Volume II Part 132 (1/2)
Yours truly, J. T. SARGENT.
WEST NEWTON, _May 6, 1866_.
E. C. STANTON, _President Executive Committee Women's Rights a.s.sociation_:
MY DEAR MRS. S.:--I had hoped to be present at this, our eleventh anniversary, but find it impossible. And so, at the last moment, I hasten to express my earnest conviction that now, as never before, we are called upon for vigorous, united action--that we are left no alternative but an unflinching protest against the strange legislation by which a Republican Congress, so-called, a.s.sumes to engraft upon our national Const.i.tution, as ”amendments!” clauses which not only allow rebels to disfranchise loyal soldiers, who have borne the flag of the Republic victoriously against their treason and rebellion, but to keep the ballot from the hands of all women!
If not moved by an enlightened appreciation of the first principles of political economy and social justice in legislation touching them heretofore, we could scarcely believe that after the record made by both the proscribed cla.s.ses during our late fearful struggle, our legislators could gravely stoop to brand them anew as ”aliens” and outlaws! It is an act as discreditable to their hearts and their moral sense as to their statesmans.h.i.+p. And upon their shoulders must rest the responsibility of an agitation to which we are thus forced--an agitation which we have hesitated to arouse while so many vital questions touching the future of the negro were awaiting settlement, and in which we are acting strictly on the defensive. Under the magnificent utterance of our brave Senator Sumner--which was an inspiration and a prophecy--we looked to see all faltering and compromise, so fatal in all our past, so fatal always and everywhere, swept like dew before the sun. But the old fears and falterings return sevenfold reinforced to renew a puerile and patch-work legislation, which, while a.s.serting the truth, submits to, nay, invites a fresh struggle over each separate application of the same ”self-evident truth.” What remains for us, then, but to turn from a Congress from which we had hoped so much, which might have dared anything in the interest of loyalty and justice, as our brave brethren turned, from a recreant President to the people, whom he and Congress have not dared to trust, and resolve to do our utmost to awaken a public sentiment which only slumbers, but is not dead, and which shall make impossible such burlesques, such infamous ”amendments” to our organic law. With undiminished hope and faith, yours,
CAROLINE M. SEVERANCE.
HARTFORD, _April 22, 1866_.
DEAR MADAM:--I learn by a circular I have received that a Woman's Rights Convention is to be held in New York in May. I can not have the pleasure of attending it, but I would like to take this opportunity of telling you I am with you, heart and soul, in this cause--of thanking you, and those with whom you are a.s.sociated, for the n.o.ble work you have done, and are doing, in the cause of universal suffrage. There never was a more opportune time for calling a convention of this kind than the present, when it is evident that the United States Const.i.tution is about to undergo some repairs--when all the so-called radicals in Congress are trying to have it so altered as to insure the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of one-half the nation. They have so strangely perverted the meaning of the term ”universal suffrage,” that it is a misnomer as at present used by them. It is rather significant of the ”universality” of the suffrage intended, that every one of these special guardians of freedom refused to present Congress a pet.i.tion for woman's enfranchis.e.m.e.nt; that the Ma.s.sachusetts Senator who leads the van of freedom's host, did, finally, most reluctantly present it with one hand, while taking good care to deal it a blow with the other that would prove a most effectual quietus to it; that a representative [Mr. Boutwell], after repeating the self-evident truth that ”there can be no just government without the consent of the governed,” says that ”man is endowed by nature with the priority of right to the vote rather than woman or child;” that the two Senators from Ma.s.sachusetts have each proposed amendments to the Const.i.tution holding out inducements to the States to enfranchise all male inhabitants, but none to enfranchise women, when they could have included them by omitting one word; that that light of freedom, Mr. Greeley, of the _Tribune_, states that ”men express the public sense as fully as if women voted” [speech in Suffield, Conn., last June]. These are a few of the straws pointing to that sham labeled ”universal suffrage.”
The conservatives of the slave-driving school have had an odious enough reputation, but I never heard of any of them taking measures to so amend the Const.i.tution as to insure the perpetuation of the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of sixteen millions of the nation, as would the proposed amendments of Messrs. Sumner and Wilson. And these Ma.s.sachusetts Senators are called the foremost workers in the ranks of liberty's grand army. If these are the foremost, Heaven save us from those in the rear! Why does Mr. Boutwell try to make it appear that he believes that governments, to be founded on justice, should obtain ”the consent of the governed,” when he believes the consent of only one-half the governed should be obtained? when he cla.s.ses adults as fully capable of exercising an enlightened judgment as himself with infants? If Mr. Greeley thinks it right for one-half the people to represent the wants, and speak as they may think best for the other half, that other half having no choice in the matter, he must admit, if he have a t.i.the of the sense of justice attributed to him, that it would be only fair to let each half take their turn--the men expressing the public sense a part of the time, then the women--thus alternating between the two, in order to balance the scales of justice with perfect equilibrium.
It seems rather a difficult matter for men to appreciate the fact that women are ordinary human beings, with the wants and reasoning faculties of the same. If women lived on the plane where sword and cannon are resorted to for the procuring of justice, men might then see the necessity of establis.h.i.+ng equality of rights for all. But the power of women lies in spiritual, not in brute force; therefore men have failed to comprehend them, or to see the necessity of granting rights that are not contested at the point of the bayonet. Add to this the ambitious but weak love of power--of having some one to rule--inherent in the natures of most men, and the causes of woman's bondage are pretty clear. In the light of the developments of the past few months it is plain that the most thorough faced abolitionists--those who wax eloquent for the negro--are as much in favor of continuing the slavery of women as were Southern planters of continuing negro slavery. There are a few exceptions to this, and but a few.
Even the Boston _Commonwealth_, perhaps as radical a paper as any now published, and which favors suffrage for women, is a good ill.u.s.tration of the difficulty of the most liberal-minded men seeing this question in its true light; for, in its issue of February 24, it says that ”suffrage for women is not a political necessity of a republican government.”
The _Nation_ thinks women ought to be deprived of the franchise because they do not, as a general thing, express a wish for it, stating at the same time that they have as good a right to it as men.
Remarkable logic this, to deprive the whole cla.s.s of the power to obtain their dues because they do not _en ma.s.se_ express a wish for them. There are men who do not care enough about the franchise to make use of it; therefore, according to this argument, they should be immediately disfranchised.
There is no compulsion in exercising the right to the vote--all can let it alone who choose; and did every woman in the land choose to let it alone, it would be no argument for withholding from her the power to make use of it whenever disposed. But the statement that they are opposed to it is untrue. No woman--whether teacher, or telegraph operator, or government clerk, or dry-goods clerk, all the way down to the poor needle-woman who lives under a reign of oppression as frightful as that in the manufacturing districts of England--is paid more than half or a third what she earns, or what a man would be paid performing the same services, and performing them no better, in many cases not so well; and the needle-women are paid no more than a tenth part of what they earn. And yet women do not rise up against the oppression that denies them the just compensation; therefore these logicians of the _Nation's_ school must, to be consistent, argue that women do not wish to have just wages paid them, and they should not have just wages offered them--the right of accepting or refusing being at their own option.
It seems to be full time for the women of this country to demand a settlement of the question whether they are still to be treated as infants or as intelligent adults. If the former treatment is to be continued it would be very appropriate to present Congress with a protest against having one-half the basis of representation composed of those who are to remain in a state of perpetual infancy (which needs and can have representation; whose government must be as absolute as that of the Czar's, the very word ”representative”
implying a subst.i.tute chosen by another)--a protest that if they are too good--as often stated, too divine--to have any voice in such earthly matters as governments, they are also too good to be thrust just so far into the body politic as to swell the basis of representation one-half, merely for the furtherance of the interests of ambitious politicians, and then to be put one side and utterly ignored when the voice of a free intelligent being is required.
It seems to be full time for women to take soundings of the depth of the professions, and make calculations of the lat.i.tude and longitude of the party to which alone they have looked for redemption from the slavery in which they have ever been held, when the chief ones of that party--now that there is any possibility of attaining that object--utterly refuse all efforts in that direction, and, worse than that, give indications of taking positive measures in the opposite direction. It is important that Congress be flooded with pet.i.tions on this matter--that it be allowed no rest from them; and, in addition to pet.i.tions, a bill is needed excluding women from the basis of representation so long as they shall be excluded from the franchise--excluding them from the list of taxable persons and from those who are by law liable to the death-penalty.
Should such a bill be tabled by Congress; should they refuse all action on it that would place them in their true light, showing that they look upon this question the same as the Southern Congress under Polk, Pierce, and Buchanan looked upon the anti-slavery movement--very much afraid of having the subject agitated; should they give it a decided veto, that would place them in their true light--greatly opposed to universal suffrage, although it is their policy to sail under that banner, like the pirate who sometimes finds an advantage in subst.i.tuting for his own black flag some more respectable one. Should they pa.s.s such a bill it would place them in a better light than they have ever had the fortune to be in before, while it would make it for the interest of the States to have this bill followed up by another, giving women the franchise; and it is very doubtful whether we will ever obtain it in any other way than from motives of self-interest on the part of legislators--motives of pure justice and right occupying a secondary place.
The statutes of the land present a remarkable conglomeration of inconsistencies and injustice in regard to women, and show the utter failure of the plan of having one cla.s.s govern another cla.s.s without any consent or partic.i.p.ation in the matter on the part of the cla.s.s so governed. The law ought not in certain cases to treat women as infants and wholly irresponsible beings, merely to foster a weak ambition and love of power, and in other cases as wholly responsible adults. The infant regimen should be enforced thoroughly from the day of their birth to the day of their death, whether it be in one year or a hundred, or they should come, in all respects, under a system adapted to responsible, intelligent adults. Infants should not pay taxes and they should not be hung. It is the general opinion that the infant Surrat committed crimes equal in magnitude to those of any of the conspirators who were hung with her, but her state of infancy should have afforded her legal protection from the gallows. If this government is too weak to decide the qualifications of voters; too weak to extend freedom from the northern coast of Maine to the southern coast of Florida; too weak to prevent any State disfranchising its inhabitants; too weak to make ignorance, criminality, and non-age the only political limitations for man or woman, be they black or white, or a combination of all the hues of the rainbow; too weak to send tyranny to the wall and make liberty the universal rule for this broad land; then a party must and will arise of sufficient metal to infuse into it the requisite strength--a party that will ”strengthen its weak hands and confirm its feeble knees.”
Concentration of power for the establishment and extension of liberty is not a tendency to despotism. Despotisms are never built out of that material. But that is a despotism as bad as Austria that allows one-half its citizens to govern the other half without any consent of theirs; and it is none the less a despotism for being divided up into petty State despotisms than if carried on by the general government, so long as they are all agreed on disfranchising one-half the people.
Thirty-six despotisms make a pretty good sized one taken in the aggregate. The party to inaugurate the reign of freedom must inevitably arise, for the elements to bring it into power are at work.
Morally, it will tower as far above the present republican party as that did above the old ones--whig and democratic. There are true souls, women and men, in the Old World and the New, faithfully working and watching for its advent.
Some months ago we got word from over the water that John Stuart Mill had been elected to that formidable body of conservatism--the British Parliament. Another significant fact, but this time significant of good. The writings of Mill are illumined by the sun-clear radiance of that liberty for which he appeals--a liberty that s.h.i.+nes with the steady light of a fixed star--and which I have watched for in vain in the writings and speeches of the most noted reformers on this continent. When men like him come into power I think we have good ground for taking fresh courage. I have written more than I intended, but the subject is one on which I do not feel like restricting myself, especially when writing to one who fully appreciates the situation.
Sincerely hoping you may never weary in your good work.
Yours respectfully, F. ELLEN BURR.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
ALBANY, _April 9, 1866_.