Delivered at Seneca Falls, N. Y., on the assembling of the first Woman-Suffragist Convention, July 19, 1848. Mrs. Stanton begins by saying:
SHOULD feel exceedingly diffident to appear before you at this time, having never before spoken in public, were I not nerved by a sense of right and duty.
[After delivering a masterly and eloquent argument of nearly two hours length announcing the principles and setting forth the arguments which have since signalized the movement, Mrs. Stanton closed in the following eloquent strain:]
Our churches are multiplying on all sides, our missionary societies, Sunday Schools, and prayer meetings and innumerable charitable and reform organizations are all in operation, but still the tide of vice is swelling, and threatens the destruction of everything, and the battlements of righteousness are weak against the raging elements of sin and death. Verily the world waits the coming of some new element, some purifying power, some spirit of mercy and love. The voice of woman has been silenced in the state, the church, and the home, but man cannot fulfill his destiny alone, he cannot redeem his race unaided. There are deep and tender cords of sympathy and love in the hearts of the down-fallen and oppressed that woman can touch more skilfully than man. The world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous nation, because in the degradation of woman the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source. It is vain to look for silver and gold from the mines of copper and lead. It is the wise mother that has the wise son. So long as your women are slaves you may throw your colleges and churches to the winds. You can’t have scholars and saints so long as your mothers are ground to powder between the upper and nether millstone of tyranny and lust. How seldom, now, is a father’s pride gratified, his fond hopes realized, in the budding genius of his son. The wife is degraded, made the mere creature of caprice, and the foolish son is heaviness to his heart. Truly are the sins of the father visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation. God, in his wisdom, has so linked the whole human family together, that any violence done at one end of the chain is felt throughout its length, and here, too, is the law of restoration, as in woman all have fallen, so in her elevation shall the race be recreated. “Voices” were the visitors and advisers of Joan of Arc. Do not “voices” come to us daily from the haunts of poverty, sorrow, degradation and despair, already too long unheeded. Now is the time for the women of this country, if they would save our free institutions, to defend the right, to buckle on the armor that can best resist the keenest weapons of the enemy—contempt and ridicule. The same religious enthusiasm that nerved Joan of Arc to her work nerves us to ours. In every generation God calls some men and women for the utterance of the truth, a heroic action, and our work to-day is the fulfilling of what has long since been foretold by the prophet—Joel ii. 28, “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.” We do not expect our path will be strewn with the flowers of popular applause, but over the thorns of bigotry and prejudice will be our way, and on our banners will beat the dark storm-clouds of opposition from those who have entrenched themselves behind the stormy bulwarks of custom and authority, and who have fortified their position by every means, holy and unholy. But we will steadfastly abide the result. Unmoved we will bear it aloft. Undauntedly we will unfurl it to the gale, for we know that the storm cannot rend from it a shred, that the electric flash will but more clearly show to us the glorious words inscribed upon it, “Equality of Rights.”
“Then fear not thou to wind thy horn,
Though elf and gnome thy courage scorn.
Ask for the Castle’s King and Queen,
Though rabble rout may rush between,
Beat thee senseless to the ground,