Volume I Part 70 (1/2)
4. _Resolved_, That women's duties and rights as daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers, are not bounded within the circle of home; that in view of the sacredness of their relations, they are not free to desert their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons amidst scenes of business, politics, and pleasure, and to leave them alone in their struggles and temptations, but that as members of the human family, for the sake of human advancement, women are bound as widely as possible to give to men the influence of their aid and presence; and finally, that universal experience attests that those nations and societies are most orderly, high-toned, and rich in varied prosperity, where women most freely intermingle with men in all spheres of active life.
5. _Resolved_, That the fundamental error of the whole structure of legislation and custom, whereby women are practically sustained, even in this republic, is the preposterous fiction of law, that in the eye of the law the husband and wife are one person, that person being the husband; that this falsehood itself, the deposit of barbarism, tends perpetually to brutalize the marriage relation by subjecting wives as irresponsible tools to the capricious authority of husbands; that this degradation of married women re-acts inevitably to depress the condition of single women, by impairing their own self-respect and man's respect for them; and that the final result is that system of tutelage miscalled protection, by which the industry of women is kept on half-pay, their affections trifled with, their energies crippled, and even their n.o.blest aspirations wasted away in vain efforts, ennui, and regret.
6. _Resolved_, That in consistency with the spirit and intent of the Statutes of New York, enacted in 1848 and 1849, the design of which was to secure to married women the entire control of their property, it is the duty of the Legislature to make such amendments in the laws of the State as will enable married women to conduct business, to form contracts, to sue and be sued in their own names--to receive and hold the gains of their industry, and be liable for their own debts so far as their interests are separate from those of their husbands--to become joint owners in the joint earnings of the partners.h.i.+p, so far as these interests are identified--to bear witness for or against their husbands, and generally to be held responsible for their own deeds.
7. _Resolved_, That as acquiring property by all just and laudable means, and the holding and devising of the same is a human right, women married and single are ent.i.tled to this right, and all the usages or laws which withhold it from them are manifestly unjust.
8. _Resolved_, That every argument in favor of universal suffrage for males is equally in favor of universal suffrage for females, and therefore if men may claim the right of suffrage as necessary to the protection of all their rights in any Government, so may women for the same reason.
9. _Resolved_, That if man as man, has any peculiar claim to a representation in the government, for himself, woman as woman, has a paramount claim to an equal representation for herself.
10. _Resolved_, Therefore, that whether you regard woman as like or unlike man, she is in either case ent.i.tled to an equal joint partic.i.p.ation with him in all civil rights and duties.
11. _Resolved_, That although men should grant us every specific claim, we should hold them all by favor rather than right, unless they also concede, and we exercise, the right of protecting ourselves by the elective franchise.
12. _Resolved_, That if the essence of a trial by an ”impartial jury” be a trial by one's own equals, then has never a woman enjoyed that privilege in the hour of her need as a culprit. We, therefore, respectfully demand of our Legislature that, at least, the right of such trial by jury be accorded to women equally with men--that women be eligible to the jury-box, whenever one of their own s.e.x is arraigned at the bar.
13. _Resolved_, That could the women of the State be heard on this question, we should find the ma.s.s with us; as the mother's reluctance to give up the guardians.h.i.+p of her children; the wife's unwillingness to submit to the abuse of a drunken husband, the general sentiment in favor of equal property rights, and the thousands of names in favor of our pet.i.tion, raised with so little effort, conclusively prove.
WHEREAS, The right of pet.i.tion is guaranteed to every member of this republic; therefore
14. _Resolved_, That it is the highest duty of legislators impartially to investigate all claims for the redress of wrong, and alter and amend such laws as prevent the administration of justice and equal rights to all.
_Resolved_, That all true-hearted men and women pledge themselves never to relinquish their unceasing efforts in behalf of the full and equal rights of women, until we have effaced the stigma resting on this republic, that while it theoretically proclaims that all men are created equal, deprives one-half of its members of the enjoyment of the rights and privileges possessed by the other.
The salient points of the question as embodied in the resolutions and the address were ably presented by William Henry Channing, Samuel J.
May, Mrs. Nichols, Mrs. Rose, Mrs. Love, Miss Brown, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Jenkins, Hon. William Hay, and Giles B. Stebbins. At the evening session Mrs. Stanton read her address prepared for the Legislature, which Miss Anthony had stereotyped and published. A copy was laid on the desk of every legislator, and twenty thousand scattered like snow-flakes over the State.
MRS. STANTON'S ADDRESS.
_To the Legislature of the State of New York_:
”The thinking minds of all nations call for change. There is a deep-lying struggle in the whole fabric of society; a boundless, grinding collision of the New with the Old.”
The tyrant, Custom, has been summoned before the bar of Common-Sense. His majesty no longer awes the mult.i.tude--his sceptre is broken--his crown is trampled in the dust--the sentence of death is p.r.o.nounced upon him. All nations, ranks, and cla.s.ses have, in turn, questioned and repudiated his authority; and now, that the monster is chained and caged, timid woman, on tiptoe, comes to look him in the face, and to demand of her brave sires and sons, who have struck stout blows for liberty, if, in this change of dynasty, she, too, shall find relief. Yes, gentlemen, in republican America, in the nineteenth century, we, the daughters of the revolutionary heroes of '76, demand at your hands the redress of our grievances--a revision of your State Const.i.tution--a new code of laws. Permit us then, as briefly as possible, to call your attention to the legal disabilities under which we labor.
1st. Look at the position of woman as woman. It is not enough for us that, by your laws we are permitted to live and breathe, to claim the necessaries of life from our legal protectors--to pay the penalty of our crimes; we demand the full recognition of all our rights as citizens of the Empire State. We are persons; native, free-born citizens; property-holders, tax-payers; yet are we denied the exercise of our right to the elective franchise. We support ourselves, and, in part, your schools, colleges, churches, your poor-houses, jails, prisons, the army, the navy, the whole machinery of government, and yet we have no voice in your councils. We have every qualification required by the Const.i.tution, necessary to the legal voter, but the one of s.e.x.
We are moral, virtuous, and intelligent, and in all respects quite equal to the proud white man himself, and yet by your laws we are cla.s.sed with idiots, lunatics, and negroes; and though we do not feel honored by the place a.s.signed us, yet, in fact, our legal position is lower than that of either; for the negro can be raised to the dignity of a voter if he possess himself of $250; the lunatic can vote in his moments of sanity, and the idiot, too, if he be a male one, and not more than nine-tenths a fool; but we, who have guided great movements of charity, established missions, edited journals, published works on history, economy, and statistics; who have governed nations, led armies, filled the professor's chair, taught philosophy and mathematics to the savants of our age, discovered planets, piloted s.h.i.+ps across the sea, are denied the most sacred rights of citizens, because, forsooth, we came not into this republic crowned with the dignity of manhood! Woman is theoretically absolved from all allegiance to the laws of the State. Sec. 1, Bill of Rights, 2 R. S., 301, says that no authority can, on any pretence whatever, be exercised over the citizens of this State but such as is or shall be derived from, and granted by the people of this State.
Now, gentlemen, we would fain know by what authority you have disfranchised one-half the people of this State? You who have so boldly taken possession of the bulwarks of this republic, show us your credentials, and thus prove your exclusive right to govern, not only yourselves, but us. Judge Hurlburt, who has long occupied a high place at the bar in this State, and who recently retired with honor from the bench of the Supreme Court, in his profound work on Human Rights, has p.r.o.nounced your present position rank usurpation. Can it be that here, where we acknowledge no royal blood, no apostolic descent, that you, who have declared that all men were created equal--that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, would willingly build up an aristocracy that places the ignorant and vulgar above the educated and refined--the alien and the ditch-digger above the authors and poets of the day--an aristocracy that would raise the sons above the mothers that bore them? Would that the men who can sanction a Const.i.tution so opposed to the genius of this government, who can enact and execute laws so degrading to womankind, had sprung, Minerva-like, from the brains of their fathers, that the matrons of this republic need not blush to own their sons!
Woman's position, under our free inst.i.tutions, is much lower than under the monarchy of England. ”In England the idea of woman holding official station is not so strange as in the United States. The Countess of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery held the office of hereditary sheriff of Westmoreland, and exercised it in person. At the a.s.sizes at Appleby, she sat with the judges on the bench. In a reported case, it is stated by counsel, and substantially a.s.sented to by the court, that a woman is capable of serving in almost all the offices of the kingdom, such as those of queen, marshal, great chamberlain and constable of England, the champion of England, commissioner of sewers, governor of work-house, s.e.xton, keeper of the prison, of the gate-house of the dean and chapter of Westminster, returning officer for members of Parliament, and constable, the latter of which is in some respects judicial. The office of jailor is frequently exercised by a woman.
”In the United States a woman may administer on the effects of her deceased husband, and she has occasionally held a subordinate place in the post-office department. She has therefore a sort of post mortem, post-mistress notoriety; but with the exception of handling letters of administration and letters mailed, she is the submissive creature of the old common law.” True, the unmarried woman has a right to the property she inherits and the money she earns, but she is taxed without representation. And here again you place the negro, so unjustly degraded by you, in a superior position to your own wives and mothers; for colored males, if possessed of a certain amount of property and certain other qualifications, can vote, but if they do not have these qualifications they are not subject to direct taxation; wherein they have the advantage of woman, she being subject to taxation for whatever amount she may possess. (Const.i.tution of New York, Article 2, Sec. 2). But, say you, are not all women sufficiently represented by their fathers, husbands, and brothers? Let your statute books answer the question.
Again we demand in criminal cases that most sacred of all rights, trial by a jury of our own peers. The establishment of trial by jury is of so early a date that its beginning is lost in antiquity; but the right of trial by a jury of one's own peers is a great progressive step of advanced civilization. No rank of men have ever been satisfied with being tried by jurors higher or lower in the civil or political scale than themselves; for jealousy on the one hand, and contempt on the other, has ever effectually blinded the eyes of justice. Hence, all along the pages of history, we find the king, the n.o.ble, the peasant, the cardinal, the priest, the layman, each in turn protesting against the authority of the tribunal before which they were summoned to appear. Charles the First refused to recognize the competency of the tribunal which condemned him: For how, said he, can subjects judge a king? The stern descendants of our Pilgrim Fathers refused to answer for their crimes before an English Parliament.
For how, said they, can a king judge rebels? And shall woman here consent to be tried by her liege lord, who has dubbed himself law-maker, judge, juror, and sheriff too?--whose power, though sanctioned by Church and State, has no foundation in justice and equity, and is a bold a.s.sumption of our inalienable rights. In England a Parliament-lord could challenge a jury where a knight was not empanneled; an alien could demand a jury composed half of his own countrymen; or, in some special cases, juries were even const.i.tuted entirely of women. Having seen that man fails to do justice to woman in her best estate, to the virtuous, the n.o.ble, the true of our s.e.x, should we trust to his tender mercies the weak, the ignorant, the morally insane? It is not to be denied that the interests of man and woman in the present undeveloped state of the race, and under the existing social arrangements, are and must be antagonistic. The n.o.bleman can not make just laws for the peasant; the slaveholder for the slave; neither can man make and execute just laws for woman, because in each case, the one in power fails to apply the immutable principles of right to any grade but his own.
Shall an erring woman be dragged before a bar of grim-visaged judges, lawyers, and jurors, there to be grossly questioned in public on subjects which women scarce breathe in secret to one another? Shall the most sacred relations of life be called up and rudely scanned by men who, by their own admission, are so coa.r.s.e that women could not meet them even at the polls without contamination? and yet shall she find there no woman's face or voice to pity and defend? Shall the frenzied mother, who, to save herself and child from exposure and disgrace, ended the life that had but just begun, be dragged before such a tribunal to answer for her crime? How can man enter into the feelings of that mother? How can he judge of the agonies of soul that impelled her to such an outrage of maternal instincts? How can he weigh the mountain of sorrow that crushed that mother's heart when she wildly tossed her helpless babe into the cold waters of the midnight sea? Where is he who by false vows thus blasted this trusting woman? Had that helpless child no claims on his protection? Ah, he is freely abroad in the dignity of manhood, in the pulpit, on the bench, in the professor's chair. The imprisonment of his victim and the death of his child, detract not a t.i.the from his standing and complacency. His peers made the law, and shall law-makers lay nets for those of their own rank?
Shall laws which come from the logical brain of man take cognizance of violence done to the moral and affectional nature which predominates, as is said, in woman?
Statesmen of New York, whose daughters, guarded by your affection, and lapped amidst luxuries which your indulgence spreads, care more for their nodding plumes and velvet trains than for the statute laws by which their persons and properties are held--who, blinded by custom and prejudice to the degraded position which they and their sisters occupy in the civil scale, haughtily claim that they already have all the rights they want, how, think ye, you would feel to see a daughter summoned for such a crime--and remember these daughters are but human--before such a tribunal? Would it not, in that hour, be some consolation to see that she was surrounded by the wise and virtuous of her own s.e.x; by those who had known the depth of a mother's love and the misery of a lover's falsehood; to know that to these she could make her confession, and from them receive her sentence? If so, then listen to our just demands and make such a change in your laws as will secure to every woman tried in your courts, an impartial jury. At this moment among the hundreds of women who are shut up in prisons in this State, not one has enjoyed that most sacred of all rights--that right which you would die to defend for yourselves--trial by a jury of one's peers.