Volume I Part 56 (1/2)
[88] Gerrit Smith's home was ever a charming resort for lovers of liberty as well as lovers of Eve's daughters. In his leisure hours my cousin had a turn for match-making, and his chief delight in this direction was to promote unions between good Abolitionists and the sons and daughters of conservative families. Here James G. Birney, among others, wooed and won his wife. Here one would meet the first families in the State, with Indians, Africans, slaveholders, religionists of all sects, and representatives of all shades of humanity, each cla.s.s alike welcomed and honored, feasting, feting, dancing--joining in all kinds of amus.e.m.e.nts and religious wors.h.i.+p together (the Indians excepted, as they generally came for provisions, which, having secured, they departed). His house was one of the depots of the underground railroad. One day Mr. Smith summoned all the young girls then visiting there, saying he had a great secret to tell them if they would sacredly pledge themselves not to divulge it. Having done so, he led the way to the third story, ushered us into a large room, and there stood a beautiful quadroon girl to receive us.
”Harriet,” said Mr. Smith, ”I want you to make good Abolitionists of these girls by describing to them all you have suffered in slavery.”
He then left the room, locking us in. Her narrative held us spell-bound until the lengthening shadows of the twilight hour made her departure safe for Canada. One remark she made impressed me deeply. I told her of the laws for women such as we then lived under, and remarked on the parallel condition of slaves and women. ”Yes,”
said she, ”but I am both. I am doubly d.a.m.ned in s.e.x and color. Yea, in cla.s.s too, for I am poor and ignorant; none of you can ever touch the depth of misery where I stand to-day.” We had the satisfaction to see Harriet dressed in Quaker costume, closely veiled, drive off in the moonlight that evening, to find the liberty she could not enjoy in this Republic, under the shadow of a monarch's throne.
CHAPTER XIV.
NEW YORK.
First Steps in New York--Woman's Temperance Convention, Albany, January, 1852--New York Woman's State Temperance Society, Rochester, April, 1852--Women before the Legislature pleading for a Maine Law--Women rejected as Delegates to Men's State Conventions at Albany and Syracuse, 1852; at the Brick Church Meeting and World's Temperance Convention in New York, 1858--Horace Greeley defends the Rights of Women in _The York Tribune_--The Teachers' State Conventions--The Syracuse National Woman's Rights Convention, 1852--Mob in the Broadway Tabernacle Woman's Rights Convention through two days, 1853--State Woman's Rights Convention at Rochester, December, 1853--Albany Convention, February, 1854, and Hearing before the Legislature demanding the Right of Suffrage--A State Committee Appointed--Susan B. Anthony General Agent--Conventions at Saratoga Springs, 1854, '55, '59--Annual State Conventions with Legislative Hearings and Reports of Committees, until the War--Married Women's Property Law, 1860--Bill before the Legislature Granting Divorce for Drunkenness--Horace Greeley and Thurlow Weed oppose it--Ernestine L. Rose, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton Address the Legislature in favor of the Bill--Robert Dale Owen defends the Measure in _The New York Tribune_--National Woman's Rights Conventions in New York City, 1856, '58, '59, '60--Status of the Woman's Rights Movement at the Opening of the War, 1861.
A full report of the woman's rights agitation in the State of New York, would in a measure be the history of the movement. In this State, the preliminary battles in the anti-slavery, temperance, educational, and religious societies were fought; the first Governmental aid given to the higher education of woman, and her voice first heard in teachers' a.s.sociations. Here the first Woman's Rights Convention was held, the first demand made for suffrage, the first society formed for this purpose, and the first legislative efforts made to secure the civil and political rights of women; commanding the attention of leading members of the bar; of Savage, Spencer, Hertell, and Hurlbut. Here too the pulpit made the first demand for the political rights of woman. Here was the first temperance society formed by women, the first medical college opened to them, and woman first ordained for the ministry.
In 1850, in the city of Buffalo, 1,500 women pet.i.tioned the Common Council not to license the sale of intoxicating drinks; and the following year, they sent a pet.i.tion to the Legislature, signed by 2,200, asking for an act authorizing some official body to take into custody, and provide for the swarms of vagrant children, growing up in ignorance and vice. This may be considered the initiative step to a Board of Charities. In the same year, a number of spirited women in Fulton, Oswego Co., disgusted with the inefficient action of the temperance men, entered complaint against the liquor dealers, for the violation of the license laws, and some of them attended the trials in person. In 1851, the ladies of Cardiff, Onondaga Co., appeared before the Grand Jury, and made complaint against the liquor dealers and overseers of the poor, the one for violating the law, the other for neglecting to prosecute the violators on their complaint, and they succeeded in getting both indicted. In 1851, a pet.i.tion was sent from Ontario County, praying the Legislature to exempt women from taxation.
September 15, 1853, Antoinette L. Brown was ordained as pastor of a church in South Butler, and November 15, performed the ceremony at the marriage of a daughter of Rhoda de Garmo, of Rochester. In this year, at a large Convention of liberal people, to promote Christian Union, held in Syracuse, she made an address. All denominations took part on the occasion and listened to her with respectful attention. In New York, woman's voice was first heard on the Nation's great festal day.
In 1853, Mary Vaughan gave the fourth of July oration at Speedsville, Emily Clarke at Watkins, Amelia Bloomer at Hartford, and Antoinette Brown at South Butler. Everything on these occasions was conducted as usual: the grand procession to the grove, or town hall, the military escort, reading the Declaration, martial music, cannon, fire-crackers, torpedoes, roast pig, and green peas; none of the usual accompaniments were omitted. In the same year, Antoinette Brown and Lucy Stone canva.s.sed the twenty-second district, to secure the election of the Hon. Gerrit Smith for Congress, and were successful in their efforts.
In April, 1854, the Daughters of Temperance at Johnson's Creek, sent thirty pieces of silver to Gov. Seymour, for vetoing a bill for a prohibitory law, and thus betraying the friends of temperance. In New York, the first anti-tax a.s.sociation, the first woman's club and Loyal League were formed. Here, too, a woman, Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, was appointed State Commissioner of Charities, by Gov. Samuel J.
Tilden. Whether the Governor of any other State had preceded him in a more profitable or honorable appointment, has not yet been discovered.
Lest women should feel too deep a sense of grat.i.tude, they should understand that this office involves arduous labors, but no pecuniary recompense. This may be a reason that such positions are being gradually a.s.signed to women.
At the time of this general uprising, New York was thoroughly stirred with temperance and anti-slavery excitement. George Thompson, the great English reformer and orator, who had been mobbed in all the chief cities of the North, accompanied by William Lloyd Garrison, was holding a series of conventions through the State. And as these conventions were held in the midst of the ”Jerry rescue trials,”[89]
the apostles of freedom spoke with terrible vehemence and denunciation. Popular orators, too, were rus.h.i.+ng here and there in the furor of a Presidential campaign, and as all these reforms were thrown into the governmental cauldron for discussion, the whole people seemed to be on the watch towers of politics and philanthropy. Women shared in the general unrest, and began to take many steps before unknown.
Since 1840, they had generally attended political meetings, as with the introduction of moral questions into legislation, they had manifested an increasing interest in government.
The repeal of the License Law of 1846, filled the temperance hosts throughout the State with alarm, and roused many women to the a.s.sertion of their rights. Impoverished, broken-hearted wives and mothers, were for the first time looking to the State for some protection against the cruelties and humiliations they endured at the hands of liquor dealers, when suddenly the beneficent law was repealed, and their reviving hopes crushed. The burning indignation of women, who had witnessed the protracted outrages on helpless wives and children in the drunkard's home, roused many to public speech, and gave rise to the secret organizations called ”Daughters of Temperance.” Others finding there was no law nor gospel in the land for their protection, took the power in their own hands, visiting saloons, breaking windows, gla.s.ses, bottles, and emptying demijohns and barrels into the streets. Coming like whirlwinds of vengeance, drunkards and rum-sellers stood paralyzed before them. Though women were sometimes arrested for these high-handed proceedings, a strong public sentiment justified their acts, and forced the liquor dealers to withdraw their complaints.[90]
There is nothing more terrible than the reckless courage of despairing women, who, though knowing they have eternal truth and justice on their side, know also their helplessness against the tide of misery engulphing the drunkard's home. Women were applauded for these acts of heroism by the press and temperance leagues; they were welcomed too as speakers sometimes on their platforms, just as slaves were in the olden days, to move an audience with their tales of woe. But when they organized themselves into a.s.sociations, adopted const.i.tutions, pa.s.sed resolutions, and sent their delegates to men's conventions, asking to be recognized as equals, then began the battle in the temperance ranks, vindictive and protracted for years. The clergy were the most bitter opponents of the public action of women; but throughout the conflict they were sustained by the purest men in the nation, such as Horace Greeley, Joshua R. Giddings, Rev. E. H. Chapin, Rev. Samuel J.
May, Thomas W. Higginson, William H. Channing, Gerrit Smith, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, and others. All this persecution on the ground of s.e.x, intensified the love of liberty in woman's soul, and deepened the oft repeated lesson of individual rights.
On January 28, 1852, ”The Daughters of Temperance” a.s.sembled in Albany to take part in a ma.s.s meeting of all the ”Divisions” in the State.
Among the delegates present were Susan B. Anthony, Mary C. Vaughan, and Lydia Fowler, who were received as members of the Convention. But at the first attempt by Miss Anthony to speak, they were informed that the ladies were invited to listen, and not to take part in the proceedings. Those women present who were not satisfied with such a position withdrew, announcing that they would hold a meeting that evening in which men and women would stand on equal ground.
At the appointed time they a.s.sembled in the vestry-room of the Presbyterian church on Hudson Street. Samuel J. May, who was in Albany attending one of the ”Jerrey Rescue Trials,” was present, and opened the meeting with prayer. Mrs. Vaughan was chosen President,[91] and on taking the chair, said:
We have met to consider what we, as women, can do and may do, to forward the temperance reform. We have met, because, as members of the human family, we share in all the sufferings which error and crime bring upon the race, and because we are learning that our part in the drama of life is something beside inactive suffering and pa.s.sive endurance. We would act as well as endure; and we meet here to-day because many of us have been trying to act, and we would combine our individual experiences, and together devise plans for the future, out of which shall arise well-based hopes of good results to humanity. We are aware that this proceeding of ours, this calling together of a body of women to deliberate publicly upon plans to carry out a specified reform, will rub rather harshly upon the mould of prejudice, which has gathered thick upon the common mind.
.... There are plenty of women, as well as men, who can labor for reforms without neglecting business or duty. It is an error that clings most tenaciously to the public mind, that because a part of the s.e.x are wives and mothers and have absorbing duties, that all the s.e.x should be denied any other sphere of effort. To deprive every unmarried woman, spinster, or widow, or every childless wife, of the power of exercising her warm sympathies for the good of others, is to deprive her of the greatest happiness of which she is capable; to rob her highest faculties of their legitimate operation and reward; to belittle and narrow her mind; to dwarf her affections; to turn the harmonies of her nature to discord; and, as the human mind must be active, to compel her to employ hers with low and grovelling thoughts, which lead to contemptible actions.
There is no reform in which woman can act better or more appropriately than temperance. I know not how she can resist or turn aside from the duty of acting in this; its effects fall so crus.h.i.+ngly upon her and those whose interests are identical with her own; she has so often seen its slow, insidious, but not the less surely fatal advances, gaining upon its victim; she has seen the intellect which was her dearest pride, debased; the affections which were her life-giving springs of action, estranged; the children once loved, abused, disgraced and impoverished; the home once an earthly paradise, rendered a fit abode for lost spirits; has felt in her own person all the misery, degradation, and woe of the drunkard's wife; has shrunk from revilings and cowered beneath blows; has labored and toiled to have her poor earnings transferred to the rum-seller's ill-gotten h.o.a.rd; while her children, ragged, fireless, poor, starving, gathered s.h.i.+vering about her, and with hollow eyes, from which all smiles had fled, begged vainly for the bread she had not to bestow. Oh! the misery, the utter, hopeless misery of the drunkard's wife!
.... We account it no reason why we should desist, when conscience, an awakened sense of duty, and aroused heart-sympathies, would lead us to show ourselves something different than an impersonation of the vague ideal which has been named, Woman, and with which woman has long striven to identify herself. A creature all softness and sensibility, who must necessarily enjoy and suffer in the extreme, while sharing with man the pleasures and the ills of life; bearing happiness meekly, and sorrow with fort.i.tude; gentle, mild, submissive, forbearing under all circ.u.mstances; a softened reflex of the opinions and ideas of the masculines who, by relations.h.i.+p, hold mastery over her; without individualism, a mere adjunct of man, the chief object of whose creation was to adorn and beautify his existence, or to minister to some form of his selfishness. This is nearly the masculine idea of womanhood, and poor womanhood strives to personify it. But not all women.
This is an age of iconoclasms; and daring hands are raised to sweep from its pedestal, and dash to fragments, this false image of woman. We care not how soon, if the true woman but take its place. This is also, and most emphatically, an age of progress.