Part 4 (2/2)

Charles Sumner said: ”An omnibus-load of Boston abolitionists has done more harm to the Anti-slavery cause than all its enemies.”

Angelina Grimke, writing at this time to Mr. Weld, said: ”What wouldst thou think of the 'Liberator' abandoning abolitionism as a primary object, and becoming the vehicle of all these grand principles?”

In his published volume ”Anti-slavery Days,” James Freeman Clarke says of the first Garrison Anti-slavery society: ”There was no such excitement to be had anywhere else as at these meetings. There was a little of everything going on in them. Sometimes crazy people would come in and insist on taking up the time; sometimes mobs would interrupt the smooth tenor of their way; but amid all disturbance each meeting gave us an interesting and impressive hour. I think that some of the Garrisonian orators had the keenest tongues ever given to man. Stephen S. Foster and Henry C. Wright, for example, said the sharpest things that were ever uttered. Their belief was, that people were asleep, and the only thing to be done was to rouse them; and to do this it was necessary to cut deep and spare not. The more angry people were made, the better.” Again, in the same volume, he says, after describing the political Anti-slavery party: ”While these political anti-slavery movements were going on, the old abolitionists, under the lead of Garrison, Phillips, and others, had decided to oppose all voting and all political efforts under the Const.i.tution. They adopted as their motto, 'No union with slaveholders.'

Their hope for abolis.h.i.+ng slavery was in inducing the North to dissolve the Union. Edmund Quincy said the Union was 'a confederacy with crime,'

that 'the experiment of a great nation with popular inst.i.tutions had signally failed,' that 'the Republic was not a model but a warning to the nations;' that 'the whole people must be either slaveholders or slaves;'

that the only escape for 'the slave from his bondage was over the ruins of the American Church and the American State:' and it was the unalterable purpose of the Garrisonians to labor for the dissolution of the Union.”

Freeman Clarke goes on to say: ”Wendell Phillips said on one occasion, 'Thank G.o.d, I am not a citizen of the United States.' As late as 1861 he declared the Union a failure, and argued for the dissolution of the Union as 'the best possible method of abolis.h.i.+ng slavery.' If the North had agreed to disunion and had followed the advice of Phillips, 'To build a bridge of gold to take the slave States out of the Union,' slavery would probably be still existing in all the Southern States. At all events, it was not abolished by those who wished for disunion, but by those who were determined at all hazards and by every sacrifice to maintain the Union.”

On April 8, 1839, Henry B. Stanton wrote to William Goodell as follows: ”At this very time, and mainly, too, in that part of the country where political action has been most successful, and whence, from its promise of soon being triumphant, great encouragement was derived by abolitionists everywhere, a sect has arisen in our midst whose members regard it as of religious obligation in no case to exercise the elective franchise. This persuasion is part and parcel of the tenet which it is believed they have embraced, that as Christians have the precepts of the gospel of Christ, and the spirit of G.o.d to guide them, all human governments, as necessarily including the idea of force to secure obedience, are not only superfluous, but unlawful encroachments on the Divine government as ascertained from the sources above mentioned. Therefore they refuse to do anything voluntarily that would be considered as acknowledging the lawful existence of human governments. Denying to civil governments the right to use force, they easily deduce that family governments have no such right. They carry out the 'non-resistant' theory. To the first ruffian who would demand our purse or oust us from our house, they are to be unconditionally surrendered unless moral suasion be found sufficient to induce him to desist from his purpose. Our wives, our daughters, our sisters, our mothers, we are to see set upon by the most brutal, without any effort on our part except argument to defend them! And even they themselves are forbidden to use in defence of their purity such powers as G.o.d has endowed them with for its protection, if resistance should be attended with injury or destruction to the a.s.sailant. In short, the 'no-government' doctrines, as they are believed now to be embraced, seem to strike at the root of the social structure, and tend, so far as I am able to judge of their tendency, to throw society into entire confusion and to renew, under the sanction of religion, scenes of anarchy and license that have generally hitherto been the offspring of the rankest infidelity and irreligion.”

Again, he wrote: ”The non-government doctrine, stripped of its disguise, is worse than f.a.n.n.y-Wrightism, and, under a Gospel garb, it is f.a.n.n.y- Wrightism with a white frock on. It goes to the utter overthrow of all order, yea, of all purity. When carried out, it goes not only for a community of goods, but a community of wives. Strange that such an infidel theory should find votaries in New England!”

The editors of the ”History of Woman Suffrage” say in their opening chapter: ”Among the immediate causes that led to the demand for the equal political rights of women, in this country, we may note these: First, the discussion in several of the State legislatures of the property rights of married women; Second, the great educational work that was accomplished by the able lectures of Frances Wright, on political, religious, and social questions. Ernestine L. Rose, following in her wake, equally liberal in her religious opinions, and equally well-informed on the science of government, helped to deepen and perpetuate the impression Frances Wright had made on the minds of unprejudiced hearers. Third, and above all other causes of the Woman-Suffrage movement, was the Anti-slavery struggle in this country.” By referring to the columns of the secular and religious press of that period, we find that most of the respectable and representative opinion of the country was ”prejudiced.” Halls and a.s.sembly rooms in all the cities were closed against f.a.n.n.y Wright, not only because her doctrines were absolutely infidel and materialistic, but because they were deemed subversive of law, order, and decency. The better portion of society in the United States was of one mind in its estimate of ”The Pioneer Woman in the Cause of Woman's Eights,” as she was called. In the columns of ”The Free Inquirer,” a newspaper which she and Robert Dale Owen established and edited in New York City in 1829, she attacked religion in every form, marriage, the family, and the State. She pretended to no basis of scientific investigation, but in a brilliant flood of words endeavored to sweep away faith in the Bible, the home, the Republic, in favor of negation, communism, free love. I have place for but a single quotation from one of her ”Fables,” published in the ”Free Inquirer.” It will show the drift of her work in one direction:

”'Is my errand sped, and am I a master on earth?' said the infernal king (Pluto). 'Even as I promised,' said the Fury. 'Love hath forsaken the earth. Under the form of religion I aroused the fears and commanded the submission of mortals; and our imp now reigns on earth in the place of Love, under the form of Hymen.' Pluto smiled grimly, and smote his thigh in triumph. 'Well conceited, well executed, daughter of Night. Our empire shall not lack recruits, now that innocence is exchanged for superst.i.tion, and the true affection of congenial and confiding hearts is replaced by mock ceremonies and compulsory oaths!'”

Frances Wright had founded, in 1825, at Nashoba, Tennessee, a community that had for its professed aim the elevation and education of the Southern negroes. In describing her object, Miss Wright said: ”No difference will be made in the schools between the white children and the children of color, whether in education or in any other advantage. This establishment is founded on the principle of community of property and labor: these fellow-creatures, that is, the blacks, admitted here, requiting these services by services equal or greater, by filling occupations which their habits render easy, and which to their guides and a.s.sistants might be difficult or unpleasing.” This form of helotism flourished but three years on American soil. It is doubly interesting as containing the germs of communism and anti-slavery that blended themselves in the beginnings of a movement for suffrage which was directly inspired by Frances Wright.

The editors of the ”Suffrage History” say that ”above all other causes of the suffrage movement, was the Anti-slavery struggle in this country.”

They add: ”In the early Anti-slavery conventions, the broad principles of human rights were so exhaustively discussed, justice, liberty, and equality so clearly taught, that the women who crowded to listen, readily learned the lesson of freedom for themselves, and early began to take part in the debates and business affairs of all a.s.sociations. And before the public were aroused to the dangerous innovation, women were speaking in crowded promiscuous a.s.semblies. The clergy opposed to the Abolition movement first took alarm, and issued a pastoral letter, warning their congregations against the influence of such women. The clergy identified with Anti-slavery a.s.sociations took alarm also, and the initiative steps to silence women, and to deprive them of the right to vote in the business meetings, were soon taken. This action culminated in a division in the Anti-slavery a.s.sociation. The question of woman's right to speak, vote, and serve on committee, not only precipitated the division in the ranks of the American Anti-slavery society, in 1840, but it disturbed the peace of the World's Anti-slavery Convention, held that same year in London. In summoning the friends of the slave from all parts of the two hemispheres to meet in London, John Bull never dreamed that woman, too, would answer to his call. Imagine, then, the commotion in the conservative Anti-slavery circles in England when it was known that half a dozen of those terrible women who had spoken to promiscuous a.s.semblies, voted on men and measures, prayed and pet.i.tioned against slavery, women who had been mobbed, ridiculed by the press, and denounced by the pulpit, who had been the cause of setting all the American Abolitionists by the ears, and split their ranks asunder, were on their way to England.”

These quarrels, stirred up through the unseemly conduct of men and women, as we have seen, they were willing to precipitate upon a convention in a foreign land, a convention, too, which had declared its desire not to receive them as delegates. Upon the calling of the roll, the meeting was thrown into excitement and confusion on a subject foreign to that which brought them together. Wendell Phillips eloquently pleaded for the admission of the women. The English officers, while showing their personal courtesy, begged to remind them that the Queen, and many ladies in various stations, were represented by male delegates, and that to admit the American ladies would be to cast a slight upon their own active members, many of whom were present. During the heated discussion Mr. James Fuller said: ”One friend has stated that this question should have been settled on the other side of the Atlantic. Why, it _was_ so settled, and in favor of the women.” Mr. James G. Birney answered: ”The right of the women to sit and act in all respects as men in our Anti-slavery a.s.sociations was so decided in the Society in May, 1839, but not by a large majority, which majority was swelled by the votes of the women themselves. I have just received a letter from a gentleman in New York (Lewis Tappan) communicating the fact that the persistence of the friends of promiscuous female representation in pressing that practice on the American Anti- Slavery society, at its annual meeting on the 12th of last month, had caused such disagreement that he, and others who viewed the subject as he did, were deliberating the question of seceding from the old organization.”

Lewis Tappan, a founder of the American Missionary Society, was intimately connected with his brother Arthur in all anti-slavery work. Arthur was a founder of the American Tract Society, and of Oberlin College, and a benefactor of Lane Seminary. He established ”The Emanc.i.p.ator,” and was president of the American Anti-Slavery Society until compelled, with his brother Lewis, to withdraw on account of the conduct of the no-government men and women, and take nearly all the Society with him.

When the vote was taken in the London meeting the women were excluded on the ground that ”it being contrary to English usage, it would subject them to ridicule and prejudice their cause.”

George Thompson then said: ”I hope, as this question is now decided, that Mr. Phillips will give us the a.s.surance that we shall proceed with one heart and one mind.” Mr. Phillips replied, ”I have no doubt of it. There is no unpleasant feeling on our part. All we asked was an expression of opinion; we shall now act with the utmost cordiality.”

But Mr. Phillips had reckoned without his host and hostesses. Mr. Garrison had not been present at the discussion, but he arrived at this juncture and took his seat with the excluded delegates. During a twelve-days'

discussion of the momentous cause that had called them together, which he had professed especially to champion, he took not the slightest part. Such was his mistaken zeal that he was willing so to stultify himself, and the women were willing to applaud him in so doing. The spirit that looked upon the American Const.i.tution as ”a covenant with death and an agreement with h.e.l.l” was there. The spirit that defied all authority and could confound liberty of conscience with the formal acts of courtesy between man and man, was there. The spirit that took for its motto ”You cannot shut up discord” was there. And out of these combined elements, trained in the school of thought that had treated as tyranny the religious and civil liberty of the United States, grew directly the Woman-Suffrage movement.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was not a delegate. The delegates were Abby Kelly, Esther Moore, and Lucretia Mott. Mrs. Stanton was a bride, and in the immediate party on this, their wedding trip, was Mr. Birney, her husband's special friend. The writers of the ”History” say: ”As the ladies were not allowed to speak in the Convention, they kept up a brisk fire, morning, noon, and night, on the unfortunate gentlemen who were domiciled at the same house.” Mrs. Stanton had not been identified with any of these abolition quarrels; but she records that now she took her full share of the ”firing,” notwithstanding her husband's ”gentle nudges under the table” and Mr. Birney's ominous frowns across it. In the volume ent.i.tled ”Woman's Work in America,” in a contribution called ”Woman in the State,”

written by Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, she says: ”The leaders in the new [suffrage] movement, Lucretia Mott and Mrs. Stanton, with their husbands,”

did thus and so in originating it. Lucretia Mott's husband was with her as a silent member of the conventions, but Elizabeth Cady Stanton's husband is conspicuous for his absence from every list of officers or attendants, from the inception of the Suffrage movement until his death. He may have been in perfect sympathy with his wife; but since the names of all the men already mentioned in connection with the mad ”no-civil, no-family, no- personal government” movement, do appear, and his does not, it is impossible not to challenge Mrs. Livermore's statement. The last reference to him in the ”History” was as voting on the occasion of the London meeting, in favor of the women's admission to the World's Convention. No mention is made of any speech, or of reasons given. Certain it is, that while Mr. Garrison became the conspicuous standard-bearer for the Woman's Rights movement, Mr. Stanton became one of the conspicuous bearers of the standard of the Free Soil and Republican parties, which included some of Anti-slavery's staunchest friends, who were denounced by Garrison as its foes.

Thus it seems evident to me that the Woman-Suffrage movement no more grew logically out of the great discussions on human bondage which began with Was.h.i.+ngton, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, and John Jay, and ended with Sumner, Seward, and Lincoln, than the communes of this country grew out of the utterances of the Fathers based on the declaration that ”All men are created equal, and are endowed with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

It was among those whose mistaken zeal and wild conduct were most mischievous, that the Suffrage sentiment gathered head. Their lack of judgment in defying the opinions of their own s.e.x, as well as of the other, their wrapt forgetfulness of proprieties, which incited mobs and proved a fine tool for the frenzy of so-called social reformers, brought contempt upon womanhood as well as upon the cause they advocated. Women, in the churches and out, were the strength of the Anti-slavery movement; but not these women. As to the notable meeting in London, had the delegates been the highest and largest minded and most cultured of their s.e.x, and had their cause been the n.o.blest, they and it would have been dishonored by the method of its presentation. American women of to-day would no more applaud such conduct than did those of fifty years ago.

Women have won lasting public favor and place, while Suffrage has won an uneasy footing by unenviable methods.

This survey enables us to understand what otherwise would seem most strange, how the women of the Suffrage movement, in claiming the right of suffrage, ignored the duties and powers based upon and connected with it-- those that formed the defence which made possible any such nation as ours.

Added to the extreme Quaker doctrine of peace-at-any-price, was the fanatical notion of the sinfulness of all war, all use of physical force, and a cool a.s.sumption that opinion was law. Mrs. Maria Chapman read, at one of the early Woman's-Rights conventions, a string of verses that reveals the absurdity of the situation. It was in reply to ”A Clerical Appeal,” issued by the Rev. Nehemiah Adams, whose ”South-Side View of Slavery” received more Anti-slavery attention than it deserved, for it expressed only his own fantastic ideas. In the ”Appeal” he maintains that women should paint in water colors only, not in oil. Mrs. Chapman says:

”Our patriot fathers, of eloquent fame, Waged war against tangible forms; Aye, _their_ foes were men--and if ours were the same, We might speedily quiet their storms; But, ah! their descendants enjoy not such bliss, The a.s.sumptions of Britain were nothing to this.

”Could we but array all our force in the field, We'd teach these usurpers of power That their bodily safety demands they should yield, And in presence of womanhood cower; But alas! for our tethered and impotent state, Chained by notions of knighthood--we can but debate.”

”Oh! shade of the prophet Mahomet, arise!

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