Volume II Part 107 (1/2)

Gentlemen, very few of us are very young women. We have forty, fifty, some of us seventy years of life behind us. We have stood on this eminence where you in your mistaken kindness and gallantry placed us, and we have been all this time looking down upon the battle-field of life where you have been engaged, single-handed and alone. Those of us who have had half a century have seen the ranks of men who started out in life with us shortened one half as they have gone. Here is a husband, there a brother or a father, men as dear to us as drops of our own heart's blood. We have seen them steadily sacrificed by means more appalling than those of Gettysburg, men literally slaughtered by licentiousness and drunkenness, and all the while we have looked on and been able to do nothing, and our agony has become so great that we exclaim, ”Oh, G.o.d! why don't these brothers of ours call us, the reserves, into action? We could help them.”

When I look back to the days of our great war, I remember that women sprang up every day all over the country--women of whom it was not before believed there was any patriotic blood in their veins. We all came together by one common instinct--saying, ”What shall we do?” I could tell you of women who have died from exposure and suffering in the war. Hundreds of the very best women of the Northwest went down voluntarily as nurses, and in other capacities, and a.s.sisted suffering and dying men, until they themselves were almost at death's door. ”When women do military duty, they shall vote!” We _did_ do military duty. We did not cease our labors till all the soldiers had come home, wearied with their services. We have earned recognition at the hands of this government, and we ought to have it. Knowing, then, the qualities of woman and her courage and bravery under trials, I can never cease to demand that she shall have just as large a sphere as man has. All we want is, that you shall leave us free to act.

Mrs. LIVERMORE then spoke of the attempts of men to define the sphere of women. Let the sphere of woman be tested by the aspiration and ability of their own minds, and let it be limited only by what we are able to do. Don't fear that women will not marry and make good wives if allowed legal equality with men.

They even now make as good wives as men do husbands. Trust G.o.d.

This talk of woman getting out of her sphere is sheer lack of faith in G.o.d. He has given us our natures. The gentlest woman is transformed into a tigress when you go between her and her baby.

There's no sense, therefore, in the fear that the paltry lures of politicians will draw women from the home circle. There is no necessity to enact laws to keep women women. Woman's sphere is that which she can fill, whether it be sea-captain, merchant, school-teacher, or wife and mother.

Only two millions of women are among the producers of the country--five millions are wives and mothers, and eight millions are rusting out in idleness and frivolity. Take eight millions of men from the world of commerce and productive work; the deficit will be immediately felt. Add to the producers of the world eight millions of skilled women, and the quickening would be felt everywhere. Mrs. Livermore also urged the admission of women to political life from considerations drawn from the increase of the foreign element. East and West is a huge, ignorant, semi-barbarous ma.s.s, brought hither from European and Asiatic sh.o.r.es, needing the enlightenment and the quickening that would come from the addition of educated women to the polls.

The Thursday morning session was called to order by the PRESIDENT, Rev. HENRY WARD BEECHER. Mr. Henry B. Blackwell, the Secretary, read, on behalf of the Business Committee, the resolutions.[187]

Mr. BLACKWELL moved their acceptance, and, in support of his motion, said: _Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen_: We have so often heard of the great step that was taken in the war of the Revolution--when our connection with Great Britain was severed--that I fear we have lost sight of the fact that there have been two great revolutions since that day--revolutions which, to my mind, are immeasurably more important than the first. For, when the war of the Revolution ended, a republic in the present sense of the term did not exist in these United States. In almost every State there was a property qualification for voting. It was a government like the government of Great Britain to-day--like the government of other countries--it was an aristocracy of wealth, the privilege of voting being based upon a property qualification. But hardly had the guns of the Revolution ceased action, before the Democratic party of that day, under the lead of Mr. Jefferson, demanded suffrage for poor men as a natural right. The Federal party opposed the change. The Democratic party were a unit in its favor. They advocated suffrage for poor men on the same ground that the Republicans have advocated it more recently for the negro--on the same ground upon which Mr. Beecher advocated it last night for women--_as a natural right_. They said, ”All men have equal natural rights to life, liberty, and property; if so, they have a natural right of self-defense in the enjoyment of these rights. Now, in a state of nature, self-defense takes the form of individual violence--of the pistol or the club; but in a state of civilization men appeal to the law, and government is nothing but an organized system of self-defense for the benefit of the individual citizen.” The old Democratic party said, ”Poor men have rights of life, liberty, and property, poor men have a natural right of self-defense; therefore, in a state of society they have a right to the ballot which is the organized weapon of self-defense for the individual citizen.” What was the result? The Democratic party swept the Union on that platform. They obtained a majority in the government of the States and in the Federal Government. For more than a generation they ruled this country as the poor man's party. That result followed inevitably from their principles, because parties, like individuals, are sure to obtain their deserts in the long run. When any party appeals to that fine sense of justice which is in the heart of every human being, sooner or later its success is certain. The Democratic party obtained the control of the Government for two generations because it appealed to that sense of justice? But what was the result to the country? America became known all over the world as the country of the poor man. In America alone the ma.s.ses had the ballot. That was what brought from the sh.o.r.es of Europe this great influx of foreign labor which has felled our forests, and fenced our prairies, and built up the waste places of our continent. There are to-day in Russia hundreds of thousands of acres of land as good as any in the world, which have never been cultivated, and yet Europeans, by thousands, turn their backs on Russia, coming to America and going far into the interior to make their homes, not because our land is better, or our climate more genial, but because our Government is established upon the basis of equal rights for every human being. The child of the poor man becomes educated, he acquires property, he becomes a member of the commonwealth, he does his own thinking, and, thank G.o.d, his own voting, too.

But the Democratic party has lost power. To-day the Republicans control three-fourths of the States of this Union. There was a reason for these reverses. Before the abolition of slavery, a certain race was denied the advantages of the Democratic principle. It was a ”white man's government.” In the course of time the inevitable collision came. Slavery was abolished, and the Republican party attempted a new application of the Jeffersonian principle. It demanded suffrage for the negro and the Chinese. The principles of justice again prevailed. The sentiment of liberty came to the support of the Republican party; manhood suffrage is forever fixed in the Const.i.tution of the country, and to-day every man, whether learned or ignorant, rich or poor, white, yellow, or black, whether he can read the English language or not, is by the Const.i.tution of the United States forever made a voter. Now, ladies and gentlemen, every argument through which an extension of the suffrage has been already accomplished, applies with still greater force in the case of women. The extension of the suffrage to woman, will be the last crowning step in political progress, the final application of the principles of Christianity and human brotherhood to the political structure.

We do not advocate a new principle. We only desire to make a wider application of our admitted American principles. That application is sure to be made. I do not know what party is going to accomplish it, but this widening of the political basis is as certain as the rising of the sun or the flowing of the tide. Woe be to the party that works against it! I know not whether the Republicans or the Democrats, or the good men of both parties, or an altogether new party, will take it up; but this I do know, that the political party which takes up woman suffrage, and unfolds its banner to the breeze, holds in its hand the key to political success on this continent.

I appeal to every man and woman in this audience to go to work for the great object we have at heart. Let Republicans go to their primary meetings, and offer woman suffrage resolutions there. Let Democrats go and do likewise. Let every woman take tracts bearing on the subject and give her influence and labor to the work. Let us all stand up as faithful representatives of a great idea. Sooner or later, we shall see a n.o.ble reform party in this country--I care not what its name--which will sweep away forever the dens of immorality and drunkenness by which we are surrounded, which will build up a Christian commonwealth--and rule over it--not because it is powerful in numbers, but because it is based upon the principles of the Declaration of Independence, of universal justice and of impartial liberty.

Rev. HENRY WARD BEECHER said: I heartily concur with every word spoken by Mr. Blackwell, and while on this point I wish to call your attention to an argument used as against woman suffrage, by men who perhaps might otherwise be with us. They argue that universal suffrage is itself not a good but an evil, and that to add to the evil is not to correct it. ”It is bad,” say they, ”that every white man shall vote,” and it had to be pledged, for political reasons, to give the ballot to 800,000 ignorant blacks; but two bad things are not to be made right by now extending the vote to women, a great majority of whom are in the lower walks of life, and are not supposed to be competent to inform themselves.

This is a most plausible argument to those who are under the unconscious influence of Pharisaism, to those who think that wisdom lives and dies with them. It is a strong argument, too; I don't know that you can put any stronger; but I am bold to make the statement that, low and bad as human nature may be in some of its phases, there is nothing in this world that is so safe to trust or to believe in. And though governments may grow, and gain experience here and there with perpetually s.h.i.+fting dynasties and times, yet after all it is human nature that keeps governments up and gives to the world its laws. The great underlying force is genuine human nature with all its mistakes. We have recently had a great ill.u.s.tration of this. I wish to call your attention to one fact. If there was anything in this world that the ma.s.s of the Northern people were unprepared for it was to take up arms for the purpose of going to war with the South. Yet when the time came, and it was flashed over the country that an attack was made at the life of the Government, take notice that while the South grew weaker and weaker in furnis.h.i.+ng material for the army, the North grew stronger and stronger, and had only got to its full strength at the close of the war. Now during that time, by the votes of the people, with a great party to back up the opposition, with all the old predilections in favor of the South, and the natural unwillingness of men to burden themselves with taxation, this country, in which there was substantially a universal manhood suffrage, voted to burden itself until three thousand millions of debt was rolled up. There is an instance of what men will do with universal suffrage. Yes, and that among the common people; for the large copperhead element was to be found among capitalists, not among the ma.s.ses. ”Well, but,” it may be said, ”sober second thought will come; wait until the people come to pay the debt, when currency depreciates and greenbacks become scarce!” Now as they had gone to the war for a sentiment, a patriotic sentiment, not because they had received material damage or expected any pecuniary damage from the South, but purely from the glorious sentiment of a united country, as they fought through four years of the war backed up by votes at home, so when the question came up, ”Will you sustain the honor of the Government? Will you pay the debt that has been incurred?” look at the answer. Never did trap of dishonesty, so concealed in its interior structure, present so tempting a bit of cheese to humanity. Yet when the question came, after full discussion and trial in all the States of the North successively, by majorities that no man will choose now to gainsay or resist, by overwhelming majorities, they said, ”The debt shall be paid, every penny of it!” The North so voted. It was the common people that voted it; men that live on wages. By that experiment two things were shown; one that when the whole people are appealed to, they do stand up to the interests of the States better than educated cla.s.ses do; and the other, that when it comes to the question of sentiment or National integrity, the common people are to be trusted; and it is not the day, in the face of the magnificent disclosures of that trying time, to say that it is unsafe to trust the welfare of a country in the hands of such people. I say there is no man that comes to years of discretion who is not fit for the responsibilities of citizens.h.i.+p. Women will also improve when we welcome them to the open air of liberty.

The sum of all these remarks is simply this, ”Amen” to Brother Blackwell.

LUCY STONE came forward and reminded the audience that a bill is now before Congress which provides that the employees in the Government departments at Was.h.i.+ngton and in both Houses of Congress shall be equally paid irrespective of s.e.x, and that pet.i.tions should be sent to Congress advocating the pa.s.sage of the bill; that blanks for the purpose would be found in the hall, and she hoped the friends of the cause would sign them. She read a letter from Mr. Giles B. Stebbins regretting his inability to be present, and expressing confidence in the ultimate triumphant success of the cause.

Mr. POWELL, of the _Anti-Slavery Standard_, was introduced: Ladies and gentlemen--My first feeling this morning was one of congratulation in view of the encouraging auspices under which we meet here to advocate the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women. I regard this movement to-day as just entering upon its earliest efficient practical work. The era of curiosity and novelty is past. There is no longer in the public mind that feeling which has. .h.i.therto manifested itself in connection with the discussion of the proposition that women should vote. We have now to contend with the more difficult and solid portion of the problem. The right of woman to speak has been argued and settled; the right of woman to the ballot has been quite generally admitted--indeed, almost universally so--as it must be by any one who observes carefully the arguments used to justify the extension of the ballot to men.

By the ratification of the XV. Amendment the question has been finally settled in regard to all men, excepting perhaps the Indians and Chinese, who may, however, be interpreted by and by as having citizens.h.i.+p under this amendment. Logically and inevitably, therefore, we come at this time to the consideration of Mr. Julian's XVI. Amendment, as something which, if we were not arguing for it, somebody else would be. It is the logical sequence of what has gone before in the way of the experiment of republican government in this country. There is no one--either American or foreign-born--who has observed the workings of our inst.i.tutions and the progress of our country, who will say that we must stand still. We must either go forward in our work of extending suffrage until we finally reach universal suffrage, or go back to a one-man power. The victims of the slave power are to-day standing erect in the possession of equal citizens.h.i.+p on the basis of absolute legal equality with the white men of the country. Therefore, with slavery abolished, with our free-school system, with newspapers scattered all over like snow-flakes throughout the country, with free thought and free education, there is not such a thing probable or possible as our going backward to the system of one-man power. The question now to be decided is the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women. And this question is at last fairly before the world--not in newspapers alone, but in State Legislatures, and even in Congress. Propositions are pending in Was.h.i.+ngton for the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the women of the District of Columbia, and for the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt by Congressional authority of the women of the Territories. There is also a Const.i.tutional amendment proposed, which, if successful, will abolish all political proscription on account of s.e.x everywhere throughout the country. My advice would be to concentrate directly our chief energy on the larger part of the problem. I believe in State action. I think it would be well to go to Albany and to the Ma.s.sachusetts Legislature and to the Ohio Legislature, and to the Legislatures of all the States, and to urge that the States take the initiative and enfranchise their women. But I do not expect that any one State, whatever may be the political opinion of that State, will go much in advance of the nation at large. It seems to me that no political party existing in any one State can establish the precedent of woman's enfranchis.e.m.e.nt much in advance of the National Government. I think it therefore the part of wisdom to concentrate directly upon the National Legislature. I believe that one object of this Convention to-day should be to concentrate its voice in an emphatic resolution, asking that Mr. Julian's amendment be not allowed to slumber into the hot weather of July, and then be pa.s.sed over entirely. I think we should make the voice of this a.s.sociation felt as a power for immediate effective work in the direction I have indicated; and, if we speak earnestly, we shall be felt and heard. Let us concentrate first upon the XVI.

Amendment and the proposition to enfranchise the women of the District of Columbia. I hold that that District should be the first battle-ground for the women of America to a national precedent, as it was in the prior struggle for the abolition of slavery. The District is immediately under the supervision of your Representatives and mine, and members of Congress are to be held personally responsible for the government which prevails there. Let us then demand of Congress--demand, I say, because that is the language of earnest reform--that it give us forthwith, before the adjournment of the present session, a law of equal suffrage for the women of the District of Columbia. In the light of the recent action of the British Parliament, is this asking too much? Should not we Americans be up to the level of a test vote on this question--which has never yet been reached either in the Senate or House of Representatives?

The President introduced GRACE GREENWOOD, who said: ”I rise to a personal explanation,” as we say in Was.h.i.+ngton. When Colonel Higginson yesterday overwhelmed me with his compliment, by the proposition that I should belong to the Congress of the United States, I wanted to say--had I not been so overwhelmed--in order to set myself ”right before the country,” that there had been no previous understanding between Colonel Higginson and myself; and that as I didn't want to encourage any false hopes, and in fact didn't want to go, I should decline the nomination. I prefer the position he referred to--absolutely prefer my place in the reporters' gallery. I know that a white reporter is as good as a colored Senator, if he or she behaves himself or herself. I like to look down upon that scene of legislation and feel that I am out of it; though sometimes I feel like echoing Coldstream's opinion in looking into Vesuvius, ”There is nothing in it.” I like to sit in the gallery of the House and watch our few true men. When women sit there, there will be justice done to them; and, while I have the honor of reporting for the _Tribune_, there will be justice done to women when any question concerning her interests comes up in Was.h.i.+ngton. And here I would like to refer, as others who have spoken have already referred, to the work to be done in the Church. I think that many of our earnest, eloquent, high-minded, religious women should make for the pulpit. I have always felt that there was great point in the doctrine of the orthodox Church on the birth of Christ. We have a greater share in Him than men can have, as He received His humanity--His sweet, tender, suffering humanity--wholly from woman. And yet we have been made to keep silence in the house of our Father even on such festivals as Christmas and Thanksgiving.

How would it seem if on these occasions the sons only were allowed to thank our heavenly Father for His care and love, and the daughters were allowed to sit quiet? But woman's piety, you know, is a very good thing for home consumption, and is supposed to consist in her quietly sitting at home and praying for her husband and sons. Goodness knows, she always has enough to pray for! There is an anecdote told of a loving son who once spoke of the inestimable blessing of a fine mother. He was a preacher in Illinois, and he said to his congregation, ”Oh, my friends, I have such a mother. I remember when I was a little lad, standing by my mother's side on a Sabbath afternoon, as she sat with her Bible open before her, how she turned from the blessed Word to lay her hand upon my sunny head, and pray that I might grow up to be a minister of the Gospel and a great man; and, brethren and sisters, I stand before you to-day a living example of the efficacy of that prayer.” While Mrs. Livermore was speaking so gloriously last night out of her mother's heart, of mothers robbed by the law of their little ones, what mother's heart didn't stir within her? My little one--she is about my height now--but I never have been able to get rid of the sweet weight of that baby head on my breast! My arms always have the feel of the baby in them yet; and I can not express to you the horror--the almost rage--with which I hear every story of such outrages on the maternal heart. It was this feature of mother-robbery in the system of slavery that always enraged me most against it. It was just at that point that the system dipped deepest into h.e.l.l.

Though slavery is gone, however, there are many evils yet remaining in the laws which should be remedied, and not the least of them is that which gives the father the entire control of the children instead of the mother. Some fathers, however, are quite willing to relinquish that control. I remember a colored woman in Was.h.i.+ngton, in whose kitchen I once happened to be for a moment, and, seeing several dark olive branches around, I said to her, ”Are these your children?” She said, ”Yes.” ”How many have you?”

She said, ”Seven, and all to support.” I said to her, ”Have you no husband?” ”Oh, yes,” she said, ”I have a husband; I was married by a Methodist minister down South.” ”Well,” said I, ”why don't he support the children?” ”Oh,” she said, ”he's done gone away.” ”Why has he left you?” ”Oh, he was a very bright man,” she said (meaning that he was light in color), ”and he thought that I was too black.” ”But,” I said, ”didn't he know how black you were before he married you?” ”That is just what old Missus said--she said, 'Why, you know'd she was black when you married her,' and he said, 'Yes, but den she didn't have so many relations about her.'” ”What relations?” ”Children!” Her children, of course, and his, too. ”He doesn't want so many of my relations about, so he's done gone off.” When a man doesn't want to go, the children are his ”property”; when he wants to desert his wife, they are her ”relations.” I would be willing to have the strictest morality enjoined as a qualification for the ballot. But, as it is a poor rule that would not work both ways, if that test were applied to the male voters, what a frightful disfranchis.e.m.e.nt would take place. The Democratic party would be well-nigh annihilated, and the Republican party would be in a fit state to condole with it.

I think, however, that all these things will adjust themselves when they come. All bugbears seem much more terrible at a distance than when they are close enough to be grappled with.

Mr. OLIVER JOHNSON was then introduced. He said that the true germ of the present woman suffrage agitation was to be found in the foundation of the Anti-slavery Society. At the time that Society was founded, the question arose as to whether women were persons, in the sense in which that word was used in the const.i.tution of that Society. The question gave rise to much discussion, and it was finally decided by a majority of the members that the word ”person” did include women; and it was therefore determined that, in the Society, women should have all the rights that men had. And when thirty years ago the anniversary of the Society was held, it became the duty of the presiding officer on that occasion to appoint a business committee, and, in announcing the names of that committee, he included that of Abby Kelly--more lately known as that of Abby Kelly Foster--a Quaker woman of excellent character, and a devoted friend of the anti-slavery cause. The announcement of her name was the signal for much tumult, and the withdrawal for the time being of not less than one hundred and fifty clergymen, who, led by an eminent citizen, left that meeting and went down into the bas.e.m.e.nt of the church and formed a new anti-slavery society, solely because a woman was permitted to serve on a committee. Mr. Johnson said that he had always had a profound belief in the triumph of the anti-slavery cause. So also did he believe in the success of the woman suffrage movement.

Mrs. Hazlett, of Michigan, was the next speaker. G.o.d, she said, says to America to-day, take now the next step in the path of national progress; then come and take thy place as the highest nation of the earth. Will America obey heaven's voice, or does republicanism exist only in name? Men of America! let the stars and stripes wave over a land true to its principles. It is not because we want to usurp power that we want the ballot. We want justice, for the sake of liberty. But, above all, gentlemen, we hold the welfare of this country our birthright as well as yours.

We wish the vote because it is our right and our duty to have it.

We have duties in life, in society, in the church--duties to ourselves and to our families which can not be discharged without the ballot.

When the Convention re-a.s.sembled, Mrs. Celia Burleigh, in the absence of the President, took the chair.

Miss CATHERINE E. BEECHER, who was now introduced, requested the Secretary, Mr. Blackwell, to read a paper which she had written, containing her objections to woman suffrage, to which objections Mrs. Cutler, of Ohio, would reply. Mr. Blackwell read the following:

I will first state to what I am not opposed. And, first, I am not opposed to women speaking in public to any who are willing to hear, nor do I object to women's preaching, sanctioned as it is by a prophetic apostle--as one of the millennial results. It is true that no women were appointed among the first twelve, or the seventy disciples sent out by the Lord, nor were women appointed to be apostles or bishops or elders. But they were not forbidden to teach or preach, except in places where it violated a custom that made a woman appear as one of a base and degraded cla.s.s if she thus violated custom.