Volume II Part 21 (1/2)

Rev. SAMUEL J. MAY said: I wish to give my testimony most earnestly and solemnly to the conviction, which has continually increased in my soul since my attention was first called to the subject, that this is a fundamental question. How can we expect that our government will be well conducted when one-half, and that too what we have been accustomed to call the ”better half,”

of its const.i.tuency is disfranchised, and unable to influence it as it should? It is now twenty-two years since I delivered my first public discourse on this subject; and when I have insisted, as I have done during that time, that women should be allowed to take part in the government, it has always been thrown in my teeth that women were governing the nation after all through their influence over their husbands, brothers, and sons. I was delighted with the remarks of Mrs. Stanton on this subject. In the first place, women can not influence their husbands, nor educate their sons, as they should do, because they are not properly informed, and have no inducement to become informed.

Were they to feel a responsibility, doubtless the better part of them would prepare themselves to discharge their duty; but knowing that they have nothing to do with the government of the country, you can hardly persuade our young women to study the subject. Years ago I insisted that the Const.i.tution of the United States should be introduced into the common schools of the city where I live, to be studied by girls as well as boys. Yet I hardly know half a dozen girls there who have taken the least interest in it. Why? Because, when any allusion is made to women's partic.i.p.ation in the government, it has been met with a sneer, which so many dread more than they do a bullet; and this has doubtless deterred them from it.

I was glad, too, to hear the reply so successfully made to the objection that women do not demand this right. That is no reason why they should not be required to exercise it. It is their right because it is their duty. It is their duty because it is their right. We have the most glorious inheritance that G.o.d ever gave to a nation, the privilege of governing ourselves. Where does self-government begin? Where does it reside? In the individual.

No individual that can not govern himself can contribute in the least toward the government of the country in which he lives. He becomes a burden, if not a curse. Knowing that women have the same moral powers as men, the same intellectual powers, the same affections, that they are governed by the same laws, and amenable to the same government, who can doubt that if they were made sensible of their responsibilities in the government of the country, and that they can not contribute in the least to the well-being of the community unless they can contribute those virtues and graces which const.i.tute the true government of one's self; this would have the most inspiring and elevating influence upon them? Think you they would continue to be the servants of mere fas.h.i.+on, as too many of them now are? By our refusal to act in accordance with the eternal principles of righteousness set forth in the Declaration of Independence and in the preamble of the Const.i.tution of the country, we have been brought into a terrible civil war, which has resulted in a disorganized condition requiring reconstruction. Why should we not see to it that our country as a whole, and that each individual State of the country, shall be reconstructed on this true basis, so that, if possible, nothing may be left to be done hereafter to improve the foundations on which this nation rests?

Many say, ”One thing at a time. You have been struggling for the abolition of slavery and obtained that; and now claim the political rights of the colored men, and will undoubtedly get them. Why can't you be satisfied?” Because that would leave a tremendous wrong at the foundation of our country. What will be the consequence, G.o.d only knows, should we dare to go on with such a fatal mistake in the basis of our inst.i.tutions. It is presumption to suppose that we can do this without incurring, sooner or later, awful consequences. We can not predict what they will be; but that they will be great our past experiences should teach us. It was thought a very little matter to leave our Const.i.tution indefinite as to the rights of colored men. Our fathers in the meetings held to ratify the Const.i.tution, said they had done all that could be expected, said that the death-blow was struck at the inst.i.tution of slavery, that it would soon die a natural death; and thus they quieted those who were distrustful because slavery was not explicitly abolished in the Const.i.tution. The people, engaged in their various pursuits, ambitious for office, eager for wealth, let this seed of wrong become a mighty upas tree that covered our republic all over, and scattered everywhere its poisonous fruits. Shall we dare to go on for another period of our national existence knowing that at the foundation of our government there is a tremendous wrong?

What should the government of a nation be? Ought it not to be as much as possible like the government of a well-ordered family?

Can you think of any model so good as the divine model set before us in the family? What would the family be with a father and without a mother? To whom do you owe the most--your father or your mother? Who controlled the family most effectually? Some thirty years ago, being chairman of the Board of Education in my district, I proposed to put a woman into a school where the male teachers had been set at nought year after year. It stood the lowest in rank when she took it; but in less than a month its character was obviously changed, and at the end of the term it stood number three in point of character as well as in scholars.h.i.+p. Men are not governed by the fear of punishment. They are governed by a strong, persistent manifestation of the consciousness of a right to govern them; and that is pressed upon them more effectually by the influence of a mother or a sister than of a father or a brother. Just so it will be in the government of our country, when women shall educate and prepare themselves to take part in that government, with their almost instinctive perception of the right, the true, and the good.

And if our fathers and mothers were what they might and should be, the children would be so well trained that they would govern themselves, and there would be very little need of the instrumentality of a political organization. If women understood that it was not only their right, but their duty, to educate themselves to be citizens of the State, we should have, instead of the trifling topics which now occupy their attention in our domestic circles, the consideration of great questions; and doubtless their finer perceptions often would help to settle great questions aright; and they who should go forth from that family circle into the various relations of life, would go prepared to advocate the right, to ill.u.s.trate the truth, and at the ballot-box to give their votes for the true and the right. It is my first conviction respecting the future well-being of our country, that it is to be measured exactly by our treatment of the colored man. My second conviction is that the well-being of our country never will be effectually provided for until the better half of humanity is educated and instructed, and required to take part in the enactment of the laws and in their administration.

Mrs. Mott then introduced the venerable Sojourner Truth, who was greeted with loud cheers, after which she said:

My friends, I am rejoiced that you are glad, but I don't know how you will feel when I get through. I come from another field--the country of the slave. They have got their liberty--so much good luck to have slavery partly destroyed; not entirely. I want it root and branch destroyed. Then we will all be free indeed. I feel that if I have to answer for the deeds done in my body just as much as a man, I have a right to have just as much as a man.

There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again. White women are a great deal smarter, and know more than colored women, while colored women do not know scarcely anything. They go out was.h.i.+ng, which is about as high as a colored woman gets, and their men go about idle, strutting up and down; and when the women come home, they ask for their money and take it all, and then scold because there is no food. I want you to consider on that, chil'n. I call you chil'n; you are somebody's chil'n, and I am old enough to be mother of all that is here. I want women to have their rights. In the courts women have no right, no voice; n.o.body speaks for them. I wish woman to have her voice there among the pettifoggers. If it is not a fit place for women, it is unfit for men to be there.

I am above eighty years old; it is about time for me to be going.

I have been forty years a slave and forty years free, and would be here forty years more to have equal rights for all. I suppose I am kept here because something remains for me to do; I suppose I am yet to help to break the chain. I have done a great deal of work; as much as a man, but did not get so much pay. I used to work in the field and bind grain, keeping up with the cradler; but men doing no more, got twice as much pay; so with the German women. They work in the field and do as much work, but do not get the pay. We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much. I suppose I am about the only colored woman that goes about to speak for the rights of the colored women. I want to keep the thing stirring, now that the ice is cracked. What we want is a little money. You men know that you get as much again as women when you write, or for what you do. When we get our rights we shall not have to come to you for money, for then we shall have money enough in our own pockets; and may be you will ask us for money. But help us now until we get it. It is a good consolation to know that when we have got this battle once fought we shall not be coming to you any more. You have been having our rights so long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again. I have been in Was.h.i.+ngton about three years, seeing about these colored people. Now colored men have the right to vote. There ought to be equal rights now more than ever, since colored people have got their freedom. I am going to talk several times while I am here; so now I will do a little singing. I have not heard any singing since I came here.

Accordingly, suiting the action to the word, Sojourner sang, ”We are going home.” ”There, children,” said she, ”in heaven we shall rest from all our labors; first do all we have to do here. There I am determined to go, not to stop short of that beautiful place, and I do not mean to stop till I get there, and meet you there, too.”

CHARLES C. BURLEIGH said: I consider it among the good omens with which the Society enters upon its new year of labor, that its workers have been so busy, as appears from the informal report of the Secretary this morning, that really they have not had time to let the left hand know what the right hand was doing. It shows an earnestness, a determination, a vigor, an industry, which can not co-exist with a cause of righteousness like the one before us without hopeful results. There is no narrow question here. We are not contending for Woman's Suffrage or Negro Suffrage, but for a broad principle of right applicable to the whole race. Those in opposition to us have really nothing to stand upon. While we may fairly a.s.sume that the burden of proof lies upon those who urge objections, that ours is the affirmative case, and all that we are bound to do is to answer objections; yet in this reform, as in others which have preceded it, its enemies not being willing to take the burden of proof, we have undertaken to do their work as well as our own. We are willing, therefore, for the sake of meeting every cavil, for the sake of fighting every shadow of objection, to take the laboring oar which the other side should take, and to prove the objections unfounded which they have not yet attempted to prove well-founded.

We are told sometimes that women ought not to share with men in the rights we claim for humanity, because of the difference of s.e.x; that there is a s.e.x of soul as well as of body. This is an objection practically cutting its own throat; because if it is true that there is a diversity of s.e.x in soul which ought to be recognized in political inst.i.tutions as well as in social arrangements, how can you rightly determine woman's proper place in society by the standard of a man's intellect? How can man's intellect determine what kind of legislation suits the condition of woman? The very fact, then, of the diversity of the masculine understanding and masculine spirit, proves the necessity of a.s.signing to woman a share in the work which is to be done affecting woman. Manifestly one of these two things must be true: Either there is no such essential difference worthy to be taken into account, in which case woman has the same rights as man, and there is no necessity for making a distinction; or there is an essential difference, in which case man is not competent to do the work of legislating for the whole of society without the aid of woman. We might just as well let one effigy stand in the tailor's shop, as the standard of measurement of every garment the tailor is to make, and also of every garment the dressmaker is to make as to found the legislation for all upon one standard.

If you recognize a difference, let your legislation proceed from both elements of the body politic which your legislation is to affect.

It is said also, that if you allow women to vote, the logic of your argument will go further and require that women shall be voted for and they may chance to receive votes enough for election; and they may even go to the State Legislature or to Congress. Suppose such a thing should happen, would a city which is represented in the Congress of the United States by John Morrissey and Fernando Wood, have reason to blush if by some singular good fortune she should chance to be represented by Elizabeth Cady Stanton? (Applause.) Would the halls of Congress suffer any loss of dignity, or any loss of efficiency, even if John Morrissey's place should be vacated to make room for Mrs.

Stanton, or if some Pennsylvania Democrat should be allowed to remain at home while Lucretia Mott occupied his chair?

(Applause.) Is it so terrible that women who can utter sentiments as n.o.ble and elevating as those to which you have listened, who can sustain them by logic as clear, and who can expose with such delicate wit the ridiculous absurdity of the opposite side, should have a voice in the counsels of the nation? Somebody says that ”the child is father to the man.” You know who govern the children. Who governed you when you were children? Is it not as safe that woman should govern in the halls of national legislation as in the family and in the school? You will find in hundreds of schools, governed a few years ago by men, only women for teachers to-day. I remember that in a building which contained some three hundred pupils, the last man employed as a teacher was an a.s.sistant teacher under the supervision of a woman as princ.i.p.al; a woman who has vindicated her right to the place by her admirable administration, and her admirable adaptation to the business of teaching, so that she has become, as it were, a fixture in that schoolhouse. And that is only one case among many. And if woman excels in government in those spheres in which she has had an opportunity to prove her ability, it is at least safe to try the experiment further.

We have just seen one folly, one absurdity refuted by the simple process of trying an experiment. The time was when it was deemed altogether unwomanly, and repugnant to female delicacy and refinement, for a woman to ink the ends of her fingers in handling a pen; for a woman to be what was derisively called a ”blue-stocking,” or a literary woman. It was thought that nothing but pedantry, nothing but slatternly habits and neglected housekeeping, could come of it. But who would be willing to banish from the literary world to-day such names as Browning, Hemans, Stowe, and Gage? And if I were to fill out the catalogue of names, I might close my speech at the end of it, having tired you all with the length of the recital. So it was said that women should not appear on the public platform. But who now would banish the women who have delighted such vast congregations, and who have drawn such applause from all cla.s.ses and conditions of men? Who, to-day, considers it improper for Lucy Stone, Anna d.i.c.kinson, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Gage, to appear upon a public platform? Who is willing to shut the pulpit against Mrs. Mott, when she has filled it with such acceptance, in so many places, and on so many occasions? Step by step, woman has advanced toward her right position. Step by step, as she advanced, she has proved her right, to the satisfaction of caviling skepticism itself....

She would now go a step further. She demands the rights, not of womanhood, but of humanity. And I feel just as confident that what she demands will be conceded, in reference to her political rights, as that it has been conceded with regard to these other rights, which are now settled in the estimation of thinking and reasoning people. The tide sets that way, clearly and strongly.

Kansas is not to go alone, in granting this right to woman. The agitation is to go on; and the more you resist the current of events, the more earnestly will the agitation be continued until reason shall be convinced; until prejudice shall be overcome by the power of conviction; until men are constrained, from very shame, to withdraw from a position which no argument, no experience can justify, which no consideration of decency will palliate.

One objection to our claim is, that the right of voting should not belong to human beings as individuals, but rather to households of human beings. This is not a denial of equality in all respects, but an allegation that the right belongs neither to the man nor to the woman, but to the household; and that for the household, as its representative, the man casts the ballot.

Suppose I concede that, what then? Why should the head of the household, or rather the _hand_ of the household, be masculine rather than feminine? We have heard the argument over and over again that woman should leave to man the counting-house, the work-bench, and all the duties supposed peculiarly to appertain to masculine humanity, and should attend to ”household” matters.

If, then, suffrage is a household matter, why should not woman attend to it, in her feminine capacity, as peculiarly within her domestic province, and relieve man from the interruption of his appropriate duties?

Rev. Mr. RAY inquired what was the basis for the right of suffrage, if suffrage was not, as Mr. Burleigh had said yesterday in another place, a natural right. If it does not belong to the individual whence does it come? The Sultan of Turkey may claim that the right belongs to him, and that he may delegate that right to whomsoever he will to a.s.sist him in the government of the people. But in a Republic the right must be in the individual; and if so, it belongs to woman as well as to man, to black as well as to white persons. If the right of suffrage is not a natural right, why has not the Const.i.tutional Convention about to meet the right to limit the suffrage, if they think it will secure the best interest of the State?

FRANCES D. GAGE said: I have but little to say because it is almost two o'clock, and hungry and weary people are not good listeners to speeches. I shall confine my remarks therefore to one special point brought up this morning and not fully discussed. Sojourner Truth gave us the whole truth in about fifteen words: ”If I am responsible for the deeds done in my body, the same as the white male citizen is, I have a right to all the rights he has to help him through the world.” I shall speak for the slave woman at the South. I have always lifted my voice for her when I have spoken at all. I will not give up the slave woman into the hands of man, to do with her as he pleases hereafter. I know the plea that was made to me in South Carolina, and down in the Mississippi valley. They said, ”You give us a nominal freedom, but you leave us under the heel of our husbands, who are tyrants almost equal to our masters.” The former slave man of the South has learned his lesson of oppression and wrong of his old master; and they think the wife has no right to her earnings. I was often asked, ”Why don't the Government pay my wife's earnings to me?” When acting for the Freedman's Aid Society, the orders came to us to compel marriage, or to separate families. I issued the order as I was bound to do, as General Superintendent of the Fourth Division under General Saxton. The men came to me and wanted to be married, because they said if they were married in the church, they could manage the women, and take care of their money, but if they were not married in the church the women took their own wages and did just as they had a mind to. But the women came to me and said, ”We don't want to be married in the church, because if we are our husbands will whip the children and whip us if they want to; they are no better than old masters.” The biggest quarrel I had with the colored people down there, was with a plantation man because I would not furnish a nurse for his child. ”No, Nero,” said I, ”I can not hire a nurse for your child while Nancy works in the cotton field.” ”But what is we to do? I'se a poor miserable man and can't work half the time, and Nancy is a good strong hand; and we must have a nurse.” He went away in utter disgust, and declared to the people outside that I had got the miserablest notion he had ever heard, to spoil a good field hand like his Nancy to nurse her own baby.

We were told the other day by Wendell Phillips, upon the Anti-Slavery platform, that it takes people forty years to outgrow an old idea. The slave population of the South is not yet removed a hundred years from the barbarism of Africa, where women have no rights, no privileges, but are trampled under foot in all the savageism of the past. And the slave man has looked on to see his master will everything as he willed, and he has learned the lesson from his master. Mr. Higginson told us that the slave-master never understood the slave. I know that to be the fact. Neither does man understand woman to-day, because she has always been held subservient to him. Now it is proposed to give manhood the suffrage in all these Southern States, and to leave the poor slave woman bound under the ban of the direst curse of slavery to him who is the father of her children. It is decreed upon all the statute books of slavery, that the child shall follow the condition of the mother. That has been the decree from the beginning of this awful slave system; that the whitest woman, the child of a slave mother, whose hair curled down to her waist, and whose blue eyes of beauty were a lure to the statesmen of the South, should be a slave, though the Governor of the State were her father. Are you to leave her there yet, and desecrate marriage, by making it such a bond of slavery that the woman shall say, ”I do not want to be married, to suffer oppression!”

Are you to force prost.i.tution and wrong upon those people by these unjust laws? Are you to compel wickedness and crime? Are you going to let it stand upon the statute books of the Southern States that the only woman free to work for her own child shall be the mother of illegitimate children? That is the consequence of what you are doing to the people who in all time past, since they have lived upon this continent, have been denied the right of sacred marriage; and who must have, as Wendell Phillips tells us, forty years to outgrow the past, or to educate them.