Volume II Part 107 (2/2)

Nor am I opposed to a woman earning her own independence in any lawful calling, and wish many more were open to her which are now closed.

Nor am I opposed to the agitation and organization of women, as women, to set forth the wrongs suffered by great mult.i.tudes of our s.e.x, which are multiform and most humiliating. Nor am I opposed to women's undertaking to govern both boys and men--they always have done it, and always will. The most absolute and cruel tyrants I have ever known were selfish, obstinate, unreasonable women to whom were chained men of delicacy, honor, and piety, whose only alternatives were helpless submission, or ceaseless and disgraceful broils.

Nor am I opposed to the claim that women have equal rights with men. I rather claim that they have the sacred, superior rights that G.o.d and good men accord to the weak and defenseless, by which they have the easiest work, the most safe and comfortable places, and the largest share of all the most agreeable and desirable enjoyments of this life. My main objection to the woman suffrage organizations is mainly this, that a wrong mode is employed to gain a right object.

The ”right object” sought is to remedy the wrongs and relieve the sufferings of great mult.i.tudes of our s.e.x. The ”wrong mode” is that which aims to enforce by law instead of by love. It is one which a.s.sumes that man is the author and abetter of all these wrongs, and that he must be restrained and regulated by const.i.tutions and laws, as the chief and most trustworthy method.

In opposition to this, I hold that the fault is as much, or more, with women than with men, inasmuch as that we have all the power we need to remedy all wrongs and sufferings complained of, and yet we do not use it for that end. It is my deep conviction that all reasonable and conscientious men of our age, and especially of our country, are not only willing, but anxious to provide for the best good of our s.e.x, and that they will gladly bestow all that is just, reasonable, and kind, whenever we unite in asking in the proper spirit and manner. It is because we do not ask, or ”because we ask amiss,” that we do not receive all we need both from G.o.d and men. Let me ill.u.s.trate my meaning by a brief narrative of my own experience. To begin with my earliest: I can not remember a time when I did not find a father's heart so tender that it was always easier for him to give anything I asked than to deny me. Of my seven brothers, I know not one who would not take as much or more care of my interests than I should myself. The brother who presides is here because it is so hard for him to say ”No”

to any woman seeking his aid.

It is half a century this very spring since I began to work for the education and relief of my s.e.x, and I have succeeded so largely by first convincing intelligent and benevolent women that what I aimed at was right and desirable, and then securing their influence with their fathers, brothers, and husbands; and always with success. American women have only to unite in asking for whatever is just and reasonable, in a proper spirit and manner, in order to secure all that they need.

Here, then, I urge my greatest objections to the plan of female suffrage; for my countrywomen are seeking it only as an instrument for redressing wrongs and relieving wants by laws and civil influences. Now, I ask, why not take a shorter course, and ask to have the men do for us what we might do for ourselves if we had the ballot? Suppose we point out to our State Legislatures and to Congress the evils that it is supposed the ballot would remedy, and draw up pet.i.tions for these remedial measures, would not these pet.i.tions be granted much sooner and with far less irritation and conflict than must ensue before we gain the ballot? And in such pet.i.tions thousands of women would unite who now deem that female suffrage would prove a curse rather than a benefit.

And here I will close with my final objection to woman suffrage, and that is that it will prove a measure of injustice and oppression to the women who oppose it. Most of such women believe that the greatest cause of the evils suffered by our s.e.x is that the true profession of woman, in many of its most important departments, is not respected; that women are not trained either to the science or the practice of domestic duties as they need to be, and that, as the consequence, the chief labors of the family state pa.s.s to ignorant foreigners, and by cultivated women are avoided as disgraceful.

They believe the true remedy is to make woman's work honorable and remunerative, and that the suffrage agitation does not tend to this, but rather to drain off the higher cla.s.ses of cultivated women from those more important duties to take charge of political and civil affairs that are more suitable for men.

Now if women are all made voters, it will be their duty to vote, and also to qualify themselves for this duty. But already women have more than they can do well in all that appropriately belongs to women, and to add the civil and political duties of men would be deemed a measure of injustice and oppression.

Mrs. H. M. T. CUTLER, of Ohio, then rose to reply. She said: I account myself happy to be allowed to stand here to reply to the objections of my friend, Miss Beecher. There is one point where I feel that her argument is not as strong as most of her arguments are. We enjoy things of privilege, if privileges are granted; but we enjoy things of right, because they are right--not otherwise.

All that she says of good men, and of what good men will do for women, only goes to show what everybody has already known, that she had for a father one of the first Christian gentlemen in the United States or in the world; and for brothers seven men of princely virtue, and highest and n.o.blest Christian attainments.

If the world was made up of all such people, there would be no need of laws. Miss Beecher may well speak for such men as they, and they may well speak for such women as she. If I make a pet.i.tion for something, and that pet.i.tion does not clearly express a right that is due me, but instead, asks for something that may be withheld without moral guilt, that is a privilege; but when I come and demand that which is a right, the condition is altogether changed. I claim the right because it is G.o.d-given.

We have in the advanced age of Christianity, those who do not believe in the use of physical force on any account whatever.

They are non-resistants; but it will not be said that the vicious can be controlled by moral suasion. Society is not yet sufficiently Christianized for men not to demand of each other guarantees for the safety of each other's rights. Shall we who are in some sense the weaker s.e.x have no guarantee for our rights?

Miss Beecher makes the point that men will give, if we ask them properly. The first asking of American women was not for themselves--not for their own account. They forgot themselves in their anxiety for poor oppressed slaves. They didn't know what they had lost through long ages, from not having exerted their own powers, and established their own responsibilities. But when they came to do that, they then asked themselves, ”Where are our good right hands?” I sent pet.i.tions to Congress again and again, which I had gathered from my neighbors, in regard to the abolishment of slavery in the District of Columbia and in the territories; and I have sent numbers of them in regard to this question of woman suffrage. I sent many of them to Horace Greeley, and he sent me back word, ”The only good that these things will do in Congress is to help the janitor to light the fires. They do good to the people perhaps, but they do no good otherwise.” We might have pet.i.tioned until the crack of doom, before Congress would have broken the chain. Why should we not demand our right to the vote, when we reflect that one vote, cast in the State of Indiana, was the means of electing a man whose vote in Congress turned the scale, and enacted the ”Fugitive Slave Law”--that law which put the collar upon every bondsman's neck, and branded him the property of every Southern master.

I admit the great responsibility of the ballot, and if we are true women, we shall a.s.sume it with a full appreciation of that responsibility, and a determination to do our whole duty in its exercise. The argument that many women do not desire the ballot reminds me of an old colored woman whom I met soon after the war.

I said to her, ”Some people say they think your people are really almost sorry that they have been made free; that they were more comfortable as slaves.” She said, ”Is it possible that any person thinks like that? Can it be that any colored person feels like that?” I said, ”I have heard people say so.” ”Then,” said she, ”if anybody feels like that they deserve to be slaves--doubly slaves--slaves in this world and slaves in the next.” The woman that is not willing to a.s.sume the responsibility of casting a vote upon a question that may decide whether in her individual neighborhood or precinct there shall be grog-shops and houses of prost.i.tution open, and there shall be no proper care of the poor and needy and infirm--I say that if there is any woman who is not willing to a.s.sume such responsibilities, it seems to me that she must feel that it is a judgment on her, should her own husband or son or the daughter of her heart, or all of them, become sufferers in consequence of the evil that she might have stayed had she been willing to uphold the exercise of that right.

We ask only for the same right that is accorded to the poorest man landing on our sh.o.r.es. Is the giving of the ballot to a foreigner who comes among us a burden so great that he should not have it imposed upon him? And shall an American woman shrink from her duty when there is so much power in her hands for good?

I know that a great many women have not been educated up to a condition that would teach them fully how to act. Like the slave, they have had too much thinking and acting done for them, until now they feel incompetent to discharge these duties for themselves. Our great duty, then, which we who know better should consider imposed upon us, is that of educating women up to the proper standard. Shall we be beggars for that which is, of right, ours? Shall there not be one law for the brothers and the daughters throughout this entire country? As Mr. Beecher has well said, women have borne their full share of martyrdom; and it strikes me that it is now about time for her redemption from the evils of her position. If she has to suffer from the evils of a defective or vicious system of laws, put in her hands the power to protect herself, to mitigate the sufferings of her s.e.x, to preserve and defend the right and to suppress the wrong.

Mrs. MIRIAM M. COLE spoke at some length. The spirit of '76, she said, influenced Mrs. John Adams to write to her husband to inquire if it were generous in American men to keep their wives in thraldom, when they were emanc.i.p.ating the whole earth. Had the spirit of that letter animated the wife of Mr. Lincoln when his emanc.i.p.ation proclamation was issued, how pertinently could she have made the same inquiry! The laws regarding women were written down so plain that those may run who read, and they who read had better run.

Mrs. CELIA BURLEIGH said: Several references have been made to the work of women in the church. I am glad to be able to introduce to you now the pastor of one of the most popular churches of New Haven, and whose church, I am happy to say, is crowded every Sunday--Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford.

Mrs. HANAFORD said: Speaking with Horace Greeley a few weeks ago, he replied to my query why he was not in favor of woman suffrage, by saying that he did not think women would gain the opportunity of suffrage or improve the opportunity if they had it, until they should come to consider suffrage a duty, and he declared that he had never known any one to advocate woman suffrage on the ground of duty.

I was amazed at his a.s.sertion in the face of all the speeches and lectures which such women as Lucretia Mott and her conscientious co-laborers had made and delivered during the last twenty years.

The very next night, I heard Anna d.i.c.kinson in the largest hall in New Haven, and before nearly 3,000 people, urge the women present to consider their duty to this vast Republic in which we dwell, and whose starry banner is as dear to women as to men. The keynote of her bugle-call to the rescue was the idea of duty, and that is the idea which inspires the women on this platform to-day, while thousands of hearts throughout our Union respond, with the same sentiment, to their appeals from the platform, the pulpit, and the press.

Leading reformers of the world are telling us in clarion notes, and in thunder tones, with the voice of warning or of appeal, that woman owes service to the State, and that it is her duty to strive earnestly that she may have that ballot in her own hand which shall be at once her educator and protector, her sceptre and her sword. But I have heard the Master's voice, speaking through Lucy Stone and her co-workers, and speaking in my own soul also, declaring that I, in common with every other woman in this grand Republic, have a duty to the State that must not be ignored. In the home, and in the church, most women acknowledge they have duties--but as to the State they hesitate. Oh, if they would but ”gather into the stillness,” as the Friends say, and listen reverently to the voice within, I think they would often hear the solemn utterance, ”These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.” Every woman who has tried to do her whole duty in the family, tried faithfully to make home a foretaste of heaven, with its abounding peace and love, tried with a mother's prayers, a mother's tears, a mother's unselfish, self-denying love, to train her darlings for the skies--every such woman deserves the grat.i.tude of humanity, and that sweetest of rewards to a mother's heart, viz; that ”her children shall rise up, and call her blessed;” while every woman who superadds to this unselfish devotion to home and children, a lifelong fidelity to the church in which she was reared, or has adopted; every woman who has wors.h.i.+ped devoutly at the shrine her own soul has accepted, following meekly in the footsteps of Him who went about doing good--every such woman deserves the wreath of immortal amaranths which angel hands are weaving for her brow--but more than all, she who crowns her home work and her religious endeavors with a service to the State, which of necessity touches the great questions of reform, and aids in the settling of vast problems wherein the weal or woe of a nation is concerned--that woman, from the centre of her individual responsibility, reaches out to the circ.u.mference of her individual influence, and desires to receive from the lips of the dear Lord himself, the ”Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord”--the joy of a completed mission. The recording angel will write such a woman's name with that of Abou Ben Adhem, who loved his fellows, and in serving humanity served G.o.d.

The single point which I wish to present to the women before me at this hour and in these brief remarks is this, then; that it is your solemn, sacred duty, as you love G.o.d and the truth, and human welfare, to seek the ballot, and, having obtained it, to use it in purifying our statute-books and making them read more like the oracles of G.o.d--the eleven Commandments, and the Golden Rule.

Mrs. MARY F. DAVIS, of New Jersey, observed that in a court room of New York, a lawyer--she understood--recently stated that according to law the husband of a woman has such control over her as to ”own” her; that man was made for G.o.d and woman for man! She asked if those present accepted that law [A voice, No!] Do you, said she, own your own persons, according to the law of G.o.d, or do you not? Our brothers tell us that women would be contaminated by going into the court rooms and sitting on juries; that women must be kept from these places because it would impair their delicacy. Well, if women were wholly excluded from our court rooms the case would be different. But when in the mornings we take up the daily papers, how frequently do we read of some poor young creature who has been arrested and taken to the court room, to be tried by a jury of men; and carried perhaps from there to a place of imprisonment, with no pitying woman's eye or heart or hand to give her a ray of comfort. And these poor, forlorn creatures shall be deprived of our sympathy and left to perish because we are too ”delicate” to come to their a.s.sistance! These may be daughters of good people, and may once have been good and pure as any. They might be your daughters or mine. Brothers, they might be your sisters or your daughters! Oh! change the laws that bear so hard on women. Give us such laws as will allow your wives and mothers--those in whom you have confidence and whom you love--to come, with a mother's heart, and help rescue these deserted and fallen and miserable ones.

<script>