Since the women had had experience of oppression and slavery, and since they, like negroes, were struggling for the recognition of their “human rights,” they were amongst the most zealous opponents of “slavery,” and belonged to the most enthusiastic defenders of “freedom” and “justice.”
Among the Quakers, who played a very prominent part in the anti-slavery movement, man and woman had the same rights in all respects in the home and church. When the first anti-slavery society was formed in Boston in 1832, twelve women immediately became members.
The principle of the equality of the sexes, which the Quakers held, was opposed by the majority of the population, who held to the Puritanic principle of woman’s subordination to man. In consequence of this principle it was at that time considered “monstrous” that a woman should speak from a public platform. Against Abby Kelly, who at that time was one of the best anti-slavery speakers, a sermon was preached from the pulpit from the text: “This Jezebel has come into the midst of us.” She was called a “hyena”; it was related that she had been intoxicated in a saloon, etc. When her political associate, Angelina Grimke, held an anti-slavery meeting in Pennsylvania Hall (Philadelphia) in 1837, the hall was set on fire, and in 1838 in the chamber of the House of Representatives in Massachusetts a mob threatened to take her life. “The mob howled, the press hissed, and the pulpit thundered,” thus the proceedings were described by Lucy Stone, the woman’s rights advocate.
Even the educated classes shared the prejudice against woman. To them she was a “human being of the second order.” The following is an illustration of this:
In 1840 Abby Kelly was elected to a committee. She was urged, however, to decline the election. “If you regard me as incompetent, then I shall leave.” “Oh, no, not exactly that,” was the answer. “Well, what is it then?” “But you are a woman....” “That is no reason; therefore I remain.”
In the same year an anti-slavery congress was held in England. A number of American champions of the cause went to London,—among them three women, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Elizabeth Pease. They were accompanied by their husbands and came as delegates of the “National Anti-slavery Society.” Since the Congress was dominated by the English clergy, who persisted in their belief in the “inferiority” of woman, the three American women, being creatures without political rights, were not permitted to perform their duties as delegates, but were directed to leave the convention hall and to occupy places in the spectators’ gallery. But the noble William Lloyd Garrison silently registered a protest by sitting with the women in the gallery.
This procedure clearly indicated to the American women what their next duty should be, and once when Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton came from the gallery to the hotel Mrs. Stanton said, “The first thing which we must do upon our return is to call a convention to discuss the slavery of woman.”
This plan, however, was not executed till eight years later. At that time Elizabeth Cady Stanton, on the occasion of a visit from Lucretia Mott, summoned a number of acquaintances to her home in Seneca Falls, New York. In giving an account of the meeting at Washington, in 1888, at the Conference of Pioneers of the International Council of Women (see Report, pp. 323, 324), she states that she and Lucretia Mott had drawn up the grievances of woman under eighteen headings with the American Declaration of Independence as a model, and that it was her wish to submit a suffrage resolution to the meeting, but that Lucretia Mott herself refused to have it presented.
Nevertheless, in the meeting Elizabeth Cady Stanton herself, burning with enthusiasm, introduced her resolution concerning woman’s right to vote, and, as she reports, the resolution was adopted unanimously. A few days later the newspaper reports appeared. “There was,” relates Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “not a single paper from Maine to Louisiana which did not contain our Declaration of Independence and present the matter as ludicrous. My good father came from New York on the night train to see whether I had lost my mind. I was overwhelmed with ridicule. A great number of women who signed the Declaration withdrew their signatures. I felt very much humiliated, so much the more, since I knew that I was right.... For all that I should probably have allowed myself to be subdued if I had not soon afterward met Susan B. Anthony, whom we call the Napoleon of our woman’s suffrage movement.”
Susan B. Anthony, the brave old lady, who in spite of her eighty-three years did not dread the long journey from the United States to Berlin, and in June, 1904, attended the meetings of the International Council of Women and the International Woman’s Suffrage Alliance, was in early life a teacher in Rochester, New York, and participated in the temperance movement. She had assisted in securing twenty-eight thousand signatures to a petition, providing for the regulation of the sale of alcohol, which was presented to the New York State Legislature. Susan B. Anthony was in the gallery during the discussion of the petition, and as she saw how one speaker scornfully threw the petition to the floor and exclaimed, “Who is it that demands such laws? They are only women and children...,” she vowed to herself that she would not rest content until a woman’s signature to a petition should have the same weight as that of a man. And she faithfully kept her word. After a life of unceasing and unselfish work, Susan B. Anthony died March 13, 1906, loved and esteemed by all who knew her. At the commemoration services in 1907, twenty-four thousand dollars were subscribed for the Susan B. Anthony Memorial Fund (to be used for woman’s suffrage propaganda). Susan B. Anthony was honorary president of the International Woman’s Suffrage Alliance.