The History of Woman Suffrage Volume IV Part 38

That we appeal to Congress to submit a Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Const.i.tution, thereby enabling the citizens of each State to carry this question of woman suffrage before its Legislature for settlement.

That we will aid, so far as practicable, every State campaign for woman suffrage; but we urgently recommend our auxiliary State societies to effect thorough county organizations before pet.i.tioning their Legislatures for a State const.i.tutional amendment.

WHEREAS, The good results of woman suffrage in Wyoming since 1869 have caused its adoption successively by the three adjoining States; therefore,

_Resolved_, That we earnestly request the citizens of these four free States to make a special effort to secure the franchise for women in the States contiguous to their own.

That we demand for mothers equal custody and control of their minor children, and for wives and widows an equal use and inheritance of property.

That we ask for an equal representation of women on all boards of education and health, of public schools and colleges, and in the management of all public inst.i.tutions; and for their employment as physicians for women and children in all hospitals and asylums, and as police matrons and guards in all prisons and reformatories.

That this a.s.sociation limits its efforts exclusively to securing equal rights for women, and it appeals for co-operation to the whole American people.

Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer and Mrs. Harper were appointed fraternal delegates to the Woman's Press a.s.sociation, in session at this time in Washington.

A beautiful feature of this occasion was the luncheon given by Mrs.

John R. McLean to Miss Anthony on her seventy-eighth birthday, February 15, attended by thirty-six of the most distinguished ladies in the national capital, and followed by a reception to the members of the convention. Mrs. McLean was a.s.sisted in receiving by Miss Anthony and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant. Seventy-eight wax tapers burned upon the birthday cake, which was three feet in diameter and decorated with flowers. It was presented to Miss Anthony, who carried it in triumph to the convention in Columbia Theatre, where it was cut into slices that were sold as souvenirs and realized about $120, which she donated to the cause.

Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, at the age of eighty-two, sent two papers for this fiftieth anniversary, one for the congressional hearing, on The Significance of the Ballot; the other, Our Defeats and our Triumphs, was read to the convention by Mrs. Colby. Both displayed all the old-time vigor of thought and beauty of expression. The latter, filled with interesting reminiscence, closed with these words:

Another generation has now enlisted for a long or short campaign.

What, say they, shall we do to hasten the work? I answer, the pioneers have brought you through the wilderness in sight of the promised land; now, with active, aggressive warfare, take possession. Instead of rehearsing the old arguments which have done duty fifty years, make a brave attack on every obstacle which stands in your way.... Lord Brougham said: "The laws for women [in England and America] are a disgrace to the civilization of the nineteenth century." The women in every State should watch their law-makers, and any bill invidious to their interests should be promptly denounced, and with such vehemence and indignation as to agitate the whole community....

There is no merit in simply occupying the ground which others have conquered. There are new fields for conquest and more enemies to meet. Whatever affects woman's freedom, growth and development affords legitimate subject for discussion here....

Some of our opponents think woman would be a dangerous element in politics and destroy the secular nature of our Government. I would have a resolution on that point discussed freely, and show liberal thinkers that we have a large number in our a.s.sociation as desirous to preserve the secular nature of our Government as they themselves can possibly be.... When educated women, teachers in all our schools, professors in our colleges, are governed by rulers, foreign and native, who can neither read nor write, I would have this a.s.sociation discuss and pa.s.s a resolution in favor of "educated suffrage." ...

The object of our organization is to secure equality and freedom for woman: First, in the State, which is denied when she is not permitted to exercise the right of suffrage; second, in the Church, which is denied when she has no voice in its councils, creeds and discipline, or in the choice of its ministers, elders and deacons; third, in the Home, where the State makes the husband's authority absolute, the wife a subject, where the mother is robbed of the guardianship of her own child, and where the joint earnings belong solely to the husband.

....Let this generation pay its debt to the past by continuing this great work until the last vestige of woman's subjection shall be erased from our creeds and codes and const.i.tutions. Then the united thought of man and woman will inaugurate a pure religion, a just government, a happy home and a civilization in which ignorance, poverty and crime will exist no more. They who watch behold already the dawn of a new day.

The Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell (N. Y.), the first woman to graduate in theology and be ordained, delineated The Changing Phases of Opposition, pointing out that when the first Woman's Rights Convention was held the general tone of the press was shown in that newspaper which said: "This bolt is the most shocking and unnatural incident ever recorded in the history of humanity; if these demands were effected, it would set the world by the ears, make confusion worse confounded, demoralize and degrade from their high sphere and n.o.ble destiny women of all respectable and useful cla.s.ses, and prove a monstrous injury to all mankind." Yet this present convention was celebrating the granting of all those demands except the suffrage and not one of the predicted evils had come to pa.s.s. The direful prophecies of the early days were taken up, one by one, and their utter absurdity pointed out in the light of experience. Now all of those ancient, stereotyped objections were concentrated against granting the suffrage.

Mrs. Virginia D. Young (S. C.) delighted the audience with one of her characteristic addresses. Prof. Frances Stewart Mosher, of Hillsdale College (Mich.), gave an exhaustive review of the great increase and value of Woman's Work in Church Philanthropies. Mrs. May Wright Sewall (Ind.) demonstrated the wonderful Progress of Women in Education. The New Education possessed the charm of novelty in being presented by Miss Grace Espy Patton, State Superintendent of Public Instruction in Colorado, a lady so delicate and dainty that, when Miss Anthony led her forward and said, "It has always been charged that voting and officeholding will make women coa.r.s.e and unwomanly; now look at her!"

the audience responded with an ovation.

Miss Belle Kearney (Miss.) discussed Social Changes in the South, depicting in a rapid, magnetic manner, interspersed with flashes of wit, the evolution of the Southern woman and the revolution in customs and privileges which must inevitably lead up to political rights. Mrs.

Mary Seymour Howell (N. Y.) gave an eloquent review of the splendid services of Women in Philanthropy.

At the memorial services Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (D. C.) offered the following resolutions:

It is fitting in this commemorative celebration to pause a moment to place a laurel in memory's chaplet for those to whom it was given to be the earliest to voice the demand that woman should be allowed to enter into the sacred heritage of liberty, as one made equally with man in the image of the Creator and divinely appointed to co-sovereignty over the earth. To name them here is to recognize their presence with us in spirit and to invoke their benediction upon this generation which, entering into the results of their labors, must carry them forward to full fruition.

Lucretia Mott always will be revered as one of those who conceived the idea of a convention to make an organized demand for justice to women. She became a Quaker preacher in 1818 at the age of twenty-five, and the last suffrage convention she attended was in her eighty-sixth year. Her motto, "Truth for authority and not authority for truth," is still the tocsin of reform. Sarah Pugh, the lovely Quaker, was ever her close friend and helper.

Frances Wright, a n.o.ble Scotchwoman, a friend of General Lafayette, early imbibed a love for freedom and a knowledge of the principles on which it is based. In this the land of her adoption she was the first woman to lecture on political subjects, in 1826.

Ernestine L. Rose, the beautiful Polish patriot, sent the first pet.i.tion to the New York Legislature to give a married woman the right to hold real estate in her own name. This was in 1836, and she continued the work of securing signatures until 1848, when the bill was pa.s.sed. She was a matchless orator and lectured on woman suffrage for nearly fifty years.

Lucy Stone's voice pleaded the wide continent over for justice for her s.e.x. Her life-long devotion to the woman suffrage cause was idealized by the companionship and a.s.sistance of her husband, Henry B. Blackwell, the one man in this nation who under any and all circ.u.mstances has made woman's cause his chief consideration.

Her first lecture on woman's rights was given in 1847, the year of her graduation at Oberlin College, and her life work was epitomized in her dying words, "Make the world better."

Martha C. Wright, Jane Hunt and Mary Ann McClintock were three of those n.o.ble women who issued the call for the Seneca Falls Convention, and were ever ready for service.

Paulina Wright Davis, who called the first National Convention in 1850 and presided over its twentieth celebration in 1870, was one of the moving spirits of the work for more than twenty-five years. a.s.sisted by Caroline H. Dall, she edited the _Una_, founded in 1853, the first distinctively woman suffrage paper.

Frances Dana Gage, better known by her pen-name, "Aunt f.a.n.n.y,"

was farmer, editor, lecturer and worker in the Sanitary Commission. Of her eight children six were stalwart sons, and she used to boast that she was the mother of thirty-six feet of boys.

She was a pillar of strength to the movement in early days.

Clarina Howard Nichols is a.s.sociated with the seed-sowing in Vermont, in Wisconsin and especially in Kansas, where her labors with the first const.i.tutional convention, in 1859, engrafted in organic law many rights for women which were obtained elsewhere, if at all, only by slow and difficult legislative changes. Susan E. Wattles led the Kansas campaign of 1859 with Mrs. Nichols.

Emily Robinson of Salem, Ohio, was one of the chief movers in the second Woman's Rights Convention, and this was held in her own town in 1850. From that time until the present year she has been unfaltering in her devotion.

Dr. Susan A. Edson, who was graduated in medicine in 1854, was a fellow-pioneer in the District of Columbia with Dr. Caroline B.

Winslow, whose death preceded hers by about one year. She was one of the most distinguished army nurses and the friend and faithful attendant of President Garfield. For many years she was the president of the District Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation. Among the earlier woman physicians who espoused the cause were Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, Dr. Mary B. Jackson, Dr. Ann Preston, one of the founders and physicians of the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia, and Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, a founder and physician of the New York Medical College for Women.

Sarah Helen Whitman was the first literary woman of reputation who gave her name to the movement, which later counted among its warmest friends Lydia Maria Child, Alice and Phoebe Cary and Mary Clemmer.

Amalia B. Post of Cheyenne, to whom the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the women of Wyoming was largely due, was ready, as she often said, at the first tap of the drum at Seneca Falls. She occupied the place of honor by the side of the Governor on that proud day when the admission of Wyoming as a State was celebrated.

Josephine S. Griffing, organizer of the Freedman's Bureau; Amelia Bloomer, editor of the _Lily_, the first temperance and woman's rights paper; Mary Grew, for twenty-three years president of the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation; Myra Bradwell, the first woman to enter the ranks of legal journalism; Virginia L. Minor, the dove with the eagle's heart, who took to the U. S. Supreme Court her suit against the Missouri officials for refusing her vote--all these, and many more who might be added, form the n.o.ble galaxy who brought to the cause of woman's liberty rare personal beauty, social gifts, intellectual culture, and the all-compelling eloquence of earnestness and sincerity.

Albert O. Willc.o.x of New York, whose eighty-seven years were filled with valuable work for reforms, was drawn to the conviction that women should have a share in the Government by a sermon preached by Lucretia Mott in 1831, and from that time declared himself publicly for the movement and was its life-long supporter.

James G. Clark, the sweet-souled troubadour of reform, sang for woman's freedom in suffrage conventions all over the land.

Joseph N. Dolph was always to be counted on to further the political emanc.i.p.ation of women, both in his own State of Oregon and in the U. S. Senate, of which he was long an honored member.

To name the men who have been counselors and friends of the woman suffrage movement is to name the greatest poets, preachers and statesmen of the last half century. Wherever there has been a woman strong enough to demand her rights there has been a man generous and just enough to second her. Surely we may say that "the spirits of just men made perfect" are our strength and our inspiration.

No less ent.i.tled to remembrance and grat.i.tude are the unnamed mult.i.tude who have helped the onward march of freedom by standing for the truth that was revealed to them. Whether they pa.s.s away in the beauty of youth, the strength of maturity or the glory of old age, they who have given to the world one impulse on the upward path to freedom and to light are not dead. They live here in the life of all good things, and, because of strength gained in earthly activity, have strength to perfect in other spheres what here they but dreamed of.

The _Woman's Tribune_ thus described one scene of the convention:

The opening address of Wednesday evening was by Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker (Conn.) on United States Citizenship. She was not heard distinctly and the audience was very fidgety. Miss Anthony came forward and told them they ought to be perfectly satisfied just to sit still and look at Mrs. Hooker. She is always a commanding presence on the stage, and on this evening, impressed with the deep significance of the event, and clad in silver gray, which harmonized beautifully with her whitening curls, she was a picture which would delight an artist. But notwithstanding Miss Anthony's admonition, the audience really wanted to hear as well as to see. Mrs. Hooker realizing this at last said impatiently, "I never could give a written speech, but Susan insisted that I must this time," and, discarding her ma.n.u.script, she spoke clearly and forcibly with her old-time power. A portion of her address was a graphic recital of Miss Anthony's trial for illegal voting in 1872.

When Mrs. Hooker's time had expired Miss Anthony rose and put her arm around her, and thus these striking figures, representing the opposite poles of the woman suffrage force, made a tableau which will never pa.s.s from the mental vision of those who witnessed it.

At the close of her remarks Mrs. Hooker threw her arms around Miss Anthony and kissed her. The latter, more moved than was her wont, gave vent to that strong feeling of the injustice of woman's disfranchis.e.m.e.nt which is ever present with her, and exclaimed: "To think that such a woman, belonging by birth and marriage to the most distinguished families in our country's history, should be held as a subject and have set over her all cla.s.ses of men, with the prospect of there being added to her rulers the Cubans and the Sandwich Island Kanakas. Shame on a government that permits such an outrage!"

Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.), one of the first suffrage advocates south of Mason and Dixon's line, gave A Glimpse of the Past and Present. Dr. Clara Marshall, Dean of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, presented the history of Fifty Years in Medicine. She related in a graphic manner the struggle of women to gain admission to the colleges, the embarra.s.sments they suffered, the obstacles they were obliged to overcome, reading from published reports the hostile demonstrations of the male students. In closing she bore testimony to the encouragement and a.s.sistance rendered by those men who were broad-minded and generous enough to recognize the rights of women in this profession and help secure them. The Ministry of Religion as a Calling for Women was the subject of an able and interesting address by the Rev. Florence Buck of Unity Church, Cleveland, Ohio. Mrs. Ella Knowles Haskell, a.s.sistant attorney-general of Montana, spoke on Women in the Legal Profession, giving many incidents of the practice of law in the far West.

Samuel J. Barrows, member of Congress from Ma.s.sachusetts, was called from the audience by Miss Anthony, and closed his brief remarks by saying: "I believe in woman suffrage; it has in it the elements of justice which ent.i.tle it to every man's support, and we all ought to help secure it." A leading feature of the program was the speech of August W. Machen, head of the free delivery division of the national post office, on Women in the Departmental Service of the United States. He gave the history of their employment by the government, declared they had raised the standard of work and testified to their efficiency and faithfulness.

The Civil Rights of Women were ably discussed by the Rev. Frederick A.

Hinckley of the Second Unitarian Church, Philadelphia, who reviewed the existing laws and pointed out the changes in favor of women. In regard to the prevalence of divorce he said: "There is a large cla.s.s of our fellow-citizens who greatly misinterpret, in my opinion, the significance of the increase in the number of divorces. No one would counsel more earnestly than I, patience and consideration and every reasonable effort on the part of people once married to live together.

But I can not dispute the proposition, nor do I believe any one can dispute it, that in the great process of evolution divorce is an indication of growing independence and self-respect in women, a proclamation that marriage must be the union of self-respecting and mutually respected equals, and that in the ideal home of the future that hideous thing, the subjugation of woman, is to be unknown."

Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch (Ills.) discussed The Economic Status of Women. Madame Clara Neymann (N. Y.) read a philosophical paper on Marriage in the Light of Woman's Freedom. The Progress of Colored Women was pictured in an impa.s.sioned address by Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, president of the National a.s.sociation of Colored Women. She received numerous floral tributes at its close. Mrs. Emmy C. Evald of Chicago, with an attractive foreign enthusiasm, told of the work of Swedish women in their own country and in the United States. Mrs.