Mrs. Stanton said:—A great idea of progress is near its consummation, when statesmen in the councils of the nation propose to frame it into statutes and constitutions; when Reverend Fathers recognize it by a new interpretation of their creeds and canons; when the Bar and Bench at its command set aside the legislation of centuries, and girls of twenty put their heels on the Cokes and Blackstones of the past.
Those who represent what is called "the Woman's Rights Movement," have argued their right to political equality from every standpoint of justice, religion, and logic, for the last twenty years. They have quoted the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bible, the opinions of great men and women in all ages; they have plead the theory of our government; suffrage a natural, inalienable right; shown from the lessons of history, that one class can not legislate for another; that disfranchised classes must ever be neglected and degraded; and that all privileges are but mockery to the citizen, until he has a voice in the making and administering of law. Such arguments have been made over and over in conventions and before the legislatures of the several States. Judges, lawyers, priests, and politicians have said again and again, that our logic was unanswerable, and although much nonsense has emanated from the male tongue and pen on this subject, no man has yet made a fair, argument on the other side. Knowing that we hold the Gibraltar rock of reason on this question, they resort to ridicule and petty objections. Compelled to follow our assailants, wherever they go, and fight them with their own weapons; when cornered with wit and sarcasm, some cry out, you have no logic on your platform, forgetting that we have no use for logic until they give us logicians at whom to hurl it, and if, for the pure love of it, we now and then rehearse the logic that is like a, b, c, to all of us, others cry out—the same old speeches we have heard these twenty years. It would be safe to say a hundred years, for they are the same our fathers used when battling old King George and the British Parliament for their right to representation, and a voice in the laws by which they were governed. There are no new arguments to be made on human rights, our work to-day is to apply to ourselves those so familiar to all; to teach man that woman is not an anomalous being, outside all laws and constitutions, but one whose rights are to be established by the same process of reason as that by which he demands his own.
When our Fathers made out their famous bill of impeachment against England, they specified eighteen grievances. When the women of this country surveyed the situation in their first convention, they found they had precisely that number, and quite similar in character; and reading over the old revolutionary arguments of Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Otis, and Adams, they found they applied remarkably well to their case. The same arguments made in this country for extending suffrage from time to time, to white men, native born citizens, without property and education, and to foreigners; the same used by John Bright in England, to extend it to a million new voters, and the same used by the great Republican party to enfranchise a million black men in the South, all these arguments we have to-day to offer for woman, and one, in addition, stronger than all besides, the difference in man and woman. Because man and woman are the complement of one another, we need woman's thought in national affairs to make a safe and stable government.
The Republican party to-day congratulates itself on having carried the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution, thus securing "manhood suffrage" and establishing an aristocracy of sex on this continent. As several bills to secure Woman's Suffrage in the District and the Territories have been already presented in both houses of Congress, and as by Mr. Julian's bill, the question of so amending the Constitution as to extend suffrage to all the women of the country has been presented to the nation for consideration, it is not only the right but the duty of every thoughtful woman to express her opinion on a Sixteenth Amendment. While I hail the late discussions in Congress and the various bills presented as so many signs of progress, I am especially gratified with those of Messrs. Julian and Pomeroy, which forbid any State to deny the right of suffrage to any of its citizens on account of sex or color.
This fundamental principle of our government—the equality of all the citizens of the republic—should be incorporated in the Federal Constitution, there to remain forever. To leave this question to the States and partial acts of Congress, is to defer indefinitely its settlement, for what is done by this Congress may be repealed by the next; and politics in the several States differ so widely, that no harmonious action on any question can ever be secured, except as a strict party measure. Hence, we appeal to the party now in power, everywhere, to end this protracted debate on suffrage, and declare it the inalienable right of every citizen who is amenable to the laws of the land, who pays taxes and the penalty of crime. We have a splendid theory of a genuine republic, why not realize it and make our government homogeneous, from Maine to California. The Republican party has the power to do this, and now is its only opportunity. Woman's Suffrage, in 1872, may be as good a card for the Republicans as Gen. Grant was in the last election. It is said that the Republican party made him President, not because they thought him the most desirable man in the nation for that office, but they were afraid the Democrats would take him if they did not. We would suggest, there may be the same danger of Democrats taking up Woman Suffrage if they do not. God, in his providence, may have purified that party in the furnace of affliction. They have had the opportunity, safe from the turmoil of political life and the temptations of office, to study and apply the divine principles of justice and equality to life; for minorities are always in a position to carry principles to their logical results, while majorities are governed only by votes. You see my faith in Democrats is based on sound philosophy. In the next Congress, the Democratic party will gain thirty-four new members, hence the Republicans have had their last chance to do justice to woman. It will be no enviable record for the Fortieth Congress that in the darkest days of the republic it placed our free institutions in the care and keeping of every type of manhood, ignoring womanhood, all the elevating and purifying influences of the most virtuous and humane half of the American people....
I urge a speedy adoption of a Sixteenth Amendment for the following reasons:
1. A government, based on the principle of caste and class, can not stand. The aristocratic idea, in any form, is opposed to the genius of our free institutions, to our own declaration of rights, and to the civilization of the age. All artificial distinctions, whether of family, blood, wealth, color, or sex, are equally oppressive to the subject classes, and equally destructive to national life and prosperity. Governments based on every form of aristocracy, on every degree and variety of inequality, have been tried in despotisms, monarchies, and republics, and all alike have perished. In the panorama of the past behold the mighty nations that have risen, one by one, but to fall. Behold their temples, thrones, and pyramids, their gorgeous palaces and stately monuments now crumbled all to dust. Behold every monarch in Europe at this very hour trembling on his throne. Behold the republics on this Western continent convulsed, distracted, divided, the hosts scattered, the leaders fallen, the scouts lost in the wilderness, the once inspired prophets blind and dumb, while on all sides the cry is echoed, "Republicanism is a failure," though that great principle of a government "by the people, of the people, for the people," has never been tried. Thus far, all nations have been built on caste and failed. Why, in this hour of reconstruction, with the experience of generations before us, make another experiment in the same direction? If serfdom, peasantry, and slavery have shattered kingdoms, deluged continents with blood, scattered republics like dust before the wind, and rent our own Union asunder, what kind of a government, think you, American statesmen, you can build, with the mothers of the race crouching at your feet, while iron-heeled peasants, serfs, and slaves, exalted by your hands, tread our inalienable rights into the dust? While all men, everywhere, are rejoicing in new-found liberties, shall woman alone be denied the rights, privileges, and immunities of citizenship? While in England men are coming up from the coal mines of Cornwall, from the factories of Birmingham and Manchester, demanding the suffrage; while in frigid Russia the 22,000,000 newly-emancipated serfs are already claiming a voice in the government; while here, in our own land, slaves, but just rejoicing in the proclamation of emancipation, ignorant alike of its power and significance, have the ballot unasked, unsought, already laid at their feet—think you the daughters of Adams, Jefferson, and Patrick Henry, in whose veins flows the blood of two Revolutions, will forever linger round the campfires of an old barbarism, with no longings to join this grand army of freedom in its onward march to roll back the golden gates of a higher and better civilization? Of all kinds of aristocracy, that of sex is the most odious and unnatural; invading, as it does, our homes, desecrating our family altars, dividing those whom God has joined together, exalting the son above the mother who bore him, and subjugating, everywhere, moral power to brute force. Such a government would not be worth the blood and treasure so freely poured out in its long struggles for freedom....
2. I urge a Sixteenth Amendment, because "manhood suffrage" or a man's government, is civil, religious, and social disorganization. The male element is a destructive force, stern, selfish, aggrandizing, loving war, violence, conquest, acquisition, breeding in the material and moral world alike discord, disorder, disease, and death. See what a record of blood and cruelty the pages of history reveal! Through what slavery, slaughter, and sacrifice, through what inquisitions and imprisonments, pains and persecutions, black codes and gloomy creeds, the soul of humanity has struggled for the centuries, while mercy has veiled her face and all hearts have been dead alike to love and hope! The male element has held high carnival thus far, it has fairly run riot from the beginning, overpowering the feminine element everywhere, crushing out all the diviner qualities in human nature, until we know but little of true manhood and womanhood, of the latter comparatively nothing, for it has scarce been recognized as a power until within the last century. Society is but the reflection of man himself, untempered by woman's thought, the hard iron rule we feel alike in the church, the state, and the home. No one need wonder at the disorganization, at the fragmentary condition of everything, when we remember that man, who represents but half a complete being, with but half an idea on every subject, has undertaken the absolute control of all sublunary matters.
People object to the demands of those whom they choose to call the strong-minded, because they say, "the right of suffrage will make the women masculine." That is just the difficulty in which we are involved to-day. Though disfranchised we have few women in the best sense, we have simply so many reflections, varieties, and dilutions of the masculine gender. The strong, natural characteristics of womanhood are repressed and ignored in dependence, for so long as man feeds woman she will try to please the giver and adapt herself to his condition. To keep a foothold in society woman must be as near like man as possible, reflect his ideas, opinions, virtues, motives, prejudices, and vices. She must respect his statutes, though they strip her of every inalienable right, and conflict with that higher law written by the finger of God on her own soul. She must believe his theology, though it pave the highways of hell with the skulls of new-born infants, and make God a monster of vengeance and hypocrisy. She must look at everything from its dollar and cent point of view, or she is a mere romancer. She must accept things as they are and make the best of them. To mourn over the miseries of others, the poverty of the poor, their hardships in jails, prisons, asylums, the horrors of war, cruelty, and brutality in every form, all this would be mere sentimentalizing. To protest against the intrigue, bribery, and corruption of public life, to desire that her sons might follow some business that did not involve lying, cheating, and a hard, grinding selfishness, would be arrant nonsense. In this way man has been moulding woman to his ideas by direct and positive influences, while she, if not a negation, has used indirect means to control him, and in most cases developed the very characteristics both in him and herself that needed repression. And now man himself stands appalled at the results of his own excesses, and mourns in bitterness that falsehood, selfishness and violence are the law of life. The need of this hour is not territory, gold mines, railroads, or specie payments, but a new evangel of womanhood, to exalt purity, virtue, morality, true religion, to lift man up into the higher realms of thought and action.
We ask woman's enfranchisement, as the first step toward the recognition of that essential element in government that can only secure the health, strength, and prosperity of the nation. Whatever is done to lift woman to her true position will help to usher in a new day of peace and perfection for the race. In speaking of the masculine element, I do not wish to be understood to say that all men are hard, selfish, and brutal, for many of the most beautiful spirits the world has known have been clothed with manhood; but I refer to those characteristics, though often marked in woman, that distinguish what is called the stronger sex. For example, the love of acquisition and conquest, the very pioneers of civilization, when expended on the earth, the sea, the elements, the riches and forces of Nature, are powers of destruction when used to subjugate one man to another or to sacrifice nations to ambition. Here that great conservator of woman's love, if permitted to assert itself, as it naturally would in freedom against oppression, violence, and war, would hold all these destructive forces in check, for woman knows the cost of life better than man does, and not with her consent would one drop of blood ever be shed, one life sacrificed in vain. With violence and disturbance in the natural world, we see a constant effort to maintain an equilibrium of forces. Nature, like a loving mother, is ever trying to keep land and sea, mountain and valley, each in its place, to hush the angry winds and waves, balance the extremes of heat and cold, of rain and drought, that peace, harmony, and beauty may reign supreme. There is a striking analogy between matter and mind, and the present disorganization of society warns us, that in the dethronement of woman we have let loose the elements of violence and ruin that she only has the power to curb. If the civilization of the age calls for an extension of the suffrage, surely a government of the most virtuous, educated men and women would better represent the whole, and protect the interests of all than could the representation of either sex alone. But government gains no new element of strength in admitting all men to the ballot-box, for we have too much of the man-power there already. We see this in every department of legislation, and it is a common remark, that unless some new virtue is infused into our public life the nation is doomed to destruction. Will the foreign element, the dregs of China, Germany, England, Ireland, and Africa supply this needed force, or the nobler types of American womanhood who have taught our presidents, senators, and congressmen the rudiments of all they know?
3. I urge a Sixteenth Amendment because, when "manhood suffrage" is established from Maine to California, woman has reached the lowest depths of political degradation. So long as there is a disfranchised class in this country, and that class its women, a man's government is worse than a white man's government with suffrage limited by property and educational qualifications, because in proportion as you multiply the rulers, the condition of the politically ostracised is more hopeless and degraded. John Stuart Mill, in his work on "Liberty," shows that the condition of one disfranchised man in a nation is worse than when the whole nation is under one man, because in the latter case, if the one man is despotic, the nation can easily throw him off, but what can one man do with a nation of tyrants over him? If American women find it hard to bear the oppressions of their own Saxon fathers, the best orders of manhood, what may they not be called to endure when all the lower orders of foreigners now crowding our shores legislate for them and their daughters. Think of Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung, who do not know the difference between a monarchy and a republic, who can not read the Declaration of Independence or Webster's spelling-book, making laws for Lucretia Mott, Ernestine L. Rose, and Anna E. Dickinson. Think of jurors and jailors drawn from these ranks to watch and try young girls for the crime of infanticide, to decide the moral code by which the mothers of this Republic shall be governed? This manhood suffrage is an appalling question, and it would be well for thinking women, who seem to consider it so magnanimous to hold their own claims in abeyance until all men are crowned with citizenship, to remember that the most ignorant men are ever the most hostile to the equality of women, as they have known them only in slavery and degradation.
Go to our courts of justice, our jails and prisons; go into the world of work; into the trades and professions; into the temples of science and learning, and see what is meted out everywhere to women—to those who have no advocates in our courts, no representatives in the councils of the nation. Shall we prolong and perpetuate such injustice, and by increasing this power risk worse oppressions for ourselves and daughters? It is an open, deliberate insult to American womanhood to be cast down under the iron-heeled peasantry of the Old World and the slaves of the New, as we shall be in the practical working of the Fifteenth Amendment, and the only atonement the Republican party can make is now to complete its work, by enfranchising the women of the nation. I have not forgotten their action four years ago, when Article XIV., Sec. 2, was amended[113] by invidiously introducing the word "male" into the Federal Constitution, where it had never been before, thus counting out of the basis of representation all men not permitted to vote, thereby making it the interest of every State to enfranchise its male citizens, and virtually declaring it no crime to disfranchise its women. As political sagacity moved our rulers thus to guard the interests of the negro for party purposes, common justice might have compelled them to show like respect for their own mothers, by counting woman too out of the basis of representation, that she might no longer swell the numbers to legislate adversely to her interests. And this desecration of the last will and testament of the fathers, this retrogressive legislation for woman, was in the face of the earnest protests of thousands of the best educated, most refined and cultivated women of the North.
Now, when the attention of the whole world is turned to this question of suffrage, and women themselves are throwing off the lethargy of ages, and in England, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Russia are holding their conventions, and their rulers are everywhere giving them a respectful hearing, shall American statesmen, claiming to be liberal, so amend their constitutions as to make their wives and mothers the political inferiors of unlettered and unwashed ditch-diggers, boot-blacks, butchers, and barbers, fresh from the slave plantations of the South, and the effete civilizations of the Old World? While poets and philosophers, statesmen and men of science are all alike pointing to woman as the new hope for the redemption of the race, shall the freest Government on the earth be the first to establish an aristocracy based on sex alone? to exalt ignorance above education, vice above virtue, brutality and barbarism above refinement and religion? Not since God first called light out of darkness and order out of chaos, was there ever made so base a proposition as "manhood suffrage" in this American Republic, after all the discussions we have had on human rights in the last century. On all the blackest pages of history there is no record of an act like this, in any nation, where native born citizens, having the same religion, speaking the same language, equal to their rulers in wealth, family, and education, have been politically ostracised by their own countrymen, outlawed with savages, and subjected to the government of outside barbarians. Remember the Fifteenth Amendment takes in a larger population than the 2,000,000 black men on the Southern plantation. It takes in all the foreigners daily landing in our eastern cities, the Chinese crowding our western shores, the inhabitants of Alaska, and all those western isles that will soon be ours. American statesmen may flatter themselves that by superior intelligence and political sagacity the higher orders of men will always govern, but when the ignorant foreign vote already holds the balance of power in all the large cities by sheer force of numbers, it is simply a question of impulse or passion, bribery or fraud, how our elections will be carried. When the highest offices in the gift of the people are bought and sold in Wall Street, it is a mere chance who will be our rulers. Whither is a nation tending when brains count for less than bullion, and clowns make laws for queens? It is a startling assertion, but nevertheless true, that in none of the nations of modern Europe are the higher classes of women politically so degraded as are the women of this Republic to-day. In the Old World, where the government is the aristocracy, where it is considered a mark of nobility to share its offices and powers, women of rank have certain hereditary lights which raise them above a majority of the men, certain honors and privileges not granted to serfs and peasants. There women are queens, hold subordinate offices, and vote on many questions. In our Southern States even, before the war, women were not degraded below the working population. They were not humiliated in seeing their coachmen, gardeners, and waiters go to the polls to legislate for them; but here, in this boasted Northern civilization, women of wealth and education, who pay taxes and obey the laws, who in morals and intellect are the peers of their proudest rulers, are thrust outside the pale of political consideration with minors, paupers, lunatics, traitors, idiots, with those guilty of bribery, larceny, and infamous crimes.
Would those gentlemen who are on all sides telling the women of the nation not to press their claims until the negro is safe beyond peradventure, be willing themselves to stand aside and trust all their interests to hands like these? The educated women of this nation feel as much interest in republican institutions, the preservation of the country, the good of the race, their own elevation and success, as any man possibly can, and we have the same distrust in man's power to legislate for us, that he has in woman's power to legislate wisely for herself.
4. I would press a Sixteenth Amendment, because the history of American statesmanship does not inspire me with confidence in man's capacity to govern the nation alone, with justice and mercy. I have come to this conclusion, not only from my own observation, but from what our rulers say of themselves. Honorable Senators have risen in their places again and again, and told the people of the wastefulness and corruption of the present administration. Others have set forth, with equal clearness, the ignorance of our rulers on the question of finance....
The following letters were received and read in the Convention:
New York, Jan. 14, 1869.
Mrs. Josephine S. Griffing,—Dear Madam:—Your favor of the 6th inst. is received. Permit me to assure you it would give me great pleasure to be present at your important convention of the 19th, but indisposition will not allow me that gratification.
Looking at all the circumstances; the position, the epoch, and the efforts now being made to extend the right to the ballot, your Convention is perhaps the most important that was ever held. It is a true maxim, that it is easier to do justice than injustice; to do right than wrong; and to do it at once, than by small degrees. How much better and easier it would have been for Congress, when they enfranchised all the men of the District of Columbia, had they included the women also; but better late than never. Let the National government, to which the States have a right to look for good example, do justice to woman now, and all the States will follow....
It was a terrible mistake and a fundamental error, based upon ignorance and injustice, ever to have introduced the word "male" into the Federal Constitution. The terms "male" and "female" simply designate the physical or animal distinction between the sexes, and ought be used only in speaking of the lower animals. Human beings are men and women, possessed of human faculties and understanding, which we call mind; and mind recognizes no sex, therefore the term "male," as applied to human beings—to citizens—ought to be expunged from the constitution and laws as a last remnant of barbarism—when the animal, not mind, when might, not right, governed the world. Let your Convention, then, urge Congress to wipe out that purely animal distinction from the national constitution. That noble instrument was destined to govern intelligent, responsible human beings—men and women—not sex. The childish argument that all women don't ask for the franchise would hardly deserve notice were it not sometimes used by men of sense. To all such I would say, examine ancient and modern history, yes, even of your own times, and you will find there never has been a time when all men of any country—white or black—have ever asked for a reform. Reforms have to be claimed and obtained by the few, who are in advance, for the benefit of the many who lag behind. And when once obtained and almost forced upon them, the mass of the people accept and enjoy their benefits as a matter of course. Look at the petitions now pouring into Congress for the franchise for women, and compare their thousands of signatures with the few isolated names that graced our first petitions to the Legislature of New York to secure to the married woman the right to hold in her own name the property that belonged to her, to secure to the poor, forsaken wife the right to her earnings, and to the mother the right to her children. "All" the women did not ask for those rights, but all accepted them with joy and gladness when they were obtained; and so it will be with the franchise. But woman's claim for the ballot does not depend upon the numbers that demand it, or would exercise the right; but upon precisely the same principles that man claims it for himself. Chase, Sumner, Stevens, and many of both Houses of Congress have, time after time, declared that the franchise means "Security, Education, Responsibility, Self-respect, Prosperity, and Independence." Taking all these assertions for granted and fully appreciating all their benefits, in the name of security, of education, of responsibility, of self-respect, of liberty, of prosperity and independence we demand the franchise for woman.
Please present this hastily-written contribution to your Convention with best wishes.
Ernestine L. Rose.
Yours, dear madam, very truly,
William Lloyd Garrison writes: Unable to attend the Convention, I can only send you my warm approval of it, and the object it is designed to promote. It is boastingly claimed in behalf of the Government of the United States that it is "of the people, by the people, and for the people." Yet reckoning the whole number at thirty-eight millions, no less than one-half—that is, nineteen millions—are political ciphers. A single male voter, on election day, outweighs them all!
Aaron M. Powell writes: I have no doubt that if a fair and honest vote can be had upon the question, submitted upon its own merits, in the Senate and House of Representatives, both the friends and opponents of the measure here, as in Great Britain when John Stuart Mill's proposition was first voted upon in Parliament, will be surprised at the revelation of its real strength.
Mrs. Caroline H. Dall writes: It mitigates my regret in declining your invitation to remember that these are not the dark days of the cause.
Senator Fowler, of Tenn., writes: It is not possible that the people who have so enlarged the boundaries of the political rights of another race just emerged from slavery, will fail to recognize the claims of the women of the United States to equal rights in all the relations of life.
Wm. H. Sylvis says: I am in favor of universal suffrage, universal amnesty, and universal liberty.
Abby Hopper Gibbons says: My father, Isaac T. Hopper, was an advocate for woman and her work, he believed in her thoroughly. His life long he was associated with many of the best women of his day. With the help of good men, we shall ere long stand side by side with ballot in hand.
Paulina Wright Davis: If women are the only unrecognized class as a part of the people, then woe to the nation! for there will be no noble mothers; frivolity, folly, and madness will seize them, for all inverted action of the faculties becomes intense in just the ratio of its earnestness.
Harriet Beecher Stowe writes: I am deeply interested in the work, and hopeful that a broader sphere is opening for woman, that as a class they may be trained in early life more as men are in education and business.
Gen. Oliver O. Howard answers: Please express to the Committee my thanks for the invitation. I should be pleased to accept, but a lecture engagement in the West will compel me to be absent from the city.
James M. Scovill, of New Jersey, says: I deeply desire to come. Go on in your great work. The Convention tells on the public mind.
Gerrit Smith replies: I thank you for your invitation, though it is not in my power to attend the Convention. God hasten the day when the civil and political rights of woman shall be admitted to be equal to those of man.
Simeon Corley, M.C., of South Carolina, writes: Having been an advocate of woman suffrage for a quarter of a century, I had the pleasure yesterday of enrolling my name and that of my wife on your list of delegates. To-day Hon. James H. Goss, M.C., of South Carolina, requested me to have you insert his name. I think you may safely count on the South Carolina delegation.
This Convention was the first public occasion when the women opposed to the XIV Amendment, measuring their logic with Republicans, Abolitionists, and colored men, ably maintained their position. The division of opinion was marked and earnest, and the debate was warm between Messrs. Douglass, Downing, Hinton, Dr. Purvis, and Edward M. Davis on one side, and the ladies, with Robert Purvis[114] and Parker Pillsbury on the other. Edward M. Davis, the son-in-law of Lucretia Mott, was so hostile to the position of the women on the XIV Amendment that he refused to enroll his name as a member of the Convention. Nevertheless, Mrs. Mott in the chair, allowed him to criticise most severely the resolutions and the position of those with whom she stood. She answered his attacks with her usual gentleness, and advocated the resolutions.[115] Robert Purvis, differing with his own son and other colored men, denounced their position with severity. Yet good feeling prevailed throughout, and the Convention adjourned in order and harmony.
The following objective view of the Convention, of the tone of the addresses, and the personnel of the platform, from the pen of one of our distinguished literary women—Sarah Clarke Lippincott—will serve to show that the leaders in the suffrage movement were not the rude, uncultured women generally represented by the opposition, but in point of intelligence, refinement, appearance, and all the feminine virtues, far above the ordinary standard. For the honor of this grand reform, we record the compliments occasionally bestowed.
[From the Philadelphia Press].
Washington, Jan. 21, 1869.
The proceedings were opened with prayer by Dr. Gray, the Chaplain of the Senate, a man of remarkably liberal spirit. This prayer, however, did not give perfect satisfaction. Going back to the beginning of things, the doctor unfortunately chanced to take, of the two Mosaic accounts of the creation of man and woman, that one which is least exalting to woman, representing her as built on a "spare rib" of Adam. Let us hope the reverend gentleman will "overhaul" his Genesis and "take a note."
On the platform was an imposing array of intellect, courage, and noble character. First there was dear, revered Lucretia Mott, her sweet, saintly face cloistered in her Quaker bonnet, her serene and gracious presence, so dignified yet so utterly unpretending, so self-poised yet so gentle, so peaceful yet so powerful, sanctioning and sanctifying the meeting and the movement.
Near her sat her sister, Mrs. Wright, of Auburn, a woman of strong, constant character and of rare intellectual culture; Mrs. Cady Stanton, a lady of impressive and beautiful appearance, in the rich prime of an active, generous, and healthful life; Miss Susan B. Anthony, looking all she is, a keen, energetic, uncompromising, unconquerable, passionately earnest woman; Clara Barton, whose name is dear to soldiers and blessed in thousands of homes to which the soldiers shall return no more—a brave, benignant looking woman. But I will not indulge in personal descriptions, though Dr. Mary Walker in her emancipated garments and Eve-like arrangement or disarrangement of hair, is somewhat tempting.
Senator Pomeroy, acting as temporary chairman, called the Convention to order. Certain committees were appointed, and the Senator spoke for some twenty or thirty minutes, very happily and effectively, on the question of Woman's Rights under the Constitution—both as originally written and as amended. He argued that all born or naturalized Americans are citizens—that neither sex nor color has anything to do with citizenship rightfully. His reasoning seemed to us, who are interested, cogent and logical, and his spirit fearless and broad. Mrs. Stanton spoke on the general question with great force and pithiness. Of all their speakers she seemed to me to have the most weight. Her speeches are models of composition, clear, compact, elegant, and logical. She makes her points with peculiar sharpness and certainty, and there is no denying or dodging her conclusions. Mrs. Mott followed Mrs. Stanton, and at a later hour spoke again. She can not speak too often for the good of this or any cause. Her arguments are always gently put forward, but there is great force behind them—the force of reason and justice and simple truth. Her wit, too, though it gleams out softly and playfully, illuminates her subject as the keener, sharper light of satire never could illuminate it. She is always reasonable, gracious, and judicious. She never strives for effect, and is too conscientious to be sensational, yet no speaker among the younger women of this movement makes more telling points—no one knows so well every foot of the broad field of argument. In her practiced hand every weapon is ready on the instant, whether drawn from the armories of Scripture, history, literature, or politics. She reviewed the history of this movement from the beginning, paying warm tribute to the memory of its early advocates. She proved that for centuries the discontented, the indignant protest in the souls of women, which has culminated in this movement, has formed an element which has been secretly surging and seething under the surface of society. These were no new wrongs or needs of ours, she said; the women of the past, of all ages, had felt them; we are only giving voice to them.
A most eloquent letter from Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose was read, indorsing the Convention; also one from William Lloyd Garrison. Mrs. Griffing, of Washington, spoke with remarkable earnestness and fervor, and was followed by Mrs. Hathaway, of Boston. This lady said: "They say the majority shall rule. Well, there are, east of the Alleghanies, 400,000 more women than men. So the minority rule us." Upon the whole, I was quite willing to have this body of women orators and debaters compared with either of the great legislative bodies who meet over in yonder great marble temple of wisdom, eloquence, logic, and law.
Mrs. Starrett, of Kansas, a bright, ruddy, rosy woman, made a good, practical speech on the influence of the franchise upon the domestic life of women.
Mrs. Butler, of Vineland, N. J., made one of the most charming and womanly speeches, or talks, of the Convention, recounting her experience as one of the gallant band of women who, at the late fall elections, made an imposing demonstration at the polls in her lively and progressive town. Fearful threats had reached them of insult and violence from rough boys and men; but they met with absolutely nothing of the kind, though they did not approach the polls like the Neapolitan heroine who votes for Victor Emanuel, with pistols and daggers in their belts and war medals on their breasts. They were made way for as respectfully as though they had been about to enter a church door. Of course, their votes were thrown out, but it would not always be so. They would hope on and vote on. Touching the reforms that women intend to bring about when they shall "come into the kingdom," she said, "we will rule liquor out of the country;" a declaration which at the present critical stage of affairs, and in Washington, struck me as rather impolitic. "As to the question of woman first or the black man first," she said, "I mean both together"; evidently looking for a constitutional amendment gateway wide enough for the two to dash in abreast, neck-and-neck. "Oh, woman, great is thy faith!" This speaker related some sad stories illustrative of woman's legal disabilities, and dwelt feelingly on the old, palpable, intolerable grievance of inequality of wages, and on the bars and restrictions which woman encounters at every turn, in her struggle for an honorable livelihood.
In reply, Mrs. Mott, in her bright, sweet, deprecating way, cast a flood of sunlight on the dark pictures, by referring to the remodeling of the laws respecting the relation of husband and wife, in regard to property, and the right of the mother to her child, by the Legislatures of the various States and especially by that of the State of New York.
Miss Anthony followed in a strain not only cheerful, but exultant—reviewing the advance of the cause from its first despised beginning to its present position, where, she alleged, it commanded the attention of the world. She spoke in her usual pungent, vehement style, hitting the nail on the head every time, and driving it in up to the head. Indeed, it seems to me, that while Lucretia Mott may be said to be the soul of this movement, and Mrs. Stanton the mind, the "swift, keen intelligence," Miss Anthony, alert, aggressive, and indefatigable, is its nervous energy—its propulsive force.
Mrs. Stanton has the best arts of the politician and the training of the jurist, added to the fiery, unresting spirit of the reformer. She has a rare talent for affairs, management, and mastership. Yet she is in an eminent degree womanly, having an almost regal pride of sex. In France, in the time of the revolution or the first empire, she would have been a Roland or a De Stael. I will not attempt the slightest sketch of her closing speech, which was not only a powerful plea for disfranchised womanhood, but for motherhood. It was now impassioned, now playful, now witty, now pathetic. It was surpassingly eloquent, and apparently convincing, for the boldest and most radical utterances, brought from the great audience the heartiest applause. For this, I love the people. No great, brave, true thought can be uttered before an American audience without bringing a cordial and generous response. All are not ready, of course, to carry into action, into life, legislation, and law the sentiments of liberty and justice they applaud; but they feel that somewhere, in some nameless Utopia far away, such things might be lived out. Thank heaven that Utopia is possible for humanity—a real, practical condition of our mortal life—only a little way before us, perhaps.
Many good, refined people turn a cold shoulder on this cause of woman's rights because their religious sentiment, or their taste, is shocked by the character or appearance of some of its public advocates. They say: "If we were only to see at their conventions that Quaker gentlewoman, Lucretia Mott, with her serene presence; Mrs. Stanton, with her patrician air; Miss Anthony, with her sharp, intellectual fencing; Lucy Stone, with her sweet, persuasive argument and lucid logic—it were very well; but to their free platform, bores, fanatics, and fools are admitted, to elbow them and disgust us." I suppose that such annoyances, to use a mild term, necessarily belong to a free platform, and that freedom of speech is one of the most sacred rights—especially to woman. Yet I think some authority there should be to exclude or silence persons unfit to appear before an intelligent and refined audience—some power to rule out utterly, and keep out, ignorant or insane men and women who realize some of the worst things falsely charged against the leaders of this movement. But to see the three chief figures of this great movement of Woman's Rights sitting upon a stage in joint council, like the three Parcæ or Fates of a new dispensation—dignity and the ever-acceptable grace of scholarly earnestness, intelligence, and beneficence making them prominent—is assurance that the women of our country, bereft of defenders, or injured by false ones, have advocates equal to the great demands of their cause.
Grace Greenwood.
EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE.
Washington, Jan. 22, 1869.
Dear Revolution:—We hear good accounts from all quarters of the effect of the Woman's National Suffrage Convention. From the numbers who called upon us, the courtesy of our rulers, the marked attentions paid us in society, and the many enthusiastic letters we daily receive, we are led to believe that woman's suffrage is becoming very popular. As both the editor and proprietor of The Revolution are in the sere and yellow leaf, the many attentions and compliments showered upon us are of course from no personal considerations, but so many tributes of respect to the ideas we represent; as such we gratefully accept all that come to us, and thank our hosts of friends for the words of good cheer we received in Washington. As we have never been cast down with scorn and ridicule, we shall never be puffed up with praise and admiration. In the future, as the past, the motto of the good Abbe de Lamennais shall be ours, "Let the weal and the woe of humanity be everything to us, their praise and their blame of no effect." In conversation with some of the members we found them quite jealous of the attentions Mr. Pomeroy was receiving from the women of the nation. This will never do, to be sowing seeds of discord where fraternal love should abound, and we hope the women of the several States will send their petitions to their own members. As Mr. Pomeroy has enough piled up in his committee room to keep him busy all winter, we advise him to distribute them among all the gallant gentlemen who would feel honored in presenting them. Then, too, there is much wisdom in the remarks made by the Hon. Roscoe Conkling, when he presented a woman's petition, on the danger of granting Mr. Pomeroy a monopoly of such privileges, lest he should grow lukewarm in the cause. True, we have looked in vain for any burst of eloquence from the Kansas gentleman, thus far, in the Senate, but it may be that he can not find words to express the depth of his sympathy for oppressed womanhood, hence the silent eloquence of action alone in behalf of the fair petitioners.
One gentleman remarked, "Why do you push Pomeroy forward in your movement? Julian is altogether the most reliable man." We replied, we always push those who come forward. We should have been very glad if Boutwell or Brooks, Wade or Wilson, Harlan or Henderson, Julian or Jenckes had had the courage to come to our platform, but as Mr. Pomeroy was the only member of Congress who did come, he stands before the public as our champion in Washington. These politicians are all alike. No doubt there are many men in both Houses as earnest on this question as Mr. Pomeroy, who are silent on personal considerations, while he is active for the same reason. In Kansas, woman suffrage is a popular question, hence it is safe for Senators from that State, looking to a re-election, to advocate it, and when the women of the several States are as wide awake as in Kansas, the members of Congress will vie with each other to do them honor. We chanced to lunch one day in Downing's saloon with the Hon. Sidney Clark, of Kansas, and Gen. McMillan, of Minnesota, both strongly opposed to the land swindle. The former has just made an able speech on that question. Mr. Clark is a tall, fine-looking man, and bears so striking a resemblance to the editor of the Independent that he is often accosted for him. The subject of discussion over Mr. Downing's fine oysters was woman suffrage. Although Mr. Clark rather gave us the cold shoulder in the Kansas campaign, he promises to atone for his error by renewed ardor when the proposition is again submitted.
Miss Anthony called on Senator Harlan, Chairman of the District Committee, who readily granted us a hearing, which was had on Wednesday, the 26th. Mr. H. being friendly to the idea, we shall look to him to report a bill favorable to woman suffrage in the District. Mr. Harlan has one of the most refined, spiritual faces in the Senate. Mr. Lawrence, of Ohio, who was on the committee for investigating the election frauds in New York, said, when he returned, that the greatest fraud he found there was that one-half the people were not allowed to vote at all.
Messrs. Aiken and Florence, of the Sunday Gazette, were deeply interested listeners throughout our Convention. On being introduced to Mr. Florence, we expressed the hope that he would now sharpen his pen and do valiant service for woman and help to atone for all the injustice and ridicule of the press in the past. He promptly pledged himself to defend our ideas valiantly in the future. And he has started well in writing a glowing editorial in his last paper, and giving two columns to our speech on "Manhood Suffrage." To Senator Trumbull, who is Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, all our petitions, appeals, and addresses are referred. We hope he will not sink under such a weight of responsibility, but read everything we send him with a holy unction to the committee, and report favorably to the Senate.
We learned from the Southern members that the South Carolina delegation will go solid for woman suffrage. It has been a wonder to us that Southern white women did not see the necessity of their speedy enfranchisement, as a foreign race is, by the edicts of the Republican party, exalted above their heads—made their rulers, judges, jurors, and law-givers.
Friday evening, we went to Secretary McCulloch's and Mr. Colfax's receptions. There we saw Mrs. Colfax for the first time; tall, handsome, vigorous. We congratulated her on having won the most popular man in America, whereupon the Vice-President elect smiled and bowed profoundly, and we turned to greet glorious old Ben Wade and his noble wife. Finance seemed to be the theme on all sides, and we have our fears that the negroes, as well as the women, will be lost sight of, in these discussions about the currency. But this finance is a grave question, and the more we read and think on it, the more we are convinced that the need of money is the root of all evil. We were introduced to Professor Helyard and Gen. Eaton, members of a scientific society of gentlemen which meets once a week to discuss all that is in heaven above, on the earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth, without permitting a single one of Eve's daughters to listen to the wisdom. They have lately discussed the subject of earthquakes, and it was stated, we understand, that after the women began to hold conventions in this country, earthquakes became more frequent, occurring from 1850 in California, simultaneously with these conventions in several States, showing that old mother earth sympathizes with the sorrows of women. The fear of similar occurrences in the District fully accounts for the exclusiveness of these scientific gentlemen. Professor Helgard discoursed most eloquently on co-operative housekeeping. As we listened to the many good reasons he gave for cooking, washing, and ironing on a large scale, we felt the women of the nation might be benefited ultimately by these weekly cogitations, if not permitted to enjoy the society of the cogitators.
E. C. S.
The National Woman's Suffrage Convention held in Washington, January 18th and 19th, presented the following appeal to the District Committee:
TO THE CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.
Honorable Gentlemen: As the Franchise bill is now under consideration, we would urge your committee to so amend it as to secure the right of suffrage to all the women of the District, and thus establish in the capital of the nation the first genuine republic the world has ever known. It would be a work of supererogation to warn you against the puerile proposition to disfranchise all the people of the District, by placing their municipal affairs under the direct control of Congress, for such retrogressive legislation is beneath the consideration of your honorable committee, and would never be tolerated by the American people. The tide of public opinion is setting to-day in the opposite direction; in all governments we see a steadily increasing tendency toward individual responsibilities—to the election of rulers by a direct voice of the people. In this general awakening, woman too has been roused to a sense not only of her own rights as a human being, but to her duties as a citizen under government.
It is especially fitting that the grand experiment of equality should be first tried in the District of Columbia, where such able debates on freedom have been heard during the last century; where slavery was first abolished by an act of Congress; and where the black man was first recognized as a citizen of the United States. But in removing all political disabilities from the male citizens of the District, you have established, for the first time in the history of nations, a government based on the aristocracy of sex; an aristocracy of all kinds the most odious and unnatural. While every type and shade of manhood is rejoicing to-day in all the rights, privileges, and immunities of citizens in the District, its noblest matrons are still living under the statute laws of a dark and barbarous age, running back to the old common law of England centuries ago, having no parallel in our day, but in the slave codes of the Southern States. Here a married woman has no right to the property she inherits, to the wages she earns, or to the children of her love, and from laws like these she has no appeal; no advocate in the courts of justice; no representative in the councils of the nation. Such is the result of class legislation, clearly proving that man has ever made laws for his own mother with as little justice and generosity as he has from time to time for different orders of his own sex. Suffering, as woman does, under the wrongs of Saxon men, you have added insult to injury by exalting another race above her head: slaves, ignorant, degraded, depraved, but yesterday crouching at your feet, outside the pale of political consideration, are to-day, by your edicts, made her lawgivers! Thus here in the District you have consummated this invidious policy of the nation, placing outside barbarians above your Pilgrim mothers, who have stood by your side from the beginning, sharing alike your dangers and triumphs in the great struggle on this continent for free institutions.
We urge you, therefore, to report favorably on Senator Wilson's amendment, because woman not only needs the ballot for her protection, but the nation needs her voice in legislation for the safety and stability of our institutions. We simply ask you to apply your theory of government, your declaration of rights, the principles enunciated by the great Republican party, the far-seeing wisdom with which step by step you have secured all men in their inalienable rights, to our case, and you will see that logic, justice, common sense, and constitutional law are all alike on our side of the question. We need not detain you to rehearse the fundamental principles of our government, your own interpretation of the constitution, or the right of Congress to regulate suffrage in the District, for all this has been argued before the nation and sealed by your own acts. With the argument all on our side, the only question that remains is, does woman herself demand the right of suffrage at this hour? If, honorable gentlemen, you will look abroad, and note the general uprising of women everywhere, in foreign nations as well as our own, you will realize that our demand is the great onward step of the century and not, as some claim, the idiosyncrasy of a few unbalanced minds. Man knows as little of the real feeling of the women of their household as did the proud Southerner of the slaves on his plantation. Woman fears man's ridicule more than the slave did the master's lash. Yes! woman waits to-day but for man's approval, to manifest the intense enthusiasm she feels in the no distant future, when she, too, shall be crowned sovereign of this great republic, where all are of the blood royal—all heirs apparent to the throne.
We are often asked the question, "On what do you base your assertion that the ballot can achieve so much for woman? It has not done much for man; in this country all white men vote, yet the masses are wretchedly fed, housed, clothed, and poorly paid for their labor. Ignorant alike of social and political economy, their voting is a mere form; practically they have no more to do with the government than the masses in the old world who have no representation whatever." These wholesale philosophers, and we meet them every day, are incapable of any patient process of analytical reasoning. If the moment a man is endowed with the suffrage he does not spring up into knowledge, virtue, wealth, and position, then the right amounts to nothing. If a generation of ignorant, degraded men, does not vote at once with the wisdom of statesmen, then Universal Suffrage is a failure, and the despot and the dagger the true government. The careful reader of history will see that with every new extension of rights a new step in civilization has been taken, and that uniformly those nations have been most prosperous where the greatest number of the people have been recognized in the government. Contrast China with Russia, England with the United States. Where the few govern, the legislation is for the advantage of the few. Where the many govern, the legislation will gradually become more and more for the advantage of the many, as fast as the many know enough to demand laws for their own benefit. This knowledge comes from an education in politics; and a ballot in a man's hand and the responsibility of using it, is the first step in this education. Even if a man sells his ballot, there is power in possessing something that a politician must have or perish. The Southern slaves must have acquired a new dignity in the scale of being when Judge Kelley and Senator Wilson traveled all through the South to preach to them on political questions.
The thinking men of England, as they philosophize on the abuses of their government, see plainly that the only way to abolish an order of nobility, a law of primogeniture and an established church, is to give the masses a right by their votes to pitch this triple power into the channel; for all the bulwarks of aristocracy will, one by one, be swept away with the education and enfranchisement of the people. Gladstone, John Bright, and John Stuart Mill see clearly that the privileges of the few can be extended to the many only by the legislation of the many. All the beneficial results of the broad principles they are advocating to-day, may not be fully realized in a generation, but, to the philosophical mind, they are as true now as if already achieved. The greatest minds in this country, too, have made most exhaustive arguments to prove the power of the ballot, and recognized the equality of all citizens, in our Declaration of Rights, in extending suffrage to all white men, and in the proposition to farther extend it to all black men. The great Republican party (in which are many of the ablest men of the nation) declare that emancipation to the black man is a mockery, without the suffrage. When the thinking minds on both continents are agreed as to the power of the ballot in the hand of every man, it is surprising to hear educated Americans ask, "What possible value would suffrage be to woman?" When, in the British Parliament, the suffrage was extended to a million new voters, even Lord Derby and Disraeli, who were opposed to the measure, said at once, now, if this class are to vote, we must establish schools for their education, showing the increased importance of every man who has a voice in the government, and the new interest of the rulers in his education. Where all vote all must be educated; our public school system is the result of this principle in our government. When women vote, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton will throw wide open their doors.
Woman is not an anomalous being outside all law, that one need make any special arguments to prove that what elevates and dignifies man will educate and dignify woman also. When she exercises her right of suffrage, she will study the science of government, gain new importance in the eyes of politicians, and have a free pass in the world of work. If the masses knew their power, they could turn the whole legislation of this country to their own advantage, and drive poverty, rags, and ignorance into the Pacific Ocean. If they would learn wisdom in the National Labor Conventions and not sell their votes to political tricksters, a system of Finance, Trade, and Commerce, and Co-operation could soon be established that would secure the rights of Labor and put an end to the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. Labor holds the ballot now, let it learn how to use it. Educated women know how to use it now, let them have it.