BELVA ANN LOCKWOOD.
FIRST WOMAN LAWYER BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES.
OR heroic perseverance, strength of intellect, dignity and power of mind, logic and eloquence,—and withal true womanliness of character, the sisterhood of the world perhaps could present no counterpart in any single woman, of any age, to Belva A. Lockwood. Had she devoted her life to literature the profoundness of her writings must have impressed the world. The fragments of her speeches which remain are worthy to live. She has had one idea in life—to enfranchise woman—and while earning her living in a profession, for recognition in which she had to fight and conquer the United States, she has, from every advanced step, held back the helping hand to her more timid sisters. If her ideal is ever realized, she will live in future history as one of the emancipators and greatest benefactors of her sex.
Belva Ann Bennett was born in Niagara County, New York, October 24, 1830, on her father’s farm. Her early education was received at a district school and in the academy of her native town. At fourteen years of age she began to teach in summer, attending school in winter. At eighteen she married a young farmer, Uriah H. McNall, who died in 1853, leaving one daughter. The young widow entered Genesee College in Lima, New York, the same year, from which she graduated with the degree of A. B. four years later. She was immediately elected to a position in the Lockport Academy, where she manifested her progressive principles by introducing declamation and gymnastics for young ladies, conducting the classes herself. This was in addition to her duties as professor of higher mathematics, logic, rhetoric, and botany. Four years later she became proprietor of McNall Seminary in Oswego, New York, which she conducted until the close of the Civil War, at which time she removed to Washington, D. C., and in March, 1868, married Rev. Ezekiel Lockwood, a Baptist minister and chaplain during the war. Dr. Lockwood died in 1877. At this late date Mrs. Lockwood resumed her studies, entering the Syracuse University at New York, from which she graduated with the degree of A. M. She had previous to this studied law in Washington, graduating from the National University Law School with the degree of D. C. L. in May, 1873. In the same year she was admitted to practice in the highest court of the District, and in 1875 applied for admission to the Court of Claims, which was refused; first, on the ground that she was a woman, and afterwards that she was a married woman. In 1876 she applied for admission to the Supreme Court of the United States. This was denied her because there was no English precedent. It was in vain that she pleaded that Queens Eleanor and Elizabeth had both been supreme chancellors of the realm, that Countess Ann had sat with the judges on the bench at the Assizes of Appleby. Finally she drafted a bill and secured its introduction into both houses of Congress, which was passed in 1879, admitting women to the Court, by which means she accomplished her purpose, and since that time she has enjoyed an active and lucrative practice, being privileged to appear before any Court in the United States. Nine other women have since been admitted to practice in the Supreme Court under the above Act.
Among the services which Mrs. Lockwood has rendered her sex may be mentioned the bill passed by Congress in 1870, giving to the women employees of the government, of whom there are many thousands, the same pay as men receive for similar work. She also secured the passage of a bill appropriating $50,000 for the aid of sailors and mariners. She has frequently appeared before congressional committees in the cause of women, her arguments always looking to the final enfranchisement of woman. An extract from one of these addresses succeeds this article. Mrs. Lockwood is also an intense advocate of temperance and labor reform.
When President Garfield died in 1881, he was considering her application for appointment as minister to Brazil. In 1884 and again in 1888, she was nominated for President of the United States by the Equal Rights Party of San Francisco, California, and though knowing that her candidacy would only subject her to the ridicule of the masses, it afforded an opportunity for the preaching of her theory of woman suffrage, and she accepted the nomination, and made a canvass that awakened the people of the United States to no small consideration of the subject. The popularity given her by these several movements has called her largely to the lecture platform and into newspaper correspondence during the last fifteen years. She was a delegate to the International Congress of Peace in Paris, and made one of the opening speeches, and presented a paper in the French language on “International Arbitration,” which was well received. In 1890 she was again a delegate to the same convention in London, and her paper there on “Disarmament” was widely commented upon. Even at this late date her thirst for knowledge again evinced itself, for she remained in London to take a course of University Extension lectures at Oxford. In 1891 she was again a delegate to the Peace Congress at Rome, where her influence was equally as conspicuous as before.
Of late years Mrs. Lockwood, in addition to her law practice, has acted as assistant editor of the “Peacemaker,” a Philadelphia magazine, all the time pursuing her studies and contributing no small modicum of encouragement, both by her pen and lectures, to the furtherance of the University Extension idea. It may be said, however, that her interest and labor in all forward movements are mainly due to her confidence in the aid they will contribute toward the final enfranchisement of woman.
ADDRESS BEFORE THE COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES WASHINGTON, IN SUPPORT OF WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE.
ENTLEMEN of the Committee: We come before you to-day, not with any studied eloquence, far-fetched erudition, or new theories for the metamorphosis of our government, or the overthrow of our social economy and relations, but we come, asking for our whole commonwealth, for the fathers who begat us, and the brothers at our side—for the mothers who bore us, and the sisters who go hand in hand with us; for the orphan and the widow unprotected; for the wretched inebriate and the outcast Magdalene; for the beggars who throng our streets and the inmates of our jails and asylums—for these we ask you that we too may have a hand and a voice, a share in this matter which so nearly concerns not only our temporal but even our eternal salvation. We ask you that we may have an interest that shall awaken from its apathy fully one-half of the moral and intellectual resources of the country, fully one-half of its productive interest—an interest which contains in the germ the physical power and vital force of the whole nation. Weakness cannot beget power, ignorance cannot beget wisdom, disease cannot produce health. Look at our women of to-day, with their enfeebled bodies, dwarfed intellects, laxness of moral force, without enough of healthy stimulus to incite to action, and compare them with our grandmothers of the Revolution and the Martha Washington school. Here you find a woman who dared to control her own affairs; who superintended a farm of six hundred acres; giving personal instructions to the workmen, writing her own bills and receipts, and setting an example of industry and frugality to the neighboring women who called to see her.
I need not, gentlemen, enumerate to you to prove what I wish to prove to-day, the countless numbers of women who have participated creditably in government from the days of our Saviour until the present time. You know that Victoria rules in England; and the adoration of the English heart to-day for its Queen, found expression but a few weeks since in one of our popular lecture halls, when the audience, composed partly of Englishmen, were asked to sing “God Save the Queen.” The wisdom of the reign of Elizabeth, “good Queen Bess,” as she has been called, gave to England her prestige—the proud pre-eminence which she holds to-day among the nations of the earth. Isabella I. of Spain, the patron saint of America, without whose generosity our country to-day might have been a wilderness, was never nobler than when after Ferdinand’s refusal, after the refusal of the crowned authority of England, the disapproval of the wise men of her own kingdom, she rose in her queenly majesty, and said, “I undertake it for my own crown of Castile, and will pledge my jewels to raise the necessary funds.” Maria Theresa, of Austria, who assumed the reins of government with her kingdom divided and disturbed, found herself equal to the emergency, brought order out of chaos, and prosperity to her kingdom. Christine, of Sweden, brought that kingdom to the zenith of its power. Eugenie, Empress of the French, in the late disastrous revolution, assumed the regency of the Empire in defiance of her ministry, and, when forced to flee, covered her flight with a shrewdness that would have done credit to Napoleon himself. Florence Nightingale brought order and efficiency into the hospitals of the Crimea, and Clara Barton, with her clear head and generous heart, has lifted up the starving women of Strassburg, and made it possible for them to be self-sustaining. I need not cite to you Catharine, of Russia, Cleopatra, or the Queen of Sheba, who came to admire the wisdom of Solomon; or the Roman matrons, Zenobia, Lucretia, Tullia; or revert to the earliest forms of government when the family and the church were lawgivers; remind you of Lydia, the seller of purple and fine linen, who ruled her own household, called to the church; of Aquilla and Priscilla, whom Paul took with him and left to control the church at Ephesus, after they had been banished from Rome by the decree of Claudius; or of Phebe, the deaconess. It is a well-known fact that women have been sent as ministers and ambassadors, the latter a power fuller than our country grants, to treat on important State matters between the crowned heads of Europe. In many cases they have represented the person of the monarch or emperor himself. France, since the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV., through the period of the ascendency of Napoleon I. down to the reign of Napoleon III., has employed women in diplomacy. Instances may be found recorded in a work entitled “Napoleon and His Court,” by Madame Junot, and also in our own consular works. The late Empress of France has been said to be especially gifted in this respect. It has been the custom of Russia for the past century, and still continues to be, to send women on diplomatic errands. In this empire, also, where the voting is done by households, a woman is often sent to represent the family.
Women are now writing a large proportion of the books and newspapers of the country, are editing newspapers and commanding ships. They are admitted to law schools, medical schools, and the higher order of colleges, and are knocking at Amherst and Yale. Yea, more, they are admitted to the practice of law, as in Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Wyoming and Utah; admitted to the practice of medicine everywhere, and more recently to consultation. One hundred women preachers are already ordained and are preaching throughout the land. Women are elected as engrossing and enrolling clerks in Legislatures, as in Wisconsin, Missouri and Indiana; appointed as justices of the peace, as in Maine, Wyoming and Connecticut; as bankers and brokers, as in New York and St. Louis. They are filling as school teachers three-fourths of the schools of the land.
This is more than true of our own city. Shall we not then have women school trustees and superintendents? Already they are appointed in the East and in the West, and women are permitted to vote at the school elections. Who has a deeper interest in the schools than the mothers.
Look at the hundreds of women clerks in the government departments. They are all eligible, since the passage of the Arnell bill, to the highest clerkships. Look at the postmistresses throughout the land. Each one a bonded officer of the government, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, the highest executive power in the land. “The power of the President to appoint, and of the Senate to confirm, has never been questioned by our highest courts. Being bonded officers, they must necessarily qualify before a judicial officer.”
And now, gentlemen of the Committee on Laws and Judiciary, whatever may be your report on these bills for justice and equality to women, committed to your trust, I hope you will bear in mind that you have mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, who will be affected by your decision. They may be amply provided for to-day, and be beggared to-morrow. Remember that “life is short and time is fleeting,” but principles never die. You hold in your hands a power and an opportunity to-day to render yourselves immortal—an opportunity that comes but once in a lifetime. Shakespeare says, “There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” Gentlemen, the flood-tide is with you! Shall this appeal be in vain? I hold in my hands the names of hundreds of men and women of our city pledged to this work, and they will not relax their efforts until it is accomplished.
“Truth crushed to earth will rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But [♦]Error, wounded, writhes in pain
And dies amid her worshippers.”
[♦] ‘Errror’ replaced with ‘Error’
