The History of Woman Suffrage Volume IV Part 3

CHAPTER II.

THE NATIONAL SUFFRAGE CONVENTION OF 1884.

The first Woman's Rights Convention on record was held in Seneca Falls, N. Y., in July, 1848; the second in Salem, O., in April, 1850; the third in Worcester, Ma.s.s., in October, 1850. By this time the movement for the civil, educational and political rights of women was fully initiated, and every year thenceforth to the beginning of the Civil War national conventions were held in various States for the purpose of agitating the question and creating a favorable public sentiment. These were addressed by the ablest men and women of the time, and the discussions included the whole scope of women's wrongs, which in those days were many and grievous.

Immediately after the war the political disabilities of the negro man were so closely akin to those of all women that the advocates of universal suffrage organized under the name of the Equal Rights a.s.sociation. The "reconstruction period," however, engendered so many differences of opinion, and a platform so broad permitted such lat.i.tude of debate, the women soon became convinced that their own cause was being sacrificed. Therefore in May, 1869, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Miss Susan B. Anthony, the National Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation was formed in New York City, having for its sole object the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women. From this time it held a convention in Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., every winter.

The above mentioned a.s.sociations and conventions, as well as the American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation, formed at Cleveland, O., in November, 1869, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Mrs. Lucy Stone, are described in detail in the preceding volumes of this History. The present volume begins with the usual convention of the National a.s.sociation in Was.h.i.+ngton in 1884. This place was selected for a twofold purpose: because here a more cosmopolitan audience could be secured than in any other city, including representatives from every State in the Union and from all the nations of the world; and because here the a.s.sociation could carry directly to the only tribunal which had power to act, its demand for a submission to the State Legislatures of an amendment to the Federal Const.i.tution which should forbid disfranchis.e.m.e.nt on account of s.e.x. During each of these conventions it was the custom for committees of the Senate and House to grant hearings to the leading advocates of this proposition.

The Sixteenth of these annual conventions met in Lincoln Hall, in response to the usual Call,[10] March 4, 1884, continuing in session four days.[11]

On the evening before the convention a handsome reception was given at the Riggs House by Charles W. and Mrs. Jane H. Spofford to Miss Susan B. Anthony, which was attended by several hundred prominent men and women. Delegates were present from twenty-six States and Territories.[12] Miss Anthony was in the chair at the opening session and read a letter from Mrs. Stanton, who was detained at home, in which she paid a glowing tribute to Wendell Phillips, the staunch defender of the rights of women, who had died the preceding month.

Mrs. Mary B. Clay, in speaking of the work in her State, said:

In talking to a Kentuckian on the subject of woman's right to qualify under the law, you have to batter down his self-conceit that he is just and generous and chivalric toward woman, and that she can not possibly need other protection than he gives her with his own right arm--while he forgets that it is from man alone woman needs protection, and often does she need the right to protect herself from the avarice, brutality or neglect of the one nearest to her. The only remedy for her, as for man himself, in this republic, is the ballot in her hand. He thinks he is generous to woman when he supplies her wants, forgetting that he has first robbed her by law of all her property in marriage, and then may or may not give her that which is her own by right of inheritance....

A mother, legally so, has no right to her child, the husband having the right to will it to whom he pleases, and even to will away from the mother the unborn child at his death. The wife does not own her own property, personal or real, unless given for her sole use and benefit. If a husband may rent the wife's land, or use it during his life and hers, and take the increase or rental of it, and after her death still hold it and deprive her children of its use, which he does by curtesy, and if she can not make a will and bequeath it at her death, then I say she is robbed, and insulted in the bargain, by such so-called owners.h.i.+p of land. "A woman fleeing from her husband and seeking refuge or protection in a neighbor's house, the man protecting her makes himself liable to the husband, who can recover damages by law." "If a husband refuse to sue for a wife who has been slandered or beaten, she can not sue for herself." These are Kentucky laws.

Mrs. Harriette R. Shattuck closed her record for Ma.s.sachusetts by saying: "The dead wall of indifference is at last broken down and the women 'remonstrants,' by their active resistance to our advancing progress, are not only turning the attention of the public in our direction and making the whole community interested, but also are paving the way for future political action themselves. By remonstrating they have expressed their opinion and entered into politics."

Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway gave a full report of the situation in Oregon, and a hopeful outlook for the success of the pending suffrage amendment.[13] This was followed later by a strong address. A letter was read from Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett (Ky.). Dr. Clemence S. Lozier (N. Y.) spoke briefly, saying that for eleven years her parlor had been opened each month for suffrage meetings, and that "this question is the foundation of Christianity; for Christians can look up and truly say 'Our Father' only when they can treat each other as brothers and sisters." Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell (N. Y.) gave an eloquent address on The Outlook, answering the four stock questions: Why do not more women ask for the ballot? Will not voting destroy the womanly instincts? Will not women be contaminated by going to the polls? Will they not take away employment from men?

At the opening of the evening session Miss Anthony read a letter from Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett of England, and an extract from a recent speech by her husband, Henry Fawcett, member of Parliament and Postmaster General, strongly advocating the removal of all political disabilities of women. Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert (Ills.) spoke on The Statesmans.h.i.+p of Women, citing ill.u.s.trious examples in all parts of the world. Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.) gave a trenchant and humorous speech on The Unknown Quant.i.ty in Politics, showing the indirect influence of women which unfortunately is not accompanied with responsibility. She took up leading candidates and their records, criticising or commending; ill.u.s.trated how in every department women are neglected and forgotten, and closed as follows:

It is better to have the power of self-protection than to depend on any man, whether he be the Governor in his chair of State, or the hunted outlaw wandering through the night, hungry and cold and with murder in his heart. We are tired of the pretense that we have special privileges and the reality that we have none; of the fiction that we are queens, and the fact that we are subjects; of the symbolism which exalts our s.e.x but is only a meaningless mockery. We demand that these shadows shall take substance. The coat of arms of the State of New York represents Liberty and Justice supporting a s.h.i.+eld on which is seen the sun rising over the hills that guard the Hudson. How are justice and liberty depicted? As a police judge and an independent voter? Oh, no; as two n.o.ble and lovely women! What an absurdity in a State where there is neither liberty nor justice for any woman! We ask that this symbolism shall a.s.sume reality, for a redeemed and enfranchised womanhood will be the best safeguard of justice.

Mrs. Blake was followed by Mrs. Martha McClellan Brown, of Cincinnati Wesleyan College, who spoke on Disabilities of Woman. Miss Anthony read the report from Missouri by Mrs. Virginia L. Minor, who strongly supported her belief in the const.i.tutional right of women to the franchise. A letter of greeting was read from Miss Fannie M. Bagby, managing editor St. Louis _Chronicle_; Miss Phoebe W. Couzins (Mo.) gave a brilliant address ent.i.tled What Answer?

At the evening session the hall was crowded. The speech of Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood (D. C.), the first woman admitted to practice before the Supreme Court, was a severe criticism on the disfranchising of the women in Utah as proposed by bills now before Congress. It was a clear and strong legal argument which would be marred by an attempt at quotation.

In an address on Women Before the Law, the report says:

Mrs. Helen M. Gougar of Indiana traced the development of human liberty as shown in the history of the ballot, which was at first given to a certain cla.s.s of believers in orthodox religions, then to property holders, then to all white men. She showed how cla.s.s legislation had been gradually done away with by allowing believer and unbeliever, rich and poor, white and black, to vote unquestioned and unhindered, and as a result of this onward march of justice, the last remaining form of cla.s.s legislation, now shown by the s.e.x ballot, must pa.s.s away. She declared the s.e.x-line to be the lowest standard upon which to base a privilege and unworthy the civilization of the present time. She answered many of the popular objections to woman suffrage by showing that if education were to be made the test of the ballot, women would not be the disfranchised cla.s.s in America, as three-fifths of all graduates from the public schools in the last ten years have been women. If morality were to be made a test, women would do more voting than men. The ratio of law-abiding women to men is as one to every 103; of drunken women to drunken men, one to every 1,000. Reasoning from these facts, if sobriety, virtue and intelligence were necessary qualifications, women enfranchised would largely reflect these elements in the Government.

At noon on March 6 the delegates were courteously received at the White House by President Chester A. Arthur.

During the afternoon session the Pennsylvania report was presented by Edward M. Davis, son-in-law of Lucretia Mott, and an exhaustive account of Woman's Work in Philadelphia by Mrs. Lucretia L.

Blankenburg. A letter from Mrs. Anna C. Wait (Kas.) was read by Mrs.

Bertha H. Ellsworth, who closed with a tribute to Mrs. Wait and a poem dedicated to Kansas.

The guest of the convention, Mrs. Jessie M. Wellstood of Edinburgh, presented a report made by Miss Eliza Wigham, secretary of the Scotland Suffrage a.s.sociation, prefaced with some earnest remarks in which she said:

To those who are sitting at ease, folding their hands and sweetly saying: "I have all the rights I want, why should I trouble about these matters?" let me quote the burning words of the grand old prophet Isaiah, which entered into my soul and stirred it to action: "Rise up, ye women that are at ease; hear my voice, ye careless daughters, give ear unto my speech; many days shall ye be troubled, ye careless women, etc." It is just because we fold our hands and sit at ease that so many of our less fortunate fellow creatures are leading lives of misery, want, sin and shame.

In the evening Mrs. May Wright Sewall (Ind.) delivered a beautiful address on Forgotten Women, which she closed with these words: "It was not a grander thing to lead the forlorn hope in 1776, not a grander thing to strike the shackles from the black slaves in 1863, than it would be in 1884 to carry a presidential campaign on the basis of Political Equality to Women. The career, the fame, to match that of Was.h.i.+ngton, to match that of Lincoln, awaits the man who will espouse the cause of forgotten womanhood and introduce that womanhood to political influence and political freedom."

Interesting addresses were made by Mrs. Mary E. Haggart (Ind.), Why Do Not Women Vote? and by the Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford, pastor of the Second Universalist Church, Jersey City, on New Jersey as a Leader--the first to grant suffrage to women. They voted from 1776 until the Legislature took away the right in 1807.

At the afternoon session of the last day Mrs. Lizzie D. Fyler, a lawyer of Arkansas, gave an extended resume of the legal and educational position of women in that State, which was shown to be in advance of many of the eastern and western States. George W. Clark, one of the old Abolition singers contemporaneous with the Hutchinsons, expressed a strong belief in woman suffrage and offered a tribute of song to Wendell Phillips. Brief addresses were made by Mrs. J. Ellen Foster (Ia.) and Mrs. Morrison (Ma.s.s.). A letter of greeting was read from the corresponding secretary, Rachel G. Foster, Julia and Mrs.

Julia Foster (Penn.), written in Florence, Italy. Mrs. Caroline Gilkey Rogers described School Suffrage in Lansingburgh, N. Y.

An eloquent address was made by Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.), in which she said:

There are a great many excellent people in the world who are strongly prejudiced against what they designate "isms," but who are always glad of any opportunity of serving G.o.d, as they express it. I ask what can finite beings do to serve Omnipotence unless it be to exert all their powers for the good of humanity, for the uplifting of man, which, if aught of ours could do, must rejoice our Creator. When we see more than one-half of the adult human family--reasonably industrious and intelligent, if we make for them no larger claim, and certainly the _raison d'etre_ of the other half--called to account by the laws of the land and held in strict obedience to them without the slightest voice in their making, with neither form nor shadow of representation before State or country, do we not see that there rests upon the entire race a stigma that materialist and idealist, agnostic and churchman, should each and all hasten to remove?

"Behold, the fields are white unto harvest, but the laborers are few!" How can it be longer tolerated that the wives and mothers, the sisters and daughters, of a land claiming the highest degree of civilization and boasting of freedom as its watchword, should still rank before the law with criminals, idiots and slaves? I feel as confident as I do of my existence, that the apathy which we are now fighting against, especially among our own s.e.x, springs mainly from want of thought; the women of culture throughout the country placidly accept the comfortable conditions in which they find themselves. They receive without question the formulated theories of woman's sphere as they accept the formulated theories of the orthodox religions into which they may chance to have been born; occasionally an original thinker steps out of the ranks and finds herself after a while with a few followers. They remain but few, however, for it is too much trouble to think.

At the evening session the Rev. Florence Kollock (Ills.) spoke on The Ethics of Woman Suffrage, saying in part:

By what moral right stands a law upon the statute books that infringes upon the rights and duties of womanhood, that prohibits a mother from the full discharge of the duties of her sacred office, as all are prohibited through the law that forbids them the opportunity of throwing their whole moral strength, influence and convictions against the existence and growth of social and political iniquities and in defense of truth and purity? The great evils of our day are of such a nature that all, regardless of moral principles or s.e.x, suffer from their effects, proving clearly that all have a moral obligation in these matters, and the fact that one human being suffers from an evil carries with it the highest authority to remove that evil.

The silent influence of woman has failed to accomplish the desired good of humanity, has failed to bring about the needed moral reforms, and all observing persons are ready to concede that posing is a weak way of combating giant evils--that att.i.tudism can not take the place of activity. To suppress the full utterance of the moral convictions of those who so largely mold the character of the race is a crime against humanity, against progress, against G.o.d.

Mrs. Shattuck, in discussing the question, said:

It is absolutely necessary for the improvement of the race that the manly and womanly elements shall be side by side in all walks of life, and the fact that our social status, our literature and our educational systems have been greatly improved by woman's co-operation with man, points to the eternal truth that man and woman must work hand in hand in the State also, in order that it shall be uplifted and saved. Woman herself will not be harmed by the ballot, for the acquisition of greater responsibilities improves and not degrades the recipient thereof. If the ballot has made man worse it will make woman worse, and not otherwise.

Whoever studies the history of the race from age to age and nation to nation finds the world has advanced and not retrograded by giving responsibility to the individual. The opposition to woman suffrage strikes a blow at the foundation-stone of this republic, which is self-representation by means of the ballot. At the bottom of this opposition is a subtle distrust of American inst.i.tutions, an idea of "restricted suffrage" which is creeping into our republic through so-called aristocratic channels.

A distinguis.h.i.+ng feature of this convention was the large number of letters and reports sent from abroad, undoubtedly due to the fact that Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony had spent the preceding year in Europe, making the acquaintance and arousing the interest of foreign men and women in the status of the suffrage question in the United States.

Among these letters was one from Miss Frances Power Cobbe in which she said: "The final and complete emanc.i.p.ation of our s.e.x ere long, I think, is absolutely certain. All is going well here and I hope with you in America; and with all my heart, dear Miss Anthony, I wish you and the woman's convention triumphant success."

Miss Jane Cobden, daughter of Richard Cobden, said in the course of her letter: "I feel all the more certain of the righteousness of the work in which I am so much engaged, because I know from words spoken and written by my father as far back as 1845, that had he been living at the present day I should have had his sympathy. He was nothing if not consistent, and so he said in a speech delivered in London that year on Free Trade: 'There are many ladies present, I am happy to say.

Now it is a very anomalous and singular fact that they can not vote themselves and yet they have the power of conferring votes upon other people. I wish they had the franchise, for they would often make a much better use of it than their husbands.'"

Miss Caroline Ashurst Biggs, for many years editor of the _Englishwoman's Review_, sent a full report of the situation in England. There was a letter of greeting also from Miss Lydia Becker, editor of the _Women's Suffrage Journal_ and member of the Manchester School Board. John P. Thoma.s.son and Peter A. Taylor, members of Parliament, favored woman suffrage in the strongest terms, the latter saying: "Justice never can be done to the rising generations till the influence of the mother is freed from the ignominy of exclusion from the great political and social work of the day." Mrs. Thoma.s.son, daughter of Margaret Bright Lucas, and Mrs. Taylor, known as the organizer of the women's suffrage movement in England, also sent cordial good wishes.[14]

The wife of Jacob Bright, who was largely responsible for the Married Women's Property Bill, presented a review of present suffrage laws; his sister, Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren, wife of Duncan McLaren, M.

P., and the great Abolitionist, Mrs. Elizabeth Pease Nichol of Edinburgh, sent long and valuable letters. Mrs. McLaren wrote:

I was in Exeter Hall, London, on the day our Parliament a.s.sembled; a prayer-meeting was held there the whole of that day.

Earnest were the intercessions that the hearts of our rulers might be influenced to repeal every vestige of the Contagious Diseases Acts; and the women especially prayed that our men might be led to send representatives to Parliament of much higher morality than such Acts testified to, and that the eyes of the women of their country might be opened to see the iniquity of such legislation. I venture to express that the burden of my prayer had been, whilst sitting in that meeting, that the eyes of the women there a.s.sembled, and of the women throughout our country, might be opened to see that we could not expect men who did not consider morality to be a necessary part of their own character, to regard it as needful for the men who were to represent them in Parliament; that we needed a new moral power to be brought into exercise at our elections, and as Parliament was meeting that day and one of its first acts would be to bring in a new reform bill, that we might unite in prayer that the pet.i.tions so long put forth by many of the women of this land, that their claim to the suffrage should be included in this new Act for the extended representation of the people, might be righteously answered; and the power given to women not only to pray for what was just and right, but to have by the Parliamentary vote a direct power to promote that higher legislation which they all so much desired. I know nothing which calls for more faith and patience than to hear women pleading for justice, and refusing to help get it in the only legitimate way....

Whilst we have our anomalies here, you have a glaring inconsistency in your country. It is not a property qualification which gives a vote in America. Is not every human being, who is of age, according to your Const.i.tution, ent.i.tled to equal justice and freedom? Are you women not human beings? The lowest and most ignorant man who leaves any sh.o.r.e and lands on yours, ere he has earned a home or made family ties, becomes a citizen of your great country; whilst your own women, who during a life-time may have done much service and given much to the State, are denied the right accorded to that man, however low his condition may be.

You are fighting to overcome this great monopoly of citizens.h.i.+p.

We watch your proceedings with deep interest. We rejoice in your successes and sympathize with you in your endeavors to gain fresh victories.

Congratulatory letters were received from Ewing Whittle, M. D., of the Royal Academy, Liverpool, and Miss Isabella M. S. Tod, the well-known reformer of Belfast. M. Leon Richer, the eminent writer of Paris, and Mlle. Hubertine Auclert, editor of _La Citoyenne_, sent cordial words of co-operation. There were also greetings from Mrs. Ernestine L.

Rose, a Polish exile, one of the first women lecturers in America; from the wife and daughter of A. A. Sargent, U. S. Minister to Berlin; from Theodore Stanton; Miss Florence Kelley, daughter of the Hon.

William D. Kelley; the wife of Moncure D. Conway; Rosamond, daughter of Robert Dale Owen; Mrs. Charlotte B. Wilbour and Dr. Frances E.

d.i.c.kinson, all Americans residing abroad.

Among the noted men and women of the United States who sent letters endorsing equal suffrage, were George William Curtis, William Lloyd Garrison, U. S. Senators Henry B. Anthony and Henry W. Blair, the Hon.

George W. Julian, the Hon. William I. Bowditch, Robert Purvis, the Rev. Anna Oliver, Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace, the "mother" of Ben Hur, and Mrs. Abby Hutchinson Patton.[15]