Volume II Part 44 (1/2)
Mr. FOSTER:--What are these principles? The equality of men--universal suffrage. These ladies stand at the head of a paper which has adopted as its motto Educated Suffrage. I put myself on this platform as an enemy of educated suffrage, as an enemy of white suffrage, as an enemy of man suffrage, as an enemy of every kind of suffrage except universal suffrage. _The Revolution_ lately had an article headed ”That Infamous Fifteenth Amendment.” It is true it was not written by our President, yet it comes from a person whom she has over and over again publicly indorsed. I am not willing to take George Francis Train on this platform with his ridicule of the negro and opposition to his enfranchis.e.m.e.nt.
Mrs. MARY A. LIVERMORE:--Is it quite generous to bring George Francis Train on this platform when he has retired from _The Revolution_ entirely?
Mr. FOSTER:--If _The Revolution_, which has so often indorsed George Francis Train, will repudiate him because of his course in respect to the negro's rights, I have nothing further to say. But it does not repudiate him. He goes out; it does not cast him out.
Miss ANTHONY:--Of course it does not.
Mr. FOSTER:--My friend says yes to what I have said. I thought it was so. I only wanted to tell you why the Ma.s.sachusetts society can not coalesce with the party here, and why we want these women to retire and leave us to nominate officers who can receive the respect of both parties. The Ma.s.sachusetts Abolitionists can not co-operate with this society as it is now organized. If you choose to put officers here that ridicule the negro, and p.r.o.nounce the Amendment infamous, why I must retire; I can not work with you. You can not have my support, and you must not use my name. I can not shoulder the responsibility of electing officers who publicly repudiate the principles of the society.
HENRY B. BLACKWELL said: In regard to the criticisms on our officers, I will agree that many unwise things have been written in _The Revolution_ by a gentleman who furnished part of the means by which that paper has been carried on. But that gentleman has withdrawn, and you, who know the real opinions of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton on the question of negro suffrage, do not believe that they mean to create antagonism between the negro and the woman question. If they did disbelieve in negro suffrage, it would be no reason for excluding them. We should no more exclude a person from our platform for disbelieving negro suffrage than a person should be excluded from the anti-slavery platform for disbelieving woman suffrage. But I know that Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton believe in the right of the negro to vote. We are united on that point. There is no question of principle between us.
The vote on the report of the Committee on Organization was now taken, and adopted by a large majority.
Mr. DOUGLa.s.s:--I came here more as a listener than to speak, and I have listened with a great deal of pleasure to the eloquent address of the Rev. Mr. Frothingham and the splendid address of the President. There is no name greater than that of Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the matter of woman's rights and equal rights, but my sentiments are tinged a little against _The Revolution_.
There was in the address to which I allude the employment of certain names, such as ”Sambo,” and the gardener, and the bootblack, and the daughters of Jefferson and Was.h.i.+ngton, and all the rest that I can not coincide with. I have asked what difference there is between the daughters of Jefferson and Was.h.i.+ngton and other daughters. (Laughter.) I must say that I do not see how any one can pretend that there is the same urgency in giving the ballot to woman as to the negro. With us, the matter is a question of life and death, at least, in fifteen States of the Union. When women, because they are women, are hunted down through the cities of New York and New Orleans; when they are dragged from their houses and hung upon lamp-posts; when their children are torn from their arms, and their brains dashed out upon the pavement; when they are objects of insult and outrage at every turn; when they are in danger of having their homes burnt down over their heads; when their children are not allowed to enter schools; then they will have an urgency to obtain the ballot equal to our own. (Great applause.)
A VOICE:--Is that not all true about black women?
Mr. DOUGLa.s.s:--Yes, yes, yes; it is true of the black woman, but not because she is a woman, but because she is black. (Applause.) Julia Ward Howe at the conclusion of her great speech delivered at the convention in Boston last year, said: ”I am willing that the negro shall get the ballot before me.” (Applause.) Woman!
why, she has 10,000 modes of grappling with her difficulties. I believe that all the virtue of the world can take care of all the evil. I believe that all the intelligence can take care of all the ignorance. (Applause.) I am in favor of woman's suffrage in order that we shall have all the virtue and vice confronted. Let me tell you that when there were few houses in which the black man could have put his head, this woolly head of mine found a refuge in the house of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and if I had been blacker than sixteen midnights, without a single star, it would have been the same. (Applause.)
Miss ANTHONY:--The old anti-slavery school say women must stand back and wait until the negroes shall be recognized. But we say, if you will not give the whole loaf of suffrage to the entire people, give it to the most intelligent first. (Applause.) If intelligence, justice, and morality are to have precedence in the Government, let the question of woman be brought up first and that of the negro last. (Applause.) While I was canva.s.sing the State with pet.i.tions and had them filled with names for our cause to the Legislature, a man dared to say to me that the freedom of women was all a theory and not a practical thing. (Applause.) When Mr. Dougla.s.s mentioned the black man first and the woman last, if he had noticed he would have seen that it was the men that clapped and not the women. There is not the woman born who desires to eat the bread of dependence, no matter whether it be from the hand of father, husband, or brother; for any one who does so eat her bread places herself in the power of the person from whom she takes it. (Applause.) Mr. Dougla.s.s talks about the wrongs of the negro; but with all the outrages that he to-day suffers, he would not exchange his s.e.x and take the place of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. (Laughter and applause.)
Mr. DOUGLa.s.s:--I want to know if granting you the right of suffrage will change the nature of our s.e.xes? (Great laughter.)
Miss ANTHONY:--It will change the pecuniary position of woman; it will place her where she can earn her own bread. (Loud applause.) She will not then be driven to such employments only as man chooses for her.
Mrs. NORTON said that Mr. Dougla.s.s's remarks left her to defend the Government from the inferred inability to grapple with the two questions at once. It legislates upon many questions at one and the same time, and it has the power to decide the woman question and the negro question at one and the same time.
(Applause.)
Mrs. LUCY STONE:--Mrs. Stanton will, of course, advocate the precedence for her s.e.x, and Mr. Dougla.s.s will strive for the first position for his, and both are perhaps right. If it be true that the government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, we, are safe in trusting that principle to the uttermost. If one has a right to say that you can not read and therefore can not vote, then it may be said that you are a woman and therefore can not vote. We are lost if we turn away from the middle principle and argue for one cla.s.s. I was once a teacher among fugitive slaves. There was one old man, and every tooth was gone, his hair was white, and his face was full of wrinkles, yet, day after day and hour after hour, he came up to the school-house and tried with patience to learn to read, and by-and-by, when he had spelled out the first few verses of the first chapter of the Gospel of St. John, he said to me, ”Now, I want to learn to write.” I tried to make him satisfied with what he had acquired, but the old man said, ”Mrs. Stone, somewhere in the wide world I have a son; I have not heard from him in twenty years; if I should hear from him, I want to write to him, so take hold of my hand and teach me.” I did, but before he had proceeded in many lessons, the angels came and gathered him up and bore him to his Father. Let no man speak of an educated suffrage. The gentleman who addressed you claimed that the negroes had the first right to the suffrage, and drew a picture which only his great word-power can do. He again in Ma.s.sachusetts, when it had cast a majority in favor of Grant and negro suffrage, stood upon the platform and said that woman had better wait for the negro; that is, that both could not be carried, and that the negro had better be the one.
But I freely forgave him because he felt as he spoke. But woman suffrage is more imperative than his own; and I want to remind the audience that when he says what the Ku-Kluxes did all over the South, the Ku-Kluxes here in the North in the shape of men, take away the children from the mother, and separate them as completely as if done on the block of the auctioneer. Over in New Jersey they have a law which says that _any_ father--he might be the most brutal man that ever existed--_any_ father, it says, whether he be under age or not, may by his last will and testament dispose of the custody of his child, born or to be born, and that such disposition shall be good against all persons, and that the mother may not recover her child; and that law modified in form exists over every State in the Union except in Kansas. Woman has an ocean of wrongs too deep for any plummet, and the negro, too, has an ocean of wrongs that can not be fathomed. There are two great oceans; in the one is the black man, and in the other is the woman. But I thank G.o.d for that XV.
Amendment, and hope that it will be adopted in every State. I will be thankful in my soul if _any_ body can get out of the terrible pit. But I believe that the safety of the government would be more promoted by the admission of woman as an element of restoration and harmony than the negro. I believe that the influence of woman will save the country before every other power. (Applause.) I see the signs of the times pointing to this consummation, and I believe that in some parts of the country women will vote for the President of these United States in 1872.
(Applause.)
At the opening of the evening session Henry B. Blackwell presented a series of resolutions.[120] Antoinette Brown Blackwell spoke, and was followed by Olive Logan.
Miss LOGAN said:--I stand here to-night full of faith, inborn faith, in the rights of woman to advance boldly in all enn.o.bling paths.... In my former sphere of life, the equality of woman was fully recognized so far as the kind of labor and the amount of reward for her labor are concerned. As an actress, there was no position in which I was not fully welcomed if I possessed the ability and industry to reach it. If I could become a Ristori, my earnings would be as great as hers, and if I was a man and could become a Kean, a Macready, or a Booth, the same reward would be obtained. If I reach no higher rank than what is called a ”walking lady,” I am sure of the same pay as a man who occupies the position of a ”walking gentleman.” In that sphere of life, be it remembered, I was reared from childhood; to that place I was so accustomed that I had no idea it was a privilege denied my s.e.x to enter into almost every other field of endeavor.
In literature also I found myself on an equality with man. If I wrote a good article, I got as good pay; and heaven knows the pay to man or woman was small enough. (Applause). In that field, for a long time, I did not feel an interest in the subject of women's rights, and stood afar off, looking at the work of those revolutionary creatures, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony. The idea of identifying myself with them was as far removed from my thoughts as becoming a female gymnast and whirling upon a trapeze. But once I wrote a lecture, and one night I delivered it. Adhering to my practice of speaking about that which was most familiar, my lecture was about the stage. I lectured, simply because I thought the pay would be better in that department; the idea that I was running counter to anybody's prejudice, never entered my head. And I was so far removed that I never read a page of _The Revolution_ in my life, and, what is more, I did not want to; and when Miss Anthony pa.s.sed down Broadway and saw the bills announcing my lecture she knew nothing about me, and what is more, she did not want to. (Laughter). She made a confession to me afterwards. She said to herself, ”Here is a lady going to lecture about the stage,” looking through her blessed spectacles, as I can see her (laughter)--and I can hear her muttering ”a woman's rights woman.” (Laughter). That is not so very long ago, a little over a year. Since this great question of woman's rights was thrust upon me, I am asked to define my position; wherever I have traveled in the fifteen months I have had to do so. A lady of society asked me, ”Are you in favor of woman's rights?” I had either to answer yes or no, and ”Yes,” I said. (Applause)....
I met, in my travels, in a New England town, an educated woman, who found herself obliged to earn her livelihood, after living a life of luxury and ease. Her husband, who had provided her with every material comfort, had gone to the grave. All his property was taken to pay his debts, and she found herself penniless. What was that woman to do? She looks abroad among the usual employments of women, and her only resource seems to be that little bit of steel around which cl.u.s.ter so many a.s.sociations--the needle--and by the needle, with the best work and the best wages, the most she can get is two dollars a day.
With this, poor as it is, she will be content; but she finds an army of other women looking for the same, and most of them looking in vain. These things have opened my eyes to a vista such as I never saw before. They have touched my heart as it never before was touched. They have aroused my conscience to the fact that this woman question is the question of the hour, and that I must take part in it. I take my stand boldly, proudly, with such earnest, thoughtful women as Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Stanton, and Anna d.i.c.kinson, to work together with them for the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of woman, for her elevation personally and socially, and above all for her right and opportunity to work at such employments as she can follow, with the right to such pay as men get. (Applause). There are thousands of women who have no vital interest in this question. They are happy wives and daughters, and may they ever be so; but they can not tell how soon their husbands and brothers may be lost to them, and they will find themselves dest.i.tute and penniless with no resources in themselves against misfortune. Then it will be for such that we labor. Our purpose is to help those who need help, widows and orphan girls. There is no need to do battle in this matter. In all kindness and gentleness we urge our claims. There is no need to declare war upon man, for the best of men in this country are with us heart and soul. These are with us in greater numbers even than our own s.e.x. (A Voice--”That is true.” Great applause). Do not say that we seek to break up family peace and fireside joy; far from it. (Applause). We interfere not with the wife or daughter who is happy in the strong protection thrown around her by a father or husband, but it is cowardice for such to throw obstacles in the way of those who need help. More than this, for the sake of the helpless woman, to whose unhappiness in the loss of beloved ones is added the agony of hard and griping want. For the sake of the poor girl who has no power to cope with the hard actualities of a desolate life, while her trembling feet tread the crumbling edge of the dark abyss of infamy. For the sake of this we are pleading and entertaining this great question, withhold your answer till at least you have learned to say, ”G.o.d speed.”
The next speaker was Miss Phoebe Couzins, a young law student from St.
Louis, who spoke in a most agreeable and forcible manner.
Miss COUZINS said:--MRS. PRESIDENT AND LADIES: I deem it the duty of every earnest woman to express herself in regard to the XVth Amendment to our Federal Const.i.tution. I feel deeply the humiliation and insult that is offered to the women of the United States in this Amendment, and have always publicly protested against its pa.s.sage. During a recent tour through the Eastern States I became still more (if that were possible) firmly fixed in my convictions. Its advocates are unwilling to have it publicly discussed, showing that they know there is an element of weakness in it which will not bear a thorough investigation.