Volume IV Part 53 (1/2)
Paul, thus carrying on two series of meetings contemporaneously. The Hon. Wm. Dudley Foulke occupied the chair. Mayor George A. Pillsbury, of Minneapolis, gave the address of welcome, which he closed by saying: ”Our citizens may not all agree with you, yet we recognize the fact that some of the greatest and best minds in the country are engaged in this work. I have never identified myself with your organization but wish you G.o.dspeed, and hope to see the time when the women shall stand with the men at the polls.”
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe in responding said: ”We are glad to be welcomed for ourselves; we are still more gratified by the welcome extended to our cause. We do not live altogether in our magnificent cities and houses; we all live in houses not made with hands. We have with us some who have devoted their lives to this n.o.ble work. They have been building up, stone by stone, a mighty structure, and it is to lay a few more stones that we have gathered here.”
It had been persistently a.s.serted that Mrs. Howe and Louisa M. Alcott had renounced their belief in equal suffrage. Mrs. Howe was present to speak for herself. Miss Alcott wrote from Concord, Ma.s.s.:
I should think it was hardly necessary for me to say that it is impossible for me ever to ”go back” on woman suffrage. I earnestly desire to go forward on that line as far and as fast as the prejudices, selfishness and blindness of the world will let us, and it is a great cross to me that ill-health and home duties prevent my devoting heart, pen and time to this most vital question of the age. After a fifty years' acquaintance with the n.o.ble men and women of the anti-slavery cause and the sight of the glorious end to their faithful work, I should be a traitor to all I most love, honor and desire to imitate if I did not covet a place among those who are giving their lives to the emanc.i.p.ation of the white slaves of America.
If I can do no more, let my name stand among those who are willing to bear ridicule and reproach for the truth's sake, and so earn some right to rejoice when the victory is won.
Most heartily yours for woman suffrage and all other reforms.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps wrote: ”With all my head and with all my heart I believe in womanhood suffrage; can I say more for your convention?”
and from the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, of Boston, ”Every word spoken for or against our cause helps it forward. I feel that there is a current of conviction sweeping us on toward the day when there shall be neither male nor female, in Church or State, but equal rights for all, and the tools to those who can use them.”
Chief-Justice Greene, of Was.h.i.+ngton Territory, sent a careful statistical computation in regard to the women's votes, and said: ”My sober judgment, from the best light I have succeeded in getting, is that at our last general election the women cast as full or a fuller vote than the men in proportion to their numbers.” Mrs. Livermore wrote:
Whatever may be the apparent direction of the ripples on the surface, facts which acc.u.mulate daily show us that the cause of woman's enfranchis.e.m.e.nt progresses with a deep and steady undercurrent. The long, weary, faithful work of the past, covering almost half a century, has resulted in a radical change of public opinion. It has opened to woman the doors of colleges, universities and professional schools; it has increased her opportunities for self-support till the United States census enumerates nearly 300 employments in which women are working and earning livelihoods; it has repealed many of the unjust laws which discriminate against woman; it has given her partial suffrage in twelve States and full suffrage in three Territories.
Courage, then, for the end draws near! A few more years of persistent, faithful work and the women of the United States will be recognized as the legal equals of men; for the goal towards which we toil is the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women, since the ballot is the only symbol of legal equality that is known in a republic.
Chancellor Wm. G. Eliot, of Was.h.i.+ngton University, St. Louis, wrote:
Considered as a _right_, suffrage belongs equally to man and woman. They are equally citizens and taxpayers. They share equally in the advantages of good government and suffer equally from bad legislation. They equally need the right of self-protection which the ballot alone can give. In average good, practical sense, wherever fair opportunity is permitted women are equal to men. In moral perception and practice women are at least equal--generally the superiors, if such comparison must be made.
There is, therefore, no justification in saying that the right of suffrage, on whatever founded, belongs to man rather than to woman.
Considered as a _privilege_, little needs to be said on either side.... Every citizen is under moral obligation to take part in the social interests and welfare of the community, whether national or munic.i.p.al. Woman equally with man is under that moral law. In a republic she can not rightly be deprived of the opportunity to do her full share as a citizen in all that concerns good government.
This seems to be the whole story. I have read with astonishment the arguments (so called) of Francis Parkman, the Rev. Brooke Herford and Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells. They scarcely touch the real merits of the case.
Dr. Mary F. Thomas, of Indiana, wrote:
As I see pictured before me all of you gathered from different parts of this great sisterhood of States to discuss the grand principle of human freedom, I can but compare this a.s.sembly with one convened in Philadelphia over a hundred years ago with this difference--they declared for the civil and political freedom of all men; you ask to-day that all human beings of sound mind shall enjoy the civil and political rights which they are ent.i.tled to by virtue of their humanity. As the judicious management of the family circle requires the combined wisdom and judgment of father and mother, so this great political family, whose interests are identical, can only be consistently managed by the complete representation and concurrence of each individual governed by its laws.
It is not necessary for me to show argument for this statement, as your meeting to-day, composed of men and women thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the great truth contained in the Declaration of Independence, will supply words glowing with fervor that can not be written, that comes with a full conviction of the magnitude of this great question, involving even the perpetuity of our government.... But without other reasons than that it is right, let the united voice of your meeting demand full recognition of the political rights of the women of the nation, so that it may stand before the world exemplifying the meaning of a true republic. After near half a century of earnest, continued pleading we see light breaking in different parts of the political horizon. If it takes half a century more, nay, even longer than that, to establish this truth let us never falter.
For we know our cause is just and, as G.o.d is just, the eternal principles of right must succeed.
Among the speakers were Mr. Foulke, Mr. Blackwell, Mrs. Alice Pickler of Dakota, Mrs. Cutler, Miss Bessie Isaacs of Was.h.i.+ngton Territory, the Rev. Ada C. Bowles of Ma.s.sachusetts, Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway, editor of the _New Northwest_, Oregon, and from Minneapolis Mrs. Sarah Burger Stearns, C. H. Du Bois, editor of the _Spectator_, Dr. Martha G. Ripley, the Rev. Dr. J. H. Tuttle, pastor of the Church of the Redeemer, the Rev. Kristofer Jansen, of the Swedish Unitarian Church, the Rev. Mr. Williams of the City Mission, the Rev. Mr. Tabor of the Friends' Church, the Rev. Mr. Harrington, a visiting Universalist minister, and Mrs. Charlotte O. Van Cleve, of the Bethany Home, who spoke of herself and her a.s.sociates as ”the ambulance corps, to pick up and care for the fallen and wounded of their s.e.x.”
Judge Norton H. Hemiup of Minneapolis, read a humorous play in several acts, dramatically representing the venerable widows of ex-presidents and wives of living ones going to the polls in their respective precincts and offering their votes in vain, while those of the late slaves and of men half-drunk and wholly ignorant were received without a question.
Major J. A. Pickler, the chivalrous legislator of Dakota, who championed the suffrage bill which pa.s.sed both Houses and was defeated by the veto of Gov. Gilbert F. Pierce, was invited to tell the history of the bill and did so in a vigorous speech. He said its pa.s.sage was materially aided by the efforts of Eastern remonstrants to defeat it, and added: ”There are peculiar reasons why our women should have their rights, as they own fully one-fourth of the land and are veritable heroines.” During the convention the men and women present from Dakota organized an a.s.sociation to carry on the battle for equal rights in that Territory.
Mrs. Howe said in her address:
While a great deal needs to be said to both men and women on the subject of woman suffrage, I am one who thinks that most needs to be said to women. This is quite natural both because of their timidity in putting themselves forward and because of their frequent ignorance of the principles upon which reform is based.
No one could be more opposed to woman suffrage than I was twenty years ago. Everything I had read and heard seemed to point in exactly the opposite direction. But at the first meeting I attended I heard Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other pioneers of the cause, found nothing but reasonableness in their speech and their arguments and so was speedily converted.
The Battle Hymn of the Republic was then sung by Prof. James G. Clark, the well-known singer of anti-slavery days, the audience rising and joining in the chorus.
Mrs. Margaret W. Campbell of Iowa, who was introduced by Lucy Stone with a history of her many years of devoted work for the cause, said in part: ”Good men who mean well often say that women are as fit to vote as the ignorant foreigners just landed at Castle Garden or the freedmen who can not read or write. Don't say that any more; you don't know how it hurts. Say instead, 'You are as fit to vote as we are.'
The names of those who emanc.i.p.ated the slave will be written in letters of gold, but the names of those who have helped to emanc.i.p.ate the women of this nation will be written in letters of living light.”