Volume III Part 71 (1/2)
The legislature of 1807 departed from this wise and just precedent, and pa.s.sed an arbitrary act, in direct violation of the const.i.tutional provision, restricting the suffrage to white male adult citizens, and this despotic ordinance was deliberately endorsed by the framers of the State const.i.tution which was adopted in 1844. This was plainly an act of usurpation and injustice, as thereby a large proportion of the law-abiding citizens of the State were disfranchised, without so much as the privilege of signifying their acceptance or rejection of the barbarous fiat which was to rob them of the sacred right of self-protection by means of a voice in the government, and to reduce them to the political level of the ”pauper, idiot, insane person, or person convicted of crime.”
If this flagrant wrong, which was inflicted by one-half the citizens of a free commonwealth on the other half, had been aimed at any other than a non-aggressive and self-sacrificing cla.s.s, there would have been fierce resistance, as in the case of the United Colonies under the British yoke. It has long been borne in silence. ”The right of voting for representatives,” says Paine, ”is the primary right, by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce man to a state of slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the electing of representatives is in this condition.” Benjamin Franklin wrote: ”They who have no voice nor vote in the electing of representatives do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes and to their representatives; for to be enslaved is to have governors whom other men have set over us, and be subject to laws made by the representatives of others, without having had representatives of our own to give consent in our behalf.”
This is the condition of the women of New Jersey. It is evident to every reasonable mind that these unjustly disfranchised citizens should be renstated in the right of suffrage. Therefore, we, your memorialists, ask the legislature at its present session to submit to the people of New Jersey an amendment to the const.i.tution, striking out the word ”male” from article 2, section 1, in order that the political liberty which our forefathers so n.o.bly bestowed on men and women alike, may be restored to ”all inhabitants” of the populous and prosperous State into which their brave young colony has grown.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Cornelia Collins Hussey]
With but a slight change of officers and arguments, these conventions were similar from year to year. There were on all occasions a certain number of the clergy in opposition. At one of these meetings the Rev. Mr. McMurdy condemned the ordination of women for the ministry. But woman's fitness[279] for that profession was successfully vindicated by Lucretia Mott and Phebe A. Hanaford. Mrs. Portia Gage writes, December 12, 1873:
There was an election held by the order of the towns.h.i.+p committee of Landis, to vote on the subject of bonding the town to build shoe and other factories. The call issued was for all legal voters. I went with some ten or twelve other women, all taxpayers. We offered our votes, claiming that we were citizens of the United States, and of the State of New Jersey, also property-holders in and residents of Landis towns.h.i.+p, and wished to express our opinion on the subject of having our property bonded. Of course our votes were not accepted, whilst every _tatterdemalion_ in town, either black or white, who owned no property, stepped up and very pompously said what he would like to have done with his property. For the first time our claim to vote seemed to most of the voters to be a just one. They gathered together in groups and got quite excited over the injustice of refusing our vote and accepting those of men who paid no taxes.
In 1879, the Woman's Political Science Club[280] was formed in Vineland, which held its meetings semi-monthly, and discussed a wide range of subjects. Among the n.o.ble women in New Jersey who have stood for many years steadfast representatives of the suffrage movement, Cornelia Collins Hussey of Orange is worthy of mention. A long line of radical and brave ancestors[281] made it comparatively easy for her to advocate an unpopular cause. Her father, Stacy B. Collins, identified with the anti-slavery movement, was also an advocate of woman's right to do whatever she could even to the exercise of the suffrage. He maintained that the tax-payer should vote regardless of s.e.x, and as years pa.s.sed on he saw clearly that not alone the tax-payer, but every citizen of the United States governed and punished by its laws, had a just and natural right to the ballot in a country claiming to be republican. The following beautiful tribute to his memory, by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, is found in a letter to his daughter:
LONDON, July 27, 1873.
My last letter from America brought me the sad intelligence of your dear father's departure from amongst you; and I cannot refrain from at once writing and begging you to accept the sincere sympathy and inevitable regret which I feel for your loss. The disappearance of an old friend brings up the long past times vividly to my remembrance--the time when, impelled by irresistible spiritual necessity, I strove to lead a useful but unusual life, and was able to face, with the energy of youth, both social prejudice and the hindrance of poverty. I have to recall those early days to show how precious your father's sympathy and support were to me in that difficult time; and how highly I respected his moral courage in steadily, for so many years, encouraging the singular woman doctor, at whom everybody looked askance, and in pa.s.sing whom so many women held their clothes aside, lest they should touch her. I know in how many good and n.o.ble things your father took part; but, to me, this brave advocacy of woman as physician, in that early time, seems the n.o.blest of his actions.
Speaking of the general activity of the women of Orange, Mrs.
Hussey says:
The Women's Club of Orange was started in 1871. It is a social and literary club, and at present (1885) numbers about eighty members. Meetings are held in the rooms of the New England Society once in two weeks, and a reception, with refreshments, given at the house of some member once a year.
Some matter of interest is discussed at each regular meeting. This is not an equal suffrage club, yet a steady growth in that direction is very evident. Very good work has been done by this club. An evening school for girls was started by it, and taught by the members for awhile, until adopted by the board of education, a boys' evening school being already in operation. Under the arrangements of the club, a course of lectures on physiology, by women, was recently given in Orange, and well attended. At the house of one of the members a discussion was held on this subject: ”Does the Private Character of the Actor Concern the Public?” Although the subject was a general one, the discussion was really upon the proper course in regard to M'lle Sarah Bernhardt, who had recently arrived in the country. Reporters from the New York _Sun_ attended the meeting, so that the views of the club of Orange gained quite a wide celebrity.
Of Mrs. Hussey's remarks, the Newark _Journal_ said:
The sentiments of the first speaker, Mrs. Cornelia C.
Hussey, were generally approved, and therefore are herewith given in full: ”I have so often maintained in argument that one has no right to honor those whose lives are a dishonor to virtue or principle, that I cannot see any other side to our question than the affirmative. That the stage wields a potent influence cannot be doubted. Let the plays be immoral, and its influence must be disastrous to virtue. Let the known character of the actor be what we cannot respect, the glamour which his genius or talent throws around that bad character will tend to diminish our discrimination between virtue and vice, and our distaste for the latter.
Some one says: 'Let me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes the laws.' The poetry that Byron wrote, together with his well-known contempt for a virtuous life, is said to have had a very pernicious influence on the young men of his time, and probably, too, blinded the eyes of the young women. I recall being quite startled by reading the essay of Whittier on Byron, which showed him as he was, and not with the halo of his great genius thrown around his vices. It seemed to me that our national government dethroned virtue when it sent a homicide, if not a murderer, to represent us at a foreign court; and again when it sent as minister to another court on the continent a man whose private character was well known to be thoroughly immoral.
Even to trifle with virtue, or to be a coward in the cause of principle, is a fearful thing; but when, a person comes before the public, saying by his life that he prefers the pleasures of sin to the paths of virtue, it seems to me that the way is plain--to withhold our patronage as a matter of public policy.”
On the Fourth of July, 1874, Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake was invited to make the usual address in East Orange, which she did before a large audience in the public hall. Says the _Journal_: ”Mrs. Blake's speech was characterized by simplicity of style and appropriateness of sentiment.” She made mention of Molly Pitcher, Mrs. Borden and Mrs. Hall of New Jersey, and of noted women of other States, who did good service in Revolutionary times, when the country needed the help of her daughters as well as her sons.
In the summer of 1876 a noteworthy meeting was held in Orange in the interest of women. A number of ladies and gentlemen met in my parlor to listen to statements in relation to what is called the ”social evil,” to be made by the Rev. J. P. Gledstone and Mr. Henry J. Wilson, delegates from the ”British, Continental and General Federation for the Abolition of Government Regulation of Prost.i.tution.” It is due to the English gentlemen to say that they gave some very strong reasons for bringing the disagreeable subject before the meeting, and that they handled it with becoming delicacy, though with great plainness.
”Ann A. Horton, who died in June, 1875, at the Old Ladies'
Home, Newark, bequeathed $2,000 to Princeton College, to found a scholars.h.i.+p to be called by her name.” Would not the endowment of a ”free bed” in Mrs. Horton's true alma-mater, the Old Ladies' Home, have been a far wiser bequest than the foundation of a scholars.h.i.+p in Princeton--a college which, while fattening on enormous dole received from women, offers them nothing in return?
In relation to the law giving the mothers of New Jersey some legal claim to their children, Mrs. Hussey writes:
I have often heard it said that Kansas is the only State where the married mother has any legal owners.h.i.+p in her children; but the women of New Jersey have enjoyed this _privilege_ since 1871, when it was gained for them by the efforts of Mrs. Ann H. Connelly of Rahway. She was an American woman, the mother of one daughter, and unhappily married. She desired to be divorced from her husband, but she knew that in such case he might legally take her child from her. Such a risk could not be thought of for a moment; so she applied to the legislature for a change of the law.
She was a.s.sisted by many influential citizens, both men and women; pet.i.tions largely signed were presented, and the result was the amendment of the law making the mother and father equal in the owners.h.i.+p of their children. When a copy of the new law appeared in our papers I wrote to Mrs.
Connelly, inclosing a resolution of thanks from the Ess.e.x County Woman Suffrage Society, of which I was then secretary. In her reply she said: ”This unexpected and distinguis.h.i.+ng recognition of my imperfect, but earnest, efforts for justice is inexpressibly gratifying.” Several years after, I went with my daughter to Rahway to see Mrs.
Connelly. She seemed to be well known and much respected.
She was teaching in one of the public schools, but seemed quite feeble in health. In 1881 I saw the notice of her death. She was a woman of much intelligence, and strongly interested in suffrage, and should certainly be held in grateful remembrance by the mothers of New Jersey, to whom she restored the right which nature gave them, but which men had taken away by mistaken legislation.
This law of February 21, 1871, composed of several acts purporting to give fathers and mothers equal rights in cases of separation and divorce, is not so liberal as it seems in considering this provision: