Life and writings of Amelia Bloomer

by D. C. Bloomer

The first Iowa Woman’s State Suffrage Society was organized at Mount Pleasant, in 1870. Mrs. Bloomer was present at this gathering of the earnest workers of the state and took an active part in their proceedings. Hon. Henry O’Conner, then attorney-general of the state, was made its first president, and Mrs. Bloomer its first vice-president. On her way home, she stopped over at Des Moines, with Mrs. Anna Savary and with Mrs. H. B. Cutler; addressed in the afternoon a large Temperance gathering on the capitol grounds, and in the evening both ladies spoke on woman’s enfranchisement in the Baptist church. The first annual meeting of the society was held in Des Moines in October, 1871. Mrs. Bloomer presided and was chosen president; she attended its annual meetings in subsequent years so long as she had the strength to do so. She was for years in constant correspondence with its members, and whenever the question of woman suffrage was before the general assembly she did not fail, by petition and otherwise, to do all in her power to promote its success. In 1875 she was an inmate of the Cleveland Sanitorium, and while there delivered to the inmates an address on the subject in which she was so deeply interested. In 1867 she made a long and wearisome journey, while in very poor health, to the city of New York to attend the meeting of the Woman-Suffrage Association, and was elected one of its vice-presidents, a position she continued to hold so long as she lived. She was an interested listener to the proceedings of the Woman’s Council held in Des Moines in 1883, but took no part in them further than a very short address.

HISTORY OF IOWA SUFFRAGE WORK.

Mrs. Bloomer furnished the main portion of the chapter on Iowa in the third volume of the History of Woman Suffrage, published by Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony in 1887. In short, the advocacy of woman’s enfranchisement was her life-work from 1851 down to the end of her days. She was in constant written communication with many of its leading advocates not only in Iowa but all over the country. They visited her often in her home, and she was subjected to frequent interviews from newspaper reporters. A volume could be filled with their writings called out by conversations with her. She always treated them with kindness and courtesy, and received many kind notices from the press. She always had a cheerful and pleasant greeting for her many visitors.

Mrs. Bloomer was spared to witness the triumph of many of the reforms she had earnestly advocated. The temperance principle in which her heart was so much absorbed made great progress during her lifetime, and the prohibitive features she so earnestly advocated were engrafted on the laws of her adopted state. She was not spared to see woman accorded a right to the ballot in all the states, but she was cheered by the wonderful progress in that direction that took place all over the world. In Wyoming and Utah women had voted for several years, and only a few weeks before her departure she learned with infinite satisfaction from Mrs. Jennie A. Irvine, a favorite niece residing in Colorado, that the right of suffrage had been granted to women in that state. While therefore she was never herself permitted to exercise that inestimable right, yet she died in the full conviction that only a few years would elapse before it would be accorded to women in all the free countries in the world.

ESSAYS BY MRS. BLOOMER.

In the following pages are given the productions of Mrs. Bloomer’s pen on a variety of subjects. Most of these essays have been printed in newspapers located in different parts of the country, but are here made public again in more durable form. It is believed they will not be devoid of interest to the reader:

“WIFELY DUTIES.

“‘Unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.’—Gen., iv. 7.

“These words were addressed to Cain by the Creator. They are the same as those used to Eve, except that in the one case they were addressed to the one to be ruled, and in the other to the one who was to rule. The latter is more clearly a command than the former. And if a command, then Cain only obeyed it in ruling over his brother; and, as there was no limit fixed to the rule, was he very much to blame for taking the life of his brother? Did not God command him to rule and was not God responsible for the result?

“And if God foretelling to Eve that her husband should rule over her was a command to which all women were to be subject for all time, does not this command to Cain to rule over his brother follow the seed of Cain for all time, and are not all elder brothers commanded to rule over the younger, and is it not the duty of the younger to submit to such rule?