History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III

by Unknown

In the original constitution (1780) women were excluded from voting except for certain State officers.[131] In the constitutional convention of 1820, the word "male" was first put into the constitution of the State, in an amendment to define the qualifications of voters. In this convention, a motion was made at three different times, during the passage of the act, to strike out the intruding word, but the motion was voted down. Long before the second attempt was made to revise the constitution of the State, large numbers of women began to demand suffrage. Woman's sphere of operations and enterprise had become so widened, that they felt they had not only the right, but also an increasing fitness for civil life and government, of which the ballot is but the sign and the symbol.

In the constitutional convention of 1853, twelve petitions were presented, from over 2,000 adult persons, asking for the recognition of woman's right to the ballot, in the proposed amendments to the constitution of the State. The committee reported leave to withdraw, giving as their reason that the "consent of the governed" was shown by the small number of petitioners. Hearings before this committee were granted.[132] The chairman of this committee, in presenting the report, moved that all debate on the subject should cease in thirty minutes, and on motion of Benjamin F. Butler of Lowell, the whole report, excepting the last clause, was stricken out. There was then left of the whole document (including more than two closely-printed pages of reasoning) only this: "It is inexpedient for this convention to take any action."

Legislative action on the woman's rights question began in 1849, when William Lloyd Garrison presented the first petition on the subject to the State legislature. Following him was one from Jonathan Drake and others, "for a peaceable secession of Massachusetts from the Union." Both these petitions were probably considered by the legislature to which they were addressed as of equally incendiary character, since they both had "leave to withdraw." In 1851 an order was introduced asking "whether any legislation was necessary concerning the wills of married women?" In 1853 a bill was enacted "to exempt certain property of widows and unmarried women from taxation." In the legislature of 1856 the first great and important act relating to the property rights of women was passed. It was to the effect that women could hold all property earned or acquired independently of their husbands. This act was amended and improved the next session.

In 1857 a hearing was held before the Committee on the Judiciary to listen to arguments in favor of the petition of Lucy Stone and others for equal property rights for women and for the "right of suffrage." Another hearing was held in the same place in February, 1858, before the Joint Special Committee on the Qualifications of Voters. A second hearing on the right of suffrage for women was held the following week before the same committee. Thomas W. Higginson made an address and Caroline Kealey Dall read an essay.

In 1858, Stephen A. Chase of Salem, from the same Committee on the Qualifications of Voters, made a long report on the petitions. This report closed with an order that the State Board of Education make inquiry and report to the next legislature "whether it is not practicable and expedient to provide by law some method by which the women of this State may have a more active part in the control and management of the schools." There is nothing in legislative records to show that the State Board of Education reported favorably; but from the above statement it appears that ten years before Samuel E. Sewall's petition on the subject, a movement was made towards making women "eligible to serve as members of school-committees."

The petitions for woman's rights were usually circulated by women going from house to house. They did the drudgery, endured the hardships and suffered the humiliations attendant upon the early history of our cause; but their names are forgotten, and others reap the benefit of their labors. These women were so modest and so anxious for the success of their petitions, that they never put their own names at the head of the list, preferring the signature of some leading man, so that others seeing his name, might be induced to follow his example. Among the earliest of these silent workers was Mary Upton Ferrin. Her petitions were for a change in the laws concerning the property rights of married women, and for the political and legal rights of all women. In 1849 she prepared a memorial to the Massachusetts legislature in which are embodied many of the demands for woman's equality before the law, which have so often been made to that body since that time.[133]

In 1861 the legislature debated a bill to allow a widow, "if she have woodland as a part of her dower, the privilege of cutting wood enough for one fire." This bill failed, and the widow, by law, was not allowed to keep herself warm with fuel from her own wood-lot. In 1863 a bill providing that "a wife may be allowed to be a witness and proceed against her husband for desertion," was reported inexpedient, and a bill was passed to prevent women from forming copartnerships in business. In 1865, Gov. John A. Andrew, seeing the magnitude of the approaching woman question, in his annual message to the legislature, made a memorable suggestion:

I know of no more useful object to which the commonwealth can lend its aid, than that of a movement, adopted in a practical way, to open the door of emigration to young women who are wanted for teachers and for every appropriate, as well as domestic, employment in the remote West, but who are leading anxious and aimless lives in New England.

By the "anxious and aimless" it was supposed the governor meant the widowed, single or otherwise unrepresented portion of the citizens of the State. No action was taken by the legislature on this portion of the governor's message. But a member of the Senate actually made the following proposition before that body:

That the "anxious and aimless women" of the State should assemble on the Common on a certain day of the year (to be hereafter named), and that Western men who wanted wives, should be invited to come here and select them.