Volume II Part 105 (1/2)
Mrs. M. M. COLE read the following letter:
VINELAND, N. J., May 10, 1870.
MY DEAR FRIENDS: I once had a neighbor who was for years entirely crippled with rheumatism, and she, when asked, ”How are you to-day?” invariably answered, ”Better, I thank you, to-day than I was yesterday. Hope I shall be right smart to-morrow.” So, friends, I could say, unasked, I am better this year than I was last, and I hope to keep on in this line until 1876, and be able then to stand with you once more upon the platform of equal rights, and shout ”Hallelujahs” over the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment; over the crowning of my labors of twenty-five years, during which time I have not failed to ask for the right of suffrage for all citizens of this Republic, of sane mind and adult years, without regard to race, color, or s.e.x.
”The good time coming is almost here.”
Yours in faith,
FRANCES D. GAGE.
The President read a letter just received from Mr. Tilton:
NEW YORK, May 11, 1870.
_Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, President of the American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation_: Honored Sir: I am commissioned by the unanimous voice of the Union Woman Suffrage Society, now a.s.sembled in Apollo Hall, to present to yourself, and through you to the a.s.sociation over which you are presiding in Steinway Hall, our friendly salutations, our hearty good will, and our sincere wishes for mutual co-operation in the cause of woman's enfranchis.e.m.e.nt.
Fraternally yours, THEODORE TILTON, President of the Union Woman Suffrage Society.
At his own desire the President was unanimously requested to make reply on the behalf of the American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation.
Mr. Beecher remarked, ”If there are two general a.s.sociations for the same purpose, it is because we mean, in this great work, to do twice as much labor as one society could possibly do.”
Rev. OSCAR CLUTE said: Every favored movement of civilization has been simply a recognition of the rights and privileges that inhere in humanity. Take for instance the idea of the divine right of kings--which has been so thoroughly scouted by our republicanism. The abandonment of that idea upon the part of our fathers was a great stride in the path of civilization. And at this time in almost all parts of the world something is being done toward giving the ma.s.ses a clearer idea of those rights which inhere in them.
In our own country, the object of the woman suffrage reformers is, not to overturn anything already established that is good and pure and n.o.ble, but to extend to women those rights which inhere in them as human beings. It is not claimed for women that they shall have any advantage over men, but simply that they shall have the right to labor and receive their earnings. That they shall have such facilities of education as men enjoy. Give woman equal opportunities. Her sphere is, undoubtedly, to engage in such labor, to get such culture, and do such good work as she finds ready to her hands, and to help on in the cause of humanity. The ballot is the key that opens to woman all the avenues of labor and of culture. If all the avenues of education and labor were open to women, we should find them growing up with higher and n.o.bler ambition than the girls of to-day. The laws at present in force are detrimental to the interests of women not only in regard to property, but to marriage itself. Some provision is necessary by which women themselves can bring their efforts to bear upon these laws, and the ballot is the only effective measure for the purpose.
Mrs. JULIA WARD HOWE said: My dear friends--Sometimes, when I begin to speak at conventions for the advocacy of woman suffrage, I feel self-dismayed in thinking that I ought to educate my audience all over from beginning to end. But this would require so much time that no one convention would ever get through with it; so I content myself with saying, as simply and as strongly as I can, what happens to be in my mind. That particular thought which is now uppermost is the great pleasure of our meeting to-day. We come together here, trusting to see in your kind faces the reflection of our great hope; and to find in your ears the echo of that great promise which some of us expected to hear a long while ago, and which all of us now see growing and strengthening until its harmony seems to us to fill the world.
We don't come together here to ignore oppositions, but to reconcile them. Oppositions are divinely appointed. I do believe that their distance can not be increased with safety to the economy of the world. But love is the tropical equator. His fiery currents are able to quicken and vivify the whole globe. They circulate equally at the arctic and antarctic extremities. The work that we are doing in common is not unfavorably affected by oppositions. The poles are G.o.d's anointed and stand firm; but opposition has quickened the currents of love until it has melted the social ice at the extremities for us, and even the snows which very prematurely, I do a.s.sure you, begin to fall upon the heads of some of us. I have been speaking and writing on this subject for a year and a half, and I find the subject always getting outside of my efforts much more rapidly than my efforts are able to get outside of it. At every new meeting I find the speech of the last meeting much too small. Whether the question grows or the speech shrinks I do not know, but I am inclined to think the former. I never knew any member of my nursery to require so much letting out, expanding, as this question. From all of this I am inclined to think that we have set our hands to a great work, to a long and hard labor, to a reform of human society; to a reduplication of human power and well-being.....
MRS. SARA J. LIPPINCOTT, more widely known as ”Grace Greenwood,”
stated that she had believed in woman suffrage since she was old enough to believe in anything that was right and to denounce anything that was wrong. She was not counted among the extremists. Indeed, she claimed the right only for three cla.s.ses of persons, namely, single women who have property of their own, married women, and all such other women as may desire it. I am willing that a property qualification should be exacted. Require, if you will, that each woman voter shall possess a gold watch, and keep it wound and up to time--a clothes wringer and a sewing machine; that she shall be able to concoct a pudding, sew on a b.u.t.ton, and, at a pinch, keep a boarding-house and support a husband respectably....
The PRESIDENT read the reply which he had prepared to the letter of Mr. Tilton as follows:
NEW YORK, May 11, 1870.
_To Theodore Tilton, President of the Woman Suffrage Society Meeting in Apollo Hall_: Dear Sir: Your letter of congratulation was received with great pleasure by the ma.s.s Convention a.s.sembled in Steinway Hall, under the auspices of the American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation, and I am instructed by their unanimous vote to express their gratification, and to reciprocate your sentiments of cordial good-will. In this great work upon which you have entered--the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of woman--we have a common aim and interest, and we shall rejoice at any success which is achieved by your zeal and fidelity.
I am, very truly, yours, HENRY WARD BEECHER.
Mrs. MARY F. DAVIS, of New Jersey, read a report from the executive committee of the New Jersey Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation.
Col. T. W. HIGGINSON spoke as follows: Mr. President, Ladies and gentlemen--I was thinking during the brilliant speech of Mrs.
Lippincott, what an awful reflection the existence of that woman was upon the Government of the country in which we live--that she should reside in sight of the Capitol of Was.h.i.+ngton and never get nearer the interior of that building than the reporter's desk.
Fancy a House of Representatives in which she should have an opportunity of talking to her fellow-delegates as she has talked to us this afternoon. Fancy the life, the new interest, the animation that will come into those desolate debates in Congress whenever she sets her foot as Senator or Representative within those halls, and the rest of the women come after her. If she was there, she might perhaps be met by the old objection, that, whatever her words may be, she did not have the physical force to sustain them. The composition of our delegates in both houses of Congress is not, as a general rule, so formidable as to lead one to suppose that they were particularly sent there for their muscle. Bring before you the array of the men whom you send to represent the nation. See how absurd it is to suppose that they were chosen for anything but their intellect. Hear this lady talk, and when you compare what you have heard with the debates in Congress, it does not seem to me that even intellect was the main consideration.
I believe that no man ever made use of that hackneyed argument, that women couldn't vote because they couldn't discharge military duty, unless there was in that man something that needed the teaching of womanhood to make him do his military duty, and do it well. I never heard that argument made that I do not suspect that there is something amiss in that man's lungs, or his liver, or at any rate his brain. The military duties of the nation have nothing to do with the elective franchise. Every soldier who comes back from military service finds the way to the polls blocked up by dozens of men who, at the time of the draft, suddenly developed lamenesses, either of limbs, or of excuses; men who wanted to see if there wasn't some wound or trouble by which they could be relieved from the obvious necessity. You recollect the man that Mr. Clarke spoke to you of this morning, who, at the sacking of Lawrence, hid himself in the cellar, while his wife guided with a lantern the border ruffians who were in search of him. She relied apparently upon the ingenuity of the husband to hide himself effectively--a reliance in which she was not disappointed. Not having found him, they decided to set fire to the house, and then she asked permission to bring out her household furniture and save it from the flames. To finish up she dragged out a great roll of carpet. Had anybody sat down on that roll of carpet they would have heard the ready scream of her brave but suffering husband. If that man was like mult.i.tudes of men, if he were a man like Horace Greeley in his opinions, the moment the carpet was unrolled, the carpet knight would step out, and his first remark to his wife would probably be, ”My dear, you can now return to the kitchen. I will do the voting, because I have the physical strength to stand by the Government.”
Woman, in time of war, has her mission, as man has his. It is idle to talk about her ”sphere”--as her sphere is generally interpreted. Even in the most disastrous war, the mission of woman is plainly to be discerned in deeds of self-denial and self-sacrifice. Women have worked themselves literally to death through the toils and exposures of war. Of all the semblances of argument that can be brought against the right of woman to the suffrage--of all the figments of the brain that men devise, there is nothing idler than to object to this right on the ground that suffrage and bearing arms should go together. In times of war the women of our country did aid and comfort and bless our suffering armies, and hundreds of returned soldiers owe their restoration to health and life to the ministering labors and devotedness of some woman. Such men will not use the argument that woman should not have the suffrage because she can not bear arms.
The ballot of woman is needed to render our civilization more complete and harmonious. I knew a lady who rode with the first party of ladies over the mountains into a mining town of California. The whole population turned out to see the novel spectacle. What did they say when the women came among them? Did they say, ”Go away from here; this is no place for women; you will uns.e.x yourself?” Oh, no! The first sound heard from that silent and expectant throng of miners was a rough voice calling out, ”Three cheers for the ladies who have come to make us better!” It is this coming of the new influence--not a purer influence merely, for doubtless a great part of what is called the purity of woman is but the purity of ignorance, that rough contact with the world would seem to endanger--it is not merely the greater purity, but it is because she is the other part of the human race; it is because without her we have fathers in the State, but no mothers; it is because without her in our legislative halls, we have laws that take from the mother the right to every child she bears; it is because without her in our courts, lawyers use foul words that shame the purity of woman.