The History of Woman Suffrage Volume I Part 77

In that story of Mr. Higginson's, of the heroic woman in Kansas whose left arm was cut off, there is a lesson for us to learn. I tell you, ladies, though we have our left hand cut off by unjust laws and customs, we have yet the right hand left; and when we once demand the ballot with as much firmness as that Kansas daughter did her horse, believe me, it will not be in the power of men to withhold it--even the border ruffians among them will hasten to restore it. After all, the fault is our own. We have sat to

"Suckle fools, and chronicle small beer;"

and, in inglorious ease, have forgotten that we are integral parts in the fabric of human society--that all that interests the race, interests us. We have never once, as a body, claimed the practical application of the principles of our government. It is our own fault. Let it be so no longer. Let us say to men: "Government is just only when it obtains the consent of the governed": we are governed, _surrender to us our ballot_. If they deride, still answer: Surrender our ballot! _and they will give it up_. "It is not in our stars that we are underlings, but in ourselves." Woman has sat, like Mordecai at the king's gate, hoping that her silent presence would bring justice; but justice has not come. The world has talked of universal suffrage; but it has made it universal only to man. It is time we spoke and acted.

It is time we gave man faith in woman--and, still more, woman faith in herself. It is time both men and women knew that whatever has been achieved by woman in the realm of mind or matter, has been achieved by right womanly women. Let us then work, and continue to work, until the world shall a.s.sent to our right to do whatever the capacities G.o.d has given us enable us to do.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY rose and said that several gentlemen had handed her contributions, one $40, another $25. She trusted that all New York men and women would find they had something more to do than listen to speeches.

LETTER FROM HORACE GREELEY.

NEW YORK, _November 22, 1856_.

MY FRIEND:--You are promised to be present and speak at the approaching "Woman's Rights Convention." I, too, mean to attend its deliberations, or some portion thereof, but not to take part in them. For I find this evil apparently inseparable from all Radical gatherings: a very large and influential portion of the press, including, I grieve to say, religious as well as secular journals, are p.r.o.ne and eager to expose to odium those whom they would undermine and destroy, by attributing to them, not the sentiments they have personally expressed, but those of others with whom they are or have been a.s.sociated in some reformatory movement. He, then, who appears as a speaker at a Woman's Rights Convention is made responsible for whatever may be uttered at such Convention--no matter by whom--which is most likely to excite popular prejudice and arouse popular hostility. I have borne a good share of this unfairly exalted and unjust odium, with regard to the dietetic, anti-slavery, and social reforms suggested in our day, and shall bear on as patiently as I may; but I grow older, and do not confront the world on a fresh issue with so light a heart, so careless a defiance, as I might have done twenty years ago. Allow me, then, through you, to say what I think of the woman's rights movement, its objects, incitements, and limitations. If I may thus attain perspicuity, I can bear the imputation of egotism.

1. I deem the intellectual, like the physical capacities of women unequal in the average to those of men; but I perceive no reason in this natural diversity for a fact.i.tious and superinduced legal inequality. On the contrary, it seems to me that the fact of a natural and marked discrepancy in the average mental as well as muscular powers of men and women ought to allay any apprehensions that the latter, in the absence of legal interdicts and circ.u.mscriptions, would usurp the functions and privileges of the former.

2. I believe the range of employment for woman, in our age and country, far too restricted, and the average recompense of her labor, consequently far less than it should be. In saying this, I do not intimate a doubt that the best possible employment for most women is to be found in the care and management of their own households respectively, with the rearing and training of their children. But many women, including some of the most n.o.ble and estimable, are never called to preside over households; while some of the called are impelled to decline the invitation. In point of fact, then, there is and always will be a large proportion of the gentler s.e.x who are, at least temporarily, required to earn their own subsistence, and vindicate their own usefulness in some other capacity than that of the loved and honored wife and mother. The maiden or widow, blessed with opulence, ought to be insured against the worse calamities of a reverse of fortune, by the mastery of some handicraft or industrial avocation; she ought to lead a life of persistent and efficient industry, as the fulfillment of a universal duty; while her unportioned sister must do this or grovel in degrading idleness and dependence on a father's or brother's overtaxed energies, looking to marriage as her only chance of escape therefrom. For man's sake, no less than woman's, it is eminently desirable that that large portion of our women, who are not absorbed in domestic cares, should be attracted and stimulated to industry by a wider range of pursuits, and a consequent increase of recompense. I deem it at once unjust and--like all injustice--impolitic, that a brother and sister, hired by the same farmer, the one to aid him in his own round of labor, the other to a.s.sist his wife in hers, should be paid, the one twelve to twenty, the other but four to six dollars per month. The difference in their wages should be no greater than in their physical and mental ability. Still more glaring is this discrepancy, when the two are employed as teachers, and, though of equal efficiency, the one is paid five hundred dollars per annum, the other but two, or in that proportion, merely because the former is a man and the latter a woman. While such disparities exist, right here in this metropolis of American civilization and Christianity, it is in vain that Conservatism stops its ears and raises its eyebrows at the announcement of a Woman's Rights Convention.

3. Regarding marriage as the most important, most sacred, and tender of human relations, and deeming it irrevocable, save by death, it seems to me essential that woman should be proffered such a range of employments, with such adequate recompense, as to enable her at all times to support herself in honored and virtuous independence, so that marriage shall be accepted by her at the dictates of love, and not of hunger. Much might be urged on this point, but I choose simply to commend it to the consideration of others.

4. As to woman's voting or holding office, I defer implicitly to herself. If the women of this or any other country believe their rights would be better secured and their happiness promoted by the a.s.sumption on their part of the political franchises and responsibilities of men, I, a Republican in principle from conviction, shall certainly interpose no objection. I perceive what seem to be serious practical difficulties in the way of realizing such a.s.sumption; but these are difficulties, not for me, but for them. I deem it unjust that men should be so constantly and unqualifiedly impeached as denying rights to woman which the great majority of women seem quite as reluctant to claim as men are to concede. I apprehend that whenever women shall generally and earnestly desire an equality of political franchises with men, they will meet with little impediment from the latter.

5. I can not share at all in the apprehensions of those who are alarmed at the Woman's Rights agitation, lest it should result in the uns.e.xing of woman, or her general deflection from her proper sphere. On the contrary, I feel sure that the freest inquiry and discussion will only result in a clearer and truer appreciation of woman's proper position, and a more general and rigid adherence thereto. "Let there be light!" for this is an indispensable condition of all true and healthy growth. Let all convictions find free utterance--all grievances be stated and considered. In the range of my observation, I have found those women who were conscious of defects in the present legal and social position of their s.e.x among the most zealous, faithful, and efficient in the discharge of their household and parental duties. I feel confident that a general discussion of the subject of Woman's Rights will result in a more general recognition and cheerful performance of woman's appropriate duties.

Very truly yours, HORACE GREELEY.

Rev. SAMUEL J. MAY.

LETTER FROM HON. WILLIAM HAY, OF SARATOGA SPRINGS.

I acknowledge, with much pleasure, the receipt of a printed circular, calling for the Seventh Woman's Rights Annual Convention. I also acknowledge, with increased pleasure, and perhaps with more pride than becomes me, the accompanying invitation to attend that Convention, and take part in its proceedings. I like this word, because it implies progress.

Pre-engagement will prevent my personal attendance at the Broadway Tabernacle, but, be a.s.sured, my heart shall be there, with all its desires and hopes for the future of humanity; because I am convinced that until the individual and social rights of our whole race, without distinction of caste or s.e.x, shall have been universally recognized, the tyrannies of earth will not cease from oppressing it.

I wish that every woman in the United States could be at New York, throughout the continuance of your Convention, where each might see for herself, in Mrs. Lucretia Mott, what woman may be, and should be, and must be, before her s.e.x can attain, individually and socially, "that equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature's G.o.d ent.i.tle" her. For physical and mental improvement of man's condition, according to his birthright and educational capacity, there must be, in America, more Marys, the mothers of Washingtons.

The great political and legal reform announced in your circular, contemplating complete development of the entire human race, is already operating, sympathetically and auspiciously, in Europe, upon preeminent minds, like that of Lord Brougham, and may favorably react, in practical adoption here, of Jefferson's elementary truth (almost a self-evident proposition, and yet treated as theory), that government derives its just powers from suffrage-consent of all (not half) of the governed. Partial consent (especially by and to a moiety of mankind, arrogantly claiming, like Louis XIV., to be the State) can confer only unjust power, which Heaven's higher law of liberty, equality, and justice never sanctioned.

Your Convention is most opportune, for this Continent is threatened with permanent and peculiar danger, produced by the feudal condition of women. I allude to the increasing curse of Mormonism, a consequence of woman's legalized inferiority or nonent.i.ty. With power from your local situation and undoubted sphere, to influence, for all time, the destiny of every civilized country, the members of your Convention, conscious of their duty, will never flinch from the responsibility of their position. It requires an unequivocal and uncompromising claim for perfect equality of rights in every department of manual and machine labor, of thought, of speech, of government, of society, and of life itself. Indeed, testamentary provision for a.s.sertion of that claim, by those few fortunate women who have, like Mrs.

Blandina Dudley[152], wealth to bestow, should become a ruling principle, instead of that pa.s.sion, so strong in death, for posthumous pulpit and newspaper applause, which Protestantism has sagaciously subst.i.tuted in lieu of the saving ordinances of the Roman Catholic Church.

Respectfully yours, WILLIAM HAY.

LETTER FROM FRANCES D. GAGE

ST. LOUIS, _November 19, 1856_.

DEAR LUCY STONE:--Most earnestly did I desire to attend this Seventh National Convention, more especially as I felt that I should be the only representative from the west side of the great Father of Waters. But it is impossible for me to remove the barriers just now opposed to so long a journey and absence from home. There is much thought in the free States of the great West--much less of conservatism and rigid adherence to the old-time customs of law and theology among the ma.s.ses, than in the East. Thousands are becoming ready to be baptized into a new faith, a broader and holier recognition of the rights of humanity. The harvest-fields are ripening for the reapers.

The gloomy night is breaking-- E'en now the sunbeams rest With a bright and cheering radiance On the hill-tops of the West; The mists are slowly rising From the valley and the plain, And a spirit is awaking That shall never sleep again.

But since I can not meet you in your councils, I will endeavor to allay the disappointment by striving to reach with my pen some of the sunset homes in the far West, and endeavor to arouse woman there to her duties and responsibilities, that she may sympathize more fully with her Eastern sisters, who caught the first glow of the sunrise hour of our great reform movement. With sincere and earnest wishes for your advancement in right and truth,

I am respectfully yours, FRANCES D. GAGE.

Mr. HIGGINSON was then introduced. Mrs. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen: I think, as perhaps some of you do, that a disproportionately large portion of the time of the meeting to-day has been taken up by the speeches of men; therefore I do not intend that this man's speech shall be a very long one. I remember a certain sermon, of which it was said it had nothing good in it except its subject and its shortness. My speech is going to be like that sermon. But there is one great advantage which men, enjoy in speaking on a Woman's Rights platform: they can not help doing good to the movement, no matter how they speak; for if a man speaks well, of course he helps it by his speech; and if he speaks ill on the subject, he still helps it, because there are women about him who won't speak ill, and the comparison is useful.

I wish to take up a point which, as a man, I am ent.i.tled to claim should have more prominence given it than has yet been the case; a point touched upon by me previously, in something I said yesterday, which some of you thought was not correct; and a point touched upon by Wendell Phillips this afternoon. I mean the claim of the Woman's Rights movement on woman; the wrong done by woman to that movement; and the injustice of the charge against man, that he especially resists it. And yet I can not fully accept the position taken by Rev. Mr. Johnson and Horace Greeley, that man's duty is only to stand aside and let woman take her rights. Not so. It is not so easy as that, let me tell you, gentlemen, to get rid of the responsibility of years of wrong. We men have been standing for years with our hands crushing down the shoulders of woman, so that she should not attain her true alt.i.tude; and it is not so easy, after we have cramped, dwarfed, and crippled her, to get rid of our responsibility by standing back at last, and saying, "There, we will let you go; stand up for yourself." If it is true, as these women say, that we have wronged them for centuries, we have got to do something more than mere negative duty. By as much as we have helped to wrong them, we have got to help to right them; by as much as we have discouraged them heretofore, we have got to encourage them hereafter; and that is why I wish to speak to women to-night of their duties, as these women have spoken to us of ours. I want to remind them that the time has come when men must appeal to them; for be a.s.sured that when women are ready to claim their rights, men will be ready to grant them.

There are three special obstacles, Mrs. President, to the willingness of woman to do her simple duty to the Woman's Rights movement. The first is the obstacle of folly--sheer, unadulterated folly--the folly in which women are trained, and in which we men help to train them, and for which we then denounce them. The reason why many women don't like the Woman's Rights movement, is because they have too little real thought in them to appreciate it at all. They have been brought up as fashionable society brings up woman on one side, or as mere household drudgery brings them up on the other--in each case, without power to appreciate a great principle--without power to appreciate a sublime purpose--without power to appreciate anything but a "good match," and the way to obtain it. On their entrance into life, their choice lies, for social position, for enjoyment, for occupation, for usefulness, in this narrow alternative--between a husband and nothing; and that, as Theodore Parker once said, is very often a choice between two nothings. These women may have literary culture and social polish; but, for want of an idea to light up their eyes and strengthen their souls, these things are only glitter and worthlessness.

A certain celebrated French woman in the last century (Mlle. de Launay), who made mathematical science her study, at last had a lover; whereupon she partially forgot her mathematics, and only remembered enough of it for practical purposes. And, in her Memoirs, she mentions the fact that her lover at length began to be less attentive to her; so much so, that she observed that whereas in walking home with her in the evening, he used to take pains to go round the two sides of the public square, in order to make the walk as long as possible, he now cut it short by always striking across the center; "so that his love for me," she observes, "must have decreased in the inverse ratio between the diagonal of a rectangular parallelogram and the sum of two adjacent sides." Who shall say that mathematics are wasted on a woman after that? Now, that is the sum of the science that is taught in half our inst.i.tutions of education, in more than half our fashionable boarding-schools, in nearly all the most cultivated social circles in the land. How can you expect, from such women, any n.o.bleness or appreciation of n.o.bleness? How can you expect any from such a woman's husband, when all his thoughts of woman have been crushed down, by sad experience, to the level of his wife's capacities? When I find a man who is obstinate against Woman's Rights, I try to find out either what sort of a mother or what sort of a wife that man has, and there I find the key to his position; for how can you expect any man to have a n.o.ble and equal idea of woman, when his mother knows nothing in the universe beyond a cooking-stove, and his wife has not much experimental acquaintance even with that?

No; the first obstacle to this Woman's Rights movement is the feminine, that builds all its hopes upon the wretched adulation and flattery of men--that thinks "the gentlemen admire weakness in a woman." Well, so they do admire to flatter it and to laugh at it! Those are the women who have called out from gifted men, age after age, those terrible denunciations of which literature is full. Women who are here, who think men admire weakness in a woman, let me tell you that if you want to know what men really think of women, you must go beyond the flatteries of the ball-room; you must go beyond the compliments of the public speaker. You must follow your young admirer from the ball-room into the bar-room, where he ridicules you among his companions, and laughs at the folly he has been flattering. You must pa.s.s from the public meeting into the office or study, to learn how the man who flatters woman most may despise her in his heart.

Think what great men of the world have said of woman. Voltaire said: "Ideas are like beards--women and young men have none."

Lessing, the German, says: "The woman who thinks is like a man who puts on rouge--ridiculous." Dr. Maginn, that accomplished literary man, says: "We like to hear a few words of wit from a woman, just as we like to hear a few words of sense from a parrot--because they are so unexpected." These things were never said to women, but they were said of them. In the presence of female intellect, men are very often like that Englishman who was reproached by the judge in the police-court, because he, being a very large, athletic man, allowed his wife, who was a very delicate, puny woman, occasionally, to beat him. Said the judge: "How can you allow it? you have ten times her strength." "Oh,"

said the giant, drawing himself up to his full stature, "it is no great matter; it pleases her, and it don't hurt me." That is the way men deal with female intellect--they like to amuse themselves with it, to flatter it as an entertaining trifle. But when it comes in earnest, and shows itself, then it is that these men stand apart from the new spectacle of a woman transformed into a thinker and worker; while true men rejoice to see n.o.bleness in a woman. There is not a man here who does not, in his own highest moments, reverence in woman the same qualities he admires in himself, if he thinks he claims them. Power of clear thought and of heroic action--every man admires these in woman in the best moments of his life. It is when he lowers himself to the level of the public meeting, or of the fashionable drawing-room, that he is changed into a flatterer, and he who flatters always despises the object of his flattery.

Another source of opposition to this movement among women is founded in Fear. It does not require much courage for a man to stand on a Woman's Rights platform. I do not say that it does not require more than a good many men have, for it would be difficult to find a thing so easy as not to do that. He, of course, has to run the gauntlet of the old nonsense of "strong-minded women and weak-minded men." Well, I am willing to be accounted weak-minded in the presence of strength of mind and heart, with which it has been my privilege to be a.s.sociated in this movement. That is a small thing, and it is the experience of every man who has entered into this reform, that if he had a fiber of manhood in him heretofore, that fiber had been doubled, trebled, and quadrupled before he had been in it a year. Instead of requiring courage for a man to enter into this movement, it rather requires courage to keep out of it, if he is a logical, clear-headed man.

But with a woman it is different. She needs much courage. A woman who, for instance, has been engaged in some literary avocation, and obtained some position, does not wish to risk her reputation by connecting herself with those who advocate the right of woman, not merely to write and to speak, but to vote also; hence, while admitting, secretly admitting, the justice of the claim, she will shrink back from avowing it for fear of "losing her position."

How can any brave man honor such a recreant woman as that, who, having gained all she wants to herself, under cover of the bolder efforts of these n.o.bler spirits, then settles back upon the ease and comfort of that position, and turns her small artillery on her own sisters? I feel a sense of shame for American literature, when I think how our literary women shrink, and cringe, and apologize, and dodge to avoid being taken for "strong-minded women." Oh, there's no danger. I don't wonder that their literary efforts are stricken with the palsy of weakness from the beginning. I don't wonder that our magazines are filled with diluted stories, in which sentimental heroines sigh, cry, and die through whole pages of weary flatness, and not a single n.o.ble thought relieves that Sahara of emptiness and barrenness. It is a retribution on them. A man or woman can not put in a book more than they have in themselves, and if woman is not n.o.ble enough to appreciate a great thought, she is not n.o.ble enough to write one.

I don't wonder that their fame does not keep the promise of its dawn, when that dawn is so dastardly.

The time will come, let me tell you, ladies, when the first question asked about any woman in this age who is worth remembering will be, "Did that woman comprehend her whole sphere?

Did she stand beside her sisters who were laboring for the right?

If she did not this, it is no matter what she did." It is thus we already begin to judge the American women of the past. The time will come, when of all Mrs. Adams' letters, the pa.s.sage best remembered will be that, where she points out to her great husband, that while emanc.i.p.ating the world, he still believes in giving men the absolute control over women. So the time will come when Harriet Beecher Stowe will be less honored, even as the auth.o.r.ess of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," than as the woman who in _The New York Independent_, that repository of religious thought, dared to place it among her religious thoughts, that Antoinette Brown had a right to stand in the pulpit. I wish Mrs. Stowe were yet more consistent; I wish she were not satisfied with merely wishing that others would attend Woman's Rights Conventions, and support Woman's Rights Lectures, but would join and take part in these things herself, as I believe she will when her brave spirit has gone a little further. Her heroic brother, Henry Ward Beecher, is with us already in the public advocacy of the right of suffrage for women.

The third obstacle that sets woman against this movement is _prejudice_. It is the honest feeling of mult.i.tudes of women that their "natural sphere," their domestic duties, will be interfered with by any other career. Let me tell you that so judging, you have only learned half the story we have to tell. We encourage these domestic duties most fully and amply. There is not a woman here who is not proud to claim them. Of all the women who have stood or spoken on this platform since this Convention began, there is only one who is not a married woman; there are very few who are not mothers; and among them all there is not one who does not give, by the n.o.bleness of her domestic life, a proof of the consistency of that with the rest of the claims she makes for her s.e.x. Some there are who doubt this; some there are who do not see how the elective franchise is any way connected with home duties and cares. I tell you there is the closest connection. If any one thing caps the sum of the argument for the rights of woman, it is the fact of those domestic duties which some idly array against it. What has a man at stake in society? What has he to risk by his ballot? Ask him at the ballot-box, and you will hear his statement. You will hear it in a thousand ways, and in a thousand voices. His own personal interest. A man invests _himself_ in society; woman invests infinitely more, for she throws in _her child_. The man can run away to California with his interests, and from his duties; the woman is anch.o.r.ed to her home. It is important to him, you say, whether the community provides, by its statutes, schools or dram-shops. Then how vast, how unspeakable the importance to her! Deprive every man in the nation of the ballot, if you will, but demand, oh, demand its protection for the wife and the mother!

See the unjust workings of the present system. I knew in a town in Ma.s.sachusetts a widow woman, who paid the highest tax bill in the town; nay, for every dollar that any man paid in the town, she paid two, and yet that woman had not the right to the ballot, which belonged to the most ignorant Irishman in her employ. She hadn't the right to protect her child from the misappropriation of his property; and if she had owned the whole town, and there had not been any other person to pay a property tax except that solitary woman, the case would have been the same, and not the slightest power of protection would have been in her hands, against the most outrageous misappropriation.

In another town of Ma.s.sachusetts there is a story told of a man, a member of the Society of Friends. He was once sending his wife on a long journey. As she was about to set forth in the stage, "My dear," said she, "thee has forgotten to give me any money for my journey." "Why," said the Quaker, "thee knows very well that I paid thy fare in the stage." "But thee knows," said she, "that I am going to be away for some weeks, and perhaps it may be well for me to have some little money, in case I should have any expenses." "Rachel," said the astonished husband, "where is that ninepence I gave thee day before yesterday?" That man had gained all the money he had in the world through that wife. He obtained her property by marriage; he invested that property in real estate, and had grown richer and richer, until he grew rich enough to spare a ninepence for Rachel the day before yesterday.

It is such marriages as that, that we wish to avert, by placing woman in an honorable position, by subst.i.tuting an equal union in marriage; such a union as is shown in the lives of those who stand behind me now.

The movement which these women urge is sweeping on with resistless power. Within the last seven years, every legislature, every school, every industrial avocation has been reached by it.

This is preliminary work. The final Malakoff, the right of suffrage, is yet to be gained. Already it has been partially conceded, in communities differing in all else, in Canada and in Kentucky. We have only to press on. Strange to say, the reform is reversing the ordinary weapons of the s.e.xes, for the women have all the logic, and the men only gossip and slander. But it finds its answering echo in the very hostility it creates. It has a million hearts. Silence every woman on this platform, and the movement still goes on. Elevate woman at any point, and you lead directly to this. The thousand schools of New York are educating a Woman's Rights advocate in every house.

During the latter part of Mr. Higginson's remarks, a frequent disturbance was made by some of the occupants of the galleries, who were evidently curious to hear the female speakers.

The President then introduced Ernestine L. Rose, who said she wished to say to all self-respecting men, that this is the last place in which they should create a disturbance, especially in a matter which concerns their sisters, their wives, and their mothers.

Mrs. ROSE: This morning a young man made some remarks in opposition to our claims. We were glad to hear him, because he gave evidence of an earnest, sincere spirit of inquiry, which is always welcome in every true reform movement. And as we believe our cause to be based on truth, we know it can bear the test of reason, and, like gold doubly refined, will come out purer and brighter from the fiery ordeal. The young man, who, I hope, is present, based his princ.i.p.al argument against us, "Because," said he, "you can bring no authority from revelation or from nature."

I will not enter into an inquiry as to what he meant by these terms, but I will show him the revelation from which we derive our authority, and the nature in which it is written in living characters. It is true we do not go to revelations written in books; but ours is older than all books, and whatever of good there is in any written revelations, must necessarily agree with ours, or it is not true, for ours only is the true revelation, based in nature and in life. That revelation is no less than the living, breathing, thinking, feeling, acting revelation manifested in the nature of woman. In her manifold powers, capacities, needs, hopes, and aspirations, lies her t.i.tle-deed, and whether that revelation was written by nature or nature's G.o.d, matters not, for here it is. No one can disprove it. No one can bring an older, broader, higher, and more sacred basis for human rights. Do you tell me that the Bible is against our rights? Then I say that our claims do not rest upon a book written no one knows when, or by whom. Do you tell me what Paul or Peter says on the subject? Then again I reply that our claims do not rest on the opinions of any one, not even on those of Paul and Peter, for they are older than they. Books and opinions, no matter from whom they came, if they are in opposition to human rights, are nothing but dead letters. I have shown you that we derive our claims from humanity, from revelation, from nature, and from your Declaration of Independence; all proclaim our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and having life, which fact I presume you do not question, then we demand all the rights and privileges society is capable of bestowing, to make life useful, virtuous, honorable, and happy.

But I am told that woman needs not as extensive an education as man, as her place is only the domestic sphere; _only_ the domestic sphere! Oh, how utterly ignorant is society of the true import of that term! Go to your legislative halls, and your Congress; behold those you have sent there to govern you, and as you find them high or low, great or small, n.o.ble or base, you can trace it directly or indirectly to the domestic sphere.