Gerrit Smith.
Cordially yours,
WASHINGTON NOTES.
BY GRACE GREENWOOD.
When I said that in the dull languor of our summer collapse we felt none of your fierce Northern excitements, I should have excepted the Anthony suffrage case. That touched nearly if not deeply. The ark of the holy political covenant resting here—the sacred mules that draw it being stabled in the Capitol for half a year at a time—the woman who has laid unsanctified hands upon it, is naturally regarded with peculiar horror. I did not take exception to the Times' article of June 19th on this case. It was mild and courteous in tone, and the view taken of the XIV. Amendment plea seems to me the only sound one. I certainly do not want to get into your political preserves by any quibble or dodge. I want my right there freely granted and guaranteed, and will be politely treated when I come, or I won't stay. The promised land of justice and equality is not to be reached by a short cut. I fear we have a large part of the forty years of struggle and zigzaging before us yet. I am pretty sure our Moses has not appeared. I think he will be a woman. Often the way seems dark, as well as long, when I see so much fooling with the great question of woman's claims to equal educational advantages with men; to just remuneration for good work, especially in teaching, and fair credit for her share in the patriotic and benevolent enterprises of the age. I do not say that equal pay for equal services will never be accorded to woman, even in the civil service, till she has the ballot to back her demand; but that is the private opinion of many high Government officials. I do not say that woman's right to be represented, as well as taxed, will never be recognized as a logical practical result of the democratic principle till the Democrats come in power. But it may be so. The Gospel was first offered to the Jews, but first accepted by the Gentiles.
In your article, fair as it was in spirit, you failed to touch upon two points which struck me rather painfully. It seems that Judge Hunt, after pronouncing a learned, and, I suppose, a sound opinion, peremptorily ordered the jury to bring the defendant in guilty. Now, could not twelve honest, intelligent jurymen be trusted to defend their birthright against one woman? Why such zeal, such more than Roman sternness? Again, in the trial of the inspectors of election, why were both judge and jurymen so merciful? No verdict of guilty was ordered, and the council of twelve who had seen fit to punish Miss Anthony by a fine of $100 and costs, merely mulcted in the modest sum of $25, each defenseless defendant sinning against light. Was it that they considered in their manly clemency the fact that women have superior facilities for earning money, or did they give heed to the old, old excuse, "The woman tempted me, and I did register"?
It surely is strange that such severe penalties should be visited on a woman, for a first and only indiscretion in the suffrage line, when a man may rise up on election morning and go forth, voting and to vote. If he be of an excitable and mercurial nature, one of the sort of citizens which sweet Ireland empties on us by the county, he may sportively flit about among the polls, from ward to ward, of the metropolis, and no man says to him nay; he may even travel hilariously from city to city, with free passes and free drinks—who treats Miss Anthony?—making festive calls, and dropping ballots for cards, and no disturbance comes of it—he is neither fined nor confined. So, it would seem, "a little voting is a dangerous thing."
Say what you will, the whole question of woman's status in the State and the Church, in society and the family, is full of absurd contradictions and monstrous anomalies. We are so responsible, yet irresponsible—we are idols, we are idiots—we are everything, we are nothing. We are the Caryatides, rearing up the entablature of the temple of liberty we are never allowed to enter. We may plot against a government, and hang for it; but if we help to found and sustain a government by patriotic effort and devotion, by toil and hardship, by courage, loyalty, and faith, by the sacrifice of those nearest and dearest to us, and then venture to clutch at the crumbs that fall from the table where our Masters Jonathan, Patrick, Hans, and Sambo sit at feast, you arrest us, imprison us, try us, fine us, and then add injury to insult, by calling us old, ugly, and fanatical.
One is forcibly reminded of the sermon of the colored brother on woman, the heads of which discourse were: "Firstly. What am woman? Secondly. Whar did she come from? Thirdly. Who does she belong to? Fourthly. Which way am she gwine to?"
The law and the Gospel have settled the "secondly" and "thirdly." Woman came from man, and belongs to him by the mortgage he holds on her through that spare-rib; but "firstly" and "fourthly" remain as profound and unsolvable questions as they were before the Ethiopian divine wrestled with them. But perhaps this troublous and perplexed existence is our "be-all and end-all"; that in the life beyond, man may foreclose that old mortgage and re-absorb woman into his glorified and all-sufficient being.