History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I

by Unknown

1. Should not all women living in States where woman has the right to hold property refuse to pay taxes, so long as she is unrepresented in the government of that State?

Such a movement, if simultaneous, would no doubt produce a great deal of confusion, litigation, and suffering on the part of woman; but shall we fear to suffer for the maintenance of the same glorious principle for which our forefathers fought, bled, and died? Shall we deny the faith of the old Revolutionary heroes, and purchase for ourselves a false power and ignoble ease, by declaring in action that taxation without representation is just? Ah, no! like the English Dissenters and high-souled Quakers of our own land, let us suffer our property to be seized and sold, but let us never pay another tax until our existence as citizens, our civil and political rights be fully recognized.... The poor, crushed slave, but yesterday toiling on the rice plantation in Georgia, a beast, a chattel, a thing, is to-day, in the Empire State (if he own a bit of land and a shed to cover him), a person, and may enjoy the proud honor of paying into the hand of the complaisant tax-gatherer the sum of seventy-five cents. Even so with the white woman—the satellite of the dinner-pot, the presiding genius of the wash-tub, the seamstress, the teacher, the gay butterfly of fashion, the feme covert of the law, man takes no note of her through all these changing scenes. But, lo! to-day, by the fruit of her industry, she becomes the owner of a house and lot, and now her existence is remembered and recognized, and she too may have the privilege of contributing to the support of this mighty Republic, for the "white male citizen claims of her one dollar and seventy-five cents a year, because, under the glorious institutions of this free and happy land, she has been able, at the age of fifty years, to possess herself of a property worth the enormous sum of three hundred dollars. It is natural to suppose she will answer this demand on her joyously and promptly, for she must, in view of all her rights and privileges so long enjoyed, consider it a great favor to be permitted to contribute thus largely to the governmental treasury.

One thing is certain, this course will necessarily involve a good deal of litigation, and we shall need lawyers of our own sex whose intellects, sharpened by their interests, shall be quick to discover the loopholes of retreat. Laws are capable of many and various constructions; we find among men that as they have new wants, that as they develop into more enlarged views of justice, the laws are susceptible of more generous interpretation, or changed altogether; that is, all laws touching their own interests; for while man has abolished hanging for theft, imprisonment for debt, and secured universal suffrage for himself, a married woman, in most of the States in the Union, remains a nonentity in law—can own nothing; can be whipped and locked up by her lord; can be worked without wages, be robbed of her inheritance, stripped of her children, and left alone and penniless; and all this, they say, according to law. Now, it is quite time that we have these laws revised by our own sex, for man does not yet feel that what is unjust for himself, is also unjust for woman. Yes, we must have our own lawyers, as well as our physicians and priests. Some of our women should go at once into this profession, and see if there is no way by which we may shuffle off our shackles and assume our civil and political rights. We can not accept man's interpretation of the law.

2. Do not sound philosophy and long experience teach us that man and woman should be educated together? This isolation of the sexes in all departments, in the business and pleasure of life, is an evil greatly to be deplored. We see its bad effects on all sides. Look at our National Councils. Would men, as statesmen, ever have enacted such scenes as the Capitol of our country has witnessed, had the feminine element been fairly represented in their midst? Are all the duties of husband and father to be made subservient to those of statesman and politician? How many of these husbands return to their homes as happy and contented, as pure and loving, as when they left? Not one in ten.... Experience has taught us that man has discovered the most profitable branches of industry, and we demand a place by his side. Inasmuch, therefore, as we have the same objects in life, namely, the full development of all our powers, and should, to some extent, have the same employments, we need precisely the same education; and we therefore claim that the best colleges of our country be open to us.... This point, the education of boys and girls together, is a question of the day; it was prominent at the late Educational Convention in Newark, and it is fitting that in our Convention it should be fully discussed. My ground is, that the boy and the girl, the man and the woman, should be always together in the business and pleasures of life, sharing alike its joys and sorrows, its distinction and fame; nor will they ever be harmoniously developed until they are educated together, physically, intellectually, and morally.

I hope, therefore, that in the proposed People's College, some place will be provided where women can be educated side by side with man. There is no better test of the spirituality of a man, than is found in his idea of the true woman. Men having separated themselves from women in the business of life, and thus made their natures coarse by contact with their own sex exclusively, now demand separate pleasures too; and in lieu of the cheerful family circle, its books, games, music, and pleasant conversation, they congregate in clubs to discuss politics, gamble, drink, etc., in those costly, splendid establishments, got up for such as can not find sufficient excitement in their own parlors or studios. It seems never to enter the heads of these fashionable husbands, that the hours drag as heavily with their fashionable wives, as they sit alone, night after night, in their solitary elegance, wholly given up to their own cheerless reflections; for what subjects of thought have they? Gossip and fashion will do for talk, but not for thought. Their theology is too gloomy and shadowy to afford them much pleasure in contemplation; their religion is a thing of form and not of life, so it brings them no joy or satisfaction. As to the reforms of the day, they are too genteel to feel much interest in them. There is no class more pitiable than the unoccupied woman of fashion thrown wholly upon herself.... Does not the abuse of the religious element in woman demand our earnest attention and investigation?

Priestcraft did not end with the beginning of the reign of Protestantism. Woman has always been the greatest dupe, because the sentiments act blindly, and they alone have been educated in her. Her veneration, not guided by an enlightened intellect, leads her as readily to the worship of saints, pictures, holy days, and inspired men and books, as of the living God and the everlasting principles of Justice, Mercy, and Truth.

There is the Education Society, in which women who can barely read and write and speak their own language correctly, form sewing societies, and beg funds to educate a class of lazy, inefficient young men for the ministry, who, starting in life on the false principle that it is a blessing to escape physical labor, begin at once to live on their piety. What is the result? Why, after going through college, theological seminaries, and a brief struggle at fitting up skeleton sermons, got up by older heads for the benefit of beginners, and after preaching them for a season to those who hunger and thirst for light and truth, they sink down into utter insignificance, too inefficient to keep a place, and too lazy to earn the salt to their porridge, whilst the women work on to educate more for the same destiny. Look at the long line of benevolent societies, all filled with these male agents, living, like so many leeches, on the religious element in our natures, most of them from the ranks of the clergy, who, unable to build up or keep a church, have taken refuge in some of these theological asylums for the intellectually maimed, halt, and blind of this profession.

Woman really thinks she is doing God service when she casts her mite into their treasury, when in fact not one-tenth of all the funds raised ever reach the ultimate object. Among the clergy we find our most violent enemies—those most opposed to any change in woman's position; yet no sooner does one of these find himself out of place and pocket, than, if all the places in the various benevolent societies chance to be occupied, he takes a kind of philanthropic survey of the whole habitable globe, and forthwith forms a Female Benevolent Society for the conversion of the Jews, perhaps, or for sending the Gospel to the Feejee Islands, and he is, in himself, the law for one and the gospel for the other. Now, the question is, not whether the Jews are converted, or whether the Gospel ever reaches the islands, but, Does the agent flourish? Is his post profitable? And does woman beg and stitch faithfully for his support and for the promotion of his glorious mission?

Now, I ask women with all seriousness, considering that we have little to give, had we not better bestow our own charities with our own hands? And instead of sending our benevolent outgushings in steamers to parts unknown, had we not better let them flow in streams whose length and breadth we can survey at pleasure, knowing their source and where they empty themselves? Instead of any further efforts in behalf of a pin-cushion ministry, I conjure my countrywomen to devote themselves from this hour to the education, elevation, and enfranchisement of their own sex. If the same amount of devotion and self-sacrifice could be given in this direction now poured out on the churches, another generation would give us a nobler type of womanhood than any yet molded by any Bishop, Priest, or Pope.

Woman in her present ignorance is made to rest in the most distorted views of God and the Bible and the laws of her being; and like the poor slave "Uncle Tom," her religion, instead of making her noble and free, and impelling her to flee from all gross surroundings, by the false lessons of her spiritual teachers, by the wrong application of great principles of right and justice, has made her bondage but more certain and lasting, her degradation more helpless and complete.