History of Woman Suffrage Volume II Part 114

Having spoken of the East and the West, let me say how welcome to us of the East are occasions which make us better acquainted with our fellow-workers and believers of the West. The late Mr. Seward once said that slavery was sectional and freedom National. This was true in a larger sense than that in which he said it. All that is slavish tends to keep up sectional prejudice and isolation. All that is liberal tends to sympathy and union. East and West are the two hands of this mighty country--let the harmony of the present occasion show that they have but one heart between them. Are not all our chief possessions held in common? We gave you Sumner and you gave us Lincoln. We fought together the war of our late enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, and when G.o.d shall give us impartial suffrage as an established fact, it will be hard to discriminate between our work and yours. But the two hands will then be clasped, and the one heart uplifted with a throb of thankfulness that shall make our whole Nation one, and that forever. For the present moment, while we workers for woman suffrage can make no boast as to the final adoption of our method, we can yet rejoice in the results which already crown our work. Christ, in the very infancy of his mission, looked abroad and saw the fields already white with the harvest.

The different agencies employed by this and kindred a.s.sociations have plowed and furrowed the land far and near.

They have dropped everywhere the seed of a true word, of a right feeling. How small a thing may this dropping of a seed seem to a careless observer! Yet it is the very life of the world which the patient farmer sows and reaps. So, our laborious meetings and small measures; our speeches, soon forgotten; our writings, soon dismissed; our pet.i.tions to Legislatures, never entertained; all these seem small things to do. The world says: "Why do you not labor to build up fortunes and reputations for yourselves if you will labor?

Why do you waste your time and efforts on this ungrateful soil?" But we may reply that we have the joy of Christ in our hearts. In every furrow, some seed springs up; from every effort, some sympathy, some conviction results. When we look about us and see the number of suffrage a.s.sociations formed in the different States, we too can say that the fields are white already to harvest.

White already. Yet centuries of martyrdom lay between the sowing of Christ and the harvest which we reap to-day. All of those centuries brought and took away faithful souls who continued the work, who gathered and reaped and sowed again.

And we, too, know not what years of patient endeavor may yet be in store for us before we see the end of our suffrage work. We know not whether most of us shall not taste of death before we do see it, pa.s.sing away on the borders of the promised land, with its fair regions still unknown to us. And yet we see the end as by faith. By faith we can prophesy of what shall come. The new state, in which for the first time ideal justice shall be crowned and recognized; the new church, in which there shall be neither male nor female; but the new creature that shall represent on either side free and perfect humanity. Like a bride coming down from Heaven, like a resurrection coming out of the earth, it shall appear and abide. And we, whether we shall see it as living souls or as quickening spirits, shall rejoice in it.

Miss EASTMAN read the following letter:

LARAMIE CITY, W. T., Sept. 22, 1874.

Mrs. LUCY STONE, _Chairman of the Executive Committee:_--Your favor of the 12th inst. is received. I wish I could be with you at your meeting in Detroit next month, but I am so crowded with engagements here that I do not think I can get away. We have just had another election, and at no time have we had so full a vote. Our women have taken a lively interest, and have voted quite as universally as the men. Their influence has been felt more than ever and generally on the side of the best men. Several candidates have been defeated on account of their want of good characters, who expected success on party grounds. It is the general sentiment with us now that it will not do to nominate men for whom the women will not vote. Is not this a great step in advance? When candidates for office must come with a character that will stand the criticism of the women or be sure of defeat, we shall have a higher tone of political morals.

I hear it urged abroad that woman suffrage is not popular in Wyoming, but I hear nothing of the kind here. All parties now favor it. Those who once opposed it oppose it no longer, while its friends are more and more attached to it, as they see its practical benefits and feel its capacity for good.

No one that I hear of wishes it abolished, and no one would dare propose its repeal. The women are beginning to feel their power and influence, and are growing up to a wider and stronger exertion of it. I think I can see a conscious appreciation of this in a higher dignity and a better self-respect among them. They talk and think of graver subjects and of responsibilities which enn.o.ble them. A woman will not consent to be a b.u.t.terfly when she can of her own choice become an eagle! Let her enjoy the ambitions of life; let her be able to secure its honors, its riches, its high places, and she will not consent to be its toy or its simple ornament.

Very respectfully, J. W. KINGMAN.

Miss EASTMAN said that this letter presented just the evidence on the result and experience of woman suffrage that was wanted. She said that women were very inconsiderate and indifferent to this question. Women, until they are brought to think upon the matter, generally say they do not want to vote. She spoke of the laws of some States which allow the taking away from a mother of her children, by a person who had been appointed as their guardian, in place of her dead husband, and of the laws severe in other respects which States have made in relation to women. She wished all persons had the question put to them conscientiously whether woman had all the power she wanted. We do want, she said, every legitimate power, and we shall never be content with a t.i.the less than we can command.

Gen. A. C. VORIS, of Ohio, read letters from the following persons, regretting their inability to attend the Convention: Bishop Gilbert Haven, D.D., of the Methodist Episcopal Church; from Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Judge Wm. H. West, of Ohio; Hon.

C. W. Willard, of Vermont; Hon. G. W. Julian, of Indiana; Hon. D.

H. Chamberlain, of South Carolina; William Lloyd Garrison, George William Curtis, the Smith sisters, Richard Fiske, Jr.

Rev. Mrs. GILLETTE, of Rochester, Mich., said every woman as well as every man should speak for what she believes to be necessary for her own well-being and for the well-being of the community.

Charles Sumner once said that a woman's reason was the reason of the heart. She would give a few womanly reasons why she wanted the voters of Michigan to give the ballot to women. The want of the ballot prevents woman from possessing knowledge and power. If a woman performs the most menial services for the sake of her children, to eke out for them a subsistence, she does not do it because the law demands it, but because there is no other way open to her to obtain a livelihood. She did not ask for the ballot because the laws of the State are barbarous. She did not believe that men can make laws that will answer to the needs of women. Only when men and women together make laws can they be just and equal, and for that reason there should be both men and women in the Legislature.

Mrs. BLACKWELL read some additional resolutions[196] to those that had been adopted at an earlier stage of the Convention.

At the first evening session Mrs. Lucy Stone presiding, Mrs.

JULIA WARD HOWE, of Boston, was the first speaker. In opening she spoke of the silent weary work, of the results of which the afternoon's reports told, and showed that the equal suffragists'

labor is not comprised in facing pleasant audiences and listening to the applause which so many say is the one thing for which the women in this movement work. Her entire speech was in a tone that could not fail to convince all, that she, at least, works for something higher.

Mrs. STONE said that in every time of need, wherever the womanly workers for woman go, they find men to whom their grat.i.tude flows as the rivers flow to the sea--they are the men who stand up to speak in woman's name in behalf of woman's rights. As one of these men she introduced Gen. Voris, of Ohio, the champion of equal suffrage in the Ohio Const.i.tutional Convention. The speech of Gen. Voris was a close, logical argument. It reviewed the entire question of suffrage, and bristled with points. He was so frequently interrupted by applause that he was obliged to ask the audience to withhold their tokens of approbation till he got through, but it was to little purpose, for enthusiastic suffragists couldn't help letting their hands tell their ears how good the General's hard hits at the anti-suffragists made them feel, and the applause would still break out once in a while.

Mrs. MARY A. LIVERMORE was next introduced. She was greeted with applause, and commenced by an allusion to the Scandinavian origin of our race, and their characteristic bravery, vigor, and love of freedom. The Scandinavians were distinguished from other races by their regard for their wives. With them the woman stood nearer to heaven than the man. She was in some sense a priest, a law-giver, and a physician, and she was worthy of the position. Is it strange that with such foremothers we should love liberty?

Something of this spirit has always marked the race. And now women ask for the right of suffrage, not because they are abused, but because they are half of humanity--the other half of man.

They want simply equality, not superiority. She spoke of laws in the statute-books which do absolute injustice to men, and asked whether if the men could not legislate better than that for themselves, it was not a little ridiculous for them to a.s.sume to legislate for themselves and the women too? Mrs. Livermore spoke of some of the injustice of the law to women. The law is not for you, gentlemen, who are a law to yourselves, and who care for your wives so that they forget the injustice of the law. They are for the poor and down-trodden women, the wives of drunkards and wife-beaters. Make them what they should be. But the main claim of women to the ballot is that it is the symbol of equality.

Women can never be made men. There is no danger of woman losing her womanhood. In fact we do not dream yet what womanhood can be.

Women are now obsequious. Many who want to vote, in awe of husbands, fathers, sons, the pulpit, the press, ruled by men, do not say so. They have been taught through all the centuries that patience is the highest attribute of woman. She spoke of the division of masculine and feminine attributes. They complement each other, and together make the perfect whole. The a.s.sertion that women are slaves is nonsense. The great reason for woman suffrage is that it will aid a higher and grander civilization.

The following letter was read:

BOSTON, 148 Charles Street, October 10, 1874.

H. B. BLACKWELL, Esq.: My dear sir--I am sorry my first letter never reached you, for I said in that just what I wanted to express of my own convictions touching suffrage for women. My opinion will go for very little, but whenever an opportunity occurs I wish to say just this if nothing more. It is my firm conviction that all who oppose so just a cause as woman suffrage know not what they do; and, if they are not dead within five years, will repent their opposition in deep and mortifying self-reproach.

"The seed of the thistle," says Tyndall, "always produces the thistle," and our opponents will have a p.r.i.c.kly time of it with their own consciences, when the day dawns in righteousness over the American ballot-box. G.o.d prosper the struggle and give you heart and hope, for your triumph is sure as sunrise, and will win that final mastery which heaven unfailingly accords to everlasting truth. Cordially yours,

JAMES T. FIELDS.

Short speeches were then made by Giles B. Stebbins, Mrs.

Blakeman, Miss Strickland, Miss Patridge, and Mrs. Dr. Mary F.

Thomas. Mr. BLACKWELL reported the list of officers[197] for the ensuing year.

Afterward addresses were made by Mr. Blackwell, Mrs. Elizabeth R.

Churchill, Mrs. Samm, Miss M. Adele Hazlett, and Gen. Voris.

Mrs. MARGARET W. CAMPBELL, of Chicago, said she came before the audience to speak upon the most important question of the day, important to one half, and through them to the other half of the community. This movement is no crusade of women against men, but an honest effort of both men and women to make one s.e.x equal in all respects with the other. When our forefathers attempted to secure their own liberty they adopted the principle that all men are created free and equal, and are endowed with certain inalienable rights. Notwithstanding this, the Government allowed the maintenance of slavery for over three-quarters of a century.

Rights are G.o.d-given. If any man can tell where a man gets his right to vote, he will find that woman obtained hers in the same place. The ballot, she claimed, was a means of educating the cla.s.s who exercise the power of such ballot.

Mrs. MARGARET V. LONGLEY, of Ohio, said this question of woman suffrage was one that was claiming the attention of the best minds of Europe and America. Women think they have as good a right to the ballot as men, and this right they want to exercise.

Lunatics and idiots are deprived of the ballot because they do not know how to use it. Criminals are denied it because they are outcasts of society and have proved themselves unworthy of it.

Women are deprived of it because of their womanhood. The s.e.xes, she said, were never made to be antagonistic. Experience proves that what is of interest to women is of interest to men. There is no branch of business or of industry in which concession is granted to women on account of their s.e.x. n.o.body will pay more to a woman for any work than they will to men for the same work, and in the making of a suit of clothes it is seen that they pay a man more than double the amount they will to a woman for the same work.

Prof. ESTABROOK said that he was a recent convert to this movement. He had read the Bible, Bushnell, and Fairchild, and some others, and was convinced that women ought not to vote. When the question was submitted to the people by the Legislature, he commenced to read the Bible and Bushnell and others again. He found that Bushnell proved too much, and that the objections urged against women voting were equally good against nine-tenths of the men. The question of propriety--whether women should go to the polls--was another question which he considered. He did not now see why it was improper for woman to go where her husband or her son must go; and if the polls are not good places, decent men ought not to go there. He had all his life debated the question whether the University should be opened to ladies, and his first vote, cast as a Regent of the University, was in favor of the admission of women to the University. He was then opposed to their entering the medical department. But they next applied for admission to the law department, and he voted for that, and then, when they applied for admission to the medical department, he had to vote for that. He had never found out what right a man possesses to the ballot that a woman has not; and if anybody could convince him that the right of woman to vote did not come from the same source as man's right came from, he would be glad to have it done.

Miss MARY F. EASTMAN said it was a hard thing to stand and demand a right to which we were all born. It has been said by Dr. Chapin that woman's obligations compel her to demand her rights. There is a great cry going up from humanity, and only woman's nature can answer it. As she recently stood at the corner of the five streets which make the Five Points of New York, and looked at the crowd of miserable people about her, she was aghast. But she took courage when she learned that the mission-house and the long block of tenement houses on one side of the street were built by women, who daily feed 400 poor children, and that this was done by women, who took up the work after the Methodist Church had made a vain effort to do something to ameliorate the condition of those poor starving creatures.

On motion of Mr. H. B. Blackwell a vote of thanks was tendered to the citizens of Detroit, to the Detroit Suffrage a.s.sociation and to the press of the city for favors and courtesies shown to the a.s.sociation and its members during its meeting in this city, and for the full and fair reports of the Convention. The a.s.sociation then adjourned.

The seventh Annual Meeting of the American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation was held at New York, in 1875. There was a large audience,[198] not less than 1,000 persons were present.

Bishop GILBERT HAVEN, President of the Society, took the chair, and called upon Rev. Dr. THOMPSON, of Brooklyn, to open the meeting with prayer. After which Mr. HAVEN said: In appearing before you to-night as the official head, for a very few hours, of the society which holds its annual meeting here, I deem it proper to burden you before you get at the richness of the feast that will follow, with a few thoughts that are in my own mind connected with this reform. The inevitable effect of every true idea is that it shakes off everything that hinders it and rises far superior to all a.s.sociations. Woman suffrage has reached that development, and the public of America and England are beginning to appreciate it. Now, what is this idea? It is simply this--that the right of suffrage has no limitation with the male portion of the human race; that it belongs alike to the whole human family.

I am a Democrat, a Jeffersonian Democrat, and I believe in the right of every man to have a voice in public affairs. It is a right that belongs to the very system of our government.

Monarchical governments recognize the nation as belonging to a family; but the democratic system recognizes a government by the people and for the people, and, if this be the government, every person in the nation has a right to partic.i.p.ate in its administration. There is no partiality possible in such a conception of the system of government under which we live.

Charles Sumner said that "equality of rights is the first of rights," and this will reveal itself in every department of citizens.h.i.+p. Our Government requires the expression of the views of the whole people upon every national question; it is a human right belonging to the political status of every individual, the woman as well as the man. The history of Christianity has been a history of the gradual enlarging of the sphere of woman; and this meeting to-night is one of the effects of Christianity. We stand now at the beginning of a new century; the last has been one of great development, and yet the very root fact of our national being lies in the first line of the Declaration. When we declared ourselves to be a Nation, we declared equality for all men, and we never meant by that, equality simply for all males. Jefferson never had that narrow view of human nature. He knew it meant all the people of America. Every one had a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the woman as well as the man.

It is said women can not rule. Not rule! look through history.

Where are Cleopatra and Semiramis, and Zen.o.bia and Catharine, and Elizabeth and Victoria? Not rule? Did not Joan of Arc save France when the king had fled, and the armies were scattered, and English soldiers did their will in all that land? So Elizabeth picked up a prostrate nation, lowest of the low, despised of emperor, king, and Pope, and made it the sovereign power of Europe. So Victoria held back Palmerston and Russell and Gladstone and Derby, who would have plunged England into war with us, and left us free to subdue our enemy. Had not a woman ruled England we should have had a harder task than we did by far.

Christianity has lifted woman to a level with man. It has given her liberty of movement, of faith, of life. It also demands her political deliberation. May this beginning of our second Centennial see the perfection of our political system, in this admission of woman to all the rights and duties of citizens.h.i.+p.

It has worked well in Wyoming. It will everywhere. Let it come.

Rev. ANTOINETTE BROWN BLACKWELL, of Somerville, N. J., said: A few days ago, in one of the New York dailies, I saw the announcement that one subject which now occupies the minds of the American people can never be settled till it is settled right.

Knowing that this Convention was just at hand, I mentally exclaimed, "It is certainly woman suffrage!" But no! it was the question of the National currency. Well, the currency question did suggest great moral issues, and it was vital enough in character to justify the editorial claim. I believe it never can be settled till it is settled right. But what is the currency problem to a direct question of human rights, involving the highest moral and civil interests not only of all the women in the country, but of all the men likewise? This suffrage question never can be settled till it is settled right. So surely as the law of justice must yet prevail, it will continue to vex and trouble the whole nation continually.

Because the s.e.xes are so unlike in their natures and in all their relations to the State, there is imperative need of representation for both. Women in beleaguered cities have again and again stood heroically side by side with men, suffering danger and privation without a murmur, ready to endure hunger and every form of personal discomfort rather than surrender to the enemy. What women have done in the past they would willingly do again in the future in like circ.u.mstances. They are everywhere as patriotic as men, and as willing to make sacrifices for their country.

But their relations to the government in war are of necessity widely unlike. If men as good citizens are bound to peril their lives and to endure hards.h.i.+ps to aid the country in its hour of need, yet women peril their lives and devote their time and energy in giving to the country all its citizens, whether for peace or war. And if the liberties of the nation were in real peril, they would freely devote their all for its salvation. In any just warfare it is fitting that the young men should first march to battle, and if all these were swept away, then the old men and the old women might fitly go out together side by side, and, last of all, the young mothers, leaving their little children to the very aged and to the sick, should be and would be ready in their turn to go also, if need be, even to the battle-field rather than suffer the overthrow of a righteous government. But woman's relations to war are intrinsically unlike man's. Her natural att.i.tude toward law and order and toward all public interests must always differ from his. Women would never be the producers of wealth to the same extent with men. The time devoted by the one cla.s.s to earning money would be given by the other to rearing children. Yes, this question touches too many vital interests ever to be settled till it is settled right. We mean to live, to keep well and strong, and to continue to trouble the whole country until it is settled and settled to stay. There can be no rest from agitation till this is done.

LUCY STONE spoke particularly of the need of using the opportunity the Centennial gives, to show that, if it was wrong for George III. to govern the colonies a hundred years ago without their consent, it is just as wrong now to govern women without their consent; that if taxation without representation was tyranny then it is tyranny now, and no less tyranny because it is done to women than if it were done to men; that the usurpation of the rights of women is as high-handed a crime as was the usurpation of the rights of the colonists by the British Parliament, and will be so regarded a hundred years hence. She claimed that this occasion ought to be used to show men that the deeds of their ancestors, of which they are so proud, are worthy of their own imitation; she urged women to refrain from joining in the Centennial, and to show no more respect for the power which governs them without their consent, than did their brave ancestors a century ago.

The PRESIDENT said--I understand there is among the audience the famous Democrat of England, CHARLES BRADLAUGH, and I will call upon him to say a few words.