Volume I Part 90 (1/2)
ARTICLE 16. After setting aside sufficient funds to pay all legacies and bequests herein made, I direct my said Trustees to hold all the rest and residue of my estate, real, personal and mixed, in special trust for the following purposes, namely; to pay over, out of the Interest and princ.i.p.al of said special trust, a sum of not less than eight thousand dollars annually, until the same be all exhausted, to said Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Stephen S. Foster, Abby K. Foster, Parker Pillsbury, Henry C. Wright, Francis Jackson and Charles K. Whipple, and their survivors and survivor, for them to use and expend, at their discretion, without any responsibility to any one, for promotion of the Anti-Slavery cause and other reforms, such as Woman's Rights, Non-Resistance, Free Trade and Temperance, at their discretion; and I request said Wendell Phillips and his said a.s.sociates to expend not less than eight thousand dollars annually, by the preparation and circulation of books, newspapers, employing agents, and the delivery of lectures that will, in their judgment, change public opinion, and secure the abolition of Slavery in the United States, and promote said other reforms. Believing that the chain upon four millions of slaves, with tyrants at one end and hypocrites at the other, has become the strongest bond of the Union of the States, I desire said Phillips and his a.s.sociates to expend said bequest by employing such agents as believe and practice the doctrine, of ”No union with slaveholders, religiously or politically”; and by circulating such publications as tend to destroy every pro-slavery inst.i.tution.
ARTICLE 17. In case chattel slavery should be abolished in the United States before the expenditure of the said residue of my estate, as stated in said sixteenth article of this Will; then, in that case, I desire that the unexpended part of said residue be applied by said Phillips and his a.s.sociates, in equal proportions, for the promotion of Non-Resistance, Woman's Rights and Free Trade; requesting that no agents be employed by them for the promotion of said causes, except such as believe it wrong to have any voluntary connection with any government of violence, and such as believe that the natural rights of men and women are equal. Whether slavery be abolished or not, I desire that a part of the said residue of my estate may be applied to the promotion of the kindred causes of Temperance, Woman's Rights, Non-Resistance and Free Trade, at the discretion of the said Phillips and his a.s.sociates.
ARTICLE 22. I particularly request that no prayers be solicited from any person, and that no priest be invited to perform any ceremony whatever, over or after my body. The Priesthood are an order of men, as I believe, falsely a.s.suming to be reverend and divine, pretending to be called of G.o.d; the great body of them in all countries have been on the side of power and oppression; the world has been too long cheated by them; the sooner they are unmasked, the better for humanity. As I have heretofore borne my testimony against slavery, intemperance, war, tariffs and all indirect taxation, banks and all monopolies, I desire to leave on record my abhorrence of them all. The fear of being buried before I am dead is slight, nevertheless it is greater than the fear of death itself. I therefore request my executors not to bury my body until at least three days after my decease. In witness whereof, I have hereto set my hand and seal, this twenty-eighth day of March, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-nine.
CHARLES F. HOVEY.
Signed, sealed, published and declared by the said Testator to be his last Will and Testament, in presence of us, who, at his request, and in his presence, and in the presence of each other, have hereto subscribed our names as witnesses.
GEORGE L. LOVETT.
THOMAS MACK.
WILLIAM W. HOWE.
I do prove, approve and allow the same, and order it to be recorded.
Given under my hand and seal of office, the day and year above written.
ISAAC AMES, _May 30, 1859_. _Judge of Probate and Insolvency._
[154] George William Curtis, Mrs. Eliza W. Farnham, Parker Pillsbury, Sarah Hallock, Mrs. Sidney Howard Gay, Sarah M. Grimke, Charles Lenox Remond, Lucy A. Coleman, Sarah P. Remond, and the Hutchinson family, consisting of Jessie, his wife, and two children, and Abby, who sung among many other sweet ballads, ”The Good Time Coming.”
[155] Frederick Douglas, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Ernestine L.
Rose, Lucretia Mott, Frances Dana Gage, Wendell Phillips, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Oliver Johnson, Susan B. Anthony, Caroline H. Dall, Lucy Stone, Antoinette Brown, Aaron M. Powell.
[156] Eliza Farnham was in many respects a remarkable woman. As matron of the Sing Sing prison at one time, she introduced many humane improvements in the occupation and discipline of the women under her charge. She had a piano in the corridor, and with sweet music touched the tender chords in their souls. Instead of tracts on h.e.l.l-fire and an angry G.o.d, she read aloud to them from d.i.c.kens' most touching stories. In every way, a.s.sisted by Mariana Johnson and Georgiana Bruce, she treated them as women, and not as criminals.
[157] Wendell Phillips, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Caroline H. Dall, Caroline M. Severance, Ernestine L. Rose, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Thomas W. Higginson, Susan B. Anthony.
[158] _Resolved_, That while every newspaper in the land carries on its face the record of woman's dishonor, the women who seek to elevate their s.e.x are bound to inquire into its causes and save from its paralysis.
_Resolved_, That while we have no daughters too tender and pure, no sons too innocent, to escape from the influence of such tragedies as those at North Adams and Was.h.i.+ngton, the true modesty of every mother, the true dignity of every wife, should forbid her to put aside the questions they involve.
_Resolved_, That the dishonor of single women proceeds in great measure from dest.i.tution, and the dishonor of married women as much from their own want of education and utter absence of purpose in life as from the inability of their husbands to inspire them with true respect and help them to true living: therefore,
_Resolved_, That it is our bounden duty to open, in every possible way, new vocations to women, to raise their wages by every advisable means, and to secure to them an education which shall be less a decoration to their persons than a tool to their hands.
_Resolved_, That while courts adjourn in honor of a man like Philip Barton Key, while the whole Bar of the District of Columbia pa.s.s resolutions in his honor, and vote to attend his funeral, as a mark of respect, while the public opinion of a whole community sustains a man who could not defend his murderous indignation by the witness of an unspotted life, it is our duty to rate public opinion as a corrupting power, and to bring up our children in the knowledge and sanction of a higher law.
[159] FORM OF PEt.i.tION.
_To the Senate and a.s.sembly of the Slate of New York:_
The undersigned, citizens of ----, New York, respectfully ask that you will take measures to submit to the people an amendment of the Const.i.tution, allowing women to vote and hold office. And that you will enact laws securing to married women the full and entire control of all property originally belonging to them, and of their earnings during marriage; and making the rights of the wife over the children the same as a husband enjoys, and the rights of a widow, as to her children, and as to the property left by her husband, the same that a husband has in the property and over the children of his deceased wife.
[160] Lydia Mott, in writing to a friend, says: ”I have heard but one opinion about the merits of the address and the manner of its delivery, and the press is very complimentary. It was better that one like Mrs. Stanton should speak on the occasion than two, unless the other might have been Wendell Phillips. Mr. Mayo expressed himself thoroughly satisfied; the whole effect was grand. Even old Father Woolworth stood the whole time, and very often he would nod a.s.sent at certain points. The House was packed, but so still that not one word was lost. It was worth as much to our cause as our whole Convention, though we could not have spared either.”
[161] AN ACT CONCERNING THE RIGHTS AND LIABILITIES OF HUSBAND AND WIFE.
Pa.s.sed March 20, 1860.