The History of Woman Suffrage Volume III Part 125

Hughes of Raleigh, a bright mulatto girl, as deacon in the church. Shortly after the close of the late war, my husband being then incapacitated for work by wounds received in the Mexican and the civil war, and my sons under age, I applied to Governor Jonathan Worth for the position of State librarian. Though cordially acknowledging my fitness, intellectually, for the office, and admitting that my s.e.x did not legally disqualify me to hold it, he positively refused to appoint me or any other woman to any office in his gift. Public sentiment then sustained him, but it would not now do so; so many ladies of culture, refinement and social position have been, since the war, forced to work or starve, that it is now nothing remarkable to see them and their daughters doing work which twenty years ago they would have been ostracised for undertaking.

In a letter to the Boston _Index_, published August, 1885, the venerable Mrs. Elizabeth Oakes Smith, who is now a resident of this State, truthfully says,

The women of the North can have little conception of the hindrances which their sisters of the South encounter in their efforts to accept new and progressive ideas. The other s.e.x, in a blind sort of way, hold fast to an absolute kind of chivalry akin to that of the renowned Don Quixote, by which they try to hold women in the background as a kind of porcelain liable to crack and breakage unless daintily handled. Women here see the spirit of the age and the need of change far more clearly than the men, and act up to this light, but with a flexible grace that disarms opposition.

They see the necessity of work and are turning their attention to methods for remunerative labor, far more difficult to obtain at the South than at the North.

I cordially endorse this extract. The Southern man does not wish his "women folks" to be self-supporting, not because he is jealous of their rivaling him, but because he feels it is his duty to be the bread-winner. But the much sneered at "chivalry"

of the South, while rendering it harder for a woman to break through old customs, most cordially and heartily sustains her when she has successfully done so. There are fewer large centers in the South than in the North, and much less attrition of mind against mind; the people are h.o.m.ogeneous and slower to change, and public opinion is much less fluctuating. But once let the tide of woman suffrage fairly turn, and I believe it will be irresistable and advance far more steadily and rapidly in the South than it has done in the North. Let the Southern women be won over and the cause will have nothing to fear from the opposition of the men. But, after twenty years' experience as a journalist, my honest opinion is that until the Southern women can be made to feel the pecuniary advantages to them of suffrage, they will not lift a finger or speak a word to obtain it.

In 1881, at the March meeting of the Raleigh Typographical Union, No. 194, my son, being then a member of that Union, introduced and, after some hard fighting, succeeded in carrying a resolution placing women compositors on a par in every respect with men.

There was not at that time a single woman compositor in the State, to my son's knowledge; there is one now in Raleigh and two apprentices, who claimed and receive all the advantages that men applying for admission to the Union receive.

Mrs. C. Harris started the _South Atlantic_ at Wilmington. The Misses Bernheim and their father started a magazine in the same city called _At Home and Abroad_, which was afterwards moved to Charlotte; both were short-lived. We have now the _Southern Woman_. This is the only journal ever edited and managed by a woman alone, with no man a.s.sociated with or responsible for it. I have been for twenty years connected with the press of this State in one way and another, and am called the "Grandmother of the North Carolina Press a.s.sociation." In 1880 I delivered an original poem before the a.s.sociation, and another Masonic one before the board of the orphan asylum; making me, I believe, the first native North Carolina woman that ever came before the public as a speaker. I was both denounced and applauded for my "bra.s.s" and "bravery." Public sentiment has changed since then.

Mrs. Marion A. Williams, president of the State National Bank at Raleigh for several years, is probably the first woman ever elected to that responsible position in any State of this Union.

In 1885 Louisa B. Stephens was made president of the First National Bank of Marion, Iowa; and a national bank in Newbery, South Carolina, honored itself by placing a woman at the head of its official board.

The _North Carolinian_ of January, 1870, contained an able editorial endorsing woman suffrage, closing with:

For one we say, tear down the barriers, give woman an opportunity to show her wisdom and virtue; place the ballot in her hands that she may protect herself and reform men, and ere a quarter of a century has elapsed many of the foulest blots upon the civilization of this age will have pa.s.sed away.

From an interesting article in the _Boston Advertiser_, May 22, 1875, by Rev. James Freeman Clark, concerning Dr. Susan Dimock, one of North Carolina's promising daughters, whose career was ended in the wreck of the Schiller near the Scilly islands, we make a few extracts:

One of our eminent surgeons, Dr. Samuel Cabot, said to me yesterday:

"This community will never know what a loss it has had in Dr. Dimock. It was not merely her skill, though that was remarkable, considering her youth and limited experience, but also her nerve, that qualified her to become a great surgeon. I have seldom known one at once so determined and so self-possessed. Skill is a quality much more easily found than this self-control that nothing can flurry. She had that in an eminent degree; and, had she lived, she would have been sure to stand, in time, among those at the head of her profession. The usual weapons of ridicule would have been impotent against a woman who had reached that supreme position which Susan Dimock would certainly have attained."

During the war of the rebellion, Miss Dimock sought admission into the medical school of Harvard University, preferring, if possible, to take a degree in an American college. Twice she applied, and was twice refused. Hearing that the University of Zurich was open to women, she went there, and was received with a hospitality which the inst.i.tutions of her own country did not offer. She pursued her medical studies there, and graduated with honor. A number of the "Revue des Deux Mondes" for August, 1872, contains an article called "Les Femmes a l'Universitie de Zurich," which speaks very favorably of the success of the women in that place. The first to take a degree as doctor of medicine was a young Russian lady, in 1867. Between 1867 and 1872 five others had taken this degree, and among them Miss Dimock is mentioned. From the medical school at Zurich, she went to that at Vienna; and of her appearance there we have this record: A distinguished German physician remarked to a friend of mine residing in Germany that he had always been opposed to women as physicians--but that he had met a young American lady studying at Vienna, whose intelligence, modesty and devotion to her work was such as almost to convince him that he was wrong. A comparison of dates shows that this American student must have been Dr. Dimock.

On her return to the United States Dr. Dimock became resident physician at "The Hospital for Women and Children," on Codman Avenue, in Boston. Both the students of medicine and the patients became devotedly attached to her; they were fascinated by this remarkable union of tenderness, firmness and skill. The secret was in part told by what she said in one of her lectures in the training-school for nurses connected with the woman's hospital: "I wish you, of all my instructions, especially to remember this.

Where you go to nurse a patient, imagine that it is your own sister before you in that bed; and treat her as you would wish your own sister to be treated." While at this hospital, she was also able to carry out a principle in which she firmly believed, namely--that in a hospital the rights of every patient, poor and rich, should be sacredly regarded, and never be postponed even to the supposed interests of medical students. No student was allowed to be present at any operation, except so far as the comfort and safety of her patients rendered the student's presence desirable. Her interest in the woman's hospital was very great. She was in the habit, at the beginning of each year, of writing and sealing up her wishes for the coming year. Since her death, her mother has opened the envelope of January 1, 1875, and found it to contain a prayer for a blessing on "my dear hospital."

And now this young, strong soul so ardent in the pursuit of knowledge, so filled with a desire to help her suffering sisters, has been taken by that remorseless deep.

IX.--SOUTH CAROLINA.

The first action we hear of in South Carolina was a Woman's Right's Convention in Columbia, Dec. 20, 1870, of which the Charleston _Republican_ said:

The chairman, Miss Rollin, said: "It had been so universally the custom to treat the idea of woman suffrage with ridicule and merriment that it becomes necessary in submitting the subject for earnest deliberation that we a.s.sure the gentlemen present that our claim is made honestly and seriously. We ask suffrage not as a favor, not as a privilege, but as a right based on the ground that we are human beings, and as such, ent.i.tled to all human rights. While we concede that woman's enn.o.bling influence should be confined chiefly to home and society, we claim that public opinion has had a tendency to limit woman's sphere to too small a circle, and until woman has the right of representation this will last, and other rights will be held by an insecure tenure."

Mr. T. J. Mackey made a forcible argument in favor of the movement. He was followed by Miss Hosley, who made a few brief remarks upon the subject. General Moses thought woman's introduction upon the political platform would benefit us much in a moral point of view, and that they had a right to a.s.sist in making the laws that govern them as well as the sterner s.e.x.

Messrs. Cardozo, Pioneer and Rev. Mr. Harris followed in short speeches, endorsing the movement and wis.h.i.+ng it success.

Resolutions were adopted, and officers chosen.[533] The following letters were read:

EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, Columbia, Jan. 19, 1871.

_Miss L. M. Rollin_:--I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your invitation to be present at the preliminary organization of the a.s.sociation for the a.s.sertion of woman's rights in this State, and regret that the pressure of public duties precludes my indulging myself in that pleasure. Be a.s.sured, however, that the cause has my warmest sympathy, and I indulge the hope that the time is not far distant when woman shall be the peer of man in political rights, as she is peerless in all others, and when she will be able to reclaim some of those privileges that are now monopolized by the sterner s.e.x.

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, etc.,

R. K. SCOTT, _Governor_.

OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL, Columbia, Feb. 1, 1871.

I hoped when I received your invitation to the meeting to-night of the friends of woman suffrage, that I should be able to attend in person, but at a late hour I find other duties standing in the way, and I can only say a word of approval and encouragement with my pen. The woman suffrage cause is to my mind so just and so expedient as to need little argument. To say that my mother, my sisters or my wife have less interest in good government than I have, or are less fitted by nature to understand and use the ballot than I am, is to contradict reason and fact.

Upon the same grounds that I defend my own right to share in the government which controls and protects me, do I now a.s.sert the right of woman to a voice in public affairs. For the same reasons that I would regard an attempt to rob me of my civil rights as tyranny, do I now protest against the continued civil inequality and thralldom of woman. I take no merit or pride to myself for such a position. I have felt and said these things during my whole life. They are to me self-evident truths; needing no more demonstration by argument than the first lines of the Declaration of American Independence. My claim for woman is simply this: Give her a full and fair chance to act in any sphere for which she can fit herself. Her sphere is as wide as man's. It has no limits except her capacity. If woman cannot perform a soldier's duty, then the army is not her sphere; if she can, it is her sphere, as much as it is man's.

I value the ballot for woman chiefly because it opens to her a wide, free avenue to a complete development of all her powers. The Chinese lady's shoe is nothing compared to the clamps and fetters which we Americans have put upon woman's mind and soul. An impartial observer would scarcely condemn the one and approve the other. What we need now is to accustom the public to these radical truths. Demand the ballot; demand woman's freedom. It is not a conflict of argument or reason, so much as a crusade against habit and prejudice. To tell the truth, I don't think there is a respectable argument in the world against woman suffrage.

People think they are arguing or reasoning against it when they are in fact only repeating the prejudices in which they have been trained. With the sincerest wishes for the success of your meeting and of all your efforts for woman suffrage, I remain, yours very truly,

D. H. CHAMBERLAIN.

The American a.s.sociation memorialized the legislature March 13, 1872. The joint committee recommended an amendment to the const.i.tution of the State, providing that every person, male or female, possessed of the necessary qualifications, should be ent.i.tled to vote. B. F. Whittemore, H. J. Maxwell, W. B. Nash, G.

F. McIntyre, were the committee on the part of the Senate; C. D.

Hayne, W. J. Whipper, Benj. Byas, B. G. Yocom, F. H. Frost, committee on the part of the House.

In the debate in congress in 1874, Hon. Alonzo J. Ransier of South Carolina, the civil-rights bill being under discussion, claimed that equal human rights should be extended to women as follows:

And may the day be not far distant when American citizens.h.i.+p in civil and political rights and public privileges shall cover not only those of our s.e.x, but those of the opposite one also; until which time the government of the United States cannot be said to rest upon the "consent of the governed," or to adequately protect them in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Miss Sallie R. Banks, for some years a teacher of colored schools in South Carolina, has been appointed collector of internal revenue for the Sumter district.

X.--FLORIDA.

In 1880, the agricultural department at Was.h.i.+ngton, paid a premium of $12 to Madame Atzeroth of Manatee, for the first pound of coffee ever grown out of doors in the United States.

The following is from a letter to the Savannah _News_, reporting a judgment rendered by a Florida county judge, in a case between an old black man and his wife:

OCALA, Fla., May 12, 1874.

Be it known throughout all christendom that the husband is the head of the wife, and whatever is his is his'n, and whatever is hers is his'n, and come weal or woe, peace or war, the right of all property is vested in the husband, and the wife must not take anything away. The ox belongs to Uncle Ben, and he must keep it, and the other things, and if the old woman quits she must go empty-handed. Know all that this is so by order of the Judge of Probate.

[Signed] WM. R. HILLYER.

Though quaintly expressed, yet this decision is in line with the old common law and the statutes of many of the States in this Union to-day.

XI.--ALABAMA.

The women of Alabama are evidently awake on the temperance question, though still apparently unprepared for suffrage. In a report of a meeting in Birmingham in 1885, the following, from a prominent editor, was read by the president:

Tell the admirable lady, Mrs. Bryce, that I would devote everything to the cause she espouses, but there's no use. Let women demand the ballot, and with it they can destroy whisky, and by no other agency. There is no perfect family or state in which woman is not an active governing force. They should have the courage to a.s.sert themselves and then they can serve the country and the race.

If a thunderbolt had fallen it would not have created a greater sensation. The ladies at first grew indignant and uttered protestations. When they grew calmer, the corresponding secretary was ordered to furnish the editor with the following:

The ladies of the W. C. T. U. return thanks to the editor for his kindly and progressive suggestions, but, in their opinion, they are not ready to ask any political favors. Whenever suffrage is granted to the women of the United States, those of Alabama will be found on the right side.