Читать книгу History of Woman Suffrage (Vol. 1-6) - Various - Страница 30

I was born in Townshend, Windham County, Vermont, January 25, 1810.

From 1843 to 1853 inclusive, I edited The Windham County Democrat, published by my husband, Geo. W. Nichols, at Brattleboro.

Early in 1847, I addressed to the voters of the State a series of editorials setting forth the injustice and miserable economy of the property disabilities of married women. In October of the same year, Hon. Larkin Mead, of Brattleboro, "moved," as he said, "by Mrs. Nichols' presentation of the subject" in the Democrat, introduced in the Vermont Senate a bill securing to the wife real and personal property, with its use, and power to defend, convey, and devise as if "sole." The bill as passed, secured to the wife real estate owned by her at marriage, or acquired by gift, devise, or inheritance during marriage, with the rents, issues, and profits, as against any debts of the husband; but to make a sale or conveyance of either her realty or its use valid, it must be the joint act of husband and wife. She might by last will and testament dispose of her lands, tenements, hereditaments, and any interest therein descendable to her heirs, as if "sole." A subsequent Legislature added to the latter clause, moneys, notes, bonds, and other assets, accruing from sale or use of real estate. And this was the first breath of a legal civil existence to Vermont wives.

In 1849, Vermont enacted a Homestead law. In 1850, a bill empowering the wife to insure, in her own interest, the life, or a term of the life of her husband; the annual premium on such insurance not to exceed $300; also an act giving to widows of childless husbands the whole of an estate not exceeding $1,000 in value, and half of any amount in excess of $1,000; and if he left no kin, the whole estate, however large, became the property of the widow. Prior to this Act, the widow of a childless husband had only half, however small the estate, and if he left no kindred to claim it, the remaining half went into the treasury of the State, whose gain was the town's loss, if, as occasionally happened, the widow's half was not sufficient for her support.22

In 1852, I drew up a petition signed by more than 200 of the most substantial business men, including the staunchest conservatives, and tax-paying widows of Brattleboro, asking the Legislature to make the women of the State voters in district school meetings.

Up to 1850 I had not taken position for suffrage, but instead of disclaiming its advocacy as improper, I had, since 1849, shown the absurdity of regarding suffrage as unwomanly. Having failed to secure her legal rights by reason of her disfranchisement, a woman must look to the ballot for self-protection. In this cautious way I proceeded, aware that not a house would be opened to me, did I demand the suffrage before convicting men of legal robbery, through woman's inability to defend herself.

The petition was referred to the Educational Committee of the House, whose chairman, editor of the Rutland Herald, was a bitter opponent, and I felt that he would, in his report, lampoon "Woman's Rights" and their most prominent advocates, thus sending his poison into all the towns ignorant of our objects, and strengthening the already repellant prejudices of the leading women at the capital. I wrote to Judge Thompson, editor of the Green Mountain Freeman (a recent accession to the press of the State and friendly to our cause), what I feared, and asked him to plead before the Committee and interest influential members to protect woman's cause against abuse before the House. He counseled with leading members of the three political parties—Whig, Free-Soil, and Democrat—including the Speaker of the House, and they advised, as the best course, that "Mrs. Nichols come to Montpelier, and they would invite her, by a handsome vote, to speak to her petition before the House." "When," added Judge T., "you can use your privilege to present the whole subject of Woman's Rights. Come, and I will stick by you like a brother." I went. The resolution of invitation was adopted with a single dissenting vote, and that from the Chairman of the Educational Committee, who unwittingly made the vote unanimous by the unfortunate exclamation, "If the lady wants to make herself ridiculous, let her come and make herself as ridiculous as possible and as soon as possible, but I don't believe in this scramble for the breeches!"

In concluding my plea before the House (in which I had cited the statutes and decisions of courts, showing that the husband owned even the wife's clothing), I thanked the House for its resolution, and referred to the concluding remark of the Chairman of the Educational Committee, and said that though I "had earned the dress I wore, my husband owned it—not of his own will, but by a law adopted by bachelors and other women's husbands," and added: "I will not appeal to the gallantry of this House, but to its manliness, if such a taunt does not come with an ill grace from gentlemen who have legislated our skirts into their possession? And will it not be quite time enough for them to taunt us with being after their wardrobes, when they shall have restored to us the legal right to our own?"

With a bow I turned from the Speaker's stand, when the profound hush of as fine an audience as earnest woman ever addressed, was broken by the muffled thunder of stamping feet, and the low, deep hum of pent-up feeling loosed suddenly from restraint. A crowd of ladies from the galleries, who had come only at the urgent personal appeal of Judge Thompson, who had spent the day calling from house to house, and who a few months before had utterly failed to persuade them to attend a course of physiological lectures from Mrs. Mariana Johnson, on account of her having once presided over a Woman's Rights Convention, these women met me at the foot of the Speaker's desk, exclaiming with earnest expressions of sympathy: "We did not know before what Woman's Rights were, Mrs. Nichols, but we are for Woman's Rights."

Said Mrs. Thompson to me upon our return to her home: "I broke out in a cold perspiration when your voice failed and you leaned your head on your hand."23 "I thought you were going to fail," continued Mrs. Thompson. "Yes," said the Judge, "I was very doubtful how it would come out when I saw how sensitive Mrs. Nichols was. But," (turning to me), "you have had a complete triumph! That final expression of your audience was perfect. Mr. Herald with his outside recruits did not come forward with the suit of male attire at the close, as he had advertised he would, (I did not tell Mrs. N. this, my dear," said the Judge.) "He'll catch it now, in the House and out." And he did "catch it."

The effort brought me no reproach, no ridicule from any quarter, but instead, cordial recognition and delicate sympathy from unexpected quarters, and even from those who had heard but the report of persons present. The editorial criticism of the Chairman of the Educational Committee, paid me the high compliment of saying, that "in spite of her efforts Mrs. Nichols could not unsex herself; even her voice was full of womanly pathos." The report of the Committee was adverse to my petition, but not disrespectful. Though the petition failed, the favorable impression created was regarded as a great triumph for woman's rights.

From the time I spoke at the Worcester Convention, 1850, until I left for Kansas, October, 1854, I responded to frequent calls from town and neighborhood committees and lyceums—in the county and adjoining territory of New Hampshire and Massachusetts as well as Vermont, to lecture or join in debate with men and women, the women voting me their time, on the subject of woman's legal and political equality. In these neighborhood lyceums, ministers and deacons and their wives and daughters took part. Generally wives were appointed in opposition to their husbands, and from their rich and varied experience did excellent execution. In order to secure opposition, I used to let the negative open and close, other wise the debate was sure to be tame or no debate at all. In all my experience it was the same; the "affirmative" had the merit and the argument.

The clergy often spoke—always when present—and in the negative, if it was their first hearing; and without a single exception they faced the audience at the close with a cordial endorsement of the cause. Said one such: "I told you, ladies and gentlemen, that I had given little attention to the subject, and you see that I told the truth. Mrs. Nichols has made out her case, and let her and the women laboring like her, persevere, and woman will gain her rights." "Let your wife go all she can," said one of these converts to Mr. Nichols, "she is breaking down prejudices and making friends for your paper. Your political opponents have represented her as a masculine brawler for rights, and those who have never met her know no better. I went to hear her, full of misgivings that it might be so."

In the winter of 1852 I went as often as twice a week—late p.m. and returned early a.m.—from six to twenty miles. I was sent for where there was no railroad. I often heard of "ready-made pants," and once of a "rail," but the greater the opposition, the greater the victory.

On a clear, cold morning of January, 1852, I found myself some six miles from home at a station on the Vermont side of the Massachusetts State line, on my way to Templeton, Mass., whither I had been invited by a Lyceum Committee to lecture upon the subject of "Woman's Rights." I had scarcely settled myself in the rear of the saloon for a restful, careless two hours' ride, when two men entered the car. In the younger man I recognized the sheriff of our county. Having given a searching glance around the ear, the older man, with a significant nod to his companion, laid his hand upon the saloon door an instant, and every person in the car had risen to his feet, electrified by the wail of a "Rachel mourning for her children." "O, father! she's my child! she's my child!" I reached the door, which was guarded by the sheriff, in a condition of mental exaltation (or concentration), which to this day reflects itself at the recollection of that agonizing cry of the beautiful young mother, set upon by the myrmidons of the law whose base inhumanity shames the brute! "Who is it?" "What is it?" "What does it all mean?" were the anxious queries put up on all sides. I answered: "It means, my friends, that a woman has no legal right to her own babies; that the law-makers of this Christian country (!) have given the custody of the babies to the father, drunken or sober, and he may send the sheriff—as in this case—to arrest and rob her of her little ones! You have heard sneers at 'Woman's Rights.' This is one of the rights—a mother's right to the care and custody of her helpless little ones!"

From that excited crowd—all young men and grown boys, I being the only woman among them—rose thick and fast—"They've no business with the woman's babies!" "Pitch 'em overboard!" "I'll help." "Good for you; so'll I!" "All aboard." (The conductor had come upon the scene). "All aboard." "Wait a minute till he gets the other child," cries the old man, rushing out of the saloon with a little three-year-old girl in his arms, while the sheriff rushed in. Standing behind the old man, I beckoned to the conductor, who knew me, to "go on," and in five minutes we were across the Massachusetts line, and I was in the saloon. With his hand on her child, the sheriff was urging the mother to let go her hold. "Hold on to your baby," I cried, "he has no right to take it from you, and is liable to fine and imprisonment for attempting it. Tell me, Mr. C——, are you helping the other party as a favor, or in your official capacity? In the latter case you might have taken her child in Vermont, but we are in Massachusetts now, quite out of your sheriff's beat." "The grandfather made legal custodian by the father, was he? That would do in Vermont, sir, but under the recent decision of a Massachusetts Court, given in a case like this, only the father can take the child from its mother, and in attempting it you have made yourselves liable to fine and imprisonment." Thus the "sheriffalty" was extinguished, and mother and child took their seat beside me in the car.

Meantime the conductor had made the old gentleman understand that they could get off at the next station, where they might take the "up train," and get back to their "team" on the Vermont side of the "line." As they could get no carriage at the bare little station, and with the encumbrance of the child, could not foot it six miles in the cold and snow, they must wait some three or four hours for the train, which suggested the possibility of a rescue. I could not stop over a train, but I could take the baby along with me, if some one could be found—The conductor calls. The car stops. As the child robbers step out (the little girl, clutched in the old grandfather's arms) 'mid the frantic cries of the mother and the execrations of the passengers, two middle-aged gentlemen of fine matter-of-fact presence, entered. I at once met their questioning faces with a hurried statement of facts, and the need of some intelligent, humane gentleman to aid the young mother in the recovery of her little girl. Having spoken together aside, the younger man introduced "Dr. B——, who lives in the next town, where papers can be made out, and a sheriff be sent back to bring the men and child; the lady can go with the doctor, and the baby with Mrs. Nichols. I would stop, but I must be in my seat in the Legislature." "I have no money, only my ticket to take me to my friends," exclaimed the anxious mother. "I will take care of that," said the good doctor; "you won't need any." "They will have to pay," I whispered. …

I gave my lecture at Templeton to a fine audience; accepted an invitation to return and give a second on the same subject, and having left the dear little toddler happy and amply protected, at noon next day found myself back at Orange, where I had left the mother. Here the conductor, who by previous arrangement, left a note from me telling her where to go for her baby, reported that the party had been brought to Orange for trial, spent the night in care of the sheriff, and were released on giving up the little girl and paying a handsome sum of the needful to the mother. He had scarcely ended his report when the pair entered the car, like myself, homeward bound. The old gentleman, care-worn and anxious, probably thinking of his team left standing at the Vermont station, looked straight ahead, but the kind-hearted sheriff caught my eye and smiled. In my happiness I could not do otherwise than give smile for smile.

Arrived at home, I found the affair, reported by the conductor of the evening train, had created quite an excitement, sympathy being decidedly with the mother. I was credited with being privy to the escapade and the pursuit, and as having gone purposely to the rescue. Had this been true, I could not have managed it better, for a good Providence went with me. I received several memorial "hanks" of yarn, with messages from the donors that "they would keep me in knitting-work while preaching woman's rights on the railroad"—a reference to my practice of knitting on the cars, and the report that I gave a lecture on the occasion to my audience there.

And thus was the seed of woman's educational, industrial, and political rights sown in Vermont, through infinite labor, but in the faith and perseverance which bring their courage to all workers for the right.