Читать книгу The History of Woman Suffrage - Various - Страница 18

Table of Contents

The promised land of fugitives—"Uncle Tom's Cabin"—Salem Convention, 1850—Akron, 1851—Massilon, 1852—The address to the women of Ohio—The Mohammedan law forbids pigs, dogs, women, and other impure animals to enter a Mosque—The New York Tribune—Cleveland Convention, 1853—Hon. Joshua R. Giddings—Letter from Horace Greeley—A glowing eulogy to Mary Wollstonecroft—William Henry Channing's Declaration—The pulpit responsible for public sentiment—President Asa Mahan debates—The Rev. Dr. Nevin pulls Mr. Garrison's nose—Antoinette L. Brown describes her exit from the World's Temperance Convention—Cincinnati Convention, 1855—Jane Elizabeth Jones' Report, 1861.

There were several reasons for the early, and more general agitation of Woman's Rights in Ohio at this period, than in other States. Being separated from the slave border by her river only, Ohio had long been the promised land of fugitives, and the battle-ground for many recaptured victims, involving much litigation.

Most stringent laws had been passed, called "the black laws of Ohio," to prevent these escapes through her territory. Hence, this State was the ground for some of the most heated anti-slavery discussions, not only in the Legislature, but in frequent conventions. Garrison and his followers, year after year, had overrun the "Western Reserve," covering the north-eastern part of the State, carrying the gospel of freedom to every hamlet.

A radical paper, called The Anti-Slavery Bugle, edited by Oliver Johnson, was published in Salem. It took strong ground in favor of equal rights for woman, and the editor did all in his power to sustain the conventions, and encourage the new movement.

Again, Abby Kelly's eloquent voice had been heard all through this State, denouncing "the black laws of Ohio," appealing to the ready sympathies of woman for the suffering of the black mothers, wives, and daughters of the South. This grand woman, equally familiar with the tricks of priests and politicians, the action of Synods, General Assemblies, State Legislatures, and Congresses, who could maintain an argument with any man on the slavery question, had immense influence, not only in the anti-slavery conflict, but by her words and example she inspired woman with new self-respect.

These anti-slavery conventions, in which the most logical reasoners, and the most eloquent, impassioned orators the world ever produced, kept their audiences wrought up to the highest pitch of enthusiasm hour after hour, were the school in which woman's rights found its ready-made disciples. With such women as Frances D. Gage, Hannah Tracy Cutler, Josephine S. Griffing, J. Elizabeth Jones, Mariana Johnson, Emily Robinson, Maria Giddings, Betsey Cowles, Caroline M. Severance, Martha J. Tilden, Rebecca A. S. Janney, to listen to the exhaustive arguments on human rights, verily the seed fell on good ground, and the same justice, that in glowing periods was claimed for the black man, they now claimed for themselves, and compelled the law-makers of this State to give some consideration to the wrongs of woman.

Again, in 1850, Ohio held a Constitutional Convention, and these women, thoroughly awake to their rights, naturally thought, that if the fundamental laws of the State were to be revised and amended, it was a fitting time for them to ask to be recognized.

In 1851, Harriet Beecher Stowe commenced the publication of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in the National Era, in Washington, D. C., which made Ohio, with its great river, classic soil, and quickened the pulsations of every woman's heart in the nation.

Reports of the New York Conventions, widely copied and ridiculed in leading journals, from Maine to Texas, struck the key-note for similar gatherings in several of the Northern States. Without the least knowledge of one another, without the least concert of action, women in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, sprang up as if by magic, and issued calls for similar conventions. The striking uniformity in their appeals, petitions, resolutions, and speeches; making the same complaints and asking the same redress for grievances, shows that all were moved by like influences. Those who made the demand for political freedom in 1848, in Europe as well as America, were about the same age. Significant facts to show that new liberty for woman was one of the marked ideas of the century, and that as the chief factor in civilization, the time had come for her to take her appropriate place.

The actors in this new movement were not, as the London and New York journals said, "sour old maids," but happy wives and faithful mothers, who, in a higher development, demanded the rights and privileges befitting the new position. And if they may be judged by the vigor and eloquence of their addresses, and the knowledge of parliamentary tactics they manifested in their conventions, the world must accord them rare common-sense, good judgment, great dignity of character, and a clear comprehension of the principles of government. In order to show how well those who inaugurated this movement, understood the nature of our republican institutions, and how justly they estimated their true position in a republic, we shall give rather more of these early speeches and letters than in any succeeding chapters.

In 1849, Mrs. Elizabeth Wilson, of Cadiz, Ohio, aroused some attention to the general question, by the publication of "A Scriptural View of Woman's Rights and Duties," clearly demonstrating the equality of man and woman in the creation, as well as the independent, self-reliant characteristics sanctioned in woman, by the examples of the sex given in the Bible. As woman has ever been degraded by the perversion of the religious element of her nature, the scriptural arguments were among the earliest presentations of the question. When opponents were logically cornered on every other side, they uniformly fell back on the decrees of Heaven. The ignorance of women in general as to what their Bibles really do teach, has been the chief cause of their bondage. They have accepted the opinions of men for the commands of their Creator. The fulminations of the clergy against the enfranchisement of woman, were as bitter and arrogant as against the emancipation of the African, and they defended their position in both cases by the Bible. This led Abolitionists and women to a very careful study of the Scriptures, and enabled them to meet their opponents most successfully. No clergyman ever quoted Scripture with more readiness and force than did Lucretia Mott and William Lloyd Garrison, who alike made the Bible a power on the side of freedom.