HOW TO QUARREL WITH A WIFE.—Wait until she is at her toilet preparatory to going out. She will be sure to ask you if her bonnet is straight. Remark that the lives of nine-tenths of the women are passed in thinking whether their bonnets are straight, and wind up with the remark that you never knew but one who had common sense about her. Wife will ask you who that was. You, with a sigh, reply: “Ah! never mind.” Wife will ask you why you did not marry her. You say, abstractedly, “Ah! why, indeed?” The climax is reached by this time, and a regular row is sure to follow.
[Page 8]
A LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN.
Madam, I do not say legion, but legend. Possibly there may be a legion of good women, but I have no legend of such. The truly good women, like the other angels from whom they take their name, are “few and far between.” You may see these few in various walks of life, but if you seek conspicuous specimens, I point you to the platform of a woman’s rights meeting. Nevertheless, one platform cannot hold them all; and you must go to several different meetings, and add up the sum total of the various representative characters, before you realize the full intellectual force of that sisterhood who constitute the stateswomen of our time.
Madam, I will name a few names.
Lucretia Mott is the first in age, and the chief in honor. And where will you ever see a more benignant look than the serene expression which this venerable grandmother emits from within the neatest of Quaker caps? She probably made that cap herself. I say this because she is always busy with her needle—either knitting stockings, or sewing carpet-rags, or mending boys’ jackets, or making uncorrugated frills. Her public life has never interfered with her domestic duties. And the chief glory of her old age is that it furnishes a noble refutation that the maxim that reformers, as they grow in years, grow in conservatism. This far seeing and ever-learning teacher of her sex keeps even pace with the radical party on the political, social and religious questions of her time.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or, as she is sometimes called, Susan B. Anthony, is a celebrated lady with snow-white and auburn hair, plump and slender figure, Grecian and Roman nose, and lives simultaneously in two houses—one at Tenafly, N.J. and the other at Rochester, N.Y. Indeed, Mrs. Stanton, or to call her by her maiden name, Miss Anthony, is an ubiquitous personage, and not only attends all the woman’s meetings wherever they are held, but also has been known on certain occasions to be writing the resolutions, and at the self-same moment to be delivering the speech in their support. It has been sometimes suspected that Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony are two distinct persons, united by a cartilege like the Siamese twins, but in the absence of any medical or other scientific proof of this hypothesis, I remain of the opinion that, like Liberty and Union, they are “one and inseparable.”
Julia Ward Howe is a French and Italian lady who lives in Boston, and speaks English with an Emerson accent. She is a writer of battle hymns and an advocate of peace—of which latter she is also justice. She was once an opponent of woman’s rights, but when she became convinced of the rightfulness of this great cause she gave her adhesion to it with a zeal and fidelity beyond praise. Neither handsome, nor homely, she is nevertheless one of the most noticeable of conspicuous women. She is one of nature’s gooseberries after it has passed from the acerbity of the berry to the pungency of wine. She is an honor to her time and country.
Mary A. Livermore, the wife of a Universalist clergyman, has the happiness to be a preacher herself; and her speeches are solid, sensible and fervid. Moreover, she is the editor of The Woman’s Journal. As an editorial writer she is argumentative an forcible, but her editorship is of second-rate consequence compared with her oratory. She is a born manager, understanding the fine art of manipulating both men and women; and accordingly she ought not only to vote but to be voted for. She would make an excellent Governor of Massachusetts, and if General Butler does not run next time, and on a woman’s ticket, I hope she will be nominated. She is a little too much of a Republican to suit my cosmopolitan tastes; still, I don’t think she would give up to party what was meant for womankind.
Laura Curtis Bullard, the editor of the Revolution, is now traveling in Europe and has been regaling her readers at home with an almost uninterrupted series of editorial letters for several months past. She is one of the most accomplished of the many well educated ladies who constitute the flower of the suffrage movement. Beauty of person, richness of acquirements and refinement of manners are rarely all united in so eminent a degree as in this lovely lady. She seldom speaks in public further than to perform the loquacious duties of a presiding officer, but she is an incessant and useful writer and one of the wisest and safest of counselors. She has the air of a princess, and her presence would grace the court of any of the countries through which she is now making her pleasurable pilgrimage.
Lucy Stone, the wife of Henry B. Blackwell, prefers (as I think you know) to call herself by her maiden, rather than her married name. Indeed, you may say she has no married name, for she protested before her wedding that her name should always remain simply Lucy Stone. I have thought this an error of judgment and taste on her part, but the affair is nobody’s business except hers and her husband’s, and I am perfectly satisfied with the arrangement. Many actresses and singers, on marrying, have retained their maiden names; and Lucy Stone, having won a wide reputation before her marriage, did not wish to part with so large a share of her nominal identity as she thought would follow the merging of this reputation with another name. Lady Lucy (and she is every inch a lady) has encountered a good deal of ugly criticism from the press by reason of her obstinate adherence to her maidenly title. But I believe most of her critics are now getting tired of calling her Mrs. Blackwell. At all events, madam, you and I will hold her in sufficient respect to speak of her by the name which she chooses to bear. She is so pleasant-voiced a woman that she would make any name sound well.
Ernestine L. Rose, who is now out of the country, is one of the ablest of female brains. Foreign by birth, and revealing her German extraction in her accent, she nevertheless speaks the English tongue with a rare force and eloquence, and handles her logic as deftly as her needle. Radical in her religious views—called by some an atheist, and by others an infidel—she has been considered as a dangerous character—a kind of Thomas Paine among her sisterhood. But as I am a believer in all honest religions, and have a profound reverence for all sincere souls, I have nothing to say against Mrs. Rose’s infidelity, which is itself a religion, nor against her character, which, in spite of her own testimony to the contrary, I know to be thoroughly Christian.
Paulina Wright Davis, as I saw by the last Golden Age, has just been publishing a very radical letter on the social aspects of the woman question. This is just like her. She has always been just a little ahead of her time. She began to air her advanced doctrines many years ago, and ever since has been a consistent advocate of woman’s social as well as civil enfranchisement. Do you know her by sight? She is a beautiful woman—her white hair covering her head like a crown of glory—and she looks enough like Elizabeth Cady Stanton to be her twin. Indeed, madam, I believe that Mrs. Davis would have been Mrs. Stanton’s twin if that geminal function had not accidentally devolved on Miss Anthony.
Victoria C. Woodhull is a younger heroine than most of the foregoing—having come into the cause after some of her elders had already become veterans. But her advocacy of woman’s right to the ballot, as logically deduced from the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, has given her a national notoriety. If the woman’s movement has a Joan of Arc, it is this gentle but fiery genius. She is one of the most remarkable women of her time. Little understood by the public, she is denounced in the most outrageous manner by people who do not appreciate her moral worth. But her sincerity, her truthfulness, her uprightness, her true nobility of character are so well known to those who know her well, that she ranks, in the estimation of these, somewhat as St. Theresa does in the admiring thoughts of pious Catholics. She is a devotee—a religious enthusiast—a seer of visions—a devout communionist with the other world. She acts under spiritual influence, and, like St. Paul, is “not disobedient to the heavenly vision.” Her bold social theories have startled many good souls, but anybody who on this account imagines her to stand below the whitest and purest of her sex will misplace a woman who in moral integrity rises of the full height of the highest.
Isabella Beecher Hooker, a sisterly confederate of Mrs. Woodhull, is rapidly earning the best reputation in the Beecher family. Her courageous—I will even say heroic—advocacy of woman’s enfranchisement, including not merely woman’s political but social freedom, is a new proof that a Calvinistic education, if once the soul which it narrows gets broadened, furnishes and intensity of moral conviction and enthusiasm which makes its possessor competent to perform great things. Mrs. Hooker is covering the State of Connecticut with suffrage tracts. Lyman Beecher wonders at her in his grave, and the living pulpit of Connecticut is doubtful whether her orthodoxy be wholly orthodox. But it is somewhat singular that Mrs. Stowe, who does not know Mrs. Woodhull, is writing furiously and unwarrantably against her in the Christian Union, while Mrs. Stowe’s sister, who does know her, is acting bravely as Mrs. Woodhull’s chief co-worker. When Isabella Beecher Hooker joined the woman’s cause, she brought to it an army with banners; and I hope she will be able to do as much for woman as her sister did for the negro.
I might go on and mention other notabilities. The apostle whom I just quoted, you remember, made a high-sounding catalogue of the names of Gideon, Barak, Samson and others of whom the world was not worthy. In the same way I could put together, like a string of pearls, the names of twenty or thirty brave and noble women, scattered in all parts of the country, and variously laboring for the enfranchisement of their sex. The ladies who occupy the thrones of Europe are not the equals in brains with these and other women who figure at the principal Woman’s Rights Conventions. Victoria herself is not more queenly, nor Eugenie more imperial, than some of these stately wives and mothers, whose names, passing beyond their own homes, have become household words throughout the land. These worthy folk have their faults—some of judgment, others of taste, others of ignorance and others of obstinacy. But if there be, as Dr. Johnson thought, “failings which lean to virtue’s side,” such are the foibles of these noble women whose utterances sometimes are rough, and whose actions occasionally are rash, but whose purposes are always as white as the light.
SLEEPY HOLLOW, June 20, 1871.
—Golden Age
Webmaster’s note: The above is a complete transcript of “A LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN” from Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly. The article was written by Theodore Tilton and was mentioned in his final statement to the Investigating Committee of Plymouth Church in September 1874.
When this web site began in September 1999, there were no digitized copies of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly available online. Now you can find an almost complete run on the IAPSOP web site which has no affiliation with Victoria Woodhull & Company:
Mrs. Amelia F. Southgate has been elected a member of the school committee in Taunton, Mass.
A kiss, says a French authoress, costs less and gives more pleasure than anything else in the world.
“I will be in fashion, if I dye for it!” said the ambitious belle, whose locks were not of the ruling tint; and dye she did….
In the Elgin watch factories three hundred of five hundred employe[e]s are girls. These girls earn from $10 to $20 a week, and perform the delicate operations incident to the business more skillfully than men.
A “Western woman” says in a letter that her sex will never rest contented until their sins are treated as leniently as are those committed by men. Yes, the sex has more than an equality of wrongs; it is about time to have an equality of rights.
Mrs. Rolles has knocked one “objection” entirely out of sight by the statement that an invention has been perfected in Boston by which the cradle can be satisfactorily, securely and continuously rocked while the women go to vote.
The Emperor of Germany had no less than fifteen thousand applications for the cross of merit from ladies who acted as nurses during the war. Only three thousand of them were successful. Of course killing must be rewarded before curing.
Rev. Dr. Peabody, in his election sermon yesterday, said: “The sole reason why women were underpaid was that women who did not need work were mean enough to underbid those who did, and the lowest bid ruled the market.”—Boston Transcript.
In an election held at Greeley, Colorado, on the 2d, the people of that town nominated by ballot the man they wished to receive the appointment of postmaster. Ninety-eight women participated in the election.
A married lady in Connecticut recently fell into a river, and would have drowned except that her cries attracted the attention of her husband, who, mistaking her in the dark for another woman, worked like a beaver to get her out….
A couple were married at Great Barrington, Mass., on Tuesday, and on Saturday the husband returned the bride to her mother. He said he wasn’t in the habit of being kicked out of bed by women, and he wouldn’t stand it. If the story be true here is a man who needs protection by a free love law. What will society do for him now? Laugh at him….
[Page 10]
Beecher stock is declining. Choice of pews only fetched two-thirds what it did last year.
[Page 8]
THE CONVENTION OF THE THEOLOGIANS.
Last week we presented some of our views as to what the proposed action of the theologians means, when they shall attempt to indoctrinate the Constitution with their interpretation of God and the Bible. Against all such despotism we have always protested, and shall always continue to protest. No living man or woman has any right to force his or her convictions upon another person, and what these Pharisees propose, is simply the most high-handed outrage upon human rights that was ever attempted. They know that they represent but a miserable minority of the people of the country, or of the world, and when they assume to dictate to the great mass of people, we can but call to mind the old adage, “that whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.”
Their egotistic, self-righteous call we have already published. We now propose to take it, sentence by sentence, and expose its monstrous and absurd assumptions. Its very first sentence is a plainly-stated falsehood, which everybody who is not prejudiced in its favor must discern at first sight. It declares that “government is instituted for man as an intellectual, social, moral and religious being. It corresponds to his whole nature.”
By whom, pray, is government instituted for man? We deny the proposition. Government is instituted by men, as members of a common humanity, the rights of each one of whom are sacred to him and beyond the reach, by any but despotic means, of all people who meddle with what is none of their business. If we believe to-day that Jesus Christ took this view of humanity, teaching that they are all brothers and sisters, what business have these religious demagogues to attempt to compel men to believe that there are sheep and goats in humanity, and that the goats shall be separated from the sheep and burned up in a lake of fire and brimstone, which, by the way, is a natural impossibility and a burlesque upon science, which is the exponent and natural handmaid and companion of all true religion.
Are we told that these long-faced hypocrites do not intend to use torture to convert us to Christianity? Don’t you believe it. Anybody who believes that an infinite God can eternally burn His own children for a few miserable years of ill-spent earth life, can commit any heinous crime in the name of such a God, since anything that they might do to save us from His wrath, even the use of the rack and the stake would be merciful when compared with His horrible judgment. Therefore we say those who pretend to believe in a God who can be such an Infernal Fiend as they represent Him to be, will be justified by their belief, in proceeding to any terrible resorts to convert the world.
Read the next sentences and ponder them well, and see if they do not mean all we have hinted at. “It” [government] “acts well when it watches over domestic life, and asserts and enforces,” mark the language, ” the sanctity of the marriage bond; when it frowns on profanity, lewdness, the desecration of the Sabbath, and other crimes.” Here it is seen that a clear statement is made of what its intents are. It is a perfect departure from the theory of our present government, and a reversion to the extreme doctrine of Romanism*, which has murdered, mercifully as it thought, millions of men and women, in the name of their God, before whom they bowed. And these bigots, who are now moving in this direction, are imbued with the same spirit, and were they to attain to the requisite power, they would hesitate at nothing to save souls from hell.
The Justice of the Supreme Court, whose name, William Strong, is appended to this case, set all rules of logic at defiance, and, as Religious Bigotry has always done, assumes everything. He says, “Moral principles of conduct are determined by moral relations.” Now, if any school girl of twelve years could not detect that absurdity we should say her teaching had been in vain. Why, the very reverse is true. Moral relations are determined by moral principles. The principles exist in the souls of men and determine what relations they shall maintain. Relations of all kinds are the outgrowth of principles. Do these supercilious egotists suppose they can cram such stuff into the intellectual maw of humanity with the prospect of its being digested to yield fruit unto them? Our estimate of human intellect is too good to admit such an absurdity.
But he proceeds: ‘The relations of a nation to God and his Moral Laws are clear and definite: 1. A nation is the creature of God. 2. It is clothed with authority derived from God. 3. It is under the dominion of Jesus Christ, the appointed ruler of the nations. 4. It is subject to the Bible, the special revelation of the moral law:” and he should have added, to complete his position, 5. And we whose names are hereunto signed are the elect of God and Christ to assert and enforce these propositions.
The relations of a nation as such to God and his moral law are not clear and definite. The relations which a nation sustain are determined entirely by the character of the moral and intellectual conditition [sic] of the people who compose it. It proves quite too much to admit Justice Strong’s proposition. They are clear and definite to him. So also are they to every other human being, but not in the same way that they are clear to him. But he assumes that he is right and everybody else wrong; while everybody else has the same right to assume that Justice Strong and the long list of Reverend Doctors are wrong and that he is right. Can Justice Strong make that application?
Absolutely—in the absolute sense—”A nation is the creature of God,” and in the same sense are all things creature of God just what He has made them. He should certainly be satisfied with His own work, since nobody interfered with Him in its performance. In the absolute sense, all things are good. To God all things are good, because God is absolute.
In the relative sense, a nation is not the creature of God, but the construction of man, in the same sense that the railroad and steamship are the construction of man. Men construct them by taking hold of the absolutely good things which God had created and fashioning them into forms of which they can make use. Even these bigots will not assume that God constructed the locomotive engine, except in the absolute sense that he created man and all things else as results of a general constructive process. Man contrived it, and, so far as these theologians have ever shown us, without any superior help. In the same way have men constructed nations, and unless these people assert that God has made all things just as he wants them, and that all the things of which they complain are creations of their own diseased fancies, then they must admit that they have no cause of action, since they do not propose to fight against God, nor should they fight against man when he has done so many things so well.
In the relative sense it is not true that government is clothed with authority from God. The authority of the government is derived from the people who construct it, except in governments which exist by the divine right of kings. If a king assume that he is clothed with power from God, as kings have claimed, and that he has the power to enforce his rule, then, of course, the will of the people is submerged. Is that the kind of authority to which these people refer? If so, we are of opinion they had better remove to some other country not quite so far enlightened as this before attempting to put their ideas into practice.
So far as their proposition regarding Christ is concerned we have no comment to make, except that we shall require the direct authority of Christ as to who are his representatives. The rules which he laid down by which his disciples were to be known, do not attend these assuming people. We are skeptical about their being the disciples of Christ. In short, we do not believe they are at all, except in the absolute sense in which all people are his disciples. In the relative sense in which we must treat all things relating to human progress and needs, we are obliged to leave the absolute and deal with persons, things and circumstances as facts, separated from the general whole. In this sense we
[Page 9]
admit his third proposition, but deny the application. Any other person might just as well assume the same thing, and he would have just as good authority. Neither Justice Strong nor any of his associate vice-presidents have any commission from Christ to specially represent Him, or if they have, let them bring it forward.
Government is no more subject to the Bible than to the Koran. The truths enunciated by Confucius, Budha, Brahma, Zoroaster, Plato and every other great person, are just as much authority to us as anything contained in the Bible. In fact there is no moral law contained in the Bible that is not copied from some of the earlier authorities. Every one who ever proclaimed a truth is an authority, not of his own personality, but because of the truth. Had the most terrible tyrant this world ever knew discovered and uttered the Golden Rule, it would have been all that it is now.
We must therefore enter our protest against the last proposition. In fact they deny it themselves, since they denounce in Brigham Young what they worship in Solomon. If the Bible is the moral law, then Solomon and his 1,000 women are a part of it. If only parts of it are moral law then we have just as good right to judge what parts are moral and what immoral as Justice Strong and Governor Geary have. We don’t believe they will permit us to judge for them in this matter. We know they would fight rather than be compelled to take our judgment as against their won; and we know we shall fight when they attempt to compel us to take their judgment as against our own.
These would-be tyrants have not yet been the recipients of the first principles of freedom. It has yet to germinate within their souls. They want their own freedom but refuse to grant the same to anybody else. They want their freedom to be despotism to everybody else, and not being able to accomplish this by the force of their moral power they propose to assert and enforce it through a government shaped to suit their designs.
The fundamental propositions of these people being erroneous, all their deductions fall to the ground. A moral law which does not find itself written in the hearts of the people will never, if written in the Constitution of the country, accomplish anything except to become a basis of persecution.
Prohibitory laws of all kinds are equally a fallacious kind of government. Religion, morality, or any other sentiment can ever be legislated into human souls. He would be crazy who should attempt to legislate intellectual truths into the heads of people. But he would not be more so than they are who attempt to produce morality and religious growth by means of the power of government.
Education is legitimate in all departments of life, as well in religion as in science. But nobody can become a legitimate, religion teacher, until the perfect moral law is discovered, as the perfect mathematical law has been discovered. Nobody thinks of speculating upon mathematics. A theology of mathematics would be received as an absurdity. But it is not more so than a theology of religion. The world is not religious only, it is intellectual and affectional. In fact, the devotional nature of humanity is nothing more than the expression of the affections in their relation to the Unknowable, while true religion consists entirely of works.
If these would-be exemplars of religion would follow the precepts and practices of their professed Master, they should set them about doing practical good, even breaking the Sabbath day as He did. They should begin the inquiry as to who are their neighbors. Some of them should even look into their own hearts to see if they have not already committed adultery. They should learn what Jesus always taught, that the law is unto death, but the spirit unto life. They should endeavor to learn the truth, that they have no right to judge, lest they be judged. In short, while they should desire a government to protect themselves from interference by others, they must learn that every other person desires governmental protection from their schemes for despotism.
Government, in its latest and best significance, is a form of organization by which the people secure to themselves protection from each other in their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. That is its only function. It can never have any other power in this country beyond what it now has. And what it now has, outside of that, will soon be taken away from it and returned to the people, to whom it belongs individually and not collectively.
But we want these professing hypocrites, these I-am-holier-than-thou people, to go on with their convention. Their resolutions will all appear well on the surface. They are nothing. But the spirit which lies back of them is what we must regard. That spirit of proselytism is a dangerous one to intrust with any power. It will never get any in these United States. But, we repeat, let the convention proceed.
Webmaster’s note: *The reference to millions murdered by Romanism is referring to historical church-state violence, like the Crusades and the Inquisitions, and should not be construed as an attack on Catholics themselves. This particular article was written in response to an upcoming national convention to be held in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Jan. 31, 1872. The “God in the Constitution” movement proposed adding an amendment to the Constitution recognizing God and Jesus Christ. The movement, led by conservative Protestants, drew significant opposition from both the religious and the secular. The above is a full transcript of the article, “THE CONVENTION OF THE THEOLOGIANS,” published in Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly.
When this web site began in September 1999, there were no digitized copies of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly available online. Now you can find an almost complete run on the IAPSOP web site which has no affiliation with Victoria Woodhull & Company:
Washington is invaded again by the women of the land, and this time they come with a more determined purpose than ever before. The Stone-Howe party, which was here some time ago, was an advanced guard of skirmishers to open the way for that which has now burst upon us, for it cannot be questioned that there is more brains and vigor in the wing of the grand army marshaled by the ladies whose names are given below than in the other wing, which is fighting to the same end, but has not taken quite such an advanced position.
The woman suffrage movement is one that cannot be ignored. There can be no doubt but that the advocates of the cause are gaining not only ground but strength, as during the three sessions held yesterday the audience was made up of some of our most prominent citizens, both male and female. There seemed to be an evidence of terrible earnestness on the countenances, which served to infuse fire and enthusiasm into the leaders of the movement.
The earnestness of the women having the cause in charge, of course, cannot be doubted, and in order to make the convention as effective as possible, the best available talent has been brought forward. Miss Anthony, who reminds one of Senator Trumbull, is on hand ready to combat any argument that may be sprung by the opponents of the cause. Mrs. Woodhull, the enthusiast and able legal advocate, is ready and willing to argue the question from that standpoint. Mrs. Stanton, the good, matronly-looking dame, whose face is adorned with smiles and full of sunshine, makes converts by her lucid reasoning and happy, winning ways, while others of well-known ability lend aid with their powerful voice and argument.
Just before 10 o’clock the leaders made their appearance on the stage. First came Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in a heavy black silk, trimmed with taste, and cut after an approved modern pattern. She has a handsome face, and is of portly proportions. Then followed Miss Susan B. Anthony, a woman evidently well over the forties, of angular features and wiry, active frame. No endowed with a handsome face, but full of vim and logic. She was dressed in a wine-colored silk, with two narrow flounces of the same material. Her white collar was relieved with a blue tie. Victoria C Woodhull came next, and was greeted with applause. She wore her usual plain suit of blue broadcloth and a double-breasted chinchilla coat trimmed with black velvet. She is quick of movement, and of well-developed form; has a pleasing face. Her hair is cut short, and is given to a slight curl.
Mrs. Joslyn Gage appears to be about forty-five years of age, and of firm and decisive character; not comely, nor yet bad looking. She has an eye of magic attraction and a lilly-white complexion. She attired herself for the occasion in a brown poplin, with a sacque of the same material, a jockey hat and feather, and kept her neck inclosed in a boa of mink.
Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, a prominent mover, has a full, intelligent face and ruddy complexion. In speaking she displays a full set of pearly-white teeth. Her hair, of iron gray, is arranged in many ringlets, which fall over her forehead. She was dressed in black silk, with a profusion of blue silk ribbons flowing from her neck. A black bonnet, which she wore during the sessions, served on the whole to make up a most becoming attire.
Mrs. Wright, old enough to have voted long, long since, is of a demure turn of mind, if her countenance is to be believed. She seemed to take deep interest in the proceedings. Her body was adorned in a black alpaca, trimmed plainly; an Astrachan coat, of good size; a black bonnet, with black and white ruche, and a huge white scarf.
Mrs. Ricker, a sister of ex-Representative Ely, is a beautiful, charming and good widow, said to be rich and not over forty. She wore a dark-blue dress, without wrappings, the only ornaments being a profusion of military buttons. She wears her hair a la Woodhull, cut short.
Mrs. E. L. Daniels has a peculiar expression of countenance, hard to read. She is said to be a spiritualist, and probably converses at all times with the good people of the other world. She is not handsome, nor yet uncomely. She wore a dark blue dress and coat, and a dapper little hat, with the tail of some domestic animal for an ornament.
Mrs. B. A. Lockwood, too well known to be described, wore a green poplin, trimmed with green plaits of black velvet, black velvet coat, and brown hat.
Dr. Mary Walker wore her usual costume of breeches and long monk like coat, a pair of number three shoes, and her hair arranged in curls.
Among the others on the stage were Laura De Force Gordon, Mrs. Elizabeth Bladen, of Philadelphia; Miss Laura C. Smith, of California; Miss Maggie Saxton, and others.
MORNING SESSION.
A few minutes past 10 o’clock the assemblage was called to order by Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the president, who said:
This is the fourth convention we have held in Washington, and the effect of the same can hardly be estimated in the education of American people toward female suffrage. We now propose to tell you what we are going to do. I feel more anxious about how women will vote than in their speedy voting. So many political questions are seen in the horizon that woman’s influence is needed to guide safely through all storms the ship of state. We propose to change tactics. Instead of petitioning Congress for our rights we propose to fight and settle the question before the courts, unless Congress gives us the declaratory act this winter, which I think they will.
We have reasoned for twenty-five years, and we now propose to take our rights. If we don’t get them we will organize a government outside of the bogus republic, and carry on one of our own, and as soon as it is well organized all the great and wise men of the nation will come to our side. A grand way to celebrate our centennial anniversary of independence would be by giving the franchise to the women. [A Voice—”If not sooner.”]
Miss Susan B. Anthony was then introduced, who said that for the past two weeks she had been in a snow bank in the Rocky Mountains, and had with much difficulty succeeded in reaching Washington in time to attend the convention, but that she was glad she was here.
Now, we ask no new guarantee from the Government. We only ask that our sex be protected by the Government in the exercise of our rights in the several States. We have been appealing and petitioning Congress for the past twenty years. We are here now in earnest. Since I was last here, one year ago, I have traveled fifteen thousand miles, and spoken one hundred and eighty nights out of the three hundred and sixty-five. After delivering my speeches I always took occasion to take a vote of such as believed themselves entitled to the ballot, and I assure you it was almost a unanimous one with the women composing the audience. She then spoke of the increased Republican votes in the Territory of Wyoming since the enfranchisement of women, and how attempts were made to repeal the law which gave them the ballot. She stated that any party that put woman suffrage in its plank, she was pledged to support. President Grant, in his message, has remembered all classes and conditions of men to Congress, but never said woman once, and we have made up our minds that he is not the women’s candidate for the White House. [Applause.]
Mrs. Victoria C. Woodhull was the next speaker, and delivered a short address on the relations of Spiritualism, to political reform, claiming that it recognized the doctrine of equal rights. She wanted all evangelical bodies to organize for political purposes against all class rule and legislation. The duty of the hour was to overthrow all inequalities before the law and to inaugurate justice.
Order is God’s first law, and is observed wherever individualized mind does not interfere to obstruct. Organization among humanity corresponds to order in nature, and without it humanity expend their power with inadequate results.
Our Constitution contains all the elements of a perfect government. It is based upon the spiritual idea that all men and women are born free and equal, and alike entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To these broad propositions nothing need be added. They are sufficient for all circumstances and adequate for all emergencies. It is only required that they be completely developed in form and practice.
Until Spiritualism dawned upon the world, humanity did not conceive the full glory and grandeur of freedom, equality and justice. But an appreciation of these sentiments has come to some souls, and they burn with a desire for all humanity to enjoy the inestimable benefits of their full realization in practice.
Then let Spiritualists and all Reformers tear from their political banners the names of Democracy and Republicanism, which have become a stench in the nostrils of all thoughtful people, and throw to the breeze that more comprehensive name, “Equal Rights,” which is the compound essence of equality and justice; and let them battle for it stoutly and devotedly, never faltering until it shall be planted on the dome of the Capitol at Washington in the hands of the Goddess of Liberty, in whose keeping it may be intrusted for all future ages. From that centre of political power its elevating and ennobling influence shall radiate in all directions, even to the circumference of the country, and, extending its encircling arms, gradually encompass the whole earth, reducing all nations, climes and tongues to a common brotherhood, owning but one Father, and He the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, which will be the Spiritualization of humanity.
This is the destiny of Spiritualism which comprehends all reform and the duty of Spiritualists. Now as to the methods by which this should be pursued. First: All Spiritualistic teachers whose souls are lit up by angelic inspiration or wisdom should at once address themselves to organizing the masses of Spiritualists into co-operative bodies to act in concert upon ail political questions. Their platform should be so comprehensive as to include all that is good in Democracy and Republicanism, and should be so perfectly humanitarian as to irresistibly draw all good men and women to its occupancy. There is a singular proclivity in the American mind. It will always desert the less for the more perfect,so soon as its proportions become manifest.
How long do you think Democracy would exist or Republicanism have place and power were there a party to arise based on perfect right and justice? You know they would suddenly fade from sight, and the new and true as suddenly burst in all its splendor upon the startled, waiting world.
Since Spiritualism is the most comprehensive and humanitarian of all religions, it should also become so in its politics. It is a false idea that religion and politics have nothing to do with each other. Religion should be the basic idea in all things, and that thing in which it is lacking may be safely considered as but temporary or transitional. Aye, let politics become Spiritualized, and we may then hope for blessings to flow from government, and fit to be a system emanating from all the people, to be administered for the
[Page 4]
interests of all the people, by the consent of all the people, by those who are the servants of the people and thus the servants of humanity.
This work is not the work of Spiritualists, simply as such, but as the representatives of an idea to which humanity entire may give in their allegiance. They, however, should form a centre around which all radicalism can with consistency concentrate. There is no other separate body representing radically progressive ideas so powerful and so well distributed throughout the country as are Spiritualists; which is another reason why they should seize upon this auspicious moment to strike the knell that shall carry dismay to all who stand barring the Car of Progress.
Surrounded by staunch, strong and firm friends, the President of the National Association of Spiritualists stands as the present bearer of the standard of the Equal Rights party. But she does not sound this trumpet-call to rally simply because she is the bearer of the standard, but because the standard is one of equal and exact justice, belonging to all humanity, whom she desires shall be brought to their birthright, and she will yield it to the first comer who shall be considered more worthy or more capable to bear it than she is. She is only ambitious for victory that principles may triumph. She would now gladly retire to the ranks. She has, as gallantly as she knew how, breasted the dark clouds and storms that have risen over her path, but she has done so devoutly and reverentially, always recognizing that she is but an humble instrument of those who command the armies of heaven and desire to accomplish the conquest of the inhabitants of the earth; though sometimes weary and almost fainting by the wayside, by the help of the good angels she will neither permit the banner to trail in the dust nor resign it until the victory is either won or another, stouter, braver and better, shall be sent to bear it on to victory.
The duty of the hour, then, is that all people in whose souls there has dawned a comprehension of the better government which shall descend from heaven, long foretold by prophets and seers, should rally to the overthrow of everything that is against the spirit of the new and true, and to the inauguration of it in its place. With equality and justice as your motto, you should supplant caste and favor, and lead the way to the ultimate elevation of the world to the plane of a common brotherhood.
Upon the conclusion of Mrs. Woodhull’s address the following resolutions were read by Mrs. Joslyn Gage :
RESOLUTIONS.
Whereas, In the adjustment of the question of suffrage now before the people of this country for settlement, it is of the highest importance that the organic law of the land should be so framed and construed as to work injustice to none, but secure, as far as possible, perfect political equality among all classes of citizens; and whereas, all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein the reside; be it
Resolved, 1. That the privileges and immunities of American citizenship, however defined, are national in character and paramount to all State authority.
2. That while the Constitution of the United States leaves the qualifications of electors to the several States, it nowhere gives them the right to deprive any citizen of the elective franchise which is possessed by any other citizen—the right to regulate, not including the right to prohibit the franchise.
3. That, as the Constitution of the United States expressly declares that “no State shall make or enforce any law that shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,” those provisions of the several State constitutions that exclude women from the franchise on account of sex, are violative alike of the spirit and letter of the Federal Constitution.
4. That, as the subject of naturalization is expressly withheld from the States, and as the States clearly would have no right to deprive of the franchise naturalized citizens, among whom women are expressly included, still more clearly they have no right to deprive native-born woman citizens of this right.
5. That justice and equity can only be attained by having the same laws for men and women alike.
6. That, having full faith and confidence in the truth and justice of these principles, we will never cease to urge the claims of women to a participation in the affairs of Government equally with men.
The resolutions, on motion of Mrs. Stanton, were laid on the table for discussion.
Mrs. Stanton again advanced to the front, and stated that some time since she had endeavored to induce the members of the New York Legislature to strike the word male out of the statutes at the time they were discussing the propriety of eliminating the word white therefrom. She was told to wait until they had gotten the negro safely into the political kingdom, and then the women’s turn would come next. Well, we are still waiting, and patiently, too, although the negro has been safely in the political kingdom for some time. The noble women who have been agitating this question have been called “strong-minded.” Now, strong-minded women are not all that have been ridiculed; the weak-minded ones are too. The strong-minded are ridiculed for a principle, and the weak ones for a panier. I would rather be ridiculed for a principle than a panier. [Immense applause.] Now, the Bible says: “Honor thy father and thy mother ;” but the Constitution of the United States says otherwise. Some say it will degrade women to vote. Not so. When we infuse this element into politics you won’t find the voting done in a green grocery or in a rum-hole through the shutter, but in a church.
Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker then spoke in relation to Mrs. Woodhull’s allusions to Spiritualism, stating that if it recognized equal rights, it was that far at least right. If Spiritualists have brains enough to comprehend and soul enough to come up to the position to which Victoria Woodhull invites them, Spiritualists will rule the world. She then went on to say that she did not intend to allow side issues to swerve her from her work; that her whole time would be devoted to the cause of securing for women the right to vote. I am no believer in the exclusive use of terms. I believe every human being is evangelical who loves his God and his neighbor as himself. We, too, believe in the power of spirits of whom Paul has spoken, and that they are with us to-day in every good and honest work. If any are doubtful whether our work is of the Lord or devil, Let them come and hear us and then combat our arguments. Upon the conclusion of her remarks a recess was taken Until 2 P. M.
AFTERNOON SESSION.
A few minutes past two o’clock the afternoon session wa[s] called to order. The large hall was filled to repletion with an audience composed of many of our best and most valued citizens. Mrs. Stanton introduced Mr. Burlingame, of Rhode Island, as the first speaker, remarking that the convention did not believe in the proscription of men, but rather allowed them to have a hearing.
REMARKS OF MR. BURLINGAME.
I sympathize with this movement. It commands my respect and admiration. I have come here unexpected and unsolicited, because I think my wife and other women should have the same rights as the colored man, Irishman and “Heathen Chinee.” I believe in this movement, because I believe it to be right; it is the most important question of the times. The speaker then reviewed the objections against female suffrage, and pronounced them all weak, and closed with allusions to the many heroic deeds of illustrious women now a part of history.
Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker then presented the following report, in relation to the work of the association for the past year:
REPORT.
The work to be done in the future is precisely what has been recommended during the past year by every member of the committee in public and in private.
1. Women should attempt to qualify and attempt to vote in every State election or otherwise, according to opportunity. This action not only serves the purpose of agitation of the whole question of suffrage, but it puts upon men, our brothers, the onus of refusing the votes of their fellow-citizens, and compels them to show just cause for such proceeding. If it could be well understood that every woman who believes she has a right to vote, would actually test her right by an appearance at the polls before and at the next Presidential election, the question as to nominees for that office would contain a new element, and the views and preferences of this large constituency would receive serious consideration at the hands of President-makers in both the great parties of the country.
2. Women should study the question of their present rights and duties, and make their views known in public and in private to the utmost extent of their ability. In a time like this, when the interests of our whole beloved country are at stake, when political corruption is appalling, and men are paralyzed with fear because of the threatened failure of republican institutions, ignorance and indifference on the part of women, who are the natural protectors of purity and honor, whether in the family or the State, are sins against God, their country and their own souls.
3. Men and women should pour out money like water for the propagation of these views. A copy of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution of the United States, together with an argument on the fair interpretation of these documents, should be put into every family in the United States which has a reading member in it. Your committee are able and willing to send these documents directly into these homes-one at a time, carefully directed and franked by members of Congress, who believe they are making a patriotic and legitimate use of the franking privilege by thus educating their constituents in the first principles of a constitutional government-a government founded upon personal liberty and personal responsibility. Half a million dollars appropriated by Congress itself for this simple purpose would inaugurate a reign of patriotism and purity scarcely dreamed of as yet by the most powerful lovers of their country. But Congress has not yet even printed the able reports from the Judiciary Committee of the House, and the few copies we have been able to send out have been the gift of a private individual. Women must educate themselves-men must help them. The latter hold the purse-strings; and so surely as they desire peace, plenty and the perpetuity of republican institutions, they must see to it that women are supplied with the sinews of war. Moral warfare costs not only heart’s blood, but treasure. Women are offering their very souls in behalf of mankind. Can men do less than empty their pockets tor the good of the race?
And there is one thing more that men can and must do before the reign of justice and equality can be inaugurated. They, being voters, must pledge themselves in their own breasts, and to one another, that they will vote for such candidates in either party as are in favor of woman suffrage, and for no others. Such proceedings would settle the question in less than a year, and the peaceful working of a new regime would prove the wisdom and patriotism of these faithful souls before the whole world. We confidently believe that there are at least 300,000 voters to-day who desire to share the burdens and responsibilities of government with their mothers, wives and sisters. Let them combine and speak the sovereign words, “Principle before party,” and the day is won.
The political aspect is eminently encouraging. In the language of our call : “The times are auspicious, party ties are broken, politicians are losing their hold on the masses, who have clearer ideas of human rights than ever before; and of all the vital issues now looming up for the party of no distant future, there is no one so momentous and far-reaching in its consequences as woman suffrage.”
In commenting on the above, she said that no woman has any right to allow any man to represent her. Women have the right to be heard for themselves, and she hoped all women would use all the influence they had to induce the Judiciary Committee of the Senate to give them a hearing this week.
THE REPORT ADOPTED.
Miss Anthony—The adoption of the report is moved. It is moved and seconded that the report be adopted. If there are any comments to be made, now is the time to make them.
Miss Anthony—The report is adopted.
A letter was then read from Mrs. Paulina W. Davis, dated at Naples, expressing the hope that the work of the convention would be productive of much good.
SHARP CORRESPONDENCE. The following letters, which are self-explanatory, were then read :
MRS. GAGE TO MRS. DAHLGREN. WASHINGTON, D. C., Jan. 8, 1872.
Mrs. Admiral Dahlgren : MADAM : The National Woman Suffrage Association is to hold a three days’ convention the present week, in Lincoln Hall, commencing on the morning of Wednesday, the 10th. Nothing would afford the officers and speakers of the convention greater pleasure than to hold a debate, during some session, with yourself and your friends, upon the question of woman suffrage. As you have publicly expressed your opposition to woman’s enfranchisement, not only through the papers, but also by a petition against it to Congress, we feel sure you will gladly accept our invitation and let us know your reason for the faith that is within you.
Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as president of the association and convention, will afford you every opportunity for argument, and will herself enter the list against you. Not only Mrs. Stanton, but all members of the committee cordially extend this invitation for debate, to be held at any session most convenient for yourself.
An early answer is desirable.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements.
MRS. DAHLGREN TO MRS. GAGE. Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage, Chairman Committee of Arrangements : MADAM : Mrs. Sherman and myself are this morning in receipt of a note from you in which you invite us, in the name of the “officers and speakers of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association,” to hold a debate upon the question of “woman suffrage,” and mention that “Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as President of the Association and Convention, will afford every opportunity for argument, and will herself enter the lists,” etc.
In reply to this invitation, for which we thank you, in so far as it may have been extended in a true desire to elicit fair argument, we would remind you that in the very fact of soliciting us to “hold debate” on a public platform on this or any other question, you entirely ignore the principle that ourselves and our friends seek to defend, viz., the preservation of female modesty.
The functions of men and women in the State as citizens are correlative and opposite. They cannot be made common without seriously impairing the public virtue.
Our men must be brave and our women modest, if this country may hope to fulfill her true mission for humanity.
We protest against woman suffrage, because the right of petition may safely be considered as common to all, and its exercise most beneficial.
We publish written articles, giving our “reasons for the faith that is within us,” because we may, consistently with the home life and its duties, make such use of whatever talents God may have confided to our keeping. To these printed articles, in which we have fully and at different times explained our views, we are happy to refer you.
We likewise hold that an appeal to the public made in this manner is much more likely to evolve a clear apprehension of this important subject, as presenting a strict issue to the reasoning faculties, and one undimmed by those personalities which generally are indulged in during the course of oral debate.
I am truly yours, MADELINE VICTOR DAHLGREN. Washington, January 9, 1871.
Mrs. E. L. Daniels, of Boston, was introduced. The speaker was evidently a Spiritualist, and talked about the death of our Saviour and the ingratitude of the Masonic Fraternity. She then said that men were weak and vacillating like women, and that women would not love them if they were not. Upon the conclusion of her remarks, Miss Anthony advanced to the front and said: “I am temporarily in the chair, and it is contrary to all red-tapism for the chairman to talk, but I am going to talk.” [Laughter.]
Now, if man filled the bill for everything that was good, and legislated in our own interests to our own satisfaction, I would not give up so long as the ballot was withheld. You are none the less a slave because you are a petted slave, or because you are kindly legislated for. Those women who do not desire the ballot do not look into the cause of the sufferings of thousands of women, because they themselves are provided for. I want the door of every workshop and government office opened for women. If every law were generosity more than justice to women, I should still stand up for the rights of women. Woman’s condition to-day is like the caged bird-petted and well-fed, perhaps, but still restrained in natural rights. By ignoring us the right of representation, we are distressed as much as was John Hancock or Patrick Henry. You may just as well recognize our rights now as to keep us begging at the doors of Congress.
Mrs. Joslyn Gage stated that it was going the rounds of the press that the illiteracy of American women was on the increase. If this were so, she urged that the ballot was an educator, and should be given at once to women to counter-act the same.
The next speaker introduced was Mrs. Laura C. Smith.
All true women realized that their strength was in their womanhood, and they would never sacrifice it without loss of power. Throughout nature we find the positive and negative, the masculine and feminine elements harmoniously blended. Only in government are they divorced, and the result is confusion and corruption. Our design, therefore, is to introduce this needed element into the science of government; and we demand an exalted and perfected womanhood in its divine strength for this great work, and not masculine women, who are burlesques upon manhood.
She alluded to the influence of the ballot in the hands of woman in redressing human wrongs. Suffrage for her sex, as she understood it, meant education for the ignorant, work for the idle, redemption for the outcast, equal rights for all. When mothers realized the responsibility of the home, they would establish a new system of education for their sons and teach them that moral and physical purity is as essential for them as for our daughters; they would no longer smile upon the seducer and frown upon the seduced.
To-day these victims of society are shut out of all places of instruction, amusement and worship, while their seducers fan the daughters of upper tendom in the dress-circle of our theatres and embrace the delicate daughters of fashion in the mazes of the intoxicating dance, their mothers looking on with approving smiles. The sentiment expressed by the matrons of our day to the effect that “a reformed rake makes the best husband” must no longer be expressed save as it is accompanied by the frank admission that a reformed prostitute makes, as a natural conclusion, the best wife. Our young maiden must insist upon the same purity in her love as he demands from her; and when our daughters say to the libertine who seeks them in marriage, “I will not clasp in troth plight the hand that has lured a sister down to social destruction—I will not accept a place in a heart that has been the sepulchre of a sister’s honor”—then, and not till then, will men realize that they can only purchase the society of noble women by the sacrifice of every degrading vice.
Mrs. Smith then enlarged upon the law of transmitted tendencies, and closed with a desire upon the part of the audience to hear her again.
Just after the speaker concluded, Mr. Kilgore, of Penn-
[Page 5]
sylvania, arose in the audience and moved the appointment of a committee of five on resolutions.
Mrs. Anthony said that she proposed again to overstep the conventionalities of red tape, and announced the following committees, which were accepted, and a permanent organization effected.
On Organization—Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. Wright, M. T. Davis, Mrs. L. C. Smith. On Presidential Convention—Miss Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mrs. L. De Force Gordon, Edward M. Davis. On Resolutions—Mrs. M. E. Joslyn Gage, Mary F. Davis, William F. Channing. Carrie S. Burnham, Ellen C. Sargent, John Gage, D. Y. Kilgore. On Finance—Miss Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood, E. L Daniels.
The convention then took a recess to 7:30 P. M.
EVENING SESSION.
The convention reassembled at 7:30 o’clock P. M., at which hour Mrs. Cady Stanton, followed by Mrs. Victoria Woodhull, Susan B. Anthony, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Dr. Mary E. Walker, and other notables connected with the woman’s movement, made their appearance on the platform and took their seats.
Mrs. Stanton taking the chair called the meeting to order, and announced as the lecturer of the evening Mrs. Victoria Woodhull, who on being referred to stepped quickly to the stand and commenced her lecture.
[The length of this speech prohibits publication in this number. It will be given in full in the next, as will also the Constitution of the United States of the World in the succeeding number.]
Mr. Drury, following Mrs. Woodhull, said that he appeared with considerable diffidence. He thought when men came forward to advocate the cause of women, it looked like Beelzebub appearing to plead the cause of justice. He thought the woman question and the question of human rights inseparable. The woman’s platform is the platform of every working man, because by it they could see that there is no freedom when woman is a slave. Upon this platform is discussed the principle of the abolition of all class privileges, and the social and political equality of all the people. It is for this equality we are here to-night, to bid God speed to the platform which is to give liberty and equality to the world.
The principle of the woman’s platform is already being placed in the platforms of the laboring men’s associations. It has been been contended that woman has no right to place herself on the same plane with man. This question of voting must come. It has gone through all the phases which such questions have to go through. Like the anti-slavery question, it has to go through the three phases of ridicule, argument and then adoption. Argumentatively,the women have gained their position, and now the only thing to wait for is the adoption. The speaker approved heartily of the new constitution launched out to-night by Mrs. Woodhull. This new constitution will rally around itself all the radical and liberal judgment of the people. It will divide the country into conservatives and liberals, and the grand majority will not be on the side of monopolies and capitalists. These two sides must come forward, and when they do come, the great army of the workingmen will be on the liberal side, and the solution of the question of political and social equality will then have been accomplished. Our position is this : That labor is entitled to all it creates, and that no one has a right to take advantage of any portion of that labor to enrich himself and crush the laborer. We demand that the equality, politically and socially, for woman exists, not only as a right, but as a duty on the part of man to give the right of suffrage. There can be no rights without duties, and no duties without rights. We do not conceive a state of society can be just when any other condition exists. Dr. Mary E. Walker followed, saying that they were there to discuss the subject of human rights. She was here to support the Constitution of the United States as it is. She was opposed to every species of disunion or revolution. She was a friend of the working man and woman. She was a working woman, and had always been. The time is fast coming when the condition of the laborers will be bettered. But how ridiculous to talk of revolution. She stood on the Constitution as it is.
Mrs. Stanton then introduced Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, who briefly stated that in some form or other the women would be heard by the Judiciary Committee of Congress this week. She was sure that this would be done. Last year the speaker tried to have a hearing before that committee, but failed. This year the committee of the associations had made another attempt in an appeal to Mr. Trumbull, who had promised to try and get a hearing for them before that committee. She had received a letter, which she read, from Mr. Trumbull, announcing that the women’s memorial had prevailed with the committee so far as to obtain for them a hearing before the Judiciary Committee next Friday morning, at 11 o’clock.
Mrs. Hooker said, so far so good. What was impossible this time last year is to-day possible.
It has gone forth to the country that the women are to have a chance to defend their right to vote before their Representatives in Congress. Every politician in the country knows what this means. It settles the question of woman’s rights, and the speaker invited all present to be at the Judiciary Committee rooms on Monday next to hear the result.
The meeting then adjourned to assemble again this morning at 10 o’clock A. M.
SECOND DAY’S PROCEEDINGS. [From the Washington Patriot]
The second day’s session of the National Suffrage Convention was held yesterday in Lincoln Hall, and was even more numerously attended than the day before, and with the best class of society. By some means, a mystery to even those having the convention under their charge, a man, judging from his looks, evidently on the verge of lunacy, entered, bearing with him a huge banner, having on one side the inscription, “Inasmuch as ye have not done it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye have not done it unto me ; depart from me ye who work iniquity,” and on the reverse were four medallion figures, representing the white man, the negro, the Indian and the “heathen Chinee” in full fellowship, overtopped by the passage, “One is our father, and ye are our brethren.” This banner is intended, as the party who bore it testifies, to represent the cardinal principles of the progressive woman’s movement, and on the 1st of January twelve months ago was borne in procession through the streets of Philadelphia, with a white man as ensign, flanked on either side by a colored man and an Indian.
Among the new-comers who appeared on the stage was Mrs. Laura De Force Gordon, of California, a handsome brunette, with a clear, sparkling eye and glossy, curly hair. She was neatly attired in a black and white barred poplin.
MORNING SESSION.
The convention was called to order a few minutes past eleven o’clock by Mrs. Wright, who introduced as the first speaker, Mrs. Elizabeth Bladen, of Philadelphia, who said: I do not demand suffrage as a gift, but as an acknowledgment of that which already belongs to me. I want to urge all within hearing of my voice to secure public opinion in favor of suffrage; to use pluck in the matter, for real pluck is the origin of success in everything, illustrated even with the inferior order of creation. There are many offices now held by men which could be well filled by women, and the holding of which would give them lucrative employment. Women would make good postmen, it is light work, and the Government should intrust such duties to them. Many women would publicly advocate female suffrage were it not that they are afraid of attracting public attention. The main thing in success is to create public opinion in favor of the cause.
Upon the conclusion of the speaker’s remarks, Mrs. Laura De Force Gordon was introduced by Mrs. Wright.
Miss Anthony advanced to the front and stated that Mrs. Gordon was one of those dug out of the mountain snow banks. I want to say that Mrs. Gordon was regularly nominated for the State Senate of California last August, and that she canvassed her district and received over one hundred and sixteen votes, which was within one vote of an election. All along the line in the far West the suffrage question is becoming a matter of fact. You now listen to a woman regularly nominated as a candidate for the State Senate of California.
Mrs. Laura de Force Gordon, a rather handsome woman, then appeared on the stage and said that it was true she had been dug out of a snow bank, and had scarcely thawed out. Since Miss Anthony has spoken of my Senatorial canvass, I am loth to alluded to it. Three years ago I delivered the first lecture on woman suffrage in San Francisco ever delivered on the Pacific coast; it was hard to get even a corporal’s guard. From that primitive beginning, by dint of hard work, Territories had granted woman the ballot. She then spoke of how she had endeavored to have the word male stricken out of the statutes, and the vacillating course of politicians with regard to lending a helping hand; how, when the woman’s petition was presented to the California Legislature, an honorable member moved that it be referred to the Committee on Swamp Lands. She argued that politicians were given to the doctrines of neutrality where a large number of votes were concerned.
Now, those in favor of female suffrage disclaim any sympathy with either the Republican or Democratic party; all political parties are humbugs. Both will talk nonsense and try to pacify us just so long as any of our number have influence to help them to positions of honor and trust.
And now to a few Republican politicians in California: They were strong woman suffragists as long as they could make a point in favor of their own party. When an independent candidate—a woman—loomed up in the political horizon, they wrote letters deprecating the same. We ask our rights on account of a divine inheritance, and not on account of any concessions of either the Republican or Democratic party.
Miss Anthony, without introduction, then advanced to the front, and said that the previous speaker had touched on a subject in which she was interested. It is this : If any party put a woman’s suffrage plank in its platform, and nominate candidates in accordance therewith who are above-board in favor of woman having the ballot, that party is my party, and that party will I support. (Applause.)
I shall take the stump for that party at the next presidential campaign. (Laughter.) Women have a name and principle of their own. We have a kite to fly ourselves. Any party that is a woman’s suffrage party I am in for—(applause)—and I will help to fly its kite; but I am not willing to be the last little paper knot in the tail of any political kite. (Laughter and immense applause.)
Just after finishing the above sentence, the speaker removed from her shoulders her shawl, and, with a vengeance, threw it to the rear of the stage. The action was quite vigorous, and produced roars of laughter. Resuming, she said, you may laugh at me just as much as you please, for I am just as mad as I can be. You think we came here for notoriety. Now, I have been speaking in this cause for over twenty years, and have been called everything but decent. Think you, if I desired notoriety, I could not secure it much cheaper. People tell us to wait—that our time is coming. Now, I have waited long enough, and I propose to wage war, and get all suffrage women to take the field against subtle politicians. We are not politicians. I set my heel on that party-(stamping her foot). [Applause.] That party has been in power since the war, and one scratch of the pen could have enfranchised women. Still they tell us to wait. I charge that those composing it are not Republicans. Some one says I am mad. Victoria Woodhull was mad last night, but she did not begin to be as mad as I am now. [Laughter.] She has been abused, but not half as much as I have. I have been on the public platform for twenty years as an advocate of equal rights, and have been scoffed and scorned. You have killed off women in a moment by pointing at them the finger of scorn, but we don’t propose to die so easily now that our cause carries strength. I don’t propose to proscribe any class; I should gladly welcome all the infamous women in New York and sit side by side with them on this platform if they were willing to make speeches in favor of freedom. [Applause.] They shall stand by my side—I will be their champion. I will take by the hand every prostitute I can find who seeks to escape the inequalities of that law which places all womanhood at the mercy of manhood. [Immense applause.] I care not for the history of any woman any more than that of any man who shall step on this platform. I want you to understand you can’t scare me if you do others. When I heard of a woman on Wall street, I went to see how a woman looked among the bulls and bears. Women have the same right there as men[.]
Who brought Victoria C. Woodhull to the front? I have been asked by many, why did you drag her to the front? Now, bless your souls, she was not dragged to the front: she came to Washington from Wall street with a powerful argument and with lots of cash behind her, and I bet you cash is a big thing with Congress. [Uproarious applause.] She presented her memorial to Congress, and it was a power. I should have been glad to call it the Dickinson memorial, or the Beecher memorial, or even the Anthony memorial.
It was a mighty effort, and one that any woman might be proud of. She had an interview with the Judiciary Committee; we could never secure that privilege. She is young, handsome and rich. Now, if it takes youth, beauty and money to capture Congress, Victoria is the woman we are after. [Laughter and applause.]
Women have too much false modesty. I was asked by the editors of the New York papers if I knew of Mrs. Woodhull’s antecedents. I said I didn’t, and I did not care nay more about them than those of Congress. Her antecedents will compare favorably with any member of Congress. I will not allow any human being, wearing the form of manhood, to ask me to desist working with any woman; for what woman is to-day is the result of man’s handiwork.
I have been asked all along the line of the Pacific coast, what about Woodhull? You make her your leader? Now, we don’t make leaders, they make themselves. If any can accomplish a more brilliant effort than Victoria C. Woodhull, let him or her go ahead and they shall be the leaders. [Applause] The fountain-head of this movement is in dispute. Spiritualists say they began it. I am a Quaker, and the Quakers say they sounded the tocsin. Then the Abolitionists claim it. Next, I presume the Presbyterians will claim it. Mrs. Hooker will, perhaps, say it was the Beecher family who originated it.
[Mrs. Hooker, shaking her head: No; you must take that back”]
Now, all I want is that all shall come together on the platform of equal rights to all, and work for woman suffrage. We don’t endorse any sect, breed or political power. We don’t endorse temperance, labor reform or Spiritualism, but we do emphatically endorse woman suffrage. Now, do you understand our platform?
(A Voice : Yes. Long live Miss Anthony.) [Laughter.]
Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker complimented Miss Anthony on the principle she asserted, that she didn’t believe any of God’s creatures have the right to say ” I am holier than thou,” and read with fine effect the following poem :
If a hand hath such a stain It will ne’er come white again; Let it not drop idly then, It may save God’s race of men ; It may work with him below, Where the white hands fear to go.
Looking up and reaching down There is neither scorn nor frown; In that service day by day. Evil marks shall wear away: She that washed Christ’s feet is known In heaven by that act alone.
Mrs. Lockwood then brought to the front a huge petition of great size and weight, having the names of those who petition Congress for the declaratory act. She spoke as follows :
MRS. LOCKWOOD’S SPEECH.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : I appear before you impressed with the fact that a lesser luminary gives no light in the presence of a greater, that a prophet has no honor in his own country, and that one whom you know so well, at least through that most correct of mediums, the public press, can hardly have power to interest you anew. And yet I speak because I have a consciousness of an innate individuality which none other can represent. I am not my father, my brother, my husband, my sister, but myself ; and as such an Infinite Jehovah holds me accountable for the thoughts of my heart, the words of my mouth, the acts of my life.
As regards this great moral and political question of woman’s emancipation—for it is none other for which we contend—it shall be if necessary my life work. We have asked you to open to us more avenues of labor; we have been met with scorn. We have asked for equal pay for equal work, and it has not been granted. We have asked to be ordained to preach the Gospel of Christ, and ministry and laity have held up their hands in holy horror.
We have asked to study and practice medicine that we might protect our own sex, and we have been scoffed at and stoned. We have asked that the doors of law schools might be opened to us that we might know the legal enactments by which we are bound, and they have been barred in our faces. We have asked to be protected in our right of property, and we are taxed without our consent; and it is wrested from us in the face of justice, without even the hearing of our protest. Not even are our infant children sacred to us. We have asked to vote that we might remedy these evils, and we have been caricatured by the public press-denounced as brazen-faced and immodest-as unfaithful wives and incompetent mothers. In the words of immortal Henry, on the eve of our memorable revolution, “Our petitions have been slighted-our remonstrances have received additional violence and insult,” and we have been spurned with contempt from polling places and offices of registration.
We have now come fully to understand that the ballot, and that alone, will give us the moral and physical power(for voting is but the representative of physical force) to protect ourselves. We are asking for that, and we believe we are asking intelligently, knowing the ground on which we stand.
As the English people considered the Bill of Rights and the Magna Charta wrung from King John as the great bulwark of English liberty, so do we consider the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, made in the defense of human liberty, our bulwark. We have right on our side, the most faithful and successful of all advocates; and we demand, in the name of justice and humanity, that equality of rights and privileges shall be granted to every American citizen. The memorable memorial of Victoria C. Woodhull to Congress last winter, and her unanswerable argument before the joint Committee, has explained to you more clearly than I can our position under the Constitution. The arguments of the most eminent lawyers of the land in our behalf ; the judicial decision of the eminent judges of our own city, and those of Virginia and Wyoming, with the veto message of the Governor, who dared to be true, and could afford to be just, has carried conviction to every reasoning and impartial mind. We come to you, perhaps, with no new arguments, except the progressive tendency of the age toward liberty and equality; and that element of to know and to do already far too deeply infused into the mind of the American woman to be suppressed; we come like one presenting a just bill for payment, asking for that which is our due, presenting it in proper form for more than twenty consecutive years, but told each time that we need something, but not so much, that the payment of this whole debt is not for our good, that it is not expedient, our debtors being the judges. Annoyed, insulted, wearied out with this child’s play, we now earnestly and determinedly demand a settlement that shall render to us our own, which no man hath a right to
[Page 6]
take from us. Suppose all the debtors in the land should refuse to meet their obligations and to render justice because they, seeing only one side of the matter, should deem it inexpedient, giving for answer that they did not know what use we would make of it, or what the results would be. Results are with God ! It is ours to do right. This bill of ours has been examined by legal examiners and they have pronounced it genuine; it has been submitted to referees and they have decided in our favor, and still our rights are withheld. Congress itself has opened the doors in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. This child’s talk about social disorganization, family bickerings and deserted children, is merely the scarecrow of the hour. Does the exercise of any right or privilege change the nature of either men or women ? Would the maternal love of a mother for her babe be less because she had acquired the power to shield and protect it ? Would she love her husband less because equally with him she shared the burdens of the household or even of church and state ? Is it the experience of the world that responsibility renders people less trustworthy ? and that justice renders them less affectionate? Have oppression and proscription ever accomplished their ends ? Will a woman be less womanly, less noble, less grand for feeling that a moral responsibility rests upon her for the welfare and prosperity of her city, her town, her state, her country ? Has this been the result of our observation with reference to the black men who have so recently clamored for similar rights ? Have they deserted their wives and children and fallen into a state of anarchy and confusion ? Have they become morally degraded because permitted to vote? Pope says, “What can we reason but from what we know;” and do we not know that these children of Ethiopia, but yesterday the ignorant, oppressed, degraded, despised slaves of a proud people, are to-day clothed and in their right mind-aye, literally clothed in purple and fine linen, clerks and officers in our marble palaces, lawyers, ministers, editors and doctors in our midst, sitting in our halls of legislation, aye, in the two wings of yon proud Capitol itself ; and to-day their school-houses and their church spires are dotting every corner of the land.
It is apparent to every thinking mind that the inception and the progress of this humanitarian reform, the so-called “Woman Question,” has its origin in the onward march of the civilization of the age. If it is possible for the great scroll of time to roll backward into heathen and primitive darkness, and this vast continent to become the savage wild that Columbus discovered, then is it possible for this question of woman’s enfranchisement to pass into the sea of oblivion, and be remembered only as a thing of the dead and buried past, an ignis fatuus of the mind. But if this great and glorious civilization, upon which hangs the hopes and the eyes of the world are fixed is to march steadily onward until the whole world is regenerated, it must lift and glorify and redeem the mothers who conceived it—
Till heart to heart and hand to hand In equal honor each shall stand, And from the talent jointly given Shall offer incense unto heaven.
Upon the conclusion of which she was presented with a handsome basket of flowers by Mrs. Dr. Walker.
Major Dr. Walker rushed forward and said, “I am here to protest against the imputations cast upon Congress.”
Miss Anthony—This convention stands adjourned until 2 P. M.
Before the managers of the movement had retired from the platform, and while the crowd were leaving the hall, the little man with his banner mounted the stand, and whirling round his standard, proclaimed in a loud voice that God made no distinction of race or color, and did not recognize the difference between the sexes. At this point he was approached by Miss Anthony and other prominent leaders of the convention, who demanded who he was, and that he should leave the stand. Against this he protested, and maintained his ground till he was compelled to retire by the officiating members of the convention of the “sterner sex.”
AFTERNOON SESSION.
A few minutes after two o’clock the meeting, which completely filled the hall, every seat being occupied, was called to order by Mrs. Stanton.
Mrs. Hooker then rose, and after a few words, expressing her gratitude at seeing such a goodly number of people present, proposed the singing of a song of patriotism, viz .: “My Country, ’tis of thee, Sweet Land of Liberty, of thee I sing,” which was sung in very good style by the audience; after which Mrs. Hooker again came forward and briefly spoke as follows:
MRS. PRESIDENT AND MY FRIENDS: I desire to state one fact in connection with the petition which we have already spoken of, signed by a portion of the women of this land who are in favor of woman suffrage, and that is, that thousands are the names inscribed upon that roll, yet they do not represent one tithe of all the women who are in favor of this movement. The fact is, my friends, that we have done with petitions; all I now ask of Congress is simply to protect me in my right. Governor Buckingham, of my own State of Connecticut, when he presented our petition in the Senate, made the truthful remark that, to his own knowledge, there were upon that scroll the names of women of position and character, of high social standing, and virtue unblemished, “‘whom,” he said, ” I can and do most sincerely indorse.” And while speaking of Connecticut, let me tell you one thing that will show you what rights a woman has there, for instance, to her own wages, which will show you how greatly a reform is needed. The law of the State upon this subject is as follows: If a woman gets first to her employer, and asks for her wages, she can have them; if her husband comes first, he can have them. Simply a race, you see; and you may imagine who comes first.
Mrs. Stanton then came forward, and, after offering an apology for having detained the audience a few minutes, before calling the meeting to order, introduced Mary F. Davis, wife of Andrew Jackson Davis, a lady of some forty summers, or thereabouts, becomingly attired in a black alpaca, with velvet trimmings, and ornamented with a fine lace collar and red scarf. Tue speaker commenced by stating that she was a Spiritualist, according to her own and Mrs. Victoria C. Woodhull’s term; but, she said, more than that, I am a woman, and as such I am here on this platform, before you, to speak for myself and women. When I received the letter from Mrs. Stanton calling upon all friends cf this great and good cause—rich and poor, high and low, the washed and unwashed alike—to be present, and that they would be welcomed here on this platform, then I felt that this was the place for me also. I heard yesterday read here Mrs. Dahlgren’s letter, and her objections to meet us here, because it is not consistent with her notion of womanly “modesty.” All I have to say in answer to that is, that if that noble and good woman who sold her jewels to raise the funds by which Columbus was enabled to follow out his great idea was not immodest, then are we, who do our utmost in furtherance of another great cause, not immodest? And if Joan of Arc, acting as she did, was never yet considered immodest, why, then, is that slur cast upon us?
If Queen Victoria, reading her message to Parliament, is immodest, then we are so, too; and if the mother who rushes to the rescue of her child is immodest, then, indeed, are we also immodest; for we are rushing to the rescue of humanity!
Men should be brave and women modest; this is one of the most important planks in our platform, and we, therefore, quite agree with the sisters who are opposed to us, but really only differ from us in seeing “modesty” in a somewhat different light. I think that the woman who frequents fashionable parties in fashionable attire, such as it is nowadays in the ball-room and at evening parties, is immodest; and I think further, that the men who are also there, with their minds and imaginations fired by these immodest presentations, are not brave—cannot be brave, while planning the seduction and ruin of those who flit around them. The first step to the moral, as well as social, elevation of woman is the ballot-box. Women in their present position have no right to be women; they cannot, under existing circumstances, develop into their full beauty and purity. They are always and inevitably driven to the wall, and will always be, until they hold the ballot in their own hand. Not until then, when woman shall become really and truly a citizen, will that large class, called outcasts and prostitutes, diminish in numbers; political disfranchisement is the first step toward their emancipation; and, knowing this, how can we, then, resist the call to come forward here to speak for those who are speechless? I cannot think of this without remembering that poor girl, Alice Bowlsby, with whose sad history and horrible! horrible fate we are all familiar; I have wept, not for her alone, nor for that young man who was her companion, and, alas! became her ruin, alone; nay, not for her poor, wretched mother, who sits in her grief, with a heart bowed down in sorrow and despair, alone; but for the thousands of those who were once beautiful and good, but are now termed outcasts, and trod under foot by society. There is not, nor will there ever be, rest for me while they are left to perish !
That woman may begin her noble work of the elevation of man and woman alike, she must first be endowed with an education which shall be commensurate with that of the appalling responsibility which, as a mother and trainer of the young, rests upon her shoulders; she must be placed where her best faculties can be properly developed; and if freedom will accomplish this, then, by all means, she should have it. No man, claiming the proud title of American, should rest while woman is kept a menial and a slave; nor can the true and honorable statesman feel at ease until her shackles are removed, and all women endowed with, at least, political privileges! [Applause.]
After this lady had finished,
MRS. STANTON
announced to the audience that they had received a great number of letters from the leading men of the labor reform and temperance parties. Among these was one from Mr. Alexander Troup, of New Haven, addressed to Mrs. Woodhull, which was read aloud. In it the writer said, that, in his place, there seemed to be a great diversity of opinion as to woman suffrage, and the proceedings of the party, and of the present convention, were closely watched. He should think that the first and greatest necessity to insure success, would be for the leaders in this movement to set themselves the example of practicing what they preach, and, if they want the ballot, obtain it, as there exists no power, or law, which can, in justice, deprive a single woman of her right to vote. The writer announced that he was a strong advocate of the principle that women should have an equal chance with men in every respect, socially and politically ; and, as regarded the latter, he would call it to the remembrance of those women who do not desire to vote that even if they acquire the right, they are not compelled to do so, but that the matter is then left entirely to their own choice.
Enlarging upon this sentence, Mrs. Stanton declared that that was exactly so, and that voting, after that right, as regards women, should be no longer disputed, but would remain altogether a matter of choice; but that she for one did want to vote, because she had all the qualifications necessary ; she could read the Constitution, owned two hundred and fifty dollars worth of property, and, when she last consulted the family Bible, had found that she was over twenty-one years of age. [Laughter and applause.] And as to modesty, according to Mrs. Dahlgren’s interpretation, that should not keep her back; she, for her part, would be much prouder to see her daughters vote than to see them present themselves in fashionable society in the manner and dress in which a great many ladies do it who still claim to be exceedingly “modest.”
She next proceeded to state that at the commencement of the present convention invitations had been sent out to several Senators and Congressmen to come here and speak on their platform, and their answers were now coming in fast, but all pleading that they had so many engagements to fill and were so busy that they could not possibly come ; “but,” she continued, “my friends, we have those here who make the Senators and Congressmen, and we shall unseat the honorable gentlemen who can’t afford to come here.”
Mrs. Stanton next introduced
MR. THEODORE BANKS,
of New York, one of the bright, particular stars of the International Society, who, in a short speech, giving considerable evidence, as he himself said, that he was not accustomed to speak to such a large, intelligent and critical audience as that here assembled, explained the connection between the Internationals and the workingmen generally and this movement. He said, when approaching the city of Washington this morning, he felt proud to know that he was going to demand the power of the ballot for his sisters, whom to enslave was to enslave himself. And he was happy indeed to have acquired some influence among workingmen, since now that he could use it in behalf of such a cause, which is not simply woman’s rights but the rights of humanity. It was, he said, as “correct” that women should have the right to vote as it was that the negro should be free. Mrs. Woodhull’s success in the advancement of this great cause was, he thought, simply owing to the fact that she dares to tell the truth, and dares to bear the consequent criticism of the world. The woman question is a question of human rights, and we have got either to have that or to be slaves. The Internationals and the workingmen will rally—what do they care for Congress ? not one cent-and the working people of the world will come to the front, for they understand this question of human rights a great deal better than the people who sit in Congress do.
Mr. Banks, after this declaration, finished, to again give place to Mrs. Stanton, who, as the next speaker, introduced Mr. Ira Davis, of New York. This gentleman, she said, appeared as the representative of thousands of laboring men. The speaker himself, after stating his position, launched forth into quite a lengthy speech, during which he reviewed the Constitution as it is, and insisted that it was necessary for the people to send up their petition for that instrument to be amended, that full justice might be done to women, and the right given them to vote ; “for we never can have justice, peace, or virtue, until the instrument called the Constitution shall correspond to the spirit of it.” He fiercely attacked the Senate and House of Representatives, “whose members,” he said, “waste their own breath, and other people’s money, in their squibbles and squabbles over the re-election of President Grant, or election of somebody else.” He finally maintained that our Constitution should be so amended that the people, instead of the President, shall exercise the veto power.
After Mr. Davis had again taken his seat,
MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY
read letters, bearing upon the subject under discussion, which had been received from Miss Amy Post, of Rochester, and from several members of Congress. Among these was one from Gen. J. A. Garfield, politely declining the invitation which had been sent to him to appear upon the platform. Miss Anthony stated, in this connection, that when she had last seen this honorable member, he had said to her:
“Well, to tell the truth, I don’t know but that it is about as you say; that if women were to vote, we should be deprived of our pet vices.” These, Miss Anthony continued, these pet vices mean chewing, drinking and smoking, with a few other “pet vices” which she would not mention. Letters, politely declining to be present, were also received and read from Messrs. Dawes and Hoar, of Massachusetts.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 11, 1872. MRS. ELIZABETH CADY STANTON—Dear Madam : I thank you for your thoughtful invitation to be present at Lincoln Hall to take part in the proceedings, but regret to say that other engagements will prevent my doing so. I remain, yours very truly, H. MITCHELL.
WASHINGTON, D. C., Jan. 11, 1872. MRS. ELIZABETH CADY STANTON—Madam: I have the honor to acknowledge your kind invitation to attend your Convention, and regret that my engagements are such as to prevent me from accepting the same. Very respectfully, JOHN LYNCH.
WASHINGTON, D. C., Jan. 10, 1872. MRS. E. C. STANTON—Dear Madam: Your courteous inquiry of this day is before me, and, thanking you for your kindness, I have to state that my official duties in the House and in Committee are such as to absorb my entire time and strength, and I shall therefore have no leisure to attend your Convention. I am, with great respect, Very truly yours, M. C. KERR.
WASHINGTON, January 11, 1872. MRS. ELIZABETH CADY STANTON—My dear Madam : Other duties will prevent me from accepting your polite invitation to address the convention now in session. I judge, from the list of distinguished speakers in attendance, that your time will be more usefully and agreeably employed than in listening to me. Wishing you all success, I am yours very respectfully, GEO. F. HOAR.
PROVIDENCE, R. I., Jan. 1, 1872. MY DEAR MRS. WOODHULL: I had hoped to be present at the Convention of the National Suffrage Committee in Washington, the 10th inst., and on, but my engagements oblige me to remain here. I therefore send a word of greeting, and bid you all God-speed in the effort to make our government in fact what it is name. We have dilated on our characteristics on Fourth of July and other occasions most unctuously, and with great self-gratulation quoted our national Declaration that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were fully assured, also much else in a similar strain, while all the time the actualities of the government have given the lie to all our professions.
Slavery existed in half the land; the chatelizing of humanity was an established institution, which was protected by church and State. Both these instrumentalities met the anti-slavery reformers, but at length the country was roused, and the institution fell, at a terrible price. All through the struggle it was found necessary to combat the hoary errors and usages which clustered around both, especially the church. It became necessary to assert the natural and inalienable prerogatives of woman, her right to act in the grand army of freedom, and act for humanity. On this question the Anti-Slavery party succeeded, and finally the opponents of woman were forced to yield, finally sinking into insignificance. The present movement for free, unrestricted, impartial suffrage is the legitimate outcome of the anti-slavery movement, enforced by the great spiritual movement which has been developed within the last twenty-five years. Spiritualism from the outset has had a free platform, and in the order of its philosophy has known no sex. It was a John the Baptist to prepare the way and educate the public mind to be ready to act when the end of slavery should be proclaimed.
That has come; parties are now arrayed against each other without any radical dividing lines between them. The Democratic party is but the shade of a shadow; the Republican party coheres only by the force of public plunder. The time for a new departure has come, and the point d’oppui is Woman Suffrage. But I cannot dilate. I can only send a word of cheer, and say, Move on. The people must rule, not sections, fragments or cliques. For Progress, Equal Rights and Humanity, Fraternally, WM. FOSTER, JR.
UNITED STATES SENATE CHAMBER, WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 1872. MRS. E. CADY STANTON : Your note asking me to be present on the platform of your convention, etc., is duly received. But the fact is, I am driven nearly to death with work. I have to be present in the Judiciary Committee of the Senate to-morrow, to hear the argument of your associates upon the proper construction of the Fifteenth Amendment; the Supreme Court are after me in several causes, including that of Mrs. Bradwell, of Chicago, claiming admission to the bar ; so that I am compelled to ask you to excuse me from attending where I could neither be useful nor ornamental.
[Page 7]
Female suffrage is sure to be finally adopted. I regard it not as a matter of woman’s rights, but of man’s rights; and rely upon it to do more to reform the abuses of our present elective system than can be accomplished by penal laws, with soldiers and marine to enforce them. Go on, dear lady, and success is sure to crown your efforts. Yours truly, MATT. H. CARPENTER.
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan, 1, 1872. To the National Committee for Woman Suffrage at Washington, D. C .:
MESDAMES: The State Central Committee of California, through its undersigned officers, takes great pleasure in seconding the nominations made by you of the Hon. Mrs. A. A. Sargent and Mrs. Laura De Force Gordon to represent California in the effort to induce Congress to pass a Declaratory act to the effect that women are already citizens and have the right to vote under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
These ladies, having been duly elected, will soon be with you, accompanied by several others who are well known for their interest and earnestness in the cause of Woman Suffrage.
Since Mrs. Gordon’s residence on this coast she has devoted much of her time to the advocacy of the rights of her sex, and has the honor of having given, some six years since, the first lecture upon Woman Suffrage delivered on the Pacific coast.
We commend Mrs. Gordon as an unselfish, earnest and untiring worker, worthy the confidence and respect of all the friends of our cause. MRS. ELIZABETH T. SCHENCK, President. MISS JENNIE PHELPS, Secretary. MRS. ANNA FULLER, Treasurer.
But by far the greatest interest was awakened by the reading, by Miss Anthony, of the following letter from
THE REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER:
BROOKLYN, January 1, 1872. MY DEAR MADAM : Your letter of December 30, in which, after conference with Mrs. Stanton, you invite me to take part in the Washington convention in behalf of woman suffrage, is duly received.
I am engaged during the whole week of the convention with lectures in Massachusetts and Maine. I cannot say that I am so sanguine of the immediate or new admission of women to the rights of suffrage. But of its ultimate accomplishment I have not a doubt, since justice and expediency combine in requiring it. That manhood is, on the whole, made better and stronger by a direct participation in the duties and responsibilities of active citizenship, notwithstanding incidental evils, is becoming the sentiment of the civilized world; nor is there any reason to doubt that, in spite of temporary and incidental evils, the same advantages would accrue to womanhood. In every wise and Christian movement for the education and enfranchisement of woman I hope always to be in sympathy. I am, respectfully, yours, HENRY WARD BEECHER.
MRS. VICTORIA WOODHULL.
The reading of this letter was followed by loud and prolonged applause by the audience. Mrs. Stanton then rose and introduced Miss Addie Ballou, of Wisconsin. The speech of this lady was principally in defense of the outcasts of society, whose cause, she said, she was pledged, by a solemn vow, to plead, and whose champion she was. She said that she often went to all the bad places where women are not expected to go, simply because she was a woman to her innermost soul ; and, besides, as all women are, she was curious to see and learn all she could. It was the fate of woman, ever since that first woman—Eve—to be curious; Eve, in her curiosity, plucked the apple from the tree of wisdom, but then, you know, she only took a bite, while Adam gobbled down the whole rest of that apple, which probably accounts for men being so much wiser than women.
Mrs. Laura Cuppy Smith said: Mrs. Woodhull told you last night that we were already citizens under the provisions of the fourteenth amendment, and that we should no longer petition Congress; but it they failed to pass a declaratory act we should launch our bark Constitution and rally about us the People, who make Congressmen and Presidents. We shall pass our measures over the heads of Congressmen, and leave them to be educated by the results. [Laughter and applause.] It is generally supposed that the press and the pulpit lead the people; it is false: the people restrains the press and controls the pulpit. While in California it was my good fortune to mingle socially with many members of the press. Bohemians there, as everywhere, are enlightened, intellectual men, posted upon all the great questions of the day, and sympathizing with progressive ideas, but when, having written their best thoughts, they submit them to the power behind the throne, they are met with this response: “This is true, but we are caterers to the the public taste and must feel the pulse of the people. They are not ready for these ideas,” and the editor-in-chief draws his pen through the glowing periods of an inspired brain, and substitutes commonplace. Ministers of the Gospel dare not investigate or take interest in such progressive theories. Elizabeth Barrett Browning declares the qualification for a Bishop to be that he shall not “love truth too dangerously, but ever prefer the interests of the Church.” Country clergymen visiting our large cities hang upon the outskirts of spiritualism, take a peep at the “Black Crook ” and venture to call upon Mrs. Woodhull, but would not dare indulge in these luxuries save in secret and away from the watchful gaze of their congregations. The people intimidate and repress those who are too weak to utter their convictions. Henry Ward Beecher’s power and influence are limited by the extent of his courage. Proportionate to his daring in uttering his sacred convictions will be the measure of his power.
Victoria C. Woodhull’s popularity is founded upon her high-souled vindication of the truth as she apprehends it.
According to the press of New York, that city was shocked beyond redemption at her Steinway Hall speech, yet conservative, puritan Boston, through its Parker Fraternity, invites the immediate repetition of this shocking speech, and Music Hall, crowded to its utmost capacity, failed to accommodate the eager throng that came to hear the exponent of Social Freedom. “Verily the world moves,” and truth alone to-day will command the masses.
I have alluded to Victoria C. Woodhull. I am not a hero worshiper, but my whole soul does homage to the principles of which I deem this grand woman to be the inspired representative. [Great applause.]
In the few remarks made by this lady a sensation was created. The earnestness of her manner, the apparent truth of her convictions and the real gift of imparting to an audience her own enthusiasm rivited the attention of the audience. She answered the objection against suffrage that its tendency would be to unsex women.
Mrs. Smith closed her remarks by stating that neither she, nor her sisters on the platform, were there for their own sake, but for the sake of their children, and those who should come after them. We stand here, she said, advocating the truth as we understand it; realizing that we are opening the door for thousands of men and women who shall come after us, to their elevation to a diviner man and womanhood-to such glorious results as you cannot to-day foresee.
Mrs. Stanton, after stating that a meeting would take place to-day at the regular morning hour, notwithstanding the hearing granted by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which comes off to-day, at the Capitol, at 11 A. M., then adjourned the meeting until the evening session.
EVENING SESSION.
[At the evening session the feature was an eloquent speech by Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton—” The True Republic”—which want of space prevents our publishing. Suffice it to say that its matter fully warranted its title.]
THIRD DAY’S PROCEEDINGS. [From the Chronicle.] CLOSE OF THE CONVENTION—GROUND GAINED—BRILLIANT PROSPECTS.
Yesterday morning, at eleven o’clock, the committee appointed by the National Woman’s Suffrage Convention, composed of Susan B. Anthony, E. C. Stanton, M. Joslyn Gage, E. L. Daniels, Isabella Beecher Hooker and Victoria C. Woodhull, appeared before the Judiciary Committee of the Senate of the United States, for the purpose of urging favorable action in behalf of woman suffrage. Senators Trumbull, Conkling, Frelinghuysen and Carpenter, of the Judiciary Committee, were present. The occasion attracted a large number of people to the Capitol, for it was the first time in the history of our Government that a hearing has been given to women by a Senate committee. A large force of police were required to keep the passage and hall clear, so great was the eager curiosity of the crowd gathered at the Capitol to witness the novel and important scene. The committee room was filled to its utmost capacity. Altogether it was a scene for a historical painting, and as such it might, perhaps ought to be, perpetuated.
MRS. ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER
opened the proceedings by an argument before the committee which has been highly complmented by all who heard it. Indeed, several Senators have spoken of it as an able production and worthy the gifts of a statesman.
Advancing to the table, at which sat Senators Trumbull and Carpenter, she unrolled a manuscript and began the music. She first read the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution, and averred that under its provisions none could deny that citizens of the United States were not entitled to the elective franchise. Now, what is the meaning of the word “citizen” as there used? It is said by the opponents of female suffrage that if women vote it destroys the intent of the amendment, as it never was the intention to include them within the scope of its provisions. She assumed that the intent of the amendment had nothing to do with the question, which simply was, What is the fact? That fact was that women were citizens just as much as the negroes, who have already been given the elective franchise by virtue of its ratification.
In the next place, it is said that the word citizen has two meanings—a legal and political one, This we do not concede; for no American, male or female, can be called a citizen of a State who is not entitled to all the rights and immunities of the highest classes of society. Now, if the word citizen, as implied by lexicographers, means voters, none are willing to admit that a class can be excluded and a class favored. The word citizen means either a voter or merely a resident of the nation; it cannot mean an alien.
To show that the word citizen meant a voter, the speaker read the fourteenth amendment, substituting the word “inhabitant” in place of the word citizen, to amplify how ridiculous it would read if such word had been used, and to sustain the argument that a citizen cannot mean other than voter. The fifteenth amendment confers no new right ; but the language of it clearly implies a pre-existing right to vote, and protects a right already granted.
Now, to say that a citizen does not mean a woman as well as man is sheer nonsense. Suppose, in the order of things, woman should be given the ballot, and should gain control of the legislative and judicial functions of this government. Then, suppose we should assert boldly that the word citizen did not include “men,” what would be the result? Why, you might as well distinguish the meaning of the word in a broader light, and bar from without its definition those whose hair was not of a particular color as well as make sex a barrier. If men were thus disfranchised by women it could not stand a constitutional test.
It is said again, it is not fair to take advantage of a law not intended to include women. We answer, we have been too long unfairly dealt with to allow such a glorious opportunity to escape.
She concluded by saying that her right to vote was guaranteed in the preamble to the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence. Black men and women need no other charta than white men.
I will never consent to vote under any enactment which treats me as an alien. I am free-born, and claim to be an American citizen.
You say we have no precedent for giving the women the ballot. Gentlemen, the precedent was made in 1776 by the Declaration of Independence, and we are making it to-day[.] She then presented a book, containing the signatures of five or six thousand women asking for their rights, and pledging themselves to work hand in hand with their brothers and fathers in their grand effort for the elevation of womankind. She had hoped to present the book to Congress, but that body referred them to this committee.
MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY
was the next speaker. She held, in common with the previous speakers, that women had rights, and that they should be respected. The Republican Congress said to them before the colored man was liberated, “Wait till we free the negro and give him a vote, then we will take up your case.” But have they done as promised ? No, they have refused us our rights, although they have given them to the negro. She asked that they report soon favorably, or unfavorably, if they must, so that they can assemble their friends and count their strength and forces. In conclusion, she hoped that she had impressed her ideas upon the committee, so that they would think favorably of her remarks.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON
then made an exhaustive argument, covering the whole ground of the controversy.
ARGUMENT OF MRS. STANTON BEFORE THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE.
GENTLEMEN OF THE JUDICIARY : We appear before you at this time to call your attention to our memorial asking for a “declaratory act” that shall protect woman in the exercise of the right of suffrage. Benjamin F. Butler, early in the session, presented a bill in the House to this effect that will soon, in the order of legislation, come before you for consideration in the Senate of the United States. As you well know, women are demanding their rights as citizens to-day under the original Constitution, believing that its letter and spirit, fairly interpreted, guarantee the blessings of liberty to every citizen under our flag. But more especially do we in our memorial claim that our title-deed to the elective franchise is clearly given in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. Therein for the first time the Constitution defines the term citizen, and in harmony with our best lexicographers declares a citizen to be a person possessed of the right to vote. In the last year the question of woman’s political status has been raised from one of vague generalities to one of Constitutional law.
The Woodhull memorial, and the able arguments sustaining it, made by Mr. Riddle and herself, and the exhaustive minority report of Messrs. Butler and Loughridge, have been before the nation for one year, and as yet remain unanswered; in fact, the opinions of many of our most learned judges and lawyers multiplying on all sides, sustain the positions taken by the “Woodhull Memorial.” As our demands are based on the same principles of Constitutional interpre[t]ation, I will not detain you with the restatement of arguments already furnished to you all, but state a few facts and general principles showing the need of some speedy action on this whole question.
As gentlemen hold seats in Congress to-day by the votes of women, the legality of their election involves the question whether or not their constituents are legal voters, and ultimately this question must be considered in the Senate as well as the House.
In some States women have already voted ; in others they are contesting their rights in the courts, and the decisions of different judges differ as widely as the capacities of men to see first principles.
Judge Howe, Judge Cartter and Judge Underwood have given their written opinions in favor of woman citizenship under the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. Even the majority report of the Judiciary Committee, presented by John A. Bingham, though adverse to the prayer of Victoria Woodhull, admits the citizenship of woman. In the late cases of Sarah Spencer against the Board of Registration, and Sarah E. Webster against the Superintendent of election, the Judge decided that under the fourteenth amendment women are citizens.
Now we do not ask to vote outside any law or in open violation of it, nor to avail ourselves of any strained interpretations of constitutional provisions, but in harmony with the Federal Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and our own theory of just government.
The women of this country and a handful of foreign citizens in Rhode Island, the only disfranchised citizens, ask you to-day to secure to them, as you have to the masses of the people, a republican form of government to protect them against the oppression of State authorities, which in violation of your amendments assume the right not merely to regulate the suffrage, but to abridge and deny it to these two classes of citizens.
The Federal Constitution in its fourteenth amendment clearly defines for the first time who are citizens : “All persons born and naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the States wherein they reside.”
No one denies that “all persons” in the fourteenth amendment is used without limitation of sex, or, in other words, that not men only but women also are citizens. Whether in theory the citizenship of women is generally admitted or not, it certainly is in practice. Women pre-empt land ; women register ships; women obtain passports; women pay the penalty of their own crimes; women pay taxes, sometimes work out the road tax.
In some States even married women can make contracts, sue and be sued, do business in their own names ; in fact, the old Blackstone idea that husband and wife are one, and that one the husband, received its deathblow twenty years ago, when the States of New York and Massachusetts passed, first, property bills, securing to married women the property they inherited in their own right.
“Individual rights,” “industrial conscience and judgment,” are great American ideas underlying our whole political and religious life. We are here to-day to ask a Congress of Republicans and Protestants for that coming act that shall secure to 15,000,000 women the right to protect their persons, property and opinions by law. The fourteenth amendment, having told us who are citizens of the Republic, further declares that “no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the ‘privileges or immunities’ of citizens” of the United States. Some say that “privileges and immunities” do not include the right of suffrage. We answer that any person under government who has no voice in the laws or the rulers has his privileges and immunities abridged at every turn, and when a State denies the right of suffrage it robs the citizen of his citizenship and of all power to protect his person or property. Without some act of Congress regulating suffrage for women as well as black men, citizens of the United States in Washington Territory, Utah and Wyoming and Kansas, who in these are voters and jurors, and who in this one State vote on school and license questions, would be denied the exercise of these fundamental rights in toto in all the States of the Union, and no naturalization papers, education, property, residence or age could help them. What an anomaly is this in a republic ! A woman who in Wyoming enjoys all the rights, privileges and immunities of a sovereign, by crossing the line into Nebraska, sinks at once to the political degradation of a slave. Humiliated with such injustice, one set of statesmen answer her appeals by sending her for redress to the courts; another to submit her qualifications to the States; but we, with a clearer intuition of the rightful power, come to you who thoughtfully, conscientiously and understandingly passed that amendment defining the word “citizen,” declaring suffrage its foundation right. How are women “citizens” from Utah, Wyoming, Kansas, moving
[CONTINUED ON PAGE 13.]
[Page 13]
[CONTINUED FROM PAGE 7.]
into other States, to be protected in the rights they have heretofore enjoyed, unless Congress shall pass the bill presented by Mr. Butler, and thus give us a homogeneous law for suffrage from Maine to Louisiana?
You did not leave the negroes to the tender mercies of the courts and States. Why send your mothers, wives and daughters suppliants at the feet of the unwashed, unlettered, unthinking masses that carry on elections in the States! Would you compel the women of New York to sue the Tweeds, the Sweenys, the Connollys, for their inalienable rights, or to have the scales of justice balanced for them in the unsteady hand of a Cardozo, or Barnard, or a McCunn? Nay, nay; the proper tribunal to decide nice questions of human rights and constitutional interpretations, the political status of every citizen under the national flag, is the Congress of the United States. This is your right and duty, clearly set forth in article 1, section 5, of the Constitution, for how can you decide the competency and qualifications of electors for members of the House of Representatives, without settling the fundamental question on what the right of suffrage is based? All power centres in the people. Our Federal Constitution, as well as that of every State, opens with the words, “We, the people.” However this phrase may have been understood and acted on in the past, women to-day are awake to the fact that they constitute one-half the American people; that they have the right to demand that the Constitution shall secure to them “justice,” “domestic tranquillity,” and the blessings of liberty. So long as women are not represented in the Government they are in a condition of tutelage, perpetual minority, slavery.
You smile at the idea of women being slaves in this country. Ben. Franklin said long ago that they who have no voice or vote in the laws, or the election of those who administer them, do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes and to their representatives. I might occupy hours in quoting grand liberal sentiments from the fathers—Madison, Jefferson, Otis and Adams—in favor of individual representation. I might quote equally noble words from the statesmen of our day—Seward, Sumner, Wade, Trumbull, Conkling, Schurz, Thurman, Groesbeck and Julian—to prove “that no just government can be formed without the consent of the governed;” that the ballot is the Columbiad of our political life, and every man who holds it is a full armed monitor. What do lofty utterance, logical arguments avail, so long as men, blinded by old prejudices and customs, fail to see their application to the women by their side. Alas! gentlemen, these are your subjects. Your selfish interests are too closely interwoven for you to feel their degradation, and they are too dependent to reveal themselves to you in their nobler aspirations, their native dignity. Did Southern slaveholders ever understand the humiliations of slavery to a proud man like Frederick Douglass ? Did the coarse, low-bred master ever doubt his capacity to govern the negro better than he could govern himself? Do cow-boys, hostlers, pot-house politicians ever doubt their capacity to prescribe woman’s sphere better than she could prescribe it herself ? We have yet to learn that with the wonderful progress in art, science, education, morals, religion and government we have witnessed in the last century woman has not been standing still, but gradually developing to an equal place with the man by her side, and stands to-day his peer in the world of thought.
American womanhood has never worn iron shoes, burned on the funeral pile, or skulked behind a mask in a harem, yet though cradled in liberty, with the same keen sense of justice and equality man has, she is still bound by law in the swaddling bands of an old barbarism. Though the world has been steadily advancing in political science, and step by step recognizing the rights of new classes, yet we stand to-day talking of precedents, authorities, laws and constitutions, as if each generation were not better able to judge of its wants than the one that preceded. If we are to be governed in all things by the men of the eighteenth century, and the twentieth by the nineteenth, and so on, the world will be always governed by dead men. The exercise of political power by women is by no means a new idea. It has already been exercised in many countries, and under governments far less liberal in theory than our own. As to this being an innovation on the laws of Nature, we may safely trust Nature at all times to vindicate herself. In England, where the right to vote is based on property and not person, the femme sole freeholder has exercised her right all along. In her earliest history we find records of decisions in courts of her right to do so, and discussions on that point by able lawyers and judges. The femme sole voted in person when her husband represented her property, and voted in her stead ; and the moment the breath went out of his body she assumed again the burden of disposing of her own in; come and the onerous duty of representing herself in the government. Thus England is always consistent ; property being the basis of suffrage, is always represented. Here it is based on “persons,” and yet one half our people are wholly unrepresented. No one point in government has been so much discussed and changed as “who constitutes the governing power.”
We have declared in favor of a government of the people, for the people, by the people, the whole people. Why not begin the experiment ? It suffrage is a natural right, we claim it in common with all citizens; if it is a political right, that the few in power may give or take away, then it is clearly the duty of the ruling powers to extend it in all cases as the best interests of the State require. No thinking man would admit that educated, refined womanhood would not constitute a most desirable element and better represent the whole humanitarian idea than a government of men alone.
The objections to Mr. Butler’s bill, demanding of Congress a declaratory act, all summed up are these : 1st. This is too short a cut to liberty. It is taking the nation by storm. The people are not ready for it. The slower process of a sixteenth amendment would be safer, surer and do more toward educating the people for the final result. To all of which I answer the women, at least, are ready and as well prepared for enfranchisement as were the slaves of the Southern plantation. There could have been no plan devised to educate the people so rapidly as the startling announcement in the Woodhull memorial that women already had the right to vote. It had raised more men to thought on the question, stirred the bar and bench of the nation, with a new and fruitful source of litigation, it has inspired woman with fresh hope that the day of her enfranchisement is at hand, given the press of the country solid arguments for their consideration, and changed the tone of the speeches in our conventions from whinings about brutal husbands, stolen babies and special laws to fundamental principles of human rights.
This question has been up for discussion in this country
[Page 14]
over thirty years; it split the first anti-slavery society in two, was a firebrand in the world’s convention, and has been a disturbing element in temperance, educational and constitutional conventions ever since, and it is high time it took a short cut to its final consummation. There have been many shorter cuts to liberty than this is likely to be, even with a declaratory act at this session. Why multiply amendments when we have liberty and justice enough in the spirit and letter of the Constitution as it now is to protect every citizen under this Government ?
The simple opinion of a Chief Justice a century ago, without any change in legislation, settled in one hour as great a question of human rights as we now submit to your consideration. Lord Mansfield, presiding in the Court of Queen’s Bench, listening to the arguments in the famous Somerset case, with higher light and knowledge, suddenly awoke to the truth that by the laws of England a slave could not breathe on that soil, and he so decided, and the negro was discharged. Slavery was abolished in Massachusetts in the same way, without any amendment of her constitution or new legislation, simply by the decision of her Chief Justice. So you perceive, honorable gentlemen, we have two precedents for the “short cut” we propose to liberty.
Second—Some object that it was not the “intention” of the framers of the original Constitution, nor of the amendments, to enfranchise women.
When ordinary men, in their ordinary condition, talk of the “intentions” of great men specially inspired to utter great political truths, they talk of what they cannot know or understand.
When by some moral revolution men are cut loose from all moral moorings, and get beyond the public sentiment that once bound them, with no immediate selfish interests to subserve—as, for instance, our fathers in leaving England, or the French Communes in the late war—in hardship and suffering they dig down to the hard-pan of universal principles, and in their highest inspirational moments proclaim justice, liberty, equality for all.
Visiting Chicago not long since I saw great pieces of rock of the most wonderful mineral combinations—gold, silver, glass, iron, layer after layer, all welded beautifully together, and that done in the conflagration of a single night that would have taken ages of growth to accomplish in the ordinary rocky formations. Just so revolutions in the moral world suddenly mould ideas, clear, strong, grand, that centuries might have slumbered over in silence; ideas that strike minds ready for them with the quickness and vividness of the lightning’s flash. It is in such ways and under such conditions that constitutions and great principles of jurisprudence are written; the letter and spirit are ever on the side of liberty; and highly organized minds, governed by principle, invariably give such interpretations; while others, whose law is expediency, coarse and material in all their conceptions, will interpret law, Bible, constitution, everything in harmony with the public sentiment of their class and condition. And here is the reason why men differ in their interpretations of law. They differ in their organizations; they see everything from a different standpoint. Could ideas of justice and liberty and equality be more grandly and beautifully expressed than in the preamble to our Federal Constitution?
It is an insult to those Revolutionary heroes to say that, after a seven years’ struggle with the despotic ideas of the O!d World, in the first hour of victory, with their souls all on fire with new-found freedom, they sat down like so many pettifogging lawyers and drew up a little instrument for the express purpose of robbing women and negroes of their inalienable rights. Does the preamble look like it ? Women did vote in America at the time the Constitution was adopted. If the framers of the Constitution meant they should not, why did they not distinctly say so ? The women of the country, having at last roused up to their rights and duties as citizens, have a word to say as to the “intentions” of the fathers. It is not safe to leave the “intentions” of the Pilgrim fathers. or the Heavenly father, wholly to masculine interpretation; for by Bible and Constitution alike women have thus far been declared the subjects, the slaves of men.
But able jurists tell us that the “intention” of the framers of the document must be judged by the letter of the law. Following this rule, the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia has decided that the Fourteenth Amendment does affect the status of women : that it advances them to full citizenship, and clothes them with the capacity to become voters.
The exact language of Judge Cartter, who spoke for the Court, is as follows :
“All that has been accomplished by this amendment to the Constitution, or its previous provisions, is to distinguish them (women from aliens, and make them capable of becoming voters. In giving expression to my judgment, this clause does advance them to full citizenship, and clothes them with the capacity to become voters.”
If so much has been done we have already gone beyond the “intention” of the founders, if, as some say, they did not intend to touch the status of woman at all. But with or without intent, a law stands as it is written—” Lex ita scripta est.” But in regard to the intention of the framers. Theodore Tilton, in a published letter to Charles Sumner, says: “I happen to know that a number of able men, including Matt. Carpenter, George W. Julian, General Ashley, Judge Woodward, of Pennsylvania, and others, either during the pendency or after the passage of the new amendments, discovered in them a title-deed to woman suffrage, and some of these legislators voted for, and others against, these amendments on this account. Furthermore, this discovery, being thus promulgated before the amendments were adopted, became immediately thereafter the basis of a powerful and widely-echoed demand for the enforcement of this construction.”
The true rule of interpretation, says Charles Sumner, under the National Constitution, especially since its additional amendments, is that anything for human rights is constitutional. “No learning in the books, no skill in the courts, no sharpness of forensic dialects, no cunning in splitting hairs, can impair the vigor of the constitutional principle which I announce. Whatever you enact for human rights is constitutional, and this is the supreme law of the land, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”
Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood, at the conclusion of Mrs. Stanton’s argument, presented petitions covering immense rolls of paper, and containing nearly 20,000 names of women asking for the right of suffrage. Senator Trumbull thanked the ladies for the prompt manner in which they had dispatched their business, and said that the matter would be taken into respectful and earnest consideration, and that a report would be made as early as possible.
The committee then held a session with closed doors, when it is understood an informal discussion took place on the subject.
AFTERNOON SESSION.
By far the largest audience since the assembling of the convention convened in Lincoln Hall for the afternoon session. Every seat was occupied, and the passages filled with people who manifested their interest by standing.
Promptly at 2 o’clock Mrs. Stanton and her friends appeared on the platform.
Mrs. Stanton came forward and told of the grand and respectful hearing they had had before the Judiciary Committee. She felt somewhat aggrieved that they had been denied the hearing in the Senate chamber, but consoled herself with the thought that before another year they would be heard there. The signs of the times indicate the formation of a third party, in the presence of which both the old parties may well tremble. Those who enjoyed these conventions would enjoy those of the future more. We shall assemble in convention all over the country. Women would do well to now throw away all yellow-covered literature and take up the studies pertaining to the science of government. Men and women were about to move together in parallel lines. Let the high morals of the household be carried into legislation. No hope of honest and brave men until we have a better form of womanhood.
Upon the conclusion of Mrs. Stanton’s remarks, the following resolutions were presented by Mrs. Gage and adopted :
RESOLUTIONS.
Resolved, That as the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution of the United States have established the right of women to the elective franchise, we demand of the present Congress a declaratory act which shall secure us at once in the exercise of this right.
As the recognition of woman suffrage involves immediate political action, and as numbers as well as principles control parties,
Resolved, That we rejoice in the rapidly organizing millions of Spiritualists, labor reformers, temperance and educational forces now simultaneously waking to their need of woman’s help in the cause of reform.
Resolved, That the movement for the enfranchisement of woman is the movement of universal humanity; that the great questions now looming upon the political horizon can only find their peaceful solution by the infusion of the feminine element in the councils of the nation. Man, representing force, would continue in the future as in the past, in the New World as in the Old, to settle all questions by war; but woman, representing affection, would, in her true development, harmonize intellect and action, and weld together all the interests of the human family—in other words help to organize the science of social, religious and political life.
Resolved, That our thanks are due to Governor Campbell, of Wyoming, for his veto, and to the Republican members of the Legislature of Wyoming, for their votes against the bill disfranchising the women of that Territory.
Resolved, That the thanks of the women of America are due to Hon. Benjamin F. Butler for introducing, so early in the present session of Congress, a bill to enfranchise woman under the Constitution, and also to Hon. Wm. Loughridge and to the Hon. Benjamin F. Butler, for their admirable minority report, at the last session, sustaining the Woodhull memorial.
THEO. TILTON HEARD FROM.
Mrs. Gage then read the following telegram:
NEW YORK, January 12, 1872. VIC. C. WOODHULL: Theodore Tilton’s brother is at the point of death. He will not come to Washington this week. I send you one thousand tracts and five hundred papers. FLORENCE GORDON.
Mr. Andrews, of New York, was then introduced. He said that the women of the country were making history to-day. I said to Miss Susan B. Anthony when she left the Judiciary Committee room this morning, “I congratulate you on the death of the woman suffrage movement ; dead because it has fulfilled its mission; it is now only a question of time; Congress cannot ignore or deny it; the movement is virtually conceded to-day.”
I said to Mrs. Stanton, “Allow me to congratulate you on your election to the United States Senate, for that is only a question of time.” I should have congratulated Mrs. Hooker upon her being the future Chief Justice of the United States. This is one of the days that will go down to posterity as did the day the Declaration of Independence was ratified. This is but the beginning of the end; the verdict has already been rendered, and at this very hour.
From the whole of jurisprudence, including ordinary law, common and statute, we rise, through ethics, or the spirit of the laws, into the broad science of society, which, for the first time within the last ten or fifteen years, has been admitted into the popular list of the sciences, and has been recognized by the learned world as a distinct science. It is only now that human society is just coming to be regarded as a proper realm of science ; and from the proper point of view of science, as such, all the reform movements of the day are regarded as somewhat empirical, or, as the doctors would say, quackish, from the fact that they are not guided by definite knowledge of all the forces at work in society, and by their relations to each other.
From this scientific or more reflective point of view, it is not certain that the ballot is the last word of political wisdom. A democratic republic is, undoubtedly, the best form of government tor a highly intelligent people that has ever existed, but it does not follow that it is the highest form that ever will exist. Freedom is a good thing, but freedom is simply opportunity. What will, what ought, indeed, to grow out of that opportunity? We know pretty well what has existed below and prior to republicanism ; it may be requisite that we begin to inquire if there be not something above and subsequent to it.
Every year, and sometimes several times a year, I have put into my hands a ballot containing from one to twenty names, for all sorts of offices, and I am asked to vote for those men. Not one in ten of them do I know, and many of them I never heard of before, and I have no opportunity or method of knowing them. And even if I did know them, I very likely know nothing of the particular nature of the duties of each of these multitudinous offices. And finally, if I do happen to know both the men and the offices, I very likely know nothing whatever of the fitness of these particular men respectively for these particular offices, and yet I am probably a citizen of more than average intelligence. I am in other words, invested with the appointing power (in part, and for my fraction of the elective franchise) of a set of men about whom I know, very likely, nothing, to a set of offices, of the detailed duties of which I know as little, or less ; and the duty of making a right choice is made incumbent upon me. Now, I know very well that neither you nor I would deal in this helter-skelter and chance-begotten way in selecting agents to transact for us our own private affairs. This is the highest to which empirical political knowledge has attained ; but I know that it is neither common sense nor science, and that it can not be a finality ; and I appeal to science to tell the world what there is in the future higher and better than this republican contrivance of the ballot. I accept it as the best for the hour. I accept it as a necessary stage through which the progressive development of the world must pass ; but I listen for the word which science shall utter upon a domain to which science has only just now for the first time reached. I believe that it is a great triumph for humanity to achieve the ballot, but I know that there remains more beyond it still to be achieved. What I mean, stated more clearly, is, that I believe in the future scientific organization of government, industry and the household, and that this organization will, in the end, mainly supersede the use of the ballot, and that the new reform party of the future will tend directly to that object.
The word organization is in one sense unfortunate. There has been an enforced and arbitrary kind of organization of great strength, and a bulwark of despotism in the past ; and now comes liberty and the sovereignty of the individual disrupting such an organization. Reformers are therefore skittish of the word and of the idea which they entertain of organization. And yet organization is exactly what they need and want and must have, and can not afford to do without. Organization is a means of the economy of power; is, in fact, power and the augmentation of wealth and the source of every good thing. But then I do not mean by organization anything which is not as spontaneous as crystallization. Hence, I say, scientific organization, or organization by attraction, is to be a new and later achievement in society than the mere acquisition of the concession of rights.
But we must reach the ulterior goal in part through ordinary reform and the machinery of political parties. A new party is about forming which will take a great step in the right direction. Perhaps the nucleus of that party, the equal rights party, or the like, is now in this hall.
Here is the first complete fusion of three or four great branches of the great army of reform. There is, first, a politico social branch, namely, the woman’s rights party, which already has its two wings, the woman suffragists proper, and the social movement. Then there is a sciento-religious branch, the Spiritualists, with its two wings, tending toward the science and toward the religion of this movement respectively ; and, in fine, an industrio-politico-financial branch including the workingmen’s party, with two main branches, the trades unionists and the Internationals, together with the financial reformers, to all which we may add the temperance people and the Socialists proper. All these parties are now, as I say, in a state of fusion, for the first time harmoniously and conjointly represented here.
The politicians can not afford either to neglect or to offend such a movement. It is an uprising of the people. It means work. It is more and more earnest every day. It is gathering strength. Unless effectually conciliated by one or the other of the existing parties it will be itself the great, and the greatest party of the immediate future. The people are liable any day to stampede from the Republican and Democratic parties and join the new party by the million.
The Judiciary Committee of the Senate can not afford either to ignore the women’s memorial, this day argued before them, nor to postpone it, nor to reject it. No party was ever confronted before at the height of its prosperity by so much earnestness based on such incontestable right, and these two are immense elements of success. Place aux Dames.
Mrs. Hooker then yielded to a loud call for
VICTORIA C. WOODHULL
When this remarkable woman came forward she was received with much applause. In a few earnest words she “thanked her brothers and sisters for their approbation, but her heart was too full for utterance. Besides there are many friends here who have come from distant places, having earnest words to say to you, and whom I, equally with you, should desire to hear. Thanking you for your appreciation and encouragement, I shall go home from this convention more determined than ever to boldly push the Car of Progress.
Mrs. Ada Ballou, from the audience, rose and placed Victoria C. Woodhull in nomination for President of the United States. The nomination was subsequently put and unanimously carried, notwithstanding the fact that Miss Anthony “thought it a little premature, and that Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. Gage and herself all had claims to be considered, but not because they wanted office.
A handsome collection was then taken up.
Mrs. Laura Cuppy Smith came deprecatingly forward, urged by Miss Anthony. She did not feel like making a speech. She alluded to the necessity of educating our daughters to be their own protectors. A woman fortified by principle needed no protection save her own integrity of purpose and good common sense. Men always respected a woman who respected herself. She told several anecdotes in proof of her statement, and proceeded to say that the women who were conducting this movement had no idea that they should enter the kingdom of political equality on “flowery beds of ease;” they had come upon that platform urged there by deliberate conviction, and were satisfied if even the martyrdom of the mothers purchased the emancipation of their daughters from every yoke. We do not wish women to imagine that this work can be accomplished without a struggle. Garibaldi said to his soldiers: “Ye who are in love with wounds, starvation and death, follow me!” I say: “Ye who prefer truth before personal happiness, who are in love with trial, privation and sorrow, ye who are inspired by a sacred purpose and know no such word as Fail, follow us.”
Miss Anthony also spoke of the right of free speech, and mentioned it as the old difficulty over again; but, after all, it was was a kind of retributive justice. The time was when the rabble would not hear women; now the rabble will not hear men
EVENING SESSION.
Notwithstanding an admission fee of fifty cents was charged for the evening session, the hall was handsomely filled.
The proceedings were opened with singing, after which that discreet, self-poised and very able defender of the cause, Mrs. Gage, addressed the meeting.
MRS. M. JOSLYN GAGE’S SPEECH.
The argument before the Judiciary Committee to-day was
[Page 15]
the culmination of long ages. The seed of to-day was sown far down in the past. Geologists tell us that marks of rain-storms which occurred hundreds of years ago are visible now in the solid rock, and that the direction of the wind at that time may also be plainly seen by noticing the slant of the rain-drop marks. So in woman’s demand to-day for self-government, we find the rain-drops of past thought—we find what was the direction of men’s minds at an early age of the world. All great leaders in the past promised more liberty, greater freedom to their followers. Political equality has been the dream of the ages, but only within the last hundred years has this dream of freedom begun to be realized. Where were human rights before that day ? Where were the rights of men before that day ? Did they come into the world newly created then ? Did declarations and constitutions create those rights at the time of the Revolutionary War? Were a band of men born into the world who possessed natural rights never before possessed by human beings ? The world has gained its growth through protest. Every religious or political reformer is a protestant. Where do people get their right of protest unless within themselves? All protests against tyranny come from within. When the old Revolutionists protested against the exactions of King George’s government they found that right of protest within themselves. They found their right to life and liberty and self-government within themselves.
Although it is less than a hundred years since the first government which recognized human rights was instituted, the scales have dropped from the eyes of many men besides Americans, and all nationalities, European, Asiatic and African, have come to the United States to enjoy their natural right of self-government. The lesson of human rights is one easily learned. Foreigners have not only learned it, but also American wives and daughters. We would be dullards, indeed, did we not read the lesson too. Women have been interested in these questions of natural rights ever since the first protest was made by the Colonies. Mercy Otis Warren bore a powerful hand in bringing about the Revolution. She was consulted on all the important questions of the day, and was a member of that committee of correspondence which did so much to educate and develop the sentiment of liberty in the Colonies, and her brother, James Otis, was indebted to her for many of the ideas he gave the world.
That taxation without representation is tyranny was a fundamental doctrine of the women of 1871. In 1770, six years before the Declaration of Independence, the women of New England made a public combined protest against taxation without representation, and entered into a league. This league was formed by the married women, but the young ladies soon held an anti-tax meeting. These young ladies publicly declared they did not take this step for themselves alone, but they protested against taxation as a matter of principle, and with a view to benefit their posterity. These protests were the real origin of the famous “tea party” in Boston harbor. They were made more than five years before the commencement of the Revolutionary war.
The history of the world, the history of our own country, shows the rights of any class are not safe in the hands of any other class. We arraign this Government at the bar of its own faith. The Constitution of the United States was founded upon the principle of the Declaration of Independence.
The faith of this Congress—of this Government—is founded, first, on the Declaration. The whole spirit of the Declaration is, that those who are not protected and sustained by a government in the enjoyment and exercise of their natural rights do not owe that government allegiance. It is the faith of the Government that government derives its just powers from the consent of the people for whom it makes laws. The legislative bodies make laws for fifteen millions of women. By their own faith their will over women is unjust, a usurpation and tyranny. It is the faith of this Government that taxes should not be imposed upon persons without their consent. We arraign this Government as tyrannous and contradictory of its own foundation principles when it taxes woman, as it now does, not only without her consent, but in absolute opposition to her wishes. It is the faith of this Government that every person has an inborn right to a trial by a jury of peers. We here again arraign this Government at the bar of its own faith, and to-day demand from it a strict adherence to its Charter of Rights.
The Declaration of Independence is not a mere formula of words; it is the judgment bar of the American Government, and by it the country lives or dies.
A hymn specially composed for the occasion was then sung to the tune of “John Brown’s Body,” the audience joining in the chorus with thrilling effect.
SPEECH OF LAURA DE FORCE GORDON.
Women asking the right of suffrage, some think, is strange. To me it is strange that the necessity for the demand ever existed. You men, born free and equal, and conscious of your own power and greatness, may not appreciate the force of our wonder that the necessity exists. A century has passed since the Declaration of Independence, and to-day one-half of the population are still asking for their rights. As an American citizen I claim that the exercise of suffrage in this country is right. What says the Declaration ? “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This means to me that whatever means may be taken to secure suffrage, the ballot is a divine right, for through the ballot the consent of the governed can only be given. If you say it is not a right you array yourselves as in favor of tyranny. The moment you do this you become an apologizer for the “Divine right of kings.” Great Britain can recognize the ballot as a privilege, America must recognize it as a right. The ballot as a privilege offers a premium to ambitious schemers. The ballot is a right as sacred as that of a choice in religion. The settlement of this question is more important than all the religions of the world, for without civil liberty there is no security for religious liberty. In the right of suffrage is involved the only protection an individual has under the laws. The ballot is our insignia of rank. It declares the sovereignty of its possessor. It is a sceptre of power. Is this a trifle ? Men are found stupid and apostate enough to ask what advantage the ballot is to woman. You can neither take this right from us nor extend it to us. It is ours. It is necessary for the elevation of woman and the purity of man.
If you want a church built the women raise the money. Women have devoted much time to religious subjects. Men, however, make charges of extravagance against women. There may be some truth in it. Women should have some thing more to do. Women respond to every sacred duty. The original mistake of government was that of not planting a clause in the Constitution specifying the circumstances under which suffrage might be exercised. Woman suffrage will elevate men, because it will make better mothers. It is a necessity, because the condition of the State demands it. The government will soon fall from its own corruption unless a purifying element is brought into it. The salvation of the country depends upon the extension of suffrage to women. Like a home, the government wants a woman in it. Voting does not interfere with men’s avocations. Why should it with women ? We must have our own political organizations. We must have it—will not wait for either party. We have determined in California to work out our own salvation, unless it is given to us before the next Presidential election, or a revolution will be the result, springing from a fusion of all the liberal elements of the country. We shall march to victory, peaceably if needs be, forcibly if we must. [Immense cheering.]
SPEECH OF C. FANNIE ALLYN.
This speech was replete with appropriate similes, apt comparisons and quotations, and had for its object the development of the tender and emotional sentiment pervading the question of woman suffrage. She closed by improvising about two hundred lines of poetry really elegant in its rhythm and structure.
The closing words of parting were uttered by the great executive officer of the movement, Miss Anthony, and the convention then adjourned sine die.
The spirit of the convention throughout was deep and fervent, as marking the work of those thoroughly in earnest. Most of the meetings were largely attended. The convention as a whole was one of the most commanding and successful of any gatherings ever held on the continent in the cause of woman suffrage.
Webmaster’s note: This is a complete transcription of “The Washington Convention” from Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly.
When this web site began in September 1999, there were no digitized copies of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly available online. Now you can find an almost complete run on the IAPSOP web site which has no affiliation with Victoria Woodhull & Company:
Madame Massena, a Creole lady, conducts the Weekly Magnolia in New Orleans….
Marion V. Churchill very sensibly says: “I would rather see a policewoman, club in hand, marching an offender to punishment than to see that same woman marched to punishment, by a policeman for lack of money which would have been her honorable salary in the police service. There are women in the world better fitted for police than for parlor duty. Let them do it.”
A Danbury, Conn., man saw his daughter into the cars and passed round to her window for a parting look at her. While he was passing out the daughter left the seat to speak to a friend, and at the same time a prim looking lady, who occupied the seat with her moved up to the window. Unaware of the important change inside, our venerable friend hastily put his face up to the window and hurriedly exclaimed: “One more kiss, sweet pet.” In another instant the point of a blue cotton umbrella caught his seductive lips, followed by the passionate injunction, “Scat, you gray-headed wretch!” and he scattered….
[Page 7]
“SERVANT GIRLS.”
The very name expresses the servile position which this class of our dear sisters are forced to occupy. How would the term sound applied to men? Words rarely get out of place in their application. Consult Webster for the meaning of the word servant.
To be a servant is to be little better than a slave. To be a “servant girl” is to be worse than were the common run of black slaves in the South. They were fed, clothed, housed, nursed in sickness, doctored and decently buried. Nothing of this kind is done for the generality of servant girls among us, and no provisions made for it through their wages. What can be done with a dollar and a half or two dollars power week in the way of clothing, comforts, food for mind and soul, the accidents of sickness, etc.? Is it not the pittance of a slave? This is strong language, but the disgraceful facts will more than sustain it.
No class among us are so mercilessly trodden under foot as these defenseless, hopeless girls and women who wear out their cheerless lives in dismal kitchens and foul basements. The brave Irish or German girl who, by dint of energy and frugality, secures a passage “to the land of the free” soon learns the bitter lesson that the women of America who “boss establishments” or tyrannize by proxy in comfortless kitchens, are more to be dreaded than the hard fare of Ireland or the narrow opportunities of Germany. They fled from a noble aristocracy to find themselves ground down by a contemptible shoddy, one whose supercilious dictations and tyranny is “sharper than a serpent’s tooth.”
These vixens who have nothing to recommend them to respectability but their nasal twang and god clothes, who pride themselves on keeping “servants” and ruling with a sway of iron over their perhaps hired domain, crush every hope and aspiration of their God-made sisters who work in their kitchens, as remorselessly as they tread the dirt beneath their feet. These poor and oppressed menials are unworthy of their slightest consideration or regard. What is it to them if the “girl,” is tired or sick, or pines for her foreign home and longs once more to hear the voices of her friends or kindred? What is it to them for the “girl” to work sixteen hours a day and then go to her attic or cellar, and steep her pillow in hopeless tears? What is it to them if she does the work of two women and breaks down under the shameful load? When she is used up she is as ruthlessly thrust out of doors as the butcher thrusts his victims into the slaughter pen. And these women, as heartless as Nero, adorn “good society,” are members of churches, and very much interested in foreign missions, and their “dear pastor.” Shame on them!
Think of two dollars a week! Not enough to buy a calico dress! Seven days work for two dollars? Twenty-eight cents a day for clothing for books, for papers, for comforts? What else do they receive? The treatment of a dog. Are they recognized by the mistress? No. Are they allowed to eat with the family. No. Have they any privileges of thought or intelligence? No. Are they allowed to have an opinion of their own? No. Are their womanly natures allowed a single tithe of respect? No. Their feelings are continually outrages; their woman hood thrust into the mire of contempt; their inner sensibilities trampled upon and the whole fabric of their lives crushed into the miserable shapelessness of a menial servile drudge.
Twenty-eight cents for sixteen hours of weary, disheartening toil, loaded with unspeakable bitterness, and crowded with that sharp and burning abuse which a woman can only conceive and execute. How can a lot of a slave be worse? Is it any wonder that American girls would sooner sell their souls to damnation than to go into a woman’s kitchen? Is it any wonder that they wear out their lives in stitching in garrets and cellars rather than bear the unbearable indignities of working in the kitchen for these bantam Neroes?
Only those girls who are forced by the direct necessity and those who have lost their self-respect and womanhood by the wretched demoralization of the kitchen, will submit to the exactions, indignities, a petty tyranny and slavery of doing “housework” for ladies. We admit that there are ladies who are such in the kitchen as well as parlor, whose souls are alive with sympathy and love to their sisters, whether in their kitchen or on the street; but we regret to say, for the honor of womankind, that they are the exception and not the rule.
A pseudo aristocracy, supercilious pride and dictatorial affectation have poisoned the hearts and brains of a large portion of American women; and instead of being what God made them–ministering angels of love and good will–they are transformed into monstrosities of ugliness, and disgrace the name they bear.
When will women who employ servant girls remember that these girls are women as well as themselves, and that they are entitled to womanly treatment. Their lot at best is one of peculiar hardships and burdens; why will women make it more dismal, yea unbearably wretched, by unnecessary abuse and gratuitous indignities? It is lamentable that women should be such tyrants when they have the opportunity, yet we remember that women are incomparably the worst enemies of their sex.
There is no class of laborers among us so poorly paid as servant girls; is it not most lamentable that they should as well be the most abused? If any class of laborers need a vigorous trades union, it is servant girls. Why will they not try the experiment? We are satisfied they would have much help and encouragement from men. —Penn. Labor Journal
Webmaster’s Note: These are actual extracts from the Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly. Sentences or paragraphs that have been removed are indicated with the ellipsis (….)
When this web site began in September 1999, there were no digitized copies of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly available online. Now you can find an almost complete run on the IAPSOP web site which has no affiliation with Victoria Woodhull & Company:
All the readers of this paper, and some others, know perfectly well that Victoria C. Woodhull has not been an inactive woman during the last two or three years. Her private life is her own, although it has been a subject of free comment. As the individual American, however, is supposed to live in a glass house, into and through which the public have a right to look, she has, perhaps, no ground of complaint on that score, only that, with some others, she would complain not of intrusive comment but of deliberative misrepresentation. Her public life is at the public service.
In April, 1869, the world was startled from its propriety by the announcement of a woman’s intention to run for the Presidential chair. A few persons thought this was a freak of insanity, others read in it an outrageous craving for personal notoriety.
Some wonderingly inquired whether ‘the woman’ could possibly be in earnest, while the community at large laughed at the ridiculous presumption of a woman who thus dared to outrage the proprieties and brave an ordeal of unfriendly criticism and aspersion from which a case-hardened political adventurer might well recoil. A few generous exception there were, indeed, who neither blamed nor ridiculed, but saw in the fact a Sign of the Times, and left events to shape their own course. Among the foremost of these bold free-thinkers was Mr. Bennett. The columns of the Herald were thrown open to Mrs. Woodhull; in them her presidential pronunciamiento and her views of government were enunciated, and if the Herald did not praise, it did not blame. It simply recorded progress and change, and left its readers free to choose between the old and the new.
The objects that Victoria C. Woodhull had in view in her presidential candidature were multiform. The most prominent was the deliberate announcement of her conviction that a woman had political rights–that she had, moreover, intellectual capacity for the highest political position. A woman’s claim to the highest office in the gift of the nation at once covered the whole ground of ‘woman’s rights.’ The right to vote and to work had been talked; the equal capacity of woman had been advanced, but nothing practical had been done. Victoria C. Woodhull stepped to the front, and, grasping the hostile weapons, concentrated them on herself and undertook to receive the full charge of ridicule, obloquy and detestation, in the hope that the cause might triumph.
Her object has been gained. A woman has been heard in Congress, a woman’s arguments have been respectfully listened to by the Judiciary Committee. Women are admitted to colleges, practice law, in one Territory have been admitted to political rights, and that cause which was once a by-word and term of reproach, a laughing-stock and a thing of derision, is now held in respect and is become the leading question by whose issue the social and political regeneration, not only of this nation, but of all nations, is to be determined. It is decided that woman’s equality with man in all the functions of social and political life is to be the corner-stone of the new edifice in the coming time.
The growth of the woman question, like all great projections of free thought in all reformatory periods of the world’s history, has opened up innumerable correlative topics. A review of our whole social and moral condition is impending. After dissonance, harmony.
Inasmuch as the self-nominated candidateship of Victoria C. Woodhull for the Presidential office still disturbs some weak minds with visions of unknown possibilities, and inasmuch as she values unity of action far beyond any purposes of personal advancement, Victoria C. Woodhull repeats, what she has frequently said, that the purposes for which she advanced her name signifying Presidential aspirations are accomplished.
We are approaching a season of Presidential nominations, and all political parties are skirmishing for favorable positions and points of departure. It is nearly certain that the regular Republicans will renominate General Grant. It is not yet evident that the Democrats will not nominate an independent ticket. There is a deal of wire-working going on looking to union between disaffected Republicans and Democrats, and undoubtedly such a programme is already formed. Whether it can succeed is not certain, since democracy will resist final burial with all the energy of despair. But such a consummation will come or there will be a straight Democratic nomination, in which case there will also be a broad field for a third party, made up of all the varied elements of radical reform, standing upon a platform of unmistakable meaning, and under the appellation of
THE EQUAL RIGHTS PARTY.
It was with this view that the National Labor Union were invited to postpone their Columbus Convention ; and the general favor with which the idea of a Union Convention is received promises well for its accomplishment.
It should be in a peculiar sense a spontaneous gathering, to which the people should go, leaving all personal ambitions and prejudices at home; and, being imbued with the great purposes in view, they would construct a platform of principles to which none could object, and wide enough for all to gather upon, and which would inspire enthusiasm in the hearts of the people, from the very fact of the harmony and unity of purpose in which it was conceived. This is an age of rapid progress. Who can say that a party thus begun might not sweep over the country like a refreshing rain after a long drouth, [sic[ to the perfect astonishment even of its own movers.
At all events, there will be several elements in the next canvass which have never before manifested themselves in a Presidential election, each of which, acting separately, would produce modifying effects upon the vote. The Labor Unionists are a power if they resolve to work for political purposes. So also are the Temperance Reformers, while the Woman Suffragists are by no means to be ignored; and the more recent developments looking to the political action of Spiritualists will cause whatever parties there may be in the field to proceed with the utmost caution. The Spiritualists alone, acting in unison, can defeat any party, and they will defeat any party which does not carry at its head the promise, at least, of Equal Humanitarian Rights.
It is all of these branches of reform that should meet in common convention and organize for the impending campaign.
It is because such events are at hand that Victoria C. Woodhull at this particular time wishes her position distinctly understood, so that nothing relative to it can be made an objection by anybody to the proposed Convention. Whatever she has done has been with the sole view of pushing the car of progress and justice, and entirely without reference to personal considerations. She has and makes no claim upon anybody, but feels amply repaid for whatever service it has been her privilege to render the common cause. Indeed, she believes there are wider fields of reform than open to view in the White House, while those upon which she has recently entered are so radical and revolutionary, and so generally unpopular among those who now hold and dispense the national favors, that the idea of political preferment in her case is precluded. She has only to add, that had she been a political aspirant, she would not have entered upon them. Let people who have made her motives only those of an ambitious woman consider this before they repeat their assertions. She will work for the election of the candidate of the Equal Rights Party, and to defeat any party which still adheres to the right of the government to, at its will only, dispense the right to vote among citizens, or, if it please them, to withhold it altogether.
[Page 4]
“FREE LOVE,” MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE.
BY MRS. GOODRICH WILLARD
No. I.
The conservative world today professes to be greatly shocked and dreadfully disgusted at the “free-love” doctrines put forth by a certain class of woman suffragists.
Now, if the “free lovers” are so greatly in error and the conservative world so neatly right, it seems to me that it would be very easy to show up the errors of the former, and thus put a stop to the spread of their false doctrines.
Instead of this, what do we see? The conservative world, including the Church, seems powerless to check the “free-love” tide. There must be a reason for this, and, to me, the reason is very plain. It is because the conservative world is deeper in the mud than the “free lovers” are in the mire. Satan cannot reprove sin with any hope of success. The difference between the “free lovers” and the conservatives is that the former preach boldly what the latter secretly practice.
I believe that today Victoria Woodhull is leading a virtuous life, while the majority of those who are howling at her are secretly and habitually guilty of adultery or licentiousness; and they howl because they fear exposure. I am glad if the time has come for the fulfillment of that prophecy which declares that that which is done in secret shall be proclaimed on the house-top.
Conservatives! Pharisees ! hypocrites! put your own feet on the solid ground of moral right and virtue-cast the beam out of your own eye before you attempt to pluck the mote from the eye of your sister.
There is, there can be, no difference of opinion about the right of every person to exercise the freest love for everybody that is lovely and lovable, in the same sense that we love a beautiful or fragrant flower. Such a love must be free; no law can touch it, because it is purely a personal matter. It does not even require that the love should be mutual, and, of course, it cannot involve or injure the rights of any other person. There would be no pith or point to the assertion or to the opposition to free-love doctrines on such grounds. But such love does not imply or constitute marriage.
True marriage implies a mutual love and a contract or compact of union between two persons of opposite sex. Nothing less than this can be called marriage in any true sense of the word. The real question at issue is, shall we have marriage at all or shall we not? Shall that love—shall that sexual relation that implies parentage, that involves the rights and happiness of partner and child, that lies at the very foundation of all social organization and order—I say,shall such a relation be regulated by mutual legal compact—shall it be tethered to law and order, or shall it be left solely to individual control, and therefore in multitudes of cases to the fickle caprice of designing or misguided men and women.
I reply in the most positive and emphatic terms, that social organization and order imply the regulation b civil law of all important relations that exist between or affect second and third parties. Civil law is, or should be, the expression of the highest moral tone of the best developed element of society, and this moral tone, expressed and enforced by law, controls, or should control, the lower and baser elements, which, if left to themselves, would recognize no rights but their own selfish desires.
[Ah! Mrs. Willard, are you not making a rather broad assertion ? Does social organization imply the regulation as you first state ; or the control, as you state last ? There is a wide difference between the right to regulate and the right to control. It seems to us that Mrs. Willard utterly ignores the logic of individual freedom, since she says ” some people would recognize no rights but their own selfish desires.” Doesn’t Mrs. Willard see that freedom is the only cure for the lawlessness of which she complains, which is legalized by present marriage customs? Or can she not comprehend that in freedom no expression of selfish desires is possible unless they first find a consenting party. And who has the right to object in that case? Be sure you comprehend freedom, Mrs. Willard, before you presume to settle what its consequences will be.]
Men will bind themselves before the world to obey a much higher code of morality than they would practice in secret ; and it is in this way that society lifts itself up to a higher plane of life and action. In the light of a higher morality than their own, men are ashamed of their secret practices, and when they secretly disobey laws to which they have openly given a voluntary assent, it becomes necessary to expose them, and then their own sense of shame and their fear of further exposure are often enough to compel reform and obedience.
[A most successful manner by which to manufacture hypocrites! Compel men to be open in all their actions, and banish canting sycophancy. If Mrs. Willard can invent a system by which to legislate morality into men and women, perhaps by a little further experiment she may also find the means to legislate intellectuality into them, and thus do away with the necessity of education. ]
Mrs. Woodhull asserts most positively that all which is good and commendable now existing in the marriage relation, would continue to exist if ail marriage laws were repealed to-morrow. I am just as positive that it would not continue to exist long. Public opinion might preserve and maintain the present legal status of sexual morality for a while, but civil law is the form and expression of public morality, and this moral tone or status could not long remain after its form and expression had been destroyed.
[We do not know by what authority Mrs. Willard assumes this position. We have the right to assume the position which we occupy, since the extension of freedom in every other direction has been accompanied by beneficial results. It is one thing to assume: anybody can do that. It is quite another matter to deduce conclusions from the logic of events. Only those who can separate principles from effects are capable of this.]
Civil marriage should embody the form and expression of the highest moral sense of that sexual relation that implies parentage; but today it does not. The best and most intelligent element of society has outgrown our civil code of marriage laws and regulations. I am just as much opposed to the present unjust law and conditions of marriage as Mrs. Woodhull, but I would not abrogate the present laws until I had substituted better ones.
[We have never advocated the immediate and unconditional repeal of all laws to regulate marriage. But we do say the reasons that we presented to prove the right to institute such laws apply equally to numerous other things beside marriage. If the children argument is advanced to prove the right to control marriage, why should not laws also be enacted to compel people to eat and drink such things as the doctors tell us are conducive to health. It seems to us that health for children is of a vast deal more importance than the mere matter of support during youth. It is always an indication of wisdom in a person who undertakes to wade in deep water to be sure he knows all the surroundings, lest in escaping one “hole” he falls into others of which he knows nothing.]
In all the relations of life (especially in one so fundamental and vital to society as the sexual), where two or more persons are concerned, the law should seek to bind the parties to deal truly and justly by each other, to keep them on their best behavior, to throw them upon their honor, and when either of them fails to come up to the standard of what is just and right, then the law should take cognizance of the failure in such a way that the one who has acted falsely and basely should feel that he has compromised his honor and disgraced himself, and that in so far as his conduct has been base, he has shown himself or herself unworthy of trust and confidence.
[To the doctrine of total depravity we oppose that of the inate goodness of the human heart.]
If public opinion could become so demoralized that a man could feel as if it was perfectly honorable for him to desert his wife at any time, even when the law of maternity had placed her in a condition that made his loving care and attention essential to her health and happiness, I am very certain that greater misery and worse children would result from the reform than under the present laws and conditions of marriage, bad as they are.
[Women should be placed upon such a footing by the general customs of society that they will be perfectly independent of men. Then there will be no such thing as desertion. And women will only have children when they desire them. Such children are never, while all others are liable to be, bad, not only intellectually and morally, but also physically.]
If I understand Mrs. Woodhull aright, she would have no legal form or recognition of the conjugal relation; and now, with the kindest feelings toward Mrs. Woodhull, and without at all impugning her motives or her character, I must say, in all sincerity, that I believe that such doctrines, if fully carried out and practically realized, would produce such a lawless condition of society as would render social order and self-government impossible.
[According to Mrs. Willard, society all these years has been advancing backward. It ought to have been going toward despotism instead of toward freedom; toward absolutism instead of democracy.]
I am uncompromisingly opposed to every form of slavery, but I am just as strongly opposed to unbridled license and lawlessness. It is no more slavery to bind ourselves by a solemn compact of marriage in such a way as would lead us to repress the evil passions and tendencies of our nature and cultivate the best feelings and affections toward each other, than it would be slavery to join a temperance society and bind ourselves not to get drunk.
[Will Mrs. Willard define slavery, and also license? And is she commissioned to declare what evil tendencies and evil passions are? Why shouldn’t the law compel us to join a temperance society? And why shouldn’t the law forbid the bearing of children having such tendencies and passions ?
If there were no dishonor or legal hindrances attending the separation of conjugal partners I am very certain that, in very many cases, there would be so little restraint to the indulgence of bad temper and the picking of quarrels for slight causes that love would seldom last longer than the honeymoon. It is a very easy matter to kill love by neglect and ill-temper, and just as easy to cultivate and strengthen it by kindness and attention.
[On the contrary, the only way to insure constancy is to be in a state of perfect freedom.]
Two persons may not be able to promise to love each other and to live together as long as life shall last, but they can promise to do their best to insure such a result. The conditions of the marriage union and compact should be such as to compel the parties, as far as possible, to do their best to be always true and constant and affectionate toward each other. Nevertheless, divorces should be granted whenever the best good of all parties concerned demands it; but the best good of children and of society should be.the para mount consideration. Patriotism and parentage and honor should forbid us to be governed by our own selfish feelings, because parents should feel that they are mainly responsible for the existence and training and character of their children.
[And who is to be the judge ? If we had perfect men and women, we would make no objection.]
The marriage compact should be such as to make men and women careful in assuming those relations that shall make them parents. If men and women could, without loss of character and honor, select conjugal partners one day, desert each other the next, and unite with other partners on the third day, there would be very little caution, I trow, in the selection of conjugal partners. When it shall become just as honorable for men and women to take a new conjugal partner every week or month; or every year, or every three or five years, as it is for them to remain true and loving to each other as long as life lasts, then truth and constancy and firmness of character will cease to be virtues, and falsity and fickleness will take their places, and the social conditions upon which to build a firm, self-governing republic will have ceased to exist.
[Assumption without anything to sustain it.]
Every permanent organization, whether natural or social, must be governed by law-by such laws of equilibrium and justice as shall produce order and harmony. Natural organizations are controlled by natural laws; social and political organizations must be governed by social and civil laws. The law of gravitation binds the earth to its integrity and holds it in its orbit; the laws of marriage should bind men and women to their integrity in the conjugal relation, that society may be held together and preserved from anarchy and dissolution.
[Arbitrary law can control nothing. Laws to govern mus[t] be the natural laws. These, in the relations of society, have not been discovered. When social laws shall be as well known as the laws of mathematics are, then we shall be governed by law. But until they are discovered, we want freedom to investigate and experiment. Suppose Franklin ad been prevented experimenting with lightning until he had discovered the law, where would our telegraphs have been ? Mrs. Willard would have us learn to swim before going near the Water. It is high time that social matters should be reduced to a common-sense standard, and treated as we treat all other matters. Then the superficiality of Mrs. Willard’s strictures will become apparent even to herself.]
Webmaster’s Note: These are actual extracts from the Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly.
When this web site began in September 1999, there were no digitized copies of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly available online. Now you can find an almost complete run on the IAPSOP web site which has no affiliation with Victoria Woodhull & Company:
We have received copies of two books which just now possess considerable interest for many people. They are entitled respectively, ‘Constitutional Equality, a Right of Women,’ by Tennie C. Claflin, and ‘The Origin, Functions and Principles of Government,’ by Victoria C. Woodhull. We have examined these books carefully, not only for the sake of the subjects treated of, but because of the discussion which has been called out in the past few weeks about these two remarkable women.
It would seem as though everything conspired at once to bring them and their views before the public. First, the Tribune paraded them as the champion free-lovers by way of attacking its old enemies, the woman suffrage women; then one branch of the suffragists attacked them, while the other wing as vehemently upheld them, and lastly they were brought bodily before the public in the recent trial. These conflicting elements of notoriety were enough to have made any one famous for the moment, and ought to make their books sell. The chief element of curiosity, however, was in the fact that they were denounced so bitterly by the Tribune as free-lovers, while they were, on the other hand, endorsed so enthusiastically by a lady so universally respected as Mrs. Stanton. Careful examination of their book fails to show anything so very startling in the doctrines put forth in them, however, distasteful they may be to many. They advance many strong arguments for giving the women the right to vote, for a remodeling of the marriage laws, and, in fact, for the general renovating and making over of society. Some of these are new, and some not so new, but they are very well put, and will be found not uninteresting, even to those who are opposed to the doctrines advocated. —Newark (N.J.) Register.
[Page 5]
COMMUNISM
MESDAMES EDITORS: How often have I said to myself, “Oh, for a paper of world-wide circulation, through which we could pour into the public lap the most important results of our lives’ experience! that others who come after us may avoid the thorny paths that have lacerated our feet–may profit by our errors and successes.” I hope and believe that yours is, or will be, such a paper; and in it I propose to furnish a series of articles, showing the practical workings of Communism and other reform experiments running through forty-six years devoted to peaceful social revolution; and it will be seen that some facts are more strange than fiction, more philosophical than philosophy, more romantic than romance and more conservative than conservatism.
THE MOTIVES FOR COMMUNISM—HOW IT WORKED AND WHAT IT LED TO.
When Robert Owen came to this country in 1825 I listened to some of his sublime discourses and read some of his publications, from which it appeared that, unless some peaceful revolution could be devised, the working classes, driven to starvation by machinery and destructive competition between themselves, would be compelled to choose between death by destitution and an effort to save themselves by violent revolution.
He showed us that in Communism, instead of working against each other as in competition, we should all work for each other while working for ourselves. A problem that had been profoundly considered by the wisest of our race, but which had always baffled the highest stretch of genius. It appeared that mutual help would beget mutual sympathy, or social harmony. That labor would be reduced to two or three hours a day, leaving abundance of leisure for new enterprises and general improvement. That the jealousies and antagonism between the poor and rich would be at an end, and a fellow feeling would grow up from equality of condition. No more horrible crimes, or punishments still more horrible. No more children crying for bread. No more suicides for fear of starvation. No more drunkenness from despair. No more prostitution to escape starvation. No more wars about the profits in trade nor for the privileges of governing, for the government was to consist of all above a certain age. The business of nations would not be the destruction of each other, but a mutual interchange of services beneficial to each.
Sick at heart with the habitual contemplation of the frauds and cruelties of men toward each other, and the miseries in different forms that had surrounded me from childhood, all growing out of the crudity of our civilization, and seeing no hope of change, I had, at the age of 23, become willing to shut my eyes forever; but here was a new sun arisen! and my young and ardent spirit grasped at it as at the breath of life. Mr. Owen had become a new god to me, and I said to myself, now I have an object worth living for!
I was not alone in these views and feelings, several excellent people of rare intelligence and thoughtful habits joined in a project to start a community in the neighborhood of Cincinnati.
The next article will show how it worked.
I would gladly avoid the imputation of egotism, but for the sake of giving definite responsibility, and as simple truth works better than anything short of it, and to put myself in communication with readers, I give my name and place of residence.
Josiah Warren, Princeton, Mass.
Webmaster’s Note: These are actual extracts from the Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly.
When this web site began in September 1999, there were no digitized copies of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly available online. Now you can find an almost complete run on the IAPSOP web site which has no affiliation with Victoria Woodhull & Company:
[An editorial on the Nast cartoon depicting Victoria as Mrs. Satan which was published in Harper’s Weekly, Feb.17, 1872, p. 140.]
[Page 11]
HARPER-NAST, FREE LOVE AND BIBLE MARRIAGE
Harper-pious, godly, methodistic Harper, indulges, feasts his methodistic, pious, godly patrons with a feeble attempt at burlesquing the institution of divine marriage-marriage according to God’s law; the only holy wedlock possible to humanity ; a wedlock based on principles, and therefore within itself having the element of perpetuity.
A poor, besotted woman, the wife of a besotted husband; the other of besotted children, because begotten of besotting whiskey, and besotted matrimony, is represented as packing her drunken, besotted husband flourishing a besotting bottle on her besotted back and their besotted children, three in number, clinging to her besotted skirts, lie young possums to their maternal ancestor; she bears all these burdens with poverty, rags, hunger, brutal treatment; barren rocks; bleakness reigning around and before her.
On her right hand is a woman—a female demon with horns, and wings of bat; with countenance coarse, sensual, selfish; hard, harsh; habiliments of blackest hue; in the hands of this Proserpine—fit companion of devils—is a parchment, containing these words, “Be saved by Free Love.” The overburdened woman, with her besotted load of four human beings, replies, “I HAD RATHER TRAVEL THE HARDEST PATH OF MATRIMONY THAN FOLLOW YOUR FOOTSTEPS!”
It is from the pencil of Nast. Its apparent meaning is disgraceful to aesthetic taste. The moral lesson—is to those who are tempted to accept the pernicious doctrine of free love; of which we produce several clerical examples in our present issue, which we commend to the immortal Nast and to the pious Harpers for their next artistic effort and moral lesson. After quoting from the words of a recent advocate of woman’s rights an argument in favor of the divine right of men and women to determine when they will enter into the estate of matrimony, and how long it shall continue, and principles which the superficial brains of Harpers and Nast cannot comprehend, closes the moral lesson thus, “If this mischievous talk does not emanate from Satan, whence does it come? (How profound this logic!) Certainly it cannot have the divine approval, else what comes of the injunctions uttered b the Saviour, ‘What, therefore, God hath joined together, let not man put asunder!’ ” More and still more profound!
We too will “point a moral and adorn a tale,” from this coarse, vulgar attempt at pious wit.
The picture teaches that God is guilty of the injustice of uniting and continuing the union of a drunken man with a sober woman, and begetting children in violation of physical law, social rights—the rights of children and the rights of society. It teaches, in the name of God and Jesus, that this is better, more acceptable to God than unions formed on mutual fitness and mutual attraction that need no law to bind, because there is no tendency to separate.
It also teaches that the expounders are wholly ignorant of the meaning of the scripture quoted, and hold themselves up to the ridicule and contempt of all sensible people.
No form of marriage is provided in the Bible; the Bible no where defines what is a diving union; Jesus recognized the legal marriage of the unbelieving Gentiles with the attending ceremonies which neither recognized the law of Moses, nor yet the teachings of Jesus. “What God hath joined together” is not defined. Have ye not read that he which made them at the beginning, made them male and female? Therefore the twain shall be one flesh; “What therefore God hath joined together let no man put asunder.” The marriage which Jesus taught them, was: I. Based on male and female, or difference of sex; 2. On a union so complete that they were mutually absorbed–the twain became a unity, and having such unity they had Divine marriage; and this joining Jesus forbade them to fracture. But when fractured, he allowed divorce! So much for the Divine marriage and what comes of the teachings of Jesus–the joining by God–the male and female united in mutual equity and harmony, without one word of legal or pious ceremony. Jesus says nothing about priestly interference to announce, approving words on the law, action and sanction of God.
Now for Moses and Bible marriage:–See Exodus xxi. “If thou buy an Hebrew servant.” (How does Harper like the buying of a brother?); “If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons and daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s; and he shall g out by himself; and if a man sell his daughter to be a maid servant, she shall not go out as the men servants do; (how’s that for justice?); and if she please not her master who hath betrothed her to himself; if he take to himself another wife–polygamy–her food, her raiment and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish; and if he do not these three things unto her, then she shall go out free without money.”
Here then is a Bible marriage by the direction of God. The father sells his daughter, the man buys his wife. If on trial he is not pleased, the father may redeem her—the husband may divorce her—she may divorce herself, because he hath dealt deceitfully. The master may betroth her to his son or servant, and divorce her at pleasure.
No legal ceremony—no election of the woman–no penalty for the perfidy of the man–no law to compel him to do his duty, no compensation for the poor woman who is turned adrift like the girl of the street, penniless, to sell herself on the best possible terms. This is Divine marriage, or Moses and the Bible lie; and this is Bible divorce—putting away!
Hear O hearers, and give ear O earth! The reformers of the 19th century are accounted among Devils for opposing this marriage, this divorce, and advocating the Divine unity taught by Jesus!
We commend the marriage of Moses and the Divine unity based on male and female fitness, as taught by Jesus to the pencil of Nast, and the homilizing pen of Geo. William Curtis, the professed friend of woman’s rights.
Webmaster’s Note: With the exception of the Mrs. Satan political cartoon, these are actual extracts from the Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly. The Mrs. Satan image is from Harper’s Weekly, Feb.17, 1872, p. 140.
When this web site began in September 1999, there were no digitized copies of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly available online. Now you can find an almost complete run on the IAPSOP web site which has no affiliation with Victoria Woodhull & Company:
The most important and imposing gathering that has been known for many a day took place at the Academy of Music, on Tuesday evening last, the occasion being the lecture of Victoria C. Woodhull on
“THE IMPENDING REVOLUTION.”
Six thousand men and women were crowded together within the auditorium of that immense building, while as many more made ineffectual attempts to gain admission. The whole length and breadth of Irving Place, from Fourteenth to Fifteenth Streets, as well as the wide pavements from Fourth to Third avenues was literally packed with a living, swaying mass of people. Some estimated that the crowd outside at ten thousand souls.
Neither was the chief significance of this gathering in its numbers, but in the spirit which animated it. Of course, there were some rude and vulgar persons in it, but the great mass were honest, toiling citizens, who came there to hear the analysis of the wrongs under which they suffer, while there were not a few of the representatives of accumulated wealth also, and every one of each class seemed to vie with every other in efforts to gain the main door-way. When it became evident that no more could crowd their way inside, large sums, from one to ten dollars for reserved seats, and twenty to thirty dollars for private boxes were offered; and only when it was learned that not another seat was vacant did the immense throng slowly and reluctantly turn their faces homeward.
Ordinarily such a remarkable outpouring of the people would have received respectful attention from the press. Had it been some vulgar show; some great artist in music or the drama; some reverend divine, speaking upon a commonplace subject; some noted personage, denouncing freedom and equal political rights for women, why, whole columns with headings, immensely displayed, would have proffered their readers. But this occasion was only an inquiry about matters into which the ‘monopolists’ of all sorts do not desire that the people shall inquire; hence the press is muzzled, the people must not know too much. The speaker of Tuesday evening, however, could not have been more highly complimented than by the silence of all the Republican journals Wednesday morning. None of them had heard that the largest mass of people ever called out to inquire into political affairs, gathered Tuesday night in and around the largest hall in the city; and great was the astonishment of the “six thousand” who failed to gain admission to it, as they in vain searched the columns of the Tribune, Times and Standard, for some account of what, to them, had been something quite out of the ordinary channels of events. The people can afford to have these papers ignore them ; but if the whole truth were known, the papers cannot afford to do it.
It is true the Tribune contained a poor attempt at ridicule, referring to a recent utterance made at Washington, which we quote for the enlightment of our readers, as to the general character of what was once a dignified and honorably conducted paper. So far as its apeing in print, the vulgar brutalism of the high moral toned Day’s Doings, the illustrated Police Gazette and other pictorials of that ilk is concerned, we are perfectly indifferent, since we are not responsible for its tastes. Nature will out, and there is nothing that so quickly demonstrates the brutal vulgarism of a person as the attempt to ridicule another of the opposite sex. In this sense there is no mistaking the author of the following poetic and æsthetic effort of the Tribune:
We notice that Mrs. Victoria Woodhull, who has really become as preposterous and as intolerable a bore as George Francis Train or the Count Johannes, signifies her purpose of sending out 500 female orators to make shrill and incoherent the coming Presidential campaign. Perhaps she can do it. Who knows? If so, it will add petticoats and picturesqueness to a crusade which has hitherto been somewhat bleak from the lack of those alluring and attractive elements. The twinkle of a No. 2 gaiter with a high heel upon the rostrum would doubtless tickle the great mass-meeting-imagination, stupified by long contemplation of No. 14 brogans doubled soled; but we don’t think the discourses of the wearers of these bewildering boots would amount to much. It is seriously to be hoped that Mrs. W. will reconsider her alarming resolution and not wantonly flood the land with another deluge of talking virgins. There are surely enough now. With babble of them is the world filled, and of most of them the emptiness is as the emptiness of innumerable. Of the other sort, so far as heard from, it would appear that they desire to have as ltttle [sic] to do with Mrs. Woodhull as possible.
Even the Herald, usually independent, makes a tremendous effort to say nothing, and succeeds admirably. Although it could not ignore the crowd it endeavored to belittle its character:
“VICTORIA” ON THE STUMP.
She says Christ was a Communist and does not believe in Hell or Damnation—Pitches into A. T. Stewart and Astor—Tom Scott gets a “Show” and so does Vanderbilt.
Last evening the Academy of Music was crowded to overflowing with a fashionable audience of ladies and gentlemen who came to listen to Victoria Woodhull in her new lecture entitled, “The Impending Revolution.” The aisles of the large auditorium were packed with ladies, who were forced to stand up packed like herrings in a barrel. Many of these ladies were afterward carried out fainting into the open air. Irving Place at as early as seven o’clock was filled with a moving mass of people of both sexes who were either endeavoring to force their way in at fifty cents a head or were fighting their way out, having found out that there was not even standing room for them. The proscenium boxes were many of them filled with the owners and their families and guests, who had come for the first time to hear the terrible Victoria Woodhull. It can be safely concluded that there were as many people turned away last evening from the doors of the Academy as there were persons who found accommodation within the walls of the temple of music. Mrs. Woodhull came on the stage in a quiet black dress, her hair cut short and allowed to float freely on her shoulders. There was a pleased flush on her cheeks as she looked first into the parquette, then into the dress circle, and finally into the amphitheater, and smiled ‘victoriously’ at the tiers upon tiers of eager faces. It was a noticeable fact that many bald-headed men were among the audience. Mrs. Rose M[a]cKinley, Miss Tennie C. Claflin, Mrs. Miles, sister to Mrs. Woodhull, and other strong-minded females were present in the boxes. It may here be observed that the bald-headed men were nearly all sitting in the front rows. Victoria read from her notes slowly and with precision, and so distinctly that she was heard all over the Academy. It is a popular belief that Victoria Woodhull is a sort of Bacchante, cut on the bias, with low neck and short sleeves, whatever she may be she has achieved success and has at last secured an audience. There were but few interruptions last night and when they occurred it was only to encourage her to proceed.
“She has at last secured an audience.” Has the Herald forgotten her audience at Lincoln Hall, Washington, of 2,500 persons; at Cooper Institute shortly after, of 3,000 persons; at the Rink, Cleveland of 4,000 persons; at Steinway Hall, according to its own report, of 3,000 persons; and at Music Hall, Boston of 3,000 persons? Verily it is convenient for this great paper to be slightly oblivious to facts contained in its own columns.
The Sun, always sensational, did its best to break the effect of the meeting, upon its large number of readers, and at the same time retain its consistency. There was a great crowd—in fact, a jam; but it was an earnest, and not a “chaffing,” crowd, unless a few low specimens are to determine the character of the whole: MRS. WOODHULL’S LECTURE, A TREMENDOUS JAM IN IRVING PLACE.
Victoria C. Woodhull read her lecture, “The Impending Revolution,” in the Academy, last evening, to one of the largest assemblages ever seen in that hall. An hour before the opening of the doors people began to congregate in Irving place, and fifteen minutes before eight o’clock the multitude filled up the street, extending out to Fourteenth street. The crowd was in good humor, and the chaffing was lively and amusing.
Women and girls were wedged in so tight that they were helpless beyond uttering pitiful screams, indicative of disaster to toilets, and unaccustomed abrasions of knees and shoulders, while several fat old gentlemen nearly lost their tempers, as some broad-footed republican sovereign stood for an instant on a favorite corn.
Many were carried utterly off their feet, and so conveyed along with the surge into the vestibule. The door-keeper could hardly take and separate the tickets.
THE RUSH INTO THE ACADEMY.
As the time for the lecture drew near the police became almost overpowered, and finally the doors were thrown open, and then the unterrified rushed in with a roar and crash as loud as thunder. They jammed into the galleries and into the dress circle, overflowed into the parquet, and then the impetus was such that the mass of half-frantic people clambered over into the orchestra and filled it in a moment. The aisles were filled with men and women, who bravely stood it out to the last moment.
THE AUDIENCE DEMONSTRATIVE.
The audience kept up a fearful din of chaffing, stamping and hooting. Numberless facetious remarks were exchanged from one gallery to snother, [sic] and many interruptions of the lecture were made by uneasy individuals, one malcontent wanting to know what the speaker thought of free-love by this time. Several peremptory demands were made that she should speak louder, and some of her interrogatories were promptly answered by wise persons at the top of the house.
Several passages of the speech were enthusiastically applauded, as much of what she said appealed directly to the prejudices of the audience.
The World, formerly fair, but more recently in matters pertaining to the radical branch of reformers, brutal, deigned to denominate the crowd a “motley crew” etc,, as follows :
THE IMPENDING REVOLUTION.
Lecture by :Victoria C. Woodhull .—The Academy of Music Filled with an Immense Audience.
The crowd which had gathered last evening at the Academy of Music to hear Mrs. Woodhull deliver her lecture on “The Impending Revolution” was immense. Long before eight o’clock, the hour appointed for the lecture, Irving place was filled with a motley crew of all sorts of people, crowding and pushing each other about, surging up the steps which lead to the entrance, and pressing against the doors, which were then unopened, and receiving accessions of every kind from every direction. Speculators elbowed their way as best they could through the jam, shouting their offers of tickets at far less than the advertised price, and when the doors were thrown open it seemed that scarcely any whatever were needed. The crowd pressed by the door-keeper with such force that it was utterly impossible for the small force of police present to offer any hindrance, and collecting tickets was out of the question. Instantly every seat in the parquette and the gallery was taken, the aisles speedily filled with persons of both sexes, and every inch of standing room occupied. Soon after the lecturer commenced the boxes were thrown open and immediately filled. The entrances were jammed, and even then many were obliged to go away unable to get within ear shot of the speaker, The immense audience was far from a respectful one, and the interruptions frequent, even the applause being of a dubious character. The lecturer was attired very simply in a dark dress, with a cut-away jacket, and wearing a large blue necktie. She was unaccompanied by any one. After introducing her subject and explaining that by the “impending revolution” she meant “the strife for the mastery between the authority, despotism, inequalities, and injustices of the present, and freedom, equality and justice in their broad and perfect sense, based on the proposition that humanity is one, which is the complete statement of the religion of Jesus Christ unadulterated by his professional followers, the speaker touched at length on what she called the different forms of despotism which now enslave humanity. Among these, she referred to the absolute slavery of the laboring classes, as she termed their present condition, the railroad monopolies for which she prophes[i]ed a speedy downfall, the monopoly of money, the reduction of the public debt, minority representation, and the relation of Christianity to politics. At the close of the lecture the audience remained seated, amid many shouts for the appearance of “Tennie Claflin” and “Tilton.” After five or ten minutes had elapsed, however, the gas was lowered and the effect was visible enough, the Academy being speedily cleared.
The Star, whose fading light betokens an early setting, whose chief delight has been to fatten on Tammany pap and defend Tammany thieves; which purloins or invents messages; whose editor writes in the Sunday Star, sketching coarse cuts to illustrate his coarser ideas, still more coarsely expressed, gives a hypothetical and burlesqueing exaggeration as an account of the greatest gathering ever held in the Academy as follows:
THE IMPENDING REVOLUTION.
The Academy of Music presented an unusual scene last evening, it being the occasion of a lecture delivered by the famous Mrs. Woodhull, on the “Impending Revolution.” Rich revelations being expected from the fair orator, thousands of people of both sexes gathered around the building, in order to obtain admittance. By 7.15 P.M. the street opposite the building was almost impassable, and many an earnest wish was then expressed that the doors might be opened in order to prevent a jam, which was sure to occur in a very short time.
The crowd continually increased until about 7.30, when the doors were thrown open, and a headlong rush commenced. After the first score or so had entered, a perfect wedge of human beings was continually being formed in the hall for about an hour. The rate at which this mass of human beings advanced did not exceed a yard in two minutes, and it took nearly twenty minutes, in some instances, from the time a person would leave the sidewalk till his entrance to the main part of the building. During this trying ordeal touching scenes occurred. Women were shrieking and fainting, and wishing Mrs. Woodhull and her lecture were gone to glory. Men were shouting and jeering the free-lovers, and hoping that Vic. would wait with her lecture till they had crossed the Jordan and got inside, while cries of “my ribs are going in!” “my sore arm!” “my pocket!” ” my corset!” “my hoops!” and “my poor sore feet!” resounded throughout the walls of the Academy. Inside the scene was no less ludicrous, the seats nearest the doors were first, of course, occupied, and that quickly, too, while the reserved seats in the parquette were nearly empty. Seeing this, someone gave the mandate to enter the latter. Immediately a headlong rush was made, men and women falling over each other in the most inelegant manner. One of the gallery-doors next gave way, and in poured the crowd of the surging mass till the place was full to repletion. The private boxes were also taken possession of despite rules to the contrary; cheering, yelling, whistling, and Kentish fire were now brought into requisition, until the fair orator made her appearance on the platform. On her coming forward, cheer after cheer again resounded through the edifice, she bowing all the time in recognition. Vic. was neatly dressed in black, and her hair was in accordance with the style of the empress of Austria. There was great enthusiasm manifested throughout her remarks,
HISSING AND CHEERING.
vieing with each other at the lapse of every few moments. Her principal aim throughout was to have all on equal footing ; to do away with monopolists of every kind, and to obliterate hell. She said that to have these ideas carried out, a revolution was sure to come, which would be triumphant in like manner to that which swept slavery off the land. At the conclusion of her remarks she was loudly and
REPEATEDLY CHEERED
and bouquets to any quantity were showered on the platform, some of those which were thrown rather late were afterwards taken off by her daughter, who was also called on for a “speech.” Before the end of the lecture several squads of police arrived to see that order prevailed and to save the Academy from destruction.
And such is the press of New York city, without capacity to construct or execute a sound political economy ; without honesty to expose the dishonesty and incompetency of partizans ; without courage to utter the truth or permit its free expression; for a time, and only a short time will these monopolists maintain their thrones on the necks of the people. Instead of approving of what is good, and disapproving that which is not tenable or practicable in the remedies now being offered for the wrongs which none but fools or knaves deny, they suppress all that is good and valuable, and misrepresent and ridicule both the good and bad alike. These men forget that the people will find out that newspapers and politicians are equally guilty of the wrongs which make reforms and revolutions necessary at this hour; and when the expurgation shall come, they will be included among the common enemies who have bartered great principles-human rights, and the well for a mess of pottage—political pap.
As we have said, the Academy of Music was crowded. Of course, there were rowdies there; but the great body of the audience was composed f the bone and sinew of this great city, well dressed, well behaved, thoughtful people who are anxiously asking the way out of this wilderness of political incompetency and dishonesty. Notwithstanding the most radical and revolutionary doctrines were enunciated, the great mass of that great audience accepted them, and the great mass of the people will accept them when permitted to hear dispassionately. They may not approve of our methods, but our purposes and principles are so in accord with the spirit, necessities, and tendencies of the age that the people can only be made to reject them because they are not allowed to fairly consider them.
If the press do not, the people do, concede that our civilization and our religion are failures. The purposes of government are not accomplished, the design of the church is not met. But this is not the worst. The intelligence of the age, presented in editors and politicians is wholly unable to solve the simplest problem in the purposes of government. They do not understand any of the great questions demanding answer, in the hands of a people ready for remedy or revolution. Scurrility, slander, ridicule are fit weapons in the hands of such men, and for a time conceal their ignorance, incompetency, malevolence, and dishonesty, but the mask must fall, and then the people will lose confidence in editors just as they have in political hucksters and tricksters.
We do not object, we court, fair and honorable criticism. We are ready to publish such criticism; for we have no interest in error. But such the press of New York is incompetent or unwilling to render. A horse neighs, a hog grunts, a dog barks. It is their nature. So editors steeped in corruption–the creatures of party and plunder–educated in the school that accepts as axiomatic: “To the victor belong the spoils.” What more can we expect than dishonorable and dishonest renderings. But the day of retribution is at hand, and not one who has bartered principle for political or party purposes shall escape. And so we bear patiently, and wait cheerfully for that law of compensation which enforces even-handed justice.
There was another fact connected with the meeting which, though of considerable significance, was not noticed by the press.
On the stage were two large banners, bearing the following inscriptions:
What lack I yet? Jesus said unto him; go sell all thou hath and give to the poor. —St. Matthew XIX., 21, 22. Neither said any that what he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.—The Acts V., 32.
[Note .—The “Times” of Thursday, has a long editorial, entitled “A Lamp Without Oil,” regarding this lecture, to which we shall give attention next week.]
Webmaster’s Note: These are actual extracts from the Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly.
When this web site began in September 1999, there were no digitized copies of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly available online. Now you can find an almost complete run on the IAPSOP web site which has no affiliation with Victoria Woodhull & Company:
…Dr. Malthus asserted that “too many were invited to the feast of life, and that, consequently, some must go without share therein.” The worst paid class of workers are the millions of British agricultural laborers who put the aforesaid feast on the table. The question is, ought the latter to be deprived of the food their labors have produced, in order to make room for idlers with tickets, who at present are first served?
There are four revolutions in progress throughout civilization: social, industrial, political and religious. All are progressing; but the success of either cannot be predicted until they coalesce. Our present systems are not only useless, but mischievous and prolific of crimes and criminals. Under any circumstances, those relics of the dark ages are doomed. Let them pass. The world waits for the morning….
Our Social Science reformers are fond of amusing themselves with statistics. They compute that were it not for diseases, wars, and famines, there would not be standing room for our people on this continent by the year 3000. Probably they could add something to this useful information, by informing us from the present rate of increase, how many millions of dollars per capita the people ought then to possess, also into how many thousand hands it will be concentrated. Having solved the problem they can conclude their labors by estimating, form British statistics, how many hundred men will be likely to own this continent about the same period.
At the Court of Special Sessions, on Saturday last, three children were brought before Judge Dowling, charged as follows: Lion Ullmann, aged 9, accused of stabbing Lawrence McEvoy, aged 10. Convicted.
The second, a wretched little fellow, aged 8 years, was charged with having stolen a wheelbarrow. Acquitted. The third case was that of a child of eleven years, who was condemned for the crime of stealing a pair of shoes.
Two of these will most probably be sent to one of our houses of refuge, where they will cease to be burden to their parents, and where their physical, intellectual, and moral wants will be properly attended to. When the Japanese visitors come, let us not show them our tenement houses in proof of our civilization, but our alms-houses and prisons.
[Page 7]
THOSE WHO KNOW US.
TENAFLY, N.J., March 10, 1872
VICTORIA WOODHULL—Dear Madam: In answer to an article in your paper of last week, “A word to the wise,” let me say, that, as far as I am concerned, I ask no higher praise than to have it said that you—maligned, denounced, cruelly and wickedly persecuted by priests, politicians, press and people—ever find a warm and welcome place in my heart, and by my side. You are doing a grand work, not only for your sex, but humanity. I have read all your speeches and bound volumes on political and social equality, and I consider your arguments on the many national questions now moving popular though, able and unanswerable.
Do not let the coldness and ingratitude of some of your sex wound you, while such noble women as Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Paulina W. Davis, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Mary J. Davis, Susan B. Anthony, and Isabella Beecher Hooker, are one and all your sincere friends.
The latter spent a few days with me not long since, and one night, as we sat alone hour after hour, by the bright moonlight, talking over the past, the present, and the future, of woman’s sad history and happier destiny, and of your sudden and marvelous coming, she abruptly exclaimed, “that little woman has bridged, with her prostrate body an awful gulf over which womanhood will walk to freedom.” Many of us fully appreciate the deep ploughing, sub-soiling, under-draining you have done for public and private morals in the last year, and while the world sneers at your blunders, we shall garner up your noble utterances with grateful hearts. The WEEKLY is all that the most fastidious could ask this week. I specially liked the editorial, “Positive and Negative Reform.” I am amused in reading the Republican and Democratic journals to see how firmly fixed these old parties are to the faith that they are to live on indefinitely, when the democracy per se has been in the grave at least four years, and the Republican party is in its dotage, so weak in the knees it cannot bear its own weight, and so blind it cannot tell its own friends. The Labor party, in refusing to do justice to woman, has sealed its doom also. Now is the time for the advance guard in all reforms to organize their forces into a “Peoples’ Party.” Those who understand the true principles of government, if they would save what we have left of freedom, and secure equal rights for all, must now come to the front and be leaders of numbers, as well as leaders of thought. If we desire a peaceful solution of the many questions now looming on our political horizon, the best men and women of the republic must assemble at an early day, and take counsel together. When we get the united thought of man and woman on national questions we shall have the complete humanitarian idea, that harmony in political action hitherto unknown.
It is strange men do not see this; and yet, not so strange after all; for when we talk to them of the “feminine element” they think of the frail specimens of womanhood who preside in their households, and say what possible benefit could these bring to us? Forgetting that the poor, cribbed slave would be transformed in freedom, and in her native dignity, develop powers that he never dreamt she possess. Today, in dependence, she reflects the man by her side, not her own true nature, or her God.
We shall never know what a true grand womanhood is, until woman has the full liberty to bound her own sphere, and you, dear friend, are doing much to usher in that glad day.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON
Webmaster’s Note: These are actual extracts from the Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly. Sentences or paragraphs that have been removed are indicated with the ellipsis (….)
When this web site began in September 1999, there were no digitized copies of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly available online. Now you can find an almost complete run on the IAPSOP web site which has no affiliation with Victoria Woodhull & Company:
Victoria C. Woodhull delivered an address on the last evening of February, before this lodge, upon “Finance, and the Relation of Labor and Capital,” to a large and enthusiastic audience. It is believed that this is the first time in the history of these unions that a woman was invited to speak before them. To this lodge belongs the praise of breaking the way in this direction. All honor to them!
Recently, Mrs. Woodhull was mentioning to some Congressmen that she was going to speak before this lodge on finance. One of them remarked, “Speak to the laborers on finance? Why, you might as well talk Latin to cattle.” She retorted, “Be careful lest you wake up to find that these people, and not you, do understand the question of finance.”
[Page 12]
A WORD TO THE WISE
A local Suffrage Association holding semi-occasional meetings in an obscure schoolroom somewhere uptown, is doing the cause it professes to espouse such harm as gnats are capable of, by its ludicrous attempts to force the community to believe in its eminent respectability. Comprised of a few women who are hanging by the eyelids on to the outskirts of that rather unsubtantiative, if not mythical thing known in New York as “Society,” it fails to perceive that it is really paving the way for an expose of pretentious assumption by its persistent attacks upon women who, to say the least, are not inferior in any respect to those who comprise its membership. The Association has done absolutely nothing since its rise from the ashes of the old Society, and has rather decreased than increased in numbers. Lately there has been considerable beating of the bushes to create an interest in this Association, and at late meetings various schemes of agitation were suggested, among others lectures in the various wards of the city. An enthusiastic member proposed that Mrs. Stanton should be invited to deliver one of the addresses, when up popped an exceedingly voluble, and O, so eminently respectable lady, formerly of New Haven*, who glories, like the “penniless lass” in the old Scottish song, in a “lang pedagree” and opposed the movement on the ground that if Mrs. Stanton should deliver an address in this city “the woman Woodhull would be sure to put herself forward on the platform.” The insult to ourself, we can afford to smile at, as we have never been in the habit of appearing upon any platform or in any society to which we are not cordially welcomed. The eminently respectable remote descendant of those eminently respectable remote Roman ancestors, whose names we do not just now remember, need give herself no uneasiness. We claim the right to make one of any public audience we have an inclination to mingle with, but we never have the slightest inclination to appear on the platform of an association which repudiates women who are the moral superiors of the majority at least of its membership, and for which, as an association, we haven’t the slightest respect.
The insult to Mrs. Stanton, however, is another and graver matter. These women, who are not worthy to untie the latchet of her shoes, shall not insult her over our shoulders without being warned that there is an end to even our forbearance, and that we are ready at a day’s notice to give the world certain biographies which shall compel it to give a verdict concerning comparative respectability.
[Page 3]
THE AGE OF UNREASON.
Some “female (?) writer seeking after notoriety” and the applause of men, asserts that this woman’s rights agitation is substantially a quarrel with the Almighty because we are not men. Were I the husband of so short-sighted a mortal I might, perhaps, be tempted to quarrel with some one because I was not a woman, born to serve man, and so having “all the rights I wanted.” Should such a wish be granted the next move would be to get away as soon as possible from the woman who would quarrel with her own sex.
It would be cruel certainly for women to attempt to quarrel with the Almighty, since He has admitted that He “repenteth making man.”
It would be just as reasonable to assert in reply, that because some noble men justly complain of not realizing a return for the deference and generosity sometimes bestowed on our sex that they should quarrel with their Maker because they are not women. MRS. W. PHILADELPHIA.
*The respectable lady, formerly of New Haven, is probably Lillie Devereux Blake.
Webmaster’s Note: These are actual extracts from the Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly. Sentences or paragraphs that have been removed are indicated with the ellipsis (….)
When this web site began in September 1999, there were no digitized copies of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly available online. Now you can find an almost complete run on the IAPSOP web site which has no affiliation with Victoria Woodhull & Company:
