We are indebted to John K. Wildman of Philadelphia for the following:
The Pennsylvania association was organized December 22, 1869, in Mercantile Library Hall, Philadelphia. The meeting was called to order by John K. Wildman, who said: "The time has arrived when it is necessary for us to take some action towards promoting the cause of woman suffrage. We desire to do our part as far as practicable, in the work of enlightening the people of our State upon this important subject. With this end in view we propose to organize, hoping that all friends of the movement will cordially give us their influence." Edward M. Davis then proposed the appointment of Judge William S. Pierce as chairman of the meeting. This was agreed to, and Judge Pierce announced that the meeting was ready for business, reserving for another stage of the proceedings any remarks he might wish to make. Annie Heacock was chosen to act as secretary. In accordance with a motion that was adopted, the chairman appointed a committee of five persons[265] to prepare a constitution, and present the same for the action of the meeting. Mary Grew spoke at length in her earnest and impressive manner, presenting forcibly those familiar yet solid arguments in favor of woman suffrage which form the basis of the discussion, and which should irrevocably settle the question. Dr. Henry T. Child followed with a brief address, showing his zealous interest in the object of the meeting, and trusting that at no distant period the ballot would be placed in the hands of the women of the land. Judge Pierce said:
I am in favor of giving woman a chance in the world. I feel very much in regard to woman as Diogenes did when Alexander the Great went to see him. When the monarch arrived at the city in which Diogenes lived, he sent a request for him to come to see him. Diogenes declined to go. The monarch then went to the place of his residence, and found him lying in his court-yard sunning himself. He did not even rise when Alexander approached. Standing over him, the warrior asked, "Diogenes, what can I do for you?" And the philosopher answered, "Nothing, except to stand out of my sunshine." Now, I am disposed to stand out of woman's sunshine. If she wants the light of the sun upon her, and the breath of heaven upon her, and freedom of action necessary to develop herself, heaven forbid that I should stand in her way. I believe that everything goes to its own place in God's world, and woman will go to her place if you do not impede her. We should not be afraid to trust her, or to apply the same principles to her in regard to suffrage that we apply to ourselves. There should be no distinction. Her claims to the ballot rest upon a just and logical foundation.
The venerable Sojourner Truth spoke a few words of encouragement, showing in her humble and fervid way a reverent faith in the final triumph of justice. After the adoption of the constitution, the organization was completed by the election of officers[266] to serve for the ensuing year.
The first thing that claimed the attention of the officers of the new society was the representation of the different counties on the executive committee; and for this purpose the chairman wrote to nearly all of the sixty-three counties, chiefly to the postmasters of the principal towns. The replies that were received presented a curious medley of sentiment and opinion touching the object in view, disclosing every shade of tone and temper between the two extremes of cold indifference and warm enthusiasm. It was evident that, in a large number of cases, the inquiries promptly found their resting-place in the waste-basket. Before the close of the year twenty-two counties were represented. Thus reinforced, the committee took immediate steps towards distributing documents and circulating petitions throughout the State. Many of the county members coöperated earnestly in this work. Some of them, not satisfied to limit their action to this particular form of service, aided the movement by collecting funds and holding public meetings in their respective localities. Matilda Hindman, representing Alleghany county, evinced both energy and enterprise in forwarding the movement through the agency of public meetings. She did good service from the beginning, relying almost solely upon her own determined purpose. Her deep interest in the work and its object, and the courage that animated her at the first impulse of duty, have continued without abatement to the present time. Her usefulness and activity have not confined themselves within the limits of Pennsylvania, but have extended to other States, both in the East and West.
Miss Matilda Hindman, of Philadelphia, pays the following tribute to her parents:
In 1837, my father being a member of the school committee of the Union township, Washington county, secured equal salaries for women; and in spite of steady opposition, there was no difference made for four years. The women who taught the schools in the summer were paid the same as the men who taught in the winter. At the death of my father the board returned to the old system of half pay for women; the result was "incompetent teachers," furnishing the opposition with just the plea they desired—that women were not fit for school teachers. My mother remonstrated, but in vain. They replied, "women never received as much as men for any work"; "it did not cost as much to keep a woman as a man," and moreover, these school matters belonged to men, and women had no right to interfere. In 1842, my mother offered to board the teacher in her district, gratis, if the board would raise her salary proportionally. They received her proposition with scorn. She then refused to pay her taxes. Such was the respect for her in the community, and the sense of justice in regard to the teachers, that the authorities suffered the tax to go unpaid, and at the end of the year accepted the proposition, and for many years after, she boarded the teacher in her district, making the woman's net salary equal to that of the man.
My mother lived to see her daughters employed in her township on equal salaries with men. But in process of time, another board, for the express purpose of humiliating mother and daughters alike, passed a resolution to take two dollars a month from each of their salaries, when all three resigned. They all honored her, by carrying into their life-work the noble principles for which she suffered so much.
She was the grand-daughter of a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian minister, who, with his young family, was among the earliest settlers in the wilderness of what is now known as the prosperous and beautiful county of Washington, Pennsylvania. Her name was Sarah Campbell. She was born in 1798. From her earliest girlhood she rebelled against the injustice done women by the law. She felt acutely the wrong done her and her sisters by being denied an education equal to their brothers, and denied also an equal share of their inheritance. While the father possessed a large estate, and provided liberally for his sons, he left his daughters a mere pittance.
In view of such facts, it is folly to say that women were ever satisfied with the humiliating discriminations of sex they have endured in all periods, and in all ranks in society.
The first annual report of the association was prepared by Eliza Sproat Turner. She said:
We do not complain that man is slow to realize the injustice of his present attitude towards woman—an attitude once, from necessity, endurable; now, from too long continuance, grown intolerable. It would not be natural for him to feel it with equal keenness. It takes a great-minded fox to find out, what every goose knows, that foxes' teeth are cruel. And while we do not complain of this incapacity on his part, the advocates of this cause feel the necessity for woman to take upon herself whatever share in the management of their mutual affairs shall be needed to right the balance; concluding that the defects in legislation which she is, by reason of her position, more competent to understand, she should be more competent to remedy. Not these innovations alone, but others involving matters beyond individual interests, she expects to achieve by the power she shall gain through the exercise of her right of suffrage. We discern, in the consideration of nearly all questions of national welfare, a disposition to press unduly the interests of trade and commerce rather than the interests of the fireside.
Mary Grew presided, and has been elected president of the association every year from the beginning, performing the duties of the position with ability, earnestness and satisfaction. In the winter of 1870-71 the executive committee recommended the passage of a law that should give married women the control of their own earnings. The appeal to the legislature in behalf of such a law was renewed the following winter, and its passage finally secured. Among the resolutions adopted at the annual meeting was the following:
Resolved, That the vote of the legislature of this State for a convention to amend the constitution, makes it our duty to work for the exclusion of the word "male" from the provision defining the qualifications for the elective franchise, and that we call upon all friends of justice to give their best energies to the sustaining of this object.
Subsequently the executive committee prepared a petition with reference to the formation of the constitutional convention, asking the legislature, in making the needful regulations, to frame them in such a way as to secure the representation of the women of the State. This petition was unavailing. At the next annual meeting, which was held at the time the constitutional convention was in session, a resolution was adopted containing an appeal to that body, earnestly requesting it to present to the people of the State a constitution that should secure the right of suffrage to its citizens without distinction of sex, accompanied by a request for a hearing at such time and place as the convention should decide. The request was willingly granted, and an evening assigned for that purpose. An evening was also given to the Citizens' Suffrage Society of Philadelphia for a like object. These meetings were held in the hall of the convention, and were largely attended by the members and by the people generally. Addresses were delivered by various friends of woman suffrage, as representatives of the two societies.[267] Still another evening was granted the Pennsylvania association for a meeting to be addressed by Bishop Matthew Simpson of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The earnest and forcible words of the eloquent speaker, and his solid array of arguments, made a deep impression on the attentive audience.
In the convention the question was discussed during five successive days. Hon. John M. Broomall introduced a provision in favor of making the ballot free to men and women alike, proposing that it be incorporated in the new constitution. This provision was ably advocated by Mr. Broomall and many other members of the convention. Their firm convictions in behalf of equal and exact justice, however well sustained by sound reasoning and earnest appeal, was an unequal match for the rooted conservatism which recoiled from such a new departure. Although the measure was defeated, its discussion had an influence. It was animated, intelligent and exhaustive, and drew public attention more directly to the subject than anything that had occurred since the beginning of its agitation in the State.
The only act of the convention that gave hope to the friends of impartial suffrage was the adoption of the third section of Article X.: "Women twenty-one years of age and upwards shall be eligible to any office of control or management under the school laws of this State." It was a very faint gleam of comfort, too small to stir more than a breath of praise. It had the merit of being a step in the right direction, though timid and feeble, and as it has never disturbed the equilibrium of society, it may ultimately be followed by others of more importance.
The annual meetings of the association have been held in Philadelphia, Westchester, Bristol, Kennett Square and Media, respectively. An interesting feature of the Westchester meeting was the reading of an essay, entitled "Four quite New Reasons why you should wish your Wife to Vote." It was written for the occasion by Eliza Sproat Turner, and was subsequently printed and re-printed in tract form by order of the executive committee, and freely circulated among the people. It was likewise published in the Woman's Journal. Other documents relative to the question have been printed from time to time by authority of the committee, and large numbers of suffrage tracts have been purchased for distribution year after year, embodying the best thoughts, the soundest arguments, and the most forcible reasoning that the question has elicited. Frequent petitions have been sent to the legislature and to congress, all having in view the one paramount object, and showing by their repeated and persistent appearance the indefatigable nature of a living, breathing reform. The executive committee at one time employed Matilda Hindman as State agent. Meetings were held by her chiefly in the western part of the State. In 1874 her services extended to the State of Michigan, where the question of woman suffrage was specially before the people. Lelia E. Patridge also represented the association in Michigan at that time, where she performed excellent service in addressing numerous meetings in different parts of the State. In 1877 Miss Patridge was appointed to represent the society in Colorado. There she labored with others to secure the adoption of a constitutional amendment providing for suffrage without regard to sex. On several occasions the executive committee has contributed to woman suffrage purposes in other States. Massachusetts, Michigan, Colorado and Oregon have been recipients of the limited resources of the association. The executive committee has felt the cramping influence of an unfriended treasury. Its provision has been the fruit of unwearied soliciting, and should the especial object of the association ever be accomplished, the honors of success may be fitly contested by the fine art of begging.
I am in favor of giving woman a chance in the world. I feel very much in regard to woman as Diogenes did when Alexander the Great went to see him. When the monarch arrived at the city in which Diogenes lived, he sent a request for him to come to see him. Diogenes declined to go. The monarch then went to the place of his residence, and found him lying in his court-yard sunning himself. He did not even rise when Alexander approached. Standing over him, the warrior asked, "Diogenes, what can I do for you?" And the philosopher answered, "Nothing, except to stand out of my sunshine." Now, I am disposed to stand out of woman's sunshine. If she wants the light of the sun upon her, and the breath of heaven upon her, and freedom of action necessary to develop herself, heaven forbid that I should stand in her way. I believe that everything goes to its own place in God's world, and woman will go to her place if you do not impede her. We should not be afraid to trust her, or to apply the same principles to her in regard to suffrage that we apply to ourselves. There should be no distinction. Her claims to the ballot rest upon a just and logical foundation.
In 1837, my father being a member of the school committee of the Union township, Washington county, secured equal salaries for women; and in spite of steady opposition, there was no difference made for four years. The women who taught the schools in the summer were paid the same as the men who taught in the winter. At the death of my father the board returned to the old system of half pay for women; the result was "incompetent teachers," furnishing the opposition with just the plea they desired—that women were not fit for school teachers. My mother remonstrated, but in vain. They replied, "women never received as much as men for any work"; "it did not cost as much to keep a woman as a man," and moreover, these school matters belonged to men, and women had no right to interfere. In 1842, my mother offered to board the teacher in her district, gratis, if the board would raise her salary proportionally. They received her proposition with scorn. She then refused to pay her taxes. Such was the respect for her in the community, and the sense of justice in regard to the teachers, that the authorities suffered the tax to go unpaid, and at the end of the year accepted the proposition, and for many years after, she boarded the teacher in her district, making the woman's net salary equal to that of the man.
My mother lived to see her daughters employed in her township on equal salaries with men. But in process of time, another board, for the express purpose of humiliating mother and daughters alike, passed a resolution to take two dollars a month from each of their salaries, when all three resigned. They all honored her, by carrying into their life-work the noble principles for which she suffered so much.
She was the grand-daughter of a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian minister, who, with his young family, was among the earliest settlers in the wilderness of what is now known as the prosperous and beautiful county of Washington, Pennsylvania. Her name was Sarah Campbell. She was born in 1798. From her earliest girlhood she rebelled against the injustice done women by the law. She felt acutely the wrong done her and her sisters by being denied an education equal to their brothers, and denied also an equal share of their inheritance. While the father possessed a large estate, and provided liberally for his sons, he left his daughters a mere pittance.
We do not complain that man is slow to realize the injustice of his present attitude towards woman—an attitude once, from necessity, endurable; now, from too long continuance, grown intolerable. It would not be natural for him to feel it with equal keenness. It takes a great-minded fox to find out, what every goose knows, that foxes' teeth are cruel. And while we do not complain of this incapacity on his part, the advocates of this cause feel the necessity for woman to take upon herself whatever share in the management of their mutual affairs shall be needed to right the balance; concluding that the defects in legislation which she is, by reason of her position, more competent to understand, she should be more competent to remedy. Not these innovations alone, but others involving matters beyond individual interests, she expects to achieve by the power she shall gain through the exercise of her right of suffrage. We discern, in the consideration of nearly all questions of national welfare, a disposition to press unduly the interests of trade and commerce rather than the interests of the fireside.
Resolved, That the vote of the legislature of this State for a convention to amend the constitution, makes it our duty to work for the exclusion of the word "male" from the provision defining the qualifications for the elective franchise, and that we call upon all friends of justice to give their best energies to the sustaining of this object.
The following report was sent us by Mrs. Mary Byrnes:
March 22, 1872, the Citizens' Suffrage Association of Philadelphia was formed, William Morris Davis, president, with fifty members. The name of the society was chosen to denote the view of its members as to the basis of the elective franchise. The amendments to the United States constitution had clearly defined who were citizens, and shown citizenship to be without sex. Woman was as indisputably a citizen as man. Whatever rights he possessed as a citizen she possessed also. The supreme law of the land placed her on the same plane of political rights with him. If man held the right of suffrage as a citizen of the United States, either by birthright within the respective States, or by naturalization under the United States, then the right of the female citizen to vote was as absolute as that of the male citizen; and woman's disfranchisement became a wrong inflicted upon her by usurped power. Men became voters by reason of their citizenship, having first complied with certain police regulations imposed within and by the respective States. The Citizens' Suffrage Association demanded the same political rights for all citizens, nothing more, nothing less. It repudiated the idea that one class of citizens should ask of another class rights which that other class never possessed, and which those who were denied them never had lost. This society held that the right to give implied the right to take away; and further, that the right to give implied a right lodged somewhere in society, which society had never acquired by any direct concession from the people.
This society held also, that the theory of the right to the franchise, as a gift, bore with it the power somewhere to restrict the male citizen's suffrage, and to strike at the principle of self-government. They had seen this doctrine earnestly advanced. They knew that there was a growing class in the country who were inimical to universal suffrage. In view of this they chose the name of citizen suffrage, as the highest and broadest term by which to designate their devotion to the political rights of all citizens. They held that the political condition of the white women of the United States was totally unlike that of the slave population in this: that while the slaves were not considered citizens until the adoption of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, white women had always been citizens, and always entitled to all the political rights of citizenship. The colored male citizen became a voter—subject to the police regulations of the different States—upon acquiring citizenship. No constitutional enactment denied equal political rights to women as citizens. No constitutional enactment was therefore required to enable them to exercise the right to vote, which became the right of male slaves upon their securing citizenship under the law. The first legal argument on the subject of woman's right to the ballot as a citizen of the United States, was made by Jacob F. Byrnes before the Pennsylvania Society. Had it been published as soon as written, instead of being circulated privately, surprising person after person with the position taken, it would have antedated the report of General Benjamin F. Butler in the House of Representatives in the winter of 1871.
Edward M. Davis, president for many years, was one of the most active and untiring officers of this association, giving generously of his time and money not only to its support but to the general agitation of the suffrage question in every part of the country. The meetings were held regularly at his office, 333 Walnut street, as were also those of the Radical Club. This was composed largely of the same members as the suffrage society, but in this organization they had a greater latitude in discussion, covering all questions of political, religious and social interest. As the division in the National Society produced division everywhere, some of the friends in Philadelphia made themselves auxiliary to the American Association, and the sympathy of others was with the National, thus forming two rival societies, which together kept the suffrage question before the people and roused their attention, particularly to the fact of a pending constitutional convention. Hence the necessity of holding meetings throughout the State, and rolling up petitions asking that the constitution be so amended as to secure to women the right to vote. The following appeal was issued by this association:
To the Editor of the Post:
Sir: There is no political question now before the people of this commonwealth more important than the consideration of the changes to be made in our constitution. The citizens of the State, by an enormous majority of votes, have re-claimed the sovereign powers of government, and evinced a determination to re-form the fundamental law, the constitution of this State, in the interest of a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." In this new adaptation of old rules of government to the advanced ideas of the age, it seems to us fitting and opportune that woman in her new status as a citizen of the United States (under the fourteenth amendment of the constitution), should be allowed the exercise of rights which have been withheld under old rules of action. Therefore we respectfully ask you to give this, with our appeal, an insertion in your paper, and to continue the appeal until further notice. And we ask all the friends of woman suffrage to aid our association in placing this appeal in each paper of our city, as well as of the neighboring towns.
"There is no distinction in citizenship as has been determined by the fourteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States. The citizens of Pennsylvania have decided on a revision of the constitution of the commonwealth. The power of revision is to be delegated by the citizens of the commonwealth to a convention. The foundation of free government is based on the consent of the governed. Therefore, the Citizens' Suffrage Association of Pennsylvania appeals to the sense of right and justice in the hearts of the citizens of this State, to aid in securing to every citizen, irrespective of sex, an equal voice in the selection of delegates, and an equal right, if elected thereto, to a seat in said constitutional convention."
Wm. Morris Davis, Controller.