Читать книгу History of Woman Suffrage (Vol. 1-6) - Various - Страница 86

Pursuant to a call issued by the Central Committee, the Seventh National Woman's Rights Convention was held in New York, at the Broadway Tabernacle, November 25 and 26, 1856.

The Convention was called to order by Martha C. Wright, President of the last Convention.

The officers were duly appointed.145

Lucy Stone, on taking the chair, said: I am sure that all present will agree with me that this is a day of congratulation. It is our Seventh Annual National Woman's Rights Convention. Our first effort was made in a small room in Boston, where a few women were gathered, who had learned woman's rights by woman's wrongs. There had been only one meeting in Ohio, and two in New York. The laws were yet against us, custom was against us, prejudice was against us, and more than all, women were against us. We were strong only "in the might of our right"—and, now, when this seventh year has brought us together again, we can say as did a laborer in the Republican party, though all is not gained, "we are without a wound in our faith, without a wound in our hope, and stronger than when we began." Never before has any reformatory movement gained so much in so short a time. When we began, the statute books were covered with laws against women, which an eminent jurist (Judge Walker) said would be a disgrace to the statute books of any heathen nation.

Now almost every Northern State has more or less modified its laws. The Legislature of Maine, after having granted nearly all other property rights to wives, found a bill before it asking that a wife should be entitled to what she earns, but a certain member grew fearful that wives would bring in bills for their daily service, and, by an eloquent appeal to pockets, the measure was lost for the time, but that which has secured other rights will secure this. In Massachusetts, by the old laws, a wife owned nothing but the fee simple in her real estate. And even for that, she could not make a will without the written endorsement of her husband, permitting her to do so. Two years ago the law was so changed that she now holds the absolute right to her entire property, earnings included. Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island have also very much amended their statutes. New York, the proud Empire State, has, by the direct effort of this movement, secured to wives every property right except earnings. During two years a bill has been before the Legislature, which provides that if a husband be a drunkard, a profligate, or has abandoned his wife, she may have a right to her own earnings. It has not passed. Two hundred years hence that bill will be quoted as a proof of the barbarism of the times; now it is a proof of progress.

Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana have also very materially modified their laws. And Wisconsin—God bless these young States—has granted almost all that has been asked except the right of suffrage. And even this, Senator Sholes,146 in an able minority report on the subject, said, "is only a question of time, and as sure to triumph as God is just." It proposed that the Convention which meets in two years to amend the Constitution of the State should consider the subject. In Michigan, too, it has been moved that women should have a right to their own babies, which none of you, ladies, have here in New York. The motion caused much discussion in the Legislature, and it would probably have been carried had not a disciple of Brigham Young's, a Mormon member, defeated the bill. In Nebraska everything is bright for our cause. Mrs. Bloomer is there, and she has circulated petitions, claiming for women the right to vote. A bill to that effect passed the House of Representatives, and was lost in the Senate, only because of the too early closing of the session. That act of justice to woman would be gained in Nebraska first, and scores of women would go there that they might be made citizens, and be no longer subjects.

In addition to these great legal changes, achieved so directly by this reform, we find also that women have entered upon many new and more remunerative industrial pursuits; thus being enabled to save themselves from the bitterness of dependent positions, or from lives of infamy. Our demand that Harvard and Yale Colleges should admit women, though not yielded, only waits for a little more time. And while they wait, numerous petty "female colleges" have sprung into being, indicative of the justice of our claim that a college education should be granted to women. Not one of these female colleges (which are all second or third rate, and their whole course of study only about equal to what completes the sophomore year in our best colleges) meets the demand of the age, and so will eventually perish. Oberlin and Antioch Colleges in Ohio, and Lima College in New York, admit women on terms nearly equal with men.

In England, too, the claims of women are making progress. The most influential papers in London have urged the propriety of women physicians. Also a petition was sent to Parliament last year, signed by the Brownings, the Howitts, Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Gaskell, and Mrs. Jameson, asking for just such rights as we claim here. It was presented by Lord Brougham, and was respectfully received by Parliament. The ballot has not yet been yielded; but it can not be far off when, as in the last Presidential contest,147 women were urged to attend political meetings, and a woman's name was made one of the rallying cries of the party of progress. The enthusiasm which everywhere greeted the name of Jessie148 was so far a recognition of woman's right to participate in politics. Encouraged by the success of these seven years of effort, let us continue with unfailing fidelity to labor for the practical recognition of the great truth, that all human rights inhere in each human being. We welcome to this platform man and women irrespective of creed, country, or color; those who dissent from us as freely as those who agree with us.

Ernestine L. Rose, from the Business Committee, reported a series of resolutions.149

The President stated that several letters had been received, one from Francis Jackson, of Boston, one of the noblest of the noble men of the age, inclosing $50, which, he says, he gives "to help this righteous cause along." Also a letter from the Rev. Samuel Johnson, of Salem, Massachusetts, which would be read by Mr. Higginson.

Rev. T. W. Higginson said he was much more willing to be called upon to read the words of others at this time, than to utter poor words of his own. There were many who came into a Woman's Rights Convention and started to find men on the platform. He could only say, that in these times, and with the present light, there was no place where a man could redeem his manhood better than on the Woman's Rights Platform. Gentlemen in distant seats were perhaps trembling to think that they had actually got that far into this dangerous place. They might think themselves well off—no, badly off—if the maelstrom did not draw them nearer and nearer and nearer in, as it did him. He began, like them, hesitating and smiling on the back seats; they saw what he had got to now, and he hoped they, too, might get into such noble company before long. He was prouder to train in this band than to be at the head of the play-soldiers who were marching through the streets to-day, and immortalizing themselves by not failing, so utterly as some of their companions, to hit some easy target. Those were play-soldiers; these were soldiers in earnest.

Men talk a great deal of nonsense about the woman's rights movement. He never knew a husband who was demolished in an argument by his wife, or a young gentleman who found his resources of reason entirely used up by a young lady, who did not fall back at last when there was no retreat, and say: "It's no use; you can't reason with a woman." Well, so it would seem in their case. Others shelter themselves behind the general statement, that they don't wish to marry a woman's rights woman. I have no doubt the woman's rights women reciprocate the wish. These appear to have some anxiety about dinner—that seems to be the trouble. Jean Paul, the German, wanted to have a wife who could cook him something good; and Mrs. Frederica Bremer, the novelist, remarked, that a wife can always conciliate her husband by having something to stop his mouth. In a conversation in Philadelphia the other day, a young lawyer, when told that Mrs. Emma R. Coe was studying law with the intention of practicing, remarked, that he should never see her in Court, but she would remind him of mince pies; to which the gentleman he was in conversation with, observed that he had better not get her as his antagonist in trying a suit, or she would remind him of minced meat. Having given two or three examples of the nonsense of men upon this subject, he would now read them some sense. The letter was from one of the most eloquent and learned of the younger clergy of New England; a man possessed of powers of genius and practical wisdom which would yet make him heard in a larger sphere than that which he now occupied. It was not the old English Sam. Johnson who said that "there never was a lawsuit or a quarrel where a woman was not at the bottom of it." This was Sam. Johnson Americanized, and of course he was a woman's rights man.

LETTER FROM REV. SAMUEL JOHNSON.

Salem, October 4, 1856.

Dear Friend:—In complying with your desire that I should send a few words to the Woman's Rights Convention, I am quite aware that in this matter infinitely more depends upon what women do than upon what men say; nevertheless, if my confession of faith will be of the least service, it shall not be wanting.

I regard this movement as no less than the sum and crown of all our moral enterprises; as a proclamation of entire social freedom, never practicable until now. I welcome it, not merely because it aims at delivering half the human race from constraints that degrade and demoralize the whole, but also because it is opening a new spiritual hemisphere, destined to put a new heart into our semi-barbarian theology, politics, manners, literature, and law. And especially do I rejoice, that having defrauded the feminine element of its due share in practical affairs for so many ages, and found ourselves, as a natural consequence, drifting toward barbarism with all our wealth and wisdom, we are compelled at last to learn that justice to woman is simply mercy to ourselves.

Doubtless the main obstacles to this work come from her own sex. Strange if it were not so; if the meagre hope doled out to women hitherto should have unfitted them to believe that such a function awaits them. Strange if they did not fear a thousand perils in the untried way of freedom. But the unwise distrust will have to be abandoned; and so will the conventional flippancy and contempt. I think the grand duty of every honorable man toward this effort at emancipation is simply not to stand in its way. For how much is really covered by that duty? It means that he must wash his hands of every law or prejudice that dooms woman to an inferior position, and makes her the victim of miserable wages and fatal competitions with herself. It means that he must clear himself of this senseless twaddle about "woman's sphere," a matter surely no more for his legislation, than his "sphere" is for hers; and one upon which, at this stage of their experience, it is unbecoming in either to dogmatize; and it means that as a simple act of justice, he must resign to her the control of her own earnings, secure her fair and full culture, and welcome her to the pulpit, the bar, the medical profession, and to whatever other posts of public usefulness she may prepare herself to fill. As long as he fails of doing this, he is unjustly interfering with her sacred rights; and after he has done this, he may safely leave the rest to her.

It is humiliating indeed that numbers of well-disposed persons should not recognize so plain a duty. I have no patience to argue it. The moral logic of this movement is as patent as the simplest rule in arithmetic. Every argument brought against it resolves itself into a sneer at woman's capacity, or an anxiety lest the distinction God has established between the sexes will not bear testing; or, what is more common still, though covered up in a thousand ways, the brutish assertion that "might makes right." There is but one answer to these impertinences, and that is the success of individual women in the work they set about. The current ridicule at "doing justice to women" will pass for the sheer vulgarity it is, when so many women shall do justice to themselves, that they can not be taken as exceptions to prove the rule. And this success depends on their own wills. The noble use of God's gifts shall make its mark in this world. As sure as God lives, it shall compel a becoming respect. For more and more of these lessons in true honor do we pray; for the very name of manhood must make us blush, so long as it is identified with these airs of patronage and control, these insulting obeisances, these flatterers of what is childish in women, these sarcasms upon what is noblest; worse than all, this willingness to derive gain from the degradation and suffering of the sex it professes to adore. And words are poor to express the gratitude that shall be forever due to those women whose moral energy shall rebuke this littleness, and stir true manliness in man.

With sincere respect, I am truly your friend,

Samuel Johnson.

Ernestine L. Rose remarked, that in the letter read by Mr. Higginson there was one sentence that struck her with great force, viz: that it is of far greater importance what woman does than what man thinks; and, she would add, what woman thinks. The influence of what she had done was felt not only in this country, but throughout the entire continent of Europe.

The author of that letter had expressed another sentiment to which she wished briefly to advert. He said that where ten men could be convinced of the truth of Woman's Rights, hardly one woman could be gained. At first sight it might so appear. But it should be borne in mind, that men were more accustomed to think and reflect and argue upon everything connected with the legal and political rights of men, at least, and, therefore, they were more easily convinced. Nevertheless, the subject, whenever presented to the mind of woman in its proper light, would not fail to find an echo in her heart. Whenever the subject was broached to a woman hitherto unacquainted with it, it first caused a smile, and, perchance, a sneer; but, put to her a few common-sense questions, and the smile disappeared, and her countenance assumed a serious expression. Ask her if she is not entitled to self-government, to the full development of her mental powers, to the free choice of her industrial avocations, to proper remuneration for her labor, to equal control of her offspring with that of her husband, to the possession and control of her own property, and to a voice in making the laws that impose taxes upon property that she may hold—ask her a few simple, straight-forward questions like these, and see if an immediate, hearty, and warm assent is not elicited.

In spite of a violent storm a large number assembled in the evening. The speakers announced were Mrs. Elizabeth Jones and Wendell Phillips. Mrs. Jones' address was a clear and logical statement of the whole claim of woman. By her own request, it was not published.

Wendell Phillips:—Ladies and gentlemen. I am told that the Times of to-day warns the women of this Convention that if they proceed in their crusade they will forfeit the protection of the men. Perhaps, before it is offered, the question had better be asked whether it is needed. I do not think that I should run the risk of much difference of opinion if I claimed, that nine men out of ten would not be able to defend their right to vote as logically as the lady who has just addressed us has defended her right to vote. I question whether one-quarter of what we call the men educated by the colleges, and in active life—the better education of the two—would be able, arrogating to themselves as they do a far greater political and civil capacity, to state the grounds of civil rights and responsibilities, to mark out the limits, to vindicate the advantages, and to analyze the bases on which these rest, as we have just had it done. If participation in civil rights is based on mind—as in this country we claim it to be—then certainly to-night we have no right to deny that the cause is gained, for the friend who has preceded me has left very little for any one to say; she has covered the whole ground.

In fact this question is a question of civilization, nothing less. The position of woman anywhere is the test of civilization. You need not ask for the statistics of education, of national wealth, or of crime; tell me the position of woman, and you answer the question of the nation's progress. Utah is barbarism; we need no evidence; we read it in the single custom that lowers the female sex. Wherever you go in history this is true. Step by step as woman ascends, civilization ripens. I warn the anxious and terrified that their first efforts should be to conquer their fears, for the triumph of this crusade is written as certain on the next leaf that turns in the great history of the race, as that the twentieth century will open.

The time was when a Greek dared not let his wife go out of doors, and in the old comic play of Athens, one of the characters says, "Where is your wife?" "She has gone out." "Death and furies! what does she do out?" Doubtless, if any "fanatic" had claimed the right of woman to walk out of doors, he would have been deemed crazy in Athens; had he claimed the right of a modest married woman to be seen out of doors it would have been considered fanaticism, and I do not know but that the Herald of that day would have branded him as an infidel. But spite of the anchored conservatism of others, women got out of doors and the country grew, and the world turned round, and so modern Europe has progressed. Now the pendulum swung one way, and now another, but woman has gained right after right until with us, to the astonishment of the Greek, could he see it—of the Turk, when he hears it—she stands almost side by side with man in her civil rights. The Saxon race has led the van. I trample underfoot contemptuously the Jewish—yes, the Jewish—ridicule which laughs at such a Convention as this; for we are the Saxon blood, and the first line of record that is left to the Saxon race is that line of Tacitus, "On all grave questions they consult their women." When the cycle of Saxondom is complete, when the Saxon element culminates in modern civilization, another Tacitus will record in the valley of the Mississippi, as he did in the valley of the Rhine, "On all grave questions they consult their women." The fact is, there is no use of blinking the issue. It is Paul against the Saxon blood; it is a religious prejudice against the blood of the race. The blood of the race accords to woman equality; it is a religious superstition which stands in the way and balks the effort.

Europe has known three phases. The first was the dominion of force; the second the dominion of money; the third is beginning—the dominion of brains. When it comes, woman will step out on the platform side by side with her brother. The old Hindoo dreamed that he saw the human race led out to its varied fortune, and first he saw a man bitted and curbed, and the reins went back to an iron hand. Then he saw a man led on and on, under various changes, until, at last, he saw the man led by threads that came from the brain and went back to an invisible hand. The first was the type of despotism—the reign of force, the upper classes keeping down the under. The last is ours—the dominion of brains. We live in a government where The New York Herald and New York Tribune, thank God, are more really the government than Franklin Pierce and Caleb Cushing. Ideas reign. I know some men do not appreciate this fact; they are overawed by the iron arm, by the marble capitol, by the walls of granite—palpable power, felt, seen. I have seen the palace of the Cæsars, built of masses that seemed as if giants alone could have laid them together, to last for eternity, as if nothing that did not part the solid globe could move them. But the tiny roots of the weeds of Italian summers had inserted themselves between them, and the palace of the Cæsars lies a shapeless ruin. So it is with your government. It may be iron, it may be marble, but the pulses of right and wrong push it aside; only give them time. I hail the government of ideas.

There is another thing I claim. You laugh at Woman's Rights Conventions; you ridicule socialism (I do not accept that); you dislike the anti-slavery movement. The only discussion of the grave social questions of the age, the questions of right and wrong that lie at the basis of society—the only voices that have stirred them and kept those questions alive have been those of these three reforms. Smothered with gold—smothered with material prosperity, the vast masses of our countrymen were living the lives of mere getters of money; but the ideas of this half of the nineteenth century have been bruited by despised reformers, kept alive by three radical movements, and whoever in the next generation shall seek for the sources of mental and intellectual change will find it here; and in a progressive people like ours that claim is a most vital and significant one. …

I contend that woman, broadly considered, makes half the money that is made. Go the world over, take either Europe or America, the first source of money is intelligence and thrift; it is not speculation. … Out of the twenty millions of American people that make money, woman does more than half of the work that insures the reward. I claim for that half of the race whose qualities garner up wealth, the right to dispose of it, and to control it by law.

Again, take thought. I know our sister has modestly told us how utterly they are deprived of what are called the institutions of education; but we know very well that book learning is a miserably poor thing, and that the best education in the world is what we clutch in the streets; and of that education, by hook or by crook, woman has so far gained enough, that, Europe and America through, where is the man presumptuous enough to doubt that the hand of woman is not felt as much on the helm of public opinion as that of man? To be sure, she does not have an outside ambitious distinction; but at home, in the molding hours, in youth, in the soft moments when the very balance-wheel of character is touched, we all know that woman, though she may not consciously enunciate ideas, does as much to form public opinion as man. The time has been—and every man who has ever analyzed history knows it—when in France, the mother to Europe of all social ideas; France that has lifted up Germany from mysticism, and told England what she means and what she wants: France that has construed England to herself, and interpreted to her what she was blindly reaching out for; when in that very France, at the fountain-head of that eighteenth century of civil progress, it was in the saloons of woman that man did his thinking, and it was under the brilliant inspiration of her society that that mighty revolution in the knowledge and science of civil affairs was wrought. In this country, too, at this hour, woman does as much to give the impulse to public opinion as man does.

Wherever I find silent power I want recognition of the responsibility. I am not in favor of a power behind the throne. I do not want half the race concealed behind the curtain and controlling without being responsible. Drag them to the light, hold them up as you do men to the utmost study of public questions, and to a personal responsibility for their public settlement. Corruption—it often takes the very form of the passions of woman. In Paris, to-day, we are told, when the government approaches a man, the way is, not to give him wealth for his own enjoyment, but to dower his daughter. It is the pride of woman through which they reach him. Drag that woman forward on the platform of public life; give to her manifest ability a fair field, let her win wealth by her own exertions, not by the surrender of principle in the person of her husband; and although my friend doubts it, I believe, when you put the two sexes harmoniously in civil life, you will secure a higher state of civilization—not because woman is better, not because she is more merciful, or more just, or more pure than man, as man naturally, but because God meant that a perfect human being should be made up of man and woman allied, and it is only when the two march side by side on the pathway of civilization that the harmonious development of the race begins.

Then, again, you can not educate woman, in the sense that we use education. She has no motive. As my friend said, when she marries, education ceases. At that age the education of man commences: he has wealth, ambition, social position, as his stimulus: he knows that by keeping his mind on the alert he earns them all. You furnish a woman with books—you give her no motive to open them. You open to her the door of science: why should she enter? She can gain nothing except in individual and exceptional cases; public opinion drives her back, places a stigma upon her of blue-stocking, and the consequence is, the very motive for education is taken away. Now, I believe, a privileged class, an aristocracy, a set of slaveholders, does just as much harm to itself as it does to the victimized class. When man undertakes to place woman behind him, to assume the reins of government and to govern for her, he is an aristocrat; and all aristocracies are not only unjust, but they are harmful to the progress of society.

I welcome this movement, because it shows that we have got a great amount of civilization. Every other movement to redress a wrong in the past generations of the world has been yielded to only from fear. Bentham says truly, the governing race never yielded a right unless they were bullied out of it. That is true historically; but we have come to a time—and this movement shows it—when civilization has rendered man capable of yielding to something different from fear. This movement has only been eight years on foot, and during that time, we who have watched the statute-book are aware to admiration of the rapid changes that have taken place in public opinion, and in legislation, all over the States. Within the last four years, in different localities, woman has been allowed the right to protect her earnings, and to make a will—two of the great points of property. Aye, and one little star of light begins to twinkle in the darkness of the political atmosphere: Kentucky allows her to vote. Yes, from the land where on one question they are so obstinate, the white race have remembered justice to their white co-equals. In her nobly-planned school system, Kentucky divides her State into districts; the trustees are annually chosen for the State funds; and it is expressly provided, that besides the usual voters in the election of trustees for the school fund, which is coveted by millions, there shall be allowed to vote, every widow who has a child betwixt six and eighteen years old, and she shall go to the ballot-box in person or by proxy. Kentucky repudiates the doctrine that to go to the ballot-box forfeits the delicacy of the sex; for she provides, in express terms, that she shall go to the ballot-box in person, or by proxy, as she pleases. It is the first drop of the coming storm—it is the first ray of light in the rising sun.

Civilization can not defend itself, on American principles, against this claim. My friend of Brooklyn claims the right to make political speeches, as well as sermons, because he is a citizen. Well, woman is a citizen too: and if a minister can preach politics because he is a citizen, woman can meddle in politics and vote, because she is a citizen too. When Mr. Beecher based his right, not on the intellect which flashes from Maine to Georgia, not on the strength of that nervous right arm, but solely on his citizenship, he dragged to the platform twelve millions of American women to stand at his side. But the difficulty is, no man can defend his own right to vote, without granting it to woman. The only reason why the demand sounds strange, is because man never analyzed his own right. The moment he begins to analyze it, he can not defend it without admitting her. Our fathers proclaimed, sixty years ago, that government was co-equal with the right to take money and to punish for crime. Now, all that I wish to say to the American people on this question is, let woman go free from the penal statute—let her property be exempt from taxation, until you admit her to the ballot-box—or seal up the history of the Revolution, make Bancroft and Hildreth prohibited books, banish the argument of '76, and let Mr. Simms have his own way with the history of all the States, as well as South Carolina. Yes, the fact is, women make opinion for us; and the only thing we shut them out from is the ballot-box.

I would have it constantly kept before the public, that we do not seek to prop up woman; we only ask for her space to let her grow. Governments are not made; they grow. They are not buildings like this, with dome and pillars; they are oaks, with roots and branches, and they grow, by God's blessing, in the soil He gives to them. Now man has been allowed to grow, and when Pharaoh tied him down with bars of iron, when Europe tied him down with privilege and superstition, he burst the bonds and grew strong. We ask the same for woman. Göethe said that if you plant an oak in a flower-pot, one of two things was sure to happen: either the oak will be dwarfed, or the flower-pot will break. So we have planted woman in a flower-pot, hemmed her in by restrictions, and when we move to enlarge her sphere, society cries out, "Oh! you'll break the flower-pot!" Well, I say, let it break. Man made it, and the sooner it goes to pieces the better. Let us see how broadly the branches will throw themselves, and how beautiful will be the shape, and how glorious against the moonlit sky, or glowing sunset, the foliage shall appear.

I say the very first claim, the middle and last claim of all our Conventions should be the ballot. Everywhere, in each State, we should claim it; not for any intrinsic value in the ballot, but because it throws upon woman herself the responsibility of her position. Man never grew to his stature until he was provoked to it by the pressure and weight of responsibility; and I take it woman will grow up the same way.

The first three resolutions on the Presidential election were brought up for discussion and adopted. Those persons in the audience who desired to speak were urged to do so.

Mrs. Rose said: In reference to this last election, though it was not my good fortune to be here during the time of that great excitement, being then on the continent of Europe; yet, even at that great distance, the fire of freedom that was kindled here spread itself across the Atlantic. The liberal, intelligent, and reformatory portion of the people of Europe, as well as in England, have most warmly, most heartily sympathized with us in the last struggle of freedom against slavery. It is a most glorious epoch. I will not enter into a political or anti-slavery lecture, but simply state this fact—the time has come when the political parties are entirely annihilated. They have ceased to exist. There is no longer Whig and no longer Democrat—there is Freedom or Slavery. We have here an equally great purpose to achieve. This, too, is not woman's rights or man's rights, but it is human rights. It is based on precisely the same fundamental truths with the other question. In the last election the general feeling prevailed that woman ought to take more interest in political affairs, and with the noble work she did during the campaign, it seems to me most extraordinary that the men who have worked thus nobly for the freedom of one class, should yet refuse freedom to the other class.

Phillip D. Moore rose in the body of the building and said: During this last Presidential canvass I heard more than once the oldest member of Congress declare that Freedom was based upon the law of God, which was declared in our Bill of Rights—our Declaration of Independence—that it was the inalienable right of all mankind to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness. He placed this last Presidential struggle upon that right higher than all human law; and upon that it seems this contest in behalf of human rights is based. I think that we should adopt these resolutions, and also appeal to the legislative bodies, where, I believe, there are men who will hear and heed the voice of justice.

Rev. T. W. Higginson took the floor, and expressed his hope that they would have more speaking from the floor and less from the platform. As a Republican voter, he would take his stand in support of these resolutions; and he would declare that it was true that the close of the Presidential election was the time for a woman's Convention to be held. It was true that the Republican party was pledged, if it had any manliness in it, to support the cause of women, to whom it had applied to support its cause every day; and it was positively true that, if there were such a thing in the land as a Democratic party, that party was the party of the women also. As a further illustration of the idea expressed by the gentleman who had preceded him, he would state the fact that, when he was invited to Vermont to address the Legislature in favor of the appropriation of $20,000 for Kansas,150 the meeting was postponed, on the ground that the shortness of the notice would not allow time for procuring the attendance of the women of the village to fill the galleries, and by their sympathy to influence the determination of the members of the Legislature who might be present. Accordingly they waited a little longer, gave sufficient notice, got the gallery full of ladies, and ultimately got the $20,000 appropriation, too. But always when the women had given their sympathy and began to demand some in return, it was found out that they were very "dependent" creatures, and that, if they persisted in it, they would forfeit the "protection" of the men; and this in the face of the fact, that when politicians wanted votes and clergymen wanted money, their invariable practice was to appeal to the women!

The last time he had considered woman's rights he was in a place where man's rights needed to be defended—it was in Kansas. No man could go to Kansas and see what woman had done there, and come back and see the little men who squeak and shout on platforms in behalf of Kansas, and then turn to deride and despise women, without a feeling of disgust. He would like to place some of these parlor orators and dainty platform speakers where the women of Kansas had stood, and suffered, and acted. He saw, while in Kansas, a New York woman151—whose story they might remember in the newspapers—how she hospitably prepared, in one day, three dinners for the marauders who were hovering around her house, and in their starvation became respectful at last, and asked her for the hospitality they did not then quite dare to enforce; and how they ate her dinner and abused her husband, until the good woman could stand it no longer, and at last opened her lips and gave them a piece of her mind. He saw that woman. She had lived for weeks together in the second story of a log hut, with the windows of the lower story boarded up, so that the inmates had to climb in by a ladder. She was surrounded by pro-slavery camps; and while her husband was in the army, she was left alone. The house had been visited again and again, and plundered. The wretches would come at night, discharge their rifles, and howl like demons. Her little girl, a nervous child, had sickened and died from sheer fright. But still, after the death of that child, the mother lived on, and still gave hospitality to free-soil men, and still defended the property of her husband by her presence. At last the marauders burned her house over her head, and she retreated for a time. The speaker saw her when she was on her way back to that homestead, to rebuild the house which she had seen once reduced to ashes by the enemy; and she said that if her husband was killed there in Kansas, she should preempt that claim, and defend the property for her children.

He saw another woman, a girl of twenty. He visited a mill which had been burnt by Missourians, where piles of sawdust were still in flames before his eyes, and there he met her; and when he asked to whom that house belonged, she said to her father. And when he inquired about her adventures in connection with that burning house, this was the story. Twenty-eight hundred Missourians were encamped around that house the morning after they had burned it. The girl had fled with her mother a mile off, but had come back to see if she could save any of the property. She walked into the midst of the crowd, and found a man she had previously known seated upon her favorite horse. Said she, "That is my horse; get off." He laughed at her. She repeated her demand. He loaded her with curses and insults. She turned to the bystanders—the herd of ruffians who had burned her father's house—and said: "This is my horse; make that man get off." Those fellows obeyed her; they shrank before that heroic girl, and made their companion dismount. She mounted the horse and rode off. When she had gone about half a mile, she heard a trampling of horses' hoofs behind her. The thief, mounted on a fleeter horse, was riding after her. He overtook her, and reining his horse in front of her, he seized hers by the bridle, and commanded her to let go. She held on. Said he, "Let go, or it will be the worse for you." She still held on. He took out his bowie-knife, and drew it across her hand, so that she could feel the sharpness of the edge. Said he, "If you don't let go, I will cut your hand off." Said she, "Cut if you dare." He cut the rope close to her hand, and took the bridle from her. It was useless to resist any longer, so she slipped off and walked away. But it was not ten minutes before she again heard trampling behind, and as she looked around, she saw two companions of this miscreant—two men less utterly villainous than he—bringing back her horse. Moved by her heroism, they had compelled him again to give up the horse, had brought it back to her, and she owns it now.

That was what great emergencies made out of woman. That girl had splendid physical proportions, and though some accident had deprived her of her left arm, she had a right arm, however, which was worth a good many. She had one arm, and the editor of The New York Times, he supposed, had two. He was not much accustomed to seeking defence of anybody, but he must say that, if he ever did get into difficulty as a Woman's Rights man, and had to choose between the protection of the one arm of that girl in Kansas, and the two of the New York editor, he thought his first choice would not be the Lieutenant-Governor. Seeing the heroism of the women of Kansas, he told the men of Lawrence, that when the time came for them to assert their rights, he hoped they would not imitate the border ruffians of the Eastern States, who asserted rights for man, and denied them to woman.

Mr. Higginson then reported the following resolution from the Business Committee:

Resolved, That the warm sympathies of this Convention are respectfully offered to those noble women in England, who are struggling against wrongs even greater than those of American women, but the same in kind; and we trust that they will follow on their demands in logical consistency, until they comprise the full claim for the equality of the sexes before the law.

This resolution referred, as some of them knew, to the recent action of some of the noblest women in England, in behalf of juster rights of property and a larger construction of human rights than had hitherto prevailed there. The list included a few of the very noblest of the women who had helped to make England's name glorious by their deeds in literature and in art. It included Mrs. Norton, to whom Wendell Phillips had referred, as a living proof of the intellectual greatness of woman; she had a husband who, after blasting her life by an infamous charge against her, which he confessed to his counsel he did not believe, now lived on the earnings of the brains of his wife. It included, also, Mrs. Somerville, a woman who had forever vindicated the scientific genius of her sex, by labors that caused the wonder and admiration of scientific men; a woman of whom it is said, that she is in all respects true to her sex, because while studying the motions of the heavenly bodies, she does not forget the motion of the tea-cups around her own table, and is as exquisite a housekeeper, as she is wise and accomplished as a student. It included also Harriet Martineau, that woman who, perhaps more than any other person in this age, had contributed to place the last half century in Europe in a clear light, by her admirable History, and shown in her treatise on Political Economy, a grasp and clearness which few men attain. It included also the name of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, that woman of rarest genius, of whom her husband, himself the greatest of England's living poets, had said that his wife's heart, which few knew, was greater than her intellect, which everybody knew; a woman whose inspiration had drawn from that husband, in the closing poem of his latest volume, the very highest strain which modern English poetry had struck, and the noblest utterance of emotion that ever man produced toward woman, in the speaker's judgment, since the world began. It also included Mary Howitt, whose beautiful union with her husband is a proof of what true marriage will be, when man and woman are equals, and whose genius had brought forth the wonderful powers of another woman whom we may fearlessly claim as a co-laborer, Frederica Bremer. These were the women of England to whom the resolution referred; women who had taken the first step in that movement, of which the full enfranchisement of woman will be the last.

He could not quite accept the opinion by Mrs. Jones in her admirable essay in regard to the superior education of the women of England. The women of England, as he took it, did not equal the women of America in their average education, although they did surpass them in that physical vigor of constitution which, in the end, gave greater power of action and thought. Whilst the English woman was, by the necessity of the case, taught more of the modern languages, she was not so commonly taught either the ancient languages or the mathematics, and had not, therefore, the same amount of mental training. In England, too, this Woman's Rights movement was met by more serious obstacles. It had to encounter all the thunders of The Thunderer—all the terrors of The Times—whilst here it had to undergo the very diluted thunders of The Times the Little. A recent traveler has remarked that he could distinguish the Massachusetts women from the women of any other State—not because they spoke through their nose, or sung psalms, but because they had "views." Every woman had her "views" upon every subject. It was true that the English women had superb frames, grand muscles, fine energies, that they spoke two or three languages, but then they usually didn't have any "views"; and he thanked God that he lived in a State where women had them.

He had spoken for woman and to woman, because he was a man. He did not dare, as a Republican voter, to throw his vote with one hand, without doing something for Woman's Rights with the other. Men and women were one before God, and this union can not be perfect until their equality be recognized. So long as woman is cut off from education, man is deprived of his just education. So long as woman is crushed into a slave, so long will man be narrowed into a despot. Without this movement, the political conventions of the present day would only prove to posterity that the nation was half civilized; but now future historians will record that in 1856, New York had not only her caucuses and her ballot-boxes, but her Woman's Rights Convention also.

Mrs. Rose wished to remark, in reference to the resolution offered by Mr. Higginson, that English women, to her knowledge, were very active in forwarding the Woman's Rights movement throughout Great Britain. And not only English women, but young and noble English girls—girls, who were too timid to take part publicly in the movement, but who were untiring and indefatigable in making converts and enlisting aid. There was Miss Smith, Miss Fox, the daughter of the celebrated W. J. Fox, the eloquent lecturer and member of Parliament for Oldham, Miss Parkes, and others. They had devoted themselves to the great work, which was more difficult in that country than this. They had no declaration of independence to appeal to, declaring that all men were created equal, and endowed with the incalculable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They had no such standard to appeal to there, because men there were not recognized as free. Banking interests, manufacturing interests, land monopolies, and monopolies of every other kind were represented in England, but not men. The principle of universal suffrage had not yet obtained in England, and hence the greater difficulties that woman had to encounter there.

Another obstacle was the division of the people into classes and castes. No movement could make headway in England unless it was commenced among what are termed the higher classes. Every petition to Parliament must first have some names that have a title attached to them before it can obtain other signatures. The thinking portion of the middle classes were kept silent to a great extent, because of their utter inability to do anything unless it was taken up and supported by the higher classes. But this state of things would not continue long; there was "a good time coming" there as well as here. Signatures by thousands had been obtained to the Woman's Petition, and she presumed by the time it was presented to Parliament it would contain tens of thousands of names.

Mrs. Rose then offered the following resolution from the Committee:

Resolved, That we also present our assurances of respect and sympathy to the supporters of the cause of women in Paris, the worthy successors of Pauline Roland and Jeanne Deroine, who, in the face of imperial despotism, dare to tell the truth.

In commenting on this resolution, Mrs. Rose remarked that if the difficulties surrounding English women who advocated an amelioration of woman's condition were great, how much greater were those which surrounded the French women, owing to the blight of despotism in that country. They could write their thoughts, but their writings could not be published in France. They had to send them to the one State in Italy which was not crushed by dark and bitter despotism. That bright spot is Sardinia. The works of the noble French women had to be sent to Turin, printed there, and sent back to Paris for private, secret distribution. And when these women met in consultation, they had to watch the doors and windows, to see that all was secure. She knew many of them, but dared not mention their names, for fear they might be borne across the Atlantic, and lead to their oppression and proscription. The noblest thoughts that had ever been uttered in France were by women, not only before the Revolution, but down to the present day. Madame Roland was imprisoned for uttering the truth, in consequence of which imprisonment she lost her arm. Jeanne Deroine was exiled, and now resides in London, where she supports herself, two daughters and son. She was teaching them herself, because she had no means to pay for their education. She filled their minds with noble thoughts and feelings, even to the very sacrifice of themselves for the benefit of the race, and more especially for the elevation of woman, without which she feels convinced that the elevation of man can never be accomplished.

But while the names of a few such noble women were made public, hundreds, nay, thousands, who had done as much, and even more than these, were in obscurity. They were constantly watching to find what was done in America. And there was one thing which characterized these French women, and that was, the entire absence of jealousy and envy of the talents and virtues of others. Wherever they see a man or woman of intellect or virtue, they recognize them as a brother or sister; and they never ask from whom a great thought or a virtuous action comes, but, is it good, is it noble? It seemed to her that the character of the French women was the very essence of human nobility. They are ready to welcome, with heart and hand, every reformer, without stopping to inquire whether he is English, American, German, or Turk. But poor France was oppressed as she never was before. The usurper that now disgraces the throne, as well as the name he bears, does not allow the free utterance of a single free thought. Men and women are taken up privately and imprisoned, and no newspaper dares to publish any account of it.