The History of Woman Suffrage Volume I Part 110

The Committee have on hand a variety of Woman's Rights Tracts, written by S. J. May, Wendell Phillips, Elizabeth C. Stanton, Mrs. C. I. H.

Nichols, Ernestine L. Rowe, T. W. Higginson, and others. Also, the Reports of the several National Woman's Rights Conventions, all of which may be had at very low prices.

All correspondence and orders for Address, pet.i.tions, etc., should be addressed to

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, General Agent, Rochester, N. Y.

_June 22, 1854_.

SECOND APPEAL OF 1854.

_To the Women of the State of New York:_

We purpose again this winter to send pet.i.tions to our State Legislature--one, asking for the Just and Equal Rights of Woman, and one for Woman's Right of Suffrage. The latter, we think, covers the whole ground, for we can never be said to have just and equal rights until the right of suffrage is ours. Some who will gladly sign the former may shrink from making the last demand. But be a.s.sured, our cause can never rest on a safe, enduring basis, until we get the right of suffrage. So long as we have no voice in the laws, we have no guarantee that privileges granted us to-day by one body of men, may not be taken from us to-morrow by another.

All man's laws, his theology, his daily life, go to prove the fixed idea in his mind of the entire difference in the s.e.xes--a difference so broad that what would be considered cruel and unjust between man and man, is kind and just between man and woman. Having discarded the idea of the oneness of the s.e.xes, how can man judge of the needs and wants of a being so wholly unlike himself? How can he make laws for his own benefit and woman's too at the same time? He can not. He never has, as all his laws relative to woman most clearly show. But when man shall fully grasp the idea that woman is a being of like feelings, thoughts, and pa.s.sions with himself, he may be able to legislate for her, as one code would answer for both. But until then, a sense of justice, a wise self-love, impels us to demand a voice in his councils.

To every intelligent, thinking woman, we put the question, On what sound principles of jurisprudence, const.i.tutional law, or human rights, are one-half of the people of this State disfranchised? If you answer, as you must, that it is done in violation of all law, then we ask you, when and how is this great wrong to be righted? We say now; and pet.i.tioning is the first step in its accomplishment. We hope, therefore, that every woman in the State will sign her name to the pet.i.tions. It is humiliating to know that many educated women so stultify their consciences as to declare that they have all the rights they want. Have you who make this declaration ever read the barbarous laws in reference to woman, to mothers, to wives, and to daughters, which disgrace our Statute Books? Laws which are not surpa.s.sed in cruelty and injustice by any slaveholding code in the United States; laws which strike at the root of the glorious doctrine for which our fathers fought and bled and died, "no taxation without representation"; laws which deny a right most sacredly observed by many of the monarchies of Europe--"the right of trial by a jury of one's own peers"; laws which trample on the holiest and most unselfish of all human affections--a mother's love for her child--and with ruthless cruelty snap asunder the tenderest ties; laws which enable the father, be he a man or a minor, to tear the infant from the mother's arms and send it, if he chooses, to the Feejee Islands--yea, to will the guardians.h.i.+p of the _unborn_ child to whomsoever he may please, whether to the Sultan of Turkey or the Imam of Muscat; laws by which our sons and daughters may be bound to service to cancel their father's debts of _honor_, in the meanest rum-holes and brothels in the vast metropolis; laws which violate all that is most pure and sacred in the marriage relation, by giving to the cruel, beastly drunkard the rights of a man, a husband, and father; laws which place the life-long earnings of the wife at the disposal of the husband, be his character what it may; laws which leave us at the mercy of the rum-seller and the drunkard, against whom we have no protection for our lives, our children, or our homes; laws by which we are made the watch-dogs to keep a million and a half of our sisters in the foulest bondage the sun ever shone upon--which forbid us to give food and shelter to the panting fugitive from the land of slavery.

If, in view of laws like these, there be women in this State so lost to self-respect, to all that is virtuous, n.o.ble, and true, as to refuse to raise their voices in protest against such degrading tyranny, we can only say of that system which has thus robbed womanhood of all its glory and greatness, what the immortal Channing did of slavery, "If," said he, "it be true that the slaves are contented and happy--if there is a system that can blot out all love of freedom from the soul of man, destroy every trace of his Divinity, make him happy in a condition so low and benighted and hopeless, I ask for no stronger argument against such a slavery as ours." No! never believe it; woman falsifies herself and blasphemes her G.o.d, when in view of her present social, legal, and political position, she declares she has all the rights she wants. If a few drops of Saxon blood gave our Frederick Dougla.s.s such a clear perception of his humanity, his inalienable rights, as to enable him, with the slaveholder's Bible, the slaveholder's Const.i.tution, a Southern public sentiment and education all laid heavy on his shoulders, to stand upright and walk forth in search of freedom, with as much ease as did Samson of old with the ma.s.sive gates of the city, shall we, the daughters of our Hanc.o.c.ks and Adamses, we in whose veins flow the blood of the Pilgrim Fathers, shall we never try the strength of these withes of law and gospel with which in our blindness we have been bound hand and foot? Yes, the time has come.

"The slumber is broken, the sleeper is risen, The day of the Goth and the Vandal is o'er.

And old Earth feels the tread of Freedom once more."

Fail not, Women of the Empire State, to swell our Pet.i.tions. Let no religious scruples hold you back. Take no heed to man's interpretation of Paul's injunctions to women. To any thinking mind, there is no difficulty in explaining those pa.s.sages of the Apostle as applicable to the times in which they were written, as having no reference whatever to the Women of the nineteenth century.

"Honor the King," heroes of '76! Those leaden tea-chests of Boston Harbor cry out, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." When the men of 1854, with their Priests and Rabbis, shall rebuke the disobedience of their forefathers--when they shall cease to set at defiance the British lion and the Apostle Paul in their National Policy, then it will be time enough for us to bow down to man's interpretation of law touching our social relations, and acknowledge that G.o.d gave us powers and rights, merely that we might show forth our faith in Him by being helpless and dumb.

The writings of Paul, like our State Const.i.tutions, are susceptible of various interpretations. But when the human soul is roused with holy indignation against injustice and oppression, it stops not to translate human parchments, but follows out the law of its inner being, written by the finger of G.o.d in the first hour of its creation.

Our Pet.i.tions will be sent to every county in the State, and we hope that they will find at least ten righteous Women to circulate them.

But should there be any county so benighted that a pet.i.tion can not be circulated throughout its length and breadth, giving to every man and woman an opportunity to sign their names, then we pray, not that "G.o.d will send down fire and brimstone" upon it, but that the "Napoleon" of this movement will flood it with Woman's Rights Tracts and Missionaries.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, _Chairman N. Y. State Woman's Rights Committee._

SENECA FALLS, _Dec. 11, 1854_.

N. B.--All orders for forms of Pet.i.tions and Woman's Rights Tracts, and all communications relating to the movement in this State, should be addressed to our General Agent, Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, N. Y.

Let the Pet.i.tions be returned, as soon as possible, to Lydia Mott, Albany, N. Y., as we wish to present them early in the session, and thereby give our Legislature due time for the consideration of this important question.

NATIONAL WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION, COOPER INSt.i.tUTE, 1856.

LETTER FROM MRS. STANTON.

SENECA FALLS, _November 24, 1856_.

DEAR LUCY STONE:--We may continue to hold our Conventions, we may talk of our right to vote, to legislate, to hold property, but until we can arouse in woman a proper self-respect, she will hold in contempt the demands we now make for our s.e.x. We shall never get what we ask for until the majority of women are openly with us; and they will never claim their civil rights until they know their social wrongs. From time to time I put these questions to myself: How is it that woman can longer silently consent to her present false position? How can she calmly contemplate the barbarous code of laws which govern her civil and political existence? How can she devoutly subscribe to a theology which makes her the conscientious victim of another's will, forever subject to the triple bondage of the man, the priest, and the law? How can she tolerate our social customs, by which womankind is stripped of all true virtue, dignity, and n.o.bility? How can she endure our present marriage relations, by which woman's life, health, and happiness are held so cheap, that she herself feels that G.o.d has given her no charter of rights, no individuality of her own. I answer, she patiently bears all this because in her blindness she sees no way of escape. Her bondage, though it differs from that of the negro slave, frets and chafes her just the same. She too sighs and groans in her chains; and lives but in the hope of better things to come. She looks to heaven; whilst the more philosophical slave sets out for Canada.

Let it be the object of this Convention to show that there is hope for woman this side of heaven, and that there is a work for her to do before she leaves for the celestial city.

Marriage is a divine inst.i.tution, intended by G.o.d for the greater freedom and happiness of both parties--whatever therefore conflicts with woman's happiness is not legitimate to that relation. Woman has yet to learn that she has a right to be happy in and of herself; that she has a right to the free use, improvement, and development of all her faculties, for her own benefit and pleasure. The woman is greater than the wife or the mother; and in consenting to take upon herself these relations, she should never sacrifice one iota of her individuality to any senseless conventionalisms, or false codes of feminine delicacy and refinement.

Marriage, as we now have it, is opposed to all G.o.d's laws. It is by no means an equal partners.h.i.+p. The silent partner loses everything. On the domestic sign, the existence of a second person is not recognized by even the ordinary abbreviation, Co. There is the establishment of John Jones. Perhaps his partner supplies all the cents and the senses--but no one knows who she is or whence she came. If John is a luminous body, she s.h.i.+nes in his reflection; if not, she hides herself in his shadow. But she is nameless, for a woman has no name! She is Mrs. John or James, Peter or Paul, just as she changes masters; like the Southern slave, she takes the name of her owner. Many people consider this a very small matter; but it is the symbol of the most cursed monopoly on this footstool; a monopoly by man of all the rights, the life, the liberty, and happiness of one-half of the human family--all womankind. For what man can honestly deny that he has not a secret feeling that where his pleasure and woman's seems to conflict, the woman must be sacrificed; and what is worse, woman herself has come to think so too. She believes that all she tastes of joy in life is from the generosity and benevolence of man; and the bitter cup of sorrow, which she too often drinks to the very dregs, is of the good providence of G.o.d, sent by a kind hand for her improvement and development. This sentiment pervades the laws, customs, and religions of all countries, both Christian and heathen. Is it any wonder, then, that woman regards herself as a mere machine, a tool for men's pleasure? Verily is she a hopeless victim of his morbidly developed pa.s.sions. But, thank G.o.d, she suffers not alone! Man too pays the penalty of his crimes in his enfeebled mind, dwarfed body, and the shocking monstrosities of his deformed and crippled offspring.

Call yourselves Christian women, you who sacrifice all that is great and good for an ign.o.ble peace, who betray the best interests of the race for a temporary ease? It were n.o.bler far to go and throw yourselves into the Ganges than to curse the earth with a miserable progeny, conceived in disgust and brought forth in agony. What mean these asylums all over the land for the deaf and dumb, the maim and blind, the idiot and the raving maniac? What all these advertis.e.m.e.nts in our public prints, these family guides, these female medicines, these Madame Restells? Do not all these things show to what a depth of degradation the women of this Republic have fallen, how false they have been to the holy instincts of their nature, to the sacred trust given them by G.o.d as the mothers of the race? Let Christians and moralists pause in their efforts at reform, and let some scholar teach them how to apply the laws of science to human life. Let us but use as much care and forethought in producing the highest order of intelligence, as we do in raising a cabbage or a calf, and in a few generations we shall reap an abundant harvest of giants, scholars, and Christians.

The first step in this improvement is the elevation of woman. She is the protector of national virtue; the rightful lawgiver in all our most sacred relations.

Yours truly, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.

LETTER FROM N. H. WHITING.

MARSHFIELD, Ma.s.s., _September 29, 1856_.

DEAR FRIEND:--I do not see that I can do much to aid you in your effort for self-emanc.i.p.ation from the injustice your s.e.x encounters in the present social and political arrangements of the world. You know the old maxim, "The G.o.ds help them who help themselves." This is true of all times and circ.u.mstances. The two inevitable conditions that are found in, and are essential to all bondage, are the spirit of oppression, the desire to exercise unlawful dominion on the one side, and ignorance, servility, the willingness, if not the desire to be enslaved on the other. The absence of either is fatal to the existence of the thing itself.

I apprehend the princ.i.p.al thing you want from our s.e.x, as a preliminary to your growth and equal position in the great struggle of life, is what Diogenes wanted of Alexander, viz., that we shall "get out of your suns.h.i.+ne." In other words, that we shall remove the obstacles we have placed in your way. To this end, politically, all laws which discriminate between man and woman, to the injury of the latter, should at once be blotted out. Women should have an equal voice in the creation and administration of that government to which they are subject. This will be a fair start in that direction. The first thing to be done, socially, is to so regulate and arrange the industrial machinery that women shall have an equal chance to labor in all the departments, and that the same work shall receive the same pay whether done by man or woman. This will do much to clear the track, so that all can have a fair chance. This is all you ask, as I take it.

This you should have. Justice demands it....

But, save in the removal of the outward forms of society, which now environ and hedge up your way, the active work in all this change in the most important human relations must be done by yourselves. "They who would be free, themselves must strike the blow." What woman is capable of we shall never know until she has a fair chance in the wide arena of universal human life.

If the love of frivolity and show and of empty admiration, which now so generally obtains, is an unfailing characteristic in the female s.e.x, legislation can not help you. Encouragement, sympathy, can not help you. It is of no use to fight against the eternal laws. But if this be only a perversion or misdirection of n.o.ble and lovely powers and faculties, the result of accidental circ.u.mstances and vicious inst.i.tutions, as I believe, then, when the outward pressure is removed, the elastic spring of the genuine human spirit, encased in the form of woman, shall return; the great curse of civil and domestic strife shall cease; the true marriage of the male and female heart can then take place, because that perfect equality, under which alone it can exist, will be recognized and established.

You are engaged in a great work. May you have faith and resolution to continue to the end. It is a long way before you. Man is a plant of slow growth. His education and development are the work of ages. It is only by a landmark extending far back into the dim and misty past we can trace his upward path.

But though the race grows so slow, and the forward wave is go often pressed backward by the prevailing currents of ignorance, superst.i.tion, and oppression, still, it is cheering to know that no true word was ever spoken, or good deed ever done, but it cast some rays of light into the surrounding darkness, while it gave strength and vigor to the spirit that sent it forth. That is a grand truth whose utterance is attributed to Jesus, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." By that gift we may relieve the want of others, but we gain far more to ourselves by creating from the chaos of human crime and misery a beautiful and G.o.dlike act. That act is wrought into the fibers of our own individual life, and we are n.o.bler, better, happier than before.

So you, in the thankless task before you, subject to ribald jest, to the cold, heartless sneer, to obloquy and abuse of all sorts from our and even your s.e.x, who are most immediately to be benefited by your labors, will have this great truth to console and stimulate you, that in every step of this grand procession in which you are marching, you will gather rich and substantial food for the sustenance and growth of your own mental and moral natures.

Truly yours, N. H. WHITING.

NEW YORK, _November 25, 1856_.

_To the Seventh National Woman's Rights Convention_:

The central claim for Woman is her right to be, and to do, as well as to suffer. Allow her everywhere to represent herself and her own interests.

Custom and law both deny her this right. If she is too cowardly to contend with custom, and to overcome it, let her remain its slave. But the law has bound her hand and foot. Here she can not act. The law-makers have forged her chains and riveted them upon her. They alone can take them off. Shall we not, then, at once demand of them--demand of every sovereign State in the Union--the elective franchise for woman? With this franchise she can make for herself a civil and political equality with man. Without it she is utterly without power to protect herself. She does not need to be protected like a child. She does need freedom to use the powers of self-protection with which her own nature is endowed.

Each of the several States has its specific laws--statutes and const.i.tution--varying in details, but all more or less unjust to her as wife, mother, property-holder; in short, unjust to her in all her relations as citizen. Every State denies to her the right to represent herself politically. Once give her this, and she can take all the rest.

Would it not be wholly appropriate, then, for this National Convention to demand the right of suffrage for her from the Legislature of each State in the Nation? We can not pet.i.tion the General Government on this point. Allow me, therefore, respectfully to suggest the propriety of appointing a committee, which shall be instructed to prepare a memorial adapted to the circ.u.mstances of each legislative body; and demanding of each, in the name of this Convention, the elective franchise for woman.

Such a memorial, presented to the several States during the coming winter, could not fail of doing good. It would be pressing home this great question upon all the powers that be in the whole nation; and, with comparatively little effort, would, at least, create a healthful agitation. Who shall say that the just men of some State will not even accord to us the franchise we claim? With this hint to the wise, I remain, as ever,

Yours, for equal human rights, ANTOINETTE L. BROWN BLACKWELL.