"This community will never know what a loss it has had in Dr. Dimock. It was not merely her skill, though that was remarkable, considering her youth and limited experience, but also her nerve, that qualified her to become a great surgeon. I have seldom known one at once so determined and so self-possessed. Skill is a quality much more easily found than this self-control that nothing can flurry. She had that in an eminent degree; and, had she lived, she would have been sure to stand, in time, among those at the head of her profession. The usual weapons of ridicule would have been impotent against a woman who had reached that supreme position which Susan Dimock would certainly have attained."
IX.—South Carolina.
The first action we hear of in South Carolina was a Woman's Right's Convention in Columbia, Dec. 20, 1870, of which the Charleston Republican said:
The chairman, Miss Rollin, said: "It had been so universally the custom to treat the idea of woman suffrage with ridicule and merriment that it becomes necessary in submitting the subject for earnest deliberation that we assure the gentlemen present that our claim is made honestly and seriously. We ask suffrage not as a favor, not as a privilege, but as a right based on the ground that we are human beings, and as such, entitled to all human rights. While we concede that woman's ennobling influence should be confined chiefly to home and society, we claim that public opinion has had a tendency to limit woman's sphere to too small a circle, and until woman has the right of representation this will last, and other rights will be held by an insecure tenure."
Mr. T. J. Mackey made a forcible argument in favor of the movement. He was followed by Miss Hosley, who made a few brief remarks upon the subject. General Moses thought woman's introduction upon the political platform would benefit us much in a moral point of view, and that they had a right to assist in making the laws that govern them as well as the sterner sex. Messrs. Cardozo, Pioneer and Rev. Mr. Harris followed in short speeches, endorsing the movement and wishing it success. Resolutions were adopted, and officers chosen.[533] The following letters were read:
Executive Department, Columbia, Jan. 19, 1871.
Miss L. M. Rollin:—I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your invitation to be present at the preliminary organization of the association for the assertion of woman's rights in this State, and regret that the pressure of public duties precludes my indulging myself in that pleasure. Be assured, however, that the cause has my warmest sympathy, and I indulge the hope that the time is not far distant when woman shall be the peer of man in political rights, as she is peerless in all others, and when she will be able to reclaim some of those privileges that are now monopolized by the sterner sex.
R. K. Scott, Governor.
I have the honor to be, very respectfully, etc.,
Office of the Attorney-General, Columbia, Feb. 1, 1871.
I hoped when I received your invitation to the meeting to-night of the friends of woman suffrage, that I should be able to attend in person, but at a late hour I find other duties standing in the way, and I can only say a word of approval and encouragement with my pen. The woman suffrage cause is to my mind so just and so expedient as to need little argument. To say that my mother, my sisters or my wife have less interest in good government than I have, or are less fitted by nature to understand and use the ballot than I am, is to contradict reason and fact.
Upon the same grounds that I defend my own right to share in the government which controls and protects me, do I now assert the right of woman to a voice in public affairs. For the same reasons that I would regard an attempt to rob me of my civil rights as tyranny, do I now protest against the continued civil inequality and thralldom of woman. I take no merit or pride to myself for such a position. I have felt and said these things during my whole life. They are to me self-evident truths; needing no more demonstration by argument than the first lines of the Declaration of American Independence. My claim for woman is simply this: Give her a full and fair chance to act in any sphere for which she can fit herself. Her sphere is as wide as man's. It has no limits except her capacity. If woman cannot perform a soldier's duty, then the army is not her sphere; if she can, it is her sphere, as much as it is man's.
I value the ballot for woman chiefly because it opens to her a wide, free avenue to a complete development of all her powers. The Chinese lady's shoe is nothing compared to the clamps and fetters which we Americans have put upon woman's mind and soul. An impartial observer would scarcely condemn the one and approve the other. What we need now is to accustom the public to these radical truths. Demand the ballot; demand woman's freedom. It is not a conflict of argument or reason, so much as a crusade against habit and prejudice. To tell the truth, I don't think there is a respectable argument in the world against woman suffrage. People think they are arguing or reasoning against it when they are in fact only repeating the prejudices in which they have been trained. With the sincerest wishes for the success of your meeting and of all your efforts for woman suffrage, I remain, yours very truly,
D. H. Chamberlain.
Executive Department, Columbia, Jan. 19, 1871.
Miss L. M. Rollin:—I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your invitation to be present at the preliminary organization of the association for the assertion of woman's rights in this State, and regret that the pressure of public duties precludes my indulging myself in that pleasure. Be assured, however, that the cause has my warmest sympathy, and I indulge the hope that the time is not far distant when woman shall be the peer of man in political rights, as she is peerless in all others, and when she will be able to reclaim some of those privileges that are now monopolized by the sterner sex.
R. K. Scott, Governor.
I have the honor to be, very respectfully, etc.,
Office of the Attorney-General, Columbia, Feb. 1, 1871.
I hoped when I received your invitation to the meeting to-night of the friends of woman suffrage, that I should be able to attend in person, but at a late hour I find other duties standing in the way, and I can only say a word of approval and encouragement with my pen. The woman suffrage cause is to my mind so just and so expedient as to need little argument. To say that my mother, my sisters or my wife have less interest in good government than I have, or are less fitted by nature to understand and use the ballot than I am, is to contradict reason and fact.
Upon the same grounds that I defend my own right to share in the government which controls and protects me, do I now assert the right of woman to a voice in public affairs. For the same reasons that I would regard an attempt to rob me of my civil rights as tyranny, do I now protest against the continued civil inequality and thralldom of woman. I take no merit or pride to myself for such a position. I have felt and said these things during my whole life. They are to me self-evident truths; needing no more demonstration by argument than the first lines of the Declaration of American Independence. My claim for woman is simply this: Give her a full and fair chance to act in any sphere for which she can fit herself. Her sphere is as wide as man's. It has no limits except her capacity. If woman cannot perform a soldier's duty, then the army is not her sphere; if she can, it is her sphere, as much as it is man's.
I value the ballot for woman chiefly because it opens to her a wide, free avenue to a complete development of all her powers. The Chinese lady's shoe is nothing compared to the clamps and fetters which we Americans have put upon woman's mind and soul. An impartial observer would scarcely condemn the one and approve the other. What we need now is to accustom the public to these radical truths. Demand the ballot; demand woman's freedom. It is not a conflict of argument or reason, so much as a crusade against habit and prejudice. To tell the truth, I don't think there is a respectable argument in the world against woman suffrage. People think they are arguing or reasoning against it when they are in fact only repeating the prejudices in which they have been trained. With the sincerest wishes for the success of your meeting and of all your efforts for woman suffrage, I remain, yours very truly,
D. H. Chamberlain.
The American association memorialized the legislature March 13, 1872. The joint committee recommended an amendment to the constitution of the State, providing that every person, male or female, possessed of the necessary qualifications, should be entitled to vote. B. F. Whittemore, H. J. Maxwell, W. B. Nash, G. F. McIntyre, were the committee on the part of the Senate; C. D. Hayne, W. J. Whipper, Benj. Byas, B. G. Yocom, F. H. Frost, committee on the part of the House.
In the debate in congress in 1874, Hon. Alonzo J. Ransier of South Carolina, the civil-rights bill being under discussion, claimed that equal human rights should be extended to women as follows:
And may the day be not far distant when American citizenship in civil and political rights and public privileges shall cover not only those of our sex, but those of the opposite one also; until which time the government of the United States cannot be said to rest upon the "consent of the governed," or to adequately protect them in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Miss Sallie R. Banks, for some years a teacher of colored schools in South Carolina, has been appointed collector of internal revenue for the Sumter district.