History of Woman Suffrage Volume I Part 61

The Nominating Committee reported the list of officers,[105] with Lucretia Mott as permanent President. She asked that the vote be taken separately, as there might be objections to her appointment. The entire audience (except her husband, who gave an emphatic "No!") voted in her favor. The very fact that Mrs. Mott consented, under any circ.u.mstances, to preside over a promiscuous a.s.semblage, was proof of the progress of liberal ideas, as four years previously she had strenuously opposed placing a woman in that position, and as a member of the Society of Friends, by presiding over a meeting to which there was an admission fee, she rendered herself liable to expulsion. The vote being taken, Mrs. Mott, who sat far back in the audience, walked forward to the platform, her sweet face and placid manners at once winning the confidence of the audience. This impression was further deepened by her opening remarks. She said she was unpracticed in parliamentary proceedings, and felt herself incompetent to fulfill the duties of the position now pressed upon her, and was quite unprepared to make a suitable speech. She asked the serious and respectful attention of the Convention to the business before them, referred to the success that had thus far attended the movement, the respect shown by the press, and the favor with which the public generally had received these new demands, and closed by inviting the cordial co-operation of all present.

In commenting upon Mrs. Mott's opening address, the press of the city declared it to have been "better expressed and far more appropriate than those heard on similar occasions in political and legislative a.s.semblages." The choice of Mrs. Mott as President was pre-eminently wise; of mature years, a member of the Society of Friends, in which woman was held as an equal, with undoubted right to speak in public, and the still broader experience of the Anti-Slavery platform, she was well fitted to guide the proceedings and encourage the expression of opinions from those to whom public speaking was an untried experiment. "It was a singular spectacle," said the _Syracuse Standard_, "to see this gray-haired matron presiding over a Convention with an ease, dignity, and grace that might be envied by the most experienced legislator in the country."

Delegates were present from Canada and eight different States. Letters were received from Mrs. Marion Reid, of England, author of an able work upon woman; from John Neal, of Maine, the veteran temperance reformer; from William Lloyd Garrison, Rev. William Henry Channing, Rev. A. D. Mayo, Margaret H. Andrews, Sarah D. Fish, Angelina Grimke Weld, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, from G. W. Johnson, chairman of the State Committee of the Liberty party, and Horace Greeley, the world-renowned editor of the _Tribune_. Mr. Johnson's letter enclosed ten dollars and the following sentiments: 1. Woman has, equally with man, the inalienable right to education, suffrage, office, property, professions, t.i.tles, and honors--to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 2. False to our s.e.x, as well as her own, and false to herself and to G.o.d, is the woman who approves, or who submits without resistance or protest, to the social and political wrongs imposed upon her in common with the rest of her s.e.x throughout the world.

Mrs. Stanton's letter[106] presented three suggestions for the consideration of the Convention, viz.: That all women owning property should refuse to pay taxes as long as unrepresented; that man and woman should be educated together, and the abuse of the religious element in woman. This letter created much discussion, accompanied as it was by a series of resolutions of the most radical character, which were finally, with one exception, adopted. Thus at that early day was the action of those women, who have since refused to pay taxes, prefigured and suggested. One of the remarkable aspects of this reform, is the fact that from the first its full significance was seen by many of the women who inaugurated it.

HORACE GREELEY'S LETTER.

NEW YORK, _Sept. 1, 1852_.

MY FRIEND:--I have once or twice been urged to attend a Convention of the advocates of woman's rights; and though compliance has never been within my power, I have a right to infer that some friends of the cause desire suggestions from me with regard to the best means of advancing it. I therefore venture to submit some thoughts on that subject. To my mind the BREAD problem lies at the base of all the desirable and practical reforms which our age meditates. Not that bread is intrinsically more important to man than Temperance, Intelligence, Morality, and Religion, but that it is essential to the just appreciation of all these. Vainly do we preach the blessings of temperance to human beings cradled in hunger, and suffering at intervals the agonies of famine; idly do we commend intellectual culture to those whose minds are daily racked with the dark problem, "How shall we procure food for the morrow?" Morality, religion, are but words to him who fishes in the gutters for the means of sustaining life, and crouches behind barrels in the street for shelter from the cutting blasts of a winter's night.

Before all questions of intellectual training or political franchises for women, not to speak of such a trifle as costume, do I place the question of enlarged opportunities for work; of a more extended and diversified field of employment. The silk culture and manufacture firmly established and thriftily prosecuted to the extent of our home demand for silk, would be worth everything to American women. Our now feeble and infantile schools of design should be encouraged with the same view. A wider and more prosperous development of our Manufacturing Industry will increase the demand for female labor, thus enhancing its average reward and elevating the social position of woman. I trust the future has, therefore, much good in store for the less muscular half of the human race.

But the reform here antic.i.p.ated should be inaugurated in our own households. I know how idle is the expectation of any general and permanent enhancement of the wages of any cla.s.s or condition above the level of equation of Supply and Demand; yet it seems to me that the friends of woman's rights may wisely and worthily set the example of paying juster prices for female a.s.sistance in their households than those now current. If they would but resolve never to pay a capable, efficient woman less than two-thirds the wages paid to a vigorous, effective man employed in some corresponding vocation, they would very essentially aid the movement now in progress for the general recognition and conception of Equal Rights to Woman.

Society is clearly unjust to woman in according her but four to eight dollars per month for labor equally repugnant with, and more protracted than that of men of equal intelligence and relative efficiency, whose services command from ten to twenty dollars per month. If, then, the friends of Woman's Rights could set the world an example of paying for female service, not the lowest pittance which stern Necessity may compel the defenceless to accept, but as approximately fair and liberal compensation for the work actually done, as determined by a careful comparison with the recompense of other labor, I believe they would give their cause an impulse which could not be permanently resisted.

With profound esteem, yours, HORACE GREELEY.

MRS. PAULINA W. DAVIS, Providence, R. I.

Mr. Greeley's letter bore two remarkable aspects. First, he recognized the poverty of woman as closely connected with her degradation. One of the brightest anti-slavery orators was at that time in the habit of saying, "It is not the press, nor the pulpit, which rules the country, but the counting-room"; proving his a.s.sertion by showing the greater power of commerce and money, than of intellect and morality. So Mr.

Greeley saw the purse to be woman's first need; that she must control money in order to help herself to freedom.

Second, ignoring woman's pauperized condition just admitted, he suggested that women engaged in this reform should pay those employed in the household larger wages than was customary, although these very women were dependent upon others for their shelter, food, and clothes; so impossible is it for a governing cla.s.s to understand the helplessness of dependents, and to fully comprehend the disabilities of a subject cla.s.s.

The declaration of sentiments[107] adopted at the Westchester Convention was read by Martha C. Wright, and commented upon as follows by

CLARINA HOWARD NICHOLS: There _is_ no limit to personal responsibility. Our duties are as wide as the world, and as far-reaching as the bounds of human endeavor. Woman and man must act together; she, _his_ helper. She has no sphere peculiar to herself, because she could not then be his helper. It is only since I have met the varied responsibilities of life, that I have comprehended woman's sphere; and I have come to regard it as lying within the whole circ.u.mference of humanity. If, as is claimed by the most ultra opponents of the wife's legal individuality, the _interests of the parties are identical_, then I claim as a legitimate conclusion that their spheres are also identical. For interests determine duties, and duties are the land-marks of spheres. The dependence of the s.e.xes is mutual.

It is in behalf of our sons, the future men of the Republic, as well as of our daughters, its future mothers, that we claim the full development of our energies by education, and legal protection in the control of all the issues and profits of our lives called _property_. Woman must seek influence, independence, representation, that she may have power to aid in the elevation of the human race. When men kindly set aside woman from the National Councils, they say the moral field belongs to her; and the strongest reason why woman should seek a more elevated position, is because her moral susceptibilities are greater than those of man.

Mrs. MOTT thought differently from Mrs. Nichols; she did not believe that woman's moral feelings were more elevated than man's; but that with the same opportunities for development, with the same restrictions and penalties, there would probably be about an equal manifestation of virtue.

ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH: My friends, do we realize for what purpose we are convened? Do we fully understand that we aim at nothing less than an entire subversion of the present order of society, a dissolution of the whole existing social compact? Do we see that it is not an error of to-day, nor of yesterday, against which we are lifting up the voice of dissent, but that it is against the h.o.a.ry-headed error of all times--error borne onward from the foot-prints of the first pair ejected from Paradise, down to our own time? In view of all this, it does seem to me that we should each and all feel as if anointed, sanctified, set apart as to a great mission. It seems to me that we who struggle to restore the divine order to the world, should feel as if under the very eye of the Eternal Searcher of all hearts, who will reject any sacrifice other than a pure offering.

We are said to be a "few disaffected, embittered women, met for the purpose of giving vent to petty personal spleen and domestic discontent." I repel the charge; and I call upon every woman here to repel the charge. If we have personal wrongs, here is not the place for redress. If we have private griefs (and what human heart, in a large sense, is without them?), we do not come here to recount them. The grave will lay its cold honors over the hearts of all here present, before the good we ask for our kind will be realized to the world. We shall pa.s.s onward to other spheres of existence, but I trust the seed we shall here plant will ripen to a glorious harvest. We "see the end from the beginning," and rejoice in spirit. We care not that we shall not reach the fruits of our toil, for we know in times to come it will be seen to be a glorious work.

Bitterness is the child of wrong; if any one of our number has become embittered (which, G.o.d forbid!), it is because social wrong has so penetrated to the inner life that we are crucified thereby, and taste the gall and vinegar with the Divine Master.

All who take their stand against false inst.i.tutions, are in some sense embittered. The conviction of wrong has wrought mightily in them. Their large hearts took in the whole sense of human woe, and bled for those who had become brutalized by its weight, and they spoke as never man spoke in his own individualism, but as the embodied race will speak, when the full time shall come. Thus Huss and Wickliffe and Luther spoke, and the men of '76.

No woman has come here to talk over private griefs, and detail the small coin of personal anecdote; and yet did woman speak of the wrongs, which unjust legislation; the wrongs which corrupt public opinion; the wrongs which false social aspects have fastened upon us; wrongs which she hides beneath smiles, and conceals with womanly endurance; did she give voice to all this, her smiles would seem hollow and her endurance pitiable.

I hope this Convention will be an acting Convention. Let us pledge ourselves to the support of a paper in which our views shall be fairly presented to the world. At our last Convention in Worcester, I presented a prospectus for such a paper, which I will request hereafter to be read here. We can do little or nothing without such an organ. We have no opportunity now to repel slander, and are restricted in disseminating truth, from the want of such an organ. _The Tribune_, and some other papers in the country, have treated us generously; but a paper to represent us must be sustained by ourselves. We must look to our own resources. We must work out our own salvation, and G.o.d grant it be not in fear and trembling! Woman must henceforth be the redeemer, the regenerator of the world. We plead not for ourselves alone, but for Humanity. We must place woman on a higher platform, and she will raise the race to her side. We should have a literature of our own, a printing-press and a publis.h.i.+ng-house, and tract writers and distributors, as well as lectures and conventions; and yet I say this to a race of beggars, for women have no pecuniary resources.

Well, then, we must work, we must hold property, and claim the consequent right to representation, or refuse to be taxed. Our aim is nothing less than an overthrow of our present partial legislation, that every American citizen, whether man or woman, may have a voice in the laws by which we are governed. We do not aim at idle distinction, but while we would pull down our present worn-out and imperfect human inst.i.tutions, we would help to reconstruct them upon a new and broader foundation.

LUCY STONE: It seems to me that the claims we make at these Conventions are self-evident truths. The second resolution affirms the right of human beings to their persons and earnings.

Is not that self-evident? Yet the common law which regulates the relation of husband and wife, and which is modified only in a very few instances where there are statutes to the contrary, gives the "custody" of the wife's person to her husband, so that he has a right to her even against herself. It gives him her earnings, no matter with what weariness they have been acquired, or how greatly she may need them for herself or her children. It gives him a right to her personal property, which he may will entirely from her, also the use of her real estate; and in some of the States, married women, insane persons, and idiots are ranked together as not fit to make a will. So that she is left with only one right, which she enjoys in common with the pauper, viz.: the right of maintenance. Indeed when she has taken the sacred marriage vow, her legal existence ceases.

And what is our position politically? Why, the foreigner who can't speak his mother tongue correctly; the negro, who to our own shame, we regard as fit only for a boot-black (whose dead even we bury by themselves), and the drunkard, all are entrusted with the ballot, all placed by men politically higher than their own mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters. The woman who, seeing and feeling this, dare not maintain her rights, is the woman to hang her head and blush. We ask only for justice and equal rights--the right to vote, the right to our own earnings, equality before the law--these are the Gibraltar of our cause.

Rev. ANTOINETTE L. BROWN: Man can not represent woman. They differ in their nature and relations. The law is wholly masculine; it is created and executed by man. The framers of all legal compacts are restricted to the masculine stand-point of observation, to the thought, feelings, and biases of man. The law then could give us no representation as woman, and therefore no impartial justice even if the present lawmakers were honestly intent upon this; for we can be represented only by our peers. It is expected then under the present administration, that woman should be the legal subject of man, legally reduced to pecuniary dependence upon him; that the mother should have lower legal claims upon the children than the father, and that, in short, woman should be in all respects the legal inferior of man, though ent.i.tled to full equality.

Here is the fact and its cause. When woman is tried for crime, her jury, her judges, her advocates, are all men; and yet there may have been temptations and various palliating circ.u.mstances connected with her peculiar nature as woman, such as man can not appreciate. Common justice demands that a part of the law-makers and law executors should be of her own s.e.x. In questions of marriage and divorce, affecting interests dearer than life, both parties in the compact are ent.i.tled to an equal voice. Then the influences which arise from the relations of the s.e.xes, when left to be exerted in our halls of justice, would at least cause decency and propriety of conduct to be maintained there; but now low-minded men are encouraged to jest openly in court over the most sacred and most delicate subjects. From the nature of things, the guilty woman can not now have justice done her before the professed tribunals of justice; and the innocent but wronged woman is constrained to suffer on in silence rather than ask for redress.

CLARINA HOWARD NICHOLS said: There is one peculiarity in the laws affecting woman's property rights, which as it has not to my knowledge been presented for the consideration of the public, except by myself to a limited extent in private conversation and otherwise, I wish to speak of here. It is the unconst.i.tutionality of laws cutting off the wife's right of dower. It is a provision of our National and State Const.i.tutions, that property rights shall not be confiscated for political or other offences against the laws. Yet in all the States, if I am rightly informed, the wife forfeits her right of dower in case of divorce for infidelity to the marriage vow. In Ma.s.sachusetts and several other States, if the wife desert her husband for any cause, and he procure a divorce on the ground of her desertion, she forfeits her right of dower. But it is worthy of remark that in no case is the right of the husband to possess and control the estate which is their joint acc.u.mulation, set aside; no, not even when the wife procures a divorce for the most aggravated abuse and infidelity combined. She, the innocent party, goes out childless and portionless, by decree of law; and he, the criminal, retains the home and the children, by the favor of the same law. I claim, friends, that the laws which cut off the wife's right of dower, in any case do confiscate property rights, and hence are _unconst.i.tutional_. The property laws compel the wife to seek divorce in order to protect her earnings for the support of her children. A rum-drinker took his wife's clothing to pay his rum bill, and the justice decided that the clothing could be held, because the wife belonged to him.

Only under the Common Law of England has woman been deprived of her natural rights. Instances are frequent where the husband's aged parents are supported by the wife's earnings, and the wife's parents left paupers.

Mrs. Nichols here offered the following resolution:

_Resolved_, That equally involved as they are in all the Natural Relations which lie at the base of society, the s.e.xes are equally ent.i.tled to all the rights necessary to the discharge of the duties of those relations.

ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH presented the following resolution offered by Lucretia Mott:

_Resolved_, That as the imbruted slave, who is content with his own lot, and would not be free if he could, if any such there be, only gives evidence of the depth of his degradation; so the woman who is satisfied with her inferior condition, avering that she has all the rights she wants, does but exhibit the enervating effects of the wrongs to which she is subjected.

Susan B. Anthony read the resolutions.[108] The audience called upon Hon. Gerrit Smith for a speech. His rising was received with cheers.

This was Mr. Smith's first appearance upon our platform, although in letters to different Conventions he had already expressed his sympathy. His commanding presence, his benevolent countenance, and deep rich voice, made a profound impression, and intensified the power of his glowing words. Being well known in Syracuse for his philanthropy, his presence added dignity and influence to the a.s.sembly.[109]

Mr. SMITH said: The women who are engaged in this movement are ridiculed for aspiring to be doctors, lawyers, clergymen, sea captains, generals, presidents. For the sake of argument admitting this to be true, what then? Shall we block the way to any individual aspiration? But women are totally unfit for these places. Let them try, and their failure will settle the matter to their own satisfaction. There is not the slightest danger of a human being holding any position that he is incapable of attaining. We can not lay down a rule for all women. Because all women are not born with a genius for navigation, shall we say that one who is by skill and education able to take observations, who understands the chart and compa.s.s, the dangerous sh.o.r.es, currents, and lat.i.tudes, shall not, if she chooses, be a sea captain? Suppose we apply that rule to man. Because I can not stand on my head, shall we deny that right to all acrobats in our circuses? Because I can not make a steam engine, shall all other men be denied that right? Because all men can not stand on a platform and make a speech, shall I be denied the exercise of that right? Each individual has a sphere, and that sphere is the largest place that he or she can fill.

These women complain that they have been robbed of great and essential rights. They do not ask favors; they demand rights, the right to do whatever they have the capacity to accomplish, the right to dictate their own sphere of action, and to have a voice in the laws and rulers under which they live. Suppose I should go to vote, and some man should push me back and say, "You want to be Governor, don't you?" "No," I reply, "I want to exercise my G.o.d-given right to vote." Such a taunt as this would be no more insulting than those now cast at women, when they demand rights so unjustly denied.

I make no claim that woman is fit to be a member of Congress or President; all I ask for her is what I ask for the negro, a fair field. All will admit that woman has a right to herself, to her own powers of locomotion, to her own earnings, but how few are prepared to admit her right to the ballot. But all rights are held by a precarious tenure, if this one be denied. When women are the const.i.tuents of men who make and administer the laws, they will pay due consideration to their interests and not before. The right of suffrage is the great right that guarantees all others.

Mr. Smith set forth the education, the dignity, the power of self-government, and took his seat amid great applause.

LUCY STONE said: It is the duty of woman to resist taxation as long as she is not represented. It may involve the loss of friends as it surely will the loss of property. But let them all go; friends, house, garden spot, and all. The principle at issue requires the sacrifice. Resist, let the case be tried in the courts; be your own lawyers; base your cause on the admitted self-evident truth, that taxation and representation are inseparable. One such resistance, by the agitation that will grow out of it, will do more to set this question right than all the conventions in the world. There are $15,000,000 of taxable property owned by women of Boston who have no voice either in the use or imposition of the tax.

J. B. BRIGHAM, a school teacher, said: That the natures of men and women showed that their spheres were not the same, and woman was only truly lovely and happy when in her own element. He wished woman to recognize the feminine element in her being, for if she understood this, it would guide her in everything. In the domestic animals even this difference was manifest. Women should be keepers at home, and mind domestic concerns. The true object of this Convention is, I fear, not so much to acquire any real or supposed rights, as to make the speakers and actors conspicuous.

I urge those engaged in this movement to claim nothing masculine for woman.

Mrs. NICHOLS said: Mr. Brigham's allusion to the animal world is not a happy one, as no animal has been discovered which legislated away the rights of the female.

GERRIT SMITH said: He would hand his esteemed friend over to Lucretia Mott, that he might be slain like Abimelech of old, by the hand of a woman; as evidently from his estimate of the s.e.x, that would be the most humiliating death he could suffer. I trust no gentleman on this platform will consent to play the part of the armor-bearer in his behalf, and rescue him from his impending fate.

LUCRETIA MOTT said: It was impossible for one man to have arbitrary power over another without becoming despotic. She did not expect man to see how woman is robbed. Slaveholders did not see that they were oppressors, but slaves did. Gerrit Smith alluded to one woman that he intends me to personify, whom our friend would consider far out of her sphere. Yet if he believes his Bible, he must acknowledge that Deborah, a mother in Israel, arose by divine command, and led the armies of Israel,--the wife of Heber the Kenite, who drove the nail into the head of the Canaanite General, and her praises were chanted in the songs of Israel. The preaching of women, too, is approved in the Bible.

Paul gives special directions to women how to preach, and he exhorts them to qualify themselves for this function and not to pin their faith on the sleeves of the clergy. I would advise Mr.

Bingham not to set up his wisdom against the plain decrees of the Almighty. As to woman's voice being too weak to be heard as a public speaker, did Mr. Brigham send a protest to England against Victoria's proroguing Parliament?

Mr. MAY moved that Mrs. Stephen Smith be placed on a Committee in his stead.

The PRESIDENT quickly replied: Woman's Rights' women do not like to be called by their husbands' names, but by their own.