History of Woman Suffrage Volume I Part 86

While, in her loyalty to the Government and her love to humanity, she was encouraging the "boys in blue" to fight for the freedom of the black mothers of the South, these dastardly law-makers, filled with the spirit of slaveholders, were stealing the children and the property of the white mothers in the Empire State!

When Susan B. Anthony heard of the repeal of 1862, she was filled with astonishment, and wrote thus to Miss Lydia Mott:

DEAR LYDIA:--Your startling letter is before me. I knew some weeks ago that that abominable thing was on the calendar, with some six or eight hundred bills _before it_, and hence felt sure it would not come up this winter, and that in the meantime we should sound the alarm. Well, well; while the old guard sleep the young "devils" are wide-awake, and we deserve to suffer for our confidence in "man's sense of justice," and to have all we have gained thus s.n.a.t.c.hed from us. But nothing short of this can rouse our women again to action. All our reformers seem suddenly to have grown politic. All alike say, "Have no conventions at this crisis"! Garrison, Phillips, Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Wright Mrs. Stanton, etc., say, "Wait until the war excitement abates"; which is to say, "Ask our opponents if they think we had better speak, or, rather, if they do not think we had better remain silent." I am sick at heart, but I can not carry the world against the wish and the will of our best friends. But what can we do now, when even the motion to retain the mother's joint guardianship is voted, down? Twenty thousand pet.i.tions rolled up for that--a hard year's work!--the law secured!--the echoes of our words of grat.i.tude in the capitol have scarce died away, and now all is lost!

And, worse still, in 1871,[176] after the black man was not only emanc.i.p.ated, but enfranchised, by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which, overriding State Const.i.tution and statute law, abolished the property qualification for colored voters in the State of New York, another step of retrogressive legislation was taken against woman, in the repeal of section nine[177] of the Act of 1860, re-enacting the spirit and letter of the old common law, which holds that the children born in legal wedlock belong to the father alone.

Had woman held the ballot--that weapon of protection--in her hand to punish legislators, by withholding her vote from those thus derelict to duty, no repeal of the law of 1860 could have possibly taken place.

ALBANY, _April 8, 1881_.

DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--Your esteemed favor of the 6th duly received.

The Statute of 1862, Laws of 1862, chapter 90, page 157, repealed the grandest and crowning section of the Statute of 1860, viz: Sections 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, and 11, copies of which sections I herewith inclose you. Had these sections remained, wives in this State would have possessed equal rights with their husbands, save simply the right of voting. It was a great mistake and wrong to repeal them. Had I been a member of the Senate at that time, as I was not, I don't think it would have been done.

I do not know who was the author of the repeal bill, nor did I know of its existence until I saw it in the statute-book. I think Judge Charles J. Folger, now Chief-Justice of the Court of Appeals, was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the bill of 1862 must therefore have pa.s.sed through the hands of that Committee, in which it originated, or through which it was reported, and by the influence of which it must have been adopted.

Strange that you women, so watchful and so regardful of your rights, should have allowed the repeal of those important sections, without strenuous opposition.

Very sincerely yours, ANDREW J. COLVIN.

We were busily engaged rolling up pet.i.tions for the Thirteenth Amendment to the Federal Const.i.tution, our hearts and hands full of work for the Government in the midst of the war, supposing all was safe at Albany. But how comes it that the author of the bill of 1860, residing at the capital, never heard of its repeal? If the bill was so slyly pa.s.sed that Mr. Colvin himself did not know of it until he saw it in the statute-book, it is not remarkable that it escaped our notice in time to prevent it.

GENENA, N. Y., _April 12, 1881_.

MISS ANTHONY, DEAR MADAM:--I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the New York Senate in 1862-'3-'4-'5-'6-'7-'8-'9.

Judge John Willard, of Saratoga County, was a member of the State Senate in that year, and a member of that Committee. He was the author of the Act of 1862. His object, as I have always understood it, was to simplify, make clear, consistent, and practical some of the legislation in regard to married women. I think, with deference I say it, that you are not strictly accurate in calling the legislation of 1862 a repealing one. The first section of the Act of 1862 (chap. 172, p. 343) _amends_ the third section of the Act of 1860 (chap. 90, p. 157), by striking out the provision requiring the a.s.sent of the husband, and giving the wife the right (or privilege) to contract and convey as a _feme sole_, and to covenant for t.i.tle, etc., etc. That amendment rendered unnecessary the fourth, fifth, and sixth sections of the Act of 1860. They would have fallen of themselves, that is, have been repealed by implication, as inconsistent with the greater power and freedom attained by married women by the amendment of 1862 to the Act of 1860. But _ex abundanti cautela_, as Judge Willard would have said, there was an express repeal of them. The tenth and eleventh sections of the Act of 1860 were also repealed expressly; but not to the sole detriment of married women. The tenth section gave to married men and married women a life estate in certain cases in one-third of all the real estate of which the wife or husband died seized. The wife had before the Act of 1860, and has now, that estate. The tenth section gave her nothing. The repeal of it took nothing from her. The eleventh section, so far as it gave a life estate, is the same as the tenth. So far as it gave the use of all the real estate of the intestate for the minority of the youngest child, it was an addition to the property rights of the wife, but it was also an addition to the property rights of the husband. I am not able from memory to say why it was repealed; and it is remembrance and not reasoning that you ask for. The third section of the Act of 1862 amends the seventh of the Act of 1860 by striking out the phrase, "_except her husband_," thus enabling a married woman to protect the property given to her by the husband, in which the Act of 1860 was lame, and in other ways gave more freedom and power to married women. The fourth section of the Act of 1862 amends the eighth section of the Act of 1860, but only in its verbiage. The fifth section of the Act of 1862 does not impair the Act of 1860; it simply puts the woman before the courts, and the law as an ent.i.ty able to go alone. The sixth section of the Act of 1862 increases the powers of a married woman, by giving her a veto on some acts of her husband. The seventh section is like the fifth.

In no other respect than those I have named did the Act of 1862 affect the Act of 1860. In but one thing did it repeal, in the sense of taking away any right or power or privilege or freedom that the Act of 1860 gave. On the contrary, in some respects, it gave more or greater.

I am glad that you wrote to me. I am glad that I have the opportunity to defend the memory of a good man, Judge John Willard. I make bold to ask you to turn to the thirty-seventh volume of Barbour's Supreme Court Reports, Appendix, pp. 670 et seq., and read the words spoken of him by his peers. I am glad also to have the opportunity to speak a word for my Judiciary Committee.

And I will not close this lengthened answer, without suggesting a suspicion, that those who have taken the notion that the Act of 1862 was a retrograde step, have done so without comparing for themselves the two acts.

For myself, I have the distinction of being one of less than half-a-dozen Senators who voted that women have the right to vote for delegates to the Const.i.tutional Convention of 1866; and one of about a dozen and a half members of that Convention who voted to erase from the suffrage article the word "male." I have never been convinced of the expediency of giving to females the privilege of suffrage; but I have never been able to see the argument by which they were not as much ent.i.tled to the _right_ as males.

Trusting that you will forgive the length of this epistle,

I am with respect, yours, etc., etc., CHARLES J. FOLGER.

MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

As will be seen by the above letters, both Mr. Colvin and Mr. Folger make mistakes in regard to the effect of these bills. In speaking of the complete equality of husbands and wives under the law of 1860, Mr.

Colvin said, "All the wife then had to ask was the right of suffrage,"

quite forgetting that the wife has never had an equal right to the joint earnings of the copartnership, as no valuation has ever been placed on her labor in the household, to which she gives all her time, thought, and strength, the absolute sacrifice of herself, mind and body, all possibility of self-development and self-improvement being in most cases out of the question. Mr. Folger in saying the repeal of section eleven affected man as much as woman, falls into the same mistake, a.s.suming that the joint earnings belong to man. We say that the wife who surrenders herself wholly to domestic life, foregoing all opportunities for pecuniary independence and personal distinction in the world of work, or the higher walks of literature and art, in order to make it possible for the husband to have home and family ties, and at the same time, his worldly successes and ambitions, richly earns the place of an equal partner. In their joint acc.u.mulations, her labor and economy should be taken into account.

This is _the vital point_ of interest to the vast majority of married women, since it is only the _few_ who ever possess anything through separate earnings or inheritance. A law securing to the wife the absolute right to one-half the joint earnings, and at the death of the husband, the same control of property and children that he has when she dies, might make some show of justice; but it is a provision not yet on the statute-books of any civilized nation on the globe.

The seeming sophistry of Judge Folger may be traced to the universal fact that man does not appreciate the arduous and unremitting labors of the wife in the household, or her settled dissatisfaction in having no pecuniary recompense for her labors. No man with cultured brain and skilled hands would consider himself recompensed for a life of toil in being provided with shelter, food, and clothes while his employer was living, to be cut down in his old age to a mere pittance; yet such is the fate of the majority of wives and widows under the most beneficent provisions of our statutes in this favored republic. True, the law says "the husband shall maintain the wife in accordance with his circ.u.mstances"; he being judge, jury, executive. Though she may toil incessantly, and her duties be far more exhaustive than his, yet he is supposed to maintain her, and the joint property is always disposed of on that basis. Legislation for woman proceeds on the a.s.sumption, that all she needs is a bare support; and that she is dest.i.tute of the natural human desire to acc.u.mulate, possess, and control the results of her own labor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE (with autograph).]

FOOTNOTES:

[89] Jerry McHenry was an athletic mulatto, a cooper by trade, who had been living in Syracuse for many years, since his escape from slavery.

On the 13th of October, 1850, there was an attempt to kidnap him, but the Abolitionists, with such men as Samuel J. May and Gerrit Smith at their head, succeeded in rescuing him by a _coup d'etat_, from the officers of the law, which involved several trials in Auburn, Canandaigua, Buffalo, and Albany. As this occurred soon after the pa.s.sage of the Fugitive Slave Law, the leading Abolitionists were determined to test its const.i.tutionality in the courts. It was so systematically and universally violated, that it soon became a dead letter.

[90] A HEROIC WOMAN.--Mrs. Margaret Freeland, of Syracuse, was recently arrested upon a warrant issued on complaint of Emanuel Rosendale, a rum-seller, charging her with forcing an entrance to his house, and with stones and clubs smashing his doors and windows, breaking his tumblers and bottles, and turning over his whisky barrels and spilling their contents. Great excitement was produced by this novel case. It seems that the husband of Mrs. Freeland was a drunkard--that he was in the habit of abusing his wife, turning her out of doors, etc., and this was carried so far that the police frequently found it necessary to interfere to put a stop to his ill-treatment of his family. Rosendale, the complainant, furnished Freeland with the liquor which turned him into a demon. Mrs. Freeland had frequently told him of her sufferings and besought him to refrain from giving her husband the poison. But alas! she appealed to a heart of stone. He disregarded her entreaties and spurned her from his door.

Driven to desperation she armed herself, broke into the house, drove out the base-hearted landlord and proceeded upon the work of destruction.

She was brought before the court and demanded a trial. The citizens employed Charles B. Sedgwick, Esq., as her counsel, and prepared to justify her a.s.sault upon legal grounds. Rosendale, being at once arrested on complaint of Thomas L. Carson for selling liquor unlawfully, and feeling the force of the storm that was gathering over his head, appeared before the Justice, withdrew his complaint against Mrs. Freeland, paid the costs, and gave bail on the complaint of Mr.

Carson, to appear at the General Sessions, and answer to an indictment should there be one found.

Mrs. Freeland is said to be "the pious mother of a fine family of children, and a highly respectable member of the Episcopal Church."

The _Carson League_ commenting on this affair says:

"The rum-seller cowered in the face of public feeling. This case shows that public feeling will justify a woman whose person or family is outraged by a rum-seller, for entering his grocery or tavern and destroying his liquor. If the law lets loose a tiger upon her, she may destroy it. She has no other resort but force to save herself and her children. Were the women of this city to proceed in a body and destroy all the liquor of all the taverns and groceries, they would be justified by law and public opinion. Women should take this war into their hands, when men take side with the murderers of their peace.

"A tavern or grocery which makes the neighbors drunken and insane is a public nuisance, and may be pulled down and destroyed by the neighbors who are injured by it. It is worse than the plague. And if men will not put hands on it, then should the women do it. Tell us not it is property. It ceases to be property when it is employed to destroy the people. If a man lights his torch and sets about putting fire to the houses about him, any person may seize the torch and destroy it. So if a man takes a pistol and pa.s.ses through the streets shooting the people, the pistol ceases to be property and may be taken from him by force and destroyed by any person who can do it. We sincerely hope that the women of the State will profit by this example, and go to destroying the liquor vessels; and their contents." To all of which we respond AMEN.

_The Lily_, June, 1853.

[91] Mrs. Thompson, of Albany; Mrs. Cushman, of New York, _Vice-Presidents_. Mrs. Fowler and Miss Anthony, _Secretaries_. Lydia Mott, of Albany; Phebe Hoag Jones, of Troy; Eliza Hoxie Shove, of Easton; and Elizabeth Van Alstine, of Canajoharie, _Business Committee_.

[92] The following citizens of Rochester concur in the above call: Samuel Richardson, Rev. Wm. H. Goodwin, Samuel Chipman, Geo. A. Avery, James P. Fogg, J. O. Bloss, Wm. K. Hallowell, James Vick, Jr., E. C.

Williams, Daniel Anthony.

[93] _Vice-Presidents_.--Mary C. Vaughan, Olivia Fraser, Frances Stanton Avery, Rhoda De Garmo, Sarah D. Fish, and Mrs. D. C. Ailing.

_Secretaries_.--Amelia Bloomer and Susan B. Anthony.

_Resolutions_.--Amy Post, Elizabeth Monroe, Rachel Van Lew.

_Finance_.--Susan B. Anthony, Mary H. Hallowell, H. Attilia Albro.

[94] See Appendix.

[95] See Appendix.

[96] _Vice-Presidents_--Mrs. Gerrit Smith, Peterboro; Mrs. E. C.

Delevan, b.a.l.l.ston Spa; Mrs. D. C. Alling, Rochester; Lydia F. Fowler, Mrs. J. T. Coachman, Mary S. Rich, New York; Julia Clark Lewis, Oswego; Olivia Fraser, Elmira; Emily Clark, Le Roy; Mrs. A. N. Cole, Belfast; Betsy Hawks, Bethany Centre; Antoinette L. Brown, Henrietta.

_Recording Secretaries_--Susan B. Anthony, Rochester; Mary C. Vaughan, Oswego.

_Corresponding Secretary_--Amelia Bloomer, Seneca Falls.

_Treasurer_--Elvira Marsh, Rochester.

_Executive Committee_--Sarah T. Gould, Mary H. Hallowell, and Mrs.