I went into Boston on Tuesday, with Lucy Stone, to attend the Convention. We stopped at Francis Jackson's, where we found Antoinette Brown and Ellen Blackwell. A pleasant company in that most hospitable home. The Convention passed off pleasantly, but with none of the enthusiasm we have in our New York meetings. As this was my first visit to Boston, Mr. Jackson took Antoinette and myself round to see the lions; to the House of Correction, the House of Reformation, the Merchant's Exchange, the Custom-House, State House, and Faneuil Hall, and then dined with his daughter, Eliza J. Eddy, in South Boston, returning in the afternoon. Lucy and Antoinette left, one for New York and the other for Brookfield. In the evening, Ellen Blackwell and I attended a reception at Mr. Garrison's, where we met several of the literati, and were most heartily welcomed by Mrs. Garrison, a noble, self-sacrificing woman, the loving and the loved, surrounded with healthy, happy children in that model home. Mr. Garrison was omnipresent now talking and introducing guests, now soothing some child to sleep, and now, with his charming wife, looking after the refreshments. There we met Mrs. Dall, Elizabeth Peabody, Mrs. McCready, the Shakespearian reader, Mrs. Severance, Dr. Hunt, Charles F. Hovey, Francis Jackson, Wendell Phillips, Sarah Pugh, of Philadelphia, and others. Having worshiped these distinguished people afar off, it was a great satisfaction to see so many face to face.
On Saturday morning, in company with Mr. and Mrs. Garrison and Sarah Pugh, I visited Mount Auburn. What a magnificent resting-place this is! We could not find Margaret Fuller's monument, which I regretted. I spent Sunday with Charles Lenox Remond; we drove to Lynn with matchless steeds to hear Theodore Parker preach. What a sermon! our souls were filled. We discussed its excellence at James Buffum's, where, with other friends, we dined. Visited the steamer Africa next day, in which Ellen Blackwell was soon to sail for Liverpool.
Monday Mr. Garrison escorted me to Charlestown; we stood on the very spot where Warren fell, and mounted the interminable staircase to the top of Bunker Hill Monument, where we had an extensive view of the harbor and surrounding country. Then we called on Theodore Parker; found him up three flights of stairs in his library, covering that whole floor of his house; the room is lined all round with books to the very top—16,000 volumes—and there, at a large table in the center of the apartment, sat the great man himself. It really seemed audacious in me to be ushered into such a presence, and on such a commonplace errand, to ask him to come to Rochester to speak in a course of lectures I am planning. But he received me with such kindness and simplicity, that the awe I felt on entering was soon dissipated. I then called on Wendell Phillips, in his sanctum, for the same purpose. I have invited Ralph Waldo Emerson by letter, and all three have promised to come. In the evening, with Mr. Jackson's son James, the most diffident and sensitive man I ever saw, Miss B—— and I went to the theater to see Dussendoff, the great tragedian, play Hamlet. The theater is new, the scenery beautiful, and, in spite of my Quaker training, I find I enjoy all these worldly amusements intensely.
Returning to Worcester, I attended the Anti-Slavery Bazaar. I suppose there were many beautiful things exhibited, but I was so absorbed in the conversation of Mr. Higginson, Samuel May, Jr., Sarah Earle, Cousin Dr. Seth Rogers, Stephen and Abby Foster, that I really forgot to take a survey of the tables. The next day Charles F. Hovey drove me out to the home of the Fosters, where we had a pleasant call.
Francis Jackson and Charles F. Hovey, though neither speakers nor writers, yet they furnished the "sinews of war." None contributed more generously than they to all the reforms of their times. They were the first men to make a bequest to our movement. To them we are indebted for the money that enabled us to carry on the agitation for years. Beside giving liberally from time to time, Francis Jackson left $5,000 in the hands of Wendell Phillips, which he managed and invested so wisely, that the fund was nearly doubled. Charles F. Hovey left $50,000 to be used in anti-slavery, woman suffrage, and free religion. With the exception of $1,000 from Lydia Maria Child, we have yet to hear of a woman of wealth who has left anything for the enfranchisement of her sex. Almost every daily paper heralds the fact of some large bequest to colleges, churches, and charities by rich women, but it is proverbial that they never remember the Woman Suffrage movement that underlies in importance all others.
HEARING BEFORE THE MASSACHUSETTS LEGISLATURE,
MARCH, 1857.
The Boston Traveller says: The Representatives Hall yesterday afternoon was completely filled, galleries and all, to hear the arguments before the Judiciary Committee, to whom was referred the petition of Lucy Stone and others for equal rights for "females" in the administration of government, for the right of suffrage, etc.
Rev. James Freeman Clarke was the first speaker. He said: Gentlemen, the question before you is, Shall the women of Massachusetts have equal rights with the men? The fundamental principles of the Constitution set forth equal rights to all. A large portion of the property of Massachusetts is owned by women, probably one-third of the whole amount, and yet they are not represented, though compelled to pay taxes. It has been said they are represented by their husbands. So it was said that the American colonies were represented in the British Parliament, but the colonies were not contented with such representation; neither are women contented to be represented by men. As long as we put woman's name on the tax-list we should put it in the ballot-box.
Wendell Phillips said: Self-government was the foundation of our institutions. July 4, 1776, sent the message round the world that every man can take care of himself better than any one else can do it for him. If you tax me, consult me. If you hang me, first try me by a jury of my own peers. What I ask for myself, I ask for woman. In the banks, a woman, as a stockholder, is allowed to vote. In the Bank of England, in the East India Company, in State Street, her power is felt, her voice controls millions.
Three hundred years ago it was said woman had no right to profess any religion, as it would make discord in the family if she differed from her husband. The same conservatism warns us of the danger of allowing her any political opinions.
Lucy Stone said: The argument that the wife, having the right of suffrage, would cause discord in the family, is entirely incorrect. When men wish to procure the vote of a neighbor, do they not approach them with the utmost suavity, and would not the husband who wished to influence the wife's vote be far more gracious than usual? She instanced the heroic conduct of Mrs. Patton, who navigated her husband's ship into the harbor of San Francisco, as an argument in favor of woman's power of command and of government. The captain and mate lying ill with a fever, she had the absolute control of both vessel and crew. Mrs. Stone's speech was comprehensive and pointed, and called forth frequent applause.
Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, a woman of wealth and position, protested every year against being compelled to pay taxes while not recognized in the government.
DR. HUNT'S PROTEST OF 1852.
To Frederick W. Tracy, Treasurer, and the Assessors, and other Authorities of the city of Boston, and the Citizens generally:
Harriot K. Hunt, physician, a native and permanent resident of the city of Boston, and for many years a taxpayer therein, in making payment of her city taxes for the coming year, begs leave to protest against the injustice and inequality of levying taxes upon women, and at the same time refusing them any voice or vote in the imposition and expenditure of the same. The only classes of male persons required to pay taxes, and not at the same time allowed the privilege of voting, are aliens and minors. The objection in the case of aliens is their supposed want of interest in our institutions and knowledge of them. The objection in the case of minors, is the want of sufficient understanding. These objections can not apply to women, natives of the city, all of whose property interests are here, and who have accumulated, by their own sagacity and industry, the very property on which they are taxed. But this is not all; the alien, by going through the forms of naturalization, the minor on coming of age, obtain the right of voting; and so long as they continue to pay a mere poll-tax of a dollar and a half, they may continue to exercise it, though so ignorant as not to be able to sign their names, or read the very votes they put into the ballot-boxes. Even drunkards, felons, idiots, and lunatics, if men, may still enjoy that right of voting to which no woman, however large the amount of taxes she pays, however respectable her character, or useful her life, can ever attain. Wherein, your remonstrant would inquire, is the justice, equality, or wisdom of this?
That the rights and interests of the female part of the community are sometimes forgotten or disregarded in consequence of their deprivation of political rights, is strikingly evinced, as appears to your remonstrant, in the organization and administration of the city public schools. Though there are open in this State and neighborhood, a great multitude of colleges and professional schools for the education of boys and young men, yet the city has very properly provided two High-Schools of its own, one Latin, the other English, in which the "male graduates" of the Grammar Schools may pursue their education still farther at the public expense. And why is not a like provision made for the girls? Why is their education stopped short, just as they have attained the age best fitted for progress, and the preliminary knowledge necessary to facilitate it, thus giving the advantage of superior culture to sex, not to mind?
The fact that our colleges and professional schools are closed against females, of which your remonstrant has had personal and painful experience; having been in the year 1847, after twelve years of medical practice in Boston, refused permission to attend the lectures of Harvard Medical College. That fact would seem to furnish an additional reason why the city should provide, at its own expense, those means of superior education which, by supplying our girls with occupation and objects of interest, would not only save them from lives of frivolity and emptiness, but which might open the way to many useful and lucrative pursuits, and so raise them above that degrading dependence, so fruitful a source of female misery.
Reserving a more full exposition of the subject to future occasions, your remonstrant, in paying her tax for the current year, begs leave to protest against the injustice and inequalities above pointed out.
Harriot K. Hunt,
32 Green Street, Boston, Mass.This is respectfully submitted,
Harriot K. Hunt commenced the practice of medicine at the age of thirty, in 1835; twelve years after, was refused admission to Harvard Medical Lectures. She often said that as her love element had all centered in her profession, she intended to celebrate her silver wedding, which she did, in the summer of 1860. Her house was crowded with a large circle of loving friends, who decorated it with flowers and many bridal offerings, thus expressing their esteem and affection for the first woman physician, who had done so much to relieve the sufferings of women and children. The degree of M.D. was conferred on her by "The Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania," in 1853. Her biographer says she honored the title more than the title could her.
MARRIAGE OF LUCY STONE UNDER PROTEST.
It was my privilege to celebrate May day by officiating at a wedding in a farm-house among the hills of West Brookfield. The bridegroom was a man of tried worth, a leader in the Western Anti-Slavery Movement; and the bride was one whose fair name is known throughout the nation; one whose rare intellectual qualities are excelled by the private beauty of her heart and life.
I never perform the marriage ceremony without a renewed sense of the iniquity of our present system of laws in respect to marriage; a system by which "man and wife are one, and that one is the husband." It was with my hearty concurrence, therefore, that the following protest was read and signed, as a part of the nuptial ceremony; and I send it to you, that others may be induced to do likewise.
Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
PROTEST.
While acknowledging our mutual affection by publicly assuming the relationship of husband and wife, yet in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem it a duty to declare that this act on our part implies no sanction of, nor promise of voluntary obedience to such of the present laws of marriage, as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess. We protest especially against the laws which give to the husband:
1. The custody of the wife's person.
2. The exclusive control and guardianship of their children.
3. The sole ownership of her personal, and use of her real estate, unless previously settled upon her, or placed in the hands of trustees, as in the case of minors, lunatics, and idiots.
4. The absolute right to the product of her industry.
5. Also against laws which give to the widower so much larger and more permanent an interest in the property of his deceased wife, than they give to the widow in that of the deceased husband.
6. Finally, against the whole system by which "the legal existence of the wife is suspended during marriage," so that in most States, she neither has a legal part in the choice of her residence, nor can she make a will, nor sue or be sued in her own name, nor inherit property.
We believe that personal independence and equal human rights can never be forfeited, except for crime; that marriage should be an equal and permanent partnership, and so recognized by law; that until it is so recognized, married partners should provide against the radical injustice of present laws, by every means in their power.
We believe that where domestic difficulties arise, no appeal should be made to legal tribunals under existing laws, but that all difficulties should be submitted to the equitable adjustment of arbitrators mutually chosen.
Thus reverencing law, we enter our protest against rules and customs which are unworthy of the name, since they violate justice, the essence of law.
(Signed), Henry. B. Blackwell,
Lucy Stone.Worcester Spy, 1855.
To the above The Liberator appended the following:
We are very sorry (as will be a host of others) to lose Lucy Stone, and certainly no less glad to gain Lucy Blackwell. Our most fervent benediction upon the heads of the parties thus united.