However, these gentlemen invited ladies from other States, and a series of meetings[196] was inaugurated through the chief towns and cities of Vermont. The speakers[197] were heartily welcomed at some points and rudely received at others. The usual "free-love" cry was started by some of the opposition papers—a cry that like "infidel" in the anti-slavery days, oft' times frightened even the faithful from their propriety. Henry B. Blackwell came to the rescue, and ably answered the Vermont Watchman:
The Vermont Watchman evades the discussion of the question whether women shall be entitled to vote, by raising false issues. The editor asserts that "many of the advocates of suffrage have thrown scorn upon marriage and upon the Divine Word." That assertion we denounced as an unfounded and wicked calumny. We also objected to it as an evasion of the main question. Thereupon the Watchman, instead of correcting its mistake and discussing the question of suffrage, repeats the charge, and seeks to sustain it by garbled quotations and groundless assertions, which we stigmatized accordingly. The Watchman now calls upon us to retract the stigma. We prefer to prove that our censure is deserved, and proceed to do so.
The first quotation of the Watchman is from an editorial in the Woman's Journal, entitled "Political Organization." The object of which was to show the propriety of doing what the Watchman refuses to do—viz.: of discussing woman suffrage upon its own merits. It showed the unfairness of complicating the question with other topics upon which friends of woman suffrage honestly differ. It regretted that "many well-meaning people insist on dragging in their peculiar views on theology, temperance, marriage, race, dress, finance, labor, capital—it matters not what." It condemned "a confusion of ideas which have no logical connection," and protested "against loading the good ship, Woman Suffrage, with a cargo of irrelevant opinions." The Watchman cites this article as an admission that some of the friends of suffrage advocate free-love. Not at all. The editor of the Watchman is himself one of the well-meaning people alluded to. He insists on dragging in irrelevant theological and social questions. He refuses to confine himself to the issue of suffrage. The Watchman quotes a single sentence of the following statement:
The advocates of woman's equality differ utterly upon every other topic. Some are abolitionists, others hostile to the equality of races. Some are evangelical Christians; others Catholics, Unitarians, Spiritualists, or Quakers. Some hold the most rigid theories with regard to marriage and divorce; others are latitudinarian on these questions. In short, people of the most opposite views agree in desiring to establish woman suffrage, while they anticipate very different results from the reform, when effected.
The above is cited as evidence against us. How so? A man may hold "latitudinarian theories in regard to marriage and divorce" without "throwing scorn upon the marriage relation," or having the slightest sympathy with free-love. For instance: The present law of Vermont is latitudinarian is these very particulars. It grants divorce for many other causes than adultery. Measured by the more conservative standard of Henry Ward Beecher and Mary A. Livermore, it allows divorce upon insufficient grounds. This law represents the public sentiment of a majority of the people of Vermont. Will the Watchman assert that the people of Vermont "throw scorn on the marriage relation"? Or that he is in "low company" because he is surrounded by the citizens of a State who entertain views upon the marriage relation less rigid than his own? Our indignant protest against the injustice of the common law, which subjects the person, property, earnings and children of married women to the irresponsible control of their husbands, is not a protest against marriage. It is a vindication of marriage, against the barbarism of the law which degrades a noble and life-long partnership of equals into a mercenary and servile relation between superior and dependant.
The Watchman assails prominent supporters of woman suffrage, and misquotes and misrepresents them. Because Theodore Tilton is unwilling "that men or women shall be compelled to live together as husband and wife against the inward protest of their own souls," therefore he is charged with advocating free-love. Is it possible that the editor regards such a relation of protest and disgust as consistent with the unity of Christian marriage? Is it right that a pure and noble man, the tender husband of a happy wife, the loving father of affectionate children, should be thus causelessly traduced for showing that the essential fact of marriage is in that unity of soul which is recognized and affirmed by the outward form? When the Watchman undertakes to brand men and women of irreproachable character for an intellectual difference, he is engaged in a very unworthy business. When he charges immorality upon the New York Independent and infidelity upon John Stuart Mill, he forgets that his readers have minds of their own.
But, suppose it were true that newspapers and individuals who believe in woman suffrage held objectionable views on other subjects, what has this to do with the merit of the proposed reform? There are impure and intemperate men in the Republican party. Is the Republican party therefore "low company"? There are brutal and ignorant and disloyal men in the Democratic party. Does this prove that Dr. Lord and every other Democrat in the State of Vermont is brutal and ignorant and disloyal? The Supreme Court of the United States has just decided that a divorce obtained under the laws of Indiana is legal and binding in every other State. In thus affirming Mrs. McFarland's right to marry Mr. Richardson, has the Supreme Court of the United States sanctioned free-love? Will the Watchman call Chief-Justice Chase and the Supreme Court free-lovers? We have very little hope that the Watchman will treat this question with fairness or candor. Our cause is too strong. The argument from reason, from revelation, from nature, from history, is on our side. The Watchman is fighting against the Declaration of Independence, the bill of rights of the State of Vermont, and the principles of representative government. No wonder that it raises false issues. No wonder that it evades the question.
H. B. B.
The advocates of woman's equality differ utterly upon every other topic. Some are abolitionists, others hostile to the equality of races. Some are evangelical Christians; others Catholics, Unitarians, Spiritualists, or Quakers. Some hold the most rigid theories with regard to marriage and divorce; others are latitudinarian on these questions. In short, people of the most opposite views agree in desiring to establish woman suffrage, while they anticipate very different results from the reform, when effected.
The following editorial in the Woman's Journal, from the pen of Mary A. Livermore, does not give a very rose-colored view of the reception of the Massachusetts missionaries on their first advent into Vermont:
The Vermont constitutional convention has rejected a proposition to give the ballot to woman, by a vote of 231 to 1. It flouted all discussion of the question, and voted it down with the utmost alacrity. No one cognizant of the bigotry, narrowness and general ignorance that prevail there will be surprised at this result. It is not a progressive State, but the contrary. Great stress has been laid on the fact that "Vermont never owned a slave"—and from this it has been argued that the Green Mountain State is and has been especially liberty-loving. But during the two brief visits we made last winter, we were told again and again, by Vermont men, that the only reason for the non-introduction of slavery was the impracticability of that form of labor among the Green Mountains—that slavery could never have been made profitable there, and that this, and not principle and heroic love of freedom, prevented Vermont from ever being a slave State. Nowhere, not even in the roughest and remotest West, have we met with such vulgar rudeness, ill-manners and heroic lying as we encountered in Vermont. The lecturers who were invited into the State by the Vermont Woman Suffrage Association, composed wholly of men, were in many instances left unsupported by them, allowed to meet the frequently rough audiences as best they could, to pay their own bills, and to manage the campaign as they might. At the very first intimation of opposition on the part of the Montpelier Argus, the Watchman and the Burlington Free Press—an unworthy trio of papers that appear to control the majority—many members of the State association showed the "white feather," and either apologetically backed out of the canvass, or ignominiously kept silent in the background. There was, therefore, nothing like a thorough discussion of the question, no fair meeting of truth and error, not even an attempt to canvass the State. For, not ambitious to waste their efforts on such flinty soil, the men and women who were invited to labor there shook off the dust (snow) of Vermont from their feet, and turned to more hopeful fields of labor.
Let it not be supposed, however, that this vote of the delegates of the constitutional convention is any indication of the sentiment of the women on this question. The fact that 231 women of lawful age, residents of Brattleborough, and 96 of Newfane, sent a petition for woman suffrage, with their reasons for asking it, to Charles K. Field, delegate from that town to the constitutional convention; that petitions from other hundreds of women have been forwarded to congress, praying for a sixteenth amendment; that, by letters and personal statements, we know the most intelligent and thoughtful women everywhere rebel against the State laws whose heathenism, despotism and absurdity were so well shown by Mrs. Nichols in 1845—all these facts are proofs that the sentiment of Vermont women is not represented by the constitutional convention now in session at Montpelier.—[M. A. L.
August 12, 1871, our Burlington correspondent says:
While conventions, picnics and bazar meetings, in the cause of woman suffrage, have been held in our sister States, an event has very quietly occurred with us which we deem an important step in the right direction, viz.: the admission of women to the University. By an almost unanimous vote of the corporation, a few conservatives opposing it, the matter was referred to the faculty, who are understood to be heartily in favor of the "new departure." The college that has thus thrown its doors wide open to all, is the University of Vermont and State Agricultural College, founded by the munificence of General Ira Allen in 1791. It commenced operations in 1800; the Federal troops used its buildings for barracks in the war of 1812; the buildings (and library) were burned in 1824, and reconstructed in the following year, when the corner-stone was laid by General Lafayette. It sent forth nearly all its sons to the great rebellion. Indeed, at one time its condition served to remind one of the lines of Holmes—
"Lord, how the Senior knocked about
That Freshman class of one."It has graduated such men as the late Senator Collamer, John G. Smith, president of the Northern Pacific Railroad; William G. T. Shedd, the learned theologian; the late Henry J. Raymond of the New York Times; John A. Kasson of Iowa, Frederick Billings, and a host of others, eminent in all the walks of life. Its late president, who was an "Angell from Providence," and has just been elected president of Michigan University, is heartily in favor of the movement, and the president-elect, Matthew H. Buckham, is no less so. With its new president and its "new departure" the future bids fair even to outshine the past.
It may be well to inquire the reason why a college located in a State regarded by outsiders "as the most conservative of the Union on the woman suffrage question," should take a step so far in advance of what has been deemed the prevailing sentiment. Editors who have been battling the new reform with a zeal equaled only by that manifested against abolitionism a few years since, can see no necessary connection between the new movement and the general cause of woman's emancipation. Whether necessary or not, there is a practical connection between them which is being felt more and more every day. I assert, with no fear of contradiction by any observing man, that Vermont is no more committed against woman suffrage than any other State in the East, and the fact that but one man in our late convention voted to extend the right of suffrage to all, can well be explained when we consider the manner of choosing delegates by towns; one town, for instance, with twelve voters, having the same voice in the representation that this city has with 1,500. With a popular vote upon that question the State would give such a majority as would fairly astonish all those who regarded the late convention as a complete demolition of the "reformers."
St. Andrew.
The following criticism of the Rev. Mr. Holmes, from the pen of a woman, shows the growing self-assertion of a class hitherto held in a condition of subordination by clerical authority. Such tergiversation in the pulpit as his has done much to emancipate woman from the reverence she once felt for the teaching of those supposed to be divinely ordained of heaven:
Benson, Vt., June 20, 1871.
I have heard it stated from the pulpit within a year that the woman suffrage question in Vermont is dead. Well, we believe in the resurrection. Week by week this question of the hour and of the age confronts those who claim to have given it decent burial. The same clergyman who pronounced it dead has since spoken of it as one of the "growing evils of the times," and in this beautiful summer weather he has felt called upon to preach another sermon, ostensibly on "marriage," really upon this "dead question," dragging it out to daylight again, that we might see how easily he could bury it fifty fathoms deep—with mud. It reminded me of Robert Laird Collier's sermon, "The Folly of the Woman Movement," in its logic and its spirit. Mr. Collier and our Mr. Holmes see but one thing in all this struggle for truth and justice, and that is "free-love." Here are some specimens of Mr. Holmes' assertions:
The advocates of woman's rights want, not the ballot so much as the dissolution of the marriage tie. They propose to form a tie for the term of five, six or seven years. Mark the men or women who are the most strenuous advocates of woman suffrage. They are irreligious and immoral.
Who are more strenuous advocates of woman suffrage than Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, Mrs. Lucy Stone, Mrs. Lucretia Mott, Mrs. Livermore, T. W. Higginson, Henry Ward Beecher, Bishop Simpson, Governor Claflin, Gilbert Haven, Wendell Phillips, and scores of others whose lives are as pure and intellects as fine as his who dares stand in the sacred desk and call these persons "irreligious and immoral"? His argument seems to be like this: Some advocates of woman suffrage are in favor of easy divorces. These men and women advocate woman suffrage; therefore these men and women are in favor of easy divorces. Or, to make the matter still plainer, some ministers of the Gospel are immoral. Mr. H. is a minister of the Gospel; therefore Mr. H. is immoral. The method of reasoning is the same, but it don't sound quite fair and honorable, does it?
"In our land woman is a queen; she is loved and cared for," says Mr. Holmes. In sight from the window where I write is a sad commentary upon this. One of these queens, so tenderly cared for, is hoeing corn, while her five-months-old baby—the youngest of nine children—lies on the grass while she works. Her husband is away from home, but has left word for the "old woman" to "take care of the corn and potatoes, for he has to support the family." When they are out of meat, she must go out washing and earn some, for "he has to support the family," and cannot have her idle. Not long since they were planting corn together, she doing as much as he. At noon, although she had a pail of milk and another of eggs, he brought her the two hoes to carry home, as he could not be troubled with them. Had he ever read:
"I will be master of what is my own;
She is my goods, my chattels—
My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything"?"No woman reaches such dignity as the New England wife and mother," says Mr. H. Is wifehood more honorable, or motherhood more sacred, in New England than in other places? Is to be a wife and mother, and nothing else, the sole end and aim of woman? Or is there not other work in God's universe which some woman may possibly be called upon to do? Is Florence Nightingale or Anna Dickinson less dignified than Mrs. John Smith, who happens physically to be the mother of half-a-dozen children, but mentally and morally is as much of a child as any of them?
"Woman has just the sphere she wants. She has more privileges than she could vote herself into," says Mr. H. Has she, indeed? I know women, who would gladly vote themselves into the privilege of having the custody of their own children, whose husbands are notoriously drunken and licentious. They are pure, good women, who, rather than part with their children, live on with men whose very breath is pollution. I know others who would like to vote themselves into the privilege of retaining their own hard earnings instead of having them sacrificed by a drunken husband. Widows have been literally turned out of doors after their husbands' death, and the property they had helped to accumulate divided among those who never earned it. Do you think such women would not change the laws of inheritance if they had the power?
"Husband and wife are one, hence one vote is sufficient," says Mr. H. Follow out the reasoning, if you please. "Both one," hence one dinner is sufficient, "both one," hence if a man is a member of a church his wife is also. In plain English, "the husband and wife are both one," and the husband is that one. Now in case that one should die, is it fair, or just, or fitting, that the widow—"the relict"—or, in the words of Mr. H., "the feminine spirit that has supplemented this masculine nature," whose hands have been tied all these years, should be called upon to pay taxes upon the share of property the law allows her? Taxation without representation was the immediate cause of the famous tea-party in Boston harbor, and, in fact, of a good many other unpleasant things that followed.
"Woman has just the sphere she wants," says Mr. H., closing the discussion. No, sir, she has not. Had those young ladies in Philadelphia who were studying medicine, and were insulted day after day by the male medical students, the sphere they wanted? Our American girls have been to Europe for the sake of pursuing their studies in medicine, and have met with kindness and courtesy, while in this land, where they are called "queens," they received only hisses. Last winter Governor Claflin of Massachusetts—one of those "irreligious and immoral" advocates of woman suffrage—reminded the gentlemen of that State who claim to be woman's representatives in the legislature, "that a wife in that State is deprived of the free control of property that was her own before marriage, and is denied an equal right in the property accumulated during the marriage partnership; that a married mother has no legal right to her child; and that a widow has not equal rights with a widower." When woman has the sphere she wants, these things will be changed.
As a majority of the men in this community are opposed to woman suffrage, I will relate one circumstance that will do to "point a moral or adorn a tale." Of course, the voters in this or any other place always elect their best men to hold office, and the board of selectmen would naturally be the very wisest and best, the "crème de la crème." Now it so happens that one selectman being away from home, there was not enough arithmetic left with the other two to make out the tax-bills for the town, and they hired a woman, the mother of two children, to do it for them. It certainly took more of her time than it would for her to have walked across the street and voted for men who could make out their own tax-bills. Then arithmetic is not a womanly accomplishment, like tatting, crocheting, etc. These things sink into our hearts, and will bear fruit in due season.
Sarah A. Gibbs.
The advocates of woman's rights want, not the ballot so much as the dissolution of the marriage tie. They propose to form a tie for the term of five, six or seven years. Mark the men or women who are the most strenuous advocates of woman suffrage. They are irreligious and immoral.