The History of Woman Suffrage Volume III Part 88

Against the acc.u.mulated precedents of all the ages, you and your n.o.ble coadjutors have rebelled in the face of derision for fifty long, weary years. Was ever such sublime womanly heroism and self-sacrifice before known? Was ever such worth of culture, such wealth of womanhood, laid on the altar of country and humanity? And all this comparatively unrecognized and unrewarded. Where is the boasted chivalry of the English-speaking nations? It is a virtue we boast of, but do not possess. It never, in fact, had any real existence based on genuine respect for woman. It is a bitter sarcasm in the mouth of an American male citizen. A few men like Theodore Parker, Joshua R. Giddings, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Gerrit Smith, Samuel J. May and Parker Pillsbury have measurably redeemed this nation, recognizing your claim for woman as self-evidently just and righteous, and cooperating with you in maintaining it. There are only a score or two of such men in a generation with sufficient chivalry or perception of justice to publicly claim for women the rights they themselves possess.

Science has demonstrated that men to be manly must be well born, must have n.o.ble mothers. How can a mother give birth to a n.o.ble soul while herself a slave? How can she impart a free spirit when her own is servile? A stream cannot rise higher than its fountain.

We have thought to bring about a high order of civilization by freeing our sons, while chaining our daughters, by sending sons to college and daughters to menial service for a mere pittance as wages, or selling them in marriage to the highest bidder--by robbing them on the very threshold of life of all n.o.ble ambition. By the degradation of our women we take from the inherited qualities of the race as much as is added by culture. We take from the metal before casting as much as we restore by polish afterwards, and thus we curse and stultify both s.e.xes.

The law and religion of man can be no better than man himself. If religion, law, justice and social order are to improve, man must first be improved. Religion and law are effects, not causes. They are fruits, not the tree--the products of the human mind. If these are to be improved, mankind must first be improved. This will be impossible until freedom and culture shall become the inalienable rights of woman. It would be a thousand times better, if either must be a slave to the other, that man should be a slave to woman. The History of Woman Suffrage, on which you are engaged, if the second volume shall prove equal to the first, will be the richest legacy this age will bequeath to the future. It is a revelation from G.o.d, in which, if men believe, they shall be saved. Religion itself, without this great salvation, will continue to remain little else than "a wretched record of inspired crime" against woman. Woman must be free! Protection as an underling from man, savage or civilized, she in reality never had and never will have.

Protection she does not want. What she needs is equal rights, when she can protect herself--rights of person, rights of labor, rights of property, rights of culture, rights of leisure, rights to partic.i.p.ate in the making and administering of the laws. Give her equality in exchange for protection; give her her earnings in exchange for support; give her justice in exchange for charity. Let man trust woman as woman trusts man, with entire liberty of action, and she will show the world that liberty is her highest good.

In conclusion, let me confess that I read your first volume with a feeling of inexpressible shame and mortification for my s.e.x.

Yours faithfully, A.J. GROVER.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Elizabeth Boynton Harbert]

Mrs. Boynton Harbert, to whom we are indebted for this chapter, has from girlhood been an enthusiastic advocate of the rights of women.

Growing up in Crawfordsville, Indiana, under the very shadow of a collegiate inst.i.tution into which girls were not permitted to enter, she early learned the humiliation of s.e.x. After vain attempts to slip the bolts riveted with precedent and prejudice that barred the daughters of the State outside, she tried with pen and voice to rouse those whose stronger hands could open wide the doors to the justice of her appeals. Her youthful peans to liberty in prose and verse early found their way into our Eastern journals, and later in arguments before conventions and legislative a.s.semblies in Illinois, Iowa and other Western States. As editor for seven years of the "Woman's Kingdom" in the Chicago _Inter-Ocean_--one of the most popular journals in the nation--she has exerted a widespread influence over the lives of women, bringing new hope and ambition into many prairie homes. As editor-in-chief of the _New Era_, in which she is free to utter her deepest convictions; as wife and mother, with life's multiplied experiences, a wider outlook now opens before her, with added wisdom for the responsibilities involved in public life. In all her endeavors she has been n.o.bly sustained by her husband, Mr. William Harbert, a successful lawyer, many years in practice in Chicago, whose clear judgment and generous sympathies have made his services invaluable in the reform movements of the day.

FOOTNOTES:

[351] Judge and Mrs. Catharine V. Waite, Mrs. Hannah M. Tracy Cutler, Amelia Bloomer, Dr. Ellen B. Ferguson, Mrs. E. O. G.

Willard, the Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Harrison of Earlville; Professor and Mrs. D. L. Brooks, Mrs. M. E. De Geer, Mrs. Frances D. Gage.

[352] Mrs. Sunderland was one of the many New England girls who in the early days went West to teach. Speaking of the large number of women elected to the office of county superintendent (one of them her own daughter), she told me that thirty years ago when she arrived at the settlement where she had been engaged as teacher, the trustees being unable to make the "examination" deputed one of their number to take her to an adjoining county, where another New England girl was teaching. The excursion was made in a lumber wagon with an ox-team. All the ordinary questions asked and promptly answered, the trustee rather hesitatingly said, "Now, while you're about it, wouldn't you just as lief write out the certificate?"

This was readily done, and the man affixing his cross thereto, triumphantly carried the applicant back to his district, announcing her duly qualified to teach; and that trio of unlettered men installed the cultivated New England girl in their log school-house, probably without the thought entering the heads of trustees or teacher, that woman, when better educated, should hold the superior position.--[S. B. A.

[353] Dr. Mary Safford, Mrs. A. M. Freeman, Hon. and Mrs. Sharon Tyndale, Hon. E. Haines, Fernando Jones, Jane Graham Jones, Professor Bailey, Mr. and Mrs. Ezra Prince, Mr. and Mrs. R. M.

Fell, Mrs. Belle S. Candee, General J. M. Thompson, Mrs. Professor Noyes of Evanston, Charles B. Waite, Catharine V. Waite, Susan Bronson, E. S. Williams, Kate N. Doggett, C. B. Farwell, L. Z.

Leiter, J. L. Pickard, Henry M. Smith, Frank Gilbert, Ann Telford, Mrs. L. C. Levanway, Myra Bradwell, Mary E. Haven, Mrs. A. L.

Taylor, Elizabeth Eggleston, P. D. Livermore, James B. Bradwell, Joseph Haven, J. H. Bayliss, D. Blakely, R. E. Hoyt, C. D. Helmer, Alfred L. Sewell, George D. Willigton, H. Allen, R. N. Foster, W.

W. Smith, M. B. Smith, Amos G. Throop, Robert Collyer, L. I.

Colburn, G. Percy English, Arthur Edwards, A. Reed and Sons, S. M.

Booth, Sumner Ellis, George B. Marsh, Sarah Marsh, Ruth Graham, John Nutt, J. W. Butler, Mrs. J. Butler, Mrs. S. A. Richards, Mrs.

S. W. Roe, F. W. Hall, Mrs. f.a.n.n.y Blake, Mary S. Waite, J. F.

Temple, A. W. Kellogg, W. H. Thomson, J. W. Loomis, James E.

Curtis, Elizabeth Johnston, E. F. Hurlbut, E. E. Pratt, Mrs. E. M.

Warren, William Doggett, Edward Beecher, James P. Weston, E. R.

Allen, J. E. Forrester, Mrs. J. F. Temple, Mrs. F. W. Adams, L.

Walker, Mary A. Whitaker, Elvira W. Ruggles, W. W. Corbett, H. B.

Norton, W. H. Davis, I. S. Dennis, G. T. Flanders, Mrs. H. B.

Manford, Edward Eggleston, Sarah G. Cleveland, G. G. Lyon, E.

Manford, William D. Babbitt, Elizabeth Holt Babbitt, I. S. Page, W.

O. Carpenter, Mrs. W. O. Carpenter, Mrs. H. W. Cobb, T. D. Fitch, Harriet Fitch, Mary A. Livermore, T. W. Eddy, A. G. Brackett, Andrew Shuman, John A. Jameson, John V. Farwell, B. W. Raymond, E.

G. Taylor, Mems Root and lady, Rev. John McLean, Mrs. Owen Lovejoy, Mrs. Noyes Kendall.

[354] The officers were: _President_, Mrs. M. Livermore; _Vice-Presidents_, the Rev. Dr. Goodspeed, Mrs. Helen M. Beveridge, Judge Bradwell, the Rev. Edward Beecher, the Rev. D. Eggleston, Miss Eliza Bowman, the Rev. Dr. Fowler, Mrs. Elizabeth Loomis, Mrs.

M. Hawley, Mrs. M. Wheeler, Mrs. Myra Bradwell; _Secretaries_, Mrs.

Jeanne Fowler Willing, of Rockford, Mrs. Elizabeth Babbitt, and George Graham, Esq.; _Committee on Finance_, Judge Bradwell, General Beveridge and the Hon. S. M. Booth. The speakers were Anna d.i.c.kinson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Rev. Robert Collyer, Rev. Mr. Hammond, Rev. Robert Laird Collier, Kate N.

Doggett, and many of the officers of the convention.

[355] For this speech see Vol. II., page 348.

[356] The officers of the convention were: _President_, Mary A.

Livermore; _Vice-Presidents_, the Rev. Robert Collyer, Professor Haven; _Recording Secretary_, Jeanne Willing, of Rockford; _Corresponding Secretary_, Myra Bradwell; _Executive Committee_, Professor Haven, chairman; the Rev. Dr. Edward Beecher, Elizabeth J. Loomis, Hannah B. Manford, the Rev. E. Eggleston, the Rev. C. H.

Fowler the Rev. E. J. Goodspeed, Rebecca Mott, Charlotte L.

Levanway.

[357] The committee to visit Springfield were Hon. James B.

Bradwell, Mrs. Myra Bradwell, Mrs. Kate N. Doggett, the Rev. E.

Goodspeed, the Hon. C. B. Waite, and Mrs. Rebecca Mott.

[358] _Indiana_--Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Dr. Mary Wilhite, Emma Mallory, and Amanda Way; _Missouri_--Rebecca N. Hazzard; _Wisconsin_--Lelia Peckham; _Iowa_--Mary Newbury Adams, Matilda Fletcher; _Minnesota_--Mrs. Bishop; _Kansas_--Mrs. Henry; _Ohio_--Margaret V. Longley; _Michigan_--Professor Stone; _Ma.s.sachusetts_--Henry B. Blackwell, and Lucy Stone; _New York_--Susan B. Anthony, most of whom took part in the discussions.

[359] Letters were also received from Paulina Wright Davis, Frederick Dougla.s.s, Hon. Sharon Tyndale, Rev. D. H. N. Powers, Mrs.

Arabella Mansfield, Rev. Willis Lord.

[360] The speakers were Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Stone, Hon. Sharon Tyndale, Hon. E. Haines, and Judge Bradwell.

[361] One thousand three hundred and eighty women of Peoria also prayed that the const.i.tution might not be so amended as to enfranchise women; another evidence of the demoralizing influence of any form of slavery upon the human mind. Had not these women been lacking in a proper self-respect they would not have protested against the right to govern themselves.--[E. C. S.

[362] Our limited s.p.a.ce prevents the publication of Judge Waite's argument and Judge Jameson's decision.

[363] Jane Graham Jones and Elizabeth Loomis represented the Cook County a.s.sociation. Delegates from several other districts were present. The speakers were A. J. Grover, Mrs. Jane Graham Jones, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Adelle Hazlett of Michigan, Dr. Ellen B.

Furguson of Indiana, Mr. and Mrs. Fell, Mr. and Mrs. Prince.

[364] For Mrs. Bradwell's case see Vol. II., page 601.

[365] Those who have traveled and lectured through the West and spent many rainy Sundays in dreary hotels, know how to appreciate a few days rest in the delightful homes scattered over the country as well as in the towns and cities. How many of these memory recalls in the State of Illinois! What a hospitable reception we had in the cozy farm-house of Mrs. Owen Lovejoy at Princeton, and in the stately residence of Mrs. Noyes Kendall at La Moile, in the home of Judge Lawrence at Galesburg, Mrs. Judge Joslyn at Woodstock, Mrs.

R.M. Patrick, Marengo; Mrs. A.W. Brayton, Mt. Morris; Mrs. Eldridge Norwood, Olney; Rev. Dr. Moffatt, Monticello; Col. E.B. Loop, Belvidere; Mrs. Judge Greer, Decatur; Mr. and Mrs. Prince, Bloomington; Col. and Mrs. Latham, Lincoln, and others too numerous to mention in all the Western States.--[S.B.A.

[366] At her beautiful home, 910 Prairie avenue, her social influence was even more than her public work. An unfriendly report in any journal was uniformly followed by an invitation to dinner to the editor or some one of his staff, to meet the lady criticised, or discuss the point of attack. Miss Emily Faithful, Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony and Miss Couzins have all in turn shared these dinners and discussions. If the Methodist Episcopal conference sent an opponent to preach in their church, and a little social attention did not convert him, two persons left the church. Neither Mrs.

Jones nor her husband would listen to the Rev. Dr. Hatfield, for Fernando Jones was always as staunch an advocate of the suffrage for women as his wife, and had no faith in a religion that did not teach human equality.--[S. B. A.

[367] "_Ducit Amor Patriae_"; "1876."--Centennial Commemoration, Evanston, Ill. Music, prayer, music; recitation, Miss M. E. Brown; music, "Battle Hymn"; salutatory, "Woman and Philanthropy," Mrs.

Elizabeth Boynton Harbert; "Historical Record of the Educational Work of Our Women," Mrs. Mary Bannister Willard; music, "Whittier's Hymn; recitation, Miss M. E. Brown; Missionary Roll of Honor, Miss Jessie Brown; oration, Rev. F. L. Chapell; benediction.

[368] Mary F. Haskin, Melinda Hamline, Caroline Bishop, Elizabeth M. Greenleaf, Harriet S. Kidder, Mary T. Willard, Mary I. K. Huse, Cornelia Lunt, Harriet N. Noyes, Maria Cook, Margaret P. Evans, Sarah I. Hurd, Annie H. Thornton, Abby L. Brown, and Virginia S.

Kent.

[369] Prominent among these journalists were Margaret Buchanan Sullivan and Mrs. Annie Kerr of the Chicago _Times_, Mrs. Hubbard of the _Tribune_, Miss Farrand of the _Advance_, Virginia Fitzgerald and Alice Hobbins of the _Inter-Ocean_, Mrs. Myra Bradwell, editor of the _Legal News_, Mrs. Catharine V. Waite and Mrs. DeGeer of the _Crusader_, Mrs. Louisa White of the Moline _Dispatch_, Mrs. C. B. Bostwick of the Mattoon _Gazette_, Mrs. J.

Oberly of the Cairo _Bulletin_, Miss Mary West of the Galesburg _Republican_, Mrs. Celia Wooley, Miss Eliza Bowman, Mrs. Clara Lyon Peters of the Watseka _Times_, Jane Grey Swisshelm, Elizabeth Holt Babbitt, and many others.

[370] The officers of the Illinois Social Science a.s.sociation were: _President_, Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Evanston; _Recording Secretary_, Miss Sarah A. Richards, Chicago; _Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs. W. E. Clifford, Evanston; _Treasurer_, Mrs. H. H.

Candee, Cairo; _Directors_, Mrs. Helen M. Beveredge, Evanston; Mrs.

Frank Denman, Quincy; Mrs. C. A. Beck, Centralia; Mrs. R.

McLoughrey, Joliet; Mrs. W. O. Carpenter, Chicago; Miss M.

Fredricka Perry, Chicago; _Vice-Presidents_, First Congressional District, Mrs. Eliza R. Sunderland, Chicago; Second, Mrs. W. D.