Volume III Part 16 (1/2)

* * * I beg to offer to the venerable pioneers of the movement, more especially to Lucretia Mott, a tribute of respectful admiration and grat.i.tude for the services they have rendered in the cause of enfranchis.e.m.e.nt. * * * As regards the United kingdom, the movement in a practical form is but twelve years old, and in that period, although we have not obtained the parliamentary franchise, we have seen it supported by at least one-third of the House of Commons, and our claim admitted as one which must be dealt with in future measures of parliamentary reform. We have obtained the munic.i.p.al franchise and the school-board franchise. Women have secured the right to enter the medical profession and to take degrees in the University of London, besides considerable amendment of the law regarding married women, though much remains to be done.

Senator Sargent, since minister to Berlin, wrote:

I regret that the necessity to proceed at once to California will deprive me of the pleasure of attending your convention of July 19, the anniversary of the spirited declaration of rights put forth thirty years ago by some of the n.o.blest and most enlightened women of America. Women's rights have made vast strides since that day, in juster legislation, in widened spheres of employment, and in the gradual but certain recognition by large numbers of citizens of the justice and policy of extending the elective franchise to women. It is now very generally conceded that the time is rapidly approaching when women will vote. The friends of the movement have faith in the result; its enemies grudgingly admit it. Courage and work will hasten the day. The worst difficulties have already been overcome. The movement has pa.s.sed the stage of ridicule, and even that of abuse, and has entered that of intelligent discussion, its worst adversaries treating it with respect. You are so familiar with all the arguments in favor of this great reform that I will not attempt to state them; but I wish to say that as an observer of public events, it is my deliberate judgment that your triumph is near at hand. There are vastly more men and women in the United States now who believe that women should have the right to vote than there were in 1848 who believed the slave should be freed.

This is a government of opinions and the growing opinion will be irresistible.

Respectfully yours, A. A. SARGENT.

The following letters from the great leaders of the anti-slavery movement were gratefully received. As Mr. Garrison soon after finished his eventful life, this proved to be his last message to our a.s.sociation:

BOSTON, June 30, 1878.

MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY--Your urgent and welcome letter, inviting me to the thirtieth anniversary of the woman's rights movement at Rochester, came yesterday. Most earnestly do I wish I could be present to help mark this epoch in our movement, and join in congratulating the friends on the marvelous results of their labors. No reform has gathered more devoted and self-sacrificing friends. No one has had lives more generously given to its service; and you who have borne such heavy burdens may well rejoice in the large harvest; for no reform has, I think, had such rapid success. You who remember the indifference which almost discouraged us in 1848, and who have so bravely faced ungenerous opposition and insult since, must look back on the result with unmixed astonishment and delight. Temperance, and finance--which is but another name for the labor movement--and woman's rights, are three radical questions which overtop all others in value and importance. Woman's claim for the ballot-box has had a much wider influence than merely to protect woman.

Universal suffrage is itself in danger. Scholars dread it; social science and journalists attack it. The discussion of woman's claim has done much to reveal this danger, and rally patriotic and thoughtful men in defense. In many ways the agitation has educated the people. Its success shows that the ma.s.ses are sound and healthy; and if we gain, in the coming fifteen years, half as much as we have in the last thirty, woman will hold spear and s.h.i.+eld in her own hands. If I might presume to advise, I should say close up the ranks and write on our flag only one claim--the ballot. Everything helps us, and if we are united, success cannot long be delayed.

Very cordially yours, WENDELL PHILLIPS.

BOSTON, July 16, 1878.

MY DEAR FRIEND--The thirtieth anniversary of the first woman's rights convention ever held with special reference to demanding the elective franchise irrespective of s.e.x well deserves to be commemorated in the manner set forth in the call for the same, at Rochester, on the 19th instant. As a subst.i.tute for my personal attendance, I can only send a brief but warm congratulatory epistle on the cheering progress which the movement has made within the period named. For how widely different are the circ.u.mstances under which that convention was held, and those which attend the celebration of its third decade! Then, the a.s.sertion of civil and political equality, alike for men and women, excited widespread disgust and astonishment, as though it were a proposition to repeal the laws of nature, and literally to ”turn the world upside down”; and it was ridiculed and caricatured as little short of lunacy. Now, it is a subject of increasing interest and grave consideration, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and what at first appeared to be so foolish in pretension is admitted by all reflecting and candid minds to be deserving of the most respectful treatment. Then, its avowed friends, were indeed ”few and far between,” even among those disfranchised as the penalty of their womanhood. Now, they can be counted by tens of thousands, and their number is augmenting--foremost in intelligence, in weight of character, in strength of understanding, in manly and womanly development, and in all that goes to make up enlightened citizens.h.i.+p. Then, with rare exceptions, women were everywhere remanded to poverty and servile dependence, being precluded from following those avocations and engaging in those pursuits which make competency and independence not a difficult achievement. Now, there is scarcely any situation or profession, in the arrangements of society, to which they may not and do not aspire, and in which many of them are not usefully engaged; whether in new and varied industrial employment, in the arts and sciences, in the highest range of literature, in philosophic and mathematical investigations, in the professions of law, medicine, and divinity, in high scholars.h.i.+p, in educational training and supervision, in rhetoric and oratory, in the lyceum, or in discharging the official duties connected with the various departments of the State and national governments.

Almost all barriers are down except that which prevents women from going to the polls to help decide who shall be the law-makers and what shall be the laws, so that the general welfare may be impartially consulted, and the blessings of freedom and equal rights be enjoyed by all. That barrier, too, must give way wherever erected, as sure as time outlasts and baffles every device of wrong-doing, and truth is stronger than falsehood, and the law of eternal justice is as reliable as the law of gravitation. Yes! the grand fundamental truths of the Declaration of Independence shall yet be reduced to practice in our land--that the human race are created free and equal; that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, and that taxation without representation is tyranny.

And I confidently predict that this will be witnessed before the expiration of another decade.

Yours, to abate nothing of heart or hope, WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.

Mrs. Mott never seemed more hopeful for the triumph of our principles than on this occasion. She expressed great satisfaction in the number of young women who for the first time that day graced our platform.[40] Though in her eighty-sixth year, her enthusiasm in the cause for which she had so long labored seemed still unabated, and her eye sparkled with humor as of yore while giving some amusing reminiscences of encounters with opponents in the early days. Always apt in biblical quotations she had proved herself a worthy antagonist of the clergy on our platform. She had slain many Abimelechs with short texts of Scripture, whose defeat was the more humiliating because received at the hand of a woman.

As she recounted in her happiest vein the triumphs of her coadjutors she was received with the heartiest manifestations of delight by her auditors. She took a lively interest in the discussion of the resolutions that had been presented by the chairman of the committee, Matilda Joslyn Gage:

_Resolved_, That a government of the people, by the people and for the people is yet to be realized; for that which is formed, administered and controlled only by men, is practically nothing more than an enlarged oligarchy, whose a.s.sumptions of natural superiority and of the right to rule are as baseless as those enforced by the aristocratic powers of the old world.

_Resolved_, That in celebrating our third decade we have reason to congratulate ourselves on the marked change in woman's position--in her enlarged opportunities for education and labor, her greater freedom under improved social customs and civil laws, and the promise of her speedy enfranchis.e.m.e.nt in the minor political rights she has already secured.

_Resolved_, That the International Congress[41] called in Paris, July 20, to discuss the rights of woman--the eminent Victor Hugo, its presiding officer--is one of the most encouraging events of the century, in that statesmen and scholars from all parts of the world, amid the excitement of the French Exposition, propose to give five days to deliberations upon this question.

_Resolved_, That the majority report of the chairman of the Committee on Privileges and Elections, Senator Wadleigh of New Hamps.h.i.+re, against a sixteenth amendment to secure the political rights of woman in its weakness, shows the strength of our reform.

_Resolved_, That the national effort to force citizens.h.i.+p on the Indians, the decision of Judge Sawyer in the United States Circuit Court of California against the naturalization of the Chinese, and the refusal of congress to secure the right of suffrage to women, are cla.s.s legislation, dangerous to the stability of our inst.i.tutions.

WHEREAS, Woman's rights and duties in all matters of legislation are the same as those of man.

_Resolved_, That the problems of labor, finance, suffrage, international rights, internal improvements, and other great questions, can never be satisfactorily adjusted without the enlightened thought of woman, and her voice in the councils of the nation.

_Resolved_, That the question of capital and labor is one of special interest to us. Man, standing to woman in the position of capitalist, has robbed her through the ages of the results of her toil. No just settlement of this question can be attained until the right of woman to the proceeds of her labor in the family and elsewhere is recognized, and she is welcomed into every industry on the basis of equal pay for equal work.

_Resolved_, That as the first duty of every individual is self-development, the lessons of self-sacrifice and obedience taught woman by the Christian church have been fatal, not only to her own vital interests, but through her, to those of the race.

_Resolved_, That the great principle of the Protestant Reformation, the right of individual conscience and judgment heretofore exercised by man alone, should now be claimed by woman; that, in the interpretation of Scripture, she should be guided by her own reason, and not by the authority of the church.

_Resolved_, That it is through the perversion of the religious element in woman--playing upon her hopes and fears of the future, holding this life with all its high duties in abeyance to that which is to come--that she and the children she has trained have been so completely subjugated by priestcraft and superst.i.tion.