After a speech by Mr. Garrison, the Hutchinsons sang some of the religious songs of the Southern negroes with excellent taste, and then, led by them, the whole audience united in the chorus; and as the melody rose strong and clear a pathos fell upon the assembly that brought tears to many eyes. The tableau upon the stage was striking and memorable. There stood the family of singers, with the same cheerful, hopeful courage in their uplifted faces with which for twenty years they have sung of the good time almost here, of every reform; there stood William Lloyd Garrison, stern Puritan, inflexible apostle, his work gloriously done in one reform, lending the weight of his unwearied, solid intellect to that which he believes is the last needed; there was Mrs. Paulina Wright Davis, a Roman matron in figure, her noble head covered with clustering ringlets of white, courageous after a quarter of a century of unsullied devotion, though she had just confessed that sometimes she was almost weary; there was Miss Anthony, unselfish, patient, wise and practical; the graceful Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, the poet of the movement; the tall and elegant Mrs. Celia Burleigh; the benevolent Dr. Clemence Lozier; Mrs. Isabella B. Hooker, with spiritual face and firm purpose, just taking her place in the reform that has long had her heart and deep conviction, and many others of fine presence and commanding beauty—matrons, with gray hair and countenances illuminated with lives of charity; young women, flushed with hope; and as the grand Christian song went on, many a woman, leaning against a supporting pillar, gave way to the tears that would come, tears of hope deferred, tears of weary longings, tears of willing, patient devotion—e'en though it be a cross that raiseth me—and then the benediction, and the assembly dispersed, touched, it may be, into a moment's sympathy. * * *
At the closing evening session the opera house was completely filled by an audience whose attendance was a compliment. * * * The chairman, Rev. N. J. Burton, said: "Has not this convention been a success? I say, emphatically, it has. We have had the very best of audiences at every session, and we have provided speakers as good as the audience. We have not given you even one poor speech. I thank the audience and the speakers, one and all. I feel like thanking everybody, myself included, as chairman. In Stewart's store in New York they told me 1,500 persons were employed, all guided by one brain up-stairs, and that one brain giving the store a national reputation. This convention has been inspired and managed by one person—Mrs. Hooker of this city." After speculating as to the possible oratorical power of Mrs. H., had she received the advantages and enjoyed the practice of her brother, who spoke the previous evening, he said: "But of course Mrs. Hooker couldn't vote, nor be a member of the legislature, or even a justice of the peace. Insufferable nonsense! If such women don't vote before I die—well, like Gough's obstinate deacon, I won't die till they do."
On motion of Franklin Chamberlin, esq., the thanks of the convention were tendered to Mrs. Hooker for her efforts. At her request the chairman said that she was wholly surprised by this reference to herself. She would only say, "Thank God for our success," to which the chairman added, "Amen and Amen." He then introduced Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, daughter of the late Judge Cady of Albany, wife of the Hon. Henry B. Stanton of New York, and editor of The Revolution. She is perhaps fifty, and in general appearance much resembles Mrs. Davis. She is apparently in robust health, dresses in black, with just enough of white lace, and, with her gray hair loosely gathered, and her strong, symmetrical and refined face and perfect self-possession, is a noble-looking woman. Her address, or oration, was before her, but she was not hampered by it. Her voice is clear, her gesticulation simple, and her general manner not surpassed by Wendell Phillips. Rough notes of an oration so finished can only indicate the main drift of her thoughts. * * * The eloquent peroration was heard in profound silence, followed by enthusiastic applause. * * * The chairman read the constitution and offered it for signatures, and the officers of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association were chosen.[162]
In The Revolution of November 11, 1869, Mrs. Stanton giving a description of the convention, refers to the liberality of the governor, Marshall Jewell, and the genial hospitalities of his noble wife:[163]
In company with Mrs. Howe and Miss Anthony, we were entertained at the governor's mansion, a fine brick building in the heart of the town. It has a small pond on one side, and eight acres of land, laid out in gardens, walks and lawns, with extensive greenhouses and graperies. The house is spacious, elegantly and tastefully furnished, with all the comforts and luxuries that wealth can command. With a conservatory, library, pictures, statuary, beautiful (strong-minded) wife and charming daughters, the noble governor is in duty bound to remain the happy, genial, handsome man he is to-day. Though the governor, owing to his pressing executive duties, did not honor our convention with his presence, we feel assured, in reading over his last able message, that he feels a deep interest in the education and elevation of women. In speaking of their school system, he calls attention to the low wages of female teachers, and the injustice of excluding girls from the scientific schools and polytechnic institutions in the State. He says:
I would especially call the attention of the legislature to the importance of furnishing to women such educational facilities as will better fit them for the industrial pursuits which the true progress of the times is opening to them.
On the rights of married women, he says:
While our laws with regard to married women have been amended from time to time for several years past, so as to secure to them in a more ample manner their property, held before or acquired after marriage, yet we are still considerably behind many of our sister States, and even conservative England, in our legislation on the subject. I would recommend to your favorable consideration such an amendment of our laws as will secure to a married woman all her property, with the full control of it during her married life, and free from liability for any debts, except those contracted by herself or for which she has voluntarily made herself responsible, with the same right on the part of the husband to an interest in her property, on his surviving her, that she now has, or that it may be best to give her, in his.
On the subject of divorce the governor says:
I recommend a revision of our laws with regard to divorce. According to the report of the State librarian there were in the State last year 4,734 marriages and 478 divorces. Discontented people come here from other States, to take advantage of what is called our liberal legislation, to obtain divorces which would be denied them at home. As the sacredness of the marriage relation lies at the foundation of civilized society, it should be carefully guarded. Under our present laws the causes of divorce are too numerous, and not sufficiently defined, and too wide a discretion is given to the courts. I think the law of 1849 should be modified, and so much of the statute as grants divorces for "any such misconduct as permanently destroys the happiness of the petitioner, and defeats the purposes of the marriage relation," should be repealed. I would also suggest that the law provide that no decree of divorce shall take effect till one year after it is granted.
In conversation with the governor on this point in his message he stated the singular fact that the majority of the applications for divorce were made by women. If this be so, we suggested that the laws of Connecticut should stand as they are until the women have the right of suffrage, that they may have a voice in a social arrangement in which they have an equal interest with man himself. If Connecticut, with its blue laws, disloyal Hartford convention, and Democracy, has, nevertheless, been a Canada for fugitive wives from the yoke of matrimony, pray keep that little State, like an oasis in the desert, sacred to sad wives, at least until the sixteenth amendment of the federal constitution shall give the women of the republic the right to say whether they are ready to make marriage, under all circumstances, for better or worse, an indissoluble tie. We have grave doubts as to the sacredness of a relation in which the subject-class has no voice whatever in the laws that regulate it. We shall never know what "laws lie at the foundation of all civilized society" until woman's thought finds expression in the State, the church and the home. It is presumption for man longer to legislate alone on this vital question, when woman, too, should have a word to say in the matter.
The morning after the convention we had a pleasant breakfast under Mr. and Mrs. Hooker's hospitable roof, where Boston and New York amicably broke bread and discussed the fifteenth amendment together. All the wise and witty sayings that passed around that social board, time fails to chronicle.
In 1877 Governor Hubbard called the attention of the legislature to the wrongs of married women, in the following words:
There has been for the last few years in this State much slip-shod and fragmentary legislation in respect to the property rights of married women. The old common law assumed the subjugation of the wife, and stripped her of the better part of her rights of person and nearly all her rights of property. It is a matter of astonishment that Christian nations should have been willing for eighteen centuries to hold the mothers of their race in a condition of legal servitude. It has been the scandal of jurisprudence. Some progress has been made in reforming the law in this State, but it has been done, as I have already said, by patch-work and shreds, sometimes ill-considered, and often so incongruous as to provoke vexatious litigation and defy the wisdom of the courts. The property relations of husband and wife do not to-day rest on any just or harmonious system. Not only has the husband absolute disposal of all his own property freed from all dower rights, but he is practically the owner during coverture of all his wife's estate not specially limited to her separate use; and after her death has, in every case, a life use in all her personal, and in most cases in all her real property, by a title which the wife, no matter what may have been his ill-deserts, is powerless to impair or defeat; whereas, on the other hand, the wife has during the husband's life no more power of her own right to sell, convey, or manage her own estate than if she were a lunatic or slave, and in case of his death has a life use in only one-third part of the real estate of which he dies possessed, and no indefeasible title whatever in any of his personal estate. As a consequence, a husband may strip his wife, by mere voluntary disposition to strangers, of all claim on his estate after his death, and thus add beggary to widowhood.
I am sure this cannot seem right to any fair-minded man. Neither is it strange that some of our countrywomen, stung by the injustice of the law towards their sex, should be demanding, as a mode of redress, a part in the making of the laws which govern them. I am confident there is manhood enough in our own sex to right this obvious wrong to which I have alluded.
I therefore recommend that the law on this subject be so recast that, in all marriages hereafter contracted, the wife shall hold her property and all her earnings for personal services not rendered to her husband or minor children, as a sole and separate estate, with absolute power of disposition in her own name, and that the surviving wife shall have, by law, the same measure of estate in the property of the deceased husband, as the surviving husband shall be allowed to have in the property of his deceased wife. This will reduce their property relations to a principle of equality, and, in my judgment, is demanded by the most obvious dictates of justice and equity. Those who are not satisfied with this can make a different law for themselves by ante-nuptial settlements.
I am not unmindful that the husband alone is liable in the first instance for the support of the family; but this is much more than neutralized by the fact that, in most cases, the wife's whole life is spent in the toilsome and unpaid service of the household, and that the whole drift of her estate, in consequence of her more unselfish and generous nature, is towards the husband's pockets, in spite of all the guards of the law and every consideration of prudence.
Calling attention to this stirring appeal, the Hartford Times, Democratic, used the following language:
Another notable feature of the message is its outspoken and manly call for a reformation in our laws concerning the property rights of married women. Here as in other points it is a model message. The governor's experience as a lawyer has brought him often face to face with this disgraceful one-sidedness of our laws on this subject, and in some terse sentences he shows up the injustice more effectively than has ever been done in any of the so-called women's rights conventions.[164]
The following editorial from the Springfield Republican, gives a good digest of the new law passed upon Governor Hubbard's recommendation:
Connecticut has taken a great leap forward in the reform of the property relations of married persons. The law had been long neglected in that State, the obvious right of a married woman to property acquired before marriage, which is now secured in most States by constitutional provision, having been there denied. In Massachusetts, the modification of the former inequalities has gone on by piecemeal, till it is said that in some respects the woman is now the more favored party.
The new Connecticut statute also puts the burden of the family maintenance on the man, as under most circumstances the real bread-winner. It simply lays down the principle of absolute equality in the rights and privileges of the husband and wife, with the above exception. In all marriages hereafter contracted, neither husband nor wife shall acquire any right to or interest in any property of the other, whether held before the marriage or acquired after the marriage, except as provided in this law. The separate earnings of the wife shall be her sole property. She shall have the same right to make contracts with third persons as if she were not married, and to convey her real and personal estate. Her property is liable for her debts and not for his; his is not liable for her debts, except those contracted for the support of the family. Purchases made by either party shall be presumed to be on the private account of the party, but both shall be liable where any article purchased by either shall have in fact gone to the support of the family, or for the joint benefit of both, or for the reasonable apparel of the wife, or for her reasonable support while abandoned by her husband. It shall, however, be the duty of the husband to support his family, and his property, when found, shall be first applied to satisfy any such joint liability. The wife shall be entitled to indemnity for any money of her own used to pay such claims. We have used almost the precise language of the first and second sections of the act.
On the death of either, the survivor shall be entitled to the use for life of one-third the estate of the deceased, which right cannot be defeated by will. If the deceased leaves no children or representatives of children, the survivor is entitled to one-half instead of one-third. When either party gives a legacy to the other, the latter may choose between its rights under the will, and those under the statute. Abandonment without cause may defeat this provision, and a marriage contract may supersede it entirely. Parties already married may contract to surrender their present rights for those secured by this statute, such contracts to be recorded in the probate court.
Thus we have a new and clear statute framed in accordance with a simple principle of reform, for which the Republican has long done battle—the equality of married persons in their rights and responsibilities of property. The adoption of the reform is due deeply to the general agitation of the rights of women, the efforts of Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, the Smith girls' cows, and perhaps some flagrant instance of injustice to rich wives by tyrant husbands near the capital. But the great occasion and immediate cause, without which this generation might have pleaded for it in vain, was the perception of the justice of it by Governor Hubbard, and his open advocacy of it in his message. Lawyers have one answer for all reforms regarding property or civil contracts—they are impossible. But here was undeniably the best lawyer in the State who said, and threw the weight of his first State paper on the proposition, that this thing was possible, and, if he said it was possible, there was no man who could gainsay it. The legislature took the reform on its own sense of justice and on the assurance of Richard D. Hubbard, that it would work.
I would especially call the attention of the legislature to the importance of furnishing to women such educational facilities as will better fit them for the industrial pursuits which the true progress of the times is opening to them.
While our laws with regard to married women have been amended from time to time for several years past, so as to secure to them in a more ample manner their property, held before or acquired after marriage, yet we are still considerably behind many of our sister States, and even conservative England, in our legislation on the subject. I would recommend to your favorable consideration such an amendment of our laws as will secure to a married woman all her property, with the full control of it during her married life, and free from liability for any debts, except those contracted by herself or for which she has voluntarily made herself responsible, with the same right on the part of the husband to an interest in her property, on his surviving her, that she now has, or that it may be best to give her, in his.
I recommend a revision of our laws with regard to divorce. According to the report of the State librarian there were in the State last year 4,734 marriages and 478 divorces. Discontented people come here from other States, to take advantage of what is called our liberal legislation, to obtain divorces which would be denied them at home. As the sacredness of the marriage relation lies at the foundation of civilized society, it should be carefully guarded. Under our present laws the causes of divorce are too numerous, and not sufficiently defined, and too wide a discretion is given to the courts. I think the law of 1849 should be modified, and so much of the statute as grants divorces for "any such misconduct as permanently destroys the happiness of the petitioner, and defeats the purposes of the marriage relation," should be repealed. I would also suggest that the law provide that no decree of divorce shall take effect till one year after it is granted.
In conversation with the governor on this point in his message he stated the singular fact that the majority of the applications for divorce were made by women. If this be so, we suggested that the laws of Connecticut should stand as they are until the women have the right of suffrage, that they may have a voice in a social arrangement in which they have an equal interest with man himself. If Connecticut, with its blue laws, disloyal Hartford convention, and Democracy, has, nevertheless, been a Canada for fugitive wives from the yoke of matrimony, pray keep that little State, like an oasis in the desert, sacred to sad wives, at least until the sixteenth amendment of the federal constitution shall give the women of the republic the right to say whether they are ready to make marriage, under all circumstances, for better or worse, an indissoluble tie. We have grave doubts as to the sacredness of a relation in which the subject-class has no voice whatever in the laws that regulate it. We shall never know what "laws lie at the foundation of all civilized society" until woman's thought finds expression in the State, the church and the home. It is presumption for man longer to legislate alone on this vital question, when woman, too, should have a word to say in the matter.
The morning after the convention we had a pleasant breakfast under Mr. and Mrs. Hooker's hospitable roof, where Boston and New York amicably broke bread and discussed the fifteenth amendment together. All the wise and witty sayings that passed around that social board, time fails to chronicle.
There has been for the last few years in this State much slip-shod and fragmentary legislation in respect to the property rights of married women. The old common law assumed the subjugation of the wife, and stripped her of the better part of her rights of person and nearly all her rights of property. It is a matter of astonishment that Christian nations should have been willing for eighteen centuries to hold the mothers of their race in a condition of legal servitude. It has been the scandal of jurisprudence. Some progress has been made in reforming the law in this State, but it has been done, as I have already said, by patch-work and shreds, sometimes ill-considered, and often so incongruous as to provoke vexatious litigation and defy the wisdom of the courts. The property relations of husband and wife do not to-day rest on any just or harmonious system. Not only has the husband absolute disposal of all his own property freed from all dower rights, but he is practically the owner during coverture of all his wife's estate not specially limited to her separate use; and after her death has, in every case, a life use in all her personal, and in most cases in all her real property, by a title which the wife, no matter what may have been his ill-deserts, is powerless to impair or defeat; whereas, on the other hand, the wife has during the husband's life no more power of her own right to sell, convey, or manage her own estate than if she were a lunatic or slave, and in case of his death has a life use in only one-third part of the real estate of which he dies possessed, and no indefeasible title whatever in any of his personal estate. As a consequence, a husband may strip his wife, by mere voluntary disposition to strangers, of all claim on his estate after his death, and thus add beggary to widowhood.
I am sure this cannot seem right to any fair-minded man. Neither is it strange that some of our countrywomen, stung by the injustice of the law towards their sex, should be demanding, as a mode of redress, a part in the making of the laws which govern them. I am confident there is manhood enough in our own sex to right this obvious wrong to which I have alluded.
I therefore recommend that the law on this subject be so recast that, in all marriages hereafter contracted, the wife shall hold her property and all her earnings for personal services not rendered to her husband or minor children, as a sole and separate estate, with absolute power of disposition in her own name, and that the surviving wife shall have, by law, the same measure of estate in the property of the deceased husband, as the surviving husband shall be allowed to have in the property of his deceased wife. This will reduce their property relations to a principle of equality, and, in my judgment, is demanded by the most obvious dictates of justice and equity. Those who are not satisfied with this can make a different law for themselves by ante-nuptial settlements.
I am not unmindful that the husband alone is liable in the first instance for the support of the family; but this is much more than neutralized by the fact that, in most cases, the wife's whole life is spent in the toilsome and unpaid service of the household, and that the whole drift of her estate, in consequence of her more unselfish and generous nature, is towards the husband's pockets, in spite of all the guards of the law and every consideration of prudence.
Another notable feature of the message is its outspoken and manly call for a reformation in our laws concerning the property rights of married women. Here as in other points it is a model message. The governor's experience as a lawyer has brought him often face to face with this disgraceful one-sidedness of our laws on this subject, and in some terse sentences he shows up the injustice more effectively than has ever been done in any of the so-called women's rights conventions.[164]
Connecticut has taken a great leap forward in the reform of the property relations of married persons. The law had been long neglected in that State, the obvious right of a married woman to property acquired before marriage, which is now secured in most States by constitutional provision, having been there denied. In Massachusetts, the modification of the former inequalities has gone on by piecemeal, till it is said that in some respects the woman is now the more favored party.
The new Connecticut statute also puts the burden of the family maintenance on the man, as under most circumstances the real bread-winner. It simply lays down the principle of absolute equality in the rights and privileges of the husband and wife, with the above exception. In all marriages hereafter contracted, neither husband nor wife shall acquire any right to or interest in any property of the other, whether held before the marriage or acquired after the marriage, except as provided in this law. The separate earnings of the wife shall be her sole property. She shall have the same right to make contracts with third persons as if she were not married, and to convey her real and personal estate. Her property is liable for her debts and not for his; his is not liable for her debts, except those contracted for the support of the family. Purchases made by either party shall be presumed to be on the private account of the party, but both shall be liable where any article purchased by either shall have in fact gone to the support of the family, or for the joint benefit of both, or for the reasonable apparel of the wife, or for her reasonable support while abandoned by her husband. It shall, however, be the duty of the husband to support his family, and his property, when found, shall be first applied to satisfy any such joint liability. The wife shall be entitled to indemnity for any money of her own used to pay such claims. We have used almost the precise language of the first and second sections of the act.
On the death of either, the survivor shall be entitled to the use for life of one-third the estate of the deceased, which right cannot be defeated by will. If the deceased leaves no children or representatives of children, the survivor is entitled to one-half instead of one-third. When either party gives a legacy to the other, the latter may choose between its rights under the will, and those under the statute. Abandonment without cause may defeat this provision, and a marriage contract may supersede it entirely. Parties already married may contract to surrender their present rights for those secured by this statute, such contracts to be recorded in the probate court.
Thus we have a new and clear statute framed in accordance with a simple principle of reform, for which the Republican has long done battle—the equality of married persons in their rights and responsibilities of property. The adoption of the reform is due deeply to the general agitation of the rights of women, the efforts of Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, the Smith girls' cows, and perhaps some flagrant instance of injustice to rich wives by tyrant husbands near the capital. But the great occasion and immediate cause, without which this generation might have pleaded for it in vain, was the perception of the justice of it by Governor Hubbard, and his open advocacy of it in his message. Lawyers have one answer for all reforms regarding property or civil contracts—they are impossible. But here was undeniably the best lawyer in the State who said, and threw the weight of his first State paper on the proposition, that this thing was possible, and, if he said it was possible, there was no man who could gainsay it. The legislature took the reform on its own sense of justice and on the assurance of Richard D. Hubbard, that it would work.
On June 6, 1870, at a second hearing[165] before the Joint Committee on Woman Suffrage, in the capitol at New Haven, Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford of the Universalist church, Mrs. Benchley and Mrs. Russell were the speakers. During that session of the legislature Mrs. Hanaford acted as chaplain both in the Senate and House of Representatives, and received a check for her services which she valued chiefly as a recognition of woman's equality in the clerical profession.