CHAPTER SECOND.
UNJUST LAWS FOR WOMEN.
Up to about the middle of the nineteenth century, the maxims of the common law of England relating to the rights and responsibilities of married women were in force in nearly all the states of the Union. This was true especially in the state of New York. They were exceedingly stringent in their character, and confined her, so far as related to her property rights, within exceedingly narrow limits. Indeed, in some respects they might well be regarded as brutal. They merged the legal being of the wife in her husband. Without him, and apart from him, she could hold no property, make no contracts, nor even exercise control over her children. If she earned money by whatever means, she could not collect it. Her time and her earnings belonged to her husband; and her children, when above the age of infancy, could be taken from her by will or otherwise and committed to the charge of strangers. On the decease of the husband, the personal property acquired through their joint efforts and industry passed at once to his heirs, through the legal administration of his estate; while the wife was turned off with a bare life estate in one-third of the real property standing in his name at the time of his decease.
The gross injustice of these laws began to excite attention soon after the adoption of the new constitution in the state of New York, in 1846. The first step towards their modification was taken in the legislature of 1844-5, when certain recognitions of the property rights of married women were enacted into laws; and in other states attention about that time began to be turned in the same direction. These were the beginning of the series of laws since enacted in nearly all the states as well as in the dominions and provinces of the British Empire, by which the old and absurd and barbarous features of the old common law of England applicable to married women have been to a large extent abrogated. But this result has been the work of years of earnest thought, earnest labor and earnest devotion to the principles of right and justice, upon which it is our boast that all our laws are based.
REFORM BEGINS.
To Ansel Bascom, a lawyer of Seneca Falls, a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1846 and of the first legislature following its adoption, and to David Dudley Field, a distinguished citizen of the state, were largely due the modifications in the laws relating to married women which began about that time. These gentlemen were also largely instrumental in securing the adoption of the reformed code of practice in the courts, which has since been substantially enacted in nearly all the states of the Union. But women themselves had much to do in this most important work. Two of them were Lucretia Mott, a well-known Quaker preacher of those days, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, wife of Henry B. Stanton and daughter of Daniel Cady, an eminent lawyer and judge. These ladies had been delegates to an anti-slavery convention in London, to which they were refused admission on account of being women, and they mutually resolved to enter upon an effort to secure an amelioration in the laws relating to the legal and property rights of their sex. They even went further and asked that the constitutions of the several states should be so amended, that to women should be extended the right to vote and even to hold office. That was a new thing under the sun. It was the beginning of what has since been so widely known as the women’s rights movement, the agitation of which has occupied a large place in the public discussions of the last half century.
WOMEN TO THE FRONT.
The first public meeting to bring these questions prominently before the country was held in the Wesleyan Chapel, in Seneca Falls, on the 19th day of July, 1848. It was attended by the ladies I have mentioned, by Mr. Bascom, by Mr. Thomas McClintoch, a Quaker preacher and member of his family, by several clergymen, and other persons of some prominence in the village. Frederick Douglass was also present. Mr. James Mott, the husband of Lucretia, presided, and that lady opened the meeting with a careful statement of women’s wrongs and grievances and made a demand for their redress. Mr. Stanton read a clearly written paper to the same purport and reported a woman’s declaration of independence, in which her wrongs were fully set forth and her rights as fully insisted upon and proclaimed. The position was boldly taken that the ballot should be placed in her hands on a perfect equality with man himself, as only through the ballot could her rights be effectually asserted and maintained. The discussion lasted through two days, and the declaration was signed by fifty women and about the same number of men. The papers over the country generally noticed the gathering, and with few exceptions ridiculed the whole movement, while bearing testimony to the earnestness of those engaged in it.
Two weeks later, a second meeting of the same character was held in Rochester; and this one, as showing signs of progress, was presided over by a woman, the first event of the kind that had occurred up to that date, although since then it has become a common occurrence, and as a general rule it has been found that women make excellent presiding officers. Several new recruits were enlisted at the Rochester meeting, both women and men, among the latter being the Rev. William Henry Channing, a popular Unitarian clergyman of that city. The Rochester meeting fully endorsed the resolutions and declaration of independence of the Seneca Falls meeting, and from that time the new movement of women’s rights was fully launched upon the great ocean of public discussion and public opinion. Lucretia Mott and Mrs. Stanton were the acknowledged leaders; but soon other advocates of wide influence were enrolled in the cause, and its influence from that day has continued to widen and extend, until it now includes men and women of great distinction and power in every English-speaking country in the world.