Читать книгу The History of Woman Suffrage - Various - Страница 87
ОглавлениеWhen Mrs. Rose had concluded, a young gentleman in the rear of the hall rose from his seat, and desired to make a few remarks. We subsequently understood he was from Virginia, and that his name was Leftwich, a theological student. He asked whether the claims of woman, which had been stated and advocated in the Convention, were founded on Nature or Revelation? He wished Mr. Higginson would enlighten him and several of his friends on that subject.
Rev. Mr. Higginson said that he was very glad that it was not a place for theological discussion. He was requested to answer the query whether the claims of woman, as stated in this Convention, were founded in Nature or Revelation. To define either what Nature or Revelation was, would involve metaphysical argument and abstract considerations that would take up the entire day. The basis of the movement was not due to this or that creed. Every Woman's Rights man or woman does his or her own thinking. He (the speaker) did his own. Included in the movement were men and women of all sects. There was Wendell Phillips, who thought himself a strict Calvinist; there were on the other hand professed atheists among them, and there were, he believed, Roman Catholics, so that it would be, in the highest degree, presumptuous for any one man to speak on that peculiar topic. Antoinette L. Brown had formed her idea of Woman's Rights from the Bible, and some of her friends thought that she was wasting her time in writing a treatise on Woman's Rights, deduced from Scripture. She was an orthodox Congregational minister, ordained in a Methodist meeting-house, while a Baptist minister preached the ordination sermon. There were some of the Woman's Rights friends who believed that we could get support from the Bible, and some who believed we could not, and who did not care whether we can or not. There were, also, those who simply believed that God made man and woman, and knew what He was about when He made them—giving them rights founded on the eternal laws of nature. It was upon these laws of nature that he (Mr. H.) founded his Woman's Rights doctrines. If there was any book or teacher in the world which contradicted them, he was sorry for that book and for that teacher. Was the gentleman answered?
The Gentleman From Virginia rose, in his place, in the rear of the building, and replied that he was not answered. Although earnestly invited to come upon the platform and address the audience, he declined to do so. His remarks, in consequence, were inaudible to about one-half the audience. He said it seemed to him that there was an inconsistency and an antagonism between theology and Mr. Higginson's views, as expressed by himself. The gentleman had contradicted himself. He refused to treat the question on the ground of revelation, and then declared that the claim of Woman's Rights was founded on the fundamental laws of God and nature. Here he took issue with Mr. H. The test of the naturalness of a claim was its universality. The principles upon which it was based must be found wherever man was found, and must have existed through all time and under every condition of life. What was found everywhere under all circumstances was natural. This Woman's Rights claim was not found everywhere even in this country, let alone others. He knew many enlightened and refined districts which had never heard the principles of this society, much less felt them. They were not popular anywhere in the age in which they were inaugurated. Therefore they were not founded in nature, and the claim of naturalism must fall to the ground. The taste for the beautiful, and the love of right, were innate faculties of the mind, because they existed everywhere; not so with the recognition of the claim of Woman's Rights. Again, the claim was not based on revelation, which he would prove in this way: Revelation is never inconsistent with itself. The claim for woman of the right to vote, inasmuch as she would of necessity vote as she pleased, and therefore sometimes contrary to her husband, involved a disobedience of her husband, which was directly antagonistic to the injunction of the Scriptures requiring wives to obey their husbands.
An elderly Quaker Lady in the body of the audience rose, and told the gentleman from the Old Dominion that if he wished to do any good he must come on the platform where he could be heard. The gentleman declined.
Lucy Stone said that men had rights as well as women, and she would not insist on the gentleman coming to the platform if he chose to remain where he was, but it would be more convenient if he would come.
The Gentleman from Virginia still declined, and proceeded to quote Scripture against the Woman's Rights movement.
The Quaker Lady again started up, and told him he had got hold of the letter of the Bible, but not the spirit.
Lucy Stone desired that each speaker would take his or her turn, "in due order, so that all might be edified."
The Gentleman from Virginia proceeded. Referring to a remark of Mr. Phillips on the preceding evening, in connection with a quotation from Tacitus, "that this movement was Paul against the Anglo-Saxon blood," he stood by the apostle to the Gentiles, and Mr. Phillips might stand by the corrupted Saxon blood.
A Gentleman rose and requested him to go upon the platform, as half the audience were breaking their necks by trying to listen to him. Still the gentleman declined.
The Virginian argued that woman was not fitted for the pulpit, the rostrum, or the law court, because her voice was not powerful enough. God gave her a mild, sweet voice, fitted for the parlor and the chamber, for the places for which He had designed her. God has not given her a constitution to sustain fatigue, to endure as man endures, to brave the dangers which man can brave. She was too frail, too slender—too delicate a flower for rough blasts and tempests. In her whole physical organization there was proof that she was not capable of what man was capable. Hers was a more beautiful mission than man's—a pure atmosphere was hers to breathe. Surrounded by all gentle influences, let her be content with the holy and beautiful position assigned to her by her Maker. He did not rise to make a speech. He was urged into it by the desultory, erratic, shallow, superficial reasonings of the gentleman who in one breath invited them to free discussion, and in the next defamed and scandalized the editor of The Times, because he took the liberty to discuss this question freely in his paper.
Mr. Higginson came forward promptly to reply. He thanked the gentleman for his speech. Such speeches were just what the Convention wanted. He was glad to hear from the applause which followed the gentleman's remarks, that there was a large number of persons present who were opposed to the views of the Convention. It was of little use talking to friends who already agreed with you, but it was always of advantage to talk to opponents, whom you might hope to convert. He was glad that those who differed with them were there, because it showed that the question was one of interest, and was beginning to excite those who probably had bestowed but little thought on it before. He did not think the gentleman could have meant what he said when he accused him of slander. He did not mean to slander anybody. And he did not think he quite meant what he said about his erratic and shallow reasonings. He would appeal to all if he had not treated the gentleman with courtesy. He thought he had answered the gentleman's inquiry, when in reply to the question whether he founded this claim on nature or on revelation, he said that he personally founded it on nature. If there was in the compass of the English language any simpler way of answering the question than that he did not know it. The gentleman, from the scope of his remarks, evinced a considerable love for metaphysical theology. His reasoning appeared to be a little dim; perhaps it was for want of comprehension on his part. He liked to plant himself on the fundamental principles of human nature, and work out his opinions from them.
In reply to the gentleman's reasoning about the universality of a thing being a test of its naturalness, he could say that there were a good many races who did not know that two and two make four. According to the gentleman's idea of natural laws, therefore, it was not natural that two and two should make four. But it had always been a question among metaphysicians, which was really the most natural condition for man—the savage or the civilized state? His own opinion was that the state of highest cultivation was the most natural state of man. He tried to develop his own nature in that way, and one of the consequences of that development was the conviction that two and two made four; while another was the conviction that his wife had as much right to determine her sphere in life for herself as he had for himself. And having come to that conviction, he should endeavor to carry it out, and he hoped by the time the young gentleman came to have a wife, he would be converted to that principle.
In reference to his attack on the editor of The Daily Times for the article on the Woman's Convention, which had appeared in the edition of the previous day, he remarked that he had read that article without any particular reverence for its author. He knew the quarter from which it came. There was not a man in New York who better understood on which side his bread is buttered than the editor of The Daily Times. That gentleman always wished people to understand that his journal was The Times, and was not The Tribune, and never failed to avail himself of the Woman's Rights movement as giving him such an opportunity. Have you ever seen a little boy running along the street, and carefully dodging between two big boys? If you have, that was the editor of The Times between Greeley and Bennett. The Times seeks to be a journal and nothing else. I will always say of it, continued the speaker, that the reports in The Times are very perfect and very excellent. I do not mean any disrespect to the other reporters present when I say that the report of yesterday's proceedings of this Convention, published in this morning's Times, was fuller and far more perfect than the report of any other paper. And so it always is with the reports of The Times. They are as full, as its criticisms on moral subjects are empty.
Lucy Stone vacated the chair to address the meeting. She was more than glad, for the sake of the cause, that this discussion had arisen. She was glad that the question had been asked, whether this claim was based on nature or on revelation. Many were asking the same question, and it was proper that it should be answered. If we were living in New Zealand where there is no revelation and nobody has ever heard of one, there would yet be an everlasting truth or falsehood on this question of woman's rights, and the inhabitants of that island would settle it in some way, without revelation. The true test of every question is its own merits. What is true will remain. What is false will perish like the leaves of autumn when they have served their turn.
But in regard to this question of Nature and Revelation, we found our claim on both. By Revelation I suppose the gentleman means Scripture. I find it there, "He who spake as never man spake" held up before us all radiant with God's own sunlight the great truth, "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them"; and that revelation I take as the foundation of our claim, and tell the gentleman who takes issue with us, that if he would not take the position of woman, denied right of access to our colleges, deprived of the right of property, compelled to pay taxes, to obey laws that he never had a voice in making, and be defrauded of the children of his love, then, according to the revelation which he believes in, he must not be thus unjust to me.
The gentleman says he believes in Paul. So do I. When Paul declares that there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, male nor female in Christ, I believe he meant what he said. The gentleman says he believes in Paul more than in the Anglo-Saxon blood. I believe in both. But when Paul tells us to "submit ourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake," and to "fear God and honor the king," the heavy tread of the Anglo-Saxon blood walks over the head of Paul and sweeps away from this republic the possibility of a king. And the gentleman himself, I presume, would not assent to the sway of a crowned monarch, Paul to the contrary, notwithstanding. Just as the people have outgrown the injunction of Paul in regard to a king, so have the wives his direction to submit themselves to their husbands. The gentleman intimates that wives have no right to vote against their husbands, because the Scriptures command submission, and he fears that it would cause trouble at home if they were to do so. Let me give him the reply of an old lady, gray with the years which bring experience and wisdom. She said that when men wanted to get their fellow-men to vote in the way they desire, they take especial pains to please them, they smile upon them, ask if their wives and children are well, and are exceedingly kind. They do not expect to win their vote by quarreling with them—that would be absurd. In the same way, if a man wanted his wife to vote for his candidate he will be sure to employ conciliatory means.
The golden rule settles this whole question. We claim it as ours, and whatever is found in the Bible contradictory to it, never came from God. If men quote other texts in conflict with this, it is their business, not mine, to make them harmonize. I did not quite understand the gentleman's definition of what is natural. But this I do know, that when God made the human soul and gave it certain capacities, He meant these capacities should be exercised. The wing of the bird indicates its right to fly; and the fin of the fish the right to swim. So in human beings, the existence of a power, presupposes the right to its use, subject to the law of benevolence. The gentleman says the voice of woman can not be heard. I am not aware that the audience finds any difficulty in hearing us from this platform. All Europe and America have listened to the voice of Madam Rachel and Jenny Lind. The capacity to speak indicates the right to do so, and the noblest, highest, and best thing that any one can accomplish, is what that person ought to do, and what God holds him or her accountable for doing, nor should we be deterred by the senseless cry, "It is not our proper sphere."
As regards woman's voting, I read a letter from a lady traveling in the British provinces, who says that by a provincial law of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, women were actually voters for members of Parliament; and still the seasons come and go, children are born, and fish flock to that shore. The voting there is viva voce. In Canada it is well known that women vote on the question of schools. A friend told me when the law was first passed giving women who owned a certain amount of property, or who paid a given rental, a right to vote, he went trembling to the polls to see the result. The first woman who came was a large property holder in Toronto; with marked respect the crowd gave way as she advanced. She spoke her vote and walked quietly away, sheltered by her womanhood. It was all the protection she needed. In face of all the arguments in favor of the incapacity of woman to be associated in government, stood the fact that women had sat on thrones and governed as successfully as men. England owes more to Queen Elizabeth than to any other sovereign except Alfred the Great. We must not always be looking for precedents. New ideas are born and old ones die. Ideas that have prevailed a thousand years have been at last exploded. Every new truth has its birth-place in a manger, lives thirty years, is crucified, and then deified. Columbus argued through long years that there must be a western world. All Europe laughed at him. Five crowned heads rejected him, and it was a woman at last who sold her jewels and fitted out his ships. So, too, the first idea of applying steam to machinery was met with the world's derision. But its triumphs are recognized now. What we need is to open our minds wide and give hospitality to every new thought, and prove its truth.
I want to say a word upon the resolutions. The present time, just after a presidential election, is most appropriate to consider woman's demand for suffrage. The Republican party claims especially to represent the principles of freedom, and during the last campaign has been calling upon women for help. One of the leaders of that party went to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and said he wanted her help in this campaign; and before she told me what answer she made, she asked me how I would have felt if the same had been asked of me. I told her I should have felt as Samson did when the Philistines put out his eyes, and then asked that he should make merriment for them. The Republican party are a part of those who compel us to obey laws we never had a voice in making—to pay taxes without our consent; and when we ask for our political and legal rights, it laughs in our face, and only says: "Help us to places of power and emolument, and we will rule over you." I know there are men in the Republican party who, like our friend Mr. Higginson, take a higher stand, and are ready to recognize woman as a co-sovereign; but they are the exceptions. There is but one party—that of Gerrit Smith—that makes the same claim for woman that it does for man. But while the Republican and Democratic parties deny our political existence, they must not expect that we shall respond to their calls for aid.
Madame de Staël said to Bonaparte, when asked why she meddled with politics: "Sire, when women have their heads cut off, it is but just they should know the reason." Whatever political influence springs into being, woman is affected by it. We have the same rights to guard that men have; we shall therefore insist upon our claims. We shall go to your meetings, and by and by we shall meet with the same success that the Roman women did, who claimed the repeal of the Appian law. War had emptied the treasury, and it was still necessary to carry it on; women were required to give up their jewels, their carriages, etc. But by and by, when the war was over, they wished to resume their old privileges. They got up a petition for the repeal of the law; and when the senators went to their places, they found every avenue to the forum thronged by women, who said to them as they passed, "Do us justice." And notwithstanding Cato, the Censor, was against them, affirming that men must have failed in their duty or women would not be clamorous for their rights, yet the obnoxious law was repealed.
In that story of Mr. Higginson's, of the heroic woman in Kansas whose left arm was cut off, there is a lesson for us to learn. I tell you, ladies, though we have our left hand cut off by unjust laws and customs, we have yet the right hand left; and when we once demand the ballot with as much firmness as that Kansas daughter did her horse, believe me, it will not be in the power of men to withhold it—even the border ruffians among them will hasten to restore it. After all, the fault is our own. We have sat to
"Suckle fools, and chronicle small beer;"
and, in inglorious ease, have forgotten that we are integral parts in the fabric of human society—that all that interests the race, interests us. We have never once, as a body, claimed the practical application of the principles of our government. It is our own fault. Let it be so no longer. Let us say to men: "Government is just only when it obtains the consent of the governed": we are governed, surrender to us our ballot. If they deride, still answer: Surrender our ballot! and they will give it up. "It is not in our stars that we are underlings, but in ourselves." Woman has sat, like Mordecai at the king's gate, hoping that her silent presence would bring justice; but justice has not come. The world has talked of universal suffrage; but it has made it universal only to man. It is time we spoke and acted. It is time we gave man faith in woman—and, still more, woman faith in herself. It is time both men and women knew that whatever has been achieved by woman in the realm of mind or matter, has been achieved by right womanly women. Let us then work, and continue to work, until the world shall assent to our right to do whatever the capacities God has given us enable us to do.
Susan B. Anthony rose and said that several gentlemen had handed her contributions, one $40, another $25. She trusted that all New York men and women would find they had something more to do than listen to speeches.
LETTER FROM HORACE GREELEY.
New York, November 22, 1856.
My Friend:—You are promised to be present and speak at the approaching "Woman's Rights Convention." I, too, mean to attend its deliberations, or some portion thereof, but not to take part in them. For I find this evil apparently inseparable from all Radical gatherings: a very large and influential portion of the press, including, I grieve to say, religious as well as secular journals, are prone and eager to expose to odium those whom they would undermine and destroy, by attributing to them, not the sentiments they have personally expressed, but those of others with whom they are or have been associated in some reformatory movement. He, then, who appears as a speaker at a Woman's Rights Convention is made responsible for whatever may be uttered at such Convention—no matter by whom—which is most likely to excite popular prejudice and arouse popular hostility. I have borne a good share of this unfairly exalted and unjust odium, with regard to the dietetic, anti-slavery, and social reforms suggested in our day, and shall bear on as patiently as I may; but I grow older, and do not confront the world on a fresh issue with so light a heart, so careless a defiance, as I might have done twenty years ago. Allow me, then, through you, to say what I think of the woman's rights movement, its objects, incitements, and limitations. If I may thus attain perspicuity, I can bear the imputation of egotism.
1. I deem the intellectual, like the physical capacities of women unequal in the average to those of men; but I perceive no reason in this natural diversity for a factitious and superinduced legal inequality. On the contrary, it seems to me that the fact of a natural and marked discrepancy in the average mental as well as muscular powers of men and women ought to allay any apprehensions that the latter, in the absence of legal interdicts and circumscriptions, would usurp the functions and privileges of the former.
2. I believe the range of employment for woman, in our age and country, far too restricted, and the average recompense of her labor, consequently far less than it should be. In saying this, I do not intimate a doubt that the best possible employment for most women is to be found in the care and management of their own households respectively, with the rearing and training of their children. But many women, including some of the most noble and estimable, are never called to preside over households; while some of the called are impelled to decline the invitation. In point of fact, then, there is and always will be a large proportion of the gentler sex who are, at least temporarily, required to earn their own subsistence, and vindicate their own usefulness in some other capacity than that of the loved and honored wife and mother. The maiden or widow, blessed with opulence, ought to be insured against the worse calamities of a reverse of fortune, by the mastery of some handicraft or industrial avocation; she ought to lead a life of persistent and efficient industry, as the fulfillment of a universal duty; while her unportioned sister must do this or grovel in degrading idleness and dependence on a father's or brother's overtaxed energies, looking to marriage as her only chance of escape therefrom. For man's sake, no less than woman's, it is eminently desirable that that large portion of our women, who are not absorbed in domestic cares, should be attracted and stimulated to industry by a wider range of pursuits, and a consequent increase of recompense. I deem it at once unjust and—like all injustice—impolitic, that a brother and sister, hired by the same farmer, the one to aid him in his own round of labor, the other to assist his wife in hers, should be paid, the one twelve to twenty, the other but four to six dollars per month. The difference in their wages should be no greater than in their physical and mental ability. Still more glaring is this discrepancy, when the two are employed as teachers, and, though of equal efficiency, the one is paid five hundred dollars per annum, the other but two, or in that proportion, merely because the former is a man and the latter a woman. While such disparities exist, right here in this metropolis of American civilization and Christianity, it is in vain that Conservatism stops its ears and raises its eyebrows at the announcement of a Woman's Rights Convention.
3. Regarding marriage as the most important, most sacred, and tender of human relations, and deeming it irrevocable, save by death, it seems to me essential that woman should be proffered such a range of employments, with such adequate recompense, as to enable her at all times to support herself in honored and virtuous independence, so that marriage shall be accepted by her at the dictates of love, and not of hunger. Much might be urged on this point, but I choose simply to commend it to the consideration of others.
4. As to woman's voting or holding office, I defer implicitly to herself. If the women of this or any other country believe their rights would be better secured and their happiness promoted by the assumption on their part of the political franchises and responsibilities of men, I, a Republican in principle from conviction, shall certainly interpose no objection. I perceive what seem to be serious practical difficulties in the way of realizing such assumption; but these are difficulties, not for me, but for them. I deem it unjust that men should be so constantly and unqualifiedly impeached as denying rights to woman which the great majority of women seem quite as reluctant to claim as men are to concede. I apprehend that whenever women shall generally and earnestly desire an equality of political franchises with men, they will meet with little impediment from the latter.
5. I can not share at all in the apprehensions of those who are alarmed at the Woman's Rights agitation, lest it should result in the unsexing of woman, or her general deflection from her proper sphere. On the contrary, I feel sure that the freest inquiry and discussion will only result in a clearer and truer appreciation of woman's proper position, and a more general and rigid adherence thereto. "Let there be light!" for this is an indispensable condition of all true and healthy growth. Let all convictions find free utterance—all grievances be stated and considered. In the range of my observation, I have found those women who were conscious of defects in the present legal and social position of their sex among the most zealous, faithful, and efficient in the discharge of their household and parental duties. I feel confident that a general discussion of the subject of Woman's Rights will result in a more general recognition and cheerful performance of woman's appropriate duties.
Horace Greeley.
Very truly yours,
Rev. Samuel J. May.
LETTER FROM HON. WILLIAM HAY, OF SARATOGA SPRINGS.
I acknowledge, with much pleasure, the receipt of a printed circular, calling for the Seventh Woman's Rights Annual Convention. I also acknowledge, with increased pleasure, and perhaps with more pride than becomes me, the accompanying invitation to attend that Convention, and take part in its proceedings. I like this word, because it implies progress.
Pre-engagement will prevent my personal attendance at the Broadway Tabernacle, but, be assured, my heart shall be there, with all its desires and hopes for the future of humanity; because I am convinced that until the individual and social rights of our whole race, without distinction of caste or sex, shall have been universally recognized, the tyrannies of earth will not cease from oppressing it.
I wish that every woman in the United States could be at New York, throughout the continuance of your Convention, where each might see for herself, in Mrs. Lucretia Mott, what woman may be, and should be, and must be, before her sex can attain, individually and socially, "that equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle" her. For physical and mental improvement of man's condition, according to his birthright and educational capacity, there must be, in America, more Marys, the mothers of Washingtons.
The great political and legal reform announced in your circular, contemplating complete development of the entire human race, is already operating, sympathetically and auspiciously, in Europe, upon preeminent minds, like that of Lord Brougham, and may favorably react, in practical adoption here, of Jefferson's elementary truth (almost a self-evident proposition, and yet treated as theory), that government derives its just powers from suffrage-consent of all (not half) of the governed. Partial consent (especially by and to a moiety of mankind, arrogantly claiming, like Louis XIV., to be the State) can confer only unjust power, which Heaven's higher law of liberty, equality, and justice never sanctioned.
Your Convention is most opportune, for this Continent is threatened with permanent and peculiar danger, produced by the feudal condition of women. I allude to the increasing curse of Mormonism, a consequence of woman's legalized inferiority or nonentity. With power from your local situation and undoubted sphere, to influence, for all time, the destiny of every civilized country, the members of your Convention, conscious of their duty, will never flinch from the responsibility of their position. It requires an unequivocal and uncompromising claim for perfect equality of rights in every department of manual and machine labor, of thought, of speech, of government, of society, and of life itself. Indeed, testamentary provision for assertion of that claim, by those few fortunate women who have, like Mrs. Blandina Dudley152, wealth to bestow, should become a ruling principle, instead of that passion, so strong in death, for posthumous pulpit and newspaper applause, which Protestantism has sagaciously substituted in lieu of the saving ordinances of the Roman Catholic Church.
Respectfully yours,
William Hay.
LETTER FROM FRANCES D. GAGE
St. Louis, November 19, 1856.
Dear Lucy Stone:—Most earnestly did I desire to attend this Seventh National Convention, more especially as I felt that I should be the only representative from the west side of the great Father of Waters. But it is impossible for me to remove the barriers just now opposed to so long a journey and absence from home. There is much thought in the free States of the great West—much less of conservatism and rigid adherence to the old-time customs of law and theology among the masses, than in the East. Thousands are becoming ready to be baptized into a new faith, a broader and holier recognition of the rights of humanity. The harvest-fields are ripening for the reapers.
The gloomy night is breaking—
E'en now the sunbeams rest
With a bright and cheering radiance
On the hill-tops of the West;
The mists are slowly rising
From the valley and the plain,
And a spirit is awaking
That shall never sleep again.
But since I can not meet you in your councils, I will endeavor to allay the disappointment by striving to reach with my pen some of the sunset homes in the far West, and endeavor to arouse woman there to her duties and responsibilities, that she may sympathize more fully with her Eastern sisters, who caught the first glow of the sunrise hour of our great reform movement. With sincere and earnest wishes for your advancement in right and truth,
Frances D. Gage.
I am respectfully yours,
Mr. Higginson was then introduced. Mrs. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen: I think, as perhaps some of you do, that a disproportionately large portion of the time of the meeting to-day has been taken up by the speeches of men; therefore I do not intend that this man's speech shall be a very long one. I remember a certain sermon, of which it was said it had nothing good in it except its subject and its shortness. My speech is going to be like that sermon. But there is one great advantage which men, enjoy in speaking on a Woman's Rights platform: they can not help doing good to the movement, no matter how they speak; for if a man speaks well, of course he helps it by his speech; and if he speaks ill on the subject, he still helps it, because there are women about him who won't speak ill, and the comparison is useful.
I wish to take up a point which, as a man, I am entitled to claim should have more prominence given it than has yet been the case; a point touched upon by me previously, in something I said yesterday, which some of you thought was not correct; and a point touched upon by Wendell Phillips this afternoon. I mean the claim of the Woman's Rights movement on woman; the wrong done by woman to that movement; and the injustice of the charge against man, that he especially resists it. And yet I can not fully accept the position taken by Rev. Mr. Johnson and Horace Greeley, that man's duty is only to stand aside and let woman take her rights. Not so. It is not so easy as that, let me tell you, gentlemen, to get rid of the responsibility of years of wrong. We men have been standing for years with our hands crushing down the shoulders of woman, so that she should not attain her true altitude; and it is not so easy, after we have cramped, dwarfed, and crippled her, to get rid of our responsibility by standing back at last, and saying, "There, we will let you go; stand up for yourself." If it is true, as these women say, that we have wronged them for centuries, we have got to do something more than mere negative duty. By as much as we have helped to wrong them, we have got to help to right them; by as much as we have discouraged them heretofore, we have got to encourage them hereafter; and that is why I wish to speak to women to-night of their duties, as these women have spoken to us of ours. I want to remind them that the time has come when men must appeal to them; for be assured that when women are ready to claim their rights, men will be ready to grant them.
There are three special obstacles, Mrs. President, to the willingness of woman to do her simple duty to the Woman's Rights movement. The first is the obstacle of folly—sheer, unadulterated folly—the folly in which women are trained, and in which we men help to train them, and for which we then denounce them. The reason why many women don't like the Woman's Rights movement, is because they have too little real thought in them to appreciate it at all. They have been brought up as fashionable society brings up woman on one side, or as mere household drudgery brings them up on the other—in each case, without power to appreciate a great principle—without power to appreciate a sublime purpose—without power to appreciate anything but a "good match," and the way to obtain it. On their entrance into life, their choice lies, for social position, for enjoyment, for occupation, for usefulness, in this narrow alternative—between a husband and nothing; and that, as Theodore Parker once said, is very often a choice between two nothings. These women may have literary culture and social polish; but, for want of an idea to light up their eyes and strengthen their souls, these things are only glitter and worthlessness.
A certain celebrated French woman in the last century (Mlle. de Launay), who made mathematical science her study, at last had a lover; whereupon she partially forgot her mathematics, and only remembered enough of it for practical purposes. And, in her Memoirs, she mentions the fact that her lover at length began to be less attentive to her; so much so, that she observed that whereas in walking home with her in the evening, he used to take pains to go round the two sides of the public square, in order to make the walk as long as possible, he now cut it short by always striking across the center; "so that his love for me," she observes, "must have decreased in the inverse ratio between the diagonal of a rectangular parallelogram and the sum of two adjacent sides." Who shall say that mathematics are wasted on a woman after that? Now, that is the sum of the science that is taught in half our institutions of education, in more than half our fashionable boarding-schools, in nearly all the most cultivated social circles in the land. How can you expect, from such women, any nobleness or appreciation of nobleness? How can you expect any from such a woman's husband, when all his thoughts of woman have been crushed down, by sad experience, to the level of his wife's capacities? When I find a man who is obstinate against Woman's Rights, I try to find out either what sort of a mother or what sort of a wife that man has, and there I find the key to his position; for how can you expect any man to have a noble and equal idea of woman, when his mother knows nothing in the universe beyond a cooking-stove, and his wife has not much experimental acquaintance even with that?
No; the first obstacle to this Woman's Rights movement is the feminine, that builds all its hopes upon the wretched adulation and flattery of men—that thinks "the gentlemen admire weakness in a woman." Well, so they do admire to flatter it and to laugh at it! Those are the women who have called out from gifted men, age after age, those terrible denunciations of which literature is full. Women who are here, who think men admire weakness in a woman, let me tell you that if you want to know what men really think of women, you must go beyond the flatteries of the ball-room; you must go beyond the compliments of the public speaker. You must follow your young admirer from the ball-room into the bar-room, where he ridicules you among his companions, and laughs at the folly he has been flattering. You must pass from the public meeting into the office or study, to learn how the man who flatters woman most may despise her in his heart.
Think what great men of the world have said of woman. Voltaire said: "Ideas are like beards—women and young men have none." Lessing, the German, says: "The woman who thinks is like a man who puts on rouge—ridiculous." Dr. Maginn, that accomplished literary man, says: "We like to hear a few words of wit from a woman, just as we like to hear a few words of sense from a parrot—because they are so unexpected." These things were never said to women, but they were said of them. In the presence of female intellect, men are very often like that Englishman who was reproached by the judge in the police-court, because he, being a very large, athletic man, allowed his wife, who was a very delicate, puny woman, occasionally, to beat him. Said the judge: "How can you allow it? you have ten times her strength." "Oh," said the giant, drawing himself up to his full stature, "it is no great matter; it pleases her, and it don't hurt me." That is the way men deal with female intellect—they like to amuse themselves with it, to flatter it as an entertaining trifle. But when it comes in earnest, and shows itself, then it is that these men stand apart from the new spectacle of a woman transformed into a thinker and worker; while true men rejoice to see nobleness in a woman. There is not a man here who does not, in his own highest moments, reverence in woman the same qualities he admires in himself, if he thinks he claims them. Power of clear thought and of heroic action—every man admires these in woman in the best moments of his life. It is when he lowers himself to the level of the public meeting, or of the fashionable drawing-room, that he is changed into a flatterer, and he who flatters always despises the object of his flattery.
Another source of opposition to this movement among women is founded in Fear. It does not require much courage for a man to stand on a Woman's Rights platform. I do not say that it does not require more than a good many men have, for it would be difficult to find a thing so easy as not to do that. He, of course, has to run the gauntlet of the old nonsense of "strong-minded women and weak-minded men." Well, I am willing to be accounted weak-minded in the presence of strength of mind and heart, with which it has been my privilege to be associated in this movement. That is a small thing, and it is the experience of every man who has entered into this reform, that if he had a fiber of manhood in him heretofore, that fiber had been doubled, trebled, and quadrupled before he had been in it a year. Instead of requiring courage for a man to enter into this movement, it rather requires courage to keep out of it, if he is a logical, clear-headed man. But with a woman it is different. She needs much courage. A woman who, for instance, has been engaged in some literary avocation, and obtained some position, does not wish to risk her reputation by connecting herself with those who advocate the right of woman, not merely to write and to speak, but to vote also; hence, while admitting, secretly admitting, the justice of the claim, she will shrink back from avowing it for fear of "losing her position." How can any brave man honor such a recreant woman as that, who, having gained all she wants to herself, under cover of the bolder efforts of these nobler spirits, then settles back upon the ease and comfort of that position, and turns her small artillery on her own sisters? I feel a sense of shame for American literature, when I think how our literary women shrink, and cringe, and apologize, and dodge to avoid being taken for "strong-minded women." Oh, there's no danger. I don't wonder that their literary efforts are stricken with the palsy of weakness from the beginning. I don't wonder that our magazines are filled with diluted stories, in which sentimental heroines sigh, cry, and die through whole pages of weary flatness, and not a single noble thought relieves that Sahara of emptiness and barrenness. It is a retribution on them. A man or woman can not put in a book more than they have in themselves, and if woman is not noble enough to appreciate a great thought, she is not noble enough to write one. I don't wonder that their fame does not keep the promise of its dawn, when that dawn is so dastardly.
The time will come, let me tell you, ladies, when the first question asked about any woman in this age who is worth remembering will be, "Did that woman comprehend her whole sphere? Did she stand beside her sisters who were laboring for the right? If she did not this, it is no matter what she did." It is thus we already begin to judge the American women of the past. The time will come, when of all Mrs. Adams' letters, the passage best remembered will be that, where she points out to her great husband, that while emancipating the world, he still believes in giving men the absolute control over women. So the time will come when Harriet Beecher Stowe will be less honored, even as the authoress of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," than as the woman who in The New York Independent, that repository of religious thought, dared to place it among her religious thoughts, that Antoinette Brown had a right to stand in the pulpit. I wish Mrs. Stowe were yet more consistent; I wish she were not satisfied with merely wishing that others would attend Woman's Rights Conventions, and support Woman's Rights Lectures, but would join and take part in these things herself, as I believe she will when her brave spirit has gone a little further. Her heroic brother, Henry Ward Beecher, is with us already in the public advocacy of the right of suffrage for women.
The third obstacle that sets woman against this movement is prejudice. It is the honest feeling of multitudes of women that their "natural sphere," their domestic duties, will be interfered with by any other career. Let me tell you that so judging, you have only learned half the story we have to tell. We encourage these domestic duties most fully and amply. There is not a woman here who is not proud to claim them. Of all the women who have stood or spoken on this platform since this Convention began, there is only one who is not a married woman; there are very few who are not mothers; and among them all there is not one who does not give, by the nobleness of her domestic life, a proof of the consistency of that with the rest of the claims she makes for her sex. Some there are who doubt this; some there are who do not see how the elective franchise is any way connected with home duties and cares. I tell you there is the closest connection. If any one thing caps the sum of the argument for the rights of woman, it is the fact of those domestic duties which some idly array against it. What has a man at stake in society? What has he to risk by his ballot? Ask him at the ballot-box, and you will hear his statement. You will hear it in a thousand ways, and in a thousand voices. His own personal interest. A man invests himself in society; woman invests infinitely more, for she throws in her child. The man can run away to California with his interests, and from his duties; the woman is anchored to her home. It is important to him, you say, whether the community provides, by its statutes, schools or dram-shops. Then how vast, how unspeakable the importance to her! Deprive every man in the nation of the ballot, if you will, but demand, oh, demand its protection for the wife and the mother!
See the unjust workings of the present system. I knew in a town in Massachusetts a widow woman, who paid the highest tax bill in the town; nay, for every dollar that any man paid in the town, she paid two, and yet that woman had not the right to the ballot, which belonged to the most ignorant Irishman in her employ. She hadn't the right to protect her child from the misappropriation of his property; and if she had owned the whole town, and there had not been any other person to pay a property tax except that solitary woman, the case would have been the same, and not the slightest power of protection would have been in her hands, against the most outrageous misappropriation.
In another town of Massachusetts there is a story told of a man, a member of the Society of Friends. He was once sending his wife on a long journey. As she was about to set forth in the stage, "My dear," said she, "thee has forgotten to give me any money for my journey." "Why," said the Quaker, "thee knows very well that I paid thy fare in the stage." "But thee knows," said she, "that I am going to be away for some weeks, and perhaps it may be well for me to have some little money, in case I should have any expenses." "Rachel," said the astonished husband, "where is that ninepence I gave thee day before yesterday?" That man had gained all the money he had in the world through that wife. He obtained her property by marriage; he invested that property in real estate, and had grown richer and richer, until he grew rich enough to spare a ninepence for Rachel the day before yesterday. It is such marriages as that, that we wish to avert, by placing woman in an honorable position, by substituting an equal union in marriage; such a union as is shown in the lives of those who stand behind me now.
The movement which these women urge is sweeping on with resistless power. Within the last seven years, every legislature, every school, every industrial avocation has been reached by it. This is preliminary work. The final Malakoff, the right of suffrage, is yet to be gained. Already it has been partially conceded, in communities differing in all else, in Canada and in Kentucky. We have only to press on. Strange to say, the reform is reversing the ordinary weapons of the sexes, for the women have all the logic, and the men only gossip and slander. But it finds its answering echo in the very hostility it creates. It has a million hearts. Silence every woman on this platform, and the movement still goes on. Elevate woman at any point, and you lead directly to this. The thousand schools of New York are educating a Woman's Rights advocate in every house.
During the latter part of Mr. Higginson's remarks, a frequent disturbance was made by some of the occupants of the galleries, who were evidently curious to hear the female speakers.
The President then introduced Ernestine L. Rose, who said she wished to say to all self-respecting men, that this is the last place in which they should create a disturbance, especially in a matter which concerns their sisters, their wives, and their mothers.
Mrs. Rose: This morning a young man made some remarks in opposition to our claims. We were glad to hear him, because he gave evidence of an earnest, sincere spirit of inquiry, which is always welcome in every true reform movement. And as we believe our cause to be based on truth, we know it can bear the test of reason, and, like gold doubly refined, will come out purer and brighter from the fiery ordeal. The young man, who, I hope, is present, based his principal argument against us, "Because," said he, "you can bring no authority from revelation or from nature." I will not enter into an inquiry as to what he meant by these terms, but I will show him the revelation from which we derive our authority, and the nature in which it is written in living characters. It is true we do not go to revelations written in books; but ours is older than all books, and whatever of good there is in any written revelations, must necessarily agree with ours, or it is not true, for ours only is the true revelation, based in nature and in life. That revelation is no less than the living, breathing, thinking, feeling, acting revelation manifested in the nature of woman. In her manifold powers, capacities, needs, hopes, and aspirations, lies her title-deed, and whether that revelation was written by nature or nature's God, matters not, for here it is. No one can disprove it. No one can bring an older, broader, higher, and more sacred basis for human rights. Do you tell me that the Bible is against our rights? Then I say that our claims do not rest upon a book written no one knows when, or by whom. Do you tell me what Paul or Peter says on the subject? Then again I reply that our claims do not rest on the opinions of any one, not even on those of Paul and Peter, for they are older than they. Books and opinions, no matter from whom they came, if they are in opposition to human rights, are nothing but dead letters. I have shown you that we derive our claims from humanity, from revelation, from nature, and from your Declaration of Independence; all proclaim our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and having life, which fact I presume you do not question, then we demand all the rights and privileges society is capable of bestowing, to make life useful, virtuous, honorable, and happy.
But I am told that woman needs not as extensive an education as man, as her place is only the domestic sphere; only the domestic sphere! Oh, how utterly ignorant is society of the true import of that term! Go to your legislative halls, and your Congress; behold those you have sent there to govern you, and as you find them high or low, great or small, noble or base, you can trace it directly or indirectly to the domestic sphere.
The wisest in all ages have acknowledged that the most important period in human education is in childhood—that period when the plastic mind may be moulded into such exquisite beauty, that no unfavorable influences shall be able entirely to destroy it—or into such hideous deformity, that it shall cling to it like a thick rust eaten into a highly polished surface, which no after-scouring shall ever be able entirely to efface. This most important part of education is left entirely in the hands of the mother. She prepares the soil for future culture; she lays the foundation upon which a superstructure shall be erected that shall stand as firm as a rock, or shall pass away like the baseless fabric of a vision, and leave not a wreck behind. But the mother can not give what she does not possess; weakness can not impart strength.
Sisters, you have a duty to perform—and duty, like charity, begins at home. In the name of your poor, vicious, outcast, down-trodden sister! in the name of her who once was as innocent and as pure as you are! in the name of her who has been made the victim of wrong, injustice, and oppression! in the name of man! in the name of all, I ask you, I entreat you, if you have an hour to spare, a dollar to give, or a word to utter—spare it, give it, and utter it, for the elevation of woman! And when your minister asks you for money for missionary purposes, tell him there are higher, and holier, and nobler missions to be performed at home. When he asks for colleges to educate ministers, tell him you must educate woman, that she may do away with the necessity of ministers, so that they may be able to go to some useful employment. If he asks you to give to the churches (which means to himself) then ask him what he has done for the salvation of woman. When he speaks to you of leading a virtuous life, ask him whether he understands the causes that have prevented so many of your sisters from being virtuous, and have driven them to degradation, sin, and wretchedness. When he speaks to you of a hereafter, tell him to help to educate woman, to enable her to live a life of intelligence, independence, virtue, and happiness here, as the best preparatory step for any other life. And if he has not told you from the pulpit of all these things; if he does not know them; it is high time you inform him, and teach him his duty here in this life.
This subject is deep and vast enough for the wisest heads and purest hearts of the race; it underlies our whole social system. Look to your criminal records—look to your records of mortality, to your cemeteries, peopled by mothers before the age of thirty or forty, and children under the age of five; earnestly and impartially investigate the cause, and you can trace it directly or indirectly to woman's inefficient education; her helpless, dependent position; her inexperience; her want of confidence in her own noble nature, in her own principles and powers, and her blind reliance in man. We ask, then, for woman, an education that shall cultivate her powers, develop, elevate, and ennoble her being, physically, mentally, and morally; to enable her to take care of herself, and she will be taken care of; to protect herself, and she will be protected. But to give woman as full and extensive an education as man, we must give her the same motives. No one gathers keys without a prospect of having doors to unlock. Man does not acquire knowledge without the hope to make it useful and productive; the highest motives only can call out the greatest exertion. There is a vast field of action open to man, and therefore, he is prepared to enter it; widen the sphere of action for woman, throw open to her all the avenues of industry, emolument, usefulness, moral ambition, and true greatness, and you will give her the same noble motives, the same incentives for exertion, application, and perseverance that man possesses—and this can be done only by giving her her legal and political rights—pronounce her the equal of man in all the rights and advantages society can bestow, and she will be prepared to receive and use them, and not before. It would be folly to cultivate her intellect like that of man without giving her the same chances to use it—to give her an industrial avocation without giving her the right to the proceeds of her industry, or to give her the right to the proceeds of her industry without giving her the power to protect the property she may acquire; she must therefore have the legal and political rights, or she has nothing. The ballot-box is the focus of all other rights, it is the pivot upon which all others hang; the legal rights are embraced in it, for if once possessed of the right to the ballot-box, to self-representation, she will see to it that the laws shall be just, and protect her person and her property, as well as that of man. Until she has political rights she is not secure in any she may possess. One legislature may alter some oppressive law, and give her some right, and the next legislature may take it away, for as yet it is only given as an act of generosity, as a charity on the part of man, and not as her right, and therefore it can not be lasting, nor productive of good.
Mothers, women of America! when you hear the subject of Woman's Rights broached, laugh at it and us, ridicule it as much as you please; but never forget, that by the laws of your country, you have no right to your children—the law gives the father as uncontrolled power over the child as it gives the husband over the wife; only the child, when it comes to maturity, the father's control ceases, while the wife never comes to maturity. The father may bequeath, bestow, or sell the child without the consent of the mother. But methinks I hear you say that no man deserving the name of man, or the title of husband and father, could commit such an outrage against the dearest principles of humanity; well, if there are no such men, then the law ought to be annulled, a law against which nature, justice, and humanity revolt, ought to be wiped off from the statute book as a disgrace; and if there are such—which unhappily we all know there are—then there is still greater reason why the laws ought to be changed, for bad laws encourage bad men and make them worse; good men can not be benefited by the existence of bad laws; bad men ought not to be; laws are not made for him who is a law unto himself, but for the lawless. The legitimate object of law is to protect the innocent and inexperienced against the designing and the guilty; we therefore ask every one present to demand of the Legislatures of every State to alter these unjust laws; give the wife an equal right with the husband in the property acquired after marriage; give the mother an equal right with the father in the control of the children; let the wife at the death of the husband remain his heir to the same extent that he would be hers, at her death; let the laws be alike for both, and they are sure to be right; but to have them so, woman must help to make them.
We hear a great deal about the heroism of the battle-field. What is it? Compare it with the heroism of the woman who stands up for the right, and it sinks into utter insignificance. To stand before the cannon's mouth, with death before him and disgrace behind, excited to frenzy by physical fear, encouraged by his leader, stimulated by the sound of the trumpet, and sustained by the still emptier sound of glory, requires no great heroism; the merest coward could be a hero in such a position; but to face the fire of an unjust and prejudiced public opinion, to attack the adamantine walls of long-usurped power, to brave not only the enemy abroad, but often that severest of all enemies, your own friends at home, requires a heroism that the world has never yet recognized, that the battle-field can not supply, but which woman possesses.
When the Allied Powers endeavored to take Sebastopol they found that every incision and inroad they made in the fortress during the day was filled up by the enemy during the night; and even now, after the terrible sacrifice of life to break it down, they are not safe, but the enemy may build it up again. But in a moral warfare, no matter how thick and impenetrable the fortress of prejudice may be, if you once make an inroad in it, that space can never be filled up again; every stone you remove is removed for aye and for good; and the very effort to replace it tends only to loosen every other stone, until the whole foundation is undermined, and the superstructure crumbles at our feet.
The President: Before this Convention closes, I want to say a word to the women who hear me. This work lies chiefly in our hands. We have undertaken no child's play. It is nothing less than a change in customs hoary with age—in laws which have existed through long years—in mistaken religious interpretations and views of duty, which have received the sanction and veneration of antiquity. It is to place woman where she may make herself fit for life's duties, in whatever department she may find herself, whether as woman, daughter, wife, or mother. Every influence around us to-day tends to the reverse. The young girl stands beside her brother in the world's wide arena, and looks out to see what it shall assign her. To him, everything that power can win is open, while the world cheers him, by so much as he grasps and conquers. To her is presented, what kind of a life? There is not a man in the world, who, if such a life were offered him, would not sooner lie down peacefully in his grave, than in a paltry cage fret away a life that ought to have been broad and grand, as God who gave it intended it should be.
Horace Greeley says he thinks the intellect of woman is not equal to that of man. Horace Greeley was a poor boy, and had to make his way up in the world. He has reached a position that is attained by few. When he speaks the nation listens. Suppose that he had been told by his mother, as she placed her hand upon his little head, with all the tenderness that gushes from a mother's heart, "My son, here is your brother; he shall grow up in the world of society, and no school or college shall be closed against him; the great school of life shall be free to him; he shall have a voice in making the laws he is to obey; he shall pay taxes, and he shall direct the use of the tax; but for you, alas! none of these places will be open; you must therefore rest satisfied with helping your brother. He will win power and wealth, but none of it shall be your own; if you seek to enter into the same position that he is in, the world will scorn and deride you." And if when he came into life he had found all that his mother told him was true, what think you would have been the success of Horace Greeley, with all this mountain-weight upon him? Would he have taken the place he has now? I am glad he was not hindered; I am only sorry that woman is. It is too early for him or us to say what the intellect of woman is, till she has had the freedom to try its powers. I am reminded of what Frederick Douglass said of the negroes: "You shut us out of the schools and colleges, you put your foot on us, and then say, Why don't you know something?" That is just what is said to us.
Let us teach men who talk of the wrongs perpetrated in Kansas, that they are doing the very same thing to us here. One need not go to Kansas to find border ruffians, or bogus legislation, for they can all be found here; and when the future historian shall record that in Kansas, Missourians deprived free State men of the franchise, and that New York men deprived the women of the same, it will be said that the border ruffians of Missouri and the border ruffians of New York were very much alike—one came with the gloved hand, and smiled and bowed, saying, I can't let you vote; while the other said, If you do I will blow out your brains. The result is the same.
I look in the faces of men and marvel that they can meet us in the way they do, when they have made such laws against us. Clear-headed and far-sighted, they do not appear to realize that the outrages they condemn in Kansas, they are themselves all the while inflicting upon us. John Randolph, when the women of Virginia were making garments for the Greeks, pointed to long gangs of slaves, and said, "Ladies, the Greeks are at your doors."
In addition to the annual canvass of the State, lectures from the most popular orators were secured in the large cities. In the winter of 1856, by invitation of Miss Anthony, Theodore Parker, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Ralph Waldo Emerson, lectured in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, to good audiences. In the spring of 1858, Miss Emily Howland managed a course of lectures in Mozart Hall, New York, in aid of "The Shirt-sewers' and Seamstresses' Union," viz: George Wm. Curtis, "Fair Play for Women"; Lucy Stone, "Woman and the Elective Franchise"; Hon. Eli Thayer, "Benefit to Women of Organized Emigration"; and Rev. E. H. Chapin, "Woman and her Work." In the autumn of the same year, through the enterprise of Elizabeth M. Powell, Henry Ward Beecher, James T. Brady, Solon Robinson, and others addressed a large audience in Dr. Chapin's church, Mayor Tieman presiding, to aid in the establishment of a "Free Library for Working Women."
In January, 1859, Antoinette L. Brown gave a series of Sunday sermons in Rochester, and in 1860 she preached in Hope Chapel, New York, for six months. In Rochester during the winter of 1859, Miss Anthony had a series of lectures by George William Curtis, Wendell Phillips, Antoinette Brown, Ernestine L. Rose, and others. The following letter will show that Thomas Starr King was in full sympathy with our movement:
Boston, Sep. 20, 1858.
Susan B. Anthony.
Dear Madam:—It would afford me great satisfaction to be able to serve you as you request. I am compelled to say, however, that it is entirely out of my power. I have already engaged for so much work beyond my regular duties, that I shall have no leisure even to prepare a new Lyceum address. Not having any lecture upon the position of woman that is full enough, and adequate in any way to the present state of the discussion, I must reluctantly decline the opportunity you offer.
T. S. King.
With sincere thanks, I remain truly yours,
In the autumn of 1858, Francis Jackson, of Boston, placed $5,000 in the hands of Wendell Phillips for woman's enfranchisement, as will be seen by the following letter:
Boston, Nov. 6, 1858.
Dear Friends:—I have had given me five thousand dollars, to be used for the Woman's Rights cause; to procure tracts on that subject, publish and circulate them, pay for lectures, and secure such other agitation of the question as we deem fit and best to obtain equal civil and social position for woman.
The name of the giver of this generous fund I am not allowed to tell you; the only condition of the gift is, that the fund is to remain invested in my keeping. In other respects, we three are a Committee of Trustees to spend it wisely and efficiently.
Let me ask you to write me what plan strikes you as best to begin with. I think some agitation specially directed to the Legislature very important. It is wished that we should begin our efforts at once.
Wendell Phillips,
Yours truly,
Miss Susan B. Anthony.
Mrs. Lucy Stone.
It was in the year 1859 that Charles F. Hovey of Boston left by will,153 a sum of $50,000 to be expended annually in the promotion of various reforms. Woman's Rights among them.
