History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I

by Unknown

The limits of a written communication will forbid me to say much, and I would address myself to a single point broached in your Albany Convention, and a point that seems to me of the first importance; because a mistake in morals, a wrong perpetrated in the home relations, is the greatest of all wrongs to humanity. And marred, indeed, would be your triumph, if, in preventing the repeal of one unjust statute, you sanction the enactment of another. So true it is that one injustice becomes the source of another, I fear to contemplate the enactment of a trifling encroachment even upon inalienable rights or divinely sanctioned pursuits.

In addressing myself to the position that "drunkenness be made a good and sufficient cause for divorce," I am secured from any fear that you will regard me as warring with abstractions, since such a bill has found its way into your Legislature, proving that the popular sympathy for suffering women and children is already concentrating on divorce as the remedy. I have hesitated about addressing you on this subject, lest I might render myself obnoxious to the charge of diverting the objects of your meeting, to an occasion for the discussion of forbidden topics. But an irresistible conviction, that since the subject is already launched upon your reform, it is important that a just view of its bearings should be presented, impels me to throw myself upon your sympathy, trusting in the divine power of truth to commend both my motives and my positions to your judgments and your hearts.

And first, let me say, I would not be understood as opposed to emancipating the wretched victims of irremediable abuse. And if there be a benevolence, under the warm heaven of Almighty Love, it is the protecting of helplessness and innocence from the sufferings that result, inevitably, from the rum traffic. But while I fully agree with Mrs. Stanton, that no pure-hearted and understanding woman can innocently become the mother of a drunkard's offspring—while I rely upon the general diffusion of physiological truths to create a sentiment abhorrent to the idea of raising a posterity, the breath of whose life shall be derived from the animalized and morally tainted vitality of the drunkard—I differ with her in the remedy proposed.

If drunkenness were irremediable, and beyond the reach of legislation, then would I accept her remedy as the final resort. But regarding divorce as, at best, only affording a choice of evils, and drunkenness as equally within the power of legislation, I propose that drunkenness be legislated out of existence, and thus the necessity for divorce, which it creates, be avoided.

Let a thoroughly prohibitive law destroy the traffic, and the drunkard will be found "clothed" again and "in his right mind." It will come to this glorious consummation at last; and, though years may intervene, it becomes us to act with reference to the discerned future, and beware that transient evils do not betray us into planting life-long regrets. Allow me to illustrate my idea by narrating incidents of a case in point, and which is inwoven with the recollections and tenderest sympathies of my whole life.

The young and lovely mother of five little ones procured a divorce from her husband, whose incompetency and unkindness was the result solely of intemperance, and that intemperance the consequence of his strong social bias and inability to resist the temptations of a period, when every man put the bottle to his neighbor's month as proof of his generosity, his friendship, and his good-breeding. His father, on whom the family were dependent for support, urged it upon the wife, as a duty to her children and due to her own self-respect, to procure a divorce, when, at last, the miserable husband had been sent to prison for a forgery, involving a small sum, and which he had thought to meet—before the note came to maturity—undetected.

She submitted, and, before the period of his imprisonment expired, married again, by the advice and persuasion of her kind father-in-law, to a wealthy and excellent man, who offered a father's care and home to her children, in proof of his affection for herself. But the heart never yielded its first love; and, when more than twenty years had passed, she confessed to a friend "that, should he reform at the eleventh hour, she must be the most wretched of women." He did reform! and for many years has exhibited those cheerful graces of the Christian, which, added to his naturally amiable disposition and unselfish deportment, make his three-score and tenth year seem rather the morning than the evening of a life, stretching far away into the glories of eternity.

And now, tell me, friends, if the picture of that youthful affection, strengthened and intensified in the hearts of both by long years of unavailing regret, does not awaken in you a conviction of some better way for protecting helpless women and children from the evils of drunkenness? Oh, say, can you calmly contemplate the hundreds and thousands of hearts which would throb with repressed anguish, when the wretchedness which drove them to divorce shall have vanished with the doomed traffic, and reformed men, by the strong arm of law, reclaim their children from the weeping Rachels of the land?

But think not, friends, that I am unmindful of the misery of years, or months even, when I plead that divorce shall not be made the necessity of hunted and betrayed affections, the factitious barrier against abuse and starvation. I present to your consideration a remedy equally effective, and far more grateful to the delicate sensibilities and hopeful affection of the woman and the wife—a remedy which possesses the merit of a preventive power, and the collateral security of a reclaiming influence.

The advantage proposed to be secured to the wife of the drunkard, by divorce, is the release from his control of her property and person. Secure to the innocent and suffering wife the guardianship of her children, and the control of her own earnings—in short, make her a free, instead of a bond-woman—and you secure to the family of the drunkard all the alleviation in the power of legislation, and without compelling the wife, from pecuniary necessity or self-immolating regard for her children, to sever her conjugal relation, and quench the hope of a future of rational companionship.