Volume II Part 30 (1/2)
We wondered then at the general indifference to that first opportunity of realizing what all those gentlemen had advocated so long; and, in looking back over the many intervening years, we still wonder at the stolid incapacity of all men to understand that woman feels the invidious distinctions of s.e.x exactly as the black man does those of color, or the white man the more transient distinctions of wealth, family, position, place, and power; that she feels as keenly as man the injustice of disfranchis.e.m.e.nt. Of the old abolitionists who stood true to woman's cause in this crisis, Robert Purvis, Parker Pillsbury, and Rev. Samuel J. May were the only Eastern men. Through all the hot debates during the period of reconstruction, again and again, Mr.
Purvis arose and declared, that he would rather his son should never be enfranchised, unless his daughter could be also, that, as she bore the double curse of s.e.x and color, on every principle of justice she should first be protected. These were the only men who felt and understood as women themselves do the degradation of disfranchis.e.m.e.nt.
Twenty years ago, as now, the Gibraltar of our difficulties was the impossibility of making the best men feel that woman is aggravated by the endless petty distinctions because of s.e.x, precisely as the most cultivated man, black or white, suffers the distinctions of color, wealth, or position. Take a man of superior endowments, once powerful and respected, who through unfortunate circ.u.mstances is impoverished and neglected; he sees small men, unscrupulous, hard, grinding men taking places of trust and influence, making palace homes for themselves and children, while his family in shabby attire are ostracised in the circle where by ancestry and intelligence they belong, made to feel on all occasions the impa.s.sable gulf that lies between riches and poverty. That man feels for himself and doubly for his children the humiliation. And yet with the ever-turning wheel of fortune such distinctions are transient; yours to-day, mine to-morrow. That glorious Scotch poet, Robert Burns, from the depths of his poverty and despair, might exclaim in an inspired moment on the divine heights where the human soul can sometimes mount:
”A man's a man for a' that.”
But the wail through many of his sad lines shows that he had tasted the very dregs of the cup of poverty, and hated all distinctions based on wealth.
When a colored man of education and wealth like Robert Purvis, of Philadelphia, surrounded with a family of cultivated sons and daughters, was denied all social communion with his neighbors, equal freedom and opportunity for himself and children, in public amus.e.m.e.nts, churches, schools, and means of travel because of race, he felt the degradation of color. The poor white man might have said, If I were Robert Purvis, with a good bank account, and could live in my own house, ride in my own carriage, and have my children well fed and clothed, I should not care if we were all as black as the ace of spades. But he had never tried the humiliation of color, and could not understand its peculiar aggravations, as he did those of poverty. It is impossible for one cla.s.s to appreciate the wrongs of another. The coa.r.s.er forms of slavery all can see and deplore, but the subjections of the spirit, few either comprehend or appreciate. In our day women carrying heavy burdens on their shoulders while men walk by their side smoking their pipes, or women harnessed to plows and carts with cows and dogs while men drive, are sights which need no eloquent appeals to move American men to pity and indignation. But the subtle humiliations of women possessed of wealth, education, and genius, men on the same plane can not see or feel, and yet can any misery be more real than invidious distinctions on the ground of s.e.x in the laws and const.i.tution, in the political, religious, and moral position of those who in nature stand the peers of each other? And not only do such women suffer these ever-recurring indignities in daily life, but the literature of the world proclaims their inferiority and divinely decreed subjection in all history, sacred and profane, in science, philosophy, poetry, and song.
And here is the secret of the infinite sadness of women of genius; of their dissatisfaction with life, in exact proportion to their development. A woman who occupies the same realm of thought with man, who can explore with him the depths of science, comprehend the steps of progress through the long past and prophesy those of the momentous future, must ever be surprised and aggravated with his a.s.sumptions of heads.h.i.+p and superiority, a superiority she never concedes, an authority she utterly repudiates. Words can not describe the indignation, the humiliation a proud woman feels for her s.e.x in disfranchis.e.m.e.nt.
In a republic where all are declared equal an ostracised cla.s.s of one half of the people, on the ground of a distinction founded in nature, is an anomalous position, as hara.s.sing to its victims as it is unjust, and as contradictory as it is unsafe to the fundamental principles of a free government. When we remember that out of this degraded political status, spring all the special wrongs that have blocked woman's success in the world of work, and degraded her labor everywhere to one half its value; closed to her the college doors and all opportunities for higher education, forbade her to practice in the professions, made her a cipher in the church, and her s.e.x, her motherhood a curse in all religions; her subjection a text for bibles, a target for the priesthood; seeing all this, we wonder now as then at the indifference and injustice of our best men when the first opportunity offered in which the women of any State might have secured their enfranchis.e.m.e.nt.
It was not from ignorance of the unequal laws, and false public sentiment against woman, that our best men stood silent in this Kansas campaign; it was not from lack of chivalry that they thundered forth no protests, when they saw n.o.ble women, who had been foremost in every reform, hounded through the State by foul mouthed politicians; it was not from lack of money and power, of eloquence of pen and tongue, nor of an intellectual conviction that our cause was just, that they came not to the rescue, but because in their heart of hearts they did not grasp the imperative necessity of woman's demand for that protection which the ballot alone can give; they did not feel for _her_ the degradation of disfranchis.e.m.e.nt.
The fact of their silence deeply grieved us, but the philosophy of their indifference we thoroughly comprehended for the first time and saw as never before, that only from woman's standpoint could the battle be successfully fought, and victory secured. ”It is wonderful,”
says Swift, ”with what patience some folks can endure the sufferings of others.” Our liberal men counseled us to silence during the war, and we were silent on our own wrongs; they counseled us again to silence in Kansas and New York, lest we should defeat ”negro suffrage,” and threatened if we were not, we might fight the battle alone. We chose the latter, and were defeated. But standing alone we learned our power; we repudiated man's counsels forevermore; and solemnly vowed that there should never be another season of silence until woman had the same rights everywhere on this green earth, as man.
While we hold in loving reverence the names of such men as Charles Sumner, Horace Greeley, William Lloyd Garrison, Gerrit Smith, Wendell Phillips and Frederick Dougla.s.s, and would urge the rising generation of young men to emulate their virtues, we would warn the young women of the coming generation against man's advice as to their best interests, their highest development. We would point for them the moral of our experiences: that woman must lead the way to her own enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, and work out her own salvation with a hopeful courage and determination that knows no fear nor trembling. She must not put her trust in man in this transition period, since, while regarded as his subject, his inferior, his slave, their interests must be antagonistic.
But when at last woman stands on an even platform with man, his acknowledged equal everywhere, with the same freedom to express herself in the religion and government of the country, then, and not till then, can she safely take counsel with him in regard to her most sacred rights, privileges, and immunities; for not till then will he be able to legislate as wisely and generously for her as for himself.
FOOTNOTES:
[76] DISAGREEMENTS IN THE REPUBLICAN STATE CENTRAL COMMITTEE--THE SUFFRAGE QUESTION.--The Kansas _State Journal_ publishes a letter from Judge SAMUEL N. WOOD, in which he declares himself unqualifiedly in favor of impartial suffrage. He says:
”I have not opposed, and shall not oppose negro suffrage. It should be adopted because they are a part of the governed, and must have a voice in the Government, just as much as women should. What I have had to do with is the inconsistency and hypocrisy of those who advocate negro suffrage and oppose Woman suffrage; the inconsistency and hypocrisy of those negroes who claim rights for themselves that they are not willing other human beings with equal intelligence should also enjoy.”
The same paper says that at the meeting of the Republican State Central Committee in Leavenworth, last week, the following resolution was offered and laid on the table, by a vote of two yeas to one nay:
_Resolved_, That the Republican State Central Committee do not indorse, but distinctly repudiate, as speakers, in behalf and under the auspices of the Republican party, such persons as have defamed, or do hereafter defame, in their public addresses, the women of Kansas, or those ladies who have been urging upon the people of Kansas the propriety of enfranchising the women of the State.
Mr. TAYLOR, who offered the resolution, has accordingly published the following protest:
The undersigned, a member of the Republican State Central Committee of Kansas, protests against the action of the Committee this day had, so far as relates to the placing of the names of I. S. KALLOCH, C. V.
ESKRIDGE, and P. B. PLUMB, on the list of speakers to canva.s.s the State in behalf of Republican principles, for the reason that they have within the last few weeks, in public addresses published articles, used ungentlemanly, indecent, and infamously defamatory language, when alluding to a large and respectable portion of the women of Kansas, and to women now engaged in canva.s.sing the State in favor of impartial suffrage.
R. B. TAYLOR.
[77] DEMOCRATIC RESOLUTION.--_Resolved_, That we are opposed to all the proposed amendments to our State Const.i.tution, and to all unjust, intolerant, and proscriptive legislation, whereby a portion of our fellow citizens are deprived of their social rights and religious privileges.
[78] ACTION OF THE GERMANS.--ST. LOUIS, _Sept. 26._--A special dispatch to the _Republican_ from Wyandotte, Kansas, says: ”The German Convention, which was held at Topeka on Monday last, adopted resolutions against Sunday and temperance laws, and declared that they would not support any man for State, Legislative, or munic.i.p.al office who would not give his written pledge to oppose such laws. An unsuccessful effort was made to commit the Germans to negro suffrage.
The female suffrage question was not touched.”
[79] STATE TEMPERANCE CONVENTION.--LAWRENCE, KANSAS, _Sept. 26._--A ma.s.s State Temperance Convention was held here last night, and was addressed by Senator Pomeroy, ex-Gov. Robinson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. Resolutions were pa.s.sed committing the Temperance people to female suffrage, and to prevent the repeal of the Temperance law of last winter, to the abrogation of which the Germans pledged themselves in their Convention on the 23d.
[80] The New York _Tribune_, May 29, 1867: ”Womanhood suffrage is now a progressive cause beyond fear of cavil. It has won a fair field where once it was looked upon as an airy nothing, and it has gained champions and converts without number. The young State of Kansas is fitly the vanguard of this cause, and the signs of the agitation therein hardly allow a doubt that the citizens.h.i.+p of women will be ere long recognized in the law of the State. Fourteen out of twenty newspapers of Kansas are in favor of making woman a voter. Governor Crawford, ex-Governors Robinson and Root, Judge Schuyler, Col.
Ritchie, and Lieut.-Gov. Green, are the leaders of the wide-spread Impartial League, which has among its orators Mistresses Stanton, Stone, and Susan B. Anthony. The vitality of the Kansas movement is indisputable, and whether defeated or successful in the present contest, it will still hold strongly fortified ground.” ...