
her constitution.
FOOTNOTES:
[453] These counties are Union, Lincoln, Clay, Minnehaha, Moody,
Deuel, Codington, Cass, Walsh, Grand Forks, Pembina, Barnes,
Lawrence and Hutchinson.
[454] Since 1882 Mrs. Bones has held the office of deputy-clerk of
the District Court of Day county; Mrs. Washburn was appointed to
her office in 1884; Miss Elizabeth M. Cochrane, appointed by Judge
Seward Smith, is clerk of the District Court of Falk county; Mrs.
Virginia A. Wilkins is deputy-clerk of the District Court of Hand
county; Mrs. Dutton, deputy county-clerk, and Mrs. Hanson
deputy-sheriff of Day county; and Mrs. Pease is deputy-receiver of
the Watertown Land-office.
[455] _Yeas_--Barnes, Blackmore, Coe, Bayard, Clark, Dermody,
Gregg, Hutson, Johnson, Miller, McCall, Parshall, Pierce, Roach,
Southwick, Smith, Stebbins, J. P. Ward, Huntington, Hutchinson,
Langan, Martin, Morgan, Pickler, Riddell, Steele, Stevens, Sprague,
Stewart--29. _Nays_--Davison, Hobart, Larson, McCumber, Oliver,
Pugh, Ruger, Strong, Eldridge, Helvig, Myron, McHugh, Runkle,
Swanton, Van Osdell, Williams, Mark Ward, Mr. Speaker--18.
[456] Mrs. Gage has a son and daughter residing in Dakota, both
well educated, superior young people, whose influence will, no
doubt, be felt in every progressive movement in that State. Mrs.
Gage's children sympathize with their mother in her broad, liberal
views on all questions.--[E. C. S.
CHAPTER XLIX.
NEBRASKA.
Clara Bewick Colby--Nebraska Came into the Possession of the
United States, 1803--The Home of the Dakotas--Organized as a
Territory, 1854--Territorial Legislature--Mrs. Amelia Bloomer
Addresses the House--Gen. Wm. Larimer, 1856--A Bill to Confer
Suffrage on Woman--Passed the House--Lost in the
Senate--Constitution Harmonized with the Fourteenth
Amendment--Admitted as a State March 1, 1867--Mrs. Stanton, Miss
Anthony Lecture in the State, 1867--Mrs. Tracy Cutler, 1870--Mrs.
Esther L. Warner's Letter--Constitutional Convention, 1871--Woman
Suffrage Amendment Submitted--Lost by 12,676 against, 3,502
for--Prolonged Discussion--Constitutional Convention,
1875--Grasshoppers Devastate the Country--_Inter-Ocean_, Mrs.
Harbert--Omaha _Republican_, 1876--Woman's Column Edited by Mrs.
Harriet S. Brooks--"Woman's Kingdom"--State Society formed,
January 19, 1881, Mrs. Brooks President--Mrs. Dinsmoore, Mrs.
Colby, Mrs. Brooks, before the Legislature--Amendment again
Submitted--Active Canvass of the State, 1882--First Convention of
the State Association--Charles F. Manderson--Unreliable
Petitions--An Unfair Count of Votes for Woman Suffrage--Amendment
Defeated--Conventions in Omaha--Notable Women in the
State--Conventions--_Woman's Tribune_ Established in 1883.
Clara Bewick Colby, the historian for Nebraska, is of English
parentage, and came to Wisconsin when eight years of age. In her
country home, as one of a large family, she had but scant
opportunities for attending the district school, but her father
encouraged and assisted his children to study in the winter
evenings, and in this way she fitted herself to teach in country
schools. After a few terms she entered, the State University at
Madison, and while there made a constant effort to secure equal
privileges and opportunities for the students of her sex. She was
graduated with honors in 1869, and at once became a teacher of
history and Latin in the institution. She was married to Leonard W.
Colby, a graduate of the same university, and moved to Beatrice,
Nebraska, in 1872. Amidst the hardships of pioneer life in a new
country, the young wife for a season found her family cares
all-absorbing, but her taste for study, her love of literature and
her natural desire to improve the conditions about her, soon led
her to work up an interest in the establishment of a library and
course of lectures. She afterwards edited a department in the
Beatrice _Express_ called "Woman's Work," and in 1883 she started
_The Woman's Tribune_, a paper whose columns show that Mrs. Colby
has the true editorial instinct. For several years she has been
deeply interested in the movement for woman's enfranchisement,
devoting her journal to the advocacy of this great reform. In
addition to her cares as housekeeper[457] and editor, Mrs. Colby
has also lectured extensively in many States, east and west, not
only to popular audiences, but before legislative and congressional
committees.
In her description of Nebraska and the steps of progress in woman's
civil and political rights, Mrs. Colby says:
Nebraska makes its first appearance in history as part of
Louisiana and belonging to Spain. Seized by France in 1683, ceded
to Spain in 1762; again the property of France in 1800, and sold
to the United States in 1803; the shifting ownership yet left no
trace on that interior and inaccessible portion of Louisiana now
known as Nebraska. It was the home of the Dakotas, who had come
down from the north pushing the earlier Indian races before them.
Every autumn when _Heyokah_, the Spirit of the North, puffed from
his huge pipe the purpling smoke "enwrapping all the land in
mellow haze," the Dakotas gathered at the Great Red Pipestone
Quarry for their annual feast and council. These yearly
excursions brought them in contact with the fur traders, who in
turn roamed the wild and beautiful country of the Niobrara,
returning thence to Quebec laden with pelts. With the exception
of a few military posts, the first established in 1820 where the
town of Fort Calhoun now stands, Nebraska was uninhabited by
white people until the gold hunters of 1849 passed through what
seemed to them an arid desert, as they sought their Eldorado in
the mountains beyond. Disappointed and homesick, many of the
emigrants retraced their steps, and found their former trail
through Nebraska marked by sunflowers, the luxuriance of which
evidenced the fertility of the soil, and encouraged the travelers
to settle within its borders.
Nebraska became an organized territory by the Kansas-Nebraska
bill in 1854, including at first Dakota, Idaho and Colorado, from
which it was separated in 1863. The early settlers were
courageous, keeping heart amid attacks of savages, and
devastations of the fire-demon and the locust. Published history
is silent concerning the part that women took in this frontier
life, but the tales told by the fireside are full of the
endurance and heroism of wives whose very isolation kept them
hand to hand, shoulder to shoulder, and thought to thought with
their husbands. It is not strange then that the men of those
early days inclined readily to the idea of sharing the rights of
self-government with women who had with them left home and
kindred and the comforts of the older States. But it is
remarkable, and proof that the thought belongs to the age, that,
thirty years ago, when the discussion of woman's status was still
new in Massachusetts and New York, and only seven years after the
first woman-suffrage convention ever held, here--half way across
a continent, in a country almost unheard of, and with but scant
communication with the older parts of the Republic--this
instinctive justice should have crystalized into legislative
action.
In December, 1855, an invitation was extended by the territorial
legislature to Mrs. Amelia Bloomer of Council Bluffs, to deliver
an address on woman's rights, in the Hall of the House of
Representatives. This invitation was signed by twenty-five
members of the legislature and was accepted by Mrs. Bloomer for
January 8. The following pleasing account of this address and its
reception was written by an Omaha correspondent of the Council
Bluffs _Chronotype_ of that date:
Mrs. Amelia Bloomer, who had been formally invited by
members of the legislature and others, arrived at the door
of the state-house at 7 o'clock, P. M., and by the gallantry
of Gen. Larimer, a passage was made for her to the platform.
The house had been crowded for some time with eager
expectants to see the lady and listen to the arguments which
were to be adduced as the fruitage of female thought and
research. When all had been packed into the house who could
possibly find a place for the sole of the foot, Mrs. Bloomer
arose, amid cheers. We watched her closely, and saw that she
was perfectly self-possessed--not a nerve seemed to be moved
by excitement, and the voice did not tremble. She arose in
the dignity of a true woman, as if the importance of her
mission so absorbed her thoughts that timidity or
bashfulness were too mean to entangle the mental powers. She
delivered her lecture in a pleasing, able, and I may say,
eloquent manner that enchained the attention of her audience
for an hour and a half. A _man_ could not have beaten it.
In mingling with the people next day, we found that her
argument had met with much favor. As far as property rights
are concerned, all seemed to agree with the lady that the
laws of our country are wrong, and that woman should receive
the same protection as man. All we have time to say now is,
that Mrs. Bloomer's arguments on woman's rights are
unanswerable. We may doubt it is policy for women to vote,
but who can draw the line and say that naturally she has not
a right to do so? Mrs. Bloomer, though a little body, is
among the great women of the United States; and her keen,
intellectual eye seems to flash fire from a fountain that
will consume the stubble of old theories until woman is
placed in her true position in the enjoyment of equal rights
and privileges. Her only danger is in asking too much.
ONEIDA.
Eight days after Mrs. Bloomer's address, Hon. Jerome Hoover,
member for the counties of Nemaha and Richardson, introduced in
the House a bill to confer suffrage equally upon women. The bill
was put upon its third reading, January 25, and was earnestly
championed by General William Larimer of Douglas county, formerly
of Pittsburgh, Pa. It passed by a vote of 14 to 11.[458] The
result of the passage of the bill by the House was graphically
described by the _Chronotype_ of January 30:
On Friday afternoon and evening quite an excitement took
place, which resulted in offering an insult to one of the
ablest members of the legislature, but which, while it
reflected no dishonor upon the person against whom it was
aimed, should cover the perpetrators with lasting shame. We
will state briefly the facts as we have heard them.
The bill giving woman the right to vote came up at 11
o'clock, by a special order of the House. A number of ladies
entered the hall to listen to the proceedings. General
Larimer spoke eloquently and ably in favor of the bill,
making, perhaps, the best speech that could be made on that
side of the question. On the vote being taken, it
stood--ayes 14, nays 11. The bill was then sent to the
Council, where it was referred to the Committee on
Elections. Its passage by the House of Representatives
created a great deal of talk, and several members threatened
to resign. At the evening session J. S. Morton, W. E. Moore,
A. F. Salisbury and L. L. Bowen came into the House and
proposed to present General Larimer with a petticoat, which
did not tend much to allay the excitement. The General, of
course, was justly indignant at such treatment, as were also
the other members. The proposal was characteristic of the
prime mover in it, and we are astonished that the other
gentlemen named should have been willing to associate
themselves with him in offering this indignity to the oldest
and most respected member of the body--a man who was elected
to the station he has so ably filled by the unanimous vote
of the people of Douglas county. General Larimer had a
perfect right to advocate or oppose the bill according to
his own sense of duty, and any man, or set of men, who would
attempt to cast insult or ridicule upon him for so doing, is
worthy only of the contempt of decent people. In saying this
we, of course, express no opinion on the merits of the bill
itself.
The bill was taken up in the Council, read twice, and referred to
the Committee on Elections, whose chairman, Mr. Cowles, reported
it back without amendment, and recommended its passage. This
being the last day of the session, the bill could not come up
again. The _Chronotype_, after the adjournment, commented as
follows:
The bill granting women the right to vote, which had passed
the House, was read the first and second time in the Council
and referred to the Committee on Elections, where it now
remains for want of time to bring it up again. A gentleman
who was opposed to the passage of a bill to locate the seat
of justice of Washington county, obtained the floor, and
delivered a speech of many hours on some unimportant bill
then under consideration, in order to "kill time" and
prevent the Washington county bill from coming up. The hour
for adjournment _sine die_ arrived before he concluded, and
the Woman Suffrage bill, and many others of great
importance, remained upon the clerk's table without being
acted upon. It is admitted by every one that want of time
only defeated the passage of the bill through the Council.
The citizens of Nebraska are ready to make a trial of its
provisions, which speaks volumes for the intelligence of the
free and independent squatters of this beautiful territory.
Mrs. Bloomer says that assurance was given by members of the
Council that the bill would have passed that body triumphantly
had more time been allowed, or had it been introduced earlier in
the session. The general sentiment was in favor of it, and the
gentlemen who talked the last hours away to kill other bills were
alone responsible for its defeat. Mrs. Bloomer followed up her
work by lectures in Omaha and Nebraska City two years later.
The exigencies attending the settlement of the territory and the
absorbing interests of the civil war occupied the next decade.
The character of the settlers may be inferred from the fact that,
with only about 5,000 voters, Nebraska gave over 3,000 soldiers
for the defense of the Union and of their home borders, where the
Indians had seized the occasion to break out into active
hostilities. The war over, Nebraska sought to be admitted as a
State, and a constitution was prepared on the old basis of white
male suffrage. Congress admitted Nebraska, but provided that the
act should not take effect until the constitution should be
changed to harmonize with the fourteenth amendment. After some
discussion the condition was accepted, and Nebraska was thus the
first State to recognize in its constitution the sovereignty of
all male persons. Some of the debates of this time indicate that
the appreciation of human rights was growing, nor were allusions
wanting making a direct application of the principle to women.
The debates and resolutions connected with the ratification of
the fourteenth amendment are historically and logically connected
with the growth of the idea of woman's political equality. The
man who, from regard for justice and civil liberties, advocates
the right of franchise for additional classes of men, easily
extends the thought until it embraces woman. On the other hand
the man who sees men enfranchised whom he deems unworthy to use
the ballot, thinks it a disgrace to withhold it from intelligent
women. Gov. Alvin Saunders,[459] in his message urging the
ratification of the fourteenth amendment said:
The day, in my opinion, is not far distant when property
qualifications, educational qualifications, and color
qualifications, as precedent to the privilege of voting,
will be known no more by the American people, but that
intelligence and manhood will be the only qualifications
necessary to entitle an American citizen to the privilege of
an elector.
Later, Acting-governor A. S. Paddock[459] in his message said:
I should hail with joy a radical change in the rule of
suffrage which would give the franchise to intelligence and
patriotism wherever found, regardless of the color of the
possessor.
The majority report of the committee to whom was referred that
portion of the governor's message which related to rights of
suffrage, was as follows:
We hold that the dogma of partial suffrage is a dangerous
doctrine, and contrary to the laws of nature and the letter
and spirit of the Declaration of Independence.
[Signed:] ISAAC WILES, WILLIAM DAILEY, GEORGE CROW.
A minority report was brought in by S. M. Curran and Aug. F.
Harvey. On its rejection Mr. Harvey introduced this
resolution:
_Resolved_, That we, the members of the House of
Representatives, of the legislature of Nebraska, are in
favor of impartial and universal suffrage, and believe fully
in the equality of all races, colors and sexes at the
ballot-box.
This was not intended to advance the rights of women, but simply
to slay the advocates of the enlargement of the franchise with
their own weapons. A. B. Fuller moved to amend by striking out
the word "universal," and all after the word "suffrage," which
was carried by a vote of 22 to 9. The Committee on Federal
Relations reported:
The constitution recognizes all persons born within the
United States, or naturalized in pursuance of the law, to be
citizens, and entitled to the rights of citizenship; and a
recent act of congress amends the organization acts of the
several territories so as to confer the rights of suffrage
upon all citizens except such as are disqualified by reason
of crime. Consequently, when congress decrees that we shall
not, as a State, deprive citizens of rights already
guaranteed to them, it does not transcend its powers, or
impose upon us conditions from which we are now exempt.
With these discussions of fundamental principles which, although
couched in the most comprehensive terms, strangely enough
conserved the rights of only half the citizens, the fourteenth
amendment was ratified, and Nebraska became a State on March 1,
1867.
The early legislation of Nebraska was favorable to woman, and
much ahead of that passed in the same period by most of the older
States, The records show that a few legislators treated any
matter that referred to the rights of woman as a jest, but the
majority were liberal or respectful, and the honored names of
Dailey, Reavis, Majors, Porter, Kelley, and others, constantly
recur in the records of the earlier sessions as pushing favorable
legislation for women. At almost every session, too, the actual
question of the ballot for woman was broached. The legislature of
1869 bestowed school suffrage on women;[460] and a joint
resolution and a memorial to congress relative to female suffrage
were introduced. The journals show that:
Hon. Isham Reavis of Falls City, introduced in the Senate
January 30, a memorial and joint resolution to congress, on
the subject of female suffrage. After the second reading, on
motion of Mr. Majors, it was referred to a select committee
of bachelors, consisting of Senators Gere, Majors, Porter,
and Goodwill, who reported it back without recommendation.
It was afterwards considered in committee of the whole, then
taken up by the Senate. Reavis moved it be taken up for
third reading on the following day. The yeas and nays being
demanded the motion was lost by a vote of 6 to 7. On motion
of Mr. Stevenson the matter was referred to the Judiciary
Committee, with the usual result of neglect and oblivion.
In the autumn of 1867 Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony lectured in
Omaha and sowed seed which bore fruit in the large number of
petitions sent later from that city. In December 1870, Mrs. Tracy
Cutler gave several addresses in Lincoln. Miss Anthony lectured
January 28, 1871, on "The False Theory," and before leaving the
city looked in on the legislature, which promptly extended to her
the privilege of the floor. A number of ladies met Miss Anthony
for consultation, and took the initiatory steps for forming a
State association. A meeting was appointed for the following
Friday, when it was decided to memorialize the legislature. The
memorial was headed by Mrs. Lydia Butler, wife of the governor of
the State, who spent some days in securing signatures. A lively
pen-picture of those times is furnished by private correspondence
of Mrs. Esther L. Warner of Roca:
The first work done for woman suffrage in Lincoln was in
December, 1870. Mrs. Tracy Cutler stopped when on her way to
California, and gave several addresses in Lincoln. Her
womanliness and logic won and convinced her hearers, and had
a marked effect upon public sentiment. There are men and
women to-day in Nebraska who date their conversion to the
cause of equal rights from those lectures. Some steps were
taken towards organization, but the matter was dropped in
its incipient stages. During the same winter Miss Susan B.
Anthony lectured in Lincoln, and presented a petition to be
signed by women, asking to be allowed to vote under the
fourteenth amendment. She also called a meeting of ladies in
a hotel parlor and aided in organizing a State suffrage
society. Her rare executive ability accomplished what other
hands would have failed to do, for the difficulties in the
way of such a movement at that early day were great. Lydia
Butler, wife of Governor Butler, was elected president, and
other representative women filled the various offices, but
after a short time it was deemed wise to disband, as
circumstances made it impossible to keep up an efficient
organization. Time and money were not plentiful with western
women, but we did what we could, and sent a petition to the
legislature that winter asking a resolution recommending to
the coming State convention to omit the word "male" from the
constitution. The petition was signed by about 1,000 women,
and received respectful attention from the legislature, and
speeches were made in its favor by several members. Among
others the speaker of the House, F. M. McDougal, favored the
resolution. Governor Butler sent a special message with the
petition, recommending the passage of the resolution, for
which Nebraska women will always honor him.
Next it was thought best to call a convention in the
interest of woman suffrage, to be held while the
constitutional convention should be in session the coming
summer. Two women were commissioned to prepare the call and
present it for the signatures of members of the legislature
who favored the measure. It was thought this course would
give dignity and importance to the call which would secure
attention throughout the State. The session of the
legislature was very exciting. Intrigue accomplished the
impeachment of a high State official, and others were being
dragged down. As it neared its close the political cauldron
boiled and bubbled with redoubled violence. It was more than
any woman dared do to approach it. Were not the political
fortunes and the sacred honor (?) of men in jeopardy?
Woman's rights sunk into insignificance. We subsided. Our
hour had not yet come.
Mrs. Butler says of the part she took at this time: "I
entertained the speakers because requested to, and found them so
pleasant and persuasive that I soon became a convert to their
views. The active and intelligent leaders at that time were
Mesdames Cropsey, Galey, Warner, Monell, Coda, and many others
whose names I cannot recall." As the result of the effort thus
made the legislature of 1871 memorialized the constitutional
convention relative to submitting the question to the electors.
The proceedings given in the journals are as follows:
February 4, 1871, Mr. J. C. Myers announced that ladies were
in the gallery, and desired to present a petition. A
committee was appointed to wait on them. D. J. Quimby
introduced a resolution asking an opinion of the
attorney-general as to whether in accepting the fourteenth
and fifteenth amendments we grant the right of suffrage to
women. It was carried, and the memorial, the opinion, and
the governor's message were referred to the judiciary
committee, which reported through Mr. Galey as follows:
_Whereas_, The constitution of the State of Nebraska
prohibits the women of said State from exercising the right
of the elective franchise; and
_Whereas_, Taxation without representation is repugnant to a
republican form of government, and applies to women as well
as all other citizens of this State; and
_Whereas_, All laws which make any distinction between the
political rights and privileges of males and females are
unbecoming to the people of this State in the year 1871 of
the world's progress, and tend only to deprive the latter of
the means necessary for their own protection in the various
pursuits and callings of life. Therefore be it
_Resolved_, By the House of Representatives of the State of
Nebraska, that the constitutional convention to be begun and
holden on the--day of May, 1871, for the purpose of
revising and amending the constitution of said State, is
hereby most respectfully and earnestly requested to draft
such amendment to the constitution of this State as will
allow the women thereof to exercise the right of the
elective franchise and afford to them such other and further
relief as to that honorable body may be deemed wise,
expedient and proper; and be it further
_Resolved_, That said convention is hereby most respectfully
and earnestly requested to make such provision (when said
amendment shall be submitted to a vote of the people of said
State) as will enable the women of Nebraska to vote at said
election for the adoption or rejection of the same.
_Resolved_, Further, that the Secretary of State is hereby
instructed to present a copy of this resolution to said
convention as soon as the same shall be convened.
Mr. Porter moved the adoption of the report, which was
carried by a vote of 19 to 16.[461] In the Senate, March 22,
E. C. Cunningham offered the following amendment to the bill
providing for calling a constitutional convention:
That the electors of the State be and are hereby authorized
and recommended to vote for and against female suffrage at
the election for members of the constitutional convention.
Provided, That at such election all women above the age of
21 years, possessing the qualifications required of male
electors are hereby authorized and requested to vote upon
said proposition, and for the purpose of receiving their
votes a separate polling place shall be provided.
The amendment was lost by a vote of 6 to 6.[462]
In accordance with the memorial of the legislature, the
constitutional convention that met in the following summer by a
vote of 30 to 13[463] submitted a clause relative to the right of
suffrage. The constitution itself was rejected by the voters; and
on this clause the ballot stood, for, 3,502; against, 12,676. Had
it been carried at the polls, it would only have conferred upon
the legislature the right to submit amendments, and it was
therefore no special object to the adherents of impartial
suffrage to make efforts for its adoption, while the fact that it
was the outgrowth of the discussion of that principle brought
upon it all the opposition that a clause actually conferring the
ballot would have insured. The right of woman to the elective
franchise was championed by the ablest men in the convention.
Night after night the question was argued _pro_ and _con_.
Petitions from Lincoln and Omaha were numerously presented. The
galleries were filled with women eagerly watching the result. The
proposition finally adopted did not touch the point at issue, but
was accepted as all that could be obtained on that occasion. As
the constitution was not adopted, the succeeding legislature felt
no interest in the proceedings of the convention, and the
journals were not printed; and the records of this battle for
justice and civil liberty were hidden in the dusty archives of
the state-house until brought out to tell their story for these
pages. As this is the only discussion of the question by Nebraska
statesmen which has been officially preserved, and as the
debaters were among the most prominent men of the State, and
many of them retain that position to-day, a few extracts will be
of interest:
The discussion began with the motion of Mr. I. S. Hascall to
strike out "men" and insert "persons" in the clause "All men
are by nature free and independent." The motion was lost.
General E. Estabrook moved to add "Every human being of full
age, and resident for a proper length of time on the soil of
the Nation and State, who is required to obey the law, is
entitled to a voice in its enactment; and every such person
whose property is taxed for the support of the government is
entitled to a direct representation in such government." Mr.
Hascall moved that "man" be inserted in place of "human
being." Mr. E. S. Towle desired to put "male" in the place
of "man." General Estabrook, on being asked if his amendment
was intended to cover "woman's rights," replied:
I take pleasure in making the amendment because it is a step
in the right direction. Justice to woman is the keystone in
the arch of the temple of liberty we are now building. That
no citizen should be taxed without representation is an
underlying principle of a republic and no free government
can exist without it.
General Estabrook seems to have stood alone in considering
that the principle of impartial suffrage properly belonged
to the Bill of Rights. The amendments were lost. When the
article on extension of suffrage was under discussion,
General Estabrook opened the subject in a comprehensive
speech, lasting all one evening and part of the next. He
proved that women were citizens, citing the petitions to
congress relative to woman's right to vote under the
fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, and the reports of the
committee thereupon--one in favor and one opposed, but both
agreeing that women are citizens. Then he showed what rights
they were entitled to as citizens, quoting the Federal
Constitution, Bouvier's Institutes and Law Dictionary, James
Madison, Paine's Dissertation on the Principles of
Government, Otis' Rights of the Colonies, Thomas Jefferson,
Benjamin Franklin, and others. Commenting upon these, he set
forth that women vote in corporations, administer estates,
manage hospitals and rule empires without harm to themselves
and with benefit to everybody else. He made a special
argument to the Democrats, reviewing the position of some of
their leading men, and closed with saying, "This is the most
important measure yet considered, because it contains a
fundamental principle."
General Strickland then introduced a resolution that an
article for woman suffrage should be submitted to the
people, that the women should vote separately, and that if a
majority of both men and women should be in favor, it should
become a law. The member did not move this because he
favored the principle, but because he felt sure the women
would not vote for it. He could not understand what a woman
could possibly want more than she had, having the privileges
while man has the drudgery. He closed with the prophecy that
in two years not a woman would vote in Wyoming.
General Charles F. Manderson followed. Taking the ground
that the members were not in convention to look after the
rights of the males only, he said: "Did we recognize the
right of all the people to be represented, we should have
to-day on this floor some persons sent here to represent the
women of our State. Men do not represent women because they
are not and cannot be held responsible by them. We have no
more right to represent the women here than a man in Iowa
has to go to congress and presume to represent Nebraska
there." To illustrate the principle General Manderson
instanced that in the New York Constitutional Conventions of
1801 and 1821, persons voted for delegates who had not the
property qualifications to vote at ordinary elections. Even
the black man was represented by delegates for whom he had
voted. In presenting a petition from Lincoln with seventy
names of women who desired to vote, General Manderson said
he had made inquiries, and these were the names of the
respectable, influential ladies of Lincoln, sixty-three of
whom were married. He then reviewed the history and workings
of woman suffrage in Wyoming, furnishing the highest
testimony in its favor, and closed as follows:
Mr. Chairman, I envy not the heart or the head of the man,
let him occupy what place he may, let him sit in a
legislative body or wield the editorial pen, who is so base
as to denounce the advocates of this measure as demagogues,
and to say that if the right is extended to woman, the low,
the miserable, will outnumber at the polls the thousands of
virtuous wives throughout this land who advocate this
measure; the lie is thrown in his teeth by that noble woman,
Mrs. Livermore, who did more service in time of war as a
soldier battling for the right than did even my gallant
friend, and did far more than myself. She inaugurated and
carried in her mighty hand and guided by her mighty brain
that Western Ladies' Aid Society, and helped by some means
the Western Sanitary Association that did more than 10,000
armed men to suppress the late rebellion. The lie is hurled
in the teeth of the vile slanderer by this petition from the
honest, virtuous ladies of the city of Lincoln. If we have
planted one seed, that will bring forth good fruit, God be
thanked for that result.
Mr. Kenaston spoke in favor of the measure, and Judge Moore
opposed it in a very witty speech, of which the principal
points were that the members were to decide according to
expediency, not right; that women had always consented to
the government--never trampled the flag in the dust, but
always rallied to its support. Judge O. P. Mason followed in
opposition, also J. C. Myers, the latter claiming that for
twenty years the advocates of woman suffrage have made
little, if any, impression on the public mind. E. F. Gray
had begun speaking in favor when Victor Vifquain moved the
previous question. A lively debate followed this, but it did
not prevail. Mr. Mason said: "If we hold the right on this
question let us challenge discussion and meet the
opposition. It is not a wasted time that sows the seed of
truth in the brain." Mr. Manderson urged the number of
petitions that had been sent in as a reason for full
discussion. R. F. Stevenson said he was opposed to it in
every form. A. L. Sprague was against submitting this
question at any time, that neither by the laws of God nor of
man were women entitled to vote. Seth Robinson would like to
hear the social aspects of the question discussed. He said:
"I would like, gentlemen, to show whether it would not have
a tendency to regenerate our social system and make women as
a class more efficient than they are." The motion for the
previous question being lost a motion was made to strike out
this section. While this was pending General Estabrook
insisted that it should be re-committed, saying: "It is the
only political question that has essential principle in it.
There are not brains enough in this convention to show the
justice of taxation without representation. Judge George B.
Lake warmly seconded Mr. Estabrook's motion. O. P. Mason
wanted the proposition to be submitted to both sexes
separately. J. E. Philpott advocated woman suffrage in a
comprehensive argument. In closing, he said:
I demand that suffrage shall be extended to females for the
reason that they have not adequate representation in the
electoral department. As evidence of this I cite the
undeniable facts that in this State woman has not fair wages
for her work--has not a fair field to work in. The law, with
all its freedom, does not place her on the same footing as
to property that it does males. She has no voice as an
elector in the making of the laws which regulate her marital
union, no voice in the laws which sever those ties. The
motto of the State is "Equality Before the Law." This can no
more be among us with women disfranchised than in our nation
all men could be free and equal while there were more than
3,000,000 slaves.
A. J. Weaver spoke in opposition and was followed by Hon. I.
S. Hascall, who based his advocacy of the principle on the
rights that woman has as an individual:
Because we have started upon the wrong track, because women
in the dark ages were in bondage, is no reason, when we have
advanced to a higher civilization, that we should continue
this barbarous practice. There is a higher point to reach
and I want to see the people reach that point. I think that
the American people are old enough in experience to bring
order out of disorder, and that when the question arises
they will meet it in such a way as will be satisfactory to
all.
Mr. Stevenson spoke in opposition basing his argument on
man's superiority to woman and closed with this remarkable
prediction which has probably never been surpassed as a
specimen of "spread eagle":
Finally, Mr. President, I really think that if the ballot
were placed in the hands of woman the old American eagle
that stands with one foot upon the Alleghanies and the other
upon the Rockies, whetting his beak upon the ice-capped
mountains of Alaska, and covering half the Southern gulf
with his tail, will cease to scream and sink into the pits
of blackness of darkness amidst the shrieks of lost spirits
that will forever echo and reëcho through cavernous depths
unknown.
S. P. Majors advocated the measure, and in the course of the
discussion, B. I. Hinman offered a burlesque resolution,
proposing to change the duties and functions of the sexes by
law, and John D. Neligh said:
The gentleman from Otoe (Mr. Mason) will get the commission
of the Christian mothers, not _against_ the right of female
suffrage, but _for_ universal suffrage. That will be a happy
day--a day when we shall shine out as a nation more brightly
than any other nation under the sun.[464]
The constitution of 1871 not having been adopted, it became
necessary to present another to the people. Accordingly in the
summer of 1875 delegates of the male citizens met in the capital
city. No outside pressure was brought to bear upon them to
influence their consideration of this subject. The grasshoppers
had ravaged the State the previous year, cutting off entirely the
principal crop of the country. Again in the spring of 1875, in
some of the river counties, the young had hatched in myriads, and
devoured the growing crops ere winging their way to their
mountain home. Gloom overspread the people at the prospect of
renewed disaster, and the dismal forebodings were realized even
as the delegates sat in council, for at this time occurred the
final appearance of the locust. As the people gazed into the sky
and watched the silver cloud floating in the sunshine resolve
itself into a miniature army clad in burnished steel, women
forgot to be concerned for their rights, and the delegates
thought only of completing their work with the utmost economy and
speed.
The new constitution, however, was formed on a more liberal
basis. Hon. R. B. Harrington, of Beatrice, in the Committee on
Bill of Rights, substituted the word "people" for "men," and it
passed without comment. An article on amendments was embodied in
the constitution, the same in substance as the one defeated in
1871, under which, as was actually done in 1881, the legislature
could present amendments relating to suffrage.
The question of adopting the article relating to qualifications
of electors being before the convention. Judge Clinton Briggs of
Omaha sat during the reading of the first clause, "every male,"
etc., meditating, as he related to a friend, on how many lives
had been sacrificed and how many millions of money had been spent
in getting rid of the word "white," which had made such an unjust
restriction, and how easy it would be, by one dash of the pen,
to blot out the word "male," and thus abolish this other unjust
restriction. On the inspiration of the moment, he moved to strike
out the word "male," R. B. Harrington relates that the motion of
Judge Briggs, who had not before expressed his sentiments, and
who had not consulted with the known advocates of the measure, so
astonished the convention that it was some time before they could
realize that he was in earnest. The friends rallied to Judge
Briggs' support. Gen. Chas. F. Manderson--a member of this, as of
the preceding convention--seconded the motion, and sustained it
with a forcible speech. Mr. Harrington made a speech in its
favor, and after a short and vigorous discussion it came to a
vote, which showed fifteen for the motion and fifty-two
against.[465]
About this time Nebraska was again visited by lecturers on woman
suffrage, who found an intelligent class of people, who, with
growing material prosperity, were kindly disposed toward
progressive ideas. Mrs. Margaret Campbell lectured in Nebraska in
1875, at about fifteen places between Kearney and the Missouri.
In 1877-8 and 9, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony lectured at many
points. These, with some local lectures aroused an intelligent
interest in equal rights for women. It was attempted to give this
expression in the legislature of 1879. Resolutions were
introduced, favorable reports made and the subject treated with
kindly consideration, but for lack of time, or some one deeply
interested, nothing was accomplished.
The legislation of 1879 on the subject of equal suffrage
originated with Senator McMeans and C. B. Slocumb of
Fairbury. The former offered a petition from Thos. Harbine
and 160 others, asking a constitutional amendment
prohibiting the disfranchising of citizens on account of
sex. Referred to a committee of whom a majority recommended
that its consideration be indefinitely postponed. A minority
report was brought in by Orlando Tefft and Chas. H. Brown
recommending that the prayers of petitioners be granted. In
the House, at the same session, C. B. Slocumb presented the
petition of Calvin F. Steele and others, with a resolution
asking that the committee on constitutional amendments be
instructed to provide for the submission of an amendment
conferring the franchise upon woman. The resolution was
adopted, referred, and reported back with draft of an
amendment. The committee were Messrs. True, Windham, Batty,
Simonton, Mitchell, Sparks and Gaylord. On motion of Mr.
True the joint resolution was ordered to first reading; no
further mention appears of it.
The first suffrage society of the State was formed at Fairbury by
Mrs. H. Tyler Wilcox, and although this organization lived but a
short time, it secured petitions and drew the attention of
legislators elect--Senator McMeans and C. B. Slocumb--to the
general interest felt in Jefferson county. The second society was
formed in Thayer county. The sisters, Mrs. Davis and Mrs.
Cornell, of Alexandria, called a meeting, which resulted in
organizing the Alexandria Free Suffrage Association, Sept. 27,
1878. Prof. W. D. Vermilion and E. M. Correll of Hebron, lectured
before this society, but, most of the members living in the
country, the meetings were given up when the cold weather set
in.
The first working society was that of Hebron, which was organized
by Mrs. Stanton, April 15, 1879. The citizens were prepared for
the undertaking. E. M. Correll, editor of the Hebron _Journal_,
in editorials, in lectures by himself and others, had urged on
women the dignity and importance of interesting themselves in
their own behalf. The society had been encouraged by lectures
from Miss Couzins and Mrs. H. T. Wilcox, the latter taking the
ground then comparatively new, that woman's ballot is necessary
for successful temperance effort. Meetings were kept up regularly
and with increasing membership, and the Thayer County Woman
Suffrage Association won a deserved triumph in being primarily
connected with the origin and successful passage of the joint
resolution of 1881. The legislators elected in 1880 were Senator
C. B. Coon, and Representative E. M. Correll. Both these
gentlemen were active members of the Thayer County Association,
and after their election a committee waited on them, pledging
them to special effort during the coming session.
Meanwhile a general favorable sentiment was growing. In noting
this it would not be right to omit mention of Mrs. Harbert's
"Woman's Kingdom," in the Chicago _Inter-Ocean_, which circulated
largely among country readers. The Omaha _Republican_ passed, in
1876, under the editorial management of D. C. Brooks, who, with
his wife, had been prominent in the suffrage work of Michigan and
Illinois. The favorable attitude of this paper, and the articles
which Mrs. Brooks from time to time contributed to it, exerted a
wide influence. In the winter of 1881, Mrs. Brooks established a
woman's department in the _Republican_ which crystallized the
growing interest around the leadership of its editor. Letters
were addressed to her from various sections of the State, urging
immediate action. The following from Mrs. Lucinda Russell will
show the interest felt:
TECUMSEH, Neb., December 4, 1880.
MRS. HARRIET S. BROOKS--_Dear Madam_: I have been shown a
form of petition for the suffrage which you enclosed to Rev.
Mary J. DeLong, of this place. Will you please inform me if
this is to be the form of petition to be presented during
the present session of the legislature? We wish the exact
words in order that we may have it published in our local
paper.
We think it best to call a meeting, even now at this
somewhat late day, and send women to Lincoln who will attend
personally to this matter. We have left these things
neglected too long. Will you call on all women of the State
who can do so to assemble at Lincoln during the session of
the legislature, appointing the day, etc.? I think we would
be surprised at the result. This town contains scarcely a
woman who is opposed to woman suffrage. We know we are a
power here; and we do not know but the same hearty support
which Tecumseh would afford may exist in many towns
throughout the State. All we need for good earnest work and
mighty results is organization.
L. R.
In accordance with these requests a meeting for conference was
called at Lincoln, January 19, 1881, Mrs. Brooks presiding. A
second meeting was held at the M. E. Church, January 22, and a
Lincoln Woman Suffrage Association was formed. A mass convention
was held January 26, and a State Association was formed next
day:[466]
The meeting of January 26 was held in the opera-house and
was presided over by Mrs. Franc E. Finch. The speakers were
John B. Finch, Rev. Mary J. DeLong, Judge O. P. Mason and
Mrs. Esther L. Warner. Reading and music filled the
programme. Mrs. DeLong's address was in behalf of the
prohibitory and suffrage amendments. Judge Mason's address
was afterwards printed for distribution. It showed how
forcible and eloquent the Judge could be when on the right
side. It will be remembered that Judge Mason opposed woman
suffrage in the constitutional convention of 1871. His
closing sentences were:
The more intelligent and exalted the character of the
electors in a government whose foundation rests upon the
franchise, the more safe and secure are the liberties of the
people and the property of that government. The higher the
social and moral standard of the electors, the better will
be the type of manhood that is chosen to make laws and
administer the government. As you elevate the standard of
intelligence, and increase the ability and intensify the
power to recognize the right and a sense of obligation to
follow it, you make sure the foundations of civil and
religious liberty. You do more, you elevate the character of
the laws, and better the administration in every department
of government. It has been wisely said that government is
best which is best administered.
Do as we will, however, forget the rights of others, treat
them with contempt, summon to our aid the united efforts of
great political parties, invoke statutory and constitutional
law to aid us in the mad career, yet, let no one forget that
God's balances, watched by his angels, are hung across the
sky to weigh the conduct of individuals and nations, and
that in the end divine wisdom will pronounce the inexorable
judgment of compensatory justice.
Previous to all of these meetings Hon. E. M. Correll had
introduced on January 13, H. R. 59, a bill for an amendment to
the constitution striking the word "male" from qualifications of
electors. This had given impetus to the friends of the measure
and inspiration to the meetings. A vote of thanks was tendered
Mr. Correll by both the State and Thayer County Associations. The
bill not being technically correct, Mr. Correll introduced on
February 3, a joint resolution of the same purport, H. R. 162.
The committees of Senate and House on constitutional amendments
gave a hearing that evening to the advocates of the measure:
Of the fourteen members of the committees, ten were present;
the full number from the House and three from the Senate.
Mr. Correll pressed the claims of the resolution in the
first speech, and then introduced the different speakers
representing the State association. Mrs. Harriet S. Brooks
reviewed the progress of sentiment elsewhere and said that
her acquaintance and correspondence in this State led her to
think the time ripe for action of this kind. Mrs. Orpha
Clement Dinsmoor argued the abstract right of it, saying:
It has now come to the question of absolute right--whether
one class of people shall say to another: "You can come only
thus far in the direction of liberty." We realize that woman
must be educated to this new privilege, just as man has been
educated to it, and just as this nation is now educating
millions of the newly enfranchised to it. Feeling that in
intellectual and moral capacity woman is the peer of man, I
think that her actual steps forward in needful preparation
have given her the right to say who shall rule over her.
Mrs. Jennie F. Holmes based her remarks on the added
influence it would give women in securing wise legislation
in matters of welfare to the home. Clara B. Colby answered
questions of the committee. It was a most encouraging fact
that every member of the committee, after the speakers had
finished presenting the case, spoke in favor of the
amendment, except one, a Bohemian, who was suffering from
hoarseness and induced his colleague to express favorable
sentiments for him. These gentlemen all remained friendly to
the bill until its passage.
Headquarters were established in Lincoln. Mrs. Brooks remained
during the session, and Mesdames Holmes, Russell, Dinsmoor and
Colby all, or most of the time, until the act was passed,
interviewing the members and securing the promise of their votes
for the measure:
The joint resolution went through all the preliminary stages
in the House without opposition on account of the discretion
of its advocates, the watchfulness of its zealous friends
among the members, and the carefulness of Mr. Correll with
regard to all pending measures. The bill was made a special
order for February 18, 10:45 A. M., and Mrs. Brooks, Mrs.
Dinsmoor and Mrs. Colby addressed the House by invitation.
At the close of their remarks Mr. Roberts offered the
following:
_Resolved_, That, as the sense of this House, we extend our
thanks to the ladies who have so ably addressed us in behalf
of female suffrage, and we wish them God-speed in their good
work.
On motion of Mr. Howe the resolution was unanimously
adopted. Mr. Correll moved that H. R. 162 be ordered
engrossed for third reading. The motion prevailed. The final
vote in the House, February 21, stood 51 for the amendment;
22 against.[467]
The passage of the bill had its dramatic features. Intense
interest was felt by the crowds which daily gathered in the
capitol to watch its progress, while the officers of the State
association were extended the courtesies of the floor, and came
and went, watching every opportunity and giving counsel and
assistance at every step. On this eventful Monday afternoon but
one of these was present, and she watched with anxiety the rapid
passage of the bills preceding, which made it evident that H. R.
162 would soon be reached. Six more than the needed number of
votes had been promised, but three of these were absent from the
city. There were barely enough members present to do business, as
important bills claimed attention in committee-rooms and lobbies.
The last bill ahead of this was reached, and the friends hurried
out in every direction to inform the members, who responded
quickly to the call. One man pledged to the amendment went out
and did not return, the only one to betray the measure.
The roll was called amid breathless interest and every one kept
the tally. Church Howe, in voting, said: "I thank God that my
life has been spared to this moment, when I can vote to extend
the right of suffrage to the women of my adopted State." And C.
B. Slocumb responded to his name, "Believing that my wife is
entitled to all the rights that I enjoy, I vote aye." The last
name had been called, and all knew that only fifty votes had been
cast for the amendment, lacking one of the required three-fifths
of all members elect. The chief clerk of the House, B. D.
Slaughter, usually so glib, slowly repeated the names of those
who had voted and more slowly footed up the result. Two
favorable members were outside; if only one could be reached! The
speaker, who had just voted against the amendment, but was kindly
disposed towards those interested in it, held the announcement
back for a moment which gave Church Howe time to move the
recommitment of the resolution. His motion was seconded all over
the House, but just at this juncture one of the absent friends,
P. O. Heacock, a German member from Richardson county, came in,
and, being told what was going on, called out, "I desire to vote
on this bill." He walked quickly to his place and, in answer to
his name, voted "aye." The speaker asked Mr. Howe if he wished to
withdraw his motion, which he did, and the vote was announced.
The galleries cheered, and the House was in a hubbub, unrebuked
by the speaker, who looked as happy as if he had voted for the
bill. The members gathered around the woman who sat in their
midst, shook hands and extended congratulations, many even who
had voted against the amendment expressing their personal
sympathy with its advocates.
The joint resolution was immediately sent to the Senate, where,
after its second reading, it was referred to the Committee on
Constitutional Amendments, who returned it with two reports:
That of the majority, recommended its passage, while the
minority opposed it on the ground that it would be
inadvisable to introduce opposing measures into the House
and thus create new divisions in politics and a new cause of
excitement; but principally upon the claim that in the
territory where female suffrage had obtained "for a period
of two years" the experiment had been disastrous, the
"interests of the territory damaged in emigration," and the
administration of justice hindered in the courts. This
report was signed by Senators J. C. Myers and S. B. Taylor,
who had persistently refused to listen to argument or
information on the subject. As soon as the report was made,
the senators were informed of their glaring mistake as to
the length of time the women of Wyoming had voted, and
information was laid before them proving that the results in
that territory had been in every way beneficial,[468] but
they refused to withdraw or change their report.
The parliamentary tactics and watchfulness of Senators
Doane, Coon, Smith, White, Dinsmore, Harrington and Tefft
carried the bill through the bluster of the minority to its
final vote; by twenty-two for to eight against.[469] When
Senator Howe's name was called he offered the following
explanation:
The question of submitting this proposition to a vote of the
people is not to be regarded as a pleasantry, as some
members seem to think. However mischievously the experiment
of giving the suffrage to women may operate, the power once
given cannot be recalled. I have endeavored to look at the
question conscientiously. I desire to keep abreast of all
legitimate reforms of the day. I would like to see the moral
influence of women at the polls, but I would not like to see
the immoral influence of politics in the home circle. The
Almighty has imposed upon woman the highest office to which
human nature is subject, that of bearing children. Her life
is almost necessarily a home life; it should be largely
occupied in rearing and training her children to be good men
and pure electors. Therein her influence is all-powerful.
Again, I incline to the belief that to strike out the word
'male' in the constitution would not change its meaning so
as to confer the suffrage upon women. I am not acquainted
with half a dozen ladies who would accept the suffrage if it
were offered to them. They are not prepared for so radical a
change. For these reasons, briefly stated, and others, I
vote _No_.
Mr. Turner explained his vote as follows:
Our wives, mothers and sisters having an equal interest with
us in the welfare of our commonwealth, and being equal to
ourselves in intelligence, there appears no good reason why
the right to vote should be withheld from them. The genius
of our institutions is opposed to taxation without
representation; opposed to government without the consent of
the governed, and therefore I vote _Aye_.
The act was then signed by the president of the Senate and
speaker of the House, and sent to Gov. Nance. The latter,
who, although not personally an advocate of the measure, had
given all courtesy and assistance to its supporters, signed
it promptly. To take a bill like this, which even a minority
are anxious to defeat, through the intricate course of
legislation requires work, watchfulness and the utmost tact
and discretion on the part of its friends in both Houses.
The suffrage association immediately arranged to begin a canvass
of the State. The vice-president was appointed State organizer
and entered upon the duties of the office by forming a society at
Beatrice, March 5. The next step was to secure ample and
unimpeachable testimonials from Wyoming, which were printed in
_Woman's Work_, and then spread broadcast in leaflet form.
Lectures were given, and societies and working committees formed
as rapidly as possible. The _Western Woman's Journal_, a neat
monthly magazine, was established in May, by Hon. E. M. Correll,
and a host of women suddenly found themselves gifted with the
power to speak and write, which they consecrated to the cause of
their civil liberties.
The Thayer County Association, as the elder sister of the
numerous family now springing up, maintained its prominence as a
centre of activity and intelligence. Barbara J. Thompson,
secretary from its organization, wrote at this time of the
enthusiasm felt, and of the willingness of the women to work, but
added, "nearly all our women are young mothers with from one to
five children, and these cannot do anything more than attend the
meetings occasionally when they can leave the children." This
might have been said of any society in the State, and this fact
must be considered in judging from their achievements of the zeal
of the Nebraska women. Few, comparatively, could take a public
part, and all others were constantly reckoned by opponents as
unwilling or indifferent. Thayer County Association celebrated
the Fourth of July in a novel manner, making every feature an
object lesson. _Woman's Work_ gave an account of it at the time,
which is quoted to give a pleasant glance backward at the
enthusiasm and interest that marked the work of this society:
We found to our surprise that the women of Thayer county had
in charge the whole celebration. The Fourth dawned cool and
clear, and with news of the improvement of Garfield,
everybody felt happy. The procession, marshaled by ladies on
their handsome horses, and assisted by Senator C. B. Coon,
was formed in due time, and presented a very imposing
appearance. The band wagon was followed by nearly a hundred
others, and among the novelties of the occasion was the
boys' brigade, consisting of a score of little fellows,
some with drums and some with cornets, who played in quite
tolerable time. The States were represented to indicate
their progress with regard to equal rights. Young men
represented those wherein no advance had been made; young
women those where school suffrage had been granted to women;
and Wyoming Territory was represented by two, a man and a
woman. The little girls were all dressed in the appropriate
colors, the wagons were gaily decorated, and the procession
well managed. After singing and prayer, the president, Mrs.
Ferguson, gave a short address. Mrs. Vermilion, who is a
direct descendant of one of the signers of the Declaration
of Independence, read the Woman's Declaration of
Independence and Bill of Rights, a document couched in such
forcible terms as Hancock, Adams & Co., would use if they
were women in this year of our Lord 1881. Then followed the
oration of the day, delivered by Mrs. Colby, and for the
audience it had at least two points of interest: First, that
the woman suffrage society had acted in defiance of
precedent, and had engaged a woman as their orator; and
secondly, that it was given from the standpoint of a citizen
and not of a woman. There being nothing in the address on
the matter of woman suffrage, the society desired the
speaker to address them in the evening on that subject.
Accordingly a meeting was held, and despite the fatigue of
the day, there was a good attendance and considerable
interest. A good dinner was provided on the grounds, and
afterwards they had singing and speaking. Mr. Hendershot
addressed the children. It will be an item of interest to
the readers of the _Express_ that the W. S. A. of Thayer
county have had some songs printed appropriate for their
use. Among them is "Hold the Polls," a song by the editor of
the _Express_, and this was sung with considerable
enthusiasm. It may be said that the whole affair was a
success, and reflected great credit on the executive ability
of the ladies in charge. One item of interest must not be
forgotten--among the various banners indicative of the
virtues which are worthy of cultivation, was one whose motto
read, "In Mother we Trust." A lady being asked the peculiar
significance of this, said, "It has always been God and
father, now we want the children to learn to trust their
mothers, and to think they are of some account."
A successful State convention was held at Omaha July 6, 7, Mrs.
Brooks presiding and making the opening address. The address of
Mrs. Ada M. Bittenbender on "The Legal Disabilities of Married
Women" created quite a discussion among a number of noted lawyers
present. Of this the _Republican_ said:
This lady is the well-known recent editor of the Osceola
_Record_, which she has now relinquished for the study and
practice of law, in partnership with her husband. Her
address, although learned, elaborate, comprehensive, and
dealing with principles and technicalities, was delivered
extemporaneously, with great animation and effect, and in a
manner at once womanly, captivating and strong.
Miss Ida Edson read a paper on "Might and Right." Mrs. Bloomer,
whose presence was an interesting feature of the convention, gave
reminiscences of her own work for woman's ballot in Nebraska. The
convention was enlivened by the dramatic readings of Mrs. H. P.
Mathewson, and the inspiring ballads of the poet-singer, James G.
Clark, who had come from Colorado to attend the meeting. A
glimpse at the convention through the friendly eyes of the editor
of the _Republican_ will indicate the interest and ability shown
by the women of the State:
The first general convention of the Woman's State Suffrage
Association commenced its session last evening at Masonic
hall, the president, Mrs. Harriet S. Brooks, in the chair,
assisted by the first vice-president, Mrs. Clara B. Colby of
Beatrice; the secretary, Mrs. A. M. Bittenbender of Osceola;
and the treasurer, Mrs. Russell of Tecumseh. A majority of
the members of the executive committee and of the
vice-presidents were also present, with several friends of
the cause from abroad, including Hon. E. M. Correll, editor
of the _Western Woman's Journal_, who was the "leader of the
House" on the bill for submitting the suffrage amendment to
the people. The evening was sultry and threatening, and
Masonic hall was not so full as it would otherwise have
been, considering both "promise and performance." The local
attendance was representative, including quite a number of
our leading citizens, with their wives, and the editors of
our contemporaries the _Herald_ and the _Bee_. The meeting
was a very interesting one, more especially the
"conversational" portion, in which free discussion was
solicited. This was opened by Hon. E. Rosewater, who spoke
in response to a very general call. His address of half an
hour in length was marked by apparent sincerity, and was a
calm and argumentative presentation of objections,
theoretical and practical, which occurred to him against the
extension of the franchise to women. It was replied to by
Mrs. Colby, in a running comment, which abounded in womanly
wisdom and wit, and incessantly brought down the house. Our
restricted space will compel us to forego a report of the
discussion at present. On the conclusion of Mrs. Colby's
very bright and convincing remarks, Dr. McNamara addressed
the convention in a brief speech of great earnestness, depth
and power.
The last session was most interesting. The hall was nearly
filled, and among the audience were representatives of many
of our leading families. There was rather too much crowded
into this session, but the convention "cleaned up" its work
thoroughly, and the audience displayed a patient interest to
the very end. Besides the address of Professor Clark, there
was a masterly constitutional argument by Mrs. Clara B.
Colby, which demonstrated that woman can argue logically,
and can support her postulates with the requisite legal
learning, embracing a knowledge of the common and statute
law authorities from Blackstone down. The address abounded
in historical and literary allusions which show its author
to be a person of broad culture as well as an adept in "book
learning." Following came another address from Mrs. Bloomer,
in which she disposed--as he expressed, to Dr. McNamara's
entire satisfaction--of the stock biblical argument down
from Moses to Paul against "woman's rights" to act in the
same spheres, and speak from the same platform with men.
This address was given at the special request of several
leading ladies of this city, and though the hour was late,
it was received with unbroken interest, and was complimented
with a special vote of thanks, moved by Mrs. Colby. Most
interesting reports of district and local work were made by
Mrs. Holmes, of Tecumseh, Mrs. Chapin of Riverton, and Mrs.
Slaughter of Osceola. Dr. McNamara closed the convention
with a few stirring words of exhortation to the ladies to go
right to work from now on to November, 1882. He excused
himself from a set speech with the promise that, if "let
off" now, he would, at some future time, present a full
expression of his views on the reform to which he has so
earnestly pledged himself. The closing word in which the
_Republican_ would sum up the varied proceedings of the
first State suffrage convention is the magic word success.
A second very successful convention was held at Kearney, October
19, 20. A score or more societies were represented by delegates
and their reports were very encouraging.
The principal features of the programme were: Address of
president, Harriet S. Brooks; welcome, Mrs. H. S. Sydenham;
response, Mrs. A. P. Nicholas; addresses by Mrs. Esther L.
Warner, Gen. S. H. Connor (whose name appeared among the
votes of the opponents in 1875); Mrs. Orpha C. Dinsmoor, on
"Inherent Rights"; L. B. Fifield, regent of the State
University, on "Woman's Influence for Women"; and Rev.
Crissman, resident Presbyterian minister, on "Expediency."
Among the letters received was the following, addressed to
Mrs. Dinsmoor, by Gen. Manderson, whose name has been
mentioned as voting for woman's ballot in the constitutional
conventions of 1871 and 1875:
OMAHA, October, 17.
Your esteemed favor inviting me to speak before the
convention at Kearney, October 18, 19, upon the subject of
the extension of suffrage to women, was duly received. I
have delayed replying to it until to day in the hope that my
professional engagements would permit me to meet with you at
Kearney. The continuing session of our District Court
prevents my absence at this time. I would like very much to
be with you at the meeting of your association. My desire,
however, would be to hear rather than to speak. Ten years
have passed since, with other members of the constitutional
convention of 1871, I met in argument those who opposed
striking the word "male" from the constitution of Nebraska.
In those days "the truth was mighty and prevailed," almost
to the extent of full success, for, as the result of our
effort, we saw the little band of thirteen increase to
thirty. I feel that there must be much of new thought and
rich argument growing from the agitation of the last ten
years, and to listen to those who, like yourself and many
other members of your association, have been in the
forefront of the battle for the right, would be most
interesting. But I must, for the present, forego the
pleasure of hearing you. I write merely to keep myself "on
the record" in the good fight. Now, as ever, I favor the
enfranchisement of women, the disfranchisement of ignorance.
I would both extend and contract the right to vote in our
republic; extend it so that intelligence without regard to
color or sex should rule, and contract it so that ignorance
should be ruled. If this be not the cure for the political
ills that threaten the permanency of American institutions,
then there is no cure. May Nebraska be the first of the
States to apply the remedy.
Very respectfully yours, CHARLES F. MANDERSON.
[Illustration: Clara Bewick Colby]
The association sent out its scouts, and as a result a convention
was held in quite the northern part of the State, at Norfolk,
November 30 and December 1. This was much appreciated by the
citizens, whose locality was at that time not much frequented by
speakers on any topic.[470] The first annual meeting, held at
Lincoln in February, 1882, found a large number of delegates,
each with reports of kindred local work, ready to receive the
record of this year of preparation. Everything indicated a
favorable termination to the effort, as it became evident that
all sections of the State were being aroused to active interest.
The address of the president, Mrs. Harriet S. Brooks, was
entitled, "Work, Wages and the Ballot." It was a review of a
lecture given earlier in the season by Chancellor Fairchild
of the University, in which he had taken the ground that the
work of women should not receive the same wages as that of
men. Rev. Dr. McNamara and others spoke briefly and
earnestly. Miss Lydia Bell, at the closing evening session,
gave an address which, to use the words of the reporter,
"for felicity of composition, strength of argument, and
beauty of delivery, fully merited the special resolution of
thanks unanimously given by the society."[471]
The work of organizing and lecturing was continued with as much
zeal and efficiency as the busy days and limited resources of the
women would permit. Many of the counties held conventions, took
count of their friends, and prepared for a vigorous campaign. As
the summer advanced, at picnics, old settlers' gatherings,
soldiers' reünions, fairs, and political conventions,--wherever
a company of people had assembled, there interested women claimed
an opportunity to present the subject to audiences it would
otherwise have been impossible to reach. With but few exceptions,
officials extended the courtesies asked.
During the summer of 1882, the work was greatly aided by the
lectures of Margaret Campbell and Matilda Hindman; and during the
month of September by Helen M. Gougar. The American Suffrage
Association, at its annual meeting in 1881, elected Hon. E. M.
Correll president, as a recognition of his services to the cause
in Nebraska, and in 1882, it held its annual meeting in Omaha,
September 12 and 13. Lucy Stone, H. B. Blackwell, and Hannah
Tracy Cutler remained for some weeks, lecturing in the State, and
were warmly received by the local committees. Ex-Governor John W.
Hoyt, and Judge Kingman, of Wyoming, gave a few addresses. The
National Association also held its annual meeting at Omaha, Sept.
26, 27, 28. A reception was given at the Paxton Hotel on the
close of the last session. Following this, a two days' convention
was held at Lincoln, from which point the speakers diverged to
take part in the campaign.[472]
While those friendly to the amendment were laboring thus
earnestly, the politicians held themselves aloof and attended
strictly to "mending their own fences." After the act had passed
the legislature, it was found that almost every prominent man in
the State was friendly to the amendment. The bench and bar were
especially favorable, while three-fourths of the press and a
large majority of the clergy warmly espoused the cause. Leading
politicians told the women to go ahead and organize, and they
would assist in the latter part of the canvass. Thayer and Clay
county Republicans endorsed woman suffrage in their platform,
while Franklin county delegates were instructed to vote for no
one who was not in favor of the amendment.
Previous to the session of the Republican State Convention, great
hopes were entertained that this body would put an endorsement of
the amendment in its platform, as a majority of the delegates
were personally pledged to vote for such a measure. But the
committee on resolutions was managed by a man who feared that
such endorsement would hurt the party, and the suffrage
resolution which was handed in, was not reported with the rest.
On the plea of time being precious, the convention was maneuvered
to pass a resolution that the report of the committee should not
be discussed. The report was brought in at the last moment of the
convention, and adopted as previously arranged, and the
convention was adjourned, everybody wondering why a resolution
relative to the amendment had not been presented. The Republican
leaders feared that their party was endangered by the passage of
the bill by the legislature, for it was very largely carried by
Republican votes, and while individually friendly, they almost to
a man avoided the subject.
As the canvass progressed, it was comical to note how shy the
politicians fought of the women to whom they had promised
assistance. Judge O. P. Mason, who had agreed to give ten
lectures for the amendment, and whose advocacy would have had
immense weight, engaged to speak for the Republican party, and at
every place but one, the managers stipulated that he should be
silent on the amendment. Of the vast array of Republican
speakers, had even those who had expressed themselves in favor of
the amendment advocated it intelligently and earnestly, the
result would have been different.
Due credit must be given to ex-United States Senator Tipton,
Judge W. H. Morris, and a few others who lectured outside of
their own counties, as well as at home, while David Butler,
candidate for senator from Pawnee county, E. M. Correll of
Hebron, C. C. Chapin of Riverton, Judge A. P. Yocum of Hastings,
and doubtless a few others, regardless of their political
prospects, advocated the cause of woman along with their own. The
women of Nebraska will always cherish the memory of the
enthusiastic young student from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who spent
some months of the campaign in Nebraska, giving lavishly of his
means and talents to aid the cause. Wilder M. Wooster was a
bright, logical speaker, and his death, which occurred in 1885,
cost the world a promising and conscientious journalist.
Towards the close of the campaign it became evident that the
saloon element was determined to defeat the amendment. The organ
of the Brewers' Association sent out its orders to every saloon,
bills posted in conspicuous places by friends of the amendment
mysteriously disappeared, or were covered by others of an
opposite character, and the greatest pains was taken to excite
the antagonism of foreigners by representing to them that woman
suffrage meant prohibition. On the other hand, the temperance
advocates were by no means a unit for its support.
The morning dawned bright and clear on November 5, 1882. The most
casual observer would have seen that some unusual interest was
commanding attention. Everything wore a holiday appearance.
Polling places were gaily decorated; banners floated to the
breeze, bearing suggestive mottoes: "Are Women Citizens?"
"Taxation Without Representation is Tyranny!" "Governments Derive
their Just Powers from the Consent of the Governed." "Equality
before the Law," etc., etc. Under pavilions, or in adjoining
rooms, or in the very shadow of the ballot-box, women presided at
well-filled tables, serving refreshments to the voters, and
handing to those who would take them, tickets bearing the words:
"For Constitutional Amendment Relating to Right of Suffrage,"
while the national colors floated alike over governing and
governed; alike over women working and pleading for their rights
as citizens, and men who were selling woman's birth-right for a
glass of beer or a vote. It looked like a holiday picnic--the
well-dressed people, the flowers, the badges, and the flags; but
the tragic events of that day would fill a volume.
The conservative joined hands with the vicious, the egotist with
the ignorant, the demagogue with the venial, and when the sun
set, Nebraska's opportunity to do the act of simple justice was
gone--lost by a vote of 50,693 to 25,756--so the record gives
it. But it must not be forgotten that many tickets were
fraudulently printed, and that tickets which contained no mention
of the amendment were counted against it, as also were tickets
having any technical defect or omission; for instance, tickets
having the abbreviated form, "For the Amendment," were counted
against it. It will always remain an open question whether the
amendment did not, after all, receive an actual majority of all
votes cast upon that question. In this new State, burdened with
the duties incident to the development of a new country, the
women had done what women might do to secure their rights, but
their hour had not yet struck.
On the following evening, the speakers of the National
Association, who still remained in the State held a meeting[473]
at the opera-house in Omaha, at which the addresses were in the
main congratulatory for the large vote, making proportionally the
largest ever cast for woman's ballot.
While history must perforce be silent concerning the efforts and
sacrifices of the many, a word will be expected in regard to some
of the principal actors. Looking back on these two eventful
years, not a woman who took part in that struggle would wish to
have been inactive in that heroic hour. It is an inspiration and
an ennobling of all the faculties that they have once been lifted
above all personal aims and transient interests; and for all who
caught the true meaning of the moment, life can never again touch
the low level of indifference. The officers of the State
Association who were most active in the canvass are here
mentioned with a word as to their subsequent efforts:
Mrs. Harriet S. Brooks, whose services have so often been
referred to, after working in three States for the
privileges of citizenship, is devoting herself to the
congenial study of sociology, and her able pen still does
service.
Ada M. Bittenbender was admitted to the bar May 17, 1882,
and from that time until the election gave undivided
attention to the duties of her office as president of the
State Association. The campaign song-book, the supplement
folded in the county papers, the columns of notes and news
prepared for many journals in the State, the headquarters in
Lincoln from which, with the assistance of E. M. Correll and
Mrs. Russell, she sent forth documents, posters, blanks and
other campaign accessories, sufficiently attest her energy
and ability. She is now a practicing lawyer of Lincoln, and
was successful during the session of the legislature of 1885
in securing the passage of a law making mothers joint and
equal guardians of their children.
Mrs. Belle G. Bigelow of Geneva was an active and reliable
officer during the canvass of 1882, and is now prominent in
the temperance work of Nebraska.
Mrs. Lucinda Russell of Tecumseh, for two years the
treasurer of the State Association, edited a department in
the local paper in the interest of the amendment, was one of
the campaign committee, and spared no effort to push the
work in her own county. Her sister, Mrs. Jennie F. Holmes,
was one of the most efficient members of the executive
committee. She drove all over her own county, holding
meetings in the school-houses. The efforts of these two
women would have carried Johnson county for the amendment
had not the election officials taken advantage of a
technical defect in the tickets used in some of the
precincts. Mrs. Holmes sustained the suffrage work in
Nebraska through the two following years as chairman of the
executive committee, was elected in 1884 to the office of
president of the State Woman's Christian Temperance Union,
and reëlected in 1885 to the same position.
Mrs. Orpha C. Dinsmoor of Omaha, as chairman of the
executive committee during the first year (Mrs. De Long
having resigned), contributed largely to the most successful
conventions of the campaign. One of the most notable
lectures given in the State was hers in reply to Chancellor
Fairfield of the Nebraska University, on "Work and Wages."
As it was known that the chancellor held the ground that
woman should not be paid equally with man, even for the same
work and the same skill, the Lincoln Woman Suffrage
Association invited him to give his lecture on that subject,
and Mrs. Dinsmoor to answer him on the following evening.
Mrs. Dinsmoor is well known for her interest in education
and scientific charity, and has, by appointment of the
governor of the State, represented Nebraska at the National
Conference of Charities and Corrections at its last two
annual meetings. She is now the president of the Nebraska
Woman's Board of Associated Charities.
Mrs. Barbara J. Thompson, of English birth, was one of the
leading spirits of the Thayer County Society, and was active
in holding meetings and organizing committees. Her principal
service was by her ready pen, which furnished articles for a
large number of papers. It is pleasant to reflect that one
woman who worked so earnestly for the rights of citizenship
in Nebraska has obtained them in her new home at Tacoma,
Washington Territory.
Mrs. Gertrude McDowell of Fairbury lent her wit and wisdom
to many conventions, was ready with her pen, and secured a
thorough canvass in Jefferson county. She was the third
president of the State Association.
Mrs. Mollie K. Maule of Fairmont laid by her law studies to
serve on the executive board of the State Association. In
company with Mrs. Susie Fifield and others, she held
meetings in all the precincts of Fillmore county, securing a
good vote. Mrs. Maule was elected president of the State
Association in 1885.
Mrs. Jennie G. Ford of Kearney, for some time member of the
executive committee, was one of the leading advocates in
Buffalo county. Always aiding and inspiring others to
effort, she was an incessant worker in the causes dear to
her heart. She was president of the Nebraska Woman's
Christian Temperance Union from 1882 to 1884. She died June
18, 1885, leaving in the hearts of all who had known her,
tender memories of her beautiful life.
Miss Lydia Bell, a talented elocutionist of Lincoln, devoted
some months to lecturing. Her great intellectual and
rhetorical gifts made her a very effective speaker.
Dr. Hetty K. Painter was a graduate of the Pennsylvania
Medical College in 1860. She was a physician in the army
during the civil war, and her proudest possession is the
badge which proves her membership in the Fifth Army Corps.
Her practice and her infirmary at Lincoln did not prevent
her helping largely the cause in which she felt so great an
interest.
Mrs. Esther L. Warner of Roca was the only person actively
engaged in the last canvass who had been connected with the
effort of 1871. As vice-president of her judicial district,
she spoke at many places, organizing wherever practicable.
Her motherly face, and persuasive but humorous argument,
made her a favorite at conventions. Coming to Nebraska in
its early days, a widow with a large family, she purchased a
large farm and devoted herself to its management, to the
care and education of her children, and to the direction of
the village school, being a member of the board of trustees
for many years. She had not used tongue or pen for public
service since her girlhood until this occasion enlisted her
interest and proved her gifts.
Clara C. Chapin, _La Petite_, as she was called at
conventions, or as a friend styles her, "the dear little
English bud that blossomed on American soil," was one of the
most zealous of our women, organizing, lecturing and
arranging campaigns. She is at present very active in the
temperance work, and is one of the editors of a State
temperance paper, the _Republican Valley Echo_. An extract
from a letter received from her in answer to inquiry will
show the spirit that actuates this representative advocate
of woman's political enfranchisement:
I never thought much about "woman's rights" until within the
last five years--that is, _political_ rights. I always had a
strong sense of my responsibilities as a woman and a mother
(have three children), and realize that we need something
more than moral suasion to make our influence practical and
effective. My husband, though not what is called a
"politician," has been sufficiently in politics for me to
know just what power the ballot has, and to see the
necessity of woman's work in that direction. I am happy to
say that Mr. Chapin is heart and soul with me in this, and
it is a wonder to us how any wife or mother, how any
Christian woman can say, "I have all the rights I want."
Hoping to hold the vantage ground already gained, a State
convention was held at Kearney, December 6, 7, the place being
selected because Buffalo county had carried the amendment by a
good majority.
The association held three formal sessions, which were well
attended and very interesting. Speeches of encouragement and
congratulation were made, plans for work discussed, and
campaign reminiscences recounted. One of the most
interesting that was given was that of Mrs. Beedy of Gardner
precinct, who said that the women actively interested in the
suffrage work talked socially on the subject with every man
in the precinct. There were seventy-two votes, and only four
against the amendment. Of these four persons, two could
neither read nor write, a third could not write his own
name, and the fourth could not write his name in English.
All the delegates present reported that the social work had
been a prime cause of such success as they had found. Mrs.
Bigelow said that Geneva precinct stood ninety-eight for the
amendment and ninety-eight against. At Fairmont sixty ladies
went to the polls. They wore white ribbon badges on which
was printed, "Are we citizens?" The general impression among
those attending the convention was that the Association
should petition congress for a sixteenth amendment, petition
the Nebraska legislature for municipal suffrage, and make
use of school suffrage to its fullest extent. The executive
committee held four sessions, appointed a number of working
committees, and attended to settling up the campaign
business of the Association. The convention was considered a
decided success in every way.
The annual meeting was held in January, 1883. Mrs. Gertrude
McDowell was elected president. The usual business was
transacted, and a special committee appointed to secure favorable
legislation. In view of the fact that so much of the opposition
had been based on the allegation that "women do not want to
vote," a resolution was prepared for the immediate re-submission
of a constitutional amendment with a provision making it legal
for women to vote on its final ratification. The joint resolution
was introduced by Senator Charles H. Brown of Omaha, and ably
advocated by him and others, especially by Senator David Butler.
It was lost by nearly a two-thirds vote. The Committee on
Amendments gave a hearing to Lydia Bell, Clara C. Chapin and
Clara B. Colby. The joint resolution was taken up in the Senate
for discussion February 15. _Woman's Work_ gives the record of
the proceedings:
Senator McShane of Douglas moved indefinite postponement.
Senator Brown of Douglas, who introduced the resolution,
spoke against the motion and made a forcible historical
argument for the bill. Senator McShane then spoke at length
against the bill, basing his opposition to the
enfranchisement of woman on the ground that it would be
detrimental to the interests of the foreigner. Senator
Schönheit of Richardson opposed the bill on the plea that it
would mar the loveliness of woman in her domestic relations.
Senator Reynolds of Butler favored the bill. He had voted
against the amendment last fall, but he did it because he
feared the women did not want the ballot, and he was willing
to let them decide for themselves. Senator Dech of Saunders
favored the bill in remarks showing a broad and
comprehensive philosophy. Senator Butler of Pawnee made a
magnificent arraignment of the Republican and Democratic
parties, and an appeal to the anti-monopolists to oppose the
monopoly of sex. His speech was the longest and most
earnest of the session. Several persons expressing a desire
to continue the discussion, McShane withdrew his motion to
postpone. The Senate adjourned, and on Friday morning it was
moved and carried that this bill be made the special order
for that evening. Accordingly, the chamber and gallery were
filled. On motion, Mrs. Colby was unanimously requested to
address the Senate in behalf of the bill. Senator Butler
escorted her to the clerk's desk, and she delivered an
extemporaneous address, of which a fair synopsis was given
by the _Journal_ reporter. Foreseeing the defeat of the
bill, she said, in closing, "You may kill this bill,
gentlemen, but you cannot kill the principle of individual
liberty that is at issue. It is immortal, and rises
Phoenix-like from every death to a new life of surpassing
beauty and vigor. The votes you cast against the bill will,
like the dragons' teeth in the myth of old, spring up into
armed warriors that shall obstruct your path, demanding of
you the recognition of woman's right to 'equality before the
law.'" The grave and reverend senators joined in the
applause of the gallery, and carried Senator Reynolds'
motion "that the thanks of this Senate be returned to Mrs.
Colby for the able, eloquent and instructive address to
which we have listened"; but with no apparent reluctance, on
Senator McShane's motion being renewed, they postponed the
bill by a vote of 18 to 6.[474] Of the absent ones, Senator
Dech was known to be sick, some of the others were in their
seats a moment previous, and it is fairly to be presumed
that they did not dare to vote upon the question. Of those
voting aye, Senators Brown of Clay, and Walker of Lancaster
had favored the bill in the committee, and the friends were
counting on their vote, as also some others who had
expressed themselves favorable. It is due to Senators Brown
of Douglas and Butler to say that they championed the bill
heartily, and furthered its interests in every possible way.
Conventions were held at Grand Island in May, at Hastings in
August of 1883, and at Fremont August, 1884. The annual meeting
of 1884 was held at York, and that of 1885 in Lincoln. At all of
these enthusiasm and interest were manifested, which indicate
that the idea has not lost its foothold. The _Woman's Tribune_,
established in 1883, circulates largely in the State, and
maintains an intelligent if not an active interest. When a new
occasion comes the women will be able to meet it. Their present
attitude of hopeful waiting has the courage and faith expressed
in the words of Lowell:
"Endurance is the crowning quality,
And patience all the passion of great hearts;
These are their stay, and when the hard world
With brute strength, like scornful conqueror,
Clangs his huge mace down in the other scale,
The inspired soul but flings his patience in,
And slowly that out-weighs the ponderous globe;
One faith against a whole world's unbelief,
One soul against the flesh of all mankind."
FOOTNOTES:
[457] Having visited Beatrice twice to speak in different courses
of lectures arranged by Mrs. Colby, I can testify to her executive
ability alike in her domestic and public work. She can get up a
meeting, arrange the platform, with desk and lights, and introduce
a speaker with as much skill and grace as she can spread a table
with dainty china and appetizing food, and enliven a dinner with
witty and earnest conversation.--[E. C. S.
[458] _Yeas_--Messrs. Boulwere, Buck, Campbell, Chambers, Clancy,
Davis, Decker, Hail, Haygood, Hoover, Kirk, Larimer, Rose,
Sullivan--14.
_Nays_--Messrs. Beck, Bowen, Gibson, Harsh, Laird, Miller, Moore,
Morton, McDonald, Riden, Salisbury--11.
[459] It is a pleasure to record that both these gentlemen have
reached the logical result of their former views, and now advocate
giving the franchise to intelligence and patriotism regardless of
the sex of the possessor. Governor Saunders, in the capacity of
United States Senator, cast a favorable ballot on measures in any
manner referring to woman's civil rights, and in 1882 spoke on the
platform of the National Association, at its Washington convention.
[460] The legislature of 1875 repealed this law except so far as it
referred to unmarried adult women and widows. In the legislature of
1881, Senator C. H. Gere introduced a bill revising the laws
relating to schools. One of the provisions of the bill conferred
the school ballot on women on the same terms as on men--viz: Any
person having children of school age, or having paid taxes on
personal property, or being assessed on real estate, within such a
period, is entitled to vote at all elections pertaining to schools.
This, however, does not include the power to vote for State or
county superintendents. The women of the State now vote so largely
that it is no longer a matter of comment or record.
[461] The following named representatives voted "yea": Messrs.
Ahmanson, Cannon, Doone, Galey, Goodin, Hall, Jenkins, Kipp,
Majors, Myers, Nims, Patterson, Porter, Quimby, Rhodes, Ryan,
Wickham, Riordan, Roberts--19. Voting "nay": Messrs. Briggs, Beall,
E. Clark, J. Clark, Dillon, Duby, Grenell, Hudson, Munn, Overton,
Reed, Rosewater, Rouse, Schock, Shook, Sommerlad--16.
[462] Voting in the affirmative: Messrs. Gerrard, Hascall, Kennedy,
Tucker, Tennant, and Mr. President--6. Voting in the negative:
Messrs. Brown, Hawke, Hillon, Metz, Sheldon, and Thomas--6.
[463] Voting "yea": Messrs. Ballard, Boyd, Campbell, Cassell,
Estabrook, Gibbs, Gray, Hascall, Kenaston, Kilburn, Kirkpatrick,
Lake, Lyon, Majors, Mason, Manderson, Maxwell, Neligh, Newsome,
Philpott, Price, Robinson, Stewart, Spiece, Shaff, Thomas, Tisdel,
Towle, Wakeley, President Strickland--30. Voting "nay": Messrs.
Abbott, Eaton, Granger, Griggs, Moore, Myers, Parchin, Reynolds,
Sprague, Stevenson, Hummel, Vifquain, Weaver--13.
[464] The gentlemen who advocated the measure most warmly, were
among the ablest judges and jurists of the State. Of the
opposition, Judge O. P. Mason experienced a change of heart, and
ten years later appeared as a foremost advocate. General E.
Estabrook of Omaha lent all his influence to the amendment in the
late canvass, and Col. Philpott of Lincoln was also a warm
advocate, often accompanying his zealous wife and other members of
the effective and untiring Lincoln association to the school-house
meetings held in all parts of Lancaster county. D. T. Moore was
called out at a meeting in York in 1881, and came forward without
hesitation, saying that he was in favor of woman suffrage. He
related this incident: that on his return home from the convention
of 1871, he found that his wife had been looking after his stock
farm and attending to his business so that everything was in good
order. He praised her highly, when she replied, "Yes, and while I
was caring for your interests, you were voting against my rights."
The reply set him to thinking, and he thought himself over on the
other side. A. J. Weaver opposed the clause in a very bitter
speech. The friends of the amendment in 1881 were given to
understand that Mr. Weaver was friendly, but to prevent the
foreigners having that opinion, Mr. Weaver translated the record of
his opposition into German, and distributed the papers among the
German voters. Having been elected to congress, he was one of only
three Republican members who voted against the standing committee
on woman's claims. These facts cost him a great many votes at the
time of his reëlection in 1884, and are not yet forgotten.
[465] The debates of this convention were not reported for the
economical reasons mentioned. The names of the honored fifteen are,
Clinton Briggs, W. L. Dunlap, R. C. Eldridge, J. G. Ewan, C. H.
Frady, C. H. Gere, R. B. Harrington, D. P. Henry, C. F. Manderson,
J. McPherson, M. B. Reese, S. M. Kirkpatrick, L. B. Thorne, A. M.
Walling, J. F. Zediker. Many of these were active friends of the
amendment of 1881.
[466] The officers elected were: _President_, Harriet S. Brooks,
Omaha; _Vice-President-at-Large_, Clara Bewick Colby, Beatrice;
_Vice-Presidents_--First Judicial District, Mrs. B. J. Thomson,
Hebron; Second, Mrs. E. L. Warner, Roca; Third, Mrs. A. P.
Nicholas, Omaha; Fourth, Mrs. J. S. Burns, Scribner; Fifth, Mrs. C.
C. Chapin, Riverton; Sixth, Mrs. D. B. Slaughter, Fullerton;
_Recording Secretary_, Mrs. Ada M. Bittenbender, Osceola;
_Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs. Gertrude McDowell, Fairbury;
_Treasurer_, Mrs. L. Russell, Tecumseh; _Executive Committee_, Rev.
M. J. DeLong, Tecumseh; Mrs. Orpha C. Dinsmoor, Omaha; Mrs. J. C.
Roberts, David City; Mrs. C. B. Parker, Mrs. J. B. Finch, Lincoln;
Mrs. E. M. Correll, Hebron; Mrs. J. H. Bowen, Hastings.
[467] Members voting in the affirmative were: Messrs. Abbott,
Babcock; Bailey, Baldwin, Bartlett, Broatch, Brown, Cantlin,
Carman, Cook, Cole, Correll, Dailey, Dew, Dowty, Filley, Fried,
Graham, Gray, Hall, Heacock, Herman, Hostetter, Howe, Jackson of
Pawnee, Jensen, Johnson, Jones, Kaley, Kempton, Kyner, Linn,
McClun, McDougall, McKinnon, Mickey, Moore of York, Montgomery,
Palmer, Paxton, Ransom, Reed, Roberts, Root, Schick, Scott, Sill,
Slocumb, Watts, Wilsey and Windham--51. Voting in the negative:
Messrs. Bick, Bolln, Case, Franse, Frederick, Gates, Hollman,
Jackson of Douglas, King, Lamb, Laughlin, McShane, Moore of Otoe,
Mullen, Overton, Peterson, Putney, Sears, Wells, Whedon, Ziegler
and Mr. Speaker--22.
[468] At this time the valuable information from Wyoming with which
Nebraska was afterwards flooded; letters from Gov. Hoyt, editorials
from leading papers of the territory, and testimony from every
reputable source, had not been gathered; but two members of the
House, J. H. Helm and Church Howe, had been residents of Wyoming,
and these cheerfully gave their assurance that only good had
resulted from the enfranchisement of the women of Wyoming.
[469] Those voting in the affirmative were: Messrs. Baker, Burns
(of Dodge), Burns (of York), Coon, Daily, Dinsmore, Doane, Evans,
Gere, Graham, Harrington, Morse, Perkins, Pierce, Powers, Smith,
Tefft, Turner, Van Wyck, Wells, Wherry and White--22. Those voting
in the negative were: Messrs. Ballentine, Cady, Ervin, Howe, Myers,
Taylor, Turk and Zehrung--8. Two of these names cannot stand in the
roll of honor without an explanation; for twenty votes indicate the
full strength of the bill. The irrelevance of opponents was
illustrated by Senators Morse and Pierce. The former in voting
said, he had opposed the measure every step of the way, and now to
be consistent he voted aye. Senator Pierce said he had been
watching the other side of the capitol and nothing there seemed
popular but whiskey and women, therefore, he voted aye!
[470] The speakers of this convention were Clara Bewick Colby,
acting president; Mr. Sattler, who gave the welcome; Ada M.
Bittenbender, Esther L. Warner, Judge I. N. Taylor, Mrs. M. E.
Vandermark, Rev. Haywood and Professor Wood of Nebraska City
College. The latter spoke in English in the afternoon, and in
German, his native tongue, in the evening. The announcement that he
would do so drew a large number of his countrymen. One of these was
allowed the floor by request, when he soundly berated (in German)
the women as opposed to foreigners, while at the same time he tried
to weaken Professor Wood's argument by saying it was to be
attributed to an American wife. It was reported that the marked
contrast between the speakers was commented on by resident Germans
greatly to the disadvantage of their fellow-townsman.
[471] The officers elected were: _President_, Ada M. Bittenbender;
_Vice-President_, Clara Bewick Colby; _Secretary_, Belle G.
Bigelow; _Corresponding Secretary_, Gertrude M. McDowell;
_Treasurer_, Lucinda Russell; _Executive Committee_, Harriet S.
Brooks, E. M. Correll, Susie Noble Fifield, George B. Skinner, Rev.
John McNamara, Jennie F. Holmes; _Vice-Presidents of Judicial
Districts_--First, Barbara J. Thompson; second, Dr. Ruth M. Wood;
third, Orpha Clement Dinsmoor; fourth, Ada Van Pelt; fifth, Mrs. H.
S. Sydenham.
[472] Most of the speakers spent several weeks in the State. Mrs.
Helen M. Gougar, Mrs. May Wright Sewall, Mrs. Saxon, Mrs. Blake,
Mrs. Harbert, Mrs. Shattuck, Mrs. Neyman, Miss Anthony, Miss
Couzins and Miss Hindman were the principal National speakers, and
their ability and zeal aroused the whole State. Mrs. Colby was
indefatigable in her exertions from the moment the amendment was
submitted to the end of the canvass. Mrs. Colby and Miss Rachel
Foster organized the whole campaign throughout the State, and kept
all the speakers in motion.--[S. B. A.
[473] For further details of the closing scenes, see Vol. III. page
241.
[474] _Yeas_--Brown (Clay), Brown (Colfax), Butler, Canfield,
Conklin, Dolan, Dunphy, Harrison, Heist, McShane, Norris,
Patterson, Rogers, Sang, Schönheit, Sowers, Thatch and Walker--18.
Senator Butler voted with these for the purpose of being able to
move a reconsideration. _Nays_--Bomgardner, Brown (Douglas),
Conner, Dye, Filley and Reynolds--6. _Absent_--Barker, Brown
(Lancaster), Case, Dech, Fisher, Harris, Kinkaid and Rich.
CHAPTER L.
KANSAS.
Effect of the Popular Vote on Woman Suffrage--Anna C.
Wait--Hannah Wilson--Miss Kate Stephens, Professor of Greek in
State University--Lincoln Centre Society, 1879--The Press--The
Lincoln _Beacon_--Election, 1880--Sarah A. Brown, Democratic
Candidate--Fourth of July Celebration--Women Voting on the School
Question--State Society, 1884--Helen M. Gougar--Clara Bewick
Colby--Bertha H. Ellsworth--Radical Reform Association--Mrs. A.
G. Lord--Prudence Crandall--Clarina Howard Nichols--Laws--Women
in the Professions--Schools--Political Parties--Petitions to the
Legislature--Col. F. G. Adams' Letter.
We closed the chapter on Kansas in Vol. II. with the submission and
defeat of the woman suffrage amendment, leaving the advocates of
the measure so depressed with the result that several years elapsed
before any further attempts were made to reorganize their forces
for the agitation of the question. This has been the experience of
the friends in every State where the proposition has been
submitted to a vote of the electors--alike in Michigan, Colorado,
Nebraska and Oregon--offering so many arguments in favor of the
enfranchisement of woman by a simple act of the legislature, where
the real power of the people is primarily represented. We have so
many instances on record of the exercise of this power by the
legislatures of the several States in the regulation of the
suffrage, that there can be no doubt that the sole responsibility
in securing this right to the women of a State rests with the
legislature, or with congress in passing a sixteenth amendment that
should override all State action in protecting the rights of United
States citizens.
We are indebted to Anna C. Wait for most of the interesting facts
of this chapter. She writes:
I watched with intense interest from my home in Ohio, the
progress of the woman suffrage idea in Kansas in the campaign of
1867, and although temporary defeat was the result, yet the moral
grandeur displayed by the people in seeking to make their
constitution an embodiment of the principle of American liberty,
decided me to become a citizen of that young and beautiful State.
Gov. Harvey's message was at that time attracting much attention
and varied comments by the press. For the benefit of those who
have not studied the whole history of the cause, we give the
following extracts from his message, published February 9, 1871:
The tendency of this age is towards a civil policy wherein
political rights will not be affected by social or
ethnological distinctions; and from the moral nature of
mankind and the experience of States, we may infer that
restrictions merely arbitrary and conventional, like those
based upon color and sex, cannot last much longer than they
are desired, and cannot be removed much sooner than they
should be. This consideration should give patience to the
reformer, and resignation to the conservative.
Let us have a true republic--a "government of the people, by
the people, for the people," and we shall hear no more the
oligarchical cry of croaking conservatism calling for a
"white man's government"--appealing by this, and like
slogans of class and caste to the lowest and meanest
principles of human nature, dangerous alike to real
republicanism and true democracy. Expediency, that great
pretext for the infringement of human rights, no longer
justifies us in the retention of a monopoly of political
power in our own favored class of "white male citizens."
In the summer of 1871, Mr. Wait and myself removed to Salina,
where Mrs. Hannah Wilson resided. She was the only person in this
section of Kansas I ever heard of doing any suffrage work between
the years of 1867 and 1877. She was a woman of great force of
character, and a strong advocate of suffrage. She was born in
Hamilton county, Ohio, and came to Salina in 1870. After Miss
Anthony lectured in that city in 1877, Mrs. Wilson circulated
petitions to the legislature and to congress. She was also active
and aggressive in the temperance cause. When she learned of the
Lincoln _Beacon_, and its advocacy of woman suffrage, she wrote
an article for the paper, and accompanied it with a kind letter
and the price of a year's subscription. Mrs. Wilson was a Quaker,
and in her dress and address strictly adhered to the peculiarites
of that sect.
Miss Kate Stephens, professor of Greek in the Kansas State
University, writes that she has made diligent search during the
past summer among the libraries of Topeka and Lawrence for record
of suffrage work since the campaign of 1867, and finds absolutely
nothing, so that I am reduced to the necessity of writing,
principally, of our little efforts here in central Kansas. In the
intensely interesting letters of Mesdames Helen Ekin Starrett,
Susan E. Wattles, Dr. R. S. Tenney and Hon. J. P. Root, in Vol.
II., all written since 1880, I find no mention of any woman
suffrage organizations. Mrs. Wattles, of Mound City, says: "My
work has been very limited. I have only been able to circulate
tracts and papers"; and she enumerates all the woman suffrage
papers ever published in America, which she had taken and given
away. A quiet, unobtrusive method of work, but one of the most
effective; and doubtless to the sentiment created and fostered by
this sowing of suffrage literature by Mrs. Wattles, is largely
due the wonderful revival which has swept like one of our own
prairie fires over south-eastern Kansas during the past year; a
sentiment so strong as to need but "a live coal from off the
altar" to kindle into a blaze of enthusiasm. This it received in
the earnest eloquence of Mrs. Helen M. Gougar, who has twice
visited that portion of the State. All these writers express
their faith in a growing interest in the suffrage cause, and,
some of them, the belief that if the question were again
submitted to a vote of the people, it would carry.
In our State suffrage convention, June, 1884, among the demands
which we resolved to make of our incoming legislature, was the
submission of an amendment striking out the word "male" from the
State constitution. For myself, I entertained no hope that it
would succeed further than as a means of agitation and education.
On reflection, I hope it will not be done. The women of Kansas
have once been subjected to the humiliation of having their
political disabilities perpetuated by the vote of the "rank and
file" of our populace. While I believe the growth of popular
opinion in favor of equality of rights for women has nowhere been
more rapid than in Kansas, yet I do not lose sight of the fact
that thousands of foreigners are each year added to the voting
population, whose ballots in the aggregate defeat the will of our
enlightened, American-born citizens. Besides, it is a too
convenient way for a legislature to shirk its own responsibility.
If the demand is made, I hope it may be done in connection with
that for municipal and presidential suffrage.
The history of the woman suffrage organizations in Kansas since
1867, may be briefly told. The first owes its existence to one
copy of the _National Citizen and Ballot-Box_ subscribed for by
my husband, W. S. Wait, who by the merest chance heard Miss
Anthony deliver her famous lecture, "Woman wants Bread, not the
Ballot," in Salina, in November, 1877. The paper was religiously
read by Mrs. Emily J. Biggs and myself; although we did not need
conversion, both being radical in our ideas on this question, we
had long felt the need of something being done which would fix
public attention and provoke discussion. This was all we felt
ourselves competent to do, and the knowledge that nobody else in
our section of the country would do it, coupled with the
inspiration of the _National Citizen_, culminated, in November
1879, in sending to the _Saline Valley Register_, George W.
Anderson, editor and proprietor, a notice for a meeting of women
for the purpose of organizing a suffrage society. In response to
the call, Mrs. Emily J. Biggs, Mrs. Sarah E. Lutes, and Mrs.
Wait, met November 11, 1879, at the house of A. T. Biggs, and
organized the Lincoln Auxiliary of the National Association. We
elected a full corps of officers from among ladies whom we
believed to be favorable, interviewed them for their approval,
and sent a full report of the meeting to be published as a matter
of news in the _Register_, which had given our call without
comment. The editor had a few weeks previously bought the paper,
and we were totally ignorant in regard to his position upon the
question. We were not long left in doubt, for the fact that we
had actually organized in a way which showed that we understood
ourselves, and meant business, had the effect to elicit from his
pen a scurrilous article, in which he called us "the three
noble-hearted women," classed us with "free-lovers," called us
"monstrosities, neither men nor women," and more of the same
sort. Of course, the effect of this upon the community was to
array all true friends of the cause on our side, to bring the
opposition, made bold by the championship of such a gallant
leader, to the front, and cause the faint-hearted to take to the
fence. And here we had the discussion opened up in a manner
which, had we foreseen, I fear our courage would have been
inadequate to the demand. But not for one moment did we entertain
a thought of retreating. Knowing that if we maintained silence,
the enemy would consider us vanquished, I wrote an article for
his paper, quoting largely from Walker's American Law, which he
published; and Mrs. Biggs also furnished him an article in which
she showed him up in a manner so ludicrous and sarcastic that he
got rid of printing it by setting it up full of mistakes which he
manufactured himself, and sending her the proof with the
information that if he published it at all, it would be in that
form. It appeared the following week, however, in the first
number of _The Argus_, a Democratic paper, Ira C. Lutes, editor
and proprietor, in which we at once secured a column for the use
of our society. About a dozen ladies attended our second meeting,
at which the following resolutions were unanimously adopted, all
the ladies present being allowed to vote:
WHEREAS, The local newspaper is adjudged, by common consent,
to be the exponent of the intelligence, refinement, and
culture of a community, and, in a large degree, the educator
of the rising generation; and
WHEREAS, In one issue of the Lincoln _Register_ there
appears no fewer than forty-seven misspelled words, with
numerous errors in grammatical construction and punctuation;
also a scurrilous article headed "Woman vs. Man," in which
the editor not only grossly misrepresents us, but assails
the characters of all advocates of suffrage everywhere in a
manner which shocks the moral sense of every true lady and
gentleman in this community; therefore
_Resolved_, That this association present the editor of the
_Register_ with a copy of some standard English
spelling-book, and English Language Lessons, for his
especial use.
_Resolved_, That as he has been so kind as to offer his
advice to us, unsolicited, we reciprocate the favor by
admonishing him to confine himself to facts in future, and
to remember that the people of Lincoln are capable of
appreciating truth and common decency.
_Resolved_, That a copy of these resolutions be furnished
the editor of the Lincoln _Register_, with the books above
named.
This was promptly done, and so enraged him that the following
week he published a tirade of abuse consisting of brazen
falsehoods, whereupon a gentleman called a halt, by faithfully
promising to chastise him if he did not desist, which had the
desired effect so far as his paper was concerned.
W. S. Wait bought the _Argus_ at the end of four months, changed
its politics to Republican, and its name to the Lincoln _Beacon_,
in which I established a woman suffrage department, under the
head of "Woman as a Citizen," with one of Lucretia Mott's
favorite mottoes, "Truth for Authority, and not Authority for
Truth"; and weekly, for six years, it has gone to a constantly
increasing circle of readers, and contributed its share to
whatever strength and influence the cause has gained in this
portion of the State. In the summer of 1880, G. W. Anderson
announced himself a candidate for the legislature. He had just
before made himself especially obnoxious by shockingly indecent
remarks about the ladies who had participated in the exercises of
the Fourth of July celebration. At a meeting of the suffrage
society, held August 6, the following resolution, suggested by
Mrs. S. E. Lutes, were unanimously adopted:
WHEREAS, We, as responsible members of society, and
guardians of the purity of our families and community, are
actuated by a sense of duty and our accountability to God
for the faithful performance of it; and
WHEREAS, George W. Anderson, editor and proprietor of the
Lincoln _Register_, during his few months' residence in our
county has, by constant calumny and scurrility, both verbal
and through the columns of his paper, sought to injure the
reputation of the honorable women who compose the Lincoln
suffrage and temperance associations, and of all women
everywhere who sympathize with the aims and purposes which
these societies represent; and
WHEREAS, His utterances through the columns of the Lincoln
_Register_ are often unfit to be read by any child, or aloud
in any family, because of their indecency, we are
unanimously of the opinion that his course is calculated to
defeat the aims and purposes of Christianity, temperance and
morality; therefore
_Resolved_, That whenever George W. Anderson aspires to any
position of honor, trust or emolument in the gift of the
voters of Lincoln county, we will use all honorable means in
our power to defeat him; and we further urge upon every
woman who has the welfare of our county at heart, the duty
and necessity of coöperating with us to accomplish this end.
The above preamble and resolution appeared in the woman's column
of the Lincoln _Beacon_ the following week, and 250 copies were
printed in the form of hand-bills and distributed to the
twenty-three post-offices in Lincoln county. It did not prevent
his election, and we did not expect it would, but we believed it
our duty to enter our protest against the perpetration of this
outrage upon the moral sense of those who knew him best. We
ignored him in the legislature, sending our petitions asking that
body to recommend to congress the adoption of the sixteenth
amendment, to Hon. S. C. Millington of Crawford, who had come to
our notice that winter by offering a woman suffrage resolution in
the House. In 1882 Anderson sought a second indorsement as a
candidate for the legislature, but that portion of the community
which he really represented had become disgusted with him; he
struggled against fate with constantly waning patronage for
another year, when he succumbed to the inevitable and sought a
new field, a wiser if a sadder man. His mantle has fallen upon E.
S. Bower, whose capacity and style were graphically portrayed in
caustic rhyme by Mrs. Ellsworth, making him the target for the
wit of the women long after.
I have given more space and prominence to these two editors than
they merit, but the influence of a local newspaper is not to be
despised, however despicable the editor and his paper may be; and
it takes no small degree of courage to face such an influence as
that exerted in this county by the one in question, which, I am
happy to say, has gradually dwindled, until to-day it is too
trifling, both in extent and character, to deserve recognition.
Six years ago I do not believe there was a paper in the State of
Kansas which contained a woman suffrage department, and we rarely
saw any reference whatever to the subject; now, within a radius
of fifty miles of Lincoln Centre, fully two-thirds of all
newspapers published have a column devoted to suffrage or
temperance, or both, edited by women. The reason this is not true
of the press of the entire State is because our indefatigable
corresponding secretary, Mrs. Bertha H. Ellsworth, has not yet
had sufficient time to personally present the matter; but there
has been such a growth on the subject that by the press generally
it seems to be accepted as one of the living issues of the day. A
very efficient agency in bringing about this desirable result was
the printed column, entitled "Concerning Women," sent out gratis
every week during the year 1882, by Mrs. Lucy Stone, from the
office of _The Woman's Journal_, to all newspapers that would
publish it. Many Kansas editors availed themselves of this
generous offer, greatly to the advantage of their patrons and
themselves.
But to return to the Lincoln Woman Suffrage Association. The
first year our membership increased to twenty-seven; the second,
to forty, including six gentlemen. We did not invite gentlemen to
join the first year; owing to the character and attitude of the
opposition, we preferred to demonstrate our ability to conduct
the affairs of the society without masculine assistance. During
our six years' existence we have enrolled eighty members,
eighteen of whom are gentlemen. Of this number, forty-five women
and fourteen men still reside in Lincoln county. We have held, on
an average, one parlor meeting a month and ten public meetings.
In 1880, Mesdames Emily J. Biggs, Mary Crawford, Bertha H.
Ellsworth and myself were assigned places on the programme for
the Fourth of July celebration, after solicitation by a committee
from our society. To me was assigned the reading of the
Declaration of Independence, and I embraced the opportunity of
interspersing a few remarks not found in that honored document,
to the delight of our friends and the disgust of our foes. The
other ladies all made original, excellent and well-timed
addresses. In 1881 we got up the Fourth of July celebration[475]
ourselves, and gave the men half the programme without their
asking for it. In 1883 we had a "Foremothers' Day" celebration,
and confined the programme to our own society. In September,
1882, the society sent the writer as delegate to the annual
meeting of the National Woman Suffrage Association, held at
Omaha, Nebraska; and in March, 1884, we sent Bertha H. Ellsworth
to the Washington convention in the same capacity. Our society
has taken an active part in the annual school district elections
in Lincoln Centre. In the last five elections we have been twice
defeated and three times successful. Our defeats we claimed as
victories, inasmuch as we forced our opponents to bring out all
their friends to outvote us. Fifty per cent. of all the votes
cast at the last three elections were by women. Only twelve women
in the town failed to vote in 1884. This increase is general all
over the State; and, although we have only once tried in Lincoln
Centre to elect a woman, and then failed, yet very many of the
country districts have one, some two women on the school-board,
and at one time all three members in one district were women.
That they are honest, capable and efficient is the verdict in
every case.
In the spring of 1881, Mrs. Emily J. Biggs organized the Stanton
Suffrage Society, eight miles from Lincoln Centre, with a
membership of over twenty, more than half of whom were gentlemen.
Mesdames Mary Baldwin, N. Good, T. Faulkner, M. Biggs, Mrs. Swank
and others were the leading spirits. All their meetings are
public, and are held in the school-house. Through this society
that portion of the county has become well leavened with suffrage
sentiment. Failing health alone has prevented Mrs. Biggs from
carrying this school district organization to all parts of the
county and beyond its limits, as she has been urgently invited to
do. "Instant in season and out of season" with a word for the
cause, she has, individually, reached more people with the
subject than any other half-dozen women in the society. Her pen,
too, has done good service. Over the _nom de plume_ of "Nancy,"
in the _Beacon_, she has dealt telling blows to our ancient
adversary, the _Register_. In October, 1882, the writer went by
invitation to Ellsworth and organized a society[476] auxiliary to
the National, composed of excellent material, but too timid to do
more than hold its own until the summer of 1884, when Mrs.
Gougar, and later, Mrs. Colby, lectured there, soon after which
Mrs. Ellsworth canvassed the town with literature and a petition
for municipal suffrage, which was signed by eighty of the
eighty-five women to whom it was presented, showing that there
was either a great deal of original suffrage sentiment there, or
that the society had exerted a large amount of "silent
influence." In October, 1883, Mrs. Helen M. Gougar came to fill
some lecture engagements in the southeastern part of the State.
During this visit she organized several clubs.[477]
In June, 1884, Mrs. Gougar again visited Kansas, lecturing for a
month in different parts of the State. She drew large audiences
and made many converts. A suffrage society was organized at
Emporia, Miss M. J. Watson, president. The active friends availed
themselves of her assistance to call a State Suffrage Convention,
which met in the Senate chamber in Topeka, June 25, 26, and
organized a State Association.[478] Mrs. Gougar, by the unanimous
vote of the convention, presided, and dispatched business with
her characteristic ability. In view of all the circumstances,
this convention and its results were highly satisfactory. The
attendance was not large, but the fact that the call was issued
from Topeka to the press of the State but eight days before the
convention met, and probably did not reach half the papers in
time for one insertion, accounts for the absence of a crowd. Some
even in Topeka learned that the convention was in progress barely
in time to reach its last session. Reporters for the Topeka
_Capital_, the Topeka _Commonwealth_ and Kansas City _Journal_
attended all the day sessions of the convention, and gave full
and fair reports of the proceedings. After the adjournment of the
State convention, the women of Topeka formed a city society. The
corresponding secretary, Mrs. Ellsworth, with Mrs. Clara B.
Colby, made an extensive circuit, lecturing and organizing
societies. They were everywhere cordially welcomed.[479]
Kansas has a flourishing Women's Christian Temperance Union which
at its last annual meeting adopted a strong woman suffrage
resolution; Miss O. P. Bray of Topeka is its superintendent of
franchise. Mrs. Emma Molloy of Washington, both upon the rostrum
and through her paper, the official organ of the State Union,
ably and fearlessly advocates woman suffrage as well as
prohibition, and makes as many converts to the former as to the
latter.
Mrs. A. G. Lord did a work worthy of mention in the formation of
the Radical Reform Christian Association, for young men and boys,
taking their pledge to neither swear, use tobacco nor drink
intoxicating liquors. A friend says of Mrs. Lord:
Like all true reformers she has met even more than the usual
share of opposition and persecution, and mostly because she
is a woman and a licensed preacher of the Methodist church
in Kansas. She was a preacher for three years, but refuses
to be any longer because, she says, under the discipline as
it now is, the church has no right to license a woman to
preach. Trying to do her work inside the church in which she
was born and reared, she has had to combat not only the
powers of darkness outside the church, but also the most
contemptible opposition, amounting in several instances to
bitter persecutions, from the ministers of her own
denomination with whom she has been associated in her work
as a preacher; and through it all she has toiled on,
manifesting only the most patient, forgiving spirit, and the
broadest, most Christ-like charity.
The R. R. C. A. has been in existence two and a half years, and
has already many hundreds of members in this and adjoining
counties, through the indefatigable zeal of its founder. Mitchell
county has the honor of numbering among its many enterprising
women the only woman who is a mail contractor in the United
States, Mrs. Myra Peterson, a native of New Hampshire. The
_Woman's Tribune_ of November, 1884, contains the following brief
sketch of a grand historic character:
Marianna T. Folsom is lecturing in Kansas on woman suffrage.
She gives an interesting account of a visit to Mrs. Prudence
Crandall Philleo. Miss Crandall over fifty years ago
allowed a girl with colored blood in her veins to attend her
young ladies' school in Connecticut. On account of the
social disturbance because of this, she dismissed the white
girls and made her school one for colored pupils. Protests
were followed by indictments, and these by mobbings, until
she was obliged to give up her school. For her fortitude,
the Anti-Slavery Society had her portrait painted. It became
the property of Rev. Samuel J. May, who donated it to
Cornell University when opened to women. Miss Crandall
married, but has now been a widow many years. She is in her
eighty-third year, and is vigorous in mind and body, having
been able to deliver the last Fourth of July oration at Elk
Falls, Kan., where she now lives and advocates woman
suffrage and temperance.
In the introduction to Chapter VII., Vol. I., of this history,
appears this sentence: "To Clarina Howard Nichols[480] the women
of Kansas are indebted for many civil rights which they have as
yet been too apathetic to exercise." Uncomplimentary as this
statement is, I must admit its truthfulness as applied to a large
majority of our women of culture and leisure, those who should
have availed themselves of the privileges already theirs and
labored for what the devotion of Mrs. Nichols made attainable.
They have neither done this, nor tried to enlighten their less
favored sisters throughout the State, the great mass of whom are
obliged to exert every energy of body and mind to furnish food,
clothes and shelter for themselves and children. Probably fully
four-fifths of the women of Kansas never have heard of Clarina
Howard Nichols; while a much larger number do know that our laws
favor women more than those of other States, and largely avail
themselves of the school ballot. The readiness with which the
rank and file of our women assent to the truth when it is
presented to them, indicates that their inaction results not so
much from apathy and indifference as from a lack of means and
opportunity. Among all the members of all the woman suffrage
societies in Central Kansas, I know of but just one woman of
leisure--one who is not obliged to make a personal sacrifice of
some kind each time she attends a meeting or pays a dollar into
the treasury. Section 6, Article XV., of the constitution of
Kansas reads:
The legislature shall provide for the protection of the
rights of women, in acquiring and possessing property, real,
personal, and mixed, separate and apart from her husband;
and shall also provide for their equal rights in the
possession of their children. In accordance with the true
spirit of this section, our statute provides that the law of
descents and distributions as regards the property of either
husband or wife is the same; and the interests of one in the
property of the other are the same with each; and that the
common-law principles of estates of dower, and by courtesy
are abolished.[481]
[Illustration: "The world needs women who do their own thinking.
Cordially yours, Helen M. Gougar"]
The rights of husband and wife in the control of their respective
properties, both real and personal, are identical, as provided
for in sections 1, 2, 3, and 4. Chapter 62, page 539, compiled
laws of Kansas, 1878:
SECTION 1. The property, real and personal, which any woman
in this State may own at the time of her marriage, and the
rents, issues, profits, and proceeds thereof, and any real,
personal, or mixed property which shall come to her by
descent, devise, or bequest, or the gift of any person
except her husband, shall remain her sole and separate
property, notwithstanding her marriage, and not be subject
to the disposal of her husband, or liable for his debts.
SEC. 2. A married woman, while the marriage relation
subsists, may bargain, sell and convey her real and personal
property, and enter into any contract with reference to the
same, in the same manner, to the same extent, and with like
effect as a married man may in relation to his real and
personal property.
SEC. 3. A woman may, while married, sue and be sued, in the
same manner as if unmarried.
SEC. 4. Any married woman may carry on any trade or
business, and perform any labor or services, on her sole and
separate account, and the earnings of any married woman from
her trade, business, labor or services, shall be her sole
and separate property, and may be used and invested by her
in her own name.
It is a fact worthy of note that the above legislation, also the
passage of the law of descents and distributions, immediately
followed the woman suffrage campaign of 1867.
In 1880, the Democrats of Kansas, in their State convention at
Topeka, nominated Miss Sarah A. Brown of Douglas county, for
superintendent of public instruction, the first instance on
record of a woman receiving a nomination from one of the leading
political parties for a State office. The following is Miss
Brown's letter of acceptance:
OFFICE OF SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, Douglas }
Co., Kansas,}
LAWRENCE, Kansas, Sept. 30, 1880. }
_To Hon. John Martin, Topeka, Kansas, Chairman of the State
Democratic Central Committee:_
SIR:--I am in receipt of your communication of August 30,
advising me of the action of the Democratic convention of
August 26, in nominating me as their candidate for State
superintendent of public instruction.
In making this nomination the Democratic party of Kansas
has, with a liberal and enlightened spirit, and with a
generous purpose, yielded to the tendency of the times,
which demand equal rights and equal opportunities for all
the people, and it has thus shown itself to be a party of
progress. It has placed itself squarely and unequivocally
before the people upon this great and vital question of
giving to woman the right to work in any field for which she
may be fitted, thus placing our young and glorious State in
the foremost rank on this, as on the other questions of
reform.
Furthermore, in nominating one who has no vote, and for this
reason cannot be considered in politics, and in doing this
of its own free will, without any solicitation on my part,
the Democratic party of this State has shown that it is in
full accord with the Jeffersonian doctrine that the office
should seek the man and not the man the office; and also
that it fully appreciates the fact which is conceded by all
persons who have thought much on educational matters, that
the best interests of our schools demand that the office of
superintendent, both of the State and county, should be as
far as possible disconnected from politics, and it has done
what it could to rescue the office from the vortex of mere
partisan strife. For this reason I accept the nomination,
thanking the party for the honor it has conferred upon me.
Respectfully, SARAH A. BROWN.
Miss Brown was defeated. The vote of the State showed the average
Democrat unable to overcome his time-rusted prejudices
sufficiently to vote for a woman to fill the highest educational
office in the gift of the people, so that Miss Brown's minority
was smaller even than that of the regular Democratic ticket.
January 21, 1881, Hon. S. C. Millington of Crawford county
introduced in the House a joint resolution providing for the
submission to the legal voters of the State of Kansas of a
proposition to amend the constitution so as to admit of female
suffrage. The vote on the adoption of the resolution stood 51
ayes and 31 noes in the House, and a tie in the Senate. Later in
the same session, Hon. A. C. Pierce of Davis county introduced in
the House a joint resolution proposing an amendment to the
constitution which should confer the right of suffrage on any one
over 21 years of age who had resided in the State six months. Mr.
Hackney of Cowley county, introduced a like resolution in the
Senate.
In December, 1881, Governor St. John appointed Mrs. Cora M. Downs
one of the regents of the State University at Lawrence. In 1873,
Mrs. Rice was elected to the office of county clerk of Harper
county, and Miss Alice Junken to the office of recorder of deeds,
in Davis county. In 1885 Miss Junken was reëlected by a majority
of 500 over her competitor, Mrs. Fleming, while Trego county gave
a unanimous vote for Miss Ada Clift as register of deeds.
In proportion to her population Kansas has as many women in the
professions as any of the older States. We have lawyers,
physicians, preachers and editors, and the number is constantly
increasing. In Topeka there are eight practicing physicians,
holding diplomas from medical colleges, and two or three who are
not graduates. In the Woman's Medical College of Chicago, Kansas
now has four representatives--Mrs. Sallie A. Goff of Lincoln,
Miss Thomas of Olathe, Miss Cunningham of Garnett, and Miss
Gilman of Pittsburg.
All female persons over the age of twenty-one years are entitled
to vote at any school-district meeting on the same terms as men.
The right of a woman to hold any office, State (except member of
the legislature), county, township or school-district, in the
State of Kansas, is the same as that of a man. In 1882, six
counties, viz., Chase, Cherokee, Greenwood, Labette, Pawnee, and
Woodson, elected women as superintendents of public instruction.
Section 23, Article II., Constitution of Kansas, reads: "The
legislature, in providing for the formation and regulation
of schools, shall make no distinction between males and
females."
Under the legislation based upon this clause of our constitution,
males and females have equal privileges in all schools controlled
by the State. The latest report of the State superintendent of
public instruction shows that over one-half of the pupils of the
Normal school, about two-fifths in the University, and nearly
one-third in the Agricultural College, are females.
In the private institutions of learning, including both
denominational and unsectarian, over one-half of the students are
females who study in the same classes as the males, except in
Washburn college which has a separate course for ladies.
Most of these institutions have one woman, or more, in their
faculties. One-half of the faculty of the State University is
composed of women. In the last report of the State superintendent
is the following:
The ratio of female teachers is greater than ever before,
some 69 per cent. of the entire number employed. It is,
indeed, a matter of congratulation that the work of the
schools, especially the primary teaching, is falling more
and more to the care of women.
The Republican State convention of 1882, by an overwhelming
majority endorsed woman suffrage, which action the Lincoln W. S.
A. promptly recognized as follows:
WHEREAS, The Republican party of the State of Kansas, by and
through its chosen representatives in the Republican State
convention at Topeka, August 9, 1882, did, by an
overwhelming majority, pledge itself to the support of the
principle of woman suffrage by the following:
_Resolved_, That we request the next legislature to submit
such an amendment to the constitution of the State as will
secure to woman the right of suffrage. And,
WHEREAS, By this action the Republican party of Kansas has
placed itself in line with the advanced thought of the times
in a manner worthy a great political party of the last
quarter of the nineteenth century, thereby proving itself
worthy the respect and confidence of the women of the State;
therefore,
_Resolved_, That the Lincoln Woman Suffrage Association, in
behalf of the women of Kansas, does hereby express thanks to
the Republican party for this recognition of the political
rights of the women of the State, and especially to the Hon.
J. C. Root of Wyandotte, Hon. Hackney of Winfield, Col.
Graves of Montgomery, and Gen. Kelly, for their able and
fearless support of the measure, and to each and every
member of the convention who voted for it.
In 1883, Senator Hackney introduced a bill of which we find the
following in the _Topeka Capital_ of that date:
Senate bill No. 46, being Senator Hackney's, an act to
provide for the submission of the question of female
suffrage to the women of Kansas, was taken up, the reading
thereof being greeted with applause. It provides that at the
general election in 1883 the women of the State shall
decide, by ballot, whether they want suffrage or not.
Senator Hackney made an address to the Senate upon the bill,
saying he believed in giving women the same rights as men
had. The last Republican platform declared in favor of woman
suffrage, and those Republicans who opposed the platform
said they believed the women of the State should have their
say about it; the Democratic platform said the same as the
dissenters from the Republican. Several humorous amendments
were made to the bill. Senator Kelley favored the bill
because there were a great many women in the State who
wanted to vote. He hoped the Senate would not be so
ungallant as to vote the bill down. Senator Sluss moved the
recommendation be made that the bill be rejected. Carried.
The Republican State convention of 1884 ignored the woman
suffrage question. The Anti-monopoly (Greenback) party State
convention, of August 1884, placed in its platform the following:
That we believe the advancing civilization of the past
quarter of the nineteenth century demands that woman should
have equal pay for equal work, and equal laws with man to
secure her equal rights, and that she is justly entitled to
the ballot.
Miss Fanny Randolph of Emporia, was nominated by acclamation for
State superintendent of public instruction, by this convention.
The Prohibition State convention, in session in Lawrence,
September 2, 1884, placed the following plank in its platform:
We believe that women have the same right to vote as men,
and in the language of the Republican State platform of two
years ago, we request the next legislature to submit such an
amendment to the constitution of the State as will secure to
woman the right of suffrage.
This year we sent from Lincoln a petition with 175 names asking
for a resolution recommending to congress the adoption of the
sixteenth amendment. The results of the election of 1884, showed
quite a gain for women in county offices. There are now eleven
superintendents of public instruction, several registers of
deeds, and county clerks. The number of lawyers,[482] physicians,
notaries public, principals of schools, members of school-boards
in cities and school districts, is rapidly increasing, as is also
the number of women who vote in school-district elections. Miss
Jessie Patterson, who ran as an independent candidate for
register of deeds in Davis county, beat the regular Republican
nominee 286 votes, and the Democratic candidate 299 votes.
The work of organizing suffrage societies has also progressed,
though not as rapidly as it should, for want of speakers and
means to carry it on. Through the efforts of Mrs. Laura M. Johns
of Salina, vice-president of the State society, several new and
flourishing clubs have been formed this summer in Saline county,
so that it is probably now the banner county in Kansas. The
Lincoln society is preparing to hold a fair in September, for the
benefit of the State association, which will hold its next annual
convention in October. Suffrage columns in newspapers are
multiplying and much stress is placed upon this branch of work.
On July 18, a convention was held to organize the Prohibition
party in Lincoln county. A cordial invitation was extended to
women to attend. Eight were present, and many more would have
been had they known of it. I was chosen secretary of the
convention, and Mesdames Ellsworth and Goff were appointed upon
the platform committee, and several of the central committee are
women. The position of the new party upon the question may be
inferred from the following clauses in its platform:
_Resolved_, By the Prohibition party of Lincoln county,
Kansas, in convention assembled, that the three vital issues
before the people to-day are prohibition, anti-monopoly, and
woman suffrage.
_Resolved_, That we believe in the political equality of the
sexes, and we call on the legislature to submit such an
amendment to the people for adoption or rejection, to the
constitution of the State as will secure to women equal
political rights.
Later the convention nominated me for register of deeds, and Dr.
Sallie A. Goff for coroner. I immediately engaged Miss Jennie
Newby of Tonganoxie, member of the executive committee and State
organizer of the Prohibition party of Kansas, to make a canvass
of the county with me in the interest of the party and the county
ticket. We held ten meetings and at all points visited made
converts to both prohibition and woman suffrage, though nothing
was said about the latter. There were two men on the ticket; one
of them received more votes than Dr. Goff and I did, and the
other fewer. Emma Faris ran independently for register of deeds
in Ellsworth county and received a handsome vote. It is no longer
a matter of much comment for a woman to run for an office in
Kansas.
Mrs. Gougar came again to Kansas in June to attend the third
annual meeting of the Radical Reform Christian Association, and
spent a month lecturing on woman suffrage and temperance.
January 15, 16, 1885, the annual meeting of the State society was
held at Topeka. Large and enthusiastic audiences greeted Mrs.
Gougar on this, her third visit to Kansas. She remained at the
capital for several days, and largely through her efforts with
members of the legislature special committees were voted for in
both Houses to consider the interests of women. The measure was
carried in the House by a vote of 75 to 45.[483] In the Senate it
was a tie, 19 to 19. The new committee[484] through its chairman,
George Morgan of Clay, reported in favor of a bill for municipal
suffrage. It was so low on the calendar that there was no hope of
its being reached, but a motion was made to take it out of its
regular course, which was lost by 65 to 52.
The second annual meeting of the State society was held at
Salina, October 28, 29, 1885. Mrs. Laura M. Johns gave the
address of welcome, to which Mrs. Anna C. Wait, the president,
responded. "Mother Bickerdyke,"[485] who followed Sherman's army
in its march to the sea, was present and cheered all with her
stirring words of the work of women in the war.[486] Her
introduction was followed with applause and the earnest attention
to her remarks showed in what high esteem she is held. She said
that half the work of the war was done by women, but she made no
complaint, indeed no mention, of the fact that these women had
never been pensioned.
As it may add force to some facts already stated to have them
repeated by one in authority, we give the following letter from
the secretary of the Kansas Historical Society:
KANSAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY Topeka, Nov. 26, 1885
MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Rochester, N. Y.:
_My Dear Friend_:--In answer to your request for information
upon certain points bearing upon the subject of woman
suffrage in Kansas, I give the following:
The women avail themselves quite generally of their
privilege of voting at the annual and special school
district meetings, at which district officers are elected,
and all questions of taxes and expenditures are voted on and
settled. Women are, in many instances, elected members of
the board of school directors, and thus are charged with the
duty of employing teachers, with the supervision of the
schools, and with the general management of the affairs of
the district. Women vote on the question of the issue of
school district bonds, and thus they take part in deciding
whether new school houses shall be built and the property of
the districts be pledged for the future payment of the cost
of the same.
In the chartered cities women do not generally vote for
school officers although, under the constitution, it is
believed they have the right to do so, and in one or more
instances I am informed they have done so, without the right
being contested. In cities, school officers are elected at
general elections for other city officers, for which women
are not permitted to vote, and as they cannot vote for all
they generally do not choose to vote for any. Women do not
vote for either city, county, or State superintendents, and
it is not considered that under our constitution they have
the right to do so.
In 1884, there were 4,915 women teaching in the State, and
1,936 men. The average monthly wages of women was $32.85,
and of men, $40.70. There are at present twelve women
holding the office of county superintendent of public
schools in the State. In 72 counties the office is filled by
men. Thus, of the 84 organized counties of the State,
one-seventh of the school superintendents are women, who
generally prove to be competent and efficient, and the
number elected is increasing.
In one county, Harper, a woman holds the office of county
clerk. A young woman was recently elected to the office of
register of deeds, in Davis county. It is conceded that
these two offices can very appropriately be filled by women;
and now that the movement has begun, no doubt the number of
those elected will increase at recurring elections. Already,
in numerous instances, women are employed as deputies and
assistants in these and other public offices.
The participation of women in school elections and their
election to membership of school district boards, are
resulting in a steady growth of sentiment in favor of woman
suffrage, generally. It is seen that in the decision of
questions involving the proper maintenance of schools, and
the supplying of school apparatus, women usually vote for
liberal and judicious expenditures, and make faithful school
officers. Their failures are not those of omission, as is so
frequently the case with men holding these offices. If they
err in judgment, it is from a lack of that business
information and experience which women as non-voters have
had little opportunity to acquire, but which, under our
Kansas system is now rapidly being supplied.
Among the influences tending to increase the suffrage
sentiment in Kansas, may be mentioned those growing out of
the active part women are taking in the discussion of
political, economical, moral and social questions, through
their participation in the proceedings of the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union, the State Temperance Union, the
Woman's Social Science Association, the Kansas Academy of
Science, the Grange, the State and local Teachers'
Associations, and many other organizations in which women
have come to perform so prominent a part. In these
organizations, and in the part they take in discussions,
they show their capacity to grapple with the political,
social, and scientific problems of the day, in such a manner
as to demonstrate their ability to perform the highest
duties of citizenship. Still the chief influence which is
bringing about a growth of opinion in favor of woman
suffrage in Kansas, comes from what has now become the
actual, and I may say, the popular and salutary practice of
woman suffrage at school district meetings. It is seen that
the reasons which make it right and expedient for women to
vote on questions pertaining to the education of their
children, bear with little, if any, less force upon the
propriety of their voting upon all questions affecting the
public welfare.
I think I may truly say to you that the tendencies in Kansas
are to the steady growth of sentiment in favor of woman
suffrage. This is so apparent that few of those even who do
not believe in its propriety or expediency now doubt that it
will eventually be adopted, and the political consequences
fully brought to the test of experience.
Yours sincerely, F. G. ADAMS.
The greatest obstacle to our speedy success in this State, as
elsewhere, is the ignorance and indifference of the women
themselves. But the earnestness and enthusiasm of the few, in
their efforts from year to year, cannot be wholly lost--the fires
kindled by that memorable campaign of 1867 are not dead, only
slumbering, to burst forth with renewed brilliancy in the dawn of
the day that brings liberty, justice, and equality for woman.
FOOTNOTES:
[475] In the centennial year, when protests were in order, the
following was sent to the National Association at Philadelphia,
describing the manner in which a lady eighty-four years old
celebrated her birthday:
"NEUTRAL STATION, Kansas, July 17, 1876.
"DEAR SISTERS: Two days ago, on Saturday, the 15th, as has been
usual for three or four years, a company of our friends and
neighbors met at our house to celebrate my eighty-fourth
birthday. We had a pleasant time. Some pieces, composed for the
occasion, were read, and a clergyman made some appropriate
remarks. I improved the opportunity to obtain the names of the
ladies present, and succeeded with all, old and young, except one
who was afraid it would get her into a trap; but with _the rest
it needed but little electioneering beside reading your
advertisement to secure their names_. We, as a neighborhood, are
ignorant on the subject. I solicited assistance pecuniarily, and
send you what I can, with a word of encouragement still to work
and wait, and my earnest prayer for your final success.
ELSIE STEWART."
The other signatures were: Henrietta L. Miller, Mrs. Julia A.
Ingraham, Mrs. Hollet, Mrs. Lottie Griffin, Selinda Miller, Celina
Lake, Mollie Yeates, Betsey J. Corse, Mary G. Hapeman, Mrs. Maggie
Clark, Miss Elsie Miller, Louie Ingraham, Malura Hickox, C. A.
Eddy, Anna Lowe, Charlotte H. Butler.
[476] _President_, Mrs. Mary Maberly; _Secretary_, Miss Lillie M.
Hull; _Treasurer_, Mrs. Emma H. Johns; and an able executive
committee, of which Mrs. E. M. Alden, Mrs. Emma Faris, Mrs. Mattie
McDowell and Bertha H. Ellsworth, who was then teaching there, were
members.
[477] Arkansas City Suffrage Club, with Mrs. M. B. Houghton,
_President_; Mrs. E. T. Ayers, _Vice-President_; Miss Gertrude
Fowler, _Secretary_, and Mrs. F. Daniels, _Treasurer_; also one at
Winfield, county-seat of Cowley county, with Mrs. J. Cairns,
_President_; Mrs. M. R. Hall, _Secretary_, and Mrs. E. D. Garlick,
_Treasurer_; and vice-presidents from each of the churches, as
follows: Mesdames P. P. Powell, G. Miller, M. Burkey and J. C.
Fuller.
[478] _President_, Mrs. Hetta P. Mansfield, Winfield;
_Vice-President-at-Large_, Mrs. Anna C. Wait, Lincoln;
_Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs. Bertha H. Ellsworth, Lincoln;
_Recording Secretary_, Miss Georgiana Daniels, Eureka; _Treasurer_,
Mrs. D. A. Millington, Winfield; _Chaplain_, Rev. S. S. Cairns,
Winfield; _Vice-Presidents_ and _Executive Committee_, Mrs. Judge
Griswold, Leavenworth; Miss Sarah Hurtsel, Columbus; Mrs. Anna
Taylor, Wichita; Miss Myra Willets, Independence; Mrs. W. P.
Roland, Cherryvale; Judge Lorenzo Westover, Clyde; Mr. V. P.
Wilson, Abilene; Hon. Albert Griffin, Manhattan; Mrs. A. O.
Carpenter, Emporia; Mrs. Noble Prentis, Atchison; Mrs. S. S. Moore,
Burden; Mrs. Emma Faris, Carnerio; Mrs. Houghton and Mrs. Farrer,
Arkansas City; Mrs. Finley, Topeka.
[479] The towns visited were: Beloit, Lincoln Center, Wilson,
Ellsworth, Salina, Solomon City, Minneapolis, Cawker City and
Clyde. The officers of the Topeka society were: _President_, Mrs.
Priscilla Finley; _Secretary_, Mrs. E. G. Hammon; _Treasurer_, Mrs.
Sarah Smith. The officers of Beloit were: _President_, Mrs. H.
Still; _Vice-Presidents_, Mrs. J. M. Patten, Mrs. M. Vaughan;
_Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs. F. J. Knight; _Recording
Secretary_, Mary Charlesworth; _Treasurer_, Mrs. M. Bailey. At
Salina, Mrs. Johns and Mrs. Christina Day are the officers.
[480] The women of Kansas should never forget that to the influence
of Mrs. Nichols in the Constitutional convention at Wyandotte, they
owe the modicum of justice secured by that document. With her
knitting in hand, she sat there alone through all the sessions, the
only woman present, watching every step of the proceedings, and
laboring with members to so frame the constitution as to make all
citizens equal before the law. Though she did not accomplish what
she desired, yet by her conversations with the young men of the
State, she may be said to have made the idea of woman suffrage seem
practicable to those who formed the constitution and statute laws
of that State.--[E. C. S.
[481] See compiled laws of Kansas, 79, page 378, chapter XXXIII.
[482] Miss Flora M. Wagstaff of Paoli was among the first to
practice law in Kansas. In 1881, Ida M. Tillotson of Mill Brook,
and in 1884, Maria E. DeGeer were admitted.
[483] The names of representatives voting for the committee stand
as follows: _Yeas_--Barnes, Beattie, Bollinger, Bond, Bonebrake,
Brewster, Buck, Butterfield, Caldwell, Campbell, Carter, Clogston,
J. B. Cook of Chetopa, H. C. Cook of Oswego, Collins, Cox, Currier,
Davenport, Dickson, Edwards, Faulkner, Gillespie, Glasgow, Gray,
Grier, Hargrave, Hatfield, Hogue, Hollenshead, Holman, Hopkins,
Hostetler, Johnson of Ness City, Johnson of Marshall, Johnson of
Topeka, Johnson (Speaker of the House), Kelley of Cawker City,
King, Kreger, Lawrence, Lewis, Loofburrow, Lower, McBride, McNall,
McNeal, Matlock, Maurer, Miller, Moore, Morgan of Clay, Morgan of
Osborne, Mosher, Osborn, Patton, Pratt, Reeves, Rhodes, Roach,
Roberts, Slavens, Spiers, Simpson, Smith of McPherson, Smith of
Neosho, Stewart, Stine, Sweezy, Talbot, Vance, Veach, Wallace,
Wentworth, Wiggins, Willhelm--75. The names of senators were:
_Yeas_--Bowden, Congdon, Donnell, Edmunds, Granger, Hicks,
Humphrey, Jennings, M. B. Kelley, Kellogg, Kimball, Kohler,
Pickler, Ritter, Rush, Shean, Sheldon, White, Young--19.
[484] The Committee on the Political Rights of Women, granted by
the House, were: George Morgan of Clay, George Seitz of Ellsworth,
David Kelso of Labette, F. W. Rash of Butler, W. C. Edwards of
Pawnee, F. J. Kelley of Mitchell, W. H. Deckard of Doniphan.
[485] The speakers were: Rev. Amanda May (formerly of Indiana),
Mrs. Martha L. Berry, Mrs. Ada Sill, Mrs. Colby, Dr. Addie Kester,
Mrs. M. D. Vale, Rev. C. H. Rogers, Mrs. De Geer, Miss Jennie
Newby. Officers: _President_, Mrs. Anna C. Wait of Lincoln;
_Vice-President_, Mrs. Laura M. Johns of Salina; _Treasurer_, Mrs.
Martia L. Berry of Cawker City; _Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs. B.
H. Ellsworth of Lincoln; _Recording Secretary_, Mrs. Alice G. Bond
of Salina.
[486] When Miss Anthony and I went through Kansas in 1867 we held
an afternoon and evening meeting in Salina. Our accommodations at
the hotel were wretched beyond description. Mother Bickerdyke was
just preparing to open her hotel but was still in great confusion.
Hearing of our dismal quarters she came and took us to her home,
where her exquisitely cooked food and clean beds redeemed in a
measure our dolorous impressions of Salina. Our meetings were held
in an unfinished church without a floor, the audience sitting on
the beams, our opponents (two young lawyers) and ourselves on a few
planks laid across, where a small stand was placed and one tallow
candle to lighten the discussion that continued until a late hour.
Being delayed the next day at the depot a long time waiting for the
train we held another prolonged discussion with these same sprigs
of the legal profession. We had intended to go on to Ellsworth, but
hearing of trouble there with the Indians we turned our faces
eastward. Mother Bickerdyke and her thrilling stories of the war
are the pleasant memories that still linger with us of Salina.--[E.
C. S.
CHAPTER LI.
COLORADO.
Great American Desert--Organized as a Territory, February 28,
1860--Gov. McCook's Message Recommending Woman Suffrage,
1870--Adverse Legislation--Hon. Amos Steck--Admitted to the
Union, 1876--Constitutional Convention--Efforts to Strike Out the
Word "Male"--Convention to Discuss Woman Suffrage--School
Suffrage Accorded--State Association Formed, Alida C. Avery,
President--Proposition for Full Suffrage Submitted to the Popular
Vote--A Vigorous Campaign--Mrs. Campbell and Mrs. Patterson of
Denver--Opposition by the Clergy--Their Arguments Ably
Answered--D. M. Richards--The Amendment Lost--_The Rocky Mountain
News_.
That our English readers may appreciate the Herculean labors that
the advocates of suffrage undertake in this country in canvassing a
State, they must consider the vast territory to be traveled over,
in stages and open wagons where railroads are scarce. Colorado, for
example, covers an area of 104,500 square miles. It is divided by
the Rocky Mountains running north and south, with two hundred lofty
peaks rising thirteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, and
some still higher. To reach the voters in the little mining towns a
hundred miles apart, over mountains such as these, involves
hardships that only those who have made the journeys can
understand. But there is some compensation in the variety, beauty
and grandeur of the scenery, with its richly wooded valleys, vast
parks and snow-capped mountains. It is the region for those awake
to the sublime in nature to reverently worship some of her grandest
works that no poet can describe nor artist paint. Here, too, the
eternal struggle for liberty goes on, for the human soul can never
be attuned to harmony with its surroundings, especially the grand
and glorious, until the birthright of justice and equality is
secured to all.
For a history of the early efforts made in the Centennial State to
secure equal rights for women, we are indebted to Mrs. Mary G.
Campbell and Mrs. Katharine G. Patterson, two sisters who have been
actively interested in the suffrage movement in Colorado, as
follows:
In 1848, while those immortal women whose names will be found on
many another page of the volume in which this chapter is
included, were asking in the convention at Seneca Falls, N. Y.,
that their equal membership in the human family might be admitted
by their husbands, fathers and sons, Colorado, unnamed and
unthought of, was still asleep with her head above the clouds.
Only two mountain-tops in all the-world were nearer heaven than
hers, and they, in far Thibet, had seen the very beginnings of
the race which, after six thousand years, had not yet penetrated
Colorado. Islanded in a cruel brown ocean of sand, she hid her
treasures of gold and silver in her virgin bosom and dreamed,
unstirred by any echoes of civilization. When she woke at last it
was to the sound of an anvil chorus--to the ring of the mallet
and drill, and the hoarse voices of men greedy only for gold.
In 1858, when the Ninth National Convention of women to demand
their legal rights was in session in New York, there were only
three white women in the now rich and beautiful city of Denver.
Still another ten years of wild border life, of fierce
vicissitudes, of unwritten tragedies enacted in forest and mine,
and Colorado was organized into a territory with a population of
5,000 women and 25,000 men.
The first effort for suffrage was made in 1870, during the fifth
session of the legislative assembly, soon after General Edward
McCook was sent out by President Grant to fill the gubernatorial
chair. In his message to the legislature, he promptly recommended
to the attention of its members the question of suffrage for
woman:
Before dismissing the subject of franchise, I desire to call
your attention to one question connected with it, which you
may deem of sufficient importance to demand some
consideration at your hands before the close of the session.
Our higher civilization has recognized woman's equality with
man in all respects save one--suffrage. It has been said
that no great reform was ever made without passing through
three stages--ridicule, argument, and adoption. It rests
with you to say whether Colorado will accept this reform in
its first stage, as our sister territory of Wyoming has
done, or in the last; whether she will be a leader or a
follower; for the logic of a progressive civilization leads
to the inevitable result of a universal suffrage.
This was the first gun of the campaign, and summoned to the field
various contending forces, armed with ridicule, argument, or an
optimistic diplomacy, urging an immediate surrender of the ground
claimed. Bills favoring the enfranchisement of women were
discussed both in the Territorial Council Chamber and in the
lower House of the legislature. The subject was taken up by the
press and the people, and not escaping its meed of ridicule, was
seriously dealt with by both friend and enemy. Perhaps the
western champions of woman's recognition as an intelligent part
of the body politic were brought to understand the full meaning
of her disabilities by their own experiences as territorial
minors. Certain it is that the high spirit of the citizens of
Colorado chafed intolerably under the temporary limitations of
accustomed rights of sovereign manhood. The federal government,
in the capacity of regent, sent to these territorial wards their
officers and governors and fixed the rate of their taxation
without full representation. These wards were indeed empowered,
as were the people of their sister territories, to elect a
delegate to the national congress, whose opinions upon
territorial matters were allowed expression in that body, but who
could no more enforce there his convictions upon important
measures, by a vote, than could the most intelligent woman of
this territory upon the question of his election to represent her
interests.
In the Colorado papers of those days of territorial tutelage,
there appeared repeatedly most impatient protests against these
humiliating conditions of citizenship. With the attainment of
statehood in 1876 there came to the men of Colorado a restoration
of their full rights as citizens of the Republic. According to
the proscriptive usage, the humiliating conditions of citizenship
without the ballot, remained to the women of the Centennial
State; and those of their reënfranchised brothers who had felt
most keenly their own unaccustomed restrictions, were without
doubt the foremost advocates of the movement to secure the full
recognition of women's rights.
The majority of the territorial legislative assembly of 1870 was
unexpectedly Democratic, and almost as unexpected was the favor
promptly shown by the Democratic members to the passage of the
bill proposing woman suffrage. The measure was indeed
characterized by the opposing Republicans, as "the great
Democratic reform," and for weeks seemed destined to triumph
through Democratic votes, in spite of the frivolous and serious
opposition of the Republican minority, and the few Democratic
members who deserted what then seemed the party policy upon this
question. The pleas urged in advocacy of the new movement, as
well as the protests urged against it, were substantially the
same as were used in the East at that stage of the question.
Accompanying them were the extravagancies of hope and fear
incident to the early consideration of every suggested change in
a long-accepted social order. An impossible Utopia was promised
on the one hand no less confidently than was predicted upon the
other a dire iconoclasm of the sacred shrine of long-adored
ideals, as a consequence of simply granting to intelligent women
a privilege justly their due. Both the derision and the adverse
reasoning of the alarmists were well met by fearless friends, in
Council and House. Bills looking to the removal of woman's
disabilities were referred in each to a select committee for
consideration, on January 19. The majority report to the House
through the chairman of its special committee, M. DeFrance, was
an able advocacy of the measure under consideration, while the
adverse recommendation of the Council committee was accompanied
by an excellent report by Hon. Amos Steck, setting forth clearly
the reasons of the minority for their favorable views. After
hearing the reports, both Houses went into committee of the whole
for a free discussion upon the question.
"The criterion of civilization, physical force," "Strength as the
measure of right,"--as recent writers have defined the divine
right of might--seemed the basis of reasoning with those who
claimed that woman should not be given the ballot because she
might not carry the sword. Dark pictures were drawn of possible
women as electors plunging their country into wars, from whose
consequences they would themselves suffer nothing. By the more
hopeful it was urged that the mighty heart, the moral force of
humanity, as represented in womanhood, and united with clear
womanly intelligence, would prove a greater power in all State
interests than sword or bayonet.
The strongest speaker in the legislature upon the subject of
suffrage--President Hinsdale of the Council--was, unfortunately,
a bitter enemy of the proposed reform. Yet some of his most
forcible utterances made in committee of the whole, were
excellent arguments in favor of, rather than against the measure.
Excellent arguments in favor of the bill in question were made by
leading members of the House--Messrs. Lea, Shepard and DeFrance.
By invitation of the legislature, that body was addressed by a
prominent member of the Denver bar, Mr. Willard Teller, the
brother of one of our U. S. senators. The hall was filled by an
interested audience to hear Mr. Teller's address, which was a
strong presentation of the principles upon which rest the claims
of American citizens to universal suffrage.
Outside the assembly halls, Governor McCook and his beautiful,
accomplished, and gracefully aggressive wife, strongly favored
the affirmative of the question at issue, while Willard Teller,
D. M. Richards and other distinguished men and women of the
territory were active friends during the contest. In the press,
the measure had a most influential support in the _Daily Colorado
Tribune_, a well-conducted Denver journal, edited by Mr. R. W.
Woodbury. Space in its columns was given to well-written articles
by contributors interested in the success of the cause, and many
able editorials appeared, embodying strong arguments in favor of
the reform, or answering the opposing bitterness and frivolity of
its contemporary the _Rocky Mountain News_. The interest in the
proposed innovation was indeed quite general throughout the
territory, but wherever the subject was discussed, in the
legislative halls, in private conversation, editorial column, or
correspondence of the press, the grounds argumentatively
traversed were the same highways and byways of reason and
absurdity which have been so often since gone over.
There was perhaps one lion in the way of establishing universal
suffrage in the West, which the eastern advocates did not fear.
It was said that our intelligent women could not be allowed to
vote, whatever the principles upon which the right might be
claimed, because in that case, the poor, degraded Chinese women
who might reach our shores, would also be admitted to the voting
list, and what then would become of our proud, Caucasian
civilization? Whether it was the thought of the poor Mongolian
slave at the polls, or some other equally terrifying vision of a
yearly visit of American women to the centre of some voting
precinct, the majority of the Colorado legislative assembly of
1870, in spite of all the free discussion of the campaign of that
year, decided adversely. In the latter days of the session, the
bill having taken the form of a proposition to submit the
question at issue to the already qualified voters of the
territory, was lost in the council chamber by a majority of one,
and in the House by a two-thirds majority, leaving to the
defeated friends of the reform as their only reward, a
consciousness of strength gained in the contest.
A few years more made Denver a city beautiful for habitation,
made Colorado a garden, filled that goodly land with capable men,
and intelligent, spirited women. Statehood had been talked of,
but lost, and then men began to say: "The one hundredth birthday
of our American independence is so near, let us make this a
centennial State; let the entrance into the Union be announced by
the same bells that shall ring in our national anniversary." And
so it was decreed. Mindful of 1776--mindful too, of the second
declaration made by the women at the first equal rights
convention in 1848, the friends of equality in Colorado
determined to gird themselves for a supreme effort in
anticipation of the constitution that was to be framed for the
new State to be.
A notice was published asking all persons favorable to suffrage
for women, to convene in Denver, January 10, to take measures to
secure the recognition of woman's equality under the pending
constitution. In pursuance to this call, a large and eager
audience filled Unity Church long before the hour appointed for
the meeting. A number of the orthodox clergy were present. The
Rev. Mrs. Wilkes of Colorado Springs, opened the exercises with
prayer. Mrs. Margaret W. Campbell of Massachusetts was then
introduced, and said: "This convention was called to present
woman's claims to the ballot, from her own stand-point, and to
take such measures to secure the recognition of her equality in
the constitution of Colorado, as the friends gathered from
different parts of the territory may think proper. We do not ask
that women shall take the places of men, or usurp authority over
them; we only ask that the principles upon which our government
is founded shall be applied to women.
Rev. Mrs. Wilkes made an especial point of the fact that in
Colorado Springs women owned one-third of the taxable property,
and yet were obliged (at the recent spring election) to see the
bonds for furnishing a supply of pure water, voted down because
women had no voice in the matter. This had been a serious
mistake, as the physicians of the place had pronounced the
present supply impure and unwholesome. She referred to the fears
of many that the constitution, freighted with woman suffrage,
might sink, when it would else be buoyant, and begged her hearers
not to fear such a burden would endanger it. The convention
continued through two days with enthusiastic speeches from Mr. D.
M. Richards and Rev. Mr. Wright, who preferred to be introduced
as the nephew of Dr. Harriot K. Hunt of Boston. Letters were read
from Lucy Stone and Judge Kingman, and an extract from the
message of Governor Thayer of Wyoming, in which he declared the
results of woman suffrage in that territory to have been
beneficial and its influence favorable to the best interests of
the community. A territorial society was formed with an efficient
board of officers;[487] resolutions, duly discussed, were
adopted, and the meeting closed with a carefully-prepared
address by Dr. Avery, the newly-elected president of the
territorial association.
The committee[488] appointed to wait upon the constitutional
convention were received courteously by that body, and listened
to with respectful attention. One would have thought the
gentlemen to whom the arguments and appeals of such women were
addressed would have found it in their hearts to make some reply,
even while disclaiming the official character of their act; but
they preserved a decorous and non-committal, if not incurious
silence, and the ladies withdrew. The press said, the morning
after their visit: "The gentlemen were all interested and amused
by the errand of the ladies." The morning following, the
constitutional convention was memorialized by the Suffrage
Association of Missouri, and was also presented with a petition
signed by a thousand citizens of Colorado, asking that in the new
constitution no distinction be made on account of sex. This was
only the beginning. Petitions came in afterwards, numerously
signed, and were intended to have the force of a sort of
ante-election vote.
Denver presented an interesting social aspect at this time. It
was as if the precursive tremor of a moral earthquake had been
felt, and people, only half awake, did not know whether to seek
safety in the house, or outside of it. Women especially were
perplexed and inquiring, and it was observed that those in favor
of asking a recognition of their rights in the new State, were
the intelligent and leading ladies of the city. The wives of
ministers, of congressmen, of judges, the prominent members of
Shakespeare clubs, reading circles, the directors of charitable
institutions,--these were the ones who first ranged themselves on
the side of equal rights, clearly proving that the man was right
who pointed out the danger of allowing women to learn the
alphabet.
When February 15 came, it was a momentous day for Colorado. The
report of the Committee on Suffrage and Elections was to come up
for final action. As a matter of fact there were two reports;
that of the minority was signed by two members of the committee,
Judge Bromwell, whose breadth and scholarship were apparent in
his able report, and a Mexican named Agapita Vigil, a legislator
from Southern Colorado where Spanish is the dominant tongue. Mr.
Vigil spoke no English, and was one of those representatives for
whose sake an interpreter was maintained during the session of
the convention.
Ladies were present in large numbers. Some of the gentlemen
celebrated the occasion by an unusual spruceness of attire, and
others by being sober enough to attend to business. The report
with three-fifths of the signatures, after setting forth that the
subject had had careful consideration, went on to state the
qualifications of voters, namely, that all should be male
citizens, with one exception, and that was, that women might vote
for school district officers.
Mr. A. K. Yount of Boulder, spoke in favor of the motion to
strike out the word "male" in section 1: "That every male person
over the age of 21 years, possessing the necessary
qualifications, shall be entitled to vote," etc. He called
attention to the large number of petitions which had been sent
in, asking for this, and to the fact that not a single
remonstrance had been received. He believed the essential
principles of human freedom were involved in this demand, and he
insisted that justice required that women should help to make the
laws by which they are governed. The amendment was lost by a vote
of 24 to 8.
Mr. Storm offered an amendment that women be permitted to vote
for, and hold the office of, county superintendent of schools.
This also was lost. The only other section of the report which
had any present interest to women, was the one reading:
SECTION 2. The General Assembly may at any time extend by
law the right of suffrage to persons not herein enumerated,
but no such law shall take effect or be in force until the
same shall have been submitted to a vote of the people, at a
general election, and approved by a majority of all the
votes cast for and against such law.
After much discussion it was voted that the first General
Assembly should provide a law whereby the subject should be
submitted to a vote of the electors.
After this the curtain fell, the lights were put out, and all the
atmosphere and _mise en scène_ of the drama vanished. It was well
known, however, that another season would come, the actors would
reäppear, and an "opus" would be given; whether it should turn
out a tragedy, or a Miriam's song of deliverance, no one was able
to predict. Meantime, the women of Colorado--to change the
figure--bivouacked on the battle-field, and sent for
reïnforcements against the fall campaign. They held themselves
well together, and used their best endeavors to educate public
sentiment.
A column in the Denver _Rocky Mountain News_, a pioneer paper
then edited by W. N. Byers, was offered the woman suffrage
association, through which to urge our claims. The column was put
into the hands of Mrs. Campbell, the wife of E. L. Campbell, of
the law firm of Patterson & Campbell of Denver, for editorship.
This lady, from whose editorials quotations will be given, was
too timid (she herself begs us to say cowardly) to use her name
in print, and so translated it into its German equivalent of
_Schlachtfeld_, thus nullifying whatever of weight her own name
would have carried in the way of personal and social endorsement
of an unpopular cause. Her sister, Mrs. T. M. Patterson, an early
and earnest member of the Colorado Suffrage Association, "bore
testimony" as courageously and constantly as her environment
permitted.
Mrs. Gov. McCook, as previously stated, had been the first woman
in Colorado to set the example of a spirited claim to simple
political justice for her sex, but she, alas! at the date now
reached in our sketch, was dead--in her beautiful youth, in the
first flower of her sweet, bright womanhood. Her loss to the
cause can best be measured by those who know what an immense
uplifting power is present when an intelligent man in an
influential position joins his personal and political force to
his wife's personal and social force in the endeavor to
accomplish an object dear to both.
It is a pity not to register here, however inadequately, some
outline of many figures that rise to form a part of the picture
of Colorado in 1876-7. When liberty shall have been achieved, and
all citizens shall be comfortably enjoying its direct and
indirect blessings, this book should be found to have preserved
in the amber of its pages the names of those who bravely wrought
for freedom in that earlier time. Would that one might indeed
summon them all by a roll-call! But they will not answer--they
say only: "Let our work stand for us, be its out-come small or
great."
To Dr. Alida C. Avery, however, whatever the outcome, a weighty
obligation is due from all past, present and future laborers in
this cause in Colorado. She it was who set at work and kept at
work the interplay of ideas and efforts which accomplished what
was done. Through her personal acquaintance with the immortals at
the East, Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Henry B. Blackwell, she
drew them to Colorado during the campaign about to be described,
and with them came others. Mrs. M. W. Campbell and her husband
reäppeared to do faithful service, and then came also Miss Lelia
Patridge of Philadelphia, a young, graceful, and effective
speaker,--so the local papers constantly describe her, and then
came, in the person of Miss Matilda Hindman of Pittsburg Pa., one
of the ablest women of the whole campaign. Gentle, persuasive,
womanly, she was at the same time armed at all points with fact,
argument, and illustration, and her zeal was only equaled by her
power of sustained labor.
Many of these same qualities belong to Mrs. M. F. Shields, of
Colorado Springs, one of the committee on constitutional work in
the campaign of 1876, and an ardent, unceasing, unselfish laborer
in the church, in suffrage and temperance, for more than ten
years. She did not lecture, but "talked"; talked to five hundred
men at a time as if they were her own sons, and only needed to be
shown they were conniving at injustice, in order to turn about
and do the right thing. This same element of "motherliness" it
was, which gained her the respectful attention of an audience of
the roughest and most ignorant Cornish miners up in Caribou, who
would listen to no other woman speaking upon the subject. When
the members of the famous constitutional committee were
considering the suffrage petition, prior to making their report,
Judge Stone of Pueblo, tried to persuade the Spanish-speaking
member that to grant the franchise to women would be to be false
to his party, as those women were all Democrats. But Senor Vigil
replied that he had been talking through his interpreter to the
"nice old lady, who smiled so much" (meaning Mrs. Shields), and
he knew what they asked was all right, and he should vote for it.
Of the men who were willing to obey Paul's entreaty to "help
those women," must be named in the front rank David M. Richards
of Denver, a pioneer of '59, and as brave and generous and true a
heart as ever beat in time to the pulse of progress, Rev. B. F.
Crary, a true apostolic helper, Mr. Henry C. Dillon, a young
western Raleigh for knightly chivalry, Hon. J. B. Belford, member
of congress then and now, Judge H. P. H. Bromwell, who needs no
commendation from the historian, as his eloquent minority report
speaks adequately for him; these, and very many more, both men
and women, have, as the French say, "deserved well of the State
and of their generation."
And it was once more to the aid of these men and women that the
East sent reïnforcements as soon as the winter of 1877 was well
ushered in. An annual convention was announced for January 15, in
Denver. When the bitter cold evening came it seemed doubtful if
any great number of persons would be present, but the large
Lawrence street Methodist Church was, on the contrary, packed to
its utmost capacity. Rev. Mr. Eads, pastor of the church, opened
the meeting with prayer, and Dr. Avery, as president of the
association, gave a brief _résumé_ of the work during its one
year of existence. Colonel Henry Logan of Boulder (formerly of
Illinois), made a manly and telling speech in favor of a measure
which he called one of axiomatic justice. Mrs. Wright of New
York, after a piquant address, announced the meeting of the
convention for the next day. On the following morning a business
session was held, and officers elected for the year.[489] In the
afternoon speeches were made by Dr. Crary, Mrs. Shields, and Mr.
David Boyd of Greeley, and in the evening by Mr. Henry C. Dillon
and Rev. J. R. Eads, the closing and crowning speech of the
convention being given by Miss Laura Hanna of Denver, a _petite_,
pretty young girl, whose remarks made a _bonne bouche_ with which
to close the feast. Interest in the subject rose to fever heat
before October. Pulpit, press and fireside were occupied with its
discussion. The most effective, and at the same time,
exasperating opposition, came from the pulpit, but there was also
vigorous help from the same quarter. The Catholic Bishop preached
a series of sermons and lectures, in which he fulminated all the
thunders of apostolic and papal revelation against women who
wanted to vote:
Though strong-minded women who are not satisfied with the
disposition of Providence and who wish to go beyond the
condition of their sex, profess no doubt to be Christians,
do they consult the Bible?--do they follow the Bible? I fear
not. Had God intended to create a companion for man, capable
of following the same pursuits, able to undertake the same
labors, he would have created another man; but he created a
woman, and she fell. * * * The class of women wanting
suffrage are battalions of old maids disappointed in
love--women separated from their husbands or divorced by men
from their sacred obligations--women who, though married,
wish to hold the reins of the family government, for there
never was a woman happy in her home who wished for female
suffrage. * * * Who will take charge of those young children
(if they consent to have any) while mothers as surgeons are
operating indiscriminately upon the victims of a terrible
railway disaster? * * * No kind husband will refuse to
nurse the baby on Sunday (when every kind of business is
stopped) in order to let his wife attend church; but even
then, as it is not his natural duty, he will soon be tired
of it and perhaps get impatient waiting for the mother,
chiefly when the baby is crying.
These, with the omnipresent quotations from St. Paul to the
effect that women shall keep silence in the church, etc., formed
the argument of the Bishop in two or three lengthy sermons.
Indignant men, disgusted with the caliber of the opposition and
yet obliged to notice it on account of the position of the
divine, made ample rejoinders. Rev. Dr. Crary of Golden, in an
exhaustive review of the Bishop's discourse, deprecated the
making permanent and of universal application the commands which
with Paul were evidently temporary and local, and said half the
churches in Christendom would be closed if these were literally
obeyed:
"Women should not usurp authority, therefore men should
usurp all authority." This is the sort of logic we have
always heard from men who are trotting along in the wake of
progress and howling because the centuries do not stop
rolling onward. In barbarous regions Paul is paraded against
educating girls at all. In half-civilized nations Paul is
doing service against educating girls except in the
rudiments. Among people who are just beginning to see the
hill-tops of a higher, nobler world, Paul is still on duty
crowding off women from high-schools and colleges. Proud
universities to-day have Paul standing guard over medical
meanness and pushing down aspiring female souls from the
founts of knowledge. Within our memory Paul has been the
standing demonstration in favor of slavery, intemperance and
the oppression of women.
Another sermon in which the Bishop lays solemn stress on the one
sacred, inevitable duty of women to become wives and mothers, was
answered by Mr. David Boyd of Greeley, who, among other things,
asks the Bishop:
How, in view of the injunction to increase and multiply, he
can justify the large celibate class created by positive
command of the Catholic church, not only by the ordination
of priests, but by the constant urging of the church that
women should become the barren brides of Christ by taking on
them the vows of nuns.
The Bishop published his lectures in pamphlet form, that their
influence might be far-reaching, and curiously enough, the very
same lectures were printed and scattered by the friends of
suffrage as the best sort of document for the campaign now fairly
inaugurated. D. M. Richards, the able chairman of the executive
committee, and Dr. Avery, president of the association, showed
themselves capable of both conceiving and executing a plan of
operations which had the merit of at least deserving victory.
There was no lack of pens to defend women's claim to equal
chances in the struggle for existence. In Denver, the _Rocky
Mountain News_ and the _Times_ planted themselves fairly and
squarely in an affirmative attitude, and gave generous aid to the
effort. The _Tribune's_ columns were in a state of chronic
congestion from a plethora of protests, both feminine and
masculine. One young lawyer said: "If suffrage is to come, let it
come by man's call, and not by woman's clamor"; and, "When all
the women of the land can show the ability to rear a family, and
at the same time become eminent in some profession or art, then
men will gladly welcome them." Whereupon the women naturally
rushed into print to protest against the qualifications required
of them, compared with those required of men.
It is safe to say, that from the middle of January, 1877, until
the following October, the most prominent theme of public
discussion was this question of suffrage for women. Miners
discussed it around their camp-fires, and "freighters" on their
long slow journeys over the mountain trails argued _pro_ and
_con_, whether they should "let" women have the ballot. Women
themselves argued and studied and worked earnestly. One lawyer's
wife, who declared that no refined woman would contend for such a
right, and that no woman with self-respect would be found
electioneering, herself urged every man of her acquaintance to
vote against the measure, and even triumphantly reported that she
had spoken to seventy-five men who were strangers to her, and
secured their promise to vote against the pending amendment.
This, however, must not be mistaken for electioneering.
On Wednesday, August 15, an equal rights mass-meeting was held in
Denver, for the purpose of organizing a county central committee,
and for an informal discussion of plans for the campaign. Judge
H. P. H. Bromwell and H. C. Dillon spoke, with earnest repetition
of former pledges of devotion to the cause, and Gov. Evans said:
Equal suffrage is necessary to equal rights. It is fortunate
that we have in Colorado an opportunity of bringing to bear
the restraining, purifying and ennobling influence of women
upon politics. It is a reform that will require all the
benign influences of the country to sustain and carry out,
and, as I hope for the perpetuation of our free
institutions, I dare not neglect the most promising and
potent means of purifying politics, and I regard the
influence of women as this means.
Major Bright of Wyoming, was introduced as the man who framed and
brought in the first bill for the enfranchisement of women. Judge
W. B. Mills said: "It is an anomalous condition of affairs which
made it necessary for a woman to ask a man whether she should
vote," and referring to all the reforms and changes of the last
half century, predicted that the extension of the franchise to
woman would be the next in order.
The meeting was a full and fervid one, and great confidence of
success was felt and expressed. A committee of seventeen was
appointed[490] and this committee did its full duty in
districting the territory and sending out speakers. Mr. Henry B.
Blackwell, Lucy Stone and Miss Anthony arrived almost immediately
after this, and henceforth the advocates of suffrage swarmed
through the rocky highways and byways of Colorado as eagerly, if
not as multitudinously, as its gold seekers. Mrs. Campbell wrote
to the _Woman's Journal_:
We have now been at work two weeks. Some of our meetings are
very encouraging, some not so much so. But the meetings are
only one feature of the work. We stop along the way and
search out all the leading men in each voting precinct, and
secure the names of those who will work on election day. We
do more talking out of meeting than in. We rode thirty-five
miles yesterday, and arrived here after six o'clock in the
evening. While Mr. Campbell was taking care of the horse, I
filled out bills before taking off my hat and duster; in
fifteen minutes they were being distributed, and at eight
o'clock I was speaking to a good-sized audience.
On October 1, a monster meeting was held in the Lawrence street
Methodist Church, and was addressed by Lucy Stone, Miss Matilda
Hindman, Mrs. Campbell, and Dr. Avery. The most intense interest
was manifested, and the excellent speeches heartily applauded.
The next day (Sunday) the Rev. Dr. Bliss of the Presbyterian
Church, preached a sermon in his own pulpit, on "Woman Suffrage
and the Model Wife and Mother," in which he alluded to "certain
brawling, ranting women, bristling for their rights," and said
God had intended woman to be a wife and mother, and the eternal
fitness of things forbade her to be anything else. If women could
vote, those who were wives now would live in endless bickerings
with their husbands over politics, and those who were not wives
would not marry."
These utterences brought out many replies. One was in the column
edited by "Mrs. Schlachtfeld," and may perhaps be quoted as a
specimen of her editorial work, such being, as we have intimated,
her one service to suffrage, and that incognito:
One of the daily, dismal forecasts of the male Cassandras of
our time is, that in the event of women becoming emancipated
from the legal thralldom that disables them, they will
acquire a sudden distaste for matrimony, the direful
consequences of which will be a gradual extermination of
homes, and the extinction of the human species. This is an
artless and extremely suggestive lament. In the first
place--accepting that prophecy as true--why will women not
marry? Because, they will then be independent of men;
because in a fair field for competition where ability and
not sex shall determine employment and remuneration, women
will have an equal chance with men for distinction and
reward, for triumphs commercial and professional as well as
social, and hence, needing men less, either to make them
homes, or to gratify indirectly their ambitions, their
affections will become atrophied, the springs of domestic
life will disappear in the arid sands of an unfeminine
publicity, and marriage, with all the wearying cares and
burdens and anxieties that it inevitably brings to every
earnest woman, will be regarded more and more as a state to
be shunned. The few who enter it will be compassionated much
as a minister is who undertakes a dangerous foreign mission.
Men will stand mateless, and the ruins of the hymeneal
altars everywhere crumble mournfully away, and be known to
tradition only by their vanishing inscriptions: "To the
unknown god." But it is ill jesting over that which tugs at
every woman's heartstrings and which impinges upon the very
life-centres of society. If women, on being made really free
to choose, will not marry, then we must arraign men on the
charge of having made the married state so irksome and
distasteful to women that they prefer celibacy when they
dare enjoy it. Observe, however, the inconsistency of
another line of reasoning running parallel with this in the
floating literature of the day: "Motherhood," these writers
say, "is the natural vocation of women; is, indeed, an
instinct so mighty, even if unconscious, that it draws women
toward matrimony with a yearning as irresistible as that
which pulls the great sea upon the land in blind response to
the moon." If this be true, society is safe, and women will
still be wives, no matter how much they may exult in
political freedom, no matter how alluringly individual
careers may open before them, nor how accessible the
tempting prizes of human ambition may become.
Well, the day came,--the _dies irae_ for one side or the other,
and it proved to be for the "one." The measure was defeated. Ten
thousand votes were for it, twenty thousand against it. Women
remained at the polls all day, distributing ballots, and
answering objections. They had flowers on all the little tables
where the tickets were heaped, on which were printed the three
words, "Woman Suffrage Approved," words for many pregnant with
hope for a new impetus to civilization, for others with a
misfortune only to be compared to that which happened in Greece
when Ino boiled the seed corn of a whole kingdom, and thus not
only lost the crop of that year, but, by the subtle interplay of
the laws by which evolution proceeds, set back humanity for a
period not to be reckoned in years. Mrs. H. S. Mendenhall of
Georgetown wrote to Dr. Avery on the evening of election day:
Before this reaches you the telegraph will have given you
the result of the day's work all over the State, but I
thought I would jot down a line while the experiences of the
last ten hours were fresh in my mind. Last evening our
committee appointed ladies to represent the interests of
woman suffrage at the polls. To my surprise, many evaded the
work who were, nevertheless, strongly in favor of the
measure. Mrs. Dr. Collins and I were the only ones at the
lowest and most important precinct until one o'clock, when
we were joined by the wife of the Presbyterian minister. Our
course was somewhat as follows: On the approach of a voter,
we would ask him, "have you voted?" If he had, we usually
troubled him no further; if he had not, we asked, "Can you
vote for woman suffrage?" If he approved, we supplied him
with his ticket; if he disapproved, we asked him for his
objections, and we have listened to some comical ones
to-day. One man asked me, though not rudely, "Who is cooking
your husband's dinner?" I promptly invited him to dine with
us. Another spoke of neglected household duties, and when I
mentioned a loaf of bread I had just baked, and should be
glad to have him see, he said, "I expect you can bake
bread," but he voted against us. The Methodist men were for
us; the Presbyterians and Episcopalians very fairly so, and
the Roman Catholics were not all against us, some of the
prominent members of that church working and voting for
woman suffrage. The liquor interest went entirely against
us, as far as I know.
The observations of the day have led me to several general
conclusions, to which, of course, exceptions exist: (1)
Married men will vote for suffrage if their wives appreciate
its importance. (2) Men without family ties, and especially
if they have associated with a bad class of women, will vote
against it. (3) Boys who have just reached their majority
will vote against it more uniformly than any other class of
men. We were treated with the utmost respect by all except
the last class. Destitute of experience, and big with their
own importance, these young sovereigns will speak to a woman
twice their years with a flippancy which the most ignorant
foreigner of mature age would not use, and I have to-day
been tempted to believe that no one is fitted to exercise
the American franchise under twenty-five years of age.
The main objection which I heard repeatedly urged was, women
do not want to vote. This seems to be the great
stumbling-block to our brethren. Men were continually saying
that their wives told them not to vote for woman suffrage.
If we are defeated this time I know we can succeed in the
next campaign, or just as soon as we can educate enough
prominent women up to the point of coming out plainly on the
subject. Then all men, or all but the vicious men who always
vote against every good thing, will give in right away.
Lucy Stone, in a letter to the _Woman's Journal_ describes
similar scenes enacted that day in Denver; speaks of the order
and quiet prevailing at the polls, of the flowers on all the
tables, and, in spite of the strangeness of the occasion, of the
presence of women as evidently a new and beneficent element
there. Rev. Dr. Ellis of the Baptist Church, who, on the Sunday
before had preached from the text, "Help those Women," was using
his influence to convert those doubtful or opposed. Rev. Mr.
Bliss, who had declared in his pulpit that "the only two women
the Bible mentioned as having meddled in politics were Jezebel
and Herodias," was there also, to warn men not to vote for equal
rights for women. At other polls I saw colored men, once slaves,
electioneering and voting against the rights of women. When
remonstrated with, one said: "We want the women at home cooking
our dinners." A shrewd colored woman asked whether they had
provided any dinner to cook, and added that most of the colored
women there had to earn their dinner as well as cook it.
* * * * *
Hear the conclusion of the whole matter. In the words of the last
editorial of the woman's column in the _Rocky Mountain News_:
Woman's hour has not yet struck! The chimes that were
waiting to ring out the tidings of her liberty--the candles
furtively stored against an illumination which should typify
a new influx of light, the achievement of a victory whose
meaning and promise at least seemed to those who both prayed
and worked for it, neither trivial nor selfish--all these
are relegated to the guardianship of Patience and Hope.
Colorado has refused to enfranchise its women. * * * * * *
The Germans, the Catholics, and the negroes were said to be
against us. Naturally, those who themselves most keenly
feel, or most recently have felt, the galling yoke of
arbitrary rule, are most disposed to derive a certain
enjoyment from the daily contemplation of a noble class
still in bondage. * * * * * * But _all_ opposition, in
whatever guise, comes back at last to be written under one
rubric--the immaturity of woman. We make this dispassionate
statement of a fact. We feel neither scorn nor anger, and we
trust that we shall excite none. It is a fault which time
will cure, but meantime it is the grand factor in our
account. Every other argument has been met--every other
stronghold of opposition taken. Woman's claim to the ballot
has been shown to rest in justice on the very foundation
stone of democratic government--has been, from the Christian
standpoint, as completely exonerated from the charge of
impiety as ever anti-slavery and anti-polygamy were, and the
fact which was the slogan of the anti-suffragists still
remains: the mass of the women do not want it. We do not
quarrel with the fact, but state it to give the real reason
for our failures--the real objective point for our future
work.
The complacency with which we are able to state without fear
of contradiction that the body of intelligent and thoughtful
women _do_ want suffrage must not obscure our perception of
the equal truth of what we have just stated above. To accept
this verity and turn our energies toward the emancipation of
our own sex--toward their emancipation from frivolous aims,
petty prejudices, and that attitude toward the other sex
which is really the sycophancy born of vanity and weakness;
to make them recognize the State as a multiplication of
their own families, and patriotism as the broadening of
their love of home; to make them see that that mother will
be most respected whose son does not, when a downy beard is
grown, suddenly tower above her in the supercilious
enjoyment of an artificial superiority--a superiority which
consists simply, as Figaro says, in his having taken the
trouble to be born; to make them see, finally, that in the
highest exercise of all the powers with which God has
endowed her, woman can no more refuse the duties of
citizenship, than she can refuse the duties of wifehood and
motherhood, once having accepted those sacred relations.
This is our first duty, and this the scope of our work, if
we would attain suffrage in 1879, or even in 1900.
FOOTNOTES:
[487] _President_, Alida C. Avery, M. D., Denver.
_Vice-Presidents_, Rev. Mr. Harford, Denver; Mr. J. E. Washburn,
Big Thompson; Mrs. H. M. Lee, Longmont; Mrs. M. M. Sheetz, Cañon
City; Mrs. L. S. Ruhn, Del Norte; Mr. N. C. Meeker, Greeley; Hon.
Willard Teller, Central; Mr. D. M. Richards, Denver; Mr. J. B.
Harrington, Littleton; Mr. A. E. Lee, Boulder; Rev. Wm. Shephard,
Cañon City. _Recording Secretary_, Miss Eunice D. Sewall, Denver.
_Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs. A. L. Washburn, Big Thompson.
_Treasurer_, Mrs. I. T. Hanna, Denver. _Executive Committee_, Mrs.
M. F. Shields, Colorado Springs; Mr. A. L. Ellis, Boulder; Mrs. M.
E. Hale, Denver; Mr. W. A. Wilkes, Colorado Springs; Mr. J. R.
Hanna, Denver; Mrs. S. C. Wilber, Greeley; Rev. Dr. Crary, Pueblo.
[488] Of the membership of this committee a grateful word is to be
said: Mrs. Campbell is a woman of agreeable and stately presence,
and adds to thorough information on all points connected with
the claims made in this campaign, an unusual facility and
persuasiveness of language. Mrs. Shields is one of the most lovable
women to be seen in the suffrage panorama; a tower of strength in
her own family, where she is at once the comrade and commander of
her children--the help-meet and friend of her husband. She inspires
immediate confidence whenever she confronts an audience. Mrs.
Washburn is also an attractive and large-hearted woman--a
"Granger," and thus experienced in united, organized action of men
and women for furthering the interests of both. Mrs. Hanna, a tall,
graceful blonde, more reserved in speech but entirely intelligent
in faith and in labor, represented to many men of the convention
the very qualities they liked in their own wives.
[489] _President_, Dr. Alida C. Avery of Denver; _Vice-Presidents_,
D. Howe, Mrs. M. B. Hart, J. E. Washburn, Mrs. Emma Moody, Willard
Teller, J. B. Harrington, A. E. Lee, and N. C. Meeker; _Recording
Secretary_, Birks Carnforth of Denver; _Corresponding Secretary_,
Mrs. T. M. Patterson of Denver; _Treasurer_, Mrs. H. C. Lawson of
Denver; _Executive Committee_, D. M. Richards, Mrs. M. F. Shields,
Mrs. M. E. Hale, H. McAllister, Mrs. Birks Carnforth, J. A.
Dresser, A. J. Wilber, B. F. Crary, Miss Annie Figg, H. Logan, J.
R. Eads, F. M. Ellis, C. Roby, Judge Jones, General Cameron, B. H.
Eaton, Agapita Vigil, W. B. Felton, S. C. Charles and J. B.
Campbell.
[490] Consisting of Dr. R. G. Buckingham, chairman, Hon. John
Evans, Judge G. W. Miller, Benjamin D. Spencer, A. J. Williams,
Captain Richard Sopris, E. B. Sluth, John Armor, Hon. E. L.
Campbell, John Walker, J. U. Marlow, Col. W. H. Bright, John G.
Lilly, John S. McCool, J. W. Nesmyth, Henry O. Wagoner, and Dr.
Martimore.
CHAPTER LII.
WYOMING.
The Dawn of the New Day, December, 1869--The Goal Reached in
England and America--Territory Organized, May, 1869--Legislative
Action--Bill for Woman Suffrage--William H. Bright--Gov. Campbell
Signs the Bill--Appoints Esther Morris, Justice of the Peace,
March, 1870--Women on the Jury, Chief-Justice Howe, Presiding--J.
W. Kingman, Associate-Justice, Addresses the Jury--Women Promptly
take their Places--Sunday Laws Enforced--Comments of the
Press--Judge Howe's Letter--Laramie _Sentinel_--J. H.
Heyford--Women Voting, 1870--Grandma Swain the First to Cast her
Ballot--Effort to Repeal the Law, 1871--Gov. Campbell's Veto--Mr.
Corlett--Rapid Growth of Public Opinion in Favor of Woman
Suffrage.
After recording such a long succession of disappointments and
humiliations for women in all the States in their worthy endeavors
for higher education, for profitable employment in the trades and
professions and for equal social, civil and political rights, it is
with renewed self-respect and a stronger hope of better days to
come that we turn to the magnificent territory of Wyoming, where
the foundations of the first true republic were laid deep and
strong in equal rights to all, and where for the first time in the
history of the race woman has been recognized as a sovereign in her
own right--an independent, responsible being--endowed with the
capacity for self-government. This great event in the history of
human progress transpired in 1869.
Neither the point nor the period for this experiment could have
been more fitly chosen. Midway across this vast western continent,
on the highest plane of land, rising from three to eight thousand
feet above the level of the sea, where gigantic mountain-peaks
shooting still higher seem to touch the clouds, while at their feet
flow the great rivers that traverse the State in all directions,
emptying themselves after weary wanderings into the Pacific ocean
at last; such was the grand point where woman was first crowned
with the rights of citizenship. And the period was equally marked.
To reach the goal of self-government the women of England and
America seemed to be vieing with each other in the race, now one
holding the advance position, now the other. And in many respects
their struggles and failures were similar. When seeking the
advantages of collegiate education, the women of England were
compelled to go to France, Austria and Switzerland for the
opportunities they could not enjoy in their own country. The women
of our Eastern States followed their example, or went to Western
institutions for such privileges, granted by Oberlin and Antioch in
Ohio, Ann Arbor in Michigan, Washington University in Missouri, and
refused in all the colleges of the East. For long years, alike they
endured ridicule and bitter persecution to secure a foothold in
their universities at home.
Our battles in Parliament and in the Congress of the United States
were simultaneous. While nine senators,[491] staunch and true,
voted in favor of woman suffrage in 1866, and women were rolling up
their petitions for a constitutional amendment in '68 and '69, with
Samuel C. Pomeroy in the Senate and George W. Julian in the House,
the women of England, keeping step and time, found their champions
in the House of Commons in John Stuart Mill and Jacob Bright in
1867-69, and no sooner were their mammoth petitions presented in
parliament than ours were rolled into the halls of congress. At
last we reached the goal, the women of England in 1869 and those of
Wyoming in 1870. But what the former gained in time the latter far
surpassed in privilege. While to the English woman only a limited
suffrage was accorded, in the vast territory of Wyoming, larger
than all Great Britain, all the rights of citizenship were fully
and freely conferred by one act of the legislature--the right to
vote at all elections on all questions and to hold any office in
the gift of the people.
The successive steps by which this was accomplished are given us by
Hon. J. W. Kingman, associate-justice in the territory for several
years:
It is now sixteen years since the act was passed giving women the
right to vote at all elections in this territory, including all
the rights of an elector, with the right to hold office. The
language of the statute is broad, and beyond the reach of
evasion. It is as follows:
That every woman of the age of twenty-one years, residing in
the territory, may, at every election to be holden under the
laws thereof, cast her vote; and her rights to the elective
franchise, and to hold office, shall be the same, under the
election laws of the territory, as those of the electors.
There was no half-way work about it, no quibbling, no grudgingly
parting with political power, no fear of consequences, but a
manly acknowledgment of equal rights and equal privileges, among
all the citizens of the new territory. Nor was this the only act
of that first legislature on the subject of equal rights. They
passed the following:
AN ACT _to protect married women in their separate property,
and the enjoyment of their labor._
SECTION 1. That all the property, both real and personal,
belonging to any married woman as her sole and separate
property, or which any woman hereafter married, owns at the
time of her marriage, or which any married woman during
coverture acquires in good faith from any person other than
her husband, by descent or otherwise, together with all the
rents, issues, increase and profits thereof, shall,
notwithstanding her marriage, be and remain during
coverture, her sole and separate property, under her sole
control, and be held, owned, possessed and enjoyed by her,
the same as though she were sole and unmarried, and shall
not be subject to the disposal, control or interference of
her husband, and shall be exempt from execution or
attachment for the debts of her husband.
SEC. 2. Any married woman may bargain, sell, and convey, her
personal property, and enter into any contract in reference
to the same, as if she were _sole_.
SEC. 3. Any woman may, while married, sue and be sued in all
matters having relation to her property, person or
reputation, in the same manner as if she were _sole_.
SEC. 4. Any married woman may, while married, make a will
the same as though she were _sole_.
SEC. 5. Any married woman may carry on any trade or
business, and perform any labor or service on her sole and
separate account, and the earnings of any married woman from
her trade, business, labor or services, shall be her sole
and separate property, and may be used and invested by her
in her own name; and she may sue and be sued, as if _sole_,
in regard to her trade, business, labor, services, and
earnings. * * *
SEC. 9. The separate deed of the husband shall convey no
interest in the wife's lands.
Under the statute for distributions, the wife is treated exactly
as the husband is; each having the same right in the estate of
the other. The provisions are so unusual and peculiar, that I
venture to copy some of them:
* * * * If such intestate leave a husband or wife, _and_
children, him or her surviving, one-half of such estate
shall descend to such surviving husband or wife, and the
residue thereof * * * * to the children; if such intestate
leave a husband or wife and _no_ child, * * * * then the
property shall descend as follows, to wit: three-fourths
thereof to such remaining husband or wife, and one-fourth
thereof to the father and mother of the intestate, or the
survivor of them; provided that if the estate of such
intestate, real and personal, does not exceed in volume the
sum of ten thousand dollars, then the whole thereof shall
descend to and rest in the surviving husband or wife as his
or her absolute estate. Dower and the tenancy by the curtesy
are abolished.
The school law also provides:
SEC. 9. In the employment of teachers no discrimination
shall be made, in the question of pay, on account of sex,
when the persons are equally qualified.
Such are some of the radical enactments of the first legislature
of Wyoming territory in reference to woman's rights; and to a
person who has grown up under the common law and the usages of
English-speaking people, they undoubtedly appear extravagant if
not revolutionary, and well calculated to disturb or overthrow
the very foundations of social order. Experience has not,
however, justified any such apprehensions. The people of Wyoming
have prospered under these laws, and are growing to like them
better and better, and adapt themselves more and more to their
provisions. The object of this sketch is to trace the progress
and development of this new legislation, and gather up some of
its consequences as they have been observed in our social and
political relations.
The territory of Wyoming was first organized in May, 1869. The
Union Pacific railroad was completed on the 9th of the month, and
the transcontinental route opened to the public. There were but
few people in the territory at that time, except such as had been
brought hither in connection with the building of that road, and
while some of them were good people, well-educated, and came to
stay, many were reckless, wicked and wandering. The first
election was held in September, 1869, for the election of a
delegate in congress, and members of the Council and House of
Representatives for the first territorial legislature. There was
a good deal of party feeling developed, and election day
witnessed a sharp and vigorous struggle. The candidates and their
friends spent money freely, and every liquor shop was thrown open
to all who would drink. I was about to say that any one could
imagine the consequences; but in fact I do not believe that any
one could picture to himself the mad follies, and frightful
scenes of that drunken election. Peaceful people did not dare to
walk the streets, in some of the towns, during the latter part of
the day and evening. At South Pass City, some drunken fellows
with large knives and loaded revolvers swaggered around the
polls, and swore that no negro should vote. One man remarked
quietly that he thought the negroes had as good a right to vote
as any of them had. He was immediately knocked down, jumped on,
kicked and pounded without mercy, and would have been killed, had
not his friends rushed into the brutal crowd and dragged him out,
bloody and insensible. It was a long time before the poor fellow
recovered from his injuries. There were quite a number of colored
men who wanted to vote, but did not dare approach the polls until
the United States Marshal placed himself at their head and with
revolver in hand escorted them through the crowd, saying he would
shoot the first man that interfered with them. There was much
quarreling and tumult, but the negroes voted. This was only a
sample of the day's doings, and characteristic of the election
all over the territory. The result was that every Republican was
defeated, and every Democratic candidate elected; and the whisky
shops had shown themselves to be the ruling power in Wyoming.
From such an inspiration one could hardly expect a revelation of
much value! Yet there were some fair men among those elected.
The legislature met October 12, 1869. Wm. H. Bright was elected
president of the Council. As he was the author of the woman
suffrage bill, and did more than all others to secure its
passage, some account of him may be of interest. He was a man of
much energy and of good natural endowments, but entirely without
school education. He said frankly, "I have never been to school a
day in my life, and where I learned to read and write I do not
know." His character was not above reproach, but he had an
excellent, well-informed wife, and he was a kind, indulgent
husband. In fact, he venerated his wife, and submitted to her
judgment and influence more willingly than one could have
supposed; and she was in favor of woman suffrage.[492] There were
a few other men in that legislature, whose wives exercised a
similar influence; but Mr. Bright found it up-hill work to get a
majority for his bill, and it dragged along until near the close
of the session. The character of the arguments he used, and the
means he employed to win success are perhaps worthy of notice, as
showing the men he had to deal with. I ought to say distinctly,
that Mr. Bright was himself fully and firmly convinced of the
justice and policy of his bill, and gave his whole energy and
influence to secure its passage; he secured some members by
arguing to support their pet schemes in return, and some he won
over by even less creditable means. He got some votes by
admitting that the governor would veto the bill (and it was
generally understood that he would), insisting at the same time,
that it would give the Democrats an advantage in future elections
by showing that they were in favor of liberal measures while the
Republican governor and the Republican party were opposed to
them. The favorite argument, however, and by far the most
effective, was this: it would prove a great advertisement, would
make a great deal of talk, and attract attention to the
legislature, and the territory, more effectually than anything
else. The bill was finally passed and sent to the governor. I
must add, however, that many letters were written from different
parts of the territory, and particularly by the women, to members
of the legislature, urging its passage and approving its object.
On receipt of the bill, the governor was in great doubt what
course to take. He was inclined to veto it, and had so expressed
himself; but he did not like to take the responsibility of
offending the women in the territory, or of placing the
Republican party in open hostility to a measure which he saw
might become of political force and importance. I remember well
an interview that Chief-Justice Howe and myself had with him at
that time, in which we discussed the policy of the bill, and both
of us urged him to sign it with all the arguments we could
command. After a protracted consultation we left him still
doubtful what he would do.[493] But in the end he signed it, and
drew upon himself the bitter curses of those Democrats who had
voted for the bill with the expectation that he would veto it.
From this time onward, the measure became rather a Republican
than a Democratic principle, and found more of its friends in the
former party, and more of its enemies in the latter.
Soon after the passage of the bill, a vacancy occurred in the
office of justice of the peace, at South Pass City, the county
seat of Sweetwater county, and the home of Mr. Bright and of Mrs.
Esther Morris. At the request of the county attorney--who favored
woman suffrage--the commissioners, two of whom also approved of
it, appointed Mrs. Morris to fill the vacancy. The legislature
had vested the appointment of officers, in case of a vacancy, in
the county commissioners, but the organic act of congress,
creating the territory, provided that the governor "shall
commission all officers who shall be appointed under the laws of
said territory." Governor Campbell being absent from the
territory at the time, the secretary, acting as governor, sent
Mrs. Morris her commission. It is due to Secretary Lee to say
that he was an earnest advocate of woman's enfranchisement, and
labored for the passage of the bill, and gladly embraced the
opportunity to confirm a woman in office. The important fact is,
however, that Mrs. Morris' neighbors first suggested the
appointment that secured her the office, and manfully sustained
her during her whole term. She tried between thirty and forty
cases, and decided them so acceptably that not one of them was
appealed to a higher court; and I know of no one who has held the
office of justice of the peace in this territory, who has left a
more acceptable record, in all respects, than has Mrs. Esther
Morris. Some other appointments of women to office were made, but
I do not find that any of them entered upon its duties.
The first term of the District Court, under the statutes passed
by the first legislature, was to be held at Laramie City, on the
first Monday of March, 1870. When the jurors were drawn, a large
number of women were selected, for both grand and petit jurors.
As this was not done by the friends of woman suffrage, there was
evidently an intention of making the whole subject odious and
ridiculous, and giving it a death-blow at the outset. A great
deal of feeling was excited among the people, and some effort
made to prejudice the women against acting as jurors, and even
threats, ridicule and abuse, in some cases, were indulged in.
Their husbands were more pestered and badgered than the women,
and some of them were so much inflamed that they declared they
would never live with their wives again if they served on the
jury. The fact that women were drawn as jurors was telegraphed
all over the country, and the newspapers came loaded with hostile
and uncomplimentary criticisms. At this stage of the case Col.
Downey, the prosecuting attorney for the county, wrote to Judge
Howe for advice and direction as to the eligibility of the women
as jurors, and what course should be taken in the premises. At
first Judge Howe was much inclined to order the women discharged,
and new juries drawn; and it certainly required no small amount
of moral courage to face the storm of ridicule and abuse that was
blowing from all quarters. We had a long consultation, and came
to the conclusion that since the law had clearly given all the
rights of electors to the women of the territory, they must be
protected in the exercise of these rights if they chose to assume
them; that under no circumstances could the judges permit popular
clamor to deprive the women of their legal rights in the very
presence of the courts themselves. The result was that Judge Howe
wrote the county attorney the following letter:
CHEYENNE, March 3, 1870.
S. W. DOWNEY--_My Dear Sir_: I have your favor of yesterday,
and have carefully considered the question of the
eligibility of women who are "citizens," to serve on juries.
Mr. Justice Kingman has also considered the question, and we
concur in the opinion that such women are eligible. My
reason for this opinion will be given at length, if occasion
requires. I will thank you to make it known to those ladies
who have been summoned on the juries, that they will be
received, protected, and treated with all the respect and
courtesy due, and ever paid, by true American gentlemen to
true American ladies, and that the Court, in all the power
of government, will secure to them all that deference,
security from insult, or anything which ought to offend the
most refined woman, which is accorded in any walks of life
in which the good and true women of our country have
heretofore been accustomed to move. Thus, whatever may have
been, or may now be thought of the policy of admitting women
to the right of suffrage and to hold office, they will have
a fair opportunity, at least in my Court, to demonstrate
their ability in this new field, and prove the policy or
impolicy of occupying it. Of their right to try it I have no
doubt. I hope they will succeed, and the Court will
certainly aid them in all lawful and proper ways. Very
respectfully,
J. H. HOWE, _Chief-Justice_.
When the time came to hold the court, Judge Howe, whose duty it
was to preside, requested me to go with him to Laramie City, and
sit with him during the term. I gladly availed myself of the
opportunity. As soon as we arrived there, Judge Howe was waited
on by a number of gentlemen who endeavored to induce him to order
the discharge of the female jurors without calling them into
court. Some spoke of the impolicy of the proceeding, and said the
women all objected to it and wished to be excused; while some
were cross, and demanded the discharge of their wives, saying
that it was an intentional insult and they would not submit to
it. But Judge Howe told them all firmly, that the women must come
into court, and if, after the whole question was fairly explained
to them, they chose to decline, they should be excused. At the
opening of the court next morning, the house was crowded, and the
female jurors were all there. After the usual preliminaries, an
attorney arose and moved that all the women summoned as jurors be
excused, saying he made the motion at the request of the women
themselves; and that he was assured they did not wish to serve.
Judge Howe then requested me to express my opinion and make some
remarks to the women on the duties devolving on them. I said:
It was a real pleasure to me to see ladies in the
court-room, with the right to take a responsible part in the
proceedings, as grand and petit jurors; that no one knew so
well as they did, the evils our community suffered from
lawless and wicked people; and no one better understood the
difficulties the court labored under in its efforts to
administer justice and punish crime; that the time had come
when the good women of the territory could give us
substantial aid, and we looked to them especially, as the
power which should make the court efficient in the discharge
of its duties; that the new law had conferred on them
important rights, and corresponding duties necessarily
devolved upon them; that I hoped and believed they would not
shrink when so many influences were calling on them for
noble and worthy action; that if they failed us now, the
cause of equal rights would suffer at their hands, not only
in our territory, but in every land where its advocates were
struggling for its recognition; that if they would remain,
their presence would secure a degree of decorum in the
court-room and add a dignity to the proceedings, which the
judges had been unable to command; that we required the
assistance of good women all over the territory, and I
begged them to help us.
Judge Howe then spoke as follows:
It is an innovation and a great novelty to see, as we do
to-day, ladies summoned to serve as jurors. The extension of
political rights and franchise to women is a subject that is
agitating the whole country. I have never taken an active
part in these discussions, but I have long seen that woman
is a victim to the vices, crimes and immoralities of man,
with no power to protect and defend herself from these
evils. I have long felt that such powers of protection
should be conferred upon woman, and it has fallen to our lot
here to act as the pioneers in the movement and to test the
question. The eyes of the whole world are to-day fixed upon
this jury of Albany county. There is not the slightest
impropriety in any lady occupying this position, and I wish
to assure you that the fullest protection of the court shall
be accorded to you. It would be a most shameful scandal that
in our temple of justice and in our courts of law, anything
should be permitted which the most sensitive lady might not
hear with propriety and witness. And here let me add that it
will be a sorry day for any man who shall so far forget the
courtesy due and paid by every American gentleman to every
American lady as to ever by word or act endeavor to deter
you from the exercise of those rights with which the law has
invested you. I conclude with the remark that this is a
question for you to decide for yourselves. No man has any
right to interfere. It seems to me to be eminently proper
for women to sit upon grand juries, which will give them the
best possible opportunities to aid in suppressing the dens
of infamy which curse the country. I shall be glad of your
assistance in the accomplishment of this object. I do not
make these remarks from distrust of any of the gentlemen. On
the contrary, I am exceedingly pleased and gratified with
the indication of intelligence, love of law and good order,
and the gentlemanly deportment which I see manifested here.
The ladies were then told that those who could not conveniently
serve, and those who insisted on being excused, might rise and
they should be discharged. Only one rose and she was excused. But
a victory had been won of no small moment. Seeing the earnestness
of the judges and the dignified character they had given to the
affair, the women were encouraged and pleased, and the enemies of
equal rights, who had planned, as they thought, a stunning blow
to further progress, were silenced and defeated. The current set
rapidly in the other direction and applause, as usual, followed
success. The business of the court proceeded with marked
improvement. The court-room, always crowded, was quiet and
decorous in the extreme. The bar in particular was always on its
good behavior, and wrangling, abuse and buncome speeches were
not heard. When men moved about they walked quietly, on tip-toe,
so as to make no noise, and forbore to whisper or make any
demonstrations in or around the court-room. The women when called
took their chairs in the jury-box with the men, as they do their
seats in church,[494] and no annoyance or reluctance was visible
from the bench. They gave close and intelligent attention to the
details of every case, and the men who sat with them evidently
acted with more conscientious care than usual. The verdicts were
generally satisfactory, except to convicted criminals. They did
not convict every one they tried, but "no guilty man escaped," if
there was sufficient evidence to hold him. The lawyers soon found
out that the usual tricks and subterfuges in criminal cases would
not procure acquittal, and they began to challenge off all the
women called. The court checkmated this move by directing the
sheriff to summon other women in their places, instead of men,
and then came motions for continuances. The result was a great
success and was so acknowledged by all disinterested persons. On
the grand jury were six women and nine men, and they became such
a terror to evil-doers that a stampede began among them and very
many left the town forever. Certainly there was never more
fearless or efficient work performed by a grand jury.
The legislature copied most of the statutes which it enacted from
the laws of Nebraska, and among others the following clauses in
the crimes act, to wit.:
If any person shall keep open any tippling or gaming-house
on the Sabbath day or night, * * * he shall be fined not
exceeding one hundred dollars, or imprisoned in the county
jail not exceeding six months.
Any person who shall hereafter knowingly disturb the peace
and good order of society by labor on the first day of the
week, commonly called Sunday (works of necessity and charity
excepted), shall be fined, on conviction thereof, in any sum
not exceeding fifty dollars.
No attention whatever had been paid to these statutes, and Sunday
was generally the great drinking day of the whole week; the
saloons sold more whiskey and made more money that day than any
other. The women on that grand jury determined to put a stop to
it and enforce these laws. They therefore indicted every liquor
saloon in town. This made a great outcry, not only among the
liquor-sellers but among their customers also. They were all
arrested, brought into court and gave bail; but Judge Howe told
them as this was a new law recently passed, and as it was quite
probable that most of them were ignorant of its provisions, he
would continue the cases with this express understanding, that if
they would strictly obey the law in future these cases should be
dismissed; but if any of them violated it, these cases would be
tried and the full penalty inflicted. They all agreed to this,
and the "Sunday Law," as it was called, was carefully observed
afterwards in Laramie City; and so great has been the change in
that town in the habits of the people and the quiet appearance of
the streets on Sunday, as compared with other towns in the
territory, that it has been nick-named the "Puritan town" of
Wyoming, and, I may add, rejoices in its singularity.
And how was this most successful experiment in equal rights
received and treated by the press and the people out of the
territory? The New York illustrated papers made themselves funny
with caricatures of female juries, and cheap scribblers invented
all sorts of scandals and misrepresentations about them. The
newspapers were overflowing with abuse and adverse criticism, and
only here and there was a manly voice heard in apology or
defense. I copy these extracts as a sample of the rest.
"LADY JURORS."--Under this head the New Orleans _Times_, the
ablest and largest paper in the South, said:
Confusion is becoming worse confounded by the hurried march
of events. Mad theorizings take the form of every-day
realities, and in the confusion of rights and the confusion
of dress, all distinctions of sex are threatened with swift
obliteration. When Anna Dickinson holds forth as the teacher
of strange doctrines in which the masculinity of woman is
preposterously asserted as a true warrant for equality with
man in all his political and industrial relations; when
Susan B. Anthony flashes defiance from lips and eyes which
refuse the blandishment and soft dalliance that in the past
have been so potent with "the sex"; when, in fine, the women
of Wyoming are called from their domestic firesides to serve
as jurors in a court of justice, a question of the day, and
one, too, of the strangest kind, is forced on our attention.
From a careful review of all the surroundings, we think the
Wyoming experiment will lead to beneficial results. By
proving that lady jurors are altogether impracticable--that
they cannot sit as the peers of men without setting at
defiance all the laws of delicacy and propriety--the
conclusion may be reached that it will be far better to let
nature alone in regulating the relations of the sexes.
The Philadelphia _Press_ had the following:
WOMEN AS JURORS.--Now one of the adjuncts of female
citizenship is about to be tested in Wyoming. Eleven women
have been drawn as jurors to serve at the March term of the
Albany County Court. It is stated that immense excitement
has been created thereby, but the nature of the aforesaid
excitement does not transpire. Will women revolutionize
justice? What is female justice, or what is it likely to be?
Would twelve women return the same verdict as twelve men,
supposing that each twelve had heard the same case? Is it
possible for a jury of women, carrying with them all their
sensitiveness, sympathies, predilections, jealousies,
prejudices, hatreds, to reach an impartial verdict? Would
not every criminal be a monster, provided not a female? Can
the sex, ordinarily so quick to pronounce pre-judgments,
divest itself of them sufficiently to enter the jury-box
with unbiased minds? Perhaps it were best to trust the
answer to events. Women may learn to be jurymen, but in so
doing they have a great deal to learn.
So persistent were the attacks and so malignant were the
perversions of truth that Judge Howe, at the request of the
editor, wrote the following letter for publication anonymously in
the Chicago _Legal News_, every statement in which I can confirm
from my own observation. The Judge, after writing the letter,
consented to its publication over his own signature:
CHEYENNE, Wyoming, April 4, 1870.
_Mrs. Myra Bradwell, Chicago, Ill.:_
DEAR MADAM: I am in receipt of your favor of March 26, in
which you request me to "give you a truthful statement, over
my own signature, for publication in your paper, of the
history of, and my observations in regard to, women as grand
and petit jurors in Wyoming." I will comply with your
request, with this qualification, that it be not published
over my own signature, as I do not covet newspaper
publicity, and have already, without any agency or fault of
my own, been subjected to an amount of it which I never
anticipated nor conceived of, and which has been far from
agreeable to me.
I had no agency in the enactment of the law in Wyoming
conferring legal equality upon women. I found it upon the
statute-book of that territory, and in accordance with its
provisions several women were legally drawn by the proper
officers on the grand and petit juries of Albany county, and
were duly summoned by the sheriff without any agency of
mine. On being apprised of these facts, I conceived it to be
my plain duty to fairly enforce this law, as I would any
other; and more than this, I resolved at once that, as it
had fallen to my lot to have the experiment tried under my
administration, it should have a fair trial, and I therefore
assured these women that they could serve or not, as they
chose; that if they chose to serve, the Court would secure
to them the most respectful consideration and deference, and
protect them from insult in word or gesture, and from
everything which might offend a modest and virtuous woman in
any of the walks of life in which the good and true women of
our country have been accustomed to move.
While I had never been an advocate for the law, I felt that
thousands of good men and women had been, and that they had
a right to see it fairly administered; and I was resolved
that it should not be sneered down if I had to employ the
whole power of the court to prevent it. I felt that even
those who were opposed to the policy of admitting women to
the right of suffrage and to hold office would condemn me if
I did not do this. It was also sufficient for me that my own
judgment approved this course.
With such assurances these women chose to serve and were
duly impanelled as jurors. They were educated, cultivated
eastern ladies, who are an honor to their sex. They have,
with true womanly devotion, left their homes of comfort in
the States to share the fortunes of their husbands and
brothers in the far West and to aid them in founding a new
State beyond the Missouri.
And now as to the results. With all my prejudices against
the policy, I am under conscientious obligations to say that
these women acquitted themselves with such dignity, decorum,
propriety of conduct and intelligence as to win the
admiration of every fair-minded citizen of Wyoming. They
were careful, pains-taking, intelligent and conscientious.
They were firm and resolute for the right as established by
the law and the testimony. Their verdicts were right, and,
after three or four criminal trials, the lawyers engaged in
defending persons accused of crime began to avail themselves
of the right of peremptory challenge to get rid of the
female jurors, who were too much in favor of enforcing the
laws and punishing crime to suit the interests of their
clients. After the grand jury had been in session two days,
the dance-house keepers, gamblers and _demi-monde_ fled out
of the city in dismay, to escape the indictment of women
grand jurors! In short I have never, in twenty-five years of
constant experience in the courts of the country, seen more
faithful, intelligent and resolutely honest grand and petit
juries than these.
A contemptibly lying and silly dispatch went over the wires
to the effect that during the trial of A. W. Howie for
homicide (in which the jury consisted of six women and six
men) the men and women were kept locked up together all
night for four nights. Only two nights intervened during the
trial, and on these nights, by my order, the jury was taken
to the parlor of the large, commodious and well-furnished
hotel of the Union Pacific Railroad, in charge of the
sheriff and a woman bailiff, where they were supplied with
meals and every comfort, and at 10 o'clock the women were
conducted by the bailiff to a large and suitable apartment
where beds were prepared for them, and the men to another
adjoining, where beds were prepared for them, and where they
remained in charge of sworn officers until morning, when
they were again all conducted to the parlor and from thence
in a body to breakfast, and thence to the jury-room, which
was a clean and comfortable one, carpeted and heated, and
furnished with all proper conveniences.
The cause was submitted to the jury for their decision about
11 o'clock in the forenoon, and they agreed upon their
verdict, which was received by the court between 11 and 12
o'clock at night of the same day, when they were discharged.
Everybody commended the conduct of this jury and was
satisfied with the verdict, except the individual who was
convicted of murder in the second degree. The presence of
these ladies in court secured the most perfect decorum and
propriety of conduct, and the gentlemen of the bar and
others vied with each other in their courteous and
respectful demeanor toward the ladies and the court. Nothing
occurred to offend the most refined lady (if she was a
sensible lady) and the universal judgment of every
intelligent and fair-minded man present was and is, that the
experiment was a success.
I dislike the notoriety this matter has given me, but I do
not shrink from it. I never sought it nor expected it, and
have only performed what I regarded as a plain duty, neither
seeking nor desiring any praise, and quite indifferent to
any censure or criticism which my conduct may have invoked.
Thanking you for your friendly and complimentary
expressions, I am very respectfully yours,
J. H. HOWE.
As showing how the matter was received at home, in Laramie City,
I copy the following from the _Laramie Sentinel_ of April 7,
1870:
If we should neglect to give some idea of the results of our
jury experiment, the world would say we were afraid or
ashamed of it. For our own part we are inclined to admit
that it succeeded beyond all our expectations. We naturally
wished it to succeed; still we scarcely wished it to
demonstrate a theory that women were better qualified for
these duties than men. Hence, when Chief-Justice Howe said,
"In eighteen years' experience I have never had as fair,
candid, impartial and able a jury in court, as in this term
in Albany county," and when Associate-Justice Kingman said,
"For twenty-five years it has been an anxious study with me,
both on the bench and at the bar, how we are to prevent jury
trials from degenerating into a perfect burlesque, and it
has remained for Albany county to point out the remedy and
demonstrate the cure for this threatened evil," we confess
to having been _more_ than satisfied with the result. It may
be safely stated as the unanimous verdict of bench, bar and
public opinion, that the jurors of Albany county did well
and faithfully discharge their duties, with honor and credit
to themselves and to the satisfaction of the public.
Among the few exceptions to the general abuse of the press, the
following from the Cincinnati _Gazette_ of April 14, 1870, is
well worth preserving:
Now, in the name of the inalienable right of every person to
the pursuit of happiness, we have to ask: Are not these
women competent to decide for themselves whether their
households, their children or their husbands are of more
importance than their public duties? And having the best
means for deciding this question, have they not the right to
decide? Who has the right to pick out the females of a jury
and challenge them with the question whether they are not
neglecting their households or their husbands? Who
challenges a male juror and demands whether he left his
family well provided, and his wife well cherished? or if,
through his detention in court, the cupboard will be bare,
the wife neglected, or the children with holes in their
trousers? This is simply the crack of the familiar whip of
man's absolute domination over women. It means nothing short
of their complete subjection. Not to use rights is to
abandon them. There are inconveniences and cares in all
possessions; but who argues that therefore they should be
abandoned? It would much promote the convenience of man if
he would let his political rights and duties be performed by
a few willing persons; but he would soon find that he had no
rights left.
And what is this family impediment which is thus set up as a
female disability? The family obligation is just as strong
in man as in woman. It is much stronger, for the manners
which compel woman to be the passive waiter on the male
providence leave to him the real responsibility. Yet many
men forego marriage and homes and children, and nobody
imagines that it disqualifies them for public duties. Nobody
challenges them as jurors, and demands if they have
discharged the family obligation. Rather it is held wise in
them to give themselves wholly to their pursuits, without
the distraction of conjugal joys, until they have achieved
success. Why should the family requirement, which man throws
off so easily, be made a yoke for woman? There is something
more fundamental than nursing babies or coddling the
appetites of husbands. The sentiment, "Give me liberty, or
give me death," is the American instinct. Breathes there a
woman with soul so dead that she would bring forth slaves?
Babes had better not be born if they are not to have their
rights. It is the duty of women to first provide the state
of freedom for their progeny. Then they may consent to
become wives and mothers. Liberty and the exercise of all
political rights are so bound together, that to neglect one
is to abandon all. Trial by a jury of one's peers is the
essential principle of the administration of justice. To be
a peer on a jury involves the whole principle of equal
rights. To abandon this to man, is to accept subjection to
man.
For women to neglect jury duty is to give men the exclusive
privilege to _judge women_, and to abandon the right to be
tried by a jury of their peers. How can men justly judge a
woman? They cannot have that knowledge of her peculiar
physical and mental organization which is requisite to the
judgment of motives and temptations. They cannot comprehend
the variable moods and emotions, nor the power of her
impulses. It is monstrous injustice to judge women by the
same rules as men. And men lack that intuitive charity and
tender sympathy which women always feel for an exposed,
erring sister. Furthermore, many of the crimes of men are
against women. How can men appreciate their injury? That
which is her ruin, they call, as Anna Dickinson says, sowing
their wild oats. How can justice be expected from those who
instinctively combine to preserve their privilege to abuse
women? For the administration of justice to women who are
accused, and to men who have wronged women, judges and
jurors of their own sex are indispensable.
As long as Judge Howe remained on the bench he had women on his
juries.[495] His first term at Cheyenne, after the law was
passed, several women were among the jurors, and they did fully
as well, and exerted quite as good an influence there, as the
women had recently at Laramie City.
The first election under the woman suffrage law was held in
September 1870, for the election of a delegate in congress, and
county officers. There was an exciting canvass, and both parties
applied to the whisky shops, as before, supposing they would
wield the political power of the territory, and that not enough
women would vote to influence the result. The morning of election
came, but did not bring the usual scenes around the polls. A few
women came out early to vote, and the crowd kept entirely out of
sight. There was plenty of drinking and noise at the saloons, but
the men would not remain, after voting, around the polls. It
seemed more like Sunday than election day. Even the negro men and
women voted without objection or disturbance. Quite a number of
women voted during the day, at least in all the larger towns, but
apprehension of a repetition of the scenes of the former
election, and doubt as to the proper course for them to pursue,
kept very many from voting. The result was a great disappointment
all around. The election had passed off with unexpected quiet,
and order had everywhere prevailed. The whisky shops had been
beaten, and their favorite candidate for congress, although he
had spent several thousand dollars to secure an election, was
left out in the cold. I cannot deny myself the pleasure of
quoting at length the following letter of the Rev. D. J. Pierce,
at that time a resident of Laramie City, and a very wealthy man,
to show the powerful influence that was exerted on the mind of a
New England clergyman by that first exhibition of women at the
polls, and as evidence of the singular and beneficial change in
the character of the election, and the conduct of the men:
_Editor Laramie Sentinel:_ I am pleased to notice your
action in printing testimonials of different classes to the
influence of woman suffrage in Wyoming. With the apathy of
conservatism and prejudice of party spirit arrayed against
the idea in America, it is the duty of the residents in
Wyoming to note the simple facts of their noted experiment,
and lay them before the world for its consideration. I came
from the vicinity of Boston, arriving in Laramie two weeks
before the first regular election of 1870. I had never
sympathized with the extreme theories of the woman's rights
platform, to the advocates of which I had often listened in
Boston. But I had never been able to learn just why a woman
is naturally excluded from the privilege of franchise, and I
sometimes argued in favor in lyceum debates. Still the
question of her degradation stared me in the face, and I
came to Wyoming unsettled in the matter, determined to be an
impartial judge. I was early at the polls, but too late to
witness the polling of the first female vote--by "Grandma"
Swain, a much-esteemed Quaker lady of 75 summers, who
determined by her words and influence to rally her sex to
defend the cause of morality and justice.
I saw the rough mountaineers maintaining the most respectful
decorum whenever the women approached the polls, and heard
the timely warning of one of the leading canvassers as he
silenced an incipient quarrel with uplifted finger, saying,
"Hist! Be quiet! A woman is coming!"
And I was compelled to allow that in this new country,
supposed at that time to be infested by hordes of
cut-throats, gamblers and abandoned characters, I had
witnessed a more quiet election than it had been my fortune
to see in the quiet towns of Vermont. I saw ladies attended
by their husbands, brothers, or sweethearts, ride to the
places of voting, and alight in the midst of a silent crowd,
and pass through an open space to the polls, depositing
their votes with no more exposure to insult or injury than
they would expect on visiting a grocery store or
meat-market. Indeed, they were much safer here, every man of
their party was pledged to shield them, while every member
of the other party feared the influence of any signs of
disrespect.
And the next day I sent my impressions to an eastern paper,
declaring myself convinced that woman's presence at the
polls would elevate the tone of public sentiment there as it
does in churches, the social hall, or any other place, while
her own robes are unspotted by the transient association
with evil characters which she is daily obliged to meet in
the street or dry-goods store. My observation at subsequent
annual elections has only confirmed my opinion in this
respect.
Without reference to party issues, I noticed that a majority
of women voted for men of the most temperate habits, thus
insuring success to the party of law and order.
After three years' absence from my old home, I could not
fail to notice in the elections of 1877 and 1878 that both
parties had been led to nominate men of better standing in
moral character, in order to secure the female vote.
I confess that I believe in the idea of aristocracy--_i. e._
"the rule of the best ones"--not by blood or position, but
the aristocracy of character, to which our laws point when
they declare that prison characters shall not vote.
The ballot of any community cannot rise above its character.
A town full of abandoned women would be cursed by the
application of woman suffrage.
We need to intrust our State interests to the class most
noted for true character. As a class, women are more moral
and upright in their character than men. Hence America would
profit by their voting.
D. J. PIERCE, _Pastor Baptist Church_.
The next general election occurred in September, 1871, for
members of the second territorial legislature. The usual tactics
were employed and considerable sums of money were given to the
drinking saloons to secure their influence and furnish free
drinks and cigars for the voters. But no one thought of trying to
buy up the women, nor was it ever supposed that a woman's vote
could be secured with whiskey and cigars! Election day passed off
with entire quiet and good order around the polling-places; the
noise and bustle were confined to the bar-rooms. The streets
presented no change from an ordinary business day, except that a
large number of wagons and carriages were driven about with the
watch-words and banners of different parties, or different
candidates, conspicuously posted on them. A much larger number of
women voted at this election than at the former one, but quite a
number failed or refused to take part in it. The result was again
a surprise, and to many a disappointment. Some candidates were
unexpectedly elected, and some who had spent large amounts of
money and worked hard around the drinking saloons, and were ready
to bet largely on being elected, were defeated. The Republicans
had shown an unexpected strength and had returned several members
to each House, although it was quite certain that some of the
Democrats were indebted to the women for their success. It was
admitted, however, that their votes had generally gone against
the favorites of the whiskey shops and that the power of the
saloons had been largely neutralized and in some cases entirely
overthrown. Some remarkable instances of woman's independence and
moral character occurred at this election which I cannot help
recording, but must not mention names.
As above stated in reference to the grand jury in Laramie City,
the "Sunday law" had there been put into vigorous operation. The
evening before the election, and after both the political parties
had nominated their candidates for the legislature, the
saloon-keepers got together very secretly and nominated a ticket
of their own number, pledged to repeal the "Sunday law." This
move was not discovered until they began to vote that ticket at
the polls next day. Then it was found that the saloons were
pushing it with all their influence and giving free drinks to all
who would vote it. This aroused the women and they came out in
force; many who had declined to vote before not only voted, but
went round and induced others to do the same. At noon the
rum-sellers' ticket was far ahead and it looked as though it
would be elected by a large majority; at the close of the polls
at night it was overwhelmingly defeated. In one case the wife of
a saloon-keeper who was a candidate on that ticket, told her
husband that she would defeat him if she could. He was beaten,
and he was man enough to say he was glad of it--glad he had a
wife so much better than he was, and who had so much more
influence in town than he had.
Another candidate on that ticket was a saloon-keeper who had
grown rich in the traffic, but whose private character was much
above the morals of his business. He had recently married a very
nice young lady in the East, and she was much excited when she
learned how matters were progressing. She told her husband she
was ashamed of him and would vote against him, and would enlist
all the members of her church against him if she could; and she
went to work in earnest and was a most efficient cause of the
defeat of the ticket. Her husband also was proud of her, and said
it served him right and he was glad of it. I have never heard
that the domestic harmony of either of these families was in
anyway disturbed by these events, but I know that they have
prospered and are still successful and happy.
Still the legislature was strongly Democratic. There were four
Republicans and five Democrats in the Council, and four
Republicans and nine Democrats in the House. When they met in
November, 1871, many Democrats were found to be bitterly opposed
to woman suffrage and determined to repeal the act; they said it
was evident they were losing ground and the Republicans gaining
by reason of the women voting, and that it must be stopped. The
Republicans were all inclined to sustain the law. Several
caucuses were held by the Democrats to determine on their course
of action and overcome the opposition in their own ranks. These
caucuses were held in one of the largest drinking saloons in
Cheyenne and all the power of whiskey was brought to bear on the
members to secure a repeal of the woman suffrage act. It required
considerable time and a large amount of whiskey, but at last the
opposition was stifled and the Democratic party was brought up
solid for repeal. A bill was introduced in the House for the
purpose, but was warmly resisted by the Republicans and a long
discussion followed. It was finally carried by a strict party
vote and sent to the Council, where it met with the same
opposition and the same result followed. It then went to the
governor for his approval. There was no doubt in his mind as to
the course he ought to take. He had seen the effects produced by
the act of enfranchisement, and unhesitatingly approved all of
them. He promptly returned the bill with his veto; and the
accompanying message is such an able paper and so fully sets
forth the reasons in favor of the original act, and the good
results of its operation, that at least a few extracts well
deserve a prominent place in this record:
I return herewith to the House of Representatives, in which
it originated, a bill for "An Act to repeal Chapter XXXI. of
the Laws of the First Legislative Assembly of the Territory
of Wyoming."
I regret that a sense of duty compels me to dissent from
your honorable body with regard to any contemplated measure
of public policy. It would certainly be more in accordance
with the desire I have to secure and preserve the most
harmonious relations among all the branches of our
territorial government, to approve the bill. A regard,
however, for the rights of those whose interests are to be
affected by it, and for what I believe to be the best
interests of the territory, will not allow me to do so. The
consideration, besides, that the passage of this bill would
be, on the part of those instrumental in bringing it about,
a declaration that the principles upon which the
enfranchisement of women is urged are false and untenable,
and that our experience demonstrates this, influences me not
a little in my present action.
While I fully appreciate the great danger of too much
attention to abstract speculation or metaphysical reasoning
in political affairs, I cannot but perceive that there are
times and circumstances when it is not only proper but
absolutely necessary to appeal to principles somewhat
general and abstract, when they alone can point out the way
and they alone can guide our conduct. So it was when, two
years ago, the act which this bill is designed to repeal was
presented for my approval. There was at that time no
experience to which I might refer and test by its results
the conclusions to which the application of certain
universally admitted principles led me. In the absence of
all such experience I was driven to the application of
principles which through the whole course of our national
history have been powerfully and beneficially operative in
making our institutions more and more popular, in framing
laws more and more just and in securing amendments to our
federal constitution. If the ballot be an expression of the
wish, or a declaration of the will, of the tax-payer as to
the manner in which taxes should be levied and collected and
revenues disbursed, why should those who hold in their own
right a large proportion of the wealth of the country be
excluded from a voice in making the laws which regulate this
whole subject? If, again, the ballot be for the physically
weak a guarantee of protection against the aggression and
violence of the strong, upon what ground can the delicate
bodily organism of woman be forbidden this shelter for her
protection? If, once more, each ballot be the declaration of
the individual will of the person casting it, as to the
relative merit of opposed measures or men, surely the
ability to judge and determine--the power of choice--does
not depend upon sex, nor does womanhood deprive of
personality. If these principles are too general to be free
from criticism, and if this reasoning be too abstract to be
always practically applicable, neither the principles nor
the reasoning can fail of approbation when contrasted with
the gloomy misgivings for the future and the dark
forebodings of evils, imaginary, vague and undefined, by
dwelling upon which the opponents of this reform endeavor to
stay its progress. Aggressive reasoning and positive
principles like these must be met with something more than
mere doubtful conjectures, must be resisted by something
more than popular prejudices, and overthrown--if overthrown
at all--by something stronger than the force of inert
conservatism; yet what is there but conjecture, prejudice
and conservatism opposing this reform? * * * * * * * *
The law granting to women the right to vote and to hold
office in this territory was a natural and logical sequence
to the other laws upon our statute-book. Our laws give to
the widow the guardianship of her minor children. Will you
take from her all voice in relation to the public schools
established for the education of those children? Our laws
permit women to acquire and possess property. Will you
forbid them having any voice in relation to the taxation of
that property? This bill says too little or too much. Too
little, if you legislate upon the assumption that woman is
an inferior who should be kept in a subordinate position,
for in that case the other laws affecting her should be
repealed or amended; and too much, if she is, as no one will
deny, the equal of man in heart and mind, for in that case
we cannot afford to dispense with her counsel and assistance
in the government of the territory.
I need only instance section 9 of the school act, which
declares that, "In the employment of teachers no
discrimination shall be made in the question of pay on
account of sex when the persons are equally qualified." What
is more natural than that the men who thought that women
were competent to instruct the future voters and legislators
of our land, should take the one step in advance of the
public sentiment of yesterday and give to her equal wages
for equal work? And when this step had been taken, what more
natural than that they should again move forward--this time
perhaps a little in advance of the public sentiment of
to-day--and give to those whom they consider competent to
instruct voters, the right to vote.
To the statement, so often made, that the law which this
bill is intended to repeal was passed thoughtlessly and
without proper consideration, I oppose the fact to which I
have adverted, that the law perfectly conforms to all the
other laws in relation to women upon our statute-book.
Studied in connection with the other laws it would seem to
have grown naturally from them. It harmonizes entirely with
them, and forms a fitting apex to the grand pyramid which is
being built up as broadly and as surely throughout all the
States of the Union as it has been built up and capped in
Wyoming.
The world does not stand still. The dawn of Christianity was
the dawn of light for woman. For eighteen centuries she has
been gradually but slowly rising from the condition of
drudge and servant for man, to become his helpmeet,
counselor and companion. As she has been advanced in the
social scale, our laws have kept pace with that advancement
and conferred upon her rights and privileges with
accompanying duties and responsibilities. She has not abused
those privileges, and has been found equal to the duties and
responsibilities. And the day is not far distant when the
refining and elevating influence of women will be as clearly
manifested in the political as it now is in the social
world.
Urged by all these considerations of right, and justice, and
expediency, and the strong conviction of duty, I approved
that act of which this bill contemplates the repeal, and it
became a law. To warrant my reconsidering that action, there
ought to be in the experience of the last two years
something to show that the reasons upon which it was founded
were unsound, or that the law itself was wrong or at least
unwise and inexpedient. My view of the teachings of this
experience is the very reverse of this. Women have voted,
and have the officers chosen been less faithful and zealous
and the legislature less able and upright? They have sat as
jurors, and have the laws been less faithfully and justly
administered, and criminals less promptly and adequately
punished? Indeed the lessons of this two years' experience
fully confirm all that has been claimed by the most ardent
advocate of this innovation.
In this territory women have manifested for its highest
interests a devotion strong, ardent, and intelligent. They
have brought to public affairs a clearness of understanding
and a soundness of judgment, which, considering their
exclusion hitherto from practical participation in political
agitations and movements, are worthy of the greatest
admiration and above all praise. The conscience of women is
in all things more discriminating and sensitive than that of
men; their sense of justice, not compromising or
time-serving, but pure and exacting; their love of order,
not spasmodic or sentimental merely, but springing from the
heart; all these,--the better conscience, the exalted sense
of justice, and the abiding love of order, have been made by
the enfranchisement of women to contribute to the good
government and well-being of our territory. To the plain
teachings of these two years' experience I cannot close my
eyes. I cannot forget the benefits that have already
resulted to our territory from woman suffrage, nor can I
permit myself even to seem to do so by approving this bill.
There is another, and in my judgment, a serious objection to
this bill, which I submit for the consideration and action
of your honorable body. It involves a reference to that most
difficult of questions, the limitations of legislative
power. High and transcendent as that power undoubtedly and
wisely is, there are limits which not even it can pass. Two
years ago the legislature of this territory conferred upon
certain of its citizens valuable rights and franchises. Can
a future legislature, by the passage of a law not liable to
the objection, that it violates the obligation of contracts,
take away those rights? It is not claimed, so far as I have
been informed, that the persons upon whom these franchises
were conferred have forfeited or failed to take advantage of
them. But even if such were the case it would be rather a
matter for judicial determination than for legislative
action. What that determination would be is clearly
indicated in the opinion of Associate-justice Story in the
celebrated case of Trustees of Dartmouth College _vs._
Woodward: "The right to be a freeman of a corporation is a
valuable temporal right. * * It is founded on the same basis
as the right of voting in public elections; it is as sacred
a right; and whatever might have been the prevalence of
former doubts, since the time of Lord Holt, such a right has
always been deemed a valuable franchise or privilege."
But even if we concede that these rights once acquired may
be taken away, the passage of this bill would be, in my
judgment, a most dangerous precedent. Once admit the right
of a representative body to disfranchise its own
constituents, and who can establish the limits to which that
right may not be carried? If this legislature takes from
women their franchises or privileges, what is to prevent a
future legislature from depriving certain men, or classes of
men, that, from any consideration they desire to
disfranchise, of the same rights? We should be careful how
we inaugurate precedents which may "return to plague the
inventors," and be used as a pretext for taking away our
liberties.
It will be remembered that in my message to the legislature
at the commencement of the present session I said: "There is
upon our statue book an act granting to the women of Wyoming
territory the right of suffrage and to hold office which has
now been in force two years. Under its liberal provisions
women have voted in the territory, served on juries, and
held office. It is simple justice to say that the women,
entering for the first time in the history of the country
upon these new and untried duties, have conducted themselves
with as much tact, sound judgment, and good sense as the
men. While it would be claiming more than the facts justify,
to say that this experiment, in a limited field, has
demonstrated beyond a doubt the perfect fitness of woman, at
all times and under all circumstances, for taking a part in
the government, it furnishes at least reasonable presumptive
evidence in her favor, and she has a right to claim that, so
long as none but good results are made manifest, the law
should remain unrepealed."
These were no hastily formed conclusions, but the result of
deliberation and conviction, and my judgment to-day approves
the language I then used. For the first time in the history
of our country we have a government to which the noble words
of our _Magna Charta_ of freedom may be applied,--not as a
mere figure of speech, but as expressing a simple grand
truth,--for it is a government which "derives all its just
powers from the consent of the governed." We should pause
long and weigh carefully the probable results of our action
before consenting to change this government. A regard for
the genius of our institutions, for the fundamental
principles of American autonomy, and for the immutable
principles of right and justice, will not permit me to
sanction this change.
These reasons for declining to give my consent to the bill,
I submit with all deference for the consideration and
judgment of your honorable body.
J. A. CAMPBELL.
The Republicans in the House made an ineffectual effort to
sustain the veto, but the party whip and the power of the saloons
were too strong for them, and the bill was passed over the veto
by a vote of 9 to 4. It met a different and better fate, however,
in the Council, where it was sustained by a vote of 4 to 5, a
strict party vote in each case. Mr. Corlett, a rising young
lawyer, at that time in the Council and since then a delegate in
congress, made an able defense of the suffrage act and resisted
its repeal, sustaining the veto with much skill and final
success. And there was much need, for the Democrats had made
overtures to one of the Republican members of the Council (they
lacked one vote) and had obtained a promise from him to vote
against the veto; but Mr. Corlett, finding out the fraud in
season, reclaimed the fallen Republican and saved the law. It is
due to Mr. Corlett to say that he has always been an able and
consistent supporter of woman's rights and universal suffrage. He
is now the leading lawyer of the territory.
Since that time the suffrage act has grown rapidly in popular
favor, and has never been made a party question. The leading men
of both parties, seeing its beneficial action, have given it an
unqualified approval; and most, if not all, of its former
enemies have become its friends and advocates. Most of the new
settlers in the territory, though coming here with impressions or
prejudices against it, soon learn to respect its operation, and
admire its beneficial results. There is nowhere in the territory
a voice raised against it, and it would be impossible to get up a
party for its repeal.
The women uniformly vote at all our elections, and are exerting
every year a more potent influence over the character of the
candidates selected by each party for office, by quietly
defeating those most objectionable in point of morals. It is true
they are not now summoned to serve on juries, nor are they
elected to office; and there are some obvious reasons for this.
In the first place, they never push themselves forward for such
positions, as the men invariably do; and in the second place, the
judges who have been sent to the territory, since the first ones,
have not insisted on respecting the women's rights as jurors, and
in some cases have objected to their being summoned as such. But
these matters will find a remedy by and by. It used to be an
important question in the nominating caucuses, "Will this
candidate put up money enough to buy the saloons, and catch the
loafers and drinkers that they control?" Now the question is,
"Will the women vote for this man, if we nominate him?" There
have been some very remarkable instances where men, knowing
themselves to be justly obnoxious to the women, have forced a
nomination in caucus, relying on their money and the drinking
shops and party strength to secure an election, who have been
taught most valuable lessons by signal defeat at the polls. It
would be invidious to call names or describe individual cases,
and could answer no necessary purpose. But I would ask particular
attention to the following articles, taken from recent
newspapers, as full and satisfactory evidence of the truth of
these statements, and of the wisdom of granting universal
suffrage and equal rights to the citizens of Wyoming territory.
The Laramie City _Daily Sentinel_ of December 16, 1878, J. H.
Hayford, editor, has the following leading editorial:
For about eight years now, the women of Wyoming territory
have enjoyed the same political rights and privileges as the
men, and all the novelties of this new departure, all the
shock it carried to the sensibilities of the old
conservatives, have long since passed away. For a long
time--even for years past--we have frequently received
letters asking for information as to its practical results
here, and still more frequently have received copies of
eastern papers with marked articles which purported to be
written by persons who resided here, or had visited the
territory and witnessed the awful results or the total
failure of the experiment. We have usually paid no attention
to these false and anonymous scribblers, who took this
method to display their shallow wit at the sacrifice of
truth and decency. But recently we have received more than
the usual number of such missives, and more letters, and
from a more respectable source than before, and we take this
occasion and method to answer them all at once, and once for
always, and do it through the columns of the _Sentinel_, one
of the oldest and most widely circulated papers in the
territory, because it will be readily conceded that we would
not publish here at home, false statements and
misrepresentations upon a matter with which all our readers
are familiar, and which, if false, could be easily refuted.
We assert here, then, that woman suffrage in Wyoming has
been in every particular a complete success.
That the women of Wyoming value as highly the political
franchise, and as generally exercise it, as do the men of
the territory.
That being more helpless, more dependent and more in need of
the protection of good laws and good government than are
men, they naturally use the power put into their hands to
secure these results.
That they are controlled more by principle and less by party
ties than men, and generally cast their votes for the best
candidates and the best measures.
That while women in this territory frequently vote contrary
to their husbands, we have never heard of a case where the
family ties or domestic relations were disturbed thereby,
and we believe that among the pioneers of the West there is
more honor and manhood than to abuse a wife because she does
not think with her husband about politics or religion.
We have never seen any of the evil results growing out of
woman suffrage which we have heard predicted for it by its
opponents. On the contrary, its results have been only good,
and that continually. Our elections have come to be
conducted as quietly, orderly and civilly as our religious
meetings, or any of our social gatherings, and the best men
are generally selected to make and enforce our laws. We have
long ago generally come to the conclusion that woman's
influence is as wholesome and as much needed in the
government of the State as in the government of the family.
We do not know of a respectable woman in the territory who
objects to or neglects to use her political power, and we do
not know of a decent man in the territory who wishes it
abolished, or who is not even glad to have woman's help in
our government.
Our laws were never respected or enforced, and crime was
never punished, or life or property protected until we had
woman's help in the jury box and at the polls, and we
unhesitatingly say here at home that we do not believe a man
can be found who wishes to see her deprived of voice and
power, unless it is the one "who fears not God nor regards
man," who wants to pursue a life of vice or crime, and
consequently fears woman's influence and power in the
government. We assert further that the anonymous scribblers
who write slanders on our women and our territory to the
eastern press, are either fools, who know nothing about what
they write, or else belong to that class of whom the poet
says:
"No rogue e'er felt the halter draw
With good opinion of the law."
We took some pains to track up and find out the author of
one of the articles against woman suffrage to which our
attention was called, and found him working on the streets
of Cheyenne, with a ball and chain to his leg. We think he
was probably an average specimen of these writers. And,
finally, we challenge residents in Wyoming who disagree with
the foregoing sentiments, and who endorse the vile slanders
to which we refer, to come out over their own signature and
in their own local papers and take issue with us, and our
columns shall be freely opened to them.
There are some obvious inferences to be drawn and some rather
remarkable lessons to be learned, from the foregoing narrative.
In the first place, the responsibilities of self government, with
the necessity of making their own laws, was delegated to a
people, strangers to each other, with very little experience or
knowledge in such matters, and composed of various nationalities,
with a very large percentage of the criminal classes. It is a
matter of surprise that they should have so soon settled
themselves into an orderly community, where all the rights of
person and property are well protected, and as carefully guarded
and fully respected as in any of our old eastern commonwealths.
It is a still greater surprise that a legislature selected by
such a constituency, under such circumstances as characterized
our first election, and composed of such men as were in fact
elected, should have been able to enact a body of laws
containing so much that was good and practicable, and so little
that was injudicious, unwise or vicious.
In the next place, it is evident that there was no public
sentiment demanding the passage of the woman suffrage law, and
but few advocates of it at that time in the territory; that its
adoption, under such circumstances, was not calculated to give it
a fair chance to exert a favorable influence in the community, or
even maintain itself among the permanent customs and laws of the
territory. The prospect was, that it would either remain a dead
letter, or be swept away under the ridicule and abuse of the
press, and the open attacks of its enemies. But it has withstood
all these adverse forces, and from small beginnings has grown to
be a permanent power in our politics, a vital institution,
satisfactory to all our people. The far-reaching benefits it will
yet accomplish can be easily foreseen. To make either individuals
or classes respected and induce them to respect themselves, you
must give them power and influence, a fair field and full
enjoyment of the results of their labors. We have made a very
creditable beginning in this direction, so far as woman is
concerned, and we have no doubts about the outcome of it. Wyoming
treats all her citizens alike, and offers full protection, equal
rewards, and equal power, to both men and women.
Again it is very evident that while our women take no active part
in the primary nomination of candidates for office, they exercise
a most potent influence by the independent manner in which they
vote, and the signal defeat they inflict on many unworthy
candidates. Their successful opposition to the power of the
bar-rooms is a notable and praiseworthy instance of the wise use
of newly-acquired rights. The saloon-keepers used to sell
themselves to that party, or that man, who would pay the most,
and while robbing the candidates, degraded the elections and
debauched the electors. So long as it was understood that in
order to secure an election it was necessary to secure the
rum-shops, good men were left out of the field, and unscrupulous
ones were sought after as candidates. The women have already
greatly modified this state of affairs and are likely to change
it entirely in the end.
Another wonderful consequence which has attended the presence of
women at the polls, is the uniform quiet and good order on
election day. All the police that could be mustered, could not
insure half the decorum that their simple presence has everywhere
secured. No man, not even a drunken one, is willing to act like a
rowdy when he knows the women will see him. Nor is he at all
anxious to expose himself in their presence when he knows he has
drank too much. Such men quit the polls, and slink out of the
streets, to hide themselves from the eyes of the women in the
obscurity of the drinking shops.
Another fact of great importance is the uniform testimony as to
woman's success as a juror. It is true that there has been but a
limited opportunity, thus far, to establish this as a fact beyond
all doubt. But a good beginning has been made, a favorable
impression produced, and no bad results have accompanied or
followed the experiment. If our jury system of trying cases is to
be preserved, as a tolerable method of settling disputes and
administering justice in our courts, every one will admit that a
great improvement in the character of the jurors must be speedily
found. At present, a jury trial is generally regarded as a farce,
or something worse. The proof of this is seen in the fact that in
most of our courts the judges are required to try all cases
without a jury, where the parties to the action consent, and that
in a great portion of the cases the parties do consent.
Another notable observation is the rapid growth of opinion in
favor of woman suffrage among our people, after its first
adoption; but more particularly the change effected in the minds
of the new settlers, who come to the territory with old
prejudices and fixed notions against it. Neither early education,
nor personal bias, nor party rancor, has been able to withstand
the overwhelming evidence of its good effects, and of its
elevating and purifying influence in our political and social
organization.
I must add, in conclusion, that the seventh legislature of our
territory has just closed its session of sixty days. It was
composed of more members than the earlier legislatures were,
there being thirteen in the Council and twenty-six in the House.
Many important questions came up for consideration, and a wide
field of discussion was traveled over, but not one word was at
any time spoken by any member against woman suffrage.
Hon. M. C. Brown, district-attorney for the territory, confirms the
testimony given by the judges and Governor Campbell, in a letter to
the National Suffrage Convention held in Washington in 1884, which
will be found in the pamphlet report of that year.
FOOTNOTES:
[491] Messrs. Wade, Anthony, Gratz Brown, Buckalew, Cowan, Foster,
Nesmith, Patterson, Riddle. See Vol. II., Chapter XVII.
[492] Ex-Governor Hoyt in his public speeches frequently gives this
bird's-eye view of Bright's domestic and political discussions:
"Betty, it's a shame that I should be a member of the legislature
and make laws for such a woman as you. You are a great deal better
than I am; you know a great deal more, and you would make a better
member of the Assembly than I, and you know it. I have been
thinking about it and have made up my mind that I will go to work
and do everything in my power to give you the ballot. Then you may
work out the rest in your own way." So he went over and talked with
other members of the legislature. They smiled. But he got one of
the lawyers to help him draw up a short bill, which he introduced.
It was considered and discussed. People smiled generally. There was
not much expectation that anything of that sort would be done; but
this was a shrewd fellow, who managed the party card in such a way
as to get, as he believed, enough votes to carry the measure before
it was brought to the test. I will show you a little behind the
curtain, so far as I can draw it. Thus he said to the Democrats:
"We have a Republican governor and a Democratic Assembly. Now,
then, if we can carry this bill through the Assembly and the
governor vetoes it, we shall have made a point, you know; we shall
have shown our liberality and lost nothing. But keep still; don't
say anything about it." They promised. He then went to the
Republicans and told them that the Democrats were going to support
his measure, and that if _they_ did not want to lose capital they
had better vote for it too. He didn't think there would be enough
of them to carry it, but the vote would be on record and thus
defeat the game of the other party. And they likewise agreed to
vote for it. So when the bill came to a vote it went right through!
The members looked at, each other in astonishment, for they hadn't
intended to do it, _quite_. Then they laughed and said it was a
good joke, but they had "got the governor in a fix." So the bill
went, in the course of time, to John A. Campbell, who was then
governor--the first governor of the territory of Wyoming--and he
promptly signed it! His heart was right. He saw that it was
long-deferred justice, and so signed it as gladly as Abraham
Lincoln wrote _his_ name to the Proclamation of Emancipation of the
slaves. Of course the women were astounded! If a whole troop of
angels had come down with flaming swords for their vindication,
they would not have been much more astonished than they were when
that bill became a law and the women of Wyoming were thus clothed
with the habiliments of citizenship.
[493] No sooner had these gentlemen left than Mrs. Post and Mrs.
Arnold had a long interview with the governor, urging him to sign
the bill on the highest moral grounds; not only to protect the
personal rights of the women of the territory but to compel the men
to observe the decencies of life and to elevate the social and
political status of the people.--[E. C. S.
[494] In the summer of 1871 Mrs. Stanton and myself, _en route_ for
California, visited Wyoming and met the women who were most active
in the exercise of their rights of citizenship. At Cheyenne we were
the guests of Mrs. M. B. Arnold and Mrs. Amalia B. Post. Mrs.
Arnold had a large cattle-ranch and Mrs. Post an equally large
sheep-ranch a few miles out of the city, which they superintended,
and from which each received an independent income. They had not
only served as jurors, but acted as foremen. At Laramie we were the
guests of Mr. J. H. Hayford, editor of the _Laramie Sentinel_, and
met Grandma Swain, who was the first woman to cast her ballot in
that city. We also met Judges Howe and Kingman and Governor
Campbell, and heard from them of the wonderful changes wrought in
the court-room and at the polls by the presence of enfranchised
women. We spoke in the very court-room in which women had sat as
jurors and felt an added inspiration from that fact.--[S. B. A.
[495] The following is the list of the first grand jury at Laramie
City, composed of nine men and six women, as impanneled and sworn:
C. H. Bussard, foreman; Mrs. Jane E. Hilton, T. W. DeKay, Jeremiah
Boies, Mrs. H. C. Swain. Joseph DeMars, M. N. Merrill, Mrs. M. A.
Pierce, Mrs. C. Blake, Richard Turpin, G. W. Cardwell, Mrs. S. L.
Larimer, N. C. Worth, Mrs. Jane Mackle, W. H. Mitchell.
CHAPTER LIII.
CALIFORNIA.
Liberal Provisions in the Constitution--Elizabeth T.
Schenck--Eliza W. Farnham--Mrs. Mills' Seminary, now a State
Institution--Jeannie Carr, State Superintendent of Schools--First
Awakening--_The Revolution_--Anna Dickinson--Mrs. Gordon
Addresses the Legislature, 1868--Mrs. Pitts Stevens Edits _The
Pioneer_--First Suffrage Society on the Pacific Coast,
1869--State Convention, January 26, 1870, Mrs. Wallis,
President--State Association Formed, Mrs. Haskell of Petaluma,
President--Mrs. Gordon Nominated for Senator--In 1871, Mrs.
Stanton and Miss Anthony Visit California--Hon. A. A. Sargent
Speaks in Favor of Suffrage for Woman--Ellen Clarke Sargent
Active in the Movement--Legislation Making Women Eligible to Hold
School Offices, 1873--July 10, 1873, State Society Incorporated,
Sarah Wallis, President--Mrs. Clara Foltz--A Bill Giving Women
the Right to Practice Law--The Bill Passed and Signed by the
Governor--Contest Over Admitting Women into the Law Department of
the University--Supreme Court Decision Favorable--Hon. A. A.
Sargent on the Constitution and Laws--Journalists and
Printers--Silk Culture--Legislative Appropriation--Mrs. Knox
Goodrich Celebrates July 4, 1876--Imposing Demonstration--Ladies
in the Procession.
The central figure in the seal of California is the presiding
goddess of that State, her spear in one hand, the other resting on
her shield, the cabalistic word "Eureka" over her head and a bear
crouching quietly at her feet. She seems to be calmly contemplating
the magnificent harbor within the Golden Gate. The shadows on the
distant mountains, the richly-laden vessels and the floating clouds
indicate the peaceful sunset hour, and the goddess, in harmony with
the scene is seated at her ease, as if after many weary wanderings
in search of an earthly Paradise she had found at last the land of
perennial summers, fruits and flowers--a land of wonders, with its
mammoth trees, majestic mountain-ranges and that miracle of
grandeur and beauty, the Yosemite Valley. Verily it seems as if
bounteous Nature in finishing the Pacific Slope did her best to
inspire the citizens of that young civilization with love and
reverence for the beautiful and grand.
California, admitted to the Union in 1850, owing to the erratic
character of her early population, has passed through more
vicissitudes than any other State, but she secured at last social
order, justice in her courts and a somewhat liberal constitution,
as far as the personal and property rights of the "white male
citizen" were concerned. By its provisions--
All legal distinctions between individuals on religious grounds
are prohibited; the utmost freedom of assembling, of speech and
of the press is allowed, subject only to restraint for abuse;
there is no imprisonment for debt, except where fraud can be
proved; slavery and involuntary servitude, except for crime, are
prohibited; wives are secured in their separate rights of
property; the exemption of a part of the homestead and other
property of heads of families from forced sale is recognized.
So far so good; but while the constitution limits the franchise to
every "white male citizen" over twenty-one, who has been a resident
of the State six months, and thus makes outlaws and pariahs of all
the noble women who endured the hardships of the journey by land or
by sea to that country in the early days, who helped to make it all
that it is, that instrument cannot be said to secure justice,
equality and liberty to all its citizens. The position in the
constitution and laws of that vast territory, of the real woman who
shares the every-day trials and hardships of her sires and sons
inspires no corresponding admiration and respect, with the ideal
one who gilds and glorifies the great seal of the State.
For the main facts of this chapter we are indebted to Elizabeth T.
Schenck.[496] She says:
Out of the stirring scenes and tragical events characterizing the
early days of California one can well understand that there came
of necessity many brave and adventurous argonauts and many women
of superior mental force, from among whom in after years the
woman suffrage cause might receive most devoted adherents. For
nearly a score of years after the great incursion of gold-seekers
into this newly-acquired State no word was uttered by tongue or
pen demanding political equality for women--none at least which
reached the public ear. There were no preceding causes, as in the
older States, to stimulate the discussion of the question, and
even that mental amazon, Eliza W. Farnham who was one of the
distinguished pioneers of California, gathered her inspiration
from afar, and thought and wrote for the whole world of women
without once sounding the tocsin for woman's political
emancipation. Many of the women who braved the perils of the
treacherous deep, or still more terrible dangers of the weary
march over broad deserts, inhospitable mountains, and through the
fastnesses of hostile and merciless Indians, to reach California
in the early times, entertained broad views upon the intellectual
capacity and political rights of women, but their efforts were
confined to fields of literature. While this advanced guard of
progressive women was moulding into form a social system out of
the turbulent and disorganized masses thrown together by the
rapidly-increasing population from all parts of the globe, the
elements were aggregating which in after years produced powerful,
outspoken thought and earnest action in behalf of disfranchised
women.
Here as elsewhere women took the lead in school matters and were
the most capable and efficient educators from the days of "'49."
One of our permanent State institutions, Mills' Seminary, was
founded by a woman whose name it bears, and who, assisted by her
husband, Rev. Mr. Mills, conducted the school for nearly a
quarter of a century, until by an act of the legislature, she
conveyed it to the State. Several principals of the public
schools in San Francisco have held their positions for over
twenty consecutive years. Mrs. Jeanne Carr, deputy state
superintendent of public instruction from 1871 to 1875, was
succeeded by Mrs. Kate M. Campbell, who served most efficiently
for the full term. During Mrs. Carr's public service she visited
nearly every county in the State, attending teachers' institutes,
and lecturing upon educational topics with great ability. For
many years women have been eligible to school offices in
California and there is not a county in the State where women
have not filled positions as trustees or been elected to the
office of county superintendent.[497] Mrs. Coleman has been
reëlected to that office in Shasta county, and Mrs. E. W.
Sullivan in Mono county has served for several terms.
The first attempt to awaken the public mind to the question of
suffrage for woman was a lecture given by Laura De Force Gordon
in Platt's Hall, San Francisco, February 19, 1868. Although the
attendance was small, a few earnest women were there[498] who
formed the nucleus of what followed. Soon after Mrs. Gordon
addressed the legislature in the senate-chamber at Sacramento,
and made an eloquent appeal for the political rights of women.
Among the audience were many members of the legislature who
became very deeply impressed with the justice of her demand,
including the subsequent governor of the State, George C.
Perkins, then senator from Butte county. Soon afterwards Mrs.
Gordon removed to Nevada, and no more lectures on woman suffrage
were given until the visit of Anna Dickinson in the summer of
1869.
The way was being prepared however, for further agitation by the
appearance of _The Revolution_ in 1868 in New York, which was
hailed by the women of California (as elsewhere) as the harbinger
of a brighter and better era. Its well filled pages were eagerly
read and passed from hand to hand, and the effect of its
startling assertions was soon apparent. Mrs. Pitts Stevens had
about that time secured a proprietary interest in the _San
Francisco Mercury_, and was gradually educating her readers up to
a degree of liberality to endorse suffrage. Early in 1869 she
became sole proprietor, changing the name to _Pioneer_, and threw
the woman suffrage banner to the breeze in an editorial of marked
ability.
The organization of the National Woman Suffrage Association in
New York, May, 1869, gave fresh impetus to the movement, and the
appointment of Mrs. Elizabeth T. Schenck as vice-president for
California by that association, met with the approval of all
those interested in the movement. Soon after this Mrs. Schenck
with her gifted ally, Mrs. Stevens, decided to organize a
suffrage society, and at an impromptu meeting of some of the
friends at the residence of Mrs. Nellie Hutchinson, July 27,
1869, the first association for this purpose on the Pacific coast
was formed. There were just a sufficient number of members[499]
to fill the offices. This society grew rapidly and within a month
the parlors were found inadequate to the constantly increasing
numbers. Through the courtesy of the Mercantile Library
Association their commodious apartments were secured.
The advent of Anna Dickinson afforded the ladies an opportunity
to attest their admiration for her as a representative woman,
which they did, giving her a public breakfast, September 14.
Their honored guest appreciated the compliment; and in an earnest
and eloquent speech referred to it, saying that although she had
received many demonstrations of the kind, this was the first ever
given her exclusively by her own sex.[500]
Soon after Miss Dickinson's departure, Mrs. Schenck, much to the
regret of the society, resigned the chair, and Mrs. J. W. Stow
was appointed to fill the vacancy. The ladies having for some
time considered the organizing of a State Society of great
importance, it was decided to hold a grand mass convention for
that purpose. There was need of funds to carry forward the work,
and a course of three lectures was suggested as a means to raise
money. This carried, on motion of Mrs. Stow, and her offer to
deliver the first lecture of the course was accepted. All the
members of the society devoted their energies to secure the
success of the undertaking. Many of them engaged in selling
tickets for the two weeks intervening, and on November 2, Mrs.
Stow gave her lecture to a large and interested audience, taking
for her theme, "Woman's Work." The Rev. Mr. Hamilton followed,
November 9, with "The Parlor and the Harem," and the Rev. C. G.
Ames concluded the course, November 18, with "What Does it Mean?"
The lectures were well received, and though not particularly
directed to the right of suffrage for women, succeeded in
attracting attention to the society under whose auspices they
were given, and helped it financially. About this time Mrs.
Gordon returned from the East and took an active part in
canvassing the State, lecturing and forming county societies
preparatory to securing as large a representation as possible at
the coming convention. The following report of the proceedings is
taken from the San Francisco dailies:
[Illustration: Laura deForce Gordon]
The convention to form a State Woman Suffrage Society, held
its first meeting in Dashaway Hall, Wednesday afternoon,
January 26, 1870. The hall was well filled. Mrs. E. T.
Schenck, vice-president of the National Association, was
chosen president, _pro. tem._, and Miss Kate Atkinson,
Secretary. A committee on credentials was appointed by the
chair, consisting of one member from each organization.[501]
During the absence of the committee quite an animated
discussion arose as to the admission of delegates. Mrs.
Gordon said the greatest possible liberality should be
exercised in admitting persons to the right to speak and
vote; that all who signed the roll, paid the fee, and
expressed themselves in sympathy with the movement, should
be admitted. After some discussion, Mrs. Gordon's views
prevailed, and the names of those who chose to qualify
themselves were enrolled. About 120 delegates were thus
chosen from nine suffrage societies in different parts of
the State. Many counties were represented in which no
organizations had yet been formed. Some rather humorous
discussion was had as to whether the president should be
called Mrs. Chairman or Mrs. Chairwoman. The venerable Mr.
Spear arose and suggested the title be Mrs. President, which
was adopted. Mrs. Gordon said she had noticed that when
questions were put to the meeting not more than a dozen
timid voices could be heard saying "aye," or "no." The
ladies must not sit like mummies, but open their mouths and
vote audibly. This disinclination to do business in a
business-like way, is discreditable. (Cheers). Mrs. Gordon's
hint was taken, and unequivocal demonstration of voices was
made thereafter upon the taking of each vote. Long before
the time arrived for the evening session, the hall in every
part, platform, floor and gallery, was crowded, and large
numbers were unable to gain entrance.
The Committee on Permanent Organization presented the
following names for officers of the convention: President,
Mrs. Wallis of Mayfield; Vice-Presidents, J. A. Collins, C.
G. Ames, Mrs. Mary W. Coggins; Secretaries, Mrs. McKee, Mrs.
Rider, Mrs. Perry; Treasurer, Mrs. Collins. On motion, Mrs.
Haskell and Mrs. Ames escorted the president to the rostrum,
and introduced her to the convention. Mrs. Wallis is a lady
of imposing presence, and very earnest in the movement. Upon
being introduced she said:
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN--I thank you for this expression of
your high esteem and confidence in electing me to preside
over your deliberations. I regard this as a severe ordeal,
but, having already been tested in this respect, I do not
fear the trials to come. I shall persevere until the
emancipation of women is effected, and in order to fulfill
my duties successfully upon this occasion, I ask the hearty
coöperation of all. [Applause].
Mrs. Stow gave the opening address, after which
delegates[502] from various localities made interesting
reports. An able series of resolutions was presented and
discussed at length by various members of the convention,
and letters of sympathy were read from friends throughout
the country.[503]
From the first session, some anxiety was felt regarding the
action of the State Society in affiliating with one of the two
rival associations in the East. The Rev. C. G. Ames of San
Francisco, whose wife had been in attendance upon the Cleveland
convention of the American Association, was appointed
vice-president for California, while Mrs. E. T. Schenck had been
appointed vice-president by the National Association. In addition
to the names of officers of county societies appended to the call
for this convention, both Mrs. Schenck and Mrs. Ames signed in
their official capacity, as vice-president of their respective
Associations. Under these circumstances it was not strange that a
spirit of rivalry should manifest itself, but it was unfortunate
that it was carried so far as to breed disturbance in this infant
organization. The leading women looked upon Mrs. E. Cady Stanton
and Miss Susan B. Anthony as among the first who organized the
suffrage movement in the United States, and therefore felt that
it was due to them that our California Society which owed its
existence mainly to the efforts of Mrs. Schenck whom they had
appointed vice-president for California, should show its loyalty,
devotion and gratitude to them, by becoming auxiliary to the
National Association. On the other hand, Rev. C. G. Ames, being
an enthusiastic admirer of some of the leading spirits in the
American Association, desired it to be auxiliary to that. This
conflict having been foreshadowed, a letter was written to Miss
Anthony in relation to it. Her reply was received by Mrs. Schenck
on the first day of the convention, breathing a noble spirit of
unselfishness, advising us not to allow any personal feelings
towards Mrs. Stanton or herself to influence us in the matter,
but rather to keep our association entirely independent, free to
coöperate with all societies having for their object the
enfranchisement of woman. Accordingly, the following resolution
was almost unanimously adopted:
_Resolved_, That the California Woman Suffrage Society
remain independent of all other associations for one year.
The result was satisfactory to Mrs. Schenck and her sympathizers,
but Mr. Ames seemed loth to relinquish his preference for the
American, and the course taken had the effect of lessening his
zeal and that of his followers, until they gradually dropped from
the ranks. But the convention, despite the unfortunate schism,
was a grand success. The sessions were crowded, and so great was
the interest awakened in the public mind that a final adjournment
was not had until Saturday night, after four days of earnest,
profitable work. The press of the city gave full and fair reports
of the proceedings, though very far from endorsing woman's claim
to suffrage, and men and women of all classes and professions
took an active part in the deliberations. But of the multitude
who met in that first woman suffrage convention on the Pacific
coast but few were prominent in after years.
The newly organized society immediately arranged to send a
delegation to Sacramento, to present to the legislature then in
session a petition for woman suffrage. The delegation consisted
of Laura DeForce Gordon, Caroline H. Spear and Laura Cuppy Smith,
who were accorded a hearing before a special committee of the
Senate, of which the venerable Judge Tweed, an able advocate of
woman suffrage, was chairman. The proceeding was without a
parallel in the history of the State. The novelty of women
addressing the legislature attracted universal attention, and the
newspapers were filled with reports of that important meeting.
During the year 1870 a general agitation was kept up. A number of
speakers[504] held meetings in various parts of the State. The
newspapers were constrained to notice this all-absorbing topic,
though most of them were opposed to the innovation, and
maintained a bitter war against its advocates. Prominent among
them was the sensational San Francisco _Chronicle_ followed by
the _Bulletin_, the _Call_, and in its usual negative style, the
_Alta_, while the _Examiner_ mildly ridiculed the subject, and a
score of lesser journalistic lights throughout the State
exhibited open hostility to woman suffrage, or simply mentioned
the fact of its agitation as a matter of news. But the brave
pioneers in this unpopular movement received kindly sympathy and
encouragement from some journals of influence, first among which
was the San Francisco _Post_, then under the management of that
popular journalist, Harry George, afterwards distinguished as the
author of "Progress and Poverty." The San José _Mercury_ was our
friend from the first, and its fearless and able editor, J. J.
Owen, accepted the office of president of the State woman
suffrage society to which he was elected in 1878. The Sacramento
_Bee_ also did valiant service in defending and advocating
woman's political equality, its veteran editor, James McClatchy,
being a man of liberal views and great breadth of thought, whose
powerful pen was wielded in advocacy of justice to all until his
death, which occurred in October, 1883. There were several county
journals that spoke kind words in our behalf, and occasionally
one under the editorial management of a woman would fearlessly
advocate political equality.
During the year of 1870, Mrs. Gordon traveled extensively over
the State, delivering more than one hundred lectures, beside
making an extended tour, in company with Mrs. Pitts Stevens,
through Nevada, where on the Fourth of July, at a convention held
at Battle Mountain, the first suffrage organization for that
State was effected. In February, 1871, Mrs. Gordon again lectured
in Nevada, remaining several weeks in Carson while the
legislature was in session. She was invited by that body to
address them upon the proposed amendment to the State
constitution to allow women to vote, which amendment was lost by
a majority of only two votes, obtained by a political trick, the
question being voted upon without a call of the House, when
several members friendly to the measure were absent. The author
of the proposed amendment was the Hon. C. J. Hillier, a prominent
lawyer of Virginia City, who, in bringing the bill before the
legislature in 1869, delivered one of the ablest arguments ever
given in favor of woman suffrage.
In 1871 Mrs. Gordon again made an extended tour through
California, Oregon, and Washington Territory, traveling mostly by
stage, enduring hardships, braving dangers and everywhere
overcoming prejudice and antagonism to strong-minded women, by
the persuasiveness of her arguments. In September, while
lecturing in Seättle, a telegram informed her of her nomination
by the Independent party of San Joaquin county for the office of
State senator, requesting her immediate return to California.
This necessitated a journey of nearly a thousand miles, one-half
by stage-coach. Six days of continuous travel brought her to
Stockton, where she entered at once upon the senatorial campaign.
Mrs. Gordon spoke every night until election, and succeeded in
awakening a lively interest in her own candidacy and in the
subject of woman suffrage. Her eligibility to the office was
vehemently denied, particularly by Republicans, who were badly
frightened at the appearance of this unlooked-for rival. The
pulpit, press, and stump speakers alternated in ridiculing the
idea of a woman being allowed to take a seat in the Senate, even
if elected. The Democratic party, being in the minority, offered
but little opposition, and watched with great amusement this
unequal contest between the great dominant party on the one side,
and the little Spartan band on the other. The contest was as
exciting as it was brief, and despite the great odds of money,
official power, political superiority, and the perfect machinery
of party organization in favor of her opponents, Mrs. Gordon
received about 200 votes, besides as many more which were
rejected owing to some technical irregularity. Among those who
took part in that novel campaign and deserving special mention,
was the venerable pioneer familiarly called Uncle Jarvis, who had
voted a straight Whig or Republican ticket for fifty years, and
who for the first time in his life scratched his ticket and voted
for Mrs. Gordon.
In July, 1871, California was favored by a visit from Mrs.
Stanton and Miss Anthony, who awakened new interest wherever
their logical and eloquent appeals were heard. Their advent was
hailed with joy, and they received marked attention from all
classes, the clergy not excepted. Every lecture given by them
drew out large assemblies of the most influential of the
citizens. Indeed, they received a continual ovation during their
stay in San Francisco. After Mrs. Stanton returned to New York,
Miss Anthony remained and traveled in California, Nevada, Oregon
and Washington Territory several months, speaking at conventions
held in San Francisco and Sacramento, besides lecturing in all
the principal towns, winning for herself great praise, and a
deeper respect for the cause she so ably represented. A
complimentary banquet was tendered her in San Francisco on the
eve of her departure eastward, at which eighty guests,
distinguished in art, literature and social life, sat down to a
sumptuous collation spread in the Grand Hotel.
In the early part of that year, 1871, Hon. A. A. Sargent and wife
returned to California from Washington, his term as
representative having expired, and both took an active part in
the work of woman's political enfranchisement. Mr. Sargent, with
commendable bravery, which under the circumstances was indeed a
test of courage, delivered an address in favor of woman suffrage
at a convention held in San Francisco, just on the eve of an
important political campaign, in which he was a candidate for
reëlection to congress, and also to the United States Senate. Of
course, those opposed to woman suffrage tried to make capital out
of it against him, but without avail, for that able and
distinguished statesman was elected to both offices, his term as
representative expiring before he would be called upon to take
his seat in the United States Senate. His noble wife, Ellen Clark
Sargent, took an active interest in all the woman suffrage
meetings, and in November, 1871, was appointed, as was also Mrs.
Gordon, to represent California in the National convention to be
held in Washington in January, 1872.
During the session of the California legislature in 1871-2 a
delegation from the State Society visited Sacramento and was
accorded a hearing in the Assembly-chamber before the Judiciary
Committee of that body. Addresses were made by Mrs. Pitts
Stevens, Mrs. A. A. Haskell, Mrs. E. A. H. DeWolf and Hon. John
A. Collins.
During the session of 1873-4 a bill was passed by the legislature
making women eligible to school offices, and also one which
provided that all women employed in the public schools should
receive the same compensation as men holding the same grade
certificates.
Mrs. Laura Morton has filled and ably discharged the office of
assistant State librarian for the past ten years. Mrs. Mandeville
was deputy-controller during the Democratic administration of
Governor Irwin, and proved herself fully capable of discharging
the duties of that responsible office; while for several years
women have been elected to various positions in the legislature
and employed as clerks.
July 10, 1873, the Woman Suffrage Society was incorporated under
the laws of the State, with Mrs. Sarah Wallis, president. Mrs.
Clara S. Foltz, a brilliant young woman who had begun the study
of law in San José, knew the statutes permitted no woman to be
admitted to the bar, and early in the session of 1877 drafted a
bill amending the code in favor of women, and sent it to Senator
Murphy of Santa Clara to be presented. Five years before this,
however, Mrs. Nettie Tator had applied for admission to the bar
at Santa Cruz. A committee of prominent attorneys appointed by
the court examined her qualifications as a lawyer. She passed
creditably and was unanimously recommended by the committee, when
it was discovered that the law would not admit women to that
learned profession.
Following the presentation of Mrs. Foltz' bill, Mrs. Knox
Goodrich, Laura Watkins, Mrs. Wallis and Laura De Force Gordon
were appointed by the State Society a committee to visit
Sacramento during the session and use their influence to secure
the passage of the "Woman's Lawyer Bill," as it was termed, and
to petition for suffrage. Mrs. Gordon, who was also reading law,
was in Sacramento as editorial correspondent for her paper, the
_Daily Democrat_ of Oakland, and had ample opportunity to render
valuable service to the cause she had so much at heart. The bill
passed the Senate by a vote of 22 to 9, being ably advocated by
Senators N. Green Curtis, Judge Niles Searles of Nevada county,
Creed Haymond of Sacramento, and Joseph Craig of Yolo. In the
Assembly, after weeks of tedious delay and almost endless debate,
the bill was indefinitely postponed by a majority of one. By the
persistent efforts of Assemblymen Grove L. Johnson of Sacramento,
R. W. Murphy, Charles Gildea and Dr. May of San Francisco, the
bill was brought up on reconsideration and passed by two
majority. The session was within three days of its close, and so
bitter was the opposition to the bill that an effort was made to
prevent its engrossment in time to be presented for the
governor's signature. The women and their allies, who were on the
watch for tricks, defeated the scheme of their enemies and had
the bill duly presented to Governor Irwin, but not till the last
day of the session. Then the suspense became painful to those
most interested lest it might not receive his approval. Mrs.
Gordon, as editor of a Democratic journal, asserted her claims to
some recognition from that party and strongly urged that a
Democratic governor should sign the bill. Aided by a personal
appeal from Senator Niles Searles to his excellency, her efforts
were crowned with success; the governor's message sent to the
Senate, when the hands of the clock pointed to fifteen minutes of
twelve, midnight (at which hour the president's gavel would
descend with the words adjourning the Senate _sine die_),
announced that Senate bill number 66, which permitted the
admission of women to all the courts of the State, had received
his approval. There was great rejoicing over this victory among
the friends everywhere, though the battle was not yet ended.
The same legislature had passed a bill accepting the munificent
donation to the State of $100,000 from Judge Hastings to found
the Hastings College of Law, on condition that it be the law
department of the State University, and the college was duly
opened for the admission of students. At the beginning of the
December term Mrs. Foltz, who had been admitted to the District
Court in San José (being the first woman ever admitted to any
court in the State), came to San Francisco, and with Mrs. Gordon
applied for admission to the law college. The dean, Judge
Hastings, himself opposed to women being received as students,
told them it was a matter that must be laid before the board of
directors, but that they could attend the lectures _ad interim_.
Three days later they were informed that their application had
been denied. Satisfied that the law was in their favor, they
immediately appealed to the courts. To save time Mrs. Gordon
applied to the Supreme Court and Mrs. Foltz to the District
Court, simultaneously, for a writ of mandamus to compel the
directors to act in obedience to the law which, the petitioners
claimed, did not discriminate against women in founding the State
University or its departments. The Supreme Court, wishing perhaps
to shirk the responsibility of acting in the first instance, sent
their petitioner, Mrs. Gordon, to the lower court, which had in
the meantime ordered the writ to issue for Mrs. Foltz; so it was
decided to make hers the test-case, and by the courtesy of Judge
Morrison, now chief-justice of the Supreme Court, Mrs. Gordon was
joined with Mrs. Foltz in the prosecution of the cause. The board
of directors of the college consisted of the chief-justice of the
Supreme Bench and seven other lawyers, among the most
distinguished and able in the State. The case attracted great
attention and deep interest was taken in the proceedings. Judges
Lake and Cope, who were ex-justices of the Supreme Court,
assisted by T. B. Bishop, another learned practitioner at the
bar, were arrayed as counsel for the defense against these
comparatively young students in the law, who appeared unaided in
their own behalf. After one of the most interesting legal
contests in the history of the State these women came off
victors, and the good-natured public, through the press, offered
them congratulations. But the defendants would not yield without
a stubborn resistance and carried their cause on appeal to the
Supreme Court; hence many months elapsed before the final
struggle came, but victory again rewarded the petitioners, the
Supreme Court deciding that women _should_ be admitted to the law
department of the State University. Although excluded from the
benefit of the lectures in the college, Mesdames Gordon and Foltz
had improved their time in study, and in December, 1879, both
were admitted to the Supreme Court of the State, after a thorough
examination.
Prior to this legal contest, in the summer of 1878, when
delegates to the constitutional convention were to be elected,
Mrs. Gordon, urged by her friends in San Joaquin county, became
an independent candidate only a week or two before the election.
With Mrs. Foltz she made a very brief though brilliant canvass,
attracting larger and more enthusiastic audiences than any other
speaker. Mrs. Gordon received several hundred votes for the
office, and felt compensated for the time and money spent by the
great interest awakened in the subject of woman suffrage.
As soon as the constitutional convention assembled in September,
Mrs. Gordon, although still pursuing her legal studies, was able
as a newspaper correspondent to closely watch the deliberations
of that body and urge the insertion of a woman suffrage clause in
the new organic law. The State Society delegated Mrs. Knox
Goodrich, Mrs. Sarah Wallis and Mrs. Watkins to join Mrs. Gordon
in pressing the claims of woman, but the opposition was too
strong and the suffrage clause remained declaring male citizens
entitled to vote, though a section in the bill of rights,
together with other provisions in the new constitution, renders
it quite probable that the legislature has the right to
enfranchise women without having to amend the organic law. At all
events the new instrument is far more favorable to women than the
old, as will now be shown. The agitation of the question of the
admission of women to the Law College, which began during the
session of the convention, led that body to incorporate the
following provision in the constitution:
ARTICLE II., SEC. 18. No person shall be debarred admission
to any of the collegiate departments of the State University
on account of sex.
Remembering the hard struggle by which the right to practice law
had been secured to women, and the danger of leaving it to the
caprice of future legislatures, Mrs. Gordon drafted a clause
which protects women in all lawful vocations, and by persistent
effort succeeded in getting it inserted in the new constitution,
as follows:
ARTICLE XX., SEC. 18. No person shall, on account of sex, be
disqualified from entering upon or pursuing any lawful
business, vocation or profession.
The adoption of this clause, so valuable to women, was mainly
accomplished by the skillful diplomacy of Hon. Charles S.
Ringgold, delegate from San Francisco, who introduced it in the
convention and worked faithfully for its adoption. Thus
California stands to-day one of the first States in the Union, as
regards the educational, industrial and property rights of women,
and the probability of equal political rights being secured to
them at an early day, is conceded by the most conservative.
About the time Mrs. Foltz and Mrs. Gordon were admitted to the
bar, they, as chief officers of the State W. S. S.
(incorporated), called a convention in San Francisco. It convened
in February, 1880, and was well attended. Mrs. Sargent took an
active part in the meetings, occupied the chair as president _pro
tem._, and subsequently spoke of the work done by the National
Association in Washington. Several prominent officials, unable to
be present, sent letters heartily endorsing our claims; among
these were Governor Perkins, State Senator Chace, and A. M.
Crane, judge of the Superior Court. Addresses were delivered by
Judge Swift, Marian Todd and Mrs. Thorndyke of Los Angeles, Judge
Palmer of Nevada city, and others. The newspapers of the city,
though still hostile to the object of the convention, gave very
fair reports. In September following, the annual meeting of the
society was held, and made particularly interesting by the fact
that the proposed new city charter, which contained a clause
proscriptive of women, was denounced, and a plan of action agreed
upon whereby its defeat should be secured, if possible, at the
coming election. The women worked assiduously against the
adoption of the city charter, and rejoiced to see it rejected by
a large majority.
The following facts in regard to the constitution and statute
laws of California were sent us by the Hon. A. A. Sargent:
In 1879, California adopted a new constitution, by means of
a constitutional convention. It was an unfortunate time for
such organic legislation, for the reason that the State was
rife at the time with the agitation of "sand-lotters," as
they were called, a violent faction which assailed property
rights and demanded extreme concessions to labor. The
balance of power in the constitutional convention was held
by persons elected by this element, and resulted in a
constitution extraordinary in some of its features, but
which was adopted by the people after a fierce contest.
Women fared badly at the hands of these constitution-makers,
so far as suffrage is concerned. Section 1, article 2,
confirms the right of voting to "every native male citizen,"
and "every male naturalized citizen," although a heroic
effort was made by the friends of woman suffrage to keep out
the word "male." But section 18, article XX., provides that
"no person shall, on account of sex, be disqualified from
entering upon or pursuing any lawful business, vocation or
profession."
Some years before, the State had adopted a "civil code,"
which was abreast of the world in liberality to women. This
code discarded the idea of any servility in the relation of
the wife to the husband. This code is still the law, and
provides, in effect, that husband and wife contract toward
each other obligations of mutual respect, fidelity and
support. The husband is the head of the family, and may
choose any reasonable place and mode of life, and the wife
must conform thereto. Neither has any interest in the
property of the other, and neither can be excluded from the
other's dwelling. Either may enter into any engagement or
transaction with the other, or with any other person,
respecting property, which either might if unmarried. They
may hold property as tenants in common or otherwise, with
each other, and with others. All property of the wife owned
by her before marriage, and acquired afterwards by gift,
devise, bequest or descent, with the rents, issues and
profit thereof, is her separate property, and she may convey
the same without his consent. All property acquired after
marriage is community property. The earnings of the wife are
not liable for the debts of the husband. Her earnings, and
those of minor children in her custody, are her separate
property. A married woman may dispose of her separate
property by will, without the consent of her husband, as if
she were single. One-half of the community property goes
absolutely to the wife, on the death of the husband, and
cannot be diverted by his testamentary disposition. A
married woman can carry on business in her own name, on
complying with certain formalities, and her stock, capital
and earnings are not liable to her husband's creditors, or
his intermeddling. The husband and father, as such, has no
rights superior to those of the wife and mother, in regard
to the care, custody, education and control of the children
of their marriage, while such husband and wife live separate
and apart from each other.
The foregoing exhibits the spirit of the California law. It
is believed by friends of woman suffrage that had the
convention been held under normal conditions, the word
"male" might have been eliminated from that instrument.
Several creditable attempts were early made in journalism. In
1855 Mrs. S. M. Clark published the weekly _Contra Costa_ in
Oakland. In 1858, _The Hesperian_, a semi-monthly magazine, was
issued in San Francisco, Mrs. Hermione Day and Mrs. A. M. Shultz,
editors. It was quite an able periodical,[505] and finally passed
into the hands of Elizabeth T. Schenck.
As journalists and printers, women have met with encouraging
success. The most prominent among them is Laura DeForce Gordon,
who began the publication of the _Daily Leader_ at Stockton in
1873, continued afterward at Oakland as the _Daily Democrat_,
until 1878. In Geo. P. Rowell's _Newspaper Reporter_ for 1874,
the _Stockton Leader_ is announced as "the only daily newspaper
in the world edited and published by a woman." Mrs. Boyer, known
as "Dora Darmoor," published different magazines and journals in
San Francisco during a period of several years, the most
successful being the _Golden Dawn_. Mrs. Theresa Corlett has been
connected with various leading journals of San Francisco, and is
well known as a brilliant and interesting writer. Miss Madge
Morris has not only made a place for herself in light literature,
but has been acting-clerk in the legislature for several
sessions. Mrs. Sarah M. Clark published a volume entitled
"Teachings of the Ages"; Mrs. Josephine Wolcott, a volume of
poems, called "The World of Song."
Mrs. Amanda Slocum Reed, one of our most efficient advocates of
suffrage, has proved her executive ability, and capacity for
business, by the management of a large printing and publishing
establishment for several years. The liberal magazine called
_Common Sense_, was published by her and her husband--most of its
original contents the product of her pen; and when the
radicalism of her husband caused the suspension of that journal
in 1878, Mrs. Slocum began the publication of _Roll Call_, a
temperance magazine which was mainly edited by her gifted little
daughter Clara, only fifteen years old, who also set all the
type. Among the earliest printers of California was Lyle Lester.
She established a printing office in San Francisco in 1860, in
which she employed a large number of girls and women as
compositors. Miss Delia Murphy--now Mrs. Dearing--ranks with the
best printers in San Francisco, and several women in various
portions of the State have taken like standing. "Mrs. Richmond &
Son," is the novel sign which decorates the front of a large
printing establishment on Montgomery street, San Francisco, known
for many years as the "Woman's Coöperative Printing Company," but
which, in fact, was always an individual enterprise. Mrs. Augusta
DeForce Cluff has entered upon her seventh year in practical
journalism as publisher of a sprightly weekly, the _Valley
Review_, at Lodi, in which enterprise she has met with remarkable
success, being a superior business manager as well as a facile
and talented writer. Some of her little poems have great merit.
Mrs. Cluff and Mrs. Gordon have both filled official positions in
the Pacific Coast Press Association. Miss Mary Bogardus, the
gifted young daughter of that pioneer journalist, H. B. Bogardus,
editor of _Figaro_, is her father's main assistant in all the
business of his office. Mrs. Wittingham has been elected
postmaster of the State Senate several terms, and is at present
employed in the U. S. branch mint in San Francisco.
One of the most meritorious and successful enterprises occupying
the attention of the women of California, is the silk culture,
which promises to develop into one of the dominant industries of
the nation. Mrs. G. H. Hittel first brought the subject into
public notice by able articles on the cultivation of the mulberry
tree, published in various journals. In 1880 she formed the
Ladies' Silk Culture Society of California. This association like
its predecessor, the first Woman Suffrage Society, was organized
and held its meetings in private parlors for a time, but it soon
required more room. Men have been taken into membership since the
object for which the society was formed seemed to be feasible,
and, as a natural result, whatever of financial and honorary
reward may be accorded the self-sacrificing women who performed
the arduous and thankless labor of founding the institution, will
be shared with the men who now come into the work.
During the session of the legislature of 1883, a committee was
appointed to ask an appropriation from the State for the purpose
of establishing a Filature or free silk-reeling school. After
considerable delay the committee called to their aid Mrs. Gordon,
and asked her to visit the State capital and see what could be
done. The session was rapidly drawing to a close, and even the
warmest friends of the measure feared that it was too late to
accomplish anything. But happily the bill was got through both
branches of the legislature and sent to the governor the last
hour of the session. By its provisions a State Board of Silk
Culture was created consisting of nine members, five of whom were
to be women, and the sum of $7,500 was appropriated. Thus women
have begun and are now fostering a great industrial enterprise
which in the near future will give to millions of hitherto
unemployed or ill-paid women and children an occupation
peculiarly suited to them, and which will add millions of dollars
annually to the revenue of the country. Mrs. Florence Kimball of
San Diego county was appointed a member of the State Board of
Silk Commissioners by Governor Stoneman in 1883.
Since the expiration of their term as superintendents of the
public schools of the State, Dr. and Mrs. James Carr have made
their home in that loveliest spot of southern
California--Passadena, where, overlooking rich orange groves and
luxurious vineyards, they enjoy the blessings of prosperity, and
where Mrs. Carr, with her ambitious, active nature, finds
congenial employment in demonstrating what woman can accomplish
in silk-culture, raisin-making, and the crystalizing of fruit.
Miss Austen, formerly a teacher in the public schools of San
Francisco, has a vineyard at Fresno, where she employs women and
girls to prepare all her considerable crop of raisins for market,
conceded to be of the best quality produced in the State. Mrs.
Ellen McConnell Wilson of Sacramento county, from the small
beginning, twenty years ago, of 320 acres of land, and less than
1,000 sheep, has now over 5,000 acres of rich farming land and
6,000 sheep. Mrs. H. P. Gregory of Sacramento, left a widow with
a large family of little children, succeeded her husband in the
shipping and commission business in which he was engaged on a
small scale. From such a beginning, Mrs. Gregory has built up one
of the largest trades in that city, and has by judicious
investments in real estate acquired property of a value exceeding
$100,000, besides having reared and educated her numerous family.
Mrs. Elizabeth Hill was one of the early settlers in Calaveras
county, where her husband located land on the Mokelumne river
near Camanche in 1855. Six years after she was left a widow with
four little children. The support of the family devolved upon the
mother, and she engaged in cultivating the land, adding thereto
several hundred acres. In 1877 Mrs. Hill began the cultivation of
the Persian-insect-powder plant, known to commerce as Buhach. So
successful has this venture proved that she has now over 200
acres planted to that shrub, and manufactures each year about
fifteen tons of the Buhach powder, for which she finds a ready
sale. The number of women who have supported their families
(often including the husband), and acquired a competency in
boarding and lodging-house keeping, dressmaking, millinery,
type-setting, painting, fancy work, stock-dealing, and even in
manufacturing and mercantile pursuits, is legion.
In regard to the position of women in medicine, Miss Elizabeth
Sargent, M. D., writes:
Women are admitted on equal terms with men to the medical
and dental departments of the State University, and to the
Cooper Medical College of San Francisco. Women are also
eligible to membership in the State and various county
medical associations, as well as in the dental association.
There are in the State 73 women who have been recognized by
the authorities as qualified to practice. They may be
classified as follows: Practitioners of regular medicine,
30, 16 of whom are established in San Francisco; eclectics,
22, 9 in San Francisco; homoeopathists, 21, 2 in San
Francisco. Among these physicians two make a specialty of
the eye and ear, one in San Francisco and one in San José.
Two women have been graduated from the State Dental College,
located in San Francisco. In April, 1875, the Pacific
Dispensary Hospital for women and children was founded by
women. In 1881 a training-school for nurses was added. The
hospital department, although admitting women, is intended
especially for children, and is the only children's hospital
on the coast. The dispensary is for out-patients, both women
and children. The board of ten directors, the resident and
attending physicians of the hospital, and five out of the
seven connected with the dispensary are women. From a small
beginning the institution has increased to importance, and
bids fair to continue in its present prosperity and capacity
for good work. I have written thus lengthily that you may
see how energetic our women have been in originating and
carrying on such an institution.
The most prominent literary woman of the coast is undoubtedly
Miss M. W. Shinn. She is a graduate of our State University and
was the medal scholar of her class. At present she is the editor
of the _Overland Monthly_, and the excellent prospects of the
magazine are largely the result of her own courage and the hard
work she has done.
The higher education in the State is being put upon a secure
basis. Hon. Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford,
have recently given a great part of their vast fortune for the
establishment of a university which bids fair to be the foremost
educational institution on the continent. In a letter specifying
his views in regard to the management of the university, Governor
Stanford says:
We deem it of the first importance that the education of
both sexes shall be equally full and complete, varied only
as nature dictates. The rights of one sex, political and
other, are the same as those of the other sex, and this
equality of rights ought to be fully recognized.
There are many men and women throughout the State who have
faithfully advocated political equality for all citizens.[506]
Mendocino county has the honor of claiming as a citizen, one of
the earliest and ablest women in this reform, Clarina Howard
Nichols, who may be said to have sown the seeds of liberty in
three States in which she has resided, Vermont, Kansas and
California. Since 1870, her home has been with a son in Pomo,
where she finished her heroic life January 11, 1885. Though
always in rather straitened circumstances, Mrs. Nichols was
uniformly calm and cheerful, living in an atmosphere above the
petty annoyances of every-day life with the great souls of our
day and generation, keeping time in the march of progress. She
was too much absorbed in the vital questions of the hour even to
take note of her personal discomforts. Many of her able articles
published in magazines and the journals of the day, and letters
from year to year to our conventions, were written in such
conditions of weakness and suffering, as only a hero could have
overcome. She was a good writer, an effective speaker, and a
preëminently brave woman, gifted with that rarest of all virtues,
common sense.
The advocacy of woman's rights began in Santa Cruz county, with
the advent of that grand champion of her sex, the immortal Eliza
Farnham, who braved public scorn and contumely because of her
advanced views, for many years before the suffrage movement
assumed organized form. Mrs. Farnham's work rendered it possible
for those advocating woman suffrage years later, to do so with
comparative immunity from public ridicule. A society was
organized there in 1869, and Rev. D. G. Ingraham, E. B. Heacock,
H. M. Blackburn, Mrs. Georgiana Bruce Kirby, Mrs. Van
Valkenburgh, W. W. Broughton and wife, and Mrs. Jewell were
active members.
Prominent in Santa Clara county is Mrs. Sarah Wallis of Mayfield.
From the first agitation of the subject in 1868, when she entered
heartily into the work of getting subscribers to _The
Revolution_, she has been untiring in her efforts to advance the
interests of women. A lady of fine presence, great energy and
perseverance, Mrs. Wallis has been able to accomplish great good
for her sex. With a large separate estate, when the statutes
prevented her as a married woman from managing it, she determined
that the laws should be changed, and never ceased her efforts
until she succeeded in getting an amendment to the civil code
which enables married women to make contracts. The most
successful suffrage meetings ever held in Santa Clara county have
been at Mayfield. There Mrs. Wallis and her husband, Judge Joseph
S. Wallace, make their spacious and luxurious home the rendezvous
of lecturers and writers in the great work of woman's
emancipation.
Mrs. Sarah Knox Goodrich of San José, was among the first to see
the significance of the movement for woman's rights in 1868. Her
husband, William J. Knox, who shortly before his death had been
State senator, secured the passage of a bill, drafted by himself,
giving to married women the right to dispose of their own
separate property by will. Having been from her youth the
cherished companion of a man who believed in the equality of the
sexes, and being herself a thoughtful, clear-headed person, she
naturally took her place with those whose aim was the social and
political emancipation of woman, and has stood from the first a
tower of strength in this cause, giving largely of her wealth for
the propagation of its doctrines. Mrs. Knox Goodrich has for many
years paid her taxes, sometimes exorbitant, under protest, and at
important elections has also offered her vote, to have it
refused. The county suffrage society has had an untiring leader
in Mrs. Goodrich, and on all occasions she has nerved the weak
and encouraged the timid by her example of unflinching devotion.
The following extracts from a letter written by the lady will
show how effective her work has been:
In 1872, our society was invited to take part in the Fourth
of July celebration, which we did, and had the handsomest
carriages and more of them than any other society in the
procession. We paid our own expenses, although the city had
made an appropriation for the celebration. In 1876 we were
not invited to take part in the festivities, but some of us
felt that on such a day, our centennial anniversary, we
should not be ignored. Accordingly I started out to see what
could be done, but finding some of our most active friends
ill and others absent from home, I decided to do what I
could alone. I had mottoes from the grand declarations of
the Fathers painted and put on my house, which the
procession would pass on two sides.
Some of our most prominent ladies seeing that I was
determined to make a manifestation, drove with me in the
procession, our carriage and horses decorated with flags,
the ladies wearing sashes of red, white and blue, and
bearing banners with mottoes and evergreens. A little
daughter of Mrs. Clara Foltz, the lawyer, dressed in red,
white and blue, was seated in the center of the carriage,
carrying a white banner with silver fringe, a small flag at
the top with a silver star above that, with streamers of
red, white and blue floating from it, and in the center, in
letters large enough to be seen some distance, the one word
"Hope." On my flag the motto was: "We are Taxed without
being Represented"; Mrs. Maria H. Weldon's, "We are the
disfranchised Class"; Mrs. Marion Hooker's, "The Class
entitled to respectful Consideration"; and Miss Hannah
Millard's, "We are governed without our Consent." On the
front of my house in large letters was the motto: "Taxation
without Representation is Tyranny as much in 1876, as it was
in 1776"; on the other side was, "We are Denied the Ballot,
but Compelled to Pay Taxes"; fronting the other side was,
"Governments Derive their Just Powers from the Consent of
the Governed." Mrs. McKee also had the last motto on her
house. On the evening of July 3, after we had all our
preparations completed, we sent to one of the marshals and
asked him to give us a place in the procession _next to the
negroes_, as we wished to let our legal protectors have a
practical illustration of the position occupied by their
mothers, wives, sisters and daughters in this boasted
republic. We _did_ want to go in, however, _ahead of the
Chinamen_, as we considered our position at present to be
between the two. The marshal willingly assigned us a place,
but not the one we desired. "We cannot allow you," said he,
"to occupy such a position. You must go in front, next to
the Pioneer Association"; and being in part members of that
society we accepted the decision. Our carriage was the
center of attraction. Many, after reading our mottoes, said:
"Well, ladies, we will help you to get your rights"; "It is
a shame for you to be taxed and not have the right to vote."
Hundreds of people stood and read the mottoes on the house,
making their comments, both grave and gay: "Good for Mrs.
Knox"; "She is right"; "If I were in her place I would never
pay a tax"; "I guess one of the strong-minded lives here."
Mrs. Knox was married to Mr. Goodrich, the well-known architect,
in 1878, in whom she has found a grand, noble-souled companion,
fully in sympathy with all her progressive views, and with whom
she is passing the advancing years of her well-spent life in
luxury and unalloyed happiness.
Mrs. Van Valkenburg tried to vote under the claim that the
fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States
entitled her to registration, and being refused, brought suit
against the registrars. The case was decided against her after
being carried to the Supreme Court of California. These cases
argued in the Supreme Court have been of inestimable value in the
progress of the movement, lifting the question of woman's rights
as a citizen above the mists of ridicule and prejudice, into the
region of reason and constitutional law. We cannot too highly
appreciate the bravery and persistence of the few women who have
furnished these test cases and compelled the highest courts to
record their decisions.
FOOTNOTES:
[496] Having spent several days with Mrs. Schenck, in her cozy,
artistic home surrounded with a hedge of brilliant geraniums, I can
readily testify to the many virtues and attractions her large
circle of friends has always accorded her. From all I had heard I
was prepared to find Mrs. Schenck a woman of remarkable cultivation
and research, and I was not disappointed. Refined, honorable in her
feeling, clear in her judgments of men and measures, just and
upright In all her words and actions, she was indeed the fitting
leader for the uprising of women on the Pacific Slope. The
preparation of this chapter occupied the last year of her life, her
one wish to live was to complete the task, but when her failing
powers made that impossible she charged her friend Mrs. Manning,
with whom she resided, to take up the work that had fallen from her
hands and make a fair record of all that had been done and said, by
her noble coädjutors, who had labored so faithfully to inaugurate
the greatest reform of the century.--[E. C. S.
[497] Among them are Laura Fowler, Kate Kennedy, Mary N. Wadleigh,
Trinity County; Anna L. Spencer, Alpine; Mrs. D. M. Coleman,
Shasta; Miss A. L. Irish, Mono; Los Angeles City Board of Education
has three women out of its five members, to-wit., Mrs. C. B. Jones
(chairman), Mrs. M. A. Hodgkins (secretary), Mrs. M. Graham.
Oakland Board, Miss A. Aldrich; Sacramento, Charlotte Slater; San
Jose, Mrs. B. L. Hollenbeck. Sister Mary Frances of the order of
"Sisters of Charity" came to California in 1849, and devoted her
great energies, and rare accomplishments, to the cause of education
up to the time of her demise in April, 1881. Annie Haven, Miss
Prince, Miss Austin, and a host of others have been successful in
the same field of labor, including Miss Merweidel, founder of the
kindergarten system in San Francisco.
[498] Among them were Mrs. Sarah Wallis of Mayfield, Mrs. E. T.
Schenck, Mrs. L. M. Clarke, Emily Pitts (afterwards Mrs. Stevens of
San Francisco).
[499] _President_, Elizabeth T. Schenck; _Vice-President_,
Emily Pitts Stevens; _Recording Secretary_, Mrs. Hutchinson;
_Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs. Celia Curtis; _Treasurer_, Mrs. S.
J. Corbett.
[500] The following persons were present: Mrs. E. T. Schenck,
president of Woman Suffrage Associasion of San Francisco; Mrs. E.
Pitts Stevens, Mrs. Celia Curtis, Mrs. Walton, Mrs. Watson, Mrs. S.
J. Corbett, M. D.; Mary Collins, Mrs. E. P. Meade, M. D.; Mrs.
Alpheus Bull, Mrs. James S. Bush, Mrs. S. M. Clarke, Mrs. Judge
Shafter, Mrs. Judge Burke, Mrs. Thomas Varney, Mrs. R. B. Swain,
Mrs. Carlton Curtis, Mrs. T. Richardson, Mrs. I. W. Hobson, Mrs.
Smythe, Mrs. J. W. Stow, Mrs. C. G. Ames, Mrs. Barry and 30 others.
[501] Rev. C. G. Ames, San Francisco; Mrs. S. S. Allyn, Oakland;
Mrs. Sarah Wallis, Mayfield; Mrs. Bowman, Sacramento; Mrs.
Georgiana Bruce Kirby, Santa Cruz; Mrs. Fannie Kingsbury, San
Diego; Mrs. Elmira Eddy, Nevada; Mrs. A. A. Haskell, Petaluma;
Minnie H. McKee, Santa Clara.
[502] See Appendix to California chapter.
[503] At the close of the convention a State society was organized,
with the following officers: _President_, Mrs. A. A. Haskell of
Petaluma; _Vice-Presidents_, Mrs. J. W. McComb of San Francisco,
Mrs. Denio of Solano, Mrs. Kingsbury of San Diego, Mrs. E. J. Hall
of Los Angeles, Mrs. Eddy of Nevada, Mrs. Lewis of Sacramento, Mrs.
Kirby of Santa Cruz, Mrs. Agnes Eager of Alameda, Mrs. Watkins of
Santa Clara, Mrs. L. D. Latimer of Sonoma; _Secretary_, Mrs. Minnie
McKee of Santa Clara. _Board of Control_, Mrs. C. H. Spear, Mrs. C.
G. Ames, Mrs. Minnie Edwards, Mrs. Celia Curtis, Miss Laura Fowler,
Mr. John A. Collins, Miss Kate Atkinson, Mrs. Pitts Stevens.
[504] Mrs. Kingsbury of San Diego, Mrs. H. F. M. Brown, Addie L.
Ballou, Paulina Roberts, Mrs. C. H. Spear, Laura Cuppy Smith, Mrs.
F. A. Logan, M. D., Mrs. C. M. Churchill, John A. Collins, and a
large number of local speakers, who aided in organizing societies,
or in keeping up the interest in those already formed.
[505] Chief among its contributors were Eliza W. Farnham, Sarah M.
Clark, Amanda Simonton Page, Mrs. M. D. Strong, Fanny Green, Annie
K. Fader, Eliza A. Pittsinger, Mrs. James Neal, Mrs. Elizabeth
Williams.
[506] Among the many who have been active and faithful in the
movement for the political rights of women, whose names should be
mentioned, are: Mrs. Eliza Taylor, Mrs. O. Fuller, Elizabeth
McComb, Dr. Laura P. Williams, Mrs. Dr. White, Sallie Hart, Dr. R.
H. McDonald, Hon. Frank Pixley, and many others in _San Francisco_;
Fanny Green McDougal, _Oakland_; Mrs. Phebe Benedict, _Antioch_;
Mrs. Isabella Irwin, _San Rafael_; Mrs. Cynthia Palmer, Mrs. Emily
Rolfe, _Nevada City_; Mrs. Elizabeth Condy, _Stockton_; Miss E. S.
Sleeper, _Mountain View_; Mrs. Laura J. Watkins, Mrs. Damon, _Santa
Clara_; Mrs. Dr. Kilpatrick, _San Mateo_; Mrs. S. G. Waterhouse,
Drs. Kellogg and Bearby, Mrs. M. J. Young, Mrs. E. B. Crocker, and
others, _Sacramento_; Mrs. Mary Jewett, Mr. and Mrs. Howell,
_Healdsburgh_; Mrs. Lattimer, _Windsor_; Mr. and Mrs. Denio, Mrs.
E. L. Hale, _Vallejo_; Mrs. J. Lewellyn, Mrs. Potter, _St. Helena_;
Mr. and Mrs. J. Egglesson, _Napa_; Henry and Abigail Bush,
_Martinez_; Rowena Granice Steele, _Merced_; Mrs. Jennie Phelps
Purvis, Mrs. Lapham and daughter, _Modesto_.
CHAPTER LIV.
THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST.
The Long Marches Westward--Abigail Scott Duniway--Mary Olney
Brown--The First Steps in Oregon--Col. C. A. Reed--Judge G. W.
Lawson--1870--The New Northwest, 1871--Campaign, Mrs. Duniway and
Miss Anthony--They Address the Legislature in Washington
Territory--Hon. Elwood Evans--Suffrage Society Organized at
Olympia and at Portland--Before the Oregon Legislature--Donation
Land Act--Hon. Samuel Corwin's Suffrage Bill--Married Woman's
_Sole_ Traders' Bill--Temperance Alliance--Women Rejected--Major
Williams Fights their Battles and Triumphs--Mrs. H. A.
Loughary--Progressive Legislation, 1874--Mob-Law in Jacksonville,
1879--Dr. Mary A. Thompson--Constitutional Convention,
1878--Woman Suffrage Bill, 1880--Hon. W. C. Fulton--Women
Enfranchised in Washington Territory, Nov. 15, 1883--Great
Rejoicing, Bonfires, Ratification Meetings--Constitutional
Amendment Submitted in Oregon and Lost, June, 1884--Suffrage by
Legislative Enactment Lost--Fourth of July Celebrated at
Vancouvers--Benjamin and Mary Olney Brown--Washington
Territory--Legislation in 1867-68 Favorable to Women--Mrs. Brown
Attempts to Vote and is Refused--Charlotte Olney French--Women
Vote at Grand Mound and Black River Precincts,
1870--Retrogressive Legislation, 1871--Abby H. Stuart in
Land-Office--Hon. William H. White--Idaho and Montana.
In the spring of 1852, when the great _furor_ for going West was at
its height, in the long trails of miners, merchants and farmers
wending their way in ox-carts and canvas-covered wagons over the
vast plains, mountains and rivers, two remarkable women, then in
the flush of youth, might have been seen; one, Abigail Scott
Duniway, destined to leave an indelible mark on the civilization of
Oregon, and the other, Mary Olney Brown, on that of Washington
territory. What ideas were revolving in these young minds in that
long journey of 3,000 miles, six months in duration, it would be
difficult to imagine, but the love of liberty had been infused in
their dreams somewhere, either in their eastern homes from the
tragic scenes of the anti-slavery conflict, or on that perilous
march amidst those eternal solitudes by day and the solemn
stillness of the far-off stars in the gathering darkness. That this
long communion with great nature left its impress on their young
hearts and sanctified their lives to the best interests of humanity
at large, is clearly seen in the deeply interesting accounts they
give of their endeavors to mould the governments of their
respective territories on republican principles. Writing of herself
and her labors, Mrs. Duniway says:
I was born in Pleasant Grove, Tazewell county, Illinois, October
22, 1834, of the traditional "poor but respectable parentage"
which has honored the advent of many a more illustrious worker
than myself. Brought up on a farm and familiar from my earliest
years with the avocations of rural life, spending the early
spring-times in the maple-sugar camp, the later weeks in
gardening and gathering stove-wood, the summers in picking and
spinning wool, and the autumns in drying apples, I found little
opportunity, and that only in winter, for books or play. My
father was a generous-hearted, impulsive, talented, but
uneducated man; my mother was a conscientious, self-sacrificing,
intelligent, but uneducated woman. Both were devotedly religious,
and both believed implicitly that self-abnegation was the crowing
glory of womanhood. Before I was seventeen I was employed as a
district school teacher, received a first-class certificate and
taught with success, though how I became possessed of the
necessary qualifications I to this day know not. I never did,
could, or would study when at school.
In the spring of 1852 my father decided to emigrate to Oregon. My
invalid mother expostulated in vain; she and nine of us children
were stowed away in ox-wagons, where for six months we made our
home, cooking food and washing dishes around camp-fires, sleeping
at night in the wagons, and crossing many streams upon
wagon-beds, rigged as ferryboats. When our weary line of march
had reached the Black Hills of Wyoming my mother became a victim
to the dreadful epidemic, cholera, that devastated the emigrant
trains in that never-to-be-forgotten year, and after a few hours'
illness her weary spirit was called to the skies. We made her a
grave in the solitudes of the eternal hills, and again took up
our line of march, "too sad to talk, too dumb to pray." But ten
weeks after, our Willie, the baby, was buried in the sands of the
Burnt River mountains. Reaching Oregon in the fall with our
broken household, consisting of my father and eight motherless
children, I engaged in school-teaching till the following August,
when I allowed the name of "Scott" to become "Duniway." Then for
twenty years I devoted myself, soul and body, to the cares,
toils, loves and hopes of a conscientious wife and mother. Five
sons and one daughter have been born to us, all of whom are
living and at home, engaged with their parents in harmonious
efforts for the enfranchisement of women.
The first woman suffrage society ever formed in Oregon, was
organized in Salem, the capital of the State, in the autumn of
1870, and consisted of about a dozen members. Col. C. A. Reed was
chosen president and G. W. Lawson, secretary. This little society
which maintained a quiescent existence for a year or more and
then disbanded without ceremony, was, in part, the basis of all
subsequent work of its character in Oregon. In the winter of 1871
this society honored me with credentials to a seat in the woman
suffrage convention which was to meet in San Francisco the
following May. My business called me to the Golden City before
the time for the convention, and a telegraphic summons compelled
me to return to Oregon without meeting with the California
Association in an official way, as I had hoped. But my
credentials introduced me to the San Francisco leaders, among
whom Emily Pitts Stevens occupied a prominent position as editor
and publisher of the _The Pioneer_, the first woman suffrage
paper that appeared on the Pacific coast. Before returning to
Oregon I resolved to purchase an outfit and begin the publication
of a newspaper myself, as I felt that the time had come for
vigorous work in my own State, and we had no journal in which the
demands of women for added rights were treated with respectful
consideration.
[Illustration: "Yours for Liberty, Abigail Scott Duniway"]
Soon after reaching my home in Albany I sold my millinery store
and removed to Portland, where, on May 5, 1871, the _New
Northwest_ made its appearance, and a siege of the citadels of a
one-sexed government began, which at this writing is going on
with unabated persistency. The first issue of this journal was
greeted by storms of ridicule. Everybody prophesied its early
death, and my personal friends regarded the enterprise with
sincere pity, believing it would speedily end in financial
disaster. But the paper, in spite of opposition and burlesque,
has grown and prospered.
In August, 1871, Susan B. Anthony favored Oregon and Washington
territory with a visit. The fame of this veteran leader had
preceded her, and she commanded a wide hearing. We traveled
together over the country, visiting inland villages as well as
larger towns, holding woman suffrage meetings and getting many
subscribers for the _New Northwest_. During these journeyings I
became quite thoroughly initiated into the movement and made my
first efforts at public speaking. After a six weeks' campaign in
Oregon, we went to Olympia, the capital of Washington territory,
where the legislature was in session, and where, through a motion
of Hon. Elwood Evans, we were invited to address the Assembly in
advocacy of equal rights for all the people. From Olympia we
proceeded to Victoria, a border city belonging to a woman's
government, where we found that the idea of the ballot for woman
was even more unpopular than in the United States, though all, by
strange inconsistency, were intensely loyal to their queen. After
an interesting and profitable experience in the British
possessions we returned to Puget Sound, stopping over on our
route at the different milling towns that teem with busy life
upon the evergreen shores of this Mediterranean of the Pacific.
At Seättle we organized an association[507] in which many of the
leading ladies and gentlemen took a prominent part; after which
we returned to Olympia, where a territorial organization was
effected.[508]
Returning to Portland, we called a convention, and organized the
Oregon State Woman Suffrage Association, with Harriet W.
Williams, a venerated octogenarian, president. This estimable
woman had been one of the earliest leaders of the woman suffrage
movement in the State of New York, and her presence at the head
of our meetings in Oregon was a source of genuine satisfaction to
the friends of the cause in the new State of her adoption.
Subsequently, Mrs. Williams was compelled to resign on account of
increasing infirmities, but her wise counsels are still cherished
by her successors, whom she regards with motherly solicitude as
she serenely awaits the final summons of the unseen messenger.
Many of those who early distinguished themselves in this
connection deserve special mention because of their
long-continued zeal in the work.[509] If others failed us, these
were always ready to work the hardest when the fight was hottest.
And whatever might be our differences of opinion personally, we
have always presented an unbroken phalanx to the foe. The
original society at Salem having disbanded, its members joined
the new State Association organized at Portland, which has ever
since been regarded as the nucleus of all our activities.
In September of 1872, I visited the Oregon legislature, where I
went clothed by our association with discretionary power to do
what I could to secure special legislation for the women of the
State, who, with few exceptions, were at that time entirely under
the dominion of the old common law. The exceptions were those
fortunate women who, having come to Oregon as early as 1850 and
'52, had, by virtue of a United States law, known as the Oregon
Donation Land Act, become possessed of "claims," as they were
called, on equal shares with their husbands, their half, or
halves, of the original ground being set apart as their separate
property in realty and _fee simple_. This Donation Land Act
deserves especial mention, it being the first law enacted in the
United States which recognized the individual personality of a
married woman. It became a temporary law of congress in 1850,
mainly through the efforts of Hon. Samuel R. Thurston, delegate
from Oregon territory (which at that time included the whole of
Washington territory), aided by the eminent Dr. Linn of Missouri,
from whom one of the principal counties of the State of Oregon
derives its name.
My first experience in the capitol was particularly trying. I
spent two days among my acquaintances in Salem in a vain attempt
to find a woman who was ready or willing to accompany me to the
state-house. All were anxious that I should go, but each was
afraid to offend her husband, or make herself conspicuous, by
going herself. Finally, when I had despaired of securing company,
and had nerved myself to go alone, Mary P. Sawtelle, who
afterwards became a physician, and now resides in San Francisco
where she has a lucrative practice, volunteered to stand by me,
and together we entered the dominion hitherto considered sacred
to the aristocracy of sex, and took seats in the lobby, our
hearts beating audibly. Hon. Joseph Engle, perceiving the
innovation and knowing me personally, at once arose, and, after a
complimentary speech in which he was pleased to recognize my
position as a journalist, moved that I be invited to a seat
within the bar and provided with table and stationery as were
other members of the profession. The motion carried, with only
two or three dissenting votes; and the way was open from that
time forward for women to compete with men on equal terms for all
minor positions in both branches of the legislature--a privilege
they have not been slow to avail themselves of, scores of them
thronging the capitol in these later years, and holding valuable
clerkships, many of them sneering the while at the efforts of
those who opened the way for them to be there at all.
Hon. Samuel Corwin introduced a woman suffrage bill in the House
of Representatives early in the session; and while it was
pending, I was invited to make an appeal in its behalf, of which
I remember very little, so frightened and astonished was I,
except that once I inadvertently alluded to a gentleman by his
name instead of his county, whereupon, being called to order, I
blushed and begged pardon, but put myself at ease by informing
the gentlemen that in all the bygone years while they had been
studying parliamentary rules, I had been rocking the cradle.
One member who had made a vehement speech against the bill, in
which he had declared that no respectable woman in his county
desired the elective franchise, became particularly incensed, as
was natural, upon my exhibiting a woman suffrage petition signed
by the women he had misrepresented, and headed, _mirabile dictu_,
by the name of his own wife! The so-called representative of
women lost his temper, and gave vent to some inelegant
expletives, for which he was promptly reprimanded by the chair.
This offender has since been many times a candidate for office,
but the ladies of his district have always secured his defeat.
The woman suffrage bill received an unexpectedly large vote at
this session, and was favored in 1874 by a still larger one, when
it was ably championed by Hon. C. A. Reed, the before named
ex-president of the first woman suffrage society in the State.
In 1872 the Senate, the House concurring, passed a Married
Woman's Sole Trader bill, under the able leadership of Hon. J. N.
Dolph, who has since distinguished himself as our champion in the
Senate of the United States. This bill has ever since enabled any
woman engaged in business on her own account to register the fact
in the office of the county clerk, and thereby secure her tools,
furniture, or stock in trade against the liability of seizure by
her husband's creditors.
Perhaps I cannot better illustrate the general feeling of
opposition to women having a place in public affairs at that
time, than by describing the scenes in the State Temperance
Alliance in February of that year, when somebody placed my name
in nomination as chairman of an important committee. The
presiding officer was seized with a sudden deafness when the
nomination was made, and the Alliance was convulsed with
merriment. Ladies on all sides buzzed about me, and urged me to
resent the insult in the name of womanhood. And, as none of them
were at that time public speakers, I felt obliged to rise and
speak for myself.
"Mr. President," I exclaimed, "by what right do you refuse to
recognize women when their names are called? Are men the only
lawful members of this Alliance? And if so, is it not better for
the women delegates to go home?"
"Mr. President: The committees are now full!" shouted an excited
voter. Somebody, doubtless in ridicule, then nominated me as
vice-president-at-large, which was carried amid uproarious
merriment. I took my seat, half frightened and wholly indignant;
and the deliberations of the sovereign voters were undisturbed
for several hours thereafter by word or sign from women. At last
they got to discussing a bill for a prohibitory liquor law, and
the heat of debate ran high. During the excitement somebody
carried a note to the presiding officer, who read it, smiled,
colored, and rising, said: "We are hearing nothing from the
ladies, and yet they constitute a large majority of this
Alliance. Mrs. Duniway, will you not favor us with a speech?"
I was taken wholly by surprise, but sprang to my feet and said:
"Mr. President: I have always wondered what it was that consumed
so much time in men's conventions. I hope gentlemen will pardon
the criticism, but you talk too much, and too many of you try to
talk at once. My head is aching from the roar and din of your
noisy orators. Gentlemen, what does it all amount to? You are
talking about prohibition, but you overestimate your political
strength. Disastrous failures attend upon all your endeavors to
conquer existing evils by the votes of men alone. Give women the
legal power to combat intemperance, and they will soon be able to
prove that they do not like drunken husbands any better than men
like drunken wives. Make women _free_. Give them the power the
ballot gives to you, and the control of their own earnings which
rightfully belong to them, and every woman will be able to settle
this prohibition business in her own home and on her own account.
Men will not tolerate drunkenness in their wives; and women will
not tolerate it in husbands unless compelled to."
A prominent clergyman arose, and said: "Mr. President: I charge
the sins of the world upon the mothers of men. There are twenty
thousand fallen women in New York--two millions of them in
America. We cannot afford to let this element vote." Before I was
aware of what I was doing I was on my feet again. Shaking my
finger at the clergymen, I exclaimed: "How _dare_ you make such
charges against the mothers of men? You tell us of two millions
of fallen women who, you say, would vote for drunkenness; but
what say you, sir, to the twenty millions of fallen men--all
voters--whose patronage alone enables fallen women to live? Would
you disfranchise them, sir? I pronounce your charge a libel upon
womanhood, and I know that if we were voters you would not _dare_
to utter it."
A gentleman from Michigan--Mr. Curtis--called me to order, saying
my remarks were personal. "You, sir, sat still and didn't call
this man to order while he stood up and insulted all womanhood!"
I exclaimed, vehemently. "Prohibition is the question before the
house," said the gentleman, "and the lady should confine herself
to the resolution." "That is what I am doing, sir. I am talking
about prohibition, and the only way possible to make it succeed."
The chair sustained me amid cries of "good!" "good!" but I had
become too thoroughly self-conscious by this time to be able to
say anything further, and, with a bow to the chairman whom I had
before forgotten to address, I tremblingly took my seat.
A resolution was passed, after a long and stormy debate,
declaring it the duty of the legislature to empower women to vote
on all questions connected with the liquor traffic; and I, as its
author, was chosen a committee to present the same for
consideration at the coming legislative session. Woman suffrage
gained a new impetus all over the Northwest through this victory.
Everybody congratulated its advocates, and the good minister who
had unwittingly caused the commotion seized the first opportunity
to explain that he had always been an advocate of the cause. I
was by this time so thoroughly advertised by the abuse of the
press that I had no difficulty in securing large audiences in all
parts of the Pacific Northwest.
I was chosen in April, 1872, as delegate to the annual meeting of
the National Association, held in New York the following month.
Horace Greeley received the nomination for the presidency at the
Cincinnati Liberal Republican Convention while I was on the way;
and when I reached New York I at first threw what influence I had
in the Association in favor of the great editor. But Miss
Anthony, who knew Mr. Greeley better than I did, caused me to be
appointed chairman of a committee to interview the reputed
statesman and officially report the result at the evening
session. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Jane Graham Jones of Chicago were
the other members of this committee. We obtained the desired
interview, of which it only needs to be said that it became my
humiliating duty to ask pardon in the evening for the speech in
advocacy of the illustrious candidate which in my ignorance I had
made in the morning. That Mr. Greeley owed his defeat in part to
the opposition of women in that memorable campaign, I have never
doubted. But he builded better than he knew in earlier years, for
he planted many a tree of liberty that shall live through the
ages to come, overshadowing in a measure his failure to recognize
the divine right of political equality for woman in his later
days.
The first annual convention of the Oregon State Association met
in Portland, February 9, 1873. Many ladies and several
gentlemen[510] of more or less local prominence assisted at this
convention, but we were able to prevail upon but one gentleman,
Col. C. A. Reed of Salem, to occupy the platform with us. This
convention received favorable notice from the respectable press
of the State, and was largely attended by the best elements of
the city and country. Delegates were chosen to attend the
forthcoming State Temperance Alliance which held its second
annual meeting February 20, and to which a dozen of us went
bearing credentials. It was evident from the first that trouble
was brewing. The enemy had had a whole year to prepare an
ambuscade of which our party had no suspicion. A Committee on
Credentials was appointed with instructions to rule the woman
suffrage delegation out of the Alliance as a "disturbing
element." Hon J. Quinn Thornton was chairman of that committee.
In his report he declared all delegations to be satisfactory
(including those from the penitentiary) except the women whom he
styled "setting hens," "belligerent females," etc., after which
he subsided with pompous gravity. All eyes were turned upon me,
and I felt as I fancy a general must when the success or failure
of an army in battle depends upon his word. "Mr. President," I
exclaimed, as soon as I could get the floor, "I move to so amend
the report of the committee as to admit the suffrage delegation."
The motion was seconded by a half-dozen voices. Then followed a
scene which beggars description. It was pandemonium broken loose.
When I arose again to address the chair that worthy ordered my
arrest by the sergeant-at-arms, saying: "Take that crazy woman
out of the house and take care of her." The officer came forward
in discharge of his duty, but he quailed before my uplifted
pencil, and several gentlemen stepped into the aisle and began
drawing off their coats to defend me, among them a veteran
minister of the gospel. I smiled and bowed my thanks, and as
nobody could hear a word amid the uproar I complacently took my
seat while the officer skulked away, crestfallen. All that day
and evening, and until one o'clock the next afternoon, a noisy
rabble of self-styled temperance men sought to prevent bringing
the question to a square and honorable vote. Major George
Williams, a brave man who had lost a limb in fighting for his
country, at last succeeded in wearying the chairman into a
semblance of duty. The result was a triumph for the advocates of
suffrage. A recess was then taken, during which my hand was so
often and enthusiastically shaken that my shoulder was severely
lamed. The first thing in order after resuming business was my
report as Legislative Committee. I advanced to the platform amid
deafening cheers and, as soon as I could make myself heard, said,
in substance, that the legislature had decided that it was an
insult to womanhood to grant women the right to vote on
intemperance and debar them from voting on all honorable
questions. I then offered a fair and unequivocal woman suffrage
resolution, which was triumphantly carried. The disappointed
minority seceded from the Alliance and set up a "Union" for
themselves; but their confederacy did not live long, and its few
followers finally returned to their _alma mater_ and gave us no
further trouble.
Woman suffrage associations were formed in several counties
during the year 1874. Our strength was now much increased by the
able assistance of Mrs. H. A. Loughary, who suddenly took her
place in the front rank as a platform speaker. The editorial work
of the _New Northwest_ received a valuable auxiliary in June of
this year in the person of Catharine A. Coburn, a lady of rare
journalistic ability, who held her position five years, when my
sons, W. S., H. R. and W. C. Duniway, having completed their
school duties and attained their majority, were admitted to
partnership in the business. Mrs. Coburn now holds a situation on
the editorial staff of the _Daily Oregonian_.
In the autumn of 1876 I was absent at the Centennial Exposition,
whither I had gone in the summer in response to an invitation
from the National Woman Suffrage Association to "Come over into
Macedonia and help." The work for equal rights made favorable
headway in the legislature of Oregon that year through the
influence of a convention held at Salem under the able leadership
of Mrs. H. A. Loughary and Dr. Mary A. Thompson.
In June, 1878, a convention met in Walla Walla, Washington
territory, for the purpose of forming a constitution for the
proposed new State of Washington, and in compliance with the
invitation of many prominent women of the territory I visited the
convention and was permitted to present a memorial in person,
praying that the word "male" be omitted from the fundamental law
of the incubating State. But my plea (like that of Abigail Adams
a century before) failed of success, through a close vote
however--it stood 8 to 7--and men went on as before, saying, as
they did in the beginning: "Women do not wish to vote. If they
desire the ballot let them ask for it." In September of that year
I was again at my post in the Oregon legislature circulating the
_New Northwest_ among the law-makers, and doing what else I could
to keep the cause before them in a manner to enlist their
confidence and command their respect. An opportunity was given me
at this session to make an extended argument upon constitutional
liberty before a joint convention of the two Houses, which
occupied an hour in delivery and was accorded profound attention.
I was much opposed to the growing desire of the legislature to
shirk its responsibility upon the voters at large by submitting a
proposed constitutional amendment to them when the constitution
nowhere prohibits women from voting, and I labored to show that
all we need is a declaratory act extending to us the franchise
under the existing fundamental law. Dr. Mary A. Thompson followed
in a brief speech and was courteously received. The Married
Woman's Property bill, passed in 1874, received some necessary
amendments at this session, and an act entitling women to vote
upon school questions and making them eligible to school offices,
was passed by a triumphant majority.
I went to Southern Oregon in 1879, and while sojourning in
Jacksonville was assailed with a shower of eggs (since known in
that section as "Jacksonville arguments") and was also burned in
effigy on a principal street after the sun went down.
Jacksonville is an old mining town, beautifully situated in the
heart of the Southern Oregon mountains, and has no connection
with the outside world except through the daily stagecoaches. Its
would-be leading men are old miners or refugees from the
bushwhacking district whence they were driven by the civil war.
The taint of slavery is yet upon them and the methods of
border-ruffians are their hearts' delight. It is true that there
are many good people among them, but they are often over-awed by
the lawless crowd whose very instincts lead them to oppose a
republican form of government. But that raid of the outlaws
proved a good thing for the woman suffrage movement. It aroused
the better classes, and finally shamed the border ruffians by its
own reäction. When I returned to Portland a perfect ovation
awaited me. Hundreds of men and women who had not before allied
themselves with the movement made haste to do so. The newspapers
were filled with severe denunciations of the mob, and
"Jackson-villains," as the perpetrators of the outrage were
styled, grew heartily disgusted over their questionable glory.
When the legislature met in the autumn of 1880 it was decided by
the Woman Suffrage Association that we could "raise the blockade"
and encourage agitation in the work by consenting to an attempt
to amend the State constitution. Pursuant to this decision a
resolution was offered in the Senate by Hon. W. C. Fulton of
Clatsop, and in the House by Hon. Lee Laughlin, which, after
considerable discussion _pro_ and _con_ in which I was graciously
invited to participate on the floor of both Houses, was passed by
the requisite two-thirds majority. The result was considered a
triumph for the cause. A grand ratification jubilee was held in
the opera-house in honor of the event, and resolutions of thanks
to the lawmakers were passed, accompanied by many expressions of
faith in the legislation of the future.
In the meantime the work was going steadily on in Washington
territory, my own labors being distributed about equally between
the two sections of the Pacific Northwest that had formerly been
united under one territorial government. In the autumn of 1881
the legislature of Washington met one afternoon in joint
convention to listen to arguments from Hon. William H. White and
myself, on which occasion I held the floor for nearly three
hours, in the midst of an auditory that was itself an
inspiration. Mr. White, a Democrat of the old school, and now
(1885) holding the office of United States marshal in the
territory, under commission from President Cleveland, based his
plea for woman suffrage upon the enfranchisement of the colored
men, urging it strongly as a means of Democratic retaliation. The
suffrage bill passed in the House on the following day by a
majority of two, but was defeated in the Council by a majority of
two, showing that the vote would have been a tie if taken under
the joint-ballot rule.
Returning to Oregon I renewed the contest, and in the autumn of
1882 we were all gratified by the passage of the pending
constitutional amendment by a very nearly unanimous vote of each
House. Then the Oregon campaign began in earnest. The question
had assumed formidable proportions and was no longer an ignored
issue. The work went on with accelerated speed, and as far as
could be ascertained there was little or no opposition to it. The
meetings were largely attended and affirmative speakers were
ready to assist at all times, the help of this kind representing
all grades of the professions, led by the best and most
influential men of the State everywhere.
Another year went by, and the time for assembling the Washington
territory legislature was again at hand. Immediately upon
arriving at Olympia I learned that a coterie of politicians,
finding open hostility no longer effectual, had combined to crush
the woman suffrage bill, which had passed the House triumphantly,
by lobbying a "substitute" through the Council. In pursuance of
this seemingly plausible idea they talked with the ladies of
Olympia and succeeded in convincing a few of them that all women,
and especially all leaders of the movement, must be kept away
from the capitol or the bill would certainly be defeated.
Several women who ought to have have known better were deceived
by these specious pleaders, and but for some years of experience
in legislative assemblies that had brought me to comprehend the
"ways that are dark and tricks that are vain," for which the
average politician is "peculiar," the ruse would have succeeded.
I remained at headquarters, enduring alike the open attacks of
the venal press and the more covert opposition of the saloons and
brothels, and, as vigilantly as I could, watched all legislative
movements, taking much pains to keep the public mind excited
through the columns of the _Daily Oregonian_ and the weekly
issues of the _New Northwest_. The bill, which had been prepared
by Professor William H. Roberts, passed the House early in the
session; but it tarried long in the Council, and those most
interested were well-nigh worn out with work and watching before
the measure reached a vote. It came up for final passage November
15, 1883, when only three or four women were present. The Council
had been thoroughly canvassed before-hand and no member offered
to make a speech for or against it. The deathly stillness of the
chamber was broken only by the clerk's call of the names and the
firm responses of the "ayes" and "noes." I kept the tally with a
nervous hand, and my heart fairly stood still as the fateful
moment came that gave us the majority. Then I arose and without
exchanging words with any one left the state-house and rushed
toward the telegraph-office, half a mile distant, my feet seeming
to tread the air. Judge J. W. Range of Cheney, president of a
local woman suffrage society, overtook me on the way, bound on
the same errand. He spoke, and I felt as if called back to earth
with a painful reminder that I was yet mortal. A few minutes more
and my message was on the way to the _New Northwest_. It was
publication-day and the paper had gone to press, but my jubilant
and faithful sons opened the forms and inserted the news, and in
less than half an hour the newsboys were crying the fact through
the streets of Portland, making the _New Northwest_, which had
fought the fight and led the work to the point where legislation
could give a victory, the very first paper in the nation to
herald the news to the world. The rejoicing in Oregon, as well as
in Washington territory, was most inspiriting. A bloodless battle
had been fought and won, and the enemy, asleep in carnal
security, had been surrendered unawares. The women of Oregon
thanked God and took courage.
After passing the Council the bill passed leisurely, and some of
us feared perilously, through the various stages of clerical
progress till November 22, when it received the signature of
Governor William A. Newell, who used a gold pen presented him for
the purpose by women whom his act made free. And when at a given
signal the church bells rang in glad acclaim, and the loud boom
of minute-guns reverberated from the forest-clothed hills that
border Puget Sound and lost itself at last in the faint echoes of
the far-off hights, the scroll of the dead century unrolled
before my inner vision and I beheld in spirit another scene on
the further verge of the continent, when men in designing to ring
the bell at Independence Hall in professed honor of the triumph
of liberty, although not a woman in the land was free, had sought
in vain to force the loyal metal into glad responses; for the
old bell quivered in every nerve and broke its heart rather than
tell a lie!
An immense ratification jubilee was held in the evening of the
same day at the city hall in Olympia, with many distinguished
speakers.[511] Similar meetings were subsequently held in all the
principal towns of the Pacific Northwest. The freed women of
Washington thankfully accepted their new prerogatives. They were
appointed as jurors in many localities, and have ever since
performed their duties with eminent satisfaction to judges,
lawyers and all clients who are seeking to obey the laws. But
their jurisdiction soon became decidedly uncomfortable for the
law-breaking elements, which speedily escaped to Oregon, where,
as the sequel proved, they began a secret and effective war upon
the pending constitutional amendment. We all knew we had a
formidable foe to fight at the ballot-box. Our own hands were
tied and our own guns spiked, while our foe was armed to the
teeth with ballots, backed by money and controlled by vice,
bigotry and tyranny. But the leading men of the State had long
been known to favor the amendment; the respectable press had
become mildly, and in a few cases earnestly acquiescent; no
opposition could be raised at any of our public meetings, and we
felt measurably sure of a victory until near election time, when
we discovered to our dismay that most of the leading politicians
upon whom we had relied for aid had suddenly been seized with an
alarming reticence. They ceased to attend the public meetings and
in every possible way ignored the amendment, lest by openly
allying themselves with it they might lose votes; and as all of
them were posing in some way for office, for themselves or
friends, and women had no votes with which to repay their
allegiance, it was not strange that they should thus desert us.
Our Republican senator in congress, Hon. J. N. Dolph, favored the
Woman Suffrage Association with an able and comprehensive letter,
which was widely circulated, urging the adoption of the amendment
as a measure of justice and right, and appealing to the voters to
make Oregon the banner State of the great reform. Leading
clergymen, especially of Portland, preached in favor of woman
suffrage, prominent among them being Rev. T. L. Eliot, pastor of
the Unitarian church; Chaplain R. S. Stubbs of the Church of Sea
and Land, and Rev. Frederic R. Marvin of the First Congregational
society. Appeals to voters were widely circulated from the pens
and speeches of many able gentlemen.[512] Not one influential man
made audible objection anywhere.
We had carefully districted and organized the State, sparing
neither labor nor money in providing "Yes" tickets for all
parties and all candidates and putting them everywhere in the
hands of friends for use at the polls. But the polls were no
sooner open than it began to appear that the battle was one of
great odds. Masked batteries were opened in almost every
precinct, and multitudes of legal voters who are rarely seen in
daylight except at a general election, many of whom were refugees
from Washington territory, crowded forth from their hiding-places
to strike the manacled women down. They accused the earnest
ladies who had dared to ask for simple justice of every crime in
the social catalogue. Railroad gangs were driven to the polls
like sheep and voted against us in battalions. But, in spite of
all this, nearly one-third of the vote was thrown in our favor,
requiring a change of only about one-fourth of the opposing vote
to have given us a victory, and proving to the amazement of our
enemies that the strength of our cause was already
formidable.[513] We were repulsed but not conquered. Before the
smoke of the battle had cleared away we had called immense
meetings and passed vigorous resolutions, thanking the lovers of
liberty who had favored us with their suffrages, and pledging
ourselves anew to the conflict.
We at once decided that we would never again permit the
legislature to remand us to the rabble in a vain appeal for
justice. We had demonstrated the impossibility of receiving a
fair, impartial vote at the hands of the ignorant, lawless and
unthinking multitude whose ballots outweigh all reason and
overpower all sense. In pursuance of this purpose I went to the
legislature of 1885 and found no difficulty in securing the aid
of friendly members of both Houses who kindly championed the
following bill:
_Be it enacted by the Legislative Assembly of Oregon:_
That the elective franchise shall not hereafter be denied to
any person in this State on account of sex.
This act to be in force from and after its approval by the
governor.
After much parliamentary fillibustering the vote of both Houses
was recorded upon this bill and stood conjointly 34 to 54. This
vote, coming so soon after our defeat at the polls, is regarded
as the greatest victory we have yet won. The ablest lawyers of
the State and of Washington territory are preparing elaborate
opinions showing the constitutionality of our present plan, and
these are to be published in the form of a standard work, with
appropriate references for convenient use. The movement exhibits
a healthy, steady and encouraging growth, and is much accelerated
by its success in Washington territory.
On the Fourth of July of this year a grand celebration was held
at Vancouver, on Washington soil, the women of Oregon having
resolved in large numbers that they would never again unite in
celebrating men's independence-day in a State where they are
denied their liberty. The celebration was a success from first to
last. Boys and girls in equal numbers rode in the liberty-car and
represented the age of the government. The military post at
Vancouver joined heartily in the festivities, headed by the
gallant soldier, General Nelson A. Miles, commander-in-chief of
the department of the Columbia. The fine Fourteenth Infantry Band
furnished the instrumental music, and a local choir rendered
spirited choruses. The New Declaration of Independence was read
by Josie De Vore Johnson, the oration was delivered by Mattie A.
Bridge, and Louise Lester, the famous _prima donna_, electrified
the delighted crowd by her triumphant rendition of the
"Star-Spangled Banner." The exercises closed with the
announcement by the writer, who had officiated as president of
the day, that the Executive Committee of the Oregon Woman
Suffrage Association had, during the noon recess, adopted the
following resolutions:
_Resolved_, That our thanks are due to General Nelson A.
Miles of the department of the Columbia for his valuable
coöperation in the exercises and entertainments of this
historic day.
_Resolved_, That we thank the citizens of Clarke County, and
especially of Vancouver, for their hospitality and kindness,
so graciously bestowed upon their less fortunate Oregon
neighbors, who have not yet achieved their full
independence, and we shall ever cherish their fraternal
recognition in grateful remembrance.
_Resolved_, That while we deplore the injustice that still
deprives the women of Oregon of the liberty to exercise
their right to the elective franchise, we rejoice in the
record the women of Washington are making as citizens, as
voters and as jurors. We congratulate them upon their
newly-acquired liberties, and especially upon the
intelligent and conscientious manner in which they are
discharging the important public duties that in no wise
interfere with their home affairs. And we are further
_Resolved_, That if our own fathers, husbands, sons and
brothers do not at the next session of the Oregon
legislature bestow upon us the same electoral privileges
which the women of Washington already enjoy, we will prepare
to cross the Columbia River and take up our permanent abode
in this "land of the free and home of the brave."
The resolutions evoked cheers that waked the echoes, and the
celebration, reported by the Oregon press, contributed largely to
the growth of the equal-rights sentiment among the people of the
State. Two stanzas of a spirited poem are subjoined, written for
the Woman Suffrage Association just after our defeat at the
polls, by a young man from Southern Oregon who has withheld his
own name but included the names of all the counties in his
glorious prophecy:
From Clatsop and from Clackamas, from Linn and Tillamook;
From Grant, Multnomah, Lane and Coos, and Benton, Lake and
Crook;
From Josephine, Columbia, and loyal Washington,
And Union, Baker and Yamhill, and proud old Marion;
From where the Cascade mountain-streams their foaming waters
pour,
We're coming, mothers, sisters, dear, "ten times ten thousand
more."
From Klamath's lakes and Wasco's plains, and Jackson's rolling
hills;
From Douglas with her mines of gold, and Curry with her mills;
From Umatilla's burdened fields, and hills and dales of Polk,
We're coming with our votes and songs to break the tyrant's
yoke,
And in the ears of Liberty this song of joy we'll pour,
We're coming, mothers, sisters, dear, "ten times ten thousand
more."
Mrs. Mary Olney Brown gives an amusing account of her attempts to
vote in Washington territory. The incidents related occurred
several years before the passage of the act specifically
enfranchising women. She says:
I do not think there has ever been a session of our legislature
that has not had before it the subject of woman suffrage. It has
been my habit to write out, and send to all parts of the
territory, before the assembling of each legislature, petitions
to be signed, asking for a law guaranteeing to women the
exercise of their right to vote. These petitions were not without
their effect, though no one knew who sent them out, or, when
returned, who selected the member to receive and present them to
the legislature. At the session of 1867, mainly through the
efforts of Edward Eldridge of Whatcom County, an act was passed
giving "all white American citizens above the age of twenty-one
years" the right to vote. This law is still on our statute books;
but, like the fourteenth amendment, is interpreted to mean only
male citizens. During the time between the passage of this law
and the next election, I wrote to some of the prominent women of
the principal towns, telling them of the law, and urging them to
go out and vote at the coming election, and also to induce as
many more to go as they could. But no notice was taken of my
letters. I was looked upon as a fanatic, and the idea of a woman
voting was regarded as an absurdity. The law seemed to be in
advance of the people. It needed lectures and organized societies
among us to educate the women into a just appreciation of their
rights and duties.
In the autumn of 1868, Dr. Smith wrote several articles on the
right of women to the ballot, as did also Mr. Eldridge. The
latter asserted that it was the intention of the law to give the
women of the territory the right to vote; that being a member of
the legislature he had purposely stated in his remarks, that if
the bill passed in that form, it would give the women the right
to vote; and a member from his seat cried out, "That is what we
want!" Mr. Eldridge urged the women to go out to the polls and
vote. These articles were published in the Olympia _Transcript_,
the Republican paper, J. N. Gale, one of the editors, being an
advocate of suffrage. Still not a woman made a move. Many wished
to vote; they knew it was the only way to secure their rights,
and yet they had not the courage to go to the polls in defiance
of custom.
Seeing this to be the case, and knowing that if anything was done
some one must take the initiative, I determined to cast aside my
timidity and set the ball rolling. Accordingly, several weeks
before the election of 1869 I gave out word that I was going to
the polls to vote. I had the previous year removed with my family
from Olympia, and was living on White River in King county. The
announcement that I would attend the election caused a great
commotion in White River precinct. A fearful hue and cry was
raised. The news reached Olympia and Seättle, and some of the
papers deprecated the idea that "a woman should unsex herself by
dabbling in the filthy pool of politics." But I was fully
committed. The law had been on our statute books for nearly three
years. If it was intended for our benefit, it was time we were
availing ourselves of it. So, nothing daunted, I determined to
repair to the polling place, the district school-house,
accompanied by my husband, my daughter (Mrs. Axtell) and her
husband--a little band of four--looked upon with pity and
contempt for what was called our "fanaticism."
For several days before the election the excitement in the
neighborhood and other settlements along the river was intense.
Many gentlemen called on me and tried to persuade me to stay at
home and save myself from insult. I thanked them for their
kindness, and told them I fully appreciated their good
intentions, but that I had associated with men all my life, and
had always been treated as a lady; that the men I should meet at
the polls were the same that I met in church and social
gatherings, and I knew they would treat me with respect. Then
they begged my husband not to allow me to go; but he told them
his wife had as good a right to vote as he had; and that no
citizen can legally deprive another of the right to vote.
On the morning of the election, just before we reached the
school-house, a man met us and said, "Mr. Brown, look here now!
If Mrs. Brown goes up to vote she will be insulted! If I was in
your place I wouldn't let her go any farther. She had better go
back." My husband answered, "Mr. Brannan, my wife has as good a
right to vote as I have, and I would not prevent her if I could.
She has a mind of her own and will do as she thinks best, and I
shall stand by her and see that she is well treated! Besides
[speaking with emphasis], she will not be insulted either!"
"Well," said the man, "if she was my wife she shouldn't go!
She'll be sure to be insulted!" I looked him full in the face,
and said with decision, "Mr. Brannan, a gentleman will be a
gentleman under all circumstances, and will always treat a lady
with respect." I said this because I knew the man, and knew that
if anyone offered any annoyance, it would be he, and so it
proved.
As we drove up to the school-house and alighted, a man in an
angry voice snapped out, "Well! if the women are coming to vote,
I'm going home!" But he did not go; he had too much curiosity; he
wanted to see the fun. He stayed and was converted. After
watching the sovereign "white male citizen" perform the laborious
task of depositing his vote in the ballot-box, I thought if I
braced myself up I might be equal to the task. So, summoning all
my strength, I walked up to the desk behind which sat the august
officers of election, and presented my vote. When behold! I was
pompously met with the assertion, "You are not an American
citizen; hence not entitled to vote." The great unabridged
dictionary of Noah Webster was opened, and the definition of the
word citizen read to me. They all looked to see me vanquished;
they thought I would have to retreat before such an overwhelming
array of sagacity. The countenances of the judges wore a pleased
expression that they had hit on so easy an expedient to put me
_hors du combat_, while the crowd looked astonished that I did
not sink out of sight. Waiting a moment, I said, "The definition
is correct. A citizen of the United States, is a _person_ owing
allegiance to the government; but then all persons are not _men_;
and the definition of "citizeness" is a female citizen. I claim
to be an American citizen, and a native-born citizen at that; and
I wish to show you from the fourteenth amendment to the
constitution of the United States, that women are not only
citizens having the constitutional right to vote, but also that
our territorial election law gives women the privilege of
exercising that right."
When I commenced speaking, all the men, with the exception of
two--the one who had urged my husband not to let me go to the
school-house, and a low, degraded fellow, who had a squaw for a
wife--came and ranged themselves around me and the judges before
whom I stood, and listened attentively. It was a new subject to
them. They had heard of woman suffrage, but only in ridicule. Now
it was being presented to them in a very different light. As I
proceeded there was a death-like stillness, so intent were they
to catch every word. Even the man who had declared he would go
home if the women were going to vote, was among the most
interested of the listeners. There was but one interruption; the
two men, of whom I have spoken, to make good their assertion that
I would be insulted, got behind a desk in the far corner of the
room, and began talking and laughing very loudly; but they were
promptly called to order. Silence being restored, I went on to
show them that the original constitution recognized women as
citizens, and that the word citizen includes both sexes, as is
proved by the phrases, "male citizen," and "female citizen"; that
women from the beginning had been unjustly deprived of the
exercise of their constitutional rights; that they had for years
been petitioning those in power to restore them to their
political freedom, when the emancipation of the Southern slaves
threw upon the country a class of people, who, like the women of
the nation, owed allegiance to the government, but whose
citizenship was not recognized. To settle this question, the
fourteenth amendment was adopted. Its first section declares
emphatically who are citizens, and guarantees to them the
exercise of all their natural rights under the equal protection
of the law. (Here I read to them the section.) No distinction is
made in regard to sex; the word "person" being used, which
includes both men and women.
"And now, honorable gentlemen," I said, in conclusion, "I am a
'person,' declared by the fourteenth amendment to be a citizen,
and still further, I am a native-born citizen of the same race
and color of these gentlemen by whom I am surrounded, and whose
votes you do not hesitate to receive; and, had our territorial
law failed to give me the right to vote, this amendment would
protect me in the exercise of it. I again offer my vote, and hope
you will not refuse it." No hand was extended to receive it; but
one of the judges threw himself back in his seat, and with great
dignity of manner and an immense display of ignorance, exclaimed,
"Women have no right to vote; and the laws of Congress don't
extend over Washington territory." This was too much for even the
strongest opponents. On every side was heard, "Oh, Mr. Alvord!
why, yes, they do!" "Mr. Alvord, you are mistaken, the laws of
congress do extend over our territory"; and some tried to explain
to him that the territory belonged to the United States and was
under the jurisdiction of the national government, and that of
course the laws of congress extended over it. But still more
pompously, he again declared, "It is no such thing, the laws of
congress don't extend over Washington territory." A look of
disgust and shame was depicted on nearly every countenance, and
the cause of woman suffrage had advanced perceptibly in the minds
of the audience.
Another of the judges arose, and said, he had never thought much
on the subject. He had no doubt but Mrs. Brown was right, woman
were citizens and had the right to vote; but as the courts had
not instructed the election officers to take the votes of women,
and as the precinct was a small one, he was afraid their whole
vote would be thrown out if they received the women's ballots.
So, although he should like to see the women have their rights,
he should have to refuse Mrs. Brown's vote. Here an Irishman
called out, "It would be more sensible to let an intelligent
white woman vote than an ignorant nigger." Cries of "Good for
you, Pat! good for you, Pat!" indicated the impression that had
been made. My daughter now went up and offered her vote, which
was, of course, rejected.
My going to the polls was noised abroad, and set men as well as
women thinking. They examined the law for themselves, and found
that women had a right to vote, so that before the next election
many were prepared to act. In May, 1870, I published an appeal to
the women of the territory, quoting to them the law, and urging
them to avail themselves of its provisions by going to the polls
and voting. My sister, Charlotte Olney French, living in Grand
Mound precinct, some twenty-five miles from Olympia, began
talking the matter up; and, being a woman of energy and
influence, she soon had the whole neighborhood interested. With
the assistance of an old lady, Mrs. Peck, she planned a regular
campaign. By the programme the women were to get up a picnic
dinner at the school-house where the election was to be held, and
directly after, while the officers of election were in good humor
(wives will understand the philosophy of this), they were to
present their votes. My sister, being a good talker and well
informed on all the constitutional, judicial and social phases of
the question as well as a good judge of human nature, was able to
meet and parry every objection, and give information where
needed, so that by the time dinner was over, the judges, as well
as everybody else, were in the best of spirits. When the voting
was resumed, the women (my sister being the first) handed in
their ballots as if they had always been accustomed to voting,
and everything passed off pleasantly. One lady, Mrs. Sargent,
seventy-two years old, said she thanked the Lord that He had let
her live until she could vote. She had often prayed to see the
day, and now she was proud to cast her first ballot.
It had been talked of for some days before the election in the
adjoining precinct--Black River--that Mrs. French was organizing
a party of women to attend the election in Grand Mound precinct;
but they were not sure the judges would let them vote. "If they
do," said they, "if the Grand Mound women vote, the Black River
women shall!" So they stationed a man on a fleet horse, at the
Grand Mound polls, with instructions to start as soon as the
women began to vote, and ride with all haste back to their
precinct and let them know. The moment the man rode in sight of
the school-house he swung his hat, and screeched at the top of
his voice, "They're voting! They're voting!" The teams were all
ready in anticipation of the news, and were instantly flying in
every direction, and soon the women were ushered into the
school-house, their choice of tickets furnished them, and all
allowed to vote as "American citizens."
While the women of these two precincts were enjoying the exercise
of their political rights, the women of Olympia were suffering
the vexation of disappointment. I had been stopping there for
some weeks previous to the election, trying to induce the women
to go to the polls, and also to convince the men that women had a
legal right to vote, and that their right must be respected. The
day before election the judges were interviewed as to whether
they would take the votes of the women. They replied, "Yes; we
shall be obliged to take them. The law gives them the right to
vote, and we can not refuse." This decision was heralded all over
the city, and women felt as if their millennium had come.
To-morrow, for the first time, their voice would be heard in the
government through the ballot. All day long women met each other,
and asked: "Are you going to the election to-morrow?" Groups
gathered in parlors and discussed the matter, and everything
seemed auspicious.
But how true the saying: "There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and
the lip!" Before nine o'clock the next morning, the word had been
communicated all over town that "the women need not come out to
the polls as the judges would not take their votes." They would
give no reason why, but said "they had decided not to take the
votes of the women." About a dozen of us gathered together to
consult what was best to be done; finding most of them inclined
to back out, I urged the necessity of our making an effort; that
whether the judges took our votes or not, it was not best to give
it up as the rest had done; if we did, it would be harder to make
an effort next time; that I had been to the polls once and had my
vote refused, and could be refused again; at any rate, I had the
right to vote, and I should go and offer it if I had to go alone.
Three of the number said they would go with me--Mrs. Patterson,
Mrs. Wiley and Mrs. Dofflemyer; these, with Mr. Patterson, my
husband and myself made our party. As we reached the court-house
where the election was held, Mr. Dofflemyer met us and took his
wife home, she meekly submitting.
Just before us a cart rattled up bearing a male citizen, who was
too drunk to know what he was doing, or even to do anything. He
was lying on his back in the cart, with feet and hands up,
hurrahing at the top of his voice. This disgusting, drunken idiot
was picked up out of the cart by two men, who put a ticket into
his hand, carried him to the window (he was too drunk to stand),
shoved him up and raised his arm into the aperture; his vote
received, he was tumbled back into the cart.
I then stepped up and offered my vote, and was answered with, "We
have decided not to take the votes of the women!" "On what
grounds do you refuse?" I asked. No answer. "Do you refuse it on
legal grounds?" Still no answer. I then said, "Under the election
law of this territory, setting aside my constitutional right as a
citizen of the United States, I have the right to vote at this
election. Have you the election law by you?" "No, we have not got
it here," they said. I knew they had, but did not dispute their
word. "Very well," I said, "I can quote it for you." I did so,
and then said, "Under this territorial law I claim my right, and
again I offer you my vote as an American citizen. If you doubt my
citizenship, I will insist on taking the oath. Will you receive
it?" The answer was, "No; we have decided not to take women's
votes, and we cannot take yours." "Then," said I, "it amounts to
this: the law gives women the right to vote in this territory,
and you three men who have been appointed to receive our votes,
sit here and arbitrarily refuse to take them, giving no reason
why, only that you have decided not to take the women's votes.
There is no law to sustain you in this usurpation of power. We
can claim legal redress. Are you willing to stand a legal
prosecution?" "Yes," was the response of each one separately. It
was now plain to see why the votes of the women were refused; the
judges had been hired to do the dirty work, and money pledged in
case of prosecution. They were men in moderate circumstances and
could not have stood the cost of a suit individually. The ready
assent they gave showed such a contingency had been thought of
and provided against by the opponents of woman suffrage. The
other two women then offered their votes, which were also
refused.
In the autumn of 1871 Susan B. Anthony came to Olympia and
attended the first woman suffrage convention ever held here. Our
legislature was in session, and a joint hearing before the two
Houses was extended to her. Her statesman-like argument clearly
proved the right of our women to vote under both the national
constitution and the territorial law. After Miss Anthony left,
there arose a rumor that the election law was to be repealed, and
a committee of women attended every session, determined if
possible to prevent it. They were at the capitol the last day,
prepared to stay until the adjournment; they were urged to go
home, but would not unless a solemn promise was made them that
the law should in no way be tampered with. This the members
refused to do, until a bright idea struck one of them, which was
that they need not disturb the law, but could make it inoperative
by enacting another statute. This being whispered among the
members, the promise was given, and the women retired.
Immediately after, the following act was passed by both Houses,
approved and signed by the governor:
_Be it enacted by the Legislative Assembly of the Territory
of Washington:_
SECTION 1. That hereafter no female shall have the right of
ballot, or vote at any poll or election precinct in this
territory until the Congress of the United States of America
shall, by direct legislation, declare the same to be the
supreme law of the land.
SEC. 2. This act to take effect from and after its passage.
Approved November 29, 1871. EDWARD S. SOLOMON, _Governor_.
When the proclamation to hold a convention to form a constitution
preparatory to our admission into the Union as a State, was
issued, I recommended to the Territorial Woman Suffrage
Association that we make every effort to secure to the convention
as many delegates as possible in favor of woman suffrage, and
then that we circulate petitions asking them to leave out the
word "male" from the constitution. Failing to get the society to
take any associated action, I went to work individually, wrote
and sent out petitions into every town and country place where
there was a post-office, asking that the word "male" be left out
of the constitution. With each petition I sent a letter to the
person whose name I had procured from the postmaster of the
place, stating the object, urging a thorough circulation, and
directing its return at a given date to Mary Olney Brown,
President of the Washington Territorial Woman Suffrage
Association; thus giving the credit of the work to the Society.
I could not get a member of our Association to circulate the
petition in Olympia, so every day that I could get away from home
I took my petition in hand and canvassed for signatures. If I
went shopping or on an errand I took it with me, and in that way
I procured over 300 names. My experience had taught me that the
principal opposition to woman's voting came from ignorance as to
her true position under the government. She had come to be looked
upon almost as a foreign element in our nation, having no lot nor
part with the male citizen, and I felt that it was necessary to
disabuse the minds of the people generally, and the delegates to
the convention particularly, of this notion. I therefore wrote
five articles on the "Equality of Citizenship," which Mrs.
Duniway kindly published in the _New Northwest_. The Olympia
_Courier_ also printed them, and placed the paper on file in the
city reading-room; and when I met a man who had not made up his
mind on the subject I recommended him to the reading-room, and
several after perusing the articles were converted and signed the
petition.
On the assembling of the legislature Mrs. A. H. H. Stuart and
myself watched a favorable opportunity to present an equal rights
bill. We let them talk up the matter pretty well over a petition
signed by fifty women of one of the upper counties, when one day
Mrs. Stuart came to me and said: "Now, Mrs. Brown, write out your
bill; the speaker of the House sent me word they were ready for
it." I sat down and framed a bill[514] to the best of my ability,
which was duly presented and respectfully debated. Mrs. Duniway
came from Portland to urge its passage, and the day before it
came to a vote both Houses adjourned and invited her to speak in
the hall of representatives. She made one of her best speeches.
The members of both Houses were present, besides a large audience
from the city. The next day the House passed the bill by two
majority, and on the day following it was lost in the Council by
two majority. In the House the vote stood, ayes, 13; nays, 11. In
the Council, ayes, 5; nays, 7.
Saturday evening Mrs. Duniway made another telling speech in the
city hall, at the close of which Mr. White, a lobby member, made
a few remarks, in which he disclosed the cause of the defeat of
the bill in the Council. He said, after the bill passed the House
the saloon-keepers, alarmed lest their occupation would be gone
if women should vote, button-holed the members of the Council,
and as many of them as could be bought by drinks pledged
themselves to vote against the bill. The members of the Council
were present, and though an urgent invitation was given to all to
speak, not one of them denied the charge made by Mr. White. On
the following Monday an effort was made in the Council to
reconsider the bill, but failed. Thus stands our cause at
present. There will be a greater effort than ever before put
forth during the next two years to secure an affirmative vote in
our legislature.
As Mrs. Brown wrote the above in 1881, the promise in the closing
sentence was really quite prophetic, since the legislature of 1883
passed a law enfranchising the women of the territory.[515] Mrs.
Duniway concludes her account with a brief reference to the work in
neighboring territories:
In addition to all that is being done in Oregon and Washington,
we are actively engaged in pushing the work in Idaho and Montana
territories, where the _New Northwest_ has been thoroughly
circulated in many localities and many spirited public meetings
have been held. The Idaho legislature seriously considered and
came near adopting a woman suffrage bill last winter, and the
women of the territory are confidently awaiting a triumph at the
next biënnial session. Remembering Dakota's set-back through the
governor's veto in 1885, they are carefully planning to avoid a
like calamity in their own territory. In Montana the cause has
made less apparent progress, but there is much quiet and
constantly increasing agitation in its favor. Popular feeling is
steadily ripening for the change, and let the rest of the world
wag as it will, there cannot be much longer hindrance to the
complete triumph of liberty in the Pacific Northwest.
FOOTNOTES:
[507] Hon. H. L. Yesler, the city's founder and mayor; Mrs. Yesler,
Rev. John F. Damon, Mrs. Mary Olney Brown, Rev. Daniel Bagley and
others.
[508] Its leaders being Mrs. Abble H. H. Stuart, Mrs. P. C. Hale,
Hon. Marshall Blinn, Hon. Elwood Evans, and Mr. J. M. Murphy,
editor of the _Washington Standard_.
[509] Mr. D. W. Williams, Mr. and Mrs. W. T. Shanahan, Mr. and Mrs.
A. B. Gibson, Rev. T. L. Eliot, Mr. B. C. Duniway, Dr. Mary A.
Thompson, Rev. Isaac Dillon and Hon. and Mrs. G. W. Brown.
[510] Addresses were made in advocacy of the cause by Col. Reed,
Mrs. J. Devore Johnson, Miss V. M. Olds, Rev. T. L. Eliot, Mrs. C.
A. Coburn, Mrs. Beatty (colored), and the writer. The celebrated
McGibeney family furnished the music, and the Portland press gave
favorable reports of the proceedings. Valuable aid was also
contributed by Mr. and Mrs. D. H. Hendee, Mr. and Mrs. J. W.
Peters, and Mrs. M. J. Foster.
[511] Governor Newell, Judge Orange Jacobs, Judge B. F. Dennison,
Mrs. Pamela Hale, Hon. Philip D. Moore, Mr. W. S. Duniway, Captain
William H. Smallwood, the writer, and a large number of the members
of the legislature.
[512] S. F. Chadwick, United States Representative M. C. George,
ex-United States Senator J. H. Mitchell, United States District
Judge M. P. Deady, Hon. H. W. Scott, editor of the _Oregonian_,
ex-Governor A. C. Gibbs, District-Attorneys J. F. Caples and T. A.
McBride, and various ex-members of the legislature.
[513] The official vote of the State was 11,223 for the amendment,
and 28,176 against.
[514] _Be it enacted by the Legislature of the Territory of
Washington:_
SECTION 1. All female citizens of the age of twenty-one years shall
be entitled to vote at all elections in the territory, subject only
to such regulations as male citizens.
SEC. 2. Any officer of election who shall refuse to take the vote
of a woman citizen (otherwise qualified to vote), shall be liable
to a fine of not less than $100 nor more than $500.
SEC. 3. All laws in conflict with this act are hereby repealed.
SEC. 4. This act to be in force on and after its passage.
[515] The bill was introduced in the Washington House by
Representative Coply, and was supported in speeches by Messrs.
Coply, Besserer, Miles, Clark and Stitzel, while Messrs. Landrum
and Kincaid spoke against it. The vote was: _Ayes_--Besserer,
Brooks, Clark, Coply, Foster, Goodell, Hungate, Kuhn, Lloyd,
Martin, Miles, Shaw, Stitzel and Speaker Ferguson--14.
_Noes_--Barlow, Brining, Landrum, Ping, Kincaid, Shoudy and
Young--7. _Absent_--Blackwell, Turpin and Warner--3. The bill was
favorably reported in the Council, November 15, by Chairman Burk of
the Judiciary Committee. No one offered to speak on it. The vote
stood: _Ayes_--Burk, Edmiston, Hale, Harper, Kerr, Power and
Smith--7. _Noes_--Caton, Collins, Houghton, Whitehouse and
President Truax--5. Governor W. A. Newell approved the bill
November 22, 1883.
CHAPTER LV.
LOUISIANA--TEXAS--ARKANSAS--MISSISSIPPI.
St. Anna's Asylum, Managed by Women--Constitutional Convention,
1879--Women Petition--Clara Merrick Guthrie--Petition Referred to
Committee on Suffrage--A Hearing Granted--Mrs. Keating--Mrs.
Saxon--Mrs. Merrick--Col. John M. Sandige--Efforts of the Women
all in Vain--Action in 1885--Gov. McEnery--The _Daily
Picayune_--Women as Members of the School-Board--Physiology in
the Schools--Miss Eliza Rudolph--Mrs. E. J. Nicholson--Judge
Merrick's Digest of Laws--Texas--Arkansas--Mississippi--Sarah A.
Dorsey.
I.--LOUISIANA.
Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick has furnished the following interesting
facts from her native State, for which we feel ourselves deeply
indebted:
Like the children of one family the States have a common
resemblance, but they are various in character as in geographical
outline. In Louisiana the Anglo-American finds himself
side-by-side with inhabitants of French or Spanish descent, and
in many of the country parishes the African freedmen outnumber
all the rest.
St. Anna's Asylum in New Orleans is controlled and managed by a
board of directors composed entirely of women. Among the inmates
in 1878 was a German woman who had resided in the institution for
many years. Finding herself in ill-health and fearing the
approach of the end, she confided to the ladies of the board that
she had a thousand dollars in bank which she wished to bequeath
to the home where she had been provided for and sheltered so
long. At her earnest request a will was drawn up in accordance
with her wishes, and signed by members of the board who were
present as witnesses. Shortly after, the woman died and her will
was submitted to the proper authority for admission to probate.
When the ladies were duly informed that the will was null and
void, they naturally asked why, and were told that under
Louisiana law women were not lawful witnesses to a will. Had they
only called in the old darkey wood-sawyer, doing a day's work in
the asylum yard, and had him affix his mark to the paper, the
money would have accrued to the asylum; as it was, it went to the
State.
Early in 1879, when a convention to make a new State
constitution[516] had been called and was about to assemble in
New Orleans, Mrs. Merrick tried to arouse the ladies of the
board, representing to them that in the controlling power they
exercised over St. Anna's Asylum they were only children
_playing_ they were a part of the people and citizens of the
State, when in reality they were legally powerless to perform any
free and independent act. The ladies were mortified by the
position in which they found themselves but were not willing to
take any step to remedy their pitiful case, not even to sign the
petition which was afterwards drawn up by Mrs. Saxon and Mrs.
Merrick to present to the constitution-makers to have these
disabilities removed. The petition was as follows:
_To the Honorable President and Members of the Convention of
Louisiana, convened for the purpose of framing a new
Constitution:_
The undersigned, citizens of the State of Louisiana,
respectfully represent:
That up to the present time all women, of whatever age or
capacity, have been debarred from the right of
representation, notwithstanding the burdensome taxes which
they have paid.
They have been excluded from holding any office save in
cases of special tutorships in limited degree, or of
administration only in specified cases.
They have been debarred from being witnesses to wills or
notarial acts, even when executed by their own sex.
They look upon this condition of things as a grievance
proper to be brought before your honorable body for
consideration and relief.
As a question of civilization, we look upon the
enfranchisement of women as an all-important one. In
Wyoming, where it has been tried for ten years, the
law-makers and clergy unite in declaring that this influx of
women voters has done more to promote morality and order
than thousands of armed men could have accomplished.
Should the entire franchise seem too extended a privilege,
we most earnestly urge the adoption of a property
qualification, and that women may be allowed a vote on
school and educational matters, involving as they do the
interests of women and children in a great degree.
So large a proportion of the taxes of Louisiana is paid by
women, many of them without male representatives, that in
granting consideration and relief for grievances herein
complained of, the people will recognize justice and equity.
To woman as well as man "taxation without representation is
tyranny," she being "a person, a citizen, a freeholder, a
tax-payer," the same as man, only government has never held
out the same fostering, protecting hand to all alike, nor
ever will, until women are directly represented.
Wherefore, we, your petitioners, pray that some suitable
provision remedying these evils be incorporated in the
constitution you are about to frame.
While this petition was being circulated, favorable articles
appeared from time to time in the public prints. The following,
signed "Fatima," the _nom de plume_ of Clara Merrick Guthrie,
appeared in the _Democrat_:
A well-known notary signed this petition with a flourish,
remarking that "few women and not over half the men were
aware of the disabilities of wives and daughters."
If the convention should invest women of property with the
elective franchise it would give to the respectable side of
politics a large body of sensible voters which would go far
toward neutralizing the evil of unlimited male suffrage. The
policy in the Northern States has been to demand
unrestricted suffrage, but the women of Louisiana may with
propriety exhibit certain variations in the nature of their
appeal. This subject in all its phases inspires my
enthusiasm, but I dare not be as eloquent as I might, lest a
messenger should be sent to me with an urgent request to
address the convention next Monday evening. * * * *
_On dit._--Other ladies beside our brave Mrs. Saxon are
desired to give their views. Now surely the convention would
not ask these quiet house-mothers, who are not even remotely
akin to professional agitators, to do such violence to their
old-time precedents if the prospect of some reward were not
encouraging and immediate. Nothing could induce me to make
personal application save the solemn obligation of the whole
august body to accede to my timid proposal simultaneously
and by acclamation. Fortunately for us there are women in
Louisiana more sacrificing of their naturally shrinking
disposition, who perhaps take the cause more seriously than
your correspondent, who would make a most persuasive
enrolling-officer but not so gallant a general for active
service.
After securing over 400 influential names[517] the petition was
sent in to the convention and was referred to the Committee on
Suffrage, Mr. Felix P. Poché, chairman, now judge of the Supreme
Court. On May 7, the committee invited the ladies to a conference
at Parlor P, St. Charles Hotel. Mr. and Mrs. Saxon, Colonel and
Mrs. John M. Sandige and Mrs. Mollie Moore Davis were present.
Mrs. Saxon spoke for an hour and replied to questions from the
committee. She made a very favorable impression and was highly
commended for her argument. On June 16 the friends of the
petition were notified that a hearing would be granted them at
the evening session of the convention. Mrs. Harriette C. Keating
and Mrs. Elizabeth L. Saxon had consented to speak if such a
hearing were granted.
Col. John M. Sandige, who had occupied prominent positions in the
political affairs of the State, gave much encouragement and
assistance. He did not hesitate to urge the importance of this
movement, and the necessity that the women who were most
interested should cheerfully assume their responsibility in
relation to it. While Mrs. Saxon was known already as a fearless
and able reformer, and Dr. Harriette C. Keating as a noble
representative of woman in professional life, he thought it was
desirable to have a voice from the home and from society, and
Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick was solicited to come forward and
endorse what her colleagues would say, in a few words at the
close of the proceedings. Mrs. Merrick finally agreed that she
should see her duty in the light in which it was presented if
Judge Merrick, who constituted her court of last resort, should
leave her entirely free to act in the case. After a consultation,
to her great surprise and consternation the judge said, "You have
always desired to help women--here is an opportunity; go forward
and do your share in this work."
The surprise could hardly have been greater if a procession of
slaves twenty-five years ago had come up in force to the lordly
mansion of their master with several spokesmen chosen from their
ranks, for the avowed purpose of asking for their freedom. The
ladies were treated with a delicate courtesy and kindness on this
unusual occasion, which they can never forget. Judge Poché, with
the tact of a true gentleman, endeavored to smooth a difficult
way, reassuring the failing courage of the ladies while assisting
them to mount the platform. The _Daily Picayune_ of June 17,
1879, said:
The usually prosaic and unimpressive appearance of the
convention hall assumed for the occasion an entire change
last evening. When the convention closed its forenoon's
labors, it took a recess until half-past 7 o'clock for the
purpose of affording the female suffragists an opportunity
to plead their cause before a full meeting. The scene before
the convention was called to order was interesting and
amusing. As the minutes rolled on the crowd of ladies
commenced to pour in, and by 8 o'clock the hall contained
some fifty representatives of the gentler sex of the
Crescent City. Every age of womanhood and every class of
beauty found a representative upon the floor. About half a
dozen "society girls" occupied a retired corner of the room,
while a number of the notables, including Mrs. Myra Clark
Gaines, took possession of the middle of the hall.
Promptly at 8 o'clock President Wiltz climbed to his seat
and called the convention to order in a tone slightly husky
from nervous excitement. Secretary Harris, having summoned
up his spare courage, called the roll in a determined voice.
Of the 134 members 106 responded to their names. After the
usual preliminaries Mr. Poché announced that a committee of
ladies were in attendance, prepared to address the
convention upon the question of woman suffrage. He then
introduced Mrs. Dr. Keating. The fair speaker had scarcely
begun before it was seen that she possessed a clear, slow
enunciation and perfect confidence in her ability to enforce
the doctrines of the cause she was to advocate. She read
from manuscript and showed no little knowledge of the rules
of oratory.
Mrs. Saxon was greeted with a burst of applause, which was
gracefully acknowledged by the recipient; her address was
earnest and made a deep impression.
Mr. Robertson of St. Landry then offered the following
resolution, which lies over under the rules:
_Resolved_, That the committee on elective franchises be
directed to embody in the article upon suffrage reported in
this convention, a provision giving the right of suffrage to
women upon the same terms as to men.
After some talk the resolution was laid aside to allow
another speech to be made. Mrs. E. T. Merrick was introduced
by Mr. Poché, as the wife of ex-Chief-Justice Merrick, and a
shower of applause followed the appearance of the lady. She
said:
_Mr. President and Delegates of the Convention:_--We have
met with such unexpected kindness in the reception which you
have accorded us to-night, that we find it hard to give
expression to anything but thanks. When we remember the
persistent and aggressive efforts which our energetic
sisters of the North put forth before they could obtain a
hearing before any legislative assembly, we find ourselves
lost in a pleasing astonishment at the graciousness which
beams upon us here from all quarters. Should we even now be
remanded to our places and have our petitions met with an
utter refusal, we should be grieved to the heart, we should
be sorely disappointed, but we never could cherish the least
feeling of rebellious spite toward this convention of men,
who have shown themselves so respectful and considerate
toward the women of Louisiana.
Perhaps some of the gentlemen thought we did not possess the
moral courage to venture even thus far from the retirement
in which we prefer to dwell; perhaps they thought we would
not dare to appear in person before this formidable body and
speak for our own cause. Be assured that a resolute and
conscientious woman can put aside her individual preferences
at the call of duty, and act unselfishly for the good of
others. You are our witnesses that we have not wearied you
by our importunities, nor have we sought in any disingenuous
manner to influence you in our favor. We are simply here in
response to your own courteous invitation to explain our
ideas and opinions on the great question of woman's
enfranchisement. The ladies who have already addressed you
have given you our arguments, and in eloquent language have
made their appeal, to which you could not have been
insensible. It only remains for me to give you some of my
own individual views in the few words which are to conclude
this interview.
We assure you we are not cherishing any ambitious ideas of
political honors and emoluments for women. We do not wish to
become governors or legislators, nor have we any inordinate
desire to obtain seats in congress. I have seen but one
woman who ever expressed even a wish to be president of
these United States. But we do ask with most serious
earnestness that you should give us the ballot, which has
been truly called the expression of allegiance and
responsibility to the government. All over the world this
same movement is advancing. In many countries earnest,
thoughtful, large-hearted women are working day and night to
elevate their sex; to secure higher education; to open new
avenues for their industrious hands; trying to make women
helpers to man, instead of being millstones round his neck
to sink him in his life struggle. Ah, if we could only
infuse into your souls the courage which we,
constitutionally timid as we are, now feel on this subject,
you would hasten to perform this act of justice, and
inaugurate the beginning of the end which all but the blind
can see is surely and steadily approaching. We are willing
to accept anything. We have always been in the position of
beggars, as now, and cannot be choosers if we wished. We
will gladly accept the franchise on any terms, provided they
be wholly and entirely honorable. If you should see proper
to subject us to an educational test, even of a high order,
we should try to attain it; if you require a considerable
property qualification, we would not complain. We would be
only too grateful for any amelioration of our legal
disabilities. Allow me to ask, are we less prepared for the
intelligent exercise of the right of suffrage than were the
freedmen when it was suddenly conferred upon them? Has not
this right been to them a beneficial stimulant, inducing
them to use exertions to promote their improvement, and has
it not raised them to a superior place, above the
disfranchised classes, such as the Chinese, Indians and
women?
Perhaps you think only a few of us desire the ballot. If
that were so, we think it would not be any sufficient reason
for withholding it. In old times most of our slaves were
happy and contented. Under the rule of good and humane
masters, they gave themselves no trouble to grasp after a
freedom which was beyond their reach. So it is with us
to-day. We are happy and kindly treated (as witness our
reception here to-night), and in the enjoyment of the
numerous privileges which our chivalrous gentlemen are so
ready to accord; many of us who feel a wish for freedom, do
not venture even to whisper a single word about our rights.
For the last twenty-five years I have occasionally expressed
a desire to vote, and it was always received as a matter of
surprise, but the sort of effect produced was as different
as the characters of the individuals with whom I conversed.
* * * *
Gentlemen of the convention, we now leave our cause in your
hands, and commend it to your favorable consideration. We
have pointed out to you the signs of the dawning of a
better day for woman, which are so plain before our eyes,
and implore you to reach out your hand and help us up, that
we may catch the first glimpse of its glory before it floods
the world with noon-day light.[518]
Col. John M. Sandidge read a letter from Mrs. Sarah A.
Dorsey:
JUNE 11, 1879.
_Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention:_--Too weak
from recent illness and suffering to appear personally
before you by the side of the women of Louisiana who are
asking for the privilege and responsibility of political
suffrage, I am forced to use this mode of indorsing their
movement.
Being left by the fiat of God entirely alone in the world,
with no man to represent me, having large interests in the
State and no voice either in representation or taxation
while hundreds of my negro lessees vote and control my life
and property, I feel that I ought to say one word that may
perhaps aid many other women whom fate has left equally
destitute. It is doubtful whether I shall rise from my couch
of pain to profit by the gift should the men of Louisiana
decide to give the women of the State the right which is the
heritage of the Anglo-Saxon race--representation for
taxation. But still I ask it for my sisters and for the
future of the race. We women of Louisiana have always been
treated before the law as civil partners of our husbands. In
every respect our rights have been protected.
It needs but one more step to make us civilly free, and this
we ask you to embody in your new constitution. Many men are
not opposed to the fact of female suffrage, but to its mode
at present; that could be corrected, and women need not be
exposed to the coarseness and strife of the polls as they
are now conducted. There is no man among you who does not
believe his wife or his daughter intelligently capable of
taking a voice in the government. If my lessees are capable
of being citizens of Louisiana, it is because for thirty
years of my life and for five generations of my ancestors we
have interested ourselves in their civilization and in their
instruction. Gentlemen, we ask nothing that would unsex
ourselves. We do not expect to do man's work; we can never
pass the limits which nature herself has set. But we ask for
justice; we ask for removal of unnatural restrictions that
are contrary to the elemental spirit of the civil law; we do
not ask for rights, but for permission to assume our natural
responsibilities.
Praying that the hearts and minds of the men of Louisiana
may be moved toward this act of justice, I am, with profound
respect, your obedient servant,
SARAH A. DORSEY.
The Webster _Tribune_, Mr. Scanland, editor, of June 25, 1879,
shows the sensation created in the remotest parishes of Louisiana
by this hearing before the convention:
The ladies, it seems, are about walking up and demanding
enlarged liberties. We were under the impression that women
generally had about as much latitude as they wanted, but if
they desire more, the _Tribune_ says, in the name of
gallantry if not justice, let them have all they wish. There
is an element throughout the Union agitating the proposition
that they are entitled to vote because they are taxed. The
Constitution of the United States provides that no one shall
be taxed without representation. Representation is based on
population, and, of course, the ladies are enumerated; and
the "horrid men" claim that the ladies are represented
through them. This a great many repudiate, and their heads
are about level. When a man assumes to represent a woman, he
undertakes a larger contract than he imagines--something we
would not dream of attempting in a political or any other
sense.
The ladies who advocate female suffrage claim that as they
are governed by the laws they have a right to a voice in
making them. Many of the ablest women of this country hold
that belief, and of all our noble statesmen, not one has
advanced an answer to this demand--reasonable, if it does
come from women. A French essayist held that as women are a
part of society, they have a right to be judges of its
members, assist in making its laws, and condemn and punish
transgressors. They have their influence, but that is not so
effective as power. * * * * Some of the brightest intellects
that adorn the social circles throughout this country and
State hold these views and ably advance them. Among them in
this State are Mrs. E. L. Saxon, Mrs. Merrick, wife of
ex-Chief-Justice Merrick, and Mrs. Dr. Harriette Keating.
When our convention was discussing the suffrage question,
these ladies petitioned to be heard. Of course the request
was allowed. Last Tuesday evening the above-mentioned ladies
addressed the congress at length. Their speeches were able,
and the ideas they advanced were sound logic; but if carried
into effect may prove beneficial, and may not. Woman
suffrage is an experiment. Like everything else, we will
never know its effects until after it is tried. We only wish
that there were a few more men in that convention who could
make as able speeches as did these ladies--notwithstanding
the Utopian ideas advanced.
When the new constitution finally went forth, it contained, as
the result of all our arguments and appeals, but one little
concession:
ARTICLE 232. Women twenty-one years of age and upwards,
shall be eligible to any office of control or management
under the school laws of the State.
Judge I. F. Marshall of Catahoula parish, an accomplished
gentleman and able lawyer, suggested this article, and it was
presented and championed by Hon. F. L. Claiborne[519] of Pointe
Coupée. The women of Louisiana have never realized any advantage
from this law. All school offices are filled by appointment of
the governor, and there was no serious agitation for the
enforcement of this clause in the new constitution until the
autumn of 1885, when, in response to the demand that women should
be appointed on the school-board of New Orleans, Gov. McEnery,
through a correspondent of the _Times-Democrat_, gave his opinion
as follows:
If a married woman occupied an office under the school laws,
in which it was necessary to bring a suit to enforce some
right connected with it, she would have to get the consent
of her husband to bring the suit and join him with her.
There are only a few exceptional cases where the married
woman can legally act independently of her husband. Our code
so recognizes the paramount control of the husband that when
a widow, who is the tutor of her minor children, wishes to
marry, and gets the consent of a family meeting to be
retained in the tutorship, the code, article 255, says: Her
second husband becomes of necessity the co-tutor, and, for
the administration of the property subsequently to his
marriage, becomes bound _in solido_ with his wife. And so it
would be in the appointment of a married woman to a public
office. Her husband, of necessity, would share it with her;
would, in fact, be the officer. And as to unmarried women,
Article 232 does not repeal any of their disabilities. It
does not repeal the laws creating the essential differences
between men and women. It, as I stated, simply asserts a
right, and is inoperative until there is legislation to
enforce it.
The _Daily Picayune_ of November 16, under the head lines of
"Women as Members of School Boards," "The Law and the Facts in
the Case Presented by Mrs. Merrick," gives the following:
Last Thursday evening, November 12, a special meeting or
reception was held by the women's club at their rooms on
Baronne street. On this occasion the club was addressed by
Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick, a good and practical-minded friend
of the cause of woman. The 12th was the seventieth birthday
of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and a decorated picture of
the famous woman hung in the rooms. Mrs. Merrick read a
sketch of the life of Mrs. Stanton, but devoted the first
part of the evening to reading the following paper, the
matter of which is, of the keenest interest to all thinking
men and women in the State:
More than eighty thousand children attend the public schools
in Louisiana, and of this number one-half are girls, and of
the 389 teachers employed in the public schools of New
Orleans, 368 are women. It cannot be denied that these are
of equal concern and importance to the State with any like
number of boys and men, nor does it require any argument to
prove that mothers are best qualified to superintend and
look after the welfare of their own children. In view of
this fact the convention of 1879 embodied the following
article in the constitution of the State:
ARTICLE 232. Women 21 years of age and upward shall be
eligible to any office of control or management under the
school laws of this State.
Notwithstanding the absolute right conferred by this article
on women over twenty-one years of age, the chief executive
of the State, with his present views, is apparently
unwilling to make any appointment of women to such
management without further legislation. The views of the
Governor on all questions are always entitled to great
respect. The question is one of interpretation, and many of
the best lawyers in Louisiana do not hesitate to hold and
declare a different view.
I am told that there are in the various constitutions of the
States and general government two classes of provisions, the
one self-executing and absolute, and the other requiring
legislative action before they can be exercised. For example
of the first class, article 59 of the constitution declares
that "the supreme executive power of the State shall be
vested in a chief magistrate, who shall be styled the
Governor of Louisiana." Nobody would ever undertake to say
that the governor was dependent on any more legislation to
carry this into effect so as to enable him to fill his
office. If he were, it would then become necessary to
legislate about every other article, and so the constitution
would be worthless, everything being required to be done
over by the legislature before the constitution could have
any effect.
Article 232 of the constitution is imperative. It declares
that women over twenty-one years of age shall be eligible to
any office of control or management under the school laws of
the State. Can the legislature repeal or modify this
mandate? Of course not. Could the absoluteness of this right
be expressed in plainer or more energetic terms? No, indeed.
We are told and have been made to understand that it is a
right conferred by the constitution of the State, which
cannot be defeated or enlarged, or even abridged in any way
by the legislature; neither by modification, repeal, or
inaction. That this article being paramount law, itself
repeals all legislation inconsistent with it. The
constitution, I am told, prescribes the legal and other
qualifications for our judges of the courts. Nobody ever
thought legislative action was needed when their
qualifications are according to that instrument, to enable
them to take their places on the bench.
Article 185 of the constitution prescribes the
qualifications of voters or electors, and we are instructed
that all conflicting laws on that point are annulled by the
sovereign will of the people in convention assembled. In
fact, good lawyers have given us innumerable examples,
illustrations and decisions to this effect; and even women,
who are for the most part ignorant of the laws of their
State, begin to understand that they have a right to a place
on the school-board for some one of their own sex here in
Louisiana. True, it has been said that there are other
articles which are in conflict with article 232, but we are
told the other provisions of the constitution relate to
other and more general subjects, and on this very subject
the framers of the constitution have in very positive and
unmistakable terms declared its precise will, and it is
wasting time to try to explain it away. These wise jurists
do not fear to tell us further, that special laws or
provisions in a constitution or statute abrogate or limit
the general provisions in the same instrument.
We are sorry that our governor apprehends any difficulty
would arise in regard to married women being school
directors. He says the husband might change his domicile and
the wife would be obliged to follow him, and if bond were
required she could not sign it without his consent, and
finally the fact was she could not do _anything_ without the
husband's consent. Then "the husband would share the office
with her." I have heard that it was difficult to prevent
outside influences from operating upon the minds of men in
office. We have certainly heard some complaints of this
sort, but it seems that there would be no great danger
encountered from this source. The duties which this article
of the constitution permits women to perform are not
generally remunerative, and would be probably more a labor
of love than of reward. As to the other objections, perhaps
the husband _would_ sign his wife's bond, and perhaps he
would _not_ move away while she held the office. I have
heard that sheriffs sometimes run away after giving bond,
and people are sometimes elected to office and unable to
qualify, and others disappoint the public by resigning.
Moreover we have ascertained the fact that a tutrix may
subsequently marry, and that act does not prevent her from
filling the office of tutrix, neither does the fact of being
already married prevent her from discharging the duties of
tutrix. But I see no harm done if the husband should become
the assistant of his wife in this office. Is it not manifest
that the two together would have a superior official
knowledge of the needs and exigencies of the girls sent to
the public schools and the women who teach them daily, than
the husband could possibly attain by himself? But the whole
difficulty, it seems to us, might be obviated. Let the
governor appoint unmarried women. A woman who has been so
unfortunate as to be a widow would not be objectionable.
The article says: "Women over twenty-one years shall be
eligible" to these offices. It does not say the legislature
may make them "eligible." By its own inherent force it
declares them eligible. If they are really eligible, then
why not have them selected and appointed? They have every
requisite for the office, and as the dictionary says, are
"proper to be chosen." They are "qualified to be elected."
They are "legally qualified." They are eligible. It is not
at all likely that the legislature will ever do the vain
thing of affirming a constitutional right so explicitly
given.
The opposition of the executive, therefore, seems to be a
bar not only to this provision being carried out, but also
to the raising of any question under it for the
consideration of the judiciary. It is confidently hoped and
expected that he will consent to reconsider the whole
question. We feel sure the governor will not intentionally
be guilty of any injustice to the women of Louisiana, and
will not desire to withhold any benefit from them which has
already been conferred by the State constitution. Women all
over the Union rejoiced when this generous concession was
granted here in Louisiana. In many other States they enjoy
the same, and greater privileges, and letters and inquiries
have come from distant States, asking why this law has not
gone into effect. We are aware that any reform changing
existing conditions must move slowly, and is apt to be
unpopular with men in authority; then it also antagonizes
the inertia of women, who are too modest to thrust
themselves forward, saying, "I am ready to serve the State";
yet they know all the time they can do good service in
relation to the schools. Only give them a kindly helping
hand, and we feel sure that a valuable coöperating influence
will be felt, of which no one has ever dreamed in the past.
We leave this matter to the governor, to the citizens of
Louisiana, and to the fathers who take a deep interest in
the welfare of their daughters as well as of their sons.
Our legislature passed a law requiring physiology to be taught in
the public schools, while the vast majority of the teachers of
the State are women, and no college in which that science is
taught is open to them. In 1885, Dr. Chaillé gave a course of
free lectures on physiology and anatomy for the benefit of the
New Orleans teachers, who, while they are doing the most
important-public work in training the rising generation in the
rudiments of learning, are denied the advantages of the higher
education that would fit them for the duties of their profession.
A fitting precedent for the action of our rulers may be found in
Shakespeare's, "Titus Andronicus," in which rude men seize the
king's daughter, cut out her tongue and cut off her hands, and
then bid her go call for water and wash her hands.
The State Pharmaceutical Association, formed in 1882 with 110
members, unanimously elected Miss Eliza Rudolph a member. Miss
Rudolph was then the only woman in the drug business. Having been
refused admission to the medical college of the State University,
she perfected herself in pharmacy by a course of private
lectures. In 1884 she was elected corresponding secretary of the
association.
The _Daily Picayune_, in closing its half-century, gives the
following of Mrs. E. J. Nicholson, its chief owner and manager
since January, 1876:
"Pearl Rivers," the lady's _nom de plume_, was already well
known in the republic of letters before she became, as she
now is, the most eminent female journalist in the world,
largely owning and successfully directing for years a great
daily political journal. The fact is unique. The fame of
Mrs. Nicholson belongs to the world of letters and her
biography may be found in any dictionary of Southern
authors, nevertheless a history of the _Picayune_ would not
be complete without some notice of one who has had so much
to do with its destiny. Miss Eliza J. Poltevent is a native
of Hancock county, Mississippi. She was born on the banks of
one of the most beautiful streams in the South, Pearl river.
She wrote over the name of "Pearl Rivers," and her poems
made her a conspicuous niche in the temple of Southern
letters. She wrote much for the _Picayune_ and wrote herself
into love as well as fame. She was married to Col. Holbrook,
the proprietor of the paper, and after his death in 1876,
she succeeded to the ownership. This was a trying position
for a woman. The South had not recovered from the
devastation of the war, and the _Picayune_ was involved in
embarrassments. Friends even advised her to dispose of the
property and not to undertake so formidable a task as the
conduct of a daily paper under existing complications. Brave
and true-hearted, with a profound and abiding conviction of
her duty in the matter, she assumed the control of the
paper. She wisely surrounded herself with able and devoted
assistants, and with their help has gallantly and
successfully surmounted many formidable obstacles, until she
has seen the _Picayune_ reëstablished on a sound and
prosperous basis. Mr. George Nicholson had acquired a
proprietorship in it, and when Mrs. Holbrook assumed control
the firm name was E. J. Holbrook & Co. On June 28, 1878, the
interests of the two copartners were further consolidated by
marriage. Since then the _Picayune_ has been published under
the firm name of Nicholson & Co., and the columns daily
attest the energy, enterprise and ability with which it is
conducted, while its advertising patronage speaks for
itself.
Mrs. Martha R. Field is a member of the editorial staff of the
_Picayune_. She has charge of the Sunday woman's column, besides
her regular column over the _nom de plume_ of Catherine Cole.
The _Times-Democrat_ is owned by Mrs. Burke, who however leaves
its management to her husband, Col. Burke. Miss Bessie Bisland,
under the name of B. L. R. Dane, contributes to the Sunday paper,
and edits the "_Bric-a-Brac_ column" which consists of criticisms
and reviews of the leading magazines. This paper boasts the most
clever "Society column" in the country; it is edited by Mrs.
Jennie Coldwell Nixon who is now, 1886, superintendent of the
Woman's Department of the Exposition.
Mrs. J. Pinkney Smith edits the "Social Melange" of the _States_.
Among the regular Sunday contributors are Miss Corrinne
Castillanos, who buzzes as the Society Bee, and Mrs. Mollie Moore
Davis, known as the "Texas Song Bird." Mrs. Ada Hilderbrand,
editor of the _Courier_ at Gretna, did the printing for the
Woman's Exposition.
New Orleans has a Woman's National Press Association of which
Mrs. E. J. Nicholson is president; a Christian Woman's Exchange,
Mrs. R. M. Wamsley, president, doing a business of $45,000 a
year,[520] a Southern Art Union and Woman's Industrial
Association, with Mrs. J. H. Stauffer and others on the auxiliary
executive committee, and a Woman's Club,[521] originated by Miss
Bessie Bisland who was the president of the club for the first
year, 1885.
The laws of Louisiana relating to women have been given by Judge
E. T. Merrick, a well-known legal authority and for ten years the
chief-justice of the Supreme Court of the State:
The rights of married women to their estates are probably
better secured in Louisiana than in any other of these
United States. The laws on this subject are derived from
Spain. Certain provinces of that kingdom were conquered and
for centuries held by the Visigoths, among whom, as among
the Franks at Paris, the institution called the community of
aquets and gains between husband and wife, prevailed. In
Spain, as in France, there were certain provinces in which
the ancient Roman law continued in force, and they were
called the provinces of the written law. In these (called
also the countries of the _dotal regime_) there was no
community between the spouses of their acquisitions. Both of
these systems are recognized by the Louisiana civil code,
but if the parties marry without any marriage settlement the
law implies that they have married under the _regime_ of the
community. To prevent error it is proper to observe that
there have been three civil codes adopted in Louisiana,
viz., in 1808, 1825 and 1870. The marriage laws are
substantially the same in all, but bear different numbers in
each code. The following references are to the code of 1870.
Except in a very limited number of cases the husband and
wife are incapable of making binding contracts with each
other during the marriage. Hence all settlements of
property, to be binding, must be executed before marriage
and in solemn form, that is, before a notary and two male
witnesses having the proper qualifications. The betrothed
are granted considerable liberty over the provisions of
their marriage contract, as the following quotations show:
ART. 2,325. In relation to property, the law only regulates
the conjugal association in default of particular
agreements, which the parties are at liberty to stipulate as
they please, provided they be not contrary to good morals
and under the modifications hereafter prescribed.
ART. 2,326. Husband and wife can in no case enter into any
agreement or make any renunciation the object of which would
be to alter the legal order of descents, either with respect
to themselves, in what concerns the inheritance of their
children, posterity, or with respect to their children
between themselves, without prejudice to the donations
_inter vivas_ or _mortis causa_, which may take place
according to the formalities and in the cases determined by
this code.
The parties are also "prohibited from derogating from the
power of the husband over the person of his wife and
children which belongs to the husband as the head of the
family, or from the rights guaranteed to the surviving
husband or wife" (C. C., Art. 2,327).
If the parties adopt the _dotal regime_ in their marriage
contract the dotal effects are (except under some
circumstances) inalienable during marriage; and at the
dissolution of the marriage, they are to be replaced or
returned to the wife, or her heirs, and to secure this, the
wife has a mortgage on her husband's lands, and a privilege
on his movables, including those of the community (C. C.,
Art. 2376; Art. 2347). "The dower is given to the husband,
for him to enjoy the same as long as the marriage shall
last." Strong as is this language, the dowry is given by the
wife or her father or mother or other relations or friends,
simply to support the marriage.
Under the _regime_ of the community, the individual property
of the husband or wife, and all property either may acquire
afterwards by inheritance or donations re-remain separate
property. The conjugal partnership is defined by C. C., Art.
2402. "This partnership, or community, consists of the
profits of all the effects of which the husband has the
administration and enjoyment, either of right or in fact, of
the produce of the reciprocal industry and labor of both
husband and wife, and the estates which they may acquire
during marriage, either by donations made jointly to them
both, or by purchase, or in any other similar way, even
should the purchase be in the name of one of the two, and
not of both, because in that case the period of time when
the purchase is made is alone attended to, and not the
person who made the purchase."
During the marriage the husband has the management of the
community, and he can sell or exchange the same, but he
cannot give away the real estate without binding his estate
to recompense the wife or her heirs, for the one-half so
given away. All the income of his estate must enter into the
community. On the other hand the wife may at her pleasure
take her own estate from the management of the husband into
her own control and discretion (C. C. 2384). But in this
contingency she must contribute to the family expenses (C.
C. 2389 and 2435).
If the affairs of the husband become embarrassed, the wife
can sue the husband for a separation of property, and get a
judgment against him for all indebtedness, on account of
money or property used or disposed of by him, and sell him
out under execution, and buy in the property herself if she
sees fit. Thus she stands in a more favorable position
toward the community than the husband, who is bound for all
its debts, for she can stand by and choose. If the community
becomes prosperous, she has the absolute right, as owner, to
one-half of it after payment of debts, and a right to the
income of the other half until she dies, or marries a second
time.
By causing her claims on account of her separate or
paraphernal estate to be recorded, she secures a mortgage
against her husband's lands and the lands of the community.
If a husband or wife dies affluent, leaving the survivor in
necessitous circumstances, the latter can claim one-fourth
of the estate of the deceased. This is called "the marital
fourth." The wife, also, if she or the children do not
possess one thousand dollars in their own right, can claim
as a privilege and against the creditors, one thousand
dollars, or a sum which, with her own estate, shall equal
that amount.
The wife cannot appear in court, or dispose of, or mortgage,
or acquire real estate, without the consent of the husband,
but the judge of the court of the domicil may authorize the
wife to sue, or be sued. If the husband refuses to empower
the wife to contract, she may cite him into court and have
the property of the proposed contract settled by an order of
the judge. The wife has full power to make a will without
any authorization from her husband or the court.
ART. 2,398. The wife, whether separated in property, by
contract, or by judgment, or not separated, cannot bind
herself for her husband, nor conjointly with him, for debts
contracted by him before or during the marriage.
ART. 119. The husband and wife owe to each other mutual
fidelity, support and assistance.
ART. 120. The wife is bound to live with her husband, and
follow him wherever he chooses to reside; the husband is
obliged to receive her, and furnish her with whatever is
required for the convenience of life in proportion to his
means and condition.
It is provided that the domicil for granting divorces of
such marriages as have been solemnized in Louisiana, shall
be in that State so that the courts of Louisiana may grant
divorces for causes and faults committed in foreign
countries. For abandonment and other causes, a final divorce
cannot be granted until one year after a decree of
separation from bed and board has elapsed without a
reconciliation. In other particulars the law is similar to
that of the other States.
[Illustration: Caroline E. Merrick]
One day in 1842, the New Orleans _Delta_ had this item: "Myra Clark
Gaines argued her own case in court in this city; the only instance
of a lady appearing as counsel in the courts." Mrs. Gaines was a
remarkable woman. She carried on a suit for many years against the
city of New Orleans to recover property that belonged to her, and,
through untold difficulties and delays, triumphed at last. She
preserved her youth, beauty and vivacity until late in life. All
who knew her can readily recall her bright, sparkling face, and
wonderful powers of conversation. In her long experience in
litigation, she became well versed in the laws regarding real
estate and the right of descent. Mrs. Gaines was a generous woman
and did not desire to rob the poor; to many such she gave a
quit-claim title to the property which she had secured under her
suits.
In 1869, the New Orleans _Republican_ had an excellent editorial
fully endorsing the demand for woman's enfranchisement. In 1870 the
_Livingston Herald_, published in Ponchatoula parish, by J. O. and
J. E. Spencer, advocated suffrage for women.
In 1874, the secretary of the treasury rendered a decision that
when a woman owns a steamboat she may be named in the papers as the
master of the same. This decision, despite the opposition of
Solicitor Raynor, received confirmation in case of Mrs. Miller, in
1883, from Secretary Charles J. Folger.
II.--TEXAS.
In the adoption of the first constitution of Texas, woman had some
representatives in the convention to remind the legislators of that
State of her existence, and to demand that the constitution be so
framed as to secure the right of suffrage alike to both sexes. On
the resolution of Mr. Mundine, to extend suffrage to women, in the
constitutional convention of Texas, January, 1869, Hon. L. D. Evans
said:
I do not favor the adoption of this measure at the present time,
because the country is not yet prepared, yet it is entitled to
our respectful consideration--therefore I thank the convention
for allowing me the opportunity to state the ground on which the
friends of woman suffrage place their advocacy, so far as I may
be able under the five-minute rule. It does not comport with the
dignity of a representative body engaged in forming a
constitution of government to thrust aside the claim of woman to
the right of suffrage,--a claim that is advocated by some of the
ablest statesmen and political philosophers of Europe and
America, and is destined to a sure and speedy triumph.
Aristotle, the profoundest thinker of antiquity, in his treatise
on politics, defines a citizen to be "one who enjoys a due share
in the government of that country of which he is a member." If he
does not enjoy this right, then he is no citizen, but a subject.
Every citizen, therefore, is entitled to a voice--a vote--a due
share in the government of his country. I am aware that the
courts and politicians in democratic America have not so defined
citizenship. The reason is that politics is not yet a positive
science, and they have failed to analyze this question. Had they
a clear conception of the constituent elements--the anatomy, so
to speak, of the body politic, they would perceive that
suffrage--a voice in the government--is an essential condition of
citizenship. Aristotle, in his treatise, which is perhaps the
ablest yet given to the world, pointed out that families, not
individuals, are the constituent units of a State.
A family--a household--exists and is held together by natural
laws, independent of the State, and an aggregation of these
constitute the State. The head of the family, whoever that may
be, according to its structure, is the representative in the
State. All the constituent members of the family, consisting, in
its most perfect form, of husband, wife, children and domestics,
are subject to the authority of the head, and have no voice, no
vote, no share in the government, except through their head or
representative. In societies where the common law obtains, which
in this respect is a transcript of the Bible, the wife, like the
child, is subordinated to the authority of the husband, and on
principle, has no voice, no vote. On the decease of the husband,
the widow becomes the head of the family, and on principle is
entitled to a voice, a vote. But in countries where the civil law
governs, the wife is the partner, and not the subject of her
husband, and on principle ought to have her due share in the
government.
When the children in a family, whether male or female, attain the
age fixed by law for the control of their own affairs, and do
control them, they are free, independent, and on every principle
are entitled to a due share in the government--to a vote. Every
member of society who is free and independent--capable of
managing his own affairs, or making his own living, and does make
it, should have the same right of choice in the selection of his
political agents that he has to select his legal or business
agents. But all persons, no matter from what cause, who are
unable to maintain themselves, and are dependent for their
support upon others, are incapable of any share in the
government, and should have no voice--no vote. As soon as the
principle of citizenship comes to be thoroughly understood, woman
suffrage must be adopted throughout the United States, in
England, and in every country where representative government
exists.
_The Revolution_ of August 20, 1868, said:
We have received from Loring P. Haskins, esq., a delegate to the
convention, the following excellent report and declaration made
and signed by a majority of the committee to whom the subject of
woman suffrage was referred. We need scarcely bespeak attentive
reading:
_Report of the Committee on State Affairs upon Female
Suffrage, with accompanying Declaration:_
July 30, 1868--Introduced and ordered to be printed.
COMMITTEE ROOM, AUSTIN, Texas, July 10, 1868.
_To the Hon. E. J. Davis, President of the Convention:_
A majority of your Committee on State Affairs, to whom was
referred the declaration introduced by the Hon. T. H.
Mundine of the county of Burleson, to extend the right of
suffrage to all citizens of the State over the age of
twenty-one years, possessing the requisite qualifications
for electors, have examined with much care said declaration
and considered the object sought to be accomplished, and
have arrived at the conclusion that said declaration ought
to be a part of the organic law.
It was said by George Washington that the safety of
republican government depends upon the virtue and
intelligence of the people. This declaration is not a new
theory of government for the first time proposed to be made
a part of our republican institutions. The idea of extending
the elective franchise to females has been discussed both in
Great Britain and in the United States. Your committee are
of the opinion that the true base of republican government
must ever be the wisdom and virtue of the people.
In this State our system of jurisprudence is a combination
of civil and Spanish law, intermixed with the common law of
England; and this peculiar system, just in all its parts for
the preservation of the rights of married and unmarried
women, is likely to be continued. The time was when woman
was regarded as the mere slave of man. It was believed, in
order to perpetuate the pretended divine right of kings to
rule, that the mass of the people should be kept in profound
ignorance and that woman was not entitled to the benefits of
learning at all. It is not remarkable that as the benign
principles of Christianity have been promulgated, free
government has steadily progressed and the divine rights of
woman have been recognized.
The old constitution of the republic of Texas, the
constitution of the State of Texas of 1845, the laws enacted
for the protection of married women, the many learned
decisions of the Supreme Courts of Texas and Louisiana, and
other courts, clearly indicate that the march of
intelligence is onward and that our advanced civilization
has approximated to the period when other and more sacred
rights are to be conceded. Is it just that woman, who bears
her reasonable portion of the burdens of government, should
be denied the right of aiding in the enactment of its laws?
The question of extending the freedom of the ballot to woman
may well claim the attention of the law-maker, and in view
of the importance of the subject a majority of your
committee earnestly recommend the passage of the
declaration.
H. C. HUNT, _Chairman_,
T. H. MUNDINE, BENJ. WATROUS,
WM. H. FLEMING, L. P. HARRIS.
A DECLARATION.
Be it declared by the people of Texas in convention
assembled, that the following shall be a section of the
constitution of the State of Texas, known as section ---- of
article ----: Every person, without distinction of sex, who
shall have arrived at the age of twenty-one years, and who
shall be a citizen of the United States, or is at the time
of the adoption of this constitution by the congress of the
United States a citizen of the State of Texas, and shall
have resided in this State one year next preceding an
election, and the last six months within the district,
county, city or town in which he or she offers to vote,
shall be an elector.
The _Woman's Journal_ of December 4, 1875, contains a letter from
Mrs. Sarah W. Hiatt, who presented a memorial to the constitutional
convention. The memorial was referred to the Committee on Suffrage.
In regard to the effect, she says:
Since the presentation of the memorial I have had some very
interesting letters on the subject from a few of our leading men;
some for, others against woman suffrage, but all treating the
subject respectfully. I copy below a portion of one just
received. I should like to give it entire with the writer's name,
but have not his permission to do so:
As you apprehended, the question of suffrage had been
definitely settled in the convention before the reception of
your letter. It remains as heretofore, unrestricted manhood
suffrage. That all the rabble, the very _débris_ of society,
should be allowed a voice in government, and yet
intelligent, highly-cultivated women who are amenable to the
laws of the State and who own and pay taxes on property,
should be debarred from a voice in making the laws which are
to affect their persons and property equally with that of
the men, is to my mind simply an outrage on reason and
justice. * * * The fear of ignoring the right of petition,
and gallantry towards your sex on the part of a few,
prevented the memorial from being summarily rejected.
Outside of ---- and ---- I know of no member of the
convention who openly favors woman suffrage in any form. It
is true there are a number of gentlemen who, in private
conversation, will admit the justice of your plea, but avoid
it by saying that ladies generally neither demand nor desire
the right to vote. The truth is, these men (and society is
full of them) have not the moral courage to do simple
justice.
Thus you see that, so far as the action of this convention is
concerned, our cause is defeated. Yet I do not feel discouraged.
I think there is hardly a State in the Union that has such just
and excellent laws concerning the property rights of women as
Texas. There is also great liberality of sentiment here
concerning the avocations of women. But the right of women to the
ballot seems to be almost a new idea to our people. I have never
lived in a community where the women are more nearly abreast of
the men in all the activities of life than here in this frontier
settlement. In our State a woman's property, real or personal, is
her own, to keep, to convey, or to bequeath. The unusual number
of widows here, due to the incursions of the Indians during and
since the war, has made the management as well as the ownership
of property by women so common a thing as to attract no notice. I
might give interesting instances, but that would take time, and
my point is this, that the laws which have enabled, and the
circumstances which have driven women to rely upon and to exert
themselves, have been educational, not only to them, but also to
the community. The importance of this education to the
future--who can measure it? It is true that many of them can
neither read nor write, but in this the men are not in advance of
them. It as often happens that the woman can read while the man
cannot, as the reverse. And they are almost universally resolved
that their children shall not grow up in the ignorance that has
been their portion. If the women could vote, our convention would
not think of submitting a constitution that did not secure to the
State a liberal free school system.
The legislature of 1885, after a hard struggle, enacted a law
making it compulsory on the heads of all departments to give at
least one-half of the clerical positions in their respective
offices to women. The action has extraordinary interest, and is
regarded as a victory for the woman's rights party. Mrs. Jenny
Bland Beauchamp of Dennison writes:
Texas claims to be a woman's State, in that her laws are
unusually just and lenient to women. A woman who has property at
marriage can keep it. She can even claim any property that she
can prove was bought with that money. The wife is entitled to
half the community whether she owned any of the original stock or
not. She has a life interest in the homestead; no deed of trust
can be put upon it, nor can it be mortgaged. It can only be
conveyed from her by actual sale with her written consent. Under
our latest revised statutes women have the right of suffrage, but
have never exercised it; nor is the subject agitated to any great
extent.
Three years ago, when the State University was built, it was
decided that it should be coëducational, and young women are now
being educated there side by side with young men. Texas has many
liberal men and women. It is generally remarked that the women of
the State are better educated than the men.
Miss Julia Pease, a Vassar graduate and daughter of the late
ex-Governor Pease, has charge of 6,000 acres of land. She
lives in the family mansion at Austin with her mother, and
in addition to her other duties superintends the education
of the three children of her deceased sisters.
Mrs. Rogers, the "cattle queen" of Texas, inherited from her
first husband a herd of 40,000 cattle. The widow managed the
business, and in due time married a preacher twenty years
younger than herself, who had seven children. She attends to
her estate herself, rides among her cowboys on horseback,
and can tell just what a steer or cow is worth at any size
or age.
The largest individual sheep-owner is a woman, known all
over the State as the "Widow Cullahan." Her sheep, more than
50,000 in number, wander over the ranges of Uvalda and
Bandern counties, in the southwestern part of the State.
Their grade is a cross between the hardy Mexican sheep and
the Vermont merino. They are divided into flocks of 2,000
head each, with a "bossero" and two "pastoras" in charge of
each flock. At the spring and fall shearings long trains of
wagons transport the "widow's" wool to the market at San
Antonio.
Texas has two female dentists. Mrs. Stocking is one of the
most successful dental surgeons in the State. The other,
Miss Emma Tibler, went from Kentucky to Texas for the
purpose of teaching. Finding this profession full, she
studied dentistry and is now a successful practitioner of
Cleburne.
The youngest telegrapher in the world is probably Hattie
Hutchinson, in charge of an office in Texas. She is only ten
years old.
III.--ARKANSAS.
Under date of March, 1868, Miles L. Langley writes from
Arkadelphia, Arkansas, in regard to the efforts for equality in the
constitutional convention:
ARKADELPHIA, Ark., March 5, 1868.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY--_Dear Friend_: With a sad heart but an
approving conscience, I will give you some information relative
to the action of our constitutional convention on the franchise
question.
The new constitution--a copy of which I send you--makes no
difference between men, on account of race or color and contains
other excellences; but alas! it fails to guarantee to woman her
God-given and well-earned rights of civil and political equality.
I made a motion to insert in the constitution a section to read
thus: "All citizens twenty-one years of age, who can read and
write the English language, shall be eligible to the elective
franchise, and be entitled to equal political and legal rights
and privileges." The motion was seconded and I had the floor,
but the House became so clamorous that the president could not
restore order, and the meeting adjourned with the understanding
that I was to occupy the floor next morning. But next morning,
just as I was about to commence my speech, some of the members
tried to "bully" me out of the right to speak on that question. I
replied that I had been robbed, shot, and imprisoned for
advocating the rights of the slaves, and that I would then and
there speak in favor of the rights of women if I had to fight for
the right! I then proceeded to present arguments of which I am
not ashamed. I was met with ridicule, sarcasm and insult. My
ablest opponent, a lawyer, acknowledged in his reply that he
could not meet my argument. The motion was laid on the table.
The Democrats are my enemies because I assisted in emancipating
the slaves. The Republicans have now become my opponents, because
I have made an effort to confer on the women their rights. And
even the women themselves fail to sympathize with me.
Very respectfully, MILES L. LANGLEY.
The Arkansas _Ladies' Journal_ says:
They tell us that women are not fit for politics. This may
be true; and as it is next to impossible to change the
nature of a woman, why wouldn't it be a good idea to so
change politics that it shall be fit for women?
In 1885, Arkansas formed its first woman suffrage society at
Eureka Springs through the efforts of Miss Phoebe Couzins, Mrs.
Lizzie D. Fyler, president. The association numbers some fine
speakers. The press is not in opposition, one or two papers favor
the cause.
Misses Pettigrew and Sims have been elected clerks of the
legislature. Several other ladies were candidates for the
positions, and the contest was quite exciting. Mrs. Simonson and
Miss Emily Thomas are members of the board of directors of a
lumber company at Batesville, and Miss Thomas is also bookkeeper
of the firm.
A very able report[522] of what has been done in Arkansas for the
elevation of woman was presented by Mrs. Lizzie D. Fyler at the
annual Washington convention in March, 1884.
IV.--MISSISSIPPI.
Mississippi secures to a married woman her own separate estate, and
enables her to contract with her husband, or others, and carry on
business in her own name. She may sue her husband, or others, and
be sued, and has practically most of her civil rights; but her
political rights are denied as in all other States.
In 1877 a law was passed by which henceforth no one can legally
sell liquor in Mississippi unless he can obtain the written
consent of a majority of the adult citizens of both sexes
resident in the township.
The Mississippi Industrial College for Women held its formal
opening October 22, 1885, at Columbus. Students had come from all
parts of the State. More than 300 had already entered. The
occasion was a brilliant one. Speeches were made by Senator E.
T. Sykes, Senator J. McMcartin of Claiborne county, Col. J. L.
Power of Jackson, Hon. James T. Harrison, Governor Lowry, and Dr.
Jones. Mrs. E. G. Peyton of Hazelhurst, to whose efforts the
founding of the Industrial College is largely due, was called
upon, and in a few well-chosen remarks expressed the pride she
felt in the State and in the college, feeling sure, she said,
that Mississippi's daughters were now in safe hands.
Miss Lilian Light, the eight-year-old daughter of Mr. Jere Light
of Hayneville, when only five or six years old began to make
figures in clay, and now (1885) has a large collection of mud
cats, hogs, dogs, cows, horses, and men. The figures are declared
to be not childish imitations, but remarkably acute likenesses.
Her best piece represents a negro praying, and is said to be very
clever.
Miss C. F. Boardman of Elmore's Point, two miles from Biloxi, on
the Bock Bay, has received the chief premiums awarded for oranges
grown on the Gulf coast outside of Florida. This lady has 1,000
bearing orange trees of the choicest varieties, and has devoted
her attention to the production of these and other tropical
fruits, with great success. She came to the South for health a
few years ago, and has not only found that, but has established
for herself a pleasing and profitable industry in fruit culture.
Her oranges were exhibited among numerous fine competing
specimens, and were chosen for high excellence.
Miss Eliza A. Dupuy for many years contributed copiously to Mr.
Bonner's _Ledger_. Miss Dupuy, who was descended from prominent
Virginia families, was in her youth a teacher. The first story
written by her was produced when she was only fourteen years old.
More fortunate than the majority of authors, she leaves behind
her a considerable sum earned by her ever-busy pen.
Mrs. Sarah A. Dorsey was perhaps the most remarkable woman that
Mississippi can boast. She was the niece of Mrs. Warfield, the
author of the "Household of Bouverie," who had great influence in
forming her literary tastes. The New Orleans Monthly _Review_
contains many able articles on abstruse questions from her pen.
One, in the February number for 1876, on the "Origin of the
Species," is exceptionally able and interesting. It was read in
October, 1875, before the New Orleans Academy of Sciences by Mrs.
Dorsey herself. This article shows extensive reading in scientific
questions. She was made corresponding member of the Academy, an
honor she appreciated more highly for her sex than for herself. She
was a large-souled, noble woman, devoted to what she considered
Southern interests. She bequeathed to Jefferson Davis the estate,
called Beauvoir, on which he now resides.
FOOTNOTES:
[516] Emily P. Collins of Ponchatoula, Louisiana, wrote Miss
Anthony: "Our State is to form a new constitution this spring. I
feel that now if ever is the time to strike for woman's
emancipation. 'We, the people' includes women as well as men, and
regardless of former legislative enactments we should be allowed to
vote and be voted for as delegates to the constitutional
convention. If I only had some one to aid me, or had your moral
courage, I would proclaim myself a candidate for the constitutional
convention. The colored people ought to sustain me for I have ever
been their steadfast friend, and they themselves owe their
emancipation chiefly to women. They cannot elect a colored man
here, but could I have their support I have personal friends enough
to secure my election. The parish ought to be stumped in support of
some candidate whose efforts should be pledged to the insertion of
a clause in the new constitution to prohibit future legislatures
making sex a qualification for voting."
[517] The following letter from Mrs. Saxon to Mrs. Minor gives the
reason why she could not be present at the National Convention held
in St. Louis:
"Almost entirely unaided I have gained 300 names in five weeks.
Among them two Presbyterian ministers, wives of three others, seven
of the most prominent physicians, all of the city administrators,
two distinguished judges, several lawyers and many leading business
men. I have begged Mrs. Emily P. Collins to urge upon the
Association to meet here next year. I feel that now and before this
convention is our most important work, so I must stay and try and
influence the members all in my power. I was unaware of the action
I was to take here, and if I get before the convention it will not
be before the morning of the 7th, or I would come anyway as I have
been offered a free passage by both rail and river. Mrs. Collins
was with me for a few days and will assure you of my untiring
efforts in the cause here. God knows I would be willing to buy
fifteen minutes before the whole convention, the day they vote on
that bill, by the sacrifice of my life; for remembering the grand
women I have seen sacrificed along life's path, I think from their
memory a power and eloquence would spring that might win hearts of
steel and force justice to women from them. I will write again in a
few days and report progress.
"Very sincerely your friend, E. L. SAXON."
"_May 5, 1879._"
[518] Of her speech Mrs. Merrick writes: "Fearing that I could not
be heard, I proposed to my son-in law, Mr. Guthrie, that he should
read it for me, but Mrs. Saxon objected, saying, 'No matter if they
do not hear a word you say! You do not wish a man to represent you
at the polls; represent yourself now, if you only stand up and move
your lips.' 'I will,' said I, 'you are right.'--[EDITORS.
[519] The Claibornes are a distinguished Virginia family, but
belong to the history of Mississippi and Louisiana since
territorial times. Mr. Claiborne now regrets that he did not go
farther, for he is satisfied that women may be trusted with powers
that have long been withheld. He says he was led to reflect
seriously on the subject by the able addresses of Mrs. Keating,
Mrs. Saxon and Mrs. Merrick, who made a profound impression on the
convention.
[520] The officers of the Christian Woman's Exchange for 1885,
were: _President_, Mrs. R. M. Walmsley; _Vice-Presidents_, Mesdames
T. G. Richardson, M. W. Bartlett, Albert Baldwin, John R. Juden, J.
H. Allen; _Recording Secretary_, Mrs. Theo. Auze; _Corresponding
Secretary_, Mrs. E. J. Wharton; _Treasurer_, Mrs. S. H. Davis;
_Acting Treasurer_, Mrs. F. N. Griswold; _Board of Managers_,
Mesdames S. Landrum, M. C. Jennings, B. D. Wood, A. Brittin, Percy
Roberts, S. Delgado, F. N. Griswold, E. L. Wood, Wm. Muller, E.
Ranlett, G. W. Pritchard, L. P. Wayne, T. H. Holmes, J. B. Wallace,
Albert Baldwin, P. N. Strong, K. Fuhri, S. H. Kennedy, H. J. Leovy,
John Parker, R. M. Walmsley, T. G. Richardson, Theo. Auze, E. J.
Wharton, S. H. Davis. M. W. Bartlett, D. A. Given, John R. Juden,
J. H. Allen, Fred. Wing.
[521] The original members of the Woman's Club were: Miss Bessie
Bisland, Mrs. Elizabeth W. Baker, Miss C. Farrar, Mrs. J. M.
Ferguson, Miss M. E. Hagan, Miss J. E. Linsler, Miss H. D. Pickens,
Miss M. Siebold, Mrs. M. J. C. Swayze, Miss E. Schrieves, Miss M.
Manning, Miss P. Teiltebaum.
[522] See Report Washington Convention, 1884.
CHAPTER LV. (CONTINUED).
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA--MARYLAND--DELAWARE--KENTUCKY--TENNESSEE--
VIRGINIA--WEST VIRGINIA--NORTH CAROLINA--SOUTH CAROLINA--FLORIDA--
ALABAMA--GEORGIA.
Secretary Chase--Women in the Government Departments--Myrtilla
Miner--Mrs. O'Connor's Tribute--District of Columbia Suffrage
Bill--The Universal Franchise Association, 1867--Bill for a
Prohibitory Law Presented by Hon. S. C. Pomeroy, 1869--A Bill for
Equal Wages for the Women in the Departments, Introduced by Hon.
S. M. Arnell, 1870--In 1871 Congress Passed the Organic Act for
the District Confining the Right of Suffrage to Males--In 1875 it
Withdrew all Legislative Power from the People--Women in Law,
Medicine, Journalism and the Charities--Dental College Opened to
Women--Mary A. Stuart--The Clay Sisters--The School of
Pharmacy--Elizabeth Avery Meriwether--Judge Underwood--Mary
Bayard Clarke--Dr. Susan Dimock--Governor
Chamberlain--Coffee-Growing--Priscilla Holmes Drake--Alexander H.
Stephens.
I.--DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.
The District covers an area of 64 square miles, and contains a
population of 200,000. It was originally a portion of Maryland, and
was ceded to congress by that State for the exclusive use of the
Federal government. Hon. Salmon P. Chase, secretary of the treasury
under Abraham Lincoln, seeing that most of the gifted young men had
been drafted or had enlisted in the army, introduced young women as
clerks in the government departments. The experiment proved
successful, and now there are about six thousand women in the
various departments. Mr. Chase often alluded to this afterwards as
one of the most important acts of his life. The war brought many
bright, earnest women to Washington, led thither by patriotism,
ambition, or the necessity of finding some new employment. This new
vital force, this purer element, infused into the society at the
capitol, has been slowly introducing more liberal ideas into that
community.
The first specific work for woman in the District of Columbia of
which we find any record was that of Myrtilla Miner of New York,
who opened a Normal School for colored girls, December 3, 1851. She
began with six pupils in a small room in a private house, but soon
had more offered than could be accommodated. Through much ridicule
and untold difficulties she struggled alone, but successfully, for
ten years, when Miss Emily Howland came to her aid. The heroism of
this noble woman has been told by Mrs. Ellen O. Connor in a little
volume[523] which is a beautiful tribute to the memory of Miss
Miner. The Miner Normal School of Washington is now a thorough and
popular school for colored girls.
For a brief report of what has been accomplished in the District of
Columbia, we are indebted to Belva A. Lockwood:
In 1866, the women of Washington were first aroused to the
consideration of the suffrage question, by the discussion of "The
District of Columbia suffrage bill" proposing to strike out the
word "white" in order to extend the franchise to colored men. Mr.
Cowan, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, offered an amendment to
strike out the word "male" also, and thus enfranchise the women
of the District. It was said his proposition was not made in good
faith, but simply to embarrass Republican legislation. However it
served a good purpose for all disfranchised classes, as the
amendment called out a notable debate,[524] lasting three days,
and received the votes of nine influential senators in its favor.
The voting of the newly enfranchised negroes at the May election,
1867, brought out in strong color the beauties of masculine
legislation, and immediately after there was a movement among the
friends of woman's enfranchisement. A meeting was called by James
and Julia Holmes at their residence, where the "Universal
Franchise Association" was organized.[525] As soon as their
meetings, regularly held, took on a serious air, the combined
power of the press was brought to bear upon them with the
determination to break them up. But the meetings were continued,
notwithstanding the opposition; and although most of the speeches
were good, they were often interrupted with hisses and yells, and
the police, when appealed to, failed to keep order, seeming
rather to join hands with the mob. In order to put a check on the
rabble, contrary to the spirit of the society, a fee was charged
at the door. Strangely enough, so great had the interest become,
the crowd increased instead of lessening, and night after night
Union League Hall was crowded, until the coffers of the
association contained nearly $1,000. The press of the city in the
meantime had kept up a fusilade of ludicrous reports, in which
the women were caricatured and misrepresented, all of which they
bore with fortitude, and without any attempt at reply. The
meetings continued through the year notwithstanding the cry of
the timid that the cause was being injured and fair reputations
blighted.
June 25, 1868, a deputation from the District Franchise
Association appeared, by appointment, before the House Committee
of the District, to urge the passage of the bill presented in the
House of Representatives by Hon. Henry D. Washburn, accompanied
by a petition signed by eighty women of the District:
"Be it enacted, etc., That from and after the passage of
this act, no person shall be debarred from voting or holding
office in the District of Columbia by reason of sex."
Mrs. Josephine S. Griffing began by saying that the friends
of equal freedom for women in the District had thought the
revision of the local government a fit time to present their
claims and submit a memorial, setting forth the justice of
passing the bill before the committee to remove the
restrictions that forbid women to vote in the District. The
movement was not wholly new, and was known by those active
in the work to be approved by a large mass of women who were
not prepared to express themselves openly. The
enfranchisement of woman is needful to a real
reconstruction.
Mr. Wilcox read a memorial, signed by a committee of
residents of the district, consisting of eleven ladies and
eleven gentlemen, including Mrs. Griffing, Mrs. E. D. E. N.
Southworth, Miss Lydia S. Hall (formerly of Kansas), Mrs.
Annie Denton Cridge, Judge A. B. Olin and Mrs. Olin,
recalling the fact that congress had freed 3,000 slaves, and
enfranchised the 8,000 colored men of the district, both of
which experiments had worked well, notwithstanding
conservative predictions to the contrary; and showing that,
while the former experiments, on a small scale
comparatively, had yielded rich results, so the
enfranchisement of half the adult population would produce
vast good. He incidentally answered the usual arguments
against suffrage, and affirmed that those who possess
neither the power of wealth nor of knowledge wherewith to
protect themselves, most need political power for that
purpose. He remarked that the competition for votes among
politicians was a tremendous educating force, and that laws
would not be certain of enforcement unless those for whose
benefit they were made were clothed with power to compel
such enforcement.
Mrs. Mary T. Corner presented a number of points as to the
laws of the district relating to women, of some of which
Judge Welker took notes with a view to their speedy
investigation by the committee. As to suffrage, she pointed
out that women do not come under the head of paupers,
minors, felons, rebels, idiots or aliens, and that the
reasons existing for the disfranchisement of such persons do
not apply to native-born, loyal women. She showed that women
are not represented in the government of the district,
though taxed by it, and by law cannot properly protect
themselves, their children, or their property, nor hold
municipal office, however fit. A wife cannot hold property
in the district except by proxy. Women understand their
needs and condition better than men, and should be free to
regulate them. The swarms of foreigners who are freely
admitted to the polls know less of our institutions than the
masses of our women. Women have voted and held the highest
offices in other countries with great success. Are our women
less capable than these? At the conclusion Mrs. Corner
returned thanks to the committee for their attention; and
the latter, without expressing an opinion on the matter,
complimented the speakers on the ability and eloquence with
which their views had been presented. It was also stated
that a large number of petitions would be presented in
support of the bill. The committee expressed themselves as
unable, by reason of the lateness of the session and the
pressure of other business, to promise an early report. The
interview lasted about an hour, and was very cordial and
pleasant on both sides.
September 25, 1868, the Universal Franchise Association held its
first annual meeting[526] at Union League Hall, Mrs. Josephine S.
Griffing presiding. A letter was read from Senator Pomeroy,
stating that he was willing to act as president of the society.
In closing he said:
I trust the friends will unite in one association. We have
but one object in view, and should all labor together to
accomplish this end, viz.: the enfranchisement of every
citizen, with no partiality for race or sex. The American
citizen is the only safe depository for the ballot, and the
only safeguard for individual and national liberty. Let us
labor to realize, even in our day and time, this true type
of republican government. The rights and safety of
individuals and of the nation demand it.
In 1869, the executive committee passed a resolution to expend
the money that had been accumulated at the meetings of the
association in a series of lectures for the purpose of
enlightening the public mind upon the question of equal political
rights for women. Among the speakers engaged were Anna Dickinson,
Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, D. R. Locke (Nasby), Theodore Tilton.
From that time the women of the district were permitted to speak
their minds freely.
In the House of Representatives, March 21, 1870, Mr. Arnell, on
leave, introduced the following bill:
_A bill to do justice to the female employees of the
Government, and for other purposes._
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled, That
hereafter all clerks and other employes in the civil service
of the United States shall be paid, irrespective of sex,
with reference to the character and amount of services
performed by them.
SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That, in the employment
of labor, clerical or other, in any branch of the civil
service of the United States, no discrimination shall be
made in favor of either sex.
SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That where examinations
of candidates for positions in the civil service of the
United States are prescribed by law, or by the heads of
departments, bureaus, or offices, said examinations shall be
of the same character for persons of both sexes.
SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That the designations,
chief clerk, chief or head of division, chief or head of
section, clerk of the fourth class, clerk of the third
class, clerk of the second class, clerk of the first class,
copyist, messenger, laborer, and all other designations of
employes, in existing acts of Congress, or in use in any
branch of the civil service of the United States, shall be
held, hereafter to apply to women as well as to men; and
that women shall be regarded equally eligible with men to
perform the duties of the afore-designated clerks and
employes, and shall receive the compensation therefor
prescribed by law.
SEC. 5. And be it further enacted, That this act shall not
be so construed as to require the displacement of any person
now employed, but shall apply to all vacancies hereafter
occurring, for any cause.
SEC. 6. And be it further enacted, That all acts and parts
of acts, in conflict with any of the provisions of this act
be, and the same are hereby, expressly repealed.
Thousands of petitions for this bill were circulated. Mrs.
Lockwood went to New York, and secured seven hundred signatures,
visiting both of the suffrage conventions then in session in that
city, the National and the American. The bill was shortly
afterward passed in a modified form, and has ever since been in
force in all of the government departments.
In February, 1871, congress passed the organic act for the
district, making of it a territory and granting suffrage to the
male members of the commonwealth. There was also granted under
this bill a right to a delegate in congress. In the meetings
which followed for the nomination of delegates a number of women
took part. Mrs. Lockwood often broke the monotony with a short
speech, and on one occasion only lacked one vote of an election
to the general convention for the nomination of a delegate to
congress.
The women of the district were not permitted to vote under the
organic act, but soon after the organization of its legislature,
bills to provide for this were introduced into both Houses. Mrs.
Lockwood prepared an exhaustive address upon these pending bills,
and was granted a hearing before both Houses of the legislature,
but they were finally lost. In 1875 congress withdrew the
legislative power from the people of the District of Columbia.
It was also in 1871 that the National University Law School, then
principally under the control of Prof. Wm. B. Wedgewood,
organized a law class for women, in which fifteen matriculated.
Mrs. Lockwood had been denied admission the previous year to the
law class of Columbia College for the reason, as given by the
trustees, "that it would distract the attention of the young
men." About this time a young colored woman, Charlotte Ray of New
York, was graduated from the law class of Howard University and
admitted to the bar with the class. Of the fifteen women who
entered the National University only two completed the course,
viz., Lydia S. Hall, and Belva A. Lockwood. The former never
received her diploma. The latter, after an appeal to President
Grant, received her diploma, and was admitted to the district
bar, September 23, 1873. Since that period Emma M. Gillett,
Marilla M. Ricker, and Laura DeForce Gordon have been admitted to
the district bar, and there seems to be no longer any hindrance
to such admissions. The above-named have all appeared in court,
and a number of other ladies have been graduated in the district.
Women have also been appointed notaries public, and examiners in
chancery.
In the profession of medicine there has been more liberality. Dr.
Susan A. Edson and Dr. Caroline B. Winslow have been in full
practice here since the close of the war. Dr. Mary Parsons and
Dr. Cora M. Bland and others, are practicing with marked success.
Last year there were fourteen women duly registered with the
health department, and they all seem to be in good standing.
Howard University has admitted women to its medical classes for
some years, and both white and colored women have availed
themselves of the privilege. Last year Columbia College opened
its doors in the medical department, with a suggestion that the
classes in law and theology may soon be opened also.
Many women in the district within the last few years have entered
into business for themselves, as they are now permitted to do
under the law of 1869, and are milliners, merchants,
market-women, hucksters. In the art of nursing, which has been
reduced to a science, they have free course.
In 1871, a large number of ladies tried to register in the city
of Washington. They marched in solid phalanx some seventy[527]
strong to the registrar's office, but were repulsed. They tried
afterwards to vote, but were refused, whereupon Mrs. Spencer sued
the inspectors, and Mrs. Webster sued the registrars, so testing
their rights in two suits in the Supreme Court of the
District.[528]
In 1866 Jane G. Swisshelm commenced the publication of a liberal
sheet in the District of Columbia, known as _The Wasp_. This was
the continuation of a paper formerly published by her in
Pittsburg, Pa., and in St. Cloud, Minn., called _The Visitor_.
Many other papers by women have been since published in the
District. Perhaps the most voluminous author in this country is
Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, who has written a volume for each
year of her life, and is now sixty-five years of age. Her
authorship has been confined to romances, which have been very
popular. A large proportion of the teachers of the public schools
in the District are women, some of them of very marked culture.
Many of the most noted and successful private schools, some with
collegiate courses, are conducted by women. Among these, Mrs.
Margaret Harover who taught in the District during the war, is
worthy of mention, also Mrs. Ellen M. O'Connor, president of the
Miner school. Mrs. Sarah J. Spencer, as associate principal of
the Spencerian business college whence large classes of young
women have been graduated for many years past, is deservedly
popular. She was at one time prominent in the woman suffrage
movement, acting as corresponding secretary of the National
Association. She is now engaged in one of the large charity
organizations of the city. Many colored women who have been
graduated from Howard University, have become quite successful as
teachers, and some have studied medicine. All of the copyists in
the office of registrar of deeds are women. A goodly number are
short-hand reporters for the courts, among whom Miss Camp,
daughter of the assistant clerk, is notably skillful.
The number of women who hold property in the District is large
and rapidly increasing. A woman may now enter into almost any
honorable profession that she chooses, and maintain her
respectability. All of the professions are open to her, and the
sphere of trades is rapidly widening. The progress made in this
regard in the last quarter of a century amounts almost to a
revolution. The first women ever admitted to the reporter's
gallery of the Senate and House were Abigail Dodge (Gail
Hamilton), and Helen M. Barnard, both political writers of great
power; the former as a reporter for the New York _Times_, and the
latter for the New York _Herald_. Mrs. Barnard, during Grant's
administration, was sent as commissioner of immigration to
Liverpool, visiting England, Ireland and Scotland. Returning in
the steerage of an ocean steamer, she gave one of the finest
reports ever made upon this question. This resulted in the
passage by the legislature of New York of a bill for the better
protection of emigrants on shipboard, and the appointment by the
United States government of an inspector of immigration for every
out-going steamer.
Women were first appointed as clerks in the government
departments in 1861 by Secretary Chase, at the earnest
solicitation of Treasurer Spinner. They were employed at
temporary work at $50 a month--one-half the lowest price paid to
any male clerk--until they were recognized by an act of congress
in which their salary was fixed at $900 a year, in the general
appropriation bill of July 23, 1866. The men doing the same work
were of four classes, receiving, respectively, $1,000, $1,400,
$1,600, $1,800. Treasurer Spinner, in his report of October,
1866, said:
The experiment of employing females as clerks has been, so
far as this office is concerned, a success. For many kinds
of office-work, like the manipulation and counting of
fractional currency, they excel, and in my opinion are to be
preferred to males. There is, however, quite as much
difference in point of ability between female clerks as
there is between the several classes of male clerks, whose
equals some of them are. Some are able to accomplish twice
as much as others, and with greater accuracy. So, too, some
of them incur great risks, being responsible for making
mistakes in count, and for counterfeits overlooked. Such
should, by every consideration of justice and fair dealing,
be paid according to their merits, and the risks and
liabilities they incur.
And in 1868, Mr. Spinner urged the committee of which Mr.
Fessenden of Maine was the chairman, to so amend the bill
providing for the reorganization of the treasury department as to
increase the salary of the female clerks who have the handling of
money, stating that cases had occurred in which women had lost
more than half their monthly pay by reason of being short in
count, or of allowing counterfeit notes to pass their hands.
Secretary M'Cullough asserted that women performed their clerical
duties as creditably as men, and stated that he had three ladies
who performed as much labor, and did it as well as any three male
clerks receiving $1,800 a year. It is now a quarter of a century
that women have served the government in these responsible
positions, and still, with but few exceptions, they receive only
the allotted $900. Mrs. Fitzgerald, the expert in the redemption
bureau of the treasury, who has for fifteen years deciphered
defaced currency, in which no man has ever yet proved her equal,
receives $1,400. In 1886 she subjected herself to an examination
for an increase to $1,600, but, failing to answer some questions
foreign to her art, she was compelled to content herself with the
former salary.
II.--MARYLAND.
_The Revolution_ of February 26, 1868, shows an effort in the
direction of progress on this question in Maryland. A correspondent
says:
Notwithstanding the present ascendancy of conservatism in
Maryland, the progressive element is not wholly annihilated; in
proof of which, we send information of the working of this
leaven, as developed in an association lately organized in the
city of Baltimore, under the name of the "Maryland Equal Rights
Society." For nearly a year past it has been in contemplation to
form a society based upon the principle of equal chance to all
human kind, irrespective of sex or color, through the mediumship
of the elective franchise. The first public meeting of the
friends of the movement was held on the afternoon of November 12,
1867, at the Douglass Institute, at which twelve persons, white
and colored, were present. Some steps were taken towards
organization in the framing and adopting of a constitution based
upon the principle afore-mentioned; but further business was
deferred in hope of securing a larger attendance at a subsequent
meeting. Two weeks later a second meeting was called, when the
constitution was signed by fourteen persons, ten of whom were
white and four colored. Officers were chosen, consisting of a
president, a vice-president, a secretary and a treasurer,
together with eight other members to act as an executive
committee. The last meeting, held January 29, was attended by
Alfred H. Love and Rachel Love of Philadelphia. To Mr. Love the
society is indebted for many valuable suggestions as to the best
means of becoming an effective co-worker in the cause of human
progress.
Our colored friends, who have control of the Douglass Institute,
have testified their good will toward the movement in giving the
society the use of an apartment in the building, free of charge.
This is the one instance in which we have met with encouragement
in our own community. We have sought it in high places, among
those we supposed to be friends, and found it not. It appears to
be the nature of fine linen to dread the mud splashes of the
pioneer's spade and pick-ax, and for silk and broadcloth to
shrink from contact with the briers of an uncleared thicket;
hence our sole recourse is to appeal to those only who are
dressed for the service. We are conscious that we have entered
upon no easy task; but, ashamed of having so long left our
Northern sisters to toil and endure alone in a cause which is not
one of section but of humanity, we come forward at last to assume
our share of the hardship, trusting that what we have lost in our
tardiness may be made up in earnestness and activity.
From various papers we clip the following items:
At the election in Baltimore, January 20, 1870, there were three
women who applied to be registered as voters at the third-ward
registry office. Their names were Mrs. L. C. Dundore, Mrs. A. M.
Gardner and Miss E. M. Harris. Their cases were held under
advisement by the register.----In 1871, a Maryland young lady,
Miss Middlebrook, raised over 5,000 heads of cabbage. On
Christmas, she sold in the Baltimore market 500 pounds of turkey
at 20 cents per pound.----Mrs. H. B. Conway of Frederick county,
has established a reputation as a contractor for "fills" and
"cuts." She has filled several contracts in Pennsylvania, been
awarded a $100,000 job on the Western Maryland railroad, and now,
1885, is engaged in the work of excavating a tract in Baltimore
for building-sites.
Miss R. Muller has for several years been engaged as subscription
and general correspondence clerk for the Baltimore _Daily
American_. She was the first woman to be employed in that city on
newspaper work during the present century. In the chapter on
newspapers it will be seen that Anna R. Green established the first
newspaper in the Maryland colony one hundred and nineteen years
ago, doing the colony printing; and that Mary R. Goddard not only
published a paper, writing able editorials, but was also the first
postmaster after the revolution. And from the following item it
would seem that the first woman to claim her right to vote must be
credited to Maryland:
At the regular meeting of the Maryland Historical Society in
Baltimore, December, 1885, Hon. J. L. Thomas read a paper on
"Margaret Brent, the first woman in America to claim the right
to vote." She lived at St. Mary's city on the river of the same
name two hundred and forty years ago, and was related to Lord
Baltimore. She was the heir of Leonard Calvert, Lord Baltimore's
brother and agent, and as such she claimed not only control of
all rents, etc., of Lord Baltimore, but also the right to two
votes in the assembly as the representative of both Calvert and
Baltimore. The first claim the courts upheld, but the second was
rejected.
On March 20, 1872, Hon. Stevenson Archer made an exhaustive speech
on the floor of the House of Representatives, entitled, "Woman
Suffrage not to be tolerated, although advocated by the Republican
candidate for vice-presidency." The speech was against Senator
Wilson's bill to enfranchise the women of the territories. The
honorable representative from Maryland may have been moved to enter
his protest against woman's enfranchisement by the fact that the
women of his State had in convention assembled early in the same
month made a public demand for their political rights:
The Havre de Grace _Republican_ says that the convention of the
Maryland Equal Rights Association, held in Raine's Hall,
Baltimore, last week, was a grand success. Mrs. Lavina C.
Dundore, president of the association, presided over the
convention with dignity and grace. Many prominent and able
champions of the cause were present and delivered eloquent and
telling addresses in favor of woman's enfranchisement, which were
listened to with marked attention by the large audiences in
attendance. The friends of the cause in Maryland feel much
gratified at this exhibition of the rapidly increasing interest
in the movement.
Meetings had been held in Baltimore during the years of 1870-71,
and lectures given by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, Susan B.
Anthony, and others.
Charlotte Richmond of Baltimore writes the _Woman's Journal_, April
22, 1873:
The American _Journal of Dental Science_ makes the following
statement: "The Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, having had
the honor of conferring the first degree of Doctor of Dental
Surgery in the world, has also graduated the first woman who ever
received a diploma in medicine or dentistry in Baltimore, in the
person of Miss Emilie Foeking of Prussia, who, after attending
two full courses of lectures and demonstrations, passed a very
creditable final examination. Miss Foeking conformed to all the
rules and regulations of the college during the two sessions that
she was a student; no favor whatever as to requirement being
asked for on her part, or extended to her by the faculty, on
account of sex. She has fairly earned her degree by proficiency
and earnest application. After a short time Miss Foeking will
return to Berlin, where she intends to locate. That she will
succeed in establishing a large and lucrative practice, there is
no doubt, as she is well qualified professionally, and is in
manner so perfect a lady as to command the respect of all who
know her."
You will see by this extract from one of our medical journals,
that a lady has been graduated from our dental college. I hope
she has left the doors open, so that some of our own countrywomen
may enter and acquit themselves as honorably, but without the
difficulties which she has been compelled to encounter. You are
aware of the proceedings of the Philadelphia college in regard to
female students. Our Baltimore dentist, for we feel proud to
claim her as ours, although admitted in the college, still had
all the prejudices to meet in the minds of the people, but they
were too courteous and hospitable to act upon those feelings so
far as to turn her from their doors. She was brave and did not
surrender; not even when her sensitive woman's heart was wounded
and humiliated by the little acts done heedlessly under the
impression that a woman had stepped out of her sphere and was
taking upon herself a vocation belonging exclusively to men. She
is naturally sincere, modest and dignified. With these lady-like
qualifications, together with ability and perseverance, she has
won the honor and esteem of the faculty and the students.
I wish that Prussia could have witnessed the success of her
daughter on the night of commencement--the wreaths of laurel, and
the incessant applause while she was on the stage. I, for one,
felt quite proud to see my city acknowledge the foreign
lady-student so gracefully. She is already practicing to some
extent, and in every case gives the most entire satisfaction. I
trust there will be no more college doors closed against our sex,
for the reason that the male students do not want us. Let the
professors and trustees be just. We have proved that a true lady
is no disadvantage in a college with male students. I think the
way is now clear for women to enter upon the dental profession.
Miss Foeking has proved that a woman can be successful when she
undertakes an honorable profession.
[Illustration: Mary B. Clay]
For the facts in regard to the Baltimore Dental College we are
indebted to the dean of the faculty:
BALTIMORE COLLEGE OF DENTAL SURGERY, Jan. 2, 1886.
MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY--_Dear Miss_: Your letter of 27th of last
month came safely to hand. In reply I will say that only two
members of the fair sex have been graduated with us. Miss Emilie
Foeking of Prussia, whose present address I do not know, and Miss
Pauline Boeck of Germany, who has since died. Miss Foeking was
graduated in 1873, and Miss Boeck in 1877. I have learned that
both of these young ladies were attentive and energetic in the
pursuit of their studies, and were graduated with credit to
themselves. We have the "Woman's Medical College," from which
quite a number of young women have been graduated. For
information in regard to this institution I would refer you to
its dean, Prof. Wm. D. Booker, 157 Park avenue.
Very truly yours, R. B. WINDER.
III.--DELAWARE.
Mary A. Stuart is the active representative of the movement for
woman suffrage in Delaware. From year to year she has written and
contributed to our National conventions in Washington, and has been
among the delegates on several occasions to address congressional
committees. In her report she says:
My father was the first man in the State Senate to propose the
repeal of some of our oppressive laws, and succeeded in having
the law giving all real estate to the eldest male heir repealed.
The law of 1871 gave a married woman the right to make a will,
provided her husband gave his written consent, with the names of
two respectable witnesses thereunto attached. In 1873 the law was
repealed, and another act passed giving married women the right
to make a will, buy property and hold it exempt from the
husband's debts, but this law does not affect his tenancy by
courtesy.
Prior to 1868, bonds, mortgages, stocks, etc., were counted
personal property, all of which went into the possession of the
husband the moment the woman answered "I will," in the marriage
ceremony. I worked hard to get the law passed giving the wife the
right to her own separate earnings, and at last was greatly
helped by the fact that a woman petitioned for a divorce, stating
in her application that she was driven from her home, that she
and her two children had worked hard and saved $100 for a rainy
day, and now her husband claimed the money. It was a case in
point, and helped the members of our legislature to pass the
wages bill.
Delaware College, the only institution of the kind in the State,
was open to girls for thirteen years, but owing to a tragedy
committed by the boys in hazing one another, resulting in death,
the doors were thereafter closed to girls, although they were in
no way directly or indirectly implicated in the outrages. When
Governor Stockley was appealed to, he simply gave some of the old
arguments against coëducation, and did not recommend, as he
should have done, an appropriation at once by the State to build
a similar college, with all the necessary appointments for the
education of girls. We have women who are practicing physicians,
and are also in the State Medical Boards. We have none who
practice law or preach in our pulpits, and all the political
offices of the State are closed to women. No notaries, bank
cashiers, telegraph operators. Women are still in the belief that
work outside the home is a disgrace to the men of their families.
In February, 1881, Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, Miss Couzins and
Mrs. Lockwood, held various hearings before the legislature. Mrs.
Lockwood read to the gentlemen article 4 of the constitution as
amended in 1834: "Any white male citizen over 22 years of age who
shall be a tax-payer, shall be eligible to vote for electors."
She then showed them how readily, without any marked revolution,
the word "white" had been stricken out, while the word tax-payer
had virtually become a dead letter. Then turning to the first
paragraph of the United States revised code she cited the passage
which states that in determining the meaning of statutes after
February 25, 1877, "words importing the masculine gender may be
applied to females." * * * * At this point the chairman of the
committee placed before Mrs. Lockwood the Delaware code from
which she read a similar application of the law made many years
before. Having laid this foundation she asserted that the women
of Delaware were legally entitled to vote under the laws as they
are, but that to prevent all question on the subject, she would
recommend a special enactment like that prepared in the bill
before them. An amendment to the State constitution giving
suffrage to women was presented in the House of Representatives
in February, 1881, and referred to the committee on privileges
and elections. It was reported adversely. The vote showed that
all the members, with two[529] exceptions, were opposed to the
measure.
Among the friends in Delaware were several liberal families, active
in all the progressive movements of the day. Preëminent among these
was that of the noble Thomas Garrett, whose good words of
encouragement for woman's enfranchisement may be found in the bound
copies of _The Revolution_ as far back as 1868. His private letters
to those of us interested in his labors of love are among our most
cherished mementoes. He was a man of good judgment, broad
sympathies, and unswerving integrity.
IV.--KENTUCKY.
Mary B. Clay, daughter of Cassius M. Clay, sends us the following
report of what has been done to change the status of women in
Kentucky:
The earliest agitation of the suffrage question in our State
arose from the advent of Miss Lucy Stone in Louisville, in 1853,
at which time she delivered three lectures in Masonic Hall to
crowded audiences. George D. Prentice gave full and friendly
reports in the _Courier-Journal_. In later years, Anna Dickinson
and others have lectured in our chief cities. But the first note
of associated effort is that given in _The Revolution_ from
Glendale, which says:
We organized here an association with twenty members the
first of October, 1867, and now have fifty. We hope soon to
have the whole of Hardin county, and by the close of another
year the whole of the State of Kentucky, enlisted on the
side of woman's rights.
In the winter of 1872 Hannah Tracy Cutler and Margaret V. Longley
were granted a respectful hearing before our legislature at
Frankfort. In May, 1879, self-appointed, I represented Kentucky
at the May anniversary of the National Association at St. Louis.
In the autumn following, Miss Anthony, during an extended lecture
tour through the State, stopped in Richmond several days, and
aided us in organizing a local suffrage society.[530] Letters
were at once written to the leading editors asking them to
publish articles on the subject. Many favorable answers were
received, and we have largely availed ourselves of the columns of
the papers to keep up the agitation. My sister, Sally Clay
Bennett, edits a column in the Richmond _Register_, sister Anne a
column in the Lexington _Gazette_, and Kate Dunning Clarke, a
column in the _Turf, Field and Farm_. Mrs. Clarke is also
associate editor of the Kentucky _State Journal_. The Misses
Moore are making a success of a daily paper at Milledgeville.
In May, 1880, Mrs. Bennett and myself were delegates at the great
National Mass Convention in Farwell Hall, Chicago. In October,
1881, the American Association held its annual meeting in
Louisville. It was largely attended and fully and fairly reported
by the press of the city. At its close, a Kentucky State
association was organized, with Laura Clay as president.
In January, 1882, the Richmond and Louisville clubs secured a
hearing before the judiciary committee of the Senate, Mrs.
Bennett and myself representing the former, and John A. Ward the
latter. With the valuable aid of Mrs. Mary Haggart of
Indianapolis we made a most favorable impression upon our
legislators. The points in which our laws are defective and upon
which our appeals and arguments were based are well indicated by
the pleas of our several petitions:
That women might have municipal and presidential suffrage by
statute; that in marriage women might own their property as
men own theirs; that women who were married might be the
legal guardians of their children's property and persons as
well as the father; that women should be appointed with
equal responsibility and authority as assistant physicians
in insane asylums, and that the appointment of all the
officers in such asylums should be made by the legislature,
and not by the governor, as now; that women be appointed on
boards of visitors and commissioners to all asylums where
women are inmates or prisoners.
In 1884, all of the Clay sisters--Mrs. Bennet, Mary, Laura and
Anne--with Mrs. Haggart, again went to Frankfort, and held
meetings in the legislative hall, which were largely attended by
the best classes of the citizens of that city, as well as by
members of the legislature.
For several years we have had a woman for State Librarian. In
Fayette, one of our most aristocratic counties, Lexington being
its county seat, a woman was elected to the office of county
clerk by a majority of 200 over her male competitor. In two other
counties women are also county clerks. Each of them had served so
efficiently in her husband's office, that at his death she had
been elected in his place.
That woman has to fight every step of her way to the recognition
of her rights as a citizen equal before the law, is shown by the
following despatch from Frankfort, dated December 18, 1885:
Mrs. M. C. Lucas was elected by the vote of Daviess county
to the office of jailer, to succeed her husband, who was
killed by a mob while in discharge of his duty. When she
appeared before the county court to give bond for the
office, the Judge refused to allow her to qualify. A writ of
mandamus from the Circuit Court was applied for to compel
the court to allow her to qualify, but the motion was
denied. An appeal was then taken to the Court of Appeals.
Yesterday that court affirmed the decision of the Circuit
Court, that a woman cannot legally hold the office of county
jailer.
A woman in Madison county acted as census-taker, and performed
her duty well. She was the niece of Mr. Justice Miller of the
Supreme Court of the United States. Gen. W. J. Sanderson,
internal revenue collector for the eighth district, employed two
young ladies as clerks, Miss Brown and Miss Price, the former of
whom is said to be his best clerk. She is the sister of Mrs.
Smith, the circuit clerk of Laurel county. The successor of
General Sanderson, employs his two daughters as clerks, and they
receive the same pay as men who do the same work.
Many women in our State manage their own farms. My mother, during
my father's absence as minister to Russia, took his farm of 2,500
acres (he making her his attorney), paid off a large debt on the
property, built an elegant house costing $30,000, stocked the
farm, and largely supported the family of six children, with
money which she made during the war. She fed government mules,
and did it so well that she would return them to camp before the
time expired, in better condition than most feeders got theirs.
She is now, 1885, conducting her own farm of 350 acres, selling
several thousand dollars' worth of wheat, cattle, and sheep
annually, giving her personal attention to everything, at the age
of seventy. During the adventurous and perilous period of my
father's life she shared his dangers, and was ever his mainstay
in upholding his hands against slavery; and in that crowning
point of his life, when he was mobbed in Lexington, my mother sat
at his bed-side, and wrote at his dictation, "Go tell your secret
conclave of dastardly assassins, Cassius M. Clay knows his rights
and how to defend them."
Two of my sisters, Laura and Anne, and myself are practical
farmers, each having under her immediate superintendence the
workmen, both white and black, on 300 acres. We raise corn,
wheat, oats, cattle and sheep, buying and selling our own stock
and produce. We took possession of the land without stock or
utensils, and by our observation and experience, prudence and
industry, have greatly improved the lands and stock, and annually
realize a handsome income therefrom.
Miss Laura R. White of Manchester, sister of Hon. John D. White,
who ably advocated our cause in congress as well as in his own
State, was graduated with marked honor from the Michigan State
University in 1874. Since that time she has studied architecture
in the Boston Institute of Technology one year, worked as
draughtsman in the office of the supervisory architect of the
treasury department at Washington, two years, studied in the
special school of architecture in Paris one year, and is now,
1886, prosecuting her studies with a liberal selection of French
and English architectural works at her mountain home in Kentucky.
Mrs. Bessie White Heagen, the youngest daughter of Mrs. Sarah A.
White, was graduated with honor from the Roxbury High School of
Boston, and from the school of Pharmacy of Michigan University.
Being denied examination and the privileges of college graduates
of the college of pharmacy at Louisville, where she was employed
by a prominent pharmacist, she brought suit and obtained a
verdict in her favor.
Early in 1882, Dr. J. P. Barnum employed young women in his store
with the expectation of being able to educate them in the college
of pharmacy. But the hostility of the students to the proposed
innovation, and the lack of a systematic laboratory course,
caused the relinquishment of that plan and the formation of the
new school. Prominent gentlemen in the community assisted Dr.
Barnum, and the Louisville School of Pharmacy was duly
incorporated under the general laws of Kentucky.[531] Though
sustained by men of wealth and influence, the school met with
great opposition, the State Board of Pharmacy refusing to
register the women who were graduated from it until compelled to
do so by a mandamus from the Law and Equity Court, Judge Simral
presiding. March 7, 1884, the legislature incorporated the
Louisville School of Pharmacy for Women, and by special enactment
empowered its graduates to practice their profession without
registration or interference from the State board.
The school confers two degrees; its full course taking three
years and requiring more work than is done in other schools. So
far its graduates have been representative women, and all have
found responsible situations awaiting them. Its faculty remains,
with a few exceptions, as in the first session. Dr. J. P. Barnum,
to whose indefatigable efforts the foundation of the school is
due, is dean and professor of pharmacy and analytical chemistry;
Dr. T. Hunt Stuckey, a graduate of Heidelberg University, who
joined his efforts with Dr. Barnum at an early day, is professor
of _materia medica_, toxicology and microscopy. Mrs. D. N.
Marble, professor of general and pharmaceutical chemistry, and
Mrs. Fountaine Miller, professor of botany, were graduates of the
first class.
Mrs. Kate Trimble de Roode, in a recent letter says:
Kentucky has had school suffrage for thirty years, but as
the right is not generally known or understood, few women
have ever availed themselves of the privilege. The State
librarian has for many years been a woman, and there are
several post-mistresses also in this State. The State
University has recently admitted women on equal terms to all
its departments. As a general thing the young women of
Kentucky are better educated than the men, the latter being
early put to business, while most parents desire above all
things to secure to their daughters a liberal education. We
have a number of women practicing medicine in the larger
cities, one architect, but as yet no lawyers, although
several women have taken a full course of study for that
profession. The question of woman suffrage has been but
little agitated in this State, although the last
legislature gave a respectful hearing to several ladies on
the question. The property rights of married women are in a
crude state; the wife's personal property vests in the
husband; the profits and rents that accrue from her real
estate belong to him also. She can make no will without the
assent of her husband, and if given, he can revoke it at any
time before the will is probated. The wife's wages belong to
her husband. She cannot sue or be sued without he joins her
in the suit. The wife's dower is a life interest in a third
of the husband's real estate, whereas the husband's curtesy,
where there is issue of the marriage, born alive, is a life
interest in all the real estate belonging to the wife at the
time of her death. This is the statutory law, but the wife
by obtaining a decree in chancery may possess all the rights
of a _femme sole_. A bill securing more equal rights to
women passed the House of the last legislature, but failed
in the Senate. The courtesy of Kentucky men to women in
general, has kept them from realizing their civil and
political degradation, until, by some sudden turn in the
wheel of fortune, the individual woman has felt the iron
teeth of the law in her own flesh, and warned her slumbering
sisterhood. We are now awaking to the fact that an
aristocracy of sex in a republic is as inconsistent and
odious as an aristocracy of color, and indeed far more so.
V.--TENNESSEE.
We are indebted to Mrs. Elizabeth Lisle Saxon for the following:
Elizabeth Avery Meriwether is the chief representative of liberal
thought in Tennessee. Her pen is ever ready to champion the
wronged. I first came to know her when engaged in a newspaper
discussion to reestablish in the public schools of Memphis three
young women who had been dismissed because of "holding too many
of Mrs. Meriwether's views"--the reason actually given by the
superintendent and endorsed by the board of directors. A seven
month's war was carried on, ending in a triumphant reinstallment
of the teachers, a new superintendent, and a new board of
directors. Public opinion was educated into more liberal ideas,
and the _Memphis Appeal_, through its chivalrous editor, Mr.
Keating, declared squarely for woman suffrage.
When Col. Kerr introduced into the Tennessee legislature a bill
making divorce impossible for any cause save adultery, Mrs.
Meriwether wrote the ablest article I ever read, in opposition,
which Mr. Keating published in his paper, and distributed among
the members of the legislature. The result was a clear vote
against the bill.
With Mrs. Lide Meriwether and Mrs. M. J. Holmes, she publicly
assailed the cross examination of women in criminal trials,
either as culprits or witnesses, until the practice was broken
up, and private hearings accorded. In 1876 she sent a memorial to
the National Democratic convention at St. Louis, asking that
party to declare for woman suffrage in its platform. Though her
appeal was not read, hundreds of copies were circulated among the
members in the hope of stirring thought on the subject in the
South. It provoked much sarcasm because it was signed only by
Mrs. Meriwether and Mrs. Saxon. In 1880-81 Mrs. Meriwether was
one of the speakers in the series of conventions held by the
National association in the Western and New England States.
VI.--VIRGINIA.
In the winter of 1870, immediately after the National Washington
convention, Mrs. Paulina Wright Davis, while spending a few days in
Richmond, formed the acquaintance of Mrs. Anna Whitehead Bodeker, a
most earnest advocate of the ballot for women. Mrs. Davis held a
parlor meeting in the home of Mrs. Bodeker, enlisting the interest
of several prominent citizens of Richmond, who very soon invited
Mrs. Joslyn Gage to their city to give a series of lectures. Of the
result of this visit we give Mrs. Bodeker's report as published in
_The Revolution_ of May, 1870:
DEAR REVOLUTION:--I glory in announcing a grand achievement in
the great reform of the day in Virginia. Our energetic and heroic
leader, Mrs. M. Joslyn Gage, after giant efforts on her part, and
with the aid of some strong advocates of the reform, on Friday
evening, May 6, 1870, organized in the city of Richmond a
Virginia State Woman Suffrage Association. The whole proceedings
I here append, for immediate publication in your columns.
Mrs. Gage, advisory counsel for New York, in the National Woman
Suffrage Association of America, delivered a lecture upon
"Opportunity for Woman," at Bosher's Hall, corner of Ninth and
Main streets, on Thursday evening. The lecture was able, earnest
and eloquent, and was listened to with rapt attention by the
friends of the cause present. At its conclusion, Judge John C.
Underwood gave notice that on the following evening a meeting
would be held at the United States Court room (which he freely
proffered for the purpose) to organize a State Association, adopt
a constitution, elect officers, and appoint delegates to the
anniversary of the National Association soon to be held in New
York city. The judge remarked that, upon conversing with Governor
Wise upon the subject, he expressed his warm sympathy with the
objects of the movement save upon the question of giving women
the ballot. With all the other rights claimed, he was heartily in
accord; especially, he thought, should the professions be opened
to women, more particularly the medical, they being the natural
physicians of their sex and of children.
Pursuant to the above notice, a meeting was held in the United
States court-room. Judge John C. Underwood was called to preside.
Previous to action on the regular business of the meeting,
several articles favorable to the movement were read. Miss Sue L.
F. Smith, daughter of the late Rev. Dr. Wm. A. Smith, read very
charmingly a well-written essay prepared by herself in advocacy
of granting to women the full meed of powers and responsibilities
now enjoyed by men. Mr. William E. Colman read an article
entitled "Clerical Denunciation of Woman Suffrage--A Defense,"
being a reply to a violent attack made by the Rev. Dr. Edwards of
this city, upon the adherents of the movement, in a sermon
delivered by him recently. A proposed constitution for the
government of the Virginia State Woman Suffrage Association was
adopted; after which came the election of officers[532] of the
society. On motion of Judge Underwood, Miss Sue L. F. Smith was
appointed delegate to represent Virginia in the National
Association to be held in New York city May 12, 13, the society
having by resolution connected itself as an auxiliary to said
National Association. Mrs. Gage offered resolutions, which were
unanimously adopted, after which she delivered a forcible
address, enumerating many of the wrongs to which women are
subjected in this State, dwelling particularly upon the laws
depriving mothers of the right to their own children, placing the
property of married women at the mercy of their husbands, and
depriving the wives of all voice in the disposition of the
property possessed by them before marriage.
In the winter of 1871, Miss Anthony was honored by an invitation
from the society, and held several meetings in Judge Underwood's
court-room. About this time appeared the following:
Judge Underwood, having stated in a letter that after mature
consideration he had come to the conclusion that the fourteenth
and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution of the United
States, together with the enforcement act of May 31, 1870, have
secured the right to vote to female citizens as fully as it is
now exercised and enjoyed by male citizens, a test case is to be
made at once in the Virginia courts. As there are very few
advocates of woman suffrage in Virginia, some of the leaders of
the movement in Washington are about to move to Alexandria to
perfect an organization and be ready with a case when Judge
Underwood opens court there.
But Mrs. Bodeker, who also memorialized the general assembly, was
first to make the attempt to vote. The Richmond _Dispatch_
describes the occasion:
Yesterday morning the judges of the second precinct of Marshall
ward, J. F. Shinberger, esq., presiding, were surprised at the
appearance of a lady at the polls. She wished to deposit a
ballot, but as the judges declined to allow this, in view of her
not having registered, she then asked to be permitted to have a
paper with the following inscription placed in the ballot-box:
"By the Constitution of the United States, I, Anne Whitehead
Bodeker, have a right to give my vote at this election, and in
vindication of it drop this note in the ballot-box, November 7,
1871." This paper was taken by the judges, and will be deposited
with the ballots in the archives of the Hustings court.
One remarkable incident in Gen. Grant's administration was Miss
Elizabeth VanLew's appointment as postmaster at Richmond. She held
the office eight years, notwithstanding the persistent opposition
of politicians. The _Ballot-Box_ said:
Miss VanLew was postmaster in Richmond under Grant, introducing
many reforms in the office, but through the envy of men, who were
voters, she, a non-voter, lost her office, as she had lost wealth
and friends from her devotion to the Union during the war. Now,
since its close, she finds not only her former slave men
permitted to make laws for her, but also those whom she opposed
when they were seeking their country's life. But women of all
ranks, white and colored, are awaking to their need of the ballot
for self-protection.
The Philadelphia _Press_, edited by J. W. Forney, said:
Some covert enemies of the president and the new civil-service
reform have been spreading a report, through sensational
specials, that the Richmond post-office is to be given to some
prominent Virginian of local standing as soon as Miss VanLew's
commission expires. If there is any post-office in the United
States in which the whole nation at this time has a special
interest, it is this one of Richmond which the present incumbent
holds, as it were, by a national right, and certainly by popular
acclaim. We have not time in a brief paragraph to tell the
striking story of what Miss VanLew has done and what she has
suffered for the country. Her story will pass into standard
history, however, as sadly illustrative of our times. She herself
is known and loved wherever the horrors of Libby and Belle Isle
are mourned and denounced.
VII.--WEST VIRGINIA.
Hon. Samuel Young, in a letter to _The Revolution_, dated Senate
Chamber, Wheeling, West Virginia, February 22, 1869, writes:
In 1867, I introduced a bill in the State Senate, looking to the
enfranchisement of all women in West Virginia, who can read the
Declaration of Independence intelligently, and write a legible
hand, and have actually paid tax the year previous to their
proposing to vote. But even this guarded bill had no friends but
myself. * * * I introduced a resolution during the present
session of our legislature, asking congress to extend the right
of suffrage to women. Eight out of the twenty-two members of the
Senate voted for it. This is quite encouraging--advancing from
one to eight in two years. At this rate of progress, we may
succeed by next winter. I give the names of those who are in
favor of and voted for female suffrage in the Senate: Drummond,
Doolittle, Humphreys, Hoke, Wilson, Workman, Young, and
Farnsworth, president. The same senators voted to invite Miss
Anna E. Dickinson to lecture in the state-house during her late
visit to Wheeling.
VIII.--NORTH CAROLINA.
We are indebted to Mrs. Mary Bayard Clarke of New Berne for the
following:
Since 1868, when the constitution was changed, a married woman
has absolute control of all the real estate she possessed before
marriage or acquired by gift or devise after it, except the power
to sell without the consent of her husband, who in his turn is
not at liberty to sell any real estate possessed by him before
marriage, or acquired after it, without the consent of his wife.
Should he sell any real estate without the wife's consent, in
writing, she can, after his death, claim her dower of one-third
in such real estate. If she owns a farm and her husband manages
it, she can claim full settlements from him, he having no more
rights than any other agent whom she may employ. So her property,
real and personal, is her individual right, with the income
therefrom. But she cannot contract a debt that is binding on her
property without the consent of her husband. With his written
consent, which must be registered in the office of the clerk of
the county in which she resides, she may become a free-trader
with all the rights of a man, her husband having no claim to her
gains and not being responsible for any debt which she may
contract. By giving this written consent her husband virtually
places her in the position of an unmarried woman, as far as her
property is concerned.
In 1881, finding that a widow had no right to appoint a guardian
for her children by "letters testamentary," I, through my son,
William E. Clarke, who was then senator for this county in our
State legislature, succeeded in getting this law so changed that
she now has the same rights as a man. In cases of divorce or
separation while the children are under age, it is discretionary
with the judge to give the children to either parent; but public
sentiment always gives them to the mother while young.
As a rule the women of the South are better educated than the
men, the boys being put to work while the girls are at school.
The girls are not trained to work in any way, and very few, as
yet, see the necessity of being regularly trained to do anything
by which they may make a living except as teachers. Our
public-school system requires a course through the normal school
for all teachers. Mixed schools are not popular with us, but we
have been forced into them by the public-graded-school tax, which
has crushed out our private schools. I am now, and have been for
the past two years, making an effort to have women on our
school-boards, and a female as well as a male principal for every
mixed public school, on the ground that mothers have as much
right to a voice in the education of their daughters as fathers
have in that of their sons. We have female teachers in our public
schools but not as principals, and the pay of the women is,
regardless of the quality of their work, always considerably less
than that of men.
Our Supreme Court granted a license to Miss Tabitha A. Holton to
practice law, and there is no legal impediment in the way of one
doing so. The same is true of the medical profession. Dr. Susan
Dimock was a North Carolinian by birth and on her application
for admission to the State Medical Society was unanimously
elected a member of that body. The African Methodist-Episcopal
Conference, Bishop Turner presiding, ordained Miss Sarah A.
Hughes of Raleigh, a bright mulatto girl, as deacon in the
church. Shortly after the close of the late war, my husband being
then incapacitated for work by wounds received in the Mexican and
the civil war, and my sons under age, I applied to Governor
Jonathan Worth for the position of State librarian. Though
cordially acknowledging my fitness, intellectually, for the
office, and admitting that my sex did not legally disqualify me
to hold it, he positively refused to appoint me or any other
woman to any office in his gift. Public sentiment then sustained
him, but it would not now do so; so many ladies of culture,
refinement and social position have been, since the war, forced
to work or starve, that it is now nothing remarkable to see them
and their daughters doing work which twenty years ago they would
have been ostracised for undertaking.
In a letter to the Boston _Index_, published August, 1885, the
venerable Mrs. Elizabeth Oakes Smith, who is now a resident of
this State, truthfully says,
The women of the North can have little conception of the
hindrances which their sisters of the South encounter in
their efforts to accept new and progressive ideas. The other
sex, in a blind sort of way, hold fast to an absolute kind
of chivalry akin to that of the renowned Don Quixote, by
which they try to hold women in the background as a kind of
porcelain liable to crack and breakage unless daintily
handled. Women here see the spirit of the age and the need
of change far more clearly than the men, and act up to this
light, but with a flexible grace that disarms opposition.
They see the necessity of work and are turning their
attention to methods for remunerative labor, far more
difficult to obtain at the South than at the North.
I cordially endorse this extract. The Southern man does not wish
his "women folks" to be self-supporting, not because he is
jealous of their rivaling him, but because he feels it is his
duty to be the bread-winner. But the much sneered at "chivalry"
of the South, while rendering it harder for a woman to break
through old customs, most cordially and heartily sustains her
when she has successfully done so. There are fewer large centers
in the South than in the North, and much less attrition of mind
against mind; the people are homogeneous and slower to change,
and public opinion is much less fluctuating. But once let the
tide of woman suffrage fairly turn, and I believe it will be
irresistable and advance far more steadily and rapidly in the
South than it has done in the North. Let the Southern women be
won over and the cause will have nothing to fear from the
opposition of the men. But, after twenty years' experience as a
journalist, my honest opinion is that until the Southern women
can be made to feel the pecuniary advantages to them of suffrage,
they will not lift a finger or speak a word to obtain it.
In 1881, at the March meeting of the Raleigh Typographical Union,
No. 194, my son, being then a member of that Union, introduced
and, after some hard fighting, succeeded in carrying a resolution
placing women compositors on a par in every respect with men.
There was not at that time a single woman compositor in the
State, to my son's knowledge; there is one now in Raleigh and two
apprentices, who claimed and receive all the advantages that men
applying for admission to the Union receive.
Mrs. C. Harris started the _South Atlantic_ at Wilmington. The
Misses Bernheim and their father started a magazine in the same
city called _At Home and Abroad_, which was afterwards moved to
Charlotte; both were short-lived. We have now the _Southern
Woman_. This is the only journal ever edited and managed by a
woman alone, with no man associated with or responsible for it. I
have been for twenty years connected with the press of this State
in one way and another, and am called the "Grandmother of the
North Carolina Press Association." In 1880 I delivered an
original poem before the association, and another Masonic one
before the board of the orphan asylum; making me, I believe, the
first native North Carolina woman that ever came before the
public as a speaker. I was both denounced and applauded for my
"brass" and "bravery." Public sentiment has changed since then.
Mrs. Marion A. Williams, president of the State National Bank at
Raleigh for several years, is probably the first woman ever
elected to that responsible position in any State of this Union.
In 1885 Louisa B. Stephens was made president of the First
National Bank of Marion, Iowa; and a national bank in Newbery,
South Carolina, honored itself by placing a woman at the head of
its official board.
The _North Carolinian_ of January, 1870, contained an able
editorial endorsing woman suffrage, closing with:
For one we say, tear down the barriers, give woman an
opportunity to show her wisdom and virtue; place the ballot
in her hands that she may protect herself and reform men,
and ere a quarter of a century has elapsed many of the
foulest blots upon the civilization of this age will have
passed away.
From an interesting article in the _Boston Advertiser_, May 22,
1875, by Rev. James Freeman Clark, concerning Dr. Susan Dimock, one
of North Carolina's promising daughters, whose career was ended in
the wreck of the Schiller near the Scilly islands, we make a few
extracts:
One of our eminent surgeons, Dr. Samuel Cabot, said to me
yesterday:
"This community will never know what a loss it has had in
Dr. Dimock. It was not merely her skill, though that was
remarkable, considering her youth and limited experience,
but also her nerve, that qualified her to become a great
surgeon. I have seldom known one at once so determined and
so self-possessed. Skill is a quality much more easily found
than this self-control that nothing can flurry. She had that
in an eminent degree; and, had she lived, she would have
been sure to stand, in time, among those at the head of her
profession. The usual weapons of ridicule would have been
impotent against a woman who had reached that supreme
position which Susan Dimock would certainly have attained."
During the war of the rebellion, Miss Dimock sought admission
into the medical school of Harvard University, preferring, if
possible, to take a degree in an American college. Twice she
applied, and was twice refused. Hearing that the University of
Zurich was open to women, she went there, and was received with a
hospitality which the institutions of her own country did not
offer. She pursued her medical studies there, and graduated with
honor. A number of the "Revue des Deux Mondes" for August, 1872,
contains an article called "Les Femmes à l'Universitie de
Zurich," which speaks very favorably of the success of the women
in that place. The first to take a degree as doctor of medicine
was a young Russian lady, in 1867. Between 1867 and 1872 five
others had taken this degree, and among them Miss Dimock is
mentioned. From the medical school at Zurich, she went to that at
Vienna; and of her appearance there we have this record: A
distinguished German physician remarked to a friend of mine
residing in Germany that he had always been opposed to women as
physicians--but that he had met a young American lady studying at
Vienna, whose intelligence, modesty and devotion to her work was
such as almost to convince him that he was wrong. A comparison of
dates shows that this American student must have been Dr. Dimock.
On her return to the United States Dr. Dimock became resident
physician at "The Hospital for Women and Children," on Codman
Avenue, in Boston. Both the students of medicine and the patients
became devotedly attached to her; they were fascinated by this
remarkable union of tenderness, firmness and skill. The secret
was in part told by what she said in one of her lectures in the
training-school for nurses connected with the woman's hospital:
"I wish you, of all my instructions, especially to remember this.
Where you go to nurse a patient, imagine that it is your own
sister before you in that bed; and treat her as you would wish
your own sister to be treated." While at this hospital, she was
also able to carry out a principle in which she firmly believed,
namely--that in a hospital the rights of every patient, poor and
rich, should be sacredly regarded, and never be postponed even to
the supposed interests of medical students. No student was
allowed to be present at any operation, except so far as the
comfort and safety of her patients rendered the student's
presence desirable. Her interest in the woman's hospital was
very great. She was in the habit, at the beginning of each year,
of writing and sealing up her wishes for the coming year. Since
her death, her mother has opened the envelope of January 1, 1875,
and found it to contain a prayer for a blessing on "my dear
hospital."
And now this young, strong soul so ardent in the pursuit of
knowledge, so filled with a desire to help her suffering sisters,
has been taken by that remorseless deep.
IX.--SOUTH CAROLINA.
The first action we hear of in South Carolina was a Woman's Right's
Convention in Columbia, Dec. 20, 1870, of which the Charleston
_Republican_ said:
The chairman, Miss Rollin, said: "It had been so universally the
custom to treat the idea of woman suffrage with ridicule and
merriment that it becomes necessary in submitting the subject for
earnest deliberation that we assure the gentlemen present that
our claim is made honestly and seriously. We ask suffrage not as
a favor, not as a privilege, but as a right based on the ground
that we are human beings, and as such, entitled to all human
rights. While we concede that woman's ennobling influence should
be confined chiefly to home and society, we claim that public
opinion has had a tendency to limit woman's sphere to too small a
circle, and until woman has the right of representation this will
last, and other rights will be held by an insecure tenure."
Mr. T. J. Mackey made a forcible argument in favor of the
movement. He was followed by Miss Hosley, who made a few brief
remarks upon the subject. General Moses thought woman's
introduction upon the political platform would benefit us much in
a moral point of view, and that they had a right to assist in
making the laws that govern them as well as the sterner sex.
Messrs. Cardozo, Pioneer and Rev. Mr. Harris followed in short
speeches, endorsing the movement and wishing it success.
Resolutions were adopted, and officers chosen.[533] The following
letters were read:
EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, Columbia, Jan. 19, 1871.
_Miss L. M. Rollin_:--I have the honor to acknowledge the
receipt of your invitation to be present at the preliminary
organization of the association for the assertion of woman's
rights in this State, and regret that the pressure of public
duties precludes my indulging myself in that pleasure. Be
assured, however, that the cause has my warmest sympathy,
and I indulge the hope that the time is not far distant when
woman shall be the peer of man in political rights, as she
is peerless in all others, and when she will be able to
reclaim some of those privileges that are now monopolized by
the sterner sex.
I have the honor to be, very respectfully, etc.,
R. K. SCOTT, _Governor_.
OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL, Columbia, Feb. 1, 1871.
I hoped when I received your invitation to the meeting
to-night of the friends of woman suffrage, that I should be
able to attend in person, but at a late hour I find other
duties standing in the way, and I can only say a word of
approval and encouragement with my pen. The woman suffrage
cause is to my mind so just and so expedient as to need
little argument. To say that my mother, my sisters or my
wife have less interest in good government than I have, or
are less fitted by nature to understand and use the ballot
than I am, is to contradict reason and fact.
Upon the same grounds that I defend my own right to share in
the government which controls and protects me, do I now
assert the right of woman to a voice in public affairs. For
the same reasons that I would regard an attempt to rob me of
my civil rights as tyranny, do I now protest against the
continued civil inequality and thralldom of woman. I take no
merit or pride to myself for such a position. I have felt
and said these things during my whole life. They are to me
self-evident truths; needing no more demonstration by
argument than the first lines of the Declaration of American
Independence. My claim for woman is simply this: Give her a
full and fair chance to act in any sphere for which she can
fit herself. Her sphere is as wide as man's. It has no
limits except her capacity. If woman cannot perform a
soldier's duty, then the army is not her sphere; if she can,
it is her sphere, as much as it is man's.
I value the ballot for woman chiefly because it opens to her
a wide, free avenue to a complete development of all her
powers. The Chinese lady's shoe is nothing compared to the
clamps and fetters which we Americans have put upon woman's
mind and soul. An impartial observer would scarcely condemn
the one and approve the other. What we need now is to
accustom the public to these radical truths. Demand the
ballot; demand woman's freedom. It is not a conflict of
argument or reason, so much as a crusade against habit and
prejudice. To tell the truth, I don't think there is a
respectable argument in the world against woman suffrage.
People think they are arguing or reasoning against it when
they are in fact only repeating the prejudices in which they
have been trained. With the sincerest wishes for the success
of your meeting and of all your efforts for woman suffrage,
I remain, yours very truly,
D. H. CHAMBERLAIN.
The American association memorialized the legislature March 13,
1872. The joint committee recommended an amendment to the
constitution of the State, providing that every person, male or
female, possessed of the necessary qualifications, should be
entitled to vote. B. F. Whittemore, H. J. Maxwell, W. B. Nash, G.
F. McIntyre, were the committee on the part of the Senate; C. D.
Hayne, W. J. Whipper, Benj. Byas, B. G. Yocom, F. H. Frost,
committee on the part of the House.
In the debate in congress in 1874, Hon. Alonzo J. Ransier of South
Carolina, the civil-rights bill being under discussion, claimed
that equal human rights should be extended to women as follows:
And may the day be not far distant when American citizenship in
civil and political rights and public privileges shall cover not
only those of our sex, but those of the opposite one also; until
which time the government of the United States cannot be said to
rest upon the "consent of the governed," or to adequately protect
them in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Miss Sallie R. Banks, for some years a teacher of colored schools
in South Carolina, has been appointed collector of internal revenue
for the Sumter district.
X.--FLORIDA.
In 1880, the agricultural department at Washington, paid a premium
of $12 to Madame Atzeroth of Manatee, for the first pound of coffee
ever grown out of doors in the United States.
The following is from a letter to the Savannah _News_, reporting a
judgment rendered by a Florida county judge, in a case between an
old black man and his wife:
OCALA, Fla., May 12, 1874.
Be it known throughout all christendom that the husband is the
head of the wife, and whatever is his is his'n, and whatever is
hers is his'n, and come weal or woe, peace or war, the right of
all property is vested in the husband, and the wife must not take
anything away. The ox belongs to Uncle Ben, and he must keep it,
and the other things, and if the old woman quits she must go
empty-handed. Know all that this is so by order of the Judge of
Probate.
[Signed] WM. R. HILLYER.
Though quaintly expressed, yet this decision is in line with the
old common law and the statutes of many of the States in this Union
to-day.
XI.--ALABAMA.
The women of Alabama are evidently awake on the temperance
question, though still apparently unprepared for suffrage. In a
report of a meeting in Birmingham in 1885, the following, from a
prominent editor, was read by the president:
Tell the admirable lady, Mrs. Bryce, that I would devote
everything to the cause she espouses, but there's no use. Let
women demand the ballot, and with it they can destroy whisky, and
by no other agency. There is no perfect family or state in which
woman is not an active governing force. They should have the
courage to assert themselves and then they can serve the country
and the race.
If a thunderbolt had fallen it would not have created a greater
sensation. The ladies at first grew indignant and uttered
protestations. When they grew calmer, the corresponding secretary
was ordered to furnish the editor with the following:
The ladies of the W. C. T. U. return thanks to the editor for his
kindly and progressive suggestions, but, in their opinion, they
are not ready to ask any political favors. Whenever suffrage is
granted to the women of the United States, those of Alabama will
be found on the right side.
At Huntsville lives Mrs. Priscilla Holmes Drake, whose name has
stood as representative of our National Association in Alabama
since 1868.
XII.--GEORGIA.
We give a letter from Georgia's great statesman, defining his views
of woman's sphere:
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, D. C., May 29, 1878.
_Mrs. E. L. Saxon, New Orleans, La._
MY DEAR MADAM:--Your letter to Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, of the
22d inst., came duly to hand. He requests me to thank you for it,
and to say in reply that he has ever sympathized with woman in
her efforts for a higher and broader sphere of intellectual and
moral culture, as well as physical usefulness in life. He does
not go so far as to endow woman with the ballot, or to fit her
for the more masculine duties of the State. Her sphere, by
nature, is circumscribed within certain physical boundaries, but
in all those things to which she is fitted by nature, and can
enter without interference with the laws of God, he would open
the doors wide to her.
Very respectfully yours, C. P. CULVER, _Secretary_.
FOOTNOTES:
[523] Myrtilla Miner; published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston
and New York.
[524] See Vol. II., page 90.
[525] _President_, Hon. Samuel C. Pomeroy; _Vice-Presidents_,
Josophine S. Griffing, Belva A. Lockwood, Jas. H. Holmes, John H.
Craney; _Advisory Council_, Mary E. O'Connor, Josephine S.
Griffing, Caroline B. Winslow, Dr. Susan A. Edson, Lydia S. Hall,
Mr. and Mrs. Boyle, Caroline B. Colby, and others.
[526] The officers elected were: _President_, United States Senator
S. C. Pomeroy; _Vice-Presidents_, Mrs. Josephine S. Griffing, Mrs.
Belva McNall Lockwood, Miss Stickney, Thaddeus Hyatt, Caroline B.
Winslow, M. D., S. Yorke At Lee, Mrs. Josephine L. Slade, Prof.
William J. Wilson, Mrs. Mary Olin, Judge A. B. Olin, Mrs. C. M. E.
Y. Christian, Prof. George B. Vashon, J. H. Crossman, Mrs. Angeline
S. Hall, Dr. C. B. Purvis, Mrs. Dr. Hathaway, Bishop Moore, Mrs. C.
A. F. Stebbins, Giles B. Stebbins, Miss Emily Stanton, Dr. John
Mayhew, John R. Elvana, J. C. O. Whaley, Charles Roeser, George T.
Downing; _Recording Secretary_, George F. Needham; _Treasurer_,
Daniel Breed; _Board of Managers_, Josephine S. Griffing, Hamilton
Wilcox, Dr. Daniel Breed, Mrs. Corner, Geo. F. Needham, Mrs. Lydia
S. Hall, J. H. Crane; _Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs. Mary T.
Corner. Letters were reported from Frederick Douglass, George
William Curtis, Mrs. E. Oakes Smith. Addresses were delivered by J.
H. Crossman, G. F. Needham, Mrs. Lockwood, R. J. Hinton, and Mr.
Tibbits of Virginia. Dr. Breed recited an original poem, entitled,
"Woman's Pledge to Freedom."
[527] The names of the women who attempted to register and vote
were: Jane A. Archibald, Clara M. Archibald, Mary Anderson, S. W.
Aiken, Sallie S. Barrett, Mary B. Baumgras, Florence Riddle
Bartlett, Ann M. Boyle, M. W. Browne, Deborah B. Clarke (Grace
Greenwood's mother, eighty years of age), C. W. Campbell, Elizabeth
T. Cowperthwaite, Mary T. Corner, Mary M. Courtenay, Mary A.
Donaldson, Mary A. Dennison, Ruth Carr Dennison, L. S. Doolittle,
Dr. Susan A. Edson, Sarah P. Edson, B. F. Evans, E. W. Foster,
Olive Freeman, Maggie Finney, Julia H. Grey, Josephine S. Griffing,
A. A. Henning, Susie J. Hickey, Calista Hickey, E. M. Hickey, Mary
Hooper, Ruth G. D. Havens, E. E. Hill, Lydia S. Hall, Julia
Archibald Holmes, N. M. Johnson, Jennie V. Jewell, Carrie Ketchum,
Joanna Kelly, Sara J. Lippincott (Grace Greenwood), Belva A.
Lockwood, Susie S. McClure, A. Jennie Miles, Augusta E. Morris, M.
T. Middleton, Savangie E. Mark, A. E. Newton, M. C. Page, Eliza Ann
Peck, Mary A. Riddle, A. R. Riddle, Caroline Risley, Sarah Andrews
Spencer, E. D. E. N. Southworth, Caroline A. Sherman, Mary S.
Scribner, Belle Smith, Maria T. Stoddard, Ada E. Spurgeon, Rubina
Taylor, Harriet P. Trickham, Eliza M. Tibbetts, Dr. Caroline B.
Winslow, Sarah E. Webster (mother of Dr. Susan A. Edson), Julia A.
Wilbur, Mrs. Westfall, Mary Willard, Amanda Wall, Lucy A. Wheeler.
[528] For full account see Vol. II., page 587.
[529] David Eastburn and Henry Swaine of New Castle county.
[530] The officers were: Sally Clay Bennett, Maggie S. Burnham,
Mrs. Somers, Mary B. Clay.
[531] The incorporators who formed the Board of Regents were, the
Right Rev. Thomas U. Dudley, D. D., Bishop of Kentucky; Rev. James
P. Boyce, D. D., President of the Baptist Theological Seminary;
Rev. E. F. Perkins, Rector of St. Paul's Church; Hon. I. H.
Edwards, Chancellor of Louisville Chancery Court; Theodore Harris,
President Louisville Banking and Insurance Co.; W. N. Haldeman,
President _Courier Journal_ Co.; Nicholas Finzer, President of
Finzer tobacco works; Samuel L. Avery, President B. F. Avery Co.;
G. H. Cochran, President Louisville School Board; Robert Cochran,
Commissioner of Chancery Court; Hon. Charles Godshaw, Trustee of
Jury Fund; Dr. E. A. Grant and Mr. James K. Lemon. The board was
organized by the election of Mr. Theodore Harris, _President_, Dr.
E. A. Grant, _Secretary_, and James K. Lemon, _Treasurer_. The
school opened with fifteen students, and continued until June,
1883. A lecture and practical course combined, occupy ten months of
the year--lectures being given five afternoons of each week during
the term.
[532] _President_, Mrs. Anne W. Bodeker, Richmond;
_Vice-Presidents_, Mrs. Maria G. and Judge John C. Underwood, Mr.
and Mrs. Judge Westal Willoughby, Mr. and Mrs. Judge Lysander Hill,
all of Alexandria; Mr. R. M. Manly, Richmond; Mrs. Martha Haines
Bennett, Norfolk; Mr. Andrew Washburne and Mr. William E. Coleman,
Richmond; _Secretary_, Miss Sue L. F. Smith, Richmond; _Executive
Committee_, Rev. W. F. Hemenway, Mrs. Andrew Washburne, Mrs. Dr. E.
H. Smith, Dr. and Mrs. Langstedt, Richmond, and Mrs. Allen
(Florence Percy) of Manchester.
[533] _President_, Gov. R. K. Scott; _Vice-Presidents_, Hon. B. F.
Whittemore, Hon. G. F. McIntyre, Gen. W. J. Whipper, Mrs. R. C.
DeLarge, Hon. D. H. Chamberlain, Mrs. A. J. Ransier, and Mrs. R. K.
Scott; _Secretary_, Miss K. Rollin; _Treasurer_, Mrs. K. Harris.
CHAPTER LV. (CONCLUDED).
CANADA.
We are indebted to Miss Phelps of St. Catharines and Mrs. Curzon of
Toronto for the facts we give in regard to women's position in the
Dominion. Miss Phelps says:
History tells us that when the thirteen American colonies
revolted and their independence was declared there were 25,000
who adhered to the policy of King George, under the name of the
United Empire Loyalists, some of whom came to Canada, others to
Acadia and others wandered elsewhere. The 10,000 who sought a
home in Canada at once formed a government in harmony with
English laws and usages. Parliament was established in 1803 at
York, now Toronto, and during that session the first law for the
protection of married women was passed. At first, if a married
woman desired to dispose of her property, she was obliged to go
before the courts to testify as to her willingness to do so. In
1821 a bill was passed enabling her to go before justices of the
peace. This was a great convenience, for the courts were not
always in session when it was imperative for her to sell. In 1849
a bill was passed to naturalize women who married native-born or
naturalized subjects. In 1859, under the old parliament of
Canada, the Married Woman's Property act was passed, which in
brief provides that every woman who may marry without any
marriage-contract or settlement shall, after May 4, 1859,
notwithstanding her coverture, have, hold and enjoy all her real
estate, whether belonging to her before marriage or in any way
acquired afterward, free from her husband's debts and obligations
contracted after May 4, 1859. A married woman may also hold her
personal property free from the debts and contracts of her
husband, and obtain an order of protection for her own earnings
and those of her minor children. She may become a stockholder of
any bank, insurance company or any incorporated association, as
if she were a _feme sole_, and may vote by proxy or otherwise. A
married woman is liable on contracts respecting her own real
estate. No married woman is liable to arrest either on mesne or
final process. Any superior court of law or equity or any judge
of said court, or a judge of a surrogate court, or deputy, may,
on hearing the petition of a mother, or minor whose father is
dead, appoint her as guardian--notwithstanding the appointment of
another person by the father--of the estate to which the minor is
entitled, and of such sums of money as are necessary from time to
time for the maintenance of the minor. In 1881 a law was passed
enabling a woman to discharge a mortgage on her lands without her
husband being a party to it, while a husband cannot dispose of
his property without her consent.
More than thirty years ago school suffrage was granted to women
on the same grounds as to male electors, and they are eligible to
all school offices. Women have, however, been slow to avail
themselves of this privilege, owing to their ignorance of the
laws and their lack of interest in regard to all public measures.
When they awake to their political rights they will feel a deeper
responsibility in the discharge of their public duties. But the
steady increase in the number of those who avail themselves of
this privilege is the one encouraging indication of the growth of
the suffrage movement in Canada.
In 1882 the municipal act was so amended as to give married
women, widows and spinsters, if possessed of the necessary
qualifications, the right to vote on by-laws and some other minor
municipal matters. Again, in 1884, the act was still further
amended, extending the right to vote at municipal elections to
widows and unmarried women on all matters. In Toronto, January 4,
1886, the women polled a large vote, resulting in the election of
the candidate pledged to reform. But it must be remembered that
this progressive legislation belongs only to the Province of
Ontario.
Mrs. Curzon writes:
In the year 1876 Dr. Emily H. Stowe--graduated in New
York--settled in Toronto for the practice of her profession.
Thoroughly imbued with the principles roughly summed up in the
term "woman's rights," and finding that her native Canada was not
awake to the importance of the subject, she lectured in the
principal towns of Ontario on "Woman's Sphere and Woman in
Medicine." By reason of the agitation caused by these lectures a
Woman's Literary Club[534] was organized in Toronto with Dr.
Stowe, president, and Miss Helen Archibald, secretary. The
triumphs scored through the efforts of this club were the
admission of women to the University College and School of
Medicine of Toronto, Queen's University and the Royal Medical
School of Kingston, and the founding of a medical school for
women in each city. When the municipal franchise was granted to
women the club decided to come out boldly as a suffrage
organization. Accordingly by resolution the Toronto Woman's
Literary Club was dissolved and the Canadian Woman Suffrage
Association[535] formed, March 9, 1883.
McGill University at Montreal has an annex for women founded
through the munificence of one of the merchants of that
city.----Dalhousie College, Halifax, admits women on the same
footing as men. The Toronto _Mail_ says it is only a question of
time when all Canadian colleges will do the same thing.----In
1883 the provincial legislature of Nova Scotia gave duly
qualified women the right to vote, and they exercised it very
generally the following year.----In New Brunswick the old laws
and prejudices remain, but woman suffrage has its friends and
advocates in Mrs. E. W. Fisher and Mr. and Mrs. W. Frank Hathaway
of St. Johns.----In 1885 the Mount Allison Methodist College at
Sackville, N. B., conferred the degree of M. A. on Miss Harriet
Stewart. This is the first instance of an educational institution
in the Dominion conferring such an honor upon a lady.
FOOTNOTES:
[534] _The Ballot-Box_ in 1880 said: "_The Citizen_ of Toronto,
Ont., has established a 'Ladies' Column' under the auspices of the
Toronto Woman's Literary Club, the first ladies' club ever formed
in Canada. This club has been in existence four years. _The
Citizen_ is said to be the first Canadian paper devoted, even in
part, to woman's interest. Heading this change 'Important Notice,'
it says: 'We have great pleasure in announcing that we have made an
arrangement with the Toronto Woman's Literary Club to occupy an
important space in our columns, for the advance of moral, social,
educational and family matters affecting woman generally. Mrs. S.
A. Curzon has charge of this column as associate editor.' The club
in a stirring salutatory defines its work and objects. It is the
intention to give, each week, a _résumé_ of the current topics
concerning women, education, the franchises, the legal abilities
and disabilities of women, etc., hoping to arouse a national
sentiment among Canadian women and intelligence upon these
important subjects. This appeal is signed by Mrs. McEwen, the
president, and Emily H. Stowe, Mrs. W. J. MacKenzie, Mrs. W. B.
Hamilton and Mrs. S. A. Curzon, the executive committee."
[535] The officers were: _President_, Mrs. Donald McEwen;
_Vice-Presidents_, Mrs. Curzon, Mrs. E. H. Stowe, M. D., Captain W.
F. McMaster, John Hallam, esq.; _Treasurer_, Mrs. W. B. Hamilton;
_Secretary_, Miss J. Foulds; _Executive Committee_, Mrs. McKenzie,
Mrs. S. McMaster, Mrs. Riches, Mrs. Miller, Miss Hamilton, Miss
McMaster, Miss Alexander, William Houston, J. L. Foulds, P.
McIntyre, Phillips Thompson, Thomas Bengough.
[Illustration: Mentia Taylor]
CHAPTER LVI.
GREAT BRITAIN.
BY CAROLINE ASHURST BIGGS.
Women Send Members to Parliament--Sidney Smith, Sir Robert Peel,
Richard Cobden--The Ladies of Oldham--Jeremy Bentham--Anne
Knight--Northern Reform Society, 1858--Mrs. Matilda
Biggs--Unmarried Women and Widows Petition
Parliament--Associations formed in London, Manchester, Edinburgh,
1867--John Stuart Mill in Parliament--Seventy-three Votes for his
Bill--John Bright's Vote--Women Register and
Vote--Lord-Chief-Justice of England Declares their Constitutional
Right--The Courts give Adverse Decisions--Jacob Bright secures
the Municipal Franchise--First Public Meeting--Division on Jacob
Bright's Bill to Remove Political Disabilities--Mr. Gladstone's
Speech--Work of 1871-2--Fourth Vote on the Suffrage Bill--Jacob
Bright fails of Reëlection--Efforts of Mr. Forsyth--Memorial of
the National Society--Some Account of the Workers--Vote of the
New Parliament, 1875--Organized Opposition--Diminished Adverse
Vote of 1878--Mr. Courtney's Resolution--Letters--Great
Demonstrations at Manchester--London--Bristol--Nottingham--
Birmingham--Sheffield--Glasgow--Victory in the Isle of Man--Passage
of Municipal Franchise Bill for Scotland--Mr. Mason's Resolution--
Reduction of Adverse Majority to 16--Conference at Leeds--Mr.
Woodall's Amendment to Reform Bill of 1884--Meeting at Edinburgh--
Other Meetings--Estimated Number of Women Householders--Circulars
to Members of Parliament--Debate on the Amendment--Resolutions of
the Society--Further Debate--Defeat of the Amendment--Meeting at
St. James Hall--Conclusion.
In writing a history of the woman suffrage movement, it is
difficult to say where one should begin, for although the organized
agitation which arose when John Stuart Mill first brought forward
his proposal in parliament dates back only eighteen years, the
foundations for this demand were laid with the very earliest
parliamentary institutions in England. As a nation we are fond of
working by precedents, and it is a favorite saying among lawyers
that modern English law began with Henry III. In earlier Saxon
times women who were freeholders of lands or burgesses in towns had
the same electoral rights as men. We have records of the reigns of
Mary and Elizabeth, showing that ladies of the manse, in their own
right, sent members to parliament. Down to the time of the civil
wars women were accustomed to share in the election of "parliament
men." In 1640, some women voted in an election for the county of
Suffolk, Sir Simonds d'Ewes being high-sheriff:
Who, as soon as he had notice thereof, sent to forbid the same,
conceiving it a matter verie unworthy of anie gentleman, and most
dishonourable in such an election to make use of their voices,
although in law they might have been allowed.
The spirit of the Puritans was not favorable to woman's equality;
but, though disused, the right was never absolutely taken away by
law. In a celebrated trial, Olive _vs._ Ingram (reign of George
II.) the chief-justice gave it as his opinion that "a person paying
scot and lot," and therefore qualified to vote, was a description
which included women; and all the writs of election down to the
time of William IV. were made to "persons" who were freeholders.
However, for all purposes of political life this right was as good
as dead, being absolutely forgotten. But still the local franchises
remained. We have no data to determine whether these were as
completely neglected as the parliamentary franchise. Parishioners
voted for overseers of the poor and for other local boards; and
women were never legally disqualified from voting in these
elections. The lowest period in the condition of women appears to
have been reached at the end of the last century, though they were
not then indifferent to politics. "You cannot," says Miss
Edgeworth's Lady Davenant, "satisfy yourself with the common
namby-pamby phrase, 'Ladies have nothing to do with politics.' * *
* Female influence must exist on political subjects as well as on
all others; but this influence should always be domestic not
public; the customs of society have so ruled it." This sentence
exactly represented ordinary English feeling. It was never
considered derogatory to an English lady to take an active part in
elections, provided she did so for some member of her family; but
of direct responsibility she had none.
In the ferment of opinion which preceded the great Reform bill,
woman's claim to participate in it was never heard. The new
franchises which were then for the first time created applied
exclusively to _male_ persons, but in the old franchises continuing
in force, the word "person" alone is strictly used. Mr. Sidney
Smith said:
In reserving and keeping alive the qualifications in existence
before those itself created, this statute falls back exactly to
the accustomed phraseology of the earlier acts. Whenever it
confers a new right it restricts it to every male person.
Whenever it perpetuates existing franchises, it continues them
to every person, leaving the word "male" out on system.
This may have been little more than an oversight, or it may have
been that respect for precedent which used to be an inherent
quality in English statesmen. But it is curious that the first
petition ever, to our knowledge, presented for women's suffrage to
the House of Commons should date from this same year. It was
presented on August 3, 1832, and is the worthy predecessor of many
thousands in later times. Hansard thus describes it:
Mr. Hunt said he had a petition to present which might be a
subject of mirth to some honorable gentlemen, but which was one
deserving of consideration. It came from a lady of rank and
fortune, Mary Smith of Stanmore, in the county of York. The
petition stated that she paid taxes, and therefore did not see
why she should not have a share in the election of a
representative; she also stated that women were liable to all the
penalties of the law, even death, and ought to have a voice in
the fixing of them; but so far from this, on their trials both
judges and jurors were of the opposite sex. She could see no good
reason for the exclusion of women from political rights while the
highest office of the State, that of the crown, was open to the
inheritance of females; and, so we understood, the petitioner
expressed her indignation against those vile wretches who would
not marry, and yet would exclude females from a share in the
legislation. The prayer of the petition was that every unmarried
female, possessing the necessary pecuniary qualifications, should
be entitled to vote for members of parliament.
The following year Sir Robert Peel in opposing vote by ballot said:
The theoretical arguments in favor of woman suffrage were at
least as strong as those in favor of vote by ballot. There were
arguments in favor of extending the franchise to women to which
it was no easy matter to find a logical answer. Other and more
important duties were entrusted to women. Women were allowed to
hold property, to vote on many occasions in right of that
property; nay, a woman might inherit the throne and perform all
the functions of the first office of the State. Why should they
not vote for a member of parliament?
But Sir Robert Peel evidently had no idea that a time would come
when women would ask this question in downright seriousness.
Meanwhile the preference for the words "male person" in the new
enactments still continued. It was employed in the Municipal
Corporation Reform act, 1835; and in the Irish poor-law act of
1838, women, as well as clergymen, were expressly excluded from
election as poor-law guardians. The repeal of the corn-laws brought
the political work of women to the front; they formed local
committees, collected funds and attended meetings. In a speech on
free-trade, delivered in Covent Garden Theater January 15, 1845,
Richard Cobden said:
There are many ladies present, I am happy to say; now, it is a
very anomalous fact that they cannot vote themselves, and yet
that they have a power of conferring votes upon other people. I
wish they had the franchise, for they would often make much
better use of it than their husbands.
Again in 1848, in supporting a motion of Mr. Joseph Hume in the
House of Commons to the effect that the elective franchise should
be extended to all householders, Mr. Cobden said:
A gentleman asked me to support universal suffrage on the ground
of principle, and I said to him, if it is a principle that a man
should have a vote because he pays taxes, why should not a widow
who pays taxes and is liable to serve as church-warden and
overseer, have a vote for members of parliament? The gentleman
replied that he agreed with me.
In 1853, Mr. W. J. Fox, member for Oldham, in acknowledging the
presentation to him by the ladies of Oldham of a signet-ring
bearing the inscription, "Education, the birthright of all," spoke
strongly in favor of women having a definite share in political
life:
If women have nothing to do with politics, honest men ought to
have nothing to do with politics. They keep us pure, simple,
just, earnest, in our exertions in politics and public life. They
have to do with it, because while the portion of man may be by
the rougher labors of the head and hands to work out many of the
great results of life, the peculiar function of woman is to
spread grace and softness, truth, beauty, benignity over all. Nor
is woman confined to this. In fact I wish that her direct as well
as indirect influence were still larger than it is in the sphere
of politics. Why, we trust a woman with the sceptre of the realm,
consider her adequate to make peers in the State and bishops in
the Church; surely she must be adequate to send her
representatives to the lower House. I know the time may not have
come for mooting a question of this sort; but I know the time
will come, and that woman will be something more than a mere
adjective to man in political matters. She will become a
substantive also. And why not?
Other speakers and writers brought forward the same point. Jeremy
Bentham declared he could find no reasons for the exclusion of
women, though he laid no stress on the matter; Herbert Spencer in
"Social Statics" (1851), Mr. Thomas Hare in his book on
"Representation," and Mr. Mill in "Representative Government," all
discussed it. In 1843 Mrs. Hugo Reid published an excellent volume,
"A Plea for Woman," in which she maintained that "There is no good
ground for the assumption that the possession and exercise of
political privileges are incompatible with home duties." In 1841 a
strong article appeared in the _Westminster Review_, written by
Mrs. Margaret Mylne, a Scotch lady still living. Mrs. Stuart Mill's
admirably comprehensive article appeared in the same review in
1851.[536] In 1846, also, Col. T. Perronet Thompson, the well-known
anti-corn-law advocate, wrote:
Whenever the popular party can agree upon and bring forward any
plan which shall include the equal voting of women, they will not
only obtain an alliance of which most men know the importance,
but they will relieve the theory of universal suffrage from the
stigma its enemies never fail to draw upon it, of making its
first step a wholesale disqualification of half the universe
concerned.
Among other writers and speakers on the subject, we must also
enumerate Anne Knight, an earnest warm-hearted Quaker lady. She
sometimes lectured upon it, and many of her letters written to Mrs.
Elizabeth Pease Nichol of Edinburgh, Lord Brougham, and others, are
still preserved, in which she eagerly advocates the admission of
women to the suffrage. She assisted in founding the Sheffield
Female Political Association. On February 26, 1851, this
association held a meeting at the Democratic Temperance Hotel,
Sheffield, and unanimously adopted an address, which was the first
manifesto dealing with the suffrage ever formulated by a meeting of
women in England:
ADDRESS OF THE SHEFFIELD POLITICAL ASSOCIATION TO THE WOMEN OF
ENGLAND--_Beloved Sisters_: We, the women of the democracy of
Sheffield, beg the indulgence of addressing you at this important
juncture. We have been observers for a number of years of the
various plans and systems of organization which have been laid
down for the better government and guidance of democracy, and we
are brought to the conclusion that women might with the strictest
propriety be included in the proclamation of the people's
charter; for we are the majority of the nation, and it is our
birth-right, equally with our brother, to vote for the man who is
to sway our political destiny, to impose the taxes which we are
compelled to pay, to make the laws which we with others must
observe; and heartily should we rejoice to see the women of
England uniting for the purpose of demanding this great right of
humanity, feeling assured that were women thus comprehended, they
would be the greatest auxiliaries of right against might. For
what would not the patient, energetic mind of woman accomplish,
when once resolved? The brave and heroic deeds which history
records are our testimony that no danger is too great, no
struggle too arduous for her to encounter; thus confirming our
convictions that woman's coöperation is greatly needed for the
accomplishment of our political well-being. But there are some
who would say: "Would you have woman enjoy all the political
rights of men?" To this we emphatically answer: Yes! for does she
not toil early and late in the factory, and in every department
of life subject to the despotism of men? and we ask in the name
of justice, must we continue ever the silent and servile victims
of this injustice? perform all the drudgery of his political
societies and never possess a single political right? Is the
oppression to last forever? We, the women of the democracy of
Sheffield, answer, No! We put forth this earnest appeal to our
sisters of England to join hand and heart with us in this noble
and just cause, to the exposing and eradicating of such a state
of things. Let us shake off our apathy and raise our voices for
right and liberty, till justice in all its fulness is conceded to
us. This we say to all who are contending for liberty, for what
is liberty if the claims of women be disregarded? Our special
object will be the entire political enfranchisement of our own
sex; and we conjure you, our sisters of England, to aid us in
accomplishing this holy work. We remain with heartfelt respect,
your friends.[537]
At the end of 1858 there was established in Newcastle-on-Tyne an
association called the Northern Reform Society, which had universal
suffrage for its object, and it expressly invited the contributions
of women. Letters were written by Matilda Ashurst Biggs, and
afterwards by two or three women in different parts of the country,
offering to become members. In acknowledging these letters, the
secretary stated that the Northern Reform Union only contemplated
the extension of the franchise to men, although he admitted that
many of its leading members were individually in favor of "woman
suffrage" but they believed that by asking for manhood suffrage,
they were advancing a step towards universal franchise. He added.
"The society will be very glad of women's subscriptions, and trusts
that they will use their best efforts to promote its extension."
Undoubtedly, there has never been any reluctance to accept the
subscriptions of women towards promoting the objects of men. In
commenting upon this letter, Mrs. Biggs[538] said in the _Newcastle
Guardian_, February 19, 1859:
I have never given my rights to be merged in those of any other
person, and I feel it an injustice that I, who am equally taxed
with men, should be denied a voice in making the laws which
affect and dispose of my property, and made to support a State
wherein I am not recognized as a citizen. I consider that a
tyranny which renders me responsible to laws in the making of
which I am not consulted. The Northern Reform Society, which
"takes its stand upon justice," should claim for us at least that
we be exempted from the duties, it we are to be denied the rights
belonging to citizens.
These books, speeches and letters though scattered and unconnected,
slowly prepared the ground for the organized agitation. Another
Reform bill grew into preparation. Men's thoughts were turned again
towards the question of representation, and every word spoken on
behalf of the enfranchisement of women assumed double force as it
drew near to a political issue. The enfranchisement of women
advanced from a question of philosophical speculation to actual
politics in the election of John Stuart Mill member of parliament
for Westminster in 1865. In his election address, Mr. Mill, as
previously in his work on representative government, openly avowed
this article of political faith. Nevertheless, the first speech of
which we have record in the House of Commons plainly vindicating
the right of women to the vote, was that of a man who differed from
Mr. Mill in every other feature of his political life and
creed--Mr. Disraeli. He used almost the same form of argument as
Sir Robert Peel had done thirty years before, but unlike the former
statesman he backed it up with his vote and personal influence for
many succeeding years. It was in 1866 that he spoke these words,
long and gratefully remembered by the women of the country:
In a country governed by a woman--where you allow woman to form
part of the estate of the realm--peeresses in their own right for
example--where you allow a woman not only to hold land, but to be
a lady of the manor and hold legal courts--where a woman by law
may be a church-warden and overseer of the poor,--I do not see,
where she has so much to do with the State and Church, on what
reasons, if you come to right, she has not a right to vote.
These words from Disraeli were the spark that fired the train. In
answer to a request from Miss Jessie Boucherett, Mrs. Bodichon and
Miss Bessie R. Parkes, Mr. Mill replied that if they could find a
hundred women who would sign a petition for the franchise, he would
present it to the House of Commons. A committee was immediately
formed in London, and the petition was circulated. In two or three
weeks it had received 1,499 signatures. Among these were many who
in after years took a prominent part, not only in suffrage, but in
other movements for the elevation of women. The petition was
presented by Mr. Mill in May, 1866, and was received with laughter.
He then gave notice of a motion to introduce into the Reform bill a
provision to the same effect. The committee[539] immediately began
to circulate petitions and pamphlets. Two of these were by Mrs.
Bodichon, "Reasons for, and Objections against the Enfranchisement
of Women," being the substance of a paper she had read at the
Social Science Congress, in October, 1866. We give the text of the
petition, as it differed somewhat from those circulated in after
years:
_To the Honorable, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled:_
The humble petition of the undersigned,--showeth, That your
petitioners fulfill the conditions of property or rental
prescribed by law as the qualification of the electoral
franchise, and exercise in their own names the rights pertaining
to such conditions; that the principles in which the government
of the United Kingdom is based, imply the representation of all
classes and interests in the State; that the reasons alleged for
withholding the franchise from certain classes of her majesty's
subjects do not apply to your petitioners. Your petitioners
therefore humbly pray your honorable House to grant to such
persons as fulfill all the conditions which entitle to a vote in
the election of members of parliament, excepting only that of
sex, the privilege of taking part in the choice of fit persons to
represent the people in your honorable House.
This form of petition was only signed by unmarried women and widows
of full age, holding the legal qualification for voting in either
county or borough, but there were other forms for other classes of
persons. On March 28, the Right Hon. H. A. Bruce presented a
petition from 3,559 persons, mostly women. Mr. Mill, in April,
presented one with 3,161 names collected by the Manchester
committee, and the Right Hon. Russell Gurney one signed by 1,605
qualified women, _i. e._, free-holders and householders who would
have had the vote had they been men. In all 13,497 were counted in
the parliamentary report this session; among these were many
clergymen, barristers, physicians and fellows of colleges.
While we are on the subject of petitions we may as well briefly
glance at what was done in this branch of work during succeeding
years.[540] No better method could be found of testing public
opinion, or of affording scope for quiet, intelligent agitation.
Many friends could help by circulating petitions, distributing
literature at the same time and arguing away objections. In 1868
there were presented 78 petitions with nearly 50,000 signatures.
One of them, headed by Mrs. Somerville and Florence Nightingale,
contained 21,000 names, and was a heavy but delightful burden which
Mr. Mill could hardly carry to the table. This petition excited
great attention. During all these years no petitions were presented
against granting the suffrage to women. These numbers were
undoubtedly a surprise to many members of parliament who were
inclined to look upon woman suffrage as an "impracticable fad,"
"the fantastic crochet of a few shrieking sisters." But the
collection and arrangement of the signatures took up incalculable
time, and after a few years this method of agitation was discarded
to a great extent in the large political centres. Friends became
wearied out with the toilsome process of year by year collecting
signatures, which when presented were silently and indifferently
dropped into the bag under the table of the House of Commons. But
during the early days of the movement these petitions, signed by
all classes of men and women, were invaluable in arousing interest
in our movement.
In 1867, for the better prosecution of the work, instead of one
committee embracing the whole of England, separate associations
were formed in London, Manchester and Edinburgh. The London
committee consisted of ladies only, Miss Frances Power Cobbe, Mrs.
Fawcett, Miss Hampson, Miss Hare, Mrs. Lucas, Mrs. Stansfeld, with
Mrs. Taylor as secretary. In the Manchester committee Mr. Jacob
Bright, M. P., at once took up the position of leader and advocate
which he afterwards so long and nobly maintained in the House of
Commons. Miss Becker was appointed secretary. The Edinburgh
committee elected Mrs. McLaren[541] for their president. At a
special general meeting, November 6, 1867, it was resolved that
these three societies should form one national society, thus
securing the advantages of coöperation while maintaining freedom of
action. The same rule applied to societies in Birmingham, Bristol
and other towns.
To return to the debate in the House of Commons on May 20, 1867 on
clause 4 of the Representation of the People bill. Mr. Mill moved
to leave out the word "man" and insert the word "person." His
speech has been too long before the public to need quotation; it is
a model of inductive reasoning and masterly eloquence. The debate
which followed was very unequal in character, but the division was
gratifying, for he received 73 votes (including pairs, 81); 194
voted against him. Mr. Mill wrote afterwards to a friend:
We are all delighted at the number of our minority, which is far
greater than anybody expected the first time, and would have been
greater still had not many members quitted the House, with or
without pairing, in the expectation that the subject would not
come on. But the greatest triumph of all was John Bright's vote.
At the election for Manchester, held near the end of 1867 (when Mr.
Jacob Bright was elected), Lily Maxwell, whose name had been
accidentally left on the parliamentary register, recorded her vote.
No objection was taken to it by the returning officer, or by the
agents of either candidate. The _Times_ devoted a leading article
to it. The circumstance was of no legal value, but it was useful to
show that a woman could go through the process of recording a vote
in a parliamentary election even before the Ballot act was passed.
The idea gained ground that by the new Reform act the right to vote
had been secured to women. The Reform act of 1867, sec. 3, declares
that:
Every man shall in and after the year 1868 be entitled to be
registered as a voter, and when registered, to vote for a member
to serve in parliament.
In the substitution of the word "man" for that of "male person"
in the Reform act of 1832, a great difference was already
discernable, but this difference was more important when taken into
conjunction with what was popularly known as "Lord Romilly's act,"
an act for shortening the language used in acts of parliament (13
and 14 Vict.). This act provides, "that all words importing
the masculine gender shall be deemed and taken to include
females, unless the contrary is expressly provided"; and in the
Representation of the People act there was no express provision to
the contrary. This had been pointed out by one or two members at
the time.
Accordingly the several societies united in a systematic endeavor
to procure the insertion of women's names on the registers of
electors under the new Reform act. A circular respectfully
requesting the boards of overseers to insert on the list of voters
the names of all persons who had paid their rates, was sent to
several hundred boards in different parts of the country. Very few
replies were received, but women were placed on the lists in many
counties, in Aberdeen, Salford and many small districts in
Lancaster, Middlesex, Kent, etc. The overseers of Manchester
declined compliance. In that city there were 5,100 women
householders who claimed their votes, and when the revision courts
were opened in September, this claim came on for consideration. The
case was ably argued, but the revising barrister decided against
admitting it, granting, however, a case for trial at the Court of
Common Pleas. Another case was also granted, being that of Mrs.
Kyllman, a free-holder, her claim being under the old free-holding
franchise 8 Henry VI., to wit.:
Elections of knights of the shire shall be made in each county by
people dwelling and resident therein of whom each has free-hold
to the value of £40 by the year.
In the majority of districts the revising barristers disallowed the
claims; but in four district-revision courts the women's names were
admitted. In Finsbury, one of the metropolitan boroughs, Mr.
Chisholm Anstey was revising barrister, and he admitted them on
account of ancient English law; in Cockermouth, Winterton and two
townships of Lancashire, the revising barrister admitted them upon
his interpretation of the Reform act taken in conjunction with Lord
Romilly's act. In the suffrage report for this year the number of
women placed on the electoral roll by these decisions is estimated
at about 230, but undoubtedly there were others concerning whom no
information was received. In many cases the women voted: 15 did so
in Finsbury (not only was there no disturbance, but hardly any
remark was made, and they expressed their surprise that it was so
easy a thing to do); 12 in Gordon and 10 in Levenshulme, both
little districts in Lancashire, and smaller numbers in other
places. In Chester the parliament candidate issued his election
placards to "Ladies and Gentlemen."
On November 7, the case of the 5,000 Manchester women householders
was argued before the Court of Common Pleas. Mr. J. D. Coleridge
(now Lord Coleridge, Lord-chief-justice of England) and Dr.
Pankhurst were the counsel for the appellants. Mr. John Coleridge
in an able argument spoke of the ancient constitutional right of
women to take part in elections. He produced copies from the record
office of several indentures returning members to parliament, the
signatures of which were in the hand-writing of women, or to which
women were parties. He argued that the term "man" in the Reform act
included woman, not only generally but specifically, under the
provisions of Lord Romilly's act. The case was argued before
Lord-chief-justice Boville; the decision was given on November 9,
and decisively pronounced that the new Reform act had never
intended to include women, and that they were incapacitated from
voting. This decision did not affect the women who were already on
the register, and many voted in the general election which took
place afterwards. Thus women have been shut out from electoral
rights, not by any decree of parliament, but by this decision of
the Court of Common Pleas. However there was no appeal from this
Court, except to parliament, and from this time forward the
character of the agitation changed. The year 1868 ended with a
legal decision which seemed crushing in its finality, while the
same year had given the most conclusive proof that women wished to
vote, and would do so whenever the opportunity offered.
The next year, 1869, gave another convincing proof that women were
eager to vote, and brought us the most substantial triumph yet
obtained, due to the wisdom and skilful tactics of Mr. Jacob
Bright, member of parliament for Manchester. This victory was the
municipal franchise for women. Early in 1869 Mr. Hibbert introduced
a bill to regulate the conditions of the municipal franchise. By
the Municipal Corporation Amendment act, passed in 1835, male
persons only were authorized to vote. The present bill was to amend
that. Mr. Jacob Bright, seconded by Sir Charles Dilke and Mr.
Peter Rylands, proposed the omission of the word "male" from the
bill, and the insertion of a clause securing to women the right of
voting in municipal elections. Mr. Hibbert concurred in the
introduction of these amendments, though he did not anticipate they
would lead to any result beyond a discussion. A circular containing
full information upon the ancient and existing rights of women to
vote in local affairs was sent to each member of parliament by the
Manchester committee. It showed that before the passing of the
Municipal Corporation act of 1835, women rate-payers had rights
similar to those of men in all matters pertaining to local
government and expenditure; and that in non-corporate districts
they still exercised such rights, under the provisions of the
Public Health act, and other statutes guarding the electoral
privileges of the whole body of rate-payers. But when any district
was incorporated into a municipal borough, the women rate-payers
were disfranchised, although those not included within its
boundaries remained possessed of votes. It showed also that women
can vote in parochial matters, and take part in vestry meetings,
called for various purposes, such as the election of church-wardens
and way-wardens, the appointment of overseers, the sale of parish
property, and, formerly, the levying of church-rates; also that
they can vote in the election of poor-law guardians--that in fact,
in none of those ancient voting customs, was the sex of the
ratepayers taken into consideration as either a qualification or
disqualification. We quote from the Manchester society:
In the House of Commons on June 7, 1869, on consideration of the
Municipal Franchise bill as amended, Mr. Jacob Bright rose to
move that in this act and the said recited act (Municipal
Corporation Reform act, 1835) wherever words occur which import
the masculine gender, the same shall be held to include females
for all purposes connected with and having reference to the
election of or power to elect representatives of any municipal
corporation. He stated that his object was to give the municipal
vote to every rate-payer within the municipal limits; to give to
municipal property the representation which all property enjoyed
elsewhere; that had the proposition been an innovation, a
departure from the customary legislation of the country, he would
not have brought it in as an amendment to a bill; but that his
object was to remove an innovation--to resist one of the most
remarkable invasions of long-established rights which the
legislation of this or any other country could show. The bill
before the house was an amendment of the Municipal Corporation
act of 1835. That act was the only act in regard to local
expenditure and local government which established this
disability. Before and since, all acts of parliament gave every
local vote to every rate-payer. The Health of Towns act of 1848
had a clause almost identical with the one he was moving. He was
therefore asking the House not only to make the bill in harmony
with the general legislation of the country, but to allow it to
be in harmony with its latest expressed convictions as shown in
the act of 1848. There were in England 78 non-corporate towns
which were not parliamentary boroughs, with populations varying
from 20,000 to 6,000. In these every rate-payer voted. There was
little if any difference between their government and that of
municipal towns. Who could assign a reason why women should vote
in one and not in the other? Every parochial vote was in the
hands of the whole body of rate-payers. Women held the most
important parochial offices. The sister of the member for
Stockport had acted as overseer. Miss Burdett Coutts had been
urged to take the office of guardian. Had she been a large
rate-payer in a municipal town, what an absurdity to shut her out
from the vote! He then showed how the process of disfranchisement
was going on, and quoted Darlington and Southport. The latter
town was incorporated in 1867. In 1866, 2,085 persons were
qualified to vote for commissioners; 588 of these were women.
From the moment of incorporation these votes were extinguished
without a reason being assigned, though they had exercised them
from time immemorial. Such would be the case with any town
incorporated in the future. He appealed to the metropolitan
members, and showed them that unless his clauses were carried,
when they came to establish corporations throughout the
metropolis, as some of them desired, all the female rate-payers
would be struck off the roll; that over a population of 3,000,000
this exclusion would prevail. He stated that where women had the
vote they exercised it to an equal degree with the men. Mr.
Lings, the comptroller for the city of Manchester, affirms that
according to his experience the number of men and women who vote
in local affairs bears a just proportion to the number of each on
the register. He showed that as the bill was a largely
enfranchising measure, his clause was in strict harmony with it,
but that while the bill sought to increase the representation of
those who were already considerably represented, the clause which
he wished to add would give representation to those who within
municipal towns were totally deprived of it. He concluded by
saying that questions had come to him, since these amendments had
been on the paper, from women in different parts of the country,
and from those who by their social and intellectual positions
might be regarded as representatives of their sex, asking why
there should always be this tender regard for the representation
and therefore the protection of men, and this apparent disregard
for the interest of women; and he appealed to the House, by its
decision, to show that as regards these local franchises it had a
common regard for the whole body of rate-payers.
Mr. Jacob Bright's motion, which he supported with all the tact,
earnestness and judgment of which he afterwards gave such repeated
proofs in bringing forward his Women's Disabilities bill, was
seconded by Mr. Rylands. Mr. Bruce (the home secretary) said he
had shown conclusively that this proposition was no novelty, and
that women were allowed to vote in every form of local government,
except under the Municipal Corporations act. The clause introduced
no anomaly, and he should give it his cordial support. Mr. Hibbert
also supported the clause, which was agreed to amid cheers, and it
was passed without a dissentient word or the faintest shadow of
opposition, as was also the proposal of Sir Charles Dilke, to leave
out the word "male" in the first clause.
In the House of Lords an attempt was made by Lord Redesdale to
reverse the decision of the House of Commons, but the proposal
found no seconder, and therefore fell to the ground. The Earl of
Kimberley, on behalf of the government, supported the proposition,
as did also Lord Cairns, from the opposition benches. The Municipal
Franchise bill became law in August, 1869. One well-known statesman
said at the time, "This is a revolution; this vote means still
another, and there never was so great a revolution so speedily
accomplished." In 1869 the Ballot act had not been passed; this was
in the days of open voting. It was therefore possible to ascertain
with accuracy in how large a proportion the women householders
availed themselves of their restored right to vote whenever a
contested election took place. On the following November a letter
of inquiry was sent to the town clerk of every municipal borough in
England and Wales, and by their courtesy in replying it was
ascertained that the women voted in very large numbers. In our
municipal towns the average ratio of women householders to men
householders is about one to seven. This varies greatly in
different localities. In Tewkesbury, for instance, there was only
one woman householder to twenty-three men householders, while in
Bath the proportion had risen as high as one to three. The women
voters were in about the same proportion. In the larger boroughs
the proportion was especially good, while there were cases in which
the polling of the women exceeded that of the men. In Bodmin,
Cornwall, two women voted, one of whom was 92 and the other 94
years of age.
The first public meeting in connection with women's suffrage was
held in Manchester, April 14, 1868, in the assembly room of the
Free Trade Hall. The occasion was one of great interest. Mr. Henry
D. Pochin, the mayor of Salford (which adjoins Manchester), took
the chair, and the first resolution was moved by Miss Becker,
seconded by the venerable Arch-deacon Sandford, and supported by
Mr. T. B. Potter, M. P.:
_Resolved_, That the exclusion of women from the exercise of the
franchise in the election of members, being unjust in principle
and inexpedient in practice, this meeting is of opinion that the
right of voting should be granted to them on the same conditions
as it is or may be granted to men.
The other resolutions were spoken to by Dr. Pankhurst, Mrs. Pochin
(who had also written a very exhaustive pamphlet on "The Claim of
Woman to the Elective Franchise," signed, _Justitia_), Mr. Chisholm
Anstey, Mr. Jacob Bright, M. P., Miss Annie Robertson of Dublin,
Mr. F. W. Myers, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Mr. J.
W. Edwards. This meeting, and the one which followed in Birmingham,
May 6, are fair types of those which have followed by thousands.
With few exceptions they have been addressed by men and women
jointly; the resolutions passed have generally been of a directly
practical and political character. They have been presided over,
whenever possible, by the chief magistrate, or some other
well-known man in the locality; in comparatively few cases have
women presided, and very seldom, indeed, strangers. Thus they have
been modeled closely on the ordinary English political meeting; and
this form, quite apart from the principles discussed at the
meetings, has done much to identify women's suffrage with the
practical politics of the day. The first meeting ever held in
London (July, 1869,) excited much attention. Admittance here was by
ticket. Mrs. Peter A. Taylor took the chair; Miss Biggs read the
report, and a noble array of speakers followed.[542]
The principle of women's suffrage was unhesitatingly conceded by
the passing of the Municipal Amendment act of 1869. The time was
come to demand its application in parliamentary elections.
Moreover, the decision of the Court of Common Pleas had left no
mode of action possible except for parliament to reverse that
decision. Mr. Jacob Bright, therefore, on the first day of the
session gave notice of his intention to introduce a bill to remove
the electoral disabilities of women. Sir Charles Dilke, a Liberal,
and Mr. E. B. Eastwick, a Conservative, also gave their names on
the back of the bill.
A BILL _to remove the Electoral Disabilities of Women_:
Be it enacted by the Queen's most excellent Majesty, by and with
the advice and consent of the Lords, spiritual and temporal, and
Commons in this present parliament assembled, and by the
authority of the same, as follows:
_First_--That in all acts relating to the qualification and
registration of voters or persons entitled or claiming to be
registered and to vote in the election of members of parliament,
wherever words occur which import the masculine gender, the same
shall be held to include females for all purposes connected with,
and having reference to the right to be registered as voters, and
to vote in such elections, any law or usage to the contrary
notwithstanding.
On February 16, the bill was read for the first time, and on May 4,
it came on for its second reading. Mr. Jacob Bright earnestly
appealed to the House to grant this measure of justice:
The women who are interested in this subject, he concluded, are
only acting in the spirit of one of the noblest proverbs of our
language, "God helps those who help themselves." Is it a matter
of regret to us that they should have these aspirations? Ought it
not rather to be a subject of satisfaction and of pride? That
this bill will become law, no one who has observed the character
of this agitation and who knows the love of justice in the
British people can doubt. I hope it will become law soon, for I
have a desire which will receive the sympathy of many in this
House. I have a strong desire that when our children come to read
the story of their country's fame, it may be written there that
the British parliament was the first great legislative assembly
in the world, which, in conferring its franchises, knew nothing
of the distinctions of strong and weak, of male and female, of
rich and poor.
The result of the division surprised and cheered all the supporters
of the measure. The government was neutral, and members of the
cabinet voted on either side according to their own opinions. The
second reading was carried by a vote of 124 to 91, being a majority
in its favor of 33. Those who witnessed that division will never
forget the grateful enthusiasm with which Mr. Jacob Bright was
received when he came up to the ladies' gallery, with his wife
leaning upon his arm. But our triumph was short-lived. Before the
bill went into committee, a week later, it became known that the
government intended to depart from its attitude of neutrality. A
strong pressure was exercised to crush the bill, and the contest of
course became hopeless. On the division for going into committee
220 votes were counted against 94 in its favor.
It became evident that we were in for a long contest, which would
require not only patience, courage and determination, but a high
degree of political sagacity. Organizations had to be perfected,
and additional societies established; meetings had to be called,
and lectures given to explain the question. In March of this year
the _Women's Suffrage Journal_ was established in Manchester. Miss
Becker has conducted this monthly from the beginning with great
talent and spirit; it is frequently quoted by the ordinary press,
and its pages contain the best record extant of the movement. This
same year of 1870, which witnessed our first parliamentary defeat,
brought compensation also of such magnitude as to outweigh the
temporary overthrow of the franchise bill. This was the Elementary
Education act, by which women were not only admitted to vote for
school-board candidates, but expressly enabled to sit on these
boards, and thus exercise not only elective, but legislative
functions of the most important character. The election clause
reads thus:
The school-board shall be elected in the manner provided by this
act, in a borough by the persons whose names are on the burgess
roll of such borough for the time being in force, and in a parish
not situated in the metropolis, by the rate-payers.
In London, with the sole exception of the city, the persons who
elect the vestries, _i. e._ the rate-payers, are the electors--this
includes women as a matter of course. In the city only,
the electors were to be the same persons who elected
common-council-men, and as these included men only, women are thus
excluded from voting in the school-board election, though even here
it may be observed they are eligible to sit on the board. Thus,
within the space of two years, two important measures were extended
unexpectedly.
In 1871 Mr. Jacob Bright again introduced the Women's Disabilities
Removal bill, and it was also supported by Mr. Eastwick and Dr.
Lyon Playfair. It was thrown out in the division upon the second
reading on May 3, by a majority of 69; 151 (including tellers and
pairs 159) voting for it, and 220 (including tellers and pairs 228)
voting against it. The most remarkable feature of the debate was a
speech made by Mr. Gladstone, which certainly justified the
confidence that women have subsequently entertained that the great
minister was willing to see justice done to them:
The ancient law recognized the rights of women in the parish; I
apprehend they could both vote and act in the parish. The modern
rule has extended the right to the municipality, so far as the
right of voting is concerned.... With respect to school-boards, I
own I believe that we have done wisely, on the whole, in giving
both the franchise and the right of sitting on the school-board
to women. Then comes a question with regard to parliament, and we
have to ask ourselves whether we shall or shall not go
further.... I admit, at any rate, that as far as I am able to
judge, there is more presumptive ground for change in the law
than some of the opponents of the measure are disposed to
own.... I cannot help thinking that, for some reason or other,
there are various important particulars in which women obtain
much less than justice under social arrangements.... I may be
told that there is no direct connection between this and the
parliamentary franchise, and I admit it, but at the same time I
am by no means sure that these inequalities may not have an
indirect connection with a state of law in which the balance is
generally cast too much against women, and too much in favor of
men. There is one instance which has been quoted, and I am not
sure there is not something in it--I mean the case of farms.... I
believe to some extent in the competition for that particular
employment women suffer in a very definite manner in consequence
of their want of qualification to vote. I go somewhat further
than this, and say that so far as I am able to form an opinion of
the general tone and color of our law in these matters, where the
peculiar relation of men and women is concerned, that law does
less than justice to women [hear, hear], and great mischief,
misery and scandal result from that state of things in many of
the occurrences and events of life. [Cheers.] ... If it should be
found possible to arrange a safe and well-adjusted alteration of
the law as to political power, the man who shall attain that
object, and who shall see his purpose carried onward to its
consequences in a more just arrangement of the provisions of
other laws bearing upon the condition and welfare of women, will,
in my opinion, be a real benefactor to his country. [Cheers.]
In another portion of his speech Mr. Gladstone said that the
personal attendance of women in election proceedings, until the
principle of secret voting should be adopted, was in his eyes an
objection of the greatest force--thus giving reason to believe that
as soon as vote by ballot was secured, this objection would be
removed. Mr. Gladstone did not on this occasion vote against the
bill, but left the House without voting.
In 1872, our indefatigable leader again moved the second reading of
the bill on the 4th of May. His speech was calm and masterly, and
he was ably supported, but the division remained much the same; 143
for the bill and 222 against it. This year the Scotch Education
bill was passed, which extended the voting of women and their
election on school-boards to Scotland; thus the principle of direct
representation on a matter so important as national education was
recognized. The Ballot act also, which at once rendered elections
orderly and safe, henceforth gave increased security and comfort to
women who were voting in municipal elections.
In this year a new committee was established in London called the
Central committee, to which all other branches of the society had
the right of appointing delegates, and the movement received
thereby a considerable increase of strength and solidity.[543]
Meantime each branch of the society was working away indefatigably.
During 1871, the _Suffrage Journal_ recorded 135 public meetings,
and during 1872, 104 in England and 63 in Scotland. The work in
Scotland was chiefly carried on in the way of lectures by Miss Jane
Taylour, who during these early years of the movement was an
untiring and spirited pioneer, Miss Agnes McLaren often
accompanying her and helping her to organize the meetings.
We must not omit to mention Mary Burton (sister of John Hill Burton
the historiographer of Scotland), who was also one of the most
energetic workers of the Edinburgh committee, especially in the
north of Scotland; and Mrs. Dick Lauder who had the courage to free
herself from the opinions in which she had been educated, and with
much sacrifice devoted herself to the work. Space fails us fitly to
record the indomitable efforts of Eliza Wigham, one of the
honorable secretaries of the Edinburgh committee. In England, Mrs.
Ronniger organized and spoke at many meetings, as did Mrs. Fawcett,
Miss Rhoda Garrett, Miss Becker, Miss Craigen and, less frequently,
Mrs. Josephine Butler, Lady Amberley, Miss Annie Young and others.
Mrs. Grote, wife of the historian and herself a well-known author,
took part in one meeting held in Hanover Square rooms, London, on
March 26, 1870. Mrs. Grote was then upwards of seventy years of
age. Rising with great majesty, she spoke with all the weight that
age, ability and experience could give, greatly impressing her
audience. Miss Helen Taylor, step-daughter of John Stuart Mill,
also made her maiden speech at this meeting; it was delivered with
much grace, excellent in thought as in manner.
Many additional local committees were established, and good work
was done by familiarizing the public mind with the principles of
the association. Ward meetings were held in which the women
burgesses and municipal voters were assembled, and while the
responsibilities of the vote they already possessed were pointed
out to them, attention was called to the prior importance of the
vote which was withheld from them.
In 1873, for the fourth time, our unwearied champion, Mr. Jacob
Bright, brought forward his bill. This time the second reading was
fixed for April 30. He was supported in the debate by Mr. Eastwick,
Sergeant Sherlock, Lord John Manners, Mr. Fawcett, Mr. Heron, Mr.
Henley, and Sir J. Trelawny. While all these gentlemen deserved our
thanks for the able assistance they rendered the cause, the speech
of Mr. Henley, Conservative member for Oxfordshire, so old a member
that he was styled the "Father of the House," excited special
attention. He said he had once felt considerable doubt and dislike
of the measure, but after careful watching of the way in which
women gave the local votes, he had come to the conclusion that an
extension of the principle would be useful. The votes in favor of
the bill increased at this debate to 155 (with tellers and pairs
172), a larger number than had ever before been obtained, while the
opposition remained stationary.
Along with the petitions of this year were two memorials signed by
upwards of 11,000 women, and presented to Mr. Gladstone and Mr.
Disraeli. Every English county, with the exception of the smallest,
Rutland, and most large towns sent representative signatures. An
effort was made this session by Mr. William Johnston, the member
for Belfast, to introduce amendments into the Irish Municipal bill,
which would have had the effect of extending the municipal
franchise to Irish women householders. But the bill was withdrawn,
and similar efforts made in subsequent years have met with the like
fate.
This year the death of Mr. John Stuart Mill saddened the hearts of
all. He will never be forgotten as the first man who carried this
question into the arena of practical politics and gave it the
weight of an honored name. The strength and vitality of the
movement were further tested by a disaster which threatened to do
it a lasting injury. The general election took place early in the
spring of 1874, and to the regret and consternation of the friends
of equal suffrage, their able and devoted leader, Mr. Jacob Bright,
lost his seat for Manchester--a loss in a great degree attributable
to his unshrinking advocacy of an unpopular question. Never did his
clients, for whom he had sacrificed so much, feel so deeply the
need of the power which the franchise would have given them to keep
so good a friend in the House of Commons. Not only was Mr. Bright
defeated, but Mr. Eastwick, the friend who had always seconded the
bill, also lost his seat with about seventy others of our
supporters. We were thus compelled to look around for fresh
leaders. The task of bringing in a bill was accepted by Mr.
Forsyth, the Conservative member for Marylebone, one of the London
boroughs; with him were associated Mr. Stansfeld, Mr. Russell
Gurney and Sir R. Anstruther, men differing widely on matters of
party politics. The bill was introduced early in the session, but
no day was found for it, and in the middle of July it was
withdrawn. Considerable discussion was excited by the unexpected
action of Mr. Forsyth, who on his own responsibility inserted in
the bill an additional clause by which married women were
especially excluded from its operation. Although the insertion of
this clause would probably have made no difference, the bulk of
legal opinion being that under the law of coverture, married women
even when possessed of property are not "qualified persons," yet
the society joined in requesting that this additional clause should
be dropped and the original form of the bill adhered to.
Memorials, signed by upwards of 18,000 women headed by Florence
Nightingale, Harriet Martineau, Lady Anna Gore Langton (sister of
the Duke of Buckingham), Frances Power Cobbe, Anna Swanwick, were
again this year forwarded to Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone. An
important memorial was also forwarded from a large conference held
in Birmingham in January, which represents very accurately the
special aspects of the question in England. The president of the
conference was Mrs. William Taylor, sister-in-law of Mr. Peter A.
Taylor, M. P.:
_To the Right Honorable William Ewart Gladstone, M. P., First
Lord of Her Majesty's Treasury:_
The memorial of members and friends of the National Society for
Women's Suffrage, in conference assembled at Birmingham, January
22, 1874, showeth, that your memorialists earnestly desire to
urge on the attention of her majesty's government the justice and
expediency of abolishing the disability which precludes women,
otherwise legally qualified, from voting in the election of
members of parliament.
They submit that the disability is anomalous, inasmuch as it
exists only in respect to the parliamentary franchise. The
electoral rights of women have been from time immemorial equal
and similar to those of men in parochial and other ancient
franchises, and in the year 1869 a measure was passed, with the
sanction of the administration of which you are the head,
restoring and confirming the rights of women ratepayers to the
exercise of the municipal franchise.
The electoral disability is further anomalous, because by the law
and constitution of this realm, women are not disabled from the
exercise of political power. Writs, returning members to serve
in the House of Commons, signed by women as electors or returning
officers, are now in existence, and the validity of such returns
has never been disputed. Women who were heirs to peerages and
other dignities exercised judicial jurisdiction and enjoyed other
privileges appertaining to such offices and lordships without
disability of sex. The highest political function known to the
constitution may be exercised by a woman. The principle that
women may have political power is coëval with the British
constitution. On the other hand the practice of women taking part
in voting at popular elections is equally ancient in date, and
has been restored and extended by the action of the present
parliament. Your memorialists therefore submit that to bring the
existing principle and practice into harmony by removing the
disability which prevents women who vote in local elections from
voting in the election of members of parliament, would be a step
in the natural process of development by which institutions,
while retaining the strength and authority derived from the
traditions of the past, and preserving the continuity of the
national life, continually undergo such modifications as are
needed in order to adapt them to the exigencies of the age and
the changed conditions of modern life.
They also submit that the old laws regulating the qualifications
of electors do not limit the franchise to male persons; that the
laws under which women exercised the parochial franchise were
couched in the same general terms as those regulating the
parliamentary suffrage, and that while the latter were not
expressly limited to men, the former were not expressly extended
to women. There is, therefore, a strong presumption that the
exclusion of women from the parliamentary suffrage was an
infringement on their ancient constitutional rights, rendered
possible in a barbarous age by the comparative weakness and
smallness of the number of persons affected by it, and continued
until the exclusion had become customary. The franchise of women
in local elections has been from time to time under judicial
consideration, and their right to take part in such elections has
been repeatedly confirmed by the judges. During the arguments in
these cases, the question of their right to vote in the election
of members of parliament was frequently mooted and conflicting
opinions thereon incidently expressed by various judges, but the
matter was never judicially decided, and no authoritative
judgment was ever given against the right until the year 1868,
after the passing of two modern acts of parliament in 1832 and
1867, the former of which for the first time in English history,
in terms, limited the franchise created by it to every "male
person," and the latter to every "man" qualified under its
provisions. Your memorialists submit that had the question of the
right of women to vote in the election of members of parliament
been raised in the law courts under the old statutes which
contain no reference to sex, and before the passing of the
limiting acts of 1832 and 1867, that the precedents which had
determined the right in their favor in the construction of the
law as to local government must have been held to apply to the
case of qualified freeholders or others who claimed the right as
regards parliamentary government.
They submit also, that even after these limiting acts, women had
reasonable grounds for claiming the suffrage under the existing
law. There is an act of parliament which declares that "in all
acts, words importing the masculine gender shall be deemed and
taken to include females, ... unless the contrary is _expressly
provided_." The act of 1867 contained clauses imposing personal
liabilities and pecuniary burdens on certain classes of
ratepayers. In these clauses, as in the enfranchising clauses,
and throughout the act, words importing the masculine gender were
alone used. No provision was made that these words should not
include females. Accordingly in enforcing the act the extra
liabilities and burdens were imposed on women ratepayers, to many
of whom they caused grievous hardship. There was, therefore,
reason to expect that the enfranchising clauses would bear the
same interpretation, inasmuch as they were confessedly offered as
an equivalent for the increased liabilities. But when the women
who had been subjected to the liabilities claimed their votes,
they found that words importing the masculine gender were held to
include women in the clauses imposing burdens, and to exclude
them in the clauses conferring privileges, in one and the same
act of parliament.
This kind of injustice was shown in a marked manner in the case
of certain women ratepayers of Bridgewater, who, in a memorial
addressed to you in 1871, set forth the grievance of most heavy
and unjust taxation which was levied on them, in common with the
other householders of that disfranchised borough, for the payment
of a prolonged commission respecting political bribery. The
memorialists felt it to be unjust and oppressive, inasmuch as,
not exercising the franchise nor being in any way directly or
indirectly concerned in the malpractices which led to the
commission, they were nevertheless required to pay not less than
three shillings in the pound according to their rental. To that
memorial you caused a reply to be sent through Mr. Secretary
Bruce, stating that "it was not in the power of the secretary of
State to exempt women owning or occupying property from the local
and imperial taxation to which that property is liable." While
fully admitting this, your memorialists beg to represent that it
is in the power of the legislature to secure to women the vote
which their property would confer, along with its liability to
local and imperial taxation, were it owned or occupied by men.
They submit that this concession has recently been granted in
respect to local taxation, and that if justice demands that Women
should have a voice in controlling the municipal expenditure to
which their property contributes, justice yet more urgently
demands that they should have a voice in controlling the imperial
expenditure to which the same property is liable. The local
expenditure of the country amounts to about £30,000,000, the
imperial expenditure to about £70,000,000 annually; if,
therefore, the matter be regarded as one of taxation only, the
latter vote is of more importance than the former. Local
government deals with men and women alike, and knows no
distinction between male and female ratepayers. But imperial
government deals with men and women on different principles, and
in such a manner that whenever there is any distinction made in
the rights, privileges and protection accorded to them
respectively, the difference is always against women and in favor
of men. They believe this state of things is a natural result of
the exclusion of women from representation, and it will be found
impracticable to amend it until women are admitted to a share in
controlling the legislature.
By the deprivation of the parliamentary vote, women, in the
purchase or renting of property, obtain less for their money than
men. In a bill which passed the House of Commons last session,
provision was made for the amalgamation in one list of the
municipal and parliamentary registers of electors. In that list
it appeared that the same house, the same rent and the same taxes
conferred on a man the double vote in municipal and parliamentary
government, and on a woman the single vote only, and that the
less honorable and important one. When the occupation of a house
is transferred from a man to a woman, say to the widow of the
former owner, that home loses the privilege of representation in
the imperial government, though its relations with the
taxgatherer continue unaltered. There have been various societies
formed with a view to enable persons to acquire portions of
landed or real property, partly for the sake of the vote attached
to such property. Should a woman purchase or inherit such an
estate, the vote, which has been one important consideration in
determining the value, would be lost through her legal disability
to exercise it.
The deprivation of the vote is a serious disadvantage to women in
the competition for farms. A case is recorded of one estate in
Suffolk from which seven widows have been ejected, who, if they
had possessed votes, would have been continued as tenants. A
sudden ejection often means ruin to a family that has sunk
capital in the land, and it is only too probable that no day
passes without the occurrence of some such calamity to some
unhappy widow, who, but for the electoral disability, might have
retained the home and the occupation by which she could have
brought up her family in comfort and independence.
Besides this definite manner in which the electoral disability
injures women farmers, it has a more or less directly injurious
influence on all self-dependent women who maintain themselves and
their families by other than domestic labor. A disability, the
basis of which is the presumed mental or moral incapacity of the
subject of it to form a rational judgment on matters within the
ordinary ken of human intelligence, carries with it a stigma of
inferiority calculated to cause impediment to the entrance on or
successful prosecution of any pursuit demanding recognized
ability and energy. This presumed incapacity is probably the
origin of the general neglect of the education of women, which is
only now beginning to be acknowledged, and the absence of
political power in the neglected class renders it difficult if
not impossible to obtain an adequate share for girls in the
application of educational funds and endowments. So long as women
are specifically excluded from control over their parliamentary
representatives, so long will their interests be postponed to
claims of those who have votes to give; and while parliament
shall continue to declare that the voices of women are unfit to
be taken into account in choosing members of the legislature, the
masses of men will continue to act as if their wishes, opinions
and interests were undeserving of serious consideration.
It is now nearly two years since you, in your place in the House
of Commons, said that the number of absolutely self-dependent
women is increasing from year to year, and that the progressive
increase in the number of such women is a very serious fact,
because those women are assuming the burdens that belong to men;
and you stated your belief that when they are called upon to
assume those burdens, and to undertake the responsibility of
providing for their own subsistence, they approach the task under
greater difficulties than attach to their more powerful
competitors. Your memorialists therefore ask you to aid women in
overcoming these difficulties, by assisting to place them,
politically at least, on a level with those whom you designate as
"their more powerful competitors."
One of the greatest hindrances in the path of self-dependent
women is the opposition shown by members of many trades and
professions to women who attempt to engage in them. The medical
and academical authorities of the University of Edinburgh have
successfully crushed the attempt of a small band of female
students to qualify themselves for the medical profession, and
the same spirit of "trades unionism" is rife in the industrial
community. A few months ago the printers of Manchester, learning
that a few girls were practicing type-setting, and endeavoring to
earn a little money thereby, instantly passed a rule ordaining a
strike in the shop of any master printer who should allow type
set up by women to be sent to his machines to be worked. At the
present time, in a manufacturing district in Yorkshire where
there are "broad" and "narrow" looms, at the former of which much
more money can be earned, the men refuse to allow women to work
at the broad looms, though they are quite able to manage them,
because the work is considered too remunerative for women. At
Nottingham there is a particular machine at which very high wages
can be earned, at which women now work, and the men, in order to
drive them out of such profitable employment, have insisted on
the masters taking no more women on, but as those at present
employed leave, supplying their places by men. A master
manufacturer reports: "We have machines which women can manage
quite as well or better than men, yet are they not permitted by a
selfish combination of the strong against the weak." These are
only samples of the cases that are constantly occurring of
successful attempts to drive women out of remunerative
occupations. Your memorialists submit that women would be more
able to resist such attempts if they had the protection of the
suffrage; and that men would be less likely to be thus aggressive
and oppressive if they had learned to regard women as their
political equals.
Besides the restrictions on the industrial liberties of women
effected by combinations of men, there are existing and proposed
legislative restrictions from which men are exempt, and which
exercise a powerful influence on the market for their labor. For
the coming session we have the proposal further to limit their
hours of paid labor in factories, and to place other restrictions
on their labor in shops; also a proposition to place married
women on the footing of half-timers. Without here expressing any
opinion as to the wisdom of these proposals, we urge that members
of the House of Commons would be more capable of dealing with
them in a just and appreciative spirit if they were responsible
for their votes to the persons whose interests are directly
concerned and whose liberties they are asked to curtail; and,
further, that it is a grave question how far it is safe to trust
the industrial interests of women, as a class, to the
irresponsible control of the men who have manifested to
individuals and to sections of working women the spirit indicated
by the examples we have cited.
In the same speech you spoke of a state of the law in which the
balance is generally cast too much against women and too much in
favor of men. Since you directed your attention to this matter,
you have not been able either to introduce or to assist others
who have introduced measures to ameliorate the state of the law
respecting women, and such proposals have been unable to win
consideration from parliament. Your memorialists cannot believe
that this neglect has arisen from want of a desire on your part
to deal with the grievances under which you have admitted that
your countrywomen suffer; they are therefore led to the
conclusion that you have been unable to take into consideration
the affairs of an unrepresented class, owing to the preoccupation
of parliament with the concerns of those to whom it is directly
responsible.
You stated that "the question was, to devise a method of enabling
women to exercise a sensible influence, without undertaking
personal functions and exposing themselves to personal
obligations inconsistent with the fundamental particulars of
their condition as women," and that the objection to the personal
attendance of women at elections was in your mind an objection of
the greatest force. They respectfully submit that the exercise of
the municipal franchise involves the personal attendance of women
at the polls, and that since your words were uttered changes have
been effected which render the process of voting absolutely
identical for municipal and parliamentary elections, and the
whole proceeding perfectly decorous and orderly. Experience has
proved that women can vote at municipal elections without
prejudice to the fundamental particulars of their condition as
women, whatever these may be; and this experience shows that they
may vote in parliamentary elections without the smallest personal
prejudice or inconvenience. The school-board elections have also
shown that women can appeal to large constituencies and go
through the ordeal of public meetings, addresses and questions
from electors, to which men must submit who seek the suffrages of
a great community, without any sacrifice of womanly dignity, or
of the respect and consideration accorded to their position and
their sex. They therefore submit that events have obviated the
objections you entertained in 1871 to the proposal to give
representation to women, and that the course taken by the
administration over which you preside in assenting to the
extension of the municipal and school-board franchise to them; in
calling them to the public functions of candidates and members of
school-boards; and lastly, of securing the passing of a law which
renders the process of voting silent and secret, have taken away
all reasonable grounds for objecting on the score of practical
inconvenience to the admission of women to the exercise of a
vote, which they would have to give in precisely the same manner,
but not nearly so often, as those votes which they already
deliver.
It has been said that there is neither desire nor demand for the
measure, and further, that women do not care for and would not
use the suffrage if they possessed it. But the demand for the
parliamentary franchise is enormously greater than was the demand
for the municipal franchise, and for the school-board franchise
there was no apparent call. Yet these two measures were passed
purely on their own merits, and it was not held to be necessary
to impose on their promoters, over and above the obligation to
make out their case, the condition that a majority of the women
of England or of a particular district should petition for the
proposed boon. Experience proved the wisdom and justice of this
course, for although women throughout the country had taken no
active part in agitating for the municipal franchise, no sooner
was the privilege accorded than they freely availed themselves of
it, and statistics obtained from some of the largest boroughs in
the kingdom show that from the first year that women possessed
the suffrage, they have voted in about equal proportion with men
to the number of each on the register. The parliamentary vote is
more honorable and important than the municipal vote; it is,
therefore, safe to conclude that women who value and use the
latter will appreciate and exercise the former as soon as it
shall be bestowed upon them. Your memorialists submit that great
injustice and injury are done by debarring these women from a
voting power which there is such strong presumptive ground for
believing that they would freely exercise but for the legal
restraint.
Your memorialists are especially moved to call your attention to
the urgency of the claim at the present time, when a bill
extending the application of the principle of household suffrage
is about to be proposed to parliament, which bill received last
year such expressions of approval from members of her majesty's
government as to lead to the belief that they are willing to take
the proposal into serious consideration. They submit that the
claim and the need for representation of women householders are
even more pressing than that of agricultural laborers. The
grievances under which women suffer are equally great, and the
demand for the franchise has been pressed by a much greater
number of women and for a much longer period of time than in the
case of county householders now excluded. The number of persons
who petitioned last session for the County Franchise bill and for
the Women's Disabilities bill respectively were, for the former,
1,889, and for the latter, 329,206. The latter bill has received
most influential support from both sides of the House, and more
votes have been recorded in its favor than have been given for
any bill not directly supported as a party measure by one or
other of the great parties in the State. Under these
circumstances your memorialists earnestly request that you will
use your influence as leader of the House of Commons and of the
government to secure the passing of the bill introduced by Mr.
Jacob Bright, either as a substantive enactment, or as an
integral portion of the next measure that shall be passed dealing
with the question of the representation of the people.
Signed on behalf of the conference,
CAROLINE M. TAYLOR, _President_.
The first vote that was given by the new parliament was on April 7,
1875, Mr. Forsyth having moved the second reading in an able
speech. It at once became manifest that the question had made great
progress in the country. In spite of the loss of the seventy
friends at the preceding general election, our strength in the new
parliament had greatly increased. Including tellers and pairs, 170
voted for the bill, and only 250 against. This result appears to
have alarmed our opponents, who proceeded to form an association of
peers, members of parliament and other influential persons, to
resist the claims of women to the suffrage. They issued a circular
which will be read by future generations with a smile of
amazement.[544]
It may have been partly owing to the influence of this association
that the next year, when Mr. Forsyth again brought forward his
bill, April 26, 1876, although the numbers of our friends and
supporters remained undiminished, the opponents had considerably
increased. This was due, also, no doubt, in great degree to the
unexpected attitude taken on this question by the Right Hon. John
Bright, the most powerful living advocate for freedom and
representative government. In Mr. Mill's division of 1867, Mr.
Bright had voted in favor of the measure, and while his brother had
charge of the bill, he had never opposed it. His opposition speech
in this debate, therefore, caused extreme disappointment and
discouragement. It had little of the force which had always
characterized his pleas for political justice. The most eloquent
voice in the House of Commons lost its magic power when no longer
inspired by truth. The women in the gallery listened with sorrowful
hearts. Though they knew Mr. Bright's opinion could not block the
wheels of progress, yet they felt intense regret that so honored a
friend to freedom should abandon his most cherished principles when
applied to women.
The parliamentary history of the next few years may be very briefly
recorded. In 1877 the bill had again passed into the hands of our
beloved leader, Mr. Jacob Bright, who had resumed his place in the
House of Commons, as member of parliament for Manchester. After a
debate of great interest, and while our advocate, Mr. Leonard
Courtney, was speaking, the opponents of the measure burst into a
tumultuous uproar, which effectually drowned his voice. This new
method of setting up shouts and howls in place of arguments, has
since been brought to bear on more than one public question, but it
was then comparatively novel. Mr. Courtney, nothing daunted, would
not give way, and when six o'clock, which is the hour for closing
the debates on Wednesday, struck, it was no longer possible to take
a division.
The following year, 1878, Mr. Jacob Bright was unable from failing
health to continue in charge of the bill in the House of Commons,
and a deputation of members from each society waited on Mr.
Courtney and placed it in his hands. June 19, was set for the
second reading. In his speech Mr. Courtney dwelt on the benefits
that may accrue to women from representation. He added:
The political reasons for granting the prayer of the bill appear
to me to be undeniable, but I confess they are not the reasons
why I most strongly support it. I believe it will develop a
fuller, freer and nobler character in women by admitting them
into the sphere of political thought and duty. Some may say, "But
what is to be the end?" I do not know that we are always bound to
see the goal towards which we are moving. If we are moving on
right principles; if we are actuated by a feeling of justice; if
the hand that moves above us and leads us on is a hand in which
we can place implicit confidence,--then I say, trust to that
light, follow that hand, without fear of the future.
The bill was again lost by 219 votes against 140, thus showing a
smaller adverse majority than on the last division. This year Mr.
Russell Gurney died. His name will always be associated with the
women's suffrage movement, which he had supported ever since Mr.
Mill's division in 1867. The death of Lady Anna Gore Langton about
this time was also a severe loss.
The last time that the question was brought before that parliament
was the following summer, 1870. Mr. Courtney, after taking counsel
with his parliamentary friends, made an important change in the
conduct of his measure. It had hitherto been brought forward as a
bill, which, if passed, would have made the actual change desired
in the law; as the parliament was now verging towards its close, it
was thought wiser to test the opinion of the House by bringing the
question forward in the form of a resolution. Two purposes were
served by this change: one was that many men who were in favor of
the principle of women's suffrage had objected to it when brought
forward as an isolated measure of reform involving a large addition
to the constituency, and possibly therefore a new election; the
other was, that the time for discussion of a private member's bill
is very limited. On Wednesdays, when such bills come on, the House
only sits in the morning, and the debate must be concluded at a
quarter before six, while the forms of the House afford greater
facilities for discussing and voting upon motions. Mr. Courtney in
a clear and exhaustive speech moved his resolution as follows:
That in the opinion of this House it is injurious to the best
interests of the country that women who are entitled to vote in
municipal, parochial and school-board elections when possessed of
the statutory qualifications, should be disabled from voting in
parliamentary elections, although possessed of the statutory
qualifications, and that it is expedient that this disability
should be forthwith repealed.
The debate was animated, but the result on division was much the
same as before: 113 (including tellers and pairs, 144) voting for
it, and 217 (with tellers and pairs, 248) against it. Thus closed
the ninth parliament of Victoria, as far as women's suffrage was
concerned.
The steady perseverance and unflagging courage of the devoted band
of men and women had achieved victories at many points along the
line of attack.[545] Every suffrage meeting was the means of
gaining converts. The agitation for the suffrage kept the memory of
women's wrongs and grievances fresh before the public mind. These
years saw the medical profession legally thrown open to women, and
facilities given them in school and hospital for obtaining that
education which had been hitherto sought abroad. Pharmacy no longer
excluded them. London University opened its gates. The Irish
Intermediate Education bill, in 1878, which was originally
introduced for boys only, was, after several energetic discussions,
widened, so as to include girls. Women began to be elected as
poor-law guardians. A Scotch Married Women's Property bill was
passed, which was a great improvement on the former law. A
Matrimonial Causes Amendment act was also carried, which enables
magistrates to grant a judicial separation to wives who are
brutally treated, along with a maintenance for their children. Some
of our friends regretted that these side issues should absorb the
time of those who might otherwise have been working exclusively for
suffrage; but this was a short-sighted fear. By broadening the
basis of work, by asking simultaneously for better laws, better
education, better employments and wider fields of usefulness, the
sympathies of more women were engaged; while underlying and
supporting all was the steady agitation for the suffrage with its
compact organization of committees, meetings, publications and
petitions which kept parliament awake to the fact that though still
disfranchised, women had claims which it could not afford to
ignore.
[Illustration: Priscilla Bright McLaren]
This was a time when the agitation for the suffrage had apparently
reached a stationary condition, neither advancing nor receding, in
which it was destined to remain for some years longer. Other
causes, as the abolition of West Indian slavery and the corn laws,
have had a similar period of apparent torpor succeeding the first
activity. Justin McCarthy in his "History of our own Times," says:
This is, from whatever cause, a very common phenomenon in our
political history. A movement which began with the promise of
sweeping all before it, seems to lose all its force, and is
supposed by many observers to be now only the care of a few
earnest and fanatical men. Suddenly it is taken up by a minister
of commanding influence, and the bore or the crotchet of one
parliament is the great party controversy of a second, and the
accomplished triumph of a third.
During the year of 1879, it was thought desirable to ascertain by
some practical test what were the various reasons which caused
thinking women to wish for the suffrage; and letters were addressed
to ladies who were eminent either in literature or art, or who were
following scientific or professional careers, or were engaged in
any form of philanthropic work. The answers that were returned were
collected into a pamphlet of exceeding interest, which was sent to
each member before the debate, and it was amazing to watch from the
gallery how the little green pamphlet was consulted and quoted
from, in the most opposite quarters of the House, by friends who
sought fresh arguments from it or by enemies who were looking for
some sentence on which to base a sarcasm.[546]
As a specimen of these letters Miss Frances Power Cobbe said:
So far from the truth is the reiterated statement of certain
honorable members of parliament that women do not desire the
franchise, that in my large experience I have scarcely ever known
a woman possessed of ordinary common sense, and who had lived
some years alone in the world, who did not earnestly wish for it.
The women who gratify these gentlemen by smilingly deprecating
any such responsibilities, are those who have dwelt since they
were born in well-feathered nests, and have never needed to do
anything but open their soft beaks for the choicest little grubs
to be dropped into them. It is utterly absurd (and I am afraid
the members of parliament in question are quite aware they are
talking nonsense) to argue from the contented squawks of a brood
of these callow creatures, that full grown swallows and larks
have no need of wings, and are always happiest when their pinions
are broken.
The production of this pamphlet marked an era in women's suffrage
literature. It was impossible after this to doubt that a large body
of thinking women, not the queens of society, but the women who
wrote, read, thought, or worked, were in favor of having full
admission to political rights and responsibilities.
The chief work of the society had now crystallized into five or six
great centres. Edinburgh, under the presidency of Mrs. McLaren,
assisted by Miss Wigham and Miss Kirkland, treasurer and secretary,
was the recognized centre of activity for Scotland. In Ireland
there was a committee in Dublin, of which Mrs. Haslam is the most
active member; and the North of Ireland Committee, led by Miss
Isabella Tod.[547] The three principal associations in England were
those of London,[548] including the east and north-east counties;
Manchester,[549] taking charge of the north of England and Wales,
and Bristol[550] looking after the West. The officers of the
several committees of the three kingdoms form a National Central
Committee which has its headquarters in London and superintends all
of the work bearing specially upon the action of parliament.
Petitions were still sent in, but no longer in such enormous
numbers. It had become evident that parliament cared little for a
long roll of names from the unrepresented classes; they were now
chiefly collected as a means of discovering how public opinion
stood in any particular district. For instance, in 1879, a petition
was sent from 1,447 women householders of Leicester. The total
number of women householders in this town was 2,610, of whom only
1,991 could be applied to, and there is no reason to suppose that
public opinion was more advanced in Leicester than in the majority
of large manufacturing towns.
The municipal elections occur in England every November, and our
custom in some towns was to call meetings of the women householders
in every ward in which there was a contest, to explain to them the
responsibilities resting upon the voters, and after an earnest
address from some one of the ladies, to invite the respective
candidates to speak. By these means not only was the interest of
the women awakened in local politics, but the candidates themselves
were reminded of the interests of an important section of their
constituencies.
With the beginning of 1880, came again the promise of a reform
bill. The majority of the Liberal members of the House of Commons
had pledged themselves to their constituents in its favor. But as
our enemies were still reiterating that women themselves did not
care for the franchise, some further proof of their sympathy was in
order. The first great demonstration in favor of women was held in
Free Trade Hall, Manchester, which seats about 5,000 people,
February 3, where women were admitted free, and seats reserved for
men in the gallery at 2s. 6d. each. This arrangement was adopted to
make it a meeting of women. One hundred gentlemen were present
besides the reporters.
The purpose of the demonstration had been explained at preliminary
ward meetings to which men and women came in crowds. On the night
in question the scene exceeded the most sanguine expectations.
Those who had witnessed the great free trade gatherings which
assembled to hear Charles Villiers, Richard Cobden and John Bright,
never saw a more enthusiastic audience. Mrs. Duncan McLaren of
Edinburgh, who had been invited to preside, took her seat followed
by an array of distinguished women, such as had never before graced
any platform in the history of the three kingdoms, while the vast
area and galleries were crowded with women of wealth and culture;
factory women, shop-keepers and hard toilers of every station were
also there. Some had walked twenty miles to attend that great
meeting. They sat on the steps of the platform, climbed on every
coigne of vantage, stood in dense masses in every aisle and corner.
A large over-flow meeting was also held in the neighboring Memorial
Hall over which Mrs. Lucas presided, but even this could not
accommodate all who came, and thousands went away disappointed. It
was truly a marvelous meeting, grand in its numbers, grand in the
enthusiasm which had brought so many thousands together unattracted
by the names of any distinguished speakers, to sympathize with
each other in a great national movement, and to proclaim unity of
action until it was gained; and it was grand also in the
impressiveness of the words that were uttered. The president in her
clear grave tones which were heard in the breathless stillness over
that large assembly, said:
It seems like a dream. But only a grave reality could have
brought so many women together. Need we wonder that the
beneficent designs of Providence have been so imperfectly carried
out when only one-half the intellect and heart of the nation have
hitherto been called into action, and the powers of the other
half have been almost wholly suppressed? Women are learning along
with good men that politics in the true sense has to do with
human interests at large.
When Mrs. McLaren had concluded, one speaker after another, gave
her special testimony in favor of the necessity of obtaining
representation. The number was so great that no one was allowed
more than ten minutes.[551]
This demonstration was quickly followed by others that were every
way as successful. In connection with one at St. James' Hall,
London, over which Viscountess Harberton presided, a procession of
working women marched through the streets with a banner on which
was inscribed "We're far too low to vote the tax; we're not too low
to pay." Here also an overflow meeting was held to accommodate the
numbers that could not be admitted into the hall. On November 4,
the same scene was repeated at the Colston Hall, Bristol, and Mrs.
Beddoe, the wife of a popular physician in that city presided, and
on November 11, the last demonstration of that year was convened in
the Albert Hall, Nottingham, where Mrs. Lucas took the chair. The
following year saw no relaxation in these efforts. The Birmingham
demonstration took place on February 22, 1881. It was a most
inclement night and great fears had been entertained that it would
prove a failure, but nothing had power to keep the crowds of women
away or to lessen their enthusiasm. Mrs. Crosskey, the wife of Dr.
Crosskey, one of the most respected of the Birmingham Liberal
leaders, presided. The next was in St. George's Hall, Bradford, on
November 22, and here again Mrs. McLaren took the chair, and said:
We are here to-night in the spirit of self-sacrifice. We have had
our sorrows in working on this question. We are here because we
know there are on our statute books unjust laws which subject
many women to sorrow and suffering, and the fact that we have
worked our way to such a platform proves that women are capable
of holding a political position, and ought to have a voice in our
national affairs. We cannot rest contented under the
consciousness of injustice because there are women who accept it
as their natural condition. We feel it our duty to arouse our sex
everywhere to a sense of their high destiny. The inspiration for
this work has come from a higher source than ourselves, and we
have had often to feel that God does not leave his children to
fight their battles alone.
In 1882 there were two more demonstrations. The first was in Albert
Hall, Sheffield, on February 27, Lady Harberton presiding, and it
was crowded to overflowing with women of all ranks and conditions
of society. The demonstration at Glasgow was on November 3, and no
way inferior to the other in brilliancy and interest.[552]
These demonstrations conclusively proved that the suffrage is
desired, not only by a few educated women, the leaders of the
movement, but by the great masses of the hard-working women. They
proved also woman's political capacity and organizing power. No
body of persons could possibly do more to manifest their desire for
political liberty than the women who have organized and attended
these demonstrations. So far as I am aware no such meetings
have been attempted by the agricultural laborers over whose
enfranchisement the House of Commons has been so deeply exercised,
and though the absence of interest which these classes of men have
as a whole shown in the question of the franchise is no argument
for depriving them of it, the political knowledge and aspirations
that women have shown for more than fifteen years ought to count
for something in establishing their claim.
The session of 1880 was broken, and the dissolution of parliament
in March, the general election which followed, the change in the
government and the consequent press of public affairs, made it
impossible to bring forward any measure for the suffrage, but the
principle was most splendidly and triumphantly vindicated in the
ancient kingdom of the Isle of Man which has an independent
government dating from the time of its first colonization under the
vikings. It has in modern times its elective house which is called
the House of Keys and is equivalent to the Commons. Its Upper House
consists of the attorney-general, the clerk of the rolls, the
bishop, two judges (or deemsters) and other officials. It enacts
its own laws and imposes its own taxes, but is subject to imperial
control by requiring the sanction of the queen before any law can
come into effect. Some few years ago the franchise was felt to be
too restricted, and a movement was set on foot which culminated in
1880 in a bill to extend the franchise to every male person who was
a householder. Mr. Richard Sherwood, who five years previously had
brought forward a similar motion, moved an amendment to omit the
word "male" for the purpose of extending the franchise to women who
possessed the requisite qualification, which was carried by 16 to
3, a vote of two-thirds of the whole body of the House of Keys. It
then went before the Council which refused the franchise to female
occupiers and lodgers, though agreeing to give it to all female
owners of real estate of £4 annual value. Thus modified the bill
was sent back to the House of Keys which gave up the lodger
franchise but adhered to that for occupiers. The bill thus altered
was again sent back to the Council and again returned with a
message that the Council refused to come to an agreement. The Keys
then proposed a compromise, limiting the qualification to woman
occupiers of £20 a year. This again was refused, and the Council
were prepared to reject the bill altogether. Sooner than lose the
whole, the Keys assented, signing, however, a protest in which they
stated that they had complied simply to secure a part of a just
principle rather than lose the whole. The act was signed by the
governor, the Keys and the Council on December 21, received the
royal assent on January 5, 1881, and was immediately afterwards,
according to ancient custom, proclaimed as law on the Tynwald Hill.
Fully to estimate this victory, it must be remembered that the vote
thus gained is the complete parliamentary franchise. Though the
total area of the island is so small and though only those women
who were absolutely owners of property were enfranchised, they
numbered about 700. The law came into operation immediately, and
the election began March 21. The women voted in considerable
numbers, and were, as an eye-witness states, without exception
quite intelligent and business like in this procedure. At the
polling stations, the first persons who recorded their votes were
women. We may mention in proof of their political gratitude that in
the district where Mr. Sherwood was one of the candidates, every
woman, whatever her party, voted for his reëlection.
Just before the opening of parliament in 1881, Mr. Courtney
accepted a position in the administration, which rendered it
impossible for him to continue in charge of any independent
measure. By his advice, application was made to Mr. Hugh Mason,
member for Ashton under Lyme. But the state of public business
during the session never permitted the resolution to be discussed.
The same disappointment occurred in the session of 1882--the
difficulties in Ireland and Egypt occupying the attention of the
government and the country to an extent which almost precluded any
measure of domestic reform. Nevertheless, by constant and arduous
efforts, these two years witnessed the passing of the Municipal
Franchise bill for Scotland.
The Municipal Franchise act of 1869 applied to English women only.
Early in the session of 1881, Dr. Cameron, member for Glasgow,
introduced a bill to assimilate the position of Scottish women to
that which their English sisters had enjoyed for twelve years. The
bill passed the House of Commons before Easter, and was then
brought forward in the House of Lords by the Earl of Camperdown,
passed May 13, and received the royal assent June 3. This law
applied only to women rate-payers of the royal and parliamentary
burghs, and did not extend to the police burghs, the populous
places endowed with powers of local self-government under the
general Police and Improvement act of 1862. A request was sent to
Mr. Cameron to exert himself for a similar extension of the
franchise to the women of the police burghs, and he answered by
introducing in the following year, 1882, another act which gave to
all women rate-payers the right, not merely of voting at elections
of burgh commissioners, but also of voting with the other
inhabitants as to whether a populous place should be constituted a
police burgh.
The election under these new measures was in November, 1882, and
then Scottish women voted for the first time, excepting of course
in school-board elections. The result was entirely satisfactory,
though the number of women who voted varied greatly--in some places
where no special interest attached to the election none came to
vote, while in others they voted in equal proportion with the men,
and in a few towns nearly every woman whose name was on the
register voted. The passing of these two franchise bills was an
undoubted triumph of the women's suffrage party. As one of the
opponents in the debate of July, 1883, scornfully observed, "Had it
not been for the question of women's suffrage being agitated
throughout the country at the time, we should not have heard a
syllable of the Scottish women's franchise bill," a sneering
admission which we willingly construe into compliment.
The year 1882 also witnessed the passing of the Married Women's
Property act, whose immense benefits can hardly be estimated, and
we may confidently assert that but for the unceasing agitation of
the friends of women's suffrage, another quarter of a century would
have been suffered to pass without bringing in this tardy measure
of justice.[553]
We now come to the session of 1883, inoperative as far as actual
legislation was concerned, but rich in its augury for the future.
Already in April the improved temper of the House on questions in
which women were concerned, had been shown by the brilliant
majority that voted with the Rt. Hon. Mr. Stansfeld for the
suppression of the Contagious Diseases acts which have so long
stained the English statute book. Early in May a memorial to Mr.
Gladstone was signed by 110 Liberal members of parliament,
unconnected with the government, in which they stated:
That in the opinion of your memorialists no measure for the
assimilation of the county and borough franchise will be
satisfactory unless it contain provisions for extending the
suffrage without distinction of sex to all persons who possess
the statutory qualifications for the parliamentary franchise.
This memorial was a most remarkable manifestation of the support
which members on the Liberal side of the House are pledged to give
to the principle of justice to women. Nor are we wanting in
Conservative support. Sir Stafford Northcote, has always given his
friendly approval to the movement, and has very recently repeated
his assurances of coöperation in answer to a deputation of ladies
who waited on him. After repeated balloting, Mr. Mason obtained a
day, July 6, on which to bring forward his resolution. It was thus
worded:
That in the opinion of this House the parliamentary franchise
should be extended to women who possess the qualifications which
entitle men to vote, and who, in all matters of local government
have the right of voting.
Mr. Edward Leatham, also a Liberal, gave notice to oppose the
resolution affirming with a curious liberalism, that "it is
undesirable to change the immemorial basis of the franchise, which
is that men only shall be qualified to elect members to serve in
this House." Thus after a silence of four years, years of apparent
inertia, but really fraught with progress, the debate once again
revived in parliament. Mr. Jacob Bright said:
They have told us women can get what they want without the
franchise. That used to be said of working men--but since they
have had a vote, members in every part of the House have had a
generosity and sympathy and courage in all matters affecting
working men which they never had before. Precisely the same
effect would follow if you gave women the franchise. I admit that
women have gained much without the franchise, and I will tell the
House when that gain began: It began with the introduction of the
question of women's suffrage to the House, and the gain has been
mainly due to the awakening intelligence of women on political
questions owing to the wide-spread agitation and the demand for
women's suffrage. They have gained without the franchise,
municipal votes, school-board votes, the right to sit on
school-boards, the magnificent act of last year--an act which
ought to confer lasting fame on the present lord chancellor--the
Married Women's Property act. And owing to the untiring energy of
the right honorable member for Halifax (Mr. Stansfeld), they have
succeeded in inflicting a blow on an act of parliament[554] more
unjust to women than anything which has ever been passed, a blow
from which that act will never recover. These things have been
gained without the franchise. But who will tell me they would not
have gained them sooner, with less heart-breaking labor, if they
had had the political franchise?
Mr. Courtney also addressed the House in stirring words. The result
was most encouraging. Four years had passed since a division had
been taken, and the enormous majority against us which in so many
divisions had maintained its strength had dwindled to only 16. A
total of 164, including tellers and pairs supported the resolution
against an opposition of only 180. If the Liberal side of the House
had only been canvassed on this occasion it would have been a
victory, as 119 Liberals voted for it and paired, and only 75
against it.
With the close of the session the question was transferred to the
country, and the events of the autumn made it amply evident that
the majority of Liberals were in favor of extending the
parliamentary suffrage to women. A great conference was held in
October at Leeds, where delegates from between 500 and 600 Liberal
organizations were present. Fully 2,000 delegates were present at
the first meeting. After a long discussion upon the coming Reform
bill, the Rev. T. Crosskey, of Birmingham, proposed a rider to the
resolution which would include women's suffrage, as follows:
_Resolved_, That, in order to meet the just expectations of the
country, and to fulfill the pledges given at the last general
election, this conference is of opinion that a measure for the
extension of the franchise should confer on householders in the
counties the same electoral rights as those enjoyed by
householders in parliamentary boroughs; _and that, in the opinion
of this meeting, any measure for the extension of the suffrage
should confer the franchise upon women, who, possessing the
qualifications which entitle men to vote, have now the right of
voting in all matters of local government_.
Mr. Walter McLaren seconded Dr. Crosskey in an able speech, and
Miss Jane Cobden (daughter of the late Richard Cobden) who was
sitting on the platform, and who had been appointed delegate from
the Liberal association of Midhurst, supported the resolution. She
begged them, representing as they did the Liberal principles of all
England, to give it their hearty support. This was a continuation
of the struggle in which Liberals had taken part during the last
fifty years, and she trusted they would be true to their
principles.
Mrs. Helen Bright Clark, the daughter of Mr. John Bright, M. P.,
who had been appointed delegate from one of the few Liberal
associations which comprise women among their members, said:
There was in this country a considerable and increasing number of
earnest women of strong liberal convictions, who felt keenly the
total exclusion of their sex from the parliamentary suffrage.
Their hope was, of course, in the Liberal party, though all of
its members were not yet converted to true liberalism. The
Liberal women would not rest satisfied until there was throughout
the United Kingdom a real and honest household suffrage. They
knew that they were weak in the cabinet, and they regretted to
know that some of the most eminent leaders of the Liberal party
were not in this matter wholly their friends. These leaders had
fears which she thought the future would show to have been
unfounded. But she could venture to say on behalf of the Liberal
women of England that they were not unmindful of the past, and
were not ungrateful for the services which these men rendered and
were prepared to render to their country. Women were grateful.
They sympathized with the efforts of Liberal statesmen in the
past, and they knew how faithfully and loyally to follow. But
they felt that they must sometimes originate for themselves, and
they dared not blindly and with absolute faith follow any man,
however great or however justly and deeply beloved. Further, she
could say that, with the result of the high political teaching
they had had in the past, they would endeavor faithfully,
intelligently and with what ability was given to them, to uphold
those great principles of justice, and trust in the people which
she believed had made the Liberal party what it was, and which
alone were capable of lifting it to the highest triumphs in the
future.
There were enthusiastic cheers when Mrs. Clark had finished
speaking. The historical interest, the self-evident justice of the
plea brought forward by the daughters of the great reform leaders
on behalf of the continuance of the grand cause of freedom for
which their fathers had so bravely battled, went to the hearts of
the crowded assembly. Delegates who had come determined to vote
against the resolution--the "monstrous political fad," as one of
our opponents in parliament had called it--said, almost with tears
in their eyes, "We can't vote against the daughters of Bright and
Cobden," and when the resolution with the rider was put, a forest
of hands went up in its support, and in that vast crowd there were
only about thirty dissentients. The following evening Miss Jane
Cobden and Mrs. Scatcherd addressed an open-air meeting of 30,000
men who could not gain access to Victoria Hall, where John Bright
was speaking on the franchise for men, and a unanimous cheer was
given in favor of women's suffrage.
This was only the beginning of the autumn campaign among the
Liberal associations. The general committee of the Edinburgh United
Liberal Association met on November 16, 1883, in the Oddfellows'
Hall (No. 2), Forrest road, Edinburgh, to consider the questions of
the Local Government Board (Scotland) bill, the equalization of the
burgh and county franchise, and the extension of the parliamentary
vote to women householders. After the two first subjects had been
considered, the following resolution, moved by ex-Bailie Lewis, was
adopted:
_Resolved_, That this meeting regards the extension of the
parliamentary franchise to female householders as just and
reasonable, and would hail with satisfaction the introduction of
a government measure which would confer the parliamentary
franchise upon all female householders, whether resident in
counties or burghs.
November 21, a meeting of the general council of the Manchester
Liberal Association was held in the Memorial Hall to consider the
resolutions passed at the Leeds conference. Mr. J. A. Beith
presided. Mr. J. W. Southern moved the following resolution:
_Resolved_, That in order to meet the just expectation of the
country and to fulfill the pledges given at the last general
election, this council is of opinion that a measure for the
extension of the franchise should confer on householders and
lodgers in the counties the same electoral rights as those
enjoyed by householders and lodgers in parliamentary boroughs,
and should extend to Ireland the franchise enjoyed by Great
Britain; and that, in the opinion of this meeting, any measure
for the extension of the suffrage should confer the franchise
upon women who, possessing the qualifications which should
entitle men to vote, have now the right of voting in all matters
of local government.
An amendment to strike out the portion relating to women having
been rejected, the resolution was carried unanimously. November 26,
the sixth annual meeting of the National Liberal Association was
held at Bristol. Here also one or two ladies were present as
delegates. After a resolution affirming the urgency of the question
of parliamentary reform had been passed, Mr. Lewis Fry, M. P.,
moved:
_Resolved_, That in the opinion of this meeting any measure for
the extension of the suffrage should confer the franchise upon
women who, possessing the qualifications which entitle men to
vote, have now the right of voting in all matters of local
government.
The resolution was seconded by Dr. Caldicott, supported in
excellent speeches by Mrs. Walter McLaren and Mrs. Ashworth
Hallett, and carried by a majority of five. Many other Liberal
associations of less importance, during the autumn, affirmed the
principle of women's suffrage. All the political associations in
Ulster, both Conservative and Liberal, either formally or
informally signified their acceptance of the principle. In the
progress of the movement it was very encouraging to see so many
brave women[555] of ability crowding our platform, conscientiously
devoting their time, talents and money to this sacred cause, ready
and able to fill the vacant places that time must make in our
ranks.
The year 1884 opened with good hopes. There was the immediate
prospect of a reform bill, intended so to widen the representation
of the people as to fix it on a satisfactory basis for another
generation at least. The time seemed opportune for the attainment
of women's suffrage. There had been repeated proof that the
majority of the Liberal party in the country admit the justice of
their claims; there were renewed promises of support on the part of
members of parliament of all shades of political opinion. Many
times the claims of women for the franchise have been set aside by
the assertion that so important a privilege could not be granted
till the time came for the general re-settlement of the question.
That time appeared to have come. A considerable extension of the
suffrage was to be granted, so as to include another 2,000,000 of
unenfranchised men; what better time to recognize the claims of
women who already possessed the qualifications of property or
residence which alone in England give the vote? A few persons
expected that the government Reform bill would contain a clause
relating to women, but this expectation was not generally shared.
It was well known that strong differences of opinion existed in the
cabinet which would render it well-nigh impossible for the
government to introduce the question as one of their own; and
though there may have been disappointment, there was no great
surprise when the Franchise bill, on its introduction, was found to
contain no reference to women.
Meanwhile there had been a change in the leadership of the
movement. Mr. Hugh Mason having intimated his intention to resign
the conduct of the measure, Mr. William Woodall, member of
parliament for Stoke-on-Trent, consented to take charge of it. A
conference of friendly members of parliament was held in the House
of Commons on February 7, and it was then agreed that should the
government Franchise bill not extend to women, an amendment with
the object of including them should be moved at some stage of the
discussion in the House of Commons. Mr. Woodall agreed to take
charge of this amendment.
On February 28, Mr. Gladstone moved in the House of Commons for
leave to bring in a bill to amend the representation of the people.
The forms of the House did not admit of Mr. Woodall's amendment
being placed on the notice-paper until after the second reading of
the bill, but during the adjourned debate on the second reading he
found an opportunity to announce that he would move his proposed
clause while the House was in committee on the bill. He remarked
that the fundamental principle of the bill as it was described by
the prime minister was to give a vote to every household, but as
there was no provision for giving the franchise to such
householders if they happened to be women, he intended to propose
the insertion of a clause to remedy this omission. The clause was:
For all purposes connected with and having reference to the right
of voting in the election of members of parliament, words in the
Representation of the People acts importing the masculine gender
include women.
A careful analysis of the opinions of members of the House of
Commons gave every promise that such an amendment might be
successful. The views of 485 out of the entire number were known,
while 155 had never expressed an opinion, about one-third of these
being new members. Of those whose opinions were known, 249, or a
majority, had expressed themselves in favor of women's suffrage,
236 had expressed themselves against it. The preponderance of
support had hitherto always been among the Liberal ranks, for
though the leaders of the Conservative party had given the
principle their hearty approval, their example had not been
followed by their partisans. It appeared probable therefore that,
if the government held itself neutral on the occasion and permitted
fair play, the amendment would be carried mainly by means of their
own friends.
During the spring, meetings of considerable importance were held in
the country. The first was at Edinburgh on March 22. It was a
demonstration of women inferior in no respect to those we have had
occasion to chronicle of former years. No more imposing assemblage
for a political object had ever been seen in Edinburgh. The largest
hall in the city--that of the United Presbyterian Synod--was
crowded to the doors, and an overflow meeting was held in the
Presbytery Hall. Banners were hung above the platform and a roll
inscribed with the names of the principal supporters of the
movement was conspicuously displayed.[556] Lady Harberton occupied
the chair and was accompanied by the delegates.[557] Letters[558]
of sympathy were read by Miss Wigham, the secretary.
LADY HARBERTON said: If our legislators say taxation and
representation should go together, it is right that they should
give expression to this opinion fairly and openly, and at all
times and seasons insist upon it that those women who are
ratepayers and who are in fact heads of households, ought not to
be excluded from the privilege of voting for a member to
represent them in the House of Commons. This is no question of
women usurping the place of men or any trivialities of that kind;
it is a much more serious matter. The exclusion of women from the
right to representation has already led to laws being passed
about them and their interests, that I do not hesitate to call a
disgrace to humanity. [Cheers.] That they are not more commonly
recognized as such is due, I think, to two causes. One thing is
that women of the upper classes, who are usually wealthy, are
able by the aid of money so to hedge themselves around with
barriers to oppose the inconveniences placed upon women by the
laws, that they very often do not feel them so much; while women
of the classes who are not wealthy are so crushed and oppressed
by the working of these laws that they are unable to take the
first step, which is agitation, towards getting them altered or
repealed. [Cheers.] It often seems to me that another reason why
women themselves are not more enthusiastic upon this question of
the franchise is, that from their earliest childhood they are
taught that the first duty of women is unselfishness, the putting
of their own interests and wishes behind those of others. Any
discussion of this great question only brings forth hysterical
clamor that "women should stay at Home"--with a very big "H."
[Laughter and cheers.] Well, I have been examining a little into
the conduct of those ladies who do stay at home so much, and what
do I find? Why, that they rush about and seem like the changing
colors of the kaleidoscope, now collecting at a bazaar, anon
singing at a concert, with no end of publicity [cheers], but as
long as no rational object is promoted by their action, it is all
counted as staying quietly home in the nursery, whether they have
children or not. That is their notion of being "thoroughly
domesticated." [Laughter.] Now, much as I could wish myself that
men had done their duty and agitated for us, in this case it is
an undeniable fact that they have not shown that readiness, I may
say eagerness, to begin that one could have wished; it therefore
changes at once into one of those duties men have not seen their
way to do, and so becomes of necessity women's work.
A series of meetings[559] after this was held in Bath, Newcastle
and London.
The audiences heartily concurred with the speakers that the time
when a reform bill was before parliament was the fittest and most
opportune moment in which to press forward the claim of women to
representation.
We may observe once again with pride, how hearty and cheering have
always been the sympathy and assistance that men have rendered to
women in this movement in England. At no time has there been a
possibility of a feeling of bitterness between the sexes or a
conviction that their interests were antagonistic, for the plain
reason that there have always been men working side by side with
women. Our suffrage meetings have been attended and supported by
political leaders, members of parliament, town councils or
prominent movers among the working-class associations. Except in
the great demonstrations, which for special reasons were confined
exclusively to women, our movement has formed part of the ordinary
political life of the country.
The _Suffrage Journal_ for May contains a very carefully drawn
calculation of the number of women in the United Kingdom who will
probably receive the franchise if the wider qualifications
contained in the present Franchise bill become law. It must be
remembered that there are now 3,330,720 more houses than electors
in the British Isles. In boroughs where household suffrage already
prevails for men, the unrepresented houses should guide us to a
tolerably correct estimate of the number of women householders. We
may say that practically there are 446,000 houses in the boroughs
of England and Wales, whose inhabitant in each case being a woman,
is unrepresented. The proportion varies much in different
localities; in the city of Bath one-fourth the householders are
women. If we calculate that one house in every six in the boroughs
is occupied by a woman, we find that 349,746 is the probable number
to be enfranchised there.
For the counties there are no means of arriving at so close a
result, but by estimating the proportion of women householders to
be the same as that of women land-owners, or one in seven, we reach
the fairly approximate calculation of 390,434, in the counties. The
same method of calculation applies to Scotland and to Ireland,
where, however, the proportion of woman land-owners is one in
eight.[560]
In order to show that the desire for the suffrage was not confined
to any one rank, class or profession of women, a circular was
signed by a large number of ladies and sent to every member of both
houses of parliament. It was as follows:
SIR: We desire to call your attention to the claim of women who
are heads of households to be included in the operation of the
government Franchise bill.
Women have continuously presented this claim before parliament
and the country since the Reform bill of 1867. The introduction
of a measure declared by the government to be intended to deal
with the franchise in an exhaustive manner, renders it especially
necessary now to urge it upon the attention of parliament.
We respectfully represent that the claim of duly qualified women
for admission within the pale of the constitution is fully as
pressing as that of the agricultural laborer, and that the body
of electors who would thereby be added to the constituencies,
would be at least equal in general and political intelligence to
the great body of agricultural and other laborers who are to be
enfranchised by the government bill.
Among this body would be found women land-owners, who form
one-seventh of the land proprietors of the country; women of
means and position living on their own property; schoolmistresses
and other teachers; women engaged in professional, literary and
artistic pursuits; women farmers, merchants, manufacturers and
shopkeepers; besides large numbers of self-supporting women
engaged in industrial occupations. The continued exclusion of so
large a proportion of the property, industry and intelligence of
the country from all representation in the legislature is
injurious to those excluded, and to the community at large.
Several bills having special reference to the interests and
_status_ of women have been introduced in parliament during the
present session. This affords a powerful reason for the immediate
enfranchisement of women, in order that members of parliament may
have the same sense of responsibility towards the class affected
by them whether dealing with questions relating to women or to
men.
For these and other reasons we earnestly beg that you will give
your support to the amendment to be introduced by Mr. Woodall in
committee on the Representation of the People bill for including
women householders in its operation. We are, sir, yours
faithfully,[561]
In this circular women of all opinions were represented, but a
special circular, signed only by ladies of Conservative views, was
sent to the conservative associations. These ladies pointed out
that justice to women themselves, and the welfare of the whole
community are involved in the admission of the women householders
who at this moment are possessed of the existing statutory
qualifications:
To bring in a new class, under new conditions, whilst continuing
to exclude those who fulfill the present conditions, would be
very injurious to those excluded and set a wrong example before
the community. Every enlargement of the electoral franchise for
men which can now take place necessarily includes many whose
interests in the country cannot equal those of the women who now
claim it. Their position is already recognized by their
possession of every local franchise whatsoever. Justice requires
that the principle should be fully carried out by extending to
women the right to vote for members of parliament, whose
legislation so strongly affects their welfare. Prudence also
requires that an important class of educated and philanthropic
persons should not be left out, or their claims postponed, when a
large addition is likely to be made to the less educated portion
of the electorate. We most seriously believe that few things
could happen more dangerous for the real happiness of the nation
than to permit the opportunity to pass without the admission of
legally qualified women within the circle of the constitution.
A correspondence also was conducted with Mr. Gladstone by the
Bristol Ladies' Liberal Association and others whom they invited to
join them, of known Liberal views, urging him to receive a
delegation and praying that
It may not in the future be said that women alone were unworthy
of any measure of confidence which you so rightly extended even
to the humblest and most ignorant men.
Mr. Gladstone declined to receive the deputation, partly on the
ground of illness, partly lest the admission of their views might
interfere with his plans for the bill. So the day of battle drew
on, when a rumor began to be circulated that the government
intended to oppose Mr. Woodall's clause, on the ground that its
admission might endanger the bill. Strenuous efforts were at the
same time made to induce him to withdraw the amendment, and the
government whips plainly intimated that the question would not be
considered an open one, on which members were to be free to vote
according to their convictions, but as one which the government had
made up their minds to oppose. With the hope of changing this
determination a memorial was signed by seventy-seven members of
parliament, and presented to Mr. Gladstone, asking him to leave the
introduction of the clause an open question. It represented--
That the Franchise bill being now in committee a favorable
opportunity is afforded for the discussion of the amendment for
extending its provisions to women, of which notice has been given
by Mr. Woodall.
That your memorialists have heard a rumor that her majesty's
government have declared against allowing the question to be
discussed and decided on its merits, on the ground that the
adoption of the proposal might endanger the bill.
That your memorialists are of the opinion that the claim of women
who are householders and ratepayers is just and reasonable, and
that the time when the House is engaged in amending the law
relating to the representation of the people is the proper time
for the consideration of this claim.
That during the discussion in committee on the Reform bill of
1867, an amendment for extending its provisions to women was
introduced by Mr. John Stuart Mill, and that on that occasion the
government of the day offered no opposition to the full and free
discussion of the question, and placed no restriction on the free
exercise of the judgment of members of their party as to the
manner in which they should vote. The tellers appointed against
Mr. Mill's motion were not even the government tellers.
That your memorialists earnestly pray that the precedent so
instituted may be followed on the present occasion, and that the
clause proposed by Mr. Woodall may be submitted to the free and
unbiased decision of the House on its own merits.
They desire earnestly to express their conviction that the course
of allowing the question to be an open one, on which the
government is prepared to accept the decision of the House,
cannot possibly endanger or prejudice the Franchise bill. In
connection with this your memorialists would press on your
attention the fact that Mr. Woodall's amendment is in the form of
a new clause, and would not therefore come under discussion until
the bill as it stands has passed through committee.
This request was refused. On June 9, such unexpected progress was
made by the committee of the House of Commons with the Franchise
bill that all the government clauses were carried. There were many
amendments on the paper which took precedence of Mr. Woodall's, but
these were hastily gone through or withdrawn, and in the middle of
the morning sitting of June 9, he rose and moved the introduction
of his clause. Mr. Woodall's speech was a masterpiece of earnest
but temperate reasoning. He was fortunate enough to present an old
and well-worn subject in new lights. He said that Mr. Gladstone had
affirmed the principle of the measure to be to give every
householder a vote, and it would now be his endeavor to pursuade
parliament that women were capable citizens, who would meet all the
conditions so clearly laid down by the prime minister. Against the
charge of inopportunity in bringing the subject forward at this
crisis, he reminded the House of Mr. Chamberlain's words on a
recent occasion, that it was always opportune to do right.
Mr. Gladstone said there were two questions to be considered. One
of these was the question whether women were to be enfranchised,
the other whether the enfranchisement should be effected by a
clause introduced in committee on the present bill. The second
question was that on which he was about to dwell. He deprecated
the introduction of new matter into the bill. The cargo which the
vessel carried was, in the opinion of the government, as large as
she could carry safely. The proposal was a very large one. It did
not seem unreasonable to believe that the number of persons in
the three kingdoms to be enfranchised by the amendment would be
little short of half a million. What was the position in which
Mr. Woodall placed the government when he requested them to
introduce a completely new subject on which men profoundly
differed, and which, it was clear, should receive a full and
dispassioned investigation? It was not now practicable to give
that investigation. This was one of those questions which it
would be intolerable to mix up with purely political and party
debates. If there was a subject in the whole compass of human
life and experience that was sacred beyond all other subjects it
was the character and position of woman. Did his honorable friend
ask him to admit that the question deserved the fullest
consideration? He gave him that admission freely. Did he ask
whether he (Mr. Gladstone) wished to bind the members of the
Government or his colleagues in the cabinet with respect to the
votes they would give on this question? Certainly not, provided
only that they took the subject from the vortex of political
contention. He was bound to say, whilst thus free and open on the
subject itself, that with regard to the proposal to introduce it
into this bill he offered it the strongest opposition in his
power, and must disclaim and renounce all responsibility for the
measure should Mr. Woodall succeed in inducing the committee to
adopt his amendment.
On motion of Lord John Manners the debate was adjourned till June
12.
On the intervening day a meeting was summoned of the general
committee of the society. Miss Cobbe first, and Mr. Woodall
subsequently, presided, and the following resolutions were passed:
_Resolved_, That the claim of duly qualified women to the
exercise of the suffrage having been continuously presented
before parliament and the country since the Reform bill of 1867,
this meeting is of opinion that the time when the legislature is
again engaged in amending the law relating to the representation
of the people is the proper time for the consideration of this
claim.
_Resolved_, That this meeting heartily approves of the amendment
which Mr. Woodall has moved in committee on the Franchise bill
for extending its provisions to duly qualified women, and pledge
themselves to support his action by every means in their power.
_Resolved_, That they have heard with astonishment that her
majesty's government refuse to allow this amendment to be
discussed on its merits and to be decided by the free exercise of
the judgment of members of the House of Commons, but that the
government require their supporters to refrain from such free
exercise of their judgment on the alleged ground that the
adoption of the proposal would endanger the Franchise bill.
_Resolved_, That in the opinion of this meeting the exercise of
such pressure appears to be an infringement of the privileges of
a free parliament and an aggression on the rights of the people.
They hold that all sections of the community, whether electors or
non-electors, have an indefeasible right to have matters
affecting their interests submitted to the unbiased judgment, and
decided by the unfettered discretion of the members sent to
represent them in parliament.
_Resolved_, That a declaration signed by 110 Liberal members of
the House of Commons was presented last session to Mr. Gladstone
which set forth that, in the opinion of the memorialists, no
measure for the assimilation of the borough and county franchise
could be satisfactory unless it contained provisions for
extending the suffrage, without distinction of sex, to all
persons who possess the statutory qualifications for the
parliamentary franchise.
_Resolved_, That this meeting calls upon those who signed this
declaration, and all other members who believe that the claim of
duly qualified women to the parliamentary franchise is reasonable
and just, to support the clause moved by Mr. Woodall, in
committee on the Franchise bill, for extending its provisions to
such women.
_Resolved_, That a copy of these resolutions be forwarded to Mr.
Gladstone and to every member of parliament.
_Resolved_, That petitions to both houses of parliament in
support of Mr. Woodall's clause be adopted and signed by the
chairman on behalf of this meeting.
Some members of parliament who attended this meeting explained that
though they were as firmly convinced as ever of the justice of the
claim, they could not vote for it after Mr. Gladstone's distinct
declaration that he would abandon the bill if the amendment were
passed. On June 12 Lord John Manners resumed the debate. He said:
That although this proposal had never been of a party character,
it had always been a political question. There was no question
connected with the franchise which had been more thoroughly
discussed, threshed and sifted. Guided by every consideration of
justice and fairness, of equity, of analogy and experience, he
should give it his cordial and unhesitating support.
The next speech of importance was Mr. Stansfeld's. He maintained
that the acceptance of the clause by the government would have
strengthened rather than weakened the bill, and that its insertion
certainly would not have rendered the bill less palatable to the
House of Lords:
The principle of this bill is household suffrage. Household
suffrage is one of two things--it is either put as a rough test
of capable citizenship, or else it means what I will call the
family vote. The women to be enfranchised under this clause would
be first of all women of property, intelligence and education,
having a status in the country; secondly a large class of women
of exceptional competency, because having lost the services and
support of men who should be the bread-winners and the heads of
families, they are obliged to step into their shoes and to take
upon themselves the burdens and responsibilities which had
previously devolved upon men, and because they have done this
with success. I decline either by word or deed to make the
admission that these women are less capable citizens than the
2,000,000 whom the right honorable gentleman proposes to
enfranchise by this bill. Well, then, let it be the family
vote--that is to say, exceptions apart, let the basis of our
constitution be that the family, represented by its head, should
be the unit of the State. Now that is the idea which recommends
and has always recommended itself to my mind. But on what
principle, or with what regard to the permanence and stability of
that principle, can you exclude the head of the family and give
that family no voice, because the head happens to be a woman? If
this clause be excluded from the measure, as it will be, this
will not be a bill of one principle, but of two principles. It
will not be a bill containing only the principle of household
suffrage interpreted as the family vote, but one founded on these
two principles--first, a male householding vote; and, secondly,
the exclusion of the head of the household when the head is a
woman. That is a permanent principle of exclusion, and therefore
the bill with this clause left out is a declaration for ever
against the political emancipation of women.
After some speeches against the motion Colonel King-Harman said:
In the old state of the franchise it was not so much a matter of
importance to women whether they possessed votes or not, but now
that this bill proposed to create two million new voters of a
much lower order than those now exercising the franchise, it
became of importance to secure some countervailing advantage.
They were told this was a matter which could wait. What were the
women to gain by waiting? They had waited for seventeen years
during which the subject had been discussed, and now they were
told to wait till two million of the common orders had been
admitted to a share in the parliamentary management of the
country. The honorable member for Huddersfield (Mr. Leatham) had
used an argument which he (Colonel King-Harman) thought a most
unworthy one, namely, that the franchise was not to be extended
to women, because, unhappily, there are women of a degraded and
debased class. Because there were 40,000 of them in this
metropolis alone, the remaining women who were pure and virtuous
were to be deprived of the power of voting. But would Mr. Leatham
guarantee that the 2,000,000 men he proposes to enfranchise shall
be perfectly pure and moral men? Would he propose a clause to
exclude from the franchise those men who lead and retain in vice
and degradation these unfortunate women? No--men may sin and be a
power in the State, but when a woman sins not only is she to have
no power, but her whole sisterhood are to be excluded from it. He
believed that every idea of common sense pointed to the
desirability of supporting the amendment, and he therefore had
great pleasure in doing so.
There were also excellent speeches from Mr. Cowen (Newcastle),
General Alexander, Sir Wilfred Lawson and Mr. Story, and finally
from Sir Stafford Northcote the leader of the Conservative
opposition. He observed:
That the prime minister had told them that they did not consider
this clause to be properly introduced now, because this was not
the time for the question. It seemed to him, on the contrary,
that it was the very best opportunity for dealing with it,
because they were going enormously to increase the electorate,
and would, therefore, make the inequality between men and women
much greater than it was before. It would be said they were going
to extend the property franchise if this amendment were carried.
On that issue they were prepared to join and to maintain that it
was a right thing, and it was the duty of that House to make
proper provision for those classes of property holders now
without a vote. Members who had canvassed boroughs would remember
that after going into two or three shops and asking for the votes
of those who were owners, they have come to one perhaps of the
most important shops and have been told, "Oh, it is of no use
going in, there is no vote there." Such women are probably of
education and gentle character, and perhaps live as widows and
take care of their families; they have every right to be
consulted as to who should be the man to represent the
constituency in which they lived and to take care of their
interests and the interests of those dependent on them. That was
the ground on which Lord Beaconsfield stood. They had adhered to
that ground for several years, and there they stood now.
The division took place at a late hour with the result that the
clause was defeated by 271 votes to 135, being a majority against
it of 136, or two to one. But though such a vote would have been a
sore discouragement if it had represented the real opinion of the
House, on the present occasion it meant little if anything. The
government had sent out a "five-line" whip for its supporters, and
so effective had this whip been, combined with Mr. Gladstone's
assertion that he would give up the responsibility of the bill if
the clause were carried, that 98 Liberals and 6 Home Rulers, known
to be supporters of our cause, voted with the government, even Mr.
Hugh Mason being among this number, while 34 Liberals and 7 Home
Rulers, also friends of ours, were absent from the division. We may
safely assume that had the government more wisely left it an open
question, upon which members were free to vote according to their
consciences, our defeat would have been turned into a victory. On
the other hand while our Liberal friends thus voted against the
amendment or abstained from voting, the bulk of our supporters in
this division were Conservatives, a circumstance unknown in the
previous history of the movement.
An important conference of friends and supporters was held the next
morning in the Westminster Palace Hotel at which Mr. Stansfeld
presided. To use Miss Tod's words:
Never had a defeated army met in a more victorious mood. There
was much indeed to encourage in the degree of importance to which
the question had attained. It had risen from a purely speculative
into a pressing political question; it had been debated during
two days, and it was heartily supported by the Conservative
leader.
The speeches at the conference were animated and full of hope for
the future. Mr. Stansfeld congratulated the meeting on having made
a new departure; their question had become one of practical
politics, and they had now to address themselves in all the
constituencies to the political organizations.
A magnificent meeting was held in St. James Hall the following
week. The hall was densely crowded in every part, and an overflow
meeting was arranged for those unable to gain admission. Some of
the speakers[562] proposed as the best measure for agitation, a
determined resistance against taxation.[563]
Repeated attempts to obtain a day for the debate and division were
followed by repeated disappointments. The session commenced in
November, 1884. Mr. Woodall at once gave notice of a bill. In
presenting it to the House, he concluded after consultation with
parliamentary friends, to add a clause defining the action of his
bill to be limited to unmarried women and widows.[564] The enacting
clause of the bill was as follows:
For all purposes of and incidental to the voting for members to
serve in parliament, women shall have the same rights as men, and
all enactments relating to or concerned in such elections shall
be construed accordingly, provided that nothing in this act shall
enable women under coverture to be registered or to vote at such
elections.
The addition of this clause excited much discussion. Those in favor
of it argued that this limitation would certainly be imposed in
committee of the House, which though it was in all probability
prepared to give the vote to women possessed of independence,
dreaded the extension of faggot votes which would have been the
almost inevitable consequence of admitting married women; while the
result would be the same whether the limitation clause was
introduced by the promoters of the bill or by a parliamentary
committee, and it would be more likely to obtain support at the
second reading if its intentions were made clear in the beginning.
On the other hand it was argued that the principle of giving the
vote to women in the same degree that it was given to men, was the
basis upon which the whole agitation rested; that marriage was no
disqualification to men, and therefore should not prove so to
women; and that, though it might be necessary to accept a
limitation by parliament, it was not right for the society to lower
its standard by proposing a compromise. This divergence in the
views of the supporters of the movement was the cause of much
discussion in the public press and elsewhere, and unfortunately
resulted in the abstention of some of the oldest friends of the
cause from working in support of this particular bill, although it
was admitted on all sides that if a day could be obtained its
chances in a division were very good.
The bill was introduced on November 19, 1884, and its opponents
took the unprecedented course of challenging a division at this
stage. Leave was however given to bring it in, and the second
reading was set down for November 25, and then for December 9; on
each occasion it was postponed owing to the adjournment of the
House. It was next set down for Wednesday, March 4, but its chance
was again destroyed by the appropriation by the government of all
Wednesdays for the Seats bill. Mr. Woodall then fixed on June 24,
but before that time the ministerial crisis occurred, and when that
day arrived the House had been adjourned for the reëlections
consequent upon a change of government. He then obtained the first
place on Wednesday, July 22, but again ministers appropriated
Wednesdays, and all chances for the session being over, Mr. Woodall
gave order to discharge the bill.
This delay stands in sharp and painful contrast with the promptness
with which parliament passed the Medical Relief bill. A clause had
been inserted in the Franchise bill disfranchising any man who had
been in receipt of parish medical aid for himself or family. This
clause caused great dissatisfaction as it was stated it would
disqualify from voting a large number of laborers in the
agricultural counties; parliament therefore found time amidst all
the press of business and party divisions to pass the Medical
Relief bill removing this disfranchisement from _men_, though we
are repeatedly assured that nothing but the want of time prevents
their fair consideration of the enfranchisement of _women_. It is
another proof that there is always time for a representative
government to attend to the wants of its constituents.
Another effort was made in the House of Lords by Lord Denman who
introduced a bill for extending the parliamentary vote to women.
The committees[565] were unaware of his intention until they read
a notice of the bill in the newspapers. The enacting clause was as
follows:
All women, not legally disqualified, who have the same
qualifications as the present and future electors for counties
and divisions of counties and boroughs, shall be entitled to vote
for knights of the shire for counties and divisions of counties
and for boroughs, at every election.
A division was taken upon it on June 23, just after the Seats bill
had been passed and the peers were about to adjourn in consequence
of the change of government. Many protests were made that the time
was ill chosen, and some peers left the House to avoid recording
their votes while others voted against it without reference to its
merits as a question. The division showed 8 in favor and 36
against. There appears to be a strong impression that if a bill to
enfranchise women were passed by the Commons it would be accepted
by the Lords, while there is at the same time a feeling that any
measure dealing with the representation of the people should
originate with the Commons, and not in the upper House.
During the year 1885 we sustained the loss of many of the earliest
friends of the movement; chief among these Professor Fawcett, who
from the commencement of its history had given it his firm and
unflinching support. His conviction that justice and freedom must
gain the upper hand often caused him to take a more sanguine view
of the prospect than the event has justified. He was the firm
friend of women in all their recent efforts, and helped them to
obtain employment in the civil service, to enter the medical
profession, to open the universities, and in many other ways. Next
to be mentioned is the death of Mrs. Stansfeld. She was the
daughter of Mr. William H. Ashurst, who was a staunch advocate of
freedom and may be remembered as the first English friend of
William L. Garrison. She had been a member of the suffrage
committee in London for more than sixteen years, and gave unfailing
sympathy to all the efforts made by her noble husband, James
Stansfeld, in behalf of the rights of humanity. This year has also
been saddened by the death of Mrs. Ronald Shearer, formerly Helena
Downing, an able and true-hearted woman, who had devoted her
strength and talents to the furtherance of our cause at a time when
its advocates were still the objects of ridicule and attack.
The electorate of three millions of men is now increased to five
millions, and by this extension of the suffrage the difficulty of
waging an up-hill fight in the interests of the still excluded
class has also been increased. The interests of the newly
represented classes will imperatively claim precedence in the new
parliament. Like the emancipated blacks who received the vote after
the American civil war, while the women who had supported the cause
of the Union by their enthusiasm and their sacrifices were passed
over, the miners and laborers of English counties have received the
franchise for which they have never asked, in preference to the
women who have worked, petitioned and organized themselves for
years to secure it. Women have now to appeal to this new electorate
to grant that justice which the old electorate has denied them;
they have to begin again the weary round of educating their new
masters by appeals and arguments; they will once more see their
interests "unavoidably" deferred to the interests of the
represented classes; they will once again be bidden to stand aside
till it is time for another Reform bill to be considered!
In recounting the history of woman suffrage frequent allusion has
been made to the parallel movements which have been carried on
through the same course of years; the most important of these have
been: (1) The admission of women to fields of public usefulness;
(2) removal of legal disabilities and hardships; (3) admission to a
better education and greater freedom of employment. Much of the
progress that has been made has been the work of the active friends
of woman suffrage, and under the fostering care of the suffrage
societies.
Under the first division comes the work of women on the
school-boards. The education act of 1870 expressly guaranteed their
right of being elected, and even in the first year several were
elected. One, Miss Becker, in Manchester, has retained her seat
ever since. In London the number of lady members has greatly
varied. Beginning with two, Miss Jarrett and Miss Davis, in 1879 it
rose to nine, but now, 1885, has sunk again to three, Miss
Davenport Hill, Mrs. Westlake, and Mrs. Webster. Taken as a whole,
their influence has been very usefully exerted for the benefit of
the children and the young teachers. Under this head also comes
women's work as poor-law guardians. The first was elected in
Kensington in 1875. Six years afterwards a small society to promote
the election of women was founded by Miss Müller, and the number
elected is steadily increasing. There are now in England and
Scotland in all forty-six. In Ireland women are still debarred from
this useful work. The election occurs every year, and it is one of
the local franchises that women as well as men exercise. Last year
three ladies were appointed members of the Metropolitan Board which
looks after London hospitals and asylums. In 1873 Mr. Stansford,
then president of the local government board, appointed Mrs. Hassan
Session assistant inspector of work-houses, and after an interval
of twelve years Miss Mason was appointed to the same position.
Women are also sometimes appointed as church wardens, overseers of
the roads, and registrars of births and deaths. These are the only
public offices they fill.
Under the second heading, the removal of legal disabilities, is
included the Married Woman's Property act, which was finally passed
in 1882, twenty-five years after it had been first brought forward
in parliament by Sir Erskine Perry. The ancient law of England
transferred all property held by a woman, except land, absolutely
to her husband. A step was gained in 1870 by which the money she
had actually earned became her own. This was followed by frequent
amendments, sometimes in Scotland, sometimes in England, and a
comprehensive bill met with frequent vicissitudes, now in the House
of Lords, now in the Commons. The honor of this long contest is
chiefly due to Mrs. Jacob Bright and Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy, whose
unwearied efforts were finally crowned with success by the act of
1882, under which the property of a married woman is absolutely
secured to her as if she were single, and the power to contract and
of sueing and being sued, also secured to her. The right to the
custody of their own children is another point for which women are
struggling. In 1884, Mr. Bryce, M. P., brought in a bill to render
a mother the legal guardian of her children after the father's
death. This was read a second time by a vote of 207 for, and only
73 against. In 1885, however, though passing the House of Lords, it
was postponed till too late in the Commons. Another important
alteration in the legal condition of married women was made in
1878. In that year Mr. Herschell introduced the Matrimonial Causes
act to remedy a gross injustice in the divorce law, and Lord
Pensance inserted a clause which provided that if a woman were
brutally ill-treated by her husband, a magistrate might order a
separate maintenance for her and assign her the care of her
children. It is no secret that the original drafting of this clause
was due to Miss Frances Power Cobbe. The long struggle which is not
yet terminated against the infamous Contagious Diseases acts
belongs to this division of work. The acts were passed in 1866,
'69, and for many years were supported by an overpowering majority
of the House of Commons. Mr. Stansfeld, who has always been the
supporter of every movement advancing the influence of women, has
been the leader of this agitation. Mrs. Josephine Butler, Mrs.
Stewart of Ougar, and latterly Mrs. Ormiston Chant, have been the
most untiring speakers on this question. On April 26, 1883, Mr.
Stansfeld carried a resolution by a vote of 184 against 112 for the
abolition of the acts, since which time the acts have been
suspended, but we must look to the new parliament for their total
repeal. The Criminal-law Amendment act was the great triumph of
1885. It had been postponed session after session, but the bold
denunciation of Mr. Stead, editor of the _Pall Mall Gazette_,
finally roused the national conscience, and now a larger measure of
protection is afforded to young girls than has ever been known
before.
Of the successive steps by which colleges have been founded for
women, and the universities opened to them, it is impossible to
give any record. The London University and the Royal University of
Ireland, recognize fully the equality of women; nine ladies secured
the B. A. diploma from the latter university in 1884, and nine more
in 1885. Oxford and Cambridge extend their examinations to women.
The Victoria University acknowledges their claim to examination.
The London school of medicine gives a first rate education to women
(there are 48 this session), and the Royal College of Surgeons,
Dublin, admits them to its classes. There are now about 45 ladies
who are registered as medical practitioners. One of them, Miss
Edith Stone, was appointed by Mr. Fawcett medical superintendent of
the female staff at the general post-office, London. The success of
the movement for supplying women as physicians for the vast Indian
empire has attained remarkable success during the last two years.
FOOTNOTES:
[536] This was called out by the movement in America. A report of a
convention held in Worcester, Mass., published in the New York
_Tribune_, fell into the hands of Mrs. Taylor and aroused her to
active thought on the question. She comments on a very able series
of resolutions passed at this convention, in which such men
as Emerson, Parker, Channing, Garrison and Phillips took
part.--[EDITORS.
[537] _Council of the Association_--Mrs. S. Turner, Mrs. S.
Bartholomew, Mrs. E. Stephenson, Mrs. M. Whalley, Mrs. E. Rooke,
Mrs. E. Wade, Mrs. C. Ash, president _pro tem._, Mrs. E.
Cavill, treasurer, Mrs. M. Brook, financial-secretary, Mrs. A.
Higginbottom, corresponding secretary.
[538] Mrs. Biggs, Anna Knight, Mrs. Hugo Reid and many other
English women were roused to white heat on this question, by the
exclusion of women as delegates from the World's Anti-slavery
Convention held in London in 1840. That was the first pronounced
public discussion, lasting one entire day, on the whole question of
woman's rights that ever took place in England, and as the
arguments were reproduced in the leading journals and discussed at
every fireside, a grand educational work was inaugurated at
that time. The American delegates spent several months in
England--Lucretia Mott speaking at many points. She occupied the
Unitarian pulpit in London and elsewhere. As Mrs. Hugo Reid sat in
this convention throughout the proceedings and met Lucretia Mott
socially on several occasions, we may credit her outspoken
opinions, in 1843, in a measure to these influences.--[EDITORS.
[539] The committee as at first formed, consisted of the following
persons: The very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury, Dr. Alford, Miss
Jessie Boucherett, Professor Cairnes, Rev. W. L. Clay, Miss Davies,
the originator of Girton College, Lady Goldsmid, Mr. G. W.
Hastings, Mr. James Heywood, Mrs. Knox, Miss Manning, and Mrs.
Hensleigh Wedgwood. Mrs. Peter A. Taylor was treasurer, and Mrs. J.
W. Smith, _nee_ Miss Garrett, honorary secretary. A few months
later Mrs. Smith's death left this post vacant, and Mrs. P. A.
Taylor then assumed the office of secretary which she retained with
the aid of Miss Caroline Ashurst Biggs till 1871. No one else could
have rendered such services to our movement while it was in its
infancy as Mrs. Taylor gave. Her gentle and dignified presence, her
untiring energy, the experience of organization and public life
which she already possessed, her influence with an extended circle
of friends chosen from among the most liberal thinkers of the
nation, secured at once attention and respect for any cause she
took up. Many years before she had worked hard for the association
of the Friends of Italy, and on the breaking out of the American
civil war her sympathies and practical knowledge led her to found a
society for assisting the freedmen. In acknowledgment of the
invaluable assistance she rendered, her friends in America sent a
book containing a complete set of photographs of all the chief
anti-slavery workers. When she began her efforts for women's
suffrage, the English Abolitionists were among the first
correspondents to whom she applied, and they nearly all responded
cordially. For years her house, Aubrey House, Kensington, was the
centre of the London organization to which she gave her time,
strength, and money, well earning the title of "Mother of the
Movement," which loving friends have since bestowed.
[540] In 1869, 255 petitions, signed by 61,475 persons; in 1870,
663 petitions, signed by 134,561 persons; in 1871, 622 petitions,
signed by 186,976 persons (75 of these petitions were from public
meetings and signed only by the chairman, or from town councils and
sealed with the official seal); in 1872, 829 petitions with 350,093
signatures; in 1873, 919 petitions, with 329,206 signatures; in
1874, 1,494 petitions with 430,343 signatures; and in 1875, 1,273
petitions were sent in containing 415,622 signatures.
[541] This lady, sister of John and Jacob Bright, and wife of the
senior member for Edinburgh, Mr. Duncan McLaren, so much esteemed
that he was sometimes spoken of as the "Member for Scotland,"
unites in her own person all the requisites for a leader of the
movement. She has the charm and dignified grace so generally found
among Quaker ladies, and the pathetic eloquence which belong to her
family. She is clear-sighted in planning action, and enthusiastic
and warm-hearted in carrying it out, and for the past sixteen years
the movement in Scotland has centered around her.
[542] Mr. Thomas Hare, Mr. Boyd Kinnear, Mr. Mill, who was no
longer in parliament, the Rev. Charles Kingsley (this was the first
and only meeting at which he was present), Prof. Fawcett, M. P. and
Mrs. Fawcett, Lord Houghton, Mr. John Morley, Sir Charles W. Dilke,
Bt. M. P., Mr. P. A. Taylor, M. P., Professor Masson of Edinburgh,
and Mr. Stamfeld, M. P.
[543] Mrs. Penington, Mr. Hopwood, Q. C. and Professor Amos were
honorary secretaries the first year, and succeeding them Miss C. A.
Biggs and Miss Agnes Garrett. The principal committees united with
the central, including Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh,
Dublin and the North of Ireland.
[544] Minutes of a meeting at the House of Commons, June 23, 1875.
Present: The Right Honorable E. P. Bouverie, in the chair; and the
following members of parliament: Right Hon. H. C. Childers, Marquis
of Hamilton, Lord Randolph Churchill, Hon. E. Stanhope, Mr.
Bentinck, Mr. Beresford Hope, Mr. Chaplin, Mr. Hayter, Sir Henry
Holland, Sir Henry James, Mr. Kay Shuttleworth, Mr. Edward Leatham,
Mr. Merewether, Mr. Newdegate, Mr. Raikes, Mr. de Rothschild, Mr.
Scousfield, Mr. Whitbread.
_Resolved_, That a committee of peers, members of parliament and
other influential men be organized for the purpose of maintaining
the integrity of the franchise, in opposition to the claims for the
extension of the parliamentary suffrage to women.
_Resolved_, That Mr. E. P. Bouverie be requested to act as
chairman, and Lord Claud John Hamilton and Mr. Kay Shuttleworth as
honorary secretaries.
The following members have since joined those named above: Lord
Elcho, Right Hon. E. Knatchbull-Hugessen, Right Hon. J. R. Mowbray,
Sir Thomas Bazley, Mr. Butt, Mr. Gibson and Colonel Kingscote.
[545] We must mention the names of the ladies who during the
previous two or three years had been most active in speaking and
organizing societies. So many meetings had been held that there was
hardly a town of any importance in England, Ireland or Scotland
where the principles of woman suffrage had not been explained and
canvassed. One of the foremost for her activity in this department
of work was Miss Mary Beedy, an American lady, resident for some
years in England. She had thoroughly mastered the legal and
political condition of the question in this country, and her
untiring energy, her clear common sense, and her ready logic made
her advocacy invaluable. The regret was general when she was
compelled to return to America. Miss Helena Downing, niece of Mr.
McCarthy Downing, member of parliament for Cork, arranged and gave
many lectures during 1873 and 1874. Miss. Lillias Ashworth,
honorary secretary of the Bristol committee, frequently spoke at
meetings about this time. In Scotland Miss Jane Taylour and others
still continued their indefatigable labors, in which they were
frequently assisted by Miss Isabella Stuart of Balgonie in
Fifeshire. In Ireland, in addition to the usual meetings in the
north, a series of meetings in the south was undertaken by Miss
Tod, Miss Beedy and Miss Downing. Other meetings were addressed by
Miss Fawcett, Miss Becker, Miss Caroline Biggs, Miss Eliza Sturge,
Miss Rhoda Garrett, Mrs. Fenwick-Miller and many others. During
1873 Mrs. Henry Kingsley, sister-in-law of one novelist and wife of
another, also spoke frequently. Space fails me to do justice to the
varied powers of the speakers who have carried our movement on
during these years of patient perseverance; to the clear logic and
convincing power of Mrs. Fawcett's speeches; to the thrilling
eloquence of her cousin, Rhoda Garrett, now, alas! no longer with
us; to Miss Becker's accurate legal knowledge and masterly
presentation of facts and arguments; to Miss Helena Downing's
eloquence marked by the humor, pathos and power which were hers by
national inheritance. During these years of trial, too, the cause
owed much to the strenuous advocacy of the Misses Ashworth, Anne
Frances and Lillias Sophia, nieces of Jacob Bright. Miss Ashworth
did not herself speak at meetings, but she comforted and helped
those who did, while Lillias possessed the family gift of eloquence
and charmed her audience by her witty, forcible and telling
speeches. So numerous and so well attended have been these meetings
during these and subsequent years, that it is impossible to
exonerate men and women from the charge of willful blindness if
they still misconstrue the plain facts of the question.
[546] First in the list came six ladies, members of school-boards:
Mrs. Buckton of Leeds, Miss Helena Richardson of Bristol, Mrs.
Surr, Mrs. Westlake, Mrs. Fenwick Miller and Miss Helen Taylor,
London; then followed the opinions of ladies who were guardians of
the poor. Forty ladies known as authoresses or painters came next
on the list; among these were Mrs. Allingham, Mrs. Cowden Clarke,
Mrs. Eiloart, Mary Howitt, Emily Pfeiffer, Augusta Webster. Women
doctors came next: Dr. Garrett Anderson, Dr. Annie Barker, Dr.
Elizabeth Blackwell, Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake, Dr. Eliza Dunbar, Dr.
Frances Hoggan, Dr. Edith Pechey; and next to the doctors came Miss
Eliza Orme, the only woman who was successfully practicing law. The
section of education included the names of Mrs. Wm. Gray, and her
sister. Miss Shirreff, Mrs. Nichol (Edinburgh), Miss Emily Davies,
founder of Girton College, Miss Byers, founder of the Ladies'
Collegiate School, Belfast, Mrs. Crawshay and Miss Mary Gurney.
Nineteen ladies, the heads of women's colleges and high-schools,
next gave their reasons why they desired the suffrage. After these
came ladies engaged in philanthropic work, which included the
sisters Rosamund and Florence Davenport Hill, Florence Nightingale,
Miss Ellice Hopkins, eminent for rescue work; Miss Irby, well-known
for her efforts among the starving Bosnian fugitives; Miss Manning,
secretary of the National Indian Association; Mrs. Southey,
secretary of the Women's Peace Association; Mrs. Lucas, and Mrs.
Edward Parker, president and secretary of the British Women's
Temperance Society. The opinions were various, both in kind and in
length, some being only a confession of faith in a couple of lines,
others a page of able reasoning.
[547] Miss Tod gives the spirit to each movement in Ulster, which
is the intellectual headquarters of Ireland. She is the pioneer in
all matters of reform; she is asked to speak in churches; she
instigated the efforts which led to girls participating in the
benefits of the Irish Intermediate Education act, which was being
restricted to boys; she has organized and has won friends and votes
not only over her own district of Ulster, but in many other
quarters of Ireland; and often when in England some indefinable
torpor has crept over a meeting--as will happen at times--a few
eloquent and heart-stirring words from her have been sufficient to
raise the courage and revive the interest.
[548] Mrs. Peter A. Taylor, Mrs. Fawcett, Mrs. Lucas, Miss Biggs,
Miss Rhoda Garrett, Miss Jessie Boucherett, Mrs. Arthur Arnold,
Miss Frances Power Cobbe, Lady Harberton, Mrs. Pennington, Miss
Helen Taylor, step-daughter of John Stuart Mill, Miss Henrietta
Müller, member of the London school-board, and others.
[549] Mrs. Jacob Bright, Miss Becker, Mrs. Scatcherd, Miss Corbutt,
Mr. Steinthal, Mrs. Thomasson, and others.
[550] Led by Mrs. Lillias Ashworth Hallett, Mrs. Helen Bright
Clark, niece and daughter of John Bright, Mrs. Beddoe, Miss Snyder,
Miss Estlin, the Priestman sisters, Miss Blackburn and Miss Colby,
Eliza Sturge, Mrs. Ashford, Mrs. Matthews. Mrs. Ann Comen and Mrs.
Alfred Osler, niece of Mrs. Peter Taylor, are the chief Birmingham
and Nottingham workers.
[551] Lady Harberton, Mrs. Scatcherd, Mrs. Ashworth Hallet, Mrs.
Josephine Butler, Mrs. Ellis, Miss Eliza Sturge, Mrs. Wellstood
(Edinburgh), Mrs. Haslam (Dublin), Miss Becker, Mrs. Pearson, Miss
Jessie Craigen, Miss Helena Downing, Miss Lucy Wilson, Mrs. Nichols
(Edinburgh), Mrs. O'Brien, and in the overflow meeting Mrs. Lucas
and Miss Biggs. At the close of the meeting the enthusiastic and
prolonged cheering which rose from the crowd, the cordial
hand-shakes of utter strangers with words of encouragement and
sympathy brought tears to the eyes of many who had the privilege of
being present on that occasion.
[552] Mrs. McLaren occupied the chair and was accompanied by Mrs.
Nichol, Miss Wigham, Miss Tod, Mrs. Charles McLaren, Miss Craigen,
Miss Becker, Miss Beddoe, Mrs. Shearer (formerly Miss Helena
Downing), Miss Flora Stevenson, Mrs. Wellstood, Miss Annie
Stoddart, Mrs. Burton and a distinguished visitor from New York,
Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was able on this visit to England
to estimate the wide difference in the position of women since the
time--more than forty years before--she had been refused a seat as
a delegate in the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London.
[553] MARRIED WOMEN'S PROPERTY COMMITTEE.--The committee, at the
time of the final meeting, November 18, 1882, consisted of the
following ladies and gentlemen: Mrs. Addey; Mr. Arthur Arnold, M.
P.; Mrs. Arthur Arnold; Mr. Jacob Bright, M. P.; Mrs. Josephine E.
Butler; Mr. Thomas Chorlton; Mr. L. H. Courtney, M. P.; Sir C. W.
Dilke, Bart., M. P.; Rev. Alfred Dewes, D.D., LL.D.; Mrs. Gell;
Lady Goldsmid; Rev. Septimus Hansard; Mr. Thomas Hare; Miss Ida
Hardcastle; Mrs. Hodgson; Mr. William Malleson; Mrs. Moore; Mr. H.
N. Mozley; Dr. Pankhurst; Mrs. Pankhurst; Mrs. Shearer; Mrs.
Sutcliffe; Mr. P. A. Taylor, M. P.; Mrs. P. A. Taylor; Mrs.
Venturi; Miss Alice Wilson; Miss Lucy Wilson; _Treasurer_, Mrs.
Jacob Bright. _Secretary_, Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy.
The immediate passage of this bill was in a large measure due to
Mrs. Jacob Bright, who was unwearied in her efforts, in rolling up
petitions, scattering tracts, holding meetings, and in company with
her husband having private interviews with members of parliament.
For ten consecutive years she gave her special attention to this
bill. I had the pleasure of attending the meeting of congratulation
November 18, and heard a very charming address from Mrs. Bright on
the success of the measure. Mr. Jacob Bright and other members of
the committee spoke with equal effect.--[E. C. S.
[554] The Contagious Diseases acts.
[555] Miss Henrietta Müller and her sister Mrs. Eva McLaren, Mrs.
Ormiston Chant, Mrs. Ashton Dilke, Mrs. Oliver Scatcherd, Mrs.
Charles McLaren, Miss Florence Balgarnie, Miss Laura Whittle,
Florence and Lillie Stacpoole, Miss Frances Lord, Mrs. Stanton
Blatch and Mrs. Helena Downing Shearer.
[556] The inscription was: "Women Claim Equal Justice with Men.
_The Friends of Women_: Henry Fawcett, John Stuart Mill, Chas.
Cameron, Jacob Bright, Leonard Courtney, Duncan McLaren, George
Anderson, James Stansfeld, Sir Wilfred Lawson, J.P. Thomasson."
[557] Mrs. Buchanan, Curriehill; Mrs. O. Scatcherd, Leeds; Mrs.
Nichol, Mrs. M'Laren, Miss Wigham, Dr. A. M'Laren, Miss Hunter,
Mrs. Paterson, Miss L. Stevenson, Miss F. Stevenson, Mrs. M'Queen,
Mrs. Hope, Mrs. M. Miller, Miss S.S. Mair, Miss R. Smith, Miss E.
Kirkland, Mrs. Raeburn and Miss A.G. Wyld, Edinburgh; Mrs. O.
Chant, Mrs. Hodgson, Bonaly; Miss Tod, Belfast; Mrs. Somerville,
Dalkeith; Mrs. Forbes, Loanhead; Mrs. D. Greig, Mrs. Erskine
Murray, Miss Greig, Mrs. Lindsay, Miss Barton and Mrs. A. Campbell,
Glasgow; Miss Simpson, Miss Caldwell, Portobello; Mrs. M'Kinnel,
Dumfries; Mrs. M'Cormick, Manchester; Miss Burton, Liberton; Miss
Balgarnie, Scarborough; Miss A.S. Smith, Gorebridge; Miss Drew,
Helensburgh; Miss Blair, Girvan; Mrs. Smith, Mrs. F. Smith,
Bothwell.
[558] Miss Helen Taylor, Mrs. Lucas, Mrs. Fawcett, London; Mrs.
Thomasson, Bolton; Miss Orme, Miss Jane Cobden, Miss C. A. Biggs,
Mrs. Fenwick-Miller, Mrs. Ashton Dilke, London; Mrs. Hallet, Bath;
Miss Becker, Manchester; Miss Priestman, Bristol; Mrs. Helen Bright
Clark, Street, Somersetshire; Miss Müller, London; Mrs. Eva
M'Laren, Bradford; Mrs. Charles M'Laren, London; Mrs. Pochin,
Bodnant, Conway; Mrs. Campbell, Tilliechewan Castle; Mrs.
Charteris, Edinburgh; Mrs. Edward Caird, Mrs. Young, Mrs. Kinnear,
Mrs. A. B. M'Grigor, Glasgow; Mrs. Arthur, Barshaw, Paisley; Mrs.
Readdie, Perth; Miss Birrel, Cupar; Mrs. Dunn, Aberdeen; Miss
Duncan, Foxhall; Miss Chalmers, Slateford; Miss Smith, Linlithgow;
Miss Macrobie, Bridge of Allan; Mrs. Ritchie, Mrs. Greenlees,
Glasgow; Mrs. Ord, Nesbit, Kelso; Mrs. Gordon, Nairn; Mrs. Gerrard,
Aberdeen; Miss Stoddart, Kelso; Mrs. Robertson, Paisley; Miss
Maitland, Corstorphine.
[559] EDINBURGH.--The first resolution was moved by Miss Tod and
seconded by Mrs. Scatcherd:
_Resolved_, That this meeting, whilst thanking the 110 Liberal
members who signed the memorial to Mr. Gladstone to the effect
that no measure of reform would be satisfactory which did not
recognize the claims of women householders, trusts that since the
bill unjustly excludes them, these members will be faithful to
the convictions expressed in that memorial, and will support any
amendment to the bill which has for its object the
enfranchisement of duly qualified women.
The second resolution, a memorial to Mr. Gladstone, was moved by
Miss Flora Stevenson, member of the Edinburgh school-board,
seconded by Mrs. McLaren and supported by Miss Florence Balgarnie
and Mrs. Ormiston Chant. The third resolution, the adoption of
petitions, was moved by Miss S. S. Mair, a grand-niece of Mrs.
Siddons, and Mrs. Lindsay of Glasgow.
BATH, GUILD HALL.--Presided over by the mayor. Among other speakers
were Mrs. Beddoe, Miss Becker, Mrs. Jeffrey and Mrs. Ashworth
Hallet.
NEWCASTLE, TOWN HALL.--Followed on April 21, under the presidency
of the mayor. The crowd was so great that an overflow meeting had
to be arranged. The speakers were Mrs. Ashton Dilke, Miss Tod, Mrs.
Eva McLaren and Mrs. Scatcherd. The audience was largely composed
of miners and working people, and the enthusiasm manifested was
striking. A Newcastle paper reports that this was the first
occasion on which Mrs. Ashton Dilke had appeared in public since
her husband's death, and tears glistened in many eyes as the men
who were his constituents welcomed her among them once more. Some
miners walked twelve miles to hear her and twelve miles back after
the meeting, who had to go down the pit at 3 o'clock next morning.
Some could not get in, and pleaded piteously for an overflow
meeting. "We have come a long way to hear Mistress Dilke; do bring
her." Some women after hearing Miss Tod said: "She's worth hearing
twice, is that," and insisted on following her to the overflow
meeting.
LONDON, ST. JAMES HALL.--Three days later there was a great meeting
presided over by Sir Richard Temple G. C. S. I., and addressed by
Mr. W. Summers, M. P., Mrs. Fawcett, the Rt. Hon. Jas. Stansfeld,
M. P., Mrs. Charles McLaren, Mr. Woodall, M. P., Mr. J. Rankin, M.
P., Miss Tod, Mr. J. R. Hollond, M. P., Viscountess Harberton and
Miss Jane Cobden.
[560] The result is as follows:
No. of Inhabited Estimated No. of
Houses. Women Householders.
ENGLAND AND WALES.
Boroughs, 2,098,476 340,746
Counties, 2,733,043 390,434
----------4,831,519 --------740,180
SCOTLAND.
Boroughs, 329,328 54,888
Counties, 409,677 58,525
--------739,005 -------113,413
IRELAND.
Boroughs, 129,837 21,339
Counties, 784,571 98,034
--------914,108 -------119,373
-------
972,966
[561] Signed by Eveline Portsmouth (Countess of Portsmouth), E. P.
Verney (Lady Verney), Florence Nightingale, Anne J. Clough (Newham
College), Clara E. L. Rayleigh (Lady Rayleigh), Selina Hogg (Lady
Hogg), Anna Swanwick, Julia Camperdown (Countess of Camperdown),
Mina E. Holland, (Mrs. John Holland), (Lady) Dorothy Nevill,
Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Helen P. Bright Clark, Jane E. Cobden,
Elizabeth Adelaide Manning, M. Power (Lady Power), Louisa Colthurst
(Dowager Lady Colthurst), Frances E. Hoggan, M. D., Florence
Davenport Hill (Poor-law Guardian), Louisa Twining (Poor-law
Guardian), Maryanne Donkin (Poor-law Guardian), Rosamond Davenport
Hill (M. L. S. B.), Mary Howitt, Maria G. Grey, Emily A. E.
Shireff, Deborah Bowring (Lady Bowring), Emily Pfeiffer, Barbara L.
S. Bodichon, Augusta Webster, Catherine M. Buckton, Frances M. Buss
(North London Collegiate School), Sophia Bryant, B. Sc., Malvira
Borchardt (Head Mistress of Devonport High School), Louisa
Boucherett, Jessie Boucherett, Margaret Byers (Ladies' Collegiate
School, Belfast), Ellice Hopkins.
[562] Mrs. Lucas presiding, Dr. Garrett Anderson, Miss Becker, Miss
Orme, Mrs. Beddoe, Mrs. Scatcherd, Mrs. Eva M'Laren, Mrs. Simcok,
Mrs. Stanton Blatch, Mrs. Louisa Stevenson, Miss Balgarnie, Miss
Müller, Miss Wilkinson, Mrs. Ashworth Hallett, Miss Tod.
[563] Miss Müller's spirited protest against taxation without
representation, owing to her official reputation as a member of the
London school-board, attracted unusual attention. For some time she
kept her doors barred against the coarse minions of the law, but
ultimately they entered the house, seized her goods and carried
them off to be sold at public auction, but they were bought in by
friends next day. Miss Charlotte E. Hall and Miss Babb have
protested and resisted taxation for many years.
It is probable that Miss Müller's example will be followed by many
others next year. This quiet form of protest used to be very
generally followed by members of the society of Friends, and must
command the sympathy of our co-workers in the United States, who
date their national existence from their refusal to submit to
taxation without representation.--[E. C. S.
[564] The bill was prepared and brought in by Mr. Woodall, Mr.
Illingworth, Mr. Coleridge Kennard, Mr. Stansfeld, Mr. Yorke and
Baron Henry de Worms.
[565] _Central Committee of the National Society for Women's
Suffrage_--Mrs. Ashford (Birmingham), Miss Lydia E. Becker
(Manchester), Alfred W. Bennett, esq., M. A., Miss Caroline Ashurst
Biggs, Miss Helen Blackburn, Miss Jessie Boucherett, Hon. Emmeline
Canning, Miss Frances Power Cobbe, Miss Jane Cobden, Miss
Courtenay, Leonard Courteny, esq., M. P., Mrs. Cowen (Nottingham),
Miss Mabel Sharman Crawford, Mrs. Ashton Dilke, Hon. Mrs. Maurice
Drummond (Hampstead), Mrs. Millicent G. Fawcett, Miss Agnes
Garrett, Rev. C. Green (Bromley), Mrs. Ashworth Hallett (Bristol),
Viscountess Harberton, Thomas Hare, esq., Mrs. Ann Maria Haslam
(Dublin), Frederick Hill, esq., Mrs. John Hollond, Mrs. Frank
Morrison, C. H. Hopwood, esq., Q. C., M. P., Mrs. John Hullah,
Coleridge Kennard, esq., M. P., Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucas, Mrs. E.
M. Lynch, Robert Main, esq., Mrs. Laura Pochin McLaren, Mrs. Eva
Müller McLaren (Bradford), Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren
(Edinburgh), Miss Henrietta Müller, Frederick Pennington, esq., M.
P., Mrs. F. Pennington, Miss Reeves, Mrs. Saville, Miss Lillie
Stacpole, Rev. S. A. Steinthal (Manchester), J. S. Symon, esq.,
Miss Helen Taylor, Sir Richard Temple, G. C. S. I.; J. P.
Thomasson, esq., M. P., Mrs. Katherine Lucas Thomasson (Bolton),
Miss Isabella M. Tod (Belfast), Miss Williams, William Woodall,
esq. M. P. _Secretary_, Miss Florence Balgarnie. _Assistant
Secretary_, Miss Torrance. _Organizing Agent_, Miss Moore.
_Treasurer_, Mrs. Laura Pochin McLaren. _Office_, 29 Parliament
street, London S. W.
CHAPTER LVII.
CONTINENTAL EUROPE.[566]
BY THEODORE STANTON.
If you would know the political and moral status of a
people, demand what place its women occupy.--[L. AIMÉ
MARTIN.
There is nothing, I think, which marks more decidedly the
character of men or of nations, than the manner in which
they treat women.--[HERDER.
The Woman Question in the Back-ground--In France the Agitation
Dates from the Upheaval of 1789--International Women's Rights
Convention in Paris, 1878--Mlle. Hubertine Auclert Leads the
Demand for Suffrage--Agitation began in Italy with the
Kingdom--Concepcion Arenal in Spain--Coëducation in
Portugal--Germany: Leipsic and Berlin--Austria in Advance of
Germany--Caroline Svetlá of Bohemia--Austria Unsurpassed in
contradictions--Marriage Emancipates from Tutelage in
Hungary--Dr. Henrietta Jacobs of Holland--Dr. Isala van Diest of
Belgium--In Switzerland the Catholic Cantons Lag Behind--Marie
Goegg, the Leader--Sweden Stands First--Universities Open to
Women in Norway--Associations in Denmark--Liberality of Russia
toward Women--Poland--The Orient--Turkey--Jewish Wives--The Greek
Woman in Turkey--The Greek Woman in Greece--An Unique
Episode--Woman's Rights in the American Sense not known.
The reader of the preceding pages will be sorely disappointed if he
expects to find in this brief chapter a similar record of progress
and reform. If, however, he looks simply for an earnest of the
future, for a humble beginning of that wonderful revolution in
favor of women which has occurred in the United States, and to a
less degree in England, during the past quarter of a century, his
expectations will be fully realized. More than this; he will close
this long account of woman's emancipation in the new world
convinced that in due season a similar blessing is to be enjoyed by
the women of the old world.
For the moment, the woman question in Europe is pushed into the
background by the all-absorbing struggle still going on in various
forms between the republican and monarchical principle, between the
vital present and the moribund past; but the most superficial
observer must perceive, that the amelioration of the lamentable
situation of European womanhood is sure to be one of the first
problems to come to the front for resolution, as soon as liberty
gains undisputed control on this continent,--a victory assured in
the not-distant future. When men shall have secured their rights,
the battle will be half won; women's rights will follow as a
natural sequence.
The most logical beginning for a sketch of the woman movement on
the continent, and indeed of any step in advance, is of course
France, where ideas, not facts, stand out the more prominently;
for, in questions of reform, the abstract must always precede the
concrete,--public opinion must be convinced before it will accept
an innovation. This has been the _rôle_ of France in Europe ever
since the great revolution; it is her _rôle_ to-day. She is the
agitator of the old world, and agitation is the lever of reform.
[Illustration: George Sand]
The woman movement in France dates from the upheaval of 1789.
Though the demands for the rights of man threw all other claims
into the shade, a few women did not fail to perceive that they also
had interests at stake. Marie Olympe de Gouges, for example, in her
"Declaration of the Rights of Woman," vindicated for her sex all
the liberties proclaimed in the famous "Declaration of the Rights
of Man." During the empire and the restoration the reform slept;
under the July monarchy there was an occasional murmur, which burst
forth into a vigorous protest when the revolution of 1848 awakened
the aspirations of 1789, and George Sand consecrated her talent to
the cause of progress. During the second empire, in spite of the
oppressive nature of the government, the movement took on a more
definite form; its advocates became more numerous; and men and
women who held high places in literature, politics and journalism,
spoke out plainly in favor of ameliorating the condition of French
women. Then came the third republic, with more freedom than France
had enjoyed since the beginning of the century. The woman movement
felt the change, and, during the past ten years, its friends have
been more active than ever before.
The most tangible event in the history of the question in France is
the International Woman's Rights Congress, the first international
gathering of the kind, which assembled in Paris in the months of
July and August during the exposition season of 1878. The committee
which called the congress contained representatives from six
different countries, viz.: France, Switzerland, Italy, Holland,
Russia and America. Among the eighteen members from France were two
senators, five deputies and three Paris municipal councilors. Italy
was represented by a deputy and the Countess of Travers, an
indefatigable friend of the undertaking, who died just before the
opening of the congress. The American members of the committee were
Julia Ward Howe, Mary A. Livermore and Theodore Stanton. Among the
members[567] of the congress, besides those just mentioned, were
deputies, senators, publicists, journalists, and men and women of
letters from all parts of Europe. Sixteen different organizations
in Europe and America sent delegates. The National Woman Suffrage
Association was represented by Jane Graham Jones and Theodore
Stanton, and the American Woman Suffrage Association by Julia Ward
Howe.
The work of the congress was divided into five sections, as
follows: the historical, the educational, the economic, the moral,
and the legislative. The congress was opened on July 25, by Léon
Richer, its promoter and originator, and one of the most
indefatigable friends of women's rights in France. He invited Maria
Deraismes, an able speaker well known among Paris reformers, to act
as temporary chairman. The next thing in order was the election of
two permanent presidents, a man and a woman. The late M. Antide
Martin, then an influential member of the Paris municipal council,
and Julia Ward Howe were chosen. Mrs. Howe, on taking the chair,
made a short speech which was very well received; Anna Maria
Mozzoni, of Milan, a most eloquent orator, followed; and then
Genevieve Graham Jones advanced to the platform, and in the name of
her mother, Jane Graham Jones, delegate of the National Woman
Suffrage Association, she conveyed to the congress messages of
good-will from the United States. This address, delivered with much
feeling, and appealing to French patriotism, was enthusiastically
received. When Miss Jones had taken her seat, M. Martin arose,
thanked the foreign ladies for their admirable words, and concluded
in these terms: "In the name of my compatriots, I particularly
return gratitude to Miss Graham Jones for the eloquent and cordial
manner in which she has just referred to France, and in turn, I
salute republican America, which so often offers Europe examples of
good sense, wisdom and liberty."
At the second session was read a long and eloquent letter from
Salvatore Morelli,[568] the Italian deputy. Theodore Stanton read a
paper entitled, "The Woman Movement in the United States." The
third session was devoted to the educational phase of the woman
question. Tony Révillon, who has since become one of the radical
deputies of Paris, spoke, and Miss Hotchkiss presented an able
report on "The Education of Women in America." After Miss Hotchkiss
had finished, Auguste Desmoulins, now a member of the Paris
municipal council, offered, as president of the section, a
resolution advocating the principal reforms--the same studies for
boys and girls, and coëducation--demanded by Miss Hotchkiss. The
resolution was carried without debate. Aurelia Cimino Folliero de
Luna, of Florence, followed in a few remarks on the "Mission of
Woman." Eugénie Pierre, of Paris, spoke on the "Vices of Education
in Different Classes of Society," and in closing complimented
America in the highest terms for its progressive position on the
woman question. In fact, the example of the United States was
frequently cited throughout the proceedings of this congress, and
the reformers of America may find some joy in feeling that their
labors are producing fruit even in the old world.
At the last session of the congress, August 9, 1878, a permanent
international committee was announced. France, England, Italy,
Alsace-Lorraine, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Sweden, Poland,
Russia, Roumania and the United States are all represented on this
committee.[569] The chief duties of this committee were to be the
advancement of the reforms demanded by the congress and to issue
the call for the next international gathering. The congress ended
with a grand banquet on the evening of the last day's session, in
which about two hundred guests participated.
The present situation in France is full of interest and
encouragement. There are societies, journals, and different groups
of reformers all striving independently but earnestly to better the
situation of French women politically, civilly, morally and
intellectually. At the head of the agitation in favor of women's
political rights stand Hubertine Auclert and her vigorous monthly,
_La Citoyenne_[570]; the reformers of the code are lead by Léon
Richer and his outspoken monthly, _Le Droit des Femmes_[571]; the
movement in favor of divorce, which was crowned with success in the
summer of 1884, is headed by Alfred Naquet in the senate, and finds
one of its earliest and ablest supporters in Olympe Audouard; the
emancipation of women from priestly domination--and herein lies the
greatest and most dangerous obstacle that the reformers
encounter--counts among its many advocates Maria Deraismes; woman's
moral improvement, to be mainly accomplished by the abolition of
legalized prostitution, is demanded by Dr. and Mrs. Chapman and
Emilie de Morsier; while the great uprising in favor of woman's
education has such a host of friends and has already produced such
grand results, that the brief limits of this sketch will permit
neither an enumeration of the one nor the other.
* * * * *
The transition from France to Italy is easy and natural, for it is
on the Cisalpine peninsula that Gallic ideas have always taken
deeper root than elsewhere on the Continent, and, as might be
expected, the Italian woman movement resembles in many respects
that of which we have just spoken.
With the formation of the kingdom of Italy in 1870 began a
well-defined agitation in favor of Italian women. The educational
question was first taken up. Prominent among the women who
participated in this movement were Laura Mantegazza, the
Marchioness Brigida Tanari, and Alessandrina Ravizza. Aurelia
Cimino Folliero de Luna, who has devoted her whole life to
improving the condition of her countrywomen, writes me from
Florence on this subject. "Here it was," she says, "that the
example of American and English women, who in this respect were
our superiors, was useful to us. While we were still under foreign
domination and ignorant of solidarity of sex, they were free and
united." The new political life produced a number of able women
orators and writers, such as Anna Mozzoni, Malvina Frank, Gualberta
Beccari, and many others. The last named founded at Venice _La
Donna_, and in 1872 Aurelia Cimino Folliero de Luna established in
Florence _La Cornelia_, which has since ceased to exist, while in
1882 Ernesta Napollon began at Naples the publication of the
short-lived _L'Umanitario_, the youngest of a goodly list of
journals which have done much to excite an interest in the woman
question. The Italian government has generously seconded the
efforts of the reformers. The code has been modified, schools have
been established, the universities thrown open and courses in
agriculture proposed.
But the most significant sign of progress in Italy was afforded by
the great universal suffrage convention, held at Rome on February
11, 12, 1881. Anna Mozzoni, delegate to the convention from the
Milan Society for the Promotion of Woman's Interests, of which she
is the able president, made an eloquent appeal for woman suffrage
and introduced a resolution to this effect which was carried by a
good majority.[572] In 1876 a committee of the Chamber, of which
the deputy Peruzzi was chairman, reported a bill in favor of
conferring on women the right to vote on municipal and provincial
questions (_voto amministrativo_), a privilege which they had
formerly enjoyed in Lombardy and Venice under Austrian rule. This
bill was reïntroduced in 1882 by the Depretis ministry and was
reported upon favorably by the proper committee in June, 1884. It
is believed that the proposition will soon become a law. If such is
the case, Italian women will enjoy the same rights as Italian men
in municipal and provincial affairs, with this exception, that they
will not be eligible to office in the bodies of which they are
electors.[573] Aurelia Cimino Folliero de Luna, says:
I make no doubt that in a few years the question of the
emancipation of women in Italy will be better understood; will be
regarded from a more elevated standpoint and will receive a more
general and greater support; for if we turn to the past, we shall
be astonished at what has already been accomplished in this
direction.
* * * * *
Concepcion Arenal, the distinguished Spanish authoress, signals
several signs of progress in her country. This lady writes:
In the schools founded by the Madrid Association for the
Education of Women, nearly five hundred girls pursue courses in
pedagogics, commercial studies, modern languages, painting, etc.
This instruction, for the most part gratis, is given by
professors who devote their time and strength to this noble
object without receiving any remuneration,--worthy continuators
of the grand work of the founder of the Madrid high-school for
women, Fernando de Castro, of blessed memory, one of the most
philanthropic men I ever met, who so loved mankind that his name
should be known in every land. Nine hundred and eighteen girls
attended the session of 1880-1881 of the school of music and
declamation at Madrid, and the number has since increased.
A few years ago a school of arts and trades was founded at the
capital, and women were admitted to the classes in drawing. In
1881, one hundred and thirty availed themselves of this
privilege. In 1882, one hundred and fifty-four female students
were present at the institutions (_institutos_) for intermediate
education in Spain. The coëducation of the sexes, therefore, is
not unknown to us. In that year Valencia, Barcelona, Gerona and
Seville each counted sixteen, while the single girl at Mahon
discontinued her studies on the ground that she preferred not to
mingle with boys. At Malaga, the only female aspirant for the
bachelor's degree took seven prizes, and was "excellent" in all
her studies. During the academic year, 1881-1882, twelve women
attended lectures in the Spanish universities. The three at
Madrid were all working for the doctorate, and one had passed the
necessary examinations; the two at Valladolid were occupied with
medicine, while at Barcelona five were studying medicine, one
law, and one pharmacy. Three of the medical students have passed
their examinations, but instead of the degrees, which are refused
them, they are granted certificates which do not allow them to
practice.
Our public opinion is progressing, as is evidenced by the laws,
and especially by the educational reforms, which are the
exclusive work of men. The council of public instruction, a
consulting body holding by no means advanced ideas, was called
upon a short time ago, to decide whether the university
certificates conferred upon women could be converted into regular
degrees, which would entitle the recipients to the enjoyment of
the privileges attached to these titles. The learned council
discussed, hesitated, tried to decide the question, but finally
left it in a situation which was neither clear nor conclusive.
This hesitancy and vagueness are very significant; a few years
ago a negative decision would have been given promptly and in the
plainest terms.
* * * * *
Portugal is following closely upon the steps of Spain, and, in the
former as in the latter country, it is in the department of
education that the most marked signs of an awakening are to be
found. Rodrigues de Freitas, the well-known publicist and
republican statesman of Porto, says:
There is not a single intermediate school for girls in all
Portugal. In 1883, the Portugese parliament took up the subject
of intermediate instruction, and discussed the question in its
relation to women, and the progress in this direction realized in
France during the last few years. A deputy who opposed the
reform, recalled the words of Jules Simon, pronounced in a recent
sitting of the council of public instruction at Paris. The
philosopher remarked:
We are here a few old men, very fortunate gentlemen, in
being excused from having to marry the girls you propose to
bring up.
Our minister of the interior, who has charge of public
instruction, followed, and declared that he was in favor of the
establishment of girls' colleges. He said:
It is true that M. Jules Simon considers himself fortunate
in not having to marry a girl educated in a French college;
but I think I have discovered the reason for this aversion.
He is getting in his dotage, otherwise he would experience
no repugnance in proposing to such a girl, provided, of
course, that, along with an education, she was at the same
time pretty and virtuous.
The chamber laughed. And such is the situation to-day: the
minister favorable to the better instruction of women, while
neither minister nor deputies make an earnest effort to bring it
about.
This dark picture is relieved, however, by one or two bright
touches. There are many private boarding schools where families
in easy circumstances send their daughters, who learn to speak
several languages, are taught a little elementary mathematics and
geography, and acquire a few accomplishments. Some of the pupils
of these institutions pass with credit the examinations of the
boys' lyceums or colleges. Article 72, of the law of June 14,
1880, on intermediate instruction, reads as follows: "Students of
the female sex, who wish to enter the State schools, or pass the
examinations of said schools, come within the provisions of this
law, except as regards the regulations concerning boarding
scholars." That is to say, girls enjoy in the State intermediate
schools the same privileges as male day scholars. Many girls have
availed themselves of this opportunity and have passed the lyceum
examinations.
* * * * *
Crossing the Rhine into the Teutonic countries, we find less
progress on the whole, than among the Latin races. Germany,
however, if behind France and Italy, is far ahead of Spain and
Portugal. The agitation is divided into two currents: the Leipsic
and the Berlin movements. The former is the older, the General
Association of German Women having been founded in Leipsic in
October, 1865. Louise Otto-Peters, the prime mover in the
organization of this association, may be considered the originator
of the German movement. A novelist of much power, whose stories all
teach a lesson in socialism, she established in 1848, the year of
the great revolutionary fermentation throughout Europe, the first
paper which advocated the interests of women in Germany. The aims
of the Leipsic and Berlin reformers were of an economic and
educational nature. It was felt that the time had come when woman
must have wider and better paid fields of work, and when she must
be more thoroughly educated in order to be able the easier to gain
her livelihood. A paper, _New Paths_ (_Neue Bahnen_), was
established as the organ of the association. It still exists. The
plan of holding annual conventions--much like those which have been
in progress in America for so many years--in the chief cities of
Germany was settled upon, and numerous meetings of this kind have
already occurred. At these gatherings all questions pertaining to
woman's advancement are discussed, and auxiliary associations
organized. The General Association of German Women has sent several
petitions to the Reichstag, or imperial parliament, demanding
various reforms and innovations. The principal members of the
association are Louise Otto-Peters, the president and editor of the
_Neue Bahnen_; Henriette Goldschmidt, the most effective speaker of
the group; and Mrs. Winter, the treasurer, all of whom live in
Leipsic; Miss Menzzer of Dresden; Lina Morgenstern, the well-known
Berlin philanthropist; and Marie Calm of Cassel, perhaps the most
radical of the body, whose ideas on woman suffrage are much the
same as those entertained in England and the United States. In
fact, an American is frequently struck by the similarity between
many of the features of the General Association of German Women,
and the Woman's Rights Association in the United States.
* * * * *
The Berlin movement, which resembles that of Leipsic in everything
except that it is rather more conservative, owes its origin to that
distinguished philanthropist, Dr. Adolf Lette. The Lette Verein, or
Lette Society, so called in honor of its founder, was organized in
December, 1865, but a few months after the establishment of the
Leipsic association. The object of the society is, as has already
been said, to improve the material condition of women, especially
poor women, by giving them a better education, by teaching them
manual employments, by helping to establish them in business--in a
word, by affording them the means to support themselves. The Lette
Society has become the nucleus of similar organizations scattered
all over the German empire. Its organ, the _German Woman's
Advocate_ (_Deutcher Frauenanwalt_), is a well-conducted little
monthly, edited by the secretary of the society, Jenny Hirsch. Anna
Schepeler-Lette, daughter of the founder, has been for many years
and is still at the head of this admirable society. She writes me:
If we are asked whether we would have women enter public life,
whether we would wish them to become professors in the
university, clergymen in the church, and lawyers at the bar, as
is the case in America, we should make no response, for they are
but idle questions. These demands have not yet been made in
Germany, nor will they be made for a long time to come, if ever.
But why peer into the future? We have to-day many institutions,
many customs, which past centuries would have looked upon as
contrary to Divine and human law. In this connection we would say
with Sancho Panza: "What is, is able to be."
The German philosopher, Herr von Kirchmann, is more decided in his
views concerning the future of his countrywomen. In one of his last
works, entitled "Questions and Dangers of the Hour" (_Zeitfragen
und Abenteuer_) is a chapter on "Women in the Past and Future,"
where it is shown that the female sex has been gradually gaining
its freedom, and the prediction is made that the day is near at
hand when women will obtain their complete independence and will
compete with men in every department of life, not excepting
politics.
* * * * *
Turning to the other great Germanic nation, Austria, we find still
less progress than in the north. In fact, the movement in the south
is little more than a question of woman's self-support. The
important problem of woman's education is not yet resolved in
Germany, and in Austria still less has been done. "In two
particulars," writes a Berlin correspondent, "Austria may be said
to be in advance of Germany. The admission of women to the
university does not present such insurmountable difficulties, and
her employment in railroad, post, and telegraph offices does not
encounter such strong opposition." But it must not be supposed from
this statement that the Austrian universities are open to women.
"Our universities are shut against women," Professor Wendt, of
Troppau, informs me; "but they may pass the same examinations as
boys who have finished their preparatory studies, though it is
distinctly stated in the women's diplomas that they may not
continue their studies in the university." The professors, however,
sometimes allow foreign girls to attend lectures. Professor Bruhl,
of Vienna, for example, has lectured to men and women on anatomy.
The Academy of Fine Arts at Vienna is not open to women, though the
Conservatory of Music is much frequented by them. In 1880, in fact,
three women received prizes for musical compositions. Johanna
Leitenberger, of Salzburg, writes:
Several newspapers are devoted to the different phases of the
woman's movement in Austria. Some years ago an ex-officer,
Captain A. D. Korn, who, if I am not mistaken, had passed some
time in England and America, founded the _Women's Universal
Journal_ (_Allgemeine Frauen Zeitung_). This newspaper was wholly
devoted to women's interest, but it soon died. The same thing is
true of the _Women's Journal_ (_Frauenblätter_) of Gratz, which
appeared for a short time under my editorship. * * * * On October
9, 10, 11, 1872, the third German women's convention (_Deutsche
Frauenkonferenz_) was held at Vienna, under the auspices of the
general society for popular education and the amelioration of
women's condition. The other two sittings of this society had
been held at Leipsic and Stuttgart. The soul of this new movement
was Captain Korn, whom I have already mentioned. His study of the
woman question in the United States may have prompted him to
awaken a similar agitation among the women of the Austrian
empire. Addresses were delivered at this convention by ladies
from Vienna, Hungary, Bohemia and Styria and all the various
interests of women were discussed. * * * * The proceedings of the
convention attracted considerable attention, and produced
favorable impressions on the audience, which was recruited from
the better classes of the population. But the newspapers of
Vienna ridiculed the young movement, its friends grew lukewarm,
and every trace was soon lost of this first and last Austrian
women's rights convention.
In one important particular the Austro-Hungarian empire treats
women more fairly than is the case in other European countries.
Elise Krásnohorská, the Bohemian author, writes me:
Women have a voice in the municipal, provincial and national
elections, though male citizens duly authorized by them cast
their vote. With this single reserve--a very important one, it
must be confessed--our women are politically the equals of men.
At Prague, however, this is not the case. The Bohemian capital
preserves an ancient privilege which is in contradiction to the
Austrian electoral law, and which excludes us from the elective
franchise. Universal suffrage does not exist in the empire, but
the payment of a certain amount of taxes confers the right to
vote. I do not enter into the details of the electoral law, which
is somewhat complicated, which has its exceptions and
contradictions, and is in fact an apple of discord in Austria in
more than one respect; but, speaking generally, it may be said
that a woman who owns property, who is in business, or who pays
taxes, may designate a citizen possessing her confidence to
represent her at the polls. Our women are satisfied with this
system, and prefer it to casting their ballot in person.
It may be said, also, that women are eligible to office, or at
least that there is no law against their accepting it, while
there are instances of their having done so. In southern
Bohemia, a short time ago, a countess was chosen member of a
provincial assembly (_okresni zastupitestvo_) with the approval
of the body, on the condition that she should not participate
personally in its deliberations, but should be represented by a
man having full power to act for her. At Agram in Croatia, a
woman was elected, a few years ago, member of the municipal
council, and no objection was made. Of course such cases are very
rare, but they have their significance.
Carolina Svetlá, the distinguished poet and author, has done,
perhaps, the most to awaken thought on the woman question in
Bohemia. She stands at the head of a talented group of literary
women, which plays a brilliant part in the fatherland of Huss. The
means for woman's instruction, however, are most lamentable in
Bohemia. The universities are shut against women, and though two
women have been graduated in Switzerland, their degrees are not
recognized in their native land. Beyond primary instruction the
State does almost nothing for its women, though they outnumber the
other sex by two hundred thousand. In several of the large cities
of Bohemia something has been accomplished for girls' high-school
and normal-school instruction; but, in general, we may say that the
intellectual development of Bohemian girls is left to private
instruction. Associations of women have done much to fill this
void, one of which, founded by Carolina Svetlá, is devoted to the
industrial and commercial instruction of girls. Two thousand women
belong to this association, and five hundred girls attend its
school annually, while many young women frequent its school for the
training of nurses. This vigorous organization has disarmed
prejudices by the success of its schools and by the arguments of
its monthly organ, the _Zenské Listy_, ably edited by Elise
Krásnohorská, one of the best known Bohemian poets, and a leader in
the work of improving the condition of her countrywomen. Vojtá
Náprstek, a man who has justly been named "the woman's advocate,"
has founded at Prague the Women's American Club, whose object is
charity and the intellectual elevation of women, and has presented
the club a valuable collection of books and objects of art. A lady,
writing me from Prague, says:
The club has always been in a most flourishing condition,
although it has never had a constitution or by-laws to hold it
together,--nothing but the single bond of philanthropy. At first
it had not even a name. But outsiders began to call its members
'the Americans,' because they adopted American improvements in
their homes. The appellation was accepted by the club as an
honorable title, and from that time it formally called itself the
"American Club."
The Austrian code, in its treatment of women, is unsurpassed in
contradictions. Women, for example, may testify in criminal
actions, but they may not be witnesses to the simplest legal
document. There are many absurdities of this sort in the existing
law which were unknown in the ancient code of independent Bohemia,
which was more liberal in its treatment of women. Divorce exists,
but divorced persons cannot marry again. Bohemia being a part of
Austria, women vote in the same way as has already been mentioned
in what was said of the latter country. But at Prague, however,
women do not vote, the capital still retaining its old laws on this
subject.
Concerning the other grand division of the empire of the Hapsburgs,
Hungary, much the same may be said as of Bohemia. It is only within
the last forty years that Hungary has striven to attain to the
level of occidental civilization and culture, so that the question
of the amelioration of women's condition is of very recent origin
in that country. Rose Revai, of Budapest, writes:
Hungarian legislators have always treated us favorably in all
matters pertaining to the family, marriage and inheritance. By
the mere act of marriage we attain our majority and are
emancipated from tutelage. As heirs, our interests are not
forgotten, and as widows, we have the control over our own
children. In business and trade we enjoy equal rights with men.
And Hungarian women have not been slow to take advantage of these
privileges, as is shown by those of our sex who occupy worthy
positions in literature, art, commerce, industry, the theater and
the school-room.
Although the Hungarian universities are still closed against women,
there are many girls' industrial and normal schools and colleges.
The impetus given to female education in Hungary is chiefly
due to the late Baron Joseph Eoetvoes, the savant, poet and
philanthropist, who was minister of public instruction in 1867.
Women are employed in the postal and telegraphic service.
* * * * *
Returning north, to Holland, we find much the same situation as
in the other Teutonic nations. "The women of Holland are
unquestionably better educated, and entertain as a body more
liberal ideas than French women," said a Dutch lady to me, who had
lived many years at Paris; "but, on the other hand, there is not
the little group of women in the Netherlands who grasp the real
meaning of the woman question as is the case here in France."
Woman's social position is a little better in Holland than in the
Catholic countries. In 1870 an essay on the woman question "by a
lady" demanded political rights for women, and there are a few
instances of women having lectured on that subject. The Dutch
universities are open to female students, and Aletta Henriette
Jacobs, the first and only female physician in Holland, has a
successful practice at Amsterdam. Dr. Jacobs recently attempted to
vote, and carried the question before the courts. Elise A.
Haighton, of Amsterdam, writes:
A few of our women do not hesitate to participate in political
and social discussions. The Union (_Unic_), a society which aims
to promote popular interest in politics by meetings, debates,
tracts, etc.; the Daybreak (_Dageraad_), a radical association
which holds very ultra opinions on politics, religion and
science, and supports a magazine to which many scientific men
contribute; and the New Malthusian Band, an organization
sufficiently explained by its name, all count several women among
their members.
Elise van Calcar, the veteran Dutch authoress, sums up the
situation in Holland, as follows:
I am sorry to have to confess that, as regards the general
emancipation of women, we have accomplished but very little. Our
work is indirect; we can only proclaim the injustice of our
position.
* * * * *
Two countries, the product of Latin and Teutonic civilization,
Belgium and Switzerland, must be touched upon before we turn to the
Scandinavian people. Of the first, Belgium, about the same may be
said as of Holland with which she was so long united politically. A
correspondent in Belgium writes me as follows:
There cannot be said to be any movement in this country in favor
of the emancipation of women. No journal, no association, no
organization of any kind exists.
But public opinion is said to be quite favorable. Women are making
their way slowly into certain callings. The professors of the
universities of Liege and Ghent, when asked their opinion not long
ago by the minister of public instruction, expressed a desire to
see women admitted to the privileges of these institutions on the
same terms as men, and to-day female students are found at all the
institutions for higher education. Another correspondent writes:
Within the past few years an effort has been made among the women
of the middle classes in the large cities, and secondary and
professional schools have been established for girls, which are
already producing good fruit. This movement is beginning to make
itself felt among the upper classes, and it is to be hoped that
the next generation will make longer strides in the direction of
instruction than is the case with the present generation.
In one respect at least Belgium is far behind her neighbor,
Holland. Dr. Isala van Diest, the first and so far the only female
physician in Belgium, although she has passed successfully all the
necessary examinations and taken all the necessary degrees, may not
practice medicine in her own country. She wrote me recently:
I fear I shall soon be obliged to give up the fight and go to
France, England or Holland, unless I wish to lose the fruit of
all my studies.
Concerning the higher education of women Dr. van Diest writes:
There existed in Belgium some years ago a law which required
students who would enter the university, to pass the examination
of graduate in letters (_gradué-en-lettres_). Candidates for this
degree were expected to know how to translate Greek and write
Latin. But as there were no schools where girls could study the
dead languages with the thoroughness of boys who were trained six
years in the classics, the former were almost entirely shut out
from enjoying the advantages of an university course. This
_graduat_, however, no longer exists, and the entrance of women
into our universities is now possible. Female students are found
to-day at Brussels, Liege and Ghent, but their number is still
very small. It was in 1880 that the first woman entered the
university of Brussels, but it was not until 1883 that their
admission became general. They pursue, for the most part,
scientific studies, thereby securing more lucrative positions as
teachers, and pass their examinations for graduation with
success.
Switzerland being made up of more than a score of separate cantons
closely resembling our States in their political organization, it
is difficult to arrive at the exact situation throughout the whole
country--small though it be. However, generally speaking, it may be
said that the Helvetic republic has remained almost a passive
spectator of the woman movement, though a few signs of progress are
worthy of note. The Catholic cantons lag behind those that have
adopted Protestantism, and the latter are led by Geneva. Though
subject to the Napoleonic code, Geneva has never known that
debasing law of the tutelage of women which existed for so long a
time in the other cantons, even in the intelligent canton of Vaud,
where it was abolished only in 1873. It was not until 1881 that a
federal statute put an end to the law throughout all Switzerland.
Geneva has always been very liberal in its treatment of married
women--divorce exists, excellent intermediate girls' schools were
created more than thirty years ago, and women are admitted to all
the university lectures. Marie Goegg, the untiring leader of the
movement in that country, writes me:
However, notwithstanding these examples of liberality, which
denote that the law-makers had a breadth of view in accord with
their time, Switzerland, as a whole, has been one of the least
disposed of European States to accept the idea of the civil
emancipation of woman, much less her political emancipation, so
that from 1848 to 1868 the demands of American women were
considered here to be the height of extravagance.... The seed
planted in America in 1848, though its growth was difficult,
finally began to take root in Europe. The hour had come.
In March, 1868, Marie Goegg published a letter, in which she
invited the women of all nations to join with her in the formation
of a society. In July of that same year the Woman's International
Association was founded at Geneva with Marie Goegg as president.
The organization began immediately an active work, and through its
efforts, several of the reforms already mentioned were brought
about, and public opinion in Switzerland considerably enlightened
on the question. Mrs. Goegg says:
With the object of advancing the young movement, I established at
my own risk a bi-monthly, the _Woman's Journal_ (_Journal des
femmes_). But this was a violation of that good Latin motto,
_festina lenté_, and, at the end of a few months the paper
suspended publication. Swiss public opinion was not yet ready to
support such a venture.
It may be pointed out here that, except in England, all the
women's societies created in Europe had, up to the time of the
organization of the International Association refrained from
touching the question of the political rights of women. The Swiss
association, on the contrary, always included this subject in its
programme. But, unfortunately, at the moment when our efforts
were meeting with success, and the future was full of promise for
the cause which we advocated, the terrible Franco-German war
broke out, and, for various reasons unnecessary to go into here,
I felt constrained to resign the presidency, and the association
came to an end.
Two years later the International Association was revived in the
form of the Solidarity (_Solidarité_), whose name signified the
spirit which ought to unite all women. In 1875 Mrs. Goegg became
president of the new organization as well as founder and editor of
its organ, the _Solidarity Bulletin_ (_Bulletin de la Solidarité_).
But on September 20, 1880, both society and journal ceased to
exist. The president in her farewell address said:
The dissolution of the Solidarity ought not to discourage us, but
ought rather to cause us to rejoice, for the recent creation of
so many women's national societies in different countries proves
that the Solidarity has accomplished its aim, so that we have
only to retire.
The striking success of university coëducation in Switzerland calls
for a few words of notice. Mrs. Goegg writes:
In October, 1872, I sent a petition to the grand-council of
Geneva, asking that women be admitted to the university of Geneva
on the same footing as men. The state of public opinion on this
subject in Switzerland, and especially in Geneva, may be judged
from the fact that, fearing to compromise the demand if I acted
in my own name or that of the Solidarity, the petition was
presented as coming from "the mothers of Geneva." Our prayer was
granted.
The number of women who have pursued studies at Geneva has steadily
increased every year. In 1878 the university of Neufchatel was
thrown open to women, while the university of Zurich has long had a
large number of female students. Professor Pflüger, of the
university of Bern, writing to me in April, 1883, said:
From February 2, 1876, to the present time, thirty-five women
have taken degrees at our medical school. The lectures are
attended each semester on an average by from twenty-five to
thirty women, while from three to six follow the lectures on
philosophy and letters. The presence of women at our university
has occasioned no serious inconvenience and many colleagues favor
it.
The rector of the university of Geneva wrote, February, 1883:
Up to the present time the attendance of women at our university
has occasioned us no inconvenience except in some lectures of the
medical school, where the subjects are not always of a nature to
admit of their treatment before mixed classes.
* * * * *
We shall now glance at the situation of woman in the three
Scandinavian countries, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Sweden stands
first, just as Germany does among the Teutonic nations, and France
among the Latin nations; in fact we may perhaps go farther and say
that of all Continental States, Sweden leads in many respects at
least, in the revolution in favor of women.
The State, the royal family, private individuals, and, above all,
women themselves have all striven to outstrip each other in the
emancipation of Swedish women. Normal schools, high schools,
primary schools, the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Academy
of Fine Arts, both at Stockholm, dairy schools and a host of other
educational institutions, both private and public, are thrown wide
open to women. The State has founded scholarships for women at
Upsala University and at the medical school of the university of
Lund. Numerous benevolent, charitable and industrial societies
have been established and in many instances are managed by women.
But the best idea may be gained of the liberal spirit which
prevails in Sweden by showing what the State has done for the
emancipation of women. For instance, in 1845, equality of
inheritance for son and daughter was established, and the wife was
given equal rights with the husband as regards the common property;
in 1846, woman was permitted to practice industrial professions and
to carry on business in her own name; in 1861, the professions of
surgery and dentistry were opened to her; in 1864, her rights in
trade and industrial pursuits were enlarged; in 1870, she was
admitted to the universities and medical profession; in 1872, a
woman of twenty-five was given the full right of disposing of
herself in marriage, the consent of parents and relations having
been necessary before that time; and in 1874, a married woman
became entitled to control that part of her private property set
aside for her personal use in the marriage contract, as well as to
possess her own earnings. The reforms in favor of married women are
in no small measure due to the society founded in 1871 by Mrs.
E. Anckarsvärd and Anna Hierta Retzius, whose aim was the
accomplishment of these very reforms.
A good beginning has been made toward securing full political
rights for Swedish women. In many matters relative to the
municipality, women vote on the same terms with men, as for
example, in the choice of the parish clergy, in the election of
municipal councilors, and members of the county council. This
latter body elects the House of Lords, so that woman's influence,
through an intermediate electoral body, is felt in the upper
chamber. May this not be one reason why the Swedish legislature has
been so liberal toward women? Demands have been made, but in vain,
for the complete franchise which would confer upon women the
privilege of voting for members of the diet. Woman's interests have
found a warm and energetic advocate in the _Home Review_
(_Tidskrift för Hemmet_), which was founded in 1859 by the Hon.
Rosalie d'Olivecrona and the Baroness Leyonhufoud, to-day the Hon.
Mrs. Adlersparre. The paper is still edited by the latter; Rosalie
d'Olivecrona, who has always been a most active friend of the woman
movement, having retired in 1868.
* * * * *
If we cross the boundaries of Sweden into the sister kingdom of
Norway, we find the condition of woman absolutely changed.
"Concerning Norway, I have said almost nothing," writes Camilla
Collett, the distinguished Norwegian author, in some notes which
she sent me recently on the situation of women in Scandinavia, "for
the very simple reason that there is little to say." The long and
oppressive domination of Denmark prostrated Norway, but her close
union with Sweden since the fall of Napoleon, has begun to have a
good effect, and the liberal influence of the latter country in
favor of woman is already beginning to be felt in the other half of
the Scandinavian peninsula. One step in advance has been the
opening of the university to women--"The best thing that can be
said of Norway," says Camilla Collett. Miss Cecilie Thoresen, the
first female student to matriculate at Christiania University,
writing to me from Eidsvold, Norway, in December, 1882, says it was
in 1880 that she decided to try and take an academic degree. Her
father, therefore, applied to the minister of public instruction
for the necessary authorization; the latter referred the
application to the university authorities, who, in their turn,
submitted the portentous question to the faculty of the law-school.
In due season Miss Thoresen received this rather unsatisfactory
response:
The admission of women to the university is denied, but we
recognize the necessity for changing the law on the subject.
Thereupon Mr. H. E. Berner, the prominent liberal member of the
Storthing, or Norwegian parliament, introduced a bill permitting
women to pursue university studies leading to the degrees in arts
and philosophy (_examen artium_ and _examen philosophicum_). The
committee reported unanimously in favor of the bill; on March 30,
1882, it passed without debate the Odelsthing, one of the two
chambers of the Storthing, with but one dissenting voice--that of a
clergyman; on April 21, 1882, it received the unanimous vote of the
other house, the Lagthing; and it finally became a law on June 15,
1882. But Mr. Berner did not stop here. He once wrote me:
In my opinion there hardly exists nowadays another social problem
which has a better claim on public attention than that of the
emancipation of women. Until they are placed on an equal footing
with men, we shall not have departed from the days of barbarism.
In 1884, Mr. Berner succeeded in making it possible for women to
take all university degrees, the law of 1882 having opened to them
only the degrees in arts and philosophy. He is now pressing on the
attention of parliament other reforms in favor of women; and he has
recently written me that he believes that his efforts will be
crowned with success.
* * * * *
In Denmark nothing has been done in the direction of political
rights, nothing for school suffrage, though the liberal movement of
1848 improved woman's legal position slightly. But the situation of
married women is still very unsatisfactory, for it may be summed up
by saying that her property and her children are controlled by the
husband. In 1879 many thousand women petitioned the legislature for
the right to their own earnings, and a law was passed to this
effect. During the last twenty years, thanks to the example set by
Sweden, much has been done to open to women the field of work. In
1875 the university consented to receive women, but as the State
furnishes them only primary instruction, and does nothing for their
intermediate instruction, leaving this broad gap to be filled by
private efforts, the educational situation of Danish women leaves
much to be desired. But the women themselves have turned their
attention to this matter, and high schools and professional schools
for women, and generally managed by women, are springing up.
Denmark has produced several journals devoted to the interests of
women and edited by women. The _Friday_ (_Fredagen_), issued from
July, 1875, to 1879, was edited by Vilhelmine Zahle. It was a bold,
radical little sheet. The name was probably taken from the _Woman's
Journal and Friday Society_, which appeared at Copenhagen in 1767,
under the anonymous editorship of a woman. The _Woman's Review_
(_Tidsskrift for Kvinder_) began to appear in January, 1882. Its
editor, Elfride Fibiger, has associated with her Mr. Friïs, a very
earnest friend of the women's movement, who has given a more
progressive turn to the paper, which has come out for women's
suffrage--the first journal in Denmark to take this radical step.
Perhaps the most encouraging sign of progress is the foundation,
during the past few years, of numerous associations of women with
different objects in view. John Stuart Mill's "Subjection of
Women," which was translated into Danish and widely read; the
"Letters from Clara Raphael," of Mathilde Fibiger, which appeared
still earlier, in 1850; the writings of Camilla Collett, of Norway;
the liberal utterances of the great poets of the North, Björnsen,
Hostrup and Ibsen, whose "Nora" has rightfully procured for him
the title of "Woman's Poet"; the great progress in America, England
and Sweden; all these influences stimulated thought, weakened
prejudices and prepared the way for reforms in the Danish
peninsula. Kirstine Frederiksen, of Copenhagen, says:
It is plainly evident that Danish women are weary of the part
allotted to them in the old society, a part characterized by the
sentiment that the best that can be said of a woman is that there
is nothing to say about her.... When, in due time, the claim for
political rights is made here in Denmark, then will women from
all classes unite in their efforts to secure the palladium which
alone can protect them from arbitrariness and subjection.
* * * * *
We shall now take up the Slavonic countries, beginning with Russia,
which stands first, not only because of its vastness, but also
because of its liberality toward women. The position of the Russian
women before the law is very peculiar. Children, whatever their age
and whether male or female, are never emancipated from the control
of their parents. The daughter can only escape from this authority,
and then only in a limited degree, by marriage, and the son by
entering the service of the State. In the provinces alone girls of
twenty-one may marry without the parents' consent. The married
woman is in the full power of her husband, though she is the
mistress of her own fortune. Divorce exists. Russian women vote on
an equality with men for members of the municipal councils and
county assemblies, and these two bodies choose the boards which
transact the public business, such as superintending the collection
of taxes, keeping the roads in order, directing the schools, etc.
The Russian woman does, not however, appear at the polls, but is
represented by some male relative or friend (as we have already
seen in Austria) who casts the vote for her. Thus the Russian
woman, except that she is ineligible to office, possesses all the
political rights of the Russian man--a privilege, however, that is
of little value in a country where liberty is crushed under the
iron heel of autocracy. The position of the Russian peasant women
is not as good as that of the women of the upper classes. They find
some comfort, however, in the doctrines of the rapidly spreading
religious sects, which resemble somewhat the American Revivalists
or Anabaptists. In fact, the subject condition of Russian women is
one of the chief causes of the growth of these sects; down-trodden
by society and the State, they seek liberty in religion. In some of
these sects women preach. Miss Maria Zebrikoff, an able Russian
writer, sends me this curious information:
We have lately heard of a new sect which preaches a doctrine
exalting woman. She is placed above man, because she can give
birth to another being. Her pain and travail are so great, that
alleviating the other sufferings and annoyances of woman would be
but a poor reward; she is entitled to the deepest gratitude of
mankind.
Thought concerning the emancipation of woman was first awakened
among the upper classes about 1840, inspired by George Sand, but
was confined to a narrow circle of men of science and authors. The
new ideas continued to exist in a latent form until the freedom of
the serfs in 1860, when they burst forth into life. The reforms of
the last reign, the abolishment of bureaucratic government and the
emancipation of the slaves, advanced the cause of woman, for the
daughters of the office-holders and land-owners, reduced to poverty
by these changes, were forced to go forth into the world and earn
their own living. Woman's success in the walks of higher
education--especially in medicine--has been a great victory for the
friends of the rights of woman. The government, the professors of
the university and women themselves have all united, more or less
heartily, in a common effort to give Russian women facilities for a
complete education. The first woman's medical school in Russia owes
its origin to a donation of 50,000 rubles from a woman. The war
department--for Russia thinks of medicine only in its relation to
the army--came to the aid of the new movement, and the medical
profession, though in a restricted manner, was thrown open to
women.[574] As yet women physicians may treat only diseases of
women and children, but, notwithstanding this drawback, there are
fifty-two women physicians in St. Petersburg and two hundred and
fifty in Russia. During the last war with Turkey twenty women
physicians did noble work in the army. Women flock to the
universities in great numbers. An attempt has been made to render
the profession of law accessible to them, but the government has
prohibited it. It is expected that ere long women will be
professors in the university. The chemical, medical and legal
associations have already received women into membership.
In literature Russian women take an active part; reviews,
magazines, and political journals counting many women among their
contributors and in some cases their directors. Writes Maria
Zebrikoff:
It is especially in the domain of fiction that Russian women
excel. After the two renowned names of Tourguéneff and Tolstoi,
the greatest genius of which our contemporary literature can
boast is Krestowsky, the pseudonym of woman.
"The reäctionary party," exclaims the same lady with enthusiasm,
"counts in its ranks no woman distinguished for thought or talent."
Even this brief glance at woman's position in Russia conclusively
proves that when the day of liberty comes to the great Cossack
empire, the women will be as thoroughly fitted to enter upon all
the duties of citizenship as the men. The women of no other
continental nation are perhaps better prepared for complete
emancipation than those of Russia. Here, as in several other
respects, autocratic Russia resembles free America. The good-will
of every transatlantic friend of woman's elevation should ever go
forth to this brave, struggling people of the North.
The civil law of the kingdom of Poland, a part of Russia, has been,
since 1809, the Napoleonic code; the other Polish provinces of
Russia are subject to Russian law. Under the former, the woman has
an equal share in the patrimony; but the married woman is a
perpetual minor. According to the Russian code, on the contrary, a
girl receives only a fourteenth part of the patrimony; and when a
distant relative dies, brothers alone inherit. But a woman has
absolute control of her own property: and when she becomes of age,
at twenty-one, she may buy, own, sell, without being subjected to
any tutelage, without requiring the consent of the husband--the
very contrary of the Napoleonic code. This same thing is true in
several other particulars, a striking illustration of the fact that
much-abused Russian civilization is in some respects superior to
the much-vaunted Latin civilization. In regard to education, the
Polish woman is not so well off. In the primary schools alone does
she enjoy equal rights; in secondary education she has far fewer
advantages than the boy; while as for university instruction, she
is forced to seek it in Russia or in foreign lands, the Polish
universities being absolutely closed against her. In the Polish
provinces under direct Russian authority, the State does nothing
whatever for woman's instruction; and in the kingdom of Poland, the
same thing is true except in the matter of primary instruction.
Polish women may practice medicine, if, besides this foreign
diploma, they also pass an examination before the medical school of
St. Petersburg. Tomaszewicz Dobrska is one of the few Polish women
who has succeeded in this difficult field.
The Academy of Fine Arts at Cracow is open to men alone, but
Madeline Andrzejkowicz has endeavored to fill the gap by
establishing at Warsaw a school of painting for women. The first
woman's industrial school was founded in 1874 at Warsaw, and during
the first six years, to 1880, it had 743 scholars. Establishments
of this kind are now quite numerous in the kingdom, but, for
political reasons, they have not been founded in the Polish
provinces of Russia. The unfortunate political situation of Poland,
which robs even men of their rights, is an insurmountable obstacle
in the way of the emancipation of women. There are, however, many
encouraging signs of progress. At Warsaw there is more than one
newspaper edited by a woman. Marie Ilnicka has owned and edited for
more than sixteen years, at the capital, a paper which is widely
read and which has great influence. It is no uncommon thing for
women to deliver public lectures, which are very popular and draw
large houses. Elise Orzeszko, the distinguished Polish novelist,
tells me:
We have confidence in the efforts of the men who are leading
society and who are sacrificing their talents and earnestly
toiling to advance liberal ideas. In the meanwhile our duty is to
awaken thought on the question of woman's rights, so that when a
better day does come to Poland, women may be ready to participate
in the common welfare.
* * * * *
But we cannot close this brief sketch without mentioning the
Orient, that region of transition between the darkness of Asia and
the light of occidental Europe; for, though the position of woman
is in general so lamentable that at first glance it seems best to
pass over this portion of the continent in silence, one catches
here and there a glimmer of progress that portends a better day in
the still distant future. And, too, regenerate Greece commands our
attention, for she indeed is a rich oasis in this desert of
Mohammedan conquest.
There are many Ottoman women, especially among the rich families,
who desire to change their dress and enter into relations with the
women of other religions, but the ecclesiastical and civil
authorities are always ready to check this tendency and to
rigorously enforce the ancient customs. In certain harems earnest
efforts have been made to establish true family life and to bring
up the children under the eye and care of the parents, with the aid
of foreign governesses, who, along with the languages, inculcate
the habits and manners of occidental nations. Vain attempts have
been made to found girls' schools. There are noble natures who long
for amelioration of their state, and for progress, but fanaticism
condemns everything to mortal stagnation.
The Jewish woman leads a contracted, monotonous existence under the
authority of the priest. The wives of many rich bankers have tried
to do something to improve the condition of Hebrew women by
founding aid societies, primary schools, and normal schools. The
Bulgarian women of the country enjoy an agricultural and pastoral
life, and those of the city are simple and primitive in their
habits and customs. But little has been done for woman's
instruction, though some worthy attempts have been made to
establish schools. The hope of the regeneration of the Oriental
woman lies in the influence of Greek civilization. The emancipation
of the Greek woman means the emancipation of the Turkish woman.
The Greek woman in the Orient must be studied under two heads: the
Greek woman in Turkey and the Greek woman in Greece. In
both cases we find them filled with the spirit of western
civilization--perhaps it would be better to say, with the spirit of
their classic ancestors. Primary, secondary and normal schools,
asylums, hospitals, societies--all for women and generally managed
by women--are found in all the Greek centers of Turkey. Calliope A.
Kechayia, the cultured principal of the Zappion, the famous girls'
college at Constantinople, says:
The intellectual condition of the Greek woman in the Orient is,
generally speaking, not inferior to that of women in many parts
of Europe; and as regards the instruction of the girls of the
lower classes, it is much superior to that of several Latin
countries.
The Greek woman in Greece differs essentially from the Oriental
woman. With the independence of Greece came a great patriotic
movement for the building up of the new nationality, a movement in
which women took a most active and prominent part. Several American
women, especially Mrs. Hill, lent their aid and founded the first
girls' school at Athens. "A whole generation of women," says a
Greek lady, "distinguished for their social and family virtues,
received their education in this college." An association of
Greeks soon afterward established a normal school for women. The
Greek government also early took up the question of popular
education without excluding women from its plans. The way in which
young Greek schoolmistresses hastened all over the peninsula,
spreading knowledge, the Greek language and their own enthusiasm
throughout the newly liberated nation, is one of the most unique
episodes in modern history. "It is true and beyond dispute," I am
told by Miss Kechayia, "that the Greece of to-day owes its rapid
progress and its Greek instruction to its women." But the Greek
woman is more than a school-mistress. The wife of a public man has
other than social duties to occupy her. She often represents her
husband before his constituents. She participates actively and
usefully in many of his political affairs. It frequently happens
that the wife goes into the provinces to solicit votes for her
husband, and sometimes in drawing-room lectures she defends his
political conduct. "In truth these facts would not be believed by a
foreigner if he had not seen them with his own eyes," I was once
told by a Greek. Associations of various kinds have been formed by
women during the past few years, and there is at least one instance
of a woman lecturing in public on literary topics. However, woman's
rights in the American sense has not yet penetrated into Greece,
but from what has just been said it will be seen that when that day
comes, the reform will find a soil well prepared for its reception.
* * * * *
Such is a brief and general view of the present status of the Woman
Question on the European Continent. It will have been constantly
noticed in the preceding pages that in every country there are
evidences of progress. Public opinion in the Old World is slowly
but surely accepting Voltaire's statement when the broad-minded
philosopher says, with a dash of French gallantry: "Women are
capable of doing everything we do, with this single difference
between them and us, that they are more amiable than we are." In
matters of instruction, the ideas of Montesquieu and Aimé Martin
are gaining ground. "The powers of the sexes," wrote the
penetrating author of the "Spirit of the Laws," "would be equal if
their education were, too. Test women in the talents that have not
been enfeebled by the way they have been educated, and we will then
see if we are so strong." "It is in spite of our stupid system of
education," declared Aimé Martin, more than fifty years ago, "that
women have an idea, a mind and a soul." And even the more radical
utterances of the late Eugène Pelletan find an echo. "By keeping
women outside of politics," once said the distinguished senator,
"the soul of our country is diminished by one-half." No wonder then
that Frances Power Cobbe likens this revolution to the irresistible
waves of the ocean. "Of all the movements, political, social and
religious, of past ages, there is, I think," writes Miss Cobbe,
"not one so unmistakably tide-like in its extension and the
uniformity of its impulse, as that which has taken place within
living memory among the women of almost every race on the globe.
Other agitations, reforms and revolutions have pervaded and lifted
up classes, tribes, nations, churches. But this movement has
stirred an entire sex, even half the human race. * * * When the
time comes to look back on the slow, universal awakening of women
all over the globe, on their gradual entrance into one privileged
profession after another, on the attainment by them of rights of
person and property, and, at last, on their admission to the full
privileges of citizenship, it will be acknowledged that of all the
'Decisive Battles of History,' this has been, to the moralist and
philosopher, the most interesting; even as it will be (I cannot
doubt) the one followed by the happiest Peace which the world has
ever seen."
FOOTNOTES:
[566] This chapter is, in large part, a résumé of Mr. Stanton's
valuable work "The Woman Question in Europe," published in 1884 by
the Putnams of New York, to which we refer the reader who desires
to study more in detail the European movement for women.--[THE
EDITORS.
[567] The United States was represented by Albert Brisbane and Mrs.
Brisbane, of New York; Elizabeth Chalmers and Mrs. Gibbons, of
Philadelphia; Colonel T. W. Higginson, of Massachusetts; Miss
Hotchkiss, Fernando Jones and his wife and daughter, Jane Graham
Jones and Genevieve Graham Jones (now Mrs. Geo. R. Grant), Mrs.
Klumpke and her two daughters, of Chicago; Mrs. Party and Louisa
Southworth, of Ohio.
[568] Before closing this brief sketch, I desire to mention with
deep gratitude the name of the man who first lifted up his voice in
the Italian parliament to defend and protect women. Salvatore
Morelli deserves the veneration of every Italian woman. His first
book, "Woman and Science" (_La Donna e la Scienza_), dedicated to
Antona Traversi, was animated by a just and noble spirit, too
radical, however, to meet with universal approbation. When he
entered parliament, Morelli, with the same courage, constancy, and
radicalism, demanded the complete emancipation of women.
Conservatives laughed, and many friends of our movement trembled
for the cause. Ably seconded by Mancini, he succeeded in securing
for women the right to testify in civil actions, a dignity which
they had not previously enjoyed, although, by an absurd
contradiction they could be witnesses in criminal cases, convict of
murder by a single word and send the criminal to the scaffold. One
of Morelli's last acts was a divorce bill which was examined by the
Chamber. Guardasigilli Tomman Villa, the then Minister of Justice,
was inclined to accept it, but death, which occurred in 1880, saved
poor Morelli the pain of seeing his proposition rejected. An appeal
to women has been made to raise a modest monument to Salvatore
Morelli in memory of his good deeds, by Aurelia Cimino Folliero de
Luna. The author of this essay has been requested to receive
subscriptions to this fund. Such subscriptions will be acknowledged
and forwarded to the Italian Committee. They should be addressed to
Theodore Stanton, 9 rue de Bassano, Paris, France.
[569] The American members are as follows: Massachusetts, Julia
Ward Howe, Lucy Stone; Illinois, Jane Graham Jones, Miss Hotchkiss;
New York, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Theodore
Stanton; Pennsylvania, Mrs. Gibbons, of Philadelphia.
[570] The office of this journal is 12, rue de Cail, Paris.
[571] The office of this journal is 4, rue des Deux-Gares, Paris.
[572] See the _Index_, of Boston, May 19, 1881, where I give in
full this remarkable speech.
[573] What is said of Austria in this respect further on in this
chapter will apply to Italy if the proposed reform is finally
accepted by parliament.
[574] Recent reforms in the war department call for economy, and
the minister has been forced to refuse the usual subsidy for the
support of the woman's medical courses and they are unfortunately
in a very critical situation. The result will probably be the
foundation of medical colleges for women independent of government
aid.
CHAPTER LVIII.
REMINISCENCES.
BY E. C. S.
Reaching London amidst the fogs and mists of November, 1882, the
first person I met, after a separation of many years, was our
revered and beloved friend, William Henry Channing. The tall,
graceful form was somewhat bent; the sweet, thoughtful face
somewhat sadder; the crimes and miseries of the world seemed more
heavy on his heart than ever. With his refined, nervous
organization, the gloomy moral and physical atmosphere of London
was the last place on earth where that beautiful life should have
ended. I found him in earnest conversation with my daughter and a
young Englishman soon to be married, advising them not only as to
the importance of the step they were about to take, but as to the
minor points to be observed in the ceremony. At the appointed time
a few friends gathered in Portland-street chapel, and as we
approached the altar, our friend appeared in surplice and gown, his
pale, spiritual face more tender and beautiful than ever. This was
the last marriage service he ever performed, and it was as pathetic
as original, his whole appearance so in harmony with the exquisite
sentiments he uttered that we who listened felt as if for the time
being we had entered with him into the Holy of Holies.
Some time after, Miss Anthony and I called on him, to return our
thanks for the very complimentary review he had written of the
History of Woman Suffrage. He thanked us in turn for the many
pleasant memories we had revived in those pages, which he said had
been as entertaining as a novel; "but," said he, "they have filled
me with indignation, too, over the repeated insults offered to
women so earnestly engaged in honest endeavors for the uplifting of
mankind. I blushed for my sex more than once in reading these
volumes." We lingered long in talking over the events connected
with this great struggle for freedom. He dwelt with tenderness on
our divisions and disappointments, and entered more fully into the
humiliations suffered by women than any man we ever met. His
conversation that day was fully as appreciative of the nice points
in the degradation of sex as is John Stuart Mill in his wonderful
work on "The Subjection of Woman." He was intensely interested in
Frances Power Cobbe's efforts to suppress the vivisectionists, and
the last time I saw him he was presiding at a parlor meeting at
Mrs. Wolcott Brown's, when Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell gave an
admirable address on the causes and cure of the social evil. Mr.
Channing spoke beautifully in closing, paying a warm and merited
compliment to Miss Blackwell's clear and concise review of all the
difficulties involved in the question.
Reading so much of English reformers in our journals, of the
Brights, the McLarens, the Taylors, of Lydia Becker, Caroline
Biggs, Josephine Butler and Octavia Hill, and of their great
demonstrations with lords and members of parliament in the chair,
we had longed to compare the actors in those scenes with our
speakers and conventions on this side the water. At last we met
them, one and all, in London, York, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow,
Edinburgh, in great public meetings and parlor reunions, at dinners
and receptions, listened to their public men in parliament, the
courts and the pulpit, to the women in their various assemblies,
and came to the conclusion that Americans surpass them in oratory
and the spirited manner in which they conduct meetings. They have
no system of elocution in England such as we have--a thorough
training of the voice, in what is called vocal gymnastics. A
hesitating, apologetic way seems to be the national idea for an
exordium on all questions. Even their ablest men who have visited
this country, such as Kingsley, Stanley, Arnold, Spencer, Tyndal,
Huxley, and Canon Farrar, have all been criticised by the American
public for their stammering enunciation. They have no speakers to
compare with Wendell Phillips and George William Curtis, or Anna
Dickinson and Phoebe W. Couzins. John Bright is without a peer
among his countrymen, as are Mrs. Bessant and Miss Helen Taylor
among the women. Miss Tod, from Belfast, is a good speaker. The
women, as a general thing, are more fluent than the men; those of
the Bright family in all its branches have deep, rich voices.
Among the young women, Mrs. Fawcett, Mrs. Charles McLaren, Mrs.
Scatcherd, Miss Henrietta Müller, Mrs. Fenwick Miller, and Lady
Harberton, all speak with comparative ease and self-possession. The
latter is striving to introduce for her countrywomen a new style of
dress, in which all the garments are bifurcated, but so skillfully
adjusted in generous plaits and folds, that while the wearer enjoys
the utmost freedom, the casual observer is quite ignorant of the
innovation. We attended one of their public meetings for the
discussion of that question, at which Miss King, Mrs. Charles
McLaren, and Lady Harberton appeared in the new costume. All spoke
in its defense, and were very witty and amusing in criticising the
present feminine forms and fashions. Lady Harberton gave us a
delightful entertainment one evening at her fine residence on
Cromwell Road, where we laughed enough to dissipate the depressing
effect of the fogs for a week to come over the recitations of
Corney Green on the piano. There, among many other celebrities, we
met Moncure D. Conway[575] and his charming wife.
I reached England in time to attend the great demonstration in
Glasgow to celebrate the extension of the municipal franchise to
the women of Scotland. It was a remarkable occasion. St. Andrew's
immense hall was packed with women; a few men were admitted to the
gallery at half a crown apiece. It was said there were 5,000 people
present. When a Scotch audience is thoroughly roused, nothing can
equal the enthusiasm. The arriving of the speakers on the platform
was announced with the wildest applause, the entire audience
rising, waving their handkerchiefs, and clapping their hands, and
every compliment paid the people was received with similar
outbursts of pleasure. Mrs. McLaren, a sister of John Bright,[576]
presided, and made the opening speech. I had the honor, on this
occasion, of addressing an audience for the first time in the old
world. Many others spoke briefly. There were too many speakers; no
one had time to warm up to the point of eloquence. Our system of
conventions of two or three days, with long speeches discussing
pointed and radical resolutions, is quite unknown in England. Their
meetings consist of one session of a few hours into which they
crowd all the speakers they can summon together. They have a few
tame resolutions on which there can be no possible difference of
opinion printed, with the names of those who are to speak appended.
Each of these is read, a few short speeches made, that may or may
not have the slightest reference to the resolution, which is then
passed. The last is usually one of thanks to some lord or member of
parliament who may have condescended to preside at the meeting, or
to do something for the measure in parliament; it is spoken to like
all that have gone before. The Queen is referred to tenderly in
most of the speeches, although she has never done anything to merit
the approbation of the advocates of suffrage for woman. As on this
occasion a woman conducted the meeting, much of the usual red tape
was omitted.
From Glasgow quite a large party of the Brights and McLarens went
to Edinburgh, where the Hon. Duncan McLaren gave us a warm welcome
to Newington House, under the very shadow of the Salisbury crags.
These and the Pentland Hills are the remarkable feature in the
landscape as you approach this beautiful city, with its monuments
and castles on which are written the history of the centuries. We
passed a few charming days driving about, visiting old friends, and
discussing the status of woman on both sides of the Atlantic. Here
we met Elizabeth Pease Nichol, Jane and Eliza Wigham, whom I had
not seen since we sat together in the World's Anti-slavery
Convention in London in 1840, Yet I knew Mrs. Nichol at once; her
strongly-marked face is one not readily forgotten.
I went with the family on Sunday to Friends' meeting, where a most
unusual manifestation for that decorous sect occurred. I had been
told that if I felt inclined, it would be considered quite proper
for me to make some remarks, and just as I was revolving an opening
sentence to a few thoughts I desired to present, a man arose in a
remote part of the house, and began in a low voice to give his
testimony as to the truth that was in him. All eyes were turned
toward him, when suddenly a friend leaned over the back of the
seat, seized his coat-tails and jerked him down in a most emphatic
manner. The poor man buried his face in his hands, and maintained a
profound silence. I learned afterwards that he was a bore, and the
friend in the rear thought it wise to nip him in the bud. This
scene put to flight all intentions of speaking on my part, lest I,
too, might get outside the prescribed limits, and be suppressed by
force. I dined with Mrs. Nichol at Huntly Lodge, where she has
entertained in turn many of our American reformers. Her walls have
echoed to the voices of Garrison, Rogers, Samuel J. May, Parker
Pillsbury, Henry C. Wright, Douglass and Remond, and hosts of
English philanthropists. Though over eighty, she is still awake on
all questions of the hour, and generous in her hospitalities as of
yore.
Later, Miss Anthony, in company with Mrs. Rebecca Moore, spent
several weeks in Edinburgh looking over Mrs. Nichol's voluminous
correspondence with the anti-slavery apostles, to see if anything
of interest could be gleaned for these volumes. She found Mrs.
Moore as a traveling companion better than the most approved
encyclopedia, as she possessed all possible information on every
subject and locality, so that all Miss Anthony had to do was to
keep her ears open whenever she was sufficiently rested to listen.
There, too, Miss Anthony visited Dr. Agnes McLaren, in her
_recherché_ home, and found her as charming in the social circle as
she was said to be skillful in her profession. She spent several
days also with Dr. Jex Blake, and from her lips heard the full
account of her prolonged struggle to open the medical college to
women, and to secure for them as students equal recognition. After
listening to all the humiliations to which they had been subjected,
and their final expulsion from the university, and of the riots in
Edinburgh, Miss Anthony felt that Dr. Jex Blake had fought the
battle with great wisdom and heroism. The failure of the experiment
in that university was not due to a want of tact in the women who
led the movement, but to the natural bigotry and obstinacy of the
Scotch people, the universal hostility of the medical professors to
all innovations, and the antagonism men feel towards women as
competitors in the sciences and professions. Before leaving
Edinburgh a public reception was tendered to Miss Anthony, Mrs.
Nichol presiding. Professor Blackie, Mrs. Jessie Wellstood, and the
honored guest herself, did the speaking. With refreshments and
conversation it was altogether a pleasant occasion.
In the meantime I was making new friends in the other parts of the
kingdom. Mrs. Margaret Lucas, whose whole soul is in the temperance
movement, escorted me from Edinburgh to Manchester, to be present
at another great demonstration in the Town Hall, the finest
building in that district. It had just been completed, and, with
its ante-rooms, dining hall, and various apartments for social
entertainments, was altogether the most perfect hall I had seen in
England. There I was entertained by Mrs. Matilda Roby, who, with
her husband, gave me a most hospitable reception. She invited
several friends to luncheon one day, among others, Miss Lydia
Becker, editor of the _Suffrage Journal_ in that city, and the Rev.
Mr. Steinthal, who had visited this country and spoken on our
platform. The chief topic at the table was John Stuart Mill, his
life, character, writings, and his position with reference to the
political rights of woman. In the evening we went to see Ristori in
Queen Elizabeth. Having seen her many years before in America, I
was surprised to find her still so vigorous. And thus, from week to
week, were suffrage meetings, receptions, dinners, luncheons and
theatres pleasantly alternated.
The following Sunday we heard a grand sermon from Moncure D.
Conway, and had a pleasant interview with him and Mrs. Conway at
the close of the sessions. Later we spent a few pleasant days at
their artistic home, filled with books, pictures, and mementoes
from loving friends. A billiard-room with well-worn cues and balls
may in a measure account for his vigorous sermons--quite a novel
adjunct to a parsonage. A garden reception there to Mr. and Mrs.
Howells, gave us an opportunity to see the American novelist
surrounded by his admiring friends. Howells and Hawthorne seemed to
be great favorites in the literary circles of England at that time,
but I never read one of their novels without regretting for the
honor of American women that they had not painted more vigorous and
piquant characters for their heroines.
One was always sure of meeting some Americans worth knowing at the
Conway's in Bedford Park. We dined there with Mary Clemmer and Mr.
Hudson, just after their marriage, and a bright, pretty daughter of
Murat Halstead, who chatted as gaily among the staid English as on
her native heath. There, too, we first saw Mrs. William Mellen with
her daughters, from Colorado Springs, now residing in London for
the purpose of educating a family of seven children,[577] although
there is no so fitting place to educate children to the duties of
citizens of a republic, as under our own free institutions. If
possessed of wealth, they readily adopt aristocratic ideas, and
enjoy the distinctions of class they find in all monarchical
countries, which totally unfit them for properly appreciating the
democratic principles it is our interest to cherish at home.
The Sunday after Mr. Conway left for Australia, I was invited to
fill his pulpit. Spending a few days with Mrs. Conway, we attended
the Ladies' Club one afternoon. The leading spirits seemed to be
Miss Orme and Miss Richardson, both attorneys in practice, with an
office in London, though not yet regularly admitted to the Queen's
Bench. The topic of discussion was the well-worn theme--the
education of girls; but no one seemed quite prepared to take off
all the ligatures from their bodies and the fears of everything
known or unknown from their minds, and leave them for a season to
grow as nature intended, that we might find out by seeing them in
their normal condition what their real wants and needs might be. I
suggested for their next topic, the proper education of boys, which
was accepted. I retired that night very nervous over my sermon for
the next day, and the feeling steadily increased until I reached
the platform; but once there, my fears were all dissipated, and I
never enjoyed speaking more than on that occasion, for I had been
so long oppressed with the degradation of woman under canon law and
church discipline that I had a sense of relief in pouring out my
indignation.
My theme was, "What has Christianity done for Woman?" and by the
facts of history, I showed clearly that to no form of religion was
woman indebted for one impulse of freedom, as all alike have taught
her inferiority and subjection to man. No lofty virtues can emanate
from such a condition. Whatever heights of dignity and purity women
have individually attained, can in no way be attributed to the
dogmas of their religion.
With my son Theodore, always deeply interested in my friends and
public work, we called on Mrs. Gray, Miss Jessie Boucherett and Dr.
Hoggan, who had written essays for "The Woman Question in Europe";
on our American minister, Mr. Lowell, Mr. and Mrs. George W.
Smalley, and many other notable men and women. By appointment we
had an hour with the Hon. John Bright at his residence on
Piccadilly. As his photograph, with his fame, had reached America,
his fine face and head, as well as his political opinions, were
quite familiar to us. He received us with great cordiality, and
manifested a clear knowledge, and deep interest in regard to all
American affairs. Free trade and woman suffrage formed the basis of
our conversation; the literature of our respective countries, our
great men and women, the lighter topics of the occasion. He is not
sound in regard to the political rights of women, but it is not
given to any one man to be equally clear on all questions. He voted
for John Stuart Mill's amendment to the "Household Suffrage Bill,"
in 1867, but, as he said, as a personal favor to a friend, without
any strong convictions as to the merits of what he considered "a
purely sentimental measure."
We attended the meeting called to rejoice over the passage of the
Married Woman's Property bill, which gave to the women of England
in 1882 what we had enjoyed in many States in this country since
1848. Mrs. Jacob Bright, Mrs. Scatcherd, Mrs. Almy, and several
members of parliament made short speeches of congratulation to
those who had been instrumental in carrying the measure. It was
generally conceded that to the tact and persistence of Mrs. Bright,
more than to any other one person, belonged the credit of that
achievement. Hon. Jacob Bright was at that time a member of
parliament, and fully in sympathy with the bill; and while Mrs.
Bright exerted all her social influence to make it popular with the
members, her husband, thoroughly versed in parliamentary tactics,
availed himself of every technicality to push the bill through the
House of Commons. Mrs. Bright's chief object in securing this bill,
aside from establishing the right every human being has to his own
property, was, to lift married women on an even plane with widows
and spinsters, thereby making them qualified voters.
The next day we went out to Barn Elms to visit Mr. and Mrs. Chas.
McLaren. Mr. McLaren, a Quaker by birth and education, has
sustained to his uttermost the suffrage movement, and his charming
little wife, the daughter of Mrs. Pochin, is worthy the noble
mother who was among the earliest leaders on this question,
speaking and writing with equal ability on all phases of the
subject. Barn Elms is a grand old estate, a few miles out of
London. It was the dairy farm of Queen Elizabeth, and presented by
her to Sir Francis Walsingham. Since then it has been inhabited by
many persons of note. It has existed as an estate since the time of
the early Saxon Kings, and the record of the sale of Barn Elms in
the time of King Athelston is still extant. What with its well-kept
lawns, fine old trees, and glimpses here and there of the Thames
winding round its borders, and its wealth of old associations, it
is indeed a charming spot. Our memory of those days will not go
back to Saxon Kings, but remain with the liberal host and hostess,
the beautiful children and the many charming acquaintances we met
at that fireside. I doubt whether any of the ancient lords and
ladies who dispensed their hospitalities under that roof, did in
any way surpass the present occupants. Mrs. McLaren, interested in
all the reforms of the day, is radical in her ideas, a brilliant
talker, and, for one so young, remarkably well informed on all
political questions. One thing is certain, those old walls never
echoed to more rebellious talk among women against existing
conditions,[578] than on that evening.
It was at Barn Elms I met for the first time Mrs. Fannie Hertz, to
whom I was indebted for many pleasant acquaintances afterwards. She
is said to know more distinguished literary people than any other
woman in London. I saw her, too, several times in her own cozy
home, meeting at her Sunday-afternoon receptions many persons I was
desirous to know. On one occasion I found George Jacob Holyoake
there, surrounded by a bevy of young ladies, all stoutly defending
the Nihilists in Russia, and their right to plot their way to
freedom; they counted a dynasty of Czars as nothing in the balance
with the liberties of a whole people. As I joined the circle Mr.
Holyoake called my attention to the fact that he was the only one
in favor of peaceful measures among all those ladies. "Now," said
he, "I have often heard it said on your platform, that the feminine
element in politics would bring about perpetual peace in
government, and here all these ladies are advocating the worst
forms of violence in the name of liberty." "Ah," said I, "lay on
their shoulders the responsibility of governing, and they would
soon become as mild and conservative as you seem to be." He then
gave us his views on coöperation, the only remedy for many existing
evils, which he thought would be the next step toward a higher
civilization.
There, too, I met some Positivists, who, though quite reasonable on
religious questions, were very narrow on the sphere of woman. The
difference in sex, which is the very reason why men and women
should be associated in all spheres of activity, they make the
strongest reason why they should be separated. Mrs. Hertz belongs
to the Harrison school of Positivists. I went with her to one of
Mrs. Orr's receptions, where we met Robert Browning, a fine looking
gentleman of seventy years, with white hair and mustache. He is
frank, easy, playful, and a good talker. Mrs. Orr seemed to be
taking a very pessimistic view of our present sphere of action,
which Mr. Browning, with poetic coloring, was trying to paint more
hopeful.
The next day I dined with Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucas, in company
with Mr. John P. Thomasson, member of parliament, and his wife, and
afterwards we went to the House of Commons and had the good fortune
to hear Gladstone, Parnell, and Sir Charles Dilke. Seeing Bradlaugh
seated outside the charmed circle, I sent my card to him, and in
the corridor we had a few moments' conversation. I asked him if he
thought he would eventually get his seat; he replied, "Most
assuredly I will. I shall open the next campaign with such an
agitation as will rouse our politicians to some consideration of
the changes gradually coming over the face of things in this
country."
The place assigned ladies in the House of Commons is really a
disgrace to a country ruled by an Empress. This dark perch is the
highest gallery immediately over the speaker's desk and government
seats, behind a fine wire-work, so that it is quite impossible to
see or hear anything. The sixteen persons who can crowd in the
front seat, by standing with their noses partly through some open
work, can have the satisfaction of seeing the cranial arch of their
rulers, and hearing an occasional pean to liberty, or an Irish
growl at the lack of it. I was told this net work was to prevent
the members on the floor from being disturbed by the beauty of the
women. On hearing this I remarked that I was devoutly thankful that
our American men were not so easily disturbed, and that the beauty
of our women was not of so dangerous a character.
I could but contrast our spacious galleries in that magnificent
capitol at Washington, as well as in our grand State capitols,
where hundreds of women can sit to see and hear their rulers at
their ease, with these dark, dingy buildings, and such inadequate
accommodations for the people. My son, who had a seat on the floor
just opposite the ladies' gallery, said he could compare our
appearance to nothing better than birds in a cage. He could not
distinguish an outline of anybody. All he could see was the moving
of feathers and furs, or some bright ribbon or flower.
In the libraries, the courts, and the House of Lords, I found many
suggestive subjects of thought. Our American inventions seem to
furnish them cases for litigation. A suit in regard to Singer's
sewing machine was just then occupying the attention of the Lord
Chancellor. Not feeling much interest in the matter, I withdrew and
joined my friends, to examine some frescoes in the ante-room. It
was interesting to find so many historical scenes in which women
had taken a prominent part. Among others, there is Jane Lane
assisting Charles II. to escape, and Alice Lisle concealing the
fugitives after the battle of Sedgemoor. Six wives of Henry VIII.
stand forth a solemn pageant when one recalls their sad fate. Alas!
whether for good or ill, woman must ever fill a large space in the
tragedies of the world.
I passed a few pleasant hours in the house where Macaulay spent his
last years. The once spacious library and the large bay window
looking out on a beautiful lawn, where he sat from day to day
writing his flowing periods, possessed a peculiar charm for me, as
the surroundings of genius always do. I thought as I stood there
how often he had unconsciously gazed on each object in sight in
searching for words rich enough to gild his ideas. The house is now
owned and occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Winckworth. It was at
one of their sociable Sunday teas that many pleasant memories of
the great historian were revived.
We went with Mrs. Lucas to a meeting of the Salvation army, in
Exeter Hall, which holds 5,000 people. It was literally packed--not
an inch of standing-room even, seemed to be unoccupied. This
remarkable movement was then at its height of enthusiasm in
England, and its leaders proposed to carry it round the world, but
it has never been so successful in any other latitude. They not
only hold meetings, but they march through the streets, men and
women, singing and playing on tambourines. The exercises on this
occasion consisted of prayers, hymns, and exhortations by Mr. and
Mrs. Booth. When this immense audience all joined in the chorus of
their stirring songs, it was indeed very impressive. The whole
effect was like that of an old-fashioned Methodist revival meeting.
I purchased their paper, _The War Cry_, and pasted it in my journal
to show the wild vagaries to which the human mind is subject. There
is nothing too ridiculous or monstrous to be done under the
influence of religious enthusiasm. In spite, however, of the
ridicule attached to this movement, it is at least an aspiration
for that ignorant, impoverished multitude. The first thing they
were urged to do was to give up intoxicating drinks, and their
vicious affiliations. If some other organization could take hold of
them at that point, to educate them in the rudiments of learning
and right living, and supplement their emotions with a modicum of
reason and common sense in the practical affairs of life, much
greater good might result from this initiative step in the right
direction.
One of the most remarkable and genial women we met was Miss Frances
Power Cobbe. She called one evening at 10 Duchess street, and
sipped with us the five o'clock cup of tea, a uniform practice in
England. She is of medium height, stout, rosy, and vigorous
looking, with a large, well-shaped head, a strong, happy face, and
gifted with rare powers of conversation. I felt very strongly
attracted to her. She is frank and cordial and pronounced in all
her opinions. She gave us an account of her efforts to rescue
unhappy cats and dogs from the hands of the vivisectionists. We saw
her, too, in her own cozy home and in her office in Victoria Row.
The perfect order in which her books and papers were all arranged,
and the exquisite neatness of the apartments were refreshing to
behold.
My daughter, having decided opinions of her own, was soon at
loggerheads with Miss Cobbe on the question of vivisection. After
showing us several German and French books with illustrations of
the horrible cruelty inflicted on cats and dogs, enlarging on the
hypocrisy and wickedness of these scientists, she turned to my
daughter and said, "Would you shake hands with one of these
vivisectionists?" "Yes," said Harriot, "I should be proud to shake
hands with Virchow, the great German scientist, for his kindness to
a young American girl. She applied to several professors to be
admitted to their classes, but all refused except Virchow; he
readily assented, and requested his students to treat her with
becoming courtesy. 'If any of you behave otherwise,' said he, 'I
shall feel myself personally insulted.' She entered his classes and
pursued her studies unmolested and with great success. "Now," said
she, "would you refuse to shake hands with any of your statesmen,
scientists, clergymen, lawyers or physicians, who treat women with
constant indignities and insults?" "Oh, no"; said Miss Cobbe.
"Then," said Mrs. Blatch, "you estimate the physical suffering of
cats and dogs as of more consequence than the humiliation of human
beings. The man who tortures a cat for a scientific purpose is not
as low in the scale of being, in my judgment, as one who sacrifices
his own daughter to some cruel custom." Though Miss Cobbe weighs
over two hundred pounds, she is as light on foot as a deer and is
said to be a great walker. After seeing her I read again some of
her books. Her theology now and then evidently cramps her, yet her
style is vigorous, earnest, sarcastic, though at times playful and
pathetic. In regard to her theology, she says she is too liberal to
please her orthodox friends and too orthodox to please the
liberals, hence in religion she stands quite solitary.
Suffering from the effects of the prolonged fogs, we took our
letters of introduction from Dr. Bayard of New York to the two
leading high-dilution homeopathic physicians in London, Drs. Wilson
and Berridge. We found the former a good talker and very original.
We were greatly amused with his invectives against the quacks in
the profession; the "mongrels," as he called the low dilutionists.
The first question he asked my daughter was if she wore high heels;
he said he would not attempt to cure any woman of any disease so
long as she was perched on her toes with her spine out of plumb.
His advice to me was to get out of the London fogs as quickly as
possible. No one who has not suffered a London fog can imagine the
terrible gloom that pervades everywhere. One can see nothing out of
the windows but a dense black smoke. Drivers carry flambeaux in the
streets to avoid running into each other. The houses are full; the
gas burns all day, but you can scarcely see across the room;
theaters and places of amusement are sometimes closed, as nothing
can be seen distinctly. We called on Dr. Berridge, also, thinking
it best to make the acquaintance of both that we might decide from
their general appearance, surroundings, conversation and
comparative intelligence, which one we would prefer to trust in an
emergency. We found both alike so promising that we felt we could
trust either to give us our quietus, if die we must, on the high
dilutions. It is a consolation to know that one's closing hours at
least are passed in harmony with the principles of pure science. On
further acquaintance we found these gentlemen true disciples of the
great Hahneman.
As we were just then reading Froude's "Life of Carlyle," we drove
by the house where he lived and paused a moment at the door, where
poor Jennie went in and out so often with a heavy heart. It is a
painful record of a great soul struggling with poverty and
disappointment; the hope of success as an author so long deferred
and never wholly realized. His foolish pride of independence and
headship, and his utter obliviousness as to his domestic duties and
the comfort of his wife, made the picture still darker. Poor
Jennie, fitted to shine in any circle, yet doomed all her married
life to domestic drudgery, with no associations with the great man
for whose literary companionship she had sacrificed herself. It
adds greatly to one's interest in Scott, Dickens, Thackeray,
Charlotte Bronté, Bulwer, James and George Eliot, to read them
amidst the scenes where they lived and died. Thus in my leisure
hours, after the fatigues of sight-seeing and visiting, I re-read
many of these authors near the places where they spent their last
days on earth.
As I had visited Ambleside forty years before and seen Harriet
Martineau in her prime, I did not go with Miss Anthony to Lake
Windermere. She found the well-known house occupied by Mr. William
Henry Hills, a liberal Quaker named after William Henry Channing.
Mrs. Hills received the party with great hospitality, showed them
through all the apartments and pointed out the charming views from
the windows. They paused a few moments reverently in the chamber
where that grand woman had passed her last triumphant days on
earth. On the kitchen hearth was still sitting her favorite cat,
sixteen years old, the spots in her yellow and black fur as marked
as ever. Puss is the observed of all observers who visit that
sacred shrine, and it is said she seems specially to enjoy the
attention of strangers. From here Miss Anthony drove round
Grasmere, the romantic home of Wordsworth, wandered through the old
church, sat in the pew he so often occupied and lingered near the
last resting-place of the great poet. As the former residence of
the anti-slavery agitator, Thomas Clarkson, was on Ulswater,
another of the beautiful lakes in that region, Miss Anthony
extended her excursion still further and learned from the people
many pleasing characteristics of these celebrated personages. On
her way to Ireland she stopped at Ulverston and visited Miss Hannah
Goad, who was a descendant of the founder of Quakerism, George Fox.
She was in the old house in which he was married to Margaret Fell
and where they lived many years; attended the quaint little church
where he often spoke from the high seats, looked through his
well-worn Bible, and the minutes of their monthly meetings, kept by
Margaret Fell two centuries ago.
Returning to London we attended one of Miss Biggs' receptions and
among others met Mr. Stansfeld, M. P., who had labored faithfully
for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases acts, and in a measure
been successful. We had the honor of an interview with Lord
Shaftsbury at one of his crowded receptions, and found him a little
uncertain as to the wisdom of allowing married women to vote, for
fear of disturbing the peace of the family. I have often wondered
if men see in this objection what fatal admissions they make as to
their own selfishness and love of domination.
Miss Anthony was present at the great Liberal conference at Leeds
on October 17, to which Mrs. Helen Bright Clark, Miss Jane Cobden,
Mrs. Tanner, Mrs. Scatcherd and several other ladies were duly
elected delegates from their respective Liberal leagues, and
occupied seats on the floor. Mrs. Clark and Miss Cobden, daughters
of the great Corn-law reformers, spoke eloquently in favor of the
resolution to extend parliamentary suffrage to women, which was
presented by Walter McLaren of Bradford. As these young women made
their impassioned appeals for the recognition of woman's political
equality in the next bill for the extension of suffrage, that
immense gathering of 1,600 delegates was hushed into profound
silence. For a daughter to speak thus in that great representative
convention in direct opposition to her loved and honored father,
the acknowledged leader of that party, was an act of heroism and
fidelity to her own highest convictions almost without a parallel
in English history, and the effect on the audience was as thrilling
as it was surprising. The resolution was passed by a large
majority. At the reception given to Mr. John Bright that evening,
as Mrs. Clark approached the daïs on which her noble father stood
shaking the hands of passing friends, she remarked to her husband,
"I wonder if father has heard of my speech this morning, and if he
will forgive me for thus publicly differing with him?" The query
was soon answered. As he caught the first glimpse of his daughter
he stepped down and, pressing her hand affectionately, kissed her
with a fond father's warmth on either cheek in turn. The next
evening the great Quaker statesman was heard by the admiring
thousands who could crowd into Victoria Hall, while thousands,
equally desirous to hear, failed to get tickets of admission. It
was a magnificent sight, and altogether a most impressive gathering
of the people. Miss Anthony with her friends sat in the gallery
opposite the great platform, where they had a fine view of the
whole audience. When John Bright, escorted by Sir Wilfred Lawson,
took his seat, the immense audience rose, waving hats and
handkerchiefs and with the wildest enthusiasm giving cheer after
cheer in honor of the great leader. Sir Wilfred Lawson in his
introductory remarks facetiously alluded to the resolution adopted
by the conference as somewhat in advance of the ideas of the
speaker of the evening. The house broke into roars of laughter,
while the father of Liberalism, perfectly convulsed, joined in the
general merriment.
But when at length his time to speak had come, and Mr. Bright went
over the many steps of progress that had been taken by the Liberal
party, he cunningly dodged all in the direction of the emancipation
of the women of England. He skipped round the agitation in 1867 and
John Stuart Mill's amendment presented at that time in the House of
Commons; the extension of the municipal suffrage in 1869; the
participation of women in the establishment of national schools
under the law of 1870, both as voters and members of school-boards;
the Married Woman's Property bill of 1882; the large and increasing
vote for the extension of parliamentary suffrage in the House of
Commons, and the adoption of the resolution by that great
conference the day before. All these successive steps towards
woman's emancipation he carefully remembered to forget.
During Miss Anthony's stay in Leeds she and her cousin, Dr. Fannie
Dickinson, were guests of Mrs. Hannah Ford at Adel Grange, an old
and lovely suburban home, where she met many interesting women,
members of the school-board, poor-law guardians and others. The
three daughters of Mrs. Ford, though possessed of ample incomes,
have each a purpose in life; one had gathered hundreds of factory
girls into evening schools, where she taught them to cut and make
their garments, as well as to read and write; one was an artist and
the third a musician, having studied in London and Florence. It was
during this ever-to-be-remembered week that Miss Anthony, escorted
by Mrs. Ford, visited Haworth, the bleak and lonely home of the
Brontés. It was a dark, drizzly October day, intensifying all the
gloomy memories of the place. She sat in the old church pew where
those shivering girls endured such discomforts through the fearful
services, with their benumbed feet on the very stone slab that from
time to time was taken up to deposit in the earth beneath their
loved dead! She was shown through the house, paused at the place
under the stairs where the imperial Shirley had her fierce
encounter with that almost human dog, Keeper; she stood in the
drawing-room where the sainted three sisters, arm-in-arm, paced up
and down plotting their weird stories. She walked through the same
old gate, on the same single stone pavement and over the same stile
out into the same heather fields, gazing on the same dreary sky
above and the same desolate earth on every side. She dined in the
same old "Black Bull"; sat in poor Branwell's chair and was served
by the same person who dealt out the drinks to that poor
unfortunate--then a young bar-maid, now the aged proprietor.
Miss Anthony crossed from Barrow to Belfast, where she was given a
most cordial reception at the house of one of Ireland's
distinguished orators, Miss Isabella M. Tod, who took her to one of
her Ulster temperance meetings at Garvah, where they were the
guests of Rev. Thomas Medill, a cousin of the distinguished Chicago
editor. There, as Miss Anthony listened to the prayers and
exhortations of the Presbyterian ministers and to the arguments of
Miss Tod, and heard no appeals to the audience to join in the work
of suppressing the traffic, a realizing sense of the utter
powerlessness of the queen's subjects in Ireland dawned upon her
for the first time. In all that crowd there was not one who had any
voice in the decision of that question. The entire control of the
matter rested with three magistrates appointed by the queen, who
are in nowise responsible to the tax-paying people to whom they
administer the laws. Had Miss Tod been addressing an American
audience, she would have appealed to every man to vote only for
candidates pledged to no-license. From Garvah they made a
pilgrimage to the Giant's Causeway. Miss Anthony had, when at Oban,
visited Fingal's Cave, and the two wonders that always fix
themselves upon the imagination of the youthful student of the
world's geography fully matched her expectations.
At Dublin she visited the Castle, the old parliament building, now
a bank; Kings and Queens College, that gives diplomas to women;
the parks, the cemeteries, the tomb of Daniel O'Connell. She
attended a meeting of the common council, of which Alfred Webb, the
only surviving son of the old abolitionist, Richard D. Webb, was a
member, and there she listened to a discussion on a petition to the
queen that the people of Dublin might be allowed to elect their own
tax-collector instead of having one placed over them by "the powers
that be" at London, as the official thus appointed had just proved
a defaulter. In listening to the outrages perpetrated upon a
helpless people by foreign officials, the one wonder to her was,
not that so many of Ireland's sons are discontented, but that they
are not in open rebellion.
There Miss Anthony made the acquaintance of numbers of excellent
Friends,[579] and with Mrs. Haslam visited their large free library
and attended their First-day meeting. In Dublin, too, she met
Michael Davitt, who seemed to her a most sincere champion of
liberty for himself and his people. Miss Anthony spent a week with
Mr. and Mrs. Haslam in Cork, visiting Blarney Castle, the old
walled city of Youghal with its crumbling Quaker meeting-house and
fine old mansion in which Sir Walter Raleigh lived, and thence to
the beautiful Lakes of Killarney, and in a jaunting-car through the
evicted tenants' district, entering the hovels and talking with the
inmates. The sad stories poured into her ears, and the poverty and
wretchedness she saw, proved to her that none of Mr. Redpath's
revelations, so shocking to the humanity of our people, were in the
least over-drawn. The circuit through Limerick, Galway, Clifton and
Belfast was made in third-class cars, that she might talk with the
people of the working class. This was the season for their county
fairs, which gave her an opportunity to see the farmers driving
their cattle and taking their meagre products to the fair. The
women and girls were uniformly barefooted, while some of the men
and boys wore shoes. In reply to her query why this was so, one man
said, "It is all we can do to get shoes for them as airnes the
money." The same old story; woman's work, however arduous, brings
no price in the market.
While in London we attended several large and enthusiastic reform
meetings. We heard Bradlaugh address his constituency on that
memorable day at Trafalgar Square, at the opening of parliament,
when violence was anticipated and the parliament houses were
surrounded by immense crowds, with the military and police in large
numbers to maintain order. We heard Michael Davitt and Miss Helen
Taylor at a great meeting in Exeter Hall, the former on home-rule
for Ireland, and the latter on the nationalization of land, showing
that in ancient times the people had many privileges long since
denied. They even had forests and commons and the road-side, where
their cows, sheep and geese could glean something. The facts and
figures given in these two lectures as to the abject poverty of the
people and the cruel system by which every inch of land had been
grabbed by their oppressors, were indeed appalling. A few days
before sailing we made our last visit to Ernestine L. Rose and
found our noble coadjutor, though in delicate health, pleasantly
situated in the heart of London, as deeply interested as ever in
the struggles of the hour.
Dining one day with Mrs. Lucas, we were forcibly impressed with the
growing liberality of people of all shades of belief and of all
professions. The guests on that occasion were Mrs. Hallock,
sister-in-law of Robert Dale Owen, thoroughly imbued with his
religious and social ideas; Dr. Mary J. Hall, the only woman
practicing homeopathy in England; Miss Henrietta Müller, member of
the London school-board; Miss Clara Spence, a young actress from
America, who gave us some fine recitations; and such liberals in
politics and religion as Mrs. Stanton Blatch and myself, while our
hostess was an orthodox Friend. However we were all agreed on one
point, the right of women to full equality everywhere. In the
evening we went to see Mrs. Hallock's daughter, Ella Deitz, in the
play of "Impulse." We urged Mrs. Lucas to accompany us, but she
said she had never been to a theater in her life.
A great discomfort in all English homes is the cold draughts
through their halls and unoccupied rooms. A moderate fire in the
grates in the family apartments is their only mode of heating, and
they seem quite oblivious as to the danger of throwing a door open
into a cold hall on one's back while the servants pass in and out
with the various courses' at dinner. As we Americans were sorely
tried under such circumstances, it was decided in the Basingstoke
mansion to have a hall stove, which, after a prolonged search, was
found in London and duly installed as a presiding deity to defy the
dampness that pervades all those ivy-covered habitations, as well
as the neuralgia that wrings their possessors. What a blessing it
proved, more than any one thing making the old English house seem
like an American home! The delightful summer heat we in America
enjoy in the coldest weather is quite unknown to our Saxon cousins.
Although many came to see our stove in full working order, yet we
could not persuade them to adopt the American system of heating the
whole house at an even temperature. They cling to the customs of
their fathers with an obstinacy that is incomprehensible to us, who
are always ready to try experiments. Americans complain bitterly of
the same freezing experiences in France and Germany, and in turn
foreigners all criticise our over-heated houses and places of
amusement.
An evening reception at Mrs. Richardson's, in the city of York,
gave us an opportunity of a personal greeting with a large circle
of ladies identified with the suffrage movement, and a large public
meeting the next day in the Town Hall enabled us to judge still
further of the merits of English women as speakers. Here I was
entertained by Mrs. Lucretia Kendall Clarke, an American, who had
spent five years as a student in Dresden, where she made the
acquaintance of Mr. Clarke. It is said in England that the
American girls capture all the choice young men; that our rich
cattle-dealers get all their best horses, cows, sheep, dogs, and
that in time we shall rob them of all that is best in the country.
One thing is certain, we shall always regret our hospitable
invitation to the sparrows, as they are making war on our native
birds instead of fulfilling their mission to the "Diet of Worms."
In company with Mrs. Scatcherd we spent an hour in that magnificent
York cathedral, said to be one of the finest in England. Being
there at the time for service we had the benefit of the music. To
us, lost in admiration of the wonderful architecture and the
beautiful carving in wood and stone, the solemn strains of the
organ reverberating through those vast arches made the whole scene
very impressive. As women in many of the churches are not permitted
to take part in the sacred ceremonies, the choir is composed of
men, and boys from ten to fifteen who sing the soprano and alto.
But these old ideas, like the old Roman wall that still surrounds
that city, time only can remove.
We had a merry trip from York to London. Miss Müller, Mrs. Chant,
Mrs. Shearer, Miss Stackpole, in our compartment, discussed freely
the silly objections to woman's enfranchisement usually made by
our legislators. We found on comparing notes that the arguments
usually made were the same in the House of Commons as in the halls
of Congress. If the honorable gentlemen could only have heard their
stale platitudes with good imitations in voice and manner, I doubt
whether they would ever again air their absurdities. I regretted
that our Caroline Gilkey Rogers had not been there to have given
her admirable impersonation of a Massachusetts legislator.
A few days later I attended another meeting in Birmingham and
stayed with a relative of Joseph Sturge, at whose home I had
visited forty years before. This was called to discuss the
degradation of women under the Contagious Diseases acts. Led by
Josephine Butler, the women of England have been deeply stirred on
the question of repeal, and are very active in their opposition to
the law. We heard Mrs. Butler speak in many of her society
meetings, as well as on several public occasions. Her style is not
unlike that we hear in Methodist class-meetings from the best
cultivated of that sect; her power grows out of her deeply
religious enthusiasm.
In London we met Emily Faithful, who had just returned from a
lecturing-tour in the United States, and were much amused with her
experiences. Having taken prolonged trips over the whole country
from Maine to Texas for many successive years, Miss Anthony and I
could easily add the superlative to all her narrations. She dined
with us one day at Mrs. Mellen's, where we also had the pleasure of
meeting Miss Jane Cobden, a daughter of the great Corn-law
reformer, who was much interested in forming Liberal leagues, to
encourage the Liberal party and interest women in the political
questions under consideration. She passed a day with us at
Basingstoke, and together we visited Mrs. Caird, the author of
"Whom Nature Leadeth," an interesting story of English life. I
found the author a charming woman, but in spite of the title I
really could not find one character in the three volumes that
seemed to follow the teachings of nature.
Two weeks again in London, visiting picture-galleries, museums,
libraries, going to teas, dinners, receptions, concerts, theaters
and reform-meetings; it is enough to turn one's head to think of
all the different clubs and associations managed by women. It was a
source of constant pleasure to me to drive about in hansoms and try
to take in the vastness of that wonderful city; to see the
beautiful equipages, fine saddle-horses and riders and the skill
with which the bicycles were so rapidly engineered through the
crowded streets. The general use of bicycles and tricycles all over
England, even for long journeys, is fast becoming the favorite mode
of locomotion both for ladies and gentlemen.
It was a pleasant surprise to meet the large number of Americans
usually at the receptions of Mrs. Peter Taylor.[580] Graceful and
beautiful in full dress, standing beside her husband, who evidently
idolizes her, Mrs. Taylor appeared quite as refined in her
drawing-room as if she had never been "exposed to the public gaze,"
while presiding over a suffrage convention. Mr. Peter Taylor, M.
P., has been untiring in his endeavors to get a bill through
parliament against "compulsory vaccination." Mrs. Taylor is called
the mother of the suffrage movement. The engraving of her sweet
face which adorns the English chapter will give the reader a good
idea of her character. The reform has not been carried on in all
respects to her taste, nor on what she considers the basis of high
principle. Neither she nor Mrs. Jacob Bright has ever been
satisfied with the bill asking the right of suffrage for "widows
and spinsters" only. To have asked this right "for all women duly
qualified," as but few married women are qualified by possessing
property in their own right, the result would have been
substantially the same without making any invidious distinctions.
Mrs. Taylor and Mrs. Bright felt that as married women were the
greatest sufferers under the law, they should be the first rather
than the last to be enfranchised. The others, led by Miss Becker,
claimed that it was good policy to make the demand for "spinsters
and widows," and thus exclude the "family unit" and "man's
headship" from the discussion; and yet these were the very points
on which the objections were invariably based. They claimed that if
"spinsters and widows" were enfranchised they would be an added
power to secure to married women their rights. But the history of
the past gives no such assurance. It is not certain that women
would be more just than men, and a small privileged class of
aristocrats have long governed their fellow-countrymen. The fact
that the spinsters in the movement advocated such a bill shows that
they are not to be trusted in extending it. John Stuart Mill, too,
was always opposed to the exclusion of married women in the demand
for suffrage.
If our English friends had our system of conventions and
discussions in which every resolution is subject to criticism,
changes could be more readily effected. But as their meetings are
now conducted, a motion to amend a resolution would throw the
platform into the wildest confusion and hopelessly bewilder the
chairman. We saw this experiment made at the great demonstration in
St. James' Hall the night before Mr. Mason's bill was to be acted
on in the House of Commons. For its effect on their champions some
were desirous that a resolution should be endorsed by that great
audience proposing higher ground; that instead of "spinsters and
widows," the demand should be for "all duly qualified women." After
the reading of one of the resolutions Miss Jessie Craigen arose and
proposed such an amendment. Mr. Woodhall, M. P., in the chair,
seemed quite at a loss what to do. She was finally, after much
debate and prolonged confusion, suppressed, whether in a
parliamentary manner or not I am unable to say. Here we should have
discussed the matter at length if it had taken us until midnight,
or adjourned over until next day, "the spinsters and widows" having
been the target for all our barbed arrows until completely
annihilated.
Spending two months in traveling on the continent, Miss Anthony had
many amusing experiences. While visiting our minister and his wife,
Mr. and Mrs. Sargent, at Berlin, she occupied some rainy days, when
sight-seeing was out of the question, in doing up papers and
writing a large number of letters on our official paper, bearing
the revolutionary mottoes, "No just government can be formed
without the consent of the governed," "Taxation without
representation is tyranny." For a brief period she was in the full
enjoyment of that freedom one has when a pressing duty to family
and friends has been thoroughly discharged. But alas! her
satisfaction was soon turned to disappointment. After a few days a
dignified official appeared at the American Legation with a large
package bearing the proscribed mottoes, saying, "such sentiments
cannot pass through the post-office in Germany." So all that form
of propagandism was nipped in the bud, and in modest, uncomplaining
wraps the letters and papers started again for the land of the free
and reached their destination.
But this experience did not satisfy the "Napoleon of our movement"
that the rulers in the old world could securely guard their
subjects from those inflammable mottoes to which from long use we
are so indifferent. She continued to sow the seeds of rebellion as
she had opportunity, in Germany, France, Switzerland and Italy. It
is well for us that she did not experiment in Russia, or we should
now be mourning her loss as an exile in Siberia. At all points of
interest books are kept for visitors to register their names; Miss
Anthony uniformly added some of our Pilgrim Fathers' heroic
ejaculations in their struggle for liberty, which friends visiting
the same places afterwards informed us were carefully crossed out
so as to be quite illegible. But we may hope for their restoration
in the near future and that they may yet do an effective work. Thus
circumscribed with her pen and not being able to speak a foreign
language, happily no rebellions were fomented by her rapid transit
through their borders.
My sense of justice was severely tried with all I heard of the
persecutions of Mrs. Besant and Mr. Bradlaugh for their
publications on the right and duty of parents to limit population.
Who can contemplate the sad condition of multitudes of young
children in the old world whose fate is to be brought up in
ignorance and vice--a swarming, seething mass whom nobody
owns--without seeing the need of free discussion of the
philosophical principles that underlie these tangled social
problems. The trials of Foote and Ramsey, too, for blasphemy,
seemed unworthy a great nation in the nineteenth century. Think of
well-educated men of good moral standing, thrown into prison in
solitary confinement for speaking lightly of the Hebrew idea of
Jehovah and the New Testament account of the birth of Jesus! Our
Protestant clergy never hesitate to make the dogmas and
superstitions of the Catholic church seem as absurd as possible,
and why should not those who imagine they have outgrown Protestant
superstitions make them equally ridiculous? Whatever is true can
stand investigation and ridicule.
The last of April, when the wild-flowers were in their glory, Mrs.
Mellen and her lovely daughter, Daisy, came down to Basingstoke to
enjoy its beauty. As Mrs. Mellen had known Charles Kingsley and
entertained him at her residence in Colorado, she felt a desire to
see his former home. Accordingly, one bright morning Mr. Blatch
drove us through Stralfieldsage over the grounds of the Duke of
Wellington, well stocked with fine cattle, sheep and deer. This
magnificent place was given him by the English government after the
battle of Waterloo. A lofty statue of the duke that can be seen for
miles around stands at the entrance. A drive of a few miles further
brought us to Eversley, the home of Canon Kingsley, where he
preached many years and where all that is mortal of him now lies
buried. We wandered through the old church, among the moss-covered
tombstones and into the once happy home, now silent and deserted,
his loved ones scattered in different quarters of the globe.
Standing near the last resting-place of the author of "Hypatia,"
his warning words for woman, in a letter to John Stuart Mill,
seemed like a voice from the clouds, saying with new inspiration
and power, "This will never be a good world for woman until the
last remnant of the canon law is civilized off the face of the
earth."
Mrs. Mellen's spacious home in Pembroke Gardens, Kensington, was
thrown open for her American friends in London to celebrate the
Fourth of July. A large number of our English acquaintances were
also present, who very kindly congratulated us on the stirring
events of that day in 1776. Of the Americans assembled, many
contributed to the general entertainment. Grace Greenwood, Miss
Rachel Foster, Miss Kate Hillard and Miss Mildred Conway gave
recitations. Miss Lippincott, daughter of Grace Greenwood, sang
some fine operatic music; Mrs. Carpenter of Chicago sang sweetly,
playing her own accompaniment; Mr. Frank Lincoln gave some of his
amusing impersonations; Miss Maud Powell of Chicago, only fourteen
years of age, who had been taking lessons in France and Germany for
some years, played exquisite airs on the violin; Mrs. Flora Stark,
Miss Alice Blatch and Miss Conway gave us some fine classical music
on the piano, and Nathaniel Mellen sang some pathetic negro
melodies.[581] Altogether it was a pleasant occasion and I felt
quite proud of the varied talents manifested by our young people.
Some English friends remarked on their cleverness and readiness,
all spontaneously called out without any time for preparation.
We heard Mr. Fawcett speak to his Hackney constituents at one
of his campaign meetings. In the course of his remarks he
mentioned with evident favor as one of the coming measures the
disestablishment of the church, and was greeted with loud applause.
Soon after he spoke of woman suffrage as another question demanding
consideration, but this was received with laughter and jeers,
although the platform was crowded with advocates of the measure,
among whom were the wife of the speaker and her sister, Dr. Garrett
Anderson, who sat just behind him. The audience were evidently in
favor of releasing themselves from being taxed to support the
church, forgetting that women were taxed also not only to support
the church, in which they had no voice, but the State, too, with
its army and navy. Mr. Fawcett was not an orator, but a simple,
straightforward speaker. He made but one gesture, striking his
right clenched fist into the palm of the left hand at the close of
all his strongest assertions; but being sound and liberal, he was a
great favorite with his constituents.
A pleasant trip southward through Bath to Bristol brought us to the
home of the Misses Priestman and Mrs. Tanner, sisters-in-law of
John Bright. I had stayed at their father's house forty years
before, so we felt like old friends. I found them all charming,
liberal women, and we enjoyed a few days together, talking over our
mutual struggles, and admiring the beautiful scenery for which that
part of the country is quite celebrated. The women of England were
just then organizing political clubs, and I was invited to speak
before the one in Bristol. They are composed of men and women
alike, for the discussion of all political questions. The next day
I spoke to women alone in the church on the Bible view of woman's
creation and destiny. It is strange that those who pretend to be
well-versed in Scripture do not see that the simultaneous creation
of man and woman and the complete equality of the sexes are as
clearly taught in the first chapter of Genesis as the reverse is in
the allegorical garden-scene in the second. The drive over the
suspension-bridge by moonlight to dine with Mrs. Garnet, a sister
of John Thomasson, M. P., was a pleasant episode to public speaking
and more serious conversation. There, too, we had an evening
reception. There is an earnestness of purpose among English women
that is very encouraging under the prolonged disappointments
reformers inevitably suffer. There is something so determined and
heroic in what Mary Priestman does and says that one would readily
follow her through all dangers. It added much to my comfort in
this visit to have an escort in Mrs. Lucas.
Later Miss Anthony visited Bristol and had a complimentary
reception at the Misses Priestman's. She was the guest of Miss Mary
Estlin, who had spent some time in America, a dear friend of Sarah
Pugh and Parker Pillsbury. Miss Estlin was from home during my
visit, so that I did not see her while in England. The order of
English homes among the wealthy classes is very enjoyable. All goes
on from year to year with the same servants, the same surroundings,
no changes, no moving, no building even; in delightful contrast
with our periodical upheavings, always uncertain where we shall go
next, or how long our main dependents will stand by us.
From Bristol we went to Greenbank to visit Mrs. Helen Bright Clark,
a daughter of the great orator. In the evening the parlors were
crowded, and I was asked to give an account of the suffrage
movement in America. Some clergymen questioned me in regard to the
Bible position of woman, whereupon I gave quite an exposition of
its general principles in favor of liberty and equality. As two
quite distinct lines of argument can be woven out of those pages on
any subject, on this occasion I selected all the most favorable
texts for justice to woman, and closed by stating the limits of its
authority. Mrs. Clarke, though thoroughly in sympathy with the
views I had expressed, feared lest my very liberal utterances might
have shocked some of the strictest of the laymen and clergy.
"Well," I said, "if we who do see the absurdities of the old
superstitions never unveil them to others, how is the world to make
any progress in the theologies? I am now in the sunset of life, and
I feel it to be my special mission to tell people what they are not
prepared to hear, instead of echoing worn-out opinions." The result
showed the wisdom of my speaking out of my own soul. To the
surprise of Mrs. Clark, the primitive Methodist clergyman called on
Sunday morning to invite me to occupy his pulpit in the afternoon
and present the same line of thought I had the previous evening. I
accepted his invitation. He led the services and I took my text
from Genesis i., 27, 28, showing that man and woman were a
simultaneous creation, endowed with equal power in starting.
Mr. and Mrs. Clark I found very agreeable, progressive people, with
a nice family of boys and girls. Like all English children, they
suffered too much repression, while our American children have too
much latitude. If we could strike the happy medium between the two
systems, it would be a great benefit to the children of both
countries. The next day we drove down to see Glastonbury cathedral.
England is full of these beautiful ruins, covered with flowers and
ivy, but the saddest spectacles, with all this fading glory, are
the men, women and children whose nakedness neither man nor nature
seeks to drape.
Returning to London we accepted an invitation to take tea with Mrs.
Jacob Bright. A choice circle of three it was, and a large server
of tempting viands was placed on a small table before us. Mrs.
Bright, in earnest conversation, had helped us each to a cup of
tea, and was turning to help us to something more, when over went
table and all, tea, bread and butter, cake, strawberries and cream,
silver, china, in one conglomerate mass. Silence reigned. No one
started; no one said "Oh!" Mrs. Bright went on with what she was
saying as if nothing unusual had occurred, rang the bell, and when
the servant appeared, pointing to the _débris_, she said, "Charles,
remove this." I was filled with admiration at her coolness, and
devoutly thankful that we Americans maintained an equally dignified
silence.
At a grand reception given in our honor by the National Central
Committee, in Princess' Hall, Mr. Jacob Bright, M. P., presided and
made an admirable opening speech, followed by his sister, Mrs.
McLaren, with a highly complimentary address of welcome. By
particular request Miss Anthony gave a presentation of the
industrial, legal and political status of American women; while I
set forth their educational, social and religious limitations. Mr.
John P. Thomasson, M. P., made the closing address, expressing his
satisfaction with the addresses of the ladies and the progress made
in both countries.[582]
Mrs. Thomasson, daughter of Mrs. Lucas, gave several delightful
evening parties,[583] receptions and dinners, some for ladies
alone, where an abundant opportunity was offered for a critical
analysis of the idiosyncracies of the superior sex, especially in
their political dealings with women. The patience of even such
heroic souls as Lydia Becker and Caroline Biggs was almost
exhausted with the tergiversations of members of the House of
Commons. Alas for the many fair promises broken, the hopes
deferred, the votes fully relied on and counted, all missing in the
hour of action. One crack of Mr. Gladstone's whip put a hundred
Liberals to flight in a twinkling, members whom these noble women
had spent years in educating. I never visited the House of Commons
that I did not see Miss Becker and Miss Biggs trying to elucidate
the fundamental principles of just government to some of them.
Verily their divine faith and patience merited more worthy action
on the part of their representatives.
We formed very pleasant friendships with Miss Frances Lord and Miss
Henrietta Müller, spending several days with the latter at 58
Cadogan square, and both alike visited us at different times in
Basingstoke. Miss Lord has translated some of Ibsen's plays very
creditably to herself, and, we understand, to the satisfaction of
the Swedish poet. Miss Lord is a cultured, charming woman,
attractive in society, and has a rare gift in conversation; she is
rather shrinking in her feelings. Miss Müller, her devoted friend,
is just the opposite; fearless, aggressive and self-centered. Miss
Lord discharged her duties as poor-law guardian faithfully, and
Miss Müller, as member of the London school-board, claimed her
rights when infringed upon, and maintained the dignity of her
position with a good degree of tact and heroism. We met Miss
Whitehead, another poor-law guardian, at Miss Müller's, and had a
long talk on the sad condition of the London poor and the grand
work Octavia Hill had done among them. Miss Müller read us a paper
on the dignity and office of single women. Her idea seems to be
very much like that expressed by St. Paul in his epistles, that it
is better for those who have a genius for public work in the church
or State not to marry; and Miss Müller carries her theory into
practice thus far. She has a luxurious establishment of her own, is
fully occupied in politics and reform, and though she lives by
herself she entertains her friends generously, and does whatever it
seems good to her to do. As she is bright and entertaining and has
many worshipers, she may fall a victim to the usual fate in spite
of her admirable essay, which has been printed in tract form and
circulated extensively in England and America. Miss Müller gave
Miss Anthony and myself a farewell reception on the eve of our
departure for America, when we had the opportunity of meeting once
more most of the pleasant acquaintances we had made in London.
Although it was announced for the afternoon, we did in fact receive
all day as many as could not come at the hour appointed. Dr.
Elizabeth Blackwell took breakfast with us; Mrs. Fawcett, Mrs.
Seville[584] and Miss Lord were with us at luncheon; Harriet Hosmer
and Olive Logan soon after; Mrs. Peter Taylor later, and from three
to six o'clock the parlors were crowded.
Returning from London I passed my birthday, November 12, in
Basingstoke. It was a sad day to us all, knowing that it was the
last before my departure for America. When I imprinted the farewell
kiss on the soft cheek of little Nora in the cradle, she in the
dawn and I in the sunset of life, I realized how widely the long
years and the broad ocean would separate us forever. Miss Anthony,
who had been visiting Mrs. Parker, near Warrington, met me at
Alderly Edge, where we spent a few days in the charming home of Mr.
and Mrs. Jacob Bright. There we found their noble sisters, Mrs.
McLaren and Mrs. Lucas, young Walter McLaren and his lovely bride,
Eva Müller, whom we had heard several times on the suffrage
platform. We rallied her on the step she had lately taken,
notwithstanding her sister's able paper on the blessedness of a
single life. While here we visited Dean Stanley's birthplace; but
on his death the light and joy went out, and the atmosphere of the
old church whose walls had once echoed to his voice, and the house
where he had spent so many useful years, seemed sad and deserted.
But the day was bright and warm, the scenery all around was
beautiful, cows and sheep were still grazing in the meadows, the
grass as green as in June. This is England's chief charm, forever
green, some compensation for the many cloudy days. An evening
reception in Mrs. Bright's spacious parlors, with friends from
Manchester and other adjoining towns, with speeches of welcome and
farewell, finished our visit at Alderly Edge.
As our good friends Mrs. McLaren and Mrs. Lucas had determined to
see us safely on board the Servia, they escorted us to Liverpool,
where we met Mrs. Margaret Parker, Mrs. Scatcherd and Dr. Fanny
Dickinson of Chicago. Another reception was given us at the
residence of Dr. Ewing Whittle. Several short speeches were
made, all cheering the parting guests with words of hope and
encouragement for the good cause.
Here the wisdom of forming an international association was
considered. The proposition met with such favor from those present
that a committee was appointed to correspond with the friends in
different nations. As Miss Anthony and myself are members of that
committee,[585] now that these volumes are finished and we are at
liberty once more, we shall ascertain as soon as possible the
feasibility of a grand international conference in New York in
1888, to celebrate the fourth decade of our movement for woman's
enfranchisement. Such conventions have been held by the friends of
anti-slavery, peace, temperance, social purity and evangelical
christianity, and why may not the suffrage cause, too, receive a
new impetus from the united efforts of its friends in all
countries.
On the broad Atlantic for ten days we had many opportunities to
review all we had seen and heard. There we met our noble friends,
Mr. and Mrs. Hussey of New Jersey; also Mrs. Margaret Buchanan
Sullivan of Chicago, just returning from an extended tour in
Ireland, who gave us many of her rich experiences. Sitting on deck
hour after hour, how often I queried with myself as to the
significance of the boon for which women were so earnestly
struggling. In asking for a voice in the government under which we
live, have we been pursuing a shadow for forty years? In seeking
political power, are we abdicating that social throne where they
tell us our influence is unbounded? No! no! the right of suffrage
is no shadow, but a substantial entity that the citizen can seize
and hold for his own protection and his country's welfare. A direct
power over one's own person and property, an individual opinion to
be counted on all questions of public interest, is better than
indirect influence, be it ever so far-reaching.
Though influence, like the pure white light, is all-pervading, yet
it is oft-times obscured with passing clouds and nights of
darkness; like the sun's rays, it may be healthy, genial,
inspiring, though sometimes too direct for comfort, too oblique for
warmth, too scattered for any given purpose. But as the prism by
dividing the rays of light reveals to us the brilliant coloring of
the atmosphere, and as the burning-glass by concentrating them in a
focus intensifies their heat, so does the right of suffrage reveal
the beauty and power of individual sovereignty in the great drama
of national life, while on a vital measure of public interest it
combines the many voices of the people in a grand chorus of protest
or applause.
After an unusually calm, pleasant voyage, for November, we sailed
up our beautiful New York harbor just as the sun was rising in all
his glory, gilding every hill-top and distant spire in the
landscape, and with grateful hearts we celebrated the national
Thanksgiving-day once more with loving friends in the great
Republic.
FOOTNOTES:
[575] He asked me confidentially if I knew what the "D" in his name
stood for. "Why," said I, "in line with your profession, it must be
for 'Divinity,' or 'Doxology.'" "No," said he, "for 'Dynamite.'" As
we were being blown up just then in all parts of London, I begged
him not to explode until Sunday morning in old South Church, as I
would rather see a wreck of the old theologies than of our charming
hostess and Corney Green, who were giving us this pleasant
entertainment.
[576] She says she prefers to be known as the wife of Duncan
McLaren, a member of parliament from Edinburgh for sixteen years,
who always voted right on the woman question, while John Bright is
opposed to the movement.
[577] She occupies the home of an English woman who has taken her
seven children to Germany for their education. How strange it is
that so many parents imagine that they can educate their children
better in a foreign land.
[578] After dinner, while the gentlemen still lingered at the
table, the ladies being alone, an unusual amount of heresy as to
the rights of "the divinely appointed head of the house" found
expression. A young English-woman, who had been brought up in great
retirement, turned to me and said, "I never heard such declarations
before; do you ladies all really believe that God intended men and
women to be equal, and do you really feel that girls have a right
to enjoy as many privileges as boys?" In chorus we all promptly
said, "We do," and I added, "If you will recall all the events of
your life thus far, and your own feelings at times, you will find
that again and again your own heart has protested against the
injustice to which you have been subjected. Now," said I, "think a
little, and see if you can recall no sense of dissatisfaction at
the broad difference made between your sisters and brothers."
"Well," said she, "I did often wonder why father gave the boys half
a crown a week for spending money, and us girls a few pence; why so
much thought and money were expended on their education, and so
little on ours; but as I saw that that was the custom everywhere, I
came to the conclusion that they were a superior order of beings,
and so thought no more about it, and I never heard that theory
contradicted until this evening."
[579] Among these were Mr. and Mrs. Haslam, Mr. Wigham, brother of
Eliza Wigham, and his cultured wife; Hannah Webb, the daughter of
Richard, and Thomas Webb and daughters, in whose old family-record
book of visitors she was shown the autographs of William Lloyd
Garrison and Nathaniel P. Rogers over the date of 1840.
[580] On one occasion I counted fourteen: Miss Risley Seward, Mrs.
Louise Chandler Moulton, Mrs. Laura Curtis Bullard, Miss Rachel
Foster, Mrs. William Mellen and two sons and daughters, Mr.
Theodore Tilton. Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton Blatch and myself.
[581] Aside from those already mentioned were William Henry
Channing, L. N. Fowler, the phrenologist, and his daughter; Mrs.
Louise Chandler Moulton, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Stanton Blatch, Miss
Anthony, Mrs. Powell, Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Phillips, several members
from the Bright, the McLaren and the Cobden families, Mrs. Conway,
Miss Emily Faithful, Mr. William Henry Blatch, Mr. Stark, the
artist; Philip Marston, the blind poet; Miss Orme and Miss
Richardson, attorneys-at-law; Judge Kelley, wife and daughter
Florence, Miss Lydia Becker, Miss Caroline Biggs and sisters, Miss
Julia Osgood.
[582] Among the distinguished persons on the platform were Frances
Power Cobbe, Dr. Garrett Anderson, Mrs. Fawcett, Mrs. Jacob Bright,
Mrs. Lucas, Mrs. Thomasson, Mrs. Margaret Parker, Mrs. Alice
Scatcherd, Miss Becker, Miss Biggs, Mrs. Moore, Mr. and Mrs.
Conway, Oscar Wilde and his queenly mother, Charles McLaren, M. P.,
Mrs. Peter A. Taylor, Miss Helen Taylor, Miss Orme, Miss Müller,
Miss Lord, Miss Foster, Mrs. and Miss Blatch, Mrs. Mellen, Miss Tod
of Belfast, Mrs. Chesson, daughter of George Thompson, the great
anti-slavery orator, and very many others whose names we cannot
recall.
[583] Where we met Mrs. Fawcett, Dr. Garrett Anderson, Sir Hugh
Staples, Mr. Mitchell, the Misses Stackpole and brothers, Madame
Venturi, Miss Biggs and sisters, Miss Frances Lord and her sister,
who is doing a noble work in her kindergarten.
[584] Mrs. Seville, whose husband was a professor at Sandhurst
College, having recently awoke to the indignities the church heaps
upon women, made her protest in discarding her bonnet and appearing
on Sundays with her head uncovered, contrary to Paul's injunctions.
Having thus attended church for two years, involving much criticism
and disturbance, both the vicar and the bishop labored with her to
resume the bonnet, but she remained incorrigible. She read us a
letter of remonstrance from the bishop, over which we all had a
hearty laugh.
[585] The following is the report of the action prepared that
evening by Mrs. Parker: "At a large and influential gathering of
the friends of woman suffrage, at Parliament Terrace, Liverpool,
November 16, 1883, convened by E. Whittle, M. D., to meet Mrs.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Miss Susan B. Anthony prior to their
return to America, it was proposed by Mrs. Margaret E. Parker of
Penketh (near Warrington), seconded by Mrs. McLaren of Edinburgh,
and unanimously passed:
"That this meeting, recognizing that union is strength and that the
time has come when women all over the world should unite in the
just demand for their political enfranchisement; therefore
"_Resolved_, That we do here appoint a committee of correspondence,
preparatory to forming an International Woman Suffrage Association.
"_Resolved_, That the committee consist of the following friends,
with power to add to their number:
"_For the American Center_--Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Miss Susan
B. Anthony, Miss Rachel Foster. _London Center_--Mrs. Peter A.
Taylor, Mrs. Margaret B. Lucas, Miss Helen Taylor, Miss Henrietta
Müller, Miss Caroline A. Biggs, Mr. and Mrs. Charles McLaren, Miss
Eliza Orme, Miss Rebecca Moore, London; Mrs. Harriot Stanton
Blatch, Basingstoke. _Manchester Center_--Mr. and Mrs. Jacob
Bright, Manchester; Mr. and Mrs. J. P. Thomasson, Bolton; Mrs.
Margaret E. Parker, Penketh; Dr. and Mrs. Whittle, Liverpool; Mrs.
Oliver Scatcherd, Leeds; Mr. and Mrs. Walter McLaren, Bradford;
Mrs. Philips, Liverpool; Mr. and Mrs. Crook, Bolton; Mr. Berners,
Mr. Russell, Liverpool; Miss Becker, Manchester. _Bristol
Center_--Miss Helen Bright Clarke, Street; Mrs. Alfred Ostler,
Birmingham; Miss Priestman, Bristol. _Center for Scotland_--Mrs.
Duncan McLaren, Mrs. Elizabeth Pease Nichol, Miss Eliza Wigham,
Edinburgh. _Center for Ireland_--Miss Tod, Belfast; Mrs. Haslam,
Dublin. _Center for France_--M'lle Hubertine Auclert, Mr. and Mrs.
Theodore Stanton, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Paris.
APPENDIX.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE CENTENNIAL YEAR.
Among those who sent most cordial letters of greeting, with
requests that their names should be enrolled in the centennial
autograph-book as signers of the woman's declaration of sentiments,
were: _Maine_, Lavinia M. Snow, Lucy A. Snow; _New Hampshire_,
Marilla M. Ricker, Abby P. Ela; _Massachusetts_, E. T. Strickland,
Sarah E. Wall; _Rhode Island_, Paulina Wright Davis; _Connecticut_,
Isabella Beecher Hooker, Frances Ellen Burr, Julia and Abby Smith;
_New York_, Clemence S. Lozier, Henrietta Paine Westbrook, Nettie
A. Ford, Elizabeth B. Phelps, Charlotte A. Cleveland, Elizabeth M.
Atwell; _Pennsylvania_, E. A. Stetson Lozier, Anna Thomson; _New
Jersey_, Ellen Dickinson, S. Mary Clute, Mary M. Van Clief, S. H.
Cornell, Emma L. Wilde, Jennie Dixon, Casa Tonti, Marie Howland,
Lucinda B. Chandler; _District of Columbia_, Addie T. Holton,
Margaret E. Johnson, Sabra P. Abell, Ruth Carr Dennison, Ellen H.
Sheldon, Mary Shadd Cary and ninety-four others, Mary F. Foster,
Susan A. Edson; _Virginia_, Sally Holly, Carrie Putnam; _Kentucky_,
Annie Laurie Quinby; _Tennessee_, Elizabeth Avery Meriwether;
_Louisiana_, Elizabeth Lisle Saxon; _Michigan_, Sarah C. Owen,
Margaret J. E. Millar; _Illinois_, A. J. Grover, Edward P. Powell,
Cynthia A. Leonard, Susan H. Richardson; _Missouri_, Francis Minor,
Annie R. Irvine; _California_, Sarah L. Knox, Sarah J. Wallis,
Carrie M. Robinson, Mary E. Kellogg, Georgiana Bruce Kirby;
_Oregon_, Mrs. A. J. Johns, Eveline Merrick Roork, Charles A. Reed;
_Washington Territory_, Mary Olney Brown, Abby H. H. Stuart; _Utah
Territory_, Annie Godbe; _Iowa_, Amelia Bloomer, Submit C. Loomis,
Philo A. Lyon and seventy-five others of Humboldt, Jane A. Telker,
Nancy R. Allen, Margaret Euart Colby, Mrs. Ellen M. Robinson, Mrs.
G. R. Woodworth, Mrs. W. W. Johnson, Mrs. Caroline A. Ingham, Mrs.
Mabel A. Stough, Mrs. R. H. Spencer, Mrs. J. W. Kenyon, Mrs. A. M.
Horton, Miss L. T. Dood, Mary L. Watson, Mrs. Sarah A. McCoy, Mrs.
J. J. Wilson, Mrs. F. L. Calkins, Mrs. L. H. Smith, Mrs. Emma C.
Spear, Mrs. M. L. Burlingame, Mrs. G. W. Blanchard, Mrs. D. L.
Ford, Mrs. E. C. Buffam, Mrs. Cora A. Jones, Mrs. Clara M. Wilson;
_Wisconsin_, Laura Ross Wolcott, M. Josephine Pearce, Eliza T.
Wilson, H. S. Brown; _Minnesota_, Sarah Burger Stearns; _Kansas_,
Susan E. Wattles, Elsie Stewart, Henrietta L. Miller, Lottie
Griffin, Jane M. Burke, Malura Hickson, Elsie J. Miller;
_Colorado_, Alida C. Avery; _Ohio_, Sarah R. L. Williams, Margaret
V. Longley; _England_, Lydia E. Becker, Caroline A. Biggs, Jessie
M. Wellstood.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XXX.
CONSTITUTION OF THE NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION.
ARTICLE 1. This organization shall be called the NATIONAL WOMAN
SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION.
ARTICLE 2. The object of this Association shall be to secure
NATIONAL Protection for women in the exercise of their right to
vote.
ARTICLE 3. All citizens of the United States subscribing to this
Constitution, and contributing not less than one dollar annually,
shall be considered members of the Association, with the right to
participate in its deliberations.
ARTICLE 4. The officers of this Association shall be a President, a
Vice-President from each of the States and Territories,
Corresponding and Recording Secretaries, a Treasurer and an
Executive Committee of not less than five.
ARTICLE 5. A quorum of the Executive Committee shall consist of
nine, and all officers of this Association shall be _ex-officio_
members of the committee, with power to vote.
ARTICLE 6. All woman suffrage societies throughout the country
shall be welcomed as auxiliaries, and their accredited officers or
duly appointed representatives shall be recognized as members of
the National Association.
OFFICERS OF THE NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION, 1886.
_President_--Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Tenafly, N. J.
_Vice-Presidents-at-Large_--Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, N. Y.;
Matilda Joslyn Gage, Fayetteville, N. Y.; Rev. Olympia Brown,
Racine, Wis.; Phoebe W. Couzins, St. Louis, Mo.; Abigail Scott
Duniway, Portland, Ore.
_Honorary Vice-Presidents_--Ernestine L. Rose, London, England;
Priscilla Holmes Drake, Huntsville, Ala.; Mrs. Perry Spear, Eureka
Springs, Ark.; Sarah. J. Wallis, Mayfield; Sarah Knox Goodrich, San
José, Cal.; Mary F. Shields, Colorado Springs, Col.; Rev. Phebe A.
Hanaford, New Haven, Conn.; Rev. Eliza Tupper Wilkes, Sioux Falls,
Dak. Ter.; Rosina M. Parnell, Susan A. Edson, M. D., Ellen M.
O'Connor, Washington, D. C.; Catherine V. Waite, Myra Bradwell,
Chicago, Ill.; Zerelda G. Wallace, Indianapolis; Eliza Hamilton,
Fort Wayne, Ind.; Amelia Bloomer, Council Bluffs; Mary V. Cowgill,
West Liberty, Ia.; Prudence Crandall Philleo, Elk Falls; Mary T.
Gray, Wyandotte; Mary A. Humphrey, Junction City, Kan.; Elizabeth
H. Duval, Rinaldo, Ky.; Ann T. Greeley, Ellsworth; Lucy A. Snow,
Rockland, Me.; Anna Ella Carroll, Baltimore, Md.; Sarah E. Wall,
Worcester; Paulina Gerry, Stoneham, Mass.; Catherine A. F.
Stebbins, Detroit, Mich.; Charlotte O. Van Cleve, Minneapolis,
Minn.; Caroline Johnson Todd, St. Louis, Mo.; Harriet S. Brooks,
Omaha, Neb.; Eliza E. Morrill, Sarah H. Pillsbury, Concord; Mary
Powers Filley, North Haverhill, N. H.; Sarah G. Hurn, Vineland;
Delia Stewart Parnell, Bordentown, N. J.; Clemence S. Lozier, M.
D., New York; Amy Post, Rochester; Sarah H. Hallock, Milton; Mary
R. Pell, Flushing, N. Y.; Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Hollywood, N. C.;
Sophia O. Allen, South Newbury; Sarah R. L. Williams, Toledo;
Louise Southworth, Cleveland, O.; Harriet W. Williams, Portland,
Ore.; M. Adeline Thomson, Philadelphia, Penn.; Catherine C.
Knowles, East Greenwich; Elizabeth B. Chace, Valley Falls, R. I.;
Elizabeth Van Lew, Richmond, Va.; Mary Olney Brown, Abbie H. H.
Stuart, Olympia, Wash. Ter.; Laura Ross Wolcott, Milwaukee; Emma C.
Bascom, Madison, Wis.
_Vice-Presidents_--Caroline M. Patterson, Harrison, Ark.; Ellen
Clarke Sargent, San Francisco, Cal.; Mrs. L. J. Terry, Pueblo,
Col.; Isabella Beecher Hooker, Hartford, Conn.; Marietta M. Bones,
Webster City, Dak.; Mary A. Stewart, Greenwood, Del.; Ruth C.
Dennison, Washington, D. C.; Mrs. C. B. S. Wilcox, Interlachen,
Fla.; Althea L. Lord, Savannah, Ga.; Dr. Jennie Bearby, Mountain
Home, Idaho; Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Evanston, Ill.; Helen M.
Gougar, Lafayette, Ind.; Jane Amy McKinney, Decorah, Ia.; Laura M.
Johns, Salina Kan.; Mary B. Clay, Richmond, Ky.; Caroline E.
Merrick, New Orleans, La.; Sophronia C. Snow, Hampden Corners, Me.;
Caroline Hallowell Miller, Sandy Spring, Md.; Harriette R.
Shattuck, Malden, Mass.; Fannie Holden Fowler, Manistee, Mich.;
Sarah Burger Stearns, Duluth, Minn.; Olivia Fitzhugh, Vicksburg,
Miss.; Virginia L. Minor, St. Louis, Mo.; Clara Bewick Colby,
Beatrice, Neb.; Maria H. Boardman, Reno, Nev.; Ada M. Jarrett,
Magdalena, N. Mex.; Marilla M. Ricker, Dover, N. H.; Cornelia C.
Hussey, East Orange, N. J.; Lillie Devereux Blake, New York, N. Y.;
Mary Bayard Clarke, New Berne, N. C.; Frances D. Casement,
Painesville, O.; Harriette A. Loughary, McMinneville, Ore.; Matilda
Hindman, Pittsburgh, Penn.; Anna S. Aldrich, Providence, R. I.;
Elizabeth Lisle Saxon, Memphis, Tenn.; Jennie Bland Beauchamp,
Denton, Tex.; Jennie A. Froiseth, Salt Lake City, Utah; Lydia
Putnam, Brattleboro', Vt.; Mrs. Roger S. Greene, Seättle, Wash.
Ter.: Alura C. Collins, Milwaukee, Wis.; Amalia B. Post, Cheyenne,
Wyoming.
_Executive Committee_--May Wright Sewall, _Chairman_, 429 North New
Jersey street, Indianapolis, Ind.; Laura DeForce Gordon, San
Francisco; Mary J. Channing, Pasadena, Cal.; Dr. Alida C. Avery,
Denver, Col.; Frances Ellen Burr, Emily P. Collins, Hartford,
Conn.; Mrs. J. S. Pickler, Falktown; Linda W. Slaughter, Bismark,
Dak. Ter.; Belva A. Lockwood, Dr. Caroline B. Winslow, Washington,
D. C.; Flora M. Wright, Drayton Island, Fla.; Julia Mills Dunn,
Moline; Rev. Florence Kollock, Englewood; Dr. Alice B. Stockham,
Ada C. Sweet, Chicago, Ill.; Mary E. Haggart, Mary E. N. Cary,
Indianapolis, Ind.; Narcisa T. Bemis, Independence; Mary J.
Coggeshall, Des Moines, Ia; Annie C. Wait, Lincoln Center;
Henrietta B. Wall, Mrs. S. A. Hauk, Hutchinson, Kan.; Sally Clay
Bennett, Mary A. Somers, Richmond; Laura White, Manchester, Ky.;
Maria I. Johnson, Mound, La.; Charlotte A. Thomas, Portland, Me.;
Amanda M. Best, Bright Seat, Md.; Harriet H. Robinson, Malden; Sara
A. Underwood, Dorchester Mass.; Julia Upton, Big Rapids; Cordelia
Fitch Briggs, Grand Rapids, Mich.; Julia Bullard Nelson, Red Wing:
Mrs. L. H. Hawkins, Shakopee; Mary P. Wheeler, Kasson, Minn.; Anne
R. Irvine, Oregon; Elizabeth A. Meriwether, St. Louis, Mo.; Jennie
F. Holmes, Tecumseh; Orpha C. Dinsmoore, Omaha, Neb.; Hannah R.
Clapp, Carson City, Nev.; Mrs. A. B. I. Roberts, Candia, N. H.;
Augusta Cooper Bristol, Vineland; Theresa A. Seabrook, Keyport, N.
J.; Mathilde F. Wendt, New York; Caroline G. Rogers, Lansingburgh;
Ellen S. Fray, Lewia C. Smith, Rochester, N. Y.; Sarah M. Perkins,
Elvira J. Bushnell, Cleveland; Sarah S. Bissell, Toledo, O.; Mrs.
J. M. Kelty, Lafayette, Ore.; Deborah L. Pennock, Kennett Square;
Harriet Purvis, Philadelphia, Penn.; Lillie Chace Wyman, Valley
Falls, R. I.; Lide Meriwether, Memphis, Tenn.; Mrs. D. Clinton
Smith, Middleboro', Vt.; Mrs. F. D. Gordon, Richmond, Va.; Eliza T.
Wilson, Menomonie; Laura James, Richland Center, Wis.; Barbara J,
Thompson, Tacoma, Wash. Ter.; Mrs. J. H. Hayford, Laramie City,
Wyoming Ter.
_Recording Secretaries_--Julia A. Wilbur, Caroline A. Sherman,
Washington, D. C.
_Corresponding Secretaries_--Rachel G. Foster, Philadelphia, Penn.;
Ellen H. Sheldon, Washington, D. C.
_Foreign Corresponding Secretaries_--Caroline A. Biggs, London;
Lydia E. Becker, Manchester, England; Marguerite Berry Stanton,
Hubertine Auclert, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Paris, France; Clara
Neymann, Berlin, Germany.
_Treasurer_--Jane H. Spofford, Riggs House, Washington, D. C.
_Auditors_--Eliza T. Ward, Ellen M. O'Connor, Washington, D. C.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XXXII.
CONNECTICUT.
_Is the Family the Basis of the State?_
BY JOHN HOOKER.
The proposition that the family is the basis of the State has come
down through many generations, so far as I know, unchallenged; but
in the sense in which it is ordinarily understood, and for the
purpose for which it is ordinarily used, it is entirely a fallacy.
The State depends upon the family for the continuance of its
population, just as it depends upon the school for the intelligence
of its people and on religious institutions for their morality.
But the State stands in no political relation to the family any
more than to the school and the church. What is meant by the
proposition as generally used is, that the State is politically an
aggregate of families and not of individuals. This is entirely
untrue, and if true the fact would be calamitous. Civil government
is supposed to have had its origin in family government, the
patriarch becoming chief of a tribe which was substantially the
outgrowth and expansion of a single family; but if a nation was to
be formed of such tribes it would be essential to its peace and
prosperity that they should as soon as possible mingle into one
homogeneous mass, and that no citizen should consider himself of
one tribe rather than another. It is the family idea in a
government like ours that makes the feuds which are handed down
from generation to generation in some parts of the country. It made
the frequent bloody contests of the clans in Scotland, and the
dissensions of the Hebrew tribes. In a republic nothing can be more
disastrous than that great political leaders should have large
family followings. The first duty of the citizen is to forget that
he belongs to any family in particular. He is an individual citizen
of the State, and when he becomes a magistrate he must practically
ignore the fact that he has family relatives who feel entitled to
his special favor. He must, like justice, be blind to every fact
except that the applicant for office or for justice is an
individual citizen and must stand wholly on his personal merits or
the justice of his cause.
The proposition that the family is the basis of the State thus
taken by itself is entirely false; but even if true, the use made
of it as an argument against giving suffrage to women is equally
fallacious. This can be shown by a single illustration. We will
suppose there are two families, in both of which the father dies,
leaving in one case a widow and one son, and in the other a widow
and six daughters. Where is now the family representation? The son
whom we will suppose to be of age, goes to the polls and we will
suppose sufficiently represents the family to which he belongs; but
where is the family representation for the other widow and her six
daughters? She may be the largest tax-payer in the State, and yet
she can have no voice in determining what taxes shall be laid, nor
to what purposes the money shall be appropriated.
The question whether the family is the basis of the State cannot be
made an abstract question of political philosophy. Indeed the
question is unmeaning when put as an abstract one. We might just as
well ask, "Is the climate cold in a State?" or, "Is the English
language spoken in a State?" It is only as we ask these questions
about a _particular_ State that they have any meaning. "Is it cold
in Russia?" "Is English spoken in Connecticut?"
Take the case of a State ruled by a despot. Here the people are not
the political basis of the State, either as families or as
individuals. They have no political power whatever. The political
basis of the State is the will of the despot. He is himself and
alone the State politically. He makes the laws himself, and shoots
and hangs those who disobey them. The people are indispensable to
the State, and so in one sense its basis, just as the square miles
that compose its territory are its physical basis, but the people
stand in no political relation whatever to the State, any more than
the rocks and gravel of its territory. It is only where the people
of the State have the whole or a part of its political power, that
the question can possibly arise as to whether individuals or
families are its political basis. And when it thus arises, it comes
up wholly with reference to a particular State, and not as an
abstract question. And then it is wholly a question of fact, not
one of political philosophy; a matter for simple ascertainment, not
for speculation and reasoning. Thus, suppose the question to be,
"Is the family or the individual the political basis of the State
of Connecticut?" We are to answer the question solely by looking at
the constitution and laws of the State. We look there and find that
it is as clear as language can make it that the political basis of
the State is the individual and not the family. The individual is
made the voter--not the family--and that is the whole question. It
was perfectly easy for the people, if they had so desired, when
they were adopting a constitution, to make families and not
individuals the depositaries of political power, but they chose to
give the power to individuals, and thus the question is absolutely
settled for the State. It is true, the State does not carry out
completely its own theory, but this was its theory, and what it did
was wholly in this direction and away from the family theory. We go
to the constitution of the State to settle this question, just as
we would to settle the question whether the governor's term is one
year or two, or whether the judges hold office for a term of years
or for life. While considering whether either of these provisions
ought to be adopted, we are dealing with a matter proper for
opinions and argument, but when the provisions have been adopted,
the whole question becomes one of fact, and we look only to the
constitution to determine it, and treat it as a matter not for
discussion but for absolute ascertainment.
When one is advocating the theory that the family should be the
political basis of the State, he is simply saying that the
constitution ought to be amended and the right of voting taken away
from individuals and given to families. But it is idle to urge
this. Such a measure would not get even a respectable minority
of votes. It is decisive on this point that not a single
representative government, so far as the writer knows, has adopted
the theory that the family and not the individual should vote. A
law peculiar to Russia gives its villages, in the management of
their local matters, the right of voting by families--a perfect
illustration, on a very small scale, of the family as the political
basis of a State. But here woman suffrage is admitted as a
necessary result; and where there is no man to represent the
family, or he is unable to attend, the woman of the house casts the
vote.
The advocates of woman suffrage have no interest whatever in this
question, as it is idle to suppose that it can become a practical
one. The writer has taken what trouble he has in the matter solely
in the interest of correct thinking.
_Hartford, May, 1879._
* * * * *
CHAPTER XXXVII.
NEW YORK.
_Brief on the Legislature's Power to Extend the Suffrage,
Submitted February 19, 1880, to the Judiciary Committee of the
Assembly of the State of New York._
BY HAMILTON WILCOX.
I. LEGISLATURE OMNIPOTENT.--Unlike the Federal constitution, the
State constitution does not reserve all powers not expressly
delegated. It is held by the authorities that in the absence of
positive restriction the legislature is omnipotent.
"In a judicial sense, their authority is absolute and unlimited,
except by the express restrictions of the fundamental law" (Court
of Appeals, 1863, Bank of Chenango vs. Brown, 26 N. Y., 467; S. P.,
Cathcart vs. Fire Department of New York, Id., 529; Supreme Court,
1864, Clark vs. Miller, 42 Barb., 255; Luke vs. City of Brooklyn,
43 Id., 54).
"Only on the ground of express constitutional provisions limiting
legislative power, can courts declare void any legislative
enactment" (Court of Error. 1838, Cochran vs. Van Surlay, 29 Wend.,
365; Newell vs. People, 7 N. Y. [3 Seld.], 9, 109).
"Before proceeding to amend, by judicial sentence, what has been
enacted by the law-making power, it should clearly appear that the
act cannot be supported by any reasonable intendment or allowable
presumption" (Court of Appeals, 1858, People vs. Supervisors of
Orange, 17 N. Y., 235; affi'g, 27 Barb., 575).
II. POWERS UNDEFINED.--The constitution forbids the legislature to
do certain things. Otherwise it does not define or limit the
legislature's powers (Art. 3, §§ 3, 18, 19, 24).
III. NO PROHIBITION.--No constitution of New York has ever
forbidden the legislature to extend the suffrage beyond the
classes specified by such constitution; nor has any ever forbidden
unspecified persons to vote. The constitution simply secures the
suffrage to certain classes, and there leaves the matter.
IV. RULE OF CONSTRUCTION.--The constitution declares that the
object of its establishment is to secure the blessings of freedom
to the people (Preamble, Revised Statutes, vol. 1., p. 82). Hence
it, and all enactments under it, must be understood and construed,
where a contrary intent is not clearly expressed, to be aimed at
securing freedom to all.
V. DISFRANCHISEMENT.--The constitution follows this declaration by
laying down at its outset, as its fundamental principle, that "No
member of this State shall be disfranchised or deprived of any of
the rights or privileges secured to any citizens thereof, except by
the law of the land" (Art. 1, § 1, do., do.). Disfranchisement,
then, must be express by the law. It cannot constitutionally be
inflicted through mere implication or silence.
Rules for the securing of freedom have often been found to cover
unforeseen cases. Such was the fact in the famous decision of Lord
Mansfield in 1774, that slavery was against the common law, under
which slavery was afterward abolished throughout the British
empire; and the decision of the highest court of Massachusetts,
that the terms of the constitution of 1780 conferred freedom on the
slaves of that State.
Women, it is now fully recognized, are citizens, and hence "members
of the State," entitled to the security guaranteed. The _practice_
under the constitution has been to treat as _disfranchised_ all
persons _not specified_ as entitled to vote. Though this practice
is plainly against the declared object and principle of the
constitution, it has been general and mostly continuous, and has
thus acquired the force of law. This, however, does not impair the
legislature's power to correct the practice by express enactment.
VI. PRECEDENTS.--The legislature _has_ repeatedly corrected this
practice by express enactments securing freedom to various portions
of the people.
(_a_). CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, 1801.--The act calling this
convention extended the suffrage for members of that body--_the
highest officers of the State_--to "all free male citizens over
twenty-one years of age," while the constitution secured suffrage
only to male holders of and actual taxpayers on a fixed amount of
real estate (Session Law 1801, ch. 69, p. 151; constitution of
1777, do., 1, 39).
(_b_). CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, 1821.--The act providing for the
convention that framed the constitution of 1822, while the existing
constitution (as above) only specified as entitled to vote, holders
of and taxpayers on a fixed amount of real estate--this act allowed
_all_ freeholders, however small the value of their holdings, all
actual taxpayers, all officers and privates, ex-officers and
ex-privates, in militia or in volunteer or uniform corps, all
persons exempt by law from taxation or militia duty, all workers on
public roads and highways, or payers of commutation for such work;
to vote on the question whether the convention should be held, to
vote in the choice of delegates thereto--_again for the highest
officers of the State_--and to vote on the question of adoption of
the new constitution--_to exercise a voice in framing the State's
fundamental law_. The council of revision, including the governor,
which opposed and defeated part of this act, made no objection to
this feature (Session Laws 1821, ch. 90, p. 83).
The vote for governor, 1820, was 93,437--the largest ever cast in
the State. That on the question of calling the convention in 1821
was 144,247. One act of the legislature thus enfranchised _fifty
thousand persons_. The vote on the new constitution stood: For,
74,732; against, 41,402; majority for, 33,330. Thus the votes of
fifty thousand persons--enfranchised, not by the constitution but
by the legislature--carried the adoption of a new constitution,
which further secured to them the freedom which the legislature had
opened to them. The vote for governor in 1824--the next
hotly-contested election--was 190,545; so that the immediate effect
of the legislature's act was to add 97,108 persons to the
constituency--to make a mass of new voters who outnumbered those
specified by the constitution.
(_c_). ALIENS VOTING.--The constitution specifies none but
"citizens" as entitled to vote; yet the legislature, by a school
law of many years' standing, allowed _aliens_ to vote for school
functionaries, on filing with the secretary of state notice of
intention to become naturalized (1 R. S., art. 2, § 1, p. 65; 2 R.
S., 63, § 12; 2 R. S., 1,096, § 31).
(_d_). NORTHFIELD.--The proprietors of swamp-lands in the town of
Northfield, Richmond county, were authorized to elect directors of
drainage, without any restriction or qualification but ownership
(Session Laws 1862, ch. 80, § 2, p. 233).
(_e_). The taxpayers of Newport, Herkimer county, were authorized
to vote on the question of issuing bonds to raise money for a
town-house. Under this law women who were taxpayers voted (Act
April 9, 1873, Session Laws, ch. 187, § 3, p. 304).
(_f_). The taxpayers of Dansville, Livingston county, were
authorized to vote on the issue of water-bonds. Under this act
women voted (Act April 24, 1873, Session Laws, ch. 285, § 4, p.
409).
(_g_). The taxpayers of Saratoga Springs were authorized to vote on
the question of issuing bonds for the construction of an additional
water-main. Under this ninety-nine women voted (Act May 13, 1876,
Session Laws, ch. 254, § 4, p. 250).
VII. SCHOOL SUFFRAGE.--If the legislature can admit aliens to vote
at school-meetings, it can admit female citizens to do so.
VIII. PRESIDENTIAL SUFFRAGE.--1. The federal constitution provides
that electors of president and vice-president shall be appointed
"in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct" (Art. 2, §
2).
2. It also provides that "this constitution shall be the supreme
law of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound
thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the
contrary notwithstanding" (Art. 6, § 2).
3. The legislature has the power under the federal constitution to
provide whatever method it may choose for the appointment of the
electors. The courts have no power to interfere, and even an
executive veto would have no force. The legislature has sole and
full power to say who may vote for electors and how the election
shall be held.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
PENNSYLVANIA.
BY CARRIE S. BURNHAM.
The common law of England as modified by English statutes prior to
the Revolution has been formally adopted either by constitutions
and statutes or assumed by courts of justice as the law of the land
in every State save Louisiana, and in the absence of positive
statutes is the common law of the United States. To understand the
legal status of woman in Pennsylvania it is therefore necessary,
_First_--To ascertain her condition under the common law;
_Second_--How this law has been modified in this State by statutes.
COMMON LAW.
By the common law, which Lord Coke calls "the perfection of
reason," women arrive at the age of discretion at twelve, men at
fourteen; both sexes are of full age at twenty-one, entitled to
civil rights, and if unmarried and possessed of freehold, they are
equally entitled to the exercise of political rights (Blackstone,
I., 463; IV., 212; Bouvier's Institutes, 156, 157; Decisions of
English courts in 1612, quoted in 7 Mod. Rep., 264).
"By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law"; that is,
the legal existence of the woman is "merged in that of her
husband." He is her "baron," or "lord," bound to supply her with
shelter, food, clothing and medicine, and is entitled to her
earnings--the use and custody of her person, which he may seize
wherever he may find it (Blackstone, I., 442, 443; Coke Litt., 112
a, 187 b; 8 Dowl., P. C., 632.)
The husband being bound to provide for his wife the necessaries of
life, and being responsible for "her morals" and the good order of
the household, may choose and govern the domicil, choose her
associates, separate her from her relatives, restrain her religious
and personal freedom, compel her to cohabit with him, correct her
faults by mild means and, if necessary, chastise her with
moderation, as though she was his apprentice or child. This is in
"respect to the terms of the marriage contract and the infirmity of
the sex" (Bl., I., 444; 1 Bishop on Mar. and Div., 758; 8 Dowl. P.
C., 632; Bouv. Insts., 277, 278, 2,283; 1 Wend. Bl., 442, note; 4
Petersdorf's A. B., 21, note).
Woman's character, exposed to the vilest slanders of "malignity and
falsehood," and her chastity are protected on account of the injury
sustained by the father, husband or master from loss of her
services, or wrongful entry of his house, rather than the injury
done to her as an individual (Bl. I., 445, note; III., 141, 143,
note; 3 Serg. and Rawle, Penn., 36; 3 Penn., 49; 2 Watts' Penn.,
474).
The husband is entitled to recover damages for "criminal
conversation with his wife," or for injury to her person whereby he
is deprived of his "marital rights," or of her "company and
assistance"; also an action of _trespass vi et armis_ against the
individual enticing her away or encouraging her to live separately
from him; the offense implies force and constraint, "the wife
having no power to consent," and is punishable with fine and
imprisonment (Bl., III., 139; 2 Inst., 434; Bouvier's Institutes,
3,495).
The wife has no action for injuries to her husband as she is not
entitled to his services, neither has she any separate interest in
anything during her coverture. The law takes notice only of the
injuries done to the "superior of the parties related"; because
"the inferior has no kind of property in the company, care or
assistance of the superior, as the superior is held to have in
those of the inferior" (Blackstone, III., 143; Bouv. Insts.,
3,495).
The husband, by marriage, becomes entitled absolutely to the
personal property of his wife, which at his death goes to his
representatives; also to the rents and profits of her lands, to the
interest in her chattels real and _choses_ in action, of which he
can dispose at pleasure, except by will. He acquires the same right
in any property whether real or personal of which she may become
possessed after marriage, and is liable during coverture for her
debts contracted before marriage (Bl., II., 434, 435; Bouv. Insts.,
4,005; Coke Litt., 46, 351).
At his death she becomes possessed of her wardrobe and jewels, such
of her chattels as remain undisposed of, and her own real estate;
also quarantine (_i. e._, forty days' residence in "his mansion"),
one-third of his personality absolutely and the use of one-third of
any real estate of which he is possessed during coverture for the
term of her natural life. _His_ mansion, realty and personalty
includes what they have jointly earned as well as that of which he
was possessed at marriage. The widow's right to one-third of the
personal estate was abolished by English statutes prior to the
Revolution, but has since been revived by Pennsylvania statutes
(Blackstone, II., 129, 134, 139, 436, 492, 493; Coke Litt., 31, 34;
Bouvier's Institutes, 1,750; Brightley's Purdon, 806, 2 and 3).
At the death of the wife their joint earnings, also her chattels
real, vest absolutely in the husband, and if they have had a living
child the husband, as "tenant by the curtesy," becomes possessed of
her entire real estate for life. The wife loses her dower by
adultery, but the husband does not lose his curtesy on that
account. Her dower is also barred by his treason and by a divorce
grounded on his adultery (Blackstone, II., 127, 434; Roper, Husband
and Wife, 1,210; 2 Kent, 131; 7 Watts, 563; Bouvier's Institutes,
1,732).
A husband cannot convey real estate directly to his wife, but may
through a trustee; neither can he give "anything to her nor
covenant with her, for the grant would be to suppose her separate
existence, and to covenant with her would be to covenant with
himself." Their covenants or indebtedness to each other before
marriage are by the marriage extinguished (Blackstone, I., 442;
Coke Litt., 3, 30; 112 a; 187 b; Connyn. Dig. Baron and Feme, D).
The husband may devise any property to his wife, but the wife
cannot make a will, the law supposing her to be under his coercion;
neither can she bind her person or property, nor make nor enforce a
contract, nor can she be a witness in any matter in which her
husband is interested (Blackstone, II., 293, 498, 444; 2 Kent, 179;
Bouv. Insts., 1,441; Connyn. Dig. Pleader, 2 A, 1; Baron and Feme,
W; 2 Roper, Husband and Wife, 171).
A wife, with the consent of her husband, may act as his or other's
attorney, may be a guardian, trustee, administratrix or executrix,
but cannot sue in _auter droit_ unless her husband join in the
suit. This incapacitates her to act independently in either
capacity (Blackstone, II., 503; 1 Anders., 117; 2 Story, Eq.
Juris., 1,367, note; 57 Penn. St. Rep., 356).
A wife cannot enforce her rights nor defend any action brought
against her, but must plead coverture in person, being incapable of
appointing an attorney (Bouv. Insts., 2,787, 2,907; 41 N. H., 106;
2 Saund., 209; c. n. 1).
When a woman marries after having commenced a suit, the suit
abates; but the husband may _in equity_ sue her for his marital
rights in her property; marriage of a female partner dissolves the
partnership (Bouv. Insts., 4,037, 1,494; 4 Russ. Ch., 247; 3 Atk.
Ch., 478; 2 P. Will Ch., 243).
The father of legitimate children is bound for their maintenance
and education, is entitled to their labor and custody and has power
to dispose of them until twenty-one years of age, by deed or
legacy, even though they are unborn at his death. The testamentary
guardian's right to their custody supersedes that of their mother
(Bl., I., 447, 451, 453; 2 Kent, 191 and 193; Bouv. Insts., 344; 5
Rawle, 323; 2 Watts, 406; 5 East, 221; Purd. Dig., New Ed., 411,
29; 5 Pitts, L. J., 406; 1 Pitts, 412).
"A mother is entitled to no power, but to reverence and respect,
from her children"; she has no legal authority over them nor right
to their services, but her property is liable for their maintenance
if the father has not an estate. The mother's appointment of a
testamentary guardian is absolutely void (Bl., I., 453 and 461,
note by Chitty; Vaughan, 180; 1 Leg. Gaz. R., 56).
The mother of a "natural or illegitimate" child is its natural
guardian, entitled to its control and custody and her settlement is
its domicil (Bl., I., 459; 2 Kent, 216; 5 Term Rep., 278; Newton
vs. Braintree, 14 Mass., 382).
"Intestate personal property is divided equally between males and
females, but a son, though younger than all his sisters, is the
heir to the whole of real property" (Bl., I., 444, note by
Christian).
PENNSYLVANIA STATUTES AND COURT DECISIONS.
This "perfection of reason" (the common law) has been changed in
Pennsylvania in the following particulars:
All women, married and single, are deprived of political rights by
the use of the generic word "freeman" in the constitution (29 Legal
Intelligencer, 5).
Heir at common law is abolished by statute; however, the right to
administer vests in the male in preference to the female of the
same degree of consanguinity. Half-brothers are entitled to the
preference over own sisters (Purdon, 410, 27; Single's Appeal, 59
Penn. St. R., 55).
Any property belonging to a woman before marriage, or which accrues
to her during coverture by gift, bequest or purchase, continues, by
the act of April 11, 1848, to be her separate property after
marriage, and is not liable for the debts of her husband nor
subject to his disposal without her written consent, duly
acknowledged before one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas
as voluntarily given; _provided_, that he is not liable for the
debts contracted before or after marriage, or for her torts
(Purdon's Dig., 1,005, 13).
"This act protects the wife's interest in her separate property
both as to title and possession," but "does not empower her to
convey her real estate by a deed in which her husband has not
joined," nor "create a lease without his concurrence," nor "execute
an obligation for the payment of money or the performance of any
other act," nor in any way dispose of her property save by gift or
loan to him; she may bind her separate estate for his debts, and in
security for the loan she may take a judgment or mortgage against
the estate of the husband in the name of a third person, who shall
act as her trustee (18 Penn. St. R., 506, 582; 21, 402; 1 Gr., 402;
6 Phila., 531; Pur. Dig., 1,007, 21).
The husband is the natural guardian or trustee of the property of
the wife; but by application "to the Court of Common Pleas of the
county where she was domiciled at the time of her marriage," the
court will appoint a trustee (not her husband) to take charge of
the property secured to her by the act of 1848. This act, however,
does not authorize the appointment of a trustee, to the exclusion
of her husband, of property owned by her prior to the passage of
the act, nor was it intended to affect vested rights of husbands
and does not protect them for the wife's benefit against the claims
of creditors (10 Penn. St. Rep., 398 and 505; 18, 392 and 509; 21,
260; 1 Jones, 272).
In a clear case the wife's real estate cannot be levied upon and
sold by a creditor of the husband, _but the burden of proof_ is
upon her to show by evidence "which does not admit of a reasonable
doubt," that she owned the property before marriage or acquired it
subsequently by gift, bequest, or paid for it with funds not
furnished by her husband nor the result of their joint earnings.
The wife's possession of money is no evidence of her title to it
(18 Penn. St. Rep., 366; 7 Phila., 118).
If no property, or not sufficient property, of the husband can be
found, the separate property and goods of the wife may be levied
upon and sold for rent or for debts incurred for the support of the
family (Purd. Dig., 1,006, 15; 38 Penn. St. Rep., 344).
A married woman's bond and warrant of attorney are absolutely void,
nor can she make a valid contract except for a sewing-machine or
for the improvement of her separate property, and her bond given or
a judgment confessed by her for such debt is void (24 Penn. St.
Rep., 80; Act of 1872, Pur. Dig., 1,010).
She may sell and transfer shares of the capital stock of any
railroad company, but cannot herself or by attorney transfer
certificates of city loan (28 Leg. Int., 116; Act June 2, 1871).
A married woman cannot enforce her rights against third persons,
either for the performance of a contract or the recovery of her
property, without her husband join in the suit, although the party
contracting with her is liable to an action (1 Gr., 21; Act of 1850
and 1839; 6 Phila., 223).
If divorced or separated from her husband by his neglect or
desertion, she may protect her reputation by an action for slander
and libel; but if her husband is the defendant, this suit, as also
for alimony and divorce, must be in the name of a "next friend."
She is entitled to a writ of _habeas corpus_ if unlawfully
restrained of her liberty (Purd. Dig., 510, 12; 513, 24; 754, 1).
The wife of a drunkard or profligate man by petitioning the Court
of Common Pleas, setting forth these facts and his desertion of her
and neglect to provide for her and their children, may be entitled
to the custody of her children, and, as a "_feme sole trader_,"
empowered to transact business and acquire a separate property,
which shall be subject to her own disposal during life, and liable
for the maintenance and education of her children. Her testimony
must be sustained "by two respectable witnesses" (Pur. Dig., 692,
5; Act of 1855, 2; 2 Roper, Husband and Wife, 171, 173).
By act of April, 1872, any married woman having first petitioned
the court, stating under oath or affirmation her intention of
claiming her separate earnings, is entitled to acquire by her labor
a separate property which shall not be subject to any legal claim
of her husband or of his creditors, she, however, being compelled
"to show title and ownership in the same." The husband's possession
of property is evidence of his title to it; not so with the wife
(Purd. Dig., 1,010, 38, 39; 4 Lansing, 164; 61 Barb., 145).
A married woman may devise her separate property by will, subject,
however, to the husband's curtesy, which in Pennsylvania attaches,
though there be no issue born alive, and which she cannot bar
(Purd. Dig., 806, 804; I Pars., 489; 26 Penn. St. R., 202, 203; 2
Brewster, 302).
The husband may bar the wife's dower by a _bona fide_ mortgage
given by himself alone or by a judicial sale for the payment of his
debts. It is also barred by a divorce obtained by her on the ground
of his adultery, and in case of such divorce she is entitled to the
value of one-half of the money and property which the husband
received through her at marriage (Purd. Dig., 514; 2 Dall. 127; 12
Serg. and R., 21; I Yeates Pa., 300).
A single woman's will is revoked by her subsequent marriage, and is
not again revived by the death of her husband; a single man's will
is revoked by marriage absolutely only when he leaves a widow but
no known heirs or kindred (Purd. Dig., 1,477, 18 and 19; 47 Penn.
S. Rep., 144, 34, 483).
If the husband die intestate leaving a widow and issue, the widow
shall have one-third of his and their joint personalty absolutely,
and one-third of the real estate for life; if there are no
children, but collateral heirs, she is entitled to the use of
one-half the realty, including the mansion-house, for her life, and
one-half the personalty absolutely (Purd. Dig., 806, 2 and 3; Act
of 1833, 1).
If the wife die intestate leaving a husband and no issue, he is
entitled to her entire personalty and realty during his life; if
there are children her personal estate is divided between the
husband and children share and share alike; in either case he is
entitled to their entire joint estate (Purd. Dig., 806, 5; Act of
1848, 9).
Married women may be corporate members of any institution composed
of and managed by women, having as its object the care and
education of children or the support of sick and indigent women
(Purd. Dig., 283; Act of 1859, 1).
It is a crime, punishable by fine and imprisonment, to employ any
woman to attend or wait upon an audience in a theater, opera or
licensed entertainment, to procure or furnish commodities or
refreshments (Purd. Dig., 337, 112).
A man, by marriage, is subjected to no political, civil, legal or
commercial disabilities, but acquires all the rights and powers
previously vested in his wife. He is capable of all the offices of
the government from that of postmaster to the presidency, and of
transacting all kinds of business from the measuring of tape to the
practice of the most learned professions. Woman, deprived of
political power, is limited in opportunities for education, and, if
married, is incapable of making a contract; hence crippled in the
transaction of any kind of business.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XLII.
INDIANA.
[A.]
Governor Porter made the following novel appointment: On August 30,
1882, Mrs. Georgia A. Ruggles, from Bartholomew county, presented
to Governor Porter an application for a requisition from the
governor of Indiana upon the governor of Kansas, for William J.
Beck, charged with the crime of bigamy. Beck had been living a few
months in Bartholomew county and had passed as an unmarried man;
had gained the affections of a young lady much younger than himself
and much superior to him by birth and education. After their
marriage the fact that Beck had already one wife became known and
he fled to Kansas. Mrs. Ruggles was a friend to the young lady who
had been thus duped, and upon learning the facts she called the
attention of the proper authorities to the matter, and begged them
to effect Beck's arrest. They were not disposed to do so, and upon
various excuses postponed action. She therefore determined to take
the matter into her own hands. Governor Porter granted her the
desired requisition; she went to Kansas, and on September 10, 1882,
she received Beck from Samuel Hamilton, sheriff of Ellsworth
county; she herself brought the prisoner, in cuffs, to Indiana,
and, September 13, she delivered him into the hands of Thomas E.
Burgess, sheriff of Bartholomew county. Beck was tried, convicted
and sent to the penitentiary. This bit of justice was the fruit of
a woman's pluck and a governor's good sense.
EXTRACT FROM GEN. COBURN'S ADDRESS.
The people expect that they will in their own way and time
inaugurate such measures as will bring these questions in their
entire magnitude into the arena. I hope to see 10,000 women in
convention here. They can, if they will, create a public sentiment
in favor of their enfranchisement that will be irresistible. They
have the ears of the voters; they have access to the columns of the
newspapers; they control all the avenues of social life. What can
they not accomplish, if, with their whole hearts they set about it?
The sphere of public life has many vacant places to be filled by
women. Why shall they not serve upon the boards of trustees of our
great reformatory and benevolent institutions, as superintendents
in our hospitals, and as directors and inspectors in our prisons?
The last legislature conferred upon them the right to hold any
office in our great school system except one, that of State
superintendent of public instruction. From them may now be
selected, president of the State university, or of the Normal
School, or of Purdue University, school commissioners and county
superintendents. But the legislature should give them the power to
rescue our prisons, hospitals and asylums from the indescribable
horror of filth, neglect and cruelty which hangs like a murky cloud
over many of them. Men have tried it and failed. Stupidity or
partisanship or brutality or avarice, has transformed many a noble
foundation of benevolence into a hell of abomination. Some one must
step in to inspect; to enforce order, cleanliness and virtue; to
bring comfort and hope to the downcast and to the outcast of
society. This purpose must be backed up by the strong arm of power,
by the sanction of the law, and that law must have upon it the
stamp of woman's intellect. This year the women of Indiana can
place themselves in the van of human progress and dictate the
policy which mankind must recognize as just and true for ages to
come. The public mind is not unprepared for this measure. The
spread and the acceptance of great ideas is almost miraculous in
intelligent communities.
[B.]
LEGAL OPINION BY W. D. WALLACE, ESQ., UPON THE POWER OF THE
LEGISLATURE TO AUTHORIZE WOMEN TO VOTE FOR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTORS.
_Capt. W. DeWitt Wallace, Attorney-at-law, Lafayette, Ind.:_
DEAR SIR: You will confer a favor upon the friends of woman
suffrage in Indiana, if you will send me, in writing, your opinion,
as a lawyer, in answer to the following question, giving your
reasons therefor: Can the legislature of this State empower women
to vote for presidential electors?
MARY F. THOMAS, _President I. W. S. A._
_Richmond, Ind._, December 30, 1880.
LAFAYETTE, Ind., January 5, 1881.
_Dr. Mary F. Thomas, President of Indiana Woman Suffrage
Association, Richmond, Indiana:_
DEAR MADAM: In your favor of the 30th ult., you ask my opinion
upon, to me, a novel and most interesting question, viz.: "Can the
legislature empower women to vote for presidential electors?" After
the most careful consideration which I have been able to give to
the subject, consistent with other duties, and with the aid of such
books as I have at command, I answer your question in the
affirmative. The grounds of my opinion I will proceed to state:
Section 1, article 2, of the Constitution of the United States,
which provides that the president and vice-president shall be
chosen by electors appointed by the several States, declares in
the following words how said electors shall be appointed:
Each State shall appoint in such manner as the legislature
thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole
number of senators and representatives to which said State may be
entitled in the congress, etc., etc.
Now, in the absence of any provision in the State constitution,
limiting or attempting to limit the discretion of the legislature
as to the manner in which the presidential electors shall be
chosen, there can be no doubt but that the legislature could
empower female, as well as male, citizens to participate in the
choice of presidential electors.
Section 2, article 2 of our State constitution is as follows: In
all elections, not otherwise provided for by this constitution,
every white male citizen of the United States, of the age of
twenty-one years, and upwards, who shall have resided in the State
during the six months immediately preceding such election * * * *
shall be entitled to vote in the township or precinct where he may
reside.
Two questions at once suggest themselves upon the reading of this
section: _First_--Does the section apply to elections of
presidential electors, and thus become a limitation upon the
discretion of the legislature in case it shall direct the
appointment of the electors by a popular vote? _Second_--If so, can
a State constitution thus limit the discretion which the
Constitution of the United States directs shall be exercised by the
legislature? I shall consider the last question first.
While the legislature is created by the State, all its powers are
not derived from, nor are all its duties enjoined by the State. The
moment the State brings the legislature into being, that moment
certain duties enjoined, and certain powers conferred, by the
nation, attach to it. Among the powers and duties of the
legislature, which spring from the national constitution, is the
power and duty of determining how the State shall appoint
presidential electors. The Constitution of the United States
declares in the most explicit terms that the State shall do this
"in such manner as the legislature may direct." In the case of
_Ex-Parte_ Henry E. Hayne, _et al._, reported in volume 9, at page
106, of the Chicago Legal News, the Circuit Court of the United
States for the district of South Carolina, in speaking of the
authority upon which a State legislature acts in providing for the
appointment of presidential electors, says:
Section 1, article 2 of the constitution provides that electors
shall be appointed in such manner as the legislature of each State
may direct. When the legislature of a State, in obedience to that
provision, has, by law, directed the manner of appointment of the
electors, that law has its authorities solely from the Constitution
of the United States. It is a law passed in pursuance of the
constitution.
Hon. James A. Garfield, who was a member of the Electoral
Commission, in discussing before that body the source of the power
to appoint electors, said:
The constitution prescribes that States only shall choose
electors. * * * To speak more accurately, I should say that the
power is placed in the legislatures of the States; for if the
constitution of any State were silent upon the subject, its
legislature is none the less armed with plenary authority
conferred upon it directly by the national
constitution.--[Electoral Commission, p. 242.
That this section of the national constitution has always been
understood to lodge an absolute discretion in the legislature, is
proved by the practice in the different States. Chief Justice
Story, in his "Commentaries on the Constitution of the United
States," in speaking of this section of the constitution and the
practice under it, says:
Under this authority, the appointment of electors has been
variously provided for by the State legislatures. In some States
the legislatures have directly chosen the electors by themselves;
in others they have been chosen by the people by a general ticket
throughout the whole State, and in others by the people in
electoral districts fixed by the legislature, a certain number of
electors being apportioned to each district. No question has ever
arisen as to the constitutionality of either mode, except that of
a direct choice by the legislature. But this, though often
doubted by able and ingenious minds, has been firmly established
in practice ever since the adoption of the constitution, and does
not now seem to admit of controversy, even if a suitable tribunal
existed to adjudicate upon it.--[2 Story on Constitution, section
1,472.
Judge Strong, one of the justices of the Supreme Court of the
United States, and a member of the electoral commission, in
discussing the subject of this section, says:
I doubt whether they [the framers of the national constitution]
had in mind at all [in adopting this section] the idea of a
popular election as a mode of appointing State electors. They
used the word _appoint_, doubtless thinking that the legislatures
of the States would themselves select the electors, or empower
the governor or some other State officer to select them. The word
appoint is not the most appropriate word for describing the
result of a popular election. Such a mode of appointment, I
submit is allowable, but there is little reason to think it was
contemplated. * * * It was not until years afterward that the
electors were chosen by vote.--[Electoral Commission, p. 252.
Senator Frelinghuysen, also a member of the Electoral Commission,
thus speaks of the practice in the several States:
Under this power [the power given by the section of the national
constitution, which we are now considering] the legislature might
direct that the electors should be appointed by the legislature,
by the executive, by the judiciary, or by the people. In the
earliest days of the republic, electors were appointed by the
legislatures. In Pennsylvania they were appointed by the
judiciary. Now, in all the States except Colorado, they are
appointed by the people.--[Electoral Commission, p. 204.
If then it be true that the power to determine how the presidential
electors shall be appointed is derived from the national
constitution, and that power is a discretionary one, to be
exercised in such manner as the legislature may direct, how can it
be said that a State constitution can limit or control the
legislative discretion? If the State can limit that discretion in
one respect it can limit it in another, and in another, and in
another, until it may shut up the legislature to but a single mode
of appointment, which is to take away, and absolutely destroy all
its discretion, and this is nullification, pure and simple. One of
the questions before the electoral commission in the case of South
Carolina, was whether the electoral vote of that State should not
be rejected because the legislature, in providing for the
appointment of the electors, had failed to obey a requirement of
the State constitution in regard to a registry law. This raised, in
principle, the very question we are now considering, and on that
question Senator O. P. Morton, who was a member of the commission,
and who was an able lawyer as well as a great statesman, thus
expressed himself:
They [the presidential electors] are to be appointed in the
manner prescribed by the legislature of the State, and not by the
constitution of the State. The manner of the appointment of
electors has been placed by the Constitution of the United States
in the legislature of each State, and cannot be taken from that
body by the provisions of a State constitution. * * * The power
to appoint electors by a State, is conferred by the Constitution
of the United States, and does not spring from a State
constitution, and cannot be impaired or controlled by a State
constitution.--[Electoral Commission, p. 200.
The distinguished lawyer and statesman [Hon. William Lawrence] who
made the principle argument before the commission in favor of
admitting the vote of the State, took the same ground (Electoral
Commission, p. 186).
The opinion of Justice Story, expressed in the Massachusetts
constitutional convention of 1820, on a very similar question, and
one involving the same principle, quoted by Mr. Lawrence in his
argument, is very high authority, and I reproduce it here. He
(Justice Story) said:
The question then was whether we have a right to insert in our
constitution a provision which controls or destroys a discretion
which may be, nay _must_ be, exercised by the legislature in
_virtue_ of _powers confided_ to it by the Constitution of the
United States. The fourth section of the first article of the
Constitution of the United States declares that the times, places
and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives
shall be prescribed by the legislature thereof. Here an express
provision was made for the manner of choosing representatives by
the State legislatures. They have an _unlimited_ discretion on
the subject. They may provide for an election in districts
sending more than one, or by general ticket for the whole State.
Here is a general discretion, a power of choice. What is the
proposition on the table? It is to limit the discretion, to leave
no choice to the legislature, to compel representatives to be
chosen in districts; in other words to compel them to be chosen
in a specific manner, excluding all others. Were not this plainly
a violation of the constitution? Does it not affect to control
the legislature in the exercise of its powers? * * * It assumes a
control over the legislature, which the Constitution of the
United States does not justify. It is bound to exercise its
authority according to its _own view_ of _public policy_ and
_principle_; and yet this proposition compels it to surrender all
discretion. In my humble judgment * * * it is a direct and
palpable infringement of the constitutional provisions to which I
have referred.--[Electoral Commission, p. 186.
The conclusion seems irresistible that a State constitution cannot
determine for the legislature who shall, or shall not, participate
in the choice of presidential electors, and that in so far as our
State constitution may attempt to do so, it is an infringement of
the national constitution. The discretion of the legislature, by
virtue of the supreme law of the land, being (except in so far as
it is controlled by the national constitution itself) thus
absolutely unlimited, it may, without doubt, as I think, authorize
all citizens without regard to sex, to participate in the choice of
presidential electors. But it has been suggested to me that
possibly by the State legislature, as used in the section of the
national constitution which we have been considering, was meant the
whole people of the State in whom the legislative power originally
resides and not the organized legislative body which they may
create. We answer first that the language of the section will not
admit of this construction. It clearly recognizes a distinction
between the State or the people of the State, and its legislature.
The language is not "each State shall appoint in such manner as
_it_ may direct," etc., but it is, "each State shall appoint in
such manner as the _legislature_ thereof may direct," etc.
Again, it is a familiar canon of construction that in determining
the meaning of a statute, recourse may be had to the history of the
times in which it was enacted. When the Constitution of the United
States was framed, all of the States had organized legislatures, or
representative bodies who wielded the legislative power, and
without doing violence to language, we must suppose that it was to
_them_ the constitution referred. Again, the State legislatures are
referred to not less than ten times in the national constitution,
and in each instance the reference is such as to make it clear that
the organized representative bodies are intended, and in article 5
they are, in express terms, distinguished from conventions of the
States. Indeed, the fundamental idea of the American government is
that of a representative republic as opposed to a pure democracy,
and it may well be doubted whether a State government, without a
representative legislative body of some kind, would, in the
American sense, be republican in form.
Finally, it is apparent from the debates in the constitutional
convention which framed the constitution, and from the whole plan
devised for the election of president and vice-president, that it
was not intended by the framers of the constitution to commit
directly to the whole people of a State the authority to determine
how the presidential electors should be chosen. Nothing seems to
have given the convention more trouble than the mode of selecting a
president. Many plans were proposed. Chief among these were:
election by congress; election by the executives of the States;
election by the people; election by the State legislatures; and
election by electors. These were presented in many forms. The
convention decided not less than three times, and once by a
unanimous vote, in favor of election by the national congress, and
as often reconsidered it (2 Madison Papers, pp. 770, 1,124, 1,190).
The proposition that the president should be elected directly by
the people, instead of by the national congress, received but one
vote, while the proposition that he should be appointed by the
State legislatures received two votes (2 Madison Papers, p. 1,124).
The most cursory examination of the debates will, I think, convince
any mind that it was to the _organized_ legislature of the State,
and not to the people of a State, that the framers of the
constitution intended to commit the power of determining how the
presidential electors should be chosen. It seems, both from the
debates and the plan adopted, to have been their studied effort to
prevent the people from acting in the choice of their chief
magistrate otherwise than through their representatives, and in no
single step of the process are the people directly required or
authorized by the national constitution to act, but in every
instance the duty and the authority are devolved upon their
representatives. For these reasons I think it clear that it was
intended to invest the organized State legislatures with the power
of determining how the presidential electors should be chosen, and
that the discretion thus lodged in the legislature cannot be
limited or controlled by a State constitution.
W. DE WITT WALLACE.
[C.]
In 1868, the Indiana (Friends) Yearly Meeting appointed Mrs. Sarah
J. Smith of Indianapolis, and Mrs. Rhoda M. Coffin of Richmond, to
visit the prisons of the State, with a view to ascertain the spirit
of the management of these institutions, and the moral condition of
their inmates. In obedience to this appointment the two ladies
visited both of the State prisons of Indiana, and made a
particularly thorough examination of the condition of the Southern
prison (at Jeffersonville) where all our women convicts were kept.
Here they found the vilest immoralities being practiced; they
discovered that the rumors which had induced their appointment were
far surpassed by the revolting facts.
They visited Gov. Conrad Baker and urged him to recommend the
General Assembly to make an appropriation for a separate prison for
women. With the full sympathy of Governor Baker, who was not only a
most honorable gentleman, but a sincere believer in the equal
political rights of women, Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Coffin appeared
before the legislature of 1869, and by an unvarnished account of
what they had witnessed and learned in the Southern prison, they
aroused the legislators to immediate action, and an act to
establish a "Reformatory Institution for Women and Girls" was
passed at that session (viz., that of 1869). By statute the new
institution was located at Indianapolis. It was opened in 1873, the
first separate prison for women in this country. Mrs. Sarah J.
Smith was made its first superintendent, and she retained that
office, discharging all its duties with great ability, until 1883,
when upon her resignation she was succeeded by Mrs. Elmina S.
Johnson, who had up to that time been associated with Mrs. Smith as
assistant superintendent.
The first managing board of women consisted of Mrs. Eliza C.
Hendricks (wife of Hon. Thomas A. Hendricks who was governor of
Indiana on the opening of the prison), Mrs. Rhoda M. Coffin and
Mrs. Emily A. Roach. The changes upon the board have been so
infrequent that in addition to those on the first board and to
those on the board at present, only three ladies can be mentioned
in this connection, viz.: Mrs. Eliza S. Dodd of Indianapolis, Mrs.
Mary E. Burson (a banker of Muncie) and Mrs. Sarah J. Smith, who,
after resigning the superintendency, served on the board for a
brief time.
The board at present consists of Mrs. Eliza C. Hendricks,
president, Mrs. Claire A. Walker and Mrs. M. M. James. From the
opening of this institution Mrs. Hendricks has been connected with
it; first as a member of the advisory board, for eight years a
member of the managing board and during a large part of the time
its president, she has served its interest with singular fidelity.
The position is no sinecure. The purchasing of all the supplies is
only a part of the board's work; the business meetings are held
monthly and often occupy half a day, sometimes an entire day. These
Mrs. Hendricks always attends whether she is in Indianapolis or in
Washington; from the latter point she has many times journeyed in
weather most inclement by heat and by cold, simply to look after
the prison and to transact the business for it imposed by her
position on its board. During the last eight years, since women
have had control of its affairs, Miss Anna Dunlop of Indianapolis
has served the institution as its secretary and treasurer. Perhaps
the highest tribute that can be paid to the ability with which Miss
Dunlop has discharged the responsible and complicated duties of her
double office, lies in the fact that with the General Assembly of
the State it has passed into a proverb that "The Woman's
Reformatory is the best and most economically managed of the State
institutions." The committees appointed to visit the penal
institutions always report that "The accounts of the reformatory
are kept so accurately that its financial status can always be
understood at a glance."
This institution has two distinct departments, the penal and the
reformatory, occupying two sides of one main building and joined
under one management. Convicts above sixteen years of age are
ranked as women and confined in the penal department; those under
sixteen years are accounted girls (children) and lodged in the
reformatory department.
The average number of girls in the institution from its opening has
been 150; the number of women 45. There are now (July, 1885,) over
200 inmates.
All of the work of the institution is done by its inmates. A school
is maintained in the building for the children; a few trades are
taught the girls; all are taught housework, laundry work, plain
sewing and mending; the greatest pains is taken to form in the
inmates habits of industry and personal tidiness, and to prepare
them to be good servants; and when their period of incarceration
has expired, the ladies interest themselves in finding homes and
employment for the discharged convicts whom they seek to restore to
normal relations to society. The secretary estimates that of those
who have been discharged from the institution during the last
twelve years, fully seventy-five per cent. have been really
restored and are leading honest and industrious lives.
[D.]
GOV. PORTER'S BIENNIAL MESSAGE, 1883: "I recommend that in the
department for women in this hospital it shall be required by law
that at least one of the physicians shall be a woman. There are now
in this State not a few women who bear diplomas from respectable
medical colleges, and who are qualified by professional attainments
and experience to fill places as physicians in public institutions
with credit and usefulness. It would be peculiarly fit that their
services should be sought in cases of insanity among members of
their own sex."
[E.]
About the year 1867, Miss Lucinda B. Jenkins, formerly of Wayne
county, Indiana, left her work among the "Freedmen" in the South,
to accept the position of matron in "The Soldiers' Orphans' Home"
at Knightstown, Indiana. She afterwards became the wife of Dr.
Wishard, the superintendent; and when the office was vacated by his
death, she was authorized to assume his responsibilities, and
perform his duties, with the exception of receipting bills and
drawing appropriations, which latter duties, not being then
considered as within the province of a woman, were delegated to the
steward until the doctor's successor could be legally appointed.
She was a lady of intelligence and true moral worth, possessing a
dignified, pleasing manner, and other good qualities, which, with
her long experience as co-manager of the institution, admirably
fitted her for the position of superintendent; but she was a woman,
without a vote or political influence, and it was necessary that
"party debts" should be paid. She therefore continued her influence
for the good of the institution without public recognition until
1882, when she left to take charge of a private orphan asylum under
the management of ladies of Indianapolis.
[F.]
Miss Susan Fussell is the daughter of the late Dr. B. Fussell of
Philadelphia, to whom, with his estimable wife, women are indebted
as the founder of the first medical college for women in the United
States. At that period of our civil war, when women were admitted
to the hospitals as nurses, Miss Fussell was at her brother's home
at Pendleton, Indiana. She immediately volunteered her services,
and was assigned to duty by the Indiana sanitary commission in the
military hospitals in Louisville, Kentucky, where she served
faithfully until the close of the war, giving the bloom of her
youth to her country without hope of reward other than that which
comes to all as the result of self-sacrificing devotion to the
cause of humanity.
At the close of the war she returned to Philadelphia, but learning
soon that an effort was being made to induce the State of Indiana
to provide a home for the soldiers' orphans, she again offered her
services in any useful capacity in that work. A benevolent
gentleman of Indianapolis who had been most urgent in calling the
attention of the officers of the State to their duty in that
matter, finding that there was no hope, offered to furnish Miss
Fussell with the money necessary to clothe, rear, educate and care
for a family of ten orphans of soldiers, and bring them up to
maturity, if she would furnish the motherly love, the years of hard
labor and self-sacrifice, the sleepless nights and endless patience
needed for the work. After a few days of prayerful consideration
she accepted, and in the fall of 1865 ten orphans were gathered
together in Indianapolis from various parts of the State from among
those who had no friends able or willing to care for them. In the
spring of 1866 they were removed to the Soldiers' Home near
Knightstown, where a small cottage and garden were assigned to
their use. In 1875, she placed the older boys in houses where their
growing strength could be better utilized, and moved with the girls
and younger boys to Spiceland to secure the benefit of better
schools. In 1877, all of the ten but one were self-supporting, and
have since taken useful and respectable positions in society. The
one exception was a little feeble-minded boy, who, with his
brother, had been found in the county poor-house; his condition and
wants very soon impressed her with the necessity for a State home
for feeble-minded children in Indiana, it having been found
necessary to send this boy to another State to be educated.
He is now in a neighboring State institution, and is almost
self-supporting. With her usual energy and directness, she went to
work to gather statistics on the subject of "Feeble-minded
Children" in this and other States, and to interest others in their
welfare. She at last found an active co-worker in Charles Hubbard,
the representative from Henry county in the legislature, and their
united efforts, aided by other friends of the cause, secured in
1876 the enactment of the law establishing the Home for
Feeble-minded Children, now in operation near Knightstown, Indiana.
Having seen all her children well provided for, she began to look
for further work, and soon conceived the idea of taking the
children from the county poor-houses of the State and forming them
into families. She offered to take the children in the Henry county
poor-house and provide for them home, food, clothing and education,
for the small sum of twenty-five cents per day for each child,
which her experience had proven to be the smallest sum that would
accomplish the good she desired; but the county commissioners would
only allow her twenty cents per day. She accepted their terms,
furnishing the deficit from her own means, and so earnest was she
and so completely did she demonstrate the superiority of her plan
for the care of these children, that she interested many others in
the work, and the result was the passage of a law by the
legislature of 1880-1881, giving to county commissioners the right
to place their destitute children under the care of a matron,
giving her sole charge of them and full credit for her work, and
providing for her salary and their support. Under that law Miss
Fussell now has all the destitute children of Henry county under
her care, and has created a model orphans' home. Thus has this one
woman been a power for good, and by following in the direct line of
her duty, has been obliged to "meddle in the affairs of State" and
to influence legislation.
If in giving this sketch we have exceeded the limits allotted us,
let us remember that our subject represents thousands of noble
women who care rather that their light shall carry with it comfort
and warmth, than be noted for its brilliancy, and who, having no
voice in the government, are obliged to work out their beneficent
ideas with much unnecessary labor.
[G.]
The friends of woman's equality addressed the following petition to
each member of the State legislature:
Being personally acquainted with Mrs. SARAH A. OREN, and knowing
her to be a woman of refinement and culture, we can consistently
urge upon you a favorable consideration of her claims as a
candidate for election to the office of State librarian. She has
had the benefit of a collegiate education, and has been for several
years a successful teacher in Antioch College and in the public
high-school of Indianapolis. She is mainly dependent on her own
labor for the means to support and educate her children, who were
_made fatherless by a rebel bullet_ at the siege of Petersburg. Her
education and experience have admirably fitted her for the
discharge of all the duties of the office of State librarian; and
by electing her to that office, the Republican party will secure a
faithful and efficient officer, and have the pleasure of making
another payment on the debt we owe to the widows and orphans of
those who died that our country might live.[586]
Mrs. Oren was elected to the office of State librarian and
performed the duties belonging to it with great efficiency and
fidelity. She has been succeeded by Mrs. Margaret Peele, Mrs. Emma
A. Winsor and Miss Lizzie H. Callis.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XLVII.
MINNESOTA.
[A.]
In the early days, long before the organization of either State or
local societies, there were, besides those mentioned in the main
chapter, a few earnest women who were ever ready to subscribe for
suffrage papers and circulate tracts and petitions to congress and
the State legislature, whose names should be honored with at least
a mention on the page of history. Among them were: Mrs. Addie
Ballou, Mrs. Ellis White, Mrs. Eliza Dutcher, Mrs. Sarah Clark,
Miss Amelia Heebner, Miss Emily A. Emerson, Mrs. Mary F. Mead, Mrs.
E. M. O'Brien, Miss Ellen C. Thompson, Miss R. J. Haner, Mrs. Mary
Hulett, Mrs. Gorham Powers, Mrs. C. A. Hotchkiss, Mrs. Emma Wilson,
Mrs. Mary Wilkins, Mrs. Anna D. Weeks, Mrs. Mary Leland, Mrs. Susan
C. Burger, Mrs. A. R. Lovejoy, and others.
[B.]
Of the seventy-six organized counties in Minnesota we give the
following partial list of those that have elected women to the
office of superintendent of public schools: _Mille Lacs County_,
Olive R. Barker; _Pine_, Ella Gorton; _Lac Qui Parle_, Malena P.
Kirley; _Anoka_, Mrs. Catharine J. Pierce, Mrs. Ellen Conforth,
Miss Dailey; _Benton_, Mrs. Belle Graham, Mrs. E. K. Whitney;
_Cottonwood_, Mrs. E. C. Huntington, Mrs. B. J. Banks, Mrs. L.
Huntington; _Dodge_, Mrs. Mary Powell Wheeler, Mrs. P. L. Dart,
Mrs. J. W. Willard, Barbara Van Allen; _Dakota_, Mrs. Martha
Wallace, Harriet E. Jones, Mrs. C. H. Day, Mrs. C. Teachout, Nellie
Duff, Mary Mather, Anna Manners, Jennie Horton; _Freeborn_, Mrs. J.
B. Foote, Mrs. D. R. Hibbs, Mrs. A. W. Johnson, Mrs. J. H.
Pickard; _Fillmore_, Charlotte Taeor, Margaret Hood, Mrs. M. E.
Molstad, Mrs. A. E. Harsh; _Fairbault_, Jane Harris, Georgia Adams,
Mrs. A. B. Thorp, Mrs. Levi Crump, Mrs. R. C. Smith, Mary Rumage,
Mrs. L. A. Scott; _Goodhue_, Mrs. H. A. Hobart; _Brown_, Mrs. O. B.
Ingraham; _Douglass_, Mrs. M. C. Lewis, Mrs. J. B. Van Hoesen, Mrs.
Trask; _Houston_, Mrs. Annie M. Carpenter; _Hennepin_, Angelina
Dupont, Mrs. M. F. Taylor; _Lyon_, Louise M. Ferro, M. D., Mrs. W.
C. Robinson, Mertie Caley; _Mower_, Mrs. W. H. Parker, Mrs. V. J.
Duffy, Mrs. J. F. Rockwell, Mrs. E. Hoppin, Sarah M. Dean;
_Marshall_, Mrs. L. H. Stone; _Meeker_, Mrs. A. R. Jackman, Mrs.
Orin Whitney, Mary E. Ferguson; _Martin_, Mrs. J. W. Fuller, Mrs.
M. E. St. John, Mary E. Harvey, Mary A. McLean; _Olmstead_, Adelle
Moore, Jane Haggerty, Mrs. R. S. Carver; _Polk_, Mrs. M. C. Perrin,
Mrs. J. A. Barnum; _Ramsey_, Mrs. B. McGuire, Annie E. Dunn; _St.
Louis_, Sarah Burger Stearns; _Winona_, Dr. Adaline Williams;
_Stevens_ county reports one lady serving as school-district
treasurer; _Otter Tail_ county reports six ladies serving in
different places; _Wright_ county, four serving as clerks of
school-districts; and in _Beeker_ county it is said ladies
sometimes serve as deputies during their husbands' absence.
[C.]
In a volume edited by Harriet N. R. Arnold, entitled, "The Poets
and Poetry of Minnesota," published in 1864, are the following
names: Mrs. Laura E. Bacon Hunt, Mrs. Emily F. Bugbee Moore, Miss
Eleanor C. Donnelly, Miss Jane Gray Fuller, Mrs. E. M. Harris, Miss
Ninetta Maine, Mrs. J. R. McMasters, Harriet E. Bishop, Irene
Galloway, Mary R. Lyon, Miss M. E. Pierson Smith, Mrs. Helen L.
Pandergast, Julia A. A. Wood. Among the later writers possessing
true poetic genius are Mrs. Julia Cooley Carruth, Miss Eva J.
Stickney, Miss Jennie E. M. Caine, Mrs. Emily Huntington Miller.
Among the authors who sent their books to the New Orleans
Exposition in 1885, are Frances A. Shaw, Marion Shaw, Minnie May
Lee, Eleanor G. Donnelly, Mrs. M. M. Sanford, Mrs. Julia Wood, Edna
A. Barnard, Mrs. Arnold, Miss Franc E. Babbett, Mrs. Henderson,
Miss Campbell, Mrs. C. H. Plummer, Mrs. Will E. Haskell, Mrs. Delia
Whitney Norton, Maria A. Drew, Mrs. Jennie Lynch, Miss Mary A.
Cruikshank.
[D.]
Mrs. Winchell, wife of the president of the Minnesota State
University, kindly sent us the names of the fifty-six young women
who were graduated from that institution between 1875 and 1885:
Class of '75, Helen Mar Ely; '76, Martha Butler; '77, Matilda J.
Campbell, Viola Fuller, Charlotte A. Rollet, Mary A. Maes; '78,
Mary Robinson, Nettie Getchel; '79, Marian H. Roe, Caroline Rollet,
Martha J. West, Evelyn May Champlin, Etta Medora Eliot; '80, Lizzie
A. House, Bessie S. Lawrence, Minnie Reynolds, Lillian Todd, Cora
Inez Brown; '81, Emily Hough, Diana Burns, Sarah E. Palmer, Lilla
Ruth Williams; '82, Carrie Holt, Lydia Holt, Mary Eliza Holt, Alice
E. Demmon, Louise Lillian Hilbourn, Emily D. McMillan, Ada Eva
Pillsbury, Agnes V. Bonniwell, Grace W. Curtis, Marie Louise Henry,
Mary Nancy Hughes, Carrie D. Fletcher; '83, Annie Harriet
Jefferson, Kate Louise Kennedy, Sarah Pierrepont McNair, Anna
Calista Marston, Janet Nunn, Emma Frances Trussell, Helen Louise
Pierce, Martha Sheldon, Louise E. Hollister, Emma J. Ware; '84,
Hannah Sewall, Susie Sewall, Anna Bonfoy, Bessie Latho, Addie
Kingsbury, Belle Bradford, Emma Twinggi; '85, Mary Benton, Bertha
Brown, Ida Mann, Mary Irving, Mabel Smith.
Among the women who have been successful as preceptresses in the
State University are: Helen Sutherland, M. A., Mrs. Augusta Norwood
Smith, Matilda J. Campbell, B. L., Maria L. Sanford.
Among the teachers in the normal schools of the State are the
following:
_Winona_--Martha Brechbill, Sophia L. Haight, Jennie Ellis, Sarah
E. Whittaker, Kate L. Sprague, Vienna Dodge, Ada L. Mitchell, Anna
C. Foekens, Rena M. Mead, Mary E. Couse, B. S.
_Mankato Normal School_--Helen M. Philips, Defransa A. Swan, Anna
McCutcheon, Genevieve S. Hawley, Mary E. Hutcheson, Eliza A.
Cheney, Charity A. Green, M. Adda Holton.
_St. Cloud Normal School_--Isabel Lawrence, Ada A. Warner, Minnie
F. Wheelock, Rose A. Joclin, Mary L. Wright, Kittie W. Allen.
Nearly all of the above-named teachers were graduated from Eastern
colleges and universities.
Women occupy the same positions as men and receive corresponding
salaries. A recent report of Minneapolis schools names fifteen
women in the High School receiving from $650 to $900 per year;
twelve principals of ward schools, receiving from $750 to $1,000;
and eleven primary principals receiving from $650 to $800. At St.
Paul there were reported two principals getting $1,200 each, two
getting $900, and twelve others getting $600 each; of the five lady
assistants in the High School, one received $900, one $800, and
three received $700 each. The principal of the High School at
Duluth receives $750 per annum, and some of the assistants and
principals of ward schools, $600.
Miss Sarah E. Sprague, a graduate of St. Lawrence University, and
of the Normal and Training School at Oswego, N. Y., has been
employed since August, 1884, by the State Department of Public
Instruction, for institute work, at a salary of $1,260 per year and
expenses. Miss Sprague is a lady of rare ability and an honor to
her profession.
Prominent among private schools for young ladies is the Bennett
Seminary at Minneapolis, Mrs. B. B. Bennett, principal; also the
Wasioja Seminary, Mrs. C. B. P. Lang, preceptress, and Miss M. V.
Paine, instructor in music. The services of Miss Mary E. Hutcheson
have been highly valued as instructor in vocal music and elocution
in the Mankato Normal School. Miss Florence Barton at Minneapolis,
Mrs. Emily Moore of Duluth, are excellent teachers of music, and
Miss Zella D'Unger, of elocution.
Prominent among the kindergarten schools is that of Mrs. D. V. S.
Brown at St. Paul; Mrs. Mary Dowse, Duluth; Miss Endora Hailman,
Winona. The latter is director of the kindergarten connected with
the Winona State Normal School. Miss Fannie Wood, Miss Kate E.
Barry, Miss Ella P. McWhorter and Miss Abby E. Axtell, are reported
as having rendered very efficient service as teachers in the State
Deaf and Dumb Asylum; Miss Mary Kirk, Miss Alice Mott and Miss Emma
L. Rohow are spoken of as having been earnest and devoted teachers
in the State Institution for the Blind.
Mrs. Viola Fuller Miner of Minneapolis, graduated from the State
University, has long been known as a teacher and writer of much
ability. Her pen never touches the suffrage question except to its
advantage. Miss Eloise Butler, teaching in the High School of the
same city, would gladly have lent her personal aid to suffrage work
had time and strength permitted. We have at least the blessing of
her membership and influence. Mrs. Sadie Martin, likewise a teacher
of advanced classes and an easy writer, will be remembered as the
first president of the local suffrage society of Minneapolis, and
one much devoted to its interests. Mrs. Maggie McDonald, formerly a
teacher at Rochester and long a resident of St. Paul, has ever been
a devoted friend of the suffrage cause--commenced work as long ago
as '69, and is to-day unflagging in hope and zeal. Mrs. Caroline
Nolte of the same city, though much occupied as a teacher in the
High School, still found time to aid in forming the St. Paul
Suffrage Society. Miss Helen M. McGowan, a teacher at Owatonna, is
spoken of as "a grand woman who believes in the ballot as a means
to higher ends." Miss S. A. Mayo, a lady of fine culture and a
successful teacher of elocution, was also an active member of this
society while in the city. Miss Clara M. Coleman, a classical
scholar from Michigan University, for one year principal of the
Duluth High School, was a believer in equal rights for all and did
not hesitate to say so. Miss Louise Hollister, a graduate of the
Minnesota University, is Miss Coleman's successor and a friend of
suffrage for women, with an educational qualification; she is
vice-president of the Equal Rights League of Duluth. Miss Jenny
Lind Gowdy, graduated from the Winona Normal School, is an
excellent primary principal who teaches her pupils that girls
should have the same rights and privileges as boys--no more, no
less.
[E.]
The names of the women who have been admitted to the Minnesota
State Medical Society are: Clara E. Atkinson, Ida Clark, Mary G.
Hood, A. M. Hunt, Harriet E. Preston, Belle M. Walrath, Annes F.
Wass, Lizzie R. Wass, Mary Twoddy Whetsone.
Among the women who have practiced medicine in Minnesota are:
Catharine Underwood Jewell, Lake City; E. M. Roys, Rochester;
Harriet E. Preston, M. Mason, Mary E. Emery, Jennie Fuller, Clara
E. Atkinson, St. Paul; Mary G. Hood, Mary J. Twoddy Whetsone, R. C.
Henderson, A. M. Hunt, Adele S. Hutchinson, Mary L. Swain, D. A.
Coombe, Minneapolis; E. M. Roys, Mary Whitney, Ida S. Clark,
Rochester; Augusta L. Rosenthal, Winona; Fannie E. Holden, Anna
Brockway Gray, Duluth.
The board of officers of the Sisters of Bethany has for many years
consisted of: _President_, Mrs. Charlotte O. Van Cleve;
_Vice-President_, Mrs. Euphemia N. Overlock; _Secretary_, Mrs.
Harriet G. Walker; _Treasurer_, Mrs. Abbie G. Mendenhall.
The city of Minneapolis takes the lead of all others in the State
in the number of its benevolent institutions. It has its Woman's
Industrial Exchange, as an aid to business women; its Woman's Home,
or pleasant boarding-house; for the care of sick women, its
Northwestern Woman's Hospital and training-school for nurses; also
a homeopathic hospital for women; for the care of homeless infants,
its Foundlings' Home; for unfortunate girls, its Bethany Home. All
of these institutions are in the hands of the best of women. Among
the most active are: Mrs. M. B. Lewis, Miss Abby Adair, Mrs. O. A.
Pray, Mrs. J. M. Robinson, Mrs. John Edwards, Mrs. L. Christian,
Mrs. S. W. Farnham, Mrs. Wm. Harrison, Mrs. H. M. Carpenter, Mrs.
D. Morrison, Mrs. John Crosby, Mrs. George B. Wright, Mrs. Moses
Marston, Mrs. Charlotte O. Van Cleve, Mrs. T. B. Walker, Dr. Mary
S. Whetsone, Mrs. C. S. Winchell, Dr. Mary G. Hood, Mrs. R. W.
Jordan, Miss A. M. Henderson.
In the city of Duluth there is a woman's home unlike any other in
the State. It is managed by a corporate body of ladies known as
home missionaries. The charter members are: Sarah B. Stearns, Laura
Coppernell, Jennie C. Swanstrom, Fanny H. Anthony, Olive Murphy,
Flora Davey, Jennie S. Lloyd, Fannie E. Holden, M. D. The work of
this corporation is to seek out all poor women needing temporary
shelter and employment. The classes chiefly cared for are poor
widows and deserted wives, and such small children as may belong to
them; also over-worked young women who may need a temporary
resting-place; also young girls thrown suddenly upon their own
resources without knowledge of how to care for themselves. These
ladies care also for the unfortunate of another class, but in a
retired place, unmarked by any sign. They prefer that to the usual
plan of caring for the victims of men.
[F.]
Portrait and landscape-painters in oil and water-colors, who give
promise of success: _Minneapolis_, Miss Clara V. Shaw, Miss Mary E.
Neagle, Mrs. Frank Painter, Miss Mary Dunn, Mrs. Irene W. Clark,
Miss C. M. Lenora, Mrs. Arthur Clark, Mrs. A. M. West, Miss Myra H.
Twitchell, Mrs. A. L. Loring, Miss Luella Gurney, Mrs. Charles
Fairfield, Mrs. A. T. Rand, Miss E. Robeson, Miss Helen Goodwin,
Mrs. Sarah E. Corbett, Mrs. Lucille Hunkle, Miss Mary Kennedy, Mrs.
Frances A. Pray. Mrs. W. B. Mead, Miss Flora Edwards, Mrs. Knight,
Mrs. I. W. Mauley, Mrs. M. P. Hawkins; _St. Paul_, Miss Florence M.
Cole, Miss Mary Hollingshead, Miss A. M. Shavre, Miss Alice
Chandler, Mrs. Martha Griggs, Miss L. B. West, Mrs. Knox, Mrs.
Theodosia Rose Cleveland, Mrs. Genevieve Jefferson, Mrs. C. B.
Grant, Jennie Lynch, Miss Wilson, Miss Lilla Inness, Mrs. George
Eastman, Mrs. Paine, Mrs. Fannie Smith, Miss Alice Page, Mrs.
Hunter; _Winona_, Mrs. W. Ely, Mrs. Ella Newell, Miss D. E. Barr;
_Lake City_, Mrs. H. B. Sargent, Mrs. J. G. Richardson, Bessie
Milliken; _Stillwater_, Sadie S. Clark, Miss Field, Sarah Murdock;
_Albert Lea_, Birdie Slocum; _Fairbault_, Grace McKinster, Miss S.
E. Cook; _Litchfield_, Mrs. Carter; _Alexandria_, Mamie Lewis; _St.
Cloud_, Mary Clarke; _Fergus Falls_, Mrs. Wurtle; _Owatonna_, Mrs.
D. O. Searles; _Duluth_, Emma F. Shaw Newcome, Anna E. Gilbert,
Mrs. A. D. Frost, De Etta Evans, Mrs. Persis Norton, Addie W. L.
Barrow, Gertrude Olmstead, Addie Hunter, Fanny Woodbridge.
Doubtless there are many others of worth in other localities
improving their talents and finding real enjoyment and pecuniary
recompense in the pursuit of their loved art.
It is one of the imperfections of this chapter that the names
cannot be given of the many gifted young ladies who have gone from
Minnesota for a musical education to the New York and Boston
Conservatories of Music. Of those who have gone from Duluth, and
returned as proficients, may be named Mary Willis, Mary Ensign
Hunter, Mary Munger, Florence Moore and Jessie Hopkins. With this
beautiful thought in mind, "_noblesse oblige_," the christian
workers of Duluth call upon these talented young ladies for aid in
furnishing many entertainments for charity's sake, and are seldom
disappointed.
[G.]
Among the occasional speakers and writers not mentioned in the main
chapter are: Abbie J. Spaulding, Mrs. M. M. Elliot, Miss A. M.
Henderson, Mrs. M. J. Warner, Lizzie Manson, Rebecca S. Smith,
Viola Fuller Miner, Harriet G. Walker, Eliza Burt Gamble, Emma
Harriman, Eva McIntyre, Mary Hall Dubois, Minnie Reed, Mrs. G. H.
Miller, Dr. Mary Whetsone, Mrs. M. C. Ladd, Mrs. M. A. Seely, Mrs.
E. S. Wright, Mrs. M. H. Drew, Mrs. E. J. Holly, Mrs. David
Sanford, Mrs. F. E. Russell, Lily Long. Zoe McClary, daughter of
Rev. and Mrs. Thomas McClary, gives promise of distinction.
Since the formation of the State and local societies there are many
women in their quiet homes who are ever ready to encourage any
effort toward making all women more free, helpful and happy. Let
this paragraph record the names of a few of these: Mary E. Chute,
Isabelle L. Blaisdell, Mary Partridge, Mrs. C. C. Curtis, Frances
A. Shaw, Lucy E. Prescott, Mrs. S. J. Squires, Minnie Reed, Mrs. E.
S. Wright, Nellie H. Hazeltine, Adelle J. Grow, Mrs. A. B. Cole,
Mrs. A. F. Bliss, Mrs. E. J. Holley, Frances P. Sawyer, Frances L.
James, Mrs. M. C. Clark, Lucy Gibbs, Prudence Lusk, Lizzie P.
Hawkins, M. Hammond, Mrs. E. Southworth, Josephine Strait, Kittie
Manson, Mrs. R. C. Watson, Alice B. Cash, Emma Drew, Helen M. Olds,
Mrs. W. W. Bilson, Adaline Smith, Mrs. L. A. Watts, Emily Moore,
Olive Murphy, Mrs. L. A. Wentworth, Gertrude L. Gow, Della W.
Norton, Mrs. V. A. Wright, Mrs. M. H. Wells, Aurelia Bassett, Kate
C. Stevens, Mary Vrouman, Belle Hazen, Mrs. D. C. Hunt, Mrs. L. H.
Young, Louisa Stevens, Esther Hayes, Sarah J. Crawford, Lucinda
Roberts, Carrie Rawson, Sarah Herrick, Kate Tabor, Charlotte
Herbert, Belle McClelland, Jane E. Knott, Margaret Bryson, Mary
McKnight, Emma Coleman, Sarah Ricker, Mary M. Pomeroy, Sarah
Pribble, Mary A. Grinnell, Eliza Van Ambden.
* * * * *
CHAPTER LIII.
CALIFORNIA.
We give not only the names of the delegates present at the
convention of 1870, but also of a few of the most earnest friends
of the cause in the several counties of the State, not heretofore
mentioned in connection with the early conventions.
In San Francisco we must not omit the venerable Eliza Taylor, a
sweet-faced Quaker, eighty years of age, nor Fanny Green
McDougall--"Aunt" Fanny, as we loved to call her--nor Mrs. C. C.
Calhoun, Mary F. Snow, Minnie Edwards, Mrs. O. Fuller, Mrs. C. M.
Parker, Wm. R. Ryder, Mrs. M. J. Hendee, Kate Collins, Mary
Kellogg, Louise Fowler, M. J. Hemsley and Mrs. H. T. Perry. In
October, 1883, Elizabeth McComb, Mary Coggins, Mrs. J. V.
Drinkhouse, Dr. and Mrs. E. D. Smith, Mrs. E. Sloan, Mrs. C. J.
Furman, Elizabeth D. Layres, Miss Prince, Kate Kennedy, Carrie
Parker, Marion Hill,[587] Mrs. Olmstead, Mrs. Dr. White, Dr. Laura
P. Williams and Mrs. Olive Washburn were all members of the city
and State associations. There was the brilliant Sallie Hart, who
took such an active part in the "local option" contest in 1871, and
who as a newspaper reporter and correspondent in the State
legislature for two or three sessions was very active in urging the
claims of woman upon the consideration of our law-makers.
Hon. Philip A. Roach, often a prominent official of the State, and
for many years editor of the _Daily Examiner_, is an advocate of
woman's rights and was instrumental in getting an act, known as
"Senator Roach's bill to Punish Wife-whippers," passed. It provided
that such offenders should be punished by flogging upon the bare
back at the whipping-post. A wise and just law, but it was
afterward declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Hon.
James G. Maguire, a brilliant and rising young lawyer, a member of
the legislature in 1875, now a judge of the Superior Court of San
Francisco, is a most reliable and talented advocate of equality for
women. Among the members of the bar and other prominent men of the
State are to be found a number who are either pronounced in their
views of woman's right to vote, or are inclined to favor all
measures tending to ameliorate woman's condition in life; of whom
are Judge G. M. Clough, Judge Darwin, D. J. Murphy, Judge L. Quint,
Col. J. P. Jackson of the _Daily Post_, Hon. Charles Gildea of the
Board of Equalization, Judge Toohey, the late Judge Charles Wolff,
Rev. Dr. F. F. Jewell, Dr. R. H. McDonald, the prominent temperance
advocate; Hon. J. T. Wharton, P. S. Dorney, esq., Judge J. B.
Lamar, Rev. Dr. Robert McKenzie, Capt. Walker of the _City Argus_,
Hon. Frank Pixley of the _Argonaut_, ex-Gov. James A. Johnson of
the _Daily Alta_, Alfred Cridge, esq., Dr. R. B. Murphy, N. Hawks,
W. H. Barnes of _The Call_, O. Dearing, Hon. W. W. Marrow, Hon.
Charles A. Sumner, representative in congress; Hon. J. B. Webster
of the _California Patron_, in San Francisco. In other parts of the
State are; Senator Cross of Nevada county, Assemblyman Cominette of
Amador, Judge G. G. Clough, and Senator Kellogg of Plumas county,
Hon. H. M. Larue, Speaker of the House, and Assemblyman Doty of
Sacramento county, Senator Del Valle of Los Angeles, Hon. O. B.
Hitchcock of Tulare county, Judge McCannaughy and Judge E. Steele
of Siskyon county, Hon. T. B. Wigginton, Judge Charles Marks, R. J.
Steele, esq., of Merced county; John Mitchell, John T. Davis and
Capt. Gray of Stanislaus; Hon. J. McM. Shafter of Marin county;
Senator Brooks and Judge J. D. Hinds of Ventura county.
Sacramento county contains a large number of progressive men and
women, though the good work has consisted mainly in the efforts
made by committees appointed by the State society to attend the
biënnial sessions of the legislature, most of whom were not
residents of the county. But among those who have done good service
in Sacramento, the first and most active for many years has been
Mrs. L. G. Waterhouse, now of Monterey. She espoused the cause in
early life, and when many added years compelled her to retire from
active service, her efforts in behalf of women were still
continued. Miss Dr. Kellogg is not only a successful practitioner
of medicine, but is gifted with eloquent speech, and has on several
occasions addressed the legislature of the State; Dr. Jennie
Bearby, for some years a resident of Sacramento, now of Idaho, is
worthy of mention; Mrs. M. J. Young, attorney-at-law since June,
1879; Annie G. Cummings and daughter, have been among the earliest
and most faithful adherents to our cause. Mrs. E. B. Crocker has,
through her social position, exerted great influence in a quiet
way, and has contributed liberally from her vast wealth to aid the
cause; she founded the Marguerite Home for aged women. Dr. and Mrs.
Bowman, now of Oakland, were pioneers in this work; while Mesdames
Jackson, Hontoon, Perley Watson, and Miss Hattie Moore are among
the recent converts. Hon. Grove L. Johnson has been one of the most
eloquent of all the fearless champions of women who have occupied a
seat in the legislature; Hon. Creed Haymond deserves to rank with
the foremost, as an able advocate of woman's political rights; Hon.
S. J. Finney of Santa Cruz, Talbot Wallis, State Librarian, Judge
Taylor, a prominent lawyer, and his brilliant wife, are also among
our friends. Sarah A. Montgomery, Mattie A. Shaw, Mrs. A. Wilcox,
Mary B. Lewis, Judge and Mrs. McFarland, Judge J. W. Armstrong,
encouraged by his devoted and talented wife, and a large number of
others, favor in a quiet way the ballot for women.
San Joaquin county has been the home of Laura De Force Gordon since
1870, and much of her practice as a lawyer has been in the courts
at Stockton. Among the earliest advocates of suffrage were Mr. and
Mrs. William Condy, Mr. and Mrs. Harry, Judge Brush, Hattie Brush,
Judge Roysdon, William Hickman and wife, Mrs. E. Emery, William
Israel, Hannah Israel, Miss E. Clifford, Dr. Holden, Richard Condy
and his noble wife Elizabeth, who was the first president of the
San Joaquin county society. Among a host of others are Mr. and Mrs.
W. F. Freeman and their bright young daughter Sophronia, who gives
promise of future usefulness in the lecture-field; Mr. and Mrs. J.
C. Gage, whose daughter Hattie possesses marked artistic ability,
and though still in her teens has produced oil paintings of rare
beauty; Dr. Brown, physician in charge of the State Insane Asylum;
Dr. Phoebe Tabor, for many years a successful medical practitioner;
Mrs. N. G. Cary, Mrs. M. S. Webb, Mrs. Zignago, a successful
business woman; Mr. and Mrs. H. B. Loomis, R. B. Lane, Mr. and Mrs.
H. M. Bond, and Mr. and Mrs. W. L. Overhiser, both of whom are
active members of that liberal woman's rights order, the Patrons of
Husbandry. Hon. R. C. Sargent, a member of the legislature for
several terms, has always aided the woman's cause by his vote and
influence. Dr. J. L. Sargent and his intelligent wife are also
friends to every measure tending to benefit woman. Hon. S. L.
Terry, Senator F. T. Baldwin, James A. Lontitt, esq., Judge J. H.
Budd, Judge A. Van R. Patterson, George B. McStay, Judge Buckley
and a number of other prominent officials and members of the legal
profession, are all in favor of equal rights.
Sonoma county has a few fearless friends of woman suffrage. Mary
Jewett, Mrs. Prince, Fannie M. Wertz and Miss E. Merrill were
officers in the first organization formed at Healdsburg in that
county in 1870, and together with J. G. Howell and wife, who were
proprietors of the _Russian River Flag_, kept up the society for
years. At Petaluma, Mrs. A. A. Haskell, Mr. and Mrs. A. L. Hatch,
Kate Lovejoy and Mrs. Judge Latimer organized a society in 1869. In
Solano county are Mr. and Mrs. Denio and Mrs. E. L. Hale of
Vallejo; Mrs. Elizabeth Ober and Mrs. Celia Geddes of Fairfield.
Napa county soon became an objective point for lecturers; a society
was organized at St. Helena in 1871, with Mr. and Mrs. John
Lewellyn, Charles King, Mrs. Potter and Dr. and Mrs. Allyn as
officers; at Napa were Joseph Eggleton and wife and Mrs. Ellis. In
San Mateo county was Mrs. Dr. Kilpatrick. Contra Costa county was
organized in 1870, and Mrs. Phebe Benedict, Mrs. Abbott, Mary
O'Brien, Sarah Sellers, Dr. and Mrs. Howard, Hannah Israel, an able
writer and lecturer, and Capt. Kimball of Antioch, took an active
part therein. Mrs. J. H. Chase of Martinez, E. H. Cox and wife of
Danville, were pioneers in the cause, and Henry and Abigail Bush of
Martinez, were most prominent in the first meetings held there.
Mrs. Bush had the honor to preside over the second woman suffrage
convention ever held in the United States, that at Rochester, N.
Y., in 1848. O. Alley and wife, also of Martinez, extended their
hospitality to lecturers who visited that place, and fully
sympathized in the cause.
In Marin county a society was formed in 1870, with Isabella Irwin,
Mrs. Barney, Flora Whitney, Mrs. M. Dubois and Mary Battey Smith,
as officers; Mrs. McM. Shafter, a gifted and influential lady, was
also an active worker in the good cause. Alameda county--Rev. John
Benton and wife, Professor E. Carr and wife, Mrs. C. C. Calhoun,
Mrs. M. L. S. Duncan, Mrs. S. S. Allen, Dr. and Mrs. Powers, Mr.
and Mrs. Ingersoll, Angie Eager, Mary Kenny, George and Martha
Parry and Mr. and Mrs. William Stevens, were interested in the
earlier agitation of the question; Mrs. Sanford, Mrs. A. M.
Stoddard and Mrs. M. Johnson are among the later converts. Merced
county the home of Rowena Granice Steele, the author, and publisher
of the _San Joaquin Valley Argus_, has furnished the State with a
worthy and capable advocate of woman suffrage, both as a speaker
and writer. In her cozy, rose-embowered cottage at Merced, she
generously entertains her numerous guests, who always seek out this
distinguished and warm-hearted friend of woman. Stanislaus county
is the present home of Jennie Phelps Purvis, a talented and
brilliant woman, well known in literary circles in an early day and
for some years a prominent officer and member of the State society.
At Modesto are Mrs. Lapham and daughter Amel, and Mr. and Mrs.
Brown, good friends to suffrage. In San Diego are Mrs. F. P.
Kingsbury, Mrs. Tallant. In Santa Cruz county, Georgiana Bruce
Kirby, Mrs. H. M. Blackburn, Mrs. M. E. Heacock, Rev. D. G.
Ingraham, Ellen Van Valkenburg. In Los Angeles county, Mrs. Eliza
J. Hall, M. D. Ingo county, J. A. Jennings. Santa Clara county, J.
J. Owen, the able editor of the _San José Mercury_; Laura J.
Watkins, Hon. O. H. Smith and wife, Mrs. G. B. McKee, Mrs.
McFarland, Mrs. Herman, Mrs. Montgomery, Mrs. Miller, Mrs. J. J.
Crawford, Mrs. R. B. Hall, Mrs. Knox, Mrs. Wallis, Mrs. C. M.
Putney, Mrs. Damon, Miss Walsh, and many others, have all helped
the good cause in San José; while Louisa Smith of Santa Clara, a
lady of advancing years, was ever a faithful friend of the cause,
as was also Miss Emma S. Sleeper of Mountain View, formerly of Mt.
Morris, N. Y. In Nevada county, originally the home of Senator A.
A. Sargent, the question of woman suffrage was agitated at an early
day. The most active friends were: Ellen Clark Sargent, Emily
Rolfe, Mrs. Leavett, Mrs. E. P. Keeney, Mrs. E. Loyed, Elmira Eddy,
Mr. and Mrs. William Stevens, Mrs. Hanson, Judge Palmer and Mrs.
Cynthia Palmer.
* * * * *
CHAPTER LVI.
GREAT BRITAIN.
A CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE SUCCESSIVE STEPS OF PROGRESS TOWARDS
FREEDOM FOR WOMEN.
1848. Queen's College, Harley street, London, founded for girls.
1849. Bedford College, London, founded; incorporated, 1869.
1850. North London Collegiate School for girls opened by Miss
Buss, April 4.
1854. Cheltenham Ladies' College commenced.... Miss Nightingale
goes to Sentari; from hence may be dated the beginning of
training schools for nurses, metropolitan associations for
nursing the poor, etc., etc.
1856. Female Artists' Society founded.
1857. Divorce and Matrimonial Causes act passed, by which divorce
and judicial separation became attainable in course of law....
Ladies' Sanitary Association, founded October 1.
1858. _Englishwoman's Journal_ started (now _Englishwoman's
Review_) by Bessie R. Parkes and Mdme. Bodichon, March 2....
First swimming bath for ladies, opened in Marylebone, July 14.
1859. Society for the Employment of Women established in London,
June 22.
1860. Law-copying Office for women opened February 15....
Victoria Printing Press, established March 26.... Institution for
the Employment of Needle-women commenced.... First admission of
women students to the Royal Academy (Miss Herford).
1861. Lectures on Physiology to ladies at University College,
April.
1862. Social Science Congress in London; though not the first
time ladies had read papers at the congress--this was remarkable
for the increased share they took in its proceedings.... Ladies'
Negro Emancipation Society commenced.... New church order of
deaconesses founded on the model of Kaiserwerth.... First voyage
of Miss Rye to Australia, and commencement of her system of
emigration.
1863. Establishment of Queen's Institute, Dublin, for industrial
training of women.
1864. Female Medical and Obstetrical Society begun.... Working
Women's College, Queen's Square, opened October 26.
1865. Miss Garrett receives her medical diploma from
Apothecaries' Hall.
1866. A petition of 1,500 women for the franchise presented, and
the first women's suffrage society formed.
1867. Mr. Mill's motion in the House of Commons to give the
suffrage to women.... Lily Maxwell voted in Manchester for Mr.
Jacob Bright.
1868. In the general election many women who were left on the
register voted. Women's suffrage was declared illegal by the
Court of Common Pleas, November 9.... London University
establishes a women's examination.
1869. Ladies' Educational Association begun in London, which was
dissolved July 18, 1878, upon London University College admitting
women as regular students.... Women's College established at
Hitchin, October ... The telegraph service was transferred to
government, and women clerks were retained, thus entering the
civil service.... Municipal Franchise act passed; women first
voted under it November 1.
1870. Publication of _Women's Suffrage Journal_ commenced March
1.... Women's Disabilities Removal bill introduced by Mr. Jacob
Bright, M.P., read a second time, but rejected in committee,
May.... Lectures for women begun in Cambridge.... First
examinations of women in Queen's University, Ireland.... Married
Women's Property act (England) passed, August 9.... National
Indian Association established by Mary Carpenter (principal
object: the improvement of women's education in India),
September.... Vigilance Association established, October; mainly
occupied in women's questions.... Elementary Education act
passed.... First school-board election in London, November 25
(Miss Garrett and Miss Emily Davies elected in London; Miss
Becker, Manchester, etc.).
1871. Ladies' National Health Association commenced by Dr.
Elizabeth Blackwell.... Law of Ireland amended slightly with
regard to married women's property.... National Union for
improving the education of women established by Mrs. Grey,
November.
1872. New Hospital for Women, opened February, in Marylebone
(women doctors).... Girls' Public Day School Company formed.
First school opened January 1, at Chelsea; there are now
fifteen.... Girton College, Cambridge, incorporated. Hitchin
College subsequently removed to it.... New Bastardy act, passed
August 10, affording a greater measure of relief to unmarried
mothers.
1873. Mrs. Nassau Senior, appointed assistant inspector of
workhouses, January; the first government appointment of a lady;
made permanent, February, 1874.... First school-board election in
Scotland, February (twenty ladies elected).... Second English
school-board.... Custody of Infants act passed, which enables a
man, having a deed of separation from his wife, to give up the
custody of the children to her if he chooses.
1874. Women's Peace and Arbitration Auxiliary of the London Peace
Society formed, April.... Women's Protection and Provident League
formed, July 8 (benefit societies and trades unions for working
women).... Protection Orders given to wives in Scotland, July
19.... College for Working Women, Fitzroy street, London, opened
October.... London School of Medicine for Women, opened October
12.
1875. A lady first elected as poor-law guardian (Miss Merington,
in Kensington), April.... Albemarle Club opened for ladies and
gentlemen, May 29.... Newnham College, Cambridge, opened....
Employment of Women Office, opened in Brighton.... Female
clerkships in Post-Office Savings Bank.... Pharmaceutical Society
of Ireland admitted women to examinations.... Madras Medical
School opened to women.... First woman lawyer's office opened in
London (Miss Orme).... Metropolitan and National Nursing
Association formed.... Women delegates from women's unions first
admitted to Trades' Congress in Glasgow, October.
1876. Admission of women to Manchester New College, February
9.... First qualified woman pharmacist established in London
(Miss Isabella Clarke).... Plan-tracing office for women opened
(Miss Crosbie).... Employment of Women Office, opened in
Glasgow.... Scholarship for women established in Bristol
University College.... British Women's Temperance Association
commenced.... Passing of the act, known as Russell-Gurney's act,
enabling universities to admit women to degrees, August....
Resolutions of King and Queen's College of Physicians in Ireland
to confer medical degrees on women; five ladies passed their
examinations and received degrees in the following spring.... A
memorial, signed by 45,000 women, presented to the queen on
behalf of the Bulgarians.
1877. Teachers, Training and Registration Society inaugurated,
February 2.... Trinity College, London, decided to throw open its
musical examinations to women.... St. Andrew's University offered
"Literate in Arts" degrees to women.... A bill to amend the
Married Women's Property Law (Scotland) passed; came into force
January 1, 1878.... International Congress on Public Morality met
at Geneva, September.... Admission of women medical students to
the Royal Free Hospital, October 1.... Manchester and Salford
College for women (now affiliated to the Victoria University)
opened, October.
1878. Society to extend the knowledge of law among women
started.... Matrimonial Causes Amendment act passed; a clause
being inserted by Lord Penzance enabling magistrates to grant a
judicial separation to women if brutally treated by their
husbands, a maintenance to be given them, and the children to
remain under their mother's care.... Admission of women to London
University degrees and examinations, July 1.... Intermediate
Education act, Ireland; participation of girls in its benefits.
1879. Victoria University charter grants degrees to women....
Oxford, Somerville and Lady Margaret Halls opened, October....
Nine ladies elected on London school-board, November....
Pharmaceutical Society admits women as members, October.... Order
of St. Katherine for nurses established.... School for
wood-engraving and one for wood-carving established.
1880. Charter of Irish University gives degrees to women....
Demonstration of women in Manchester in favor of the suffrage,
February 3; followed by London, Bristol and Nottingham in the
same year.... Bill to give further protection to little girls
under 13 passed.... Mason College in Birmingham founded; equal
facilities to girls and boys.... First lady B. A. in London
University, October.... Melbourne University matriculates women,
March 22.... The Burial bill gives women the right to conduct
funeral services.... The House of Keys in the Isle of Man passed
women's suffrage for women who are owners of property, November
5.
1881. Suffrage bill in the Isle of Man received royal assent
January 5; seven hundred women are electors; general election
began March 21.... Cambridge University admits women students to
formal examinations by a vote of 398 against 32, February 24....
Durham University votes that women may become members.
1881. Sydney University (New South Wales) admits women to
matriculation and degrees.... New Zealand University confers
title of M. A. on a woman, August.... Poor-law Guardian
Association for promoting the election of ladies established,
March; seven ladies elected in London.... Somerville Club for
women opened.... Women clerks admitted to the civil service by
open competition.... Municipal Franchise act for Scotland, passed
June 3; came into operation January 1, 1882.... Married Women's
Property act for Scotland, passed July 18.
1882. London University Convocation resolves to admit women as
graduates, January 17.... Twelve women elected in London as
poor-law guardians, April; fifteen in the country.... Married
Women's Property act passed by the Lords and brought down to the
Commons May 22; passed and returned to the Lords August 16;
received royal assent August 18.... Addition to Municipal
Franchise act (Scotland) by inclusion of police burghs.... Women
first voted in Scotland under the new act, November 8....
Appointment of women as registrars of births and deaths in four
parishes.
1883. Married Women's Property act comes into operation January
1.... Appointment of Miss E. Shove as physician to female staff
in post-office; first appointment by government of a woman....
Poor-law guardian elections, April; thirteen ladies in London,
two in Scotland for the first time; thirteen in other towns in
England.... Mr. Stansfeld's resolution against the Contagious
Diseases acts carried in the House of Commons by a majority of
72, April 26; the acts consequently are suspended....
May.--Memorial to the Prime Minister signed by 110 independent
Liberal members, asking that women's suffrage shall be included
in the coming Reform bill.... Mr. Mason's resolution for women's
suffrage thrown out by a majority of only 16.... Great conference
of Liberal associations at Leeds on parliamentary reform votes
for woman suffrage, October 17, followed by similar votes at
Edinburgh, November 16; Manchester, November 21; Bristol,
November 26, and in many smaller places.... Guarantee-fund raised
in Bombay for lady physicians and hospitals for women commenced;
Calcutta University opened to women.
1884. Second reading of the bill for the Custody and Guardianship
of children carried, March 26, by a majority of 134.... First
lady, Mrs. Bryant, obtained degree of Doctor of Science in London
University.... Nine ladies obtain B. A. degree in Royal Irish
University.
1885. College of Surgeons, Ireland, opens its degrees to
women.... Criminal-law Amendment Bill passed in August, raising
the age of protection for girls, and giving increased facilities
for rescuing them from ruin.... Municipal suffrage granted to
women in Madras.... Miss Mason appointed inspector of workhouses
by local government board, November.
FOOTNOTES:
[586] Signed by Superintendents Public Schools, A. C. Shortridge,
Indianapolis, Alexander M. Gow, Evansville, Wm. H. Wiley, Terre
Haute, Jas. McNeil, Richmond, J. H. Smart, Fort Wayne, Wm. Phelan,
Laporte, Barnabas C. Hobbs, Bloomingdale; Thomas Holmes, president
Union Christian College, Mrs. Thos. Holmes, Merom; Geo. P. Brown,
principal high-school, Mrs. Geo. P. Brown, Jessie H. Brown,
assistant-superintendent public schools, Prof. W. A. Bell, Prof. T.
Charles, Hon. Byron K. Elliott, Geo. Merritt, Mrs. George Merritt,
Wm. Coughlen, Jno. S. Newman, president Merchants National Bank,
Col. James B. Black, Jos. E. Perry, Dr. E. S. Newcomer, Mrs. S. E.
Newcomer, Col. Samuel Merrill, Franklin Taylor, Phebe M. Taylor, H.
H. Lee, Mrs. Elizabeth Lee, Dr. O. S. Runnels, Mrs. Dora C.
Runnels, Horace McKay, Thomas E. Chandler, David Gibson, Miss Mary
Bradshaw, Dr. J. C. Walker, Indianapolis; Elias Hicks Swayne,
Mahala M. Swayne, Richmond; Dr. Geo. M. Dakin, Mrs. Geo. M. Dakin,
Laporte.
[587] Mrs. Hill was President of the San Francisco Woman Suffrage
Society for three years prior to her death in 1884.
INDEX
TO
THE HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
Compiled by JOHN WEINHEIMER of _The New York Tribune_.
A.
Abelard, i, 759.
Abbott, Francis, iii, 127.
Adam and Eve, i, 561.
Adams, Abigail Smith, i, 32, 201.
Adams, Hannah, author, i, 205.
Adams, John, i, 31, iii, 79.
Adams, John Q., iii, 479.
Adams, Mary N., lecturer, iii, 614.
Addresses and appeals, i, 106, 595, 676, 742, 856; ii, 51, 67, 167,
168, 364, 485, 517; iii, 58, 129, 580.
Adelbert College, iii, 498.
_Agitator_, ii, 373, iii, 274.
Agrippa, Cornelius, i, 29.
Alabama, iii, 830.
_Albany Evening Journal_, ii, 282.
_Albany Knickerbocker_ on woman's rights, i, 611.
_Albany Register_ on woman's rights, i, 608, 609, 610, 611.
_Albany Law Journal_, ii, 691, 947.
--on "our laws," iii, 94.
Alcibiades and the dog, ii, 103.
Alcott, A. Bronson, iii, 193
--on woman suffrage, iii, 519.
Alcott, Abby May, appeal, i, 247.
Alcott, Louisa May, letter to Mrs. Stone, ii, 831.
Alexander, Janet, iii, 298.
Allen, Jane, case of, ii, 592.
Allen, Nancy R., argument before Senate Committee, iii, 160
--legacy, iii, 624
--Notary Public, made, iii, 626.
Allen, Sophia Ober, iii, 502.
Almanac, Woman's Rights, i, 863.
Amberly, Lady, letter to Mrs. P. W. Davis, ii, 439.
AMERICAN EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION:
--"colored," the word, discussion, ii, 214
--Constitution, ii, 173
--Meetings:
Academy of Music (Brooklyn), ii, 398,
Church of the Puritans, ii, 182,
Cooper Institute, ii, 309,
Steinway Hall, ii, 378
--Memorial to Congress, ii, 226
--name changed to "Nat. Woman Suffrage Association," ii, 400
--officers, ii, 174
--organized, ii, 173
--letter of B. F. Wade, ii, 117
--report, Susan B. Anthony's, ii, 183.
American flag, design, i, 323.
AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION, ii, 756
--Celebration of Woman Suffrage in New Jersey, ii, 846
--constitution of, ii, 763
--conventions:
call for first, ii, 757,
Baltimore, 820,
Brooklyn in Plymouth Church, 831,
Cincinnati, O., 854,
Cleveland, O., 802,
Detroit, Mich., 834,
Indianapolis, Ind., 851,
Louisville, Ky., 861,
New York City in Apollo Hall, 821,
in Cooper Institute, 825,
in Steinway Hall, 809, 840,
Philadelphia, 815, 849,
St. Louis, Mo., 821,
Washington, D. C., 819, 858
--letter, circular, ii, 757
--members received at the White House by Mrs. Hayes, ii., 860
--memorial to Congress, ii., 859,
referred to Committee on Territories, 860
--report of chairman of Executive Committee, ii, 803
--resolutions, ii, 805, 809, 810, 818, 826, 837, 843, 849, 851, 859.
Ames, Chas. G., i, 271, ii, 844, iii, 754.
Amnesty, universal, ii, 315.
Amos, Sheldon, on vice, i, 796.
Anderson, Geo. W., iii, 699.
Andrews, Margaret H., letter to S. J. May, i, 531.
Angell, John W., iii, 341.
Ann Arbor University, ii, 541.
Annekè, Franceska, i, 571, ii, 374, 393
--sketch of, iii, 646.
Anniversaries, _See Conventions_.
Anthony, Daniel, Lucy and Mary, i. 461.
Anthony, Hon, Henry B., on woman suffrage, i, 867, ii, 106, 273
--Pembina Territory bill, on the, ii, 568
--Sargent's amendment to the Pembina Territory bill, on, _ib._
--suffrage on, iii, 339
--woman suffrage, his last utterance on, iii, 350.
ANTHONY, Susan B., i, 186, 465, 467,468, 476, 485, 487, 489, 490, 500,
501, 515, 517, 526, 570, 589, 591, 607, 624, 653, 673, 679, 716;
ii, 66, 67, 116, 154, 220, 286, 287, 322, 360, 361, 363, 375, 382,
389, 391, 427, 431, 437, 442, 456, 582, 584, 760; iii, 3, 40, 66,
151, 175, 178, 195, 243, 257, 412, 502, 560, 580, 630, 641, 697,
773, 811, 819
--Abolitionists, and the, ii, 264
--American Equal Rights Association, ii, 117, 171
--appeal for woman rights, 1854, i, 856
--appeal to Congress, ii, 167
--argument before Illinois Legislature, iii, 572
--argument before Senate Committee, iii, 160, 227
--arrest of, ii, 628
--arrest, incidents of, ii, 539
--arrest, resolution concerning, ii, 537
--birthday celebrated in Indianapolis, iii, 538
--"Bloomer," in a, i, 128
--bonnet and Noah's ark, iii, 522
--"Bread and Ballot," iii, 536
--California visit, iii, 756
--call, loyal women, ii, 53
--Centennial Exhibition, at the, iii, 27
--complimented by Judge Edmunds, iii, 160
--Constitutional Convention at Albany, before, ii, 284
--corruptionist, as a, ii, 936
--Declaration of Rights, reads, at Centennial, iii, 31
--delegate to Democratic National Convention, ii, 340,
--comments of the press, ii, 342
--Democratic National Convention, at the, iii, 182
--_feme sole_ capable of making a contract, iii, 21
--Fifteenth Amendment, on the, ii, 340
--financial report, ii, 175
--fugitive wife's escape from an insane asylum, aids, i, 469
--general agent, appointed, i, 619
--Grant and Wilson campaign, appeal, ii, 517
--Grant, U. S., conversation with, ii, 544
--Iowa, in, iii, 622
--Kansas campaign, i, 200, ii, 239, 254, 261, 262, 263
--lecture, "False Theory," iii, 675
--lecturing tour, Ohio, iii, 491
--Letters: Boston Convention, i, 256
--Brooks, James, to, ii, 97
--Carson League, i, 488
--Democratic National Convention, to, ii, 340
--Foote, E. B., to, ii, 941
--Garfield. Jas. A., to, iii, 185
--loyal women, from, ii, 875
--Mott, Lydia, to, i, 748
--Stanton, Mrs., to, announcing her having voted, ii, 934
--Wright, Martha C, to, i, 678.
--Logan, Olive, and, ii, 385
--"Male" in the Constitution, on the word, ii, 91
--manhood suffrage, on, iii, 566
--marriage and divorce, on, i, 735
--meeting in Rahway, N. J., iii, 479
--meetings in Virginia, iii, 824
--Michigan campaign, iii, 522
--Napoleon of Woman Suffrage, the, i, 456
--Newport Convention, ii, 403
--on Mrs. Robert Dale Owen, i, 303
--Oregon visit, iii, 769
--police officer, and the, ii, 540
--portrait, i, 577
--President Mozart Hall Convention, i, 668
--President National Woman Suffrage Association, ii, 516
--presentations, iii, 193
--reception, Sorosis, iii, 571
--registered, ii, 627
--reminiscences, Mrs. E. C. Stanton's, i, 456
--report, National Convention, at Cooper Institute, i, 689
--report as secretary of American Equal Rights Association, ii, 183
--_Revolution_, i, 46
--Secretary Loyal League, made, ii, 66
--sex, and her, ii, 112
--Speeches: Anti-Slavery question, ii, 898
--Congressional Committee, before, ii, 414, 513
--first public speech, i, 41
--Furness' Church, in, iii, 35
--Is It a Crime for a United States' Citizen to Vote? ii, 630
--Philadelphia Convention, i, 385
--Saratoga Convention, i, 621
--Teachers' Convention, N. Y. State, i, 513
--Temperance Convention, Rochester, i, 483
--Washington Convention, ii, 423, 521
--Washington Convention, iii, 259
--Woman's National Loyal League, ii, 57, 61.
--Suffrage, on, ii, 383
--tableau "Mother and Susan," i, 461
--Taxation without Representation, on, ii, 539
--Temperance Convention at Rochester, read call, i, 481
--testimonial, i, 534
--tour, western, ii, 367
--tour with Ernestine L. Rose, i, 97
--tracts, Kansas campaign, ii, 239
--tracts and petitions, on, i, 383
--Train, G. F., and _The Revolution_, criticism, ii, 264
--Trial:
--Arrest, ii, 628
--argument, Crowley's, ii, 648, 675
--argument, Judge Selden's, ii, 654
--bail, refused to give, ii, 629
--case opened by Judge Selden, ii, 652
--Gage, Matilda J., Letter to _Albany Law Journal_, ii, 947
--guilty, Court directs a verdict of, ii, 679
--Hunt's, Judge, decision, ii, 677
--Hunt's decision criticised, ii, 689
--Hunt's decision reviewed, ii, 946
--incidents, ii, 537
--indictment, ii, 647
--inspectors of elections, _See trials and decisions_
--Jones, B. W., testimony, ii, 650
--letter from Gerrit Smith, ii, 941
--trial, new, denied, ii, 687
--trial, new, motion for, ii, 680
--opening of, ii, 647
--petition to Congress praying for remission of fine, ii, 698
--reports, majority and minority, ii, 701, 711
--Pound, J. E., testimony ii, 653
--press comments, ii, 935
--resolutions concerning, ii, 537
--Selden's letter, ii, 935
--sentenced to pay a fine of $100, ii, 687
--testimony in trial of election inspectors, ii, 692
--Washington gossip, ii, 943.
--Tribute, "Aunt Lottie's," iii, 41
--tribute, to Laura C. Haviland, iii, 532
--tribute, from _The Leavenworth Commercial_ (Kansas), ii, 263
--tribute to Lucretia Mott, iii, 189
--tribute, St. Louis Convention, iii, 147
--tribute, Scovill's, ii, 420
--visit to Lucretia Mott, i, 414
--voted for Grant for President, ii, 628
--letter announcing her having voted, ii, 934
--Washington Territory Legislature, hearing before, iii, 786
--Wyoming visit, iii, 734.
Anti-Slavery struggle, i, 39, 52, 54, 323, 325, 339, 417
--Josephine Griffing and Freedman's Bureau, ii, 29
--Society reorganized, ii, 153.
Anti-Woman Suffrage Society, iii, 99.
Antonelli's, Cardinal, sacrilegious child, i, 788.
Appendix, i, 801, ii, 863, iii, 955.
Archer, Stevenson, iii, 816.
Arkansas, iii, 805
--Constitutional Convention, iii, 806.
Arnell's services in Congress, ii, 489, 491.
Arnett, Hannah, i, 442.
Art and artists, iii, 301.
Ashley, Henry, iii, 319.
Ashley, J. M., speech in Congress, iii, 495.
Astell, Mary, i, 30.
Attorneys, ii, 604.
Augustine, i, 756.
Austin, Helen V., sketch of, i, 312.
Austria, iii, 904.
Autograph book, Centennial, iii, 40.
Avery, Alida C., iii, 719.
B.
Ballard, Anna, iii, 407.
Ballot, the, ii, 168
--Sumner on the, ii, 95
--what is the, ii, 155.
_Ballot-Box_, iii, 51, 504.
Banks, N. P., speech, iii, 10.
Banquet, St. James Hotel, ii, 441.
Bar, admission to the, iii, 330.
Barber, Miss, i, 807.
Barkaloo, Helena, lawyer, iii, 404.
Barker, Jos., i, 114
--Pulpit, on the, i, 140.
Barnum, P. T., i, 503.
Barstow, Hon. A. C., i, 499
--battle-field, services on the, ii, 23
--letters to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 916.
Barton, Clara, appeal to soldier friends, ii, 418.
Bascom, Emma C, letter to S. B. Anthony, iii, 647.
Batchelder, Mrs. Dr. L. S., on working women, ii, 389.
"Battle Hymn of the Republic," ii, 18.
Battle of Lexington, commemoration of, iii, 414.
Baxter, Richard, on witchcraft, i, 765.
Bayard, Thos. F., ii, 567, 576; iii, 205-6.
Beck, Senator, on woman suffrage, iii, 209.
Becker, Lydia E., letters, iii, 62, 121, 249.
Beecher, Catharine E., ii, 787, iii, 399.
Beecher, Edward, ii, 368, iii, 566.
BEECHER, Henry Ward, Kansas campaign, ii, 265
--letter to American Woman Suffrage Association meeting in
St. Louis, ii, 825
--letter to Lucy Stone, Presidency American Woman Suffrage
Association, ii, 808
--letter to Washington Convention, ii, 496
--President of American Woman Suffrage Association, made, ii, 764
--speeches, ii, 156, 216, 399, 766, 774; iii, 52
--suffrage, universal, and, ii, 315
--Tilton colloquy, ii, 167
--Tilton trial, i, 789
--woman's right to vote, on, i, 620.
Beecher, Lyman, i, 393.
Belgium, iii, 909.
Bell, Lydia, iii, 693.
Bell, Dr. T. S., ii, 862.
Bellows, Dr., on woman's rights, i, 245.
Bennett, Dr. Alice, iii, 472.
Bennett, James Gordon, i, 546.
Bentham, Jeremy, iii, 836.
Bequests, i, 257, 258, 667, 742.
Berlin, iii, 903.
Berlin Congress, ii, 404.
Bible, Antoinette L. Brown's points, i, 535
--divorce, and, i, 213
--interpolations, i, 797
--revision, i, 798
--woman and the, discussion, i, 380.
Biggs, Caroline A., letter to S. B. Anthony, iii, 250
--letter to Rochester Convention, iii, 120
--letter to Washington Convention, iii, 261.
Biggs, Emily J., iii, 702.
Bingham, Anson, i, 687, ii, 461.
BIOGRAPHY: Austin, Helen V., i, 312
--Blake, Lillie D., iii, 408
--Barton, Clara, ii, 23
--Boyd, Louise V., i, 312
--Brown, Olympia, iii, 646
--Clark, Mary T., i, 312
--Colby, Clara B., iii, 670
--Collins, Emily, i, 88
--Davis, Paulina Wright, by "E. C. S.", i, 283
--Duniway, Abigail S., iii, 768
--Griffing, Josephine Sophie, ii, 26
--Lozier, Clemence, iii, 411
--Morrow, Jane, i, 313
--Owen, Mary Robinson, i, 313
--Owen, Robert Dale, i, 293
--Rose, Ernestine, i, 95
--Swank, Emma B., i, 313
--Thomas, Mary F., i, 314
--Underhill, Sarah E., i, 313
--Warren, Mercy Otis, in the Revolution, i, 201
--Way, Amanda M., i, 311
--Wright, Frances, i, 35.
Bird, Frank W., iii, 194.
Birdsall, Mary B., sketch of, i, 313.
Bittenbender, Ada M., sketch of, iii, 692.
Blackstone on the canon law, i, 771.
BLACKWELL, Antoinette L. B., ii, 760
--letter to Cooper Institute Convention, i, 862
--marriage and divorce, on, i, 723
--speech at American Woman Suffrage Association meeting in New York,
ii, 841
--Woman's National Loyal League, ii, 69.
(See Brown, A. L.)
BLACKWELL, Elizabeth, i, 37, 78
--letter to Emily Collins, i, 90
--letter to Westchester, Pa., Convention, i, 831
--physician, as a, i, 94
--sanitary commission, ii, 13.
BLACKWELL, Henry B., ii, 382
--Kansas Campaign, ii, 232, 235
--South, on the, ii, 929
--speech at American Woman Suffrage Association meeting in Steinway
Hall, ii, 811
--at American Woman Suffrage Association meeting in Cooper
Institute, ii, 830
--Cleveland Convention, i, 126, ii, 780
--President of Am. Woman Suffrage Association, made, ii, 856
--_Vermont Watchman_, on, iii, 386
--Woman Suffrage in New Jersey, on, ii, 846.
BLAKE, Lillie Devereux, iii, 74, 223, 483
--Argument before House Committee, iii, 163
--sketch of, iii, 408
--Dix's Lenten lectures, her reply to, iii, 436
--lectures "Woman's Place to-day," iii, 436
--Washington Convention '76, iii, 7
--Washington Convention, at, ii, 541
--Fable, "The Selfish Rats," iii, 114
--speech, Battle of Lexington Commemoration, iii, 414.
Blake, S. L., against woman suffrage, iii, 371.
Blaine, Jas. G., iii, 164, 165, 366.
Blair, Henry W., letter to Susan B. Anthony, iii, 380.
BLOOMER, Amelia, i, 46
--address before Nebraska Legislature, iii, 672
--Cleveland National Convention, at, i, 128
--comments on Jane G. Swisshelm, i, 844
--portrait, i, 496
--replies to Senator Gaylord's speech against woman suffrage,
iii, 623
--speech at Rochester Temperance Convention, i, 483
--work done, iii, 613.
Bloomer costume, i, 127, 469, 844.
Blunt, Gen., Kansas campaign, ii, 243.
Boarding House Law, i, 688.
Bodeker, Anna W., iii, 823
--vote, attempted to, iii, 824.
Bohemia, iii, 907.
Bolton, Sarah Knowles, iii, 494.
Bolton, Sarah T., i, 300.
Bones, Marietta, address to Dakota Constitutional Convention,
iii, 665.
Booth, Mary L., i, 48, 624, ii, 433.
_Boston Commonwealth_, report of fifth Washington Convention, ii, 543.
Boston Convention, i, 255.
_Boston Transcript_, iii, 227.
Bottsford, Harriette, iii, 623.
Bower, E. S., iii, 700.
Bowles, Ada C., iii, 194.
Bowles, Samuel, letter to Mrs. Hooker, iii, 325.
Boyd, Louise V., sketch of, i, 312.
Bradburn, Geo., address, i, 56.
Bradlaugh, Charles, speaks in New York for woman suffrage, ii, 842.
Bradley, Judge, on the XIV. Amendment, ii, 457
--opinion, Bradwell case, ii, 624.
Bradstreet, Anne, i, 204, iii, 302.
Bradwell, Myra, application to Illinois Bar, ii, 601
--opinion denying, ii, 609
--Carpenter's, Matt. H., argument, ii, 615
--opinion of Justice Bradley, ii, 624
--report of proceedings in Illinois and U. S. Supreme Courts,
ii, 614
--U. S. Supreme Court decision, ii, 622
--writ of error, ii, 614.
Brent, Margaret, first woman in America to claim the right to vote,
iii, 815.
BRIGHT, Jacob, iii, 727, 841
--letter to Mrs. P. W. Davis, ii, 438
--municipal franchise bill, secures, iii, 845
--became law, iii, 847
--Parliament, fails of reelection, iii, 853
--speech on woman suffrage, iii, 849, 873
--votes for woman suffrage, iii, 842.
Bright, John, ii, 349, 366, 420
--speech against woman suffrage, iii, 861.
Bright, Wm. H., career of, iii, 729.
Brinkerhoff, Martha H., iii, 614.
British taxation, ii, 202.
Bromwell, H. P. H., iii, 720.
Brooklyn Bridge, iii, 440.
Brooks, James, on woman suffrage, ii, 97.
Brooks, Harriet S., sketch of, iii, 692.
Broomall, John H., iii, 464.
Brougham, Lord, i, 633.
BROWN, Antoinette L., i, 41, 119, 186, 624
--Bible argument, points on the, i, 535
--colleges, on, i, 144
--on the Half-world's Temperance Convention, i, 507
--pastor, ordained as, i, 473
--portrait, i, 449
--resolutions, Albany Convention, i, 593
--speech at Broadway Tabernacle Convention, i, 553
--Syracuse National Convention, argument, i, 524
--World's Temperance Convention, at the, i, 152.
(See Blackwell, A. L. B.)
Brown, B. Gratz, speech, ii, 136
--universal suffrage, on, iii, 598.
Brown, David Paul, i, 333.
Brown, Martha McClellan, iii, 226.
Brown, Mary Olney, iii, 767
--argument, her right to vote, iii, 783
--vote, attempts to, iii, 780, 785.
BROWN, Olympia, iii, 73, 267, 301
--discussion with Fred. Douglass, ii, 311
--Kansas, in, i, 200, ii, 239, 240, 241
--letter to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 259
--sketch of, iii, 646
--speech at Equal Rights Association anniversary, Cooper Institute,
ii, 309
--speech before Congressional Committee, iii, 95
--speech, Washington Convention, '76, iii, 7
--speech at Washington Convention, ii, 422.
Brown, R. T., speech on suffrage, ii, 853.
Brown, Sarah A., nominated for office, iii, 705.
Brown, Wm. Wells, ii, 368.
Bruhn, Rosa, letter to Mrs. P. W. Davis, ii, 439.
Buchanan, James, ii, 204.
Buck, J. D., iii, 511.
Buckalew, Senator, speech, ii, 146.
Buckingham, Mrs., iii, 337.
Buckley, Brother, on women as preachers, i, 784.
Burger, Sarah, iii, 526 (see Stearns, S. B.).
Burleigh, Celia, ii, 402, 790, 801, 817.
Burleigh, Charles C., i, 148, 549, 558, ii, 194, 392, 818.
Burnet, Rev. J., i, 55.
Burnham, Carrie S., ii, 600, iii, 444.
Burns, Anthony, i, 254.
Burns, Robert, ii, 266.
Burr, Frances Ellen, iii, 319
--letters to S. B. Anthony, ii, 912, iii, 334
--Senate Judiciary Committee, argument before, ii, 543.
Burtis, Sarah Anthony, i, 76.
Burton, Mary, iii, 852.
Bush, Abigail, i, 75, iii, 120.
BUTLER, Benj. F., letters to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 539, iii, 255
--report on Victoria C. Woodhull's memorial to Congress, ii, 464
--speech, ii, 514.
Butler, David, iii, 691.
Butler, Deborah, ii, 348.
Butler, Josephine E., on prostitution, iii, 145
--vice, on, i, 795.
C.
Cadwallader, John, i, 330.
CALIFORNIA, iii, 749
--Appendix, iii, 977
--constitution, liberal provisions, 750
--constitution and statute-laws, 760
--Conventions (_see Conventions_)
--journalism, 761
--Mill's Seminary, 751
--petition to Legislature, 755
--press, _ib._
--senator, Mrs. Gordon nominated for, 756
--silk culture, 762
--State Society organized, 754
--woman's lawyer bill, 757
--woman suffrage society, first, 752
--women made eligible to school offices, 757
--women in the industries, 763
--women in the State University, contest, 758.
Cameron, Don, iii, 176.
Campbell, Margaret W., iii, 269, 716
--speech in Detroit, ii, 839.
Campbell, Mary G., iii, 712.
Canada, women's position in, iii, 831.
Canon law, i, 755, 769, 770, 771, 774.
Carey, Mary A. S., iii, 72.
Carey, Samuel F., i, 121, 154.
Carpenter Hall, application for, iii, 16.
Carpenter, C. C., letter to Iowa Woman Suffrage Association, iii, 621.
Carpenter, Matt. H., on Sargent's amendment to Pembina Territory bill,
ii, 562
--Anthony, Susan B., trial, on, ii, 701
--argument in Myra Bradwell's application to Illinois Bar, ii, 615
--letter to Elizabeth C. Stanton, ii, 423.
Carr, Jeanne, iii, 751.
CARROLL, Anna Ella, iii, 153
--claim before Congress, ii, 12, 863
--statement of Benj. F. Wade, ii, 865
--letters, ii, 865, 866, 867, 868
--Tennessee campaign, ii, 3
--Vicksburg, on, ii, 11.
Cartter, Mrs. M. M., ii, 442.
Cartter, Chief-Justice, opinion, Spencer-Webster suit, ii, 597.
Cary, Alice and Phoebe, ii, 433.
Catherine II., i, 34.
Catholic Church, ii, 201, 207.
Cattle expert, Middie Morgan, iii, 404.
Cavender, John H., i, 328.
Centennial celebration, iii, 411.
Centennial headquarters, iii, 21.
Centennial Tea-Party, iii, 269.
Centennial year, iii, 1.
Centralization, iii, 89
--Matilda J. Gage, on, ii, 523.
Century Club, Philadelphia, iii, 469.
Chace, Elizabeth B., iii, 340, 341, 348.
Chalkstone, Mrs., ii, 59.
Chamberlain, D. H., favors woman suffrage, iii, 829.
Chambers, Rev. John, i, 159, 167, 500, 508.
Chandler, Dolly, iii, 275.
Chandler, Z., on Mrs. J. S. Griffing and the freedmen, ii, 33.
CHANNING, William Henry, i, 476, 583, 584, 587, 591
--appeal, woman's rights, i, 588
--resolutions, Rochester Convention, i, 580
--social relations, report on, i, 233
--speech at Broadway Tabernacle Convention, i, 550
--Woman's Rights, Declaration, i, 129
--World's Temperance Convention and John Chambers, on the, i, 508,
iii, 922.
Chapin, Augusta, iii, 276.
Chapin, Clara C., iii, 691, 693.
Chapin, E. H., i, 476.
Chaplain, Mrs. E. F. Hobart, ii, 18.
Chapman, Maria Weston, i, 53
--poem, i, 82.
Chase, Salmon P., i, 167, ii, 73, iii, 808.
Cheever, George B., ii, 226.
Chicago Historical Society, iii, 179.
_Chicago Inter-Ocean_, iii, 682.
_Chicago Legal News_, iii, 562.
Chicago Legal News Company, ii, 607.
CHILD, Lydia Maria, i, 38, 258, 775
--letter to E. C. Stanton, ii, 910
--letter to St. Louis Convention, ii, 825
--petitions Congress, iii, 266
--universal suffrage, on, iii, 519.
Children, guardianship of, i, 747
--illegitimate, i, 760
--rearing of, i, 304.
Christine of Pisa, i, 29.
Christlieb, Prof., i, 787.
Church and State, i, 753.
Church, Elmwood, Illinois, iii, 563.
Churchill, Elizabeth K., iii, 371
--woman suffrage, on, ii, 812.
CITIZENSHIP, ii, 462, 468, 469, 470, 473, 532, 555, 556, 665
--Bates, Attorney-General, on, ii, 461
--Blake, Devereux, on, iii, 7
--Curtis, Justice, on, ii, 472
--Daniel, Justice, on, ii, 471
--Stanton, Elizabeth C., speech on, iii, 80
--Taney, Justice, on, ii, 472
--term defined, ii, 451
--Thorbeck, on, ii, 473
--White, Richard Grant, on, ii, 567.
Citizenship, women crowned with rights of, in Wyoming, iii, 726.
Claiborne, F. L., iii, 795.
Clark, Emily, i, 489.
Clark, Helen Bright, iii, 874.
Clark, Mary T., sketch of, i, 312.
Clark, Sidney, ii, 363.
Clarke, Hannah B., on woman suffrage, ii, 807.
Clarke, Jas. Freeman, on suffrage, i, 258, ii, 768, iii, 266
--speech, New England, Convention, i, 263.
Clarke, Mary Bayard, iii, 825.
Clarkson, Thomas, i, 54.
Clay, Mary B., iii, 818.
Clemmer, Mary, letter to S. B. Anthony, iii, 262
--letter to Senator Wadleigh, iii, 111.
Clergy, charges against, i, 135
--celibacy of, i, 757.
Clergymen and corkscrews, ii, 167.
Cleveland, Grover, iii, 437.
Clute, Oscar, on woman suffrage, ii, 770.
Cobbe, Francis Power, iii, 865
--letter to Mrs. P. W. Davis, ii, 438.
Cobden, Jane, iii, 875.
Cobden, Richard, favors woman suffrage, iii, 835.
Coe, Emma R., i, 146, 232.
Cogswell, Brainard, iii, 371.
Colburn, Catharine A., iii, 774.
Colburn, Mary J., iii, 650.
Colby, Clara Bewick, iii, 222
--sketch of, iii, 670.
Colby University opened to girls, iii, 355.
Cole, Mrs. Miriam M., ii, 790, 806, 832, iii, 501.
Coleman, Lucy N., speech at Woman's National Loyal League, ii, 62.
Coleridge, Lord, iii, 844.
Colfax, Schuyler, ii, 181.
Colleges, iii, 399
--women in, i, 144.
Colleges for women, iii, 296.
College, Woman's, Evanston, Ill., iii, 578.
Collier, Robert Laird, iii, 567.
Collins, Emily, reminiscences of, i, 88
--Miss Sarah Owen's correspondence, i, 91.
Collins, Jennie, speech at Washington Convention, ii, 423.
Collins, Stacy B., iii, 482.
Collyer, Robert, ii, 368, 371, 372
--recollections of Lucretia Mott, i, 409, 414
--speech at Chicago, iii, 565.
COLORADO: clergy, iii, 720
--Conventions, _See Conventions_
--Desert, great American, iii, 712
--equal-rights mass-meeting in Denver, 722
--leaders in the cause, 719
--legislation, 714, 715
--press, 715
--suffrage amendment, defeat of, 723
--suffrage first effort for, 712
--suffrage, Gov. McCook's message, 713
--woman suffrage, Gov. Evan's on, 722.
_Colorado Tribune_, iii, 715.
Columbia College, effort to open to women, iii, 410.
Colvin, N. J., letters to S. B. Anthony, i, 691, 750; ii, 914.
Conciliatory amendments, ii, 527.
_Concord Monitor_, iii, 371.
Congress, first Continental, iii, 17
--Elizabeth C. Stanton runs for, ii, 180
--Victoria C. Woodhull's memorial, 443
--Riddle's speech in support of, 448
--House majority report, 461
--Minority report, 464.
CONGRESSIONAL ACTION, ii, 90
--Anthony, Senator, speech, ii, 106
--arguments before House Committee, iii, 161
--arguments before Senate Committee, iii, 155
--Banks' N. P., speech, iii, 10
--Brooks' James, speech, ii, 96
--Brown's, Senator, speech, ii, 136
--Buckalew's, Senator, speech, ii, 146
--Butler's, Benj., speech, ii, 514
--Committee, special, House appoints, iii, 221
--Committee, special, on woman suffrage, Senate discussion, iii, 198
--Committee, special, on woman suffrage, House discussion, iii, 219
--Committee, standing, Senate discussion, iii, 190
--Cowan, Senator, speech, ii, 103, 110
--Cowan repels the charge of insincerity, ii, 121
--Davis's Senator, speech, ii, 144
--Debate, Senate and House, iii, 70
--Democrats and the petitions, ii, 95
--District of Columbia suffrage bill, ii, 103
--vote, ii, 151
--District of Columbia bill, Julian's amendment, ii, 482
--Doolittle, Senator, speech against, ii, 150
--electors, who constitute, House debates, ii, 326
--female employées, iii, 811
--Frelinghuysen's, Senator, speech, ii, 135
--hearing before Senate Committee, iii, 227
--Henderson, Senator, presents Mrs. Gerrit Smith's petition with a
speech, ii, 98
--House discussion, ii, 514
--Johnson's, Senator, speech, ii, 130
--joint resolutions before House affecting women, ii, 72
--Julian's bills, ii, 325
--Morrill's, Senator, speech, ii, 118
--National Association granted hearing, iii, 75
--Negro's hour, ii, 94
--Parker's bill, ii, 516
--Pembina Territory bill, debate on, Sargent's amendment, ii, 545;
am't rejected, 582;
Anthony's remarks, 568;
Bayard's remarks, 567, 575;
Boreman's remarks, 549, 580;
Carpenter's remarks, 562;
Conkling's remarks, 558, 559;
Edmund's remarks, 562, 569, 571, 572, 573, 580;
Ferry's remarks, 568;
Flanagan's remarks, 552;
Merrimon's remarks, 552, 553, 554, 555, 556, 557, 560;
Morrill's remarks, 562;
Morton's remarks, 549, 569;
Sargent's remarks, 546, 555, 564, 567;
Stewart's remarks, 548, 558, 559, 564, 573, 579.
Petition, iii, 9
--petition read and referred, iii, 130
--petition, Rhode Island, ii, 560
--petition for universal suffrage, ii, 97
--petitions against the word "male" in Constitution, ii, 91
--Pomeroy's, Senator, resolution, ii, 324
--Pomeroy's, Senator, speech, ii, 151
--Report, first favorable majority, iii, 231
--report, first favorable, Senate, iii, 131
--report, minority, iii, 237
--reports on Victoria C. Woodhull's memorial, ii, 461, 464
--reports, iii, 150
--Republicans' protest in presenting petitions, ii, 94, 96
--Republicans, squirming of, ii, 101
--resolution to appoint special committee, iii, 175
--Sargent, Senator, speech, iii, 9
--Sixteenth Amendment, ii, 333
--Sixteenth Amendment, resolutions, iii, 154
--Stevens', Thaddeus, resolution, ii, 95
--Sumner, Charles, presents a petition under protest, ii, 96;
why he protested, ii, 100.
Wade, Benj. F., speech, ii, 123
--Williams, Senator, speech against, ii, 108
--Wilson's, Senator, bill, ii, 324
--Wilson's, Senator, speech, ii, 128.
Conkling, Roscoe, ii, 363
--on Senator McDonald's Woman Suffrage resolution, iii, 191
--talk with, ii, 347
--Senator Stewart and woman suffrage, on, ii, 558.
Connecticut, iii, 316
--Appendix, iii, 957
--Bar, admission to the, iii, 330
--Legislature, minority report, iii, 317.
Constitution, Story on the, ii, 477, 478, 588.
Constitution and suffrage, ii, 741.
Continental Europe, iii, 895.
CONVENTIONS: American Woman Suffrage Association (_See Am. Woman
Suffrage Association_)
--barn, in a, i, 123
--_California_, San Francisco, iii, 753, 760
--_Connecticut_, Hartford, iii, 197, 322
--_Colorado_, Denver, iii, 716, 720
--_Illinois_, Bloomington, iii, 572,
Chicago, ii, 368, iii, 175, 565, 570;
Galena, ii, 375;
Springfield, ii, 371, iii, 570.
--_Indiana_, Dublin, Wayne Co., i, 306;
Indianapolis, i, 307, iii, 175, 534, 537;
Richmond, i, 307;
Winchester, i, 308;
--_Iowa_, Des Moines, iii, 618, 623, 624;
Mount Pleasant, iii, 617;
Ottumwa, iii, 624.
--_Kansas_, Topeka, iii, 702, 709;
Salina, iii, 709.
--London, first ever held, ii, 406
--Loyalists' ii, 329
--_Maine_, Augusta, iii, 359, 363;
Portland, iii, 197, 352
--_Massachusetts_, Boston, ii, 178, iii, 192
--Worcester (Nat.), i, 215, 266
--_Michigan_, Detroit, iii, 516;
Grand Rapids, iii, 530;
Lansing, iii, 519
--_Minnesota_, Minneapolis, iii, 659
--_Missouri_, St. Louis, ii, 369, 407, iii, 142, 601, 606
--National, in 1866-67,
report by Caroline H. Dall, ii, 899
--_Nebraska_, Kearney, iii, 688 694;
Norfolk, iii, 689;
Omaha, iii, 241, 687, 690
--New England, i, 254, 255, 262, iii, 267
--_New Hampshire_, Concord, iii, 270, 368;
Dover, iii, 197;
Keene, _ib._;
New Haven, _ib._
--_New Jersey_, Vineland, iii, 479
--_New York_, Albany, i, 591, 628, 678, 745;
Rochester, i, 75, 577,
press comments, i, 802;
Rochester, iii, 117;
Saratoga, ii, 402;
Burleigh's, Celia, description, ii, 402;
Saratoga, i, 620, 623;
Saratoga, iii, 396;
Seneca Falls, i, 67,
press comments, i, 802;
Syracuse (Nat.), i, 517,
press comments i, 852
--New York Constitutional, ii, 269, 282
--New York City, Apollo Hall, ii, 427, 484, 533;
Broadway Tabernacle i, 631, 546;
Church of the Puritans (Nat.), 152;
Cooper Institute (Nat.), i, 688;
Irving Hall, ii, 426, 545;
Masonic Temple, ii, 584, iii, 19, 98;
Mozart Hall (Nat.), i, 668, 672;
Steinway Hall, ii, 809
--_Ohio_, Akron, i, 111;
Cincinnati (Nat.), i, 163;
Cincinnati, iii, 492;
Cleveland (Nat.), i, 124;
Cleveland, ii, 757;
Dayton, iii, 493;
Massilon, i, 123;
Salem, i, 103;
Toledo, ii, 377, iii, 506.
_Oregon_, Portland, iii, 773
--Paris, International, iii, 127, 585, 896
--_Pennsylvania_, Philadelphia, i, 375, iii, 34, 229;
Westchester, i, 350
--_Rhode Island_, Newport, ii, 403;
Providence, iii, 197, 340
--_South Carolina_, Columbia, iii, 828
--_Vermont_, Montpelier, iii, 385
--_Washington Ter._, Walla Walla, iii, 775
--Washington, D. C., ii, 345, 356, 359, 416, 418, 425, 417, 442,
493, 521, 537, 538, 543, 582, iii, 3, 60, 71, 128, 150, 187,
221, 254
--_Wisconsin_, Janesville, iii, 642;
Madison, ii, 374;
Milwaukee, ii, 374, iii, 640;
Racine, iii, 645.
Conventions, Constitutional, Kansas, i, 189
--Massachusetts, i, 253
--New York, ii, 267
--Ohio, i, 105
--Pennsylvania, iii, 465.
Conventions held in Washington, why, iii, 150.
Cooper, Edward, against woman suffrage, iii, 422.
Cooper, Joseph, i, 447.
Cooper, Peter, iii, 399.
"Copperheads," going over to the, ii, 320.
Corbin, Hannah Lee, i, 33.
Cornell, A. B., iii, 223, 423.
Cornell, University, iii, 398.
Corner, Mary T., i, 122, iii, 810.
Correll, E. M., ii, 862, iii, 691.
Correspondence, _See Letters_.
Corson, Hiram, letter to Susan B. Anthony, iii, 472.
Courtney, Leonard, iii, 862.
COUZINS, Phoebe W., iii, 7, 60, 370
--address, "Woman as a Lawyer," ii, 542
--argument before House Committee, iii, 170
--delegate to National Democratic Convention, iii, 27
--Labors of, iii, 596
--reception, iii, 610
--Senate Judiciary Committee, argument before, ii, 543
--Speeches:
Centennial, iii, 36,
St. Louis Convention, iii, 142;
Washington Convention, 223, 258;
Woman Suffrage, ii, 387.
Couzins, Mrs. J. E. D., as a nurse, iii, 596.
Covenant, Ladies' National, ii, 39.
Cowan, Senator, speech on District of Columbia suffrage bill,
ii, 163, 110.
Cowles, Betsey M., i, 104.
Cox, Rt. Rev. Dr., i, 782.
Crandall, Prudence, iii, 316, 560, 703.
Craven, Rev. E. A., on Woman in the Pulpit, iii, 485.
Crawford, S. J., ii, 251.
Cromwellian era, i, 775.
Crosby, Howard, letter to Mrs. M. J. Gage, i, 798.
Crow, Wayman, iii, 595.
Crowley, Richard, argument Miss Anthony's trial, ii, 648.
"Crown and Anchor," i, 438.
Culver, Hon. Erastus D., speech at Cooper Institute Convention,
i, 709.
CURTIS, Geo. Wm., i, 668; ii, 378; iii, 440
--speech on woman suffrage, ii, 795
--speech, Constitutional Convention at Albany, ii, 288
--suffrage for women, favors, i, 672.
Cushman, Major Pauline, ii, 20.
Cutler, Hannah M. T., i, 123, 163, 380, 384; ii, 773, 788, 809, 818,
823, 853; iii, 561, 614, 675.
D.
Dahlgren, Madeleine, ii, 494, 495, iii, 101.
DAKOTA, iii, 662
--address to women of, M. J. Gage's, iii, 663
--Constitutional Convention, iii, 664
--Legislative action, iii, 662
--school suffrage, iii, 663, 666
--suffrage bill passed Legislature, iii, 667
--vetoed, iii, 667.
DALL, Caroline H., "Drawing-room Convention," i, 276
--lectures, i, 262
--letter to _The Nation_, ii, 101
--petition, i, 262
--reports National Conventions held in '66 and '67, ii, 899
--speech, New England Convention, i, 265.
Dana, Richard H., on womanhood, i, 367
--woman suffrage, on, i, 41.
Darlington, Hannah M., i, 349
--letter to Mrs. E. C. Stanton, i, 344.
Darrah, Lydia, i, 321.
Dartmouth College case, ii, 725.
Daughters of Liberty, i, 203.
Davis, Senator, speech against woman suffrage, ii, 144.
Davis, Edward M., ii, 358, iii, 45, 462.
Davis, Jefferson, ii, 542.
Davis, J. J., iii, 154.
Davis, Mary F., ii, 390, 791, iii, 480.
DAVIS, Paulina Wright, i, 37, 46, iii, 823
--colored women on, ii, 391
--death of, i, 827
--Fifteenth Amendment, on the, ii, 336
--portrait, i, 273
--President, made, Boston Convention, i, 255
--President, made, Worcester convention, i, 221
--President, made, Worcester National Convention, i, 227
--reminiscences of, Elizabeth Cady Stanton's, i, 283
--speech, Boston Convention, i, 256
--speech, Syracuse National Convention, i, 533
--_The Una_, i, 246
--woman's rights movement, review of, ii, 428.
Deaths, Mrs. Dall's report, ii, 905.
Decisions and Trials, ii, 586.
Declaration, Channing's, i, 129.
Declaration of sentiments, i, 70.
Declaration and pledge, ii, 486.
DeFoe, Daniel, i, 29.
Delaware, iii, 817.
Democrats advocated woman suffrage, ii, 320.
Denmark, iii, 914.
Dentistry, Lucy B. Hobbs, iii, 401, 455.
Dentistry, women in, iii, 452.
Deroine, Jeanne, address to women of America, i, 234.
DICKINSON, Anna E., ii, 375, iii, 320, 811
--California, in, iii, 752
--Chicago Convention, at, ii, 368
--Fifteenth Amendment, her suggestion, ii, 227
--letter to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 916
--speech, Chicago, iii, 567
--speeches, ii, 40
--tribute, ii, 433
--"Young Elephant," ii, 42.
Dilke, Sir Charles, iii, 847.
Dimock, Susan, tribute, iii, 827.
Dinsmoor, Orpha C., sketch of, iii, 693.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, iii, 808
--Conventions (see Conventions);
--Miner Normal School, iii, 809
--Organic Act, iii, 812
--suffrage bill, iii, 809, ii, 103, 482
--Universal Franchise Association, iii, 809
--women admitted to District bar, iii, 812
--women in government departments, iii, 808
--women in the profession of medicine, iii, 812
--women writers and teachers, iii, 813.
Disraeli on woman suffrage, iii, 839.
Dix, Dorothea, i, 479, ii, 12.
Dix, John A., i, 530.
Dix, Morgan, Lenten lectures, iii, 436
--Mrs. Blake's reply, iii, 436
--coëducation, on, iii, 410.
Divorce (see Marriage and Divorce).
Dodge, Mary Mapes, i, 49.
Dolph, J. N., iii, 778.
Doolittle's, Senator, speech against woman suffrage, ii, 150.
Dorsett, Martha Angle, lawyer, iii, 660.
Dorsey, Sarah A., iii, 794, 807.
Doud, Katharine R., iii, 645.
DOUGLAS, Frederick, i, 74, 584, 585, 587, ii, 391, iii, 74, 125
--discussion with Olympia Brown, ii, 311
--Fifteenth Amendment, on the origin of, ii, 326
--Kansas campaign, ii, 265
--letter to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, ii, 328
--Loyalists' Convention, delegate, ii, 329
--refuge in Mrs. E. C. Stanton's house, ii, 382
--_Revolution_, on the, ii, 382
--wolf-skins, in, ii, 377
--speech, Washington Convention '76, iii, 7.
Douglass, Sarah M., i, 332.
Douglass, Stephen A., ii, 263, 301.
Dow, Neal, i, 121, 154.
Downing, Geo. T., ii, 214, 215, 377.
Downing, Lucy, iii, 296.
Downs, Cora M., made a Regent, iii, 706.
Doyle, Sarah E. H., iii, 344.
Draper, E. D., ii, 242.
Dresser, Horace, ii, 952.
Duchess of Sutherland, i, 421.
Dugdale, Jos. A., on wills, i, 357.
DUNIWAY, Abigail Scott, arrest of, ordered, iii, 774
--career, iii, 768
--egged at Jacksonville, Oregon, iii, 775
--Constitutional liberty, on, _ib._
--lecturing tour, iii, 769
--temperance meeting, at a, iii, 772.
E.
Eaglesfield, Elizabeth, iii, 549.
Earl, Sarah H., tribute, i, 217
--President New England Convention, made, i, 254.
Eastman, Mary F., speeches, ii, 829, 840, 845, 854.
Ecclesine, Thos. C, iii, 420.
Eddy, Eliza F., will case, iii, 312.
Edgerton, A. J., on woman suffrage, iii, 666.
Editor, first colored, i, 91.
Editors, opinions of three liberal, ii, 227.
Editors interviewed, iii, 623.
Edmunds, Senator, on State rights and suffrage, ii, 561, 569, 570,
571, 572, 573. 580
--woman suffrage, on, iii 70.
Education, Mrs. Dall's report, ii, 900.
Education, compulsory, iii, 61.
Education, equal, ii, 909.
Educational movement, iii, 398.
Eggleston, Edward, on woman suffrage, ii, 810.
Eldridge, Edward, iii, 781.
Electors, qualification of, ii, 272, 463-4.
Eliot, Rev. Wm. G., i, 171.
Elizabeth, Queen, i, 30.
Ellsworth, Bertha H., iii, 700.
Elstob, Elizabeth, i, 30.
Emancipation Petition, ii, 78.
Emerson, on Power of Human Mind, ii, 427.
Episcopal restrictions, i, 785.
Essex County Society, iii, 270.
Estabrook, Prof., speech for woman suffrage, ii, 839.
"Eumenes", i, 451.
Evans, L. D., ii, 10, iii, 801.
Evarts, Wm. M., upon woman's subordination, i, 789, iii, 53.
F.
Fable, "The Selfish Rats," iii, 114.
Fales, Mrs. I. C, speech on suffrage, ii, 851.
Fairchild, Governor, ii, 375.
Faithful, Emily, letter to Mrs. P. W. Davis, ii, 440.
Farnham, Eliza W., iii, 750
--speech at Mozart Hall, i, 669, iii, 750.
Ferrin, Mary Upton, i, 209, iii, 289
--speech before Judiciary Committee, Massachusetts Legislature,
i, 212.
Ferry, Thos. W., ii, 568, iii, 28, 154, on the Pembrina Territory
bill, ii, 568.
Feudalism, i, 761-3.
Flanagan, Senator, on Sargent's amendment to Pembrina Territory bill,
ii, 552.
Florida, iii, 829.
Field, Anna C, ii, 398.
Field, David Dudley, iii, 647.
Field, Kate, i, 620.
Fields, Jas. T., letter to H. B. Blackwell, ii, 838.
Fifteenth Amendment, ii, 314, 327, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 387, 455,
463, 478, 479, 502, 503, 556, 557, 569, 616, 618, 619, 641, 642,
663.
Filley, Mary Powers, iii, 97, 380.
Foeking, Emilie, iii, 816.
Foley, Margaret, iii, 301.
Folger, Chas. J., i, 750, ii, 271, iii, 801.
Folsom, Marianna, iii, 703.
Foltz, Clara S., iii, 757.
Foote, Samuel A., i, 629.
Forbes, Arathusa L., iii, 596.
Ford, Jennie G., iii, 693.
Forney, John W., on women and hospital clinics, 3, 450.
Foster, Abby Kelly, i, 40, 53, 101, 134, ii, 216.
Foster, J. Ellen, iii, 536.
Foster, Julia, i, 301.
Foster, Rachel, i, 391, iii, 474.
Foster, Stephen S., i, 141, ii, 381, iii, 372.
Fourteenth Amendment, ii, 313, 315, 323, 324, 327, 407, 411, 412, 422,
455, 457, 461, 463, 468, 478, 479, 499, 500, 501, 502, 503, 556,
586, 590, 593, 595, 596, 619, 617, 618, 619, 621, 622, 624, 625,
626, 641, 642, 663.
Fox, Charles James, i, 453.
Fox, W. J., on women in politics, iii, 836.
Fowler, Lydia F., i, 178, 478, 491.
France, ii, 202
--agitation in, address of Pauline Roland and Jeanne Deroine, i, 234
--international woman's rights congress, iii, 896.
"Frank Miller," ii, 19.
Franklin, Benjamin, i, 324, ii, 244, 475.
Franklin, William, i, 441.
Freedmen's Relief Association, Mrs. J. S. Griffing, ii, 26
--Josephine Griffing's letter to Lucretia Mott, ii, 869
--letters on the, ii, 45
--originator of, ii, 38.
Freeland, Margaret, arrest of, i, 475.
Frelinghuysen, F. G., speech, ii, 135.
Fremont, Jessie B., letter to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 911.
Fremont, Jno. C., Presidential campaign, i, 651.
French, Charlotte Olney, iii, 784.
Frothingham, O. B., ii, 186, 248, 380, 545.
Fry, Elizabeth, i, 479.
Fry, Elizabeth, and Lucretia Mott, i. 423.
Frye, Wm. P., iii, 105, 366.
Fuller, Margaret, i, 40, 49, 217, 801; iii, 307.
Fulton, W. C., iii, 776.
Furness' church, iii, 35.
G.
GAGE, Frances Dana, ii, 112, 113, 114, 116, iii, 561
--Cleveland Convention, at, i, 124
--lectures in Iowa, iii, 613
--letter to American Woman Suffrage Association, ii, 769
--at Cincinnati, ii, 857
--letter to Matilda Joslyn Gage, i, 117
--letter to _National Anti-Slavery Standard_, ii, 176
--letter to Lucy Stone, i, 656
--letter to Rochester Temperance Convention, i, 845
--letter to Washington Convention, ii, 424
--mothers and their children, on, i, 360
--National Convention, Philadelphia, at, i, 325
--negro testimony quoted by Senator Cowan in U. S. Senate, ii, 115
--Nichols, Mrs., and, i, 198
--orator, as an, i, 168
--portrait, i, 128
--reminiscences of Sojourner Truth, i, 115
--reply to Gerrit Smith's letter to Mrs. Stanton, i, 842
--speech, Akron Convention, i, 111;
Broadway Tabernacle Convention, i, 563;
Winchester, Ind., Convention, i, 308;
Equal Rights Association Convention, ii, 197, 200
--her last speech, ii, 223;
temperance and the ballot, ii, 211.
GAGE, Matilda Joslyn, i, 589, 591, iii, 65, 151, 227, 437
--address to women of Dakota, iii, 663
--Anthony case, her letter to _Albany Law Journal_, ii, 947
--appeal, iii, 413
--argument before House Committee, iii, 167
--Carpenter Hall, application for, iii, 17
--church influence on woman's liberties, iii, 74
--divorce on, i, 566
--Grant and Wilson campaign, appeal, ii, 517
--letter to wife of Admiral Dahlgren, ii, 494
--letter to Dakota Constitutional Convention, iii, 664
--letter to Omaha convention, iii, 259
--Minor suit, her review of Judge Waite's opinion, ii, 742
--_National Citizen_ prospectus, iii, 116
--_National Citizen and Ballot-Box_, i, 47
--petition, political disabilities, iii, 60
--portrait, i, 753
--report, iii, 522
--sketch of, i, 466
--speeches:
Centralization, at Washington Convention, ii, 523;
Congressional Committees, before, ii, 415, iii, 10, 93;
Furness' church, in, iii, 35;
Rochester Convention, i, 579;
Saratoga Convention, i, 622;
Syracuse National Convention, i, 528;
United States on trial, not Susan B. Anthony, ii, 630;
Washington National Convention, iii, 4
--Sunderland controversy, i, 543
--Van Schaick, and Mr., i, 406
--Woman, Church and State, i, 753.
"Gail Hamilton," iii, 365.
Gaines, Myra Clark, iii, 801.
Gale's, Senator, insulting epithets, i, 483.
Gallup, J. D., iii, 319.
Galusha, Eben, address, i, 55.
Gardner, Nannette B., ii, 587
--votes in Michigan, iii, 523.
Garfield, James A., letter to Susan B. Anthony, iii, 185.
Garret, Eliza, iii, 582.
Garrett, Thomas, iii, 818.
GARRISON, Wm. Lloyd, argument at Cleveland National Convention, i, 136
--attacked by Dr. Nevin, i, 144
--on Gen. Carey, i, 162
--letter to American Woman Suffrage Association meeting in
Philadelphia, ii, 816
--letter to Concord Convention, iii, 368
--letter to Rochester Convention, iii, 122
--letter to Worcester National Convention, i, 216
--London Anti-slavery Convention, and the, i, 61
--marriage and divorce, on, i, 733
--National Convention, Philadelphia, at, i, 378
--speech at Broadway Tabernacle Convention, i, 548, 570
--tracts and petitions, on, i, 383
--tribute to Mrs. J. S. Griffing, ii, 38
--woman suffrage, apathy, ii, 322
--women in national councils, on the right of, i, 672
--World's Temperance Convention, on the, i, 160.
Gay, Sidney Howard, ii, 369.
Gaylord, Senator, iii, 623.
Geddes, Geo., on the Property bill, i, 64.
Generals, why kept in the army, ii, 75.
Geneva, iii, 909.
George Eliot, i, 302.
Georgia, iii, 830.
Germans against woman suffrage, ii, 231.
Germany, iii, 902.
Gibbons, Abby Hopper, i, 40.
Gibbs, Sarah A., dissection of a sermonizer, iii, 391.
Gibson, Anthony, i, 29.
Giddings, Joshua R., on woman suffrage, i, 128
--World's Temperance Convention, on the, i, 162.
Giddings, Maria L., i, 114.
Gillette, Rev. Mrs., ii, 837.
Gillingham, Lydia, i, 324.
Girls and boys, ii, 541.
Gladden, Washington, on woman suffrage, ii, 815.
GLADSTONE, ii, 293, 366
--Catholicism, i, 27
--speech on woman suffrage, iii, 850, 854, 877, 883, 888.
Goddard, Sarah, i, 44.
Godwin, Parke, on the higher education of women, iii, 433.
Goodell, Lavinia, iii, 648.
Goodrich, Sarah Knox, iii, 765.
Gordon, J. W., i, 307.
Gordon, Laura DeForce, iii, 6, 751
--Lectures, iii, 755
--Letter to Washington Convention, iii, 64
--Senator, nominated for, iii, 756.
Gougar, Helen M., iii, 540, 552, 697, 702, 708, 857.
Government, Hooker on, ii, 475
--Paine on, ii, 474
--Pillsbury on, ii, 201
--Priestly on, ii, 476
--Radical basis of, ii, 290
--Sharpe, Granville, on, ii, 475
--Summers, Lord, on, ii, 475
--theory, true, ii, 474.
"Grace Greenwood" (_see_ Mrs. Sara J. Lippincott).
GRANT. U. S., ii, 88
--campaign (1872), Tremont Temple meeting, iii, 278
--XV. Amendment, on the, ii, 646
--talk with Susan B. Anthony, ii, 544.
Grant and Wilson campaign, National Woman's Rights Association's
appeal, ii, 517.
Graves, Ezra, ii, 282, 307.
GREAT BRITAIN, ii, 202; iii, 833
--associations formed, iii, 841
--circular to Members of Parliament, iii, 881
--Conference, Edinburgh, iii, 878
--Conference, Leeds, iii, 874
--Conference, St. James' Hall, iii, 888
--demonstration, Birmingham, iii, 868
--demonstration, Manchester, iii, 867
--demonstrations, iii, 869
--education act, iii, 850
--education bill, Scotch, iii, 851
--household suffrage, iii, 886
--Isle of Man, iii, 870
--letters, woman suffrage, iii, 865
--Manchester Liberal Association, iii, 876
--married women's property act, iii, 872
--medical relief bill, iii, 890
--meetings during 1870, iii, 852
--memorial of the Birmingham conference, iii, 855
--memorial to Gladstone, iii, 883
--memorials, iii, 853, 854, 873
--municipal franchise bill, iii, 845
--municipal franchise bill for Scotland, iii, 871
--Northern Reform Society, iii, 838
--Parliament debates woman suffrage, iii, 850, 861, 862, 863, 873,
884, 889, 890
--petitions, iii, 866
--petitions and pamphlets, iii, 840
--petition to Parliament, Mary Smith's, iii, 835
--reform act, ii, 590
--Sheffield Association, iii, 837
--suffrage bill before Parliament, iii, 842
--chronological table of successive steps towards freedom, iii, 980
--women householders, iii, 881
--women in politics, iii, 835
--woman suffrage, able advocates of, iii, 836
--women suffrage meeting, first ever held in London, iii, 848
--_Woman Suffrage Journal_, iii, 850
--women vote, iii, 843
--women vote in Scotland, iii, 871.
Greece, iii, 919.
Greeley, Ann F., iii, 356.
GREELEY, Horace, ii, 227; iii, 408, 773
--abolitionists, denounced, ii, 287
--bullet and ballot, ii, 284
--defranchisement, panacea for, ii, 101
--enfranchisement of women, on, ii, 103
--Kansas campaign, ii, 230
--letter to Susan B. Anthony, i, 628
--letter to Cleveland National Convention, i, 125
--letter to Paulina W. Davis, i, 520
--letter to Mrs. J. S. Griffing, ii, 36
--letter to Sam'l J. May on woman's rights, i, 653
--marriage, on, i, 730
--marriage and divorce, on, i, 740
--Owen, R. D., discussion, divorce, i, 296, 746
--Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, and, ii, 287
--support of, lost, ii, 269
--temperance speech, Metropolitan Hall, i, 491
--universal suffrage and universal amnesty, ii, 315
--woman and work, on, i, 589
--woman suffrage, opposed to, iii, 185
--woman suffrage, report against, ii, 285
--criticism, _New York Independent_, ii, 305.
Greeley's, Mrs., petition, ii, 287.
Green, Anna R., Md., iii, 815.
Green, Beriah, i, 417
--speech at Cooper Institute Convention, i, 699, 450, 487.
Gregory, Samuel, i, 38.
Grew, Rev. Henry, on woman's rights, i, 379.
Grew, Mary, i, 325
--speech at Cooper Institute Convention, i, 735
--woman suffrage, on, ii, 814
--President, iii, 457.
GRIFFING, Josephine S., i, 110; ii, 345, 422; iii, 810
--Freedman's Aid Association, letter to Lucretia Mott, ii, 869
--Freedman's Bureau, originator of, ii, 38
--Freedman's Relief Association, ii, 26
--letter to Horace Greeley, ii, 36
--letter to Lucretia Mott, ii, 33
--letter to Catharine F. Stebbins, ii, 874
--report 1871, ii, 484
--"Shirley Dare," on, ii, 30
--speech, Equal Rights Association, ii, 221
--testimonials of Congressmen, ii, 33
--tribute from Wm. Lloyd Garrison, ii, 38.
GRIMKÉ, Angelina, i, 39, 52
--anecdotes, by her husband, i, 402
--letter to Wm. Lloyd Garrison, i, 397
--sketch of "E. C. S.," i, 392
--speech against slavery, i, 334.
GRIMKÉ, Sarah Moore, i, 39, 53, 406
--letter, West Chester, Pa., Convention, i, 353.
Grover, A. J., iii, 560, 591.
Guardianship law, i, 749.
Gurney, Samuel, i, 421.
Guthrie, Clara Merrick, iii, 790.
Guthrie, Mrs., daughter of Frances Wright, ii, 543.
H.
Haggerty, James, ii, 210, iii, 434.
Hale, Sarah Josepha, i, 45, 388.
Hall, Israel, ii, 377.
Hall, Mary, admission to the Bar, iii, 330.
Halleck, Sarah H., ii, 60.
Hallock, Frances V., ii, 435.
Halstead, Murat, iii, 593.
Hamilton, Alexander, ii, 413.
Hamlin, Senator, ii, 411.
Hampden Society, iii, 270.
Hanaford, Phebe, ii, 398, 791; iii, 327, 479, 481.
Hancock, Gen. W. S., iii, 185, 431.
Hanna, Laura, iii, 720.
HARBERT, Elizabeth Boynton, iii, 560, 592, 621
--delegate to Republican National Convention, iii, 26
--oration, iii, 581
--speech before Congressional committee, iii, 76.
Harberton, Lady, speech at Edinburgh, iii, 879.
Hare, Thomas, ii, 292.
Harper, Frances E. W., ii, 838.
Harrington, Mary L., iii, 374.
Harris, Sarah, ii, 376.
_Hartford Courant_, iii, 322.
_Hartford Times_, ii, 538.
Harvard Annex, iii, 294.
Haskell, Mehitable, Worcester Convention, i, 232; iii, 286.
Hatch, Junius, "pin-cushion ministry," i, 539.
Hatton, Frank, iii, 617.
Haven, Gilbert, ii, 388; iii, 268, 528, 620; ii, 839, 398, 840.
Havens, E. O., iii, 526 428.
Haviland, Laura C, iii, 532.
Hawley, Jos. R., letter to Mrs. Stanton, iii, 28, 30, 90.
HAY, William, letter to Broadway Tabernacle Convention, i, 655
--letter to Susan B. Anthony, i, 631
--letter to _The North Star_, on the Saratoga Convention, i, 621;
paper, property rights, 607.
Hayes, R. B., iii, 165.
Hayhurst, Martha, i, 348.
Hazard, Rebecca N., ii, 855, iii, 604.
Hazlett, Adelle, ii, 787; iii, 522.
Heath, Jeannette Brown, i, 642.
Heloise, i, 759.
Henderson, Miss A. M., iii, 654.
Henderson, Senator, ii, 98.
Heroism, Kate Shelly, iii, 633.
Herricourt, Madame, ii, 569, 395.
Hertell's, Barbara, will, i, 63.
Hewitt, Rev. Dr., i, 502.
Heyrick, Elizabeth, i, 41.
Heywood, E. H., ii, 222.
Hiatt, Hannah, i, 306.
Hiatt, Sarah W., iii, 803.
Hicks, Elias, i, 412, 415.
HIGGINSON, Thos. Wentworth, iii, 275, 277, 305
--Brick Church meeting, i, 500
--coëducation, on, iii, 496
--Kansas campaign, ii, 265
--Kansas campaign, ii, 237
--letter to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 917
--letter to Cleveland National Convention, i, 131
--letter to Lucy Stone, i, 566
--marriage ceremony, on, i, 260
--Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, i, 253
--_New York Times_, on the, i, 648
--speech, in Cleveland, O., ii, 802
--speech, in Cooper Institute, ii, 828
--speech, Broadway Tabernacle Convention, at, i, 656
--speech, Cleveland Convention, ii, 760, 771
--speech, National Convention, New York, i, 642
--voters, qualification of, i, 249
--temperance and woman suffrage, on, ii, 819
--theological discussion, i, 647
--woman's rights almanac, i, 863
--women in Christian civilization, on, i, 791.
Hilda, Abbess, i, 30.
Hill, Benj. H., speech, iii, 217.
Hill, Charlotte, iii, 365.
Hill, Peter, iii, 524.
Hillier, C. J., iii, 756.
Hinckley, Frederick A., on woman suffrage in Rhode Island, iii, 349
--speech at Washington Convention, iii, 222.
Hindman, Matilda, iii, 459, 522, 621, 719, 723.
HOAR, Geo. F., minority report, iii, 131,
--presents petitions, iii, 104
--letter to Washington Convention, ii, 858
--speech, women in the Supreme Court, iii, 139
--select committee, U. S. Senate, iii, 198-216
--speech in 1871, ii, 820.
Hobart's, Ella F., services as chaplain in Union army, ii, 18.
Hobbs, Lucy B., dentist, iii, 401, 455.
Holland, J. G., iii, 46.
Holloway, Wm. R., iii, 534.
Homeopathic College, ii, 765.
Holland, iii, 907.
Holmes, Jennie F., iii, 683.
Holmes, Rev., iii, 390.
Hook, Frances, as a soldier, ii, 19.
HOOKER, Isabella B. iii, 194, 327
--argument before House Judiciary committee, iii, 103
--before Senate committee, iii, 105
--declaration and pledge, ii, 486
--letter to New York Convention, twenty-fifth anniversary, ii, 534
--police, how she would rule,, iii, 73
--receptions in Washington; iii, 99
--reminiscences of, iii, 320
--report, National Association, 1872, ii, 496
--speech before House Judiciary committee, ii, 458
--speech before Senate Judiciary committee, ii, 499
--thanks the champions of woman's rights in Congress, ii, 489
--Washington Convention, notes ii, 425.
Hooker, John, iii, 101, 327, 957.
Hopkins, E. A., on legal grievance of women, i, 584.
Hosmer, Harriet, iii, 143, 301, 595, 951.
Hospital clinics, iii, 448.
Houghton, Agnes A., iii, 359.
Hovey, Charles F., i, 625
--Bequests, i, 257, 258, 667.
Howe, Frederick B., iii, 438.
Howe, J. H., on women as jurors, iii, 736.
HOWE, Julia Ward, ii, 757, 770, 792, 873, portrait, 783; iii, 270,
275, 276, 371
--Fifteenth Amendment, on the, ii, 335
--President of Am. Woman Suffrage Association, made, ii 834
--Speech in Philadelphia, ii, 817; in Detroit, 834
--Woman Suffrage in New Jersey, on, ii, 847.
Hoyt, John W., Gov. of Wyoming, iii, 241, 474, 730.
Hoyt, Mrs., on anti-slavery and woman's rights, ii, 59, 61, 63.
Howitt, Wm., letter to Lucretia Mott, i, 434.
Howland, Emily, i, 688.
Howland, Fannie, description of Washington Convention, ii, 416.
Howland, William, iii, 437.
Hubbard, R. D., iii, 326.
Hugo, Victor, ii, 369, iii, 75, 127.
Hulett, Alta C., iii, 572.
"Human Rights," Hurlbut's, i, 38.
HUNT, Harriot K., i, 219, 224, 255, 356, 531, 535, ii, 583
--medical education, on, i, 356
--physician, as a, i, 260
--speech at Broadway Tabernacle Convention, i, 564
--taxation, protest against, i, 259, iii, 298.
Hunt's, Ward, Judge, decision Anthony trial, ii, 689
--resolution against, ii, 537.
Hunt's, Richard, tea table, i, 68.
Hunt, Seth, iii, 270.
Hurlbut's "Human Rights," i, 38.
Husband and wife, act concerning rights and liabilities of, i, 686.
Hussey, Cornelia Collins, iii, 482.
Husted, James W., favors suffrage for women, iii, 409, 417, 424, 437.
Hutchinson family, ii, 59, 239, 262, 309, 542, 934; iii, 35
--Letter, John W., i, 627.
Hutchinson, Anne, i, 206.
Hutchinson, Nellie, iii, 752.
I.
ILLINOIS, iii, 559
--Art Union, iii, 587
--Bar, Myra Bradwell's application, ii, 601
--opinion denying, ii, 609
--Carpenter's, Matt. H., argument, ii, 615
--opinion of Justice Bradley, ii, 624
--report of proceedings in Illinois and U. S. Supreme Courts,
ii, 614
--U. S. Supreme Court decision, ii, 622
--writ of error, ii, 614
--centennial celebration at Evanston, iii, 581
--Conventions (see conventions)
--Elmwood church trouble, iii, 563
--Garrett Biblical Institute, iii, 582
--houses of ill-fame, licensing Chicago, iii, 572
--married women's earnings act, iii, 570
--Master in Chancery, Mrs. Schuchardt, iii, 588
--Moline Association, iii, 589
--Monticello Ladies Seminary, iii, 579
--petitions, toils of circulating, iii, 590
--pulpit utterances, iii, 564
--Social Science Association, iii, 584
--Suffrage Association formed, iii, 569
--suffrage society, first, iii, 560
--temperance petition, iii, 587
--Woman's College at Evanston, iii, 578
--woman, as preacher, first in, iii, 579
--women elected as school officers, iii, 575
--women eligible as school officers, bill making, iii, 575
--women, trials and triumphs of, iii, 560.
Impeachment, articles of, iii, 31.
INDIANA, i. 290, iii, 533
--appendix, iii, 965
--campaign of 1882, iii, 543
--colleges open to women, iii, 548
--constitutional debates, i, 296
--Conventions (see Conventions)
--electoral bill, iii, 541
--Equal Suffrage Society Indianapolis, iii, 536
--laws for women, changes in, iii, 544
--legislative enactments, iii, 544
--legislative hearings, iii, 538
--liquor law, i, 307
--mass meeting in Indianapolis, iii, 541
--newspapers, iii, 555
--Republican State Convention, iii, 542
--secret conclave, iii, 535
--temperance petition, Mrs. Wallace, iii, 539
--women in schools, iii, 547.
Infidelity, i, 143.
International Convention, iii, 157, 585, 896, 952.
IOWA, iii, 612
--churches indorse woman suffrage, iii, 620
--Clergymen's tract, iii, 624
--Conventions (see Conventions)
--Fort Dodge, iii, 617
--friendly associations, iii, 635
--Governor Kirkwood appoints women to office, iii, 626
--Governor, first, to recognize woman suffrage, iii, 622
--Governor Sherman interviewed, iii, 624
--Inventions by women, iii, 632
--Journalism, iii, 629
--laws, improvement in, iii, 636
--lectures, iii, 630
--Legislative action, iii, 619
--Legislative action, summary, iii, 625
--mass meeting at the capitol, iii, 619
--medical profession, iii, 631
--Polk County Society, iii, 614
--Republican Convention, women's plank, iii, 620
--County School Superintendents, Attorney General's opinion,
iii, 627
--school offices, eligibility of women to hold, iii, 628
--societies organized, iii, 615, 617
--_State Register_, iii, 620
--women in office, iii, 626
--women employed as teachers, iii, 627
--woman suffrage, first agitation of, iii, 613
--woman suffrage society, first, iii, 614
--women in positions of trust, iii, 616.
Island No. 10, ii, 10.
Italy, iii, 899.
J.
Janney's, Mrs. R. A. S., recollections, i, 122.
Jay, John, ii, 413.
Jackson, Rev. E. M., i, 502.
Jackson, Francis, i, 189, 257, 634, 667, 743,
will case, iii, 310.
Jackson, James C., ii, 582.
Jackson, Mercy B., letter, ii, 920.
Jenkins, Lydia Ann, i, 145.
Jerry, rescue trials, i, 474.
Johnson, Andrew, ii, 205.
Johnson, Mariana, i, 103, 351.
Johnson, Oliver, i, 101, 367, 671; ii, 786, 813.
Johnson, Rev. Samuel, letter to National Convention in New York,
i, 635.
Johnson, Wm. H. and Mary, letter to Westchester, Pa., Convention,
i, 832.
Jones, Mrs. E. C., Jailoress, iii, 488.
Jones, Jane Graham, delegate to National Convention at Washington,
ii, 522, 442; iii, 229, 580
--address International Congress at Paris, iii, 585
--Genevieve Graham, daughter, iii, 586, 897.
Jones, J. Elizabeth, report, i, 168
--speech at Cooper Institute Convention, i, 694
--speech at Syracuse National Convention, i, 530.
Journalism, women in, i, 43, iii, 303, 629, 761, 813.
Judge direct a verdict of guilty, can a, ii, 690.
Julian, Geo. W., ii, 333, 489, 490, 552, 727
--amendment to District of Columbia suffrage bill, ii, 282
--speech on woman suffrage, ii, 801.
Juries, venerable decisions on, ii, 705.
Jury, women on, iii, 732.
Justice of Peace, Mrs. Esther Morris made, iii, 731.
K.
Kalamazoo college, iii, 525.
KANSAS, Mrs. Nichols' account, i, 185, iii, 696
--appeal, ii, 247
--campaign, 1867, ii, 928
--campaign, S. N. Wood's summing up of, ii, 254
--_Champion_ (Atchison) on woman suffrage, ii, 240
--_Commercial_, (Leavenworth) on the campaign, ii, 262
--constitutional amendment to strike word "white" from suffrage
clause, ii, 229
--Conventions (see Conventions)
--elections, iii, 701, 708
--Harvey, Governor, message, iii, 696
--legislative action, iii, 709
--Lincoln suffrage association, iii, 701
--Lincoln Auxiliary of the National Association, iii, 698
--parties in convention, action of, iii, 707
--press, iii, 699
--property rights, iii, 704
--Radical Reform Christian Association, iii, 703
--reminiscences, Helen Ekin Starrett's, ii, 250
--schools, iii, 706
--Stanton Suffrage Society organized, iii, 702
--suffrage organizations, history of, iii, 698
--suffrage song, the Hutchinsons, ii, 934
--Superintendent of Public Instruction, Sarah A. Brown nominated,
iii, 705
--suppressed proceedings, ii, 931
--Temperance Convention, ii, 231
--woman suffrage facts, iii, 709
--woman suffrage indorsed by Republican State Convention, iii, 707
--woman suffrage petitions, report of Judiciary Franchise Committee,
i, 194
--Women's Christian Temperance Union, iii, 703
--Women's Impartial Suffrage Association, address, ii, 932
--women run for office, iii, 708
--women in office, iii, 706
--women in the professions, iii, 706.
Kasson, John A., iii, 619.
Keating, Harriette C., iii, 791.
Kelley, W. D., suffrage resolution, iii, 71.
Kelly, Abby (_see Foster_).
Kemble, Fanny, i, 412.
KENTUCKY, iii, 818
--architecture, Miss White, iii, 820
--education, facilities for, iii, 821
--Louisville School of Pharmacy, iii, 821
--woman suffrage society, ii, 862
--school suffrage, i, 869, iii, 821.
King, Susan A., sketch of, iii, 420.
King, Thos. Star, i, 666.
Kingman, Judge, Kansas, i, 192.
Kingman, J. W., ii, 836, iii, 727, 241.
Kingsbury, Benjamin, iii, 359.
Kingsbury, Elizabeth A., ii, 310, iii, 476.
Kingsley, Henry, letter to Mrs. P. W. Davis, ii, 438.
Kirk, Mrs. Eleanor (Nellie Ames), ii, 390.
Knight, Ann, i, 438, iii, 837.
Knowlton, Helen M., iii, 302.
L.
Ladies' Art Association, iii, 399.
Lander, Mrs. Dick, iii, 852.
Lane, James H., i, 191.
Langdon, Lady Anna G., iii, 854.
Lapham, Elbridge G., presents petition, ii, 283
--votes for, ii, 304
--Anthony trial, ii, 647
--printing speeches in the House, iii, 174
--vote in Senate, iii, 218
--Senate committee, 228, 231
--Senate report, 232
--thanks to, iii, 252.
Lawrence, Amos A., iii, 330.
Lawrence, Sybil, iii, 532.
Lawyers, women, iii, 575.
Lee, Mary B., legacy, iii, 624.
Leftwich, i, 649.
Legacy, iii, 624.
Leipsic, iii, 902.
Leslie, Mrs. Frank, iii, 441.
Lester, Louise, iii, 780.
Letters:
Alcott, Louisa May, to Lucy Stone, ii, 831
--Amberly, Lady, to Mrs. P. W. Davis, ii, 439
--Andrews, Margaret H., to S. J. May, i, 531
--Anthony, H. B., to S. B. Anthony, iii, 350.
Letters, Anthony, Susan B., to her family; Boston Convention, i, 256;
to Brooks, James, ii, 97;
to Foote, E. B., ii, 941;
to Garfield, iii, 185;
to Mott, Lydia, i, 748;
to National Democratic Convention, ii, 340;
to Wright, Martha C., i, 676.
Letters, Barton, Clara, to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 916
--Bascom, E. C., to S. B. Anthony, iii, 647
--Becker, Lydia E., to Susan B. Anthony, iii, 62
--Beecher, H. W., to St. Louis Convention, ii, 825
--Bennett, Alice, to Susan B. Anthony, iii, 472
--National Association to Berlin Congress, ii, 404
--Briggs, Caroline A., to S. B. Anthony, iii, 250
--Blackwell, Elizabeth, to Emily Collins, i, 91
--Blackwell, Antoinette Brown, to Cooper Institute Convention,
i, 862
--Blackwell, Elizabeth, to Westchester, Pa., Convention, i, 831
--Blackwell, H. B., to E. C. Stanton, ii, 232, 235
--Blair, Henry W., to Susan B. Anthony, iii, 380
--Bowles, Samuel, to Mrs. Hooker, iii, 325
--Bright, Jacob, to Mrs. P. W. Davis, ii, 438
--Brown, Olympia, to S. B. Anthony, ii, 259
--Bruhn, Rosa, to Mrs. P. W. Davis, ii, 439
--Burleigh, Celia, giving account of Saratoga Convention, ii, 402
--Burns, Alexander, to Des Moines Convention, iii, 618
--Burr, Frances E., to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 912, iii, 334
--Butler, Benjamin F., to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 539, iii, 255.
Letters:
Carpenter, C. C., to Iowa W. S. Association, iii, 621
--Carpenter, M. H., to Elizabeth C. Stanton, ii, 423
--Channing, Wm. Henry, Cleveland National Convention, i, 129
--Child, L. Maria, to St. Louis Convention, ii, 825; E. C. Stanton,
ii, 910
--Clemmer, Mary, to Senator Wadleigh, iii, 111;
to S. B. Anthony, iii, 262
--Cobbe, Frances P., to Paulina W. Davis, ii, 438
--Cole M. M., to H. B. Blackwell, ii, 832
--Colvin A. J., to Susan B. Anthony, i, 691, 750; ii, 914
--Corner, Mary T., to Mrs. Bloomer, i, 122
--Corson, Hiram, to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 472
--Cutler, Mrs. H. M. T., to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 915
--Dall, Caroline H., to _The Nation_, ii, 101
--Darlington, Hannah M., to Mrs. Stanton, i, 344
--Deroine, Jeanne, to women of America, i, 234
--Dickinson, Anna E., to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 916
--Douglass, Fred., to E. Cady Stanton, ii, 328
--Faithful, Emily, to Mrs. P. W. Davis, ii, 440
--Fields, James T., to H. B. Blackwell, ii, 838
--Folger, Charles J., to Susan B. Anthony, i, 750
--Foster, Rachel G., to _Our Herald_, iii, 243
--Freedman's Relief Association, on, ii, 35
--Fremont, Jessie B. to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 911.
Letters:
Gage, Frances D., to Cincinnati Convention, ii, 857;
Steinway Hall Convention, ii, 769;
Gage, M. E. J., to, i, 47;
Rochester Temperance Convention, i, 845;
Stone, Lucy, i, 656;
Washington Convention, ii, 424
--Gage, M. J., to Mrs. Dahlgren, ii, 494;
to Omaha Con., ii, 250;
to women of Dakota, iii, 663
--Garfield, James A., to S. B. Anthony, iii, 185
--Garrison, Wm. Lloyd, to American Woman Suffrage Association
meeting in Philadelphia, ii, 816;
to Third Decade Convention, Rochester, iii, 123;
to Concord Convention, iii, 368
--Geddes, George, to M. J. Gage, i, 64
--_Greeley_, Horace, to Susan B. Anthony, i, 628;
Cleveland National Convention, i, 125;
Davis, Paulina W., i, 520;
Marsh, Rev. John, i, 503;
May, S. J., on woman's rights, i, 653.
Severance, Mrs. C. M., i, 125
--_Griffing_, Josephine S., to Catharine A. F. Stebbins, ii, 874;
to Greeley, ii, 36
--Grimké, Angelina, to Wm. Lloyd Garrison, i, 397
--Grimké, Sarah M., to Westchester, Pa., Convention, i, 353
--Grover, A. J., to Mrs. Stanton, i, 591.
Letters:
Hay, Wm., to Susan B. Anthony, i, 631;
Broadway Tabernacle Convention, i, 655
--Higginson, T. W., to S. B. Anthony, ii, 917;
Cleveland (Nat.) Convention, i, 131
--Hooker, Isabella B., to Susan B. Anthony, i, 535;
to Mrs. Dahlgren, iii, 100; Stone, Lucy, i, 566
--Howitt, Wm., to Lucretia Mott, i, 434
--Hugo, Victor, to Clemence S. Lozier, iii, 75
--Johnson, Samuel, National Convention in New York, i, 635
--Johnson, Wm. H. and Mary, to Westchester, Pa., Convention, i, 832
--Kingman, J. W., to Lucy Stone, ii, 836
--Kingsley, Henry, to Mrs. P. W. Davis, ii, 438
--Lawrence, Amos A., to Abby Smith, iii, 330
--Leo, Andre, to Second Decade meeting, ii, 439
--Livermore, Mary A., to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 921.
Letters: Manderson, C. F., to O. C. Dinsmoor, iii, 688
--Marsh, J., to Horace Greeley, i, 503
--Marsh, L. R., to Mrs. E. C. Stanton, ii, 922
--Martineau, Harriet, to P. W. Davis, i, 229
--Mott, Lucretia, i, 437
--Mayo, A. D., to Syracuse Con., i, 851
--Mendenhall, H. S., to Dr. Avery, iii, 724
--Meriman, Emelia J., to the Second Decade meeting, ii, 451
--Mill, John Stuart, to Paulina W. Davis, i, 220, ii, 419;
to S. N. Wood, ii, 252
--Miller, Francis, to S. B. Anthony, ii, 536
--Mills, Chas. D. B., to Mrs. Matilda J. Gage, ii, 424
--Mott, Lucretia, to Daniel O'Connell, i, 432;
to Josephine S. Griffing, ii, 873;
to Salem, Ohio, Convention, i, 812
--Mott, Lydia, to Susan B. Anthony, i, 630
--Mott, Mary, to Westchester, Pa., Convention, i, 829.
Letters:
_New York Tribune_, on, canvass of 1859-'60, i, 677
--Nichols, Mrs. C. I. H., to Rochester Tem. Convention, i, 847
--Owen, Robert Dale, to Susan B. Anthony, i, 292
--Pastoral, i, 81
--Phelps, Almira L., to Mrs. Hooker, iii, 100
--Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, to Am. W. S. Association meeting in
Cooper In., ii, 831
--Phillips, Wendell, to S. B. Anthony, iii, 62;
to Third Decade Convention at Rochester, N. Y., iii, 122
--Pickler, J. A., to Matilda J. Gage, iii, 668
--Pomeroy, C. R., to Des Moines Convention, iii, 618
--Post, Amy, to S. B. Anthony, iii, 48
--Pugh, Sarah, to Salem, Ohio, Convention, i, 814
--Rose, Ernestine L., to Susan B. Anthony, i, 98; ii, 423;
iii, 50, 120;
to Mrs. J. S. Griffing, ii, 356
--Russell, Lucinda, to Harriet S. Brooks, iii, 682.
Letters: Sanford, R. M., to Cleveland Con., i, 819
--Sargent, A. A., to Third Decade Con., iii, 121;
to Omaha Con., iii, 245
--Sargent, J. T., to E. C. Stanton, ii, 911
--Saxon, Elizabeth L., to Mrs. Minor, iii, 791
--Severance, Caroline M., to Mrs. E. C. Stanton, ii, 911
--Shaw, Sarah B., to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 239
--Smith, Gerrit, to Susan B. Anthony, i, 497; ii, 317, 538, 941;
Garrison, Wm. L., i, 223, 620;
Stanton, E. Cady, i, 708, 836;
St. Louis Convention, ii, 825
--Somerville, Mary, to Mrs. P. W. Davis, ii, 440
--Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, to Akron, O., Convention, i, 815;
Cooper Institute Con., i, 860;
Greeley, Horace, i, 738;
Mott, Lucretia, iii, 45;
Omaha Convention, iii, 244;
Salem, O., Convention, i, 810;
Smith, Gerrit, i, 839;
Syracuse Convention, i, 848
--Stanton, Harriot, to Nebraska voters, iii, 247
--Stebbins, Catharine A. F., to Lucretia Mott, iii, 47
--Stone, Lucy,
to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 237, 919;
to Elizabeth C. Stanton, ii, 234;
to Salem, O., Convention, i, 813.
Letters:
Taylor, Mrs. M., to Mrs. P. W. Davis, ii, 438
--Tenney, Mrs. R. S., to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 257
--Tilton, Theo., to American Woman Suffrage Association, ii, 770
--Wade, Benjamin F., to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 117,
to Josephine Sophie Griffing, ii, 35
--Wallace, Zerelda G., to Susan B. Anthony, iii, 257
--Wattles, Susan E. to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 255
--Weber, Helene M., to M. A. Spofford, i, 822
--Weld, Angelina G., on organizations, i, 540
--Whiting, N. H., letter to Cooper Institute Convention, i, 861
--Winder, R. B., to Susan B. Anthony, iii, 817
--Wright, Elizur, to Paulina W. Davis, i, 217
--Wright, Henry C., to Garrison, i, 310
--Wright, Martha C., to Pillsbury, ii, 240.
Lewis, Ida, iii, 347.
_Lily, The_, i, 486.
_Lincoln_ (Kansas) _Beacon_, _Lincoln_ (Kansas) _Register_, iii, 699.
Lippincott, Sarah J., i, 46
--Saxe's poems, on, i, 828
--Washington Convention (Nat.), description of, ii, 359
List, Charles, address at Worcester National Convention, i, 232.
Little, Knox, iii, 471
--sermon to women, i, 728.
Livermore, Mary A., ii, 777; iii, 268, 274, 279, 388, 561, 565, 570.
Livingston, William, i, 441.
LOCKWOOD, Belva A., ii, 522, 240, 443, 523, 537, 585; iii, 64, 177,
809, 811, 818
--attempted to vote, iii, 813
--admitted to U. S. Supreme Court, iii, 141
--brief to U. S. Senate, on women as lawyers, iii, 106
--motion to admit Lowry to Supreme Court, iii, 174
--speech in Dr. Furness' Church, iii, 35
--women's rights, the way to get, iii, 73.
Logan, John A., on woman suffrage, iii, 207.
Longfellow, Samuel, speech at Cooper Institute Convention, i, 711
Lord, Mrs. A., iii, 703.
Loring, Geo. B., iii, 154.
Lords, feudal, i, 760, 762.
Loud, Huldah B., iii, 279.
Loughary. Mrs. H. A., iii, 774.
LOUISIANA, Constitutional Convention, iii, 789
--married women, laws relating to, iii, 799
--press, iii, 798
--St. Anna's Asylum, iii, 789
--schools, physiology in, iii, 797
--women eligible to school offices, iii, 795
--women's club, iii, 796.
Love, Mary F., i, 583, 587, 589 (See Davis, Mary F.).
Lovering, J. F., iii, 371.
Lowell, Jas. R., poem "Endurance," iii, 695.
Lowell, Josephine Shaw, appointed to office, i, 473;
police matrons, iii, 432
--Com'r of Charities, made a, iii, 417.
Lozier, Clemence S., M. D., iii, 405
--sketch of, iii, 411, 416, 421
--presided, 425
--seats for shop girls, 433
--protest against District Attorney Russell, 436
--appeal to voters, 437.
Lukens, Esther Ann, i, 311.
Lunt's, Bishop, defence of polygamy, i, 776.
Luther, Martin, will of, i, 358.
Luther and polygamy, i, 775, 776.
Lyford, Rev. C. P., on polygamy, i, 778.
Lynn, Eliza, i, 34.
M.
Macaulay, Catharine Sawbridge, i, 32, 790.
McCarthy, Justin, iii, 864.
McClellan, Geo. B., ii, 42, 75.
McClintock, Thomas, i, 539.
McClintock, Mary Ann, i, 67, iii, 454.
McCook, Edward, on suffrage, iii, 713.
McCook, Mrs. Mary, 715
--tribute, 718.
McDonald, Joseph E., women to the Supreme Court, iii, 111, 139, 155
--moves Standing Committee, iii, 190
--tribute, iii, 553.
McDowell, Anna E., _Woman's Advocate_, i, 388
--_Sunday Dispatch_, iii, 446
--J. Edgar Thomson's will, iii, 468
--Rev. Knox Little, iii, 471.
McDowell, Gertrude, iii, 693.
Mackey, T. J., iii, 828.
McLaren, Mrs. Duncan, iii, 842
--portrait, iii, 849; 951.
McLaren, Charles, Mr. and Mrs., iii, 927.
McLaren, Walter, iii, 874, 936.
McRae, Emma M., argument before House committee, iii, 161.
Madison, James, ii, 632.
Mahan, Asa, i, 151
--argument at Cleveland National Convention, i, 133.
MAINE, iii, 351
--Bar, admissions to, iii, 355
--conventions (see Conventions)
--faithful friends, iii, 365
--Goddard, Judge, iii, 353
--Industrial School for girls, iii, 356
--legislation, iii, 357, 364
--married women, law, iii, 352
--"Moral Eminence of Maine," iii, 359
--suffrage society, first, iii, 352
--women holding office, Supreme Judicial Court opinion, iii, 361
--women in office, Gov. Dingley's message, iii, 363
--women on school committees, iii, 351
--woman suffrage, progress made, 1873, iii, 357
--women tax-payers protest, iii, 356.
"Male" in the Constitution, ii, 91.
Manderson, Charles F., iii, 678
--letter to O. C. Dinsmoor, iii, 688.
Mandeville, Dr., i, 486.
Manikin, i, 37.
Mann, Horace, i, 356.
Mansfield, Arabella A., case of, ii, 606.
Manufactures in hands of women, i, 291.
Marcet, Jane, i, 34.
"Maria" and "Old Betty," ii, 114.
Marriage amendment act, English, ii, 293.
Marriage a cause of disfranchisement, ii, 621.
Marriage and minority disabilities, ii, 603.
Marriage, "Mrs. Schlachtfeld," on, iii, 723.
Marriage, what is legal status of, ii, 456.
MARRIAGE QUESTION:
Church views, i, 758
--devils, with, i, 769
--Greek church, under, i, 773
--heterogeneous, i, 719
--law, i, 107
--law of 1860, i, 686
--protest, Robert Dale Owen's, i, 295
--protest, Lucy Stone's, i, 260
--relations, i, 293
--Rose, Ernestine L., on, i, 237.
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE:
Anthony, Susan B., on, i, 735
--bill before New York Legislature, i, 745
--Blackwell, Antoinette B., on, i, 723
--drunkenness, for, i, 485
--Garrison, Wm. Lloyd, on, i, 733
--Greeley, Horace, on, i, 740
--Greeley-Owen discussion, i, 296, 746
--law amended in Massachusetts, i, 211
--Mott, Lucretia, on, i, 746
--Phillips, Wendell, on, i, 732
--Rose, Ernestine L., on, i, 729
--Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, on, i, 716
--Stanton, Mrs., letter to Horace Greeley on, i, 738.
Marriages solemnized by women, iii, 301.
Marquette, i, 762.
Marsh, John, letter to Horace Greeley, i, 503.
Marsh, Luther R., iii, 408
--letter to Mrs. E. C. Stanton, ii, 922.
"Martian Statutes," i, 31.
Martin, John A., ii, 249.
MARTINEAU, Harriet, i, 34; iii, 854
--letter to Pauline W. Davis, i, 229
--letters to Lucretia Mott, i, 437.
MARYLAND, iii, 814
--Baltimore Dental Surgery, iii, 817
--Equal Rights Society, iii, 815.
Mason, O. P., iii, 683, 691.
MASSACHUSETTS, i, 201, iii, 265
--Association, anniversary, iii, 272
--association, work done, iii, 269
--conventions (see Conventions)
--Democratic Convention, action, iii, 278
--divorce law amended, i, 211
--Governors, action of, iii, 287
--Grant campaign, Tremont Temple meeting, iii, 278
--Harvard Annex, iii, 294
--Legislative, action, iii, 284
--Legislature, petition before, i, 258
--New England Women's Club, iii, 304
--petitions, iii, 274, 285
--Philosophy at Concord, School of, iii, 307
--prohibitionists, alliance with, iii, 280
--Republican Convention, action, iii, 277, 278
--school committees, women, iii, 290
--school suffrage, iii, 280, 288
--suffrage associations, iii, 273
--Supreme Court decisions, iii, 290
--women in the civil service, iii, 306
--women delegates to Republican Convention, iii, 277
--women opposed to suffrage, iii, 275
--women at the polls, iii, 282
--women, social condition, iii, 294
--woman suffrage political party, iii, 276
--woman suffrage ticket, iii, 281.
Mather, Cotton, iii, 303.
Maule, Mollie K., iii, 693.
Maxwell, Lily, iii, 842.
May, Joseph, iii, 34.
May, Samuel J., i, 40, 485, 518; ii, 418, 422
--"Colored," on the word, ii, 215
--Kansas campaign, ii, 265
--President Rochester Convention, made, i, 578
--speech at American Equal Rights Association meeting, ii, 191
--speech on temperance, i, 478.
Mayo, A. D., letter to Syracuse Convention, i, 851.
Medical, iii, 299, 549.
Medical College, first opened to women, i, 88, 389.
Medical Education, Harriot K. Hunt on, i, 356.
Medical profession, i, 37
--Iowa women, iii, 631.
Meetings (see Conventions).
Memorials, ii, 226, 497; iii, 130, 480, 517, 539, 855
--Democratic Party, iii, 182
--Gladstone, iii, 883
--Greenback Convention, iii, 180
--Ohio Constitutional Convention, i, 105
--Republican Party, iii, 177
--Woodhull, Victoria C., ii, 443
--Legislatures, i, 673.
Mendenhall, Mrs. H. S., letter to Dr. Avery, iii, 724.
Meriman, Emelia J., letter to Second Decade meeting, ii, 441.
Meriwether, Elizabeth A., iii, 27, 154, 822.
Merrick, Caroline E., iii, 789
--women as school officers, iii, 795.
Merrick, Mrs. E. T., speech, Louisiana Constitutional Convention,
iii, 792.
Merrill, Catharine, iii, 548.
Merrimon, Senator, on the Pembina Territory bill, ii, 552-560.
Merritt, Paulina, T., iii, 540.
Methodists and women preachers, i, 784.
MICHIGAN, iii, 513
--churches, attitude of, iii, 521
--constitutional amendment, iii, 518;
lost, iii, 522
--Conventions (see Conventions)
--Episcopal Church bill, iii, 529
--legislative action, iii, 516
--local societies, iii, 529
--memorial, iii, 517
--Northwestern Association, iii, 516
--State Suffrage Society, iii, 515
--University, iii, 525
--State University, Ann Arbor, opened to girls, iii, 525
--vote for woman suffrage, iii, 522
--women's literary clubs and libraries, iii, 513
--women voting in Sturgis, iii, 514.
Middlesex society, iii, 270.
Miles, Nelson A., iii, 779.
MILL, John Stuart, ii, 341, 378, 727, 833
--death of, iii, 853
--Fifteenth Amendment, on the, ii, 334
--"Household Suffrage Bill" amendment, ii, 182
--Letter to Paulina W. Davis, i, 220; ii, 419
--letter to S. N. Wood, ii, 252
--women government, on, iii, 77.
MILL, Mrs. John Stuart, essay, i, 225.
Miller, Francis, argument, ii, 523
--Argument Spencer-Webster suit, ii, 595
--letter to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 536.
Mills, Chas. D. B., letter to M. J. Gage, ii, 424; ii, 915.
Milton, John, i, 779, 780.
Ministers, charges against, i, 135.
MINNESOTA, iii, 648
--Appendix:
Early friends, iii, 973;
school officers, 973;
authors and poets, iii, 974;
graduates from State University, iii, 974;
teachers and professors, iii, 975;
medical profession, benevolent institutions, painters in oil and
water colors, iii, 976;
musical clubs, speakers and writers, iii, 977
--coëducation, iii, 656
--constitution, bill to amend, iii, 651
--Conventions (see Conventions)
--Evangelists, iii, 657
--homestead law, iii, 655
--Kasson Society, iii, 652
--legislative hearing, iii, 651
--petitions to Congress, iii, 651
--property rights of married women, iii, 655
--Rochester society, iii, 651
--school officers, voting for, iii, 653
--school suffrage, iii, 652
--State association organized, iii, 657
--teachers, iii, 660
--temperance question, iii, 655.
Miner, Myrtilla, iii, 808.
Minor, Francis, resolutions St. Louis Convention, ii, 407, 717.
MINOR, Virginia L., Dahlgren's, Mrs., memorial, on, iii, 103
--delegate to Nat. Democratic Convention, iii, 27
--labors of, iii, 596
--sanitary work, iii, 597
--speeches:
St. Louis Convention, ii, 409;
Washington Convention, iii, 257
--suit, ii, 715
--Chief-Justice Waite's opinion, ii, 734
--decision reviewed by Mrs. Gage, ii, 742
--reviewed by _Central Law Journal_, ii, 748
--taxes, refused to pay, iii, 607
--vote, attempted to, iii, 606.
MISSISSIPPI, iii, 806.
MISSOURI, i, 194, 594
--address to voters, iii, 599
--Church and State, iii, 601
--colleges and law schools, iii, 594
--Conventions (see Conventions)
--petition to Legislature, iii, 601
--suffrage movement, facts and incidents, iii, 604
--taxation, iii, 600
--Woman Suffrage Association organized, iii, 599;
division, iii, 603
--woman's union, iii, 607
--women in the war, iii, 596.
Mob Convention, Broadway Tabernacle, i, 546.
Mobs, i, 467.
Moody, W. W., iii, 662.
Morelli, Salvatore, iii, 898.
Morgan, E. D., i, 687.
Morgan, John T., on woman suffrage, iii, 210.
Morgan, Middie, live-stock reporter, iii, 403.
Morinella, Lucrezia, i, 29.
Mormonism, see _Polygamy_.
Morrill, Senator, on Sargent's amendment to Pembina Territory bill,
ii, 562
--speech on woman suffrage, ii, 118, 563.
Morris, Esther, made Justice of Peace, iii, 731.
Morris, W. H., iii, 691.
Morrow, Jane, sketch of i, 313.
Morton, O. P., iii, 114, 553
--Pembina Territory bill, on the, ii, 549, 569, 571.
Moss, Charles E., speech, ii, 200.
"Mother Bickerdyke" iii, 709.
Mott, James, i, 69, 174, 438.
MOTT, Lucretia, ii, 177, 184; iii, 456
--address at Westchester, Pa., Convention, i, 355
--Bible, on the, i, 143
--Bible, position of woman, on the, i, 380
--Cleveland National Convention, at, i, 124
--dangerous woman, spoken of as a, i, 423
--divorce, on, i, 746
--eulogy by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, i, 407
--Farewell, last Convention, iii, 125
--funeral, i, 835
--Furness' church meeting, at, iii, 35
--home of, i, 411
--Howitt, William, correspondence, i, 434
--letter to Lydia Mott, i, 746
--letter to Josephine Griffing, ii, 873
--letter to St. Louis Convention, iii, 144
--letter to Salem, O., Convention, i, 812
--letter to Saratoga Convention, i, 626
--Luther's will, on, i, 359
--marriage of, i, 408
--marriage, on, i, 79
--Martineau, Harriet, correspondence, i, 437
--memorial service, iii, 188
--ministry, engaged in, i, 412
--O'Connell, Daniel, correspondence, i, 432
--portrait, i, 369
--President of the American Equal Rights Association, made, ii, 174
--President, meeting in Dr. Furness' church, iii, 35
--President National Woman's Rights at Syracuse, made, i, 519
--President Washington National Convention, made, ii, 346
--Pulpit, on the, i, 73
--recollections of, by Robert Collyer, i, 409, 414
--religion and theology, on, i, 422
--Rochester Convention, at, iii, 123
--sketch of, i, 407
--slavery, on, i, 416
--speech at Broadway Tabernacle Convention, i, 557
--Syracuse National Convention, argument, i, 527
--tribute, Susan B. Anthony's, iii, 189
--womanhood, her reply to R. H. Dana's lecture, i, 368.
Mott, Lydia, i, 376, 476, 519, 578, 593, 623, 744
--letter Susan B. Anthony, i, 630; iii, 409.
Mott, Mary, letter to Westchester, Pa., Convention, i, 829.
Mottoes, Washington Convention, 1880, iii, 151
--Newbury Society, Ohio, 502.
Moulton, Louise Chandler, i, 49.
N.
Nash, Clara H., iii, 358
--admitted to the Bar, iii, 355.
Nash, Mary E., iii, 623.
National Association, officers 1886, iii, 956.
_National Citizen_, iii, 114, 116, 125.
Nations, mortality of, ii, 201.
Neal, Alice Bradley, i, 386.
Neal, John, ii, 435; iii, 352.
NEBRASKA, iii, 670
--campaign, iii, 241
--canvass of the State, iii, 686
--Constitutional amendment, iii, 683;
again defeated, 691;
convention, 677;
debate, 678;
new constitution, 680
--Conventions (see Conventions)
--description of, iii, 671
--electors, qualifications of, iii, 680
--Fourteenth Amendment ratified, iii, 675
--Frontier life, iii, 671
--legislative action, iii, 672, 674, 675, 676, 683, 695
--State, made a, iii, 675
--suffrage societies, first, iii, 681
--Thayer County Association, iii, 686
--Woman Suffrage Amendment beaten at the polls, iii, 677
--woman suffrage bill passed House, beaten in Senate, iii, 672
--woman suffrage, first work in Lincoln, iii, 675
--women, leading, iii, 692.
Negro, civil and political right of, argument, ii, 59.
Negroes opposed to woman suffrage in Kansas, ii, 232, 238.
Negro suffrage, ii, 103, 106.
Nevin, Dr., defence of the clergy, i, 140.
New England Convention, i, 262.
NEW HAMPSHIRE, iii, 367
--married men, bill to protect, iii, 372
--married women, Judicial decision, iii, 379
--petitions, iii, 371
--Republican Convention, iii, 373
--State Association formed, iii, 370
--woman suffrage, first organized action, iii, 367
--women on school committees, iii, 374
--women voting, iii, 376.
NEW JERSEY, i, 441; iii, 476
--Conventions (see Conventions)
--Constitution, defects in, i, 451
--Historical Society, i, 447
--legislative hearings, iii, 490
--memorial to Legislature, iii, 480
--mothers' legal claim to their children, iii, 483
--property of married women, iii, 484
--State Society, iii, 479
--suffrage, progress made, iii, 479
--Women's Club of Orange, iii, 482
--Woman's Political Science Club, iii, 481
--women in the pulpit, iii, 484
--women as school trustees, iii, 484
--woman suffrage, celebration of, ii, 846
--woman suffrage, origin of, i, 447
--women voted, iii, 476.
_New Orleans Picayune_, iii, 798.
Newspapers, women in, i, 43.
NEW YORK, i, 63, 472, iii, 395
--appendix, iii, 959
--Constitutional Convention, ii, 269, 282
--Constitutional revision commission, iii, 409
--Conventions (see Conventions)
--disfranchisement bill, Attorney-General Russell's opinion,
iii, 434
--Lansingburgh taxpayers, iii, 441
--Legislative hearings, i, 464, 489, 605, 679, 745; iii, 406, 409,
417, 420;
disfranchisement bill, iii, 426, 431, 434;
reports on petitions, i, 612;
report on woman suffrage, i, 629;
school suffrage bill passed, iii, 424;
suffrage, power to extend, iii, 959
--License Law
of 1848, repeal, i, 474
--property rights granted, iii, 438
--reception at the capitol, iii, 438
--results, iii, 443.
_New York Christian Enquirer_ on the Worcester National Convention,
i, 243.
_New York Evening Express_, ii, 95.
_New York Evening Post_, ii, 102.
_New York Herald_ on Senator Wilson and woman suffrage, ii, 325.
_New York Independent_ on the New York Constitutional Convention,
ii, 305.
_New York Times_, i, 645, 648.
_New York Tribune_, ii, 101, 103, 304, 491, 820; iii, 46
--support lost, ii, 269
--World's Temperance Convention, on the, i, 511
--woman as a voter, on the, ii, 248
--Kansas campaign, on the, ii, 232.
Neyman, Clara, speech at Washington Convention, iii, 258.
Nichols, Elizabeth Pease, iii, 837, 925-6.
NICHOLS, Clarina I. Howard, iii, 704
--Centennial protest, iii, 49
--education of women, on, i, 356
--Kansas campaign, ii, 258
--letter to Rochester Temperance Convention, i, 847
--portrait, i, 192
--reminiscences, i, 171
--speech at Broadway Tabernacle Convention, i, 561
--Syracuse National Convention arguments, i, 522
--tribute, iii, 764
--work in Vermont, iii, 383.
Nicholson, Mrs. E. J., iii, 798.
Nightingale, Florence, ii, 14; iii, 854.
Nixon, Jennie C., iii, 798.
NORTH CAROLINA, iii, 825.
Northcote, Sir Stafford, iii, 873
--speech on woman suffrage, iii, 887.
Norton, Caroline, i, 229.
Norway, iii, 912.
Nye, Joshua, iii, 359.
O.
Obituaries, ii, 905; iii, 891.
O'Connell, Daniel, letter to Lucretia Mott, i, 432.
O'Connor, Henry, iii, 617.
OHIO, i, 101; iii, 491
--centennial celebration, women decline to take part, iii, 507
--Constitutional Convention, iii, 565
--Conventions (see Conventions)
--Equal Rights Association, iii, 491
--Painesville Equal Rights Society, iii, 509
--Senate Committee report on the suffrage question, i, 870
--Soldiers' Aid society, first, iii, 491
--Toledo society, iii, 503, 506
--women of Oberlin protest against enfranchisement, iii, 494.
Oliver, Anna, debate upon ordaining, i, 784
--suit, iii, 440.
Oliver, Lewise, letters, iii, 40.
_Omaha Republican_, iii, 682
--on Omaha Convention, iii, 251.
OREGON, iii, 767
--clergy favor woman suffrage, iii, 778
--constitutional amendment lost, iii, 778
--Convention at Portland, iii, 773
--Donation Land Act, iii, 770
--legislative action, iii, 779
--married woman's property bill, iii, 775
--married woman's sole trader bill, iii, 771
--school offices, women made eligible, iii, 775
--suffrage organizations formed, iii, 774
--suffrage society, first, iii, 768
--Temperance Alliance, iii, 771
--woman suffrage bill, iii, 771
--woman suffrage bill passed Legislature, iii, 776.
Oren, Mrs. Sarah A., iii, 548, 972.
Organizations, Angelina G. Weld, on, i, 540.
Orth, Judge, votes woman suffrage in Congress, ii, 483
--on national platform, iii, 225.
Orient, iii, 918.
Orme, Miss, iii, 928, 982.
Ostrander, Mrs. R., i, 180.
Otis, James, ii, 291, 644.
OWEN, Robert Dale, Women's Loyal League, ii, 50
--"male" in Federal Constitution, ii, 91
--birthday anniversary, 83rd, i, 619
--Greeley discussion on divorce, i, 746
--letter to Susan B. Anthony, i, 292
--sketch of, by Rosamond Dale Owen, i, 293
--speech at meeting in Philadelphia, ii, 817
--speech, property rights of married women, i, 296
--spiritualism, i, 301
--testimonial, silver pitcher, i, 300.
Owen, Mrs. Robert Dale, i, 302, 313,
(see Robinson, Mary).
Owen, Sarah C., letter to Emily Collins, i, 91
--speech, i, 78.
P.
Pacific Northwest, iii, 767.
Paddock, A. S., iii, 674.
Painter, Hetty R., iii, 693.
Paist, Harriet W., iii, 467.
Pan-Presbyterians, i, 783.
Panim, Ivan, i, 773.
Parasol-makers, ii, 829.
Parker, Alex., speech at Broadway Tabernacle Convention, i, 560.
Parker, Julia Smith, argument before Senate Committee, iii, 156
(see Smith, Julia, and Abby).
Parker, Mary S., i, 39.
Parker Theodore, i, 626; ii, 207
--sermon "Function of Woman," i, 277.
Parnell, Stewart, M. P., iii, 71.
Parnell, Rosina M., iii, 956.
Parody, woman suffrage in the courts, ii, 599.
"Pastoral Letter," i, 81, 84.
Pat and the Locomotive, ii, 188.
Patridge, Lelia E., ii, 852; iii, 461.
Patterson, Catherine G., iii, 712.
Patterson, Jessie, iii, 708.
Peckham, Lilia, career, iii, 642.
Peel, Sir Robert, iii, 835.
Pellet, Sarah, speech at Saratoga Convention, i, 621.
Pembina Territory bill, U. S. Senate debate on Sargent's amendment,
ii, 545
--bill rejected, ii, 582
(see also Congressional).
Penn, William, i, 320.
Pennell, Mrs. Horace, i, 92.
PENNSYLVANIA, i, 320; iii, 444
--anti-slavery struggle, i, 323
--appendix, iii, 961
--Century Club, iii, 469
--Citizens' Suffrage Association, iii, 460
--common law, iii, 961
--Constitutional Convention, iii, 495
--Conventions (_see Conventions_)
--Fugitive Slave law i, 328
--hall, destruction of, i, 333
--Legislature recommends a sixteenth amendment, iii, 474
--literary women, iii, 469
--medical school controversy, iii, 447
--petitions to Legislature, iii, 463
--property law, married women's, iii, 445
--school officers, women elected, iii, 467
--school offices, women made eligible, iii, 465
--statutes and court decisions, iii, 963
--suffrage association formed in Philadelphia, iii, 457
--report, annual, iii, 459
--Swarthmore college, iii, 456
--temperance work in, i, 344
--University, attempt to open to women, iii, 474
--University, clinical instruction, iii, 448
--Woman's Medical College, i, 389
--Woman's Medical College, report on hospital clinics, iii, 450
--woman's rights, first legal argument, iii, 462
--women sold with cattle, iii, 445.
Perry, M. Frederica, lawyer, iii, 574.
Peru, iii, 6.
Peterson, Myra, iii, 703.
PETITION to Congress for a XVI. amendment, ii, 851
--first, sent to New York Legislature, iii, 395
--Sherman-Dahlgren against woman suffrage, ii, 494
--Woman's National Loyal League, ii, 78.
Petitions, i, 262, 308, 315, 489, 588, 625, 629; ii, 91, 282, 283,
286, 401, 514, 516, 560, 698; iii, 58, 104, 790
--form of, i, 676
--New York Legislature report, i, 612;
against, iii, 571, 841.
Petitioners, four classes of, ii, 283.
Phelps, Almira L., letter to Mrs. Hooker, iii, 100.
Phelps, Elizabeth B., woman's bureau, ii, 431.
Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, ii, 831.
_Philadelphia Press_, ii, 359; iii, 44
--_Ledger_, iii, 43.
Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society, i, 325.
PHILLIPS, Wendell, ii, 317, 268; i, 469
--Anti-Slavery Convention, London, i, 54
--Grimké, Angelina, his opinion of, i, 399
--Kansas campaign, ii, 230
--last letter on woman suffrage, iii, 122
--letter of regret, Saratoga Con., i, 627
--letter to Susan B. Anthony, iii, 62
--letter to Mrs. Stebbins, iii, 522
--marriage and divorce, on, i, 732
--Mrs. Eddy's will, iii, 312
--self-government, on, i, 258
--speeches:
Broadway Tabernacle Convention, i, 572, 637;
Cooper Institute Convention, i, 701;
Mozart Hall Convention, i, 674;
National Convention, Boston, ii, 178;
New England Convention, i, 273;
Woman's National Loyal League, ii, 84;
Worcester, Mass., Convention, i, 227
--treasurer of Jackson fund, i, 189
--woman suffrage, apathy, ii, 318
--World's Temperance Convention, at the, i, 152.
Philosophy, school of, at Concord, iii, 307.
Physical culture, ii, 908.
Physicians and nurses, iii, 298.
Pickler, J. A., letter to M. J. Gage, iii, 668.
Pierce, J. D., on woman suffrage, iii, 739.
Pierce, Wm. S., on woman suffrage, iii, 458.
Pierpont, Rev. John, iii, 294
--speech at Broadway Tabernacle, i, 451, 569.
PILLSBURY, Parker, speeches, i, 427, 671; ii, 173, 176, 201, 375;
iii, 173, 196, 275, 367, 478, 948
--appeal for, universal suffrage, ii, 917
--editor, _The Revolution_, ii, 264
--Fifteenth Amendment, on the, ii, 265, 335, 337
--Kansas campaign, ii, 265; iii, 367, 945.
Pitkin, Benjamin C, on woman's rights, i, 209.
Playfair, Lyon, iii, 850.
Plumb, P. B., the Kansas campaign, ii, 231, 253.
Plumly, Rush, i, 364.
Pochin, Henry D., iii, 847.
Pochin, Mrs., iii, 848, 929.
Poem, "Endurance," Lowell, iii, 695
--Frances D. Gage and the Hutchinsons, iii, 38
--"From Clatsop," iii, 780
--"Pastoral Letter," i, 84
--"Ancient Usage," i, 371
--"The Times That Try Men's Souls," i, 82
--"Woman's Cause," Lowell, i, 263
--Tennyson's Princess, iii, 258.
POLAND, iii, 917.
Police, women as, iii, 397, 431, 432.
Political campaigns, Anna E. Dickinson, ii, 43.
Political disabilities, ii, 315.
Polygamy, i, 776, 777, 778
--Miss Couzins on, iii, 223, 128, 130
--Bishop Lunt's defense of, i, 776.
Pomeroy, C. R., letter to Des Moines Convention, iii, 618.
Pomeroy, Senator, S. C., i, 185
--speeches, ii, 151, 324, 346, 419; iii, 727, 811.
Poppleton, A. J., speech at Omaha Convention, iii, 241.
Porter, Albert G., iii, 538, 553.
Portugal, iii, 901.
POST, Amy, i, 75
--letter to Susan B. Anthony, iii, 48
--Third Decade Meeting in Rochester, N. Y., iii, 117
--tried to vote, ii, 647.
Potter, T. B., iii, 848.
Powell, Aaron M., i, 468, 671; ii, 783.
Pray, Isaac C., speech at Broadway Tabernacle Convention, i, 571.
Presidential campaigns:
--1856, John C. Fremont, i, 633, 641, 643
--1872, Grant and Wilson, ii, 217, 520
--1876, Hayes and Tilden, iii, 22, 26, 415
--1880, Garfield and Hancock, iii, 175, 187, 431.
Preston, Ann, i, 389, 390
--address at Westchester, Pa., Convention, i, 360
--Dean Medical College, iii, 450.
Pretorius, Emile, letter to Woman's Nat. Loyal League, ii, 86.
Price, Abby, speech at Syracuse National Convention, i, 532
--Worcester Convention, i, 218, 242.
Priestley, celibacy, i, 759, 760.
Prince, Bradford L., iii, 417.
Privileges and immunities, ii, 453.
Progressive friends, i, 141.
Prohibition Convention, iii, 183.
Prohibitionists, alliance with, iii, 280.
Property Bill, i, 64
--bill, New York, i, 256
--laws, i, 171
--rights, Wm. Hay's paper, i, 607
--rights of married women, iii, 325
--opinions of Indiana Legislators, i, 299.
Prostitution, i, 264; iii, 144, 397, 398
(see, also, Vice).
Pryor, Margaret, iii, 477.
Pugh, Sarah, i, 327, 337, 376
--letter to Salem, O., Convention, i, 814; iii, 19, 34
--at Third Decade Convention, iii, 125.
Pulpit, ii, 902
--charges against, 135.
Pulte medical college, iii, 511.
Purvis, Robert, ii, 183, 265, 347, 358, 418; iii, 63, 72.
Q.
Quakers, i, 412, 783.
"Queen's women," i, 794.
R.
Ransier, A. J., ii, 542; iii, 829.
Raymond, Henry J., i, 547, 649.
Reconstruction, ii, 313.
Reed, C. A., iii, 768, 773.
Reed, Thomas B., in Congress, iii, 219, 366.
Reformation, i, 774.
Reid, Mrs. Hugo, iii, 836, 838.
REMINISCENCES:
--Collins, Emily, i, 88
--Davis, Paulina W., by "E. C. S.," i, 283
--Grimké, Angelina, by "E. C. S." i, 392
--Nichols, Clarina I. H., i, 171
--Stanton's, Elizabeth C., i, 456; iii, 922
--Starrett, Helen E., ii, 250
--Thomas, Mary F., i, 306
--Way, Amanda, i, 306.
Remond, Charles L., i,, 214, 220, 225.
Republican Party, iii, 279.
Republicans, treachery of, ii, 322.
Reports (see Woman Suffrage).
Resolutions:
i, 71, 219, 254, 535, 537, 542, 570, 574, 580, 593, 633, 641, 644,
646, 673, 694, 706, 708, 716, 723, 787, 808, 814, 816, 817, 820,
821, 823, 825, 827, 833, 834, 855;
ii, 57, 84, 154, 171, 190, 213, 358, 384, 388, 396, 407, 420, 436,
493, 521, 533, 537, 583, 584, 780, 809, 810, 818, 826, 837, 843,
859;
iii, 5, 19, 61, 69, 74, 124, 128, 152, 252, 256, 493, 566, 619, 641,
676, 707, 708, 780.
Retrospect, iii, 51.
Revelation, i, 647.
Revolution, 1776, i, 747
--Arnett, Hannah, i, 441
--battle, first, i, 203
--girls, two, with a drum and fife, i, 204
--spy, female, i, 323
--women in the, i, 201, 321, 444.
_Revolution, The_, i, 46; ii, 317, 319, 321, 324, 333, 340, 344, 345,
372, 381, 382, 400, 401, 407, 411, 426, 431; iii, 397, 398, 478,
752, 802
--editorial correspondence, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, ii, 362, 367
--establishment of, iii, 401
--founded, when, ii, 264.
RHODE ISLAND, iii, 339
--Conventions (see Conventions)
--legislation, iii, 346
--State Association, organized, iii, 340,
address, iii, 345;
work done, iii, 343
--women represented, iii, 349
--Women's Board of Visitors, iii, 345
--women on school boards, iii, 341.
Richards, David M., iii, 715, 716, 719, 721.
Richardson, Susan Hoxie, iii, 560.
Ricker, Marilla M., iii, 106
--first woman to cast a vote, ii, 586
--prison reform, on, iii, 578.
Riddle, Albert G., iii, 106
--speech at Washington Convention, ii, 421
--speech before Congressional Committee, ii, 448
--Spencer-Webster suit, argument, ii, 587.
Roberts, Mrs. Marshall O., iii, 400.
Roberts, William H., iii, 777.
Robinson, Charles, i, 191.
Robinson, Emily, i, 103.
Robinson, Harriett Hanson, iii, 125, 196, 222, 227, 229, 265.
Robinson, Lelia J., application to the bar, iii, 307
--Supreme Court decision, iii, 308.
Robinson, Lucius (Gov.), defeat of, iii, 423
--vetoes school suffrage bill, iii, 418.
Robinson, Mary, sketch of, i, 293.
_Rochester Democrat and Chronicle_ on Miss Anthony's trial, ii, 715.
_Rochester Evening Express_ on Miss Anthony's trial, ii, 714.
_Rocky Mountain News_, iii, 715.
Roebling, Mrs., iii, 440.
Roebuck's flattery of woman, i, 537.
Rogers, Nathaniel P., i, 61, iii, 367.
Roland, Pauline, i, 234.
Rome, "The City of God," i, 794.
Root, H. K., speech at Broadway Tabernacle Convention, i, 560.
Root J. P., on the Kansas campaign, ii, 258.
ROSE, Ernestine L., i, 38, 52, 619, 624, 626, 636; ii, 390; iii, 514
--biography, i, 95
--debate, Cleveland National Convention, i, 133
--English women, on, i, 645
--Equal Rights Association, on the, ii, 397
--_Letters_:
to Susan B. Anthony, i, 99, iii, 50;
to Mrs. J. F. Griffing, ii, 356;
to Rochester Convention, iii, 120
--marriage, on, i, 237
--marriage and divorce, on, i, 729
--portrait of, i, 97
--propagandist, _Albany Register_ charges, i, 608
--resolutions, i, 707
--_Speeches_:
Broadway Tabernacle, i, 562, 661;
Cooper Institute Convention, i, 692;
New York Legislature, i, 607;
Philadelphia Convention, i, 376;
Rochester Convention, i, 579;
Syracuse Convention, i, 537;
Woman's National Loyal League, ii, 60, 64, 73;
Worcester Convention, i, 237
--tribute to Frances Wright, i, 692
--Westchester, Pa., Convention, at, i, 357
--women in colleges, on, i, 144; ii, 208
--in London, 1883, iii, 940.
Ross, E. G., letter to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 423.
Ross, James, i, 449.
Ross, Laura J., ii, 374;
(see Wolcott, Laura Ross).
Russell, Leslie W., iii, 434
--defeat of, iii. 437.
Russell, Lucinda, correspondence, iii, 682
--sketch of, iii, 692.
Russia, iii, 915.
S.
Sacrilegious child, Cardinal Antonelli's, i, 788.
Safe deposit companies, iii, 402.
St. Chrysostom's description of woman, i, 758.
St. John, Gov., J. P., ii, 258. iii, 706.
St. Paul, quotations, iii, 720.
Salic law, i, 774.
Sanborn, Frank B., ii, 765.
Sandford, Arch-Deacon, iii, 848.
Sanford, Rebecca M., i, 77
--letter to Cleveland Convention, i, 819.
Sandige, John M., iii, 791.
Sanitary Commission, ii, 13.
SARGENT, A. A., iii, 108
--California Constitution, on the, iii, 760
--District of Columbia suffrage bill, on the, ii, 483
--letter to Omaha Convention, iii, 245
--letter to Rochester Convention, iii, 121
--Pembina Territory bill, amendment, ii, 545;
bill rejected, ii, 582
--Pembina Territory bill, on the, ii, 546, 555, 564, 567
--resolution, woman suffrage, iii, 70
--speech in San Francisco, on woman's rights, ii, 483
--speech in Senate, iii, 9
--woman suffrage, joint resolution, iii, 75
--minister at Berlin, iii, 944.
Sargent, Elizabeth, M. D., iii, 763.
Sargent, J. T., letter to Mrs. E. C. Stanton, ii, 911
--speech at New England Convention, i, 270.
Saunders, Alvin, on woman suffrage, iii, 226, 674.
Savage, John, i, 38.
Saxe, Dana, and Grace Greenwood, i, 828.
Saxon Elizabeth L., iii, 180, 197, 241, 690, 791
--argument before Senate committee, iii, 157.
Scatcherd, Mrs. Oliver, iii, 875, 878, 923, 929, 936.
Schell, Augustus, favors woman suffrage, iii, 422.
Schenck, Elizabeth T., iii, 750, 754.
School of Design for Women, i, 390; iii, 399.
School officers, bill passed New York Legislature, iii, 417;
vetoed by Gov. Robinson, iii, 418.
School suffrage (see Suffrage Gained).
Schurz, Carl, i, 42; ii, 370; iii, 46.
SCOTLAND (see Great Britain, iii, 833).
Scott, Thomas A., ii, 5.
Scovill, James M., ii, 420; iii, 477.
Sears, Judge, in Kansas campaign, ii, 240, 253.
See, Rev. Isaac M., trial of, i, 780; iii, 485.
Segur, Rose L., iii, 103.
Selden, H. R., Miss Anthony's counsel, ii, 629, 647, 652, 654, 679,
680, 689;
appeal to Congress, 698.
Seneca Falls Convention, i, 67.
Severance, Caroline M., address at Broadway Tabernacle, i, 569
--New England Convention, i, 262
--letter to Mrs. E. C. Stanton, ii, 911.
Sewall, Samuel E., iii, 269.
Seward, Wm. H., on self-government, ii, 76, 77; iii, 85
--on woman's rights, i, 457.
Sewall, May Wright, iii, 226, 534, 557, 259.
Seymour, Horatio, thirty pieces of silver, i, 473.
Shattuck, Harriette R., iii, 226, 257.
Shaw, Sarah B., letter to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 239.
Shelly, Kate, heroism of, iii, 633.
Sherman-Dahlgren petition against woman suffrage, ii, 494.
Shields, M. F., iii, 719.
Sholes, C. L., report on rights of women in Wisconsin, i, 315;
iii, 640.
Shuman, Andrew, iii, 561.
Silk Culture, iii, 762.
Simpson, Bishop, favors woman suffrage, iii, 460, 616.
Sixteenth Amendment, ii, 333, 350, 351, 352, 353, 400, 420, 422,
425, 436; iii, 112.
Sixteenth Amendment, reasons for a, iii, 235.
Sixteenth Amendment, renewed appeal, iii, 58
--press comments, iii, 67.
Sketches, _see Biography_.
Slave law, fugitive, Pennsylvania, i, 328.
Slavery, Angelina Grimké's speech, i, 334
(see, also, Anti-Slavery).
Slavery sustained by the North, ii, 542.
Slavery and the war, ii, 77.
Slavonic countries, iii, 915.
Smith, Elizabeth Oakes, iii, 117, 128, 328, 826
--Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, at the, i, 253
--speech at Syracuse Convention, i, 522
--Worcester Convention, at, i, 231.
SMITH Gerrit, home of, i, 471
--letter to
Susan B. Anthony, i, 497; ii, 317, 538, 941;
Wm. Lloyd Garrison, i, 223, 620;
St. Louis Convention, ii, 825;
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, i, 708, 836
--speech at Syracuse National Convention, i, 526
--petition for woman suffrage, refused to sign, ii, 317.
Smith, Mrs. Gerrit, petition, ii, 98.
Smith, Hannah Whitehall, speech at Philadelphia Convention, iii, 230.
Smith, Julia and Abby, iii, 76, 98, 328, 336.
Smith, Sidney, iii, 834.
Snow, Lucy and Lavinia, iii, 365.
Social relations, Channing's report, i, 233.
Sojourner Truth, i, 115, 567; ii, 193, 222, 224, 926; iii, 458, 531.
Soldiers, women as, ii, 18, 869.
Somerville, Mary, i, 790
--letter to Mrs. P. W. Davis, ii, 440.
Song, "A Hundred Years Hence," iii, 38.
Song, "Kansas Suffrage," ii, 934.
Sorosis, iii, 402, 571.
South, what the, can do, ii, 929.
SOUTH CAROLINA, iii, 828.
Southwick, Thankful, i, 341.
Southworth, Mrs. E. D. E. N., iii, 813.
SPAIN, iii, 901.
Spencer, Herbert, i, 26.
SPENCER, Sarah Andrews, iii, 35, 66, 97, 103
--argument before House Committee, iii, 166
--before Senate Judiciary Committee, ii, 543
--before D. C. Committee, iii, 12
--delegate Rep. Nat. Convention, iii, 26
--resolutions, iii, 152
--speeches, ii, 539
--suit, ii, 587
--Chief-Justice Cartter's opinion, ii, 597.
Spider-crab, Theodore Tilton, ii, 93.
Sprague, Homer B., ii, 425.
Stanford, Leland, iii, 764.
Stansfeld, M. P., James, iii, 872
--speech, iii, 886.
Stanton, Edwin M., and Mrs. J. S. Griffing, ii, 33.
STANTON, Elizabeth Cady, i, 61, 67, 79; ii, 322, 360, 361, 381, 382,
383, 391, 417, 418, 428, 430, 456, 582; iii, 7, 35, 40, 195, 222,
529, 560, 630, 644, 811
--Abolitionists, and the, ii, 264
--address to New York Legislature, i, 595
--appeal to women of New York State, i, 676
--appeal to women of the Republic, ii, 51
--appeal for Woman's Rights, i, 858
--argument before Senate committee, iii, 228
--"Bloomer," in a, i, 128
--California visit, iii, 756
--call, loyal women, ii, 53
--candidate for Congress, ii, 180
--children i, 457
--civil rights bill for women, ii, 541
--"copperheads," ii, 320
--divorce for drunkenness, argument, i, 485
--editorial correspondence in _The Revolution_, ii, 362, 367
--eulogy: Lucretia Mott, i, 407
--Equal Rights Association, ii, 173, 174
--eternal punishment, on, iii, 196
--Fifteenth Amendment, on the, ii, 333
--girls and boys at school, on, ii, 541
--Grant and Wilson campaign, in, ii, 520
--Greeley, Horace, and, ii, 287
--Hurlbut, Judge, i, 39
--Kansas campaign, i, 200; ii, 253, 254, 261, 262, 263
--lecture, "Education of Girls," iii, 536
--lectures in Omaha, iii, 675
--lecturing tour, Ohio, iii, 491
--Letters:
to Akron, O., Convention, i, 815;
to _The Ballot Box_, iii, 64;
to Cooper Institute Convention, i, 860;
to Gerrit Smith, i, 839;
to Gen. Hawley, iii, 28;
to Horace Greeley, i, 735;
to the _National Citizen_, iii, 147;
to Omaha convention, iii, 244;
to Salem, O., convention, i, 810;
to Syracuse convention i, 848;
to Washington convention, iii, 261
--London visit, 1882-3, iii, 922
--"male" in the constitution, on the word, ii, 91
--manhood suffrage, on, iii, 566
--marriage and divorce, on, i, 716, 738
--Michigan campaign iii, 521
--"Negro's hour," ii, 94
--Newport Con., ii, 403
--Oregon, Mo., visit, iii, 609
--portrait, i, 721
--President Albany convention, i, 592
--President Loyal League, made, ii, 66
--press comments on Rochester and Seneca Falls conventions,
her reply to, i, 806
--reception, Sorosis, Chicago, iii, 571
--reconstruction, on, ii, 214
--Reminiscences: i, 456, 836; iii, 922;
of Angelina Grimké, i, 392;
of Paulina Wright Davis, i, 283
--resolutions before Congress affecting women, on, ii, 92
--resolutions, Washington convention, ii, 542
--sermon, St. Louis, iii, 148
--Sixteenth Amendment, urges a, ii, 350
--Smith, Gerrit, refusing to sign petition for woman suffrage, on,
ii, 317
--Speeches:
Cooper Institute, i, 716;
Congressional committee, before, ii, 411;
Furness' Church, in, iii, 35;
Legislature, claiming woman's rights, ii, 271;
Milwaukee, iii, 641;
National protection for National citizens, iii, 80;
New York Legislature, i, 679;
New York National convention, ii, 154;
Rochester Convention, iii, 117;
Rochester Temperance Convention, i, 481, 493;
Senate Judiciary Committee, before, ii, 506;
suffrage, question of, ii, 185;
Washington Convention, ii, 495;
Washington Nat. Convention, ii, 348;
Woman's National Loyal League, ii, 87
--testimonial ii, 533
--Train, G. F., and _The Revolution_, criticism, ii, 264
--tribute from _Leavenworth Commercial_ (Kansas), ii, 263
--view of, an objective, i, 456
--Wadleigh, Senator, on, iii, 93
--western trip, ii, 367
--Wyoming visit, iii, 734.
Stanton Harriot, letter to Nebraska voters, iii, 247, 933.
Stanton, Theodore, iii, 262, 895, 928.
Starrett, Helen Ekin, reminiscences Kansas campaign, ii, 250, 348.
Stearns, O. P., iii, 528.
Stearns, Sarah Burger, iii, 527, 649.
Stebbins, Catharine A. F., ii, 26, 514
--before House committee, iii, 162
--letter to Lucretia Mott, iii, 47
--vote, attempts to, iii, 523.
Steck, Amos, iii, 714.
Steele, William, iii, 319.
Stephens, Alexander H., reception, iii, 98, 830.
Stevens, Louisa B., iii, 633.
Stevens, Thaddeus, ii, 354, 632.
Stevenson, Emily Pitts, iii, 752.
Stevenson, Sarah Hackett, iii, 579.
Stewart's Home for Working Women, iii, 420.
Stewart, Senator, on the Pembina Territory bill, ii, 548, 558, 559,
564, 573, 579.
Stone, Dr. James A. B., address at St. Louis, ii, 821; iii, 525.
STONE, Lucy, i, 473, 619, 626; ii, 56; iii, 268, 279, 513, 722, 724,
818
--Constitutional Convention at Albany, ii, 284
--husband, and her, i, 164
--husband's name, refusing to take her, i, 261
--Kansas, in, i, 200
--Kansas campaign, in, ii, 232
--letter to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 237, 919
--letter to Salem, O., Convention, i, 813
--letters to E. Cady Stanton, ii, 234
--letter to _The Una_, i, 501
--marriage of, under protest, i, 260
--meetings held in New Jersey, iii, 479
--petitions, iii, 104
--National Convention, Broadway Tabernacle, i, 631
--Philadelphia National Convention, at, i, 375
--portrait, ii, 761
--report, American Woman Suffrage Association, ii, 803
--scripture, on, i, 650
--speeches:
Broadway Tabernacle Convention, i, 554, 565, 632;
American Woman Suffrage Association meeting in Cooper Institute,
ii, 829;
in Steinway Hall, ii, 811;
in Detroit, ii, 837;
in St. Louis, ii, 823, 827;
in Washington, ii, 858;
Cincinnati, i, 165;
Cleveland, i, 163;
Concord, iii, 271;
Woman's National Loyal League, ii, 64;
Worcester, i, 233
--suffrage, negro, first, on, ii, 383
--Syracuse National Convention, i, 524
--taxes, refused to pay, i, 450.
Story, Judge, on the Constitution, ii, 477, 478, 588.
Strahan, Robert H., iii, 417.
Strong, Rev. A. H., iii, 155
--on subordination of women, i, 787.
Stuart, Abby H. H., iii, 787.
Stuart, Mary A., iii, 158, 817.
Studwell, Edwin A., ii, 398.
SUFFRAGE GAINED:
_Full_ suffrage, Isle of Man, iii, 870, 982;
Utah Territory, ii, 426, 432;
Washington Territory, iii, 777;
Wyoming Territory, ii, 426, 432; iii, 730.
SUFFRAGE GAINED:
_Municipal_ suffrage:
Canada, iii, 832,
England, iii, 845;
Madras, iii, 983;
Scotland, iii, 871, 983.
SUFFRAGE GAINED:
_School_ suffrage: Canada, iii, 831;
Colorado, iii, 718;
Dakota, iii, 633;
England, iii, 850;
Kansas, i, 185, iii, 701, 710;
Kentucky, i, 869, iii, 821;
Massachusetts, iii, 288;
Michigan, iii, 515, 530;
Minnesota, iii, 652, 653, 654;
Nebraska, iii, 675;
New Hampshire, iii, 375, 376;
New York, iii, 424;
Oregon, iii, 775;
Scotland, iii, 851;
Vermont, i, 171, iii, 304.
Suits (see Trials).
SUMNER, Charles, ii, 35, 81, 168, 169
--ballot, on the, ii, 95
--equal rights to all, ii, 322
--Fourteenth Amendment, opposed, ii, 323
--voted for, ii, 324
--letter, Woman's National Loyal League anniversary, ii, 86
--"male," and the word, ii, 91
--petition, presents, under protest, ii, 96
--petitions, asks for, ii, 93
--rebuked by Senator Cowan, ii, 113
--speech in U. S. Senate on presentation of petition of the Woman's
Nat. League, ii, 78
--Taxation without Representation, on, ii, 114.
Sunday-school teachings, i, 786.
Sunderland-Gage controversy, i, 543.
Sunderland, Mrs. H. E., iii, 564.
Sutherland, Julia K., iii, 6.
Swank, Emma B., i, 307
--sketch of, i, 313
Sweet, Ada, pension agent, iii, 6.
Swisshelm, Jane Grey, i, 386; iii, 650, 813
--_Saturday Visitor_, i, 46
--letter, "Borders of Monkeydom," i, 807
--speech, Washington Convention, iii, 61.
SWITZERLAND, iii, 909, 911.
T.
Taney, Justice, ii, 639.
Tax, society, anti, iii, 413
--Susan A. King, iii, 420
--protest, Harriet K. Hunt's, i, 259
--Report of N. Y. State Assessors, iii, 412
--representation, without, ii, 114, 169, 274, 475; iii, 289, 397
--Lucy Stone refused to pay, i, 450.
Taylor, Helen, ii, 425; iii, 852, 923, 940.
Taylor, Mrs. Mentia, letter to Mrs. P. W. Davis, ii, 438
--Mrs. P. A., iii, 848.
Taylor, R. B., in Kansas campaign, ii, 231.
Tea, Anti, Leagues, i, 202.
Telegrapher, Hattie Hutchinson, age ten years, iii, 805.
Teller, Willard, iii, 715.
TEMPERANCE conventions:
--Albany, i, 489
--Dayton, Ohio, i, 118
--Half World's, i, 506
--Lawrence, Kansas, ii, 231
--Pennsylvania, i, 348
--World's, i, 152
--press comments, i, 854
--daughters of, i, 474
--New York, Brick Church meeting, i, 499
--New York, Metropolitan Hall meeting, i, 490
--New York Woman's State Society, i, 484
--Woman Suffrage, and, ii, 819.
TENNESSEE, iii, 822.
Tennessee campaign, Miss Carroll, ii, 3-9.
Tenney, Mrs. R. S., letter to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 257.
TEXAS, iii, 801
--Constitutional Convention, iii, 801
--Legislative action, iii, 802
--women in government offices, iii, 804.
Theological discussion, i, 647.
Thirteenth Amendment, ii, 77, 313, 663.
Thomas', Mrs. Abel C., farm, iii, 469.
Thomas, Julia J., and Greek prize, iii, 6.
Thomas, Mary F., ii, 860
--reminiscences of, i, 306
--sketch of, i, 314
--speech, Winchester, Ind., convention, i, 308.
Thompson, Geo., speech, i, 56.
Thompson, Mary A., iii, 97, 775.
Thomson, J. Edgar, will of, iii, 468.
Thornton, J. Quinn, iii, 773.
Tilden, Samuel J., i, 473; iii, 417.
Tillotson, Mary A., iii, 103.
TILTON, Theodore, ii, 117, 376
--Beecher colloquy, ii, 167
--Fifteenth Amendment, and the, ii, 327
--Kansas campaign, ii, 230
--letter to American Woman Suffrage Association, ii, 770
--speech at Nat. Convention in New York, ii, 154.
Tod, Isabella M., iii, 866, 888, 938.
Toucey, Sinclair, ii, 419.
Train, Geo. Francis, ii, 381, 431
--Constitutional Convention at Albany, before, ii, 284
--Kansas campaign, in, ii, 243, 254, 264.
Tracts, prize, i, 379.
TRIALS and Decisions, ii, 586, 934
--Allen, Jane, case of, ii, 592
--Anthony, Susan B. (see Anthony)
--Bly, Mrs., ii, 671
--Bradwell, Myra (see Bradwell)
--Burnham, Carrie, suit, ii, 600
--Gardner, Nannette B., ii, 587
--Huntington, Sarah M. T., ii, 628
--Inspectors of election, ii, 691
--jury convicts, ii, 696
--pardoned by President Grant, ii, 715
--sentenced, ii, 698
--trial, motion for new, ii, 696
--Mansfield, Arabella A., case of, ii, 606
--Minor, Virginia L., ii, 715
--Chief-Justice Waite's opinion, ii, 734
--opinion reviewed by Mrs. Gage, ii, 742
--reviewed by _Central Law Journal_, ii, 748
--parody, ii, 599
--Ricker, Mrs. M. M., ii, 586
--Spencer, Sarah Andrews, suit, ii, 587
--Chief-Justice Cartter's opinion, ii, 597
--Van Valkenburg, Ellen Rand, suit, ii, 600
--Waite, Catharine V., suit, ii, 601; iii, 571
--Webster, Sarah E., ii, 587; iii, 571
--5,000 women householders and Lord Coleridge, iii, 884.
Truman, James, on Women in dentistry, iii, 452.
Trumbull, Lyman, ii, 498.
Tudor, Mrs. Fenno, reception, iii, 197.
TURKEY, iii, 919.
Turner, Eliza Sproat, iii, 451.
Turner, Jennie, iii, 407.
Tyler, Moses Coit, ii, 813.
Tyler, W. S., iii, 497.
Tyndale, Sarah, tribute, i, 218.
Tyndale, Sharon, ii, 371.
U.
UNA, Mrs. Paulina Wright Davis, i, 46, 246.
Uncle Tom's Cabin, i, 102.
Underhill, Sarah E., i, 308
--sketch of, i, 313
United States a nation? Is the, ii, 529.
Updegraff, W. W., Kansas campaign, ii, 250.
Upham, Hon. Charles W., i, 210.
Underwood, John C., iii, 823
--tribute, ii, 538, 640.
UTAH, ii, 325.
V.
Van Cleve, Charlotte O., iii, 653.
Van Lew, Elizabeth, postmaster at Richmond, iii, 824.
Van Pelt, Maggie, journalist, iii, 629.
Van Valkenburg, Ellen Rand, ii, 600.
Van Voorhis, John, ii, 692-697.
Vassar College, iii, 398.
Vaughan, Mary C., speech on temperance, i, 476.
VERMONT, i, 171; iii, 383
--homestead law, i, 172
--St. Andrew's letter, iii, 384, 389
--school suffrage, iii, 393
--University opens to women, iii, 389
--woman suffrage amendment, Reed's report, iii, 385
--_Vermont Watchman_, iii, 386.
Vest, Senator, on woman suffrage, iii, 199, 203.
Vice, legalization of, i, 795, 796; iii, 145, 397.
Vicksburg, naval attack on, ii, 11.
VIRGINIA, iii, 823
--Woman Suffrage Association, iii, 823.
Voltaire, i, 658.
Voris, A. C., ii, 837.
Vote, first woman to cast a, ii, 586
--first woman to claim the right, iii, 815
--Mrs. Gage attempted to, iii, 406
--woman earned her right to, ii, 89
--in Scotland, iii, 871
--reports of voting in New York, iii, 429
--voted with Miss Anthony, list of, ii, 647
--voted in New Jersey, i, 448; iii, 476
--voting in 1776, i, 33
--persons entitled to, ii, 272.
Voted, 1867, Lily Maxwell, iii, 981.
Voters, qualification of, T. W. Higginson's speech, i, 249.
W.
Wade, Benjamin, F., ii, 9
--letter to Susan B. Anthony, ii, 117;
J. S. Griffing, ii, 34
--speech, ii, 123
--remarks to Anna Ella Carroll, ii, 9
--letters to Miss Carroll, ii, 866, 867.
Wadsworth, L. A., iii, 352.
Wait, Anna C., iii, 696, 709.
Waite, Catharine V., ii, 601; iii, 571.
Waite, Chas. B., iii, 569.
Waite, Jessie T., argument before House committee, iii, 161
--report of National Convention, iii, 254-260.
Waite, M. R., iii, 505
--Supreme Court opinion, ii, 734-742.
Waldo, Peter, ii, 27.
Walker, Dr. Mary, ii, 20, 813; iii, 103.
Wall, Sarah E., ii, 636; iii, 310.
Wallace, W. D., iii, 540, 966.
Wallace, Zerelda G., iii, 536-7, 539-40, 551
--argument before Senate com., iii, 155
--letter to S. B. Anthony, iii, 257.
Walling, Mrs. M. C., speech in U. S. Senate, ii, 327.
Walter, Cornelia, iii, 303.
War, woman's patriotism in, ii, 1, 863; iii, 596, 631.
Warn Kate, iii, 398.
Warner, Esther L., iii, 693.
Warren, Mercy, Otis, i, 31; ii, 201.
Washington Conventions (see Conventions)
--(see also District of Columbia).
_Washington Evening Star_, iii, 97.
_Washington Sunday Chronicle_, ii, 599.
Washington, George, letter to ladies of Trenton, N. J., i, 447.
WASHINGTON Territory, iii, 786
--women enfranchised, iii, 776.
Watterson, Henry, ii, 861, 862; iii, 182.
Wattles, John O., i, 189.
Wattles, Susan E., ii, 255; iii, 697.
Way, Amanda M., iii, 533
--legislative hearing, iii, 539
--reminiscences, i, 306
--sketch of, i, 311.
Weber, Helene Marie, i, 41
--letter to M. A. Spofford, i, 825.
Webster, Rev. D. L., i, 114.
Webster, Sarah E., suit, ii, 587
--Chief-Justice Cartter's opinion, ii, 597.
Weed, Thurlow, i, 720.
Weld, Angelina Grimké, on organizations, i, 540
--speech, Loyal Women's Convention, ii, 54
--speech, Woman's National Loyal League, ii, 60; iii, 282.
Weld, Theodore, i, 392.
Wells, Charlotte Fowler, i, 45; ii, 435.
Wendt, Mathilda F., iii, 405.
Wendte, W. C., ii, 855.
Wenthworth, Elizabeth R., iii, 643.
Wesley, John, on witchcraft, i, 765.
Wesley, Susannah, i, 790.
Weston, Hannah and Rebecca, i, 203.
WEST VIRGINIA, iii, 824.
Wheatly, Phillis, colored, i, 205.
Wheeler, L. May, iii, 659.
Whipple, E. P., views of George Eliot, i, 791.
White, Andrew D., iii, 398, 528.
White, Bessie Heagen, pharmacy, iii, 820.
White, Laura R., architect, iii, 820.
White, Richard Grant, on the word "citizen," ii, 567.
Whitehead, Wm. A., paper on woman suffrage, i, 447.
Whiting, Lilian, iii, 303.
Whiting, N. H., i, 861.
Whitman, Sarah Helen, ii, 433.
Whittier, John G., i, 83; iii, 520.
Wife ownership, i, 772.
Wigham, Eliza, iii, 852.
WILBOUR, Charlotte B., iii, 396
--organized Sorosis, iii, 403
--President New York City Society, iii, 405
--remarks at Washington Convention, ii, 421, 424
--Corresponding Secretary Loyal League, ii, 80.
Wilbur, Hervey Backus, iii, 421.
Wilcox, Hamilton, ii, 346; iii, 441, 959.
Wildman, John R., iii, 457.
Willard, Emma, i, 36.
Willard, Frances E., iii, 104, 578, 587, 660.
Willard, Judge John, i, 750.
Will of Bridget Smith, i, 563.
Williams, George, iii, 774.
Williams, Nellie, i, 48.
Williams, Sarah Langdon, iii, 503
--_The Ballot-Box_, iii, 51.
Williams, Senator, ii, 108.
Willing, Mrs. J. F., ii, 368.
Willis (see Olympia Brown).
Wilson, Elizabeth, i, 103.
Wilson, Hannah, iii, 697.
Wilson, Henry, ii, 113, 128, 322, 390; iii, 267.
Winchell, Charlotte, S., career of, iii, 653.
WISCONSIN, i, 178, 290; iii, 638
--Conventions (see Conventions)
--legislation, iii, 638
--Shole's report, i, 315
--report of David Noggle, i, 867
--married women, rights of, iii, 638
--Milwaukee Female College, iii, 643
--State Association, iii, 645
--State University, iii, 643
--statutes, modification of, iii, 639
--suffrage amendment, iii, 644
--temperance question, iii, 645
--women as lawyers, iii, 648
--voters, iii, 640.
Wise, Mary E., ii, 869.
Witchcraft, i, 759, 764, 765, 766, 767, 768, 769.
Wives in Russia, i, 773.
Wives, sale of, i, 792.
Wizards, i, 766.
Wolcott, Laura Ross, graduated medical college i, 389
--organized Wisconsin State Society, ii, 374
--sketch of, iii, 638
--National Convention, Milwaukee, iii, 184.
Wollstonecraft, Mary, eulogy of, i, 126-7
--"Rights of Women," i, 34.
Wollstenholme, Mrs. Almy, with Mrs. Jacob Bright, iii, 893.
WOMAN, advice of men, warned against, ii, 268
--Anglo-Saxon laws, i, 863
--army, in the, i, 290
--bar, admissions to, iii, 307, 355
--British Parliament, in, i, 30
--census enumerators, first appointments, iii, 174
--church poll, at the, i, 781
--civil service, in, iii, 306
--clinical instruction, Pennsylvania University, iii, 448
--coeducation, statistics, iii, 496
--colleges, and the, ii, 541
--colleges, in, i, 144, iii, 6
--college in Evanston, Illinois, iii, 578
--congress organized in New York, iii, 411
--degradation of, i, 791, 794
--emancipation, i, 29
--employment of, in insane asylums, iii, 421
--employments, varied capacity for, iii, 406, 572
--excluded as delegates, Anti-slavery Convention, London, i, 60
--chronological table of successive steps in England, iii, 980
--history of, in three pictures;
under Hindoo laws, i, 863;
under Anglo-Saxon laws, i, 863, 864;
under Signs of the Times, i, 865, 866
--illiteracy of, iii, 372
--inventions by, iii, 632
--jury, on, iii, 731;
list of the first grand, iii, 738
--Kansas, of, i, 642
--labor performed in Christian countries, i, 792
--laborer, unpaid, i, 28
--legal disabilities, removed of, iii, 893
--legal rights, i, 107
--list of names of friends in California, iii, 977-80;
list of names of friends in Minnesota, iii, 973-80
--Loyal League, ii, 3;
address to Abraham Lincoln, ii, 67;
anniversary of, ii, 80;
letters in response to a call for a meeting, ii, 875;
petition, ii, 78;
platform, ii, 891;
press comments, ii, 893;
resolutions, ii, 84;
secretary's report, ii, 80
--married, act relative to rights of, i, 618
--married, laws regarding, iii, 291
--married, and their legal status, ii, 642
--married, property rights of, iii, 325
--marry, will the coming, iii, 723
--national protection, claim, ii, 531
--naval heroines, ii, 21
--official position, first appointed to, in New York, iii, 417
--Ohio, protest against enfranchisement, iii, 494
--outrages, 1880, in Ireland, i, 794
--pharmacy, 379, 820, 980
--physician, first, i, 260
--physicians in insane asylums, as, iii, 473
--politics, in, ii, 277, 304
--preachers, as, i, 784
--professions, in the, iii, 706
--property rights, i, 38, 64, 146, 256, 296, 770
--property rights granted, iii, 438
--public affairs, why meddle in, i, 109
--revolution, in the, i, 31, 201, 321, 444
--Roman law, under i, 754
--school of design, Philadelphia, i, 390
--school boards, on, iii, 892, 981
--school officers, bill passed New York Legislature, iii, 417;
vetoed by Gov. Robinson, iii, 418
--school officers, made so in Illinois, iii, 575
--science and literature, degraded in, i, 790
--sermon to, Rev. Knox Little's, i, 782
--Sin, Original, i, 756
--slaves, legislated for as, i, 772
--social evolution of, iii, 226
--social relations, i, 233
--sold with cattle in Pennsylvania, iii, 445
--soldiers, as, ii, 18, 889
--sphere, i, 76, 93, 148, 265, 317, 522, 660, 662, 694, 713, 716;
ii, 62, 163, 779
--spy, anecdote, i, 323
--subordination, i, 780;
Evarts in the Beecher-Tilton trial upon, i, 789;
sermon by Rev. A. H. Strong, i, 787
--Supreme Court opened to, iii, 138;
Senator Hoar's speech, iii, 139
--torture of, i, 26, 766, 768
--type-setters, i, 585
--wardens, iii, 893
--work, statistics, i, 267
--work done by, iii, 54
--work and wages, i, 78, 589
--working, of Boston, ii, 389
--working, seats in shops, iii, 433.
WOMAN SUFFRAGE, (see Suffrage Gained);
--appeals, i, 588, 856, 858; ii, 168, 247, 364
--arguments in favor of, ii, 349
--Bible argument, ii, 374;
Bible, and the, i, 380, 535
--complaints, 1869, the, ii, 323
--debate between Anna Dickinson and R. L. Collier, iii, 567
--Democratic National Convention, letters and delegates, iii, 22
--discussion at Woman's National Loyal League, ii, 59
--England, Gen. Butler's report in, ii, 465, 466, 467
--essay, in _Westminster Review_, i, 225
--Equal Rights Association organized, ii, 173
--Fifth Avenue conference, ii, 427
--Kansas, report of Judiciary Franchise Committee, i, 194
--_National Association_ organized, ii, 400;
address to President Hayes, iii, 129;
appeal, Mrs. Hooker's, to women of the United States, ii, 485;
appeal to women, Grant and Wilson Presidential campaign, ii, 517;
Congressional Committee grant hearings, iii, 75;
constitution and officers, ii, 401, iii, 955-6;
letter to Berlin Congress, ii, 404;
delegates to Berlin, ii, 406
--New York and Boston wings, ii, 406
--New York City society, iii, 405
--opponents, iii, 570
--organ, need of an, i, 378
--periods, most trying, ii, 319
--petitions in many States, one year's work, i, 869
--power of legislature to extend suffrage, iii, 959-6
--presidential suffrage iii, 966
--principles, mode of disseminating, i, 379
--progress made, ii, 905
--"Fair Play," from Rev. Wm. H. Channing, i, 611
--Second Decade celebration, ii, 427
--Third Decade Celebration, iii, 117
--subscriptions, ii, 923
--sympathizers, celebrated, iii, 233.
_Woman's Journal_, Lucy Stone editor, ii, 819, 820; iii, 268, 274,
297, 388.
"Woman's Kingdom," _Chicago Inter-Ocean_, Mrs. Harbert, editor,
iii, 583.
_Woman's Review, English_, Caroline Ashurst Biggs, editor, iii, 120,
970.
_Women's Suffrage Journal_, Lydia E. Becker, editor, iii, 850, 852,
880, 981.
_Woman's Tribune_, Mrs. Colby, editor, iii, 695.
Wood, Bradford R., i, 500.
Wood, Rev. Jeremiah, i, 690.
Wood, S. N., i, 200
--Kansas campaign, ii, 230, 232, 233, 234, 236, 250, 251, 252, 254.
Woodall, William, iii, 877.
Woodhull, Victoria C., memorial to Congress, ii, 443
--memorial supported in a speech by A. G. Riddle, ii, 448
--memorial, House majority report, iii, 461
--memorial, House minority report, ii, 464
--speech before Judiciary Committee, House of Representatives,
ii, 444.
Woolson, Abba G., ii, 832.
Wooster, Wilder M., iii, 691.
Worden, Mrs., i, 462.
Wright, Elizur, letter to Paulina W. Davis, i, 217.
WRIGHT, Frances, i, 44, 52
--editor, _Free Enquirer_, i, 296
--Owen, Robert Dale, and, i, 293
--portrait, i, 1
--sketch of, i, 35
--tribute, ii, 429;
tribute, Mrs. Rose's, i, 692.
Wright, Henry C., letter to Garrison, i, 310.
WRIGHT, Martha C., i, 67, 69, 376, 429, 462, 519, 522, 535, 744
--May Anniversary, ii, 545
--President Cincinnati Convention, made, i, 163
--President N. Y. State Society, i, 623; presided, 628-31
--thanks Rev. Sam'l Longfellow, i, 716
--portrait, i, 640
--Equal Rights Association, on the, ii, 175
--letter to Pillsbury, ii, 240
--speech at Cooper Institute Convention, i, 689
--tribute, ii, 582-3.
WYOMING, iii, 726
--act to protect property rights of married women, iii, 728
--election, first, iii, 729
--election under woman suffrage, first, iii, 738
--jury, women on, iii, 731;
list of the first grand, iii, 738
--press, iii, 745
--school law, iii, 728
--Sunday laws enforced, iii, 734
--suffrage bill signed by Gov. Campbell, iii, 731
--territory organized, iii, 729
--women granted citizenship, iii, 726
--woman suffrage act, Legislature votes to repeal, iii, 741;
bill vetoed, iii, 741
--woman suffrage respected, iii, 744.
Y.
Yocum, A. P., iii, 691.
Yount, A. K., iii, 718.
[Transcriber's Notes:
The transcriber made changes as below indicated to the text to
correct obvious errors:
1. p. 23 forgotton --> forgotten
2. p. 83 petioned --> petitioned
3. p. 136 neccessarily --> necessarily
4. p. 143 Universiy --> University
5. p. 146 engergertic --> energetic
6. p. 151 presidental --> presidential
7. p. 170 in ever --> in every
8. p. 217 committe --> committee
9. p. 218 therefere --> therefore
10. p. 274 nnd --> and (Footnote #120)
11. p. 291 certan --> certain (Footnote #141)
12. p. 298 their is no need (left as published)
13. p. 347 Footnote marker for #177 missing in original text
14. p. 351 iniative --> initiative
15. p. 369 suffers form --> suffers from
16. p. 384 iniative --> initiative
17. p. 399 mora --> more (Footnote #209)
18. p. 429 enconnter --> encounter
19. p. 444 thorougly --> thoroughly
20. p. 445 enfrancisement --> enfranchisement
21. p. 447 Text for footnote #259 missing
22. p. 449 Hopsital --> Hospital
23. p. 450 neccessarily --> necessarily
24. p. 465 elegible --> eligible
25. p. 479 Historcal --> Historical (Footnote #276)
26. p. 496 Table header text in footnote #291 replaced with legends
to shorten table width
27. p. 509 auxilary --> auxiliary
28. p. 509 disappoinments --> disappointments
29. p. 510 Footnote marker missing; placement assumed
30. p. 517 Februay --> February
31. p. 533 iniative --> initiative
32. p. 571 handsomly --> handsomely
33. p. 606 Sufirage --> Suffrage (Footnote #386)
34. p. 621 Yonrs --> Yours
35. p. 629 ef --> of (Footnote #420)
36. p. 631 hnndred --> hundred
37. p. 633 minature --> miniature
38. p. 644 introducd --> introduced
39. p. 660 St. Panl --> St. Paul
40. p. 674 Footnote #459 points to two places
41. p. 697 dilligent --> diligent
42. p. 724 benificent --> beneficent
43. p. 727 universites --> universities
44. p. 740 transcient --> transient
45. p. 743 connot --> cannot
46. p. 751 Feburary --> February
47. p. 769 seige --> siege
48. p. 770 jonrnalist --> journalist
49. p. 780 npon --> upon
50. p. 797 objectionabie --> objectionable
51. p. 808 origininally --> originally
52. p. 809 Josophine --> Josephine (Footnote #525)
53. p. 827 distinguised --> distinguished
54. p. 887 uuhappily --> unhappily
55. p. 943 bycicles --> bicycles
56. p. 967 at al. --> et al.
57. p. 978 bïennial --> biënnial
58. p. 978 legislatuere --> legislature
59. p. 985 and following, Index punctuation standardized
60. p. 988 Snpreme --> Supreme
61. p. 994 pseeches --> speeches
62. p. 1000 Stan- --> Stanton
63. p. 1005 (Convention)s --> (Conventions)
64. p. 1007 Covention --> Convention
65. p. 1007 Scatcherd..629... --> Scatcherd..929..
66. p. 1009 Suffbage --> Suffrage
End of Transcriber's Notes]
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III
(of III), by Various
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE ***
***** This file should be named 28556-8.txt or 28556-8.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/2/8/5/5/28556/
Produced by Richard J. Shiffer and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
http://gutenberg.org/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
[email protected]. Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at http://pglaf.org
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
[email protected]
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit http://pglaf.org
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.
Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
http://www.gutenberg.org
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
