Woman and the Republic / A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost Advocates

by Helen Kendrick Johnson

In 1844, Rhode Island had passed property laws for married women. In 1848- 9 Connecticut and Texas, as well as New York, did so, apparently uninfluenced by anything except their "sense of justice." In 1850-'52 Alabama and Maine passed such laws. In 1853 New Hampshire, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Iowa changed their laws in this respect. They moved forward in this reform, as did the other States, before there was even a beginning of Suffrage agitation in them.

In 1847, Mrs. C. J. II. Nichols, who afterward became a Suffrage worker, addressed to the voters of Vermont a series of editorials setting forth the property disabilities of women. In October of that year, Hon. Larkin Mead, moved, he said, by her presentation, introduced a bill into the Senate, which, becoming a law, secured to the wife real estate owned by her at marriage, or acquired by gift, devise, or inheritance during marriage, with the rents, issues, and profits, as against any debts of the husband; but to make a sale or conveyance of either her realty or its use valid, it must be the joint act of husband and wife. She might by last will and testament dispose of her lands, tenements, hereditaments, and any interest therein descendable to her heirs, as if "sole." Mrs. Nichols says that in 1852 she drew up a petition signed by more than two hundred business men and tax-paying widows, asking the Legislature to make women voters in school matters. Mrs. Nichols's report is clear, sound, definite, and she seems to have been of real service, and to have won what she sought. She says, "Up to 1850 I had not taken position for suffrage, although I had shown the absurdity of regarding it as unwomanly." She appears to have done a great deal of clever as well as earnest and spirited talking in the West, after she had "taken position for suffrage," and she reports that, when she removed to Kansas, her claims were for "equal educational rights and privileges in all the schools and institutions of learning fostered or controlled by the State." "An equal right in all matters pertaining to the organization and conduct of the common schools." "Recognition of the mother's equal right with the father to the control and custody of their mutual offspring." "Protection in person, property, and earnings for married women and widows, the same as for men." The first three were fully granted, the fourth was changed as to "personal service." In her pleading for "political rights," she was associated with John O. Wattles, and the amendment they proposed was defeated in the Legislature.

Petitions for "Woman's Right" and changes of the laws were circulated in Massachusetts as early as 1848. In 1849, a year after the first Suffrage Convention, Ohio, Maine, Indiana, and Missouri, had passed laws giving to married women the right to their own earnings. A "Memorial" was sent by the Suffrage Association to the Ohio Constitutional Convention in 1850, from which I take the following: "We believe the whole theory of the common law in relation to woman is unjust and degrading." (Then follows political injustice.) "We would especially call your attention to the legal condition of married women." (Then follow general statements and quotations from the common law.) The attention of the memorialists was called by the proper authorities to the fact that the statute laws of Ohio had radically changed the general matters charged. In answering comment, Mrs. Coe said: "The committee were perfectly aware of the existence of the statutes mentioned, but did not see fit to incorporate them in the petition, not only on account of their great length, but because they do not at all invalidate the position which the petition affects to establish—the inequality of the sexes before the law; because if the wife departs from the conditions of the statutes, and thus comes under the common law, they are against her." She then adds: "There are other laws which might be mentioned, which really give woman an apparent advantage over man; yet, having no relevancy to the subject in the petition, we did not see fit to introduce them."

The ignorance displayed here is phenomenal. Common law is operative only in the absence of statute law. The Ohio statute (as with all statutes) superseded the common law; and if the woman "departs from the condition of the statute," she suffers the penalty prescribed therein, without reference to her previous position before the law.

One of the earliest demands made by the Suffrage Association was for a law that should allow of absolute divorce for drunkenness; and this was soon followed by demands for divorce for other causes. In presenting a petition to the New York Legislature, pressing these measures, Mrs. Stanton addressed the Assembly, and from her remarks I take the following words: "Allow me to call the attention of that party now so much interested in the slave of the Carolinas to the similarity in his condition and that of the mothers, wives, and daughters of the Empire State. The negro has no name. He is Cuffy Douglas, or Cuffy Brooks, just whose Cuffy he may chance to be. The woman has no name. She is Mrs. Richard Roe, or Mrs. John Doe, just whose Mrs. she may chance to be. Cuffy has no right to his earnings; he cannot buy or sell, nor make contracts, nor lay up anything that he can call his own. Mrs. Roe has no right to her earnings; she can neither buy, sell, nor make contracts, nor lay up anything that she can call her own. Cuffy has no right to his children; they may be bound out to cancel a father's debts of honor. The white unborn child, even by the last will of the father, may be placed under the guardianship of a stranger, a foreigner. Cuffy has no legal right to existence; he is subject to restraint and moderate chastisement. Mrs. Roe has no legal existence; she has not the best right to her person. The husband has the power to restrain and administer moderate chastisement. The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way. The negro's skin and the woman's sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man. The few social privileges which the man gives the woman, he makes up to the negro in civil rights. The woman may sit at the same table and eat with the white man; the free negro may hold property and vote."

It is difficult for our thought to reach the low level from which this comparison is made. It ignores all the moral and spiritual conceptions that gave rise to and hallow marriage. But looking upon marriage as a mere financial compact, and taking the laws even as they then were, a few things may be said. "Cuffy has no name that he can call his own." Elizabeth Cady Stanton has her own baptismal name, the name of her honored father, and that of her honored husband, and the opportunity to make those names more her own by personal achievement than any one's else. Her mother, her father, her husband, and her son are as dependent upon her for preserving the character and distinctiveness of that name, as she is upon them. Why Lucy Stone should have put inconvenience and indignity upon both herself and her husband for the sake of continuing to wear her father's name instead of assuming her husband's, I never could understand. She did not share the name she gave her child. And there is another distinction between the nameless Cuffy and the trebly-named Saxon woman. The husband's name was not thrust upon her. By uttering the simple monosyllable "No," she could decline to wear it. It was only as she consented to be mistress of a husband's heart and home that she passed from the condition of femme sole and acquired a title and an additional name. "Cuffy has no right to his earnings." This would be of less consequence to Cuffy if he had a right to his master's earnings. When a right to another's earnings goes along with the mutual relation toward a home of master and mistress, the difference between Cuffy and Mrs. Roe is unspeakable. "Cuffy cannot buy or sell, make contracts, nor lay up anything that he can call his own." If Cuffy had the right to prevent his master from buying, selling, making contracts, or laying up anything that he could call his own until Cuffy's wants had been provided for in the most ample manner, the world would have felt less moved over Cuffy's wrongs. "Cuffy has no right to his children." Mrs. Roe has a right to compel Mr. Roe to bestow his name upon her children, and to support the boys until they are twenty-one, and the girls forever. "Cuffy has no legal right to existence." Mrs. Roe has so much legal right to existence that she stands toward the State and toward her husband in the relation of a preferred creditor. The State cannot call upon her for its most arduous duties, which must however be performed in her behalf. Her husband cannot dispose of real property without her signature. If he dies solvent, nothing can prevent her taking a fair share of his estate, and he may give her the whole; but if he dies bankrupt, neither his will, nor the State, nor anything else, can make her pay one dollar of his debts. "Cuffy is subject to restraint and moderate chastisement." "The husband has the power to restrain and administer moderate chastisement." The public horsewhipping of a husband by his wife is a rare sight, but when it occurs the law is far more ready to overlook the breach of order than it is to permit the slightest attempt at assault and battery upon the wife. As the remaining statements have no reference to the laws, I may excuse myself from telling how strangely beneath the dignity of truth they seem to me. That they were urged in connection with a bill asking for divorce for drunkenness suggests that such a plea was made an entering wedge for the radical divorce measures that have been advocated in Suffrage conventions. Any State would, at that time, grant legal separation for a wife from a drunken husband, and would compel the husband to support the wife to the extent of his means.

This matter of easier divorce has been pressed steadily from the beginning, but with very little of the result that the Suffragists desired.

In the Convention of the National Council of Women, which met in Washington, D. C., in February, 1895, the Suffrage Associations were largely represented. Their committee on divorce reform consisted of Ellen Battelle Dietrick, Chairman, and Mary A. Livermore and Fanny B. Ames. Their report was, in part, as follows: "In accordance with the instructions of the Executive Committee of the Council, your chairman sent forty-eight letters to the Governors of States and Territories, asking each to call the attention of his legislature to the situation concerning divorce laws, and requesting the appointment of a committee to consider the matter, said committee to consist of an equal number of men and women."

Here it is the same old story. Theirs is not an intelligent presentment of changes desired, but simply a continued urging of women for personal share in the making of the laws. In commenting upon the refusal of the Governor of Iowa, among others, the Committee says: "And yet Iowa is one of the States which has recently formed a commission of men to consider making Iowa divorce laws uniform with those of all other States." The laws that make it possible for a woman divorced in one State to be looked upon in another State as still bound, were not petitioned against.

Uniformity in the divorce laws of the United States is one of the great legislative reforms that are moving slowly but surely; and with that, it appears, the Suffrage appeal has nothing to do. The Committee closed its report by saying: "We might as well face the fact that the official servants of the United States cherish frank contempt for woman's opinions and wishes, and that, too, in regard to a matter which concerns the welfare of women far more vitally than it does the welfare of men. The one thing we should deprecate is having men make any new laws or fresh provisions for women's protection."