Volume II Part 39 (1/2)
Since our famous Bill of Rights was given to the world declaring all men equal, there has been no other proposition, in its magnitude, beneficence, and far-reaching consequences, so momentous as this. The specific work now before us, is to press the importance of this Amendment on the consideration of the people, and to urge Congress to its speedy adoption. Suffrage a.s.sociations should be formed at once and newspapers established in every State to press Woman's Enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, and pet.i.tions should be circulated in every school district from Maine to California, praying the adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment, that when the Forty-second Congress a.s.sembles it may understand the work before it.--_The Revolution_, April 29, 1869.
Pet.i.tions for a Sixteenth Amendment were immediately printed and sent throughout the nation, and have been steadily rolling into Congress for the last thirteen years from all the State and National Woman Suffrage a.s.sociations. The Fortieth Congress was the first in which an amendment to the National Const.i.tution in the interests of woman was ever proposed. In a series of editorials in _The Revolution_ there was a decided expression of hostility towards the Fifteenth Amendment during all the time it was pending in Congress. In the issue of October 21, 1869, Mrs. Stanton said:
All wise women should oppose the Fifteenth Amendment for two reasons. 1st. Because it is invidious to their s.e.x. Look at it from what point you will, and in every aspect, it reflects the old idea of woman's inferiority, her subject condition. And yet the one need to secure an onward step in civilization is a new dignity and self-respect in women themselves. No one can think that the pending proposition of ”manhood suffrage” exalts woman, either in her own eyes or those of the man by her side, but it does degrade her practically and theoretically, just as black men were more degraded when all other men were enfranchised.
2d. We should oppose the measure, because men have no right to pa.s.s it without our consent. When it is proposed to change the const.i.tution or fundamental law of the State or Nation, all the people have a right to say what that change shall be.
If women understood this pending proposition in all its bearings, theoretically and practically, there would be an overwhelming vote against the admission of another man to the ruling power of this nation, until they themselves were first enfranchised. There is no true patriotism, no true n.o.bility in tamely and silently submitting to this insult. It is mere sycophancy to man; it is licking the hand that forges a new chain for our degradation; it is indorsing the old idea that woman's divinely ordained position is at man's feet, and not on an even platform by his side.
By this edict of the liberal party, the women of this Republic are now to touch the lowest depths of their political degradation.
JUNE 3, 1869.
THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT.--It is not to be believed that the nation which is now engaged in admitting the newly liberated negro to the plenitude of all political franchise, will much longer retain woman in a state of _helotage_, which is more degrading than ever, because being no longer shared by any of the male s.e.x, it const.i.tutes every woman the inferior of every man.--JOHN STUART MILL.
It is this thought, so clearly seen and concisely stated by this distinguished English philosopher and statesman, that I have endeavored to press on the hearts of American reformers for the last four years. I have seen and felt, with a vividness and intensity that no words could express, the far-reaching consequences of this degradation of one-half the citizens of the republic, on the government, the Saxon race, and woman herself, in all her political, religious, and social relations. It is sufficiently humiliating to a proud woman to be reminded ever and anon in the polite world that she's a political nonent.i.ty; to have the fact gracefully mourned over, or wittily laughed at, in cla.s.sic words and cultured voice by one's superiors in knowledge, wisdom and power; but to hear the rights of woman scorned in foreign tongue and native gibberish by everything in manhood's form, is enough to fire the souls of those who think and feel, and rouse the most lethargic into action.
If, with weak and vacillating words and stammering tongue, our bravest men to-day say freedom to woman, what can we hope when the millions educated in despotism, ignorant of the philosophy of true government, religion and social life, shall be our judges and rulers? As you go down in the scale of manhood, the idea strengthens at every step, that woman was created for no higher purpose than to gratify the l.u.s.t of man. Every daily paper heralds some rape on flying, hunted girls; and the pitying eyes of angels see the holocaust of womanhood no journal ever notes.
In thought I trace the slender threads that link these hideous, overt acts to creeds and codes that make an aristocracy of s.e.x.
When a mighty nation, with a scratch of the pen, frames the base ideas of the lower orders into const.i.tutions and statute laws, and declares every serf, peasant and slave the rightful sovereigns of all womankind, they not only degrade every woman in her own eyes, but in that of every man on the footstool. A cultivated lady in Baltimore writes us a description of a colored republican reunion, held in that city a few evenings since, in which a colored gentleman offered the following toast: ”Our wives and daughters--May the women of our race never uns.e.x themselves by becoming strong-minded.”
E. C. S.
MARCH 11, 1869.
DRAWING THE LINES.--If the fifteenth article of Const.i.tutional Amendments ever gets ratified and becomes the rule of suffrage, it will have at least one good effect. Woman will then know with what power she has to contend. It will be male versus female, the land over. All manhood will vote not because of intelligence, patriotism, property, or white skin, but because it is male, not female. All womanhood will be newly outraged and debased, not for ignorance, disloyalty, poverty, or a black skin, but because it is female, not male. Julia Ward Howe, of Boston, has some good thoughts in the _Galaxy_ for March on this subject, in part as below:
”The Irish or German savage, after three years' cleansing, is admitted to the general enrollment of the community. The colored man, cleaner at the start than these, the natural ally of republican principles, trained to an understanding of freedom by a long experience of its opposite, stands next upon the record.
Voting to him is a military necessity. It is the only weapon with which he can meet those whom law, custom, and prejudice have hitherto trebly armed against him. This admitted right of elective franchise to all men, brings one scarcely antic.i.p.ated condition. It arrays now the whole male and female s.e.xes in a new and unforeseen condition. The right of the elective franchise is now the recognition of the inalienable right of all men to the proper administration of their interests, and in America this right is founded upon the right of human intelligence to its own exercise, the right of human labor to its own recompense. The generous culture which allows woman in this country so large an extension of thought, and the social necessities which place in her hands so many of the nicer tasks. .h.i.therto kept for those of the other s.e.x, alike commission her to claim and make good her right to the most simple, general and explicit method of expressing her will in the arena where wills are counted and respected.”
END OF THE SUFFRAGE AGITATION.--”The adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment will put an end to further agitation of the subject, for a long time at least, and thus leave the government of the country free to deal with its material interests, and with the more pressing questions of public policy and administration which will arise from time to time. We do not concur with those who predict that the question of suffrage for women will speedily demand public action or engross public attention, or that the right of men to hold office without distinction of color or race, will absorb any great degree of public time or public thought for a long while to come. Until some decided practical advantage is to be gained by a dominant political party, neither of these questions will be pressed to a decision; and both of them have, in our judgment, commanded more attention already than they will soon command again. With the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment, we may fairly look upon the suffrage agitation as at an end, for the present political generation at all events; and that consideration, of itself, affords a very powerful argument in favor of its adoption.”
Such is the conclusion of the New York _Times_. It is, too, the belief, hope, and intention of a large number of party leaders, both Republican and Democrat. But such reckon without their host.
They seem to have no idea with whom they have to deal. Woman may not achieve her rights next year; may not vote for President in 1872. But if President Grant means by ”let us have peace,” an end to the struggle for Woman Suffrage, he must pray to some other than the G.o.d of Heaven, or the politicians of his party and country; for the latter can't stop the agitation, and the former won't. So President Pierce actually proclaimed peace with slavery at his inauguration; but John Brown was already whetting his sword, and the Almighty was forging his thunderbolts for that vessel of wrath, long fitted for destruction, and the day of peace is not even yet.
P. P.
PROVIDENCE, June 7, 1869.
PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS ON THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT.--MY DEAR MRS.
STANTON: Nothing but the great crisis pending in our movement would have drawn me from my retirement again into public strife and turmoil, but I feel it a duty to enter my protest with yours against the Fifteenth Amendment. Last winter, in Boston, I could only give my vote against it, for no Sixteenth had been proposed.
It seemed almost a childish, selfish thing to do, when all the eloquence of a Boston platform was arrayed on the other side, and other women rose and said they were ready to step aside and let the colored man have his rights first. Not one said we will step aside and let the negro woman (whom I affirm, as I ever have, is better fitted for self-government than the negro man) have her rights before we press our claim, I could not but think it an easy thing for them to do, never having had the right they demanded. But if they truly believe that it will do for humanity what is claimed for it, I do not see why it should be called magnanimous for a woman to say, I yield to man just what he has always a.s.serted as his, the right to rule. You have taken a bold stand, and I thank G.o.d for it. Though still in the minority, there is hope; for with a radical truth one shall chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight; and ere very long, before another convention, I trust many more will see with us that the Fifteenth Amendment, without the Sixteenth, is a compromise worse by far for the nation than any other ever pa.s.sed. They could be repealed, this can not. Once settled, the waves of corruption will swamp our little bark freighted with all humanity, the women of all shades of color, and subject to every variety of tyranny and oppression, from the cramped feet of the Chinese to the cramped brains and waists of our own higher order of civilization.
It seems specially strange to those of us who so well remember the motto of the old Abolitionists, ”Immediate and unconditional emanc.i.p.ation,” now to hear a half measure advocated. It was that stern principle of justice which attracted and held me in the old organization when those dearest to me went into the Liberty party. I had been trained in that school which taught children that they must do right for right's sake, without hope of reward or fear of punishment, leaving the consequences with the All wise Ruler of events. Among the early Abolitionists this uncompromising spirit was manifest, and to me it was the real gospel.
I remember well the strong opposition to some who advocated the election of John C. Fremont, in 1856, among whom was Frederick Dougla.s.s. He was then denounced as a compromiser asking for a half loaf. He still asks for the half loaf; but others who stood firmly then for the whole have now come down to his plane, and desire above all things to finish up the anti-slavery work and have the negro man out of the way, and so give the Sixteenth Amendment the go-by, claiming manhood suffrage because it is the order of nature that man, however ignorant, debased and brutal he may be, shall always be first, because he always has been, yielding the whole argument to physical force, leaving the negro woman wholly out of the question, giving her over to the tyranny of the husband, which is nearly, if not quite, equal to that of the master. The anti-slavery platform still carefully guards itself against the woman question, while on the Suffrage platform the Fifteenth Amendment is considered essential. Miss Couzins was the only one who put the two amendments fairly before the Convention in Boston. After presenting the issues of the two amendments she trenched lightly on another topic still more offensive. She plead for the outcast woman in a most womanly way, but it did not prove to be a popular theme; but I think she is too true, pure, and n.o.ble not to do the same again and again.
Last evening Miss Peckham, Mrs. Churchill, and Miss Couzins presented the suffrage question to a select audience in Providence. Each in her own way and from her own stand-point spoke well. I have not time to give you as elaborate a notice as I should like to of each, but will do so after the convention which the State a.s.sociation propose holding next week, on Monday, the 14th, in Westerly, R. I. If you have helps to send us we shall welcome them cordially.