Volume I Part 25 (1/2)
Its intended changes are to be wrought in the intimate texture of all societary organizations, without violence or any form of antagonism. It seeks to replace the worn-out with the living and the beautiful, so as to reconstruct without overturning, and to regenerate without destroying.
Our claim must rest on its justice, and conquer by its power of truth. We take the ground that whatever has been achieved for the race belongs to it, and must not be usurped by any cla.s.s or caste. The rights and liberties of one human being can not be made the property of another, though they were redeemed for him or her by the life of that other; for rights can not be forfeited by way of salvage, and they are, in their nature, unpurchasable and inalienable. We claim for woman a full and generous invest.i.ture of all the blessings which the other s.e.x has solely, or by her aid, achieved for itself. We appeal from man's injustice and selfishness to his principles and affections.
It was cheering to find in the very beginning many distinguished men ready to help us to the law, gospel, social ethics, and philosophy involved in our question. A letter from Gerrit Smith to William Lloyd Garrison says:
PETERBORO, N. Y., _Oct. 16, 1850_.
MY DEAR SIR:--I this evening received from my friend H. H. Van Amringe, of Wisconsin, the accompanying argument on woman's rights. It is written by himself. He is, as you are aware, a highly intellectual man. He wishes me to present this argument to the Woman's Convention which is to be held in Worcester. Permit me to do so through yourself.
My excessive business engagements compel me to refuse all invitations to attend public meetings not in my own county. May Heaven's richest blessings rest on the Convention.
Very respectfully and fraternally yours, GERRIT SMITH.
Mr. Van Amringe's paper on ”Woman's Rights in Church and State” was read and discussed, and a large portion of it printed in the regular report of the proceedings.
The papers read by the women, in style and argument, were in no way inferior to those of the men present.
Letters were read from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Rev. Samuel J. May, L.
A. Hine, Elizur Wright, O. S. Eowler, Esther Ann Lukens, Margaret Chappel Smith, Nancy M. Baird, Jane Cowen, Sophia L. Little, Elizabeth Wilson, Maria L. Varney, and Milfred A. Spaford.[43]
Mrs. Abby H. Price, of Hopedale, made an address on the injustice of excluding girls from the colleges, the trades and the professions, and the importance of training them to some profitable labor, and thus to protect their virtue, dignity, and self-respect by securing their pecuniary independence.
She thought the speediest solution of the vexed problem of prost.i.tution was profitable work for the rising generation of girls. The best legislation on the social vice was in removing the legal disabilities that cripple all their powers. Woman, in order to be equally independent with man, must have a fair and equal chance. He is in nowise restricted from doing, in every department of human exertion, all he is able to do. If he is bold and ambitious, and desires fame, every avenue is open to him. He may blend science and art, producing a competence for his support, until he chains them to the car of his genius, and, with Fulton and Morse, wins a crown of imperishable grat.i.tude. If he desires to tread the path of knowledge up to its glorious temple-summit, he can, as he pleases, take either of the learned professions as instruments of pecuniary independence, while he plumes his wings for a higher and higher ascent. Not so with woman. Her rights are not recognized as equal; her sphere is circ.u.mscribed--not by her ability, but by her s.e.x. If, perchance, her taste leads her to excellence, in the way they give her leave to tread, she is wors.h.i.+ped as almost divine; but if she reaches for laurels they have in view, the wings of her genius are clipped because she is a woman.
Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, of Boston, the first woman who practiced medicine in this country, spoke on the medical education of women.
Sarah Tyndale, a successful merchant in Philadelphia, on the business capacity of woman.
Antoinette L. Brown, a graduate of Oberlin College, and a student in Theology, made a logical argument on woman's position in the Bible, claiming her complete equality with man, the simultaneous creation of the s.e.xes, and their moral responsibilities as individual and imperative.
The debates on the resolutions were spicy, pointed, and logical, and were deeply interesting, continuing with crowded audiences through two entire days. In these debates Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, Wendell Phillips, William Henry Channing, Ernestine L. Rose, Frederick Dougla.s.s, Martha Mowry, Abby Kelly and Stephen Foster, Elizabeth B.
Chase, James N. Buffam, Sojourner Truth, Eliab Cap.r.o.n, and Joseph C.
Hathaway, took part. As there was no phonographic reporter present, most of the best speaking, that was extemporaneous, can not be handed down to history.
Among the letters to the Convention, there was one quite novel and interesting from Helene Marie Weber,[44] a lady of high literary character, who had published numerous tracts on the Rights of Woman.
She contended that the physical development of woman was impossible in her present costume, and that her consequent enfeebled condition made her incapable of entering many of the most profitable employments in the world of work. Miss Weber exemplified her teachings by her practice. She usually wore a dress coat and pantaloons of black cloth; on full-dress occasions, a dark blue dress coat, with plain flat gilt b.u.t.tons, and drab-colored pantaloons. Her waistcoat was of buff ca.s.simere, richly trimmed with plain, flat-surfaced, gold b.u.t.tons, exquisitely polished; this was an elegant costume, and one she wore to great advantage. Her clothes were all perfect in their fit, and of Paris make; and her figure was singularly well adapted to male attire.
No gentleman in Paris made a finer appearance.
One of the grand results of this Convention was the thought roused in England. A good report of the proceedings in the New _York Tribune_, for Europe, of October 29, 1850, was read by the future Mrs. John Stuart Mill, then Mrs. Taylor, and at once called out from her pen an able essay in the _Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review_, ent.i.tled ”Enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of Woman.” This attracted the attention of many liberal thinkers, and foremost of these, one of England's greatest philosophers and scholars, the Hon. John Stuart Mill, who became soon after the champion of woman's cause in the British Parliament. The essayist in speaking of this Convention says:
Most of our readers will probably learn, from these pages, for the first time, that there has risen in the United States, and in the most Civilized and enlightened portion of them, an organized agitation, on a new question, new not to thinkers, nor to any one by whom the principles of free and popular government are felt, as well as acknowledged; but new, and even unheard of, as a subject for public meetings, and practical political action. This question is the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women, their admission in law, and in fact, to equality in all rights, political, civil, social, with the male citizens of the community.
It will add to the surprise with which many will receive this intelligence, that the agitation which has commenced is not a pleading by male writers and orators _for_ women, those who are professedly to be benefited remaining either indifferent, or ostensibly hostile; it is a political movement, practical in its objects, carried on in a form which denotes an intention to persevere. And it is a movement not merely _for_ women, but _by_ them....
A succession of public meetings was held, under the name of a ”Woman's Rights Convention,” of which the President was a woman, and nearly all the chief speakers women; numerously reinforced, however, by men, among whom were some of the most distinguished leaders in the kindred cause of negro emanc.i.p.ation....
According to the report in the _New York Tribune_, above a thousand persons were present, throughout, and ”if a larger place could have been had, many thousands more would have attended.”
In regard to the quality of the speaking, the proceedings bear an advantageous comparison with those of any popular movement with which we are acquainted, either in this country or in America.