The Duty of American Women to Their Country

by Catharine Esther Beecher

The American people are sanguine and hasty, careless of peril, and thoughtless of risk, but, when brought by danger to reflection, they have first-rate common sense, surpassing energy, and endless resources. And if they can but be convinced of their danger in season, all is safe; but the work to be done is prodigious, the time is short, and the question all turns on whether the work will be undertaken soon enough, and with sufficient energy.

Look, then, at the work to be done. Two millions of destitute children to be supplied with schools! To meet this demand, sixty thousand teachers and fifty thousand schoolhouses are required. Or, if we can afford to leave half of them to grow up in ignorance, and aim only to educate the other half, thirty thousand teachers and twenty-five thousand schoolhouses must be provided, and that, too, within twelve years. The census calculates the children between four and sixteen, and in twelve years most of these children will be beyond the reach of school instruction, while other millions, treading on their heels, will demand still greater supplies. Sixty thousand teachers now needed for present wants, and thousands, to be added every year for the increase of population!

Where are we to raise such an army of teachers? Not from the sex which finds it so much more honourable, easy, and lucrative to enter the many roads to wealth and honour open in this land. But a few will turn from these, to the humble, unhonoured toils of the schoolroom and its penurious reward.

It is woman who is to come in at this emergency, and meet the demand; woman, whom experience and testimony has shown to be the best, as well as the cheapest guardian and teacher of childhood, in the school as well as the nursery. Already, in those parts of our country where education is most prosperous, the larger part of the teachers of common schools are women. In Massachusetts, three out of five of all the teachers are women. In the State of New-York and in Philadelphia similar results are seen.

Women, then, are to be educated for teachers, and sent to the destitute children of this nation by hundreds and by thousands. This is the way in which a profession is to be created for woman—a profession as honourable and as lucrative for her as the legal, medical, and theological are for men. This is the way in which thousands of intelligent and respectable women, who toil for a pittance scarcely sufficient to sustain life, are to be relieved and elevated. This is the way, and the only way, in which our nation can be saved from impending perils. Though we are now in such a condition that many have given over our case in despair, as too far gone for remedy—though the peril is immense, and the work to be done enormous, yet it is in the power of American women to save their country. There is benevolence enough, there are means enough at their command. All that is needed is a knowledge of the danger, and a faithful use of the means within their reach.

And who else, in such an emergency as this, can so appropriately be invoked to aid? It is woman who is the natural and appropriate guardian of childhood. It is woman who has those tender sympathies which can most readily feel for the wants and sufferings of the young. It is woman, who is especially interested in all efforts which tend to elevate and dignify her own sex. It is woman, too, who has that conscientiousness and religious devotion, which, in any worthy cause, are the surest pledges of success.

And it is the pride and honour of our country, that woman holds a commanding influence in the domestic and social circle, which is accorded to the sex in no other nation, and such as will make her wishes and efforts, if united for a benevolent and patriotic object, almost omnipotent.

To you, then, American women, are brought these two millions of suffering and destitute children; these “despised little ones,” of whom is written, “their angels do always behold the face of our Father in heaven;” who are loved and cared for by the good Shepherd above, so that it were better for any of us, that we were thrown with a millstone about our necks into the sea, than that, through our guilty neglect, even one of these little ones should perish.

To you, my countrywomen, these little children call, with voices soft as the young ravens’ cry, yet multitudinous as the murmuring ocean waves. To you they complain of the filth, and the weariness, and the aching muscles, and the throbbing head, and the tortured eyes. To you they lament the degrading scenes and fatal influences, that wither all that is pure, and sweet, and lovely in childhood and youth. Of you they ask relief from suffering, and all those blessed ministries that will lead their young feet to usefulness and happiness on earth, and to glory, honour, and immortality on high. Ah, surely their supplications will be heard, and speedy relief will be found!