History of Woman Suffrage Volume I Part 80

It is the desire and purpose of those interested in the Woman's Rights movement, to send up to our next Legislature an overwhelming pet.i.tion, for the civil and political rights of woman. These rights must be secured just as soon as the majority of the women of the State make the demand. To this end, we have decided thoroughly to canva.s.s our State before the close of the present year. We shall hold conventions in every county, distribute tracts and circulate pet.i.tions, in order, if possible, to arouse a proper self-respect in woman.

The want of funds has heretofore crippled all our efforts, but as large bequests have been made to our cause during the past year, we are now able to send out agents and to commence anew our work, which shall never end, until, in Church and State, and at the fireside, the equality of woman shall be fully recognized.

We hope much from our Republican legislators. Their well-known professions encourage us to believe that our task is by no means a hard one. We shall look for their hearty co-operation in every effort for the elevation of humanity. We have had bills before the Legislature for several years, on some of which, from time to time, have had most favorable reports. The property bill of '48 was pa.s.sed by a large majority. The various bills of rights, to wages, children, suffrage, etc., have been respectfully considered. The bill presented at the last session, giving to married women their rights to make contracts, and to their wages, pa.s.sed the House with only three dissenting votes, but owing to the pressure of business at the close of the session, it was never brought before the Senate.

Whilst man, by his legislation and generous donations, declares our cause righteous and just--whilst the very best men of the nation, those who stand first in Church and State, in literature, commerce, and the arts, are speaking for us such n.o.ble words and performing such G.o.d-like deeds--shall woman, herself, be indifferent to her own wrongs, insensible to all the responsibilities of her high and holy calling? No! No!! I Let the women of the Empire State now speak out in deep and earnest tones that can not be misunderstood, demanding all those rights which are at the very foundation of Republicanism--a full and equal representation with man in the administration of our State and National Government.

Do you know, women of New York! that under our present laws married women have no right to the wages they earn? Think of the 40,000 drunkards' wives in this State--of the wives of men who are licentious--of gamblers--of the long line of those who do nothing; and is it no light matter that all these women who support themselves, their husbands and families, too, shall have no right to the disposition of their own earnings? Roll up, then, your pet.i.tions[159] on this point, if no other, and secure to laboring women their wages at the coming session!

Now is the golden time to work! Before another Const.i.tutional Convention be called, see to it that the public sentiment of this State shall demand suffrage for woman! Remember, "they who would be free, themselves must strike the blow!"

E. CADY STANTON, _Chairman Central Committee._

Of the canva.s.s of 1859 and '60, we find the following letter in _The New York Tribune_, February, 1860.

_To the Editor of The Tribune:_

SIR:--The readers of _The Tribune_ who have perused its columns closely for the last six months will have noticed repeated announcements of County Conventions in different parts of the State to be addressed by certain ladies engaged in advocating equal rights for woman. It may not be uninteresting to them to know that every one of those appointments was filled by said ladies. Over fifty counties of the State have been thus visited, and pet.i.tions presented to the people for their signatures, praying for equal property rights, and for steps to be taken to so amend the Const.i.tution as to secure to woman the right of suffrage, which have been numerously signed and duly presented to the Legislature. In the rural districts the success has been wonderful, considering the unpopularity of the subject; our most violent opposers being demagogical Democrats who frankly acknowledge that if our doctrines prevail, anti-slavery, temperance, moral reform, and Republicanism will conquer.

Large bequests have been made in the East for the furtherance of this movement, and under the direction of a committee appointed for that purpose, these ladies have gone forth to proclaim the doctrine of civil and political equality for woman. No laggards are they in their work. In the language of Mr. Greeley, they have found a work to be done, and have gone at it with ready and resolute will; they have not been able to answer all the calls made upon their time and talent. One of them (I can speak but for one) between the 11th of November and the 31st of January, has given sixty-eight lectures, not missing one appointment, resting only through the holidays and on Sundays. The others have doubtless done as well. In most instances all have been able to pay their own expenses, and in some cases their own salaries.

These ladies are not disappointed old maids, desolate widows, or unhappy wives, though there is one widow and one who has pa.s.sed what is called the sunny side of twenty-five. Miss Susan B.

Anthony, the general agent, resides at Rochester, and is unmarried. Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, of New York City, is too widely known to need comment. The same may be said of Antoinette Brown Blackwell, the eloquent minister, accomplished scholar, and amiable wife and mother. Mrs. J. Elizabeth Jones, of Ohio, is a lady in the ripeness of womanhood, to whom, equally with the above, all these adjectives apply. Mrs. Hannah Tracy Cutler, of Illinois, has been twice married, and has superintended two families of children satisfactorily; she has been teacher in a high school in Columbus, Ohio, and matron of a deaf and dumb asylum, has taken premiums on sorghum sugar made by her own hands, and is also a physician among the poor of her neighborhood. Mrs. Lucy N. Colman, of New York, is a widow, and has fought life's battle bravely and well for herself and children. Mrs. Frances D. Gage, of Missouri, formerly of Ohio, might claim the nomination for President under the authority of Henry Ward Beecher, "having brought up six unruly boys," whose aggregate height would form a column of thirty-six feet in honor of their mother, who will all vote the Republican ticket in 1860 but one, and he is not old enough; and no one of them smokes or chews, or stimulates the inner man with intoxicating beverages.

She is also the mother of two daughters.

Two years ago Mr. Greeley said to one of the ladies, "Why don't you ladies go to work?" They have gone to work; and with the help of such men as Garrison, Phillips, Parker, Giddings, Curtis, Beecher, Chapin, Brady, and a host of others whom the world delights to honor, their cause will surely triumph. It is a question of time only; not of fact. G.o.d speed the day.

The State Convention of 1860 was held in a.s.sociation Hall, Albany, February 3d and 4th, with fine audiences throughout, and the usual force of speakers. As the outpourings of Miss Anthony's love element all flowed into the suffrage movement, she was sorely tried with the imperative cares that the domestic experiments of most of her coadjutors so constantly involved. Her urgent missives coming ever and anon to arouse us to higher duties, are quite inspiring even at this date. In a letter to Martha C. Wright, she says:

Mr. Bingham, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, will bring in a radical report in favor of all our claims, but previous to his doing so he wishes our strongest arguments made before the Committee, and he says Mrs. Stanton must come. I write her this mail, but I wish you would step over there and make her feel that the salvation of the Empire State, at least the women in it, depends upon her bending all her powers to moving the hearts of our law-makers at this time. Mr. Bingham says our Convention here has wrought wondrous changes with a large number of the members who attended, and so says Mr. Mayo, of the Albanians; indeed our claims are so patent they need only to be known to be approved.

Mrs. Stanton must move heaven and earth now to secure this bill, and she can, if she will only try. I should go there myself this very night, but I must watch and encourage friends here. The Earnings Bill has pa.s.sed the House, and is in Committee of the Whole in the Senate. Then a Guardians.h.i.+p Bill must be drafted and put through if possible. I returned from New York last evening; have taken the "Cooper Union," for our National Convention in May. Saw Miss Howland; she said Mr. Beecher's lecture is to be in this week's _Independent_. Only think how many priestly eyes will be compelled to look at its defiled page. Theodore Tilton told me that Mr. Beecher had had a severe battle to get into _The Independent_.

Mrs. Stanton, in answering Miss Anthony's appeal, says:

I am willing to do the appointed work at Albany. If Napoleon says cross the Alps, they are crossed. I can not, my dear friend, "move heaven and earth," but I will do what I can with pen and brain. You must come here and start me on the right train of thought, as your practical knowledge of just what is wanted is everything in getting up the right doc.u.ment. Kind regards to the anti-slavery host now with you. I did not think that the easy arm-chair I occupied on the Auburn platform was to bring me so much glory. Did you know the resolutions of that meeting were read on the floor of Congress?--that pleased me greatly. I am very proud to stand maternal sponsor for the whole string. I wish our Albany resolutions had more snap in them. The Garrison clique are the only men in this nation that know how to write a resolution.

On the 18th of February Mrs. Stanton addressed the Legislature on woman's right of suffrage and the bill then pending in the Senate. A magnificent audience greeted her in the Capitol. She occupied the Speaker's desk, and was introduced by Senator Hammond, and spoke as follows:

GENTLEMEN OF THE JUDICIARY:--There are certain natural rights as inalienable to civilization as are the rights of air and motion to the savage in the wilderness. The natural rights of the civilized man and woman are government, property, the harmonious development of all their powers, and the gratification of their desires. There are a few people we now and then meet who, like Jeremy Bentham, scout the idea of natural rights in civilization, and p.r.o.nounce them mere metaphors, declaring that there are no rights aside from those the law confers. If the law made man too, that might do, for then he could be made to order to fit the particular niche he was designed to fill. But inasmuch as G.o.d made man in His own image, with capacities and powers as boundless as the universe, whose exigencies no mere human law can meet, it is evident that the man must ever stand first; the law but the creature of his wants; the law giver but the mouthpiece of humanity. If, then, the nature of a being decides its rights, every individual comes into this world with rights that are not transferable. He does not bring them like a pack on his back, that may be stolen from him, but they are a component part of himself, the laws which insure his growth and development. The individual may be put in the stocks, body and soul, he may be dwarfed, crippled, killed, but his rights no man can get; they live and die with him.

Though the atmosphere is forty miles deep all round the globe, no man can do more than fill his own lungs. No man can see, hear, or smell but just so far; and though hundreds are deprived of these senses, his are not the more acute. Though rights have been abundantly supplied by the good Father, no man can appropriate to himself those that belong to another. A citizen can have but one vote, fill but one office, though thousands are not permitted to do either. These axioms prove that woman's poverty does not add to man's wealth, and if, in the plenitude of his power, he should secure to her the exercise of all her G.o.d-given rights, her wealth could not bring poverty to him. There is a kind of nervous unrest always manifested by those in power, whenever new claims are started by those out of their own immediate cla.s.s. The philosophy of this is very plain. They imagine that if the rights of this new cla.s.s be granted, they must, of necessity, sacrifice something of what they already possess. They can not divest themselves of the idea that rights are very much like lands, stocks, bonds, and mortgages, and that if every new claimant be satisfied, the supply of human rights must in time run low. You might as well carp at the birth of every child, lest there should not be enough air left to inflate your lungs; at the success of every scholar, for fear that your draughts at the fountain of knowledge could not be so long and deep; at the glory of every hero, lest there be no glory left for you....

If the object of government is to protect the weak against the strong, how unwise to place the power wholly in the hands of the strong. Yet that is the history of all governments, even the model republic of these United States. You who have read the history of nations, from Moses down to our last election, where have you ever seen one cla.s.s looking after the interests of another? Any of you can readily see the defects in other governments, and p.r.o.nounce sentence against those who have sacrificed the ma.s.ses to themselves; but when we come to our own case, we are blinded by custom and self-interest. Some of you who have no capital can see the injustice which the laborer suffers; some of you who have no slaves, can see the cruelty of his oppression; but who of you appreciate the galling humiliation, the refinements of degradation, to which women (the mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of freemen) are subject, in this the last half of the nineteenth century? How many of you have ever read even the laws concerning them that now disgrace your statute-books? In cruelty and tyranny, they are not surpa.s.sed by any slaveholding code in the Southern States; in fact they are worse, by just so far as woman, from her social position, refinement, and education, is on a more equal ground with the oppressor.

Allow me just here to call the attention of that party now so much interested in the slave of the Carolinas, to the similarity in his condition and that of the mothers, wives, and daughters of the Empire State. The negro has no name. He is Cuffy Douglas or Cuffy Brooks, just whose Cuffy he may chance to be. The woman has no name. She is Mrs. Richard Roe or Mrs. John Doe, just whose Mrs. she may chance to be. Cuffy has no right to his earnings; he can not buy or sell, or lay up anything that he can call his own.

Mrs. Roe has no right to her earnings she can neither buy nor sell, make contracts, nor lay up anything that she can call her own. Cuffy has no right to his children; they can be sold from him at any time. Mrs. Roe has no right to her children; they may be bound out to cancel a father's debts of honor. The unborn child, even by the last will of the father, may be placed under the guardians.h.i.+p of a stranger and a foreigner. Cuffy has no legal existence; he is subject to restraint and moderate chastis.e.m.e.nt. Mrs. Roe has no legal existence; she has not the best right to her own person. The husband has the power to restrain, and administer moderate chastis.e.m.e.nt.

Blackstone declares that the husband and wife are one, and learned commentators have decided that that one is the husband.

In all civil codes, you will find them cla.s.sified as one. Certain rights and immunities, such and such privileges are to be secured to white male citizens. What have women and negroes to do with rights? What know they of government, war, or glory?

The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against s.e.x. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way. The negro's skin and the woman's s.e.x are both _prima facie_ evidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man. The few social privileges which the man gives the woman, he makes up to the negro in civil rights. The woman may sit at the same table and eat with the white man; the free negro may hold property and vote. The woman may sit in the same pew with the white man in church; the free negro may enter the pulpit and preach. Now, with the black man's right to suffrage, the right unquestioned, even by Paul, to minister at the altar, it is evident that the prejudice against s.e.x is more deeply rooted and more unreasonably maintained than that against color. As citizens of a republic, which should we most highly prize, social privileges or civil rights? The latter, most certainly.

To those who do not feel the injustice and degradation of the condition, there is something inexpressibly comical in man's "citizen woman." It reminds me of those monsters I used to see in the old world, head and shoulders woman, and the rest of the body sometimes fish and sometimes beast. I used to think, What a strange conceit! but now I see how perfectly it represents man's idea! Look over all his laws concerning us, and you will see just enough of woman to tell of her existence; all the rest is submerged, or made to crawl upon the earth. Just imagine an inhabitant of another planet entertaining himself some pleasant evening in searching over our great national compact, our Declaration of Independence, our Const.i.tutions, or some of our statute-books; what would he think of those "women and negroes"

that must be so fenced in, so guarded against? Why, he would certainly suppose we were monsters, like those fabulous giants or Brobdignagians of olden times, so dangerous to civilized man, from our size, ferocity, and power. Then let him take up our poets, from Pope down to Dana; let him listen to our Fourth of July toasts, and some of the sentimental adulations of social life, and no logic could convince him that this creature of the law, and this angel of the family altar, could be one and the same being. Man is in such a labyrinth of contradictions with his marital and property rights; he is so befogged on the whole question of maidens, wives, and mothers, that from pure benevolence we should relieve him from this troublesome branch of legislation. We should vote, and make laws for ourselves. Do not be alarmed, dear ladies! You need spend no time reading Grotius, c.o.ke, Puffendorf, Blackstone, Bentham, Kent, and Story to find out what you need. We may safely trust the shrewd selfishness of the white man, and consent to live under the same broad code where he has so comfortably ensconced himself. Any legislation that will do for man, we may abide by most cheerfully....

But, say you, we would not have woman exposed to the grossness and vulgarity of public life, or encounter what she must at the polls. When you talk, gentlemen, of sheltering woman from the rough winds and revolting scenes of real life, you must be either talking for effect, or wholly ignorant of what the facts of life are. The man, whatever he is, is known to the woman. She is the companion, not only of the accomplished statesman, the orator, and the scholar; but the vile, vulgar, brutal man has his mother, his wife, his sister, his daughter. Yes, delicate, refined, educated women are in daily life with the drunkard, the gambler, the licentious man, the rogue, and the villain; and if man shows out what he is anywhere, it is at his own hearthstone. There are over forty thousand drunkards in this State. All these are bound by the ties of family to some woman. Allow but a mother and a wife to each, and you have over eighty thousand women. All these have seen their fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, in the lowest and most debased stages of obscenity and degradation. In your own circle of friends, do you not know refined women, whose whole lives are darkened and saddened by gross and brutal a.s.sociations?

Now, gentlemen, do you talk to woman of a rude jest or jostle at the polls, where n.o.ble, virtuous men stand ready to protect her person and her rights, when, alone in the darkness and solitude and gloom of night, she has trembled on her own threshold, awaiting the return of a husband from his midnight revels?--when, stepping from her chamber, she has beheld her royal monarch, her lord and master--her legal representative--the protector of her property, her home, her children, and her person, down on his hands and knees slowly crawling up the stairs? Behold him in her chamber--in her bed! The fairy tale of "Beauty and the Beast" is far too often realized in life. Gentlemen, such scenes as woman has witnessed at her own fireside, where no eye save Omnipotence could pity, no strong arm could help, can never be realized at the polls, never equaled elsewhere, this side the bottomless pit.

No, woman has not hitherto lived in the clouds, surrounded by an atmosphere of purity and peace--but she has been the companion of man in health, in sickness, and in death, in his highest and in his lowest moments. She has wors.h.i.+ped him as a saint and an orator, and pitied him as madman or a fool. In Paradise, man and woman were placed together, and so they must ever be. They must sink or rise together. If man is low and wretched and vile, woman can not escape the contagion, and any atmosphere that is unfit for woman to breathe is not fit for man. Verily, the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation. You, by your unwise legislation, have crippled and dwarfed womanhood, by closing to her all honorable and lucrative means of employment, have driven her into the garrets and dens of our cities, where she now revenges herself on your innocent sons, sapping the very foundations of national virtue and strength. Alas! for the young men just coming on the stage of action, who soon shall fill your vacant places--our future Senators, our Presidents, the expounders of our const.i.tutional law! Terrible are the penalties we are now suffering for the ages of injustice done to woman.

Again, it is said that the majority of women do not ask for any change in the laws; that it is time enough to give them the elective franchise when they, as a cla.s.s, demand it.

Wise statesmen legislate for the best interests of the nation; the State, for the highest good of its citizens; the Christian, for the conversion of the world. Where would have been our railroads, our telegraphs, our ocean steamers, our ca.n.a.ls and harbors, our arts and sciences, if government had withheld the means from the far-seeing minority? This State established our present system of common schools, fully believing that educated men and women would make better citizens than ignorant ones. In making this provision for the education of its children, had they waited for a majority of the urchins of this State to pet.i.tion for schools, how many, think you, would have asked to be transplanted from the street to the school-house? Does the State wait for the criminal to ask for his prison-house? the insane, the idiot, the deaf and dumb for his asylum? Does the Christian, in his love to all mankind, wait for the majority of the benighted heathen to ask him for the gospel? No; unasked and unwelcomed, he crosses the trackless ocean, rolls off the mountain of superst.i.tion that oppresses the human mind, proclaims the immortality of the soul, the dignity of manhood, the right of all to be free and happy.

No, gentlemen, if there is but one woman in this State who feels the injustice of her position, she should not be denied her inalienable rights, because the common household drudge and the silly b.u.t.terfly of fas.h.i.+on are ignorant of all laws, both human and Divine. Because they know nothing of governments, or rights, and therefore ask nothing, shall my pet.i.tions be unheard? I stand before you the rightful representative of woman, claiming a share in the halo of glory that has gathered round her in the ages, and by the wisdom of her past words and works, her peerless heroism and self-sacrifice, I challenge your admiration; and, moreover, claiming, as I do, a share in all her outrages and sufferings, in the cruel injustice, contempt, and ridicule now heaped upon her, in her deep degradation, hopeless wretchedness, by all that is helpless in her present condition, that is false in law and public sentiment, I urge your generous consideration; for as my heart swells with pride to behold woman in the highest walks of literature and art, it grows big enough to take in those who are bleeding in the dust.

Now do not think, gentlemen, we wish you to do a great many troublesome things for us. We do not ask our legislators to spend a whole session in fixing up a code of laws to satisfy a cla.s.s of most unreasonable women. We ask no more than the poor devils in the Scripture asked, "Let us alone." In mercy, let us take care of ourselves, our property, our children, and our homes. True, we are not so strong, so wise, so crafty as you are, but if any kind friend leaves us a little money, or we can by great industry earn fifty cents a day, we would rather buy bread and clothes for our children than cigars and champagne for our legal protectors.

There has been a great deal written and said about protection.

We, as a cla.s.s, are tired of one kind of protection, that which leaves us everything to do, to dare, and to suffer, and strips us of all means for its accomplishment. We would not tax man to take care of us. No, the Great Father has endowed all his creatures with the necessary powers for self-support, self-defense, and protection. We do not ask man to represent us; it is hard enough in times like these for man to carry backbone enough to represent himself. So long as the ma.s.s of men spend most of their time on the fence, not knowing which way to jump, they are surely in no condition to tell us where we had better stand. In pity for man, we would no longer hang like a millstone round his neck. Undo what man did for us in the dark ages, and strike out all special legislation for us; strike the words "white male" from all your const.i.tutions, and then, with fair sailing, let us sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish together.

At Athens, an ancient apologue tells us, on the completion of the temple of Minerva, a statue of the G.o.ddess was wanted to occupy the crowning point of the edifice. Two of the greatest artists produced what each deemed his masterpiece. One of these figures was the size of life, admirably designed, exquisitely finished, softly rounded, and beautifully refined. The other was of Amazonian stature, and so boldly chiselled that it looked more like masonry than sculpture. The eyes of all were attracted by the first, and turned away in contempt from the second. That, therefore, was adopted, and the other rejected, almost with resentment, as though an insult had been offered to a discerning public. The favored statue was accordingly borne in triumph to the place for which it was designed, in the presence of applauding thousands, but as it receded from their upturned eyes, all, all at once agaze upon it, the thunders of applause unaccountably died away--a general misgiving ran through every bosom--the mob themselves stood like statues, as silent and as petrified, for as it slowly went up, and up the soft expression of those chiselled features, the delicate curves and outlines of the limbs and figure, became gradually fainter and fainter, and when at last it readied the place for which it was intended, it was a shapeless ball, enveloped in mist. Of course, the idol of the hour was now clamored down as rationally as it had been cried up, and its dishonored rival, with no good will and no good looks on the part of the chagrined populace, was reared in its stead.

As it ascended, the sharp angles faded away, the rough points became smooth, the features full of expression, the whole figure radiant with majesty and beauty. The rude hewn ma.s.s, that before had scarcely appeared to bear even the human form, a.s.sumed at once the divinity which it represented, being so perfectly proportioned to the dimensions of the building, and to the elevation on which it stood, that it seemed as though Pallas herself had alighted upon the pinnacle of the temple in person, to receive the homage of her wors.h.i.+ppers.

The woman of the nineteenth century is the shapeless ball in the lofty position which she was designed fully and n.o.bly to fill.

The place is not too high, too large, too sacred for woman, but the type that you have chosen is far too small for it. The woman we declare unto you is the rude, misshapen, unpolished object of the successful artist. From your stand-point, you are absorbed with the defects alone. The true artist sees the harmony between the object and its destination. Man, the sculptor, has carved out his ideal, and applauding thousands welcome his success. He has made a woman that from his low stand-point looks fair and beautiful, a being without rights, or hopes, or fears but in him--neither n.o.ble, virtuous, nor independent. Where do we see, in Church or State, in school-house or at the fireside, the much talked-of moral power of woman? Like those Athenians, we have bowed down and wors.h.i.+ped in woman, beauty, grace, the exquisite proportions, the soft and beautifully rounded outline, her delicacy, refinement, and silent helplessness--all well when she is viewed simply as an object of sight, never to rise one foot above the dust from which she sprung. But if she is to be raised up to adorn a temple, or represent a divinity--if she is to fill the niche of wife and counsellor to true and n.o.ble men, if she is to be the mother, the educator of a race of heroes or martyrs, of a Napoleon, or a Jesus--then must the type of womanhood be on a larger scale than that yet carved by man.

In vain would the rejected artist have reasoned with the Athenians as to the superiority of his production; nothing short of the experiment they made could have satisfied them. And what of your experiment, what of your wives, your homes? Alas! for the folly and vacancy that meet you there! But for your club-houses and newspapers, what would social life be to you? Where are your beautiful women? your frail ones, taught to lean lovingly and confidingly on man? Where are the crowds of educated dependents--where the long line of pensioners on man's bounty?

Where all the young girls, taught to believe that marriage is the only legitimate object of a woman's pursuit--they who stand listlessly on life's sh.o.r.es, waiting, year after year, like the sick man at the pool of Bethesda, for some one to come and put them in? These are they who by their ignorance and folly curse almost every fireside with some human specimen of deformity or imbecility. These are they who fill the gloomy abodes of poverty and vice in our vast metropolis. These are they who patrol the streets of our cities, to give our sons their first lessons in infamy. These are they who fill our asylums, and make night hideous with their cries and groans.

The women who are called masculine, who are brave, courageous, self-reliant and independent, are they who in the face of adverse winds have kept one steady course upward and onward in the paths of virtue and peace--they who have taken their gauge of womanhood from their own native strength and dignity--they who have learned for themselves the will of G.o.d concerning them. This is our type of womanhood. Will you help us raise it up, that you too may see its beautiful proportions--that you may behold the outline of the G.o.ddess who is yet to adorn your temple of Freedom? We are building a model republic; our edifice will one day need a crowning glory. Let the artists be wisely chosen. Let them begin their work. Here is a temple to Liberty, to human rights, on whose portals behold the glorious declaration, "All men are created equal." The sun has never yet shone upon any of man's creations that can compare with this. The artist who can mold a statue worthy to crown magnificence like this, must be G.o.dlike in his conceptions, grand in his comprehensions, sublimely beautiful in his power of execution. The woman--the crowning glory of the model republic among the nations of the earth--what must she not be? (Loud applause).[160]

AN ACT CONCERNING THE RIGHTS AND LIABILITIES OF HUSBAND AND WIFE.

The Act of 1860[161] was offered by Andrew J. Colvin in the Senate as a subst.i.tute for a bill from the a.s.sembly, which was simply an amendment of the law of 1848. Senators Hammond, Ramsey, and Colvin const.i.tuted the Judiciary Committee, to whom the bill was referred.

Mr. Colvin objected to it for want of breadth in giving to married women the rights to which he thought them ent.i.tled, and urged that a much more liberal measure was demanded by the spirit of the times. In one of Miss Anthony's interviews with Mr. Colvin, she handed him a very radical bill just introduced in the Ma.s.sachusetts Legislature, which after due examination and the addition of two or three more liberal clauses, was accepted by the Committee, reported to the Senate by Mr. Colvin, and adopted by that body February 28, 1860[162]. The bill was concurred in by the a.s.sembly, and signed by the Governor, Edwin D. Morgan. It is quite remarkable that the bill in its transit did not receive a single alteration, modification, or amendment from the time it left Mr. Colvin's hands until it took its place on the statute-book. The women of the State who labored so persistently for this measure, felt that the victory at last was due in no small degree to the deep interest and patient skill of Andrew J. Colvin. Hon. Anson Bingham, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who did good service in the a.s.sembly at this time, should be gratefully remembered by the women of New York. Mr. Bingham acted in concert with Mr. Colvin, both earnestly putting their shoulders to the wheel, one in the a.s.sembly and one in the Senate, and with the women pulling all the wires they could outside, together they pushed the grand measure through.

Judge Bingham served our cause also by articles on all phases of the question over the signature of "Senex," published in many journals throughout the State. And this, too, at an early day, when every word in favor of woman's rights was of immense value in breaking down the prejudice of the ages.

In addition to this, another act of great benefit to a large number of housekeepers, called the "Boarding House Law," was secured by the same members. Miss Emily Howland, Mrs. Margaret Murray, Mrs. Manning, and Mrs. Griffith Satterlee spent some weeks in Albany using their influence in favor of this measure.

In February, 1860, Emily Howland arranged a course of lectures on Woman's Rights, to be given in Cooper Inst.i.tute, New York. Henry Ward Beecher delivered his first lecture on the question in this course, receiving his fee of $100 in advance, as it was said he considered no engagement of that sort imperative without previous payment. Mr.

Beecher's speech was published in full in _The New York Independent_, of which he was then editor-in-chief. The State Committee purchased a large number, which Lydia Mott, of Albany, laid on the desk of every member of both Houses. At the time we felt the speech worth to our cause all it cost.

TENTH NATIONAL WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION.

COOPER INSt.i.tUTE, NEW YORK, MAY 10-11, 1860.

A large audience a.s.sembled in Cooper Inst.i.tute at 10-1/2 o'clock, Thursday morning. Susan B. Anthony called the Convention to order, and submitted a list of officers,[163] nominated at a preliminary meeting, which was adopted without dissent.