Volume I Part 76 (1/2)

Mrs. ROSE said: In reference to this last election, though it was not my good fortune to be here during the time of that great excitement, being then on the continent of Europe; yet, even at that great distance, the fire of freedom that was kindled here spread itself across the Atlantic. The liberal, intelligent, and reformatory portion of the people of Europe, as well as in England, have most warmly, most heartily sympathized with us in the last struggle of freedom against slavery. It is a most glorious epoch. I will not enter into a political or anti-slavery lecture, but simply state this fact--the time has come when the political parties are entirely annihilated. They have ceased to exist. There is no longer Whig and no longer Democrat--there is Freedom or Slavery. We have here an equally great purpose to achieve. This, too, is not woman's rights or man's rights, but it is human rights. It is based on precisely the same fundamental truths with the other question. In the last election the general feeling prevailed that woman ought to take more interest in political affairs, and with the n.o.ble work she did during the campaign, it seems to me most extraordinary that the men who have worked thus n.o.bly for the freedom of one cla.s.s, should yet refuse freedom to the other cla.s.s.

PHILLIP D. MOORE rose in the body of the building and said: During this last Presidential canva.s.s I heard more than once the oldest member of Congress declare that Freedom was based upon the law of G.o.d, which was declared in our Bill of Rights--our Declaration of Independence--that it was the inalienable right of all mankind to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness.

He placed this last Presidential struggle upon that right higher than all human law; and upon that it seems this contest in behalf of human rights is based. I think that we should adopt these resolutions, and also appeal to the legislative bodies, where, I believe, there are men who will hear and heed the voice of justice.

Rev. T. W. HIGGINSON took the floor, and expressed his hope that they would have more speaking from the floor and less from the platform. As a Republican voter, he would take his stand in support of these resolutions; and he would declare that it was true that the close of the Presidential election was the time for a woman's Convention to be held. It was true that the Republican party was pledged, if it had any manliness in it, to support the cause of women, to whom it had applied to support its cause every day; and it was positively true that, if there were such a thing in the land as a Democratic party, that party was the party of the women also. As a further ill.u.s.tration of the idea expressed by the gentleman who had preceded him, he would state the fact that, when he was invited to Vermont to address the Legislature in favor of the appropriation of $20,000 for Kansas,[150] the meeting was postponed, on the ground that the shortness of the notice would not allow time for procuring the attendance of the women of the village to fill the galleries, and by their sympathy to influence the determination of the members of the Legislature who might be present. Accordingly they waited a little longer, gave sufficient notice, got the gallery full of ladies, and ultimately got the $20,000 appropriation, too. But always when the women had given their sympathy and began to demand some in return, it was found out that they were very ”dependent”

creatures, and that, if they persisted in it, they would forfeit the ”protection” of the men; and this in the face of the fact, that when politicians wanted votes and clergymen wanted money, their invariable practice was to appeal to the women!

The last time he had considered woman's rights he was in a place where man's rights needed to be defended--it was in Kansas. No man could go to Kansas and see what woman had done there, and come back and see the little men who squeak and shout on platforms in behalf of Kansas, and then turn to deride and despise women, without a feeling of disgust. He would like to place some of these parlor orators and dainty platform speakers where the women of Kansas had stood, and suffered, and acted. He saw, while in Kansas, a New York woman[151]--whose story they might remember in the newspapers--how she hospitably prepared, in one day, three dinners for the marauders who were hovering around her house, and in their starvation became respectful at last, and asked her for the hospitality they did not then quite dare to enforce; and how they ate her dinner and abused her husband, until the good woman could stand it no longer, and at last opened her lips and gave them a piece of her mind. He saw that woman.

She had lived for weeks together in the second story of a log hut, with the windows of the lower story boarded up, so that the inmates had to climb in by a ladder. She was surrounded by pro-slavery camps; and while her husband was in the army, she was left alone. The house had been visited again and again, and plundered. The wretches would come at night, discharge their rifles, and howl like demons. Her little girl, a nervous child, had sickened and died from sheer fright. But still, after the death of that child, the mother lived on, and still gave hospitality to free-soil men, and still defended the property of her husband by her presence. At last the marauders burned her house over her head, and she retreated for a time. The speaker saw her when she was on her way back to that homestead, to rebuild the house which she had seen once reduced to ashes by the enemy; and she said that if her husband was killed there in Kansas, she should preempt that claim, and defend the property for her children.

He saw another woman, a girl of twenty. He visited a mill which had been burnt by Missourians, where piles of sawdust were still in flames before his eyes, and there he met her; and when he asked to whom that house belonged, she said to her father. And when he inquired about her adventures in connection with that burning house, this was the story. Twenty-eight hundred Missourians were encamped around that house the morning after they had burned it. The girl had fled with her mother a mile off, but had come back to see if she could save any of the property.

She walked into the midst of the crowd, and found a man she had previously known seated upon her favorite horse. Said she, ”That is my horse; get off.” He laughed at her. She repeated her demand. He loaded her with curses and insults. She turned to the bystanders--the herd of ruffians who had burned her father's house--and said: ”This is my horse; make that man get off.” Those fellows obeyed her; they shrank before that heroic girl, and made their companion dismount. She mounted the horse and rode off.

When she had gone about half a mile, she heard a trampling of horses' hoofs behind her. The thief, mounted on a fleeter horse, was riding after her. He overtook her, and reining his horse in front of her, he seized hers by the bridle, and commanded her to let go. She held on. Said he, ”Let go, or it will be the worse for you.” She still held on. He took out his bowie-knife, and drew it across her hand, so that she could feel the sharpness of the edge. Said he, ”If you don't let go, I will cut your hand off.” Said she, ”Cut if you dare.” He cut the rope close to her hand, and took the bridle from her. It was useless to resist any longer, so she slipped off and walked away. But it was not ten minutes before she again heard trampling behind, and as she looked around, she saw two companions of this miscreant--two men less utterly villainous than he--bringing back her horse. Moved by her heroism, they had compelled him again to give up the horse, had brought it back to her, and she owns it now.

That was what great emergencies made out of woman. That girl had splendid physical proportions, and though some accident had deprived her of her left arm, she had a right arm, however, which was worth a good many. She had one arm, and the editor of _The New York Times_, he supposed, had two. He was not much accustomed to seeking defence of anybody, but he must say that, if he ever did get into difficulty as a Woman's Rights man, and had to choose between the protection of the one arm of that girl in Kansas, and the two of the New York editor, he thought his first choice would not be the Lieutenant-Governor. Seeing the heroism of the women of Kansas, he told the men of Lawrence, that when the time came for them to a.s.sert their rights, he hoped they would not imitate the border ruffians of the Eastern States, who a.s.serted rights for man, and denied them to woman.

Mr. Higginson then reported the following resolution from the Business Committee:

_Resolved_, That the warm sympathies of this Convention are respectfully offered to those n.o.ble women in England, who are struggling against wrongs even greater than those of American women, but the same in kind; and we trust that they will follow on their demands in logical consistency, until they comprise the full claim for the equality of the s.e.xes before the law.

This resolution referred, as some of them knew, to the recent action of some of the n.o.blest women in England, in behalf of juster rights of property and a larger construction of human rights than had hitherto prevailed there. The list included a few of the very n.o.blest of the women who had helped to make England's name glorious by their deeds in literature and in art. It included Mrs. Norton, to whom Wendell Phillips had referred, as a living proof of the intellectual greatness of woman; she had a husband who, after blasting her life by an infamous charge against her, which he confessed to his counsel he did not believe, now lived on the earnings of the brains of his wife. It included, also, Mrs. Somerville, a woman who had forever vindicated the scientific genius of her s.e.x, by labors that caused the wonder and admiration of scientific men; a woman of whom it is said, that she is in all respects true to her s.e.x, because while studying the motions of the heavenly bodies, she does not forget the motion of the tea-cups around her own table, and is as exquisite a housekeeper, as she is wise and accomplished as a student. It included also Harriet Martineau, that woman who, perhaps more than any other person in this age, had contributed to place the last half century in Europe in a clear light, by her admirable History, and shown in her treatise on Political Economy, a grasp and clearness which few men attain.

It included also the name of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, that woman of rarest genius, of whom her husband, himself the greatest of England's living poets, had said that his wife's heart, which few knew, was greater than her intellect, which everybody knew; a woman whose inspiration had drawn from that husband, in the closing poem of his latest volume, the very highest strain which modern English poetry had struck, and the n.o.blest utterance of emotion that ever man produced toward woman, in the speaker's judgment, since the world began. It also included Mary Howitt, whose beautiful union with her husband is a proof of what true marriage will be, when man and woman are equals, and whose genius had brought forth the wonderful powers of another woman whom we may fearlessly claim as a co-laborer, Frederica Bremer. These were the women of England to whom the resolution referred; women who had taken the first step in that movement, of which the full enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of woman will be the last.

He could not quite accept the opinion by Mrs. Jones in her admirable essay in regard to the superior education of the women of England. The women of England, as he took it, did not equal the women of America in their average education, although they did surpa.s.s them in that physical vigor of const.i.tution which, in the end, gave greater power of action and thought. Whilst the English woman was, by the necessity of the case, taught more of the modern languages, she was not so commonly taught either the ancient languages or the mathematics, and had not, therefore, the same amount of mental training. In England, too, this Woman's Rights movement was met by more serious obstacles. It had to encounter all the thunders of _The Thunderer_--all the terrors of _The Times_--whilst here it had to undergo the very diluted thunders of _The Times the Little_. A recent traveler has remarked that he could distinguish the Ma.s.sachusetts women from the women of any other State--not because they spoke through their nose, or sung psalms, but because they had ”views.” Every woman had her ”views” upon every subject. It was true that the English women had superb frames, grand muscles, fine energies, that they spoke two or three languages, but then they usually didn't have any ”views”; and he thanked G.o.d that he lived in a State where women had them.

He had spoken for woman and to woman, because he was a man. He did not dare, as a Republican voter, to throw his vote with one hand, without doing something for Woman's Rights with the other.

Men and women were one before G.o.d, and this union can not be perfect until their equality be recognized. So long as woman is cut off from education, man is deprived of his just education. So long as woman is crushed into a slave, so long will man be narrowed into a despot. Without this movement, the political conventions of the present day would only prove to posterity that the nation was half civilized; but now future historians will record that in 1856, New York had not only her caucuses and her ballot-boxes, but her Woman's Rights Convention also.

Mrs. Rose wished to remark, in reference to the resolution offered by Mr. Higginson, that English women, to her knowledge, were very active in forwarding the Woman's Rights movement throughout Great Britain. And not only English women, but young and n.o.ble English girls--girls, who were too timid to take part publicly in the movement, but who were untiring and indefatigable in making converts and enlisting aid. There was Miss Smith, Miss Fox, the daughter of the celebrated W. J. Fox, the eloquent lecturer and member of Parliament for Oldham, Miss Parkes, and others. They had devoted themselves to the great work, which was more difficult in that country than this. They had no declaration of independence to appeal to, declaring that all men were created equal, and endowed with the incalculable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They had no such standard to appeal to there, because men there were not recognized as free. Banking interests, manufacturing interests, land monopolies, and monopolies of every other kind were represented in England, but not men. The principle of universal suffrage had not yet obtained in England, and hence the greater difficulties that woman had to encounter there.

Another obstacle was the division of the people into cla.s.ses and castes. No movement could make headway in England unless it was commenced among what are termed the higher cla.s.ses. Every pet.i.tion to Parliament must first have some names that have a t.i.tle attached to them before it can obtain other signatures.

The thinking portion of the middle cla.s.ses were kept silent to a great extent, because of their utter inability to do anything unless it was taken up and supported by the higher cla.s.ses. But this state of things would not continue long; there was ”a good time coming” there as well as here. Signatures by thousands had been obtained to the Woman's Pet.i.tion, and she presumed by the time it was presented to Parliament it would contain tens of thousands of names.

Mrs. ROSE then offered the following resolution from the Committee:

_Resolved_, That we also present our a.s.surances of respect and sympathy to the supporters of the cause of women in Paris, the worthy successors of Pauline Roland and Jeanne Deroine, who, in the face of imperial despotism, dare to tell the truth.

In commenting on this resolution, Mrs. Rose remarked that if the difficulties surrounding English women who advocated an amelioration of woman's condition were great, how much greater were those which surrounded the French women, owing to the blight of despotism in that country. They could write their thoughts, but their writings could not be published in France. They had to send them to the one State in Italy which was not crushed by dark and bitter despotism. That bright spot is Sardinia. The works of the n.o.ble French women had to be sent to Turin, printed there, and sent back to Paris for private, secret distribution. And when these women met in consultation, they had to watch the doors and windows, to see that all was secure. She knew many of them, but dared not mention their names, for fear they might be borne across the Atlantic, and lead to their oppression and proscription. The n.o.blest thoughts that had ever been uttered in France were by women, not only before the Revolution, but down to the present day. Madame Roland was imprisoned for uttering the truth, in consequence of which imprisonment she lost her arm.

Jeanne Deroine was exiled, and now resides in London, where she supports herself, two daughters and son. She was teaching them herself, because she had no means to pay for their education. She filled their minds with n.o.ble thoughts and feelings, even to the very sacrifice of themselves for the benefit of the race, and more especially for the elevation of woman, without which she feels convinced that the elevation of man can never be accomplished.

But while the names of a few such n.o.ble women were made public, hundreds, nay, thousands, who had done as much, and even more than these, were in obscurity. They were constantly watching to find what was done in America. And there was one thing which characterized these French women, and that was, the entire absence of jealousy and envy of the talents and virtues of others. Wherever they see a man or woman of intellect or virtue, they recognize them as a brother or sister; and they never ask from whom a great thought or a virtuous action comes, but, is it good, is it n.o.ble? It seemed to her that the character of the French women was the very essence of human n.o.bility. They are ready to welcome, with heart and hand, every reformer, without stopping to inquire whether he is English, American, German, or Turk. But poor France was oppressed as she never was before. The usurper that now disgraces the throne, as well as the name he bears, does not allow the free utterance of a single free thought. Men and women are taken up privately and imprisoned, and no newspaper dares to publish any account of it.

When 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstances was natural.